Tropical Cyclone Alfred made landfall in Brisbane

 Totally unheard of, very nearly, because Brisbane doesn't get cyclones as a rule.

 

Saturday 8th of March, around midnight, Tropical Cyclone Alfred made landfall near Redcliffe.

 

There is widespread damage from Hervey Bay down to the Gold Coast and out as far as Toowoomba (up on a mountain range, and yet it flooded again).

 

The northern rivers of New South Wales also got hit.

 

I am currently flooded in, with my road cut in both directions.

 

It's a complete mess out there and we are still due torrential, and life threatening, rains today.

 

Most of the areas around here have been issued with Emergency Alert messages ranging from "watch and wait" to the one I got which read "too late to leave. Seek higher ground if possible".

 

Thing is - there's nowhere to go! 

 

Tropical Cyclone Alfred

 Today has been getting rather windy. 

The BOM is saying that currently Alfred is a Category 2 cyclone (was supposed to only be a Cat 1 at this point in its development). At some point tonight it will pull away from the coastline, towards New Zealand, before pulling back into the Queensland coast, and heading straight for the coast at high speed and at least Category 2, although they are now saying it could actually hit us at Category 3, which is really not good at all.

The cyclone in January that hit Townsville and surrounds was a Category 3, and it wiped them out. Flooded everywhere, power outages, people died, houses wiped out (and their houses are built to withstand cyclones). A Category 2 is bad enough, but a 3?

I have spent the better part of today working in the gardens, pulling down greenhouses, and securing garden furniture, working out where my farm animals will go to keep them safe, along with my dogs and cats.  

Tomorrow I am going out to get food supplies for the animals to last at least a week, as it's unlikely anything will be open come Thursday. Add to that, my street floods at the smallest amount of rain, and we still tend to lose power here for days, if not weeks, on end when there's a bad storm, so who knows how bad it will get with a cyclone.

We aren't used to them down here, and it feels truly odd having to prepare my little farm for just such an occurrence! 

It is Autumn here now, but it's still Summer temps of low 30s, making the days sticky and hot, even despite the oncoming cyclone. 

Because the alternative is to be very very scared, I am looking at all of this as a chance to renovate my garden and fix the things that haven't worked, plus get a lot of stuff sorted around the house and in the sheds, and fix some fences after the cyclone has gone. To start from scratch again, somewhat.

I'm not looking forward to being flooded in, with no power though. Especially as I do not drive.

Thursday, maybe Friday, and the cyclone will be here. Wednesday is when they say the rain will be heaviest and when we are likely to start being flooded. Thursday they think the power will probably go out, although that could also start happening on Wednesday. If it hits Brisbane itself, Brisbane will probably shut down completely for a few days. The BOM is saying if it hits north of Brisbane, the people living south of the point of impact will get worse weather than the people at the centre of the cyclone. All of it is scary. 

I have a rechargeable radio now at least, and will be sorting out some way to charge my mobile tomorrow, assuming my mobile carrier doesn't go down when the power goes out (they usually do). 

How on earth do the people of Townsville in Far North Queensland cope with multiple cyclones per year???

I will try to update each day for as long as I am able. No guarantees though!

Cyclones and Earthquakes

 Earlier this year, Townsville, Ingham, Cairns, and surrounds in Far North Queensland, was hit by a Cyclone. It was quite a doozy.

 

Last night, Townsville was hit by a 4.7 magnitude earthquake. Not something that normally happens here in Queensland!

 

The scariest thing though, is that down here in South East Queensland, we are expecting Tropical Cyclone Alfred to hit the Brisbane area on Thursday. 

 

Brisbane hasn't had an earthquake since the 1950s!!!! Our houses aren't built to withstand Cyclones.

 

Life is getting scary!

Life

 Life always seems to get in the way. So much has happened since I last posted an update!

While I'm still living in the same place, my circumstances have changed drastically in the last two years. In some ways for the better, in other ways not so much.

I have been very ill this year (bedridden for the first 6 months, and no it isn't covid), and while I am not over it yet, I am definitely starting to feel better these past couple of months. 

I have started setting up my garden again - greenhouses are my friend! I've had issues with wildlife eating my broccoli and cauliflower and peas, but for the most part, everything seems to have survived.

I have a lovely little collection of English Cottage Garden flowers too, plus roses, geraniums and daisies, and for my birthday last month I got a dwarf sunflower, which is bringing great joy to my life currently.

