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My last exam was on Tuesday the 14th of November – it was somewhat difficult to concentrate given that TDU was commencing in just two days! With a myriad of thoughts running through my mind at the time, what will we see, will it be a good year, will we see any tornadoes, large hail, great features! And then came the daydreaming of thunderstorms and trying to imagine your “dream storm” and whether or not you’d see it on this TDU! Certainly the last TDU (99) was great fun, it was filled with memorable life experiences – the only thing that didn’t comply was the weather, with a rather below average season. However, TDU 2000 or “TD2K” for short was one that did not disappoint! Rather, it was the best weather experience in my life, with days of supercells at a time on occasions! Wednesday the 15th was a busy time…I had to go into work to fix up some loose ends, I had to go to the shops, clean the house – I hadn’t even started packing yet and I was leaving just after dawn the following day for Dubbo, 950km away! It was filled with excitement – Andrew McDonald (Macca) and Greg Browning were going to start their journey north a little earlier, leaving in the afternoon they intercepted some thunderstorms on their way north. They were also driving to Dubbo, but had to detour via Sydney first to pick up Matthew Smith (Matt), we would rendevous in Dubbo and Macca would jump into my car for the three week journey of a lifetime! At approximately 2am, Thursday the 17th I was lying down in bed, wide awake – eyes to the ceiling, heart pumping half considering driving to Dubbo at that very moment! I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep – I did get some sleep though (fortunately), but was awake at 5:30am to get the last few things done. Some goodbyes to my parents, and by 6:30am I was off on TD2K!!! Not without a minor hitch…the route I was going to take (Cunningham Hwy) was cutoff due to a landslide, so I had to go through Toowoomba to get to Goondiwindi, then take the Newell Hwy down to Dubbo. But when I looked at the map, I discovered that going via Toowoomba is actually 10km quicker! And the speed limits are higher as well going via Toowoomba, so it worked out well. I took it easy – going up the range was slow due to extremely thick fog (visibility down to barely seeing the car in front of you!) But that soon cleared after the first set of traffic lights in Toowoomba, and I continued SW. It was an area of light rain – although there had been some much heavier falls recently. Most of the roads were wet all the way down to Dubbo, but nothing major except for some minor flooding near Moree with water flowing over the highway. Incidently my first bit of excitement happened near Moree! A CG out of nowhere in a period of heavier rain! I was surprised and excited! Although I didn’t see anything more :( I arrived in Dubbo at around 4:30pm (or 5:30pm local, DLS time), I’d made good timing (10hrs for 950km) on the journey and was happy with that. The others arrived at Dubbo about an hour before me, they were going to go to a library and assess the situation for tomorrow to see if we’d have a chance of something nice as the rain band cleared and moved eastwards. It was quite good timing – I pulled up into the caravan park about 30 seconds before they arrived back at the library! A nice welcome and jubilation of excitement was had as everyone met each other for the first time in a few months since the ASWA AGM. We decided to get pizza at Pizza Hut with an all you could eat deal – was good value, we certainly ate our fair share of pizza! Matt and Macca were in charge of eyeing off the pizza table to see what pizzas came and how much was left! After this we headed back to the cabin and watched video footage before getting a relatively early night for the next day. Report by Anthony Cornelius & Andrew McDonald, all captures by Andrew McDonald |
