Peter Conrad's critique of Baz Luhrmann's Australia ("Gone with the Wind", February 2009) is timely and to the point. The film has polarised opinion. Some Australians claim that it has no purpose but entertainment and that we should just sit back and enjoy the spectacle, overlooking the fakery as the Kimberley morphs into Arizona, cattle stampede on the edge of an abyss and an Aboriginal boy eyeballs the mob into submission. Others cringe at the lack of historical perspective and criticise the film-maker for pandering to the American box office. Still others lament that it has set the Australian film industry back by millions of dollars.
In my view, even more disturbing than Luhrmann's indulgence in cliché and nonsense is the way he has dealt with history. The bombing of Darwin should not be treated as merely a convenient filmic plot device. Australians must face up to the fact that Gallipoli and the Anzacs form only part of our history of wartime involvement. John Howard focused on the Gallipoli campaign, in which it could be argued that the miscalculation or stupidity of other nations resulted in Australian heroism and sacrifice. But the bombing of Darwin was, to quote Paul Hasluck, our "own day of shame".
In February 1942, 45 ships lay at anchor in Darwin Harbour, both American and Australian, supply and ammunition vessels and the hospital ship Manunda. Without warning, a force of Japanese Zeros rained more bombs on these ships than were dropped in the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 45 minutes, most of the ships were severely damaged, eight sunk and the Australian ammunition vessel Neptuna burnted red in a sea of oil. Men trying to escape by diving into the water were engulfed in flames.
My late husband was appointed war artist to Darwin in July 1942 to record the devastation still very much in evidence. I saw Australia on the sixty-seventh anniversary of the bombings. Baz Luhrmann completely trivialises this horrific wartime event when he has the Aboriginal boy and his companions rescued from an island occupied by Japanese soldiers. Come off it, Baz: no Japanese ever occupied an island near Darwin!
The reality is that 160 people died in the Darwin Harbour raid, and later raids around the town brought the total death count to 300. The recent Victorian bushfires have been described as Australia's worst peacetime tragedy; it is about time we recognised the bombing of Darwin as Australia's worst wartime disaster.
