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About the Book

It seems to have happened overnight, Val thought. How extraordinary. We’ve become a khaki town.

It’s March 1942. Singapore has fallen. Darwin has been bombed. Australia is on the brink of being invaded by the Imperial Japanese Forces. And Val Callahan, publican of The Brown’s Bar in Townsville, could not be happier as she contemplates the fortune she’s making from lonely, thirsty soldiers.

Overnight the small Queensland city is transformed into the transport hub for 70,000 American and Australian soldiers destined for combat in the South Pacific. Barbed wire and gun emplacements cover the beaches. Historic buildings are commandeered. And the dance halls are in full swing with jazz, jitterbug and jive.

The Australian troops begrudge the confident, well-fed ‘Yanks’ who have taken over their town and their women. There’s growing conflict, too, within the American ranks, because black GIs are enjoying the absence of segregation. And the white GIs don’t like it.

As racial violence explodes through the ranks of the military, a young United States congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, is sent to Townsville by his president to investigate. ‘Keep a goddamned lid on it, Lyndon,’ he is told, ‘lest it explode in our faces …’

Khaki Town, Judy Nunn’s exciting new novel, is inspired by a true wartime story that has remained a well-kept secret for over seventy years.

Dedication

To the memory of my brother Robert Nunn

I miss you, Rob

This book was inspired by the story ‘Ross River Fever’
by Michael Roberts

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A NOTE TO READERS

Khaki Town is about racism and there are some passages that readers may find offensive and even shocking. I have made no attempt to soften this. Even in sections of the narrative where I am referring to government and military views, I have chosen to write in the language of the times because to modernise the vernacular would not be true to the era, both historically and dramatically.

PROLOGUE

1964

There was a tap at the north-east door.

Seated behind his desk by the windows, he looked up expectantly, knowing who would be announced.

The door opened, not fully, just ajar, and the secretary popped his head in. ‘Senator Kennedy is here, Mr President.’

He rose from his chair and stood erect, back ramrod straight, a big man, around six feet, three inches in height, an imposing figure. And he knew it.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he said in his Texan drawl.

The secretary opened the door wide, Kennedy stepped into the room, and the secretary retired wordlessly, the door closing behind him with a gentle click of the latch.

‘Robert …’ He circled the desk, hand extended, and greeted the younger man with a welcoming smile. ‘Good to see you, so glad you could come.’

‘Mr President.’ Kennedy returned his own boyish smile, albeit a little tightly. Close to six feet tall himself, he was dwarfed by the president, both in height and build.

The men shook hands.