From long night into darkest day

The long night of the cyclone arrived early for those of us in Alfred’s path, the growling wind and drumbeat of rain a harbinger of what was to come.

Alister Reid and son Oliver of Ashgrove in Brisbane carry sandbags to help with flood defence. Picture: Annette Dew

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The long night of the cyclone arrived early for those of us in Alfred’s path, the growling wind and drumbeat of rain a harbinger of what was to come.

We’ve done all that can be done to prepare. Taped our windows, filled the bathtub, cleared decks and balconies of anything not nailed down. Passports and those family snaps we didn’t get around to digitising are packed in a go-bag, just in case. There is nothing to do but wait.

The great, the good, the not-so-good – we’re all in this now, listening to the gale build, watching the trees outside shake and bend, wondering whether the scaffolds on the construction site across the street will hold.

A colleague has wrapped the ground floor of his home in plastic sheeting, wary of flooding. We’ve rolled up the mats in the living room and taken down the artwork because those big, bifold windows we installed to catch the Brisbane breezes suddenly don’t seem like such a neat idea.

Should we crack the louvres in the back to equalise the pressure when the cyclone arrives? Are the phones charged? Torches to hand if the power goes? Matches to light the candles? What have we missed?

Honourine Pourbaix of Rosalie near the Brisbane River with her dog Rocket amid the sand bags. Picture: Annette Dew

Some of us have had uncomfortable conversations with our nearest and dearest. Like this one. Jennifer Griffiths is talking to her son, Martin. She lives on Russell Island with her 76-year-old husband, Neil, a retired pool builder; Martin is on the mainland, desperately worried about them.

He wanted the couple to relocate, but now it’s too late; the ferries have stopped running on Moreton Bay. They are where they are, for better or worse.

“This is our home and we just wanted to stay here,” Ms Griffiths, 73, says. “It’s the safest place for us, I think. We’re just going to ride it out and if anything happens we’ll go into the bathroom and see how we go. That’s the plan, anyway.”

They haven’t bothered to crisscross their windows with masking tape. No point when there’s glass everywhere you look in the split-level house, capturing the views across Canaipa Passage. The channel is twinkling with lights from the fleet of small boats sheltering in the lee of North Stradbroke Island. Ms Griffiths wouldn’t trade places with the yachties for all the money in the world when the cyclone arrives.

“We’re starting to feel it now,” she says of the deteriorating conditions. “We had a squall come through … with a lot of wind, heavy rain on the high tide, and a lady near us got a tree through her roof. The power is out in the IGA (store) and the bottom part of the island.”

Jim Chalmers at the Logan metro sports and events centre in southern Brisbane. Picture: Annette Dew

On Moreton Island, Greg Drury, 75, is one of 50 residents at Kooringal who elected to stay, ­despite ­appeals by police. By 5pm, it is nearly dark. Alfred has unleashed winter in March.

“I’m apprehensive,” says Mr Drury, a retired airline executive. He has owned this house for 45 years and lived through what were touted as two once-in-a-century floods. But this is something else.

“It’s very, very remote here,” he says. “You’ve got to drive 35km on sand tracks or the beach to Kooringal. The ferry’s not operating so you can’t get off the island. There’s no emergency services here and there’s not a manned medical centre. There’s the helicopter pad but in this sort of weather if you rang an ambulance, they’re not going to get here.”

Peter Ridout, co-manager of the Whalewatch Ocean Beach Resort at Port Lookout on North Stradbroke Island, says they’ve ­already been “belted” by the winds. “Main Beach copped a battering,” he says.

Alfred is the ultimate leveller. Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers might pull the levers of power by day, but now he’s just another worried husband and dad, hunkered down with Laura and the kids at Daisy Hill, hoping for the best.

He’s been out and about in his electorate on Brisbane’s southern fringe, helping sandbag vulnerable properties. “People are nervous and anxious and stressed,” Dr Chalmers says. “The thing that is hard for our area is it’s always the same places that go under, and it’s often the people who can afford it least copping it.”

Prisoners at Brisbane Correctional Centre at Wacol in the city’s outer west have been locked down since Wednesday and are being served meals in their cells. The ­security measures will stay in place for the duration of the cyclone emergency.

On Brisbane’s southeast coast, Fiona and Mark Lindberg and Aiden and Abbie walk along the Manly esplanade. Picture: Peter Wallis

At bayside Wynnum, the Lindberg family is wargaming what they’ll do if worse comes to worst: retreat to the old rumpus room downstairs. It was built with steel-lined brick before 12-year-old Aiden grabbed it as his bedroom - safe as houses, says dad Mark, 55.

His wife, Fiona, 48, and nine-year-old daughter Abbie are relieved by the latest prediction that the cyclone will cross in daylight Saturday, hopefully missing the high tide that would swell any storm surge from the sea. “It’s ­always scarier in the dark,” Ms Lindberg says.

By now, the denuded supermarkets have closed and Brisbane’s normally busy roads are eerily quiet. The Bureau of Meteorology is issuing hourly updates on the cyclone’s track, which shows the eye will cross the coast north of the CBD, weakened slightly to category 1.

The bad news for Mr Drury is that the cyclone will be at its peak, category 2, packing destructive winds of up to 150km/h, when it passes over Moreton Island. He thinks he should be all right in his sturdy Besser block home, but ­suggests we check in after the dust settles.

“If you’re coming over can you bring two loaves of bread, a pint of milk and a couple of bottles of Scotch?” he says, laughing.

Additional reporting: Michael McKenna