cyclone yasi!

I'd like to apologize for a not-so-fantastic photos. I just had my point and shoot and it's frustrating beyond belief. So I didn't really take enough and the ones I did take aren't outstanding.

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Evening of February 2nd

OK, about half past 6 I checked out of Traveler's Oasis. I'm staying here tonight, but since they're not open at 5.45 tomorrow morning they let me check out early.
They've ordered my 5.45 shuttle for me too, everything's set.
Not the place just needs to leave. Please let it leave.

I am pretty much fucked if I'm stuck here when this thing hits.


After that I walked down to the esplanade, looking for some ice cream. Which I found. I kind of hate eating ice cream here because they don't seem to have any concept of how much a container holds.
I asked for a large, which looked like two scoops and honestly there must have been 5. It's overflowing everywhere and annoys the pants off of me.

I went and sat right by the water to eat and and saw the most bizarre animal in the shallows/on the muddy sand bank thing below me.
I think maybe it was a Mudskipper, but I thought those were fresh water only.

see? a mudskipper.

Well I just did some googling and it was definitely a Mudskipper. Super cool, it was just there eaten' some water bugs and chillin' like mudskippers do.

Walked back to my hostel and watched all the bats fly out.

I felt really dizzy earlier but I realized I'd barely had any water today so on my way back I stopped and got a few big bottles, one of which I've already finished.
And I feel better, so remember kids, drink enough water!

In other news. I have a super painful bruise on my tailbone.
I guess it's from my tank hitting there sometimes when I was swimming, I can't think of a different way I'd have gotten it.
So painful. ugh.

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It's 5.30 AM on the 3rd now. I'm awake and skyping with mum.
My flight's been canceled, so I'll just be roughing it through the cyclone.

Hopefully I'm ok.

Just met a lady called Nicola, she just did her Pro Dive open water course and seems nice enough. Little on edge about the whole thing though.

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OK, this is all the stuff I wrote in my journal while at the evacuation centre. Some of it's a tiny bit repetitive but I think y'all can handle it.

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Been up since four. Skyped with mum & Magnus a bit, it was really nice to hear their voice.
She kindle re-booked my ticket for Saturday, hopefully the airport is up and running by then!

Since everything had been canceled I just stayed at the hostel and did what they wanted me too.

About quarter to 6 we were told to pack an emergency 24-48 hour bag and leave everything else in our room.

what I took - my bag, my bedding & extra water.

I was, sadly, forced to leave my mask at the hostel. If something happens to it I will be so upset. Everything else can go, but the mask. Oh it better be ok.

taping up the windows before we left Traveler's Oasis.

Helen drove 10 of us to this mall 15 minutes inland from Cairns, which I do not remember the name of. There were already about 1,700 people there when we arrived, it topped out at 2,300.

Nicola, Ellen, Bethen and myself went and set up in the food hall with all out stuff.

We were right by the 'Jaz' fish and chips stand, which was closed when we got there but ended up opening.
Which meant we pretty much were the queue. Nicola got really mad, but I kind of felt like it wasn't that huge of a deal.

Being the queue. I guess this is before Nicola for super angry.

there was even less room when people stared lying down.

I took a bit of a walk and found Matt. I'm still overly worried about the other people on the course. As if they're not all perfectly able functioning adults.

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My laptop died. right after I wrote that, this is being written for realz in a journal.
Fancy fancy.

I need to find a plug to charge it, I want to be able to talk to my family!

I finished A Tale of Two Cities and played cards for a bit, taught them how to play gin rummy. My one and only card game.

Went for another walk around, saw Andreas. He said he's seen Taylor and Bobo.
--

It's 1.30 now. Which means I've been here for about 6 hours already. And we have another 9 or something before Yasi even hits. Oh my god.

It's gone slightly south, so the parts hitting us are only going to be a 3. Which is terribly good news. Maybe it'll be complete non event…

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3.30 PM

I managed to sleep for an hour or so, which made me feel mildly better though not exactly chirpy.

my first little nest.

