I'm glad you're all right, hilda. That's a lot scarier than we had to put up with at our place. I think I would have turned back.

The gale force winds were scary but luckily most of our trees are ok. Except for one silky oak which has yellow grevillea-like flowers and the wattle birds use them for food, and possibly a really big eucalyptus nicholii which the magpies, wattle birds, tawny frogmouths and koels use. (Koels are very large cuckoo-birds from Papua New Guinea which knock locals out of the nests and with an annoying woop-woop call). We can't really tell if that tree is leaning more than it used to so we're getting the tree people in to look at it as well.

I was supposed to go to Maitland to work yesterday but I phoned them and found out that the 10 minute drive from East Maitland to Maitland was taking at least two and a half hours, and other roads are cut off so I said I'd take some time off. I wasn't looking forward to driving back home at midnight if the roads were messed up or cut off. I'm off again today, but maybe I'll go back to work tomorrow. It's the first paid annual leave I've had for about 10 years, apart from a couple of days off between the second last and the last job back in October 2005. (Casual work, with peanuts for pay and no proper conditions! Who'd do it by choice? Not me! Thank god I've got a proper job now.)

On the whole, this flood could have been a lot worse. If it had kept raining up river it could have been as bad as the 1955 flood, which was before all of the flood mitigation works.

One good piece of news is that the Newcastle City Council is going to use the emergency fund we all donated to after the 1989 Newcastle earthquake, and which for some reason they have been sitting on for 18 years. They decided to only use a bit of it after 1989 but could never really justify why. I'm waiting with baited breath to see how (if)they use the money now.

And Rowan, interesting comments! For a year or so I was thrust into teaching some geography/social science subjects at TAFE and really enjoyed it. One of the subjects was called Exploring Natural Disasters. My main theme was the difference between countries in the way they deal with disasters and also with town planning and building development approvals. I didn't think of the importance of the SES being one coordinated organisation relying on volunteers. More food for thought.

Helen