Part IV

1930 to 1949: Going So Wrong, So Soon?

‘Putting these planes together is easy. Try raising a family of six through the Great Depression . . . that was tough.’

In this part . . .

The massively expanded expectations of the 1920s had been built on a spectacular amount of government borrowing and debt. With perfectly terrible timing, Australia began to struggle with repayments at the exact same moment as the stock market crashed on Wall Street and the world was hit by the worst economic depression of the 20th century. In Australia, easy dreams of rapid expansion and unlimited prosperity nosedived big-time. Politicians, bankers and bureaucrats argued about how to fix the debt problem — and what to do with the many thousands of unemployed.

When a war came soon after, Australia found itself directly under threat for the first time in its history — which concentrated people’s minds wonderfully. In the war’s aftermath, the Labor Government made a determined effort to reconstruct society and make sure nothing like the Great Depression ever happened again.

In this part, I cover the way Australians dealt with the twin calamities of economic crash and war, and then how they set about ensuring a different Australia emerged from the aftermath.