A Bad, Bad, Bad Day in Australia.

Even in Australia, Bad Luck Comes in Threes

You can live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, (we certainly think we do) but sometimes it doesn’t matter where you live. The forces, whatever they are, can always combine to “bite you”. Bad stuff happens!

We recently had a bad, bad, bad day in Australia. But to save all of this repetition of the word bad, from now on we shall call this day Tuesday. Because it was a Tuesday.

Bad One.

It was Tuesday, around two o’clock in the morning as I recall. I was watching Manchester United teach Arsenal how to play football (I’m a bit of a night owl). My wife ran into the room, only half dressed, having just woken up and she was begging me to come to the bedroom quickly.

This was unusual behaviour. Football? Wife? Wife? Football? I pondered. Then I had a great idea. I pressed pause on the remote and followed my wife into the bedroom.

Which was sinking fast! Water, everywhere! I ran into the ensuite which now resembled a giant shower room, water spraying all over. Checking under the sink, it turned out that a flexi pipe connecting the mains to the tap had ruptured.

Ruptured flexi hose

I put my thumb over it but only succeeded in changing the direction of the spray.

Time to run down to the front of the house and turn it off at the mains!

When all the spraying had stopped, we surveyed the damage. Water had filled the ensuite, seeped through to our bedroom, soaking the entire carpet and the bases of the furniture, and had started penetrating the walls adjoining Elizabeth’s bedroom too.

It was wet!

“I’m going to get a towel” said my wife. I told her we needed more than a towel and suggested she went back to sleep.

I went back to finish watching the football.

Bad Two.

Leaking water pipe

In an unrelated incident, and I had a lot of trouble explaining to my wife that it was unrelated, the main plastic water pipe outside of the house at the point where it joins the copper pipe in the house had started to leak big time.

This came to light the next day, after the ruptured flexi hose had been sealed off and the water main had been turned on again.

I mentioned this problem before in a post called Even in Paradise, but since then the fine mist spray leak from the pinhole, which had been stopped with silicone sealant, had turned into a healthy gush through a widening split.

Bad Three.

The postman arrives, so does this speeding ticket…….

The name has been crossed out to protect the innocent. ME! The guilty party being my WIFE! 89 kph in a 70 limit. Kerching! That’s a pointless $200 to Queensland Transport. Oh, and 3 demerit points on my wifes licence.

They say bad things come in three’s – they did for us on Tuesday.

But the bad day has extended to a bad week. There have been builders to deal with, plumbers to organise, restoration experts, flood equipment, insurance departments, paperwork; all this has meant we are both behind with everything.

On top of that, we have about 6 fans and two de-humidifiers running 24/7 sucking up our water (AND electricity) in both ours and Elizabeth’s bedroom, turning them into virtual wind tunnels. Words can’t describe the noise that comes from our bedroom areas at the moment, it sounds like a jet is waiting to take off in there.

Standing in the rooms is almost impossible, you can feel the moisture being sucked out of your body, it’s like being in a dried out sauna. About 5 minutes in there is all you could take.

So we have had to sleep on the toy room floor (on our mattress) with Elizabeth in the single bed.

Now we sleep in the toy room

Of course, had this happened almost any other time of the year, we could have used the double bed in the spare room. But my son, Tom, is here for another holiday. He now has the best bedroom in the house!

So, it’s been a tough week. What do we “Aussies” do when we’ve had a bad week?

We go to the beach!

At the very moment this post went live, (it was posted using the scheduler) we were in Byron Bay. That’s Australia’s furthest point east. Hopefully, I’m having a wonderful time.

I’ll tell you all about it on Monday.

Mains supply – Fixed but not finished

Our Industrial De-humidifier