Australians at War Film Archive

Yeah, well my name is Frank Tuttle and I was born at Charters Towers in 1929 in December.

I’m wrong again. Start again, I got mixed up there. Just wipe it out.

Hi, my name’s Frank Tuttle and I was born at Charters Towers on the twenty-ninth of the twelfth 1925.

I never spent much time in the Towers but at that particular time it was classed as the second biggest city in Queensland. I can't recall the population but it had a hotel on every corner. It had its own exchange and though I never spent much time there the history of this city should be read

to understand just what an important role it played for the state of Queensland.

Well as I said I never stayed there. I shifted from Mount Coolum, my father and his brother had a contract with the gold mines of Australia at Mount Coolum was geographically situated about a hundred and thirty miles from Charters Towers

in a sou’easterly direction. About a hundred and thirty miles in the opposite direction from Claremont and about a hundred and forty miles inland from Bowen. They had this contract with the gold mines of Australia to supply raw materials such as charcoal and lime, gravel, timber for the shafts, and in those days they had Audreys [ore drays],

what they called Audreys. Driven by about a seven in number team of horses. Later on of course they got in the motor lorries which made things a lot more easier for them but I started my school years at Mount Coolum. You might look behind you there and there’s an old bank book on the wall where I first put my first entry in the Commonwealth bank

in 1930 and the number of that book is 29599. I stayed at Mount Coolum until I was roughly about fourteen years of age and we came to Bundaberg in the late thirties. But whilst I was going to school as I grew up and got around about the ten or eleven year old mark there was a professional boxer there called

Bob Roberts and he had a son, he might have been about eighteen months older than me, Charlie Roberts, and he could fight like buggery. And there wasn't a day of the week come to pass that he didn't give me a flogging. So I went home on this particular day with a busted eye and a bloody nose or a split lip or something like that and the old mater [mother], she said, “You’re a bloody boob.

Hang one on him.” Well the day I went to school and it may not have happened the following day but a few days later on I was sitting up on those old wash stands, you know, they used to have these stands that had about three holes cut in the top that wash basins used to nestle in, and I was sitting on that having my eleven o’clock [break] as they called it in those days and he came towards me.

And I thought, ‘Oh Christ, I’m in for it again’. But he got about probably an arm’s length away from me and he started poking his tongue out you know and gesturing and jiving and so forth and I let one go. And holy Christ I got a bigger fright than he did you know. Anyway, he still got into me and gave me a thrashing but it got to the stage where I’d hang two on him, then it got to the stage where I’d

give him three and as time come to pass I got the better of the bugger and of course by then he reckons we were the best of mates. But the tide had turned of course you know but that’s the way they were and anyway, I owe a lot to Mount Coolum because it played a great role in the education of Frank Tuttle. When it was at the height of its gold producing days it had a nomadic

itinerant [population]. You’d probably have fifteen hundred people there, miners, you might have a thousand, you might only have five hundred. It sort of fluctuated with the fortunes and they were rough buggers of course, they had be in those days to survive. It was sort of like dog eat dog as the saying is and we lived just below the pub [hotel],

only about a hundred and fifty yards on the down side of the hotel, it was the only hotel there. And every afternoon there was blue after blue [fight after fight], there was disputes about this claim and that claim and I used to perch up on a big rock just outside the pub doors and I’d watch all this going on and you got to pick up different things and I was virtually educated as a young individual. So then we came down to Bundaberg and

my father had no occupation here of course and I was only about fourteen years of age so he went working for the city council in the meantime until he got a business together in haulage contracting, you know gravel and sands and fillings and loans and so forth. And I used to go around and canvas orders for him.

And eventually got a footing here and he ended up winning a big contract with the Fairymead Sugar Company to build a stone wall about probably a half a mile long and about thirty foot across the bottom, come up in a pyramid type style with about a six foot flat

surface on the top. But these stones, he used to cart the rocks out and you’d tip them over a little bit of a race but the moment they went down and hit the mud they just stopped dead. And as you went to pick them up they were full of silt and Christ knows what, you had to carry them out and Christ it was a terrible experience. But the chap next door, he was working for us, a fellow called Charlie Rourke and he was pretty bloody useless

and needless to say he got a crook [bad] back after a few days. So I was there, I carried on regardless, I didn't mind working and I was doing two men’s work. And I’ll never forget on this particular occasion I used to sneak a cigarette on the quiet and away from my father you see because back in those days like you had to get permission off your parents to smoke, you had to get permission

to leave the table and goodness knows what, or to be excused. And I just absentmindedly rolled this, you used to roll your own, we used to call them ‘whirlies’, and I lit it up and he said, “What the bloody hell are you doing smoking?” He boned me, in no uncertain manner. I said, “Well, Dad.” I said, “If I’m big enough and old enough to do two men’s work.” I said, “Surely to God I can

have a puff at a cigarette.” Well it sort of shot him down in flames you know and I carried on smoking after that which I did until I was about twenty-one years of age and then I never touched one after that. I gave it up. It got to the stage where I wanted to join the navy,

by now I was seventeen years of age, and I was somewhat, well I wouldn't say I was overly big for my age but you sort of had that feeling of embarrassment. You’d walk up town and people would look at you and say, “Well, he’s a sort of a bomb dodger.” or something like that you know. So I volunteered but I was medically unfit. I had a hernia so I had to get this hernia fixed up.

And it was pretty fortunate too because at that time the old superintendent of the hospital went away on holidays and there was a marvellous old German doctor there called Egmont Schmidt and he relieved him while he was absent and he performed the operation on me and it marvellous how doctors sort of recognise ‘beautiful work’ as they call it. So I was having a, I’m not going to say short-arm [genital] inspection or

anything like that, but on this particular occasion this old four ringer [high officer] surgeon said, “Goodness gracious me!” He said, “Son, who performed that operation?” I said, “An old German doctor by the name of Egmont Schmidt.” He said, “That’s beautiful work. You don't see that very often.” So I’m not going to give you a look at it now that’s for certain, but anyway after I became medically fit I sat for my exam under the watchful eye of a Church

of England minister here in the main street, Bundaberg at the rec [recreation] wing. A fellow by the name of Reverend Alfred Joel. Very handsome individual, he was a beautiful looking man. He used to drive around a little Mini Minor. No bigger than a Christmas beetle and he was sort of a landmark of Bundaberg because of that particular vehicle. Anyway that was getting towards October ’43 so

I was accepted in the navy and I went down to Brisbane to Moreton Depot and from there went to Flinders and they put you through exams down there such as splicing [joining ropes by intertwining strands], well not exactly exams but through an educational course where you were splicing ropes and (UNCLEAR). Doing a bit of signalling, rowing boats, how to box a

compass, all of these things were a necessity in the running of a ship and you did torpedo classes and things such as that and that took about seven weeks roughly and from there I was drafted to HMAS [His Majesty’s Australian Ship, but here used as a designation for a naval base] Penguin and that was a sort of a distributing point. People went hither and thither and I was

transported to Cairns. That was about the end of February ’44 and I joined the ships company on the corvette Broome. I hardly had time to unpack my kit and report to the chief petty officer to find out what watch I was in when all of a sudden

we were at sea. We joined other ships, such as corvettes and destroyers etcetera, etcetera and we were escorting convoys up to New Guinea. Back we’d come and this went on for a few months and on the last trip back we came back to Townsville and we got orders to go out and assist a supply

ship that was on fire just off Magnetic Island. It was blowing a gale and strike me pink the bloody seas were rough and those corvettes when it's rough – you had to be a special sailor to be a crew member of a corvette. So we gets out to this supply ship and we had a go, she had her anchors out, she was on fire and we had to go around the stern and come up the other side. We were

given strict instructions not to get too close. Well as I said before the wind was blowing with such a force that when the water came out the end of the hose it immediately went ninety degrees to the left or the right so we were absolutely useless. We were no assistance to her whatsoever and later on we found out that she was laden with bombs, land mines, ammunition, so they were pretty fortunate.

Later on they got some sea-going tugs and so forth and we were still there assisting them and they got her off the reef and away she went. Well, our next assignment we were ordered to make haste to the Admiralty Islands and that was sort of off the beaten track and it was here…. We were to report to the skipper of [HMAS] Australia which was the

flagship of the Australian Navy. So as we got to Seeadler Bay or Seeadler Harbour, Manus Island which was all a part of the Admiralties, it was a sight to be seen. There was bloody battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers. It was like a

gigantic caravan park. Every anchorage, every mooring, every site was numbered so if you wanted to find landing craft, (UNCLEAR) 3, number 26 you’d just look through this list and you’d say ‘That’s anchored at point 38’ or whatever it may be. So we anticipated with the gathering that it was an assault force.

Now, I think Luzon could have been the place in the Philippines but in endeavouring to pull alongside the Australia which we had to, we had to, well the skipper had to report to the Australia. The cruisers in those days they had what they called torpedo blisters under the water line. They were a false hull and they might have extended out ten

or fifteen feet or something like that away from the ship’s hull itself. So as when a torpedo hit that false hull it would detonate and possible and hopefully it would explode before it entered into the ship’s hull if you understand what I mean. So as we manoeuvred to come alongside the way that this torpedo blister was under the water, it just didn't seem to marry in with the shape

of the corvette so our starboard propeller got tangled up with the torpedo blister. Buggered up the propeller admittedly. Well the skipper of the Aussie [Australia] came over the side with a megaphone, now a corvette’s only a hundred and eighty foot long, about I just can't think of the tonnage now. It's a hundred and eighty foot long and about eight hundred and fifty tons I think. He came over

the side of the Aussie with a megaphone up to his bloody mouth and he said, “Get that life boat away from here!” Really bloody offensive and at that particular time one didn't pay much attention to it but when you think about it later on how you used to minesweep in front of these big ships and probably he might have been right in what he said, we could have been a lifeboat for the bloody Australia you know? But anyway,

that was the end of our involvement there. We came back down to, we had to come back and get a new propeller and we had to return to Brisbane. But later on at the Seeadler Bay, or Seeadler Harbour, it might have been around about November. As I mentioned before we never, ever got the opportunity to go back there again but there

was something like four hundred ships in the harbour on this occasion. There was an ammunition ship, [USS] Mount Hood was the name of it, it was an American ship. And how it happened one never knows but I dare say even today there would be a hell of a lot of people in Australia that wouldn't even know now that it happened. It was hush-hush for a long time

and you could probably write it down that it was the second greatest tragedy in the Pacific to the American fleet, second to Pearl Harbour. She had four thousand tons of explosives on her and ‘boompf’ Up she went. No air attack or anything like that. Just (UNCLEAR). She had a crew of three hundred; well they were just blown to smithereens. There was

a gigantic number of ships that were unrepairable. But that was as I said, we weren't there, we didn't witness that but that took place in the same place where we got tangled up in the Aussie going alongside it. So we came down to Brisbane again to get this propeller replaced and

only there about four days and we were fortunate enough to get one afternoons leave. So I was hellishly good friends with a fellow Joe Gibb[?], he was a square rigger, now what we call a square rigger is the bloke that wears a suit, like a double breasted suit, like a clerk or a cook. And we went into some hotel, it was between Queen Street and Adelaide Street and you had to go down two or three

steps to get in the bar because of course in those days they only had sessions. Like the beer might last an hour, it might last an hour and a half. So the first thing you did was you lined up the barmaid or whoever was serving the beer and you gave them five bob [shillings] to look after you. See it was back in those days five bob was a day’s wages for us. So we were there for about a half hour and these

two well dressed blokes came in. Now I’m going back to ’44 and you can imagine the style in those days as far as Americans were concerned. They had those three-quarter length coats that used to come well down along their thigh bones and that was the dress and they couldn't help but stand out in the crowd you know. And I’m standing there with Joe Gibb and bugger me

they sorted me out. They came over and they said, “Hey guy!” and I said, “Yeah, what's the trouble?” “How’d you like to get your photograph taken?” “Oh,” I said, “I’d like that very much.” I said, “Who with?” They said, “Carole Landis.” Now Carole Landis was a, she was one of the sex machines of Hollywood you see and

she was out here entertaining the troops and I said, “Whereabouts is this going to take place?” and I think they said the Australia Hotel, I’m not quite certain. I said, “Look, I’ll have to bring my friend along.” I said, “I’m a stranger here.” They said, “No, you’ll have to come on your own.” Straightaway I thought, these are a couple of ‘seat men’ you know, what we called seat men in those days, bloody poofters [homosexuals]. So anyway to make a long story short I refused.

Next morning I picked up the Courier Mail and right on the bloody front page would you believe he's an AIF [Australian Imperial Force] bloke, a swatty [soldier], and a sailor on the other side and Carole Landis in between them. I thought, ‘Jesus, she doesn’t know what she missed out on.’ Anyway, that was the end of the Brisbane session so we straight back up to New Guinea. No it wasn't New Guinea, we got back to Cairns.

And we were ordered to make haste to Darwin but we had to pick up this light ship at Thursday Island. Now you couldn't imagine making haste towing a light ship all the way to bloody Darwin which we did and when we eventually got there like around from Thursday Island, Darwin, right across the top of Australia under the Timor Sea,

to Bathurst and Melville Island and those places, Onslow, Broome you’ve got a gigantic surge in the tide there, something like thirty or forty feet. So as we entered into Darwin Harbour, you would have thought they’d have sent out a tug to anchor this light ship out in the harbour somewhere but no, we had to try to manoeuvre into the jetty and moor this thing to the pier. Well,

you would have swore to Christ that those ships were in a barbed wire entanglement. There was ropes, hurricane horses, Christ! Anyway it was very embarrassing for the skipper of the Broome, he couldn't get out of the place quick enough. So right we then merged with these three other corvettes and our duty was there to make haste to the Indian Ocean and we had to survey

from the Indian Ocean from Bathurst and Melville Island across the top of Australia, through the Timor Sea or under the Banda Sea, or Arafura, to not Port Moresby. I just can’t think of the other place in New Guinea, I’ll think of it later on. And now this, this was a very, very important job because

we had to, it was a tedious bloody job as I said before you had a rise and fall of the tide of about forty-five feet and the waters there were very shallow. Now you had to be careful because one moment you might be in sixty feet of water, ten fathoms, and within the space of about a hundred yards you might be in three. So you had

to stop engines, back pedal, go somewhere else. So we eventually beat that. Took us about, took us roughly about a fortnight. Now the beautiful part about this manoeuvre was it enabled supply ships and so forth coming from around India and Africa and those places to come across the top of Australia to the Pacific.

It come out at China Straits and that stopped them going down the west coast of Australia and across the [Great Australian] Bight and coming up the south-east coast and of course by then all around New South Wales area in particular, that had been christened ‘torpedo alley’ because there was bloody ships sunk there left, right and centre. So we reported

back to, I’m stymied. I just can’t think of this other port. Well we took all the data along and I don't know whether they drew up these charts and maps with the information that we supplied because it was only a matter of two or three days and they had everything ready for us to transport out to ocean going ships

coming into the China Straits but they could have been maps for something else, I don't know. But we had to take these out, intercept these vessels, then we’d fire these in a little cylinder. It would have something like a compressor gun, like a Daisy air-rifle. You’d load these things down and we’d fire them across to the other ship. With a length of

the old cuttyhunk fishing line, you know the old green line that they used to have before the nylons and things like that. It went along quite smoothly until it might have been our second or third trip out and this is where we had our first casualty. When you came from across the top of Australia into New Guinea the waters

were pretty calm there but it was where this big surge in the tide, so you were down below the Mindanao deeps which is in the bottom of the Philippines, there was water there ten miles deep or something like that. Then you had the currents from the Pacific, they all sort if met and you’d come off a mill pond into a raging sea. So as we entered into the China Straits we had the sea just about on the,

just off the starboard beam and the old ship she started to pitch and toss and all of a sudden we, got a beauty you know, the old girl went over on her side and the morning watch of the stokers that were just coming onto the upper deck, four of them, they’d just put their foot out through the door, you know x-door or y-door or whatever it was and whoosh. Well there was three

of them didn't [know] whether to laugh or curse but everything was sort of silent after that because one of the boys, a young fellow, he was just lying prone on the deck. Well the sick bay tiffy [untrained medico] was quickly on hand and he had a look at him and he suggested to the skipper through the jimmy, he’s what you call the first lieutenant, that they

radio for assistance, like a faster boat. We could only to about eight, maybe ten knots with a tail sea. Recommended we get a faster boat and turn about, meet him on the way out. So we did this and they put him in this hospital – bloody place, I’m trying to think of it but I just can't think – they put him in the army hospital there, it was above Port Moresby

and before we got back to the ship we got, well it wasn't before we got back to the ship, I’m telling a lie now, when we got, about three or four hours later we were notified that he’d died. Apparently what had happened was he was thrown against some iron work and it had punctured into his liver and shattered his liver. Only a young boy too. Well, we all were at that particular time…

Everybody was upset, no doubt. See on a corvette in particular, it's like as I said before they’re about a hundred and eighty feet long and about thirty foot wide, eight hundred and fifty ton, you had a crew of about eighty-five to ninety. You’d pass, you’d brush shoulders with one another as you were passing through the waist or something like that or walking up and down the deck.

You’d rub shoulders with one another forty, fifty, sixty times a day. Like you were one big family and yes, we were very glum about it. But there you go. They were responsible for introducing a different type of sailor, the camaraderie – is that the right word? – was absolutely powerful and this was born out of either fact like after the war when they started their

reunions, corvette reunions, you’d get bloody over a thousand sailors present. Very strong, very powerful. Yes, well from there of course we got back into the old swing of things running convoys north as the fighting forces went north we had to keep the supplies up to them and

we went from Lamarack to Finschhafen. I just can't think of the names. But eventually we got up to Hollandia Bay and that was when we witnessed another sight that was one to remember because things were on the move again and like with all the battleships and aircraft carriers and cruisers and

troop carriers and goodness knows what. They were ready to strike somewhere else – where it was I don't know but we operated out of Hollandia Bay for quite some time. But we used to do the mopping up work mainly. The people who weren't required for something else. See the beautiful part about a corvette they never, they weren't looked upon as man-of-wars. There were sixty of them built originally. Four were given

to New Zealand, the first six that were ever constructed, they were built for escort duties. They were built so they could do fifteen knots. Now we, later on they realised that you couldn't mine sweep at fifteen knots. They were built solely for the purpose of minesweeping so like you had to minesweep at a reasonably slow speed

and that’s why some of the corvettes could only do eight knots you see. You could just about walk that. And if they weren't doing that – mine sweeping, you were doing escort duties like with convoys. You’d have forty ships in the convoy this afternoon, come to night, you’d scan the horizon with the binoculars in the morning

and you might have twenty. The buggers would blow through on you because you were too slow for them you see. But that was their prerogative, if they broke rank and anything happened well it had nothing to do with us. And outside of that, the beautiful part about them was that as I said before we were doing mopping up duties and we’d take a raiding party into an island somewhere and you could get in with about

see we only used to draw about nine foot forward. Like the draft, you only needed nine foot of water under your keel, or not under your keel but you needed nine foot and about eleven and a half foot aft. You could take these soldiers in within about fifty yards of the beach which was a good thing. They were used quite repeatedly for that because they’d only have to swim about fifteen yards and they’d

just be able to walk to the beach then. Whereas otherwise they had to have these landing barges and goodness knows what but normally you’d have one or two around the point of the island making a bit of noise you know. We only had four inch guns on the bow, Jesus it was nothing compared to what he big ships had but we weren't looked upon as man-o-wars but they served their purpose. I can remember one American admiral

that had involvements with the corvettes. He referred to them as the Anzacs of the ocean so that’s a big rap. So we operated out of Burlandia Bay for a while and then slowly and surely went further north and we were ordered to go to Biak and Biak copped a bloody pasting from both sides. This particular night

we were just entering into the harbour and there might have been about eight or ten bombers come over but they weren't greatly concerned about us. They were more concerned about retarding the activities of the air strip and trying to blow up a few fuel dumps and ammunition dumps and things like that. And it was a sort of a Catch-22 [an impossible] situation because you’d have to stop your engines

because the phosphorus content in the water, if you churned it over like that it was like a neon light and what the dive bombers used to do was follow this wake of the ship – they’d follow it along and then all of a sudden there’d see the end of the wake and they’d say ‘That’s where the ship is,’ and they’d attack them but we were pretty fortunate, they never got at us but the things was of course if there was a real bright moonlight night well that’d help to

camouflage the illumination of the phosphorus but it’s show the ship up. So no matter what you did whether it was moonlight or it was dark the phosphorus would show up, and if it was moonlight the ship would show up but anyway they more or less left us alone. They didn't worry about us too much. Just if they had a couple left there when they were turning around or something like that. They gave you the impression they couldn't get out of the place quick enough the way they’d go.

They might just drop a couple around you and let you know they were going home or something like that. So then we went, well we were there for quite some time at Burlandia Bay. The sickening part about it was we had a skipper who was a hellishly good seaman. He was a fellow that didn't mingle much with his crew but he was too savage, no matter where you went he’d always volunteer

to do something and his crew got dirty on him. You know even a half a day on the beach in the sand would have put a better morale in the ship’s company but he’d go somewhere and he’d volunteer to patrol the heads whilst everybody else had a rest. So I just can’t recall exactly where it

was but there was an act of mutiny took place, or rebellion or whatever you like to term it as. Bloody they pulled the breach out of a four inch gun and threw it over the side and took the azimuth mirrors out of the compass and diced them. They cut up all the bloody hoses and threw the (UNCLEAR) over the side and

it must have been pretty close to New Guinea I’d say or still in New Guinea because they flew the CIB [Criminal Investigation Branch] up from Australia to fingerprint us all to see if there was any hoodlums amongst the crew you know and then they decided to draft, to split the bad apples up and draft some to the [HMAS] Shropshire, some to the Australia and there was only a few of the old divisional crew left which I was one of.

Well I can remember my father. He was a hard working man, and in those days as I previously mentioned they operated teams with these ore drays and I can remember him hearing him of a morning, getting up in the early hours and getting off at daybreak because by the time you yoked up seven horses or something like that and put the harness on them it’d

be probably half past three in the morning and they’d get away at daybreak. And he used to call me ‘squatter’, that was my nickname. And I got this because of an afternoon I’d be squatting down on top of the woodheap, you know when I say woodheap, there’d be logs and goodness knows what and I’d be looking into the distance waiting for my Dad to come home.

Of course with him getting away early in the morning I’d go to school and come home of course and probably have to milk a couple of cows even though I was only young, they were (UNCLEAR). And then if I didn't squat on the woodheap and wait till I could see him coming in the distance, by then dark would be just about falling, and then he had to look after the horses’

needs once he took the harness off, unharnessed them. And there may have been other repairs that he had to do, by the time he got inside for his evening meal I’d be curled up in bed so it’s not necessary to say that I saw very little of my father in particular. But I can remember on occasions when he did have a few spare moments

he used to bounce me on his knee in front of the old wood stove and he had a harmonica. Well at this particular time I was no judge of music, I was too young but he used to make a noise with this old harmonica and I can remember two tunes in particular: one was ‘Swanee River’ and the other one was ‘My Silver Bells’.

Well as I said I wasn't a judge of

music at that time but the old mater used to say, “He’s playing well tonight son.” you know. And I’ll just tell you, I’ll elaborate on it a little bit, I’ll tell you a story about this. When we eventually came to Bundaberg I’ll get back to Mount Coolum again later on, but we came down to Bundaberg and of course both the parents died here. And the old Dad we buried him in 1980 out at the Lawn Cemetery.

So I got a phone call from the sexton of the cemetery on this occasion to say, “Frank, the vandals have cut loose in the cemetery and they’ve run over numerous headstones and so forth of which one happens to belong to your parents Francis John and Bessie Evelyn Silver.” he said, “Would you like me to take care of the repairs?” I said, “No, I’ll do it myself thanks very much.”

