Beneath the Southern Cross

by Judy Nunn

  Laurence Binyon’s verses ‘For the Fallen’ had been embraced throughout the war, and afterwards remained to serve as a remembrance of the Anzacs; a more reassuring and comforting tribute to heroism than the recollection of things too awful to contemplate.

  They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning

  We will remember them.

  But the facts of this war, though unspoken, could never be denied. It had been the war to end all wars, they said and, for the future of mankind, it must never, never happen again.

  ‘It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war on her and that, as a result, Australia is now also at war.’

  Millions gathered around their wireless sets at nine o’clock on Sunday night 3 September, 1939 to hear Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies’s broadcast to the nation. And amongst the millions were many who wondered at the fact that it was less than twenty-one years since the war to end all wars.

  But, even as they wondered, there were none who questioned the validity of the war in Europe, or Australia’s responsibility in once more allying herself to Britain. They had weathered the Great Depression which had followed the stock market collapse of 1929 and they had rallied to rebuild their country. They were weary. They did not welcome another war, but they were resigned to its inevitability. The policy of aggression adopted by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party was a direct attack upon human rights, a clear-cut case of good against evil and, as women who had lost their husbands prepared to watch their sons march off to war, and others who had lost their fathers waved goodbye to their husbands, none argued the reason why.

  It was a different nation which now prepared for another war. The news was greeted with none of the excitement and patriotic fervour which had welcomed the prospect of battle in 1914. Pragmatism prevailed, and the mood of the people was composed and purposeful.

  Enemy aliens were rounded up and interned, amateur radio operations were banned and, although overseas service remained voluntary, the government introduced compulsory military training for defence of the home front.

  This would be a war fought on land, sea and air that would spill out of Europe to Asia and the Pacific; a global battle which would creep ever closer to home.

  When the HMAS Sydney sank off the coast of Western Australia following a gunnery duel with the German raider Kormoran, Australians were aghast to learn that all 645 on board had died, the greatest loss in their country’s naval history.

  But less than a month later, on 8 December, 1941, when Prime Minister John Curtin announced that Australia was at war with Japan, for the first time in their short history, Australians realised that their country was under threat of direct attack. Air raid precautions were adopted. City hospitals were evacuated, shelters were built, trenches dug and blackout laws enforced. Home defence conscription ages were immediately extended. Single men from 18 to 45 and married men from 18 to 35 were called up for full-time duty. The vast and vulnerable coastlines of Australia must somehow be defended.

  The Allies, too, looked south. Australia could now serve a purpose other than the supply of troops and materials. She could prove an invaluable military base.

  Fourteen days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American troops arrived in Brisbane, and on 17 March, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur landed at Batchelor Field, south of Darwin. A week and a half later, the city of Sydney received its first ship-load of US servicemen, over 8,000 in all.

  ‘But it’s Friday,’ Ada insisted, ‘and you promised you’d come this Friday.’ The Yanks had been in town for a whole six weeks and Ada and her girlfriends had danced the night away at the Trocadero each Friday since. ‘Oh please, Caroline. Please.’ Caroline remained silent as they walked from the tram-stop down William Street, but Ada refused to give up. ‘You promised me on Monday that you would.’

  ‘I said I might.’

  ‘You didn’t. You said “I’ll come with you this Friday”. It was a promise.’

  Caroline sighed. She probably had promised, in fact she now remembered that she had, simply to appease Ada at the time. When Ada had a bee in her bonnet, she was relentless. Caroline supposed she would have to give in some time and it might as well be tonight.

  ‘All right, I’ll come,’ she said with ill-humour. She really didn’t want to go to the Trocadero but Ada was her best friend, and a promise was a promise.

  They turned the corner into Bourke Street, and walked down the hill into Woolloomooloo, avoiding the piles of sand dumped here and there by the City Council for fire-fighting use in the event of incendiary bombs. Ada ignored her friend’s petulance as she skipped along the pavement with girlish excitement, dodging both the sand and the passers-by. Despite the fact that she was twenty-four years old, two years younger than Caroline, there was a disarmingly childlike quality about Ada.

