I was nine when the cyclone hit. Our family—Dad (Ray Twist), Mum (Annette Twist), my brother Colin (6), and my sister Caroline (3)—had been at a neighbour’s house for a Christmas party when the wind picked up and the cyclone warnings were on the radio. People kind of ignored them because there had been so many false alarms.
My brother Colin nagged my parents so much that we left and went home to our house in Rapid Creek. Unlike most other houses, our place was single level. I remember later being woken up as this terrible groaning sound of the wind outside got louder and louder, and we could hear banging and glass smashing.
We sat in three inches of water under the kitchen table while Dad went around with a lamp, strategically opening some windows to avoid a pressure build-up. Dad was a man of science—a geologist—who had been in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped. He was part of the Australian Army’s clean-up there. My parents showed no panic, just calm, although I felt a little concerned when Mum started to say the Lord’s Prayer out loud over and over. I didn’t know the words until I heard them that night.
During the eye of the cyclone, Dad went to check on our elderly neighbours because the husband was paralysed and wheelchair-bound after a stroke. Then a family of four came and sheltered in our house, and the five of us kids were sandwiched between mattresses near the bathroom and toilet—the strongest part of houses because of all the cement.
The next morning, everything was devastated. It was eerily quiet, and there was a huge piece of corrugated iron still waving in the wind on our patio. Mum quickly re-labelled all of the Christmas presents so that everyone got a gift. Dad had a CB radio and a generator, and the house was largely intact, so we didn’t get evacuated. He and my brother helped the police with the recovery operation in the days that followed.
We had six additional people in our house for a week or so. I remember giving up my bed and sleeping on one of our lounge chairs. We bathed in Rapid Creek with everyone else, planes flew over dropping insecticide to keep the mozzies down, and there were gunshots all the time—killing stray animals or scaring off looters. Mum listened to Stretton’s broadcast on the radio every afternoon. It kept everyone’s spirits up.
I rode my new bike—my Christmas present—around on all the broken glass and debris and miraculously never got a puncture. I remember Mum and the other mum running out naked into the rain the first time we had rain after the cyclone. They were so deliriously happy to feel gentle, clean water on their skin.
We stayed on in Darwin for two more years. My primary school was amalgamated with two others for a while because there weren’t many kids left. So Rapid Creek, Milner, and Nightcliff Primary Schools temporarily became Nimira (the first two letters of each of the three schools).
I mostly remember my parents being stoic and brave, helping others, and it all being a bit of an adventure for us kids. However, I feel a little traumatised by the memory now that I’m older, and I find it difficult to talk about. My mum—she’s 87 now—my brother, and I still feel uneasy when the wind picks up in storms, especially when we hear that kind of moaning, growling sound.