Flood victim.

This connector was a casualty of the flooding that followed Yasi.
Tru's had a dash warning lamp since her floor got wet and finally Jimmy had a fair chance to find out why.

The warning code was a 49 which indicates a faulty seat position sensor and sure enough the connector to it was rather yucky looking. A clean up and a touch of contact grease has restored her to health, Tru will be pleased that Jimmy didn't wait any longer though but he can only manage one task at a time.

Not a good way to mount an aerial.

My arms still don't work raise up high and I was stumped as to how I'd managed to mount the aerial at the top of the mast nearly eight years ago, but this was not a good look so I took the lazy way out and lopped off the top part of the mast.

Afterwards I remembered I'd stood on top of a chair to gain the extra height way back then.

The aerial was another victim of Yasi but it probably would have fallen over if an ant had crawled on it, as its stay bracket had rusted into nothingness.

Grand Crapola.

This rat's nest of wire caused us much misery over the last fortnight, water had leaked onto it due to our roof failure and corroded the last bit of life out of it. With phones out everywhere around us I just assumed the failure was upstream somewhere, until I was shocked to hear Jenny next door's phone had come back on, that stirred me into action and I found breakage in the wire here that I've slapped a bit of solder on to see if we can operate again, yippee but the connection was ugly and barely worked.

I've now tidied it up by wiring an old and faulty (though not in the bit I cut off) cat5e network cable onto it. It's the blue cable dangling to the left. Much success now and http://www.speedtest.net/ just gave me a download of 17.99 mb/s result, our best yet!

Very happy Jimmy now and he's even slapped the webcam back online, though he's pensioned off the temperature reading, we'll call it a victim of Cyclone Yasi.

Brightness.

We get a bit of light into the room but providing the rain falls vertically it'll stay mainly dry until the roof is repaired.

We now have power again and our lives are returning to normal.

Invisible or do they hate us?

We've waited patiently for our power to be restored so we can get our lives back, but late yesterday arvo was just too typical for us. An Ergon truck toured down the street inspecting, then turned around tooted and cheered to us, and 10 minutes later our neighbours had power. The only thing we had with power is the lead in from the street that a sparky disconnected and left lying on the ground. It arced up like a welder last night when we had yet more rain, so I suppose it's live.

Anyway we still don't have a phone service, so I'm gunna have to find someone to see about it.

The line drops from the upper centre of the picture, over the hated tree on the footpath.

Action.

Funny that the phone number on the tarp has been obsolete for 14 years. I suppose change comes slowly to regional Australia.

The SES appeared today, and a welcome sight it was, Jimmy's health has exhausted itself and it was good to play spectator.

Still no power, but the cheap Chinese inverter is doing a mighty job.

Wot's this!

The supermarket shelves are slightly less full than last Tuesday. At least the panic buyers won't be much the blame this time, good to see something open again.

One valuable lesson we've learnt is to actually not stock up on food for events like Yasi, except for a few tins. Appetites go south and frozen stuff only gets dumped.

The back of a Sunbird.

Who was probably as miserable as us, he/she did hunt a bit of nectar from that flower, so maybe that cheered it up.

What the webcam would show.

Except we still don't have power, sorry.

Wildlife.

It really isn't easy to snap the wildlife here but this birdie wasn't too scared of us as he munched on these yucky palm berries.

We've spend so much time out the front lately we see these little things.

Plenty of these things flying around.

Not easy to get a good shot of either, too many trees and powerlines obscuring things.

Again.

Another oil change coming up for the compressor. Seems like only a month since the last one.

First vehicle through.

After the nice quiet road this Army truck was the first thing to wade its way along our road. It must have gone to the nursing home up the road. Funny thing is they go there to die but never seem to be allowed to do that.

I appear to have been spotted by them but even then they never shot me.

Flooding.

They didn't tell us it was going to be this high. My groin is about 75 cm above ground, so I suppose that's the height of it. And yes I do have very short legs.

I think the diff may have copped it but I hope the transmission stayed dry.

It came too late for me to move.

Not a lot of fun.

Our adsl has just returned, but we have no water, power, phone, but the cellphone just returned.

We have flooding after the cyclone and that really buggered us, It even swamped my good inverter which luckily has dried out enough for me to post this.

Grace and I are fine but the wait for any help will be long.

Our roof took a bit of a blow, pity is that it's over the communication headquarters of the house.

Rough night.

Cyclone Yasi beat us in the end, it tore off the board where our power connects to the house and part of the roof, later punching a hole in the ceiling. It also whacked a lot of trees and palms but that did me a favour so it's not all bad.
The board in the photo broke off at about one this morning and then spent the rest of the night bashing the window, which incredibly survives. None of our upstairs glass broke and I haven't seen any broken downstairs yet either but I'll look a bit more later.

Now we have to work out how to get the roof and our power fixed, that to me is a huge worry, we have insurance and money but we may need more.

We had a dry comfortable and sleepless night.

Changes.

We've just changed our ISP, which has meant a bit of a hurdle for us to display the webcam that a few people have become attached to. So I've got it running again at 221.121.146.78  it may have some fun to show with the massive cyclone heading our way, it's the biggest thing I think has ever been seen this way, hopefully it won't turn our home into matchsticks.