Kiss My Yasi

On Wednesday, News.com.au ran this rather terrifying superimposed graphic of what Cyclone Yasi would look like if placed over the continents of the world. With a diameter of 250 miles (400km), the storm quite comfortably swallows the whole of England, the state of Louisiana, and half of New Zealand.

Furious gusts of up to 285kph - flattening the towns of Tully, Cardwell and Innisfail - somehow managed to avoid killing anyone, but certainly made an aggressive attempt. Quickly identified as a Category 5 cyclone, Yasi was more intense than both 2006’s Larry and 1974’s Tracy, the latter of which convincingly destroyed the town of Cairns and 71 of its inhabitants over the Christmas period. And that was a Category 4 cyclone. Category 5 is the highest you can get: “extremely dangerous with widespread destruction,” according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website, which over the past month has become the home page for nearly all Queenslanders.

Channel 7 cancelled their scheduling for another hysterical non-stop talk fest, whipping the winds into a further frenzy and giving Queensland Premier Anna Bligh an ample platform to reclaim her soap box. She earned it well and truly with her compassion and sentimentality during the January floods, where she actually broke down in tears during a press conference, inspired by the selfless nature and courage of those affected by the carnage. This is now referred to as The Queensland Spirit. You can even buy your own slice of The Queensland Spirit on three CDs, with all proceeds going to the Flood Relief Appeal.

Bligh was back like a rampant Rambo commanding the TV coverage with her well honed, Churchill esque rhetoric, as if she might be preparing to head north and physically wrestle with the cyclone from the state’s shoreline. This was no storm in a teacup, as Bligh issued her final warning: “You have to take this window of opportunity now. Do not bother to pack bags, just grab each other and get to an area of safety. People are irreplaceable. We shall fight this on the beaches. We will never surrender.” Yes, OK, I may have embellished that a little, but with such positive public support, surely Bligh couldn’t possibly fail to retain her premiership when it comes to next year’s state elections. Heck, you would believe she was practically running the country right now, making sour-faced Labour compadre Ms Gillard look like some form of robotic intern.

If such a thing exists as The Queensland Spirit, then surely it's very embodiment can be explained by a simple sign in a Cairns café which reads, ‘Kiss my Yasi’. So it might be an idiosyncratic mixture of both tenderness and bravado, of laughing in the face of adversity, and a sort of underdog mentality: like the Bulldog Spirit, but a bulldog in thongs and a singlet. It’s actually a media invention, mostly, purported by the likes of Channel 7, who threw caution to the wind and their sanity out the window with the sort of excruciating news coverage that could actually warrant the end of the earth.

Still buoyed by the horrifically captivating scenes of Brisbane’s monumental floods, the network went into full 24-hour disaster porn mode, reporting on news that hadn’t even happened and, then when it did, a complete loss of power guaranteed that the majority of it would be completely incomprehensible. At one point, nonsensical two-ways were broadcast via Skype and a reporter’s iPhone. With journalists clearly exempt from evacuation notices, the most anyone could possibly deduce from this garbled interference was that actually, yes, it was really very windy outside. “But just how windy is it?” and so on and so on and so on.

But it’s hard to take such excessive scaremongering seriously when members of the public are continuing with their daily routines in the background. Category 5 cyclones may be unique in their severity, but storms are not unfamiliar to Australia. We are now entering a tropical cyclone season. There is actually a specified season for this, and the Bureau of Meteorology are predicting more cyclones to follow.

Being English and completely unaware of what to do in this situation, you can be sure that Toxic Math is taking precautions. I’m told the safest place is the bath tub. But without one, I’ll just be standing in the shower until this whole thing blows over.

One of the reoccurring debates on Australia Day is the design of the flag - it's an annual patriotic sticking point, like having the Queen on a postage stamp. Modern consensus seems to suggest that the Southern Cross bit is quite alright, but what really gnaws on the public conscious is that Union Flag in the top left. I was a bit surprised at the extent of vehemence considering just how many Australians proudly fly the flag even when they’re not annually obliged to do so. I can honestly say that I have never felt the need to paint a flag on my face. Any flag, for that matter. Yet Australia Day passed in a sea of blue, red and white, seemingly proud of it’s symbolic gesture despite the design.

All of which links us back to the country’s colonial past and the significance of January 26 as the date when the first British fleets sailed into Sydney Cove in 1788 (and not when Captain Cook first landed in Australia, which actually happened in April some 18 years earlier). But what most Australians actually prefer to celebrate is the notion of not having to go into work, bolstered by a unified but jovial sense of celebrating their national identity. Which is why the day is traditionally spent around a barbecue, tucking into lamingtons, damper and assorted bush tucker, with the odd eccentric past time to boot: cockroach racing, for one, and even the odd thong-throwing competition. Sadly, I’m completely stumped to conjure up a British equivalent, other than eating fish and chips, at a bus stop, while it rains. On a Tuesday.

