Kalgoorlie-Boulder community mourns tragic loss of local Hills hoist in freak WA storm

Flying sheds, fallen bins and the untimely demise of a Hills hoist — it was a wild night in the Goldfields yet the region managed to avoid the storm damage felt elsewhere in WA.

Kalgoorlie-Boulder residents woke yesterday morning to overcast skies after the edge of WA’s so-called ‘storm of the decade’ hit overnight on Sunday.

There were tragic scenes on the streets as innocent bins lay strewn along verges right across town, caught in the crossfire of wind gusts maxing out at a touch under 100km/h before midnight.

In yet more devastating news, one family lost their cherished Hills hoist when the neighbour’s patio decided to move into their backyard.

“It will be missed, many swings off there as a child,” Reihanna Orlandi said, paying tribute to the hoist.

“RIP you classic Aussie icon.”

Most damage in Kalgoorlie- Boulder was fairly minor.

The one exception was an errant shed which hitched a ride on a gust of wind into Western Power’s Piccadilly substation, knocking out power to about 15,000 premises until about 10am.

With power out and staff scattered across the State due to coronavirus lockdown, one local Kalgoorlie-based newspaper was left briefly scratching its collective head as the remaining battery life on laptops slowly drained away.

Thankfully power was restored for almost all Kalgoorlie-Boulder residents by 1pm.

City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder chief executive John Walker said the town emerged from the storm almost entirely unscathed.

Mr Walker said other than some reticulation pipes being broken and minor damage to a fence at the Sir Richard Moore Oval, there was little to report.

“We had about 20-25 calls for trees that had been blown over or large branches and all of those were attended to by staff by around 7.30 this morning and the mulchers were following,” he said.

“It’s pretty good these days, the team activates itself almost.

“When we have a storm that blows like that, the teams get up early and go to work and just do what they do so by not much later than 7.30am we had all the jobs covered.”

Kalgoorlie-Boulder State Emergency Services unit manager Felix van Gelderen said as far as he was aware there had only been one call-out overnight and that the damage had been minimal.

Wind speeds remained around 35kmh for the duration of the day, with regular gusts around the 50kmh mark.