Pod Insights ABC Rewind Cyclone Tracy: survivor stories About this episode Fifty years ago, in the early hours of Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy killed 66 people and decimated the city of Garramilla/Darwin. Afterwards more than 30,000 residents were evacuated, many never returning to Darwin.
Writing down memories of the event helped some survivors of the cyclone process the experience. Hear a handful of these stories, set in crumbling houses, airborne cars, a busy restaurant and an overcrowded hospital, all set to the terrifying real-life soundtrack of Cyclone Tracy.
(image courtesy of the NT Archive : LANT LJ Adams NTRS 3129 P2, item 1 Caption "Chris Adams looking at Cyclone Tracy destruction, 26 December 1974")
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0:19 Speaker 01 Ladies and gentlemen, this is Tiger Brennan, the mayor of what was once a prosperous city.
0:28 Speaker 02 Fifty years ago, in the early hours of Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy decimated the city of Garramilla, Darwin.
0:40 Speaker 03 One might almost think the atomic bomb has come into Darwin, the capital of Northern Australia.
0:47 Speaker 02 Sixty-six people were killed in the cyclone and hundreds more were injured.
0:53 Speaker 02 The ferocious storm flattened most of the city's buildings.
0:58 Speaker 02 And afterwards, more than 30,000 residents were evacuated, many never returning to Darwin.
1:05 Speaker 02 And then there was the psychological toll Tracy took on the thousands of survivors.
1:11 Speaker 04 Afterwards, Darwin was just a basket case. It was full of people with PTSD and broken families and alcoholism and all sorts of things.
1:22 Speaker 02 Catherine Donie survived Cyclone Tracy as a 12-year-old, and the trauma of the experience has stayed with her ever since. She set up an online support group for fellow survivors, along with a website where people can share their memories of the event.
1:39 Speaker 02 Hello, I'm Kirsty Melville and welcome to the History Listen.
1:44 Speaker 02 Producer Phoebe Hartley recorded a selection of these stories for today's episode. And a warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners, that a deceased person is spoken about in the programme. And the sounds of the cyclone and the warning siren may be distressing for some listeners. This is Cyclone Tracy: Survivor Stories.
2:11 Speaker 05 1974, Gough Whitlam was Prime Minister of Australia. Inflation was high, flares were wide. I wasn't quite born yet, but my parents were married and living in Melbourne. My family on my mum's side had moved from Melbourne to Darwin. My Uncle Phil had gone up there to help run the Travelodge Hotel, along with my auntie, mum's sister, my one-year-old cousin, and my nan. When the cyclone hit, they sheltered in the bathroom of their ground-floor flat, like they were told to, because the bathroom was meant to be the strongest room in the house. But Cyclone Tracy blew my family's bathroom away that night, along with most of the rest of the flat.
2:54 Speaker 05 Back in Melbourne, mum had no idea whether her entire family was dead or alive.
3:04 Speaker 05 Before the cyclone, Darwin was a great place for kids to grow up.
3:08 Speaker 04 Oh gosh, it was a tropical paradise. From a kid's point of view, it was utter freedom. We would go fishing, we would go sailing, we'd go camping. My name is Catherine Donie. Grew up in the Northern Territory, spent most of my life there.
3:24 Speaker 05 Catherine was living in Darwin with her parents and six siblings when Tracy hit. Thankfully, her whole family survived. Decades later, Catherine found that writing down her memories of the event and sharing them in her online support group helped her process the experience.
3:42 Speaker 04 I had actually written a fictional account. And I eventually figured out that I was too scared to write what really happened.
3:54 Speaker 04 In 1974, there were seven of us kids, ranging from three to 15. I was 12 years old. I remember I'd spent the day, Christmas Eve, picking up rubbish from the yard, but no one else seemed bothered by the cyclone warning. "It'll never happen," my dad said. "It'll go west, straight past us." There was a Christmas tree in the corner of the lounge room, presents piled around it, overflowing.
4:21 Speaker 04 That night, my folks went out for drinks with friends. The wind picked up. The rain started. We watched TV. The siren warned every hour or so. The rain kept coming. It sliced sideways at the louvers. 11pm. The sound of a car door slamming. My parents are home. My sister Claire, two years older than me, yells, "Water's coming down the walls." We get towels. We try and knock the puddles, but they keep coming.
4:57 Speaker 04 Then, under the dining table, all of us, a crash, maybe an earthquake? No power, it's dark, it's cold. Water streams down the walls. We're paddling in water. And the noise, the howling wind, on and on and on and on.
