Australians at War Film Archive

Mary now. I was Billy. Dad called me Billy when I was born, he called me Bill, he was disappointed because I wasn’t a boy. So they all called me Billy. So where I lived up on the Far North Coast of New South Wales, all the people called me Billy, but when I came in to do nursing, I had to write down my name and everyone had to call me Mary.

So I’m Billy one-way and Mary the other.

I was born at The Rock, in 1922, a little town not very far from Wagga [Wagga].

Oh, wonderful. I was only two and I used to sit on big pumpkins that my father grew in the backyard. I’ve got pictures of them. And I used to go round Bert's Creek, it was in the back of our house at The Rock, and there used to be all ducklings and geese things walking along the creek. I had a marvellous time when I was young, yeah, great.

He worked on the railways, he was an engine driver. He drove the trains, the Melbourne Express. Not from Melbourne to Albury, but from Albury to Junee. He drove the expresses.

Yes, I had two sisters, who are still living. One, just recently….They’ve both been with me when I had this operation on my foot. One sister came down from Robina on the Gold Coast. And my other sister, Patricia, she’s come down from

Sylvania Waters in Sydney and she’s just gone home. So I’ve had good company, beside the district nurse and everyone else who comes in the house. I’ve been well cared for.

I went to lots of primary schools. I went to school at The Rock, a Church of England school there, because there wasn’t a Catholic school. It was in the primary school. Then I went to school in Junee, which was also primary school. And when I came to Albury,

and I went to school in Albury, and it was, really, a college. It was St Joseph’s Ladies College, then. It was a girls school.

Because my Dad was on the railways, and in the railways when you get a higher grade on your move, higher in your position, you move to another town. Well, you did in those days, because there was plenty of accommodation. I don’t know what they do now, because the accommodation is not the same.

And people can’t find accommodation, so they’ve got to be more or less settled in their own area. Know what I mean?

Yes. When I was in Casino I went to the high school, in Casino, and I did my first year and second year. And then I branched off into commercial subjects, and I commercial work, shorthand, typing and book-keeping.

The Second World War started in 1939, and the WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force]….The Women’s forces didn’t come into being until 1941. They realized that we weren’t winning the war, and they wanted the manpower, so the WAAAF were the first to volunteer for that. Incidentally, I’ve got a picture and a certificate for that.

Well, my best friends that I’d known, were working in the office with me, in Casino, they had all joined up, particularly all the boys that I knew, just friends they were, but they were going one by one into the forces. And I was associated with the air force in that way.

All my friends were joining the air force, so I thought I’d join the air force. I never thought of any other departments of the forces, only the air force. That’s why I joined.

When I first joined, I went to Woolloomooloo. And then I was received in the air force, and then I went to Eastern Area Headquarters, and we had no accommodation at that time, so we were in

Oxford Street, in Sydney, at the YWCA [Young Women’s Christian Association], we spent our time there. And after I had been at Eastern Area Headquarters for a short time…I’m talking about 1942 now, I was sent down to Wagga. It was a place called 2 Training Group, and I was there for a very, very short time, when they sent me back to Eastern Area Headquarters, because I went in as a clerk general in the forces. Then I went on a course.

When I went back, up to Eastern Area, I was sent on a course to do teletyping and teleprinting, to do with Signals. I was mustered into the Signals section.

Yes, I was there all through the war years, until the very last year, when I was sent up to Brisbane WT [Wireless Transmission]. It was getting near the end of the war then, in 1945.

The 15th of August, and peace was declared. They could see that hostilities were commencing to….our war, anyway. The hostilities were deceasing. And lots of girls were posted close to their hometown, and I lived in Casino, so I spent the last twelve months up at Brisbane. Our barracks were Netherway on North Quay, and we were in Edward Street, Brisbane.

A big warehouse. Brisbane WT we were called.

First stop on the train, in those days when you took the express, the first stop was Casino.

No, that was a different line. That's a different line. It does now. It has a branch line that goes up to Murwillumbah,

through Byron Bay. But in those days it was Brisbane, Casino, straight down like that, no coastal journey.

It was just the express. They called it “the Express”:. Sometimes it went just through, from Brisbane to Sydney, only the big main stops. It wasn’t like a rail train or a pick up train, [for goods] like cream cans and things, or the mail, where it stops for everybody to get off in the paddocks.

It was just a strait train though.

After the war, I went back home to Casino, where I lived. I received a letter to say that I could have a refresher course in doing my commercial work again. that was shorthand and typing. I went down to Sydney, and I completed a course there with the training. Then I met a friend of mine,

who said to me, “Do you want a good position?” I said, “Of course, I’d love to have a good position.” She said, “Come with me.” And where I went was up in Margaret Street in Sydney, the corner of Margaret and Clarence Street. I walked in and here was all my old friends, in the teletype room, because they’d commenced Australian National Airlines. That was back in those years. They called it Australian National Airlines,

it was owned by Mr William Holliman, and they were recruiting girls from the forces because it was the same. All the signals were the same. Everything in connection with accommodation and arrival and departure of aircraft, we just sat down…..And it was like we’d never been away. It didn’t seem like it was the army any more, it was just the civilian way of doing it. So we were all great friends, we all knew each other, we knew each other from Brisbane,

Sydney, and Melbourne, and there were also girls that were in the army, and the navy girls, operating. So it was a big thing in those days. And that was the commencement, too, of the girls being trained by Mrs Holliman to be in the aircraft. You know how they used to come through, the girls, to serve you in the aircraft…

Air hostesses, that’s right, because the lady asked us if we’d like to be air hostesses and we didn't know what it was all about.

But we saw all the girls coming in and she was training them in those days. Very beautiful girls they were.

Oh yes, very tall and very lovely. Lovely girls, yeah. They came from Tasmania and Sydney. Sydney Girls.

Oh, yes.

A very small place, in those days, in 1922, when I was born. Everyone had dogs, cocker spaniels mainly, because they used to get ducks from the little creek, Bert's Creek. And everybody had horses. They used to ride their horses through the town. And there was one big store there, a general store,

that I remember. And there was a chemist shop. And there was a school, the public school that I went to. I used to have to cross the creek to go to the school. There were lots of people who were very very wonderful at playing the piano, everyone had pianos, and when you went into their homes they played all the old time songs. It was a very lively little town. And I’ve noticed now from the train, when I go by in the XPT [express train], when I go up north. I look at The Rock now,

the old big rock is still there, behind, I call it The Rock, where the people used to go out, years ago, rabbiting and all that sort of thing, on their motorbikes or something. I see the big rock there, but I can see that's grown and it’s all beautifully tree lined now, and it’s got plantations in the centre. I didn’t get off to have a look, and I didn’t get up to have a look at the house, but I’ve got a picture of the house there, where I was born at The Rock. It was lovely. To me, it was like a fairyland story about The Rock.

And everyone knew each other. And I had lovely little dresses when I was young, and they had little smocking on them and little paintings. This lady, Mrs Day, she gave Mum all these lovely dresses. Mum said I was the nicest little baby in the town. I don’t know whether that's true or not. But lots of people did things for each other, in those days, yeah.

Yes. I'm eight years older than my youngest sister, and six years older…

I was. Yes, I was. That’s what my sisters say to me now. “Where are all the baby pictures of us?” Like, when I was young, I’ve got myself in prams and going along in pushcarts and with the dog and sitting on pumpkins,

They say, “We've got nothing. Where are all our pictures?” But I was the big one they made the fuss of, because the other babies come along…They're lovely but, they're looking for baby pictures, and I look for pictures to find them, even in this day, because their children say to their mothers, “Where’s the pictures of you, Mum?” And I have to look through and find a little face somewhere, in a bonnet or something, when they're with me or something like that. So yes, I was highly favoured. I’m not saying my other sisters weren’t, but it is different, with the first child.

And I was the one, for a long time, the only one. But I remember I loved my little sisters when they came, because they were beautiful. I remember seeing them, when they came. And my mother used to say to me, “Don’t go in there waking up your sisters.” Because every time people would come, I would go in and wake up the children. And Mum wouldn't like that. She'd say, “The poor little thing never has any sleep." So we had another one then. And when the other one came, I was just the same. So I really loved my little sisters.

I must say, they really care for me now, because they care for me. They came down and cared for me, two of them, Pat and Shirley.

My mother, when we were younger, there was not that much volunteer work, as we know it now, but people volunteered among themselves to do things. Like, if somebody died in the street,

everybody would go and help prepare the person for their funeral. And everyone would make cakes for everybody. They would come in with batches of cakes and scones and everything like that. It was sort of a general thing when we were young, that everyone did something for people all the time. Like if you had a peach tree, you’d send in a bucket of peaches, and they had pears or apples or growing peas or beans. We'd share out things. I think it was because we were in the Depression years.

And when it was like that, people shared everything they had. Mum said we never wanted for anything, because of that generosity between people. That was clothes and everything. They shared everything together. They’d find out in the street what people did have and what people didn’t have, and between them all they shared everything. So it was like a real community of generous people. I was lucky I was brought up in that era, because people say, “Oh you poor thing, you had nothing."

Well we had everything, really. We didn’t know it was Depression or anything. Just like Shirley Temple [child actress] in the pictures, when she's interviewed, she said, “I didn’t know I was working in the pictures. I though every little girl was in the movies.” She thought every little girl was doing what she was doing, and she worked all her life, she said. But it's just the same as that. We were all together, we never felt any Depression at all. I didn't. We didn’t have a lot of clothes, but we had enough to get out in, you know, little work shoes and you had your Sunday dress,

and your dress for school, and about three dresses or something like that, a pair of shoes, and you didn’t want anything else. We didn’t have a room full of dolls and everything children have got now. You go into their room and they’ve got ducks and dolls and they've got everything you can imagine. Well, we just had one little thing we'd get, what it was for Christmas, we loved that. One little tiny thing for Christmas, and really love it. But that was everything to us, we didn't want anything else. We were never bored. Never.

I never heard any of us say, when we were young, “Oh, I’m bored,” or something like that. We were never bored, ever. No child, I never heard a child say that, as you do occasionally now, don’t you? "Oh, "I'm bored," or something. We didn’t have television or anything, but we had all these hundreds of little friends. Like in spring time, it’s spring time now, we’d go out on the hills and we’d have all these dandelions…you know those little golden flowers? Well, we’d do ourselves up with daisy chains, a little crown on our heads,

a little belt of flowers on our waist and have little ankle flowers. Everything. The only thing we used to have was, we’d get stung by bees a lot, bees used to follow us all over the place.

She had blue bottle stuff. You know the blue bottle? It's blue. Those tabs you got. You don’t see them now. They were blue, and they used to put it through the washing to make it white, and we used to take those with us,

when we out along the creek, or wherever we were. We’d just dab this in water and put it on these things and it used to take the pain out of it. We got used to bee stings, though, and didn’t take too much notice of them. But they used to chase us when we used to have all these flowers on us.

Yes, and methylated spirits they used to put on them, too.

Well, every night when my Dad

used to be coming home, just before he was driving the train…He worked from four o’clock in the afternoon until twelve o’clock at night, and he always had a tea break of an hour. And he would come up from the loco shed, I'm talking about Albury now, and we’d go down to meet him, at the gates, the Wilson’s gates. One night, my sister and I, we were waiting there for Dad, and he didn’t come.

There was a train there shunting, up and down, and we decided instead of looking down the line for Dad, we decided that we’d walk underneath the train, go underneath the wheels. And the two of us walked underneath the wheels, between the trucks, and we got out the other side and my father nearly died, because he was coming up the track, and the train was just about to move. So we were never allowed to go down anymore. So Dad stopped us.

No, we didn’t go down. But when I used to go down sometimes, the fellow taking the 128, it used to be a freight train going to Junee, he would say, "You would like to pull a whistle?" And I’d get up, and pull the whistle like that. But Dad stopped us. We weren’t allowed to go down, any more. So what we used to do, we used to go down to the…There used to be a Young Husband's Wool Store there….or Dalgety’s, I think it was…

I noticed the other day when I was going up to Sydney, the Dalgety's store was being pulled down. So that was right at this particular time, I was going up on the XPT to my sister's place. The big wool store, the great, big, huge wool store. And we were only allowed to walk as far as the wool store, to meet Dad. And of course, it was in Albury, and in those days, like in Melbourne, it didn’t get dark till about nine o’clock. So it was light, in the summer I’m talking about.

Well…very cold. It was very cold. It was quite warm in the summer, a bit like Melbourne, very warm. We used to swim in the Murray River at Royal Park, that was the swimming place. But it was extremely cold. I think it was Mount Bogong and [Mount] Kosciusko and some of the mountains are close, handy there. Especially with Mount Bogong there. You can go to the golf course in Albury and look on the hill and

you'd see Mount Bogong in the distance with snow on it. I think it was Mount Buffalo they used to go to, we never went there. But no, it was very cold, very, very cold in the winter. Much colder than Melbourne. We had gloves and everything, the winter wear for Albury. It was extremely cold.

Yes, Dad was a Returned Serviceman. He actually was English,

and he came to Australia…And when he came here to Australia, the First World War was….1914 to 1918, and Dad enlisted and went over to….France. He was English but he went over to France. And when he was over there he enlisted then with the Australian forces. So he was with them, because the other day when we were down at the Cenotaph….

They’ve changed the Cenotaph now and you can…We went and had a look at the new….I’m talking about the memorial.

The Shrine. You can go in now from the side and enter in. And we went in and they put the computer on and we saw Dad’s name. He definitely enlisted with the Australians. He was English and he could speak French very well, and he didn’t come out until 1919, twelve months later than all the others, because he was an interpreter for the Australians.

Speaking to the Australians about French and English and helping them to be discharged. But Dad came back to Australia, really, just to get his deferred pay. Because they paid them money while they were in the forces, and while he was waiting to get his deferred pay, he also transferred back to the railways for the time being, but he saw in the hotel where he was staying, he saw a beautiful girl on a bike. But he never saw her face, he saw her lovely golden hair,

or whatever she had and she was going along on the bike. Which was unusual in those days, because Mum was a dental assistant, and women didn’t have position like that in those days, but Mum did. And Dad saw her and he thought, “I don’t think I’ll go back to England any more.” But he found it very difficult to get in touch with Mum, he didn't know what to do, he must have been nervous. But he found out that the man in charge of him in his office, he was on the railways, he was in charge of Dad, sort of,

and then he found out that his wife had a boarding house and that was where Mum lived. That was Mum’s mother. Her mother and father had a boarding house, so Dad went and lived in the boarding house. He gradually got around to seeing Mum. I think it took him two years. You wouldn’t believe that, would you? It’s a bit different to men today, isn’t it?

Well, I’ve got pictures of Mum with her hair long. Maybe it looked like that on the bike. She was on a bicycle. But her hair was very long and it was tied at the back, I think, in different pictures that I’ve got of Mum. When Dad saw her, anyway, it was flowing probably from the bike. I don’t know.

But I said to Dad, "You didn’t see her face?" He said, "No." He didn’t see her face for some time, the way that it was, with the hair and everything and the way she was riding, he didn’t see her face. So it's unbelievable, you wouldn’t think hair would be so attractive, would you?

Her glorious crown or something, isn’t it? [crowning glory]

Well, her mother had a boarding house. And there was

lots of people that knew people and one thing and another, that had influence. But she'd also had a good education, because she was educated at Wagga. She went through and did as far as she could go in education, in those days. And she was a great musician. She could play the piano. She used to play for the silent movies. She would be employed, and like at half time. They had the special pianist who used to play for the silent movies, that was their position.

It wasn’t on the movies, but they’d have the person to play. But Mum was often asked to assist with a program at half time, when they had their cup of teas and thing like that. But she was very good at music, and her whole family were dedicated. Like her brother played the trumpet and another one played the violin and her own father, he was a bit of a singer, Gilbert & Sullivan music. He was a bandleader, or something, when he was young. So Mum had lots of friends

involved with lots of things. Her mother was also a great member of the Red Cross. So I think through the influence of her mother, and her family, she got this position.

She might have been. My grandmother might have been, because she was always out with the Red Cross doing things like that.

She got a special medal from the Red Cross, for her work. Yes, she was always out doing things. They used to make dairy butter in those days, and she’d used to have the sulky, and she’d be delivering thing to people and getting almonds from the trees….Yes, she was very outgoing. Perhaps she was one of those…I don’t know exactly. But she was very out going, my grandmother.

Well, I can’t remember much about the Depression. I was well and truly alive, but I didn’t suffer anything. See, I think the railways…When my Dad was on the railways at The Rock, they were laid off. I think they had three days a week to work, they shared their positions like that. They didn’t actually lay people off. They gave people the work, but in less time.

And I know…Not at The Rock, we didn’t feel it so much, because Dad owned the house at The Rock, that we were in, he brought the house there. But when we went Albury…I’m moving from the Rock to Albury now…

They, my mother, they shared a house. They shared a house with another railway family, they shared a house there, and that helped my mother with half the rent. Most people did.

Oh yes. We all had plenty of friends. I had many friends there. See, in those days, all your neighbours that you knew, they’d invite you to their house. And you’d go to their house one Sunday night, and the next Sunday night they would go to your place, and this, that and the other. And we had all the friends. And not only that, but out little friends were very talented.

Because you must remember that we had Shirley Temple and Jane Withers and Freddy Bartholomew and Jackie Coogan and all these, and they were all young entertainers. Well, when we were young, everyone could do things. They could get up and tell tales, and get up and sing and dance. You’ve no idea what people could do, years ago. What’s that little girl? Deana Derbans. They could sing like her. They were all taking off Shirley Temple in the songs.

Oh yes. We used to have mates in Albury, it was a big shop, and every Friday night, you’d go down there, it was just voluntary and all the children…While their mothers shopped downstairs, you'd go up and you'd sing, whatever you liked. And, of course, everyone would get a prize. You’d all get a lovely chocolate. But apart from that, you’d get a bigger prize. And everyone used to go. I used to go down every Friday night and sing.

All the songs of the day.

I’ll give you the song that we used to sing for 2AY [radio station] Albury.

\n[Verse follows]\n When the Smile Club starts its session,\n From the Studio 2AY\n You’ll hear a great big Cheerio\n From the Studio 2AY.\n Every wireless in the nation\n Just will tune in to our station\n

When the Smile Club starts its session\n

From the Studio 2AY.\n

Then they’d go :

\n[Verse follows]\n Here we are again\n Happy as can be,\n All good pals\n And jolly good company.\n

We don’t mind the weather,\n We don’t mind the rain.\n Here we are together,\n Here we go again.\n

Lada Dady Da\n Lada Dady Da.\n All good friends\n And jolly good company.\n

Yeah, but the ones in Albury we used to sing were songs like

Red Sails in the Sunset. That's a very old one. All those old ones. They're still popular, all those ones, and I used to sing those on the 2AY session myself. I used to get trained by Mr Bolger, he would pick up anyone. You didn’t have to have a good voice. Just so long as you got up, and you went down and had a practise with him. You’d have a practise with him and he’d say, “Right, you can sing this or sing that.”

So you’d be prepared, see, when you went down. You didn't just get up and sing, you always knew what you were doing, and it was always something good that he’d trained you to do.

Yeah, yeah.

Well I didn’t actually go into the studio. This was done in the halls, a big hall we had, it was like a big theatre, but it was a studio. We had the pianist there,

and we had a microphone or something, but it wasn’t actually in the studio 2AY itself.

Yes. We had a microphone we used to stand in front of.

I don’t think it’s much different to what it is today.

Oh yeah, that was. Yes, I wished I had have taken more notice of it because it’s so long ago.

Oh no, no, no. It was nothing. It was just like throwing pebbles at the beach. And as a matter of fact, when I was very young, that was the time they had…Remember they had the British air race from Britain to Australia?

The Centenary Air Race. Well, I was living in Albury then, and my Dad came home. I told you he would come back at twelve o’clock at night, and he'd finish his work…As soon as the Express went out from Melbourne, they had to change trains

to go over to the New South Wales side, as soon as the train went Dad would come home, because everything was right as far as he was, because he was in charge of the running of the engines or something. He would sort of go home. This night he went home and he was reading his paper, and the lights were going on and off, as he's reading the paper, and he thought something was wrong. So we didn’t know, but we did have wireless sets in those days, so we turned on the wireless and all it had this message

that a plane was lost in the sky. Everybody who had a car, they asked to go out to the race course, and by the lights of the town, they gave the signal that the runway, lit up, from the cars, and to follow it, and they’d form a ring round and this runway…And these men, I think they were Parmentier and Moll, they were two Dutchmen, and they were lost. They thought they were in Melbourne because they saw the Murray River, but it was only Albury,

and the people of Albury brought them down. It was a terrible night, too. It was all rain and wet, a sort of tropical sort of storm. It was very muddy and everything, but they bought them down to safety. It was a well-known thing in Albury in those days. I didn’t go to it, my mother and father didn’t wake us up. Just Mum and Dad went out, and the neighbours next door, he drove them out. The next morning they got them off.

They went out and they had to lift them out of all the mud and slosh and everything, and they cleared the aircraft of the freight and everything they had, and they got them off quickly. And they got down to Melbourne and they got second. I think a man called Scott won it, but they got second. So the Dutch people were always very thoughtful and generous towards Australians, because they said they saved their lives. Well, they probably did.

Yes, they made the runway for them.

The cars came in and made a runway for the plane to come down. Yeah, it was interesting, wasn't it?

Oh yes. All those things they had years ago, yes.

We used to have curly hair. Mum used to do it in rags, when you have the big rag on top of your head. Everyone had curly hair in those days.

