Antarctic beech trees 2000 years old grow in the Gold Coast hinterland, living through millennia in lush rainforests more than 1000 metres above sea level.
From the ruins of the former heritage-listed Binna Burra Lodge in the subtropical forests where the ancient trees grow, one can stand on a ridge and gaze down at a distant row of high-rises on the Surfers Paradise skyline. It’s just under an hour’s drive away but inhabiting a different geological era.
Binna Burra chair Steve Noakes says climate change is the greatest threat to the cherished eco retreat.Credit: Justin McManus
The Gondwana forests of south-east Queensland are a world heritage-listed treasure, but they were off-limits this week. The region’s national parks were closed after ex-tropical cyclone Alfred dumped more than 1100 millimetres of rain on the mountains and fierce wind gusts tore down trees and power lines, threatening the forest-dwelling communities that live there, and leaving them isolated and without power for several days.
After bunkering down through the storm, hinterland resident Steve Noakes returned to Binna Burra, the volunteer-run Lamington National Park eco retreat that he chairs, on Wednesday to find significant storm damage. Awnings were torn off the retreat’s tiny wild houses and water damaged its safari tents.
It’s not the first time in recent history that extreme weather has threatened the retreat. Most of it was destroyed in a September 2019 bushfire that burnt one-third of the region’s Gondwana forests and kicked off Australia’s catastrophic Black Summer fire season of 2019-20.
The retreat, including the heritage-listed lodge, is being rebuilt. Noakes estimates the tropical storm cost the social enterprise at least $600,000 and set back its reconstruction by two years.
ADF personnel clear the road to Lamington National Park after ex-tropical cyclone Alfred hit.Credit: Steve Noakes
Binna Burra is no ordinary eco haven. It was founded 90 years ago by a band of citizen environmentalists who pooled resources and bought land in a campaign to save the rainforest at a time when it was under increasing pressure to be developed.
These days, climate change is the greatest threat to the region’s natural assets, Noakes says. Binna Burra has closed just four times in its long history, all during his 10-year watch as chairperson.
“Sadly, we are well practised in recovery,” he says.
“It’s been more intense in the last decade, quite frankly. There’s no doubt you’ve got climate change issues impacting on us in terms of the frequency and the intensity of the weather, whether it’s a bushfire or lightning storm, and now the first cyclone in 50 years to hit this part of Queensland.”
Antarctic beech trees and tropical cyclones don’t often meet, but as Queensland mops up and moves on in Alfred’s aftermath, experts predict the region will face more extreme weather in a warming world, and warn that its residents are unprepared for living in a more volatile climate.
Alfred hit the Queensland coast with varying levels of intensity. When it reached the cluster of islands off Brisbane’s east coast as a category one cyclone it lost force, sparing Queensland’s capital the full weight of its weather.
Gold Coast’s beaches suffered heavy erosion when Alfred reached shore.Credit: Justin McManus
But Gold Coast, Queensland’s second-largest city, was more exposed to the fierce winds and waves as Alfred approached, even though the cyclone was downgraded to a tropical low when it reached the mainland further north.
Eighty per cent of the city’s golden beaches were washed away by heavy swells. Tens of thousands of properties lost power for days, trees fell onto roads and homes, low-lying areas were flooded and traffic lights malfunctioned on major roads.
Gold Coast resident Dr Johanna Nalau, an expert in climate adaptation with Griffith University’s School of Environment and Science, says there is a popular view that south-east Queensland dodged catastrophe with ex-tropical cyclone Alfred. Nobody died and rivers peaked at moderate flood levels.
Climate adaptation expert Johanna Nalau says south-east Queensland isn’t prepared for extreme weather.Credit: Justin McManus
Already, the region’s network of beachfront streets and dining arcades are humming with tourists, even as beaches remain closed and swimming in the sea is banned.
But Nalau says crucial questions about how the heavily populated region would cope with a cyclone remain untested, in a time when some climate models indicate cyclone activity is tracking further south along Australia’s east coast as oceans warm, and that cyclones are becoming less frequent but stronger.
Nalau believes south-east Queensland is not ready for a looming future in which cyclones appear more often. Warning signs such as panic buying in stores, supply chain disruptions and the breakdown of the electricity grid indicate neither the built environment nor its inhabitants are adequately equipped.
Research published by academic publisher Science Direct in 2022 found that cities in subtropical Queensland and northern NSW would experience more extreme storms and were highly vulnerable to cyclones because they are not built to withstand them.
