The weather in Sydney last Friday and Saturday was atrocious. Strong winds and seas caused a ship carrying a load of coal to run aground near Newcastle. Heavy rainfall and flooded creeks caused a huge hole, some 30 metres deep and 10 metres wide, to open up on the Pacific Highway and into which one car disappeared. Both the car and the bodies of the occupants were found later. Flooding in the Hunter Valley and Newcastle areas, by all reports, was severe. Strong winds brought down trees that cut power lines, leaving hundreds of thousands of people between Newcastle and Sydney without electricity. The economic cost of the disaster has been suggested to be around $1 billion. Warnings on Saturday informed us that it was safer to stay home that day, if possible. As far as the weather was concerned at our place, it was windy and wet and perfect for staying home and making changes to my thesis.
Andrew glimpsed a shot of Maroubra beach on the TV news on Saturday evening, so on Monday when we were doing our weekly shopping over that way we decided to pop down to the beach to see what it looked like. Andrew said that on the news there were photos of sand piled up against the Maroubra pub, having been blown there by the strong winds.
Although the sand had gone from infront of the pub and the road, there was sand covering the grass and all the walkways and steps. In some places, where it piled up against a solid wall, it looked to be almost a metre deep! Andrew took the photo of the little machine that was a sort of cross between a front end loader and a street sweeper. It swept the sand from the footpath into the front bucket, and then relocated it to the beach. It looked to me like it would take weeks to clear the sand from all the concrete areas of the beach-front using this method!
sandy!