Florence Peters

Today we remember Florence Peters, who was living at Pine Creek in the Northern Territory (NT) with her family when Darwin was bombed.

Florence Peters audio file (MP4 23.83 MB)

Florence Peters audio script

75th Anniversary of the End of the Second World War

Audio actuality

“Fellow Citizens, the War is over” — (The Hon J B Chifley, Prime Minister of Australia)

On the 75th Anniversary of the End of the Second World War, Australia Remembers Florence Peters, who was living at Pine Creek in the NT with her family when Darwin was bombed.

Their home came perilously close to taking a direct hit.

Florence Peters

Considering our age and considering we didn’t have war around us in Australia, it was very hard to comprehend the place that we were born in was being devastated by bombs and the enemy destroying buildings and that. It was very hard to comprehend that. Our own house had a crater next to it where what they called daisy-cutter bombs had dropped in … made this big crater by the side of the house. And there were machine-gun bullet holes along the sides of the wall. So, it then brought home to us how much this war meant to us as a family.

You know, war does leave its scars on people’s lives. We tend to sort of say, “Well it won’t happen”, but that’s what we thought before Darwin was bombed — “It won’t happen here”, but it did.

Saturday, August 15 marks the 75th Anniversary of the End of the Second World War. Let’s pay our respects to that amazing generation of Australians.