Cape York residents batten down ahead of Cyclone Narelle

In Coen, what began as a pleasant wet season morning saw shop owner Sara Watkins swap a planned sausage sizzle for securing the town — pulling down signs, sandbagging doors, selling gas stoves and canned food, and preparing to communicate via UHF radio. The few hundred residents of the Cape York town of about 330 were hunkering down for a cyclone they were told could be the worst in living memory.

Narelle had intensified to a category five storm offshore and was forecast to pass directly over Coen, leaving the town likely to face weeks without power, mobile reception or access to the outside world. Coen Regional Aboriginal Corporation general manager Lucretia Huen, who was in Brisbane, said the town has no purpose-built cyclone shelter and some buildings are older and not built to modern cyclone standards.

She described the scene as "very eerie" and said residents "can’t hear birds," calling it the calm before the storm. More than 700 people in the remote community of Lockhart River were also preparing.

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