The ocean tried to warn us, but we just didn't get it

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11824548%255E2703,00.html

The ocean tried to warn us, but we just didn't get it

Kimina Lyall, Southeast Asia correspondent

January 01, 2005

A TSUNAMI announces its arrival. It does not creep up ashamed in silence to catch its victims unaware. It gallops, tail high, across the sea like a platoon of soldiers drunk on the excitement of being on the right side of an uneven fight.

It even sends an advance scout or two, smaller big waves that come from nowhere and then immediately retreat, leaving hundreds of metres of exposed sand as they collect water to feed the growing beast.

So, on Golden Buddha Beach last Sunday morning, on a barely inhabited island 200km north of Phuket, we were warned.

The warnings hadn't come from police, or seismologists, or even fishing boats far out to sea: they had come from the ocean itself. .......