Greg and Mandy's Travels

Mar 6, 2025

Way back in 1986 a rather battered courier pigeon detected a cyclone off the Queensland coast, and declared it Cyclone Alfred. Much to everybody’s delight, it fizzled out to a tropical storm before it made landfall, and Alfred was duly miffed that his name was not etched in history.

Fun fact! Did you know this cyclone wasn’t going to be named Alfred? It was originally set to be ‘Anthony’ in accordance with the Bureau of Meteorology’s naming system. But the BOM decided that wasn’t such a great idea for next year’s budget allocation, and wisely decided to move to the next name on the list.

So, poor Freddy’s time had come around again. He vowed to do it properly this time, and it looks like he has.

In preparation for Cyclone Alfred hitting the population centres of South East Queensland sometime tomorrow night, shop shelves have been stripped bare, there are queues for gas bottle refills, and people are proudly showing their stash of 64 rolls of toilet paper as they exit the supermarket – just in case. Seriously!

It’s meant that we’ve endured a day of contingency plans A, B, C and a few more besides. We have plans if our flight tomorrow leaves as scheduled (adobo in Manila), we have plans if the Brisbane airport is open but the flight is not going, we have plans if the Brisbane airport is closed but the Sunshine Coast airport is still open, we have plans if we are locked down, we have plans if Mandy throws something at me for coming up with yet another plan….

However, we did agree that it would eliminate lots of variables if we were hanging over the fence of Brisbane airport on the morning of our flight, so we took a lunchtime train from the Sunny Coast, where you couldn’t even spot a cloud, into the teeth of the coming storm and down to a suitable airport hotel, who at least yesterday promised to drive us to the airport tomorrow morning, even if they’ve changed their tune today.

First casualty was the bus and train network which are ceasing services at midnight tonight. It was announced while we were on the bus to the station, and the loudest cheer came from the driver who is looking forward to at least one paid day off.

Checked into our airport hotel ok, smiling at the planes passing overhead. The latest from the airport is that they will remain open while airlines are game to send planes, and Philippines Airlines have been heard to mutter “What cyclone?”, so at the moment it looks like our plane is coming from the Philippines. It’s not even raining here. Let’s not get too cocky just yet – our incoming plane doesn’t leave for another 8 hours.

Once the time passed where we could catch transport to any other place, and with our flight for tomorrow still showing as scheduled and on time, we gave up staring at our screens and turned in for the night.

Think I’ve got enough?