The most vivid image that comes to mind when I think about cyclones is my uncle Rodney, drenched in his thongs and shorts and tropical shirt, machete by his side, crouching in a sodden orchard. He’s holding a drunken parrot in the palm of his hands and he’s laughing.
This was in the days that followed Larry, which crossed the far north Queensland coast near Innisfail on 20 March 2006. The Bureau of Meteorology forecast Larry as a category five severe tropical cyclone, although a re-analysis of the data would later suggest Larry was a category four system when it crossed the coast. Whatever, Larry blew hurricane-force wind speeds of well over 200km an hour and we had the eye pass directly over us. So let us not quibble about categories.
