Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Toowoomba 1923 and I was the third in the family of four. We just had a normal upbringing. It was Depression days and we never had very much. My father never

ever owned a car. We had a normal upbringing. After primary school, I had two years at Fairholme College and from Fairholme College I was offered a position hairdressing in Toowoomba. I was partway through the hairdressing apprenticeship when they were enlisting girls in the air force. I would like to join then, but my family thought it’d be better if I finished the apprenticeship.

By that time they were enlisting girls in the WRANS [Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service]. How I came to really join the WRANS, at the beginning of the war, when I was about 17-18, we had the Women’s National Emergency Legion formed a squad in Toowoomba. It was a motorbike squad and motor vehicle squad. Another lass and I joined the motorcycle squad. The young man motor mechanic who taught us to ride motorbikes and got us our licence, he

joined the navy, did his course at [HMAS] Flinders in Victoria, came back to HMAS Moreton [both shore stations] in Brisbane and he was the warrant officer in the transport office. He notified us they were enlisting girl dispatch riders in the WRANS. We applied to go in as dispatch riders. They said there was no call for them in Queensland, although they never did have them in the WRANS anyway. They were in need of transport drivers. That’s how we came to

join the WRANS. As far as growing up it was just a normal family. We never had a lot of anything, but we were no different from our neighbours because none of them had very much either. We always wondered why the man next to us had a motorcar and no one else had one. In later years, we found out that he was a TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated] from the First World War. My father was a TPI.

He was invalided home from the Middle East in 1917 with a sickness that never left him. He died in his late 50s. This complaint was from drinking water in the Middle East apparently. We thought the man next door was a very wealthy man. We wondered why he always walked on two sticks, walked very badly on two sticks. We found out that’s why he had a motorcar because it was much cheaper for a

TPI. I just went to the normal East State primary school where I did all my primary lessons, went on to Fairholme College, where I still belong to Fairholme Old Girls Association here in Brisbane. That’s my growing up. We did the normal things. Most our younger lives revolved around the church.

Our church had big dances on a Friday night in Toowoomba. We all went to them from when we were quite young because my mother helped in the kitchen. I think it was one and sixpence to go in and that included supper. My mother helped with the supper and my father helped on the door. So we went to the dances from when we were quite young. I was 16 when war broke out.

Yes.

Not really, not where I lived in Toowoomba. The only thing was that, what was I going to say? No, we never saw shanties. Nobody ever had

very much. You were no different from the person next-door. My father was a railway worker and he was a permanent employee. Through the Depression sometimes he only worked two or three days a week. It was very difficult; I can remember after I joined the WRANS my mother came down from Toowoomba to Brisbane to make the last payment on their war service home. It took them a long time because there were lots of times when they only made

interest payments. We noticed things like that. If you wanted a new pair of shoes, you had to wait till it was the next one’s turn to get new shoes. I was very fortunate in the fact that I had a single aunt lived near us who was a dressmaker. My sister and I were quite lucky because she used to cut out frocks for us, and my mother sewed them up. My mother was a tailoress, but only a

trouser hand. She used to cut down my father’s work trousers for my two brothers; one was older than me and one much younger. You had to have things like that. I was lucky I never had any hand-me-downs from my older sister because I was bigger than she was. I couldn’t even have hand-me-down shoes because I had bigger feet than she had. I was one of the lucky ones in our neighbourhood, but only for my aunt, I don’t think we would have so well.

My mother had a lot of sickness during our young days too. This aunt down the road used to bundle my younger brother up when he was only a baby and take him down to her place and look after him. There was only 2 1/2 years between the three eldest and 7 1/2 years between me and my younger brother. So he grew up like an only child.

I saw the days when you gave the order to the grocer and when he brought the order on the weekend and you paid him at the door, you got a packet of boiled lollies. The butcher used to come about twice a week. He’d collect your order one time when he came and bring it the next time, collect the order for the next time. It was really towards the end of the war before my parents had a refrigerator. It was one of the old gas

Silent Knight [brand name] refrigerators. It ran on gas. Up to then we only had chests with wire at the side and then the iceman came, you got round to having ice chests. The iceman used to call every day. From that we ventured on to the Silent Knight refrigerator.

Obviously they were fairly

silent I would say. They were called Silent Knights. We did the normal things. My father made us a billy cart. My brother and I were very close. We were only 13 months apart. We used to harness our dog in the billy cart and drive round and round the yard. I never had a bike till I went to work. I learned to ride a bike by riding up and down the side fence

on my father’s bike that he used to ride to work. We never had very much at all. We did have an uncle in Sydney that was tied up with Cyclops. He sent us one of those pedal cars between the three of us. That was the only big toy we ever had. We used to line up and have a turn on it. You got in the queue.

Yes. Wheels that

you peddled along.

Yes, they are. He made a fortune out of it too. We were all very friendly with people in your own area. People in the street, you always knew one another. One family at the back of us, he was an insurance inspector, they had the phone on and no one else did. All our phone calls, the lady used to call out the back,

“Mrs Kalund, phone.” Everybody used their phone. Everybody was very close in those days. Your neighbours were very close. You all knew one another. You could get help from one another if you wanted it. Seems to be a thing that’s rather lost today.

No. I think it was

really because of the Depression. Wages are so much higher today and I know my first week at work I earned 16 and sixpence a week for the first year’s apprenticeship. I used to give 10 shillings in at home, so it didn’t leave you very much, although you could buy a pair of shoes for 10 shillings. That was really my growing up years.

Yes, my father’s parents lived in Sydney. We never saw a great deal of them because money wasn’t very prevalent in those days. My mother’s parents lived not far from us in Toowoomba, but my mother’s mother died when we were quite young. All I remember about her was she always sat in a rocking chair on the front veranda. She always seemed to have long clothes on. Whether they were nightdresses or gowns or just

long dresses. My grandfather lived to be almost 90. My aunt, she stayed on and looked after both my grandma and grandfather. She never married till late in life. My grandfather in Sydney was born in Denmark. My father’s younger brother took a trip back to

Denmark on a sailing boat when he was quite young to learn the softening of bone in salmon. My grandfather and grandmother in Sydney, we didn’t see a lot of them. My father used to go down every couple of years over the Christmas holidays because he was able to get a reduction in fare from working on the railway. Occasionally he used to take one of us down. I can remember having my eleventh birthday in Sydney and Christmas too cos my birthday is

New Year. It was amazing all the presents I got. I couldn’t understand it because we only ever got one each in Toowoomba. My father’s family were rather influential. I think he was the only poor one in the family. He left Sydney in his younger days before the First World War. He enlisted from Toowoomba in the First World War. As we got older, we drifted apart a lot because my brother

was in the light horse in peacetime. He went to camp almost as soon as the Second World War was declared. My sister’s husband was in the army and she went to Sydney while he was in camp there. Then he went from there back to New Guinea. Then I joined the forces. So my young brother was the one that was left at home. We used to complain and say he got more than we ever did. My mother said, “You forget there were three of you, there was only one of him.”

No, we never saw them anyway. My father always kept WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s [chickens] and he always grew his own vegetables. He used to get cars on the railway for a big firm that sold potatoes and onions and those things. They used to keep him with that sort of food. He grew our

own vegetables. Then we had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s for the eggs. We didn’t fare too badly. Mainly we had stews and milk puddings. I suppose that was all good for us. We never saw much fish because my father believed there were no refrigerated trucks in those days going from Brisbane to Toowoomba. He didn’t feel the seafood was fresh so he would never buy it. We never saw seafood,

in fact, I’m not into seafood today. I like fish, but I don’t eat any other seafood at all. I think it was the fact that we never had it when we were young. My mother was a very good cook. She could make something out of nothing. They were very tied up with the church. They had fetes at the church that my mother did the cooking and made sweets for it and all that sort of thing,

which we don’t seem to do today. I’ve never made sweets in my life. In those days everyone seemed to make everything that you ate.

Yes. Rice pudding.

Yes. The family next-door to us had two girls and

five boys. We were friendly with them. One family at the back only had one daughter. Everybody was very friendly in those days. We used to all walk to school together because there was no bus to ride in. We had about a mile to walk, which I suppose we were one of the lucky ones. We’d all walk to school together. You’d all walk home from school together. Then we all went to church and Sunday school together on Sundays. We had two vacant allotments

next to our house in Toowoomba. Until the war years it was almost the last as you got up towards the range. After we’d all been to Sunday school, my father used to play cricket with us all, all the neighbourhood kids gathered there, on those vacant allotments. Actually, for a Sunday outing, we used to take a picnic lunch down to the botanic gardens or

the park. That was about the only place you could go at that time eh weekend because there was no mode of transport. You didn’t own a car. So we used to walk down there and take a picnic lunch and that was our outing for a Sunday.

Yes, very fond memories. I was lucky I grew up in a very close family. You never had problems at all except as we

got a bit older and wanted to go out. My father would say, “Ask your mother” and she’d say, “Have you asked your father?” It went from one to the other. No, I grew up in a very close family.

Yes. Quite strict. Even up till I joined the WRANS, I never went out a lot in the evenings, only two nights a week. I was 20 then. You can imagine

the difference there is between those years and today.

Yes. Although I was fortunate I was almost Noel’s age. We were 13 months apart and when he was allowed to go out to dances away from the church I was allowed to go with him, because I had him to chaperone me.

Yes, it was. My sister and I weren’t terribly close because we followed different things as we got older. She was in the church choir and the drama society and that. I was into riding motorbikes and we had two different lives altogether.

Yes. He died about 15 years ago. Noel and I were very close. Actually, my young brother that’s still alive, there’s only two of us

now, he lives in Buderim and we’re very close too. I was 7 1/2 when he was born and Mum had photos of me nursing him and singing him to sleep. Now I say I’m the only woman who can’t sing, “God Save the Queen”. Yes, we were all fairly close.

Yes, because we were nearly on the

edge of the range and there were a lot of people who had big properties there. At one stage, when my father had to go onto milk product and they felt they couldn’t afford a lot of milk, my aunt and grandfather rented our house and we rented one that had an acre of land and we used to run a cow on that. There was a cow and a horse and it was ideal because it had a big hill down one side and we used to make sledges and ride down. It

was fascinating the couple of years we had there. Really was.

Wood and old wheels we’d find. There was a lot of blackberries in the place. Slacks weren’t born in those days. You put your brother’s long pants on to go and pick the blackberries because it was very thorny. We really enjoyed our couple of years over there.

This was the complaint he had that it was virtually from drinking water in the Middle East.

Yes, it was bilharziasis [chronic disease of parasitic flat-worm, prevalent in Egypt] disease. I spoke to a doctor of mine some years ago and he said it was caused either from drinking water or eating different food over there, but mainly from drinking water. It just never

leaves the body.

Yes, he was in and out of Greenslopes. He used to go down from Toowoomba to Greenslopes very often.

I never noticed. He was always a very jovial, pleasant man. He was inclined to be a bit straight-laced even in clothes you wore. He wouldn’t like to see you in something, in those days you wouldn’t wear shorts, he’d be upset if you got out in shorts. No, I’ve never known him to suffer depression. When he was on the railway in the early years, he was on shift work. I’ve known him to come home in the daytime

and scrub floors for my mother. He helped with us all. He was very helpful around the house.

I think so because most the men that lived around us with families, they were all men from the war. Like the man next-door who walked on sticks. It was really in the shadow

of it. We always felt that there’d never be another one. That was to be the war that ended all wars. My father was in the light horse in the First War and my brother started off in the light horse in the Second World War, but it was disbanded then. He was always mad on horses.

Yes. My father, when we were very young, took out an

insurance policy for us all. It was one of those that the man used to come to the door and collect it every fortnight. Then he got to the stage where he couldn’t afford it and he just let it lie. When we got to about 13, we could make the decision what we wanted to do with the little bit of money as it became due. I remember that’s when I fitted myself out to Fairholme College. I wanted to go, the college wasn’t far from us, it was within walking distance.

Always wanted to go there, so I was able to buy the uniforms and fit myself out for Fairholme College. My sister, who was never interested in going much further in school, she used hers to do a commercial course up there and my brother, I have no idea what he used his for because my mother was instrumental in getting him a position when he was ready to leave school, with a jeweller up there who she knew. He wouldn’t stay, he didn’t like it. He wanted to

go and be tied up with horses. So Campbell’s, who had a soap factory here in later years, the old Mr Campbell had a place outside Toowoomba where he had horses and he worked there until he went into the army. He was always mad on horses.

No. I don’t think we ever thought about it again.

It was a college for

girls. It was like Somerville House and Clayfield College. It was a girls’ college.

They had boarders. Took them right from 1st year up to senior standard.

13 to 17 would have been from scholarship through to junior and then onto senior. I went from scholarship to junior there.

That’s when I went to work at the end of that. I was only a daygirl cos we only lived around the corner there, although I would always have liked to have been a boarder. Yes, it was a boarding school as well.

Yeah, well the money I started off with, no, anything after that Mum and Dad paid for. The money I had just started me off there.

The technical college. It was one like the public high schools here; the technical college in Toowoomba.

Yes. I’ve always said, even though I only had two years there, I think it did wonders for me really. It helped me a lot.

I still belong to Fairholme Old Girls Association here now. We have a couple of ladies in their 90s that are there now.

I don't know, just the thought that they used to do their homework in the afternoon and then they’d have time. Things were measured out for them and I think that’s what I liked

about it, or would have liked about it. Probably if I’d got there I wouldn’t have liked it. I know a lot of girls that went to boarding school that were glad to leave. I suppose it was the fact they were away from home. A friend of mine who was in the WRANS with me, she went to boarding school. She didn’t like it, but she had lost her mother just at that time and her father was a businessman and thought it was better.

She disliked every day she had there. Here was me, I’d have loved to have been a boarder.

Yes, that’s right. I had an interview with the ethnic radio station just before Anzac Day a few years ago. The lady that interviewed me

asked me how I got on with the discipline when I joined up. I said, “I was reared with discipline. I had discipline at home, discipline at the schools, discipline at college, discipline at work because I was an apprentice. It didn’t worry me. Discipline didn’t worry me at all.”

I can remember a house, it was

a very palatial home not far from us. I can remember my father saying he thought things weren’t very good because there were German men, not just ordinary men, but parliamentarians that stayed there and came backwards and forwards for some time and it was just prior to the war that they were there. That was the main thing that I heard about it was my father and this house where

these German people stayed. Actually they were interned during the war, these people.

This is what we think too. We don’t know. I don’t’ think I was old enough to really understand it except that my father spoke about it so much. I knew that it upset him; it was something that upset him, so I knew they were some form of politicians or something like that.

That was the main thing I noticed about it. I think, when the Second World War was declared, it was a shock to me. I don’t think we realised exactly the length and breadth of it until the war actually started. I don’t think we realised how bad it is. You just go about your normal ways and it’s probably only people that were

affected that had people that joined the service and never came home, I think those were the people that were more affected by it. As far as the outbreak of the war, it never meant a great deal to me because I was too young to do anything. I was 16 and that’s when we joined this Women’s National Emergency Legion.

No.

We weren’t allowed to be interested really. I think it was only the ones around the neighbourhood that you played with. Having a brother myself, he used to bring a lot of his friends home and they were boys. My mother used to have, and a lot of the other ladies from the church, Friday nights they’d come and someone would play the piano and we’d have all sorts of games and things. You never saw a bottle of beer.

My father actually enjoyed a drink, but during the Depression I don’t think he ever had a glass of beer because he felt we would have had to do without something if he’d had his little drink. He never had a glass of beer at all during those times.

Yes. Then when my brother went and I wanted to

join up, actually my mother wouldn’t sign my papers, but my father did. I wasn’t 21 and you had to have the signature of one of your parents. My father signed them. I think he was patriotic. Mum wasn’t feeling very patriotic in those times.

No. She went to Sydney. She was married then and she went to Sydney because her husband was in camp there.

She worked on the trams for a long time as a conductress down there till her husband went to New Guinea and then she came back to Toowoomba.

I really don’t know. I think it was the fact that we wanted to join this Emergency Legion in case you were required to do something. The motorbike squad just appealed to Kath and I.

She joined up with me the same day. Kath Dunstan. We joined up together. We had known each other before we joined up.

I was hairdressing and she was a clerk in the building society. She used to come to Bourke’s Hairdressers; I used to do her hair. Then we joined the motorcycle squad when that came out.

When they required drivers in the WRANS we went in. Although we couldn’t drive when we went there. We’d never sat behind the wheel of a car in our lives. It was a different story.

Yes, very good friend. We are still. It’s rather sad, she has Alzheimer’s and she’s in a nursing home up the north coast. She has a husband that had a massive stroke. He can’t speak or feed himself or anything.

It’s rather sad although the family were lucky enough to get them in together. He’s in the nursing home and she’s in the hostel accommodation. She walks around every day to help feed him and that. But she’s getting to the stage now where she doesn’t ring you up, you have to ring her. She’s very forgetful. I sent her some magazines from the Naval Association a few weeks ago. I waited a week. I rang her up and I asked her did she get the parcel

of books and she said, “I suppose if you sent them, I must have got them.” So she must have got them because they didn’t come back, but that’s the stage she’s got to now. We’ve been friends all those years.

Yes.

I did a domestic science course at Fairholme College

because I wanted to be a dressmaker because I had two aunts dressmakers. In those days it was rather like it is now, positions were hard to get. I had the opportunity to get in as a hairdressing apprenticeship and my mother and father suggested that I could take it and if I didn't like it I didn’t have to stay. It was the biggest salon in Toowoomba and there were about 8 girls working there. Everybody was very nice. I never thought of leaving. That’s why I never joined up until I was 20.

It was a 5-year apprenticeship. As soon as I finished that I joined the WRANS.

Yes, it was. Sometimes it was a bit too handy. I used to do the makeup in the salon and my sister decided she wouldn’t have to buy makeup; she could get plenty from me. Yes, hairdressing’s been handy over the years

to be truthful. It’s been very good for me.

It really is.

Is it? There is a private course that you can do that’s 2 years. You get a certificate at the end of it, but it’s not an apprenticeship.

I think the apprenticeship is still 4 years so the hairdresser up the road tells me.

Yes, she’d be doing it at the private school. They had that in Melbourne years and years ago, but they found it difficult to get work at the end of it. The hairdressers were rather more prepared to put on someone who had done the apprenticeship.

It probably does, yes. The only thing is, by

doing it at a private college, you’re doing it every day under supervision, aren’t you? Otherwise you only go to college like the girls only go once a week. If your hairdresser’s not a good hairdresser, you’re not going to be one. So it has it’s ups and downs I’d say.

The Women’s National Emergency League, WNEL.

I think we read about it in the paper. A lot of girls we knew joined the motor vehicle squad, but we joined the motorcycle.

Yes, we used to go a couple of times at night

and we used to go on weekend camps. There was a big motor truck firm in Toowoomba that gave us a motorbike in pieces. They were all motorbike fellows and they gave us a motorbike in pieces for us to put together. I had a loan of a motorbike. I had a boyfriend at the time who had a motorbike. He was away in Melbourne in the early stages of the war and I had his motorbike in Toowoomba. A couple of the girls

had motorbikes from boyfriends or brothers. So we managed quite well.

Yes, loved it. It was nice getting greasy. I think I enjoyed the company too. We used to have the weekend camps and you’d all be cooking and it’d be your turn to cook. You never had that at home. Your mother cooked all the time. It was just something different I think.

Yes, we had a motorbike licence. Most of us got our licence on the one day. When the policeman got round to me I climbed on the motorbike. I thought he would get on the pillion at the back because they go with you in a motorcar with the licence. I said to him, “Aren’t you going to get on the back?” and he said, “Not on your bloody life.” I didn’t realise they just let you go

round and round the police station. That’s all we did. About 3 or 4 runs around the police station and gave us our licence.

No, there were no lights in those days.

Only policemen on point duty at the busy corners. It was the same in Brisbane after we joined up.

They were in the middle of the corner. They used to stand there.

There was usually like a silent cop they used to call it. It was like a great round cement thing and they used to stand there, they were on point duty. There wasn’t the traffic there is today either. There wasn’t the speed in the vehicles.

It was wonderful.

They were quite happy about it. They thought I was doing something towards the war effort.

They were quite happy about it.

Yes.

Yes. Very much.

Well, he was always disappointed that he wasn’t able to go to Denmark as his brother did.

I think that was his one big disappointment. He would like to have gone over to see the family and find out all about them. My uncle worked his way over in a fishing boat to learn the softening of the bone in salmon. He was quite young when he did that. Then he came back here and he was at Nowra and he was in a government-funded place where they…

End of tape

Yes.

15, yes.

Yes, when the WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force]

were recruiting when I was 18. The WAAAF were the first women’s service to recruit and I wanted to join that, and that’s when my mother and father talked me into staying till I’d finished the apprenticeship.

I think it was just the first of the women’s services. If the WRANS had been the first I’d have probably been there then, you know or the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service], I’d have probably been there then, it was just the fact that it was the first one to start.

Not really, I can remember a lady at the back, lived at the back of us and she said that no decent women ever joined the service, and no decent girls ever joined the services. She was horrified when my parents allowed me to go in, yes, really horrified.

No, no, I think if you’re brought up well you

follow that through your life, don’t you, mainly. You find an odd one that doesn’t but I think that mainly if you’re brought up well you just follow it through.

I don’t, well, I don’t really know. I had a friend that I worked with at the hairdressing, she joined the AAMWS [Australian Army Medical Women’s Service]

and I know that it was a very nice group. They were really the nurses, they weren’t actually nurses but they were nurses’ aides. And Ruth was one of a nice lot of girls; I met quite a lot of her friends. But there was, yes, a lot of people thought that the WAAAF wasn’t a very nice place to join. I don’t know if it was one of those things that people just got into their mind or not. But the thing is too that there were 132,000 army women during the war,

18,000 WAAAFs and less than 3,000 WRANS. We never topped three thousand at any time during the war, so we were a very small group and a just more select group, you know, they’re able to choose better, I suppose, they had more to choose from.

