Longreach goes all in

This effort reflected not just the patriotism of the community, but genuine fears that, with war raging across the Pacific, Australia was in imminent danger of being invaded by Japan. That meant Queenslanders were living on the frontline. ‘The enemy is at our entrance gates, and soon he will be coming up the main drive to the front gate,’ the deputy chairman of Longreach Shire Council, Councillor A.A. Moffat, warned a public meeting in early February 1942. If anyone doubted the seriousness of the situation, that changed over the next few weeks as word spread that Singapore had fallen and the Japanese were dropping bombs on Darwin.