Today marks the one year anniversary of the storm that ripped apart The Gap in the western suburbs of Brisbane, tearing roofs from homes and ripping trees up from their roots. It was the worst storm to hit the area in 25 years. My daughter's teacher and a colleague at work were without electricity for a week. Other friends only moved back into their houses a month ago. MaryAnne, who took this photo as the storm approached, sent me her account:
I took this photo on that fateful Sunday afternoon, but believe me I was not outside, I was on a ladder in my garage, and I took this through, my garage window, have a look at it, one can clearly see there are two storm fronts approaching and what amazed me is the area in the middle of these two "rotating storm cells" looks like the map of Africa!
I live in such a lovely neighbourhood! When the storm had passed I wandered round with my camera and many of the residents in my street and in the neighbouring streets, were walking around with a glass of wine in one hand and also checking if everyone in the immediate vicinity was ok, and any help that was needed was offered!
To add to everyone's concerns, my daughter and I, flew out for Sydney the next morning, and we had no electricity, we ate cold meat and cold spaghetti for dinner that evening, and got up in the cold and dark, and were ready for our cab to the airport at 5am, having packed in the dark or by torch light the night before and without having had showers the previous night or that morning.
Today marks the one year anniversary of the storm that ripped apart The Gap in the western suburbs of Brisbane, tearing roofs from homes and ripping trees up from their roots. It was the worst storm to hit the area in 25 years. My daughter's teacher and a colleague at work were without electricity for a week. Other friends only moved back into their houses a month ago. MaryAnne, who took this photo as the storm approached, sent me her account:
It was about 26 degrees on Saturday - an average mid-spring day by Brisbane's sub-tropical standards - but for some reason, It was absolutely baking hot down at The Gap where a charity Ultimate Frisbee tournament was under way. For those not in the know it's a 2-team, 7-a-side game where the aim of the game is to pass the frisbee from one end of the field to the other, with a team member catching it in the end zone. These teams played game after game all day from 9am until 6pm. I was sweating just watching a little part of it.
Later on this year in December, Queensland will have been independent from New South Wales for 150 years so there are lots of celebrations and commemorations already taking place. One of which is an allocation of traffic signal boxes to be painted with a "Q150" theme. This one on the corner of Waterworks Road and Settlement Road in The Gap was being painted yesterday. There's going to be a horse on one side and a cyclist on the other showing how we got around then and now. The colour scheme is the same for all the boxes doing the project - taken from the Q150 logo. Each one is representative of something Queensland-y so green is the tropical rainforest, red and yellow are the sand, blue is the barrier reef and black (along with red and yellow) are from the aboriginal flag. I had a bit of a chat to the artist, Kathy Sullivan, who said that there is a time limit for getting the thing painted and she had to finish it by yesterday - with 2 coats of paint! Hopefully it's all done now and you can go and admire her work next time you're in The Gap.
