Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle had 195km/h winds at landfall
The Bureau of Meteorology has just confirmed that Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle made landfall at around 7am Queensland time with sustained winds of 195km/h, making the system a “top-end Cat 4.”
That means that Narelle was only 5 km/h short of being a category 5 system at landfall.
This perhaps explains why in the past 24 hours there has been some uncertainty in the forecasts over which category the storm would be as it crossed the coast.
Queenslanders ‘have their wits about them’ as Tropical Cyclone Narelle hits, premier says
Queenslanders are being careful and following safety warnings as Tropical Cyclone Narelle hits, the state premier says.
David Crisafulli says people in far-north Queensland are experienced with severe storms and paying attention to alerts to prepare.
The overwhelming reports were that people were doing the right thing … [The cyclone is] a big system but people have got their wits about them. They know what to do.
Nearby councils have helped people find shelter in evacuation zones, with residents seeking refuge and leaving towns like Coen, in the cyclone’s path, Crisafulli says:
We said first and foremost – you need to have a plan and stick to it. And for most people, that means going into a safe room in their own home.
Others will choose to go and be with friends or family, which is always another good option if they believe that their home, for example, predates 1982, which is when the new building systems came in.
Others chose to go and seek refuge in one of the council refuge centres and the council, which is the Cook Shire council in that case, accommodated those residents in Coen.
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Rainfall totals over 500mm expected from cyclone, 300 power outages
The Queensland premier, David Crisafulli, has continued to provide updates on Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle as it makes landfall.
There have been over 300 power outages, 73 in the town of Coen, which sits right in the cyclone’s path, Crisafulli said. Essential services could lose power and some areas could face long-term power outages but teams are standing by to reconnect them, he said.
We are going to experience loss of electricity and the damage is likely to be significant with a system of this size.
Health services are in position on the ground and 14 schools have been closed, Crisafulli said. Telecommunications companies have set up generators and fuel capacity to try to keep contact lines online.
Flash and river flooding is expected and heavy rain has been recorded, with 150mm in the last 24 hours at Wenlock River and nearly 150mm at Wujal Wujal and Coen, the BoM’s Matthew Collopy said.
Rainfall totals could exceed 200mm from Ingham up the coast to Lockhart River and across the Cape, while north of Cooktown rainfall will exceed 500mm, he said.
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Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle hits Cape York coast
The Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle is crossing the Cape York coast “as we speak” as a category-four system, senior BoM forecaster Matthew Callopy says.
The Queensland premier, David Crisafulli, has just spoken, saying:
There is the prospect the eye of the system might pass over the town of Coen. If this occurs people will feel great intensity and then a lag. It’s really important that people don’t leave their homes.
We’re expecting storm surge as far south as Cairns.
There are 14 schools in the area that are closed. Everything north of the Daintree in the Cape area will be closed.
I want to assure Queenslanders that final preparations have been made. You saw footage of our emergency services staff going door to door. That is still happening.
Crisafulli continues:
My message to Queenslanders is very clear: stay where you are. It’s a remote part of the state. It’s not a highly populated part of the state, but it’s a part of the state that matters to us.
Just know we will flick the switch from response to recovery.
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Fuel stockpile flowing to service stations, Bowen says
Chris Bowen has said service stations are starting to receive the millions of litres of fuel released from national stockpiles.
Bowen said a “low single digit” percentage of the country’s service stations were “fully out of fuel”, while speaking to ABC Radio National.
Australia is home to about 7,000 petrol stations, so at least 70 are out of fuel, or 1%. In New South Wales alone, the state government yesterday said about 40 petrol stations had no fuel and another 40 had no diesel.
A week ago, Bowen authorised fuel companies to release nearly a fifth of their mandatory reserves. He’s confirmed most of that – 519m litres – is beginning to flow to terminals and service stations across the country:
It predominantly flows from Brisbane and from Geelong, which is a lot better than having it flow from Texas, where it used to be held … It does take time to get to every single service station, but it is already flowing.
