Darwin was more hot,and certainly more humid than other parts of Canberra,but neither it,nor the other suburb,Alice Springs,were exactly hardship posts,tending to have much the same standard of suburban amenity,schools and high pay as Canberra proper. Naturally,while people from Canberra were posted there,they would,within a week or so,put on the clothes of the very few long-term inhabitants,call themselves territorians and begin whinging about how southerners,such as Canberra people,had absolutely no idea of how real people lived.
In my experience,coming from a place which regarded Darwin as the big smoke,the more people went on in this fashion,the more likely that they had been in the territory for only a few weeks. Most had not even yet acquired the Territorian salute,which (for men) involved the invariable hitching of one's belt and trousers above one's beer gut before shaking hands or dipping the hat. The more sensible old timers knew that if ever there was a la la land,into which million upon million of taxpayers'money was injected into white pockets without visible consequence,it was in the Northern Territory,not Canberra.
I have my own fond memories of Cyclone Tracy,though,to my disappointment,I did not get to see the ruins close up until they were refurbished,mostly by Canberra public servants,at public expense. I was a young journalist atThe Canberra Times,rostered to work on Christmas Day in 1974,actually as acting chief of the reporting staff. This was no great honour,since the allocated reporting staff,on a public holiday in the silly season was two. The total number of reporters and sub-editors involved in putting out the Boxing Day edition was probably about six. Being acting chief of staff simply meant I was on the early shift.
I wandered in to Mort Street,wondering what,possibly,local,national or international,might be able to be cobbled into a lead story for the morrow. It would,I thought,probably be a close race between the Queen's and the Pope's Christmas day speeches. In the office,I began making telephone calls to the normal rounds of public officials and others from whom one might dredge a story even on a public holiday. The ACT Police could not even report a road accident or a crime since two days before,nor the combined resources of Goulburn,Yass,Gundagai,Braidwood,Queanbeyan and Batemens Bay. The ambulance and the fire brigade had nothing to offer. Nor casual listening to the ABC and other wireless stations. There were routine,and very boring,Christmas stories,particularly from abroad,on the telex machines,but nothing of any great moment or deep local import.
It took me about an hour to become aware that during the night a cyclone had pretty much destroyed Darwin overnight. This was not particularly obtuse of me;I was probably among the first dozen people in Canberra who did. The news was slow to travel because virtually the first thing blown away by the cyclone was the area's communications systems – telephone and radio aerials,even most of the considerable quantity of military communications and signals equipment. The phones were out. The Weather Bureau's communications were out. The cyclone weather warnings issued around Darwin on Christmas Eve had not been circulated south. Silence from Darwin down south was,as now,rare and welcome,but not particularly remarkable.
According to Wikipedia,Bruce Stannard,of theAge,was later to write that Cyclone Tracy was"a disaster of the first magnitude ... without parallel in Australia's history". That's laying it on a bit ... the Mount Lamington disaster nearly 24 years before had killed 3000,even if they were"only"New Guineans,and thus deserving of"only"a minor relief effort. But there had not been a natural disaster – flood,fire,earthquake or tsunami – on Australian soil on a fraction of its scale,before or since.
The homes of 41,000 people were flattened. Only about 200 of 10,000 houses were largely undamaged. The physical damage in modern day terms was about $4.5 billion. Almost all of the public infrastructure – though mercifully not the hospital,built from the plans created for Woden Valley Hospital,and the police station – was destroyed,including almost all the power,water supplies and sewerage systems. At the airport,31 aircraft were destroyed and 25 badly damaged. The death toll was 66,of whom 22 died at sea.