  ‘You won’t regret coming, honestly you won’t. The Yanks are gentlemen, and they dance much better than our boys.’

  A group of American sailors was walking up from the docks. Ada stopped skipping and walked sedately and demurely down the hill, aware that she looked attractive in the stylish little felt hat which she wore pertly tilted to one side. She’d made the hat herself from squares of material normally used for toymaking. She was aware, too, that her knee-length skirt and her high-heeled shoes effectively showed off her neat calves and ankles. Despite the austere wartime fashion, Ada managed, by way of meticulous improvisation, to retain a touch of thirties glamour.

  Hatless and in a plain, belted cotton dress, Caroline, too, looked attractive, but unlike her friend she was neither a slave to fashion, nor apparently aware of the admiring glances she and Ada regularly drew from men in the street.

  The American sailors raised their caps, ‘Afternoon ladies,’ several of them said, and Ada flashed a coquettish dimpled smile as she nodded back. Caroline also nodded, but walked briskly on.

  ‘They’ve got a darn sight more manners than our boys too,’ Ada said when they’d passed, and she’d caught up once again with Caroline.

  ‘I know, I know, I’ve seen them around town.’ And a darn sight more money, which they were only too happy to throw about, Caroline thought, feeling sorry for the Aussie blokes who couldn’t compete. Caroline found the Americans a bit flashy, but then she hadn’t met any, so she supposed she really shouldn’t judge.

  Five minutes later, they parted company outside Caroline’s house. ‘I’ll be at your place at seven,’ Ada said, skipping down the road, she lived just around the corner, ‘don’t be late.’

  Caroline O’Shea and Ada Bird had grown up together, children of Woolloomooloo. Like Caroline, Ada’s family had lived in the Loo for four generations and, with six children in the current crop, it was quite likely they’d live there for four more, the Birds were a fixture of Woolloomooloo.

  When Caroline had completed her Stott’s Business Course for Women in shorthand and typing, she had been an inspiration to Ada who had immediately followed suit. And when, a year or so after the war broke out, Caroline had resigned from the small insurance company where she worked as a clerk to accept a secretarial position at H. Small & Company, it had been only natural for Ada to apply for a position there also. Caroline had been most encouraging.

  ‘It’s a very patriotic company, Ada,’ she boasted. ‘Seventy-five percent of Small’s Club Chocolate is sold to the armed services, so we’ll be helping the war effort.’ Ada was most impressed. ‘And they’re employing factory workers for their new cocoa department,’ she added, ‘so they’re bound to need more office staff.’

  She’d been right and Ada had had no trouble in getting a clerical job with H. Small & Company in Bridge Road, Stanmore. Ada and Caroline were a pride and joy to their respective families. Two Woolloomooloo lasses who’d made good.

 
‘I’m going dancing at the Trocadero with Ada tonight,’ Caroline said to her grandmother as she walked into the kitchen and plonked her handbag on the table.

  ‘Good.’ Kathleen was pleased. She wanted to say ‘it’s about time you went out and had fun’, but she didn’t.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Caroline said a little sulkily, ‘I’m only going because she made me promise last week.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad she did.’

  ‘I won’t stay long.’

  ‘Of course you won’t if you’re not having a good time, that’d be silly wouldn’t it?’

  Caroline looked suspiciously at her grandmother, but Kathleen ignored her as she stirred the stew in the iron pot. ‘But then who knows,’ she continued, putting the lid back on the pot, ‘a miracle might happen.’ She turned to her granddaughter. ‘You might actually have fun.’

  Caroline frowned. She’d been right, her grandmother was teasing her.

  Kathleen laughed, her magnificent eyes disappearing into crinkles amidst the fleshy folds of her still handsome face. It was an infectious laugh, full of warmth, humour and affection, but Caroline stood her ground. She didn’t like being teased.

