Remembering Tracy

Larrikins: Soldiers involved in the clean-up effort aptly name a truck.

Patch up: Army medics were on hand after the cyclone to tend to injured civilians.

Putting in: Soldiers help in the many aspects of clearing up after Cyclone Tracy, from mozzie fogging to mapping. Photos provided by 5/7RAR

Putting in: Soldiers help in the many aspects of clearing up after Cyclone Tracy, from mozzie fogging to mapping. Photos provided by 5/7RAR

Putting in: Soldiers help in the many aspects of clearing up after Cyclone Tracy, from mozzie fogging to mapping. Photos provided by 5/7RAR

Thirty years ago, the Army was called on to deal with a natural disaster on our own shores, Pte Shannon Joyce reports.

For Darwin residents who lived through Cyclone Tracy’s relentless destruction 30 years ago when it hit on Christmas Eve 1974, the tsunami-devastated residents of Sumatra have a special place in their thoughts.

As the ADF’s response came swift and fast with a recon medical team on the ground in Sumatra the morning after the Boxing Day disaster, so too did a coordinated relief effort start for the cyclone-hit town.

With 45,000 Darwin residents living in the ruins of their homes, and no sanitation or power, Australia’s first large-scale disaster relief operation got under way.

But as the cyclone had severed all communications with the outside world, the true extent and details of the cyclone’s damage and a relief response couldn’t be determined with any certainty.

Then Lt Neil Benton (now retired), of 121 LAA Bty, like most Darwin residents, lost everything in the disaster.

He recalled the Christmas Eve when Tracy struck; woken up by his wife close to midnight because the winds were bringing salt water through their closed louvres.

“We were 500m from the ocean, so we knew something was wrong,” he said.

“As the cyclone intensifi ed, it became obvious that this one was for real and the house wasn’t going to be too safe.

“I couldn’t open the front door because the house was leaning, so I took my wife and two kids into the bathroom.

“The house was rocking on its foundations, and the noise is something you don’t forget. You couldn’t hear one another it was that loud.

“The walls were breaking off the house, and eventually our roof.

“The four of us crouched in the shower recess with our legs interlocked, while the house slowly started to disappear.”

Only the walls of Lt Benton’s house that had plumbing cavities inside of them withstood the winds.

“We were open to the sky, and the loose debris in the wind was a problem,” he said.

Lt Benton was struck hard in the head by a piece of timber, and his son lost three of his fi ngers during the ordeal.

When the winds started to drop to gale-force about 6am, he knew they were going to get through the ordeal.

“The damage as you looked out into the street was something that those of us who had been to war would recognise,” he said.

“The devastation after bombardment in other parts of the world; that is the best way I can describe it.

“I could see the remains of a building in Larrakeyah from where I lived in Nightcliff. This was direct line-ofsight, it had been that flattened.”

When members of 125 Signals Squadron, 7th Military District at Larrakeyah Barracks, re-established communications with Townsville at 1pm on Christmas Day, they were able to relay information.

Their fi rst transmissions contained casualty, damage and situation reports that gave the rest of Australia an insight into what had happened.

With more than 90 per cent of houses destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, women and children were given priority for evacuation.

Air Force flights began evacuating residents out of the region, as supplies and disaster relief support were brought in.

Soldiers from 1 Fd Engr Regt and 5/7RAR at Holsworthy contributed to an Army Field Force Group that deployed to Darwin in January, bolstering support to 500 soldiers.

RQ 6RAR WO1 Stephen Swaysland was a digger in a 5/7RAR clean-up crew in 1975, and recalled his fi rst impression of the disaster scene.

“Most of the town was gutted, but you didn’t really get a sense of the winds strength until you saw a ’63 Chevy Belle-Air sticking out of the old Holiday Lodge building, fi ve storeys up,” he said.

It wasn’t just the locals though who had lost a lot. WO2 Peter Drescher, of the Darwin Workshop Platoon, signed for his new home at 11am on Christmas Eve, which by dawn on Christmas day was matchwood.

Among the stories of tragedy though, there was humour.

WO1 Swaysland said there was always a competition going on between the companies to see who could clean up the most houses, and who could fi nd the most unusual items.

“When we were cleaning up a house, we would put aside the salvaged possessions for the owners,” he said.

“In one house, I’d never seen so many sex-toys in all my life. I never met the owners, but we kept it all aside for them anyway.”

In some instances, the clean-up work became really personal for some crews.

WO1 Swaysland said his section had found some coins sticking out of a plaster wall in one home.

“When we pulled them out, we found they were a collectors’ set, so we went painstakingly through the walls of the whole house,” he said.

“We went back through the rubble we’d already cleared, and salvaged every one we could.

“When the owner came around his house to see how the clean-up was going, and saw what we had done, he broke down in tears.

“He said after everything that had happened, his faith had been restored in humanity.”

Cyclone Tracy facts