Sydney blackout briefly restores female prime minister to power

For a few hours, Australia’s first female prime minister Julia Gillard was returned to power – at least on the national broadcaster ABC’s news website, which was affected by a blackout.

On Wednesday morning, emergency service workers were busy clearing fallen trees after a flash storm raced across the northern part of the city the day before.

The episode left more than 40,000 homes in Sydney without power, according to electricity provider, Ausgrid.

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The storm roared through the city with winds of up to 90 kilometres per hour before blowing out to sea.

At ABC, reporters and radio hosts worked with minimal light as the power issues continued, with presenter Joe O’Brien tweeting a picture of the darkened office with the comment “No it’s not mood lighting”.

The outage also caused the broadcaster’s popular national news website to crash, with stories from 2011 showing on the homepage for some users.

Julia Gillard was back on the news site as prime minister despite being toppled from the post in 2013.

The site was fixed by lunchtime, but thousands of people may have to spend a second night in darkness as workers continue to restore downed electricity wires, Ausgrid spokesman Jonathon Hall said.

(dpa/NAN)