31 Oct 1942, John Charter's wartime journal

The last day of another month - and I have a feeling that we may not be here for so very much longer! The last week has been an exciting one: on the night of Monday 26th at about 1:30 a.m. and by the light of a brilliant full moon there was another raid. Our room slept through it but other people heard it and on looking out saw the flashes of guns beyond the Mount Parker range of hills and saw tracer shells and saw the shells bursting. Next morning the Japanese sent in a notice to Gimson to say that no internee must be seen looking at the sky!!! Did we laugh!! Also, no paper was allowed in that day, so there was no doubt about the veracity of the raids. On the following day there was a great deal of aerial activity but it consisted of Japanese patrols only - as far as we could make out.

On Wednesday morning at about 11:00 a.m. I was in the workshop where I had been making an ash tray for Christine Corra's 21st birthday. There was a considerable amount of noise, hammering etc. as there usually is, but above it, or rather through it, I thought I felt rather than heard a thud. I went to the door and outside, I heard the drone of aeroplanes.

Mr Sharp was standing by and I said, “Are those aeroplanes I hear?”

“Oh yes, “he replied, “They’ve been about all morning”.

“I thought I heard a few thuds just now”, I said.

“So did I”, said he, “But it’s very easy to imagine that, I find”.

“That’s true”, I agreed.

But at that moment there was an increase in the roar of planes and then the sharp cracks of bursting shells. I rushed round the block and there, over the Mount Parker range I saw a cluster of puffs of smoke in the sky and some four or five planes buzzing about. Presently one of them went into a steep dive, its engines roaring and it disappeared behind the crest of the hill; then another dived and another. More puffs of smoke from AA shells; thuds of bursting bombs; the sudden rattle of machine gun fire from the air - there must have been a Japanese fighter up too. The planes seemed to dive with great speed. Then presently two planes appeared above the hill crest, climbing steeply and twisting about so much in their climb that I thought they must have been hit. But they were twisting to make it difficult for the AA guns. They climbed and made off in a N.E. direction.

It was all most exciting. Everyone was out (gazing at the sky I regret to say) including the rice boilers and when one of the kitchen orderlies came running out to say, “More rice,” for the food queue, as lunch was being served, no one paid him the slightest attention! There was a great deal of gossip and speculation during the rest of the day as can be imagined.