Nature never takes a holiday: What Cyclone Tracy means for us today

By ALEX NELSON

As 2024 winds down unsurprisingly much attention is directed to the 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy which destroyed Darwin in the early hours of Christmas Day 1974.

After months of work, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) recently unveiled its renewed, highly popular Cyclone Tracy exhibition. The original exhibition was opened in 1994.

There’s an intriguing set of coincidences in relation to Cyclone Tracy and the opening of its namesake exhibitions at MAGNT in Darwin, as the years 1974, 1994 and 2024 also featured NT election campaigns in which the CLP won 17 seats each time.

The first fully elected NT Legislative Assembly in 1974 had only just commenced, with the elections held on October 19 and the first sittings in November.

Devastated Darwin after Cyclone Tracy (Photo: Hazards, Disasters and Survival, 1992).

As cyclones go, Tracy was tiny and short-lived but packed a wallop; indeed, it’s likely due to its size that this cyclone’s energy was concentrated in a small area, rather like a giant tornado.

As chance would have it, the approaching monsoon front caused Tracy to dogleg around the Tiwi Islands and flung it directly towards the Territory’s capital city – it was a bullseye.

Inadequate construction standards for most buildings, in particular houses, left the majority susceptible to Tracy’s intense wind, leading to immense destruction reminiscent of a nuclear explosion.

This disaster has gone on to influence national building standards; and I recall a swift reaction from the Commonwealth as our family’s partially constructed new home on the CSIRO Field Station at the end of Heath Road was apparently obliged to be completed to cyclone-proof standards!

Cyclone Tracy bookended a year of weather extremes across much of Australia, notably commencing with Cyclone Wanda which crossed the Queensland coast on January 24 (exactly 11 months before Tracy) about 150km north of Brisbane.

Wanda’s wind caused little damage but the system triggered intensive rain for almost a week on top of already saturated catchments, leading to major flooding in Brisbane – one of the worst ever experienced.

Like Tracy for Darwin, the Brisbane flood of ’74 is considered a “defining moment” for that city.

There was a national outpouring of sympathy for Brisbane, including in Alice Springs where former Queenslander (Mrs) Pat Duncalfe, an employee at Pine Gap, gained the support of the Rotary Club of Stuart and Alice Springs Jaycees to combine with Radio 8HA for a 24-hour fund-raising appeal held on the weekend of 9-10 February.

The appeal was tremendously successful, raising $17,000, including donations raised on a QANTAS airliner flying over the Alice (by contrast, $5,000 was raised in Darwin in a fortnight).

“The manager of 8HA, Mr Ren Kelley, said this was the first time 8HA had been on air for 24 hours. He said that a staff of about 20 had worked throughout the night to answer phone calls and keep the station running.” (Centralian Advocate, 14/02/74).

Architect Peter Dermoudy’s “Futuro” home in Darwin, early 1970s. This was one of about 100 “space age” houses around the world but proved no match for Cyclone Tracy. Flying debris sliced it like an egg.

No-one had the slightest inkling this was to prove a mere practice run for the Cyclone Tracy appeal at the end of the year.

When the Brisbane flood appeal was held, Alice Springs itself was completely isolated by floodwaters in every direction.

Frequent heavy rains of long duration commenced in late 1973 but the birds really came home to roost as wet weather conditions exposed the long-known inadequacy of road and rail links between the NT and the rest of Australia.

The snail’s pace of necessary infrastructure improvements is best illustrated by the original Central Australian Railway, notoriously susceptible to floods: “A hint that the Commonwealth Railways might re-route portion of the line from the South to Alice Springs in a bid to obviate flood delays, was given at the Tourist seminar in Alice Springs this week.

“Mr B. M. Hogan, Assistant Secretary, Commonwealth Railways, spoke of a much more sympathetic route.

“Mr Hogan told the seminar that a route to Alice Springs from a point east of Tarcoola on the Adelaide-Perth railway would be much better.

