Australians at War Film Archive

Well I was born in Drummoyne in Sydney and then we moved up to Queensland for a few years, but my mother couldn’t take it up there so we moved down to Melbourne there, which was a big change. And we lived in Melbourne, we moved down there when I was three and we lived in Melbourne till

I went to New Guinea. And then when I came back to there I couldn’t stand the cold so I just moved on then and went to Western Australia. And when I went to Western Australia I met my husband and we were married there and we’ve got one son there. We lived in Collie and in those days, that was ’48, I went over there, and Perth was so far away that you know you felt as if you were in another world over there.

So our parents were up in Queensland and Melbourne, so we decided to come home so we came back then. Ian was only 12 months old then so we came back there and we lived in Brisbane for 31 years. And it was just as well we came back because we both lost our fathers then in that time and then we, my husband

took sick and we decided that he’d retire early, so he retired in ’85 and we came down to Tweed [Heads]. We’d been coming down here quite a bit because we had our caravan here and we used to come down every weekend and I absolutely loved other. It was nice and near the water and it was a good life that I could see ahead of me. So anyway we came down here in ’85 and we had two and a half years in the caravan park next to the

RSL [Returned and Services League] there, the twin towns. And then he got another cancer and so we had to get somewhere where we could be safe and in touch with people so we came down and saw this place and they had a buzzer and everything and so we moved in here and we’ve been here for about sixteen years now, and I’ve got a very full life here because I’m out every day, nobody seems to be able to get in touch with me.

That’s another good thing, the answering machine. And I’m in the ex-service women which is a great one because we’re all more or less the same age and we’ve all had the same experiences so we’ve all got something to talk about. And I’m also in the RSL auxiliary, the RSL and the hospital, the public hospital, not on the committee there, I’m only in amongst all the others and we work for the hospital.

What else am I in? No, that’s about all in the present so it’s a very busy time, going backwards and forwards about every day. Because I had my brother here to look after him and he didn’t go into care until three years ago so I’m just starting to get a bit of my life back now. I lost a lot of weight, three stone to be exact and I’ve sort of settled down a bit.

I had a rough time for about ten years and that’s how things are going now, so I’m here and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I have two sons, I have one son in Brisbane and he’s up in Buderim now and they come down to see me and they took me out for my birthday the other day and they’re all over six foot. One’s six four and one’s over six four and

I think he’s six five now, he’s growing all the time and the other one’s six three so I went out and I felt like a real little old lady, shrunken little old lady amongst them but we had a lovely time and they’re very good, I’m very lucky to have both of them. Unfortunately my husband has gone not to the aggressive way, he’s gone the other way, he has a lot of strokes and vascular dementia he’s got, he has a lot of strokes and everything and I go up once a week to see him and

he gives us a laugh and we have a laugh but I have my moments I miss him but that, I’m lucky to still have him. So and then when I knew that he was going, when he went in for three years he only had six months to live so we thought we’d better do something about him so we renewed our vows again when our fiftieth wedding anniversary came around and it wasn’t long after that he decided to go for a walk on

his own and we didn’t know where he was or anything so we said it was time to put him in, he had started to wander a bit so he went in there then and he’s been there nearly two and three quarters years anyway but he’s, my son said he’ll probably come to all our funerals because he’s so well looked after and what have you but that seems to be the main things in my life now and I’m enjoying it and I’ve got my garden and my computer now and

a few things like that but I’m very lucky to be able to do everything and since I’ve lost the weight I’m 100% better and the boys asked me the other day whether, “How old are you Mum?” and I said, “Eighty-one minus ten.” And they said, “What do you mean?” and I said, “I’m seventy one,” and they said, “Oh Mum, you can’t say that.” I said, “Too right I can say it. You mightn’t believe it but some others would believe it.” Because I don’t feel it so that’s the… But I think the ex-service women

we have a vice-president of that association and we’ve got a wonderful feeling between the lot of us. We sort of, when we go there we’ve got something to talk about but these aren’t the lasses I was away with, out of the five of us that were in New Guinea there’s only two of us, three of us left. We all sort of stayed around together but there the ones that

really when we have a reunion it’s hilarious. I took Johnny to it one day up in Surfer’s Paradise and he took me up to where we were staying and when we got there all these ladies were outside the door and somebody said, “Has anybody seen Peg Graham?” and he said, “Yes, there she is.” “Oh.” And they just looked at him and walked over and he stood right back and when I saw him later he said, “I had the fun of my life.” He said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

There was forty-five years later but your face doesn’t change so much as, your voice doesn’t change so much but they were all grey and of course they’d got a lot older but your voices don’t change and as soon as you’re looking for somebody and you hear their voice and they’d say, “Oh yes,” then they’d know straight away. But that was me in particular because they all knew my voice but we had a lovely

time up there and everybody just sort of sat and talked and reminisced about things but we had a wonderful time up there. There was only 344 of us went but we were all twenty one which was very young and I think that’s why we all volunteered, we were young, we didn’t know anything else, but the majority of them felt they’d joined the army and this was a chance to feel as if they’d done something.

So we left here in March, we got up there on VD, not VD, when peace was declared in England and we were there [VE Day – Victory in Europe], the March of that year and then we were up there until the end of the, February of the next year so we all got a medal sent out to us because we’d been there six months after peace was declared we all got a little

medal for that which was very nice. But it was an experience for everybody. I went up on deck when we got to Lae in the morning, about dawn it was, and we stood up on the top of the deck and there was beautiful and everything was green but there was no civilians, no cars

no buses, no trains, nothing. Only army trucks and the men and a few of the natives came out and peered through the porthole, gave me the terrible fright this black face came up, I’d never seen before. Came up to the window. But it was the most beautiful place, and it was so serene and quiet because the war had been through there then, this was

’45, March ’45 and the place was so lovely and quiet and you only could hear the water so we got in the things and the book is up there on the shelf, the picture on the front page of us coming down the boat, that green one there next to the little man on the… no, that’s it, the first one and we then, we got in, we thought we were going to have to go down on a rope ladder because we were right out to sea

anyway, they brought the barges in and we slipped out on the barges and went out and then we went round to our barracks and our barracks was very big but it hard a barbed wire fence all the way around with a roll that was right and a roll to the left and we never knew if it was to keep us in or to keep the men out. It was to keep us in I think. And we went down and went to the rec [recreation] hut and

got a lot of our places and went down and we had all the banana leaf roof huts and everything and open sides on them and whatnot. They were all things that we had never experienced, none of us. In those days you didn’t travel very far and to be going up to the islands, it was different situation altogether, we sort of… Everything was new, there wasn’t anything, oh palm trees and then banana trees and

there were natives and there were everything else running around and you felt as if you were back in one of the pictures you’d seen over the years but anyway we got into our huts and we came back up to the rec hut after we wrote home and we had a tropical storm. It poured, I have never seen rain like it and we all smelt of mosquito lotion because we couldn’t leave any part of your body uncovered. We had long

sleeves on and what have you and you couldn’t leave any part of your body uncovered because the mosquitoes and the malarial ones, I got dengue, and the dengue mosquitoes too but that’s another part of the life up there but anyway then when we did get out to walk back to our huts it was mud and you’ve seen those pictures on Kokoda Trail and everything with all the mud and slush, well it wasn’t much different to that so we knew then that we were in New Guinea. But we all worked over at

the first army base and we’d sort of gone into the offices that we were in down on the mainland and I went into military secretaries branch and I was with them all the time and the others went into the branches that they were with down there but that was very interesting. We had goannas running through the office on the floor every now and again. Never saw a snake, petrified of snakes

never saw a snake but we had plenty of goannas and the natives would go up the tree after them and catch them and take them home for tea and one day one of the lasses was a bit friendly with them, we weren’t allowed to talk to them but if they spoke to you well you sort of had to say something. And he came back, he wanted to bring a bit of goanna back from his tea.., anyway, I don’t think he did, I think that went by and by.

But we had an Atebrin parade every morning and before we went we were at Fraser’s paddock in Brisbane and we had to go onto our Atebrin and if you had dark skin like mine, I went yellow. I was that colour and I, the four of us, four of us with the dark skin and we all went yellow.

What happened at home?

My brother arriving and I didn’t like it, we never have got on since. It was going to school and childhood memory… jeepers.

They’re not very interesting, just the usual. Well I can go from where I started school, then I went to college.

Oh geez that would be better. Am I right on now. That’s peace on the floor. We were brought up in more or less, we always said in a military camp

because my father was a, went to Duntroon and he went through the First World War which he was bombed, blown up, and I’ve got the shrapnel there that they took out of him but I don’t know why he brought that home but I’ve got it now and he was put out of the First World War rather early and then when the Second World War started of course he went straight back in again but we all, George and I always used to say that

we were his batmen. He was very military minded, and we used to have to do his Sam Brown belt and his baton and all the rest of it. We used to have to clean all those and his shoes and what not but he was lovely, he was a wonderful man, wonderful father. But when the war, the Second World War came along he got called up the day it was declared and had to go straight in. Came home in his uniform and he was

a captain then and his uniform and the stick and all the brass and what have you over him and I came home from work and I got out of the train at Ivanhoe to go home and here he is waiting for me in the car. He got out of the car, I can see it to this day, got the baton under his arm, because this is going back a long time, you know, this is the things they sort of did at traditional

things and he’d come to pick me up in the car to take me home and he’d never done that in his life. Oh, my mother had a fit. Anyway, he was in the army and it just seemed to be the second thing that I’d go in too so I joined in early ’43 and he was thrilled to pieces about it. Thrilled to pieces and when I got out from my three weeks rookies and I got out on a Saturday morning and that Saturday

night he said, “I’m going to take you out to a dinner.” “Oh yes?” He said, “It’s over at the drill hall at Preston,” and he said, “I’d like you to come.” And Mum looked at me and Dad had never taken me to anything before, and anyway when we get over there it was the last function the army had held where they wore their little red jackets and all that, the war had been on for a while and here’s all these majors and captains and generals and God only knows what there and father walks in

with his little private and we’d been instructed to salute everything that had pips on and I’d have enough trouble with that when I got home, I didn’t whether I had to salute him or not and I knew I had to be army while Dad was in and he was there. Anyway, they all came up and they introduced and I’ll never forget it, I couldn’t have forgotten because there was so many pips around the place and so many little red jackets. Anyway, he had danced with me,

the first time Dad had ever danced with me and he danced me around the floor and everything and I felt about that big. Anyway that was all right, I got off, got out of that all right.

Well I’d just come out of rookies and you get it drummed into you, you salute everything that moves and you stand to attention and you go this way

and you go that way and I got to that door, when this little fellow came up to me with his red dinner jacket on and everything I thought, “He hasn’t got a hat on. Can I get my hat off quick before he bothers to talk to me or not?” Anyway, he was very nice and Dad said, “This is my daughter, she’s just come out of the army.” And, “Oh, that’s lovely for you.” I couldn’t get out of the place quick enough but I stayed there and we had that

there for a little while and then came home but I could have throttled him but then I got down into Vic [Victoria] LFC [?]. Then I started working in town and I went out to, Dad was out at Preston, he was brigade major out at Preston so I was a fair way away from him but I think some of his friends kept in touch with him to tell him what I was doing and I always had to be very, very careful.

I never got out of my uniform the whole time. I nearly went to bed in it one night because I wasn’t allowed out of uniform because he was there and if I was in uniform I had to go out in uniform all the time. My friends would slip on out in civvies, but not me, not with pop. Anyway, I went in there and then I went down to Melbourne Grammar and then I went out to Albert Park. Went out there for quite some time and then the thing came around but

I often think of what I did to my mother by volunteering but Mum and I were on a different level. She was rather possessive and we were sort of not the same level as I was with my Dad and of course when the war was on I got, it was all military, military at our place. Anyway, I volunteered to go and I came home and I told Mum

straight out that I was going to New Guinea. When I think of it now, it would be a bit of shock to think that I was going to go that far up. And there’s a war on and oh, she wasn’t very happy and so she said, “Have you told your father?” I said, “No.” I said, “I’m not going to tell him yet,” and went on for about three or four weeks and I got my final leave and I had to tell my father so I came home and we’re all sitting around the dinner table and Mum was

looking at me, “Go on, you go, tell him, tell him.” And I said, “Oh Dad,” I said, “I’m going to New Guinea. I’m on final leave.” “Oh yes,” he said, “I heard all about that.” And they must have been in contact with him all the time and he knew but he never said a word to me. Oh and I said, “How did you know?” “I knew,” sort of business and we could almost hear the sigh of relief right around the table and then when

I eventually finished it and I started to go up he, another thing that he’d never done before, he walked up to the station with you, nobody came to pick you up, you just had to find your own way. And we went up to the station and he walked up with me and when we got up on this train it was just about to come in and he said, “Look,” he said, “I was given this medal,” he said, “when I went into France the first time, into the front line.” He said, “I’d like you to take it with you.”

And I started to cry and carry on and I’ve still got it here. Some old lady gave it to him as he went into the front line and I took that and he was nearly crying and he stayed on the station until I went and Dad didn’t show any emotions at all but I was thrilled to pieces to think that it had… and that was the last that I saw of him before I went away and

Well I think he probably

did think that… yeah I suppose he was a bit but he knew what was going on, he knew where I was going and he knew that the wave of war had passed right through there by then by the time we got up there. But there was nothing like that, there was only where they’d been, they’d bombed trucks and things around. But there was only the signs. But I think he, my brother was too young to go in but

George was more or less on Mum’s side, you know usually you have one side or the other. You’re more friendly, there’s no, you still love them both but you’ve got more connections with one than with the other one. Anyway, I think he might have been but he was so proud of the fact that I was going and see I’d lived at home while I was, before then and to me I might as well have stayed in the office and gone backwards and forwards to home. I didn’t

feel as though I was in the army. Only when I went home and Dad was there and I had to leave my uniform on. But this was a real break and it was a break that effected me all the time because I suddenly found out what the outside world did and I didn’t have Mum buying my clothes and buying my shoes and telling me what to do and what not. I was on my own and things when I came back weren’t as good with Mum as they

had been before because I realised that I had a life of my own and I wasn’t to be told to do what, you know I turned 21 and that’s why I went to Western Australia. I stayed home for about two years and then I went over to the west and I had a different life altogether. I couldn’t iron, I’d never done anything. Mum ironed, made my bed and everything and just sent me to school, to college. I think she expected me to marry somebody with money and she got a

bit of a shock because, well she never knew, because I married someone exactly the opposite. In those days just after the war people weren’t, we didn’t have a fortune or anything you know, but it was very hard, because the first day we were in camp in Brisbane, I had to go and stand at the ironing, where they ironed and see how they ironed because I’d never ironed anything in my life. And I didn’t know how to make my bed up and I had to be told how to

make the bed up and I learnt all these things because I had good companions with me and I’d spoken to Nancy – Nancy and I were very close – and I’d told her about it and what had happened and anyway, I learnt eventually but I’ve never liked ironing anyway. Don’t think much about ironing. And I remember I had to iron a white shirt for Johnny to wear to work one day and I hadn’t a clue what to do with it. He came out in the end and did himself. Oh dear, isn’t that terrible. But

that’s the sort of thing Mum wanted me to grow up and marry well and etc., etc., etc but I didn’t. Oh I did, I thought I did, got the best catch I’d ever have but they never got on together. Oh dear, oh dear and she didn’t like Queenslanders and I wanted… and she didn’t like

Queenslanders, she called them hillbillies and God only knows what and the first time she came up to Brisbane to see us he, Johnny went in to pick her up and of course the train was early and he got into the station and there she is sitting waiting to come out and that didn’t please her. She’d been sitting in the hot sun for so long and when they got home he said, “I’ve done it already.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said ,

“We’re not talking.” I said, “Why? What have you done?” He said, “She doesn’t like the train drivers, she doesn’t like their hats,” or something or other and they were offside straight away. I’ve had some terrible dos with them but Dad thought he was wonderful and Dad would come up and he knew Johnny played league in Western Australia and he represented Western Australia at one stage of the game, it was early in the piece and Dad played union and

I had a medal of his too, his south districts, down Cootamundra way where he was born and young where they’d won the premiership and I gave it to them down there, the rugby union people down there to put on a board or something but anyway he played union and of course Johnny played league so anyway I was frightened to tell him that he played league so when Johnny came up, when he met him and he told him

and oh, they got on famously well. They never had a misunderstanding or anything and he thought he was wonderful because he played league and this and that and everything and then Dad would come up and he’d stay three months and Mum would be ringing up wondering what was going on. But he loved it, he used to come up, he was lovely with the kids and he was a photographer, not a professional but he was an amateur photographer and oh, photos, God

we’ve got that many photos. George and I used to go silly because he’d take us out, we’d have to wait for the clouds to move over a certainly tree before he took the photo of it and poor George and I, that’s my brother, used to all be sat under the tree to give it more picture and everything you know so having photos taken wasn’t in our family at all; the boys hated it and I didn’t particularly like it either but he and Johnny got on very well and he knew

everybody in Mount Cravat where we lived in Brisbane and even after he’d passed away I had people coming along to me as I was walking down the street, and I wouldn’t know them and they’d say, “And how’s your father?” and I’d say, “How did you know him?” and they’d say, “Oh, I met him on the bus.” Because Queenslanders are like that, they’ll talk to everybody you know and they’re more friendly than Victorians, Victorians are a bit stodgy sometimes so when they asked where I came from I never used to say, I’d just say I was born in Sydney

and that was it. They got on very well and we had a very happy time when he was up there. he thought the boys were wonderful. Ian can remember him a bit because we were down there when he had the other heart attack. They said the explosion or whatever he was in… he never talked about it, that’s the sad part, we don’t know anything about Dad’s history. He wouldn’t talk about the war.

He had a Luger gun that he’d got off some German or something and that was the only thing we ever saw and he used to clean it regularly and looked after it and everything but he always happened to clean it when Mum had visitors. And she’d say, “Put that gun away, Mick. Put it away,” and poor old pop would have to put it away and…

Oh he was so proud of his Luger. I often think that he did things

at times. He had a wonderful sense of humour, wonderful sense of humour and I think he did it on purpose because Mum was entertaining. And all these ladies would come in and they’d play cards and everything and Dad would, when I look back he did some wonderful things and I don’t think, Mum had no sense of humour. My brother’s got no sense of humour at all. I’ve got one I hope and I

hope I never lose it and I’ve got a son who hasn’t got any sense of humour, he’s got a weird sense of humour but Ross and I are very much alike. My Mum used to tell me I was sarcastic and I didn’t know what sarcastic was, I knew I’d said something wrong but since I’ve been going over it, I wasn’t being sarcastic, I was being funny and she hadn’t grasped it. And I said that to, Ross was down recently and I said,

“You know, I’ve worked out what Mum used to meant about that because you’re the same and I thought at one stage that you were being sarcastic but I realise now it’s his funny sense of humour.” They like the humour of, what’s that? The far side. And anything where anybody’s getting knocked about Ross will laugh his head off. He’s got a very funny sense of humour and I think Dad used to do that. But he gave it, it’s in the Melbourne Museum now.

He took it down there and put it in there for him, the gun. But we know nothing about what he did in the war or anything and I must, I was going to try to find out, I thought you might know where I could get his 1918 records from. I don’t know where they,

Ross got the Second World War ones off the computer but he couldn’t get the 1918 war off. So I must I’ll still have a go at it. And then I wonder whether I should know what he did. You know cause you don’t know what’s why he never. He never ever mentioned it.

Well you didn’t do those things. Children were seen and not heard.

You know you didn’t I never asked him anything about it because I dunno, it was just something that we didn’t discuss. I knew he’d been in the war and he had a German helmet down and he had a box with all his souvenirs in and I got into that one day and I find the German helmet with the spike on the top. And I though I’ll take that when I get older you know I’ll do something with it. But somebody else must a got

it because it wasn’t there when we went home when he passed away and I went through all the stuff it had gone. But no we never Dad was very not quiet he had a good sense a humour and you could have a good laugh with him but he never said anything about it and I think as kids we thought well we shouldn’t ask. And he was in charge of the house and what not you know that bit of army went through

we respected him and we never sort of not until I woke up to that there was another world not until after I’d come back from New Guinea did I get as close to my father really and I was very close to him then but it’s one of those things in families I suppose you know that go on. So my two know all about me. I’m gonna write me history on the computer one day and see how you know just let them know. But

apart from that we had a good life. We…

Apart from that we had a good life. We…

I don’t remember much about it. To be quite all I can remember is that the children at school had dripping sandwiches and I was dying to have dripping sandwiches and I came home and I told Mum I wanted dripping sandwiches she said, “Oh no, you can’t have dripping sandwiches. You’ve got to have jam.” So that’s why I never had…

I don’t know what the financial position was but Mum was a didn’t sort of we must’ve had enough money to carry us through you know to. We weren’t to the stage what a lot of the others were but we never had dripping sandwiches we always had jam and we always had everything else. And the kids at school. Mum used to give me cake for

little lunch – they didn’t call it little lunch then – and all the other kids used to have a biscuit and I used to swap them because I never got a biscuit and I’d swap them the piece a cake and they’d think it was wonderful. But these sort of I was just started school I think then well I was born in ’22 – had a birthday the other day – and the Depression really…

Dad had had a job all the time. The Depression really didn’t affect me or my brother you know. I remember seeing the marches through the town and all that but it didn’t really. I still had me cake, Adams cake. Mum brought everything from Adams. We’d have Adams cake but no we had a good life there. We had all our… Dad bred dogs and bulldogs and

I had, I was bought up with I’ve never been without an animal in my life until I came here and I can’t have a cat or anything and I miss the animals I really do miss having a cat or a dog or a something but well I couldn’t. You couldn’t go out anywhere and leave them there’d be nobody to look after them. But they no we had a lovely time. He was a bulldog judge. He used take me

along to the shows and I used to walk the dog around and. No he was and we all had pups and all the rest of it and you never knew what Dad was coming home with. Even during the war there was a beautiful Irish Setter one a the fellas that had come in and joined up and he’d left his dog with Dad and would he look after it? And Dad said yes he’d look after the dog for him. And he never came back for it. So

Peter came over to our place and he was beautiful. And then somebody else’d leave something behind and it’d come home. One night he came home and opened the back door and a wallaby jumped out. He’d got a wallaby and we found out that he was in touch with the dogs home and if they had a desperate one they’d ring him and we’d have that. We had kittens we had dogs we had possums we had every animal you could and white mice every animal you could you know could see.

But I miss that. I really do I miss having the animals. I’ve got a couple a funny birds out there that come and feed but no he gave us a good life with that. And I’m very pleased that we had him. But I still miss him I still talk to him sometime if something goes on you know. And then I went to college and I’ve never been to a

mixed school. I’ve only been to

In Melbourne and then I went to college in Melbourne.

I had me little brother with me all the time. I had to look after him. Well I can tell ya a funny story about primary school. We lived my husband used to go up to Holland Park Hotel after work sometime I have a beer and he came home and he said,

“Do you know Sister Leah?” And I said, “Yes I know Sister Leah.” I said, “How do you know Sister Leah?” He said, “I heard.” He said, “Show me your hands,” and I showed him my hands. “No,” he said, “there’s no marks on them.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Well I’ve been up at the hotel, I met this fella that was with somebody else, Lawler,” I’ve forgotten his first name. And he said something came up about where they lived and all of that and he said, Johnny said, “My wife came from Melbourne,”

and he said, “What part of Melbourne?” and he said, “Ivanhoe,” and he said, “I’ve lived in Ivanhoe,” this fella said. He said, “I went to school there,” he said. “What was her name?” And Johnny said, “Peg McGee.” He said, “Yes,” he said, “when you go home,” he said, “ask her did she remember Sister Leah and all the straps she got from her.” And this is what he came home with. This fella was in my class at school and I didn’t, I never saw him again or anything and it just happened

that he was there and Johnny was there at the same time. And she had a black strap. Big thick black strap and I’m a terrible speller and I’ll always will be a terrible speller and I got more cuts for spelling than anything else. I was a bit of a larrikin at school because I used to go down after. I wasn’t happy with my brother because I think I was spoilt and when George came along he got all the attention so I never bothered about him much.

