Cyclone Tracy: Survivor's story

THIS year marks the 40th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy. In this extract, former Darwin resident LUDIJ PEDEN recounts her family's experience as the cyclone struck.

CycloneTracy

THIS year marks the 40th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy. In this extract, former Darwin resident LUDIJ PEDEN recounts her family's experience as the cyclone struck.

PART ONE - in today's NT News

PART TWO

We were now standing around in a dazed little family huddle.  Looking around, we could see little family groups everywhere doing the same  looking in disbelief at the rubble of their homes.  Even though the night's experience had been traumatic, no one really expected such a scene.

Almost in one accord, people came out of their dazed shock to start calling out to neighbours, "You all okay?"

Then the shock hit.  People suddenly became very cold and shivered uncontrollably - us included.  It was still drizzling lightly and we were soaked to the skin.  While the adrenalin had been pumping, we had not even noticed that.  We were now very cold.

How to get something dry when your house and everything was blown away?  Bruce and I clambered over the debris to what had been our bedrooms.  At least our built-in wardrobes were, sort of, surviving on their teetering walls.  The doors were blown open or off, but some clothes were still hanging  very wet and stained.

Obviously the doors had blown open at the last.  Being North Queenslanders we knew that things blew open, even into the winds - the pressure being greater than the windforce itself.  The last thing I had done, before getting under the pool table, was to slide lengths of pictureframe moulding, from my studio, through the loop handles of our built-in cupboards.  This way the doors were braced against each other.  It had worked.  The doors had held out almost to the very last.  The shattered moulding still hung off some of the remaining handles. Quite a bit of clothing had survived  but very wet.

Under the bedroom debris, I spotted Bruce's grandfather's very heavy sea chest from when he had been a ship's captain travelling the world.  It had been handed down through the family.  Clearing my way to it, upon opening it, I found it had remained true to its purpose.  No doubt it had probably been through much the same on its journeys round the world.

The woollen blankets and clothes I had stored in there, never imagining I would need them in Darwin, were bone dry.  I grabbed a blanket to wrap around my boys and myself, and one for Grandma.  Bruce pulled on his old woollen sweater.

My friend next door had followed me into the remains of our house.  She was desperate for something to wear.  Anything ........... even wet would do!  She had made the mistake of going to bed in a skimpy, see through nightie.  Now she stood there  one arm over her breasts, and the other arm trying to conceal her crotch area.  The wet nylon nightie was clinging everywhere.  She may as well have been wearing nothing.

By this time, Grandma had put on Bruce's old tracksuit, so my neighbour picked out one of his old football jerseys which went well down almost to her knees.  She was happy.  Their clothes were "gone with the wind".  Most people had lost all of their clothing except what they had been wearing. Her husband was standing in his G-string underpants as when he'd gone to bed.  So we dressed him in Bruce's shorts which were still neatly folded, albeit wet, in the drawers within our built-in cupboards.  The rest of the warm dry clothes in the sea chest went into dressing the neighbourhood children.    The children were suffering as much shock as the adults.

Within the first hour, a doctor dressed in T-shirt, shorts, joggers, and carrying his medical bag trotted along our street, clambering over and around the debris, calling out if anyone needed emergency treatment.  You could not have driven a car, even a 4WD, anywhere on the streets.  What streets?  It was hard to distinguish where the streets had been.

By this time it was all getting to me.  The neighbours on our other side called out for everyone to come into their lounge area to escape the drizzle.  They were also in a ground level brick house but their lounge and hallway had a unique feature for Darwin.  It had a plaster ceiling. Some of it was still intact even though their roof was gone. Their house was also wrecked with only a wall standing in their lounge room, but the hallway walls, although badly holed, were still standing.  He was up on the top, with a brace and bit, hand drilling holes into the plaster, so it would not collapse with the weight of the rainwater.

The boys and I, with Grandma, sat on the hallway floor under the blankets.  Bruce was off checking things out.  He came back smiling.  He had rescued the Christmas ham, plum pudding and custard.  Amongst the rubble he had found the frig still standing, but not in its place, with the door blown open.  He had quickly shut the door after removing his favourite Christmas fare. Now he stood there saying, "Merry Christmas everyone. Anyone for ham and pudding?  He could not understand why everyone groaned, and refused the offer.  He broke off pieces and happily tucked into the food.  I think it was his way of coping.

Gradually the rain stopped and the sun came out.  We all regained our composure and wandered off to our various ruins.  On inspection it occurred to us that it appeared some of the roof over part of our bedroom was intact, even if it had dropped down to head level.  Wrong.  We recognized it was the galvanised steel framed and zincalume lined trundle door from the shed two houses away.  The very large shed held their large caravan and very big cabin cruiser side by side.  When either was needed, the trundle door in front, would be rolled across the other.  It was so very heavy and cumbersome.  To think that such a large heavy object was flying through the air, across that distance, to slice through our rafters and brickwork, and lodge there, made us appreciate our fortunate survival.

We looked at where our alternative choice for shelter had been.  A long timber house girder, not ours, had pierced the two opposite walls of the bathroom and was still lodged across - right where we would have been sitting on the floor. Some of us certainly would have been killed.

