Although the British Army would have it otherwise, it’s well-known in my home town that the first shots fired in both World Wars were fired from the fort at Queenscliff, guarding the entrance to Port Phillip Bay.
“Victoria’s Gibraltar” was built to defend the Bay and its strategic ports from invasion by the Imperial Russians and the French. But, when Australia was invaded for the first time, in WWII, the threat came in the far north of the country.
The bombings of Darwin and, to a lesser extent, Broome, are etched into the Australian consciousness of the War, along with the Japanese midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour, five months later. In all, some 90 attacks were made on various places in and around Australia.
One that has become almost forgotten is the bombing of the town of Mossman, in far north Queensland.
The Maryborough Chronicle reported a local cane farmer, Felice Zullo, his wife and daughter Carmela, and a cousin, Antonio Peglise, were asleep when the bomb exloded within a few yards of the house, making a deep crater. “The bomb fragment flying through the thin wood and iron walls of the two-roomed dwelling, struck her on the head, inflicting a severe gash and fracturing on the child’s skull”.
“Other residents of the area said that they felt the blast. Shrapnel struck the house of an Italian named Scarcella, quarter of a mile away, and a window was shattered. Another Italian, Previtera, about a mile away, reported that his house had been severely shaken.”
Sub Lieutenant Kyoshi Mitzukura had flown from Rabaul to make a bombing raid on Cairns, in an Emily Flying Boat of the 14th KU. At 0330 hours on 31 July 1942 Mitzukura made an approach on what he thought was Cairns after seeing some lights. Mitzukura reported that he dropped eight 250kg bombs on the target.
Seven of the eight bombs have never been recovered, but the bomb which fell on Felice Zullo’s sugar cane farm left a crater seven metres wide and a metre deep. A police party from Cairns recovered the nose cap and other fragments of the bomb.
Sub Lieutenant Mitzukura arrived back at Rabaul at 10.10 am after a 17 hour flight.
Carmela, recalled the incident in a newspaper report in 1989.
“My mother said it was bright moonlit night and very cold. She said the blast woke her and she saw I was covered in blood. She thought I had been killed and started screaming. I know I’m a unique part of Queensland history, but it’s something I could have done without.”
Other locals also remember the incident well.
Lesley Perry recalls, “There was very little in the way of media accounts back then. I was a small child in Cairns during the war and can remember the air raid sirens and knowing we had to rush to a shelter that was built under our house. It happened quite often.”
“I was a child then,” says Daphne Andersen. “The day after the bombing everyone in the town began digging trenches and some people moved further south away from Mossman. It is common knowledge that the Japanese were searching for the Airstrip in Mareeba or the wharves in Cairns and Townsville.”
Judy Grieves remembers that, “Myself and my twin brother were born in Cairns[…]a week before the bombing at Mossman. I was brought up with the story and how we were the ones who should have been bombed. The girl injured by shrapnel was always part of this story.”
Carmela spent 3 months recovering in hospital. She has been left with a large scar under her hair.
In 1991, Carmela, now Carmel Emmi, unveiled a plaque on a memorial stone commemorating the attack and her survival. The memorial stone is situated on Bamboo Creek Road, after the turnoff to Whyanbeel.
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