So I went out and took various measurements and so forth and the scene was set a couple of Sundays later on, I thought, ‘Righto, I’ve got a bucket of sand, some cement, a shovel.’ and I knew there was water out there and various tools, spirit levels and lays, not lays, trowels. So out I go. Now mind you I’m going from about

1930 to when my Dad used to play ‘My Silver Bells’ to about 1986. So I get out there and I put down a bit of mortar like and so forth and straightened the headstone up and tiddlied [straightened] her up got the tools out and washed them and so forth and then I had a final check, you know, inspection and I thought, ‘That’ll keep you pair of buggers quiet for a while.’ you know just like that

in a endearing way. And put the tools in the car, drove around the corner, turned the bloody radio on and you wouldn't want to know - ‘My Silver Bells’. Well that was the first time I’d heard it since the day Dad used to bounce me on his knee.

And though I consider myself to be a man of the world I had to pull the car over to the side and steady myself and I thought, ‘Goodness gracious me. Was that, you know some hidden spirit giving a message of thanks or what?’ But apparently I didn't know, because I wasn't aware of it because it's very rarely that I listen to the radio unless

I listen to it for the TAB [betting agency] but apparently this Macca’s [Ian McNamara] program on the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] of a Sunday morning he must play this song pretty often which I wasn't aware of but I tell you what it made the old hair on the back of the neck stand up. But back to Mount Coolum…

No. Oh, on scant occasions yes but

look it wasn't, that sort of work in those days wasn't a children’s play, you know what I mean? You had, up at the mines in particular you had all these mine shafts which were enormously deep like what do you call them, chasms, and you were sort of parent-wise, your mind would never be at ease if your children running around those. But before I was born

getting back to Mount Coolum but you might like to read that story up there on the wall of Mount Coolum shooting. There was a, Luke Reynolds as the story goes, he found this lode, like a lode is a reef

or a gold vein, so he in turn of course through his stupidity, told somebody and somebody else told the baker and the baker told somebody else and before you knew what was what because as I said before this was a nomadic itinerant, he had sharks coming there like con-men and goodness knows what so Tom Coolum, he was the chap

that the town was named after, he was working the… he reckons he had the rights to it. So he went to, now I could be wrong here, I think he went to Claremont, to peg the claim with the controlling shire of Mount Coolum. And when people found out about that

they went to Charters Towers to peg the claim there which was the right controlling shire for Mount Coolum so when Tom Coolum came back these blokes were working his claim and he told them there and then he said, “Now you’ve jumped my claim.” and they said, “No we haven’t Tom.” they said, “The law says you’ve got to work your claim for so many days per given month.” which he

hadn’t done. But they were only using that as an excuse, whether it stood up in a court of law or not I wouldn't know. So anyway he said, “Alright, I’ll give you twenty-four hours to vacate the property.” he said, “If not I’ll be back and I’ll shoot the lot of you.” So next morning true to his word he rode back, and he shot Broome and… Broome and Brown I think it was. Funny we talked about now, I was on the Broome.

He shot them on the spot, he got two more later on and shot them and he was going to shoot this Curly Thompson but somehow or other he got away and he got out and he lived with the blacks, lived with the blacks for about three weeks this Curly Thompson. Little did he realise that Coolum had shot himself the next day and my father carted those bodies away to their resting place in the old ore drays and

there was a big court case over it, she took the case to court and lost it. That was Tom Coolum’s wife, she appealed to a higher court, she won the case and then she ended up selling it for some enormous amount of money then, this was back in about I don't know might have been, be about the First World War time. And she sold it for something like fifth thousand or sixty thousand pounds,

jumped on a old windjammer [ship] to go back to Ireland and bugger me she died at sea so it was an ill wind. But it had a hell of a lot of history about it; there were claim jumpers there, they had their own Kelly Gang [famous Australian bushrangers], I don't know whether they were quite as bad as Ned and his brother but they were bad enough.

They had what they called miners’ settlements. It was only a while back that I enquired about this, Dad had a lease on this block of ground where you build your own house and as I said before it was only about a hundred and fifty yards below the local pub

and he let that expire it was about 1976 and I went down to the Lands Department here to find out what was going on and there was some real estate agent, now they might have been where the area where I was referring to right on Police Creek, this was just below Jim Barclay's hammer mill.

Now the hammer mill was where they used to crush all the ore, then they put it through various phases you know to get the gold out of it just like an old washing board filled with quicksilver and so forth. There was a lot of detail about it but I went down to make an enquiry about these settlements, or miners’ leases and this

girl down here told me she said, “Well there’s a map of it.” gave me everything in detail and then she said, “That’s where you used to live.” she said, “There’s one chap has got every block of land there tied up.” You see it was only three dollars a year holding fee. Now if he had a thousand blocks well it was costing him three thousand dollars a year and you only had to sell one block, he’d probably drop a nugget somewhere and kick his toe on it. What they call ‘salting up’ the area, saying, “Oh look gold again in

Mount Coolum!” of course everybody would tumble into the old con-trick and go out and buy a block of ground here and a block of ground there and he’d make a fortune but it faded out though. There was still plenty of gold left there but to get the modern equipment to work all the old ruins and that, by the time Peter paid for Paul there wouldn't be much left over so they’re all full of water now I think.

Ah, I don't think it had any great effect. You're talking about the late thirties. No, Dad always seemed to have plenty of work and we never wanted for anything. We always

seemed to have plenty on the table as the saying is and of course the old Dad was never a drinker so that saved him some sort of expense but he was well regarded no matter where he went. He was a hard working individual and gave any employer a full day’s work. That was until he branched out on his own, he was employed at one stage by people called Kings, they had a, he was the head stockman on

Bulliwallah [cattle station], now that was, head stockman was well, the head sarang [boss] you know. And it wasn't the American Kings, these were the Australian Kings. Now the American Kings when they came out here they were enormous; they had their own shops, they had their own picture theatre and all their employees used to go along and support them – give them their money back type through all these agencies. And

the Australian Kings were something similar; every animal they had on their station was blueblood. Whether it was a cow, a horse or otherwise. And they were well respected – if you had anything to do with the Kings and Bulliwallah you had to be something special and my old mater she was a governess there and that’s where I dare say Dad met her. She was a nanny, governess, goodness knows what.

Well as I said before with this little aboriginal boy pretty hectic. Oh dear, oh dear, school life in those days was something similar to what you have today. I was never a brilliant scholar although I did shine out in multiplications,

algebra and I got to the stage where it was what they call scholarship. I think that was about year seven but I never went back to school after that but I had a fair amount of horse sense, general knowledge. That’s why I say I owed a lot to Mount Coolum because of the education I got there.

Well you know seeing how people roughed you

and the way you could live out in the bush.

Oh miners in particular you know, what sort of food they out on the table, something that would last them for a weeks meals if you see what I mean instead of having to go to the trouble of cooking all the time like dampers [bread] and so forth. And sometimes they never used the old camp oven they’d just roast that on the coals

and just brush the coals off like that or what's a bit of, I suppose a bit of coal wouldn't hurt you. Sharpen your teeth up if anything else but no, they came down in all different shapes and forms and lived the way that they wanted to live.

The only people that I got

to know connected with the gold mines itself were people that my father did business with. You know someone might have been a foreman, whether he’d have to check every time he took a lode or something in he’d have to get a docket signed or something like that but I never made friends with any of the… There were certain individuals that used to come down to home. The old Dad, we had a radio that

was battery driven of course and on a Friday night there used to be a couple would come down and they’d try and pick up the sports program in Sydney or Brisbane or something like that. And oh it was static and whistling and all that but they used to enjoy it and I got to know some of them pretty good. But outside of the average knockabout bloke no. I had a lot of cousins there see my father

now hang on let me think. My father had three or four sisters, three I think, and there were three Hutchins brothers married three Tuttle sisters so there were cousins everywhere. I wasn't short of company in that regard you know, I got to know them pretty well. Now they’re like rabbits, they’re by the hundreds of them in north Queensland.

Yes. Look I’m not quite certain of the exact date but it’d be about, well my third eldest son now would be about forty-two so it's got to be something like forty years ago we went back to

Collinsville. Now when the gold mines of Mount Coolum closed down people just dispersed. They went hither and some of them went to Mount Morgan where there was a mine there, Mount Isa you know, Collinsville. There you had the coal mine at Scottsville so they just went wherever they could get work that they were familiar with and I said to Faye one day, we only had…

Richard was a baby that’s right, Neil and Kerry, Richard was a baby so it would have been about 1961 or ’62. I said to Faye ‘(UNCLEAR) We’ll go up to Collinsville for a week,’ so we jumped in the old FJ [Holden car] I had, away we went. Oh jeez I tell you what the roads were something, atrocious. Especially

through that Marlborough strip. You’d hit a pothole and it’d be two foot deep. I cut one spring and I cut it completely in half just like you’d got a blowtorch and rhhhgh. Anyway we eventually got there and Kerry got pneumonia or double pneumonia so he was in hospital for three weeks and we only intended staying a week and you wouldn't want to know; I walk into the, there were only two hotels there and I walked into the bottom

hotel and there was a young cousin of mine there – Juney Tuttle, she was only about seventeen or eighteen years of age. She was working behind the bar and you would have thought I was long lost King Billy or something like that you know when I introduced myself to her and bugger me I looked around the corner and I thought, ‘Don’t tell me!’ there was this bugger, this bloody Charlie Roberts and you know it’s not a matter of, “How are you going Squatter? I haven’t seen you for

umpteen years what have you been doing?” The first thing, he opened his mouth and the first thing was he hit me for two bob. God almighty. Anyway I had a couple of beers with him, he sort of had a bad reputation around the place but that didn't worry me.

No, it was just because I didn't retaliate I’d imagine. You know probably on the first occasion he thought, ‘Well he’s an easy mark.’ and

he just – oh, I tell you what – the thing was of course his old man was a very polished boxer, he was well respected in the community and the teachers – there was no good in me going along and complaining to the teachers because they thought, ‘Well, Christ. If there’s going to be any reprisals here we’re not going to be on the end of old Bob Roberts’ left and right’. So poor old Squatter had to cop it.

Well I suppose it taught me this: that if you’re game enough to have a go you mightn’t always succeed but at least give your opponent the impression. Christ he wasn't as big a fool as what I thought he was but oh no, he got great enjoyment out of it and until the old mater said to me, “You're a bloody boob – stand up

to him and have a go.” and as I said before the first time I hit him I thought, ‘Oh Christ what have I done?’ type of thing, ‘What am I in for?’ Anyway I got no more than I got before and it got to the stage where I could swap punches with him and then it got to the stage where I was just a bit too good for him but we were a drawcard to the miners. We’d get down behind the post office on one of our set-tos and they’d be there two or three hundred,

“Come on squatter hang one on him!” you know, “Come on Charlie!” and after it was all over and done with they’d be throwing pennies and threepences on the floor. Yeah, we could have made a bit if a business out of it – never thought about doing that.

Oh yeah. Yeah we sort of grew out of it. He realised of course that he could no longer thrash me and

I never went looking for it and oh no, we were as good as buddies as I was with anybody else.

Yes but as I said I last met him in Collinsville in about 1962 I think it was.

Yes. Well,

what had happened when the gold mines ceased there were different syndicates. Some of my uncles they formed a syndicate of about ten individuals and they got the rights to re-treat a big cyanide dump. Now the cyanide dump was the refuge off from the big mine, like

it used to come out in a slurry and there’d be a certain amount of gold element in it. What they had to do was they put it through a very, very fine screen and they’d take it back to their like a big mechanised sluice and it had a, there's about six foot wide and it was just like an old time washing board with all those little rivulets in it and these things were filled with steel wool and mercury.

And as all this slurry was washed over this the mercury would collect the gold deposits and they done pretty well out of it. So did others too but Dad, people like Fred Williams who had a big cattle station I think it might have been ‘Diamond Plains’ or ‘Diamond Downs’ and the Commodes at ‘Yukalunga’, they

all bought miles of pipeline. See the mines had to pump the water from Police Creek there was a big dam there, they used to pump the water from there up to the mines so they could treat all the ore and so forth and for other purposes. So all this material was going cheap and we had the, they used to engage us, this was when we had the lorry – the lorries came into being then.

And we had the lorries and we used to transport it out to these cattle stations and so forth and the moment that came to and end, well we just, what we couldn't get rid of monetary wise, we couldn't sell, we gave away like cattle and horses and left the old ore drays there. My daughter said to me some time back and my youngest son – “What about we go out to Mount Coolum for the weekend?” he said, “Just to see what it's like.”

There wouldn't be much there now. The only thing that I was concerned about and while she was travelling through there on one occasion she made enquiries about my brother Ritchie. He got drowned when he was only a toddler, that’s him up there in the second row two from the top when he was a baby and he was buried down on the flat. There were numerous graves there but when Stacey

came back she said, “There’s no graves there Dad. I’ve made enquiries everywhere and apparently no shire wants to claim rights to it because there might be trouble.” you know because apparently they’ve just graded over all these graves and made an airfield out of it or something like that. So I was going to look into that but when she said to me, “No shires want to claim the rights to Mount Coolum.” so

it would be fruitless I’d imagine.

Well it's, back in those days of course you had a different type of people. I suppose every generation you get people with different understanding and different beliefs and so forth but back in those days

outside of the nomadic population most of the other people were pretty staid. You know they sort of put something away every week for a rainy day so when these things did happen they weren't what you’d call destitute and I’d say the majority of them would come away from Mount Coolum. Though as I just said a while ago what we

couldn't sell, which was pretty hard to do because everybody was dispersing, you just let them roam. Like the horses they just went out on Yakamunga station the same with the cattle and they’d leave behind things that they didn't want to, like you do.

Well I think it was purely and simply because

there was moves on in Bundaberg. You know, it was a matter of where you could get work. You could have went to Mount Morgan or Mount Isa or somewhere like that and my old Dad could have gone back to the mining but by now he’s sort of got set in his ways as regards the carrying business and he said, “Oh well we’ll go to Bundaberg.” And you meet some lovely people you know on the way down we used to stop hither and thither and camp

in a tent even though it was only a few hundred miles away. We’d camp in a tent for a night or a couple of days and get the permission of the property owners just to put the tent up down the corner of the property and they were great like that and when we eventually got to the outskirts of Bundaberg we came to a place just by the side of the river about five mile out, a place called Smith’s Crossing and there were some people there called Shearers

and we got permission off them to just put the tent down at the back of the creek that used to go through Smith’s Crossing, Splinters Creek sorry, did I say Smith’s Crossing? No Splinters Creek and they said, “Look, you stay here for as long as you like. When you get established – that’s good enough for me.” so it might have been a fortnight or so and we booked

into a flat just around the corner from where you are at the moment in Burham Street. We were there for a couple of months or so and my Dad bought a home, Dad and my mater bought a home up in Beetra Street which is as the crow flies only about wouldn't be half a mile from here. I think the home cost him four hundred pounds then. It was a new home.

Things have got out of all proportion now. But it was a home you know, it was lively and warm. It wasn't an elaborate building like a beautiful big brick mansion or anything like that but it definitely gave you that feeling it was a home not a house. My old mater, she made certain of that. She loved the royal springs. Especially

you know the younger brother down the bottom unfortunately he was born an invalid, deformed, and she actually through her understanding and kindness and generosity she actually spoiled him and I could say ruined his life but Dave was a pretty cunning bugger. He’d wake up of a morning and he’d say, “Mum, I don't feel too well today. I don't think I can got to school.” so Mum would say, “Alright son I’ll write a

letter of explanation to the teacher and you just stay in bed.” and of course this happened with monotonous regularity and needless to say his education suffered. But he was OK, he got on, he did alright.

Would have been about 1939 I reckon, yeah ’39, just verging on the forties.

Well at that particular time I never took much notice of it. You knew war had been declared but that would have been when I was fourteen years of age and as time comes to pass as I’ve said before you know I started to grow up and you couldn't help but feel that people were staring at you. They probably thought I was twenty-one or something like that because well the navy and the air force were voluntary

services whereas the army was conscription of course but I thought, ‘Bugger this.’ even though I was working for the father at the time, ‘Bugger this I’ll join the navy.’ which was at seventeen was an accepted age.

No

I don't think it had any effect on me because at that particular stage you were that young and sort of carefree you just went about life in a normal manner because you just didn't realise, you just didn't realise what had taken place. Even when we joined up I’d venture to say that half the Australian fleet joined up when they were seventeen and I think you’re major thought was

‘Bell bottom trousers and a sheila [woman] in every port’ but by Jesus I tell you what you were hardly in port long enough to get a sheila and bloody the quicker you realised it wasn't all milk and honey.

Oh yeah. Getting closer to home. Yeah it got

serious but still it was just the same like you accepted things as they were.

Well look certainly a lot of this propaganda it went on everywhere you know. They’d use a lot of light hearted stuff to keep the spirits

of the people up and so forth but they still didn't, like the amusing part about that is they didn't stop even the films in those days, the movies, the first thing you’d do was put, “The eyes and the ears of the world are upon you.” you know the old news bracket[?], and “blunch”, there’d be half a city blown up and goodness knows what so they more or less kept it in your attention all the time and

everybody used to rush to the old radio at seven o’clock of a night for the BBC [British Boraodcasting Corporation] news you know and the Britons are doing well.

I have great admiration. They’d be the dirtiest buggers that I ever sailed with, fair enough I think even today the buggers only bathe about once a fortnight but

put their back to the wall and by jeez I tell you what they can fight alongside me any time. I have great admiration for them. You know the things that they went through the average person in Australia wouldn't have the slightest idea. You know all those Blitzes and that they used to have over there, the guts blown out of them but they’d still sing the old

songs ‘Keep Your Chin Up Tommy Atkins’ and so forth.

Oh well, you see when you went to school in the old days and you got on parade, I think we used to sing ‘God Save the King’. You went to the

movies it was until he died, later on of course it was ‘God Save the Queen’. Now all these things were sort of instilled in you until later on, people that don't like the monarchy decide to cut out ‘God Save the Queen’ even when you go to schools now and I think it myself. I think myself that doing away with a lot of these old customs has harmed the country. The kids,

and like you send a child to school, you send a child to school to be educated and disciplined you know teachers have no longer got the right to discipline a child. I’m not going to say they should be flogged and stood in the corner for half a day but they should have the rights to be able to show them right from wrong and so forth and I think myself that to do thus entirely that’s sort of been taken away from the teacher. What you

call you, you know government and union intervention or something like that where kiddies that high can sue their parents for, or they can divorce themselves from them now or something like that. Like you know, it's the respect where people should be respected no longer exists. That’s just my opinion. Like you get John Williamson [singer] now, I’m not going to say he’s a billygoat but what's he want ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as our national anthem?

Well that’s his choice. I’ve got my choice the same as you’ve got your choice and I can find, you know it's like I sailed under the white ensign and I’ll always treat the white ensign with pride. You know it's the flag, the navy flag.

No. It's a white one with a red cross always

(UNCLEAR) flies it, down half at the masthead but you know you had the Union Jack or the… But the white ensign was classed as the navy flag and as far as I’m concerned it was. Now they want to do away with that and put forty-two stars here or something like that and a few crosses on it like a noughts and crosses board. Why change these things after all these years

I can’t see any sense in it myself. Perhaps somebody will get some benefit out of it, I fail to see how they can get any more benefit out of a bit of white bunting than what they’re getting out of it now.

Well I think probably a sense of embarrassment you know,

you’d be walking up the street say of an evening going to the movies and there’d be some soldiers or whatever, servicemen home on leave and people would look at me and they’d look at them and say, “Well jeez, what's the difference? Why hasn’t Frank joined up?” or something like that. And you couldn't help but sense this attitude. I’m not going to say that it was there, it was just in my mind and I thought, ‘Bugger it,

I’ll join the navy.’ so I went home and had a talk to my Dad and Mum and of course they said, “Well that’s entirely up to you son.” So I endeavoured to join about six months before I did but because I mentioned before that I was medically unfit which was taken care of almost immediately but of course back in those days of course operations were different to what they are now. Today you’re in and out of hospital in twenty-four hours but

back in those days I was in there for a month.

Oh hernia operation. I can't go into exact detail but it wasn't nice in those days I can tell you and that’s all I’m going to tell you. It's pretty close to being serious anyway.

Oh terrific yeah. As I said before when this old four ringer captain

must have been some reason why I had to show him what was what, when he seen the scar he said, “Well goodness gracious me that’s beautiful work.” he said, “You don't see work like that these days.” Well when I say these days it was only bloody six months before that I’d had the operation so it must have been still existing but I understood what he meant. But you had brilliant men in their own particular field and Egmont Schmidt was

one of those.

Yes. Oh great old doctor. He used to drive around in a black sulky with a lovely white horse. You’d see him jogging along the road making his house calls and depending on the wealth I’d say of his patients.

Some people never received an account from him. He was a marvellous individual. He had shares in the Metropolitan Hotel, his surgery still stands today but all people like that have died out you know. There aren’t many more of them round.

No he was very, very well respected. His son was something similar. His son wasn't anywhere near as brilliant as old Egmont,

Eric was his son’s name. You might remember him, he delivered the Lukey [?] quads. Remember the Lukey quads of Bundaberg? Well anyway he delivered those and I think he had a… story has it and I shouldn't put this on tape but that reckoned he sat seven times before he passed junior but he was always our family doctor. He delivered four of our children. The eldest boy was delivered in Sydney but

what I gave him credit for – he was a family doctor . When you went along to him, “How’s the wife and how’s all the young ones?” You know he wasn't just concerned about what you had wrong with you he was concerned about the whole clan and if he didn't know what was wrong with you he wouldn't experiment he’d contact somebody that had better credentials than he even if it had to be a specialist and

you’ve got to give a man full marks for that you know.

Well I think probably just, well I said before, you never thought about the ill winds you were thinking about the bell bottom trousers you know and

the old hat on the side of the head type of thing and women sort of hanging off you as I say – it never turned out to be like that. Certainly you had your moments.

Well it was a common thing in those days and

still is today, I mean you go buying Christmas cards of birthday cards and things like that you know you see a sailor strutting along on the seashore with a girl on either arm and I suppose those are the sort of ideas you get into your mind and wasn't to be.

At that time? Not really. Later on after the war we had an ex-naval men’s association here and it was a hell of a thing. We used to have our annual break up, now this was an ex-naval men’s association. We’d have something like fifty people come from Toowoomba,

Ipswich, probably the same number from Mareeba, from Rockhampton plus your local contingent. We’d have four hundred people present of a night, most of the boys after they got out of the navy they got into fishing and so forth well there’d be I don't know if you remember the old tea cases, what they called tea cases – they were about yea high and this square. They’d be full of crabs and prawns and goodness knows what plus

every dish imaginable put on the table and we’d go till all hours of the morning. I can remember the old milkman , one venue where we were having this reunion the old milkman came along so we got him inside around the keg and so forth and pumped a few in him and we ended up delivering his bloody milk. Ah the things! And one occasion when the Queen was out here, I think it might have been ’54, we had a bit of a cavalcade

up the street and these buggers were coming down from Rockhampton, these ex-sailors and as they come across the bridge, across the river to link up there’s people waving madly because the Queen was just going up the road you see so that night at the reunion this bloke from Rockhampton got up, “You know.” he said, “Jesus, I got the surprise of my life. I didn't think Bundaberg people were so hospitable.” he said, “As we come across the bridge they were

waving madly with their flags and Christ knows what.” Little did he realise of course that the Queen was about a hundred yards in front of him. Strike me lucky. But they were good days then but look we’re getting to the age now, I’m president of the corvette association here at the moment which I have been for umpteen years and we’re getting to the age where you know we’re just about dying out,

we’ve only got about six members, or seven members left. They’re all passing away, various ailments I suppose which has got to happen of course, nothing surer. But we must have once, we mustered the first Wednesday of every month and tell a few dits and white lies and so forth you know after a couple of beers.

Oh, I don't think there’d be any lies attached to them but it's just spinning a dit or two and probably every time you spin it you might just add a little body more to it you know so that’s what you’d call a white lie. It actual truth but exaggerated.

Yeah well this was possibly the hardest part of the time you spent in the navy. That doesn’t sound right but the point that I’d like to stress is young fellows had never been away from home in their life, all of a sudden you know you’d have dormitories.

