Cyclone Vance strikes Exmouth

as experienced by Rod, Heidi, Jasmine and Luke Ellison
at the Lighthouse Caravan Park

We were still more worried about Elaine when Vance made his first appearance off the shores of the Northern Territory and our initial reaction was: "That's still miles away!" and: "What's it's name? Dance? Lance? ...Vance! What sort of a name is that?" Little did we know then that the name would soon be engraved in our minds forever...
We'd been living at the Lighthouse Caravan Park for thirteen months and packing up all the extra belongings we had accumulated in that time into a twenty foot caravan just because of a cyclone which might not even come was no fun, especially as dismantling the annex was a divorce case at the best of times. Our two kids, Jasmine and Luke, had been doing School of the Air, so we had schoolbooks, maths kits, a radio, desk etc on top of all the other stuff. We were still stuffing it into every available space in the van while the park was rapidly emptying out, with most people heading for the allegedly safer shores of Carnarvon or even Geraldton, although Carnarvon was on blue alert as well and the cyclone may very well have struck there.
Exmouth was our home now and we decided not to join the exodus but to put our van into an old light aircraft hangar south of town, packing a few precious things like the photo albums (and Rod's surfboard - one has to get the priorities right) into the Landcruiser, just in case. We were obviously novices at this - we took plenty of candles but no matches, two films but the camera was accidentally left behind, and plenty of food which we never ended up using because most unfortunately needed cooking, a task that proved impossible when we lost power. Well, the only cyclone we'd ever experienced was a Cat1, and barely more than a strong sea breeze!
Thus equipped we headed back out to the Cape to help with the last of the preparations with a surf check on the way in which Rod complained that he was missing all the good waves in all the rush!
The air was still, too still. Dark clouds were sitting on the horizon like ominous messengers of disaster. At about 5 pm, back at the caravan park, a violent dust storm blew up, followed by a half hour torrential downpour. We weren't overly worried. Vance, should he indeed strike, would not reach us until lunchtime on Monday, the radio had assured us. Right enough, the rain stopped and it was still again.
We decided to spend the night in a unit at the park which Robbie Atkinson kindly let us have as it was one of the most solidly built. The next morning, should the need arise, we would seek shelter at the Harold E. Holt base.
It proved to be an uncomfortable night - by two am we lost all radio and TV reception and not long after the power went, too. The wind had picked up that much that even a pillow over the head could not muffle the howling and rattling as the little building shook on its foundations. The kids, surprisingly, slept through it all, but I started to worry. I tried repeatedly to get radio reception, remembering how I'd been told to listen to the radio at all times to be informed about what was going on. At around 4.30am I poked Rod in the ribs: "We've got to find shelter now or we won't make it!" Outside the car was rocking in the now heavy wind gusts. "I'm not driving through this!" Rod mumbled, "let's worry about it at daylight!" And he promptly fell asleep again.
I was getting frightened. Without radio contact we had no idea what was going on, and I did not feel safe to weather a Cat5 cyclone in a little hut a mere two hundred metres from the angry ocean. Visions of the devastation Tracey had left behind loomed in my head whenever I closed my eyes, and the ominous warning: This is even stronger than Tracey! Also I worried about the threat of the huge storm surges we had been told about, and what one of those waves could do to our little hut. I'd never before been in a situation where I truly had to fear for my life, but this was it. Being unable to drive even to the base without the danger of getting blown off the road, we were trapped. The kids were still asleep and their innocent faces touched me: had we endangered their lives by staying here?
The worst was not knowing anything: whether the cyclone had crossed the coast or was still heading towards us. And if it was, what was in store for us. There was nowhere to run, we were trapped. Accepting our powerlessness was hard. Once I came to grips with the fact that there was nothing at all I could do I felt a lot calmer. We did the little every day routine things like every morning, trying to hide the panic: wake the kids and give them breakfast - I was too scared to eat anything. Get dressed. Steel a quick worried glance out of the window. I got some blankets and towels and put them in the kids bedroom, since our bedroom already leaked a lot of water through a broken window behind the storm shutter, and packed some food in a bag in case we had to move somewhere else.
