Note from the Editor:
This article was kindly written for the SDC by member @Doctor Alan.

I was born in a place we used to know as ‘England’, where there didn’t ever seem to be any reports of floods, fires or cyclones. There was the odd storm, of course, and sometimes it used to snow a lot – rarely, though – and the Council never seemed to remember to get the salt down on the roads quickly enough to get rid of the ice and snow. In Australia, though, we’ve made up for the natural petulance of Mother Nature in spades! Where we’ve lived, we’ve had bushfires, floods, violent storms and intense heat waves.

Early crises:
For a number of years from the early 80s, we lived in a lovely house we had built in McGraths Hill, NSW, and noticed that one of the stipulations for allowing the house to be built was that it had to be ‘above the 100-year flood level’. During the time we were there, a lot of heavy rain over a long period resulted in a flood, which was exacerbated by the opening of the Warragamba Dam. We were actually cut off for a while – a couple of days, I think. Luckily, we didn’t lose power, though.

We moved to Dandaragan, about 80km north of Perth, and were subject to another flood – nowhere near us, luckily, but enough to cut a number of roads leading to Perth. It would have added nearly an hour to the trip for me to get to work, but the water receded after a couple of days.





The Bush Fire:
We moved closer to Perth and built a kit home in Gingin. They called the people who live in WA ‘Sand-Gropers’ because it seems that the whole place (around Perth anyway) is one big sand dune! Our 5-acre block was on the top of a hill, and there was absolutely no chance of a flood there. What we did get, though, was a bushfire that got very close to us!

On Australia Day 2013, a friend of ours was visiting from south of Perth, and she and my wife had driven down to Gingin for our visitor to have a look around. Meanwhile, I’d been making some biscuits. We’d designed the house with the kitchen on the top floor (It was a 2-storey kit home), and I noticed a bit of smoke rose from somewhere a short distance to the south of us. (Somebody’s generator had overheated and started the fire, apparently). I checked the weather vane and was reassured by the direction of the wind. The fire, if it developed, would pass to the east of us. Meanwhile, my wife had also seen the smoke as the fire grew and joked that it was probably me burning the biscuits! By the time they got home, the fire had grown substantially, and the wind looked as though it was changing direction slightly. I still felt we were safe, though. We had a huge water tank – I’d paid extra for a larger tank than we needed, really, and I’d made sure that the ‘fire-fighter water outlet’ was clear and able to be used if necessary. Some friends turned up so they could watch the fire from our balcony, and it wasn’t long before there was a continual buzz of aircraft and helicopters flying directly over our house to drop retardant on the fire. Our friends drove down to the town and bought some food to use on our barbecue, which was also up on the balcony since the fire had, in fact, passed to the east of us, and we had quite a convivial time of it. At one point, a huge fire engine pulled up outside, and the young fireman had just called to let us know that all the other houses to the end of the road had been evacuated and that we should be prepared to do the same if they called on us later. (Our friend suggested she should simply stand on the balcony and call ‘Hee-lp’ in a little girly voice in case the fireman she’d seen was available to carry her away!) Luckily, the ‘fairies’ did a wonderful job, and the fire was extinguished later that night, but not before that huge appliance had driven down our fire break and got bogged in the sand – a neighbour had to drag the engine out with his JCB! (If we’d lost power, we would have been OK – I’d installed a large diesel 3-phase generator!)

Since that time, another equally dangerous fire has passed even closer to our old house.





Cyclone Alfred:
Well, we all knew days in advance that the cyclone was coming, but I’m sure very few people would have realised how much it would disrupt our lives. Despite my supposed intelligence, I was woefully unprepared for what was to come. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, they say, but my wife and I were really unprepared for a prolonged power cut.

We ‘battened down the hatches’ as they say, retracted all the blinds, turned the garden furniture upside down and made sure that there really wasn’t anything that would be blown around by the strong winds predicted.

We had not prepared an operable radio and/or made sure that we had plenty of batteries. Our freezers were full, and we had no contingency plan for keeping food frozen – bags of ice could have been bought at the very least. We could have hired (or even bought) a small generator, but that may have been overkill. Besides that, everybody and his uncle would probably be after the same thing.



Luckily, we had quite a few LED torches, including two camping torches. The most useful torch for me, at least, was a head-mounted LED torch. Over the four days, we lost power, and the little batteries showed no signs of running down. We realised we had a radio after all, as part of a CD ‘boom-box’. It needed 6 ‘C-cell’ batteries, which I was able to find in other equipment. In the future, a dedicated battery-operated radio would be a good idea. (I’d kept a ‘wind-up’ radio but the battery didn’t last very long after I’d charged it.)

A cold shower was an experience and took a little getting used to, and I actually started reading again – I hadn’t read a book for quite some time, and I found it quite enjoyable!

The effects of the cyclone were not at all devastating for us. We had some high winds that followed the cyclone’s crossing over the coast and weren’t impacted at all by floods. The local shopping centre’s underground car park, though, was inundated. It made me wonder why they hadn’t put any safety measures in since the last time rain had covered it in four feet of water.

Of course, the high winds brought down trees that fell on power lines all over the place, and thousands of houses lost power for nearly a week.



Next time…
When we see pictures of houses that have been obliterated by fire, too many of them were surrounded by trees. After the first fire in Gingin – the one that we experienced – I used a chainsaw to get rid of all the trees within about 40m of the house and ‘stump-ground’ the remainder. Trees are lovely, but in the right place. The same goes for trees near power lines. Underground power in the outlying areas is apparently too expensive, but there is no excuse for trees being allowed to grow so close to power lines that if they blew down, those lines would be cut. It’s a big job, but intense storms don’t happen that often in most places, so there is time for a plan in this regard. Perhaps when we get all this power distribution organised, every house can generate its own power and be ‘off-grid’, but at the moment, it’s a pie-in-the-sky wish, I’m afraid.

Note from the Editor:

Love Alan’s writing and want to read more? You might also like to read:

Alan G.’s Member Spotlight: ‘Almost Famous’
The Ice Cream Job: The Tech Guy – Dr Al
The Lucky Man: The Tech Guy – Dr Al
‘Ten Pound Pom’ Hostel Living: The Tech Guy – Dr Al
Many Happy Returns of the Day!
Reaching for the Stars!
Sportsmanship, Manners, and Respect
My great-grandfather’s journal of 1908: The Tech Guy – Dr Al
Christmases I’ve Had
Pocket Money
University Days