But I used to go down after school down the creek with the boys and we’d look for bullfrogs. God. No wonder my mother went grey and I’d be down the creek there and I’d be splashin’ around there. What would I be? About 11. 10 or 11 and then I’d get home about 6 o’clock at night and she’d be standing at the door with the strap and I had to get between her and the door and through the door before I got the wallop and I got it down to a fair art. I used to get through sometimes

and she must’ve had terrible times with me but it all we didn’t do any harm or anything. He finished is he?

Well I went to primary school and then I went over to, I was going to go to Mandible Hall in Melbourne but it was too far to go in so there was a new college opened near us, Santa Maria and my mother took me over there.

I was petrified, they were different nuns that taught there and it happened that my aunt was head of the Dominican nuns in Moss Vale. Well, we’re not sure about whether she was in charge or not because I don’t know if you’ve had any family history things but when you go back you find there’s quite a few things that are wrong but anyway she held some position with them. And these are the Dominican nuns, and they all knew aunty Albertus and

they all knew that I was coming and I was her niece. Anyway, I think they expected great things from me and it did rule me a bit at the school because if I did anything wrong they would say, “Your Aunty Albertus wouldn’t like that dear,” you know. So that sort of governed my, I had four years there, it sort of didn’t help me, particularly this aunt could speak eight languages and I wrote to her, she’d been brought up

in Belgium at Bruges and one of each generation was supposed to go over to Bruges and get educated and it was me to go and then the war broke out and I didn’t have to go which I was very pleased and I wrote to her and asked for a pen friend and I got a letter back, ‘When you can speak the language, Peg, I’ll send you one’. There was no way in the world I was going to learn all these languages so French and I weren’t very happy with one another at all and

whether they reported back to Aunt Albertus I don’t know and anything that I did wrong, you know, I’d have this brought up to me all the time. And it didn’t have a very good impression. It wasn’t very happy four years there and I met a life long friend there, I sat next to her the first day. I went over, I was very nervous, I can remember that and she was lovely and we still send birthday cards to one another

from when we were at school together. We’re still doing it. I got one the other day from her but it was a beautiful college and we had uniforms and everything. It was a ladies college and everything had to be just right and I didn’t have a very happy time there. I got to intermediate and I didn’t go on to leaving. I didn’t want to. And I used to

play a lot of sport there and I think that’s why I got my liking for sport, I’ve played sport all my life and they were, they were very nice but I can still see them, they had the big black beads on them and they used to rattle when you, if you heard them rattling you’d behave straight away. But no, it wasn’t a terribly happy time although I had a lot of friends there and I didn’t excel at it but I don’t think –

there’s a bit of a rebel in me – I think I didn’t want to because I didn’t like going to school there. But the best part about it was at morning tea they used to, we were allowed to buy lollies and they had clinkers, you ever had a clinker? Twopence each they were. And I used to get my bus fare, I used to have to come over on the bus, I used to get my bus fare from my bus fare and tuppence I had for my bus fare and I’d come

and I’d spend it on these two clinkers. These clinkers, oh they were beautiful. And then I’d walk home and I don’t know if you know Melbourne but it must have been at least three or four miles I used to walk home and this just shows you what you can do these days. It was, our suburb was an outer suburb of Melbourne at the time and it’s not now and I used to walk down these roads, cross the roads and everything and down

not bush, they used to have grass, we had a lot of grass around our place and nobody wanted to pick me up or anything. I’d have probably have got in a car if somebody had said something. But it was a different situation so anyway Mum never knew I did that. And then the shop that I used to pass has those long things about that wide with the jam and the cream and the nice (UNCLEAR) and they were tuppence each so often I used to go and I’d buy two of those and have one for my lunch and one for my morning tea and walk home

again but I did some terrible things, I can’t even think of it. But sporting was good there, I enjoyed sport and we have, this friend of mine, we’ve had a couple of reunions down there and she sent me photos home of the girls that were in my class and I was going to go to one last February, we’ve had our sixtieth that’s right. And they have a reunion every year so I’m hoping to get there at one stage of the game but I haven’t been able

leave the place because of father, I couldn’t leave him. And he didn’t have enough confidence to go with me so the last ten years we’ve sort of just stayed around here, that’s when I put the weight on. But I still hear from her and I get a magazine every now and again but when Mum booked me in I could always remember her coming out and she said, “Well,” she said, “it’s two pound ten a term but,” she said, “it’ll

be worth it.” And two pound ten in those days was a huge amount but I stayed there for four years and I never excelled in, I wasn’t too bad at botany but I don’t know, I didn’t… My brother came, this is another story that came up, when he was going to be born, when Mum was carrying him of course you never knew your mother was having a baby or anything like that and you weren’t allowed to see the clothes or anything so all the

baby’s clothes came and I was told they were for my doll, I was getting a new doll. They wouldn’t say she was having a baby and I had this drawer full of all these beautiful baby’s clothes that I was going to put on my doll. Well, the doll happened to be my brother and when he came well she took them all off me and put them on for George. And I have never forgotten it and it had a bad,

George and I talk to one another, I’m going over to Perth to see him next year I hope, but we’ve never been brother and sister because George got everything. I was, I was probably spoilt and deserve all of what I got too but George was the tin pin and he was the son. And I was brought up as a son because Dad didn’t have a son, and I think I was a bit of a tomboy or what have you. But

never left me that, I saw all those clothes go out of that drawer that were to be mine and go on him. So we fought from the day he arrived I think and we’ve never, we get on all right, we’re speaking. We ring one another and all the rest of it but we’ve never been companionable. That’s the word I wanted to use.

You didn’t in those days. Oh no, that was all very hush-hush.

You know, they didn’t, I didn’t even know she was having a baby till they got a maid in to be there when Mum came home from hospital. And I was at the pictures with her and I’ve forgotten her name now, she took me up to the pictures and the message came to the pictures that I was to go to the hospital to see my little brother and that’s the first I knew of my little brother, and I went to the hospital to see

me little brother and he had my dolls’ clothes on. And it was a hard thing to, it was a wrong thing to do but then again I might have been spoilt. I was six years old but we’re quite friendly but there’s always been that, you know you stole my doll’s clothes and every time, I did ever so awful things to him too. And I’d get into the you know that ad that’s on TV [television] with the little boy

gets into trouble for the little girl? She puts on an act that he hit her and they take him away and put him in his well that’s just how I felt. I hit him on the head with a hammer one day. I know I held the hammer over his head and I said, “I’ll hit you,” and, “I’ll let it drop.” It’d only be about that far you know. Well did I get into trouble for that! He was annoying me and everything that happened he’d.

When I started going out with boys and what not George used to come around and peep around he must a stayed away and then I’d hear him cough it’d be George. I’d be out the front gate saying good night and George’d come down and he had an awful name. I hate the name George and he always seemed to have a go at me the little. But anyway we get on all right now but he lives in Perth and I’m

hoping I’ve got my fingers crossed to go over to see him in March. I haven’t been back to Perth since 1954. So we made two attempts. I had two reunions to go to over there and I got the tickets and everything but Johnny reneged on it the last minute and I had to cancel and he wouldn’t go on the plane or something. But this time I’m going on my own and I’m hoping that I get across to see them. But the little thing

you don’t it’s not until you get older that some of these little things come to mind that you’ve. I heard when I was in Hobart I spent most a my childhood in Hobart with Mum’s sister but I think she used to put me on that boat and send me over to get rid a me. And I’d stay over there for quite some time. Aunty Trixie was more like a mother to me than my own mother. But I heard Mum one day and they didn’t know I was there say

oh yes but George is the son. Aunty Clarrie must a been having a go at her about something she’d done to be you know and I thought then well I wasn’t wanted. So then I decided I was adopted. Then I decided I’d run away and I went down to this neighbour a couple a blocks down the road and went down asked her how much it was to go to Hobart? And Nicky said, “And what do you want to go to Hobart for, Peg?”

“I’m going I’m running away. I’m going over to Aunty Trixie.” “Oh right, well it’s such and such and such.” Never said anything. Of course went straight back up to Mum and told her I was going to run away so I didn’t run away. But cause I loved my Aunty Trixie she was a wonderful person and they gave me Mum’s sisters were all over there and I had a lot a fun in Hobart and I love Hobart I love Tasmania. I haven’t been there for a while either. But anyway

that’s that part of it. But it’s funny as I said before you as you get older and you start thinking back little things still come to you, you still know, and I think yes that’s right I remember hearing them say that you know. Mum even had a miscarriage at home and I didn’t know about that cause the door was closed and I never found out about that for years after. But I must’ve been choofed [sent] off somewhere

I was 6 yeah, George was. Yeah I was 6 when George was born. Yes I was going to school. And a course then when he went to school I had to look after him too and I had to get him out of any fights or anything and I had to bring him home and I took him to the I used to have to take him to the picture. Everything sort of went around you know went around him. So when I got that new life when I joined up it was wonderful.

I really you know came into myself then. But I took him to the pictures one day and he was crawling. Now that’s how young he was now that just came to me. And he crawled down the isle and I went down to pick him up and he swung a punch at me gave me a blood nose. So I refused then I wouldn’t take him to the pictures any more. We used to go to the pictures every Sat’day afternoon, sixpence,

and I used to leave early so I’d be the first in and with out sixpence and we’d have our penny to spend and we used to go over to this particular shop and you’d have a penny and it’d probably take you half an hour to spend it because you could have one a those and one a those and one a those and that sticks in my mind too and one a my uncles gave me a threepence and did I have fun spending that threepence. I came out loaded. But

It you know there’s little things like that that come up and sometimes you sit and think about them. But I saw what was that picture? And it was back again they put it back on. The wax museum with winter that was creepy I had my head down all the time and it came on TV one yes it was. I saw it on the

TV and I watched it and it was nothing in it. It was real easy you know easy to watch but in those days. Trader Horn was the one that’s right burnt them at the stake and I can remember that. I think these things are stuck here. I reckon your head’s like your computer they’re stuck there and every now and again these little bits come out. But I went to Perth and got married there

and didn’t tell Mum I was getting married until the last minute and I didn’t want them to come over so they didn’t come over and that put me out a favour again. I’ve done some things but no I knew if she’d come over I wouldn’t a married him would a got married. Because they never. That photo there that’s my Dad. That’s 1912 when he just came out a Duntroon

I just spotted that there. But no he didn’t have much to do with the our bringing up. He was sort of always in the background but Mum was always only the military part of it but he was.

Only three languages. French and English and Latin which I hated too.

I still remember some of that and trigonometry geometry and I didn’t do any this is what I think was a big mistake in those times they never had a domestic science course you never did anything like that. I just did all the trig and geometry and biology and all that sort of stuff you know it was only. That’s all

we learned and I didn’t particularly. I only use the French now for crosswords.

No. I can tell ya a funny thing about that. One a the girls, Annette McLennan, how’s that for remembering a name. Annette’s brother was a doctor or he was studying to be a doctor and it never was discussed

that much but this day our little clan was all. We weren’t allowed to stand in pairs in the school yard you weren’t allowed two people to stand talking to one another because they might get onto subjects that they shouldn’t. You had to have three or four girls around. Anyway there was about five of us and somebody brought up where babies came from and somebody said you have a pill and they were different little things.

Anyway we said, “Annette, your brother’s a doctor, you ask him.” “Yeah as soon as, yeah, I’ll do that when I go home.” So we’re all waiting for next day for her to come in and, “Did you ask your brother?” “Yes, I asked my brother.” “And what’d he say?” He said, “It’s right. You take a pill,” and we believed that. I mean that was if he was a doctor he knew and we believed that I believed that for a long long

long time.

I was about 11 12 then. But then when I went into the army I never missed. Oh God got everything in that. And half of the girls were the same I wasn’t on my own I wasn’t naïve on my own. Our first lecture was a sex lecture that’s right and the girls all fainted. Some a the girls

fainted.

Well they knew nothing.

Well didn’t tell us, they put pictures up. And well see people don’t seem to realise that we were blind to anything like that.

Well the pictures were…

Well the parents didn’t talk to you about it. I look back at

what my parents told me I went I was lucky to get away with all of it. We all were because we weren’t told a thing. You know there’s no didn’t know anything. You didn’t you had a peck when you came home from a dance or anything and that was it. You came in because your parents’d waiting up for you. My parents went to all the dances I went to and there was a group of us and

all their mothers and fathers used to come and I wasn’t allowed to do anything till I made my debut and I made my debut when I was 17 and even then I was only allowed to go to the pictures at night on my own or go with I was allowed out to the pictures on my own that’s right. But I’d go with a girlfriend then that was I was 17 then. I’d started or Mum had got me I’d just left school

and I’d just started working in an office and. No, when I think of it, it was terrible. And anyway we went into this camp and we had to have these lectures and the whole pictures of every part of you and all the rest of it were put up on a screen. Now you imagine the impact that had on a lot a young girls. Nobody had seen, would never ever have seen a man, never,

and knew nothing about them. You’re lucky you know as much now. And we all laughed. We thought it was a huge joke and knew nothing about nothing. Nothing not a thing and then we came home and we all started talking you know some of them were smart enough and say oh yes I thought that was right you know and didn’t know that happened or didn’t know that happened. And then when I went to New Guinea

they got worse. We had lectures on learnt a lot in the army I can tell ya. Lectures on VD [Venereal Disease] and all the rest a that and pictures to follow that what happens if you don’t if something goes that and. It was…

Well they probably would, yes.

Well the men, I couldn’t, I can’t understand

this harassing that’s going on. I might’ve been a bit naïve myself but when we went to New Guinea I couldn’t fault any of em. They were wonderful and some of them hadn’t seen us for women for 3 years or 2 years or something and they went out of their way to entertain us and they put on dances and things certainly we had to come in a truck and they had to be armed. We never went out the gate unless we were with armed

something they had a gun or something because it wasn’t so much them it was I dunno what. Nobody seemed to be violent or anything there. But we were guarded from well there was a lot a Jap [Japanese] prisoners we had to be guarded from them. We were guarded from the in those days the American Negroes didn’t have a terrific name and they were supposed to be over sexed

and everything and we had to have the guns we weren’t to go near them and even in Brisbane we weren’t allowed to go over the bridge over Victoria Bridge because that’s where that’s as far as they could go and whether that you know it sort of that came to your mind but you didn’t sort of worry about it. But the men when they came to get us they had to have guns in the front of the car. We all had to be under guard

then they’d take us to the dances and they used to put on beautiful dances and lovely suppers with stuff out a tins. You know everything we never had fresh food for 12 months and everything that you ate was come out of a tin and they were terrific and I don’t know that and I worked with the men all the time. We had a you know our officer were men and I just can’t understand that. But anyway things have changed

since then I suppose. But when we went out they’d turn up for you in a jeep and I’ve got a soft spot for jeeps I’ve had a lot a fun in jeeps and you’d get in. The first day we went out this fellow was a major he was a friend of a friend that was with me and he bought a couple of fellows along and we went out for trip and I got in the front and there’s a great gun beside a me. They bring anything

not just revolvers and the others all sat in the back a the jeep and we went out and we were guarded all the time. They had to guard us all the time. But we went swimming or something I’ve forgotten now exactly what we did but they took us around a lot and none of them were they were all so pleased to see. There were few nurses up there. One a the AGHs [Australian General Hospital] was up there but we were the only other women there and we never had any worry at all. So I don’t know what happens

perhaps we’ve all advanced a bit further and after all our lectures we’re probably frightened anyway. But we had a Christmas I’ve got a book there with all photos in it a Christmas party at one a the.. I think it was the Water Transport we went to. We had a beautiful Christmas party and they made all this food and it was no hassle or anything. So I dunno they might’ve changed since then. But this gun business

they all had to get they were mainly base fellows and they probably some of them had never fired a gun they used to have to prove the weapons before we went out. And you’d see all you’d they’d all have different sort of revolvers and. Some of them’d have revolvers and some of them had ordinary rifles and then some of them’d have the fancy ones you know and this is all be stuck in between and they had to prove that they could use it before they took us out. But we never had any worries.

We used to have a lot of dances at our rec hut but they all had to go by 10 the men had to go by 10-o’clock. Well they we didn’t go out thereafter. But VP [Victory in the Pacific] night we got the VP a fortnight before we heard that the war was over and we had a bit of a celebration then and we went to work and we had a bit of a celebration at work and in the middle of it they came back and told us that it

was wrong. That peace hadn’t been declared. So that was the first one. Then the second one the men it was visiting night and the men had all come in and they were all choofed off at 10 o’clock and we all went to bed and everything and then they came down and told us that peace had been declared. Well it was an upheaval everybody got out of their huts and we, the only way we could celebrate were the ones that didn’t smoke had to have a cigarette. So we made them all have a cigarette.

We had no grog. We had I didn’t drink in those days and we had nothing to just yell and scream. Anyway the men all came down from the Units and were outside the barrier and they were trying to get in and the girls were trying to get out. So we found out then while we had two rolls of barbed wire. But they wouldn’t let them in they didn’t come in They just…

Well I don’t know. I don’t know why they wouldn’t let them in.

but I don’t think they’d have got them out. You know everybody was very high on that and anyway we just went back and celebrated ourselves but as I say we had a wet canteen there and ones that did drink but it wasn’t open, they didn’t open that or anything. We just all went back to bed and I don’t know what time we got into bed that night but it was funny, all the girls along, it must have looked like Belsen camp.

We were all along the side, I didn’t see anybody that I knew there but the ones that were handy around had come and then all the blokes were outside and they’re all screaming, “Let us in! Let us in!” and the girls were all “Let us out! Let us out!” But nobody got in or out. But that was our VP night. But we didn’t leave then until the end of February, 28th of February we

came back. We came back on the [HMAS] Duntroon and no we didn’t, we came back in the [HMAS] Canberra, we came up on the Duntroon.

Well we didn’t have high schools. I went to college when I was twelve and I was there for four years and I had had just, nearly seventeen when I came out from and

then I made my debut and that was it, that was the whole thing.

Well, I’ll tell you what it was like. I didn’t have a boyfriend, I didn’t have a boyfriend then like they do now at seventeen and they got the boys from the Christian Brothers’ College to come over and I don’t even know who he was now, I can’t remember, I’ve got the photo but I haven’t got the photo of him and they came in and partnered with us.

But up till then we only had girls, we all partnered with one another and then the boys got passed over and they turned up and we were partnered off with them and oh, it was a beautiful turn out. It was a big thing in those days; it’s not so big now. And I had this lovely white frock – oh – it was printed, not georgette, it was one that had roses printed all over it. It was a new material and frills

and dills and whatnot and it was really a lovely day. We had Dame Enid Lyons received us and we walked down the hall to, not ‘Sweet Chariot’, the English one, the English song – marching song. I can’t think of the name of it now. We marched down to that and then we just had to bow and do things and then we had a meal and then our mothers and fathers took us home and

it was totally different.

It meant that I was free. I could go wherever I wanted to, I’d been entered onto the… I’d ‘come out’ as they called it and I was considered old enough to go out on my own and I was old enough to have a boyfriend but boys didn’t interest me.

I knew quite a few of them but I didn’t worry much about boys then when I was at school and then I went into, I went to work, I was playing patience at home and I drove my mother mad because I always played patience. I drive her mad now at home too. And she got tired of it so she went and got me a job. She went and she came home and she said, “I’ve got you a job at Gibson’s in Smith Street, Collingwood.”

She said, “You start tomorrow.” “Oh, right.” So I had a job. I went down and I was on the, I was put in as cashier and strangely enough I’ve done money jobs all my life now, it sort of followed on and it was when, you probably haven’t seen them, instead of them coming to you to pay you the money you got up in a little elevated box

sort of business and they had the wires to each department and then they had little cylinder things that attached to these wires and they’d pull a tape and it would send it up to the little box. You’ve probably never seen those. No, well that’s back in, that’d be ’38 because I was there in ’39 when war was declared and anyway I

was stuck up there and I had to get the, come up and I put the change in and I put it up on the wire and pulled the thing and down it would go to the girl down below and we had some larrikins, the boys there working. And one day old Mrs… Oh! I nearly had her name then, old lady, oh I suppose she wasn’t as old as I am now and they sent a mouse up in it. There was a great hullabaloo. She was screaming and trying to

get the mice, Dickey, Dickinson, Jack Dickinson, he was the mongrel that did it. That’s right. And oh there was a terrible to-do and they got into terrible trouble and all the rest of it and the rest of us thought it was a huge joke but poor Mrs… Oh dear, the names there. What she did I don’t know, she was a lovely lady. Well I did that for a while and I was to go back to school to do the leaving and I got sixteen and ten pence a week, which was very good money.

One dollar sixty that is and I stayed there then. Mum said, “Well, you might as well stay there,” because they wanted to put me in the office and all the rest of it but then I went into the lay-by office and I ended up running the lay-by office and then I decided to join up and all the boys were going, the ones that were, you know they were all joining up and so I joined up and then I, they kept my job for me

and I went back then after that and I had two years there again up on the ledger machines and then I decided I’d go…. I went into another job. Where did I go to? International Harvesters. I did the comptometer on, you know they taught you for nothing sort of business so I did the comptometer and…

There was like a… well, they’re right out now. And

it was fifteen pound a week. Comptometrist was good money. They’re about that big and they had things like an adding machine only you could do division or you can do division on these now and you can do percentages and everything. I used to hold the keys down and press the keys and it would all come up down there but you could touch thing on it and use one hand but I did

that then and then I went to Perth. But the night war was declared I’ll always remember that, I was going round with a fellow then, I’d got old enough to go around with a boy then and they came and picked me up because you worked to, the office hours you still work the shop hours and I worked nine till nine at night and when we came out there was a big poster

on one of the lampposts ‘Declares war on the…’ and, “Oh yes, they’ve declared war you know?” And they didn’t sort of, well there was a war on, you know, “Dad’ll have to go, I suppose,” and it didn’t sort of worry us. We were still, life went on for us but then I wasn’t home for when peace was declared but I can always see that poster and you often see them in the old

pictures. Where they used to stick the white posters on and what was there. I haven’t been back to Melbourne since ’74, I’m going to go out there and have a look but it’ll probably be all changed and everything but no, well that was where I first started working and then I got up in the office upstairs and did that. But I sort of, what would they say now? I wasn’t boy crazy then. I

was sports mad then. I was playing tennis and badminton and all those sorts of things but it wasn’t… I wasn’t crazy about men but anyway I met some very nice ones. I used to go to Heidelberg town hall for dances but doing the debut business, that was your entrée into society more or less but it never worried me I can

tell you. But, what else can I tell you?

Then, yes I met another fellow that he was in camp. I don’t know what happened, where he went to but anyway he was taking me up to the dances and what have you and I was very, very keen. I’d have married him only he was a Baptist and

I was a Catholic so that fixed that very smartly. And there was another one, yeah there was another one, he was in the air force. I got engaged to him. But he used to play for Collingwood Football, Carlton Football Club, and he was about six foot two and poor old Jack, he thought the world of me but I was never terribly keen and then when I went away I wrote him a ‘Dear John’ letter [letter informing relationship is over].

But the strange part about it was when I went to Perth and I met Johnny I was going around with him and he was at Pearce camp out there and this fellow happened to mention my name and, “Oh yes,” he said, “I know Peg.” So he came and saw me one day and I told him them that I was going around with Johnny and then when I left Perth I had Ian, he was only nineteen months old, no,

twelve months old. It was his birthday when we got to Melbourne and I had been waiting for Johnny to come out of the post office, we were just about to go to the train and he turned up and I was talking to him all right. I don’t know if ever married or what he did. He drove me mad a bit, he did everything for me you know, and I was a bit independent, I liked to do things for myself and I couldn’t go through life with that all the time, having him wait on me all the time and then I married the

opposite. But we got through. But I don’t know where he is now. I had a few boyfriends and then Dad used to bring them home. Somebody would come down from the country to join up and Dad would take pity on them and he’d bring them home. We had two of them came home and stayed while they were waiting to be shipped off. And the job men with his dogs and his animals and all that and these men.

One fellow, I never very keen on any of them but they were nice companions and what have you. But I was never, I don’t know if I’d been looking for something and then I didn’t find it for quite some time but they never sort of, I don’t know. But anyway that was very interesting time. I’m running out of conversation here. Ask something.

Well we had the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] on every night. Dad followed the everything all the time. We knew what was going on and every seven o’clock news every Sunday night before the plays came on we used to get he ABC and find out exactly what was going on and we knew but see we were, well I wasn’t twenty one

and you can imagine now anybody between seventeen, just let out of school knowing nothing, you were ready to live and you didn’t have time to think about what was going on. I was upset about it because I lost quite a few fellows that I knew didn’t come back and I had a cousin was a POW [prisoner of war]. He was taken in Timor and I had other people that

I knew quite a few and we knew there was a war on but it wasn’t touching us. We were too so far away that it wasn’t until we went away but you were a bit, I don’t know, I think coming from the home that I’d come from I had to do everything right – had to set the table right and I had to put out the right China and the right and all that and be a lady and

we didn’t, couldn’t happen to us sort of business. We didn’t have much in Melbourne, see Brisbane, well the life that Johnny had up there in Brisbane was totally different to what I had down in Melbourne as far as the war was concerned. They had trenches and they had all the other things. We didn’t, I remember Dad saying there was no need for us to have any, he would know when they were coming and he’d let us know. But Mum was going to shoot me if the Japs arrived

because we heard all these terrible things of what they did to the…

Well, we went down and got our clothes and everything, our uniforms which didn’t fit anybody but we still had to wear them and our hats and what have you. I’ve still got my old army hat in there and then it was the hours – we used to have to get up at six o’clock on Sunday mornings for parade and do the chores the same as the men, practically

the same sort of things as what the men would have and we had our needles. That wasn’t very nice either and a lot of marching, a lot of exercise but I put on a stone while I was in there. But I often think that we’ve all sort of lived until this, to our eighties which is pretty good and whether all that training and all that discipline and things that we had in those days

did pay off because when we were in Brisbane, before we went away we used to march up hills every day and a drill every day and parades every day and the food that they give us, it wasn’t very nice but it was good, had to eat it. Whether that has had any effect on this later because this ex-servicewomen’s thing that I go to they’re nearly all eighty and

some of them are nearly about 78, 79, but they’re getting close to 80 so perhaps that good exercise and everything may have paid off. But we did a then they course they wanted to find out what we were better suited for. Well I definitely didn’t win on the mechanical bits the driving bit and couple of other things then as soon as they knew you’d been in an office well you just more or less automatically went into an office.

All funny little things. You know you had to put this into that square and that into that square. I dunno what they did for the electrical part but that was for the. I couldn’t I wasn’t so bright at that either. But they only gave me a couple of them and then when they knew I’d been in an office all that time well it was just automatic that you go into an office. If I’d have known that was going to happen I would’ve asked to go onto

I’d liked to have gone onto searchlights or the guns whatever. That to me was what army life was. But it wasn’t to be. I had 2 years, 2 and a half years in the office. It was just like going backwards and forwards to if I’d a been still working. So but they were all probably outdated now all the things that they did then.

Well you could ask for a particular area but they had the last word on it. And I think I asked for searchlights I can’t remember now and I wanted to get out into something where I had to go into camp and but soon as they knew what you’d done and how long you’d done it and all the best of it you went straight into got into an office. But that was interesting at times. We had a I was in charge of the officers records all their

transfers and promotions and everything and I also knew whether they were married or had children or anything and if any of my friends’d start going out with somebody they’d say check up on him. But I couldn’t do it. What questions they wanted there was no answer for. But you’d know if they were married or anything and when we were away that was very important because a lot of them were married. Five of us went with married men we didn’t know until we came home. No but they were

all very nice. You know they were very nice and what have you but we probably went round with a lot more married men but we didn’t frat with the Officers very much weren’t supposed to. The only the Officer went out with the. But I went out with one with a major and then I had a major in charge of our office he took a shine to me. I don’t know why because he was a lot older than me and I knew he had he told me he had three children and

he’d always sing out, “Private McGee, come in here and bring your cup in with ya.” So I’d have to go and have. He was a nice man. He was a very nice man but he gave me some embarrassing times because we had a pictures night one night and come over the thing, “Major Ryan’s here. Would like to see Private McGee.” And I’m sitting next to one of our captains and she burst out laughing. I said, “I can’t go out and see him,” and he kept wantin’ to take me into the officers’ mess

and I said, “I can’t go into the officers’ mess,” and he said, “It’ll be all right.” But I don’t know what happened to him. He lived near me as a matter of fact in Melbourne. But no there were some funny things like that went on. But I enjoyed the office work and we worked Saturdays I think I had Sunday off but I used to have to leave home about 6 o’clock in the morning to get from Ivanhoe to

Vic[toria] Barracks down that way, went down Geelong Grammar, and one Saturday afternoon there was a big explosion and somebody had knocked a see I’m frightened of weapons he had a paper weight which was a grenade and somebody knocked it on the floor and it blew up. So I’m I hate guns I loathe guns and yet I bought two Samurai swords back with me

and they didn’t worry me so much. As long as I didn’t open em and see how sharp they were. One wasn’t for me one was for this major and one for myself. So and I had to hide that because the kids when the boys got a bit bigger they knew it was there and I had it behind the where I though was hidden and I had an awful thought one day what if they got it out and started to play with it. So I sold it. But horrible lookin’ thing. But

this thing that went off they got shrapnel in them but that was all it wasn’t very dangerous. Then we went over to Albert Park and there’s Albert. You know Melbourne at all? You know Albert Park Lake? Well I’m the best rower boat rower there is in Albert Park Lake. We had a race between the men and the women one day and we got these boats it was a lunchtime and three of us. Was we in the same one? No think there was two of in the one

and I kept pushin’ the oar the wrong way. And we’re going round and round in circles and the blokes are going for their lives and I ended up we ended up on the little island out there. We ended up over there but we eventually got back we didn’t find out till after that the men had been betting on it and I’d have had a fit if I’d a known that because they lost a lot a money on our crew. But it was quite. It was good down there. It was you could

it was a bit different. I think it’s still there I dunno I haven’t been back to see but that was a big area a big office area big area. Yes. What do you want me to say now?

In Vic Park in Victoria, not Victoria Barracks, in Royal. No I didn’t. I signed up, up the top of Vic LFC up in Swanston Street.

We went in there and we signed. That’s some funny stories too. We went in there and we signed on and then we all had to give a urine sample and all they had was jam tins and you have no idea of the. I laugh now and one a the poor girls with fright couldn’t do it so they sent us out to walk around Melbourne for a little while and sat her somewhere with a tap running and anyway

eventually that happened and then they gave us our 4 and 10-pence for our for that days pay once we’d signed and we’d taken the oath then we got 4 and 10-pence and we were let lose in Melbourne with 4 and 10-pence. I dunno what happened to ours I kept it and then we were called up after that to report. We were taken out to Darley Barracks and

then we had all our exercise and lectures and what have you and needles. But the worst needles were in the other one when we went away. And they had to hurry up to get us out set us going and we’d had our what’s the one you’ve got to have two of em? Anyway whatever needle it was they had to give us the other needle instead of a week apart

a few days apart and it knocked us all out. Knocked us out completely and then we went away the next day. But when we left there everything was secret very very secret and we were just told at dinner that we were going the next day. No phone calls no nothing. We couldn’t make we were out of contact with the world and next morning we got our gear well as you see

on that photo on the front there what gear we had. We had tin helmets and mugs and God only knows what and we got all that gear and we got in the trucks and all the trucks were covered up and nobody was allowed to look outside we just had to we didn’t know where we were going and then we got down to the wharf there at the Customs office in Brisbane and we all had to march up and quietly and all you could hear was the clink of the tin hat

and the mug were side by side for some reason and you could hear this clink clink clink and then all the people came down to see us off. And nobody knew they were supposed to be all secret and we got on the boat and went out and it wasn’t till I got out a the river and they had all these boats out there convoy to take us up and I thought, “My God, what have you done, Graham? You’ve overstepped your mark now.” And

anyway then they had deck in case we got bombarded or something what we had to do. And I thought, “Well if we get bombarded, they drop a bomb there, I’ll be lucky to get to the boat. I’ll be too frightened to move.” And they had that everyday all the time and the convoy didn’t leave us until we were practically well out of the Coral Sea anyway. But I’ll never forget that it was all quite and nothing. It was all in the papers in the morning

in Brisbane and everybody knew about it. Supposed to be so secret. And it took us 10 days to get up there. It was a wow of a time though. But what else have you got? Yes you ask the questions.

Yes I told yeah I had to get Dad’s permission. Yeah they knew. They knew that I was putting in for the army. He was thrilled to pieces. He thought it was wonderful I couldn’t do anything wrong.

But.

I just old I just said I’m going to join the army and very very good. He was waiting for me to do it think cause it he couldn’t wait to get me into uniform. As I said my brother was younger than me and 6-years younger than me and George sort of I don’t think George was the son that he. He didn’t play sport. He didn’t do any a that. Dad boxed and he played rugby league and rugby

union and tennis and everything. He was the sportsman of it then I started to do it and I think that’s why we got on so well together and I just went in and said I’m going to join the army. I want to join it. I didn’t say I’m going that’s right I want to join the army. Yes he said that was all right and I had the papers and they both signed em. Mum was a bit concerned a bit worried about me going in but Dad wasn’t, no; he thought that was wonderful. He took me in to get to go

into do my first course in the army there and picked me up. He couldn’t do enough for me. And he never worried much you know he used to go his own way. But no, he was very pleased until he took me to that do and introduced me to all the other officers. Never forget it. And they looked lovely too some of them looked funny some of them were little.

I never knew but I think a lot of them did. I don’t know I never he never said anything. But he was on the R of O, Reserve of Officers and I don’t know whether they had he might probably still had contact with them but. He had to

sign everything and a course he always signed. And people still called him captain they never called him anything else even when he got out and he’d have to sign those. But I think he was in contact somewhere. I didn’t too many things that he didn’t know about. I often wondered about that though whether you know cause they’re pretty tight crowd. But see he went in he joined in New South Wales was in the 55th Battalion

and he marched every Anzac Day. Yeah he could’ve. But he that’s another thing he did to me too. He made me march with him in Ivanhoe he was in the RSL down there and he was in the Manly RSL too in Sydney for a while until they went to Melbourne and I was the only woman, the only girl.

Yeah, and this is only

through Ivanhoe only through our town. He thought it was wonderful and he led it. He always used to lead the march and he led the marches in town too. But cause there weren’t many 55th in Melbourne evidently and he led the march and I waited till he got out of sight and I got right in the back row right on the inside so nobody’d see me. But then after that I was allowed to go home. I wasn’t allowed to go into any RSL.

No, this is when I just after I entered.

It was very strict. It was definitely a man’s domain down there, you know. Only the men went in and if they had a do the wives used to stay down stairs and the men would have their do upstairs. But he was very pleased with that. I think that must’ve been the only one. No I think I marched with him twice because then I went to Perth but no it was quite possible that

he did have connections because I didn’t he never he always seemed to know ahead a me what I was going to do. So he could’ve but he never commented he never said anything but he was quite pleased to see me go and get in and he worked at Vic LFC too when he was he didn’t get out till he was 55. He was in the army from 15 to 55 and

I think they still had like reunions like everybody else like we did too. But no I don’t think much went past pop. We thought it I know one thing that I thought I’d put over him. I never drank till I went in the. I never drank till I met father and if you live in Western Australia if you don’t have a beer well you might as well go home, you’re not accepted. A beer and play darts, you’re not accepted. Anyway when we

came home we used to go into the Australia [Hotel] in Melbourne and have little reunions and what not and I drank I’d have a wine just to sort a be sociable but they wouldn’t give me gin they gave me when we were up there they gave me a bottle of a glass of gin or something and they never shut me up and right throughout and they’re all screamin’ out, “Go to sleep Peg.” “No.” And I’d laid in bed all night so I never got

they never gave me anything else after that. But we used to go into and have a dinner and what not and I’d have a drink but it’d probably only be a glass, and I’d go home and you know the old devil he used to come in and kiss me goodnight and I never worked out why he suddenly started doin’ that. But he could smell the grog on me, he knew. And he didn’t drink. He was a teetotaller and he didn’t drink, and I thought

I was puttin’ it over him. I’d get into bed and I’d put the sheet up over my head and he’d come in cause my room was near the bathroom and he’d come in to clean his teeth and whatever and he’d pop in and kiss me goodnight and I know he only did that because he was just lettin’ me know that he knew. And he said something to me one night but I forget what it was and then I woke up that he’d smell it. And then when he came up to Queensland I said to Johnny, I said, “Now what are we gonna do? We

have a beer every night.” And, “What am I gonna do?” I said, “I can’t drink in front of Dad.” And Johnny got into me, he said, “Why?” I said, “No, no, I’ve never done it.” And he said, “Look, you can’t change your life just because he’s coming up to holiday. Have the beer say nothing about it.” So anyway when the happy hour came around Johnny got the beer out and he said, “Have a beer, Peg?” “Yes dear,” I said, “I’ll have me beer.” And he said, “What will you have, captain?”

And Dad said, “What’ve you got?” He said, “I’ve got some wine out there if you like a wine.” And he had a little wine just to drink and he never said a word. From then on, pardon me, I drank in front of him. But I was frightened I thought he might go crook and he might say something to father about it. But he always had a little wine every night with us when we had our beer. But I often thought a the other one and he knew damn. And he caught me smokin’. I was under 21 then. I was only 19 then I think I’d only

just gone into the army and I’d gone up to a dance and you see your parents’d pick you up after the dance if you’re lucky enough that they couldn’t come out well you might go home with somebody but he used to call in for me and I’m smoking. He never said a word. Never said a word. Just walked out a the place and nothing was ever said. But I never had another cigarette then for the next 3 years till I was 21 and I knew I could smoke after I was 21 and I’ll never forget it I saw him walk

in and in uniform and in he comes. I dunno where he’d been and here’s Peg puffin’ away like an old. But he never said he knew more of what was going on than what I thought he did. He wasn’t silly. He but the no the training was very good the in the camps. Only a fortnight. I put on as I said I put on a stone and you had the hours

you know getting you weren’t allowed out. We weren’t allowed out it was a closed camp and I think that all that exercise and what not we probably or else it was the Atebrin. We had five of us that were together we all had boys so if you want a boy at any time have a couple of Atebrin tablets I reckon they’re made for em. But it’s strange isn’t it? Out of the five of us we all had boys. So we reckoned it was the Atebrin. But I turned that colour.

And we went out to the races in Brisbane and these fellows came up to us and, “You just back are ya?” We said, “No, we haven’t gone yet.” And we were a girlfriend and myself we were as yellow as yellow. And three or four of us went yellow the others had fair skin but you had to have dark skin. When I came home Mum came out to meet me and she walked up to me and tapped m on the shoulder. She come up the back a me and I turned around and she said,

“Good God, what have they done to my daughter? What have they done to my daughter?” And my brother, he thought it was wonderful. He took me all over Melbourne when I was yellow. As soon as the colour went I never saw him again. He thought it was this is my sister she’s been to New Guinea. Look at the colour of her. God I got into some trouble. We went swimming in Manly, Nance and I, we thought we were looked pretty brown and whatnot you know. We’d only been home about 3 weeks and we went down to

Balmoral to have a swim and we ran out and we dived in and just as we dived in this couple a kids beside the water there and one said, “Hey, get a look at these yeller sheilas.” And Nance and I went under the water and I don’t think we came up again. Yeah, ‘these yeller sheilas’. Cause sheilas was enough for us. So we didn’t run down on Balmoral beach any more. We went down with towels around us and threw them in and went in. But she was terrific

Nance she was a great mate. She had a bit influence on my life. Lived at Balmoral and her father was on the butter board yeah. And they lived in a Japanese right on the. You know Balmoral I suppose you know Balmoral in Sydney? Are you Queenslander? One a those hillbillies. You’d get on with my mother. It was right on the side a the hill it was a Japanese consulate

at some time and her father. And it was all made like a Japanese house it was a beautiful house and they had plenty a money and they dined and you had your wine and your blah-blah and anyway I didn’t know one wine from another and they said, “Will you have a glass of wine?” And I said, “Yes.” I’ve got to do the right thing so I had the glass of wine and I said, “Gee it just tastes like raspberry

drink.” Anyway and the roared and it wasn’t till years after that I thought gee well that was the wrong thing to have said. But she had a very nice family. But the house was all they opened up the whole side as you went in. Like there wasn’t a door you came in and the whole side went and the same inside just like a Japanese place. But they were a lovely family I spent a lot a time up there with Nan and she was a great mate a mine. I miss her still

but that’s not right. Direct me back I wandered again. I’m wandering all the time.

No it’s sad.

But you’ll have to cut all those bits out.

Yes yes every Anzac Day he led the march led the 55th. Oh yes we always went in with. We were pretty well army from the word go you know everything revolved around it with him

and he’d lost a brother in France and on this my son got his record and told us where exactly he was buried and how to get there and everything. Which was very not that I’m every likely to get over to see the grave but I don’t know whether Dad did. But yes but see Dad didn’t drink and I don’t suppose he had any went back and drank madly after it

you know sort of like they do now and I don’t think they I dunno. He never sort of he wouldn’t have had part of got a reunion to go to. They used to have reunions. I know he used to come down to Sydney for the reunions and the last time he marched with them he must a come down to Sydney to those and the last time he marched with them was only about 2 or 3 rows

of them and I don’t think he went back again then. But he kept in touch with them all the time but he went into that as a lieutenant and whether he got his commission on the field or not I don’t know. He started off as a lieutenant and whether he was

Yeah he went to Duntroon yeah. Well his mother died my grandmother died and they split the family up and he went to the

one side a the McGees and they bought him up and my uncle was a book maker down there. He was pretty well known down there in those days and I think there was a little bit of money there and they lived at Dry Dock at Five Dock right on the river and that and they had their own swimming pool and everything and whether my mother thought when she went out to see them that she was marrying into money or not but money didn’t worry

Dad you know he couldn’t he wasn’t a bit like that. Whether that was the funny ideas a gettin’ me married off to somebody. But I didn’t want the money and anyway she got a big shock. When father and I got married we owed somebody 15 pound. No we had 10 dollars I think in the bank and 15 pound we owed. 10 pound and we owed somebody 15 pound. But he hadn’t touched I had a bit

tucked away. Mum was a great saver that’s one thing you know we saved made us save so that was all right and then I got me gratuity and everybody was hijacking me with what you gonna do with Peg’s gratuity and that was 89 pounds which was a lot a money in those days. And I said he’s not you’re not getting onto my gratuity I’m gong away and I flew to Brisbane I flew to Melbourne then up to Brisbane and back for 89 pound.

Now what would you I’m going to Perth I don’t know how much it’s gonna cost me to go to Perth cause Ross is shouting me to go there. So that’s where my gratuity went. But we came good though we were right after we had enough to. I mean you that’s it’s a good learning thing. But Mum never knew that. She’d of had a fit. But no I think Dad kept in touch with them all the time and

I know he used to go down to all their marches. But this particular one that he put me in was only in Ivanhoe. But see in those days you couldn’t I joined the RSL in 1946 I came home in September and I joined just after that and we had a women’s RSL and you didn’t merge at all. It was a real well Dad used to tell us the story of they had something the

officers had something somewhere a dinner and no women were allowed anywhere around at all and a couple of them snuck in and got behind the curtains and they found them there and I said what did they do? Oh they were taken out straight away you know and I could see that he was disgusted that they’d it was like a Masonic lodge. It always felt like a Masonic lodge to me cause he didn’t… He wasn’t in the Masonic Lodge. He wasn’t fussed about the Masonic

Lodge. I don’t think and then Johnny joined that. God and I thought now you can’t tell Dad that for God’s sake don’t go down there. But no you just didn’t go and it wasn’t until late you know later on that you were allowed in. Now they take you can join the RSL with you don’t have to have overseas service. That’s why we’ve got so many of our ladies in it and we’ve got our own as well. But this one up here’s good. This is very good they look after

everybody you know very good. But I never got into the Ivanhoe one I never ever got in there. I wasn’t allowed passed the door and neither was Mum but that’s what went on in those days you were segregated. The man was the almighty.

What’s that in?

Well the men dominated the women. I think the women were I dunno cause that other they came to the fore later on but you were more or less the second in the family if you understand what I mean. The man was the bread winner and you didn’t work

you couldn’t work. A woman couldn’t work then but well even when we came up here and I wanted to go and work at the TAB [Totalizer Agency Board – a betting agent] Johnny wasn’t very keen about me working at all. He said, “No wife a mine’s gotta work. I can support you,” and that’s it and that was what in ’54 in the fifties, but eventually he relented and I did and I was there for 13 years. But

every time I saved up any money I was a supervisor and I was getting 54 pound a week that was wonderful. But I had to spend it on the house and I bought a fridge and I bought this and I bought that and I bought myself a car with it and he said he didn’t want any a the money that was my money and it’s got a

go into something. So that’s what we did. But I enjoyed that that was a lot of fun. I missed all the break ins. I had three hold ups and I’d just left and they all reckoned there was something in it. I just finished my shift and they came in and held them up. But it was interesting work and everything and Johnny wasn’t happy about it first at all. And I thought, “Gee, you know, a lot a women work now.” “There’s no need for you to work. I’ll look

after it. You’ve got the kids to look after,” and the boys were well they used to come up to work to me after and they were quite old enough to leave on their own but I started that work at well just at the beginning when women were working. But I think well we expected and we were bought up or I was anyway you know that the man at the house was the man a the house and that’s all there is to it. And sometimes I’m sorry that it stopped.

Yes I was still single yes. I could work wherever I wanted you know you had work and you were bought half your money and gave half your money to your mother and but Mum used to do all my shopping and everything for me. She bought all my clothes and my shoes and everything but I didn’t know any better. And as I say until I found out there was another world outside and that was very exciting and I think a lot of us were the

same that went in. All of a sudden we had our really had our independence but to be able to go to the pictures on your own that was wonderful. And there was something else I was allowed to do too once I’d worked. I’ve forgotten what that was. There was something else I know I could do once I’d made me Debut. But it was the big thing down there. We had Dame Enid Lyons I think I might a said to receive us. That was before your time.

Joe Lyons’ wife. And she came in a beautiful brocaded purple dress and we presented her with red roses and I’ll never forget that. I never forgot that because these bright red roses with this purple dress. But she was very nice very nice lady and so was he. Mum knew him from he was a Tasmanian and Mum knew the family from there but she was very nice. No it was just a sort of a not everybody did make

their Debut cause I don’t think they make they do so much now.

