# In the middle of cyclone preparation I found a baby bird – one tiny, wild life amid the wind and rain

## Opinion


My homeplace has experienced four natural disasters in eight years. But I’d never seen the like of this bird before, vibrantly green and startlingly beautiful.

We were midway through our cyclone preparation when my mother broke her leg. She stepped into her bedroom to retrieve something, tripped and fell, and that was that. My mother is 74 and hardy, so this sudden break took us by surprise. Once I got her home, leg in brace, we’d lost significant time, and my household was down to one functional human: me.

This is the fourth natural disaster I’ve experienced in the last eight years. One-in-100-year floods (2017), unprecedented bushfires (2019), one-in-1,000-year floods (2022) and now . Cyclones are a new threat. I’ve lived in my homeplace, in northern New South Wales, for almost 50 years and we’ve never had a cyclone cross land in our vicinity. We were, as they say, in uncharted waters.

 is the author of four books including the memoirs  and .

[](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/12/in-the-middle-of-cyclone-preparation-i-found-a-baby-bird-one-tiny-wild-life-amid-the-wind-and-rain#img-1)

A flooded road in northern NSW on Monday as Cyclone Alfred continues to wreak havoc.  
Photograph: Jason O’Brien/AAP
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