Andrew Williams

So it was up to a body called the Commonwealth Oil Board to figure out what to do once war seemed like it was imminent.

And as luck may have it, it was in the middle of a meeting where that plan was being presented to the road authorities in each state when war was officially declared.

That was the 3rd of September 1939.

Yeah, so not exactly the same situation, but a few parallels with our current situation there.

Obviously, you know, an ad campaign coming out from the government as we record this.

Lots of people hoarding petrol, although they were doing that well in advance.

So the next plan was to encourage motorists to use something called a gas producer, which were these sort of big, ugly charcoal burner things that were used as a substitute for petrol.

The problem is there wasn't a lot of consumer confidence in them.

They were pretty cumbersome and rarely used products.

technology at the time, so it didn't quite work in getting people to adopt it.

But at the time, the government was trying to find any alternative it could to the idea of petrol rationing, which was deeply unpopular.

Newspapers campaigning against it, businesses campaigning against it.

Nobody really wanted it.

But by May 1940, Australia's supply was in real strife.

And the following month, the government finally made the call to bring it in, and it officially started on the 1st of October that year.

And those problems only got worse as the war went along.

Rationing became tighter as England demanded that Australia further restrict supply so that England could keep up its fight in Europe.

Lots of people switched to bikes.

Again, something similar happening at the moment with people picking up e-bikes and turning to electric vehicles.

and it was deeply, deeply unpopular with the Australian public.