Australians at War Film Archive

Where would you like me to start?

Right. In 1873 my grandparents came from Scotland to Cooktown. He was a blacksmith-wheelwright and gold started to peter out at the

turn of the century so he went over to New Guinea because gold was being discovered over there so he went over there in about 1907. We lived in Rabaul, we lived in different places in New Guinea. We lived in Rabaul and when my mother was 17 she married the manager of Burns Philp in Rabaul. We had a beautiful home, 15 servants and we had it really laid on in those days.

She came back to Australia and I was born in Australia at Punchbowl and when I was two months old I went back to New Guinea again. I was there until my father died. He drank a glass of whisky a bit too quick and he went up to his room, he was checking on something and he drank a glass of whisky too quick and it took his breath away, if someone had been there to hit him on the back he would have been right,

so he was dead sitting on the side of the bed, the whisky took his breath away. So we came back to Australia then and we moved around a lot and eventually we ended up in Cooktown about 1936, 1937. Mum said we’ll try there. So we moved up there and then

I finished off a bit of schooling there. Then we were evacuated from Cooktown in 1941 and we came down to Brisbane. Well I joined up straight away but I was too young so I had to wait and it came through on my 18th birthday and I was on the troop train to go south. Having been brought up in New Guinea, Mum couldn’t

boil water, she had never done a thing and it was very hard for her. So I thought, ‘I’m not going to have the same problem so I’ll learn to cook.’ So I joined up as a cook because I was doing a little bit of cooking because Mum didn’t have a clue. So I joined up as a cook and I absolutely loved it. Well I did my training at West Melbourne in Latrobe Street at Anglish Food School.

From there I went out to East Preston to Urandel Asylum, before they had the lunatics in there. We would be doing PT [physical training] and the loonies from Mont Park would be looking at us and we’d be thinking, ‘Oh my God we’re in here and look at them over there.’ So that was a bit of fun. And you would never dream of missing a bus to home because where you got off the tram

you had quite a walk and there was vacant allotments on the one side and there was a cemetery on the other so you kept walking straight ahead. But it was a good life and I finished off my cooking there. I was chosen fortunately to go to Adelaide to Emmanuel College and I also worked in Exhibition Building in Adelaide. There again, we

would go up around past the zoo to our barracks which was St Anne’s Church, we had our barracks there. That was very good. Then I was posted to Sandgate and that was 3PD and it was an embarkation depot right on the waterfront, and the playground was right on the beach area. It’s Eventide Home now.

Then I went to, well I met Jim there actually. I went to a dance. We would be taken into the Sailors’ Institute for a dance. So we went there and there was always a WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force] officer sitting out the front and so if you went there you stayed there. I’ve jumped ahead. Anyhow, how I met Jim, I went into town and I was at the railway station and

Jim came along and said, “Hello,” and I said, “Hello.” He said, “I suppose you’re waiting for a Yank?” And I said, “Well as a matter of fact I am. He’ll be on the next train.” He said, “He won’t be on that train. I’ll wait.” So anyway he didn’t get in so he didn’t come. I was about eighteen and a half I suppose. Then he asked if I would like a cup of coffee and I said I could pay for my own.

So he said, “Righto,” and we went over to the PX [Post Exchange], the American canteen across the road. So we had our cup of coffee and he saw me to the train and he asked when he could see me again so I said that tomorrow we would be going to the dance in the valley, the Sailors’ Institute. Well, he turned up there and then he went back to camp. Then he went away and we corresponded with each other, he came back quite a few months later.

He came back, he came on a troop train, he was going back up north again. He said, “What if we get married?” I told him I was only 19 and, “I will have to get permission.” It was the Queen’s Birthday holiday. So we went and saw the padre and he said he would marry us in either the Officers’ Mess or the Sergeants’ Mess, so that was ok. So every hour, on the hour,

we were going to the police station to see if they had got word back that Mum had signed for permission for me to get married. Anyway it came through so we got married and the padre came along and said he could get the Presbyterian church to get married in because it was a lot nicer than the Officers’ Mess. We told him that Jim was a Catholic and I was a Church of England but he said a church is nicer and so we said, “Righto,” so we got married in the Presbyterian Church.

Prior to Jim coming up to get married, I used to go to this café for cups of coffee and milkshakes and so forth and the lady who owned it was telling me one day that it was very hard to get cooks, the young ones all want to go out. So I told her I would come over and cook for her of a night so long as she got me back to camp before it was dark. And she did. So I would go over there if I wasn’t going anywhere.

I didn’t take any money but I could always get a free cup of coffee or something to eat. So we were sitting in there and I introduced her to Jim and told her we were waiting to get permission so we could get married tonight. She told us that as soon as we know, “Come and see me.” So as soon as we knew we went and told her and she put on a wedding breakfast for us. So we got married at five to seven at the church because we had to wait

until everybody had knocked off work so they could come over. We had a guard of honour from the church to the café and they had bottles of whisky and all sorts of things at their feet and as soon as the café couldn’t hold any more people she shut the door. We had the most wonderful night. They came up to me and told me that whatever I did I wasn’t to sip the toasts, just to drink them straight down otherwise I would get drunk. So every

toast, I drank it straight down and needless to say I was tipsy by the end of the night. So anyway before I went over to the church madam came around and asked me whether I knew much about sex and I said, “Yes, a bit.” She gave me a book on this so I had my book and I took it up to the hotel room with me and I told Jim I had a book on sex.

Anyway, he started reading it and by this time I was asleep and so he got interested in the book because he had had a few drinks too. The next morning, somebody had got in and they had filled my cap with confetti and I didn’t notice. I just got dressed and put my cap on and went into Toowoomba to see him off on the train because he had to catch up with his unit.

So I had a wedding dress in Brisbane because I knew a wedding would be coming up eventually but I didn’t have time to get it. So when he came back 12 months later he told me to put my wedding dress on and we’d go and get a photo taken. So there was a place in Osmond House in Adelaide Street where ex-service women could go. So I put my wedding dress on there and we found a photographer just across the road.

So we didn’t have the money to get a taxi to go there, so I hitched up my dress and we walked across the road. The photographer asked me where my flowers were and we said we didn’t have any flowers, that we were just so happy we were together. He gave me some that he kept to put on coffins. They were Arum Lilies and Macadamia Palms. I’ve got the wedding photo there and that was my bouquet of flowers.

And I’ve loved Arum Lilies ever since. So not long after that Jim had to go away again and I got posted from Oakey to … no I’m jumping myself. I was already up in Oakey so I stayed there because there was no point in getting out of the air force, so I stayed there until Jim came back on leave at different times. Then he was at Cowra and I went to see him at Cowra.

I went Ackwilly then for a week and his CO [Commanding Officer] said, “You had better take her back to camp.” So we had six days at Bondi and then he took me back on the last day to Bradfield Park. And then it wasn’t long after that I was able to apply for compassionate discharge so I got discharged. Jim was back in the islands again. He’ll tell you his story which is very sad.

So then after the war when he came back we went to Melbourne to live and he just couldn’t take the … he got a job and pay day would come and they would put the pay out from underneath and he would sign for it and then they would pull it back and they would take 10 shillings out of it.

He asked why and they said for the people who were on strike in New South Wales. He told them that he didn’t fight for this, he was very quick tempered in those days. So he told me we were getting out and we sold up what stuff we had and we came up to Cairns intending just to come to Cooktown to see Mum and then come back and find a job. But we got to Cooktown, he got a job, we got a four roomed house for a shilling a week rent

so we stayed there. He worked around and eventually he got a job with the Department of Civil Aviation so he stayed there. They were absolutely wonderful. When he got bad and sick, the doctor would send him off to Greenslopes but his job was always there when he came back. So they really and truly looked after him. Well it was …

I found out, we didn’t have any electricity in Cooktown and we used to sleep on the verandah in the real hot weather. Moonlight nights was a bit dangerous sleeping on the verandah with Jim so we moved inside. There were a few little incidents that happened. I needed somebody so I took in a boarder, it ended up I had five boarders.

So if I needed help I could always call out to them and they would either sit with Jim until I got help or they would go for help. We were lucky. Our doctor was a real bomb happy chap, he was an air force doctor and he was a nervous wreck too, but a good doctor. The Police Sergeant, Sergeant Haggerty, was a wonderful man, a bushman. He had been out in bush towns nearly all his service. He understood. Between him and the doctor,

they knew all the servicemen in Cooktown who were nerve cases, they really and truly looked after them. And Bob Haggerty never charged one man ever. He would ring up, it didn’t take much. There were POWs [Prisoners of War] and all there. It didn’t take much to set them off. They would have a couple of drinks and someone would pick a fight with them

and that would be it. They would ring up for the Sergeant to come and he would take his time walking up. He would have hand cuffs all the way around his belt. There was a hitching rail in front of the hotel and he would put the handcuffs around the hitching rail and onto the fellow. So then he would go down to the police station and bring the car up. While he was away, in the bar everybody’s feeling sorry for them out there so they’re carting beers out to them. So they

knew the ones that weren’t too bad and they would get them home and the sergeant would take the ones who were sicker home and he would sit and talk to them. There was no such thing as counselling in those days, nobody knew anything about counselling. But between the sergeant and the doctor it would be good. Then the doctor, they were

sort of your friend, he would say it would be time for Jim to go down to Greenslopes again. He would arrange it and for nearly 18 years he would be away every three to four months for shock treatment, insulin. He wouldn’t have the electric shock, he had that. They would come down to see if I was ok. During that time

he was away, the council phoned me and asked me if I could put on morning tea for the Deputy Premier, Sir Kenneth Morris, and his party. There were 16 of them and I said I could, but I asked whether the chairman’s wife should be doing it. They said that she should but she’s got a hen sitting on a nest of eggs in the lounge and she’s not shifting it for any premier. So that’s how I got to know Sir Kenneth and Lady Morris.

Anyway, he was there and we talked about different things and he said, we talked about different things and I told him that we were going to eventually put on more rooms and he was excavating underneath, he was a workaholic, and we might turn it into a boarding house. People were making enquires because they didn’t want to stop in pubs. He suggested a private hotel and not a boarding house so

we did and we registered it and got in touch with the Tourist Bureau and we started off with the Hill Cliff Private Hotel. Sir Kenneth Morris bought land in Cooktown and he said that big things were going to happen in Cooktown and the town did go ahead from there. We were involved with anything to do with tourists because it was going to help us and help the town too. So Kenneth … and asked

me if I could do something for the 1970, for the 200th year, Cooktown was founded in 1770. So I got around and decided I would put on a re-enactment of Captain Cook’s landing and then at that particular

time I got a letter through the Progress Association from the Captain of the Wandana about whether we could put on a corroboree for the passengers on the boat. Another member of the association and I went out to the native camp. No, they didn’t know how to do a corroboree. We went to the mission; they didn’t know how to do a corroboree.

So I went back to the Postmaster who was a member of the Progress Association. “Leave it with me,” he said, “I’ll get in touch with the Ma-tee-ai.” So he got in touch with the Ma-tee-ai and they said they would send down some people to teach them how to do it but they didn’t know how to do a corroboree either, they taught them how to do the Tee-Ai dance. So, so much for the Aboriginals and their culture in Cooktown, they knew nothing of it.

So we did the corroboree, the Tee-Ai dance. And they still did it when the Queen came in 1970 to open the museum which used to be the convent in Cooktown. That’s where the Americans were barracked during the war. They came down and … where am I?

Oh yes. She opened it. I was fortunate enough, just before the Queen arrived, we had the Queen’s cars at our place, the hotel. And the police guarding them and, the whole place was full of motorcycle police and they looked absolutely marvellous when they came down for breakfast that morning, all polished up.

And this chap knocked on the door the day before and asked if we had any accommodation. And I told him we had no accommodation at all and he might get some at one of the pubs. He told me he was in the Queen’s party. I said there was only one thing I could do but I wouldn’t stand for any nonsense. I told him we had just built a new home half way up the hill and his five men could sleep up there but that they had to eat down here, and they’re not to

have any grog up there. It was Mr Curtis, he had organised the whole Queen’s tour, so he made sure there was no hanky panky business. I asked them in the morning whether I could take a camera, I was to be in the invited guest section. They told me I wouldn’t be able to take a camera but he said, “Don’t put it up near the Queen’s face, but it will be

alright.” So when I went down in the morning they said I couldn’t take the camera in and when I told them that Mr Curtis said I could, it was ok. Well, Jim was in charge of the airport by this stage and he had over 100 planes that came in and landed. Like a big plane would come in and another one came in with a whole lot of policemen and everything.

So he took photos and everything out at the airport and I took them at the wharf. So we were able to splice them together. And then he came in after he had finished with all the planes and then he took photos of the opening of the museum. Sorry…

Yes. Well anyway, then they did the dance for the Queen … no first, the barge came in and we’ve got photos from the top of the hill of the Britannia, and the Stewart was the escort ship, and then the barge came in with Mr and Mrs Curtin, the Premier and his wife, they came in first on the barge. Their plane was out at the airport to whip them away.

They had a plane out there for the Queen in case she got seasick because she doesn’t travel too well if it’s a bit rough. So the barge went back out and then the Queen came and Princess Anne and then they went up to the convent and it was opened and while they were away the TI [Thursday Island] boys kept us entertained with the dancing and what have you.

She was there for the best part of a whole day, her and the Duke and Princess Anne. Jim got lovely photos of them waving and so forth. It was only just recently we saw an ad in the paper where he was doing up films and that so we took all our films and took them down to him and asked if he could put them onto a video because it was easier for us to see. And he was just so rapt in them, he asked if he could do a free one for himself

and also a third one to send to the Queen. He said he would like to and she could only say no, so as far as I know he sent a copy of it to the Queen. He’s got one and the one he did for me I took to Cooktown and we gave it to

the Museum and they can put it on for the visitors. It shows the opening of the Museum and the Queen in Cooktown. From there I started the re-enactment of Captain Cook’s landing. So that was one for me and one for the town too you know and it’s still going, the re-enactment of Captain Cook’s landing. It happens over the June weekend and it brings a lot of people into the town and that’s still going today.

We were very, very involved in the town. There was no TV or things like that. So you did your home entertaining and you brought people into the town. Then Jim got the golf course going, and the RSL [Returned and Services League] had been defunct for quite a few years. Well I got that going and to get that going I got the heads of the Cairns RSL to come up and I

offered them free accommodation and everything which they accepted. They came up by car because they could all come in the one car. So I went around the town to see who would take on the position of president and secretary and so forth. I had to make sure we had enough people to come to the RSL to warrant having it. So we got enough and I got Peter Bayliss to be president. He was a Vietnam bloke and

just after that he got the Order of Australia and unfortunately he died about a month ago. And the RSL is just thriving now. So you go back and you feel good about things that you start and they’re still going. And Hillcrest is still going and it’s doing very well. Each time we’ve gone up there we’ve visited and ended up having dinner or lunch there. It’s had three different owners and they’ve all done well out of it.

Hillcrest plays a very important part in Cooktown because not everyone wants to stay at a pub. In the early days, that’s how I got my first five, they went to the pub and they said they were drinking all their money and they wanted a night’s sleep so they would stay in their room and then their mates would bring the drink up to them.

So they thought they had to get out of the pub and that’s how they came to us and that’s how I started. I don’t think I’ve told you about that. Did I tell you about the CO and that?

Yes. Well anyway, then the army was there and I was putting on this old English pub night. The men had to have no hair on their chest and

I had these hats made. I was on a boat cruise and I copied it. The hats had big brims on and they fitted on their shoulders and they had little slits so they could see out and on their chests, around their nipples, we painted them as their eyes, we had a couple of artists in Cooktown, and their navel was painted as their lips. We put cot sheets underneath there and pinned them at the

back, and made a black bow tie in cardboard. Then the boys made big black buttons down the front. I had heard on the wireless the ‘Whistling Rufus’ and I rang them and they sent me up a tape so we put the tape on and the boys would come in like this and they would just sort of whistle quietly to themselves. Well! The way their stomachs went.

And the chap who made the hats for me, he was 80 and as skinny as could be. He wanted to be in it and he had more wrinkles in his belly than anybody but he was wonderful. It was a fabulous night. And other girls had, these artists had done paintings on heavy cardboard and we had them depicting England and what’s inside those shops. And

I got Burns Philp beer mugs. And I borrowed all the jugs from the pubs and we poured the beer from the kegs into jugs. I sold them a mug when they came in so we had no mugs to wash up, they didn’t want them to get broken so they all looked after them.

I went to the two fish shops and I ordered fish and chips and told them how many were there. So the people had their tickets and they would cut them in half when they went in and the other half was for their supper and they came up in big baskets and it had to be wrapped up in newspaper. So there was no washing up and then they just went around after and put all the paper in the baskets and that was it.

So they had the other half of the tickets and that was supper over with. So we had no breakages and no mess and everybody was able to enjoy themselves. We raised big money out of that. I love Cooktown, we go back every year for a holiday. I just love Cooktown, the people are just so lovely,

if they said they were going to do something they would do it. Everybody helped everybody. Like the doctor rang me up one day and asked if I could help her out. She said she had a lady who was pregnant and she wanted her to come up and stay with us and have the baby, so she did.

When it was time for her to go to hospital I took her to hospital and she had the baby. I don’t know where she went. I just knew her Christian name and that was it. The same thing happened again. And people in Cooktown, I supposed because I had plenty of beds, if kiddies had an accident or something and they had to be flown away to hospital, they’d bring the other kids up

for me to look after. One family had five and the policeman’s wife had to take one of their children to Brisbane so I had them all. The little one was only 10 months old or something. So I had all those there. I said to this chappie, “Do you really like Cooktown?” Most of them would come and stay at our place before they moved into their own homes.

So I knew a lot of them. I asked this chap how he liked it and he said he loved it. I said I thought he would miss the social life of Brisbane. He said, “I have more social life in Cooktown than I ever had in Brisbane. You imagine going to the pictures, shopping with five kids and taking them into Brisbane. We haven’t missed a dance or anything in Cooktown.

You take the kids to the pictures with you. They play in the verandah for a while. They know they’re not to make a noise.” We had long church pews and so they’d put a blanket on them. The same with the dances, they might lie in the back seat or you’d push them under the seat and you could dance all night and the kids were under there. They were wonderful days. There was never any drink at the dances.

Sometimes there were outside, they’d have it hidden in the cars and they’d whiz out there, but not inside and so there was never ever any drunks around. It was really good. And then Jim got into the band and we had a German chap come and he played the bugle beautifully. And our bugler had broken his bugle and Anzac Day came and we didn’t have a bugle and someone said go and see Hans. So he said he would have a go.

So we got the music for him and learnt ‘The Last Post’ and he played it well and he played it for years. And when he played it the tears would be running down his eyes. On Anzac Days the CWA [Country Women’s Association] always put morning tea on and Hans would be invited and one day he said, “We were firing stones and here I am

sitting with you all.” It was really lovely if you were genuine. They would pick someone who wasn’t and they brought them into their hearts and they really looked after them. Jim’s said several times that Cooktown was the salvation for him. He came from Machoocha on the Murray and they’d never been to Sydney or Melbourne until the war. Then we went down there and lived there for a little while after the war until we moved out.

So the quiet life up there and everything was good.

Jim’s been pretty sick on and off, and we had a magnificent home. He made every brick, every brick in that house he made, all by hand, one at a time. I would make 27, that would be a bag of cement,

and Jim would make some after he came home and he’d stack them up. I think the pub was getting a bit worried, I think they thought we were going to build a motel or something. We had this block of land up the hill. We had bought that because there was a good well on it and we syphoned the water down to give us extra water. Where am I?

So Jim built that. We got a chap in to put the bricks up and Jim did all the woodwork. The boat brought our sheets, he wanted 44 feet sheets of iron and they put special beams out the back of boat and they had the iron on like that. You wouldn’t get people to do that.

