“CYCLONE Yasi has been a great leveller,” Tully priest Fr Karel Duivenvoorden said last week.
The priest, who took up his new parish posting in Cairns diocese just five days before the monster cyclone struck, was not only referring to the widely publicised images of smashed resorts and luxury cruisers at places like Hinchinbrook and Dunk Island.
He was speaking from personal experience.
Fr Duivenvoorden, as he spoke with The Catholic Leader, was housing 85-year-old retired priest Fr John O’Connor whose Tully Heads home had been smashed by giant waves generated by Cyclone Yasi.
Fr O’Connor had lost everything, but a few personal possessions.
Fr Duivenvoorden and other Catholic leaders in Cairns and Townsville dioceses told of facing the terrors of cyclonic winds reaching nearly 300km per hour on February 2.
The cyclone crossed the north Queensland coast near Mission Beach around midnight wreaking destruction on communities such as Cardwell, Innisfail and Tully.
Cyclone Yasi was variously described as “a giant ogre trying to hammer its way inside” and of emitting a “harrowing groaning” which went on for hours.
The tales also carried a sense of incredible relief and gratitude that a terrible loss of life had not eventuated and of the almost miraculous veering of the cyclone away from Cairns shortly before it struck land.
Cairns Catholic Education Services communication officer Andrea Gregory said the city had not “just dodged a bullet but actually a whopping great missile”.
The damage to Church property – schools and churches – reached far and wide across the dioceses.
Yet there was also encouraging news that most Catholic schools would be open for classes last Monday (February 7).
Townsville diocese chancellor Len Horner said Bishop Michael Putney had gone to visit St Teresa’s College at Abergowrie “where about 180 boarders had spent a day without a power and water supply”.
But as Townsville Catholic Education communications officer Julie Plath said “property can be replaced, people can’t”.
Ms Plath said the experience had been truly terrifying and was one which she never wanted to face again.
“There was a fear that some people would not make it through the night,” she said.
“Not only were we facing destructive winds but there was the additional threat from tidal surges – people might drown and if they attempted to climb onto roofs they could have been killed by flying metal roofing and other debris.
“The wind started really blowing around 5pm Wednesday afternoon and was blowing heavily Thursday morning through to lunch time.
“From 11pm Wednesday to around 2.30am was absolutely horrendous.
“We were all bunkered down in the laundry downstairs – my parents, myself, my husband, our eight-year-old daughter, two cats and a dog – trying to get the latest news from the ABC on the radio.
“I’ll never forget the noise the cyclone made – I can only describe the sound as a harrowing groaning.”
Ms Plath said the cyclone’s onslaught by night made the situation worse.
“You were wondering what scenes of destruction you’d see when morning came,” she said.
Mr Horner, who lives on The Strand at Townsville’s waterfront on the seventh floor of an apartment block, had moved out temporarily to stay at his sister’s place at Cranbrook.
“We were unsure of the extent of problems the storm surge would cause,” he said.
“The fact that our windows even seven storeys up were well-caked with salt gives an idea of ferocity of the blow.”
He estimated about 60 per cent of trees along The Strand had been blown down.
Mr Horner said Bishop Putney had visited St Teresa’s College, Abergowrie, west of Ingham, and Ingham’s Our Lady of Lourdes School on Monday.
The college, with more than 180 students, had lost its power and water supply for a day and communications for several days. The Ingham school had been quite badly damaged.
Fr Duivenvoorden said he would be drawing on his experience as a government employee in disaster management in the wake of Cyclone Larry to support the battered communities in his parish.
Being right in the path of Cyclone Yasi, he said had exposed him to the full force of “an ogre of nature” as he sheltered in the presbytery toilet.
“It was as if nature’s giant had been woken and wanted to come in,” he said.
“There was a sense of some huge ogre banging at the presbytery’s double doors, testing my resolve.”
Tully’s new parish priest had only taken up duties on the Friday before the cyclone.
Suddenly he was dealing with a major catastrophe and celebrating Mass in a church overrun by television cameras and reporters.
His presbytery is buzzing with parishioners using it as a meeting centre.
He also has a guest, “a local identity and dedicated fisherman”, Fr O’Connor, whose Tully Heads house while seeming structurally sound is in a “no go” area until all residences are checked for their condition in the wake of battering seas.
Fr O’Connor lost most of his property and only “rescued a few clothes”.
Fr Duivenvoorden also had a couple of funerals pending which were disrupted by the cyclone. One was for a priest, Fr Dave McKenzie, who died in Atherton on the eve of Cyclone Yasi.
The Tully priest, who has only in the past seven months returned to active ministry, believes he will need to draw on every bit of his experience and prayer life to get through the coming months as he helps patch the shattered community together.
“Unfortunately quite a few houses around Tully were quite weatherbeaten to begin with,” he said.
“This was one cyclone too many for a lot of them.
“There’ll be much pastoral work needed here as people struggle to cope.
“In my case, it seems God has a strange sense of humour.
“‘I want you back and this is what I want you to do’, He seems to be saying.
“That seems His will … but I wish it could have been a gentler return to ministry.”
