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Authors: David Crookes
Tags: Historical
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or never.
Joe whispered to Koko to carefully lift
the anchor and told Sunday and Monday to raise the sails, warning
them that the slightest sound could betray them. When the anchor
broke free, Joe held Faraway to her predetermined course and with Faith beside him at the
wheel, the ketch ghosted silently out of the harbor on the ebbing
tide.
By dawn, she was nearly forty miles out to
sea, in the centre of Van Diemen Gulf, charging along at full
throttle and heading northward for Cape Don and the Arafura
Sea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Faraway thrust her bow through the emerald green
waters of Van Diemen Gulf in brilliant sunshine, it was still dark
two thousand miles to the south where the Prime Minister of
Australia anxiously paced the floor of his office in
Canberra.
Just four months earlier, fate had decreed
that fifty-seven-year-old John Curtin, a socialist, one-time trade
union leader, journalist and antimilitarist, should hold the
destiny of the nation in his hands at the very time when its
greatest fear—the dreaded invasion by the Asian ‘yellow
peril’—looked more and more like becoming a reality with every
passing hour.
In the short time since taking the reins,
Curtin had seen a staggering succession of Allied military
reversals resulting in the greatest threat to the tenuous hold of
Europeans on the continent of Australia than at any time during the
course of the nation’s entire history. Not the least was the loss
of the supposedly impregnable British fortress of Singapore and
with it the grim realization that the Royal Navy could no longer
guarantee Australia’s security as it had for over a hundred and
sixty years. Now the bombing of Darwin had brought the Pacific War
to Australia’s very shores and Curtin had been forced into
action.
Following a secret session of Parliament he
had authorized the sending of a cable to Winston Churchill in
London, demanding the return of the fifty thousand men of the
Australian Imperial Force serving with the British forces overseas.
He had stated emphatically that the Imperial Force, already
weakened by severe losses in Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East
Indies, were the only seasoned soldiers Australia had and they were
now desperately needed to defend their homeland against an imminent
Japanese invasion.
The cable was the most recent of several
forceful exchanges over the past week between Curtin to Churchill.
It left no room for maneuvering by the British Prime Minister whose
intransigence on the matter prior to the bombing of Darwin had been
absolute, insisting the bulk of the Imperial Force be deployed in
the defense of Burma, to where a convoy was already taking
them.
Curtin continued to pace the floor. He
hoped the decision to recall the 6 th and 7 th Divisions of the
Imperial Force hadn’t been taken too late. It would still be some
time before the convoy carrying the troops could return to
Australia. In the meantime, with much of the Royal Australian Navy
serving abroad with the Royal Navy, and the cream of the Royal
Australian Air Force engaged in Europe and the Middle East,
Australia would have to rely on around eighty thousand untrained
and poorly equipped conscripted militia soldiers, many of whom had
never held a rifle let alone fired one.
But Curtin was heartened by the fact that not
every setback of the past few months had been a total disaster for
Australia. The successful attack on the United States Pacific Fleet
at Pearl Harbor, and the United States Army Air Force in the
Philippines, had made Australia a natural staging area from where
the Americans could halt Japan’s advance across the Pacific.
The few American aircraft that had
escaped destruction in the Philippines, mainly P-40 fighters and
B.17 bombers, had already been sent to Australia and more men and
equipment were beginning to arrive from the United States. The
first Americans had come aboard an eight-ship convoy of men and
equipment escorted by the cruiser USS
Pensacola,
Joe whispered to Koko to carefully lift
the anchor and told Sunday and Monday to raise the sails, warning
them that the slightest sound could betray them. When the anchor
broke free, Joe held Faraway to her predetermined course and with Faith beside him at the
wheel, the ketch ghosted silently out of the harbor on the ebbing
tide.
By dawn, she was nearly forty miles out to
sea, in the centre of Van Diemen Gulf, charging along at full
throttle and heading northward for Cape Don and the Arafura
Sea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Faraway thrust her bow through the emerald green
waters of Van Diemen Gulf in brilliant sunshine, it was still dark
two thousand miles to the south where the Prime Minister of
Australia anxiously paced the floor of his office in
Canberra.
Just four months earlier, fate had decreed
that fifty-seven-year-old John Curtin, a socialist, one-time trade
union leader, journalist and antimilitarist, should hold the
destiny of the nation in his hands at the very time when its
greatest fear—the dreaded invasion by the Asian ‘yellow
peril’—looked more and more like becoming a reality with every
passing hour.
In the short time since taking the reins,
Curtin had seen a staggering succession of Allied military
reversals resulting in the greatest threat to the tenuous hold of
Europeans on the continent of Australia than at any time during the
course of the nation’s entire history. Not the least was the loss
of the supposedly impregnable British fortress of Singapore and
with it the grim realization that the Royal Navy could no longer
guarantee Australia’s security as it had for over a hundred and
sixty years. Now the bombing of Darwin had brought the Pacific War
to Australia’s very shores and Curtin had been forced into
action.
Following a secret session of Parliament he
had authorized the sending of a cable to Winston Churchill in
London, demanding the return of the fifty thousand men of the
Australian Imperial Force serving with the British forces overseas.
He had stated emphatically that the Imperial Force, already
weakened by severe losses in Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East
Indies, were the only seasoned soldiers Australia had and they were
now desperately needed to defend their homeland against an imminent
Japanese invasion.
The cable was the most recent of several
forceful exchanges over the past week between Curtin to Churchill.
It left no room for maneuvering by the British Prime Minister whose
intransigence on the matter prior to the bombing of Darwin had been
absolute, insisting the bulk of the Imperial Force be deployed in
the defense of Burma, to where a convoy was already taking
them.
Curtin continued to pace the floor. He
hoped the decision to recall the 6 th and 7 th Divisions of the
Imperial Force hadn’t been taken too late. It would still be some
time before the convoy carrying the troops could return to
Australia. In the meantime, with much of the Royal Australian Navy
serving abroad with the Royal Navy, and the cream of the Royal
Australian Air Force engaged in Europe and the Middle East,
Australia would have to rely on around eighty thousand untrained
and poorly equipped conscripted militia soldiers, many of whom had
never held a rifle let alone fired one.
But Curtin was heartened by the fact that not
every setback of the past few months had been a total disaster for
Australia. The successful attack on the United States Pacific Fleet
at Pearl Harbor, and the United States Army Air Force in the
Philippines, had made Australia a natural staging area from where
the Americans could halt Japan’s advance across the Pacific.
The few American aircraft that had
escaped destruction in the Philippines, mainly P-40 fighters and
B.17 bombers, had already been sent to Australia and more men and
equipment were beginning to arrive from the United States. The
first Americans had come aboard an eight-ship convoy of men and
equipment escorted by the cruiser USS
Pensacola,
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