Not mixed. We used to have balls from our school and only the girls went and we used to have to dance with one another. There was but then we did have the boys but I can’t even remember who the fellow was that I had. No idea and I think

they all shot through after it. I didn’t blame them cause I something the boys were from Clifton Hill Brothers, that’s what it was I think. But the poor fella he had to cop me and I was awkward too. But I’ve never forgotten that and when we bowed we had to go right down and I was frightened I’d sit down on the floor but I didn’t. I’m all for them cause I think it’s a good.

See the war broke out just not long after that and so that altered everything. You know all those niceties were forgotten because there was a war on and the war you couldn’t do all those sort of things and Dad wouldn’t build a trench. That was funny Mum wanted him to build a trench in the back yard and she wanted a gun so she shot me if the Japs arrived and I dunno what she would a done with it and the man over the road he

sunk a petrol tank you know they have in the ground he got one a those he was with the Wormald Brothers he was one a the directors and he got the, I dunno how he got it. Anyway they’re all digging a big hole in Miska’s place and we all wondered what he was going to do and he wouldn’t tell anybody and then this great big thing came and they sunk that in and he turned it into a room underneath and it was full. I only went down it once I couldn’t I dunno how I’d a got on if

I’d a had to get in I got claustrophobia and he had it all rigged out with all the food to last say 6-months all their clothes and their beds and everything and it had a he still had the top the petrol top like a submarine you lift that back and then you got in there and you pulled that down and that was it. And they spent nights in it sometimes just to sort a get the kids used to it. One boy that’s right they had Nicholas and he was, “Look what

he’s doing,” Mum’d say. Miska’s gone and done that how bout you digging a trench or something. No no he wouldn’t he’d fight to the end. And we kids thought it was wonderful. But Johnny said they had trenches up in Brisbane when he was at school and they had all the drill and everything they all had to get in the trenches. But see I never thought of anything like that when I went away. Why didn’t we had an earth tremor once and

it was funny cause we were all laying in bed and we were writing letters or reading and we had the old globes down from the top with the white shield over them and I’m laying and I looked up and it was going like that (indicates swaying). I thought that’s funny. I looked to see if the others were seein’ anything and no they were all reading so I went on reading and I looked up again it was still going and then everybody else started looking up. That’s funny, what’s that going like that for?

And then we got the rumble. Well we’re out there in the middle we all had to come out and stand on the middle and we had trenches dug all around the huts and the water in the them was going right up the top and right down the bottom like this. They weren’t concerned it was an earth tremor and it was the volcano in Rabaul had gone off towards the end of ’39 I think it was, yeah it

was the earth tremor. It was weird gee it was weird but we forgot about it. You don’t when you’re young like that you don’t sort of think about anything. Once it’s finished it’s gone like that and you don’t sort of keep thinking about it and that didn’t worry us and then one day they blew up an American ammunition dump.

The Japs have arrived. They’ve come back. They’ve come back. What’ll we do? What’ll we do? And we all stood out and watched it then cause it was very interesting and we found out that’s what it was you know. But we had Jap prisoners around our huts and they had slats on them like that then another slat there and that was all open and the banana leaf tops on them and the horrible… They gave you the creeps. They used to come up and we’d have a siesta at 12 o’clock

and when you had a siesta when you came home you took off everything, I was sick of looking at boosies. They’d be runnin’ around all over the place they’d all have their tops off and I was probably a bit jealous but still that didn’t matter I didn’t take mine off and they used to come and if the guard wasn’t looking they’d come up and have a look under the things and never forget that and I had the dengue [fever] and when I couldn’t I had to come back and convalesce at home and I couldn’t get from A

to B could hardly walk it takes a lot out a ya and I had to go out for a drink a water one day and they’re all working outside and the fella standing there with a big it wouldn’t be a machine gun but it was a big gun guarding them and I wanted to get some water so I went over and got it and one of them came up while I was there and I just held me breath and looked at the gun and I thought yes he’s got his finger on it. He knows what to do with it and he just went off and shooed him back.

He wouldn’t let him come anywhere near me and I got back very quickly back on the bed but they and then we had Formosans. Now Formosa.

Go and have your dinner.

Formosa. No I think it was part of as you said of I dunno it was up that anyway they looked just like Japs but they were very quiet we had a lot a them working around us. You’d be on the side a the road and when we’d march up see we marched up to work and we were under guns then we were all one at the back and one at the

front and they used to be on the sides and we thought they were Japs but they weren’t as dangerous as what the Japs would have been and we had a lot a missionaries came down too from up there. And I went to Salamoa it was a beautiful place Salamoa. We went over there for a. There weren’t any of them over there. It was only seemed to be around us that they had the. I must find out where that

is. I’ve been meaning to do that Formosa. But they didn’t worry us so much. They just sort of worked on. But they’re very Japanese looking.

Roads. Cleaning up. Doing the digging around our compound. Cause we had a huge compound. It would’ve taken up well this goes right around it’d be twice as big as this and they had the fence all the way around it and all the wire

on the top and on the bottom. On one that way and one that way and nobody could get in but they did. They cut a hole in the back of it and came in and into our hut. They didn’t come up our end. We were all disappointed and went to one a the girls in there and they cause we had the Negroes were sort of they didn’t have a very good name for something

Well we don’t well she said it was

a Negro but she got such a fright she wouldn’t have known but as everybody said what did he say he lent on the cause we had mosquito nets and he lent on the mosquito net and said something to her and she woke up and a course she screamed and he went away and when they went out there was this great big hole and when the first lot of women went and we were the last lot to go our hut was the end one and

we I don’t think we had a floored hut and they came in that end again. So they reckoned there was something wrong with our end. Nobody came up our end. We’d a killed him if he a come up. Well he couldn’t come up because he’d come right into the road in the middle of the camp. But that happened. That happened twice and then we had another one. One a the girls went down to the toilet and a course they were just big holes dug down deep and they just put a row a

seats along the top a them and she screamed and so everybody rushed out to see what was wrong. She said there’s something moved on the back of the seat. And course they could cut they only had things up the side of them and it was all open down the back. Anyway it was this great big python and she just went to sit down and it moved and it was a python and they had to get the guard then and he came down with his bayonet and killed it. But it was right along the back

it was cause we all laughed we thought it was a huge joke but she didn’t. She got a hell of a fright. Yeah there were some funny little incidents like that but the we never saw many animals of any. No birds. No birds at all there because you see wasn’t that long since the war had been there I dunno when Lae fell I can’t remember. Wouldn’t know but there were

no birds at all but plenty of flying foxes and they used to be out in the jungle. Course and once they cleared the jungle you had to keep it clear because it’d grow overnight. You know come up it just come up. And a course that was so exciting you know we went into the jungle and look at that. That’s young kids. But we went over to Salamoa we used tog over there for our rests and

there was a lot of trucks burnt out and you could see there’d been a war through there and they hadn’t moved them and it’s one of the prettiest places I’ve ever been. It comes out on an isthmus like that and it’s narrow down this side and then it widens out a bit and all those blue fish that you see in the. Well when we out we went out in a lackatoy and you could see all those just in the water and we pulled over the side and there was a cemetery

right on the side of Salamoa Hill and Damien Parer’s grave was there and it was full of hibiscus and frangipani they had trees all round it. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful spot but I believe they bought him back. I think I heard I read somewhere where they bought him back or they probably bought all most of them back. But

He was the photographer.

What did he?

Well I knew he was a war correspondent and it hadn’t been very long before that he’d been up there and he must’ve been he must’ve died at Salamoa. Must’ve a been shot at Salamoa. I don’t know but he was buried there and also we saw the grave of the prisoner that was beheaded the air force bloke that was beheaded. We found that cemetery there walking around and that was only flat. He was right on the water. That

upset us all a bit you know when we found it because we knew that it was there and we went round and we found it. But seeing the other one it was such a beautiful spot and when this we had this explosion in Port Moresby the water at Salamoa. It’s well it wouldn’t be the strip wouldn’t be much wider tan from here to the

other to Banks Avenue and the water ran out a hundred yards and then come back in and they all just held on they couldn’t move they couldn’t nowhere for them to go because there was ocean that side and ocean that side and it just came in but it came back to it’s same level. But it was an interesting place it was very interesting. We used to go out in the lackatoys there and we went out one night we were gonna go fishing with this fellow that was over there. He was the chief

wine merchant I think. He used to get this brew going and what not. We had one taste once and it was enough. But I don’t think he was with us I think he was there for the recreation and we went out with him in the boat and the side a the lackatoy came right up nearly tipped us up and something had swum underneath but we never knew. Well I nearly walked on water that night. By gee I got in quick and anyway so did he. We paddled and

paddled and paddled and we got in and got out as quick as we could. But it’s a very pretty place and there’s a big mountains this end and then this little strip just goes out. But we had a lovely we had a rec hut we had a lovely time there that was good. And we used to go over in the transport. Water transport used to take us over and they were a nice lot a fellas too; they used to take us a lot a trips. But I loved Salamoa. I liked… There was a lot a history there. But no houses standing, nothing. There was nothing.

It was all you could see where that’s where all the bombs had gone through and what have you. Anyway you better have your tea.

Well it was because you became equals. You were treated as an equal which was good. I mean to say they didn’t pussy foot around us or anything or make things any easier

you joined the army right you’re in the army and you do what we do and we didn’t mind that. I might add they wouldn’t we never had a gun we were never allowed to do that. We were in an hours plane flight from the front line but if anything had gone wrong they’d have looked after us. I feel sure they would’ve because they still had that wanting to look after us or we’d have to learn how to fire a gun

very quickly which I wasn’t very keen on doing. I fired I got me tried to teach me to fire a revolver one day and it nearly kicked me back on my back. And I said no you can have that. I don’t want that. I’ll run if anybody comes after me I’ll go. That’s that Luger again that Dad had. I think that gun frightened the life out a George and I and I’ve never ever liked guns. Anyway we were going round with some provos [Provosts – Military Police] then and

they always took revolvers but and then we went round the ANGAU [Australia and New Guinea Administrative Unit] fellas well they took the rifles out. I dunno who it was in the air force we didn’t go very far with the air force. We had men all around the place it was lovely. That was one thing. But they were all as I said before I would not fault one of them and they wouldn’t have done anything. I’m sure they wouldn’t. There might a been a there was a murder

there or something now what was that? The natives got somebody or something but they never made a lot of it. It wasn’t now what was that? It was a civilian I think. But we weren’t so frightened of the natives as we were of the or the Japanese but we had it drilled into us about the Boongs, the American Negroes. And we were out on picnic one day and with these provos fellas and whenever you got on the beach

you had to sun bake they had to go and get their gun and lay it down it had to be at hand all the times in case we were attacked by the local populus but these fellas this great mob of Negroes came up and they were opening bottles with their teeth. I’ll never forget it and just put the bottle up on their teeth and open the bottle of grog with their teeth. And they were on the boat with us as we went back. We used to come across

in a transport boat and they were there then and they were drinking. But they never came they didn’t worry us.

No no you wouldn’t no you wouldn’t talk to them. But we had an American camp near us and the women in the American it was more like they are now. But there was no men in our camp. No man was in our camp ever at all and we were segregated all the time and the Yanks [Americans] used to come over and play table tennis with us

and the men’d come with them and then they’d just all go back together. But not us no. We weren’t well see we apart from the nurses. There was a few nurses in the AGH down the road we were the first actual women to go out of Australia that weren’t nurses know what I mean and it was a big thing to send. We didn’t think anything of it but I’ have thought of it since

that we were the first women that went into the army to go overseas and as there was only a few of us. There were a few girls went in an entertainment unit and some went to Morotai and some were at Bougainville I think it was. But Nance and I we and I still do it. We volunteered for everything that came up. We volunteered for all the places we were to go

Morotai and Hollandia and Bougainville Nance and I put our name on the top and she’d come from a very strict family too and I think it was about the same as is was with me. Then we volunteered for Japan we could a gone up to Japan with the forces but I had prickly heat and it was festering and I was frightened of getting dermo [dermatitis] and I thought I better go home

but I stayed in the army. I got home at the end of February but I stayed in the army till September and. But you know if you sit and think about it that was the first that was a big experiment. I can look back on it now and look at it as an experiment and it took them ages. We had signed our papers and volunteered a long time before. I don’t think I’d turned 21 I can’t remember it properly but I knew that I would be 21 by the time I

by the time I went and that’s how you know I wasn’t worried about it. But they were the only women that went up there and we were the only women there beside these few nurses in the hospital all the time we were you up there. You know it was an experiment but it worked. Now I don’t believe in them going into the front line I can’t but then I’m older now and I’m thinking. They’re probably thoroughly enjoying it. But

I don’t think that’s necessary. There’s a I dunno. I don’t I wouldn’t like a daughter of mine to do it anyway. I haven’t got a daughter thank goodness I didn’t want any daughters. I don’t want my sons to go either. But as somebody said to me one day, “I s’pose the boys are in the cadets?” I said, “No I’m not going to put them in the cadets. They’re not gonna have a gun in their hand.” “But you were in the army, your father was in the army.” I said, “But they’re not going to go into the army.” But I got desperate one day and went and got the papers for them to sign to go for one of

them was a bit of a rebel to go and to go in but no he decided that he wouldn’t go. But the cadets, I didn’t like the cadets. They used to… They were in high school behind our place and I’d see them practising and I’d think, “God, you’re only kids. Why you learning to do those things now? Wait till you’re grown up and you know you can go.” But then see you forget about you did it yourself. But then I think yeah what did you do?

But no it was a wonderful experience and we were all thrilled to think that we got in it. You know that we were passed. But I dunno what the things were to pass what particular things you had to pass but I often think sometimes it might’ve been Captain WJJ McGee, that might’ve helped mine along, I don’t know, but I’ve got a doubt. Whether or not. I wasn’t gonna make enquiries

but he knew my every move that I made you know, he could just go and check on me. There you are Dad; I hope you’re sittin’ up there listening to me. Go crook. But no it was all very good and you better go and have your lunch now.

Right. I went to Vic LFC in Swanston Street and then I was on the same job there the officers records and then I went down to Melbourne Grammar and I was there for a while then I went over to Albert Park and from there they the only ones I went to and then from there I went up to Milsec [?] in

New Guinea. I didn’t go anywhere else. Then when I came back from New Guinea I went to Victoria Barracks with the Milsec.

In Melbourne.

Well see I joined in Melbourne and I went back there. I never got out of that one I did that one job the whole time that what you mean.

Yeah well yeah well see I didn’t know that until I went to Sydney. No this is Vic Barracks

in St Kilda Road. That was one of the etchings that I got too which is a beauty. Ross has got that I dunno how much that’s worth. But the no well they never changed me around you see you sort of you’d volunteer to go to other places but then I can see now that if you got in one place and you’re doing a good job there or know the job well why change it and that’s probably what

suited them. But I enjoyed doing that part. I felt as I was part of it do all their movements and everything and I’d know where they were and where they weren’t but it was different up there it was quite interesting up there too because you were closer to them you’d be able to say oh yeah that’s that not very far away or something like that and then when I came home I still did it. I still did it down there

under the same Major. No under a different one but he was a friend of Major Ryan’s and Vic Barracks there was sort of a citadel really. It was a very interesting place to go to and I quite enjoyed it. I stayed there for quite a while until I thought I’d better get out and Mum wanted me to get out. But I could a stayed in I could a stayed in all the time but as it happened they had other things ready

for me to do and then we went to a school. When we got out we went to a school to learn whatever we wanted and I took the comptometer on because you got 15pounds a week for that. It was the highest paid job that you could have in an office which worked out that way. But we could a stayed up there that’s another thing we Nance and I volunteered to stay up there and we had a job and everything there for us if we wanted to stay and one of us stayed May stayed. She married

a fellow from ANGAU and she was up there for 26 years and she’s the one, I dunno whether she’s with us or not – I’ll find out at Christmas time if I get a card from her. But no it was all very interesting. Is that what you wanted to know?

Went up to Queensland in ’54, came across from Western Australia.

With the army?

When did we get up there? What was it May. It was May VE day wasn’t it? I think and we’d had bout February we went up there and we were there for 6-weeks and I hadn’t been to Queensland before and I went down to where we lived we’d lived near Queens Park

not Queens Park the other park with all the blue flowers in it.

No not the Botanical Gardens. New Farm, and I learnt to walk in New Farm Park so my mother told me and we lived the house is still there. There’s a street goes down there and then that one goes to the river and we lived on the main Brunswick Street just couple a houses away from there in those old places. We lived there for 3-years

and then Mum found out and one of my aunts came to see her and she said, “You know where you’re living Gwen?” And Mum said, “No.” She said, “Do you have much traffic around here of a night?” and Mum said, “Yes,” she said, “there’s always cars coming out here and stop.” And it was one a the local girls places underneath. Wish I’d a been there to see Mum’s face then. So they promptly moved. Yes so I laughed that’s at New Farm Park there and but

that’s where she lost her ring. Somebody pinched it she’d taken her. Dad came home from the war which 6 diamonds I found that out. I was the one that lost one of em because when I was a baby she had it pinned in a brooch and I always felt as though I lost it and she was carrying me and it must’ve rubbed off so I got into trouble for that one. And then she had three in her ring and two ear rings and she’d taken the ring off and left it in the laundry

or something. It must a been a flat or something and when she came out it was gone and the next week the Jewish lady that lived there had diamond ear rings on. So there was no proof or anything. And then she ended up she lost them all and its funny she couldn’t hold jewellery no matter what jewellery she had she’d loose. So that’s where that’s why she didn’t like New Farm Park she did all her jewellery there. But

we went down there when she came up. She pointed the house out and it was still there. One a those old there’s a lot of old places along there and Johnny came from West End and Greenslopes. We lived in Logan Road Greenslopes when we came up. But no I always loved Queensland when I came through I loved Queensland and we had a lovely time there. We were at Mt Gravatt and.

Tuck it in to me belt. You get me blood runnin’ through right.

Yes and his Mum and Dad I flew over from Perth to meet his and I’d never met them. And he’d just rung and told them we were gettin’ married. We were sorta at the beginning of that age and I came over to see them and I loved it straight away. I said yes I’m quite happy to come back and we had a down for a War Service

house in Western Australia and we had 4-years to wait and when we came home to Queensland we went to the top a the list so we were only over here a month and we were in a new home which was very very lucky. But it was unlucky in one way because a lot of our money hadn’t arrived we sold what we had in Collie and the money hadn’t come across. So I had to write to Dad and ask him for a loan which I got without any trouble

and we went straight in the house. We were only up here a month and we were in a house of our own which was good.

Fraser’s Paddock. Do you know Fraser’s Paddock?

In Enoggera yeah well the Enoggera bank was the men were there and we were down here. We got out at stop 17 in Ashgrove Road and you caught a bus from there and you went down and we used to have. We were in the officers

accommodation our particular crowd and I’d never seen a green frog and neither had Nance. She went into the showers. That was the first time I’ve shared a shower and Nance and I got in together cause there was a great queue we only had three and I wasn’t with her this day thank God and she let out a yell and we rushed in, “What’s wrong Nance? What’s wrong?” “Oh,” she says, “look at it, look at it.” And it had come out from the

roof and hit her on the back here and just slid straight down her back. I’ll never forget and he was about that big, dear little green frog I love the little frogs. And that was our first experience there and first time I had to peel potatoes was there. Was the only PT [physical training] I ever got. I was lucky I went right through without it. But the food was we had good meals there and we called in there on the way home or we called into

Bowen and we called back there. We were there for a day I think and then we went down to Sydney and we all sort of got off on the way home then. But it was a nice camp but we used to climb a hill. We marched up a hill every day we had to do this man see all this physical must’ve done us some good and it was behind we didn’t go towards Enoggera we went the other way and it was like that steep and they’d take

us right to the top of it then we’d march back. Do you think I could find that hill when I came up here? Cause it was all built on then it was so different but it was just out

No it was away well it could be now part of the barracks but it wasn’t then.

Yea it went up and they’d march us right up full mach and then we’d have to come back

again and I thought I must go and find that hill and Johnny took me around but we couldn’t matter of fact I couldn’t find Fraser’s paddock they tell me it’s all built on now. Different altogether but it was very nice. We had some nice staff sergeants and sergeants there that gave us all our training and they were all lovely and brown you know real Queenslanders I thought, “This is for me I’ll come back up here,” and never thought I’d end up living here

but it was a nice barracks and everything and then we got all our needles there and we stood. That’s where [General Thomas] Blamey came down. No we had a parade there before we went that’s right and we’d had to have this other needle can’t think a the name a that other one. We’d had the one and it knocked us all out and they were dropping the girls were dropping all over the place with it and they wouldn’t take us off the parade ground. Was that Blamey’s? No, Blamey kept us

standing in the sun for over an hour one day. I can’t remember. I think that was up there. But no it was a very nice we had officers quarters of course it was very nice. But these blinkin’ frogs. Poor old Nance she never got over that I don’t think cause when we were away we were looking for spiders and they had some big spiders up there but they were never anywhere near us because it had all been cleared. Only the goannas and things. No monkeys.

But I missed the birds. But they said they’d all been frightened. May said they came back after a while you know after we’d left the birds started to come back but not a sign of a bird. Yeah it was and then these bloody what do you call em the foxes’d start and it’d just sound like babies crying and the first night I said, “That’s funny,” I said, “I can hear a baby crying,” and the girls could all hear it you know and

then we found out that it was these flying foxes but they never came into us cause we had no trees around us. But they were weird but you got used to em after a while. But no it was a good life I’m glad I had it and I enjoyed every minute of it.

On a troop train. Yes on a troop train. My it wasn’t my first experience cause I’d been up a couple a times to Sydney

yes I’ll never forget that and all the blokes were down one end and we’re in the middle and they wouldn’t come near ya no. They were well disciplined I thought wouldn’t come only when we stop at Albury. Remember us stopping at Albury and we all went in for drinks and things and we mixed a bit then but we were all back on our. Now did I sleep on the floor that day I think.

No we had bunks that’s right yeah we had bunks coming back we must’ve had bunks going up too. But no that was an experience we’re in it at last you know. Thank goodness for that we’re going somewhere. But that trip was all right and we stopped at Clapton Junction now where’s Clapton Junction? That’s in Queensland but it’s gone now I think and I think it might a been Rocklea. I tried to find that and I couldn’t find it.

I think it could be Rocklea because we got out there and we got into the trucks and went out to Fraser’s. But it no that was yeah I’m sure it was Clapton Junction. Cause I said to Johnny where’s Clapton Junction and his mother said it’s out so and so. So I know that’s you know where it was and I think they closed it and I reckon now that it would’ve been Rocklea cause there’s a big

train thing there isn’t there? There mightn’t be now. But no that I enjoyed that time. We got caught for J-walking. We’d only just got to Queensland and the three of us went in and we crossed over in Queen Street from the Carlton Hotel was it the Carlton? Yeah that side there we crossed down to Albert Street and we just walked

straight across and I’d never heard of jaywalking and this copper came up, “You ladies have been jaywalking.” “Oh,” you know, and we just smiled and said, “We’re sorry, we’ve just arrived and we’re on our way up to the Islands.” We had to put that bit in and he let us go. But I’ll never every time I come into Brisbane I think a that. God that’s where we all got three of us May and myself and Nance that’s where we got and we used to go round all the

YWCA [Young Women’s Christian Association] the YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association] and we’d out to Lady Bowen to dance and the town hall. That was a bad place though cause they had all those doors. You’d meet somebody here and you’d say you wanted to get away from them we’re going such and such and you’d go down and you’d go in the other door and he’d be doing the same. I didn’t like those doors. It was a beautiful hall though.

No I never when we were up there Cloudland was closed because a the war or something. The might a had installations up there or something. But when we came up here to live the first do that the company had was up in Cloudland and I got to Cloudland but I didn’t go up in the little thing cause we had the car and I thought it was lovely.

