Home Front: Wartime Sydney 1939 - 45

On Tuesday the hubby and I headed into the city to check out the Home Front exhibition at the Museum of Sydney that is closing this week.

On 3 September 1939 Prime Minister Robert Menzies broadcast to the nation that Australia was at war with Germany. Although the battlefields were thousands of miles away, the war also significantly affected those at home, who were urged to support the war effort. For most Australians, life during World War II was a strange combination of loneliness, excitement, opportunity, austerity, love and grief.

Home front: wartime Sydney 1939–45 explores the experiences of Sydneysiders living on the home front during World War II. Through a fascinating array of paintings, photographs, film, costume, objects and personal memorabilia, this exhibition follows the wartime events that shaped, challenged and changed the lives of generations of Australians.

The Home Front exhibition was genuinely interesting with a mixture of posters, photos, sound clips and video from the time it really bought across what life was like in Australia for ordinary people living through the war. Whilst we were sat watching one of the information videos we got chatting to an older couple who were children in the war. They shared some interesting snippets of information with us including the fact that their were no coloured pencils for children in the war and that Plasticine was grey so it seemed at least for these children that life got more colourful after the war had ended.