I love good stories. This podcast series is full of them. It’s called My Cape York Life, made by Cape York NRM, launched on February 10. You can find My Cape York Life in your podcast app or stream/download here
And here’s a 60 second sample
Cape York Peninsula is my favourite place.I love its wide-open spaces, its earthy colours, its bone-jarring dirt roads. I admire the tenacious spirit of the people who call it home, and I love their stories.
It’s not easy living and travelling on the Cape. It’s rugged, and beautiful, all at once. Distance and remoteness challenge notions of community and connection. My Cape York Life takes you to the Cape’s tropical savannas, lush rainforests, abundant wetlands, its magnificent coastline and pristine rivers. You’ll meet the fascinating people who live and work here and take care of this surprisingly fragile place. My Cape York Life will take you to the Wenlock River, Mapoon, Lakeland, Port Stewart, Wujal Wujal and more.
The stories are entertaining, inspiring, and often hilarious. You’ll hear about epic wet season adventures, close encounters with crocodiles, the Cape’s first attempt at helicopter cattle mustering, and the joys and challenges of living in remote and isolated places.
Late last year, my friends at Cape York Natural Resource Management and South Cape York Catchments decided to give the region’s land managers a place to tell and share their own remarkable stories. And My Cape York Life was born. Lyndal Scobell travelled the Cape, recording the stories. I was invited to do the editing and audio production – and I’ve loved every minute of it.
If you live on the Cape, have a connection to the place, you’ve travelled there or dream of doing the great red dirt adventure one day, My Cape York Life is for you. Search My Cape York Life in your podcast app, and you can stream & download from http://landmanager.capeyorknrm.com.au/content/my-cape-york-life
There are tens of thousands of people who will reflect today on something they have in common – cyclone Larry.
Larry came howling in from the Coral Sea early on Monday March 20, 2006 – ten years ago today. Winds up to 290 kilometres per hour cut a trail of destruction across far north Queensland.
Some 50 thousand people directly in its paths endured a terrifying ordeal, while another 100 thousand in surrounding areas spent an anxious day or two waiting for news of relatives, friends and colleagues.
And then there were the people who responded from other regions – emergency crews, the Defence Force, government workers, NGOs, tradies, community organisations, the electricity crews, building and agriculture sector groups. They helped us rebuild, recover, and get going again.
So many people were affected by cyclone Larry and its aftermath. Each of them has a unique and important story to tell. There is much to learn in these stories – about courage, resilience, the way we prepare for and recover from disasters, and about what people can achieve when they work together.
In 2007, radio ace Suzanne Gibson and I made a radio documentary series called REMEMBERING LARRY. It’s the story of a category four cyclone, its aftermath, and how we got back on our feet. It’s a remarkable insight into life in the tropics, told by the people who live there, who lived through Larry. The theme music is a song called “Hey Rain” written by Bill Scott, performed by Penny Davis and Roger Ilot.
Click on the audio player to hear each episode in MP3 audio.
And read my recollections of being on air at ABC Far North during the cyclone here
The far north Queensland wet season is over for another year and the start of the dry is a great time to see butterflies and moths around the region. During the wet, conditions are just too tough for these beautiful creatures to flourish in significant numbers, but as the seasons change, you’ll see plenty of Cairns Birdwing and Ulysses butterflies, and many more.
Our wildlife correspondent Martin Cohen introduces you to the many butterfly and moth species of Cairns and FNQ.
The world’s oldest rainforest is just a 90 minute drive north of Cairns. The Daintree continues to be one of the main reasons visitors come to far north Queensland.It runs right down to the sea between Mossman Gorge and the Bloomfield River – Australia’s largest area of continuous rainforest. But when you do the drive from Cairns, the first road sign you’ll see with the word “Daintree” on it is just before you get there – as you approach the Daintree River car ferry.
It’s a wonderful journey and the rainforest is breath-taking. But visitor numbers have dropped and some local businesses have closed since the global financial crisis. The people who run tourism related concerns in the Daintree are a determined lot, who have long lived with the waxing and waning visitor arrival numbers – perhaps that’s just a fact of life in the industry. But there are concerns the Daintree has lost some of its lustre, that it needs to be much better promoted as a destination than it currently is, and barriers to tourism should be reduced.
One of the pioneers of tourism in the region believes the price of the short ferry trip across the river is a significant barrier. It’s the only way in from the south by road – it will cost you $23 for a return trip, and while you might spend some time waiting to get aboard, the crossing lasts barely two minutes. Ron Birkett is the director of the Daintree Discovery Centre – and he’s offered to pay the ferry fare for visitors to his Centre during the usually quiet FNQ wet season. Ron has made the offer to drum up some business, but also to make a point about a fee he believes deters visitors and adds to the already significant cost of living and running a business in the Daintree, where people have to generate their own power and provide their own water and sewerage systems.
LISTEN to my interview with Ron Birkett here
Ron first came to the Daintree in the 1980s, having seen TV news coverage of the blockades staged there by people opposed to the Queensland Government push to build a road through the rainforest. More about the blockades here
And you can take an online audio-visual tour of the Daintree Discovery Centre here
We’ve had plenty of rain here in far north Queensland this past couple of weeks, with the monsoon dumping falls up to 400 millimetres in some places. By a strange coincidence, songs pertaining to precipitation can be found on three excellent new Australian albums featured this week on Tony Hillier’s World of Music.
LISTEN
PLAY LIST
Tango Lluvia (Tango Rain) from the Tangalo CD Good Enough For Gringos
Here in far north Queensland, indeed, right across tropical Australia, we tend to count just two seasons – the wet and the dry. In the wet, the monsoon brings huge amounts of rain and the possibility of cyclones – and it’s all that water that makes this place such an attractive home to our wildlife. During the dry, the days are hot, nights are warm and the place is chockers with tourists. Of course, it can rain during the dry, but the rain comes from a different direction and in usually much smaller amounts. But within those two broad “seasons”, there are subtle changes, periods when change is on its way and signs of what’s next become more apparent. Indigenous people in tropical Australia identify several distinct seasons – in the lush wetlands of Kakadu, in the Northern Territory, the local mob recognise six distinct seasons.
COMB CRESTED JACANA
Our wildlife correspondemt Dr Martin Cohen is in Kakadu this week, working with a Japanese film crew who are documenting the region’s most famous wetland – Yellow Waters – and some of its wildlife, including Norm the comb crested jacana, who Martin reckons should get the dad of the year award. LISTEN to Martin explain the critters and the seasons of Kakadu
Dr Martin Cohen is ABC Far North wildlife correspondent. Hear him on radio Wednesday afternoons at 445 or search for him on your podcast app
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You’re looking at a pretty typical wet seasonweather chart. That blue line of dots and dashes across the top of Australia represents the monsoon. It’s a line of unstable weather that shifts, with the seasons, north and south of the equator. During the Australian summer, it surges south of the equator, pushing in to northern Australia. Along the monsoon trough, you get areas of low barometric pressure, heavy to phenomenal rainfall, and the perfect breeding conditions for cyclones.
The monsoon can begin to head south anytime from late November, but at present it’s still to the north, where Typhoon Haiyan is roaring through the Philippines. It’s one of the most powerful tropical weather events in a long time, and a very timely reminder to us of the need to prepare for the coming Australian wet season.
Yesterday in Cairns, ABC Far North was involved in the latest Get Ready Queensland event. Local emergency management, disaster responders, local & state government agencies took part, talking about their roles in an emergency and how each of us can prepare for cyclones and floods. The clear message is if you live in far north Queensland – now is the time to get ready. Early and comprehensive preparation dramatically improves your chances of getting through a weather emergency unscathed and back on your feet in a shorter period of time.
KEY MESSAGES
HOW WET WILL THIS WET BE Richard Wardle is supervising forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology
WILL THERE BE FLOODINGAndrew Preece is senior hydrologist at the Bureau of Meteorology
FNQ bushfire – our fire season comes toward the end of the dry season
Our friends down south are often surprised to learn we have a bushfire season here in far north Queensland. It happens earlier than the southern Australian fire season, which is usually at the height of summer. That’s when our wet season is in full swing, so fire isn’t much of a problem then. But the wet helps a huge amount of vegetation to flourish, and when the wet ends, we get six months of mostly dry weather. By September or October, it’s tinder dry and is easily ignited – sometimes by lightning strike, or human activity. Major wild fires ensue – in more remote areas they can burn for weeks.
Burnt out country Etheridge Shire FNQ – fires late in 2012 caused major damage – pic by Charlie McKillop
The 2012 fire season was a shocker in the Gulf country, the area stretching inland from south-east and southern shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria. About 20 pastoral stations and millions of hectares were burnt in out of control fires. Cattle properties lost stock and pasture, and regrowth without good rain will be less than required. This has re-ignited discussion about how we manage fire, reduce fire risk, and how & when we conduct hazard reduction burns.
Indigenous people in FNQ have long used fire as an environmental management tool, and there’s growing support for fire management strategies which draw on that traditional knowledge of country. A central part of that knowledge and practice is the ability to “read country” – to see the signs that indicate the right time to conduct hazard reduction burns. Cape York indigenous people generally advocate burning earlier, when the burn can be cooler – addressing the problem without causing undue damage.
A group of people from Cape York Peninsula is heading south tomorrow to share their knowledge with emergency responders and indigenous people in Victoria. This is part of a broader project to record and preserve indigenous knowledge that began in Cape York in 2004. It’s led to a national exchange of indigenous fire management knowledge – you can watch a video about the project here http://vimeo.com/60707802
LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear program manager Peta-Marie Standley & Joel Ngallametta, Sharon Ngallametta and Dawn Koondumbin talk about their trip to Victoria, and the importance of fire management as a land conservation and environmental protection measure. Joel begins by talking about how the country round Aurukun is now – at the end of the wet season
LEFT TO RIGHT DAWN, SHARON, PETA AND JOEL ON AIR AT ABC FAR NORTH
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If Vivaldi had lived in far north Queensland, he wouldn’t have called his best known work The Four Seasons. It would have been The Two Seasons. Wet and dry. It’s rarely what a southerner would call cold, and we don’t have autumn or spring. But there are subtle changes in the shift between the two ends of our climatic spectrum that led indigenous people to describe several other “seasons”.
Plants fruit or flower at different times up here, and some species might flower several times a year. Right now, we’re at the end of the wet season. The monsoon is gone, retreating back towards the equator. It’s a time when food for our wildlife should be abundant, but the critters would usually have endured some tough times during the wet with storms or cyclones. Not so this year. But at the end of the wet, bats, birds and insects get a treat – the melaleuca trees are flowering and that blossom is a tasty & nutritious treat.
The melaleuca leucadendra is a common sight around far north Queensland. It’s also known as the white paperbark – a large hardy tree that occurs all around Australia’s tropical north. It has dense thin leaves, and the bark comes off the trunk in large sheets – the bark protects the tree during fires. It produces sweet smelling white flowers – if you stand close to one in flower you’ll get a strong scent of someone cooking with honey. While you’re there, have a look at the variety of creatures that come to feast on melaleuca blossom.
LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear ABC Far North Wildlife Correspondent Martin Cohen talk about melaleuca trees and the critters that feed on their flowers
Martin Cohen has been ABC Far North wildlife correspondent since 2006. He is on the radio Wednesday afternoons at 4:45. You can read more about Martin at http://www.wildaboutaustralia.com/
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I’m writing this on a wet and very windy Cairns evening. We’ve had 40 knot winds along our coast today, with a gale warning issued by the Bureau of Meteorology. It’s being driven by an unusual combination of weather – a wet north-westerly air flow higher up in the atmosphere. and a wet south-easterly at lower altitudes. And it’s very rare to have gale force winds in far north Queensland when there’s no cyclone in the neighbourhood.
