News & Updates from Vicki Avcin ~ AusCrafts · Page 77

Who is Linda you may ask. Well Linda was a tropical cyclone that lasted a grand total of 15 hours out in the Coral Sea, about 600klm from our coast line on the other side of Fraser Island.

She started in the Solomon Islands as a tropical low, gradually edged her way south west towards our coast line before being classed as a tropical cyclone, then 15 hours later was downgraded to a low again.

Although she remained well out in the Coral Sea and never looked like crossing the coast and the only sign of her is strong winds and huge seas.

One of the shortest cyclones weve ever had!

She is still travelling south west but later today (Wednesday) is predicted to turn and head south east. Where I live is protected by Fraser Island, but the western side of the Island is copping a pounding.

The beach which is usually around 50 to 100m of sand which 4WDs drive along and the Air Fraser planes land (yes on the beach) is not there today with the surf inundating the coast right up to the dunes/rocks.

Big contrast to the eastern side which is quite smooth and calm. March is our cyclone month although they can form any time from December/January, March is usually the busiest month so we may still see a cyclone cross the Queensland coast yet.

The pictures show the contrast between west and east sides of Fraser Island and Lindas path. And so our crazy weather continues. Wonder what is in store next week. (Already talk of possibly another TC forming!)

In 1989 an average Australian bloke had a simple idea to make a difference in his own backyard - Sydney Harbour.

This simple idea has now become the nations largest community-based environmental event, Clean Up Australia Day.The following year Clean Up Australia Day was born in Sydney with over 30,000 people turning up to cleanup.

It became an annual event and is now done all over Australia with everyone from school kids to families, organisations and businesses joining in.

This concept is now a worldwide event each year....... from little things big things grow!

In the past 27 years, Australians have devoted more than 32 million hours towards the environment through Clean Up Australia Day and collected over 344 thousand tonnes of rubbish.As part of the Booral Community Association, myself and our members teamed up to register and on Sunday 4th March we walked the local streets that we felt were the worst areas for rubbish.

We found everything from bottles (both plastic and glass), cans, paper, ceramic tiles, broom handle, mattresses, tyres, car parts and even an old vacuum cleaner.

There was a lot of green waste(grass clippings and tree cuttings) also but being natural products these will break down.

It amazed us how people can just dump the green waste instead of going to the refuse station as green waste is free to dump.

We collected many many bags of rubbish which was all taken to a central point at the local park for the council to collect that afternoon.

It was hot work but we all were quite happy despite the heat knowing weve helped clean up part of our little community.

Everyone said they will be signing up again next year and we hope a few more will come on board also so more streets can be done.

Was a great effort by everyone

Well isnt the weather crazy around the world?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how our weather here had been steaming hot, then we got a lot of unseasonable rain, it then threw us a few days of very humid hot weather, then early this week a few days of cloudy skies and more rain.

North Queensland have had a very dry monsoon season but that all changed with over 300mm rain in a 24hr period.

It was very welcome up there though as their dam that supplies the towns water was down to 14%.

In 48 hrs that has now changed to well over 80% and water continues to flow which will push its capacity up even higher.

The system that brought that rain is now moving west into inland Queensland and the forecasts are that they will get 400 to 500 mm of rain which will move down into inland central and western Queensland and that flooding will be worse than the 1974 floods!

The country its going to affect is called the Channel Country and farmers out in those areas have been drought declared for many many years now.

So for many farmers it will be very welcome rain which will green up all the cattle country but its a double edged sword as the floods could mean heavy stock losses also.

This Channel Country is made up of hundreds if not thousands of dry creek beds and rivers which will now spring to life and make one huge inland sea as they all join up as the water runs down.

So while all this is happening in our part of the world, many reading this will be dealing with record snow falls as the Arctic/Siberian blasts moves over you.

I hope its not causing people too many dramas because to me it seems a good time to stay indoors ……….

And craft of course. What else could you do in that weather? I hope everyone round the world dealing with Mother Natures offerings stay safe. The photo is of my newest grandchild who was born in December. Isnt he just the cutest little man.

I think so but Im a little biased, such an awesome smile.

On 22nd February 8 years ago I was accepted as a designer at Craftsuprint. CUP has changed since I started all those years ago and the help and support I hadwas fantastic by Rob and the team.

We watched and waited as each version came out until it is as we know it today. I did several CUP TVs on how to make some of my designs and that was loads of fun.

I would like to say thanks to all the customers who have purchased my card designs over the years and to the cardmakers (now known as crafters) the designs you have made with my designs are nothing short of brilliant.

I love seeing them and how you interpret the designs, some are how I envisaged them and others have used them inslightly different ways but it is the creativity of background card stock and embellishmentsthat make them so special.

To those who have purchased my Designer Resources the designs you have made from them is absolutely fantastic. So a big thank you all round to everyone. The photo is a still shot from one of the CUPTV videos I did where I had my granddaughterhelping me.

Love our matching shirts we had. Mine was from CUP and I made my granddaughters to match.

We have had an unusually and prolonged heatwave for our summer this week. By now we are normally dealing with rain, flooding or a cyclone or two in Februarybut it has been an above average prolonged dry summer heat this year.

Although we had a couple of days of above average and record daytime temperatures already we have now had a week of constant high temperatures.

Just now as I sit to write this inside it is 32 deg C on the exercise bike inside the house. (So the air conditioner is now on!) Outside the thermometer shows a balmy 35 deg C. (apparent (feels like) temperature is 36 deg C) Summer sees the good old Aussie storms in the afternoons when we have the hot days and although for the past three nights there have been storms out to the west, we can see the lightening and hear the thunder, but none have made it this far east close to the coast.

Our temperatures though arent as high as places to the west with with a couple of places reaching 38 deg C as we are close to the coast and get a hint of a sea breeze.

Maybe this afternoon we might get a storm to cool it down.

One can only hope. It is hard to comprehend seeing posts on places like Facebook with people talking about the snow and how cold it is.