So a few weeks ago cyclone Jasper hit FNQ near Wujal Wujal south of Cooktown. A very significant event and one that saw many friends of mine affected directly. I spent a couple of years living north of the Daintree river and understand the wet. A couple of my mates are from the Wujal Wujal community and float between there and Mossman. So Jasper caused some issues for sure. Within a couple of days and after public outcry chinook helicopters were deployed and roughly 200 folk were airlifted out of the community to the Cooktown region.
WHY - lack of fresh water, no power and lack of supplies. For the record, my friends chose to stay as their families saw no great issue with the wet and told authorities they were fine.
Move forward a couple of weeks and the Gold coast hinterland (christmas day) is ravaged by wild weather. Mt Tamborine in particular. Another friend of mine lives on the western side of the mountain and has had no power or water since then. Furthermore the weather has continued to deteriorate since. Energy companies have done little to repair the damages due to ongoing bad weather, little to no government assistance has been offered and certainly no national community outrage has been displayed in the media circus. My friend is a vet who has been unable to attend her workplace due to road closures etc and certainly hasn't seen any emergancy aircraft bringing in supplies, generators or ferrying her out to hotel accommodation as with the Wujal Wujal folk.
Now I get it that she chose to live in a hinterland community where you might expect a few lifestyle losses but in comparison, the Wujal folk asked for their land back. They got their land back (in a similar environment) but for some reason they get airlifted out and rehoused indefinitely. Fifty thousand years and couldn't deal with a wet in their government funded community. And yes before you attack me, Wujal has no economy other than welfare. This is a sentiment shared by my friends from that same community.
This I find very hard to swallow.
And as for my friend in Tamborine the authorities have zero advice on when they might expect power to be restored with estimates up to three months which then includes water also.
I hope someone can make sense of this as I cannot.
