Australia's Natural Disasters

                                                By Richard "Dick" Whitaker

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. Australia’s Natural Disasters tells many stories of the devastation nature has wreaked on our wild country. From the agonies of droughts and floods to the shock occurrence of earthquakes and bushfires, Australia is a country famed as much for its ferocious natural hazards as it is for its rich environment. Freak weather has caused plane crashes and shipwrecks and even been blamed for the disappearance of a Prime Minister. 

 Australia’s Natural Disasters is a fascinating chronicle of the ferocity of nature and the dramatic effects it has had on this country and its people – from the mid-1800s to the seemingly more frequent extreme-weather events of the 2000s. 

 It is also a story of great progress both in weather prediction, as led by the Bureau of Meteorology - and in disaster recovery, from the work done by the various State Emergency Services and Rural Fire authorities. Australia now has a world-class system for dealing with natural disasters from early prediction to the aftermath. 

 Disasters covered include the bushfires of 2019 and 2020, Cyclone Yasi and Cyclone Tracy, The Black Saturday 2009 Bushfires and the devastation along with the Queensland Floods and the 2021 Floods, the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, the mass rescue at Bondi Beach, Dust Storms of 2009 and the devastating hail storm that struck Sydney's East and much more. 

 All this illustrated by on-the-spot photos of Australia’s natural disasters and their consequences. 

Recent publications by the author: 

From Gods to Gigabytes – a Brief History of Weather Forecasting 

Firewise, Firesafe - How to Survive a Bushfire

For information about either publication you can contact the author at 

weathersmart047@gmail.com