On Gallant Wings

Thirteen-year-old Ava lives in Darwin with her family and their homing pigeons, of which Essie is Ava’s favourite. A Japanese family live next door and their son, Kazuo, is Ava’s best and only real friend. Her father is serving overseas. As Essie is taking her first flight, Ava overhears an argument about her brother Fred, who has lied about his age to join the militia. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he trains in Darwin and later helps set up a pigeon service in Townsville. While most residents evacuate, Ava remains because her mother (who works in the post office) is essential to the war effort. Later that day, military police take Kazuo and his family away in a truck to a holding camp—much to Ava’s distress—along with more than 1100 others of Japanese heritage who considered Darwin their home. On February 19, 1942, Darwin is bombed, and Ava and her mother are evacuated in a cattle train with the remaining women and children. After a very difficult journey, they arrive, exhausted, at her grandparent’s home in Lake Boga, where they discover the extent of the damage to Darwin is being concealed from the population. Even those who were actually there know only part of the truth. Desperate to do something to contribute to the war effort, Ava’s mother joins the WAAAF and begins work at the secret Catalina Flying Boat Base. When the authorities decide to remove Kazuo from the family camp and sent him to the men’s camp on his own, he escapes and makes his way to Lake Boga to find Ava. Living by rules and rituals has always been how Ava has felt safe, but now she must decide what is right—to report a ‘potentially dangerous’ escapee to the authorities, or to protect a beloved friend …