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Australian War Memorial Logo
Search
  • Online Shop Use this login for Shop items, and image, film, sound reproductions
    Cart  |  Log In
  • Collection Open Information Close Information
    • Official Histories & Unit Diaries
    • Understanding the Collection
    • Research at the Memorial
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    • National Collection Loans
    • Projects
  • People
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    • Visitor Information
    • Exhibitions
    • Events
    • Schools
    • Memorial Development Project
    • Research Centre
  • Commemorate Open Information Close Information
    • Last Post Ceremony
    • Honour Rolls
    • Anzac Day
    • Remembrance Day
    • Customs & Ceremony
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  4. Australia under attack 1942 1943
  5. Australia under attack: The end in sight
  6. Australia under attack: The battle for Australia

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Australia under attack: The battle for Australia

  • Introduction
  • Under attack
  • Mobilisation
  • The End in sight

 

The attacks on Australia in early 1942 had created the belief that invasion was imminent. Allied victories in the second half of 1942, in the Coral Sea, around Midway Island, at Milne Bay, at Guadalcanal and on the Kokoda Trail, halted the advance of Japanese forces in the South-West Pacific Area. Although the Japanese high command realised that an invasion of the Australian mainland was impossible as early as March 1942, continuing air attacks on northern Australia and enemy naval activity off the east and west coasts encouraged Australians to believe that the threat persisted.

The Australian civilian population, encouraged to maintain a high state of alert and starved of detailed information on the state of the war, fell victim to rumours. Many believed, wrongly as it turned out, that a plan – the Brisbane Line – existed to abandon the north and west of the continent to the enemy in the event of invasion and only commit to the defence of the most populated areas of south-eastern Australia. There was no such plan.

By mid-1943 Allied victories in the South-West Pacific Area reassured many Australians that the threat of invasion had passed.

Hurdle defences

Hurdles were used as obstacles to prevent or obstruct enemy beach landings on many sections of the Australian coast. These photographs show the construction of hurdle defences in front of the beaches at Cockburn Sound, south of Fremantle, Western Australia, in 1943; they stretched for almost four kilometres.

Collection Item C1036096

Accession Number: P04262.003

Collection Item C1036097

Accession Number: P04262.004

Hurdle defences

Collection Item C1035999

Accession Number: RC02371

Every one a spy … every one a killer

Collection Item C256561

Accession Number: ARTV09061

Ringed with menace!

Fake Japanese invasion map

Fake Japanese invasion map

Invasion money?

Invasion money?

C192889 C192890 C192891 C192892

Newspaper propaganda

Newspaper propaganda

Collection Item C966793

Accession Number: REL28471.001

Car pennant

Collection Item C14210

Accession Number: 043801

Training to fight invaders

The end in sight

  • The battle for Australia
  • Love, loss & entertainment
    • Violet and Alan Glover
    • Cheer-Up Society
    • Entertaining the troops
  • The AIF returns
  • The Yanks are here
    • General Douglas MacArthur
    • US navy units in Western Australia
    • Lieutenant “Gus” Winckel
  • The tide turns
  • Remembering

Last updated: 27 November 2019

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