00:01Today it's a beautiful day in paradise, it's lovely and quite still with a gentle breeze
00:06and we've got a little bit of rain coming in this morning, so very different from yesterday.
00:12As you can see behind me, we've got a decimated banana plantation again.
00:19We've just had, we've come off yellow alert at 7.30, sorry, and gone on to yellow at 7.30
00:25and done a quick drive around the river. There are a lot of banana plantations that have been practically wiped
00:33out
00:33and veggie crops, corn flattened to the ground, we saw tomato sticks and structures just totally flattened
00:42and windbreaks broken everywhere, so it's going to be a busy day tidying up and helping neighbours
00:48and getting on with what we need to get on with really.
00:52Local Carnarvon bananas will be in short supply, this is the second cyclone in six to eight weeks.
00:59But there's all the other crops as well, Carnarvon produces 70% of all West Australian produce
01:04and so those veggie growers are going to be set back quite some time now.
01:10In line with everything else, there's going to be a lot of heartache when it comes to paying for fresh
01:17produce.
01:18But yeah, Carnarvon's a really resilient community, we fight hard and we work hard and we'll get back on our
01:27feet and get going again.
01:29The dust storm went on for like six hours. We were very excited when we got the first real drops
01:37of rain
01:37because within about ten minutes the dust storm was gone, which was awesome.
01:44That dust has come off the station country that surrounds Carnarvon and it always comes before a cyclone.
01:52And yeah, I believe that a lot of the stations out east of us have had some pretty severe damage,
01:59roofs off their homesteads and their shearing quarters and things like that.
02:03So our thoughts are with the station people. A lot of the rainfall went inland, so hopefully Carnarvon will get
02:10a river,
02:11which is always a blessing. It's our lifeline for our horticulture industry and our town itself.
02:17So yeah, because it was a cyclone, it was during the day, we were really lucky because you could watch
02:23everything going on,
02:25whereas at night it's a little bit more scary. But all day it just went on, the winds were horrendous,
02:33it was so noisy
02:34and obviously the dust was everywhere. By six o'clock last night the eye had passed or was passing through
02:41and so after that it was pretty, it was nowhere near as bad after that. But yeah, it was a
02:49good night overall
02:50and there's a lot of tree damage around down. I believe there's a lot of fences down in the town
02:55centre
02:56and I believe the levee that the shire put up has protected the south end of the town from getting
03:02flooded.
03:03I haven't been able to get into town yet to see that damage, but plantation people, we mainly just get
03:11on with it.
03:11I saw a lot of people already just walking in the paddocks because obviously you can't get the tractors into
03:16the paddocks.
03:17They're too heavy, the ground is too wet. Even though we didn't have a lot of rain, it's a clay,
03:22so it gets quite soggy.
03:26So I just think in a day or two, Carnarvon will be up and going again.
03:30There's a lot of trees broken. We are surrounded by beautiful gum trees.
03:34A lot of them have lost their limbs and are on the edges of roads and things,
03:39but the shire in the community will get on and clean all that up and we'll all help each other
03:44out.
03:47Thank you very much.
03:47OK, it's so beautiful.
03:48You
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