Wednesday 8 June 2016

A WILDER Weekend Than Expected

image source ABC

We knew we had a bit of a wild weekend ahead of us when Friday rolled around last week, but we had now idea just how wild it would actually become and for reasons we didn't see coming.

Our oldest Kai was turning fifteen... I KNOW - FIFTEEN!!!! so we had celebrations planned for that on the Saturday and our youngest Flynn was due to do his first communion on the Sunday, so there was yet another celebration marked for that occasion too.

There is that old saying that people use when planning events - always expect the unexpected.

Ha, yep!

In this case the unexpected was so far unexpected that never in a zillion years could we have planned for it.

You would have to had been hiding somewhere under a rock in the Bahamas with a cocktail in hand to have missed the news of what the poor East Coast of Australia copped over the weekend just gone and man did my beautiful hometown of Narrabeen take a beating from Mother Nature like I've never seen before.

After going out to dinner on the Saturday night for Kai's birthday, we knew a big storm was brewing, and after the initial storm hit we woke up to a blackout and the mother of all pots sitting at the bottom of our pool.

We kinda even nervously half joked about it... pfft is that all... when actually we had no idea of what was still to come.



What we didn't know was that so many people's homes were badly flooded on Sunday morning, that most people were blacked out and probably half of Narrabeen was under water to some degree.

The flooding was extensive, like I have never seen in my 40 years of living here. We've seen big fires...but this was a new kind of natural threat that I personally haven't experienced before.

I watched on in horror at the Queensland floods, but until you have seen it happen in your own hood... I don;t think you can really appreciate the enormity of it.

By Sunday afternoon there was no way out from where we live. Every road option available to us was closed off with flood waters and police simply sent you back from where you came.

Poor Flynn missed his first communion he had been preparing for for months - because short of jumping in the kayaks and paddling there, we had no way to get him to where he needed to be.

We like most people on the Northern Beaches had no choice but to sit tight as the storm continued and as the creek at the end of our road that feeds from the lake and ocean broke its banks and overflowed, we hoped with all we had that it did not flood our storm water drains and turn us into a waterfront property too.



Evening fell and with it came a fresh new storm front ready to wreak havoc.

We live about a km from North Narrabeen beach as the crow flies, and the sound of the waves pounding on top of the drone of the pelting rain, trees cracking and the sirens... so many sirens... it started to play with our nerves and I'm not going to lie, I was starting to get a little scared myself.

Heartbreaking doesn't even begin to describe the emotions we all felt as we listened to the news and heard that the neighbouring beach of Collaroy was being swallowed up by the gigantic swell in the dark of night.

Come Monday morning, the damage to the homes and to the local businesses was beyond what we could have imagined and was nothing less than soul destroying to witness... I can't even begin to imagine how the owners of those properties and businesses were feeling themselves.

It's events like this that puts all of our small problems into perspective.

She's a fiery one that Mother Nature, we have no control over her and we really need to show her more respect than we do.

I'm not going to get into the debate over global warming and climate change, everyone has their own opinions on that but I will say that I do totally agree with George Carlin in that if we are not careful,  "The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas."

After something like this happens, it is a reminder that we should all do what we can to support our individual communities world wide.

Support local, be kind to each other, be kind to our earth and don't sweat the small stuff... because in the big scheme of things... that small stuff is nothing but a pimple on a horses butt.


Here's some incredibly sad but incredible footage of the carnage on our local coastline from theUNSW Water Research Laboratory



Were you affected by the storm?
Have you ever been really frightened by Mother Nature?