Booyah

[den]

In 1974 Cyclone Tracy demolished Darwin. The 36m long 3 masted schooner "Booyah" was last seen in Darwin Harbour. She put out one mayday call and was never seen again, vanishing with all hands.

They found her today.

Comments

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Cool, but confusing...

Why treat a 30 year old ship wreck like some 2500 year old Greek trimarine ship wreck? It's not like vintage '74 cookware and ball point pens are treasured relics...?

CYa!
Mako

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

The impression I got from the story is that the ship is being protected as a courtesy to the crew's survivors, because there may still be identifiable human remains.

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Nods, though to my mind that seemed a secondary goal to my reading of the article - remains were barely mentioned at the end of the article and only warrented just a few lines...

CYa!
Mako

[ngarewyrd.livejournal.com]

partly due to respect of the people who went down with the ship, and partly due to the fact that it's an effective artifical reef.. would be a shame to have fish and plants destroyed and chased off due to neglegent divers who would destroy the site to have a curious look around

of course, this is partly my opinion of such things

[steamwhistle.livejournal.com]

We do not have 2500 years worth of history - just 200 years.

Cyclone Tracy completely destroyed Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974.

I think they have museum up there that covers the events of that day and the aftermath.

Also the crew members very probably still have living relatives in Germany - it will take time to contact them.

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Ahh, got it. This is a highly important, more or less local to Darwin (save of course the German ship and crew of course) event that people wish to honor then.

Thanks, that information was very helpful to help me understand what it's all about.

Mako

[steamwhistle.livejournal.com]

Because the city was so isolated (still is isolated, actually) it was a day or so before the rest of Australia realised that it had been flattened. At the time there were no building laws up there so almost all the buildings were a mixture of light timber and roofing iron.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

After the cyclone, over 90% the city consisted of rubble on concrete slabs. The place looked like Hiroshima after the bomb. (some photos: http://www.arafura.net.au/greeksnt/70s.html)

It was a pretty minor event on the world scale, certainly nowhere near as bad an Hurricane Andrew, but for us Aussies it was shocking. You don't expect a state's capital city to vanish.

[bridgette01.livejournal.com]

ahh yes, Cyclone Tracey, I remember being a terrified 7 year old in the middle of it. Truly nature at it's most powerful and destructive, don't recommend it to anyone..storms still terrify me.