That Christmas I spent in a Cyclone shelter.

  

Western Australia, 1974.  Cyclone Tracy wiped the town of Darwin off the continent. We were about 3,000 miles away in Exmouth.  Let me tell you, 3,000 miles is nothing to a cyclone.  Exmouth was mostly spared the devastation of Darwin, but we did spend 24 or so terrifying hours out of touch with everything.  On Christmas Eve.  Scared half to death.  Western Australia in 1974; was cut off.  No TV, no commercial radio, no internet, no communications at all.  We drove across town when the sirens went off to our designated "block house" shelter.  Confused and uncomfortable in someone else's house. But dry and mostly safe.   We had no idea what had happened until my Dad made his way to  the Harold E Holt Naval Base.  I stood next to him and read the news out loud off the teletype machine.  It was terrible.   It was an awful feeling to return to our mostly unscathed house, knowing that people we knew, were dying in the rubble of their own homes.  This is also the year of the Walrus story that I wrote about previously here. 

There has not been a Christmas Eve since that I have not thought about Cyclone Tracy and the way it changed my world view.  I was 9 years old.  I knew bad things could happen.  I didn't know that they could happen to me.   There were so many terrible stories that came out of Darwin.  Tonight I played the song that was recorded to raise money for Darwin, to Sebastian.  With tears in his eyes he asked me if Santa ever made it there that year.  I told him no.  Santa didn't get there.   I had the same reaction in 1974.  My things were safe, my people were mostly safe.  But there were kids who weren't safe. Kids who had lost everything that ever mattered to them.  It was a very sobering realization.   My parents bought every copy of that 45 that they could get and shipped them off the friends and relatives all over the world.  For months the whole town of Exmouth put every bit of change  they had into the collecting jars at merchants all over town. Down the shops was covered with Darwin charitable giving tins.   My Dad was one of the men that just got in the their trucks and drove the 3,000 or so miles to help.  Do something.  Anything.

I feel like that a lot lately,  Do something. Anything.  I am not sure that my small anythings are making even the tiniest dent in the suffering of our less fortunate, less lucky, neighbors.  We try.  Maybe that is what the ghosts of Darwin have been trying to tell me all these years.  Do something. Do something.  Do something.