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164 posts

Dave Carr – Tracy, Recalled 50 Years On

In the lead-up to Cyclone Tracy’s 50th anniversary, Dave Carr recounts his unforgettable experience as one of the young Kiwis living in Darwin when the cyclone struck on Christmas Eve 1974. What began as a typical holiday gathering quickly turned into a night of survival against fierce winds and flooding. […]

Sue Molina-Wilson – 13 years old survivor

13 years old survivor The night of Christmas Eve where we spent opening Christmas presents as a family’s traditional Christmas Eve, I received my first ‘Watch’, so excited and cannot wait to put on the following day. I was 13yo at that time. We went to sleep with the rain […]

Sue McIntyre – How we did everything wrong but came out alive

This is an original recording of Sue McIntyre’s (formerly Sneath) recollection about a week after the cyclone. It’s very lucid and descriptive, and may help other survivors who are still trying to piece things together, in terms of timelines and events. Sue was in the Northern suburbs, the hardest hit […]

Mike Coles – Cyclone Tracy Cleanup Photos

These previously unpublished photos were submitted by Mike Coles. He writes: I was in Darwin for about three months as a PMG (later Telecom, Telstra) technician, from early January. The house with 3165 on it is where we lived for that time, at first without a roof, just tarps overhead). […]

Devastation

These are some images of the devastation I’ve collected over the years. I don’t know the original source of most of these photos and don’t own the copyright.

Twisted steel

Over the years I’ve been asked about the iconic twisted steel photos. Here are some that are in the public domain. I do not own copyright to these photos.

Torn apart spaceship house a result of Cyclone Tracy.

The Spaceship House

Over the years many people have asked about the spaceship house. I found these images on the web.

Scott Gibson’s Christmas Present 1974

These pics were sent in by Scott Gibson. He wrote: “This is my Christmas present for 1974 was under the wreckage of our house I still have it they don’t build them like this anymore”.

292 Casuarina Drive, Bell Family after Cyclone Tracy

These pictures were submitted by Graeme Bell. He wrote: “Bell family, 292 Casuarina Drive, Nightcliff. Jim and wife Win (Winifred / Freddy) Bell had nearly finished the construction of a new two storey brick home in front of the older timber fibro single storey house. Tracy brought forward the intended […]

Gene Moyle

This picture was submitted by Gene Moyle. Gene wrote “This picture is of me as a young child (2.5 yrs) – Gene Moyle (nee Barrell) after evacuation to Brisbane following cyclone Tracy. This photo was on Page 4 of The Sunday Mail Colour Magazine, Picture Book 12, from 19th January […]

John Horn – RAAF

These photos were submitted by John Horn. He wrote “This was our house on the RAAF base”.

6 Shepherd Street after Cyclone Tracy

T This photo was submitted by Angela O’Neil. She wrote: “I took this photo of our house at 6 Shepherd St Darwin (which runs between Cavenagh and Woods Streets in the middle of Darwin City), on 25th December 1974, the morning after the cyclone hit. We weren’t able to spend […]

Twelve and Terrified: A Christmas Story by Brad Rowlands

Cyclone Tracy had a sound; it was the most terrorizing sound I have ever heard. The sound of literally millions of sheets of corrugated iron being scraped across the ground at 250 kilometres per hour and crashing into rather flimsily built fibreboard buildings. Homes exploded off their stilts, leaving people […]

Barry Chant – Flying in to restore power

In 1974, I was working with the Electricity Generating Board in Queensland. I was at my fiancé’s house celebrating Christmas when I received a call to mobilise with tools and depart for Darwin as soon as possible. That afternoon, we had to get medical injections, and the following day (Boxing […]

Iljas Adam Jamieson, Canberra Australia

 When tropical Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin I’d been living there 18 months in a typical wooden house on high stumps, with a steep pitched iron roof in Searcy Street behind the Post Office where I’d let a couple of rooms to fellow travellers. I had a temporary position cleaning planes […]

Tracy – Danny Thomas (RIP)

From Danny’s sister Georgia: “Danny was always passionate about Cyclone Tracy and that it be remembered as a significant event in our history. He produced a small concert at the gardens for the 30th Anniversary. This also got media coverage which may be available in the ABC (?) files. We […]

If this wheelhouse goes, we’re dead! – John Howard

Darwin Harbour 24th December 1974 “If this wheelhouse goes, we’re Dead Forward: This is the story of two young people’s experience of the fury of Cyclone Tracy on Darwin Harbour.  John Howard and Lynda Burke met in August 1974 when Lynda joined the crew of the NR Robinson. They soon […]

