Storm warning

It amuses me most of the time that I, one of the world's biggest wusses when it comes to thunder and lightning, should come to live in the tropics.

They don't do storms by half here. The gods really are playing bowls. Thunder doesn't start low and rumbly and build to a crescendo: it cracks suddenly and violently and gunshot loud. Free-standing items rattle and larger structures shudder. Sheet lightning surprises, but the fork lighting here knows no bounds to terror: it cuts through every window and finds me wherever I am. Thousands of strikes per storm are regularly counted by weather stations.

In our last house, floor to ceiling windows rendered every serious electric storm an ordeal. I had a cubby hole in the kitchen – between the larder and the fridge – where I could sit on the step-up and try to read. But close by was a long narrow frosted window overlooking the gap between us and next door that saw very little direct sun yet always let lightning in.

Today there has been a storm warning. Australians are very good at weather warnings. They're explicit and specific about where a storm will hit and what you can expect.

We haven't experienced hailstones yet. Apparently hail-manufacturing clouds turn a bit green, and then you know to move your car undercover and stay inside yourself. Golf-ball-sized are seriously damaging, and quite common, and lots of people take photos of the largest on their mobiles and the Courier Mail publishes them so that its readers can simply marvel.

Sometimes it can be perfectly sunny yet you hear distant claps. Other times, the sky acquires a not-quite-right look that might be a sign: is that blue or grey by that bubbling fluffy white.

You can track an approaching storm cell on BOM's radar loop: scarlet, burgundy and black splodges mean scary-heavy rain and possibly worse.

Most storms approach Brisbane from the west or the southwest. Today they're coming from the north, and are associated with 'shearing winds'. I'm not quite sure of the meteorology there, but the terminology adds to a sense of menace, don't you think?

At the height of a storm – and I'm always in my bunker by then – the sky has no detail. Visibility is minimal and everything is grey and formless in the wall of water or blurry from bending in the squalls.

The first storm I experienced in Brisbane was on Day 2 in January 2010. I was on a CityCat. You couldn't see the banks of the river and rainwater swilled through the cabin from bow to stern. Lightning cracked and thunder boomed. Nobody on board batted an eyelid and our host on this orientation tour of our new city streamed his information unperturbed. I was jet-lagged and possibly a little homesick for my girls as I tried to suppress jumpiness. Raindrops bounced off the surface of the river as if it were a pavement.

You hear waterwall rain before you see it or feel it. There are no spits and spots. You hear a noise a bit like a rushing wind and then a wet curtain drops from the sky.

Of course, if you get a storm warning and then it doesn't materialise, there's this massive feeling of anticlimax and wasted photo ops. But today wasn't one of those days. The following photographs alternate views from our river and city balconies as I rushed twixt both like a frenzied fly.

On the fifth floor of an 7-storey apartment block, do you think I still need a bunker? The guest bathroom has no windows at all...

Red Squirrels and Hairy-nosed Wombats

What's that expression? When a door closes a window opens?

A couple of weeks ago The Guardian reported* on the continuing demise of the Red Squirrel, especially in England and Wales. The UK, like Australia, has suffered from the introduction of animals that outstayed their welcome. The Grey Squirrel came from the US in the late 19th century: it's bigger and feistier than the indigenous Red, which is now found only in isolated pockets of the British Isles.

Greys damage the bark of broadleaved trees, bully birds out of suburban gardens, and carry squirrel pox virus, identified in 2005. There are thought to be more than 3 million of them. By contrast, the more timid Reds have dwindled by more than 50 per cent in 50 years (exact figures are not known but may be as low as 120,000).

The Common Dormouse isn't faring too well either. Nor the Harvest Mouse, Mountain Hare, Water Vole, Scottish Wildcat and the humble hedgehog. There were 30 million hedgehogs in the 1950s: now there are about 1.5 million.

But otters and bats are doing better as a result of biodiversity action plans. Otters now enjoy cleaner rivers following the banning of sheep-dip chemicals in the late 1990s. Brown Hares, Polecats and Greater and Lesser Horseshoe Bats are also increasing in number.

On the other side of the planet, the Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat of Northern Queensland is among the world's most endangered animals. There are fewer of them than Giant Pandas or Sumatran Tigers. NHN Wombats are shy, nocturnal creatures. They have lost their territory to cattle, sheep and rabbits, and fall prey to wild dogs and drought. Numbers fell to 35 in 1983. Under a state government protection programme, however, their numbers have been increasing – from 115 to 138 between 2007 and 2009.

