Heart of the nation: Whirly-wind twister in Ceduna grows to a monster

“Can I walk into it, Dad?” asked seven-year-old Cohen Wright when this giant twister appeared. Guess what his father said...

TWAM 2 May 2015

The first thing seven-year-old Cohen Wright said when the giant twister appeared was, “Can I walk into it, Dad?” The second thing he said was, “Will I get sucked up into the sky?”

His father, Craig, laughed and shook his head. “I wouldn’t walk into it,” he advised, “but you can walk towards it if you like.”

They were burning off a paddock on the family farm — a 7500ha grain and sheep property outside Ceduna — at the time. Craig was yakking to his old friend, photographer Andrew Brooks, who’d come out from town for the day to take some landscape shots. “And this whirly-wind started right in front of us,” Craig recounts. “Very quickly it got bigger and bigger and Andrew scrambled for his camera. We were like, ‘Oh my god, look at this thing!’ It was roaring like a train, going right up into the clouds.”

Craig, 40, is third generation on this farm. He’s had a good run for the past six years, but the eight-month dry spell that broke only a fortnight ago hints at how this marginal land can turn around and bite you. Andrew knows that only too well: he was Craig’s next-door neighbour growing up, but drought and high interest rates bankrupted his family in 1992, and the bank sold their farm. “Natural selection,” Andrew laughs philosophically.

There’s a bit of Craig that envies his friend’s freedom. “People ask, ‘What do you do on your days off?’ and I say, ‘What days off?’” Still, he relishes the free rein that his three kids enjoy in the wide open spaces. Cohen already drives the ute, which sounds bonkers but actually makes good sense. (“If I ever had an accident, he’d know how to drive for help.”) And despite the fearsome look of this twister, it wasn’t actually dangerous for his boy. “I’ve walked into plenty of them,” Craig says. “It’s not like in The Wizard of Oz. You just get your hat blown off and a faceful of dirt.”