It took years for Darwin to recover from the devastation of Cyclone Tracy in 1974, with at least 68 people dead and 25,000 residents left homeless.

Three years later NT director of health Dr Charles Gurd suggested Darwin hold a festival to celebrate its recovery from Tracy and honour the community spirit which kept the town together.

The Bougainvillea Festival blossomed in July 1979 as a floral event promoting beautification of the city.

GALLERY: From Bougainvillea to Darwin Festival, 40 years in the making

Thousands paraded down Smith St dressed as Vikings and rode on bikes in swimwear while kids marched along in their uniforms.

ABC Radio Darwin presenter Jo Laverty was part of the parade for a number of years.

In about 1986 she was part of the Irish Dance Association float.

“There were all these floats with bougainvilleas all over it and itchy hay bales to sit on,” she says.

“It was a lot of fun. People were lining up and down the street to clap you along.

“It was always terribly exciting for the kids to be apart of it, something to work towards.”

It was a humble event. Unpolished and raw but a show of community spirit which continued for decades.

The Bougainvillea Festival laid the foundation for what would become a nationally recognised event which showcased the best of Darwin and the world.

IN 2003 the winds of change began to sweep through the festival.

Throughout the 1990s the event began switching trajectories from a humble community gathering to a celebration of art and culture, however the festival didn’t make significant changes until Malcolm Blaylock entered the scene.

Mr Blaylock joined as artistic director in early 2003 with extensive experience as a former director of the Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Melbourne Moomba Festival.

He realised the then Festival of Darwin was falling behind and, in his six years as artistic director, made radical changes to bring the festival a new look.

“My perception was it was time for a change and it needed some renewal, some refreshment,” he says.

“All festivals are a reflection of the society they’re in … they come out of that community, they’re a reflection of that and Darwin, like all other places has always been like that.

“But my perception was that also society was changed and evolved and I think Darwin had been changing and evolving but the festival hadn’t quite gone far enough along that track of change.”

His most controversial change was the removal of the Grand Parade, the floral procession of floats and decorated vehicles.

“That caused lots of consternation at the time because it had been one of the major things in the festival,” he says.

“If you look at tapes of previous parades, clearly the last few, to me, didn’t seem to be working very well, like the video showed hardly anybody watching. It seemed to be a structure that had run its course and was very valuable at the time and important at the time and was a major part of the festival, but it seemed to me it needed renewing.”

“It got a lot of press in the paper. It was a terrible thing and I was some terrible person from Melbourne who came up to destroy the festival but in the end you’ve got to trust your judgment. Those rumours lasted for a year or two an they gradually died off and everybody embraced the festival and it became a much bigger and more inclusive event.”

The decision was also a financial one since Mr Blaylock had to make the most out of the $380,000 budget. Removing the parade paved the way for the celebration of art and culture the festival has become today.

“People worried it would lose its community feel, (we wouldn’t) have local people involved. So I actually went out of my way to involve as many people as I could but it was in a different format," he says.

“It was really important we have a lot of indigenous work in the program and there had been some before but not as much. I tried to do as much as I could to bring the Aboriginal spirit and Aboriginal performers to be part of the festival and I always looked at South East Asia. I brought lots of people from there as well, including the local people who were from different countries.

“If you do that it brings people from outside to come to the festival, so it was good tourism as well because people want to see something different, they want to see what this particular areas got to offer and I think indigenous and the Asian combined was an important factor in that.”

Introducing indigenous performances to the festival was one of Mr Blaylock’s greatest achievements.

“What I’m quite proud of actually is that through the indigenous music and art and bands we got an indigenous audience,” he says.

“It gave the festival a really strong flavour and strong Darwin and Northern Territory flavour, and the locals enjoyed it but also tourists came to see as well.”

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Mr Blaylock’s last Darwin Festival as artistic director was in 2008. He’d grown the meagre budget to $1.7 million and pushed the festival toward its full potential.

In the years following however, the festival teetered on the brink of financial collapse.

An independent audit report was leaked in June 2016, revealing an expected deficit of $400,000 by the end of the August festival.

The entire board was sacked but the festival rose from the ashes and in 2017 began to recover, helped by the vision of the current artistic director.

Mr Blaylock says in order for its success to continue, the festival needs to keep moving forward.

“Unless the festival goes with the times and make changes as it goes along, it will die,” he says.

“Society is changing, people are changing but the fundamentals don’t change but you’ve got to go with the times and change otherwise the festival gets left behind."

TODAY, Darwin Festival is more than a celebration of art and creativity. It offers a platform for social, cultural and political conversation.

It shares the magic of drag and gender fluidity; the beauty, pain and creativity of our First Nation peoples. It showcases upcoming Territory stars and brings the world to our little town.

This year’s festival is dipping its toes into technology, part of the vision of artistic director Felix Preval.

“Looking forward, what will it look like in 2049, well the world will be a radically different place but maybe there are a few tasters of that festival to come in this year’s program,” he says.

“We have an exciting curated programs of virtual reality film works that will be screened nightly in Festival Park under the title Shifting Realities.

“There’s four immersive film experiences which speaks to climate change, first nations perspective and definitely gives the viewer a taster of the potential of new technology in a festival context.”

There are still remnants of the Bougainvillea Festival’s spirit and colour but in a new way.

“The strength of Darwin has always been its deep connection to the community,” Mr Preval says.

“We’re got beautiful projects this year that acknowledge that history of community engagement at Darwin Festival. We’ve got a beautiful retrospective video work called Parade Days which will be screening lightly on The Lighthouse wall which reanimates photos of the early years.

In particular, the iconic event the gran parade many will remember

“It brings the set back to life in this kind of fun, quirky, irreverent way which we hope captures something of that spirit that people will feel remains in the festival despite the format of the festivities shifting so radically in this 40 years.”

One thing which will never change about the festival is its connection to community and each year more acts are brought in to strengthen this bond.

An example is the festival’s closing act, Drumming up the Storm.

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Darwin’s pacific community gave a second life to the African mahogany trees that fell in Cyclone Marcus by turning them into drums, and will perform powerful beat honouring the strength of Darwinites who overcame Marcus.

“It pays homage to Darwin’s strength as a community, it’s resilience, it’s willingness to come back again time again in the face of adversity whether or not its through natural disaster or trying economic times,” Mr Preval says.

“We’re a city that is drawn to one another to find strength and always kind of willing to come out and celebrate the best things about life up here and I think the festival gives people an opportunity to do that.”

The legacy of the Top End’s artistry and creativity is Darwin Festival. Each year the crowd grows bigger, the atmosphere more vibrant, the acts spectacular and the sense of community more united.

“As we look into the future although many things may change about our daily lives,” Mr Preval says.

“I’m also confident that strong sense of community connectedness that Darwin and the Darwin Festival enjoys will be the throughline for whatever form this will take in another 40 years.”