“There would be no creek beds and no ‘flash floods’. It is ‘a happy exercise’ to contemplate such a line into the Territory, he said” (Centralian Advocate, 13/10/66).

By the end of 1973, no real progress had been made, and local member Bernie Kilgariff took the Whitlam Government to task over it: “There are no safe all-weather road links with the adjacent States, there is an antiquated narrow-gauge rail link with Port Augusta South Australia, which is constantly cut by washaways and derailments and thirdly, there are pitifully inadequate port facilities at Darwin.

“My main concern and criticism is that our links with the rest of Australia are still weak and pathetically unreliable. We have no guaranteed all-weather link.

“In 1968-69 the previous government planned to build a new standard gauge line from Tarcoola west of Port Augusta to Alice Springs.

“There has been some activity behind the scenes by the Commonwealth Railways on this project [but] I know of no firm timetable for work, or the announcement of a specific agreement.

“I also notice that the words, ‘to undertake as a matter of urgency’ to construct the north-south standardised rail link, have now been deleted from the Australian Labor Party policy” (Centralian Advocate, 3/01/74).

Simultaneously, there was agitation for a bridge in Alice Springs: “The Department of the Northern Territory is likely to give a ‘sympathetic hearing’ to representations for a bridge to carry motor traffic over the Todd River, according to the Member for Alice Springs, Mr Bernie Kilgariff.

“Mr Kilgariff said: ‘A precedent has been set with the construction of cement bridges over the Hugh, Palmer and Finke Rivers on the South Road which have withstood heavy flooding” (Centralian Advocate, 3/01/74).

“A firm of town planning consultants looking at a future plan for Alice Springs is considering if a bridge for motor traffic is required across the Todd River. The Minister for the Northern Territory, Dr Rex Patterson, said this in answer to a question from NT Federal Member, Mr Sam Calder” (ibid).

By the time these reports were published, Alice Springs was already experiencing severe disruption to transport services due to widespread rain but during January it got far worse: “Rain records tumbled this week as Alice Springs township recorded more than five inches to bring the January total to 303mm (more than 12 inches), easily beating the 1877 January record of 282mm and giving the town more than its annual average of 252mm.

“Four RAAF Hercules aircraft with another due today, have been keeping Alice Springs and Tennant Creek in food essentials.

“At least 300 people are stranded on the South Road (mainly at the Finke and Palmer Rivers) and airdrops of food have been made to them by the Department of the NT. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs has been making airdrops to outlying settlements and the Department of the NT has made airdrops to isolated stations.

“The domestic airlines have been carrying as much freight as possible [but] have not been able to carry the maximum amount of freight [due to] carrying extra fuel so as not to diminish dwindling supplies of aviation gas.

“In Alice Springs nobody is going hungry but the airlifts are supplying only about one-third of the town’s requirements and supermarkets are out of a good number of lines. In Tennant Creek the situation has been described as ‘very bad’ with food stocks running low” (Centralian Advocate, 31/01/74).

Rail freight was blocked at the Finke River until mid-March; meanwhile, it was offloaded onto trucks that made perilous journeys on the unsealed South Road – often impassable – that sharply increased freight costs, forcing the Commonwealth to subsidize road transport to minimise impact on the local economy.

The power station ran on fuel oil to supply electricity to Alice Springs, which was railed up in oil tankers; but none could get past the Finke River for several weeks, eventually leading to power restrictions with scheduled blackouts rolled out daily for five zones across town in mid-March.

All of this disruption seriously impacted the town with a population then of only 12,700 residents.

It was to continue periodically throughout 1974, which became the wettest year on record for Alice Springs – as it also remains for Australia as a whole, literally the high-water mark of an exceptionally strong La Niña period from 1973 to ’76.

