Oh man... today was one hell of a windy day! Of course, it wasn't the most windy place in Australia... down south in Victoria and Tasmania, they had it much much worse. It was the sort of day where you just hole up inside... the wind was just cutting straight through everything, and even in the morning when I took this photo, there was already lots of debris and fallen twigs and small branches coming down.

Actually, I was sort of hoping that some of the dead branches would just fall so that I could get rid of them, there were a few up high that had broken off over time and gotten themselves trapped in the forks of the other trees. Hopefully a gust or two would shake them loose!

But by mid morning... I was not hoping for that any more! The trees were just swinging around as the leaves caught some pretty hefty gusts, and I was just looking nervously out the window... hoping that nothing large would break and fall on either the road, the neighbours, or our house!

And then, in the middle of the afternoon, I heard a sharp crack from outside our bedroom window. No thud or anything... even though, I had heard lots of smaller twigs and branches hitting the side of our house or the roof.

I took a quick walk around... probably not a great idea in all that wind, but I was definitely curious as to what had made that sound... and one of the large wattle stems had broken. A large crack that was just holding, and the rest of the stem of about 15 metres or so was leaning on other trees and bearing most of the weight.

This was the same wattle that had snapped a different stem a few months back... and my wife and I made the decision that this particular wattle wasn't going to see out the rest of the year. In fact, most of these large wattles would have to go... we have lots of small ones, but these large ones get too tip-weighted and the splaying at the base means that they are quite fragile.

A quick message to our local arborist, and he said that he would drop by on the way home. I'm guessing that he had a crazily busy day dealing with lots of fallen trees today... and he chopped the stem off and made sure that it was safe.

Meanwhile, another large wattle at the front had also snapped a long stem... again, similar problem... long and tip weighted with a fragile connection at the base. So, a second candidate for removal as soon as our arborist friend has the time.

... and as you can see here at the base, it is the sort of fragile connection that gets weaker and weaker due to the levering of the branch combined with the erosion and rotting of the base material due to the shape of the base. And then, at some point... boom, it goes...

So, we will have a few days coming of tidying up the mess from today's strong winds. And after that, we will need to have a check up of all the trees to check for safety and pruning of dead wood.

At least most of the stronger winds have now passed... hopefully nothing has been too weakened through the day, and we can take stock again when the light comes out tomorrow!

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