Cyclone Debbie Madness

March 2017 

So we are getting the house all organised, Jamie and I have both stopped our jobs, we are continuing to pack what we want to keep and sort what we are getting rid of and what we are giving to the children - not easy!! 

We are also saying goodbyes, farewells, see you laters - call them what you like, it's a strange and emotional thing to do. 

Marnie and Grandad

Granny and Grandpa

A week ago (11 - 14 March) Marnie and I flew to Auckland to see my dad, then last weekend Jamie, Marnie and I drove to Sydney to see his parents. Marnie leaves at the end of the month to live in Tennessee, America for some years whilst Dylan studies Optometry so she had her immigration interview in Sydney on Tuesday 21st March at the very early hour of 0715 - don't the American Immigration folk ever sleep in?? We stayed at the very upmarket Woolbrokers Inn (read very inexpensive instead of upmarket) Monday night after spending Sunday night in Lithgow with Granny and Grandpa.  

We have a heap of things that belong to the children that we want to give to them before we leave - I'm talking about their things, their belongings, their childhood memories. So we had decided to pack these up and return them. Sure, I know I could get rid of a lot of this stuff - but it's not mine to get rid of or decide what is important to each child, they are their memories to do with whatever they want. So back to them they go. 

We decided to take a load over to Phil in Adelaide on the next weekend - leaving Friday from here and coming back Monday. This means we get to spend the whole weekend with him, Dolly and Lilly.  

Thursday afternoon I was driving home from Shepparton and came home to find Jamie on the phone with Phil, they were talking about what I had just heard on the radio in the car - a tropical storm was brewing off the Queensland coast and the Bureau of Meteorology was anticipating that it would develop into a Tropical Cyclone and it appeared that its path would be towards Townsville. We had left SOL "cyclone ready" but would this be enough? Was there more we could do? It seemed that everything on the television on Thursday night and Friday morning was about the tropical storm - maybe because it was all we were focused on and by lunchtime Friday the decision was made. 

We were going to Townsville. 

The car was hastily packed with anything we intended to take up to SOL and by 2pm we were heading out the gate with a 2379km drive in front of us. Adelaide would wait. All went without a hitch and the kilometres seemed to fly by until about 1000km into our journey, around 1030pm we drove through the northern New South Wales town of Walgett looking for an open petrol station - NONE. The next town, 80km away was Lightening Ridge, but on phoning the local service station there (and probably upsetting the little man who answered the phone by getting him out of bed - he was a tad short with me) we found there would be NONE available there either. So, faced with a 230km drive with limited petrol before hitting the town of St George just over the Queensland border, we slowed to just 80km/hr to conserve the fuel. The gods must have been looking favourably on us though, as during the next two hundred kilometres we must have seen at least five hundred kangaroos and had we been travelling at 120km/hr we'd have hit one for sure!! Not only were kangaroos the only hazards we encountered on the road - we also saw emu, wild pig, owls, and cattle all just wandering on the verge.  

Outboard in cabin

We got petrol in St George then pulled over not far north at the side of the road, spread the old foam mattress topper out in the back of the car and settled down for some rest. A few, too short, hours later we were back on the road with a mere 1200km between us and our boat. We made good time and by 7pm Saturday evening we were greeted by the very welcome sight of Breakwater Marina and SOL. A quick dinner of fish and chips (washed down with a couple of glasses of Canadian Club) and we collapsed into our nice comfortable bed aboard.

Early Sunday morning we added another layer of rope to our already tied mainsail - we did think about removing the mainsail altogether but figured it was going to be impossible to store being fully battened so we couldn't just take it down, fold it and store it inside SOL like we had done with the screecher, jib and stormsail - so we had to leave it in its sailbag but tie that closed after zipping it closed. We removed the dinghy from the davits put the outboard in the forward cabin and wrestled the dinghy in through the saloon door and upended it over the dining table. We then added another set of lines from SOL to the dock - creating a spiderweb effect of ropes so if any one failed there was a backup. By midday we had done all we could do. She was trussed up like the turkey at thanksgiving!!  

Dinghy in Saloon

There was a big risk that if we didn't leave before Debbie made landfall we would get caught behind rising floodwaters. So lunchtime Sunday saw us back in the car and homeward bound. Again we encountered masses of wandering livestock and I guess because it wasn't heading into a weekend we also saw many road trains - huge trucks with three trailers behind, so in many cases overtaking is a big challenge, but the drivers of these road trains are very good. We were home in Numurkah by 9pm Monday having travelled nearly 5000km in three and a half days. 

Would we do it again - for fun - NO !! But if we had to - definitely!! 

Tropical Cyclone Debbie crossed the Queensland coast on Tuesday morning, April 28th, about 200km south of Townsville. Sadly these places south suffered huge damages, but thankfully Townsville and SOL were spared.