Liam Mac Court was awoken around 6am on Monday by a phone call that every boat owner dreads.
Red Cloud, his 30-foot Fastback catamaran named after the indomitable Lakota warrior chief, had been ripped from its mooring in the Pumicestone Passage and driven into the concrete embankments on the lee side of Bribie Island.
So, as many of the rest of the islanders prepared to defend their homes from a tropical cyclone menacing the coastal community just north of Brisbane – along with large swathes of south-east Queensland – Mac Court grabbed the crutches he’s been hobbling on since a recent bike accident, called his son Luke, and set out to try to secure his catamaran.
He found Red Cloud near the bridge connecting the sand island to the mainland beside White Bird, another unmoored boat – and chuckled at the cadence of names.
A former Baptist pastor who still carries Swords, Dublin, in his accent, Mac Court – lover of words and people – quotes William Butler Yeats as he talks of the “terrible beauty” inside the latter, even as the wind whips the normally becalmed passage into a grey churn of white caps.
And what of the looming storm, does it too contain a terrible beauty?
“Oh it’s magnificent!” Mac Court says with gusto in his Irish lilt. “The forces at work! What can one man on crutches do, except enjoy and admire it all?
“And the people! I’ve had hugs, I’ve had kisses, I’ve had people bring me coffees”.
People have also brought in 14 heavy tyres that are tied to the side of the boat to try to limit hull damage.
As he speaks, Luke leaps on and off Red Cloud in an effort to temporarily secure the catamaran, and a council backhoe parts the onlookers. The plan is to dig in a 1.5 tonne concrete block to which to tether the rogue boats with chains and hope they can ride out what is set to be a wild few days of weather.
“I’m praying it will all go well,” Mac Court says.
Cyclone Alfred is tracking towards the south-east Queensland coast and could make landfall on Thursday, and surging tides are already reported to be gushing right over narrower and uninhabited parts of the low-lying island.
Mac Court, though, is not at all concerned about his own wellbeing, and philosophical about that of the boat.
“It’s only fibreglass,” he says.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology’s cyclone forecast, published on Monday evening, the storm was due to grow to category two on Tuesday, slow and then make a sharp right turn towards the south-east Queensland coast. It was expected to maintain intensity as a category two and make landfall between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast late on Thursday or Friday morning. Communities from Sandy Cape south to Grafton, including Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Byron Bay, were in the watch zone.
While Mac Court remains sanguine, others on Bribie Island are far more worried for their own safety – some are preparing to evacuate.
Up the road, towards the surf side of the island, at the local State Emergency Service, people queue to collect sandbags with which to defend homes.
Jill Sanders is filling the boot of her hatchback with bags to line against her front door and the ranch sliding doors at the back of her duplex home.
She has lived at Banksia Beach for 24 years and this is a first – she says she never expected to have to hunker down against the threat of a cyclone.
“But you know, things change so you’ve just got to go with the flow,” she says serenely.
Sanders has become accustomed to painful change in recent years – her husband died in 2022.
“So this is the first thing that I’ll have to cope with by myself,” she says.
“That’s why I am lugging these by myself.”
After filling her boot Sanders plans to head home and run the bath – as an emergency supply of water. Then bring in outdoor furniture and pull down hanging plants.
“I have torches and candles, all of that stuff,” she says. “I should be fine. I’ve got good neighbours.”
As she loads, Tanya Rivera and Kiana Kilford wait patiently for council trucks to bring more sand so they can take their fill.
“Sandbags are gonna be a while!,” yells a lean man in a singlet that reveals his tattooed arms. “Council’s dropping them off.”
The pair can wait, though, Rivera says. This is one of the last steps they have to take to prepare.
“Yesterday the whole family started blowing up my family chat on Facebook, sending so many articles, news reports,” the 29-year-old says. “That’s when I realised the severity of the cyclone.
“Then, last night, I couldn’t sleep much ‘cause it was so windy, we could just hear the door slamming, so we figured it was going to be serious and we had to prepare.”
Rivera and Kilford, who run a production company, packed down outdoor furniture and fishing gear into the shed and stocked up on cans of tuna, beans, toilet paper and muesli bars – they had to buy small children’s bottles of water as that was in such short supply.
Other than collecting sandbags, the last remaining step for them to prepare for Alfred’s possible arrival was to pack bags in case they are forced to flee, Rivera says.
“Food, toiletries, emergency kits, torches, medication and, of course, some food for the pets,” she says.
“I’m a little bit nervous and if we have to evacuate … that’s a scary thing”.
Others have different priorities when stocking up on essentials.
A pair of retirees from Tasmania who have spent the last five months housesitting a home on a Bribie canal emerge from a supermarket whose shelves are being stripped of still and mineral water, bread, toilet paper, long-life milk and canned spaghetti.
They don’t want to share their names but are happy to divulge their shopping list.
“Grog, toilet paper, that’s the main things I suppose,” she says.
“Oh and veggies. And dog food.”
She is worried the garden will ‘get a bit stuffed up” as the pair have kept it in good nick and the owners are due home in a few weeks, but feel well prepared to last Alfred out.
“We’ve got brandy, champagne for when it’s over, and a couple of bottles of wine to last us until then”.