Yes, yes, that’s right. That’s how we felt about it. And another thing, we lived in huts where most of the others had to live in tents. We had huts that accommodated 26

to a hut and you certainly got to know a big part of your service by having 26 to a hut. But no, it was actually the fellow that taught us to ride motorbikes joining the navy that encouraged us, Kath and I to join.

No, it was most uncommon, no. Everybody would look

at you. Yes, it was most uncommon.

Time, yes we were really, yeah. It’s funny isn’t it, you know, nowadays you look at a motorbike and you think, “No way in the world, how did I ever ride one of those?”

I think the weekend camps we enjoyed where we did lots of riding our bikes. Mainly during the week we used to have night meetings and that but they were mainly to show you all about the motorbike and put the parts together. I think it was mainly the camps that we enjoyed.

Well, there was the Royal Enfield and the other one,

I know it was called Popeye, it had a painting on it called Popeye but I can’t even remember what it was. It’s in one of the photos that I’ve got, but I don’t know whether you can see from that. But the Royal Enfield that we put together ourselves was a little old one that these brothers that had this trucking company in Toowoomba had been motorcyclists too. They gave it in pieces and then we had to put it together, but we managed it, we got it together and got it registered so.

It wouldn’t be very much, I can tell you, the Enfield wasn’t, no.

Well, we sort of had a uniform, we had sort of khaki pants and we had a khaki jacket. And then we had khaki bib and brace overalls to do the dirty work in and we had our boots, riding boots. I can remember

when I joined up I sold mine to a young fellow that was tied up with motorbikes in Toowoomba because I’ve got rather a big foot and it fitted him quite well and I sold him my boots. So yes, we had our boots and we had a hat.

Well, it was only a little rag hat, had a badge on it. They had a reunion of the WNEL in Brisbane about four years ago, I

went to at Hamilton but there were very few turned up. I think it was left too long, you know, should’ve had something during the intervening years. But I think it was just left too long and there were really only about 30 turn up. And they had coast watchers in Malling in Brisbane. One of our WRANS, she was a coast watcher with the WNEL. So they were, it was a big organisation then. Actually they did try, over the past, about the past

five years I’d say, they tried for government funding, you know, for pensions and things but they were never ever paid by the government, they were paid by the Americans. But ours in Toowoomba was only a voluntary thing. There wasn’t any payment to it, you bought your own uniforms, supplied your own bike, everything was voluntary. But no, they did try, I think it was when they, the government recognised the

girls from, that went out on the farms. And, but they were paid by the government at the time. But the WNEL weren’t.

Yes.

Well, the,

can I say, there was a bit more work available, I think a lot of people came from the properties outside Toowoomba into Toowoomba. A lot of the men joined the services and a lot of wives were left to carry on. And a lot of young people at home, but a lot of sort of teenage ones came into Toowoomba and found work there. There was quite a lot of work particularly during the war because the Toowoomba foundries were skipping over to war efforts, you know, whatever they

built, they made primers for the guns and that and they employed a lot of people. And the railways employed a lot more of course.

Well I think there were more trains, they ran more trains. They never ever cut out the Midnight Horror that went from Toowoomba to Brisbane and used to leave there at about 20 past 11 and get into Brisbane at six o’clock in the

morning, and they used to call it the Midnight Horror, yeah. Well of course it was very steep in those days, well now the trains rarely go up there, from Gatton I think it is they take them off and put them onto buses, it’s a coordinated service. So I’m sure the railways don’t do much business now between Gatton and Toowoomba.

Yes, it was, it was, you know, long daunting. There wasn’t anything to see, there’s no scenery very much on the way there or the way up and, but, you know, you did it when you had to. But it wasn’t terribly long after we joined up that one of the firms used to run two trucks from the city hall in Toowoomba on the

Sunday night coming back to Brisbane, for service people. And you sort of went down and you came back that way. Well, for a start it didn’t cost you anything, it was free, that was a big thing because money in the service those days wasn’t very great. If you were under 21 and drivers were a grade two and we went in on four and ten pence a day and you had an allowance of about

eight pence a day, I think it was, a clothing allowance until you were 21 and then you went onto six shillings a day, and when I got to be a leading hand I got an extra shilling a day, and that was a lot of money, seven shillings a week. But, you know, money was a big problem. You never got very far.

I can remember the first week was 16 and six pence

a week and I used to pay 10 shillings a week at home, you know, your board and lodging. So it didn’t leave you very much. But things were cheaper then of course, and we were so young. A store up there called Michael’s, I’m not sure what nationality he was, but he used to open the doors and let perhaps a dozen people in, and serve them and let them out because there was only he and his wife and one girl that served, he didn’t pay anyone else. And we used to buy dress

materials for a shilling a yard, nine pence a yard we bought them for at times. I mean compared with the wages I suppose the cost of living probably wasn’t very high either. But shears used to be around 10 shillings a pair. But I usually found things that sold things cheaply. But they all had genuine sales in those days; nowadays they’re not

genuine sales. I was for some years a buyer for David Jones, different stores. And when the sales come along you go to your wholesaler and you get something made and it’s not as good as the actual, the previous article that you sold in the store, so you’re not getting the genuine article reduced any more. But you did in those days, you know, it was a big thing the two

sales a year in the ticket store up there which was one of the big stores.

Yes.

Well they sold everything just about. Mainly clothing and that, I don’t remember that they ever sold furniture like a lot of them do today. But it was all sorts of clothing and blankets and kitchen things like saucepans and everything was mixed in there really. But my sister worked in the office there for some years until she was married.

Yes.

Well, you mean like

Well you start off firstly cleaning, that’s your first job, housework. And then you usually go onto shampooing hair, and gradually from there you go onto perms [permanent waves] and things, things bigger.

But the man I worked for, he was an Englishman in Toowoomba and he did, especially at the beginning of the war when the Americans were in Toowoomba, they said that in America they could go and have a haircut and have a manicure and a pedicure and they came in asking for manicures. And he undertook it, he did, he came to the two girls that did manicures and he said, you know, what did we think about it and we thought, “Oh well, it’s all money” and I think we earned more in tips than we did in our weekly wage from the

Americans. It was a big thing, yes.

Yes. Everybody was horrified to think, you know, that Mr Bourke started doing Americans. But as they said, like they had a haircut, a manicure and a pedicure while they were in the one chair. It was nothing for them and of course they came out here looking for the same thing.

Well I never had a great deal to do with them. It was only

the ones in Toowoomba that we did manicures on and they were just in and gone. And in the WRANS I had very little to do with them except the first five months we were billeted out, our quarters weren’t ready and we were billeted with a lady next to the, oh, that children’s home at Nundah, and the Americans had taken that over during the war. And the lady that we were with, she had two little boys, her husband was away in the army and she did a lot of

domestic work, actually ironing, washing, ironing the officers’ clothes. And Kath and I got to know a few of them, we used to play tennis sometimes on our days off and that was about the extent that I knew Americans. Occasionally I would’ve had to drive, driven them, you know, they used to use Eagle Farm mainly during the war, Archerfield was the airport at the time, that’s where most of our work was from Brisbane to Archerfield.

But the Americans used Eagle Farm and I occasionally might have to bring one of our officers up with an American officer and that, but we really had very little to do with them. And to be truthful, I think if you had an American for a boyfriend, you wouldn’t have had one of our own sailors for a boyfriend.

Well, they didn’t like the Americans; I think they were paid so much money, with the fact that they had a lot of money to spend. You know, our servicemen didn’t have that.

Yes, there was one in the navy, there was an American killed own of our sailors at the hotel that’s know pulled down right down near where the depot was near the gardens and Old Parliament House and the Bellevue. And they closed the depot for a few hours, they wouldn’t let anyone out and when they let them out, they said there were a lot of fights about the town, when

they did let them out. Was rather sad, you know.

No, no, they just called it ‘the battle of Brisbane’. I know it was the first funeral I ever had to drive in; you know how you have to drive slowly in a funeral. I had to take the first officer out to the cemetery and it was the first time I had to drive in a funeral. It was a bit hectic trying to go slowly for a time.

Yes.

Yes.

Well it was mostly the pictures, everybody, all the young people seemed to go to the movies on Wednesday night and Saturday night, so it was just two nights. And other than that it was really, I went to things that were involved with the church, you know, they used to have young people’s organisations and they’d have indoor games and things and we sort of involved ourselves in that

till we were old enough to go a bit further than the church.

Well, we used to go into town to the bigger dances and that at the time. But really there wasn’t much else in Toowoomba to do. You know, it was mostly movies and the pictures and things like I said we’d had, my mother as well as the other ladies we’d take turns on a Friday night and go to each other’s places and you’d have singsongs round the piano and

supper and that, you know, it was a big thing, you looked forward to Friday night. But when I was hairdressing, see, we worked two nights a week then, well that took up two nights of your week. But they still do now, I think they do a couple of nights a week and we used to do Tuesdays and Thursdays I think. So it only left you five days, five nights didn’t it. But you never, we never sort of went to

restaurants to eat out, I don’t ever remember doing that, you know, till, oh, much, much older. Well there weren’t many restaurants, you know, in Toowoomba to do that. The same as there weren’t, people never bought cakes, they made their own cakes and that because there were never any cake shops that sold them. Unless you went right into the city, right into Toowoomba, and as I said we never had a car and buses were few and far between

then.

Yes. It wasn’t such a big concern for us in the service because when we went on leave we were given ration tickets too, but everybody sort of scrounged what they could. When I’d go home on leave, I’d hand in my tickets to my mother, you know, because she had to find the extra tickets, and they had, she was with a

guild of ladies that used to go to the camps near us in Toowoomba and they used to darn socks and that, and mend clothes for the soldiers there. And consequently she used to invite a few home, you know, I think our house always had servicemen in it during the war, because it was all extra money. But some of them were very good, they’d bring rationing tickets along. But it was a big problem; everybody would be battling for them. I can even remember in Brisbane when I joined up

we found a place up in, building next to the post office that sold linen tablecloths and that without ration tickets. They were a bit dearer but everybody sort of, you know, swooped down on it when they found her. But, yes, everybody was really scratching for tickets, I don’t think anybody ever had too many.

Oh yes, yes, you’d find it, you know,

you’d be lucky enough to hear about it from somewhere. As I said, we heard about that place next to the post office that sold these tea towels and tablecloths and things, very nice ones. But it was awful scrounging different things, whenever you saw something you’d sort of have to take it straight away or it’d be gone.

Well, they’d be looking for giftware and that, you know, nice tea sets and things

they were almost out of the question. But they weren’t, you didn’t have to have tickets for them but of course they weren’t available. I can remember when I was on my six weeks rookie course they took us out to, through Landsborough up to Caloundra and there was a shop that we stopped to get something to eat, the officer allowed us to get something to eat and in the window were two Pyrex dishes and of course you never had any money on you and he loaned me

the money to buy the two of them and I thought it was wonderful to go back with two Pyrex dishes. Had them for years and years and looked after them. But, yes, you were always scrounging things. But in the service it wasn’t so bad because you didn’t need so many things.

Yes, yes, it was common in Toowoomba. My father was one of the wardens where they used to go

round their district each night and make sure all their windows were blacked out. Knock on the door and say, “Madam, your window’s not blacked out”. But it employed quite a few men, you know, they did it and worked during the day and did warden’s work at night.

Oh yes, there were quite a few of them married Americans. One girl that worked with me in the hairdressers, she married an American. He was an American doctor and she got a passage home to America fairly quickly. We lost track of her then but yes, quite a few of them married Americans.

Yes, I think so, I think that’s what it brought on. Because there were a lot of other army camps in Toowoomba too at the same time and air force camp actually, another lass that was hairdressing she and I, they used to send one of the air force fellows in on a Friday night, and we’d take the dryers and that out and do hair

sets and haircuts and that for them. That was before I joined up.

Yeah, it’s amazing how you, everybody sort of gets together to do what they can.

Well they used to take a couple of the big dryers on the trucks and, you know, all your equipment, your pins and things like that.

The WAAAF’s hair.

Yes, the WAAAFs that were out at Oakey,

because they didn’t get into town a lot. So we used to go out every Friday night and, it was like a real war effort, everybody did something.

No, no, because actually in our day, men’s hairdressing was a completely different, was a different apprenticeship altogether, where today they learn them both at once. But

well the men wore different haircuts, you know, at that time than they do now, or a lot of the men have almost the same sort of haircut as the women do anyway. And a lot of them have a very short haircut where you never thought of it in those days.

Yes, well actually, you couldn’t take things to do perms, we never

did those. But we did hair colouring, took the colouring, and did the settings and in those days most of the setting was the butterfly clips that you had and you set it up in these butterfly clips and put them under the dryer or do the haircuts. But that was mostly what we did out there.

Well they would get a

certain amount of time off and Oakey, where the air force was, was a little township itself anyway, but it had one hairdresser there. So obviously they managed when they were on their, you know, leave I presume they’d have it done. But they were just very pleased to have it cut and set, you know, on a Friday night.

Yeah, an inch above your collar it had to be. In the WRANS at least, it had to be an inch above your collar. And we had, everybody called her the police officer, and she used to come along and she’d say, she called Kath and I the two ‘Terrible Toowoomba Twins’, and she’d say, “Your hair’s too long.” So you’d roll it up and pin it up for a few days till she stopped looking at you and you’d

let it down again. You always got by somehow.

Well I think we were both fair-haired, we were both about the same size, and we both came from Toowoomba and came in together, you know.

That’s beside the point. Oh no.

I would say about 20, roughly about 20.

Well it is for Toowoomba, and considering it was a very conservative place too.

And, there was about 20 of us. Some of the girls worked in shops there, you know.

Oh yes, a couple of older women I found were more, well, discouraging about it. You know, they’d say, “Fancy letting girls ride motor bikes” and

it was a terrible thing. In fact there weren’t many girls drove cars in those days because not many families owned a car, so you neither rode a motorbike nor drove a car. And I suppose it was a thing to see, you know, maybe half a dozen of us riding up and down the street at one time, you know, up and down the main street.

Yes, yes, it was really. But it was very enjoyable; I made a lot of friends there, and still know a few of them.

Well, of course, with the WRANS, you go in,

you choose what you want to do and you go in. And the army now, if you wanted to go in as a transport driver it would all be dependent, all depend if they thought you were suited for that. Some of them were put into other things. But I went in knowing I was going to drive a car, and of course having the fellow that had taught us to ride at HMAS Moreton in Brisbane, Bernie had told us, see when we joined up we thought we were going to Flinders to do our six weeks course. And in the end we finished up at Grovely

with the army in their transport unit there. And that’s what nearly killed us we had to learn to live in tents there. After having, you know, huts at Moreton, a bit of a blow to have to go and live in a tent, but we got used to it.

Yes, it was the only place. We never had the opportunity to move around like a lot of the

others. Most of the girls that were in Townsville came from Sydney, and Cairns was the same, but most of the ones in Brisbane joined up there and they stayed there. As I said, we were such a small group that we never moved around very much. A few of them, one of our drivers, she put her foot on the accelerator instead of the brake and went through the fence and she got the fastest draft that I ever saw. She went to Western Australia.

I think she was gone two days later. But still, you know, that’s how it goes, isn’t it? But I knew what to expect when we went to Grovely, we knew we were going to have to live in tents. And they took us out on the Saturday morning and gave us leave for the weekend to come back on Sunday night and Kath was in tears, she said she wasn’t going back on the Sunday night. We said, “You have to go” and when we got back, they’d given us

palliasses and she had a big log of wood somewhere put in hers. But they do all these sorts of things. But, yeah, we got to know, it’s funny you know, a lot of the army girls that were out there, one of them in particular I remembered because she was dux of the school, she even beat all the men there. And about 10 years ago, I went to a function at Kedron Wavell and she’s one of the ex-servicewomen there. And I clearly remembered her because, you know, she was

dux of the school, but there were two of them as a matter of fact out there, you find after all those years.

Yes, it is, yeah.

Yes, yes, it was really horrible because Kath and I were the only two WRANS that ever got in without a licence. Everybody had to hold a current licence for 12 months and, but we got in because of Bernie [Bernard]

Pramberg, he had a talk to the recruiting officer. And he used to say to us, he was a funny fellow, he said, “For Christ’s sake, keep yourselves hidden, if they want a spare driver they’ll call on you.” Kath said, “What’s the good of calling on us, because we wouldn’t know where to go”. So we virtually kept ourselves hidden, and we actually did buy part of our own uniform, our white shirts and ties we bought from Allen and Starks, it was. And our shoes, we bought our own shoes and that,

so we could get out to Grovely with the next group that went, you know, rather than be left at Moreton trying to hide all the time.

Well we only did six weeks there the same as the AWAS; they only did their six weeks, those that hadn’t driven before. So, I only had my licence two days and I hooked on the side of a tram in Queen Street. It was doing a reverse park into a very small space outside staff office and the mud guard was over the

tramline and the tram came down from Wharf Street and went straight through the mudguard. But I thought he was a bit mean that he didn’t stop, but the policeman from point duty assured me that I wasn’t supposed to be over the tram lines. He said, “You better unhook it off the tram and let him get on his way”. Yes, and I can remember Kath only had hers a couple of days and when she hooked on the post going through to the canteen.

And I said to her, “What are you going to put in the report?” She said, “I’m just going to tell them that the milk truck was coming through at the same time”. You always found an excuse. But this poor Bernie Pramberg, his son is a football referee or something still and poor Bernie, I think he was sorry he ever encouraged us to join up. He’d say, “Oh, not another accident report”. But you took it in your stride, it was nothing.

At Grovely? We did our course at Grovely.

Yeah, it was, actually they had a wonderful transport school set up there, they had half a piston set up on a big block like the old butcher’s block they had and they had parts of the engines and they’d tell you, like when you put your foot on the clutch, this happens and when you put your foot on the

brake, this happened. And I think it’s an ideal way to teach people, I think, you know, we learnt a lot more by it. But it was very well set up.

Oh yes. Oh yes, you changed your own tyres and greased your own, oh yes, you’d get under the car to do the oil and grease of them. And it was funny, Kath and I started off, we took gloves in with us, you know, gardening gloves.

And everybody laughed at us so much we never wore them afterwards, only wore them the one day. But, as you could imagine, Kath was a clerk in the building society and I was a hairdresser, you had nice soft white hands and you got under the car to grease and, do the grease and oil change. And of course there were no, they were all manual cars, no automatics of course in those days. And we virtually learnt on trucks, well, mainly utilities because they would put all

from one squad in the back of the ute [utility truck] and have one girl at a time sitting in the front with the instructor then they just keep changing over. Everybody would see you sitting in the back of the truck with these giggle hats on, these little navy blue army hats. But we were driving down Queen Street one day and we saw a lass that had worked in a newsagents up there and she was always very spritely, you know, what do I say about her, she kept to herself

a lot, and she was coming up the road, and I said to Kath, “Hide, because here’s so-and-so coming up here”. We got down in the truck so she wouldn’t see us.

Well, yes, you had to, you know,

check your own oil and water and things like that, that all had to be done. And you had to clean the engine, it was all cleaned with a spirit, the engine was as nice as the outside of them. Yeah.

Well, you had little brushes and rags and clean all round them, you ought to see mine now. I’d hate anyone to see it now. Yes, well, by the time you did all that and then you spent most of the day out driving, and then you

had lectures and they did tell us, before we left Moreton, we could wear any of our other clothes to lectures at night, it wouldn’t matter because we didn’t have much of our uniform. And when I left Toowoomba, wedgie shoes were just coming in and I had a pair of red wedge shoes, red shoes with the white wedge. And I wore them to lectures one night, and this officer said to me, “What do you think it is, a farmyard picnic?” And I had these bib and brace overalls on, Kath and I did, that we’d had

for the motorcycle squad, because we really didn’t have any other overalls to wear. And he said “What do you think it is, a farmyard picnic?” and I never wore them again.

Yes. Oh yes, you had, well, I mean we’d just left Toowoomba and we you know, Kath and I, well she was 21, I was only 20 and, but we’d been working long enough to be able to buy some clothes and that.

But as I say, wartime came and you couldn’t buy them anyway if you didn’t have the tickets to buy them.

Oh, probably twice a week, yeah, just to show you what to do. If there wasn’t anything else to do, you’d clean the engines. Yeah, you’d get underneath and grease and oil, you know, find out everything that was underneath it.

Right.

Well, I think we were listening at the last minute, like a week to a fortnight before it was actually declared, everybody was listening, everybody felt that it was coming. And, I mean, it is a shock when it actually comes, you hear it over the radio. But,

you know, when, it was expected. I mean, it’s the same with all the wars, they are expected aren’t they, when it gets to that stage.

Yes, we never had one in our early days. We had friends up the road whose son was in the navy and he was an engineer and he made us one of those crystal sets that you had the earphones. And we used to sit up at night when the cricket

was on overseas and late at night and you’d each have a turn, you know, five minutes at a time. And that’s what we had for a long time but by the time, yes, we had one of those big old cabinet models by the time it got to wartime.

Oh yes, oh no, I was interested in sport, yeah; I was interested in sport at school. I was never wonderful at any one thing, but I was still a jack-of-all-trades. I played basketball and vigoro and tennis,

you know, had a bit of everything.

Well it was rather like cricket and the bat was a bit rounded, was wider than a cricket bat and more rounded but it was more like, just like cricket I’d say.

No, it was just like ordinary cricket. But I mean, you never played cricket in those days, cricket as it is, you played vigoro.

Oh yes,

it was a woman’s sport, yeah.

Haven’t you?

Yeah.

Oh yes, it’s a wonder you haven’t heard them by now though.

Tied up with this.

Gee, I don’t think I even remember it. It probably would’ve been my mother or my sister because I

practiced a lot at home and friends, you know, neighbourhood friends and that would come. They used to tell us to get as much practice as we could at home, and I presume it would’ve been my mother or my sister but I honestly don’t remember it.

Yes, yes, the same as there is now. And there was a lot of longer hair in those days too, a lot of girls going to school had long hair and

that’s your problem with hair lice is long hair.

