Thanks, Alan.

Watching the flooding on TV goes some way to preparing you for what you will see. It does not prepare you for the anguish of losing irreplaceable items, nor the smell of items that have been sitting wet for 9 days. That was how long it was from the flood going through Brisbane to when my sister could get into the storage facility where she had left her belongings on 6 January.
Fortunately her china, crystal, cutlery and cooking utensils were fine along with her dining suite and outdoor dining suite. Everything else was damaged, most of it unsalvageable. We had some funny moments while emptying the container - a very heavy washing machine which on close inspection was full of dirty brown water, and the electric jug which was also full of water. Poignant moment when my sis found a very wet book that had been given to our mum in 1946, and then an anthology of Henry Longfellow poems our grandfather gave our grandmother in 1904, and our mother's bible. I brought the latter two back to dry and have repaired, but the first book has dried out without any smell or apparent damage.
Driving out to where the storage facility has been relocated was a sobering reminder of how fickle and random Nature can be - properties destroyed, yet on the other side of the road no damage whatsoever.