It was a dark and stormy night....

I would like to recognise the efforts of a man who did a really great thing last night and will have received no acknowledgement. It was a little thing, but it made my life and the lives of about a hundred other people a hell of a lot easier on a cold, miserable, stormy night.

On the way home last night it was raining incredibly heavily – and also a little sideways. The run from my office to my car – about 10 or 15 metres – had me completely soaked through. Winds were up to about 100km/h and it was difficult to see the road ahead of you. Traffic crawled in the kind of way that would usually be annoying, but was completely fine given the terrible conditions.

Not far from work, there is a narrow section of road that is bordered all the way along by big gum trees. As I came up to this section of road, traffic came to a halt. A tree had fallen down across the road and was blocking traffic. Minor inconvenience normally, but it was raining so hard that the prospect of a bunch of people having to get out of their cars and move it wasn’t ideal and it was too muddy and dark to try to turn around and find another way home.

Enter fork-lift man.

He drove out of a nearby factory into the full rain and proceeded to push the tree out of everyone’s way. He would have been soaked to the bone in a matter of seconds. It would have been a wet, miserable job . He could have been hit by more falling tree branches, or by some impatient driver - but he did it anyway.

What a champ! He made my night. Well, at least until I got home and found that the power lines were down outside my house and the lounge room window had leaked water all over the carpet. But right up until then, he made my night! Thanks Fork-Lift man!