Went through a category 5 cyclone in a highset house (basically a house on stone stilts) in rural Far North Queensland. Felt like being in a boat on the ocean with the entire house shaking with every gust. It felt like the house was moving a few cm back on forth on the stilts, and the noise of the gusts of wind combined with the house shaking made it feel like I was being physically pushed by nature itself. The cyclone shutters on the windows were ripped off the they were bolted onto because they were sideon to the wind direction.

The front doors snapped open, and massive branch from a tree came through the roof into the room the family was sitting in. It was one of the loudest sounds I've ever heard, and the branch must have been moving very fast because one second it wasn't in the room, then there was a massive BANG and there was a tree in the room. Luckily it hit a crossbeam in the roof. The crossbeam snapped in half, but the branch didn't go all the way through it, if it had of hit the roof either side of that beam me and my whole family would have been crushed.

We took refuge in the bathroom after the tree came through the roof in the room we were in, and we used the time during the eye of the storm to get to the neighbours house a few hundred metres up the road. There was water was ankle deep in the entire area, and we had to move a whole bunch fallen branches from the driveway so that we could get the car out, which took a fair bit of time, and if there had've been anything blocking the road between our house and the neighbours I doubt we would've been able to get to shelter before the second half of the storm.