Any company would do that. So they man-handled that up the hill to our place. The house has got the most beautiful view. Before we started to build it, we were trying to get war service homes into Cooktown and they sent somebody up. We said we would borrow $5000. Anyway Sir Kenneth Morris knew about this. This day he was at the airport and he said,

“How are you going with that loan Jim?” Jim told him it had been knocked back. He told him that Dame Annabel Rankin knocked it back. He asked if we had the letter and he told me that he was going to Parliament and he would take it down. It was granted when he got down there. The people, if they came to Cooktown they never went around and looked at anything. They just went to the pub and then went back again, they thought Cooktown was a bad investment.

Now that house that we borrowed 5000 pound to build, we sold for $400,000. That’s the view from the verandah, the most beautiful view. I could see the planes coming in. If the flare path was out I knew he would be late coming home. The sea planes landed just in the front, it was beautiful. But he built that house and he wasn’t well and people would come and say, “Oh a million dollar view!” And I would say, “Give me half a million and you can have it.”

Anyway, this day we were offered good money and Jim hadn’t been well and we said, “Right, we’ll take it.” So we came down and that gave us a start and we had $400,000 plus the contents of our home. We had sold Hillcrest and moved up to our new home in 1972. In 1972 Jim broke his back,

yes, ’71 or ’72 he broke his back. At work he was lifting steel pickets, they were supposed to be in bundles of 10 and he gave them a kick to move them and it threw it on to his back and he broke his back. So that was terrible and he had a lot of trouble with that. So we moved down here and we were only here for a short while

and he had a heart attack. He woke me up and said he was having a heart attack. We hadn’t been in the house long and I thought, “What am I going to do?” I raced next door, there was no fence up because they had just moved in too. I told them to ring for an ambulance because Jim was having a heart attack. When I got back here I rang triple ‘0’ and I told them. So I put the garage door up and opened that and then I went back to Jim,

just as the ambulance came, next door came in and I told them I had phoned for the ambulance and they said they had phoned for the ambulance and, “They asked where we lived and we didn’t know where we lived.” They didn’t know the name of the street. But luckily I had remembered to ring triple ‘0’ and anyway in they came. So they checked him out and

said he didn’t have the symptoms of a heart attack. They said they would take him to Nambour and, “If it’s not a heart attack then we’ll bring you back to this hospital.” Well he was dead at Jandinna and they had to call for help, they got him going then he was dead on arrival at Nambour Hospital. They phoned me and said, “Come down, drive carefully,”

and not to rush because he was under good care. Well by the time I got there they had him in a mini-van, you know, those doctor vans, and they were taking him to Prince Charles. So it wasn’t a heart attack, it was a clot of blood that had hit the back of his heart and broke all the rhythms of the heart. He’s never had a bypass or anything but it’s this.

He can’t get in the sun, he goes blue, as blue as your skirt, then his eyes will go vivid red. But if he gets in the sun he goes blue. Most of the time his nose and ears are blue and his forehead but if he’s in the sun he gets darker and darker. He’s had to give everything outside away. So he wouldn’t be alive today if we hadn’t come down here. It’s a nice little town. It’s a country town.

I don’t remember a great deal of that. I don’t know if I’ve just blanked it out. I know my young brother got polio and he went to

go, get up. The native girl came and said, “He won’t move, he won’t get out of bed.” Mum went in and started to tickle him and he wouldn’t move. He was only two. Anyway we brought him down to Australia to have treatment and then when he came back they had been advised to take him over to Matupi, the volcano, for the sulphur which would be good for him, it was in a way. Then Mum was bringing him

backwards and forwards to Australia. He used to be able to come over on the Montora. Burns Philp owned boats and they looked after him and Mum was also able to bring a native girl or boy over to look after Alan, I remember that. Alan and Keith were both born at Kokopo out Malaguna way. And our house was right next door to Burns Philp’s store.

A beautiful, huge big cannas in the gardens. In those days children were seen and not heard. We never ate at the same table as our Mum and Dad.

Yes, the native people looked after us. As I say, Mum had never done anything. Some of my family,

they’re all gone now. But my aunt wrote ‘The Legend of New Guinea’. When our family moved over to Cooktown, she was the first woman to ride astride at the Cooktown Races. She’s known as Ma Stewart and she put the first swimming pool in Lae and she named it Moresby

after her son, his name was Moresby and her first daughter was named Elia after Elia Beach. So she named, and at the back of the hotel there’s a hill and the Japs made that into a tunnel and they made that their hospital. And they took a lot of the stuff out of her hotel, the Hotel Cecil, and put it in the tunnel and when the war was over they sealed that up completely.

No, you didn’t because someone was tagging around looking after you all the time. I don’t think kids got up to too much mischief in those days.

No I can’t remember doing anything. I know when Dad died, he was up at Wau when he died. My aunt had

a beautiful rose garden at the hotel and the natives dug the roses up and they planted them over his grave. She wasn’t happy about that but someone dug them all up after. She might have taken them back again. Then they were evacuated out. She was the last woman back

after the war, she was the last out and the first back after the war and she bought the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service] barrack on the Boodibum because she knew that the people coming back in would want accommodation. So that’s how she started up again, she’s been a real legend. Her husband was a pearl fisherman, he brought up two black pears which are most unusual,

he gave one to my grandmother and grandmother gave it to Mum just before she died. Mum put it into the bank for safe-keeping and, being a scatterbrain, she forgot what bank she put it into. We went back to New Guinea and she couldn’t remember what bank it was and we never knew anything about it. It was a beautiful pearl apparently. I think it’s because those days are gone and you can’t have them again

and you just sort of forget. That’s it. I’ve just forgotten all about it.

About 10.

Well everything was new and I can’t even remember, I’ve been trying to think. I can’t remember

what schools I went to, I can’t remember the schools. I went to school for a little while in Cairns and then there was Cooktown. Cooktown took right over for me then and I just loved it up there and that was it.

All the goats. Cooktown was known as the town of 3 Gs, girls, goats and glass bottles.

No, I think even in those days I was interested in history and the history out at the cemetery is absolutely fantastic. The old Chinese laundries, a couple of them were still there. Hippon was there and he had his whole family and they dressed as Chinese.

I’m glad of the knowledge I got from the cemetery and talking to him because it came in handy with the tourists. It was a big thing if a Chinaman died, they would take them, it would be a big procession out to the cemetery. The food was all put on like a big table, I can show you a photo after. They would put all the food there.

They would have two big furnaces outside and they would come down chanting with all these papier maché houses and things like this and they were burnt so when they went to heaven they would have a house and food. Today we give people cards and then they take them off the wreaths and then take them home after. Well they would come back to get the plates the next day and they were always very happy because

all the food was gone. My Uncle John came down from New Guinea many years after and I was telling him this tale and he said as kids they would follow a funeral and, “After they all went we would come out from the bush and we’d eat all the tucker and take the money. And they were happy. We weren’t doing anything wrong because the departed one had plenty of food and he had houses and he had money.”

So in between, some of the really bad things, the hard things of life, some of Jim’s sicknesses and that, they’re sort of blacked out too. I’m pleased they have. I’m just pleased that our children, they knew Daddy was sick and they would keep quite. But I’ll tell you a funny incident. This is how isolated

Cooktown was. They rang up and said there were some people coming in and would I give them lunch. So I got the table set up and they came in and there was six or seven of them. My daughter played the piano and she had a good piano, which was in the lounge room. The rule was people could play if they could play but not to just tiddle around with. Anyway, after dinner

a chap came out and lifted the lid and I told him that if he could play he was more than welcome but otherwise, “If not I rather you didn’t.” So he sat down. When he signed the book, he was Eric …, oh, he’s a famous pianist, I just can’t remember, and Shirley McDonald. That was the group there and she’s a wonderful singer. I didn’t have a clue who they were. Another man came in and I had him there for three weeks and when

he came in he was so sunburnt. A lot of southern tourists came up like they were going native. So he came up in a sarong and, they were like lilies and they would get burnt with the sea air. So I poured cold tea over him to take the heat out of him and he said he would stay longer. He ended up by staying for three weeks and we used to call him Mac and he just signed Mac. And after he left

I heard him on the radio. He said he had just had the most fantastic holiday in Cooktown for three weeks, “Incognito, and I was just Mac.” He was head of ICI. So people, you don’t know who they are and they like it that way. So we met some very interesting people.

After a couple of years, about two or three years, I would get people who booked in for four and five months every year, they’d book in and they’d come up. They would write me and say they would be up on such and such a day. They would bring a case of rum for me because we weren’t licensed. They’d have it in their bedroom and things like that.

Yes. She looked Spanish. She had jet black hair, long, she could sit on it. When she washed her hair she’d put a chair under the clothes line and she’d put her hair over the clothes line. It was really thick. She used to plait it and put it around her head with a fresh frangipani every morning.

There was an old hotel there and she went back before the war finished and she started this café. She had someone in there cooking for her of course. My sister was about 16 and Peg used to wait on the tables. The planes were going out to the Battle of the Coral Sea at the time. They’d fly out and when they would come back

Peg would run out with a note pad and the planes would fly over the place and if they dipped their wing once they wanted steak and eggs and if they dipped them twice they wanted two eggs. So Mum knew then. She would put so many steaks away and so many eggs away. When they came back, they’d land and come in and she would have it roped off so those pilots could have their steaks and one or two eggs or whatever they wanted. They ordered from the air.

We were up there for the centenary in ’95 and I mentioned that and they put it on the air and a lot of people rang up and said they remembered Peggy going out.

I think we were too busy helping and doing things because, not that Mum wasn’t capable,

she could play the piano beautifully. Mum as always a lady. Then after, I don’t know how many years after Dad died, she married a policeman. He was called The Duke. Anyway he’s the oldest man who’s ever gone through Duntroon and he was through as an intelligence officer.

He used to speak six different languages. He was tall and a very good-looking man but he just absolutely ignored us kids. He was nice, he never ever chastised us or smacked us in any way, he never even spoke harshly to us but he never gave us any love. He would never sit down and talk to us either, he just sort of ignored you. We just didn’t take any notice of him.

They lost their home in 1949 in the cyclone and three years after we were up there, our place was further on where we were paying a shilling a week rent. Jim’s sister was up on holidays, she was about 18. So I said I would go down and get Mum to come up here. So I put my head down and battled my way down…

Oh yes. She was a good Mum, oh yes. She told us lots of stories of the early days in Cooktown when she was there. She was loving and nice and had four children.

It was because I can’t remember seeing her do anything. She certainly never cooked a meal in my life. I can’t say I can remember, even after Dad died, seeing her cook a meal.

One of us, my brother was older than me, he cooked.

Somehow I might have been a gifted cook. We’d all do something, Alan would do something. But Mum never cooked, she always looked nice.

Well both my grandfather and grandmother were Scottish. But she had the deepest most beautiful brown eyes

and this beautiful hair, and luckily my youngest daughter has got the same sort of hair. But she had a personality of her own, same as my youngest daughter, everybody just loves Liz. She’s just drawn to people, I don’t think she’s got an enemy. Every friend is a friend. She’s the most wonderful person.

She’s like Mum was. She couldn’t care less about anything, she would keep everything nice but things don’t mean much to her. She has beautiful things, she loves antiques. She would give you her socks if she thought you wanted them.

Yes, Mum would do exactly the same. But Mum never, no, I can’t remember Mum sitting down, oh God no, she wouldn’t have made a cake

I used to make Johnny cakes, no I can’t remember her doing anything like that.

Yes, yes. I’ve only got one left now, he’s 83. Alan died of Alzheimer’s two years ago. And Peggy, the youngest one, had a heart attack and died about 10 years ago, and in February I’ll be 70 [actually 80].

Well. Pretty good. I used to go to church things. One time, this chap, I was in the air force and he came through as a rookie and he was sent off to the mess and I said to the sergeant of the kitchen at the time,

I asked whether I could have him in the kitchen with me and I had him cleaning this and that. I got my second stripe out of him. I got him to get up and clean the flues over the stove and do this and do that. He had the place shining. They came for inspection and they noted how clean the kitchen was and he said, “Thank Christ I only tried to kiss you.”

But the boys they were like that up there. They were good. As the saying goes, it’s the man’s place to ask and it’s the girls place to refuse. My eldest daughter, she was going to New Zealand on a working holiday and I told her she wouldn’t be able to talk to them there like you talk to them here, “They’re like brothers to you here, you just watch what you’re

doing over there.” That’s how it was. They were all good mates. You knew that if they went out they would come home the way they went out. You never heard of anybody, in those days, there were no broken marriages or things like that, that didn’t went on. Next year we’ll be married 60 years. It is isn’t it?

The only thing we heard, we had a German sergeant of police in Cooktown and there was a meeting and he said, “The first warnings we’ll get will be the bombs,” and someone must have reported him because he got interned over that and they evacuated the people out of Cooktown.

That’s the first we knew that it was coming closer. But they fought the Coral Sea battle from Cooktown and Mareeba. They took over, the Mission strip was partly built on a corn field. We were told that we could get to the Mission by road, a good road, but they were told that if anyone came up the river they were to be assisted. This is the Aboriginals and that didn’t sound good.

Anyway, then they found out an airfield and they built that up and that’s what they used for the Battle of the Coral Sea, they fought from there. It’s a big strip and it takes all the big planes.

Nearly everyone was evacuated out and they came back in dribs and drabs after.

I don’t know when Mum went back but the army was still up there for quite a while so there was still army up there well and truly when Mum went back.

No. I would have been in Brisbane when that happened, I had already volunteered for the air force and I was too young. But my papers came through

and I went on the train the day I turned 18. That was lovely. I loved the air force.

It just sort of appealed to me. It might have been the first recruiting office I saw. It might have been that, I don’t know. But I just sort of went to the air force. Cooktown gave me a nice

certificate, it’s up on the wall there, when I went back.

Well I had never been to Brisbane before.

Well there wasn’t much money around. We got a furnished house, people who had evacuated from Brisbane and just took their personal things and left their furnished house, and we lived in that at Chelmer, that’s not far out of Brisbane. It was a lovely home so we lived there.

I can’t even think what Mum was doing, my step-father was in the army then so she would have been getting army allotment.

Oh no. You had no real reason to go in there. I worked at a florist shop for a little while before I went away.

I just stayed around that area.

I did a couple of little cleaning jobs, such as it was, minding kids and things like that, for a bit of pocket money.

I never had a full-time job, ever. Even when I got out of the services I didn’t have a full-time job until I took washing in a few times to help Jim. Boats would come in and want linen washed so I would do that and the captain’s clothes and I did relief cooking at hotels of a weekend.

Then I started Hillcrest and I was full on there for the whole time. Mainly it was sort of, you didn’t have a car, see it wasn’t until we got our war money, Jim got his and I got mine and we put it together and we got a second hand utility. Otherwise if you wanted to go to the beach you would put the kids in the pram and you had a mile to walk

down the dirt road, you thought nothing of it and you just did those sorts of things. And then after, when I had Hillcrest, to keep the tourists happy so they’d want to come back, I would organise picnics and that. And before I did it with the tourists, when I was living in the house before it was damaged with the cyclone, I would get on to all the young ones

and the boys would put in five shillings and we’d pay for a truck and anything that was left over we would buy watermelons and the food and we’d go to Archer Point and some of the nice beaches. If the weather was good then we’d take enough stuff and the boys would take their fishing gear, spear-fishing gear, and they’d go off spear-fishing. And if they caught fish we’d stop and have a moonlight tea there then come back home again.

Even at those turnouts, even the engaged boys, they would never pair off. We would always stay in a group and play rounders. We take a gramophone and square dancing had come in and we would be dancing on the beach and it was, to you it would be hard to believe these things but that’s how it was, and wouldn’t be able to do it today because it was an open back truck

with a side on and we’d all just sit in that and the food would be in the middle, no eskies, we’d just put it in the baskets. We had a kerosene fridge, we didn’t have an icebox, there was no ice works. And off we’d go for these picnics and that was it. They were, the boys and girls were different in those days. They weren’t prudes by any means. They got up to mischief no doubt

but the thing is, on the whole, they would know you were going with someone. I wasn’t going with anybody. I didn’t have a boyfriend in Cooktown at all. There was one chap I met in Cooktown and I went with him for a little while after, Charlie Vickery. He asked me to marry him and I said, “No.” I had never even kissed Charlie.

That was when I was in the air force and then I met Jim.

I don’t know. I could tell him what to do and he would do it, anything I wanted he gave it to me. Jim was a different kettle of fish, Jim was the boss. He’s straight as

a die Jim, and he’s as honest as could be but he won’t do anything he doesn’t want to do. No, he’s a different kettle of fish. Anything, we’ve always discussed anything we did in our life. He would hear me out and sometimes he would take notice of what I said and sometimes not. Jim has always and still does make every decision in our home. And there’s never been one that I could say after, ‘If he had only listened to me.’

Not like at all.

Yes, I like that in Jim. You felt safe with him and secure. He was a hard worker. I met Charlie years after. I was going down to Greenslopes, I had flown down to Brisbane and I was on the plane, I was going down to Greenslopes to see Jim, and Charlie happened to be sitting beside me. He

said, “You’re pretty well-preserved.” I told him I was going to see my husband and he asked if he could come to the hospital to see him, so he came and I know he saw Jim but I can’t remember what was said or anything else. I remember that. I know he didn’t flatten him.

So that was it.

Well I think I liked being with the girls and the crowd. I liked the discipline. I was learning to do something. I had this

chef, Meyer, he was a Swiss chef …

You were just exhilarated and you went there and they gave you your clothes and you walked away. I was just so thrilled that I was in it and I was going to help the war.

The girls were doing it, we were doing it to let a man go to the front. They had cooks in the front line too and so we were there to leave a man free. I think I’ve always wanted to achieve something, I had always been floating around. I wanted to be somebody and I think I’ve achieved that in my life.

I’ve always been organising parties. On Sunday, people in Cooktown got Jim’s Christmas card and they phoned to say how good it was and they thanked me and she said, “We thought of you last week and you would have loved it. It was Billy Jackson had his 50th Wedding Anniversary at Archer River which is a cattle station and he told all the boys to come as fairies.”

And she said I would have loved it. Well, can you imagine, all the boys coming as fairies. I can’t think what on earth they wore. I’ll have to chase that up. I don’t know if they were fairy fairies or what. But I’ve always loved parties, not boozy parties but I’ve loved parties. I’ve always had fancy dress

parties, even here I had a Spanish party and cooked Spanish food and told everyone to dress up in Spanish dress. I like that, it puts in a bit of atmosphere and if people dress up a little bit, they relax more.

She didn’t mind. She was pleased to see me come home and she was proud of me when she saw my stripes.

I think she was just proud. She didn’t cry, she didn’t cry when I went away.

No. But it was nothing that should upset anybody. You’re a bit apprehensive but you soon make up with somebody. You would be told to go over and do that and get a pad and paper and you listen to what they told you, and so long as you did what you were told you were alright.

On behaviour.

And your uniform, the respect for your uniform, and I would never have done anything to disrespect my uniform.

Well play up, do the wrong thing. I would have hated to have got a dishonourable discharge, that would have killed me. You wouldn’t go and get drunk. I didn’t drink at all in those days, and I never smoked.

Very early in the piece, Melbourne had the hospitality bureau there and they would call out for any girls who wanted to go out to a home for the weekend. So a few of us would go and I went to the same lady all the time and I made great friends with her and she was a mother figure until she died. You went there,

other girls knew more of the world than I did. I was pretty naive, very naive. They would like to go into town and perhaps pick up a man and go to a party. But that was their life and I never heard about that, that wasn’t my way of life. I wasn’t a prude, I wasn’t taking any risks.

