Squiz Shortcuts - The legacy of Cyclone Tracy

Your Shortcut to the legacy of Cyclone Tracy

We’re about to hit 50 years since Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin early on Christmas Day in 1974. It was one of Australia’s most devastating natural disasters and it prompted a lot of changes to keep Aussies safe. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll get you across:

• what happened

• the response

• and its legacy that lives on today.

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We’ve had a lot of cyclones in Australia, why was Tracy so memorable?
We have… but Tracy stands out as one of the biggest natural disasters on record for us in terms of the sheer destruction and disruption it caused, and the number of people who died. If you listen to the stories of survivors and look at the photos, it’s no exaggeration to say Tracy was catastrophic for Darwin, which was a town of around 47,000 people at the time. 

Were there many casualties?
Yep… 66 people were killed and 145 people were seriously injured. Reports say it left more than 80% of the houses uninhabitable and many more commercial buildings destroyed, meaning tens of thousands of people had no choice but to evacuate in the aftermath. That mass exodus left the population depleted and set Darwin back decades. 

Why was the toll so high?
Tracy was different for a range of reasons… For starters, people didn’t take the warnings seriously enough, and it took a lot of them by surprise when it ripped through in the early hours of the morning on Christmas Day…

Why didn’t they heed the warnings?
Reports from the time say that Darwin hadn’t been struck by a severe cyclone for 20 years, and there’d been another cyclone warning earlier in the month for Cyclone Selma, but that one petered out offshore. So when the warnings came in for Tracy, the majority of Darwinites just carried on with their usual Christmas prep…

What happened when it made landfall?
It packed a punch… It had winds of up to 217 kilometres per hour - that was before the Bureau of Meteorology’s equipment broke and blew away, so we’ll never know for sure how strong the wind was. 

Pretty strong, then…
Indeed… but the thing about Tracy was that it wasn’t just strong, it was slow. It was relatively small by international tropical storm standards, with a range of 40km, but it travelled at only 6km/hr, and this is what allowed it time to do so much damage. The eye of the storm struck between midnight and 7am Christmas morning, bringing 280mm of torrential rain, and reports say it didn’t properly move on until Boxing Day.

What did survivors say about it?
There are many accounts from locals about how loud the storm was. They talk about the sound of tin roofs being wrenched off houses and crashing and scraping along the streets. Many say they spent the worst of it huddled together inside and terrified, and when they emerged, Darwin was unrecognisable. 

How did it look?
Most of the buildings - particularly the houses - had either been destroyed or severely damaged. They weren’t at all up to the job of withstanding such a strong storm. When the roofs came off, they created “tin roof missiles” that in turn damaged surrounding houses. If windows or doors broke, the wind coming through then put upward pressure on those roofs, causing a disastrous chain reaction. 

What was the aftermath like?
In the days and weeks following the cyclone, most of the city’s population had to be evacuated because there was no running water, no sanitation, no electricity, hardly any shelter and a high risk of disease outbreaks. 

Darwin’s remote, could the survivors get word out?
There were just enough communication lines to let the rest of the country and the world know what had happened, and a rescue operation began quickly. That involved airlifting around 36,000 people out of Darwin, in both military and commercial planes that arrived full of emergency supplies and workers. Within just a few weeks, three-quarters of the population had left.

Where did they go?
The disaster prompted an unprecedented response from Aussies, and thousands of people across the country opened their homes to Darwin’s “refugees” - mostly women and children who were left homeless. 

How else did Aussies help?
They sent donations of toys, bedding, clothes, and food - and they raised money any way they could, even at the cricket.

Oh yeah?
Yep, at the Boxing Day Test match, both the English and Australian teams collected buckets of donations to send north. One other notable fundraiser was the song, Santa Never Made it into Darwin, which was released as a charity single in January 1975 by a Kiwi-born country music duo called Bill and Boyd, who’d been living in Australia… Aussies got behind it, and it peaked at number 2 on the charts and won APRA’s song of the year, with most of the proceeds going to charities supporting those affected by the cyclone and the massive job of rebuilding.

How did they tackle the rebuild?
Around 10,000 workers stayed in Darwin to help with the clean up/rebuild. Our PM at the time Gough Whitlam interrupted a European tour to visit and assess the scale of the destruction, and he created the Darwin Reconstruction Commission, which was tasked with reconstructing the town within 5 years.

Did they hit that goal?
They did it in 3 years - with some fundamental changes. The new homes and buildings were built properly and made of tougher stuff than the weatherboard cladding and tin roofs of the ones destroyed. That was because new nationwide building codes were introduced after Cyclone Tracy to help guard against natural disasters. 

What were the new regulations?
Houses now have to be clad to protect against flying debris, their roofs must be secured to the foundations, and screws are used in place of nails as they’re harder to pull out. 

Have they worked?
So far. Much more recently than Tracy, you might remember 2 cyclones that made news in Queensland - the town of Innisfail faced Cyclone Larry in 2006, and Mission Beach was hammered by Cyclone Yasi in 2011. They were both stronger storms than Tracy, and while people did have to evacuate from their homes, neither town recorded any casualties. 

How has Darwin fared since?
The town recovered its population within 3 years, and since then it’s thrived, serving as one of our major cultural and mining capitals, as well as being a gateway to Asia. Today, it's home to nearly 140,000 people. 

What’s happening to mark the 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy?
Given that it clashes with Christmas, a commemoration ceremony was held in Darwin last month to mark the milestone. There are several events still to happen around the country, and we’re bound to hear more about it in the lead up to Christmas Day - when Santa is most certainly due in Darwin.

Onto our recommendations

Listening: To Bill and Boyd’s song Santa Never Made it to Darwin…

Reading: This piece by Australian Geographic on the 50th anniversary - it tells some moving personal stories and has a collection of incredible photos.

That’s a wrap for 2024…

We’re taking a small break and we’ll be back with you in January. In the meantime, we’ll be putting a few of our favourite Shortcuts from this year into the Squiz Today podcast feed for you to enjoy/catch up on, so listen out for those.

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