Many of our neighbours and friends were able to relate equally lucky escapes.  The Greek family in the duplex they owned across the road from us were very shaken.  She was hysterical.  The couple and their young children had sheltered in their bathroom for the first half of the cyclone.  When the brief calm of the eye came they had compared damage with their tenants' other half of the duplex.  Because she was already panicked, they had decided reluctantly to take up the tenants' offer for the family to shelter with them in their bathroom  for company and morale.  When they all emerged from the debris they were shaken by this fateful decision.

The bathroom in which they had previously been sheltering was completely flattened by a flying concrete slab twice the size of the bathroom.  It was still lying there.  To think that they all would most certainly have been killed, except for that reluctant decision, was too much for her. It took quite a while to calm her down. Her children were also clothed from grandfather's sea chest.

It is amazing how quickly some people can spring into action.  The main arterial roads were bulldozed clear by midafternoon.  The bulldozers were driving the streets as if they were graders on a gravel road.  They pushed the debris to one side as they drove along at quite a pace.  It had to be done quickly for the emergency workers.  The selfless emergency personnel, who gave up their private lives to help others, were checking the ruins of Darwin for the wounded and dead.

Our church minister was doing the rounds, checking on his flock.  He was dressed in his pyjama shorts.  His high set house had been blown clean to the floorboards.  He and his wife had survived by huddling in the bathtub.  Being cemented into the floor, it was the only thing left standing.  Bruce gave him some wet sets of shirts and shorts, and some of my dresses for his wife.  Then he went off to check on others.

Our purple Ford Cortina Station Wagon had fared better than most cars.  The car was dented, scraped and scratched but the main thing was that the glass and tyres were intact.  We were amazed to find our car with all its four wheels sitting on top of a large sheet of corrugated iron.  There was not a scratch on the tyres, so obviously at some moment during the cyclone, the car had been lifted completely up in the air by the winds, at which moment the sheet of iron had blown under, hit the brick wall, stopped, and the car had come back down on top of it.

My little Fiat Bambino 500 had not fared as well.  The garage brick wall had collapsed on it.  It was squashed flat level to the steering wheel.  The doors were twisted and jammed shut.  However, since it had a sunroof it wasn't a problem.  Once the bricks were taken off, a clamber into it through the sunroof opening, a pull on the handle, and it started.  We took it to the farm where it ended its days bouncing around the paddocks and ferrying people to and from the various farm jobs. Our cat also ended her days at the farm.

Luckily Bruce had thought to put the car keys in his pocket because if they had been left where they normally hung we would never have seen them again.  Many people had this problem but became experts at hot wiring cars.  You wouldn't be able to do that so easily with modern cars today. He had also put his wallet in his pocket. Many had not thought to do that and were left penniless and without identity information. I found my handbag, days later, in the bottom of the remains of our built-in wardrobe, under a pile of dirty rubbish. How it got there I will never know.

Our neighbours suggested that we come with them to her parents' farm at "the 25 mile".  At that time, people living along the Stuart Highway referred to their addresses as "at the....e", much like our rural numbering system now.  She said that maybe the farm hadn't been affected as much.

Compared to Darwin, it hadn't.  They had damaged farm sheds, and had lost sheets off the house roof.  Being a farm, they hadn't wasted much time before various sheets of roofing iron were found and nailed back into place again.  However, there were heaps of leaks.  Of course, we were not the only ones seeking refuge there.  Their extended families in Darwin also arrived, thinking the same.  It had started to rain again.

The five of us were housed in her father's demountable two by three metre site office which was being used to store barrels of feed mix for the potty calves.  We slept on the floor with our blankets.  At night it was a case of one rolling over, everyone rolling over. It gave new meaning to the nursery song, "There were ten in the bed, and the little one said..........."  But at least it was dry.

The men went back, in various vehicles, into the devastated city to check on what was happening and to scrounge for food for the crowd now collecting at the farm.  Meanwhile the women were cooking up all the food, not only to feed the hordes, but also to preserve what we had, as there was no electricity or fuel for keeping perishables.  All the kids, and our dog, "Sonny the Third ", with the farm dogs, were running around everywhere, not a worry in the world. As you can imagine Grandma was not coping well at all.  She kept complaining about losing her new corsets in the cyclone.  Her pills were running low.

Bruce and our neighbour heard that some of the schools had been turned into evacuation centres so went to check these out.  All news was via "the grapevine", but could not necessarily be trusted.  Rumours were rampant.  News bulletins were chalked up on the former blackboards in the assembly areas of the schools now evacuation centres. Some schools were too badly damaged to be of any use.

They went to Casuarina High School.  As they walked into the centre they were accosted by a doctor holding a syringe, who insisted that they must have tetanus, typhoid and cholera injections .......t now!  After the two of them had three shots each, told to take it easy for a while, they went to all the relatives' house remains to empty their fridges and freezers.  The two, still pumped with adrenalin, managed to lift loaded freezers, including ours, on to the back of his Ute.  Their arms were very sore that night.  If the freezers were kept unopened the frozen food would last several days.  There was quite a crowd to feed at the farm and nobody really knew what was going to happen in the future.

Because the farm was the only dairy farm near Darwin, within a day, a large generator and a drum of fuel was dropped off by the authorities  without even being requested! Though we hadn't at our little site office, the farmhouse again now had power, lighting and water for washing and showering. We thought we were very lucky.