Oh yes

it was good, lots of jokes and that.

No, there was such a lot of people. There was one incident out on a landing between the carriages. There were a couple of MPs [Military Police] out there, I don’t know if they were on the train to guard it or whatever, anyway they had their guns. They were acting

the fool and I grabbed his gun and fired a shot, he had a fit and, “Oh my God.”

He was acting the fool and I said, “This is how you go,” and I pulled the trigger into the bush. Well he nearly had a fit. He said he had to account for the bullets.

I said, “Well you should have left it in your pouch.” That’s about the only incident and I never saw him again.

Yes. I was a good shot. I could handle a gun. I had a good .22.

Cooktown.

It was just in case of snakes. I put 10 shots into a goanna once but they’re hard to kill so I put 10 shots into a goanna before he stopped.

I hit him. No, it was handy to know how to look after yourself. Another thing in Cooktown, we were having some heavy rain and the house was leaking and I had buckets here, there and everywhere. Mum asked why I had all these extra buckets with a bit of water in them, “There’s no leaks there?” I said, “You said you were going out

and if anybody comes because there’s no lights they will fall over one of these buckets and I’ll know there was someone in there who shouldn’t be there.” I was pretty careful.

Oh yes. Someone taught me, who taught me? It might have been my brother.

He put tins up in the back yard and we fired into the hill. My sister learnt to shoot too.

I suppose about 14, something like that.

Oh yes. You never carried your gun around, the gun was always at home in a certain spot

but you never carried it around but I knew what to do. I was a little bit of a tomboy. I think I could fight and I don’t think anyone would have got the better of me. I was never put to the test but I don’t think anyone would have got the better of me.

I don’t know. I just feel it in myself. I was not frightened to have a go at anything.

I’ve always been a hard worker. We’d have the truck there and I would unload the goods off the weekly boat, and I would be in a hurry to get down to the wharf to get the supplies and get back. I would go down and the wharfies would be having smoko and I didn’t have time to waste. I thought it was smart, I would start unloading the truck myself.

The only thing I found a bit hard was putting a 10 gallon keg of oil on the truck, that was really hard. But I thought I was teaching them a lesson but they just let me do it and I always did it after that. But the thing is, I was being stupid. I did it and had no trouble but half my life I’ve had a bad back, and that is what it’s from, from being a smart arse, and if I turned around and acted as a lady and waited …

No, if there was no wood there, Jim nearly always left me wood but if there was no wood, I’d go out and chop wood. I wouldn’t chop a lot but I’d chop enough to keep me going. When the copper was going I would feed in a tree, just keep pushing it in. I’d have a go at anything. I swam,

I didn’t swim, I came across a flooded river once, don’t ask me how I got across, I don’t know, the river was up to there, the Endeavour River, it was going pretty fast. I had to get across there for some reason, but I had to get across. So I got into it. There were trees coming down. It’s a wide river the Endeavour but I got across, I kept going up. There was

the bridge and the water was coming like this and I was getting up that way, and when I got to the other side I was on this side, and I was really lucky, there were crocodiles in there. It must have been some real reason to get over there. I was 16 when I did that.

Yes, I joined up to be a cook because my mother couldn’t cook and I said, “It’s not gonna happen to me.” I joined up to be a cook.

Anything, I just love cooking.

I am a good cook too.

No, she was pleased. I wasn’t home that much after I came out of the air force to do any cooking because I got married while I was in the air force.

When I got out, naturally Jim and I went off. Then we went up to Cooktown and ended up living up there and she was down in her house and I was up in our house.

Yeah. She knew I joined up to be a cook. It’s the best thing I could have done because I didn’t know I was gonna marry a chap who would get sick and that,

I didn’t know that I would need something like that to keep me going. I was so busy with that, I think that stopped me from going around the bend. I had something and I always had somebody there if I needed help. I had help there. I met very interesting people. Wonderful people I met there. One chap was Tassie Deboner. Tassie, ‘cause he come from Tassie. He was

a navy diver. He was torpedoed on five successive ships, he was decorated twice by the King, six weeks apart. When he went the second time the King said, “I’ve seen you before?” He said, “Six weeks ago.” “Are you making a habit of this?” Then he lost his memory. Grace thought he was dead. It was nearly 12 months before he got his memory back and he was in Malta. Then they

shipped him home, met him up there doing work. Nerve cases seemed to get on well together. Sometimes Jim goes, “Oh,” you don’t keep quiet. You soon learn when to keep quiet and when to talk. Nerve cases realises the same. Ian is a bad nerve case, he and Jim just hit it like that. Jim and Tassie hit it really well together. They understand each other. They never

go into details about something, but they understand each other. So Jim, I’ve heard him talking, he told the lady that interviewed him things he’s only ever told me once. That was about when he was in those bamboo cages for three months. I heard him talking to Ian about them. That was terrible.

He’ll tell you about it, he said he will.

Right on the day he got his discharge.

Yes, exactly the same. Not like you see on TV today. We’re not climbing

over fences and then tunnels and all that, we never did, we just did marching. It was mainly marching and physical exercise and then you went and did your cooking course. I loved parades through town.

They were lovely. We’d form up, we’d march right through Brisbane, we’d come out in the valley.

That was lovely. In Melbourne we marched. It was exhilarating. I was always so pleased that I’d been chosen to do that two or three towns, to be able to march through the town. I was very proud of my uniform.

Yes, I loved marching. I could still swing them good.

Yes. No, I haven’t the last couple of years, I go in a jeep now because of my knee. I marched

when we went to the Anzac Days in Cooroy ‘cause it’s only a small march. In the 39th [Battalion] there’s only a few of them left and they asked if they could keep the number down there so we go down there. We stay the night with our son now, our son marches for his Dad and Jim goes in the jeep ‘cause Jim couldn’t do the big march. Young Jim is an associate member

of the battalion and they’ve asked all the sons if they’ll become associate members of the battalion to keep it going when their Dads are gone. I think it’s a lovely idea, Jim comes to Kokoda Day and he comes to Anzac Day. He’s known as Young Jim and Old Jim. He doesn’t wear his father’s medals, Jim wears the medals ‘cause Jim’s alive.

I loved it. I didn’t find it hard. I think you might have been 20 to a hut. You had those wide framed beds. You had a palliasse as a chafe bag and you’d go up

and you’d put straw in the bag, you soon learned not to fill it up because you just roll out of it, so you sink into it. There was no sheets or pillowcases, you had three army blankets with the blue stripe in the middle. Every morning when you got up your bed went like that, you folded your mattress up into three, your blankets would fold a certain way and the blue stripe had to be in the middle. On orderly inspection they came through and

if one of those blankets was crooked they’d flip them out and you’d have to do it all again. Shoes were at the bottom of your bed and your hat was on the top of your blankets. Your kit bag was standing next to it. It had to be that they could look in, there was no wardrobe to hang your clothes up or anything, and they were in that at all times. There’s one funny thing, just after I’d had a smallpox injection and I was in

Melbourne, I must have fainted or collapsed or something on the tram, I don’t remember any of it. When I came to, I was in Toorak Military Hospital. They notified where I was and the girls who were doing bed inspections said, “There’ll be one missing.” They went along and found my bed and I’d put my kit bag in it

and covered it up as though I was in bed. I was out and coming in late and they had it covered up for me. They told me about it when I came back. That was quite common. The boys, when we lined up for injections, they would faint before they got their injection, more boys than girls had trouble. They’d faint before they got their injection. I was

fortunate at Dengate, I had a room about that square. I had a big steel electric stove, the rest was a great big table with tin, no basins or anything to cook with, you cooked on that table. So you put your flour around the side and you beat up your eggs and sugar in the middle. So you

had to be careful you didn’t take too much from the side when you’re putting the thing in the flour because the liquid would go straight out onto the floor so you had to watch what you were doing.

No, I was making a 100 pound fruitcake. You didn’t make little, everything was big. We had an air force hospital in New Guinea

and we used to send over a cake once a month. I liked making cakes. So I’d be able to strip down, I could lock the door and I just had my bra and singlet on, you had white pants on, and I could get into mixing up the stuff. You had your steel tray there and they made a wooden frame. This is how the cakes went, wooden frame

about that deep, that went around and that sat on the tray, no top or bottom, put your cake into that and then I’d call a couple of boys in and we’d put it in the oven and cook it. When it was cooked you take the box off, take it up to the carpentry and they nail a bottom on it and bring it back and you put the cake in it. Then you take it back and they nail a lid on it. That was shipped away and the cake never got broken.

It was posted as it was cooked. I used to, shouldn’t have done it, but I did. I had the carpenter make me boxes about that big and I made a small fruit cake and I used to send them over to Jim. Sometimes he wouldn’t get any for a few months and then he might get three or four cakes all together. He said it was great because they’d split it up to all the boys around there. That’s how you made

your cakes. Where I was doing my training they had every type of electric oven, gas ovens and steam and all the veggies were done in baskets with steam. We had very little to cook with, no matter what your job is, if you haven’t got the equipment you can’t do it.

So we didn’t have much at all until the Americans came into the war and the marines came into Melbourne. They had an arrangement with the government that they would do a bakery and butchery course and we would feed them. So the Americans supplied the food. Where our cool rooms and fridges were empty, they were overflowing. We had rockmelons, we had everything you could think of so we were able

to put on good meals. We had good stuff to cook with. When the meal parade, there’d be an American MP up that end and an Aussie one down this end. We weren’t allowed to talk to the Americans as they came through. The girls would wait on the tables, take off dirty dishes, they were learning to be stewardesses, and the cook was over here. Where there’s a will there’s a way and the Yanks used to put a little note under their plate

and things like that and the girls used to get that. I never got any, but the others did ‘cause they were the stewardesses.

You weren’t allowed to talk to any on the meal parade. You’re serving up, you’re not making dates. You weren’t allowed to say, “How are you going, Bill, Joe,” or anything else. No way.

You never came in contact with them, they were in a different section. I don’t know where they slept, I’ve got no idea. They did the butchery and bakery course where we were. Where they slept or where their barracks were, I’ve got no idea.

No, this is the kitchen here, the big massive dining room is there, a

door there and a door there. They come in and there’s a big bench along here. That’s all the kitchen there. The stuff would be wheeled over. Most of it was stuff you could wheel over. Then it would be there. You had gaps where the potatoes would be mashed, they had their plate and you put it onto their plate. The next one came along and it was done like that.

It was good. That was mass cooking all the time. It wasn’t till they were doing officers’ cooking it was totally different. It was better then when I went to a station cooking in the Officers’ Mess. They’d have Saratoga chips of an afternoon at 5 o'clock and all this. They had extra stuff to cook with.

Like a fine chip, they’d have it with their beers. Then the Sergeants’ Mess, you often worked 16 hours a day. If you were asked to do a double shift, you did it, there’s no such thing as time to knock off unless another shift come down to take over from you, you left but until they came down you didn’t go. The

sergeants might be having a party and so they’d bring the live WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s in and they’d cut the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and knock their heads off. We had to pluck them. Chooks would be running around with no heads. When they had a party you did that as well as the other stuff.

Yes, Latrobe Street.

You bought your Modess or whatever at the canteen.

Yes. You had a canteen. The canteen there was for men and women. They weren’t on display, but you’d just go and ask for anything you wanted

and anything you wanted you could buy at the canteen.

Yeah, you were allowed to wear make-up. Couldn’t wear earrings or bangles, you could have a watch and you could have a wedding ring but you couldn’t have beads or anything on.

I never found out which ones

did it, it was just done. Nobody ever talked about it but it was done. Another thing is, somebody’s boyfriend would come down and someone would say, “I’m going out on a date, has anybody got any civvies?” Somebody would lend them this and, “Have you got some money?” They made sure you had enough money to go out with them. We didn’t have many civvies amongst us, but we’d make sure they went out looking nice.

Everybody always did that, you helped each other. Even when we got married, Jim had a dirty, sweaty shirt and he came there. We got permission to get married and I said, “What are we gonna do?” So we took him over to the side of the WAAAFery there and the girls are passing shirts through the window to see which one fitted him. So they got him a nice plaid shirt to get married in.

Yeah. It was the

same, it was a khaki. You ask him about it. They passed around the shirts so he had a nice clean shirt to wear to his wedding.

You did your marching. As soon as you’ve got that off pat and you learned the rules and regulations of what they

wanted you to do or not do then you got straight into the cooking. Then you were well supervised until you had your passing out parade, you didn’t have that until they knew you could do it. Then you’d be posted to different stations. The air force, we were never posted as a squadron or a group, we got individual postings, that’s why it was very hard to make friends

but you made friends quickly amongst each other, because you went as individual postings, the same as the men. They went on individual postings too, that’s how it was done.

Yes.

I did the first one

at Latrobe Street. Then I went to Larundel and that was an upgrade of cooking on the smaller scale ‘cause we weren’t cooking for the Americans there. Then I went to South Australia and I was stationed in St Anne’s Barracks and working at the Exhibition Building at North Terrace and Emmanuel College.

It was just everyday cooking. The dormitories there were huge. There was big wire cages where, I suppose that’s where the sisters or whoever was on guard were there and there was where the inmates slept. The bathrooms were straight down. There was no doors on toilets or hand basins or anything, showers, because from that

area there they had to be able to see everything that went on in there with the inmates. It was built for them, but we were there. After we left they took over again, so they made no alterations for us. We used to put newspaper underneath our palliasse on the wire and that stopped the wind from coming up. You only had your

three blankets. Then you never knew when they would call siren, an air raid, you had to get out and you got into trouble if you didn’t go out underneath the big pine trees out there. Sometimes it’d be drizzle and rain but you had to get out and fall in and roll call to make sure everybody’s out there. You never knew when they were gonna do a roll call. There’d be a mock air raid.

That was cold.

Out Preston, Victoria, East Preston. You got a tram out Mont Park Way. Mont Park was the asylum and Larundel is off Mont Park. While we were doing our PT, the inmates next-door, Mont Park, they’d be watching you through the wire.

Here we are and they thought we were the ones, not them.

Yes. You had a good walk from there into the tram terminal and then catch the tram into the city. You’d always be home on time and before dark because there was the big cemetery here and on this side was all vacant land with trees on it. It was

a bitumen road. Not that I ever heard of any problems, but we were all a little bit timid, scared of the dark, you got back before it got dark.

Yes. You got your leave pass and you had to be back on a certain time. You were hauled over the coals if you weren’t back on time.

You got a late leave pass you might have to

be back a minute to 12. That was a late one. Sometimes it’d only be a 10 o'clock leave pass. It depended.

They did. You could go and talk to your doctor, most in our section were lady doctors. You could go and talk to her at any time, the sisters, our

officers were all approachable, mine were. We never had any bullying. I never heard of anybody bullying or anything like that. We’d put the copper on and somebody’s say, “I’ve got the copper going, got anything you wanna put into the copper?” Four or five girls would do their washing together. Those are the sorts of things. We dry starched our clothes, our skirts would stand up,

got that crease down the front.

Your skirts were dry, then you had your raw starch mixed up with water and then you ran that over your clothes and then you ironed them, raw starch.

A piece of rag or something, yeah, just dip it in the starch and just do a bit at a time, if you did too much it’d be streaky.

That made them really stiff.

No, you didn’t have to but the girls all liked the nice crease in the front of your skirt. Not in the back, only in the front.

Fabulon or something like that but you wouldn’t get the stiff we had in our skirts.

Everybody knows how to get a copper going. It’s made of copper, that’s why it got the name ‘copper’. Some were built in, others had a lip like that. It was just there and there’d be a couple of bars or a couple of bricks and it sat on there.

You filled it up with water. There was no rinse on that, but some of us got Sunlight soap and shaved it and put it into there and a couple of handfuls of washing soda and then keep poking a bit of wood in till it boiled and then you had a box out here, sitting over a tub, and the box had holes drilled in it. When the clothes were boiling you got the stick and lift them

out and put them into the box and they drain into the box. Then you started rinsing them. Washing day used to be all day, that’s in private life. Washing day was Monday, that was all day. We often had newspaper on our table for lunch because the tablecloth was in the wash. That was it,

washing day took all day. Then you took them out. The end of the line was the tea towels and your pillowcases were the last to go in ‘cause it was getting a bit thin then. Monday night everything was damped down, rolled up tight and put into baskets lined with towels. Tuesday was ironing day. You ironed. In those days it was a petrol pump-up iron, not an electrical iron. Or mother pots’

irons on the thing.

About 1972. Wait a minute, 1972 was the first electric one. Before that Jim bought me a kerosene copper and we were able to put that inside the laundry. You lit it the same as, you know what a

primus is?

Yeah, on legs and you pump it up. You did this and it was fed by gravity. You filled up the side with kerosene. It came through and you start up with methylated spirits and when it got hot you turned the kerosene on. Then he made a stand thing that fitted round with holes in it and a pipe in the middle. I put that in the middle and the clothes around and the water come in and out like that. That was my first washing machine,

I ran the hotel on that. I did all the sheets. I had all the people there over the June weekend and the magistrate sends a couple of prisoners up from the thing. “Go and pick up as many sheets as you can bring down from Hillcrest for bedding. She’s got a big wash up there today.” Yet, she’s still round at the police station

and ran his own house. He only did it twice, but he did it, they were both times when I was really busy and I really appreciated it. People did lovely things up there.

No. They always had clean undies on. It’s only if they looked grubby

I’d change them, otherwise. They had their play clothes, their school clothes and their going out clothes. The girls only had one good dress. I made all their clothes, I even made Jim’s shorts and shirts. Don’t ask me how I learned, but I learned.

Stains

all over you. In Cooktown you had all the little kids, we got our flour in calico bags, if the kids were really little you could cut that it half, take the corner off each corner for their legs. Put a hem on the top there and it made a little pair of knickers for them. They’ll be getting around with ‘Self Raising’ or ‘Plain Flour’ on their bum. That was

quite common up there, with the flour bags and things like that, you utilised everything. It was a wonderful learning place. Everybody was in the same boat. There was nobody better than the other, no matter who it was. Whether it was a pub down the road, they were washing the same as we were washing with the copper outside no matter where it was, exactly the same thing.

Latrobe.

I wouldn’t have a clue. They had every type of cooking. You had big stainless steel bowls like that on a big pipe that came through. They were there. You had a lever

to tip it. It had a lip on it to go into jugs but mainly they’d be soups or white sauces and things like that. After every meal that was all steamed. All the floors were cleaned and spotlessly cleaned. You really learned hygiene at Latrobe, that carried you on no matter where you went ‘cause it was just automatic. That’s how you were taught.

We did. Until you got to a bigger place or perhaps when you got a stripe or the LACs [leading aircraftsmen] or the ACWs [Aircraftswomen] did it, you’d just stick to the cooking. As you went up the ladder somebody else underneath you did the cleaning.

No.

I did relief cooking weekends down at the pub ‘cause Jim was home to mind the children then. No, I never thought of that. I couldn’t have afforded to go away to do it anyhow and I couldn’t have left Jim and the children. In those days your husband and family came before anything else. I never ever thought to become a chef.

I know I’m a good cook. I can do whatever I want to do. I’m happy with that.

Yes, because

a lot of your cooking was with powdered eggs, not fresh eggs. It stunk. A lot of the ingredients in the beginning were totally different to, not like what you get now at all. You had to adjust to their way. You hadn’t cooked for crowds before too, you had the recipes there and they were

all big, so you just fanned out. You were given a section to do this, and a section to do that. You didn’t get in and have the whole meal to do, you’d all be given different sections to do. Curry over here, somebody else is doing the rice and somebody else is doing something else. You were told what to do and that’s what you went and did.

Yes. Shepherd’s pie was a good one because you make that, but that

was left-over meats, any meats that were left over went through a mincer. That’s the proper shepherd’s pie where they went through a mincer with carrots and onions. Then there’d be a tomato sauce and just a little bit of liquid. That went into a pie dish and then you made your mash potatoes on top. Then you put that on the top and put a little bit of milk on the top of that and pop it into the oven and the milk would make it nice and brown. You’d have

your thick potato on top and all your meat underneath. A lot of them do shepherd’s pie today with mince. Unless you do a dry mince, not a liquid mince, your potatoes will sink to the bottom. You’ve gotta do it in a dry mince, you don’t do it in the pan with water and thicken it. You brown your onion and your meat and grate

your carrot in it and cook all that. If you’ve got any leftover gravy you put that into that for moisture and you put that into your pie dish and then you put your mash potatoes on top of that.

They ate what they were given.

No. There was tomato

sauce and Holbrooks sauce on the table and that was it. If it was corned beef and cabbage or something, you’d have white sauce, onion sauce to go with them. There was no Hollandaise sauce, none of those mushroom sauce or anything like that, nothing like that, no. You can’t take it on the army as today. They’ve got proper beds, they’ve got sheets, they haven’t gotta get dressed

and keep everything. We went down as a group of ex-service people to Point Cook about 20 years ago now. We went there to see how they were going. Some of the girls were getting around in uniforms that blessed tight, you wouldn’t have been allowed to have done that. The couple of huts we went through, the beds weren’t made, they weren’t shift workers, it was totally different to our day.

We could not believe it. But it didn’t do us any harm. We learned to be neat and tidy. We learned hygiene as far as the food and that was concerned, cleanliness. We were right.

Yeah. Didn’t matter. You were told to go, you were posted there so you went. You packed your things and you went.

I suppose I was. I don’t know.

Yes. Not everybody that was here went there. Some went to McPherson cooking place, some of them went to there. You never knew where. Say you were cooking with these girls here doesn’t say you’re gonna be cooking with those girls at Larundel or somewhere else. They might be all different. You don’t know who

you’re going to, which is a good thing too. There was nothing in it I disliked or I’d want to change although you didn’t get a lot of leave, you were ready for bed of a night. First time, having lived in the north all the time, Toowoomba. Oakey, there of a wintertime, there’s icicles. You’d be going along and the ground’s

crunching underneath your feet as you’re going down the cookhouse early in the morning. That was a testing station and the motors would be going 24 hours a day and then the pilots would come down for breakfast at daylight and they would take certain engine planes to see if they were OK. So then you had to get down there in that bloody cold. It was a good station. The CO was very good.

They were all there for the same reason I was there, to help the war effort. I think that is the main thing. They weren’t there to better themselves, no-one thought they were better than you. They all came from all walks of life. Some were a lot older than us, some were younger. I got up to a few pranks I can tell you, we had lots of fun in the huts of a night time.

We had a little heater there. There’d be panic nights and you had to, panic night was clean up night and everybody, had to be scrubbed all around your bed. You were taught to do everything, there was nothing, you’d get into trouble if dirty clothes were left lying around. You only had three sets anyhow, so you had to keep them clean. I think the worst part was when you got your

things. We got our bloomers blue and bloomers pink. We said the dirty bloody pink were passion killers. They were shockers. They were bloomers. They came right down with elastic around here.

That’s your undies, bloomers.

You wouldn’t have been able to wear skankies or anything like that. No way.

Big, we’d be cooking for thousands,

1,500 people.

Depends on the shift. If you were doing the early shift you might be up by 4 o'clock, half past four. Depends. We were up early at Oakey because the pilots wanted an early breakfast to go flying. Normally breakfast was round about 7 o'clock, I can’t remember, so you’d be up at least an hour and a half beforehand.

You got up and did it.

Savoury mince on toast was always good. Boiled eggs were popular, but the ones they got at the end were hardboiled eggs because they were in the bottom of the boiler.

Sausages, porridge and toast. That’d be breakfast.

In a copper. Fill it in and turn the fire on underneath, nothing hard.

No you put them in the copper. You just moved them like that to try and settle them down a bit. Ones were always hard,

you used those for curried eggs or a salad or something. They ate good meals. The cooks ate the best of the lot I think ‘cause we’d always have a nice steak or something like that. We did all right. The meals were adequate. We had nice legs of lamb, we’d have good roast dinners and all those sorts of things.

You just go ahead and do it.

I’d do the same as I would now if I’ve got 20 for breakfast. I come down and I get the water boiling, I get the porridge out and that’d start.

Then I’d go and start preparing the mince and I get the sausages done. When the sausages are cooked I put them in a container. You make gravy and pour over them. You leave them on a heater to keep them warm. They never had steak for breakfast. Then your savoury mince. You make your toast and dish it up with the lot.

I couldn’t tell you, might be half a dozen. If they weren’t needed with the preparation for breakfast they’d start getting things ready for lunch. So you’re not standing around. I cooked on my own for my daughter’s wedding for 450 people. I put on a

beautiful wedding and I enjoyed the wedding. I had food in every deep freeze in Cooktown. You just get in and do it, that’s it. It’s always somebody you could call out to give you a hand and they’d come if it was a bit heavy. You were there to work and you worked, there’s none of this business of trying to knock off.

We had good concerts and things on the stations. We had entertainment there. It was really good.

It would depend on what the ration truck brought you in, whatever you had to use. First we made a lot of mistakes with

tinned bacon. We didn’t realise it was rolled in paper, it would have paper between. Scrambled eggs was always something we were told but that’s scrambled eggs with egg powder, it’s not like scrambled fresh eggs. If you’re hungry you eat it.

It’s 60 years ago. I can’t think what we did in those days.

It’d be generally a salad or something. At night time we had roast lamb or roast beef and veggies. I think they always had a pudding. They all lined up and came through the

servery. There were always two or three on the servery and served it up as they went through. There was never any quibbling. They might say, “Can I have a bit more of that?” and if there’s plenty there you give them a bit more. I don’t think anybody ever went hungry.

I don’t know. I can’t remember. Possibly they did. They made some good money. It took me a while to

catch onto. Of a night they used to say, “I’ll do your shift tonight.” I’d say, “No.” A lot of times I relented. This time I said, “No, I’m not going out anywhere, I’ll work tonight.” I stayed back and I did. The officers coming back from parties they’d been to, the pictures or what have you, they’d come into the kitchen. “Can I have a steak and two eggs?” If they ask you to cook steak and two eggs, you cook steak and two eggs.

They put a pound or 10 shillings under their plate. It was really good. No wonder the boys all wanted to work my shift of a night time. That was a bit of a perk.

That was upgraded to the airmen’s.

I only cooked in the airmen’s once. Mainly I was in the Sergeants’ and Officers’ Mess. You didn’t have the quantity of people so you were able to make nice steamed puddings and things like that where you couldn’t have made, they had plum duff and that down at the boys’ there, but they wouldn’t have made nicer ones. I could do a wine trifle and all those sorts of things up in the Officers’ Mess

that you couldn’t do down in the other. But then again the Officers’ Mess then would not compare to the Officers’ Mess today, no way, they’re like a five star hotel what they’ve got today. Perhaps the officers’ cooking would be what the airmen would have today. It was still good food.

Everything, the clothing, the food, is so much better today than it was in the yesterdays. Nobody complained ‘cause nobody was hungry. It was all good food.

No, not

to my knowledge, I never seen anybody coming up there. Even those that were detailed to peeling potatoes, they might have done something wrong and were sent down to the cookhouse and you give them an odd job and you put them in there peeling potatoes. If we had a cuppa naturally you gave them a cuppa and you give them something to eat. No, there was no scavenging, so they weren’t that hungry. Most of them, the men got more leave,

they could go out more than I think, I suppose, the girls. I didn’t always go out. I was buggered. I was ready to have a sleep. At Oakey there was four of us, two boys and two girls. Ellen was married, Sid was engaged, Joe was engaged and I was going with Jim then after, I was married to Jim. The thing is, the four of us used to go,

if anything was on we could ring the boys up or the boys would ring us up and say, “There’s a dance on,” or, “There’s pictures.” One time they’d pay and one time we’d pay. There was none of this fighting at the gate, there was none of that because we all knew that we had obligations. If we had weekend leave we’d go up to Dolby and I’d go and stay with Joan’s mother, Mrs Flynn, and the boys would stay at a hotel or somewhere,

then we’d meet up and go to the dance. On Saturday night they’d bring us home and go to wherever they stayed. They’d come down Sunday and Mrs Flynn’d give the four of us lunch and then we’d catch the train back to Oakey. That was really lovely. When I had leave and went to Melbourne Alan said, “You must go in and meet my wife.” She knew all about me. “I feel as if I know you.” It was lovely. There was 1,500, a few thousand or more out there

and only a few hundred girls. No matter how plain you were you wouldn’t have been short of a partner. It was safer to have something like that you could go out, because from the town over to where the camp is, you had to come over a railway line and it was all vacant land. Not that we ever heard of anything happening, but you never know. You were safer with somebody. The boys were good company.

One was a Tasmanian and one was a Melbourne boy.

Nobody tried with me so I don’t know about the others. It might have been a bit like in Cooktown, they weren’t even game to try. No, I never had anything. But the boys,

the showers, the water was controlled from the men’s end, often the hot water, the girls would be down in the shower and they’d turn the hot water off or the cold water on. We’d bloody scream. That was only done for a bit of fun and laugh. That’s about all, never heard of the men trying to break into the girls’ area or anything like that, never, not in any of the stations I was at.

If they had, they kept it to themselves. It wasn’t obvious to anybody. No doubt the majority had boyfriends but the four of us, we had commitments and we stayed true to our other ones. That was it. It was

a good life. I count my blessings often from how things work out in life after the war, what I learned helped me no end. If I hadn’t had the training I had, I wouldn’t have had the confidence I had to cope. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to run a guesthouse ‘cause I do all the cooking. I had staff, but I did all that part myself

and look after a sick husband, he wasn’t sick all the time but when he went, he went like a packet of crackers, and then ended up with three children. The kids all had jobs to do. Diane said, “Other kids haven’t got to work like we’ve got to.” I said, “Other kids don’t have holidays like you have either.” Every two years, see, with the department, you got a travelling allowance and we went all over Australia

and Tasmania. I said, “Every two years you go somewhere and other kids in this town don’t do that. If I’ve got to pay somebody to do the odd jobs that you kids are doing, you won’t have this ‘cause we couldn’t afford to do it.” So Diane had to wait on the tables when she was 14 before she went to school and when she came home of a night time and Elizabeth, the young one, had to pick up the glasses from upstairs and the water jugs and bring them

down. They all had something to do. It was good.

Too embarrassed, I couldn’t. I’ll tell it to Heather after.

I had lots of mates for years, but one really good one and she died last year.

At Oakey, no, Sandgate. She was a cook too. She was a big girl, a lot bigger than me. She came to our wedding. Jim

gave her away at her wedding. I’ve got her daughter coming to stay with me next week. We were very, very close. She’s the one that did this prank I’ll tell Heather about. Her daughter would be ashamed.

You didn’t have rubber gloves so you had to wash your hands all the time. You were told. If you’re taught that way you automatically wash your hands all the time. So right from the word ‘go’ at Latrobe Street, you were taught about hygiene and keeping your kitchen clean. That was first up, utensils and your hands, everything. You changed

from one food to another, you had to wash your hands. You always had a towel on your belt so you could wipe your hands all the time. That was drilled into you right from the word ‘go’ and that was automatically. You had your orderly officer coming around every now and again. They had eyes and they were checking to see how things are going. They see what’s what.

All these things that you carry on in life today, I ran my business exactly the same way.

They were cement floors and they were hosed, not swept, out. You had duck boards, boards with slats on them and you stood on those to serve.

You work in gum boots most of the time because the floors were often wet. That’s how I got arthritis in my legs because the steam from the big ovens and the wet floors, it gets to your legs. That’s how I started off getting arthritis. A lot of them ended up with arthritis in their legs. There’s one of our WAAAFs, she was at the hospital here, she came out last week,

her legs and hips gone, that was from the damp kitchen. She’s been getting treatment for a long time, the same as I’ve been getting treatment.

Nearly every one, yeah, that was, I suppose, for hygiene. Everything was hosed out with hot steam. In some kitchens you had steam and others it was just hot water. You’d have all your benches cleaned and everything wiped down

and you stoke up your fire, if there was a fire there to stoke up, and then a couple of them would get down and they had squeegees and they’d wash it all off there. And the duckboards were put outside in the sun to get underneath them. Then the boys would bring them back in ‘cause you stood on those to serve. They were handy because some of us were short like me. It was good ‘cause it was unusual for the

sluice over the stove to be so clean. I got this poor bugger, Clarrie, I met him up in town again a long time after, we often laughed about that. He’d clean that. “That was nasty wasn’t it?”

I can only remember Mrs Roberts. Chef Meyer was the head one, he was a thorough gentleman and a lovely man, he had really good patience, if you didn’t understand something he would help you. And Mrs Roberts was the same, she was sort of a mother figure there.

That was at Latrobe Street. On the other one was Sergeant McTaggart at Sandgate. He was a really nice man. He had a wife and family lived at Sandgate, met those. He was very nice. And there was Len Dobe. Len was very tall and

very fastidious. I found out he was gay but we didn’t know he was gay early in the piece. He was always immaculate, a very, very nice man. No doubt him and another chap I knew was gay. He asked me to go to a dance and he’d take me to Leonard’s for dinner and we’d go to a

dance. He said, “Oh my God, who are you going with?” and I told him. “Oh, he’s gay.” I said, “Is he?” He said, “Yeah, but you’ll be right.” I went out and had the most wonderful night with him, really lovely. He was gay but he wanted women’s company for dinner and he wanted to go to the dance and he wanted a partner, that’s all there was to it. So we went out a few times. He was in the Sergeants’ Mess.

That’s the only two gay people I knew. Lesbians weren’t heard of in those days, whether they were there or not, I don’t know. Those two men were really nice. Even in Cooktown we had two gay men up there, they had a restaurant, they were really nice. They were there for a number of years, I never heard of them having any other young or older

men influencing them in any way. Then two lesbians came to town and I said, “Now the two boys and girls might get together and we’ll have a couple of weddings.” They said, “Oh, don’t be bloody stupid. They’ll hate each other,” and they did too. Those two girls kept to themselves too. They were lovely mixed with everyone but they never even tried to encourage anybody to do what they’re doing.

I don’t know. They just told me. Actually I think they said, “They’re queer.” I think that’s what they said.

I think possibly the men would have known. I don’t know. They certainly didn’t flaunt it in any way.

What stood out with Len was he was always so spotless, his whites were always whiter and better than anybody else, he was just so immaculate. I’m not saying there weren’t others, I don’t know, you only know the ones you work with. I knew one girl in pay section,

Joan that was one of our four, she was in the pay section. Other than that you only knew the people you really worked with. You came on shift and you went back to your hut and there was the same people that you worked with. So you didn’t really get to know any of the others. Everyone else had their own jobs to deal with and they did them and they stuck with those. A lot were on shift work. Then the sigs [signallers] were on

shift work so their huts were out of bounds. We were told, “Such and such is out of bounds, you can’t go in that area.” If you were silly enough to go over there the MP would pull you up and I dare say they’d report you for being where you were told not to go. Different parts of Brisbane you were told not to go to. You weren’t allowed to go over Stanley Street at all.

There was a lot of

Negroes, the big Negro camp was over there. You weren’t allowed to go over there. There was somewhere else you couldn’t go. You were told these things. If you went you were looking for trouble. So those days you did as you were told. We did as we were told. We didn’t find it hard to do as we were told because we knew we were in a safe area and that was it.

I couldn’t tell you what they taught you. I can’t even think of what they looked like. I don’t remember any of their names. The only ones are Peggy Lans, Melissa, they were Oakey.

There’s only about four I know but unless I look at their photo I wouldn’t have a clue who they are, only Ethel that I stayed really friendly with, no matter where we went we always contacted each other. She even came up to Cooktown, her and her husband and baby, and they lived in Cooktown for a while.

I don’t know, we just sort of really and truly, we called her ‘Mum’. Whether she was a

mum figure, she was a couple of years older than me, she was Mum to everybody. We called her, ‘Mum’. She was big and cuddly. I think that might have been it. The closeness came because they moved up to Cooktown and he got a job up there and she came and worked for me. We just stayed tight. When they moved away she sent me photos of how her baby was

growing up and things like that so we kept in contact that way. She’s the only one that I stayed really close friends with. I got good friendships in the Ex-Service Women’s Association and meet up with the girls there. They’re all very nice. We talk about bits and pieces. We’ve never talked about what we were doing

in there, I wouldn’t know what their musterings were, I don’t know what their ranks were. We haven’t bothered about that.

If you got into the advanced stuff you were cooking smaller quantities to start with. It was

more home cooking because you were doing smaller batches. The men would be coming in at different hours so you might only have 20 or 30 and you’d do dinner for them. Then they’d be gone and another lot would come in. So you were doing it on a smaller scale, that would be the only difference.

Food was the same type of food but you had time to do silly bits and you decorated the plate and all that sort of thing. The others, it was just put on the plate. It wasn’t slapped on, it was just put on the plate with a bit of a decoration or something like that.

No, nothing.

No. I liked

my fruit cakes, I think I preferred that. I’ve even made nine Christmas cakes already. I’ll give you a whiff of one after. I like to do them in October and then every fortnight I put a bit more on them and they’re well and truly safe by Christmas.

I think that’s where it started, from there. The feedback

we got from different ones, the one I sent over to Jim and the air force got them back from the hospital and they sent compliments down to the kitchen, that was nice.

I’m flat out remembering what I do with the one now.

It’s funny, I can’t remember things that have just happened, but yesteryear I’m not too bad, I can remember that. Now I used a recipe book. I’ve got my set recipes, but I use it because I forget and I’ve gotta remember now ‘What have I put in there?’ I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep doing it because I am getting very forgetful.

Yeah, Emmanuel College and the one on North Terrace. I knew the name, I said it two, three times today. Exhibition Building.

That was god. There again Heather said ‘mixing bowls’, we didn’t have it. We had this big table and you had this ring of flour and your dry ingredients around and you whipped up your, you put your eggs and your butter and your sugar in your butter and you rub it around in your hand, cleans your hands, round and round till you grind that all down and smooth

that. There wasn’t any caster sugar in those days, it was ordinary sugar. You put eggs in and you go until that’s all absorbed. Then you add milk or orange juice, you put that in and keep mixing all around. Then you put the fruit and get that all in too. Then you gradually, you’ve already put your rising into the flour and you gradually bring that in. You’ve gotta be careful that you don’t take too much from here and the stuff would run

straight out so you’ve gotta be very careful that you take it evenly right around the side then you gradually bring the whole lot in together. It’s different type of cooking. So you’re working to bring it all around, do you follow me? So all you had to wash, you had a scraper, like that, when you finished, and it didn’t matter, and your tin

table top and then you’d give it a scrub and then hose that and hose that. When you’re finished your cake’s in the oven, you’ve hosed the table and around the legs and you squeegeed out and there was always a drain there. Then it’s all clean. So you didn’t have to go in there again for a few hours till the cake was cooked.

When all that’s done together. So you

cook it on a frame. It was a wonderful idea for when you’re sending it away because it couldn’t get broken. You just wrote on it where it was to go to. It’d be such and such a hospital in New Guinea. There was an air force plane to take it up and deliver it straight to the hospital. Then they just put that on a shelf or forget about it until wherever the occasion they wanted it.

No.

A cake in a box, yeah. You put plenty of shortening around the box and then it’d just slip out. It’s the same as you take a round spring form tin. You just grease the side of that and latch it and it just comes off. Well, here they just pull a nail out and that’d be it.

