Dubbo arborist Shannon Hart is familiar with cyclones but says he's never seen anything like Saturday's severe storm and the destruction it caused for kilometres.
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He described the aftermath along the Newell Highway between Gilgandra and Eumungerie.
Mr Hart and his Arbortec Tree Service team were returning home from Coonamble.
"We saw the big front building up and just getting intense," he said.
"And as we were getting closer to Gil from Coonamble it was just getting worse, and we thought this is something.
"...We heard over the UHF there's a heap of trees down, and thought 'great, we're not getting home when we want to'.
"We just kept driving, and got out, there were trees for 20km from Gil to Eumungerie but we just stopped and did what we could."
Mr Hart said he had experienced cyclones in Queensland earlier in his career, but Saturday's storm was something else.
"Just dealing with cyclones in Mackay, in my early years of doing arboriculture, and I've seen some crazy stuff and worked through some crazy weather, but I've never seen so many trees come down in that length of space basically," he said.
"Big solid box trees, that have just been torn straight in half, [trees] that are a metre and a half in diameter, torn and just straight across the road.
"It blew us away, the sheer velocity of the wind."
Saturday's storm caused damage to property across the Orana region, including at Nyngan, Nevertire, Warren, Trangie, Narromine, Dubbo and Gilgandra.
It came after a storm in the region on Tuesday, and a storm at Coonamble on Thursday.
"We're going to be struggling to meet customers' needs before Christmas to get stuff done, because we've been cleaning up for the past week in Wellington, with the storm over there on Tuesday and now we're probably going to get more and more calls to assist," Mr Hart said.
"I think every tree bloke in town is already busy and every tradie in town is pretty flat out as it is, and then a storm comes through."
Faye Wheeler
I have been a journalist for more than a decade and in that time I have been keeping Daily Liberal readers up to date about issues affecting them and what's happening in their community. Throughout my career I have covered a range of rounds and most recently I have been focusing on the business round.
I have been a journalist for more than a decade and in that time I have been keeping Daily Liberal readers up to date about issues affecting them and what's happening in their community. Throughout my career I have covered a range of rounds and most recently I have been focusing on the business round.
