Mist and malice: disaster-weary residents line up again

It was impossible to look at the ocean and not think – this is getting nasty. This is turning dangerous. Cyclone Alfred could be lethal.

People at the break wall at Mooloolaba Spit on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast see the wild ocean whipped up by Cyclone Alfred. Picture Lachie Millard

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Suddenly it was all mist and ­malice. As Cyclone Alfred took its precious time on Thursday inching towards southeast Queensland and the NSW Northern Rivers, it still served as entree a huge, roiling surf that battered the coastline.

This relentless whitewash obliterated many of Byron’s fabled beaches, vanished precious sandy aprons over at Millionaire’s Row at Wategos and Belongil, and draped a veil of sea mist across the coastline from the Queensland-NSW border down to Yamba.

Gone were the sunny intervals and perfect barrels of the past 48 hours, turning the region into a pop-up international surf mecca, (There were rumours that boardriders were even jetting in from overseas to take advantage of ­Alfred’s largesse).

Gone too were the rubberneckers exhilarated by the shock of the new. Monster waves and tides. Storm as spectacle.

Instead, it was impossible to look at the ocean and not think – this is getting nasty. This is turning dangerous. This could be lethal.

On Thursday, Alfred started baring its teeth, despite its apparent amble towards land.

Weather reports revealed the cyclone had gone from looming menace to an indolent flaneur. Alfred had pulled on the handbrake. Alfred had slowed to a crawl. All this while millions of people remained caught in its tease show – it was due early Friday morning, then Friday night, now Saturday morning.

Alfred’s idiosyncrasies subsequently opened a vacuum for the population in its path. And into that vacuum poured anxiety and trepidation and speculation. Into that vacuum came the chatter of people on the edge, and all day the Northern Rivers was nothing if not alive with chatter.

“Can someone please tell me where to go to for shelter from the cyclone I’m scared …,” one person posted on a Facebook community board. And: “Taping up windows. Good or bad idea?” One person asked where might be the safest place to sleep in their car during the cyclone. Another reported that Ballina’s famous Big Prawn effigy seemed to have “lost an ­antenna” in the high winds.

Alfred’s vacuum also gave rise to hope. Is that it? Has the cyclone petered out? Will it make landfall? Might it change ­direction again and head back out to sea? Time, without question, can be the enemy in the quiet before a storm.

NSW Premier Chris Minns holds a press conference on Tropical Cyclone Alfred. in Lismore on Thursday. Picture: David Freund

NSW Premier Chris Minns popped up in Lismore earlier in the day to provide support for the volunteer SES troops, the already disaster-battered folk of that river town, and the residents of the entire Northern Rivers region. “The town is ready for the next 72 hours but you wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy,” Minns said.

In his neatly ironed, fawn-­coloured Polo shirt, Minns, through no fault of his own, seemed from another planet. And he was. He was from a place with normal early autumn weather where people went about their work and went home or met friends for dinner or sat in the stands and cheered their favourite sporting team.

That magical land we once knew, beyond the tendrils of ­Alfred, beyond the unquantifiable punishment it is set to deliver.

As one newspaper reported about the Northern Rivers locals and their weariness of natural disasters: “Will we risk it again?” one local asked. “Will we stay here and gamble everything we own, even our lives, to make a living?”

A fair question. One that might have been directed at a sympathetic Premier Minns.

However, that was reported in the Brisbane Courier-Mail on March 8, 1954, exactly 71 years ago on Saturday.

And here we are again. A different generation. A different impending disaster. The same questions. We forget. We remember. We forget again. We die out. We regenerate. Just like cyclones.

By late On Thursday Alfred firmly erased the chatter and any remote hopes of a reprieve.

Heavy rain fist-thumped the region. Fierce winds strafed the coastline and hinterland.

Alfred may have been enjoying a slow waltz. But its style was crisp, deliberate and with frightening purpose. You felt in your bones one inescapable truth. Nature was in charge. And Alfred, a name quaint enough for anyone’s grandfather, was boss.