Date: 2007-07-11 16:37 Subject: Communists heading for Ouyen Security: Public Tags: quotes

From Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia vol. 4: The Succeeding Age 1901-1942 (OUP 2006), pp. 264-265

On Friday 6 March a rumour passed around the little wheat town of Ouyen in the Mallee district of Victoria: the communists had seized Sydney and even now their counterparts were advancing on Melbourne from Mildura. This was a remarkably indirect route but as Ouyen lay in its path, the farmers and local businessmen turned out with firearms, dug trenches, laid sandbags and kept watch all through the night.