The waiting. The constant checking of media sites. Cross-checking against multiple sources as to not get caught out – again.
I am hardened to the onslaught.
Disillusion was hanging in the air in days leading up to realising that we needed to respond. People were careful to not be alarmist, as to not add tension to tender hearts hoping for the best. But deep down we all know the true threat and we are desperately willing it to spare us this time. We have lived through the worst and we know that wishful thinking isn’t an imaginary force field to safety.
Just two weeks ago the studio I share with four other female artists gathered in Lismore for a flood preparedness meeting. This building was completely submerged in the 2022 climate disaster. The sun has been shining on us all year, the first “proper summer” since the bushfires in 2019, so this meeting felt far from our flood plan needing to be implemented. As a result of more than half of us losing our homes in 2022, most of us now living out of town on roads that get cut off in big rains, our approach was to act early. Our hard-earned wisdom and new modular way of existing in the floodplain means that we are always one foot out the door, ready to pack up for higher ground.
Mixed feelings bounced around town about those preparing early while the sun was still shining and the river hadn’t yet swelled. Some thought it premature – “Why would I pack up? The river doesn’t have any water in it yet” – while others were not prepared to take the risk of the Wilsons River’s unpredictable temperament. It is hard to know which thinking is rational when the collective PTSD still swells among us, residing just beneath the surface.
Life in one of Australia’s most flood-prone cities has a very specific flavour. Perhaps we can we now call it disaster culture? The little nuances adapted in response to surviving in this environment. In the houses that have been re-built you will find light switches above the highest tide line, plaster board replaced with villaboard, hooks in ceilings to save precious items, stainless steel kitchens and the avoidance of anything made of chipboard. These small improvements now offer small solace in the face of having to do it all again.
We are facing a new kind of threat: a cyclone. We don’t know cyclones. The combination of being attacked from the sky above and the rising waters beneath our feet is honestly terrifying.
Almost 4,000 of our homes where deemed uninhabitable after the 2022 climate disaster. Of these, only 600 have been bought back by the government, with temporary fencing holding down their perimeters to unknown futures, soon to take wind and beat down what little is left of Lismore’s spirit.
More than 90,000 sand bags have been collected around the northern rivers. Cars swept by cyclonic swell in Currumbin, there were reports of winds breaking off one of the Big Prawn’s feelers in Ballina, fallen trees have caused blackouts in Byron Bay – and Alfred has not even hit land yet. We are watching dominoes fall on our screens while we still have internet to view it.
Friends who have uprooted their devastated lives in Lismore to start afresh on higher ground, trading community for safety and landing in northern coastal areas, are now fleeing yet again. This time they’re heading south, below where the cyclone is predicted to hit. Back to making difficult decisions based on what is best for their families, abandoning renovations they are in debt for, having invested everything they had and more into a peaceful life that is potentially being ripped away from them once more.
New place, different disaster.
A friend phoned me this morning for advice. Her dad lives on the same street in South Lismore we moved from after 2022. She can’t get him to prepare, he is dissociated and instead asks where the evacuation centres are set up. He can’t muster the means to move his things up again. Disbelief wins.
Another friend turned 30 when the preparation began and posted “thanks for the birthday love”, also pointing out that eight out of the 10 years of her 20s was spent in disaster recovery or preparation in some way.
Each disaster makes a thriving future feel less and less realistic. Each disaster steals years and energy we will never get back.
Somewhere in a parallel universe we’re having a great time.
• Kate Stroud runs a one-woman creative studio specialising in vision hunting and visual communications
Read more of Guardian Australia’s Tropical Cyclone Alfred coverage:
