We had a full and exciting weekend planned, but Mother Nature had other plans for us and instead gifted us a holiday at home with absolute water frontage.
The events we were going to — after having already missed running for two years because of the dreaded C-word — were sadly either cancelled or no doubt under-patronised due to the major flooding in our region.
We thought our days of lockdowns were behind us now the pandemic situation is under control.
But being trapped in our house by floodwaters and having our neighbourhood closed off by police was a next-level kind of lockdown.
There was no leaving the house for a walk to get your daily exercise in a one-hour allowance. But you could always do some boating.
There was no ordering takeout and grocery (or bourbon) deliveries, because Menulog vehicles don’t exactly qualify as emergency service vehicles at roadblocks. The only things we could order were sandbags and rescues.
There were no visits from friends in our “bubble” or an “intimate partner”. It was just me and my boys at home. Together. Again.
In that case you’d think it was safe to wear your most feral yard clothes, leave your hair unbrushed and go bare-faced, wouldn’t you? Until you wade into the middle of your street in your waterproofs and gumboots to snap an updated picture of your “floating” house and end up being video interviewed by a journalist from a national news outlet that just happened to come wading down your badly affected street herself.
The novelty of a minor flood seems fun — everybody out in the streets coming together with no shortage of small talk between them because of the wet topic at hand; a bit of splashing around; a few unique photo opportunities that you might only get once in a lifetime.
But the reality of a major flood isn’t fun at all.
We don’t want to throw in a fishing line from our front door step; however, we found ourselves sitting on camp chairs in our driveway anyway, looking out for snakes and watching the water inch higher and closer to our home.
People always say kids are resilient. But how resilient? All our kids have been through a pretty tough time the past couple of years and something like this on top could surely fracture their already fragile mental health further.
While I was never concerned for our safety throughout the ordeal, there were some elements of it that really were a bit distressing for me, so I can only imagine how they sat inside a younger mind.
I made the decision to stay at home rather than evacuate.
Because I knew the levels were not going to cause a threat to our lives, just our property, I truly believed it was better to be at home in familiar surroundings to maximise comfort in an already stressful time. For the kids, for the dog and so that I could keep watch on any water seeping in through the night and take action immediately however I could — sweeping, mopping, bucketing, absorbing, lifting and moving things — to minimise damage.
But, as a single parent, I was responsible for making that decision for us all. And when one of my kids grew a little too nervous watching water rise and asked if we could leave, it was too late and I guiltily had to deny him that luxury.
Besides being able to see the water rise with a naked eye and not knowing exactly where it would stop, we laid our eyes on several scenes that could have been out of a movie.
A police chopper circled above our estate constantly. A fire truck stopped directly in front of our house and three women were carried from a house across the street, cradled like infants in the arms of the firemen, one by one. An SES dinghy motored past on our road — note, not river — on its way to a medical emergency on the corner.
At that point, having had two kids in hospital in the past couple of weeks myself, the reality sunk in that if something were to go wrong I could have really regretted my decision to keep us all at home. While one of my boys broke his wrist (not necessarily urgent), another had an issue that could have required him to have emergency surgery within six hours or a detrimental lifelong fallout from the condition that had come with no warning signs.
So the next day, we counteracted the fear with fun. We kayaked and paddle-boarded the streets; we inflated our own dinghy and let the dog jump in too, and paddled around, delightedly hollering and laughing in our driveway.
I know we’re not supposed to play in floodwater for several reasons, but the volume we got on us during these activities was no more than what we encountered each time we entered our front or back yards for a little look those couple of days anyway. It was unavoidable. Our house was like a boat itself — as soon as you stepped off it, you got wet. There was water everywhere, except inside (thankfully).
We washed the potentially contaminated water off straight away, but the memories made and the images captured will last a lifetime.
Just like those ones you get on a holiday with absolute water frontage.