Well you had special lotions that you treat it with. We had a nun from one of the convents from up there that had two sisters that had a problem with it and she said the unfortunate part was there must’ve been more family at home because they kept becoming infected. And she said if they paid for it, could we see what we could do with it and although the man

I worked for wouldn’t charge them for it, I can always remember that, he did it for nothing and we used this lotion on the hair. We got rid of it for them but it, this nun said that they obviously went back to the house and there was someone else at home with them and that just reinfected them. It’s a shame, you know, some people aren’t as clean as others. You find it hard to think that mothers don’t know that that is there in the hair, you know, they must know mustn’t they.

Well maybe, maybe not, you know, you’d have to be very dense not to notice that your child would have them, wouldn’t you, they’d be scratching all the time.

Yes.

Well, when I first started, the, what they called the Eugene perms was still, they were on their way out, but we still did a lot of them.

And the hair was sectioned with rubbers with a hole in the middle and you had pieces of hair through and you had a long stick like that, a metal stick, and you had a slit in the top and the hair was wound round it, round and round this stick, that’s why you could perm longer hair, and then you put gauge round the edge on the string. And when you had that all done, the sachets that went round the end of it were wet with solution and this machine that looks

very much like a milking machine came onto the hair with, it had all these cups, long cups. And one went on each one of these things and then the heat was turned on. And, but soon after that, they came out with what they called the non-electric and it was, the hair was done shorter with that, and it still squared off with rubbers and it was a little rod that rolled up that way. And you had a clip that came off a machine, the machine would be hot and it went on the head,

cooled off once it got onto the head but was hot to start off with, and that’s why they called it a non-electric. Because the clips that came on were away from the electricity. And then during the war was when cold waves came out and that’s what, always stayed now.

It’s, well you don’t have any machines on it at all.

Yes, yes. They’re wound up on rods with a piece of paper first and, to keep the hair together and wound up

in a wad, and just clipped across the rubber clips and across because you’d got no electricity at all, then you just put the solution on and put it under a tap. Just stand for whatever length of time it takes.

Well, if you left it on too long, yes. Yes, a lot of people came back with burnt hair, yes. But we used to have to, you’d have your lunch watching it, you’d have to stand by the machine

and watch it and of course you had cotton wool in between all these rubber squares and somebody would say, “Oh, it’s burning there”, so you’d be pushing the cotton wool in further and eating your lunch with the other hand. But, yes, you could have a lot of burns with it.

It was, but it used to be four hours to do a perm, four to five hours, especially anyone with long hair. Oh yes, it was nothing.

Yeah, sometimes, the girls hook their hair up with something like it now. You know, a clip?

Well they were just a plain silvery one and they were butterfly clips and you press the wave in with your fingers and then put these clips along it and the next wave came the other way. And that’s what you got, you all had waves, you never had actual curls, and then the ends we used to just do pin curls on the ends.

Well it’s just wound up on the finger with a bobby pin or a curl clip. And that makes a little curl on the end, where you had all the waves on the top.

Oh yes, oh yes they were. We could use dozens of them at a time. And then, actually, when cold waving came in, or just after that came in, they started, they put

about five rollers there and one or two each side and the rest was waved just the same. And they gradually got round then to all rollers all over the hair.

Yes.

Oh, you couldn’t very well sleep in those but a lot of people used to have it done at the hairdresser and put their curlers over the ridges the next day.

You could follow it. And people with decent sort of hair, it would probably last quite a few days anyway. Those sets used to last longer than they do today.

Yes.

Set your hair, yes, have a shampoo and set.

Oh

yes, actually the man I worked for, he was pretty good. The winter months were much quieter in Toowoomba and where they have open salons now, we had all wooden partitions so you’d have your own little cubicle so nobody else would see, you wouldn’t see what the lady next door was having. But in wintertime we used to have to scrub all those partitions down in the quiet period.

Yes,

yeah, scrub the wall down with a little brush. Well, health, you know, and we used to have to wear white uniforms, they weren’t washable, they had to be boilable. And yet the girls wear black slacks and all sorts of things now. But, yes, that’s why you always wore white, it had to be boilable.

Yes, in the boiler. Yes. Keep clean.

Yes. Yep,

she graduated from, she had the old copper that was a copper copper, you know, was all copper inside. And then she graduated to a gas copper after that. But I don’t know, our clothes were always lovely and clean. I think the boiling of them got stains out better than it does today, although you have all sorts of stain things now you spray on stains, don’t you? You never had anything like that in those days.

Yes, oh it is, yes. But the boiling took most of the stains out in those days.

Oh yes. They are, and I mean we used to use a lot of just fingertips, like your rubber fingertips but you used to get it on the rest of your hands anyway. But it’s awkward to work with gloves, you know, it sort of stops the

feel. That’s why a lot of girls don’t wear them.

No, I never ever had any trouble. I was sturdy, good healthy skin.

Yes.

No, no, you were separate, you never had, your classes weren’t together, you were separate.

Yeah, so we never sort of got to know the men very well there. They did the same as we did I presume.

Yes we were lucky, and even when we came back to Moreton we had the same shift for a long, long time till quite close to the end of the war before we got split up on our shift. We were very lucky.

I think so.

I think that’s what happened, you know.

Not really, I don’t think we were far enough away from home to worry about it. Like you knew you could get home, we used to work 24 hours on and 24 off. And on a Thursday, one week Thursday and Friday you’d do 48 hours so you could have the weekend off. Next week you’d have your 48 hours off on Thursday and Friday. So you could have the

you know, vice versa. But I don’t think I was ever far enough from home to be worried about it, you know, we used to go home for bigger breaks. But, 48 hours wasn’t really long enough to get to Toowoomba and back anyway. I remember one Christmas we were going home, Kath and I both had Christmas Day off and her parents lived in Yarraman so she was coming home with me for the Christmas. And we went to the railway

station, we couldn’t get on the first three divisions going to Toowoomba, it was booked out. So we went down and got on the tram and went out to Annerley, we told the conductor what we were going to do and he stopped and got us a ride to Ipswich in an army car and then from Ipswich we got a car with AAMWS in it and they took us right home to my mother’s door in Toowoomba. You know, well nowadays you certainly don’t do that do you? It’s, but when we

were billeted out for the first five months at Nundah, we used to have to get a tram to, where did it go to? Wooloowin and we used to have to, oh no, Kalinga, and we used to have to walk up that big hill and down, part of the way down Buckland Road down, and Kath, she was, I was very naïve, even more so. Kath had lived away from home because she’d boarded in Toowoomba. And

I can remember one time we went up there, we got a ride with the electricity man, he was on a motor bike with a sidecar, the fellow that went round reading the meters. And another time we got a ride with a council truck, I’m sure it was the first council truck, the gears were on the running board outside, it’s amazing, but she’d do anything rather than walk up the hill. Other than that, you had to go to Nundah station by train and walk up from there. Whichever way you went you had a long walk.

But, I mean, you did it and got used to it. It was the only way you got home, you never had money for taxis and I don’t know that there were any taxis about in those days anyway. I don’t remember them very much.

Oh yes, yes. That was no problem. But when we used to, after we went to the depot to live in and left

Mrs Day’s, our transport officer, the railway transport officer, he used to go home sometimes late at night and he lived near Mrs Day’s so we used to drop him off and go in and have a cup of tea or coffee with them and then go off back.

Yes, with, yes.

Oh she was a lovely lady, actually Kath knew her in Toowoomba and that’s how we came, and they allowed us to be billeted with her. She had two little boys and her husband was in the

army, he was away and she was glad of the company. And she was a lovely little lady, we kept in touch with her right up to, Kath and I went and saw her not long before she died about three years ago. She must’ve been really nearly into her 90’s then.

Yes, oh yes. Yes, and actually, how we kept in touch a lot, when we left there that’s when my grandfather died

in Toowoomba and my aunt came down to Brisbane, she was going to make the move to Brisbane. And she boarded with Mrs Day and she eventually married her brother, he’d never married before either, he was in the First World War and they were both in their 50s. Yes, yes, and they both, Aunty May lived till she was 93, Uncle Ern died at about 89, I think but yes, she was 93.

Yes, yes, they,

you know, he was a lovely fellow. We all loved him because when they first married he worked at Nestles chocolates. And there used to always be chocolates in the fridge, our kids used to love it. It’s funny how you keep touch with people all that time.

Oh yes, yes, he died quite a lot of years before she did. But he’d been in the First World War too and then he didn’t, I don’t know what he did, I think he only worked,

well he wasn’t in Brisbane because that’s why she took us in as boarders. He was away somewhere in the army.

No, see we were issued with stockings, awful lisle [fine twisted thread made orig. in Lisle (Lille), France] ones.

Yes, and it

would be, well actually we never wore them very much for going out. See, if you were off 24 hours or longer, which we were on and off all the time, you could go in civilian clothes. And nobody ever wore stockings with civilian clothes really. You know, they were hard to come by.

Skirts, you never thought of wearing slacks, no. That wasn’t done.

Oh, I don’t know, it must be, I suppose 40 years ago, 35.

Yes. Oh years ago, when my daughter was about, Judy was about, what, 14 or something at the time.

Yes, it would’ve too. Yes, that’s about when we started wearing them.

Oh yes, yes, because everybody wears slacks now, don’t they, they’re so comfortable and wear them summer or winter, doesn’t matter. When I first wore them, it was only in winter to keep myself warm. But now they wear them all the time.

Well, yes, that’s all you could do. Mostly in Toowoomba, see, people say, you know, “Oh, how did you go to dances in Toowoomba, it was so cold?” and I said, “Well, you never noticed it”. You only wore a summer frock and a coat over it and when you got to the dance you took the coat off and you were warm enough dancing. But, no, nobody seemed to wear stockings much through the war because they were too hard to get. The Americans used

to get a lot. In their canteens, they used to be able to buy them. I suppose the girls that, you know, servicewomen there were able to buy them, the fellows used to get them. But we never had them, and our, as I said, once you were at the depot you wore your uniform so you were supplied with stockings. They supplied us with two pairs of khaki and two pairs of navy blue knickers, what they call knickers and they

were, they had a band on here with a button at the side and they were real long, the old milliners. And when they were on the clothesline, the sailors used to call them PKs, passion killers. But oh, they were awful looking things.

Oh yes, yes. And I can remember the shorts they issued us with for sports, they were supposed to be well below your knees but Kath and I cut

about three or four inches off ours and we used to play tennis and that in them when they were shorter.

No, no. Nothing much at all.

Yes. That’s right. And the only time in Brisbane was really if Kath and I had to drive them anywhere, you know, but there was lots of girls

went out with the Americans, lots of them married them. And there was, you know, a lot of, boatloads went home to America, of girls that had married them.

I think that’s what it was because a lot of them, the girls were very disappointed when they got over there because they thought they owned ranches and things and they said they were just

little bits of farmyards when they got there, they were very disappointed. I read a book about them and a lot of them were terribly disappointed, a lot of them came back, you know, a lot never stayed.

I guess they would eventually.

No, never. Never interested me really, I suppose I was never round them enough to get to know any of them.

Always. They were very friendly. Now I was on a wharf at South Brisbane one day, one of our ships was berthed beside their ship, and it was Sunday lunchtime, I remember it, a hot day. And I was sitting there waiting for the officer to come off that ship and one of them came out with a big bowl of ice cream. Well, ice cream in those days wonderful, you know, they were very generous. And another time I was down at Newstead Wharf and one of them gave me a big

carton of candy, as they call it, lollies. Took them back and we all had a wonderful feed on the lollies, wonderful time on them.

They are, and they used to get lots of things in their canteen that we couldn’t ever get.

No, never got any stockings. I probably wasn’t friendly enough to get the stockings.

Yes.

Oh no she was wonderful, we took all our friends there, it was like home away from home. Yes, we were very lucky. See, a lot of the girls, there are other girls that came from Toowoomba that didn’t have anyone here and they had to stay in sort of lodgings, they had different lodging houses for them. And although there were never any complaints about them but it wasn’t like, ours was like a home away from home. I mean, if you came home at 11 o’clock at night, you could make a cup of tea. She’d even get up

and have one with you, you know, she was a lovely lady.

One was about seven at the time and I think one about five. Because one, he mightn’t be quite five, one was at school and one wasn’t. So, you know, it’s amazing isn’t it, how the years go by and you think they’re only little and it’s not long ago I saw the eldest boy’s funeral notice.

Yeah, he wouldn’t have been that I don’t think, would he?

Yes. Yes, his wife died very young with, what did she die with? Wasn’t cancer I don’t think? I forget what it was now but she died very young and he reared the five children really, went to work and reared their five children. But he died young.

Oh we used to go out a lot, we used to have dates and that, and go to the pictures and go into town. You know, used to, well, I suppose do all the normal things that, we went to parties. I can remember we had a ship in that was doing a refit and when you’re doing a refit there’s only a skeleton crew on. And Kath and I got an invitation to a party there and it was on

a Sunday night and we missed the last tram back to town, to the depot and they gave us the key of the engineer’s office and we stayed the night, had a shower next morning and got the first tram back to the depot. Well I mean, you wouldn’t think of it now, would you; for two women to sleep on a boat with half the crew there, you know, it wasn’t heard of. But, yeah, we did, they just gave us the key to the engineer’s office and the both of us slept on this little narrow bed.

Oh, I don’t think anyone would’ve appreciated if they had known. I don’t think if anyone at the depot had known, I don’t think they would’ve appreciated. But we were just very lucky, I suppose, I mean, that’s why I don’t believe there were many taxis about, I don’t remember us ever having to get a taxi anywhere. Maybe that’s why we stayed because we didn’t get a taxi.

But we just missed the last tram and they said we could stay the night.

Yes. Locked ourselves in the engineer’s cabin, he was on leave of course.

I didn’t, before I joined up I really had never heard of one, I didn’t know what they were. But we got to know the one at the bottom of Albert Street because the

navy were in the process of trying to take over one for staff office. And when Kath and I were waiting to go to Grovely, we used to drive round with Ellie Turpin, one of the other drivers who was an experienced driver. And she took this officer down to have a look at that place and that’s how we found out what that was. And then I wasn’t in that long when Claire Morgan, she got married, married an officer, and she got out quickly and I took her place at staff office in Queen Street.

And we used to bring a load of officers down for lunch and take them back after lunch, bring them back in the evening. And we were going past this one that was in either Margaret or Mary Street and the fire brigade were there. So you can imagine all these young officers in the back, saying, “It’s going to be a hot time in the old town tonight”, and you know “Think it’ll be business as usual tonight?” No, I had never heard of them before I left home. Very naïve aren’t you?

I’d never ever heard it mentioned between my mother and father, any of these places. But the one at the bottom of Albert Street, I really got caught. I got to know a fellow, he was a reporter for The Courier Mail but he was in the army at the time; he was waiting to go north. And he took me to the pictures in Albert Street in the afternoon and I was going back on duty and we walked right down Albert Street. And there was a girl that I went to primary school with, not high school, primary school.

Now, I never knew them very well but she was always well dressed and they never worked in Toowoomba, she or her sister. But if ever I passed the one that was in my class she’d say, “Hello Brenda” and I’d say, “Hello Sheila”. Well I walked down with this Ces Wallis and who walked out of this place but Sheila Burke. And she said, “Hello Brenda”, and I always say I think it was the end of a very nice friendship because he said to me, “My you do have some nice friends”. But Bernie Pramberg, the fellow that actually

got us in, he was walking up there between two naval officers one day and she did the same, she walked out and said, “Hello Bern”. Yes, so I realised then why they were always nicely dressed. It suddenly dawned on me. Because they never worked in Toowoomba, you used to see them there from time to time and, as I said, I passed them and she’d say, “Hello Brenda” and I’d say, “Hello Sheila”, and that would be the end of our conversation. But it’s amazing, isn’t it?

Oh, she might have too, but not knowing anything about it, you know. But the black, the American Negroes, they weren’t allowed over this side of the bridge, they had to stay over the south side, they were all billeted over there. They were not allowed to come over into Queen Street.

Well, I don’t know, I suppose you didn’t, they were all black and we were all white and probably thought, “Well, that’s how it is”. But then there was a lot of, Brisbane was actually full of servicemen and women, and it was a very busy place for service people because it was a stepping off really to Townsville and Cairns and Darwin and on to New Guinea then.

Well it was all blacked out the same as everything else at night, you know, you never had great lights anywhere. But we used to go to the movies and restaurants and that just the same and go back to the depot.

See we were lucky to be 24 hours on and 24 off. And half the time then, Kath and I if we wanted to go anywhere special even when we lived in the depot, we used to stay out, we used to stay at night if we were going to be late, because at the depot you had to be in by 11 unless you had a late leave pass. Then you could stay out till midnight, which wasn’t very often.

Yes, yes, you’d be up and down through the night. Our main work at night was do trips out, with officers out to Archerfield airport then they were always round about two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning. But the Americans had a canteen there and they’d give you coffee and a doughnut, you know, line up for that.

Yes, if there was nothing else for you.

Yes.

There was a limit to what they could do in Brisbane itself, I mean they were still bright enough to get around in. I don’t think anybody ever really noticed them, but there were blackouts, you know, just the same as there were in Toowoomba.

Yes.

Yes.

Well that’s right, well we got very little of that from our parents, very little. You know, your parents seemed to be afraid to say anything to you, to discuss it with you.

That’s right, that’s how you mainly found out. And it wasn’t a good way at times either, to find out.

But it wasn’t just me, like nearly all the girls that I was in with were the same. They were all very naïve.

Yes.

No, no I suppose it’s very hard for some people to discuss it isn’t it?

It shouldn’t be.

No, never, until I really got it. That was one of my biggest nightmares really, because you had no idea what the problem was, you know.

Yes, you do, yeah, and my aunt happened to be at our place at the time because she was making some clothes for us. And even she didn’t have very much to say about it either. Although I suppose she hadn’t had children herself,

so, yes, I can understand it with her. But with my mother, see, even my sister never discussed it. She was two and a half years older than me.

No, no, not at all.

That’s what happens, yes. That’s just it, and this is what you do about it. Yeah. But see Kath said that she was really luckier because she was boarding

with people in Toowoomba, her parents lived in Yarraman and she was boarding in Toowoomba where there were two girls older than her. And she said they were really very good at discussing things. But she said she wouldn’t have been any better off than me if she’d been at home.

No. She was lucky she had you.

Yes.

Yes, it is too. But back then, I mean, that’s a lot of years ago.

No, nothing at all, no.

No, never did. No.

Yes, you discuss it with them. They used to let you know how far he went or how far he didn’t go and what you did about it.

Oh yes. But, you know, and there were different things, now we had to go quite a lot of times over to Kangaroo Point with the health officers; there was a place over there for girls that had,

servicewomen that had had different diseases and that. And you got to know a bit more about it then by going to those places. You got to know what they were and what they weren’t. But they used to have, it was like a little hospital there at Kangaroo Point.

Or something like that, yes. Had special places for them.

No,

No. Not a thing at Fairholme, no, no. Well Miss Culpern the principal, she was very old when I was there. In fact, she retired not long after that; she retired during the war years. And she was very elderly and she was single, you know, she was a Miss, Miss Culpern.

Through your friends mainly, you know. Some got to know it before others

did. Some had parents that discussed it, but not many, very few of my friends, it wasn’t discussed with them. And I think it’s wrong, I think because you’re interested to find out what it is, aren’t you?

You like, put your nose into it and find out what’s happening.

Yes, yes I

was. I think that was the one reason why I was. But I think when I spoke to my daughter about it, I think she knew a lot about it anyway. But now, she’s one that, she had like a boy and a girl and she’s one that, you know, believes in telling them quite young.

Oh yes, but probably around 18 I think. I was allowed to go to a party at friends’ places and they were going to bring me home and I finished up coming up home with a lad I met there. And of course of all things, he had a motorbike, although when they got to know him, like I knew him for quite a few years and when they got to know him they realised he was sensible, nice sort of a fellow. But they were horrified when I came home on the

motorbike with him. Dreadful. That’s probably what gave me the idea of riding motorbikes. Because it was his bike I had for quite some time when he was away in Melbourne during the war.

Oh yes, yes, he was quite pleased about that.

No, no. No, I think when I joined the service

everybody was free and easy, the other girls, you know, your friends are on their own and you feel you want to be free. It’s one of those things, it couldn’t have been too important, could it?

No, I rang him up. But I can remember he wrote me a letter and said that I took too much notice of my girlfriends.

Oh yes, you’re not mature in

your ways, are you?

Oh yes, he had that back as soon as he came back from Melbourne. Oh dear.

No, no.

Nothing important anyway.

Right

Well, ours weren’t very bad really, we had long huts and we had 26 to a hut. One end was partitioned off for the two leading hands; there were 24 in the rest of it. And we were lucky enough to have the ladies naval auxiliary gave us

big quilts and curtains and we had a little cupboard, like a wardrobe by the side of your bed. And we were lucky enough to have, as I said, the curtains and bed quilts that, they were all made out of cheap material but the ladies dyed them and did all sorts of things with them. And we had a reading room; we had one little hut that was the reading room. You had, your hut was all watch keepers, people on different shifts. They were coming

and going all the time and I can remember we had, our beds were little iron beds, and a double decker in a wooden bed for girls just travelling through. And they found a bug in one of them so they got the sailors, see, to take the stuff over and I was in the middle of the trip and I went down to the hut to get something and here the sailors were there trying all the bras and things on out of the girls’ wardrobes, they were supposed to be debugging the hut, but they were having the time of their lives.

But, we were lucky too because you often came in late at night off trips and the food would be cold, but we had one WRAN cooked, it was very good and she’d just cook you up like bacon and eggs and tomatoes and things like that that was nice and fresh instead of having something warmed up in the gas stove. But Christmas time, I was on duty two Christmas Days while I was in the WRAN, and they let us

go down to the sailors’ mess. You could join them for Christmas dinner; that was the only time.

Oh well, it’s mainly just baked vegetables and baked meat and that, you know, and a Christmas pudding. It depended on the cook you had, see, the cooks are pretty good in the WRANS, the girls, but I don’t think the fellows had as good a cooks as we had.

No, no, but yes,

there were things that you had; I didn’t mind tripe, but once I had tripe in the WRANS I never had it again, it was like leather, you know.

