The then-police officer was photographed walking through the debris of what was left of the city carrying a cat under one arm and his kitchen sink under the other.

He was also smoking a cigarette.

“That was my last smoke – I never touched another one after the cyclone.”

Tracy wrecked hundreds of businesses in Darwin, but it was the making of others.

Many business people stayed on to rebuild the city from the ground up.

They had to work incredibly hard in grim conditions – but slowly, surely, Darwin was reborn.

Denny was an off-duty constable on the night the Northern Territory’s capital was blown away by 240km/h winds and torrential rain.

He arrived home from a friend’s house with his wife Mary at 11.30pm on Christmas Eve; his house on the corner of Trower Road and Parer Drive in Wagaman began disintegrating an hour later.

“We were in bed but that was no good – the bed began sliding. Then water came flooding in and glass windows shattered.

“We wedged a double mattress into our small toilet and clambered in for protection.

“But the roof started to be blown away so we jumped into my new 6-cyclinder car. I tried to turn right and head for Casuarina but the wind was so strong the car wouldn’t go that way.”

Denny and Mary drove 500 metres to the service station at the junction of Rothdale and McMillans roads.

Sheets of metal fencing were being blown across the street and there were great flashes of lightning.

The servo had been reduced to a toilet with no roof; the McIvers got onto the car roof and climbed into the loo.

And there they cowered for five hours.

“It was hell, the most harrowing time of my life – and as a copper I’ve been about a bit,” says Denny. “I’m no Christian but I prayed to God a lot that night.

“The noise was the worst thing – the screaming, like a mad banshee.”

When the cyclone finally passed, the couple crept out of their hideaway.

“A bloke appeared from I don’t know where and we just ran towards each other and hugged. It was as though we were the only people left on earth. It was like a scene from On the Beach.”

The devastation was beyond belief; most of Darwin had been levelled.

“My sister-in-law lived only five minutes away. But it took us four hours to get there over all the rubble.”

The McIver house was now little more than a concrete slab on the ground.

“I rebuilt that house. Every corner is packed with metal and concrete. No cyclone would blow it down now.”

There has long been a debate about how Cyclone Tracy should be commemorated. Opinions differ widely.

Some say there should be a great monument or public space – a tribute to the 71 people who died and those who survived.

Others argue that the city of Darwin – beautiful, modern, optimistic, prosperous and proud – is monument enough to Tracy.

A monument to survival.

This article first appeared in Territory Q during the 40th commemoration of Cyclone Tracy.