The Fallen Gum Tree
It was around 11pm at night and my concentration was fully focused on my computer's monitor. I can't remember what was on the screen at the time, possibly YouTube or even Facebook. It didn't matter.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of light. I look up from my monitor to see, piercing the pitch black darkness outside, via a gap to the side of my curtains red and blue flashing lights.
My first thought was that it was a police car randomly pulling over someone who was speeding or something.
I went back to whatever it was that I was doing. A while later I look up and check and see the lights are still flashing, thinking they've been there a while. I get up to check and there are two fire engines in the street.
I return to my monitor, only for the power to cut off leaving me in dark silence, broken only by the flashing lights outside.
In checking, I saw that the Safety Emergency Services had cut the power off because there was a gum tree branch on the road and the powerlines introduced the risk of electrocution to workers.
In the dark, I found my powerbank and recharged my nearly dead phone. Thirty minutes later the power was back on again.
The next morning, I came out to find a truck with a crane that could pick up logs that had several large logs on them already and I could hear the sound of chainsaws busy cutting the tree into logs.
The area where my letterbox is was sealed off by special tape, and it turned out that it was more than just a branch that fell down, it was an entire gumtree!
To show a sense of scale, I've included a photo below.
This stump came up to my knee, or around a metre roughly. Believe me, you wouldn't want this to hit your car roof from a great height.
You just wouldn't have a car left...
According to local history, the trees were planted to line the highway nearly 200 years ago. Fascinating stuff.
The reason the gum tree fell over is because recent heavy rains had loosened the soil inbetween the root system.
Here's another fallen gum tree seen later that day across a nearby creek:
That's all from me today, I hope that you enjoyed this.
Until next time, be good to yourselves.
Shaidon
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