A smashed-up Torana with a cheeky nod to the Territory sense of humour has taken centre stage in a revamped Cyclone Tracy exhibition in Darwin. Curators from the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory have spent the better part of a year putting together the display opening to the public tomorrow.
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00:00A misspelt middle finger to a deadly disaster.
00:05Who knows how you spell it? I've got that, that's mine, I don't care about anybody else.
00:11After Cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin on Christmas Day 1974, killing 66 people, survivor John
00:18Morley pulled out a paint tin.
00:20It was supposed to be a tongue in cheek thing, Tracy you bitch, but being on the highway,
00:27people going in and out of Darwin saw it and they would stop and take a photograph of it.
00:33His pride and joy didn't survive, but the memories have now been carefully restored
00:37by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory as part of a revamped permanent
00:42exhibition.
00:43These things get people through, it's that dark humour that allows people to let off
00:48steam.
00:49Remaining are parts of the popular exhibition first opened in 1994 and some new interactive
00:56elements like a 1970s era Weather Bureau office where meteorologists charted the final
01:02path of the storm that forever changed Darwin.
01:07And I have to say that takes me back a bit.
01:10The display, the product of countless donations and thousands of hours of interviews.
01:15Here we're talking about the rebuild.
01:17Curator Jared Archibald says recent controversies surrounding a commemorative artwork shows
01:22the feeling among cyclone survivors is still raw.
01:26So we have to walk this line where we're keeping survivors happy but also remembering what
01:35they went through and not denigrating their story at all.
01:38The challenge for curators looking for physical reminders of the cyclone is that it destroyed
01:42so many of them, but the donated items on display in this new exhibit tell some touching
01:47personal stories.
01:49Cyclone conservators carefully restored this donated Raggedy Andy doll and this ceremonial
01:55life boy from the stricken HMAS Arrow.
01:58But we've noticed that people who went through it, they tend to have a touchstone object
02:02that kept something.
02:04We're finding more and more people have been open to donating their thing, whether it's
02:08a Christmas decoration, a toy.
02:10Cyclone Tracy, 50 years, opens to the public tomorrow.
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