Times Past: December 28, 1974

"We knew it was coming but there was nothing we could do about it", Mrs Penelope Steeples said in Canberra a night after being evacuated from Darwin.

She and her three young children were staying with her parents in Cook.

"It was unbelievable," she said.

"There was a lot of wind and rain, trees and lightpoles blown over, caravans and cars overturned and blown on to the street, houses toppling down and metal everywhere."

She and her husband had lived in Jingili, a northern suburb of Darwin, for seven years.

Her husband, who worked with a government department, stayed there helping to clean up.

She said they were woken up by the wind and rain about 2am on Christmas Day. The family hid in the toilet with sheets covering the children.

"The kids then dropped off to sleep," she said.

"Our first thoughts [were] that our house was the only one that gave. When we saw that every one else was in the same boat, we knew we would be taken out."

She said the cyclone was at its worst when the wind turned around and then, because everything was weakened from the first time, "everything went".

She could not put into monetary terms how much they lost.

"There was only the shell of the house," she said. "It will have to be rebuilt."

The furniture was "waterlogged and probably useless".

"We'll have to start all over again," she said.

Mrs Steeples said she knew some people who died.

"They had been there for years - they just got caught."

She and her children flew from Darwin on the Thursday afternoon on a special flight.

See trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110794192/12220792