The Battle for Australia

War at Home

AWM 045120 Adelaide children practising building air raid shelters.

AWM 030205/01 German internees of No 1 Camp Tatura Internment Group at work at benches in one of the workshops in the camp. In these workshops internees turned out comforts for their own benefit. All supplies that they used were salvaged material.

AWM 122961 Moorook, SA. Loveday Internment Group. A wood cutting camp was set up in 1942 utilising first Italian and then Japanese internee labour to supply fuel urgently needed by industries in the river districts. Unfortunately the heat and flies made conditions very uncomfortable and the operation was transferred to Woolenook in 1944.

AWM 136236 Canberra, 1942. Workmen digging slit trenches in the grounds of Parliament House.

AWM 060053A Anti-submarine boom at the mouth of the Brisbane River. The boom was covered by the twin 6-pounder guns at Fort Lytton and operated by a boom vessel and also a winch on shore. It could be closed in two minutes.

AWM P02018.087 The Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) was raised and maintained in its early years by the RSL and later handed over to Army control. It comprised men from every part of Australia and every walk of civilian life -volunteers unfit for combat in the regular forces, over the age limit or in reserved occupations. VDC members are shown marching with rifles over their shoulders -training before the issue of uniforms.

AWM 306616 Japanese midget submarine No 21 being lowered onto blocks on shore after being raised from the bottom of Sydney Harbour in a salvage operation after the raid of 31 May 1942. Twenty feet (six metres) of the stern are missing.

AWM 042975 The naval depot ship Kuttabul which was damaged by a Japanese torpedo during the raid on Sydney Harbour by Japanese midget submarines on 31 May 1942.

AWM 051461 Franklin Square, Hobart, showing air-raid shelters.

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