Looking back to the 2007 storm with impressions written as it happened
The melee that may be a regular feature of the Twenty-First Century crashes onto the Australian Coast before unleashing itself across the beaches.
The mighty coal ship Pasha Bulker sits crushed against the beautiful Nobby’s Beach. Up to sixty four of her sister ships usually sit anchored off the beaches and sea-cliffs. One-and-all they claw the oceans fighting for their lives in storm-swells. Several steel giants fear they are becoming next in line for Pasha Bulker’s fate.
Drowned cars sit in rows along the roads and the call goes out from schools, “Get your children, we can’t keep them safe!”
From Toronto Public School. “The “A” block has caved in please get your children.”
Moments later the Government has ordered the schools closed. “Get your children” The torrents close roads and drown culverts. Crushing hail-stones smash rooves and add to overflowing creeks. The countryside becomes full of terrified parents struggling with a blighted winter’s grip to reach their young.
Thunder roars lightning flashes. Chaotic winds make houses rock and shudder.
The oceans tear at the beaches like an old enemy and the wealthy home-owners on the sea cliffs feel a moment of chill as they face certainty. It claws towards them. One day it will eat their investment. Maybe it knows them. They are marked, standing foolishly in their vulnerable eyries, for an ending in the threshing pool of ancient life if they remain.
The trains sit filled with executives, workers and students. Heavy iron and steel engines unable to progress against the savage touch of this unexpected reality. Travelers become as one in the face of impenetrable weather. All are now to be known as the “soggy crowd of storm-refugees” rather than the commuters. Impatient concern to be a mark of their time together.Brave men in their metal and plastic dragonflies adorn the lightning-crested storm clouds. Not desperation but stoic purpose carries them almost impossibly through the teeth of the demon-wind and lashing sea spray. They put themselves between the ocean and the crew of the Pasha Bulker and when this crew was safe they hunted for more.
Parents answering the call to rescue their children sit gridlocked and panicked across the map.
A woman tells a story of her man saying he will be a few minutes late for their date. Terrified she looked into the storm knowing he was in a helicopter winching ship’s crews to safety.
The call has come. “It turns, the wind turns west, maybe the ships can hold.”
Two children are washed from Minmi Road.
Amazement in the broadcaster’s voice, “It snowed!” People in helicopters now search for the lost at Clarencetown.The ships are making their way to sea. All but one off Stockton Beach claim the ocean has slackened it’s grip. Water burbles a few inches beneath my feet, it’s not over yet.Comparing apples with oranges old men remember another time when even the pubs were closed. I imagine them looking grim and shaking their heads.
Everywhere the roads are closed. Here and there news comes. A road is open then closed again as floods rise. The debris and wounded cleared by the frenzied efforts of rescuers only to be claimed by rising floods.
Here, in my slightly over-heated and well-lit little apartment the noise of the rain abates until I can hear my fingers tapping on the keyboard. Great, I need groceries and the shops will be closed soon. I might just make it if everybody didn’t close for the storm.
Radio reports of closed roads, lost vehicles and sodden commuters continue in the background
People are frightened. It is the first days of a new radio service on the government network and we are not used to real-time reports of crisis. Maybe it will save a lot of lives.
Off Stockton the crew of an ocean-going tug brave the white fury to meet another stricken coaler. On the beaches and from their homes people watch with dread as their little part of the world teeters on the edge of environmental and human disaster. A wall of steel meets a wall of water just beyond their beach.
In a drama as old as time the sea tries to claim it’s due while men and women fight to prevent it. The oily belly of the great ship could kill the beach if the ocean breaches it. Someone on the beach calls, “The monster seems to be further out to sea, maybe it will make it” Another tanker appears in the haze off Boat Harbor. There seems to be a sigh in the eternal ether as listeners around the world recognize they may be witnesses to some greater tragedy.
Wallerah Creek claims a vehicle. Rescuers appear but the vehicle has disappeared and can’t be found. Nobody knows how many lives were claimed in that moment.Another report from Stockton. One watcher claims the great ship is losing ground in the boiling ocean. They say she has fought a ship’s length towards the ocean in a an hour and now is being driven back again. Then more reports, She seems to be gaining ground again. The winds are dropping but the sea swell is huge. She moves visibly and the relief in the watcher’s voice is palpable as the boiling mist covers her progress. A name! Is she the “Sea Progress”?
A twelve year-old boy is rescued from the raging violence of a storm-water drain, both he and his rescuer hospitalised. The Pasha Bulker has not been forgotten, leaders of government and industry make deals for her removal as the storm rages about her. Environmental warriors race to bear witness.Port Stevens is flooded! Mussel Creek has broken it’s banks and closed more roads. Large parts of the district are closed. Williams River and Brandy Hill are flooded. The radio replays the eyewitness calls as the Pasha Bulker floundered and the crews were rescued from the hurricane spray by helicopters. I feel a lump in my throat
Patterson and Williams rivers get major flood warnings while the Mayall is upgraded to minor flooding. A weather-man tells of records being broken at some rainfall and wind-speed measuring gauges about the place and then drops the bomb, more of this to come! His radar is full of ominous cloud forms!
The road to recrimination begins as questions are asked and answered about the warnings to the captains of the coal ships. Maybe it’s just forensics but the captains were warned twelve hours before the blow struck. There is no disaster where someone does not look to apportion blame!
A professional fisherman reports on the possibility of his industry being wiped out by oil and reminds people of his opposition to the anchorage of the coalers along the coastAwash with arthritis I dress and trudge through the teeming rain to a pharmacist at the end of the street. I clump into genteel comfort. The sleepy warmth is sensuous and in the well-lit interior I am attended by a pharmacist who looks at my disheveled state with amusement.
In the stillness of this bubble of refined normality I wonder, are there really great ships fighting for their lives just a few miles away? People struggling in frozen torrents and brave men and women in fragile helicopters?
An assistant seems annoyed that their deliveries have not come through. Just another day!Returning home I slump in front of the computer and listen to the radio summing up of the days events. The sleep-timer clicks in again and I sit in silence for a while. It seems cold.
There is a short in the switch on the heater and it is not heating any more. Rousing myself I rummage about in the back of the shed for an old bar-heater beneath a pile of junk. Moments after it is turned on there is a popping and hissing. Small spiders have made a home in it’s metal body. Tiny puffs of smoke rise and assail my senses with the odour of incinerated bodies.The roar of the storm god has abated and from outside there is just the slushing sound of passing cars on a wet road. The painkillers begin their assault and my body rocks gently in the chair. I was going to turn the radio back on but it’s warm and quiet and …. my chair rocks….nice…mmmThe wind awakens and begins to batter the house again. I rock furiously trying to regain that warm muzzy. I might post this in my blog, so many places with power out, might be me soon. Candles and a torch, matches and a battery radio…yep, all done, post this and snooze in my chair a while.