CYCLONE TRACY ‘WE NEVER GOT OVER IT’
For the past 45 years in the Daffey family, someone important has been missing from the table during Christmas dinner. Late on Christmas Eve in 1974, Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, killing 71 people, wiping out most of the town and causing $837 million in damage.
Little Peter Daffey, aged 6, had been playing with a toy helicopter only hours before – an early present from his parents Ken and Sandra.
But he wouldn’t live to open the rest of his gifts from Santa. Peter didn’t survive the tropical cyclone that would obliterate the Northern Territory city.
As Tracy ripped through the Daffeys’ Nakara home in the early hours of December 25, 1974, their youngest son was tragically killed while sheltering under a bed.
Though nearly half a century has passed since the disaster, Ken, Sandra and their surviving children, Meagan and Ken Jr, never truly got over their unimaginable loss.
“We huddled up in the bedroom and we told Peter to get under the bed, and Ken was supposed to get under too, but he was too scared to get under, so he didn’t do it,” Ken Daffey, 77, tells New Idea of that awful night.
“The bed turned out to be a death trap. The wall caved in and
a beam fell from the roof … Peter was probably killed instantly.”
Ken grows teary as he vividly recalls the next few hours he spent desperately fighting to keep the rest of his family safe.
The former Australia Post worker was so preoccupied with shouting Peter’s name, he didn’t even notice when a window louvre tore through his back and hit his spine.
“I felt something hit me, but it didn’t feel like anything had cut me. Stones were embedded in our skin too, it was like bullets with gravel flying through the air,” Ken says.
“Lightening was flashing, and you could look up in the sky and see fridges flying through the air.”
Ken, Sandra and Ken Jr tried to take refuge in the bathroom but were stopped in their tracks when another steel beam fell from the ceiling. Luckily, Peter’s brand-new bike took the brunt of the weight.
“[Sandra] got pinned down by the beam, and we grabbed Ken and huddled there during the night. I went back to see if I could find Peter, but I couldn’t because it was pitch dark,” Ken explains.
“The wind was so strong that we had to hold on with all our might; we thought we would never get out of it alive and at one stage thought about letting go, but our will to survive was stronger.”
Just as the famous song ‘Santa Never Made it to Darwin’ goes, it was like the town had been blown away. There were no presents left sitting under the tree and little Peter wasn’t there to wobble down the street on his new bike.
The Daffeys broke from their lifesaving huddle at about 5am on Christmas morning to an apocalyptic nightmare. It was like an atomic bomb had struck their hometown.
“When we had a look around, what we saw deeply shocked us further than anyone could imagine. For miles there were only stumps and floorboards and we thought that we were the only ones that survived but gradually cars came, and a police officer turned up and searched for Peter,” Ken remembers.
But of course, Peter didn’t make it. Sandra, who was eight months pregnant with their daughter Meagan, was flown to Brisbane and gave birth two days later. They thought of Meagan as a ‘miracle’ baby, as Sandra had endured hell while pinned by a beam in the eye of the cyclone.
It was a strange type of grief to lose one child and welcome another into the world so soon. After driving around helping other survivors, Ken’s back was finally patched up and he was taken to Queensland to meet his baby girl. It would be the last time the Daffeys would be in Darwin for 40 years.
They couldn’t bear to return to the place where their son’s young life was catastrophically cut short. But finally, in 2014, Ken and Ken Jr returned to visit Peter’s final resting place.
The family had eventually settled in Wagga Wagga, NSW, where they hold onto an old, grainy photograph of Peter, all they have to remember him.
Sandra has since passed away, but not a day goes by that the two men don’t think of their lost son and brother – especially at Christmas.
“It hits you every Christmas. It always will … I don’t think we’ll ever get over it,” Ken admits.
Ken Jr, 53, says his dad’s strength has kept him going.
“I am so proud of my dad ... for saving us all,” he says tearfully. “He’s my best friend.”
SURVIVOR KEN DAFFEY REFLECTS ON THE CHRISTMAS CYCLONE