A mother's instinct SURVIVING CYCLONE TRACY

50 YEARS ON FROM THE DISASTER, PAM RECALLS HOW SHE KEPT HER BABY ALIVE

- Megan Rowe

On Christmas morning in 1974, as most Australians were waking up to excitedly unwrap presents, Pam McMahon was desperately clinging to her baby son, fighting for their lives in the eye of Cyclone Tracy.

Pam and her husband, Peter, were living in Darwin, NT, with fourmonth-old Matthew when they heard reports that a cyclone was forecast to strike on December 25. Like most residents, the couple were accustomed to tropical storms and cyclones.

However, as midnight approached on Christmas Eve, their calm quickly turned to terror.

The category-four storm arrived with brutal force. Power and communication lines were cut off as fierce wind gusts drove rain horizontally into the McMahon’s home.

“I picked up Matthew from his cot, and suddenly there was a deafening noise as the windows in the lounge room shattered,” Pam, 77, tells New Idea.

“I held him tightly against my chest as we huddled in the bathroom in darkness, thinking, ‘We won’t survive this; no-one could.’