by Rosen, Sue;
Rabbits, birds and native game; scarce enough - but can be shot or snared.
Fish and eels in most of the waterholes - (keep fishing lines and hooks in the camp kit).
Roasted Alsophila pulp from the top of the tree fern.
Roasted Bush Asparagus - the young shoots of the Bulrush (Typha) in the water holes.
Boiled Kurrajong roots.
Kurrajong coffee from the roasted seeds.
(Note that explorer Leichhardt and his party lived for some time on roast and boiled flying fox.)
ø/ CIVIL COLLABORATION COLUMNS AND THEIR MOBILISATION:
Every citizen, having carried out his and her unit battle orders as a private person and as a worker in the peace-time economy, will report to his or her Civil Collaboration Column.
In each Riding in each Shire, or in each separate community, every male citizen over the age of 14, and every female citizen employed in wartime duties, will enrol in the Civil Collaboration Column and section thereof corresponding to his or her place in the civil sphere - vide the ten National Emergency Services.
These are -
1. Civil Administration C.C.C. - Police, justice, law: Child supervision (teaching), Banking and Finance, Council Services, Town Fire Brigades, A.R.P.-N.E.S.
2. Medical C.C.C. - hospitals, ambulances, doctors, dentists, opticians, druggists, X-ray operators, burial services, surgical supplies, Red Cross, First Aid &c.
3. Transport C.C.C. - Shipping, air, railways, tramways, road transport, garages and oil depots &c.
4. Communication C.C.C. - Post and telegraph, wireless, radio, newspapers, messenger, carrier pigeon.
5. Commissariat C.C.C. - Canteens, hotels, restaurants, bakers, butchers, grocers, cooks, waitresses &c.
6. Primary Production C.C.C. - Cattle, wheat, fish, sugar, tobacco, dairying, butter and cheese factories &c.
7. Forestry C.C.C. - Timber supply, forest officers, timber-getters, sawmills, woodworkers, charcoal burners, bushfire brigades &c.
8. Miners C.C.C. - Coal, minerals &c.
9. Leather, rubber and textiles C.C.C. - Operators therein.
10. Mechanical C.C.C. - Mechanics, fitters, plumbers, tinsmiths &c.
11. Building and Camouflage C.C.C. - Architects, carpenters, painters &c.
12. Labor and demolition C.C.C. - Unattached labor.
In each Shire, or in each separate community, a meeting will be called for each C.C.C. for enrolment, and for the election of officers and chairman.
Every citizen will report in writing to the Secretary on the fulfilment of his Citizen Battle orders, and the Secretary will compile and summarise the whole in a report for consideration of a second meeting immediately following, to prepare a C.C.C. draft plan for submission to –
ø/ A COMMITTEE OF CIVIL COLLABORATION COLUMNS (C.C.C.C.):
This Committee will consist of the elected chairmen of the twelve Columns or their representatives, with Secretary and clerical staff to be provided by the State Government.
- And will become the district consultative committee to -
- A DISTRICT C.C.C. COMMISSIONER - to be appointed by the State Government.
It will prepare from the C.C.C. draft plans a composite C.C.C.C. draft plan - and the District C.C.C. Commissioner therefrom will draft the complete district plan in detail to conform to the Master Plan, and submit it for the approval of Government.
Thereupon the District Plan will become law and will be administered by the District C.C.C. Commissioner and policed by the Police, reinforced by special police.
Until this be done, the District C.C.C. Commissioner may adopt and implement in emergency a provisional draft plan.
ø/ THE THEME OF THE C.C.C. PLAN:
The theme of the C.C.C. plans will be, that:
ø/ No air raid, no shellings, no civil casualties therefrom, and no rumor or gossip will intimidate the working population to cessation of work, evacuation, or stampede; But will stimulate it to work harder and engage part-time in emergency auxiliaries to counter the enemy action.
ø/ Organising meantime for the coastal danger zones - whilst there is time -
(i) The entire suspension of peace-time development.
(ii) The implementation and extension of peacetime decentralisation principles.
(iii) The reduction of war-time non-essential industries, and the extension of war-time essential industries and services.
(iv) The rationalisation of remaining industry; the amalgamation of sawmills, butter, cheese and other factories, and their transport.
(v) The transfer inland or otherwise of displaced factories, of spare machinery and parts, of timber stocks, of stud stock, of luxury goods.
(vi) The voluntary evacuation of the infirm, of children under 16, and of mothers and women over 16 not voluntarily attached to C.C.C.
ø/ And having ready, for automatic-instant unit and group implementation at the invasion signal for any sector, a plan for:
(i) Evacuation by (a) evacuation trains; and (b) private motor cars with their last fill of petrol, the remaining infirm, children and unrequired women.
(ii) Civil mobilisation and withdrawal, by personal and group action, of the working population and of all available supplies of cattle &c., to pre-selected C.C.C. assembly points behind the fighting front for reorganisation to mobile functioning.
(iii) Salvage and demolition, search party and rescue work.
ø/ And having located beforehand -
Caches and hiding places for stores. Watering place and C.C.C. assembly points and camps in the forests. Bush roads and tracks, and travelling stock routes. Forest Stations.
Each C.C.C. will draft its own plan and submit to the District Commissioner for co-ordination with the District Plan, in consultation with the C.C.C.C. and for issue back to each C.C.C. when finally fitted to the District Plan and approved for implementation.
In any emergency pending this, each C.C.C. will operate its plan as co-operatively as possible with its fellow Citizen Collaboration Columns.
Employers and employees and their civil organisation will automatically become part of the C.C.C. war organisation and will continue to function in their civil employment as part of this C.C.C. organisation as fully as war circumstances will permit, but in accordance with the C.C.C. action detail.
Each C.C.C. will operate the transport available to it from its own civil economy; this transport will remain in its original ownership unless and until it is impressed.
The concept is that the civil economy becomes mobile and organised to function in war under original ownership and employer-employee arrangements, but functioning to C.C.C. plan - unless and until it is absorbed into the military organisation of the country.
Men who find themselves unemployed or unattached to a C.C.C., will report for duty to the nearest National Service Officer, for enrolment in the Labor or other C.C.C. - or in emergency may report for duty to a functioning C.C.C., or to the nearest Forest Station or police station.
Any man over 16 not so enrolled will not be entitled to war rations and may be classed as a deserter.
Rates of pay for the Labor Corps or for men attached to C.C.Cs. not on employer pay rolls, will be equivalent to military rates.
Each man must be self-contained, carrying his swag, with a week’s provisions, a water bag or water bottle and a billy; and bringing his axe, mattock, shovel, or other tools; he must wear his identity discs and carry a war ration card.
Briefly, should any sector be imminently threatened by enemy landing from sea or air, the men will instantly see the women, children and infirm off to places of safety by train or civil motor car, and themselves take to the bush as C.C.Cs., with all available material and remaining transport, and there organise to mobile functioning, serving and supporting the fighting forces as required by the military authorities.
This has been done in China without plan, and in Russia to pre-arranged plan.
Australians can do no less! Country people will have little difficulty in ac
commodating themselves to an arduous open-air living; many city dwellers know how to hike and camp.
There is no snow in Australia!
The limiting factor is water!
The first tasks in the chain of C.C.C. invasion duties are to locate the water supplies along the primary and subsidiary lines of withdrawal, to pre-select C.C.C. camps at these water supplies, and to see that even from the most secluded camp a line of retreat remains open even if only on foot with swags.
The section on “Coastal Routes and Terrain” indicates these broadly -
Bush sawmills, forest stations, sleepergetters and cattle drovers’ camps, dams, wells and water holes give the local clues.
It will be necessary to pre-select the C.C.C. camps - to estimate beforehand how many people each could sustain and for what period, to rough out camping and parking places and supply dumps and caches, to camouflage them from the air, to protect them from bush fires, to screen them from infiltrating parties, to defend them by barricades and trenches and to plan retreat.
Calculating the number of male civilians to be mobilised in the C.C.Cs., these can then be apportioned by villages or communities to the preselected camps.