It seemed that every fly and every mosquito in Darwin had also decided to re-locate to the farm. The days were hot and humid with the occasional afternoon thunderstorm. Our site office had no windows. However, at night we could not open the door because of these pests. We sweltered away but did not complain aloud, as we were much better off than those in the evacuation centres. The little office was surrounded by mud from the cyclone's rain, made worse by the potty calves that came baying for their feed at our door at daybreak.

They had been used to being fed at the site office where the formula had been stored prior to our arrival. As a response to the farmer's hospitality, we undertook to feed the potty calves each morning and evening. This entailed making up the formula with water when the incessant mooing demands became too much. Bruce, normally, got up to prepare the feed. Then it required the two of us to ward off the stampede of eager hungry calves. We quickly learnt the tricks to prevent them kicking over the buckets, and teaching some of them to slurp by wiggling our fingers in the formula to imitate their mother's teats. We were usually covered in mud by the end of the feed, and had sore toes from their trampling hooves. It forever cured us of ever contemplating a hobby farm.

Our next problem was what to do now!

PART THREE

The men kept going in each day to find out the news.  All communication was still down.  At the evacuation centres there was chaos in the first days, then ordered chaos after that. Some people were sitting around still in shock, scarcely able to move; some were pacing around in circles, jumpy, agitated and demanding.  Others were volunteering and keeping busy  preparing and cooking in the soup kitchens, keeping the children occupied with activities, monitoring the use of the scarce water for the toilets, and the camp style showers. One saucepan of water taken from a barrel was allowed for flushing the toilets, and one for washing the whole family. Lack of water was what seemed to upset most people.

In Darwin, the water plant and pumping stations, as well as the fire hydrants and people's water metres and household pipings were damaged.  The authorities had closed off the pipeline, normally bringing in water from the south, at about "the 15 mile", and transported supplies to the centres in tankers.  People were going down the highway and opening the valves of the pipeline just to wash themselves properly.  It made them feel good.

On the 29th December, Bruce and I decided to take Grandma and the boys to the evacuation centre at Casuarina High School.  The minute we arrived we were jumped on for our three injections, whether we liked it or not, and asked to register. That day about 7,500 people were airlifted out. The previous day 8,500 had been. We had been told that all residents were required to evacuate the city to prevent sickness, to relieve the load on the evacuation centres' workers and to allow unhindered cleanups to start.  The injured, sick and pregnant women had already been airlifted in the first loads; now it was the turn of the elderly and children.  Either I went with the boys or Grandma, but we weren't allowed to both go with the boys. Since she needed her medication urgently I stepped back. With a provided marker pen issued for this purpose, we wrote their names and my parents' contact details on the back of their shirts in case something happened to Grandma.

These sorts of events bring out the worst in people but also the best. The wonderful work of the Red Cross workers, Rotarians, Lions Club members, and Church Agencies, denying their own personal family needs, will never be forgotten.

We waited with Grandma and the boys in the queues for the buses.  After the initial mistake of the first day which allowed people to make their own way to the Airport, to wait and board the constant stream of incoming aircraft, they now processed everybody, in an orderly manner, at the evacuation centres; then bussed them when an aircraft was available. In the beginning, panicked mobs of people had rushed the planes and chaos had developed.  Now the Airport was off limits with armed defence personnel patrolling the perimeters.

However, the panic in some people had not yet subsided.  As Grandma and the boys were boarding the airport bus, a couple of young Greek guys pushed them aside, then clambered over the squashed-in passengers, to the back of the bus.  I had been horrified when we arrived at the evacuation centre, to see Rotarians and Lions in their club T-shirts, with pistols strapped to their belts, and police walking around with cradled rifles.  Now I understood why.

These two young guys were screaming, trying to hang on to the legs of the bus seats, while two Lions Club men dragged them by the legs, back along the floor, and literally threw them out of the door on to the cement, yelling at them that "Next time we will bloody well shoot you!"  Some of the Greek men desperate to get away with their families were dressing up as women.  Months later, when we were back in Darwin, the Greek Consul for the Northern Territory apologised publicly, on TV, radio and in newspapers, for the behaviour of his countrymen.

The perceived problem was that the evacuation could be on any plane going to anywhere.  The authorities had promised that eventually you would arrive at your desired destination. But that did not seem to console some people. Some, of course, had nowhere to go.

We waved goodbye, trying to be cheerful, as Grandma and our little boys left on the bus, not knowing where they were going, or when we'd see them again.  It was a big responsibility for Grandma looking after two little boys aged three and five.  If we'd known what was going to happen to them, we'd have been lots more worried.

Many people were desperate to get out of the city.  When we drove from the farm into Darwin there was a constant stream of cars heading out.  Lack of fuel and tyres was a real problem.  People were getting only so far and then running out of fuel or having flat tires.  Because of all the shards of glass, sharp iron, jagged timber, and nails lying around everywhere this was a real hazard.  Availability of fuel was the biggest problem. Because of the damage done to petrol bowsers and equipment, authorities banned fuel outlets from even considering trying to operate. The last thing they needed was fire.

This made some people so desperate that there were reports of armed holdups on the Stuart Highway.  Drivers were blockading the road with their vehicles, and then forcing others to relinquish their fuel and tyres.  Police cars constantly patrolled up and down the highway.

Over that one week between Boxing Day and New Years Eve, almost 10,000 people fled by car. Centres like Katherine, Tennant Creek, Mt. Isa and Alice Springs were inundated with traumatised, hungry, sleep-deprived and penniless people. The towns coped as best they could to bring comfort to these distraught arrivals.

