Around here - March 2025

Last week in South East Queensland we prepared for Cyclone Alfred with Brisbane and Northern NSW shutting up shop for a couple of days with schools closed, ferry and bus services cancelled and everyone bunkering down just like the old days of 5 years ago due to Covid.

The Gold Coast copped a huge amount of rain and wind as did Northern NSW and Bribie and Redcliffe.  Lots of areas of Brisbane flooded with power out for days and trees down however we were very lucky that by the time it got to us it was downgraded to Ex Tropical Cyclone.  Queensland is known for Cyclones however up North.  It had been 50 years since a Cyclone was in Brisbane so this was going to be quite the event.

I did ended up packing some precious photo albums, hard disk drives and camera gear into some plastic crates just in case.  I wasn't worried about flooding where I am however I was more worried about the 100-150km expected winds and with some tall gum trees behind my house if they fell on the roof then that would be the end and water would mostly definitely come inside.  Thankfully it was very mild at my place and Sunday night was the only concerning rain event however we were all good.  Parts of my suburb ended up with no power for a few days however we didn't loose power which was great.  Apart from the inconvenience of no power you loose everything in your fridge and freezer as well and with the cost of groceries that is never good.

I did do a big cook up on the Friday of some chickens in the slow cooker, happy pantry slice, focaccia and banana bread just in case we lost power.  It all felt very much like Covid with the shops out of most things, toilet paper, milk, bread, eggs, canned veggies, meats etc. the shelves were bare and are only just restocking shelves now a week later.  Here's a few pics.

Banana Bread

I premade some coffee shots and put them in the freezer in case the power went out and the largest ice cube tray happened to be this Christmas Tree one.  Add milk and you have yourself an ice coffee.

Ice Coffee

Homemade fresh ham and salad sandwich

Teddy on the couch

I loved this pic that was posted - honestly if you were in flood waters this would be totally necessary.

We all know about the cost of living with everything going up, petrol, groceries, electricity, insurances [even more so now with another natural disaster event].  I use Microsoft Windows and the annual fee went from $109 to $159 AUD which is insane.  Lightroom Software which I use for editing my photos is going up from $14 to $25 AUD.  I find that everything we do now has to be a subscription so there's annual or monthly fees.  Just to have your email storage there's a fee, a fee to keep your iCloud so your phone is backed up.  It's actually quite hard to reduce costs in 2025.

As for groceries I spent $99.55 today at Coles and apart from the $18 worth of organic chicken I didn't really buy anything as I had to stock up on some spices etc.  I ended up with 2 lots of toilet paper as they were on sale from $13.60 to $11.00 so I saved $5.20 by purchasing 2 lots.  I bought 2 lots of milk as it's the first time in 2 weeks I have been able to buy it from the supermarket as it was in stock.  Take a look at my trolley there is nothing in it and this is $100.  You can see why the cost of living is an issue if this is $100 worth of groceries with only 1kg of chicken.

Hope you have a great week, I'm needing to mow the lawn, weed the veggie patch and get some veggies in the ground.  I've ordered some garlic which should come in the next week and the variety is Glen Large which is good for our Sub Tropical Climate so we will see.  Rhonda from Down To Earth grows this one so I'll give it a whirl.  I've tried to grow garlic twice before with not that much success.