In was in 1974 on Christ­mas Eve that Trop­i­cal Cyclone Tra­cy destroyed Dar­win in Aus­trali­a’s North­ern Territory.
The death toll was 66, but may be high­er because of unrecord­ed peo­ple liv­ing in Dar­win. Back then there were many sin­gle-storey flim­sy hous­es. Some 12,500 homes were lost, only 400 sur­vived as hab­it­able, 25 ships sunk, dozens of planes were destroyed and all nor­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions cut.
When news fil­tered out, under a state of emer­gency, Major Gen­er­al Alan Stret­ton was put in charge to lead the dis­as­ter recovery.
The WIA jour­nal, Ama­teur Radio mag­a­zine, in a Decem­ber 1984 arti­cle “Cyclone Tra­cy 10th Anniver­sary”, inter­viewed four radio ama­teurs who were involved.
It tells of Slim Jones VK8JT in Dar­win mak­ing con­tact with Ken McLach­lan VK3AH at Moorool­bark in Melbourne’s east, and their incred­i­ble 78 hour on-air stint.
As the first relief plane neared Dar­win when dark­ness began to fall, it had clear­ance to land due to a three-way con­tact that involved Ken VK3AH, Mal 9M2ML Slim VK8JT.
WICEN lat­er helped the Red Cross and Sal­va­tion Army with their traf­fic. That work was detailed in Ama­teur Radio mag­a­zine on June 1985 in an arti­cle “The Christ­mas of ‘74”, by Ted Gabriel VK4YG.
Even­tu­al­ly Dar­win was recon­struct­ed under a new build­ing code and is now a vibrant city. A series of 40 year anniver­sary events in Dar­win have includ­ed his­toric pho­tos, con­certs, an upgrade of the Cyclone Tra­cy exhi­bi­tion, and an all-faith church service.
The Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion also filmed a doc­u­men­tary that inter­viewed about 19 peo­ple who were involved, plus cov­er run by oth­er TV net­works, radio sta­tions and newspapers.
— Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.