A bit different to now because everyone’s got straight hair. You had a long rag and you'd wind the hair around the rag and it came out beautiful. You just had to curl them with your finger, or put bobby pins…We all had bobby pins, in most things. Everybody was in curls. Everybody was Shirley Temple. They Shirley Temple shoes and Shirley Temple dolls, and little shoes…Everybody was the same. And everybody wanted to be movie stars.

I’ll tell you a story. This was when I was at Casino, I was a little bit older now, I went up to Casino, and everybody had the bug to be a film star. It didn’t make any difference who you were or what…You just had this bug. So I wrote to Ken Hall, he was in charge of the movies, Cinesound movies in Sydney. So I wrote and said, “I was very interested in being a movie star, did they have any positions for me?” And I quoted a few things that I had done,

like sing on the radio and that. So he sent back this letter…which was true, the letter, came back and said that he was very grateful that I had written to him, and said, "Thank you very much for thinking about being a star with us." But he said, “I think you’re a little bit young.” And my mother and father knew that I was a bit crazy about this, so they opened up this letter, and my Dad took it down to the railway office and they put on it, where it was finished by Ken Hall, They put, “P.S.

We are looking for a Popeye. Maybe you’d make a good Popeye.” Well, I didn’t know they had done this. I opened up the letter and I read it and I everybody in the town I was going to get a test to be a Popeye. Well, of course, I waited and waited, but it never came. They did that for fun for me, but I’ll never forget that, and we still laugh about it to this day, how I was going to be Popeye for Cinesound. But it was only made up, of course.

When we were young, we weren’t allowed to go to pictures. Like now people go and see pictures, on TVs [televisions] and things. We were only allowed to see Shirley Temple, Jane Withers, Freddy Bartholomew, Sybil Jason, all the children. Only child’s pictures we went to see.

Oh yes, all those ones.

Most children were allowed to see them. They didn't just go and see any picture like they do now. No, we only saw the children’s pictures.

I never saw much of the Charlie Chaplin. Believe it or not, his pictures didn’t ever seem to be around. I now I saw a picture with Charlie Chaplin when I was very young, On Easy Street, or something. I had seen him in little bits of cartoons and that, but he wasn’t really popular when we were young, because Shirley Temple had taken over. She was the one.

Oh….On the Good Ship Lollipop.

\n[Verse follows]\n On the Good Ship Lollipop\n It’s a nice trip,\n Into bed you hop.\n And dream away,\n On the good ship Lollipop.\n

That's a short-term one.

Yes.

Bubby Ebson. That’s right. He just died recently, didn’t he? He danced with Shirley, and he danced with Judy Garland, too, in the big broadcast in 1938. You remember when she sings the one, Dear Mr Gable, or something.

Yes, that was the first picture she ever made, Judy Garland. We were allowed to see her, too, but she wasn’t as popular as Shirley.

No. It’s one picture I didn’t see of Shirley Temple's.

The Blue Bird. That was her last film, I think. I never ever saw that picture. I never saw a video of it, either.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. We lived for comics.

We used to get Chick’s Own Comic, and all the comics when we were young. They used to come in about every fortnight, not weekly, or daily, and we'd get them from England. And my father, he was interested in all the serials, Marinda The Golden, all the different things in the comics…My Dad loved them. And I used to paint pictures for the comics, and I would send them over to England. And they gave me a prize once for a painting and I got them stamped to send out.

I did everything like that. And even the Melbourne Herald [newspaper] in those days, they had a great big children’s page.

Yes. And I had certificates about this high, merit certificates, all the different certificates, all the different colours, pink and green and blues, and all that. And I remember once, I was painting a little picture for the Melbourne Herald, and a man came to see Dad, and I was in the kitchen painting, and he said to me, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m painting a picture and I'm sending it down to the Melbourne Herald."

This was in Albury. And he said, “You’ll never win anything with that. You’ve got that boy with pink hair.” It didn’t make any difference to me. As long as it was colourful, I gave them any colour. But sure enough, I got a prize for it. Two [shillings] and six [pence], nothing over two and six, I got the prize for that.

Oh well, I never had any brothers, or anything like that, and I never really worried about little boys, much. I know when I got older that my sisters had lots of boyfriends, but I didn't, and I was much older than them. They had boyfriends and that. But I noticed that if I was doing my washing at home and there was anybody around,

I would never put my underwear on the line or anything like that. I don’t know what it was. I guess because I didn’t have any brothers, I suppose, I never worried much about little boys and that. I always played golf with my Dad. I started off playing golf when I was about two, and I played with plenty of men. And, as I got older, I played with plenty of boys. But I never had any desire for boys. I don’t know what it was. I just wasn't that type.

I suppose I was. Growing up, lots of boys, when they got into trouble, they would come and ask me to help give someone a punch, and I would come out and help them, when these fellows were in difficulty. I’d walk out and give them a punch. These fellows would get a terrible shock, because they didn’t know where the punch came from. You know what I mean?

Yes, my Dad called me Bill,

and he treated me like a Bill, too, because I used to have to pump the tyres. He’d tell me twenty-eight in the front and thirty in the back. They had the special pumps, the old pumps. And I had to put the water in the radiator, and I did the lawns, and I did all the jobs that boys would do. And I went about with my father a lot, and I think he treated me like a boy, and I suppose I grew like one. I don’t know. I didn’t have any desire to get married or anything at all.

I never got married until I was forty-three and then I was scared. I was frightened to go in and get married.

Oh my word, we had Max Factor [brand of makeup] in those days, and I think it was Lourne or something like that, lipstick, Forbidden Fruit. We weren’t stopped from having…We were like all people. And the thing is, in those days, they had beautiful samples. When you sent away for something, you know, say it was Max Factor or

whatever it was…you got a beautiful sample box of things. Not like now, you can’t hardly see anything, can you? You only get the rubbish, don’t you? In those days you got the very best, in a little box. Oh yes, we had makeup. We weren’t plastered up with things. There used to be a colour we used to call Vert. it was V-E-R-T. So the girls used to put it on…They had a little brush and they would put it on the eyebrows and their eye lashes.

The thing was it was a green colour, and when it rained, you had all this greenie squiggly stuff coming down your face. It looked dreadful. I don’t know why they made it…It was called Vert. And I notice in the old movies they couldn’t hardly look at each other because they had green stuff all over their faces. That’s what we had when we were young. I think they’ve changed it now. It’s black now, isn’t it?

It was never stipulated at all. We were just like people are now, but we didn’t have access to all the things that people have now. They've got everything now. They’ve got underlays and skin…They’ve got night skin and day skin, and all the things for wrinkles and plucking eyebrows and all that sort of thing. I can’t remember too much of all that sort of thing. Ours were just very simple.

We always Ponds Cream, and you had a big powder puff thing, and you’d sort of puff this over your face, and it wasn’t very long. You’d do it in a couple of seconds. You wouldn’t be there watching yourself for hours. That’s why now if you go into government places, they’ve taken away mirrors because the girls take too long to make their faces up. So now you’ve got to take your own or move off quickly, they don’t want you there doing your face up, do they?

Oh well, years ago people were very sensitive to things. For instance, if girls smoked years ago that was considered a crime. And if you were seen in a hotel that was…oh, that was out of this world. If they saw someone in a hotel or anything like that, or having a drink, or smoking. A bit different to what it is now.

The world now has accepted women in all places, but when we were young, years ago, I know when I first joined the air force and I came back home and met one of my friends in the hotel in Casino, this was a local girl that I knew, two WAAAFs, we just went and had something to eat and a little drink. And it got all round the town, you know. “That girl in the black shorts, she’s no good, she’s in there with the men, drinking”. I never met a man in there at all. But the thing is, it was different. People were different.

Their personalities in judging people….Well, I suppose they couldn’t help it. That was the environment in which they grow up in. It was a different environment all together. You had drinks at home with your parents.

That was a long…

Yes. Well it did come in during the war, because when I went out with the WAAAF in Brisbane, and Sydney, when I was young,

us girls, we could go into the hotels and have a drink with people. Yes. That was accepted. Well, it had to be, because we had all these foreign people coming in, like the Americans and the Dutch, and they wanted to drink with their girlfriends. I think they were forced to accept them. This had to be. They couldn’t have the women over here somewhere and the men over there. So they had Prince’s and Romano’s, those big areas that they had for celebrating things…

Nightclubs, they were. And all the hotels and that, oh yes. I didn’t go very much. I wasn’t that way inclined much. I didn’t spend much time in hotels and things but you could, yes.

When I was in Casino, always they had, as far as I know…We had the meat works there. Because I know Mr Watson, he had three sons,

and they joined the air force, and they never came back. And so I know that he was always in charge. And Mr Watson, he was also….the recruiting man for the WAAAF in Casino. He was very dedicated to the forces, and that’s who we went to see when we were joining the air force.

I wouldn’t say it was a Beef Week then, when I knew it. It probably is now.

It came in later. But the beef were always there. We had the Casino Cooperative Dairy Company, where I used to do shorthand typing. That was always there, too, but that was brought out by Norco. North Coast it means. Norco.

Yes. They bought out the Casino Dairy Company so all the staff moved from Casino over to Lismore.

It didn’t have wool, I don’t think. Not when I was there.

They don’t have sheep because I think the rainfall was too plentiful and they used to get footrot, so they didn't have sheep. But they had cows and cattle and all that, yes. They had butter and cream and they had a factory where they used to make powdered milk. I don't know if it's still all there now. I know the butter factory has gone, and I don’t know about the powdered milk, but the meat works is still, yes, it's a very important place now. They ship beef…

No, no, she wasn’t.

When we first went to Casino our house was in…Well, in those days, accommodation was always been hard to get.

But it wasn’t exactly the war years then when we went up there. I think we went up to Casino in 1936. That was the abdication of [King] Edward VIII, I think, the one that wanted to marry [American divorcee] Wallis Simpson. Accommodation was difficult, because it was, more or less, in the Depression time…You’d sort of have to go round and share houses with people.

We did get a house through the railways. They found a house for Dad. It wasn’t free, we had to pay rent our for it. That was up in Simpson Lane, we got a house there. And then, later on, we moved right up to the top of Canterbury Street when someone left from the railways, a man left, he got a move to Grafton or something, and Dad moved up there. We lived right up the top of Canterbury Street. And then later on, when my father died, he had

bonds in the Commonwealth Bank and things like that, and Mum bought a house herself. It was only two doors down from where we actually lived, and it has only just been sold, last week…that house, Mum's house. A nice house it was. It was a weatherboard house, it had a lot of land and that. And that's Simpson’s lane that I’m talking about where we lived, you could enter the back of it. You could bring your car in from the back into Simpson’s Lane. But three of us had the house. It was a three way thing.

Because she had the bonds from my father. He bought bonds during the war years and that…They hadn’t expired. And Mum put them into use. Because Mum and Dad were always…My mother’s family came from Cornwall in England, and my father came from Gorsewood, in Cheshire, in the north of England. And they were both going to go home, they had never been home. And they were going to use that money, but my father died,

quite young, really. He wasn’t that old when he died. He died of cancer. He was a heavy smoker. He smoked since he was about fourteen. But in those days, people didn’t know that smoking could kill you. They didn't realise. Dad said he wouldn’t have smoked, but you can’t say that to a young person. You can't say to them, “Smoking will kill you.” But Dad, he died. I think he was only about fifty-four when he died. And then Mum had these bonds,

and then so she sold them, and she bought…The women next door, or two doors up, Mrs Criteren, they had the big butchers shop, and she was desperate for money or something. So Mum just said to her, “Well, do you want to sell your house?” And she said, "Yes." And Mum got the house quite reasonably. I don’t know how much it was. But it was a nice house, anyway. A really nice place.

Well, everyone was very sad at the time, because they all liked him. My Dad liked him because he was in the forces, in the First World War with him, not with him personally, but he used to go in and visit the troops and all that sort of thing. And he was much beloved by all the people, because there were a lot of English people around then. They liked him. They didn’t car about Wallis Simpson or anything to do with that at all.

I think everybody was very sad, at the time. I was only little and that, but I was very sad, too, because he was a young handsome fellow, wasn’t he? And she'd had had two or three husbands, hadn’t she? And she hadn’t even divorced the husband, when she was going to marry. But anyway that’s the way it happened.

No, the Church never comments on any of those things.

Never. Because they say, “Leave to Caesar the things that are to Caesar and to God the things that are to God.” The Church shouldn’t interfere with politics. If they do, they shouldn’t. Well, it says that, doesn’t it. Give to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God’s. I know some of the churches do and some of the ministers do, but they should mind their own business.

Well, say for instance, we went to a new town. Say when we went up to Casino, and I can remember this, we were only young then. When we went to Casino, the first thing we did was go and look at Dad’s church, the Church of England church, with nothing in it, just the Union Jack or something. And then Dad would come to our church or something. But Dad, he wasn’t religiously inclined.

I don’t think he cared much. But the thing is, with us, we went to Mass on Sundays, and I used to go to Mass nearly every day, when I was in Casino, because the church was just down the hill. I used to have a bike and I would go to Mass. Mass would be at six o' clock in the mornings. But on Sunday, sometimes, my Mum would get up and go to Mass. And we had our grandmother living with us, too, but when she would go to Mass…And sometimes we wouldn’t get up, and Dad would come in and say, “You’re mother's been calling you for so many years,

Get up and go.” He used to make us go. He didn’t care, see, Dad didn’t care. He was happy the way we were. He thought we were marvellous. So I think Mum said Dad was always pleased with us, because none of us caused him any trouble. We were just ordinary sort of people. But he loved taking us around and wherever we went, we had our father and mother. And Dad was always saying to…As soon as our holidays had finished in Sydney, or wherever we were,

he would write down on the calendar, and count every day back until it came around to the next holiday. At first we didn’t take much notice of it, because it would be so many days, but when it came up to about two months away, we would be all interested. He was a great Dad. He used to take us everywhere and did everything. He never left us alone. Mum and Dad never left us alone when we were young. You know, mothers and fathers go away now without their families, never, in our place. Not any parents, I think, in those days,

They loved going away with their children. And if Dad ever had to go away from us, he’d write letters to us and everything. And he’d take pictures out of his pocket and show everyone all of us and that. He just though we were marvellous, you know. I think we were built up with too much confidence. The whole lot of us were like that.

Oh yes, yes. I went to school with the Aboriginal children.

They were at school with us, Marge Murray and a few of them. But they appeared to be very frightened. They were always very quiet sort of people. I got to know the Aboriginal people better when I worked for two years up in Dalby [Qld]. I went up and did voluntary work up there. They were really lovely people and they can be educated and be just as smart as we are. No different to us, when they've received their education and everything. But they were in a certain part of town.

The trouble was that they had separation. We lived over the creek and they lived on the other side. But we were always very friendly. There was no troubles like that with the Aboriginal people, that I remember. Even in Coffs Harbour, and Lismore, they went to the same schools as us, and received the same education.

No. I didn’t go to school in Lismore. We were only nineteen miles from Lismore and we’d go over to the pictures, when the pictures were crowded. See, years ago,

you'd have to have to have standing room only at the films. You'd go into the pictures and they'd be crowded and they’d say, "Standing room only." And we’d often go over to Lismore to The Star Court and the Bouge, on Saturday nights, over there, because they had more room. They had extra theatres or something, so we'd go over there. But there was lots of Aboriginal people in Lismore, too. So, no, we didn’t take much notice of them. We accepted them as ourselves. But there was a difference in so far as one part of the people

were in one part of the town and the others were…Which was bad, really. If we had all been together, it might have been different, years ago. But it wasn’t, it was like that. But we didn’t take any notice. They didn’t take any notice of the fact that they lived over there. We didn’t take any notice of where we lived. But when they went to school with us, we just received them as ordinary people. Coming from the North Coast and that, it was very open minded, because I can remember when I went into the air force and one day,

before I was on leave, I had my younger sister with me and she had a little dog and the troop train came in. They were going down to Sydney, they were injured soldiers or something. And there was this very handsome American, lolly blonde headed man, and he was looking out, and I think he was attracted to my sister because she was a lovely little thing. He said, “Hello, little girl.” And he said to me, “And where are you?” I was in civilian clothes. And I said, “Oh I’m stationed at Eastern Area Headquarters."

And he said, “Where’s that.” I said, “That’s where the WAAAF are.” And he said, "Write your name and address on this matchbox and I will send you a letter.” So being silly and that, I did. How it ended up was, when I got back to Eastern Area headquarters…It wasn’t very long after, a couple of days. There was a knock at the door, and the girl said….It was a big place where we were, and they said, “You’ve got a friend out there, wanting to see you." And when I went out

there was a great big dark black man. I got a terrible shock, but I said, “Oh yes?” And he said, “I’m so and so.” What’s his name now? Marion Davies or something. He said, “Would you like to come out with me?” And I thought for a moment, I was stunned. And he said, “You’re wondering who I am?” And I said, “Yes. I am.” He said, "You know that day on the station?" He didn't know where it was.

He said, "This fellow had a matchbox," and he had my address written on the matchbox. The fellows didn't have any lights, so he got my address off this matchbox and he came to see me. I said, “That’s very nice of you.” And he said, “Would you like to have something with me?” I said, “Yes, I would.” And we went down to La Paline at Double Bay and we had a nice dinner and that. And when I came back, you should have seen the girls.

That was the trouble. When I came back…Not that the officer said anything to me, but the girls. They said, "What's wrong with you?" I got a bad name. Just among my friends, you know.

Well, I suppose it was, but it didn’t worry me that much because I knew people in Casino, anyway. And anyway, I was a Christian. I went to Mass on Sundays. He was one of my brothers as far as I was concerned.

When he went home….He was only down there for a short time. He was having treatment. He had bullet or something in his leg, and he went up to Guadacanal and then he went home. And when he went home he wrote me a couple of letters. He said how much he appreciated it. But one of the girls, who was a friend of mine before I went into the forces, she came over to me, she was an officer by the way, she said, “Mary. It’s about time you picked your company,” she said. “You’re a WAAAF."

I said, “He’s just a friend of mine.” I said, “I meet hundreds of friends here. Hundreds of friends." But we did. I met hundreds of friends. We’d be going down the street when we were young, in the air force, like I am in the picture over there, and the fellows would come up and they'd say, "Hey? Do you like chicken?" And we'd say, "Yeah." And they’d put their hands like that and say, “Take a wing.” And off we'd go down the street and into a restaurant where you’d pay thruppence [three pence] for whatever they had, meat or one thing and another.

And they could be soldiers, but you wouldn’t see them any more. They were all just on leave for a short time and then they'd go away, and we didn’t expect to see them any more. It was just open friendliness. Do you know what I mean?

I was in convent school. I started off in convent schools at Junee when I was very young.

At The Rock I went to public school because there was no Catholic school there. And when I went to Albury, that was St Joseph’s Ladies College at Albury, and they were the Sisters of Mercy nuns, and they were wonderful to us. When I say wonderful to us, they had deep faith and they gave us a foundation for our faith, which is something I’m very grateful that I’ve got till this day. And I've got to thank the nuns for that, especially the Mercy nuns because they used to

take you over to the chapel in the morning, at playtime, sometimes, only if you wanted to go, and they’d explain to you about Jesus present on the altar. And if you loved going over there…I used to love going over there. And they used to say, “Every time you pass a church/Make a little visit/So when at last you’re carried in/The Lord won’t say, 'Who is it?'” So we’d always do that. I always did that. And even to this day, I don’t like to pass a church. And I annoy people sometimes.

But I say, “Look, I learned it at school.” And I do, whenever I pass a church I do…But unfortunately, now, the churches are not open. It used to be that the churches were open and you could go and pay a little visit to the Lord Jesus and thank him for everything. So they taught us great faith. We learned to make our first confession, our first holy communion, our confirmation. And then we had a little blue cloak as Children of Mary, that sort of thing.

And Holy Angels, they had little red cloaks. I was centred around people who were very spiritual, at school. I’ve read things about what the Nun’s did, but I never struck any of that at all, none of us did in our lives, none of that business you hear about, cruelty and that. Never at all. And then the Albury nuns who we went up to, they were the same nuns. They were Sisters of Mercy, too, and they were wonderful to us, too, just the same.

Yes, I think they are.

I don’t know who their founder is, but I think they are Irish. Most of them all are Irish nuns. Mum, where she was educated, I think they were presentation nuns at Wagga. They were the ones.

Yeah. I’ve got a sister, my sister Shirley, who’s married to Jack O’Brien, he’s now deceased, but his sister was in the Loreto Order. She recently had

sixty years of service to God, and we went up to the abbey in Ballarat.

Did she? I didn’t know. Well she’s a Loreto order. Their order is…Years ago, it was enclosed, more or less an enclosed order, but now they’re very open to everything now. We went up to Mary’s ceremony up, she had for the sixty years, it was beautiful.

Yes, they were.

Their black and white habits? Well, see, the nuns, when we were young, they never….Say, for instance the nuns came to visit your house, they never ever had a meal with you. You always had to prepare the meal inside. When the nuns were coming, you’d prepare a lovely little table and you’d find out what they liked and serve them what they wanted. You’d ask them what they have.

Generally you didn't ask. They just ate what you gave them. But that was the way it was. And they always went out in pairs. You never saw a nun alone. They went out in pairs, together.

They’d come up for general visits, just to see how your family were and just friendliness. Come up and see you and ask you how the family's going. And bring you up a little medal. I’ve got little medals over there. I must give you a couple.

Little medal of our Lady, on a little blue piece of ribbon. And they'd give you rosary beads and little Holy pictures. Just general welfare, just like people are not. They were always very nice. My Dad liked the nuns. They used to fuss over him. They used to fuss over him. They’d ask him to come down to the convent and he always got a cup to tea brought in. They'd always serve tea beautifully, the nuns, if you'd go down there. I think they do to this day.

