CHAPTER EIGHT

The first days of May saw Townsville vibrate ever louder with the rattle of war as US and Australian forces assembled in the Pacific, preparing to halt the enemy advance. The Japanese had continued their expansion south, their aim being the invasion of Port Moresby, but they would be met by fierce opposition from the Allied forces. The Battle of the Coral Sea was to be the first naval conflict fought entirely by carrier-borne and land-based aircraft. It was also to prove the most significant naval battle ever fought off the coast of Australia.

Aunty Edie didn’t know where the planes were coming from or where they were going to – some said New Guinea, some said islands in the Pacific, but she knew for sure there were plenty of them and they flew so bloody low they nearly clipped her boatsheds.

‘Right over me head,’ she’d say. ‘Above and to Betsy, I reckon if I stuck a broom up in the air they’d hit it.’

She was exaggerating, as she tended to do when something impressed, but her boatsheds were certainly situated beneath a major flight path to and from nearby Garbutt Airfield, so, dependent upon the prevailing wind, aircraft did fly very low over her domain.

‘And all sorts of planes, too,’ she’d say, ‘big ones, little ones, crikey some of them are monsters.’

She was right. The American bombers were massive aircraft. As many locals commented, ‘It’s difficult to imagine how they can get up in the air.’

But get up in the air they did. They came and they went, and very soon Aunty Edie lost all interest. She no longer looked up and exclaimed, ‘Above and to Betsy!’ She just went on with her work, and if she was chatting with one of her girls, as she so often was, she’d simply stop until the roar of the engine had died away enough for her to be heard and then pick up from where she’d left off. Edie never liked to yell.

Of far greater concern to Edie than the planes overhead was the water shortage that threatened. Indeed, water was becoming a matter of concern to the whole of Townsville. The wet season of 1941–42 from November to April had provided the customary tropical downpour, but water supplies were already threateningly low, and with the month of May heralding the start of the dry season, there was talk of restrictions being set in place.

‘It’s all you Yankees,’ Aunty Edie said accusingly to her American officers when they delivered their laundry. ‘You’re the ones usin’ up all our water. Well, don’t you come cryin’ to me if I can’t do your laundry, ’cos if we run dry it’ll be all your fault.’

‘Don’t you worry, Aunty,’ the captain promised her, ‘we’ll keep your tank topped up. Can’t risk losing the best laundry service in town, can we,’ he added, giving her a wink that he shared with his buddies. They all liked Aunty Edie.