Christmases past were Christmases ignored because they came with too much emotional baggage. They reminded us of families and homes which we were far away from or didn't even have. By the time my best friend Noel had come to stay with me over Christmas 1974, there was just enough time left for a drink at the club and a game of chess on the beach before I flew out to my next job in Burma.
My best friend Noel and I hunched over a chessboard on the beach
near Vovo Point in Lae in New Guinea on Christmas Day 1974
That was fifty years ago when I lived in Lae on the north coast of New Guinea, and Noel had flown across from Wewak in the Sepik District, a backwater of a backwater which meant that neither of us heard about Cyclone Tracy wiping out Darwin at about the same time that Noel was wiping me out on the chessboard. Within days, Noel returned up the mighty Sepik River where communication was only by jungle drums, and I was on my way to Burma which was under a curfew by its military dictatorship and a total news blackout behind their "Teak Curtain".
Immediately after the tragic events in Darwin in the early hours of Christmas Day 1974, where 65 people were killed, hundreds injured and thousands made homeless by Cyclone Tracy, film crews from Film Australia were sent by the government to document the aftermath and, later, to record the rebuilding of Darwin. Film Australia made four films covering this event: Cyclone Tracy, When Will The Birds Return?, Home Sweet Home and Tracy's Birthday. These films document not only the incredible level of destruction wrought by the cyclone but also the enormous humanitarian effort by the authorities and the courageous spirit of the residents in the face of such a large scale natural disaster and their determination to rebuild the city and their futures in it.
Thanks to technology which didn't exist then, we can still relive those tumultous events fifty years ago when Santa never made it into Darwin.
