Australians at War Film Archive

My life? Well, yes.

I was, they tell me, born in Carlton in a private hospital, but we're a Port Melbourne family. [In] my early childhood,

went to St Joseph's Catholic School, we had nuns of course, teaching us. Then I went to St Pat's [St Patrick’s] College East Melbourne, which was Jesuits, because my Dad was an old Xaverian [Xavier College], taught by the Jesuits and we, my brother and I, both went to St Pat's East Melbourne and then I went to De La Salle [College], [in] Malvern, as a

boarder. Wasn't a very bright student, but I [put] it down to moving from one school to another without completing you know, primary at one school and secondary at another school. I left school in about 1936, which was at the tail end of the Depression, and

got myself a job as a grocer boy in a grocer shop in a licensed grocer in Bay Street, Port Melbourne. I stayed there for a couple of years, and then I was fortunate enough to get a position with a printing company in George Street, Fitzroy. So I pushed a bike from Port Melbourne to George Street, Fitzroy every

morning and night, which doesn't sound much, but it was a fair hike. I was in the photolitho [photolithographic] department at McLarens and Company printers, general printers, and from there I joined the air force and had five years, eight months, almost six years, in the air force.

Many experiences in the air force. Fortunately, I was in the photographic section most of the time and it enabled me to get a good grounding of the ‘photographic industry’, as I called it. A lot of people say it's a profession, but that's it's an industry.

Yes.

Yes. When I joined the air force I

of course, did my initial training at Point Cook and I was fairly fortunate because I wanted to go overseas and within four months of joining the air force I was posted overseas. Now, they didn't tell you where you were gonna [going to] be posted. As a matter of fact, I thought I was going to England and I rallied around and got all the addresses

of forebears in England and relations in England. But my Dad gave me a farewell party and at my farewell party a distant cousin of mine, who was in one of the government's departments, whispered in my ear that, "You're going to Singapore, Frank" and sure enough. Why, we thought we were going to England because we'd all been issued with

heavy uniforms and stuff like that, so we thought we wouldn't be going to the tropics, but sure enough we were posted to Singapore. Sailed out of Sydney, went up to Cairns, Darwin. Tied up at Darwin at high tide and then, next morning, the ship's completely out of the

water because the tide had gone out. Sailed through Indonesia. We weren't allowed to land at Indonesia because the Dutch weren't at war at this time, and therefore we were foreign troops. So the boat we were on was a trading boat, but it unloaded its cargo. Anyway we arrived in Singapore in October, 1940, which was fairly early in the war.

Number 1 squadron and number 8 squadron had already arrived in Singapore. By the way, I was attached to station headquarters, and I was in what they called ‘Station Headquarters Squadron’ and I had approximately nineteen months in Singapore/Malaya [Malaysia]

before the Japs [Japanese] started. The Japs started on the 8th of December, 1941. Now a lot of people say, "Well now, the 8th of December is not right. It was the 7th of December that Pearl Harbour was bombed." Sure it was 7th of December in American time, but in Greenwich Mean Time

it was the 8th of December. The Japanese attacked the Royal Australian Air Force at Kota Bharu, which is right up on the north eastern coast of Malaya, right near Siam, today it's called Thailand, but Siam, only fifteen miles from the border of Siam. Attacked us on the 8th of December, 1941. One hour twenty minutes before

Pearl Harbour. I emphasise that. One hour twenty minutes before Pearl Harbour. So when people tell you that the Pacific war started on the 7th of December, Pearl Harbour, we were already engaged. When I say ‘we’, the Royal Australian Air Force, was engaged against the Japanese one hour twenty minutes before Pearl Harbour. As a matter of fact, our reconnaissance aircraft sighted

this convoy coming down the South China Sea on the 6th of December. Two days before they attacked us. On the 6th of December, and I understand, I was reading official records, the CO [Commanding Officer] of number 1 squadron, sent a message to headquarters in Singapore to say that,

"Sighted a Japanese invasion force. Was sailing towards Malaya" and the reply was, "Do not engage. We are not at war with the Japanese." Which, of course, we weren't. So they just sailed in. They did trick us on the 7th of December, the next day, under survey or under reconnaissance. They turned

towards Thailand instead of Malaya and we weren't caught off guard, but we thought that they were going to invade Siam, or Thailand, it was in those days, and then come down the Malayan coast, but no, they changed course again and got it. Now if you remember, on the 10th, no, on the 9th of December [actually 10th of December], that's one day after they attacked us, the big

Royal Navy [ships] The Prince of Wales [HMS Prince of Wales, George V-class battleship] and The Repulse [HMS Repulse, Renown-class heavy cruiser] were sunk, the only two major battleships in the area. So, with the two major battleships gone, they were sunk within an hour and a half. That's how good the Japanese were in those early days. Now remember, these Japanese had been fighting for ten years in China.

They were well experienced. Their aircraft were superior to ours, far superior to ours. Their training was superior to ours. They'd had ten years. The Japanese imperial force at that time, in the early stage, were terrific in their bombing. They never missed anything. Well, can you imagine? Two major battleships, one The Prince of Wales, the most modern battleship

the Royal Navy had, was sunk within an hour and a half. Unheard of. Ah, well, when I was in Singapore we had many up, the idea was that Singapore, an aerodrome called Sembawang, which was our mother air base, that we had Number 1, Number 8, Number 21 and 453

Squadron. Four squadrons, plus headquarters squadrons on Sembawang and they took it in turns to go up country, up to Malaya for six months; and at the time that the Japanese invaded, Number 1 Squadron was at Kota Bharu. Number 8 Squadron was at Kalantan, further down, and 21 Squadron was at

Sunjapatati on the west coast. 453 was at Sembawang, where the Headquarters Squadron was of course. I had been at Kota Bharu, but I wasn't there when the war started. I'd served my time up there and come back with headquarters. When you say, "Well you were in headquarters, how did you get into a squadron." Well,

sometimes a particular ‘mustering’, in other words, an armourer or a photographer or somebody was detailed to go on another duty or he was sick, so there was a replacement from headquarters would take their place. Well, you all know the chaos of Singapore. It was a hopeless cause from the very start.

Too much?

Okay, well from, yeah, I'm sorry about that.

I'm getting, you know, I don't know how to do this interview.

Um, from [there] we were ordered out of Singapore, in late January we were ordered out of Singapore to go to Sumatra,

which is a very big island. It's in the news nowadays, but sixty-odd years ago, I can tell you, it's primitive now, I understand, but sixty years ago it was really primitive, and we sailed from Singapore in a little Singapore naval auxiliary vessel to Palembang,

which is the capital of Sumatra, and from there we went to a secret aerodrome which was called P2, which, of course, was Palembang 2, but short, P2, and we were there for several weeks, and it was when we called it ‘secret’, the Japs couldn't find us. It was a well-hidden aerodrome and of course, when they did find us once again, they

never missed. They came over and bombed the daylights out of us. From there, we went down the coast of Sumatra, to the foot of Sumatra, to a place called Oosthaven [now Teluketung], which is right on the Sunda Straits, which, of course, is quite well-known by many people, and across the Sunda Straits to Java and then from

Java we went to Batavia, which, of course, now is Jakarta, and we were there for several weeks with the order from Australian Headquarters that all available air force people had to get back to Australia. Most of the fellas in these squadrons were either permanent air force fellows or

citizens’ air force. In other words, they were well-trained airmen who were needed back in Australia to train future airmen on their trades and conditions. From Batavia we, oh, this is a, well I suppose if I don't go into detail, it doesn't really tell you the story that we were on the wharf

at Batavia…

Yeah?

Yes.

Yes.

Oh, well that's easy.

Briefly, of course! I don't talk that much, but this is something that I'm well in. Well,

I was demobbed [demobilised] from the air force in December 1945. I had married early in '45, was demobbed, and I set out on my career as a professional photographer in Bridge Road, Richmond and [while] I was in Bridge Road, Richmond I moved my site twice. I was in Bridge

Road, Richmond from 1945 to 1983 and I did very well. Richmond was a very good hunting ground for a photographer. It was all cash. There was no credit in those days or “Pay you later Jack”. The very honest people, working class people were very honest people and if they ordered a hundred dollars worth of photographs, or a hundred pounds worth of photographs,

you got paid in cash when they had to pay. I did move from Bridge Road, Richmond to Little Bourke Street in the city [central Melbourne] for another three years, then I retired in 1986. Never gonna retire, but a Frenchman made me an offer for my business that I couldn't refuse and

here I am now, retired. Enjoying life. As a matter of fact, Joyce, my wife and I always say we're in our golden years, which of course it is. Golden years.

That enough?

Yes, my parents. Well, my mother came from Myrtle, Fream was her name. My mother's family was a family of butchers. Quite, well, we think they were quite famous. They had a very big butcher shop

in Port Melbourne, in Graham Street, Port Melbourne. They were one of the first people to make a success, I understand that they were that big that they used to, it goes back to the years where they used to herd sheep and cattle onto sailing ships and of course, the sheep and cattle would be slaughtered on the way, but they would herd a hundred

head of sheep and twenty cattle on a sailing boat and that was what it was. My mother's father, that's my grandfather, had died rather young in life and the business was sold to William Anglis and Company, which of course, is a very big meat player. So that side of shipping

providers is still going, but not under the name of Fream. My Dad, J.C. Bartlett, my Dad's name was James Carl, J.C., but my grandfather and great grandfather were J.J. Bartlett, and the original J.J. Bartlett was a marine in the navy, and we're not too sure whether he skipped ship or he finished his article. Any rate, he came to Australia,

married and did very well. He had old hansom cabs. Now we sort of say, well, he didn't drive them, but he had several of them that he hired out and he was the business man. Went into the hotel business and did well. There is still a hotel in Port Melbourne with his name

on the building that, 'This was the building that J.J. Bartlett built in such and such a year.' It's still there now. He [is] interesting there if you want to know, stop me if you don't. He sold the business in the 1890’s, about 1895, 96, just before the land boom bust. Can, I don't know if you can remember that, but there was a very big bust

in Australia, particularly in Melbourne, and he was going to go back to England, to live like an English gentleman with all the money he made in Australia, but he just arrived in England with a new wife, I understand, and the fella that bought the hotel from him, well, it's not [a] laughing, it was a bust and

he'd paid his deposit, but he couldn't fulfil the whole thing. So a rich Aussie gentleman had to return from England and manage his own hotel again, and my grandfather, J.J. Bartlett, was a pretty big bookie on the racecourse and, matter of fact, we have a plaque in the family

heirlooms. It's on his death. A very big write up on his obituary that said he was one of the most honest bookies in Australia. Well now that’s ridiculous isn't it? Saying one of the most honest bookies in Australia, but that's something we're quite proud of. So that's the family.

Oh, First World War. Yes. Now this is something that my brother and I are now researching. Of course, when you take the name Bartlett, you're mainly interested in the Bartlett side of your name and my brother and I, and my sister, just recently

visited the Melbourne cemetery to look up the graves of these Bartletts, and the first one died in 1905, so his grave is still there and still in pretty good condition. My grandfather died in 1926 and his grave's in perfect order.

Three, and then my father, yes my father's grave's there, and my father and mother are in the one and that's in perfect, but we have now decided that we want to get the [story] on the mother's side. The Fream side. Now you asked me about the First [World] War. It takes a long time to get to what I've got to tell you, but my mother's brother, Frank,

who I was named after of course; Frank, was killed I believe, two days before Armistice. He was a driver. He was a driver of a superior, you know, a very high ranking officer, and the officer had got out to go to a meeting or somewhere along the lines, and my uncle Frank was

seated in the car at the driver's wheel when a shell exploded close by and he was killed. So I never knew my uncle Frank, who I'm named after, but we F.J.'d for him. We're going to search out his history, which I'm ashamed to say we never have, but we're Bartletts,

and all we've been talking about is Bartletts, who had a very colourful history act as a matter of fact, so now we will get onto Freams, but yes, it [World War I] impacted on me. Now my other uncle, on the Bartlett side, my Dad's brother, my Dad's younger brother Billy, he was also a transport driver in France. He seemed to come out

of it alright, as a matter of fact. He didn't talk too much about it at all, he's dead of course by now, but he had a quite a good life. So there, when you say impact, I guess that's what you mean. Did I have any immediate…

First World War. 'Cause I was born [in] 1919 you know, one year after the war so,

No, my Dad didn't. No.

Well see, he was a married man. I was the third child, so my brother's three and a half years older than me, and my sister was five years older than me. So he would have been, ooh I can't tell you exactly what day he was married, but I think he was married before the war. So he was a married man with one, one and a

half I suppose, my brother is three and a half years older than me, and I was born in '19, so might have been almost the start of the war, and my sister, again is five years [older], so it would have been. My Dad, during the Second World War, my Dad was a retired gent by this stage, when the Second World arrived. He

worked in the navy department as a clerk, civilian clerk. Thoroughly enjoyed it, so he did his bit in the Second World War.

Well, as I said my first uncle, uncle Frank, on my mother's side, he was killed and of course, look no, I couldn't talk, he was dead. I didn't

see him, but my uncle Bill, my father's brother, you couldn't get a word from him out of it and no, he never said anything to us about it at all.

Well, you know the First World War for a young Aussie kid growing up in

schools, it was, you know, there was ‘British history’ and ‘Australians at War’. That's about all we ever did, wasn't it? Well, there was a China war, and the war in Africa, the Boer War, and of course they were all before my time, but we sent troops there and they were in our history, and I've read

a lot about the First World War since the Second World War. Does that make much sense? And I [could?] because there's a lot of literature on the First World War, more so than the Second World War, and up to, what, a couple of years ago the RSL [Returned and Services League]; well there

was more conversation about the First World War than the Second World War, and I'm a member of the RSL and we've sort of said now, "Well we've heard enough of the First World War." We're not putting it down, degrading it or anything, but I think more must be learnt about the Second World War, and we enjoy speakers now on the Second World War

more than the First World War, because we've heard it. We've had it for so many years now. I'm still remarkably interested in the First World War. I've got a book here now that's called 'Australians At War' and it's a huge volume that I make sure I read, most of it, when I've got spare time, but it covers all theatres of war that Australians have been in and

we've been in too many.

In my 20's and 30's or in the 20's and…

Yes. Well, no, see 20's, I was born in 1919.

20's, up till '29 that's ten years. '39 is twenty years. No, I never had much to do with First World War blokes. I don't think we you know we I don't can't recall going to an Anzac march before the war.

I can't recall being overly interested in the ‘diggers’ of the First World War. Oh, life was too pleasant in those days.

Well, yes, of course, Depression. We were very fortunate. Our family was pretty fortunate in

the ‘depression’ years. We were never short of anything, but my brother, who had many more years than I did at St Pat's College, well, Dad got a bit short on money for education and as I

say, my brother was at St Pat's College, and at this stage just when the Depression really hit, I was at De La Salle, Malvern which was, you know, they were rather expensive schools to be going to, and we weren't getting that far in education. My brother might’a been a brighter student than me, but I wasn't a bright student. So

what do you do? You've gotta leave school and get the first job that you can get. My brother after what, six or seven years at St Pat's, East Melbourne came home the most happy bloke I've ever known that he got an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic, which of course was a big, big thing in those days, you know. Apprenticeship in the ‘depression’ years and

there was a bit of a rumpus [a fuss] that he was the oldest son and, you know, he was gonna be a motor mechanic when everybody else had been professional men, or not professional men, but business men. I left because somebody said well, they've seen an ad in the window of the local grocer that they want a junior boy, so I applied and got it.

They were happy days, I can tell you. They were really happy days. To be able to get a job; and there were a lot of fellas my age that weren't working. And those that were working, particularly at factories around Port Melbourne, well, take Swallow and Ariell Biscuits, that you can get a job at Swallow and Ariell Biscuits, night shift or

terrible, terrible working conditions, but at eighteen you got the sack 'cause you had to get more money at eighteen.

Sounds like McDonalds, but there you are. That was it. They used to say, "Well I'm gonna be eighteen in a couple of months. I'm gonna be out of a job" and sure enough they were out of a job. They were tough times, but they were happy times. Good

God, we we'd ride a bike anywhere. You'd go on a bicycle everywhere. Now, you talk about tough times. I mentioned it before, that I moved from the from the grocery shop because an uncle of mine, wheels within wheels, an uncle of mine, who was a pretty big man at this printing company, McLaren and Company, in George Street, Fitzroy. I can remember whilst I'm

sitting here now. He rang my Mum up and he said, "Look, can Frank come in and be interviewed. There's a position here at McLaren and Companies." So in I went and got the job, but I pushed a bike come hail, come sun, come not snow, we don't have snow, but I pushed a bike

every morning and then again, back home at night, from right near the Port Melbourne Town Hall, through the city to George Street, Fitzroy, which was a fair ride every morning; and if it was raining I still went on the bike and then at night time I rode

the bike back home. Otherwise your pay would have gone in fares, and it was two tram trips and a walk, so I guess it would have taken me an hour, an hour and a half. Oh, yeah an hour, I suppose, hour and a quarter to get to work. I really forget how long it used to take

me, but I can tell you what, some mornings it was pretty [tough?]; and to top it off, the foreman said, "Well, you push a bike", he said "Could you extend your ride a little bit further down to the Fitzroy Post Office and pick up the mail out of the mail box." So

even riding all the way from Port Melbourne, I still had to go further down Brunswick Street to the post office and pick up the mail and be back before clock-in time. One morning I was late and the foreman said, "Oh" he said, “You know your clock-in's ten minutes over" and he said, "You've been doing this a few times lately." I said, "Oh yeah, you know the weather's bad some mornings" I said, “But by the way" I said,

"I go down to the post office and get the mail before I clock-on" and he was most apologetic and he said, "Oh that's alright" he said, "You can be late some mornings." He said, "I'll just sign your card" and he'd counteract the time, whatever it was. If I was late he'd just put his signature on it that I'd done a job for him, but they were responsibilities, so I had

to be down for the mail and back before the whistle went.

St Joseph's, Port Melbourne. I've very fond memories.

Port Melbourne. St Joseph's, Port Melbourne.

No, no, no. Not North Melbourne, no. St Joseph's, Port Melbourne. Brigidine nuns.

Brigidine nuns? Oh well,

Brigidine nuns, they're a teaching order of nuns and they have lots of ‘colour’. All these Kilbride.., there used to be one right on the front of the esplanade. What's the name of that esplanade in Albert Park? And there's one Kilbride [Convent] in

Burwood Road. Any rate, Brigidine nuns. Delightful ladies. They could use the strap too by the way. I can tell you.

I certainly do. Certainly did, and oh gee, can I remember? Sister Bonaventure . Sister Anthony was the head nun. And

anybody from Port Melbourne knew Sister Anthony in my era. Everybody would know Sister Anthony, a tough, old, honest, delightful lady, who really had the world at her fingertips. She knew everything. She was honest, but she was really tough. If you did anything wrong

you knew that you were in for something. Sister Bonaventure. Well, how I come to mention her name first, in my wisdom. My Dad, who was a bit of a musician, and my mother played a piano too by the way, decided I should learn the violin. Now can you imagine a boy, I don't know what I'd be, what, nine or ten I suppose, walking down Bay Street, Port Melbourne with a violin case going to school. Pretty rough area

and any rate, Sister Bonaventure was the music teacher and I learnt the violin, or she tried to teach me the violin. I must admit I never practised, but I could squeeze out a couple of squeaks. Any rate I decided that this wasn't for me. I was embarrassed walking up and down Bay Street with a violin case going to school and coming home from school.

