AUSTRALIA’S military history is full of stories of courage and heroism in both World Wars  but occasionally little-known events come to surface that help us understand how close World War II came to our shores.

As Anzac Day approaches, Nambour resident Tony Bevin recalls the day during World War II he saw a Japanese reconnaissance plane from his family’s Burnside farm. 

He was just a small boy at the time but has a vivid memory of looking up in the sky and seeing the plane.

“I wasn’t much more than a baby,” he said. “It circled from Maroochydore up to Mapleton, and it was apparently looking for a suitable site for an airstrip because the Japanese had plans to land at Maroochydore in order to try and take Brisbane.”

Tony was one of the few people still alive today who actually saw the plane. 

“Children at the school at the time were all told to get in the trenches,” he said. “They had trenches dug at the school, and my brother was in the trench, and he never saw the plane. At the time, I didn’t know it was Japanese. I was too young. But you find out these things after the war was over.  

“We had soldiers staying on our farm at the top of Carter Road. The farm went down into Burnside. My grandfather grew cane and also had cows. At the time troops were right up to the house in trenches. We could hear the sirens sounding, and my mum took me downstairs where the soldiers were. 

"We were standing with the soldiers and they were looking up, and my mother was looking up. So I looked up too, and I saw the plane. I’ve got a very good memory.”

The military authorities had considered the stretch from Noosa to Caloundra a logical beachhead for an enemy landing, and many soldiers were camped in the area. A military fortification was built on the northern end of Bribie Island to cover the defence of Brisbane and the North West shipping channel.

Mooloolaba beach itself was part of the nation’s front line, as the threat of Japanese attack and invasion increased.  

Barbed wire on the beach

Tony continued: “I can still remember seeing barbed wire on the beach. Actually, the navy used Mount Coolum as a target during the war for practice. And if you look at it nowadays, you’ll see little caves on the left-hand side, about two or three quarters up. That’s where some of the shells hit and exploded.”

Tony said the Japanese plane would have come from a ship located off the Coast. 

The Japanese revealed after the war that they had picked Mapleton as a potential location for an airstrip, should they invade. 

“Planes are most vulnerable when they’re taking off, so being 1200 feet above sea level gives you somewhat of an advantage because you’re already in the air.  At the end of the day, nothing happened because of the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4-8, 1942), and we can thank the Americans for saving Australia.”