I think that I was one of four men who went through Cyclone Tracey twice!
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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 2 of us – Mike Davies [who went on to become the Senior ATC in Alice Springs] and myself were working in Pilot Briefing that morning.
We were told that we were being sent on a search for a missing Taiwanese trawler which had sailed a couple of days before and was now missing. The pilots were briefed by the search master – Barry Lord – and we helped with the rescue gear [from memory a liferaft and other things – probably first aid kits etc.
We went on a twin engine aircraft with 2 pilots. We were all trained observers – I do believe that the aircraft was the one shown in photos hanging from the front of a hangar roof after Cyclone Tracey had gone through.
I wasn’t really aware, up until then, that there was a cyclone nearby, or even the real implications. There were many notices on the radio and tv about what to do and where to take shelter inside your house – primarily the bathroom area as it had more structural strength. These broadcast notices had been playing regularly since we had arrived.
The flight was made at low altitude [below 500 ft – 150 metres] so that we could stay visual below low cloud. We had been airborne for what seems to have been about half an hour before we started encountering a lot of very low cloud.
I believe that we had almost made it to the eye when we suddenly dropped quite a distance – my memory is that the drop was about 300 ft. I was sitting in the back seat and had the life raft clutched to my chest. After that we slowly climbed and turned back and returned to Darwin. I think that we returned late morning after about an hour and a half or so flying. We did find out much later that the trawler was aground on Bathurst Island with all safe. We didn’t find that out until well after Tracey
That evening, Christmas eve was like any other – parties, planning to go to midnight services etc. We were living in Mac Donald St Fannie Bay at the time. Yes, we had been told that there was a cyclone which was forecast to cross the coast between point such and such – and point such and such – but no one was concerned – because nobody knew where those points were – and nobody had actually come out and said that it would, or even could, hit Darwin. There had been another cyclone earlier which went away – so this would as well! Wrong!!
The winds started getting up around 10 30 pm, and by 11pm I had had part of the neighbours veranda roof hit the side of the house shattering most of the glass louvers – so we took the advice of the broadcasts and took shelter in the bathroom. Sometime around 1 o’clock a lot of the roof over the bathroom and kitchen was blown off, and the southern end wall of the house was blown out at some stage – sitting out at right angles – which I saw when I went outside during the eye.
The noise was unbelievable. Around 3 am the winds stopped – there was still continuous thunder and rain noise – but the winds had stopped.
I went outside to see what I could. We were in the middle of the cyclone, surrounded by very high, lightning lit walls of thunderstorms which went up almost forever. The neighbours on the western side had been sitting in their car, moving to stay in shelter behind their house. The neighbours over the road had a boomerang shaped house with the front half missing, but the back half was fully intact. No one was in the house on our Eastern side
I went back upstairs and shortly after the eye passed and the winds and pelting rain returned from the other direction, the house shuddered with a huge bang, which I later worked out was the end wall being slammed back into position – and the other end wall actually was blown out – not sure when it happened, and was hanging almost parallel with the floor in the morning.
First light was about 6 30 am, There was still low cloud and heavy rain, the neighbours who had been driving around the house survived and left, their house had been destroyed. The neighbour over the road still had his half house intact, and our house was missing most of the roof, most of the louvres and the end wall was hanging out, but between the neighbour over the road and us – we had the most intact houses in the street.
Many of my fellow ATC’s lived nearby and they all had nothing much left, we ended up with 20 or so people and a few children either at our place or over the road, many of us had camping gear, stoves etc. – so we made do with what food we had between us – cooking thawed frozen food and sharing it around.
We had all headed into work mid morning to see what we could do to help – the 3 km’s took 45 minutes to travel, and were all told that none of us could help with anything there as there were no communications with the rest of Australia and the airport being shut for the time being – so we returned home and did what we could to rebuild our house and provide some shelter for all. We were surrounded by debris, including many sheets of galvanised iron, and by scavenging just around us we found enough louvres to reglaze the house and enough galvanised iron to replace the roof that had blown off. I had most of a 10 kg bag of roofing nails in the lockup, as well as a ladder long enough to get onto the roof [the owner had got me to re-nail the roof when I moved in] and apparently that had helped save the basic structure as much of it had stayed on.
We all worked together, gathered roofing iron and louvres, ran a rope through the length of the house and towed the back wall up with my Ford station wagon. It came back into place again with a thud. By working together we had the house back together and providing shelter for all of the group by mid afternoon. We had people and children gathering everywhere inside the houses, and were eating beneath our house
Most of us from the Airport stayed in the 2 houses for a week or so before being told to evacuate as there would be no ATC ‘s in Darwin. The neighbour over the road was a doctor – Ted Giblin – and he was flat out.
I and others drove to Adelaide, only to be asked why we had come there and if I would go back. As I had a house I went pretty well straight back – we ended up with 6 staff in Darwin and could only provide pilot briefing and search and rescue services
Some memories from Tracey
A Stobie pole with a piece of 50mm x 100mm hardwood driven through it as if the wood was a nail – there was some splintering around the flat end for maybe 50mm and then the timber was intact
The indent of an old style refrigerator door in the water tower in front of the old passenger terminal – it was metres up in the air when it hit.