~~~*~~~* THE STORM *~~~*~~~

When we moved to Queensland from down south we had no idea what we were in for. It didn't take long before we found out. I was visiting one of my new found friendly neighbors when she commented on the color of the sky. I was horrified when we walked out onto her balcony. Since we'd been inside the wind had picked up and it was getting strong. Already bits of broken branches were blowing along the road and the air was full of dust and grit, making it uncomfortable to look up at the sky.

I shaded my eyes the best I could and looked at the clouds. My exclamation was one of shock when I saw they had turned green. Never in my life had I imagined clouds could be that color. It wasn't the color that caused me concern so much as what they were doing. The cloud front was coming towards us so quickly that it looked like one of those sped up animations of clouds they show us on TV. The wind was whipping my hair across my face ..... my eyes stung from the grit invading them, but I couldn't move. I stood transfixed as I watched the clouds rolling towards me in a forward aggressive motion.
 

When my friend raced inside and started closing her windows and yelling for her child I was spurred into action. I ran across the road to my place and started moving things inside my house which could act as a missile in a strong wind, which meant anything not anchored down. I had hanging pots to move and they were already crashing back and forth and as I moved them water from their catchment underneath dribbled all over me. I ran, picking up and dragging things here and there. With hind-sight we'd all be a lot smarter but I didn't even think to bring the washing off the line first.

Not having had this experience before I thought I had plenty of time to do it all and I had only just started unpegging the washing when my husband came home, having heard the warning of the violent storm which had hit North Brisbane, on his car radio. He raced out and implored me to leave it. By this time the deluge was almost upon us. I didn't want to leave a full line of washing out there and I frantically tried to grab things but they were ripped out of my hands as I unpegged them. When he dragged me inside and slammed the back door with force against the scary wind I stood there forlorn, panicky...scared...not knowing what to do. By now the noise was deafening and it sounded not unlike an express train about to crash the door in.

When he moved upstairs to watch what was happening outside through a window I quickly followed him. There was no way I was going to stay downstairs by myself! On our stairs landing there was a big glass window and I could see the wind making the glass bow inwards. "Oh No!" I yelled as I ran up the stairs behind my husband. It looked like any minute it was going to shatter. We knew it wasn't safe to stand near the windows and we moved well back from them while trying to peer outside. "What's happening?" I asked my hubby. I watched him stare gravely at the destruction outside as the storm whipped through. Lightning bolts flashed across the angry sky. Rain pelted down in a deluge we could barely see through. Things flew through the air...first a tree, next a rubbish bin...followed by an indistinct dark mass.

The noise was deafening and I huddled scared in the corner of the kitchen. We heard a god almighty crash then we were plunged into darkness. We'd lost our electricity and we could only speculate at what might have happened. It went on and on and I didn't think it was ever going to stop. I was so scared. It was a miracle that none of our windows broke and we continued to watch the panes of glass bowing in the wind like something alive and breathing. "When's it going to stop?!" I implored my husband. He assured me that it would soon and he kept vigil at a safe distance away from the window.
 

Finally it did stop after hours of heavenly fury, a storm that did no favors....a storm that wrecked, broke and maimed. With a morbid fascination we ventured out and saw others gingerly leaving the safety of their houses to assess what damage had been done. I looked in horror at the mess the storm had left in it's wake. Our whole back fence was missing. Every bit of greenery was gone...vanished like it never existed. My heart sank even further when I saw all my new gardens I had so lovingly planted were no more.....washed away, the garden beds and all......gone, as we sloshed our way through eight inches of water covering the ground. Our back yard had turned into a lake.

The clothes line was a mangled twisted wreck. Looking back at our house I could see part of the roof missing and our TV antenna was also gone. I looked down our street and could see everyone had received some sort of damage and we gravitated towards each other, standing around talking in subdued tones. We were all in shock. Eventually the electricity came back on but it was too late to start the massive clean-up operation we had facing us. That night we went to bed early in anticipation of the work we had to do the next day.

Imagine our surprise when we were woken early the next day by a group of our neighbors. They had rallied together and started the back breaking task of putting everything back together again. My heart was touched and I even became a little teary eyed as I watched the children dragging back our fence palings and saw the men had already started to re-build our fence while we slept. Even though I had just experienced the worst storm in my life something told me that I was going to like living in Nearra Street, Queensland.

©Janine Daniel