INSTRUCTIONS
FOR
AMERICAN
SERVICEMEN
IN
AUSTRALIA
1942CONTENTS
Preface ~
The Other Side of the World
A Pioneer Land.
The Empty Heart of Austratia
The People "Down Und:
Waltzing Matilda
The Australian Commonwealth .
The States
Miscellaneous Information
Australia at War,
Cobbers
Australian Slang
12
a
23
37
4
46
AT
50
51Quat a couple of fumes Ae Bt ypu nsw SRawe
found aut Sane not Jin Sredand afftin afl,
PREFACE
From December 1944 co August 1945 it is estimated that over
one million Americans were stationed in Australia. Their story is
cone of the lesser-told chapters of the Second World War.
Shortly after bombing Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941,
Japanese forces overran Malaya, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Phil
Australian terrivory of Rabaui, Suddeniy japan was at
Auscrali’s door, shreatening Darwin (which was bombed in 1942)
and Port Moresby. It Darwin fell, Japan would move a step closer
towards effective control of the South Pacific with the capacity co
disrupt Amercian supply lines. Australia and America had acquired a
common enemy; common solution seemed evident, as the Prime
Minister, John Curtin, explained to his people in an interview in the
Melbourne Herald in December 1941.1 make it quite clear that Aus-
tralia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links
€or kinship with the United Kingdom, We shall exert ll our energies
to shaping a defense plan, with the US as its keystone, which will
enable us to hold out until the tide swings against the enemy’
Auscralian society was nor only British in its orientation
but fargely insular. Popular knowledge of America came prima-
rily through the medium of Hollywood films. For their part. most
Americans knew very little about Australia, 2s one of the first
American soldiers in Brisbane observed: