Thursday 31 January 2013

Another January in Queensland, another natural disaster

Gosh, our insurance company must think I have them on speed dial. This time it was a 4 day storm, post cyclone winds (thanks Oswald), torrential rains = lots and lots of fallen trees, no power for days (now restored) and all of our outdoor furniture is now literally rotting in front of our very eyes as we wait for the rain and humidity to break. We were lucky, we still have out home, we still have our health and we are still alive. I really feel for those who have now done through this, loosing everything two years in a row, heart breaking stuff.

So, I'm now chainsaw girl... cutting up trees and stockpiling the branches on a burnpile to deal with later. Here's some of the damage near our house.

A small part of our driveway after the fallen trees have been pushed aside so we could use it.

This one is suspended on another tree, very close to our power lines. Team effort required here me thinks.

There are literally dozens of trees (some wider than a persons torso) that have literally snapped like this.

Thankfully the tree closest to the house fell away from the house. It was about 7m tall.

Most of the trees bought others down with them.

Alas my compost bins and recycling station was completely trashed by the same tree that took out my rose garden.
There are literally scores of trees down in the paddocks that have gone as well, some really big. The fence has been trashed in several places. Am really glad donkeys were in the open paddock when all of this happened. It's still very wet and we're still getting showers and small storms so it's going to be a while before I can even go down there and check the real damage. I can see some really large branches suspended in trees, so it's not safe either. I heard some crash down when the wind came up briefly yesterday.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Some of us are having a great time running up and down in the drains. Red dog + red mud = dirty house!

Roman runs up and down the drains
Oh well, look on the bright side. I've got the firewood for winter sorted ;o)