We had a lot of preserved, mashed, dry potatoes, eggs. Bacon was all rolled in paper, that was tinned.

Our margarine and butter was tins, we didn’t get fresh. Where we could get fresh cabbages and carrots and things like that, otherwise it was all tinned stuff ‘cause it wasn’t frozen stuff in those days. Now we have frozen beans and peas, we’d get tinned stuff in that line. Where we could get fresh they got fresh.

You never had anything exotic. You had watermelons and pineapples, apples and bananas, they were the sort of fruit that were put out on the top of you. Christmas time the stoned fruit would get out. So if you cooked with making an apple crumble, it was tinned apples that you used, you’d just make up a custard. Cream of rice was very popular.

You do that with, you had a lot of powdered milk, and you make it richer and you cook your rice and then vanilla and sugar. I used to cook it with water, then I’d put the extra, like a creamy milk into it. That made a lovely creamed rice. I did it mainly that way because

it didn’t burn, most of the cooking was done while the rice was in water. Then that was mixture in and that was able to stop and stir it for a little while and then put a bit of nutmeg on top and it’s really nice. Cream of rice and tinned prunes, that was a good one, that was very popular.

They’d ask for more. Sometimes they could get it and sometimes they couldn’t. Sometimes they’d say, “When’ll you do another one of those, cookie?” What did they call us? Babble La Brook, because of the old bubbling brook. What was very popular for breakfast was bubble and squeak. Any veggies that were left over from tea, we’d mix them all together and then

do them in the big frying pans and just heat them through. That, with an egg if we had fresh eggs, or with sausages, that was always popular, bubble and squeak. It still is. It’s nice.

No. Just what was left over. It’s not stir-fried, it’s just put in a big frying pan, not a wok.

A little bit of oil and you just keep moving and it gets a little bit of a brown crust on the bottom. Then you pop it into the oven and then rub in a bit of butter or something on the top and that would give it a nice crust on the top and you could cut it into squares and lift it out with a lifter. All these could be cabbages or beans or anything at all that was left over. That was always very popular.

I think a lot of people do that today. I’ve always cooked through my fridge, what’s left over I make something out of it.

Beautiful, it’s a real garden city. It’s so lovely. Apart from Queensland they’re the next friendliest people. The people there were just so lovely. I went to the pictures and the lady sitting next to me said, “Hello, are you a stranger here?” I said, “I only arrived yesterday.” “Know anyone?” I said, “No”.

She said, “I’ll show you Adelaide.” She gave me her phone number and said, “When you’re off give me a ring.” She showed me Adelaide on the top of a double-decker bus. We went all over Adelaide on the top of double-decker buses. I used to go and stay at her place when I had leave. The people were so friendly in Adelaide. I thought it was so clean and lovely. Next to Queensland it is.

No. When

we came up here after Melbourne, that was it. He’s content where he is. We didn’t have the money to move from place to place. He had a job and he seemed to be happy enough so we stayed there. He got a few offers to transfer to Weipa when Weipa was starting off. He said, “No”. He’d started Hillcrest then and said, “We’ll stay here.” We did very well,

a lot of hard work but we got there.

No. I was at Sandgate.

Nice looking bloke and a bit cheeky, very, very well mannered.

He didn’t try to hold my hand or anything. When we went home he invited me for a cup of coffee. I said, “As long as I pay for my own.” He said, “Right.” So we went home and we had a cup of coffee. He saw me to the station. Then we met at the dance and yes, he was very, very polite and did all the right things.

I was under no obligation to him then. If you go out and pay your own way

you feel better about it, don’t you? That’s the way I felt anyway.

He’s a beautiful dancer, he still is. Rock and roll, he can do anything. He’s very, very good on his feet. I can’t rock and roll like he can. We had a little go a couple of weeks ago, we

went to the Gold Coast for a Swarovski Crystal turn out, once a year for members. It was a cocktail party and a dinner. It was really lovely and there was a lovely band on. We got up and had a little dance. I can’t dance all night, but just a little bit. It was really lovely. He got up and had a couple, a little bit

more with a couple of others, then his legs gave out and he had to sit down. It was really lovely. We had a little bit too much to drink, we don’t normally, but that night it took us two days to get over it. Our daughter drove us down. She stayed at the motel. Everybody was a bit hung over the next morning, so it wasn’t us.

I don’t know. They were

nice glasses. I didn’t take much notice. The glasses, they kept topping them up all the time so that’s where the danger is. You don’t realise how much you’re drinking. It was a nice night.

I don’t think we did see each other because he went away.

He came out the next night and we went to the dance. A couple of times he’d come out and we’d sat on the stone wall outside the guard room. He said he got a bit of a fright when he asked the guard if he could see me. They rang up the office and they said, “She’ll come down.” He said this apparatus come down with white trousers and a white coat on and everything.

The guard let me out and we sat on the stone wall. I used to say to the guards early in the piece, “Anything that’s left over we’ll send down to you.” Lots of bits and pieces, veggies and all that, I sent it down to the guard house and they’d snaffle it all up. It came in handy if you came home a little bit late, they’d always let you in. They were good. Then we only seen

each other a few times, so then he went back to New Guinea. Then he came back and he had leave and he went home, came back from New Guinea and went home to see his family. On his way back from seeing his family he came and seen me and he said we’d get married. That was our courting. We hardly had any time. We never went out much at all.

Oh yes, we wrote to

each other all the time. Then we got married and then he was up on the Tablelands and then he went to Cowra. He was at Cowra, got there the day of the outbreak of the Japanese, so then I called to see him then. I had a week there. I was actually ackwilly.

Absent Without Leave. His CO gave him a week’s leave to take me back to camp. We had six days down at Bondi and on the seventh day we went back to camp, we were married by then. That’s later in the piece. I got my discharge, that was nearly

18 months after. He went back overseas again. He went back and when he got off the plane at Port Moresby and they unloaded, telling people where they were to go, he was left on the tarmac, the only person there. He said, “What about me?” They said, “You’re

going over to the hospital here.” He said, “What for?” When he got over there they said, “Here’s a broom you can do some ward work.” He said, “I’m not doing any ward work. I’m a soldier.” Next thing they put him on a plane and he flew to Lae. Then he was put in this nerve ward. That’s a wooden bamboo cage. There was insulin treatment.

He said they were climbing around the sides and they looked like monkeys. I didn’t know anything about this till after. I never heard anything form him for three months. I was getting a bit worried so I went to the Red Cross. They told me they’d see what they could find out. I didn’t heard anything so I went and had my fortune told. They told me a man was missing. I took my wedding ring off

so they wouldn’t know I was married. “Your man is missing,” but not to worry, he’d come out of it all right. Sure enough he did. But it was three months he was in there. It was pretty horrific, terrible. When he came out of there he went to Madang to recuperate. They kept saying, “Come back, the plane’s

taking you back to Australia.” It was always a false alarm and this day they said, “Fair dinkum,” and he got over there and it was. He came back. Even now, he had that same, when he wasn’t in a bamboo cage, at Greenslopes, must have been 18 years having treatment four months every year.

He had to have that for his nerves. He’s very strong. He learned to control his moods. It’s been very, very hard for him, being a nerve case he’s been a workaholic. I’m lucky he didn’t go to the drink. That would have been devastating if he’d done that, it would have been the end. I don’t think I could have taken it if he’d become a

drunkard or something like that. It was just so pathetic. You had to be careful what you said. You’re on tiptoes all the time. I shut the door one time and that set him off. I left him in the room. I found out from that, never shut the door. He was sick, got him to bed, see he was all right, don’t shut the door, leave the door open.

If people shut, he thought he was being locked in again, that’s the effect of it, that made him worse. It’s very hard to see someone you love being torn apart like that and there’s nothing you can do. They were Guinea pigs. This other lady they were talking to said, “That was two years before they brought it out into the hospitals.”

So they were just, a lot of the boys died when they were giving them that treatment. They flew one lot in, they just put them on a plane and they had to go to some place. They dropped the plane there and he was a machine gunner then, this is well after the Track. They just had to, in the morning there wasn’t a blade of grass, there wasn’t a tree

with a leaf on it, they’d blasted the whole lot. It was supposed to be an enemy there, whether there was or not, I don’t know. Then they brought them back. They dropped in there on parachutes.

Nothing.

No. He’d been on the Track. I knew he’d had a bad time. But I knew nothing about it. He never ever spoke of it.

Way later. Some of it I didn’t find out till many, many years later. The couple of times we were lucky to be down here when we went to a reunion and I was able to speak to some of the other wives and husbands and I found that I wasn’t Robinson Crusoe, they’d had the same problems that I’d had. The whole thing was there was no counselling, none of this, we went in the deep end, we had no idea

what to do or say or how to look after our men. The mothers were exactly the same. They didn’t tell us what to do. What upset him more than anything, was the fact that they were struck from some honours or something or other and was disbanded, the unit, a lot of them went to different ones. He was a machine gunner, so he went to the 7th Machine Gunners. They were never ever given a reason.

We found out only a few years ago, there was a chap from 9th Divvy from Yeppoon contacted Jim and said would he answer some questions. He said, “I want to find out why you were disbanded. You’ve had a raw deal and I’d like to do something about it.” We felt very honoured that a 9th Divvy, with the reputation they’ve got, that they would want to do that.

So Jim did it and it turned out it was all political, something political. So probably Blamey and that, it turned out he was a real mongrel. Then they made him field marshal. Apparently MacArthur wanted the credit for it and Blamey was too weak to fight, I don’t know. I do know from what has happened that

it was the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Milne Bay and Kokoda that saved Australia. It’s the only war in history, before and since, that has been for our country. We’ve fought in other countries to help them, but never for our own. Those young boys at that time, they come from Echuca and Bendigo and places like that, they’d never even been

to Melbourne, just come down and then be sent off, put on a troopship and come down. Then their supply ship was bombed before it got to Port Moresby. They never had a tent, they had kunai grass, this long grass, tied in knots and they were known as the Mice of Moresby. They crawled in there and that’s where they slept of a night, they never had a tent, nothing. Tokyo Rose

used to say, “I know what you are doing now.” Somebody was there giving out information. She’d tell them every day what they were doing so that was nerve wracking. Then they had hardly any instruments at all. I’ve got a speech, a lieutenant colonel gave it on Anzac Day. I’ll give it to you to read. That tells you more than I could tell you ‘cause he was a very

high up historian, he wrote it. When he finished that speech on Kokoda Day and the thing broke up and it went over, you could see all the men that were there were really upset, the whole lot, some of them were crying even. Jim was one of them. I said, “Are you all right?” He said, “That has really touched my heart. It’s so true, everything that he said.” It was really sad, but it had to come out.

So I said to, our president was there, I said, “Could I have a copy of that speech?” She said, “What do you want it for?” I said, “I’m going to have it copied and I’ll going to personally take it along to a couple of the schools and ask them to read it out on Anzac Days and Remembrance Day. People have got to know what people have sacrificed for this country. We wouldn’t be here today.” It’s all in

this speech, it’s the most well-written speech. Lieutenant colonel he was. He’s a president to the Sandgate RSL. He invited the 39th blokes who are up in north Queensland to be his guests on Remembrance Day. We went to Sandgate and he gave us the most beautiful day. He was the most lovely man, easy to talk to, didn’t cost anybody a penny.

We sat there and different soldiers, ‘cause they had their medals on, they came over and they wanted to shake hands with the 39th blokes. It was really very touching and very lovely, made you feel at least somebody does appreciate what they done. The kids learn at school about the Battle of Hastings and all this sort of thing, but not what saved our country. If the Japs had got into Moresby, only two hours flying

to Australia, and we’d be picking rice or we wouldn’t be here at all.

It was in Brisbane at a friend’s house.

No, no, no, I bought it after I’d met Jim.

I knew it was going to come off, I knew in my heart. I had the clothing coupons there, I saw the dress and I thought, “That’s it, I’m gonna buy that,” and I did.

Yes, I knew. I’ve been pretty right in my life. So I had it there. We didn’t have time to go down and get it so we put it on after.

That’s right.

I went and saw the padre and asked the padre would he marry us. I said, “We’ll do it either in the Sergeants’ or Officers’ Mess.” He said, “We’ll go and get permission,” so he went to the police station. He got them to send a police telegram because it was the Queen’s Birthday Holiday.

While they were doing that we got onto these two blokes we knew of the four in our group. They were electric platers and they made me a wedding ring out of a part of an aeroplane, electro-plated it, and the lady of the café had said to let her know as soon as we got permission and she’d fix up the wedding breakfast. Then the padre came back to us and said, “I can get a loan of the Presbyterian church, which is nicer than being married in

an officers’ or sergeants’ mess.” So that’s where we got married. Just bing-bing-bing-bing and all fell into place. The next morning I went with the troops to the train in Toowoomba, got him on the troop train and he went back to the exhibition grounds in Brisbane and then he went off from there.

No, in our letters he said, “We’ll end up by getting married.”

No, he told me. We were getting married he said.

Yes, well I think the celebration of the wedding, the lady that had the café, Miss Robinson, I think

it was just her way of repaying what I’d been doing for her for a few months. I said I didn’t want any money. I was working of a night time for her. She was thrilled about that. We made a lot of money out of that time. It was just a fruit cake, but she had a wedding cake. It was just such a lovely, I haven’t any idea what we ate. It was just so

lovely. The whole thing was a lovely turnout.

No, it was just grills and things. Fish and chips or steak and eggs. It was wartime. You didn’t cook supper and have it there on the off chance ‘cause you didn’t have the stuff you could waste. So it was just plain out cooking, anybody could have done it.

I was organised and it was nothing really to do it. After a while I’m doing something worthwhile.

I think love and understanding. He might be grateful for what I’ve put up with, I don’t know, but we are very happy together and always have been. We’ve had out ups and downs, but we’ve been very happy. Next June we’ll be married 44 years.

60 years, 1944.

On the Queen’s Birthday long weekend.

Oh yes.

Well, he hadn’t tasted much of it really. I hadn’t cooked for him until after I was married.

No, any alcohol, I didn’t drink or smoke. They said to me, very confidentially, straight out, “Whatever you do, don’t sip it, drink it straight down because if you just sip it, that’s when it’ll go to your head.” I said, “Thank you,” and I’m thanking them very much. Every toast I drank it straight down didn’t I?

No, it wasn’t Jim’s mates ‘cause

Jim was the only soldier at the wedding, the rest were all air force. There were some Americans ‘cause they were going with some of the WAAAF officers and they were over at the church to watch the wedding. Jim said, “I don’t mind the Aussies kissing my bride but I don’t want any Yanks.”

Yeah. I’ve never noticed that before.

No, madam, my WAAAF officer.

I don’t know.

No, no, they didn’t. I know I was very naïve. She taught me everything I know. I said, “I’m amazed how much you do know.” I’d better not delve into that too much. No, I wasn’t alone in that, speaking to the other girls, they were all more or less the same. We had good

fun and everything, but we never went out, there were definitely no partnerships or anything in those days. Never went and lived with anybody, there was none of that. We didn’t have the, it was there, but everything’s on TV, they see it and they think that’s life. Well, that’s not life what you see on

TV, this kissing with their tongue down their throat and all this jazz, oh, he wouldn’t wanna try that with me. The thing is that sort of thing, they think that’s love. The kids see that. I had my friend the other day saying she had her two little grandchildren sitting there watching TV, then an ad came on for Modess. An eight year old, he hits his little sister and says, “You’ll be using them

soon.” Now, that sounds ridiculous, an eight year old saying that to his little sister. It’s on TV and they get the wrong concept of all this sort of jazz. This is what is wrong.

That’s right and this is an eight year old. She said, “I just couldn’t believe it.” I said, “That’s it, there’s nothing left for the imagination today.” I think

that’s where some marriages are broken up today ‘cause they’re all expecting too much, there’s no give and take. Such a lot want to be out discoing or dancing and doing it all the time, where to us, we just wanted to be at home together, we here happy to have each other. We’ve always been like that. We’re happy with each other. We haven’t got to be going out all the time.

I wouldn’t like to be a young person today because they have a hard road to go along. I think they expect too much. Where I think it’s wrong is a woman can’t go to

work, look after her home, and not be too tired for her husband of a night. She must be tired, she just tidies up the house so much before she goes to work, she works her six or eight hours, whatever, then she’s expected to come home and get a meal, get the kids to bed, if they’ve got children, and be ready to go to bed with him and have a good time. She can’t do it, she’s ready to collapse and go to sleep. I think that’s what’s the breakdown of a lot of the marriages,

if they wanted less and they could stay at home but, unfortunately, houses and everything have got to be bought and they’re so much dearer than they were in our days. Times have changed, we’ve had the best years, although we’ve had a war we’ve had definitely the best years.

I wouldn’t have a clue.

It could have happened then, I wouldn’t have a clue. The thing is

the next time I seen him, ‘cause he went away the next morning, we could have before he got on the train in the morning, I’m not sure, I can’t remember that. Possibly he would have, knowing Jim.

That’s right. My mother couldn’t come down anyway ‘cause she was too far up there, Jim only had 24 hours so she couldn’t have got there. No. I’m happy with, I wouldn’t have changed anything, everything worked out nicely. Got the man of my dreams and that was it.

Yes.

About another six to eight months, might have been even longer, 12 months.

Yes, just in the kitchen doing the same thing. The four of us going out together.

When I had leave and I went over to Cowra to see Jim, I think that’s where I conceived our son, in Cowra. Then after the Jappo outbreak he went over there as an instructor and then he went up to, I don’t know where he went from Cowra. He went back to New Guinea. That’s when he

went on to those cages.

Yes. Testing station.

It was the same as getting used to a train going past all the time, you can live on a train track and you don’t take any notice of it. The had beautiful big guard dogs going around all the time because we didn’t know whether it was an enemy

or anything there so they were protected the whole time. I don’t know whether we knew where they were, ‘cause it was out of bounds, but you could hear the motors going all the time. You only really went from your hut over to the mess and then over to the rec [recreation] hut and then you’d come back. That’s all you did. If you had the day off you went out. You did a bit of washing and so forth.

We were all content, I never heard anybody whingeing about it. Everybody seemed to be content with what they had. That was it.

Joan got married just after me. Then the two men, I don’t know when she got married, but Alan was already married. There was two boys and two girls,

Joan and I and there was Alan and Sid. Sid had a girlfriend and he was engaged to her, Alan was already married and Joan was engaged. I wasn’t engaged, but I was the one that got married first, or second, because Alan was already married. Then there was just the four of us together.

As far as I know they are. I kept in contact with them for a couple of years and then I lost, when I got busy with Hillcrest and that I just didn’t have time to be

sitting down writing letters. I’ve been thinking about putting a piece in the RSL news and contact either of them for our 60th wedding anniversary. I’ve been thinking about doing something like that.

No.

We went to Bradfield Park.

Yes, Bradfield Park.

Don’t know very much

about it.

Yes, it was a training station. I got my discharge from there.

No, I wasn’t cooking at Bradfield Park. I don’t think I was. No, I wasn’t cooking there.

I can’t remember cooking there, I could have, but I can’t remember it.

I don’t think so. I went from Oakey to there and got my discharge, yeah, that’ll be about it.

By then I found I was pregnant so I wanted to get out, yes.

No, he was stationed in Cowra.

Yes. I asked for a compassionate discharge, this was before I knew I was pregnant. I must have conceived while I was in Cowra because I got out and I was married 16 or 18 months before our baby was born.

Yeah. It was a country town. The camp was well out of town. I never ever saw the camp. Jim got leave of a night and came home to see me, we’d go to the pictures and things like that.

We got a little flat

on top of the butcher’s shop for the week. We’ve been back and had a look at it.

Yeah, butcher’s shop is still there and the flat’s there.

At Cowra, yes.

