Wartime Australia was a very mixed community. The war brought new people into the country and made its already-existing diversity more visible. After 1942, Australia hosted many exiles from the Netherlands East Indies, both Dutch and Indonesian, but it took some time for an awareness of Indonesian attitudes towards Dutch colonialism to build among Australians across the language and racial barriers. Wartime conditions also led to even more complex transnational interactions, such as those between Indians, Chinese, Indonesians, and Australians. Although poorly publicised at the time and perhaps forgotten since, these interactions offer explanations for the networks that were mobilised at the end of the war.

For decades before the war, Australian port cities like Sydney had housed hundreds of Indian crewmen from merchant ships from the British and Dutch fleets as they waited, often for months, ‘between ships’. Despite the illusion created by the White Australia Policy, there were also Indians living as residents in Australia. Many were Australians of the Islamic faith, descendants of the South Asian cameleers and traders who had come to Australia in the nineteenth century and were living dispersed among the general population. In this project, they become visible only when they took part in political activities or joined the visiting Muslim Indian seafarers to celebrate Eid at the end of each year's Ramadan fast.

Australians had some awareness of Indian political demands, particularly after Gandhi's visit to England in 1931 during which he received wide publicity, including coverage of his visit to British textile workers and their unions. From 1937, there was also a growing awareness of the Chinese struggle against the Japanese, as well as the political differences between different Chinese groups. At this time, Australia was not only familiar with Australians of Chinese descent; there were also some European Australians who had worked or traded in China, and a number of Chinese crewmen who had walked off their ships and refused to return if forced to sail to Japanese-held ports.

During World War II, however, most Australian attention was claimed by the large numbers of US troops in the country, particularly after the American retreat from the Philippines in May 1942.