TRANSCRIPT
“I remember sitting there thinking, I wonder who's going to be left alive after this?”
In the early hours of Christmas Day, 1974, Darwin was changed forever. 50 years ago Cyclone Tracy claimed the lives of 66 people, destroying most of the town. 19 year old sailor Sue Bigham was there that day - and in the weeks following.
“At 17, I joined as a sailor. First time I saw my father cry, tears trickling down his face as I climbed onto the bus and waved goodbye. It was the service to country and the travel that attracted me, and adventure. I thought it was a very idealistic thing to do. And in September 1974 after 12 months under training, I got posted to HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin; just in time for Cyclone Tracy. It was Christmas Eve, so lots of people were out partying. So all the single people get rostered on on Christmas Day, so that the married people can go home to their families. And I was working on Christmas Day, so I disengaged from all of the festivities, and I'd gone back to the women's sleeping quarters. We knew there was a cyclone warning. What we thought that meant, because that happened frequently, was okay at some stage over the next day, we're going to have lots of wind and we'll have lots of rain, and it's going to be a horrible walk to the station where I used to work from the quarters. That was really all I was thinking, other than the fact that I better get some sleep before my shift on Christmas Day.”
But this was no ordinary cyclone.
In the hours to come, Cyclone Tracy would record 217 km per hour speeds, breaking the anemometer, and destroying most of the town.
“I'm woken up with, evacuate, evacuate, evacuate. And I'm thinking, oh, okay. So I popped up out of my bed, and I opened my wardrobe door, and as I opened that wardrobe door, the window blew in, and all the glass smashed into that door, rather than me. So that actually saved my life. Between my mid calf and my ankle, I got a few, you know, bits of glass stuck and, you know, trickles of blood, but nothing major. Once the window blew in, the roof was starting to lift as well, thought I better put some semblance of uniform on. And I went to get out the door, and the door handles were electrified, so I couldn't get the door open. I'm looking around the room thinking, I need something that's non-conductable. And a girlfriend of mine, when I went to boarding school, had given me a wooden fish for a present. And I looked at it, and I thought, right wood. And I sort of was smashing at the door handle with wood trying to get it open. And it did open.”
Sue made it out of the room, clambering down the stairs on her hands and knees.
“The noise, it was just, can't describe it. Screaming, howling, raging, just it's. I've never heard anything else like it. And I've heard a lot of things in throughout my military career. There's no comparison. It was just raging fury.”
She found four others at the bottom of the stairwell.
“So we're thinking, where the hell do we go? And we couldn't, you couldn't stand up. And there were things flying there were cars flying past. There were fridges flying past. I saw a refrigerator fly into a water tank and embed itself. You just couldn't comprehend what you were looking at. The nearest building to us was the sick bay and the dental surgery. And it was, it looked to be intact. And so we all joined arms and doubled over, and we ran as best we could. And we got there, there were other people that sheltering in there, and thankfully, they let us in. And the roof blew off. That about an hour and a half later.”
The group had to move.
“We thought we must be getting close to the eye. So we were trying to find enough shelter so that we didn't get injured until the eye. So a cyclone is a big circular thing, imagine like a donut. In the middle is is a circle called the eye, and everything stops, and it goes deathly silent. And when it comes back, man, does it come back with a vengeance.The children we moved during the eye. Three quarters of the people that were with us in the sick bay got moved during the eye, because we were organizing. We were sort of the last to move from the sick bay, and the eye was almost finished, and the wind was picking up again. We decided to go to the admin block, that was the next closest building that looked like it was intact. We went, and four of us went and knocked on the door of the admin block, and they wouldn't open the freaking door. So we said open that door and let us in. So they did. And we piled tables on top of each other, so that if the roof in that building caved in, we had some protection before, before it came on top of us. It's hot, there's no power, there's no air, and we're jammed in like sardines under these tables. The noise was probably double in intensity in the second half, and you could hear the groaning of the building and the roof, you could hear all the banging and shattering glass and all sorts of stuff in other parts of the base. And I remember sitting there thinking, I wonder who's going to be left alive after this.”
The cyclone passed, the morning broke, and the group survived.
“When finally we're allowed to go outside the next day, I remember walking outside looking for points of visual reference that were no longer there. It was like you'd walked into a moonscape devastation. The disorientation of trying to find visual to things to refer to that were no longer there.”
It was a Christmas morning like no other.
Sue had the cuts on her legs patched up, was divided into a team of 10, and the work began.
“Well, my team was told our priorities were, anyone injured, that needed treatment. Anyone who survived for evacuation. Number three priority was any deceased for identification. Number four priority was any body parts for possible identification. I thankfully didn't see any heads, that would have been pretty difficult, I reckon. The fifth priority was animals dead bury, animals alive, if there was any water, try and give them at least some water. There were houses still standing with lots of damage, but mainly rubble, so you'd never know what you're going to find under the next thing that you turned over. I've never believed, ever, that the death toll for Cyclone Tracy was actually correct.”
