Born in 1941

If you were born in 1941, the world your parents had hoped to give you was about to be turned upside down. Japan entered the war in December, and suddenly Australia's comfortable sense of distance from the fighting evaporated. Singapore — long considered an impregnable fortress — was under threat, and the news on the wireless turned grave.

But in the first half of the year, life still had its ordinary texture: the smell of a bakery on a Monday morning, the clatter of the tram on the main street, the Saturday matinee at the picture theatre for threepence. The Curtin Labor government was elected in October, and John Curtin's steady, serious voice on the radio gave people something to hold onto. Mum was still able to buy a pound of sausages at the butcher without a ration book, and the footy season had run its course with the usual passions and post-match arguments.

Kids swam at the local baths all January, and the smell of Zinc cream and chlorine was the smell of summer. But the telegram boy on his bicycle had become a figure of dread, and by December, when Pearl Harbour was bombed and Darwin felt suddenly very close to the front line, the whole country understood that this war was no longer someone else's.