Put Out into the Deep

In the midst of WWII, in mid-1942, Supreme Commander of the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) Gen. Douglas MacArthur moved his critical intelligence organisation, Central Bureau, from Melbourne to Brisbane – to a large Queenslander on Henry Street, Ascot. There, an inter-allied, ultra-secret interception and decryption team worked around the clock, deciphering and decoding, and understanding, the signals of enemy combatants throughout the Pacific. The local signals teams who intercepted these signals were stationed around the SWPA and at Camp Kalinga – they were signals operators who had sworn an oath under the Official Secrets Act (1939) never to reveal their work. The signals team began as only men – but then, by 1942, came to include young women in the Australian Women’s Army Service. This was secret stuff. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that some of these stories started to leak out. And even then, how did you explain to your grandchild that this was what you did