In some ways, it seemed a pleasant, wet season morning in the remote Aboriginal community of Coen in tropical far north Queensland on Thursday – and Sara Watkins was preparing for a sausage sizzle.
“It’s a day that you’d spend going fishing,” she said.
Instead Watkins – who runs one of two grocery and fuel shops in town, and is also a mechanic – was busy pulling down signs, sandbagging doors, selling gas stoves and canned food and preparing to communicate via UHF radio. She and the few hundred residents of the Cape York town were hunkering down for a cyclone they were told could be the worst in living memory for communities in the firing line.
And when Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle eventually passes, Coen could face weeks without power, mobile reception or access to the outside world.
“I’ve got a whole bunch of hotdog rolls and sausages,” she says. “So [when] it’s safe, we’ll do a sausage sizzle at the shop.”
By midday, a gentle breeze blew down the streets of this landlocked town of about 330 people not far from the east coast of the finger of land at the tip of Queensland that points towards Papua New Guinea.
But, about 500km offshore, Narelle had officially intensified into a category five storm – the highest category available – and was hurtling towards the coast, forecast to hit the next morning.
Its projected path: smack bang over Coen.
Which made it an anxious morning for Coen Regional Aboriginal Corporation general manager, Lucretia Huen.
The town’s population is typically transient in the wet season, with some heading to the city of Cairns, more than 400km south, or to see family in other Aboriginal communities, such as Hope Vale or Yarrabah.
Huen was in Brisbane, worried about her family and community far away in the north.
Coen has no purpose-built cyclone shelter, and some of the buildings are older, not necessarily built to modern cyclone standards. Huen was checking in for updates.
“They say it’s very calm and still,” she said. “Very eerie. It’s eerily silent. They can’t hear birds. We anticipate that this is the calm before the storm.”
A three-hour drive north-east of Coen, more than 700 people were hunkering down in the remote Aboriginal community of Lockhart River.
The town is no stranger to cyclones. In March 2019, Tropical Cyclone Trevor, a category four system, caused four hours of destructive damage, with peak gusts of 137km/h hitting the town.
The Lockhart River mayor, Wayne Butcher, told Guardian Australia that the community has learned from the past, and have been on the front foot since Wednesday morning, when they were informed that a potential category five system cyclone was headed their way.
“Unfortunately we’ve had plenty of practice over the years with cyclones, but the community is in a good position, well, I guess as best as it can be given the circumstances,” he said.
“The debris is our main concern because buildings and houses can withstand the wind but they can’t withstand any debris smashing into it during such an event.
“We’re getting all of the community residents to place all of their loose items or debris out on the footpath and then the council team is going around with a truck and loading it all up.
“We’re trying to make sure that everyone stays indoors, because the worst part is we’ve got overhead power lines and we’ll most likely get a few that will go down which always happens in the wet season.”
Like Coen, Lockhart River does not have a purpose-built cyclone shelter to keep the community safe. Butcher said many of the town’s residents lived in tin housing, while the others had concrete homes.
He said the council was working with the community to ensure people were safely sheltered, and that locals were opening their doors for “anyone in community” who needed it, until the damage can be assessed in the morning.
“We’ll just wait for the weather now and see what mother nature brings us”.
Beyond the forecast eye of the storm, hundreds of kilometres of coastal Queensland were preparing for the worst it could bring.
In Cooktown, more than 250km south-east of Coen, as the wind blows, Coast Guard deputy commander Nick Davidson was coordinating the harbour’s evacuation.
Thursday morning was the last window for boats to enter the tidal creeks that served as designated safe havens.
“And then you scratch your head and work out whether you are prepared to stay with the boat,” he said.
“Or whether you are going to have to jump in a tender and head back to town and find a nice solid house to hide in – which is always my preferred option”.
