As the Big Wind swung around and headed back towards the city, officers at Darwin and Casuarina stations refuelled their fleet, pumped up the tyres and stocked up with first aid gear, axes, shovels, crowbars, picks, ropes, lamps and torches.

They expected the worst.

By midnight, about 150 frightened people sheltered in the police stations and were housed in the basement cell blocks; many were picked up by police patrol cars..

Tracy struck at 1am with gusts of 217km/h winds recorded before monitoring equipment at Darwin Airport failed.

There was a 35-minute calms as the eye passed overhead about 4am and then the fury started again and raged until about 6am.

Women and children were sandwiched between wooden desks at Casuarina station for protection.

The roof sheeting of the building ripped off and the timber walls began flexing, the ceiling tiles were sucked out and all the windows on the fire station side shattered. Water covered the floor.

“We thought we were the only people left alive in Darwin,” said Constable Bob Kirby.

Despite their own problems and often injuries, off-duty police officers scoured homes for the injured and dead.

Roads were blocked by floodwaters, downed power lines and wreckage – one patrol car took more than two and a half hours to travel down Bagot Road. Police commandeered a bulldozer and began clearing main roads.

Hundreds of injured people were treated at Royal Darwin Hospital; seven were put on medivac flights south and one former policeman, Eric McNab, later died of his injuries.

Police set up emergency centres at schools and established food distribution units, but had no running water, electricity of sanitation.

Constable Dave Duffield said: “They raided Woolies in Casuarina. Beer and stew was the staple diet.”

Fireman Jock McLeod said: “Police were there when people needed them right from the word go and the same with the fire service. Once you got home and found your own dunghill was OK, if you had a uniform on, people looked to you.”

Armed police shot many dogs, which were running loose and forming into dangerous packs.

Looting was a serious problem in the first few days after the cyclone – some officers, such as Constable Chris Moore, slept at Casuarina shopping centre for five days to ward off thieves.

Police, firies and civilians had the grim task of retrieving bodies.

“It was a shattering job,” said Sergeant Alex Carolan. “People just brought in bodies and left them with us.”

Police helped organise the mass evacuation of women and children.

There were 208 police officers in Darwin at the time and the force was bolstered by 184 officers from interstate.

Then police commissioner Bill McLaren said that no praise was too high for the officers who went far beyond their “normal expectations of duty” in a time of crisis.

– source: The Thin Khaki Line, a police historical exhibition