Read Online SOMEDAY SOON by David Crookes - Free Book Online Page B

which had been diverted to Brisbane while
en route from San Francisco to Manila at the time of the Japanese
attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines.
    Three days after the Pensacola convoy reached Brisbane,
Curtin had made an emotional public appeal to the United States to
help Australia in her hour of need. The appeal fortunately
coincided with an American plan to wage war on Japan from
Australia. Although the arrival of the Americans was unheralded,
because of strict government censorship of troop movements, the
sight of American servicemen on the streets of Australia’s capital
cities had become commonplace in recent weeks.
    Curtin knew the presence of the Americans
gave heart to an increasingly alarmed Australian public which,
until the entry of Japan into the war, had generally treated the
far-off European conflict with casual indifference. But now, with
the bombing of Darwin, Australians were afraid as they had never
been before, even though the official government censor, newspaper
magnate Keith Murdoch, had complied with Curtin’s personal
direction to withhold the true extent of the death and destruction
from the public.
    The Prime Minister walked over to his office
window and drew back the curtain. The dawn was just breaking on a
new day. Curtin was wondering what it might hold when there was a
knock at the door and Frank Forde, the Deputy Prime Minister and
Army Minister entered the room.
    ‘John, wonderful news,’ Forde said with a
wide smile on his face. ‘We’ve just had a signal from Washington.
President Roosevelt has ordered General Douglas MacArthur to leave
the Philippines for Australia to assume command of a new South-west
Pacific Theatre.’
    *
    When Faraway passed through Dundas Strait separating
Melville Island and the Coburg Peninsular and nosed into the
Arafura Sea, she found a favorable wind. For the first time since
leaving Darwin Joe shut down the engine and the ketch entered the
almost silent world of sail. The only sound was the chuckle of the
ketch’s bow as she gently pushed her way north-easterly through a
calm sea.
    There had been no sightings of Japanese
warplanes or even reconnaissance aircraft all day. The only visual
reminder of the horror of Darwin, which now lay a hundred miles
astern, was Koko’s small figure sitting alone with his sadness near
the bow of the vessel. That night they dropped anchor in Trepang
Bay and ate fresh fish which Faith had frying in the pan just
minutes after Sunday and Monday had caught them.
    The next morning they set a course for
Croker Island. It was almost dark when Faraway arrived in Mission Bay. The vessel was
well-known at the island and was greeted warmly. That evening, Joe,
Faith and Koko dined with the missionaries. They learned of the
fearful reaction of the Methodist and Anglican missions across the
Top End to the Japanese attack on Darwin. None of the many missions
had been evacuated by the Navy as promised. Now, fearing a
full-scale Japanese invasion, the missions were using their radio
network to try and organize the evacuation of white female staff
and mixed-race children themselves, using the church owned
lugger Larrpan to transfer
evacuees from the islands to the mainland.
    The missionaries at Croker Island had
decided it was too dangerous for the Larrpan to sail to Darwin because of sightings of
Japanese submarines in Van Diemen Gulf being reported over the
airwaves. Instead, a plan was being formulated to take all evacuees
over seven hundred nautical miles to the south-east, to the mouth
of the Roper River in the Gulf of Carpentaria. From there they
would travel inland, on the river and overland, over a hundred and
fifty miles to Mataranka, a small settlement three hundred miles
south of Darwin on the road to Alice Springs.
    When one of the priests asked Joe for
his opinion of the plan, he expressed reservations. ‘It’s a long,
difficult voyage during the cyclone season in the best of
circumstances, Father. I know Kolino