If you’re reading this in the UK, cyclones probably sound exotic and vaguely tropical – even exciting perhaps.
If you’re in Queensland, you’ll know all about them. They’re a bit of a nuisance. Alfred is our most recent, forming on 23 February 2025 in the Coral Sea.
Townsvillers have said they’ll still play cricket in a category 1 cyclone. Only Alfred is not going to Townsville, it’s coming to Brisbane as a category 2. And Brisbane hasn’t had a cyclone cross the coast since 1974 – a year of record floods.
Since then Brisbane and South East Queensland has grown up. About half of Queensland’s population live here. But its property standards have remained complacent, mired in a temperate climate mindset. That means that the winds and rain that we expect in the next days could cause widespread and significant damage.
This is all very well, you may think, but what has it got to do with the Old Crocks and the desert? Well, it all comes back to that headache of a few days ago – which turned into a major migraine. I changed the wheel cylinders – both sides for good measure; bled the brakes; no bubbles but still a squishy pedal. Bled them again. Put half a litre of brake fluid into the system and ran out – both of brake fluid and ideas.
The redoubtable Land Rover designers had already catered for such incompetence by designing a system with two halves. While I had been mucking around with the back brakes, the front brakes remained undisturbed and working. So with brake warning light flashing and squishy pedal but able to lock the front wheels, I set off to my favourite brakes and tires specialist for a quick fix – or so I thought.
The quick fix turned out to be a new master cylinder. The part left Sydney last Friday – and Tropical Cyclone Alfred grew and schemed. I’d driven to the brakes place on an end-of-summer perfect Queensland day without the canopy. All the new electrics to power our trip were wrapped in light plastic tied up with bailing twine. Good enough to survive a summer shower on the way home. But some predictions have Alfred dropping 1000 millimetres of rain. That’s a lot of water! The electrics were built for a car, not a submarine. So, it’s vital that the brake cylinder is fixed, and I can get the vehicle back under cover. As of Tuesday lunchtime, no news from the garage. Will I get it home and dry before the deluge?
At least it and I have a home to go to. The Smith Family have a story of Jess, a young schoolgirl with a mother too ill to work whose after-school job wasn’t enough to keep a roof over their heads, still less afford what she needed at school. The Smith Family works to rectify that kind of disadvantage, giving children like Jess the support, encouragement and hope for a better future. That’s why they are one of our four important charities. So please help kids like Jess by sharing the link and contributing if you can.