Friday really wasn’t a good day. I missed my bus by about 2 minutes, the taxi I called took 20 minutes to get here, and when I finally got to the train station - they were running 30+ minutes behind schedule.  All up, I got to work about 45 minutes late.

A few hours later, I learned that a ship - the Pasha Bulker - had grounded off Nobbies Beach - about 1KM from work. Apparently it was/is visible from the top floor of our building. That caused a bit of excitement, but apart from the strong winds, and heavy rain - no one was terribly concerned.

At lunch, I ventured out in a brief lessening in the wind and rain to get something to eat. There was bits of tree branches, and… stuff lying on the ground. I (jokingly) described it as a war-zone in a Twitter message

By the time 4:30pm rolled around, I’d had enough, and thought I should probably catch the earlier train home, just incase there were more delays. Normally, I catch a train at about 5:20, which meets the last bus out to Coal Point. Missing that, especially on a Friday night, means a 40 minute or more wait for a Taxi to come from a surrounding area.

(Caution, Long Blog Post - also a few pics too)

Well, leaving an hour earlier from work proved to be pointless. Not only did I get absolutely soaked in my 5 minute walk, I arrived to find the rail lines under water. 

Of course, since the trains I catch are all electric services - they wouldn’t be sending a train until the water drained away. I asked who could make the call to get replacement coaches, but the station master seemed to dismiss it saying it’d take over an hour to order them. The station master also said that there were difficulties in trying to order coaches - although he didn’t elaborate.

The drainage situation wasn’t helped at all by the recent works, which seem to have completely blocked the drainage for this section of track.  Taking these photos resulted in my camera getting really wet. I dried it off and put it away shortly afterwards.

At about 5:00pm, we were informed that a coach would be made available - so all of us trudged over to the bus stop - about 500 meters away.  Before the coach could arrive - Hunter Street was turned into a parking lot, with the ‘outbound’ lanes coming to a standstill.

The coach finally arrived at about 5:30. Everyone crammed on-board, and we even had some people standing up.  It took us an hour to go about 2KM to Hamilton. From there we moved maybe 400 meters up the road in the following hour to just near the Broadmeadow Fire Station, where we got our first sight of some real flooding. 

There was a veritable river of water flowing down one of the side streets, with about 4 inches of water covering the main road. While the entire bus watched - some shops started getting flooded, two guys in an office equipment store were frantically rushing around and lifting stock to higher locations.

We discovered the cause of some of the slow moving traffic was from people having abandoned cars in the middle of the road, obviously being concerned about the rising water.  Another reason for me not taking photos was the bus windows were covered in lots of condensation (which slowly soaked the arm on my jumper), and also, because it was packed, I had to keep my back (with my camera) under the seat.

One of the more..interesting moments was when we went through 9-ways at Broadmeadow, there was water covering all of the road, more abandoned cars, and in some places - some really deep water.  because of the route the bus has to take, we went under the the bridge, to get to Broadmeadow Station. The various stores to our left were completely flooded, including (I believe, though I couldn’t see) - the children’s courthouse.  The water at one point was about halfway up a standard car’s windows (as evidenced by some parked cars) .

After a lot more mucking around, we got to Adamstown station at around 7:30pm, and went straight on over the hill to find Kotara completely shut off to all traffic - the road as far as we could see was completely under water, and given the presence of storm drains and such further on, was likely to be even deeper (and more dangerous) further on. 

Traffic was flowing fairly well by this time, although busy - and we continued up the hill to Charlestown. The normal turn-off from Charlestown towards Warners Bay/etc was completely cut off, so our Bus Driver displayed his excellent knowledge of the local roads and went a back way, to cut around and come into the turn off from the other direction(which was much less busy) .

We drove through Cardiff Heights which was completely blacked out at about 8PM, as was Cardiff itself. The area around the pedestrian crossing in the main road of Cardiff was under more than meter of water - the driver got another round of cheers when (despite his warning “We may not get through here”), we drove through without difficulty. I guess having 60+ people really wanting to get home helped with the encouragement thing.

Still more very deep flooding was under the train bridge - impassable by car (we saw a few stalled and abandoned cars which had apparently tried to make it), but, again, we made it through without issue. We were now starting to call the coach a semi-submersible.

