Cirrus@Austlit

'Threats to national safety have captured the imagination of few novelists: to date, only Maria Gardner's Blood Stained Wattle (1992) and Robin Sheiner's Smile, the War is Over (1983) have appeared. While both of these writers draw heavily upon military and political history to tell their stories, Gardner derives much of her material from a diary her father, Colin Gray Gardner, kept of his experiences during and after the bombing of Darwin, and Sheiner, who was a child during the war in Perth, supplements her memories of the period with letters from and formal interviews with those who were alive at the time.'