That, for those times, was about average for Darwin, which was pretty much a set of suburbs of Canberra, however much the inhabitants hated being reminded of it. The overwhelming proportion of the population of Darwin, other than the Aborigines suffered to live, fairly miserably, on its fringes, were Commonwealth public servants or service personnel. Most of them were there on a posting, typically of about three to five years.

Darwin was more hot, and certainly more humid than other parts of Canberra, but neither it, nor the other suburb, Alice Springs, were exactly hardship posts, tending to have much the same standard of suburban amenity, schools and high pay as Canberra proper. Naturally, while people from Canberra were posted there, they would, within a week or so, put on the clothes of the very few long-term inhabitants, call themselves territorians and begin whinging about how southerners, such as Canberra people, had absolutely no idea of how real people lived.

In my experience, coming from a place which regarded Darwin as the big smoke, the more people went on in this fashion, the more likely that they had been in the territory for only a few weeks. Most had not even yet acquired the Territorian salute, which (for men) involved the invariable hitching of one's belt and trousers above one's beer gut before shaking hands or dipping the hat. The more sensible old timers knew that if ever there was a la la land, into which million upon million of taxpayers' money was injected into white pockets without visible consequence, it was in the Northern Territory, not Canberra.

I have my own fond memories of Cyclone Tracy, though, to my disappointment, I did not get to see the ruins close up until they were refurbished, mostly by Canberra public servants, at public expense. I was a young journalist at The Canberra Times, rostered to work on Christmas Day in 1974, actually as acting chief of the reporting staff. This was no great honour, since the allocated reporting staff, on a public holiday in the silly season was two. The total number of reporters and sub-editors involved in putting out the Boxing Day edition was probably about six. Being acting chief of staff simply meant I was on the early shift.

I wandered in to Mort Street, wondering what, possibly, local, national or international, might be able to be cobbled into a lead story for the morrow. It would, I thought, probably be a close race between the Queen's and the Pope's Christmas day speeches. In the office, I began making telephone calls to the normal rounds of public officials and others from whom one might dredge a story even on a public holiday. The ACT Police could not even report a road accident or a crime since two days before, nor the combined resources of Goulburn, Yass, Gundagai, Braidwood, Queanbeyan and Batemens Bay. The ambulance and the fire brigade had nothing to offer. Nor casual listening to the ABC and other wireless stations. There were routine, and very boring, Christmas stories, particularly from abroad, on the telex machines, but nothing of any great moment or deep local import.

It took me about an hour to become aware that during the night a cyclone had pretty much destroyed Darwin overnight. This was not particularly obtuse of me; I was probably among the first dozen people in Canberra who did. The news was slow to travel because virtually the first thing blown away by the cyclone was the area's communications systems – telephone and radio aerials, even most of the considerable quantity of military communications and signals equipment. The phones were out. The Weather Bureau's communications were out. The cyclone weather warnings issued around Darwin on Christmas Eve had not been circulated south. Silence from Darwin down south was, as now, rare and welcome, but not particularly remarkable.

According to Wikipedia, Bruce Stannard, of the Age, was later to write that Cyclone Tracy was "a disaster of the first magnitude ... without parallel in Australia's history". That's laying it on a bit ... the Mount Lamington disaster nearly 24 years before had killed 3000, even if they were "only" New Guineans, and thus deserving of "only" a minor relief effort. But there had not been a natural disaster – flood, fire, earthquake or tsunami – on Australian soil on a fraction of its scale, before or since.

The homes of 41,000 people were flattened. Only about 200 of 10,000 houses were largely undamaged. The physical damage in modern day terms was about $4.5 billion. Almost all of the public infrastructure – though mercifully not the hospital, built from the plans created for Woden Valley Hospital, and the police station – was destroyed, including almost all the power, water supplies and sewerage systems. At the airport, 31 aircraft were destroyed and 25 badly damaged. The death toll was 66, of whom 22 died at sea.

Radio broadcast stations were down, though amateur operators were getting out some messages. The ABC was first to get public word out, via a landline message to Mount Isa. Two-way communication was virtually impossible for about three days.

The Commonwealth had only relatively recently established the Natural Disasters Organisation, led by two very capable men, Major General Alan Stretton, and Van Vardanega. They had little in the way of immediate resources, but one of the things with which they immediately armed themselves was authority. Stretton roused the acting prime minister, Jim Cairns (Gough Whitlam was abroad, visiting Greek ruins), and was given, in effect all of the power of the Australian government to mobilise resources, service and public service personnel and relief. He decided to fly to Darwin immediately, in a RAAF aircraft hurriedly laden with all of the material (including communications equipment) thought to be likely to be useful.

By then, the other journalist had arrived; I had discussed what was known with Van, and I dispatched the other reporter to the RAAF base to talk further to Stretton, who was busy scrounging water and other purification equipment and supervising its loading on to the Hercules. An hour later, the reporter arrived back from the airport, and told me that Stretton had said he could come along if he wanted. But he had said, no, he had to get the car back to the office, and the Hercules had gone without him. Full marks for dedication to company property, zero for initiative.

It was to be three or four days before we could get a reporter to Darwin, and then only because we disguised him as an ACT policeman, a squadron of whom were being dispatched to help keep order and provide exhausted NT cops with some relief. Reporters from everywhere were scrabbling to get in, but were not being successful, largely because the entry of outsiders, even very important people such as reptiles of the press, was hardly a priority compared with the flow of food, health teams, medicines and rescue equipment, and, of course, federal ministers. Even Gough flew back, for a 100km/h view of the local ruins.

The reporter, Frank Cranston, was a world-class scrounger and man of initiative. He had hardly been in Darwin for an hour before he somehow found what no one else could – a working telephone circuit – and rang me in Canberra.

He said, "I don't know how long I can keep this line up, but I'll give you three pieces, one about the abandoned, distressed, animals all over the place, another a colour piece about the sheer unbelievable carnage, and then a trunk telling you what's happening". Frank was awfully fond of cats and dogs, and his eye had been immediately taken by the shaken homeless, bruised and unwanted and hungry animals patrolling the streets. He had dictated a few sentences of story one (about which I cared not a jot) when the phone line went down; he was not able to make contact again for a few days.

Frank always had an eye for a fact, an ear for a line. He reported locals boasting of Darwin getting the first classification for a whole city: category z, for immediate demolition. Told of the kids given a kite for Christmas, and the man, surveying a large uprooted tree blocking one of the main thoroughfares, "I've been trying to get them to chop down that damn thing for years".

Here's a bit from January 2, by when things were "returning to normal":

"If any of our readers is looking for a new kick for early Saturday mornings, we have a small suggestion. The only ingredients needed are a city obliterated by a cyclone, a damp apartment floor, driving rain, no light and a small transistor [radio].

"At 2.30am on Saturday I was sitting on such a floor listening with a Darwin man to a long list of names being read on the radio. His two small children were asleep on the bed nearby and if his name was read, they would have had to depart almost immediately to the airport. The names were those to be embarked on the first evacuation flight south. His name was not read out.

"Later in the day, he showed me his ruined house. He had been one of those who regarded the cyclone warning seriously and had shifted his small family into town. We turned over wrecked walls and smashed furniture in an attempt to find the Christmas gifts he had bought for the two blonde little girls. We had to settle for a one-eyed teddy bear, a Woden wagon with three wheels and what was left of a toy piano.

"When I asked if there was anything else for which we should search, he turned away, shrugged his shoulders and said, "no, there's nothing else left".

We returned to the car and drove away. He never looked back".

Or came back. Probably.