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Day 149-152

1^st-4^th February

It was indeed a very long day of flights, first of all, a 3 hour flight back to Sydney. We’d been unable to get a direct flight to Cairns so this was the best we could do. We then had several hours hanging around Sydney airport before boarding a long flight to Cairns. We finally arrived in Cairns at around 8pm and jumped into a taxi to take us to our hostel. As we were driving along to the Globetrotters International (our hostel), the taxi driver mentioned something about a cyclone. What cyclone? We asked and then to our complete horror we were told that a category 5 cyclone, called Yasi, was on its way to Cairns and was due to hit the next day. We’d been quite isolated in Uluru and had not heard anything about this! We were also bloody cross with Virgin Blue airlines who had not mentioned anything about this as we boarded the flight from Sydney to Cairns. When we were dropped off at our hotel, there was a note waiting for us with a key explaining that the owners had gone to secure their own property and we would be evacuated in the morning to a safe location. Flipping brilliant! Not only were we completely stuck in Cairns as all the flights out of Cairns were fully booked, surprise, surprise. But everything was shut so we couldn’t even get some supplies of water and food together. Looking back I’m totally amazed I didn’t completely freak out at this point, I think I must have just assumed we’d be alright!



So we didn’t bother unpacking and pretty much went straight to bed after a quick call to Dad in the UK to let him know what was going on and to say I’d call when it was all over. We had a pretty restless nights sleep and were woken up at 5am by the owner who had come back to make sure we all got to the evacuation shelter (The Earlsville Shopping Centre) safely. We grabbed our bags and took the pillows from our room and jumped in one of the cabs that the owner had organised. It was complete chaos at the shopping centre but we managed to find a corner in the food hall and get ourselves settled. It was pretty empty when we arrived but it soon got absolutely rammed. Then suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the stands in the food hall opening up and ran over to get some sandwiches and drinks for us to survive on while we were there. The lovely women who decided to come in and run this stand were completely stars and stayed there until they ran out of food. At one point I decided to go and get some more sandwiches and drinks to stockpile and I ended up queuing for nearly 2 hours while Ellory guarded our stuff. It was a bit of a nightmare but we were very glad we had managed to get some food and more importantly some drinks to keep us going. After about 6 hours they also started handing our Australian army ration packs and Ellory managed to grab one of those for us as well. We were very amused by the army issue chocolate and the plastic cheese in a can!



Just when we thought we might be alright, we had a comfy bit of floor and some food, we were told to move because there were some glass doors at the end of the food hall. That was absolutely awful as the shopping centre was extremely full by that point and it took us about an hour to find somewhere else to sit. Fortunately we saw some people from our hostel and they kindly made some space for us. As day turned into evening we got reports that Cyclone Yasi was due to hit overnight, no one was allowed outside anymore and we were warned that at some point the lights and more horrifically the air conditioning would probably go. So we just had to wait it out and we spent the next 12 hours drifting in and out of sleep and listening to the wind outside. As promised, the lights and a/c did eventually fail and by morning it was completely horrible inside the shopping centre. Very hot and smelly.



When we woke up we were told that the cyclone had passed and we would soon be able to leave. This took ages and when we finally stepped outside the damage wasn’t as bad as it was feared, the cyclone had turned south and had struck further down the coast and caused horrendous damage. We did count ourselves very lucky but we had a very stressful time getting back to our hostel. We managed to meet up with more people that were at the Globetrotters and eventually we managed to get hold of the owner who was happy for us to go back to it. Then we had the drama of actually getting back. The police and fire department were organising lifts for people who were stranded but as young healthy adults we didn’t really qualify so we all decided to hitchhike. This took ages and as is normal in post cyclone weather, it was pouring it down. Ellory and I were eventually picked up by a really nice couple who took us back to our hostel without any problems. Random kind strangers, we salute you!



Back at the hostel we dumped our stuff in our room and got changed out of our stinky clothes. Ellory also decided that he was going to cut off his dreads. You’re not meant to wash your hair frequently when you have dreads (once a week at most) and Ellory’s scalp couldn’t handle it, he was in a lot of discomfort and had enough. However, the power was still out, so there we were, me with a pair of nail scissors, cutting of each dread one by one and then Ellory with his razor that had a battery operated beard trimmer trying to tidy it up! Unfortunately the battery was dying so the effect was…interesting….he looked like a crazy person! He did feel much better though and was prepared to wear a hat until we could get it sorted!



That done we went to see who else was around and found a bunch of people sitting on the terrace with some goon. They very kindly asked us to join them and we had a great evening at our ‘post cyclone party’ getting slowly drunk (again). We did have to have a quick break though when the hostel started to flood, some of us (including Ellory and I) had rooms on the ground floor and there was an interesting wade through mid shin high water to our room to retrieve our things and move them to a room on the top floor. All part of the fun and we had a great evening with our fellow survivors!



The next day everything started to get back to normal and we spent the day getting ourselves organised. We were due to leave Cairns on the 6^th, we had originally planned to do two things, the Great Barrier Reef and a trip to Daintree (both wedding presents). Unfortunately we couldn’t get to Daintree as the roads were still shut. We were absolutely gutted and were very worried that there would be no trips to the reef because the ocean wasn’t calm enough yet. Fortunately, there were some companies that were starting to run their tours again on the 5^th and we booked on a day tour with Passions of Paradise to go to Michaelmas Cay and also hired an underwater digital camera to take pictures of the fishes! The supermarkets were also open so we stocked up on food and then found a barber who started to ask what Ellory wanted done, took one look at his head and said, “oh, just tidy it up then!” It was good to not have him looking like he’d escaped from the loony bin anymore!



It had been a crazy few days, curse you Cyclone Yasi for messing with our plans! However we were safe and looking forward to the Great Barrier Reef the next day.

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