Giving shelter from the Blitz
WORLD War II raged from September 3, 1939, when war broke out, to the signing of the peace treaty on September 2, 1946. For six years the lives of millions of civilians and servicemen were drawn into the conflict.
At the outset, most of the battles were in central and eastern Europe and in Scandinavia, but it was obvious that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi supporters were determined to rule Europe, and to conquer Britain. It was also obvious the war might be fought in the air as well as at sea and on the ground civilians were more at risk than they had been in World War I.
Therefore, the British government and some private groups began organising the evacuation of women and children, particularly children, to areas away from the coast and the large towns that might be the target of German bombers.
Thousands were sent to country areas in Britain, and overseas – to Canada, the US, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia – before the evacuation of British and Allied troops from Dunkirk and the start of “The Blitz” on London on October 30, 1940.
Refugees were sent to centres all over Australia, including Townsville. Today, this is largely forgotten. However, the National Trust Heritage Centre at West End preserves one of the Townsville homes donated to accommodate English refugees in 1940. On September 24, 1940, the Townsville Daily Bulletin reported that the Minister of the Interior, Senator H. S. Foll, had inspected a large home being converted to house refugees. It was “Currajong”, then in Fulham Rd. The owners, Mr and Mrs Ferguson, had generously donated the house for use by St Matthew’s Parish, Mundingburra.
The Rector, Rev Johnson, and Mr Charles Butler, a Church Warden, were supervising the project, which was to be called St Matthew’s Lodge, and where Mrs Johnson would become the matron in charge.
For many years, a story circulated in Townsville that no refugees ever arrived, because the vessel on which they were travelling was torpedoed by a German submarine.
This proved incorrect. It was the torpedoing, in the Atlantic Ocean, of two vessels carrying refugees to Canada and the US that caused the decision to stop the evacuation program.
The Townsville Daily Bulletin on July 31, 1941, reported that “St Matthew’s Lodge at Currajong … is now in full working order, and the present inmates number seven, the ages of the boys ranging from four to 13. The first boys were admitted last January, and the seventh was received about two months ago.”
We know little about the history of the refugees at Currajong after that. Five months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and war extended into the Pacific. The danger of Japanese attacks on Australia became a more immediate possibility.
Schools in Townsville were closed, and children, some accompanied by parents, left the city for safer places in the west and south. Presumably, the English evacuees would have been moved to safer accommodation as Townsville became a “fortress city”.
By January 1942, American and Australian troops were everywhere on the streets of Townsville, and airfields were rapidly constructed around the city. Private homes and business premises were commandeered for military use, and Currajong became a RAAF hospital.
Unit diaries and other data provide a good account of the wartime service of Currajong as a hospital, but what became of the refugee children remains a mystery.