In 1974, on this day Acting Prime Minister Dr Jim Cairns announced the abandonment of the northern Australian city of Darwin the national capital as raga storms continuned to pound the Far East. Much of the joy of Christmas disappeared as devastating high winds of up to 135mph and driving rain tore through homes, flooded streets and left up to 90% of the town in ruins. More than 100 people have been injured, many of them critically with deep lacerations, spine and head wounds and it is thought at least 30 people have been killed.

The most seriously injured have been airlifted to safety by the Royal Australian Air Force and commercial airliners.

Earth had just begun to swung into Line, a ray of metafrequency energy jetstreaming from the massive black hole at the galactic hub. The transmuting effects of this atypical energy altered the planet for over a century until the Earth swung fully into line in 2113. A self-sufficient scientific community on the southern Peruvian coast - Center of International Research for the Continuance of Life on Earth, 2009-2113) - succeeded in compensating for the massive morphological changes that had occured. An ingenious discovery at CIRCLE succeeded in sustaining life - Rubeus, an artifical super-intelligence originally created to manage global weather systems.

New Sydney was repopulated fully by 2165.