It was a two-storey school St Joseph's.

A Catholic school. All Catholic schools.

De La Salle's a Catholic school.

St Pat's. St Patrick's.

East Melbourne.

Right beside the cathedral

And so I decided that I would get finished with all this violin business and the

violin was in the case. In those days they were wooden cases, right?

Oh good.

Never. Never. I'm certainly not now, although

I do say to my wife occasionally that, well, not if I die, when I die, that I might call for the priest, but more as a joke than anything, but I don't know. When one is lying there and death's just around the corner,

I still don't know.

Yeah, look, I've been through it; and I'm not try’n a say I'm the only one that has been through it, but there's a lot of fellas been through near death several times. Terrible situations and one does find oneself calling for help.

Now, whether it's help to God or somebody I'm not sure, but you seem to think there is something that you can grab on that might help you. Now what it is I don't know, but religion, no I'm not particularly religious.

It is.

Well, as

I said to you, I went to a Jesuits, at St Pat's, East Melbourne and Jesuits used to say, "Give me a child up till five years of age and he's mine forever."

Yeah, ‘I'll give’, yes, ‘I'll keep the man’ or something. So yes,

it's true. It was, it was. You know, sixty, well, what it is now? I went to school in the '30s. I was at De La Salle in 1934. I can remember that because that was the centenary of Victoria and we got a medal and that was the only thing really. I can remember the centenary, but I was at St Pat's from about 1930, '31

to '33, three years perhaps, with Jesuits, and I did learn to pray I can tell you. I did learn to pray, and I did learn to wink at the girls across the road, Catholic ladies' college that, which was a pretty high-class sort of a girls' school. Had some beautiful young ladies there and every Friday we used to have to go, well we didn't, yes,

that's right, we used to have to go to the cathedral every Friday for the Angelus.

Before?

Oh, well my father he went to Xavier. His whole life his whole education was

at Xavier. From a little boy right through.

Well, he became religious in his later life. May I say that he was too lazy to be religious, right, but later in life he did become religious.

No, he wasn't devout, no. No, he was far from it. Far from it. As a matter of fact we… oh no, I'm not gonna tell you about that. It doesn't matter. Yes, go on. What's the next question?

Yeah, my mother, well see [had] one of these mixed marriages. My mother was a Church of England and her

family were very ‘Church of Englishy’ people. As a matter of fact, my grandfather, both my mother's and my father's grandparents were very strong Church of England and Masons

and there's still photographs, family heirlooms, of the Freams and the Bartletts in their Masonic gear, you know, and not just one of the boys. They were real big, you know, whatever they call them, ‘Grand Poobahs’ or ‘Members of the Temple’; and then of course, my grandfather, who was the bookmaker, he married

into the Suffolk family, which was a very strong Irish-Catholic [family], and she of course, completely dominated, and my Dad and his two brothers were brought up as Catholics. So that's how we started, but my mother was a Church of England and my Dad was a Catholic, so we were mixed marriages. We buried Mum in the Church of England

and then of course, my Dad buried in the Catholics; but I've got a sister who's a devout Catholic and my older brother, as I say, he had many more years with the Jesuits than I had. Well I can't speak for him, but I don't think he is (UNCLEAR) Catholic.

No. No, they weren't strict at all. This was

half the problem of our education, that we were just you know, left on our own. There was very little help from my father as education went, so my mother was always far too busy. She trained as a nurse and she was always helping somebody else, some other family, and as I

said. I have mentioned the ‘depression’ years. Well, Port Melbourne, you could imagine, in the ‘depression’ years was a very sorry state of affairs with particularly females. Husbands would, well they couldn't help it, husbands and boyfriends would just have to go somewhere on the road to try and get some money and wouldn't see them and of course, they'd be left without any

money whatsoever. Wives with kids. They did get ‘susso’, as we used to call sustenance, where you had to work for your, "I'm on the susso", that meant that you had to go and dig roads. The Great Dividing Range was dug by these people, plus some of the, and then the army did it after, the returned soldiers did it afterwards

and they couldn't get a job.

Not the Great Divide [Great Dividing Range], gee whiz, I'd better sharpen up. I'm only eighty-four and I'm talking…

We made that. No, the Great Ocean Road

Oh my, dear oh dear. The Great Ocean Road. That's not bad is it? Whooar, that's a real humdinger. Yeah. Now why didn't you pull me up earlier? Great Dividing

Range. It's still there the Great Dividing [Range] they did a good job of it didn't they?

Yeah. Yeah. They dammed the Snowy River yeah, but [its] still there.

Well, see I can't recall.

I really can't recall because I know that there were a lot of people that were out of work, but I don't know of anybody that had to, well, I don't personally know of anybody, but I guess if I spoke to my mother, who's gone now, but I bet that she would have known some because, as I say, she was a very, very kind lady.

And the other thing that, well, my poor Mum, I shouldn't say my ‘poor’ Mum, but my Mum, is that when my grandfather died we moved into that house that he had, the grandfather's house, which was a fairly biggish house; and my Dad's two brothers, my uncle Ernie and uncle Bill were

of course, bred and born in this house, and they treated it as their house as well, and if they were passing by, they'd pass by at lunch time or you know, afternoon tea time; so that meant that my Mum had to make another cup of tea or another meal and, you know. As I say, the grandfather, they called him ‘Chummy’ Bartlett, a bookmaker by the name of ‘Chummy’ Bartlett, and he was really

chummy. He gave half of his fortune away. He made a lot of money, I believe. Gave it away. ‘Chummy’; everybody called him ‘Chummy’ because he put his hand in his pocket and that was it. So the house you know, a big house and everybody treated it as a nice place to come, and so Mum was always busy. Always busy; too busy to give us much attention. There were

five of us. Now, I'm not saying that we were ever undernourished and we were always pretty well set up, but I'm gonna come back now to my day; that I made sure that my son was guided through his education and not just spent money. That was [it], you know, you pay the bill and they get a good education. I made sure,

well, I didn't make sure, but I was adamant that the state school system was gonna be a system for my kid. I only had one boy, now he's a professor, all through state schools. He went to Taronga State School and then to the next grade in Malvern and then he

sat for an exam and got into Melbourne High.

Well, I think that, see, I can even see today, I can see it today that there's kids around here, particularly girls, who go to a convent or go to a girls' school

and it's in another suburb. They gotta get a bus, early bus, to go to another suburb to be educated. They come back at night time and they don't really have any friends. They don't really have any friends and what does happen a lot, and it's gonna be more so now with education, [is] that the parents, by the time they've sent their kids, if they're got two or three

of them, to a private school, they've spent a hell of a lot of money by the time that kid wants to go to university. Now, we've been very lucky with universities that you know, if you get good marks you pay for your education later on, but that's changing. So what happens is the kid gets to university age, and Dad says, "Oh well look", you know,

"Times are not what they were and I've spent a heck of a lot of money on your education. You'll just have to leave with your HSV." HSC [Higher School Certificate] is it? HSC? Or even lower than that

And that's gonna be worse than ever now I think, with the universities.

Yeah HSC. HSV. HSC that's right. Yeah I don't drive one of those as a matter of fact, but I'd like one of those.

You're

right, but isn't it nice that you can and I'm taking it graciously, right, otherwise you're not gonna get a cup of coffee. That's what you're not gonna get.

Yes.

Well, my…

Well, just take myself and my brother. Well, I can only talk for myself

of course, that I had quite some money spent on me with education. I got to intermediate. Always a hopeless student and that's nobody's fault but my own, I know, but I do blame the education, not the education, I do blame

the lack of planning from my father, that I left the primary school without reaching a certain, I forget what grade. I think I left primary school in about the fourth year and went to the Jesuits for my fifth year education. Well, I'm neither here nor there. I haven't got a full primary school education.

I go to the Jesuits. I seem to be a year behind. Like there were kids there that had had their primary school at the Jesuits and I came in from another Catholic primary school. I was hopeless. I never caught up. I never seemed to catch up at all and of course,

they don't really keep you down [make you repeat a school year]. They write, oh I shouldn't say this. No, I'm not gonna say they write good reports so that you come back again next year. You know what I mean? It's a business. Be more so now than in our days because, although ‘depression’ years, that would a been pretty bad.

So I was determined that there would be guidance from me and that his education would be

mapped out if possible. If possible, and I was in business myself and straight after the war well, you know, it was ‘boom’ time, but I wasn't making that much money, but I did later on. Later in business I was very successful. Well, in my own modest way I was successful right?

Mm.

Yeah, well my Dad, and we as well of course, we were fairly fortunate that my grandfather, ‘Chummy’ Bartlett, who I keep talking about, did leave

quite a few assets to his three sons. My father, James, Ernie, and Billy and neither of them really had to work. Now, they were all semi-interested in bookmaking. Uncle Bill, who went to the war, he worked at the racecourse as a bookie's clerk or a runner or, you know,

whatever it was. Dad managed the assets. There were houses and you know, there was money there, but of course during the ‘depression’ years, you got no rent for your houses; and not only you didn't get any rent, but the pickets off the front fence were pulled off and burnt, you know. Well, but no,

we never really saw the Depression. The only part of the Depression that we saw was job opportunities. Without the right education, job opportunities were very rare, very rare indeed. Well, we've got over it now in Australia. There's not much unemployment now, but a couple of years

ago there was pretty tough. I know my granddaughter, well, she's got, oh we haven't got to her so we won't talk about her, but her friends were finding it very difficult to; they were well-qualified people. Master of Arts and PhDs were finding it difficult getting jobs, but they all seem to have got them now. I don't know why that is that

one of her best friends, well her partner, my granddaughter's partner, he got a an Arts degree. Then he did a Masters, no he did Honours. Honours that (UNCLEAR) I'm not sure. No, he did a Masters and he couldn't get a job and we said he couldn't get an interview, and we said to him, "Well, look," well, it's a great saying in the family. George said to him once that, "Look, the first interview you

get you'll get the job" and sure enough, after about eight months of try’n a get an interview, he got his first interview. He got the job and he's doing very well indeed.

But that's not what you're asking me is it? What are you asking me about? Look, I can remember kids of my age in the Depression. Now, I woulda been, in 19…

although the Depression started earlier than '34, '36; I think it started about '28 didn't it? Something like that?

'29 was the start of it, but it really didn't start to bite till '34, '35, '36. I my experience and well, now I woulda been sixteen, seventeen. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, those three years and there were

lots of young blokes that I used to knock about with that weren't working. Their families had split up. They were living you know, in somebody's back room somewhere. Some friend's back room and couldn't get a job. Some of them had given up getting a job and, as I said earlier in the other tape, that they'd get a job at a factory somewhere,

but by the time they'd turned eighteen they were offloaded again because at eighteen you got a higher wage.

I can't tell you much, oh yes, now, you say about Depression. Now I vaguely remember, well I don't vaguely remember, I remember Fishermen's Bend. Now that's where a lot of these ‘sussos’, God

that's not a right word, it's not people that had to work for the dole that did a lot of work over Fishermen's Bend. What they were doing I don't know. They were digging or something over there, but well, look at it now, so Fishermen's Bend when I was a boy there used to be goats; only goats on Fishermen's Bend and a rifle range. A rifle range and goats.

Nothing else. Swamp, swamps and smelly lagoons and that's all there was [at] Fishermen's Bend. It was an adventure for us to go to Fishermen's Bend and then in later years, well not later years, about the same period there were a couple of playing fields right on the end of Fishermen's Bend. Williamstown Road and I remember,

I was in the local junior cricket team and my brother had got a brand new bike for his birthday. Beautiful bike. I can remember it as well as I can (UNCLEAR) now; and I'm picked to play in this cricket team and I'd take his bike without telling him and, you know dreadful thing to do, took his bike to ride over to the

Fishermen's Bend, which is, you know a fair way, otherwise you'd had to walk. It was a fair walk and so I took the bike and played cricket and I was very, very happy with myself because I'd made thirty runs and that was a big score in those junior [games]; thirty runs, and I was so engrossed that I walked home with the rest of the fellas and left the bike there and the next day, this was the Saturday I played cricket,

the next day my brother come rushin' in. He said, "I can't find my bike. I don't know where I've left it." Oh, of course, I fell through the roof. I said, "Oh God" I said I'd taken it. So we run over to Fishermen's Bend to where I'd left it. Of course it wasn't there. You know what, he never really hit me or anything. He just took it. So that's one of my, I must

ring him up. I talk to him quite often. We go get together quite often. I must remember to thank him again for that next time I see him because he was bigger than me and by God, he could have hit me, but see how stupid…Take your brother's brand new bike to cricket and just because you made thirty runs you wanna walk home with the rest of the blokes and completely forgot it. Oooh, gee whiz.

That was called a North Star. My father brought it at Northcote, somewhere in Northcote. High Street, Northcote? Northern Star or North Star ,I think it was. See in those days the most fought over, sought after push bike was a Malvern Star, but they were a bit dearer than any [other], so if you got a North Star. Anyway,

what's the next one you want to know something about?

The poor man's Malvern Star and what do you think happened? His idiot brother. Gee whiz.

Yeah. Well, my mother was a great, oh here we go on my Mum. My mother was a great cook and we used to have

winged rib of beef. That's a roast of beef with the ribs still on it and they used to call it a ‘wing ribbed beef’ and it would be it would be baked, of course with baked potatoes

and what's that English, ah…

Yorkshire pudding. Oh yeah. Now, my Dad was a great gravy and salt eater. Now he died at ninety four. He ate all the fat and all the salt you could eat and he died at ninety-four, and the year that he died, he was

complaining to us he was getting old and you know, and a few complaints and we said to him, "Dad you don't even have a corn on your toe", and he never even had a corn on his toe. He was fit as a bloody Malley bull, but he had a tragic death. He did die of a liver, but that was the last three or four weeks. My ma, I can see it now, my mother would serve up this gorgeous roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, baked potatoes and baked pumpkin,

and it'd be, you know there'd be a bit of salt on it, usual salt, and my mother used to stand over Dad and she'd say, "Jim, there won't be enough salt on that for you" and she'd pour the salt over his serve, his plate, and then he'd put more on himself, but oh yeah, well that's one. And the other thing that we were great on, was of a Friday, of course bein' a Catholic,

wow, a supposedly Catholic family, we had potato scones. You ever had a potato scone?

Oh, the most beautiful thing and, of course as I said, my Mum was a great cook and potato scones. Never had I've never had a potato scone since. Now it must be an Irish, she wasn't Irish, but it must be something

to do with the Irish, but potato scones, oh they were gorgeous and then another time of course, living in Port Melbourne we used to go down to the little jetty and they had fishermen, bay fishermen, in those days, and they'd buy a snapper you know a couple of pound snapper and that'd be baked. We wouldn't eat it baked as a whole fish and

beautiful baked snapper, but food normal you know, bacon and eggs. Well we never had cereals. I can't remember eating much cereal, but it was always bacon and eggs or something [and] eggs for breakfast. We ate a lot of meat. Seemed to eat a lot of meat but…

Ah, now there's something. Rabbits. That's another phase of

my life that brings back lovely, joyous memories. We had distant relatives who were called the O'Briens, right, and the O'Briens - a big family the O'Briens; they had about seven kids, who had about thirty grandkids, you know. There was a herd of them, the O'Briens. Catholic family, and they were distant relatives. Now, I don't know if they were that, but we used to call them distant relatives. Anyway,

the senior member of the O'Briens had a miner's right at Bacchus Marsh. Now, you know what a miner's right is, and he built tin huts on his miner's right. He had three tin huts and they used to accommodate about fifty people. The men would be in one tin hut, the women in that and the young married ones had the,

oh no, I shouldn't say the young married; the elderly people, the grand people, they had the original little tin hut. But the other two, kids and all used to sleep in these great big things and we just had beds and then the three huts, and then we had a great big tarpaulin kitchen that had tin around where the fire was, but everywhere was tarpaulin

over top and it was right on the Lerderderg River at Bacchus Marsh. Heard of the Lerderderg?

Like a made up word?

Well, the Lerderderg Gorge is still there and sometimes you may hear where hikers have been lost in the Lerderderg Gorge? Any rate there's a Lerderderg that flows

through Bacchus Marsh. It finishs up at Werribee, I believe somewhere. So there was fresh water there and rabbits. Now, after all, we're getting to the rabbits and we used to trap rabbits. Have ferrets, and we had a huge, round, we used to call it a ‘camp oven’, but it was a round pot with a big

iron lid on them, right? Huge, about this big. I don't know how many rabbits you could fit into it, but baked rabbits, oh they were beautiful. Don't eat 'em now do we, rabbits?

Well, are they? Well, of course you'd be very, you know, with the myxomatosis and all that sort of business, I don't know.

Do they?

Oh

yeah, well, I believe they're starting rabbit farms now for eating.

Isn't it? And well, we went to Bacchus Marsh every Christmas and Easter for years, right?. Right through the ‘depression’ years, now you were talking about the Depression earlier, a lot of the O'Brien men 'round about thirty or forty,

they were out of work. Their wives were working somewhere. You know, house maids or doing ironing or washing or something like that, but we used to have the ferrets. The O'Briens kept ferrets in the back of their yard and they were taken up to Bacchus Marsh. We used to go up

in an old, the O'Briens would hire a removable ‘Charabanc’, we called them in those days. ‘Charabancs’. Well, they were just a removalist's van that had seats in them, right, and we all used to have to meet at O'Briens at such and such a day, at such a time and be there'd be fifty to sixty of us; and some were, you know the cooks, and some were the gatherers, and

the miner's right was on this dairy farm right on the Lerderderg River. You look it up when you go home, the Lerderderg, and the property we were on was a dairy farm and at night time we used to go down to the dairy, to the milking shed, and get the milk for the fifty or sixty people and it was a

great, I'm just try’na think, oh Kerrs, were the name of the farmers. Beautiful piece of property. Oh, gorgeous piece of property, but rabbits, plenty of [them], and they wanted us to get the rabbits because it was eating their feed.

No, well, I guess

they would have, yes see, some of the men who were working would come up at the weekend only and they'd have to go back Sunday night or, yeah I suppose they went back Sunday. I can't remember. They would take rabbits back with them; but another thing that I'm gonna tell you about, that you might be interested in talking about is fish. Have you ever heard of catching fish with your hands? Tickling fish?

Have you ever done it?

