Illuminated30 Des 2024

My Night With Tracy - How the Darwin Cyclone Made a Man of Mike Thomson

What drives us? What makes us who we are? For one of the BBC’s most experienced foreign correspondents, the multi-award-winning Mike Thomson, it was a near-death experience in Australia’s worst natural disaster this century. Having been kicked out of school at 17 for refusing to cut his hair, Mike opts to go travelling. With an older family friend, Mick Kendall, he journeys overland from Ivybridge in Devon to Australia’s 'top end' via Turkey, Afghanistan, India, Burma and Indonesia. Mike arrives in Darwin in December 1974. However, the search for fun and adventure with Mick and their new friend, Daryl Johnson, turns to terror when an “evil wind” known as Cyclone Tracy strikes on Christmas Eve and flattens the city in one night. For days Mike’s parents think their youngest child is "presumed dead" His name is on a list of causalities when in fact Mike was being well looked after as a refugee and evacuated to a farm in Western Australia. Why the confusion? Who is this ‘other’ Thomson? Now, 50 years on, Mike returns to Darwin to answer these questions and search for the two friends who helped him through the ordeal that shaped him.

For more stories like this, search for Illuminated on BBC Sounds. It was produced by Ed Prendeville for BBC Audio Wales and Jane Ray for Cat Flap Media. Sound design is by John Wakefield, original music by Ben Goodman. This edition of ILLUMINATED was written and presented by Mike Thomson.

With thanks to Rod Louey-Gung on behalf of the Northern Territories Museum for use of their archive.

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