Port of Singapore

It is, however, for another reason that Bukka Chandu is a place that is singularly appropriate for the speech that I delivered.

And that's because the museum looks south, across Singapore Harbour, and has an unimpeded view of one of the target areas where Japanese ships were mined and destroyed in a devastating commando mission known as Operation Jaywick.

which was the very operation that set in motion a sequence of unforeseen circumstances and consequences that would ultimately give rise to a terrible tragedy, an atrocity, which was in fact the subject of the presentation that I gave.

With the permission of the museum, today's episode is a recording of that presentation.

I've actually been wanting to write a book about Operation Jaywick since I was nine years of age and I can be very specific about that because it was when I was nine or eight or nine when this movie or miniseries came out.

Now The Heroes, as it was called, none of the people in this room, with the exception of my friend Charles, who is also an Australian, who is here today, will recognise any of the actors, but these were big actors of Australian stage and film and TV of the 1980s.

And The Heroes was a very dramatic miniseries that captured all of the gallantry and the courage involved in a very daring raid that took place in September 1943, just outside there in Singapore Harbour, and essentially involved the blowing up and the destruction of several Japanese merchant vessels.

And when I watched this movie or this mini-series as a nine-year-old, incredibly, my mother let me stay up and watch it, even though it was quite violent, but I'm glad that she did.