Looking back at FNQ’s calamitous weather

THE year 1911 was a tough one before it even started, with a grasshopper plague so monumental that trains struggled to grip tracks through a blanket of crushed insect carcasses.

Ernest Cummings wrote: "When the train used all the supply of sand, the firemen had to walk and shovel dirt on the rails from the Mulgrave River bridge to Gordonvale station."

It was February 11 when the first cyclone hit.

The second one - and it was a stonker - arrived about six weeks later, causing significant damage to the town.

The Cairns Post reported on March 17, 1911: "One cottage in Lumley St was lifted clean off the stumps and deposited intact and in a perfectly upright position a few yards away."

Even worse was the destruction in Port Douglas, which was entirely flattened but for about seven partly-standing homes, the Queensland National Bank, the Customs House, the Post Office and McLean's Hotel.

A report from the Brisbane Courier on March 22, 1911 states about 40 people took refuge in the town's Government Bond building on account of its apparent structural integrity.

"The faith placed in the stability of the building, however, was not justified, for the occupants (numbering 40) had just taken timely warning from its nerve-shaking tremors and emerged from the doorway to reach the fence round the Customs building, when the bond store collapsed," it continued.

That was just one of the myriad calamitous acts of God described by historian Dr Timothy Button, whose book Cairns: City of the South Pacifi c charts the region's tumultuous history from 1770 onwards.

With saturated catchments and a consecutive run of volatile weather systems battering Queensland's northeastern coast in recent weeks, it sometimes feels like history is doomed to be repeated.

Statistically, it is only a matter of time before the region faces another test at the hands of the heavens.

But Dr Bottoms said history had proven time and time again that the people of the Far North had the gumption it takes to overcome, rebuild and flourish.

"It's patently obvious that despite all the cyclones, floods and all the rest of it, that Far North Queenslanders have really managed to get on top of it all and keep on going," he said.

"We are still here despite all of those setbacks.

"Even though one can look from an indigenous perspective and say there are things definitively wrong in how we portray our history, there have still been magnificent achievements."

As the timeline below reveals, the 1911 cyclones and floods have plenty of company.

In 1879, Old Smithfield was abandoned and later rebuilt further up the hill after an town-shattering murder-suicide and earth-shattering floods.

As Clem Lack (1900-1972) says in The Town That Was Drowned: Some North Queensland Memories and Anecdotes, the settlement - a rival to Cairns - had only been built in 1876.

"Our Wild West and Wilder North were as colourful as anything that the annals of the American West can show, but neither Craig nor Smith were gunslingers, and Craig was unarmed when he walked across the street to Smith's hotel, expecting that Smith was about to pay him a longstanding debt," he writes.

Several revolver shots followed, and both men ended up dead at Smith's hand.

It was a favourite scandal and, naturally, "extravagantly embroidered" tales of Smith riding a steed shod with golden horseshoes soon emerged.

When the settlement then got battered by consecutive floods, it was time to move on.

"If you got to where it was now, you can see why - that area would all be flooded right now," Dr Bottoms said.

Cairns: City of the South Pacific can be bought here.

FNQ - a history of natural calamities

1876

■ Cairns officially established

1878

■ Cyclone almost completely destroys Cairns and Smithfield

1896

■ Earthquake on February 27 felt in Cairns, Kuranda, Mareeba, Herberton and Port Douglas

1900

■ Drought across North Queensland

■ Plague (lasting until 1908) hits North Queensland with 102 patients, of which half died

1903

■ Bubonic plague scare

1904

■ Malay Town burns as a health measure after a Sinhalese cook dies of the plague

■ Severe cyclones in January and March with wind speeds up to 166km/h

1906

■ Cyclone on January 27 damages Geraldton (Innisfail), Yarrabah, Cairns and Cooktown

1908

■ Severe storm on January 7 damages Cairns and coastal area

■ Epidemic among Yirrganydji people on the Coastal Barron area

1911

■ Cyclones in February and March - two within five weeks - with winds up to 216km kills two people in Port Douglas, knocks down lighthouse and demolished all but two buildings

■ Heavy rains cause large landslides on the Cairns Range Railway

1913

■ Cyclone causes SS Innamincka to jump Alexander Reef and rest in the mouth of the Mowbray River, major flooding of Barron and Mulgrave Rivers and inundates Innisfail

■ Malaria epidemic in Cairns

1914

■ Cyanide found in Cairns water supply

■ World War I begins

1918

■ Disastrous cyclone hits Innisfail, Babinda, Aloomba and Gordonvale

■ World War I ends

1919

■ Influenza epidemic kills 10 white Cairns residents and devastates Aboriginal groups

1920

■ Cyclone in February washes away the Aquatic Club house (formerly Walsh & Co's rice mill)

1923

■ Cairns proclaimed a city

1927

■ Cyclone Willis hits Cairns and northwards in February, cuts the city's water supply for three days

1934

■ Aviator Tom McDonald flies the first air search in North Queensland after a bad cyclone crosses the coast at Cape Tribulation in March

1939

■ Severe storm causes the mouth of the Barron River to change from between Casuarina and Ellie Points and break through north to its current alignment, just south of Machans Beach

■ World War II begins

1942

■ Severe malaria epidemic prompts a joint Australian and US armies and council mosquito eradication program

1945

■ Landslides on the Cairns-Kuranda Range railway

■ World War II ends

1956

■ Cyclone Agnes in March causes £1.25 million damage

1967

■ Big flood in Cairns and the Tablelands with 1270mm falling over four days

1972

■ Major flooding exacerbated by high tide in the CBD - the section now known as the Shields St Heart goes a metre underwater

1979

■ Highest Australian rainfall record set on January 4 at Bellenden Ker with 1140mm in one day

1990

■ Cyclone Joy clips Cairns and Port Douglas and destroys parts of Mackay in December

1997

■ Major flooding from Cyclone Justin in March

1999

■ Cyclone Rona crosses the coast just north of Cow Bay near the mouth of the Daintree river in February

■ Heavy rainfall results in flooding from Cairns to Townsville

2000

■ Cyclone Steve strikes Cairns and district, including Mareeba in February

2006

■ Cyclone Larry reaches peak wind speed of 290km/h in March, causing massive destruction

2011

■ Cyclone Yasi brings 290km/h winds and makes landfall between Innisfail and Cardwell, with significant damage to Innisfail, Tully and the surrounding districts including 150 homes destroyed

2018

■ Big 4 Crystal Cascades caravan park evacuated as massive flood surge tears through Redlynch Valley

SOURCE: Cairns: City of the South Pacific, Dr Timothy Bottoms.