Cyclone Tracy 50 years: Salvation Army Colonel Winsome Merrett recalls her family’s night of terror

These days she is one of Australia’s top Salvation Army commanders, but on December 24, 1974, she was a 16-year-old girl cowering in a kitchen alongside her family as Tracy ripped apart their Nightcliff home.

The point of operations after the cyclone. Pictured behind is what remained of Ruth and Graham White's hostel, which would later house the Morris family through 1975. Depicted are Helen White, Carol Brown, Duncan Morris, Winsome Merrett, Valerie Barker, and Wilga Morris. Picture: Supplied

These days she is one of Australia’s top Salvation Army commanders, but on December 24, 1974, she was a 16-year-old girl cowering in a kitchen alongside her family as Cyclone Tracy ripped apart their Nightcliff home.

Colonel Winsome Merrett, The Salvation Army’s chief secretary – effectively chief operating officer – returned to Darwin on November 30 as a keynote speaker at the 50th anniversary commemorative event.

Now, she’s recounted in greater detail her bond with the city, forged in the gale force winds of Cyclone Tracy.

Colonel Merrett has a rich pedigree in the organisation, courtesy her parents, Hilton and Wilga Morris.

Salvation Army Captains Hilton and Wilga Morris, in the kitchen of their Nightcliff home where they would ultimately seek shelter during the height of Cyclone Tracy. Picture: Supplied

In the early 1970s, the Morrises, alongside Alan and Margaret Walker, were the tiny cadre who made up the Salvation Army in Darwin.

Hilton was the flying padre, Wilga his assistant (she later operated the Salvation Army’s Christian bookshop on Mitchell St), while the Walkers were the corps officers and church ministers.

A young Colonel Merrett, with the family living in a house at Nightcliff, says there was little inkling of what was to come – the Morrises in fact had friends over for Christmas Eve dinner.

“Cyclone Thelma had come a couple weeks beforehand and it was just a big tropical that storm blew into nothing,“ she recalls.

“We prepared for Cyclone Tracy, but in a general sense there was no awareness it would be this big. We got our emergency pack, worked out where we were going to stay should we need it.

Salvation Army Colonel Winsome Merrett. Picture: Salvation Army

“We had people over for the evening, socialised, two families enjoying Christmas Eve together.

“We were aware there was a cyclone coming, but it hadn’t stopped us doing what we would normally do.”

But by 9pm, “most of Darwin realised something was happening that was a little different,” Colonel Merrett says.

Captain Alan Walker, Commissioner Harry Warren and engineer Willie Pederson inspect the wrecked Salvation Army plane in the wake of Cyclone Tracy. Picture: Supplied

Then their two-storey house, which contained Hilton and Wilga, Colonel Merrett and her three siblings, two cousins and a dog, “blew up and out”.

“That was obviously quite terrifying for everyone. We ran helter skelter into the kitchen,” she recalls.

“It was bound on one end by a stairway, and had a bathroom and toilet on top, so had a bit more strength to it.

“My dad was holding a mattress against a set of louvres where the wind was coming.

“The rest of us huddled in a tight circle.

“Mum started to pray, we all started to pray. As we prayed, there was a beautiful sense of peace and calm that came over this group. It was quite miraculous really.”

The Morris family home at Nightcliff after Cyclone Tracy. Picture: Supplied

The next morning – Christmas – the children were ferried to friends at Winnellie who resided in new, sturdy units belonging to the Uniting Church.

By some miracle, Hilga was able to salvage the Christmas presents belonging to three of the four children from the rubble.

The four Darwin-based Salvation Army officers, alongside national boss Commissioner Harry Warren – who hitchhiked to the city after touching down at Eaton – were key figures in the chaotic first 72 hours before the national response whirred into action.

Hilton especially seemed to be everywhere at once, going so far as to scrawl “Salvos” on the panels of the family wagon so he could gain access to otherwise forbidden places in order to help.

Wilga Morris (wearing white) and a local Salvation Army volunteer (seated) during the initial response to Cyclone Tracy. Picture: Supplied

Colonel Merrett and her mother Wilga, meanwhile, were steady presences at the airport in those helter-skelter hours.

“I remember being on the tarmac handing out bottled water. It was so hot, so so hot,” she says. “I really felt for those people sitting in buses with families who were already traumatised.”

In the days and weeks after Tracy hit, the Salvation Army flooded the Top End with officers and assistance.

According to the organisation, it provided clothes, food and assistance to 36,000 evacuees, and served 25,000 meals at Darwin airport in the first four days after the calamity.

The Morrises would stick around for the long haul – Hilton and Wilga wouldn’t leave until the early 1980s, while Colonel Merrett would leave for university in 1977 but return at various times throughout her life.

Looking back on Cyclone Tracy now, Colonel Merrett says she remembers it as a time of adventure and camaraderie, reflective of the youthful bravado we all feel in our teenage years.

But she knows for others it was an earth-shattering event – that point was brought home to her when school returned in 1975 after a delayed start.

“I only had one friend return to school with me,” she says.

“All my other close friends, I don’t know where they went.

“There was no social media. I don’t know how to trace them at all.

“I don’t know what happened to them.”