Yeah that was yes that reminded me of that thing. Yes and we couldn’t no it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working for a long time the lift. They’ve taken it away altogether now haven’t they? But Johnny said, “We’ve got to go to Cloudland. That’s where I used to dance.” And he said, “They’ve got this floor that goes up and down.” It was a moving floor or something and I thought, “Oh yeah. So? I’ve got better ones down in Melbourne.” Anyway we went and we

had a lovely time there and it was it was a beautiful hall and he took me around to all of the places. I said, “Yes, I s’pose this is where you used to take all the girls?” And he didn’t like that. I said, “Well you’ve got me this time so you behave yourself.” But no it was a beautiful spot there wasn’t it lovely view. It’s gone thought hasn’t it? they’ve taken it away.

And it broke his heart. We went past there one day cause he worked down with down near the trotting ground there with… God, I can’t… Electrical

firm down there and we went past it when they were pulling it down. I said yes you’ve got memories of that place haven’t ya? Yes. And we went to another one the railway up near the that must a been up near Roma Street too. The railway institute that was it. That was a beauty. Oh yes but we all came home together you know the girls just went

together and we all came home together. We’d have to catch the number 17 bus home and get off there and catch the tram. We loved the trams. I loved the Brisbane trams. They’re nearly as good as the old cable trams in Melbourne. That’s aging now. I used to go to work on one every mornin’ and sit in the front seat and drive it down. Look they should keep those things and have them operating for you imagine the kids on a cable tram

now and you’d stand. I used to think they were so marvellous those drivers they were always big men and strong and everything and they’d grab hold of that handle and they’d pull it back with a bit of luck you’d stop and we lived I had to go through Clifton Hill and Clifton Hill you come straight along then go straight down like that and then turn and there was a turn into to go towards Collingwood. I used to hold me breath. I’d be sittin’ in the front holding and you’d ride it all the way down.

They were beauties. They were good. That was Melbourne yeah that’s not Queensland. No I liked the Queensland trams too but Mum didn’t like their hats. She hated those hats but they don’t keep them. I mean the kids’d have a wow of a time on those things now wouldn’t know. I’d hate to think what they’ve done to the Melbourne trams when I go down. When I go down I don’t think I’ll be going

it’s too I’ve got no relations down there now. So it’s you know not worthwhile going down and I hated Melbourne. I liked it for it’s music its musicals and it’s plays and all those sort a things and we used to never miss a. Well now that’s something we did in those days. This friend of mine she was a singer she was lovely beautiful voice she was an alto and we never missed a opera

we never missed a ballet and we never missed a. How did I pay to go to these things? Or a play. But that was the life in Melbourne. You did that you didn’t I dunno you didn’t do the things that other people did in other states. You well there weren’t any clubs and things like that then and we used to go to the old Princess Theatre in Melbourne and we’d walked up to the Gods, 5 shillings it used to cost us, and we’d go up and we’d see every one of em and we reckoned we

had the best seats of the whole lot cause you looked right down at them. I saw Helpmann dance at the Princess Theatre before he became famous in what was that? Can’t even remember it now. One a the ballet’s and then he started to go up. Because I loved the ballet I went to my 21st birthday party to the ballet and my brother was he had to come a course and he didn’t lie it at all

no he didn’t like it at all but all the girls did. We all went in uniform. And that’s another thing you always went out in uniform but they were the lucky ones they could get out of it when they went home. I had to stay in mine and we all sort of went we went in a crowd of girls because there were no men. They were all gone they were all over fighting and I don’t think I on my 21st birthday I was the only none of us had anybody there some of them had

husbands who were fighting overseas and a fella Jack that I used to go round with he was I dunno where he was. I’ve forgotten now and we just went it was all just practically all women there. It’s a different world when it but course if it happens again won’t make much difference anyway. They’ll press a button and we’ll. Well my boys’ll be too old to go I hope my grandson wouldn’t be. But

That’s a point. How did they feed us? Now you’ve got me. I don’t know. I know we got off at Albury I don’t know. Can’t remember that. I must ask some of em.

Well a day and a night at least to Sydney and another day and a night to Brisbane about 3 or 4-days cause we didn’t stop anywhere like cause we were all supposed to be so secret though we weren’t allowed out but we got out of the train. Yes it’d be about 4 days I suppose to get to Brisbane that’s right.

I don’t know how we fed. I hope they fed us. I can’t remember. They couldn’t feed us on the trains. We must’ve had vouchers or something that when we got off and went in and got stuff. I wouldn’t know wait till I find somebody that was on used to go up in the troop trains I’ll ask em. That’s the point you’ve got a tricky one now I can’t answer that. I been able to answer all the rest of em. I don’t know.

First thing I’ll tell you – it didn’t fit. And we never wore or got a uniform that did fit. And we just had the khaki skirts and the jackets and the sleeves and the… and that was… and we got some pants but that had buttons on them.

Pants with buttons on them and I’m always frightened of losing them, the button would fall off so I used to tie them in a knot there and then we’d put safety pins around because I played in the band – we had a drumming band – and I played in there and I thought, “Well, I’d hate to lose them up the…” We used to go to all the big marches. I thought, “What if we lost our trousers there?” So we all used to do that. You had no idea

what was going on inside. Oh God they were nasty things and stocking, think, long stockings and shoes. And gloves, yes we had gloves and great coats which were wonderful, I wish I’d kept mine. Great coats and just the little hat. I don’t think I’ve got any photos taken in my other uniform but they were nice enough and a belt around them and that was it.

Not till I went away and that was a different uniform altogether.

Well that was long khaki trousers and safari tops with long sleeves so that after six o’clock you used to have to take them down to keep the mosquitoes off, then you put the mosquito lotion on your hand and on your face and on your neck so any skin that was showing would have to be covered up. We had slouch hats,

then we had berets for when it rained. And what was the idea of those? Oh that’s right, if you wore a hat the water used to run around and go down because the picture theatre was in the open and everything was in the open and if you wore a beret it didn’t run around and back down your neck or something so they gave us berets but they were nice. I liked the old slouched hats and we wore boots up to here. And we wore puttees

on our, you know puttees? Yes, that’s what they call them, round our legs so that nothing could get up, the mosquitoes and what not couldn’t bite us. So we were completely covered ad after six o’clock definitely but sometimes we’d roll our sleeves up, there’s some in that book there of us with our sleeves rolled up but they were nice uniforms those but they were only tropical kit.

Nobody there to comment. Only army and they all wore them. You know what I mean? There’s one photo there that my girlfriend sent home to her mother, she was going to put it in the paper and it showed, I didn’t have a hat on or anything, but they, no there was no comments. We’d like to have kept them because they were cool and everything but you couldn’t. I couldn’t even wear my slouch hat when I got home either.

We used to have to go back to our old uniform then.

Oh we all complained about little bits and pieces of them but that was part of the trip. No, oh they had to be ironed. And some of them starched them and one lady used to get up at four o’clock in the morning and starch all her uniform, trousers and everything but she ended up being sent home. She went off her rocker. She went troppo.

But she, beautiful looking, beautiful, but I never put starch in mine. You only had them on for five minutes and they’d be wringing wet. You know, when it was a good hot day. But they were comfortable and we danced in those boots and we wore that to everything that we went to except when we went over to Labu or one of those to swim. You still wore your whole uniform over and then you’d slip into togs. So I can

never quite get that bit and then you’d just go for a swim but you’d still get back into your uniform, you must have your uniform on most of the time. But they mightn’t have thought there were mosquitoes where the ocean was but there were vingys. I got a very bad bout of vingys. I’d never heard of vingys and my whole back was just lumps all over. I had a terrible time with that but then after that I hadn’t put any mosquito repellent on my back you see.

So then before you went in for a swim you’d have to put mosquito repellent on all over you to keep them off.

Oh yes. I took a red… Yes I did. How did you…? Did I tell somebody that? How did you know that?

Oh don’t tell me!

Oh yes. No we,

I had this red dirndl. It was beautiful, I thought it was lovely. It was low-waisted, it was bright red and they all reckon the natives would attack me if they saw it because they love red, they love all those things so anyway when I left I filled out whether they’ve got it or not I don’t know but we didn’t wear civvies on many occasions at all. I don’t think I wore it up there because

we had to be covered but I had the dress there and threw it out and gave it to the Boongs, to the natives. I got so used to calling, we always called them Boongs and I believe it’s a very bad word now but that’s what everybody called them. But I don’t know whether they did or not but some of them needed a dress on I tell you. Some of them were lovely, the little fourteen year olds were beautiful. The others

weren’t, down here somewhere. I got sick of looking at those things. Oh dear, oh dear. Because when we first stayed we went out with the padre, one of the padres, I don’t know, I think it was the Church of England padre and he took us out in a jeep, three of us, and he just took us for a trip around the station and we looked over and these were, up near the Markham River and there’s these women

washing on the stones you know like you see them and doing and we were all fascinated. “Can we go over and see them?” “Oh yes.” So he took us over. I think one of them didn’t have anything on and the others had nothing on any of their tops. Us dear little girls and the padre of course. I never knew where to look, didn’t know what to do but he didn’t take any notice and of course then they all, none of them wore tops

all the girls. None of the native women wore tops and we got used to it after a while, you just saw them and that was it. Then a fellow came down from the mountains. What did they call him? He was the head man of the tribe and he’d heard there was some white girls down there so he’d come down to look us over and he had, I’ve got a photo of him in there, he had a ring through his nose and it was right out round here. It just hung down right over. Well

of course that got us in. We tried to work out how he drank or how he ate or what he did. So we followed him around, it must have been the weekend and we followed him all around the place until he had a drink of water and he just lifted this great big disk up and then he’d have a drink of water and then put it down but oh, he was a big fellow. From Mount Hagen. He must have been well over 6 foot, well over 6 foot and he just had the lap of grass down the front and grass down the back

and that’s all. Yes. And we knew, by then we knew…we knew what it was all about by then but he had a camp of little kids with him. The little kids are gorgeous. They are.

Well everybody was, he was such a

fearsome looking thing we didn’t start following him around but he went right around the camp, they let him go, he was quite harmless. We were all waiting to see him trip up or do something but he didn’t. He was too short and feet, feet like that on him. And they’ve all got big feet and they’re all very good drivers. Or they were, they reckon, because the native driver he used to drive us back from Labu when we used to go there

for a swim and he’d always bring us back and his whole foot would fit over the clutch and the other foot would fit over the bit to go forward. The whole foot. Oh they had big feet. And they never wore very much. The women didn’t take any notice of that, it was dark. I don’t know what was going on there but oh cripes. But some of the young girls

they were beautiful. They were, they had beautiful bodies on them but we went on a trip one day through, we were going to walk to Wau and we took off. I’m trying to think who was with us – must have been somebody with a gun – and we took off through the jungle and we sort of had to go through a little track and there was a woman coming up with a tiny little baby in her hand and the men went first that’s right, she was behind him, the big fellow came up with a great

big spear and all beetle nut juice in his mouth and he stopped, he had a grin all over him and when she came up she had this tiny little baby and they’re white. I think this baby might have only just been, hadn’t been born very long and they’re nearly white and they don’t darken till they get older, till they’ve been there for a while. And it was a little boy and oh, no clothes on him and he just laid there. He was the most gorgeous little thing but we weren’t allowed to touch them because they had different diseases

that we couldn’t, we couldn’t nurse him or anything. This was when I see Princess Diana nursing all those little black babies over there I often think of that and they were going on walkabout and we stopped and just, we didn’t have words with them, we just looked at the baby was taking our eye more and then he just waved his stick and that was to go and off they went, they went round us and went on.

But it was a beautiful little baby and another time we went in with some, I can’t remember where I met this fellow, he had a jeep. If they had jeeps, oh yes, we stuck to them because you could go out then. He took us down through the Fly River which he didn’t tell us till we got over, we had to be back at a certain time because it flooded and if we didn’t get back at a certain time we wouldn’t get back. You can imagine the scandal that’d be going on then.

And he took us into a village and you’ve seen these native villages on TV, there wasn’t a soul there and we went into get some bananas as a matter of a fact and there wasn’t a soul there and I said, “I’m not going in there.” He said, “Come on.” He said, “It’s all right.” And we went in, there were three of us I think, and three men. We might have had two jeeps going. Anyway, we went in

and he stood in the middle of, it was an ANGAU scout, like in peace time so he knew where he was going and everything and he stood in the middle of the village and he spoke their language and then he saw all the curtains going past, opening and they gradually came out and the man belonging to the village and I was petrified. The man belonging to the village came along and he spoke to him in pidgin

asked him did he have any bananas and they didn’t and he took him over to us and introduced us, just said, “This is so and so and so and so,” and lower teeth hanging out and betelnut juice and whatnot. And then he said, “I think we’d better go,” and I thought, “Oh God, they’re going to put us on a stake and burn us for sure.” You know you see those pictures… anyway, “Don’t hurry,” he said, “just move out quietly” and we just moved out quietly but I think

I was the first in the jeep and then we just went away. He said, “Just wave to them,” and we waved to them and that was all right, they didn’t do anything. That was my days of our lives just finished. My tape. But that was an experience, we weren’t in any trouble or anything but we’d probably all seen Trader Horn and that was the picture that I’d seen and they burnt them at the stake, and that

was all I could think of. And all the little kids came out and then by the time they’d all gone back in again. Just disappeared, they didn’t stay but that was a village right in the middle of the jungle. I don’t know whether we were supposed to be there or not. I never found out but that was really something that had stuck in my mind. It was like something out of the past and then we, on the same day we went past a group making a boat.

We thought this was wonderful. They were making a boat like we thought natives would make a boat – you know dig it out with blunt instruments and whatnot and they all had electric drills. And they had the power on and they’re making their, putting the nails in with electric drills. I couldn’t get over it and I was most upset because I thought we’d seen something native and it wasn’t and they were working away with the drills. Got them from the yanks probably. So I wasn’t

very impressed with that lot and we saw the nut trees and all that, throwing down coconuts and what have you but no they’re very quiet people. I thought, they were very quiet and it was another experience for us. I’m still going back up there. That’s the one I remember.

Nobody was allowed in. It was all enclosed. They couldn’t get in to anything. Oh, they had them though but whether they were servants to the white people and they were theirs or not I don’t know but they used to fill them up with coconuts and they’d have… that’s right. We threw out some bras, that’s right and they used to wear them down to there and

they’d fill them up like pockets. They’d have the one on top and then the ones on the bottom. And we weren’t, we bought bananas and…

Just the same. We used to go up and get them and didn’t make any difference at all really. That’s what I wonder with these ones that are going overseas, going fighting, what they’d be doing. But they might be a bit more modern now.

You’d just go up to the RAP [Regimental Aid Post] and they’d give you a tablet. They’d be a tablet for everything.

Or something like that. We had an RAP on the grounds and they’d… if you got sick you had to get sick before 12 or after 5 because they had a rest then. We had a siesta every day. We only worked till lunchtime and then we’d come home and we’d have a rest and if we had to go back and do some work they’d have to take us over again and do it but not very often.

The heat was, I loved it. The heat didn’t worry me one scrap but for some of them it did. If you were working all the time. It’s all right if it’s hot and you get under a tree or something but we were sort of just in these little huts with the sides down.

Mainly writing. Office work. All office work. We had to… we were under a lot of trees, there were a lot of trees around us and they had it pretty well shaded but by the time you walked back from the barracks, walked back to the barracks, marched back, it was pretty hot by the time you got back. See the other thing was that perspiration, now see a lot of the girls got dermo

under their bosoms. One of my friends, she had to be sent home, she got it everywhere. In her ears, in her hair and everywhere. She was a bad case so they sent her home and that’s what happened to a lot of them. The dermo was really bad but I perspired so much, it used to be just dripping off me so it wasn’t a worry. I got rid of it, it didn’t seem to worry me only I got prickly heat but we all got prickly heat

a bit down there but the heat probably affected some of them although after a while you know you didn’t, and nobody would admit it because they might get sent home and nobody wanted to go home but no way in the world any of us wanted to go home but we coped with it anyway.

Yes.

They gave us the, they told us what different words meant. I know what you want to hear, I know. I told her to cut that out but that’s true.

We picked it up. I’ve got it in that book there. Not that book, in the photo album, I’ve got a whole book in there on, the book that we got from the natives used to print it for the natives – one sides pigeon, one sides English but no, there were certain words we weren’t supposed to use and that was puss-puss because the said that that was the invitation and that you’d be likely to be flattened down on the ground and all

the rest of it so we weren’t allowed to use that but we weren’t, I think why they stopped us talking to them was perhaps because we might say something that meant something else to them. So we couldn’t but anyway this puss-puss we had to watch and when we, we hadn’t been up there very long when a kitten came into the house, into the hut and of course everybody’s going to run around and be

going to feed it and do something with it and they’d go ‘Come on, puss-puss, kitty kitty kitty kitty’. It was very hard not to say it and it disappeared thank goodness because I’m sure I would have said it at the wrong time but we laughed, we don’t know where the cat came from. I reckon somebody put it there on purpose. Found it or something because the natives have got a lot of animals and things. It came in and I thought, “Now it’s come in here for a reason.

To stop us saying it,” so we stopped. But they were very keen to talk to you anyhow. We had the boys around us, we’d say thank you and the common things but then they’d know what that means you know.

Well, it was lack of knowledge. There hadn’t been so many white women particularly up there ever,

there’d been other settlers and all of it and see they were still, there were cannibals further up the Sepik River, there were still cannibals up there so they told us and there were still a lot of the, well they weren’t wild still. I think that’s why they started right from the beginning and stopped us doing these things, well it’d be better than waiting till something happened but

they seemed gentle enough to me. They didn’t worry us. We didn’t have that many around. They cleaned the drains out and then there was another thing, they’d get on this beetle nut and it would sent them real funny. Real drunken and they were probably worried about that one of them with the beetle nut would come. It was like grog to our folk, it’s the same to the natives. And there was some reason for it but we never

luckily we never had anything that happened from it. But we weren’t allowed to speak to the drivers when they drove us out, we weren’t allowed to, I don’t know what, I think they weren’t sure just how the natives would treat us. They knew how they treated others, their own sort of and they just weren’t sure.

A white woman would probably be a big prize to them. So I don’t know but anyway, we obeyed them and did and nothing happened either way. We never had any trouble – not that I know of anyway. Only this one that didn’t bother coming up our end of the hut. I don’t know why he stayed near the other end. I said, “What would happen if he had of come in?” and they reckoned we’d have all gone like a billy-oh. He’d never have caught us anyway. But he was supposed to be a bull.

But there were, because you hear all these stories. There was a story that some of the natives captured some nurses and kept them prisoner but how true it was I don’t know but they were supposed to have taken them prisoner and used them a bit but they got away. They got them away but see I suppose these things happened while the war was on and there was no supervision.

The war had finished or there was no war in Lae then and whether they’d learnt from that I don’t know but we weren’t allowed to talk to them. You’d probably talk to them now, I’d talk to them now. I’d talk to anybody but I think it was just a sort of… and also the fact that we were the first women to go up there in a bunch like we did. I suppose they had to tread lightly. Anyway it suited us, we got used to us, we had plenty of other things to occupy us.

But we never had any trouble with them.

Oh you heard that one too did ya? That was funny

That was funny. Nancy and I and May, we were all down, no May got into the first class, that was right. But my initial was M and

Nancy’s initial was M too, so we missed the first class on both boats and we got down into second class. Anyway, we all decided we’d better go to the toilet before we got up on deck and we saw this latrine written on the front and we walked in and when we walked in it was a big square place like that and it had a trough there and there and there and there and then on top of the trough they had

these slats about that wide and that far apart and we all looked at them and we thought, “What the hell’s that?” and I said, “I don’t know, I don’t know what happens.” “Oh well, we’ve got to go, we’ve got to go.” So five of us sat up there on the slats and did what we were going to do and the water was running through it all the time and we think, the only thing we could work it out was probably the men’s, when they took all the men on the boats,

it was probably their latrine not ours but it was funny we all held hands, all five of us all along, I’ll never forget that so afterwards we used to sneak up to the first class ones because they were ours. I’ve never forgotten it and that was, it was so big. You could put a whole company in it. That was the story about that. She hasn’t forgotten those two.

But we never asked we were too frightened to ask anybody what it was all about. But we never went in there again. God no it was funny. What else did she tell ya?

Food? Good. Very good we used to go down we had men on the boat too at the same time going up and coming back and we all used to go in together and evidently we went into

where the dining room was when they were just ordinary boats and the food was very good. But coming back we struck a lot of cyclones. We come back in February cyclone time and the men all had bets on us who’d last out going down to dinner every night and we all went down we never missed a meal but by gee it was had sometimes because

we went up on deck one night and she was dropping and the top a the mast was there was water you could see the top a the waves over the top a the mast it was that whoosh down and then she’d come straight up again. That was the old [HMAS] Canberra. But they never won any a their bets because none of us missed we all went down. We didn’t eat much but we all went down there you’d have to be down. But I had a bit a trouble with my ears coming back cause I had tropical ear and then we

called into Bowen on the way back and we ate them out of milk ice cream fresh food everything. None of us had had see these fellows the fellows that were on the boat they’d come back from the Islands too I dunno what part. But see we never had any fresh food it was all tinned stuff and we hit Australia and that was it and they were drinkin’ milkshakes and were drinking all the things. Eggs fresh eggs and

all these things and oh boy did we suffer when we got onto the next day cause our tummy wasn’t used to fresh food then. No that was a it was amazing what you can eat and not affect you. All the tinned stuff we got.

Tinned spatchcock. See you don’t know what spatchcock is. Ether did I and when they pulled the poor thing out a

the tin I couldn’t eat it I felt so sorry for him. They were in cylinders I think the boys might a got them from the Yanks. They were in round tins like that and about that big. They took the top off and then you just pulled it up and it was a whole chicken. But he looked awful cause he’d been in the tin for so long. But it was nice. It was nice to eat and if you knew anybody from the hospital you were onto a bit a fresh

meat because they were the only ones that got fresh food the hospital patients and Nancy knew a friend from Sydney that was there and he got us a piece a steak one night. Well we bought it home and we had a little stove and we waited till lights out and we lit this little stove and we cooked this little bit a meat and we all had a little bit of steak a mouthful of steak each. So that was a good one to be on but if you knew the Yanks that was a good one cause you get

ice cream and they got all these all the good foods. They had a terrific canteen but we got a lot of their rations. They had the butter when you put your knife in the butter it all rolled back like that it was like rubber. That was terrible stuff but they had chocolate and their survival rations were very good. They had chocolate and everything that you could milk and but everything tinned there was nothing

any other way. But how the fellas made these meals up I don’t know I’m blowed if I know how they made it because you’d never recognise them when you go anywhere and they’d have a supper and you’d never recognise the food it was all good. A lot a tinned peaches and apricots and all that sort a stuff. But when you went on a picnic you went down the Q-store [Quartermaster’s Store] and you got all these tins and that’s all you took. No bread or anything like that

it was tinned fruit and nestles cream and then you’d get baked beans or spaghetti or anything like that and then you’d just open the tins and you’d have that. But we didn’t unless you could manage to get a couple a slices of bread from what’s a name from the canteen but didn’t seem to have much bread or somebody else could bring something you know they all used to dig in. And you’d have this great bag of tins and that’s what you’d have for your lunch.

That didn’t worry us we had that and go for your swim and what have you.

