It's late afternoon Christmas Eve 1974, Australia. For several days tropical cyclone Tracey

has been monitored off the coast of Northern Territory. It's overcast, there are low clouds and it's raining hard. As winds

pick up, residents begin to realize Cyclone Tracy is going to pass over not around the city. In the end 71 people will

die and over 90% of homes in Darwin are badly damaged or demolished. This is the story when Santa never made it into

Darwin.

Hi, I'm your host, Cambo, grab a beer and pull up a deck chair.

This is True Crime Island, another True Crime podcast. Okay islanders. First of all we need to talk about what Darwin was like in

1974.

Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory.

We have really inventive names for our states and territories. How about Western Australia, South Australia and Northern

Territory. There you go. Anyway, Darwin is up the top of Australia on the Timor Sea.

It's been rebuilt three times before 1974, once in 1897 after a cyclone, 1937 after a cyclone, and after the Japanese bombed it during

World War II.

In 1974 there are about 43,000 people living there in around 12,000 houses.

So it's not a very big place.

The population though was rising rapidly

and therefore the housing industry was booming.

Being in a cyclone-prone area, you would think that the houses would be built to a higher standard than your average house.

But as you will see, this was not always the case. Darwin has a tropical climate with distinct wet and dry seasons.

However, the temperature is pretty constant all year round,

between 30 to 32 degrees centigrade or about 90

degrees Fahrenheit. Most people were employed in the mining, defense, fishing and tourist industries. It was a pretty laid-back

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