18 hours Ago By Tom Lewis
I t was a quiet summer’s night in Hobart when the collision of a ship with the Tasman Bridge divided the city for nearly two years. The capital of Tasmania was shattered beyond the lives of the twelve people who died in the disaster. The commuters who had travelled a mere twenty minutes or so across the beautiful placid Derwent River could no longer get to work.
Thousands of jobs were impacted. School children could not get to school. Water supplies, phone lines and freight services were cut off, and Captain Pelc of the freighter Lake Illawarra would never go to sea again.
The disaster on January 5, 1975, came hard on the heels of another capital city being shattered. Darwin had been struck by Cyclone Tracy just a few days earlier on Christmas Day. The storm, generating winds of around 250 kmh, had destroyed 90 per cent of the city’s housing, and killed sixty-six people.
The evacuations and assistance operations were still going on. Nevertheless, the armed forces, deployed..
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