Talk:Brisbane Line

message: THIS PAGE IS EVILY WRONG! The Brisbane line called for the country to be split in half horizonally, sort of.  Some one fix damn it!
:If you know more about the issue please add/amend the article yourself. Bastie 07:05, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it's right either.  Every article i've ever read suggested the brisbane line was supposed to be quite a few hundred Kms north of brisbane.  Why the hell would they surrender Brisbane City but defend the sparsely populated areas south of brisbane.  Makes no sense at all.  I'll try to find a source and if I can I will change the article. Factoid Killer 12:11, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Evily wrong

message: There are so many events pertaining to this topic spanning a period of 50 years.  I think a time line might be a good format in which to describe the events that took place in chronological order.  Factoid Killer 15:10, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Time Line 

message: The current pic in the article is clearly ludicrous. There is no evidence that plans for the 'line' existed let alone defensive walls. Unless someone can provide evidence to the contrary I will have to remove the photo. 
Also the use of a time line would be a good idea.   TransylvanianTwist 02:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: False photo

message: I've left out these edits as part of the reversion intentionally.  Apart from being worded very poorly, the artcile as it currently stands makes it blatantly obvious that this was an alleged 'proposal'.  It isn't necessary to refer to the line in this way just as it isn't necessary to refer to the tropic of capricorn as something that doesn't exist.
Furthermore, as an 'alleged proposal' what was actually supposed to have been proposed is quite ambiguous.  There are three separate claims i've heard.  The original allegation was that the 'top part of the country' was to be surrendered.  General McArthur's claims are that the line ran from Brisbane to Perth and others have claimed the line was marked by the murrumbidgee river protecting only the heavily populated areas of the east coast of Australia.  So having said that I do agree that the current wording needs to change. Factoid Killer 10:14, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If this military strategy had been adopted there would be no reason to defend WA.  The mines could be blown up, and livestock etc could be moved to the south-east.  There would be no reason to use a latitude as the line.  The idea was to defend the population and industrial centres of the south-east, and not to try to defend the vast empty coastline and the vast arid empty inland area with Australia's meagre forces.  During WW2, livestock in NSW was being moved west over the Great Dividing Range.  The Western Plains of NSW were relatively safe from invasion.  There was no need to abandon them.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:35, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''''The Brisbane line would of run approximately east and west across the entire width of the country at a latitude north of Brisbane'''' 

message: There actually is evidence of this proposal.  The most compelling of which are General McArthur's remarks.  You may or may not see this as 'enough' evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the line existed, however, it is still factually innacurate to suggest there is 'No' evidence that the Brisbane Line existed.
Nobody has added this to the article yet.  I just wanted to pre-empt any attempts to do so because I can see this was used as an argument for removing the aforementioned image. 62.254.168.102 10:36, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Evidence? 

message: * Note to self... First section of timeline (March 1943) is based on a what may be an unreliable source.  This needs to be verified by another source.  We don't know exactly what was said nor do we know who this was reported to?  ie. was it a statement in parliament or an interview with a journalist.  Who reported it?  Is the suggestion that the line ran from Brisbane to Adelaide correct?  No other source seems to mention this.
* Exactly what were Douglas MacArthur's comments to the press conference in March 1943.  We know it was a press conference and that he was answering a question put to him.  We know that whatever he said was in favour of Mr Ward's allegation.
* In the 1950s or 60s MacArthur came made a public coment (or did someone else make it in a biography of MacArthur) that the line existed, he opposed it and it was to run from Brisbane to Perth.  I can't remember where I read this exactly. 
194.46.244.45 21:56, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More work and research needed 

message: I think anyone familiar with military history would find this plausible, if unpopular.  The miliary, however, are notorious for cover-ups and instead of defending it as a "scorched earth policy" went into denial mode, continuing to today.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: PS This article has a rather biased tone.  It seems to be more concerned with denigrating the idea than evaluating the evidence.  I have attempted to give Mackay's proposal the prominence it deserves, but it needs more work.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:30, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hmm, 'notorious for cover-ups' or rightly concerned about operational security? If anything I would argue that it is usually the civilian political elite that is responsible for the 'cover-ups' and the military that has to do what their told. I would be surprised if that wasn't the case in this instance also. Anotherclown (talk) 11:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Reading MacArthur's biography American Caesar in the 290-307 page range, it's pretty clear that there was active ongoing pressure from Curtain's war cabinet to adopt a defense strategy that was some variant of this. Since biographers delve carefully into private and public correspondence (primary sources) and Manchester features the line, at least inferentially, as a political factor covering several pages of background information—then baldly states MacArthur threatened to resign before Curtain's government backed his strategy... Well there's lots of smoke... In particular, it's plain there must have been significant infighting over this difference on his multinational GHQ staff (forward versus passive defensive strategies) for William Manchester to describe most of the staff as shocked and surprised when Mac began giving orders for a forward defense, (see the three quoted & cited excerpts I inserted [here] yesterday. Manchester clearly states it corresponded more or less to the line of the tropic of capricorn, though iirc, he may have qualified that as within two degrees or twenty miles or other language offsetting the line. American Caesar should be available in most any of even the worse small town libraries, and will definitely be in the better ones. Good hunting. // FrankB 14:39, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plausible 

message: ::: Reading MacArthur's biography American Caesar in the 290-307 page range, it's pretty clear that there was active ongoing pressure from Curtain's war cabinet to adopt a defense strategy that was some variant of this. Since biographers delve carefully into private and public correspondence (primary sources) and Manchester features the line, at least inferentially, as a political factor covering several pages of background information—then baldly states MacArthur threatened to resign before Curtain's government backed his strategy... Well there's lots of smoke... In particular, it's plain there must have been significant infighting over this difference on his multinational GHQ staff (forward versus passive defensive strategies) for William Manchester to describe most of the staff as shocked and surprised when Mac began giving orders for a forward defense, (see the three quoted & cited excerpts I inserted [here] yesterday. Manchester clearly states it corresponded more or less to the line of the tropic of capricorn, though iirc, he may have qualified that as within two degrees or twenty miles or other language offsetting the line. American Caesar should be available in most any of even the worse small town libraries, and will definitely be in the better ones. Good hunting. // FrankB 14:39, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Goto pages 290-307

message: I note that much of the discussion on this article centres on the paucity of documents. I would direct the attention of editors to historian Sue Rosen's 2017 book "Scorched Earth", which is based in part on the chance discovery of documents in the NSW State Archives, which do in fact confirm the fact that the Brisbane Line was a proposed strategy. Search engine Sue Rosen and Brisbane Line, and much material will appear online. A review is here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14490854.2018.1416540?journalCode=raha20. Updating this article is on my to-do list, but I thought I would alert other editors to this. Research17 (talk) 18:32, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discovery of documents in NSW State Archives