​A Cyclone for Christmas is an audio love letter to a city that no longer exists and an ode to those who survived its violent destruction. It was broadcast nationally on ABC Local Radio exactly 50 years on.​ 

 

On Christmas Eve 1974, Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin with devastating force. Small but deadly, it tore the city apart, killing 66 people and destroying more than 80% of housing. What followed was the largest evacuation and relief effort in Australian history.

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Commissioned by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, which has been the home of the Cyclone Tracy story since 1994, we part of the exhibition redevelopment, this piece grew out of an urgent focus on recording survivors’ stories before they were lost.

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Based on 21 survivors interviews from diverse walks of life, around a third had never spoken of their experiences before, not even to family. Their accounts bring to life both the terror of that night and the memory ofthe old Darwin, since replaced by a modern tropical city.

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Sound sits at the heart of this work. Tracy was marked by violent ruptures of noise and an eerie silence that followed, when even birds and insects had gone. These atmospheres are made central, woven seamlessly with the survivor voices into a narrator-less piece. The work features rare archival sound, including one of only two known live recordings of Cyclone Tracy, captured by Father Ted Collins on cassette, alongside historic radio warnings and binaural soundscapes from Darwin.

 

Designed as a loop without beginning or end, the piece circles like the storm itself. It plays permanently in the museum within the remains of a destroyed house diorama, with voices spatially positioned in surround sound.​​​

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In repsect for the trauma still carried by many Tracy surviviors, two versions are offered here, one without the sound of Cyclone Tracy.