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In 1974, luck saved Sue's life. But the trauma of Cyclone Tracy has stayed with her
On the 50th anniversary of Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy, one frontline worker and survivor reflects on the recovery efforts, the lasting trauma and the wardrobe door that saved her life.
Published 24 December 2024 5:35am
Updated 26 December 2024 8:03am
By Ewa Staszewska
Source: SBS News
Image: Sue Bigham was 19 years old when Cyclone Tracy devastated large swathes of Darwin. (Supplied, Getty)
As the window above Sue Bigham’s bed blew in, shards of glass flew across her cabin room.
They penetrated the wooden wardrobe door that Bigham was holding open, which shielded most of her body from what was an earth-shattering blast.
She says that door ultimately saved her life.
The 19-year-old sailor had skipped the 1974 Christmas Eve festivities in Darwin, choosing to sleep ahead of her shift at the HMAS Coonawarra Naval Communications Station the following day. But at close to midnight, she had flung herself out of bed to the sound of orders being yelled.
With 8 in 10 buildings destroyed or hugely damaged, entire suburbs in the Top End were wiped out on Christmas Day in 1974. Source: AAP / John Coomber
By then, cyclonic winds had started to lift the roof, and the door of her cabin, which had metal strips around it, had become electrified. So Bigham picked up a wooden fish she'd received as a present and started smashing the door handle with it. It opened onto the concrete hallway, which was howling with wind.
"I couldn't stand up, so I crawled on my hands and knees along the breezeway … and I went down the stairs, again on my hands and knees," she tells SBS News.
Bigham and her roommate sheltered in a recreational room until it was safe to move. She recalls the sounds she heard making her way out of the building as a "raging fury" of noise.
"So we're thinking, 'where the hell do we go?'
We couldn't stand up and there were things flying: Cars flying past; there were fridges flying past.
Among the scenes almost too surreal to comprehend was an airborne fridge that planted itself into a water tank.
Bigham and her roommate then moved to the "married quarters" to shelter but the roof blew off an hour-and-a-half later and they had to move again. As objects flew around them, Bigham says her "survival instinct had well and truly kicked in".
In the hours to come Cyclone Tracy would reach wind speeds of 217 km/h, causing Darwin airport's anemometer — a weather instrument that measures wind speed and direction — to break. The cyclone devastated around 80 per cent of the Northern Territory’s capital.
But for survivors like Bigham, the lasting impact is far more personal. Triggers like heat and storms thrust her back to that day in 1974 and the weeks that followed — even five decades on.
'Who's going to be left alive?'
Bigham arrived in humid Darwin in September 1974, three months before Cyclone Tracy hit.
While she grew up playing the piano and singing, she was also an avid reader. Her father's World War Two books had filled her with a desire for adventure and "an idealistic belief in service to country".
Despite her early aspirations to become a Naval Officer, at 17 Bigham was too young so she joined the navy as a sailor instead. (Unlike men, who were eligible to graduate as an officer at 17, women had to be 20 years old).
She arrived in the "heavy drinking man's town", devoid of any art or music, to the oppressive heat. Darwin is renowned for being Australia’s most humid city, and that humidity built up dramatically in the days leading up to the tropical cyclone.
Recalling the hours spent moving from one shelter to the next as the cyclone engulfed Darwin, Bigham says stacked tables in the WRAN's admin block offered protection from the threat of a roof or building caving in.
"I only remember heat and confined space. It's hot, there's no power, there's no air and we're jammed like sardines under these tables," she says.
"The noise was probably double the intensity in the second half [of the storm]. You could hear the groaning of the building, the roof kept banging … shattering glass.
I just remember sitting there thinking, 'I wonder who's going to be left alive after this?'
Sixty-six people were killed and at least 145 seriously injured, according to the National Museum of Australia. However, Bigham believes the true toll could be a lot higher.
"Not a chance, I've never believed it. And anybody that you talk to, who was there, doesn't believe it either," she says, explaining this is partially due to what she witnessed during the clean-up efforts in the cyclone’s aftermath.
Recalling the horrors of the clean-up
The following day, Bigham recalls feeling disoriented, walking through "a moonscape devastation".