5:18 Speaker 04 And then it's still.
5:21 Speaker 04 "Get downstairs," my dad says. Chris, my older brother, goes out towards the porch. Can't open the door, something's in the way. "The back," says my dad, "we'll go the back stairs." My dad opens the door. I have never seen anything like it in all my life. Trees smashed. Houses smashed. Corrugated iron all over the place, glass everywhere. The neighbour's house with no roof. Tinsel strewn and glistening. "Get downstairs," urges my dad, "it'll come back in a minute."
6:05 Speaker 04 Nine people, two cars. Mum and the little kids in the station wagon. Dad, Chris, the dog and the cat in the ute.
6:17 Speaker 04 Noise, unbelievable noise. It comes roaring at us like a train, like a lion. I look up, a stove flies past, just inches in front of us, sheets of iron. A sewing machine, a gust picks up the car and slams us against the pylons. We pray. Hail Mary, full of grace. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord be with you, blessed be thy name. And, oh my god, the noise, the wind, the cold, the screeching sound of tin and ripping and broken bones, and is there even a god?
7:00 Speaker 04 My mother is crying, I think I peed myself. We hail Mary again, all night, amongst the cries for help that we can do nothing about, amongst the screeching of metal, amongst the winds that cannot exist in anyone's imagination. We hail Mary.
7:21 Speaker 04 Sometimes I look up and the ute is still there. I am relieved, I'm numb.
7:30 Speaker 04 It's morning, it's cold, the wind has eased, it's an eerie dawn. Dad emerges from the ute. He opens the door on the station wagon. He tells us that the cat had kittens, literally. There are six premature kittens on the ute seat. Slowly, we emerge from the car and it's just impossible to describe. After that, I thought the world had ended.
8:02 Speaker 04 Our Christmas tree remained standing throughout.
8:11 Speaker 05 Paul Bajeto was a young apprentice living in Darwin. On Christmas Eve, he was working in his family's busy Italian restaurant, with no idea what the rest of his night had in store.
8:24 Speaker 06 It was Christmas Eve, and my family's restaurant was busy. Insults and instructions were flying across the kitchen in rapid staccato Italian. Porca miseria, Pauli! Rapido! Tu idioto! Paul yelled at me as I turned steaks on the grill and looked at my brother-in-law Tony. "He wants more lettuce, Paul. Hurry up. We're nearly through." "Now, Paul!" I was fifteen, and in the first few months of my apprenticeship, I'd had to learn quickly. It was always go, the Capri Restaurant in Nucky Street, Darwin. The weather had built up while we dealt with the culinary cyclone inside. Heading home down Baggett Road to Ludmilla, the rain pelted the windscreen.
9:06 Speaker 06 It was 10:30pm and Cyclone Tracy was beginning to do her thing. The car radio bleated out another Cyclone warning, and my brother-in-law turned it up. "Shall we pick up Jim and go for a burn, Pauli? What do you reckon?" Jim was Tony's best mate, and we often went for a wind-down drive after work. The three of us piled into the union and headed for the wharf. Stokes Hill Wharf was a frantic scene with fishermen and boaties trying desperately to get lines off the wharf and head out to sea to ride out the storm. The wind by now was gale-force and the rain hit horizontally on the windscreen as we pulled up. "Let's give these blokes a hand, Jim," declared Tony, and we began helping boaties get ropes off.
9:48 Speaker 06 Half an hour or so of this nonsense saw us finally in the car battling the elements down Baggett Road. The changing expressions on Tony and Jim's faces told me that the situation was serious. Back at my family's home, my sister Jackie held baby Daniel and played Scrabble with Jim's wife Lesley and me. Suddenly there was nothing, no wind. "The I," said Jim. Tony and Jim went outside and dug a trench to help alleviate the flooding. They'd been outside for a while when we all heard it. The noise grew louder as the monster approached. The gusts sounded like a jet engine warming up. Jackie was standing in the hall of the H-Pattan household and her baby son Daniel. Without warning, Tony grabbed her arms and pulled her away from the hallway loofahs.
10:30 Speaker 06 Seconds later, they blew in, smashing against the opposite wall and sending shards of glass everywhere. Tony yelled from the hallway, "Paul, bring my shoes and get down here." The electricity supply had been cut. We waited nervously, expecting the roof to go at any time, but it didn't. It was 4am by the time we got some rest. We talked nervously and dozed as the storm subsided. At 6.30, we went outside to survey the damage. A scene of total devastation struck us. People wandered numbly amongst the rubble, sifting through the wreckage of their lives. We drove into town to check out the restaurant. The restaurant had been severely flood damaged and windows had been blown in.