Well, some of them were good cooks, some of them, now some of them wouldn’t keep your meal hot if you were out late, and they wouldn’t give you fresh food like Peg used to, they’d just put it in a big gas oven and it always sort of tasted of gas

and that. But you used to have to do your hut out every Friday night, it had to be mopped out and all cleaned out. And you had, what did we have, about four baths, I think it was, and four showers. It wasn’t too bad, but if two or three of you didn’t shower at the one time you’d be too late for where you were going, you had to, you know, perhaps mix up two or three having a shower together otherwise you wouldn’t have time or the hot water would run out.

Yes, yes, one cubicle.

But they used to have, the girls used to have to go and stoke up the fires if they wanted to keep them going a bit longer. The stokers were only on time for a certain time, that was it. But, no, we were very lucky really, we had our officer’s wardroom was, it’s a restaurant in the botanical gardens in Brisbane now. And that was

the officer’s mess up there because it used to be the gardener’s residence. And they took it over during the war with the officer’s mess and quite a few of our girls cooked up there and a lot of them were stewardesses there, they had to clean the officer’s shoes, they’d put them outside their cabin at night. Because everything in the depot, when you were in the depot it was classed as a ship, all the terms you use as if you were on a ship. And the officers would leave their shoes out and the stewardesses used to have to clean

them for them. But it was, it was the typical thing, you know, we had a lot of marches through the city at the time, marches to sell bonds and to raise money and we used to, I used to hate the marches, they used to say, “You are on duty, you couldn’t go”, and you could finally get out of it. But quite a lot of things you got out of because you were a watch keeper. But it was funny, we used to have, we only had an Anglican padre on board, he was there

all the time, and we used to bring the Catholic priest in on a Sunday from out Kelvin Grove church, I used to pick him up there a lot. And I used to, they’d say, you know, church was on, they’d pipe church and say “Roman Catholics fall out”, well, I’ve never seen so many Catholics as there were there. They all fell out. It was funny to see them, you know, it was like a mass exodus. It was, yeah, all they

and all Catholics, and a few Anglicans there. But we had our own canteen; you were allowed so many packets of cigarettes a week and a couple of bottles of beer. And when we were at Grovely they allowed that too, because a lot of the girls didn’t drink, they didn’t have a beer and we used to pool all the stuff together and those that wanted a party had a party. But when we were at Grovely, we were there in a bad storm

one night and we used to have a string right round the inside of the tent where you hang your undies and that where you wash them the night before and we came in and found all our undies floating around the yard, everybody was scrounging round trying to find their clothes with the bad storm there. But we had one particular officer of the day out there at Grovely, that he used to say, “Oh yes, here come the WRANS, they’re always late”, you know, we’d straggle out and one morning

he said, “Oh yes, here they come.” We just walked out slowly, and he said, “Here they come, the WRANS, dragging out” and just then a tent full of AWAS walked out after us but he didn’t have much to say about that, he kept quiet. But I’m sure they must’ve got tired of trying to teach women, you know, some women are easy to teach and some aren’t easy to teach to drive.

You never really had room for it, you had this little like, it was a wardrobe and then a sort of a half dressing table at the side of it, and you could have a few pictures and that up there, but you never really had room for any of your personal possessions. You know, you just have to poke away for photos, most of them, have a few left out and that was it.

Yes, yes, kept a few of your special photos out

and put the rest away. But they used to ring you from down there; we had a hut that the drivers sat in until they were required for a job. And they’d ring you and, I’d been to a job at Archerfield, out to Archerfield, and I just came back and one of the other girls hadn’t been out, she was still there, and he told me I had to go to Archerfield again. And I was real annoyed and I got up to the door and you go in and mark the board where you’re going

and I got in the car and revved it up and you know, it flew up a stone, the tyre spun round, flew up a stone and it hit him in the chin. And he was annoyed about it, and he whistled, there was a big tree at the depot where you actually came in at night and there was always a sentry there and he whistled him and he said, you know, “Bring that car back”. And he came round and he said, “Now stop the car and start again” he said, “and leave your dirty liver behind this time”. But I was just annoyed because

she’d been on the lines all the time.

Well, I would say 20 minutes at the most; you’d be in and out most of the time. When I went to staff office in Queen Street, sometimes you had a lot more time to spare there. We had a room we used to sit in there, it had a phone, it was quite good, we could use the phone and all, and it had what they call a boatman, he’d been a retired naval man

that they brought back in and he just used to look after the officers, the beds of those that were on duty, make them up and that and get their lunches. And we were just, our doorway where we sat was right out near the lift and we’d wait for the boatman, he’d be going down to get their lunches, you know, he’d have three plates in his hand. And we’d wait till he got in the lift and we’d press the button and it’d open again. And in the end, sometimes I’ve seem him walk down the three flights of stairs rather than wait

for us to let him go. It’s funny, and his name was Neville Till and they all called him Tilly and he used to be, he never swore but he used to say funny things. He’d say, “You ‘swamsangs’, why they ever brought women in the navy I don’t know”, but he used to be quite annoyed because we wouldn’t let him get in the lift and go down, he’d have to walk. You do some awful things, don’t you, you know, it’s a way of putting in your time, I guess, when you’re like that. You had to

stay there, you couldn’t go away, you had to stay and wait for the call so you may as well make the most of it.

Yes, and I even see us, one morning, Claire Street and I had the little table that was there, and we put the legs hanging out over the window into Queen Street and he came in, “Oh”, you know “what am I going to do with you? Where’s the table going to finish up?” he was a funny man.

Yes, yes we did too. Actually, when the WRANS first came into the navy it wasn’t really very good, you know, you had mainly all the old salts and they were, a lot of the older ones were in the depot of course, because the younger ones were on ships. And mainly the ones at the depot, they used to drive the big trucks, we only drove the cars, staff cars or the utilities. But they were the band, the fellows that were

enlisted just to play in the band, they never left Brisbane and they used to drive the big trucks on their, whoever was free, and we drove the cars. But, yes, it’s a funny place. We used to get down the workshops at night, you know, you’d clean your car at night otherwise you had to get up at six in the morning because your car had to be all cleaned to handover to the girl that was taking it over from you. And the next day it’s cleaned up again to come back to you, it’s

sort of got to be cleaned every day. We used to get down the workshops at night, and do the cleaning and that at night and have a bit of a sleep-in in the morning. I was never an early riser, I hated getting out early, hated going to bed early when you were on duty and getting called up an hour later and

No. No, it wasn’t quite.

Actually, the discipline didn’t worry me so much, we had discipline at home, I was disciplined at school and then at work you’re disciplined when you’re an apprentice but that didn’t worry me so much. We used to do silly little things, you know, that might annoy some of them.

Oh well, as I said, you’d leave your hair long until you were made, we’d roll it up and let it down again.

Actually, the day peace was declared was the greatest shemozzle in Brisbane that I ever saw, driving through the street, fellows used to just open the door of the car and get in till they took the women off the cars and manned it with sailors for the rest of that day. But that was an amazing day.

Yes, but

I can remember us coming across South Brisbane towards Queen Street and we were stopped, a policeman there, and there was a fellow in a utility in the next lane, no, a little car it was in the next lane to us. And while he was waiting to get the signal to go, he’s combing his hair, because we were sitting in the back of the car. And this Louise Bates, she’d never done a day’s work in her life but she’d driven the family car. She had the qualifications to get in, and she sat there with her tongue out as though

she was the village idiot, you know, and he’s combing his hair and he spotted her and he turned round and he poked his tongue out at her, and I said. “I wished I had a camera”, it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, you know, just on the spur of the moment. He must’ve thought there was something wrong with her. And she gave him that impression too; she sat there with her tongue out just looking at him. But you used to get some funny calls, you know, when you’re back of the utility because it had “Driver under Instruction” on the front and the back. Everybody used to get

out and wave, give you a clear go.

Well, as I said, the instructor used to sit in the front with one girl at a time and take them round and tell them what to do and then you used to change over. You’d all have a turn in the front with him.

Well mainly, we did a lot of our driving up around Sandford because

we were out at Grovely and it wasn’t that far from there and the Sandford Ranges, until you could drive. And the army school, they used to provide lunches for us, we used to take the lunch for the day, and you know, it was quite good, it was like a picnic in the middle of the day, quite enjoyed it. But we used to go up then around Caloundra a lot till they finally bring you into the city and, you know, get in a lot closer. But they kept us well out for the early stages.

Oh reverse parks and, yes, reverse parks and all that, yeah. And then they put you through a test before you leave there. And they give you a driver’s licence and then when you come into the navy you get a navy licence.

Yes.

Oh yes, they still had to do six weeks at Grovely and see, Kath and I never did any longer than the others. Well, six weeks every day on a car it’s not bad, you know, you get to know quite a lot about it, you really do, but it was only that Bernie Pramberg got us in, we wouldn’t have, and that’s, you know, we were keen to, we knew we couldn’t go in as dispatch riders so we

really wanted to go in as drivers and we were so keen to get there, I think that’s what made us really work hard at Grovely.

I don’t think so. I’ve told a lot of people since, but I don’t think anyone had any idea, no. You know, and that’s why it was better to buy some of our, have our own clothing, of the uniform to get out there, to get away from the depot.

No, it was, well, it was just a thing for the navy, the navy wanted their drivers to have 12 months, you know, a current licence for 12 months. But the army didn’t, they were teaching their girls from scratch, and that’s what Bernie said, you know, so he went and saw the transport officer and the recruiting officer as well. And I can remember the day we went down and the recruiting officer met us halfway up the road, and he said, “Oh,

just the two girls I’m looking for”, he said, “Petty Officer Pramberg’s going to take you for a test now”. Kath said to me, “That’ll be interesting won’t it, Petty Officer Pramberg knows we can’t drive”. So we just went down and that’s when he said to us, “Keep yourselves hidden for the time you’re here” and he said, “If you’re sensible”, you know “go and buy some of your own uniform to get you out to Grovely quickly”.

Well that’s right. They’re only going over to do it the army’s way, aren’t they? But I suppose it was a cheaper venture in the beginning, you know, to send us out there rather than all go to Flinders in Victoria. I’d say cost was one of the big things too.

Well, I think you have to get used to it, it’s one of those things you know, you’re there, you’ve got to do it. And I was lucky, I got to be a leading hand after about the first 12 months so I got to sleep in one of the two

beds that were cordoned off at the end, partitioned off at the end of it, and that wasn’t too bad. But you got used to it. I can remember Kath used to snore and everybody all had ideas. Somebody said, “Make her sleep on newspaper”, and somebody said do this and we tried all sorts of things but it didn’t stop her from snoring. And we had, she was a third officer and her sister was a driver with us, Anne Parry-Oakden,

and they were big knobs during the war, they had this beautiful unit at Newfarm, her father was in the air force. And I don’t think Anne ever had a shower, she reckoned she waited till she went home on her day off. And one of the other girls got up on this partition, the top of this partition, with a bowl of water and when she came in she emptied the bowl of water over her and some of them took her down and put her in the shower, you know, because they reckoned she never showered. I think she showered after that.

But everybody used to have little gimmicks. They used to have singsongs down there; there was a piano in the room, the writing room and that. So, but you know, we couldn’t complain, we were busy the whole time, you were either at work or you were out enjoying yourself, just one or the other.

Yes.

Well, it was the same as it is now as a matter of fact, it’s up to 13 hundredweight. I was only looking at my licence a few days ago wondering when it was up, and it’s only up to 13 hundredweight, and that’s what it was there. We used to drive the old ambulance, it was only like a utility with a back on it but soon after we went in they bought

another one. But we had a couple of Ford cars, a couple of, oh, what were they, the names. There was Ford and there was one that they used to say it was the pride of the navy. Oh, they had a Vauxhall, an old Vauxhall, they were cars that had been used and they’d reclaimed them from

somebody. Same as a lot of fellows that owned boats, they reclaimed the boats and brought them in, we had one officer there that they brought him in with his boat as well and made him a lieutenant when he went there. But we had a Chrysler and these Fords and there was a couple of Ford Anglias, those little Fords, you know, little tiny Ford Anglias. They were almost like a Mini Minor, just I suppose so cheap to run.

But we had just a great selection of all sorts of cars.

Yes. Yeah.

Well mostly you did because you looked after it too, but I mean, if it’s getting something done, it might be in getting serviced and they give you any other to drive, you know, you get to drive every other car. That’s why I was, with my daughter when she was growing up and got her licence, I always made sure that she could drive any

other car. I think you should be able to, to get your licence. And she’s been the same with her two kids, you know, she’s made them drive anything that’s been around. I got caught, and one of the dispatch riders one night, I said to him, “I haven’t had a ride on a motorbike since I left Toowoomba”, and he said, “Have a ride” and of course I took my hat off and somebody dobbed me in. The officer of the day called me in: I was out of rig of the day and I was riding a naval vehicle I didn’t have a licence for.

But he was a real lady’s man and the women got on all right with him, the men hated him and it never went past him. But he had me up on about four charges because I’d thrown my hat off, I didn’t have the uniform, I was out of rig of the day, didn’t have a licence. But I didn’t do it again, I must admit.

Yes, I think

one of the Chevs was as good as any. They used to have them, A car, B car and C car and those, and one of the Chevs was about the best that I drove, I think.

I don’t know, I think you just got used to it. But I had this old Ford car one day, I was coming over Victoria Bridge, I had an officer, I brought him back from Archerfield. And there was this big three-ton truck, it stopped dead in front of me, no taillight or, you know, no

signal or that. And of course I put the brakes on but I hit the back of him and I looked round this officer’s picking himself up out of the back of the car, and I said to him, “What will I do now sir?” and he said, “Well, I suppose you might as well carry on and take me to The Canberra”, he was staying at the old Canberra Hotel. I felt awful though, you know, I hit this three-ton truck. That’s when you go down and make out your report and poor old Bernie would say “Not again”.

Oh, yes. Little ones, you know. One of our girls was in quite a bad accident. She was coming back from Archerfield along Annerley and, you know, the tram stops have those signposts up and it was the early hours of the morning between night and day. And she hit one of those and the sign went up underneath the car and it threw her up onto the footpath and took

down the shop, the top part of a shop, the awning. And they had to wait for a party of sailors to go out and prop the car thing, prop the roof up before he could open his shop, the poor fellow. But she finished up in hospital, she wasn’t really badly hurt, but that was about the worst accident I think I’ve seen since I was in there.

No, it was just a matter of writing out your report and the car would go to the garage to be fixed, you know, and that would be it.

It was really, yes, it was. And it’s funny you know, he finished up, some years ago he died an alcoholic in

Toowoomba. And he was an only child, he had a car when all of our friends only had motorbikes, and always had so much, you know. And his uncle set him up in a business and buying and selling, I think it was food goods, foods and that, after he came out of the army. And they said he sort of used the money, instead of putting it back into the business, he used it and he sort of went broke on it and

it was a shame though, you know, to think that he had everything when nobody else had anything sort of thing.

Yes, finished up living in a shed at the back of a house with about three other derelicts.

It is, yeah. Probably had too much in the early days I’d say.

No, I smoked when I went into the service but I’ve never ever been interested in drinking, you know. I might’ve had a glass of beer at times but that’d be all. But I did smoke, yes, and for quite a few years when I came out.

Yes, yeah. I think Kath smoked and that probably started me off. And

Oh, we could see each other on and off during the day. I’d be in the room waiting for a call and she’d come in, she might be there, we might be there half an hour, time to make a cup of tea and then one would be gone, the other would be gone. Mainly our outings at night when we were off duty and that, we went together, you know, we did a lot of things together.

Yes, that’s right.

There was with the WRANS, I think, because we were such a small group compared with the others. And it was all very close, I mean, we have a very big WRANS sub section at the Naval Association in Brisbane, but

admittedly more than 50% of them now are post-war girls, post-war ladies. There’s a lot of the wartime ones of course, they’re all my age and a lot of them have passed on, and a lot of them are not able to get out to come to meetings.

Oh yes, oh yes, see, they never liked the WRANS at all, they thought, you know, we had too much.

It was too good where we were, you know, because they lived in tents and we lived in huts. Oh yes, the girls that I know now at Kedron Wavell, they’ll tell you they thought the WRANS were awful.

Well, I don’t think it worried us very much; we just went along our merry way. But we used to have a dance, I think it was every

fortnight in the drill hall and we used to invite, particularly the WAAAF, we used to invite girls from the WAAAF as well. You know, you have a big group there for that dance.

Yes, yes. Actually the young lass that, she was a writer in the transport office like the clerk there, she was from Sydney, I still keep in touch with her. As a matter of fact she’s my age and she still works six

days a week, she’s got a little business at Double Bay where she does mending and alterations of clothes and been there for years and she’s just on 80 and she still goes out six days a week. You know, she’s wonderful to be able to do that; she’s obviously had fairly good health, you’d have to.

Oh yes, I think it was. Perhaps if I’d lived in Brisbane it mightn’t have been so, I mightn’t have noticed it so much. But both coming away like that from Toowoomba, it was just nice to have somebody handy that you could talk to and tell your troubles to, you know, tell the nice parts to and the bad parts. And then she got married, of course, she got married in the

January of 45 and she got out because she was expecting her first baby then. And she got out, but then by that time you knew everybody else anyway. And, I mean, I think at that stage we all realised that things were coming to an end. They closed up the depots in Cairns and then Townsville, they closed them up and, some of those girls went to Sydney. A lot of them came from Sydney, but a lot of them went down south just towards the end of the war just to fill

in the time for them, till they went out. And then they recalled them early in ‘46 when someone from royalty was here, who was it? I don’t think it was the Queen, but they called a few of the drivers back again, but I was married by that time and they didn’t call the married ones back. They all enjoyed the couple of weeks they had then, you know, going back into it. But of course the depot’s all gone now, that’s

back of Parliament House there, the annex of Parliament House. It was right next to the morgue. We used to go into the morgue at night and have a cup of coffee with the fellow, he used to go to one of the cold boxes and pull the milk out and have a cup of coffee with you, yeah. People say, “Fancy having a cup of coffee in the morgue” and I said, “Didn’t mean a thing, he was happy to see us”. He said he used to get lonely there on his own, he said nobody spoke to him, nobody that was around him spoke to him. So it was nice for him to see the girls.

Yes, have a cup of coffee with him.

Well, yes, it’s funny that you mentioned that, now, Cath Bacchin that, she was one, I was in the second batch of drivers to come into Moreton, she was in the first batch and she hated it from the day she got there, she really did. And she played and played on her eyes being bad till I think they were glad getting rid of her, till she got out. But she married a fellow who hasn’t long passed away. He was Chief

Justice Doug Campbell who, there was quite an obituary about him in the paper, about six weeks ago how he really deserved a, you know, a step up in his work and he wasn’t granted it and that. But Cath would never have anything to do with the WRANS after that, she never joined the association and one of the other drivers with me, she was married to a sailor in the navy and he went off with

someone else quite early after the war, and Cath’s husband helped her get a divorce and that. And Ellen rang her up when she knew she was back here in Brisbane and she never said, Ellen said she’d like to meet her one day or that and she never made any attempt, she never wanted anything to do with the navy after that, I think she just disliked it. So I don’t know what some people thought they were going in for, but I think they got the wrong idea when they got there.

Well, I think a lot of them thought

they were going, a lot of fun just to drive an officer around, they forget that you’ve got the maintenance to do and all those things to do and reports to make out that all goes with it. But it was strange; she never wanted anything to do with anyone. And it’s funny, when I read this obituary of his in the paper, it said that in 1946 he married Catherine Bacchin, and it didn’t even say like she was a WRAN or that, she always kept the fact that she was a WRAN out of it.

I think she thought it was doing drudgery work or something.

Oh yes, yes, and one of the first to go in.

No, this is a different Cath, this one’s spelt with a C, my Kath’s spelt with a K. But oh you do, you come across a lot of funny people. Molly Casey was a lot older than us and she went in, and she left because

she was expecting a baby, and there was a big thing about it that they reckoned the baby was Captain Thomas’s, he was the Naval Officer Commanding Queensland. And it’s funny, it was a shock to me because I would never have connected it at all, but I was talking to this Ellen Henderson on the phone the other night and she said she was driving Captain Thomas one night. They brought her down to where the cars, you marked the board where you were going, and they told her she was going somewhere. When she got up town he said, “We’re not going there, we’re going round to the hospital to

see Molly”, and I said “Well, isn’t it funny, because it’s only later years I heard that he was the father of that child”. But I always admired her because in those days it was hard to rear a child on your own, it really was. But her mother was helpful and Molly worked in the department of, oh, where they did the child endowments, and she worked there all her life till she retired. But people come and go.

Yes.

No, she never, no, she didn’t. But we heard on the grapevine, whether it was true or not I don’t know. He was a bit of a lady’s man. It’s funny, like, sometimes I’d have to take him home from staff office, say half past four and he and Mrs Thomas would be going out that night, and he’d say, “Come on in and put your feet on the mantelpiece and smoke all the wife’s cigarettes”. And he’d take you in and you’d sit in the lounge till they were ready to go. Real homely

pair. They had a beautiful home up on Hamilton Heights there, used to love to go there. But, yeah, but most of the other girls just came from normal backgrounds. I said that Louise Bates that was with us at Grovely, she did an extra three weeks out there, not because of her driving, because she could drive, but Lou had never worked for anyone in her life only driven the family car. And this officer used to say, you know, “Swing your bloody arms, what do you think it is, a bloody

corroboree?” and she’d say, “Who the bloody hell does he think he is?” and I’d say, “Look, Lou, we’re only here for six weeks, swing your arms”. And she finished up then having to stay an extra three weeks because she didn’t behave herself. But, you know, they all came from all sorts of, all walks of life. Got quite a lot of country girls, one lass came from, oh, where was it? Up near the Hall of Fame [Stockman’s].

Yeah, came from out Longreach way off a property. But she’d driven a lot, in and out to town and that, and that’s really what got them in. See, a lot of the writers never lived in Brisbane; they were all billeted at homes.

The writers, they’re clerical girls, they call them writers in the navy.

They never lived in, only on their duty nights once a month. But they were all billeted at homes, so there must’ve been a reason for that,

it was either cheaper or easier, one or the other. But

Yes, we had to live in. And the stewardesses and the cooks were on shift work too, and the communicators.

