Tuesday 11/1/11
My son rang early to say that he was on his way to work and that the Brisbane River was very high, lapping over the pontoons of the boat ramps in the river. It had been raining heavily for a week and was still raining at the time. He had rung my daughter who had got upset, so we contacted her and told her we would be around about 8.00am to see if we could help. Their house backs onto a creek that flows directly into the Brisbane River.

Mary Groves and William Douglass arrived in Australia on the First Fleet in 1788. They were both convicted in Lincoln, England and sentenced to seven years transportation to the new colony; William for stealing a silver watch and Mary for stealing 13 guineas in gold and 8 shillings and 6 pence in silver. They faced some of the most difficult years of the colony in New South Wales; the threat of starvation and beginning life anew in a place that couldn’t have been more different from the cobbled streets of Lincoln.