With gritted teeth, northern NSW locals await something they’ve never seen

They’re buzzed with adrenaline, sore from filling sandbags, fanging for a coffee, prepared to the gritted teeth. But for residents of the Northern Rivers it’s near impossible to imagine exactly what’s coming.

And other trials of life don’t stop for a storm.

As Cyclone Alfred spun over a hot Coral Sea last week, raging in fits between category 3 and 4, Dee Prichard’s husband Ed stopped eating. Stomach pain had gripped him for a fortnight and doctor visits hadn’t helped, so Prichard took him to the emergency department from their home in Lismore Heights.

Local flash flooding in Lismore as Cyclone Alfred nears the coast.Credit: Nick Moir

“He had emergency surgery on Saturday, and they removed half his large intestine,” Prichard says on Friday from a home buttressed with mattresses against the windows, as they batten down for the cyclone’s long-awaited landfall.

“Because of that situation, I wasn’t so aware of what else was going on. The surgeon was able to come in last Saturday and operate on him. If it had been today, who knows?

“Isn’t it weird that in this potential disaster, there’s still things to be very grateful for?”

Ed is now comfortable and recovering at home after excellent care from the Lismore Base Hospital’s doctors and nurses. Prichard, who moved to Lismore from Bondi during the pandemic, also scooped up her sister and her husband from Cabarita Beach in case it evacuates and brought them home.

The pot plants are inside, the curtains and blinds drawn to stop glass shards flying from smashed windows, the laundry “pimped” as a safe room with a mat, chairs, snacks and backgammon.

Dee Prichard and Ed van Gelderen (inset) and their laundry-turned-safe room in Lismore Heights.Credit: Diane Prichard

Prichard has cooked up a storm while there’s still power: frittata, steak, pasta and meatballs. She feels like she’s in an overlong disaster movie, waiting for the meteor to strike.

She remembers standing in a mock-up tin shed that emulates the sound of Cyclone Tracy on a visit to a museum in Darwin.

“There was this incredible rumbling, corrugated iron ratting, wind noise … it gave you a sense of it.

“They say Alfred will be like a violent thunderstorm, but it lasts six to 12 hours, rather than 15 minutes. It will be frightening. There was a strong chance I might have been on my own if Ed was still in hospital. I really feel for anyone who might be alone.”

AJ Jensen has lived around Lismore since they were nine years old. They’re an LGBTQI social worker and lived through the catastrophic 2022 floods.

Lismore local AJ Jensen (centre) helped people evacuate on Thursday night. Credit: Nick Moir

After driving back from last weekend’s Sydney Mardi Gras, they spent Thursday night getting people out of the low-lying parts of town after the State Emergency Service urged residents to evacuate by 9pm. Some of them, Jensen says, shut down.

“I had a friend, a community member in town on Wednesday night, who just was frozen in his hairdressing salon, not moving. A bunch of us went down and were like, ‘We need to go now, dude’. He went through it last time. He just couldn’t fathom it.”

More rain has already hammered Lismore than expected; 150 millimetres in the 24 hours to 9am Friday. People are saying the levee may not hold. Survivors of 2022 have a Rolodex of perils in mind.

“The risk of infection if you get cut, the risk of breaking a bone, the risk of having a mental health crisis, losing your documents,” Jensen says.

There are fears what’s left from the 2022 floods pose yet more physical dangers. The government bought back hundreds of homes on the floodplains and there are streets of abandoned houses. The decaying structures, some draped in faded flags painted with pink hearts, are surrounded by temporary fencing residents worry will be weaponised by floodwater.

Temporary fencing around homes bought back by the government after the ’22 Lismore floods.Credit: Nick Moir

“That fencing is a debris hazard,” Jensen says. “All of those unsecured buildings and houses are compounding the disaster of it all.

“I don’t think this has been experienced much yet on this continent: the recurring big, big climate disaster. That’s the thing we’re going to have to get used to. And it’s an interesting thing to watch my own nervous system and our collective community trauma kick into gear.

Dangerous coastal conditions are expected to worsen as Alfred edges towards the coast at “walking speed”.Credit: Nick Moir

“In the end, we just don’t know how big it’ll be.”

That’s the story across the Northern Rivers. Alfred is punishing those in its path with a drawn-out crawl, gorging on abnormally hot water off the coast.

The Big Prawn in Ballina, one of its whiskers stripped off by wind, rises above the Bunnings carpark like the folk around town: standing tall but down a feeler. Inside the hardware store it’s a tale of too late. Sandbags? Sold out three days ago. Powerbanks? Forget it. Torches? The wall’s stripped bare. Good luck out there.

Spectators watch wild surf at Byron Bay on Thursday.Credit: Danielle Smith

In Lennox Head, people gathered on the headland under a rattling screw pine tree to watch the destructive waves: the barbarian foot soldiers of the cyclone. These shores are famous for cushioning the tanning bodies of influencers and holidaymakers, but they’re also natural protective barriers between people and ocean storm surges. They’ve been under attack all week.

For days, swashbuckling locals have thrown themselves into the maelstrom at Byron Bay’s Main Beach. Crowds filled up the carpark to watch surfers shoot through barrels with the foam flying. Take the thrills while you’re the one controlling them.

On Friday, the eve of Alfred’s arrival, most surfers and their spectators stayed home. By the evening chainsaws had brought down three of Byron’s famous Norfolk Pines after they hit a dangerous lean, their trunks crashing where onlookers had gathered earlier.

Two of Byron’s famous beachside Norfolk Pines and one on the main street were brought down on Friday ahead of Cyclone Alfred’s arrival.Credit: Angus Dalton

On a street back from the beach, floodwater creeps up below the yellow house Jim Knight has lived in for 67 years. He’s one of the few who remember Cyclone Zoe in 1974 tossing boulders into the carpark and sending ocean waves breaking down Byron’s main street.

Knight reckons there are 15 inches left between the water and his floor. Is he planning to stay? “Yes, at this point. It’s home.”

Since Monday, these towns have drained pools, sandbagged doors, taped windows, torn sods of grass from gutters and picked through bare shelves for final supplies. All that’s left to do is face Alfred’s landfall. But with every sunrise that casts the coast in purgatory yellow light, that final hit seems more delayed.

In this mecca for the modern day-spiritualist, some sat quietly on the grass overlooking the surf on Thursday, hands upturned on their laps within a last, short-lived patch of sunlight.

Push the breath out. Let it in. Hold it.

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