Ooops. Sorry for using the “C” word! We’ve only had to use it once this wet season – when cyclone Oswald came out of the Gulf of Carpentaria in January and hit western Cape York Peninsula. Oswald was a “little fella” – a category one that did some damage around FNQ, but did its worst much further south as a rain depression. And Oswald was a traveller. He made it all the way to Sydney.
It’s been a below average wet season in FNQ, and the forecasters reckon we may have seen the last of the monsoon. It seems we’ve made it through the wet season without a major cyclone. If you’ve never been through one, count yourself lucky. Cyclones are about the worst thing nature can throw at you. We usually know they’re coming several days ahead, so there’s a long time in which to prepare and worry. The event itself is terrifying, with real risk to life and property lasting for hours. It’s the worst form of sensory overload, and when it’s over, the ordeal is really just beginning. It’s time to clean up, repair and rebuild, start again. That can take weeks, months, years, and in the early stages, you’ll be without so many of the things we take for granted – power, phone, ATMs, the Internet, shops, water, roads. It’s a challenging time, and poses real risk to your emotional well-being.
Thankfully, these days, there are people and agencies expert in helping us recover from natural disasters. And they tell us one of the best things you can do is to talk to each other – tell those cyclone stories. It might not be easy at first, but it gets easier and it does help make sense of the disaster you’ve just been through. And it helps others who’ve been there too, and can help people prepare for next time, especially people who have yet to experience a cyclone.
And let’s face it – cyclone stories can be amazing tales of the power of nature, of courage and the resilience of the human spirit. The Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville is about to put on an exhibition about cyclones in our part of the world – and they’d like your help.
If you’ve had first-hand experience with cyclones, tornados and other “big blows”, they’d like to hear from you. The exhibition will tell the story of how these fierce weather events have shaped the lives of North Queenslanders. The exhibition will look at cyclones that have affecyed North Queensland over the past 100 years with a focus on how the community has prepared for, lived through, cleaned up and counted the cost after each disaster. The Museum is keen to gather stories, photos and memorabilia about north Queensland cyclones since the early 1900s.
LISTEN Click on the red arrow to hear exhibition curator Robert de Jong talk about the exhibition and how you can help make it an authentic telling of an important north Queensland story.
Can you help? If you’d like to contribute to the tropical cyclones exhibition contact Robert de Jong on (61 7) 4726 0652 or by email: robert.dejong@qm.qld.gov.au.
There are some amazing cyclone stories in our radio documentary series Remembering Larry. Cyclone Larry hit FNQ in March 2006 – one year later, people took time to reflect on the region’s first severe cyclone in 20 years, and the lessons we learned.
You can listen to the series by clicking on the red arrow for each episode.
REMEMBERING LARRY EPISODE 1: TROUBLE BREWING OUT IN THE CORAL SEA
REMEMBERING LARRY EPISODE 2: WE’VE HAD A BIT OF A BLOW
REMEMBERING LARRY EPISODE 3: WHERE THE HELL DO YOU START
REMEMBERING LARRY EPISODE 4: AND IT WON’T BE LIKE THIS TOMORROW
REMBERING LARRY EPISODE 5: “REMEMBERING LARRY”
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I love good stories. This podcast series is full of them. It’s called My Cape York Life, made by Cape York NRM, launched on February 10. You can find My Cape York Life in your podcast app or stream/download here
It’s not easy living and travelling on the Cape. It’s rugged, and beautiful, all at once. Distance and remoteness challenge notions of community and connection. My Cape York Life takes you to the Cape’s tropical savannas, lush rainforests, abundant wetlands, its magnificent coastline and pristine rivers. You’ll meet the fascinating people who live and work here and take care of this surprisingly fragile place. My Cape York Life will take you to the Wenlock River, Mapoon, Lakeland, Port Stewart, Wujal Wujal and more.
The Mojowire 