When the ferocious winds and torrential rain of former tropical cyclone Alfred hit town in March 2025, a Yamba icon was left battered and sodden.

Now, through community generosity, and the determination to continue the family’s legacy, the Yamba Cinema will reopen before Christmas.

Cinema owner Debbie McCredie told the Clarence Valley Independent about the most stressful seven months of her life.

The impact

Debbie said cyclone Alfred destroyed the cinema’s roof in the middle of the night on March 8.

“Cyclone Alfred destroyed the roof in the main part of the building and the foyer,” she said.

“It was the strong winds lifting all of the panels on the roof, which meant massive amounts of water got into the cinema.

“It was the water that did the damage.

“So, the roof needs replacing because all of the panels have been lifted.

“And the rain following the cyclone still kept coming in, so everything inside was wet.

“The ceiling has to be replaced as well.

“The screen has been wet and once the screen gets wet you can’t use it, so it has to be replaced.

“Because the building then sat there locked up for a couple of weeks before the assessors came in and looked at it, we then had mould on everything.

“There was mould on the seats, the carpet, curtains…everything, so they’ve got to be replaced.

“Seats that are only two years old and cost me $160,000 for new seats and carpet.

“The mural that I had on the wall of the foyer, it was a mural of Main Beach.

“That wall got so much water coming into it, getting pounded on the outside as well as leaking through on the inside, that mural was on the floor, it was just ridiculous.

“You walked in and the whole smell of the place was just wet and disgusting.”

Despite the destruction, Debbie still has her sense of humour about what happened.

“It’s not like we’ve got windows we can open,” she laughed.

“I couldn’t turn my lighting off in the cinema because all of the lighting is controlled by the projector, and I couldn’t tun the projector on.

“I had some technicians come down from Brisbane to check out my projector and the last bombshell was the projector is completely gone because it was rusted.

“The whole inside of the projector was rusted because of the amount of moisture in the air, even though the projection room didn’t actually leak.

“I lost my whole projection system, which was a brand-new laser system 18 months before, and it cost $120,000.

“The front counters are damaged; they need to be replaced.

“So, I lost everything.”

Debbie is still going through the claims process with her insurer.

Film industry downturn

Since Covid, many smaller independently owned cinemas have closed.

“Since Covid the industry hasn’t recovered, completely,” Debbie said.

“I was quite fortunate that I had recovered to 80 per cent of what I was pre-Covid.

“That’s why there a lot of small independent cinemas around the country that have closed over the last five years.”

Making motion pictures takes time, and the Covid pause plus the Writers Guild of America five-month strike in 2023, when 11,500 screenwriters stopped work, have left an impact that will take time to recover from.

“We don’t have the content, the movies to show that we used to have,” Debbie said.

“If you take more than two years out of people’s ability to work; because a movie doesn’t happen overnight, it takes up to a couple of years to make.

“So, movies that should have been filming in 2020 and 2021, didn’t get filmed until 2023 and 2024.

“Then we had the screenwriter’s strike.

“We were told by the middle of last year that we’d be back on track again, but the industry put that back another 12 months because of the writers’ strike.

“If there’s no screenplays being written, there can be no movies being filmed.”

Debbie acknowledged the increase in the number of streaming platforms now available where people can consume content.

“We’re sharing the movies that are being made with a lot broader market now,” she said.

The downturn in the film industry was another blow to Debbie’s hopes of rebuilding.

“The industry is still there, but it’s not in the position it was, pre-Covid, so I wasn’t in the position to borrow the money,” she said.

Decision time

Tough decisions had to be made about the family’s 45-year legacy to Yamba.

“My mother and father built that cinema in 1980, it was their dream, it was our family’s dream, it was our family’s legacy to the town,” Debbie said.

“So, it was a heart wrenching decision to come to the fact that I’d have to sell it.

“I put expressions of interest out there to sell it, and I looked everywhere to try and set up elsewhere, but the cost to set up elsewhere was still astronomical.

“I still had to buy a new projector and buy new seats.

“It wasn’t even worth setting up temporarily, because you’ve got to pay for all of that, the equipment, seating, the soundproof walls and things like that that have to be built in a temporary location.”

Setting up a cinema isn’t a foreign experience for Debbie, she has done it twice before, with the former Treelands Drive Cinema and a second venue in town.

“The reason I opened out at Treelands Drive originally, was because I planned to do my extensions in town,” she said.

“It took two years to get my plans finished and approved for the cinema in town, so I opened up Treelands Drive the year before, so I had that to operate out of whilst I was doing my extensions in town.

“We were supposed to close in about June or July, then in March the building go sold to McDonalds and I got given four weeks’ notice to get out.”

Debbie was still determined to do her extensions on the Coldstream Street premises.

“Then the same thing happened with the bottom cinema,” she said.

“I opened the bottom cinema in 2019 and was going to close in April 2020 and just operate out of the bottom cinema and do my extensions on the original cinema, then we got shut down in April 2020 with Covid.

“Then I wasn’t in a financial position to be able to borrow the money to do the extensions anyway.

“So, it’s been bad luck after bad luck, and timing over the years.

“I then had to consider what I would get for selling the cinema before I could even consider setting up somewhere else.

“That was my plan, the business was never for sale, just the building and land.

“Depending on what I got for it, I would then set up somewhere else.”

A vital lifeline

Debbie was given a vital lifeline by a family who regularly holidayed at Yamba ensuring the legacy of the cinema would continue.

“I was approached by a couple in Melbourne just after the cyclone and they offered their help,” she said.

“I didn’t know who they were.

“A stranger out of the blue saying we can help you, we would like to help you is not something that I would say I didn’t take seriously.

“But I thought how can they help when they didn’t know the extent of the help I need.”

All the expressions of interest Debbie received were to preserve the iconic cinema.

“Everybody that looked at it to buy it was only looking at it to reinstate the cinema in it,” Debbie said.

“Which was such a shock to me.

“I thought I’d have investors knocking on my door wanting the land to develop into units.

“It was a big shock to me that the cinema was so valuable to a lot more people than just me, it is to the entire town.

“I rang the couple, and I was amazed that all they wanted to do is save the cinema.

“They bought a property in Yamba through Covid.

“Them and their three children have literally fallen in love with Yamba, the community, all of Yamba itself.

“They came to the cinema all the time when they were here in the holidays.

“They said Yamba is not Yamba without the cinema, and we want to help.”

Debbie no longer owns Yamba cinema, but the future is still bright.

“I’ve sold the land and building to them, but the business was never for sale,” she said.

“I am renting the building back off them and running the cinema, so the cinema business will still run exactly as it always has done, with me running it and me owning it.

“It’s just that I don’t own the building, I pay rent to the owners.

“Which was the best scenario for everybody.”

Having to sell the family’s dream after 45 years wasn’t easy.

“Losing the building was something I had to adjust to,” Debbie said.

“But knowing I still owned the business, and that Yamba is still going to have a cinema, because that was our family’s legacy to the town, I couldn’t come to terms with not doing that.

“So many people have said to me, just take the insurance money and retire, but then Yamba would have no cinema.

“My passion for the cinema and the town is strong, I can’t do that, I wouldn’t have retired happily and do that.”

Fundraising for a Christmas present

“Hopefully, all things going well, we will reopen before Christmas,” Debbie said.

“I don’t know exactly what it will cost until we get all of the quotes and measurements finalised.”

To help raise money to reopen, Debbie set up a Go Fund Me webpage.

“I was very hesitant about accepting money from the public, because I don’t feel that it’s up to the public to do that for me,” she said.

“It was going to be tight financially, that’s why I set up the Go Fund Me to get a bit more money.

“It came from the fact that so many people said that they wanted to help.

“I had so many people contact me saying what can we do, and I said the main thing I need at the moment is money.

“They said, let us give you some, and I said I’m not taking money from friends.

“So far, it’s raised $14,000, which is fabulous.

“Then when the building went up for sale, everyone said what can we do to save it, can we do a fundraiser.

“It brought home to me that the cinema meant a lot to a lot more people that just me who did want to help, and they could help.

“In the community spirit it’s a community cinema, if everyone helps pitch in and save it, it’s the communities even more, which it always has been.”

Step by step, Debbie said the iconic cinema will return to its former glory.

“There’re things I can do now to the cinema, and things that I can add later, which is what I will do,” she said.

“I do have a spare screen, the one I had down at the bottom cinema packed away in storage, so hopefully I can use that.

“I don’t have to buy a new screen which is a saving of $20,000.

“We’re hoping that we can do it with the money we have got, but it will be the bare minimum.

“So, if we can just get a bit more money, we can cover more things that we need to do.”

A trivia night will be held as a fundraiser for the cinema on Wednesday, October 22, from 5.30pm at the Yamba Golf and Country Club.

“Sonya Deakin who owns the Iluka Sunset Bar has been a good friend of mine for years, she used to work for Sony Pictures originally, then she worked for Universal Pictures, and she’s actually run the International Movie Convention on the Gold Coast for the past 10 years,” Debbie said.

“We’ve been friends for years due to our involvement with Sony Pictures and Universal Pictures and through the International Movie Convention, and she said what are we going to do, lets raise some money for you.

“We’ve contacted the movie companies, and they have given us a lot of prizes, some really good prizes from the movie companies for the teams.

“We will have prizes throughout the night.

“The winning team on the night will get a private screening for 40 people.”

To donate to the Help save the Yamba Cinema Keep our local screen alive Go Fund Me Page visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-the-yamba-cinema-keep-our-local-screen-alive.

This article appeared in the Clarence Valley Independent, 8 October 2025.