My chickens are in the process of getting a new coop. I lost my beloved aracana hen in June, but gained a young leghorn girl who is somewhat distantly related to my big leghorn rooster, having come from the same farm. I still have my old english game hen and my isla brown hen too. The leghorn girl is giving me daily eggs, which is very much appreciated as there is nationwide egg shortage here at the moment.

I'm also slowly renovating the inside of my house, removing the carpet in the bedrooms and changing the walls over to wallpapered (peel and stick, but it looks fabulous!). 

I've also been adding solar powered lights to my garden, and rechargeable lights inside the house, to help with the rising electricity bills, and the general cost of living crisis. 

This week, the last week of Winter (and August), we are seeing temperatures in the mid 30s (celsius), which normally would require fans on through the day, but the work I've been doing inside the house has resulted in a much cooler environment, and fans are yet to be needed!

Did I mention I've been putting the privacy window film on the windows that face the road? Not only has it made a world of difference to life in general, but it has also considerably cooled my house. I will be adding them to all the windows in the house, slowly but surely!

Last year I lost my old horse. He was in his very late 20s. 

One of my dogs made it to 14 this year and is still going strong.

This year I have been trying to live by the seasons a little more, now that I have time to do so, and it has been interesting. I spend far more time out in the garden than I used to, and I am enjoying watching things grow. I'm also enjoying being able to eat home grown produce (cherry tomatoes and eggs so far, but come Summer there should be an abundance of edibles to chomp on!), especially as this illness I've had all year has resulted in my having to go gluten free. While I can still eat gluten to a point, my stomach doesn't hurt if I steer clear of gluten-filled products. So I am cooking interesting meals, and reading labels on every mortal thing I buy, but life is not meant to be stationary!

Farm Life

Recently I was gifted a lovely big rooster, who I named "Gorgeous George". He's a white leghorn, and is quite the romantic with my three little hens.

He crows, politely, once or twice each morning, (and not very loudly), and then goes about his business of wooing the girls. He is quite gentle with them, as well as being quite protective of them. It's all rather sweet.

I do hope that, just maybe, there will be babies soon, or at the very least, that my 3 girls will start laying again, as they have been on strike for quite some time now.

I'm also starting the slow process of building a vegetable garden. I have four fruit trees growing (two mandarin, one orange, and one lemon, all of which my Dad planted many years ago), and my sister gifted me a macadamia nut seedling from her tree.

I do plan on adding to my fruit grove, with a mango tree as well as an avocado tree at some stage, but for now I will work on growing food and herbs.

The birds have helped out with some of that, as every Spring (which it is now), I often find cherry tomato seedlings in the strangest of places. I have moved them all to a raised garden bed, and planted them.

As to my flower garden, my geraniums are getting bigger, as are my collection of roses.

The cost of living has gone through the roof here, with more rises to come (although our incomes stay the same), so rather than my gardening being a hobby, it has now become something of a necessity.

Thankfully I don't mind being something of a homebody, and "Make Do And Mend" is nothing new to me. But living below the poverty line was something I had hoped was in the past.

Never mind. Things will, eventually, get better (I hope).

Queen Elizabeth II

 Our Queen has died, aged 96.

She was the longest reigning Monarch, with 70 years of her life spent serving the people of the UK and the Commonwealth.

It is still hard to believe that she is gone.

Here in Australia, very late last night we were told that The Queen was in Balmoral, Scotland, and that her family had been summoned as her doctors were concerned about her health.

This morning, I woke up at 5am to news that our beloved Queen had died.

So much has changed in her lifetime alone. I don't honestly think the younger set get that. They don't understand what she represented, and how she guided us through all the trials and tribulations of the last 70 years.

R.I.P. our dearest Queen. You will be missed.

Floods

 Queensland is now in the throws of its second major significant flood in the space of three months.

In January we had Tropical Cyclone Seth hit just north of Brisbane, but impact very badly on Brisbane in the form of cyclonic winds and hail.

In February, Brisbane flooded. Worse than 2011. Worse than 1974. In fact, the last flood to be as bad was back in 1863!

Shortly after Brisbane flooded, Lismore, in the Northern Rivers area of northern New South Wales, was pretty much wiped off the face of the Earth. The ENTIRE town flooded.

A month later, Lismore flooded again.

This week has seen Townsville (far north Queensland) all the way down to the Queensland/New South Wales border flood, and out as far west as Goondiwindi.

Will it ever end?

Prior to the floods, back in December of 2019, we had bushfires that raged across much of the Eastern Coast and some of the Western Coast of Australia, then Covid-19 rocked our world for two years straight (although it is still here, but the floods have become more important news just now).

So much for Australia being "the Lucky Country"!