They've got little silver teapots and lovely little cups and sauces and all that.

Oh yes. I remember…I only saw it on the TV. There's been two, hasn't there? There’s been…the big man. John Paul II, that's the one I remember, because they said he opened up the window, the window of the church and he let in all the flies.

Oh no. no. I wasn’t involved. Well, when I was very little like, I remember my grandmother had a picture like that one, Pope Pious X, in her room. And I always remember seeing him. Now I see our modern Pope, the one now, he’s very much like him. He’s the one that we’ve got now…He’s the first time

that we’ve had a Pope who hasn’t been Italian. He’s the first one. He’s a Polish Pope. All the others have been Italian, all the way through. When I went over to St Peters [Basilica, Rome], back in 1984, with my sister and my husband and my mother and family, about five of us went over, I remember that we went into St Peter's, they’ve got every Pope…They've got every picture of all the Popes.

Right down to the present Pope. Well, now, in the Vatican they’ve got a picture of every Pope and it goes right through…It’s very big St Peters. And you go right through and at the end, I think there was about six spaces or something left. Six blanks. And we were talking and this bloke says to us, “Oh, everybody says that when that sixth one is full, that's going to be the end of the world."

Of course, it's not true…I don't know. But it does make you wonder if it is true, because it was put there many, many years back. And whoever it was, because they were very spiritual, those people. They used to go fasting and everything, before they did things, before they painted pictures.

Oh, I looked forward to going there.

I looked forward to heaven. They tried to compare heaven to something so beautiful, “… nor has it entered the mind of man to prepare for those who love God." You can’t imagine. I looked out the window this morning. I set the clock for six o’clock, and I saw the great big full moon. Did you see it? It was monstrous. So I said to the Lord, "Thank you for this lovely moon."

And it was really full and shining in my wind, almost lit up like day. We were trained from when we were young to look at it for the beauty of life. Look at it, as flowers, all the beautiful things that are around. The flowers or rivers or people or babies, especially little babies, or little cats, or whatever you had. It was a present from God. And you grew up with a different sort of feeling. You grow up with a feeling of appreciation.

Look, every night, before I go to bed, I go outside and I look at the stars. There’s generally stars to see, even though it's cloudy, there's something to see up there in the sky. So I thank God for his creation, every day. I say, “Thank you for this. Thank you for this day and this night.” And the more I say thank you, the more I see the beauty.

Well original sin is something we inherited from our first parents, Adam and Eve.

It is the sin of disobedience. And I can prove that it is a sin of disobedience, because I’ve got a statue over there, you can see that statue, Our Lady of the miraculous Medal. You see her, that statue, with her foot on the head of the snake, and in the snake’s mouth is an apple. Now the Lady appeared to St Catherine Aboret in 1830, and she was only a

little nineteen year old girl, going into the convent, coming in. And she was wakened by what she said was her angel guardian. It looked like a child, or something. I've been to the Reedbuck, and I've seen this. And she took her into the main chapel and when she went in the chapel was lit up, just like a Mass for Christmas, all beautiful, lovely, radiant place. And she sat down on a chair, and I’ve seen the chair that St Catherine sat on,

and she sat on the chair for three and a half hours, and St Catherine just had her hand on our Lady’s knee like that. This little young nun. And she looked over at the altar and they told her to look up and she saw this magnificent…And even though Our Lady was standing there with her, there, sitting in the chair, she saw our Lady above the altar with her hands out and she says, “These are the symbols of grace as I give to those who ask for them.” She had this crown on her head and everything.

And then it sort of turned around and then she saw the medal. You know, the miraculous medal I’m talking about? Now on the medal you see it’s a sort of a catechetical thing. It is giving you truth…You can see on the medal that Mary was conceived without sin, pray for us who have the course of the…It means that Mary was conceived without sin. The hands out…She says, "These are the symbols of grace as I give to those who ask for them."

Then you see under her foot, as I said to you, the heel on the snake and in the snake’s mouth is an apple. Which means that it was an apple tree. In the Garden of Eden it was an apple tree, and it was the sin of disobedience. On the back of the medal, if you turn the medal around to the back, you see twelve stars. The stars represented the twelve tribes of Israel, and the other twelve stars represent the twelve apostles. The new thing, when Christ came, Christianity.

And then you see the cross on it, which the Lord saved…the world by dying on the cross. Then you see a big M for Mary and then the two hearts on the bottom. A heart pierced with a sword and the other heart crowned with thorns.

Well I’ve been in the institute. The Lay Institute.

I went and joined the Lay Institute. They are a group of girls who are still going now. There's the Palatine group. They're the Palatine group.

I did all this after I had been…Because don’t forget I was a WAAAF. I went to the forces. I did these things afterwards. I went into the Palatine group and went down to Melbourne and did a course with them, and we went out to Millgrove. And I went up to the missions and things like that.

Caritas Christians

Yes. Caritas Christi, that’s a hospital. Actually they call it Caritas which means love, God’s love or something like that. But these people…What’s the order…The Palatines. They’ve got their place just opposite Caritas, They are just opposite, a little bit further up.

There’s the holy corner there. There’s the Carmelite and the Jesuits and the Caritas Christi and the Palatines. And they're all together. But the Palatines, they were asking girls to come into…Just Lay members…Just ordinary girls, grouped to together and going out and visiting the poor and doing all sorts of things like that. I was in that, but much, much older than the others.

I was much older and they didn’t think I was suited, for the life and that, because I suppose I was much older than the others. But I enjoyed myself with them and did the things that they did. I really enjoyed going out and doing things but I wasn’t suited for it.

I did that at the school where I was, the Catholic school. They had Pittman’s shorthand and the nun's taught me shorthand and typing. I did all my examinations with them, through the nuns. The papers would come back and I’d have to do them, they’d sit there while I did the examination. Then I was a touch typist, because they’d put the little covering over your fingers.

So I was quite a good typist. I must have been good, because they told me in the air force once that I was the one that made the least mistakes.

Yes. I learned to do it the right way. I was only young at the time. When the others went over to the public school to do the intermediate or whatever they were going to do there, I did the qualifying final, but I didn’t do the intermediate. I did the shorthand and typing and that, so from when I was in first year at school

I used to go in my time to do the commercial work. And I had this nun, she was very good. She came from one of those Pittman shorthand places herself, so she knew all about it.

Oh, my word. Well, my first job I got when I was young was in a dolls shop. Heathwood’s, in Casino, and they were selling dolls. They were selling everything. They were a big merchandise place. I sold toys and that. I loved that, and the manager there,

said to me, "I’d like to employ you." But after Christmas, I lost my job. I was on still going to school and that. He rang me up one day and she said, “Mary, there’s a job for you.” And I was very pleased. He said, “It’s at the showground,” he said. The skating, the roller skating. He said, “Would you like to sell tickets at the roller-skating?” I said, “Oh well.” So I got experience everywhere. I went there, and everyone said, “What are you doing sitting in a box?

All these all youngsters and that there, thought it was a great joke, me, selling tickets in a box. But they used to do that, the local shows. They didn’t always have a sales girl. I didn’t know that. Mr Roffle told me. That was his name, Mr Roffle. So I got the job at the show. And I was lucky, I always got the jobs at the show then, just selling tickets, it was very easy. And then I got one in a solicitors office, where by someone went on holidays

and all I had to do was ring the phone. And I got one because I played golf and this man used to play golf. He was a married man, of course, so he asked me if I would like to do the work. And he said he would like to employ me ,too, but they didn’t always have to have a big lot of staff in the company. So the other man, Mr Roffle, the one I’d worked for over Christmas, and he was the one who rang me up and told me about the show. He rang and told me about another job. He said, “I’ve got another job for you, Mary.” He said, “You’re doing shorthand and typing?" I said, "Yes." He said, “Out at the butter factory.”

It was a long way to go and my Dad said to me, "You’ll have to walk out there." I wanted to get a bike, and he wouldn't let me have it. And he said, "No, unless you prove yourself out there." In those days, when you went for a position, you didn’t just have to start. You had to be there for three weeks or so, to have a look and see how you were going.

They paid you, but if you weren’t successful they’d tell you and get somebody else. I know, because a lot of boys came in for three weeks

and they never kept them. I was worried when I went there, but I didn't have to worry. Because I was only very young and I was doing shorthand and typing. But I was worried, and I'll tell you one of the funny things that had happened. So I went out there and I did my test. I just had to take a little letter with practically nothing, and type it out and that. So I was employed there, I got the position there. And then one day, I was asked to come in. Mr Vassy or some member from Sydney came up, and they were worried about the cows and that. You know, they had something wrong with their teats

and that, so I was asked to go into the managers office and to take the letters in there. I went in…It just shows how uneducated I was. I wrote the letter all out, and every time it talked about the cows' teats, I put tits. T-I-T-S. The poor manager. He wasn’t game to tell me. And it was from this man, Mr Vassy, from Sydney. The Distributing Society, PDS…

The Producers and Distributors Society. Anyway, one of the girls came out and said, "Mary, I have to tell you something about your letter." And I said, “What is it?” And she said, “Well, everywhere you’ve got the word 'tits.'" She said, "It's teats. It's T-E-A-T-S. For goodness sake, get your dictionary out, and change this letter." I’ll always remember that. I wasn’t a very good speller at first, but l learned to spell. I took a dictionary in. And after a while, you get to know the things they talk about and it’s just in your head.

But I always remembered that.

To tell you the truth, I never noticed at all, that there was a war, when I was. I didn't, honestly…I remember that I was reading a paper, when I heard the news that Mr [Winston] Churchill [Prime Minister of Britain] had

declared war on Germany. But I was so young, I suppose, and I was so busy about doing all my own things. I was bird-watching person, and all sorts of things that I did when I was young. But I wasn’t terribly involved in politics. But I didn’t realize….But at the time, when I first heard the news, I knew that we would win. Because I knew that [Adolf] Hitler [German Chancellor] was a…

In my mind, from what…And don't forget, we had newsreels all the time. When we went to the pictures, all we’d see was war, China and Abyssinia, and everybody fighting in wars. Like it is now. There were war pictures on all the time, and it sort of gets on your mind and you sort of accept it. But when I thought of what was happening…Like the way Hitler had been taking over all these countries, and taking over Austria and walking over everywhere. I knew, in my heart, that he

couldn’t possibly win the war. In my heart I thought that, as a young person. But I was very sad, that it had happened. I suppose, that’s what made me join up. It wasn’t that that made me join up, so much, it was just that all my friends were going. Being young like that, you’re not thinking about being killed or anything like that. It’s just the excitement of the thing. The excitement of it. Seeing all the men coming in with their uniform…with their

observer thing on here…Or their pilots here. They were mostly pilots, the boys from Casino Dairy Company, they went away, and they came in to see us there. This was in 1941. They were in that group and a lot of those boys didn’t come back. I think about thirty-eight boys never came back to Casino.

Yes. They all went over early. We were terribly short of people in the Casino Dairy Company. When I went away that was only a certain part of it.

Oh no, there was a lot of the boys.

No. There probably were. I saw more people in the bands. The young band boys.

The young boys who used to play in the bands on the streets. I used to notice them but no I never saw terribly much of anything that reminded me much of war when I was young.

Oh yes. They always had a little band uniform and a hat.

Oh well, see, there’s so many people. There used to be the Salvation Army. They used to go on street corners and they had these…tambourines, and the girls would have the different little hats

to what they have now, tied underneath there. They’d sing on the street corners and then they’d come around and you’d give them a little donation, or you'd go up there…A lot of people would go up with them and join in the service. I can’t exactly explain, give you full details about how they all looked now because they were al in uniform. But the band boys, they had nice little hats on and a nice little smart coat with the gold brading on it.

And bright sort of pants and that. Apart from that, I can't tell you that much because I didn’t have any brothers in it. But lots of girls did. Their brothers were in the local bands, some of them were church bands, Methodist and Church of England and all sorts of things. And if you had a parade, all the bands went in. The Firemen’s band….and all the bands. It was a well-known thing in those days.

No. No, no, no, no. Nobody knew. Even England itself didn’t realise that. That Mr [Neville] Chamberlain [British Prime Minister prior to Churchill], he went over and he signed a peace treaty with Hitler [reference to the Munich Agreement made in 1938], thinking that…they didn’t realize the seriousness of it. But when they started taking over all the countries, it was Churchill who stood up and declared war on Germany. Otherwise he would have been taken over by them. It's true, isn't it?

I never had that thought. I don’t think anybody does. When you're very young, you're not thinking about. You go away…We were voluntary people. You go away, it's a voluntary thing.

You go away because everybody else is going. When you go away…Like when I went away, suddenly things commenced to change, because they had all the windows blackened in the towns and cities. People who smoked, you weren’t now supposed to smoke in the dark. All the names of the towns and streets and everything went off the stations and that. Things changed.

Oh well, I suppose it did. I don’t know what Dad did because I wasn’t away there then. See he had changed from an engine driver then, and he became a chargeman. That means that Dad had quite an important position during the war years, because he had all the traffic coming down from Brisbane, all these troop trains going through, and all these hospital trains. And he had to provide the engines for the trains.

Like all the different engines, where they were, where they placed and when they were being used and one thing and another. Where they were sheltered, where they were cared for, who was driving them, they way they were prepared at the station, when they came down. If an engine should fail, you had to have another engine ready. It was all coal and different types of things, it wasn't diesel or electric or anything in those days. They were big steam engines. What my father did in the war years, I never asked him. I suppose I should have.

But he was very busy. Mum said that partly killed him, he was so busy and that. But everyone was busy. You couldn’t get any replacements. Everybody was leaving, they were all going to the forces.

Yes. Well, some of them did. Some people were. They had responsible positions like that, and they were exempted from going into the forces. Oh yes, they were. But as regards

what's going to do your country and all the rest of, no, I think when you are very young, you don’t have those thoughts. It’s something different. You more or less go in…Well, you were young, you did what you were told. We did what you were told. We had to go in. And it was strict where I was, very strict. You had a leave pass…You had to be in every night…You wouldn't be out every night anyway, we were on a certain shift, A, B, C, D…

Four different shifts. I was in the Signals section. Three till eleven, eleven to seven, seven to three…Even in the war years, when we were all together, you didn’t talk about political things much at all.

Oh, yes. I’ve got an identification disk, they called them, with your blood group on them. Mine was B3.

I’ve found out since, I’ve just had this other operation on my foot, that B3 means B Positive. Because the sister down at the health centre, she said to me, “What’s B3?” I said, "I don’t know. That’s just what they said on the olden days. B3." It had my serial number on it and my name, “Blackshore, MF”. That was for Mary Francis. And it just had your blood group and your address, that's all, on it.

You wore that constantly and never took it off.

Oh yes. they did.

No. Over the period of the whole war, I’m talking about. It wouldn’t be just that number. The boys that I knew in the office, where I was. I actually worked in the office. Alby Grant, he went…

Four boys in the office, that went, they never came back. Pat Reen was another boy that I knew, he came to see me. Even when I was in the rookies [initial training], I didn’t take any notice of him in the office and that, but he came to see me. He came to see me to see why I hadn’t written to my parents and that. It wasn’t that I hadn’t written to them, was just that, when we first went into the rookies, we didn’t even know where we were going to. We got onto the train, they put us into this station in Sydney and

I think it was called MacDonaldtown station. The one on the right hand there. This little old station in Sydney that's been there for years. Anybody that disembarking or going anywhere, or going to another place, they always put them on this station. It was a secret sort of place. And you never knew where you were going and you generally went off at night. I had no idea I was going down to Wollongong and out to Robertson when I first joined up. We didn’t know.

None of us knew where we were going. And then when we got there, we didn’t write any letters to our people for a while. After a while we did. It was a quiet sort of movement, in case something would happen. It was very secret like that. It was different all together, to other times.

I didn’t talk to them at all. My father didn’t want me to go into the forces at all.

I don’t know why, because he was a soldier. Well, he didn’t want me to go into the forces. I don’t know why he didn’t, because he was in the army himself. But and he said I wasn’t. He said. "You have to wait until your twenty one," or something. "Well," I said to Dad, "The war will be over." Anyway, I believe my mother said that I created a disturbance in the house.

I don’t know what she meant by that. I don’t know what I did. I wouldn’t eat anything or something. And I went on in such a way that in the end, my father got fed up with it, and he said, "For goodness sake, get out of the house as fast as you can.” He got annoyed with me, because I was determined I wanted to go, and he said I couldn’t go. I didn’t give him any cheek or anything, but I just didn’t eat anything.

Yes. Sort of a hunger strike or something like that, and I didn’t speak to anybody.

Dad said he wanted some peace in the house. So I was allowed go. I went up, yes. It wasn’t long either. As soon as I registered, I went off. It wasn't very long…

By the people who worked in the office with me. They were all boys and they all went into the aircrew. They were pilots, observers and air gunners. They all went off. And they came up and saw, us too. They came up and saw us,

and we saw all their blue uniforms. We were only young and that. But that’s what I thought. I thought to myself, “I wouldn’t mind going in to the air force.” But I found it hard to leave the office, because they were getting that way that they couldn’t get anybody, you see. The people, they couldn’t be replaced. No one could be replaced.

Oh, he was very disappointed. He was very disappointed that I was going.

But he didn’t stop me. He didn’t stop me. After a while you got someone from the government to say that you could keep your staff. But with me, he didn’t say anything to me.

Oh, yes, lots of girls from Casino. They didn’t all go into the air force. Some of them when in the Land Army. Some went into the voluntary aid, VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachments] they called them. Some went into the navy. They went into all different Women's services.

No, I only had my eye on the air force, because of the boys that would come in the office and they looked lovely…They do look very stylish and handsome.

Not that I remember. I see that now.

Like that, as it is. But I can’t remember it, before I joined. I think they came in after. See, those people there came in one after the other. We came in first, in 1941, into the air force. Now, the other girls, the VADs, they came in later. And then the nurses, always been there…the Red Cross nurse, and the Land Army girls, they all sort of came in later. Now it's all over, they can group them together and show them to you like that. But at the time, you don't realise

the change, and the different ones coming in. But I know the air force came in, because I've got that recommendation.

Well, I went in first, and my first mustering was clerk general. Because I did that test at Woolloomooloo…They tested us. Like they were clerk general when I went in that day. It said, “Dear Sir”, and

and “In compliance with your letter”, such and such. It was only about three or four lines and hardly nothing. And we had to take it down in shorthand and then type the letter and give it to them, to prove that you did shorthand and you did typing.

Oh no, no, I never thought of that, and it was never suggested to me, either. But some of the girls could go into aircraft depots, and that, where they did have

access to planes. They didn’t fly them, but they used to learn to change the wheels on the aircraft and the maintenance and all that sort of thing in connection with the planes.

March. In March.

Oh, yes, we had a medical, but not the big one. The first medical test I ever had was with Doctor Small. He was the doctor, and I went in to see him, and what we had…It was a strange thing, we had our ears syringed. Well, I’ll never forget it because I fainted. And when I got home I said to Mum, “I don’t think I’ll be going into the air force.” She said, “What’s wrong with you now?” I said, “I had my ears tested,

and when he put that thing in my ear, I passed out.” And I said to the doctor, “Do you think…?” “It’s nothing.” He said, “Men faint, too.” It was an awful feeling. I’ve never had it since. Have you had it done?

They get a big syringe and they just put it in your ear like that, and they gradually increase the force, and you can feel this thing spitting in your ear and then they gradually take out the suction.

And, of course, there is something there, like wax and things like that. But I could never understand, when we were young…. I’ve never heard of it since. And that was compulsory, that we all go and have our ears syringed. The doctor, he didn't do anything else, any other tests, because he had seen me and I had been playing golf, and I suppose he knew I was a hundred percent in health. But I had to have that done. That was the first thing, yes.

Yes. It was a very quick move. We went to Woolloomooloo and then we went to Robertson as rookies. There was Rookies Two. There was Rookies One before us, but we were Rookies Two. That meant we all went together, no matter what we were, whether we were going to be equipment or whether we were going to be in organisation or whether you were transport drivers or anything else.

A certain group, as they came in, went together. And that was your rookies course, because you were trained then in how to look after yourself, and pack your blankest and carry your palliasse and being obedient to whatever you had to do. What they tell you to do, you had to do. It wasn’t a test of your skills, then. I mean your skills weren’t considered. You were a just a combined unit working together and you did what you were told. And you had your meals and everything. All of us put on about two or three stone there.

We had plenty of food. It was mountainous country and we would march up and down the hills and come in and be that hungry, you’d eat six or seven slices of bread. I couldn't get into any of my clothes. I was enormous.

In Robertson. Randlar, the hotel Randlar was on the hill.

I’m trying to work out exactly where Robertson is when you go to it. Do you know Albion Park? Where people ride horses and you go over the Illawarra Pass? Around that way. When you're going over the Illawarra Pass. You know where Goulburn is, and you take the pass over the highway to…As if you’re going to Wollongong, it’s up around there.

Oh, very cold. Practically around there. The Illawarra Pass, it's part of the Great Dividing Range. The clouds are hanging on that all the time. When you go up there and go through it, it's a very strange sensation. You're in the middle of all these clouds. Especially if it’s a bad day or something like that. It's a very narrow track. It has probably changed now.

Oh, straight away. You got your uniform when you went on your rookies course.

When we got our clothing given to us, we got pink pyjamas, we got our shoes and our stockings, shirts, three or four shirts. We got a skirt and pants. That was the first time I ever saw women in pants. We got the pants in the air force, because when we were on certain duties we had to wear them. On night duty we always wore our…

Jeans, we called them.