Floating Off The Stairs: Antony Bullock

Cyclone Tracy – 25th December 1974 My name is Antony Bullock, and this is my story. Christmas Eve 1974 marked a particularly special occasion for me for several reasons. It was my last year in primary school, and I was going to start high school in January. I was just […]

Cyclone Tracy and Us, Christmas Day, 1974 – Ian and Dale Bachelor

(As recalled, Fifty Year’s on – Christmas Eve, 2024) At some point in almost everyone’s life, there will come a moment when you are faced with a situation that may be terrifying, tragic, impossible to comprehend, life threatening, or simply very unfair. My wife and I and our six week’s […]

Sheltering the Unborn, Surviving the Unseen – Julie Brimson

Cyclone Tracy, 24 December 1974 Julie Brimson It was sometime in early June 1974 when I found out I was pregnant with our second child, with a due date of 29 January 1975. Given that our first baby, a daughter, was born in Adelaide, we were so pleased that this […]

Wet Floors and Wob’s Return – Joan Andropov

Cyclone Tracy – Darwin, 24th & 25th December 1974 In 2014, on the 40th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy, I retyped our memories and added to them. Cyclone Tracy Meteorological Bureau Vital Statistics: Size: Gales extended to about 40 km from the centre. Diameter of the eye: about 12 km at […]

Survival and Betrayal – Kaye Tukukino

I’m like most survivors; Tracy doesn’t go away. In the unforgiving grip of Cyclone Tracy on Christmas morning in 1974, our Nightcliff unit transformed into a battleground. Huddled in the bathroom, knowing this wasn’t going away, we endured harrowing noises, with walls seemingly pulsating in and out, inflicting pain on […]

Two years at Larrakeyah Barracks – Dennis Ryan

I spent two years at Larrakeyah Barracks, arriving about a month after Cyclone Tracy with thousands of other troops. After many others left, I was asked if I would stay on with 711 Supply Company. The barracks had sustained a lot of damage—I remember them being open to the weather, […]

Pregnant in the eye of Tracy – Shirley Lane

December 24, 1974. Living in Jingili near Rapid Creek. I was on maternity leave from the Attorney-General’s Department, approximately eight and a half months pregnant with my first child. Around 11:30 am, I attended a Christmas party at the Civic Centre. Before leaving home, I filled the bath, secured any […]

50th Anniversary Recollections – Hugh and Rosemarie Lake

My wife Rosemarie and I lived in Darwin at the time of Cyclone Tracy. We arrived in early August 1974 from England with the object of earning money to fund future travels. We were newly married and as I had previously lived in Darwin I had contacts at the hospital […]

The Stuart Highway 1975 – Hugh Lake

We all looked into our mirrors as we left Tracy behind we’d done nothing to upset her but she had not been very kind trashed Darwin in her anger dashed children’s Christmas joys scattered homes and houses all the wrapping and the toys Dawn on The Stuart Highway the year […]

The wind was just a whipser – Hugh Lake

TRACY…. DARWIN…. CHRISTMAS….’74 It started with a warning As one the week before A cyclone was arriving And trouble was in store We filled the bath with water Took pictures off the wall Put blankets in the bathroom But Selma did not call                                                                                                                      The wind was just a whisper […]

I went through Tracy twice!

I think that I was one of four men who went through Cyclone Tracey twice! ————- On Christmas Eve 1974 I was working in Pilot Briefing at Darwin Airport. I was one of three recently qualified Air Traffic Controllers had been transferred from Adelaide to Darwin in July 1974, and […]

Cyclone Tracy – Recollections from Katherine by John Favelle

In 1974, I was the District Officer for the Commonwealth Department of the Northern Territory (formerly the Department of the Interior) in Katherine. I recall after the Christmas Day church service in the Anglican Church in Katherine, I was with Andy McNeill the local police officer. We were eating prawns […]

Paul Lyons – Journal 24-30 December 1974

From my diary – Also online at http://www.pikle.co.uk/journal/1974/Dec1974.html 24-30 December, Darwin CYCLONE TRACY And suddenly it is Christmas Eve. Work [at the power station] isn’t really work (yesterday it was quite interesting – we had to take the complete two ton end of the cylinder off – I was a […]

A Christmas of Chaos – Corporal Allen Hancock, 125 Signal Squadron, Darwin

Christmas in Darwin was always something quite different from that experienced anywhere down south. There really was no ‘silly season’ as such, probably because the ‘silly season’ lasts twelve months up there. Before the introduction of Remote Locality Leave Travel, it was normal for personnel on a two-year posting to […]

