Always an Adventurer – Arthurs Creek Storm

As a small boy, electrical storms frightened me. I’d had a few big frights and had grown to hate and fear lightning and thunder.

I’ve always been an adventurer, ya know. When I was about 14 to 16, a mate and I used to go camping on our pushbikes. This night we had a terrific electrical storm.

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Looking out the front of the tin shed, we must have been facing east toward the gully and beyond to the bush on the hill, seen in the Google Earth image.

It must have been Easter. We left home, at Diamond Creek, after school and got a fair way before dark.

Well, it was coming on dark, the wind came up quite strong and the sky grew menacing. We were on a narrow, rural road near Arthurs Creek in Victoria.

One of us had lost his sleeping bag off the bike, so we turned around and headed back.

There in the fading light was the sleeping bag, right on the corner, in the gutter.

On the low bank was a tree with quite a lean over the sleeping bag and the wind was blowing that way. It was a scary thing in the approaching darkness, grabbing the sleeping bag and running.

So we got into Arthurs Creek just as the storm hit in full fury with heavy rain and the best thunder and lightening I’ve ever heard and seen.

Now, Arthurs Creek didn’t amount to much in those days. Just a general store, the school and a few houses.

We got the bikes through the school gate and into the bike shelter which was an open fronted, tin shed, just high enough for us to stand, at the back. In the back corner we were out of the weather and had a grand view of the storm. I can still see it now!

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I was amazed to find the bike shelter still there in this Google Earth street view. Got a bit emotional, in fact. You’d have to have been there as a frightened, fifteen year old boy to understand the significance of this tin shed to me.

The trees have grown in the 47 years since that stormy night.

The school yard sloped down to the creek, maybe two or three hundred metres away. There were gnarled, old willow trees along the creek. Beyond the creek, the ground rose more steeply to the ridge top.

Lightening flashed incessantly for a long time and the thunder clapped above us, straight after the lightening flashes. They were sharp crashes!

I can still see the creek with it’s landscape of willows and the hill beyond, lit up in a scary panorama of blue, purple and orange. One flash after the other lighting up the whole environment as well as giving us a great light show in the sky.

Eventually the wind and rain moved around and we were getting wet up to our knees.

Just outside the school gate was a red phone box, so we got our sleeping bags off the bikes and moved into the phone box. There we sat, on the floor, under the shelf, with our feet up against the door and our knees in our chests. We were dry and warm and soon fell asleep. Could have been a lot worse.

At two thirty we awoke to a clear sky under a nearly full moon. The storm had moved on and we’d survived it fairly well. Time to pack the bikes and move on.

We made Wittelsea soon after daylight and had breakfast at the showground.