Pregnant with her third child in 2011, Terri Thompson clutched her children, aged two and three, and essential items grabbed at the last minute as they escaped from floodwater about to engulf their home.
After SES volunteers took them to higher ground, the house in Goodna they had bought just months prior, disappeared under the might of the 2011 floods.
This time round, they didn't take any chances, and at the earliest warning they evacuated before the engorged Brisbane River and Woogaroo Creek once again swept into their home.
Ms Thompson said it had not occurred to them to enquire about flooding because it did not seem like an area that would flood.
"But when we'd done the property searches and that with the solicitors, they never told us anything about it being a previously flooded property — I don't think they had to."
In 2011, when the water receded, the family began the gut-wrenching task of tearing down mud-soaked walls, ripping up the floors and throwing everything out.
With hot water and electricity restored, the family moved back into the shell of a home and rebuilt around themselves.
Over the next decade Ms Thompson's original plan to fix up and sell kept being put on the backburner in the face of property prices taking years to bounce back, her son's shock diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, and a marriage breakdown.
There was also the difficult prospect of finding a rental as a now single mum with four kids and pets.
The renovations were still not complete by the time the 2022 floods came.
Council warning proved crucial
Three weeks ago, Ms Thompson received a text message from Ipswich City Council warning of potential flooding.
Not wanting to alarm the children, Ms Thompson put the kids to bed and tried to sleep.
That day she received another message, this time urging them to evacuate, allowing much-needed time to pack as much as they could into their car, and move the rest of their belongings upstairs.
"I told the kids to pack just a couple things that were really important to them: 'out of the stuffed toys, pick your favourite ones you have to have'," she said.
"I packed the gaming systems because of sanity reasons, clothing and that was about it."
They moved to a friend's place on higher ground in Goodna, and after the fourth day without power, the family moved again thanks to the generosity of a stranger on social media.
The owner had offered her home, which she had vacated while renovating, to flood-affected people, and Ms Thompson and her children took refuge there for just over two weeks.
As soon as she could, Ms Thompson and some friends went to clean up the damage left behind by about 3.5 metres of water which inundated the ground level and reached about a metre of the floor above.
Family still dealing with trauma of 2011
One of her sons, old enough to remember the 2011 flood, has since obsessively monitored the weather, fearing another deluge would up-end their lives.
"It looks like my youngest son is going to go the same way because this time he kept bringing me his iPad showing me, when we were trying to pack, he kept saying: this is the where the rain is, Mummy'," she said.
"Those two are definitely paranoid about the weather.
Moving back into 'chaos'
After an electrician was able to check the electrical safety and reconnect the hot water system, which had been torn away in the floods, the family moved home at the end of last week.
Ms Thompson said it was easy to forget the difficulty of basically camping in the shell of their home.
Ms Thompson said she would love to move but was unsure it would be financially viable.
She said the cost of renovating the house, the remainder of the mortgage and sharing any proceeds of the sale with her ex-husband meant it would be hard to break even or buy another home.
A resilient Ms Thompson is making slow but steady progress.
"We've been through the floods, I've been through cancer treatment with my younger son," she said.
"It's just taking little steps at a time and dealing with the little tasks."
If there were a voluntary buyback scheme, it's something Ms Thompson would consider, especially if it gave her family peace of mind.
"I'm lucky because I'm not really emotionally attached to the home," she said.
"It's a lot to put on them [her children]; I know it plays on the eldest's mind a lot whenever there's bad weather.
She wants prospective tenants and buyers to be told if the property is prone to flooding.
"I know on the Saturday when I was evacuating, I later found out the next-door neighbour had no idea, and a girl further up the road I just happened to see in the street, she had only just moved in ... and she had no idea about these properties ever flooding.
"Still to this day people are moving in and not knowing this area's prone to flooding.
"It should be something they have to disclose I think, especially when you're buying the property."
