A monthly , or bi-monthly feature of life in suburban Sydney during World War II, at least in the vicinity of Berala , in what were then Sydney's Western Suburbs ( now the inner Western Suburbs!), was the sonorous wail of the Air Raid Sirens.
As far as I am aware the Siren we heard was
near the Park in Lidcombe - a brisk 20 minutes walk away. To me it was a
marvellous bit of entertainment! We never believed that it could be a
genuine air raid, not that that belief was based on any detailed
knowledge of the disposition of Japanese Aircraft Carriers - we just
knew we were going to be O.K. Similarly, but more irregularly,
anti-aircraft searchlights would pierce the night sky - wonderful stuff
causing people all around to run onto their verandahs or into their
front/back yards to watch the show. There seemed never to be any
aircraft around to give the exercise some semblance of reality, and very
rarely a second or third searchlight to allow co-ordination exercises.
We
had in our backyard a large hole dug as an air raid shelter, but it
seemed to me even as a child, somewhat half-hearted and incomplete, and
it was never taken seriously and as time wore on , it was filled in.
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| WW II Searchlight |
The War, so dramatic in the films, and apparently serious in the papers - not that I could read them- was somehow at one remove from our day to day lives. At least that was true for children like me.
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