Many thanks, Libretto, for your answers. I wish I could have been your history student, you recount history so well. But then I am quite a bit older than you. I was born in Hong Kong to Australian parents, and remember the bombing of the surrounding hills of Hong Kong. We were evacuated to Sydney. I thought I had perhaps forgotten what I learned about the bombing of Darwin, but then, as you say, perhaps we were never taught.
But I must say Australians are much more aware of the rest of the world than American children. Geography played an important part of our Aussie education.
Were the Japanese actually on the ground during the invasion, as shown on Mission Island?
Another question - is Darwin as hilly as predicted in the movie. Perhaps those are the hills of Bowen. Jean

Jean, it's been a while since I was in Darwin but my recollection is of generally very flat terrain in the immediate vicinity. I'd say your guess that the movie scenes are Bowen is a pretty good one.

In the 1950s we studied Australian history in the junior high school years, but it was considered an exceptionally boring subject. I believe that was because what we got was an airbrushed account, with all the controversial (i.e. interesting) bits excised.

My memory is of textbooks replete with photos of urban progress, sturdy farmers busy sending wheat and wool to the Mother Country, European immigrants joyfully disembarking from ships and, occasionally, a smiling, couldn't-be-happier, Aboriginal.

In other words, the Three Wise Monkeys model that our last prime minister was so keen to see reinstated in Australian schools.

Hello again twoaussies,

I'm so glad my reply was useful to you, and thank you for the compliment :) I did actually only teach for a few years ,European history, before moving on to another career.

You are right, I think, that we never learnt about the Darwin bombings as schoolchildren - and I'm guessing you are not that much older than me!

I distinctly remember my father renovating our back garden in the late 1950's, when I was quite a small child. He was redoing an area where there had been a slit trench, which he dug when on leave from the Navy in the weeks immediately after the first bombing.

He had been assigned to a mine sweeper/layer, a very small vessel prowling around the waters between Papua New Guinea and Northern Queensland, laying mines. He saw many Japanese vessels on the horizon and, according to my mother's recollections, on his very next leave came home and dug a slit trench.

In our house well into the 50's there was a list on the back pantry door of foodstuffs and equipment my mother was supposed to pack if she had to flee "to the hills". As we lived in a leafy Eastern Melbourne suburb and my mother had no way of escaping with two tiny children (I wasn't born until after the war), I don't quite know what my father imagined she would do if the Japanese had landed. It does at least illustrate that some servicemen "knew" how close it all really was.

Your question about Mission Island is interesting, but I suspect in the film was just for dramatic effect. I think Mission Island is really supposed to be Melville Island , the somewhat notorious Island where the government disgracefully sent mixed race children and anyone else they deemed a "problem". In most respects, it was thus a prison for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.

As it's closer to PNG than Australia it is possible that small groups of Japanese "scouts" were sent ahead of the invasion of PNG and made their way there. I know that my Uncle was one such Australian sent ahead of the Australian forces before they landed in the Solomons, and most Forces will send in small groups to check on communications etc.

Now your are om a roll Libretto..

How about..

the brisbane line

and

the battle of brisbane?

Hi johhj

I'm beginning to feel that I have highjacked this thread!

Anyway if you really want to know(?)

The Brisbane Line is a mythical invention.Some historians claim that as a strategic response to the defence of Australia a line was drawn on a map roughly following the Darling River from Brisbane to Adelaide.

Above this "line" the country was to be left to defend itself as best it could in the event of a Japanese invasion ( it seemed a very real possiblity in early 1942).

Below this line Australia was to be vigourously defended, and Brisbane in particular, where McArthur had his Northern HQ and where the Allied Intelligence Bureau was sited was to be defended by "land, sea and air".

In some histories I have read, including by MacArthur, there does seem to have been a general agreement that Australia, as a whole, was too large to defend by conventional means.

This was one of the main reasons Prime Minister Curtin, in particular, fought so vigourously to keep Australian troops close to home, as he clearly recognised the Japanese threat. This led to great tensions with Churchill and with MacArthur.

More recently many historians agree that the Brisbane Line was not an actual government policy, but just one of the many scenarios raised during the turmoil and uncertainty following the fall of Singapore.

The "Battle of Brisbane" on the other hand actually happened.It's been claimed in 1942 - 43 the population of Australia was boosted by as much as 10%, by the arrival of large numbers of American servicemen and support staff for MacArthur.

The sudden influx of so many men into small towns like Brisbane affected the locals in every way. The American troops were better paid, bored, and not always aware of the restrictions and rationing which Australians had been suffering.

There was significant resentment also about the strict segregation between the troops. Australian soldiers were forbidden to enter American clubs, but American soldiers were free to "roam the streets" of Brisbane.

The local population, including the police, were quite overwhelmed by the sheer number of soldiers (double the population almost overnight) and could not maintain the peace whenever drunken rioting began.

There were a number of riots, and some hysteria after an American serviceman in Melbourne murdered a number of young women.The bad feelings culminated in a large riot called the "Battle of Brisbane"in November 1942. US Marine MP's opened fire on the rioting crowds, and an Australian was killed.

My uncle and father were stationed there at the time, and my father claimed it began when some young Americans called out to other young Australians that they would "look after their wives" when the Australians were sent away. It was all in, then.

Other eye witness accounts suggest it began when Australian soldiers objected to the beating being meted out by an American MP on another American soldier. Who knows how it began, but it certainly led to a pretty vicious, albeit thanfully short "battle!