Right, right.

Yes.

Well, no, I think it was mostly done with hoses and water and soap. We didn’t have anything in particular to do it in. The engine, when we were doing engines, yes, we did them with, I’m not sure whether it was

mineral turps or kerosene, kerosene I think it was that it was cleaned with. We used that on them. Of course now they’ve got all sorts of things, you know, this for the bonnet of the car and something else for something else.

No, no.

Well, we used to sweep that out as best you could. We never had little vacuum cleaners or things like they have now.

Sweep it out as best we could. And used to wipe over all the front of the car, the wheel, you know, all the instrument panel and that, wipe it all over with a rag. It was always nice and shiny everyday.

No. No, as I said, we have snuck off to have a cup of coffee or tea with someone if we were in that area, they used to call them

dummy runs. But no, never take the car off the lines; you couldn’t have got past the doorway anyway.

Oh yes, there was an officer of the watch and a sailor there. The officer of the watch detailed who was going on the trips and the sailor was there to make sure that you wrote your name on the board and where you were going, what car was on. Like it would say, “A car to Archerfield”,

something like that. Yes, they were there the whole time, there was an officer of the watch and the fellow at the, off the gangway there.

Well, when we first went in it was a bit awkward; nobody seemed to want it. But after a while, you know, everybody was very friendly and the sailors would do anything for you. If you were in the workshop and you found something wrong on the car that you couldn’t fix, you could certainly get them and if they could manage it they would do it

for you. Yes, they were always very gentlemanly, but as I said, mainly those in the depot were older ones enlisted just for the band. There were the two Kirks boys we used to call them, brothers, because they used to have Kirks soft drinks here for years and years. And they were sort of older men with young families when we joined up. And they were there just to train in the band when it was required.

Yes. Yep.

No, well you had to play an instrument to get into the band. There weren’t any women in it, I don’t know whether they never wanted any or whether nobody was interested in it. But they were all men.

Oh yes, they’ve got those, yes. Well, I mean the women go to sea now.

I don’t feel that they should go right up to the front line.

I think that they can do enough, like we did by replacing a man, a man from the depot. But certainly there are things that they can do on the ships that I don’t believe they need to go right up to the front.

Well I think so. We had a talk by one of the girls who, that was the job she was doing.

She was going, she’d been overseas on all our ships to find out what the facilities were to allow the girls to go on or what extra facilities they needed. But she said they wouldn’t leave them on board unless the facilities were all there. They’ve all got their own quarters of course, maybe they can sneak into the men’s quarters, I don’t know, I didn’t ask that.

No, no, they keep it all

very quiet. No wonder they call it the silent service.

No, no, not at all. I suppose that was something that we never discussed at home either. I imagine when I joined up I wouldn’t have heard of that either. But, no, I never came across it at all. Sometimes when there’s a

big group of one sex, that’s what happens, doesn’t it. But, no, I never found it at all.

When I was in the WRANS?

Oh yes, oh yes, we had lots of friends. But of course it was, they were coming and going, you might go out with them a few times and the next they’re on their way to New Guinea. You know, and this is what

would happen.

Well, lots of places, we used to go to the dances, they had lots of dances in Brisbane, uptown. They had the Medusa, the Catholic hall down the valley and the City Hall, they all had dances and we went to most of them.

Not very much. There were things they didn’t charge a fee for during the war, you’d go to the races free of charge. The first time

I ever went to the races was when I was in the WRANS because it didn’t cost me anything. I’d never been to the races before. But possibly some of the dances were free; I know the ones we held at the depot were free. But there were lots of canteens arranged through Brisbane too where you could go and have a meal and that, that was quite reasonable.

Oh yes, yes

or even just sandwiches and things. But there were quite a lot of those places for service people, that’s why you wouldn’t get a big hot meal for nothing, you know, you’d have to pay a small amount.

Yes, yes, I went to Cloud Land, but the Americans took that over during the war. It was, the Americans took over, it was all their administration up there. But, see, the rest of

Cloud Land closed because of, what was that entertainment thing that broke down? And that’s when Cloud Land sort of folded up. The dance hall kept going for quite a long time afterwards but the Americans took it over during the war.

Yes.

Oh yes, for quite a while after the rest of it folded up.

Yes, they razed it, didn’t they? Was that one of the ones they did at night, the same as the hotel?

Yes. Yes, I’m not exactly sure when it closed but I remember reading about it in the paper. But it used to, there was a lot of people used to go there. You know, it was a big dance hall; it was all sprung wasn’t it.

But there was, when they had it as an entertainment thing like Luna Park in Sydney, there were one of the things, like a merry-go-round or something that actually broke down. And then apparently there wasn’t the money around to service it any further. I read when they said Brisbane didn’t have the floating population like Sydney had to actually keep it going. I mean, we had more now, we have a big floating population now, but we

didn’t then.

Oh yes, a lot of people have spent a lot of times there, a lot of good times.

Yes, I danced a lot. As I said, we went to dances from when I was quite young because of my mother and father helping at the church dances. And we went from when we were quite young.

Yes.

Yes, because my sister came, when her husband went away to New Guinea, she came back. She came from Sydney to Toowoomba, then she came back to Brisbane and she worked for the Americans in Brisbane and she had a little flat down at Newstead and I used to go down there and I could wear her clothes then. And I’d lost weight and when we were younger I was always bigger than she was, but we were about the same size then. And I used to go down the end of the

shift and change at her place and go back and sleep in her little unit. So everybody sort of found somewhere to go, this was the whole thing, you know, you always found somewhere you could change or somewhere you could borrow clothes from.

Oh no, no. Well, I mean, we used to go to dances in our uniform half the time, if you were going back to the depot to sleep, you know, you just went in your

uniform. It was just one of those things you got used to it.

No, not really. I was friendly with the gunnery officer on the [HMAS] Kiama for a couple of years. I suppose that was about the longest attraction I had at that time, but we used to go out a lot of course, just on dates. You had the opportunity to meet people.

I mean, I’ve met people just at Archerfield, you line up at the canteen there that the Americans had for coffee or something, and somebody always speaks to you. So, you know, I’ve met people on the train going home to Toowoomba. It was quite easy to meet them.

I don’t know, I just didn’t like

marching I suppose.

No, it wasn’t that so much, I mean you had to get tizzied up, your hat had to be nice and neat and tidy, the girls would be there and they’d have water in, you’d have the bottom of your copper, a bit of water. And you’d put the elastic on your hat over the peg in the top and steam it, all this before the march, you know. And Kath and I, we did that one day and then we were invited over to the sailors’

mess, it was about Christmas time. And we went away and forgot and the copper boiled dry and the felt hat was just like powder in your hands. We had to go and buy a new one each.

Well, I think they were quite happy with it. But we found the seagoing officers, the one’s who’d been at sea, were

more gentlemanly than the ones that were enlisted just to depot duties. At staff office, this one fellow had been a schoolteacher, one had been a solicitor, well they never went to sea at all. They were just in the communications branches and any secretive stuff they were in, but they never treated you as well as the older men that had been seagoing fellows. Just seemed to be something about them that they were

more refined or treated you as though they were more refined.

Probably, been a hard life for them, yes, probably that had a lot to do with that.

Yes, yes, although we never really had any problems with any of them. You know, I’ve heard people from the other services drivers say they had problems with officers and that, but I never did

and none of the girls that were in with me never did had, to my knowledge. You know, they all treated you with the best of respect.

No, no, not at all.

I think at that time there was, because the WAAAF had already

been in a year or so before and the AWAS were in before us, I think by the time we came into it, yes, it was quite well accepted. You found a few old salts that would never accept it, you know, fellows that had been 20 years in the navy. And that’s the first time they had women there.

Oh yes, oh there are, yes, you’ll never change them either.

Yes.

Well, I think there was a big gap with those women, because mainly they earned big money, that was the problem. It was like the Americans themselves, the girls that worked for the Americans earned big money.

My sister was a clerk for them and she earned very big money, and the drivers did the same, they got big money, and because we were doing, if you were 21 you only got the six shillings a day. You know, that was a big drop compared to what they were getting, and I think that’s where the rivalry was. It wasn’t as much as the women themselves, or what they were like, it was just the fact that they earned twice the money that we did, or three times the money that we did.

But then it would never have interested me to drive for the Americans either, so you sort of accepted it then. I’d prefer to have driven for, where I was for the smaller money, than drive the Americans for the bigger money.

I don’t know, it was just something that I never wanted to be close to the Americans; I didn’t want to get involved with any of them. I think it was just the fact because our sailors disliked them,

the men in our services disliked them. They always said, like sometimes at night coming back from staff office to the depot, you’d drive past, we had to go past the house of ill fame at the bottom of Albert Street and there’d be a queue a mile long of Australian soldiers and they reckoned once they got up close they used to sell their place to the Americans. They’d get in the queue, wait till they got close to going in and sell their places to the Americans. This was quite a known thing

really.

Just a way to earn money because our fellows didn’t get much money and those that were married sent money, allotments home of course.

They could, but while they had the money, why should they, you know, if you’ve got the money, flaunt it. But that was the story, I don’t know whether it was true, it was the

story at the time.

Oh most of them were, yes, they brought some of them out but most of them were Australian women.

No, oh, no, they were just civilians driving, they used, they wore an American uniform but they were only, they were employed by the Americans.

I don’t know, it probably would’ve been cheaper to keep us than it would’ve just to pay normal wages. There would have to be a reason for it, I imagine they had someone that they could tell what to do and what not to do, and somebody that would be there on time or, there would have to be a big reason for it.

But, yes, they were never, they were just girls, actually a lot of the WNEL girls that were driving went to drive for the Americans. That’s why when they tried to get the assistance through Veteran’s Affairs; they were knocked back because they were paid by the Americans, not by the Australian government.

I have no idea,

I wouldn’t have a clue.

I don’t know, don’t even know what they were getting, but I know they got a lot more than us. See the Americans paid well, they even paid their own men well, you know. And they still do, I believe they get a lot more money than our men get now. And I know that some of our sailors

and WRANS too, have gone to America during their time in the navy, they’ve been sent over there on exchange and they actually get paid the bigger money while they’re over there and then they have to come back on the smaller money. So that’s why most of them, apart from getting the trip over there, they’re quite happy to go, you know, because the money’s better for them.

Yes, yes, I said, even though it was really the dark days of the ‘40s, you made the most of it, you know, you enjoyed it, made the most of it. We used to do what they called a routine trip every morning, it left the depot at quarter past eight and you used to drop mail down at Hamilton wharves and right down to Pinkenba and Myrtletown and those places. And when it had been raining

and the sun comes out, you know, and you get the field mushrooms, once you’d arrived there the sailors would have mushrooms on toast waiting for you and things like that. Because I was always used to, in Toowoomba we had the, as I said, we were really on the edge of where the houses were and it was all paddocks from there on. And after it had been raining, one of us used to go with my father and my mother had this big round basket, you know, I can see it today. And we used to pick it full before breakfast time, you know, full of mushrooms.

Field mushrooms, so of course to go, you know, on that routine trip and find you had some nice field mushrooms was lovely. But they sort of all worked in with you, you know, you got on well with them all, and then they did have, we were allowed out on any speed trials or a ship that had been in doing a refit and they’d take it out on trials, we were allowed to go out into the bay on trials and then just come back.

Yes, yes, I think it did, they used to show us right over the ships and you used to have sandwiches and something to eat while you were out there. You’d go onto the mess deck and see how they eat there.

I think I just enjoyed it all. Took it all in. We only used to go out into the bay and then back again. But that’s about as far as we

went on a ship.

Yes, I met him, because when he came down from Darwin, he was posted to HMAS Moreton, he was a petty officer motor mechanic in the navy. And I’d left the lights or something on overnight and I had a flat battery. And I can remember, they sent him out, you know, to bring it back, get it started and bring the car back. And he said I must’ve left the lights

on or something, and I said, “No I didn’t”, I wasn’t going to own up. But he knew he really knew there was a problem why I had the flat battery. But that’s where I met him.

Well, he was here in Brisbane, see, they usually had so long at sea and then so long at the depot. And he came here and he was at the Fairmile [type of ship] base just down the river. And he was there for about

eight, nine months before they sent him to Thursday Island. And it was when he came back from Thursday Island that we got married then. But you do much of your courtship in writing letters and then half the pieces are cut out of course, you know, anything that you’re not supposed to say in your letter when it arrives it’s cut out, it’s censored. Yes, any letters you write that go through the post office at the depots, they’re all

censored, bits cut out.

Oh well, I think he asked me out I presume. Asked me for a date.

Well, that’s right, yes. But Kath, she was married on the

Monday of that long weekend in January, and we’d forgotten, being a holiday, that the florist wouldn’t be open, I mean they probably are now on holidays, they weren’t open then. And we, three of us went up through the university grounds from the depot and over the fence into the Botanical Gardens and we got the quartermaster to get us awake at about four o’clock in the morning. And we had these arms full of, the best of blooms from the Botanical Gardens.

And it was awkward going back because the ground was higher on one side than the other. So going back, you had to get over the fence and get down with all the flowers, and by this time it’s getting light, you know, we were getting worried about it. But everybody remarked about, we had flowers for the sides of the pews and even the frangipanis for Kath’s veil, we had all that. And she didn’t know till months afterwards, we told here where they came from. But anybody that was

getting married then we used to go, well one girl used to work for the, there was a big florist that used to be right near the Royal Brisbane Hospital. I have an idea they might still be there. And one girl that was a stewardess, she had worked there as a florist and she used to go up over the fence with everybody and choose what flowers she thought were needed then. And she used to make them up into posies or, you know, bouquets, whatever had to be. You always seem to find somebody that’ll fit in

to do a particular job, you know, you wonder how you’re going to do it and then they’ll say, “Well, ask so and so, she used to do it before she came into the WRANS”, you know, so you’d get round it some ways. But there was always somebody to help you out.

I couldn’t even tell you now, I’ve got a photo of her somewhere. We those, yeah, she had those made in

Brisbane because she was married in Brisbane, I was married in Toowoomba. But we had all that, it was mainly the church that we’d forgotten about, you know, flowers for the church.

Yes, but I mean, you had to borrow all your, anybody who was getting married during the war times, you had to really borrow your clothes because, I mean, you never had the coupons to buy them, was the whole thing.

No, no, it was one of the things that wasn’t.

Yes, and most of us had pyjamas made out of striped flannelette like men’s’ pyjamas because that wasn’t, you didn’t have coupons on that either. We all had these bright striped flannelette pyjamas.

Yes, yes, they would’ve, certainly.

Yes, I had to pick a sailor up. He must’ve been very naughty to have been in Boggo Road Gaol and you know, I was really frightened to pick him up, and they take you through one door, you drive through one door

and then they close that and you go through the next door. And the first thing he said when he entered the car, “Have you got a fag, WRAN?” I thought, “Oh, he’s not as bad as I thought he was going to be”. But he must’ve done something very naughty to be in Boggo Road.

Well, it was the main gaol, but most depots had a place where they would keep fellows that had done something that wasn’t too bad.

But for him to go to Boggo Road, he must’ve done something. Probably went AWL [Absent Without Leave] for a few weeks or something.

Yes, so he couldn’t have been too bad. But you don’t think of that at the time, you think of driving out to Boggo Road.

Yes, yes, closed down altogether.

Oh no, we had quite a few dates before he went to Thursday Island.

Yes. Yes, we’d made the arrangements for when he came back again from Thursday Island.

Yes, probably been friends all that time. We were only going out while he was here of course.

I think you make up your mind, I mean, actually, I think mine was like a lot of wartime marriages. You know, you came from different sides of the fence and it’s not till afterwards that you realise, you know, you’ve done the wrong thing, that things don’t work out as you want it. Because I divorced him, oh, Judy was only seven, in those years, you know, you never heard of it very much. And my family were absolutely appalled, you know, to think there was a

divorce in the family, that’s dreadful.

Oh yes, yes. But that’s, why I say I was lucky, I only had one child to look after and go to work. That’s why hairdressing was very good for me; I was able to go back to that. And then when I felt I was getting too old for it, I gave it away and I went as the hair care buyer for David Jones Brisbane store.

I was the hair care buyer; they wanted somebody with a good knowledge of hair care products.

Yes, yes it was. It was interesting; you had three or four trips to Sydney and Melbourne each year. It got you away from the evil eyes of the, you know, the big boys of the shop.

It wasn’t terribly easy because, when they opened Toombul

you had to do half a day a week in your department at Toombul to find out what stores you had and, you know, what was going on there, and half a day at Garden City. Well, they did have The Valley store then, but they closed that when they opened Garden, when they opened Toombul. So you had the three stores that, and when you weren’t at Garden City or Toombul, you had to put in a lunch hour in Queen Street and that was worked over two hours, you had to work

it while the staff, and then you go up to your office and then you’re busy with agents coming or representatives coming wanting you to buy stuff, you know, go through their things. It’s a pretty busy life, but it was interesting, it was something different for me but I never wanted to go into a selling field, a retail field, I’d have hated to work behind a, you know, in a shop behind a counter. That wouldn’t have interested me at all, but I didn’t mind the buying part

of it. And I met a lot of nice people there that I’m still friendly with today too, other buyers and that. And we had a cosmetic buyer who’s always fairly close to the hair care buyer; your counters are usually fairly close together too. And he had his stores downstairs in the basement and when it rained they used to get flooded out. So when it rained he’d say, “You got any rubbish you want to get insurance on?”, and we’d take it down and put it in

with all the wet stock. Yeah, so otherwise you’ve got to, when it comes to stocktake you’re well behind in stock if you don’t do that.

Oh I imagine it would be. Oh no, that’s a very old store in Queen Street. Toombul’s never really been a very big one. Garden City is the one that makes a lot of money for them.

I think there’s probably a lot you never heard of. You know, a lot of people are frightened to say anything, or they don’t like to tell people. And I think, although there, I know of a few drivers with me that had the same

problem.

Probably, yes.

Well that’s right, and money wise probably, a lot of people did. Now one of our drivers, she had nine children so I couldn’t imagine her having to go to work to keep nine children, you know. But I lost track of her for quite some years until we had a big reunion here and she rang me and she said,

“I suppose I’ve got more children than any of the other WRANS” I said, “How many have you got?” she said, “Nine”, she said “How many have you got?” I said “One”. But I remember, a lot of people have stayed together because there is a big family and not, I don’t say it for the family they stay together, but for financial reasons, trying to keep them.

But I was lucky because I had hairdressing to fall back on. Yeah, I just left Sydney and came back to Queensland.

Yes, yes, that’s right. Yes, that’s what they told me that and it was even better than dressmaking to fall back on which, dressmaker’s what I thought I’d like to do. But,

you know, as long as you keep up going to a few of the schools and that. But I do think it is a good trade for women.

No. Never wanted to, no, she said she was reared in a hairdressing shop. She used to come after school and do her homework in the back room and that. I had a salon in Redcliffe for quite a lot of years, and she said no, she saw enough of it.

She was a dental nurse

and then she worked for specialists and she sort of graduated from the dentists to the doctors, and she worked for specialists most of the time. And actually, when computers came in she went round all the specialists, you know, putting the work on their computers. But she’s 57 now of course, and she’s taking it easy. But my granddaughter thought she was going to like hairdressing and I knew Norma

Davies who is in charge of the school here and, you know, they have a course that they only do three months when they’re in their last year at school. And I spoke to Norma, Norma took her in there but she said it would’ve been alright if she’d been able to, started at the top and worked her way down to the bottom. She said what she wanted to do was bring the ladies in and sit them in the chair and put the cape around them and then go off and do something else, she didn’t want to do the hard work. So she never did that either.

That’s right, and so many of the girls think hairdressing is a beaut thing to get into but they forget that it’s like housework, you’ve got to sweep and clean basins and keep everything clean. It’s not easy. And even as you get up in your work as a hairdresser it’s not easy because you’re on your feet all the time.

Yeah, well that’s what they maintain is my back problems started, by bending incorrectly. See, now, the girls when they go to college they learn all these things, but we never learnt that, and I always sort of bent at the waist instead of at the knees and they seem to think that that’s what started my problem.

Yes, I did, I have an automatic too. And, but I had done about 130,000 on it and this one, there was an elderly lady owned this and she’d had two strokes, and it only had 50,000 on the clock. And I thought it was a, it only cost me $1700 at the time to turn it

over. And I thought, well it was silly, you know, it was a shame, I would never have gone for a station wagon for a start and I would’ve liked to have stayed with an automatic. But I thought, well and I’m not sorry, I mean it’s been a good old car. It’s been wonderful. But, yes, I think you do, you think you know a lot about cars anyway.

No I didn’t, well, the Corolla I had was brand, well, it was only a, what do you call it, a model where they displayed.

Demo, yes. And, so I suppose I didn’t have any need for him because I knew the lady, or I knew the sister of the lady that owned this one. And as I said, it’s been a good car, I couldn’t complain about it. It’s never let me down.

Yes, it’s a good idea, isn’t it? Yes. That’s why I got a photo taken of myself and the other lass on those motorbikes, we were actually riding bikes round the oval in Toowoomba. And I got that one taken off and laminated and that, for this great-grandson of mine. And I thought, well, by the time he gets older, there’s not too many would be able to say, “My great-grandmother drove a motorbike, rode a motorbike

during the war”. So I’ve got that there for him. He thinks it’s wonderful that I used to ride a motorbike.

Well there weren’t a lot of us really, when you think of it. You know, weren’t a lot of us rode them.

Well Dad was pretty good, I think he realised that we’d done things that maybe he wanted to do as

a boy. He was pretty good. It was my mother that was more naïve. Dad had been around a bit more, like he’d worked in the country and that and been to the war overseas. But Mum had never left, she was born just outside Toowoomba and she’d lived there all her life. And even when he got sick as he got older and they, to get into a warmer climate they came down to Margate, my mother always hated it. She had health problems and I said to the doctor once, “Do you

think it’s something my mother’s allergic to?” He said, “All your mother’s allergic to is Redcliffe” he said, “She was too old to make the move”. She’d been in the one place all that time. But Mum was very naïve, you know, well actually her family were. This aunt of mine that married late in life, she was very old fashioned too. You know, she thought it was awful if girls did this and girls did something else. I suppose that’s the way you’re brought up.