Oh, well. Well, picture this. The Lerderderg, at Christmas time or even at Easter, in the dry season, would be just be a trickle, but there would be little dams where the farmers would dam it up so that their windmill could pump it up. You know what I mean? It would be,

what they call those? Not a lagoon, but a little dammed up area and, of course, the water would be getting warm; because [of] the heat and no water going through the water would be getting warm, and there's big rocks in these things and, of course, fish get under the rocks in the shade so the water's not as hot. So you'd get into these ponds, that's right ponds. We used to

call 'em ponds. You get into the pond and you get your hands underneath the rock and the fish, the water being warmish, they were very lazy. Is that the right word? Very languid. Very languid. They would not move very much to the touch and then you'd slowly move two fingers up underneath the gill, and one swift motion

you throw 'em out. I've done that. Not very successfully, but I've done it, but we were only young blokes. We'd be, oh, I suppose I went from the time I was, I don't know, eight till I was about fourteen. Six years at least. Ooh, even older than that, but you know, the young men about twenty, thirty or forty, they were experts, and we used to get fish like that.

Amazing. Just throw 'em out, and the younger blokes would have to be on the river rocks and we used to have to grab the fish when they came out.

Great and that's a true story. That's not the Great Divide.

Yeah.

In my home?

We did very little chores. Very little indeed. As a matter of fact I can't, no, I never had a job. I never had a job.

My Mum did have help. My Mum did have help. There were five children. I've got one brother, myself, that's

two, two sisters still alive and one, my older sister who's been dead quite a few years. No, I can't remember having a chore. A very easy life.

Yeah well, I don't know whether it was so great in the ‘depression’ years, but I can remember going to school and

we lived near the Port Melbourne Town Hall and St Joseph's, the Catholic primary school, was further down, nearly down to the beach, and Graham Street was the next street to Bay Street. Graham Street State School and occasionally you'd be going to school at the same time as the kids, or coming home,

from the Protestant school and, oh yeah, you know they'd yell out, "Catholic dogs, jump like frogs, in and out of the water" and I can't remember what we used to say, but that one stuck, "Catholic dogs, jump like frogs, in and out the water." Well, I don't think there was any fisticuffs [fighting]. I can't recall

any fisticuffs, but you knew who was a Protestant and who was a Catholic. Mind you, we would we would play with kids who went to the state school. Yeah, of course we used to play with them. Played footy, cricket. Wasn't great, but you always knew, you know. There was always that "Oh you

go to a Catholic school" [or], "You go to a Protestant a state school." Even now in my bowling club there's a difference.

Well, you know that my bowling club's a little bit different to a lot of other bowling clubs, if I can tell you the history of the bowling

club? The first meeting of my bowling club that I belong to now, fifty-five years ago, just after the war, was in the Methodist church and that Methodist church now is a Uniting church. So I would tell you now that there are more members in

the Uniting Church than any other church in the bowling club, and you know who they are and they know that I'm not one of them. Now, I'm not saying there's anything to do with selection or you're left out of anything, but you know who's who. You do. You know who's who.

Of the bowling club?

I think it's a strong factor that.

And this is my generation.

Yeah. Yeah.

In my school time?

Oh look, I can't say I was that conscious or it or it

meant anything to me. I can't really say that I was that conscious [of it]. I knew that they went to the state school and we went to the Catholic school. I knew that we didn't play them [at] cricket or we didn't play 'em [at] footy. We would play another Catholic school in those sorts of things. We wouldn't play a state school. Now

even in the army you had a Roman Catholic padre [priest] or a Church of England padre, and of course you knew, you know, fall out Sunday morning, fall out the Catholics. You'd go that side and fall out. They didn't say Protestants, they'd say Church of England. You'd fall out that side and there were a couple of Jewish boys in it and

they used to fall out for either side, and then of course, when the Jewish religion had their holidays they got those as well. So they were pretty smart. They got the Christian holidays and also got their own holidays. So no, it's never affected my life whatsoever, but I've been conscious of it. Hm? I've been conscious of it and

I'm even conscious [of it] today when somebody gives me a Masonic shake.

Well, I don't know exactly what it is, but when they grip you by the hand you know, that it's not the normal grip. Not the normal grip. Oh, you would have had one by now.

No. It's only a hand shake. They have a

shake. They greet each other by this handshake and if you were one and I was one, and I greeted you…

With a shake, you'd know that you were a brother.

No, no, no. It's a shake of the hand right? It's a pet aversion of mine. I'm always telling Joyce, "Oh gee, I got a Masonic shake today." I usually pull my hand away and say, "Ooh gee, that's hot isn't it that one?"

and they look at you. You know, they know that you're not one of them.

Yeah well, see now, I can remember Dr Mannix [Dennis Mannix, Catholic Archbishop] and of course, I guess now that you're asked that I can, yeah, before the war that's right. We used

to march on St Patrick's Day right down Bourke Street or up Bourke Street. Which way did we go? We finished at St Patrick's Cathedral so it used to be up Collins, no, up Collins Street it was. Well, I don't know. Or was it Bourke Street? No Bourke Street I think we used to march every St Patrick's Day, and of course you'd get a few ‘boos’ there,

because people still remembered that Dr Mannix was against conscription, and Dr Mannix used to lead the parade and he was pretty old by the time ,and he used to sit in an open car in the front. No, I can't recall anybody

around me fighting over conscription. Can't recall. This is First World War of course, you're talking about?

So after the First World War…

Well, I don't think it was ever forgotten. Oh no, no, no. If you are a Protestant and you wanted to insult a Catholic you know, you'd say, "Well, what about the conscription?"

Oh yes. You would hear it in conversation, but of course you would

jokingly have a reply and I can't remember what the reply was, but, oh I think the reply was that there were more Irishmen killed in the First War than what there were English, but I don't know whether that's true or not. I'm not sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Port Melbourne.

No. No.

Never mentioned anything.

Never had cadets, no. No, we never had cadets.

Well, St Pat's, East Melbourne would be, Xavier would be the top. St Pat's would be second.

As far as Catholic schools would go. Higher than the Christian Brothers 'cause these are Jesuits we're talking about.

So and De La Salle, well they were De La Salle brothers, but we thought they were a little bit higher class than Christian, well, that's not right, that's not right. I don't know what you think 'cause you go to De La Salle, you think it's better than the Christian brothers. That's about all. No, it wouldn't be any good.

Clearly class was a factor. Yeah.

Well, you mean against the students there or outside?

Yeah.

Oh well, for me? Yeah, well look, I could tell you what class meant to me. I came from Port Melbourne. We were a middle class family that did have some money. We had a lovely home,

but even my sister, who went to Catholic ladies' college, which was opposite, we both say what a shocking class system that we had; that we were fortunate to go to a ‘class’ school, but the neighbours in the street, the kids, had to go to the local school,

right? The class schools had beautiful uniforms and lovely hats. Taught mostly by the same sort of nuns, although we were Jesuits, but I mean, girls' schools were mostly the same nuns. Taught by the same order of nuns. A poor [school]

like St Joseph's, they had their convents where the class students paid to go. We prayed in the same church, but we weren't allowed to talk to them. They went to a private school and you didn't mix with the others.

It was. It was. It was strong, and you would see a private convent girl or a private fellow like myself catch the same sort of tram. I couldn't say that we wouldn't intentionally mix with them and I can't say that we were ordered by the schools not to mix with them, but there was just

that something, that, "Oh you go to a private school. You don't mix with the state school." It's funny of course. We call our public schools, now, the big ones, don't we?

Yeah well, we call Melbourne Grammar a public school, when they're really a private school aren't they? That's what they are, you know

But they're

a public school [of sorts]. It's a bit up in the air. Hey?

And as I said to Colin [interviewer], I've only got one son, and I made sure I'd planned his education, that he was a public school boy. Not no, he went to the government schools. Let's get this mixed up between a public school a

state, government school.

Well, I wouldn't say that. We didn't think we were underclass. No. No.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well

of course, I think you might have gone earlier than my life time because, when did the potato famine, well, I think that was much earlier than all this and there were a lot of uneducated Irish people migrated to Australia and they had to take, like migrants do now, they've got to take the lowest job that there is,

but when I was growing up that had changed because, I don't know for sure, but we were led to believe that the majority of the of the police were Catholics and the Catholic schools were very smart because they trained their students to become public servants; and at one stage

there were more Catholics in the public service than anybody else and that caused a bit of a problem. So in my era I wouldn't say that they were [an] underclass, that they were the underclass at all.

Port Melbourne.

Well, Port Melbourne even today to me, it's one of the best suburbs to live in. More so

now because it's really gone up market. You've got to see the value of the places they're building down there now, Port Melbourne. It was and is a wonderful suburb for a young bloke to live in. We had the beach, we had the shipping. You could walk to the city, if you were that way inclined. If you didn't want to walk you caught a cable tram. Remember the,

oh, you wouldn't remember the old cable tram. Ah, a cable tram was, I forget how [much] it was, tuppence or something to the city. Ah, ten minutes and you were in the city. Wonderful suburb. Wonderful suburb to live in and more so today than it was in those days. I can remember at St Joseph's School, at lunchtime in the summer, we used to be able to go down and swim

during the lunch hour for about fifteen minutes. Weren't supposed to do that, but we did it, and when I was a young bloke in my teens, the shipping; well now, some time this week that big boat's coming in, the hundred and nine thousand tonnes, The Sea Princess [cruise ship], is coming in on Friday, tomorrow. A ship like that came in, not as big as that, but a ship like that was in every weekend

in Port Melbourne there, you know. All their P&O boats and the Orient Line boats [cruise ships], and we used to go down and put our best clothes on and think we were passengers and you could walk on the boat. There was no guard, there was a seaman at the gang [plank], but you were allowed to walk on and we used to walk on and think we were, "Oh gee, we'll be passengers on this boat" and have a look in the dining rooms and cabins and

it was great. There was a lot of interest [in] Port Melbourne, but a working-class suburb that was spoilt by the stigma of the waterside workers and you're talking about ‘depression’ years of course. You can imagine what the conditions those fellas…

Port Melbourne was and is, really is a working-class suburb, very much so, but now

of course, we've got all these new high rise with the middle-class and upper-class paying millions for a place. Oh yes, Port Melbourne was working-class. It was the working-class [suburb] of Melbourne.

Yeah Footscray?

I couldn't tell you. Look, I couldn't tell

you. All I know is that North Melbourne had a very good Catholic boys' college, so we assumed that there were a lot of Catholics in North Melbourne. Albert Park, which is next door to Port Melbourne or South Melbourne, Albert Park, we assumed that there were a lot of Catholics there because South Melbourne

had what they called ‘Emerald City’ [Emerald Hill]. That was the first name of South Melbourne, is ‘Emerald City’ and that's where a lot of Irish people started. It's still called ‘Emerald City’.

No, yeah, Emerald, up the bush, yeah.

But this is ‘Emerald City’. That was the original name of South Melbourne, ‘Emerald City’, because the Irish settled there. No I couldn't

I couldn't tell you, you know, which was a Catholic suburb and which [wasn’t].

Yes. I thought that's what this was all about, but it's about religion.

Yeah.

Who?

De La Salle, yeah.

De La Solle?

Catholic.

Yeah, Catholic education.

Yeah, well, I don't know. I can't tell you. Can't tell you. I don't know whether cadets were that great in those days. I know that schools like,

I don't know whether Xavier, I know Xavier have cadets now, have had cadets. I don't know whether they had [when] my Dad went to Xavier and I can't recall him ever talking about being a cadet. Whether he didn't want to be or whether they had it. I don't think they had it in those days. It'd be a an interesting background to go back on, but I know that

Melbourne Grammar and Wesley [College] and those places had it. Melbourne High had it when my son went there, but he didn't he didn't want to join and I wouldn't have pushed him by any means. Don't know whether there were that many schools with cadets in those days. Not too sure.

Yes, yes. First World War was, as I say, we

learnt British history. Never learnt much Australian history. We learnt ‘British history’ and ‘First World War [history]’.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can't recall. I can't recall. De La Salle wouldn't have been, De La Salle was a fairly new school,

right? When I say ‘new’, I don't know when it started. It was near the Malvern Town Hall. I can't remember when it started, but it certainly wasn't there First World War.

Oh, St Joseph's been there for ever and ever.

No. No, they had no plaque to those that were killed in the First World War. No.

Yes. To

my mind. No, no I wouldn't have thought.

Of course.

Yes, of course, but we would have memorials to them at the local RSL [Returned and Services League club] or in

the town memorial. Okay? Their names would be on there, and of course it wouldn't denote that they were Catholics or anything like that. Oh no, they would be remembered, but I none of the schools that I went to would have those plaques that you're talking about.

Yeah.

I don't think, you know, yeah, but our newspapers and our radio,

well, I can remember when radio came in, as a matter of fact. Particularly in newspapers we were always reminded about the First World War. Always.

Well, you ask me that and you've had twenty years in Australia? You must remember that that's perhaps our greatest piece of history?

Gallipoli, you know. A defeat, but we glory it. We win the wars in the finish [end], but we always seem to be on the wrong end of the start of the war, you know. Gallipoli, if we ever go to, oh I shouldn't say this. Yeah, we're at war again, aren't we? If we ever go to…

If we ever go to war under British command

we should, well, we should never go to war under British command. It may have changed a little now, because we're talking about ‘Establishment sons’ in the British ‘Establishment’, where the first son went into the church, the second son went into the army, the third son went into the navy and the idiot son went in the air force. Well,

that's what we used to say, right? Now, I'm not talking about the young fighter pilots who flew in the Second World War, the real heroes. I'm talking about the old, retired air vice-marshals who were in charge, who, you know, were in another world. They wouldn't

know what it was all about. You take, well, I guess you're gonna ask me about the war in Singapore but…

We had [a] RAF [Royal Air Force] air vice-marshal who was in charge of the whole area, Malaya, Singapore, who was a retired,

he come out of retirement. He had retired years before. Had become a governor of one of the countries in South Africa. Had developed Sleeping Sickness disease [African Sleeping Sickness]. I forget the right term.

No, Sleeping Sickness. Different to insomnia. Insomnia you can't sleep.

Mm. Sleeping Sickness and he was in charge. Now he was an old

man. He was sixty-five or something like that, which is not very old, because I'm much older than that now, but to be in charge of a fighting force where you've got to make decisions straight away.

Yeah.

Okay. Away we go.

Oh, I can only remember the strange things. Oh yeah, well look, young bloke eighteen, nineteen. In love for, well, for the second or third time, I don't know what, but in love. I'm madly in love. It's a Sunday night, if I remember rightly.

I'm on the front little verandah. They have a little seat on the front verandahs in these little terrace houses in Port Melbourne, where the gas meter's underneath the box, and you sit on the top; and it's Sunday night and I'm there with my current girlfriend and somehow or other, I don't know how we got the news,

the mother or somebody poked her head out the front door and said, "The war's declared", right; and I guess, yes, we'd seen photos of Chamberlain [Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britian, 1937-1940]coming back from Germany, with the piece of paper saying, "Peace in our time." There'd be no war, and yeah, we were pretty sure there was gonna be a

war. Pretty sure there was gonna be a war, but I think my attitude was, “Well, if there's gonna be one, we'll be in it, and I'd like to do something.”

Mm.

Oh no, no. Well, 'cause I've been happily married for fifty-six years and have a son I'm very proud of, and a granddaughter I'm as proud of, and I've got a dear wife, who I'm proud of. Yeah well, she was a local girl and a very pretty little local girl. We were mad, oh I

was madly in love. I think she was too. Very, very pleasant times. Very pleasant times.

Well, I was born in 1919 and admittedly my…

Yeah, admittedly I joined up when I was nineteen because war had started in

'39, but I hadn't had my birthday. Hadn't had my twentieth birthday. I joined up. My birthday's not till the 26th of December. Boxing Day. So the old story at my place is that they gave me a sock on Christmas Day and the other sock on Boxing Day, and I had a pair of socks. That was my present, but that's a joke. So I joined up in November.

I'd signed the papers, but I wasn't called up till March '40.

I joined the RAAF. Straight and joined the RAAF.

Oh, why the RAAF? Well, it was classy. It was more classy than the army, as I thought, you know, and modern technology;

aeroplanes, machinery, technical skills. I couldn't imagine and I take my hat off to any army infantry bloke. I really do. I take my hat off to them. Surely they've got [the] comradeship that we have in the air force, but I don't think it's as strong as what they've got in the army.

I've got some wonderful friends. I happen to be now, the president of my air force association, which I'm quite proud of, which keeps us busy and I still have fellas who I served with what sixty, sixty-two years ago. They haven't changed a bit. They've got

older of course, naturally they're got older, but the resemblance is still there. You can still see the resemblance, what they were when we were young blokes. Now, what else did you want to know about me?

Oh yeah, the RAF, yeah.

And, as I say, I came from Port Melbourne, where everybody was joining the army, right, 'cause it was, look I shouldn't say

this, but I'm gonna say it. It was easier to join the army. Now I know that you had to be medically fit, even in those early days. More medically fit than what it was later on, but, and I don't say this because I'm more literate than the others, but I think that the intellectual standard, oh gee, there I go, I shouldn't say…

Yeah, what I'm try’na say [is] that it was easier to join the army. I don't know about physically, but I mean otherwise. Okay?

See, I joined the air force and I was cheeky enough; I only had intermediate classification and, naturally I wanted to be a flyer, and in those days you had to have Leaving Honours. In 1939 you had to

have Leaving Honours to be accepted for aircrew, right?

That was [it], if you didn't have Leaving Honours, you couldn't be accepted for aircrew, right, unless under exceptional circumstances. Well, what they were I don't know. What a lot of fellas did who were knocked back from aircrew, they went to a flying school

for six months, right, and they had a bit of that knowledge, and they got there; but in the early part of the war, in 1939 when I made application for aircrew, I wasn't accepted because I never had leaving honours. So, but as you know, later on you never had to have any education. You had an aptitude test. If you could adapt to these questions or adapt to these movements

or brain reaction, you were aircrew. Well of course, then the trouble was you were accepted for aircrew and then you lined up and they said, "Well, today we want sixty air gunners" and you could have been the brightest boy in the world, fit to be a pilot, but you went to an air gunner's school, right, and then, "You sixty you can be

observers", and then "You thirty, pilots." No, I didn't get into aircrew, but I had to wait, this was November I signed the papers and I wasn't called up till March. March, April, 1940 and there was my number, [it] was 11199, so that's eleven thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine. Well,

I think they had about five thousand permanent air force and citizens air force. So I would have been in about the next five hundred to be called up. Very early [in the] piece. Real recruiting didn't start till later. End of '41, '42, when the Japs come into it.

What happened in March? I just said, "Whoopee, this is for me. I'm gonna be in the air force and everybody around's in the army and navy", right? So I knew a few fellas who joined the navy, but yeah, okay what happened? I joined the air force. Did my rookies [basic training] at Point Cook.

Point Cook was the premier training depot of the RAAF at the time. It's since been, you know, there were many more after that, but Point Cook was the place to go to. Did my rookies there and was there for, ah, four or five months and then everybody, no I shouldn't say everybody, but majority of fellas all wanted to

get overseas, right? Gotta go overseas and as I said earlier, that when I was posted to [the] embarkation depot I thought that I was going to the to England, which was the prize place to go to of course.

