It came quite close, close enough to bring us the rains, flooding creeks and rivers and cutting us off when Little Annan went over the bridge.
But then it made the
very unusual move to turn back to the sea
- what we were told thanks to the larger cyclone Pam at Vanuatu that
was affecting Nathan's movements by sucking it out to the sea.
But once Pam was gone Nathan
insisted on the coast, coming back after having had more
time to grow bigger and stronger.
At one stage it looked like it was going down south, then there were
warnings for Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation, and by Wednesday 18. March it was
said the cyclone will be coming to Cooktown as a category
four system.
Eleven months after cyclone Ita and the monster still so fresh on the
mind, we were in shock
and disbelief but picked ourselves up surprisingly quickly,
and the cyclone prep was a bliss as we remembered every step from the
previous year.
Before
we knew we had everything loose from the yard inside, we had drinking
water, and dirty water in the wheelie bin, we had lots of frozen water
bottles to keep the fridge cold and we had our cyclone kits
handy, and
most other things tucked away or covered just in case. Ita had been a
very good lesson and one
never learns this type of thing better than being through it first hand.
By Thursday 19. March we were relieved to see that the prediction had
changed - Nathan was now
said to cross the land north of Cooktown, leaving us only
to the edge of it.
Obviously it was still going to get very windy, but at least we weren't going to cop
the eye, so most people, like ourselves, decided to stay
at home instead of going to the cyclone shelter like the year before.
That
night no-one went to bed - all the neighbours had the lights on
the whole night.
Around midnight the cyclone was close enough to the coast that the
winds picked up.
Even within a cyclone, there are still gusts,
there are calmer moments, and then there are the gusts coming from the
distance, each one sounding like an approaching train.
Those gusts got pretty
bad between about 1am and 3am,
when our neighbour's shed was demolished, with the walls and doors
flying in the air, one banging into our wall and another making a big
hole in the shed on our other neighbour's.
But luckily by then it was almost 3am, and Nathan was leaving fast. It
was one good thing
about cyclone Nathan, it
was moving fast over the land,
which means it managed to make less damage.
The wind died off, the rain got worse, and it was time to go to bed,
until, we woke up to a calm,
rainy day
and went out to discover the damage.
There
was a lot less of it than you'd imagine after watching the news, it was
only branch damage mainly, with a couple of uprooted trees, but nothing anywhere close to what
cylone Ita left behind.
We were very lucky to not to get the eye, and believe Cape Flattery is probably
flattened, particularly considering it was already broken,
since it was also where Cyclone
Ita crossed the land a year before.
Nathan continued across the
peninsula and Gulf Savannah as a category 1-2 cyclone,
onto the Top End of Northern Territory, where cyclone Lam had left
its mess a month earlier.
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