At the time of the Clarence Valley election last year, I wrote a column urgently imploring all pertinent authorities to provide ratepayers and tourists with written details on how to combat states of emergency, including the possibilities of our being beset by a cyclone and our mighty river flooding and threatening life and limb.

We have just experienced such an event, only a few months after my written appeal, yet I and other local residents and visitors feel we have once again been left somewhat high and dry.

After three days of fairly heavy winds and almost constant rain and threats of being waterlogged, we were generally left without any information as to where we may be forced to seek refuge if threatened by an emergency such as serious riverine flooding.

At this stage, we were suddenly told for the first time by an ABC emergency broadcast that people living up river from Maclean and Yamba were being ordered to evacuate from their low-lying properties. Yet Yamborians living near the fringes of the Clarence still had absolutely no idea as to whether any evacuation centres had been established in and around Yamba and when they would be open for business.

A large section of Yamba town from Convent Lane to Pippi Beach was also thrown into complete darkness for almost two days during the recent cyclonic emergency, with the eventual loss of all telephone and computer communications. And yet, once again, people living in this section of Yamba were left with only battery powered transistor radios and little information to find out exactly what was happening.

On the second day of our wind and rain invasion, our entire Clarence Valley region had only been referred to twice by the ABC. The broadcaster had apparently not been previously provided with any meaningful official weather details on the Clarence Valley and our big river. Instead, all news items provided by the responsible government authorities were only centred on localities to the north and south of our position on the coastline and in neighbouring South East Queensland.

This caused me to phone the ABC’s Lismore station, requesting information be obtained by them as to where evacuation centres had, for instance, been set up to serve Maclean, Yamba and environs.

The very courteous ABC broadcast officer I spoke to said the ABC had not as yet received any information about the Clarence from official sources but she would ask the next official spokesman due to be interviewed.

When this happened later that day, the official interviewed avoided the question. He simply pointed out how many evacuation centres had already been developed elsewhere in Northern New South Wales together with the number of people using them.

Two days later, I and other ratepayers I know were still totally in the dark on the location of evacuation centres in the case of urgent need although official sources were reporting that the Clarence was about to seriously flood in Grafton.

By pointing out this set of unfortunate circumstances, I am not in any way criticising the ABC emergency broadcasts or the S.E.S. The ABC teams on the air did a magnificent job as did the S.E.S. overall but they were only as good as the official information passed to them by the top authorities involved.

The point of this article is to spotlight the dire need for our Clarence public to be better pre-informed on dangerous weather events, particularly in view of our low-lying floodplain situation and our history of floods.

While many Northern New South Wales towns and rivers were well served with necessary information, flood and rainfall advice provided by officialdom appeared to seriously ignore the Clarence region when reporting on the effects of Cyclone Alfred within its sphere of influence. This stretch of coastline generally covered an area from the Gold Coast in the north to Nambucca to the south of our Clarence Valley.

I feel that the top government authorities concerned in our safety on the Clarence need to disclose to we potential sitting ducks where evacuation centres will be established for future possible times of public emergency.

This information, which I earnestly sought only last year, should be made available on public notice boards around our Clarence and in documents sent to each home for permanent reference purposes, as is the practise in some flood-prone countries overseas.

As I advocated before, I sincerely believe the Clarence region is in dire need of a detailed standing plan for times of a sudden riverine inundation threat or tidal surge.

It was only in fact on Sunday night — the fourth night of our full cyclonic event — that the Clarence Valley and the river towns of Maclean and Yamba were provided with the first official warnings on our Clarence River flooding. But there was still no word on whether Yamba would, for instance, be awarded one or more evacuation refuges should they become of urgent necessity.

My thoughts go out to our elderly and infirm people who all too often have had to rely on the ABC broadcasts for their bad weather information.

Many of these people do not possess computers or are not computer savvy when told on the radio to refer to certain publicised official Websites for their weather and flooding details. The same applies to their often-poor vision or lack of know-how in using even a mobile phone.

This fairly extensive group of people in our community need to be in constant possession of a detailed plan giving them assurances on the availability of bad weather refuges and how to personally handle emergencies.

There is no doubt that the State Emergency Service, the Bureau of Meteorology and others involved did a good job in their handling elsewhere of the effects of Cyclone Alfred. But much has still to be done by all levels of government to permanently publicise where and what weather-threatened people on the Clarence need to go and do during life threatening times.

As I said before, it makes sense to me for every property in our Valley region being equipped with a document containing full details on how to save one’s life and property. In former times, Yamba people, for example, were well versed by active community groups in knowing that they could seek refuge at the old community centre in Treelands Drive, at the Yamba Bowling Club, the Wooli Street Hall and at the Anglican Church in Yamba Street.

Most of these groups are now, however, sadly strapped for volunteers to the detriment of the people who could be manning them.

We narrowly missed a serious possible cyclonic outcome this time but, as the winds of change always tell us, there is invariably another such event around the corner to test our good luck.

This article appeared in Clarence Valley Independent, 19 March 2025.