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Last night was one of the craziest nights of my life. Someone upset the wind God's and so they unleashed all of their fury on Hobart like I have never seen before. I've had some sleepless nights laying at anchor in our yacht off a rocky unfamiliar shore with a howling gale blowing outside whilst listening to the anchor chain dragging over the rocks, but last night was much worse and I spent most of it tucked up in bed at home.
It was windy (we have already established that) and Emma and Brad were with me for the night. They were tucked up asleep upstairs whilst I lay awake in bed downstairs listening to the wind building up outside. By about midnight I was sick of listening to the flappy grill on my en suite exhaust fan rattle in the wind so I grabbed some duct tape, threw on a pair of jeans and went outside into the teeth of the gale to stick it down. To get to that part of the outside wall I have to walk along a ledge that is only about a foot wide with a bit of a drop below. I managed to get to the grill OK but then found it was too high. I was going to have to jump. I did it, but trying to jump in the air whilst aiming a lump of duct tape at a flappy grill in the pitch dark with a gale howling around you and still trying to land on the little foot wide ledge (all whilst half naked and by now it's starting to rain) isn't an easy thing.
I made it back safely (I left a bit of elbow skin on the wall, but that's what elbow skin is for) only to find that I had missed one of the flaps with the tape. It was much better, but still annoying. Time passed and the wind continued to build. Did I mention that it was rubbish night? Of course it was rubbish night. What other night would the wind God's choose to blow their boobies off? My bin sat firmly rooted to it's spot on the footpath. I was quite proud of it. Others failed and were heard bouncing off down the road spewing their innards all over the place, but mine laughed in the face of the wind and remained in place. It remained in place right up until 1am. The angry wind God's had shifted into third gear by then and it fell on it's sword quite admirably. Unlike the others it kept it's lid firmly shut. I thought it deserved a rest so I bought it back off the road and into the safety of the funky little entrance thingy my apartment has.
By 3am I still had not been asleep. I had checked on Emma and Brad a few times but they were fine. There was a banging noise coming from outside somewhere that sounded very bad and I was afraid that the roof was starting to lift. I opened the upstairs bathroom window and saw that the neighbors guttering on one of their upstairs rooms had become detached a bit and was banging around. Phew. Their problem, not mine.
At about 3:15am the banging became much worse. I went back upstairs because there was no way the kids could sleep through it. Emma was sitting up looking a bit scared. It's OK I said, it's just the neighbors guttering nothing to worry about, but why don't you come downstairs with me. Brad was just snoring!
At 3:30am it all happened. There was an amazing crash that was almost deafening accompanied by the sound of broken glass and the whole place shook. The roof had gone and the entire top floor was probably blown away with Brad still in it. I have never known a feeling quite like that and I managed to get up to the top of the stairs without touching a single one. Brad was till asleep and the roof was still on. It must have been the neighbors roof that went so I grabbed Brad and rushed him downstairs.
The noise was amazing. Their roof must have hit ours because something was trying to smash it's way in. I went outside to find both roofs intact but a 4 metre section of guttering from my roof had come away but was still attached at one end and it was flaying around in the wind bashing the crap out of my roof.
I ended up on the roof in the howling gale and rain tying the lump of mental metal down so that it wouldn't take the rest of the roof with it. That was when I saw that the highway was closed and the SES were using chainsaws to remove a huge tree that had fallen. That's also when I noticed my garage roof was peeled back by about a foot. I moved some valuable stuff out of the garage. Moved all of the valuable stuff out of the upstairs bedrooms, all the time wishing I had remembered to tell the insurance people that I had moved house. Emma said "why don't you just ring them". I hadn't thought of that so at 4am I rang QBE insurance. They are big so I expected a call centre, but I got some poor guy out of bed on his mobile! He was excellent and took my details whilst re assuring me that I would be covered if the worst happened.
The wind died down, the garage roof stayed on and the guttering whilst doing it's best to open up my house like a can opener stayed put. Somehow we all managed to grab an hour or so of sleep. Below is a picture of the warped guttering looking more like art work than something meant to be functional and a YouTube video of the skylight in my laundry doing weird "I'm possessed by a ghost" stuff during the worst of the wind.
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