In case you missed the news, Charleville was mostly under water about a month ago. The rain started about a week before the wedding date, and didn’t let up. We were due to drive the 900km or so from Brisbane the day before the wedding, but by then the roads were well and truly cut, and we ended up flying. Along with one other wedding guest, we were the only passengers on the tiny plane who weren’t disaster relief workers of some kind. In fact, the little Dash-8 was so full of the Red Cross’ medical supplies that there wasn’t room for our luggage, and we arrived in Charleville with only the clothes on our backs and a small suitcase full of smoked salmon.

The floodwaters had peaked the day before our arrival, putting several metres of water through most of Charleville’s ground floors. Fortunately, the wedding venue was on a hill, and while beset by sandflies, mosquitoes, equatorial humidity and an actual biblical plague of locusts, remained dry. The wedding went to plan, although the festivities were cut a little short by the need to strip the contents (and carpets) of the family home for an insurance assessment.

The following weekend was Steph and Joel’s wedding, at a surf life-saving club in the beachside village of Copacabana. Hannah, Dad and I flew into Sydney late on Friday night and drove a hired car up the coast, finally arriving at the beach house sometime after midnight. The wedding was the following afternoon. It was almost the opposite of Mum’s – large, loud, and with a mariachi band instead of SES personnel. It was the first chance I’d had to see some members of my extended family since before I went backpacking, and was a lot of fun. I also finally got to meet little Vincent, which was awesome. All in all, a lovely wedding. There was a wedding photographer focused on the couple, so I mostly just took shots of the crowd.

In other news, I got into a clinical experience program at the Mater hospital. Had my first shift on Friday – lots of blood, broken bones and finally, the chance to get good at injections.