DAY 5 without power. The novelty of our family of five pretending we are camping in our own living room is beginning to wear off. The destructive and debilitating effects of Cyclone Rosita, on our home town of Broome, are also being felt.

Large piles of dying foliage on verges are a frustrating reminder that the sub-tropical gardens of a week ago, lush with fresh growth from the recent wet, have been ravaged. Magnificent Cable Beach, exposed to the wind’s fury, is severely eroded. Masses of rock is now exposed where the pristine white sand used to be, and a concrete path is left hanging precariously in mid-air. Local businesses have been stopped in their tracks whilst tourist operators suffer setbacks to varying degrees. The remains of Karl Plunkett’s Eco Beach Tourist Resort is sobering evidence of the truly devastating effect of a cyclone.

There is an upside to all of this, however. My 3 children and their friends now have no television, no Nintendo 64 and no computer games. As International TV Turn-Off Week begins, several residents of Broome, myself included, already loudly proclaim the benefits of this concept.

These children are physically tired at night, falling asleep by 8pm (as opposed to the normal 10pm holiday habit). They are no longer irritable and disagreeable. They are playing outside all day, building cubbies out of the surrounding natural debris, rediscovering their bikes and roller blades and using their creative talents as they paint the branches of our broken boab tree, in bright bands of colour.

Rodney Vlaise, a psychologist and local co-ordinator for TV Turn-Off Week, states that Australians will have watched 10 years of television by the end of their lives, about 3 ½ hours a day (The West Australian April 22, 2000). He goes on to describe his new found role as cultural jammer. These are people who challenge supposed basic tenets of our society, such as "technology is God" and "economic growth and the consumption of products are the key to happiness".

My children suffered computer and TV withdrawal during day one of the power failure. Since then they have been rediscovering the magic of middle childhood. They have been exploring, constructing, creating and communicating. They are demonstrating that play is children’s work. It channels their energy into their learning processes and developmental needs. It is essentially active.

Television viewing is essentially inert. Marie Winn, in The Plug-In Drug (Viking Press, New York 1977) cites its adverse effects on children’s thinking, speaking, imagination, senses, physique, feelings and behaviour. She speaks of the pre-television era when there was a culture rich in games, songs and rhymes.

Cyclone Rosita has most certainly shaken Broome; the after effects will stay with us for a while yet. It has also shaken myself, as a parent, out of my complacency. That "plug-in-drug" is all too easy. I heed the words of my youngest son: "When the power comes on can we leave the TV off and play scrabble?" I’m with him, and a new age of cultural jammers.

By Judy MCGinn of Broome, Western Australia

This article appeared in the “Outside Run” section of The West Australian in April 2000