Opinion: Locals rise against big-city cyclone drama
Monday March 23 2015, 4:30pm
By Sam Cullen
Far North Queensland had its moment in the sun recently - the irony was that it happened the day Tropical Cyclone Nathan crossed the coast 80 kilometres north of Queensland’s most historic town, Cooktown.
Channel Seven's Sunrise sent a team of six journalists to Far North Queensland, including their key man and President of the Adelaide Football Club, David ‘Kochie’ Koch, to cover the expected aftermath of Cyclone Nathan.
This year, there was a different tone to the live crosses. In years previous, there had been all types of accusations by locals of TV journalists sensationalising the affects of cyclones, including using fans and spray bottles off camera to give Australian viewers a sense of how close they were to the action.
If you caught the Channel Seven coverage this year you would have noticed a strong sense of community backlash. In Palm Cove, Eddie the weather lady reported each cross of being ‘heckled’ by the locals.
To their credit, instead of continuing down the path of previous years showing repeated images of a 'letterbox laying strewn' on the ground or worse, the affects from other cyclones (who will ever forget Channel Nine showing images of Cyclone Tracey after the arrival of the non-event Cyclone Monica in 2006? Locals were inundated with phone calls from family all over Australia) the Channel Seven team began discussing the effects of the misinformed reports and how they can cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in this tourism-dependent region.
Here lays the problem. Its cost the Seven Network a bucket load of money (approximately $100,00) to bring the team up to North Queensland, (well, this is how much it cost us if we want them here to showcase the area or an event) so to come this far and broadcast a non-event is commercially inappropriate. Thus, they will cross back to the letterbox 15 times if need be.
When it became clear that not even Cooktown (160 kilometres north of Port Douglas) suffered any real damage and locals were back at work by 7am the morning of the cross the Sunrise machine were forced to change tack. It is important to remember and this must be communicated better, that a cyclone will only ever affect a radius of about 150 kilometres and really only affect about the middle 80 kilometers of that.
“Dodged a bullet” became the catch phrase - however, when the hosts back in Sydney studios tried to sensationalise, the on the ground reporters (scared of the mobs in Palm Cove, Port Douglas and Cooktown, it appears) were forced to continue to report that it was business as usual. Boring viewing for the national audience, if you ask me. Ha!
Congratulations to both Cooktown’s and Douglas Shire's elected representatives for not allowing the reporters to sensationalise their interviews by providing informed reports on their communities. Kochie was determined to have Major Julia Leu of Douglas say that the Daintree had been damaged, but it just hadn’t.
It is now years ago that we suffered the real affects if misinformation and sensationalism by our southern broadcasters. Now with the internet and social media we can control the reporting.
Those who are truly to be displaced (holiday makers etc) will no doubt search a more local site or Facebook page and these reports will show to-the-minute updates of what the cyclone is doing and where it is doing it.
The whole region can now actively communicate with the rest of Australia and the world – and they did.
One post by local social media operator Nikki Kanzlemar from Socialeyes Media was particularly welcomed in Port Douglas.
Her post was of an image taken on the day of the cyclone crossing at Four Mile Beach with the subtitle ‘Port Douglas, open for business’. She posted this to a number of pages and the ‘Port Douglas’ Facebook page.
It was shared widely across region, accounting for a reach of over 35,000 in five hours.
Critics in previous years have pointed to the fact that if the region is too desperate to say there is no problem then we could endanger those who could have avoided any danger by not coming to the region. This is absolutely correct. The region has to be honest with its customers and holiday makers prior an event. We know what can happen. We don’t need to be reminded of Yasi and most recently our friends in Vanuatu with Pam.
It is no doubt a dilemma but can we get it right?
I don’t think anyone would complain about reports of significant damage and flooding creating real problems and danger for visitors. What the region suffers much more from are the generic reports. It is terribly important that people of Australia are informed about the distances here in North Queensland so that the reference of Cairns is not used to reflect over 500 kilometres of coast.
Generic images and reports of North Queensland deter holiday makers for weeks after their planned travel or negate visiting the area this year or at all. The region has encountered the affects of cyclones and weather events of this nature since the beginning of time. What we do know is how quickly the area recovers from any affects if the cyclone has not passed directly over. So there lays the key.
And let it be said that we can only claim this until one comes straight over us. Last one was 1910. Then we will be forced to say ‘yep, the place is a mess, please knock first’.
