DAMIAN Postregna kicked a fishing lure embedded in the grass of his Lake Mulwala home.
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He was looking for the rest of them — he kept them in a bucket somewhere in the shed.
But behind him was the rubble of his beloved brick, waterfront home.
There was no roof and no walls to speak of.
A water tank in the front yard wasn’t his. He didn’t know where it had come from, either.
He pointed to a tree, about 200 metres across the inlet and the corrugated iron in its limbs and at the base of the tree.
“I think that’s my roof,” he said.
Mr Postregna built on the foreshore in 1998, next to the Denison County Caravan park that was also devastated by Thursday night’s tornado.
The former poultry farmer doesn’t know whether he has the strength to rebuild.
“We had floor-to-ceiling windows on to the lake but the entire back wall is gone,” he said.
“I don’t think there is anything they can do but knock it over.
“We love this place. Of a morning we look out and there are the black swans, ducks — it is our piece of heaven.”
“We have nine grandchildren, they have all grown up knowing this as their holiday home.”
Mr Postregna said the saving grace was that he and his wife were out when the tornado struck.
“They reckon it only lasted six minutes,” he said.
“Normally we go out on Friday nights but for some reason, my wife wanted to go out last night.
“No one could have survived that, there was nowhere left to hide.”