In the anxiety of Thursday night as Tropical Cyclone Alfred neared Murwillumbah, a surprising number of people turned up the music and danced. You could hear it coming from houses across the northern New South Wales town. “It helped,” says Connor Hartog. On Friday evening, the wind rose to a hiss and a roar; soon it will be a shriek.
Trees bend down, the ground sodden with rain and the town deserted. Sirens wail in the distance. Electricity and phone reception are going in and out at a time when communication is survival. Water is restricted.
The only places still open on Friday morning, the bakery and the Courthouse hotel, were doing brisk business. The hopeful rows of sandbags outside the shops seem woefully inadequate for what is to come. No one is sleeping. All we can do now is wait for the worst, the malevolent beast.
“I have never known a weather event like this,” says Margot Anthony. And at 94, Anthony has seen plenty of the Northern Rivers’ notorious wild weather. “I have seen many a flood, but never a slow motion, slow strangulation like this.”
The supermarkets and shops are closed; there can be no more panic buying. Just as well. “It has been insane,” says a Coles employee. “Earlier in the week, the line for the self-service checkout went from aisle one to aisle 10. Some people were just really greedy. One person got 10 of those 24 packs of water.”
Mandy Nolan, the Greens candidate for Richmond, says, “there is an amazing community spirit but a real sense of sadness and disbelief that it is happening again so soon. There is nothing more tragic than having to evacuate people who are already in pods, evacuation accommodation.”
The old wooden cottages and farmhouses that seem so romantic and are so sought after are not built to cyclonic standards.
People are being evacuated by the thousands from low lying areas. Many are reluctant to leave. “The anxiety can make it really difficult to make decisions,” says Nolan. “There are a lot of elderly people with health issues who are unable to do the basic things to protect their home. That is when you really need your community to come and give you a hand.”
On Thursday, Nolan went down her street knocking on doors to see if anyone needed help. “And I can tell you that every door I went to needed something.”
Fingal Head was ordered to evacuate by 9pm on Thursday night. Jewellery designer Victoria Spring and her flatmate, artist Heidi Ledwell, decided to stay. “We have a friend staying who is going through chemo and radio so their immune system is compromised. An evacuation center isn’t a great option right now. It is a bit tricky but we are prepared. We are getting really big gusts but we don’t feel scared. We are in a big brick and tile house.”
Siboney Saavedra, a teacher at Mullumbimby high school, lives on top of a hill on the other side of the Tweed river from the Tumbulgam pub. In the 2022 floods, landslides and floods trapped her there for days.
Thursday night, she says, “was intense. [There were] massive winds that registered 90km an hour in Coolangatta. Up here it felt like more. Trees are down along our driveway and our neighbours. The trees are creaking and snapping.”
And then there is the bravado. The village of Uki in the hills beneath Wollumbin Mt Warning were ordered to evacuate by 9pm on Thursday.
But Gary Wall, owner of the Uki Post Office and Bastion Lane Expresso, says, “probably 80 to 90% of occupants are hanging around. They’ve been there for 30 years and have been through the 2017 floods and the 2022 foods. They are hopeful they won’t be completely flooded again.”
Let’s hope they change their minds.
Read more of Guardian Australia’s Tropical Cyclone Alfred coverage:
