by Judy Nunn
Born in Darwin on 22 January 1901, he had taken his first breath, he said, ‘in the same hour that Queen Victoria took her last’. At times he spoke like a colonial Englishman, and at others like an outback Aussie, depending upon the occasion and who he was talking to. As a result, in the eyes of the European community, Foong Lee so contradicted the image of the inscrutable Oriental that he qualified unreservedly, albeit a little patronisingly, as a good all-round chap by some, and a bonzer bloke by others. In actuality, Foong Lee was perceived by all exactly the way Foong Lee wished to be perceived.
Having prepared his shopfront display—an extraordinary selection of goods, both European and Chinese, from general groceries and photographic supplies to silks and lanterns and Eastern delicacies—Foong Lee walked through to the living quarters at the rear. Perhaps his father may want some breakfast, it might be one of the old man’s good days. But it wasn’t.
In the living area which looked out over the large back courtyard, Foong Shek Mei was a crumpled heap on the sofa. He’d slept there last night. Again. As he had for the past week or so. When the family had been present he had at least attempted to scrape himself up from the sofa and retire to his bed. It saddened Foong Lee beyond measure to see his father reduced to a skeleton, his eyes dim and befuddled, his mind obscured by the phantoms which haunted it.
Foong Shek Mei’s addiction was no secret amongst the elders of the Chinese community. There were a number like him, remnants of the old days, habitues of the opium divans of Hong Kong and Singapore, who secretly fed their habits behind closed doors in little rooms at the rear of shops and shanty dwellings in Chinatown. Although the Darwin Chinese upheld the law and indeed did not approve of the opium trade, they sympathised with those few elders amongst them to whom, throughout their lives, the drug had been readily and legally available and whose inner peace could now only be attained by ‘chasing the dragon’.
The once-strong body of Foong Shek Mei, the body which had served him so well when he’d arrived from Singapore in the nineties to work as a coolie on the goldfields, was now a wasted skeleton. A lifetime of opium abuse had taken its toll, and over the past decade his mind too had decayed to the point where he’d become childlike, dependent. Foong Lee now purchased the opium necessary to assuage the relentless demands of his father’s addiction. He was reluctant to do so but aware that he had no option. Foong Shek Mei was too far gone, and the opium was now necessary to ease him into a painless death.
Foong Lee warmed some soup and sat beside the old man, cradling the emaciated body against his. Gently, he touched the bowl to the parched lips.
‘Lei yiu yam, Baba.’
Foong Shek Mei’s eyes slowly opened. But glazed, unfocussed, they saw nothing.
‘Lei yiu yam,’ Foong Lee repeated, imploring his father to drink.
The old man’s head leaned forward slightly, the cracked lips parted and, like an obedient child, he sipped. Very gently. Twice. Then he rested his head back on his son’s shoulder and his gaze focussed on the hand which held the bowl. His eyes slowly became alive and he turned to look at Foong Lee.
‘Lei hai ho jai, Foong Lee,’ he said. Both the voice and the smile were gentle. Faded and distant, as if they came from far away, but they were genuine nonetheless. Foong Lee was indeed a good son and Foong Shek Mei wished very much to tell him so.
Foong Lee smiled fondly back. ‘Lei yiu yam, Baba. Ho gan yue.’
But the old man’s head lolled against his son’s shoulder, he’d fallen asleep.
Foong Lee rose. He eased his father’s head comfortably back upon the sofa, then he walked through the house to the shop to prepare for his morning stroll. It was his custom these days to walk the streets of Chinatown, to greet those few of his friends who remained in Darwin and to check on the properties of those who had left. The closed and shuttered shops were an advertisement to the lawless element who might wish to take advantage of the current situation. Foong Lee considered it his duty to keep his eye on things, to check the shopfronts for any sign of forced entry which may have taken place under the veil of night.
Before embarking on his walk, he checked the day’s ‘specials’. Despite the fact that business was poor, Foong Lee liked to vary the array and to have some tantalising offer displayed daily out front. Satisfied that all was in order, he stepped into the street. He would open the shutters for business upon his return.
