When I was still working in the library I went to lunch one day and as I was standing at a street corner waiting for the lights to change I realised that I had an overwhelming sense of something really bad happening. I studied everyone across the road and near me to see if I could isolate who it related to, but the more I tried to isolate it the more I sensed that everyone would be affected.

I thought that maybe a truck was going to plough into the people on the sidewalk or something like that, but that didn't feel right either.

I tried to dismiss the feeling, but it just got stronger and stronger.

Nothing happened that day, or for the next few days, but a week to the day after that, I was standing in exactly the same spot feeling totally overwhelmed and anxious, just like everyone else around me. We had had the big Newcastle (NSW, Oz) earthquake that morning, totally unexpected, and everyone's world had turned upside down.

I never ignore that feeling, but that time I couldn't pin it down, and I also strongly felt that there was nothing I could do to avert the disaster.

Helen