Keith Bushnell, Cyclone Tracy cameraman, dead aged 81
The man who showed the world how Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, has died. Read his legacy.
Keith Bushnell, the cameraman, who shot the first film vision to reach the outside world after Cyclone Tracy, died on Friday, August 1. He was 81.
A child migrant, Mr Bushnell emigrated from England to Australia in 1956 with his parents and two younger siblings.
His first media job was as an office boy at Channel Seven in Adelaide, processing film before he bought a second-hand Bolex clockwork 16mm camera, that he used to shoot everything he could for the station.
He once told longtime friend and Territorian, Richard Creswick: “I volunteered for everything. Thursday night wrestling, Friday night speedway, Saturday night trots which I would shoot, drive back to the station to process the film, then edit packages for the Sunday morning sports show.”
After several years, during which he became an A-grade cameraman, he resigned from Seven to take an extended northern-hemisphere safari which included the United Kingdom, Europe and Canada.
Returning to Australia he briefly joined Channel Nine in Sydney, but left after a union dispute. Mr Bushnell was approached by Oscar Scherl of Cinematic Services, holder of the ABC Darwin film contract, who needed “someone who could shoot, process and edit film and had no particular place to be for a year or two”.
Mr Creswick said Keith arrived in Darwin with a new short-wheelbase Toyota LandCruiser towing a 16-foot caravan which, in addition to the double bed, had been modified to take a custom-made 16mm black-and-white film processor.
“The LandCruiser, with a roof rack carrying four 10-gallon jerry cans emblazoned with the letters NEWS, soon became a highly recognisable vehicle around Darwin as he shot film for news, as well as the ABC’s local Talks, Rural and occasionally Sport departments,” Mr Creswick said.
“By late 1974 Keith had moved into a third-floor unit in Stuart Park and it was there that he spent several terrifying hours while Cyclone Tracy tore the roofs off the units and he hid in a wardrobe with a visiting friend from Sydney, another ABC employee, Toni Joyce. At dawn he ventured out and seeing the devastation knew he needed to film it.
“When the Landcruiser, partly covered by a collapsed brick wall wouldn’t start, a neighbour was enlisted as driver and they toured the city and suburbs as Keith shot 400 feet – 10-minutes 40 seconds – of colour film, which he put back in its box and addressed it ‘to the ABC, anywhere’.”
The vision was placed on the first aircraft to leave Darwin after Cyclone Tracy and was flown to ABC Brisbane. When it screened on Boxing Day, it became the first vision Australians were to see of what was, at the time, Australia’s greatest natural disaster.
“That film earned Keith the inaugural Thorn Award for Television news footage, with a prize of a Thorn TV, which he gave to his parents, and $250 cash, which he says he drank with friends the following week”.
After Cyclone Tracy, ABC’s local news service was scaled back to an add on out of Brisbane’s bulletin and Mr Bushnell headed back to Canada where he worked for Toronto-based Global Television.
When he returned to Australia five years later he returned to Darwin and formed a partnership with Mr Creswick, a former ABC journalist, producing short films for the NT Government’s Information Service and other agencies, and TV commercials for Geoff Hardwick’s Motorama.
In later life Mr Bushnell lived on Kangaroo Island and in Bundanoon, New South Wales. He was diagnosed several years ago with dementia and was in palliative care for several months prior to his death. He is survived by a daughter, Robin.
‘Largest since 2019’: Why new airline opens up the Territory to China’s riches
