Trees crashing down!

We had some excitement here today. It has been extreme windy over the past week, and people around here get rather nervous about trees. There are always lots of branches all over the place when it’s been windy, but with extreme wind, trees uproot themselves as well. Ken heard on the news that Eltham had been badly hit, and trees had hit some houses and done a lot of damage, so he phoned me to see if we were okay. I assured him we were, and hung up. What I didn't know, was that the neighbour's tree was leaning over toward our place!

About five minutes later, there was an ominous cracking noise and a ‘swoosh’, then silence. I knew what it was, but when I looked out into the back and front yards of our house, I couldn’t see any damage.

About half an hour later, a tree lopping service truck pulled up outside and I went down to see what they were doing.
The house next door (on the corner) had a huge gum tree in their front yard, which had been completely uprooted and was leaning over against the other trees, which were all that stopped the gum tree from crashing down across both blocks of land. This is the base of the tree in the neighbour's front yard.
The blokes came into our yard and kindly moved the bird bath and pergola out of the path of the gum tree, then set about clearing the way for it to fall down. It knocked a few trees and shrubs over in the neighbour's yard, and partially demolished the lattice fence between our yards, but we got off lightly because it was just the top part of the tree that fell in our yard.



We are not on good terms with this neighbour, so it will be interesting to see if she approaches us to offer to pay for any damage. The fence was built and paid for by her ex, so if she wants it rebuilt, she can see her insurance company about paying for it. Other than that, there is no damage to our place, so we are not going to ask for anything.