Toshiro Kurasoto flinched. He couldn’t help it. The voice that cracked like a whip through his headset momentarily startled him. It shouldn’t have done so, he’d been expecting the break in radio silence from the moment their flight path had approached Bathurst Island. Fifty miles north-north-west of Darwin, Bathurst Island was the point at which the attack force was to receive its specific orders. After the continuous monotone of the engine, however, the sudden sharp noise caused Toshiro to flinch, involuntarily and barely perceptibly, but he cast a glance to his left nevertheless, hoping his commander had not observed his inappropriate reaction.
Lieutenant Akira Nakajima was far too intent upon the information and instruction he was receiving to take any notice whatsoever of his young copilot. The US destroyer Peary had returned to the port of Darwin for refuelling within the past hour. It was a stroke of luck. Her presence had not been anticipated when the attack plans had first been laid out. And she was to be Nakajima’s prime target. After the initial high-level assault upon Darwin, the dive-bombers would take control of the attack. And Akira Nakajima determined that it would be he who would eradicate the US destroyer. The whole of Darwin would be under attack and its installations annihilated, that was the plan, but the Peary would be the personal jewel in Akira’s crown.
Having breakfasted, Paul Trewinnard lounged about in the luxury of the Hotel Darwin foyer observing, through the potted palms, the comings and goings of the few remaining guests and staff. It was one of his favourite pastimes, studying human behaviour. After ten minutes or so, he decided to wander down to the wharf to look at the warships. The US destroyer Peary had arrived this morning, the desk clerk had told him.
‘Huge thing,’ the clerk had said, ‘quite terrifying really.’
She’d be worth a look at, Paul thought, donning his Panama hat. He nodded to the uniformed doorman as he stepped out into the glare of the morning.
Aggie Marshall walked down the Esplanade on her way to the post office. The Esplanade formed the harbourside boundary of Darwin’s township, sweeping down the coastline and turning in an L-shape north-east at the wharves.
The streets of Darwin were busy, mainly with military personnel. Many of the older buildings along the Esplanade had been commandeered by the military, and men went about their business. The streets leading off to the left from the Esplanade and into the town centre were busy too. The civilians who had remained in the town were also going about their business.
Foong Lee stepped out of his shop and started down the broad avenue of Cavenagh Street, walking beneath the welcome shade of the endless verandahed shops and crossing the small laneways which dissected the major streets of Chinatown. Just ahead, to his right, was Gordon’s Don Hotel on the corner of Bennet Street and beyond that, to his left, was the yung si, the massive banyan tree which stood at the far end of Cavenagh Street only half a block from the wharf end of the Esplanade. The yung si was a dominant feature of Chinatown, particularly to the children who played amongst its branches. Foong Lee made a habit of turning into Bennet Street just before he got to the yung si, then he’d walk up Smith Street and back into Cavenagh to complete his around-the-block stroll. It was a pleasant twenty-minute walk in all, at a leisurely pace.
The attack force had crossed the coast of the mainland to the east of Darwin. Upon instruction, they swung round to approach the town from the south-east, with the sun behind them. Far in the distance, and from twenty thousand feet up in the sky, Darwin Harbour looked magnificent. And vulnerable. Ships of every description sat like tiny dots on the vast blue water. Forty-five in number. And tucke
d away, on its tiny peninsula within the massive harbour, was Darwin itself. Most vulnerable of all. Innocently waiting. Undefended. A lamb to the slaughter, Akira Nakajima thought.
‘Tora!’ The command barked through Nakajima’s headset. ‘Tora! Tora!’
Akira Nakajima commenced his dive.
Paul Trewinnard had strolled down Lover’s Walk to the wharves and was studying the ships in the harbour when he heard the warning sirens. He thought it was a military exercise at first. Until he looked up.
Aggie Marshall was outside the Hotel Darwin and just about to cross Herbert Street when she heard the wail of the sirens. An awful sound, it always unnerved her, even when she knew it was only an exercise of some sort. Then she looked up.
