CycloneTracy 1974 (Santa Never Made It Into Darwin)

Cyclone Tracy was a devastating event that affected Darwin intensely, but also so many others in the rest of Australia. The ripples were also felt in New Zealand by those kiwis that were working in the vicinity and called in to help with the clean up alongside the Australian workers and volunteers. What they saw when they arrived affected them deeply. This is a tribute to those that died in the incident, those that survived, those that helped and those that remember the power of nature.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Darwin
• Santa
• Australia
• 1974
• cyclone
• Tracy
• emergency
• devastation
• Northern
• Territory
• Christmas
• dawn
• wind
• eye
• Civil
• Defence
• Xmas
• storm

[Raspberries5]

the pic at 1:25 is cyclone vance and the clip at 1:40 is from the gap storm 2 years ago...

[PorcelainCatNZ]

@Raspberries5 You are absolutely right about the video clip - it is a clip from The Gap storm. I never set out to imply to people that the clip was of Cyclone Tracy but rather to show the power of such an event. Cyclone Tracy was much larger and far more powerful but I thought it helped to illustrate the voracity of Australian storms. However I wasn't aware that the pic at 1:25 was of Cyclone Vance but thank you for pointing it out. Apologies to anyone for a misunderstanding.

[mistyeden]

i have tears as im watching this video , i was only 6 years old , but so totally remember it

[craicrazy]

how can we bloody stay calm!

[IvyVolturi297]

Seeing Darwin like this in the video is just horrifying. Kids have dreaded all year for a present from Santa. But never got one because of the cyclone. Things like earthquakes, floods and all that stuff are ruining our lives. Some of us don't have insurance. What if we were flooded? What would you do? Things like this kill our loving family. No funeral or home insurance. Things would get worse.

[smeedog69]

i was 5 yo at the time, and living in Canberra. My main memory of Tracy was Humphrie B Bear and Santa came knocking on the door looking for donations. I ran into my room and grabbed my Piggy banck and a few toys that i was given for christmas to give to the kids that lost all thiers.

[smilescy]

As far as tie down rods, we saw houses with these rods. There was one on the corner across from the Casuarina shopping mall and it was flattened. We were in a single story brick 3 bedroom house, so one of the lucky ones. Also my dad new to open the louvers from the opposite side of the eye to avoid pressure building up in the house and avoiding an implosion.

Those stilt houses had walls made out of asbestos from memory, another reason why they went over.

[smilescy]

Wow it's weird looking back. I still have a couple dozen photos we took the morning of Christmas day around Jingly and Casuarina.

I was ten and we got on our bikes and road around the suburbs. I remember finding a greyhound crushed under an iron telephone pole.

[codex09]

I still remember having kids from Darwin come to our school in Sydney while their city/lives were rebuilt & if there is only 1 thing that aussies do well that is pulling together when things like this happen!

Still get sad when I see what happened though & Darwin is now bigger & better than it ever was....

[TheGreatDinahSHORE]

So sad what happened that day and may God rest the souls of all those who died...

however....DARWIN SURVIVED!!! :-)))

and is a big beautiful city today :-)))

[290948kenwong]

to all concerned with Tracy, compared to yasi, building codes have been greatly upgraded since 1974. Just look at the table tops or floors left of the high set houses and you can see that there was no cyclone tie down rods in these homes. A virtual criminal act by the ignorant councils and moron builders who didn't give a damn. At least I hope it's a lot learned. K.J. Edmonton.

[patcat011]

I believe that if Yasi was a C5 storm then what the hell force was Tracy ,because the damage even to solid concrete buildings was far worse than anything seen anywhere else so far .I have found no other film of cyclone or harricane damage that has matched the damage Tracy put out.I was there and have been storm watching ever since.

[jaslester2009]

Yasi had NOTHING on Tracey**