A Penny in Time

by Anna Bartlett

  Chapter 4 – the 1920s

  Towards the end of WWI the government introduced a system called the soldier settlement scheme, which gave blocks of land to returning soldiers who wanted to become farmers. Altogether, around 40,000 returned servicemen took up settlement farms across the country. These blocks were usually in rural areas, far from large towns, and were used to produce goods like wool, fruit or grain, or for dairy or cattle farming.

  Many of the settlers found their new lives very difficult, though. They had to work hard without much money, equipment or experience, and faced problems like rabbits destroying their crops, diseases in their livestock, and extreme weather conditions like droughts or frosts. Because they lived so far from large towns, transport and communication were also poor. Although some soldier settlers managed to produce successful farms, within 15 years around half of them had abandoned their blocks.

  Even though some Aboriginal men fought for Australia during WWI, they were not allowed to apply for soldier settler blocks. Around this time Aboriginal people were being forced to live in particular areas of land called reserves; in fact, some of the land taken for the soldier settlement scheme came from these Aboriginal reserves. If Aboriginal children had European ancestry as well, government officials often took them far away to special schools that tried to teach them to live like white people. No-one asked the children or their parents if they wanted this to happen, and many of the children ended up losing almost all of their culture, language and identity. This continued to happen for many years, up until the 1970s.

  Chapter 5 – the Great Depression

  The Great Depression began in 1929, when the American stock market failed, and lasted until WWII broke out in 1939. Before the Depression Australia had made a lot of its money by selling wool and wheat to other countries, but during the Depression the prices of most products dropped dramatically, so Australian farmers could no longer make any money by selling their goods. Lots of other industries – like the mining, building and mechanical industries – also failed, because no-one could afford to run mines, buy houses or make machinery anymore. Bosses didn’t have enough money to pay their employees, so thousands of workers lost their jobs or had to work for very low wages. While many soldier settlers and other farmers abandoned their blocks and moved to the cities to try to find work, unemployed men from the cities were going to the country for the same reason.

  Jobs were very hard to find, so once people lost their jobs they struggled to find the money to buy food or pay the rent. When families could no longer afford to pay the rent they were often evicted from their houses, and went to live with other unemployed people in dole camps on the outskirts of towns or cities. In dole camps people lived in rough shacks or tents, without electricity, running water or bathrooms. They lived off rabbits, fish (if there was a river nearby), and the dole – also known as sustenance (or susso) rations. These rations provided families with basic foods like bread, tea, sugar, flour, potatoes, onions, oatmeal, milk and golden syrup.

  Dole camps were generally very dirty places and because children living there often didn’t have enough to eat, many of them became sick. They were also teased or looked down on by other children whose families were better off. The government didn’t have much money to help poor people, partly because it had spent so much during the war and on projects like the soldier settlement scheme. Schools in poor areas gave children free bread and soup at lunchtime, however, and charities tried to help the unemployed by giving them extra clothes and food.

  Chapter 6 – the Second World War

  On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany (led by Adolf Hitler) invaded Poland, and two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. That same day, 3 September 1939, Australia also went to war with Germany. By the time the war ended in 1945, nearly a million Australians had joined the armed forces; for some of them it was the first steady job they had had, after growing up during the Great Depression. At first Australian troops fought in North Africa and parts of Europe, but when Japan entered the war at the end of 1941 Australian soldiers also fought against the Japanese in places like Singapore, Indonesia and New Guinea.

  Because Japan is much closer to Australia than Germany is, the threat to Australia became much greater once the Japanese entered the war, and people began to take more precautions. Everyone had to black out their windows so that enemy planes wouldn’t be able to see their lights, and some schools evacuated children to towns further inland. Other schools dug trenches and held air-raid drills, so that children would know what to do if they were bombed. Although most towns in Australia were never attacked during the war, Darwin was bombed more than 60 times, and there were also air-raids on other places in northern Australia like Townsville, Broome, Wyndham and Horn Island.

  Once America joined the war (at the same time as Japan), a large number of their soldiers began to be stationed at military bases in Australia. Australians were happy to have the Americans on their side, and because so many young men were away fighting overseas, some Australian girls began dating American soldiers. This, along with the fact that American soldiers were better paid, sometimes led to rivalry between Australian and American soldiers when Australian soldiers came home on leave.

  Another effect of having so many men overseas was that there weren’t as many left to work on farms or in factories or shops, and as the war continued there began to be shortages of some products. Things like tea, sugar, butter, meat, petrol, clothes and material were rationed to make sure there would be enough for everyone. Each year people were given a certain number of coupons they could use to buy these rationed items.

