We’re on mains power. That won’t be the situation forever, but it is the situation now. We pay handsomely for that power, the Far North has some of the highest electricity prices in the country.

Despite this, sometimes when we get hit by a cyclone, we are left without power for a long-ass time. The last time was during Cyclone Gabrielle, where the power was out for 52 hours. But Cyclone Tam was really something else.

On Friday night we were half-way through the season 1 finale of Ted Lasso (having treated ourselves to an AppleTV subscription for the cyclone) when the light above us flickered violently and went out. It was 5.30pm.

The neighbourhood groupchat lit up, and Richard called the power company to let them know. We settled in, figuring we probably wouldn’t be getting it back that night.

Not on the map

The energy company outages map was smothered in red exclamation marks showing problems throughout the region. It was Good Friday.

The power flickered on occasionally, but never lasted long. We turned all the appliances off at the wall until we could be sure it wouldn’t surge and blow them up.

Saturday arrived and our outage wasn’t on the map. We did the weekly grocery shop, skipping the frozens. Two of our neighbours also called the power company.

The groupchat reported sightings of technicians, but they left without resolving it. We resigned to the long-haul.

I boiled a big pot of water on the gas stove and did the dishes which had been sitting on the bench since Friday by candlelight. A cleaner space was something I could control (albeit less conveniently), and the mess was increasing the stress of the situation. I used some extra hot water to have a sponge bath.

Sunday arrived, and we still weren’t on the map. I picked up a bag of ice after work and loaded up a chilly bin from the refrigerator. We’d avoided opening it, but you can only keep things cool that way for so long. Anything that was still frozen was shifted into the bottom freezer drawer.

I published that week’s blog and sent out my subscriber email from my phone. Thankfully both were ready to go before the power went out.

I finished my second book of the power cut that afternoon. Dinner was decided by what was thawing fastest.

On Sunday night, we still weren’t on the map. Another technician had been up a couple of our poles and gone again. We borrowed a generator from a neighbour who very wisely has solar power.

Spotting the problem

The generator was a god-send. We couldn’t run the fridge (at least partially because I was scared about blowing it up like we did during Gabrielle), but I could watch the finale of Drag Race and finish that episode of Ted Lasso.

We had enough petrol to get us through a couple of days, but Gull were having a ‘discount day’. So on Monday morning we piled into the car with the dogs and headed out to get some extra fuel, more ice, and a warm breakfast.

On our way out, Richard was studying the lines running over our subdivision and noticed one line had clear dropped off a pylon over a neighbour’s place.

The flickering lights made more sense. We stopped to talk to another neighbour on our way out, and she reported it to the power company.

By the time we got home again, the guys were working on the lines. Within an hour, we were even on the outages map!

The power is on, but the work is just beginning

The power came on at about 11am on Monday morning. We’d spent basically all of Easter weekend glamping in our own houses.

We turned on the appliances, and packed down the generator. All the various cords had to go back to where they had materialised from. And then I realised I needed to clean out the freezer.

Bags of no-longer-frozen vegetables went to the chickens, along with vegetables that had begun rotting in the fridge.

A packet of still-cold-but-now-defrosted sausages went straight on the BBQ along with a bag of hash browns. A venison fillet had entirely thawed and got cut up for the dogs.

Then there was the 1.3kg slightly-defrosted summer berry harvest that couldn’t be re-frozen.

I turned that into cordial, bottling it to share with the neighbours who had survived the experience alongside us.

Just, urgh

If we’d been told “we’re really busy and we can’t get someone there until Monday”, it might have helped. Not knowing how long the power will be out affects how you react. We were left in limbo for 63-odd hours, and that was stressful. I am a planner, and it’s impossible to plan within a situation like that.

It took less than 2 hours to fix once the problem was identified and actually addressed. So I’m at least a little bitter about waiting as long as we did.

It’s fair to say that nobody expected the storm to be that powerful; and by the time our outage happened, the system was already heavily loaded with problems.

It was a long weekend, so staff were probably spread thin. I hope the technicians and the customer service reps taking calls got paid really well for that. They certainly deserve it.

65 hours is the new record for having the power out. I am filled with immense gratitude for hot showers and lights that turn on when you flick the switch.

We have burned several candles to stumps. We are definitely getting solar when we build a house.

Cyclone Gabrielle certainly meant we were better prepared for the chaos of Cyclone Tam. We had fuel, and managed to keep enough charge on our phones to get through. We knew how to access water. The telecommunications network wasn’t affected so at least we had contact with the outside world. We didn’t blow up our fridge.

But there are still things we can improve on – and which we will improve on in the coming months. Because this probably won’t be the last time, and hopefully we’ll be even better prepared for next time.