I am really enjoying this thread that evolved from the movie. If one can come out of a movie and want to know more answers, then it is a good one.
Libretto, is there a book (or books) that explain the involvement of Australia in WW2. While they would not be in a U.S. library, perhaps I can find them on Amazon.
I just remember the "Yanks" handing out chewing gum to kids. Jean

Thanks Libretto! I too enjoyed your posts!

Thank you Jean of twoaussies and Barbara!

I too, love the pathways and byways , the serendipitous discoveries that can come from wanting to know more!

Jean , I've had a quick look on Amazon for you, but sadly there isn't a lot available in the US about Australians at war.

I did note a new book "The strength of a Nation: six years of Australians fighting for the Nation and defending the homefront in WW2" which is written by an historian I highly respect, Michael McKernan, who is a War Memorial historian , so although I haven't read it personally it sounds interesting.

If you can find any of the following in a library, or second hand bookstore, or online(some Aussie bookstores , like Borders, will even deliver to an overseas address) I highly recommend these:


"A military history of Australia" by Jeffrey Grey

"Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942" by Peter Stanley

"A Bastard of a Place: the Australians in Papua, kokoda, Milne Bay, Gona and Sanananda" by Peter Brune

"Hellfire: the story of Australia, Japan and the Prisoners of War" by Cameron Forbes

"Tobruk, 1941" by Peter Cochrane

"Forgotten Anzacs: The Campaign in Greece, 1941" by Peter Ewer

Author: twoaussies
Date: 12/13/2008, 08:58 pm
We saw "Australia" and thought it great. But I have a few questions. We live in Florida, so dont have any fellow Aussies to ask. We have been in Darwin once, and do not remember the hills they showed in the movie.

Certainly the hills twoaussies would have been the Bowen countryside.

And Melodie:
Author: wlzmatilida ([email protected])
Date: 12/14/2008, 09:57 am

Hi Libretto,

I just saw your post - about the filming - so much of Darwin was bombed in the war that when rebuilt, it became the modern city you see today.

There are some of the older WW2 and post WW2 era building about but Cyclone Tracy decimated a lot of Darwin in 1974 and most of what you see now is post Cyclone Days.

http://www.anzacday.org.au/history/ww2/bfa/attack.html
is a site that outlines a bit of what libretto has described and gives a few photographs.

There is an American connection to Darwin that was only resolved earlier this year - the last of six Catalina flying boats [sunk in Darwin Harbour] ironically located by a Japabes company having a survey done - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...tm?site=darwin

Go for it..Libretto..

try these for size..

who was 'pig iron' bob?

what was a 'chocko' soldier?

was Blamey a drunk?

why do some older aussies say 'gordon bennet' when they curse?

I'll help with a couple john.

Sir Robert Menzies - think the story was something about him being behind selling scrap steel to the Japanese only to help shells to be fired back.

Choco's - conscript soldiers not looked upon too favourably by volunteers.

Blamey - Considered confrontational, violent, and ruthless, Blamey's tenure with the police was dogged by controversy; he was forced to resign in 1936 having lied to protect one of his senior officers. He remarried in April 1939 after the death of his first wife four years earlier. Within a month of the Second World War beginning he was given command of the 6th Division. The following year he became commander of the Australian Corps. Despite a mixed performance early in the war - his fitness for command was questioned by some subordinates - Blamey received further promotions and in December 1941 reached the rank of general.

In March 1942, with Japan having entered the war, Blamey returned to Melbourne as Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Military Forces and, under General Douglas MacArthur, became commander of Allied land forces in the Pacific. Overshadowed by the American - MacArthur had the prime minister's ear - and resented by many senior Australian officers, Blamey encountered numerous difficulties. His removal of several senior officers in Papua under pressure from MacArthur remains controversial.

Blamey conducted a series of successful offensives in New Guinea in 1943 but was criticised late in the war when Australians were involved in operations against long-bypassed Japanese units in New Guinea and Borneo. On a personal level, Blamey's public drinking and womanising harmed his reputation. Professionally, his failure to stand up for his subordinates prompted one historian to write that he was "the foremost Australian general of World War II but he will never be remembered as the greatest."

Gordie - God dammit!

Hi johhj

Bushranger has answered most of your questions I think, but I'll just add a little....

"Chocko" soldiers were, as Bushranger says, conscripted, rather than volunteers. They were dubbed "chocolate soldiers", i.e they would melt under stress, because until the middle of World War 2 the Army was a force of regulars, or volunteers.

During the heated World War 1 conscription debates Australian soldiers on the Western front, for example, had voted overwhelmingly against conscription.By 1942, however, it was obvious that we simply could not serve in the number of theatres of war to which the government (and the British) had committed Australia.

Conscription was necessary in order to defend the country, but anti conscription sentiments were still very strong.

Blamey was indeed a well known drinker, but it should be remembered he is the only Australian to have been made a Field Marshall, a not inconsiderable achievement.

Many of his critics, MacArthur, most of all ( a pattern emerging here with Mac, who did not seem to like Australians much, perhaps because they stood up to his giant ego) disliked his slow and cautious approach to warfare a- la -Montgomery.

He was also intensely mistrusted by some Australian senior Army men because he had never seen action in WW 1, but had been bought out of semi retirement to be C-in- C of the Australian ground forces.

He seems to have lacked the diplomatic skill necessary to mollify both the politicians and the Army but I do admire him for his supervison of the evacuation of Allied forces from Crete- a little recognized , but quite astounding tactical evasion.