The Forgotten Female Codebreakers of WWII is the latest episode in Marc Fennell’s No One Saw it Coming podcast series.

The episode visits a hot, dusty shed in Brisbane which was home to “one of Australia’s greatest war sescrets.”

A group of Australian women based in that shed were assigned to break Japanese coded messages, similar to the Bletchley Park code breakers in Britain. They called themselves The Garage Girls.

Author Alli Sinclair tells Marc Fennell the story of these codebreakers and how they secured the Allies’ victory in the Pacific, only to be lost in history because the work was classified.

The Australian Army’s Defence Signals Directorate recently declassified their work, and their stories are now publicly available.

Nicknamed the ‘Garage Girls’ after the location of their operations in the garage behind ‘Nyrambla’ mansion in Brisbane, the women of No. 11 Cipher Section, Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) operated British TypeX cipher machines to encrypt and decrypt communications between Central Bureau and other allied command signals intelligence (Sigint) centres.

_{Supplied: Australian Signals Directorate}

The work of the Garage Girls significantly shortened hostilities in the Pacific, according to one of the code breakers, Joyce Grace (pictured above): “Douglas MacArthur, I think it was, that put the news out that we reduced the war time by two years with the work that we done – so we must have done something special, and I feel very proud about it.”  

Joyce Grace was a 19-year-old working in a Sydney haberdashery store in 1943 when she received a letter from the Manpower Directorate, tasked with conscripting civilians to fill labour shortages in the latter half of World War II.

“They put it to me that if I left my job, the boss would have to take me back and give me the exact same job that I had when I left him.”

Joyce was sent for six weeks’ basic military training at Ingleburn Army Camp where she was asked what type of army work took her interest. “I hadn’t given much thought to what I might do, but anyhow, I said, ‘Well, my father was a naval signalman in the First World War, and he seemed to enjoy the job — I’ll give signals a go’.”

Listen to the episode here.

In other special ABC holiday listening podcasts, Geraldine Doogue and Hamish MacDonald‘s Global Roaming has produced a special holiday series for the lucky country examining global affairs, conflicts, security and foreign policy. Called Getting Lucky Again, the sereis is available here.

Global Roaming was a winner in the News section of the RadioToday Australia Podcast Awards.