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 clinging to the bare floorboards. Make no mistake: this was nature at its most violent!

“The city of Darwin has been completely wrecked. There is nothing left to stay for.” These are the words of Major-General Alan Stretton, the Director of Cyclone Tracy Recovery Operations, Christmas Day 1974.

Cyclone Tracy took most Darwin residents by surprise. Despite several warnings of increasing winds and heavy rain, the people of Darwin did not evacuate or prepare for the cyclone. They prepared for Christmas.

I was twelve years old and had been counting the hours down until Christmas morning, as I knew Santa had picked out a bike for me. This was no ordinary bike. This was a Malvern Star short-frame dragster in candy apple red with black rims and chrome spokes. That Santa—he knew his bikes.

By late afternoon on Christmas Eve, the sky over the city was heavily overcast with low clouds and strong rain. Between 10 PM and midnight, wind gusts increased in strength, and the damage became serious. The people of Darwin began to realize that this cyclone would not just pass by the city but come straight over the top.

At 11 PM, I was asleep in my bedroom when a length of timber crashed through the window, narrowly missing me. I remember being terrified; I couldn’t stop screaming. Dad didn’t have time to do hours of textbook counselling to console me. He had to act quickly because he wanted to move us three kids and Mum to the safest part of the house—the toilet. So, Dad slapped me across the face. It had the desired effect; I instantly calmed down.

Then, just minutes later, the glass louvers shattered throughout the living room, kitchen, and hallway. Next, the end wall in Mum and Dad’s bedroom tore away. We could now hear the neighbours screaming out for help. Dad arrived to find two small children crawling out from the kitchen cupboards. Cyclone Tracy was getting down to business. Dad helped secure the neighbours boat under the house, where Brian and his family spent the second half of the cyclone. During the 15-minute interval that was the eye of the cyclone, a lot of people thought it was over. But no, it started again, and that wind and that noise were relentless.

In the dawn of Christmas Day, the winds began to ease. You could hear nothing—silence, not even the sound of a bird. The day before, Mum was worried about leaving a door open, which might let in the occasional fly. That morning, we couldn’t even find the door! We crawled over fallen ceilings and shattered glass just to get outside. The street was a mess of twisted steel and everyone’s possessions. Cars had been tossed around like toys. Houses no longer existed, just the stilts to mark where they once were. Conditions were definitely not good for bike riding.

Now science has a formula for when to use humour after a tragedy: Tragedy + time = humour. Well, science forgot to tell Dad because when he saw Brian emerge from his boat, he yelled out, “Gee, Brian, you keep an untidy house.” A smile came over Brian’s face, and they met in the middle of the street and shook hands. But this was no ordinary greeting. These two men and their families had survived the most gut-wrenching event of their lives. Seventy-one people died that Christmas Day; 47,000 people were left homeless.

You might be happy to know that I did get to ride that bike. We were evacuated to the Sunshine Coast, and that candy apple red dragster and I went everywhere, and we never looked back. According to Albert Einstein, life can be like riding a bike: in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving. Our family Christmases are different these days; well, for one, we don’t all cram into the toilet for eight hours and then wander the streets looking for our turkey. And Santa—well, he makes it to our house every year. Cyclone Tracy had a sound, and it’s never left me.

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