Bowen also sidestepped questions on whether the government should levy a new windfall tax on gas exporter profits, as energy prices surge:
The treasurer’s made clear that tax reform is on the government’s agenda, and he’s considering the way to maximise the efficient collection of tax in Australia, but that’s not something that I’m focused on at the moment.
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Listen now: How Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is changing politics – Full Story podcast: Newsroom edition
Following on from that poll suggesting One Nation could wipe out the Nationals, this morning’s Full Story podcast covers the minor party’s surge.
Guardian Australia’s Josephine Tovey, Mike Ticher and Sarah Martin explain why the electorate is flocking to the rightwing political movement, and what major parties can do to win voters back.
Listen to the Full Story podcast here:
Nationals facing One Nation wipeout: new poll
A new poll suggests the Nationals would be wiped out by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation if a federal election was held today, with minor party replacing the Coalition as the largest opposition force in the parliament.
A new Capital Brief/Demos Au poll – run using the Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) polling method – finds Labor would win 77-86 seats in the lower house, with One Nation winning 46-55 seats.
Demonstrating the dire straits facing the Coalition, the poll finds the Liberals would win 9-15 seats and the Nationals just 0-2. The Greens and the crossbench would win just a handful of seats.
Seats where One Nation is firmly in front include; Fairfax (QLD), Fadden (QLD), Canning (WA), Forrest (WA), Wright (QLD), Lyne (NSW), Monash (VIC), Capricornia (QLD), Dawson (QLD), Hinkler (QLD), Wide Bay (QLD), Grey (SA), Nicholls (VIC), Flynn (QLD), Parkes (NSW), Wannon (VIC), Cowper (NSW), Gippsland (VIC), Maranoa (QLD), Calare (NSW), Indi (VIC), Mallee (VIC), Groom (QLD).
Polls are not predictive – especially with the next election not due for two years – but the numbers will be a wake-up call for the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, and the new Nationals leader, Matt Canavan.
Tomorrow’s South Australian state election is firming as the first major test of One Nation’s polling surge.
The MRP model generated primary vote share estimates for all 150 House of Representative electorates. It uses age, gender, education, income and other demographic information.
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Energy minister dismisses Malaysia’s warning on fuel imports
Chris Bowen has dismissed warnings Malaysia could cut its supply of petrol to Australia, saying the south-east Asian government had not threatened any Australian imports of fuel.
Australia imports billions of dollars of oil and petrol from Malaysia each year. A Malaysian embassy spokesman has told the Australian Financial Review the country would prioritise its own needs before considering demand from overseas.
Bowen, the energy minister, said there was no threat to Australia’s fuel supply from Malaysia. He told ABC Radio National:
It’s a very broad statement by the Malaysian government, just a general sort of statement there. It wasn’t a particular announcement that they were taking any particular action.
Malaysia produces refines a lot more fuel than Malaysia or Malaysians would need at any given time. We continue to talk to all our partners across Asia at various levels.
The Malaysian government has taken no action to threaten the supply of fuel to Australia and all the ships that we’d expected to arrive have arrived. But we continue to engage them.
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Greens call for windfall tax as surging gas prices give exporters ‘free ride’
The Greens are urging the federal government to slap a 25% levy on gas exporters as early as next week to raise billions of dollars in revenue to capture windfall profits as global energy prices soar amid the war in the Middle East.
The minor party’s leader, Larissa Waters, wrote to Anthony Albanese yesterday offering to pass a new bill in the Senate over the next fortnight as parliament returns.
On Wednesday night, Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, which it shares with Qatar, in a move expected to significantly raise gas prices. The US president, Donald Trump, has also claimed the US would “massively blow up” the gas field if Tehran strikes Qatar in a retaliatory attack.
Waters wrote:
Even if the war ended tomorrow, the restoration of these production facilities will take months to years. While this supply shock will hit consumers and businesses right around the world, it will produce a deep and sustained financial windfall to Australian LNG exporters.
The Greens claim a 25% tax on gas exported from Australia would have generated $17bn in annual revenue based on pre-war numbers.