Oh yes, they do. Yes.

Oh right.

He’s the Home ice cream man, too.

Yes.

Well, I can remember hearing the news and that was of course actually then that they brought women into the services. That’s what moved them along to bring women

into the services. When it was so close to home. But I know everybody was very much upset and I had, my brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, he had already gone across to Perth to go to the Middle East. And of course that’s when they stopped them and brought them back to New Guinea then. But, yes, it was very hard.

Oh yes. Oh yes. I think it was closer than we thought. Well, my husband was in Darwin

when the first bomb was dropped there. He was up there in the navy, they were working on the Fairmiles up there and yes, he said it was worse than people thought. I’ve still got a few photos of what he brought back from up there. And it’s really devastation.

Oh yes, do, that’s right, yes. A lot of people did move out into the country area. I had a lady I’d met in Brisbane over the years and she had a daughter very young at the time, and her husband was in the air force. And they went right out west somewhere, they were out there for a couple of years to get away from it. I mean, it wasn’t everybody could do that either. But a lot of people did

that, got away from it. But I think that there was a lot of problems around Townsville too that we never ever heard of. There were bombs dropped there, they said, but they were out at sea. But once it got to Townsville it got closer and of course when that Japanese submarine got into Sydney Harbour it was a bad thing.

Oh yes,

that’s when the wardens and them got busy and, to make sure that, because like we’d got very lax here over the time because we were expecting, you know, from other parts of the world. And it didn’t sort of come and I think they got very lax and of course the wardens got busy after that time and when the Japanese came into it and made sure all the blackouts were right and the coast watchers were busy too. But

we’ve got a very big coastline here to defend.

Yes, it is.

No, I don’t think they did. I think they were just going to stay put because it was at that time that my father began to get extra work and they were financially better off. It’s an awful thing to say but that’s what happened during the war. See, my father used to only have

two or three days work a week and then of course he was on overtime, which meant quite a lot of money for them. But I think they were just happy to stay put and do what they had to do and be there for us. Because, I said, like, my sister had moved away because of her husband and then my brother was in New Guinea. He was in the light horse and they expanded that in wartime and put them into water transport, he was on the barges taking the soldiers from the ships,

you know, in New Guinea there. And I think Mum and Dad were just happy to stay put to be there. You know, and Mum was always busy, as I said, she had the army camp up the road from us where she used to go with some of the ladies of the auxiliary and they’d mend socks and clothes and that for them. And invite a lot of them home. I can remember they invited, my mother was sorry for this fellow, he stuttered badly and he was coming down to Brisbane and

she told him where I was to look me up. And he came to the naval depot, they called me down to the front office, see, to find him and I could hardly understand, he really stuttered very badly. And of course, all the sailors were laughing at me, you know, where did I find him? But my mother was like that, you know, she invited them all home for a meal, home-cooked meal.

Oh, what, the fellow that stuttered? Well, he came down, he thought he was going to take me to dinner, and I said, “No, I was on duty, I couldn’t go out”. I didn’t tell a lie, I was on duty anyway. But even if I hadn’t been, I don’t think I’d have gone out. Yes, my mother used to bring them all home.

Oh yes, yes they did. Especially when you were in uniform, yes, it was a big thing.

Oh, I suppose it was just the nature of the beast, wasn’t it, sort of. You know, the women were around everywhere and they probably thought they had plenty to choose from. But

most of the women I knew that joined up with me, most of them had boyfriends, you know, or had some friendship with some of the boys anyway.

I think so. Yes. I think everybody sort of looked a bit special in uniform, didn’t they. It’s a different story when you’re just in civvy clothes.

No, we’ve always said we were the last to know, we really were. I mean, you never saw newspapers very much, I suppose if we’d stopped somewhere to buy one you might’ve had one, but nobody ever seemed to have newspapers. All your letters were censored, and going in, coming out, it didn’t matter which, you were censored. So you lost a lot of news that way. I used to depend on news

mainly from home in Mum’s letters. My mother could, she could write about 10 pages, I could fit it into two, but she could stretch it out, you know, to fit about 10 pages and she used to send this big letter every week, she used to write. But she used to give me all the news from home, or what was in their newspapers and find out, you know, who’d died, who’d been killed in action and that was really the way I got to know about it.

But, see, you weren’t supposed to have a camera in the depot, you weren’t supposed to take photos. We did take a few from time to time, that’s how you get them but you’re not supposed to, they take the camera from you if they catch you.

Oh for sure, somewhere, yes.

Oh, of course there are. I mean, what a thing to tell all those service people not to take a photo.

It’s a bit willing isn’t it?

I borrowed one from my aunt; she had the old box Brownies, that’s what I took the few photos on.

Yes, they were wonderful. She had hers forever and ever I think, yes. She took photos of us kids right from when we were born with the thing. And I used it when I was in the service, so she had it a long time.

I don’t think any of us did, I don’t remember, I don’t think we had time to sit and write it at the end of the day, you know, you were busy working and then you went out. Or you were sleeping if you’d been on night duty, you’d be sleeping the next day. But I never wrote, had one and neither did Kath, neither did anyone I know. But maybe they weren’t the in-thing at the time, I don’t know.

Yes, yes, we did. Yes. We didn’t even have a diary to write our dates in, I don’t think.

I think it was in wartime. I

think a lot of fellows thought they were going away and, you know, they’d hurry up and get engaged or married before they went. I think that’s what a lot of the crook marriages were from that, because of somebody going away. Yeah. There were a few girls I knew too that married Americans and as soon as they got a passage home on a ship they took off.

Oh, I think it was just the thought of going over there. America, you know, it’s a wonderful place, it’s got Disneyland, it’s got everything, but a lot of them got over there and were very disappointed about it. And a lot of them came back, you know, they didn’t even stay. But the Americans seem to have a way of making things

better than they are, don’t they, they have a way of blowing things up. I mean, they’re quite known for it, and, I read when one woman went over there and he was supposed to have had a ranch and he only had, you know, a couple of acres of land and an old shed on it. She had no running water or anything. Be a bit of a shock to the system, wouldn’t it?

Yes, that’s right.

Oh, I had, yes, I suppose I had quite a lot of friends. I had a fellow that was in the army that I’d actually grown up with in Toowoomba that I was quite friends with for, you know, a while. But when I was in Brisbane I used to meet him, you know, and then he went off

to New Guinea. Most of the fellows you got to know were only around for a few months and they were off again, because most of them was in the age group were just waiting to go away. Like they had big camps in the showgrounds and all the exhibition grounds, and they were camped where they were waiting to send them elsewhere. Just in between coming and going, yeah.

Yes.

I think that was it as much as anything, yes. They thought she might be gone by the time they came back if they didn’t work quickly. I think that was more it than anything.

Yes. And of course, as I said before, there was really a lot of service people around Brisbane, you know, it was the stepping-off place for Townsville and Cairns and Darwin

and all up there. So we had masses of service people in Brisbane. Yes, you certainly had your choice of servicemen. And I think one of the worst things I ever saw was when the prisoners of war came back, you know, at the end of the war, you’d have to take

officers down to the different ships coming in. And even then the POWs [Prisoners of War] had been able to be built up a bit in Cairns and Townsville and places before they got here and even then they were only skin and bone. It was a very sad thing to see them.

Well, it was very stressful, you know, you really couldn’t understand that anyone could get so thin in such a short time.

No. No, didn’t hear a lot until we had to go down to the ships, then, that were bringing them back.

Oh I think so. Oh yes, and I think they were so upset

to think that the Americans had the money to encourage them, you know, and it didn’t matter how hard our servicemen worked, they didn’t earn any more money. Yes, I think that was a very upsetting feature for them.

I don’t know, I suppose I can only speak for one that I worked with and I think she was

more or less encouraged because he was a doctor more than anything. I think she was looking for somebody with rank, didn’t matter how rank he was, as long as he had rank. But she did alright, she went to America and she was always quite happy there. I don’t know what happened to her over the last few years but up to about 10 years ago she was still over there so she must’ve been quite happy with it all.

I suppose if you strike someone, you get a nice home life and you go over there, you settle down don’t you? It was mainly those that were told all sorts of things about America and they found out it wasn’t right, they’re the ones that you feel sorry for.

Yes, it’s hard to get back home again, isn’t it then? Well, of course, they went over on

assisted passages, what was it, ten dollars or something, but it cost a lot of money to get back and I suppose a lot of them didn’t have that money.

No.

No, I actually heard the name Brisbane Line but never really knew what it was, you know. But I think that it’s actually true, I mean, we were right in the firing line here. That’s why there were so many camps and that in Queensland. And it was, they had big air force camps up round Lowood and all those places outside Toowoomba, big army camps.

Yes.

Well in the early days we used to, you’d be down at the garage at six o’clock to clean the car. Like, after we’d been there a while we got to know we could go down at night and do a bit of it, see, but then you’re supposed to be up at six and do the car and you hand over at seven thirty to the other girl. Well, mostly you’d go home and have a sleep because you’d been on duty, like, for 24 hours. And if you didn’t go home and sleep we might have gone uptown to

shop and seen a movie, Kath and I. And as I said, when we boarded with Mrs Day we might have gone, had a game of tennis with the Americans next door and things like that but we did the normal things. Well you’ve got to do your own washing, your laundry in between times and ironing and half the time you have to line up for an iron, ironing board because there’s never enough of anything in those places. You want to write letters, we had a writing room to go and

write letters and that. And you keep your own bed tidy and the area around it. And as I said, once a week we used to have to clean the hut out, mop it all out.

Well whoever was free on the Friday night, whoever was around. We never sort of stuck, never took it in turns or anything like that, it was just whoever was around the hut on the Friday night. But every night you had to have your hut tidied because at

seven o’clock the officer of the day used to do rounds, as they call rounds. Look under your bed to see if you’ve poked any rubbish under there or hidden any bottles or that and she’d come round and go through all huts, one after the other. Everybody would breathe a sigh of relief once she’d gone, but there had to be somebody there to show her through every night, seven o’clock.

Not so much as she’d discover anything that was untidy, her eyes used to pick that out very quickly. If anything was a bit untidy or the bed wasn’t made terribly well, she’d make you, you know, tidy it up and do it properly.

Oh yes. Oh yes, at seven o’clock, yes, you couldn’t go to bed before seven o’clock. Not that anybody ever wanted to, I guess.

Oh you can go

Yes, you can go to the hut and rest through the day as long as it’s all tidy by seven o’clock. Everything’s got to be put out of sight, you know, nothing sitting around, suitcases or that.

Oh yes, didn’t matter so much through the day.

Although you were never really untidy because you’ve got to think of the girls too, because one’s tidy and it gives you the urge to be tidy too, doesn’t it? So, actually, anybody could go into that hut during the day and you would never, well in our hut you would never have found it very untidy anyway. It was all pretty good. But as I said we were lucky to have nice quilts and things made by this ladies auxiliary.

Yes, they were only probably made of unbleached calico or that and then they’d dye them for you. It was just like some would be blue, some would be pink, they had all different colours on it. But there was never anything very gaudy in those days, you know, they didn’t go in for these bright red quilts and things like they do now. But it was quite good, and then they’d make curtains to match out of it.

But the navy had a big women’s auxiliary when we joined up. They had done a lot, well they did a lot for the sailors too. See, they all slept in huts as well; they never slept in tents like a lot of the other services. We all had these huts, prefabricated huts.

Auxiliary?

Well they were always there to buy extra things for the

sailors that they weren’t provided with and then when the WRANS came along they did the same for us. They didn’t come in just when the WRANS came in; they were already there. And they probably would’ve done the same, made curtains and that for the huts for the sailors, provided them with things the navy didn’t provide. And they used to do a lot of their washing for them, you know, take their laundry away and do it for sailors that

were away from home. But the auxiliaries have done a lot for the services over the years. And even for the ex-service people, the auxiliaries still do a lot of work and raise a lot of money for the RSL [Returned and Services League] and those places.

That’s all, yes. Something that they don’t get paid for, it’s just, freebie.

Oh yes, they weren’t too bad at all really. That’s why I said we had nothing to complain about. When we went to Grovely, that’s when we got the shock of our lives, you know, you slept on palliasses and it was wintertime, it was July when we went out there. It was freezing and Kath and I put our palliasses together and put the blankets, two lots of blankets over them, we sort of had the benefit of a double bed with

extra blankets. But it’s amazing what you learn to do, you know, the best way out of things and the easiest way out, you learn to do them very quickly.

There were eight of us to a tent.

Not very large when you try and walk round in it, I know that. Used to bend your head to get in

the smallest part of it, I wouldn’t have a clue the size of it, but they held about eight people. Because we only had eight girls there at the time I was there, and as I said we always got into trouble for being late on parade until this morning the tent full of AWAS was later than us. Yes, they used to have it in for the WRANS; they reckoned we had it too easy.

Yes, facilities, oh, at Grovely, oh well they were all outside, you had to go outside to them.

Yes, yes, get out in the cold night to go to the loo. Wander halfway over the playground. Yes, although

I suppose we didn’t have many more facilities at home. When I joined the WRANS, we still only had the outside toilet in Toowoomba. And it was a funny thing the day, the Sunday we went down, because we had to be in the navy like on the Monday, we went down on the Sunday afternoon’s train and you know, all the family are there with you and everybody’s weeping and crying. And when Kath and I got on the train and it started to go, there was a fellow that, we used to always call him the dunny man [sanitary worker] of course,

he was at the First World War with my father, he was Mr James. And we got on and who’s on the train all dressed up but Mr James. And of course we started to laugh then, we’d all been crying, we started to laugh and said, “Well, fancy sort of striking Jamesy on the train”. Because right from when we were little, he was with the council there for years because Mum used to say to us, “If you don’t behave yourself, I’ll give you to Jamesy”, you know. And when we got to the train that day I said to her, “If we don’t behave, are you

going to give us to Jamesy”, he’s on the train. But, you know, it’s funny, isn’t it, you’re sort of upset about going, everybody’s upset then all at once you see something you can laugh about.

Yes, it is, isn’t it.

Well when you were driving from the depot, I said, we’d be up at six in the morning and

get sorted out. And then you’d just, you’d sit in your little, we had what they called a driver’s hut. You might get called out to Archerfield, you might only be back, you go to Eagle Farm and it depends where you have to take the officers to. On the day peace was declared, I was down on Hamilton wharf, I had an officer there when, the day peace was declared. But mainly you’re running backwards and forwards. But when I became a staff driver up at staff

office where you sit up there then until the Naval Officer Commanding or one of his officers wants you and you just sort of take them and bring them back and make sure the car’s clean ,and he has his own little flag you fly on the front. I had to take him to Eagle Farm to pick up an American officer that was a higher rank than he was, so I had to fly his pennant down to Eagle Farm then while he was meeting the American officer you’ve got to get out

and change the pennant and put the other one on and get them ready, salute them when they get in the car of course. That’s what you got used to doing; all the officers got a salute when they got in the car. And then you just, you take them where they want to go, your day’s put in going backwards and forwards really, and making sure your car’s tidy. I mean sometimes you could spend an hour or more reading a book or knitting sitting on a wharf waiting for an officer. You can’t leave the car

and you’re not allowed to let an officer drive the car. And so you just sit there, I used to take knitting and do it. But at nighttime it was a bit boring because the light in the car wasn’t really bright enough to read or knit by so you just sort of sit and wait and wait. But a lot of it was quite boring just sitting and waiting. And then at other times, you know, you’re so busy you don’t even notice the time flies. I was coming back from Archerfield one

afternoon, about, it was getting towards dark, and there was a problem with the car and a tie rod had broken underneath. But a man was in his garden and he came over and he had a look and he wired it up with a bit of wire and he said, “That’ll do you till you get back into town”. But there was always somebody about if you got into trouble. Your tyres you had to change yourself, nobody ever seemed to come and help you change those. Not like maybe they do now. But, I said, you

were here there and everywhere. I used to go to Toowoomba, there was a big army camp and Commander Berry- Smith used to go up there quite often, well one of the drivers would take him up and you’d just, we’d go and shop round Toowoomba. He’d say, you know, have a look at his watch and say, “You needn’t come back till about four o’clock”. Come back about four o’clock for him. But, we never did terribly long trips, Toowoomba was one of the furthest I’d say, or Amberley, they were about the longest trips we did.

Because the air force was at Amberley, has been all those years. And you had a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with officers from the other services as well. Because you get them, get tied up at the same thing that you are tied up in your job. But, you know, we never ever had a lot of time to spare, you were coming and going nearly all the time, by the time you had something to eat.

Well we used to mainly pop into a shop and buy some fruit, you know, because they would keep your lunch for you at the depot but unless this particular WRAN that was one of the ones that was very helpful to us, if the others were on duty, they just kept your lunch hot in the gas oven and it always had that taste about it. So we used to just

go and buy some fruit and eat that. It was a good way of losing weight.

Well, it was mainly for the officers, see, because they never gave cars to sailors, only the one that came out of Boggo Road, he was lucky to get a car in. They were mainly officers that we drove,

unless, you know, somebody was going to something special.

Yes.

No, our salute. The American salute is quite different. Actually, the army and the navy and the air force are all different salutes, they’re not all the same salute.

No, no way that I could pick up an American salute in no time like that.

Yes.

You mean, you got to hate.

It’s funny, the railway transport officer, he was stationed at South Brisbane, he lived at Nundah, but we used

to get annoyed, he used to stay in the warrant officers mess, or the petty officers mess till the last train had gone to Nundah and then he’d send for a car. And I’ve seen me driving all the way to Nundah and back without even speaking to him, I couldn’t speak a word to him. You know, I kept thinking, “You mean old thing, if you’d have gone home in a train, I could’ve had more time in bed”. But everybody used to hate him, nobody ever wanted to take him home.

Well, I mean he could’ve left the mess, he was only drinking at the mess, he could’ve left there a bit earlier, half an hour earlier than he did and got a train home. But, no, he left it till it was too late to get a train and then he’d send for a car.

Oh yes. Pretty well under the weather, you know, although you never struck a lot of them like that. I struck one fellow; I took two officers to a party over Kangaroo Point and had to pick them up again

and one of them was very drunk. They went back and made him a cup of coffee in staff office there and I had to wait to take him to where he was living at New Farm and I was waiting, and he was going to pour the coffee out the window that went into Queen Street. He was fairly drunk, you know, he sobered up a bit when he had a couple of cups of coffee. But you never, it wasn’t very often you would get those, it really wasn’t, most of them would just get a car home themselves, find their

own way home.

Yes, or maybe where they went to have the party somebody might have offered to drive them home. Well, we never had a lot like that at all. But mainly you took the officers over to ships when they were doing something that, with that particular ship.

Oh yes, lots of them, you know, as I said with the seagoing officers, they were the nicest, they really were. I think it was because they’d seen enough of a harder life, hadn’t they. But they were all very good, very pleasant to you, never take you out of your way, you know, they thought about you quite a lot. They wouldn’t take you out of their way if they didn’t have to.

That’s right, yes.

Yes. they were, you know, they seemed to have more thought for you. But, see, a lot of them, like the

school teachers and that that were there, they were only enlisted for wartime. They were RA, what do they call them, RANC [Royal Australian Navy Supplement (RANS) or Royal Australian Naval Reserve (RANR)], I think it was, there was, the RAN were the permanent ones and the others were the ones that only enlisted for war times. But I guess they all went back to their own jobs. We had a WRANS reunion some years ago in Adelaide and we caught up with one of the fellows that was in our transport office for some

time in Adelaide although he’s since died. But he was a very pleasant fellow, you know, we looked him up and had afternoon tea with he and his wife. But, you know, it’s hard to keep, you never, the Naval Association and that, they don’t seem to get a lot of officers into it, it’s all just the sailors, the lower decks, they seem to get in.

I don’t know. We’ve got a Vice-Admiral

that was our federal secretary, federal president now, and one that’s our federal secretary. But they like the big life, see, they go to all these big functions that are on, all the invitations to parliament and that they go to. But they don’t seem to join the association much at all. A few of them have, got one or two in them, that’s all. But whether they still don’t like to mix with the lower deck, I don’t know.

It’s probably one of those things; I suppose you find it in all services, don’t you.

Yes.

Yes, it is, all Williams’s are Bungy, Bungy Williams, yeah, its, and all the painters are called Putty for some reason, Putty the painter. Yeah, they’ve all got names like that, it’s, there are miles of them.

Actually, somebody tried to make a list of them once and I don’t know how many pages they got before they ran out of names, you know. But everybody has a nickname, nearly everybody.

Kath, I don’t know that she had one because her name was Dunstan; I don’t know what you could do with Dunstan. No, but most of those, you know, was common names like Williams. Why they call them Bungy, I don’t know.

No. No, I don’t know how they got to it either but I knew there was a painter down there, they always called him Putty.

Oh, I couldn’t even think of them now, ask me something easy.

Right.

Yes, because when I joined up, we didn’t have a hairdresser. I could’ve changed over to a hairdresser but there was no way I would do that after I’d been driving, it was wonderful. But I can remember when Peg Thorne joined up, they asked me to cut her hair because it was long, but I was actually on duty and I got it half cut and I got a call out and I was, it was a long

time, like it was at night. And I had to leave it then till the next morning and get up early and finish cutting it for her before she went on duty, and she was a cook so she had to be up early. But yes, I used to get a lot of them to do. But then they did send a hairdresser to us but it was quite late in the war, it wasn’t, it was probably the last year, like in 45 before we got a hairdresser there. But I never wanted to do it while I was in the navy, I much prefer

being away from the, well from the eyes of the officers. You know, you got away from those piercing beady eyes of the officers. Well, I think it is good, you know, you’re away from it aren’t you. You come back to it at night and come back to it when you have to during the day but nice to be able to get away from her.

