25 December 2023 – a Tornado on the Gold Coast and we are covered with RACQ home insurance???
On 25 December 2023 the Gold Coast Hinterland located, Queensland, Australia, experienced a tornado like event. (For visitors who aren’t local, we don’t do tornados. On the Gold Coast we rarely even do cyclones but to be fair, we often experience freaky storms, and they can get funky.)
In Australia, especially Queensland, Home insurance matters. It’s expensive to insure your home properly, including flood, but you don’t F around. You pay the money, so when sh*t goes down, your life doesn’t turn into a total nightmare. Our property was insured with RACQ home insurance when the tornado hit.
As at February 2026, RACQ advertise on their website,
“RACQ’s home insurance provides the cost of repair or replacement of your house when things go wrong.”
At the time we took out our RACQ home insurance policy, we are sure they were talking about “peace of mind”.
A lot of Queenslanders are insured with RACQ home insurance. At the time we took out our policy they were not the cheapest option by any means, but we thought, the most comprehensive home insurance provider with a half-way decent reputation. (The annual premium for our RACQ home insurance policy was more than $5k (per annum) at the time of our first claim.)
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When the tornado happened, xmas day 2023, our home was one of a number effected in our area. Trees were snapped in half or pulled out of the ground. Power was down. A lot of people lost roofs. Some families lost everything.
To be fair, we were actually very fortunate. We had some tree issues and relatively minor damage to two roofs, on our home – a Queenslander, and on our motor-home. We believe a large tree had fallen on the corner of our homes’ roof and landed on an external staircase. (We lived on a 5 acre property and had two houses and one motor home that we used for accommodation, one house was a Queenslander which we renovated, loved and lived in, and a secondary, new dwelling created for our mother.)
Our Mum was home at the time of the tornado, solo. We were overseas on holiday. (It was actually the first time we had not taken her on holidays since Michael passed away, and the tornado scared the hell out of her. Mum has seen wild weather before but describes this tornado event as something she never wants to experience again. She speaks specifically of the noise being other worldly.)