  Chapter 7 – the 1950s

  Because WWII badly affected many European countries, when the war finished millions of people from Europe wanted to move overseas. Australia still had a shortage of workers, and the government felt that having a larger population would help protect the country in future if anyone tried to invade, so it began accepting many of these migrants. In the fifteen years after WWII ended, over one and a half million migrants came to Australia, with another million coming each decade after that. Although many of the migrants were from the UK and Ireland, a large number also came from countries like Italy, Germany, Greece, Yugoslavia and the Netherlands. Before this, most Australians had been of British descent, but with the arrival of these migrants (who came to be known as ‘New Australians’), Australia began to be more multicultural.

  When Queen Elizabeth II toured Australia in 1954 an estimated 75 per cent of the population turned out to see her, and newspapers were full of photos and reports about her. Because it wasn’t too many years after WWII, when so many Australians had fought on behalf of Britain, people felt pleased and honoured to have the Queen visiting. Although by this time there were new technologies like microphones, there was still no television in Australia, and so another reason people lined the streets to see the Queen was that they had no other way of seeing her. For most people it was a very exciting time, though after the Queen’s visit (partly because of Australia’s new ties with America), Australians began to feel more independent of Britain, and less interested in Britain and its affairs.

  Although it was designed in 1901, it wasn’t until 14 April 1954 that the Australian flag formally replaced the Union Jack as the national flag of Australia. A red-backgrounded version of the flag (known as a red ensign) became the flag that merchant ships had to fly.

  In the 1950s sport played a large role in Australians’ lives, with Melbourne hosting the Olympic Games in 1956, and more sports grounds and swimming pools being built. The different football codes were very popular with spectators, and Australians performed well internationally at sports like cricket and swimming, and particularly at tennis, with Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad (known as the ‘tennis twins’) winning many matches together.

  Chapter 8 – the 1960s

  After WWII the two most powerful countries in the world were Russia and America. Russia had a system of government called communism, which ma
ny Western countries (including Australia) disliked, because communist leaders could easily become dictators. Although Russia and America never actually fought each other, there was a lot of tension between them, and many people were worried that the Russians and Americans would start launching missiles or dropping bombs on each other. Western countries were also scared that communism would spread across the world, and to try to stop this happening, countries like America and Australia sent soldiers to fight against communists in Korea and Vietnam.

  The Vietnam War, which lasted from 1959 to 1975, was the first war Australia was involved in after the introduction of television, which made it the first war with television coverage. Every evening on the news people would hear about the war, and see images that were sometimes upsetting. Over time, many people began to object to the fact that Australian soldiers were fighting in Vietnam. They also objected to the government’s new conscription laws, which meant certain young men could be chosen to join the army even though they didn’t necessarily want to. These young men could even be sent overseas to fight, which many Australians thought was unfair.

  On 14 February 1966 Australia introduced decimal currency to replace the system of pounds, shillings and pence that had been inherited from Britain. Under the old system, 12 pennies equalled one shilling and 20 shillings equalled one pound, but the new system was much easier to add up. When decimal coins were first released there were 50 cent, 20 cent, 10 cent, 5 cent, 2 cent and 1 cent pieces. There were no one or two dollar coins until 1984 and 1988 – there were one and two dollar notes instead – and the 50 cent piece was round.

  In the 1960s large deposits of minerals like coal, nickel and iron ore were being discovered in Western Australia and Queensland. This led to a huge increase in mining activity in Australia, known as a mining boom. Most mineral deposits were found in remote areas, so small mining towns were built specially for miners and their families to be able to live nearby.

  Chapter 9 – Cyclone Tracy

  In the early hours of Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin. Although they had been warned, most residents of Darwin were unprepared for the cyclone. Many of them hadn’t expected it to hit, because Cyclone Selma, which had been predicted to hit Darwin three weeks before, had changed course and died out before it reached them. Tracy killed 71 people and destroyed or seriously damaged between 80 and 90 per cent of homes, causing millions of dollars of damage. About 25 boats in the harbour were wrecked and 20 more were damaged, though some vessels out at sea managed to survive the storm relatively unhurt.

  After the cyclone passed, the Darwin hospital began to treat the wounded, and doctors and military personnel from other states were flown to Darwin to help treat patients, provide supplies and clear up the mess. Nearly everyone was now homeless, so around 35,000 people were evacuated to other cities, mostly by plane. Charity organisations helped by meeting these refugees at the airports and providing them with clothes, and many community groups fundraised to help the survivors of the cyclone. Over the next four years Darwin was gradually rebuilt, this time with more attention being paid to cyclone protection.

  Anna Bartlett was born in Mount Isa and has lived most of her life in Brisbane. One of her earliest books, called ‘The Adventuer’, which she wrote and illustrated herself, was awarded an ‘excellent’ sticker by her Year 2 teacher. Anna went on to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Production at the Queensland University of Technology.

  When she’s not writing stories, Anna enjoys reading, sport, bushwalking and playing the piano. A Penny in Time is her first novel. She hopes her cousins Bereket and Telile – and lots of other people too – will enjoy it!

  Free teachers’ notes for A Penny in Time are available online at http://ipoz.biz/IP_Kidz/TeachersGuides/Penny_Guide.pdf