Australia's Natural Disasters Tales of nature's dramatic impact on this country and its people

by Whitaker, Richard

• ISBN13: 9781760792626
• ISBN10: 1760792624
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2022-07-04
• Publisher: New Holland Publishers
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Summary

Australia’s Natural Disasters tells many stories of the devastation that nature has wreaked on our wild country and its people. From the agonies of droughts and floods to the shocks of earthquakes and bush fires, Australia is a country famed as much for its ferocious natural hazards as for its rich environment. Freak weather has caused plane crashes and shipwrecks. On Christmas Eve 1974 Darwin pubs were bursting with festive people joking that ‘cyclones never hit Darwin.’ Cyclone Tracy was expected to be another ‘near miss.’ But in the early hours of Christmas Day the slow-moving tropical cyclone tore the city apart, with sustained winds of 200 kilometres per hour, and Darwin became another victim of nature. Cyclone Tracy is only one of the many extreme weather events that Australia has been subjected to. 

Author Biography

Richard (Dick) Whitaker began his career in meteorology when he started with the Bureau of Meteorology way back in 1971. He worked his way through the ranks and was Senior Forecaster in the NSW office for a nine-year period before becoming NSW Manager of the Bureau's commercial arm, the Special Services Unit in 1993. He is very interested in meteorological education, particularly through television, radio, and books, and has authored, co authored and edited twelve meteorological publications. Dick is a now Senior Meteorologist with The Weather Channel in Australia and appears regularly on TV

Table of Contents

Introduction . 8 1857 The Wreck of the Dunbar . 13 1865 Goyder’s Line Ignored . 19 1893 & 1974 Brisbane Floods . 25 1902 The Federation Drought . 34 1903 A Fatal Race up Mount Wellington 40 1914 & 1991 Storms Hit Sydney . 45 1918 Cyclone Terror in Mackay . 51 1918 & 1976 Twisters across Victoria . 57 1929 Tasmania in Flood . 62 1931 The Southern Cloud Disappears 66 1937 O’Reilly and the Stinson 72 1938 Mass Rescue at Bondi Beach 77 1938 The Crash of the ‘Kyeema’ 83 1939 Black Friday in Victoria . 88 1947 & 1999 Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs Devastated by Hail 93 1948 The Adelaide Tempest 105 1954 East Coast Cyclone 110 1955 Maitland Goes Under . 118 1961 The Flight of Tango Victor Charlie 126 1967 The Apple Isle Burns . 134 1967 Prime Minister Lost . 142 1968 & 1989 Earthquake: Meckering and Newcastle . 147 1972 & 2003 Flash Floods in Melbourne 156 1974 Cyclone Tracy Flattens Darwin . 162 1983 Dust Storms and Bushfires Sweep Victoria . 169 1985 Huge Hail Hits Brisbane 182 1990 The Big Wet in the East 187 1992 Twisters, Wind and Hail across Queensland . 195 1997 The Thredbo Landslide . 201 1998 Disaster Strikes the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race 206 1999 A Deadly Sleep – The Snowboarder Tragedy . 214 2002 ... The Millennium Drought 220 2003 Canberra Burns . 229 2007 The Pasha Bulker Storm . 235 2009 The Black Saturday Fires 238 2009 The Eastern Australian Dust Storms . 241 2010 & 2011 Queensland floods . 245 2011 Tropical Cyclone Yasi 248 2019–2020 Blazing Summer – The East Coast Bushfires 251 2020 After the Fire Came the Flood 255 Glossary 259 Bibliography 261 Index . 262