Michel and John, two of our friends from the park who'd stayed in their vans overnight decided to shift into one of the new little cabins which had just been built to lock up stage and which consisted of four solid concrete walls with a welded on roof. John had been through many cyclones before and thought that they would probably be the safest under the circumstances. We took his word for it and did the same, Rod carrying the kids one by one as the wind was already too strong to walk in for them, while I dragged a few blankets and food and water with me, fighting the heavy gusts that nearly knocked me off my feet, too. We took the cabin next to the two men and settled in for a long wait.
The cabins were not quite ready yet, and all that was in them was the tile floor, a sink and a new fridge, still in its box in the corner in the main room. Rod managed to drag two chairs in so we would have a dry spot to sit, as the water was coming in and pooling on the floor. There were two small rooms: the bigger one, facing SW, with a big sliding door and two smaller windows on the other two walls, and a smaller room with a solid concrete wall on the NE side, where the wind was coming from.
At first it didn't seem so bad: we had opened a small window in the main room and watched as trees and caravans shook in the wind, feeling relatively safe on the lee side of the storm, protected by a wall. So far everything seemed to hold up pretty well. By about 9 am the strain began to show: the first tree branches gave. Little bits of ridge capping blew off the homestead. Caravans rocked and strained against heavy tie downs. We still had no idea whether the cyclone was still heading directly towards us, but according to the last radio news we'd heard it had been moving at about 17 km per hour and would be crossing the coast around lunchtime somewhere between Onslow and Exmouth. Three hours to go.
Around 10am things changed dramatically as the wind suddenly swung around and was now coming straight at the big window on the SW side. The rain was so strong that at times we couldn't see anything anymore, total white out. But in one strong gust as the rain eased for a split second we watched in horror as a whole park home was flying through the air from the hill at the back of us. It was no longer safe to be in the main room. The wind carried debris straight towards us, slamming it into the little building. A big piece of roof iron or maybe the wall from another park home crashed into the window, knocking out the centre aluminium strip. The kids screamed in terror, cowering in the corner. So far the real danger of the situation had not been apparent to them, but they were scared now. For some miraculous reason the window held, although there was now an inch gap between the two glass panes and any other debris would surely knock them out. I thought in horror that if the window went we would have no protection from flying debris and it would create a dangerous wind tunnel. There were no beds to crawl under, no mattresses to protect us from flying glass, no door we could shut to the other room. We pushed the chairs against the wall in the smaller room, as far from the window a possible, feeling very vulnerable and exposed, praying that the windows would hold. The big glass sliding door, set into the side wall in the main room, was bowing under the force of the wind, nearly popping out of the wall, frame and all. The only buffer we could find was the new fridge, and in a combined effort we pushed it across the doorway, at least giving us some protection should any of the windows break.
The roar was deafening. 10.30 am. "Two hours to go", Rod said between clenched teeth. Oh my God, I thought. Is this going to get even worse? The walls were solid concrete and yet we could feel them vibrate if we put our hands on them, not to speak of the ceiling which was visibly moving as the wind whistled through the widening joins in the plasterboard. Water was coming in everywhere, climbing the walls vertically and gushing through the tiniest gaps. I sat with Luke on my lap, blankets draped over our heads for protection - as little as it would offer - while Rod held Jasmine, our feet ankle deep in water. Every now and then there was a loud thump as flying debris slammed into the walls. Rocks? Roof iron? Walls of other buildings?
There was nothing we could do but sit it out and hope for the best. There was nowhere to run. If our hut went, we would go with it.
I was beyond fear now. Sometime a resigned acceptance in our fate had set in - my life wasn't exactly flashing in front of my eyes, but I knew it was possible we could die. My worst worry was probably that one of us would get injured, with no help at hand, and for the safety of the kids.
But in the thick of it all some sense of inner calm and strength took over. It was probably the strangest feeling of all, but one that taught me that deep inside we do possess that amazing inner strength, and that we can tap into it when we most need it.
