Cyclone Hayley batters WA’s Dampier Peninsula as Queensland monsoon floods isolate towns and kills one

As roofs peeled away and basketball hoops twisted in the wind on Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsula on Tuesday afternoon, a very different storm was unfolding 3,000 kilometers to the east. In Queensland’s Gulf Country, a swollen monsoon was pouring nearly a meter of rain over cattle stations and small towns, cutting communities off by road and claiming the life of a man whose vehicle disappeared beneath brown, fast‑moving floodwater.

Together, the two events — Severe Tropical Cyclone Hayley in the west and a slow‑moving monsoon trough in the north and northwest of Queensland — delivered a late‑December test of Australia’s disaster systems and of how much strain remote communities can absorb.

Hayley intensified over the Indian Ocean into a Category 4 system early Tuesday, with sustained winds near its center estimated at 165 kilometers per hour and gusts to 230 kph, before weakening slightly and making landfall as a Category 3 cyclone late that afternoon. At virtually the same time, a separate monsoon low over Queensland was unleashing exceptional rainfall totals of 700 to more than 800 millimeters in some locations over several days, causing major river flooding, road and town isolation, livestock losses and at least one confirmed flood‑related death.

Officials say it will take days to understand the full damage bill. But early reports from Aboriginal communities on the Dampier Peninsula and from Gulf Country towns suggest that the brunt of this twin disaster has fallen, once again, on some of the country’s most remote residents.

A direct hit on Djarindjin and Lombadina

The Bureau of Meteorology said the eye of Cyclone Hayley crossed the northern Dampier Peninsula at about 5 p.m. Western Standard Time on Dec. 30, coming ashore just south of the Aboriginal communities of Djarindjin and Lombadina.

By then, the system had dropped back to Category 3, with sustained winds around 120 kph and gusts to 165 kph. The highest gust measured on land was 158 kph at Lombadina airstrip. Offshore earlier in the day, when the storm briefly reached Category 4 strength, winds were stronger.

For people in Djarindjin, a majority‑Aboriginal community on Bardi and Jawi country with a population of about 400 when combined with neighboring Lombadina, the landfall was still unlike anything they had seen in years.

“It was absolutely terrifying,” said Nathan McIvor, chief executive of the Djarindjin Aboriginal Corporation. “We had a solid four hours of extreme conditions. Houses were shaking in the wind.”

McIvor said at least two homes lost their roofs and many others suffered serious water damage as rain was driven under eaves and down internal walls. Around the community, a newly built basketball court was ripped up, playground and shade structures were torn apart, road signs were flattened and a shipping container was rolled by the wind.

“When you walk around town, it looks like a bomb’s gone off,” he said.

The storm also brought down power lines, leaving Djarindjin without electricity and reliant on generators while crews worked to assess and repair damage. The only road link to Broome, the Cape Leveque Road, was initially closed due to fallen trees and debris, complicating access for emergency services and supply trucks.

Ahead of landfall, Western Australia’s Department of Fire and Emergency Services issued a watch‑and‑act warning for communities between Broome and Kuri Bay, cautioning that very destructive winds with gusts to 170 kph could cause significant structural damage and widespread power failures. Extra State Emergency Service volunteers and specialist search‑and‑rescue teams were deployed to Broome in advance.

McIvor said about 100 residents, including many elders and people in older housing, had evacuated to Broome before the storm hit. About 250 people remained in Djarindjin, sheltering in stronger buildings, and only nine stayed in Lombadina itself through the worst of the cyclone.

Despite the damage, authorities reported no deaths or serious injuries in Western Australia linked to Hayley as of Wednesday morning.

Other centers in the west, including Broome and Derby, largely escaped the cyclone’s core. Broome recorded modest rainfall totals of around 40 millimeters from Hayley, while Derby saw only a few millimeters, though both remained on alert for possible flooding as the system weakened inland into a tropical low.

Queensland’s “landphoon” and a fatal flood

While Hayley was spinning across the Kimberley, a different weather system was punishing the opposite side of the continent.

A broad monsoon trough, with an embedded low, stretched from the Northern Territory into north and north‑west Queensland, dragging in deep tropical moisture and producing what forecasters described as exceptional multi‑day rainfall.

South Mission Beach on the north‑eastern coast was one of the hardest hit locations, recording more than 850 millimeters for the event and with forecasters warning that a meter of rain was possible. Cowley Beach registered 362 millimeters in 24 hours, and some sites along the tropical coast and inland Gulf Country collected close to 800 millimeters over 72 hours.

The downpours triggered moderate to major flooding on rivers across the Gulf Country and north‑west, including the Norman, Flinders and Cloncurry systems. By Wednesday, the Queensland government said towns including Normanton, Doomadgee, Burketown, Gregory, Karumba, Julia Creek and McKinlay were effectively cut off by floodwater.

