by JOHN MIKKELSEN – AS FAR North Queensland mops up after the flooding and mayhem largely resulting from unpreparedness in the wake of Cyclone Jasper, anyone who has lived there would know it has nothing to do with “catastrophic climate change” despite the usual alarmist headlines.
Cyclones are not a new phenomenon, and Jasper couldn’t hold a candle to Cyclone Althea which caused three deaths when it devastated Townsville and some other northern centres on Christmas Eve, 1971.
- Any day with no school was as good as a holiday in my book.
- Telephone lines were knocked down but we didn’t have to worry about power. There wasn’t any.
- Anyone who has lived in FNQ knows it has nothing to do with “catastrophic climate change”.
As a kid growing up in Stuart, a bush village near Townsville, they were just another chapter in life’s adventures – unless one actually hit your house.
Let’s take a trip in the mind’s Tardis back to February 1954, when that almost happened.
DAWNED
My Dad, Garnie, was the headmaster at Stuart State School, and after the day dawned wet but not too windy, he gave us the news: ABC radio had broadcast a warning that a cyclone was approaching down the coast, and all schools in the region would be closed.
Well, any day with no school was as good as a holiday in my book.
“Beauty!” I yelled. I’m not sure my enthusiasm was shared by my older siblings, who would normally be preparing to travel into Townsville State High School on the Railmotor.
During the day, the wind steadily increased and the rain became almost horizontal. That afternoon, we stood on the front enclosed verandah of the schoolhouse which was protected from the howling northerly, and watched as big trees toppled, branches whipped off and competed with sheets of roofing iron flying by.
Wow! It reminded me of the opening scenes to The Wizard of Oz and we had a front row seat without having to buy movie tickets…
Telephone lines were knocked down but we didn’t have to worry about power. There wasn’t any, and night time settled with the norm of carbide lights and kerosene lamps, which attracted the usual swarms of mozzies and other flying insects.
The radio crackling in the corner on battery power delivered news the cyclone was still on its way but, in those days, they didn’t give them pet names and there was no army of reporters recounting every wind gust tousling their hair if they stepped outside.
We eventually went to bed, knowing there was probably worse to come.
The next day dawned and I awoke early with the house still standing. I can only blame cabin fever, boredom and a warped sense of humour for what came next.
I sneaked under my sister Janette’s bed and kicked as hard as I could on the wire frame beneath the mattress.
A piercing shriek rang out as poor Janette thought the house was collapsing around her!
She ran out of the room without checking under the bed, but our Dad stormed in and caught me crawling out, laughing.
He didn’t see the joke and delivered a stern tongue lashing.
“How could you do that to your sister? You know cyclones are no joking matter, John, half the town has probably suffered damage. People can get killed!”
SCHEMED
Janette heard none of that, and in her mind, she had been a victim of my older brother, Alan. She schemed her revenge and was not in any rush to get even.
The schoolhouse had a dinkum dunny way down the back yard, with the wooden structure attached to a wrap-around corrugated iron screen for added privacy.
Janette waited until her older brother was answering a call of nature, then put her own wicked plan into action. She rapped on the iron sheeting with a big piece of wood and laughed as Alan came running out, hitching up his shorts, convinced the dunny was about to take off.
Naturally he didn’t see the joke, but I thought it was hilarious. Two birds with the one stone…
SURVIVE
Ironically, ours was about the only dunny in town to survive – some went walkabout, somersaulting into neighbouring properties, which would have been pretty scary for any occupant.
It was probably the iron privacy screen that kept it in place on the low wooden stumps and really stopped the brown stuff hitting the fan!
Later that day the wind started to ease from cyclonic to gale force, and I ventured off on my bike with my best mate, Rover the kelpie-cross, to survey the damage.
Trees down everywhere, and the old brickworks down the road had lost most of its roofing iron. Thankfully, its tall red brick chimney was unscathed.
I met up with a few fellow-adventurer schoolmates also making the most of another holiday, and we invented a new mode of travel. No need to pedal our bikes, just let the wind balloon our plastic raincoats from behind and it was something akin to wind surfing on wheels through the shallow water covering the road.
We also made an unusual discovery – miles away from Stewart Creek, which split the village in two, there were perch and herrings swimming in the water above the bitumen road.
It hadn’t rained cats and dogs, but somehow these fish appeared seemingly from nowhere, maybe lifted by the cyclonic winds just like Dorothy and her pet dog Toto in that Kansas tornado?
PRANK
Anyway, it’s an ill wind that blows no good, but obviously Alan and Janette weren’t on speaking terms that day, and my secret prank remained unspoken right up until a recent email exchange.
Janette told a group of contacts how she had gotten even with her older brother for the cyclone trick perpetrated so many years ago while she was sleeping.
“Not me, I didn’t do that!” he finally protested.
I could have copied TV’s Sergeant Schultz of Nazi POW camp fame, and declared, “I know nothing, nothing!”
But time to come clean, just like George Washington and the axed cherry tree. It was me.PC
To the climate cultists, every act of weather is climate change. The “education” system has a lot to answer for.
I can recall travelling from Darwin with my wife and 2 small children with car and caravan and being caught on the black soil plains west of Townsville (yes, I know there is no soil east of Townsville!) due to the rain depression following the cyclone that had hit Townsville. It demolished houses on the seafront at Townsville – I have the images to prove it. When was it? Christmas Eve in 1971. Nothing new….
But is it global warming that is causing all these extreme weather events, or is it weather engineering? I don’t think the science has been proven. To me it makes more sense that our weather is being manipulated. The science has been there for years but we never hear about where it is being used? That’s because its being used by the globalists in their plan for global control. We are all told to go along with net zero to “save the planet” but is it really to drive us into the arms of globalist government?
A friend in Queensland gave me a book to read about the cyclone around 1950 that wiped Noosa Heads off the sand spit. In that period there were not many houses and shops there but when the cyclone passed and the storm surge ended the sand spit was cleared completely.
Occasionally when I am visiting Noosa Heads I think about the cyclone and wonder what would happen there if another repeated the earlier event.
December 24-26, 1974 – Cyclone Tracy nearly wiped out Darwin NT.
I had been a regular visitor to Darwin and from there drove to the area now called Kakadu National Park, then on a rough gravel track that was being upgraded to become a highway. I was working with a bridge construction project.
Friends told me later about experiencing Cyclone Tracy and how frightening it was for them and their families. One had a new born baby home from hospital for Christmas Day and spent the night in the bathroom where the only reinforced concrete floor was located and plumbing to hold while protecting his wife and two children. Even a fully loaded with food cabinet freezer was blown away from their high set house and all that was left was some of the structure of the house.
Cyclone activity in more recent years has been less than in the past since settlement in 1788.
That’s true John W but as someone told me earlier today, “Unprecedented” now means “Caused by climate change!” (or so it would seem the way the media serves it up repeatedly whenever there is some wild weather or a bush fire).
Yes John, add my other annoyance about mobile phone heatwave red alerts and now BoM graded heatwave temperature levels to below 30 deg C in summer.
Heatwaves used to be 35 deg C bottom of range.
More propaganda brain washing.
I have mentioned my 1950-1960 school holiday summer experiences with mostly hot days often followed by late afternoon storms and very high humidity evenings.