Waters added:
This $17bn in revenue could easily be dedicated to urgent cost of living relief, such as free public transport for the duration of the fuel crisis. Millions of Australians are doing it tough, and these rich corporations should not get a free ride while people are going backwards.
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‘Eerie feeling’ as water shut off and electricity to be lost in far north Queensland
Far north residents in the path of Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle say they have taken shelter as winds begin to swirl in the remote Cape York Communities.
Sara Watkins, the owner of Coen Mechanical and the Little Bush Pantry in the township of Coen – population about 330 – say they moved to a more secure brick building when the winds picked up about 4am, local time.
The wind has really started to pick up, you can hear a couple of things moving around outside.
Watkins said there had been an eerie feeling in the town waiting for the storm. Now all they can do is watch as the cyclone arrives.
Until the wind started it was so still. It was raining but it was really still. That’s not like Coen, when it rains it pours and the wind moves about.
In Coen there are a lot of old properties that have been through cyclones in the past, they are standing but they’re not cyclone rated by any means.
Water services have been turned off but locals in Coen say they still have power. That will likely be shut off as well in the coming hours.
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Waves of near-record heights smash Cairns coastline
One of the challenges posed by Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle is the lack of weather monitoring infrastructure in remote parts of Cape York.
The only weather radar in the cape is at Weipa – on the western end – and that radar is starting to show rainfall and winds from Narelle.
BoM senior forecaster Kristy Johnston told ABC Radio Far North that wind monitoring in the cape was “quite sparse” and that most of the observations about Narelle had been made by satellite.
The nearest wave monitoring station is in Cairns, more than 600km from the northern cape, where Narelle will cross later this morning.
Waves of more than 4m were recorded in Cairns. That is unusually high – comfortably within the top 10 highest ever recorded.
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Property damage, power outages expected from Tropical Cyclone Narelle
Tropical Cyclone Narelle has been moving towards Australia “very swiftly overnight” and will cross the coast “in the next hour or so”, BoM senior meteorologist Angus Hines says.
The system is still on track to bring widespread damaging or destructive winds and heavy rainfall with possible flooding across the Cape York Peninsula, Hines has told ABC TV.
While the system has been downgraded from category five to category four, it will still bring wind gusts over 200km/h and even as high as 250km/h, Hines says:
Winds of that speed are pretty hard to imagine if you haven’t experienced them before. They are just so, so strong, capable of uprooting really large trees or completely stripping them of their branches.
It can also cause extensive damage to properties in the path of those very strong wind gusts as well as power outages.
The cyclone is expected to take 12 to 18 hours to cross the Cape York peninsula and move into the Gulf of Carpentaria, Hines said. It will likely strengthen and intensify back to a severe tropical cyclone by the time it arrives on the eastern side of the Top End of the Northern Territory on Saturday night.
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NSW pushes for per capita GST model after worst distribution yet
The New South Wales government will call for the distribution of GST according to overall population share when it lodges its submission to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into 2018 goods and service tax reforms today.
NSW, Australia’s most populous state, emerged as the main loser from this year’s GST carve-up, its share shrinking from 86c to 82c for every dollar its residents pay, the lowest since the tax was introduced in 2000. By contrast, Western Australia received an extra $5.5bn, thanks to the 2018 sweetheart deal struck with the then treasurer, Scott Morrison.
Under the deal, WA is guaranteed to receive no less than 0.75c back from every dollar it pays.
The NSW government says a per capita distribution would see it receive an additional $3.2bn next financial year. As a compromise, it has also suggested reverting to the pre-2018 model, but with the federal government funding a guarantee no state received less than 50 cents for every dollar it pays in GST.
The state treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, says:
The whole of the federation would be better off if we allocated the GST by population share, with the federal government using their balance sheet to prop up the smaller jurisdictions.
That is what we are arguing for. But we are also presenting a compromise proposal to push for change.
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Tropical Cyclone Narelle to make landfall in ‘next hour or two’: BoM
BoM meteorologist Kristy Johnston is giving an update on Tropical Cyclone Narelle to ABC Radio Far North.
She says the system is expected to make landfall between Lockhart River and Coen “in the next hour or two”.