Having turned the corner from Bennet into Smith Street, Foong Lee was outside the Bank of New South Wales when the sirens sounded. An air raid, he thought in the instant he heard them. He shaded his eyes and looked up.
The whole of Darwin looked up. It was two minutes before ten o’clock on a Thursday morning and people stood in the street staring up at the sky in disbelief, unable to comprehend what their eyes perceived.
Time stopped as the menacing horde swooped down from the sun. For the hundreds watching from the town, it seemed an eternity. Then, suddenly, the planes were overhead, so many they all but obliterated the sun. The light seemed to dim, the sky no longer seemed blue, and by ten o’clock, Darwin was under massive attack from the Japanese Imperial Air Force.
The Peary was hit aft by a dive-bomber. Her bridge ignited and the crew worked valiantly to extinguish the flames. Then again, another direct hit. But she fought on. Upon her captain’s orders her guns still fired as she drifted ablaze on the harbour waters.
The Neptuna, berthed at Main Jetty, was hit amidships. She burned fiercely. A time bomb, the intense heat threatening at any moment to ignite the heavy ammunition and depth charges she carried.
The Zealandia and the British Motorist, both at anchor, were hit and sank at their moorings. The harbour was an inferno, erupting in pockets of flame and belching black smoke and, as shells screamed through the air and explosions showered the shoreline with debris, the township of Darwin too became a blaze of destruction.
Foong Lee ran up Smith Street. His one aim was to get back to his father whom he knew would be in a state of utter terror and confusion. People were screaming in the streets, panic-stricken. He passed C.J. Cashman’s store and, halfway up the block, the force of an explosion caused him to stagger. He fell to his knees, hauled himself back up on his feet and looked over his shoulder. Cashman’s had been hit. Sheets of galvanised iron had been hurled across the street and smoke billowed from the windows of the gutted building. Two bodies were sprawled on the pavement. Foong Lee ran on.
Paul Trewinnard made no attempt at all to run for cover. What was the point? In his opinion there seemed no specific place in Darwin any safer than another. There had been no preparation for an event such as this, although there damn well should have been, he thought. Where were the Government-built bunkers? Where was the massive defence force which should have been present to drive away the marauders? He was as fearful as the next man, he’d be the first to admit, as he sqatted, covering his head with his arms, water and debris showering about him, but he might as well stay where he was. If he was going to be killed then he’d watch the spectacle first.
And as he watched, Paul’s fear was mingled with awe. Out on the harbour, the Peary, already twice hit and adrift, her guns still bravely blazing, suddenly destructed. The vessel’s magazine exploded and, in the instant before she was engulfed in flames, Paul could swear he saw men flying through the air. Black oil flooded the harbour, black smoke billowed up into the morning air and the once-proud Peary, now a massive ball of fire, burned on the water. His own fear now forgotten, Paul thought of the men who, only seconds previously, had been firing those guns. This was Armageddon, he thought. The annihilation was total.
After the first hideous moments of shock, Aggie Marshall ran for cover. The post office was only a block away, on the bend of the Esplanade, so she headed there. If she was to die then at least she’d be with people she knew. She crossed Bennet Street, the post office was right ahead of her. Then she was thrown backwards by a force so strong it lifted her off her feet. The noise was deafening. Surely her eardrums must have burst, she thought briefly. Then she knew nothing as she hit the pavement and was showered with rubble.
Foong Lee ran down Knuckey Street to the corner of Cavenagh. All about him others were running, screaming, wailing, terrified, and the air was thick with smoke and the sickening smell of cordite. It seemed to him that the whole of Darwin was exploding. He looked up Cavenagh Street. His shop was a block away. He stepped from the kerb. But he had barely crossed Knuckey Street before the force of another explosion threw him to the ground.
When the smoke had cleared and he’d struggled to his feet, there was no shop a block away. There was no block at all. Just wasteland. Amidst the pall of smoke and dust, there was no delineation of streets and houses. There was nothing but rubble. Half of Chinatown had been obliterated.
