Thread: 71st anniversary of bombing of Darwin

Thanks for the reminder Ean

When back home I normally work at HarbourView Plaza and so walk up to the esplanade to watch the ceremony.

Sorry to have missed it this year.

Cheers

Alan

Hi Ean

I have a link of sorts with those events in Darwin.
My Aunt, Sister Audrey McShane who was based at the Darwin Hospital for years , used to send home to Broadmarsh, snippets of information for her parents - my grand parents.

Amongst this information was a picture of the 'Wounded Angel', when I was in Darwin mid 1973 ( which was the year before Cyclone Tracey struck ), I made a point of visiting the church and viewing this poignant reminder of the bombing of Darwin.

Since Cyclone Tracey, I had been wondering if that icon had survived, so Googled this and I was pleased to know that today it still has an honoured place in the Cathedral, 'St. Mary's, Star of the Sea', in an alcove off the south side.
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yea,, but less movies were made,,

A few(!) years ago I was mad into "books" written by J E Mac Donnell, some of these were quite explicit about the happenings around Darwin after the bombing, where the bombed ships were positioned etc,, J E was actually a navigator on one of our Destroyers (or so the blurb said--)
fact or fiction?
definitely some of both,,
I had 150 of his "stories" at one stage,,
the odd one still lingers on my bookshelf,,

Originally Posted by wrinklearthur

Hi Ean

I have a link of sorts with those events in Darwin.
My Aunt, Sister Audrey McShane who was based at the Darwin Hospital for years , used to send home to Broadmarsh, snippets of information for her parents - my grand parents.

Amongst this information was a picture of the 'Wounded Angel', when I was in Darwin mid 1973 ( which was the year before Cyclone Tracey struck ), I made a point of visiting the church and viewing this poignant reminder of the bombing of Darwin.

Since Cyclone Tracey, I had been wondering if that icon had survived, so Googled this and I was pleased to know that today it still has an honoured place in the Cathedral, 'St. Mary's, Star of the Sea', in an alcove off the south side.
.

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I remember seeing this statue as a young kid but completely forgot all about it so I left work and went up and seen it. Took a few pics as well.
It looks a bit better than when I seen it about 35 or so yrs ago. The priest told me that it has had a bit of a refit since the statue was moved.
I took a pic of the story of the statue , hope its good enough to read.


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Cheers Ean

My father was in the Darwin area during that time as a transport Staff Sergeant and was just returning to their camp 10 miles south after posting the company mail at the Darwin P.O. which was bombed,with 3 in the 38 Ford Ute all unarmed all they could was floor it,they got back to camp and reported it,CO didn't believe them,and they were being marched to the pokey when the phone call came through to the CO,whence they were released every body issued with a full magazine (303) and an extra 10 bullets,with which to repell any invasion one must remember that they were transport,as at that time the road was still being built from Darwin to Alice Springs, their unit had moved from Vesty's Meatworks just after X'mas 41, I have a photo of him outside the Sergeants mess at Vesty's infront of a new 41 chev sedan type ute which with others went to Singapore with the 8th Division.


cheers

I often wonder just how unexpected the bombing of Darwin actually was.
Patsy's (My wife) mother was working at the Vic Hotel to be near her
Husband, Harry, who was posted to Darwin as crew on the Boom ship (Kangaroo I think).
Bessie (Patsy's Mum) always was a bit mystified about a friend they had in common in Darwin who organised a berth on what was heralded as being "the last boat out of Darwin, and as a result of this evacuation she lived to tell the tale. We have a copy of the last menu for the "last supper" held in the Vic Hotel Dining room just before the bombing when it was closed down!

She left Darwin the next day, along with most other women who were not involved in essential services and headed the long way around for Brisbane, via Fremantle.
The following day three of her best friends from the telephone exchange were lying dead in the rubble of the P.O.
Obviously Military intelligence of the day had a pretty good idea what was about to happen and when.
The gentleman concerned in her evacuation, Jim Cahill, in later years was involved heavily in the construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and later involved in, and fought against techniques used in the construction of the Westgate Bridge. To this day we still don't really know what was his official position in Darwin.
We were always interested to hear what Harry (Patsy's father) did during the bombing and he always replied "He hid up in a hollow log not far from the Port area", and today, armed with the hindsight/ knowledge of how unprepared we really were at that time, I believe that that is quite possibly exactly what he did.
Regards
Glen

Hi Ean

Thanks for going to the trouble of taking those photo's and I have received your PM as well.

Because of the 71st anniversary and the fact that the church is a memorial to the casualties of the bombing of Darwin, I felt that the two stories tie together well.

Funny thing is the memory, I started to recall all sorts of information about my visit to Darwin, while there I went looking for remnants of the war damage and there wasn't a lot on display, but I remember coming back out of the new road from Jim Jim Falls, which at the time was being built for a new mine east of the Stuart Highway ( could have been Ranger no 1 ) and at the straight ahead on the other side of the highway in the bush, were these mounds with tree's grown about and in them, I was curious to what they were and had a look.

On looking at the mounds I saw they were circular, gravel with a bank about one metre high and only thing they could have been were bomb craters.
.

I believe that there as a military unit stationed at Larrakeyah Barracks at that time which I think was fairly close to Vesty's meatworks they could have been a regular army garrison unit, but as to what size it was I have no idea.