11:13 Speaker 06 The fibrostructure on the second floor was pretty much gone. I was left with a feeling of stunned vagueness. Tony handed me a broom and winked, saying, "Let's get this cleaned up, eh?"
11:30 Speaker 05 Ten-year-old Michelle Faithfull had moved to Darwin from Sydney only months before the cyclone, with her parents and younger sister. As the cyclone raged, her father pressed record on a cassette player and captured an incredible tapestry of sounds.
11:47 Speaker 05 You can hear the dreaded cyclone warning siren.
11:50 Speaker 07 A cyclone is imminent.
11:54 Speaker 05 And their terrified cat.
11:57 Speaker 07 Is he saying Merry Christmas?
11:59 Speaker 05 Michelle and her sister passed the time by singing Christmas carols.
12:10 Speaker 05 And then you can hear the wind.
12:26 Speaker 05 That's Michelle's sister, saying "Dad, all the houses are broken."
12:33 Speaker 05 Dad reckons Santa's still coming.
12:45 Speaker 05 But the kids don't sound convinced.
12:54 Speaker 05 Now here's Michelle, to tell us what happened next. The recording finishes with the sound of our front class sliding doors cracking under the pressure.
13:06 Speaker 05 Then the power goes out.
13:11 Speaker 05 At one point, we decided to move to the bedroom that my sister and I shared, with all of us and the cat, and a couple of our dolls squeezing in under one single bed. This is where we stayed, for the next seven hours.
13:26 Speaker 05 I could hear screaming coming from the upstairs flat. The crashing of metal and bricks, and rain pelting on the windows. Our room slowly filled with water and leaves, and I remember being cold, very cold.
13:40 Speaker 05 The night dragged on with what seemed like the end of the world happening outside. And as it turned out, we were one of the lucky families. We escaped with our lives, and most of our belongings.
13:56 Speaker 05 My sister, mum and I were evacuated out of Darwin a few days later, on an American Starlifter. A woman up one end was in labour, and a guy at the other end was having some kind of heart failure.
14:08 Speaker 05 All the while, hundreds of us sat on the floor of this gigantic aircraft, as we flew to the safety of Sydney. Darwin changed significantly after Tracy. And the old Darwin was left behind, with the memories.
14:25 Speaker 05 Adam Jamison was a young hippie from London who was travelling the world in the early 1970s. When Tracy hit, he was sharing a house with fellow travellers in the heart of Darwin. Here's Adam's story, read by actor Toby Trusslove.
14:42 Speaker 00 When tropical cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, I'd been living there for 18 months in a typical wooden house on high stumps with a steep pitched iron roof. The myriad sheets of corrugated iron flying around and scraping along the ground during the cyclone sounded like a thousand violins playing out of tune. The travellers and I covered the windward side of the house with a big tarpaulin and opened all the windows on the leeward side so that the pressure under the roof could be released. The eye of the storm arrived at 3am and all became silent and still. I'd read that the winds come from the opposite side after the eye passes over, and so, there
15:24 Speaker 00 we were, at 3am, hurriedly moving that tarpaulin to the other side. Sure enough, 15 minutes later, all hell broke loose. Christmas morning, when the cyclone had passed, broken glass was everywhere and newly homeless people were drifting around with unprotected cut feet. One of my boarders had been an army medic and I'd been a nurse's aide in my youth, so we decided to set up a first aid station at the house. Some nuns gave us bandages and a supply of rubber sandals, and a hamburger place donated all their food. People came to us for first aid, water, food, footwear and comfort.
16:08 Speaker 00 There was no running water or electricity. Prisoners from Gunpoint Prison Farm had gotten out. They were helpful and managed to find some large plastic barrels and fill them with fresh water, which was a precious commodity by this time. Before Tracy, in our front garden, there had been four huge palm trees. Three had blown away completely and only one was left standing at an angle of 45 degrees. A nearby steel power pile had been flattened. And of all things, a World War Two-style British Army helmet had blown into our garden. At some stage, I wanted to check on my little shop, where I'd been making made-to-measure leather sandals.
