It is now the school holidays and I thought I’d take a day off to spend it with kiddo. I had originally wanted to take her out to a park to get some outdoor activities – fresh air and sunshine and a dose of nature would be good for her, I thought. I specifically had in mind Lilydale Lake which would a good distance to drive – not too far away but not so near that she’d feel we haven’t really gone on an excursion.
 
As it turned out, as far as the original purpose goes, my choice of day to take leave couldn’t have been worse. I took Wednesday off. That morning I sent Tress to the station, and went to the gym. With more time in my hands, I did a whole hour’s run and caught United’s win over Roma. I got home after that – it was about 9am and she was still in bed. The weather was still holding up. I checked up the internet to see what the weather was going to be like. It didn’t seem too promising so I looked up some movie listings as a back up plan. By the time she woke up just a little after 10am, the weather was definitely looking grim. The choice came down to which movie and whether we would go into the city for that and have lunch with Tress while there.
 
We decided to watch the Spiderwick Chronicles – I had looked up the reviews, which were positive – and there was a Hoyts theatre in the shopping centre not 5 minutes drive away. There was also a pretty decent bistro in that shopping centre and we had good discounts vouchers. The coffee there has always been good. So kiddo and I abandoned my initial thoughts of doing the Lilydale Lake and headed to that shopping centre.
 
Kiddo had a good breakfast, I had a good coffee and we went for the Spiderwick Chronicles. It was a very enjoyable movie but I thought many scenes were a tad too frightening for the hordes of kids – rugrats, really – it’s in that awkward category of films where it is based on a children’s series but when transported onto the big screen, becomes too graphic to be purely innocent.
 
After the movie, as we were making our way down the escalator, we were given a panoramic view – on the window panels running from the ceiling down to the floor below – of the strong winds which lashed Melbourne the whole of Wednesday afternoon, wreaking havoc to the public transport system and power supply.
 
We walked towards the food court and as we were wondering what to do for lunch (it was just past 2pm), large parts of lighting in the shopping centre went off and a siren/alarm system came on. The forecast of very strong winds have eventuated. The winds have messed with electricity supply and soon, some shops began to close. After a quick round of window shopping and a quick bite, we decided to go home. The winds were still lashing around when we left.
 
I drove down Glebe Street and saw some tree branches strewn across the road. We turned into Bindy Street and saw many more tree branches all over the road. As we made our way into Vicki Street, the car in front of us stopped and turned around. A huge tree had completely broken off and fallen across Vicki Street, blocking access. We turned around and drove from the other end of the street to get home.
 
On reaching home, the spectre of more chaos met us. Our neighbour’s biggest tree had broken off its trunk and fallen into our side lawn, ripping the fence in the process.

Part of its top rested on our lawn, part of it rested on the roof of our neighbour’s home and the trunk was almost resting on the splintered fence. I made a quick survey around the house and noticed that the pine tree on the front lawn had a couple of branches broken off but was still resting off other branches.
 
Thankfully the electricity and phone were still connected. I jumped on the internet and found out the whole of Melbourne has been lashed with winds in excess of 100km/h. Trees were uprooted and blocked railway tracks, causing many train services to be cancelled. I quickly rang Tress to see how things were in the city and whether she was making her way back earlier, as it was already past 4pm. The police had urged non essential personnel to leave the city.
 
Kiddo wanted to some playstation time and in between telephone calls to emergency services and Tress I raced cars with kiddo. I was constantly and acutely aware of the continuing risks we faced – one of our cars were on the unprotected driveway. A downside of living across a park is the openness and therefore exposure during storms. Smaller trees branches were flying around and larger ones were blocking roads and lying on lawns. Our unprotected car was a sitting duck. I was constantly going to the front windows to check on conditions, as well as checking latest weather reports on the internet. I rang Tress again to check if she was coming home early.
 
Tress stoically decided to remain and by the time she was ready to leave, traffic had reached a chaotic crescendo. It took me close to an hour to get to Camberwell, which was as far as the trains could go. I picked her up on Burke Road, we made our way back to the Burwood Highway and stopped to pick up some KFC – the first time in years I had voluntarily bought a KFC meal – to kiddo’s surprise and undoubted delight.
 
We got home at about 8.30pm and kiddo said Bryan the neighbour had been around to chat about the tree. I went over and checked out their place. It too was a bit of a mess. Shamefully, it was the first time we chatted for more than a couple of minutes and I made a mental note to invite them over for a drink, at some point. Bryan agreed to look into the matter as soon as possible. He was going to check out his insurance policy to ascertain the cover. Hopefully it wont be too long before he got someone around to remove that huge tree from our side lawn and fix the fence.
 
I went to bed wondering if the mess could be fixed soon but realised there was no sense worrying about it anymore than we should. God had obviously protected us – the tree had fallen maybe a couple of feet from our side door and missed the house completely. Except for the fence and hedges, there was no other damage.
 
Tress and I woke up the next day and decided to try and get to work earlier, just in case there were still problems with the trains. I decided to skip gym that morning.  As the train pulled into Box Hill, the engine cut off and the lights went out.