I was in my first year of high school, living with my two younger brothers and parents at Nightcliff, near the beach. In the evenings before the great storm, cooling tropical sea breezes would spring up at sunset after a wet-season deluge. We would watch giant mantarays glide around the bay. A cyclone had threatened these waters weeks earlier, and residents had taken measures, but it had veered harmlessly away. My mother, a high school teacher, had good‑naturedly questioned the warnings issued by First Nations boarding students. ‘No, Miss,’ they had replied, ‘that’s not the one. It’s coming’.
And boy, did it come. At 9.30 pm on