16:55 Speaker 00 I set off on my pushbike, wearing an army camouflage rain cape somebody lent me, and I donned the "British Army Helmet". I must have looked like authority, riding along in the camouflage gear and helmet, because I noticed looters ducking out of sight. The shop and stock were intact. The heat was intense, with extreme humidity. Tempers also ran high. When one of the prisoners, a French drug dealer, gave himself a bath in one of those big barrels of drinking water, an infuriated Italian started a knife fight. In the midst of wild weather and wild men, it fell to me to stop these people fighting,
17:37 Speaker 00 and I ordered them to vacate the premises, which, to my surprise, they did. Here I was, a skinny hippie from London, in a steamy frontier town among these wild characters. It was like living in an Ernest Hemingway novel.
17:54 Speaker 00 For a while, Darwin was dangerous, and I took to carrying a rifle.
17:59 Speaker 00 At five o'clock one morning, the looters came to my house. I appeared with the rifle over my arm and coolly said, "Can I help you?" And off they went. Soon, everybody had to be evacuated to avoid disease, and also to let the Army and Navy get on with their tasks. Money felt useless, so I gave some of mine to a prisoner who was heading south. Now that they were out, they were out, and nobody tried to lock them up again, as far as I know.
18:32 Speaker 00 I was given a ticket to fly out of Darwin six weeks later.
18:40 Speaker 05 Dr Richard Feijo is a Larrakia elder who was only three years old when his family survived the cyclone.
18:47 Speaker 03 I was a toddler, but I remember that backyard, we had a mango tree there.
18:54 Speaker 05 Richard's mother, known as Nana Nangala Feijo, was a Waramungu woman. She passed away in 2022 after living an incredible life.
19:05 Speaker 03 She was actually part of the stolen generation. She was removed from Tennant Creek when she was four years old and she was placed on Croker Island. She never saw her mother again. But the other thing was she was also the subject of Kevin Rudd's apology. Nana Numulafija, as she prefers to be called, was born in the late 1920s. She remembers her earliest childhood days,
19:31 Speaker 05 In 1994, Nana Nangala recorded her cyclone Tracy story and Richard is going to read an excerpt.
19:40 Speaker 05 It was Christmas morning and the cyclone was easing. Richard's older sister Rosie was pregnant and had been hurt in the storm.
19:52 Speaker 03 Next morning, the cyclone had died down a bit, but there was still continuous raining.
19:58 Speaker 03 My son-in-law Bluey was called to help clean up the place because he was in the army. But I said, "Hey, Bluey, you have to take us to the hospital first." So we drove along the road and, oh, I couldn't recognise the place. There was leaves and corrugated iron all over the bitumen road. The cars were bumper to bumper driving to the hospital. Then I heard a bloke get out of one of the cars and he started screaming at all the people. "All you young, strong, healthy men, get out of the cars and help clean up the road."
20:33 Speaker 03 And in a few minutes flat, you seen all the people dragging the leaves away, corrugated iron away, so that we could see all the road and we went on to Darwin Hospital.
20:43 Speaker 03 And Darwin Hospital was packed out full, chock-a-block with people.
20:50 Speaker 03 There was blood everywhere and the water was... Everywhere on the floor. So there was Herbert Lee on duty and he was an orderly. When Herbert saw me coming, he said, "Thank goodness you've come. We need your help to clean up this place." I said, "Herbert, I've got to see to my daughter first. I want to see her get settled and then I'll help." As we were standing there, we saw these young men running down the road and Herbert said, "Uh-oh, looks like trouble." And there was all these young hippies running down the road. So Herbert was standing up there with his arms folded and this young bloke came up and said, "We come here to offer our services to help you people here at the hospital.
21:36 Speaker 03 Not one of us are hurt and we're here to help you." So Herbert said, "All right then." And he had a big smile on his face. He said, "Two of yous go on to Ward One and Ward Two. The rest of yous follow this lady, meaning me. She's a cleaner here and will tell you how to clean up this casualty area."
21:58 Speaker 03 So it was really hard work cleaning out that casualty area because there were so many old people there and they were all crying and there were bodies all over the hospital. It was really sad.
22:11 Speaker 03 The doctors were really busy.
22:15 Speaker 03 When my son-in-law Bluey took my daughter Rosie back home, I stayed there and helped clean up that area.
22:22 Speaker 03 We worked really hard all that night till we couldn't see anymore. All the hippies were there and it was really good because we had more help. When everything was under control, I went home for a while to settle my family and take him to the school because we had no roof at home.
22:39 Speaker 03 I took them back to shelter at Knightcliffe High School.
22:43 Speaker 03 I guess it was really terrifying and everybody looked like they were lost.
