There had been warnings of heavy rain and concerns that rivers would rise, but nothing like this.
The rains that hit Queensland's south east felt like they came out of nowhere, even with the Bureau of Meteorology predicting that hundreds of millimetres could fall.
As of Saturday afternoon, 11 lives have been lost.
While Brisbane's catastrophic river rises shocked much of the country, those outside the cities were also left stranded, soaked and devastated.
The Mary River peaked in Gympie at its highest level since the 1890s, flooding the town, stranding travellers and coating everything with mud.
To the north, Maryborough endured its second flood in two months.
Towns on the Sunshine Coast copped so much rain that the downfalls were being measured in metres.
But floods are more than figures on a chart — they up-end entire lives and histories.
We're bringing you some of those stories, shared with our reporters from flooded homes, farms and communities.
Gympie: 'She has no photos of her daddy'
It was a small pile of sodden documents on the floor of a small rental home in Gympie brought a nurse named Mary undone.
The 73-year-old nurse at Gympie Hospital did not wish to give her surname, but invited us into her home with her as she returned for the first time.
She had spent days with neighbours after being rescued by canoe as the Mary River continued to rise before it peaked a week ago today.
The water had destroyed so much, but the ruined photos on the ground included the only ones Mary had of her late husband and the only ones her daughter had of her father.
"That's what my daughter said — she's got no photo of her daddy," she said.
"He died when she was 10 so there are no photos.
"It was one of those things with the scanners you were always going to do, but you never find time to."
Paper memories of Mary's own parents and grandparents are also ruined.
She said the rental property did not allow nails in the wall to hang pictures, so they were kept underneath the house — the part hit hardest by the floodwaters.
The day before the river peaked, an Ergon crew came to visit and warned a metre of water would soon come through her house about 1am that night.
"I was not putting other lives at risk, so they brought over a plastic canoe that was tied to a fire engine," she said.
"I crawled onto the canoe from the fifth step.
"I had my handbag in a bag, three sets of pants and three sets of t-shirts, and that's it."
Mary's son was arriving from Noosa, she said, and would help take charge of everything that now needed to be done.
"I was covered by insurance, but of course being covered by insurance and getting insurance are always two different things," she said.
Interview by Meg Bolton, ABC Sunshine Coast.
Sunshine Coast: 'Wife's yelling woke me up'
The small township of Pomona in the Noosa hinterland was hit by a storm so intense, it has come to be known as a "rain bomb".
The town copped more than a metre of rain in just a few days, and after weeks of showers, the water had nowhere to go.
On Monday morning, Pomona man Brian George woke up to his wife shouting and a house full of water.
"My wife's yelling woke me up," he said.
By then, there was already 75cm of water through the bottom of their home.
"It was really torrential — just pouring, pouring, pouring," he said.
"We got basically a flash flood coming down the road here through the yard, as well as the creek coming up, so we got hit from both sides."
Mr George said they checked on their daughter first, then the chickens, dogs and cats, then they hunted through the waters for anything they could save and bring to a higher part of the house.
"It was methodical — just making sure that they're all safe and then going and getting anything that was valuable that we thought could be damaged from downstairs and moving it upstairs," he said.
Mr George said the only option now was to start the huge task of cleaning, then repairing and rebuilding.
"I'm basically getting all the rubbish out and all the wet stuff out onto the roadside because it's going to smell," he said.
"Then we begin at the beginning, and clean and try and salvage what we can and throw on a pile what we can't.
"And then we wait for the builders to get here one day."
Interview by Ashleigh Theodorou, ABC News.
Maryborough: 'The hardest part was the waiting'
A slow-moving Mary River gave Maryborough residents more time to prepare for the floods than they had in January before it peaked at 10.7 metres on Tuesday.
But Alice Street resident Carla Plunkett said waiting was the hardest part.
"Actually, it was worse because we were waiting and waiting for the water to come through from Gympie," Ms Plunkett said.
"You're just trying to prepare yourself but it's frustrating knowing it's going to come up higher than last time."
After 2.7 metres of water rose and fell in their backyard, Ms Plunkett and her partner Shane Dings thanked the rural fire brigade and SES crews for a swift clean-up effort.
"The workers here, which we're really grateful for, have saved us five days of work," Mr Dings said.
"Last time Shane and I did a lot of it ourselves — scooping the pool out, it was back-breaking," Ms Plunkett said.
Resident Ruth Stephens said the slow-moving floodwater left more devastation in its wake.
"The filth and the damage is much worse. Six weeks ago, it was a clean flood — it came in quick and it went out quick. This one is just foul," she said.
Not even a day after floodwaters receded and Ms Stephens was able to return home, the skies opened up and another moderate flood warning was issued for the Maryborough region.
Many residents, like Ms Stephens, were anxious over the sight of more rain.
"It makes me a wee bit nervous. Six weeks ago, we were here doing it and now we're doing it again.
Along Mary Street, floodwaters struck Gary House's home once again — this time claiming two cars.
"It's just a mud hole. We couldn't get them going, couldn't pump up the tires in time," Mr House said.
"I had a lot of timber in the yard to fix up my house from the 1974 floods. You can imagine where that is now. So, my house will have to wait now until I can try to get back on my feet."
But with Maryborough residents no stranger to floods, its sense of community remained intact.
"I'm surviving, I've been through a couple. But I have to admit Mary Street has good neighbours helping me out," Mr House said.
Interviews by Lucy Loram, ABC Wide Bay.
Lockyer Valley: Flood took everything, even the hot tub
Julie Fox returned to her Lower Tenthill home in the Lockyer Valley on Monday morning to find her three-bay shed, campervan, and three sheep missing.
She and her husband packed up the car and fled to Brisbane last Friday and first saw the level of flooding that had swallowed their land through videos on social media.
The couple had only just moved to the area from Perth and begun renovating the house.
Now, they are virtually starting from scratch.
"We've got brand new windows that are underneath the house and we don't know how many of them survived," Ms Fox said.
"There's lots of wood. We spent $5,000 and had wood delivered about a week ago to do the outside of the property.
"So that's scattered all over and anything we find underneath is rubble.
"We've got things here that definitely do not belong to us -— we've got a bicycle down on the back fence line.
"Our hot tub is probably floating somewhere down a river."
But said she felt lucky she could escape with her husband and the dog.
"I feel sorry for the people who are sitting on their roofs and that sort of thing," she said.
Interview by Georgie Hewson, ABC Southern Qld.