You’d have Queenslanders here, Western Australians the other side of the partition, you know the partition wasn't sealed off it only went up six feet and you had open then from the top of the partition to the ceiling. And so on it went, South Australian, Tasmanian, goodness knows what and didn't take very long for the fun to start. You’d be sitting down to an evening meal and

all of a sudden over the top of the partition would come this bloody great big paper bag full of water – splonge! Well certainly you’d retaliate and it got to the stage where out come the buckets, there’d be no paper bags attached to it then it was just buckets of water and somebody had to pay the penalty and we’d all get persecuted. But of a night time when you’d sling your hammock some of them were more case hardened than the others

you know, probably because they had a bit more of a rugged upbringing but you’d hear them crying, homesick. And you just left them alone, you know it was no good trying to console them or anything like that - you’d just leave the buggers alone. Slowly and surely they’d grow out of it. But it was hard to do, I know I still often think back to the days when

I got on the train to go and my old Dad came down to the railway station with me and he was just in that transitional period from the old stern squire of the home like he was just that where the father was starting to mellow a little bit and become more of a family member. And he came down to the railway station with me and

he said, “Well look after yourself son.” just like that. Give me a kiss on the cheek which you wouldn't do today probably because people would think you were a bloody queer you know. And he walked away a little bit dewy eyed. The first time I’d seen him. Of course he’d had a bit of ill fortune or bad luck in the family, the eldest brother he got drowned when he was only a few years of

age and then the younger brother Dave being born deformed you know. And I think what people didn't realise in those days was I suppose my Dad might have thought, “Gee whiz, I hope I’m not going to lose my other son.” And I had a sister in the WAAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force] at the time but people

think about the armed forces and what goes with them like you know the munitions workers, the AWLAs [Australian Women’s Land Army] working in the fields and Christ knows what and when it comes Anzac Day or something like that there’s not too many people think of the parents. And back in those days you know the telegram boy used to ride a push bike, sergeants, police used to ride push bikes, you

name it, bloody everybody rode a push bike. The postman, and you could just imagine if someone had to deliver you bad news they’d be on a push bike too and you could just imagine how many bloody times your mother, or your father died when somebody knocked on the bloody door with a push bike. You know, poor buggers, must have been

terrible. Yeah. And it's the same today, I get shitty on this – unless you’re a bloody (UNCLEAR), unless you’ve walked over the Kokoda Trail, unless you were in the Coral Sea Battle you weren't in the bloody war. I built a bloody banner out here last year, I said, ‘Up yours. I’ll

get the bloody corvette association going’ so I built a banner and I couldn't get a bugger to march with me. I ended up getting them but it just goes to show you there's other bloody kindred bodies besides the three or four that are poked in your bloody face every Anzac Day. Like somebody’s got to make their clothes and their rifles and their bullets and you name it. Alright they probably had more bloody shots fired at them than the average man but it only takes one shot to kill you. I

get bloody, I’m getting worked up now. Bloody…

Oh I don't know. It's probably because like the famous 9th Division there's no doubt about that and I feel sorry for the 8th Divvy [Division] that collapsed with Singapore and Malaysia. They were prisoners of war – nobody wants to see that but you know they get all their accolades because they were prisoners. Other poor buggers that do certain,

do the fighting get bloody nothing. Your 9th Division and your 6th Division and your 7th – alright they were there but they played no more important role than the bloke bloody next door to you. It's the same with the navy – unless you were on a destroyer or a cruiser or something like that nobody recognises you. Or they might recognise

you but not to the same extent and yet we were the silly bloody buggers that had to sweep mines for them so that they’d have free seas that wouldn't blow up. Yeah, no a lot of people just don't get the full nitty gritty of what took place. Treat you with utter contempt you know like the bloody skipper of the Australia – “Get that bloody

lifeboat away from here!” We had a similar situation once with the skipper of the Shropshire, we were down off Milne Bay, that was the place I was trying to think of before. We were outside of Milne Bay on this occasion patrolling the heads again, just patrolling the heads and the two operators on the ASDIC [Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee, normally refers to submarine detection equipment] and the radar picked us this bloke on the, well the bloke on the ASDIC picked up the ping and the

fellow on the radar got this thing on his screen. Reported this object so we threw out the code like a challenge – no reply. Another five minutes come to pass and we challenged again – no reply. Now mind you, you’re got to take into account we’ve got a little bloody four inch gun up on the foc’s’le [forecastle]. So a quarter of an hour came to pass and the skipper said, “Right-o, action stations, close it up.”

Pushed the alarm bells and we all closed up. Next thing – oh the skippers like, “Give them one more chance – get the Aldis lamp [portable signal lamp] out.” – now you’re not supposed to give an Aldis lamp out when you're segmenting because you break the, in other words you disclose where you are because of the light. Anyway the skipper sent him a signal with the Aldis lamp and he gets

a reply. And the answer’s in code so the skipper, Donavan, he sent back a signal then over the Morse saying, “You were very lucky. I was about to open fire.” back comes the reply, “You were very lucky you didn't, HMAS Shropshire here.” Now she’d have blown us out of the bloody water like blowing froth off the top of a bath tub but that’s the sort of attitude they’d adopt. Because

you were small and weak and they’re big and strong you know they don't play it according to Hoyle [according to the rules] if you understand what I mean. We could have all got bloody killed just because of his stubbornness.

Oh Christ yes. You even find it amongst the ratings. If you were on the big ships type thing

“What were you on Frank?” I say, “I was on a corvette, a bloody old pilot vessel.” “Never heard of them.” Well that doesn't worry me greatly because my conscience is my judge and as I said before if we didn't sweep the channels in front of them they might have ended up worse off than they did.

I don't know, it's just a

air of ego or something like that. They think because they served on the Aussie, Christ I refused to trip on the Aussie, I blued about it when I was drafted to the Aussie. And that was when it was all over and I could have seen half the world you know. Bloody Christ. No, well it's, I’m not going to say it's just certain individuals, it’d be damn near

the whole ship’s company. They just get that chip on their shoulder. We had the same, we’re going north on one occasion and the [HMAS] Arunta, one of the Tribal class destroyers was coming down. And we would have only been probably half a mile away from them. Daylight it was and across comes the message, “It's no good going up there we’ve taken care of everything up there.”

So little did he know that we had Com D of New Guinea on board, Commander of New Guinea so he got on the radio to him and he gave him a nice old bloody serve. Took the wind out of his sail, just like to be a little bit uppish.

Oh no.

No you get it like that. Like I spent just under two years on a corvette and when we went to a reunion here in Brisbane on one occasion our tables were in ships you know so there was a couple of hands there, I just can’t think of their names now, they’re in that photograph up there anyway.

“When did you join her Frank?” I said, “I joined her in February ’44.” “Oh. I commissioned her.” I said, “What's that mean?” I said, “When did you leave her?” “Oh.” he said, “I had about nine months on her.” “Well I had nearly two years on her so does that make us equal or what?”

Of course he commissioned, (UNCLEAR) built her but they give you the shits the way they carry on.

Oh well you get that. They used to call you Macca, what did they call them? Macca, as a rookie you know. “You’ll be sorry Macca!”

It didn't worry me. It worries me more now because I’d like to face some of the buggers now you know and just prove to them what bloody adults they were. But I never took any notice of it then. But everybody’s got to start, you’ve got to learn and I was pretty fortunate as I said, like Mount Coolum was the sort of place that educated me I was well advanced before

I came down to Bundaberg and before I joined the navy and it didn't take me long to adapt. I was a pretty good seaman purely and simply because I took note and I dare some of the people that were gigging me when I was only a Macca as they called it, they wouldn't have been any better sailors.

What at Flinders Naval Depot?

Yeah. Well we had to report to Moreton Depot in Brisbane and we were only there but a few days and we were on a train to Finders Naval Depot and that was where we done our training. But there was as I said before in the dormitories

there was all these water bombs coming over the partition and so forth and there was a certain amount of animosity between different states and it was wasn't what you’d call a rare occasion that they’d be an all-in blue. That’s why I went and got this bloody tattoo on – that’s Queensland.

Well it's just got Queensland written across there and the old ship there and a couple of palm bits and goodness knows what

but it was a mark of distinction. You’d get into a blue and you didn't know who you were hitting because you were all strangers. I went up to Flinders Lane and got that put on – it cost me twelve and sixpence. But the thing was of course if you were found out to be one of the stirrers you know there might be say fifty Queenslanders and say forty New South Welshmen and

twenty-five Victorians and so forth and out of each group of different states you might have four or five looked upon as the ring leaders. See, I was a class leader. Class A1 it was, yeah class A1. And as I said because of being involved with this little Charlie Roberts in the Mount Coolum school episodes and watching all the miners and so forth

I could sort of handle myself reasonably well. And I found out after a few altercations, if I can use that word, that it didn't bear fruit to show your best ability. Because if you went, the bloody, the phys ed [physical eduction] teachers would come and get you and they’d take you down to the gym, there might be twenty of you and might only have half a dozen sets of gloves but you’d get out and you’d try your luck with somebody

from Western Australia and if you went too heavy on him then the bloody phys ed teacher put the gloves on and he’d take the mickey out of you [beat you], you see. So next time you went down there you let the other bloke hit you a few times because otherwise the bloody phys ed teacher put the gloves on. So you had to be pretty cluey. But there was a lot to it you know. You had, when you were doing gunnery courses

and things like that they, if you didn't pay attention – mind you they’d wake you up bloody early in the morning and if you’d had a rough night, you know had no sleep during the night, sitting there sometimes listening to this bloody petty officer telling you all about guns you – [snores]. You’d be inclined to doze off. “Right-o pick up that prodgie then!” What they called a prodgie was a warhead on a projectile you see.

Oh Christ might weigh a hundredweight. He’d make you pick the bloody thing up, you’d have to, “Not walk, now jog!” around the flag pole which was about three hundred yards away. So you had to stay on your toes otherwise you’d pay the penalty. It sort of stood you in good stead because you paid attention and you learned and you got the benefit out of it later on.

Oh well as I said before the basic things that come with operating a ship like you did a certain amount of…I was a gunner. But you had to learn how to splice rope; I learnt how to signal – like semaphore and the Aldis lamp – torpedo school you went through. You might have only done a two or three day course there. How to set

depth charges, giving you some sort of an idea how to operate in a, I’m not going to say commanding situation but in a situation where you could lead others if called upon. Like a lot of people wouldn't have the slightest idea, like rigging a boom or something like that,

a lot of people would put the boom out first and then climb out along the boom and try and rig up the lazy painter to it and Christ knows what. Well, you do all that in board before you put the boom out. So there's the rights and wrongs. But I didn't really regret it – I think it certainly had its good points.

Oh yes, no, well you had to have it in any case. But the thing was of course if you took a dislike to it well you become a grumble-bum as the saying is. So you just had to go down and do your boat drill in the morning, come back and have breakfast, away you'd go again and

if you didn't pay attention, like the thing that was impressed upon you mainly, if you didn't pay attention they’d say, they’d tell you there and then, “We can replace you tomorrow. But it takes a bloody lot longer to replace a ship.” You know what I mean? So in other words they were impressing upon you that you had to look after him and he had to look after you and so on because you were a crew. If you didn't do that well,

you were only as strong as the weakest link. You know, you were letting the whole chain down because you didn't pay attention. Oh we were there about; I suppose collectively about six weeks I think. But the funny part about it – like I joined in, there had to be a reason for it and I never delved into it – I joined

the first week in October which it's shows clearly on my old papers there and yet they’ve got beside it time didn't start till December so I’ll have to write to the buggers one day and ask them if they’ve robbed me of a couple of months pay. Which wouldn't be much.

Quite OK. Yes I had no worries

there. Not unless I felt as if I was being sorted out but that the cut of my jib didn't suit the leading hand or the petty officer or the buffer and he was just being spiteful for something that wasn't warranted you know, that didn't warrant it well then I might rear up on the old hackles a bit. But

outside of that, if I was getting a fair go, no I copped it sweet [accepted it], no worries there. I could take the good, I could take it and I could give it type of thing and probably take more than what I was entitled to but if I felt that I was just being sought out well then I’d rear up a little bit.

Ah, not really. I suppose you could say probably on a couple of occasions I felt that I was unduly being dealt with. But I just let it flow along. Now sometimes when people try to ride over the top of you and if you don't say anything you’ll end up winning their respect but when you start moaning and groaning – that’s when

they’ll put more on your plate so this is what I say when it all gets back to Mount Coolum. Where the common sense and the horse sense was instilled in me and these are the sort of… you use reverse psychology is it or whatever they call it. You know throw the onus back on them. And you can sense the change too, you can sense the bloody change (UNCLEAR) about that. But they probably say, ‘Well

this bloke’s a better fellow than I thought he was’.

Oh yes, yeah. Funny how you talk about that, a bloke called Ernie Hughes, two in particular – there was Ernie Hughes and Paul Layfelt[?]. Ernie and I were called the twins; I could wear

his clothes, he could wear mine. And it was just a matter of which one did the dhobi-ing the best – now dhobi-ing is what they called washing. And if he had a full set of clean clothes I’d borrow his. But we started, we had the, we run the SP [starting price betting] on the boat, this is when we were down in the Dutch East Indies actually. We were dealing in guilders [Dutch coins].

And it would have been further up to because I can remember we had to send some bets ashore to Morotai and yeah right up through that strait. So we got to the stage, because mind you we hadn’t been paid for some enormous amount of time and if you wanted anything out of the canteen you had to pay cash for it because we had a tough bugger

running the canteen and by God, you couldn't get past it – no such thing as ticking up [getting credit]. Well, they used to like having a punt [a bet] on the Australian racing, now we were fortunate – I had a couple of mates in the teleg [telegraphy] part of the business, you know like telephonists, and we used to get these results on short wave and we ended up at one stage there we had, everybody that bet we had all their bloody money. We

had this little notebook. If somebody wanted to come along and buy a tin of peaches out of the canteen or something like that they’d have to come along – they used to call me Tari – they’d come along to Tari or Ernie and we’d put it down in the book you know and then they’d go and buy something out of the canteen. But I flew down to Hobart, might have been a couple of years ago, two and a half years ago, I rang him up one night and I said, “Where will you be in two days’ time?” “Oh,” he said, “I’ll probably be out at Glenorchy at the pub having a beer.”

and I said, “Make sure the seat next to you is vacant.” and he said, “Why’s that?” and I said, “I’ll be down.” He said, “What? Down to Hobart?” “Yeah.” I said, “I’ll arrive on such and such a day.” I said, “I’ll make my own way out to you to your flat, unit.” Anyway bugger me when I got off the plane there he was with his niece and her husband and I’m standing there, of course he aged a lot quicker than me,

whereas he used to have real thick black hair he was as grey as buggery and I just stood back there against the wall and I thought, “Now this bugger’s going to turn around and see me in a minute.” and he turned around and he looked at me and I could read his lips, he said to his niece, “I don't think the bugger’s come down.” Anyway I couldn't help but bloody smile – “You bloody mongrel!” and over he came. Oh

we had a…I stayed there for about five days and about six months after that he died and I was pleased I went down. And Paul the other fellow, he was a good friend, Paul Lafelt. He was a vegetable for quite a few years, he was making a home brew in his kitchen and buggered if I know, I drank home brew and it never affected me like that but he threw a mickey [became ill] and never ever recovered after it. He knew nobody,

lingered on for about seven years and we only buried him a couple of years ago if it was that.

He was making a home brew. He was bottling up a home brew you know that he’d brewed and I suppose it was just time and all of a sudden - bang! Down he went and that was the end of him.

No, no. He just threw a mickey

or something like that you know. But no, I made some hellishly good friends; bloody Big Bert Dale and Joe Gibby and South Australia and Punchy McCann. But this Ernie Hughes and I, he come from Hobart as I said and I was a Queenslander, my darling old mother, she used to send me all the papers and so forth, like especially the weekend paper plus the

Sporting Globe and the Sporting Globe in those days was a real sportsman’s bible – it was a paper. They used to have boxing, football, wrestling, horse racing – you name it. All international events but for some unknown reason they allowed it to deteriorate to buggery. I don't think it exists anymore but it was, it was a fantastic paper. And Ernie and I would be sitting there nice and quietly

and there was always that little bit of animosity between rugby league and Australian rules [football] you see before it took off in Queensland and I used to sit there and say, “Ernie! Are they still playing that bloody aerial ping-pong down your way?” and of course all of a sudden some bugger sitting next to the bulkhead he’d bite and he’d come into it and then some Queenslander or New South Welshman would start talking about rugby league.

Next thing there’d be a bloody blur for sure you know but we were real stirrers by Jesus. Made a bit of activity and a bit of fun. And I was reading the paper there one day beside Ernie and I said, I was just reading this little caption and I said, “Have you got a brother called Matey?” He said, “Yeah.” “Well.” I said, “Here’s a bit of news.” I said, “You wouldn't know anything about this he got a

bloody DSM [Distinguished Service Medal] or DCM [Distinguished Conduct Medal] or something like that.” He was on the Aussie and these Kamikaze planes, apparently his offsiders were shot and he was strapped into one of these multi bloody pom-pom aircraft guns you know. And he just kept firing away, firing away and he shot two of these buggers. “Jesus Christ!” he said, “I didn't know that.”

So there you are.

Yeah

Well it's just a matter of learning how to row a boat. What you call a

feather the oar, always watch, never watch the blade of an oar when you're rowing. Like if you’re in a whaler you might have seven or eight oarsmen. Now everybody works forward like that and back, forward and back, so you never watch the paddle part of the oar, never watch that or the blade of the oar – you watched the back of the person in front of you and you work in unison with him. Now

that’s one thing you learned. Now you watch a lot of modern oarsmen in the eights and they’re watching the blade, now why I don't know because when you go forward and come back you sort of roll your wrists so when your oar comes forward it hits the water like that, the blades pointing up that way instead of that way because if it's down that way you get a crab. What they call a crab and it pulls your

oar down under the water you see and you upset the whole team of the crew. So that’s on thing. Chip oars were another thing. When you bring your oar in you stand it up straight like that and what's it? Not feather the oar, well anyway you lay in down like that in a row along the gun line either side so there’s, in other words you’ve got it all in unison. It's done one across this way and one across that

way – pigsty type but everyone’s lying the same, pointing in the same direction. So there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. You just think there's eight blokes out there rowing a boat but you’ve got to go through the motions and it’s common sense.

Every morning unless you had a regatta. Like regatta time comes

well they pick out so many seaman out of a mess, a lot of the fishermen, people that were involved in fishing families before they joined up they’d have a lot of start in them because they’d be rowing boats all the time and then they’d have the tutors, the people that were putting you through the drills etc, etc. But I tell you what the old fishermen – they were pretty hard to

get over, by Jesus the buggers they knew. They were too good for us and too good for the tutors too. But it was the sort of thing that helped make you manly. You’d march down of course; you’d feel a bit drowsy when you got there because they used to get you out of the hammock pretty early in the morning. And by the time you rowed around about four miles, of course those bloody oars are

that heavy. Jesus they were heavy. They might be a bit more fine tuned today but you were pleased to get out of the boat when it was over.

You see on a corvette

you’ve got what they call throwers. Now they point on the port and starboard side they are, and they point outwards. Now if you only want to set one shallow you undo these screws which allows the water to go into that hollow and when it gets in there the weight on that water – blunch! Up she goes.

So the idea of the throwers is to throw them well away from the ship otherwise if you just put one out there and set out for a couple of fathoms it’d blow the side of your ship before you got away from it. Now, that was with the throws but you had two racks, you had two racks down the stern – one on port and starboard side – now you could set these at a lot deeper and by the time they got down

say fifty fathoms or something like that you’d be well and truly clear of them. If you tried to set one as I said before we only used to get along about eight knots, well that’s just a fast trot. If you set one to shallow well you’d be in bloody trouble. So you had to learn all about that but that was a sort of special duty man. Like you had torpedo men but they’d have somebody

who probably did well in their exams or excelled being offsider to him and of course as you went along you learnt more about them. So it was a pretty finicky job – you had to be pretty careful.

I was the starboard Oerlikon gunner up on the starboard side of the bridge but they were only a, they weren't an anti-aircraft gun but I suppose if you

were closer enough – you only had a range of about two miles or something like that – if you were close enough to something where they could be effective well you’d throw your two and sixpence in that was for certain. But everybody had a role to play, like the (UNCLEAR) come around. You know if you had somebody on the helm well straight away the blokes that’s position was on the helm

when you went for action stations he’d immediately go to that position, the bloke that was on the helm, he’d have to go to where he was allocated and so forth. So you all had different positions even though you might have been somewhere else when action stations come about.

Not really.

I think one time when we got a couple of days leave – some people took advantage of the situation too. We were at Flinders Naval Depot and there was a hell of a bush fire around Frankston, well they called on the navy to help them put the fire out. Well you might have got the fire out within half a day in your area but you didn't let them know.

You carried on up the town or somewhere like that. If anybody rang up and said, “How are you going?” you said, “Oh the bloody flames are high down here.”

Oh just with bags, bushes, whatever you could get hold of you know. But it was, it was pretty serious at the time and I dare say just as serious then as what it would be today.

Oh look. There were different haunts for different forces and in Melbourne in particular – Melbourne was a sailors’ town – and you always went to, a lot of people called it Young and Jackson’s. Now they may have been the people that owned the hotel but as you come over Princess Alexandra Bridge

the name of the hotel was the ‘Alexandra’ or ‘The Princess Alexandra’. But everybody called it ‘Young and Jackson’s’ and inside Young and Jackson’s was this beautiful big photograph of Chloe lying on her side in the nude. That was the landmark of Young and Jackson’s hotel and I think it's still there today.

Buggered if I know. She must have been some Frenchwoman or something like that. But anyway,

you’d have a couple of beers and a couple would decide to go for a bit of a walk and all of a sudden you’d notice someone closing an eye and you’d start talking and become friendly and before you know what's what you’d go to a movie or whatever but oh yes, man wasn't numb altogether.

Naturally. Yeah naturally yeah. I think it would probably be that attraction more than the human being.

I don't know. I think when you go back many, many years ago there was all those songs you know, ‘All the nice girls love a sailor’ and so on it goes and the

girl in every port you know that was common knowledge. Didn't work out that way of course.

Oh. Well we rarely ever got into port you know. And even then they didn't give you time to operate sort of thing. You’d no sooner got ashore than you were called back to the ship.

Oh yes, that was common policy but…

Oh you know about various diseases, VD [venereal disease] and syphilis and things of that nature. Sex transmitted disease. Of course they’ve exploded out of all proportion since then. Oh they used to have these protectors,

or condoms as they call them today, but oh dear, oh dear, some of the boys reckon they were bicycle tubes.

Oh I suppose with some individuals yes but no sensitivity. That’s the quickest way to explain it I suppose.

Certainly there were all types no matter where and people used to advertise their exploits. Others were pretty tight lipped like you don't give away something that’s nice,

where needless to say you kept it to yourself. But other boys just couldn't resist the temptation of skiting [boasting] about their prowess.

Yes, oh yes. I’m not going to say I feel madly in love or anything like that but they were nice.

And I treated them accordingly. What were you going to say?

Oh no, I think what you did

before you got married was your own business. And Faye and I don't discuss those things but getting back to your question – yes, I met some lovely people.

Well as I said before it was a sailor’s town and you had free travel, tram

and bus. You were never charged. Well, that might have be why I think South Australia I think was an air force town and Adelaide and so on it went. The poor old swatty, the old soldier – I don't think he was accepted anywhere in the same mode. Probably because of his uniform. It was that drab thing – khaki you know and bloody big boots on.

Lovely blokes that they were but they just didn't look handsome enough.

Well I can relate to that. I came home on leave in ’44, the end of ’44 I think it was. And an old friend of mine up the road here,

a fellow called Cliff Kitchen, it was his younger brother, a fellow called Jack Kitchen – they called him the butcher. Why I don't know, he might have been a butcher. But I went to this dance down at one of the local venues here they called ‘The Rowing Shed’, a lot of them used to call it ‘The Home-wreckers’.