No, I think they were there doing their job. Because Jess Maxwell was our regulating petty officer, and Jess was quite a lot older than the rest of us. But she was an ideal person to be there, she’d worked in a solicitor’s office all the time, she never married, her father died young, she was very old fashioned her ways but we all got used to her, we really thought a lot of her, we sort of kept

in touch with her and she was in a nursing home before she died and we all used to go and see her. We really loved her, but she’d be there to say, you know, “About time you got your hair cut, now you know what it’s like, it’s got to be an inch above your collar”, we’d say, “Yes Jess” and we’d go away and pin it up for a while and then let it down again. She probably knew, you know, but she was really very good. And I was friends with the gunnery officer on the Kiama for a while,

and the ship was sailing from Brisbane in the early hours of the morning. And I had the watch keeper’s trip to at ten to two and then I took Jack Astill back to his ship and you know what it’s like, you stay and have a cuddle and a canoodle down there. And I wasn’t back; my car wasn’t on the lines when it should have been. And Jess ran me in, and our third officer was, she went away, she got married, and she was away in Melbourne on her honeymoon. And Mary Corrigan who had joined up

with me as a driver, she went to Townsville and then she came down and did her third officer’s course from there. And they sent her back to, you know, relieve at Moreton while she was on her honeymoon. And of course, Jess took me up before Mary Corrigan and Mary said, “Makes it bloody awkward for me, Brenda, don’t let it happen again”, and Jess is out there, “Did you get stoppage of leave?” and I said “No”. They thought it was awful that I didn’t get any, you know,

any punishment for it, yes.

Yes, that was about the worst thing I did, yes.

No, not really, no. No, they were going to, Jess was going to take me up before the captain. He’d given me his chit to get, he never smoked, to get his wife’s cigarettes on the Friday afternoon and this was after I was married and I couldn’t care

less, you know, about her cigarettes when you were trying to get home to a new husband. And I forgot about them to be truthful and on the Monday morning, and I went straight up and got them on the Monday morning and took them up and apologised to him and that. And Jess said, “Oh, you’ll get into trouble”, she said, “The captain wants to see you.” I said, “He’s already seen me”. She said, “What did he say?” I said “Nothing”. He wasn’t worried because it wasn’t his cigarettes, only his wife’s. But Jess was very much, you know, she liked to do her

job and she wouldn’t let it get under her, nobody got away with anything if she could help it. But I think we got used to her in the end, you knew how you could nail her down and how you couldn’t.

No, I didn’t. I don’t think I would have ever wanted it. I

enjoyed being with the girls. I got to be a leading hand, it’s like a corporal in the army and I did that because it gave me an extra shilling a day. But no, I was happy to be with the girls. I mean, I wouldn’t like to have had to eat at the officer’s mess and that. But I don’t think it would’ve appealed to me. No, I’d rather be one of the girls.

Oh yes,

and my mother was wonderful. As I said, I could write in two pages what she stretched out into 10 and I used to get this great letter every week, you know. And apart from the fact she had big writing too, but it was a real epistle I got each week, you know. But she used to write and give you all the neighbourhood gossip and who was doing this and who was doing that and it was really interesting.

Yes, that’s right. Yes, I think it does that to you, I think it did that to me. You know, it is only a small town but when you get away from it you can think of the size of it, not only the size of it, what the size of it does. You know, and the people in it make a big difference when you get away from them. You seem to

be a bit more liberal in your thinking of people when you’ve been away from it for a while. And especially, I never had any thought of going back to it, you know, a lot of people know they’re going back to it. But my husband came from Sydney and I knew I’d probably eventually go back to Sydney and you sort of think well, you’re really going to miss that town when you leave it altogether.

Yes, only for a few years, that’s when I packed up in Sydney and left and came home,

never to return to Sydney.

Yes, he was. Yes, and he was with the RACQ [Royal Automobile Club of Queensland] here. He was a motor mechanic. When we went to Sydney he was with the NRMA [National Roads and Motorists Association] and I thought if he got back to Sydney amongst his own people, he might be better but he had bigger and better fields down there, it was a bigger place. So I just packed our things and came back to Toowoomba.

Yes, in the last year of it.

Well I didn’t, I wore my sister’s wedding dress and her veil. I wore that, see, she’d been married about two years before me, and I wore her things otherwise I wouldn’t have been in a wedding frock. And we got married in Toowoomba, my parents were married in St Luke’s Church and that’s

where we were married, at St Luke’s Church. But a lot of the sailors and WRANS came up for the wedding and we had the reception at home. We had rather a big dining room and my father borrowed trestles and that from the church and we had the reception just there at home. Because you were very limited during the war, you know, you couldn’t really hire halls; a lot of them were taken over by service people anyway. But we just had it at home in the dining room

and I suppose there were about 50 altogether there. But it was just a normal wedding.

Oh well, they sort of got on all right with him for what they saw of him. They never saw a lot of Maurie because he was away a lot. Although he was in hospital, he had his appendix out and they sent him to a convalescent home in Toowoomba not far from my mother’s and he used to go up and down from there to see them. But they only saw the best of him, of course.

I saw the worst. But, yes, we weren’t married very long when he had his appendix out and went to the convalescent home there. But he liked one of the nurses at the convalescent home too that I found out afterwards.

Oh yes. I mean, I couldn’t have lived that life. Well I suppose I never saw it at home, like

my father wasn’t like that and both my brothers have been good husbands, you know, and fathers. And it’s a bit hard to suffer, isn’t it, when you’re not used to it. And none of our friends that lived around us in Toowoomba, like they were all sort of good husbands. Actually, I think in those days, the husbands never had enough money that they could stray did they? You know, like later on men got more money and they were able to have somebody on the side, take someone else

lunches and things. But in those days you never had much money to take anyone else out.

It does too, it does, and his mother wasn’t much better. She used to drift up to the pub every afternoon, you know, she had all her friends up there.

Oh yes.

Oh terribly, especially with sailors, I mean, I don’t know a lot about other services but with the sailors, yes. We had one of our fellows and yet, like, he was wonderful in the naval associations; he’d been presidents and secretaries and all sorts of things. And it got the better of him in the end, he got like a form of Alzheimer’s and they said it was from the alcohol. But his wife told me that his father was the same, you know, sort of

sometimes it’s in the genes, isn’t it, they do what their father did. But Keith did that and he finished up, he was in Caboolture Nursing Home there for about two years before he died. But I’ve found a lot of our fellows are heavy drinkers. Not so much the post-war ones, the younger ones, not so much them. They seem to be more interested in having meetings where they can bring their wives and children, like a lot of them will have their meeting at a barbeque.

And they have a quick meeting and then their wives and them can take part in the barbeque and children. But I find the World War II ones have been the ones that seem to like to drink. But most of the post-war fellows say that they like to be able to take their wives.

Yes, yes. Post-war, like Korea and Vietnam.

Yes.

Well I took the sea transport officer down to do something on one of the ships and I was just sitting in the car when all the ships, the sirens were going, you know, we knew what it was. It was terrific, it really was.

Well, yeah, I mean, all the ships, everybody was busy talking and saying the war was

over and they were running backwards and forwards between the ships and that, and then all the sirens went on the ships. It was really wonderful to hear it. I suppose it was the best part of the war. Yes, and I had this, he was a little Scotch fellow, Lieutenant McDougall a little fellow and he said “Oh, that’s all my work for the day”, he said, “You can take me back to the depot and that’s it”. And we had a bit of trouble, like fellows,

when you were driving up Queen Street, fellows were opening the doors and just getting in the car. So they took the WRANS off the cars later in the afternoon and just let the fellows man them, it was a bit too dangerous.

Yes, oh yes, we all had a look. You couldn’t move in Queen Street. No, it was amazing.

Well they were sort of even dancing in the street, laughing, you know, singing, they were doing all sorts of things.

Oh yes, but a lot of the hotels ran out of drink quite early. A lot of them closed. Yeah, the hotels were dry.

Yes, in those days, yes, they were considered sort of loose. It wasn’t a, well, for a start a lot of people couldn’t afford it.

A lot of fathers, husbands couldn’t afford it and apart from that, a lot of people had got to the stage where they didn’t think women should drink, you know. It wasn’t heard of. It’s one of these things like the woman at the back of where I lived at home, she said that no decent girl has ever joined the service, you know, it was just some attitude she’d got hold of herself. But I don’t think

the service made any difference to any girls, it depends on the way you’re brought up at home in the first place doesn’t it.

Not really. But it was wartime that really brought it on because nearly all the girls that were drivers with me all smoked. And very few of them had smoked before they came in. You know, it was the thing, you’re away from home, you try it like everybody else does.

Very little, no, I might have had a beer, you know, when we were out anywhere but that was it. I’ve never been a drinker. In fact the taste of it doesn’t interest me. Not even wine. But I suppose I smoked for about five years after I came out of the service and then gave it away.

Well I think it really gave me away. I’d been to a conference at Sandgate at the RSL hall there

all day Saturday and I was the state secretary. And you know you’re writing all day, you have a smoke and you write and then at nighttime they always have a dinner dance, a function. And you know you have a drink and another drink and do you know the next morning I woke up and I couldn’t stand the taste of a cigarette, and I’ve never had one since. And that’s all those years ago. Couldn’t bear the taste of it, I think I’d smoked so much in that conference and at night at the function that I couldn’t stand the taste of it. So it was quite easy for me

really, it gave me away. But most of the drivers smoked, I mean, especially at night if you’re sitting in a car, there’s nothing you can do. Your little car light’s not bright enough to read by and you sit there and have a smoke and the officer’s still on the ship so you have another smoke and another one.

Oh yes.

No, not when you were driving. No. But you could while the car was

standing.

No. No, it’s amazing.

Well, yes, we used, well, we didn’t use as much makeup as girls do now, for sure, but we used quite a lot of it. Like the hairdressing salon where I worked, we did facials there and in fact we did facials on a lot of the American fellows that we did manicures on. They had facials as well.

And I’ve always been interested in cosmetics because I’ve worked amongst them. And actually, the girl that married the American, she used to do a lot of the facials there and when she left well the next girl, who really was in line for it, Leah had a very bad complexion and Mr Baird wouldn’t give her the job of doing makeup because of her complexion. And that’s when I did them, there were two of us used to do

them. And because he had masses of stuff, cosmetics and things to choose from it was wonderful.

Oh yes. Yes, makeup and nail polish. Although nail polish and hairdressing don’t really mix because you’re all the time trying to patch it up, you know, the solutions eat into it.

But, yes, the cosmetics, yes we used to all use cosmetics in salons.

Oh yes.

Yes, like when I was in the WRANS? Oh yes, we used to have to buy them outside, David Jones or any of those places, yeah. But we all wore makeup, you know,

even driving in the cars, it was no different.

Yes, yes, there were lots of movies on. And there were different times the movies were quite cheap or even, we used to go the, what was the one that had the organ playing?

Yes it was, used to go there a lot because on a Sunday night, it was only for service people on a Sunday night although you could bring friends along.

And as long as you were with a serviceman and it was free to go in then.

No, wouldn’t have a clue now, no. But we used to go to quite a lot. And then in Albert Street we had the Metro Theatre, we used to go there quite a lot, because we used to walk straight up Adelaide Street from the, not Adelaide Street, Albert Street from the Gardens and go to the Metro. And you could sort of

fit it in and go back and have a sleep if it was your day off, you could go and have a couple of hours at the movie and then go back to the depot and have a sleep.

Yes, we had what we called the Driver’s Room to sit in when you were waiting for calls. On your day on, your 24 hours on, you used to sit there in between trips and they used to call through when they wanted you then.

Oh yes, it had a couple of, two double bunk beds for people that were on shift work and couldn’t get home, particularly those that were billeted out, but they had a night at the depot once a month, that was their duty night, the writers and them. And they used to sleep there on their duty night, and we used to stay there, but our duty night we used to go down to the quarters and crawl up on the bed in your overalls

and then they’d let you know, the girl from the room used to come, from our regulating room, she’d come down and wake you up. In the end, they used to stand by my bed until I got out of bed because I used to just turn over and go to sleep again if they didn’t. Yes, I’ve always been a good sleeper; I can sleep anywhere now.

No.

Well my

brother Noel, he died 15 years ago, but yes, we kept in touch a lot because they lived in Brisbane.

Oh, well I never saw much, yes, we kept in touch in writing but not a great deal because he was in New Guinea most of the time. And actually he married and his little girl was 18 months old before he ever saw her, he was away that long. But, yes, we kept in touch as much as we could. But we used to keep in touch more through my mother, she

used to write us all these big letters, you know, tell us all the news that’d go from one member of the family to the other.

No, he never ever mentioned his time up there at all, except that he was on the barges that took the sailors, soldiers from the ships onto the land. He was on the barges.

No, never knew him to

mention it. And see, he died with emphysema because he was a very big smoker, even when he came out of the service too, he was a very heavy smoker. He came out, when he came out, his father-in-law was almost ready to retire from the markets, they used to be at Roma Street in Brisbane. And he worked Noel in to take over, you know, get the truck and take it over and Noel said sometimes in the Stanthorpe season, he’d be at Roma Street marching up and down the platform, the train

would be late and he said he’d just smoke and smoke and smoke, and of course he developed emphysema. And that was it. We don’t really see much of his wife, like she was a rather strange person, she never sort of tried to fit into our life at all but she was an only child and she did all business and that for her mother and father. But we never saw a great deal of her; my young brother we see lots more of him of course.

And then my sister, she died oh, 11 years ago, she died of cancer. But when they retired in Brisbane, her husband came from Mullumbimby and he was on the Banana Growers’ Federation, they used to inspect the bananas. And when he came back from New Guinea, he had to have a kidney out and they put it down ‘due to war service’ but he couldn’t go back to the banana plantation and

they found him a job in the public service in Brisbane and he worked there. But then when he retired, they went back to Toowoomba to live and my sister went back, you know, thinking it was going to be like when she left. And she went back there and found that her friends all had families the same as she did and they were all looking after daughters and granddaughters and that, and she said it was the biggest mistake they ever really made. Because things don’t stay the same, do they? Life moves on.

But she was very disappointed that they went back there.

As we got older, yes. And she had two boys, because when you’ve all got children young together, you know, you seem to keep closer together, don’t you.

Well, I don’t think they were very happy about it, but they knew there wasn’t much point in leaving things as they were.

I mean, he owed me a lot of money. I could never get any money out of him, so there wasn’t much point really. And then actually what moved me to divorce him, his mother wrote and said that he was going, oh, he was looking for a position in New Guinea, he was going to New Guinea to work. And I saw the solicitor I have in Redcliffe and he said, in those days it was very hard to catch up with them when they went out of the country, and he said “You’d be better to divorce him now”,

but he never ever did go to New Guinea anyway. So that was really the reason I did it.

At Merrylands. Just where that shooting was yesterday, I saw somebody shot there yesterday.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, that’s right.

Yes.

Well no, there were no permanent navy women at that stage. They didn’t come ‘til, the WRANS and the WAAAF and the AWAS were all disbanded in, what was it, 47 or 48 and then they brought them back in 1951. Because by that time I was married and had Judy, you know. And I possibly never even thought of it. But there was that period of

a few years that there were no servicewomen. They were disbanded altogether.

I think that the only thing that we felt that we were going to sort of keep seeing each other, we were going to form some sort of an organisation. And we did

for a while, like when our children were very young, but we only met once or twice a year, we’d have a luncheon, something perhaps twice a year. Until 1960, the early 60s, the Naval Association state president then, here in Brisbane, he got the WRANS together to see if we would form a subsection of the Naval Association. And since 1962 we’ve all been together. See, a lot of women have come from other states that we didn’t know,

come up here and they’ve joined the subsection. And we have 80-odd members now, well, seeing as there was only three thousand started off during the war, that’s not a bad effort. Although more than 50% of them now are post-war girls. Well, I mean, they’re not going to get any more wartime ones in because we’re all round our 80’s. Some are over the 80’s, some are just under but they’re all round that 80 mark.

But, and I think that was the thing that we knew that we were going to do something to keep us together. And we were fortunate we had somebody like Jess Maxwell, she had the time, she went back to working for her solicitor and it was only Jess and her mother, and her mother did all the work at home. And Jess had quite an easy life so Jess undertook to do that and she was our secretary for years and years. And Muriel Bart, who was the third officer,

she was our president for many years. But they were the ones that actually started it off for us. And as I said, and then of course when we became a subsection of the Naval Association, well they all meet every month, apart from any functions that are on, you know, and they’re invited to things for the men’s subsection, they all play bowls together once a year and golf together once a year, they do all sorts of things.

No, she got married in the January and I got married in the April.

She got a discharge because she was pregnant with her first baby. But when I was married I put in an application to the captain to get out because we could’ve bought a house in Toowoomba at that time but you had these things such as people just used to come and

move in and just, what do they call them? Well they just used to come in and take over the house if it was empty.

Squatters, yes. And we were a bit afraid of that but I applied to the captain to get out and they wouldn’t let you. And the first lieutenant, he’s always at the meeting you have with the captain and he said to me afterwards, he said, oh he said, “There’s only one way for the married women to get out”, and I said to him “Well, I’ll see the navy off first”

and it’s funny, you know, when peace was declared they released the wives of servicemen first, we were the first to go. And I was out at the end of October, it was just before then that I spoke to this first officer and when he said the only way I could get out was to get pregnant, and I said I’d see the navy off first. Anyway, he was down at the canteen the night and he said, “I see you’re on the list from Navy Office, you’re getting out”, and I said, “Yes, and I’m not having a baby either”.

And this was then end of October, and Judy was born on the 31st of July so if I wasn’t pregnant that night, I wasn’t far behind. Yeah, I thought I was smart. But, no, if you were expecting a child you got out, but otherwise no. You had to have very good circumstances. Ellie Turpin got out early because, she wasn’t married then but her mother was very ill, always been very ill, and her father died suddenly. And there was no one really to look

after her so that’s the way she got out, but you had to have good grounds for getting out. A few of them had got sick of being in there and they’d whinge about different things, like Cath Bacchin whinged about her eyes and I think they were glad to see her go.

Yes, yes, I knew then, yeah.

Because a fellow who had been in Thursday Island with him, he was actually best man at our wedding, his wife had told me a few little things. And she said, “When they were in Darwin when the first raids were on,” and she said, and he never ever said anything but she said, “Maurie just took all the rum supply and went bush, they couldn’t find him for a couple of days when the bombs were dropped up in Darwin”. So I mean, I realised then that there

was a problem, but a bit late then, isn’t it, to think about it.

Yes. I wasn’t supposed to have flowers because it was in Lent and you don’t have them but because it was ex service, the rector of St Luke’s said yes, I could have flowers.

You’re not supposed to have flowers, no.

No. Lent is supposed to be a time that you give up all these things.

But he said, being a service wedding, we could have them.

Well that’s right.

Well we had a lady did the bouquets up there, a friend of my mother’s used to do them. No, we were very lucky in Brisbane, we used to have the

choices of blooms when the weddings were on.

Danish, yes.

No, I think, he, never having lived in Denmark himself, he was a bit further away from it.

You know, but I have a nephew that was doing the family tree and Kalund is an unusual name. And Neil was working in Sydney at the time and one of the rellies [relations] came out from Denmark and he looked up the phone book and Neil’s was the only Kalund there so they go together and they’ve just about finished this family tree. They’ve gone back to the 1400s. And they found out that this Kalund was never a family name, it was Kalundborg [town in Denmark],

where they used to live. And they left this place to go, to move somewhere else and they changed their name to Kalundborg and then it came down to Kalund. But it was never a family name in the first place. But after my father died we’d had, that photo of him there is when he was at his confirmation and one of the rellies, relatives, in Denmark had that. And when they knew he died they

sent it out to one of my father’s sisters and she just had photos taken off it to give to us all. But it actually came from Denmark. It must’ve been sent over there after he was, you know, his confirmation.

No, no. I have a niece that’s been there twice, she was very interested in it. No, it would be very nice to go but it’s a bit late for me to travel now.

Well that’s right, well, I suppose I am pretty fit except for the back problem is my problem, that’s all. I don’t like to walk too far, it doesn’t appeal to me very much. Standing in one place is a problem; you’re better to do a walk than stand in one place. Even that slow walk round the supermarket it’s bad.

Like that now?

I think what we did

see of it was probably, because you know, you don’t know whether those people are going to be with you tomorrow or not. You know, there was the fact that, you know, “Maybe he’ll be gone tomorrow, he’s gone away” or, “She’s gone away” or, “He’s in the service now he mightn’t come back”. I think that that was why a lot of marriages were made during wartime, I think, the same reason. But, you know, that’s

how I see it.

It wasn’t very long after, yes, by the time the wheels got in motion and she had the doctor’s certificate and all sorts of things, yes. They move you fairly quickly once you’re going out.

Yes, she did, yes.

Well of course, as I said, because of her involvement with my brother and her aunt, we sort of kept family friends all over the years.

No, they met before that. They met, after Kath and I went into quarters to live and that’s when Aunty May went to board with Mrs Day.

And Aunty May started, she worked in Brisbane then she worked in Penny’s old shop, you know, used to be, was Coles in later years down the bottom of Queen Street there. And she went to work there, then she boarded with Mrs Day and Mrs Day’s brother was still living at home with his mother who was very elderly and just round the corner, that’s how they met.

Well we were still in, both in the services but we had a little flat at New Farm that we used to go to if we were both there on our days off, or I’d go there on my days off and Maurie would go there on his days off. We had this little flat and my aunt and Mrs Day’s brother that she married, they took it over after us. We bought a house at Paddington. Well it was sort of between Milton and Paddington.

Oh that’s right, yes, you probably saw more of one another at work. You know, because you’d find him down in the garage anyway, down at the workshop because he spent all his time there.

Right.

Yes, yes, they were the ones that, they’d done all that. Anything to make it better for the servicemen and women, they’ve done. It was the navy auxiliary that did ours and then they had different auxiliaries

for different services.

Yes, they’d do that.

Yes, yes, it’s wonderful. It just makes it more comfortable for you, doesn’t it? You know, you’ve left home and left all your little knick-knacks behind. It’s nice to go down and find that something’s nice, not having to go into a tent.

Yes.