At the Glendale crossroads, we were prevented from going through towards the Glendale shopping center - we could see large amounts of rushing water going over the road. We had to go up the road a bit further, and back around a secondary road -But not before the driver insisted we stop for a 30 minute break. Apparently he was well over the number of hours he was legally supposed to drive. A lot of people wanted to get off to use the facilities at the service station and get something to eat anyway.

One thing that I found strange was that this sort of minor disaster doesn’t do much for people’s intelligence. I saw several people stop cars in the middle of the road, for no apparent reason, Meanwhile other people would blindly speed on, apparently taking the fact that there were no traffic lights as an indication to go top speed. 

Although the relatively minor damage and flooding here wasn’t good - I can start to see how civilisation can quickly deteriorate into mass hysteria and stupidity (read: looting, setting fire to places, etc) as happened in New Orleans after Katrina.

The rest of the trip back home was mostly mundane - no real further flooding once we got out of Glendale, except for around the Polyclinic & Workers Club at Toronto but that turns into a lake at the first sign of rain, so it’s not particularly unusual. 

Unfortunately, the driver decided to stop in the middle of the flooded area and let anyone who wanted out at Toronto off there. So, I ended up wading through 8-inch deep water to get back to a dry area (which the driver could have stopped at.). So, there were a number of incredibly cold, wet, and p’ed off people.

Margaret thankfully picked me up and drove me home (arriving at about 9:45PM - making it a nearly 4hr bus trip home), where I discovered our power had been cut. Apparently for several hours already - things in the freezer were already getting soft, which is never a good sign. 

My UPS was flashing Overload, apparently having run out of enough charge to keep the servers running.  There was enough however to charge my mobile and power up the wireless. Unfortunately the power outage must have also affected the remote DLSAM I’m on, since I couldn’t get line sync.

The wind was still blowing a gale, and it was (still) raining - so I grabbed my sleeping bag and slept in the loungeroom - the furthest from any tree that might have a chance of falling over.

The next morning I woke up at about 6:30AM to a bright sunrise and did a wander around the house to see if there was any damage. Luckily, we had escaped any damage to the house, but the lead-in power-lines to the house had a tree from the neighbor’s house fall on them.

The rest of the house and garden was OK, but some things did get a little beaten up. Luckily the lemon tree was good though - it’s still hanging in fruit. (They taste less like lemons every day, actually - they’re closer to lemon-drops). 

Robyn came and offered to take me into Toronto to get some food - they’d lost power overnight too, so needed a few things.  The drive into town was interesting to see all the downed trees, power-lines, and muck left by the temporary-rivers of water.

McDonalds had a huge queue waiting to get inside (for both walk-in, and drive-thru) - we opted to skip that one.

Driving back via the waterfront, the rise in water-level in  the lake were readily apparent - docks that were once well above water level were just barely above water. Others were completely submerged, and some even destroyed entirely.  According to one news source, the rise peaked at about 1.6 meters. Given it’s an estuarine lake (i.e, it’s connected to the ocean, and has tides), the water levels dropped quickly.  There was a large amount of dirt visible in the lake too, obviously due to run-off.

The rest of the day I spent reading the newspaper and cleaning up fallen branches around the house - there’s not really much else to do. The wind picked up again in the afternoon, and it resumed raining after dark.

(Update: Sunday Morning) - We’re still without power at home, and I’ve found out that it wasn’t the DSLAM that isn’t working, apparently the phone line is cut too. So, I need to call up and report it out.

(Update: Monday Morning) Still no power at home, but Tommy from down the road lent us a 2.2KVA Generator, so we’ve got the fridges running now.

If you haven’t seen it already - check out the ABC Local Radio page for Newcastle - lots of photos submitted by heaps of people.

(Update: Tuesday, Lunchtime) Again, still no power at home (when I left home, anyway) - but the generator was running things okay. I sure do hope that Energy Australia get our power restored soon, other folks down the road were fixed up some time in the last 24hrs, but it seems we were missed.

In at work, and things are okay here - some folks got their cars wet, and discovered that cars don’t float too well. Atleast, not for very long!

More photos coming soon-ish.

(Update: Tuesday, After Lunch)

Pictures Pictures Pictures!  Check over here, because Windows Live Writer doesn’t seem to like having this many pictures around.

Also, good news - Energy Australia are working at home to connect the power. Yay.