Their last natural stronghold was in Epping Forest. That's near Emerald, not northeast London; the town sits on the Tropic of Capricorn 275 kilometres west of Rockhampton. Then came plans to establish a second colony, in southwestern Queensland, just in case the one in Epping was wiped out by an extreme event. With sponsorship from the mining company Xstrata (Emerald is located in a huge mining region), a suitable site was found and developed at Yarran Downs near St George. A predator-proof fence surrounded the Richard Underwood Nature Reserve, and DERM (Department of Environment and Resource Management) rangers dug 'starter' burrows for the translocated animals and cleared the area of undesirable weeds. During 2009 and 2010, 15 wombats were moved. Wombat monitoring and fire, weed and predator management are ongoing.

In March and April this year came news of the birth of two joeys at the second colony.

Habitat destruction – whether it be the result of logging, mining, farming or urban development – plays a significant role in the demise of fauna and flora the world over, and especially so here in Australia. Perhaps it takes the occupants of a big country longer to appreciate the toll taken by extensive resource development.

The relocation of just a few NHN Wombats took a huge amount of time and effort. Many other animals need help to survive now, or they will do very soon, including koalas, bandicoots, possums, Tasmanian Devils, quokkas, quolls, dugongs, turtles, dolphins and sharks – to name but very few** of the most exotic. Even Rainbow Lorikeet numbers are dropping on the Gold Coast.

More biodiversity conservation programmes are imperative.

* State of Britain's Mammals 2011, by Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Unit for the People's Trust for Endangered Species

** For lists of those at risk from climate change see www.cana.net.au/bush/aus_animals.htm

Image courtesy of DERM

October where?

The only thing that distinguishes the image above from one that might have been taken in the UK at this time of year is the blossom just beyond the window. The jacaranda trees are beautiful at the moment in Brisbane, particularly around New Farm Park, where we live now.

We're approaching the middle of spring, which will be followed by the wet season. Weather forecasters have been telling us to expect higher than average rainfall in October and November and an increased chance of thunderstorms because the Southern Oscillation Index (see www.bom.gov.au/climate/glossary/

soi.shtml) is still tending towards a La Niña event, which means an increased likelihood of rain rather than drought conditions.

But the wet this morning was not warm and tropical. It was cool and gusty and grim. And thundery. And everything looked as if it was wrapped in gauze.

Queensland's devastating floods at the end of last year and the beginning of this were the result of a La Niña event (see A bigger wet, October 2010). We were told by weather experts within weeks of these events that the effects of La Niña would wane by the middle of the year. But that doesn't appear to have happened. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) provides regular updates on the SOI – Jenny Woodward, the ABC's lovely weather lady, frequently includes the index in her forecast – and on 28 September BOM reported, 'The continuing cooling trend in the central Pacific Ocean since early winter is consistent with a developing La Niña event.' They predict that it will be weaker than the one of 2010-11. I am sure Queenslanders will be very relieved to hear that.

The Queensland Floods Commission of Enquiry is ongoing. Improved flood mitigation measures have been introduced, the reconstruction of houses and highways continues, and some flood victims are still in dispute with their insurance companies. As we approach the Wet, people can't help but think of last summer's weather events.

It being the second Saturday of the month, the farmers' market was on at the Powerhouse. It's normally busy and bustling like this...

...but this morning it looked like this.

Many stallholders had already packed up and left by 9 o'clock. Australians don't really do wet and windy.

New south whales

I'd been whale-watching before (see A whale of a time, September 2010), off Moreton Island. I'd seen Humpbacks: they gave me goosebumps, such was their power to enthrall.

A few days ago, however, I went whale-watching on a much smaller boat, out from Brunswick Heads into Byron Bay and beyond, and this time the experience was... well... awesome. You run out of words on such occasions. Spellbinding; captivating; engaging; mesmerizing; wondrous; gobsmacking: whales are all of these and more. I was reduced to feeble 'oh-my-god' exclamations bordering on incoherence.

Before we could start looking for clues of whale activity, we had to negotiate Brunswick's white-water bar. The tidal Brunswick River has a narrow mouth, where a bar has formed from sand drifting along the coast. This reduces the depth of the water considerably (to a metre at times), and waves break over a hundred-metre stretch. Taking a boat through this water is not recommended unless you are familiar with the wave patterns, and swells and winds are light. Ideally, you cross a bar on an incoming tide when the waves are running with the tide.

Our boatman had to inform the coastguard of his intention to cross the bar, and then study the wave patterns on this particular day and observe any lulls in wave activity. He headed for the deepest parts of the channel, while at the same time manoeuvring around breaking waves. Once you decide to go, you have to keep going, maintaining a constant speed that will lift the bow over a wave, then bearing away along its back.

