Cyclone Tracy anniversary: How Darwin has changed since the destruction of Christmas 1974

REVISIT the Darwin of 1974, when Cyclone Tracy wreaked devastation on families celebrating Christmas — and see how different the city looks 40 years on.

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THIS year has seen a shattering lead-up to Christmas for Australia, with the Cairns massacre following days after the Sydney siege.

Forty years ago this week, Darwin also faced a devastating holiday season, as Cyclone Tracy ripped lives apart.

No one expected the tragedy, having made preparations for Cyclone Selmaweeks earlier, only for it turn around and go away.

But at 12.30pm on December 23, forecasters monitoring Tracy noticed that it had turned towards the city from the Tiwi Islands. By 3am Christmas morning, the anemometer at Darwin airport broke as gusts reached 217km/h.

Sixty-six people were killed, hundreds injured and most of the city left homeless as fierce winds tore through the Northern Territory.

The death toll could have stretched into the thousands, but the pitch black night prevented families from leaving their shelters to run the gauntlet of speeding debris and try to rescue possessions.

Cyclone Tracy anniversary events

They were also saved from worse because the tide was running out, spearing the suburbs from cyclonic surges that were a major factor in Hurricane Katrina’s death toll of more than 1800.

But only 500 out of 12,000 homes escaped serious damage. There was no power, running water or telephone communication. Christmas feasts rotted in the tropical heat.

Most of the survivors fled Darwin, with 35,000 of the 46,700-strong population evacuating by road or air, to stay in temporary accommodation until they could return.

Many never did.

“The evacuees arrived mainly with only the clothes they stood up in, shocked and confused, alienated, euphora (sic) weeping, stress reaction and fatigued,” the final report of the Darwin Disaster Welfare Council said.

A few stayed to assist with the recovery effort, caring for the wounded and starting work on the mammoth clean-up.

About 500 injured people — many seriously — poured through the doors of the old Darwin Hospital in the days that followed.

Many of the doctors and nurses had lost everything they owned, but nearly all turned up to work on Christmas morning.

The hospital’s head of anaesthetics was killed by flying debris, so colleague Dennis Fitzsimmons took the reins.

“Major surgeries we had were those whose houses were disintegrating and they had to leave — they were the ones that were injured,” he told the NT News.

“They were moving around and there were roofs falling off and all these missiles ... as happened to the anaesthetist.

“I was dealing with major injuries to upper and lower limbs as well as penetrating injuries of the abdomen and lungs.”

Deborah Hampton, whose father Raymond Ian “Happy” Hampton was killed in the cyclone, this year spoke for the first time about that night.

She was 12 years old that day, and escaped with a broken nose. Her father was thrown from the house and found on Christmas morning close to death inside a car.

“The walls of the lounge room literally blew away, followed by the floorboards,” said Deborah.

“When I saw our lounge and TV get swallowed up and disappear like something you see in a horror movie ... I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“My cat had a litter of kittens, and I recall seeing them being sucked away like when you open the door of a plane. I, of course, tried to run after them to save them, but my mother yanked me back.

“We were running for our lives.

“I remember the noise of the wind, we basically had to yell at the top of our lungs to speak to each other, even though we were within inches apart. Bits of stuff hit your skin, and you were sure that when daylight came you would be covered in cuts, or worse.”

They tried to flee but were trapped inside the bathroom as the air pressure held the door shut.

“The bathroom walls were coming apart at the seams, and one by one got blown away until all that was left of the entire house was floorboards,” Deborah said.

“My family and I were left holding hands in a skydiver formation, until we couldn’t hold on to each other any longer and one by one we lost our grip.

“As I got flung through the air, I remember seeing bits of planks of the floorboards following me, and I truly thought that this was it, and that I would die.”

Deborah and her sister survived the fall and found an upside-down wardrobe wedged in mud. They climbed inside and sheltered for the night.

“I was the first one of us to crawl out of the wardrobe and the first words I spoke on Christmas morning were ‘the neighbourhood’s gone’,” she says.

“My sister didn’t believe me, and when she looked out she was also in shock. It looked like we were in a war zone. The whole neighbourhood was gone. Flattened and unrecognisable.”

The girls and their mother Joy were evacuated to Sydney on a Hercules. They weren’t even allowed to stay to bury their father and husband.

“Mum never fully recovered from her injuries (and had) to retire from her government job,” said Deborah. “I am recounting this story as I don’t want my father’s death to have been in vain. Please, please treat all cyclones as the dangerous entities that they are. They can and do kill.”

Naval ships and aircraft left Melbourne and Sydney early on Boxing Day to assist with the clean-up, while the army flew in specialists to assist with rations, equipment and stores.

The first commercial flight evacuating Darwin refugees left early the same day.

In the next three days, there were 102 flights airlifting 20,000 people to southern capital cities.

Retired Major-General Alan Stretton, who led the response, persuaded many to go by recommending that everyone who left should get a free return flight.

Stretton’s efforts in Darwin saw him named 1975 Australian of the Year, but he was a divisive figure.

Some criticised his failure to acknowledge the gains already achieved by the people of Darwin before his arrival on Christmas night.

Ray McHenry, then-director of emergency services admitted in the report that there was “no doubt that there (may) have been trauma because of the way in which the evacuation was done”, noting some wanted to stay, “but the priority was to get people out in a hurry”.

The most controversial aspect of the evacuation began when McHenry suggested to Stretton a permit system be implemented to control who came back to the city.

Stretton agreed and it was introduced on December 28.

Remembering Cyclone Tracy: Red Cross workers recall chaos

“It is a fact that where accommodation was not available people were deterred from coming back to the Territory, though many of them found their way around the restriction,” McHenry said.

The permit system, finally scrapped in June 1975, has been credited with keeping unwanted people out of Darwin, but also blamed for marriage breakdown and unnecessary psychological damage as families were stopped from rebuilding their lives.

Dogs were shot by authorities in Tracy’s aftermath in an ostensible bid to control disease.

Today, Australia is by no means immune from another such disaster.

“The fact (homes) blew away was not a consequence of how they were designed,” said Troppo Architects co-director Adrian Welke, who helped build new, elevated homes in 1979. “They fell apart because they were poorly built.

“The early buildings we did were about rediscovering those older principles, but building within a structural framework that was going to ensure they were going to remain there if another Tracy or even more significant cyclone would hit Darwin.”

He warned it would be “fanciful” to assume the building codes enacted after Tracy would be enough to protect lives and property.

Increased vegetation in the city might help protect buildings from wind and debris, but could also act as missiles, wrecking homes and blocking roads as people seek shelter.

Perhaps the greatest danger comes from the sea.

“If there was a cyclone surge there’s probably nothing much you can do to design a building to resist that sort of force,” said Mr Welke.

“Wind pressure is one thing but to have a cyclone surge where you have water and debris and everything coming with it ... Those areas still remain at risk.

“They are vulnerable to forces no structural engineering could really resist.”

Originally published as Cyclone Tracy anniversary: How Darwin has changed since the destruction of Christmas 1974