  ‘Wipe that frown off, missy,’ Kathleen said as she had for the past twenty years, ‘before the wind changes.’

  ‘Don’t, Gran,’ Caroline frowned all the more, ‘don’t treat me like a …’

  ‘Why not? You’re behaving like one.’ Kathleen’s smile faded and she looked concerned. ‘Sit down, darling. Please.’ Caroline begrudgingly sat at the kitchen table and Kathleen, too, pulled up a chair. ‘You’re cross because Ada’s twisted your arm, but what am I expected to say? “Go to the dance and have a miserable time?” You know what I want to say, of course, but you’ll get cross with me if I say that too.’

  Caroline nodded. She looked down at the floor, but she was no longer sulking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  Kathleen knew her granddaughter only too well. Obstinate as Caroline could be, she was by nature a good-humoured and sensible young woman. If she could not be joked out of a bad mood, she could invariably be made to see commonsense.

  ‘I’m going to say it anyway,’ Kathleen warned, and she took a deep breath. ‘It’s nearly eighteen months since Ian died, and you’re nearly twenty-seven years old, and it’s high time you met someone else. A young woman your age needs a husband.’

  Caroline looked up. She rarely laughed out loud, but when she smiled her generous smile she needed no voice, her whole face lit up with laughter. She smiled now. ‘When you say it, you really say it, don’t you?’

  Kathleen smiled back. Never a day passed for Kathleen without feeling a rush of love for her granddaughter, or seeing Robbie in the strength of that brow and the depth of those black-brown eyes.

  Caroline sprang from her chair, good humour restored. ‘I’ll try to have a good time,’ she promised, ‘really I will, but I’m not going to flirt with the Yanks like Ada does. Do you know, she went out with one for a while. He gave her an orchid each time he picked her up, and each time she sold it back to the florist the next morning for half price.’

  ‘How very practical.’ Kathleen stood and eased her back, feeling a touch of rheumatism. At sixty-seven years of age she tended to do things slowly now, though no less deliberately. ‘Go and get washed up,’ she said, ‘tea at six o’clock. Unless you’re dining out with Ada.’

  ‘And miss your Friday stew?’ Caroline called as she ran up the stairs.

  Kathleen busied herself peeling the potatoes. She was genuinely pleased that Ada had persuaded Caroline to go to the dance hall. It wouldn’t change things overnight, she was sure, but it was a start.

  Caroline’s fiancé, a pilot with the RAAF, had successfully survived action in Europe but, after the fall of France and Italy’s entry into the war in 1940, No. 3 squadron had been transferred to the Middle East, and he’d died within the week. It had taken Caroline a full year to come to terms with his death. She no longer seemed to be grieving, but she simply didn’t care to socialise, and that, according to Kathleen, wasn’t healthy for a young woman.

  Kathleen had meant what she said. Even in this modern age, with women forging careers of their own, doing men’s work, even joining the services, the truth remained that a young woman needed a husband. It was as simple as that. She put the potatoes on to boil.

  Half an hour later, she stepped out onto the back porch. ‘Tea’s ready, Stefan,’ she called.

  Stefan Brandt was the lodger who rented the room Otto had built out the back for the boys, and he dined regularly with Kathleen and Caroline on Friday and Sunday nights. His Dutch accent reminded Kathleen of Otto. It was probably why she had chosen him as a tenant, she often thought, she found his voice comforting.

  Otto had died seven years previously. During the Depression, he’d been forced to sell his beloved store for a trifle of its true value, and he’d accepted whatever menial labour he could find. Anything to ensure that Kathleen could keep her cottage and that Caroline would not spend her teenage years in abject poverty. Times had been hard, but through Otto’s self-sacrifice, they’d survived far better than many who’d lost everything they owned and who’d struggled for their very existence. When he’d reached his three score years and ten, Otto had died peacefully in his sleep, never knowing there was another war around the corner. For that Kathleen was thankful, but she missed him dreadfully.

