Please spare a thought......

On March 31st 2009 the skies opened up around Coffs Harbour & surrounding districts & swallowed it up..... the second time in 13 years. I was over in New Zealand & just could not believe what I was seeing on the news, we were told in 96 that we had had a one in 100 year flood, boy one hell of a quick 100 years! My family was very lucky the water only went into our garage & garden shed although quite a few thousand dollars of damage was done. People further down in my street lost everything. The other night I was looking at the photos people had posted on Facebook & cried for the damage that has been done to this beautiful part of the world, & can only imagine what they went through trying to keep the water out of their homes & businesses. So many of them do not have Insurance & like my husband & I the ones who do are now left wondering if we are going to be able to replace what we have lost as news is coming out of Insurance Companies not paying out in full. I don't think I need to say how I feel about this.... to me it is just disgusting, the amount of money paid into insurance polices & there are a lot of people like us who have never made a claim before. I will find out next week if the company we deal with have a heart!
These photos were taken up at Dorrigo, the road is very aptly called *Waterfall Way*!

The photo below was taken by one of my neighbours, cannot even imagine how this poor lady must have been feeling....

Down the side of her house...

Looking toward the back of her house....

The street behind us, the house with the picket fence is directly behind us.....

The street behind us, at the far end is my street.....

In 25 days Coffs Harbour had 2 days without rain, it has only been in the last day or so that we could walk on the front lawn without sinking in mud, we still cannot go down the back yard without gummies on. The water stopped short 4" coming into our house if it had been high tide far more damage would have been done. My Darlin' went to pick Dylan up from school (in the next street) & was up to his knees in water, Dylan was up to his waist. That amount of water was dumped on Coffs in 10 minutes, Dylan was lucky to get home Taska had to stay at a friends house over night as our street was cut off.

We are seriously thinking of raising our house, think after being lucky twice in a row the third time may be pushing it.

So please spare a thought for the people up here who now are living in what has been termed *A natural disaster area* the one thing we can be thankful for there were no loss of lives.....