RIGHT THROUGH THE EYE OF CYCLONE MARCIA

The first time in my life that I have been right in the middle of a cyclone and had the eye of it pass right over us....
What a week it has been...
Our city and the coast suffered a lot more devastation than we first had realized, but in saying that it could have been much worse.  Not a life was lost... that is the most important things. 
Homes got destroyed we have been without power for a week and there are still a lot of folk our there that still haven't power restored.  Ergon and the SES and the army have done an unbeleiveable job in restoring power to over 30,000 in just the first week...

It has been a crazy week,  you realize how spoilt we are with just a flick of the switch we have power.  Power plays such a vital role in all our lives,  we need power to pump water, we need power for refrigeration, we need power for phones, we need power for lights, we need power for communications, we need power for air condiitioning, we need power for washing and ironing  and when it all goes,  life becomes a lot more simple.....  People have to spend time together, talking, playing games by candlelight,  simple meals,=.  It doesn't matter than your clothes can't be ironed for work,  everyone is in the same boat...  Still I am so thankful that we do have it back on....

It has been a difficult week,  we spent the whole of last weekend cleaning up ours and our neighbours yards.  It was good to get to know the neighbours and work together.... We were EXHAUSTED though.
It was a stinking hot day,  38 degrees and the humidity was like 98%.  It was unbearable,  almost to the point of making you feel sick.  The heatwave hit us for three days... 

We were exhausted, tired and unable to sleep at night because of the heat and insects,  and then to make matters worse,  some of us were directed to go back to work first thing Monday morning, even though the temperature for the day was 36 and the humidity was 96%... It didn't go down well.  We had no power,  their were trees and debris everywhere and none of us could stand to be inside.  We had 20 students turn up, but we were only there for an hour or so when our boss decided that it was not safe for us to be there.  The office contacted all the parents and students were sent home and then we were released. 

Steve on the other hand was given the week off.  There school coped quite a bit of damage, particularly with a lot of very large trees coming down which made a huge mess of the school.  Also no power made it impossible for them to operate.  He was thankful for the time off, but has spent his whole week, cleaning up here and at church and helping some friends of ours, re screw down a roof and waterproofing holes in their walls where windows were blown in....

 I think there will be several posts to cover all the photos I have of the damage caused by this cyclone.  These are for future reference for my family...
These photos were taken just after the cyclone.  This was within walking distance of our place.  It was too dangerous

Looking out our front door just after the cyclone passed over...

One of our trees fell straight into our neighbours yard

Trees just snapped like matchsticks...

Our place looking considerably bearer...

Our beautiful foxtail palm shed most of its leaves.

Lovely grevillia tree gone... It is going to be a hot summer next summer...

Uprooted and gone. 

Large trees uprooted in Penlington Street

Trees and power lines down...

Most streets were inaccessible because of trees and powerlines down.

Looking up Penlington Street

Very few trees left standing...

Footpaths everywhere

Down Davis Street

Trees just snapped...

Snapped completely blocking the roads...

These poor guys had two huge palm trees fall on their car...

Completely squashed the roof...

Didn't matter where we went there were trees down on footpaths

and bloclking roads.  Brae Street

Roofs on houses  were missing..

Palm tree over wiping out stairs...

Checking on our friends place.  Their neighbours lost a roof but they appear to be fine...

Every street looked like this...

Our school had trees down everywhere

More photos of our Prep area at school. 

Down near the railway..

 Chloe's boyfriend Dan was very fortunate... He was out of town for the week with work and he parked his car under a tree so it would be in shade whilst he was away little expecting that we would have a Category 5 cyclone hit us before he returned...

I think God was looking after him, because the tree did come down but it missed his car and fell in the opposite direction..

Car still sitting in one piece when he got home...

Thankful that even though we had two cars, a caravan, a boat and a trailer all parked out in our front yard, none of them sustained any damage...  We suffered no broken windows, or damage to our home.  We lost a lot of our trees, but hey you can be positive about that and say it was good to have a good clean out anyway...

We went without power for six days but we were still blessed in that we had a generator that at least allowed us to run our fridges,  and have a fan in the evenings to use whilst we slept...., Fortunately it was stinking hot, so cold showers were really appreciated

More photos to follow soon.