Gary Gibson – The Darwin Disaster – Electronics Australia Magazine

The below files are copies of pages from the now no longer published Electronics Australia Magazine. The article outlines the role Myself and my wife along with the many Australian Amateur radio operators played in the immediate post cyclone communications out of Darwin. We moved from Darwin to Northern NSW […]

Valda Lefebvre – Our Wedding Anniversary

My husband Lou and I had only arrived in Darwin 6 months before Cyclone Tracy with our three little sons, Justin, four years old, and twins Shannon and Paul, three years old. We had settled happily in our Thornton Crescent, Moil home, a very sturdy home built by Watkins Builders […]

Robert and Mary Fox – An Account of Cyclone Tracy

This is not my story but that written by late wife, Mary Fox, shortly after Cyclone Tracy. It is the personal account of our experience during and immediately after CT. Mary passed away on 30 May 2022. Robert Fox An Account of Cyclone Tracy by Mary Fox, January 1975.   […]

Lorraine Dickson – Cyclone Tracy and Evacuation

At the time of Cyclone Tracy I was living as a young Army wife in Larrakeyah Barracks where my husband was posted. I was in the early months of my first pregnancy and working as a Community Nurse based at the Parap Centre. At the time of Tracy I was […]

Darwin 1974 & a Letter Sent the Next Day – Frances Marilyn Roberts

I flew, with our four children, to Darwin on 2 November 1974, my birthday, with a couple of suitcases, just clothes, bedding and a few bits and pieces. The rest of our belongings were very few and arranged to be delivered in about 2 months. John had secured a home […]

David Curtis’s story

By Christmas 2024, it will be the 50th Anniversary of Cyclone Tracy, the fiercest and most destructive cyclone that destroyed Darwin. Here is our story of escape and survival of Cyclone Tracy. At the time, my wife Penelope and I were staying with my wife’s parents, Colin and Clara Royes, […]

Demolished homes in Darwin on the cover of Cyclone! Christmas in Darwin 1974.

The Christmas Santa Never Came – Beth

The Christmas Santa Never Came (Santa never came, instead Tracey came) Christmas eve 1974 had more than the usual anticipation. Cyclone warnings had beenblaring on the hour all day. We could almost say it off by heart, but did not really thinkall the precautions would be necessary. After all we […]

Piano Capital – Barbara Eather

According to folklore, there’s two eras in this town: Before Tracy and After. A simplistic assessment—just ask the Larrakia People—but it’s still an accepted ‘fact’. Merry Christmas, 1974. Take that up your clacker, Darwin. Plenty has been said about that mean little system—that bitch Tracy who almost wiped this northern capital off the map.

You can never understand me – Nean Curry

You can never understand me You don’t understand me, I could tell you a million times About Cyclone Tracy Christmas Eve 74, But you were not there… If you look at Darwin that morning, The debris is all that is in me, It is me. And I have been trying […]

William WOODYATT

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Siegfried Karl Otto WOLFE

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Terrance Carew WESTWOOD

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Gregory John WESTERMAN

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Robert Norman WADE

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Ronald Charles MARSHALL

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Graham William DEARDEN

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Avis Winifred DANIEL (21 Years)

Did you know Avis, or would you like to help remember her? Leave a comment in the post, below. Avis was a nursing sister at Darwin hospital and was on board the Ferry, Mandorah Queen. The Mandorah Queen was found in 1981 at the northern end of Weed Reef. Avis […]

Raymond John CURTAIN

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Koji YOSHIDA

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Jennifer Anne WOOD

These images of Jenny have been sent in by her granddaughter Emma. She wrote: “Can I please have these 2 images put up on your site for Jennifer ANNE Wood? Jennifer is my grandmother who passed away that night. Here is the telegram my Great Aunt received in the UK on […]

Molly WILLIAMS

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Kerry Lynda WILLIAMS

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Shirley WENCK

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John TURNER

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Richard THOMPSON

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Joseph Thomas TAYLOR

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Robert Gordon SWANN

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Gravestone for Cherry Stephenson, aged 22 years, and her children, Kenneth (3 years and 11 months), and Kylie (6 months) all of whom died during Cyclone Tracy.

Cherry Leonie Rose STEPHENSON (22 years)

Did you know Cherry, or would you like to help remember her and her family? Leave a comment in the post, below. Cherry was the wife Geoff Stephenson, a sailor on the HMAS Arrow which sunk at Stokes Hill wharf. Cherry, their 3 year old son Kenneth, and their 6 […]

Giovanni SMANIOTTO

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