Port Douglas homeless men plan to shelter in beach public toilets during Cat 2

Homeless men at Four Mile Beach were planning to camp out in public toilets on the beach if their tents could not withstand the storm.

Lardy Party is about to experience his first cyclone.

Homeless men at Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas were planning to camp out in public toilets on the beach if their tents could not withstand the storm.

Mick Bird, 59, remained calm as Tropical Cyclone Jasper approached Four Mile Beach; he has grown accustomed to life outdoors.

He said he was made homeless a year ago after someone where he was living attacked him with a wide blade.

He still has deep chunks of skin missing around his knee and also on his fingers.

But he has come to terms with living outdoors and on the beach.

Cyclones, he said, are all part of the territory.

“I was living in Darwin during Cyclone Tracy,” he said.

“I was 9, and I remember pulling myself out of the rubble. There were many soldiers who had just returned from Vietnam - and they said Cyclone Tracy was worse than the war.

The pair say they would consider camping out in public toilets during the storm.

“I’ve lived through maybe about 10 cyclones since then. So I know what they are usually like. I’m not worried.”

Mr Bird said he would enter the nearby public toilets if the storm was too severe to stay in a tent.

His friend Richard John Thomas, 42, goes by the name Lardy Party because his birth name “is not a black fella name”.

Mr Thomas is originally from Bairnsdale in eastern Victoria and for the last four years he said he has been travelling around Australia on “a spiritual healing journey”.

Lardy normally stays in a tent out in Mossman under a bridge.

“Mossman police said don’t stay here, you’ll be swept out. They said to go to Four Mile. So I thought I’d come here and see Birdy. We have nowhere else to go; we just have to live through it,” he said.

Mick Bird has been homeless since December last year.

“Coming from Victoria, I really didn’t know what to expect; that’s why I came here, so I could ask Birdy.

“I’m not going to camp under the bridge, but I do know I’d rather a cyclone than a Victorian bushfire.”

Lardy said his life is idyllic. Mr Bird said being homeless was “really not that bad”.

Neither was concerned with camping out in a toilet block if the storm makes tent life impossible.

Douglas Shire Council have announced they will not be opening the evacuation shelter this evening as it is not expected that the cyclone will still coincide with king tides.

Cairns Post also contacted the Homeless Hotline who said they were unaware of any places were the homeless could seek shelter during tonight’s cyclone.

So what then if the toilet block floods?

“We will head up to higher ground,” Lardy said.

Originally published as Port Douglas homeless men plan to shelter in beach public toilets during Cat 2