Spirit of the Antipodes Day 1





Even with only 3 hours sleep I was awake 4 minutes before the 04:30 alarm. To say I ‘bounded’ out of bed would be an exaggeration, but I certainly didn’t linger - the Castlemaine Flyer was collecting us in an hour. 
Visions of last night’s storm sprang to mind as I raised the bedroom blind and saw the piles of branches and timber in front of number 8, thanks to the work of the SES. I couldn’t make out the extent of the damage to the house in the still-dark morning, but I had seen it last night under the glare of the light towers as the SES unearthed it from beneath the substantial tree. They had worked for three hours. Thankfully it was the front and roof of the garage that had taken the brunt of the tree’s collapse and Mike and Ella were both ok. 
A few of us had met out on the street, as we tend to do after an event such as this. We give a shout-out  in the Scott Court WhatsApp chat and then wander out to congregate in the court to debrief and check in on each other. Last night was no different. We compared notes on water ingress and commiserated with Mike over the tree, before a small group of us went to investigate the properties of neighbours who weren’t at home. There was no other major damage to be found so Wallsy and I returned to the dinner we had left cooking on the bbq before Wallsy had abandoned the back deck due to the ferocity of the storm. 
Power was out, so the  veggies that had been cooking in the airfryer had to join the chicken on the barbie. While they cooked we went to survey any issues on our own property. 
The front verandah had flooded despite our new drainage, mainly due to the deluge taking a large percentage of the driveway into the drain with it. There was water in the garage and a cupboard that needed lifting out of said water, as well as a little water in the back shed and the railway room, but no damage. The cause of the waterfall which had developed where the roof of the deck joins that of the house will have to be dealt with on our return. There was nothing a broom and a shovel wouldn’t fix for now. 
Wallsy was particularly disgruntled about the fact that I had asked him to treat the verandah and deck with the leaf blower to tidy it up for our housesitter, and in the space of 10 minutes all his work had been undone, both areas looking like a flood zone with water and debris everywhere. We concentrated on removing the grating in the driveway and shovelling the gravel and leaf litter out of the length of drain to ensure any following rain would get away easily. 
It’s seemed like a distant memory this morning as we sat at the airport gratefully sipping our flat whites. Colin our driver had delivered us safely (through rain and potholes), and in a timely manner. Despite the longer walk from the new drop off zone we were through check-in and security and admitted to the lounge within two hours of leaving home, and a comfortable 100 minutes before our flight. 
Our flight was slightly delayed but we were on the ground in Auckland by 3pm NZ time. Our otherwise very long day was shortened by two hours thanks to the time difference. We collected our luggage, breezed through biosecurity and immigration, and then caught a bus, which took us to a train, which took us into the centre of Auckland around the corner from the Movenpick Hotel  - our home for the next 5 nights. 

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