Cyclones, Indigenous and Invasive, in Northern Australia

Abstract

In the cyclone belt of Northern Australia, a wide range of different knowledge systems apply to wild weather events.1 Generally speaking, these are of two kinds: Indigenous and non-Indigenous. In this chapter, I focus upon significant differences in Indigenous and non-Indigenous creative responses to "Australian" cyclones. The Indigenous communities and societies of Northern Australia are culturally and linguistically diverse, and so is their weather knowledge, which has evolved over thousands of years in dose relation to specific geographies ("country"). Non-Indigenous colonists brought with them a host of preconceived understandings about climate and its variability. Mostly this was based upon experience of the temperate regions of the British Isles, although many also had experience of life in other parts of the British Empire, where pejorative ideas of tropicality had evolved into a conceptual geography that predisposed them to regard Northern Australia as inhospitable and indeed hostile to their health and well-being.