Duckhand in the face of Cyclone Yasi

Last night, in the midst of the terror and impending doom as Cyclone Yasi moved slowly but surely towards landfall in Far North Queensland, something wonderful happened.

It was brief, loopy and unmistakably Australian:

At 10:14pm, a duck hand moved across the live Townsville webcam on ABC News 24.

What's a duck hand?



It happened so suddenly and so fast I almost thought I had hallucinated it (well, it was hot last night).

Immediately I ran to Twitter; "PLEASE TELL ME SOMEONE ELSE JUST SAW THE DUCK HAND ON THE TOWNSVILLE WEBCAM."

Gradually, and then swiftly, people responded. Yes, they, too, had seen the duck hand. The #duckhand hashtag started strolling racing up the trending charts.

I started a Facebook Fan Page, The ABC News 24 Cyclone Yasi Duck Hand.

Somebody made an animated GIF of duckhand:


In the aftermath - apparently the originator of the duckhand later appeared, waving in his underwear, on the same webcam - the duckhand will live on as a perfect crystallisation of the Australian spirit and sense of humour.

Live television's frisson can always go one of two ways: badly, or brilliantly.

In the latter category we have classics of live television like the sports TV show's desk eaten by an out of control camera, a news anchor screaming in the middle of a field of Thanksgiving turkeys, or Graham Kennedy's catalogue of brilliant SNAFUs.

But there was something about the duckhand that felt, despite the ephemeral nature of those few seconds, like an enduring symbol of "Australianness".

In the face of certain doom, trees whipped every which way by 100kmph winds and thrashing rain, that someone saw fit to cheer up viewers glued grimly to their TV coverage is wonderfully heartening.

Australians - like, like it or not, our brethren in the UK - have always had a very particular brand of gallows humour.

It felt, in a funny way, like an addendum to Bob Katter's comments on ABC News 24 minutes earlier about the media "terrorising" residents of Queensland with fearmongering.

But where Katter's statements felt like a dressing down, the duckhand was a gentler reassurance; "Don't worry everyone, we're still alive up here and we're laughing in the face of this impending disaster."

To wake up this morning and hear that - as yet - nobody had died or been seriously injured in Cyclone Yasi's warpath, and not only that but that three babies had been born in evacuation centres, gave it all an unexpected sheen of blessed relief.

And it made that momentary respite offered last night by duckhand all the sweeter.