Australian Events in the News

A city in ruin The News - 27 December 1974 Adelaide; News Limited Newspaper, 410 x 300 mm Location : State Library of South Australia - view catalogue entry This item is reproduced courtesy of Advertiser Newspapers Ltd. It may be printed or saved for personal research or study. Use for any other purpose requires written permission from Advertiser Newspapers Ltd and the State Library of South Australia. Further information may be found at the State Library's Permission to publish page.

On Christmas Eve 1974 Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin. The cyclone formed well to Darwin’s north on Saturday 21 December and many believed that it would not actually hit the city. However, by the afternoon of 24 December, the city was cloaked in low lying cloud and experiencing heavy rains and strong winds. Damage to buildings began late that night and by morning the devastation was obvious. 65 people were dead, 49 on land and 16 at sea. Darwin had no internal or external communications and 70 percent of its buildings had been destroyed or sustained some structural damage. 25,000 people were evacuated to southern cities, leaving only about 10,000 people in Darwin itself. Access to the city was restricted for the next six months. Cyclone Tracy was a small cyclone by world standards, the radius of winds being only 50 kilometres, but her winds were particularly strong. The official estimate of maximum wind speed, recorded at Darwin airport, was 217 kilometres per hour, but unofficial estimates suggested some gusts were up to 300 kilometres an hour.

Further reading

• Australia. Bureau of Meteorology. Report on Cyclone Tracy December 1974, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1977.
• Bunbury, Bill. Cyclone Tracy: picking up the pieces, South Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1994.
• Chamberlain, E.R. et al. The Experience of Cyclone Tracy, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1981.
• McKay, Gary. Tracy: the incredible story of the storm that wiped out Darwin on Christmas day 1974, St Leonards, N.S.W.: Allen and Unwin, 2001.
• Nicoll, Murray. Tracy: the killer who called for Christmas, Adelaide: Roger Holden: for the Australian Red Cross Society (South Australian Division), 1975.

Links

• Northern Territory Library
• National Archives of Australia
• Bureau of Meteorology

Home | Boland Timeline | Boland Memorabilia | Newspaper Production | World Events | Australian Events | Learning | Credits