The weather achieved what politics had failed to do – construction of the Tarcoola to Alice Springs rail link commenced the next year and was completed in late 1980; similarly, planning for a new bridge across the Todd River was speeded up and (despite savage budget cuts in the mid 1970s) the Stott Terrace Bridge was opened to traffic in 1978.

The sealing of the south Stuart Highway from Alice Springs to the South Australian border also commenced in 1975.

This was setting no precedent – the drowning deaths of Chris Kuhn and Josiah Dunne after being swept off the Wills Terrace Causeway in March 1955 led to the construction of the Wills Terrace footbridge crossing the Todd River in 1957, following a decade of lobbying as the Eastside suburb grew after WW2.

An “anvil head” looms over the towering cumulonimbus cloud of an approaching storm west of Alice Springs.

This was also during an extended La Niña period from 1954 to ’57, which saw widespread flooding in parts of eastern Australia.

Another La Niña period around the turn of the century provoked extensive flooding in Central Australia, once again leading to isolation of Alice Springs for short periods in 2000 and 2001 as the old “cement bridges over the Hugh, Palmer and Finke Rivers on the South Road” now proved inadequate to cope with higher river levels.

This prompted the replacement of these old river crossings with new, substantially higher bridges by the middle of the decade.

It’s interesting to note the Commonwealth usually responded to major flood events in the Centre with infrastructure upgrades at times when it was in control or had jurisdiction.

The same can’t be said for Alice Springs since NT self-government, as evidenced by major floods in 1983 and 1988 which prompted discussion and designs for another bridge over the Todd River (to replace the notorious Taffy Pick Crossing) or for flood mitigation dams in the river catchment – nothing of any significance has proceeded.

So what does 1974 teach us?

It’s most noteworthy that major improvements to all-weather infrastructure and building codes are in response to preceding events – it’s all reactionary.

However, it’s extremely rare for anything to be done pro-actively, in anticipation of major weather disruptions which are occurring on unprecedented frequency and scale around the world, influenced by unmitigated climate change.

We have had inklings of what the future may have in store for us.

Transcontinental rail services have already been disrupted several times due to massive floods that simply couldn’t be planned for, based on prior weather records and knowledge. The same goes for the national highway network.

It’s unlikely that Darwin will be as severely impacted by even a category 5 cyclone now as it was by Cyclone Tracy 50 years ago.

However, right now the hottest sea surface temperatures in the world span the northern coastline of Australia, which is typical of a La Niña but there’s a catch – the weather bureau states the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system is neutral and is forecast to remain so until well into next year.

Another major climate driver for Australian weather – the Indian Ocean Dipole – is also neutral.

We’re entering a phase of climate change where latent energy levels in the sea are matching what used to occur at the height of ocean current patterns – it’s the “new normal”.

The record high sea surface temperatures across Australia’s north lead to much higher rates of evaporation and convection which has contributed to recent oppressive humidity over much of the country triggering widespread storms and heavy rainfall.

Global atmospheric warming is continuing to rise inexorably and is close to, if not level pegging, with the 1.5C threshold of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

For every one degree of warming, the atmosphere can hold an additional 7% of moisture, but that is belatedly realised as a minimum figure.

Condensation of water vapour releases energy, in turn increasing the atmosphere’s capacity in localised areas to hold more moisture from 14% to 21%.

This is what drives the increasing phenomenon of super-charged thunderstorms that unleash deluges of unprecedented fury in many places around the world.

That’s the danger we face across the NT and, with our over-reliance on vulnerable rail and road transportation services to provide the overwhelming bulk of our supplies for daily living, we are at increasing risk of experiencing the severe disruption and destruction of the major weather events of 1974 on a far greater scale.

PHOTO at top: A Connair Heron plane airdrops food supplies to Docker River during the major floods of early 1974. It was a Connair Heron sheltered at Darwin Airport that provided the first radio communications after Cyclone Tracy informing Australia that Darwin was destroyed. Photo: David Hewitt, courtesy of Central Australian Aviation Museum.