Amber McIvor watched the water creep up her backyard but felt sure it wouldn't come into her house.
She has lived all her life in the home she shares with her mum and daughters on the banks of the Logan River.
"I've seen every flood since '79, when I was born," she said.
"No flood has ever come into the house."
This time was different.
They sandbagged the walls and doors, and then sandbagged them again.
Nothing stopped the water coming.
Late on Monday night, it started coming through the floorboards into the room Ms McIver's daughters share.
"It was a stupid idea and I just gave up."
Next morning, the entire underside of the house was flooded — both kids' rooms, and the bathroom in between.
Water had reached the second step of the stairs to the house above.
A 'heartbreaking' realisation
Returning to her room for the first time, 11-year-old Sage McIvor cried.
"It's, like, heartbreaking because my whole room's going to be gone," she said.
Sage and her sister Willow made the downstairs area their own last year.
The younger sister was so excited she had a party so her friends could see her new room.
It was previously her mum's room when she was a teenager, then her grandma's sewing room.
"I used to come down here with her when I was a little kid and play with her sewing stuff," Sage said.
They had stacked the contents of the room along the back wall, not expecting the water to rise more than a few centimetres.
Instead, Sage found her couches soggy, shoes ruined, clothes caked in mud and photos floating in the deluge.
She was devastated to discover her white Converse trainers soaked in grimy water.
Her mum had bought them for her birthday.
But it was the feared loss of a special tree in the backyard that brought tears again.
"It was the prettiest one in the yard," she said.
No house insurance, thousands of dollars of damage
According to the Bureau of Meterology, at 2pm on Tuesday the Logan River reached a height of 11.15 metres near Ms McIvor's house.
And was still rising.
In 2017, when Tropical Cyclone Debbie flooded the area, it only hit 10.6m.
Anything over 6m at that point in the river is considered flooding.
Ms McIvor said she would have to gut and rebuild the rooms under the house, and had lost about $5,000 worth of things.
She said possessions mean nothing to her but talking about the damage brought her to tears.
Despite the dire state of their house and the enormous clean up when the water recedes, levity came easily to the family.
Looking out over the backyard, Ms McIvor spotted lemons high on a partly submerged tree and noted one of the girls would need to get out the kayak to pick them.
Needing no more encouragement, Willow returned shortly with three of the fat fruit, and news that the special tree had not been swept away — it was merely submerged.
Likewise, Ms McIvor was confident her family would pull through.
"McIvor's equals survivors," she said.
