South knows little of north

“OH my god, are you OK up there? We heard North Queensland was hit by a cyclone!”

Erm, yeah, guys, we’re all OK in this part of the world, just a little hot and sweaty at the moment.

While we in Cairns were glued to our screens like the rest of the country, concerned for those living from Ayr to Mackay as Cyclone Debbie unleashed her wrath, something interesting was apparent.

The rest of the country doesn’t actually know anything about North Queensland.

At first I thought it might just be my geographically challenged friends in the southeast, who think the 2000km land north of Noosa is nothing but cattle and cane. Apparently not. On Thursday, Member for Cairns Rob Pyne seemed so frustrated by the nation’s lack of basic map reading skills, he tweeted: “Please get the message out there Cairns is not ‘cyclone affected’ and we are ‘open for business’. Come visit!”

Part of the blame for this confusion can be awarded to out-oftown television crews, who, while madly battling each other for the best wind and rain-blown piece to camera, used north, far north, and central Queensland as though they were interchangeable. This from the type of people who have a heart attack if you suggest anything west of Parramatta is true Sydney.

Maybe it’s our fault too, maybe we’re just not being parochial enough in the Far North. Maybe it’s time we once again brought up becoming a new state, so the southern half of the country might spend a moment or two learning about this great part of the world.