We woke up in the morning and was surprised that we had not woken up during the night with the wind and rain. Because luckily Townsville had escaped most of the storm. We was supposed to me going on a trip out to the Whitsunday's tomorrow but they rang to confirm it was canceled.
We packed up and headed south. The drive to Airlie beach is about 275km. We got about ¾ of the way before we started to see aftermath of the cyclone. Trees were up rooted and knocked over. Some trees just simply snapped in half. The sugar cane was flattened. It has rained so much that there was flooding. Once down near the epicenter of the cyclone, near Airlie beach the flooding became worse. Because of the hills nearby the water was still draining down. The Bruce Highway is the only road between Cairns and Brisbane. There was talk on the news that it may be closing. So we had to be quick. If the road was closed we would not be able to had south for a few days, at least.
We hit some flooding. The road was completely flooded, worse still we was just 3km from Airlie beach. People on 4WD made it through, but they had a pretty high clearance. We headed back and tried a different route to Airlie beach.
We made it Airlie beach after a bit. It was deserted, everything was shut and boarded up. The lagoon at Airelie beach was wrecked. Seen as there was nothing open and nothing to do we jumped back in the camper and headed on south.
On the way out I drove. We came to a flooded road. On the opposite side was police, who was stopping cars crossing. From our side cars were still going through. We figured it was make or break. We did not want to get stuck, so we tried to drive through. I was pretty scared having never driven through water before. But luckily we made it through without any problems. The police man at the other side seemed surprised to see us make it through. Soon afterwards we heard that the road had been closed.
We carried on down to Mackay, after finding some petrol. There was lots of petrol stations but none of them were working because of the power cut. We was nearing empty, but we eventually we found one. Phew.
In Mackay we booked into a campsite. I was tired and it looked ok from the outside. But once parked up I saw was a mess it really was. We quickly drove off to find another site. No where looked suitable and in final attempt to find some comfort we booked into a Motel.
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