An Epic Storm!

2 days after I finished the last post we experienced a major storm. We saw the clouds coming over and I made a dash for the van from the office getting the kids and dog inside and running around getting chairs and bits undercover. I just got myself in when the wind picked up and I heard a bang. I went to check outside and nearly got blown back in the door but as I watched I saw the leg of the awning fly out and I knew if I left it our awning would be destroyed so I braved up and headed out grabbing the leg of the awning and holding onto it while getting buffeted by the wind and getting drenched. I called out to the girls to call the park manager, Sal, as I didn't know what to do but finally one of our park neighbours saw me and came over to help tie down the leg. By this stage I was dripping wet, I had Elly dragging extra stuff inside as bits were getting blown about everywhere and the rain was coming in sideways. There was no point going in all wet so I stood outside, stripped to my underwear and headed back in to wait out the storm. After it died off, Sal popped past and told me to hop in the car. We drove around the park looking at all the damage that had been caused during the 15 minute storm. A good 10 trees were down, big trees not little ones. We had an RV with a tree on its roof and one of the permanent residents van and car under another tree but everyone was amazingly lucky. The RV had a busted solar panel and a crack skylight. The permanent residents weren't on site but the structure over their site saved a lot of damage. Trees fell were campers had been parked on the day before, or fell and missed vans or cabins by centimetres. One fell right near where the kids had been set up the night before for a movie night with their friends. It was a busy night starting the clean up process and clearing the roads.

The next few days were super busy. I spent mot of the day in the office to free up Sal to do what she needed to do to clean up. We had phone calls from the ABC and channel 7, which finished up with me being interviewed and shown on 7 news Perth and apparently also on Sunrise the next morning. The girls were really good, even though I was tied up working so much and then had the added pressure of trying to finish my final assignments for this semester of uni.

We didn't get out and about much on the weekend as we continued the clean up and we started to process of cleaning out and packing up, although we did get around to visit our friends place to play in their new pool.

Our final week in Kununurra was still mostly spent working and packing up. However, I did get Wednesday off work so the girls and I could go to Lake Argyle for the day as I had booked them in to do a snorkelling course. They absolutely loved it and I managed to get roasted in the sun. Dave finished up at work yesterday and we have spent today packing up. We did get some time out joining our last scout activity here, a swimming day for the kids to do their level 1 and 2 swimming badges and then some free time on the water slide.

It's still strange to think that this is our final night in Kununurra, at least for now, we do plan to come back up next year for another few months (when its not so hot!). Tomorrow we head to the Bungle Bungles for a couple of days and then its on to Broome but from there who knows? Our new van should be on the ship from Brisbane soon and we will slowly make our way south to meet it in Perth.