People took to driving with weapons under their seats for protection. We drove about with my air gun and a cricket bat handy under my seat.  The police had set up roadblocks just at the Darwin outskirts.  There people had to surrender all weapons and pick them up again on the way out. The carrying of weapons was tolerated but not in the city. All this was like a slice out of a Mad Max movie.

Armed police and authorised citizens patrolled the streets for looters and shot, on sight, any stray animals wandering about the rubble, even sometimes in front of their owners and children. As you can imagine there was quite an uproar at what some people regarded as callousness. After the cyclone many had let their pets loose hoping they could forage for themselves. The authorities could not risk disease spreading from animals poking about the rotting food everywhere or perhaps yet undiscovered bodies. People took their pets to the evacuation centres, and if small enough, tried to smuggle them on board the planes. They preferred to take their pets rather than possessions. Life suddenly had become more precious.

The planes were loaded to capacity with people, no luggage, just a small bag.  People sat double the number of normal seating, eg. three or four people to two seats.  People also sat squashed on the aisle floor of the planes.  As many as possible had to be moved as quickly as possible from the city.

Whatever people may think of America, this country is always the first to help.  They sent in their giant Starlifters  a plane that was umpteen times larger than anything Australia possessed.  Indonesia also sent as many planes as needed.  The rest of the airlift was undertaken by Hercules, Air Force transports, commercial airliners and small aircraft constantly landing and taking off, bound for all major airports around the country.  Because the Airport is almost in the centre of Darwin we watched fascinated as these big American monsters took to the skies.

We wondered which of the many planes taking off, one behind the other, contained Grandma and the boys.  Once people were on the buses bound for the airport all contact was lost.  With telephones, radios, electricity, water, everything down, we felt very vulnerable and desperate to know how and where they were.  The authorities had promised to advise receiving families that evacuees were coming their way.  We hoped that they would get to my parents in Cairns.

PART FOUR

Just before dusk, at the Airport, Grandma and our two little boys had been bundled on to a waiting Australian Air Force Hercules Transport along with several hundred others.  These Hercules planes were fitted out as troop carriers with rows of orange harness seats suspended from metal beams running the length of the cavernous interior.  There were no windows.  The seating was bum to bum, and knee to knee.  Everyone was squashed in like sardines.

Our older boy had a harness of his own but the younger one had to share one with Grandma which meant he was more or less on her lap for the whole trip.  Everyone was exhausted either by lack of sleep at the evacuation centres or from shock.  Soon most were asleep despite the discomfort of the harnesses.  The deafening noise inside the Hercules was muted by the earplugs which had been issued as they had walked up the loading ramp at the back of the plane.

An hour into their flight the Hercules was struck by lightning.  The pilot assured the passengers not to worry but that they had to turn back to Darwin.  All the instruments and communication systems had been blown out by the lightning.  The plane droned on another seven hours and then landed.

As they disembarked, the passengers realized that they were not in some distant other city but back in Darwin.  They had assumed that since they'd only been an hour out, when the lightning struck, and that they had flown another seven hours, that the Captain had changed his mind, and decided to fly on.

Again, it's these sorts of events that bring out the best and the worst.  When it dawned on the passengers what had happened, the hysterics started.  After all that had occurred over the last few days, tolerance was low.  Women were screaming at the crew that they all could have been killed; the crew couldn't be trusted; and that they wouldn't fly with them ever again. Our little boys were wide-eyed and concerned amidst the hysteria. Grandma kept her cool, and went up to the pilot.  She thanked him for safely bringing them down.  She would happily fly with him again for he obviously was very skilled.

The instruments and communications blowing out were not the only problems.  All instrumentation and communications at the Darwin airport were also blown out from the cyclone.  Air traffic control was being conducted from Katherine about 300 kilometres away from Darwin.  My uncle had been seconded from retirement.  They needed the old style air traffic controllers who could visualise the plane positions now that technology was no help.  He told us about the many near misses in the skies above, chock full with planes coming and going.

The crew of the Hercules also had to rely on their old navigation skills without the use of instruments.  The night being stormy, navigation by the stars was no help.  Since Darwin, with no electricity, was blacked out they couldn't make a sighting.  With no Hercules' communication system Katherine couldn't help either.  So for seven hours they had droned about in the skies looking for some indication of Darwin.

Just as fuel was becoming a concern, the crew had spotted car lights that appeared to be highlighting an airstrip.  Because of these very problems, night flying had not been allowed.  Someone had heard the Hercules droning around in circles for hours, maybe in trouble or maybe lost, so the decision had been made to light up the runway with cars turning on their headlights, much like country people do now for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

It was the realisation of their very lucky deliverance that threw many people into hysterics.  Scores of sobbing women were everywhere.  The Airport staff were trying to calm them down.

At daybreak the Hercules was again ready to take off after a night of frantic repairs.  The pilot approached Grandma and our two little boys.  The boys must have had a look of concern, because he took the hands of our five year old, and kneeling down in front of him, said, "Will you fly again with me, and your brave Grandma?"  Our son nodded that he would.  "Brave little chap, I'm proud of you", he smiled.

Many of the women and children had calmed down by now and walked across the tarmac to board the waiting Hercules.  However there were also many who refused to get on it again.