The paper states: “Cities along the subtropical eastern Australian coast – especially those in the sub-region of Queensland-NSW at the southern limits of the south-west Pacific basin – are particularly vulnerable to even moderate tropical cyclones given lower building code wind load standards in relation to the northern parts of Australia. Tropical cyclone intensity and damage potential of these storms are predicted to increase significantly by the end of the century.”
Alfred was the first cyclone to hit the region since 1974. There is precious little lived experience of a cyclone among those who now call the region home, Nalau says.
Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has promised to replenish the city’s eroded beaches within weeks.Credit: Justin McManus
“If we think about places like Cairns or Darwin, where they actually have had and are having more cyclones, the communities there mostly know what to do and the building code is cyclone standard. We don’t have that here.”
Tom Tate, the Gold Coast’s Liberal-aligned mayor, says he accepts that extreme weather will place an increasing economic burden on the city, even as he makes an uncosted promise to replenish the city’s beaches before the Easter break.
“Absolutely. That’s why we spend so much money in our waterways. We spend so much money on our beach and sand dunes. We spend so much money on our town plan to make sure that the revetment walls in the canals are updated,” he says. “It won’t stop, the costs will grow, but you know one thing about our city, we have lived within our means.”
Nalau, a lead author on climate adaptation with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says Alfred’s aftermath presents a window of opportunity to reduce the Gold Coast region’s vulnerability to cyclonic weather.
“Now is a good time to start thinking about that because there is a lot of effort and focus on recovery, on getting supply chains back, on people whose houses had severe impacts, some areas that are still flooded,” she says. “So while the area is still recovering we need to think about what could be done better.”
Sarah Bruhn (right) and her family were without power and trapped in their town for more than a week.Credit: Justin McManus
These are not academic questions for single mother Sarah Bruhn, who spent eight days huddled with five others in a leaky house with no power, having cold showers and cooking over a fire.
Bruhn and her children live in a ramshackle house in the hinterland town of Springbrook, which copped 1146 millimetres of rain during the storm, the heaviest downpour of any place in Alfred’s path.
“It was quite severe, the wind in particular. I don’t know how many mills of rain we got in one night, but it was getting through every hole in the roof, and we were putting buckets everywhere,” Bruhn says.
The family woke to discover a tree had fallen across their driveway, trapping them in their property. It was a situation common across Springbrook, which was isolated for several days when trees fell onto the mountain roads that wind up to the township.
Electricity outages are a fact of life in Springbrook, and most residents own generators, but Bruhn moved to the town just four months ago and doesn’t own one. She and her children spent their evenings in the dim light of their fire, “like little cave people”, eating a dwindling food supply.
“We are down to rice and beans,” Bruhn says.
Springbrook resident Scott Miller surveys the storm damage to his home.Credit: Justin McManus
A few streets away, Scott Miller returned home from evacuating to Brisbane, and found a fallen tree limb had speared through the roof of his house.
It was the first time he had evacuated his home due to extreme weather in 10 years living in Springbrook.
“You can’t have a rainforest without the rain, but this is a bit different. A cyclone is special,” he says.
Springbrook endured more than a week without electricity, but most Gold Coast properties were reconnected more quickly.
Christine Luke and Rodney Gibbons confronted Alfred head on, seeing out the storm on board a yacht that was moored in a Gold Coast marina. The pair operate a charter boat business and spend many days at sea. They watched floodwater inundate the marina car park as it rained, but never felt any sense of danger.
Rodney Gibbons and Christine Luke inspect the damage along the Gold Coast foreshore.Credit: Justin McManus
For them Alfred, was something of a damp squib.
“They predicted a cyclone, but it was just a storm,” Gibbons says. “There was a lot of swell. Nothing really got destroyed other than a lot of trees and sand. It’s become more of a spectacle than a disaster.”
Alfred demonstrated how extreme weather affects people unevenly, leading some people to complain that authorities overcooked the warnings and restrictions.
Wayne McCrae, the owner of a bakery in upmarket Main Beach, resented having to close his shop for one day at the height of the storm.
“Everyone was closed and they didn’t need to because here in Main Beach is protected by the high-rises,” he said.
But Nalau argues it would be dangerous to conclude that warnings and restrictions went too far, simply because the cyclone lost intensity before reaching land.
“The danger is that we treat this as a kind of one-off and say, ‘Oh, that didn’t really happen’,” she says. “We haven’t dealt with these kinds of storms for 50 years.”
If the climate modelling proves correct, there will be a significantly shorter gap before the region deals with the next one.
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