For those that don't know I live in the coastal city of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Our claim to fame is beautiful wine country in the Hunter Valley, silverchair, an earthquake, a riot at a pub, and coal. Lots of coal. We also have some of the best beaches in Australia. Take Nobby's Beach for instance:
Beautiful isn't it. Well, right now it looks like this:
That's the Pasha Bulker, a rather large coal ship.
Streets that once looked like this:
now look like this:
.
My usual 15 minute drive on a busy day turned into a one hour ordeal as I tried to get home from work. I had already been out at lunch and realised that it was not going to be a great drive home. My usual route was already under water and not passable. I work in the suburb of Lambton, right near the football ground. Instead of normal route which takes me pass the stadium I cut directly across heading to New Lambton trying to avoid low ground. Not far from work I came across my first water crossing, in the middle of suburbia, when the local public swimming pool decided to also take up the neighbouring park and surrounding streets. The ajoining street that I wanted to take is divided, with a high side and a low side. Well, the high side had water over the road, so you can imagine what the low side looked like.
I cut through New Lambton, and as I got to the back end of the suburb I came across my next water crossing. This water managed to get into my car, a Magna stationwagon, about two inches deep. The plan was to cut through the back of Kotara, go up the hill past Blackbutt Reserve, and then come down the hill to my place.
Well the entire area around the Blackbutt Hotel was completely under water. About three foot of it.
I turned around and headed back through New Lambton. In 15 minutes the water had risen another foot and I would think I was very lucky not to get stuck on that water crossing. I went up past the John Hunter Hospital and could not believe the carnage. Trees down all over the road. People who had just abandoned their cars because they were too frightened to drive through. I continued, very cautiously, down to the city bypass and heading down Park Ave.
As I got to the bottom of my street, which is at a very low point on the road, I saw a sight I will never forget. A Nimbus, a large 10 seater Nimbus FLOATING and spinning in a circle with the water current. There were other cars that had already sunk but the site of that white Nimbus, at the end of my street, I can never forget. I turned around and with my Window down in the torrential rain I let the people who were behind me to turn around and not bother. I took a few of the back streets and eventually got home.
About 2am that night we lost power. very little sleep was had as we could feel the whole house groaning under the pressure of the wind. About 4am (I'm guessing), the storm that started at 4pm the afternoon before had finally passed. 12 hours of not stop rain, wind, bouts of hail, all over in an instant. I eventually fell asleep.
Then we woke up to see the whole carnage. Our suburb, Kotara, was hit very hard. Kotara used to be a natural water course, and has several large storm water drains that criss-cross the area. Any property around those water ways has been destroyed. Steel railings bent and snapped by the force of the debris in the water. Mammoth trees snapped like twigs, through homes and power lines and over cars. When the rain started again we realised that a section of our roof, our house, had been ripped up and flung into the yard. It left me, terrified of heights, with the help of my father to pick up the missing tiles and put them back in their place. Driving around the suburb we found power lines down everywhere, trees all over the road, and people cleaning up and helping each other.
What scares me most is that what we experienced was the equivalent of a category 1 cyclone. I cannot begin to comprehend what it must be like to be in something worse, or to live in an area that has such a storm season every year. They are calling this "Black Friday", a once in 30 year event, the worst storm to hit the area since the Sygna . Guess that means I'll probably have to live through one more of these yet.