England was the one where the war was, and where there were people who spoke English and ate English food, but I was then told that we'd been issued with the winter uniforms, but we were going to the tropics. I think that was pretty typical of the

organisation in those days, but we went to, I think it's number 2 embarkation depot. I can't remember much about what we did in Melbourne. I know we had a week's leave and then we had to report to Number 2 Embarkation Depot, just outside Sydney [Bradfield Park].

Mm, can't remember the name of the place. I think it was Number 2, and there were about thirty-nine of us and we were going to Singapore to get the Headquarters Squadron up to its right numbers. There were fellas already there. They'd

been there about a month before we got there and we were to go, to get up to their right numbers. So we got [to] learn to march. We learnt to march at this disembarkation depot just outside Sydney. I can't recall the number of the place, and then we boarded the SS Moralla [Morinda?], [a] ship that traded, Burns Philp ship, that traded between Sydney and

Singapore and, I think, oh I'm pretty vague. I don't know how long it took us. I suppose it would have taken us a fortnight because we pulled into Townsville, and we pulled into Darwin, and we pulled into Surabaya, which is at the bottom of Java, but we weren't allowed ashore because, as I said before, this is in middle of

1940, when the Dutch weren't in the war and, of course, as the Dutch were in charge of Java they'd say we weren't allowed ashore.

Oh good.

Yeah.

Yeah, well in the education system? Yeah, we were taught that we went to the age to the aid of the ‘mother country’ [Great Britain] and

it was the right thing to do. That, although it was a terrible, defeat I suppose is the word, or a terrible retreat, we did it honourably and it was the marking of Australia as a nation.

Now, whether that's true or not I don't know. I've been to Gallipoli [now in modern Turkey]. I've stood on Anzac Cove and I've looked up at the mountains or the hills that these poor devils had to climb, and as I said before, if we ever go to war under British command again we are absolutely stupid, 'cause it was impossible to take this,

and as far as the Bosporus Sea; if they'd got that, how they'd ever get into Turkey I don't know, because there's a bridge over the Bosporus. You can drive over it. That's how wide it is further up, Gallipoli, right, but further up at

Istanbul you can drive over a bridge and the fortifications that were built there, well, you've read what they did to our navy.

It was to be a naval battle to start off. We were gonna take it only by navy.

Yes. I would say so, yes. I would say so. That we were, well, I wasn't there of course, but that the men who were there were helping the ‘mother country’. We did as we were told.

Yeah, well, not at that time.

No, when I was a kid, no idea. No idea. Oh yes, there was some prince [Archduke Franz Ferdindand, assassinated 1914] got shot in Yugoslavia, but why would you go to war over some prince being shot? You know, bit of a joke. Bit of a joke, but [a] tragic joke. What policies, what right did we as Australians [have] to go and in

and fight the Turks; Joyce and I, we had twenty-seven days through Turkey and it's the most; I've been to most places of the world and I don't say that lightly. I've been to most countries in the world, only one I haven't been to is South America, and that might be before we ‘fall off the perch’. Turkey, to me, is the most interesting

and wonderful country to visit. Why? You gonna ask me why? I'm gonna tell you. That, if you go back in history, that for two hundred years the ‘hordes from the East’ wanted to conquer Europe. How do you get to Europe? You go through Istanbul. You go through Turkey, the only way you can get across; and then when the

Christians and so forth in the West wanted to conquer the Muslims and such, where do you go? You go through Istanbul again. So you're in command for fifty years, you build your churches, you have Christian laws and then the next hundred years the Muslims come or the ‘hordes’ come and build their mosques and so forth and changed the churches into mosques

and we changed the mosques into churches. Most fabulous history and most fabulous architecture, and of course, all our early Christian teachings are right through Turkey. St John and James, they all went through there.

I know you do, but I'm just try’na, to, why would we want to go against Turkey? Okay, yes okay.

Oh yes.

Well,

And of course, as you know, at twilight when they blew the whistle [ending the day’s fighting], they came and collected the sick and they looked after the sick, so the stories go.

But at Anzac [Cove] itself it was a hopeless cause, absolutely hopeless.

At school I can't recall going to Anzac parades. The only thing I can remember is going to St Patrick Day marches, and I got an idea they were the Catholics saying that we respect non-violence more than we respect war. Right?

Now, how do I get to that? How do I get that? Well of course, Dr Mannix was against conscription, we all know that, and oh, St Patrick's Day march was the big thing of the year at the Catholic schools that I went to. St Patrick's Day march; you had to have your ribbon on your uniform and

I can't remember whether it was Bourke Street or Collins Street we marched down, but I don't think they have them now, do they? They have St Patrick's Day, but I don't think, oh, there might be a march, I'm not too sure. So I what I'm try’na say is that the Catholics were saying, "Well, conscription was bad and we will still have our own march where you have Anzac Day", but I don't know

whether that's right. I think that, I'm not try’na say that the Catholic schools and Catholic people don't honour Anzac Day. They certainly do now.

Yeah, yeah well, you know 'cause you're asking me questions that are sixty, seventy years ago.

Very little, very little. Our history was English history. That's what we got, English history. I can't recall ever seeing a big textbook on Australian history and when you come to read it, it's fascinating history. It really is. The history that started [and] its only currency was rum,

you know. Could you imagine what it would have been like in those days when the currency was rum? We've just had a holiday, our second trip, to Norfolk Island and

Yes, of course we are. Yeah I'm a great…

You go, right yeah?

Yeah.

Look, well I can't recall a great deal.

All I know is English history; I could tell you who Henry the VIII was and his eight [actually six] wives, and Richard the ‘Turd’ or Richard the III and all that sort of ‘go on’; but as far as who discovered the Tablelands of New South Wales, I've since found out, of course. Cunningham [Alan Cunningham] was one of them, and Joyce's family name is Cunningham.

She reminds me of that quite often, you know, no, I didn't know that at school. No I didn't know that at school.

Yeah, well, national anthems were all, of course we had 'God Save the King' in those days. I can remember when we used to have to stand up at the pictures, before the picture show started you stood up.

Every event that you went to, 'God Save the King' was [played and] you stood up and if I remember right, it was always before the performance. It wasn't after. I think it was always before and, to us Catholic kids, I think it became a bit, although that's another thing, at Catholic schools

we learnt a lot of Irish songs, you know. I was in the choir at De La Salle and we used to sing a lot of Irish songs and one, a famous one that I still burst out now and then is 'The Hills of Donegal' and I've been to Donegal.

You know 'Hills of Donegal'? Beautiful.

Mm.

Well, I think it was to every young person.

Terrible song to sing.

Monotonous song to sing. Now, I don't know whether

you were trying to get me to say that we were disloyal or we hated the king.

Yeah, well I think it was ‘old hat’ [out of date], right?

I think it was ‘old hat’ and, mind you we did learn, not this present song, we learnt another one about Australia that, I

can't recall it now, but it was a very good one that we used to sing. More, well, not more than 'God Save the King' no, not more, but on many occasion we used to sing this song at school.

No, oh no, not 'Waltzing Matilda' or 'Road to Gundagai.' Yeah, you know, remember

they had about five that they put up that which we would like. It was in that one, and I think it's even nicer than the one we've got now, as far as the melody went, I think it's nicer and I will some time recall it.

We used to.

Oh yes, Empire Day was a big day. Why was it big? Not because we were after the empire, because it was a holiday and you let firecrackers off. I think that's about all it was. No, I didn't celebrate Empire Day as celebrating the empire.

At the printing factory? Well, as I said earlier today, it wasn't my first job. My first job was in a licensed grocer in Bay Street, Port Melbourne. I had an uncle, well he was married to my mother's niece, so what does that make him? I don't think it makes him anything,

does it? My mother's niece’s husband was a pretty ‘big wig’ [important person] at this McLaren and Company, and a vacancy came up and, of course, we're talking about the later years of the Depression, which were the worst years because we'd had you know, you can stand the first couple of years, but as it goes on; and he rang –

we were fortunate, we always had a phone in our place, and I can remember the neighbours used to come and, "Can we use your phone? Can we use your phone?" - anyway he rang my mother to say, "Would Frank come in as quick as he can and apply for the job?" She was very good to me this niece,

in those years she would have been thirty five years of age and a very attractive lady, and as I say, it was the husband, so I went and got the job. Well, it wasn't so much [because] of qualifications, it was a matter of whether I had two eyes, two arms and a tongue and was well presented, which I made sure I was,

and of course, I had the backing of somebody who worked there, vouched for me I suppose. Norman, oh Norman, he was of Dutch descent. Norman, there we go. Norm was his first name. Big fella, about six foot two. Rugby player. Norman yeah, oh well that's it. That's gone. I'll catch him some time along the

track.

Yeah, no I can't remember, no, no that question wasn't asked of me at all. No.

Yeah, well you had sort of heard of this thing. Oh yeah, now

wait on. Yes, yes, now I had a mate a mine mm, I'd better be careful here, but [if] memory serves me, he was one of these poor unfortunate fellas who worked at Swallow and Ariellbiscuit company, that when you turned eighteen you got the sack and I can remember it now, he said "I'm getting thirty

shillings a week", which was a good pay in those days for a kid of sixteen or seventeen. He said, "But I think I'm gonna get laid off" because he was turning eighteen, which he did get laid off and he was out of work for some time, but he got a job with Kodaks in Abbotsford through a friend of a friend sort of business, same as [how] I got mine and I've got an idea that he said he had to be a Protestant or a Presbyterian. No, not

Presbyterian, he had to be a Protestant, that's right. So that meant no Catholics. Now, I couldn't swear on a bible that that's true, but vaguely in the back of my mind there's something there. No, if it was, it would be rather rare yeah. I know I did hear of companies that only employed, well if you're a Catholic you couldn't, but it never happened to me and never happened to anybody I knew.

Well now, as I say, the job at the factory was in the box, there was a machine, a gluing machine. That's what they called it. An automatic gluing machine, that you know, a box of some sort,

well, that box you got there; it's a flat piece of cardboard; it goes down a machine and the machine folds it and glues it, right; and I was the junior boy on this machine, right, that meant that I had to fill the glue up with glue and I had to pack the cartons that were finished and I had to keep a record of

the tally what we did for the day and that sort of business and then McLaren and Company became, as we were told, the first company in the southern hemisphere to have a photolitho [photolithography] department and I was fortunate enough to get the junior job there. So that was my first introduction to anything

photographic. Mind you, I didn't do very much. There were very senior, well-educated fellas who had to go overseas to learn you know, how to operate the machine, but I was thereabouts you know…

Yes, yes. Very, very interesting at that, ah time of my life.

Well, yes, it told me that, well, light and shade and sensitive material. Basics for photography, I think.

Yes, the scientific principles of photography.

Now, when I got up the photolitho department, a new department and supposedly the first in the southern hemisphere, you did not talk. Well no, that's not right. You did say, "Hello Jack" 'cause the printing presses and the packaging and the inspection and the gluing machine and all that was all downstairs. Upstairs was the offices,

the art department and photolitho. Now in order of pecking, the chief engineer, the art department, photolyte department, printing presses, ah gluing machines and well

other general, pulling out - you wouldn't know what ‘pulling out’ means. When the carton's cut, the sheet of cardboard goes through a cutting machine and it cuts out the package size, okay? You have to pull off the waste and throw it away. That's the last. That the last of the pecking order.

It was. It was a great jump;

and this is why I was able to join the air force, but I didn't go in as a photographer. I tried for aircrew, but they didn't have any vacancies for photographers at the time so I had to go in into a armament section, but I did ‘remuster’ to a photographer when I was overseas. One of the few people to do that.

Yes.

Madly in love.

Well, I mentioned this before, that I [had] a local girl. And I did mention that, you did ask me, how do I remember the beginning of the war, that, if I remember rightly, I'm almost sure this is right, it was a Sunday night 'round about nine o'clock

and we were sitting on the front verandah and somebody popped their head out of the door and said that the war's been declared, but that's, oh no, the world was a wonderful place. Still is a wonderful place you know, Colin, still is a wonderful place.

Yeah well, see, now, when there's war declared, I've only got one son who's fifty-

five, and a granddaughter who's twenty seven. I've got no immediate anybody that's gonna go. No immediate anybody that's gonna be killed. I hate the war [in Iraq]. I tell you what, I hate the war and I hate why we're in it. Hate the war first. I hate wars first and I hate the terrible politics that we're in now.

Politics of hate and fear. That's all politics is, hate and fear and we can't deal with it. We can't deal with it.

Oh.

I was preoccupied. Preoccupied, and I the opportunity of serving my country.

I was determined it was gonna be the air force. I wasn't gonna go in the army. Why? Why wouldn't I go in the army? It's too easy to go in the army. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was in the army. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry is just as good as I am. In fact you know, could be better. Could be better, but it wasn't for me, The air force. Technology you know.

Modern technology. It was for me.

Well, yeah, well I don't think I was overpaid,

you know. You're talking about me eighteen, nineteen. You don't get good wages until you're twenty-one.

Yeah, well you got a girlfriend. Pictures, going to the pictures. No, no that's a good question. I wasn't saving. I had bought a motor bike.

I'd bought a second-hand motor… are you interested?

A Rudge. A 1928 Rudge, the first motor bike with [an] overhead valve, right? Now, could you imagine owning the first, this is what, 1938, '39? '39. I'm the owner of a 1928 Rudge, the first motor bike with an overhead valve.

'Course it was eleven years old and it's pretty battered and I got it for five pounds. Wasn't registered. Wasn't registered and the petrol tank leaked, so every time I took it out for a run, I used to have to put [in] hard soap to fill up the petrol tank, right? Gee, and the brakes weren't much good, but well, there was

another thing why I wanted to go in the air force, because [of] you know, engines. I wasn't, I'm still not, mechanical. All I know about is cars that you put petrol in it and you drive it, that's all I know about cars, although I we've got two; but [I wanted] anything that is gonna be different and I thought the air force was it.

Well, yeah I must have been in those days. I musta been.

It was a dodgy motor bike and I can remember the other fellas, the other gang, and I don't say 'gang' as in gangs, you know fighting. I mean the other gang of fellas that lived over ‘Garden City’. You heard of ‘Garden City’? ‘Garden City’ was the new area

of Port Melbourne where the Commonwealth Bank built housing and these houses, I don't know what they cost, twenty thousand to build them. Now sellin' 'em for half a million. ‘Garden City’ and the gang over ‘Garden City’ had beautiful motor bikes. Beautiful, fast motor bikes and we used to race up and down Williamstown Road.

Concrete roads.

Had concrete roads in those days

down to the ferry. Down the Williamstown ferry.

And we used to race up and down there Sunday morning, Sunday afternoons and I'd go down there with my Rudge and unregistered, brakes hardly worked, but of course, you were on a straight run and these blokes used to have their BSAs and their, what's the other good bike there was? Yeah, the big Norton,

big single-stroke Norton. Low-revving Norton, but a big cylinder and 'cause I was competitive for about the first bit, but they'd go, but it was stupid really. It was really stupid. The bike could blow up any time because the petrol tank

used to leak. If you get petrol onto your hot cylinder of course, it could explode and the whole thing'd go up. Ah but that's it. That's it.

Yes.

Yeah, well as I said earlier, I can still recall Chamberlain waving his piece of paper, of course television wasn't there. Where did I see it? It musta been on the movies. We used to go to the movies a lot. Movies were the only thing we had. We used to go to the movies a lot and you know, you'd see him waving the piece of paper "Peace in our time",

and then of course you got all the news that England was preparing for war and they were vying for time to be prepared. That's about it, but how and why it started, oh yeah some prince got shot in Yugoslavia or something like that, but it didn't ring a bell, no.

Oh yes of course. Wrong again, see.

Ah, what was it over? Yeah, Hitler. He's a fella I can't forget, isn't he? You're too good for me Colin.

Ah, yeah.

Yeah, Hitler, Hitler of course. Yeah, Hitler. Yeah, well there was a mad genius hey? Let's say he was a mad genius.

Oh yeah,

Hitler? Actually you know, I think that, not the majority, but I think a lot of people really thought that he was something because as you know, Germany was in a bad way in Depression, you know. The Treaty of Versailles [World War I settlement, 1919] absolutely killed 'em. When you got your pay and you had to take it home in a wheelbarrow it was that worthless.

Don't know how that's gonna happen. In other words you don't have cash, you have assets. Cash is no good, is it?

And there’s all the markings of one coming up now, isn't there? When this war finishes and all those munition orders are stopped and the money's not going through the system. Oooooo.

There'll be another war?

Yeah well, they say the next war will be over water. So you know, it's shaping up, isn't it? You can see that, somehow or other. China. Why would we go to war to China? Any idea why we'd go to war? It'd be trade of course. 'Cause you see that now, trade. Japan are gonna put a levy on American something because they won't take their steel, and we're

talking about trade treaties. How do you think we'd go in a round table with the ‘Yanks’? Hey? Smallest nation in the world. Oh good one.

Oh yeah, well they're with us, aren't they? They're our sister.

Yes.

No. No, I did not and by the way, a lot of my

companions or men or boys of my age did drink and smoke and thought they were great, and I cared not; look, I didn't [not] drink or smoke because I was a wowser or a ‘goodie-goodie’. I tried a cigarette and I tried alcohol, but I hated them. Alcohol was like poison, and have you ever kissed a girl who smoked and you didn't smoke?

You'd never smoke in your life and you know, God, the beautiful looking girl and you'd give her a kiss and you, "Oh my God, how could I ever go back out for another one?" You know, and this goes through my air force time too, I can remember when I was in the air force at home and I came back, and even when I was away, the fellas used to come back and say, "Oh, we had a

wonderful time last night. We got drunk and we laid in the gutter and we had new cigarettes", and I used to say to myself, "I must be stupid", I said because I would go out to a dance, meet a lovely girl, have a great time and that was it, and these buggers were having great times gettin' drunk layin' in the gutter. Got nowhere.

Oh yes, I loved the ladies. Yeah, well I let's say I never had much trouble meeting the nice girls. Well, I thought, to my taste. Let's say ‘to my taste’, any rate. No, I don't know whether that's the right word, a ‘ladies' man’. No, I was normal okay? I thought I was more normal than the blokes that would smoke and drink, that's all. I thought that that was better fun than lying

in the gutter.

Yes. Yeah, I think there was a bit of glamour. Yeah, I'm sure there was. I'm sure there was. 'Cause see, when I joined, when I signed my papers in '39, you would hardly see an airman. There weren't any of them and when I first joined, I think I was about the first

that I knew, first airman in Port Melbourne. I since found out that there were others, but I never run across 'em, but in my little area I was the only bloke ‘in blue’ [air force personnel].

No, well see yeah, if you were army and you did

your training, you joined up in Victoria, you did your training in Victoria. In the air force, no I did my training at Point Cook, which is Victoria, but I could have been sent to New South Wales or Western Australia easily, which I did do later on, but so, what am I try’na to say? Oh there were plenty of army blokes about. Plenty of army blokes and they were doin'

alright. I'm not gonna speak for them, but I enjoyed it, I really did. Really enjoyed it.

Ah, it fitted me well. Yeah, I thought it was good. I thought it was good. Good design. It was a jacket. A little, I won't tell you what we call it, but a little cap and a peak cap as well, you know there was plenty of…

Hey?

