Cyclone Tracy 50 years: Plan to return broken bell to Larrakeyah school 50 years after last chime

A long-forgotten piece of Cyclone Tracy memorabilia is set to return to Darwin. Read its story.

Simon Brookes’ childhood home at 2 Zealandia St, Larrakeyah.

Simon Brookes’ memories of the night Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin and its aftermath remain as clear as a bell.

In fact, in the wash-up to the category five cyclone the then nine-year-old scored a striking keepsake that he wants to return to Darwin, if the city wants to take it back.

Brookes’ family moved here from Adelaide in 1972 when his father was appointed NT manager of petroleum company BP.

They lived at 2 Zealandia St, Larrakeyah, which was then known as Oily Ave because other petroleum companies had housing for their NT managers.

The storm itself is clear in Brookes’ memory, but viewed from the relatively safe perspective of a child, confident his parents would take care of things.

“When you’re nine you’re not worried about the situation so much as my Christmas presents getting waterlogged and Christmas being ruined,” he says.

“My sense of perception was different when I was nine, at least until I saw the devastation. I have very strong memories of the cyclone. It was Christmas Eve and people were pretty blase because there had been a number of near misses and I think people became complacent.

“My parents went up the street for Christmas drinks. Why wouldn’t you? It’s only a cyclone. They came home about 10.30pm when the winds were getting blowy.

Simon Brookes with the bell.

“Number 2 Zealandia sits on stilts and has an internal staircase, and we sat on the staircase until it stopped at about 6am.”

The house was “substantially damaged, but better off than most”.

“It doesn’t help when your neighbour’s A-frame comes blowing into the kitchen,” Brookes says.

“I just remember looking out the window on Christmas morning and it looks like a bomb’s gone off, and you realise you were better off than others.”

After his dad left the damaged house early on Christmas morning to check the fuel storage tanks, the family stayed at the TraveLodge hotel, where management had opened up the premises after the shock of the night before.

Brookes was then evacuated by TAA aircraft with the rest of his family to an uncle’s house in Brisbane about three days after Tracy, while his father stayed in town to manage critical retail fuel supplies.

2 Zealandia.

They returned in early January and he was enrolled in the old Darwin Primary School after his old school, Larrakeyah primary, was occupied by the army during the clean-up and rebuild. “I was riding a purple dragster through the school and one of the soldiers gave me the bell,” he says.

“The army was cleaning up and throwing stuff out and they came across the bell.

“Before the cyclone the power in Darwin was very unreliable and when it went off that was the analog Larrakeyah primary bell when there was no electricity. It would be given to a student before breaks and they’d run around ringing the bell.”

A crack in the bell means it no longer peals, making a sound more like a “thunk”.

“Our family have been stewards of the bell ever since,” he says. “It’s been sitting at my parents house in Brisbane for years and now I’ve got it in Sydney.”

Brookes is happy to return the bell to Darwin if it’s wanted.

Originally published as Cyclone Tracy 50 years: Plan to return broken bell to Larrakeyah school 50 years after last chime