… utterly chuffed to win the two major photography prizes at last eves “The Clarion Awards” (Queenslands Media Awards) in Brisbane … Best News Photo for “Alive – Bill & Michell’s Miraculous Escape From Jasper” … & … Best Photographic Essay for “Jasper Brings Once in a Century Flooding”. A terrific evening amongst many media colleagues and friends old and some new. Well worth the trip from the tropics to the big city ;-).
The night really was a reminder that the media industry is still alive and kicking …. the work of the category winners was a real credit to all … and I was extremely gratified to be just a part of it.
Thank You to the MEAA (especially the Queensland branch) for continuing to organise such a great media event.
First image below is my winning Best News Photo … a work that is very close to my heart. Thank You Bill and Michelle from Degarra who put up with me at an extremely fragile time of their lives … to The Australian pic editors Michael Bilbe-Taylor and Milan Scepanovic who entrusted me with a very difficult and complicated assignment … and to gun journo Michael McKenna who did a great job of crafting the story via a very crackly phone line.
The following twelve images is my winning photo essay … made from when Jasper first reared it’s destructive head, through the record breaking rain falls and on to the start of ‘recovery’.
Oh yeah … the judges comments are there too at the bottom.
(Must also mention my medical mate Dr Richard Jackman who managed to get me back out working during the cyclone event after a busted vertebrae incurred during a rain sodden stair fall 🙂 )
… it’s raining heavily as I pen this … it is the ‘wet’ season after all… but nothing like the utterly torrential rains that Cyclone Jasper brought to Cairns and the far north in mid December.
Although the actual cyclone was somewhat lower on the scale as cyclones go … the rains that followed in Jasper’s wake were the most intense seen up here in many decades.
Breaking most of the very long standing rainfall records, metres high flooding and massive landslides caused absolute havoc … and as usual it’s my sometimes challenging job to cover the happenings photographically. As a freelance this gets a little complicated as the phone runs a little hot from calls from news publications and the ‘wires’ (news agencies).
Over the course of Jasper’s journey across the Coral Sea, it’s approach and crossing of the far north coast and it’s impact and aftermath thereafter … I found myself working for all of AAP (Australian Associated Press), AFP (Agence France Presse), NCA Newswire … and News Ltd. The images I made over the initial couple of weeks of turmoil were syndicated and published around the planet … some turning up in places and publications that I had no idea existed.
Jaspers effect on far north Queensland was massive. The Cairns northern beach suburbs of Holloways, Machans and Yorkeys Knob were inundated with metres of flood water … many residents escaping to their rooftops and eventual chopper rescue. Indigenous townships further north were so badly flooded that entire communities were evacuated. At least one was swept to their death. Metres of rain eroded mountains and caused numerous massive landslides that crushed buildings, covered main roads and changed the landscape … and that’s just part of the story.
There’s a selection of my Jasper images (so far) below and here are short details of each for context … from top … as follows … 1. The Sanders family watch Jasper roll in across the Coral Sea at Holloways Beach … 2. Linda Applbee sits on the saturated contents stripped from their flooded Holloways Beach home … 3. Two Pictures on the wall … Steven and Caroline Cheng survey the flooding in their house of 38 years at Holloways Beach … 4. Evacuated residents leave the flooded Barron River bridge Cairns to return to their Holloways beach home … 5. Evacuated residents reunite with rescued family members at the Barron River Bridge Cairns … 6. (left) A discharged patient awaits outside the Emergency Department of Cairns Hospital behind a line of sand bags … (right) Tree surgeon Brice Stienstra removes a felled tree from Muddies Playground on the Cairns Esplanade … 7. (left) Rattled … Inundated ‘Rattle ‘n’ Hum’ bar on the Esplanade at Palm Cove as Jasper closes in … (right) 11 year old Cairns resident Jaxon Andrews tends to a cyclone battered and drenched white cockatoo … 8. (left) Ergon electrician Justin Pitts prepares to fix a power line victim of Jasper … (right) Motorists traverse flooded Cairns streets during torrential rains … 9. A massive tree snapped by Jasper on the Cairns Esplanade.
The first image of the waves at Holloways Beach turned up full TV screen whilst watching CNN … and the fourth image, made at the Barron River bridge in Cairns, was one of 23 images selected in the ‘Australia’s Best Agency Photography for 2023’ collection published by The Guardian. Nice …
Covering Jasper certainly wasn’t uneventful … my favourite lens became a victim of saturation … and I managed to fracture a vertebrae in a fall … minor stuff … and I’ve a feeling Jasper’s story isn’t quite over yet …