No. No I don’t think so. I used to buy the Yankee cigarettes, we used to have, yeah we had a few Yank cigarettes. No we bought our own cigarettes we didn’t have them rationed to us. Well the Yank cigarettes were only 3 and 4 pence a carton

and when I came home I had two cartons under me arm trying to hide them but I didn’t hide them very well but few cartons on me case and that’s all they were 3 and 4 a carton and they were much nicer than the Australian cigarettes. But we didn’t get them issued. We had a they opened the wet canteen

and they’d I think it’s twice a week or something we’d all line up with our mugs to get our beer but I didn’t drink then and I gave it to the girls and now when I think of it drinking hot beer out of a tin can. Tin cup it musta been awful. Cause I like my beer love my beer but they all. I don’t think you could get any wine I think we only had beer I dunno about the wine. But the men used to get the bottles

of scotch and the bottles of gin and. Gin and scotch and bottles of wine and things and we always took them with us. They always had them but I never had them. I didn’t they’d have orange juice and all the rest of it so it was. They weren’t issued either I dunno where they’d get those. You never asked you didn’t ask up there where you got things. You just took them as being there. But we did all right on the food but poor old Mum when I

came home she said, “I’ve got a lovely dinner for you tonight and lovely sweets for you.” And I said, “That’s good.” “Yes,” she said, “I stood I a queue for so long to get this fruit,” and all the rest of it. And I’d lived on tinned peaches and tinned apricots for 12 months and out she comes with this blinkin’ tin a peaches and I had to eat em. I’ll never forget. I never told her, I just ate them. It was the last thing in the world

I wanted. I wanted a pie or something you know something I hadn’t had. But and Nestles cream we used to take and you’d get ice cream from the Americans if you got them but we did all right with those little bits and pieces. And the resta the food was just. Baked beans I can never ever look at baked beans I can’t even bear the look of a tin. Cause you’d have baked beans in the morning baked beans for lunch

and baked beans for tea. One meal we had em hot the other two meals we had them cold. Powdered egg yuck. I’ll never forget that powdered egg. Powered egg and bacon like we had bacon but powered egg it was terrible. And we the first RSL thing that I helped on up here Anzac Day we lined up for the. We were on the Ladies Auxiliary, were taking the food around

and I went up to get a tray of food to take around and here’s this blinkin’ eggs. I said, “Don’t you tell me that’s powdered egg.” “No Peg, it’s not powdered.” I said, “It looks very much like powdered egg.” I said, “I don’t want any a that thanks.” But everybody else was eatin’ it and I don’t to this day know whether it was powdered eggs but they looked a bit sheepish and it probably was cause they had it in trays like this. That’s revolting. So

and then the milk. What was wrong with the milk? We had powdered milk that’s right and I’ve never had milk in my tea since couldn’t stand that and what was the other thing. And then every picture night they’d have what do you call em? Tablets on the table and we had to have these tablets before we went to the pictures. It’s that one that’s s’posed to slow you down. God I can’t think of the name of it

now. It’s s’posed to sexually.

Bromide. And we’d smell it you could smell it a mile off. We’d be going up to get our dinner to go to the pictures must be picture night tonight. They’d give you this bromide they’d put it in the tea. It was the most and it didn’t do any good anyway. Was no effect what so ever. But it smelt I can vile horrible stuff.

Well

lot a hot blooded Australians by then up there and it was dark in the pictures you never knew what was going to happen. But then it’d rain and that effects everything then. You’d have to get your ground sheet around your shoulders and didn’t make any difference what they did. But it never worried me I was too interested in the pictures. Heard Gracie Fields while I was up there. She came round gee she said some filthy things too. Filthy jokes or we thought they were. Nothing like what you’d see her on TV on

you know you hear about her. She was very good though. We had a lot a good concerts we’d all go along and the morning’s say it was Friday whoever got over there first to take the bricks over and we’d put them on the seats that was our seat or a rock or something. That’s how you booked your seats and nobody’d go and sit in those seats if there were rocks on those seats. They wouldn’t be game enough. Well this fellow that I used to go down with was over 6 foot and he was about this wide,

gee he was a big fella, and so I said, “Well we’re right, Sam. Sam’ll fix em if they take our spots.” But nobody worried but I’ve sat through a whole picture in the rain with a sheet around me you know a ground sheet around me and there’s some funny jokes about those ground sheets but I can’t remember them now. It’s too late and you’d just sit there you wouldn’t even notice the rain but one night see things

are coming back now. One night we went and we’d take lollies with us and you didn’t get soft drinks you got fire water they used to call it and you’d always take a bottle a fire water and your lollies over with you and we drank nearly all the fire water and they were fantails I haven’t eaten a fantail since and I had some left some a me fantails left and when we got home and I had some a the drink left too that’s right

and I poured the drink out. It was full of ants and we’d been drinking this all the time up there and we probably must’ve had more ants in us than outside. That was all right, then I got the lollies and said, “I’ve got some Fantales here, might as well finish these off,” and we took them out and they were alive. There were things crawling all out of em all over the place and we’d been eating them all night. No one ever ate another fantail. Didn’t do us any harm though. Yes I’ll never forget. See things

used to go off very chocolate particularly went off very quickly up there and all these wigglies in the and they’d all had them we’d all had them. We’re all waiting to see what happens. We thought we’d all be ill the next morning but we weren’t. We had ants and wigglies. But a good picture. You finished.

Yeah?

Yes I think we all sort of did but none of them were terribly serious.

Australian men yeah. We didn’t have anything to do with the Yanks. Well I was surprised when I saw them first. They were the most untidy looking lot I think I’ve ever seen

but I got used to it after a while that was the way they dressed and the WAAAFs [Women’s Australian Auxiliary Air Force] where they were so strict with us what we wore they weren’t with the WAAAFs and they weren’t good table tennis players cause we beat em. They used to come home and play table tennis with us and they’d come over for the just for the night and they had more freedom than what we had a lot more freedom. They weren’t in a compound cause they nearly had a fit when they

came to our place and saw what compound we were in and but they were all very nice they were nice ladies like girls I should say and some a the girls met up with Yanks and they used to come back there never had any trouble with em you know they went off. We used to have dances and we had competition and dance competitions and Sam and I came second I think it was

yes something like that and they had fancy dress balls and. (INTERRUPTION)

Next question please. I’m glad you got questions down there.

Well they used to they’d put up on the board that such and such a company would like so many AWAS [Australian’s Women Army Service] to go down there

and they’d put on a dance for us and supper and everything else and that’s how you met most of them because none of them would be comin’ into the camp and that’s how you meet them and then somebody might know somebody that might be there from the home town or something like that and want them to bring a friend along and that’s how it went. Well we moved around in fives our five girls. We always went

together and if these others somebody said they’d like take us out to the beach or to the run or anything but you never thought anything about it cause you trusted them and they’d be too frightened. Well I don’t think perhaps we were a bit naïve but glad to get out and go for a trip but they never. Never ever had any troubles or things like that

and you never were with anybody from the office though. You know only this major that used to come over to see me from the office that’s all.

He’s the one that every time I’d be sitting there and he’d sing out, “Corporal McGee.” “Yes sir.” “Bring your cup a tea in.” And we’d have morning tea I used to have to go in and I’d go in and sit we’d just have a talk. That’s how you know it

started up and he lived near me and in Ivanhoe and I had no intentions I mean to say I only went in just to sort a talk to him cause he was an old man as far as I was concerned. He was very nice bloke very nice fellow and then gradually he asked me could he take me to the pictures over at our place not take me I never went out a the camp with him or anything. Could he come over to the pictures and take me to the

pictures? Because it was a bit of a joke it wasn’t like being home if you went into town to the pictures. The men have to come to us and they’d take us to our pictures or to our concert or whatever was going on so I saw The Bells of St Mary’s that’s right was on and he said he was coming over and I was sitting next to one of our officers and it came over the microphone, “Corporal McGee Major Ryan wants to see

you.” And I didn’t know which way to look and she what was her name? I’ve forgotten it’s gone out now she laughed her head off she thought it was a scream. She said, “Go on,” she said, “Major Ryan’s waiting for you over in the officers’ mess.” I said, “I’m not going over there,” and you were frightened to do anything you wouldn’t do anything wrong you know what I mean? You knew you weren’t supposed to frat [fraternise] with the officers, weren’t s’posed to, and, “No, I

couldn’t do that.” She said, “Why? You go over and see him. He’ll be outside the mess.” And anyway he came over and she moved up and she said, “Sit down here sir.” And he sat down there and he was half he’d had a few drinks and I’ll never forget that night. I sat all the girls were behind me and here’s me sittin’ up the front with the officers and we saw the picture out

and then I thought, “God, I’ve got to get him home. I can’t stand this.” So I got up and I walked to the gate with him and he wouldn’t go home. Anyway eventually he did but I was very very embarrassed was never anything between us at all but he just seemed to take a shine to me for some reason or not. Wonderin’ whether he knew Dad. Dad might a said look after that daughter of mine because there was nothing no nothing ever happened. We never held hands or did anything.

but he came over every all this time. Every time he got a chance to come over to see me and they all knew in the office and they’d all be waiting for, “Corporal McGee, come in here please.” And in I’d go in with me cuppa. Cup a tea and I’d have to have morning tea with him. But that’s all the went on. But laughed I came he got me two Jap swords and one. Or he got me a Jap sword I happened to say I would like to take a Jap sword home with me. I don’t

know why I wanted a Jap sword to this day. Anyway he said, “Well I’ll get one for meself and I’ll get one for you.” And he said, “Will you take them home on the boat?” So I went onboard the boat with two Jap swords under me arm and hid them when I got in the boat and all the rest of it. I dunno whether I was supposed to allowed to take them I have no idea anyway I got home and I was working down the barracks and I got a call form one a the other

majors there, “Would you come to my office please?” And I thought that rings a bell that comment and anyway when I went in here’s Major Ryan with this other fella he rushed up and he put his arms round me and he hugged me. God only knows why and I’ve looked over his shoulder at this other officer and this other officer pop-eyed he was that pleased to see me. So he came to see if I had the swords. I said, “Yes I have the swords.” I said, “I’ll bring it

in.” And I never saw him again after that but this other officer was, he had a limp, gee he was a nice man and he was killing himself laughing on the other side of the table and he sort of I dunno what Mick Ryan had said to him about me or not or anything. But I never saw him again. So I was I the train one. No going down to Albert Park in the tram and this

other Captain Edwards was also up there with us and he was on the thing and he came down to talk to me and he said, “Have you seen Mick Ryan?” I said, “No I haven’t seen Mick Ryan.” This was I’d been back must’ve been 12 months cause I was working down at down St Kilda way and I said, “No I haven’t seen him or heard of him.” He said, “I think you better get in touch with him now.”

I said, “I’ll think about it.” And I never thought any more about it. I had no intention of getting in touch with him. But it appears his wife had died. He had a wife and three children. She was an invalid or something three kids and I’d told Mum about it and Mum said she said, “You couldn’t take on three kids.” I said, “Mum I have no intention of taking on three children.” But she was evidently terminally ill or something and I don’t know much. Anyway I didn’t see him again.

But nothing ever he was like my father that’s what he felt like more like my father and I was nice to him and I dunno whether he I dunno what it was all about but I never saw so I don’t know where he went to. I was always frightened Dad would bring him home or something. He might’ve been a friend a Dad’s but he didn’t so that was all right. But there were little romances went on all around the place. You know the men were lonely and but no

harassment or anything. I just can’t understand it I really can’t how they talking about this I dunno.

Well we wouldn’t have known if they did because they’d be taken straight home. Sometimes there was a few went home and we didn’t know what was wrong with them but nobody knew what was wrong with them so I dunno they could’ve been. But I don’t

never sort of. We didn’t think about anything like you know anything like that happening or as I keep saying we were young, but we were very young and we were very naïve. But a lot of them couple of them went home or one of my friends went home went off her rocker, and I went down the hospital to see her they had her in a cage – they were putting food

through underneath the cage. I’ve never forgotten. Never went back again. And it appears but I believe she got better. She was a beautiful girl. Peters what was her first name? I’ve forgotten now what her first name and I went up in the boat with her when we went up there and became friendly with her. But she was a lovely person she had naturally curly blond hair and she had it cut short and she had a lovely face she was really very attractive and they reckoned there was something they all said

that a lot a the girls volunteered to get away from romances and broken romances and things and they said something that like that but I don’t know what happened to her. But I believe she’s still going. She’s still alive the last time I heard. But that frightened us and we all thought we’d end up troppo the lot of us but we didn’t.

No. No enjoyin’ meself too much. Havin’ too much fun.

No I didn’t. No it was all such a wonderful new experience. Well as we stayed on we could a gone in the first draft but we didn’t we stayed on another 6-months after they went and they went home on the [HMAS] Manoora yes I think it was the Manoora they went on and they. That’s right it was the Manoora because we went down with no streamers so you can guess what they got. Toilet

paper and you should a seen the boat. It had all this toilet paper we were throwing up to them onboard and I dunno how long where it all ended up. We never found that out but we saw them off and they sent the ones that weren’t well or wanted to go home. A few of them had dermo and things like that but I don’t think we had any serious diseases. I dunno whether I was the only one. I thought I was the only one that had

dengue I think and I never want that again. It was rather frightening but once you got over it you were all right. It’s more like Ross River fever something like that. But they looked after me up there and I got time off. I had about a month off work it was lovely. I just stayed around and did nothing at home. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t walk from here to the gutter I was that weak after it. And I had a

slight dose of malaria when I came home. But that frightened Mum more than it frightened me. I had the shakes and I went straight to bed and I shook and shook and shook and, “What’ve they done to you? What have they done to you?” I said, “I’ll be all right in the morning,” and it had gone over in the morning. The reckoned that sometimes you don’t get a lot a these things until you’re on the way home until you get home you know the bug or whatever it is lays dormant there

and when you get your change of. Cause my ears were very bad coming back and they’d practically fixed up before I left but this one in particular the one I’m deaf in was really bad. I had to go down and have it dressed everyday. And I got a tropical ulcer too coming back from a little cut. Your body evidently once it gets out of that atmosphere whether that’s it or not I don’t know but that didn’t

worry me. But that’s on my army records that I had a tropical ulcer but I didn’t know it was one a those. I just thought it was just another ulcer. But apart from that I was hail and hearty. Very well. Ready for anything. I was only home a fortnight and I went up to Sydney I couldn’t stand it any longer cause you had nobody to talk to. We’d had 12 months away with a different time and nobody

wanted to hear about it. They’d all had their own little life they’d had their queues for food and their tickets for clothes and all that. Nobody wanted to hear what we’d done. So I packed up and went up to Nancy and that’s when the fella said here’s the two look at the two yellow sheilas. I’ll never forget that yeah the two yellow sheilas. And that’s why I think now with this

ex-servicewomen’s organisation we’ve all got something to talk about. We all sort of feel as if we still live in the times I suppose but everybody’s got a different story and you’ve got something to discuss. Where when we came back we had nothing if you didn’t know or were near people well you just didn’t know. But anyway that was all right. Right next question. (INTERRUPTION)

Is it gone?

I don’t want you to hurt your ears.

I don’t know about that. That’s I think Major Ryan helped me do that and they just lot of us got promotions up there. We’d been in for 3 years and I didn’t even know I was getting it. I got a lance corporal and I had to put on this one stripe and then a couple a weeks later the corporals one came through.

So I think the officer probably they put you in for recommendation. So that’s how I got it. That’s all I knew about it I didn’t know I was even getting it.

A bit more pay that’s all not much.

No there was really no advantage it was just to say that they were pleased with your work

cause I think I was the only one in the office who worked with military secretaries for as long and I knew all what had to be done. A lot of them are all new to it but I wouldn’t say I was the head. There was a sergeant there so she’d be in charge of that but I just took it give me the extra money. I think I went up bout couple of dollars. But we didn’t pay taxes or anything on there we saved a bit a money. By staying

up there and if I’d have stayed on well I wouldn’t a paid any taxes either if I’d a stayed on as a civilian. But I didn’t. No there wasn’t much. The sergeant’s but nobody ever wanted to be a sergeant cause the sergeants weren’t very popular with the sergeants’ mess, and they didn’t mean… They didn’t worry me. I didn’t care. I was doing the same job

as they were doing probably but nobody every particular wanted to be a sergeant. But corporal I was quite happy with that and Dad was tickled pink when I got my two stripes. He might a got em for me I don’t know. You’ve got me thinking now. I’m wondering what he was doing. But no there wasn’t much no advancement or privileges came with. Just you got that little bit of extra money. We only got 7 and 10 pence a

day. You think of it now what they get. These post-army women now we had a reunion up there in the three services and the post- and pre- and we sat and we had a couple a post-war lasses sitting with us they were getting terrific money and

all the little perks they get. But they don’t live. They all live at home and they pay for everything but they get a good wage. Like it’s not if you’re just in the army sort of business they all live at home and they’ve got to buy their own uniforms and everything. But they got good money up in the high thous and they were married. They had children and everything and living at home.

Right on a horses back I should a got into that. No I don’t think I could a stood it that long. But there’s a lot of them we have a lot of things that they come to and we go to and they’re very interesting to talk to cause we came compare. They have sheets that was something we never had. Actually had sheets. We only had or we didn’t need any up there but that’s what Betty and I were talking then

about our what we slept on our palliasses. I never knew what a palliasse was and I filled mine right up high and got in it and rolled out of it cause you don’t put much in it. But I didn’t know that nobody told me. You’ve got to find out for yourself and she said she did the same with hers but she learnt very early. She was in the canteens in Melbourne at

and we didn’t have any sheets but they’re very well looked after. Still it’s a different world now so they probably need to be. They’ve got to go along with everybody else. In the thousands. Yeah what’s next madam please?

Well it was circular and it had a circular big place like so and it had a

8-foot wall. I think it was 8-foot wire wall and then it had a piece of wood going out that way and a piece of wood going out that. You know like the prisoner of war camps. Piece going out that way and a piece going out that way and then about four strands of wire on either one and then in the middle of that where it went like that they had rolls of wire. You’d a been torn to pieces if you’d a tried to get over it. But the ones that did we had two break ins

but they cut a hole on the very very far side. You know where the Anchorage is? Well it would go from here as far as the Anchorage. But we were on this front perimeter of it and the rest was all just cut down there was nothing there. We had a tennis court and there was nothing else there. There was no trees or anything they’d cleared it all out but it was only the

wire and the thing and they just with snipers and just gone round it made a hole in it. But they fixed that up so that wasn’t. But it was a big area and we had our hut was 15 so there were 15 huts at least for the ORs [other ranks] and then the sergeant’s had theirs up further and a course the officers had theirs too so it was quite a big. There’s a photo in that book I think of it the compound on guard. They had a sentry

you know what I mean sentry yeah standing right outside with his rifle at. He was at ease most of the time but nobody could get past him. Nobody could get in and nobody could get out unless they had permission. But I don’t know whether they do that now I don’t think they do. I think all live in the same places they don’t have the barbed wire on the thing but it was still an experiment

when we went so. But we didn’t want to go very far anyway cause you didn’t know what’d happen to ya.

Well I think it was an experiment of sending women away to do office work. See when they started sending them when they started taking them here I think they only did office work but then now they’ve branched out and they’re just part of the ranks now.

Well as far as I know I mean I don’t know I could be wrong on it but I think they now they’re more like. They’re a soldier that’s all there is to it. They’re not a AWA [AWAS – Australian Women’s Army Service] or a whatever you’d like to call em they’re just one a the soldiers. I just don’t know I’d hate to see my daughter go over there under those circumstances because they’ve got a take what the men take so that’s all there is to it.

The discipline?

Well yes. The routines the first routine was Atebrin we had to take Atebrin everyday and they lined us up.

Well everybody else got up at 6 o’clock but I used to manage to get out on parade at five past and up till then. I was a beggar I used to I couldn’t wake up

and they got sick a waking me up and the lass that was in my hut lives up in Bilinga and poor old Tammy she got sick a waking me up so she used to leave me there then and I’d suddenly realise I was the only one in the hut and. No well we used to get up at 6-o’clock and we’d have our Atebrin and that was about all and then they’d dismiss us and then we’d just have our showers and what not and go up to breakfast and then we had a little while

before we went to work. But very strong discipline I mean you behaved yourself or you were in a lot a trouble and I think that too has carried through with us later cause we’re so used to being told what to do. But the discipline was very strong. Couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that and you were too frightened too anyway. But never

worried us we got used to it. You don’t well we were in the army so we knew we had to have discipline but you couldn’t. Up there well other times when I was living at home I used to make sure I had everything a tie on and my and everything I wouldn’t dare go out not dressed properly and we had as I said we got to salute every officer that went past and when we used to walk down to work

in the winter we used to thoroughly enjoy it because the officer’d be walking down with their great coats on and their hands in the pocket you know it was cold and we’d salute them and they’d have to take their hands out a their pocket in the cold. We did that to a few of them. But then if you didn’t salute them you’d get into trouble. You wouldn’t dare not to salute anybody you’re too frightened in case you got you wouldn’t know what they’d do to you. They’d probably yell at you or something.

No I didn’t I was very lucky. I missed out my the skin a me teeth I only went AWL [Absent Without Leave] once and that was cause we were going home and Nancy wanted to see this fellow that she knew there and somebody said, “Why don’t you just go out?” So they arranged we were allowed to go out with

them that was all right but we were late coming home that was what it was and we got home and we looked in the orderly room and the lights were off so we went like a. No the lights were on that’s right and we were still in the dark and they’d pulled up somebody else that had come in late and Nancy and I got round behind the orderly room we ran down to the other didn’t go down through the huts went round to the back a the huts and went into the toilet and we sat there for quite some time

waiting and then we just went back to the hut. It frightened the life out a me cause I thought if I go AWL and Dad hears about it I’m in trouble. But that was the only time I ever. Oh yes now I’ve forgotten his name. I didn’t like him I wasn’t keen on him at all and Nancy I think they went off we were there was a wreck up there, the Maruka Maru and it used to be there place they

reckoned that all they used to go to there the women and the men go down to the old Maruka Maroo cause there was nobody down there and anyway they walked down the beach along the beach and I sat with this fellow and I wouldn’t let him come anywhere near me. I sat in one seat and a course with the jeep everything’s down the middle and I made sure it was he stayed on his side a the jeep and we both we neither of us were that keen but we come because Nancy wanted to say goodbye to

God I dunno who it was this other fella and you had to go out in pairs you couldn’t go out on your own and was the most boring evening for both of us. We sat there and we knew that there was no light between either of us. And anyway they just were along the beach and came back and we went home but we were late and that’s why we ran down there. Cause Nancy would a been in terrible in a bit of a trouble too she was a corporal. She’d a lost her stripes. I dunno whether I had mine then I must’ve it wouldn’t a worried

me if I’d a lost them. I dunno. Anyway we got home but the others in front of us got caught. There were a lot went AWL that night it was our last night there and but it was funny. This wreck was it was a creepy thing. We went on it one day and I believe now it’s right out in the ocean you can’t see it. But it had been there for a fair while and you could get into it

the hole in the side you could get into it and you’d just go down a passage and you can take the stairs up and you can get up onto the top of it and you’d look down and all the hull was full of green coloured water. It was awful. I hated it. I didn’t like going there at all it gave me the creeps and then you couldn’t walk around the decks all the decks were blown in but she was solid and you couldn’t get into any trouble there and we went down there a couple

a times just to have a look at it. They often used to have picnics down there and go over the old Maruka Maru and there used to be another one at the end of the airfield with only the point sticking up and it was the marker for the planes to go out and you’d swear when the planes were going out that they were gonna hit the top of it and then they’d just go up over the top of it. But I believe that’s nearly beached now. So well the last

story I heard because I had friends that lived up there and but the old Maruka Maru I dunno what happened to that. Cause I was thinking off all the bodies that might be in it you know and I thought, “If one a them comes to the top, I’m off.” But it was a weird a creepy bit of a place there. We didn’t swim there we never swam there because there was supposed to be a crocodile so the fellas told us we never knew whether that was true swimming across the one a the rivers comes out

there and they reckoned he used to swim across backwards and forwards waiting for somebody to go for a swim and we never knew whether it was true or not. I don’t think it was. Right what’s me next question?