Everyone has to wear a lifejacket (by law) while crossing a bar. And hang on. I'd love to be able to show you a view of the oncoming waves bearing down on our 8.5-metre Cougar Cat, but this was a white knuckle ride. No hands for cameras.

As we boarded in Brunswick Heads Boat Harbour there were thunder rumblings, and the coastguard warned of a storm in the Bay. Luckily, my desire to see whales was greater than my fear of lightning. Our boatman correctly judged that the bad weather was moving away from us, but added that the winds had been veering wildly all day and he couldn't be sure what would happen. Once the heavy clouds had moved on, however, the sea became calmer and whale-spotting easier.

We must have sailed for half an hour before getting anywhere near a whale. Fortunately, they are curious creatures. Once we'd approached some, they invited a couple of their mates over and, for about 30 to 45 glorious minutes, eight or nine whales kept us company as we moved very slowly in the direction of their southward migration.

Having stared, wonder-struck, for a while, you think you must try to capture these moments – for Facebook mates in Europe at the very least – and, while hanging on with one hand, you stab at your camera, producing a series of grey frames, perhaps with a trace of spout or post-breaching spray in a big seascape, but few bits of whale. Between the lot of us (12), hundreds of useless shots must have been taken during the three hours we were out in the Bay. My friend was more patient than I – and the best of these photographs are his. I gave up to gaze, again, but he was determined to catch a tail fluke in all its glory and some breaching action.

The whales came so close to the boat, we could have almost touched them. They passed under the boat, then circled round to pass by again. A couple of times one turned on its back, flashing a white tum. This is what whales do when they're relaxed, we were told. And once, one showed it's beady eye above the surface and had a good look at us. That's quite rare, we were told. But I didn't need further embellishment; this trip was special enough already.

Our boatman had told the coastguard when we would return to harbour, and, eventually and reluctantly, we had to leave our friends. Some whales had been spotted further inshore, so we did a loop towards Byron's beaches before heading back to Brunswick Heads.

Sure enough, a female and her two-year-old calf (our crew guesstimated) were having fun. The calf breached repeatedly, to whoops of joy from everyone on board every time.

The awesomeness has stayed with me. A couple of days after our trip, we were walking the cliff path from Broken Head. We looked out to sea for a long time, searching for telltale signs of whale activity. I felt very close to them, still. Before sleep that night, I wondered where they all were. Do whales sleep? They must do, but how?*

By the time whaling ceased off the east coast of Australia in 1963 (1962 in Byron), the Humpback population had been reduced to little more than 100, less than five per cent of pre-whaling stock. Last year, it was estimated that 14,000 whales migrated the 10,000 kilometres from Antarctica to the subtropical waters off Northern Queensland, and the recovery rate is expected to be maintained at about ten per cent a year. This year six Southern Right Whales** have also been spotted, four more than last year.

Our adventure was with Blue Bay Whale Watching (www.bluebaywhalewatching.com.au). They do diving and snorkelling tours, too. They were recommended to me by someone I chatted to, a local, up on Cape Byron in August as we watched whales from afar. He was not wrong. I have no doubt it was the best $80 ($55 for a child) I've ever spent. Ever.

There is no more beautiful thing than several Humpbacks' synchronised arcing. Right in front of you.

* Whales sort of half-sleep, or doze. They are not 'conscious breathers', which means they have to decide to surface to breathe while they're underwater, otherwise they'll drown. So they only switch off half their brain, while the other half monitors breathing, potential predators and, if the whale is female, the safety of calves.

** Southern Right Whales and Blue Whales were hunted almost to extinction by Australian whalers, who then turned their attention to the Humpback

Koala alert

Conservation groups have long campaigned for the national protection of this much-loved Australian icon, one that's worth as much as $1 billion a year to the national economy through tourism. Deborah Tabart, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Koala Foundation (www.savethekoala.com), told the ABC this week that there are no more than 85,000 koalas left in Australia, possibly as few as 45,000. It is estimated that there may have been 10 million at white settlement.

The main threats to koalas today are habitat loss, urban development (principally in the form of traffic accidents and dog attacks), logging, drought, bushfires and disease (especially clamydia). Koalas should be on the watch list.

A Parliamentary committee recently unanimously recommended 19 measures to protect them. These include protection under national law; better national monitoring; habitat mapping of critical areas; and identification of priority spots for koala conservation. These recommendations are likely to become law by the end of the year. 'It's been two hundred years coming,' says Tabart.

