Shopkeepers told me stories about not being able to close the glass doors with three people pushing in effort; flying debris crashing through a shopfront window; a roof collapsing on workers inside; another roof from the local hall flying off and landing in the neighbouring property; and trees crashing down onto school buildings.

I was in Albury and Wagga Wagga doing some Parliament Committee work at the time of the event. The pictures coming through were incredible; mess and carnage everywhere.

It was hard to imagine what it must have been like, on the ground, at that time. I say that, having had my own experience of an Armageddon-type moment, having been stuck overnight in King Street, Newcastle, during the Pasha Bulker storm of 2007.

I drove up to Kurri Kurri from Sydney the next day. I could not believe my eyes. The streets were clean, yards and properties had been almost completely tidied and quite frankly if I hadn’t seen the images myself the previous day, I would have found it hard to believe that there had been any storm at all. Had I come to the right place?

Of course, it was no fluke or stroke of luck that so much work had already been done.

Cessnock Council, our State Emergency Services and a host of volunteers and others had all been very hard at it, making sense on the insanity.  It was an incredible effort and a tribute to the groups that plan and get ready for events like this.

They are becoming experts as these storm events seem to be increasing in frequency.  And of course in recognising the expertise of these groups, I wonder to myself what would the local MP role be in an instance like this – and I answer myself with “stay out of the way!”.

Thank you, well done, congratulations and of course, ‘stay safe’ is my message to all of those involved in any accident or event similar to the Kurri Kurri weather just two weeks ago.

I had some feedback on my phone troubles mentioned my last column and dealing with my provider. Most feedback was in the “that happened to me too” category.

So just a brief update, now that it is all so ridiculous that it is funny.

To their credit, they have called me back on several occasions to try to resolve the problem.  On one occasion I was told that I didn’t have a payment history – which shocked the pants off of me, and I wondered where all of that money that I had spent had been going.

And then I tried to visit one of their stores, their outlets, their shopfronts only to be told that I had to wait 45 minutes to see someone.

“But I am a customer,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be set up and ready to serve customers? Isn’t that what a shop does?”

I didn’t have the 45 minutes spare, so I left the store and look forward to my next follow-up phone call to resolve what I wrongly assumed to be a basic inquiry about my bill history.

If I had to add up both their time and my time, and try to put a wage value against it, I would suppose that we would now be at $800-plus in wages, time energy and effort. Progress!