Artist David Cox recalls what it was like to be a child during World War Two, and his warm observations reveal a resilient quintessential Australian spirit. A companion to his much loved picture book The Road to Goonong.

That morning, something important happened. It began with a great rumble that came in through our classroom window and rumbled on and on. We all ran out into the school yard and hung on the fence and gazed in wonder. An endless line of trucks and jeeps and tanks and weapons carriers came around the corner and along our street, all of them with big white stars on their sides. There were big cannons, too. Soldiers in the trucks waved to us. We wouldn't have guessed there were so many trucks in the whole wide world. They rumbled right through the morning break and when we came out for lunch they still rolled by. Then they were gone, heading north to where the war was being fought.