Cyclone Helen Approaches

[Jared Archibald]

G'day again everyone,
as many of you will know by now, Cyclone Helen has made landfall, moved across the Top End as a rain depression, and is now in the Gulf of Carpentaria threatening the Queensland coast.

Friday night was wet and very windy. We were getting huge gusts of wind right through the night, peaking around 2-3 am. It is amazing the sound these make - you can hear them coming before they hit - sort of like an approaching train. Lots of defoliation of the trees and branches down. We had one huge eucalypt snap about 6m from the ground and crash down onto a car and an FWD truck . Amazingly, there was not much damage - the Statesman was impaled through the grille vent in front of the windscreen with almost no other damage being done. The truck received a badly bent RH guard. Spent all day yesterday cutting up trees and cleaning up.
Power was out for 12 hours and we still have no phones, but the internet is working for some reason - hence this update.

We went to Darwin this morning and the damage there is much more severe.(We are 35 km inland and the winds begin to diminish the further inland they go). No building damage but large numbers of huge uprooted trees, many blocking streets completely, power lines down, and branches and green leaf litter everywhere. All in all, we were very happy that it didn't hit Darwin directly and that it was not any stronger.

I have some images that I will try and post later,

Jared