This is our pool, before and after Yasi.
This is the view from outside our house, before and after...note the gum leaves are all gone...
This is the army cleaning up in front of our house, yesterday..
I have posted photos in the album on the right hand side, Yasi. We lost power at home on Wed night at 8.30pm, and still don't have it now, Sun 2pm. We have power here at Tinkers Cart and we slept here last night, John, me and Elle, Frosty, Sasha and Kitty, it was so nice to have air con.
People in Townsville all say we are grateful that there was no loss of life and it appears the main damage was to trees, note..see my nieghbours house in the album, a gum tree broke his house in the centre when it fell on the roof. I would like to share what it was like, and yes I am grateful that we are all alive..the noise was deafening, the winds howled and roared around us, we were downstairs and in the centre of our house and heard the full volume when we went to the loo, very scary. The pressure in the house changed and we had to keep popping our ears, the winds went on and on,from about 8.30pm wed night to 6am thurs morning. We have a 4m x 3 m window upstairs and everytime there was an extra strong wind gust, I waited to hear if the window would break, wondering what noise it would make, if indeed it did break. We had our radio and listened to reports all night, we finally fell asleep just before dawn and woke at 7am to look outside, the winds were still cyclonic, the light was grey green and very eerie, we looked across the road at our beloved river and were shocked, all the leaves were gone, it felt like we were the only people in the world, the wind was still howling, yet it was strangely quiet, we carried the dogs outside, they had to pee, I looked at the debris, but didn't register it, picked the dogs up and went back into our coccoon. We made a coffee on the gas camper cooker thing and then decided at 8am to go to the shop to check for damage. The number of trees down on our road was amazing, we live on the road that travel alongside the river and at least every second tree had fallen. All that day we stayed in our house, the winds were too strong to start cleaning up outside, on Friday the airport opened and planes started flying overhead, govt planes and defence and ses helicopters, we only had our tiny radio, and conserving power, we only listened to it for an hour at a time, so we didn't have a great picture of what was happenning around us, we felt isolated, we cleaned up our yard yesterday and the army came and cleared our road yesterday, that was surreal, to see so many soldiers and their equipment, they powered through the debris. We are starting to feel a bit more normal, and the shop will open tomorrow as usual, but of course life isn't "as usual" many people have been affected by Yasi and it will take many sewing mornings, coffees and cakes, and in our case champagne classes to completely recover. So my advice is too certainly"get on " with things but to be sure and talk about the terror of that night and the recovery period that follows. Stay in touch with friends and let people know if you need a helping hand or a friendly ear....thats all for now..hope I haven't rambled too much..but it has been quite a week..all the best Tracy