We were midway through our cyclone preparation when my mother broke her leg. She stepped into her bedroom to retrieve something, tripped and fell, and that was that. My mother is 74 and hardy, so this sudden break took us by surprise. Once I got her home, leg in brace, we’d lost significant time, and my household was down to one functional human: me.
This is the fourth natural disaster I’ve experienced in the last eight years. One-in-100-year floods (2017), unprecedented bushfires (2019), one-in-1,000-year floods (2022) and now Cyclone Alfred. Cyclones are a new threat. I’ve lived in my homeplace, in northern New South Wales, for almost 50 years and we’ve never had a cyclone cross land in our vicinity. We were, as they say, in uncharted waters.
I live in a forest my parents planted. The house is submerged in trees. Usually, this is a good thing, all the joys of wilderness, but as the wind began to pick up, it was hard not to be frightened. While my mother was laid up in bed I went through the checklist of things to do: bring in the outside furniture, disconnect the pump and bring it to higher ground, flip our ancient trampolines, put buckets under our latest roof leak, fill water bottles and buckets in case of power outage.
We tried to figure out which part of our house was safest to shelter in. The house is made up of separate rectangular modules that all run along an open central walkway. There is no “internal” room and all the forest-facing walls are made up of glass sliding doors. Our bathroom is sturdy but open to the elements. It only has three walls. We decided we would shelter in my mother’s bedroom if it came to that. It had a wall of glass, but it was the best we had.
As I was rushing about trying to get things in order, I happened upon a baby bird, feathered, but not yet flying. It was startlingly beautiful. Tiny, but vibrantly green. I’d never seen the like. I captured it in one hand, put it in a box and called our local wildlife hotline. The woman I spoke to agreed to meet me at a designated handover spot. I jumped in the car and drove. We parked back to back, the wind whipping about us, and I got out to hand her the box.
“I’d love to chat,” she said, taking the box, “but I better get back.”
I nodded. The rain was beginning to spin around us.
“Good luck!” I called out as she got back into her car, but the sound of my voice was lost in the wind.
Back at home, I sat in my mother’s bedroom, discussing the plan. My mother has a huge cast iron bed, so we would shelter under that if things got dire. The sound of the wind was rising. In the distance we heard the crash of a tree falling. My daughter-in-law began messaging. She and my son have a 12-week-old baby and live in the next big suburban town.
“We think you should come in,” she said. “We’re worried about the trees.”
My mother was not keen on leaving. She was propped up in her bedroom, ready for anything. I went out and looked at our biggest gum. Forty-five metres at least. Right at the helm of our house, our beloved guardian. Wind gusts high above scattered leaves all around me. My daughter-in-law kept messaging. I could feel the panic of my son behind each word.
“OK, we will come,” I relented.
My ex-partner, the father of my sons, drove out in his van to pick up my mother and her four bulky mobility aids, and I did a last sweep of the house, bundled our old dog into my car and, once again, drove.
At my son’s house, the waiting began. A strange kind of limbo. We arrived on the Thursday, but Alfred didn’t cross land until Saturday morning. The night of the crossing was wild and it was strange to be so far from the trees. Were they upturned in the night? It was easy to imagine. Giant tree carcasses like beached whales. Roof caved in, all the glass smashed. The next morning it was surprisingly still and, in a break in the rain, I drove home to check on the damage. Big trees down on the roads, but already cleared. There were three trees down at my homeplace and a huge amount of debris, but the forest still stood. Our house was untouched. Our guardian, that majestic gum, standing tall.
The power had gone out days before. We’d already lost all the food in our fridge. With no power, we had no water, which made life tricky. The long wait for power restoration began. Longer, it seemed, than the wait for Alfred. We are resigned, we are weary. At home, I checked my landline. There was a message from the wildlife carers saying my baby bird was a rose-crowned fruit dove, increasingly rare. Its care had been prioritised. It would be reared to adulthood and released. I could feel my heartbeat in my chest. One tiny, wild life.
Four natural disasters in eight years. What is this new world my grandbabies are inheriting? We knew it was coming, but it’s already here.