Oh yes. They had nothing wrong with that. They had all the sizes. You could get a size to fit you. And we got a great coat. A big thick coat that you see people walking around with. Who'd I see with a nice great coat the other day? Oh, the district nurse. She comes in here every second day and does my foot. And she had a big greatcoat on.

And I said, “That’s a lovely one.” She said, “Oh yes, I put a rose over it when I go out.” She puts a rose over it. But this lot we had, a bit greatcoat, a big great warm coat. And we had hats. A hat like that that I’ve got on there. That hat. The early ones that went in have got that sort of material in them. I don't know what you call it. They used to make shoes out of it, that stuff. And then you got a little one all made of just felt. That was just a little one.

And we had that one. And then we got our summer clothes. You see in the Brisbane pictures there, where the girls are in their different clothing for summer. It's khaki, and khaki hat and all that. So I got plenty of clothing. No shortage of clothing. And if you got a hole in something you just had to go to clothing and equipment and you got all that. And shoes. Some people used to try and get new pairs of shoes, and try and cut holes in their soles, but I could never be bothered.

….To get a new pair of shoes. But no shortage of anything like that.

Well, the Robertson Hotel was a beautiful place. I don’t know the religious order that had it, but there had been a religious order there. It might have been the Franciscans or whichever it was that had it, but all the furniture and things. And I don't know whether they would have had elaborate furniture and that, anyway all those things had been taken out of it.

It was a very large place with huge rooms. You could put about twenty or so in a room. Like that it was. And we had big stairways up, and it was about two or three storeys high, and it was equipped with everything. We had our water there, our own water service, hot and cold baths. And there was a huge big kitchen. It was massive, the kitchen that they had

And the surrounding grounds were beautiful, all gardens. It was on the top of this mountain and, believe it or not, anyone who came to Randlar, that’s what it was, you'd get off the train, they had this siding for the trains there, and you had to climb up this terrible hill. I don’t know how people got up there with their baggage, but we had to get up there in the middle of the night. We arrived there in the middle of the night, and we had our

palliasse [mattress] or something with us, and we had to climb up this hill. And I thought to myself, “Well, I don't know how…” They'd have to be young people that came there, in those days, I don’t know what it is like now. But it was a very nice place, magnificent view, as I said. When you looked out, sometimes you’d see the steam train. It was all steam trains then. We weren’t on any electric trains or anything like that. And you’d see the steam trains coming along with all the smoke. It looked like a picture card…Like an old time setting. I looked out this window,

I had this nice window that looked right over the mountain and down on this little train. I'd see it going around and up the hill, and think, “Oh, that's lovely.” There, was a lovely place, really. It was just a place where they sort of got you settled for where you were going. It was nothing to do with your mustering. Whatever the girls were, we didn’t know. We just got in there altogether. But we were taught to pack our blankets…Every day you had to pack your blankets up,

and they had to be set up in a sort of arrangement at the foot of your bed. And the bed only had a palliasse on it, which was straw. We only had a straw palliasse. But when you were posted anywhere, you always had to take your blankets with you. We had all these things we had to do. We had to have our shoes cleaned. Every day we would have our shoes cleaned. We had to have our hair so many inches above our collar. All this was the sort of orderly things we were taught to do.

Oh, very nice. I never struck any of them…I never struck anyone in the air force that was…

They were unusual people. I think, in the air force, they had special women who were trained with people in the Scouts or something like that. And they were quite understanding people. Even if you did something wrong, they would always listen to you. And there was never any screaming out, or that sort of business, you know. I never found it in the groups that I was with.

Well, I don’t think so because it wasn’t hard to do. When you are with a group of people…There was a lot of us. There just wasn’t one or two, there were a hundred and fifty or something. When there's a lot of people like that together, and you're together, things are not had to do. I remember the hardest thing I found there was eating this dairy butter, or whatever…

It was in tins, tinned butter, and it was shocking. I didn’t like that very much. Apart from that, and you’d have a few things that came out of tins, camp pie or something. I never liked that much, but we were so hungry. We were jolly well hungry. After walking all day round the mountains and going on exercises and stuff like that, you would eat anything, even old bread with nothing on it.

I never knew any of my friends who couldn’t cope. Everybody that I knew, they all coped. And don’t forget when we went in, a lot of us were sent on courses. I was sent on a course for teletyping and teleprinting, others were sent on WT, wireless telegraphy, Morse Code [communication system].

Others went into areas where they had to learn what you do in garages, what boys do there. Some went to electrical places. Every group of girls was sent somewhere. Some of them might have thought they weren't even going to do that, but they did it.

No….Well, I had my choice in the fact that I came in as a clerk general. That was a choice I had. But the fact that I was sent out as a teletype operator,

well, it was the same thing, only working different machines. They were a different type of machine we worked. Same keyboard and everything like that.

Well we had everything in our kit.

Just the sanitary things…They must have given it to us. I just can't remember now.

Of course it hasn’t. That’s why I’m saying to you now, the women who were in charge of us were really and truly fine women. They were mature people. They weren’t young people like ourselves. They were just like mothers to us. Mothers, They were more like a mother or your grandmother to you.

Oh yes. Of course you could. Yes, they were like that, that's what I struck. That’s one, Doc Carter, I struck down at Wagga, when I went there, she was quite an elderly lady, and she would come to you and find out what your sport was. She said, "What do you do?" I said, “I play golf.” And she said, “You must go and have a game down at the golf course.”

What they all did, tennis or something like that, she made sure that every girl did what they did. It was arranged for you. It was arranged for you to go and have a game of golf and find out where it was. The same thing with the girls that played tennis. They could go and play tennis, she would make a day for them on the tennis courts. It was very, very good like that. As I said, we had no…They were well-trained women. We had the courthouse in Wagga,

it was a big part of town, and they took over that, and it was all full of the WAAAF. And this Dot Carter, her name was, I think someone said she had something to do with the Boy Scouts or something. They were people like that. They weren’t just ordinary young people starting off. They were matured people, who had either raised a family or been involved with people…yeah.

Now you ask me that, I don’t know how long it was.

Look, I don’t know how long the rookies course would be now. I suppose it would be…That’s one thing I really can’t remember.

Oh, yes, the Japanese had entered the war, because while I was in Wagga…We were sent to Eastern Area first,

and while I was in Wagga, the Japanese had come into Sydney Harbour, and I had just moved from there, because they sent me down to Two Training School, I was in a training school down at Wagga and the Japanese came into the harbour then. We even had, at Eastern Area Headquarters, were I was, at Edinburgh [air base South Australia], we had ground scooped up for us, in case anything like that would happen. So I often wondered what did happen to the girls. But they came in there and they broke through the submarines.

Well, we had to accept it. Nobody thought they'd break those nets, they broke through those nets going into Sydney Harbour. Nobody ever thought, at the moment, that that would be possible to do. But these were a special type F, very small [mini] submarine where the fellow came in. They martyred themselves. And they came in. But part of Point Piper was

bombed, or whatever it was, was smashed down. Because in those days…someone said, "Well, you should have been alert and bought some land." But who would be alert, then, in those days? Everyone was clearing out from that part of Sydney…Because they had the big ships in there. The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth and they were all camouflaged. Sometimes they’d have the boys on them, and they’d be going off, and then they’d flick the lights. And the WT ones used to get the messages across,

and make dates sometimes. But I don’t know how they did it, because you weren’t allowed to flicker anything in the night. You weren't allowed to have a cigarette or walk around. But we were very close. I’ve got a picture of Mt Luano in those ones over there. It was just a railing like that, and you could straight across the water at the boats. It was a beautiful place.

They did. They came from everywhere.

Well, mainly…When I first joined up and in the group I was with…In the group I was in Rookies, R2, which I told you. That group of girls

appeared to be quite…Not above average intelligence, I wouldn't say that, because I only had…average schooling. But a lot of them did appear to as if they'd had good schooling. They were always reading poetry and things like that, reading Shakespeare. I realized that the group that I was with had done their Leaving Certificate. I felt that they had.

And even when I spoke to them later on and that in different areas…Like, for instance, when I spoke to that black gentleman I told you about, when I went out with ordinary people, they'd come up to me and say, “Look a bit higher.” They did, ye. So I realized that I was with girls….not unusual, but they had ambition.

They were ambitious girls, some of them.

Yeah. They read Shakespeare and these poem books and all that sort of thing they would have, walking around. It was natural. Not putting on a show or anything. We were all only women when all was said and done. But I did realized that they were more highly educated then what I was. That didn’t worry me, because I just did what I had to do, and I did it well and that. But I did know that some of them were.

No. No. It wasn’t to me. I don’t think it was to anybody, really. We were all trying to do our best in those days. But I did recognize that. And afterwards too, when I look back now and think of some of the girls who I saw and met. And they rose to great heights, some of them. They were taken out to divisions and sent out as pilots and flight officers and things like that.

There was plenty of people called flying officers in the air force and they never flew anything. It was just the division of ranking that you got in the air force.

Nothing, nothing at all. Even though my father was…He didn’t have any ranks that I know of. He was in the army. He never spoke about it.

I’m sorry that I didn’t talk to him about his work or what he did over in France and that. No. I didn’t, and then he didn’t always go to the reunions. Like some people went to the reunions, and they meet all their friends. My Dad didn’t go to them very often. He was a real family man, he liked to be with us. And he never talked about anything like that much. Although he had pictures and war pictures and that, with his comrades and what they did.

Yeah, he had pictures of where they were and what they did, over in France and on their leave, sort of thing. See, when you're young, you don’t ask your parents about what you should ask about, find out all things. Later on when they are gone you say, "I wish I had asked my Dad about that." But you are youthful and that yourself and you care concerned with matters yourself. It's an awful thing to say, but it’s true.

Oh, no, he never got them out. I only found them out after he died.

He had the pictures there, but he never brought them out. They were there for us to see. They were in a big album there, but we never looked a them. We didn’t look at them. See, you mostly find now

people who have been away in war years, they don’t come out and talk about anything about it at all. It's only when you're living in a world that is past the war, and your different life, they've married and their living with their family, and it doesn’t come into you. Like, I notice when I go to the forces each year and I go to the Anzac [Day] parades, we meet, all the girls together, and we talk about the things we did then, together, and then we say, "Oh, I'll see you next year." And then talk about it again.

So you don’t talk about it to ordinary people because they're not interested. See people are not interested anyway, are they? Unless they are going to go down to the archives like you say now, and go and read the history of their families Young ones going through educational things. They’ll listen, because they're young, they're going to learn. But generally speaking, I don’t think people are that interested.

Well, they're getting more interested now because they realize that war is going to hit them. That's why they're getting interested now, because before the war was right overseas, the other side of the world, but now it’s right on our doorstep. It's in front of us, isn’t it? We don’t know when someone going to walk in over us, do we? If it hadn’t been for the President of America [George W Bush] now, to declare war on the enemy,

well, they were spreading their seed everywhere. Even in Victoria they had groups of people working for them. The opposition I’m talking about. They didn’t realize. And when we went down to Point Cook just recently, and there was a flight going through, and they were getting their wings [pilot qualification], one of the boys said that one of those men involved with the incident that happened in America, the shooting down of the two buildings [reference to terrorist attack on World Trade Towers, New York on September 11, 2001] it America, he said that one of them had actually trained with them, and they didn't realise.

With that group…Not the actual group, but where he was learning with the air force. The teachers down there, they had several of those people, but they didn’t know. But that’s what this president has done. He’s stopped that seed or cobweb, or whatever it is, spreading all over the world and these people setting out to attack you. Which I believe they would have. They would have been set up everywhere.

Well, we were grateful that we were on a winning side. Because where I lived in this house, Montuano, right on the sea shore, in Sydney, at Point Piper. There was a section of a house that was just sort of alone, where you’d go and view the water scenes and that,

all through this area was all plans of Sydney, and all route areas about boats and all around those little harbour places, where boats cruised round, and when we saw it…It was just open for us to see, there was nothing private about it. But we realized then that they must have been routing something from that little area where it was. I’m sorry now I didn’t pick up some of the things, because it would have been interesting to have. But at the time, we were young and we didn’t take any notice of it. You do realize that they were expecting the Japanese to take over.

By the look of these books they had, with the coastline all set out, and little areas where you could attack Sydney, all around the coast.

No, no. we didn’t. Because we were youthful. That’s why they ask the boys who are eighteen and twenty and that to come and take the flights over. They can't ask us older people because they're frightened.

But youth, no. You are not fearful in youth. You know yourself, you're not fearful of anything, are you?

No, you're not. You see, they just got in their aircraft, those boys, and flew over the [English] Channel and dropped their bombs in Germany and those places. It was wonderful for them. They could get the targets and things like that. It was sad for the ones who didn’t come back. But the boys themselves, they had nothing like that in their hearts, I don't thing. It was adventure.

Yes. We knew it was a war, but somehow we just felt, in our hearts, that we were going to win anyway. It wasn’t as if you were in a country where you could see you were being defeated, or people were overpowering you. You just felt that you were safe where you were. And you didn’t have any worries. We didn’t have any worries. Even when I went back to where I was, at the Eastern Area Headquarters, there wasn’t much said about it in the papers,

where that submarine had come in and part of the harbour had been blasted. Things were very quite. There wasn't much noise made in the paper. You didn’t get a lot of news like that then.

It was kept up. There was nothing. Any suicides or anything like that that happened around the place, nothing like that was ever put in the paper. Nothing. There was different murders and that that happened, too,

and probably different troubles between….army people that were situated in Australia at the time, they probably had a few fights and things but we never heard about them. There was nothing like that. It was always bright singing…lovely tunes, mainly love songs and things like that. And lovely bright marches. Even at Eastern Area Headquarters we used to go for our route marches down Wesley Road and around Rose Bay

and Double Bay and all that. It was very colourful, and we didn’t fear anything, I didn't anyway. And I don't think the others did.

Oh, Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant Major. That was one I always sang. There were lots of them. We’ll Meet Again.

Just A Round Slouch Hat.

\n[Verse follows]\nA round slough hat\n With it’s side turned up\n Means the world to me,\n It’s the symbol of our nation,\n Of the road to liberty.\n And soldiers they wear it,\n How proudly they bear it.\n For all the world to see.\n Just a brown slouch hat,\n With its side turned up,\n

Heading straight for victory. Now Joy Nichols, she was an Australian singer. She used to sing that in the streets, down around Martin Place, and all those sorts of places. She used to sing that song around the Sydney streets.

In an organized way, but it was a national song to lift the hearts of people.. There were hundreds of wartime songs.

Yes. An Australian one. That Joy Nichols, she used to sing lots of the songs. She sang, When A Boy From Alabama Meets A Girl From Gundagai. She used to sing that.

\n[Verse follows]\n“When a boy from Alabama,\n Meets a girl from Gundagai….'\n

It goes on and on. I can’t remember much about it. And there were all sorts of songs. Our own singers sang them as well as all the others. There were hundreds of love songs. What’s her name? Vera Lynn. The White Cliffs Of Dover.

'When The Lights Come On Again, All Over The World.' When the lights come on again all over the world…Hundreds and hundreds of very nice, very romantic songs.

Oh, they were. And I think, too, they were written from the heart, because people were losing their loved ones, and people were just married and their husbands were going away.

\n[Verse follows]\n 'We’ll meet again,\n Don’t know where,\n don’t know when,\n

But I knew we’ll meet again\n

some sunny day.'\n

All these tunes were written and they were all bright. They made you sort of feel good, all of them. And that one Gracie Fields sang, “I’m writing a letter to Santa Claus, to bring my Daddy home to me.” She used to sing that for the children, Gracie Fields.

Ye. These were for little boys and that. She’d sing them.

them to write a letter to Santa Claus to bring their fathers back home. Yes. they were sad, but they were all nice little tunes. They were tunes that touched your heart and yet they were really true. They were the ones that they all sung. And when this is finished I’ll remember all the hundreds of tunes. There were lovely ones, real romantic ones. All the romantic tunes there ever were were written in wartime. Even in the First World War, they had lovely songs, too.

I’ll always remember the old songs. Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty.

They last. The war tunes seemed to last. They bring them back again.

Well, they were always nice. There's something about what connects with your heart. Always a song that touches you inside, and I feel they were written for that reason. I saw a film the other night. It was Till The Clouds Roll By.

And I think Jerome Kern or someone had written it, but all the music was to do with the wartime ones. It had all lovely songs in it. He wrote them off one by one, but they were all nice tunes in it.

Well, in the services was like everywhere else. There were very talented people from the services. Everywhere you went there was a piano,

or everywhere you went there was a stage. Houses would have a little platform or a stage, and someone could play a flute or they could sing. Some of them had very fine voices. Some were funny, they could tell you a good joke. You'd be surprised. We entertained ourselves. Not even planing it. At night you’d just be sitting around

and some of them would tell the greatest tales you’d ever heard. Good stories. . Others could sing, and everybody could dance, because we were all children together and we came from that era where tap dancing was the thing. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and all these famous dancers.

Well, we didn’t have a lot of organized concerts.

We were invited to them. The air force sometimes, especially the American forces sometimes, the entertainers, would ring up and say, "Have you got half a dozen WAAAF to accompany our boys somewhere?" This would just be for a night, and we’d be taken out to dinner and they’d have entertainment at this club where you went. They would bring you safely home again. So we often had offers like that.

But as regards a lot of entertainment, we worked so hard. We worked from seven till three, three till eleven and eleven to seven, and sometimes you changed your shift back. It was only once a month, really, that you'd get a bit of time off over a weekend. We'd work a double shift. And there were four shifts, A, B, C, D, four shifts, and they were working flat out all the time. You know, you had to get your sleep in and another thing,

we had a leave passes, and we couldn't go out unless we had our leave pass signed. It wasn't just a matter of walking out the door and going down the street, you couldn’t do that if you were in the air force. You had to go and have your leave pass signed by your commanding officer, whoever it was. And we didn’t have a lot of time for entertainment. Apart form ourselves, like even in your rooms. We were in this place at Edinburgh, it was a great big ballroom. Oh, how many girls? About twelve of us in it. And we

would all come off together at the same time. You'd be doing the same things at the same time. You'd come off shift at the same time, you’d have your leave at the same time and you’d go to bed sometimes. But some girls at night or that…you’d have a little light there if you wanted, you could see them sitting up reading their poetry. Some of them would be telling some sort of jokes or something. But you were young and you didn’t worry about it. If you were tired, you didn't care about playing music or what…I didn’t care. I’d just go to sleep.

Whereas when you're older you have sort of fads, and somebody's watch is annoying you. But I went out one day and I saw for the first time…I don’t know what you call them…Those little packs of things you put in the toilet, you know. They have a sweet sort of odour. And I brought one of these home with me, and I didn't realise…I suppose it's coming from the country, but I put it under all the girls pillows.

They went mad on me. I put a little bit of stuff…You know the ones that are sort of like this and you’ve got to chip off. Well I put some under their pillows. You should have heard them going on, sniffing and snuffing ”Whose done this?” They said, Someone said, “She hasn’t got any under her pillow.” And they said, “You did it!” They were wild with me, and they got my clothes and put them in a pillow slip and tied them up high in the lights so I couldn’t get them. So you'd do silly things like that. But I didn't do that wilfully.

I thought I was making a nice perfume for them. "Don’t ever you do that again," they said. "Don't you know what it is?" But I didn’t know what it was. You can still buy those things and they waste away. But I put it under all their pillows. After a while they laughed about it, but at the time they didn't.

I couldn’t. I just left them there and went to bed with nothing on. I couldn’t get them. They were right up high.

The ceilings were very high there. I didn’t worry about it. I didn't report it or anything. If you reported any trouble to the sergeants and that, they’d all come down and made you probably go down and peel apples, or make you do potatoes or something, down in the kitchen. But I didn’t say anything about it.

Yes, you did. People did work things out. But if you did anything seriously wrong….

I don't know, I never did anything serious.

We used to have panic night, that was every Monday night. We'd have 'Panic Night.' We had these big houses taken over by the government and they were beautiful homes. They were from the elite of people at Point Piper, so they weren’t just mud huts. But sometimes the girls, after they had done all their panic, they'd come down and have coffee…

Well, they might have a night when they had a bit of fun together. You know how it is sometimes, when you have a bit of fun? But we never had any drink on the premises. There wasn’t much drink around in our days. There was no drink. Nobody ever had drink with them, and they didn’t have drink when they went to restaurants, either. It wasn’t served, as far as I know. The La Palite at Double Bay, they always had coffee and tea. I don’t think they had the licences for drinks in those days.

That’s just a modern thing now, isn’t it? It isn’t modern to you, but in those days …Even after six o’clock men couldn’t drink anyway. They couldn’t go into hotels, could they?

Oh, all sorts of silly things, like tying one another’s clothes up, and silly things like that. You’d go to get into bed and you’d find you had knots in your pants.

Or the top part of your pyjamas would be tied to your bed, or something like that. Silly things like that. But you must remember, we were only young. We weren’t old people. We were only eighteen and nineteen or twenty years old. There weren't many elderly people. The only elderly people were the people in charge of us. They were real mothers and fathers. They were really people who looked after us and listened to us and spoke nicely to us. And no one complained. I remember one day,

when we were in the Signals section….That was one thing the girls could do in the air force…That was one thing the girls could do in the air force, they could smoke. They smoked in the Signals. They smoked in all the offices, because it wasn’t banned like it is now. You could get cigarettes from the canteen, because they were issued with so many packets of cigarettes, because it was war time, other people weren't. But in the air force you were issued with so many….Not a lot. You only had your issue. They could smoke while they were working.

