The day was sweltering hot on Tuesday. It was 38 and with strong winds. The worst weather you’d wish to have in a state that still remembers the worst bush fires that decimated entire regions, homes, livestock, flora and fauna a few years back.

I had just started my French class when there was a loud bang on the roof. Then down came the hail. It was so loud that we couldn’t hear each other. We closed up the windows and peeked out the door to see hail the size of golf balls. They were lethal weapons of they hit you on the head. As it was still warm, the hail quickly melted.

I was worried for my car hoping I’d not find it pock marked with hail damage. Luckily it didn’t last long and we continued with our lesson.

When the class finished, I jumped into my car and headed home. By this stage, the traffic was moving freely but I could see in my rear view mirror that the sky turned black. Ahead of me, still clear blue skies. To my side, I heard a rumble in the sky and that’s when I thought, “get home NOW!”

So I drove through all the side streets ignoring the main road which seemed to have increased in cars now back to back in traffic jams. Just as I turned into my street, the skies opened and dumped so much rain that I couldn’t see ahead of me. I had the windshields going full and the car was rocking with the wind. I turned into my driveway and immediately left the car nearly being blown over by debris flying everywhere.

Once I got into the house, the cat was nowhere to be seen. I looked out the back window to see cyclonic winds of all direction taking the rain and with it,branches, leaves, rubbish in the air. I was gobsmacked.

Rain gushing down and pooling along the side of the house.

By then I didn’t know we had lost power. This meant that our pumps failed to work that resulted in our outdoor area being flooded. The water couldn’t go down to the drain as quick as it was coming down from the sky. It was a months of rain down in minutes!

I called my husband and it kept going to voicemail. Once he called back, I could hear evacuation alarms in his background as they were being evacuated from his building because of power blackouts and flooding.

I told him to stay where he was until the storm blew over and he did that. It took him hours to get home on the roads because all traffic lights were down and with trees and debris on the road. It was chaos and mayhem.

When the storm died down, it was momentarily so quiet that is until the alarms sounded. Alarms, sirens, going off everywhere.

Outside I assessed the damage. Luckily no water had gone into the house, there was however brackets, leaves and debris all over our garden. It was cooler but we had no power. The water was slowly being drained away. Our lawn sodden underfoot.

I’d never seen or been in a storm of this force. Later, the news told us that it was indeed a category of cyclone.

With the power out to over 530 000 homes and businesses, we prepared for the worst.

Luckily I had two fully charged power banks (I keep them charged all the time) and a Survival Kit/Emergency Pack with torches, candle and battery operated radio that came out. Thankfully our water supply and gas were not affected.

(Our government is trying to get all households to be fully electrical but I’m holding on to my gas storage and gas heating until we are ready for it. This storm showed us that our state is not. The infrastructure is too old which doesn’t give me confidence in what they say. Even though we have solar panels, we don’t have batteries to store our power because of the exorbitant costs of these and also the lack of government support to move households to these renewable forms of energy).

It turns out that the winds had downed six transmission towers and crumpled them; as well as one of the coal stations (Victoria’s energy still comes from brown coal) having to close down which meant they had to shut everything down (although the power was due to the transmission towers and the wind snapping wires and poles – the infrastructure – not the station itself. We have plenty of power….that we are unable to get to where it’s needed because of the ageing infrastructure.

Ultimately, these catastrophic events will be happening more frequently and they keep telling us this on the news. Over a week ago we had the earthquake and now this. We have had more rain in our summer than ever before. Meanwhile up north, towns have been flooded repeatedly.

What I need to do is to assess as much as possible the safety of our house and ensure we have things to keep water out of the house.

It shown me the value of having alternative energy backups (battery, gas) but also the need for me to have some fresh water reserves too should they go down too.

I need to have more lighting options too.

One of the most useful items surprisingly for me was that some time ago, I bought these battery operated light switches. I put them over our normal electric light switches because they’ve become loose and need to be replaced by an electrician. Until that happens, we use the battery operated switches as a temporary measure. They were great just to have a bit of light… I need to buy some more!