*nudge*

G'day,

It has been a while since I have written anything online I know. Time is flying by so very quickly and it is proving difficult to get the time to do this justice. I do intend to write a proper update sometime in the near future.

A fair bit of water still around the place over here, lots of places have been cut off for a while but the roads are slowly starting to open up again. You can now drive to Rocky so that's quite an achievement.

Supplies here in Gladstone are slowly building up again, there was a lot of panic buying and pretty much all of the grocery stores were pretty much empty. You could not buy milk, bread, veges, flour, or even softdrink. Some people were going a little crazy, one lady went mad when she was told she wasn't allowed to buy 16 loaves of bread so she smashed them all up saying "if I can't have them, no one can". That sort of carry on doesn't help anyone. People have been breaking into other peoples houses and stealing food from the freezer and all sorts of werid things. Luckily that seems to be more or less over, still a lot of empty shelves in the stores but better than it was.

I think McDonald's is now open again too, KFC is still shut as they ran out of chicken and other things. A large area between here and Brisbane got hit pretty hard, a lot of people are now in a pretty bad way. Complete houses washed off their concrete pads, cars tossed downstream like twigs.

People are starting to get sick now in the flood areas, water borne diseases and also the mould growing in the damp houses are causing dramas. We had a lot of the people from Theodore staying at the mining camp in Moura last week, I think most of them have returned to clean up now. At least three of them are now pretty crook in hospital due to the mould spores.

The mine at Moura is still running, although they can't use the conveyor as it is still under water, and they can't get the coal out as the train tracks are shot.
Some other mines aren't so lucky, one mine just up the road has a pit full of water, it is quite literally a huge lake, it will take weeks or even months to drain it out enough to mine.

I've spent all weekend putting the radio gear into my truck finally, it was stuck on the other side of the flood waters and they ended up flying a guy across to one of the mines and he drove my truck all the way around and back to town when he was finished. First day back in the office tomorrow, so it will be good to catch up and see what's in the game plan for the next few days. Looks like I'm out at Moura every second week for a month or so yet, so that will be interesting.

Anyhow, when I get time I'll try and upload some photos etc and write a bit more. NZ was a good trip over christmas, I caught up with most but not all of the people I was going to. Next time I think I will try and get more time over there, as there is so much to do and so little time.


TTFN.