Cyclone Yasi

Well...we have managed to dodge Cyclone Yasi but many haven't. We had been preparing for this for a few days, though was amazed on Tuesday when I had to go into town for jury duty the amount of people piling up trolleys in the hardware store and supermarkets. Every petrol station I saw had lines of cars going down the road as people waited to get fuel.

I only went into the hardware store to get extra rope, but people were in there with loaded up trolleys, buying torches, batteries and tarps. Why don't people have batteries and torches already? Honestly, it just stumps me, officially the cyclone season started in November, why do people wait until the day before a cyclone hits to go get everything?

I stopped in to get some potatoes and onions from the fruit place and could see the people in the supermarket loading up their trolleys with food. I really wanted some chocolate but there was no way I was going in there.
We already had gotten fuel on Monday, both vehicles filled up and we always have three drums of fuel on hand anyway.

I was so glad I didn’t have to do any of those things that lots of others were doing. Admittedly my partner in crime and life also stopped in at the hardware store just to get some stuff in case, not because we really needed anything.

All day we had barely a breath of wind as we moved quickly through the very long day tying down the bore shed and chook pen, taping up the windows and even a cable over the shipping container where we planned to spend the night. We packed up food and clothes, some things went into our bedroom, some things went into the container, we packed up the TV and computers, brought everything in off the veranda to the inside of the shed and moved the cars onto the veranda in front of the roller doors.

When it got a little darker we went and got the chooks and put them in a box to put in the shipping container with us for the night. Well, didn’t they scream blue murder, if you haven’t heard a chook scream, it is the most blood curdling thing ever, and being the wild things they are , really didn’t appreciate being caught. I had to catch eight of them, one twice as it had escaped.

My partner in crime and life tech screwed the roller doors shut later in the day, hoping it would be enough. All the time we were watching the BOM site to see where the cyclone was going. It seemed to go a bit south, which was good for us, and then it would come a bit more north, not so good.

So we prepared for the worst and really hoping for the best.
When the lights started flickering and the TV too, and the shed started to make more noise we decided it was time to move out to the container, so off we went with the dog, and I tell you, it was much quieter in the container. About 30 or 40 minutes later the power went out, we were watching the street light at the end of the road through the door.

We set it up quite well in the shipping container, with our table and chairs and a couple of mattresses and our pillows to sleep on. We sat around for quite a bit have a couple of drinks and talking while listening to the freight train go through the trees on the hills around us. Even though it was very, very windy, it didn’t get as bad as it could have, and as it turns out we caught the edge of Yasi, still very noisy and windy but not the full force.

We were lucky, Yasi turned a bit more south which made us a bit further out than we feared we would be. Unfortunately, though it missed us, it did get others. Homes have been lost, businesses destroyed, farms wiped out, although it missed major centres, smalls ones have been devastated, what has been lucky for us, is not for others.

We currently have the power back, we lost the landline a bit earlier, and now also have no mobile and internet reception. We can’t get down the mountain as there has been a landslide, so we heard, but local news is a bit sketchy at the moment, we are mainly hearing the big stuff like the airport didn’t suffer any damage. However, I want to know if our house near the beach has suffered any damage, but there currently isn’t any news about how the beach suburbs here fared and the people we know down there.

I guess we will know more in a few days, but things for us will go back to normal pretty quickly here, unlike for others. I have already started my list of what we could have done better, and a list of things to get to make life more comfortable for the next time, which there will be. I did forget to check the gas bottles, that was probably my biggest thing I didn’t’ do, but overall we did well, and lucky for us it wasn’t’ worse, and luck is all it was.

PS I am having trouble loading photos so will just post this now while the internet is working and post photos later.