The 2007 Hunter region and Central Coast storms commenced on Friday, 8 June 2007 and caused extensive flooding, damage and loss of life in the Hunter Region and the Central Coast in New South Wales, Australia. An intense low pressure system developed off the central coast of NSW on the night of Thursday 7 June and over the next 36 hours the state's Hunter and Central Coast areas were battered by the system's strong winds and torrential rain. A number of fatalities occurred at the height of the storms on 8 June with two more storm related deaths occurring on 9 June bringing the total death toll to 10.
Rainfall exceeded 300 mm in the Hunter region. The New South Wales Premier declared a natural disaster for the affected areas. Nearly 6000 State Emergency Service volunteers, including crews from across New South Wales, ACT, Queensland and Victoria worked in the area and responded to over 10,000 calls for assistance. At one point, more than 105,000 homes were without power.
The high rainfall resulted in extensive flooding in the Cogewai Creek valley and the creek rose by over 12 metres in a few hours, preceded by a 'tidal' wave of floodwater which filled the base of the valley. My Hunter Valley studio was submerged to a depth of 5 metres and tools and sculptures swept out into the valley. Most sculptures were recovered, some from up to 1 km along the creek bed after the waters subsided.
The Tsunami series is a body of work inspired by the force and intensity of water.
In this series, I continue to use the same marine metaphors as in the Reef series: the water and the sea are represented by the galvanised steel 'framework' elements (in Tsunami1, a continuous u-shape with long parallel arms for the calm sea, and awkwardly angled and disjointed for the stormy/angry sea - in this instance the tsunami wave), and the naturally-patinated oxidised corten steel elements (weathered by rain and water) represent the land, reefs, the sea bottom . . . . the land at the edge of the sea.
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