Clive bought his house because of the view. Now he wonders if this is the last time he’ll enjoy it

Pre-cyclonic rains have arrived and squalls of wind are stealing strips of fabric meant for sandbags as anxious Lismore residents prepare for Tropical Cyclone Alfred, the stewing system described by authorities on Wednesday as three natural disasters in one.

“Everyone is scared,” Debbie Grant, a resident of the Northern Rivers for 35 years, says from her balcony. “We’re getting all this information saying ‘it’s going to be big, it’s going to be bad’. But we still don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.”

Debbie Grant and Clive Tressider wait to see what will happen with Cyclone Alfred.Credit: Danielle Smith

More than 120 schools have been closed, flights have been cancelled and evacuation centres established ahead of Alfred making landfall in the early hours of Friday morning.

Most people aren’t expecting a repeat of the devastating 2022 floods, but the cyclone’s arrival at the same time as high tide, expectations of eight-metre waves and predicted winds of 120km/h promise an altogether different kind of beast.

“Cyclones are definitely something different for our community,” says Elly Bird, executive director of Resilient Lismore.

“We don’t think we’re going to get a 2022-level catastrophic event, but we never know with events like this. One thing that we’ve learned in our community is that things can change rapidly.”

Elly Bird, executive director of Resilient Lismore, helps move locations before Cyclone Alfred hits.Credit: Danielle Smith

Bird’s team are in the midst of packing down their base in town and are heading for an emergency operations centre at Southern Cross University.

Squeegees, vacuums, generators, petrol-operated pressure cleaners, gloves, masks and tools are all heading for safer ground for distribution in the cyclone’s wake.

“Previous to 2022, our community would have stayed in their homes because their previous benchmark was that floods only come under the floorboards. But 2022 radically changed that perception.”

Almost three years ago, a wet summer and a freak rain event pushed the Wilsons River height to a record 14.4 metres. Floodwater breached the levee, swallowing houses and rendering thousands of homes uninhabitable. Five people in Lismore were killed.

Clive Tressider, Grant’s partner, moved to their home in Lismore in 1989. He never experienced a flood until 2017, and then 2022. He applied for a buyback and didn’t get it – but he preferred to stay anyway, here with his friends and neighbours. He rang up for insurance a month ago and was quoted $17,000 without flood coverage.

“How can a pensioner afford that?” Grant says. “It’s home. Where are we going to move? There’s no land available that’s at a reasonable price for anybody to move to.”

Over the road, a truck pulls up and dumps another mound of sodden sand into a carpark, which is immediately met by the shovels of locals fortifying their defences.

“We’re just battening down the hatches a little and trying to help out where we can,” says Brendan Fry, who has redirected his energy from rebuilding public toilets destroyed by the 2022 floods nearby to lugging sandbags.

Brendan Fry has worked for the past two years rebuilding Lismore. Credit: Danielle Smith

“Everyone’s jumping in and getting prepared early. That’s the best anyone can do.”

Lismore mayor Steve Krieg, who lives with his family above his locally owned cafe and restaurant, said the effects of Alfred will be long lasting and severe.

“Trying to pack up a business and home – there’s no hope, there’s a lot of anxiety, stress and a fear of the unknown,” Krieg said.

“Businesses have overcapitalised to make properties more flood resilient, some got two mortgages to pay off, staff wages to consider, and the reality is that most of our businesses are week-to-week propositions at the moment, and without even three of four days of business, it puts incredible strain on small business owners.”

Krieg’s three daughters are “beside themselves”, he says.

“They don’t want to live with what they did in 2022 – we were virtually homeless for 10 months, living with friends.”

Meanwhile, at the independent Living School, kids are on deck helping with preparations. The bookshelves can be transformed into transport boxes and the panels of the rooms pop off for post-flood cleaning.

The school was back up and running in three days after the 2022 disaster – a boon to parents dealing with destroyed houses.

John Stewart and students from The Living School Lismore pack away items in preparation for Cyclone Alfred. Credit: Danielle Smith

“We’re pretty adaptable,” says school founder John Stewart. “The intention is to stay open for families. Going back to your house and finding everything demolished after a flood, you don’t want your kids around you, seeing them teary. We had a responsibility to get them out.”

Back at Clive and Debbie’s home, Clive sits on the balcony, overlooking the greenery of the park that convinced him to move here in there first place.

He wonders, he says, if it’s the last time he’ll take in that view.

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