Forest Stations can become C.C.C. headquarters - their stores and tool depots and first aid equipment, maps, telephone &c. at the service of such. Fire lookouts, towers and crows nests can become observation posts. Water filling posts and water trucks can serve.
All timber workers (C.C.C. Forestry) should regard the Forest Stations as their assembly points, whence military timber requirements can be dealt with, charcoal supplies arranged for producer gas trucks, and guiding, scouting, counter infiltration, and bushfire defence and offence arranged.
There will have to be lines of bush communications between the C.C.C. and inland and with the military; and evacuation of wounded and unfit. Severe rationing is inevitable and supply must be developed at the expense of the enemy. There will have to be supply raids and guerilla warfare - with or without military weapons or uniforms. There will be aeroplane machine gunning attacks, infiltrating enemy parties, bushfires - or floods.
There will be many difficulties - but fewer than those which would befall if civilians remained as Japanese hostages.
Knowing the bush better than the invader the C.C.Cs. will be able to render helpful service to the fighting forces -
(1) By maintaining and supplying themselves as organised groups.
(2) By auxiliary service to the military according to their C.C.C.
(3) By providing military reinforcements as armies become available - preferably from the enemy!
(4) By constituting a flanking screen to guard against the out-flanking of our fighting men.
(5) By the defensive and offensive use of bush fires; the digging of trenches, the construction of tank traps, the near-felling of roadside trees ready to block roads, the improvisation of barbed wire entanglements.
(6) By the removal or reversal of sign posts and the stationing of traffic directors and guides.
(7) By the supply of timber and charcoal, the evacuation and slaughtering of cattle, and the organisation of meat supply, the provision and rationing of food at the C.C.C. camps.
ø/ INVASION ACTION:
The ringing of church and other bells or the blowing of motor horns cease in the rural coastal regions.
In the event of imminent enemy invasion by landing from sea or air, the Invasion Action signal will be the ringing of such bells and the blowing of such horns.
Instantly thereupon -
1. EVERY CITIZEN WILL EVACUATE HIS REMAINING CHILDREN, INFIRM, AND WOMEN NOT VOLUNTARILY ENGAGED IN C.C.C. WAR DUTIES.
(At Penang only half an hour was available!)
Evacuation will be by special evacuation trains; or by pre-selected roads and routes inland; the citizen using the private motor car or conveyance which he has reserved for the purpose.
(i) Use only motor cars, utilities and horse driven vehicles; trucks and bullock and horse teams must be reserved from this use for the express purpose of removal of essential stores and for the supply and service of the fighting forces.
(ii) No car or vehicle must travel the route of civil retirement unless the entire seating accommodation is filled with children, infirm, or women. (Men may drive only if women drivers are not available).
(iii) Each person must carry a week’s provisions of small compass; personal documents and valuables may be taken but no goods or chattels; a self-provided identity disc must be worn. (No luxury goods may be taken - these must be cached or destroyed).
(iv) Travel must be by defined non-military routes, via defined camping places to defined destinations by families and Shire communities.
(v) Police may detail extra cars or trucks to accommodate children, infirm or women not catered for by the above arrangements; the assembly point will be the nearest police station.
(vi) At their destination, evacuees will engage in making camouflage nets, C.C.C. uniforms, bandages, and will arrange with the reception authorities for future supply of stores for their menfolk in the C.C.Cs., and for the maintenance of communications.
2. EVERY CITIZEN WILL CARRY OUT HIS UNIT ACTION AS MEMBER OF A C.C.C.: AND EVERY C.C.C. AS SUCH WILL IMPLEMENT ITS INVASION ACTION CODE.
Firstly, each C.C.C. within its civil sphere, and by its citizen units, and with the transport available to it and them from that sphere, will instantly:
(a) Load its trucks and vehicles to capacity with essential stores, e.g.
(i) Food and groceries, flour from flour mills, tea and sugar, soap, matches, tobacco, tinned and dried foods.
(i(a) Spirits and fortified wines.
