NEW DARWIN
WORK OF AUSTRALIAN TROOPS TRANSFORMATION IN QUICK TIME. SURPRISES FOR ANY INVADERS. In the heat of North Australia the men of the A.I.F. have done a job they can be proud of. states a staff correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald.” Working in dense bush, in steamy mangrove swamps, or on beaches washed by lukewarm water, they have cut a network of roads, dug and wired strong defences, and prepared a multitude of surprises for the Japanese invader.
Civilian labour is short in the Northern Territory, and consequently the soldiers have built their own steel huts, made railways and roads, laid on their own water system, dug and planted their own market gardens.
Soldiers back on leave from Darwin who complain about the town, the boredom and the beer shortage—all justifiable causes of complaint—do themselves less than justice, because they modestly leave out of the picture the big defence work they have done in the Territory, working fast and hard under trying conditions. "The country in which the A.I.F. force is camped is thickly timbered. The bush is so dense and so apparently limitless that in the early days the men said that they felt stifled by jt. In the wet season, which is now beginning and will last until March, there is a fresh green undergrowth everywhere which grows higher and higher until the grass and herbage are feet tall. When the undergrowth begins to dry up it is the custom in the Territory to scatter matches in it and burn it off. This does not damage the trees greatly, and a new shoot of grass springs up. to be withered eventually by the heat in the long “Dry.”
PREFABRICATED HUTS.
In this bush the men of the A.I.F. force cleared their camp sites. They have assembled their own prefabricated steel huts, laying concrete floors and concrete piles, and screwing together the steel framework and the galvanised iron sheets of which the huts are made. This is difficult work for amateurs because if the huts are not set exactly right the girders and slabs, with screwholes already cut, will not fit.
One luxury the men at Darwin and the camps round about it have, which their men in the Middle East often lacked it water. They have laid on water to their camps by tapping the pipeline which travels from the Manton river reservoir to Darwin, and have built showers where they can wash their sweat away with water which is generally piping hot, because the pipeline travels overground with the sun beating on it all day. The shortage of shipping and the small capacity of the Darwin wharf and the inefficient methods of unloading have produced a chronic shortage not only of building material, which will mean that at least a third of the men will have to live in- tents during most of the wet season, but also of fresh food. Few fresh vegetables were grown in the Territory in peace and the arrival of thousands of soldiers, combined with the rapid growth of the civilian population, has made fresh fruit and vegetables as rare as beer is now.
ARMY GROWS OWN FOOD.
Having built its own huts the army is now trying to grow its own vitaminproducing food. It has established a 50-acre market garden at Adelaide River, and, in addition, most of the units have) their own gardens. One commanding officer, searching for vitamin-producing foods, has posted two of his men in a tent on the shores of a little inlet where they have built a fish trap. At least every second day these men empty the trap and cart a load of fish to their unit, then return to their distant camp. The conventional thing to say at Darwin, when the sun is hot and the air steamy, is that it is a black man’s ■country, but the soldiers there have Worked hard in that climate for nine months and more, not only as soldiers, but as builders, gardeners, carpenters, railwaymen, and their percentage of sickness is less than 3 per cent —far lower than -that of any other A.I.F. station.
This is in spite of dengue, which is common, and the milder three-day fever, and in spite of the unfortunate and unnecessary lack of sufficient vitamin foods. The men not only are tough but look tough. They are encouraged to work wearing shorts only, not only for the sake of coolness, but because wearing a shirt is believed to induce 1 prickly heat. TOWN’S ATTRACTIONS WANE. Darwin, with a population of about 5000, many of whom are foreigners, Chinese-Australians or migratory workers living in boarding-houses or tents, is too small a town to provide entertainment for the greatly increased garrison. There is only one picture Show, four hotels, and two soldiers’ clubs. More and more troops are making their own amusements and sparetime occupations in their own camps. For the last five weeks there has been practically no beer in Darwin and supplies of spirits were running short last week. Consequently, the hotels in Darwin have lost much of their attraction and fewer and fewer of the percentage of men who are given town leave each night are taking advantage of it. Their camps are beginning to offer more entertainment than Darwin.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1942, Page 4
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881NEW DARWIN Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1942, Page 4
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