The night was still before Cyclone Justin hit Cairns. We sat in a fake Irish bar on the pier and joked about how calm it was before the storm. I was with my sister and we were planning to catch an “Oz Experience” bus the next day and work our way lazily down Australia’s east coast.
Being Irish, we were used to rain, but of the soft and drizzly variety and wind that at its strongest could shake the barley. We couldn’t even imagine what was to come. Rain that would fill empty swimming pools and wind that would rip up trees and hurl them across roads like an angry giant.
We were woken at 6am by the landlord of the hostel we were staying in and advised to pack quickly and make our way to the basement. Outside the rain was hopping off the streets and the palm trees along the shore were bent over like a penitent Japanese politician.
News and rumours swept through the nervous group that huddled there. We were about to be evacuated to the hospital apparently, as that was the only concrete building in the neighbourhood. We also heard that the pier we’d been drinking on the night before was no longer there and that the town was cut off from the outside world.
Then suddenly a rickety old bus turned up and a hippy looking driver jumped out into the rain and made his way towards us. “Anyone here for Oz Experience?” he shouted over the din of the storm. My sister and I stepped forward. “We are, but surely you’re not going out in that weather?” I asked.
He looked at me with the sort of withering expression that I later learned was reserved for soft foreigners. “It’s not called Oz Experience for nothing mate” he answered as he loaded our back packs onto the bus.
The normal road out of town was indeed blocked and he’d heard that the police were patrolling the coast looking for idiots like him and forcing them to stay put. He wasn’t a stay put kind of guy though and found a small inland road that headed into the hills. We were all Europeans and he reasoned correctly that he could fool us with some local meteorology. “Cyclones only affect the coast,” he said. “It’ll be blue skies once we get over that ridge”.
After we’d got off the bus to move the tenth tree from our path we started to lose faith in his folky wisdom but nevertheless saw it as an adventure and a chance to show off to members of the opposite sex (the purpose of all group travel after all). But our excitement was soon tested when we reached the first river on our trip. This was my first trip to Australia and I’d been surprised in the previous days at how wide riverbanks were compared to the trickle of water that flowed through them. I was soon to learn that those trickles could turn to a torrent in a matter of hours.
Beauty, our exotically named driver, slowed as he approached the bridge. The river was already over the road and all that was visible were the side rails and some marker posts that showed the water level at above 7 metres. He studied the situation and figured that returning to Cairns would dent his reputation among his adventure-seeking passengers. His plan was to empty the bins underneath the bus by moving all the backpacks upstairs and to leave the bin doors open. His reasoning for this was that the river could meander calmly through the bus as we inched across the bridge.
Someone, of an engineering bent, then pointed out that we couldn’t actually be sure that the road was still there, as we couldn’t see it. Beauty asked for a volunteer and a bronzed Dane stepped forward and agreed to walk in front of the bus to ensure that tarmac was still present.
We gathered at the front to watch his progress. As we neared the middle of the bridge, the water had risen above the young Dane’s waist and was inching it’s way up the stairwell of the bus. Gradually however, the incline rose towards the far bank and we sensed victory in our battle with the elements. When we reached dry land, a huge cheer went up and Beauty beamed, confident that one of the Scandinavian girls on board would be hanging on his every word later that evening.
Our troubles were only beginning however. Just when we got back to top speed, the taillights of a Police car appeared ahead of us. They were stopping traffic from getting to the bridge we’d just crossed and the last thing they were expecting was a run down old bus full of European backpackers to sneak up behind them.
Rather than admit that he had recklessly endangered the lives of forty tourists, Beauty lied through his teeth. The river had gone down he claimed and the bridge was fine. “Then you’ll have to go back across it”, the cop explained. “Because the next bridge along has been washed away”.
We had no choice but to turn around. The marker was now saying 7.5 metres and the light was fading. The young Danish scout had just about dried out from his first outing but he gamely headed back into the raging torrents. The bus was quieter this time. The police had spooked us and brought us back to reality.
We limped into Mission Beach as darkness fell, a town that has been virtually wiped out now by this years cyclone. Back then; it was just a shop and a hostel but felt like paradise to us after our long day battling nature and Beauty’s stupidity.
We spent the next five days there, waiting for the roads to be reopened and fighting for beer space in the hostel fridge whenever the electricity came back on.
I ended up getting to see very little of the east coast as a result but developed an appreciation for the awesome power of Australian weather. I just hope Beauty has retired. Or else there will a bunch of Europeans in Queensland this week doing something stupid, yet living to tell the tale.
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