• James and Ros Patton of 'Mogandale' north of Condobolin put on a brave face. Behind them is one of their sheds, completely demolished by the freak storm of Tuesday last week. Picture by Olivia McInnes.

Story and photo by Olvia McInnes

A freak storm tore through the Condobolin district last Tuesday night, leaving in its wake an unfathomable path of destruction.

While the township of Condobolin seemed to be mostly spared, many outlying properties suffered extensive damage with sheds flattened and rooves ripped off homes.

While there is not a lot of information on where the storm came from or what caused it, the Bureau of Meteorology recorded wind gusts of up to 102km/hour in the Condobolin area on Tuesday night.

James Patton of ‘Mogandale’ was on his header when the storm hit.

“It started to rain so I started heading back to my ute, straight into the storm when it hit and I had no visibility.

“The hail started to get really heavy and then the front windscreen of the header smashed and I was completely exposed.

“I jumped straight to the back of the header and then up on the console to try and get as high in the header as I could to get out of the hail.

“Even the header was getting pushed back from the wind,” James said.

He then proudly showed his battle scars – large and bright purple rings all over his legs from the impact of the hail.

James’s wife Ros Patton, said she was at home with the children when the storm struck.

“I was in the kitchen when the power went out and then I heard the wind roaring and thought we need to get away from this room (due to the amount of windows) so we moved into the boys room at the other end of the house.

“It sounded like really heavy things were being dropped on the roof.

“I thought at one stage that the roof was going to cave in…and then with the wind I thought it was going to lift off so I put the boys into a built-in cupboard.

“In the middle of it my three year old says ‘mummy who are we hiding from?’”, she laughed.

The amount of damaged property on the Patton’s place is extensive with debris strewn across their backyard and paddocks, a shed completely demolished and an auger tipped on its side.

James pointed out a scrub belt about 500 metres across a paddock “There’s a portable cattle race up there somewhere” he laughed.

Just next door, the Stuckey’s at ‘Homesworth’ seemed to have born significantly more of the brunt of the damage with their house rendered unliveable after the roof was torn off.

“It’s hard to describe what it sounded like, usually wind increases and then subsides, but this just kept building and building and we thought somethings got to happen here,” said Vicki Stuckey.

“With that there was a lightening flash and Pete (Vicki’s husband) said ‘there goes part of our roof!’ ”.

“The lights went out and we went to get the kids out of their rooms…we could feel water on our faces.

“We put the kids in the walk in wardrobe where we thought they would be reasonably safe and then all of a sudden it was over.

“We kept waiting for daylight and then when it was daylight we wished it was dark again so we didn’t have to face the damage.

“People keep asking me if I was scared but I guess I didn’t really have time to be scared…you just kind of go into survival mode,” Vicki said.

Further North of Condobolin at ‘Three Peaks’, the Brown family had also experienced a harrowing night of events.

“Compared to other people we didn’t have that much damage done, a few minor buildings were flattened.

“My three horse float was turned 180 degrees and pushed along about 20 metres.

“The jockey wheel had sunken down in the mud and there was a trail showing where it had ploughed through the ground,” Sharon Brown said.

On the other side of Condobolin near Derriwong, Peter L’Estrange had just received a call that a fire had started on his other property and was driving to investigate when the storm struck.

“I was with my wife and daughter and we were driving to the other property when it hit.

“I moved the ute into the table drain, as I thought this was the lowest and safest point, and faced it away from the wind.

“I had the motor running with the handbrake on and my foot on the brake at all times, and when the wind hit; the ute was rocking and swaying.

“There was zero vision outside the ute, all we could hear was hail and branches crashing around us.

“If we could see anything at all, it was all this brown stuff going past us. I realised it was all the grass and dirt out of the paddocks everything was stripped bare at ground level.

“Finally everything went calm so we tried to drive home but couldn’t get very far as there was so much debris on the road. It must have been the eye of the storm because not long after, the second half hit,” Peter said.

Storms seemed to be reasonably wide spread throughout the central west on Tuesday night, with West Wyalong receiving wind gusts of up to 133km/hour and Forbes of up to 105 km/hour.

There are a number of families in the Condobolin area whose lives have been turned upside down last Tuesday night, many of whom have not been mentioned in this article.

The Argus offers sincerest sympathies during this difficult time, and we hope that the lives of the people so badly affected can very soon return to normal.