11 February 2011

I should start by saying that I survived the cyclone! If you haven't heard much about it, Cyclone Yasi hit the coast of Queensland at about 11 PM on Wednesday night, February 2nd. To give you an idea of how big it was, they were comparing Cyclone Yasi to Hurricane Katrina. Saying Yasi was more powerful. It was known to be the worst cyclone to ever hit Australia.
Of course, for me, little Seattle girl, it was by far the scariest thing I have ever been through. It started raining hard early in the day on Wednesday, and then the winds started to pick up at about 9.00PM. We lost power at 9.30 that night and didn't get it back until about 9 this morning, February 8 So we went almost a week here with no power, cold showers and all that fun stuff! We played Sequence and Monopoly, and laid around complaining about how terrible it was having no air conditioning! But everything and everyone is okay, which is all that matters.

Here is some photos from around the house, once the cyclone was over:

Townsville is in better conditions than a lot of towns in North Queensland, but we were definitely affected by Yasi. Most of the power in town is finally back on, but some homes still have no power. Finding food around town, at the moment, is impossible. The days after the cyclone, the lines to the few open gas stations and few open fast food resteraunts were tremmendusly long. The Strand, the main street on the beach here in Townsville, is still closed due to the destruction. Trees are down all over the place, and the sand has been washed up on to the streets, but they are working to clean it up and are hoping to have it open by the weekend! Schools were closed starting last wednesday, and just started up again yesterday, Tuesday, February 8th. We were fortunate to only loose trees and parts of our fence. Many people in a town just north of us, Tully, came home from the evacuation centers to find their homes completely destroyed. There is a lot of rebuilding that is going to be happening in North Queensland over the next couple months, and a lot of it has already been started.
The cyclone has obviously been a big part of my last week in Australia, but I did get the opportunity to get out a couple days after the cyclone and drive around the town. Pauline, Bill, Gabriel and I went up to the top of Castle Hill, which is a hill here that looks over all of Townsville. It was still overcast when we went up that day because of the cyclone, but here are some pictures from the top!

I am hoping to make it up north soon to see how they have been affected up there, but I made a video so you all could see how Cyclone Yasi affected us here in Townsville.
This is the link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LimUhYx4sRo

Oh, and by the way, I would just like to say that I had kangaroo for dinner this week! How australian is that?! :)