By ALENA HIGGINS
ALLORA’S Jim Francis had just arrived from England and was looking for work when he volunteered to help with Cyclone Tracy disaster relief.
It will be 40 years next Wednesday since the deadly tropical cyclone, the worst in Australia’s history, flattened the city of Darwin on Christmas Eve.
Mr Francis, who lived through the London Blitz, said the trail of devastation and destruction of the World War II bombing raids didn’t even compare to what he witnessed at the Top End.
“This was nothing like that,” the 84-year-old said. “This was absolutely horrific.”
“Even though it had been over a week since Tracy had gone though the place, there was still rubbish everywhere, and the houses, which were on very tall stilts, well the tops of them had just gone.
“That became our main job – to put a roof on top there and fill the sides around with tarp so they could live underneath,” Mr Francis said, who worked in Darwin on contract for three months.
Back home waiting for her visa, his wife Marian watched it all unfold on television, with regular first-hand updates from her husband.
“He was absolutely gobsmacked by whole houses and cars sticking out of swimming pools,” she said.
“He told me they were all sunburned underneath from the reflection of the roof, with bright red necks and bright red backs.”
Acclimatising to the brutal heat was a baptism of fire, Mr Francis admits.
It was freezing when I left England,” he said.
“I’d never experienced anything like (the heat in Australia).”
“You’d sweat and it would drip onto the tin and it would just sizzle… then it was gone so quick.” he recalled.
“You can feel the heat – your feet were hot all the time because you were on the tin.“
While there, Mr Francis met the then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s wife, Margaret, and lived through the fear of a second cyclone warning.
Cyclone Tracy claimed 66 lives and caused about $4.45 billion (2014 dollars) worth of damage.
