My Cyclone Tracy story
On the anniversary of Cyclone Tracy, our thoughts are with all the families that were affected. In remembrance of the event, we are sharing the personal story of one of our staff.
On Christmas eve 1974, I was 9 years old my family lived at Humpty Doo, on that day our uncle come out and wanted us to go back with him to his family house which was an upstairs house in Stuart Park, as he believed it would be a safer place than our fibro shed at Humpty Doo, so about 6pm we went into Mary Street also taking our dogs.
After 11pm the wind and rain was increasing, the sound of the wind and noise of destruction was building, when Cyclone Marcus came through Darwin in 2018 it was the sound of the wind that made me extremely anxious more than anything else.
The full force of Cyclone Tracy came after 12am, we were still in the house, bits of walls were starting to fly away, the two end walls of the house were no longer intact and the roof was starting to disintegrate.
The adults made a decision to make a dash for the downstairs laundry and bathroom area, the wind was coming from the harbour direction, the back of the house, so we were able to go down the front stairs, we couldn’t wait for the eye of the cyclone, in the flashes of lightning you could see debris flying and sheets of corrugated iron scraping along the street causing sparks, the wind sound and noise from metal was something that I haven’t forgotten, I also remember seeing our dog Susie out and about in the street, I wanted to go get her but couldn’t.
So that night 4 adults and 8 children crammed into the very wet bathroom area, a very small space for about 6 hours thankfully the floorboards remained intact.
One thing my parents have talked about was the wind pressure and how it made breathing harder and added another layer to the experience.
The next morning in the light of day we could see our aunties and uncles house was destroyed along with the neighbouring houses, all of the presents were blown away, later on I never really cared for Christmas presents. As kids we did some exploring around the big mess that was left, our greatest discovery was a bunch of paper money stuck to the cyclone mesh fences, that was something totally unexpected so I ended up with a pocket full of redbacks with nowhere to spend them, Susie also survived, loved that!
In the following days with no power I remember standing with my father in line to get ice to take home and then being evacuated by a Hercules aircraft to Brisbane’s Amberly Base and later to Thursday Island in the Torres Strait.
Cyclone Tracy changed many things, most of all old Darwin was gone and the new Darwin would emerge, it also gave us that song “Santa never made it to Darwin” by Bill and Boyd.
None of our family was hurt and all our extended families returned to Darwin after they were evacuated.
