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The normally pristine coastline in the northern rivers region of New South Wales has been reconfigured into sand cliffs and fallen trees after ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
The rivers are brown and engorged, creeping towards breaching their banks. There is water everywhere – across roads, flooding country people in. The rain has been incessant, pounding down for days. Black-tinged clouds move ominously in a gray sky, promising more.
The lack of electricity is getting old fast. People, says Theresa Mitchell of the charity Agape Outreach Inc, “are struggling and going a bit batty. They have no entertainment for the children, no food access. They come here to get out of the house and get some warm food.”
Houses are starting to smell of damp and mould. Food is rotting in fridges, charging a phone involves ingenuity. There is the frustration of not being able to communicate.
Flood-hardened locals are stoic. After the horrors of 2022 it takes more than localised flooding to rattle them.
Tweed shire councillor Meredith Dennis has been flooded in at her house at Limpinwood in the hills since Friday. “I’ve had no water, no phone or power. But I’ve got five dogs so I take them for a run. I went up to my neighbours for a few wines, I live on a dead end street so we all look after each other. I knew I could wing it for a few days.”
People have been asked to conserve water and use bottled water, she says, because “all the wastewater treatment plants lost power. A lot of them have generators but some didn’t. They didn’t have enough generators for over 200 pump stations. There has been a major break in the pipes at Chinderah.”
She advises people to “just put a bucket outside and catch rain to drink. It is the best water you can have and just hold off with your washing and stuff.”
The electricity problem has been because of the wind bringing trees down on to power lines. “The big concern,” says Chris Chrysostomus, intelligence officer for the SES, “every second job has power involved, trees hanging in power lines, which we couldn’t touch because they might be live. So we have to call Essential Energy and get them to validate that the area has been isolated before we can go in and clear the roof or the house. It makes things slower.”
There are a lot of requests, he says, for welfare checks of people out in the hills, “on the back blocks” who have gone silent.
Anthony Dagg does not know when he will be able to get back to his house at Couchy Creek near the Queensland border. He has 200 acres on a nature reserve with waterfalls and swimming holes. He was working on the Gold Coast when news came of the cyclone.
“I’m on the backside of Springbrook Mountain. So all the runoff pretty much goes down Springbrook Mountain, past my creek, and then down to the towns. The already dangerous road would have gotten much worse in the past five days. And it is the only way in.
“There are potholes and potential landslides. I am quite worried that I am not going to get back up there. I can see the water line on my security cameras and it is quite high, it would be rushing down there quite fiercely at the moment. I’m quite worried for the people who live up there as well, they’d definitely be stuck there and I can’t get hold of them.”
According to his rain gauge Dagg says there has been 700mm of water. “I was up to 500mm yesterday before that big downpour last night.”
The Clarence river in Grafton is loitering with intent but local Deborah Novak says it “hasn’t hit its top mark yet”.
“I was talking to a big cane farmer last night and he said because the flood is still sitting in the river and not spilling over, the primary industry sector is still in a good position. Whereas if we get more rain like they got in Brisbane it could be a different story in a week’s time.”
Natural disasters, as we know, bring people together especially in the country. “You see mortal enemies working alongside each other, rolling their sleeves up and sandbagging, delivering food, all that sort of stuff.”
But really it is happening far too often for comfort.
