ABC Radio National

Saturday Extra





Date/Time 13 Oct 2015 7:39:25pm
I was not yet eight and Pearl Harbour had not yet happened when, late in 1941, I overheard my mother conversing with someone over the front gate. The topic was the threat to Australia should Japan make an offensive move. This was not a highly educated woman, but what she said clearly indicated that people in central Queensland were conscious of the threat. "If Singapore falls, we don't stand much of a chance," was my mother's opinion.
The 8th December came and I was not the only one in our region who was well aware of the danger. Instead of having six weeks for the school holidays, we had ten; once school did resume, we had staggered hours, juniors in the morning and older children in the afternoon. We had limited space to play in the yard because slit-trenches had been dug and we were drilled in getting out of the classrooms and into the trenches in an orderly manner.
Because we lived in a copper-mining town, we were thought to be a potential target, because that mineral was a major component of brass. Such serious consideration was given to the possibility of our needing to be evacuated to a small country town, further from the coast, that we travelled there to look at available houses for rent. The danger of attack lessened and our move did not eventuate.
There is no doubt that we knew about the Battle of the Coral Sea and we certainly knew about both the Fuzzy Wuzzy angels on the Owen Stanley Range and the troubles on the Kokoda Trail. Never once did I hear it called the Kokoda "Track" - since the men who fought there and the army nurses who cared for the injured ones still refer to it as the "Trail", that is more than good enough for me.
