Cyclone Yasi Photos

Our days with Yasi

Tuesday it was clean up day....so every thing not required went away.....everything here has been moved to our shed.

I mowed on the Monday....thinking if the cyclone did come in with all the rain it is one less thing we have to worry about.......so before.

After..... this shows how high cyclone Yasi was......which made us so lucky.  He was gusting in the tree tops....if that had been a couple metres lower there would have been all sorts of damage.  It was a roar that you could hear come for what seemed like forever and then you would see tree tops move in the distance.  You could watch as they swirled around and came straight for the house. 

This mess still took as a long while to clean up as there are lots of small branches in there that you can't just run over with the mower but were too small and too many to simply pick up by hand.  So lots of raking.

Monday and nicely mowed....a hint that the cyclone is coming but thinking....they always downgrade and turn into a rain depression.

Thursday morning....nup...this one kept on coming through and amazingly kept going across the land as a catergory 3, then 2 then 1 and took forever to turn into a rain depression.  Scary stuff.

Monday arvo......all tidy except for my overgrown vegi patch near the tied down boat.

Thursday morning out checking out the damage.  This is where we had most of our work.  Seems like the winds got trapped in here.

Boat was going nowhere....same type of tying down on the front end too.

Our accommodation in the bathroom between 11pm and 2am.....Wednesday night Thursday morning.  Yes, dog came with us too and thought he was in heaven sleeping with the humans. :-)  Amazing how bright the flash is on the camera .....we had no power and had one little 'ole torch for light.  No one was too impressed me taking these photos about 1.30am.  I was fidgety.

Bathroom looking out to laundry where hubby was bunkered down.

Yasi literally ripped branches from trees.

Just shows how anything can become a weapon during the winds.   This is one of the stands of leaf from a palm frond which has pierced the leaf on the ground.   Shows why everything has to be tied down or put away prior to a cyclone.

Our lights for 2 1/2 days......no power.

Amazingly how fast ERGON our electricity provider got or is getting everyone back on.  They are doing the most amazing job.

No landline or mobile phones for half a day on the Saturday.

Good parts of a cyclone.....our seasonal creek which most of the year is bone dry is a little oasis for us.  

We are all having a bit of down time and cooling down from all the heat and humidity after a morning of work and no power.  When we get really good rain which is often at this time of year the creek would be up over our heads....thankfully it flows so well that it goes down most times in about and hour.

Our DD is standing at the end of the easement which runs along the back of our property and into the creek.

A view down to the bridge on the street.

Water coming the other way.....the water here is about 1.5 metres deep....which amazes me since most of the time it is bone dry.....so that is so much water.

Our son....didn't want wet clothes again....

The easement....along the right top edge you can see bundles of sticks...this is the debris that comes down from other properties behind us.  Amazing how much we have to clean up everytime it flows.  I think people forget where the water goes.

A bit hard to see but another fun thing has been found whilst cleaning up after the cyclone.  

Our DD has discovered a vine swing that holds her weight....I am sure she will spend many quiet minutes up there in the future.

Thankfully our council automatically comes and picks up all our green rubbish.  We just leave it pile neatly and high out  near the street but out of the drains.  This is our first pile.

Second pile.

Collections start on Wednesday (tomorrow).

In summary.....this was indeed a scary cyclone.  It was just as scary waiting for the cyclone to arrive and seeing at some stages that it was heading directly for us....as scary as the winds at the peak of the cyclone.  Thankfully, for us we are all safe and no damage at all to our house.  

The clean up and power outage was just inconvenient as too will be the lack of food on the shelves at the shops.

The debris and mess is really nothing compared to what we had in Cyclone Larry five years ago.

Now as I sit here with family and friends safe, power, sunshine, and a house, I appreciate how lucky we were and feel for the people an hour south of us that are still trying to get to their houses.

Take care everyone.

Crafting coming from now on. :-)