Wild and woolly weather

The wild storms of the last two days played havoc with trees down all over the Hills, powerlines down, debris everywhere, record numbers of calls for emergency services, power cut off for hours and - most irritatingly - people's blogs couldn't be published! Another minor worry was the possibility of trees falling on our fences. Or rather, gaps being made in the fences. Well, actually, the real issue would be sheep getting out through said gaps. Into 150 acres of forest. Now that would be a problem. We took the trusty ute to investigate when the wind died down enough that we could hear ourselves think.

The tree above (the horizontal one, well all of them but that's the one I'm talking about) is on our neighbour's property. Just. It fell about 30cm inside the fence. Firewood for him next year and no hordes of tame sheep on his front veranda. They were taking advantage of all the fallen debris as a tasty snack, sheltering in the lee of the track and seemed unperturbed by the weathery fuss.

Further up the track however a large acacia presented it's budding top to us instead of the trunk we are usually greeted with. We couldn't see the fence. The forest on the other side is the one that spreads for miles. The L-shaped dead acacia to the right is one that fell in last year's storms whilst SO takes up the left flank to provide photographic scale. Not a huge tree then, but big enough to let wayward sheep out.

The acacia had very kindly followed the example of it's late neighbour however and split halfway up the trunk thus falling over the fence and not through it. A wonderful perch for owls and eagles but not strong enough to provide us with a valley-viewing seat so it will get cleared up. When we have time. Eventually.

In the meantime there was a break in the weather out to the west where the sun made a moment's appearance before setting. Everyone's Adelaide Hills Sunday will more than likely be spent cleaning up the results of the first part of the weekend. Same as usual then, just different debris.