You’d have to go up to the CO [Commanding Officer] and they’d have a they’d reprimand you in the office and all depends on what it was whether you’d

get your stripes taken off you or you’d get detention and then you wouldn’t be allowed out till such and such. But I don’t think there were many things like well I never heard anything like that. We were all too frightened to do anything wrong. Not frightened but we knew what could happen to us so you didn’t do anything wrong. Some of them might’ve but we wouldn’t it wouldn’t have been local news.

What’d I do on leave? All the things that I wasn’t allowed to do when I was up in the army up there. No we just

We had no leave there. No not up there no. You never went out that gate unless you had a man with you and a gun and two of you. Two of you could go you must go in twos to everything. No we never allowed out and see I s’pose there could a been mines or something around there. I don’t know what was there.

And it grows over so quickly the grass comes up the old kunai comes up and covers everything so well you wouldn’t want to go out cause you wouldn’t know what we didn’t know the area at all and you never had any wish to go exploring. It wasn’t like going on a holiday and going for a bushwalk or anything you just didn’t leave the place without somebody with you.

And you could usually find somebody to go with you and two of you, you had to go in twos. If you went to a dance or anything you’d have to go in a certain number and you’d have a sergeant in charge with you. You just sort a didn’t go on your own. There’d always be somebody in charge of you if you did start to misbehave sort a thing well you’d be in trouble then. They were very strict very strict all the time but you didn’t notice it because you expected it

couldn’t be just let run loose up there.

Well none of us wanted to go. Well none of our particularly keen to go home. We would’ve like to have stayed there as civilians but as I said we couldn’t. But when the time came we were all pretty when we got on the boat and we knew we were going home we were all you know up. But we were sorry to leave it definitely sorry to leave the place.

But there was no prospects there wasn’t many prospects there. Nancy got a very good job and she applied. And see they were trying to keep a lot of civilians there cause a lot of them had gone and they were paying good money I think it was about 26 pound a week and that was a lot a money in those days and some of them did. Some of them stayed behind and married up there.

Nancy didn’t marry there. She married she came down to Australia I think to be married and then she went back up with him and then she stayed up there after he came back and then he passed away. He had some fever or something that killed him but she stayed on up there. But she liked it she was quite happy. She’s only a little thing about this high but she had plenty a go in her.

No everybody was too busy packing and you had to have all that luggage and stuff we had to have that all done and they inspected us and did the rest of it. No I don’t think we did much the night before. I think we started to get a bit excited about going home first thing. I mean you’d resigned yourself

to going home and we were well lights out were 10-o’clock and I think we all wanted a good sleep and everything else before we got on and then we left early in the morning. But I think when it all boiled down we were glad to be going home but we wouldn’t admit it. You know you sort of I was sad to see the place go when it left because it was a beautiful spot.

Although they there was nothing there when we left they hadn’t started to rebuild or anything and they turned our barracks into a hotel. And a friend a mine from used to play bowls with she went up there and stayed at it and they charged her an exorbitant price to stay there and I laughed. I said, “I got paid to stay there.” “Yes,” she said. I said, “the place down Beauty Bun Road.”

She said, “Yes that’s it.” Yeah that was where she stayed and she stayed there for a fortnight. And there was the difference she had nobody looking after her it was a tourist place then and when we were there we weren’t allowed out as I’ve said before and it sounded so strange they just turned into a hotel and all they probably they’d divide up the huts cause they were pretty big huts and there was how many in it? One two

three four. Four beds that side four beds that side and then that was partitioned off and then there was one two three four five. Bout five lots of those so that’d be 40 people in it. So they’d have plenty of room to build on you know to make they’d have to I dunno what they’d do with the ablutions block though. But anyway that’s where she stayed she went just after the war

and stayed there. And I said I got paid to stay there and she laughed. She said it was very nice cause there was a hotel there but the air force took it over 77 Squadron took it over and they had a lovely pool and we used to go down there quite often.

I would love to go back but I wouldn’t. I would have liked.

Some of them have gone back some of them have gone back and had a look at it and everything but I don’t’ think I’d be keen to go back now. But I would’ve loved to have gone back just to have a look just to see the changes. But it’s not as peaceful as what it was when we were there. They’re not well even when May was there it wasn’t very peaceful either. Cause she had a machete next to her bed and go outside when

she’d hear them outside and just chop at the grass and hope that she hit them you know she said they used to come and try to get in and she was living on her own. But she had house boys and everything but it was getting it got a bit too much for her in the end and she came back to Sydney. But she was a lot older than me she was about gee she’d be nearly 90. Cause she was a bit no 80 she’d be gettin’ close she’d be 89 but she’s

a wiry little thing. A real little boss she was and she used to boss the boys around that she had working for her and everything. But she worked up there she didn’t just live up there she worked up there. But no she was glad to get away when she did come home. And I wouldn’t be I’d love to go and have a look at it but in a better time. They’re probably all pulled down now. They had a big mountain there

as you came into Lae harbour there it was at the back and that was Suicide Hill they called it and that was where the Japs had their hospital and it was a big battle went on there they blew them out of the hospital in the end so I believe. But that was turned into a hospital after but I don’t know what they’re doing there now. I think it’s got all houses on it now. So it’s all sort of

everything’d be different and they say never go back to a place that you liked it changes too much. So that’s what Perth’s gonna look like to me next year when I go over. I won’t be able to find anything.

Sitting here all night you know because I’ll forget that I have another chair.

Ask the question again please. The hundred dollar question.

Well I think I got closer to his

experiences and understood more of what he had done that I did before. We were on the same level we were on the he’d been in the army and I was in the army and he knew although he was in the higher part of it than I was but we’d both had the same experiences to a certain extent. He it made us a lot closer cause

he and Mum didn’t get on that well together and they used to have a few little words and Mum more or less made me very frightened of my father because, “If your father knows that you’ve done such and such a thing,” you know that type of thing and after I got into the army and had my change of saw what the other side a the world was doing it bought me closer to Dad and we became

very close before he died and my only regret is that it didn’t happen before. He never hit us or Mum sort of over rode him on everything. I dunno there’s something I don’t know what it was all about but that bought us closer. He couldn’t get close to my brother cause my brother was more like my mother and he didn’t do the things but I did the things that Dad I was mad on sport and I was mad on animals

and I’d got into that and I’d got away from everything and sort a made my own life and I think that’s what bought us closer cause we were very close by the time he passed away and when he used to come up to us he was a different man altogether. Different father to what I’d always had. And I regretted a lot a that but as I go back and think about it it couldn’t have happened before then anyway cause Mum had

all the Mum wanted me to go here and Mum wanted me to do this and Mum wanted me to do that and Dad never ever seemed to have much of a say and when I got married I caused quite a disturbance between both families for that matter and Mum was writing over to me, “When you coming over?” I said, “We’re coming over.” “I hope your father’s all right. I hope he accepts you,” and all this business and by the time I got over there I was petrified of getting out of the

train. Well when I got out of the train he ran up to me and. No out a the plane that’s right I flew over. That’s when I flew over in ’53 and when I got out a the plane he ran out a the tarmac and handed me this envelope and when I and he kissed me and you wouldn’t a known anything was wrong and when I got back there was quite a little bit a money in it and I had great delight in telling

my mother this. She said, “We thought you’d have to go. We’ve made arrangements for you to go somewhere else to stay and we’ve done this and we thought your father wouldn’t let you come home,” and all this stuff and it was all wrong. Very wrong. (INTERRUPTION)

Yes Dad came out on the tarmac and gave me an envelope I’ve forgotten how much was in it. It was quite a considerable amount a money in it and put his arms round me and

there was not a thing said. And the next minute when we came down. We flew across from Perth when we were coming home and he was down at the station and he was all over me again and he took Ian in his arms and he wouldn’t let him out and there was nothing different. He was a different person he was laughing and joking and he might’ve realised that I’d realised that you know he was softer than I thought he was. I always thought him

as being a bit of a hard man. But he wasn’t he was as soft as butter and then a course when he used to come up to us we couldn’t get rid of him and then he’d go and join the photography club in Brisbane and even just before we left to come down here people’d come along and say, “How’s your father?” “How do you know my father?” “He went such and such a thing.” Then he’d go down the bowls club and stay down there and tell them how to play bowls and he absolutely loved it and I think he

it wouldn’t have taken much for us to say, “Would you like to come and live with us?” and he got a lot back then. So I did the right thing from when I was about when I went into the army I his life changed as far as I’m concerned. But I dunno what cause when I know there was a difference between Mum and the McGee’s when it started. Something happened I don’t know what it was and whether they

were very strong Catholics and whether they didn’t want Dad to marry her but she reckoned she was converted. They reckoned she was and Mum reckoned she wasn’t converted. There was a lot of religion trouble in our place and I think. Nobody’d tell me what went on but I thought I might as well. Just as well not to know I suppose but that’s the religion had a lot to do with it too.

Dad was a Catholic but Mum wasn’t. Mum was Church of

England and when they got married the family, the McGees made her have lessons and to be converted. But Mum swore to the last that she wasn’t but they used to tell me up there that she was. So I don’t know whether she was or whether she wasn’t. But Mum was very anti. Why she married him I don’t know. As my brother said we’re lucky to be here. So he said I don’t know how we managed to get here. And there

was a lot of religious business. There’s a lot with me too I was sort a the ham in the sandwich between the two of them and Dad didn’t he just dropped it altogether later on he didn’t bother to go to church or anything. But no it was one a those mixed up ones and that’s when I met father I thought, “Well I’m not going through that again, not going through that again.” So I didn’t. So now I’m on my own and I’m quite happy. But it’s a terrible thing when these things happen

in a family. It just sort of strikes them a bit. Right next question.

Well it was a big thing, we, me as a child, because I couldn’t make out why there was all the fuss

over it. Dad wanted me to go to a Catholic school which I did go to, then every Monday morning I’d have to stand up cause I’d be the only one that didn’t go to church during the day on the Sunday and I got into trouble for that and when I went to make my first communion Mum wouldn’t go and then when I made my confirmation she wouldn’t go. And all the other mothers were there. It’s a

it’s a hard thing. I think you can’t it was a mix up. Properly. Have you still got your noise have ya?

Now you’re plugged in?

You’re plugged in.

No I didn’t no. And then when I married father and we had the two kids I said well they’re going to have some religion in them. I think it’s necessary for

well that’s my opinion so I started taking them down to the Church of England they went to they joined the cadets or whatever it was. But the both reckon their atheists now so I don’t know what I did. I said you don’t know what an atheist is you know so I just let them go along. They’re both vegetarians. Ian’s not now but Ross is a very strict vegetarian and they both sort a went through that stage of studying they wouldn’t believe in anything you know that kids went through

with what’s his name? I could choke him every time I think of him one a the singers in Ian’s era and he thought the sun shone out a him and whatever he sang about was right you know and so I just let them go. I couldn’t cope with them so I thought well I did my bit and that’s all there is too it. I don’t think Gailen’s been christened yet my grandson. I dunno he might be.

Well I still had to go to it. But see this is what I mean I had one pulling me that way and one pulling me that way and I was sort a stuck in the middle. I didn’t know what to believe. I think I had a it’s a horrible feeling. Neither side would sort a come to me and say right well we’ve both got different ones and you go along and we’ll try and help you sort a

business. So in the end I just when I. That’s right when I went away that was a bit of an opening. The we used to have the church up a lovely little chapel I got a photo of that too the lovely little chapel up there and I was most intrigued because the Minister had finished and then the priest’d go in and that’d he’d have his service then and there was no you’re this and you’re

that. It was just all one and I thought now well why can’t we do that? Anyway they had a midnight mass there one Christmas we were there and it was packed. They were standing outside cause we got leave to go you see. All my girlfriends went with me and so the priest stood up and he said, “Well I didn’t know,” he said, “there were so many Catholics in Lae.” He said, “I wonder where they all came from?” Course everybody laughed they knew damn well. But that’s how they treated it.

I mean it wasn’t. And I’ll tell ya another one that always reminds me of is ‘MASH’ [American television series set in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital] that priest in ‘MASH’ you know. I always think I wish I knew him. He’d a been real good to know because he was so open with everybody. Anybody that went to him and to me that’s how it should be. So anyway when we came here they have a service the minister. The priest they call him a priest comes down here every

Friday and gives a short little service and I just felt I had to have something cause I’d given it all away completely and I thought no I’ve got to have something. I’ve been bought up to do you know with religion being a real big part of me and I just felt as if there was something missing. So I thought I’ll go up and see what it’s like. Well I’ve been going up there ever since and he is wonderful. He’s marvellous he’s a well it looks more or less if they’re all gonna join up

soon. But I’ve learnt more from Father Doug up here about things that I wanted to know than I learnt in all my life and I asked the priest up here I’d been up a couple a times could I go because I couldn’t walk up the church anyway and he said oh no that’s all right you can go and they’re quite compatible altogether. Now that’s how it should be. But it wasn’t in my time. I was talking to Betty about it. She said

now what was it she said? The only people that chased her at school were the Catholics. I said, “Yes, you Prody [Protestant] dogs,” I said, “I chased you too.” I didn’t know what she was and she laughed. I said well it was as bad for me as it was for you so what are you worrying about? So we’re having a laugh about it when you came in and but they used to sing this song what was it? Or they both sang it for either. Sitting on logs eating gizzards out of frogs. And that was

hard too on little kids. I’ve got more understanding now. I think people have got to be very careful with kids when they start and don’t make a division. There’s no division we’re all going to the same place we just go in different ways. The same with any of them. But no I had a good talk to the priest up there here and he was. It was all so different

to when I was going to church now it was totally different and they were a lot more open. But in my days they were strict and having this Aunt as a nun didn’t help and it was sort of you I lived it with fright. I was more frightened than anything else that if I didn’t do what they told me I’d end up down the fire or something’d happen and that’s wrong. It’s wrong

for children and I might a been a bit sensitive. But anyway that’s all over now so I go up there and he’s marvellous. He has a joke and a laugh and everything else and everything’s going well now.

We had church parade every Sunday. Yes we had church parade every Sunday. I was still going to church then. I but then sometimes the Church of England

didn’t want to go to the later one so they’d come to ours and that’s where I first got the idea. You know I thought no this is better this is much better you’re all one people but anyway it’s I’ve got my own ideas now.

We used to get their parcels get their letter paper and everything and I got a letter in there the biggest letter I’ve ever written to my mother was 27 pages and it’s all on

their paper and I thought now I must keep that because that’s a real souvenir. This is when I first went up there the letters might a got a bit longer later on. But Christmas up there they had a strike down on the Brisbane wharves.

This was our first Christmas this’d be ’46, no, Christmas ’45, and we couldn’t have any of our presents

and if any of us had been down in Brisbane they’d have all been in the water I can tell you. We didn’t get our cakes until January or anything like that so we had another Christmas. It was good we got parcels and quite a few parcels from the Salvos [Salvation Army] but Dad he thought the Salvos were wonderful. He had a real thing with them cause he said at least they would be in the front line and he

spoke highly of them. He couldn’t and we laughed because I didn’t know that he’d think that way but no he thought they were very good and I think they’re good too I give most a my stuff to the Salvos. They do a wonderful job. But no everybody was mixed up, and see the natives it was Lutherans. Most of the natives were Lutheran’s there were a lot of Dutch people up there and we saw some of them that came out of the hills

that had been escaped from up there and they came and stayed at our stayed somewhere near us but I dunno where they were. They couldn’t a stayed in our camp. But they were going on their way back and a priest too came in to stay with us. They’d a been escaped from somebody or something but we never ever spoke to them dunno what they were but it was mainly Lutherans up there. No, was it Germans? No, Lutheran, that’s German isn’t it?

Dutch yeah Dutch people. That’s right they were too. They were Dutch people a lot of them there. It was a pity to see all the plantations mown down. You know they had coffee plantations and beautiful things there and they were all smashed. And they had a graveyard for planes and all the old B-83s were they? The big planes the

Yeah the Flying Fortresses and they just evidently take them in there and leave them. There was all sorts of planes in there. We got a photo taken on a Fortress and my girlfriend stood up the end and I stood down on the other end and you can hardly we could hardly see one another they were big. That’s where we used to have our races. My father would a had a fit and so would my mother. We used to race

the jeeps and I often think of my boys now I tell them not to go fast and everything. I’ll tell em one day about that. We used to hold hands with one another the two jeeps side by side and hold hands with it and tear up and down this iron strip. It was the old Nadzab strip this iron strip never turned a hair. Isn’t that awful things you do? And then you go and tell your kids. I often think of things I said to my two and I thought now Peg you’re a hypocrite because that’s what

you done before today. But they I love the old jeeps. I tried to get in one on the Anzac parade but last year. No last year I was in the leading one cause I can’t march now and it was an old T-model Ford. She was beautifully looked after she was lovely old the sides and they had to put the sides up cause

it was raining and we go in all the vintage cars but the boys got in the jeep so I couldn’t get in the jeep. They said, “All right Peg, we’ll put you in.” I said, “You’ll have to lift me in.” I don’t think I can get in and out a one now. But they didn’t have it there last year. The Anzac parades I enjoy the Anzac. But Anzac Day to me is Dad’s day nothing to do with anything else. It’s funny I can’t sort of focus on any other war. That’s his day. But

I enjoy those. The RSL’s very good. I get a lot a things from the RSL I’m behind them. This one’s very good to everybody but I think I’ve still got to be in something and it must be nearly time for you to go home. Righto next question please?

Well yes it disciplined me

cause I know I might’ve needed a lot of discipline cause I think I was spoilt cause I was 6 years old when my brother came along. But no it taught me discipline and it taught me many other things as far as other people are concerned. Consideration for other people. What was the other one? There’s another good one and I’ve forgotten what it was cause I’ve been asked that many a time. Well it taught me how to live with other people

to put it like that. Nothing hard it didn’t you know I didn’t have too bad a life in it. But I thought it this living together with other women like that you got a learn something and we had our own rules. We weren’t allow to mention what state you came from because they used to start state arguments and nobody was allowed to say they were from so and so and we did it.

We all got on. We never had a nasty word. I think it just teaches to tolerate other people and other people’s force as well as your own and I think it was very very good. It was for me and if you saw a crowd of them you never hear them whingeing pardon me like any this you might strike one odd one. I just thought of one but you never hear anybody whingeing and we’d cooperate with one another all the time

and they’re a different type of animal altogether. You’ve only got to go to a ex-service meeting there’s no sombre ones everybody’s laughing and then you’ll hear a catch of did you see so and so and so and so and whereas I’m in another organisation and their mainly war widows and they’re the best whingers that I’ve

ever come the ones down here. And they’re talk’s different altogether because they’ve got no connection with the others. Not like us. We’ve done the same things. We’ve got that big connection and I think that’s what keeps you together and I think that’s what you profit by. I really do you tolerate other people mainly. Tolerate any situation and you can. And I wouldn’t be without

them for quids. They’re my biggest I didn’t. Before I came down here I never mentioned much about the war to Johnny. Johnny knew that I’d been away and all the rest of it because he wasn’t in the services he was too young he’s 2 and a half years younger than me and he came out of his apprenticeship just as peace was going to be declared and they wouldn’t take him because they wanted all the apprentices to stay out. Anyway

I never mentioned it to him because he used to get most upset about it that he didn’t go and everybody else and all that part and I went so I never said anything. But when we came down here that all went there was no need for that because he was accepted as my husband and he knows all the girls. He used to come to all the organisations with us and up till we came down here I never had much to do with them. Only the ones that I knew

but he reckons our reunions were the funniest things he’s ever been to and he’d sit at the back and he’d just listen and he went to Canberra with us to the one down there and one in Sydney I think it was now. No the one up here we had one up at Surfers and he was sort of even the RSL men ask me how he is and see I can take him to anything there and all that,

“Were you in the army? Oh you weren’t. Why didn’t you go?” business. It’s all gone and they just take him as belonging to me and they’re very good so he’s enjoyed that then and he said he’s very proud and all the rest a that jazz you know. But it made a big difference being down here. But and he’s never stopped me from going to anything with them and he used to laugh he said he to love to sit there he said and just listen to us. The things that went on but

that was part it was the comradeship and it’s very very tight.

I don’t tell them much about it at all but they’re all interested now. They didn’t I never told them much but they know more now and Ian’s very interested in Dad and he’s the spittin’ image of my father and he’s looked up Dad’s things and he wants to know more about it. He’d like to know

more about his grandfather. Ross is younger and he’s interested in anything that I’ve done and I think they’ve suddenly realised as they’re getting a bit older that I did something that somebody a lot of other people didn’t do and we’re closer too with it. They’ve met all the girls too at different ones. The girls we always call them the girls. And I think now we’re all getting closer together cause with

father being so sick. They won’t come they can’t take it with him. It’s a shame but they can’t. Ross said to me, “Mum, he’s not my Dad. My Dad’s gone.” He said, “That’s somebody else there.” He said, “He’s nothing like what he used to be.” Cause he was, he’d play football with them and do all this swim with them. He was a very good swimmer he was a member of Tubin and so was his brother and so I said, “Well look you don’t have to come and

see him.” But if they went they don’t realise that he knows us but he doesn’t know us as his family but he knows that we’re important to him. The same time when he knows if he knows everything in here he can’t get it out here. But anyway I let them go now. But they’re well Ian got my record and everything and he’s looking for some smutty bits in it and I said, “Well I haven’t told them any smutty bits.” “Oh Mum you must’ve done something.”

“No,” I said, “I was pure,” and he just laughed. They think it’s a bit of a joke but no they’re proud too so that’s very good. And course when I march and I used to put the wreath on for the auxiliary and there were a few photos and I sent them up and you know they liked those and blah blah. But they’re glad I’ve done what I’ve done. I said, “If I hadn’t have done it,” I said, “you two wouldn’t be here.” I said, “The Atebrin brought you,” cause we all had boys. The five of us all had

boys. I said, “So you wouldn’t have been here if I hadn’t a had that Atebrin,” but anyway we did it. Next question please.

My Dad. That’s all. I don’t its strange and yet I’ve never put a flower on for him. I don’t I think about Dad and sometimes Uncle George the one that was killed. But to me we were talking about that last Anzac Day as a matter of fact and I said to one a the girls I said, “This has got nothing to do with

me or anybody.” I said, “This is my father’s day.” And she said, “That’s strange Peg,” she said, “because that’s just how I feel too.” It was Anzac Day and that’s him and reckon he’s up there looking down to see what’s going on.

Yes once. Yes once and I was the only girl I the whole troop and we walked we marched through Ivanhoe where all my friends were and I stuck down the back Dad led the march.

Yeah Dad led the march and

yeah that was the only time. But I saw him we used to go in and see him every time and he was as proud as punch with himself with his baton under his arm and he marched down there and they were all old you know they all got older and older.

When?

When the?

VE Day? We arrived in Lae. We just got there and I’ve got an awful photo

did you see that photo did you? Isn’t it awful and that girl that was trying to push in and I pushed her out I had the paper that’s right yeah VE Day we got there. We hadn’t been there what time did we. That’s right because we arrived in Lae at dawn and we were just going up from the hut and the paper came so that was it.

Everybody was excited but I soon forgot it because they were more excited about being where they were. You know we were all very pleased the bombing had stopped and all the rest of it but the war was still over here. We had to get on and do something for that.

Entering it? Where was I? I’m not sure now. Gee you ask some curly questions.

