Khaki Town by Judy Nunn

Khaki Town by Judy Nunn

Judy Nunn was born in Perth,Western Australia, is an Australian fiction author, former theatre and television actress and radio and television screenwriter. Nunn was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2015 Australia Day Honours for her service to the performing arts as a scriptwriter and actor of stage and screen, and to literature as an author.

Judy Nunn’s Khaki Town, a number one bestseller, is inspired by a true wartime story that has remained a well-kept secret for over seventy years. It seems to have happened overnight, Val thought . How extraordinary. We’ve become a khaki town. It’s March 1942. Singapore has fallen. Darwin has been bombed. Australia is on the brink of being invaded by the Imperial Japanese Forces. And Val Callahan, publican of The Brown’s Bar in Townsville, could not be happier as she contemplates the fortune she’s making from lonely, thirsty soldiers. Overnight the small Queensland city is transformed into the transport hub for 70,000 American and Australian soldiers destined for combat in the South Pacific. Barbed wire and gun emplacements cover the beaches. Historic buildings are commandeered. And the dance halls are in full swing with jazz, jitterbug and jive. The Australian troops begrudge the confident, well-fed ‘Yanks’ who have taken over their town and their women.

There’s growing conflict, too, within the American ranks, because black GIs are enjoying the absence of segregation. And the white GIs don't like it. As racial violence explodes through the ranks of the military, a young United States Congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, is sent to Townsville by his president to investigate. ‘Keep a goddamned lid on it, Lyndon,’ he is told, ‘lest it explode in our faces …’

Published: 20 October 2020

ISBN: 9780143795186

Imprint: Penguin

Pages: 400