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Norman Coles and Carmen Simonato – Coles
Supermarkets
Counting the Cost
Nine days after Cyclone Tracy ripped through Darwin, Coles managing director Norman
Coles and a group of company executives flew into the Territory capital on the first nongovernment flight allowed in. He was there to survey the destruction of his two stores in
Casuarina, one of which had recently celebrated its grand opening. Moved by the carnage
he saw on his arrival, Norman initiated a tax-free relief fund for Coles’ Darwin employees,
and was determined no expense would be spared to help Tracy’s victims.
Coles’ stores number 8 and 404 were wrecked and immediately closed; they were unable to
re-open for nine months. “The Navy had already begun to clear stock in the supermarket and
there was a high stench of rotting food,” Norman said later. “My first impressions of our
stores were of total destruction in regards to fittings, fixtures and stock. The force of the wind
just blew stock from anywhere to anywhere and the place was an utter shambles.”
Coles was a wreck. Management decided to let it be known around Darwin that all the stock
inside that was not destroyed was to be given free to anybody who wanted it. “Everything
that was edible – Coles gave it to those who needed it,” recalls employee Carmen Simonato.
Coles also had Darwin’s only operating generator-powered refrigeration. It too became
public property, serving as the disaster’s makeshift morgue.
Norman went to Darwin manager Ron Bulley’s house, which had no power but, unlike most
Darwin houses, had running water. Norman praised the resilience and character of his
Darwin staff, listening to Ron’s description of his family’s night of terror. “We heard roofs
ripping from buildings and smashing into our own,” recalled Ron, who sheltered in their
bathroom with his wife and two children. “We didn’t know what was going on outside. All we
could hear was the roar of the wind, the smashing of timber and iron, the glass inside our
house and the furniture seemed to be crashing around the house.”
Carmen Simonato, who still lives in Darwin, worked at Coles the night Tracy struck. She
remembers the trading as being ultra-busy. It was so crowded that they had to restrict entry,
allowing two customers in if two people left. Lots of employees were working because
everything had to be individually priced with a handgun. She worked at the deli cooking
chicken until after seven o’clock when the power failed. Coles closed the supermarket and
sent everyone home to face the cyclone. “It wasn’t like now where they give you such good
warnings,” Carmen remembers. “They told us it was coming but people didn’t take any
notice. We were never really advised that it was that big. Then we found out.”
By 11 o’clock timbers from the neighbour’s roof were flying through the walls of Carmen’s
Alawa home, the roof blown off. Then the eye went over before the winds changed direction
and wrecked what was still standing. Only the walls were left when the winds died off early
that Christmas morning but all else was demolished. Carmen was pregnant and, two days
later, she went with her two kids to be evacuated to Adelaide, while her husband stayed to
help rebuild their home.
Carmen’s family in northern Italy had read that Darwin had been destroyed and were very
concerned about the safety of the Simonato family. They tried to phone but all the lines were
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down. “We couldn’t contact them so they thought the worst,” sighs Carmen. “When they saw
the news on TV, they saw this whole line of people getting evacuated. Then they saw me
with the kids getting on the plane so they knew that we were alright.”
A month later she returned with her children to find that her husband had repaired the roof
and the louvres, making the house dry and liveable. Carmen had her baby and eventually
returned to work for Coles for another 33 years.
Norman Coles was impressed with the spirit displayed by the cyclone survivors. He said a
few months after Tracy hit: “The people I spoke to are saying they live in Darwin, they love
Darwin and they are staying in Darwin.” He initiated a tax-free relief fund for Coles’ Darwin
employees, and a trust fund was eventually established with $28 240 raised from donations
from all around Australia. Carmen Simonato was one of the Coles staff who received some
of the benefit of the public’s largesse. “They collected money for us and after a while I got
$100 from them. They thought of us. It was really good.”