Cyclone Alfred

​

Braelyn Rolfe-Chase, curatorial researcher on Cyclone Alfred Project. Ngugi/Quandamooka.

Throughout the course of the Cyclone Alfred research project community engagement through yarning, listening and sharing has been fundamental in creating and forming this body of work. Centralising the perspectives of both descendants of Quandamooka and Minjerribah/Stradbroke Island residents has not only been crucial in documenting how our Island community experienced the 2025 extreme weather event, but also in engaging community with the museum and its collection.

With assistance from the NSIMM team and funding from and Redland City Council RADF grant, my role on the project allowed for my own self, as a young Quandamooka descendant, to engage with historical materials held by the museum, speak with, listen and learn from community, whilst also expand and strengthen my own knowledge systems and relationships. My family and I’s personal experiences as Dunwich residents and community members during the 2025 cyclone has also been documented within the discourse, and contributes to perspectives of community that remained during the weather event.

This research surrounds Cyclone Alfred and the history of other large storms that have been experienced by Minjerribah/North Stradbroke Island and surrounding sand island communities, but also transcends into deeper narratives and connections. The inclusion of epistemological and oral creation stories by both historical recordings of weather patterns and community recounts remember the beauty, formation and destruction of natural elements, the movements of all living organisms during environmental change and the effects of environmental degradations on weather patterns and extremities.

By holding various community sharing sessions in each township, conducting home visits and interviews with Elders, young Jarjum (children) and key community stakeholders, a compilation of interviews have been correlated to document residents’ voices and experiences before, during and after Cyclone Alfred. All community voices represented have been consensually recorded and documented in the museum’s collection. This research further contributes to a historical repository of perspectives and oral histories of past and current extreme weather events experienced by Minjerribah/North Stradbroke Island community.