But for a period of time which ended 70 years ago, the threat seemed all too real for many.

About 50 people gathered in the Victory Memorial Gardens on Wednesday to reflect on the Battle for Australia, which saw the battlefront in the Pacific theatre during World War II comes right to the nation’s doorstep.

The battle against the Japanese flared up in Singapore and then Papua New Guinea in early 1942 before the fight came to Australian’s northern fringes.

“This period also saw Australia’s northern towns of Broome, Darwin and Wyndham enduring enemy air attacks,” Wagga RSL Club president John Gray said in his keynote speech at the service.

“Darwin was the main target … the city was defender by Australian, American and British fighter aircraft as well as by Australian anti-aircraft gunners and a flotilla of corvettes, one of which, HMAS Armidale, was sunk by Japanese aircraft in the Timor Sea.”

The service on Wednesday was attended by a range of people, from senior representatives from the city’s armed forces communities to veterans of various campaigns.

In his address, Mr Gray said the Japanese campaign against the Australian mainland didn’t stop at its northern frontier.

“Other attacks by Japanese aircraft and submarines were made on Sydney and Newcastle,” he said.

“Many merchant ships were torpedoed along the east coast of Australia.”

Mr Gray then went to speak of how the tide slowly turned back in favour of Australia and its allies, ultimately culminating in the Japanese surrendering in August 1945.

“In March 1943, a Japnese convoy of ships carrying reinforcements and supplies to their forces on the north coast of Papua New Guinea was almost totally destroyed by Australian and American aircraft in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. The Japanese no longer held the initiative,” Mr Gray said.