22:50 Speaker 03 But I guess a lot of people were happy that they were together.
22:56 Speaker 03 Families were united, close together.
23:04 Speaker 03 This is General Streatham speaking, Director General of the Natural Disasters Organisation. Something about 2,500 people would have flown out of Darwin on a priority basis tonight. It is the biggest airlift in one day that has ever been achieved by Australia, either in peace or in war.
23:34 Speaker 05 Lorraine Dixon, four months pregnant, was living with her soldier husband in Darwin's army barracks. In the days after the cyclone, women and children were evacuated. Lorraine took her neighbour's little kids under her wing during the evacuation because their mother had been injured.
23:51 Speaker 07 We left Larakia Barracks in the dusk of Boxing Day evening and travelled through the rubble-strewn streets to the Darwin Airport. There we joined a line to board a Hercules plane. My little dog was hidden in my overnight bag along with nappies and bottles for the children. The seats on the Hercules were made of a type of canvas. We were crammed in with our knees touching the person sitting opposite. I was able to have a seat next to me for the two-year-old and nurse the younger one on my knees in front of my little pregnant abdomen. If we needed a lavatory, there was a portable toilet with a curtain around it at the end of the seats. You needed to climb over and between other passengers' knees.
24:35 Speaker 07 I never made that journey to the toilet because it was just too difficult.
24:41 Speaker 07 I don't recall any men on the plane apart from the RAF crew. My fellow passengers were all women and children of varying ages. I found out there had been a doctor checking all the pregnant travellers. They missed me. I think our Hercules was one of the first planes to arrive in Sydney, so we were a bit of a novelty. I was apparently interviewed by a reporter for a radio station, but I don't remember doing it.
25:10 Speaker 04 Directed to a taxi along with another two ladies and their children. I was heading for my parents' house and I had limited money. But the taxi driver did not want any payment.
25:23 Speaker 04 Shortly after arriving and settling into my parents' home, I contacted the boy's grandparents. They came to collect the boys the next day, the 28th of December. A few weeks later, there was a storm. It was during the daytime and it was short, though ferocious. Even today, 50 years on from Cyclone Tracy, I become nervous and very unsettled when there are storms, especially at night time when I can't see what is happening.
25:52 Speaker 04 Apart from Cyclone Tracy, I loved living and working in Darwin. This Christmas, despite the terrible memories of Christmas 1974, I feel compelled to confront my trepidations in return with my second husband for the 50th anniversary of one of the most terrifying events of my whole life.
26:15 Speaker 05 And what of my own family, who sheltered in their bathroom during Tracy until the cyclone blew it away?
26:22 Speaker 05 Back in Melbourne in December 1974, after three long days of waiting, Mum finally got news that everyone was alive and safe.
26:33 Speaker 01 Phil speaking.
26:34 Speaker 05 Hi Phil, it's Phoebe. That's my Uncle Phil.
26:36 Speaker 01 Good day, Phoebe. How are you?
26:37 Speaker 05 I'm good. My Auntie Christine told me that when the bathroom started to go, they moved into the hallway.
26:42 Speaker 04 Yes, we pretty quickly moved into the hallway. It was perfectly positioned as far as being right in the centre of the house.
26:50 Speaker 05 Are you packing? You getting ready to go?
26:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly, getting organised.
26:54 Speaker 05 My uncle and auntie are heading back to Darwin this Christmas for the anniversary of Cyclone Tracy. Do you think it will be emotional for you or?
27:02 Speaker 01 Sure, it will be, yeah.
27:03 Speaker 04 Very emotional, but we're looking forward to it just the same.
27:07 Speaker 01 We're in our seventies now and it was 50 years ago, but yeah, it's still pretty clear. Clear as mud.
27:15 Speaker 04 ...tragedy of finding bodies around the place and losing some of your staff had been killed and he had all that side of it as well. Yes, Phil's experience was much, much deeper than mine.
27:26 Speaker 05 Can you tell me why you're going back, I suppose, and why you think it's important to remember?
27:32 Speaker 04 Oh, yes. Yeah, that's, that's my purpose for going back, I think. I think it's, it's remembering those who died, those who had incredible tales of survival, and it's an important part of our history. I think for all those reasons, we need to take stock and reflect and learn.
28:05 Speaker 02 This episode of The History Listen was produced by Phoebe Hartley. The sound engineer was Tim Simons. And a special thank you to all the survivors whose stories you heard. I'm Kirsty Mulville and I'll catch you next time.
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