Kristy Sexton-McGrath with more information from Townsville.
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00:00 It was certainly very windy down here this morning, but as the system moves off, things
00:07 seem to be calming down.
00:09 It certainly was an eventful night.
00:12 You can see behind me there, we've had a yacht washed up and it's not the only one.
00:16 There's around five or six that have washed up on the beach here on the Strand.
00:21 It's a very popular picnicking place for families and walkers.
00:25 A lot of trees down, a lot of branches, so local government authorities have a bit of
00:31 a job ahead of them in terms of the clean up here, particularly along the foreshore.
00:36 We haven't seen any major structural damage on buildings.
00:40 In the Townsville Seacourse, there's around another 8,000, 9,000 people that were without
00:45 power in the Burdekin region, just south.
00:48 There's also some power outages in the Whitsundays and even as far north as Cairns, 400 kilometres
00:54 away.
00:55 Thankfully, this system seems to have been more of a wind event than a rain event.
01:01 We only received a little bit of rain last night.
01:02 I think it was around 50 millimetres.
01:05 It might seem a lot to other regions, but when you're in the wet tropics, it's not that
01:09 much at all.
01:10 But obviously, as that system continues to track west to the areas of Richmond and Hewenden,
01:17 those alerts are in place and we could still see some flooding there.
01:21 Melissa.
01:22 And Christy, you've been out and about a bit this morning.
01:24 What have you been hearing from residents?
01:27 Well, Melissa, you know, North Queensland residents, they're a very relaxed bunch.
01:33 I've got quite the audience behind me taking photos at the moment.
01:37 They're certainly all down here on the Esplanade.
01:39 It is a public holiday.
01:41 So out and about taking photos.
01:43 The people that we've spoken to, it seems to be, you know, there's some people that
01:47 said, look, you know, the yard's a mess.
01:50 We've lost a fence or the roof's come off the shed.
01:53 But then there's others that seem to have escaped any sort of damage at all.
01:57 But look, Melissa, there is always a silver lining in these things.
02:01 And I met a fabulous man down here this morning, Jim.
02:06 And Jim dumped three mud crabs at my feet.
02:10 He had quite the cyclonic haul overnight and he was very, very happy to share them with
02:15 me and my fabulous cameraman, Olly.
02:18 Unfortunately, we just don't have the fridge space.
02:21 So hopefully Jim gets to enjoy some sweet chilli crab tonight.
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