Oh no. I got…

It's rude. Well, the one that goes on there's called a ‘cunt cap’. ‘Cunt’ because of, you know,

Hey?

Puggaree, that's the right name, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you, right. Fair enough. Well…

Yeah.

Yeah, I know, but it's [for] general exhibition

Yeah. Uniform was good.

The food was ‘bloody’ excellent when I first went in. Point Cook you know, you're joining the services. Things are scarce. Butter's scarce. Everything's fairly, you know gettin' scarce and you join the air force and the first day, you line up in the mess hall for lunch; I think lunch was the first one I ever had. There's a big blackboard and it's got

about four main courses and about five sweets and you have your pick. You know you think you're going in the defence force, and you just take what they give you but, this is early. It got a bit worse; and butter, you can have half a pound of butter to yourself if you wanted it. Ah, but that was early. That was March, 1940. It really hadn't started, you know.

Ah, yeah. My God, it was. Yeah. Yeah, when we went away we were under RAF rations. See Malaya and Singapore were British, British Empire. The RAAF were there under the command of the RAF, and Sembawang, which was the our mother

aerodrome, it was RAF, Sembawang when we went there. So we were under RAF rations, and I can tell you, RAF rations are not very good for an Australian. They had the mess downstairs. See, this is another thing that you can't understand. They had the mess underneath and on top was the NAAFI, N-double A- F-

I, Navy, Army, Air Force Institute or something. Navy, Army, Air Force Institute, and it was like a canteen. A private-run canteen where you ate your meal downstairs and if you didn't like it, you went upstairs and paid, this is what the ‘Poms’ [British] used to have to do, and this is what we had to do too when we first went there, you had to

eat this dreadful food. Well, it wasn't so much dreadful, but it was monotonous you know, the same thing; and then if you [were] roaring hungry you went upstairs and got something nice.

That's it?

Yeah, well we were at Surabaya and of course, I think I might have mentioned this, that the Dutch weren't at war as yet. The Germans hadn't got into Holland so you know, fairly early and as they weren't at war and we were at war, not with the Dutch, but at war, we weren't allowed to land. We had

to stay on the boat, which was a rather dreadful because Surabaya, I have been there since, is a wonderful city; and of course then we went from Surabaya, oh I forget how long we were there, I might have been about three or four days there; and then we went to Batavia, which now of course is Jakarta and dearly would have loved to [have] gone ashore then, but didn't; and then from Batavia we went to Singapore

and from Singapore we went to the RAF station, Sembawang. That's the name of an aerodrome. It had just been finished. It was an RAF station. So we took over there, and then I think we might have mentioned food too. Remember I said that we had the NAAFI on top of the mess? The food was pretty crook under RAF

rations for about twelve months, and then it was completely taken over by the Royal Australian Air Force and it become Sembawang RAAF, right and we had four squadrons there. Number 1, number 8, 21 and 453 and stationed in headquarters so, say five squadrons.

All Australian.

Yeah,

these are RAAF. Number 1 RAAF, Number 8, Number 21. Number 21, which was actually the City of Melbourne Squadron. 453, you might say, ‘Well, that's a big jump from 1 to 453.” 453 was really an RAF squadron, but fully maintained by Australians, bar the CO [Commanding Officer], who was an RAF bloke, right?

So there we are. Now, number 1 and number 8 squadron were the first squadrons in the history of the RAAF to fly out with their own aircraft. Fly out to the destination where they were going. There was one other squadron that went early, Number 10 Squadron, to England, but they never took any aircraft with them. The aircraft was there when they went away.

So it was quite a feat for Number 1 and Number 8 squadrons to fly from Melbourne and Canberra right through to Singapore, in those days. Now of course, it's about a five hour flight.

The name of the station is Sembawang. S-E-M

S-E-M-B-A-W

no, S-E-M

A-N-G, that's right.

Sembawang.

Yeah, right. Sembawang is close to the naval base, which is near the Jahore Straits . That's the little strait between Malaya and [Singapore], right? In other words, it was the closest to Malaya, but of course in those days

Malaya was Singapore. Singapore was part of Malaya. It wasn't till after the war that Singapore became independent and broke away from Malaya.

Okay? So, to my mind, there were, how many air force stations were there? There was Sembawang, which we were at.

There was Seletar, there was Tengah and Kalang. Yeah, four, right? But they were all RAF. We were the only RAAF blokes. Now in the RAF Squadrons that were there, there were some Australians in the personnel as well of course. navigators and

bomb aimers and those sort of things. Pilots too, but we were purely RAAF and proud of it. Mm.

Yeah, well at this stage of course, when we arrived in Singapore, the war was of course only in Europe. Things

weren't going that well. If remember there was nine months of phoney war wasn't there? Nine months, nothing happened and then it really did happen and that's when Hitler went into Belgium and Holland and all those places and it was a fair way away. What we knew about it was that all the new modern equipment

was going to Europe and we were left in Singapore with two bomber squadrons or reconnaissance bomber squadrons, Number 1 and Number 8, they had the Lockheed Hudsons, and 21 and 453 were fighter squadrons. 21 went away with Wirraways and then, when 453 came over, they both got Brewster Buffalos which were an American plane.

Brewster Buffalos were ordered by the American government for the American Navy and the navy had 'em for about one month and said they were worthless, but we got 'em and they were worthless. Absolutely worthless. They were tested when we got 'em and they gave us at the specifications of how far they could fly and how high they could fly. Typical

American money-making. They tested them without a full load of petrol or without a full load of armament, so of course, naturally they could fly nearly twice as fast and go as twice as high as what they really could do with fully loaded aircraft. So when you read in the paper that such and such can do this and do that you gotta then ask the question, is it

fully loaded or is it, okay? So here we were in Malaya with all the obsolete aircraft. The Lockheed Hudson, which was the bomber reconnaissance was designed as a civil aircraft, which it was, and then adapted to for war.

The ‘Vildebeest’. Oh yes.

The Wildebeest. We never had Wildebeests, but the RAF had Wildebeests, right? Now the Wildebeests, ah what squad that woulda been? Number, oh yeah, Vildebeest was Number 100 Squadron RAF. They had a quite a few Australians in that squadron, but it was a RAF Squadron. When I say 'quite a few', I

don't know how many, but it wouldn't be any more than thirty or forty in a squadron of three hundred. Wildebeests, well now, they're older again than what we had. Very old aircraft. They were biplanes, that's how old they were. Two wings you know. Biplanes. If the wind was blowing over sixty miles an hour they flew backwards. They did. They actually flew backwards. So that's the

type of aircraft we had, okay? Now it was pretty good going in Malaya in those days, early, because there was no enemy. We're talking about 1940 to December '41. A good twelve, fourteen months, fifteen months. No war. Beautiful climate. Good conditions.

Under the RAF system we only worked in the mornings. Could you imagine that, because ‘mad dog and English men don't go out in the midday sun’, do they? So we stood to at eight o'clock. Went to lunch at twelve and had the rest of the afternoon off, which of course, you slept for awhile, played footy, played cricket, went to town,

but that didn't last, that only lasted for about six months before we got an RAAF CO, right, and then we completely broke away from the RAF and we had to work a full day, which I think, was the best thing because ‘idle minds get up to bad things’.

Yeah.

Wonderful you know,

wonderful working eight to twelve. A nice meal and go back and have a sleep for an hour or two and then play badminton, footy, cricket, whatever you like, and then if you were a boozer [drinker], you'd go to town, which a bus ride, just a bus ride to town. Oh well, [took] half an hour I suppose 'cause Singapore Island's very

small, of course. You could go from one end to the other. So that was good for about six months and then I forget how long we worked in the afternoon. Half past four or something like that, but I think we had a good hour and a half for lunch you know, but of course it gets hot you know, Singapore's a very hot, Singapore's closer to the Equator than what Ceylon [Sri Lanka] is,

if my memory serves me right.

So you know, it's a good, actually it's sixty miles from the Equator, Singapore, so it can get pretty hot and humid and in the rainy season; it rained every day, every day. It'd be like it is here, now, clear blue skies and then the rain'd come over and it'd belt down. Oh, you couldn't see across the room

for the rain, that's how heavy it was, but it only lasted half an hour at the most, and then the sun'd come out and all the steam'd come out you know. Hot as, but our barracks were good. Our barracks were very good. We had beds with mosquito nets all around 'em. The place was sprayed for mosquitoes, but there were a few of the fellas who got malaria, but I don't know whether they got it on the station. They mighta got it somewhere else, but

pretty good; but it all got spoilt. The Japanese were after oil, weren't they? They couldn't get any oil anywhere else, but there was plenty of oil in Indonesia. Still one of the greatest oil suppliers, Sumatra, Palembang.

Ah, oh yes. Well, we knew that they were fighting in China okay, and we knew that they would be very well experienced fighters, but we were told by the RAF, by the higher command that the Japanese couldn't fly over five thousand feet. They couldn't see. They all wore glasses right,

which a lot of Japanese did. Their aircraft were no good. Made of wire and fabric, but you know, well we were told all these things, but we knew that Japan has no natural resources. They don't have any iron. They

don't have any oil, which of course they didn't, but we never thought they'd come to war. I didn't actually ever think that the Japanese would go with the Germans, but of course you gotta remember that the Germans were winning everything. There was nothing they couldn't win, so you gotta stick with the winner don't you, and

they were out of oil. That's what they wanted, oil.

No, we weren't aware, but we knew that we knew that, you know, a nation that doesn't have oil, that's got to import oil, and the shipping lanes were pretty well patrolled by the British. I don't know about the

Americans and I don't know whether they were doing much, but yeah. We knew that once it, but see, as I said earlier in my preface, that the aggressor has always got it over the other bloke. Like, we sighted them on the 6th of December and our instructions were, "Do not engage the Japanese as they are not our enemies".

On the 6th of December, 1941 and Pearl Harbour was on the 7th; but as I said before, it started on the 8th in Malaya at Kota Bharu, one hour twenty minutes before Pearl Harbour, because that's the difference in the time spot. So up on the 6th of December, when we sighted this convoy coming down

the South China Sea, we weren't at war. We weren't at war with the Japanese and they were there coming to invade us.

Yeah.

Don't engage the Jap.

Oh God, yes. On the 6th, well before that, we were ‘at the ready’ [on alert], you know. There's about three,

there's a number one, two, three. We were on two, on alert, right, but no war was declared. You're on alert, which means that, okay you've gotta be a bit shaper than normal, but…

No. No, no.

Well, we knew that our aircraft were almost useless

right? As I said, our aircraft, our main reconnaissance bomber, was a civilian designed aircraft. It's a beautiful aircraft, and there's one still flying up in Coolangatta, a beautiful aircraft to fly in, but if you start to throw it around to invade an enemy fighter the thing doesn't stand up,

right? It can't do these turns.

Not very much at all. The only thing we were told [was] that they were ‘bloody’ useless, and the pilots were useless, and they couldn't fly over a certain height and they couldn't see because they had glasses, right?

Well, I can't ever remember going to a meeting

where it was said, but this was the general you know, "Oh don't worry about them. They can't fly over a certain height". Now whether the officers' class or the ‘intelligentry’, I don't know whether they knew any more, but I'm sure they didn't because we were not prepared at all.

We didn't.

No we didn't. We didn't.

But we understood why we weren't prepared.

Because the war was going [on] in Europe and we were getting nothing, right? We were left there with nothing, okay and I don't know whether Churchill [Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, 1940-1945], well Churchill did say this, but I don't know when he said it. He said that, "We will be prepared to lose Malaya as long as we win in

in Europe first, then we'll re-take the East when we finish there." So you can see that they weren't that concerned. They had we had one of the biggest naval bases, the naval base in Singapore was a huge naval base, built to repair big battleships, but there was no battle-

ship fleet there. Only the two that, The Repulse and The Prince of Wales, came out about a week before it started, right? They musta know something 'cause they came out about a week before and they were the only two battleships that were there. We had a couple of Australian frigates and the Malayan Naval Reserve only had little tiny auxiliary boats. So there was no navy.

No navy whatsoever.

Well, one of the biggest naval bases in the world.

In the area. The biggest damn naval base in the area.

Oh, without a doubt.

Yeah. It was built to accompany a squadron of battleships that were to be placed there and we were told and that the specification was that if a war was declared that a

naval fleet would arrive within seven days of war being declared. Well they never came did they? Two were sent a week before, but after that, well see even taking your country, where you come from, after the Japanese got Singapore the British Navy went right across to

South Africa. Burma and Ceylon, they were all wide open to [the] Japanese Navy, but the Royal Navy finished up over at, what's the name of the island, Madagascar, over that way?

Right, over there. That's where their base was. So they ruled the seas. The Japanese ruled the seas. They ruled the air and they ruled the sea. Why? Because there was nothing there. We had nothing.

Well I shouldn't say we had nothing. We had aircraft. We had aircraft that were not suited for the job and very little of 'em. You spoke about the Wildebeest. Well, I don't know. The Wildebeest, you know torpedo bomber and that's another thing about how good these Japanese these first Japanese [were], right? Now, you say they lost the war. 'Course they

lost the war. They were operating what, how many thousand miles, from Japan to New Guinea? How many thousand miles would the communication be there?

Many thousands of miles.

I would think so. I'm not sure. Now, that's where they're operating. That's where their base is. So things had to go in the finish, but what was I gonna say? I don't know what I was gonna say.

Oh yeah, torpedos. Wildebeests.

Now The Repulse and The Prince of Wales were sunk. Sunk in an hour and a half. The Japanese, their torpedos were far superior to the RAF and the British torpedo. When we launched torpedos they'd be launched from about two hundred yards okay? Which brought you right in line with anti-aircraft guns on the war

ships and this was another thing that happened to the two British naval boats was they never had their aircraft carrier. They were to come out with an aircraft carrier, but I think it was the HMS Hermes [aircraft carrier] was holed up in Calcutta or Ceylon.

Trincomalee, was held up there because there was some repair and it didn't arrive in Singapore with them.

It got, oh it got

sunk afterwards.

After Singapore.

Yeah, it got sunk there; but it was to come out with these [two], but it was in dock in Ceylon somewhere, because of repairs. The two boats arrived, but the admiral of The Prince of Wales, an old establishment admiral, said, "I will sail without any air cover because I'm a navy man and I've got the best anti-aircraft", but they were used to torpedo bombing,

where the torpedo was launched about two hundred yards [away]. The Japanese were very, very clever. They had the torpedos that they could launch almost half a mile away, and I believe when the British sailors saw these torpedo bombers launching their bombs half a mile away they said, "Good God, what are they doing? Stupid idiots." Of course 'bang'. Hour and a half.

They had superior torpedoes. Superior judgment.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. My duties there, well I went away with

the with an armament section right? Now I had ‘re-mustered’ as a photographer there, but the official orders hadn't come for me, now I was on station armoury and on top of the station armoury was the photographic section. So I spent a lot of time both in the photographic section and in the armament section, but my official duties was in the armament section at this time. Okay? Right, what did we do?

We station armoury, right? That's different to a squadron armoury because a squadron armoury puts the bombs on the aircraft. We had to look after the depots where the bombs were, okay? So our duty was to make sure that the bomb dumps were in perfect order, were waterproof, were storm proof, were bomb proof. You know, all

dug away and machine guns around, we had an Indian Army did the defence of the aerodrome. Indian Army. Sikhs they were. Big, tall Sikhs, about six foot six. Most beautiful teeth you've ever seen in your life. Handsome, big, handsome men. Jesus, they were big blokes. They got slaughtered the poor ‘buggers’.

So we had to supply them with bullets and rounds and things like that and then, of course the squadrons, if the squadrons wanted a supply of ammunition they had to come through us. I went to Kota Bharu, and we put in a bomb dump at Kota Bharu, which was pretty awful.

Could you imagine an aerodrome in the tropics, not in the semi-tropics, but in the tropics with a mud, well with an earth landing. No cement. No iron grille. Just land, in the tropics. Now you know how much rain you get in the tropics. You know how muddy it gets.

That's what was at Kota Bharu, and the British had been there for how many years, and it was the most forward air base of the whole, you know landing, but of course we haven't got to this far either. We haven't got to Kota Bharu. Yeah okay, but see, you gotta remember that when you're young and you're with your mates, you're not sitting down all

the time talking about the war, right? You're talking about your girlfriend, you're talkin' about where you're gonna go tonight. Talk about how you beat the RAF at waterpolo today or something like that. Okay yeah, okay, there's a war on. You're not scared. You've got your mates. You think you're invincible. You know, you think that the enemy's ‘little Japs’. They can't do anything. They've got nothing, you know. We got very little

information about them fighting in China. They'd been in China for three years. Ten years. They'd been fightin' in China for ten years. They were well experienced troops. The Imperial Japanese force was particularly good at the start. Well, you see what they did to Pearl Harbour one day.

Yeah, well they called them the Imperial troops. So I suppose the Imperial guards.

Oh, I don't know what I mean by that.

Was it?

Yeah well, they'd have the same in the air force and they'd have the same in the navy. They'd be Imperial Air Force okay, and they were good. They were good. They never bombed us for a good, oh a good month. They never bombed us in at Sembawang. At Kota Bharu,

on the midnight on the 8th, we only lasted twenty four hours.

No, at Kota Bharu.

Yeah, okay. I'm jumping a bit.

Oh yeah, well that's alright.

Okay. Well now, you see you've got to remember that Sembawang is way down in Singapore.

The Japs started at Kota Bharu. Oh God, the distance, look I should know the distance, but and we never got the Japanese when they got a footing in Kota Bharu. The Japanese bombed Singapore Island every day or every other day right, for about a month before they bombed us, and they used to go over

us because we were the most northern part of Singapore Island. They'd go over us and we'd say, "Oh God, this is it", but they'd be attacking an army barracks behind us at Nee Soon, which was an British army [barracks] just right next to the drome [aerodrome]. They'd bomb that, and then they'd bomb the city, and it was even said that, I didn't hear it, but somebody said that they used to have a Japanese girl,

what'd they call her?

No, no. Japanese Sally or something. She used to broadcast.

Tokyo Rose, yeah and she used to say, I didn't actually hear this, so it's only hearsay. That's a bit rich isn't it? I didn't hear it, but it's hearsay, that she said, "Go home Aussie we're not gonna fight you" right or, "We don't" you know, "we don't we

to fight you, go home", but they flew over our drome for a whole month before they bombed us right, and on the 13th of January they bombed Sembawang and they made a mess. They really made a mess. Now that's where I had my worst experience in my whole life.

I don't often speak about this, but I think it should go down on the records and, mm. Yes, well now, there were four of us and in those days, we thought it was very modern, we dug trenches that were the shape of a ‘U’. You know a ‘U’ right,

and the idea of that was that the bomb blast couldn't go 'round a corner, you know. If you were in that, the bomb wouldn't get ya, which proved to be pretty right. So you may as well, you know what I'm gonna tell you, that there were four of us in the trench. There was Maxy Nalen,

Jack Goodfellow? Good Jack Goodfellow, Albury Hooper and myself. There were four of us in the trench and

about fifty feet down the hill, these trenches are in the rubber plantation beside the aerodrome, and fifty feet down the hill there's a brand new bloke by the name of, Steele? Steele. Stone. Stone. He's down digging a trench by himself and he said, "Do you mind if I come and join you"?

