Darwin spared Ingrid’s fury

DARWIN - Cyclone Ingrid has hurled its 235km/h force at the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin, ripping off roofs, levelling one home and flinging huge mahogany trees on to buildings.

Residents of the two islands, Bathurst and Melville, remained in emergency shelters yesterday as they continued to be battered by 120km/h gales and torrential rain.

But the conditions were nothing compared to what Ingrid dished out during a direct hit on the islands, before it steered into the Timor Sea away from Darwin, which largely escaped the cyclone's fury.

Winds gusting to 235km/h lashed Bathurst and Melville, cutting communications to the mainland, leaving them without power and with a substantial damage bill.

Northern Territory police said the storm cost the island communities a house and swept roofs off a school and several other properties.

But residents were incredibly grateful that no one had been killed or injured, said police Darwin region controller Max Pope.

Darwin, wary after marking the 30th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy which killed 65 people at Christmas 1974, suffered little damage.

However the city will remain on alert until authorities are satisfied there is no danger.

"Everyone is aware that Cyclone Tracy did a u-turn ... and headed straight for Darwin, so that's very foremost on our minds," said Police Commissioner Paul White.

"But speaking to the experts at the weather bureau they tell me that there is just no meteorological evidence to indicate that at all."

Bathurst Island's emergency services co-ordinator, Graeme Fregon, said: "We have no power, we have no communication [except] just one satellite phone ... If that's all we've got wrong, then we've come off pretty well.

"We had a lot of very big old mahogany trees [that] have fallen - one on top of a house, one into the local supermarket, and mainly across roads and through park areas here," Fregon told ABC radio.

At his own property, said Fregon, "when I went out the backyard ... I found a garden shed in my yard that I didn't have yesterday".

The Bureau of Meteorology said the cyclone was moving out into the Timor Sea and was expected to head southwest, away from Darwin.

Pope said authorities were preparing to rescue 10 people stranded by floods on a remote part of Elcho Island, off the Northern Territory coast.

On Saturday, the storm also did A$1 million worth of damage to six pearling vessels at Gove, in northeast Arnhem Land.

AAP