Grandma, for all her lists of ailments and complaints, was a tough woman.  She had survived much more traumatic occasions during her life in early Innisfail and later.  The pilot carried our younger boy for her into the plane and made sure they were all comfortably seated.  I think he had appreciated her publically expressed confidence in his abilities. Because so many had refused to go the plane was not so squishy this time. The children were allowed one by one into the cockpit to meet the pilot and crew.  The flight was without incident and safely landed in Brisbane.

There the evacuees were greeted by teams of doctors and nurses who checked everyone out, while others recorded names, details, contacts, next of kin, and desired forward destinations.  Buses then brought them to the Enoggera army barracks.  Volunteers of the Red Cross and Church Agencies, eg Salvation Army, Lifeline, Vinnies, were there with mountains of fresh clothing.  Some people had been in the same clothes since the cyclone, with no water even for washing the only clothes they possessed.  Now there were showers and clean underwear  they were already feeling better.

The children were bathed in large tubs on the open floor by the volunteers.  Our boys were mortified.  I think the authorities were worried that many of the traumatised mothers may not have been as particular about cleanliness as normally they would have been.  As in the army, "One rule for all!"  The avoidance of any potential outbreak of disease seemed the highest on the list of concerns.  Meantime all signs of our older boy's mumps were gone.  He maintained that the cyclone had blown them all away.  This caused some smiles, or not, for us later.

Our older boy was appeased somewhat when they produced a pair of jeans and a cowboy shirt for him to wear.  He had never owned jeans before, and this was very special for him.  Later he refused to part with them.  He would stand beside my mother's washing machine until they came out, and keep a watchful eye on them as they hung on the clothesline.  Then on they went again.  He was possessive like that with other things too for quite some years.

I think through that one fateful night, he had already learnt the ephemeral nature of possessions.  Now you have it  now you don't.  Our little ones had lost all their toys and clothes, and had even had to leave behind the presents Santa had gone to so much trouble to deliver that night.  Grandma still agonized over her lost, brand new, very expensive corsets.  We later bought her exactly the same, new ones.

The next day, after a night's sleep on the bunk beds at the army barracks, they were transferred by bus to Brisbane Airport for a normal commercial flight to Cairns.  The other passengers were curious about some of the evacuees, and constantly came down the aisle asking questions.  All Australia was agog with the events of Darwin.

My parents and my brother's family met them at Cairns Airport and took them home.  A day later they had a belated family Christmas and the boys were showered with gifts of new toys.  Dad drove Grandma home to Innisfail, stopping by at the chemist's for her pills.  She was the only known Innisfail evacuee in her large circle of acquaintances and was "the toast of the town".  She was engulfed with requests as guest speaker for the various clubs around town.  She enthralled, and horrified, them with her adventures  never failing to mention the lamentable corsets.  Her "fifteen minutes of fame". It had not been a quiet Christmas for her at all.

Bruce and I didn't know about all this until we finally arrived at my parents' home and were reunited with our two little sons.  The blown away mumps had not gone very far.  Our younger boy, Bruce and Grandma all got the mumps.  And they were very sick.

PART FIVE

After the bus holding Grandma and the boys had left, Bruce and I decided to return to the rubble which had once been our lovely home.  We thought there might be something we could salvage.

All the tinned food from the pantry and perishables had already been taken to the farm or donated to the evacuation centre.  However, our thoughts, until now, had not turned to our possessions.  Somehow they had not seemed important before.

It was a dangerous task.  Any scratch or cut from the protruding shredded iron sheets, shards of glass, and splintered timber could cause serious infections, not to mention the collapse of precariously teetering remains of walls or trusses.

We soon realized the importance of grandfather's sea chest for storing anything we might find.  Even if people found some of their belongings, where could they store it?  There was not a box or carton in existence that was not smashed, blown away or in a sodden pulp.  We hastily removed it from amongst the debris into the station wagon before someone else had the same idea.

Carefully removing stuff in our way we picked through the piles of rubble. Most of the stuff was not ours.  There were smashed items of furniture and belongings which had come from somewhere else, but our own was nowhere to be seen.  We never did find out where our very solid lounge and dining suites ended up.  The pool table was still standing in the corner which had once been the rumpus room.  The top was sodden, covered with muck and debris, and beyond repair from the rain and hot sun it had been exposed to over the last few days.

The frig, stove and oven were a mess and the electrics destroyed.  The clothing we had not already taken with us shortly after, was now hardly recognisable as such.  Everything was cooking and stewing in the alternating rain and hot sun.

Yet there were some remarkable survivals and discoveries.  On the remains of the breakfast bar between what had been the dining and lounge rooms stood our lone wine rack still in its original place.  It hadn't shifted an inch in those wild winds.  In this flimsy concertina style wine rack was still the only bottle that had been in it, a bottle of Great Western Champagne for Christmas.  Surprisingly, with all the intense pressure, it hadn't even popped its cork.

I was surprised and delighted, after lifting some sheets of iron, to find my crockery display cabinet.  It was one of those awful long rectangular boxes, with sliding glass fronts, on four spindly legs, all very trendy at the time.  Carefully we lifted it off its face.  To our amazement the glass sliding panels were unbroken, and even more amazing my best Seikie dinner set, crystal glasses, and our special wedding presents were all intact except for one glass, and one teacup.  We still have most of these today.

