2008
In December 1941 public unease turned to near panic. Those who did not have a wireless set or take a metropolitan paper had the news broken to them in the local press. ‘The Yellow Peril Strikes’. ‘We Are At War With Japan?’ An urgent public meeting was called and recriminations were heaped on council and on Hudson in particular. It was said that Wonthaggi had one hundred and fifty ‘trained men’ and Korumburra none. Hudson interjected ‘You seem panicky’, and protested that council raised money for road and street construction, not for civil defence. A Mr. Green told him ‘Keep quiet, I am speaking’. Unusually, Hudson, pressured from all around the hall, subsided. The meeting demanded that the Air Raid Precautions program should be reactivated, and Hungerford pointed out that council had cut itself off from the State Emergency Council from whom all assistance would need to come. This caused further recriminations to be hurled at the council. Hudson re-entered the fray to say that it was a government matter, and Sister Kerville, matron of the bush nursing hospital retorted, ‘If the government is lacking in care of women and children will you be the same?’ Hudson tried to reply but was shouted down by cries of ‘Rubbish!’ from all around the hall. This may have been the first time that a woman had made a major contribution to public debate in Korumburra since Vida Goldstein’s political meetings in the early days of federation . . .
Korumburra had been officially designated as a ‘vulnerable area’. This required the warden to prepare an evacuation plan. People and transport were listed and the information circulated. In the event of an invasion a council truck was designated to collect official records from all the banks and transport them ‘inland’. The driver was no doubt told of his destination, but it is not recorded. Councillors Scott and Ritchie were co-opted to work with an officer of the Agriculture Department to arrange for the transfer of stock out of the district. Beef cattle were to be taken away and dairy cattle to be milked then shot to deny the invader a ‘larder’. All these arrangements were confused by the lack of certainty for petrol supplies. Because of rationing there was considerable unused capacity of underground storage at local garages, but officials refused permission for fuel to be stored in a ‘vulnerable area’. This paradox would suggest that the Korumburra council was not the only body that had not instituted adequate planning in advance of the emergency.
Even in fields where council was not the responsible body it was assumed that it would provide support for community activities. Working bees dug air raid trenches in the grounds of the state school and St. Joseph’s. (Mothers provided the afternoon teas.) A council truck transported men to cart spars for timbering, and council undertook to supply galvanised iron to shelter the trenches from the rain. Like appeals for iron required for the water tanks the building directorate was unable to help, but each request and appeal used administrative time and resources.
Four air raid sirens were installed in the town, and as an exercise the ‘brown-out’ of the dimmed streets and premises was intensified for a trial ‘black-out’. Plane watching towers were erected and manned by trained volunteers at Mt. Misery (Outtrim) and on the fire brigade tower, which was then at the top of the Commercial Street hill. Council supplied an electric radiator for the watchers at the fire brigade tower, but it would have been a cold shift in winter on the isolated and appropriately named Mt. Misery. To modern readers it may seem that the public and authorities were indeed, as Hudson had suggested, ‘panicky’, but there were valid reasons for official and public perceptions of danger. Ships were sunk by enemy action off Cape Liptrap and a submarine-launched Japanese reconnaissance plane carried out at least one flight over Inverloch and Andersons Inlet. In the dark times of 1942 the possibility of an enemy landing if not an invasion on the coast south of Korumburra was not to be ignored . . .
While officers were overworked and stressed with civil defence duties council found time to debate unsubstantiated rumours about the activities of aliens in the community. Councillors were participating in community hysteria when one may have looked to them for a more balanced view. At a meeting of the Australian Natives Association in Korumburra a Mr Milne said, ‘In regard to the Jewish element, Hitler was the only man game to tackle them. (Applause and ‘Hear! Hear!’)’. The Great Southern Advocate uncharacteristically fired hatred at Italian members of the community, whether they were naturalised, unnaturalised or prisoners of war allocated as farm labourers in the district. The secretary was directed to prepare lists of properties, and in all cases the occupations were found to be in accordance with the law and coastline regulations. One wonders if councillors were embarrassed by the presence of Cr. John Canobio at the table, a person of Italian descent. Italian people, old citizens and new, were to make a significant contribution to the development of Korumburra shire in the second half of the twentieth century. The first victim of war is said to be truth, but national and racial intolerance rank high. Council records and newspaper articles of the forties tell an unpleasant story.
Five Fighting Shires: Korumburra Council 1891–1994, Korumburra, Victoria, 2008