'We knew it was serious when the kitchen blew away': Our Tracy story.

On Saturday November 23, 1974, Con and Irene Billias walked out of Darwin’s Greek Orthodox Church a happily married couple.

One month later their world was turned upside down.

On Christmas Eve, armed with some gifts and Greek desserts, the newlyweds got into their Holden and headed for their mates’ Alawa house, ready to see in their first Christmas as a married couple.

Meanwhile, in the Arafura Sea, Cyclone Tracy had already begun her destructive journey to Darwin.

Along with five other couples, the newlyweds were enjoying the rainy evening; bantering, eating and drinking, and playing Pilotta - a game of cards traditionally played the night before Christmas by many Greeks.

As the winds picked up speed and electricity was cut from the house, the group defiantly kept playing Pilotta by candlelight.

They only abandoned the game to head for cover when the cyclonic winds tore the kitchen away from the house.

This is my parents’ story.

  ***

HT: Thanks mum and dad for the chance to hear your story in a bit more detail. You haven’t spoken too much about your Cyclone Tracy experience before have you. Why is that?

Irene: Honestly … it was traumatic. There is no other way to explain it.

I wanted to forget about it. Lots of us did. What we saw and felt that night was horrendous. We had no idea if we’d survive. It was too much.

HT: You had only just gotten married right – in fact almost one month to the day – on November 23?

Yep, we were still newlyweds and about to have our first Christmas as a married couple together.

In fact it was so close to the wedding day, that we still had my relatives from Melbourne up. They came to Darwin for a holiday, and copped Cyclone Tracy.

Some of these relatives have never been back to Darwin. It was pretty hard for them.

Young Con and Irene on date night in Darwin, earlier that year

Irene heading into the Greek Church on Cavanagh St with her dad, affectionately known as ‘Popsy’, and some relatives in the background

HT: Can you tell us a little about that night? Particularly earlier in the night as the rain and wind started.

Irene: So it is a bit of a Greek tradition – it still is – to play cards the night before Christmas. We were living in Rapid Creek at the time and our good friends were having a Christmas Eve party nearby in Alawa.

There were 12 of us all there, enjoying the night on the front porch, playing cards and having a lovely old time.

I’d been at work at the National Bank that day and we’d been hearing alerts come through on the radio telling us a cyclone was headed and to make sure we took our picture frames off the wall when we got home. 

So of course no one thought it was going to be anything big. I mean .. we still went to a Christmas Eve party.

In fact, we were so relaxed about everything, that as everyone was playing cards, the lights went out .. so we just lit a candle and kept playing by candlelight.

I can’t believe we did that.

Irene’s parent’s original home in Rapid Creek (Kelly Place) many years before Cyclone Tracy . Her mum and sister Georgina are in this photo

 HT: When did you actually think ‘ahhh, time to pack up this card game and head for the bathroom?

 Irene: The truth? When the kitchen blew away from the house.

There was a huge bolt of lightning, the kitchen was torn off the house and I think someone yelled ‘run’.

So all 12 of us ran into this tiny little Housing Commission (Territory Housing) bathroom. We all squashed ourselves in there for the next five or six hours as we listened to the most horrendous sounds outside.

We were watching as the roof would slowly lift off the house, then slam back down again for hours. Every time the roof lifted we could see the sky from the bathroom. 

Aldridge Place, Millner neighbourhood. Photo credit Library and Archives NT https://hdl.handle.net/10070/488644.

HT: That is incredible. And you were actually six months pregnant with me at the time. You must have been extra terrified? 

Irene: Of course. I was sitting on the toilet seat and there were 11 other people crowded around me trying to protect my belly. I was 20 years old and 6-months pregnant. I had no idea what was going on.

It was hours of fear while listening to the sounds outside of what was the house being ripped apart. It was terrifying.

No one in Tracy will ever forget that sound. It just stays with you.

HT: Now, there is a story – I don’t know it in detail – but apparently Con almost lost his life walking out in the middle of the storm to find you a blanket? 

Irene: He did. Against all advice he left the bathroom as the cyclone was raging to go to the spare room in the house and find me a blanket.

We nearly lost him.

Con: It is still very clear in my mind. I walked out of the bathroom - the house walls had mostly blown away by this stage - and I made my way very slowly against the wind to the bedroom.

As I got to there .. I looked up and a caravan came flying from across the road, smashed into the house and then kept flying past my eyes down the street.

I could not believe what I saw. 

I grabbed the window frame of the bedroom and held onto it for my life. The wind was absolutely brutal.

All I remember is holding on, thinking ‘don’t let go or you’re gone’ .. but the wind had started to pick my legs up off the ground and I was really struggling to hold on.

I do not even remember how long I held onto it, but at some point I let go and crawled back into the bathroom.

It was bloody unbelievable. 

Cyclone damaged brick houses. Library and Archives NT https://hdl.handle.net/10070/315887.

HT: Did you get that blanket? 

Con: Yes I did! It was pretty wet though. 

HT: Tell us about the next morning when you all emerged from that tiny bathroom? 

Irene: We were all in there until daylight came and the storm passed.

The second we walked out of the bathroom we realised that the entire roof had detached and blown off the house.

We were literally standing in a house with four walls and nothing else.

Before we actually made it outside onto the street, we naively thought it was only our house that had been impacted.

The second we got outside .. we could not believe what our eyes saw.

