Our first visitors!

We had our first house guests for afternoon tea today! Ian and Jan came up to the Sunny Coast to bring us the parcels that arrived at their home that we shipped to ourselves from the States! It was a lovely afternoon catching up on all of their great adventures and getting some insights on life here from locals.

It has been so incredibly rainy here for the past few weeks; it was such a treat today when the sun finally came out. It's disturbing how much rain we have gotten while the rest of Queensland still remains in a terrible drought.





Brisbane & surrounding areas were just increased to some serious Level 5 restrictions. Basically, all outside watering is prohibited, except for 20 litres by bucket to wash your pets, garbage cans, & parts of your car. They anticipate Level 6 restrictions by September. It's scary the implications that these restrictions will have once they are put in place. The impact that it will have on daily life and "water dependent business" is unreal.



The higher level restrictions are anticipated for September that may limit households to 400 litres a day. That's not a lot. Apparently cutting your shower by 2 minutes saves 25 litres of water and our washer and dishwasher must heaps of litres. Thankfully, we do not live in the direct area of these water restrictions and haven't really felt any effects of the problems further Southeast Queensland.


However, the government has a new plan that will directly effect everyone living on the Sunny Coast that has everyone up in arms. So, they want to build this pipeline that will transport water from our full dams to the dams further south that are incredibly low. That all sounds fabulous, love thy neighbor and all that good stuff, but then they want to tax both the Sunny Coast residents & the Brissy residents to cover the costs of the pipeline & water transport. That just seems unfair, especially when the newscasts we approximating an extra $800 AUD in fees/taxes for this water pipeline. Scary.