We woke up to more rain so didn't rush getting up. Unfortunately for Mel, she had to go back to work today but Paul is still off.

We switched the news on to find that things are getting really bad up the coast. And our OzExp Bus can't even go all the way up north now, it only goes a couple of stops up from here.

We ended up spending most of the day working out what we should do. We've got all kinds of crazy plans. Maybe only do our 3 week Darwin to Melbourne tour and skip the east coast for now but do it after. Or go to New Zealand then come back later. Or...go to South America!!

As the day went on, the flooding further north got worse and even the rain here was relentless.

Mel and Paul gave us the car keys to use one of their cars whenever we wanted! So nice of them. I haven't driven for 3 months though! We took the car for a spin and went to Woolies to buy some food to make tea tonight. Also made a stop at the bottle shop. They even have drive-thru bottle shops here...dangerous.

We made my little Spicy Spanish Chicken Pasta dish tonight. Was bloody lovely if I do say so myself. It was nice to have a meal that we'd usually have at home. Nice to be able to cook somewhere that is clean too.

After tea, we basically spent most of the night working out what the hell to do. We could still get up the coast to one of the next stops to do Fraser Island, but the weather isn't good and then the buses are going no further than there at the moment. It was a tough decision but we decided to ring our travel agents, roundtheworldexperts.com, and change our flights. We're going straight to New Zealand with a view to come back to Australia after that if the weather and flooding is better. Unfortunately South America is out of the question as we can't go there on the Round The World ticket we have (boooo!). So, we travel to New Zealand from Brisbane on Thursday 13 Jan - nearly 2 months earlier than we should. Brisbane is the closest airport we can get the flight - hopefully the flooding doesn't affect Brisbane too much, especially the airport!

Before we came away, Therese's grandma gave her a St Christopher necklace and me a St Christopher pendant - he's the patron saint of travellers. I had it in my travel wallet but about 1 month into travelling, it disappeared and I couldn't find it. I pulled everything out of my travel wallet, but it wasn't there.
Tonight, after a couple of hours working out what the hell we were going to do and making the big decision to go to NZ, I had to run down to get my bank card to pay the £100 each amendment fee. I picked up my travel wallet, unzipped it, and saw this little blue thing popping out one of the credit card slots. It was the pendant! I haven't been able to find it for 2 months, yet it turns up right when we're changing our travel plans to move onto another country rather than risking staying here and trying to get passed the floods. That is weird...