“We do know that cyclones do have a bit of a habit of their movement being interfered with by the coast and sometimes they stall … I’m not sure that this is going to happen here, it’s got quite a good western trajectory.
Narelle has been downgraded to a category four but Johnston puts that in context: the sustained winds from the system are 195km/h and the threshold for a category-five system is 200km/h.
It is expected to maintain its intensity as it moves inland, as [a] category four [system] as it moves past Coen, [and is] still expected to be a category two or three as it’s moving over the peninsula.
Johnston says locals should expect the strongest winds to last six to 12 hours.
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Iranian footballers ‘have been taken hostage by Australia’, Tehran official says
Iran’s foreign affairs ministry has suggested the country’s two remaining footballers who sought asylum in Australia are being forced to remain in the country.
Five of the seven members of Iran’s women’s soccer team who claimed asylum in Australia last week later changed their mind and have returned to the country.
Australia’s Iranian diaspora has raised concerns that the country’s regime may have pressured some players to return home.
Speaking to the ABC’s 7.30 program, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, was asked if the two remaining players were being kept in the country against their will. He replied: “I guess so.”
Baghaei reiterated claims that the women were taken “hostage” in Australia:
They didn’t seek asylum. They were forced to. They were coerced to. They didn’t do it voluntarily.
Baghaei said he was “quoting their coach” in making the claims.
They were invited to go to a room under the pretence of clarifying the doping or something like that. And then they put the paper beside them ... you can be given asylum.
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Hello, I’ll be taking you through today’s breaking news. Thanks to Martin Farrer for opening our live blog.
Fuel taskforce will prioritise regional areas, says minister
The resources minister, Madeleine King, says a new fuel taskforce will prioritise regional areas as petrol and diesel flows from the nation’s stockpile.
Yesterday the Albanese government appointed Anthea Harris, the former chief of the energy regulator, to head a national fuel supply taskforce.
Speaking to the ABC’s 7.30, King said the taskforce would ensure the released fuel reached service stations that had run out of supply “as soon as possible”:
There is a priority that fuel does go to regional areas and the places where it is needed.
They have to come out of the storage tanks, as you can imagine. There has to be arrangements and we are doing work that would ordinarily take weeks. It’s being done in days to ensure it does get to those petrol stations.
Tropical Cyclone Narelle on track to hit Queensland coast as category-four storm
Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle is on track to make landfall in Cape York this morning, likely as a “high end” category-four storm.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s latest update suggests the system – which had been tracking as a category-five tropical cyclone – has weakened slightly overnight but remains a significant danger to a number of communities in Queensland’s north.
Sustained winds of 195km/h – with wind gusts up to 270km/h – have been recorded.
Satellite imagery shows Severe Tropical #CycloneNarelle moving over the Coral Sea at around 25km/h on Thurs. The eye of the cyclone is clearly visible, as are bands of showers emanating from the system, bringing heavy showers to the tropical north. Latest: https://t.co/4W35o8iFmh pic.twitter.com/z1Tgn0xXi3
— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) March 19, 2026
Emergency warnings have been issued for the Lockhart River, Port Stewart and Coen.
Narelle is expected to make landfall between 7am and 10am, Queensland time (8am and 11am AEDT). Tracking maps show the cyclone heading directly towards the small town of Coen.
It remains about 110km from the community and is moving about 21kmh.
Cyclones typically weaken when they reach landfall but the intensity of Narelle means it could remain destructive as it crosses Cape York and eventually reaches communities in the western cape.
Authorities are warning of combined threats – strong winds, heavy rain, flooding from already-swollen river systems and a storm surge as the cyclone arrives in conjunction with a high tide.
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Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it will be Luca Ittimani with the main action.
There’s plenty of news about but the main action this morning is in far north Queensland, where a huge and fierce storm is about to make landfall.
Tropical cyclone Narelle has dipped just below the most severe category-five level as it approaches the coast, with the town of Coen bracing for a hit.
Narelle will make landfall within hours and we’ll bring you all the news as it happens.
