An angel comes to our assistance:

While travelling around Australia by car in 1982 we were almost caught by the start of the wet season. On Tuesday 2nd November 1982, we left from Kununurra very early in the morning, filled up with petrol at Hall’s Creek and crossed the 320 km of bare desert (there was no made or marked roads there in those days) to Fitzroy Crossing. As we approached Fitzroy crossing the sky was filling with very black clouds making it so dark we had to put our headlights on in the middle of the afternoon. The rain held off until we reached the start of the made road. 50 metres after the beginning of the sealed road the rain came pouring down so that we could hardly see where we were driving.

After filling up at Fitzroy Crossing we continued on towards Derby. We had observed that the very wide and deep channels on both sides of the road had soon filled with water, and then we found that we were driving along in about 20cm of water right across the road. We were very thankful that there were guideposts along both sides of the road. As we drove, we were singing the song: “With Christ in my Vessel I can Smile at the Storm”. Those words were very comforting as the lightning flashed incessantly and the thunder cracked and rumbled very loudly and continuously.

We came to the T intersection where one could turn North to Derby or South to Broome. The only trouble was that the whole intersection was under one vast lake of water and there were no guideposts: we could not see exactly where the road went and we knew there would be deep channels at either side to swallow us up if we ran off the road. We stopped there right in the middle of the intersection, not daring to proceed any further. We looked towards Broome, no sign of any lights. We looked towards Derby, no sign of any lights. We looked behind us towards Fitzroy Crossing, no sign of any lights. We prayed and asked the Lord to help us. I looked towards Wendy and said, “We will have to stay right here until the Lord sends help.” I looked back and a Toyota utility was right beside the car and pulled in front of us and stopped. We noticed many details about the truck and that it had Perth licence plates.

The ute moved off slowly and was obviously turning in the direction of Derby, so we followed carefully behind him through the flood waters. After a few kilometres we ran out of the rain and the floodwaters. I glanced around at Wendy and said, “Wow, the Lord sent that ute along at just the right time.” I looked back at the road in front, and the Toyota, which had been 30 metres ahead of us a second earlier, had vanished without a trace. It was a straight almost level road with no side roads turning off.

The following morning we asked the locals about the Toyota ute with Perth licence plates and they were all adamant that there was no such vehicle in the district. We went back to the spot on the road where it had disappeared, and there was no sign of any laneways, gates, tracks or other places where the ute could have gone.

Gradually it dawned on us that the Lord had somehow sent an angel to rescue us in our moment of need.