Instructing on the Bren gun carriers.

I didn’t think of it in those days because, well, again, it’s not like today. You didn’t have the contraceptives, you didn’t know the bits and pieces. Today, if you’re pregnant, you’re pregnant because you wanna be pregnant. In those days it’s more good luck than good management. Today you can choose when you want a baby. There should be no unwanted pregnancies today because everything is there for

them, it’s a good idea. I suppose it wouldn’t have been so helpful now if it hadn’t been for AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome] and things like that. That has protected, people are using more protective stuff today. I don’t even think they used it in the olden days, I don’t know, I don’t think so.

He was pleased.

24th of October in ‘45.

No, he went from Cowra to New Guinea. That’s where he went into those cages. He didn’t even know I was pregnant when he went back over in those cages. He didn’t know I was pregnant.

I wasn’t able to tell him till I was quite a while because I never knew where he was.

Yes. She said not to worry. I was telling Jim about it later. He said, “Nearly all the soldiers were away. They nearly all could have been killed or anything.”

It did

make me feel better.

If I were pregnant it would only have been a couple of days or something. I don’t think so.

No, I told them I was married and I’d like to get out and they said OK, I was out no trouble.

No, they had plenty of extra to bring on, no problem at all.

It wasn’t a wacky wedding anyway. Not like some of them, you see them, a bit wacky. I think it was just the average wedding.

Nervous. I was wearing my blue uniform and Jim had his khakis on. I carried a Bible instead of flowers.

I came out and I was grinning from ear to ear.

I don’t know. They were lined up right from the church to the café. When no more could get in she shut the door, that was it. So nobody was invited, everybody just came. It was good. The ones that would have come over to watch us get married would have been people that knew me. They would have known of

Jim, but probably hadn’t met him because he hadn’t been up to Oakey prior to that. So he wasn’t seen around the place.

No, there was nowhere to waltz, nothing like that. We just had

a feed and speeches and when they came over at five to seven they brought all stuff at their feet. That’s what we drank because I’m pretty sure the café wouldn’t have had grog. So they drank what people brought and then she just brought the food out.

Before, Jim asked about the cost of it, she said three people had been up and wanted to offer to pay for it. She said, “No, I did that, we did that,” her brother and her did that. So the thing is our wedding cost us nothing apart from the cost of the room. So you hear of all these thousands of pounds, or dollars, spent on weddings today, I think back on ours,

it’s what counts. It was just lovely and that was it. Even after 60 years it’s still lovely. So you’ve got your memories, as long as I don’t lose my memory I’m all right.

Oh yes.

You didn’t hear much ‘cause you weren’t allowed to talk about it, they didn’t talk about it in the barracks or anything. It’s only what you read in the papers. We got no inside information whatsoever, we didn’t have, the girls that were up in signals and that,

if they got anything they kept it to themselves, they would have been under oath. No, you didn’t talk about the war at all, we didn’t anyhow ‘cause you knew nothing of it. I doubt even if the girls up in signals would have discussed it with others. They might have spoken something about it to the girls who were on their shift, but I think it was a secrecy act

and you don’t know who’s listening. I don’t think they would have mentioned it to somebody who was off duty. I think they would have kept that to themselves, I’m pretty sure they would have.

No, we didn’t hear much at all. I can’t remember hearing much. Certainly we never had a radio in the kitchen while we were cooking. We didn’t even

have a radio in our barracks and I can’t recall if there was a radio in the rec hut. I really don’t think so. We only went to the rec hut to read or if they were having a concert or entertainment up there. It was usually making jovial things to keep the mood up for everybody. There were

signs of something about the Japs but nobody ever took any notice of it really. No. It was all hush-hush about how many Japs were in Cowra, nobody realised that was there. Even today I’ve spoken to people that lived in Trafilly and they didn’t know there was a big concentration camp on the other side of the bridge, they didn’t know there was a big one there.

You never knew who was listening. I think it was another thing we were taught, not to talk about anything you might hear on camp ‘cause it could be true or false and could cause trouble. So you never repeated anything that you heard in that nature at all.

I knew he was up there and the Japs were up there. He never spoke much of it at all. I could see it was painful for him to talk about it, so I never mentioned it. He didn’t mention much of it, he told our children nothing and he told me very little, just a little snippet. I think

what he told me, a little bit about the early days at Port Moresby and about going into this bamboo thing, I think that was mainly so that I would understand his moods. I think that was his idea of telling me that he was very highly strung, I think that was it. He was a very fit

person, that battle went on for six weeks, night and day. I said, “How did you sleep?” He said, “We used to tip our tin hat upside down and put your bum in that and sit there and lean against a tree. It was nerve- racking because a twig would drop and you’d think it was the Japanese there.” A lot of people don’t realise there was only about four or five hundred of them and there was 13,000 of the others. Fortunately neither

one knew how few or how many was on either side, just as well they didn’t or they may not have performed as well as they did. He said, “We made that much noise they thought there was three times as many as we had there, there.” I hope you can get some other 39th blokes to talk, because the thing is they’d all have some good things to say if you can get them to talk,

that’s their big problem, they haven’t opened up, they’ve kept it concealed. Every now and again it breaks out. As they’re getting older their nightmares are coming back worse than ever. We’re lucky here, he’s got a good doctor, he’s had two good doctors here, or three. One’s died, one went away, but the one that went away was just so good.

It wasn’t an elderly doctor but he was interested in Jim’s case. He’d ring up and say, “I was going through your files, can I talk about this?” and he’d talk about things like that. It showed to us he’s interested and he’s looking for help so he’ll give you help.

No, I don’t think so. I was confident

that our blokes would keep them out. I never felt threatened personally even though that sergeant in Cooktown said, “The first warning you’ll get of the Japanese will be when they’re here, dropping the bombs.” That was pretty tough. When we heard that hew as taken away we thought it was a good thing and we promptly forgot

about it.

Yes, we heard about the bombings in Darwin and we heard about the submarine in Sydney. We were a bit concerned about that but there’s no use getting your knickers in a knot because there’s nothing you can do about it. No use sitting around crying, it’s stupid, you get on with things.

Things have got to get on and that’s all there is.

It was all well and truly over before I went down. He can tell you all about that part.

That was pretty traumatic, bodies everywhere.

A lovely country town. I’d never seen a dust storm before in my life and they had a dust storm when I was there. I was walking up the street and there wasn’t a sound, not even a bird, and then saw the dust coming. The camp was well out of the road,

I never saw the camp, Jim used to walk in and come into where I was. We’d go to the pictures. I tried to cook a meal for him, I had that much food there, he’d see some soldiers there and he’d call them up to help him. I couldn’t get down to just enough for two people, I always made lots too much food. He’d call them to come up to help him with the food I’d prepared.

One day at Cowra I just got some photos and I was showing one of these soldiers, I don’t know whether he was a mate or not, I was showing them to him. There’s a fence here and I’m showing him the photos and he’d have his hand like that on the fence and I’m showing here.

Jim came along and just the way we were standing he thought he had me baled up against the fence or something. Before the poor blighter knew what to do he flattened him, that’s how toey he was, he didn’t ask questions, he just came and flattened him. I said, “What did you do that for? I’m only showing him these photos.” “Oh,” he says.

He was very toey.

He just come to and then he said he was sorry.

I looked around and there was nobody there, there wasn’t a soul. I found out why, because they, when they can hear it and see it coming, everybody hurries home, shuts the windows, puts paper around the side ‘cause the dust would just come in. My little flat was just covered in dirt, I had it all open. The buses had to stop till it passes ‘cause you can’t see. I’d never seen anything like that before.

Really eerie. Not a sound. Not a bird. Not a whisper of anything. No leaves are moving, nothing. It’s eerie. You look around and there’s not a soul. Everything was deserted. Doors are all shut.

Then the dust fell. It was thick, heavy.

No, it just fell. It was terrible. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life and never seen it since.

Yeah, there wasn’t a leaf moving. Everything was just so still. It’s a bit like a cyclone, when the eye is over you can’t hear or see a thing. I’ve seen a cyclone in

1949, we were just about wiped out, the whole town. It’s not something you want to relive, a cyclone, it’s pretty devastating. Then the waterspouts come up, the size of this house, then there’s like a big mushroom on the top. They were in the river, there was three of those in the river. Roofs just went and they all

flicked off like that, you could see them all flying off, you see WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s flying through the air. That was 10th of February 1949.

No.

Yeah. Perhaps it was around and I wasn’t, I wouldn’t say I wasn’t interested, but I certainly didn’t know of it. I didn’t make it my business to find out either. Life went on.

Could be 20, I wouldn’t be sure. The corporal had a little room at the top, there’d be eight to ten on either side. It’s like those big igloo type huts, you’ve got the passage way down. Then there’d just be bed, bed, bed, there was no,

we were about that far apart, the beds were all the way down.

Yes, you had your kit and you had some personal belongings. Most of us had a civvy dress and a pair of shoes and I just actually had the clothes that I came

down on the train and my toilet bag that I came down on the train with. A change of clothes, then I got into the army and you got your ration clothes then. I probably put those in the bottom of my kitbag. I don’t know what I did with those. That’s probably where they would have been because I know later on, well after the rookie stage when people got leave to go out, and

we’d always say, “Have you got this or that? Do you want to loan me this or that?” Everybody helped each other to make sure that they went out presentable and they looked nice, they all did that.

No, I had no photos. I haven’t even got a photo of when we got married, because there was no film or anything like that. We never thought after

to both of us have our uniform on and get a photo of it after, we never thought of that. We just got this one in my wedding dress, we never through to put my uniform on and get one together. We didn’t have a camera and I didn’t know anybody that had a camera so I would have had to go to a studio to get another photo taken of the two of us and I don’t think we had that sort of money to put out

on just a photo. We never thought for the future that you would want it. I had single ones of Jim and I had single ones. Everybody went to Peter Fox in Melbourne, that’s where you got your photos taken down there in uniform, it was a big thing when you first go in on leave. We’ve just got a few odd photos, but we haven’t got many. Just films and that weren’t

around in those days.

The normal things I suppose. I don’t remember much about it, but I know I had a good time. But I couldn’t even tell you where we stayed, I was in another world I think.

Probably did,

probably did.

I was very fortunate. When we came down from Cooktown we stayed at Selma, my mother had this house.

Mum had gone back to Cooktown and I went back to see the neighbours that lived next-door. He was curator for the curator’s office in Brisbane, Jim Johnman. He asked me, “Where are you going to stay?” I said, “I don’t know yet.” He said, “Come and stay with us.” I said, “I’ll board here if that’s all right,” he had three children. “I’ll

pay you some board.” He said, “No, we can afford to keep you. There’s nobody in my family has gone to war. Jim’s over there fighting for us, so I won’t take anything from you,” and he didn’t. I stayed there until I had my baby. Then when Jim came down he stayed there too. We stayed friends with them. They looked after me. He said, “No,

none of my family have gone to war and Jim’s there fighting for our country. It’s the best I can do to help him out.” I thought that was very nice. You get help from another direction. Often people you help very rarely help you back, but you get it from somewhere else. Often what you get back is more than what you’re giving, accept it as that,

it’s good.

No, well, Church of England. We never went to church regularly but I’ve always helped the church and I’ve always done whatever I could no matter what denomination.

When we had Hillcrest, all denominations got free accommodation at our place irrespective of what one they were. I’m friends with the lot of them. The Uniting minister, he got special leave even to come back to marry our daughter, which was lovely. It doesn’t make any difference who they are if they come through.

Actually, I like the Catholic priests and the Church of England, hey were the best to have stay here, they crack a joke. The Methodists were bigoted, they didn’t believe in alcohol, they didn’t believe, I made a cake and this chap, a minister, came in. I said, “Would you like a cup of tea and a bit of cake?” “Yes, lovely.” I gave him a piece of cake,

“Gee that’s lovely.” I said, “Have another piece.” I gave him another piece. He said, “That’s an unusual flavour.” I said, “There’s rum in the chocolate icing.” He went and made himself sick because I had rum, that’s how bigoted they can be on alcohol. “Alcohol is a poison. Saviour, he might promise help me not to break.” They go overboard. But the Catholics would make a joke, and the

Church of England would make a joke. They were good fun at the dinner table. I always enjoyed their company, more so than this other mob. But I still make the other mob happy.

I think I got them because of that bloke that used to walk me home from different church things.

He was allotted to the mess and I got him to come into the kitchen, I don’t know what made me do it. I got up and cleaned the vents over the stove. He’d get down there. I got him up there with steel wool cleaning it all, he made a lovely job of it.

I think it impressed the orderly officer when they came around to see how clean that kitchen was, how shiny, I don’t know but I think that had something to do with me getting my stripes. Poor Clarrie, “Thank God I only tried to kiss you,” he said. We often laugh at it. He’s still in the air force.

Actually that was a Methodist church I was going to there. They’d have Band of Hope, that was like a Girl Comrades. It was good fun then, but you’d sit on the veranda and the boys would be standing at the back here, they’d wink at you and you’d get up and over to this

other seat. They were just little party games they did there, you’d read a bit out of the Bible, I suppose it was a way to keep the kids off the streets. They were really nice, you’d sing a couple of nice hymns, about an hour and a half or something. They called it Band of Hope and Girl Comrades.

I used to do tap dancing, my mother said I was like a baby elephant.

I’ve forgotten now.

Just showing off I suppose.

My son is a good tap dancer. There was three of his mates, they dressed as sailors and they tap danced, the three of them stuck together. Nobody was game to call them sissies or they would flatten them well and truly. He was a good tap dancer.

They were good. Sometimes you’d get different ones, the airmen and WAAAFs would do an act. Other times you’d get some that we’d have a concert party come in and they put that up in the rec hut. Mrs, I knew her name, she was in charge of that, she was a civilian. They were really good. I think they tried to entertain you so that you

didn’t get bored. Most of the time, after your day’s work, you were ready for bed but there was things for you to do. I suppose those that didn’t have leave could go down to the rec hut and there was something on to keep you occupied and keep your spirits up. They were quite good.

No.

No, they were just all good. Don’t think anything stood out. The only thing that, over at Strath Pine I think it was, there was a lot of English pilots came in, they had big moustaches. I thought it was amazing because they had two combs in their pocket, one for their hair and one for their moustache.

They said, “Would anybody like to go to a dance over in Strath Pine?” There was a bus taking us over. Most of us went over, we filled up a bus and off we went. A few of us the men wanted a bit more with than to dance so we just went and sat in the bus and the driver said, “You’re here early,” I think there were about half a dozen went and sat in the bus. We said “No, we’re not here to muck around, we’ve come over to dance and

a couple of the boys, we don’t want it.” He said, “Right, they won’t get in the door here.” That’s it. That’s the sort of thing that went on. If you wanted to, it was there, if you didn’t want to, they didn’t hold it against you. The guard or the bus driver would make sure you were alright. That was good, you felt safe in the services, I did anyway.

These big moustaches, apparently they were a special flying lot and they all had these long moustaches and twisted hair.

We saw very few English but there was Americans everywhere.

The few that we knew, we found them very nice. This chap I got to know was a real gentlemen, he was six foot four and he was a plotter. He was air force. He was very nice. He was up at Wakehill. That’s the one that was gonna come down on the train,

he said he’d be down. When Jim spoke to me I said, “I’m gonna meet somebody.” He said, “Is it a Yank?” I said, “As a matter of fact it is.” He said, “He won’t turn up.” He didn’t, something must have happened to him. He was a really nice man. There again, even they said they were sex happy and all the rest of it, they picked their mark. If they’re not gonna get it, they like your

company and they’d go somewhere with you. Again, if you’re paying your own way you’re under no obligation. So that’s the way I looked at it, that worked for me.

Yeah. He asked me to meet him, we’d go somewhere. I don’t know where we were gonna go, we were gonna go to the football, no, not football, boxing tournament.

That was good. I can remember his name was Laurie Hill. I got that excited, I enjoyed that.

I wasn’t a wild tomboy, but I could look after myself. I could shoot and I was always pretty strong. I didn’t run around with boys. I didn’t see many boys running around with girls in Cooktown either for that matter. We’d meet up at church dances and things like that.

It was all pretty innocent stuff. I think they never ever thought of pairing off and all this like they do today, it’s very hard for the young people today. Their hormones might have been different in those days, non-existent or something. It was totally different.

Jim came down and he was stationed in Seymour. I was still in the air force then. I

went down and had a couple of nights with him. Then his brother was going home and he took me home on the train to meet his Mum and Dad, then he brought me back and Jim had moved on by then. He brought me back to Melbourne and then I went back to camp.

Yeah, his brother took me,

his brother was in the 39th with him, Jack, he’s dead now, he was a nice chap. Jim said, “Don’t trust him.” I think he might have had good reason for that, but Jack was always nice to me, that’s the main thing.

He never

said anything. He was very, very nice, I think he might have been frightened of Jim. No, he was alright, he was a bit of a ladies’ man, Jack. I think he knew I was married and that was it and it wasn’t worth his life to say anything to me, Jim would have flattened him.

They were very nice.

His Mum and Dad were very nice.

They accepted me as a daughter straight away. They were very, very nice. Actually I get on very well with his whole family. I’ve got to keep saying to Jim, “We must try to do another trip down home to see what’s left.” We did a couple of years ago, we got in touch with them and said,

“We’re coming down to see the whole family while we’re all still alive. We’ll meet in the gardens. Everybody bring something.” We did, 200 turned up. They came from Adelaide, they came from Shepparton, everywhere. It was absolutely wonderful. Many said they hadn’t seen the family for years and one sister said, “Gee, it’s ages since I’ve seen you.” A cousin said, “Yeah, you were

at my wedding and it was 18 years ago.” Normally they get together for funerals and weddings, then you only invite the people close to that. This was for no reason, just a happy occasion while we’re all still alive and everybody was happy they were alive. It worked wonderful, it was really good. I did the same thing when Jim’s Mum was very sick. She was saying and she wanted to see Jim so we came down from Cooktown and I said,

“Everybody bring enough food for themselves and a bit more and we’ll meet in the gardens across the road from the hospital. We can go in a few at a time and see Mum and come back out again,” which we did. It was a wonderful turnout. The teenagers looked after the babies, the adults were all over, they were just sitting and talking. There was no cleaning up ‘cause it was all in the gardens. It was worth it. You just want somebody to think of these things, do this and they’ll fall in

and it all falls into place. They arrive, just organise them a little bit and they’re right. I like organising.

I think I’m reasonably good at it. I’ve had plenty of practice. It does work, as long as you don’t go overboard.

Yeah.

Yeah, still there. The bar’s down below and the accommodation’s upstairs. I can remember what we had for breakfast that morning, it was

devilled kidney on toast. Jim doesn’t eat kidney.

I love liver. I like steak and kidney. I love liver and bacon. I don’t like brains or sweet bread but I like all the other. I like tripe only if I cook it myself.

I didn’t go to her funeral. She had a very, very big funeral. The extra special, she was a great worker for the ex service people and outside they had a guard of honour for her casket when it

came out and everybody who was out in the guard of honour were in wheelchairs, they were all disabled people. She started the Ex-Service Women Association in Mackay. She was the loveliest lady you could wish, very well loved everywhere.

Yes, the 27th of June.

No, fruit cakes don’t rise, they don’t rise very far. The thing was up about that high and they’d rise, did you notice that was almost level with the tin, they don’t come up very high.

They’d last, yes. I’ve got plenty of grog in them. As soon as you take a fruit cake out of the oven

pour rum or whiskey on the top. That softens the top crust from being in the oven from 3 1/2 hours. When you pour the spirits on them they soak in and throw a towel on it or something and it steams and it softens. When you go to cut it, the knife will go, you haven’t got a hard top on them.

I think it was about six months before the war ended, I think it was about six months.

