TC Yasi made Landfall

Tropical Cyclone Yasi crossed the coast at Mission Beach, just north of Cardwell, between Cairns and Townsville around midnight last night as a category 5 cyclone. The forecast path shown below is the Bureau's best estimate of the cyclone's future movement and intensity. There is always some uncertainty associated with tropical cyclone forecasting and the grey zone indicates the range of likely tracks of the cyclone centre.


Early reports indicate that in the township of Tully, 90% of buildings have suffered major structural damage. The good news however is there has been no loss of life reported so far.


The DESTRUCTIVE CORE of Yasi, with gusts in excess of 125 km/h, will weaken as it continues to move in a west-southwesterly direction. Yasi is SE of Georgetown and will be near Mt Isa tonight as a tropical Low.


DAMAGING WINDS, with gusts above 90 km/hr, are occurring along the coast and extend inland to Georgetown and Hughenden. They will extend further west towards Richmond and Julia Creek during the day.

TROPICAL CYCLONE FORECAST TRACK MAP OF TC YASI - 7.00AM 3/02/11 

This is a picture of Wavenhoe Dam, Brisbane's main water storage dam, in January, showing just how close we came to a much larger disaster.

In comparison to May 2007 when Lake Wavenhoe looked like this

This tree trunk is usually under 8m of water

We are in Sydney, visiting the family

Here is young Fox, a little excited to see us. Had dinner with all the family last night. It was great to see them all.



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Flight over Lake Eyre

Late last year we travelled with a group of friends to South Australia where we took a flight over the flooded Lake Eyre. This lake is only suppose to flood once in a generation, but 2010 was the second year in a row that it has flooded and by the looks of it, it will flood again next year.

It's a spectacular view from a small plane flying over this inland sea.

The Wedding

OK Magazine is out this week and we are now allowed to publish Sonya and Bernie's Wedding Pictures.

Here are the four pages that appeared this week. To read the article, click on the pictures once, and a second time when it has enlarged.

Page 1

Page 2

There is a shot of me walking Sonya through the crowd of guests to Bernie. I never imagined in my life I would end up in a national glossy magazine.

Page 3

Page 4

In the top picture of Page 4, Diane and I are standing on the left hand side.

The Cleanup has began in Brisbane

The Aussie spirit came to the fore today with thousands of people volunteering to clean affected streets and houses. Here are some detail of the Channel 7 news tonight.

The 2011 Flood is heading for Brisbane

The latest about the flood which is now heading towards the state capitol Brisbane. The pictures are from the Brisbane Courier Mail and the commentary is fro the early morning edition of Brisbane's Channel Ten.