Absolute destruction. Like a bomb had dropped on Darwin.

Damage along Lee Point Road.
Photo credit: Library and Archives NT Ira and Faith Renton Collection ; https://hdl.handle.net/10070/484922.

(1974, December 25) Cyclone damaged property. Library and Archives NT https://hdl.handle.net/10070/484917.

Twisted electricity pole. Photo credit: Wiedemann, Bert. (1975) https://hdl.handle.net/10070/35155.

Old Woolworths on corner of Knuckey and Smith St. Wesley-Smith, Rob. (1974, December 25) Damage after Cyclone Tracy. Retrieved 2024, December 7, from https://hdl.handle.net/10070/324797.

HT: What were your first thoughts?

 Irene: Honestly, I thought ‘this is it for Darwin’. It’s gone for good.

There was nothing much left of it. 

And then the panic set it, because we didn’t know if our families were ok. Con’s parents lived in Millner, and my family - including my younger 5 year old sister - were in Moil. We had heard people saying there had been flooding in some suburbs so we were petrified. 

Con went to get in his car to drive to them .. but it wasn’t there. 

Con: It had blown all the way down to the other side of the street! But I managed to find it and headed straight to Millner. What should have taken me 5 minutes took half an hour because of all the debris on the road. The roads were full of debris - there was not an inch where you could see any road so I was driving over things like corrugated iron and electricity poles.

By the time I got to my parents’ house, all four tyres were flat and I was driving on the rims. 

HT: What happened when you got to Brooks Place, where your parents lived? 

Con: It was just shocking. Brooks Place is a small court, and as I turned into it … every single house was gone – except for my parents’ home. Good old sturdy 10 Brooks Place. 

I raced inside and sitting in the lounge room were six other families from the houses that had blown away. 

My parents had taken them all in. The worst part I remember - and so clearly to this day - was a little boy sitting in the lounge room with his mum and dad, in shock, and his little arm literally just dangling from him. It had been broken in so many places.

From there I had to race to my in-laws’ place to check on them as we had no idea if they were injured .. but they weren’t there.

As I ran through their house I found our puppy Zorba the bulldog alone, scared and cowering under the bed. I will never the forget the feeling of finding him there. We had thought he wouldn’t have made it.

Registration centre after Cyclone Tracy. Photo credit: Wiedemann, Bert. (1974, December 26) Retrieved 2024, December 6, from https://hdl.handle.net/10070/317466.

HT: So Irene, at this stage you had no idea if your parents - including your five year old sister were ok?

I didn’t but slowly throughout the course of the day we had heard they had been taken to emergency shelter at Moil primary school.

We raced over there and it was so so good to see them.

My sister Soulla was not even six years old at the time, yet her recollection of that night - even today - is incredible. She remembers standing in a dark flooded bedroom with her arms around our dad, choking him with fear. Wardrobes were pushed up against windows to prevent corrugated iron smashing through their house like it had in the dining room earlier.

HT: So Irene, when did you evacuate Darwin?

I spent one night at an evacuation centre with my family, and left a day later to Melbourne, where we had extended family. My parents and younger sister Soulla flew out on a separate flight, and Con had to stay back.

I remember being so scared getting on that plane, 20 years old, pregnant and alone, and not knowing when I would see them all again. That was truthfully one of the most traumatising moments.

Evacuees boarding a TAA plane at Darwin following Cyclone Tracy, 1974. National Archives of Australia. - Natural disasters - Cyclones - A6180, 7/1/75/54

HT: When were you and Con reunited? 

Irene: He and his best mate – and our pup Zorba – drove down to Melbourne about a week after Tracy.

Two men and a puppy driving down the Stuart Hwy must have been a sight!

Communications were obviously down and he was desperate to check that I was ok. 

He got to Melbourne, then about a week later he returned to Darwin to help with the clean-up and rebuild.

I didn’t see him again for almost three months, when you were born. 

He walked into the hospital the day I had you – missed the birth but got there on the day though.

The very next night he was back on the plane to Darwin.

HT: And when did you return to Darwin? 

Irene: I flew to Darwin six weeks after giving birth, about four months after Tracy. 

HT: Wow that was quick. Why did you both come back? Did you ever think, this is too hard, let’s just permanently relocate to another capital city? 

Irene: Once we knew Darwin was going to be rebuilt we knew we’d be back here in a heartbeat.

We love this place. Con is 76 and has lived in Darwin since he was 16. 

He wanted to come back and help rebuild Darwin. He played a huge role in the cleanup, and of course in rebuilding many of the houses in the northern suburbs. 

We haven’t left since!

HT: Con, as a qualified carpenter, you had a fair bit to do with the rebuild? 

Con: There was a lot of work up here back then, especially during the clean-up. We all worked in groups to get the debris and rubbish cleaned and moved. 

That went on for quite a bit, before we moved onto fixing up the houses. 

There was at least two or three years of heavy work during the rebuild of Darwin.

There was a lot of comradeship back then. We were all working for the same goal. 

And there was definitely lots of work for a carpenter. Darwin is very different today of course, and the houses would hopefully withstand another Tracy .. not that we ever want to test that though!

Her Territory thanks Con and Irene for sharing their Cyclone Tracy story.

Con and Irene Billias today

Christmas in Darwin just 12 months later looked very different…. Baby me on the left with my auntie and Irene’s younger sister Soulla, who also went through Tracy as a six year old.