Officially, 66 people were killed and at least 145 seriously injured.
There was little rest between the gruelling work.
“So we worked in shifts. We slept on these little plastic mattresses. My God, in that heat. You call it hot bunking. So one watch gets, one watch person gets up, and the next watch person lies on the same bed. On day five, we got running water through a fire hydrant. You cannot imagine seeing about 50 sailors just strip off, all of us, and just stand underneath the gushing water of the fire hydrant. Didn't matter that male female. I've never been so filthy. I've never been so filthy, but we all were we all we were filthy, we were putrid, and we worked like dogs. I think the things that are cemented in my memory are having to tag body parts and having to bury dead animals.”
After 10 days, Sue was visited by Warrant Office Mister Figg - with a task.
“If you can imagine an Englishman in shorts and sandals, and he never had a hair out of place, it's the only time I ever saw him with a hair out of place. And he said, I'm getting, going to get you to drive this naval wife into the hospital, she's in labour. So I hadn't been on the road before that. She was in pain, obviously, and I was trying to reassure her. And at the same time, I'm driving into this apocalyptic devastation, going, what? Where am I? So eventually I found the hospital, which had been heavily damaged as well during the cyclone. There were injured people all over the place, and I sort of half carried her to maternity and handed her over and then I got to drive back more slowly, and that was when the full absolute devastation of it just hit me. I just couldn't believe what I'd seen. And I got back, and I think Mr Figg said, are you okay? And I went, it's all gone, sir. And he said, I know. And he said, I'm transferring you into naval headquarters. So off I went with my blue skirt and my white shirt and my sandals. And I manned the only phone line into that headquarters other than the one that went to government. It just went non stop, constant call after call after call after call. I don't remember anyone taking that phone line from me, actually, not handing it over to somebody for a night shift or whatever. It was just constant. Where's this helicopter? Where's that ship? Where's that team? Where's this you know, multitasking in extremis.”
The operations room was chaos, often shrouded in plumes of cigarette smoke.
Sue worked around the clock directing ships, helicopters and reconstruction teams to their next allocation.
From that time, there's one phone call that still stands out.
“I picked up the phone and I said, because I had to use my rank, I said, Naval Headquarters, Darwin, Senior Bigham and my father's voice said, I'm ringing to inquire about my daughter, Sue Bigham. And I went, Dad, it's me. And he went, Sue it's dad. And he said, Are you alright? And I said, I'm fine, dad, but it's really, really busy. I don't think we could talk for very long.”
Sue manned that phone line for almost two months.
It was the Royal Australian Navy’s biggest peacetime disaster relief operation, involving 13 ships, 11 aircraft and roughly 3000 personnel.
Sue was one of the last people to leave Darwin.
“I got $250 payment from the government and two weeks survivors leave at the end of February, after the fleet had gone and I'd hand it over to the army. I was in the last group to actually go home on survivors leave.”
Sue slept for 48 hours after she returned to Melbourne.
The city came as a shock, as she realised the rest of the world had just continued on while Darwin had been consumed by Cyclone Tracy.
“There was no 'off you go to see a psych and see if you've been traumatized by this life threatening thing'. There was none of that. We just went back to life as we adapted. During that time. Mister Figg again, nominated me as an officer candidate, which is what I'd always wanted. I wanted to join as an officer and I went through the selection process and was selected.”
The now 69-year-old still struggles to believe there were no medals or commendations for the efforts in Darwin.
“Nobody that actually worked on that effort for Darwin has received a medal, ever. You know, it's actually called Defence Aid to the Civil Community. And what Navy and Army and Air Force did for that city. I just can't believe that there's never been any recognition.”
The experience did little to disenfranchise Sue Bigham from service. She served in the Navy full time, eventually as a communications specialist officer, until 2005.
It was over 40 years on from the cyclone that the symptoms of what she endured surfaced.
She suffered her first panic attack in 2021.
Now working with a PTSD specialist she's able to articulate her triggers - which continue to this day.
“Heat without any air circulating around me. I have the air conditioner on in the car all the time. I can't sit in a hot, still environment. Noise. I can tell you, I feel pretty triggered if there's a cyclone warning anywhere near me, , I actually walked into my ensuite to find water dripping on my head. That was a trigger, I can tell you. So I've learned techniques to actually assist and mostly it does. I haven't had a panic attack now for since then, five months. Raising anxiety, but no panic attacks.”
50 years on, Sue Bigham doesn't need photos to mark the months that live on in her memory in stark colour.
And she hopes that people will be able to comprehend what happened in the wake of the cyclone .
“I'd like them to understand that how how incredibly traumatic it was for those who survived it. I'd like them to 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 mobilized to provide support and assistance so fast. And we did, and we were kids. And we did our job.”
