Japanese bombing Roebuck Bay, Broome

Following the first Japanese attacks on Darwin on 19 February 1942 the Western Australian towns of Broome and Wyndham were attacked on 3 March. Broome was again attacked on 20 March, along with Derby. Wyndham came under fire for a second time on 23 March. On the day of the initial attack on Broome numerous small craft were lying at anchor in the harbour and sixteen flying boats were moored there. Most of the aircraft had just returned from the Netherlands East Indies carrying refugees who were still aboard them. There was no defence when Japanese aircraft arrived and proceeded to attack the flying-boats and other aircraft at a nearby aerodrome. All the flying-boats were destroyed and six aircraft ashore (including two Flying Fortresses and two Liberators). Women and children were amongst those killed or wounded or cast into the water. Estimates were that 35 to 40 people were killed and as many more again wounded. After the attacks the Chiefs of Staff decided Broome was important only as an RAAF refueling station and Wyndham could not be linked effectively into any defence plans. Consequently both towns were eventually left undefended except for very small contingents of Volunteer Defence Corps, an overlap of the coast watching service and minor detachments of engineers to demolish buildings and infrastructure in the case of invasion.

Jack Dale Mengenen was a Ngarinyin artist of the Komaduh people whose traditional land centres are around Mount House in the Kimberleys, about 375 km west of Broome. Although many of the people who were killed and wounded in the attack on Broome were almost certainly not Aboriginal, Dale uses a traditional motif in the snake; among some Indigenous peoples the spirits of the humans are returned as snakes after their death. The artist has used an expressive figurative style, with simple forms. This style of painting by Indigenous Australians has been developed since the 1980s. It refers to aspects of traditional figurative visual art by using pictographs to depict people and objects and is painted without perspective on a single, flat picture plane. Also the scale of people and objects in the painting are proportional to their importance to the story being depicted.