We sat like that for hours. Time meant nothing any more. We sat and waited. Luke fell asleep on my lap, mercifully oblivious to the chaos all around.
By 2 pm Rod had run out of beer, but the worst seemed to be over and he gestured some frantic signals through the window to the hut next door, where our friends had sheltered. They gave us the thumbs up - they had made it through as well.
Looking out through the rain we saw only total destruction. Where park homes had stood was now an empty space. One lonely door frame swayed in the wind, the rest of the building was a pile of debris in front of our door. Luckily it had wedged in the narrow passageway between the cabins in such a way that it prevented other things slamming into the big glass sliding doors of our cabin. Rocks and sand had slammed into the building with such force that the paint had been stripped off the walls.
Caravans had vanished or were reduced to useless piles of rubble, with the cyclone straps still tied but dangling uselessly from their iron bolts set into the concrete. The roof of the homestead had gone, a small toilet block opposite was a mess of walls twisted into one another, folded like a house of cards. We thanked our lucky star that our cabin was still intact, realising how lucky we had been.
The creek behind the cabins, usually a habitat of dry grass that has to be burnt off regularly was now a raging torrent as the skies opened. Muddy water with the flotsam and jetsam of what had once been tourist accommodation. Washing it all into the ocean. An ocean, I imagined, which would retaliate with equal fury as the huge storm tides hit.
John and Michel dashed over, heads bent low, anxiously looking out for flying objects as it was still not safe to go outside. We greeted one another with the relief of fellow survivors, each bursting with our own tale to tell. The thought of: "We've made it! We're safe!" replaced resignation. Nobody thought of our material possessions yet, we were just so glad to have come out of it all unscathed and were more worried how the town had fared.
As the winds died down a bit the kids became restless. "This is so boring!" was Jasmine's classic statement "There is nothing to do! Why can't we go outside?"
Robbie came over from the homestead, worried about how everyone had fared. Despite all the damage to his home he was also unhurt.
We looked out from our windows unto a battlefield, speechless. Then, for some absurd, cruel reason, the wind picked up again. "These things can turn around and come back, you know", one of the guys said. "It does happen." That was the time I felt real despair, more than in the thick of it all. The thought of having to go through it all again was too much. Without radio or telephone contact, of course, we had no way of telling what was happening.
The human body is a great machine: I fell asleep. Amidst the wet blankets, the chaos, the roar of the wind, my little son in my arms, sitting on a tiny chair, I fell asleep. It was an escape, plus the hours of fear had taken their toll. When I woke up again, maybe half an hour later, the wind had not picked up. I dared to think to myself: "This is it. It's all over. We've survived!"
I look back at Vance not with regret but with a new strength from looking into the abyss and coming back stronger. We have been among the lucky ones. Not only did we survive unscathed, but so did most of our possessions, despite the destruction all around. The car, which had been parked in front of the unit we slept in and was surrounded by debris only sustained a few dents and scratches, not even a broken window. A roof from a carport from the chalets on top of the hill had been carried all the way down and now lay on the track in front of the cabins, but had luckily missed us.
That night, making our way across flooded creeks into town, we went back to where we'd left our van expecting to find there was nothing left, but although the shed had been destroyed the van was still intact, the most damage caused by a boat parked next to it, which had repeatedly slammed into the side and punched a few holes through the walls, and of course the water which flooded it right through. A huge metal strut, bent to the ground by the amazing force of the wind, had just missed the front of it - had it fallen the other way it would have crushed the van like an eggshell. Nothing that couldn't be fixed in time, give and take a few things.
We have also met the best people through it all: Axel and Eske Passeck, who have not only given us a place to stay but have also become friends. Countless SES workers, Western Power and Telstra guys who have helped to get the town running again and also gave us moral support during the clean up when tiredness took its toll and everything seemed too much. And all the people from the community who went through their own drama but always asked if they could help.
I count myself lucky and I'm glad now that we stayed - both through the cyclone and the clean up afterwards. It has taught me many lessons and one more thing: We're here to stay.