The age of innocence lost, and airport security……..

I was watching a documentary last night about airport security.  I am glad in one way that I did all of my travelling twenty years ago when jumping on a jet meant just that.  A short waltz through the luggage scanner,and,  hey presto. You could just go to the waiting area and board your flight.  Looking at the programme last night I wondered if the authorities can possibly find any more indignities to heap on the heads of the passengers.

And this programme about airport security triggered a memory from sixty years ago, when I was a child of about ten, and I remembered  how trusting the Americans were way back then.

My grandparents lived in a Brisbane suburb called Bulimba, in a house just across  the  road from the Brisbane River.  Around 1943. after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, the Americans officially joined in  World War Two.  They had a lot of their fleet based in the pacific theatre of war where they were engaged in the battle of the Coral Sea, off the North Queensland coast.

Brisbane was the port of refitting, rest and regrouping, and, from time to time,  I would look across the river and see that the odd battleship or gunboat had dropped anchor  and was tied up at the big wharves on the opposite  side  of the river.

As part of what would have been an early  version of "winning the hearts and minds of the population", the Americans would hold open days on which anyone who wanted to could go aboard any of the ships which were in port.  Long queues of people would form as everyone was anxious to see the fleet that had come to save us.  And save us they did.  The Australian government, in its infinite wisdom, had decided not to defend Queensland above "the Brisbane Line", and the rest of Queensland was going to be abandoned to the Japanese invaders.

Anyway, as I was staying so close to these ships, I went aboard many of them and even got to go down into a submarine one day.  What a magnificent adventure for a ten year old .

To this day, in those of us who are still alive and can remember, there is a deep and abiding affection for the brave Americans who won this important battle and literally saved us from a horrible fate.  Just near our house, there was an unofficial graveyard where the remains of the planes, lost in battle and salvaged for scrap, were dumped, awaiting recycling.  Their shattered remains were piled up, torn and broken,  the nose cones still brightly painted with the names the brave pilots had given to their planes.