At some stage during the cyclone the cabinet must have gently fallen over to come to rest against debris which propped it up at an angle.  My precious items must have equally gently slid forward so as not to break the glass; and the winds must have slowly pressed it down until it was almost on its face.

Our music record collection was also bewildering.  Some of the records had been blown out of their racks never to be seen again; others in the same racks stood there like sentinels.  Luckily they were the old vinyls, or the older bakelite ones, and, although the jackets were caked to them, with a good soaking in the washtubs later and dried in the sun, they played again.  Some were a little scratchy.

In the guest bedroom where Grandma had been, we checked the remains of the cupboards where we had stored our personal documents. Because the doors had also blown open at the last, much of it was still on the shelves, albeit in a soggy mess.  Our wedding photo albums which had been on the top, were destroyed.  The photos were stuck together, never to be parted; but underneath, the photo albums about the boys and our youth were fine,   after a quick dry in the sun.  The paperwork was the same  top and bottom layers, in a mess, but okay in between except for maybe the edges.  This room was also where I normally painted. All my art materials had blown away. There was no sign of Grandma's corsets.  They, along with my paints, were gone with the wind.

We stored all our pickings in the sea chest and loose inside the car.  Several times, before our own evacuation, we returned, and found small items, which took on more importance than normally, only because they had survived.  We took the sea chest out to the farm, and later sent it out.

It occurred to us that we also should check on the condition of our friends' house in the next suburb, in case we could salvage some of their belongings.  We had no doubt that their house would be badly damaged, being in the hardest hit northern suburbs, but we did not expect to see what we did.  Without any landmarks to orientate us it was difficult to find our way to where their house had once been.  The whole area had completely changed so you got lost.

Their home was one of the public servant issued type  high set on concrete stumps with a concrete block storage room underneath.  There was nothing left.  We identified it from the house number still on the iron gate post.  The whole house, floor and all, had been lifted off its stumps and been impaled on the house next door.

That morning, before the cyclone struck, we had driven the couple and their three young children to the Airport for their annual furlough.  They were spending Christmas with their parents in Perth.  We had previously discussed cyclones with them, and he had said that under no circumstances would he ever seek shelter for the family in the concrete block storage room downstairs.  Since he was a builder with the Darwin Public Works he said he knew that the storage rooms were not reinforced.

Had they been in Darwin that night the whole family would almost certainly have perished.  This, I think, is why the death toll was not as high as could have been expected seeing the destruction.  At the Christmas school holidays, many public servants, a great number living in the northern suburbs, took their annual furlough  as they liked to call it.  Darwin almost seemed deserted over these months.  For taking a transfer to the Top End away from the major cities, one of the perks was extra leave when you wanted it.  I think this saved many lives. The deaths, accounted for, may have only been 71 but hundreds suffered horrendous injuries, probably to die later. Marriages also suffered in the cyclone's aftermath. Separations escalated in the months and years after Tracy.

Amazing and awful things came to light as Bruce and I tried to make contact with friends.  It was difficult as everyone was homeless and somewhere else.  As we found them we heard their stories of that night.  Many of our friends were common to the Playgroup and Kindergarten our children attended.

Cyclone Tracy had been a very intense but also a surprisingly slow cyclone.  It had stayed hovering over the city, and was at its worst from midnight to six in the morning.  It had rattled and rocked the houses until all the nails, nuts and bolts had come loose so that the buildings just fell apart.  With the pressure the structures had just exploded. A huge percentage of Darwin's houses were reduced to rubble most in the northern suburbs area.  Most public building were seriously damaged or destroyed.

One family we knew well had a terrifying night as their high set home blew apart.  They had two little boys same age as ours.  When the room they had been sheltering in disintegrated, they raced into the next one only to find it was flying apart too.  Each had one boy in their grasp as they fled from one room to the next.  Then they thought they would try for the downstairs store room. But they could not get down the stairs. There was stuff flying all around them and the boys were flapping in the wind. They could barely hold on themselves. So they squirmed under their double bed in the remains of the bedroom and prayed hard.  The last remaining wall of the house fell across the bed and channelled the winds over them.  The bed on the floorboards was all that was left of the house.

I thought we had a bad time but I can't imagine the panic and desperation of running from one place to the next desperately hanging on to child.

It was reported that "people sheltering in cars were picked up into the air, blown a few hundred metres and then dumped down again.  Babies were blown from parents' arms."  The myriad sheets of corrugated iron flying around with the winds, scraping along the ground, sounded just like a thousand fingernails scratching down a blackboard.

One of Bruce's co-workers spent the entire night with his arms locked at the elbows around a claw foot leg of the cast iron bathtub, with his legs flapping in the wind. The winds had stripped all his clothes off except for his underpants. His housemate was in the bathtub trying hard not to drown in the water from the rain and debris falling on top of him.  That bathtub was the only thing left on the swept clean floorboards.

Another couple from Bruce's office had taken shelter in a bedroom cupboard after most of their walls had collapsed.  They felt it jolted and buffeted. Suddenly it was flung on its side and they were lying in it as in a coffin.  When the winds subsided they opened the door to get out.  To their horror they realized they were nowhere near their house but almost a block away.  They had been flying through the air in their cupboard along with all the other debris.  It took them quite a while to find their house again.

