Cyclone Seroja: Steve Wiseman’s famous kitchen has been rebuilt years after storm destroyed his Kalbarri home

For many, it was one of the most memorable images to emerge the day after cyclone Seroja ripped apart Kalbarri. Steve Wiseman stood in what the day before had been his kitchen, but after the storm it had been left with no walls or roof. Five years later, Mr Wiseman is happy and relaxed in his rebuilt home. He was able to return to his now cyclone-proof home after almost four years. Mr Wiseman recalled the morning after Seroja going outside to see pieces of his house across his neighbours’ yards. One small mercy was that his wife Julie had recently been moved into care, and luckily never saw the destruction of their home. Mr and Mrs Wiseman had lived in that house since they moved to Kalbarri 26 years ago. “I think we came up for a big millennium party and never left,” he said. Locals trying to rebuild were confronted with a long process to get construction under way. “Nothing got started for at least a year. That was basically because of a shortage of materials,” Mr Wiseman said. “Then after two years, we’d got the site cleaned, and I got a friend of mine out of retirement to come up and do the brickwork, because we couldn’t get a brickie.” Mr Wiseman was able to move back into his home in December 2024. He found it “unsettling” to be back at first, with the noise of the waves too loud compared to the quiet of his work factory where had lived since Seroja. “It was nearly four years,” he said. Mr Wiseman said he wished he had a greater understanding of what insurance would provide in the event of a natural disaster like Seroja. “I wish there was a service available that I could name, but just to read through policies and say, ‘Oh, watch this’. Because none of us know. We don’t read through. You get a book like this and you don’t read through it,” he said. Mr Wiseman said he struggled to get an adequate insurance payout. “They offered $130,000 and I said, ‘You can’t even get the materials for $130,000’. So they said, ‘Well, what about $250,000’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t think $250,000 will rebuild the place’. I think it ended up at around $327,000 by the time I’d finished,” he said. “I think a lot of people just gave up and the insurance companies just browbeat them into the ground. It’s not nice to see what they do ... you’ve got to really stick at it. I was fortunate that I had the factory I could live in. Not really the nicest of places to live, but I got used to it.” Mr Wiseman, a glazier by trade, made the doors and windows for his renovated home himself and oversaw construction. The brick walls are reinforced with steel beams. “I’m very proud of what I’ve now got. I know the structure and I know the stability of it, if another cyclone hits this place won’t go,” he said. However, he said that was not the same for every rebuilt property. Mr Wiseman said some people in Kalbarri were living under a mistaken impression that their rebuilt houses were cyclone proof. “Properties have been sold under the guise that they’ve now been rebuilt to cyclone standards, and the buyer is unaware that they’re not,” he said.