THE goalposts at the Mirboo North football ground snapped in two.
The scout hall lost its roof.
There's damage to the secondary college’s buildings, devastation at and around the town’s much-loved swimming pool. Widespread damage at the golf course. Roofs off houses or extensively damaged. Powerlines still lying across the road or in a tangled mess above. It’s all around you.
According to the principal of the Mirboo North Primary School, Matt Snell, himself a proud born and raised product of the town, the scene in the aftermath of what people are widely calling a cyclone or tornado which hit the town on Tuesday afternoon, February 13 is “confronting”.
Speaking on Gippsland ABC Radio on Thursday morning, to report that both the primary school and secondary school are open for “supervision” only, where children can come if parents have no other option for work, home and clean -up commitments, Mr Snell reported on devastating scene.
“Some children or families needed supervision for their children, so we had a couple of people on site. Just trying to support, I guess, those that really needed it at this time.”
So, what’s it like around the town?” Mr Snell was asked.
“Look, I guess for me, just the amount of change that’s taken place from the weekend we had the festa, and what an amazing event that was. And then to see the stark comparison now with what was it, cyclonic winds or some people say a tornado going through the town the way it did.
“It’s such a stark comparison to where it was a week ago. And we've got, I guess, at the moment, even driving out of town or into town, from the north, to still be driving over fallen powerlines and obviously, the damage is pretty visible on both sides of the road, and just off the main highway it's even worse in patches.
“So yeah, there's a big cleanup ahead and it's going to take, I guess, weeks just for the initial cleanup to happen, but then it’ll be years in some spots before its completed,” he said referencing how long it took for people to recover from the Black Saturday bushfires and what they went through.
He noted that while some people had been able to get out and access generators and to get going quickly on the recovery, others were trapped in their homes, in the middle of town in some cases, waiting for the SES or someone to come and help them to get out.
He acknowledged that such experiences had been confronting for the people involved, and for those providing the assistance.
“Honestly, I can't believe there's not more (damage), I really can’t. Speaking to Danny O'Brien last night, he came through the town and had a rough estimate on the number of houses that have been severely damaged around the town. I mean, I've got my assistant principal Anthony who had half his roof blown off, so there's impacts on a lot of my staff as well but I can’t believe that there’s probably not a more damage to some more of the houses in town, considering how heavily vegetated it is around some of those houses or properties.
“I’ve driven around the town and was at a mate's house yesterday afternoon, surrounded by bush, and nearly every tree planted around his house was saved, which he's pretty thankful for, even though there’s been some other damage to his property and roof.”
He said both schools would be open again today for “supervision” only due in part to the issues with power and water (improving).
“Obviously we still don't have power and there are issues around the water supply but there are also issues with makesafe work still needing to occur with some trees and certainly the Secondary College has got bigger issues with one of their buildings in particular. So that'll need a little bit more time before that's rectified.”
Matt also spoke about other damage around the town.
“I guess I'm pretty involved with the sporting groups and the like and you see the damage there as well. I saw the scout hall with its roof off and up at the rec reserve with their air conditioners lying on the ground. I've seen the A&P Society’s shed ripped off, the cricket club’s lost a lot of things and then you look over to the football club with no goalposts or broken in half and you just shudder to think what the golf club’s going through. You can see five of the golf club’s holes and not one of them is playable.
“It's going to be a long cleanup for the sporting clubs, considering they rely on volunteers that are already busy looking after their own properties and things like that. It'll be a big recovery for them,” he said.