Other friends were not so lucky.  They were newly arrived in Darwin from Adelaide and had no idea about the tropics.  A fortnight earlier when we'd had a cyclone scare  which hadn't eventuated  I had sent her and her little, curly redheaded, three year old daughter home.  She hadn't realized the threat and turned up at our place for Playgroup as it had been my turn to host it.  I told her she needed to go home and prepare.  She and her husband were a very pleasant couple, and their little one was a real cutie.

During the cyclone, they had gone into the concrete store room downstairs for shelter.  After the eye, when the winds were extreme, the concrete walls had collapsed on her and the little one, seriously injuring them.  There was no possibility for him to get help.  He spent the next hours, distraught, administering CPR to his wife and his little daughter  going from one to the other, not knowing, in the dark, who to attend to best.  By the time the winds had subsided at daylight, they were both dead.  I can only imagine his feeling of helplessness and despair that night.  It really shook us up.

When we saw some of the almost surreal achievements of the wind forces, we were not surprised by the reports at all.  We saw at our neighbours' father's home something we did not think possible.  In the house remains, we saw what was left of their car.  The bonnet had blown off.  A 2 by 3 inch piece of wood had pierced, and was still lodged in, the engine block of the car.  Amazing to even contemplate!  They also had had a good laugh on Christmas morning.  His parents had a lodger who had gone to bed drunk that night.  His room, and the roof over it, was the only part of the house left intact.  The rest of the house was razed.  He had slept through the whole thing. They were standing outside his door to see his face as he emerged.  It was worth the wait.

We also saw the remaining part of a block wall at a friend's house where the end of a sheet of corrugated iron had left a three inch deep imprint.  It was a very neat zigzag, no chipped edges, as if cut into a block of butter.  This same friend lived near the airport and now had a clear view from his house of the planes taking off, loaded to capacity, sometimes overloaded, with evacuees.  He told us that one overloaded plane, full of women and children, had struggled on take-off.  It had laboured, faltered, then hung in the air almost motionless for what seemed minutes.  His heart and breathing had stopped in horror knowing the full implications of what he was seeing.  Then at the last minute, when he thought it would plummet, there was a surge from the engines and it continued on its way.  Later he learnt his wife and four children had been on that plane.

People really missed the availability of water and sanitation, more so than the lack of electricity. Disregarding the fact that a body that had been found in the Nightcliff pool, people had still collected, boiled and drunk the water just the same. A few minutes spent poking among the debris made your hands feel like they were crawling with filth. Water was what I missed most too.

Many cars would not start because it was discovered that the cyclone's winds and pressure had sucked out the petrol vapour from the engines through the exhaust pipes. They had to be towed or pushed around the block to start.

More and more the pressure was put on people to clear out and let the Army and Navy get on with their unpleasant tasks. Bruce and I were accosted at the evacuation centre and told to leave. They were going to stop the airlifts on the 31st. Since there was nothing much more we could do at this stage, and Bruce was starting to feel "off colour", we decided to leave.

We were evacuated in a Hercules on New Year's Eve, 31st December 1974 on one of the last flights out. Unlike Grandma's experience our trip was uneventful. Bruce spent most of the trip cuddling a one year old little girl to his chest. The mother was at her wit's end trying to stop the fretting little one who kept wanting to go to Bruce sitting across from her. I think she was missing her Daddy who was required to stay behind because of the position he held. When Bruce held her she snuggled into him and settled. He maintains it was because of his irresistible attraction to women!!

Our experiences at the Reception Centres at Brisbane Airport and Enoggera Army Barracks were similar to those of Grandma and the boys. Next day we were flown to Cairns to stay with my parents in time for New Year's Day. What to do next would be part of a New Year's Resolution.

PART SIX

Of course, everybody - family, neighbours and friends - was abuzz wanting to know the details.  They had only heard what was in the media and what they could get from Grandma and the boys.  Over the next few days we rehashed, and rehashed, all that had happened since the cyclone.  Because we had had no access to any sort of communication in Darwin we were quite fascinated by the reports and photos that had come from Darwin while we had been in the dark.

As with all media reports, some of it was not exactly right.  However, there was a lot of information of which we were not aware.  Except for what we had gleaned at the evacuation centre, we had not known anything much about the political side of it, and also the details about the whole evacuation. It had been interesting to learn what the authorities, both Federal and Territorian, had in mind for the future of Darwin.

Only a day or so after our arrival, Bruce came down with the mumps.  He had severe headaches, and even though it was very hot and humid, he was under two or three blankets, shivering away, or throwing it all off, with the fever.  He was that sick that I dragged him to the doctor to see if there was some sort of relief available for him.  The doctor advised that he just needed to rest, take some panadol, and weather it.  Then, as an afterthought, he said that Bruce needed to be aware that severe mumps in adulthood could cause brain damage.  With that cheery message he went back to bed to see out the mumps. Our younger son also came down with the mumps at the same time and had not been well. He shared the double bed with his daddy. However, his mumps were nowhere as severe.  Both recovered within a week.

About a fortnight after we had arrived in Cairns, Bruce received a phone call from his boss in Darwin.  There were two partners in the firm - he was the Partner in charge of Taxation and Bruce was his Taxation Manager. He was desperate for his staff to come back to Darwin to help out in the office.  Some, of course, never wanted to set foot in Darwin again.  Others were already looking around for similar jobs in the cities to which they had been evacuated.  Some of these former employees held him to ransom.  They agreed to come back to Darwin on their terms, on their conditions, and their nominated salary package, to compensate for the atrocious conditions under which they would need to work and live.  This happened with many of the firms and businesses in the recovering Darwin.