So we said, "No, come." So that made five of us in the trench and, oh the air raid siren had gone of course, we were in the trenches and we could see there were three formations of twenty-seven aircraft, three twenty-sevens, okay, came over and, as I said to you earlier, they always flew over and went to Singapore City or the army barracks

or the other RAF (UNCLEAR) stations, but this time, I can see it now. I can see the bomb, I can actually see the bomb bays opening of these aircraft and I can actually see these little tiny black specks in the sky. Well, we got a direct hit on the western side of the U

and my best mate, Maxy Nalen, who was sitting on the top of all the ammunition for the machine guns that we had in the trench, he was sitting on the box of munitions, him and the bloke by the name of Stone, who had come up the other trench, he was on the corner. That whole section of the U was blown up. Now it had been raining for days so

it was just mud. Now, instead of the concussion coming right through and giving us all the bad, being muddy it exploded and then went up. No there's a scientific way of this somehow or other that there's no hardness in the earth. You know what I mean? It's mud so instead of concussing it mud it go, anyway

those two fellas were killed. The next one in the middle of the U was Jack Goodfellow. Oldfellow? Goodfellow? He was there. He was buried. I was next to him on the corner and Aubrey Hooper was on the other. We had cuts and abrasions and I hit my head on the trench, but that was bad enough, but the worst part

about it was that these two fellows, Maxy Nalen and W. Stone. I suppose it musta been Bill Stone. I'm not too sure. It was W. Stone. Their, not their bodies, but the tissue, their skin tissue was in the rubber trees. You could see it through the rubber trees. They'd just been blown to smithereens. Well, we had to dig Jack

Goodfellow? Oldfellow? Must look it up. He came from Western Australia. We had to dig him outta the mud right, because he was the nearest to it and he was all pitted with stuff in his back ,and I was tellin' you about the Sikhs. They were all in trenches nearest. Oh, they got the lot. Oh, those poor buggers were crawlin' all over the place half dead. Any rate, the doctor came

and the medical orderlies came and they said, "Oh look you fellas know these blokes. Would you like to go and get their remains off the trees?" Oh geez. Started to do it, but couldn't. Couldn't, and to this day if I have a bad night I can see this these pieces of, well, wasn't any bones it was just

skin and a bit of flesh. You know what I mean, and to me when I dream about it they appear like, you know, in the butcher shop you see a big side of beef hanging? Well, they were only little bits, like this big, but that's what I, that's it. Maxy Nalen was my best mate. He rode a motor bike, the same as I did. So we were pretty good mates. He was exactly the same age as me, but

I met his mother and his sister since we come back. He didn't know anything about it, of course. He was gone, which was a good way to go I suppose, but that's how good the Japanese were. They could bomb anything, those first lot. So that was January the 13th. It stands out in my mind mate. Really does.

So that's our first bombing raid. After that we got many more, but the war started on the 8th of December, and we never got our first bombing till the 13th of January. So we were, you know a good month and a half or five weeks before we got any. In the meantime it's all going on in Singapore. They're bombing Singapore every day. Now whether they didn't want to bomb us or whether they thought we might

pull out because we were Australians, but of course that wasn't in the picture at all. I don't know why. Nobody seems to know why. Ah, whether they thought our aircraft wasn't much good any rate.

Oh good. I got that in did I? So we'll finish with that then.

Mm.

Death?

Yes. This was the first raid on our aerodrome. Yes, it was our first raid.

First time I'd seen death. Well that close, yeah. Yeah.

Well, at the time, the three of us that were left…there was us four fellows, but the fifth one came up from the other from the other trench. He was by himself and he came up, and the three of us that were left we started to dig, because one of the fellows was half buried. We got him out, but we thought the other two might be there and we started to dig, but of

course when we looked up we saw this stuff through the trees and we even said a prayer, right, and I even led them in prayer. Now, even at that stage I wasn't very religious, although we had a Roman Catholic chaplain there, who was chasin' me up a few times to come to mass and that sort of thing and

no. So you sort of try to grab on to something. I don't know, anyway, how did I feel? Ah well, we were awfully worried that there were time delay bombs and, as I said to Sergei [interviewer], that we had an attachment of Indian Army, Sikhs,

who were guarding the aerodrome for invasion, you know. Fine fellows. Great big six foot blokes and they were all around us in trenches and they got really got battered. So there was plenty of and we thought, "Well there'll be time delayed bombs" and they'd go off you know, usually there are time delayed bombs.

So we said, "Well" we said to ourselves, "One's just exploded there. We'll be right if we stay in the trench because” you know, “there won't be two in the one spot." So we waited there for a while and that's when the MO [Medical Officer] and the medical orderlies came down. They'd heard that there'd been some deaths, so they came down and they asked us to get the remains and we had a bit of a go

at it, but we couldn't go, so they had to do the rest. How did I feel? I felt, you know, it's sixty-odd years now. I felt enormously, ah enormously relieved that I wasn't, I could have been in that corner spot. I never was in the corner spot, but we usually had our you know, we stayed in the same spots

whenever we went to the trenches. See, we had, as I said to Sergei, we had many, many warnings, air raid sirens, but they used to fly right over our aerodrome and go to the army at Nee Soon, which was just behind us or to ‘Singa’ [Singapore] or the naval dockyards or to somewhere else, but they never dropped any on us but for this day, but we had many raids after that. The aerodrome was

pretty knocked about. We didn't eat in the mess anymore. We had to eat in the rubber trees and things like that, but conditions were still pretty good compared with the poor army up on the peninsula, up at Malaya. See that was, you talk about Gallipoli, which we did say how hopeless Gallipoli was. This was almost as hopeless. We had no navy

whatsoever. So you'd make a front line. The army'd make a front line today. Tonight the Japanese had the ruled the sea. They would just come behind you and you're on a peninsula, you can't go east, you can't go west. You can only go south. So they would come behind you. So you'd have to retreat again 'cause you know, they're on the move. They've got momentum. We're

stagnant. We're not winning anywhere. The navy's gone. We've lost control of the air. Those poor army blokes they must have, hopeless.

Oh yeah. We were aware that they were moving. They were moving faster than what we thought. The original plan was the, I don't know whether I spoke to you about the fella

who was in charge of the whole thing. An RAF air vice-marshal. Brooke-Pophamwas his name. An elderly man. Elderly to us in those days. I don't know what age he would be, but he'd be sixty-five, seventy. He retired as an air force air vice-marshal before the war,

had gone to South Africa as a governor of one of the British provinces in South Africa. Had caught Sleeping Sickness disease. I don't what the proper term is, but you've heard of Sleeping Sickness?

Don't know what the right name is.

Falling asleep.

Sleeping Sickness. You get it from the mosquito or something or from an insect mostly in South Africa and that was him and the plan was, his

plan was that he drew a line across the top of Malaya and we were to fight the Japanese in Siam, Thailand right, and see the Japanese landed at Kota Bharu and they also landed

further up in Thailand. The main force was up in Thailand, who went across on the east side of Malaya, right? The east side, South China Sea side. They landed in Thailand over the border from Malaya and also Kota Bharu, which is Malaya. Now, the one that landed in Kota Bharu came down the east coast, but the one that landed in Thailand went across, right

across Siam 'cause it's very narrow that peninsula, right across to the west coast. They invaded the west they came down the west coast. Now, the plan was that at the first sign of the war, the army would make a barrier across the top of Malaya into in Siam itself, right? So they'd engage the Japanese in Siam. Well, the order was never given.

It was too late. They got across to the west coast. See, things like that. We're talking about sixty, sixty-what? 1941, what's it now, sixty-two years, sixty-three years ago? Communications are not what they were in those days.

Oh well, see

we had radio. Our main information, our main radio was Niron Batavia [?]. That's the name of the station. "This is Niron Batavia" and beautiful music at night time. Dutch controlled. Beautiful. Beautiful. It was broad 'cause it was war by now in Europe. It was already at war so it was announcing the European, and what was happening here, and they didn't

pull any punches. Where the radio in Singapore, under British command and the newspapers you know, would just say, 'Troops falling back' you know, 'War's going well', but the ones in Batavia, they were really telling us the right general, well, we knew they were falling down. We knew it. We knew it. Look, we knew, after Kota Bharu, that it was hopeless, and that was what? That was… we left Kota Bharu in twenty-four

hours. They just wiped us out in twenty-four hours.

Oh, it dashed…

Hey? Oh God.

Oh yeah, and aircraft that couldn't fly over so many feet. They were so, see the Zero [Zero Fighter], which you've heard about, sure, it was an aircraft that

wouldn't stand up with the Mustang or anything like that, or the Spitfire early. Although they killed the Spitties [Spitfires] in Darwin. We had Spitties, finished up with Spitties (UNCLEAR). They didn't do much good because they were a cold climate aircraft right? They weren't designed for the east. They were water-cooled aircraft. Water-cooled aircraft in the tropics. Imagine the problem.

Dear, oh dear, and the Japs had spent years on their Zero. They were the first to have long-range petrol tanks that they dropped off, right? They were the first, they invented that. I forget how many thousand miles they could fly these, a fighter could fly like a bomber 'cause they had fuel tanks on the wings. They never had any armament in the aircraft

for protection for the pilot. So they were as light as they could [be], turn on a sixpence. They were not faster than ours, but being lighter, they could climb higher. They could turn like that, what else do you want? You don't want speed in an aerial battle if you can do, like today with these F118s. If I make a pass at you in an F118, I go about

twenty miles before I can turn around to come back again I'm goin' that fast, and this little thing would be turned around waitin' for you to come back. Oh, they were a good aircraft, they really were. Now what are we at? How good they were? Yes, they were good. They were good. They were good and they'd been they prepared for war. They'd been preparing for war for a long time. Now, they also were

Asians, right? Well, they came from that area. So for years and years they had, not spies, but they had agents right through Malaya and Singapore. Hairdressers and all these sort of people working there, getting all the information. Now, on our, and there were stupid things now that when it's all

over and it's so easy to be good in hindsight, but although it was an RAF station to start, so you employed local natives to look after the watering system, you had natives for cooks and batmen and ballboys and native labour doing all the labour. Well, as soon as war as soon as the war started

the locals, they're not gonna be on a ‘bloody ‘aerodrome. They're not gonna get killed are they? So we had no control over our water. Cooking all went. You know, all these facilities that we ourselves should have been doing. Mind you we had our own cooks. So ah,

Well, they just didn't turn up. No more. No more. That didn't lose the war, but that's the type of silly mistakes that were made, that you thought [if] you were gonna be on an aerodrome it was never gonna be attacked. Aircraft were stationed, parked on the aerodrome. Hangars were parked on the air-, well, you don't do that today. You have them hidden. You have an

aerodrome, but you don't park your aircraft on the aerodrome, 'cause one or two bombs and the whole lot's gone, which they did.

Oh, colonial mind. Exactly right. Colonial mind and as I, I don't know what I said to you earlier, but there used to be a saying in amongst us and this is not ‘Pommie’ bashing. These are facts,

that in an ‘Establishment’ family [old-fashioned, British upper-class] the first son goes into the church, the second son goes into the navy, the third son goes into the army and the fourth son, the idiot son, goes in the air force, but of course, I've got to say that with a grain of salt because you know, the beautiful young fighter pilots and bomber pilots they were great, but see, the fellas that were in the air force

thirty years before and that had reached the real senior ranks, they were old ‘Establishment’ blokes. Wouldn't know ‘shit’ from clay, you know what I mean? Well, I don't know whether that's the right expression, but there we are, and if you got posted to the East it was a glorified holiday, which it was. There was no war there.

Yes?

Yeah, we did.

We did. We had our barracks were cleaned by, they were Indians.

Cheap labour from India and they, what used to we call them? They cleaned the barracks. They cleaned everything. They cleaned the stores where we worked. They, you know we were ‘bloody’ lords. You don't work in the tropics. ‘Mad dog and Englishmen’, as I just said before, ‘don't go out in the midday sun’, but that was the public servant attitude in all the tropics, of the British.

You go out there and you have servants. Well, we had, I suppose we you could say we had servants, but I tell you what, we paid for it in the end. It was no picnic when it started, but it was good. It was good early, really good.

Mm.

Yeah, well I…

Yeah, I didn't mind it. I knew that it had to be done. Mind you, in your rookies, that's when you're doing your initial training, you wouldn't say anything in front of the instructor, but after it was all over and you were talkin' to the blokes at meal time you know, you'd certainly tell them what you thought of him and what an idiot he was and all that.

Oh no, you knew that the discipline was there, you know. See there wasn't a great deal of discipline in the air force. We never learnt to march. We learnt to fire, I think I fired two bullets out of a rifle. I did a gas mask drill one day, right, but that was it. We couldn't defend ourselves.

I can remember one time when we were in Sumatra at P2, at this secret aerodrome. The Japs had landed at Palembang and had captured P1 [February, 1942], the aerodrome at Palam, and that was about twenty k’s [kilometres] from us, and he the adjutant, a fellow by the name of Flight Lieutenant Broadbent, elderly man, he was the adjutant [aide-de-camp] and he lined about a hundred of

us up and he said, "You are now soldier airmen. We're gonna march down the road and stop the Japanese." Never, I'd fired two shots on training. We had about half a dozen bullets each. Somebody gave me a .303 [standard Australian issue single-shot rifle] and we're about a hundred of us walkin' down the main road between P2 and P1. 'Course we only got about half an hour down the road and he said he decided

it was stupid, so we turned back, but I don't know how we'd have ever gone. We would have been no match hand to hand. We didn't know how to protect ourselves.

You mean not being able to look after yourself? No, see you were busy and doing your job. You were keeping aircraft flying. You were

keeping supplies. You were fixing engines. You were making sure the bombs were right. You were doing photographs. You got your own little world that you're doing things in, you know.

Yeah and he said "You are now soldier airmen?" Oh yeah, well, I tell you what, there was a few brown trousers [frightened people] around. You know, I

wasn't prepared to and the Japanese had come all the way down Malaya, had got Singapore, and were now attacking Sumatra and both the British government and the Australian government had given it away. They weren't gonna send any more supplies, you know? You were gonna be left there mate. That's what was gonna happen, only we got out. You were gonna be left there, which the army

was, right?

No, I didn't know that at the time.

No, I didn't know that at the time. No. So, yeah.

Yep. Followed him down the track. "You are now soldier airmen. We're gonna defend [against] the Japanese army." In the meantime, the Japanese air force is bombin' the ‘crap’ out of the

road and doing everything. We just turned around and come back and we were happy to come back. It was hopeless, and then of course, we left Sumatra. Oh, there's another, not a story, but here's a fact. I told you about the one with the U trench. The other drastic thing to happen to me,

and I swore, if I ever catch up with this bloke I'd cut his throat, and I mean this. He's since died, so I don't have to do it. We got back from this ‘soldier airmen’ business, back to the drome, and I was still attached to the armament section and our orders were then to blow up all the bomb dumps on P2, right? Well,

we're with a PO [Pilot Officer]. A fellow by the name of Strubanow, Strubanosh. I'll leave that name. Doesn't matter. I won't tell you who he was. He's in charge. He's a brand new pilot officer, armament officer, and he's in charge. So we're blowin' these things up and when you do this you're pretty last on the aerodrome, you know? You should be the last out. So

there's about twelve of us and we're in this truck and we get to the gate, goin' out. We're leaving and we're going down to Oosthaven, down at Java, and this PO gets out. He says, "I only want fitter armourers." Now there's an armourer and a fitter armourer right? I'm an armourer and a fitter armourer is a senior man, okay?

He said, " I'm an armoured officer and I'm only taking fitter armourers with me. All you others get off the truck." Now, there was six of us had to get off, now why we got off I don't know. He's only a PO. We're evacuating in a desperate situation and we're told to get off the truck at the gate as he's goin' down the main road. "Get off." No other trucks in sight. Why would you get off? How

stupid could you be to obey a ‘bloody’ pilot officer to get off, but we got off. Six of us got off and we're stranded. Oh gee, that was desperate, but fortunately, not long after, a RAF bloke from P1 down the main road, pulled up and he said, "I'm goin' down to Oosthaven.", I said, "So are we." He said,

"You been ordered to go?" I said, "Oh yes, we've been ordered to go. P2's closed." So we got a lift with him, but the six of us swore if we ever got this Strubanow bloke we'd cut his throat because it was desperate. Any rate that's minor. That's minor.

Yes.

Yes.

All the main troops were already gone. They'd gone the day before, right? They went down by train. There was a train went

down from Palembang down to Oosthaven, which is right at the bottom of Sumatra, but there were no more trains for us. We had to go by bus, by truck, whatever we had.

Yeah. Oh yes. It was one of these open trucks you know. Oh, there was room.

Oh, to make sure he didn't have too many to look after. Make sure that he was safe, I should imagine.

You know the difference between, I suppose there woulda been twelve, look I can't exactly [remember], twelve or fourteen. At any rate, six of us had to get off. So he was only looking after eight at the most.

Get there whichever way you can. Walk, we could never walk it. The distance well, I don't know what the distance would be.

Here to Albury, I suppose. Here to Albury, but that's another fascinating story there. I'm full of them, but they're there to be told. We were with this RAF bloke and it became nightfall, okay, and he thought the main road was a bit dangerous. So he said, "I know what we'll do", he knew of a Dutch Army camp up in the

mountains down there, on the way to Oosthaven right? So he said "We'll go in there for the night and then catch the ferry the next morning."

So we went go down the army camp. Now, here's a war, Sumatra's, well, you say Sumatra's really lost, and what, half a mile off the army camp we could hear the Dutch singing. Now, the Dutch were the greatest

drinkers and celebrators. They'd drink beer and sing any time, and at half a mile off the army camp we could hear this singing. You know, it's twilight, they'd had their meal and they were in the mess drinking away, great drinkers. So we get there and all this joviality, they're ‘bloody’ well killin' each other just down the track and so we bed down.

We get to bed about ooh, eleven o'clock or something like that. At half past two I get woken up by this RAF bloke. I don't know whether he's a flight lieutenant or, anyway, he's pretty junior. He said, "Come on" he said, "we've gotta go." He said, "I've just heard that the Japs are not far behind." So we get in the truck. Leave the Dutchies [Dutch] there, they must have been all captured, and we get in the truck and we go down to Oosthaven

and it's the last ferry from Oosthaven to Java. Ah, what's the name of the place? Java, oh God, starts with an ‘M’ and that's the last ferry. There's gonna be no more ferries and it's full. It's absolutely chock-a-block [completely full] and the skipper won't take any more on, and we arrive, and I see that Father Pearce,

the Roman Catholic chaplain, [is] up on the deck and I, you know, I shout out, "Frank Bartlett here, with the six of us." He said ,"Oh" he said, "No. The skipper's given the order that no more." That's the naval skipper. "He's given the order, no more" and somehow he talked the skipper into [it], any rate we got on. We got on. I'm here, so we got on, but there we go.

