Tracy hit on Christmas Eve and shattered the town but drew the nation together for an unprecedented relief effort.
Sixty-six people died and by some miracle the death toll was not higher. The damage bill in today's money was $4.5 billion.
Darwin has been hit by a major cyclone about every 40 years since colonial settlement, making the anniversary this Christmas especially significant.
Four decades on, the anniversary is being marked in Darwin but it also comes with a warning.
"What this anniversary brings back to us is that, as a community, we need to be prepared for the next big blow and I just think individuals need to take responsibility for their cyclone planning, and that may not be what's happening all that well,” says Lord Mayor Katrina Fong Lim.
Damaged houses after cyclone tracy, Darwin, 1974 (Credit: )
There are thousands of incredible tales of survival.
Dr TT Lee and his wife Sim arrived in Darwin from Malaysia a year before Tracy to work at the local hospital.
"We came with two crates of worldly belongings. Every thing we had. And to this day we lost all the little treasures we have,” said Dr Lee.
"What was left of our house was nothing but just the bathroom upstairs and a few floor boards.”
Dr Lee proudly shows a picture of him in front of his former house.
TT Lim in front of his old house. (Supplied)
"These photos were taken in the morning when there was enough light, at 7am in the morning. I looked all around and saw this devastation and thought I have to find a camera and take a picture of this because nobody will believe it and I took pictures until the film ran out."
Sim was evacuated but TT Lee stayed in Darwin to tend the sick and injured.
Darwin’s children at the time remember the chaos and confusion.
“I woke up and walked out and looked at the living room and realised the Christmas tree was gone, the television, the furniture and all of my presents were sprawled out over the backyard and streets over,” said Toni Ah-Sam.
“It was just horrific, it was just like a massive bomb had gone off in this town, there was such despair and hopelessness and going into Casuarina shopping centre, there was disorganisation, looting, from a child's perspective there were people running everywhere and stealing and just trying to survive."
At the , the cyclone Tracy exhibit has been reopened with new exhibits, including an interactive display using the origin radar images.
"Cyclone Tracey formed in the Timor Sea and then travelled down the Tiwi Islands. It was assumed it would continue to travel southwest, but what it did on the morning of Christmas eve is it started going south and then southeast,” said curator Jared Archibald.
"The eye came right over the top of Darwin."
“That's when it was known if it wasn't going to hit Darwin, it was going to get very close, and that's exactly what happened, the eye came right over the top of Darwin."
Wind speeds of 217km/hour were recorded before the Bureau of Meteorology's instruments were blown away.
Only a few hundred of the city's 10,000 houses were left habitable, most infrastructure was destroyed and almost all communications were down except for a few radio sets.
"Some of the transcripts I've read, people say, ‘Look, we need help, Darwin's been destroyed’. There'd be a pause and then they'd say, ‘Look we know it must have been bad but it can't have been that bad, you need to tell us what really happened. You need to calm down’,” said Jared Archibald.
“It's very hard for people who didn't go through cyclone Tracy to comprehend how bad it was and how bad the damage was. Until actual footage got out, and I believe that was the ABC, until that went out and was shown on TV, people weren't disbelieving but didn't understand the magnitude of what had happened."
Aerial photograph of the devastation caused by Cyclone Tracy, 1975 (Credit: )
Cyclone Tracy created a unique bond between residents.
"The people of Darwin, when they went through cyclone Tracy, they went through it together, there was no discrimination, it was a leveller, because everyone had nothing. They had lost everything,” said Jared Archibald.
Darwin’s Aboriginal residents say they received help from authorities just like everyone else and contributed to the reconstruction.
"Most of the indigenous men, they stayed to clean this town up, they helped restore it, and they sacrificed in order for their families to come back,” said Toni Ah-Sam.
“They knew they had to do this, and that's one of the things I'm really grateful for for my dad. He was one of those guys who stayed behind and did what he had to do."
"Most of the indigenous men, they stayed to clean this town up, they helped restore it, and they sacrificed in order for their families to come back.”
Thirty-five-thousand of Darwin's inhabitants were evacuated to cities across Australia, leaving about 10,000 behind to clean-up.
Darwin Lord Mayor Katrina Fong Lim was a teenager at the time and was away in Sydney for Christmas.
"Unfortunately we lost our uncle Arthur in the cyclone. He had a fridge fall on him. It was awful,” she said.
“Our whole family, we have a very big extended family here in Darwin, and it was torn asunder and people were sent to Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne and it took a while for us to get back together again."
Australia's largest peace-time emergency evacuation was followed by a huge reconstruction effort.
"It was the first time the nation had come together in a concerted effort of disaster relief, it was just amazing how the whole country came together. The whole of Australia should be proud of themselves,” said Darwin’s Lord Mayor.
Warehouse containing food supplies - part of the relief effort following Cyclone Tracy (Credit: )
Darwin has grown up stronger and now lays claim to the most modern basic infrastructure of any capital in Australia.
The population has doubled to more than eighty-thousand people. Many residents now did not experience Tracy but TT and Sim Lee remember.
"It was the first time the nation had come together in a concerted effort of disaster relief, it was just amazing how the whole country came together. The whole of Australia should be proud of themselves.”
"This is where we will shelter in the a cyclone, under the stairs, I don't think any cyclone can come in there. I think we'll be safe here,” said TT during a tour of his house.
"The cyclone kit... There's the water and there's the food box. We'll survive the next cyclone, we've got bake beans in here, we'll survive.”
