Valerie drove her bright red Suzuki into the eye of Alfred. Now she's heading home to the northern rivers

The Guardian

09-03-2025

Valerie Thompson is heading home to Brunswick Heads in an hour. The 52-year-old lives in a low-lying area just north of Byron Bay and was among those who got out early ahead of (now ex) Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
The idea climate change may generate a cyclone that ploughs into south-east Queensland was already a 'nightmare scenario' for the country's insurance industry, the same companies who wanted to charge her $30k a year to insure her home. If they were taking it seriously, why shouldn't Valerie?
Having tied down what she could and moved their belongings to a higher floor, Valerie bundled her 18-year-old daughter, the pet guinea pig and a stock of supplies into the back of her bright red Suzuki Swift and drove north to stay with her sister.
Some might question the wisdom of driving north into the path of a tropical cyclone, but her sister's place was built like a brick and concrete bunker, she says. Experience has taught Valerie, her neighbours and many others across the Northern Rivers the value of leaving early.
'It wasn't even until the 2017 flood that the State Emergency Service knew we were there,' Valerie says. 'We had always had to rescue ourselves. That put us on their map.'
Her neighbourhood, tucked beneath the highway, had always flooded. But in 2022, the water swallowed her daughter's bedroom, the highest room in the house. The event was traumatic. Like many people across the Northern Rivers, it taught Valerie and her neighbours a valuable lesson: don't take chances.
Afterwards they formed a WhatsApp group to share information and coordinate. This time around, Valerie says positive peer pressure from people sharing their decision making and plans on the group encouraged others who may have been more blase to take the unfolding disaster more seriously.
Safe from her sister's bunker, she watched events unfold through this window into her neighbourhood. Now she's heading back, grateful to know everyone is safe.
Bec McNaught, from the South Golden Beach Community Resilience Team, says stories like Valerie's are textbook across the region. People here have learned the hard way how formal and informal communications and community networks are 'essential' before, during and after an event like Cyclone Alfred.
McNaught's own group is part of a network of other officially-recognised resilience teams who have been sharing information with authorities and local residents. The cyclone may not have hit as hard as anticipated, she says, but it was a good trial run. With many people now returning to their homes, these networks have proven reassuring especially for those who carry the memory of the 2022 floods.
'It's been a taxing week,' McNaught says. 'It's really been quite triggering for a lot of people. There's lots of people who have only just finished repairs. One woman here that I spoke to literally just had the painters in last week, finishing off her house.'
With the immediate threat from Alfred beginning to fade, heavy rain continues to fall and the risk of flash flooding or falling trees remain. Thousands across the Northern Rivers are still without power and out of contact, with telecommunications also knocked out for many. Others have turned their phones off as they try to conserve battery life.
Evacuations orders for Lismore, the town that drowned in 2022, lifted on Sunday but residents have been told to expect power, water and communications to be shut off for the next three days.
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In Alfred's wake, ice is a valuable commodity. With the highways now open and power to some areas slowly being restored, the first supply runs are making it into the region on Sunday morning.
Mandy Eddie, a woman in her seventies staying with her daughter's family in Binna Burra in the Byron hinterland, says she was just getting ready to empty the fridge of 'those things that didn't make it' when five bags of ice dropped on her doorstep.
'Ice is really important when you've had four days of no power,' she says.
Her two young grandsons are already climbing the walls, but Eddie expects that with only a couple hundred people in town, it will be days before the power company crews get her electricity back up.
What Eddie wants, going forward, is some meaningful effort from governments to sure-up electricity and telecommunications networks with renewables or other measures so they're not cut off every single time disaster strikes, and more effort to address fossil fuels and climate change.
'I really feel for Lismore,' she says. 'One thing ends, another begins. This really feels like climate change. These events are a reality. If you're not taking them seriously, you've got your head in the sand. What are politicians doing if they don't see the reality?'