• Koalas are not found in Western Australia, Northern Territory or Tasmania. They were wiped out in South Australia during the early 20th century. A hundred years later the state was repopulated with Victorian koalas, but they are still rare, with the exception of Kangaroo Island. Today koalas are considered 'vulnerable' in southeast Queensland and parts of New South Wales. They are probably thriving best in Victoria.

• Queensland koalas are smaller than those found elsewhere and have lighter grey fur, which is also thinner and not as long, presumably because it's hotter here.

• Koalas are not bears, but were labelled as such by European settlers.

• They are arboreal herbivores and native to this continent. Their nearest relative is the wombat. They are marsupials, which means they give birth to relatively undeveloped young, for a mammal. After it's born, a joey crawls into its mother's pouch and stays there, suckling, for about six months. Once it ventures beyond the pouch, a young joey stays with its mother until it is about a year old.

• There is no collective noun for koalas because they are fairly solitary animals. They do share territory, however, where they are referred to as koala 'populations' or 'colonies'.

• Koalas famously eat eucalyptus leaves (mostly), but, contrary to popular myth, they don't get high on them. They prefer some gum trees to others, but none of them are particularly nutritious. The leaves – a koala eats about 500g of them a day – take a lot of chewing and contain toxins. A koala spends more than half its waking hours – which aren't that many, between three and five – eating. It sleeps or sits in a sort of torpor the rest of the time. Like a sloth, a koala has a very low metabolic rate. It gets most of the moisture it needs from the eucalyptus leaves so it drinks very little. A young joey acquires the microbes that enable its digestive system to deal with eucalyptus leaves from its mother.

• Millions of years ago, koalas lived in rainforest. Then the climate cooled and rainforest was replaced by eucaplyt forest in many regions. Koalas may have adapted to eating eucalyptus because there was no competition for this 'food'.

• A female koala has one baby a year (twins are very rare), and her reproductive life lasts about 12 years. Gestation is 35 days.

• Koalas walk on all fours on the ground.

• When vast numbers of koalas were culled at the start of the 20th century, there was a public outcry, which perhaps marked the start of environmental campaigning to protect Australian wildlife.

Bushfire season

I didn't know there was one, officially that is. But, although bushfires can happen anywhere at any time on this arid, sunbaked continent, there is a season for each region when that risk is far greater. In most of coastal and central Queensland, it's spring; in the southwestern interior, it's spring and summer; and in the far north and surrounds of the Gulf of Carpentaria, it's winter and spring.

Brisbane has been enveloped in smoke haze for days, the result of a 'spate of blazes' (Courier Mail), aided and abetted by a ridge of high pressure. It has produced oddly pink dawns (below) and veiled sunsets. Interesting, but strange. By day the sky has been bland, not blue.

I don't particularly remember news of bushfires last year – which probably had something to do with the enormous quantities of rain dumped regularly – but no one should forget Black Saturday in February 2009, when 173 people lost their lives in Victoria.

So, bushfires are common in this land of low, often unreliable rainfall and drought. A drought followed by extensive rain – which is exactly what has happened in Australia recently – allows luxuriant grasses to grow back, and grasses are the 'fuel' of bushfires.

In addition, many native plants are particularly vulnerable: the oil in eucalyptus trees, for instance, makes them burn more easily.

Relative humidity and wind speed are also significant. Australia spans many latitudes so weather systems featuring highs and lows and fronts vary from one region to another. But a common constituent of fire-alert weather is a hot dry wind blowing from the interior. The winds ahead of and behind a cold front, too, can greatly affect the progress, or otherwise, of a fire already raging.

Bushfires are started in a number of ways. Lightning is a common natural cause. There are many unnatural ones – camp fires, dropped cigarettes and matches, machinery, agricultural clearing and controlled 'burnoffs'*, and arson. Indigenous Australians used controlled burns to clear tracks and increase grassland for hunting. Their mosaic burning practices, adopted by settlers, encouraged plant regeneration. Some plants need fire: the seed pods of banksias, for example, are split open by fire so the seeds can germinate.

As with all threats from their harsh surroundings, Australians have systems in place to deal with the dangers posed. The Bureau of Meteorology** issues forecasts (Fire Weather Warnings) to fire authorities so that they can determine the Fire Danger Rating (FDR), which is posted on highways and publicised by the media. They announce Total Fire Bans if the FDR is above low-to-moderate risk.

