QUICK thinking and a grain header saved a Mt Walker farmer from injury or worse, during the once-in-a-lifetime severe wind and hail storm that passed through his property on Sunday afternoon.
Norm Kerle was working in his big machinery shed when he noticed the forecast storm was looking as if it would hit the Mt Walker area.
“I got two of the tractors out of the shed so I could bring the header in,” Norm said.
“I was just about to put a tarpaulin over the three tonne of wheat in the grain bin I’d put in the shed earlier in the week, when I noticed the shed walls were starting to rock.”
He dropped the tarpaulin and crawled under the header hoping it would protect him.
As he took shelter, the shed door was blown in, the roof lifted and the walls caved in.
“Part of the roof ended up on top of the header.”
For the next five to 10 minutes, he watched missiles in the form of roofing iron and other debris fly past.
“I’ve never experienced any wind like it. It was ferocious and I was sheltered by the header and to some extent, parts of the collapsed walls.”
When the storm passed, he emerged to a scene of chaos.
“You can’t describe the storm like a hurricane or a tornado,” Norm said.
“It never turned, it came from the south west and it was still storming in from the south west when it passed.”
We spoke with Norm on Monday morning and his assessment of the damage couldn’t be made until heavy machinery was brought in to lift the roof and wall debris from the machinery and equipment housed in the shed.
“When I first got out, it was hard to take in what I was seeing.
“There was iron wrapped around one of the tractors I’d moved out of the shed and there was a timber pole jammed up under one of them.
“Three of the grain silos had been rolled across the paddock like bowling balls, the grain bin weighed down by three tonne of wheat had been toppled over inside the shed and there was debris all up the paddock behind the shed.”
Norm would later find that the two windmills on the property had also been damaged.
“Those things are built to withstand some pretty severe turbulence, but on both of them the blades had been folded back.
“I found iron from the shed roof and walls about three-quarters of a kilometre up the paddock.
“There were trees down everywhere.
“I don’t think any boundary fence around here has been spared from fallen trees.”
He estimated that about 10 to 15mm of rain fell. The rain gauge on his property, like so many others, had been blown away.
The ‘big marble’ sized hail that “fell in sheets” added to the savagery of the storm.
“It was still piled up three inches deep against things hours after the storm went through,” Norm said.
The storm’s funnel of destruction in that part of the Scenic Rim appears to have been worst around the southern end of Mt Walker and the eastern end of Rosevale.
A neighbour down the road from the Kerle’s property, reported golf ball sized hail.
“We weren’t home during the storm but when we returned, we found the hail still clogging the gully, our shed roof in the middle of the road, power lines down and trees pushed over everywhere,” said Zac Christensen.
He said his father, Mark, had been working on Neville Christensen’s property at the end of R Christensen Road, when the storm hit.
“Dad said you couldn’t stand out in it … if you did you’d be killed by the debris flying past.
“I don’t think there is a property around here that has escaped damage.
“One property owner had a small shed blown away … the cement floor is still there but the shed or any debris from the shed hasn’t been found.”
On Monday night, after the family had been helping out around the district, Zac said there “were scenes of devastation everywhere”.
“We’ve seen hundreds of acres where almost every tree has had its top blown out and the branches that remain are stripped bare of every leaf and twig.
“One of the landowners who has lived here for over 80 years said she had never experienced a wind like it.”
We asked Zac if he thought the wind velocity had reached the 96 to 100km/h reported in some areas of Brisbane?
“I wouldn’t know. There’s no way to measure it but it would take a big wind to rip big trees out of the ground and there is lots of evidence of that.
“This was no normal storm wind.
“There’s places where there’s just a pile of hay lying on the ground to show where the hayshed stood.”
Other buildings were damaged too, including the former Rosevale Retreat Hotel where a tree was pushed over onto the roof and the Rosevale Lutheran Church was stripped of more than a third of its roof.
