What happens
This episode of The Pacific Story traces Australia's emerging role in the Pacific, from its wartime prime minister John Curtin's declaration that the country's place would never be the same again. Dr. Herbert Evatt, Australia's foreign minister, is presented as a figure in that change, and the broadcast describes the country's uneasy relationship with Britain across the World War I and II years and the economic strains of the Great Depression. It recounts the Labour government's rise to power in 1941, Curtin's frank words to London after the fall of Singapore, and Evatt's work in Washington with the Pacific War Council. The episode also considers Australia's regional ties, its security concerns and its future relations with Asia.
Australia and the Pacific during and after the Second World War, with scenes in Washington and London
Characters: John Curtin, Herbert Evatt, Billy Hughes, Robert Menzies, Douglas MacArthur
Listen for: Curtin's statement that Australia's place in the Pacific will never be the same as before the war
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.