Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Kiss my Yasi. ~ Cairn's graffiti

Like most of Queensland, most of Australia, we have been glued to the cyclone tracker for the past few days ~ not only because these things have been known to bounce down the coast & ruffle our waters down here but because I have various bits of my family scattered in the hit zone.

My brother, a boatie, like the rest of the marine fleet in Cairns, had to move his boat up river & ride the night out as best he could.  I have a cousin in Cairns too, but at least she's land bound.  My older boy is at Townsville & my youngest on Hamilton Island ~ all places that suffered various degrees of angst during the night.

Now the sun's come up on a picture of devastation & Yasi is still zooming across the state & about to cross a state border into the Northern Territory but you know what?  Thank God.  Of all the placesYasi  could have crossed last night, including either of our biggest northern towns [Cairns or Townsville], it chose Mission Beach, a small, scarcely populated area, most of whom had been evacuated to safer ground.  Yes, phone towers are down & the power is out in thousands of homes & the clean up bill is going to be phenomenal but you know what?  This wasn't a Tracey.  We learnt something from Tracey.  I don't think any of us who are old enough to remember Tracey will forget the Christmas Morning pictures of Darwin, a thriving city, absolutely flattened to the ground ~ or the loss of life.  Happy Christmas, Darwin!

Tracey changed the building codes & most of the main structures in Yasi's path seem to be structurally undamaged ~ though only time will tell for sure.  The evacuations & preparedness of the north seems to have ensured there has been no loss of life ~ though again perhaps a little early to be sure.It seems to me God has had His protective hand over the people of Northern Queensland ~ & having ridden out a couple of category 3s ourselves I can only begin to imagine how terrifying it got last night as Yasi made landfall with all the impact of nuclear weaponry.

So the rain is still falling & there is flooding to come.  Outside my window it is so still, already warm & muggy, the bay lying like pewter glass.  Hard to believe that to the north of us Nature is still raging out of control but it is cyclone season  & chances are we aren't done yet.