Yeah, ‘cause he got back only a couple of days before I had the baby. He said, “I saw you coming but I couldn’t see you.”

Yeah, he came up to the hospital and they said, “Your husband’s outside.” I said, “Tell him to go to buggery.” In those days you didn’t have your husband in there when you had a baby.

Yeah.

I went into Sherwood Private Hospital. It’s Chelmer, Graceville and Sherwood,

I think that’s how it goes up the line.

I knew how you had a baby and that's about as far as I knew.

That’s right.

That was about it. Silly isn’t it, when you think of it today, what people know today.

it was only about four months ago my grand-daughter was saying something about a bordello and I said “And what’s that?” I’d never heard of a bordello until she said it. “Oh Nana,” and told me all about it. I’d never heard of it. For some reason, I don’t know how, but I’ve had a very protected life. Jim’s kept me protected as well.

We’ve always mixed with nice people, not necessarily hierarchy, but we’ve had a few of those too, but we’ve had nice people. I’ve never had, I organised a lot of parties, but I’ve never had any troubles with anybody pairing off or fights at any of my parties. I’ve been doing that for years.

They had those in Cooktown. Go down to the beach, throw a shoe in and pick it out and that’s who’s your partner. No, I wouldn’t be in any of those sorts of things. They went on. I know of those, but we never went to anything like that. In the kitchen part of the convent, before it was a museum,

we used to take the gramophone over and started off with square dancing. We danced maybe till half past 10, 11 o'clock and then we’d all get in a truck, we knew we were gonna do it, we’d have our togs and we’d go down to the beach a mile away and we’d swim, never thought of sharks or anything. We’d have a swim, come home and go to somebody’s place and have a coffee and that was it. We’ve had wonderful times.

Even the boys and girls who were engaged to each other, they never paired off. Everybody stayed together. I think that was the big thing about the whole lot, married couples all behaved themselves. Picnics that I organised, we took all the kids with us. Sometimes we’d have to walk away from where we parked the truck to the waterfall. Always somebody would put the kids on their shoulders and they’d carry them and off they’d

go with their eskies. That’s the way we did it up there. It’s very old-fashioned but it was really nice.

It is. Everybody wanted the chance to get out and

enjoy themselves, but they all knew to themselves, because there was no Mums and Dads, we were all young married, or about to be married, they all thought, “Well, here’s mine and that’s it.” So you all stayed in a group. You all danced and sang. Some would go off fishing in the daytime, come back and we’d eat. We stayed as a group, we never paired off. I think if

you went to a dance you stayed at the dance, you didn’t slip off. The boys might go out and have a quiet drink. Most of the dances didn’t have grog, it was always tea and coffee and cake. They might slip out and have a quiet rum or a beer or something in the back of their car. Sometimes they knew the police were gonna be around and they wouldn’t go out, then they only went out with a mate. They

never took just any young ones out there or anything, no girls, never took any girls out there to have a drink. It was a different way of life altogether. It says a lot of the country, it’s affordable, a lot of people today want things that they can’t really afford.

For us, and to a lot of others than I know, you just wanted to spend time with your man and that was all. He was happy to spend time with you and that was it. Today they’ve all got to, something over there is always a little bit better. It doesn’t work that way, it starts off as fun but doesn’t end up as fun. It can be heartbreaking for some people. We never had any of those, I’ve never had, I only had one problem with the guesthouse

when a chap went to put his arms around me. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap, I hit him so bloody hard I broke his jaw, he was up to hospital. Then they rung me up and said, “We’ve got somebody up here. He said he was at your place.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You hit him.” I said, “Oh, that bloke.” He said, “You broke his jaw.”

I said, “That’ll teach him a lesson, won’t it?”

He didn’t do nothing, I’d already done it, so.

Yes.

I only went from Chelmer into Brisbane, I stopped on the sidelines. There was a lot of dancing in the streets and

everyone had streamers going and laughing. It was lovely. I thought, “He’ll be home soon.”

Yes, went in with the people that I was staying with, Johnman, he was the curator. The curator’s building was right on the, you know you come down Edward Street? There’s a big building just there and across the road there’s a news-

agency that’s been there for donkey’s years. He was quite a few floors up so we could stand up there and we could see everything from up there. That was good. We just had to walk a little way from the railway station down to, I think it was the taxation department building as well, you only had to come down a little way into there. We went up in the lift and his office, we were able to go out on the balcony so we saw it all from there,

it was good.

No, hadn’t heard anything, didn’t hear until two days before he arrived.

Yes. He kept getting, “You’re going home,” and he’d row his boat in, he was sitting out in a boat.

he’d come in and they’d say, “Oh no, it’s a joke.” Eventually they were and he said he wouldn’t come in. They said, “Come on, it is true.” He could see they were acting differently so he came in and they said, “Hurry up, hurry up or you’ll miss the plane.” That’s when he came home, that was just before, about two days, Jimmy was born the 24th of October,

he got home about the 21st, 22nd, something like that.

No, they wouldn’t have cared about that, not in those days.

Yes. But see, he hadn’t long got out of the treatment that he was in. Then he

went to Madang and was sitting around in Madang recuperating. So he hadn’t long been out of the hospital. When he came out of hospital he went to Redbank for discharge. They had it all wired around. He said, “How long am I here for?” He was B2. They said, “You’re B2, you’ll be here for five to six weeks before

you can get a discharge.” He said, “If I’m A1” They said, “You can go out this afternoon.” He said, “Well, I’m A1.” He would have probably got a pension right from the word ‘go’, but he said he was A1 so he came out. They gave him four pound ten to go and buy a suit and he bought a suit and he came home and that was it.

Mm.

No, with my there children I’ve been very fortunate. The doctor said each time, I was very healthy through all my pregnancies, he just said, “She’s had enough,” and gave me a whiff and I don’t remember anything else. I was back in my work. All they talk about, this afterbirth and all that, I know nothing about that, I’ve never had to have anything to do with that.

I think it was chloroform wasn’t it?

That would have been us in Queensland, we were so far behind the time. We would have been having chloroform, I don’t think heroin was around in those days.

I don’t remember anything of the birth, nothing at all. It’s exactly the same, I had the two girls in Cooktown and I don’t remember either of those. They said, “She’s had enough,” and that was it. I’ve always been cleaned up, changed and everything and I’m in the other room in the ward. In those days they kept you in for 14 days, which was good, that gave you time to settle down.

You wore binders and the baby wore a binder.

It’s about that wide and they wrap it tight around your stomach, then they pin it and it holds your stomach in. With little babies they had it about that wide and they wrap that around, it supported their backs. When they brought the baby in he had to take three or four binders to

the hospital with you. They’d roll them over. They’re in a little cocoon when they bring him in, he had his little head just moving around. He was quite good, the thing is the babies were so secure, so totally different.

It helps support the back. You didn’t put the binder on until after you had the baby, not before, after you had the baby.

They put a binder on because it helped to push everything back into place, it supported your back, it supported and strengthened the baby’s back. They don’t do that today, they’ve changed a lot of things today with babies. I think I was a while, I had time to come in and have a hot bath.

It was a bit hot and that might have brought it on a bit quicker, I don’t know. I don’t think I was in labour very long with either of them.

Jimmy was about a fortnight, three weeks old I think. We decided we’d come down ‘cause we couldn’t keep staying at these people’s place, might have only been a fortnight.

We came down on the train. We went across on the – what was the name? – Speed of Progress train from Sydney to Melbourne. That was a lovely train, we went over on that.

Jim had work in Melbourne and he could get his job back, which

he did do so we shifted down there. We had bought furniture on different leaves and Patterson’s, a big furniture place in Melbourne for service people, they gave free storage. So we’d bought a kitchen suite, at different times bought everything. While I was still in the air force I had my pay and they were sending an allotment off him, the

government put in something to it as well, that gave us, so we bought furniture. Then we couldn’t get a house when we got down. We got hold of a house, we looked after a man and a 10 year old boy, his wife had left him so we moved in there, got our furniture and put it in there. That was really good for about three months, then his wife decided to come back. She was a lovely lady but there was two

lounge suites in the lounge room, two kitchen suites and everything. He’d come in and he’d belt her, she’d be almost unconscious when he went to work of a morning and he’d come home of a night time. It was too nerve wracking. Then with taking money out of his pay with people on strike in NSW he said, “To hell with this, we’ll go up north.” So we sold everything to get our fare to go north. We didn’t know till, that was 1946, we didn’t know till

1949, after the cyclone in Cooktown, when the Red Cross came around, we could have asked the Red Cross to bring our furniture up and as soon as we got a job in Queensland they would have brought this furniture up for nothing, we didn’t know that. So we sold our furniture and it was just enough to get us up on the plane and give us enough money until he got a job. Then we started from there to make a home together.

Kerosene cases and that, that was it.

Kerosene cases are about that long, about that deep. They were tins that you got kerosene in and two of them would fit in. You put three of those boxes together and put legs on this, we used to put saplings on the side, and you’ve got a cupboard with three shelves.

You could get the kerosene tin, cut the top out like that and where the handle is, you could put two of those back in, flatten it out with a hammer and that gave you a chest of drawers. You got another kerosene tin, cut it diagonally across, put a bit of water around it, about that deep, then you got a washing up dish and a draining dish. Three-quarters of kerosene tin, with a handle

on it, put it on the stove and you had some permanent place to boil water to boil the baby’s nappies and things in. A kerosene tin was used for so much up there, it was something that was more or less free. Jim worked for a lady, she said, “You’re a bit of a carpenter, I want a floor shifted.” Jim said, “Right-o.” He worked, she didn’t want her furniture taken out of the room so he had to put it all up there

and then put a new floor here and then move that down here and do it up there. When he finished she said, “I’ve got no money to pay you.” Jim said, “Oh.” She said, “Pick two pieces of any of the furniture that you want.” So he picked two chests of drawers. We were happy, they were beautiful cedar chests of drawers we got for him doing the floor. We would have preferred the money, but still. Things went on like that.

Nobody had anything. Nobody had a wardrobe, you made a bracket in the corner and put a bit of cretonne down the front, the corner wardrobe, as they called it.

Cretonne, material. It was embroidered generally with bright nice flowers on it, cretonne. It would fit in the corner like that,

come out, then you put some cup hooks inside. Then you hung your clothes in there and you had your cretonne hanging on the outside. You only had petrol irons and carbide lights and things like that.

They had a small population to start with and they’ve got a floating population of about 12,000 now and about 3,000 permanent residents now.

There was only 300 when we went back to Cooktown.

We didn’t’ get electricity up there till after, about ‘56. We had a motor, a plant down there, 110 lighting plant.

It was way behind the times. You had a butcher, baker and a grocery store and there were different farmers would come in with their trucks and stop two, three different places in the street and you fall out and go to the truck and buy whatever you wanted. You went to the pictures about once a week, or fortnight. Once a month there was always a dance. There was

pictures on. The reel would go on and somebody would play the piano around the back and another reel would go on. It was a good town.

That’s right. Then he got a job and we got a house so we stayed put.

A shilling a week rent.

About

‘46 till the cyclone ‘49. We had one sheet of iron left on it after the cyclone. A friend of ours from Murwillumbah owned a house right down the road. The cyclone had only rolled a little bit of the rooftop. We contacted him and he said, “I’m really selling you the tenants, I can’t get them out, I only wanted it for a holiday place, you can

get them out because you’re both ex-service people.” So we went down and saw this chap and he moved out so we moved down there. Jim was able to do it up. This big boulder was underneath. He and another chap got dynamite and they blew the boulders, I was upstairs, I ran outside and I heard this bang go off.

I said, “You can get rid of me easier than that.” They excavated all downstairs and then we made three to four bedrooms downstairs, dining, lounge room and kitchen, and I kept all upstairs for bedrooms. That’s when I started taking boarders in. That’s how Hillcrest came about.

We made it Hillcrest.

Yes, he said he’d sell us the house, we got rid of him.

I think it was 240 pound. We said we only had 40 pound. He said, “All right. I’ll lend you 1,000 pound. Pay me the amount for the thing and then pay me back at six dollars a week rent.” That’s what we did until we paid the house off.

Through my mother.

Yes, he was very generous, Nick Bornhold from Murwillumbah.

That’s how we started. We didn’t have downstairs, we were doing that when the council asked me to put on this morning tea for the deputy premier and that, we had that upstairs and then he said, “What are you gonna do?” We said, “We’re going to make it into a boarding house.” He said, “Change it, a big thing for Cooktown, make it a private hotel,” and we did and we never looked back. The other chap came up and wanted to stay

and I said, “I haven’t got a bed.” He said, “I’ve got a bed.” So I bought his bed off him at two and six a week so he paid for his own bed he was sleeping in. That’s how we got along. Jim made his furniture. DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs] were absolutely wonderful. They knew he had nerves and Jim was the only person in Cooktown that had 3-

phase electricity. I think it was 3-phase. They helped him buy machinery ‘cause he had to concentrate on what he was doing or he’d lose a hand. That was part of his treatment. He couldn’t get away for treatment or anything like that. He’d come home and if he was uptight he’d get in there and work. He made all the beds for the place and everything else,

he made everything. He wasn’t a carpenter, he was just a good handyman. Into the bargain he embroidered all the babies’ clothes. He did it a lot in hospital, he put little animals on them, beautiful embroidery.

Yeah. See, actually it had two main big rooms and a passage way, two smaller rooms, but it had a big 12 foot veranda right around. Then there was a piece went across about that wide and there were tanks down there and that was the kitchen, the kitchens were always offset. Underneath the kitchen, when my aunt comes to me,

she says, “It’s the most aerated bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life.” Underneath the kitchen we just had iron around that and put a shower in down there and a cement floor and a chip heater so you could have a hot shower. The place grew and we kept improving all the time until we’ve got a wonderful place there now,

it’s still going and it’s going successfully. We’ve got a beautiful swimming pool up there. This lady has just taken over and I said, “Start advertising now. ‘Book Now’, ‘Christmas Parties at Hillcrest’, ‘Swimming Pool Parties’.” “That’s an idea.” I think she has.

That’s right.

I had five people I had taken in, when he took a bad turn I could call for help. Then it grew from there.

Yes, I gave them full board and I did their ironing and washing for, I’ve forgotten what it is now, was it much? We said as long as we could get our food,

pay the expenses, it didn’t matter if we didn’t make a penny profit because Jim’s wages then could go into timber to do up the place and that’s what we did. So as long as we got our food for nothing and I could pay the rates and everything, that’s all I asked for. I didn’t want any profit. Then Jim’s wages went into materials to do the place up.

Oh my word. No doubt about that. I would never have been able to do it, only for that. I don’t think I’d ever have been able to do it, it just grew and grew all the time. We had all the Queen’s, we had a lot to do with the Queen’s visit to Cooktown.

Cooktown was good to us and we were good to Cooktown. We had good ideas, new ideas to what a lot of those people had, they all worked. We brought people into the place. They could see what could happen. We got our rake-off by the people who stayed with us. We got a different type of person that came up on the boat and just went to pubs for lost weekends and went back again,

we got people that would come up and say, “We never realised all this was up here, we’ll be up next year.” Where they came for two days, next time they might come for a fortnight. In the end we had three or four that came up for three or four or five months every year. They’d get a carton of rum or something else we had for them. They’d go fishing and they were well-to-do people, lovely people. One was the highest man in the country on

movie pictures, he was a Jew, Steiner, lovely man. No, people offered to finance us for different things. Jim said, “No, we’ll do what we can afford to do when we can do it. You just pay your board and that’s it.” They were happy and we were happy. Eventually when the place got better I was able to charge more and we

did make a profit.

Yes, two daughters.

Yes.

I did it. Ethel, my friend, she used to come down and do the ironing for me, I paid her when she’d come down and do the ironing.

You did it.

Jimmy was born in 1945, October ‘45. Diane was born in March ‘48. Elizabeth was born in May ‘52. There are two years between Jim and Diane and four years between Elizabeth and ….

Yes, I think there was. I was very concerned. I got two Japanese come in for accommodation, I wanted their accommodation. I said, “Wait a minute.” So I got on the phone and rang the aerodrome and rang Jim.

I said, “Jim, I’ve got two Japanese here that want accommodation. Will you feel happy if I take them?” He said, “Yes, I’ll handle it. OK.” So I brought them in. He didn’t mix with them but he didn’t object to it. Thing is, we were all using Japanese cars and things,

you hated them, but you didn’t hate them. They did some terrible things but they were a different people. They’re certainly different people today from what they were then. They did what they were told to do, the same as ours did what they were told to do I suppose. It was hatred.

Ethel came down and she got a blessed saveloy.

Yeah.

No, saveloy’s like a hot dog. She tied a big red bow on it and put it on my pillow. They were all waiting for me to come in and you should have heard them.

Yeah, a lot of the others were in bed or lying on the bed.

No, I think you say Frankfurts now.

I thought it was.

It was shocking.

No, that’s about the only one.

No, as I said I loved my service life, I really did. I loved my service life and I’ve had a good life. I’ve had some sad times, but on the whole I’ve had a very good life.

If I die tomorrow I should be happy, because I have had a good life.

She was too young. Peggy was only 16 during the war, 16 or 17.

Yeah, she wasn’t 17, she was 16, Peggy.

Died of a heart attack.

I’ve got a brother in Cairns.

Oh, yes. I’m lucky. I’m friends with the two of them and Keith is the only one of the family left in, the nieces and nephews up there. There’s Jim’s family I get on very well with all them.

It’s good, I think it’s a big thing to get on with the in-laws, I think possibly we’re so far away too, they’re glad to see us and we’re glad to see them and whether it’s mine or his. We see in the middle sort of thing, so that’s good. They come for holidays and I look forward to them coming and I look forward to them going. There’s no animosity. It’s lovely.

I think you need that distance. You’ve gotta have distance.

Yes, he did things like that. But then he was away at high school, Cairns, he went to Herberton. He was at that time at the school there

and then he went to the Cairns high school.

Only a primary school, there wasn’t a high school. They could only go as far as scholarship, so that’s 6th grade, and then they had to go away for school. He went away. He’s very high up in the department now.

He’s with the DCA, Department of Civil Aviation, he’s high up in that.

He joined that because he said, “Dad, will you help me get into the DCA as a fireman?” Dad said, “Fine, what for?” He said, “They’ve got a nice uniform. I like the uniform.” He started from the bottom and he’s right up the bloody top now.

He’ll be 58.

20, yeah.

He was just a baby when I turned 21.

I don’t think it really hit home until after we left Brisbane and went

down to Victoria. He just couldn’t cope with the people there, he got his job back and he got his pay. He put his hand to come through to get it and then pull it back, then sign, and then they’d take 10 shillings out for people on strike in Victoria. I think it was the traffic and the whole lot. He felt he just couldn’t

live like this. He said, “We’ll sell up.” I said, “Whatever you want to do, we’ll do.” So we sold up and flew up to Cairns, came up by boat, not expecting to stay. But when we got offered a house for a shilling a week we decided to stay. He got a job on the main roads, he did a few odd jobs, then he got this job offered to him at the airport, he was there

for 27 years. They were very, very good to him there. Then between him and the DVA they helped him along. Plus we had personal contact with the doctor, who understood his case. Then the sergeant of police who was particularly good to all the ex-servicemen that were up there that needed help. There was a case there that

another doctor came in, Dr Nash, her husband committed suicide. He was an artist. He used to stay home and watch the children. Jim was up seeing her one day. She said, “Jim, to think I’m treating so many of you boys with nerves and I didn’t recognise the symptoms with my own husband.” She said where he committed suicide, he jumped off this huge rock

at the beach and the tide was out and he must have taken something, I don’t know. She said, “I didn’t realise how bad he was. I had no idea. And to think I’m treating you boys, I can see it, but you don’t see it in the ones close to you.” I think there’s something in that too. We were very lucky with Dr Heely. He was a marvellous man and our sergeant of police. I think it’s a lot to his credit he never charged us.

