The storm passed over the east coast of QLD, but its remnants flooded the region with extensive damage.
Aioli everyone, we hope you are all doing well so close to Christmas, in today's blog entry we are going to share our experience with the aftermath of Cyclone Jasper. If you haven't seen the news in Australia, Cyclone Jasper passed over northern Australia but, in its wake, it left the region with a 1 in a 100-year flood, which some quite extensive damage.
Before we get into this blog, we want to preface it by saying, we are typing this from our own experience, we are by no means experts in the field, and we can only share from what we experience in our local area, but we do encourage you if you can please donate to funds/places that are supporting the floods in Queensland, each little bit you can donate helps a lot.
Thursday to Thursday 14 to 21/12/2023
In our last blog entry, we briefly recapped Thursday the 14th, but at that stage, they were reporting in the news, we could expect a change in weather in a few days, but my how the rain did not let up, it was just constant showers at times getting very heavy to the point all you could do is stay indoors and just admire the power of mother nature,
We had so much rain in just a short period that in our immediate area all our local rivers joined up to be one, it filled up the adjacent local swamp lands and we got flooded in for like a week, but we didn't have it nearly as bad as other places in the region, where they completely got inundated with water, people lost all their belongs and their houses, and even herds of livestock were swept away, it was completely devastating to hear and see on the all the news coverage.
For the most part here, we were completely safe, we did not lose power at all, just having only one power surge, and the floodwaters were localized to our local bridges and swamp area, not being anywhere near our houses, we only got cabin fever cause we were not able to leave our houses and go far out and socialize with other people, we reverted to island life as we liked to call it, since the rain had cut off our only ways out of the beach.
For the most part, it was life as usual, except you couldn't travel far, you couldn't go out to work, you couldn't go out shopping or visit friends, we could only visit neighbours across the road, but along with the incoming bad weather of the cyclone we took down all our outside Christmas lights which took us 2 days to put up, but after the cyclone passed we tried through the rain showers to put our decorations back up and clean our yards of all the debris and leaves, but at the same time we were very careful making sure we didn't get too wet or get sick cause there was no chance you get out to see a doctor if you did,
Thanks to the weather, a lot of services and businesses cut their services and closed up shop, the main reason they cited was to keep their staff safe but a lot of the time it was because their properties were going underwater or they were requested to halt by the police due to safety reasons, they only reopened when it was safe to do so when they could operate at capacity with adequate staffing levels.
Speaking of staff, every morning and night we had a runner from the community, who would drive up to the bridge/floodwaters and they would report back to the community online, they would share with us, how much the water had dropped each day and their predictions on how long they think we would stuck for, for us that person was Neville of the local campground, so we ended up affectionately calling them Nev's daily flood reports.
But in terms of reports, we were some of the lucky ones we like to think, others that lived closer to waterways but even in town and Cairns city where the drains were not working as well, their houses and property inundated and destroyed, they lost all their worldly possessions and had to flee to higher grounds, to be honest, a lot of us here didn't think we were on land that had much higher elevation than them being so close to the beachfront, but our drains worked well and we were safe the whole time, we had no water pool around us, the water only backed where the local bridges and creeks broke their banks.
In terms of food and supplies, we were well-prepared, we have lived here long enough to know if there is a cyclone about along with a flood there is always a good chance you could be flooded out for a week or two, but some residents who are new to the area don't know this so we had to organize with the local SES to do a supply run, only to have the roadways open up the next day.
As the water recedes
As the waters begin to clear out now and we are getting back to pre-cyclone weather conditions, a lot of residents in the local region are requesting help and donations to get them back on their feet, if you have some spare essentials like blankets, bedding, hygiene products and children's toys, we encourage you, if you can, can you please donate to the cause, every little bit can go a long way, and especially just before Christmas, let's make it that little bit more special for them.
That is Wilz for now, take care, travel safely and let's keep walking on this journey called life, peace out
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