That was I know I was home but I dunno whether I was even in the army. When did they come in? I can’t remember.

Pearl Harbour oh yes I was home yes. That’s right yes we heard it over the wireless I wasn’t very impressed I know I was a bit frightened of what was going to happen. But then I was only

I didn’t sort of think of it when somebody rang me up and started to talk to me on the phone or something you know it went out. It was could never happen to us it’s too far away sort of business.

We didn’t hear much about Darwin being bombed. This is what surprises me cause when Johnny said to me about all the alerts they had in Brisbane. I said I didn’t hear about that. We didn’t seem

to hear about that much in Melbourne and we probably heard but didn’t know how much had been done. You know we seemed to be pretty safe down the bottom of Australia and I think that sort of well I wouldn’t say that we weren’t interested but we didn’t have any shelters or anything built for us. The fella over the road had one but Dad wouldn’t build any shelters. There was no need for that they

won’t get this far so we didn’t have a shelter or anything and we didn’t have any exercises at school or anything in the schools but Johnny said they had a lot up here and they had to cause grandfather wouldn’t dig a hole in his backyard. He was a funny man. He was an army man too and he a funny man and his mother got most upset because everybody else had dug a shelter in the ground but grandfather Graham hadn’t dug a thing.

He said if they come they come. We won’t last. If they come we won’t live anyway so why worry about building a hole. But no I we never sort of heard I heard more when I sort of got further up the coast up to Sydney and up in Brisbane I heard more about it. But Johnny said they had quite a few in Brisbane. I dunno whether they were alarms and then when the ones came into Sydney Harbour. Some of the girls

were very close to that our girls forget which one it was she was out on the harbour or something when they came in for that. But the war seemed a long way away down there and even if I was in the army it was still a long way away because I was going backwards and forwards to home. It wasn’t until I got up and saw all these bomb holes and all these cars bombed and what no over at Salamoa

and around about that I sort a realised well this is where the war’s come through. And it wasn’t a pretty sight some of it.

Yes. We were away then when that hit. Yes I remember that yes we were still up there then. Well we must a been cause we were up there when peace was declared. I s’pose like

everybody else we thought it was a terrible it was a terrible way but it was necessary.

No we didn’t exactly didn’t know that there were so many killed but it was a good thing because it meant that the war would be over and that was something about it. But I don’t think we sort a realised that what the destruction was until we got home and

we thought all the prisoners I was thinking of the prisoners mainly they’d all be able to go. Cause I had a cousin prisoner in Changi and I don’t I think we were too busy worrying about you know where we were and what we were doing sort a business in case they decided to come down again. Cause there was always that in the back of your minds and we were all gonna shoot one another that wouldn’t a made any difference when you think of it now. What a waste of

what a waste it’d have been if we’d of all. But no it was a good thing and it was a shame that it had to be done like that. It did end the war and they done a lot a horrible things like my cousin told when he came home and. He lived he only died a couple a years ago and he was well up in his 80’s. He’d had Black Water Fever

he’d had everything but he was a tin smith and he used to make all the instruments for the surgeons in the prisoner of war camp and one of the doctors came down to Huonville and saw his mother saw my auntie and thanked her for what Mackie had done. And he was a nice little bloke but he was very sick.

He had been very sick when he came home. But no I think it was just the beginning of the end. I heaved a sigh of relief that at last something had happened. But as you said we didn’t know what the it must a been terrible. And then I’d hate em to do it here anyway but you wouldn’t know you’d all be gone wouldn’t ya?

It was lovely. It was nice. We came in at Bowen and we ate them out of everything and have you ever been to Bowen?

Well I’ve never seen Johnny used to go as far as Bowen when he was doing his when he was working and I’ve never seen anything it was like stepping back 50 years at least and all the hotels all with the swinging doors. We couldn’t cause

I’d never been in a hotel then and I couldn’t get over it. And then we went in and we all drank milk. We never had milk and they all had milk shakes and we drank all the milk. They drank all the beer and these two fellas we met on the or three of them I think it was we all sort a went out together. They were going to look after us and this funny hotel in town

and it took an hour to get along the wharf anyway but then as the day wore on and more beer was being drunk they were throwing them out. I thought I was in cowboy land. They were throwing them out through these swinging doors and then we went round to find a quiet hotel so we could the girls could have a drink and I dunno what I drank but it wasn’t. I might’ve even had a beer but I didn’t drink beer or anything and we went around to this little

hotel at the back and it had the parlour cause that fascinated me and yeah they went up to the bar and asked could the girls come in and they said yes but we said, “We don’t want to take them into the bar.” Well you never do that, it’s a long time, I’ve never been in a bar for ages. And so they said, “Well the parlour’s outside. You can go and sit outside there.” So we went out and they had old cane lounges in it

and one of the lounge had three legs and a course I sat in and down we go. Well we got they went out and got a drink and the girls had a drink and I got the giggles I thought well this is out of old cowboy book. So then we decided we’d better go back. We were there a day they had to wait till the cyclone had gone down or something and going home there were drunks all over the place and they drank them out of everything they ate

all their fresh food and really cleared Bowen out and there were fellows staggering down the road cause we had to walk right up there to get onto the boat and when we did get on we found out that we had to stay the night because all the crew were in jail. I laughed. How the crew were all in jail. Anyway we had to stay the night and the next morning they came back in taxi’s. Well you should a heard the men on board give them. They gave them curry and

they just waved to us. They’d had a wonderful day and they were. So then we went down and we came in to Sydney no where did we come into then? We must’ve come into Sydney. No we didn’t we come into Brisbane. That’s right we came into Brisbane then and we got off the boat and the streets were lined with people to welcome us back and that really had an effect on everybody. Cause we didn’t we thought we’d just sneak in as

we snuck out and the streets were lined all Queen Street they were all the way up the street look it was lovely and then when we got to Fraser’s Paddock they said, “What would we like for lunch?” “Eggs.” “Yes we’ve got eggs. You can have eggs.” Well we ate all their eggs and they couldn’t believe it. We’d had powdered egg for so long and we ate all the things that we hadn’t eaten before and the cooks came out and they said, “God, you girls are hungry,” you know. And we just filled ourselves

with it and then we got on the train that night and went down to Sydney and the girls got off at Sydney the Sydney girls then went down to Melbourne and we were home then. And then had to go out to Royal Park to get discharged you know. So that’s what we did and that was the end of the story then we were home. And me mother had a fit when she saw me. She said, “God what have they done to you? What have they done to my daughter?” when this yellow faced turned round to her. But my brother thought I was wonderful he took me all over the

place until the yellow went then he didn’t bother taking me anywhere. That’s brothers.

Oh that was all very sudden and I just went into Royal Park and just handed everything in and I didn’t take very long to demob at all and Mum came out. How did she come and meet me? Dad must’ve been at work. Oh, he might have been at work too and we just tottled off home. It was all sort of an

anti-climax when it happened and I’ve got my demob thing in that book.

I’ve got my hat. But I don’t know how I snuck that because you weren’t supposed to keep your hat and you weren’t allowed, you were supposed to hand in the lot. The Brisbane river’s full of a lot of things, I threw my tin hat out there and we threw, a few pairs of bras went into that. And different things,

we didn’t want or we didn’t mean to bring home but we had to hand everything in, the uniform and I had my khakis, had my long trousers and my safari jacket and the boys finished with those. They used to play soldiers with them and think they were wonderful and they finished those off but the only thing I’ve got left is something, an epaulet that I had and my big hat.

And I wouldn’t part with that for quids. That’s what’s on the, oh no it’s not on the front of that. No that’s not. Where did I put that? That’s when we had a photo in the paper. When we took that and they put my hat there with the book and that was all over the front page. “I saw your photo in the paper again!” I said, “Oh yeah?” but I had all my mates with me that day. The lady in the middle there is, she’s on oxygen now

but oh geez she’s a battler. But she was an ambulance driver and she was, I was going to get her to ring you but I didn’t think she’d be able to, well, she wouldn’t have been able to now I know it was this long, she wouldn’t have been able to. Oh Christ! She could tell you some stories. She’s lost them in the back of the ambulance and she’s a real wag but I thought, “Oh no, she might, she’s on oxygen all day and night.”

But oh geez she’s good. She’s fighting it like mad. We just don’t know how long she’ll manage. She’s the one that used to go to the ex-servicewomen’s, the golf things.

It was patriotic. Really I always have been for Australia, I always think it’s a wonderful country and my Dad fought for it, my uncle fought for it and lost him and I had a lot of relations that fought for it and I think it was worth and that was the little bit extra that I could give them.

Oh no, I could always get a tear in my eye when the put the horns up, the last post and all the rest of it. But then that’s, no I was quite patriotic and I think all the ones that did, some of them wanted to get away from broken love affairs and all the rest of it but none of us did and my friend Nancy was very staunch. She was a very

staunch New South Welshman too. She loved Sydney and she really she… Johnny used to laugh at her because she used to, “Oh you’ve got to look at this, John! Look at this! This is part of Sydney that I like and this is that.” “God,” he said, “she likes that Sydney doesn’t she?” She had a brain haemorrhage and I went down to

see her and she knew Johnny and I, she knew him and they were very surprised because she didn’t know many people but then she started, “Come on Peg, come on John” – John she used to call him – “Come on John,” and we all sat down there and started to talk and she said, “You know Peg and John and I were in the Japanese war prisoners,” and we sort of all looked… “Oh yes Nancy, yes, yes.” “No, we were lucky to escape.”

And her sister said to me, “Where would she get that from?” I said, “I don’t know.” I said, “I have no idea at all.” And she kept this up all the time and the only thing I could think of was we had the Japanese prisoners up there, whether that was where we were but she kept saying that Johnny was with us but I didn’t even know him then. But she kept that up and every time we saw her,

“Glad we got out of that prisoner of war camp.” Yes, it was strange.

No. No. We never saw that. They didn’t come near Lae, they just went straight on. No I didn’t see them which I was sorry for in a way because my cousin came home and we didn’t see that and we weren’t there for the celebrations. We had our

own celebrations up there but no, in a way I think about it and I’m glad I didn’t because Mum went down with Maggie his wife and she said it was terrible. You know, going along looking for him, she knew he was on the boat, she knew he was sick and as everybody walked past and said to them they were all looking and then there were women crying because they’d found them and it must have been a terrible sight so in a way I’m glad I didn’t go down and

see them. It wasn’t a very pretty sight at all. My friend in Melbourne that I went to work with, her husband came home and he was badly wounded and she didn’t know he was as badly wounded as he was and it was a bit of a shock to her. No, I’m not sorry I missed that. No, not very nice.

Yes. 77 Squadron was at the old hotel. There was an old civilian before the war and Ma somebody owned it and they must have taken over and they had a beautiful big pool, huge pool and we used to go over there swimming quite often and the strange part about it is a very close friend of mine from here,

from Tweed, something came up about it one day and she said, “Oh! My brother was, or my somebody was in the 77 squadron.” “Oh, was he? Was he in Lae?” “Yes,” she said, “he was in Lae.” “Oh,” I said, “don’t say any more just in case.” And she was going to look up a picture photo to bring in to see if there was somebody that I knew that I knew there. But no, they were good, they wanted to

take us and give us a flight on the planes but I wasn’t game enough to go. They were going to fly us over to Wau and I didn’t like the thought of getting smuggled into a plane and going over to Wau so we didn’t go. Just as well.

No well they didn’t have big trucks. No, we didn’t go out in

their jeeps. Well, no well see we used to go over to Labu for a swim or we had to go across in the barge to that and anybody that was going to Labu we used to all go in this big truck and they didn’t, no I don’t think they… oh, I think they might have picked us up one day. I can’t remember but this Labu when they came into it

they used to have to come down into the water and then turn and go straight up the beach the other way, there was a channel there evidently. And one day we were going there and there was a little native right up in the top of the front of the boat and I thought, “Gee, I don’t like you being up there, he should come down,” and we turned and hit and it hit the side of the boat and the boat just went up like that, where he went to

I don’t know. I never found him, just like that and we all sort of hung on to this side because we couldn’t hang onto that side because you would’ve hit and anyway the fellow righted it so it was all right -it was very close but then the truck used to meet us when we came back from there. It was a nice beach. It was a lovely beach. A lot of logs and things and we used to swim in it and then we used to go down to the Bisby River and the not the Fly, no that was further in, Bisby River

and we’d jump in. It was very fast and we used to jump in the top end of it and come down on it but we’d stay in the shore so that we’d grab something as you go. Oh, when I think of that! We could have gone out to sea! It was very rough but that was a nice river too.

No, worried about the crocodile that was supposed to be there and we never knew to this day

whether the boys were having us on or not. They reckoned it used swim across the entrance but I don’t know that it was there. You can believe them. No, I never worried, I never have worried about sharks and things but I’ve done a lot of swimming in the ocean and if it’s going to get you it’ll get you no matter where you are if you’re going to go that way.

Seeing the moon behind the palm tree and you only saw it once and it was one night we went out to, some car company, we were going out there to a do and they took us out in an open truck and we were sitting on it and the moon was up there and so we just waited for a while and we all thought the same thing, “There’s the moon behind the palm tree,” and it was there and it was there before we had a chance to and that was the only thing. Oh the Hawaiian, you know, I thought it was beautiful. And I loved the fruits. We used to go out and pick paw paws off the

trees – that was, we never took fruit with us. The paw paws and the bananas, oh the fruit was beautiful up there. But that was the one, I saw it and I never saw it again. I don’t know where the moon even was after that. But we all got it. “Ah, we’ve seen it now, right, we’ll go home.” So we were ready to go home but it wasn’t romantic when you had a gun down by your waiting in case it was needed. No but it was nice.

No. They didn’t come through Lae. They must have just come straight around I think. We never saw any. The only immigrants we saw up there were two air force flats who had been to a party in Brisbane and ended up in Lae. And oh, we were all after them to have a look at them. We had to give them clothes and everything to go home in. Oh, I’ll never forget it.

When the girls say, “Of course the WAAAFS didn’t go overseas,” I say, “Well two of them did!” And they’d been to this party or something and they’d woken up and then another one, another party in Brisbane, some sailors took these two girls up in a boat and they ended up there. They put them in a boat and sent them in and they got into Lae and they reckoned they only had fur coats on. We didn’t know whether that was true or not but we had to give them clothes too and they

were sent home. That’s the only two other people that have been out of Australia. Stupid, these two air force lasses they were hard.

I never spoke to them. We weren’t allowed to talk to them. Oh no, we wouldn’t go near them. No well they just took them straight into and they got them away as quick as they could because they shouldn’t have been there. But they got full of something and they got on the boat and the boat had… oh it was funny!

Gee we laughed! We saw Gracie Fields up there too she was in a concert. We had some good concerts up there and old Blamey had his house up there. Oh that’s another funny thing – Blamey kept us waiting for two or three hours one day in the sun to give us a march pass and I never forgave him for that and anyway when I came home I joined the women’s branch of the RSL and we had a cocktail party one night

and they said, “Oh we’ll have to ask General Blamey.” I said, “You sure?” and they said, “Yes.” And I told them and, “He’s not very popular with me,” I said. “He stood me in the sun for too long.” Anyway we had this party and he came in with his wife and sat down there and you know the beggar gave me the biggest plate of food and said, “Take this outside will you?” I didn’t know he was there. “Take it outside. There’s a couple over there that want it,” and I had to serve Blamey with his cakes.

I nearly threw them at him and I came back and every time he wanted anything they’d get me to take it out to him but he seemed quite nice you know. He didn’t know and I was dying to tell but I thought, “No, I’d better not. Don’t be rude.” See the army was still there. I think even though he’s a general and the same thing happened when we had one of these golf days. Johnny used to come out and pick us up because we weren’t probably capable, I was drinking then,

weren’t capable of going home so when he came in we had a captain there and she’d played – oh she was full as a boot [drunk] – and I said to him, “Look, can we take captain home?” I said, “She can’t drive the car home.” “Oh,” he said, “let her get a cab.” “Ooh, you can’t do that,” I said. “She’s a captain.” He said, “What does it matter if she’s a captain or not?” “Oh you can’t do that to a captain.” He said, “You’re not in the army now.

You don’t have to worry.” Anyway we took her home. Poor love. We never know to this day if she found her house. She didn’t know where she lived and she kept saying, “There, no there, there…” and Johnny got tired, “Get out here,” you know and anyway we let her out and never seen her again but he told so many people about that. He said, “Because she was a captain,” he said, “I had to take her home.” I don’t know where she ended up but that was the army coming back. Even when you’ve

got out you still respect the pips and what not. They just come naturally. Anyway she got home but we had a good day that day. I won the trophy that day.

Oh yes they flew, they were flying out of there regularly. But they never, they always flew that way and we were sort of here and there

was no need for them to fly, I don’t know where they went, but they were flying still. And these fellows we knew were pilots and they were crew on them but we never sort of, didn’t see many planes go over at al really. I don’t know where they’d be going to. Probably flying down to Sydney or something, taking personnel back you know.

No but when I

was away from her it was a bit better. You know I could write to Mum and Dad but I was so… I had to write and tell them what I’d done and what I hadn’t done and I suppose when I got away and I started to think about it you know, she’s my mother I must write to her. I knew she’d be worried but I wrote back to both of them. It was only little pages but there were 27 pages of them.

But I got it out and read it one day and I thought, “What a lot of blinking rot.” I did and I wrote regularly to them but no it was a funny situation really. When I come to think of it now I might have been able to cope with it better.

Oh yes. They used to send me up cakes and Dad would put a few lines on the paper

and send me up parcels and everything. Oh he thought it was wonderful but he was probably getting to know more about what I was doing than I did. Made me, we had to report down there all the time but no, I still… I just sort of well I got into another life and it wasn’t the one that I’d had before so that’s why I went to Sydney. As I say I was only home a fortnight. I flew up to Nancy and when she met me she said, “Oh I’m glad to see you.” I said, “Why are you glad to see me?”

“Someone to talk to!” And she’d had the same experience. Nobody was interested you know it was old news and Mum would say Mrs so and so and I wouldn’t even remember Mrs so and so or anything like that but we had a good time up there until the kids called us yellow sheilas but that was all right. But no, it’s another page out of your life that’s different to anything else that’s happened.

It’s a nice bit to look back on and we’ve got no worries from it, that was the main thing. We didn’t have any sicknesses or anything like that but some of the girls got very sick. A lot of them got boils, some of them had to be sent home they had so many and dermo, well this lady, this Mary that was with us she was covered in it, absolutely covered from head to foot. Ears and everything.

And another one had got it in the ears and she went a bit funny and they all came out to Heidelberg hops which wasn’t far from where I lived so when I got back home I used to go over there to see them and she went real funny and they used to sneak out, they had a hole in the fence and they used to sneak out and come over to see me. And I think, I told them then I said, “Dad’s home.” I said, “You’d better be careful.” “Oh he won’t know, he won’t know anything about it.”

Anyway they used to come home and then they’d go back and then one day he said to them, “How’s that hole in the fence going?” and the hospital must have known about the hole in the fence. “How did you know?” They said, “Oh we find out these things.” And he’d known all along they were sneaking out, he knew they shouldn’t be coming out after dark but they were. I think May passed away too, I think she nearly went berserk

but that was from dermo too. Oh it’s a crook of a, not a very nice thing.

Yes

Well it wasn’t fresh food I can tell you that. That’s what we all used to say – we’d get these lovely parcels but there was no fresh food – it was all tinned stuff. No they

were all very good with the parcels and I think we got men’s socks once if I remember rightly but the salvo’s was a good parcel. That was and we thought that was wonderful you know – we were really in the army if you get a parcel from them and from the Red Cross but as I said there was no fresh food but it was a very nice thought and we ate it. But would have liked a piece of steak or something. I was dying for meat.

And I never had bully beef the whole time I was in the army. Never had it. But baked beans, oh God, I can’t stand baked beans. Can’t even stand the smell of them and the kids have never had baked beans and, “Oh so and so’s mother gives him baked beans, Mum” I said, “You’ll never get them in this house. You go over there, you’ll never get them here.” And I got a tin, oh, I got rid of that though. I won a tin at bingo or something, oh, couldn’t get rid of it quick enough.

They’re revolting. They’re good for you they tell me, not good enough for me. I couldn’t eat any of them.

Yeah I was dying for dripping sandwiches. I even hear the people talking about it now, well Betty was telling me while we were talking one day and she said they used to have dripping sandwiches and that really stuck in my inside because Mum… and I didn’t realise what dripping

sandwiches were you know and Johnny when I told him I’d never had dripping sandwiches, “Oh,” he said, “it was probably below Gert to give them to you.” Mum was a bit of a snob so that’s where that bit come in. He said, “She wouldn’t give you that.” Gee, they hated the sight of one another. Oh you always make sure that your mother in law likes your husband, vice versa, and his mother was lovely. She was a hard case.

She’d never been out of Brisbane, they lived at West End, never been out of Brisbane in her life till she was 81 and I took her to Hobart in a plane and I had to get doctors certificates and all sorts of things and she had the time of her life. We were up in the air over the water and she said, “Peg,” she said, “I think one of the engines is on fire.” I thought, “That’s it. I knew that would happen.” I said, “Oh I don’t think…”

“Yes,” she said, “there’s smoke coming out of it.” So I had a look out the window and it was a cloud going past, a little bit of cloud. I said, “No, that’s a cloud, Barb.” “Oh!” she said. “Was it?” And she thoroughly enjoyed it. And then by the time she was 89 she’d been all over Australia. She wanted to go on a safari trip through Arnhem Land. She rang me and asked me if I’d go with her and, “Oh,” I said, “I don’t think we can go on that.” I said, “It’s

camping out at night.” And when Johnny came home I asked him, “Arnhem Land!?” he said. “You’ve got to camp for that.” So anyway I rang her back and I said, “I don’t think we’d better go to that.” But she went all over the place but no, she was a wag. Now what was the next question?

The very first night I got home I think I went to bed very

early, now what happened? We didn’t have a big celebration or anything but it was after that Mum had all my friends over and we had a get together. A lot of friends over there who didn’t go away were very good to Mum while I was away, they used to go and see we used to play, oh no that was after that because a lot of them came

and played golf with us and oh a couple of them were where Dad was and they knew Dad before from that but they were all very good. They came in and saw her and everything. I think we, when was the night I got malaria? No I was back at work then. I don’t know what we did, I think we had… oh, that might have been the night she gave me tinned peaches. I don’t think we had anybody there that night, there was too much talking going on.

He thought it was wonderful. He took me everywhere. Like a show pony I was there for a while but he, no he was very pleased and he’s a very quiet type and he never said much but he was, he thought it was wonderful. But he started playing… I went everywhere with him after

I came home and he started going out to golf and he was playing with the RSL and they got me to, asked me would I like to learn too. It was all the men, I was the only girl and I started playing golf there with him. Then I got a few of the girls to come down and they all came down, they all knew him then and they got on well with them and I used to smoke then and I didn’t want him to know so they all joined up

together and we’ll take Mack, we’ll go out with Mack. And then they’d make sure there were two or three between us and I’d be able to have a cigarette while I was playing. Then if he was coming up the other side they’d give me the signal, “Your father’s coming. Put your cigarette out,” and he never knew I don’t think. He probably smelt it on me but oh we played… as a matter of a fact one of them comes up here, one of the girls comes up here and they were all ex-servicewomen that joined and they’d all

been overseas. He thought that was lovely and they did too. They were very good with him but I laughed, they all covered me with my cigarettes but then I gave it away. I was over twenty-one then, I could smoke but I never smoked in front of Dad or in the house. But no, enjoyed that. We used to have lovely games and play out at Ivanhoe and go and then just go home again and it was very good.

You must nearly be finished.