My mother survived Cyclone Yasi’s attack on Queensland. I guess I just missed it, eh? I was very worried when I heard that the town of Tully was “utterly destroyed” on New Zealand Radio. You see, she lives just off of Tully Falls Road. I know the town of Tully is about 60 km away from her house outside of Ravenshoe as the raven flies, but that’s still pretty close.
On the Australian Courier-Mail (newspaper) website, I saw the following picture of Tully, for example. More on the article, here.
My mother’s email notifying family and friends of her survival is worth reproducing as a sort of first-hand account of the experience – so here it is:
But definitely don’t want to repeat the experience, EVER AGAIN. However, very lucky…house intact, simply have a completely new skyline to the north. Two huge trees down with parts of them about 2 meters from house. One is iron bark so will have plenty of firewood for foreseeable future.
Phone will probably go out sometime today, so want to send this to reassure all. Probably without power for a long time to come. Heard from Debbie (Gary’s wife). They survived in Charters Towers with category 3, and hope to be back tomorrow–something I doubt will occur if the Burdekin is up which the continuing rain will probably ensure.
I endured 5 hours of category 5 and likening it to a huge freight train barrelling through house is as close as I can get to a comparison. I was SCARED and huddled down in hallway–only narrow panels on back door to threaten with glass. Huge thumps in night…will have to check out roof once it dies down some more. “Torrential” rains is not an exaggeration for present condition of weather. Wallabies and butcher birds pretty pathetic at present. Will probably run out of power on computer and my iPod speakers, boo, hiss. But can run the earphones if so inclined/bored. Will be sleeping today!!! Not a wink before it quietened down around 4:45 AM, and only 7:45 at present.
Ben stopped by and helped me set up my old camp propane bottle/burner. It works–we extracted it from my little shed under house. He says there are heaps of trees down on their property–more on the old creek flat than on the hill. But it sure looks bright with all the tops off the trees. It’s going to be a long clean up, but he said he’d get around to getting the two-three trees down on drive off sometime in next couple of days. I’m cool for two days as long as I stay out of freezers and fridge. A lot of meat that needs to be cooked, but not sure when I’ll be able to get to it. May start giving it away.
Enough for now. I’ll see if I have an internet set up. It goes through Cairns and they didn’t suffer like Innisfal and Tully and Mission Beach. Feeling pretty lousy, nauseated from exhaustion. Could almost feel you all wishing me well. Much love, and, despite gloom of rearranged skyline (a lot of my natives gone–mostly lovely grey-green wattles), laughter and a feeling of being both lucky and blessed. Will be in touch when things get back to normal, or a semblance thereof.
Meanwhile, here in NZ (EnZed, pronounced locally as we yanks would pronounce “InZid”)… it was Southern California-like weather, as I re-crossed the Cook Strait back to Wellington, and began my drive back up to Auckland this afternoon. Here are some pictures from today.
