Getting back to Darwin

 


Zebra Rock on the way to Litchfield National Park



















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It amazed me that I was sitting in front of it

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  The Plane That Started It All By Makayla Lockwood   During this trip, one moment where I felt like I pieced together a major part of the story in relation to the Bombing of Darwin was whilst we were at the Darwin Aviation Museum. Hajime Toyoshima was the man who led the bombing squadron against Darwin on the fateful 19 th February 1942. He was also the man who led the raid on Perl Harbour less than a year before. His plane caught my attention, because without him and his plane leading the squadrons of Japanese pilots, there wouldn’t have been an attack that day. It hit me: this was one of the planes that struck fear in the citizens of Darwin. You would have heard it in the skies. Seen it fly overhead. It was used as a weapon against Australia. And now it sat here, just a pile of scrap metal. It crashed somewhere on Melville Island, on Australian soil. Toyoshima was the first Japanese prisoner of war in Australia and died during an attempt to escape his POW camp in NSW...
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The Mullen sisters by Hannah Rowlands

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  Eileen Carrig Mullen and Jean Carrig Mullen were sisters who spent their child hood in South Australia. They lived in Port Augusta with their father and mother and went to school at St. Aloysius’ Collage Adelaide. The sisters spent their whole lives together went to school together, had their first job at the telephone department at the Adelaide G.P.O., then went to Darwin together  (TROVE, n.d.) . Eileen and Jean both became trained as telegraphists and in 1941 Eileen was transferred to Darwin to operate the new telephone service and Jean shortly followed. What were they doing in Darwin After the bombing of Pearl Harbour and attack on Darwin was imminent, Prime Minister Robert Menzies’ War Cabinet instructed over 2000 women and children, including my grandmothers aunt and cousin, to be evacuated from Darwin via any method of transport available  (Library and Archives NT, n.d.) . Only 70 females remained in Darwin after the evacuation which included secretaries, nurses,...
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Roy Gardiner by Jack Lattas

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  Corporal Roy Stewart Gardiner   Born on the 12 th of September 1917, in Culcairn Roy Stewart Gardiner was the first of a soon-to-be family of six. Growing up in Culcairn his father Arthur John Gardiner was a labourer for over twenty- four years before becoming a glazier. Roy Gardiner spent his early years playing for Culcairn’s and Henty’s AFL and Rugby teams, in his spare time he also went down to the shooting range and was known for his incredible clay pigeon shot. In 1935 at the age of 18 after marrying Maida Beatrice, he was employed as a mechanic and share farmer in which he eventually won the Culcairn Pastoral Agricultural Horticultural and Industrial (PAH & I) Society Incorporated wheat crop competition (A mouthful wow). In 1941 as the war continued across the world Roy Gardiner travelled to Melbourne to enlist in the Royal Australian Air Forces (RAAF), however, he was rejected due to his skin disorder of psoriasis (A long-term inflammatory disease which mean...
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