(ii) Petrol and oils (including castor oil for lubrication).
(iii) Tools and essential machinery parts.
(iv) Boots and shoes and leather.
(v) All articles required for medical attention, i.e. bandages, disinfectants, iodine, melasol and the like; drugs, babies’ food, adhesive tape, gauze, lint, cotton wool, anaesthetics (ether, cocaine etc.), surgical scissors, instruments etc., hypodermic syringes, morphia &c.; hot water bags, aperients, sedatives &c.
(vi) Optical lenses, survey instruments, watches, flints, writing paper, ink, pens, pencils and envelopes.
(vii) A small parcel of clothing essentials, dungarees, shirts, thick sox, oilskins, ground sheets.
(viii) Camp ovens (although white ant mounds can be converted into bush camp ovens).
(ix) Fishing and tennis nets, and so on - vide C.C.C. action plans.
(x) Bicycles.
- and remove these to the first C.C.C. camp behind the fighting front and deliver to the Camp Q.M.
(Usually the storekeeper-owner, playing his part in his C.C.C. will carry out this removal himself, with assistance, and may be assigned by the Camp Q.M. to distribute at the camp to C.C.C. members per rationed card and under Government guarantee; or to transfer them to second or further C.C.C. camps.
If there be time, a second trip may be made - otherwise irremovable essential supplies to be cached beyond discovery by the enemy or destroyed by destruction parties).
And thereafter each C.C.C. will proceed urgently as per its Action Plan.
3. All available water carts, including Council watering carts, must be filled and removed also along the line of retreat; and except for water supplies required for firefighting or designated by the fighting forces for their use, all water tank taps must be turned on, and all other water supplies destroyed beyond the needs of a thirsty enemy.
Water trucks (Council and private ones used for firefighting) will fill up at water supplies (towns, wells, waterholes &c.) off the evacuation routes and will replenish horse drawn water carts that will accompany the evacuees. The horse drawn water carts should have small taps plugged into the cross pipe at rear so that many water bottles may be filled simultaneously; the carts must be in charge of reliable persons who will distribute water to necessitous cases and not allow any except the minimum for drinking p
urposes to be issued.
4. Route cards will be issued by the police when the C.C.C. vehicle is loaded; these will show destination and will act as a pass along route and will allow driver to obtain petrol or charcoal. N.R.M.A. and R.A.C.A. will be stationed at road turn-offs along lines of route to examine and issue route cards, direct traffic regarding routes to be followed (i.e. if roads are in military use, bridges destroyed &c.), supervise fuel replenishment &c.
(Japanese airplanes will try to machine gun the evacuating cars - therefore have them ready camouflaged, follow the bush roads, and keep to the edge under cover.
5. Rearguard salvaging and search parties will recover whatever can be removed of what is left, round up stragglers, aliens, spies, traitors; whilst the Medical Services C.C.C. rescues the wounded.
6. Destruction of irremovable essential goods will proceed simultaneously by unit citizen action, supplemented by C.C.C. action: e.g. beer, light wines and spirits; small boats not designated for military use; radios; irremovable vehicles; wheels; axes, mattocks, tools, garage equipment, food, clothing; haystacks and horse feed; cattle, stock and pigs; - and anything else of which the enemy may make use against us.
ø/ DUTIES OF THE C.C.Cs.:
The sketches hereunder need complete elaboration and timing, and are intended only to give a first impression of the duties of some of the C.C.Cs.
1. FORESTRY (including Bush Fire Brigades):
The District Forester will be the Actions Officer:
(i) Fire control:
– to detect and extinguish enemy bushfires.
– to make and control offensive fires on military orders
– to maintain lookouts, patrols and scouting, and to supply guides.
– to prepare C.C.C. camp fireplaces and protect C.C.C. camps from loose fires.
(ii) Sawmilling:
– to supervise the operation, or transfer of bush sawmills, and the supply of sawn timber.
(iii) Charcoal:
– to supervise the manufacture and supply of charcoal.
(iv) Timber cutting:
– to provide hewn, split, and pole material for defence requirements.
