Home Front

Overview

Recycling, learning to mend and the meticulous saving of energy. Wartime rationing seems a long time ago, but the strictures of home front life feel pretty familiar in a world pondering the financial crisis, global warming and the fashionableness of yarn bombing. Sydney's World War II home front was a world with fewer men, women getting a taste of independence, a glut of fit GIs and fear of invasion. The Museum of Sydney is bringing back these memories, good and bad, as it plays host to an exhibition about life in Sydney under the shadow of war, Home Front.

Taking in the period from Prime Minister Robert Menzies' 1939 announcement to the surrender of Japan in 1945, the show will feature photos from the Sydney of the period and parts from the midget submarines that attacked Sydney harbour in 1942. The Historic Houses Trust will also be running Sunday film screenings and its popular yearly take over of Elizabeth Bay House. This year's party will be a GI Ball — a somewhat more expensive evening's analog to Jurassic Lounge. If you'd like to see how Sydney skulked and buzzed as it collided with life during wartime, the Museum of Sydney has something to show you.

Image: Troops of the 6th Division wave goodbye, Sydney 1940 (c) Australian War Memorial