At around 12:20pm, just as many were readying for lunch on a surprisingly fair-weather day amidst the recent rains, power suddenly went dark across the towns of Hawks Nest, Tea Gardens, Pindimar, Bundabah, North Arm Cove, Carrington, Tahlee, and even northern Karuah.

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“Just under 5,000 homes and businesses across Hawks Nest, Tea Gardens, Pindimar, Bundabah, North Arm and surrounding areas were affected by an unplanned power outage following a fault being detected in the Essential Energy Tea Gardens Zone Substation,” a spokesperson for Essential Energy told NOTA.

“Safety equipment was operated, isolating the fault to keep customers safe while crews investigated.

“An initial assessment determined wildlife to be the cause of the fault.

“Power was restored to affected customers by 2pm via an alternative supply, while crews completed the necessary repairs.”

Essential Energy reminds the public to stay at least eight metres away from fallen power lines or damaged electricity equipment and report to Essential Energy immediately on 13 20 80.

Perhaps the most jarring lesson learnt last during last week’s outage was the close inter-dependence that all modern systems now rely upon to get anything done.

When the mains power went, so too went all NBN internet, as well as the Small Cell mobile towers scattered around Hawks Nest and Tea Gardens.

Ironically, north Karuah’s notoriously poor mobile signal may have been among the best available during that two-hour power outage.

A handful of clubs were able to kick in their back-up generators, such as at the Tea Gardens Country Club, however, many other commercial premises, including supermarkets, were forced to close their doors to the public in order to conserve power and turn the lights off to keep the refrigerators running.

By Thomas O’KEEFE