Australia Day is instead referred to as ‘Invasion Day’ by some, used as evidence of yet another aspect of marginalising the country’s indigenous population. Given that the oldest Aboriginal art in parts of South Australia are estimated to be around 40,000 years old, and that the indigenous population possessed the lay of the land for about another 20,000 years on top of that is food for thought especially to those who seem to regard Australia as a young country. I noted a greater sense of inclusion and compassion on the day in recognition of the country’s first Australians, but more can and should be done on all the other days. So perhaps a new flag is necessary, but one with a bit more yellow, red and black.

I will end on the results of this year’s Triple J Hottest 100, which is slowly announced over the course of Australia Day on the ABC’s flagship Gen Y radio station. And just what did those rebellious, pill-popping, know-all teen layabouts in their trendy sneakers vote for as the nation’s best record of the year? ‘Big Jet Plane’ by sleepy folk siblings Angus and Julia Stone. I know. Those crazy bastards.

Wet Christmas

In hindsight, that bit last week about Bundaberg reaching 28 degrees on Christmas Day might have sounded a tad optimistic, but it did actually reach a top of 29 degrees, if only combined with the city’s worst flooding since 1942.

The seriousness of the situation was only brought home when we saw that American networks like CNN were running reports: 200,000 people affected; 22 towns and cities inundated or isolated; forced evacuations; affecting an area larger than France and Germany combined. Combined. And in some places, it’s only getting worse.

We’re a week out and Bundaberg still resembles a lumpy soup. At its height, a third of the city was under water, forcing nearly 400 people to be evacuated. The Burnett River - usually looking resplendent with moored boats, hundred year old bridges, daily trawlers of sea-faring fish folk and the sweet smell of molasses from the sugar plantation carried on the cool breeze - rose to a peak of 7.9 metres, swamping everything I just mentioned along with it. Aviator Burt Hinkler famously flew his aircraft underneath Bundaberg's old railway bridge: if he was still around to do it this year, he’d need to pack a snorkel.

The city of Rockhampton, around 300 km north of Bundaberg, hasn’t yet reached the height of its problems, with the Fitzroy expecting to peak at 9.4 metres tomorrow, taking hold of nearly 50 per cent of the city. The Herald Sun in Melbourne highlighted another rather terrifying prospect for those residents currently swimming away from their possessions and towards drier confines. Wendy Hilcher is an ambulance officer for the RSPCA, who has been rescuing people’s pets all week, but an attempted rescue on Sunday was aborted when she noticed a crocodile in the water. Brown snakes have also been spotted. “It's not just the safety aspect of getting to these places, it's what's in the water itself,” she said.

Scenes of cataclysmic flooding is a particularly familiar media sight nowadays: cars breached with only their rooftops on show; the two-way reportage with bone-dry journalists, usually with a lake in the background which used to resemble a shopping centre; then into the houses, where a defeated couple sludge through their possessions, some even managing a weary note of optimism: “I’ve never seen it this bad,” or “it’s a good job we’ve got some Wellies.” My girlfriend's reaction to seeing her old netball courts - the ones she played on as a child - completely submerged sparked a clearly more personal response. And expletive, it would seem. Once safe in Brisbane, she could only gasp in horror at the scenes unfolding, saying the word ‘shit’ repeatedly.

Complete helplessness, and a sort of resigned acceptance; those were my feelings when the rain hadn’t stopped since we had arrived a week previously on Christmas Eve. Quite alarmingly, we were told when we arrived that it had “been like this for two weeks,” and many agreed that, yes, they had never seen it this bad.

There is science behind all of this, by the way, as the east coast of Australia is currently enjoying a particularly severe La Nina affect (the opposite of an El Nino), which has something to do with cooler temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that has caused Queensland’s rainfall to increase by six times over the December average. But when you’re there, in a state of limbo, during a religious festival, facing the relentless pitter-patter and steady drowning of a quiet country sugar town, you can’t help but feel a significant biblical overtone - real Old Testament stuff, that of great plagues, vengeance, apocalypse. The relief of having a one year old in our midst with the name Noah was at least a little reassuring.

As rivers swelled, peaked and spilled, the main concern was a swift exit from Bundy before high tide hits, the only roads are blocked and we’re done for. The house suddenly resembles a particularly serious scene from ‘CSI: Bundaberg’ with would-be forensic experts on the phones to police advice bureaus and relatives surveying the ground for clues, analysing depths and water gages like trainee meteorologists, discussing locations of evidently severe importance: “Kendall’s Flats is totally under,” says one. “McCoy’s Creek is up. If you get through the Isis in South Childers there’s further damage at Maryborough with the Bruce Highway blocked towards Gympie.”

We were restless, awaiting a parting of the waves, eventually fleeing a derelict scene just before the air lifting started. And if you need further proof of Australia’s vast meteorological unpredictability, when all of this was happening, a heat wave in South Australia saw temperatures reach 43 degrees. In Bundaberg, however, you could forget goannas running up gum trees, or even cricket in the garden, as the constant rain ultimately proved the season to be not too dissimilar from a damp, traditionally English Christmas.

Here are some more of our Bundy Christmas photos.

And my personal favourite...