Guards, bonnet, snorkel, windscreen all wrecked, but repairable.
The tree ' s main trunk had missed the van by a couple of meters. That is the only saving grace in all of this. If the fall had been just a couple of degrees different, our van would have been squashed, as would have Sharyn. Ya see, she was standing next to the van when the tree fell, leaving a footdeep furrow along its length in the sandy, grassed surface of our campsite. She had escaped back down to the riverbank while I headed up a different way.
Unfortunately, some of the smaller branches, still quite hefty, mind you, clipped the front end of the van, causing a fair amount of minor damage.
A smashed windscreen, a bent snorkel, dented mudguards and bonnet, a twisted bullbar and busted driving lights presented me with clear evidence that we had camped in the wrong place at the wrong time.
CAMPED UNDER A GUMTREE?
No, we hadn ' t camped under the gumtree. I was careful not to do that a couple of days prior when we arrived. On pacing everything out after the freak storm had passed and our hearts, nerves and minds were functioning somewhat normally, we were about 25m away from the base of the tree.
The problem was that a 35m-tall tree snapped off near the base and fell just metres to the side of our van. That seemingly healthy tree was found to be partially rotten inside, not visible at all until after it had snapped and fallen.
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