The Response from Individuals, Groups, Organisations and Governments

Because of Australia's generosity back in 1974, Darwin was able to get back on its feet. During the evacuation period, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross workers met the survivors in different parts of Australia, and the Red Cross took responsibilities for keeping track of the names and temporary addresses of the Darwin survivors.  

Once the news of the destruction of Cyclone Tracy, community groups across Australia began fundraising and relief efforts to assist the survivors. Approximately twenty-four hours after the storm hit Darwin, the people of Alice Springs raised over $105,000 to assist the victims of Tracy. Down in Melbourne at the Boxing day Test cricket match, members of both teams walked around the stadium carrying buckets which the crowd threw cash into helping the relief funds. The song, "Santa Never Made it to Darwin" composed by Bill Cate was performed by Bill Cate and Boyd Robinson in 1975 to raise money for the relief and reconstruction efforts

Personal Interview;

I briefly interviewed my Grandmother Teresa who was travelling in her camper van through Darwin when Cyclone Tracy hit. She was 28 at the time and recounted how she survived. She was lucky, being one of many to be evacuated. She told me how shocked she was at the force of it and the damage it caused. She had never been through a natural disaster before and she was “utterly terrified”. 

                                             

         

Secondary Interview;

'A woman in labour, a premonition and a jammed window helped Ella Stack's family survive cyclone Tracy.' (Brisbane Times, 2011)

Dr. Stack says she was at the Darwin hospital with a woman in labour the night of the cyclone. Dr. Stack returned to her house and, thanks to women's intuition, told her teenage sons to get to the first floor of the two storey house. The second storey was blown off during the cyclone. Her husband had been sleeping, and woke him up as one of the windows was jammed open, "I got him out of bed … a piece of the verandah [of the] house next door, a weight-bearing, huge piece of wood [was thrown] up into the air, came through the double thickness of the wall … straight through his bed.'' (Brisbane Times, 2011)A few months after the cyclone, Dr Stack was elected mayor of what she described as a ''heap of rubble''. As the news of Cyclone Yasi hit the media, Dr. Stack was praying for those involved.

                                                                                (Dr. Ella Stack)

Australia is such a generous country, and we have been that way since the beginning.