Cyclone Niran wipes out far north Queensland banana crops

Banana crops in Queensland have been decimated after gale-force winds toppled plants, despite the storm not having made landfall.

Banana farmer Bill Sinton, from Martyville, south of Innisfail in Queensland, lost about 90 per cent of his trees to gale-force winds. Picture: Arun Singh Mann

Banana crops along the far north Queensland coast have been decimated after gale-force winds from Tropical Cyclone Niran toppled plants, despite the storm not having made landfall.

Growers around Innisfail, particularly at Boogan and Wangan, have a reported a total loss of their crop after winds of more than 120km/h and heavy rain from the now category-2 storm lashed the coast on Monday.

While it is too early to estimate the overall damage to this year’s crops, Australian Banana Growers Council chair Stephen Lowe said it was another blow to growers who had already been doing it tough. “As growers, we know that we are at the mercy of mother nat­ure (but) to suffer a succession of knocks is hard to bounce back from,” he said on Tuesday.

“It’s another bitter blow to growers who have suffered enormously with consecutive years of low prices and more recently critical worker shortages due to COVID-19.

“I know there were a lot of growers out there who were extremely distressed even before yesterday’s weather event and I would imagine this has only compounded their hardship.”

 

Many crops within the Cassowary Coast region have been ­affected, with crop losses from 20 to 100 per cent reported from Fishery Falls to Cowley, Mission Beach. Growers in parts of El Arish and inland across to Walk­amin and the Atherton Tablelands have also had crops damaged.

Banana prices are not expected to be affected.

State Minister for Agricultural Industry Development Mark Furner said damage assessments for government financial assistance would take place once conditions had settled.

Mass road closures and traffic light outages have been recorded across Far North Queensland following heavy wind from Cyclone Niran. Picture: Qld Traffic

Tropical Cyclone Niran intensified into a category-2 system on Tuesday afternoon but the severe weather seen earlier in the week dissipated as the system moved away from the coast.

The slow-moving system has hovered over the Coral Sea for several days and is expected to become a severe category-3 system on Thursday before moving out to sea towards New Caledonia.

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Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Shane Kennedy said the cyclone could drift closer to the coast and again create damaging wind gusts, heavy rainfall of about 200mm and abnormally high tides along the coast

“There is still a potential for it to drift a bit further west over the next day or two, which presents the main danger to that north tropical coast area,” he said.

“The current forecast has the cyclone remaining offshore. At this stage, there is reasonable confidence it will keep most of the worst impacts away but there is still certainly going to be danger.

“We are likely not going to be able to breathe a sigh of relief until late Thursday into Friday until it properly goes away.”

The BOM had a severe weather warning in place from Cape Flattery to Mission Beach, north of Cardwell, for gale-force winds, heavy rain and high tides on Tuesday evening.