page_title: Cyclone Larry
section_title: Leadership by General Peter Cosgrove
hierarchical_section_title: Cyclone Larry / Aftermath / Leadership by General Peter Cosgrove
caption_attribution_description: English: Peter Cosgrove at the 2008 National Anzac Day service, Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
context_page_description: Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry was a tropical cyclone that made landfall in Australia during the 2005–06 Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone season. Larry originated as a low pressure system over the eastern Coral Sea on 16 March 2006, and was monitored by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in Brisbane, Australia. The low-pressure area organized into a tropical cyclone two days later and quickly strengthened into a Category 4 storm on the Australian tropical cyclone scale. Larry made landfall in Far North Queensland close to Innisfail, on 20 March 2006, as a Category 5 tropical cyclone on the Australian scale, with wind gusts reaching 240 kilometres per hour, before dissipating over land several days later.
  Throughout Queensland, Cyclone Larry resulted in roughly AU$1.5 billion in damage. At the time, this made Larry the costliest tropical cyclone to ever impact Australia; surpassing Cyclone Tracy in 1974.
context_section_description: Former Chief of the Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove, took charge of recovery efforts, and was directing activities from Innisfail by 24 March 2006. He called for an economic assessment by state and federal governments, and specified a moratorium on businesses' debt repayments to banks for 3 months.
caption: General Peter Cosgrove, head of the Cyclone Larry Taskforce, pictured in 2008 at Canberra.
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