Well I suppose a lot of skulduggery going on there you know between men and women but

I was just standing there minding my own business this night and only had the bell bottoms on and just a casual civilian shirt and I went down there with a fellow called… damn it all. Anyway, to make a long story short, I had a dance and I was just standing there minding my own business and Jack Kitchen was in his army

tunic and he walked past me and said something to me and I said, “What the bloody hell’s wrong with you?” and he more or less said, didn't mince words like, he said, “I’ll punch you in the bloody nose as quick as look at you.” Well I said, “Are you felling lucky?” Anyway downstairs we go, Snow, Snow McAlpine – that’s the

name of the bloke that I went with – Snow McAlpine. So we get downstairs and of course McAlpine wasn't aware of what was going on and when you walked outside the door there was a slope like that and I looked at this bugger and I thought, ‘Well I’m giving him about three stone.’ I thought, ‘The best thing I can do…’ – as I’m pulling my shirt off – ‘I’ll get on the top side of him on the hill.’ and he must have had the same bloody idea because as I got my shirt off he was into me. Well he knocked me down a couple of times but I still got up

and at him. Anyway next thing this Snow McAlpine charging down the bloody steps – “What the hell’s going on?” he says, “It's bloody Christmas time! You should be buying each other a beer instead of fighting!” and this Jack Kitchen said, “What the bloody hell’s it got to do with you?” he said, “Oh wake up mate.” Next thing they’re into it. Well, there was motorbikes going everywhere and I looked at this bugger when him and Snowy were into it and I thought, “Oh no. Not another Charlie Roberts job. I’m going to get it again.” By Jeez he could fight.

Anyway the word was out, that next morning I went up town, that he was looking for me. I thought, ‘Oh well, if he looks hard enough he’ll find me.’ And sue enough he did in the old Commercial Hotel and he walked straight towards me in the bar, straight towards me and I thought, ‘I’m going to cop it.’ He said, “You going to have a beer?” and I said, “My bloody oath I am.” Then I had half a dozen beers with him and I left then.

It was only because he was half tanked [drunk] and I don't know whether I was getting more attention than him or what but he just thought he’d prove his powers I suppose in some other form or manner. Those things happen. I know there was a hell of a lot of that went on.

No. Look just individuals

you know. I think Australians are Australians you know and they’ll fight one another over some trivial little thing but when the really nitty-gritty’s there they’ll all unite you know. It's just pettiness, that’s all it is. Probably because the old digger’s uniform didn't look as clean and as presentable as the old sailors.

Oh yes.

Well look, the first thing they’d say is, “What ship you on mate?” then your conversation starts from there. “What have you got your eye on?” “One over there.” type of thing you know. But that mateship was there.

Oh I suppose it existed. Like I never delved into it in that manner but I dare say probably the air force… See they used to call them Menzies… Menzies … Oh buggered if I know now [‘Menzies’ Mannequins.’ Bob Menzies was the Prime Minister at the time]. But they were

looked upon as the I’m not going to say the softies, I wouldn't use that word, but more towards the feminine side of the masculine gender if you know what I mean. Like the army were looked upon as rough and tough and the sailors sort of weather any storm and Menzies….? No I can't – you’ll probably hear it somewhere in your travels.

In your own home town I don't think you got as much attention as what you got in a strange place.

I don't know - I suppose people know you like and they say, “There’s Frank home on leave.” or something like that but in a strange place, “Hey sailor! How are you going? You want to join us for one?” or something like that and it certainly makes a difference but the moment you’re out of uniform, “You buy your own bloody beer!” you know, “You’re not getting a free one off me.” type of thing. But locally,

certainly in your own particular circle you were welcomed home and everything and people were interested in your wellbeing but outside of that you were just another one of the population of the town.

None. None. The only water exercises that you got was, when I said before, was boat drill. You went through your gunnery drill which was over on another island, you had to row across there of course but your torpedo schools were more or less in the main part of the peninsula. Same with learning about setting depth chargers and so on. See some of these things

they were that big to manipulate that they had to make them stationery. And then splicing ropes and steel wire ropes and things like that – they were just in a normal twenty by twenty shed or something like that. Different classes would go along at different times.

You know how you plait? Like if you’ve

got a three stranded rope over one and under the other then the one that you’ve tucked under, you go under again and under the next one and so on it goes. Quite simple if I had something to show you. But you know you’ve got to learn how to tie masthead juries. A masthead jury is when you get the tail end of a rope with about six strands on it. Well, lets just there’s only three on it,

you pull one strand, like you whip it around there, what they call whip it is you just keep going around and around and around and around and then tuck it underneath and then tuck it through so it doesn't break. Snip it off, now the three strands – you take one across the top, the next one goes around and the next one goes through and you pull the whole three together like that and that’s a sort of a dome end on the rope and then you plait it back through itself then.

That’s what you call splicing. And you become accustomed to it, the only thing of course when you get onto the big stainless steel, not stainless steel, steel wire ropes. Oh Jeez, you’ve got to have vices and bloody pins. Goodness knows they’re a bugger of a thing to do.

Well, what you do with a wire rope certainly they’re mainly used in what they call ‘hurricane horses’. Now you have two big pieces of manila – that’s manila rope - or it could be sisal. You might have say forty or fifty feet of that with a big eye on the end of it and the eye is to go

around the bollard – what they call a bollard on the wharf. Bollards about yea high, made out of steel, most of them are made out of steel, then you put that over that. Now in between, that’s one end and it's the same the other end, now in between you have a steel wire rope and they call them a spring and if it was all steel or all rope they’d probably snap but because

having the steel in between the two ends they’d sing - that when the ship surges with the tide ‘laaaaaaaaa!’ because of the tension in it. Now if it was all one of the other they’d probably break – mind you they still do – but because they’ve just got that little bit of yield in them they stand up against a pretty good strain.

Oh Christ. Two on the jetty and two onboard the ship that’s all. See the idea of tying them up, when you tie up you might, there might be a ship tied up at the jetty and it's got its hawser [mooring cable] over the bollard.

Got its hawser. That’s the big rope that you tie up – say you wanted to tie up in Brisbane where

there's calm water – you’d just use a hawser. And that big loop goes over that bollard just like putting a loop around your arm. Now when you come along and tie up next to it – you don't just put the loop over like that – what you do is you come up through their loop and put it over the top again. Now there's a reason for that – it's because when you come to let go the one that’s got his noose underneath – he’s

only got to take you off the top and his rope will slide down through the eye of yours you see. Otherwise, if you just put it over the top they (UNCLEAR) going up through it – you’ve got to pull the whole bloody lot off to get the bottom one out. So these things come with experience.

I’d never had much experience with the sea. Probably the only experience I had was when we were living at Mount Coolum we used to journey down to Eire and I had an aunty on the shores of the Burdekin at Reader Island and all the families – Mum’s three or four sisters – they’d all congregate there. The younger ones never got there but all the families would come along, all the cousins and

Ritchie and Tommy and Georgie Ethorne and myself we’d go out in a row boat and catch some seafood and so forth, some crabs and prawns etcetera, etcetera. But that was about the only experience I had on the water.

Well, I’ve never really tested myself but I always found that I could get to where I wanted

to go by using different strokes and so forth and I doubt if I’d test Ian Thorpe [Olympic swimmer] or any of those buggers.

Any?

Oh yes, yes. Like you had to learn the rules of the roads like they still have them at sea the same as what you have them on shore.

Yeah no I just can't remember it all but some of it was in poetry from you know ‘If upon your port hand side is seen a steamer starboard light of green, green to red…’ like type of thing. It's got to keep clear of you, you see, if it was the other way around you’d have to keep clear of them. So you had to learn all these things – how to read markings and different

lights of a night. I can remember I took on playing golf at one stage in my life after I’d got out of the navy and we had a journey over – I was captain of the A Grade pennant team in Bundaberg – and we had a journey over the Childers and you’ll like this story. We had a journey over to Childers to… Murrumburrah came down of course,

Gympie, Rockhampton, Bundaberg. So we played nine holes and that was only a little nine hole course and when you’ve got two hundred people there or two hundred players, you’d play the nine and you’d get up in the clubhouse and you might have to wait another hour and a half to two hours at the nineteenth as they call it, at the waterhole quenching your thirst until you got a chance to go down on the tee again. And there was about forty or fifty individuals in the bar.

And the barman said, “Jesus here’s Frank Tuttle! Now this bloke will answer our question.” he said, “He’s an old sailor.” And I naturally assumed it had been some sort of debate or argument or other as regards a signal. And I said, “Why? What's the problem?” “Well.” he said “Now,” he said “You're coming into port…” and he said,

“In front of you, you can see this flashing white light… wait a minute… no… you can see a red light with a flashing white light underneath it.” he said, “What do you reckon that’d be?” And I’m not aware of what's going on you see and I said, “Well, it’d either be a fishing boat trawling

or a vessel in tow.” “No.” he said, “It's a brothel with a swinging door!” Well, I had to go along with it. Bloody come in spinner [be their fool]. Jesus Christ. Brought the house down.

So much for rules of the road and signals.

Look I tell you what – I don't think people even today realise what's exactly in the deeps. Certainly you

when you were out there and in particular when I was talking before about that survey work that went up the top of Australia in the Timor Sea, now of a night time we had to get back quickly before the tide started to change and run out because it would go out at a ferocious speed. And we’d have to get into water so as that when the tide

would fully go out you might be only in say two and a half out of fifteen feet of water. And of a night time there we used to put a flood light down about a foot of the surface of water and just put a bit of bunting on a hook on a line and you’d catch a shark when you’d smash a bit off him and use other for bait - wouldn't be exaggerating – within five minutes there’d be bloody thousands of sharks, all around that area it's just riddled with them.

Now, until you see things like that. We’d be five or six miles out of anchor somewhere like that in a bay and we’d all strip off into the old birthday suits and over the side we’d go. We’d swim underneath the ship and up the other side. Whether some of the sights on the human truck scared the fishes away I don't know but you just ignored, you ignored what was there.

We’d have a bloke sitting up on the foc's'le or on the stern with a Tommy gun [Thompson submachine gun] – if he’d see something like that – if a shark’s fin did come into view you’d give it a burst and probably scare it away. But you never thought about things like that. Now, I make sure there’s some other bugger out in the surf further out than what I am when I go down the beach. Jesus. But those big manta rays and things like that you know, enormous things – they’d be as big as this room. But you’d

ignore them. You’d swim away. And you just didn't know what was there. But it's a very tempestuous thing water – there’s no doubt about that. You just you know, once you get into difficulties you haven’t got much chance. I think more so of a night time, you know if you got out, like

some of your biggest fears was of a night. You knew there was something there and you couldn't see it. You know, if you face a foe well alright it's you or him if you see him yes, but when you can't see the bugger like you know everything starts running through your mind. You think of that bloody water. And

it's so black and you're so far away for everything. Yes, certainly it was frightening.

Very peaceful actually unless it's rough weather. Very, very silent. Serene. And I never forget one night, you know like

it catches you off guard. One night I was on the helm and we might have been coming down from Hollandia Bay or Morotai or somewhere like that and strange as it may seem the bloody, the ASDIC operator he said, “I’ve got a penny. Dead ahead.” so the lookouts were peering in the dark and officer of the watch was looking through the canopy,

he couldn't see anything so they just, the skipper’s cabin was right underneath the helm and it's so quiet you know you could, “Now what the hell is it?” you know. Everything’s going through your mind and, “What is it?” and the old ASDIC operator – “It's getting closer, it's getting closer.” and the skipper, they rang down to the skipper and he came up. Now whether it’s because his eyes were adjusted to the darkness

or something like that – when you’re looking into a gyro compass you’re looking into a light and if you look up like that you can't see anything and that was my position and the moment he stepped his foot on the bridge he said, “Hard a starboard Tuttle!” and I swung it over like that and it was the bloody Kinnabulla. She was about a ten thousand ton troop carrier and as we went past her the bow wave, you know the bow wave which they turn off

the bow when they go through the water? It picked us up and rolled us out like that and you know as I said before you just don't know what it hides. It is so quiet and we were just sailing along and you could hear the rumble of the old diesel in the stern and all of a bloody sudden this giant comes out of the gloom. And I can't understand how they never picked us up – probably we were

a lot smaller than them because we were only eight hundred and fifty ton and they were ten thousand.

Well, you’ve got to give credit where it's due. You would have to go through it to appreciate what exactly a corvette stood up to. I’m not

kidding they’d go over one and under two. The bloody stern would come out of the water and both your propellers would turn like buggery being free of water and the whole ship would shudder with the vibrations and she’d go over and I tell you what – you have never, you have never been to sea unless you’ve been to sea on a corvette. I don't give a bugger what it is – they’re a special breed of sailor.

I’ve seen, you know they were that rough and people knew what they were in for. The moment you got, “Let go the forward!” or “Let go up forward, let go stern!” and these people would be seasick right from there. Some of them had to get out of the navy because the thought in their minds of what was confronting them. Bloody Christ. I’ve seen people not eat for a week. By Jesus they’re rough.

The old girl went through it though by crikey. Oh Jesus.

Well that’s where, after you finish your basic training I think it was normal procedure that most everybody went to Penguin which is a sort of a

a distributing point regarding your draft, but whilst you were there you undertook other sorts of training such as, leaning how to look after divers, deep sea divers, like in operating the pumps etc and getting their gear ready. But this only took about a week; I was only there about a week and next thing I was on the old northbound train to Cairns to pick up the Broome

that was awaiting apparently because I was no sooner got there and was let go the forward horns, or let go the stern and bang we were at sea. So, I never even had a chance to find out what watch I was in, you know, you got to report and to either the buffer or the leading hand or the watch to find out what duties you’ve got. What’s your action station, etc, etc, and, we were gone.

And straight away we were into convoy work taking supply ships etc, up the rungs of the ladder as the fighting forces went north.

Oh yes, I can recall it quite clearly but it was all new to me,

like I was a raw recruit as the saying is. And sometimes when you join a ship’s company under that category people straight away say, “Oh we got another bloody rookie.” And rightfully so in a sense, but that’s those people who don’t give you a chance to prove yourself, as I said on a prior occasion, I was a pretty keen listener

and I learned quick and took heed and took note of what was going on so I wasn’t exactly what you would call a drawback from being a member of whatever it was called, starboard watch or red white and blue watch, I was pretty capable.

Not really, no I don’t think I set my sights on anything that I’d really like. I was, the sort of person that was happy for whatever came up for me, you know. But I’ll tell you more about that later on, after I left the Broome I wasn’t too bloody happy. I got drafted, I think I might have mentioned it, I got drafted to the Aussie, she was going over to

she was taking a spare crew, over to Los Angeles and from there to London or somewhere in England, to pick up the aircraft carrier the Perth, oh, the Sydney, now wait a minute I got to be careful here, anyway it was 1946, might have been the Melbourne. And, I blued about this, because I said, my demob’s [demobilisation] coming through and I don’t want

to go, even though it was peacetime, but little did I realise that they sent me, they sent somebody in my place they‘d granted me my wishes, I didn’t want to go, so when I got back to Moreton Depot, they drafted me to a bloody old coal burner called the Matthew Flinders, running pilots from ingoing and outgoing ships as they come into harbour. And you just had to row a pilot over to the incoming ship or outgoing ship, mainly the

incoming ones, we’d steer them clear up the channels and they’d be the most ignorant people I’ve ever struck in my life. Anytime of the night, you were dragged out of your hammock and I pulled a swiftie [a trick], I pointed out that rupture scar and I said to the skipper of the Matthew Flinders, I said, “Look, my paper’s haven’t caught up with me yet, but you see that scar there?” I said, “That’s a hernia operation.”

I said, “I’m exempt rowing.” See you had to row these pilots out to the other ships and to make things even more indelible I was a stroke oarsman. And the pilots used to sit up in the bows of the cutters and every now and I wouldn’t dip the oar too deep and whip, I’d give him a nice old spray of water, see. And needless to say they didn’t like bloody Frank Tuttle rowing them out to these ingoing or outgoing ships. So I got

off that then, then they sent me down to Pinkenba [?], down to the Boom Defence Depot and I spent a, there were four of us there, and all of our demobs came through at once. And they said well only three of the four of you can go. Well I said, “I was always taught never to volunteer.” So I said, we’ll pick straws and you wouldn’t know, I picked the short bugger every time. I spent another six months

down there, but getting back to where were we?

Oh to get rid of me quicker if you understand what I mean. I got off alright, but where I blotted my copy book [made a mistake], certainly I’d love to have gone to Los Angeles and somewhere in England where they picked up the Melbourne and brought it back to Australia. Of course during the war years,

you were here, there, anywhere, but you seen bloody nothing, you know, you were probably in the dark gone in the dark. Like people say, “Oh have you been to Lavarack [?] Frank?” “Yes.” “Have you been to Luzon?” “Yes”. “Have you been to Finschhafen, wherever?” “Yeah, been there and seen nothing.” you know Tarakan, all those places up there and all you seen was an entrance to the bay.

Never had a chance to get ashore, so I could have been, it would have been, not for the matter of saying I’ve been on a couple of big ships that didn’t worry me, no the other side of the world, a hell of a lot different to this side I imagine.

Well they were human beings same as I, but, they just seemed to have that

aura about them, you know that they were Jesus Christ if I could use that terminology, and I suppose their position was rather tedious, because they just had to wait for a ship to come along, then you’d get a signal, oh yeah, so and so needs a pilot. And, I could be wrong, but I’d say, the smell of their breath when they come on board the whaler, but their pasttime was drinking a bit of scotch

or whatever down in the wardroom, see while they were waiting. This probably gave them a little bit of French, Dutch courage or something like that. They treated you like a, well like an ordinary rating and that didn’t go over too well with me, plus the fact I wanted to get off, she was a coal burner, oh Jesus, you only had to touch her like that and you got black, and, perhaps I was spoilt being on a clean ship, so I made every effort to get off, and I did.

Oh not really, no. Oh they all had some sort of characteristics about them you know, probably she was a great, she had a sister ship they called the John Oxley, it was just the same. They’d been in the bay there around about, Caloundra or Caboolture or somewhere out there, played their part, done their job, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.

Well, nowhere as high as when I had the last look at her. But to me, I didn’t

realise it of course, that I was going to be on her for quite some time. I probably ended up being one of the longest serving sailors on it. But to me she was, she was my ship, and I had to make the best of it. I was fortunate enough to, even at that young age, I considered myself to have more front than a white shirt and I made friends pretty quickly.

I could probably talk about the world through my eyes, but would have been befitting a man double my age do you understand what I mean, because of the backgrounding I had. Oh no I got on pretty well with most everyone. But

oh no, when you’ve been on the ship for a while you become attached and if somebody gives them a bit of a rubbish, and especially if you got a few beers in your or something like that, by jeez I tell you what the old hackles stand up because that one to me was home for, for a couple of years of my life. No I’ll never forget her.

Taught me a lot, I’ll never forget that I, when we eventually sailed into Fremantle we paid her off in Fremantle, the war had been over , oh shit, I’d say six months when we got back,

after the war, after peace was declared and, we sailed into Fremantle, after the Australia, she was there, this was, this was about three weeks before I got the draft back to her to go to England, or America and England. We passed the Australia and there were a couple of big aircraft carriers on the way and you know, beautiful sights

and when we got into the jetty, you know there wasn’t a dockie [dockworker], there wasn’t a bloody soul to take out lead lines, the lines are shorter to throw over the bollocks. Anyway, a couple of the boys jumped over the side as we got close to the jetty and swam ashore, and, we heaved the lead lines through to them, and they did the job. So we were there for, that was the 11th of January, I’ll never forget it, because it was, I think it was Paul Layfeld’s birthday.

One of the blokes I was talking about being one of my best mates, who was making a home brew when he took a mickey. And, we were there for about another four days and they just couldn’t make up their mind what was going to happen. Whether they were going to leave a skeleton crew on it, whilst most of the ship’s company went on leave and come back, but then that was hit on the head the next day. Half of us

to go on leave, and come back and then the other half go. So they changed their minds on about three or four occasions, eventually it turned out that we all went together, each and every one of us. And, we had to walk so far up the jetty to the transport that was going to take up to the railway.

And as we walked along, I paused and I turned around, and I looked back. I’ll never forget it, and, the

little girl, she looked so proud and stately, I’m pleased I did, because I as I said before, I owe a lot to that ship. It was on her where I was taught how to, how to receive orders, how to obey, what it was like to live in a big family, as I said before, you know, you’re rubbing shoulders with one another,

numerous times a day. And, as I said, it was my home for virtually a couple of years of my life, back in the days when I was only eighteen, nineteen and twenty you know, I’ll never forget that picture, she looked so lonely. Everybody just deserted her.

Then they sold her to Turkey, then she sailed under the Alanya I think it was. Oh no, I was, if I’d have known, if I’d have known what it was going to be like, after a couple of new years, I’d have answered your first question with consummate ease, like in other words I word I would have been very, very proud and pleased

to be sent to the Broome.

Oh no. No, I think we both played our part, you know, she looked after me as much as she did and I looked after her as much as I could. And, I made some

wonderful friends on board, she gave me some bloody rough times I know that, by Christ, talk about buck jumpers, but that goes with being in the navy I suppose. Yeah. So we all just got on the old train and as we came along the, along the ways, people just got off, well this is where I live, you know.

And haven’t seen them from this day to this.

Well I’ve never heard of one called he.

No I heard a story about that, it’s something to do with a male, male man, no, anyway, I won’t go into that. Oh no I think most

if a train comes into the station you say, “Well, here she comes.” Similar principle.

Oh they’ve all got character, no doubt about that, like you take a destroyer or a cruiser, you know they’re sleek, they’re nice and long, they’ve

got speed, they look the part. Well the corvette’s not quite up to that standard, you know they’re chunky, they’re solid, they haven’t got the speed or the grace and the firepower of the bigger ships, but, yeah. If I had my time over I’d go on them again. They’ll do me.

What did I like best about them.

Oh buggered if I know, that’s a pretty hard question to answer. I, when you got into rough seas, half the time you thought you were going to go under, you know, because the buggers, they do, they do phenomenal things. They could say you were gone, she’d be just like a dog that was thrown into a tub of water, you know, get up and she’d shake her head like that and away she’d go again and the bloody spume’d be coming off her everywhere, no they were might little tubs the corvettes.

Yeah. No they played their part, no actually they played more than their part, like they were the workhorse of the fleet, whereas the big ships, they could only go in deep water, you know, they had to go through swept channels, we had to sweep the channels for them so they wouldn’t run into a mine and get blown up or something like that. You had to do escort duties, patrol duties, drop bloody commando parties off.

Everything and anything and they couldn’t do that, oh no, that’s what I was getting at before, like you know, people don’t recognise you unless you were connected with the aircraft carriers or, well we didn’t have any at that time, but cruisers and destroyers.

And all ships were just as good as their crew, if you got a good crew, you had a good ship.

Yes, we had one bit of trouble, or when I say bit of trouble, outside of that where they flew the CIB [Criminal Investigation Bureau] up to fingerprint us all, there was a fair bit of theft going on and, they cleared lower deck,

took every sailor up on the (UNCLEAR), one by one, escorted each individual down, went through his locker, his bed, all his personal gear and goodness knows what. And you know it was the bloody bloke, took him down, he sort of undone himself actually, went through his, he had a sea bag and port and he had this locker, and, old Phil,

Phil Whelan, an old torpedo man, he was on the Kelly, an English ship when Lord Louis Mountbatten I think was only a bloody rookie, and he said to Phil, he said, funny his name was Rob, Rob by name and Rob by nature and he said, “I’ve got a bundle of old love letters there from my girlfriend, and, some from my mother, do you want to have a look through those?” And Phil shook his head and

said, “No, it’ll be right, or bugger it, we’ll have a look.” And there was all the money there, folded up in the creases of the letters, you know. So they got rid of him quick, otherwise he’d have gone over the bloody side, mongrel.

No, no. Probably I didn’t have anything then, I might have been SP betting.

That was when we got the money.

Oh he was drafted out, he got, he got turfed out of the navy, he got found out, that’s what happened to him.

Well you don’t know like, I think there’s some people that are rational and some are the other way.

And you only got to get a group of men together and, if they decide to do something, well, they’ll do it. But it’s a, it was sin, you know, like you don’t do that to mates, people you were sleeping beside and eating beside, when I say sleeping beside, I’m not talking about sleeping in the same bloody bed, I’m talking about, you know hammocks are slung beside one another, you know.

And, and all of a sudden he’s thieving off you.

Oh no, no, no I haven’t heard anything.

No I can’t say that I did hear anything of that nature, that’s, only a rare occasion I suppose that that does happen, but you’d think it’d happen more on big ships than what it would on the small ones. You know because some ships have got a thousand men on whereas the smaller ships you only got, well, three scores and ten or something like that, or a bit better four score.

Well, you had to sort of create your own enjoyment, you know like what I was getting back to before, when a mate used to send me the papers and I used to open the sporting page up at the Aussie Rules

page and refer to them playing aerial ping pong, and, that would start a bit of a mealy in the mess deck. We used to play Tombola [a lottery] and, what do they call it down here, housie, housie [a bingo like game] is it?

Well, that’s, well you know, what the on it’s own number one, legs 11, doctors chum number nine, that’s what they’d give you to move you

in those days the number nine pill, see. Is it badminton, not badminton, that’s bloody ping pong. Lotto is it?

Bingo, bingo that’s it, yeah, well we used to call it housie, housie or something.

Oh just depends what came to your mind like, I can remember there on one particular occasions F.J. Thwaites, I think he was an Australian author, and somebody jagged onto one of his books and the name of his book was Hell’s Doorway. And F.J. Thwaites was like that Danielle Steele [author], you sort of see

one movie or read one book and you bloody read the lot, see, but he wrote a lot of books but, that was the conversation for about a month, by the time the whole ship’s company read the book, and you sat down and debated it, “Oh what did you think of it?” “Oh a bit of a tear jerker you know.” And, so on it went, so they were the sort of things that took your interest off, far more damaging things.

Either that or you’d start some sort of a rumour around the place, you know and jeez, no, no, like it probably, like you’d probably say “So and sos, he’s scratching a lot, you know, I wonder if he’s got a case of the mechanised dandruff.” They used to call them in those days. Like, crabs. “Oh Jesus, don’t tell me, where’s he been sitting?” And they’d all be lighting this poor bugger and he’d wonder what the hell was wrong.

The bloody things they used to get up to.

No, no. Not me.

Well I think, well there probably wasn’t any rumours; I reckon we definitely had a couple on board.

There was one bloke in particular who didn’t give a bugger, and he made it quite common knowledge, but I don’t think he did much good, like as far as the rest of the crew went. When he got ashore, well it didn’t matter whether it was male of female I don’t think. But, talking about that, I can remember when we paid a visit to Ambon, and Ambon held a large

prisoner of war camp, we’d only been there about a day and the bosun’s mate came around the ship and he said “Anybody needing dental treatment?” And I thought oh bugger it, this is a chance to get ashore, so I said “Yeah.” So I was the only bloke that went, with an army dentist, so at this time they were interrogating all these Japanese officers and that, with regards to graves and that, reported around the place.

We had to walk past this big, big sergeant anyway he was, he might have been an NCO, non commissioned officer, he had a, he had a bloody, it was like an over exaggerated baseball bat, and as we walked past this line of Japanese officers, there was two or blokes there giving them a bit of a caning, but we were going past this compound,

and it was there to see, there would have been fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, couples, men, hard at it, he said, “I’ll fix these mongrels up.” so he went in and, the nearest one he came to, he just with this bloody great big bat, he just went bang, bang, and he said, “That’ll take the edge off their desire.” But it made no difference they were up and at it again within about a half a minute. So you find them no matter where you go.

I got me filling done, if I had one, then I had a bitt of time to put in, I had a few hours left to spare and, as I walked down to the jetty, I got tangled up with a mob of Ambonese, you know, and they took me down, they wanted to take me down to a place where they said there was an AIF [Australian Imperial Force] bloke there called Doolan.

He was in the AIF and, he had a bit of a sniper’s nest in a tree, they took me down and they showed me this tree where they had his name carved in the tree and he shot numerous Japanese, he had a record of something in excess of two hundred to his name, to his credit. But he, he got carried away, and instead of just picking them off two and three

at time like he had been doing, he took on a couple of hundred, or may not have been but three lorry loads of the buggers. And, done away with most of them but they made an all out effort to get him, see and they did too, they got him and, somehow later on, a mate of mine got a letter from Doolan’s wife. She’d remarried,

and she said, “I knew my husband was killed.” she said, “I didn’t know the circumstances.” So he enlightened her, as regards to what had taken place but he was a national hero there, and to be honest with you, I don’t know but I venture to say that that man was never recognised for his efforts. You know if ever a person deserved a Victoria Cross or something like that it would have been

Doolan. And they used to sing a song about him, and it went to the tune of the Rose and her hair, but don’t ask me to sing that.

No, yeah so we operated out of Ambon for quite some time but that was later on.

Oh yeah, because back in those days that was looked down on, you see today, of course you got all these Mardi Gras and Christ knows what like they, they pack the streets by the thousand, you don’t have to leave anything to the imagination, you know what they are. But back in my boyhood days, Jesus Christ, like if you were, if you were that away inclined you had to get out of town quick and it was just like a single girl becoming pregnant,

like if she went for twelve months holiday with her aunty or something like that, or went and seen the grandparents and even if you had a smidgen, a smidgen of the dark colour in you, she was taboo, but today, God strike me pink, I reckon the aboriginal population has exploded, to, out of all proportions purely and simply because they know there’s fringe benefits attached to it. I’m not talking about the dinky-di [true] fellow, you can see he’s an Aboriginal

just by looking at him but some of these buggers there are as white as I am, they might even be whiter, because I’ve got a pretty healthy suntan.

Oh no he made it common knowledge that he didn’t care. He didn’t care and, well just left it at that.

Oh just went about their own business and left him alone. He was a bit of a loud mouth you know and ‘you stay clear of me mate and we’ll get along alright.’

Well I don’t know about that, but I remember one occasion, a bloke asked me once, he said, “What’s one of the most terrifying experiences you ever had Frank?”

Now you got to take into consideration we only had a little, say a metre by a metre shower, and you only had a little water tank above and there was always two of a duty watch on a pump. To make sure there was water up in that tank, now the idea was to conserve and save water, there’d be a dozen of you,

in this, in the nuddy [nude], there’d be a dozen of you in this shower. You’d wet yourselves, you’d be soaping one another’s back and Christ knows what you see, and I said, “Mind you.” I said, “Just at that particular time,” I said, “There was a couple of bombers come over.” “What?” he said, “Did they drop a couple of bombs next to you?” “No.” I said “Some silly bugger dropped the soap.” Oh Jesus Christ it was nerve wracking.

Had a look around to see if that bugger was in the gathering.

Oh no, he kept his place you see, he was given to understand, you get out of turn and you’d be taken care of type of thing.

No, not a soul, not a soul. I think there, no he came along later on, there was a local fellow here, Ernie Ballantyne, but he came after me. Outside of him, there was only Paul Layfelt,

there was only about five Queenslanders on her, the rest were hither and thither, a pretty good mixture. But you know, it didn’t take a great space of time to get to know one another because you were so closely knit. You all sit down to write a letter and you couldn’t write much home,

the moment you referred to the weather, they’d cut it out, they’d censor it, so it was just a matter of hello, hooray, and if you come up with a brain wave, everybody would be writing the same thing, it’d go in a different envelope.

Oh yeah, the mater always kept in touch with me,

she used to send me cakes and she was a beautiful cook and she’d make these lovely big fruit cakes. Putting in plenty of the Bundaberg product in, you know the rum. Seal them off, she used to seal them off so that it’d be pretty hard to smell the aroma through the tin, but the buggers, they’d pinch them on you. I wasn’t a great lover of fruit cake

in those days so it didn’t make much difference, but it would have been lovely to get them you know. I used to get the old Sporting Globe and the local paper and so forth, but no great fears of that getting pinched but bloody hell, cakes used to walk.

Well Pater and Mater. That’s, oh it’s been an old saying from long ago.

I don’t know whether it’s French [actually Latin] or what, that was the, or later on, later on when you got older and so forth and you became well, let’s say more modern, I used to call her Bessie and like, I’d call the old dad Francois or Clancy or whatever came to mind first you know, they were lovely people, bloody fantastic.

No, I, to be honest with you, no, I’d say no, like I often, matter of fact, it was that long before I got home on leave, when I say that long, it might have been a couple of years before I got my first leave after I, oh no it wouldn’t have been quite that long, I never had a photograph of my mater with me or the Dad,

I can distinctly remember him but I was starting to forget what Mum looked like, you know. As a matter of fact, it sort of happened with all of my family, on, what the bloody hell happened, I just can’t recall what the occasion was, but, I had a, see on every railway station they had what’s called an RTO, Rail Transport Officer and a man in grey

and if you were new to the city you went up to the man in grey and you’d ask him for directions to get you to Homebush, to Tweed, to Kedron or something like that, and he’d say well here you are, you got to get on tram one 62 going to Lutwyche or whatever it may be, get off on stop 14 and Bob’s your uncle that’s your doorstep. Well the RTO was, of course he was in charge of rail transport. My sister had got married and she was in the WAAAFs, and her husband, up here,

up the top there, that Neptune Garage, that was after I’d got out, he was in the air force, when you got married in the air force, you got discharged. So I walked onto the railway station this night and I seen this girl kiss this army bloke, ‘Jesus Christ, that looks like my sister! Oh it wouldn’t be because she married an air force fellow.’ see,

and, she’s kissing an army bloke, what’s going on type of thing. Anyway I stood there for a few moments and they had their arms around one another and all of a sudden she’s turned around and said, “Oh Jesus, my brother!” You know and, I hadn’t seen her for so long, I was dubious see, it can’t be my sister, but she recognised me. And bugger me, the bloke in question he was

one of the sons, remember I said before about the three Tuttle brothers, or three Tuttle girls married three Hutchins brothers. Well he was one of their off springs, so he was actually our first cousin.

Well I was pretty busy as I mentioned before. I hadn’t had time to report to the coxswain or the chief petty officer or the leading hand of the watch. I didn't whether I was on duty,

whether I was…. When you got into dangerous waters you operated on two watches – what they called port and starboard. Now when you were in pretty casual orders you operated in three watches; red, white and blue. So that’s four on, eight off – red, white and blue. Now in port and starboard, four on, four off, four on, four off, four on, four off because you’ve only got two watches.

Four hours on yeah. You see your crew with

red, white and blue is broken up into three divisions where port and starboard is broke up into two divisions. So like say for argument’s sake from midnight on you go on duty from twelve to four, the other crew go on from four til eight but in that period of time you get so much time to have breakfast. Now when it becomes midday you come from midday till four, now at four o’clock you come into the dog watches.

What they call four till six is the first dog watch, that’s when you have your tea or scran or whatever you like to call it and then you go back on duty then at six and then the others have their, in the second dog watch they have their tea. Now in your daylight hours you’re not only doing duties like as regards look out, closed up and

so forth, you’re working part of ship at the same time. So there’s no time lost, like you might be chipping away at rust spots and putting some zinc chromide on them and boiled oil, putting boiling oil on them and repair work and then all of a sudden someone would tap you on the shoulder and say, “You’re on watch.” So down goes your chip and hammer and your paintbrush and so forth and you take them down to the paint locker and then you go on watch so it’s

getting back to your question – I didn't know if I was coming or going til a few days came to pass until you settled in.

Not really. I always got tired of a night time when I was on lookout. You’d be standing there, and I’m not exaggerating, you'd be standing there with your back against the (UNCLEAR) of an (UNCLEAR) can or something like that

and I reckon you’d be asleep. Your eyes would probably be open too but for the rest of the period sleep didn't really sort of worry me greatly. But every now and then you’d have what they call a ‘make and mend’. What they call a make and mend is when you get your clothes out with your reel of cotton and your needle and so forth. You'd stitch a few buttons on or darn your socks or whatever it may be and I haven’t lost the touch – I’m

still pretty handy at it. But if you didn't have much of make and mend to do well if you were sleepy well that was when you could catch up on a couple of hours shut eye.

Well if you’re… You have about, if you’re in calm waters

you got up the crows nest, a lookout goes up the crow’s nest. You see the mast, towards the top of the mast there's a nest there. Well you're up there and you can sweep right around the horizon. Right from bow to stern right around, three hundred and sixty degrees. That’s in calm waters but when you get in rough water you don't go up there. Otherwise you’ll come out pretty quick you know.

So they have a watch on the port side of the bridge and on the starboard side of the bridge so you just look after the starboard side of the ship from bow to stern and the port watchmen on the other side does exactly the same thing.

Now, after you'd been out there for so long you’d rotate. You might come from the port watch to the helm for an hour – that’s to steer the ship.

And when you’re finished there you might go to the starboard side of the ship and the bloke from the starboard side comes on to the helm. So you just rotate to break the boredom or the monotony of it. But they’d make sure you didn't get too bored, they’d swap you around and so forth. Bloody tedious just the same.

That’s just to steer the ship. You had a

wheel about yea big and beside you, you had a gyro compass. And you might have to steer say a hundred and sixty degrees so you’ve got a needle there just like the temperature gauge or something like that on a car and you’ve just got that but the needle’s stationery and the compass rolls around it. Now if you're in a calm sea you can keep it nice and quiet.

You can keep that pointer on a hundred and sixty degrees pretty easy but when you get a rough sea – holy Jesus – you could be within the space of a hundred and fifty yards you could be forty degrees off course. That was like, the moment she… You’d swing the helm around and wait for the ship to answer the call or the rudder and then it goes back the other way. Then you’ve probably checked it too much and when

the sea picks up…. Especially if you’ve got a stern sea - they’ll just pick you up like that – plonk you anyway. And they’ll pick you up again plonk you over here.

A stern sea, that’s a following sea. You had big rollers following you like instead of your…It's just like shooting the waves. You’re out coming in on a roller, now that’s what you call a following sea.

They’re pushing you. When they push the corvette they just pick them up like that and push them around – port, starboard, anywhere and you have a motor down in the tiller flat that operates the helm and by Jesus Christ she works.

Well you can only do your best. We had the skipper,

we had two lieutenant commanders onboard, one was Donovan, he was the captain of the ship and Osmond was the other two and a half ringer and I’ve seen Donovan get that critical that he’d get to the stage of becoming abusive because you couldn't keep her on a straight course and it was absolutely impossible.

I don't give a bugger who you were. And I’ve seen Osmond say to me, “Let me have a go at it Tuttle.” and as I’d walk out of the little wheelhouse he’d say, “Probably won’t abuse me like he’d abusing you.” You know he was a pretty tough man but he was a bloody good seaman. I’ve got to say that about him. He was a good sailor.

“Where did you ever learn to steer a bloody ship?” and all this and that and you know you were doing your damnedest.

They were so short that they, you’d get on top of a wave and your tiller was out of the water – that’s the part that steers your ship. It was out of the water because of the… and you know as I said before you haven’t been to sea unless you’ve been in a corvette. No matter what you tried, no matter what you did, you just had to wait until the stern went back into the sea

and then you’d swing the helm port or starboard and hope to Christ you’d correct it. With a head on sea not so bad or off the port or starboard bow pretty good but with a following sea they were bloody impossible.

Donovan

Oh well he just knew what to do. You know he’d been through the mill and he was too hard on his crew and that’s why we had that trouble I was telling you before when we had the pleasure of Her Majesty’s police force called upon us. It was an act of resentment more or less.

Well I don't know if you’d call it a mutiny. It was just an act of saying if you’re going to keep doing what you're doing, we’ll keep on doing what we’re doing type of thing. It was bloody embarrassing because the reputation gets around the fleet. So and so’s a shit ship or something like that and nobody likes to be drafted to them

but it all boiled down to – it's no good saying one thing and being another. It's funny – he got a Mention in Dispatches too. But he was just a little bit too savage he… probably if he’d allowed you half a day’s leave on the sand or something like that but he, and this is probably why he got a Mention in Dispatches, as being a great achiever or something like that.

He volunteered to do this, volunteered to do that. And this was the penalty he paid as a matter of a fact I think even he got drafted off the ship when the ship’s company broke up.

All that had happened was – you’ve only got one gun up on the foc's'le there and

they pulled the breach out. Now when you take the breach out of a gun it's useless. And they threw that over the side – now the azimuthals, they’re something to do with the navigating of the ship – the compasses, they pulled them off and threw them over the side. They had these back coils where they break down all the salinity in ocean water to

reasonably fresh water which they put through boilers and that – they threw them over. They cut up all the hoses, there was other little trivial things that came into it – now whether they were just accidents or whether they were also acts of rebellion or not one doesn't know but there was plenty of them so they had no hesitation to just to fly up the CIB. They probably got

the names of all the ship’s company before they came out and run a check on them. See of we had any bad eggs amongst us and they fingerprinted the lot of us.

No

No.

No. Oh no. Like

who, I suppose it’s only natural for people to have their suspicions but there was no semblance of truth attached to them. Most of the innuendos or suspicions.

Stupidity in my opinion. Stupidity. Like everybody had to go through it – it wasn't just them suffering. We all would have appreciated a couple of hours

just away from the every day routine but for the sake of a couple of hours you don't do things like that.

Well I suppose that’s what you’d put it down to. It's what pleasure you’d get out of it I don't know. Of course unfortunately everybody suffers. You know it's not

just those that are the guilty ones, the whole ship’s company.

Well it didn't g over too well with a lot of us because some of our best friends were being shovelled elsewhere where they didn't want to be. It certainly made a difference

to the feeling onboard the ship. Like especially when you were to go off a smaller ship onto a bigger ship. You could be on a big ship for two or three years and you probably wouldn't know a quarter of the crew whereas on a ship like this you’d only have to be there for a fortnight and you’d bloody near know the lot. Makes a hell of a difference because you’re -

I suppose the same thing applies – you’ve got to work as a team or as a crew whether the ship’s big or small but it seemed to have more meaning on a small one.

Oh

well I suppose it's like those that were leaving – they had to go to where they were sent and I suppose these individuals were in the same boat. And their feeling may have been just exactly the same as those that were sent off the Broome.

No. No we had trivial little things that occurred you know, at one stage after the war when

peace was declared we had a few Japanese boys on board – one was cleaning out the toilets you know, one was polishing brass work and one was helping the cook and so on and there was one particular occasion one of the blokes on board just had one or two glasses of Sake [rice wine] too many or something like that and he attacked one of these Japanese boys and if

it hadn’t had been through intervention he would have probably killed him. By then, most of the ship’s company had been drafted elsewhere – even the skipper and the bloke that took over, Osmond – he was the fellow that I told you who relieved me on the helm, now he was one of the boys, he knew what it was like to steer a corvette in a rough sea.

He knew what it was like to do this in adverse conditions and unfortunately when these fellows took to this little Japanese bloke – here he was a bloody good fellow getting a stigma on his name as the captain of the Broome because they took to this Japanese boy you see, and by Jesus Christ he went off. He, what they call, he lit your cap. And that’s

like sitting in the dock on a court, when you take your cap off, the judges are sort of sitting behind a table and your charges were red and this Osmond – he didn't mince any words. As a matter of a fact he gave one bloke a couple of bloody good backhanders across the ear, which he’s not supposed to do but people just closed their eyes.

So he said, “I’ll deal with you buggers as soon as we make it down to bloody Fremantle.” he said, “You’ll suffer for this.” And when we eventually got down to Fremantle these two or three individuals had to go before him again for the final sentence so we were all going you see, like the buzz was on the last day that the Broome was going to be left on her own and everybody was going either back to their

home depot or going on leave or whatever the case may be. So one of my mates and myself – we had to take these blokes before the skipper and other individuals involved and he said, “I’ll never forget what you so and so’s done to me. I’ll never forget it.” he said. “I never, ever want to see the bloody likes of you again. Now,” he said, “You do what the rest of the ship’s company are doing – go and pack your

bloody kit bags and go on leave.” Just like that you know. He could have put them in (UNCLEAR).

Oh, no I don't think so. I don't think so.

Well it wasn't right, it wasn't right but you know when you start thinking about things like that you know, I suppose what had happened was we had gone

to I think Tarakan in Borneo. Now I could stand to be corrected here. Biak? No other Biak we were in bloody Tarakan now. But at the end of the runway at one of the airstrips they found a grave with so many – there were a few Australians in it – there were so many, I mean they’d all been beheaded.

And that stirred the boys up. Like there was a real feeling throughout the ship’s company – glum. You know, depressed and when one of these Japanese boys took a liberty that he shouldn't have taken - I suppose that would be open for debate.

Oh he just drank out of somebody else’s glass or something like that you know and they took umbrage to it and it was on.

Oh well, you could say it was more or less peacetime now. Or it wasn't actually but it was pretty bloody close to it. I mean they shouldn't have been there. I don't know, they did some funny things of course. I might be getting ahead of myself a little here. No I think the war might have been over but we had a hell of a lot of mopping up work to do. See we were,

when the war was over in China we liberated Hong Kong and we were there, we got there in August and we were bloody still there at the end of November. There was a hell of a lot to do. That’s when we got our busiest but I think the Japanese boys had left us before we got there

so it would have been about Zamboanga, when we left Zamboanga and went…. we were ordered from Zamboanga to go up through Subic Bay near Manila and the trouble would have started or would have taken place before that.

Oh no. I think they appreciated the fact that we had a job to do and they’d committed a breach and I suppose if the tables had been reversed they’d have done the same thing. There was no malice held against one another. It was just bloody stupidity on their part and I think by now they’d

appreciated it and I think they fully expected to get something more drastic than being told to go and pack your kit bag and go on leave you know. Jesus Christ, they don't know how lucky they were. Because when something like that happens with all the gratuity and deferred pay, goodness knows what could have been stopped but, well it may have been, I don't know to be honest with you, but I don't think so. But that’s the, full marks to what sort of a bloke

Osmond was, the new skipper, he was a hellishly good fellow.

Oh the little puppy and the kitten. Yeah well I don't know whether the kitten died. One of them died, I’m not quite certain now and I just can't think where it was. It might have been at a place called Sarong.

We thought oh well, we’ll get rid of the little mate because no good taking the bugger to sea and getting sea sickness, they won’t eat, they won’t drink so…

Somebody loves pets you know and, ‘I’ll take this fellow to be a mascot,’ and so forth and it does happen but you don't realise what they’ve got to go through.

I can't remember now. The cat

and the dog? Um… I think Sudsy was the cat. It was something to do with froth I can remember that. All the bloody spume and that that used to come over the ship in rough seas. Oh no, I’ve lost it.

Oh they used to sleep in those hammocks unless the weather got really rough.

See on a corvette you had a… coming from the bow down into the waist, that’s about the middle of the ship, you had a sort of protection rail about yea high all the way around. And they’d have to jump over that to get out into the ocean. They would wander about and when it got real rough we’d taker them up to the mess deck, put them in the sick bay tippees office or something like that. They were well looked after but I guess it's not their

cup of tea. Not… on a big liner where there's only slow movement on the sea but on one of these buggers Jesus. You're standing on your head one minute and lying on your back the next.

Oh well it was a matter of giving the ships’ company a bit of an interest. Now not everybody did it. But come Melbourne Cup time lets say for argument’s sake, there might have been 1944 when Sirius won it, come Melbourne Cup time or that time of the year

nearly everybody has a bet in the Melbourne Cup. I suppose you do too. Yeah? And we hit on the idea, we went and seen the telephonist and they said, “Yeah we can get you a result.” they had short wave and so forth. So we started operating on this and fate would have it that we had a

positive result so we kept at it.

Well we might have won fifty guilders or something like you see on a day’s operation. That wasn't bad considering, what a guilder was worth about three and four pence wasn't it?

The guilder was Dutch East Indies money.

Well, the only thing you had to wait on was to get the results.

They’d back a horse with us they’d probably have say for argument’s sake five guilders each way. Well that’d be about say for argument’s sake not quite seventeen shillings a win and a place. Now it might win, so we had to wait until they got the price through short wave and won at a price of four to one. So that’d be four times seventeen which is sixty eight.