  There was much about Stefan Brandt which reminded Kathleen of the younger Otto De Haan. He was big in build, not given to idle chatter, he was mild and harmless and yet he, too, had been persecuted at the outbreak of the war.

  Stefan had only recently moved in to Kathleen’s at the time and there had been those in the neighbourhood who had reported him as an alien. Kathleen had been angry, it was not the Woolloomooloo way to report on one’s neighbours, and didn’t they know he was Dutch? She’d said as much to the policemen when they arrived to take Stefan to an internment camp.

  ‘He’s Dutch for goodness’ sake, can’t you tell the difference?’

  They couldn’t, and they’d insisted on seeing his papers. When all had appeared to be in order, they apologised to Kathleen as vociferously as they had to Stefan himself, clearly impressed by her defence of the lodger.

  Stefan had been very grateful, and a pleasant relationship had evolved. Kathleen had no idea what Stefan did for a living and she didn’t enquire; he paid his rent on the dot each Friday and on Sundays he insisted upon doing whatever odd jobs needed to be done about the house and, like Otto, he was a good handyman. When he shared their meals, Kathleen and Caroline chatted away, with very little comment from the Dutchman; he obviously preferred it that way.

  ‘Tea’s ready,’ Kathleen called up the stairs.

  ‘You are pretty,’ Stefan said when Caroline appeared. He was sitting at the kitchen table having his pre-dinner beer, he only ever had one. ‘You go out?’

  ‘Thank you. Yes. To the Trocadero.’

  ‘Very pretty indeed,’ Kathleen agreed as Caroline twirled about in her pink floral dress, the waves of her raven-black hair bouncing as ifwith a life of their own against her bare neck and shoulders. But Caroline wasn’t ‘pretty’, she thought, not according to the fashion of the day, her looks were too dramatic to be ‘pretty’. Radiant and animated as she was now, Caroline was beautiful, Kathleen thought with pride.

  The Trocadero was crowded and noisy. It always was, but nobody minded, the clamour and din were all part of the excitement. Men were predominantly in uniform, but so too were many women, the government’s initial reluctance to accept females into the services having undergone a rapid revision when Japan entered the war.

  On the dance floor, hundreds of couples embraced, some clumsily swaying, some twirling with expert synchronisation to the melodies of Cole Porter or Irving Berlin. And on the sidelines, hordes of onlookers crammed together, chatting and calling out to each other at the tops of their voices in order to be heard above the swing of the big band.

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nbsp; ‘You two go in ahead,’ Ada said to her girlfriends when they met up together outside. ‘I’ll look after Caroline.’

  Bev and Enid disappeared into the throng and Ada, obviously searching for a familiar face, looked about at the dozens of soldiers milling in the street.

  ‘Come on,’ she finally called above the hubbub, taking Caroline’s hand and jostling her way inside. They checked their handbags and wraps into the foyer cloakroom and, the moment they were through the doors and into the main hall, Ada was swept onto the dance floor by an American soldier. The one she’d been looking for outside, Caroline assumed, judging by her delighted giggle. And for an instant, amidst the frantic festivity which surrounded her, Caroline felt very alone. But only for an instant.

  ‘Wanna dance?’

  ‘Hi, may I have the pleasure?’

  Two servicemen had swooped upon her, the first an Aussie, the second a Yank. Caroline looked from one to the other and immediately chose the Australian. The Aussie smirked triumphantly at the Yank who, undeterred, shrugged and offered his arm to another girl standing nearby.

  For the next three hours, Caroline barely drew breath. She’d forgotten how much she loved to dance. Ian had too, she thought briefly, recalling their Saturday nights at the Palais de Dance in Bondi. But there was no time to dwell on Ian now, the band was playing ‘Begin the Beguine’ and she was being led yet again onto the dance floor. She’d stopped discriminating against the Americans and, feeling a little disloyal, had to admit that the Yanks were the better dancers.