Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 469
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[Page 469]
(19)
Office of the Department of Main Roads, to examine ad approve their detailed plans for each particular site.
In February 1942, following the fall of Manila to the Japanese, the United States Commander-in-Chief, General McArthur, had flown in haste from that city to Canberra to confer with the Labour Party Government, led by John Curtin, which had recently displaced the first Menzies administration. He then re-established his Headquarters in Brisbane, soon after which the first American soldiers and sailors appeared in the streets of Sydney; and the Lend-Lease reciprocal scheme was originated whereby Australia supplied food and raw materials to the U.S. Forces, and America supplied us with military vehicles and heavy equipment and armament.
McArthur thoroughly disapproved of the available Australian troops being stretched in a thin line along the coast adjacent to our ports. He located the bigger units in handy, rear concentrations, with only small posts on the shores to ascertain the exact position and strength of any attempted landing, to give timely warning, and to delay the enemy advance guard long enough to permit our main forces to come forward and deploy.
By this time, our Chief Engineer and most of his staff, including me, and with some additions, were transferred to the eighty-officer headquarters of the newly formed Australian Second Corps, commanded by Lt-General Northcott (later Governor of N.S.W.) and occupying the dozen or so of the large buildings comprising the Burnside Masonic Homes near Parramatta. This change occurred in the middle of my task of mining the coastal roads, and it was there that the job was completed. In the middle of the year, when the threat of immediate Japanese invasion had passed, Second Corps was reorganised, just before moving to Southern Queensland and I became surplus to establishment and was returned to Victoria Barracks for a few months before being given command of the Fifth Australian C.R.E. (Works) - Commander Royal Australian Engineers - at Newcastle. I functioned there as chief military engineer for the north of the State until transferred in August 1943 to command Fourth Australian C.R.E. (Works) with headquarters in the palatial old home once occupied by