So they’d win sixty-eight shillings for the win, sixty-eight guilders I mean, for the win plus a quarter of that which is seventeen. You’d get even money for the place, so they’d get sixty-eight and seventeen which is -five and even money for the place win at thirty-four. So that’d be a hundred and nineteen isn’t it? One hundred and nineteen all up, that’s what they’d get back for their seventeen guilders each way.

You put your money on at a price. One occasion we, they wanted the back two horses in particular, a horse called Atlee, and the name of the other one was Royal Jim and they were two good gallopers in Victoria. And Ernie looked at me and said, “What do you reckon we could do Carrey?” and I said, “Look, let’s bet the buggers even

money. (UNCLEAR) for two.” If you wanted twenty dollars on Atlee you had an even twenty, if you wanted twenty dollars on Royal Jim you had an even twenty. Well, I don't know what we had, we might have had for argument’s sake say a hundred guilders for Atlee and we might have had a hundred and twenty guilders for Royal Jim. So Royal Jim would have been our worst result. But we only bet them even money so they’re bloody fighting it out stride by stride

with about a hundred yards to go, couldn't separate them, what's this out of the pack? An old horse called Malaise with Billy Duncan on it and he got up and he beat the bloody pair of them so we got the lot and needless to say this went on until we were the only buggers on the ship, outside of the people that didn't bet, we were the only ones that had money. All the other buggers had lost you see and…

No. No, they were just

gamblers.

No. You had to get right down in the ASDIC compartment to get that. There was some sort of hook up he had.

No he’d bring it up. Signalman, the telephonist, he’d just bring it up and say, “That’s how they finished up; Malaise first, Adlee second, Royal Jim third.”

No.

Later on I did. I’m still the local broadcaster here at the gallops. I’ve been there for umpteen years but when I got out of the navy in 1947 I went to Hobart and outside of the everyday job I had there I got tangled up with a fishing trawler, I leased one

or two of us leased it. Went to the races at Aldwick and they had an ad [advertisement] in the paper for a position for a race caller. And on a couple of occasions prior to this I was very, very good friends with a fellow called Terry Austin. He was sort of a… he had trotters and gallopers and he was more or less the uncrowned heavyweight champion of Hobart. He was a pretty good knuckle man [fighter] and we were having a few barbeques

and I did a phantom call you know and anyway when he seen this ad in the Mercury he said, “You want to go and have a go at that.” Which I did and they asked me to come back but being tangled up with the trawlers it was no bloody good to me because I had signed on this trawler for I think it was at least eighteen months or something like that. So I never bothered going back after that but when I came back here I got tangled up in other

sporting activities and never got back into horse racing then, or I did in the early fifties and I gave it away for a few years and got involved in golf and other things. Until later on back in the early seventies I took it on again.

Oh no we’d operate

especially when we got up to Morotai, when we got to Morotai there was a big army camp there and, big SP betting shop and we operated out of Morotai for many, many months you know.

Oh yes. Nobody worried about it then and if we got an overflow of too much money we could get

the telephonist to send a signal ashore to the SP shop there and we’d lay some off. In other words if we got too much money for a horse, say we’ve got a hundred guilders each way or something and we only wanted fifty guilders each way well we’d get him to ring this certain number at Morotai and we put fifty guilders each way with him. Oh no, it was big business there. Good God.

We only dabbled in the horses. We didn't worry about anything else. But it was, whilst we were there it was an every Saturday occurrence. But the moment we moved from there well it became a bit more difficult. But we would get them through short wave [radio] from Australia.

Only those that wanted to have a bet. Yeah. Oh no it was an interest and a pretty

wealthy one for us.

I wouldn't know. Couldn't hazard a guess but I know when we eventually came back to Australia I had a bloody stack of guilders I can tell you that.

No, no more so than anybody else because it was

just somebody giving somebody on the crew an interest. You know, if you wanted to have a bet in something well, it was there for the taking. If you didn't, you weren't compared to but if you backed a winner it made you feel good. If you backed the loser well, chewing on your boat type of thing – just bad luck.

Well a mate of mine reckons we were there for fourteen months but I can't work that out myself. I know we were there for a hell of a time and we operated out of Morotai.

Let me think now. Look I wouldn't, we were there, I can recall us being there on New Years morning. Oh no it was Christmas. Christmas morning

must have been 1945. No, just wait I’ll have to work this out. When did we go to Hong Kong? August ’45, would have been, yeah would have been Christmas ’44. And these, well the Japs [Japanese]

had been over that night but they sort of didn't worry about that, we were anchored about two mile out and they came over and bombed the airfield and hoped to Christ they did some fuel dumps and so forth which they didn’t and there was a fellow out here then from America, he was, from Great Britain. He was a squadron leader and he came out with a Spitfire squadron, a fellow called ‘Killer’ Caldwell, that’s what they named him. And his procedure was

when the Japanese boys got rid of their load, by now of course the ground force would have these Jap planes in their searchlights and he’d take off in his Spitfire and he’d get up there and he’d say right-o, with the searchlight when you’re up there it's not only shining on that plane there it's also sort of semi-blinding you. He used to say, “Turn your lights off, I’ve got him in my sights.”

and brrrr! He’d blow him out of the sky at about twelve thousand feet and he was christened ‘Killer’ Caldwell because of his tactics but he had kills to his name and then he got caught later on, strange how the mighty fall you know, he got caught running sly [illicit] grog from Australia to the islands. You couldn't credit that could you? Now that was Christmas Eve.

And on the next morning, I’m sure it was the next morning, and I still reckon it was Boston Bombers, but my mate reckons it was Mitchells. Anyway there was no argument there, irrespective of who it was by made no difference but this squadron was taking off and they used to form up in an arrowhead – you know, one in front, two at the side,

one in front, two at the side and they only had a few more to go and one bugger come across like that and got stuck into the fuselage of the other one and he got pulled out of the formation and it went back only about three mile away, pulled out of the formation and of course they were loaded up with bombs and fuel and when they hit the water, well that was it. No sign of man, plane or anything. There was big PT [patrol torpedo] boats there, those patrol boats and whoosh! They were out there like a bloody flash

but there was nothing left. That’s was Christmas morning, ’45. Yeah. ’44 sorry.

You couldn't help but think about it. You know they’d all be laughing and joking having Christmas breakfast and all of a sudden something like that happens. But it happens, nobody willed it on anybody or

it was just one of those things. It was meant to be.

Caldwell

Look, at this particular time

like over there you could sense the war coming to a close when it was twelve months away or something like that. You could sense the foe getting weaker and all they were doing like was mainly bombing tarmac, all they were trying to do was to slow the progress of the spearhead. And even when we

- you’re talking about this contraband and stuff like that – when we got to China we had to liberate Hong Kong, take all the Japs from there over to Kowloon and so forth and take the prisoners of war out of Fort Stanley – that’s when our work started but we had to investigate anything, and when I say we I’m talking about another five or six corvettes with us, there were eight all told but some went early. We had to investigate anything

and everything that had been brought to our attention. Now this was, we got to Hong Kong just after VJ Day – Victory [over] Japan – but there was no VP [Victory in the Pacific] day. The forces of the Japanese were still active in the Pacific so we had to liberate Hong Kong. When they felt that this was the dying throes of the war,

Somebody wants to make quick money. You’ve got your Japanese officers; you’ve got your black market Chinese fellows. ‘I give you fifty thousand yen for this,’ and so on it goes so alright they buy all the arms they can get, all the ammunition, this in turn is sold to pirates and so on it goes. And that’s what was happening of course and I dare say that old Killer thought ‘Well I’ll make a…

Well it’d have to be after New Guinea, it’d be further up the side of New Guinea, but as we went north

we didn’t have to come as far south if you understand what I mean to pick up the next convoy. And we weren’t, we were sort of a deterrent with convoys, when I say a deterrent, we would be doing eight knots, they would be back peddling to stay back with us, because they can do fifteen knots or even faster than that and I may have mentioned before you might have a convoy of forty and

at day break the next day you might only have twenty and so on it went until you virtually sailed in by yourself. Say for argument’s sake we got a ping somewhere, and you’re a little bit doubtful as to whether it was a whale or a submarine, or something like that, what you did of course was you went off course, towards the object, threw a few depth charges, left right and centre and so forth and let them know that you were there and that you meant business, and then you were

flat out catching up with the convoy see, because of this slow rate of knots. But we never had altogether that much trouble, certainly there was, other occasions when other destroyers had to come to our assistance, but they, like everybody’s cunning in their own art, and whilst they’re faster and bigger ships were on one side of the convoy well the buggers would be lurking on the other side you know, that’s the way they operated, so you just had to go

with the flow but, we managed to get through on most occasions unscathed.

Oh yes, they were there of course, well the proof in the pudding lies in the fact that you only come down to Australia, you know and the midget subs got into Sydney and I think, off Sydney where they christened the place torpedo alley, well there were, there were ships went down there, by

Jesus, the dozen, not just four or five, there were forty, fifty, I think overall there’s well in excess of one hundred. So like if they were that close to home, you didn’t know where they were. But sometimes you’d get a ping like and you’d go chasing it and it might be a big tree that’s been washed out to sea. And as strange as it may seem, you pick it up on radar and sonar, or ours then. So, you had to investigate all avenues, it was

like you know, when we went from Morotai, across to Borneo, to Tarakan, you know our main object there was to stop the Japanese escaping from Tarakan Island, or from Tarakan, not from Borneo. And, everything that floated, no matter what it was we had to open fire on it. And whether it was a bush, whether it was a

XXXX [beer] carton which wasn’t, it didn’t exist then, you just had to open fire on it and, probably a waste of time and energy and ammunition but that was the procedure and that happened in nearly every port that we went into. Like you know you didn’t know whether it was somebody underneath a bow or a branch of a tree, laden with mines or something like that, trying to work their way closer to the beach, even when we went into Hong Kong,

we had to protect the bloody battleships and the cruisers. That’s us, anything that was making haste towards any of the ships, well we just had to blow them out of the water, whether they were foe or friendly or otherwise. So, you just didn’t know what was what and you just couldn’t afford to take the risk.

Oh yes, yeah just no doubt about that,

like mistakes are made. Unfortunately you can’t do anything about it, people are where they shouldn’t be you know and whether they were aware of it or not I don’t know and took the risk or whether they just divide the authorities and by doing so, you got no option but to take care of them. There was a hell of a lot that went on in Hong Kong in particular, hell of a lot.

But, that was, that was a procedure no matter where we went.

Well, just one of those things that happened. By then of course you were getting a little bit case hardened and you probably didn’t have the same sort of feelings that you had in the first instance and

It was a do or die, when I say a do or die situation; it was either them or us. Oh it’s a heartless sort of a thing, but that’s war for you. Nobody wanted to shoot innocent people, I dreaded it but when you were told to do something you just had to obey orders and that’s all there was to it,

and that was one of my policies. Always obey the last order.

Well sometimes you never had time to do that, you know you got somebody heading towards a forty thousand ton battleship, in a speedboat and you don’t know whether they’ve got torpedos under the water line or something like that,

and you got a matter of seconds, like they might be doing forty miles an our or something like that and you’ve only got a handful of seconds, you’re not going to turn around and start asking questions. Oh no, it was a bloody thankless task and one didn’t relish doing everything that he

did, you had to do it and that was all that was to it.

What since the war? Oh certainly, every time I come in here, which is sometimes a bad policy for me because I suffer badly from bloody nightmares now about bloody anything and everything. And, whether I sit there or here, or over there no matter which wall I look at,

there’s always something there that you know, sometimes it’s unsavoury and sometimes it’s pleasant but the unsavoury ones are always seem to override the pleasant memories. And probably, probably I’ll have to start parking out next to the fridge a little bit more often and have an extra stubby or two instead of coming in here. Yeah, oh it’s a bugger.

Anything and everything, I have nightmares about my kids being dragged out of a boat by bloody crocodiles and I don’t know whether you’ve ever witnessed it, but you’re trying to get out, you’re trying to sit up and ‘agh’, and you’re trying to free yourself from the blanket, and the missus absconds, she gets out of the bloody room and bolts and, I can’t blame her you know.

And then, all different sorts, bloody blokes trying to get at me with knives, and you can’t even sit up to try and defend yourself. I don’t know what creates, it, something in the back of the old brain box, I suppose, you know, stored away there. But the bloody strain, the strain that you have on your body just trying to free yourself from the bedclothes or something, like that,

well you think it’s the bedclothes holding you down. But you just can’t get up. Then that’s the bloody end of me then, I got to sit up and watch TV all night, then I can’t go back to sleep and that could be nine o’clock in the night. But other people are worse off than that. No doubt about that.

To deal with it? Oh I just take it as it comes that’s all.

My procedure every day is to work around the home, do what I have to do, do what’s compelling. Sometimes I’ll do something that probably doesn’t need really taken care of but I get it out of the way too and at a given time, I generally open the old sporting page, turn the radio on next to the fridge and listen to the TAB [Totalisator Agency Board] and if I fancy something in the next race, I’ll get on the telephone

and have a couple of dollars each way or something, just to get the monkey off your back as the saying is, the urge to have a bet and that’s the procedure, nearly a daily routine. I like to work in with the neighbours like as far as noise nuisances go, like I got a fair bit of electrical machinery in there, that, that you’ve got to use and making articles of furniture, so I work until midday with those. Take into consideration that, mind you,

mind you I take into consideration that they got to watch Home and Away [TV soap] or whatever it is, or The Young and the Restless, or is it Days of our Lives [other soaps]. At the same time I come down here and I reap a little bit of culture out of the Jerry Springer Show [American talk show]. I reckon that’s some of the greatest acting you’ll ever see in your life.

Yeah that’s so, that’s so, it’s, well I suppose that goes on every day living, you know, it’s, yeah well I think probably what’s created the real good memories, in my point of view, is of course I was on a small ship, small in structure, but, and you got to know each and everybody and

it was a happy ship and most of the memories were, weren’t altogether that bad, but a hell of a lot of them are real good ones. I sort of enjoyed it, I suppose if one had to do it again, knowing what I know now, I’d have reservations on answering that, because when I’ve witnessed the way that the

country’s deteriorated, through political bloody intervention and I feel that we fought against tyranny and bloody dictators many, many years ago and, Australia’s becoming like that now, we’re being ruled by dictators, unfortunately.

Well mainly in Hong Kong I’d say. We, we were at, Zamboanga,

this was just before they dropped the bomb I think and we got, we received orders to proceed to Surabaya at Manila in the Philippines, at the top end. There we joined seven other corvettes and the British Pacific Fleet.

There was the [HMS] King George V and the [HMS] Anson, a couple of battleships and the [HMS] Venerable and the [HMS] Indomitable, two aircraft carriers, the Kempenfelt the destroyer, or there were several destroyers, armed merchant Canadian cruisers. The [HMS] Maidstone which was a submarine tender ship, one of those you could repair with a submarine at sea, you know inside of her. So, we got to Hong Kong outside of Repulse Bay, not the Victoria

Colony, around about, oh Jesus, about mid August or something like that and we were instructed by Admiral Bruce Fraser who turned out to be the admiral of the British fleet, or Sir Admiral, or Sir Bruce Fraser. We were instructed by him to sweep in front of this task force and as we proceeded,

we were ordered by the Japanese command, to proceed no further. Now nobody knew at that stage and I don’t think Fraser knew it neither but they had 1eighteen inch guns, that was their shore batteries, on the cliffs as you approached Victoria Colonies. And the best the cruisers had, or the battleships, was sixteen inch guns. Anyway whilst Fraser and the Japanese command were arguing the point about what was going to take place,

we just carried on regardless. Well now the Japanese had partly swept the channel, but there were bloody mines bobbing everywhere, you look through the binoculars they were washed up on the beach. So the idea was of course was to try and sink them with a .303 [rifle], just to penetrate the hull of them, let them fill up with water and sink. But this was pretty hard to do, so the skipper ordered me into the harness on the oarlock on a couple of occasions and I had to try my

damnedest to puncture the buggers without detonating the buggers and unfortunately that didn’t happen, they, anyway it sunk them, but there was an English reporter there at this time and in the newspapers the next day, he, is that my tummy? So anyway I’m in the newspapers the next day, it had something about the gallant corvettes, heavily outnumbered by

Japanese forces, disregarded the command and carried on regardless and jeez it felt good. It felt good to think that you were a part of a bloody task force and you got a bloody mention. You know it’s generally some big battleship or aircraft carrier but it was a great feeling. And when we got in there, there was a bit of a skirmish it only lasted about a half an hour and then we

started then. We had about three months in front of us and that’s when we became the busiest I reckon, throughout the whole of the campaign. The bloody things we had to do, in the first instance, I thought we would have had to transport all the prisoners of war out of Fort Stanley, mainly women and kiddies. But I think the hitch was that, the big ocean-going liners hadn’t arrived and if they took them out of the camp

they had nowhere to put them. So they were held off in abeyance for a while until we had, we had to disarm the Japanese in Hong Kong and transport them across to Kowloon. Now when we got them over to Kowloon, mind you there was only a bloody half a dozen of us, we had to bloody march them up the road, off the pier and up the street about a mile and a half until they were taken over by another Chinese forces. And on the way,

now there was about, we probably had about two hundred Japs that trip and there was only six of us with a three on three on either on either, three on either side, and they weren’t game to move, you know, you’d think they’d make a dash for freedom, because the bloody Chinese they were bloody ten deep along either side, and they were armed with anything and everything. And if they’d have made a move and it’d have been the end of them and I reckon myself,

that one of the Chinamen took revenge, took advantage of the occasion, and that Paul Layfelt, that chap that died when he was bottling his home brew, him and I had the unpleasant task, every time you seen a body in the Victorian Colony or in Repulse Bay, we had to go out throw a rope around them and take them across to the mainland. Well some of them had been in the water, I reckon they’d been weighed down because the,

the scavengers of the sea had been nibbling at them where the ropes had been around their arms or their legs or something like that and they were, they were pretty well water damaged you know and by the time you towed them a couple of miles, they probably end up with one leg or two legs or, bloody head and a torso or something like that, the rest of it just disintegrate in the water. And it didn’t seem to worry me so much then

but it sort of gets to me today. But anything and bloody everything. That’s what I said, you know, no matter what moves, you had a shoot at it and I daresay there could have been some of these in that situation that, that I think the Chinese got a bit of what they call, revenge is sweet you know, and, when they got the opportunity to kill some of the buggers they killed them.

Of course they, I know they gave them plenty when they first got there, the Japs. And then we, oh we had numerous things to do, we had to chase bloody junks that were classified as being pirates and when we investigate and this tells you how loose the security and everything is, when we investigated them, bugger me if they didn’t turn out to be senior police, or something like that

secret police belonging to the allies. And, then they had, then they had another bloody suicide mob there with these torpedo boats and a couple of them got past us too, but thank Christ one of the planes off the aircraft carrier, he caught up with them and blew them up, before they did any damage. But then we had to go down to Junk Bay then, about a fortnight had

come to pass before we got most of the soldiers across the other side and, we had to go and take these prisoners of war out of Fort Stanley and transport them out to the, well the Empress of Australia, the Empress of Canada, oh there was a few ships there taking them to their various destinations, throughout the world. And, the bloody, the water sometimes seemed to be, you had to work with the tide, it was too shallow, because when you got into the jetty,

the jetty was up about twelve feet, you know, so you were better of, there was another set of steps around the stern of the ships where, they could walk down and if what we did was put the motor boat with the whaler, well we towed the motor boat and you’d put about twenty people in the whaler, and then you’d tow them out to the Broome or the Ballarat or whatever corvette was the closest and you could only move when you

did get a load, you could only move at snail pace, because the bloody sampans, they were there by the bloody hundreds, and there was one, there was one sampan in particular. By now we might have been in about thirty-five or forty foot of water and the Broome bumped her, it was a woman with, oh, about a two and

a half year old boy and the baby was wrapped up in blankets, or shawls or something like that and just stowed in the ship there and anyway the little boy went over the side. So a couple of the boys on board jumped over, you know, they, they stripped down to their bloody underwear and of course by now she was gone, she was down over the side like a, she was like a cormorant and she just kept going down and down, and down, anyway she eventually got him and brought him up and

being so young, I suppose, he’s drawn plenty of water into his lungs and Christ knows what and he was sort of given up for dead, but there was a, we had a Chinese doctor on board and we leaned over the side like that and dragged him in and there was a little locker or a little bit bigger than that wine cabinet there, or about yay long and about that wide and, he laid him on his side there and he got two cigarettes, he got two cigarettes out of a packet and he lit them both.

And I don’t know why, for the love of me, he stuck one in his bloody backside, the cork tip end, you know, he stuck that in and he took two or three big gulps, opened the boy’s mouth and he blew that down into his gullet, you know into his lungs and so forth, now I can relate to that because that because that would make you sick. Like if you were conscious and pinched a bit of your old man’ tobacco when you were a kid and rolled a cigarette and took a couple of big draws, oh, the old room would

start spinning you know, what seemed a lifetime, all of a sudden this bloody boy, he worked at both ends. There was bloody and water and there was crap came out of the other end and he was as right as rain and I’ve never seen that before and I’ve never seen it since. And I thought by Jesus, who’s to question the Chinese because by Jesus they come up with some terrific methods, you know cures and so forth.

I was talking to an old doctor about it one day and he said,“Well I don’t know why. he said,”He’d want to put in the other end.” he said, “There’d have to be a reason for it.” I couldn’t work it out, anyway it took us quite some time to clear them out of there. There was some sad cases, kiddies, kiddies four year old, never knew what a bit of fruit was you know. But he… terrible things.

No, no, like you hear all sorts of yarns admittedly and no doubt, knowing the way that that particular race acted, you’d be more or less inclined to believe it, like the raping of women and so forth and, bloody, other things that took place, it’s, quite believable.

But we were there, by Jesus we, I reckon we left there about, the end of November. We got there in say, mid August, no, we might have left, we might have left towards the end of October, because we had to go down to, we worked from Morotai

down to Ambon and around that area and that’s where I went ashore to get a bit of dental work done as I was telling you earlier and found out all about Doolan. We were there, we were hanging around there then for about the first week in December and we thought we were on our way home, we reckoned we would

have Christmas at home, so we worked out of Ambon to another, oh I can’t think of the name of the island, but all of a sudden we got a message, that we had to go looking for a bloody plane, would you imagine a ship going looking for a plane inland. So we had to call into all the different islands around the place, and had to make enquiries with the natives and so forth

and they’d tell you something about a big butterfly landed here and all this and that, so you had to go and investigate it. And by now two or three weeks had come to pass and we were running out of fuel. So it was just on Christmas Eve and we sent a message, we sent a message to say, well we’re out of bloody fuel, so we called into a place called Damar Island. Oh, about four stakes in the ground, that was the jetty, you just

tied up to one of those stakes, or two of them, stern and forward, and they said, well they’d, I think it was a Quadrant destroyer, she came out and we refuelled off her. And it didn’t turn out to be a bad Christmas, we got fifty WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s [fowls] off the natives, and we got all the old coloured bunting like the signal flags and so forth, the pennants tied them up on some of the trees and

the superstructure of the ship and so forth and when the Quadrant tied up alongside of us, she had an abundant supply of cheer [alcohol], so it didn’t last very long, we had to sail at three o’clock in the morning. But we continued that search for about, oh I suppose another week until they called it off. So we headed back down to Australia

then and got down to Darwin, and the ships that were named after various coastal towns, made a goodwill visit you know, we called into Broome. And, there was some bugger went berserk there. The bloody mayor came out and his wife, you know the town band and they made us really welcome, of course as I told you before

the surge of the tide there was something like forty feet you see. So the pub, the pub even though it was built on the ground back here, fifty yards out there and it was forty feet high and it was on stilts. And that was the bar. So they put on a dance and everybody’s turned up and here’s these silly four bloody matelots [sailors], off the Broome, turns up at the bar and they’ve got a case of beer. Now there was, I think there was four dozen tallies,

twenty-six ounce bottles, in a case of beer and even though they were in sheaths, like they were a straw sheath which you put the bottle up inside and they’re packed in those, you ready up there. yeah, we’re about to let her go, this is out the bloody window, they’re going to drop this bloody case of beer out the window and here’s this silly pair of buggers going to catch it. Well she went straight through to the concrete and that was the end of the case of beer, well that created a bad smell.

