Rising Waters

The extreme weather making its way down the coast finally hit us towards the end of the second week in May. We had relatively little strong wind, but fairly serious rainfall. My recently completed trench and wall work seems to have held out (thus far) but a lot of mud and gravel has been transported downstream, and there was some worrying gullying around the stump-pads that hold up the house.
Rod and Cherdina's wedding was scheduled for the 3rd weekend of the month, and they hit a lucky break in the weather.
We drove to the Gold Coast, in time for me to partake in the stag party chaos - a scarily typical stag-night (or bucks night as it's sometimes called in Oz) of beer, strip clubs, and getting barred from the casino due to the state of the groom (well, the dilation of his pupils).
For the wedding itself, I was MC, which involved nothing more challenging than some light banter on the mic, introducing the speakers, and playing the scheduled music during the various parts of the ceremony which called for it.
The waterfront house (venue for pre-nuptial party, wedding, and reception) was well appointed, The weather was postcard-perfect, and the beach was a 10-minute stroll away the next morning when we all needed to recover from the drinking and dancing - nothing to complain about.
The weather turned nasty on Monday when it was time to drive home, providing pathetic fallacy for our total gearbox failure. The car (just) limped to the garage in Lismore, and we then paid seventy bucks for a cab home, having been quoted a third of the car's value to get it back on the road.
The mad rain continued, and increased in intensity - we saw mudslides, and Steffan's driveway bridge was washed away.
C intended to catch the bus into town to pick up a courtesy car the garage had arranged for us, but with much of Lismore underwater the bus company cancelled all services, and C ended up first hitch-hiking into Lismore to collect the courtesy car, and then quite literally racing the floodwaters out of North Lismore to collect K from daycare, which was also shutting for the week due to flooding. She got back to Nimbin and picked K up allright, but the courtesy car (a Ford Focus) was too small to get over the Gungas road ford leading to our house, so they ended up waiting for two and a half hours until the waters subsided.
Apparently our car will be fixed early next week, so the plan is for us to head to Brisbane to meet C's mum off her plane, and then dog-sit for Rod and Cherdina for a few days, and when our car is fixed, I'll drive Brisbane-Lismore-Brisbane to pick it up, and the following weekend we can all drive back to home.