The boys I wouldn’t say ever abused it, it was just that they’d get these flashes and they’d go. You never went up and touched them on the back unexpectedly, they’d swing around. They were just so on edge the whole time. I think he understood that. He’d see them, between him and doctor, seen the men through that path.

For me personally I’ll be ever grateful to both those people because a lot of strangers, and even some locals, they didn’t realise what some of the boys had been through. The POWs were in a very bad way too. So it was a big thing. Cooktown was just so laid back and quiet. There was no road. They came up on the boat once a week and there was a small

plane, no big planes were coming in at that time. It was really very peaceful and quiet.

Just that he was not himself. Mainly it didn’t hit me until I would see him, when he was having a bad, you could tell he was having

something. Could have been something from work and he’d come home. Once he’d get a line that come down here and this eye would start to water. When I seen him grab his eye I knew it was on and he’d hurry up to the bedroom and sometimes he didn’t get there, he’d collapse before, these heads would hit him. I made a big mistake when I got him in and I shut the door, he was

a ranting lunatic, he just went mad. I think he thought that he was locked up again. From then I never shut the bedroom door.

The Japs were chasing him and there was all sorts of things going on. He was thrashing around. It was very, very hard for him. That was

just what brought these heads on, I don’t know. They’re all so touchy. If you just accidentally bump them at the wrong time or answer them back when they didn’t want you to answer back. You can tell when they’re a bit cranky and you keep quiet. Today they’ve got counselling and you’re taught what to do. Perhaps they might

still go through the same traumas that we’ve gone through but at least they’re aware of it. We weren’t aware what we’d have to put up with but we did.

We’d have to call the doctor in if he was crook. I remember the doctor taking him up to the hospital

and then he’d sometimes keep him in there for a few days or a week. Another time he’d say, “Best send him down to Brisbane down to Greenslopes,” then down he’d come. He’d keep an eye on him, unbeknownst to us, and then he’d suddenly go, “Jim, I think it’s about time you had another holiday down at Greenslopes,” before anything went wrong. I think he kept it in check. It’d be three or four months every year.

Yes, that’s definitely what it was. He went into the bomb happy ward down in Brisbane, he never went into a ward. Today the Vietnam people they call it post traumatic stress. They call it

bomb happy, or they’ve got another name for it. It’s exactly the same thing but they’ve got a different name for it. Sometimes it goes on a while and you just think he’s moody and quiet and you take no notice of it. Then something’ll happen and you’ll say, “I’ve been getting warnings for that and I haven’t taken any notice of it.” So just the other day

he was going and Ian picked it up. He said, “Jim’s not too good today.” I said, “Oh, he’s just in one of his moods I think.” “No,” he said, “it’s more than that, Betty. Do you think we were talking too much last night?” I said, “No, I don’t think so.” He said, “I’ll keep and eye on him for you,” and things like that. Just don’t know what it is but he hasn’t got over it. When the

boys get together you never hear them talk of any of the nasties. They talk about the war and they laugh and joke. We always say, “You’re gonna have some bodies to shovel up in the morning.” That’s as far as it goes. They don’t bring up the really nasty parts about it.

Mm. He generally goes, he’s a strong person,

he doesn’t let it get the better of him.

Sometimes very quiet, sometimes he gets very argumentative. He doesn’t get violent, not with me anyway. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to swing around,

hs reflexes are very, very good, even now at his age. You only have to touch him the wrong time and he’d spin around if he wasn’t sure there was somebody there. They’d be down like a packet of crackers even now. I can handle him OK. He said, “You’re taking me for granted. You don’t take any notice.” I’ve got to do that otherwise I’d be round the bend myself.

When it gets to that stage, they’re all bad, none of them are easy. Different people say, “You’ve got some lovely jewellery,” and I say, “Yes, I have.” Jim would never say he was sorry, he knows he’s done something, he doesn’t know what he’s done. He’ll go and buy me a nice piece of jewellery. I think that eases his conscience. Each time

he buys me lovely stuff. Every time he’s bought me something it’s because he knows, but he doesn’t know what he’s done. I don’t tell him what he’s done because it’s better he doesn’t know. If it’s just in his background but he knows there’s something there, whether he does know or not, he doesn’t say, but he would never apologise for what he’s done. I don’t think he knows exactly what he’s done. He’ll always go and buy me a nice piece of jewellery. That’s why I’ve got such nice jewellery.

Yes, I suppose. We have been happy.

I don’t know. Sometimes he can be alright and all of a sudden – bingo, off he goes.

Often he doesn’t sleep well of a night. He generally sleeps in of a morning because he gets a better sleep then. If he’s had a bad night he’s a bit grumpy in the morning so I just don’t take any notice of him and give him what he wants, his brekkie and I’ll go off and do something else. He’s good to me in the house, he helps,

he tries to do lots of things and he can’t do them. Like put a new battery in the smoke alarm, he only fell off two steps, 57 stitches in his leg, things like that. It’s not once, it’s over and over again. He took a little dog for a walk, my son’s dog. There was a log there and he said, “I’ll take the dog across the log to the other

side.” He had the dog in his hand and he doesn’t know whether he had a blackout or what, the next thing he’s in the water, the poor little dog’s floating around and he’s got a big gash in his leg. They’re the sort of things he doesn’t know, he has a lot of little blackouts. So I watch him like a cat watches a mouse a lot of the time because you never know when they’re going to happen.

He’d stepped out that door. How he did it, I don’t know, but he fell and fractured his skull. It’s no deeper than that. These are the sorts of things that happen.

He’s been having those for years.

Since the war he’s been having them. He might be doing the garden

up in Cooktown there and he’d just fall and have a blackout. Luckily I’d always have somebody there to pick him up and carry him inside for me. You never know when those sorts of things are happening. The doctor will let him drive around the town but she said, “You’ve gotta have it as your comfort blanket. If I take your licence off you I know you’re gonna pack, so you’re not to do any long

drives but you can drive into town and back again.” So he does that. He’s gotta be very careful.

It was insulin, not electric shock.

They give you a needle and it takes all the sugar out of your system and you go bonkers. Then after a certain time they

feed you up with lots of sugar to bring you back. You ask that lady that you mentioned that’s ‘58. She’s a nurse, she knows all about it. She was very interested when Jim mentioned bits about it so she understands the insulin. I just don’t know. He won’t let anything rile him. He’s got the psychiatrist will switch it around and he’s testing the psychiatrist just as

soon as the psychiatrist tested him. He does it all the time. He makes a joke of lots of things, he’s joking all the time.

He just told me about this cage, he only told me once. The boys were crawling around and climbing like monkeys.

He was the only bloke that seen it ‘cause he was the last one to get the injection so he seen what was happening to the other people. When they’re coming to after they’ve had it, if there’s lollies there or anything, they’ll eat the paper and everything, they’re craving for sugar. They wouldn’t take the paper off a piece of chocolate, they’d eat the paper and everything, it’s

pretty bad.

The war itself he said very little. He said the fighting was bad and they did this and that but he just went on with it. He was never badly treated or anything like that. He was in charge of his

platoon and they thought a lot of him, they followed him wherever he went. He passed three exams for an officer and he said, “I’d rather be with the men than be an officer.” So he stayed with the men and I’ve got his pay book there. He got 78% and 80% passes. They were field exams that he had. But he said, “No, I’ll stay with the boys.”

He always stayed with the boys. I think they’ve respected that and thought a lot of that too. He’s one of the men that, I hit the jackpot and I got him, I must have known something.

They don’t talk of it either. They know from me and I’d always say, “Dad is not well, don’t go up, don’t make any noise,” and they never did. They knew when he was crook and they did keep quiet. I never had to go into details with them. He never spoke of the war to them or to me really. The fact that they could see when he went up to the room they had to be quiet and they were. They were very, very good, the

three of them, exceptionally good. He’s very close to his children, he thinks they’re the sun and moon and they think he’s the sun and moon too. I can go crook at them and they go crook back, they wouldn’t dare answer their father back, they’ve never answered him back. If he tells them to do something they do it. He’s never ever hit them. I’ve given them more smacks than I ever had but he’s never.

I don’t know. They know

he won’t take any rot. They just, “Dad says that, Dad’s right,” and that’s it. They don’t argue.

He pulls them in. He said to me, “If the children do something wrong and I’m not there, I want you to deal with it. I’m not gonna come home and hit them in cold blood.” I said, “Fair enough.”

They did something wrong and he wasn’t home to see it so I dealt with it. They had enough sense not to do anything wrong in front of him. He’s strict in his own way but he’s very loving and he’s good and they think the sun and moon shines off their father. He’s a very honest

man, he helps a lot of people.

We never spoke of it, you just ignore it. You knew somebody

was having a hard time, her husband’s giving her a hard time and she wants to come over and talk to you, you listen and that’s it, you don’t interfere, we never interfered with any of them. Different ones there that got a bit overboard with Jim and he pulled them into gear.

Without doing the wrong thing, he’s straightened them out. They respect

him. They mightn’t like him, but they respect him.

I don’t know what he does. He stands for no nonsense, no nonsense with Jim. He’s slapped a couple of them. A chap didn’t pay his board. He gave me a check and it bounced

and we needed the money, Jim went down the town and seen him and flattened him, knocked him out and he went to hospital. So the sergeant comes up and sees me and I tell him what’s happened. Then the doctor gets in touch with the sergeant and tells him what’s happened up there and apparently this chap had a steel plate in his head. I was able to tell them a few things

that the bodyguard this chap had, he had a body guard, I said, “He carried a 35 gun.” He said, “Right.” So he made arrangements for the chap to go down on the plane with the chap that Jim had knocked out and they get down there. So he got the police to meet them when the plane landed, they said this chap had this Colt under his coat. The police picked him up there and he was a criminal.

So they got him and they got the bodyguard as well. So there was no charges laid against Jim, but he doesn’t muck around. I think he’s gotta defend himself, so he is a good fighter. If you rattle him up, he doesn’t pick a fight, if it’s there he will.

No. He and the sergeant, they got all the young boys in the town down to the police station

and taught them all to box so they can look after themselves. There was hardly ever any fights in Cooktown because the kids all knew, “Don’t pick a fight with him, he can fight.” So there was never any fights. Jimmy was only little. These three to four kids bailed him up on the hill and belted the hell out of him. We seen it so Jim went up and he said, “What’s going on?” It was something stupid. Jim said, “Right, Jim, give him a hiding.”

“I didn’t hit him, I didn’t hit him. I was only watching.” Jim said, “You’re in it.” Jim would fix him up and say, “Right, you’re next.” He made him knock the whole bloody lot of them out, one at a time, he did. You can fight any one at a time, but you can’t fight four. They never touched Jim after that. He ended up good mates with all those kids but they knew darn well Jim could look after himself.

It was after that Jim and the police sergeant taught most of the kids how to box, there was no fights then. It was a good idea, only things like that. On the whole he was always too busy doing things. He started the golf course, he was a great worker for the bowls club, very good on the crocus association. Then

he had his job that he was on call 24 hours a day on that. He helped me in between if I needed it. In those days we never, there was no welfare officer up in Cooktown. You never thought to apply for a pension or anything like that. When he’d come out of Greenslopes they’d say, “We’ll get something for your shoulder,” or something else. They’d put that down and he

might get a little bit extra on his pension for it. You never thought to apply for a TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated pension] or anything like that. When he got down here after he had the massive heart attack they said, “You should go for a TPI.” The doctor filled it all out. Then he came back and he said, “Beats me,” it works on a point system how much you get for a TPI, “You’re well over what you should have

but you’re too old.” He was too old. You’ve gotta get a TPI before you’re 65, Jim was 70. So they gave him a needy aid. He said, “I’m happy with that.” He wouldn’t argue, it’s less than half the amount, but the thing is it goes to show a lot of service people are in places where they can’t get help with

Veteran Affairs and they don’t know what to do. They leave it and by the time they’ve woken up to it, it’s too late. This is what the 39th have done. The Vietnam blokes, I don’t blame them, they scream blue murder. They want a march, they got a march. All the others, only the 9th Divvy are the only ones that ever got a parade. The rest all come back in dribs and drabs. But what

the 39th are worried or upset about, the way they were disbanded at the end, if they’d all speak up, but they don’t. Two, there, here and there, but they won’t speak as a body and you’ve gotta speak as a body to get anywhere, they’re not doing that so it’s hard to say. We’ve got a 39th bloke here, he’s dead now, but he was the face of Anzac last year, Jimmy Canty.

I think everyone were so proud ‘cause we all knew Jimmy and the things he used to do. But he had to be dead to be recognised. It’s a shame. It’s crazy. That’s how it goes.

Yes, all the time. It’s getting

more now than he had 10 years ago.

Moaning and groaning. Swearing and he doesn’t swear. Thrashing around and things like that.

I wouldn’t know. I never ask him.

I say, “How do you feel this morning?” “I had a rotten night, they were bad last night,” and I don’t press him, I don’t ask what it was about or anything else.

The women, if somebody was saying, “They’ve been doing this,” or, “doing that,” we’d say, “My husband’s doing the same thing.” We talk and that helped them. I think they did exactly the same as I did, they learned to keep quiet. You don’t go asking questions, you leave them be, if they want to tell you something they’ll tell you.

Otherwise you don’t push them, you keep quiet.

No. I’d say, “Is there anything I can do?” “No, I’m all right. I’ll get through this.” And I say, “Right-o. Do you want a cup of coffee?” I’m very fortunate he doesn’t get onto the grog. He has a drink, but he doesn’t drink much.

Yeah,

probably for a while when he first come home, he did. He drank heavily when he first came home. He never drank all the time he was in the islands. He never smoked until the end the war, he was out of battle. He was having these terrific headaches and he’d go to the doctor and the doctor tried everything,

they couldn’t do anything. Then they found out he was sleeping on top of gelignite, he was fixing up all the gelignite and he had a gelignite headache, fumes from gelignite, you could get a very bad charge. People sometimes rubbed their hand on gelignite and they put it on the hatband of somebody they didn’t like and the chap would put his hat on and he’d get

this ferocious head, that was a bad charge if they were found doing that. So Jim slept on top of this gelignite ‘cause he was in charge of that. He was getting the fumes and they found out it was the gelignite that was giving him these heads. So he told him to try smoking, he said he started to smoke. He was 24 when he started smoking, he smoked and he said, “It made me so sick.”

The doctor said, “Keep it up, it’ll help you. We’ve done everything else.” That started him off smoking.

They eased off at different time. I just put a lot of his migraine headaches now down to it. It’s the same when he came back. He never drank until after we went to Cooktown,

then he started drinking. One night he said he come around to the bar and, “I sat in the gutter and I said to myself, ‘You’re an idiot. Betty’s up there, she’s got tea ready and you’re down here drinking. This is not the right thing to do.’” He never had a drink again for ages, I think for 13 years he never had a drink. Now he just has a social drink.

He just stopped. He said, “I’m not smoking any more,” in ‘72. He had it and he never had another one. That was it and that was it. He had a full carton of cigarettes there, he never touched them, they went mouldy. He just said, “I don’t need patches or anything else. I’m not gonna have it,” and that’s it, he never had another one.

He puts his mind to something and he’ll do it. I think what has helped him the most is the fact that he wants to do things, he’s got a good mind and he likes to use his hands. He’s created some beautiful, does a lot of woodwork, he’s made some beautiful things. That is thanks to DVA getting permission to have this extra phase

electricity into his workshop and helping him with his machinery. DVA, I’ve got such respect. Different ones aren’t satisfied with what they’ve got, we, as a family, we can’t complain what they’ve done for us. We think they’ve been absolutely marvellous. Every time he’s had to go away there’s been no problems. While he was working

at the airport, the airways always flew him down free of charge and flew him home again free of charge. That was Ansett in those days, that was really good. DVA have always been there to help him. They’ve helped him where he’s needed help. Still nobody thought to tell him to apply for a pension. Things would have been easier.

He would have probably found in between he wouldn’t have been able to cope with sitting around not doing anything. At least he has a go, he’s trying to put a path, it’s been a week now and he’s got that far, but he does a little bit and then he stops. You can’t stop him from doing everything. I can’t start the mower, we bought a new mower but I can’t start it ‘cause it hurts my back to pull it but I like mowing so I do all

the mowing. I do a lot of the yard work. He always does the breakfast dishes, the tea dishes, he helps me in other ways. He’s very, very good to me. I think the main thing is we pull together, we work together. You’ve got to do that. Marriage is 50-50, you help each other, that’s it, you take the good with the bad. We’ve had very happy times.

I don’t know whether it’s age and time’s rolling on. You’re thinking more what's around. I’ve got no idea. Certainly it’s not from anything that we’re talking about, ‘cause we don’t talk about it. Unless it’s something he sees on TV.

I go to bed at half past eight. Whether it’s something he watches on TV or whether it’s an overactive mind sitting around talking. I thought the last couple of nights he might have had really bad dreams but he’s had bad dreams but no worse since Ian’s been here because they’ve been talking about the war. Ian is

very interested in that type of thing. He’s a TPI and I think his nerves are worse than what Jim’s are, Ian’s, he’s had a hard time too. No, I think they understand each other. Ian said to him, “Is talking about the war upsetting you?” Jim said, “No, no, I’m right.” I don’t think he’d let on if it was.

Ian said to me, “I’m doing a lot of this because I’ve done a bit of counselling with blokes up north and Jim’s never had anyone to talk it out with. This might help him if I can talk it out. It’ll hurt while it’s coming out but then you’ll get the benefit of it.” So that might be true. I’m sure he’s no

worse than what it has been. If it’s gonna do him any good, it’s good that he talks to him, they’re on the same wavelength.

I think they’d always sit together. They were all in different battalions

or different sections. They might have been navy or air force or something like that. They were different. I wouldn’t say they, I don’t think they sat and talked war, I’m pretty sure they didn’t, I think they were there for each other. One man in particular, Percy Dadener, he was torpedoed on five successive ships and he

was a ship gunner, he said if you got a young German officer came aboard they were ruthless. But if you had an older officer, captain came aboard, they were gentlemen. One came on and he said, “I don’t want you men, I want your ship. Where’s the lock?” He said, “I’ve thrown it overboard.” He said, “I thought you might.”

He got the radio deposition. He said, “Get into the boats.” They went out, ‘cause the Germans were in a sub [submarine]. “Get out in your small boats. I’ll radio for help and I’ll stop till I see something coming.” They stayed until they saw help coming, they sunk the ship and they stayed with the submarine until they saw them coming. As soon as they saw help coming, whether it was planes or it was a

boat coming, they submerged and went. But they never lost a man. If it was a younger one they’d turn the guns onto the crew but the older Germans were really very good. Then there was a chap from the Rats of Tobruk, you go to a party and they have a few grogs, “The Rats had it harder than the navy. The navy wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for us.”

There are a few squabbles like that, but they never got to fisticuffs or anything. At functions they all stood by each other, the Second World War ones. That RSL has been there for, I don’t know how many years. I’ve got to go in again. I was very proud of that, I’m more

proud to see the way it’s turned out. It’s flourishing, it’s better than ever, it’s been expanded. The only thing wrong with it is there’s more Aboriginals in there. They’re social members, they take over the pokies, they take over. But they seem to be happy to sit in the bar and dining room. They put a big igloo in down the back. That’ll take quite a lot of people. They’ve got an entertainment thing out the back there.

The Abos [Aboriginals] are keeping up in the top part. I think they’re in the better part, the others have all gone down there. It’s worked out OK because you’ve got to have the money, and the money’s coming from the Abos. The Abos have got more money than what the whites have got, that’s how it works.