Oh, they did. That’s where girls learned to smoke. They all smoked and even our sergeant, she was Noelene Jones. She was a lovely girl. A beautiful looking girl. She was our sergeant and she was in charge of us, and she had her own desk and another corporal assistant then, and we were all on the machines. I’ve got pictures there where we were all on the machines. And she smoked, but soon after the war, she died. She had cancer of the lungs because she smoked all the time.

But we didn’t know then. See, people didn’t know. It's only just recently that people know now…Not everybody. There is a possibility that their lungs to cease and that’s the end.

Oh no, no. The cigarettes were issued. We used to get Claxton…Craven A…Wills Light,

and all sorts of cigarettes. We didn’t get American cigarettes, but the girls who went out with American boys, they got cartons of cigarettes given to them. Cartons. Lucky Strike and everything. And they came in with the great big boxes and they’d pass them round to the girls. The boys would say, “Pass them round to your friends.” So I don't think they had any rationing at all, the Americans. But we had rationing from the canteen. You only could have so much, but it was plenty for them, that they got, yes

Yes. I took up smoking. I smoked on the night shift. That’s where I learned to smoke, on the nightshift. You know if the machine wasn’t busy…If you were on a busy machine, you never smoked or nothing, you just had to work, and other people helped you work, too. Sometimes the machines weren’t busy, and you’d get a little huddle around your machines. And in the beginning

none of us could smoke at all, and we just puffed them for nothing and had a great coughing sensation, and didn’t like it at all. But it was just a habit. It was a bad habit. You sat down and lit the cigarettes up and all had a smoke. And afterwards, when you got busy again, but you could smoke all the time. You could smoke. But after I left the air force, I gave up the smoking. Not because of my father. He died from it.

But just that I had a feeling against them, and I just gave up smoking after that. But during my air force years, I was forced into it in a way, because of the way we were. Especially at night-time, we did a lot of night duty together. And that’s what happens to nurses and anyone that works on night duty. They get together, whoever they are, and all talk about this and that had have a little smoke. It's only for fun, really, but you get used to it.

You get accustomed to it. It is true, you'd rather smoke a cigarette than go and have your tea. It is true, isn't it? If you smoke…

Oh yes, very hard. As a matter of fact, I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t think I could do it. I said some prayers to the mother of God, I said, "I wish to give up smoking." But I found I couldn't. I found I couldn't give up smoking.

It was very, very hard, I had to smoke all the time. I think my family thought I had give it up, but I had to run out and have a cigarette in the toilets or something like that, But the thing is, the cigarettes then, I don’t think they were as strong as they are now. Now if the cigarettes…If you went to the casino and you're on a machine next to a lady who smoked, the smoke seems to have a very bad aroma.

But I didn’t notice that it was like that when I was young, that they were the same. I don’t know whether they tried to do something, or they’ve put something in the cigarettes or what, but they seem to be revolting to me. The cigarette now seems to be revolting. Have you found that out?

They are revolting and the smell is terrible. And where they stub them out, that area there, if you're near there, you have to walk away. It was so terrible.

Whether your sense of smell changes, I don't know. But I was lucky that I did give them up eventually. It took me a long time. I couldn’t do it straight away. Some people just say I’m not going to smoke any more and that's that. But it didn't happen like that with me.

Teleprinters and teletypes, we had both. The teleprinter was our own Australian machine and the teletypes were the Americans. They were both the same, but they had a different tempo in operating them. One was more of a glamorous looking thing. The American one was more like a Rolls-Royce and ours were like the Model T Ford. They were different in appearances. Well, you'd be allotted to your machine, when you'd get in, you couldn't pick your machine.

You’d be told which machine you would go onto, and we generally did it every day. You went around the clock, you had to move your seat every day. It was like that. We had to move our machines, which meant that some days the machines were terrible busy, and other ones, are busy, they were all busy, but some were much busier than others.

Well, the machines are very big. There are two types of machines. There’s the simplex machine…which is a simple machine, but they’re big. They are not little tiny things like a typewriter. Very big, and they've got a lot of mechanism inside them because they are doing lots of things. And there’s the duplex machine, which is two big machines.

One there and one there. Duplex. That means that if you're on a duplex machine, say I’m connected to Melbourne, I’m on the Melbourne machine, I'm connected to Melbourne, well, everything I type is going through to Melbourne. Everything. I don’t have to wait for someone to come through with me together. It’s going through all the time. The other one’s coming in all the time. Incoming machine. They call them duplex machines. The girl that’s operating on the other end is coming through.

And this one’s going out to Melbourne. So both operators are going without any hesitation or any stop or anything. Even the machine…The Melbourne machine was so busy, because in the air force, Melbourne was headquarters. Melbourne Headquarters had more traffic than all the other machines did. The thing is, you’d be so busy that there was so much traffic from Melbourne that girls would go and make tapes from them, on a tape machine, and put them on tape.

Put them on an ordinary tape, to help you, while you had a rest or something they’d put the tape through, let the tape run through with the message still going through, as if you were typing it, but it was going through on a tape. It would go through to Melbourne like that. And the other girl would be doing the same thing. She’d be getting help from other people, too, and hers would coming through. And it gave you, the operator, a chance to get off, while the others put them through on the tapes. Then they had this simplex machine. For instance, you might be connected to any of the stations that we were connected to,

wherever they were, Brisbane or something like that. The same thing with Brisbane. We had a duplex machine to Brisbane. They had traffic coming in and out. But the other stations we had, we had a station to Wagga, and say for instance, Wagga was simplex. That meant that she had one machine down there and we had one machine up here. And then say we might have ten minutes each. Unless we had an important message, like an emergency or something, to send,

or an aircraft arrival or departure, they always took precedence over other messages. It could be freight, it could be accommodation, it could be anything coming through. On those machines, you might have ten messages at a time. She’d send her ten and you’d send your ten. And you’d just put your initial at the bottom of it and the time. It was always British Greenwich time that you had, everybody did the same time, it was always the Big Ben time.

And then, sometimes, you could have a talk with them, if you weren't busy, she'd say, “What’s it like up there in Sydney tonight?” And you got to know the girls. You didn’t know them personally, but you got to know them by their initials. You got to know who you were on with. You were generally on with the same people all the time, because of the same shifts. We were the same shifts coming on and off. It was A, B, C, D, in Brisbane, A, B, C, D, here and A, B, C, D there. They had their same shifts. Except some people, where there were only very few people there

and they didn’t get as much traffic as others, they might only have one operator. I don’t know how many operators we had. Twenty-four or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, Oh, easy. And in the Signals section, you’d have more than that. You’d have your teletype operators, there would be about twenty four, you'd have your WT operators, which would be about ten, that would be twenty, and then you'd have all the signal runners, the ones that ran backwards and forwards to the machines with the signals.

They used to call them runners and when you finished your work, you put it on the side and that was sent up. And they had checkers, because everybody that sent messages, they all had to be checked. They had to be checked beside the machine. And then you had to send corrections. If anybody made a bad mistake with the machine, they were sent corrections. Sometimes it was very important. We had all these people in the office, and then we also had the phones girls coming in on the phones.

They’d be ringing up and finding out the arrivals and departures of aircraft and finding out about accommodation somewhere, or finding out about freight and all the things they did in the air force. They were all together. But the phone girls were down the bottom end, further away than us. And then it came through with the WT operators, they were all there, too. So all together, on the shifts there would be…over a hundred people.

Oh easy, easy. And I’m talking about Eastern Area Headquarters now, which was very big, and it would have been bigger in Melbourne, because they were the headquarters in Melbourne. We were just the Eastern Area Headquarters. On the stations and that, where they had Signals, it would be different, because they were smaller. On the stations, where they were set up for signals and that, was different to the big station we were at.

They were straight forward. Anybody that was in code…They were cipher messages, and they came from the cipher section, but we got them, we had to send them, we hated sending them because they were X-V-Q-W-P, and all that, it was very hard to send them. And then they had to be very correct. They used to have to be checked twice, when we sent those messages.

They’d make up the signal from cipher and cipher would give it to us. We had to just do it as it was, on the machine. We sent it out to the station. All we had to do was copy it but ti was very hard sending those ones because even though you were a touch typist, X-P-Q-W-T or something…And they were long. Long messages. Some of them were very, very long, two or three pages,

And sending it all the time was very, very hard. But they were checked. Everything we did in the air force, sending out messages was checked all the time. When there was a mistake they had to send out all the information on this one, and then they were all numbered, so that they wouldn't make any mistake. Because it was important that we didn't make any mistakes. You couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

Just the same as a typewriter.

Just the same. Except that it was bigger. The whole set up was bigger and it was electrical. They had to have a different sort of a touch with them. It wasn’t like the ordinary typewriter. I don’t know what typewriters are like now. I haven’t typed for years, but these ones were all electric. It was different to a typewriter…You had to learn to get used to it with your hand, like learning a new dance or something. Same dance, but done a different way.

Yes. Light and very sensitive. It was an electrical thing and the notes came through quickly. No power in it, no power to do it. The other way you had to do something yourself…If you were drawing a line on the other typewriter, or doing tabulated bars, you would have to have a bit of force with it, pressing it down. But no, these ones sort of did it themselves but you had to do it.

A much lighter touch all together. It wasn’t heavy or anything like that.

Well, it depended on the operators. See, some girls, no matter who they were they always had something wrong with their machine. You'd go up, “Oh, don’t have this one.” When they used to ring up, and the post people came down from the post office always looked after our machines. I don’t know whether they were attached to the air force or not, but they were always postal men.

Sometimes when I got on a machine and the girl said, “Oh, this one’s no good.” Well, I would always see for myself. We used to do that thing, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 party”. Or “The lazy dog’s party or something”. That took in every letter of the alphabet, including figures and all, when you made that sentence.

When you made that sentence, it actually touched everything on the printers, like every letter of the alphabet and the figures and everything, it touched it. So I used to do that when I got on with these funny people. And I'd start going, and sometimes I never found any fault with them at all. But some of them did. I don’t know why they did, but they would always say there was something wrong with the machine. But oh, occasionally they used to have faults with them.

Well, I don’t know what it was. The men from the post office would always come down. They were always readily handy around. They were around with their little bags of tools and things like that. I don’t know what it was. We didn’t have any complete failures, like electrical failure, but just sometimes they might be…like a static thing or something jumping around, slight static.

When you were typing it gets sort of jumbled. Not clear. I didn’t find too many machines like that, but some girls did. Like they’d say, sometimes, no matter when you see her, she’s always got a bad machine or something. Well, it was true. I found some people were always complaining about bad machines or something, and the fellow would have to come down and look at the machine and they’d have a smoke. Whether they did it purposely or not? I don’t know.

But they'd find there was nothing wrong with the machine. But some of them were like that. But occasionally you would get a faulty machine. But not very often. You see, they were being checked all the time. Those fellows were there and they were going around the machines nearly all the time. They were being well serviced.

No, no, no. I never heard anybody who had anything…The only thing is they’d give them something different to do. They’d be taken off…They’d say, "Come up with me on the table."

The sergeant would say, “So and So, you come up with me,” and she’d have to work up there. See, there was a pile of messages there to be checked. Messages all had to be checked and it was hard to do that. And if you ever passed through one, when the message went out, and it wasn’t sent through and corrected, you’d be responsible, not the operator, but the person who checked it. And they used to have to sign it, that it was checked by so and do. Anyone who just sort of thought they’d get out of work, no, they'd give them something else.

Also there was the runners. The runners would have to go by, like all the messages that were on the machines and that, and put in baskets, that were sent through, all the messages that came down, the runners would bring them down to come, and then they’d take them back up to be sent and checked. And then there was the baskets underneath, any scrap stuff, like paper…We had to do all the things ourselves. We didn’t have any extra employment for that. It was all part of our work…What you were appointed for that day. No matter how good you were at operating or what you did,

you still had to take your turn at doing all the things that had to be done. Like emptying the baskets, being a runner…Sometimes it was a long run you had to do. You had to run over to the freight section or something…You know, go for a run like that. Now, you computerize the thing and send it all over the place. We had to do it by legs. Different all together. But I do think the teletypes and that were bringing in the new system,

that came in to be the computers and that. We couldn’t put it up on the wall like they do now. You'd have to run down to the different sections, whether it was equipment, or freight, or whatever it was. There was a personnel section and an organization section. They had all these teletypes coming in from all the sections, in the air force, let alone all the arrival and departures of aircraft, and things like that, and the Madison connection with the headquarters.

It was all war things like that. It was all connected with the war in different ways. Even the postings of the people came through on it, and the accidents coming from people in Darwin, from 2 Squadron, when they got killed up there. Well, all those names would come though to us on the machines…They would come through as emergency messages and you had to take all….They had all different names, what they were, the different colours, purple and red and green, that denoted the priority of the message.

Well, it meant they got priority over all the traffic.

If we got a purple message, that was one of the top ones. You’d go for purple and red. They were the main ones. They were always to do with something that had to be done immediately. And as fast as we could.

They would take priority. All the coloured ones, they would always go priority and the others would come underneath, whatever they were.

When we were in the air force, you had to do what you were told. You never said to someone, “I’m going to do this.”

It was just the way we were trained. You went to the sergeant or corporal and she'd have a list there, and what was on the list, you would do it, whatever it was. Because I came from the country, and I had a desire of visiting places and going around and that, they used to send me out to Mascot, out on the [aero] 'drome. There was a tram that used to go on the 'drome in those days.

The tram used to go right out to Mascot. I used to work in the control tower with the operator of Civil Aviation, and he was just like there. And I was here. And he would pass me on messages as the aircraft departed or arrived, from Mascot. And he passed the messages to me, and I’d put them on the printer. I used to ring a little bell and I'd go straight through to the headquarters, Eastern Area, and they’d put me on this big machine and I’d come in….It was a big machine that had all the stations on it.

It had Fighter Sector, or something, in Newcastle, it'd have Bankstown, Mascot and all these places around. And you'd just press the button down and they all come in. They’d come in in different machines. There was a circuit that was attached to the main point in the thing. Well, I used to be out at Mascot, and whenever any departure or arrival of aircraft, it was always important, because they wanted to know what they were and what they were connected with and where they were going, and all this sort of thing.

Well, I used to get a lot of those jobs. I went over to Bankstown. I never went to Fighter Sector, because that was too far away. That was up at New Lambton, up at Newcastle.

Well, I would know if I was going out to Mascot, because I would have to know the day before, because I had to travel out there. Or if I was staying out there indefinitely they’d give you accommodation. There were huts out there on the fence of the drome at Mascot.

That’s a long time ago, of course. But Mascot was a big airdrome, even in those days in 1942. Yeah, it was.

Oh yes, civil aviation as well. Bankstown must be a big airport now, because it was big enough when I was there. But I was with some girls in a hut there and they did all sorts of things there. Like they helped with the aircraft. I've forgotten that mustering now but they used to go in and do parts of the engineering with the men.

Yes. But I was in with them. But they were the same as me. They were sent in by the air force to work on the drome. With the civil aviation, they were working with the civil aviation, but yet they belonged to the air force.

I was sent out there because…Well, a lot of the girls in the air force lived at home. We were all country girls that were stationed in.

A lot of them lived all round the area. Some of them lived at Double Bay and all that area round there, Rose Hill and…Watson’s Bay…Woollahra and that. So it was close for them to come to Eastern Area Headquarters. Some lived at Kogarah, I knew a couple of girls who lived at Kogarah, and Stanmore. They all lived at home. But we were ones from the country,

And they asked to live at home and the air force gave them their money and their money for maintenance to live at home and all that. And it was handy for them to live at home. They just had to come to work like an ordinary girl. But they ones who were in barracks like us from the country. We were young and we were treated like young people. We were looked after well, and these people who were in charge of us, they had that lovely devotion to us and they did come round at night

and ask if there were any problems and things like that. We were treated very well, and we had no problems with our food. We were given very good food. The only thing was we got a baked dinner every day, and we said, “When we go home we’re not going to have any baked dinner when we get home.” I never ate it for years. But we had baked dinner every day. There was nothing wrong with it. It was lovely, too. You were hungry and you ate it, but it was always the same thing. We always had lovely potatoes and peas and beans and roast beef or something, three pieces of roast beef.

And you often had peaches and cream or something like that, or some sort of fruit with cream on it. And every morning we had bacon and eggs. Every morning you had that for breakfast. You had the same thing for breakfast and the same thing for dinner, but you had a different sort of tea, salad or something. Tea-time was always a bit different.

No, it didn’t work like that at all.

That's why we did our rookies course. When you were on your rookies course, you were trained to do what they wanted you to do. See, it was wartime, and we were all sorts of different girls, different people, and we had all sorts of different mustering and things like that. What they wanted in the air force was what they wanted you to do, and they wanted you to do it at the time, and you did it. But mind you, I never saw anybody leave. We knew we had to do that. See, don't forget, when you’re young, you fall in with things very well.

We fell in with the thing. It didn’t worry us. And another thing…we could all do it. We could all do the same thing. It wasn’t as if one person was better than you. It was nothing like that at all, because you were all equal. Some people might be better operators than others. Some of the signals that you got written out had terrible spelling and you’d be able to correct them yourself, and put in the letters and capital letters and commencement of sentences and punctuation and all that. You could do that.

But some people would just copy it out as it was, but then it would have to go back for correction. Not unless it was something that was bad grammar or something, but something that was misplaced or misspelt in such a way that it gave a different meaning to the thing, that would all be corrected. But as regards to the girls and that, no. we’d just say, “What machine are you on today?” And you'd just go and get on it.

If some girl got sick or tired or something, and she wasn't able to…Especially if the machines were terribly busy, because they just kept going all the time, all day long you’d be going with it, and they'd just say they wanted a break, and they would, they'd get a break. And they’d send somebody else down on a quieter machine, and they'd say, "Well, you go up there on Amberley," or whatever it is, "and sit on there. But every machine had an operator. They had to have an operator there because things were coming through. Even if they weren’t coming through all the time, they’d be coming through, you know, every three or four minutes or so,

one after another…never stopping, that was the thing, that's what happened on the big machines in those days. Especially the Melbourne and Brisbane Circuits. They were very busy. Sydney Melbourne and Melbourne Sydney.

Oh well, I used to relieve…I told you I relieved down at Wagga, and I relieved at Bankstown, and I relieved at Mascot. I think the exciting

trip was the time I was working upstairs in the civil aviation at Mascot in a control tower. And the fellow said, "Look, I’ll give you a couple of minutes if you want to do something." And I said “Yes,” And he said, “Go downstairs and see what’s happening downstairs.” And I ran down stairs and there was Bob Hope, back in 1942. They’d had a mishap or something somewhere in the Islands and he was brought over to Australia.

He had Lenny Ross and Jerry Cololo and Francis Langford and some other woman, I’ve forgotten…a blonde haired lady. Carol Landis. And they were all entertaining members, and they came to entertain the Americans troops in Australia, but we were free to go to their concerts. And I remember he was there at the time, and I was young and I got a surprise when I saw Bob Hope because he looked terrible. He had been in an accident or something and

his clothes were all over the place…I was surprised because he was never young, even then, he didn't look to be young to me. But he gave me his signature and like me, I’ve lost it. It would have been famous now if I’d had his signature back from 1940 whatever it was.

Oh, he spoke to everybody. He was very nice. He said he was happy to be safe and having landed in Australia. They struck some type of trouble. They were shot down or something in one of the islands,

or something happened to him. It was a bad storm or something. But they were a group. Lenny Ross was with them, too. He used to sing that song, Thanks a Million. Have you ever heard that? Well, he made that song famous. He was a very popular singer. Like Bing Crosby, a crooner and all that sort of thing. Bob Hope was with that group, and they were a bunch of entertainers who entertained the Americans and all that sort of thing.

They had just come in from…They were picked up in the Islands somewhere where they had a bad storm. And I don’t know whether anything happened to the aircraft, but they were brought into Mascot. Rescued, yes. They looked like it, too. They looked terrible. They were all swept out, with their clothes all over the place. They came in…Anyway, luckily he was alive. He only just died the other day.

He was 103.

I did, as soon as I got home. But I was in a control tower there. But the man was... I couldn’t stay very long because no one could do the work that I did, I had to be there when their aircraft went off there. And he just gave me a piece of paper and wrote it up with his hands. And I just put it on the type, and it would go through the big machines and it would go round all the places they sent, you know, so they keep a knowledge of what was happening in the air,

and what was in the sky and all this business. Oh yes, it was very exciting. It was a very exciting place. Mascot was, out the drome in those days. I think the old control tower is still there. They haven’t moved it. It’s still there in the old building the old place, the old place.

No, I never went up in any of the planes and that. No. I liked

planes in connection with…because I was working with Australian National Airlines after the war years, and I was working and I saw all the planes. And in those days, too, we got free air travel on our holidays. In those days, when we went on holidays it was free. Now they’ve got a big concession, but it isn’t free, because they’ve got many more people on the staff now. I was there when Ansett took over, Ansett ANA [Australian National Airlines], and they moved to Phillip Street in Sydney,

and then from Phillip Street they moved to Oxford Street where they are now, I think they're in Oxford Street, now.

It was mainly control then. The civil aviation was in the control tower and they controlled that.

The other things now with the Americans coming in, and with all the Dutch people and that and our own planes…I think it was more or less fully governed then by the forces. All the forces together. But the control tower was still controlled by civil aviation. They were still the same, and they kept that position, because they were the only ones that could work it.

And with the lights and everything like that. I think all that remained the same. The civil people looked after all that lighting, and the planes and the way they're lit up and the way they're lit up, and it comes on, in the control tower and all that. That would have been still maintained by them. It was not on the air force, it was all the forces. They all had something to do with the air force, even thought we had the air force, the army and the navy, all the different ones

had their own means of transportation. Like their own planes that went out with their people on them. So there was a touch of all the forces in there together.

