• Richard Evans

21 December 2009It wasn’t until Tracy struck, thirty-five years ago, that Darwin’s cyclone problem really sank in, writes Richard Evans in Inside Story

ON 1 DECEMBER 1974, about 350 kilometres north-west of Darwin in the Timor Sea, a low pressure system developed into Tropical Cyclone Selma. Selma moved directly towards Darwin and two days later was only 100 kilometres away. The Bureau of Meteorology issued a steady stream of alerts, warning the people of Darwin to prepare for a potentially devastating storm. But at 10 o’clock on the morning of 3 December, Selma changed direction, swinging north and then west away from the city. There had been a lot of rain and some trees had been brought down, but nothing too alarming.

It is a common pattern in disasters: the near miss that causes complacency. When authorities warn of a serious danger that does not eventuate, people can become fatally sceptical. One Darwin resident recalled an early conversation about whether Tracy was a real threat: “We had had Cyclone Selma only a few weeks before… Everyone was sick of talking about cyclones – and besides, Christmas was here.”...

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