On 19 February 1942 the Japanese air force bombed Darwin. Whilst this fact is well known, very few people know exactly what happened. Timothy Hall was the first writer to be given acess to all the official reports of the time and as a result he has been able to reveal exactly what happened on that dreadful day – a day which Sir Paul Hasluck (17th Governor-General of Australia) later described as ‘a day of national shame’. The sequence of events in Darwin that day certainly did not reflect the military honour that the War Cabinet wanted people to believe. On the contrary, for what really happened was a combination of chaos, panic and, in many cases, cowardice on an unprecented scale.

Following the devastating raids on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, lightning advances by Japanese forces throughout the Pacific and the Far East, and a desperate battle by the Allied command in the Dutch East Indies, it became evident that an attack on Australia was more a matter of 'when' and not 'if'. On 19 February, just eleven weeks after the attacks on Pearl Harbor and two weeks after the fall of Singapore, the same Japanese battle group that had attacked Hawaii was ordered to attack the ill-prepared and under-defended Australian port of Darwin. Publishing 75 years after this little-known yet devastating attack, this fully illustrated study details what happened on that dramatic day in 1942 with the help of contemporary photographs, maps, and profiles of the commanders and machines involved in the assault.

This book provides the first detailed history of the Bilingual Education Program in the Northern Territory of Australia. This ambitious and innovative program began in 1973 and at different times it operated in English and 19 Aboriginal languages in 29 very remote schools. The book draws together the grassroots perspectives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners and researchers. Each chapter is based on rich practitioner experience, capturing bottom-up aspirations, achievements and reflections on this innovative, yet largely undocumented language and education program. The volume also makes use of a significant collection of ‘grey literature’ documents to trace the history of the program. An ethnographic approach has been used to integrate practitioner accounts into the contexts of broader social and political forces, education policy decisions and on-the-ground actions. Language in education policy is viewed at multiple, intersecting levels: from the interactions of individuals, communities of practice and bureaucracy, to national and global forces. The book offers valuable insights as it examines in detail the policy settings that helped and hindered bilingual education in the context of minority language rights in Australia and elsewhere.