Well, where I was, there was a little glass section where he was. It was glassed between. And he would pass me

out what I had to send, a message, and I didn’t talk to them very much, no. And I didn't talk to them very much….Well, you couldn’t, because they were busy all the time, especially in wartime. They were busy on the phones and speaking and giving orders and that. And I was busy myself, so it wasn’t anything like that. I knew the people I was working with, but I didn’t have much conversation with them. And besides,

I lived with the air force in the barracks and they went home to their homes. They were married people and things like that. They weren't young fellows.

Oh, yes. I was the only one there. When I went to the dromes like that. Even when I went down to Canberra, they only had one operator anyway. They only had one operator, because they used to close at night. We were open all the time, and Canberra closed at night, so they just had the one operator.

And if any of them went for leave down there, one of us would go down and relieve for three weeks holiday or whatever they had. They were only civil people. They weren’t in the air force at all. But I’d go down and relieve down there. I used to live at Mascot.

Big sheets of paper. Like the computer comes out now.

No. It was clean. About that width, and it was just these big rolls in the machine, Just like great big roles coming through. There was no code or anything on them. It was just plain, about that wide, coming through like that.

No. Just rolling out. We never set our own papers in. They were all done by the post office man and the clerks and that. They were very busy.

They were massive things. That’s why the machines were so big. And we had tapes. The tapes had to be changed, they used to get white looking, like a typewriter. But they were great big machines.

Yes, big print, not little tiny print, quite a big print.

Of course I haven’t see the modern ones. I haven’t seen the modern ones. I don’t know what they are like now. I suppose they would be still the same. I don’t know. I've never been into the air force place to have a look. But they still have them. Qantas, they'd have the same thing in the signals section. Unless they’ve got another means of sending them…I don’t know.

Probably. They would probably be light. These were very heavy case machines,

a bit like steel or something. Like the old television. You know the old televisions were steel, weren’t they. They are very heavy things. I’m not sure. I never lifted one.

I don’t know...

I think I could type quite a few when I was young. I think as high as you could go, but with these ones, it was one thing you couldn’t do. You couldn’t operate

them like an ordinary typewriter. They had a rhythm with them and you had to sort of get into the rhythm. You worked with them, not they work with you. You couldn’t. You never saw anyone travelling terribly fast on them, because they weren’t made to do it. They had a certain rhythm…I was quite fast, but not like a typewriter where you could get on and go for your life. You had to work with the machine. I don't know what they're like now.

They might be all together different. But you couldn’t get on and go like this all over the place and type quickly. You know, really quickly, or whatever it was you typed. You had to sort of like a musical thing….You had to take your time with it. It wasn’t slow. You could go fast on it, but only a certain fastness, it wouldn't be like an ordinary machine, ordinary teletypes, no. I suppose the

mechanism of it was different. It was heavier.

You never thought about it. The thing is, though, our seats were made to order for the teletypes and that. They were special comfortable sort of seats that you could sit back in.

They weren’t the sort of seat that you just lie around and fall asleep in. They were made straight at the back, so that you could sit up straight and operate like that. It was in close to you. Everything was done as best they could. I don’t know of anyone who had any troubles with them. I never knew of anyone who fell asleep on the machine. Because you couldn't, if you were busy, you can’t fall asleep. If you’re busy doing something, it’s impossible, isn't it? To fall asleep on something…

No, we never had adjustable seats in those days. Although, they had special seats for operators. They were special seats that we had. You couldn’t adjust them though. Not that I know of…I never adjusted one, but we were all the same height and that. They were special seats for the Signals work. When you went into the Signals, you could see that they had little pads sort of here,

and something here at the back. None of us got any back trouble, anyway, so they must have been good. They were pretty high seats. They weren't low

No, not RSI. We had never heard of it. I think that’s a lot of nonsense, that. We were too young to get it. When you are young, you can move your hands and that, you know.

You don't have arthritis or nothing. When you are older you probably get more stuff like that. But you don’t hear about it so much now.

I just think someone made a bit of money out of it. Don’t you?

Well when I was very young and that…

the people of Australia, I don't think they minded. The trouble was the Australian diggers [soldiers] our boys, they didn’t like the Americans, because they had plenty of money, see, and our fellows didn’t. Like, you’d go down to Manly to get on the boat and the Americans would put their hands in their pockets…And all these big pennies we had, you see, it was different sort of money then. And they’d just throw them all off into the ocean.

And there used to be youngsters there. at the ferries. Going over to Manly and they were warned, the youngsters, that there were lots of sharks in Sydney Harbour, but they didn't seem to care. When the Americans were on the boat, they’d all come out and wait. They threw out all these pennies, and these young kids would go and get them and use all the bits of money. Especially the pennies, they didn’t like the big pennies, because the American money is very small and they thought

Australian money was just a waste of time in your pocket, so they threw that out. All these young boys. But I never heard of anyone being taken by the sharks down at Circular Quay. The kids would be down there, getting all this money. The Australian boys didn’t like that. They said, "Yes, they can do all that because they’ve got that much money." But didn't like it because they took over their girls. Whether they really did or not, I wouldn’t know, but they took over their girls.

Oh well, it’s only natural, isn’t it? When there are all the different nationalities of all the different countries of the world are in Australia. Look at this girl now. She’s married a prince or something, hasn’t she [reference to Mary Donaldson, a Tasmanian who married the Prince of Denmark]?

Oh. She looks like a nice girl, doesn’t she?

Oh well, they just said the fellows were jealous. They didn’t give two hoots.

They just said, “Too bad for them.” No, they didn’t care. Lots of Australian girls did marry Americans. But the only ones that got married were the officers. If you were an officer, you could get married, you had permission. But if you were marrying a GI [General Issue – solider], you'd never get married to them, I don't think, because they said they destroyed all the mail. When they went, anybody who had any correspondence going with GIs, their mail was destroyed.

Oh well, they couldn’t put up with it in America. All these thousands of Australian girls going over there to get married. They had their own girls to marry them over in America. It was a well-known thing. Yes, that was a well-known thing that when the GIs went back to America, I don't think they were allowed to send any letters themselves, either. But they tried to cut out the correspondence. You can’t blame them, because lots of girls thought they were going to get married and go over to America.

But a lot of them never heard from the boys any more.

Oh, it’s very sad, but it’s part of whatever it is over there. They had their own girls, and they were wanting to get married, too, the American girls, so it was better for them to have their own boys. Come back from the war, they weren't encouraging anybody else. But if they were officers, they were allowed to correspond. If they were officers. But if you weren’t an officer, definitely, no…

Oh, yes.

Well, I had a couple of friends that married American boys. One girl came from Albury, Peggy Cameron. I haven’t seen her for years now, but she married an American boy. She was a very nice girl, but her marriage didn’t last very long.

Ye. She married him here. She was only two of them in the family, was she and her brother. Ross Cameron and Peggy.

And I don’t know what happened to them, but I think that they separated or something. Lots of the people that I knew that married Americans, they've nearly all broken up. The Australians were not subject to the cold winters. America is very cold and a lot of them couldn’t take the cold and they wanted their husbands to come out to Australia, but they wouldn’t come, because they

had work or something over there. But that was another thing, too, and we see ourselves how Americans freeze to death there. They just go round the streets and pick them up, and they're frozen on the streets, poor old things, homeless. It’s really freezing - thirty degrees below zero. It's terrible, isn't it? We can’t imagine it, can we?

No.

No, I don’t think so. You could marry an officer. All the girls who got married here were officers. The reason why I’m telling you this is because I know a girl at Westgate, where I play golf, and her sister married an American during the war years. And I said to her, “How did she do that?” And she said, “Oh he was an officer.” She told me about that. And I know myself I had a friend…This locket that I’ve got on…This locket.

…He was a boy, I only just met him the last year I was in Brisbane. His name was Bob Huber, and there was nothing between us, but he was just a nice friend and I took him down to Casino where I lived a couple of times, and he would get special permission to go down there. It was a big fuss just to go down to Casino, it was only the first stop on the train, but that’s what it was like. He was only a GI. Anyway, a couple of times he came down to see my parents, and my sisters.

And before he went away he asked me if there was anything I’d like, and I said I’d like a heart locket. They were very popular in those days. And he said, “I’ll get you one. Do you mind if I put my picture in it?” I said, “Oh, no, put what you like in it.” But he was a nice friend. There was no…Nothing about marriage or anything in it. He told me he came from Buffalo, New York. But anyway when he went away,

he gave this locket. He couldn’t get the heart one because they weren’t available. This is a shield. It's got it on that, you see, from 1945. The year's 1945 and he did put his picture in it. I took the picture out, and I put a picture of the Lord Jesus and one of Our Lady in each side. I think his picture might be at the back of it. But the thing is, what I was going to say was, he went away and he left me his address to write to him,

but he went away and I never heard from him. And seeing I never heard from him, I didn’t write back. I thought, 'I’m not going to write back if he hasn’t written to me.' But I was talking to this girl about her sister, and I said, “That’s strange, your sister being able to get married in Australia.” And she said, “All the officers, they could get some permission to do things like that." But she said, "The GIs, they weren’t even allowed to write letters.” And I thought to myself

well, that was the reason probably why I never heard from him. She said that she knew herself, all the letters, thousands and thousands and thousands of letters were just destroyed. They never even left Australia. They had the address on them. I never wrote to him anyway, so I was lucky, I saved my stamp money. But she said the Americans didn’t want them. And you can understand it. There were hundreds and hundreds of girls that had been keeping company with Americans. I don’t know whether they thought they were going to marry them or what.

But there was no communication. Both ways, the letters were destroyed. And she told me that, and her husband was an officer. And he was a high-ranking officer. He wasn’t just a PO, or whatever they call them in America. So I believe that. I can understand now. I’ve been over to America, anyway. And I thought to myself, 'It’s just as well I never kept up, because I wouldn’t have liked to live in America.' It’s cold over there.

Our conditions are better in Australia than America. They have to work hard there, and they don’t get a lot of money. When you go on trips to America. or even over to Europe, they charge you so much a day for the bus driver and all that. When you go over now, Australian people refused to pay it. They ask you for so much a day, and you've got to pay so much at the end of the journey to them. So now all these people involved in these trips

take the money out before you start, so you can’t refuse to give it. And I know that, because I’ve been involved in it myself. Especially when there's three of you in the family, like my mother, my husband and me, and you had to pay a dollar a day, it was a lot of money. And the reason why they did that was they said they didn’t get much money. Everywhere you went overseas…This Belgium fellow was driving our bus, and the same thing in America. They don’t get much. They said they only get half their pay

but they rely on what people give them.

He was Huber. His people were German.

I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. I never asked him that much about his private life. I should have, I suppose, but….it wasn’t that much about marriage. He was just a friend.

But being as a friend as he was, and coming down to see my family…He was good to my father. At that point in time, my Dad smoked and he bought him all these cigarettes. All the Dutch people, that my sisters went out with, the Dutch boys, they brought him cigarettes, too, so he had so many cigarettes. No wonder he died young, he smoked too much, you see. And this boy, he was just a nice friend, and he used to come and meet me after work, when I had finished my duty,

And we’d go to the pictures, or go we'd go out somewhere, or go with a group of people or something like that. But there was nothing else in it. But I just got a shock when I never got a letter from him. Not that I was thinking that much about him, but I was disappointed when I didn’t get a letter, because I couldn’t understand how I didn't get it. But when I heard about the story, only just recently I might say, I heard about this business, that the girl told me that was true…Well, probably, that was it.

Well, he told me it was on the border of New York. The Hudson, that’s the line, the border, going into Canada. I’ve seen it now. I saw Buffalo. And I went through the Rockies.

It was interesting to hear about the history of the country, and where he was, and he lived in the state of New York. Buffalo is in New York. It is on the border where the Hudson River is. It was. Well, everybody was interested. Lots of Australian girls had jumpers with the stars and stripes in those days.

Well, they knitted them themselves. The boys didn’t like it. The Australian boys didn’t care much for the Americans at all, because they said they were robbing too many of their girls.

But a lot of the marriages, the girls that married Americans, didn't last. I know they didn't last. But a lot of them did, of course they did.

No. My life was very enclosed. See, I lived with the…And always where I went was for women. There were two hundred and fifty women, or something, at Eastern Area Headquarters. I was with women and then I went to Brisbane, Brisbane WT,

and that was with women all the time. Just at the end of the war, before I went home, we went to Victoria Park in Brisbane, and we were in huts. We spent the last twelve months, or something, in the huts and I’ve got a picture there of the huts, that you can see. We went out there and lived on the…At the back of it was the golf course. And at the back of that, the Americans had moved out into huts, too, because they had come from some other place in Brisbane where there was a big school. They took over some big school.

I don’t know which school now. I can’t think of it now. It was getting near the end of the war, you see.

I never saw any fights, or anything like that, but I wasn’t really in the city that much. I would go in the city on our days off, when we had them. But I was going with friends and we were going somewhere or doing something. We actually weren’t hanging round the streets at night. We had to be home at certain time.

I had to be home. We had leave passes. We were very much covered by everything. When I was young, it was just like a big shelter over your head where I was, you know. Not in a prison, you wouldn't say it was a prison, because it wasn’t. But I had to have a leave pass, I couldn’t go out without my leave pass signed. Even but if you just went down the street to buy yourself something, or other down at Double Bay, you couldn’t walk out without having your leave pass, so they know where you were

all the time. And you got used to living in an environment like that and it didn’t trouble you. But I never saw any fights or anything like that. I never saw anything. They talk about all the things that happened in the streets. In Melbourne, I think there was a murder or something down here, in those particular years. We never even heard about that because they didn’t make it public. You only hear about that when you talk to someone who was living at the time. There was somebody that was murdering people. But no, we didn't hear about it all.

As I said, all we heard were the good things, and we did the good things and we enjoyed ourselves.

Yes. I was in Oxford Street then because they didn’t have any accommodation for us.

That was the…the Christian, what do you call it? YWCA.

I was training then to be a teletype operator.

Yes. I was in the training group.

Well, they were different machines, see. You had to learn to cope with the machines and we had to be working in couples, sometimes, when you were on the duplex machine. You had to learn to take your turn on the operating…You know your operating, like I think it was ten for ten, or something like that. Then you had to learn about the machine

that took in all the other stations on a panel thing like that coming in. Sometimes they were coming in on about three machines here, and a lot of them would have to wait a while. Unless they were emergencies coming through, the others would say, "Just hold on." Because there mightn't be enough machines to take every one of them coming through at once. We’d have to learn to do that. How to operate this machine.

Like it had Mascot on it, and One Fighter Sector, Two Fighter Sector, Mount Ambley. All these different ones that were on this machine. There was quite a few of them. I can’t remember all the stations now. But as the bell came upon them, they had the machine…because they had communication. Well, you had to learn to operate all of those. Then you had learn, also, correcting the signals. You had to be taught to go through and correct the signals and what to do and how to send out the signal

that was to be sent, as a connection. There was all sorts of different things in connection with it. You were just like some of the signal clerks. If you were working and it was very busy, you could be sent out to be a runner, a runner for the day. And when you were a runner, you’d have to keep going until pick up every message that comes through on the machine. Even though you’ve got it on a tray, you’d have to take it down and put it in an orderly fashion,

from where it has come from, for the sergeant and the corporal to check up the top. That had to be done in sort of alphabetical order. They wouldn’t be lumped there all together. It was all the different work in connection with it. There was a lot of other work, besides operating the machines. We could all operate the machines alright, because we were typists. But it was a different manner, too, that you had to operate the machine. I told you, it had a rhythm and you had to work with the rhythm of the machine. The other ones, you can make them go fast or slow.

You see some people going like that, and some people going like this. Well on the teletypes, well, in those days…I don't know what they are like now, I haven’t seen them, and the teleprinters, they are working in an electrical way and they've got a special little dancing thing with them and you have got to operate with it. Sort of swing with it. It was like a swinging thing. But all the other things on the machine were the same. I think it was automatic, that one,

It flew back itself. They flew back on the next line. But there were all sorts of things to learn in connection with the work.

It was like a rhythm.

Oh I don’t know. I never tried to sing any song with it. But they were different. If you’ve ever tried them yourself,

go and see. I think they’ve still got teletypes everywhere, all over the place. P & O [shipping line] have got them. Pacific and Orient line. I know, because a girl was telling me the other day that her girl works there, on one of the teletypes. It's the same, but different. It's electrical, too, electrical has come in. But you can get electrical typewriters too. I haven’t seen those, but I believe you can get them. It's different operating. I can’t explain it. You’d have to do it yourself.

But you can go fast on them, but only as fast as the machine will go. They won’t go really quickly, like other machines. They've got a limit to their speed, yeah.

Oh, it was still the same, I think, Oxford Street in Sydney. Going up to Darlinghurst. You go up Darlinghurst….In those days they had Mark Foys, that was a great big shop there, and they had Snows, that was a great big shop. Now it’s got a lot of restaurants and things like that there.

A bit like Swanston Street at the end of Melbourne, you know, going down to Flinders Street Station. The main street going down there. They closed it off a couple of years ago as a …

Not the Bourke Street Mall. The other one with the trams going out to

St Kilda Road? That street.

Yes, Swanston Street. It's something like….You know how Swanston Street has got lots of Greek restaurants? Well, something like that.

Well, Oxford Street in Sydney has always been very popular because it has been the road to the markets. It used to be. Paddy's Market has gone now. But you'd go straight down

Oxford Street, straight down, cut through the streets there and get into Paddy’s Market down Broadway. Hyde Park’s just opposite there. Oh no, it's not. It's further along. But in those days, it was connected to the railway. The railway trams came down that way and Darlinghurst…That’s another place in Oxford Street, Darlinghurst.

There's all churches and things there and also Moore Park and Flemington.

Well, it's always been a cheap area. I don’t know what it’s like now, but Oxford Street has always been…You could go to the Markets, Paddy’s Markets, down at Broadway, and coming home you would find the tomatoes cheaper, in Oxford Street than they were in the market. I used to find that.

It was one of those where they had lots of little fellows out in the street selling fruit and that. Reasonably reasonable things. And you could get your bargains on Oxford Street. All the shops like Snows was a big shop, and Mark Foys, that was a nice big shop. But it was cheaper than the other shops in the city, like David Jones, or Farmers, I think was in the city in those days. It wasn’t as it is now, Myers. It was Farmers.

Oh, I love Sydney.

I loved it. The same as I love Melbourne. I like the cities. I like cities because they are nice and bright, you know. I like going to the races at Melbourne Cup time, or in Sydney at Caulfield Cup. I don’t mind going to the casino either. You waste your money a lot of the time, but there are lots of people around. And I like Sydney. And also, another thing, with

Oxford Street I noticed a lot of processions and they used to go through there and out down Anzac Parade, down that way, along past the cricket ground in Sydney. And when we were young we’d go and see all these marches. I remember one time we went to see this big march…I've forgotten what it was now. But it was a big march, and it was celebrating something big. About the Queen, I think. But I remember the life savers, they were marching along, and they didn’t have anything on their feet, and the day was extremely hot and

all the tar on the road was melting. And the poor boys, they were all screaming out for help. And we passed some paper to them. And that, they were allowed wear shoes. After that time they said never again would lifesavers march barefooted, on the roads, unless they had something on their feet. But that happened years and years ago. But it was along Oxford Street it came. You said about Oxford Street, and down to Anzac Parade. It all sort of comes into one place there.

Well, I suppose it might have been before the war, because I was young when I saw it. Some big procession in connection with the Queen and something they did. I don’t know what it was. But my sister would know. She knows all about historical events. But yes, it would have been before the war. That’s for sure, it was.

They had trams in those days. I think we paid a penny. We didn’t get free transport, but you could go out as far as you liked, to the terminals, with a penny. It wasn’t too bad. Well I liked it, because I wasn’t used to it, to a certain degree. And we all went out together. I didn’t go by myself. I went with a group of girls. I had my friends.

My friend, there Jean Lavin. And I got terribly fat when I was on my rookies, so I was very plump while I was in the forces. No, I enjoyed the city. I loved going to the shows. I went to the Tivoli in Sydney. I went to a lot of the ballets and that. I went to all these things myself, with groups of girls.

Oh, yes. That’s how we got most of the things. In those days, we were given tickets. Even the American forces or the army would ring up Eastern Area Headquarters and say, "Can you give us two or three girls, or half a dozen, or a dozen girls?" And they'd give us the transport. They'd pick the transport up and we’d go out with these friends, but we’d never see them again. They were just probably out of hospital and here for a night, or something.

They’d always ring up the forces and we’d meet the boys like that. Some of the girls wrote letters to the different boys they’d met, but it was only done on friendship. But we had lots of things given to us like that. You’d just have to go down to the board. And they’d be up there on the board, for you to go somewhere.

Oh, plays. We would see plays. I think it was Gladys Moncrieff in Rio Rita…We saw that.

Lots of plays and that. Yes. We used to get a lot of things like that in the air force. Some people wanted to take us on a boat on Sydney Harbour. They owned yachts and things like that, and they’d ask the girls if we’d like to make a group up, and they’d take us out for the day. I remember going out this day on Sydney Harbour, and it was lovely on this lovely yacht. The gentleman owned it, and he had his brother, or somebody with him, and we had lettuce,

and he put it in the salt water. He said, "You don’t need any salt here." And he cleaned it all up in the salt water and put the tomato on the salad. Gosh, it was lovely. And he put some ham with it, and he rolled it into this wet lettuce with the salt on it, and we had it in a bread roll. Oh, yes, we had lots of outings like that. Especially when we said we came from the country, because that’s what they wanted, country girls. But there was nothing ever in it.

