Storms on Phill's birthday

Raging from Tuesday night to this morning was severe storms with speeds between 150-170km/h. I'm told that the speed for Hurricane Katrina is about 200km/h.

The winds were howling the entire night and I was so frightened that the house was going to collapse. Phill and I hardly got any sleep.

But when we woke up, we realise there was no power and when Phill dialled an enquiry line, we found out 30 other areas in our district was also without electricity.

Without much of a hot breakfast, we had a yoghurt bar instead, we decided to head to work and see if we might be able to get a shower there.

With Phill driving ahead of me, he suddenly stopped his car and told me to reverse. What had happened was a huge tree fell on our driveway, cutting off our route to the highway. There was no way out.
















We went home and Phill called the local council to ask them to clear the trees. We called our colleagues and bosses to say we are not able to be at work cos we couldn't get out.

We then scrambled for batteries to see if we could listen to the news on the wireless (radio). We finally managed to find 4 batteries and a radio that only needed that many to get it working after an extensive search.

I spent the morning drifting to sleep cos without a hot breakfast, a hot shower or even a working TV, it was abit boring and I was recovering from the loss of sleep the night before.

Finally at 10.30am, power came back on and I woke up with an excitement! The first thing Phill and I did was to have toasted bread and jam and he teased me that the jam he was having was kaya jam. I told him excitedly we mite be able to get some in Melbourne....aahhhh! Kaya Jam!

Later at 11am, we went to see if the tree was removed by the council but it was not. Instead, our neighbours had started working on it and were using a chainsaw to cut parts of the huge tree to clear a path through for our cars to drive out. We helped them for abit too but they really did the majority of the work.

I called Steve to say that I could drive to work now and if power was restored in Mansfield but he said there was no power so not to worry about going to work.

Phill and I spent the rest of the afternoon watching shows we recorded the past weekend and shortly after, my parents-in-law came home from Alexandra where they were since yesterday staying over at our family friends' home. Lucky they avoided the storm cos Alexandra wasn't affected.

My mum-in-law made a pavlova with mint chocolate on top for Phill's birthday and it was yummy! That is something we both look forward to....heehee!

Quite an eventful day for Phill's birthday but I sure am glad we got to spend it together the entire day.

However, I'm sure a little boy in Phill's class will be disappointed. He shares the same birthdate as Phill and for weeks he has been telling Phill, "not long now, Mr Brown, til both our birthdays".

Cute kid.