A TYPHOON IN AUSTRALIA.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1950, 25 May 1880, Page 3

A TYPHOON IN AUSTRALIA.

A correspondent at Mysia of tho "Bendigo Independent," writing on Monday last, gives the following particulars of a typhoon which occurred north-west of Boort last week, and which had been related to him by an eyewitness :—" About noon on Wednesday last a vast bank of clouds extending along the western horizon, and moving rapidly to the south, was observed from the residence of Messrs McLean Brothers, Woolshed Lake. The weather at the time was fine, and the air perfectly calm. Shortly, however, a westerly wind set in, when a storm approaohing at a fearful rate was noticed. The wind increased in violence, and blew from every point of the compass. ' Suddenly,' says my informant, ' we heard a loud roaring sound in the west, and immediately afterwards noticed several large trees falling within a hundred yards of our residence. We hastened to tho kitchen (a detached building) for shelter, the door of which we closed. Everything got quite dark, and the roaring sound was now frightful, the storm being at its height. We heard loud crashing noises all round the house, and we were in fear every moment of being crushed to death. Tbe extreme violence of the wind continued only about a minute, and then we ventured to open the door. The whole space between the kitchen and dwelling-house was thickly Btrewn with large limbs of trees and timber, whioh had been blown there from a distance of 50ft. A large limb from a tree fifty yards distant was carried on to the roof, fortunately without doing much damage except bending it in. A tree standing twenty yards from the house was entirely stripped of its branches, another being quite rooted out of the ground, leaving a large excavation. Three-fourths of the roof was blown quite away, sixteen large sheets of corrugated iron being found 150 yards distant. One large sheet was carried with such force from the roof that it caught in tho limb of a tree 100 yards off. The force of the blow snapped tho limb, the stump of which pierced a hole through the sheet of iron, and there it now remains wrapped round the trunk of the tree like a sheet of paper. Nearly all the sheets of iron were destroyed, being twisted and bent in all directions. The width of tho whirlwind varied from twenty to perhaps sixty or seventy yards, and within these limits it took almost everything before it. Its path can also be easily followed by the fallen timber, which marks its course for nearly two miles."