Defending the North – Frontline Cairns 1940-1946
DVD Lecture presentation by Timothy Bottoms, based on his doctoral research: A History of Cairns – City of the South Pacific, 1770-1995, Chapter 9, March 2002.
Mr. Bruce Downie who was stationed in Cairns during the war and supplied many of the historic photographs for this DVD observed of this presentation that he found it:
“…amazing that someone who wasn’t actually there at the time could be so spot on with all the nuances of that era. I personally had to almost pinch myself to make me remember that you were not one of us. It is OK for me and my mates to say to each other, remember that aircraft prang (or some other thing that would tweak our memory) with the trains making their noises especially that slow chug, chug up the Kuranda Range describing the numbers of trains going back and forth, and the frogs during the medical descriptions, we loved it all and think it will take its place amongst the historical records in the future. Absolutely spot-on!”
[Mr. Bruce Downie in a letter to the author, 16 July 2006]
This lecture was first presented at the University of Queensland Art Gallery in December 2005 and subsequently at Artspace MacKay (Central Queensland):
