We have just been through Cyclone Ului. It was frightening, and yes we were scared and thought our tile roof would go. It did not, but we lost a couple of trees behind our house. We still do not have power, it went off at 9.30pm and it has now been off 36 hours and Ergon cannot tell us when it will be back on.
Fortunately we have a small generator, enough to run our fridge, and we have camping lights also. We spent last night in our caravan watching our 12V TV, but there were only two TV channels operating. We have a barbecue and gas cooking in the van.
We tied the van down to tie downs in our village, put in by management for these occasions.Several houses lost roofs, huge trees down everywhere, roads blocked by downed trees, and 56,000 people without power. There are still 34,000 people without power.
Some van parks in Mackay evacuated before the cyclone came. Andergrove Van Park near us has many trees down and the pool full of debris. Without power there is not much they can do as they require power for pool pumps, washing machines etc.
Telstra tower was down, and phone services out. Even mobile phones were out in most areas. Electric landline phones are still out for those without power. We have an old normal phone as well, so could get out after a while.
Several expensive boats were washed up at Airlie Beach, roofs off, trees down etc.
We have been told that van parks will re-open shortly, and roads already are open.
We are planning to get away on our trip as soon as we have power back and Denyse can get all our washing, sheets, towels, etc., done.
One interesting thing: our village has power garage doors. These would not open of course, and many folk could not get their doors to open manually as they had stuck. By belting the electric motor, then by pulling on the top of the door we managed to get ours and several others open!