Foong Lee walked towards where his shop and his home had been. As he walked, he ignored the mayhem which surrounded him. He ignored the fire which crackled about his feet, licking at the dried timbers which had once been verandah posts. He walked slowly, there was no point in running. He’d check the wreckage, he thought numbly, then he must help the others, those who lay maimed and bleeding amongst the ruins. He prayed that Foong Shek Mei had not awakened from his drug-induced state, he prayed that the gods had been kind and that his father had known no terror. As he stepped over the threshold into the smouldering remains of the small room which had once served as his office he saw the valuables safe. It sat upright, still locked and unscarred, apparently impervious to the Japanese bombs. With a numb sense of irony, Foong Lee walked past the safe and commenced the search for his father’s remains amongst the destruction.
At 10.40 a.m. the all-clear sounded. The Japanese attack force had departed as quickly as it had appeared, and Darwin lay devastated in its wake.
Fire engines and ambulances screamed through the streets. Rescue work started immediately; there were those trapped beneath rubble, the wounded and the dying.
Foong Lee went to the aid of a child. A little boy. He was badly burned and, as Foong Lee gently lifted him, the child’s skin came away in his hands. Mercifully, the boy was dead. Foong Lee was not a man given to the expression of emotion, but he fell to his knees and wept for the human race.
It was an army Landrover, serving as an ambulance, which transported Aggie Marshall to the hospital. She regained consciousness as they lifted her from where she lay in the street and, as she did, she realised that she was not in pain, but she couldn’t seem to move. Her body was a dead weight and yet she felt extremely light-headed. A strange combination.
Good heavens, she thought when she saw the firemen fighting the flames which were devouring the post office. It’s gone. The post office has gone. She wondered if all of her friends who worked there had gone too, surely nobody could have survived such destruction. She wanted to ask one of the two kind men who were so gently carrying her what had happened to her friends. She raised her head and opened her mouth to say something, but then she noticed the blood. All over the stretcher, all over her clothes. Such a lot of blood. Was it hers? And she seemed to have lost her left shoe, she noticed as they laid her gently in the back of the Landrover. But then she seemed to have lost most of her left foot as well. She couldn’t really tell for the blood.
Whilst emergency rescue work and firefighting continued there was no time to ponder what had happened, or even to mourn the dead. There was so much to do that it seemed the battle was still being fought and, as if to emphasise the point, the time bomb berthed at Main Jetty suddenly exploded.
The Neptuna had been burning fiercely for close to an hour and, at 11.15, the heat aboard the 6,000-ton vessel reached such an intensity
that the high explosives aboard finally ignited.
Giant jets of flame propelled wreckage high into the sky like an erupting volcano, showering the harbour with smouldering debris. In the town the force of the explosion shattered the windows of those buildings left standing as the whole of Darwin trembled from the impact of the shock waves.
The gigantic black cloud which followed the explosion billowed over the harbour and the township like a huge exclamation mark. Surely it indicated the end to the battle, to the unspeakable events of the morning. But it didn’t. Barely thirty minutes later a fresh horror presented itself.
At 11.58, two hours after the initial assault on Darwin, fifty-four unescorted land-based bombers attacked the RAAF base four miles north-east of the town. The attack lasted twenty-five minutes and the base was virtually annihilated. The gateway to the north lay ruined. The Japanese had successfully destroyed all RAAF strength in the north-western area of Australia, known as the Top End. The vast land to the south was now more vulnerable than ever.
1628
From his little writing desk in the corner by the door, young Pieter Grij stole another furtive glance at the woman as he dipped his quilled pen in the inkwell. And, yet again, he quickly averted his gaze to concentrate upon the giant leather-bound ledger before him, lest his father should catch the naked admiration in his eyes. But old Gerrit Grij’s attention was focussed upon the locket which he held in his hands. Seated at his showcase table, he lovingly buffed the silver with a fine silk cloth then delicately, reverently, and with a touch of regret as if loath to part with this newborn gem of his creation, he placed it in the black, velvet-lined presentation case.