Authorities remain on high alert across Queensland. The Mail reports today that fire crews have dealt with nearly 150 vegetation fires in the last 24 hours. They build firebreaks and carry out back-burning, which means they start small fires ahead of the main fire front to reduce the amount of flammable material available when it gets there.

The skies are slowly clearing in Brisbane but, after so many dry and sunny weeks since June, the fire threat will presumably remain high until the summer rains.

* the controlled burning of dead wood, leaves, broken branches, undergrowth and other debris that, if left lying on the ground, would feed a fire

** BOM is also a good source of information about bushfires: http://www.bom.gov.au/weather-services/bushfire/about-bushfire-weather.shtml

The uniqueness delusion

Last night Australia were beaten 6-15 by Ireland in the Rugby World Cup. This was described here as a 'shock result'. Admittedly Australia were the favourites, but I would say the result was more of a mild surprise than a shock. Ireland proved immovable in the scrum and their back line remained resolute throughout. Their experience – they are the oldest squad in the tournament – helped significantly to bring about victory over the Wallabies, whom we recently watched beat the All Blacks at Lang Park to become Tri Nations champions. Last night, the team that deprived England of the Grand Slam in the Six Nations Championship earlier in the year but had a dreadful run-up to this World Cup tournament, outwitted the Aussies, who looked increasingly perplexed and didn't even earn a bonus point for losing by less than seven points. They had been convinced beforehand, you see, of their near-invincibility, an assumption they tend to take with them into most of the world's major sporting arenas.

This morning I read Gary Younge's piece in last week's Guardian Weekly, 'Americans must learn to get over themselves'. He opines that their self-absorption in the decade following 9/11 has prevented them from making wise decisions on the world stage: a need for vengeance has precluded foreign policy based on caution and restraint. His observation that 'there was an element of narcissism to the national grief... as though American were unique in their ability to feel pain' led me to consider how other nationalities consider that certain attributes of their character are unique to them, whereas, in fact, they're nothing of the sort.

In Britain, people still talk about the Dunkirk spirit. Usually after a bit of a disaster, such as flooding or rioting or a 'hurricane', communities pull together and help one another like never before and nowhere else on earth. I didn't live through the Second World War, so it's easy for me to be glib. My great aunt, however, who is 95, has often told me that, without doubt, and despite all the hardship and fear and loss, the War days were the best of her life. But were the Brits any different from countless others who struggled in the face of that enormous adversity and leant on each other during the darkest of days?

A similar kind of belief abounded in Queensland after the Great Flood in January and following Tropical Cyclone Yasi, which literally tore through northern parts of the state barely weeks later. Thousands of volunteers turned out in Brisbane to clean streets and homes of their foul mud; millions of people nationwide contributed millions of dollars to the disasters appeal; and for months elaborate and generous aid networks organised the collection and distribution of essential items donated to flood and storm victims. You often heard it suggested that the desire and ability to provide such wonderful support sprang from Queenslanders' hearts to an extraordinary if not unprecedented degree. If the speaker was feeling particularly magnanimous, it was from Australian hearts.

Are any of us in a position, however, to compare the suffering of others, or anyone's efforts to relieve that suffering. Is the grief of parents whose sons return from a theatre of war in caskets any greater or less depending on whether those battlefields were (or are) in Flanders or Vietnam or Afghanistan? Are the consequences of a tsunami for the villages and towns it sweeps away in Banda Aceh worse than for a New Zealand community in which every family loses members in a mining disaster? Can you ever act fast enough to help the victims of famine in Africa or an earthquake in Haiti? Who can judge the cut-off point for supplies of blankets, biscuits or bandages? Is donating even a significant amount of cash good enough?

You hear a lot about 'mateship' in Australia. It means a bond of friendship founded on absolute equality and loyalty, more often than not between men, that is fundamental to the footy team or the defence forces but is also regarded as crucial for survival in a hostile landscape and climate. Such friendship is based on shared experience, but you can exhibit mateship to someone you don't know or have only just met, especially if they're in need and you're able to help.

You certainly hear men talk about their mates a lot more here than in the UK, for example. And mateship manifests itself socially, not only in the stereotypical territory of men round the barbie and women... somewhere else. We've noticed many groups of men only or women only out together in Brisbane, and I'm not talking about under-25s. So perhaps it is a peculiarly Australian thing.

Had I been born in France, I would have been une fille unique rather than 'an only child'. The French language puts a far more positive slant on a situation I wish had been otherwise. I wouldn't have been more unique than any other fille unique, but I like the idea.

In fact, we are all unique; it's just that some of us believe we're more unique than others.