So that's that. So it was amazing when we got to Java how organised the RAF officers were because it was safe or they thought it was safer, you know. Where Java was pretty civilised. Like Batavia's pretty civilised compared with Sumatra and those places. I don't know, there seemed to be RAF officers everywhere tellin' you where to go and what to do

and everything's organised, but that didn't last very long. We were only there about two weeks when we had to get out again, but that's when the army got clobbered [beaten up] in Java. They'd come from the Middle East, right, and I'm standing from here to that wall what's that, ten feet? There were about two hundred RAF blokes on the wharf

in Batavia. Panjon. Talbic Panjon [actually Tandjung Periuk, Sea Port], I think they call it. There's about two hundred officers, right, and we've got the big chief, commanding officer, fella by the name of Jack McCauley [RAAF, Group Captain]. 'Crasher' McCauley. He's the CO of the whole lot. He lines us up and he takes one hundred across the dock to another old boat that's there, and he leaves us hundred still on the wharf,

and word gets around that The Orchides is gonna come in and pick us up and we're gonna go on The Orchides. Well, it's luxury that, The Orchides. Meals and everything, and it doesn't come. Doesn't come. Doesn't come. It was gonna come in the day time and it doesn't come, so we're left with a fella by the name of Bowlerman. Squad Leader Bowlerman. He's the bloke

in charge, and three elderly blokes, and they were the worst of the lot, elderly blokes, 'cause they always wanted a ‘bloody’ beer you know. They were all beer drinkers. They always wanted a drink. They said to Bowlerman you know, "The Orchides is not coming. Can we go to the little village down the track for a drink?" and he says, "Yes, you can." Well, no sooner had they left than it became twilight, which means that a ship

can come in, well, at dark they can come in. There's no back light no silhouette, if you know what I mean. So it came in, just as they'd left it came in and I'm on the gangplank of The Orchides. Beautiful ‘bloody’ beautiful Orchides. You know, one of the most modern ships that were sailin' the seas at the time. It comes in and, as I say, I'm on near the gangplank

thinking, "We're gonna get on it" you know, and off goes the 2/8th machine gunners without any machine guns. The 2/8th, 2/9th, I don't know what it is, pioneers right, without any guns and Weary Dunlop and his hospital staff. Now, I didn't know it was Weary Dunlop. All I know was this great big tall

bloke, about six foot six, dignified, tall fella got off and we said, "Oh we're gonna get on" and this Squad. [Squadron] Leader Bowlerman said, "We're not getting on. There's three fellas I've given leave to" and we saw The Orchides come in and we saw The Orchides go out and we're still on the wharf.

Phew, desperate days mate. Desperate days.

Yeah, he was one he was ours, yeah. Squadron Leader Bowlerman.

Nice fellow, nice fellow. He stuck to his guns. He was in change of approximately a hundred blokes and he had three missing.

Yeah. You would, ninety-seven got saved and the three were their own fault. [But he] didn't.

We waited another two days before we got a little, tiny Chinese river boat called The Edendale, and we sailed through the Sunda Straits, twenty-eight hours before The [HMAS] Perth was sunk. You heard of The Perth that sunk in the Sunda Straits?

We sailed through there twenty-eight hours before. A day, a night time and a full day

before The Perth was sunk. Ooh, desperate days. Desperate days.

Very, very treacherous and to put [the] ‘icing on the cake’, and it's a fact, that the crew of this Chinese river boat deserted when they knew that we were leaving. Why I don't know, they musta been locals, I don't know.

They deserted. We had nobody to stoke the boilers. We had a Scottish captain, of course. We didn't have a navigator. Didn't have an engineer. Of course we had our own cooks and I say it's to top it, so that meant that us blokes had to do look out duty, and who do you think got the midnight watch on the bow of the

boat, not the stern, the bow of the boat? [It] was yours truly. There, I'm in the bow of the boat, going through the Sunda Straits on the midnight watch. 'Course it was pretty back, you know, you couldn't see much, but I tell you what, it was desperate, and we'd heard on the radio or well, not on the radio, but somebody had heard that the Java sea battle had been lost, and the Japanese were now gonna come through the Sunda Straits

and come down the west coast of Java. They were on the east coast of Java. They were gonna come through the Sunda Straits and come down, as I say, twenty-eight hours before and we didn't know at that time that The Perth was sunk or was gonna be sunk, but that's just what it was. We never we had a quite a uneventful trip coming down. We never saw much.

Somebody's clicking their fingers there. I dunno what that means.

Yeah. The funny thing, oh, getting on a lighter side of that trip, coming down, we've only got rice to eat of course. That's all we've got and as you know, when you boil rice you gotta tip the water off, right? So this cook of ours, Jim Humphries.

and a good mate of mine. Well, he came from Melbourne, so I knew him. Jim Humphries, he's the cook and the kitchen's in the middle of this tiny little river boat, you know, open galley on each side. So he decides, well I suppose it's the only way to get rid of the water, he's gotta get the big pot with the lid on it and just let it drain over the side of the boat right? Of course, you're ahead of me aren't you? The whole ‘bloody’ lot

goes in the ocean. There's nothing to eat. The rice and all went. He couldn't control it. Oh, so it caused a bit of a stir, but we got back [to Australia]. We got back on the 8th of March, and Singapore fell on the 15th of February. We got back on the 8th of March. My family hadn't heard from me

for, oh I forget when my last letter woulda been. It was woulda been say, the 1st of December and they hadn't heard from me, and of course Singapore had fallen on the 15th and as you know, everybody that was there was a POW [Prisoner of War]. So they thought that I was either under the ground or a POW, but I wasn't. So they were as happy as I was.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

No. No. No. Of course you would see lights, right? Indonesian people are great fishermen. You know, little fishing boats and they didn't have navigation you know, a red

and a white right for port and starboard sort of business, but they'd have a light. But didn't see much at all, but I’ll tell you what happened to me. I got the, I forget what they call it, whether they call that ‘eight bells’ or whatever? I don't know, but whatever it was…

I don't know, but it was the midnight watch any rate, whatever it was.

Yeah and

of course, by this time, we'd had fellas that had had got a lot of malaria. We got a lot of malaria in Sumatra because, see in Singapore we had mosquito nets. Of course when you get to Sumatra, without any supplies, you don't have mosquito nets and they never sprayed, there was no spraying for mosquitoes. Singapore was sprayed, but Sumatra, it was, oh,

it's a real jungle, real Orang-utans and Tigers. Sumatran Tigers. You heard of Sumatran Tigers? Could hear 'em growling, but I guess they were as scared of us as we were scared of them, but malaria was pretty rife, so we had a lot of malaria on the boat coming back.

No, we had, not a medical officer, we had a medical orderly,

right? Which are just like you and me, but they know how to put a bandage on I suppose, that's about all. No, they wouldn't have any equipment. I think the boat mighta had some. I think the skipper mighta had some. Yeah, I think there was some talk about taking quinine or something like, but that's all too late when you've got it, of course.

There was a big enquiry, but he was the CO, he was the big noise. This particular fellow finished up in charge of the air, what’s the civil aviation? Civil Aviation. He was in charge of

a department of the civil aviation.

Yeah, after the war. He was in charge of that. But he got out of that [accident]. It was one of those things, that was about the most tragic thing. That was the type of work that we did. I did have a list of aircraft that I’ve flown in or worked on and that amounts up to about 33 aircraft. We had every

aircraft that ever flew in Australia, at some time, at our base. We even had the Lancaster [Avro-Lancaster, heavy bomber] that had been flying in Britain for 4 or 5 years, done a wonderful job in the colder climate, but we found it wasn’t so good for our climate. So there were a few modifications had to be made if we ever got Lancasters. We never got Lancasters, we got Lincolns [type 2, medium bomber], which were

after Lancasters. ‘G for George’ was flying around, that’s a Lancaster.

I’ve seen 3 accidents. There was that one, there was an aircraft, when I say I’ve seen them, I’ve worked on aircraft, I’ve actually seen two accidents, and I’ve

worked on one aircraft where there were another 4 fellows killed, but I wasn’t in it. I’d flown this aircraft two or three days before it went in. It was an aircraft called the Woomera [medium bomber]. Only one ever made. It was a beautiful aircraft and if you’re interested in aeroplanes, you look out for the Woomera. It was a medium-size bomber.

It was the first to have machineguns on the wing, and they pointed backwards. You could fire behind you. When it first came to our unit, it had been designed that the machineguns could shoot its own tail off. There was no safety guard. The fellow sat in the cockpit, in the main plane and he

just worked the little joystick and moved the automatic machineguns on the wings, any way you could point. When it first came off the production line, it wasn’t a production line, it was a first model, it could shoot its own tail off. We put in governors [so] that they couldn’t come that far in to shoot it off.

That aeroplane, the Woomera, the same pilot I’m talking about, who was in the other accident, he was flying, this CO of the unit, big noise. I won’t give you his name. He was flying it and one of the engines caught fire, and somehow or other

there were three of these civil blokes from the CAC [Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation], not airmen, but the civilians from the Commonwealth Aircraft Factory. They were down in the bottom half of the aircraft. The pilot bailed out, parachuted out, and the other one crashed into the ground at Kerang up here. We had to go and

pick it up. There were three killed in that. He got out of that too. So he was a pretty… The other accident that, I was not in, but I saw, that was one of ours, was a Boomerang at Laverton. It crash landed and the poor pilot, he either had unstrapped himself or he wasn’t

strapped in properly. When it crashed, his head went forward and hit the gun sight in the front of the cockpit. He was in a terrible mess.

Yes. Terrible accidents in training. I didn’t see many of them. The other close thing [near accident] that I had, I see it now,

and it could have been tragic. Another thing we did at this aircraft performance unit, there was a professor down at the Hobart University who was making lenses for aerial cameras. We couldn’t get equipment, all the aerial cameras came from either England or America. We couldn’t get anything from England and the ‘Yanks’, well, they were hard to get too. This bloke down in

Hobart was making lenses for it. We used to have to go down twice a year to test them. They were perfect, but we went down to test them. It was my turn to go down this time, and we’d take ten cameras with us and there were about 12 lenses that had to be tested, so you’d test one on the camera and then give it to your offsider and he’d change the lens and you’d

go again. We went down in a Beaufighter this time. It was the middle of winter. It was freezing cold and we weren't flying too high. I’d say we’d be lucky to be flying 1,500 feet, which is just about the limit that you can fly, the lowest you can fly. There was ice on Mount Wellington, it was cold.

To photograph the side of the Beaufighter, you’ve got a bit of a body that you take off and pull in, and then the other part flaps down. So you lean out. The trick is, the thing that you’ve gotta do is, when you take that piece out, is to make sure that you don’t get any of it in the slipstream, because if you get it in the slipstream

it blows away. That can do that as well. I, being the smart one, thought I’d do it pretty quickly, running away, it was cold as ‘damn’ hell and I wanted to get it over with. So I grabbed the thing and unfortunately I lost it in the slipstream. It seemed like half an hour, but it would be a fraction of a second that this piece of material the size of that box there,

I can see it going down the side of the aircraft and there’s the tail. If it hits the tail and we’re only at 1,500 feet, we’re gone. And there’s my offsider, the pilot, and a wireless operator. So there’s four of us. We would have been ‘dead meat’. It seemed like half an hour. I can see this thing sailing down the side of the aircraft and there’s

the tail there. It must have just grazed the tail, didn’t hit it. I was no good after that. I wanted to get down, so we got down. My offsider saw it too’ and he vomited all over the plane. If you’ve ever been in an aircraft

and vomited without a bag and with all lenses all over it, by the time you get down with all that cold air rushing trough, it all dries. Thick solid. He had to clean it all off. We went up the next day and we did it, but that’s about the closest I’ve ever been.

Approximately 32 aircraft I’ve flown in or worked on, which is a pretty good list. I was going through it the other day. Some very old ones, and most of the modern ones.

Yeah. 2 1/2 years I had at Laverton. Used to go every day. I got married

early ‘45. That meant, if you’re a married man you can go home every night as long as you were back by parade the next morning. That was it.

Yeah, I really did. I thought there was no stopping the Japanese when we got back. I thought that it was wide open. We sailed right down the west coast from

Java through the Sunda Straits, right down the west coast and never sighted anything. In the meantime, have you ever heard about all the Flying Boats [Sunderland Flying Boat] that were sunk at Broome [Western Australian Flying Boat base]? In the meantime that was happening whilst we were on that journey. Just read in the

document the other night about a ship called the Koolama Did you see that? Where it was bombed at sea and it leant into Wyndham. It was the same time as we were sailing down the west coast. So there were Japanese about, but we never saw one.

Yeah, all that. We

were well out to sea, of course. The Scottish skipper knew what he was doing. He would have been under orders to go right out, away from the coastline. We were glad to get home. I must admit that I had my share of a war. I was very, very fortunate to have the experience of being in this unit. It was a great unit. Had a lot of experiences.

A lot of new equipment. We had movie cameras, we had still cameras, we had automatic cameras, we had a lot of good equipment. In the finish we had all the equipment we wanted, ‘Yankee’ cameras and we finished up, our photographic section; when I went, there were only two of us, and we finished up with 12. So there was a lot of work done. In the finish we

all didn’t work that hard, but that was when, see, the war finished in Europe in August didn’t it? Between [when] the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific finished it was a couple of months. It was a bit easy going in those days.

The bombing of

Darwin, we’d heard about it. We didn’t know it was as bad as what it was, ‘cause Joyce and I went up there on a holiday. Surprising you mention that, ‘cause we went up there on a holiday and it was the anniversary of the bombing of Darwin the year we went. I don't know what it was. It would be a good

15 years ago or 20 years ago that we went up there. It was an anniversary. I’d been in Darwin on the ship [when] we were going to Singapore. They were having celebrations and they were giving things away. They were giving away a medal for the anniversary of people that served in Darwin and I said, “I didn't serve here, but I

moved through here going up to Singapore.” They said, “Oh well, you’ve been in Darwin”, so they gave me an anniversary medal. Getting back to the serious side of it, we saw Japanese film of the bombing of Darwin. Japanese film. You know what? There were more bombs dropped on Darwin than Pearl Harbour. There’s something like 16 raids on Darwin. Not one, 16,

raids on Darwin. Once again, the Japanese, it was the same aircraft carrier that bombed Pearl Harbour that bombed Darwin. They never missed anything.

16 major raids. I’d have to, is that right? I said I thought there was about 16.

16 major. That first raid they hardly missed anything. You know, there was no oil or there was no diesel for the warships. Both the American and the Australian warships. There was none of that left. The whole diesel storage had gone. The whole lot.

No, see, what day did they bomb Darwin? They bombed Darwin before the fall of Singapore, or after?

Well, we would have been in Sumatra. We never got back till March the 8th. So we would have been away when they bombed Darwin. So I wasn’t in Australia when they bombed Darwin. We heard about it, but I never knew it was as bad as what

it was. They really kept it from the public. Shipping I believe was the worst. We were in desperate dire straits with the shipping.

No, there were several ships. There was an American Navy boat sunk in Darwin harbour.

Just us.

Nothing like an escort or anything like that. We had nothing. We were a little tiny 1,500 ton Chinese riverboat. 1,500 ton. You know how big that is? It’s small. When you think of this thing that’s berthing tomorrow in Port Melbourne, 109,000.

No, I didn’t, because we’d got them semi on our territory, our supplies were closer, they were a long way from home, we’d beat them in the Coral Sea battle [Battle of the Coral Sea, May 2nd, 1942], their shipping

wasn’t as strong as what it was. I thought we had a fair chance of holding them, and if you held them they couldn’t win, because eventually their supply. The only good that us Malay, Singapore blokes can really honour themselves is that we held the Japanese up for X-amount of weeks, 8 weeks. So we gave people in Australia,

the government, the army and the defence department, 8 weeks to prepare. We held them up for 8 weeks. That’s the only thing we can say we did. But we finally beat them in the finish, the ‘buggers’.

Well, We were amazed

at their skill. Bombing from the air was, in those days, a very difficult subject. They were good. They were good.

We were stunned. Really were. As

army fighting goes, I can’t tell, but only on what I observed, they must have been awesome again on the land because they just swept the… But once again they were the aggressor. They had been preparing for this for years, where we hadn't. We had all our best troops in the Middle East and Europe. Every young bloke, we had more air force

in Europe than we had defending Australia at that time. More army. All our major army was in the Middle East and Europe. Churchill wouldn’t let them come back til Curtain said, “They’ve gotta come back. I demand them to come back.” Churchill said, “You can’t get them back because they’ve gotta come on British ships. I won’t give you any British ships.” That’s

why the army got as far as Ceylon and Bombay on the way back and they were held up there for a couple of weeks ‘cause he took the ships off them.

That was after the end of Europe, wasn’t it? I think the European war had

finished.

You may as well say it was over, because the majority of the British navy, the British forces were coming to the East. It was a matter of time before they capitulated, but how many they would have killed. I think we would have had to invade them. I don’t think they would have surrendered without the

atomic bomb. Tragic thing, the atomic bomb. It’s never been used since, has it?

Well, who’s the biggest possessor of weapons of mass destruction? It’s a great word isn’t it? Weapons of, how does it roll off the tongue, and what does it mean, the “weapons of mass destruction”. Nobody else has got them bar those poor people. They haven’t got a penny to their ‘bloody’ name, but they’ve got them, haven’t they?

How did I feel about the atomic bomb? Scientifically, I thought it was absolutely amazing. The skill of a pilot to get it there and drop it where he wanted it dropped. The advances in military aviation from the start of the war till the finish of the war, let’s say 5 to 6 years at the maximum, was just outstanding. The aircraft we had at the start of the war to the aircraft we had at the

finish of the war was another world. Performance wise, quality wise, everything about it was. Look what’s happened. It’s unlimited the advancement in the air since then. Whoever though an aircraft like the Concorde would just go out of service, 27 years in

service? I’ve never flown on the Concorde. I had a wish that I’d go across the Atlantic on the QE2 [Queen Elizabeth II, P&O liner] and fly back on the Concorde, but it’s out of service now, I can’t do it. It must have made a wonderful aircraft.

I was married.

From an extended honeymoon. VP-Day. I can't remember what we did. I know I lived in Richmond. I was living in Richmond with my wife. Is it still going? I can't recall what I did VP-Day. Joyce might be able to remember. I know that

we went down to Hobart for a second honeymoon. Don’t know if that was VP-time. Not too sure. No, I can't recall. I can recall what we did VE-Day [Victory in Europe].

We were at Laverton at the time and we had a bit of a celebration in the mess that night. Thought

it was great. That’s it. The amount of men and power that’s in Europe that are going to come here, which it did. I don’t know how many British battleships came, but gee, there must have been a few. And American battleships. Couldn’t have been much more room for anybody else in the ocean with all those boats. Supply and equipment. They were major days for me,

personally speaking, my last two or three years. I was fortunate that I’ve since found out that all members of this aircraft performance unit were put on a list not to be posted anywhere else bar stay there, and their experience and their knowledge would be kept in that unit for that.