And somebody pinched a bloody car belonging to someone, ran into a tree with it. Well we were, we wore out our welcome you know what I mean, they couldn’t get rid of us quick enough. Then we picked up another message then, we had to pick up some sort of a barge or something at Exmouth Bay and it looked like we were going, looked like the Broome was going to finish off the way that she started off by towing this bloody lighthouse to

Darwin and now we’re going to tow this tub back to, from Exmouth Bay to Fremantle and the weather come up so that was aborted, and as I told you before we eventually got into Fremantle on the on the 11th January ’46 and that as I said was about six months after the war had finished. Now we were busier, we were busier in the last six months than what we were

probably throughout the bloody conflict. But oh, some pleasant memories there, one bloke in particular, I reckon he was a big Mongolian and that’s why I put that picture of a rickshaw up there. But he was an enormous man, I reckon he was just short of about maybe six foot ten, built like a woodcutter’s wedge you know, very broad at the shoulders down to the waist nice and narrow,

And he had feet on him like those bloody tennis rackets that the Eskimos wear, you know probably flop, flop, flop from pulling the rickshaw. So this big Bert Dale, a fellow from South Australia and I, we went ashore on a few occasions, and he looked after us, no matter what we wanted, he’d go the crepe de shine for us, you know. Best of beer, best of food, the best of anything and we repaid him on the first occasion, we gave him ten American dollars and Jesus,

we were the best people ever. But then I said before on the recording, that I was very good friends with a cook called Joe Gibby that I had that afternoon I was supposed to get my photo taken with Carole Anders. Well all the left over food, which they called gash in the navy, he said to me, Tarrie, he said, “You tell him to bring out containers.” he said, “I can’t afford to give him containers, but…” he said, “I’ll give him all the food that I’ve got left over.” Well he was he bloody mayor of Hong Kong.

He really owned the place you know and when I left here, I made the terrible mistake of not getting his name. And because we became very thick, he became most indignant on the occasion that, we were half full of bloody dragon brandy or something like that, you know, and Bert Dale said, “Bugger this.” he said, “We’re letting him do all the work.” he said, “Put him in the rickshaw…” and he said, “We’ll get in the shafts.” Well I don’t know whether that was frowned

upon, in Hong Kong but he was most indignant, oh Jesus, we upset him something immensely, but he settled down after a while and back in 19, what ’95 was it, the bicentenary or something of Hong Kong. The daughter said to me, Stace, she said, “Come on Dad.” she said, “I’ll take you back to Hong Kong.”

Well I got a couple of photographs there of what it was like when I was here, another one, what it’s like today. I wouldn’t know the place, wouldn’t know the place. And I said to her, “Stace,” I said, “I’d love to go back, but…” I said “If I knew that bloke,” I said “I’d definitely go back,” I said, “If I knew where he was I’d go back just to see him, but…” I said, “I wouldn’t have the slightest idea.” I said, “He could find me a lot easier, you only got to get in touch with the Royal

Australian Navy or something like that and they could chase me down but…” I said, “Could you imagine me trying to find a Chinaman in Hong Kong, you know?” But, oh scenes you’ll never forget I can remember when peace was actually signed and the Chinese have a great yen for crackers [fireworks]. They celebrate nearly everything with crackers and the water frontage there might have been,

maybe three storey buildings but they’d unfurl these great rolls of crackers just like a bloody great big carpet and they must have measured the distance and cut them off to the exact measurement, they let them furl down the front of the buildings, unfurl until they got down the footpath and they just light them right across the bottom and the whole frontage of the whole bloody, water side buildings, bang, bang, bang, bloody crackers all night,

and that went on for days. It went on for days, yeah, oh they were pleased to see the end of it, I suppose we all were to a degree.

Well that, that, now when was the bomb dropped, on the ninth was it, was it the ninth of August?

Sixth was it, nah I think that’s wrong, but anyway I won’t argue, I thought it was the ninth [the first bomb was dropped on the sixth and the second on the ninth]. Oh well they dropped two didn’t they, did they drop them both in the one day? Well anyway, they took some time to make up their mind before VJ day come about. Might have been three or four days after that but we were in Hong Kong, see VP day wasn’t till

another fortnight after that again. See you had, you had hundreds of thousands of Japanese forces still in the islands, that hadn’t surrendered and I daresay there probably are still some there today who don’t know even know the war’s over. But that was, that was certainly was the end of it and the buzz was of course, the buzz was of course that

if that hadn’t have been successful, now I don’t know how truthful this is, but rumours get around and they’ve got to start from something, if the atomic bombs hadn’t have been successful, the allied forces were going to amass right from the top of Japan, might have been ten million strong, and just keep coming down and down and taken everything before them until they’d surrendered. Now when you analyse that,

it’s a possibility that the atomic bomb saved a hell of a lot of deaths, because you could imagine, you can just imagine a force of ten million, just continuing on like a bloody lot of African ants, just eat out, shoot out, so, where there was a vast number lost their lives at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, there’d be a hell of a lot more go by the wayside if the other thing had have eventuated.

But whether that’s true or not, not for me to say, as I said before the rumours start from something.

Interesting people? Yes, yeah, no good of saying one thing and meaning another. But I was, how shall I,

how can I put this now, if you look at the, the Tuttles up there who are a very obstinate race, I think this is the best way I can answer this. I got a large influence of the Tuttle genes in me which are very stubborn and this enabled me to resist the temptation of evils and sins you see. So I never got really involved to any great extent, but no I met some nice people there,

yes but, some of the other boys, some of the other matelots, they fell in love with girls when they left there, there was heartaches and Christ knows what, I wasn’t innocent John by any means. But, never to that stage, never got involved to that stage. Oh, I brought home a few little things that still remind me of the occasion.

The unfortunate part is, like we had bloody souvenirs galore and of course when we got off Fremantle, the thing was of course if you got caught with them you were gone, so they said the best thing to do is to just jettison, throw the buggers over the side. Which we did like billygoats, and, it was all a bloody bit of hooey looey [lies]. Beautiful bloody, like you know a full samurai sword and dagger set.

Yes, there were certain individuals, I wasn’t into drinking much in those days,

but there were certain individuals on board that, somehow or other, they got hold of a demijohn.

Well a demijohn, when you see some of those old, what sort of pictures are they, where they make their stills and so forth, in Kentucky is it? They have their stills in the bush where they brew their own whiskey and so forth. Well the demijohn are generally the middle bottle,

they take a swig of over their shoulder, but these were pretty big, this, oh probably hold a gallon and a half or something like that and they used to get potato peelings and orange peelings, and they used to get a little bit of alcohol off the sick bay tiffy just to start it off. Prunes, prune juice and stuff like that, and oh jeez, I’ll tell you what she was potent stuff, but they drank it, they drank it

and on one occasion, the bloody string broke that held the cork down and she exploded of course, right in the hammock bin, well I’ll tell you what, I reckon it took at least six months to get the smell out of the place, it was just like dog vomit, it was rotten. Mightn’t of tasted like that but then again after you drank it you might have wished it was. It was shocking stuff I know that.

But they’d come at anything some of them blokes, like just anything for a, for the matter of saying well we’ve got something to drink. It was a rare occasion that we got a beer supply, we were entitled to so many bottles of beer per whatever and when you caught up with a supply ship, you didn’t always get your full quota but at least you got something and the Richmond Tiger,

that was the Victorian brew, it had the tiger on the front, it was that bad, they used to call it Panther’s Piss, and you could swap, if you got a couple of bottles of Swan Ale, or Coopers, or Emu Bitter or something like that or Cascade, or XXXX or Melbourne Bitter or Fosters Lager, you could get eight bottles of this Richmond Tiger

for one bottle of the other good, well known brews you know. And I didn’t mind it, I thought well now that’s not bad value, I was pretty good mates with the tanky [sailor who doles out daily tot of rum], a fellow called Jack Stead and he said, “Well look you, if you want to swap your couple of bottles of Emu Bitter for sixteen bottles of this Richmond Tiger.” He said, “I’ll put it in the refridge [refrigerator]

for you.” he was in charge of the cold stores and so forth. And I think it wasn’t altogether all that bad providing it was frigidly cold you know, sort of killed its taste. But it was, it was better anyway than the home brew lot.

Well look, I don’t think, I don’t think there was any taboo on it because,

well after all’s said and done, there was a war on and I think anything, anything sort of held up providing you weren’t contravening, blowing up the ship or something like that, acts of, well we’re talking about before, bloody sabotage and so forth, but I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, there was never anything said about it.

But it became more sophisticated after a while of course. But it was, you know, some of that sake that Japanese stuff, goodness gracious me, that was just as bad, I couldn’t come at it, but then it’s a pretty popular drink amongst that race.

No, we never got the opportunity; only on rare occasions did we get the opportunity to go ashore. And that was probably to pick up supplies, or running an officer somewhere like,

there might have been some sort of a shindig on, where there were moves afoot, where you’d have to take an officer ashore, you’d borrow a jeep of course off the army or something like that, but no we never got, never really got a chance to Biak, yes, it was badly damaged, and, Tarakan that was another place but outside of those couple, no, or even Morotai,

you could go ashore at Morotai, but you never really went looking for, Ambon was another place that was pretty well damaged, but you never really went there to look at those things.

Well

it was sort of a home base and we probably had to drop a raiding party over towards Helmahera, we’d have to pick them up probably forty-eight hours later on or something like that, then we’d have to go and do patrol work. There was all trivial little things, you probably

skip from Morotai over to Tarakan or something like that and stay there for a week and then you’d go back to Morotai. It was, as I said we used to do the mopping up you know. We’d make sure that the Japanese didn’t escape from there which was, even though there might have been four or five of us, corps vets in number, when you take into consideration, there probably would have been,

on Tarakan there might have been thirty thousand Japanese forces, well we would have had Buckley’s hope [no hope] of stopping them. If they’d have decided to make a move, of course we never had, like we weren’t, we weren’t armed to repel that sort of force.

Oh yes, yes, it was a, it was a gigantic base, nothing compared to Manus Island or Seeadler Bay and those places, or even Hollandia Bay that was another, a giant of a place as I said before, they were like a, like an exaggerated caravan place, where every mooring, every anchorage, every position on the jetty they were all numbered so as you could,

you knew just exactly where each and every ship was, but in places like Morotai we just anchored around about a couple of miles off the beachfront, might remain there for a day and a half and then we’d go on escort duty or patrol duty. They’d always find something for you to do.

Yes that was, Hollandia, that was something similar to Seeadler Bay or Manus Island. But, I, I think Manus Island, or Seeadler’s Bay that was the base of the fifth and the seventh Pacific, American Pacific Fleet or something. Whereas Hollandia Bay might have been just a one off occasion, they might have just been

assembling there, for an assault on Luzon or something like that.

Oh I’d imagine so, we, we didn’t communicate with anybody, only when we tried to communicate with the skipper of the Aussie. But you were given orders and you just carried them out, that was all.

Well that’s when we

done our propeller on a torpedo blister, he didn’t forgive us for that.

Oh no not really, not really, I felt that my time was up you know and, and I wanted to get back into civvy street [civilian life]. If I’d have signed on for twelve years or something like that, I’d have probably jumped at the chance.

Yeah we, we were involved with them to a, not so much task forces or escort duties or convoys, certain we probably, probably eighty-five percent of the convoy would be made up of American ships,

but now and again, we jumped at the opportunity sometimes they’d have a movie on, when we got into harbour, and they’d invite us over to watch the movie and so forth.

Oh they were a lot better off than we were, Jesus Christ, what they used to throw away, we called delicacies, like mess wise.

We had the old usual like baked beans and, prunes and custard that was one of the sweets [desserts], never get steak, you’d get some fresh vegetables if you come into port or you run into a supply ship, otherwise it was all dehydrated stuff, you know. The Yanks [Americans] always seemed to have turkey and steaks and oh.

They lived very well, not going to say all of them but the ones that I bumped into did.

Oh they were alright, I think they were, I think they were more, at sea, I never found any fault with them, but when you came ashore, maybe because they were

the strangers in a strange country or something like that, and they were, they just took it for granted that they could chiack [joke] around etc, etc and I don’t know whether it was their way of trying to win the feminine gender or something like that but they just, mind you they were probably paid about ten times more than we were getting, if not more than that which made a hell of a difference, because they could shower the

lassies with plenty of nosegays and goodies and so forth, you know whereas the old Aussie serviceman was sort of on bedrock all the time. I used to get, I don’t know whether it was thirty dollars, thirty dollars, thirty shillings one fortnight I think and thirty, I used to get an extra sixpence or something like that the next fortnight. Five cents,

but the Yanks were well paid, I might be wrong in those figures but I know it’s, it might have been thirty-five shillings. No that might have been a week, a week, and strange as it may seem you saved money out of it, because every time you bought something out of the canteen, it was duty free, you know. And, which brings to mind an

occasion when we docked at Brisbane down at Milling wharf, there just below the old Ship Dinner Hotel. Where the Diamantina is there in the dry docks now, that’s Milling Wharf. And I had a port [suitcase] full of, or I wouldn’t say it was contraband, I’d bought it, shoes, towels and tobacco and cigarette papers

and a few other odds and ends and I had a shower and I wanted to get this port, I had two ports actually, I wanted to get these ports to a person I knew in Brisbane so as they could transport them up to my father and mother up here in Bundaberg. And, this old dockie he said to me, he said, “Sailor, you won’t get past that bloody old Irish sergeant up there.” he said “I’m tell you now, you’re wasting your time.”

So I thought oh well, the best thing to do is be honest about this, I could see that he was a smoker, and, back in those days it was pretty hard to buy good tobacco. And the tobacco I had it was all sealed off with tin foil and you had to push a little clip on the lid like that and as you turned it around, that would cut the top out of the tin, just like the old, I don’t know

whether it used to be in the old True Food Skim Milk or the Lactogen [milk substitute] tins or something like that, but it was all sealed off and it kept the flavour the aroma in you know. I thought well bugger it, I’ve got to try, so I bowls up and he says, “I see you’re going on leave sailor.” I said, “Not actually sergeant.” I said, “I’ve only got about a day and…” I said, “I’ll probably have to be back by midnight.” And he said, “Where do you hail from?”

And I said “Bundaberg originally.” and I said, “Though I was born at Charters Towers.” “Oh.” he said, “I knew so and so up at the Towers.” And I said, “Look,” I said, “I want to get these ports to a gentleman, and…” I said, “I’m going to be honest with you.” I told him, I said, “I’ve got a couple of pairs of shoes in there,” and I said, “Some underclothing for the dad and some other stuff for the mater and so forth.” and I said, “and I’ve got some lovely tobacco.” And like a flash I got some out and I said,

“What do you think of that?” “Oh,” he said, “That smells beautiful.” I said, “How would you like a couple of tins?” “Oh.” he said, “I’d love that, I’d love that.” I said, “Make it three.” And the bugger carried me bloody ports up to the tram you know. Yeah, and I looked around to the old dockie and he’s going, “Strike me bloody lucky!” You know, “How’d you get away with that?” But I was honest with him and I told him what I had, and he said “That’s good enough for me.

Give us one of those ports, I’ll carry it up to the tram stop.” That’s my tummy, yeah little stories that come back, yeah little memories. And I don’t know whether he was there after that but I never struck him again.

Oh yeah he would, I reckon he wouldn’t be able to get, and I gave him Zigzags [cigarette papers] too, because you couldn’t get Zigzags,

I had a gross of them, that was twelve dozen an a box about yay square, you know the little nice fine Zigzag paper, you used to put around your rolling, see in those days most of the civilians, they’d get something like a toilet paper, and boil up some rice, boil up rice and then just dip the toilet paper, like a tissue type stuff, into this rice water

and that’d do the same sort of thing like the Zigzag but it, had a different flavour about it, it sort of killed the taste of the tobacco. Oh I can imagine him sitting back that night, listening to the radio and really dragging deep on those cigarettes.

What sort of?

Oh well, we didn’t know where we were going, but this is where we joined the British Pacific Fleet, under the command of Bruce Fraser and I thought well, we’re in for something

but it turned out to be Hong Kong of course and, and, it was magnificent, you know to sail alongside, I’d be up on lookout you know and you’d put the old binoculars up and you’d look over at the King George V or the Anson, and here were these Marines in their full uniform up on the foc’s’le, going through their exercises, every morning, you know, marching up and down, up and back, redcap marines, oh they were vicious soldiers.

But, no it, and to see the graceful big monsters, just sliding through the water like that and you’d be up and bloody down and tossing and heaving, oh, God strike me pink.

Oh yeah, lovely, lovely, like as I said, when we swept through the threats and so forth that we were getting from the Japanese forces

as we entered the Victoria colony and we disregarded the threats and God knows what and we were recognised, we were recognised as this Brisbane scribe, British scribe, he said “The corvettes absolutely disregarded and carried on, you know, without any fears.” But had we known they had eighteen inch bloody artillery there well me might have had some sort of fears, but

it was lovely to be in a force and to know that you had big brother there to help you of course, and they were probably weak compared to what the Japanese had on the shore lines.

Well there was, the King George V, the Anson, the Venerable, the Indomitable, they were the aircraft carriers.

There was the Kempenfelt and several other destroyers. There was the Maidstone submarine tender; there were six Scorpion-class subs. There were armed commerce ships and Canadian cruisers and I think there were a couple of New Zealand ships there too. I just can’t think of their names and there were eight corvettes, the Ballarat was the senior corvette.

Oh there were, there were other supply ships and tankers, they were all in the task force but, I, some of the only stayed there for a short period of time and I reckon they went onto Japan. But, they left us there, and I think there were two or three corvettes left.

Oh just with an oil less mantle, like a signal lamp with a Morse code and if you’re close enough,

they just go through the semaphore, you know the waving he flags and so forth. Quite simple.

No, well I’ve always had great admiration for the British, you know when they had their backs to the wall, by Jesus they seemed to rise or grow an extra six inches taller, as the saying is, when I got tangled up in this particular

force with the King George V and the Anson the two aircraft carriers [actually battleships], I don’t know whether the Broome felt the same but I felt a bit bigger myself, you know, I said well we’re involved with big sister and big brother and so forth, it sort of makes you feel part of it instead of just being pushed in the background all the time. No, I liked it, I liked it

it had a lovely feeling about it. And as I said when we defied the Japanese threats and we swept the channel, we felt really proud. When I say we, I’m talking about the ships in particular the corvettes, you know. Because they were only, they weren’t looked upon as any great force to be reckoned with but by Jesus, I’ll tell you what, they come in handy when they

had to get four or five hundred mines out the road. And the silly part about this, you know, as I said before, I think I was telling Kieran [interviewer] there, I got a medal not so long back that I should have got back in 1944. But that’s neither here nor there, but now they’re issuing a minesweeping medal, or they have been issuing a minesweeping medal, and our, it starts from,

I think it started from about the 27th of September, 1940, ’45, and you had to accumulate so many months from that date, was it ’45, yeah, that date, till, oh it had to be, it had if you joined the navy in peace time and did six months mine sweeping you got the medal. But I fell about,

about ten days short, now that, I know there was a big outcry over it, the bone of contention was that you had other things to be concerned with whilst you were at a conflict, not only minesweeping, you know. You had other things on your mind also and, the lot of sailors thought, especially the corvette boys, they thought it was extremely unfair that they didn’t get that particular award, but anyway, it’s only another medal to poke a

hole in your coat. But still wasn’t right just the same. Whether they’ll change it later on or not, one doesn’t know.

Back to Moreton, no I think, yeah back to Moreton Depot.

It took us about five days to get there, we’d come across by rail, from Fremantle to, to Brisbane, I reckon it would have been the best part of five days. Then I no sooner reported to Moreton Depot at Brisbane, which is across the river from Milling Wharf, and they said “Well you can go on twenty-eight days leave.” I think it was.

I’d been home about seven days, then I got a message to report back to Moreton within a week. And that’s when I got drafted to the Aussie who was still over in Fremantle, so I bellyached about it and I was in the throes of going and they said “Well alright you can stay home we’ve got somebody else to go.” Then they sent me out to that lovely little ship the Matthew Flinders, oh dear oh dear.

But I got away from the Matthew Flinders, I told you the story about that, and then they sent me down to this boom defence depot down at Pinkenba. See the Yanks had a net, a boom net across the river there, like a big steel mesh net. Any boats that come up the river they had to drag that open to let the ships through. Well they had nearly everything down there,

they had billiard tables and card and anything and everything and of course that particular time there was few people there, I reckon they built their homes out of the place, black market. I didn’t find it too bad after a while, a couple of people left and, my major duty throughout the day was just to help out down at the big shed, throwing so many shackles here and,

every Wednesday night I had to drive this, I was the duty truck driver, and I had to deliver this to such and such at place at Newfarm this to so and so at Geebung and it was electric motors, steel wire ropes, somebody be getting something under the lap, but I didn’t make enquires about it, you know and the cook would go ashore, even though we were on land, they still call it,

when you go into the city on leave, they still call it going ashore. So he’d leave the skipper’s meal prepared, and I was a bit naïve, you know, and I served him this bloody Yorkshire pudding, with his meat dish, goodness me, no I served it with the sweets, I thought it was something like a flap jack or something like that, you see, and he said, “Tuttle.” he said “Jesus!” he says, “You don’t serve

bloody, what do they call them, Yorkshire pudding.” he said, “You don’t serve that with custard!” I said, “Well Christ I’m not a cook!” “Oh,” he said “You’ll know tomorrow.” But then after he’d had his tea [dinner], I had this big V8 Mercury [car], and he said, “Righto,” he said, “You can drop me off at the Hamilton Pub. You can pick me up at the same place at eight o’clock in the morning.”

So I’d have the big V8 to myself all night.

Oh I don’t know where he stayed, I didn’t ask questions, he said just drop me off there, so that’s where I’d drop him.

Oh yes, yeah, back on my own home territory sort of thing.

You know, it’s funny, when I got out of the navy, I’m just digressing a bit here, I hadn’t seen my younger brother, Dave, I reckon for about, oh dear, five or six years, and when I got out of the navy, I went down to Tasmania for a couple of years.

There’s a couple of stories here. I went looking for a job where I could earn a quick quid [quick money]. So I fronted a, or I faced a bloke called Archie Iyssle[?], up at Dunoon, which is more or less a new suburb right up the far end of Macquarie Street past the Wheatsheaf Hotel, now he was supplying the Hobart City Council with all the blue metal.

He had this crusher, in the side of a mountain, he’d blow the rock out of the mountain, and, he had a, main tramline type of thing with all his little sidings off it. And you’d have a, your pit would be in there and every time you filled a one cubic yard truck up with stones, small enough to go through the crusher jaws, the bloke would take it down, empty it into the crusher,

bring it back and leave your truck at the side, with a little token, now that token represented, I think it was three shillings. And, I used to make anything between twelve and twenty pounds a week there, which was big money in those days because the basic wage was about five or six pounds, you know, something like that. Anyway, fate would have it that,

Archie’s sister in law, Mrs Iyssle just had a boarding house just over the side of the hill so I went and seen her and asked her if she had a room to spare she said, “Certainly by all means.” and she read me the Tenants Act, and so forth. “Oh,” I said “You’ll have no problems with me.” So, we all used to sit down of an evening and dine together, the whole family plus the boarders and, she was talking to me one night and she said, “I see you were in the navy Frank.” I said “Yes.” She said “I had a son in the forces.”

So “Oh yes.” She said “As a matter of fact,” he said “He’s coming back to Australia, he was wounded and he was coming back to Australia on a plane and they crashed in New Guinea.” Well we worked it out, compared the dates and bugger me he was on that plane that we went looking for around the, the, Damar Sea, was it the Damar Sea, or Damar Island.

And yeah, so it was a small world there. So time come to pass, I spent two years down there and I flew home from Hobart to Brisbane for fifteen pounds, one Sunday, now through the war, every Sunday night at the old Trades Hall, right up the top of Edward Street, right up on the Terrace, there was a big dancehall there, they used to have a dance for the troops.

