traveling0z

Monday 21st December

Well what a jam packed weekend...................  We have been watching the BOM very closely following the above cyclone for the last week and a half.  By Saturday morning Broome was on Blue Alert (the first of 3 warnings), by 3pm Saturday the cyclone had moved closer and the SES and police advised that Broome would go to Yellow Alert by the evening (the 2nd of 3 warnings - red being the 3rd and meaning the cyclone WILL hit and they will NOT allow you to leave town).  6 families had a meeting and decided that it was safer to leave now then wait till 12am or 3am when its possible we were in a worse situation.  It was POURING with rain and the wind was blowing a gale, however we all packed up the rest of our gear (by now this wasn't much as we had already planned for this move) and 6 vans and families headed North East to Willare or perhaps Derby.  Broome went to Yellow alert as we where leaving town, shops were closed indefinately

It was a very nervous 2hr drive with the wind blowing us around and the roads slippery wet.  We arrived at the Willare Roadhouse around 7pm everyone tired and fed up.  We free camped outside the roadhouse for the night, made poached eggs on bread and went to bed.

The next morning we decided it was still not safe to travel back to Broome,  the roadhouse let us have powered sites for the night (Sunday) for $25 a site (quite cheap) so we moved around the back to the sites, at lunch Brad, Julie, Dan and Matthew drove into Derby to get some supplies and internet access to find out what was going on.  They discovered that the road to Fitzroy Crossing was now closed, and it may be possible to go back to Broome on Monday.

Monday 9am after a VERY wet and windy night (apparently Willare had over 29 ml's of rain overnight) we head back to Broome, on the way we see the road to Port Headland has been closed, the cyclone is now a Cat 5 and headed straight for Eighty Mile Beach (they and surrounds are now on Red alert).  We got back to Broome around 11.30am still very wet and windy however for the moment all clear re: cyclone.

We hope all those in 80 mile will be ok.