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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Elias Visontay |Rafqa Touma |Ben Smee |Susan Chenery
Swathes of south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales were on alert for flash flooding and damaging winds as more than 330,000 buildings were without power on Sunday morning due to ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. After the downgraded cyclone made landfall just north of Brisbane overnight as a tropical low, the Bureau of Meteorology was still predicting up to 700mm of rain and destructive gusts to hit the region through to Monday. The hazardous outlook followed a string of tragedies.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Susan Chenery |Paul Syvret |Ben Smee |Lucy Clark |Royce Kurmelovs |Andrew Stafford
‘Can you ever be ready for a force of nature like this?’From my house I can normally see the great heft of Wollumbin/Mt Warning, which hovers over the region. Now it is gone, lost in rain and cloud. The town is deserted. When the wind is at its most ferocious, the trees in my garden are bent backwards. There is a silence where normally there would be birdsong. I have done everything I can to be ready for Cyclone Alfred, but can you ever be ready for a force of nature like this?
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Jan 4, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Susan Chenery
The day before the fire front hit, the forest went deadly silent. Normally, says wildlife carer Susie Pulis, “if you are driving or walking in the bush it’s nothing but chitter chatter. There’s lots and lots of noise, all the different bird life and insects and everything buzzing around.” But this was different. “The birds had gone.”Pulis and her son were scouting around for animals before the fires hit. “We could see the fire in the distance, we could see the flames.
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Nov 2, 2024 | 
msn.com | Susan Chenery
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Nov 2, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Susan Chenery
Richard Scolyer was fully engaged in the business of living when he suddenly received a death sentence. A person more alive would be hard to find. As an endurance athlete competing across the globe, he was in peak physical condition. As one of the world’s leading pathologists on melanoma whose pioneering research has saved thousands of lives, he was in demand. At 56, Prof Richard Scolyer was flying along. His life, he says, was “rich”.
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Sep 9, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Susan Chenery
A small-town street party on a Saturday night. On a stage outside the Tweed Regional Museum in Murwillumbah, a band is playing. They all seem to be related, as one cousin after another steps up to the mic. Suddenly a voice of extraordinary beauty rings out into the spring night. People stop and turn. Skin tingles. It’s Budjerah, the Aria award-winning pop R&B singer whom the prime minister confidently predicted “will be a superstar” after he sang at the Australian of the Year ceremony last year.
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Aug 16, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Susan Chenery
Paul Kenny was camping behind the dunes at Samurai beach, north of Port Stephens on the Australian east coast, when he jumped naked into the water to “just wake up”. It was freezing but he caught a good wave, got some speed up and hit something. At first he thought it was another person but there was no one else swimming. He had body surfed into the head of a 2.5-metre (8ft) bronze whaler shark and his outstretched arm was in its teeth.
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Jul 26, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Susan Chenery
It is where the river bends at its widest point that Rhoda Roberts comes to sit. She looks out at the water and thinks about all the generations of her family who have sat here. Once they were shaded by great cedar trees. “The river was our lifeline, our bloodline. It gave us everything. I come here and look at the river all the time.”Above us the traffic rattles and clanks over the Ballina Street bridge, a crossing that was once made by canoe.
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Jul 8, 2024 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Susan Chenery
Content Warning: This article touches on the topics of murder, domestic and family violence, and suicide which may be triggering for some readers. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are also advised that this article contains the names and images of people who have died, used with the permission of their families. Missing and murdered Indigenous women in Australia are often uninvestigated and unreported, leaving grieving families desperate for solutions.
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Jun 29, 2024 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Susan Chenery
Lynda Holden grew up running from the Welfare. She knew how to keep perfectly still in the bush, holding her breath, pressed into hollow logs and wet leaves, as the white men parted bushes looking for Aboriginal children. And she knew that at midnight her family would be on the move. Daytime was too dangerous. Both her parents had been removed from their families – stolen – and they would spend the rest of their lives avoiding the authorities to keep their own children safe.
