In the lead up to Christmas, Queensland’s tropical far north copped a battering from Cyclone Jasper and its ensuing floods. But after travelling around the region, I can confirm that a perfect paradise still awaits.
Like hundreds of others, I anxiously checked and rechecked the Cairns Airport Facebook page in the wake of Cyclone Jasper, after seeing despairing photos of the airport’s runway underwater.
Thankfully, my flight to Cairns was scheduled the day the airport reopened, but I did wonder what I’d find when I arrived in the city I visit annually. Would there be drinking water? Would there be power? Mud on the pavement? Trees over the road?
The fact is that Tropical North Queensland – the region capturing Cairns, Port Douglas, the Atherton Tablelands and the Great Barrier Reef – is no stranger to crazy weather events. Growing up in the area, it was not unusual for roads to be cut from time to time during the wet season, and getting a day off school because of a cyclone was considered a bonus. Local businesses and councils are well adept at weather-event recovery, and within a matter of days post-Jasper, many places in the far north were humming along as normal.
My post-Jasper trip started in Cairns, where the ground was dry and the sun was out. The worst-hit areas were Holloways and Machans Beach, which are low-lying and predominantly residential suburbs north of the CBD. These are the suburbs that made the news headlines, along with the small community of Wujal Wujal, 360 kilometres north of Cairns, where some homes were sadly damaged and clean-ups continue.
Across most of Cairns, business resumed once the rain subsided, with some operators, like the Cairns Aquarium, not losing a single day of trade.
In popular tourist hot-spot Palm Cove, a 30-minute drive north of the Cairns CBD, the main street only closed for 24 hours while debris was cleared off the road, and by the time I visited on Christmas Eve, some minor erosion was the only clue that floodwaters had passed through. Happily, the iconic Insta shot of a path carved between a plantation of palm trees stretching towards the ocean was still intact. Mid-afternoon, one of my favourite dining spots, Vivo, was packed with leisurely lunchers, and there was a wedding on the beach outside the swish waterfront restaurant Nu Nu.
