After a beautiful day with family on the 25th December, my husband and I settled down to watch a movie just after 8.00pm. Lightning was flashing outside and we were looking forward to some rain for the garden, but we were not expecting what was about to happen.
About a quarter of the way into the movie the screen went black and the lights went out. We had lost all power. Outside, the wind had picked up and the rain had become torrential. By the time I ran into the north-west-facing rooms of the house to close any open windows, the carpets and furniture were drenched and there was a terrible screaming wind outside. I’ve never heard anything like it. The word ‘cyclone’ came to mind but we are in south-east Queensland, so that didn’t seem right.
Nonetheless, that’s what we got. A cyclone according to some, a tornado according to the Bureau of Meteorology, based on the 200 km per hour winds ripping roofs from houses and uprooting massive tree trunks.
We found the torches, lit the candles, and sat at the double glass doors gazing (and gaping) at the light show. It was unprecedented. Surreal. Terrifying. The amount of lightning just from our small vantage point onto the dark garden and bush beyond was staggering, but the following photo, taken on the Gold Coast and shared on social media the next day, tells the story (if true and untouched, although I have also seen video that roughly matches the image). (Please forgive my use of this image, as I don’t know its provenance. I will remove it, if approached.)
The translucent roof sheets on our pergola were so battered that they tore away from their fixings and began to twist and bang in the wind. We couldn’t see much else for the driving rain, but could just imagine the damage being done to the garden.
The following morning we were relieved to find our cars undamaged, despite a tree limb lying on the ground against one of them, and our house had not sprung any leaks – just some water in the entry vestibule. But our pear tree, laden with fruit, had snapped at the base and fallen on the olive tree. Almost our whole mango crop was lying on the ground. We found our garden furniture at the bottom of the pool and tossed across the yard, and several other trees down, fortunately without breaking fences, but in the end, we fared much better than some of our neighbours whose gardens now resemble tree graveyards.
We drove around our estate to assess the damage and try to understand what had happened. We found massive gum trees that had been uprooted, lying on the ground, trees that had literally split in half, the topmost branches now hanging down toward the ground. One neighbour’s gum tree had fallen onto their roof. Another local’s house roof had peeled off in the destructive winds. Trees were lying across the power lines of the main road into the estate, signalling that we could expect several days without electricity. (It ended up being six days.)
We found this Christmas decoration lying in the street a few doors up the road, a perfect symbol of what we had experienced.
Our beautiful estate, that we and guests admired on the drive along the tree-lined streets to our home, looked like a disaster zone. For the next few days we would hear chainsaws going and smell smoke as residents burnt off their magnificent fallen trees.
Boxing Day was spent hunting for a generator. It’s all very well having tank water but if you can’t pump the water to the house… Fortunately we finally found one as they were in hot demand – as was the fuel to run them! We began the clean-up of our yard, helped by angels – beautiful friends from the My Place Jimboomba community whose homes had not been badly affected and who just showed up to help others.
We learnt how to manage the generator hours between the fridges, freezer, water tank pump, pool pump, Biocycle system (for sewage), and a fan for some personal relief – all through a heat wave (a few days of 37+ degrees). We worked through the contents of the fridge to minimise wastage and settled into a pattern of reading by candlelight each evening, which was actually quite wonderful. By eight p.m. or nine at the latest we were off to bed, then up early to chain saw and clear debris from the garden before the heat of the day bit. On the night of the full moon my husband woke at two a.m. and worked outside, processing downed trees silently, until six a.m. – just to escape the exhausting effect of the heat.
On one evening we enjoyed a beautiful ‘post-tornado’ potluck dinner with our neighbours, by candlelight at our kitchen table, to laugh and compare stories. There are always blessings to be found in disasters, and some have been glad that huge gum trees that were a risk to their homes are now down. For ourselves, we have a slightly better view of the distant mountains now that the bushland behind us has suffered some tree losses…
On New Year’s eve, as we were gathering with our wider group of neighbours to celebrate, we were surprised and delighted when the lights flickered back on. After six days of camp-like living, we suddenly had power again! By choice, we actually switched the overhead lights off again to enjoy another candlelit meal, but when a lightning show outside kicked off at eight pm-ish, eerily reminiscent of Christmas Day, we quickly sent them home to be safe.
And then the rains began. As I am writing this now, on the 1st of Jan, we have had in excess of 140 millimetres of rain (and that’s just since last night), with no end in sight and flooding already being reported and visible in our own yard.
Our hearts go out to those on Mount Tamborine and certain areas of the Gold Coast that were smashed by the tornado and are now being flooded. It was impossible to be outside today to do any clean-up due to the heavy rain, and there is so much to do on the properties and in the areas that were most badly hit.
And were we ‘hit’? Was this tornado an act of nature or of man? Those who have lived 20 or 30 years in the area say they’ve never seen (or heard) anything like it before. Tornadoes like this are not normal in south-east Queensland.
Is this departure from normal due to ‘climate change’ or human interference in order to push a climate-change agenda? I have my suspicions and will be drilling deep into the claims some are making that this is weather warfare.
There is no doubt that the governments of the world colluded in the plandemic: the exponential numbers of deaths worldwide over the last couple of years reek of a genocide, as dramatic as that sounds. If governments are capable of that, why wouldn’t a little experimental cloud-seeding (etc.) stop them? Why do we suddenly have ‘firestorms’ and ‘rain bombs’? We also now have an unprecedented number of children dying of strokes and heart attacks. Could these developments be related?
As with the so-called vaccine, government and corporate reasoning always sounds so well-intentioned:
• “It’s to protect ourselves and others.” (When it’s actually promoting the idea that we can infect others and be infected, so we must rush to pharmacies for masks and drugs, and isolate ourselves from each other rather than face the fact that we become sick because we are toxic, and the solution is to take responsibility and detox – which means the inconvenient truth of having to change one’s diet or lifestyle.)
• “It’s safe and effective.” (Actually untested and a bioweapon, in the case of the most recent situation.)
• “It’s a child’s right to decide their own gender.” (Because the one they were born with is a mistake? Or because this provides an endless source of income for pharmaceutical companies as these young people begin to take puberty-blockers, undergo surgery, and then have ongoing physical and mental health issues for the rest of their lives?)
• “Children need their own phones for safety.” (Actually mobile phones are major risk factors for cyber bullying, predators, social anxiety, physical harm from EMFs and much more.)
• “The Wellness Camps we’re building are for the poor people displaced by floods and other catastrophes.” (Actually deliberately displaced to divert the plebs into Smart Cities and free up prime coastal real estate for the wealthy?)
I know, I know. I’m sounding like a conspiracy-theorist. The Rockefeller 2030 Agenda delivers some proof, as do the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. And there are conscientious individuals who have been watching and tracking suspicious government and corporate behaviour for many decades who have accrued evidence of foul play. (Many ‘woke up’ in the aftermath of 9/11 when they could not believe that those towers fell so neatly, or that a hijacker’s passport could really be found undamaged in the debris…) They warn us but when their names and work are tagged with adjectives like ‘discredited’ and ‘far-fetched’, it’s easy to disregard them.
Besides, one of the agendas of this period of time is to pit the people against each other. It’s a war for our minds. Who is right and who is wrong? Divide and conquer families > societies > the world.
The challenges will continue in 2024. Here’s to being centred and strong enough to respond in enlightened ways.
Much love and many blessings for a healthy, fulfilling, joyous 2024.
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