A TORNADO AT BOWEN, QUEENSLAND.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 553, 27 March 1876, Page 3

A TORNADO AT BOWEN, QUEENSLAND.

Extraordinary Occurrence. The Port Denison Times has the following particulars respecting the tornado that passed over Bowen on the 16th of February, and of which we have had telegraphic intelligence ; —The night of the 16th February will be long remembered by those resident in Bowen at the time. Little did they think on rising that morning to begin their daily labour, that ere midnight ruin and desolaiion would be in their midst; but, alas 1 so it was, and before ten o’clock at night many a house was laid low. The day passed on, evening set in, and most people had retired to their homes, little anticipating that in it few hours many of them would be homeless, their house tree shattered, and their property destroyed. Shortly after nine o’clock a low, dull, rumbling sound was heard, which was thought at first by those who heard it to have been distant thunder, and by numbers to have been the surf beating on the shore. Coming from the north, and gathering strength as it swept on, the tornado rushed with irresistible force through the town, levelling to the earth everything it came in contact with. It swept on its course like a tidal wave of gigantic size rather than impalpable air, and every obstacle went down before it, The gust, in addition to its terrible sound, was accompanied by, as some people assert, balls of fire; and Mr Marlow assures us that a thunderbolt went through the wall of his house, leaving a round, welldefined hole. It was all over in a few seconds, but in that incredibly short time property to the value of many hundreds of pounds was destroyed. We may mention, as showing the inconceivable force of the wind, that the roof of Mr Silber’s house—not merely a sheet of iron—was carried across the water and landed on the Newstead side of the bay. The removal of Captain Bristowe’s house, with its inmates, without dislodging an article of furniture—the lamp even remaining lighted all the time—may be mentioned as another marvel Trees were most carefully barked, but not blown down. A man was carried on a stretcher across the street from Wagner’s without feeling any motion. The wind, having done what mischief it could on shore, crossed the bay, and ploughed its way through the scrub to the open sea, where it is to be hoped it met with no unfortunate mariners. We cannot conceive a vessel living through that terribly sudden onslaught, A gentleman residing at Bowen writes to a friend:—“We arrived here during a heavy north-west squall, raining as it only can iu

this latitude, and being as dark as Erebus, We had just finished tea (half-past 9 p m.), when it fell a fiat calm, still raining. Suddenly we heard a tremendous roaring. Mr Harbour, the owner of the lodging-house, and an old friend of mine, was outside, and he suddenly yelled out ‘A cyclone.’ As is the custom here in such cases, all hands rushed for the beach—about 150 yards away—in order to squat under the false beach. But before we got half way the wind was upon us. It was truly terrific—rain, timber, iron roofs, and a dull glare, lightning in round balls, all in a mass together. It all occupied about three minutes from the time it commenced until t he end—l mean from the time we heard the first roaring. The roaring of the thunder and wind was tremendous. After all, it was only a whirlwind aVut a quarter of a mile in diameter. I don’t know how fourteen people, grouped together as we were, escaped the timber, &c ; tons of it must have passed over, as the ground was ploughed up in the track of the squall as if grape and canister had been fired. Not a house in the direct track had one board left upon another. One of my horses, hobbled close to where we sat down, was cut to pieces with iron, and died next morning. People were buried in the ruins of different houses, but no one has died as yet. All the houses are wooden. A large house, with fourteen rooms, not in the direct line, was carried twenty yards, being lifted off the piles and plumped down in its proper position. A horse and stable are missing altogether. The doors of the stable were picked up to day floating in the bay, but nothing else, so it is supposed that the rest was blown bodily out to sea.”