What a sorry scarry Sunday arvo it's been....

The mother of all Hailstorms in north western Sydney Sunday 9 December 2007!!

Looking our our back door and out our bedroom window as it started.......

Well many of you may know now about the wild hailstorm that ravaged much of the area of Sydney I live in. It's taken since about 3.30pm yesterday to 4am this morning just to get through to our insurance company.

This was the most frightening storm I've ever experienced. All in under about 30 minutes we've managed to have lost probably both our cars, our home's roof was pounded full of holes.

Fortunately we had about 50 roof tiles stored under the house which our neighbours helped hubby put in place where many on our roof were smashed, and not just the tiles, right through the flashing. We are so fortunate some didn't come right through our ceilings. We've had water come through though in the kitchen and the formal dining room.

The same can't be said about our garage, which is separate to the house. It's roof is like swiss cheese, we don't know about the office behind it. We do know that possibly they will have to demolish it coz we believe it's roof was made from fibro/asbestos sheeting so it can't be touched. We have to find tarps big enough today to cover it because all our bikes etc & loads of stuff is stored in there. Plus our office is our library, wall to wall bookshelves full of books and other stuff.

Our cars, what can I say, my lovely Camry has had it's front windshield smash to smithereens, the front headlights too, and the whole car is covered in massive baseball sized dents. Hubby's car is almost as bad, but his lights weren't hit.

Our house had lovely canvas awnings over both back doors, big double glass sliding doors, but the hail ripped through them, tearing them to shreds. Our boat just had a new cover and canopy done a few months ago and they are shredded too. Our gardens look like someones gone through with a machette, it's such a mess. There a huge dents in the front and back lawns where the hail hammered constantly for nearly half an hour. Picture baseball sized impacts through to the dirt!

The noise was horrendous, we'd just got back from Kmart coz our microwave oven died and had just enough time to run in the house before the storm hit, it was that sudden. No time to move the cars, or get any kind of covers over the windscreens.

Here's some photos I took. We are all so tired, spent hours cleaning up and all night on the phone to get claim numbers. Can't go to work coz our cars are not driveable. Have to wait for the windscreen people to call us to set up times to come and replace them, when ever that will be.

Fortunately we have great neighbours and they were up on the roof with my hubby replacing tiles so we could at least stop the water pouring into the kitchen and dining rooms. Then as we had spare tiles, hubby got up on their roof and helped replace a load on theirs as well.

Praise the Lord we had all these spare tiles left from when our extension was done and we kept them or we'd have had to have the SES here to put temporary tarps over the house..

Here's some photos, those hailstones we managed to grab are in our freezer for the insurance assessors to see! Some were even bigger but it was too dangerous to go outside, these ones we stuck our hands out the back door and grabbed fast.

My Camry, my hubby's Echo.....

My car looks like it's got the skin of a giant orange, Herb's doesn't look much better either, at least he's got headlights though.

What can I say, we now have to play the 'waiting game' with the insurers, and all two weeks before we are ment to go to hubby's parents in south western Victoria for Christmas. All I can say is thank our almight God none of us were hurt.

Wirg.