"Terror and Turmoil": Tales of the Tribe, #2

By Ludij Peden

The frightening account of one of the most frightening extreme weather events our country has ever seen. 

In 1974, the most destructive tropical cyclone recorded in Australia's history devastated Darwin on Christmas Eve, turning the city into a war zone.

I had no idea how gut-wrenchingly horrific it would be.

While working on my book, and reading a few passages here and there, I found myself reliving the memories I'd thought were long forgotten. I found the retelling very therapeutic as I began to realize just how traumatic it had been on that terrible night so long ago, and how badly I was still affected by the event.
I recalled the wails of the sirens and the demonic sound of the wind as invisible hands snatched friends' loved ones away, while the walls, ceilings, and eventually the floorboards vanished from beneath their feet. I remembered the war-like, bombed-out devastation that greeted us as we crawled out from beneath the rubble while the rain continued drizzling down on that fateful Christmas morning, grateful still to be alive.
How it was that so many survived that brutal, unforgiving night will forever remain a mystery to me.

This story is about not only the survival of the cyclone but also the survival of the aftermath.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ludij Peden
• Release date: Aug 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393853626

Book preview

THE WARNING

It was Christmas Eve 1974. I had been busy all day, doing last-minute preparations for Christmas. Our neighbours were coming over for Christmas drinks that evening, and the nibbles were done. I had just finished the Christmas pudding and placed the frozen chickens into the fridge for the next day, when Bruce drove into the driveway. Our two boys rushed out to hug him.

You’re home early! Time off as a Christmas treat? I asked him after my initial greeting.

Naahh! Told us to head home because a cyclone’s coming he answered.

That was the first I had heard about it. I had been so busy that I had not even turned on the radio which I usually did each day.

Maybe it’ll fizz out like the last one I said.

I looked outside and yes................the sky was quite heavily overcast.............an ominous sign. It had not started to rain yet.

We had had a cyclone warning a few weeks previously, Cyclone Selma, which had been a fizzer; but nonetheless had blown over our pawpaw tree smashing the boys’ above ground splash pool. The windows and glass doors were still taped from that scare.

Nevertheless, we went about our cyclone preparations. We were used to the cyclone season. Both of us had grown up in North Queensland where these warnings were an annual occurrence. However, we never took the cyclones and their erratic paths for granted.

We were living in Grevillea Circuit, Nightcliff, Darwin, in a dark brown brick veneer low-set house that we had bought almost three years earlier. We had great plans for this house once our mortgage had been reduced somewhat. The garden was looking lovely, and the pot plants and fishpond along the L-shaped verandah gave it a wonderful inviting tropical feel.

Grandma, Bruce’s mother, had just arrived to spend a quiet Christmas with us. When the neighbours came over we all sat in the large lounge room, chatting, eating, drinking and playing cards. The children had been very excitable because tonight Santa would be coming. Our two boys were five years old and three years old, and the neighbours’ children were about a year younger all round.

It had been hard to quieten them down and get them to bed so we could put out the Christmas presents under the Christmas tree in the lounge room. When we eventually put ours to bed, the neighbours decided to put theirs asleep in their own beds.  They took turns to check on the children every quarter of an hour or so. Our houses were so close we would have heard them anyway if they’d woken. 

To prevent our two kids poking about, checking to see if there were any, we had stored the presents, covered with a blanket, in the back of our Ford Cortina station wagon. This proved to be fortunate.

The wind gusts started up about 9.00pm and steadily grew stronger. By 11.00pm it was really blowing a gale, and the worry was that the children next door might be disturbed, and we would no longer be able to hear them well. So instead of waiting till midnight, we wished each other a Happy Christmas and decided to ‘call it a night’ and go to bed ourselves. We had forgotten about the presents in the car.

Grandma had gone to bed already, and by the time we had cleaned up and organised ourselves, it was blowing so hard and gusty that we decided that perhaps this cyclone might really happen. So we roused everyone, and helped Grandma and the boys change into substantial clothing and footwear. The gusts became stronger and stronger to the point of being quite severe and scary.

In the spare room where Grandma had been sleeping there was a small chip in the large glass sliding verandah door, caused by the mower. The wind gusts were coming straight onto this side, and I was concerned that the glass could shatter.

We shifted Grandma in the nick of time - the glass door disintegrated as we stepped out of that room. For security we then closed it off from the rest of the house.

The wind driven rain lashed the windows and large sliding glass doors forcing the water down and under and through the tracks. I remember feeling quite miffed that my carpets were getting wet, but not long after, that was the least of my concerns.

Noticing that the wind was coming directly into the inner L-shaped part of our house, we picked a room to shelter in, as far away as possible. This happened to be the rumpus room. The two bathrooms were too exposed and luckily for us we did not choose them.

There was a three quarter sized pool table in the rumpus room. We wedged it into the far corner, placed a large, heavy, old style couch against the side of it, and topped it with our double bed mattress. We placed suitcases along the shorter sides to protect us lower down once we got under. Anything substantial we could find we placed on or around the pool table including a large painting of mine on masonite. We never saw it again. We covered the whole lot with our large heavy bedspread hoping that this would deter flying shards of glass.

The cyclone had escalated so quickly that from eleven o’clock, when we first became concerned, we were now under the pool table just before midnight. We had our torches, radio and a few essentials, such as drinking water and Grandma’s pills, under there with us.

The boys were most impressed with the ‘cubby house’ we had built, and at that point did not seem the least bit concerned. Grandma, who had lived most of her life in the cyclone territory of Innisfail, was quite worried. She had been through many cyclones before and knew what to expect.

We tied ‘Sonny the Third’, our Great Dane/Boxer Cross dog, on a leash to the laundry door and hoped for the best. Our cat was nowhere to be seen. Not long after we were under the table, the cat joined us, and snuggled up in the middle of our squashed little group.

Our five year old had been diagnosed that very morning with the mumps. The doctor had said to keep him ‘dry and out of draughts’. We chuckled about that one afterwards.

He now sat tucked into Bruce’s chest with a balaclava over his head and his swollen face, and a crash helmet on his head. He thought it was a huge joke. Our younger boy, only three years old, cradled by me, was starting to look panic stricken. When the first crash happened he started to scream. I think the shock was too much for him, because as soon as we calmed him down, he went straight to sleep and slept through most of it.

At this point the cat