Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy

Written by Sophie Cunningham
Text Publishing (2014)

Shortlisted for the Kibble Literary Award (2015)
Shortlisted for the Chief Minister's Northern Territory History Book Award (2015)
Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards – University of Southern Queensland History Book Award (2015)
Shortlisted for The Nib Literary Award (2015)
Longlisted for the Walkley Book Award (2014)

The sky at the top end is big and the weather moves like a living thing. You can hear it in the cracking air when there is an electrical storm and as the thunder rolls around the sky … When Cyclone Tracy swept down on Darwin at Christmas 1974, the weather became not just a living thing but a killer. Tracy destroyed an entire city, left seventy-one people dead and ripped the heart out of Australia’s season of goodwill. For the fortieth anniversary of the nation’s most iconic natural disaster, Sophie Cunningham has gone back to the eyewitness accounts of those who lived through the devastation – and those who faced the heartbreaking clean-up and the back-breaking rebuilding. From the quiet stirring of the service-station bunting that heralded the catastrophe to the wholesale slaughter of the dogs that followed it, Cunningham brings to the tale a novelist’s eye for detail and an exhilarating narrative drive. And a sober appraisal of what Tracy means to us now, as we face more – and more destructive – extreme weather with every year that passes. 

Vision – Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy

“Literary non-fiction at its absorbing, emotional, instructive best.” – The Weekend Australian     

“… an inspired use of oral archives, and a startling picture, sharply lit by disaster, of Australians as we were in the mid-'70s.” – The Age

“Highly accomplished … compelling.” – Sydney Morning Herald

“Cunningham has pieced together a pacey and energetic insight into the build-up, experience and aftermath of the cyclone … It’s a great read and, given the subject, it is strangely hopeful.” – The Big Issue