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Our cat saved us

by mary
(darwin)

Like many people I didn't think Tracy would hit. Even my brother who left about 12 hours before tracy hit said "Don't worry it won't come". Those words haunted him for a long time after.

My mum and I lived in a 3 bedroom brick house. In the hours leading up to Tracy, my mum and I were frantically trying to find a safe area of the house in which to hide.

My main fear was the huge tree we had in our yard. I kept thinking it would come through the house and with this in mind I told mum that we should shelter in my brothers room which was the furtherest away from the tree. As we went to find a place in his room, our cat suddenly jumped at us, hissing and scratching. So we decided not to go in there. We next went to my room and went under the bed, the cat jumped on the bed and went to sleep but the water was quite high on the floor and mum was scared that we would get pneumonia. So it was back to searching for a safe place.

We eventually decided to shelter in our linen cupboard in the hallway but it those days there wasn't any doors and so we pulled a mattress up in front of the shelf we sat in. The cat again went to sleep in the shelf above us. We sat and waited and when the predicted time came and went I thought it had passed by when all of a sudden we heard a mighty crash coming from my brothers room. Needless to say the mattress came up and a never ending stream of prayers were being said. The walls shook around us and the deep rumbling noise continued for what seemed like an eternity.

The eye passed over and I thought it had finished, so I went out to look at the tree. It had been ripped out and went crashing through our neighbours house. Mum was screaming at me to get back inside because she knew there would be a second attack. We waited out the second attack and during that time our neighbours ended up over our house. When tracy ended we looked in my brothers room and saw that all his windows had been smashed in and if we had have been in there we would have been cut up badly.

I didn't realise just how bad tracy had been as our house was spared a lot of damage. My mum walked out our front door and sat on the step and cried. When I asked her why was she crying she told me to come outside and look. The destruction I saw was beyond belief and all my mum could say was "look whats happened to our beautiful hometown"
I love Darwin but I still fear every wet season and the probability it brings.