A mother, her baby and a tale of love and horror: the extraordinary escape from Cyclone Tracy

Freda’s story is one of many recounted as part of a special Sky News documentary, Cyclone Tracy: 50 years on, which premieres on Wednesday night.

Cyclone Tracy occurred on Christmas Day, 1974 in Darwin. A devastated homeowner returns from holiday to find his home wrecked. Picture Bruce Howard

The luggage tag strapped around her ankle was all that identified two-year-old Brenda Brocker when she arrived at the Brisbane airport.

She had been rushed on to a Hercules aircraft and evacuated from the ruins of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy had flattened the city on Christmas Day, 1974.

Brenda’s mother, Freda, had been seriously injured when her neighbour’s house was picked up by Tracy and crashed into her home.

“It smashed the toilet, maybe that’s what did my leg, I don’t know, but I had Brenda … I was nursing her and she was thrown into the mattress there and I just ran, I got under another mattress but I panicked of course, then I ran out and (my husband) Nick had picked up Brenda, a screaming child, wondering what was happening, and I ran out and I fell in the mud,” Ms Brocker said.

“We got into one car and then the windscreen went in that car so we got in the other one, there I was down on the floor with Brenda and Nick and then I discovered that my leg was badly cut so he tore my dress and put a tourniquet on it.”

Brenda Brocker is handed to a Salvation Army representative as she is evacuated from Cyclone Tracy.

The family spent the next five hours sheltering in that car as Tracy wiped out almost everything around them.

By the time the sun rose on Christmas Day, 66 people were dead and more than half of the city’s 47,000 residents were homeless.

Ms Brocker would be one of the first of the injured to be flown out of Darwin as authorities undertook the biggest peacetime evacuation in Australian history.

Yet even getting to the airport was a mission.

Cars were carried into the pool of the Darwin Travelodge by Cyclone Tracy. This picture appeared on page 4 of The Australian on Friday, December 27, 1974. Picture: Bob Seary

“The ambulance is going along, up and down, well it was a very rough trip because it was up and down gutters, everything I imagine, they had to move things out of the way,” she said.

As she was loaded into the Hercules, she presumed her daughter was staying behind with her husband. Little did she know, two-year-old Brenda was on the same plane.

“(Nick) handed Brenda to the captain, Captain Charlie, of that plane. I didn’t know she was on the plane, I had no idea,” Ms Brocker said.

“She’s got a tag around her leg, because, well, that’s the only way they would have known what her name was, because there was nothing else, so they put this luggage tag around her leg with her name on it and she was handed to the Salvation Army family, Beula Harris at the time was her name.”

Ms Brocker’s story is one of many recounted as part of a ­special Sky News documentary, Cyclone Tracy: 50 years on, which premieres on Wednesday night.

Darwin, nearly four months after Cyclone Tracy struck. People had started their repair jobs (April 1975). Picture: Bruce Howard.

Antony Bullock, who was 12 years old when Tracy hit, has recalled watching his home in Darwin’s northern suburbs being blown away before his eyes.

His father had ordered the family downstairs to shelter in the toilet.

“Unbeknown to me that downstairs toilet was locked because I had a brand new push bike in there,” Mr Bullock said.

“Dad goes ‘The key, you’ve got to get the key to downstairs’, so I had to go back into the kitchen and it was pitch black, the house is shaking.

“As I grabbed it, I turned around and that bottom end of the kitchen just exploded out, just disappeared, and all I could see was the flash of lightning and just bits of debris going everywhere.”

Light aircraft scattered about the tarmac at Darwin Airport. This picture appeared on page 4 of The Australian on Friday, December 27, 1974. Picture: Bob Seary

He remembers his father grabbing his hand as they tried to rush down the outdoor staircase.

“As we took one step, we just disappeared,” he said.

“Something just picked us up off the stairs and before we knew it we were on the lawn, 5m-10m away from the veranda.”

Tracy destroyed about 80 per cent of Darwin’s houses. It also cut off most of the city’s critical infrastructure, making it almost impossible for people from interstate to contact loved ones and check if they were OK.

Alan Haines had been at midnight mass with his sister when Tracy struck.

They survived the night in the nurses’ quarters at the Darwin hospital but it would be more than a week before their mother in Adelaide knew they were alive.

“She’d actually written a letter to us,” Mr Haines said.

“I don’t have it anymore, but it was a mother’s plea to her children, ‘Please God we’ll all be OK’, and we were.”

Cyclone Tracy: 50 Years On premieres on Sky News on Wednesday 27 November at 8pm AEDT. Stream at SkyNews.com.au or download the Sky News Australia app.