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GARRY’S ANCHORAGE, FRASER ISLAND—ENGULFED BY DUST...continued |
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Above: Monitor Lizard, Fraser Island |
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The ship’s log of 22 September holds a clue to what happened next: Howling northerly winds continue, now in their fifth day. Something had to give.
On the sixth day the northerly blast finally stopped, late in the afternoon. An eerie silence fell. To the southwest, the distant mainland slowly turned a murky brown, became indistinct, then disappeared entirely. Something awful was coming, but we didn’t know what. |
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It reminded us of the day before the terrible Ash Wednesday bushfires in Melbourne in 1984, when the city literally disappeared under a mountain of red dust from the centre of the country. |
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Below: female Leaden Flycatcher, Fraser Island |
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A browny-red haze slowly blotted out the sky. A massive dust storm was swallowing us up. The dust, which we later learnt had closed Sydney Airport & shut down the Sydney and Brisbane ferry system, was coming to Masala. |
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Above: the sun is reduced to a moon-like brightness by the advancing dust storm |