That particular unit is still going. It’s now called “research and development”. It’s now in Adelaide.

Yeah. I would have loved to be an aircrew man. Would I? To me,

flying is an unglamorous occupation. It really is unglamorous. There’s nothing glamorous about flying in an aircraft, really there isn’t.

It’s monotonous. It’s like a good dinner, once you’ve had it, you know.

I don’t hold much glamour for it, but I would have like to be aircrew. I think I have as many flying hours as most aircrew, in fact, more hours than most aircrew. Most of it in training, training other people.

No combat in the air whatsoever,

which is a totally different field of course. We are talking about real, how do you get out of an aircraft if it’s burning or crashing down? Your parachute’s gone or you can’t move because your leg’s stuck somewhere. Must be terrible situations. A mate of mine down at the RSL, he was an RAF chap. He’s

a member of the caterpillar. He does tell us about it, it’s a wonderful story. He’s the only one in his crew, he was a wireless operator, he was the only one that got out of it. So, that’s it.

P2

I didn’t do much photography at all ‘cause I was still in the armament section. That’s the armament section, which meant that we were looking after bombs and ammunition and such.

The aircraft did, but I was not on raids.

Bombs have to be stored, which they are. They have to be checked, in and out. If they’ve gone up and they’ve come back and they’re not used they’ve gotta be stored away in a proper place, back in their proper position. Maintain that they’re not

in any hazard, that there’s guards on them and so forth, like that. If guns on the fighter planes are jammed and the armourers in the squadron can’t fix them or it’s a major breakdown, they come to the armament section

and that’s when update repairs were done. That would be done by fitter armourers. Armourers are more or less underneath the fitter armourer. He would do the major maintenance on it and we’d do it to a certain point.

My main experience in photography was when I came back to Australia.

No.

OK. It was about, exact dates I do have, but I’ll do it on memory. It was about the end of January that we were ordered to go

from Sembawang to Palembang, which meant going down to the main harbour in Singapore, Keppel Harbour, where we boarded a Malayan Navy auxiliary boat, a little tiny boat. I don't know how many there would be on it. There wouldn’t be any more than

60 of us I suppose. We went across to Palembang overnight. It wasn’t a long journey. I suppose it would be a 6 hour journey. We landed at the city of Palembang in the early morning. From there we went down to

P2. When we got to P2, our aircraft hadn't arrived. We were the first to be there. Several days later the aircraft came, that were still flying, from Singapore to Palembang, P2, and also new aircraft came up from Darwin. Flew up from Australia to P2. By this time in the war,

the RAF had got Hurricanes and had got Spitfires from the Middle East had arrived, so we had those as well. But I never had anything to do with Spitfires or Hurricanes there. I did back in Australia, but not there. There was a lot of successful raids still, from

Palembang, back to Singapore against the enemy. We could still fly; they were still in flying order. Before Singapore fell, and before the Japs took Sembawang, there were still some of our chaps at Sembawang,

in really bad conditions. They were being bombed every day. They were not bombed, they were shelled every day. Their job was that if an aircraft coming from Burma as reinforcements would land at Singapore, refuelled and then come on down to us, down to P2, if he could land at Sembawang.

What I’m getting at is that we still had aircraft at P2 that were going back to Sembawang to pick up spare parts or try and repair aircraft that were left so they could fly out again. You might say, “Why did you go to Sumatra? Why did you stay there?” Well, in real wartime you never had your

air force in the frontline, it’s too valuable. The enemy’s just 100 meters up, they could just land a bomb and the whole lot could go. You've gotta have your aircraft at least 200 ‘K’s behind the frontline. That’s why they did all the bombings, when we landed in France, all the bombing was from England. They had fighters in France, but they never had bombers.

It was. It’s still referred to in the books as ‘the secret P2’. We thought it was pretty safe for a while too. One day blokes went on a raid and the Japs followed them back and, “Ah, there it is”. And there it wasn’t within 24 hours.

They got everything. They’d already bombed P1, they knew that because that was a civil aerodrome that had been changed into a military one. So that was on the map. Ours was in a bit of a jungle. It was really a jungle. Some terrible accidents at P2 too, with big;

people have got an idea of rubber trees, [that] they’re not very big. But if they’re let grow wild they get fairly big. The runway at P2 was cut out of a rubber plantation. So if aircraft went off, which they did, at night time and they missed the runway or the engines weren’t as powerful on the day and they were

fully loaded with bombs, they didn’t get off. They’d hit the trees. Particularly Blenheims, which were an RAF aircraft. We had the RAF too, at P2.

Blenheims. You know Churchill’s family’s [the] Blenheims? Or is it duke of Marlborough?

Blenheim Castle [the Churchill family estate]. Beautiful aircraft. They were in trouble.

Yes.

Not after Java, after P2, on our way down to the end of Sumatra was Oosthaven where the ferry is across the Sunda Straits to Java. The Sunda Straits runs between Sumatra and Java. We’re in Sumatra. Now, Palembang is about two thirds the way down Sumatra, and Sumatra’s a huge island. A long island. If you have a look on the map

it’s about twice or three times the length of Malaya itself. So Palembang’s on the east coast, about two thirds down. So we had another third to go to Oosthaven, down the bottom. We didn’t go to Oosthaven, but it was getting late and they weren’t sure of the road. So he said, “I know a Dutch army camp up in the mountains. So that’s where we went.

I can't recall the name of it, all I know it was a Dutch army camp. We stayed there a couple of hours when we were woken by this fellow and he said, “Well, I think we’d better move off. I’ve heard they’re not far down the road.” The last ferry was going first thing in the morning.

No, we heard that they were.

‘Cause they must have been somewhere near ‘cause they’d already, when we left P2, they’d already taken P1 and we were on the move down now. There was only a difference of about 20 ‘K’s between the two. How they got P1 so quickly was they parachuted onto the aerodrome and got the lot, I believe.

We didn’t lose many in Java, but the RAAF lost most of its POWs in Java at a place called Butenshog [?] up in the mountains. I was never there, thank you. But a lot of my mates were there. Tragic story. There’s another story. I’m gonna tell it to you third-hand because I wasn’t there.

Number 1 squadron is still the senior squadron of the RAAF. It was in the First World War, 1 Squadron. They now fly the F1-11s. It was the only squadron left with enough aircraft to be effective. They were at a place called Butenshog up in the mountains in the middle of Java.

They too, Japanese paratroops, we’re talking about paratroops in February ‘42. We’re talking about a paratroop attack. We think it’s modern. The paratroops at Butenshog,

they landed on the drome and they went north, so the fellows that were on the south side of the aerodrome were able to get away. But the ones on the north were captured there. But these poor blokes on the south coast, they got down to a place called Tjilatjap on the south of Java, where the last shipping;

Jakarta was gone, but on the south at Tjilatjap, if you ever interview army blokes, Tjilatjap is another good place. They got to Tjilatjap and the last boat had gone. So they were left there for a couple of days. Their last radio contact with headquarters was, “Stay where you are”,

that on the return flight of this, flying boats from Broome would pick them up. These flying boats that were on the trip to Broome got shot up at Broome. There were 9 flying boats destroyed at Broome. So they waited for about 5 days and, of course, no flying boats to pick them up. The Japs got them. So that’s where we lost most of our RAAF blokes. Tragic stories

there, too. They’re not me, so I can’t tell them.

Comradeship, well, here we are 62 years on. I’m honoured and fortunate enough to be president of this Sembawang Association.

We are all still good mates. I get telephone calls and I make calls to Brisbane, Coffs Harbour, Gold Coast, Sydney, Jim Porter is in Sydney, Adelaide, Canarvon in Western Australia, but there are a lot of Melbourne fellows. We’ve got

approximately 120 on our mailing list. I suppose about 60 of them are in Victoria, the rest are scattered still. Out of approximately 1,400, there’s 120 of us left. So if they didn’t die in the war, I forget how many POWs, but I know there were

16 of them that died, you know when the American submarine sunk the Japanese transport ship where they had Australian POWs? There were 16 of our blokes on that. 5 of them got out, 11 of them were killed. There was one of our fellows

was on the Death March at Sandakan in Borneo. How did he get from there to there? It’s another story I could tell you, but it’s not my story. You haven’t asked me about my private life after the war. Do you wanna know anything about that or not? You don’t.

At that time? I can remember another very good mate of mine, Gordon Butterworth. Gordon Butterworth

contracted malaria at P2. Gordon wasn’t with us when we got put off the truck. He’d already gone down to Oosthaven on the train, but I was with Gordon all the time. He was in my department at Sembawang. He was on another job something. I didn't meet up with Gordon

till P2. He had [the] first sign of malaria there, I lost him again and I didn’t meet up with him until we got on the boat at Jakarta, coming home. We had to lay Gordon out underneath down below, no medico [medical officer]. There was a medical orderly with nothing to help him. We had to bring Gordon water every half hour and he was

in a bad state, he really was. That was the kind of thing we did, about 3 of us. We took it in turns to stay with him all the time. Malaria doesn’t seem to be such a scary thing, but by God, when you’ve got a bad case of it, they really do suffer. I’ve lost touch with Gordon. I don't know where he is. He came from Mildura.

I think he had a bit of family trouble after, no, we’ve gone out of touch with each other. A really nice bloke Gordon. Yeah, mateship. I think it was the only thing we had. I really do. I think it was the only thing we had, confidence in that you had somebody. It’s the strangest thing, the ‘herd mentality’, isn’t it? That you’re not lonely if you’ve got somebody. You’re not scared

if you’ve got somebody. If there’s two of you it’s all right, if there’s three of you it’s better, but if there’s 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 of you, you’re always the ‘bloody’ hero aren’t you? You tackle anything, which we did. Yeah. Most of them are gone unfortunately.

Yes, I did.

I don't know whether when you say “mortality”. I get back to it. I don’t say this with any purpose whatsoever because I’m not a

church man, but I felt as if somebody was on my side. I was lucky. Nothing about mortality at all. I just felt that it wasn’t my turn. “It will never happen to me.” I don't know whether you believe in positive thinking, if there is such a thing, but that’s what I, and let’s face it, when you’re 20, good God,

life’s a breeze isn’t it, really? Fit, life’s a breeze.

How can it?

Never. No, I didn’t. This U trench we were in, the front of the U wouldn’t be any longer than that, 6 feet, and about 4 feet each side. That’s there’s 5 of us in that

area. That U gets completely blown up, the front part of it is half covered with mud and stuff, and there’s Jack Goodfellow and then on that corner and ordinary Hooper’s this corner, and they’re dead and we’ve got a few scratches and I’ve got a neck injury from it.

How does it happen? Then the airspeed Oxford that I saw, that tail cut off and I’m there and the thing’s floating in the air like a piece of paper, as long as I live I’ll never forget that. I never saw the bodies, but there were three dead in it. Those days I think you can cope with anything,

you do, you cope with it. There were a few fellows that didn’t, unfortunately. I can remember another experience that I’ll never forget. We’re lining up in Sumatra for cholera, the injection, and in those days it was a great, big needle that you put in your spine, in your back, up

the spine. Huge needle. Being Bartlett, ‘B’, usually we’re the first to get the needle. But the MO [Medical Officer] started from the other end from the ‘W’s right? By the time he got to ‘B’ he’d run out of the serum or whatever it was. That’s funny on my side. But I saw great big air force police fellows keel over

before they even got into the room, standing in the queue they seemed to keel over. So we’re all different.

No, they would be the only thing I would have said that I saw, that just injection time. I think there’s a certain amount of self pride. Even though

you’re scared the ‘shit’ out of yourself, that you can’t show it.

No, I don't know of any. I know a lot of heroism though, a lot of fellows that did the obvious, a fellow by the name of McCrombie, what was his first name? Cracker McCrombie

I think we used to call him. He used to stand on top of the flat roof, station headquarters, with a pair of binoculars and look for air raids and things like that. He was up there on his own, no protection whatsoever. He finished up a pilot and become an air commodore.

He wasn’t an air commandant in those days, he was only a poor old sergeant. He was a pretty [brave] bloke. I think every aircrew bloke that went into battle has gotta be brave. The odds [were] against our fellows in aircraft that were obsolete before the war started.

You’d either be silly or brave. One or the other. We thought they were marvellous aircraft, but they weren’t really. They were obsolete. They weren’t made for the war. But in the finish, after the war, we Australians are unfortunately, our history is defeat. It’s all we wanna talk about. We wanna talk about Gallipoli, we wanna talk about the fall

of Singapore, we wanna talk about what happened it Greece and Crete. Surely we must have won one battle somewhere?

Well, it was, of course. That was close to home and we gave them the opportunity of preparing and being there. If we hadn't held the Japs up for 8 weeks they would

have been through there 5 weeks earlier. They could have surrounded them and captured Singapore or not captured Singapore and come straight there. But they had to get to Sumatra to get the oil. That’s what they wanted, the oil.

Dutch bicycle camp? No, that was in Jakarta. That’s called the ‘Bike Camp’ [Bicycle Camp] in Jakarta. The Dutch army had a battalion of Indonesian and Netherlands, East Indies, they had a brigade or battalion or whatever it is, on bicycles.

This was their camp. They called it the ‘Bike Camp’. We were billeted in there in Jakarta whilst we were waiting to come back to Australia. We were billeted there before we went to the wharf to get the boats. We were on the wharf for about 5 days before we got the boat.

The bicycle camp?

I can't recall very much what it was like. It was an army camp.

The battalion wasn’t there. They were in the field somewhere. I don't know whether they’d taken the bikes with them or not. They weren’t there. There were a lot of survivors from the Repulse, the Prince of Wales, badly burnt and been in the water for hours with the oil all over them. Real bad condition.

There was a mixture there. RAF and British, Dutch, Indian. There was a big Indian Army in Malaya. They were frontline troops. Once again, the frontline troops, the Australian army never went into battle in Malaya until 2 or 3 weeks after it started. They never went into

battle until the Japanese were halfway down Malaya. They were going to be the ones that held them up if nothing else happened. They weren’t up the frontline, they were halfway down, Mersing. Have you heard of Mersing? There was a big battle at Mersing. That’s where the tanks, you ever see the picture of the two Japanese tanks that had blown up on the road, that’s where the line was, there.

So they never got into battle till about 2 or 3 weeks after the Japanese landed north. So it was the Indian Army up the Kota Bharu, some British, but mostly Indian Army. And Australian Air Force and some RAF. There were a lot of Indian troops there.

The Prince of Wales.

Yes, I did. That’s where I got the story I told you about where the British sailors couldn’t understand the Japanese torpedo bombers releasing their bombs half a mile off the target, because in the British and in our training, our torpedos we had to release about 200 yards from the target ‘cause our torpedoes were not as

good as the Japanese. Didn't run as true. They could release them. The British navy blokes would see these Japanese torpedo bombers releasing their torpedoes half a mile [away]. “Silly buggers, what are they doing out there? Never seen this, they’ll never hit anything of ours” and of course they did. 1 1/2 hours. The two biggest battleships in the world were sunk. Never been heard of in its life.

Yes, you could say a ‘piggy mucking’.

Food, mucking and (tabitoUNCLEAR) and how are you and (abakabaUNCLEAR) and things, but as far as, to go in and say “I want a new tyre for this truck, I want it done in a hurry.” You’d be, they don’t eat the same sort of food, they don’t have the same living conditions as you. A totally different world. Only water around you and

you’ve got no boat to get off the ‘damn’ place. It’s a sticky situation. It’s out of your control. There’s nothing you can do to improve the situation.

No, there wasn’t. I don’t blame the RAF for that, because we were really, although we had our own command in the finish,

but that command was still under the RAF in the main headquarters. We’re talking about our line of communication. That communication that we sent when we sighted the invasion fleet on the 6th of December, that communiqué went from there to Singapore headquarters, to

Britain, back to Australia. Never went straight to Australia. That was the line of communication. We were under British control, even though we had our own CO. It had to go to England first, then back to Australian headquarters. So even though I’m not blaming, we had our own CO, now, some may have learned

Indonesian, but I don't know anything efficient. We were certainly not trained. We weren’t trained for the tropics. We weren’t trained to live off the land. All these things you know when you come back. You don’t think of them in there. You think, “Oh the meals are cooked ever day. The water’s coming through the tap every day” what else is done for you,

it’s all there, it’s all gonna be there when the war starts. But it wasn’t there when the war started. No water. The bare essentials are not under your control, it’s under the control of native labour, paid a shilling a day if they were lucky.

The Edendale we got on at Jakarta. The ferry was from Oosthaven to Sumatra. From Oosthaven to Java. We were in Java at the bicycle camp for a week and then we went to the wharfs. That’s when we got the Edendale to come home to Australia.

That was the Edendale.

The other duty was looking after my mate, Gordon Butterworth. No other duties whatsoever on that boat.

Me, I’m talking about me. Oh yes. I’ve

just had a mate of mine down from Coolangatta and before the war he was a fire engine man for the railways. He was a boiler maker. He went to the boiler room. He was in charge of the boiler room on the ship. One of our pilots was the navigator. A couple of the blokes had to do the stoking of the coal. I wasn’t appointed

to do anything like that. I just looked after my mate Gordon with malaria and ate and drank and prayed every day that we would get back.

Yeah, I actually did, because we actually had the Roman Catholic padre on the Edendale. John Pierce. A wonderful man. Went to England after that.

He died. Funny, he was on crutches at one reunion. He lost one leg. Next one he came in on a wheelchair, had no legs. A couple of years back he came in and we said, “How are you going?” He said, “I’ve just lost my undercarriage” his knackers [testicles] had been taken off. That’s a Roman Catholic priest.

He had diabetes, but a wonderful man. He said, “I’ve lost my undercarriage.” A nice bloke. He whipped us into line. We were escaping from sure capture or death and you’ve got a padre that says, “come on, we’ll say mass.” What do you do? What is it? I don't know. You hang

onto something. But you soon forget. And time heals a lot of wounds.

Oh yeah. Definitely the most important event in my life. It changed me to a confirmed non-believer. That sounds a bit Irish doesn’t it? When I just said I went to mass on the boat. It changed me from a very questioning believer. I admire people

who have faith. I think they’re very, very lucky that they don’t have to question things, they just blindly believe. I reckon they’ve got a wonderful life. Yeah, well, it gave me the confidence to come out after the war and set up my own business. I never worked for a boss after that in

my life. Not that I think that’s marvellous, but it was a hard road for a while, out on your own.

I still have nightmares. Not as much as I used to. I have them in the day time. I do have compulsive

whatever it’s called. I do have that. If I’m tired and I’m at home here I’d have to watch myself at night that I don’t go back into only remember the bad things. Never remember the wonderful times we had.

While I’m awake. I can do that now.

I don’t do it, but it could happen to me now. For years I used to dream the same dream. It seemed like every night, but it couldn’t possibly be every night. Seemed. It’s the scene of these tissues in the trees. It just goes, goes, goes, goes, faster and faster and faster and then bang. You either wake up or you

jump out of the chair. It’s not as often as it used to be. I don’t have any stress. Only stress I’ve got now is playing bowls [lawn bowls].