There are just so man people here. It's amazing.
You can hardly walk around without feeling like you're about to step on someone, in fact in some placed there are just these tiny narrow paths between bodies.

Nicola found a useable outlet, so I set my computer to charge, hopefully I can Skype before the electricity goes out.

they handed out army packs. This contained two main meals, a midday snack and sundry items.

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5.07 PM

Nicola moved. I'm pretty sure this is what happened, I was asleep for the first bit, but, I think I'm right.

She saw a four year old aboriginal girl trying to take a toy out of some game machine and told her off.
Which in my opinion, is where she starts deserving what comes her way. If you're going to, in the middle of a fucking national crisis, tell some little girl you don't know manners… then you have it coming to you.

Anyway, the mother comes over and tells her not to reprimand her child. Nicola was generally rude I thought.
Then the father came over and told her to talk to him or his wife not his daughter if there was a problem. She pretty much said that the kid was stealing and blah blah blah. So stupid.

Then she's standing there telling Ellen what happened, just staring at him. So he comes back over, gets a little angry and tells her to mind her own fucking business. Completely reasonable I thought.

Anyway she goes off and finds a police officer and comes over to us, in tears, saying she's moving because she's so scared of 'how threatening' he was being.

I guess everyone else felt sorry for her, but I thought she had it coming. Oh well.

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9.30 PM

The three of us ended up moving as well. We didn't have to, since we were technically far enough away from the french doors, but I wanted to in case they broke and then a few Austrian people I was talking to told me about a 'young people hallway' which is not only a great term, but a great place. The safest place in the building too, I got told. It was 98% people from Traveler's Oasis. Pretty great. And there are bathrooms off of it that no one knows about. Which is key since there were like 20 minute waits for the well known ones.

ta da!

Went for a walk with Ellen & Bethen so see how it looked outside. Answer? Not very interesting.

looks amazing, no? granted this was before it really hit us. But still.

They went off to talk to someone or other and I talked to Andreas for about an hour, we also saw Taylor & Bobo.

They were saying that some people got evacuated 6 hours inland. 6 hours! We're 20 minutes tops.
I guess they're super safe.

Then an an announcement came over the speakers saying we would loose light at any time, them there'd be 30-60 minutes of emergency light, then darkness. So everyone was supposed to go back to their beds and just chill there.

So I did. Played some solitaire, ate the other half of my sandwich… trilling things.

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6.45 AM

I fell asleep at about 10.30, the light went out at 11.

I slept totally fine until I woke up about 6 minutes ago.

Ah, they just accounted they needed volunteers to feed people breakfast, I think I'll go do that. to give me something to do. We could still be in here for proper ages since they're worried about the flooding/tides.

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10 AM

I'm back in the hostel!

I helped serve cereal to 1500 people! There were some people filling bowls, some people handing our fruit, some people pouring milk… it was good.
There was this dreadful woman though, ugh.
While we were waiting for the food she wouldn't stop talking about how natural disaster followed her and then telling us all the places she'd been that had issues.

carts of cereal, milk, juice and fruit.

And then when we were almost done serving and there were almost no people left she started to open a bunch more boxes of cereal and I just said that I didn't think we needed more since we still had a ton out and there didn't seem to be a line. She got so mad and told me I needed to calm the fuck down because I was making everyone tense and she didn't like the way I was talking to her and blah blah blah. Oi vey, I just ignored her.
Of course, as soon as we were done she buggered off somewhere and did nothing to help clean up.

by the time that was done it was about 8.45 and at 9 we got the OK to leave.

We all sat in this foyer for a bit, I talked to Paul & Mary, two very nice people from Chili.

I'm probably in the background of a lot of news reels. haha.

John & Helen got there at about 9.45 and I was in the first car load back to the hostel.

I took a shower, which felt amazing.
Now my main problem is food, namely, I have none. And nothing's open.

Rumor has it that the Green Ant is opening tonight, a bunch of us might go out.

I have a flight to Brisbane on Saturday and from everything I've been hearing the airport should be 100% fine by then.

Thanks so much to everyone for the messages and stuff, you're delightful delightful people.