Well not necessarily for the troops alone, but they went of a Sunday night, so when landed in Brisbane airport, I thought bugger it I’ll just book my luggage in, my sister had a house at Homebush Street out at Kedron. So I’ll go up and see if they’re still dancing at, top end of Edward Street. So I get up there and I can hear the old saxophones and the trombones and so forth and you know, and, went up in the lift and,

walked inside. Started to survey the surrounds like you know and, the first person I seen was my bloody brother, Dave. Then I had another look around the side of the hall and so forth, and the second person I seen was Faye, so I picked her up in the dance, I got up in the old time barn dance, a progressive barn dance where, you know, you do a bit of a waltz and so forth and then you change partners and so

you get the opportunity to dance with everybody in the circle and she wasn’t a bad mover, very pretty and got talking and bugger me, she come from Bundaberg and do did I, so, anyway, that was the end of that occasion and came home and I goes down to the rowing shed, to the dance down there and bugger me who should be there but Faye again, so, one thing led to another, you know, and after several months romance

we tied the knot and that was fifty-four years ago. So it’s a bloody strange world, you never know who you’re going to bump into. But I always kept the old weather eye open, you know, oh Christ.

No. No. Ernie was in the permanent navy and when I, when we paid the Broome off in Fremantle, he was still the navy you see, we were still in the navy, actually we still are today, we were only demobilised, we weren’t discharged, but he was in the permanent navy, he’d signed on for twelve years, and he got, I think he

went back to Korea on the Bataan, but there’s a sad story attached to him. He was a very, very silent individual, liked to have a good beer and so forth, liked to have a bet and he was telling me, when I went down to Hobart to see him, he was telling me he got caught taking a couple of bottles of beer or something back on board the Bataan and you know, he was charged with running, not contraband,

something else and they stripped him of all his bloody pay and all of his entitlements whatsoever, and I couldn’t understand that you know, probably because it was peace time I don’t know, but he died not long after that. No it, mind you it was a flourishing trade in those days, but.

Yeah.

No, no.

We, as I was telling you, when we were at Morotai, there was a hell of a big betting organisation there, and if we got too much money for a horse, well we could ring up, get the signalman to ring up or use the old code and lay some of it off on the mainland at Morotai but outside of that I got, we went to Moorefield, this was about ’44, we went to Moorefield on Saturday afternoon, we got three days leave, we were in Sydney and,

Moorefield was one of the old race tracks, it’s been pulled down now and, I had about six pounds to my name and he might have had eight, so I’m doing four pound, Christ, this is going to be a pretty drack old weekend if we got to sleep in Hyde Park for a couple of nights, you know. So he said to me, he said, “Give me a couple of pound.” I gave him, it was all I had, he said, “I’ll put a couple of pounds with it.” he says “And we’ve got two pounds left.”

He said “That’s our weekend’s enjoyment.” So he sneaked way he said “I’ll see if I can back a winner.” And he came back and we had a, one of the greatest steeplechasers we’ve ever had in Australia, a horse called Winterset, was in this race at Caulfield, he comes back and he said, “I’ve had two pounds each way Hearsay in the hurdle race.” “Oh,”I said, “Jesus Christ!” I said “He’ll never beat Winterset as long as he stands up!”

I said, “Dear oh dear.” You know I felt the worst, anyway they take off and it’s probably a bit over two miles the race and they come to the second last jump and Winterset I reckon was about thirty lengths in front and running second was Hearsay and a similar distance back to the third horse, well they come to the second last jump, and I’ll never forget the broadcaster, he said, “Oh he’s spilt his lollies, he’s come to grief!” And I thought don’t tell me it’s bloody Hearsay, it wasn’t, it was Winterset, the one in front. And then I

started biting my nails, hoping to God that Hearsay would still stand on his feet you know, so we picked up thirty-four pounds out of that and we had a real good weekend leave.

No, no, Jesus we were looking for newspapers for blankets and goodness knows what.

Oh yes, they were there by the scores.

Well you know I suppose

you had the loners and so forth, you know, the down and outs, that was just their normal abode.

Oh yeah, there was, soldiers, there was all types of civilians and winos and so forth you know. Oh it was a renowned spot Hyde Park.

Well there were four corvettes involved and what you had to do was find the deepest channels, the deepest waters, and, it was, well you had to take

readings, you had the old sextant and so forth, you had the readings on your compass in regards to what direction you were in, and you took soundings, what you call soundings. On the corvette on the starboard side they have a little platform that they put out, it extends out about three feet outside the hull of the ship, now you have a what they call a lead line, now on the, it’s a big piece

of lead, it’d weigh ten pounds, now you, when you want take a sounding somewhere, now on the bottom of that lead line, it’s countersunk, and in that there’s wax put in there, there’s wax put I there, so what you so, you have a lazy leads man with you who starts gathering in the rope after you’ve thrown it. But you’re up about, let’s say for

argument’s sake about twelve foot above the water so you start swinging, and you work it until you start to get up, you get into a rhythm and then all of a sudden you get into a circle. Now if you got too much slack in the rope it’ll fall like that and nearly pull your arm out of your shoulder, so you got to pull that lead tight on the end of that rope, as you swing it and when you got the stage where you got enough momentum, you let it go. And it flies forward,

now you’re only going along at a slow pace, it flies forward, your lazy lead man starts to gather in the rope, you weight like the sinker on a fishing line, till it hits the bottom, now that wax, might pick up some sand in it, so as you pull it in, you pull up all the slack and you say by the mark ten then you pull it in, sandy. It’s got a sandy bottom you see. Now righto because you’re only travelling

so slow in the Timor Sea or the Arafura sea or whatever, you didn’t work of the little projection, the platform you just worked off the side of the ship but one bloke would take the lead forward, he’d drop it right underneath the anchor or where the anchor was housed and you might only have about three fathoms, so

you just pull it up and say by the mark three, you wouldn’t worry about weather it was stony, sandy, or otherwise, see. So righto, you’d say well you got six, three fathoms of water there, eighteen feet, now that’s quite okay for a corvette, it depended upon whether it was full tide of a low tide, because as I said before that had a terrible bloody drop in high and low waters, it was forty odd feet and more. So righto, you thought that’s no good, so you back pedalled.

You just change course five degrees or something like that and you might find, you might find a channel, that’s probably got forty fathoms in it or something like that, or maybe not quite that deep, but by the time the three or four of youse working together took all these different readings, I guess something you didn’t do in five minutes, you had to work with the tide for fear of getting caught yourself. Like if you ventured too far, the tide would go out at a terrific rate.

And then you’d find yourself bloody high and dry so you had to work so far and make sure, that alright, so it’s going to take you an hour to get back into the deep water, you had to make sure you had enough scope, like enough time to beat the tide before you retreated, otherwise you’d be caught. It was a tedious job, but we got through it. And, it took us about, it took the four of us about

bloody ten or twelve days, something like that, mightn’t have been that long but oh it was a tedious bloody job, like you were, like you were just going along at a pace, just going along at a pace just fast enough which would allow the rudder or allow the ship to answer the turn of the rudder if you understand what I mean. If it had been any slower, you wouldn’t have been able to change course, but you were just going along at a, or an average walking pace,

so if you wanted the ship to go to starboard she’d answer the call, and any slower and she wouldn’t have, she’d have been wallowing.

Oh yes, I suppose no good saying that you didn’t but probably in an act in a movement because, sometimes as I said, by going slow

that you wouldn’t get the rudder or you wouldn’t get the ship to answer the tiller or the rudder quick enough and instead of being there, it’d be over there type of thing, you know, it’d be about fifty yards off course which would make a hell of a lot of difference. But we got through it okay. But oh, bloody terrible job.

Oh yes yeah. Oh they it opened it up, it opened it up,

but to, to what sort of like you know it might be alright for a ten thousand ton or fifteen thousand ton vessel, I never went into it any further, nothing to do with me but whether you’d have got a fifty thousand tonner, or the Queen Mary or something like that through there, but I daresay that there’s been some big vessels go through it just the same but it made a hell of a difference because you just take the extra mileage you had to travel if you were coming

from India or somewhere going right down through the bloody Bight and back up the other side of Australia, that’d be a hell of a mileage.

Yeah.

Oh, very angry, very angry and you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor buggers

because, when you grabbed them to help them onto the ship, you’d have to look twice to see if you had a hold of them. Their bones, their arms would be no thicker than my thumb you know. And as I said before, the kids, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for them, you’d give them an orange, or an apple or something, they didn’t know what to do with it, never even tasted it. But, no they, they were

very grateful, they showed their gratitude in a few letters that they wrote in the press throughout the world, you know about the ships that released them from Port Stanley. Some of them were very, very bitter, no doubt they might have been the victim of ill treatment. But it was mainly womenfolk and kids,

but they all, we took them out to the ocean-going liners and. Pardon me. We took them out to these ocean going liners and they distributed them hither and thither you know. And so, yeah so they were grateful to get home to their loved ones.

Well, this comes about because of black-marketeering but there was pirates, like even today, between here and Timor and, up and around Malaysia there’s pirates everywhere and you’d get a report, you’d get a report from somewhere that pirates were operating, I’m not going to say,

in Junk Bay or Repulse Bay but out around Stonecutter’s Island or something like that, you’d go and investigate and sure enough they’d be there. There was one bloke, by Jesus he had an arsenal, I could have filled this room, bloody hand grenades, and machine guns and goodness knows what but he’d probably done a sweet deal with the Japanese officer, you know, that knew the war was coming to and end and I’m going to get something out of this, so he sold some of their armoury and so forth. And,

he’s got some money out of it probably and the other fellow’s got caught.

Oh, well it wasn’t up to us, it was up to the Chinese authorities you know. We’d contact them and they’d come to hand and they could please themselves what they did, we couldn’t get out of the place quick enough, like from those sort of incidents. But we, I can recall on one occasion

there, there was about a dozen; had to board this bloody junk and they were reported to have Japanese dealings and so forth and you got to take into consideration, what we had in small arms on a corvette, it was about four .303s, a couple of revolvers, probably two Tommy guns or something like that. So here we are, we take along a box of grenades, we board this junk,

and I remember Ernie Hughes saying, “Get up there you bloody eyed bludgers!” like he’s waving this Tommy gun around, if it’d have went off, jeez I don’t know what would have happened. Anyway it turned out to be allied secret service mob, you see, on our side. So here we are, we’re a great raiding party like, we’ve got up with the .303s and the side arms and the bloody couple of Tommy guns. We get back down into the boat to back to the Broome

and this Chinese bloke’s, “S’cuse please s’cuse please, grenades, grenades.” And he handed the bloody box of grenades over the side to us. Like he only had to drop one of them over and if they’d have been, if they’d have been these other bludgers and we’d have gone up, no trouble at all, I’ve never forgotten that. God, strike me lucky.

Whereabouts?

Oh, yeah I met a few but, there wasn’t any that greatly interested me, even though I was young and, spent a fair bit at time overseas, you can imagine a man’s boiler being charged to the hilt you know what I mean.

But, you never, you never had enough time to sort of, well to get involved, admittedly in Hong Kong we did have, but even then you did had to be, you had to be, you know pretty wary and so forth. But as I said before, some of the blokes done their knackers on

some of the girls there, they fell madly in love with them and oh Jesus, they were heartbroken when they had to leave. Of course we used to give them plenty on the way home.

Oh you know, bloody, what are you thinking about now type of thing, you can imagine what they were thinking of course. Oh you couldn’t help but feel sorry for he poor buggers, it was.

What had happened of course, all of a sudden the war comes to a halt and these people have been under a dominant reign you know, for so long, and all of a sudden they get someone who showers them with goodies, and even a cake of soap you know was, was like that Mah-jong set there, I got that for a packet of bloody Winfield mouldy cigarettes.

I daresay it’d be worth a bit of money, it’s made out of bone and ivory. It’s, girls in particular, any, especially any scented soap, nice hand towel, or even you know, whatever, even if you took a, even if you took a pair of bloody big dungarees that are made out of denim, like they might be that wide, you probably got them off an American supply ship,

hoping we could sell them somewhere along the line and they’d buy them off you because they’d pick them to pieces, and make clothes for the kiddies, of course they were big enough to get a pattern out of them you know the material, some of the bloody things, oh I’m not kidding they must have been about ninety inches, I’m talking about, they’d be ninety inches around the guts or something like that, and, a lot of material in them, I know I sold a hell of a lot of them at

Zamboanga in the Philippines, I had a stack of pesos like that. And that’s what they were doing, they were pulling them to pieces and making clothes for the young ones. But that’s why they, that’s why they fell for them of course, they just couldn’t resist. The kindness and.

Coming back home?

Yeah, it became a little bit strange for a period of time; I went with my father for a while on the trucks. Still had that business and it wasn’t my cup or tea, so

that’s when I went to Tasmania, you know, and then I came back to Bundaberg again, pardon me and, bugger me I joined forces with my father again and of course he partly retired by then and the time come to pass, I didn’t take over his business, I kicked my own off. And, more or less stayed with it for the rest of my life then,

but I used to get away early in the morning and, and I wouldn’t become a slave I made sure I knocked off with ample time to get over the golf club of an afternoon, play eighteen holes or something like that. Which Faye would tell you all about if she was here, and I was a pretty mean bloody golfer too and self praise is no recommendation of course.

But, oh no, I settled in, didn’t take me long to settle into a nice easy style again. Got tangled up in horses for a while, then gave them away for a while, came back into them again. But, probably been involved with horses, all my bloody life, barring that break of the conflict, in the conflict and,

I didn’t mind them either, the horse racing game; I’m still heavily involved in it.

Well in Bundaberg it was pretty big. Through the war years in particular, like I was here for the early part of the war but in the latter part of the war I wasn’t. See they couldn’t race in Brisbane at

Doomben and Eagle Farm, because they were army camps. So they used to race at Albion Park but they never always get races to suit them, like to suit their horses. So they’d smoke them up here to Bundaberg and at that particular time, we would have had a hundred and fifty horse trainers here, just mainly in South Bundaberg. It was like, South Bundaberg,

was like Hendra is to Brisbane, like Hendra is the main stabling part of the horses for Doomben and Eagle Farm, well South Bundaberg was the same for the Bundaberg races here. Now I don’t know whether you know Noel Best, have you heard of Noel Best, one of Queensland’s leading jocks [jockeys], well he rode his first winner here at that particular time, 1947. And that’s him there as a young kid having his first

gallop, just above that, that, he’s a good mate of mine. But him and his father, his father was the leading premier trainer in Queensland for several years and Noel holds the distinction of being the only person that’s won a jockey, won a premiership as a trainer, won a premiership as an apprentice, and I think

that might be about it, but it’s, I think he’d be the only one in Australia.

I was very successful. As I said on the prior occasion, every horse that I’ve had, I may have had one that I didn’t own, but most of them I either owned or I leased, and as I said before, you didn’t have to train owners.

You could please yourself what you did with your horse, you know, and, just looking at some of those photographs on the wall there, that one there, Gala Glance I only had it on a, I had it tied up in a, sort of a contract with a mongrel brother in law of mine. I reckon I started her twenty-five times with no less than a hundred and ninety-eight wins, and, the old fellow up there, Old Ginger, he was the greatest

horse I ever had, he, I reckon I started him forty times, he was six year old when I bought him for five hundred and fifty dollars and I reckon I started him about forty times for about eighteen wins, I think he was out of a place about five times, magnificent old horse. That mongrel over there, Tiro Joe, I bought him off a bloke in Coffs Harbour, Barry Fey,

five hundred dollars and he was probably the biggest win I ever had in my life, I won the Queensland Cup the only race I won, he had a wind infirmity but it was with winning like twelve normal races, to win that one of them. But, no I, I always played a cunning stick, when I say a cunning stick, I had about ten stables but the most horses that I ever had at once was about six.

And, I, used to get a lot of my feed from down south and I thought well bugger it I’ll do away with this transporting it up and so forth, so I went along and, seen a produce agent and I, when you talk with produce agencies, especially if you’re tangled up in the racing game, you always want to pull your money out first, show them a bit of colour. See, say now, what are you selling oats at a bag rate for, they might say,

for argument’s sake, go back twenty odd year ago, “Oh ten dollars fifty Frank.” “Now what would you charge me on a ton rate?” “Seven dollars twenty-five.” See so you’re saving three dollars twenty-five a bag, now you leave it at the produce agency you only pick it up if you need it because if you take it out there in bulk, all the bloody rats and mice and goodness knows what get in, that’s how you lose a percentage of it.

And whether I bought, if I only wanted one set of plates, I’d go and buy twenty sets of plates, so as I’d get that discount and I done it all the time in, I used to do my own farriering, my own veterinarian work, and that way it was a business, you’d sit down and you’d, I used to sit down in the afternoon and write down stable rent, nomination fees, acceptance fees, jockey’s fees,

so forth, what it cost a to feed a horse a week and I’d write all this down, and I came up with a conclusion that you had to win ten races a year out of one stable, now let me explain that, so you started a horse a fortnight, every fortnight, that’s twenty-six times a year, now you wouldn’t start the same horse, but say you had a horse in there for three months, and when he was finished, you had another horse ready to race to go into that stable.

Other words, you stable with producing a horse on the track every fortnight, so that was twenty-six times you had to pay up, twenty-six times you had to nominate, twenty-six times you had to accept and so forth, but you had to win ten races at the first prize money on offer at that time and I’ll tell you what there wouldn’t have been, at that particular time, if there were eighty trainers here I reckon there wouldn’t have been four winning ten races a year, so how they bloody existed

I’ll never know. And I was taking all the short cuts in the world, like you know, I looked after my horses. But, where I was saving, as I said before, three dollars twenty-five on a bag of oats, or we saved two dollars on a set of plates, so when it added up over a period of twelve months to a nice tidy sum of money. And, I stayed in it then for about, when I came back I gave golf away and I came back into horse racing,

and I reckon I stayed in for the better part of twenty years and I consider myself to be one that came out of it a long way in front, and I gave, I always gave my horses away when I finished with them, I gave them away to good homes. What they did with them after that I don’t know I didn’t want to know.

Oh yeah, I’ve been at that for well in excess of thirty years. The old eyes are starting to get a bit weak and I suppose I could get a stronger set of binoculars, the set that I’ve got you know, probably the second best in the world that you could buy, but, probably cost you, I was trying to wangle a deal a while back when the daughter was going overseas. You could buy something here,

In one of those duty free stores or something like that, take it overseas or something and bring it back again, oh, I don’t know what it was, but I found out that, off a bloke that was dealing in that type of equipment, he said, “Now,” he said, “The, what do you call the,

not the customs, the some other mob, they’ve made it that you can’t claim anymore than about four hundred dollars on cameras, binoculars, equipment of that nature.” Like before, you could buy something overseas and bring it into Australia and it’d cost you nothing and pay no duty on it but now it’s, if you buy it for fourteen hundred well say overseas, you still got to pay a thousand for it to bring it into the country.

Oh no, I think one of the biggest compliments I ever had paid to me and it was through a bloke that didn’t really know what was going on, it was a bookmaker, we had a lot of bookmakers fielding at one time, but there was a chap called Col Morehead, and admittedly, earlier on I said that I done a, I done

a phantom call for the Elmick Racing Committee but I’d already taken out a lease on a trawler, and I done a phantom call for, you know for they were after a race caller and they said, “We’d like you to come back.” well I never ever went back, of course I was involved in fishing. But at that time, a fellow called Joe Brown, a real gentleman style of caller, came over and called in Melbourne from Hobart and

it was his replacement that they were after, and I sort of set my style on him, you know, to a degree. So, I done a phantom call at the golf club one night, when we were running a Caulfield Cup sweep, just to break the monotony, and there happened to be one of the race club committee men there, see we had three race clubs at the time, we had the amateurs, the race club and the Hibernians.

So he sidled up beside me after this phantom call, he said, “I want you to do me a favour.” he said, “Will you come out to the races one Saturday and I’ll get you to call a race.” “Oh,” I said “It’ll have to be when it suits me. It’ll be alright.” So bugger me, I get out there on this Saturday and he bowls up to me with a race book, he says, “The horses are just going on the track,” he said, “Will you call this race?” I said, “Oh give me a bloody chance mate, make it the next one because,”

I said, “I got to get to know the horses and the colours.” So anyway, the next race come around and I get up in the broadcasting box, you know, I said, “The starter’s calling them forward, so and so takes up his position on the inside.” There’s only about six in the race of course and bang, away they go. And this bookmaker leaned across Col Morehead he said, “They’re racing somewhere.” he said, “Where are they racing? Jeez it sounds like bloody Flemington to me.” And he’s pulled his sheets out of the board; he thought it was Joe Brown. And I thought

well, that’s not a bad compliment, you know. Oh dear I’ll never forget it.

Oh I just did.

Oh I think there’s that still, that attitude there, you know that, as I said earlier on in the taping of this session, the Rats of Tobruk, you know, seem to have that pip on the shoulder that they won the war in Africa and so forth, and fair enough, they contributed

a hell of a lot of towards it and they’re quite entitled to their accolades there’s no disputing that. But, same with the navy boys, I suppose the bigger ships at the Coral Sea Battle. And so on it goes, and half the time it makes you think, ‘Christ did we have a bloody air force?’ You know the air force hardly get a mention at all and the same with the lesser lights, and, even today I still

find that chip on the shoulder that I was a Rat of Tobruk, that they’ve all got their special plaques, and Christ knows what, and yes, I can still sense it there, yes.

Oh yes, naturally, yeah I’ve been a member of the RSL [Returned and Services League] since I got out.

I first joined in Tasmania and when I came back to Bundaberg I just continued on being a member here. We had a breakaway group here at one stage, the old chaps weren’t getting a go, down amongst the elite at the river bank and we formed a Walker Vale sub-branch which is this suburb, and we had some very knowledgeable gentlemen amongst them too and unfortunately they died out and

the other people were reckoned they were destitute and Bill Davis, he was the president and myself we had to pay their subs [subscriptions]. Every year at that time, it was only fifteen shillings, but still it was fifteen bob, so we more or less disbanded because of lack of numbers and went back to the old club on the bank. But, always a bloody clique like you know, when you really sit down and analyse things, like,

this is another thing that irks me. The old committee members of the RSL after the war, they all turned out to be TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated pension] and you know, wheels within wheels and so forth, you still find that goes on today. The person that makes it a… the wheel that squeaks the most is the one that gets oiled and, it’s tragedy what happens, because some poor buggers that are entitled to it can’t get it you know.

Representation, what on the screen? Oh well it depends on how the script’s written. God strike me lucky. You know, I don’t know why you need all these

great forces if you had Sly Stallone and Arnie Schwarzenegger and a few of that calibre on side, Jesus, she’d be over and done with before she started.

Well I think I might have summed that up before when I was talking about the Broome when I looked back down the jetty and I seen her snuggled up against the pier you know. And, and she looked so lonely because we were all deserting her, and I said to myself, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘That was my home for a couple of years and I owe a lot to you.’ and as I said before, I learned…

how to live in a big family. It was on board that I’d say in a short space of time, where I became a man from a teenager, it taught me how to treat my fellow man, you know how to accept him how to, many different things, probably I just can’t put the finger on the pulse now but my experience

in the ’39 - 45 conflict, I came out of it a hell of a lot richer than when I went into it.

Oh not really just that I’ve enjoyed the company of the people that called upon me today. I might end up with a half a furlong,

of the final handicap. I’ve got to think of, I’d have to put my glasses on to read the names of the horses up there, I’ll see if I can remember them. “They’re running down with a furlong to go, and Royal Harmony on the inside, Still Hold’s sways half a length on Magic Step. Laylana’s Light goes up on the outside, Seartle works into the picture, here comes Gala Glandsome on the outside, Firelock was putting in a claim but the old chestnut Royal Harmony was holding them at bay. On the outside getting to him now was

Magic Step and look at Firelock flashing home, but Royal Harmony done best in the drive to the wire and beat Firelock a half a head. Then came Magic Step, further off to Laylana’s Light, Seartle and one of the last to arrive was Tyro Joe, the terror of Queensland.