Day 63 - True Spirit

A few months after Cyclone Yasi last year, I was asked to contribute to a book called "The True Spirit of Cyclone Yasi", a collection of stories about the event from people who lived through it or helped with the aftermath.

If you're reading this blog in another part of the world, I was asked, and honored, to broadcast to the people of the region as that monstrous weather system battered the north and far north coasts.

The launch of the book was held today at Logan North library, and it was a really lovely morning, with guest speakers from the SES, Salvos, contributors and Bernadette Lawson whose vision it was to collate the stories.


The most touching moment was when one of the guest speakers whose dad and grandmother were at Cardwell when Yasi hit, began to choke up as the emotional memory of her anxiety and the fear she could hear in her dad's voice on that awful night, washed over her.

As someone else finished her speech you could see people throughout the room gently wiping the tears from their eyes. Including me.

You see, it's the feeling of helplessness, that complete inability to be able to ensure the safety of yourself or your loved ones in a situation like that, which stays with you forever.

As that vast cyclone advanced on our coastline, even the most stoic of Queenslanders braced themselves, sick with fear that come morning, many lives would have been lost.

By some miracle, only one person died that night, and that was due to carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator.

I'll never forget the stories I heard that night, the men and women doing their best to remain calm as they heard that howling rage of a wind beating at their homes, the screech of metal as roofs were clawed off, furniture being tossed from room to room, windows smashing, all the while not knowing if the place they had chosen to take shelter was going to disintegrate.

The big clean-up may be over, but the rebuilding of those communities will take a very long time.