They were just outings that we received like that, they were free. We had lots of outings like that. The air force gave permission for that. We didn’t pick our own. It was always picked for us.

Yeah. The services was good, because with a bunch of people, there is always someone that you can get along with. If anyone was a bit funny, they'd just discard them. There was no worry.

If you didn’t get on with someone, or they didn’t like something, you didn’t care. You’d go and find someone you did. There was so many, so many. There might have been old grumps around, but they never worried me, and all my friends didn't give two hoots about what they thought. As long as we went along the right way and you did what you had to do and came home at the right time, and had your leave pass signed, all the rest of it, it was a great life. And we liked our work, it was hard work, though.

It wasn’t easy work. What we did was hard. It was really busy all the time, we were very busy on the machines. So we enjoyed ourselves when we went out, and we had a good time.

Well, I had a friend that I always went out with, because she lived at Stanmore.

And why she was my friend was because she'd take me home sometimes, I'd get permission to go home with her, because she lived in Stanmore, and her sister was training to be a nurse, the same as one of my sisters was training to be a nurse at the hospital or something. So I used to see June quite a bit like that. I’ve got the pictures of her here but she only lived till she was forty-one. She got fond of the drink or something like that, her mother told me, and she was living by herself. She was working on

the Pacific and Orient line, as a teletype printer. Instead of coming home and cooking her tea, she used to come home and…Her mother said she didn't even know, she’d come home and have a little drink of wine or something. And after a while, she'd have more than just a little drink. And in the end, I think it came, she’d have a bottle full, or something. And she died when she was only forty-one. But her mother didn’t even know. Nobody knew about it. None of her other sisters knew. I got a surprise

when I heard, because we never had any drink at all. I said, "Well, it didn't come from the air force, because we never had anything to drink." Never, I can never remember….Jean and I, except when we were invited out with these people, and they had drink on the table. That’s where I learned to drink rum and Coke. They always had rum and Coke in those days. Especially the Americans. They would have rum and Coke, and you'd get a little bit of rum, but you'd never ever be drunk off it. I don't think you can get drunk off rum and Coke, anyway. They put more coke in it than rum.

You get a little bit of rum this big, don't you, in a rum and Coke.

She was one of my close friends. The two of us together. She liked doing the things I did, and she lived in Stanmore, that was right in the city, Stanmore was. And her mother used to work at Farmers. Her mother and father were separated, but her mother worked at Farmers, and we would go to Farmers shop. She was in the shoe department,

And we would go and see her mother every time we'd go into town, and her mother would take us out to dinner, go out and have dinner and that. She was very kind to me, the mother. And her mother was a wonderful pianist. She’d play all these old numbers, the old time, the First World War and Second World War numbers, and we had nice music on. Everywhere you went, years ago…There wasn't television around, or anything like that, but everyone was musical. Everyone had pianolas. You know, pianolas where you could pedal away and enjoy yourself with those.

Or you’d get together and tell tales, and tell different jokes about things. It was always entertaining. When you went to afternoon tea, it wasn't just sitting down and eating your biscuit, and going off. Everybody was talking about something. It was like a picture, of people. They all had something to say, they all did something interesting. And you know they'd have you laughing, and it was better than going to the movies, really. People were like that.

But now, people are so involved in work. The poor things, when you get to talk to them, a lot of them are tired, aren’t they? They're weary, because of the hard work they do. They don’t see as much as what you used to see. It doesn’t appeal to them as much, or something, but they get very tired. But it's different. I know next door there’s…I don’t know how many people live in the flats next door, but I barely know any of them. There's one girl I know, a Chinese girl. She’s just on the end, and she’s got three little babies.

I know her, because she’s home all the time with the babies, and she comes in to see me, and I go and see her. We are friends like that. But otherwise, everyone’s very busy in there. They go away in their cars. early in the morning I hear them go away….

Well see, there was more social. Life was more social. See, now people have got televisions, and when you go to see someone, sometime now,

they're in the middle of watching their serial. I’ve come to see people plenty of times. "Oh, this is my special serial.” I was surprised just recently, and I went to see a friend, and she said to me, “Do you like this program?” And I had to say yes, because I didn't know what it was. But I went to see her and the whole time she sat there and enjoyed this thing. And I thought, 'It's time for me to go home now.' So I couldn't really speak to her. I couldn't talk to her about

anything about our old times. And this is the sister-in-law I’m talking about, by marriage. Mary O’Brian, that just was…She's a nun, but she's retired. She is doing work in the parishes now. She is doing work in the parishes. She went up to the abbey at Ballarat, and stayed up there with the nuns, and the other members of her family, sisters and that, stayed here with us. Mary, then she came

back for a couple of day and she was talking about the nun. I thought I’d have a nice little spiritual talk with her but no way. When she came in here she sat down and she got that program. Well if you’ve ever seen anyone as interested in the TV as she was. I said to Shelly, “I’m so surprised because she is a nun.” Well I don’t know what this program is they watch. It’s a serial or something…It’s English and there are these two programs they watch and they think it is marvellous.

So she was here and these two serials were on and I came in and said to Mary about all her life and what she was doing. And she said, "Don’t talk to me." And then she told me about the serial. She knew everybody’s mother and father in it, all the marriages. She said to me, "So and so so and so, is this that and the other." I was so surprised. I thought, 'Good gracious.' She was so interested in watching it. But that's what people are like now, see.

They are so involved in the things that they watch on the TV, which is good really, I suppose, but it’s very hard to have a conversation with them.

We never had any radios going. We never had any radios going. No one had a radio in those days. They didn’t have transistors. We didn’t have any transistors or things like that. You could get a radio,

a great big thing, carry it around, but you couldn’t carry it around. You wouldn't be able to walk around, they were too heavy.

Oh, I wasn’t a movie fan during the air force because I couldn’t go to them. Only when I got permission. I got away from it, because you couldn’t go out any night. Say the movie was on Monday night, well that would be Panic Night or something. You couldn’t go out like that all the time.

And then you’d be on night duty all the time, for a week. You had a week of each shift. You just didn’t do it, you didn't go out like that. You went out in groups like that. I just didn’t see many movies during the war.

Well, I saw the newsreels when I went to the movies, and there were little places in Sydney that just showed newsreels.

You’d go down into a little area, in Sydney, and it would be just this little place, you know. Like the little theatres are now. The theatres years ago were very big theatres. And as I said they would be full of people. There was standing room only. There would be hardly any room to get to the pictures on Saturday night. But these little new reels, you could go into Sydney for the day, and you could say to your friend, "Oh, I'm a bit tired in my legs." And you’d go in there and all it would show was newsreels.

Oh very popular, and they were a resting place. Some people would go and have a snore in there, thinking, 'Oh, this is a place to rest my legs,' and I'd go in there and…snooorrre. This is true. It was. And we missed them. When they went, we missed them, they cut them out altogether. They’d just be everywhere, and you'd just have newsreels all the time. You see, people see the news now, so they don't go and see the newsreels. They've got it on their telly.

Well, that was the only means I had, because we didn’t have any radios in the place, when we were young. No one had a television, or even a wireless. We didn’t have them. I don’t think there were transistors around then.

Oh yes, we got the paper every day. We got a lot of papers. They delivered lots of papers for us. There would be about a dozen papers. The early bird got the papers. If you got up early, but they were supposed to leave them there for everyone to see.

But we had the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sunday Sun [newspapers] or whatever it was. They gave you the papers. It was just in the rooms where you would go in and have a rest or something like that. Oh yes, we had all those sort of things.

Well, we knew what was going on in the rest of the world, more or less, by the Signals that we had.

Sometimes just watching them coming in. We often saw if somebody’s boyfriend was missing presumed dead, or something. Well, they didn’t say it like that, but they were missing. We could see the names coming up lots of times. You didn't like to say anything but you'd see them come through on the signals. Everything had to come through down in Melbourne, and we’d be on the Sydney machine.

You'd see all these things. So we knew how things were going. We knew, somehow, that we were going to win the war. It was a secret sort of thing, but we weren’t in the secret section. We weren’t in the secret ones. What we talked about was what we could see, and we could talk about it, it wasn't really secret, what we had. But it didn’t affect us very much, somehow or other. Some of the girls, towards the end of the war, were looking forward to getting out, some of them were, because it was a long time being in the forces,

and being subject to the way we were. But we were all very happy people. I never saw anyone suffer from sickness. I did get the measles when I was in Eastern Area Headquarters, and I was terribly disappointed, because I thought I wouldn’t be able to work any more. And I was sent down to sick bay and I was down there by myself. They had plenty of nurses and all that. You had plenty of attention, and you were cared for. They cared for everybody.

And you got your teeth done, all this sort of thing. Everything was done for you. If you were short of a tooth, you could get your teeth filled. They really cared for you in that way. There was nothing that the Air force wouldn’t do for you. And everything was free. So we had all our clothes for nothing. We had all our food for nothing. We had our transport for a penny. We got all these tickets to different shows for nothing.

You know, it was really a life of freedom. And I didn’t ever worry about getting married or anything. A lot of girls got married, but I didn’t have that sort of a mind, much, because I was that busy doing what I was doing, and I was interested in going places, and I was interested in seeing things. On my days off I always went out as far as the train went. When I had a day off. I didn’t have many days off. But if June wasn't working,

we'd go together and get on the train and go as far as it went. Out to Hornsby. It used to go to Hornsby in those days, or out to Liverpool. Wherever the train went, we’d go on it for a ride. It was still only a penny.

Yes, to see what the places looked like. But when I was in Brisbane, I did the same thing. I went out to Sunnybank, a place in Brisbane. When I went out there, the train stopped at Sunnybank and there was no station.

That’s back in 1945. It was just green grass, but now you should see it. It’s a great big place. But I was telling Shirley, my sister, I said, "You wouldn't believe it, Shirley." I said, "I looked at the station and I thought, 'That sounds like a nice name,' Sunnybrank." And when it stopped and the woman said, "This is Sunnybank." There was nothing, nothing at all, just grass. It’s true. I laughed. I thought, 'Well, times have changed.' And now Sunnybank’s a lovely suburb

in Brisbane. That was a time ago. And I might tell you that when we lived in Casino and we went up to the Gold Coast, the Gold Coast was sand dunes. Do you know that?

Well, you know what it’s like at Lake’s Entrance in Victoria, the big sand dunes? Well, that’s what the Gold Coast was like. Broadbeach, that was all sand dunes, because Shirley's children used to play on them. Now you go up there and it's all parklands.

So they knocked all the sand dunes down and the water comes up in the floods. It comes over onto Old Burleigh Road.

Oh, to tell you the truth, I don’t know how much it was now, because it was in pounds, shillings and pence. Look, I can’t remember how much it was now.

Oh, we did. We had enough money, because we didn’t have to do anything. We didn’t have to pay any rent or any board or buy any clothes. Then we got the cigarettes and chocolates and the things we bought were all very cheap from the canteen. The canteens were always cheaper. We had to pay for them, but only a quarter of the price of anywhere else. We didn’t wear civilian clothes and our clothes were all…

We’d go down to equipment and get new shoes, and new stockings, or whatever it was. You wouldn’t be renewing your things all the time for nothing. But we had everything, really. We didn’t have to care for anything at all.

Well, as far as I was concerned, they treated us very well. I didn’t have a lot to do with civilians, because I was with the girls all the time. I was mainly with the girls all the time. If I was ever…even when you were on the trains, you mainly…

they’d put you with service personnel. You’d be with service personnel. You wouldn’t be with civilians very much. They treated us well. I will always remember, one time I took a girl home with me, from Brisbane. It was nearly the end of my service life there, when I went up there. This girl, she wanted to see Casino. And my Dad, as I told you, he was on the railways and that, but this day I asked him about the train.

The train that was going to take me back to Brisbane. I’d only spent a day or something with them. And Dad told me the time. And when I raced up to the station, just before I got there, the train was coming in and they weren’t taking a long time. They weren’t having a big meal or anything. And this girl and I, we couldn’t get to the top of the station to walk across up the stairs. We just had to run across the railway line. So we ran across the railway line, and as we were trying to get across

I noticed that it was a big troop train, and all these fellows…they were Australian Army men, and it they were all saying, it was a big joke. "Come on! Hurry up!" And this other woman that I was with, she had big bosoms, and she was hanging on the line there and she couldn’t get over. Anyway, in the end, they must have thought it was a commotion going on or something, because it was making a big noise, and all these fellows were laughing, because she couldn't get up and she was a bit fat. Anyway,

one of the boys opened the door for us, you know, and just as the bell went…as were were moving off we got on the train. So that was alright. The train…The two of us couldn’t get seats because it was full of army personnel. Anyway, one of these commanders came down and said, “What are you girls doing on the train? Can’t you see this is a male troop train We're all army.” He said, “What are you two doing? You're air force women.”

I didn’t know what to say. We said, "We're trying to get home because we don't want to be absent without leave.” He said, "Well, that's no excuse." He said, “I’m going to take you to the chief man on the train.” So we got a terrible shock, and off we were escorted. Down the train, and all these fellows were all roaring laughing at us, because they had seen the predicament we were in. It was a big family affair. And this man, he was annoyed. He was something to do with the army. And he was in charge of the men. He was a bit of an overbearing person.

He was saying, "You've got no right. Have you ever seen a train full of women with two men on it?” We said, “No. Of course we haven't. But we didn’t know we were on the wrong train. My father gave me the wrong time." He said, “Well, you’ve got no right to be here.” He said, “I’ll have to report it. This is a very serious matter.” He said, “There’s a man on the train here, and he’ll deal with it.” The funny thing about it, when we got taken into this little

separate compartment with nobody in it. And the man on the train, he said, “He’ll fix it up for me. It’s out of my hands.” But he said, “Don’t ever try this sort of stunt.” And we said, "We didn't. We didn't know anything about it at all. The door was open to us." And, I suppose, we should have know it was full of men. The funny part about it was, when the man came along…And I knew him straight away. The fellow that came along was a great friend of my father’s since the First World War.

He told me off. He said, “What are you doing on this train, behaving like this? With all these men? I’m ashamed of you.” He said, “You know what it’s going to be. I have to let you off at the next stop.” So anyway, I didn’t know what to think. And after a while he said, “I had to say that in front of them." It was Mr Cox who used to come and see my father nearly about once a month.

He was on the trains, he was an examiner on the trains, and he would go through the trains and see what was happening. But he came though the compartment and he said that it reminded him of Dad and him, what they used to do on the trains years ago. He said, "A chip off the old block." Anyway, we never got reported for it. But we had to sit down there as if we were. We were locked into this seat and we never moved out of it. Bill Cox, his name was. But otherwise, we might have gone on a charge for it.

You could go on a charge for practically nothing. I know it doesn't seem anything, but it was a wrong thing for two women to get on a train and expect a free ride. We had our tickets. We weren’t going on free. But we were on the wrong train. We didn’t intend to do it. it wasn’t our intention at all. But I was just lucky that it happened to be Bill Cox. When I told my Dad, he had a real good laugh. He knew him from the First World War. You wouldn’t believe it, would you? That's a true story.

But you see, it was the fault of these boys that we got in, because they opened the door for us. Because they saw my friend trying to get up. You know how it's level from the railway, when you get up off the line, and you get onto the platform, you have to get over that crust part. They weren't game to get out. If they'd gone out to help her, they would have been charged themselves, I suppose. That was a funny thing that happened, but anyway, that was a true story.

How do you mean?

We never saw them.

Oh well, people made it up. The navy still say, to this day, they're the cream of the service. They've been there for years. Well, we just took it as that.

We all say they are the cream of the forces, the navy. Who cares? But they are, when it works out. The navy has been going for years and years and years.

We were the first to volunteer in the Second World War. We were the first to go in the forces. We volunteered to go in. But the navy, as it is, the navy service, they say….not the women's Force, but in the navy itself,

they were the first ones to become militarized, in the forces. The navy. And then the army, and then last of all the air force. The air force is more a modern thing. But we were the first of the Women’s forces, yes, in the Second World War. Oh, they wouldn’t know.

In those days you wouldn’t know what…I’ve only just found out recently that we were the first, because sent me a certificate. I’d never worried about it. You wouldn’t be thinking about that when you're joining up, “Now, who's the first one in the forces?” Or anything like that. You take if for granted. You forget, you think it has probably always been going. But it wasn’t until 1941 that the women came in.

No, we weren’t then. We were only an auxiliary. Then we operated the Women’s Australian Auxiliary Air Force. It operated outside the air force, because it was an auxiliary. Now it's combined. The Royal Australian Air Force now is both women and men together.

Just like the schools. Just like the schools. The schools now are both male and female. They are together now. The same thing for the air force now. But years ago that Mr [Arthur] Drakeford, the Minister for the Air Force, he was the one who wouldn't let….All the other forces were allowed to go out of Australia, the army, navy and that, but then not the air force. Mr Drakeford, he stopped us.

But the others, I think the army might have been attached. It wasn’t an auxiliary thing with the army. I think they went in with the men straight away, but we didn’t. We were separate, we were an auxiliary one. But this Mr Drakeford stopped it. He said that no WAAAF would ever go outside Australia. And they didn’t.

No. I never thought of it much, but lots were. Lots were. They wanted to go out. They wanted to go outside Australia. They wanted to go and do things, but he wouldn't let them go.

He stopped us from doing that. He was the Minister there and that. And that’s why now, like a lot of the girls in the air force now, they can't get the Gold Card. They can get it in the navy and in the army, because those girls went outside…The army, they went out and fought battles. I don’t know where they went or what they did. On ships, they went out to areas that were under combat. They can get the Gold Card [medical assistance card]. No matter what it is. If you’re sick or you've to get bandages

or whatever you do, you can get assistance with paying everything for your health. But the air force, no. None of the air force ladies could get anything like that at all. I went down to ask them, in Latrobe Street there, and the man said to me, “Have you been in any battles?” I said, “No. There’s been a few battles around, but I haven’t been in a battle of the war. And I haven’t got a purple heart or anything." He said, “You don’t stand a chance.” No. We can’t get anything.

Mary Francis.

Blackshore.

It is English. There weren’t many Blackshores in Australia, until just recently and now there’s quite a few in the book. But my married name, I’m the only one Mallahy (Mallay-He) M-A-L-L-A-H-Y.

Oh whatever it is. Mallaly or Malki or whatever. No, there’s only one of that. But even the Blackshores now, there's plenty of those. I looked up to see what we came from and we came from the great blacksmiths. Anything with black in it. Blackberry…Everything with black in it, is from the olden days of black smithing. It was the main thing, horse shoeing and carts and carriages.

I think everybody thinks their name is important. I don’t know why, but most people…try and find out about their name and their descendents and that sort of things.

Oh yes, yes, yes. You always knew the Kassanes and that had the

solicitors’ stores and who the doctors are and that. They are important and the main people in town…you knew 'their names. The people you could get help from and that.

No. I can’t recall…It’s awful to say but I can’t remember hardly any officers who were in charge of me. That’s an awful thing to say. But I was young at the time and someone said to me, “Who was the officer in charge of Signals section?”

Well, I don't know. I wish I did. I wish I could remember his name.

Oh, yes. Some of the girls were like that. Some of the girls were looking for someone that had the stripes. Officers, yes, some of them were that inclined. But of course you meet those people. I wasn’t ever inclined like that all,

because I never thought about that, at all. I don’t know whether it was a good thing or not. But I know, one day, this boy that died, he was from the Dairy Company and came to see me at Robertson, he had a few days leave in Sydney while I was there, and he asked me if I had a girl friend that I could take, because he had a friend that wanted to go out, too, just as friends. And I went and asked one of my friends

one of my friends that I knew, and she said to me, “Who is he?” And I said, “Oh, he’s just this sergeant.” And he was a sergeant, mind you, this one. Pat was a sergeant at the time, because he was aircrew and I think he was….an air gunner. They were Flight Two Squadron, they were. And I went and asked my friend and she said, “What is he?” And I said,

He’s a sergeant.” She said, “Oh, you want to look higher than that,” she said. "I'm not going," she said, "I can't go." She said, “If he’d been a flight officer I might have gone.” I got the shock of my life, to tell you the truth, because I knew the girl very well, and I didn’t like her after that very much. She wouldn’t come. So it was there. She said, "You want to aim high." She did aim high herself, too, I might add, this girl.

I don’t know whether she did or not.

The moment when I was home she was having a nervous breakdown. And her husband is deceased now, but my sister told me he was a very heavy drinker. He had all the stripes and everything, but he was a very heavy drinker in the mess. You know, you can’t always go by going for the ones that have got all the power.

I didn’t tell him. I got someone else. I got another girl to go. I never mentioned it. I just didn’t like the girl. The girl is still alive. She lives up in Brisbane. She did what she said she was going to do, though. Aim higher, to aim higher.

Oh, no. I wouldn’t have taken much notice of him. I knew that he was in the office where I worked, as a young person,

in the Casino dairy company. When my mother and everybody were looking for me….I think he came from Sale and these areas down here. He’d been studying down there, and when he came through, he asked where I was. He must have asked the powers that be. I don’t know. But I was at Robertson. He actually came to Robertson to see me. He said to me, "Oh." I must have been like a mountain.