Nearly 50 roads were closed, among them sections of the Flinders and Landsborough highways. The rail line between Hughenden and Cloncurry, a vital freight route for the region, was also shut.

In the midst of the flooding, a man in his 70s died after his vehicle became submerged on the Gulf Development Road near Normanton on Tuesday afternoon. Police said officers responded around 3 p.m. after reports a car had gone into floodwaters. The man’s body was found in the vehicle, which had been swept off the road.

Mount Isa District Acting Superintendent Paul Austin said the death “highlights the message we keep saying — don’t drive through floodwaters.”

Police said the circumstances were not believed to be suspicious and that the matter would be referred to the coroner. Officers noted the presence of crocodiles in the floodwaters; one officer was praised by senior staff as “very courageous” for entering deep water to reach the car.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli called the fatality “a deep tragedy for the North West community” and said his government’s immediate focus was on keeping people safe, restoring access and supporting graziers.

“This is serious country, serious water and serious risk,” he said. “We know what these events can do to communities and to cattle herds.”

Cattle, roads and repeated shocks

The region inundated by the monsoon low is among Australia’s most important cattle‑grazing areas. Early reports from producers and industry groups indicate significant stock losses, although precise tallies are not yet possible while paddocks remain underwater and aerial assessments are limited by weather.

National media outlets have quoted graziers and local leaders as fearing thousands of cattle may have been lost. Some producers reported receiving the equivalent of their average annual rainfall in just a few days, echoing conditions during the catastrophic north‑west Queensland floods of 2019, which killed hundreds of thousands of cattle and devastated livelihoods.

Disaster management authorities in Queensland have activated state‑level coordination committees and are working with councils to assess damage to roads, bridges and public assets. Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements, jointly funded by the state and the Commonwealth, are expected to underpin emergency repairs and clean‑up, though specific activation announcements for all affected local government areas are still emerging.

For towns like Normanton, which sits on the Norman River and has a majority Indigenous population, this week’s flooding is part of a long history of monsoonal inundation. The river has recorded major floods in 1974, 1991, 2009, 2011 and 2019, among other years, and residents are accustomed to periods of isolation.

Still, the back‑to‑back nature of recent events has raised concerns among local leaders about the resilience of housing, health services and transport links in remote regions, especially as climate patterns change.

Insurance pool and climate backdrop

The twin events have also tested relatively new policy tools designed to spread the financial risk of cyclones and floods.

The Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation, a federal body, declared “Tropical Cyclone Hayley” a declared cyclone event under the Terrorism and Cyclone Insurance Act 2003, effective from 4 a.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time on Dec. 29. That declaration triggers coverage from the Cyclone Reinsurance Pool, a government‑backed scheme that reimburses insurers for claims arising from cyclone‑related wind, rain, storm surge and flooding affecting homes, strata properties and small businesses.

The pool, supported by a standing $10 billion Commonwealth guarantee, is intended to lower reinsurance costs and, in turn, reduce or stabilize premiums in cyclone‑prone regions of northern Australia. Hayley is one of the first severe storms to significantly test the mechanism in Western Australia, following earlier events in the Northern Territory and Queensland.

Separately, the federal government is reviewing the Terrorism and Cyclone Insurance Act to assess whether the cyclone pool is meeting its objectives and whether it maintains incentives for property owners and governments to invest in risk reduction. Submissions to that review closed in November.

Climate scientists say events like Hayley and the December deluge in Queensland are consistent with broader trends documented in the latest State of the Climate report by the Bureau of Meteorology and the national science agency, CSIRO. The report found Australia has warmed by about 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1910 and that short, intense rainfall events have become more frequent. While the overall number of tropical cyclones in the Australian region has decreased since the early 1980s, the proportion of high‑intensity storms is projected to increase, and sea‑level rise is amplifying the impact of storm surges and coastal flooding.

The report cautions that no single cyclone or flood can be attributed solely to climate change, but it notes that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, increasing the likelihood of heavier downpours when conditions align.

Communities facing the next clean‑up

On the Dampier Peninsula, residents spent New Year’s Eve cutting fallen trees, sweeping shattered glass out of houses and working out how to patch damaged roofs in high humidity and heat. Schools, clinics and community‑run businesses were assessing when they could reopen. For some, power remained intermittent.

In north and north‑west Queensland, communities were waiting for river levels to peak and recede, watching for crocodiles in swollen creeks and relying on air deliveries for food and medicine where roads were likely to stay closed for days.

For both regions, the questions now are as much about the future as about immediate recovery: how quickly power and roads can be restored, whether insurance payouts will be sufficient and timely, and how to strengthen homes, clinics and transport links before the next cyclone, or the next “landphoon,” comes ashore.