Let's be honest, we wanted to know what being on 10th floor in a glass house in a cyclone was like. However it is better that is has ended in this wash out. But my oh my the rain is heavy and relentless. We did provide for wet weather, expected some in NZ, but against this rain it only sort of works. The forecast is for it to ease slowly over the next four or five days.

On our trip so far we had no roaming phones, we only used the Internet and got away with it, until today. Some lines have been pulled down and the hotel has no internet. Does not seem much chance of it being repaired in a hurry. We were left rather isolated. Fifty years ago our concierge would simply send a boy around with a message, but now they expect us to pick up emails. It all became a bit harder to keep up with events.

Considering the problem over a very good and tasty Bibimbap in the shopping mall with free wifi, Liz managed brilliantly to hook my phone up to home and bolt on some roaming. Now I am the hottest spot in Brizzy. I will, I will rock you! Making my moves all over the place. Hoping to check in to EK0435 in a short while, but they have technical problems at the moment. Nice spin off from the roaming phone is that for the BBC we get .co.uk not .com which is great and the Iplayer works without a VPN.

Kind of strange end to all this travelling. The buses are running, the ferry is working. Liz heads out into the deluge for a walk, intending to get a 50c ride on the boats. Good thing she did not as all the transport has now been stopped. But she brought back some great photographs as well as a tumble dryer filling amount of waterlogged clothing.

Everywhere there are rivers of water running down the streets, or across the pavements or anywhere it wants to. The pictures do not do it justice.

Did not find anything up this (rather fest and bullbous) Gum Tree. Did find the gum all over the sole of my shoe, it is ugly stuff. Like wallpaper paste mixed with frog spawn. What have we missed here? The big wheel of course. The Art gallery of course and the Convict Museum, which I think detailed the arrival of the first ship. Typically about thirty convicts with sixty guards and a few officer Captains. I can hardly believe the guards and convicts could maintain their relationship over the voyage from England and then carry this forward to the building from scratch of a prison. I wondered about the time lines and asked copilot who jollied me along with: Convict transportation to Australia began in 1788 and continued until 1868. It was a system used to address overcrowded prisons in Britain and to establish a penal colony in Australia. The abolition of slavery in the British Empire was a gradual process. The slave trade was abolished in 1807, and slavery itself was officially abolished with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which came into effect in 1834. So, while convict transportation and the abolition of slavery overlapped in the early 19th century, they were separate systems addressing different issues. So that was that then.