He said to me, which I thought was unusual, he said, "I can’t get my arms around you.” I thought to myself at the time, “That’s funny, because he’s never had his arms around me.” And I was fat, too, to what I was. We all got fat up there walking around and having huge appetites and that. But he went and told my people, then, where I was. That I was at Robertson and doing very well and all that sort of business. But he was from the dairy company, and I never told him about this date, ever. I never said anything about it, ever. And he wouldn’t have known the girl

and I found another girl, and we went out with a group together and we enjoyed ourselves. But he went back up to Darwin. And I never saw him anymore, because he was lost in reconnaissance. I’ve got a picture of the plaque there, which has just come up now, recently. My sister and I went up to Darwin, recently, and we went to see the plaques, they're all around. Darwin is very appreciative for what people have done for them, when they were bombed out that time [during the war], and the big cyclone [Cyclone Tracy, 1974].

And everywhere you go, you see things of appreciation. Two Squadron helped save Darwin, in those days, and it’s got this plaque telling all about Two Squadron. Everywhere you go there’s plaques, and I’ve got a picture of that. I never saw him any more after that, no.

I saw it on the machine. I saw it come through the machines, and then later on his mother got a letter saying that he was missing.

Then after many years they said missing, presumed dead. But I knew he was gone, straight away. But the department, you don't go and spread news like that. The department would tell them themselves. But of, course, nobody believed it. When anybody saw something like that, there was always the possibility that they would be found. You never know, do you? But they have since

detected flights that have been underneath the sea for many years and they’ve found out they belonged to different squadrons, but never the one from Two Squadron. They were mostly men from Queensland in it. The pilot was a Queenslander, and Pat was from Casino. Most of them were all Queensland boys, and Casino.

Well it was a shock to see it coming through.

That was one thing…It would depend on the machine you are…or the girls would tell you. If ever we saw somebody that was concerned, or connected with one of the families, you would always tell them. But you'd never mention it anywhere outside, because it was a matter of secrecy. Anything you saw like that. But I never even told Mum, or anyone, when I first heard about it. I got a shock as a matter of fact because…It wasn't anything.

We weren’t engaged or nothing like that. Nothing at all. But he was going to see me. He said, "I’ll see you next time I come down." This night, the way they went, they were due to go on leave that day or something. And this flight that had come in, they had to go out again, and they were very tired or something, on this reconnaissance, and the whole crew, of Two Flight, said, "Oh well, we’ll do it. We’ll do it for you, because you're tired and that."

And they went out and never came back. What a strange thing. And yet, they were on leave. They were going the next day, and that’s the way it happened. The mother was terribly distressed. And his sisters…I see his sisters. My sister married a Dutchman, and lots of girls married Dutchmen from Casino, because there were a lot of Dutch fellows up there during the war years. They still talk about Pat. They’ve got everything written up everything that he did in the air force and where he went and all the places and that.

He didn’t go to too many places, because he was lost up there, but…

Oh, yes. For Two Squadron, yes.

Oh, possibly they did, when they found out…After all these years he's missing, presumed dead. I don't know, really, what they did.

Well, I felt it. I didn’t know….

I knew him from being in the office, but not to go and have talks with. Because I was busy myself when I was working. I didn’t have much time to spend talking around the office like that, and you've got a lot to do and you have to cover a lot of work. But it wasn’t until….when he came to see me at Robertson, that I was amazed that he would come to see me. I couldn't imagine anyone would be bothered. But the thing was that…

When I met him in the city, and he came out to Eastern Area Headquarters and they took us out, we went to dinner and a dance and that. I think I went somewhere with him, to the pictures or something, and then he had to go to Darwin. And then he said to me, “Well, I’ll see you when I come back.” You know, I thought I’m looking forward to seeing him, because I know he wrote nice letters. He had a gift with the pen. He wrote in detail and explained things because when they went around in reconnaissance.

That's what they were doing up there, watching, seeing how far the enemy aircraft was from Darwin. They went over Timor and things like that. I did feel sad at the time, and I thought to myself, well, perhaps there might have been something in the future, but there wasn't anything, because we weren’t engaged or anything. We were just friends. It might have been the starting of something but I don't know…

Well the difference was…The comparison is funny. But in Brisbane…In Sydney, I was in the middle of the beauty of the Sydney Harbour and the wonders of Point Piper, which is lovely, if you ever go there to see it. Well, I really loved that, and I used to say to the Lord Jesus, "This is where I want to live when I die. I want to come out here."

And I never realized I was living in this elite section. But Brisbane, of course, I went to Netherway and Mirellin, and they were on Coronation Drive, and they, too, were situated in a lovely place, because they were right on the Brisbane River. It was lovely there. It was so nice. There was a big ginger factory next door. You could smell ginger all the time. The river was there and it was very pleasant. And also when we used to go to Edward Street, we would go down past George Street and General MacArthur [General Douglas MacArthur Commander-In-Chief of the Allied forces] was there. At the hotel there, where he had…

Yes. I didn’t actually…I saw him moving in and out plenty of times, but there was always people on guard, on guard where he was. And we'd walk past there every day up to Edward Street, because we’d come home for our dinner and then walk round through Brisbane. But I got to like Brisbane very much. It was different to Sydney, all together. It had trams, too, then. They all had their trams. And I hadn’t been there very long, when I was on the machine to the Americans and this fellow spoke to me.

He spoke to me on the machine, you see. He saw my initials and must have seen I was new there, because we knew people by their initials. He asked me how I was going. And I was Billy there. They used to call me Billy. So I was BB, Billy Blackshore. And he just asked me how I was going and how I liked something, and I asked him, "How do you know I’m here?" And he said, "You've got new initials," or something. And he said, “How would you like to see me?” And I thought, God, this is a bit fast for me.

But anyway, I did make arrangements to see him, and when he came round to meet me at Netherway, where I was staying, I looked out the window and he was a real short little fat man. You know like those fellows in the Three Stooges? He was like that. I looked down and I thought that must be him, because he was in all his brass and stuff like that. But he was nice. Before he left to go home…

I wasn't there very long, that I knew him. But he got really thin. I don’t know what it was. It must have been the hot weather or something. He was quite a little fat sort of man, but I noticed in one of the pictures I had there of him, he got very, very thin. But he was just a nice friend, that's all. He was a really nice friend. He used to meet me after work and take me to this hotel where he liked the spaghetti or whatever they had. And I used to go out with him like that. And we used to go down to Lone Pine where the

koala bears are. And we went for trips on the river, and all those things were there, even the same as they are today. But Brisbane has changed terribly now. Brisbane is completely different. I was only up there the other day.

We knew the hostilities were ceasing. We knew that, because the boy had told me that lots of them had just come to Brisbane on standby. They were waiting

to be discharged. A lot of the American boys. I don’t know whether they got permission to be discharged in Sydney, but he told me a lot of them were waiting for discharge, so I presume that they were. So it was getting near the end, but we didn't know it was going to come as quickly as it did, because it did come on the 15th of August…

Oh, I was happy when the news came through.

Oh, well, everybody. Everybody knew about.

Everybody was cheering and going on in the streets and singing and laughing and talking and everything. It was a great celebration, wasn’t it? I will never forget it. I think everybody knew at once. There must have been an announcement come over the air and everyone was out in the streets and cutting up paper, and all this sort of thing. That's when the news….that happened, with this boy, he got his orders and sent home then. They got rid of them quickly, they were sent home.

I went to Mass. It was the 15th of August. Feast of the Assumption. And I went to Mass that day, and celebrated Mass, and then I went out on the streets, dancing, like everybody did.

Before. Before I’d heard about it. And everybody was laughing and cheering in the streets, and great celebrations going on. It was a wonderful day, and of course,

I think a lot of the WAAAF were pleased, too. Because we were wondering… When you’ve been in there a while, you wonder if it’s ever going to end. Then all of a sudden it came to an end, and you looked back and you thought how wonderful it all was, and to think that it had finished…It was a bit of a shock, in a way, because your routine of life had suddenly changed. You could take off your uniform and try and fit into your other clothes, if you could.

Oh yes.

Everybody had a celebration in that day.

Oh, everybody was putting their arms around everybody, but it wasn’t so much the kissing business in those days, as it is now. Do you know how people now no matter what it is, they seem to be kissing each other now. Even the footballers. They seem to be kissing each other when they kick a goal.

It was not like that at all. I think people wee a bit more shy, years ago, like poised….No, no boy ever approached me. I met plenty of them in the forces…But men were different. A bit like my Dad. It took him years to ask my Mum to marry him.

Oh well, I suppose, in those days, it was just part of all the war that had been happening.

If you wonder about all the different things that happened, they were happening all the time, everywhere, weren't they? So it didn’t make much difference to your thinking. It was just another thing that was sad about war. That’s the thing that’s sad about war. It’s when all of these things happen and people don’t want them to happen, but they do.

Well I met different Japanese people

at different time. Actually, the Japanese people I met were these ones with the little slit in their eyes. They were so narrow. They say now that every Japanese baby, as soon as it's born, their eyes are cut. Do you know that? It takes away that sort of look that they had before. Do you remember how they sort of looked like that? And they always had a sort of a squinty look. Well, they say now, as soon as a little baby’s born…

I believe it’s true…They sort of open its eyes here, somehow…

Oh yes. Everybody was pleased. Well I mean, everybody knew we had won, that was the thing. That we had won the war, and they were celebrating that, and they knew that we weren't going to be taken over by the Japanese.

No, I had never been. From the very first time, when I was very young, and I first heard that Churchill had declared war on England, I had always known that we would win the war, I had that feeling, because the man was so bad that I thought God wouldn’t allow him to take us over. I had the faith. I had the faith God wouldn’t let anyone….

It's just like what’s going on now. Things are going on in the world now that are very hard for people to take. Well, in the end, I don’t know what the Lord’s going to do this time, because it seems to be all over the world, doesn’t it?

I’ve seen Australia change considerably. Not so much straight after the war, but in the last ten years or, it’s changed, it's very much changed, because we’ve got so many different cultures. There’s so many different cultures now.

You have to learn to give and take. You know, you have to fit in to the group now and be open to listen to the other ones now, as well as yourself. There are lots of people now with cultures that we can't understand. We can’t understand them at all. But even with Footscray, the people who come to live at Footscray now. We had beautiful big stores, like Mates stores, and great big places. Well when we’ve got a lot of people here now,

they come here, they build their own shops, they build their own things, they build their own fruit stores. And they have a different own culture, they put everything out in the front. And Footscray has changed from an area where we had these big lovely stores, now we've got all these sort of marketing places, and Chinese shops and all those sorts of thing. And they're good in their way, and we have to fit in, I suppose, to the new development. it's entirely different to what we expect.

Even if you feel like you want to have a nice grilled chop or something, you can hardly get a grilled chop in a restaurant now. You have to have whatever they’ve got on the menu, and it’s not a grilled chop. It’s really different.

Oh yes, oh, my word. We would have been taken over by the Japanese, if Australia hadn’t…Especially in the First World War.

In the First World War we would have been taken over by Hitler [perhaps she means the Germans generally]. And in the Second World War, we could have been taken over by the Japanese. And in this war, even. You can’t trust people, can you? You don’t know, do you, what’s happening. All these different people now with all their eggs and cobwebs set up all over the world. They're coming in from these other countries, well they're in here and we don't even know it. All these things that are happening to the trains and these different things that are happening to little aircraft, these days,

I think they're sabotaged, don’t you?

Well, I never thought I was going to get married, anyway, because I had promised my mother that I would look after her. So I had no intentions of ever getting married, but I did take a course in nursing,

so I took up nursing. I was getting pretty old then. I was too old to go on training.

Well, I went into a training school, but they only took…The limited age was thirty-nine. I was forty-three. And I had to go and see the nursing council, and they gave me a little test. Just in English,

and a few things like that, and she talked to me, the Matron. So she gave me an exemption, and I was allowed to do a course, which was a state enrolled nurse at the time. SEN [state enrolled nurse]. So I went and did that at Toorak. And then I went in and did my nursing at Caritas Christi….That’s looking after people who are disabled and people who are dying. I did that course. And I was pleased to do it, because it was a sort of a course

where people really needed help. When people are dying…

No. I never gave any thoughts to getting married at all. No, I didn’t. I went back to the Cooperative Dairy Society Limited first. They wanted me back there, because as soon as I…Even when I came back, I had

the manager came round and wanted me back. My father was dead then, of course. He came round to the house. But while I was there, I got a letter from the air force, saying I had to be retrained. I got a letter to say that I could have a renewal course in shorthand typing. See I had been away. I had been away from the shorthand typing and I’d been doing teletype operating but not doing shorthand typing.

So I was sent to a shorthand typing school in Sydney for renewal. They gave all girls…Some of them went on nursing.

Oh, I can’t tell you the year that he died. It would have been in the '50s.

No. He had died before I came back from the air force.

I’ll just work out what it is. No. He must have been alive when I came back. No. He was alive. Yes. He was alive when I came back, first, that’s right.

That’s what it was. He asked my Dad. That’s right.

I believe they did keep my job. They kept the job of all the boys. Any boy that came back form the war got their job back, yes.

No. They didn’t.

They probably did. Yes.

No. It didn’t annoy me very much. I didn’t think of it.

But the reason why I took the course for the air force was that, I had been away from it for a while, and I had been away from different means of typing, because the hands were working differently. So I did take advantage of the course, but it was while I was there, doing the course…I got good marks and everything from the course, and I met this friend, June, who took me up to the Australian National Airline, up there,

and that’s how I got my position back doing the same work as I had done in the air force.

It had changed a lot as regards to…There was a lot of boys that had married English girls. Boys that…They weren’t in the air force, but they were in the army or something. And when I first came

I used to go out with them. We’d go to a restaurant or something in Casino. The Blue Moon I think it was, and we would have coffee or tea or something like that. And they were very discontented with Australia, the English girls were, because they had had come from England and they had these little pubs that they went to, and crowds of people like big family groups. Casino was just a small country town. There wasn’t much there. It was dead for them. And I could understand how they would feel it. It would be very hard settling in.

It was so hot. Casino is a terribly hot place, you know. They say it’s the hottest place this side of hell.

Yes, but it is. And these English girls…they nearly died. One of them, I think she went home. She went back to England, and I don’t know if she ever came back to her husband or not. But she said it was very hard for her to settle into. And the boys' mother wasn't kind to her. She was living with her mother in law at the time.

But they were very kind to her, but it was hard for her to settle in. You can imagine, having been over in London and seeing those little pubs and that that they go to, and all those places, and the big crowds of people, you can understand how it would be difficult. When you think of it, it's was very hard. Casino for me, it hadn’t grown that much. As a matter of fact, it had gone back. Because a lot of the big stores now,

that we knew in Casino were all gone. Like Heathwood’s big store is gone. And Smith’s great big stores gone and Glin’s….All those great big stores are gone. During the war years, they had lots of service personnel living in the towns and that, and they got all revenue from them. Business was brisk, and they had money coming in from everywhere. Then all of a sudden, they had everybody coming back from the war, and although business should have been good,

because there was lots of vacancies for jobs, and people wanted to get married and people wanted to build houses and all sorts of thing…But Casino seemed to me to go back to what it was, when I knew it when I was younger. But now they say it’s coming up again. I don’t know.

Well, I know one of the boys who was in the war, he was a pilot in England. He lost his eye.

Alby Cockell. He was one of the boys I knew, because he was engaged to the girl (UNCLEAR) in Casino. He must have met this girl in England, and he wrote to his girl and asked her if he could cancel his engagement to her. And she wrote back, the girl, and she said, “No."

I know it, because I know the family. As a matter of fact, I introduced her to the boy. He was from the Dairy Company.

That’s the way men were. That’s the way men were a few years ago. Men were like that. I doubt it now.

No, I doubt it now.

But she did, she said no. And he was loyal to his dedication to her and he came back and married. He came back wounded. He lost his eye and everything, that was before…He was a very a handsome looking boy. I knew him because he worked in the same office as me. I walked in there with the manager, and he was out here, with the other members….

Oh, don’t forget in the war a lot of Australian women lost their husbands. Girls who were engaged to men, never came back. There were hundreds and hundreds of girls in Australia who would never get married after the war. That’s why a lot of them married Dutchmen. They married Dutchmen and all different people.

Well, possibly they were, but I never saw it in the air force, with anyone I was with or anything like that.

I never saw anything like that at all. But you see in the movies how the girls have babies and the fellow has gone away and got killed. There possibly would be plenty of those around.

Oh, no, they didn't. And I can truthfully say that they men weren't that way inclined either. That was one thing that was never proposed to you. You can

ask any girl that I ever knew. I mean, there’s some girls like that. I went out with an American boy one night and he said to me, just straight out, "You know, you're a lovely girl and all that, but I’m not looking for your type." You know what I mean? He wasn't looking for my type…

No. But I knew there was somebody else that he could go out with. I knew straight away.

Yes. This was at Luana when I was stationed there. He said, "You’re a lovely bright person, but

I’m not looking for your type." So I didn’t give a hoot. I just said, "Good luck." What I’m mean is there were types, probably, saying is there were types who indulged in that sort of thing. But I never saw them. If they were around, they never talked about it. And I don’t know who that boy was talking about. Maybe it was another WAAAF that I knew or something. But the thing was, there was men who must have been like that. But it was like that, they said straight out, like he said to me…

I must have been expecting to go out again. I can’t remember it much now. I can remember the words that he said quite clearly.

But men were different, in those days. As my sister said, that sort of thing didn’t enter your mind. You’d be going down the street, and you’d just take a wing, and off you'd go to a place for threepenny mince meat, or something..

Well, there’s lots of other girls being independent. It’s like…compulsory, no choice. You’ve got no choice. If you happen to be on your own, well, bad luck.

No. I’m not saying…not that I say I wanted to be on my own. I wasn’t the Greta Garbo type…poor thing.

I wasn't like that, saying I wanted to be alone. But on the other hand, I accepted what I got, and I didn’t go out of my way. I wasn’t a boy crazy girl. Do you know what I mean? The thing about my husband when I first met him. I didn’t meet him until 1943, and he said to me….Like I said to you about Irish people, never ask anyone to get married until they own a house. And he must have bought his house, or whatever it was.

Well, he was forty-four, and I met him, and I went and saw The Sound Of Music with him. I think I’d seen it about sixty-two times. You know, everybody in those days….And every time you met anybody, they'd say, "I want to see The Sound Of Music." So I got tired of looking at that. And I hadn't known him very long. I met him on the 26th of January, 1967, and I was married on the 7th of October, in 1967. So I hadn't known him very long.

And he just said to me, he showed me the house. And I came out here and he showed me the house. And he said did I like it. And I said, "Yes, it's a nice home." And he said, "I might ask you to share it with me." It was a funny sort of a…Wasn’t it? A funny sort of a…It wasn't that he meant me to share it with him, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was just the way he proposed. He proposed and I hadn’t sort of…

I said, “Oh yes, it's very nice." And he said, “When do you want to set the date?” Anyway, I told my people, told my mother, my mother and my sister-in-law and that were all shocked. And they said, “That's no good. You have to find out about him. Get him to write to Ireland and find out what it’s all about." So I asked him, I said to Tom, “My family are interested to find out what you’ve been doing.” And he said, “I haven’t asked you for any certificates.” And I said,” But you can see what I am,” I said, "I can't see you."

He said, "What do they want to know? I said, "They want to know if you've been married before, if you’ve been baptised, if you're a Christian, what you're doing?" He said, "Oh? Is that all? So he wrote and told his relatives, and got this stuff telling me how wonderful he was. He had eight brothers and they were all telling me what a marvelous man he was, and this, that and the other. And my brother-in-law…he still wasn’t…

He couldn’t accept all that. So he wanted to see him. He came down to a hotel in St Kilda Road there, somewhere, and met Tom and had an interview with him and that. He said, “I think he might be a good husband for you.” That’s how I got Tom. Yes. But I was frightened, though, even before I got married I was a bit scared. I thought, 'I don’t know if I want to get married or not.' And I was terribly worried about my mother. And I said, "Look, I have a big worry

in connection with getting married. I’ve promised my mother that I will look after her.” He said, “If you want to look after your mother, as soon as our honey moon is over, you go and get your mother.” And I did, and Mum lived with me. There’s a picture of my mother. That’s Tom and I was nursing then and he’s come back from the Grader and there’s Mum sitting up in the picture. So he was wonderful. And Mum and Tom became like this. And you know, sometimes Mum would say to me,

“Don’t you speak to your husband like that.” And she took sides and I felt I was an outcast.

Yes. Twenty-seven years. But I used to go to work. I went back nursing for a while. And Mum would make Tom anything he wanted. Yes. Irish Stew. Anything that he wanted, Mum made him. She went down the butchers and bought exactly what he wanted to eat, and did exactly what he said. And that of course, spoiled it a bit of me, because she fussed over him so much. Well, I was glad.

Someone said to me, “Aren’t you lucky? They're two good friends." And they were, too. They got on beautifully together. But Mum used to attack me. I didn’t do anything evil. She would say to me, “You be careful what you are saying to your husband.” All this sort of business. So I mean, I was really good. And then, of course, Mum and I became really good friends. That was to look after Mum. That was built up for that size there. And then he had it himself. He was sick.

I had to help my mother everywhere, because she was an invalid, and when she died, Tom used to sit by himself. So I said to Tom, “Why don’t you sit with me.” And he said. “Look, why don’t you sit by yourself? I’m used to sitting by myself.” He was about six foot four. He was very tall and anywhere we’d go in the bus, he’d sit by himself with his big long legs and that. And Mum and I sat together, so he got so used to sitting by himself.

And somebody said to me one day, “Is that your husband? So why does he sit by himself?” And I told them I sat with my mother and he got used to sitting by himself. We do the same thing now. He did. He got used to being by himself and sitting by himself. He had big long legs and he stretched them out across the seat, you see. It was a strange thing, but we were very, very happily married, and that. But he just got used to playing second fiddle to Mum. And when the time came for me to sit with him, I couldn’t sit with him any more. It was very strange.