Bruce said he, but for the mumps, had had every intention of returning as soon as possible if a permit and some sort of accommodation could be arranged. Entry into Darwin was "By Permit Only" - at all points of entry  roadblocks, airport and harbour. The Authorities did not want people returning to a Darwin not yet ready for them. Bruce told him he was very happy to return under the same terms, conditions, and salary which he had undertaken at the beginning of his employment there.  His boss had offered him the same incentives he had been pressured into by some of his other employees.  Bruce, however, refused any sort of inducement, saying it was right thing to do under the circumstances.

Bruce's integrity, unbeknownst to us at the time, was really appreciated by his boss. He remembered it when finally we left Darwin six months later for an appointment in Brisbane with the same firm.  Because Bruce had not "screwed him over" he gave him a huge bonus on our departure. This enabled us to enjoy a six week European holiday which we normally would not have been able to afford, having a young family. Before he undertook his next appointment Bruce asked for a break so we could all get over the stress of the past six months, and also to go house-hunting in Brisbane. This gratitude amounted to much more than the incentives that some of the others had demanded.  Another lesson in life learnt.

His boss accommodated Bruce in his own home.  He had a beautiful house right on the beach at Nightcliff.  It had been damaged, but not severely, the roof being covered by a tarpaulin, and any smashed windows boarded up. Compared to other houses around it was quite liveable.  They had huge trees on the beach side of the house. These had prevented some of the flying debris reaching the house.  Because it was right on the beach there was not a lot of flying debris from other houses that came their way anyway, and most ended up in the ocean. They had a lot of sand and rubbish through the house. Initially it looked like an indoors sandpit. However, the trees fell on the house, and though damaging the roof, there was an advantage in that these then held most of the roof on. The three other sides of the house were bordered by six foot high solid fencing, which encased a large swimming pool. The fencing although badly damaged prevented some of the flying debris reaching the house. Any debris that did get over the fence, landed in the pool and drowned. They had a lot of water and wind damage but were luckier than most in their area.

The offices were on the sixth floor in a tall building in Mitchell Street in the heart of the commercial city area.  Of course there was no power.  This meant each morning and afternoon everyone had to ascend and descend all those flights of stairs in the heat.  The building had fixed windows, and as you can imagine, in the summer swelter of Darwin, with no air conditioning, the office was like a sauna.  All the electronic office equipment was also useless.  Any old manual calculators and typewriters they could still find in the storage room were resurrected. The clients were desperate, clamouring for their personal and business documentation.  Theirs had all blown away with the winds.  They hoped that their accountants had all their information still safe in the filing strong rooms.  They needed all this information for their insurance and compensation claims, as well as for the June taxation lodgements.  Luckily Bruce's office had not suffered too much damage and all the documentation was safe.  Other accountancy practices were not so lucky, and so, of course, their clients were in a real pickle.

Bruce has always prided himself in being able to add long columns of figures in his head running up and down each column with his finger, then jotting down the total  and being correct.  Now, in a forty+ degree sweat box, not using one of the limited supply of calculators, because the others in the office needed them more, adding the figures in his head, he found he was making mistakes. He was needing to make two or three runs at the figures.  Instead of thinking it was a result of the conditions, all he could think of was "Oh no!! Brain damage!!"

He stayed with his boss and family for about two months.  They had lived in Darwin for many years and previously in Fiji.  The wife had grown up there. Her father had been the British Ambassador in Fiji and the family were accustomed to grand entertaining.  They also lived the "Upper British Expatriate Lifestyle" even in Darwin.  Each evening after the day's activities, whether it was at the office or cleaning up the cyclone debris around the house, the custom was to wash and dress for dinner.  Not just a fresh set of clothes, but the whole bit  long trousers, dress shirt and tie; the omission of a jacket being the only concession to the Darwin climate.  True to upper class tradition, the wine was opened and decanted, with a flourish, before dinner; and after dinner the men retired to the smoking room for a cigar and port, while his wife and daughter cleaned up.  Bruce thought this was a wonderful lifestyle.  I told him, when he'd phone, he had better not get too comfortable with these ideas.

He also reported what was generally happening on the ground in Darwin which was very different to what I was hearing in the media.  All the media reports were about the squabbles between the bureaucrats, Federal or Territorian, and the politicians, Federal or Territorian. Major-General Alan Stretton, Director-General of the Natural Disasters Organisation had arrived at Darwin Airport late on Christmas Day and had taken charge of the relief efforts. He was trying to bring some order to Darwin but he had started to crack under the strain of what he has since dubbed those "furious' days". He had begun to cry in press conferences - the result, no doubt, of what he'd seen, and lack of sleep. He had returned to Canberra on New Year's Eve, much sooner than expected. Then the various petty bureaucrats had started to squabble and jockey for influential positions. The Defence Forces hierarchy and personnel were being thwarted in their clean-up efforts by these same "little hitlers"; and federal appointees as Heads for the Darwin Disaster Recovery Committee came and went at short intervals, not being able to cope with the expectations, and the rot that was going on.

If only the wonderful organisation, co-operation and lack of red tape of those first few days had remained.