Thanks again everyone for all your good wishes, but we are among the lucky ones.
The edge of the tornado passed within 50 metres of our place, but we got almost no wind at all. A dead palm frond on one of our palm trees, which is nearly ready to fall off, did not even move, yet a palm tree just across the street was partially shredded. Big caravans in the caravan park, only 150 metres from here, were picked up and thrown 20 or 30 metres crashing onto vans behind, demolishing them. Luckily they were unoccupied as they are holiday vans and it's winter here. I have only seen the kind of damage we saw here on TV footage of US tornadoes although, by American standards, ours was only a little one.
Sections of the village resemble a war zone, with debris scattered about everywhere, and our end of town is closed to all but residents and emergency workers. I went to our model boat club meeting last night in Ballina, and had to show ID to get back to our street. The NSW State Government has declared Lennox Head a natural disaster zone, which means that the local council can access State funds to assist with the clean up, which will go on for quite a while, I would imagine, given the amount of debris.
I took a few photos, some while the storm was still going, and the others are of some of the damage which, ironically enough, are in brilliant sunshine. I did not get a shot of the tornado itself, as it passed too quickly, but I did get one, from our kitchen window, of another waterspout off the coast to the north east of us. Fortunately, it stayed out at sea. You may notice, in the waterspout shot, the tangle of power lines on one of the poles. The photo of the pine trees on the beach front shows a section of roofing suspended in the branches.
It's a beautiful day today, which at least will allow the clean up to proceed unhindered.
Peter.