Eight in 10 buildings were either destroyed or seriously damaged, with damage estimated at $800 million. In today’s terms, that figure would be around $7.7 billion.
The priorities were clear: anyone injured who needed treatment, any survivors who needed evacuation, any dead people or body parts that needed identification and any deceased animals for burial.
"I think one of the things that [is] cemented in my memory from that horror is having to tag body parts and bury dead animals," Bigham says, clarifying that "parts" included hands and feet.
The gruelling clean-up shifts were spent digging through rubble, with the rescue crew unsure of what they'd find next. The only reprieve came in the form of a plastic mattress, which they took turns collapsing onto.
With no running water, the smell was putrid as the crew "worked like dogs". But on day five, all thoughts of modesty flew out the window when an opportunity for a shower arose.
You cannot imagine seeing about 50 sailors just strip off; all of us just standing underneath the gushing water of the fire hydrant.
Ten days in, warrant officer Peter Figg assigned Bigham to drive the pregnant wife of a naval officer wife to hospital — she was in labour. It was only on the slow drive back that the "full devastation" of Cyclone Tracy finally hit Bigham.
As she recalls the memory, her voice wavers: "I just couldn't believe what I'd seen. Mr Figg said, 'Are you ok?' And I would've said, 'it's all gone, sir.'"
Sue Bigham instructed ships and helicopters where to go next during recovery efforts after Cyclone Tracy. Source: Supplied / The Australian War Memorial: NAVYM2464/09
The operations room was chaotic, often shrouded in plumes of cigarette smoke. Bigham worked around the clock directing ships, helicopters and reconstruction teams to their next allocation.
Triggers decades on from Cyclone Tracy
It became the RAN's largest peacetime disaster relief operation, involving 13 ships, 11 aircraft and roughly 3,000 personnel. Bigham was one of the last people to leave Darwin.
She returned home to Melbourne for two weeks of "survivors leave", sleeping for more than 48 hours from sheer exhaustion. The then-19-year-old found returning to the Victorian city shocking, especially as she realised the rest of the world had continued on while Darwin was still reeling from the destruction of Cyclone Tracy.
"There was no 'off you go to see a psych and see if you've been traumatised by this life-threatening thing'. There was none of that.
We just went back to life and we adapted.
At 69, Bigham still struggles to accept there were no medals or commendation ribbons awarded for the post-cyclone recovery efforts in Darwin. She explains that these would "tell the story of the service that we've given".
The only acknowledgement she received was a $250 bonus, while her cabin roommate received $62, having left Darwin weeks earlier.
However, the experience did little to discourage Bigham from naval service, instead cementing an understanding that she could really make a difference. She served in the Navy full-time, eventually becoming a communications specialist officer and retiring as a Commander in 2005.
Sue Bigham, 69, just after having hip replacement surgery in late 2024. Source: SBS News / Ewa Staszewska
Bigham suffered her first panic attack in 2021, after relocating to the blissful coastal town of Lakes Entrance in eastern Victoria. Now working with a PTSD specialist, she is able to articulate her triggers, which continue to this day.
Bigham has driven with the air conditioner blasting for years, unable to tolerate heat or lack of air circulation. She's sensitive to both storms and an array of human-generated noises, with cyclone warnings particularly hard to tolerate.
"Last year during a storm, I actually walked into my ensuite to find water dripping on my head. It freaked me out, I thought the roof was going to cave in. And that's a major trigger," she says.
LISTEN TO
'We were filthy, and we worked like dogs': Memories of Cyclone Tracy 50 years on
SBS News
25/12/202415:18
But the impacts of her decades of service go beyond the psychological — the job has taken a toll on her body. Speaking to SBS News only days after her hip replacement surgery, Bigham is awaiting the results of further compensation claims and a second knee replacement due to injuries sustained during her naval service.
Fifty years on from Cyclone Tracy, she doesn't need photos to mark the anniversary of a time that lives on in her "memory in stark colour".
But she hopes by sharing her story, Australians will "understand the effort and the work and the dedication that the defence force actually provided to the city and the people of Darwin".
"We were mobilised to provide support and assistance so fast, you know? And we did.
We were kids, and we did our job.
