Australia, the movie.

[MrB (Simon)]

Originally Posted by jjjnettie

It must have be frightening times to live through.

Yep
Though I was only born in the 70's, I have a daily reminder of the times just across the road from my house.... Army bomb shelters/munition stores and huge gun emplacements, all facing out to sea. And that's south of Perth!

[acropolite (Phil)]

If ever you're in Darwin there's an interesting war museum, with exhibits and artefacts from both sides of the battle. I too was unaware of the extent of the bombing of Darwin prior to visiting the museum 3 years ago, apparently the Japanese dropped more bombs on Darwin than they did on Pearl Harbour! (If you're an aviation buff they have a B52 there as well!)

[iceman (Mike)]

My wife and I went and saw "Australia" last night.

I thoroughly enjoyed it - it's entertainment. A bit of an epic, a bit of romance, a bit of comedy, and like someone else said, good to see the bombing of darwin portrayed on the big screen.

Hugh Jackman is damn good as usual, and Nicole's character grows on you a little.. but I think she's supposed to be annoying in it

One thing that I didn't like, was the part where they had the Japanese actually landing on and invading "Mission Island" after the bombing of Darwin. That just didn't happen in reality and it added nothing to the story line at all except to add a bit of drama.

I'm actually reading "Australia Under Attack" at the moment by Douglas Lockwood , and it's all about the bombing of Darwin - the failings of the authorities, the missed early warnings, the aftermath of it all, etc.. 250+ people killed! It's certainly been an eye-opener to me, because we just didn't learn anything about this in school.

If the Japanese did invade Darwin, they wouldn't have had much resistance, at least for a while.

Anyway, good movie, good entertainment and went fairly quickly despite the 2hr 40 minute duration.

[PCH (Paul)]

I saw the movie and thoroughly enjoyed it - whether or not it had shortcomings with respect to historical accuracy or not. I honestly don't see it winning any Oscars unfortunately, unless for maybe Nicole who's part I thought was terrifically played. I could have cheerfully strangled her myself early on in the film - but in a nice sort of way if you know what I mean

I certainly wouldn't be so bold as get on my soapbox and start spouting about which bits were and which bits weren't historically accurate, but Mike, if the Japs landing on Mission Island was the only bit you picked up on as not being quite right, you might like to read Germaine Greer's comments from earlier on in the weeks' press. She had plenty to say, particularly about the treatment of Aborigines at this time.

I'm no great fan of hers particularly, but she seemed to know what she was on about in this regard. It made interesting reading anyway.

Just my 2c

[iceman (Mike)]

I've no doubt there are other inaccurate portrayals of history in the film - after all, it's a fictional film with some "real life" history thrown in.

The landing on Mission Island was one that irked me more because of the book i'm reading at the moment.