A Tropical right of passage

January 2024

In the 1950s, Mum was a nostalgic North Queenslander living on a farm in the cold country of New South Wales. Sometimes, her parents wrote from Bowen with stories of cyclones. Grandma sheltered under a kitchen table as a nameless storm unroofed their house in 1958 or `59. Mum used to listen out for cyclones on ABC radio and liked to share news with fellow Queenslanders — i.e. occupants of cars with Queensland plates.

Dad’s death in 1960 left her with loads of new jobs, three bewildered sons and 2000 ever-vulnerable sheep. In 1965, she complained politely to the Bureau of Meteorology when an unpredicted cold snap killed 113 just-shorn Merinos. In our family lore, her graphic letter prompted BOM’s issuing of sheep-weather alerts.

In 1996, I left the cold country for Tropical Queensland expecting to sometime experience the rite of passage of my first cyclone. It happened at Easter, 1997, when freewheeling Justin II showered, scrubbed and scoured Cairns, Innisfail and surrounding banana and pawpaw crops. First named a fortnight earlier, Justin I had expired over the Coral Sea before rebirth as Justin II. I sat it out in Innisfail with a motel of fascinated tourists. For hours, the rush of wind and rain was too loud for talk. A traveller told me it reminded him of a storm he’d survived on a North Sea oil rig.

As I write, January, 2024, a tropical low is swirling east over the Coral Sea. Naming cyclones is more orderly now than in 1894 when Clement Wragge first recorded them with Greek alphabet letters. BOM has prepared lists of alternating male and female names to last through decades of predicted Global Warming-era storms. The most recent, Jasper,

caused an estimated $A1 billion damage in the Far North last month.

The bureau’s apparent surprise at the flooding rain that lasted days in Jasper’s wake has revived angst over its closure of weather offices in Cairns and Townsville. Federal Emergency Services Minister Murray Watt has ordered a review of severe weather-warning procedures, but says BOM has 20 North Queensland staff, and that the Brisbane weather office has for years adequately handled severe weather forecasting.

 In 1914, similar misgivings over the 1000 miles from Brisbane to the North prompted Townsville’s council to negotiate with Wragge for a Wet Season forecasting service. Their talks broke down, but in 1921, the bureau opened a cyclone-warning station on Willis Island, 280 miles east of Cairns, still going strong today.