Well, you’re the one that, well, it goes both ways for drivers, you’ve got to keep your eye on the drivers and make sure they’re cleaning their cars. And then your hut that’s got to be cleaned every Friday night, you’ve got to make sure the other girls have cleaned it properly. It’s more like you’re in charge. It’s nothing marvellous except that it gave you an

extra shilling a day and that’s why I sat for the exam. And what they do when you have the exam, they just maybe pull wires out of something out of the bonnet and ask you why it won’t go.

Yes, that was it, yes, I had to find out what it was.

I must’ve. I got through it.

Yes, yes, it was too, no trouble at all.

But I never had any interest in sitting for an officer’s course or that. I don’t think I’d have made a good officer.

Oh, I think I’m more inclined to do things myself than tell other people to do it. I suppose I know what I want and I’m happy to try and do it myself.

I never had any problem with any of them and I had to drive one

of the third officers, a woman, I used to take her up to Caloundra, to the sig [signal] station there every fortnight and we used to stop and buy watermelon or something on the way and have something to eat. I’ve got a photo of us there eating watermelon on the way to Caloundra, but I’ve always got on, I think if you treat them with respect they treat you with respect too, don’t they. It cuts both ways. But, I mean, we were always taught to,

you know, have respect for everybody.

I think so.

Well, I was respectful but I still had a bit of fun, I think. I mean, I don’t think any of those girls in there would speak disrespectfully about me. You know, they knew me when I was in the service and we all sort of got along

very well together. Because it only takes one bad egg, doesn’t it, to make it bad for everyone. But we never seemed to have that problem. The only problem I struck when I was the leading hand was one girl stole swimming togs [swimming costume] off the clothesline that belonged to another girl and fortunately someone had seen her but it was a lot of problems getting her to admit it in the end. But that was the only thing that I ever stuck in there, nobody ever touched anyone else’s things

in the hut. Not that we ever knew anyway, that was the only thing that ever went missing.

Yes, yes, she brought them out, brought them to life afterwards.

No, I don’t think they ever used the car. They might be like us, when we were staying, or even after we left Mrs Day’s, the RTO, the railway transport officer, lived near her and if we were taking him home, either Kath or I, we’d pop in and have a cup of tea with Mrs Day. But you couldn’t just take the car out; you couldn’t get it past the quarterdecks. See, everything’s navy terms there because you’ve got the officer of the watch and the sailor there. And, I mean, if they saw a car

going by, they’d have someone chase you. There was no way you could get away with it, the way the depot was situated. But no, as I said, a lot of them did dummy runs I know; we used to call them dummy runs. In fact, the officer that I knew on the Kiama, I met him when we lived in Sydney at one time, he was managing one of Woolworth’s stores, and he said to me, asked me how many children I had, I said “One”. I said, “How many have you got?” he said, “Three, but from now

on they’re dummy runs”.

Well, if you go somewhere you’re not supposed to go. Like if you go on, you might have a trip to Archerfield, on the way back you might detour on your way back to see somebody on the way and that’s called a dummy run, you’re not supposed to be there.

Yes, because you write on your board where you’re going to and he has a rough idea anyway. I mean, often times you’d get later but he’d have a rough idea how long it was going to take you for that job.

Oh yes, oh yes, but there was no way you could just take the car out and go somewhere you wanted to go and get it back in without being seen. No way in the world.

I suppose it was worked that way. Situated that way in the first place.

Well they didn’t mind, didn’t worry them because you had two leading hands at once. You know, there was another girl at the same time as me, and there were two of us there made leading hands at the same time. But, no, I don’t think it mattered much. I said to them,

“You’ll have to clean the hut out now this week”, laughing with them, and they said, “Clean it your bloody self”. That’s how they used to be, you know. Well, I always believe if you get in and help them it’s much better isn’t it. Shouldn’t expect other people to do what you don’t want to do yourself.

Oh yes.

That’s right, yes.

Well I don’t know, see, I went back hairdressing. I had no, I don’t think anybody had any trouble getting work after the war; there was plenty of it available. I think, you know, if you didn’t have work after the war then there was something wrong with you because there were opportunities. See, there were opportunities for ex-service people too that you could take a course and it didn’t cost you anything. I did a dressmaking course just at home, you know, I didn’t

go out to do it, to a college or that, I just did it at home and the government paid for it. And a lot of people got work through that, you know, through, the work, what did I say, the opportunities they’d taken on. Some of them had done all sorts of courses after. A friend of mine, her husband wanted to do bricklaying and he actually started bricklaying, he always wanted to build his own brick house.

But they told him, after a few months, that he wasn’t really suitable for it. They said he was suitable more for a desk job and they actually got him in to the Colonial Mutual Insurance Company and he really climbed the ladder very quickly. Yeah, so obviously they knew what they were talking about, but he never did build his own brick home. But those are the courses that you could take. Another fellow that was with us in the association, he was our state president for a while,

he was waiting, they gave him, got him a job at Shell Oil Company until they could get him in as a builder, you know, carpenter, he wanted to go in. But in the meantime, while he was waiting to get in as a carpenter he had two good rises at Shell Company so he stayed there the rest of his life, he never did go carpentering. But they all had the opportunities, see, the same as I did the dressmaking course.

I think that they had more than before the war. I don’t say they had as many as men, I still don’t think so. But they had much more opportunity than before the war.

Well, I think there were more women doing men’s work than there was before. I mean, there were the girls on the land that went into the land army, that had never been on the land before.

A lot of them stayed in those jobs. A lot of the girls that sort of joined the navy was to relieve men to do something else and they went back into other jobs too.

I think so, and I think a lot of them were annoyed because the women had taken their jobs. Although

there was a, I don’t know whether it was a government ruling or not but your employer had to employ you again when you came out of the service. I think there was something there; that they were supposed to take you back again. But a lot of them were annoyed because women had come in and taken their jobs. I mean we had all those girls that did communications in the navy that never did it outside. So they must’ve sort of taken someone’s work, mustn’t they?

Well, I imagine they did, I don’t know anybody offhand that it happened to, really. But I know that there was a lot of talk that the fellows were annoyed because the girls had taken their jobs from them. And I suppose you can see their point, can’t you, you can see both sides of it.

It does, yes, it does. You’ve got to get into it very fully, haven’t you?

I don’t really, there must’ve been something about him, mustn’t there.

I think probably the fact that he was a motor mechanic. I thought, “Well at least, he’s”, you know “he’s got a trade behind him”. He was a good provider, that was one of the things for sure. But he sort of started to provide for other people on his own.

Well, different shifts he used to do at the NRMA in Sydney and that, you know, he was very late on his shifts and I knew that there was something else involved. See, he worked for the RACQ when he was in Brisbane, and I thought going to Sydney he might be better when he’s back amongst his own people. But he had bigger and better fields down there, it was a

much bigger place. But he was a person that he’d tell three or four fellows to bring their cars round on Saturday morning at eight o’clock and help them. By eight o’clock he’d be gone, he’d be round at the Bull and Bush, the hotel around the corner.

No, the morning, when they were due to come to get their car fixed he’d be gone. I used to make excuses for him

til in the end I just told them if they went round the corner they’d probably find him. You get quite desperate in the end. But I suppose that was the first I knew about it.

Judy was, she started school in Sydney, she was five when we went to Sydney and I think by the time I came back here she was seven. And then I had to wait three

years for the divorce in those days. Unless I wanted to chase him up and, you know, I didn’t have the money to do that. But just to get him on desertion, you had to be away from him for three years. And, I was saying, I really divorced him because his mother said he was going to move to New Guinea, he was going up there to work, which he never ever did. But it was the opportunity then, because it was hard to serve papers outside the country in those days.

I think it’s quite easy now. They don’t seem to have much problem now, do they? But things weren’t very easy then.

No, because I can remember saying to the solicitor, “I hope there won’t be anything in The Truth” [former Sydney newspaper, noted for scandal], you know, that paper that used to come out, The Truth. And he said, “Well, it depends what other news they’ve got, if they’ve got anything better they won’t”, but it had half a page in there, it had “Shiftless husband divorced”. When you go to the divorce, they ask you where you’ve lived and of course we lived in all these

places in a short time, and they said, “Shiftless husband divorced”. So they couldn’t have had too much to print in the paper that week.

Yes, yes, quite a lot, oh yes, they used to write up all the divorces. Everybody called it the dirty paper, you know, used to bring up all the divorces mainly.

Oh yes, names, and that’s where a lot of people found out I was divorced.

Yeah, but they don’t do that now, that’s, they don’t even put notices in of who was divorced now.

No, no. Too many.

Well yes, it was, because I’d never heard of it in my family. I was the first ever been through a divorce. And, you know, you feel quite intimidated by it, quite uncomfortable with it,

to see your name sitting there. Although when, like, I wasn’t the party that caused the problem, so I suppose it didn’t feel so bad to me. But if you’d been the offending party, you know, it wouldn’t be so good. But anyway, the old Truth used to write them all up, it was a really dirty paper.

Yes.

Yes.

For three years, yes.

Yes, when I went back hairdressing.

Yes, that’s right. But, like hairdressing’s been a good standby for me, it really has. Well, I suppose any trade is. You know, it’s good for you, isn’t it.

I think it was their life, because when I went to Sydney and we stayed with them ‘til we got a unit down there, and one would come home, he had a brother and a sister. One would come home and throw a few eggs and some bacon in the pan and that, you know, and the next one would come and cook their own, there was no, we used to, at home we used to sit round the table all at teatime and you’d discuss your day’s

doings and that. But there was never anything like that and I really think it was the home life. And his father, I got on quite well with his father. His father’s mother had a little old farm up at Carlingford, been there all her life I think. And he was a wholesale grocer, which meant he didn’t work at the weekends. And Friday nights he used to just take off up there, spend the night at the farm and come home late Sunday night and go to work Monday. He just didn’t seem to bother with any of the

others. And I think it comes from your home life, you know, one comes from one side of the fence and one’s from the other. But his brother sort of disappeared; nobody knew where he got to, and his brother married and they had a little boy and she always said to me, “As soon as Gregory’s five”, she said, “I’ll be gone”, and she was. I don’t think anybody ever heard from her again. She left as soon as the little boy was old enough for

school. You know, they were a strange family. But it opened my eyes because we just lived a normal life like everybody else had lived, and to strike that, you know, it’s a bit disconcerting.

No, I think I got so desperate in the end. I had never flown before, I swore I’d never go in an aeroplane and I was so glad to get away from Sydney I just packed Judy’s and my things and we

sold, we had started to build a house down there and we sold that and halved that up and I just got on the plane and came back to Toowoomba, just glad to get back.

Well I got to the stage of desperation because when he came home half his pay packet was gone and that’s when I was lucky, I had a friend in Sydney who had a hairdressing salon. And the lady up the road went to work and her little girl was minded by her mother, and she said to me, “If you want to”, you know, “get a job”, she said “I’ll mind Judy after school with the other grandchild”. So I did that, I went and I worked for Rita while I was in Sydney then and,

well I didn’t really mind going to work to keep myself and Judy, but I wasn’t going to go to work to keep a man that was enjoying himself.

Oh yes, oh yes. He tells everybody, you know, I was a wonderful woman.

It is, yes. The only thing is, he eventually married another woman who had three girls, three daughters. And

he only died two years ago and at least my daughter was, well, she would have to be in the will otherwise she would have contested it. But his wife had died before him so Judy at least got $72,000 out of it. And when I moved here, you know, the garden setting out there, she said she’d get me one and have it out here the day I moved in. So I said to her like, “How much do I owe you for that?” and she said, “Oh just say Maurie paid for that”. But like

Judy, one thing, as she got older she knew what he was like. And she said to me once she said, “Mum, I never knew my father was in England when he was in the navy, he was there for 18 months”. I said, “He was never in England in the navy”. He was in the army before he joined the navy, I should’ve realised there must’ve been some problem there why he went from one to the other. And I said, “He was never ever in England”, and she said, “He told me he was there for 18 months”. But, look, he could tell the best of lies and truly, you’d believe him. I’d think, “Well”, you

know, “he’s so earnest it has to be right” and then I’d find out five minutes later that it wasn’t true. Yes, he could tell the best stories out. But that was the best one, that he’d had 18 months in England.

I think at the time it upset her because she wasn’t old enough to know and when we went up to Toowoomba, it was I think her eighth

birthday, he sent her a wristwatch. Well that was something that I couldn’t afford to give her in those days because I was clothing her and I was so mad, I said to her, “You sit down and write and thank him for it and tell him that it doesn’t fill your belly or pay for your school books”. But after that, I don’t think she ever got anything else after that. And he owed me something like 600 pounds in maintenance and things like that, I mean, there was no good sending him to jail for it, I would’ve never have got the money out of him.

So I wouldn’t have been any better off. But, you know, as I said, just saved all that money and I thought, “The best thing I can do is get out of it now and start another life for yourself”. You do that, that’s actually when I joined the naval association and did all the things I’ve done with them. But, you know, I’ve been lucky, I’ve been to conferences everywhere with them in all the states and everything and I’ve

Yes, I joined the naval association when the WRANS formed and I went as a delegate to state council, you know, I was interested in it. And went as a delegate for state council and you move on and I’d been state secretary and we had a bit of a problem with the state president and, like, I stood against him and I was the first woman that had been here in Brisbane. But,

you know, you went around to all the conferences in the different states and met all people. You know, sit with the admirals, not that that interested me but you get to know a different side of life by talking to these people. And actually in 1993, I was awarded the Order of Australia for my work with ex-servicemen and women, veterans and war widows.

Yeah, yeah, that’s the little tiny badge that’s on it,

you can’t wear your big medals everywhere. And

It was wonderful, yes, because I didn’t know anything about it until they wrote and asked me would I accept it. You generally hear bits and pieces about these things, but it was one of the men that had done it because he said I’d actually done nearly every job on the state council. I’d been state; the only thing I’ve never taken on is treasurer of anything. I said, “I can’t manage my own money so I don’t

expect to manage anyone else’s”. But, yes, I still go over to the naval association office twice a month if I can get there, twice a month and do voluntary work, there’s always work there to do. And I’ve taken a great interest in it.

Naval Association?

It’s main aim is to keep ex-naval men and women together and to help them wherever possible, to help with work and that.

Oh well, there’s lots of photocopying and typing, that’s why I just bought that second-hand computer, because, I had a fiddle with the one over there and I thought, “I’ll put in some time fiddling with the computer, see what I can do with it”. But there are phones to answer and letters to get out and plenty of work to do, you know, you can never get enough volunteers, like everything. But, yeah, actually I’ve spent

all my later life with the naval association and it’s, I suppose it’s sort of taken up all my time and I’ve got a lot out of it. I mean, I’ve got things out of it that I wouldn’t have got otherwise.

Well, as I say, trips to Tasmania for conferences and that and Western Australia, I’d have probably never gone to those places. Yes, it’s all been fairly interesting.

Yes, please don’t mention that. I don’t know, and see, at the time I was a trustee on the Anzac Day Trust, you know, when the clubs open in the afternoon now, when they first opened in the afternoon Anzac Day used to be the full day memorials and that. And when they opened in the afternoon they never made it a point

but they’ve asked people to give a small percentage of what they earn. Which is very little, nobody, they should’ve made a point of saying, you know, you give one percent of what you earn but the government put in a lot of money towards it. And then all the ex-service organisations can apply for their welfare, what welfare they’ve done through the year. And you’ve got to go through all their applications and all their orders, statements and that. And you have three trustees

and they’ve all got to agree on them. And I only stood down from that last year because, I went on that because they never had a woman on it and everybody was saying they should have a woman on it and then they said, “Well you go on it”, and I said yes. I didn’t realise you had to be almost a chartered accountant to go through the work on it. But, yes, I’ve been, and see, I was president for the council of ex-servicemen for quite some years. And that’s made up by three delegates from all the ex-service organisations

because we feel you can get more through parliament or that if you’re in a group, rather than each one trying separately. And we have managed to get, you know, a few different things through over the years. We raised 11 thousand dollars for an Arjo bath for, Ken Moore was there at the time, it’s now Pinjarra Hills. It’s a bath where they don’t have to take the patient out of the chair to bath them; the chair goes over the bath and goes down into it. And they

bath them and then bring the chair up again. And we raised that and then raised enough money to put an attachment on it. You know, we’ve done a lot of things like that, raised money for Pinjarra Hills, we furnished a couple of the rooms when they were first opened there. And now they all sort of furnish their own. But, you know, I’ve enjoyed working and it’s a thrill when you get something through. I didn’t really think we’d raise enough money for the Arjo bath, we thought we

might be able to give something towards it. But we raised just about enough to get it. I wrote to every RSL sub-branch in Queensland. Some we got five dollars from, some we got 20, some we got more. It was really good though, as it came in, you know, you’re counting it; it really feels good to think you’ve done something like that. Because, see, those things are really too expensive for even the government to provide, aren’t they? When you think of it. I mean they can provide other things,

like stadiums and things. But they can’t provide the necessities for people that need it.

Yes.

Yes, I think it was because you were

out amongst people so much. You know, at work in a hairdressing salon you’re doing younger people as well as older people. But you get into the service and you’re round about the same age and you’re more mature and you seem to be doing things that the others are doing that benefit people. Where when they’re very young, you know, you’re not being able to get that, well, you can’t get that sense out of a lot of young people, can you?

I think I matured a lot when I went in, yes, really did. But I was still able to enjoy myself, you know, I don’t think I’ll ever get away from being able to do that. I don’t think, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, I think you should get some enjoyment out of it for yourself, shouldn’t you.

Yes, I think so, yeah. But,

no, I think it matured me very much.

Well I don’t know, there seems to be a lot of men’s organisations, like the RSL and naval association, air force association, you’ve got disabled associations and TPI,

there’s a lot of men’s associations. Admittedly a lot of men won’t join them for some reason, but they’re there if they want to take advantage of them. See, this man next door wouldn’t, he’s a TPI and he wouldn’t join the TPI association until we talked him into it. And I said to him, “When you go out you just wear your badge, people know you’re TPI”.

Yes. Yes, they take us in now even though we weren’t overseas.

Mind you, I don’t believe we should be there. I still think it was a thing for the returned men. It was brought in after the first war, after World War I. But I belong to Kedron Wavell ex-servicewomen and you join the club, the women’s service and the RSL all in the one lot of money. But I don’t go to any of the meetings or that, I don’t feel that I’m qualified enough to go to their

meetings.

Yes. Yeah. Yes, I feel it’s something for the returned men. But there’s no shortage of organisations for ex-service people to belong to, you know, they’ve got every avenue if they want to join something. And you really can get further in a group than you can with one or two people. We had one of our members, she was actually in the WRANS longer than I

was and she was only given one medal because it cut off at the end of the war. But she was a cook down at Flinders and they were left in till the very last which meant she was in well over three years. But we worked hard and we finished up getting them the second medal. A lot of talking of course, but she was thrilled to think she had two medals. Well it was only fair, like, she had longer than I had in there. But a lot of these things aren’t very well thought out, are they? The big

boys don’t figure out a lot of things too well, do they? Sometimes you wonder how they get to parliament.

Yeah. I’ve marched every year in the city, yes, except one year I’d just come out of hospital with a back operation and I couldn’t march. But I do march every year, yes.

Oh.

Well I suppose it was about 1955 or 56, the WRANS decided they’d march. The first year we marched we had a little flag with WRANS on it on a broomstick, that’s all, it was a last minute thing that we decided we could march. And then we formed the subsection after that and we’ve our big flag now of course.

Yeah, we march and then we usually have lunch somewhere afterwards. All get together.

Yes, yeah, that’s right.

Yes, I think the WAAAF branch has been in existence

for ages, and most of the AWAS joined the ex-service women. Just, although they take in everybody, most of the army girls joined that. And then the nursing corps have their own organisation. And of course most of them are older than we are because they were trained nurses before they went in, which sort of put them a lot older than us.

I think it means

a lot, I think it takes me back to my father’s time as much has anything. Of course, when he was alive, it was a full day memorial service. And that was the only day in the year my father had out by himself, was Anzac Day, and Mum used to take us down to see the march, the march used to be in the afternoon. And Mum used to take us down to see it in the afternoon and come home with Dad then. But, yes, I think it takes me back to World War I and,

I’m happy to march while I can. I mean, the time will come very soon when I won’t be able to make it. I tell you what, the march down Adelaide Street gets longer every year. They move it I’m sure, every year. It’s a real effort. But we have big ceremonial days, like Navy Week each year is quite a big week for the navy, we have the big service at St John’s Cathedral and little march to where they’re having the luncheon afterwards. You know,

lots of things like that. Get a chance to wear your medals. And I’ve got the highest award of the Naval Association, which is a meritorious medal. I’ve got that and got my other two medals and the one for the

The Naval

Yeah, service medal. Well after you’ve been in five years and you’ve done five continuous years service you get a certificate of service. After 15 years you can get a life membership. Then they did bring out a membership for us for anyone that had been in 20 years. A lot of people, through no fault of their own have been members for 20 years but they haven’t been able to work, they’ve worked in the country or lived in the country where there’s been no association. So they brought that out but then they brought the

Meritorious Medal for anyone that’s done 25 years continuous meritorious service for the association, yeah. And then I got the Medal of the Order of Australia, of course. So I march proudly with four medals. I don’t know who’ll take them when I die, I don’t think my family are very interested in them. My little great-grandson is, yes, he said he’d like those when I died.

Oh yes, he was very proud. Used to tell everybody I was in the WRANS and then after the war he’d tell them I was in the WRANS, yes. And I can remember there was a policeman, they used to get him to our church dances in case there were any problems. They always paid a policeman there. And he said to Dad one night he had a phone call about one of his daughters and Dad said,

“Which one”, and he said, “Oh, you’ve got one that just joined the service”, apparently the navy check up, see if you’ve got a police record. So I must’ve passed the police record to get in. He couldn’t have known all the naughty things I’d done, could he? Oh no, but as I said, I’ve lived a fairly full life. It’s been a busy one. Because when you’re tied up

with organisations, there’s always somewhere to go and something to do and somebody having a sweet stall or a cake stall and you’ve got to help with that. With voluntary work you’re never free of jobs, are you? You know, there’s always something to do when you do voluntary work. Because we’ve been very lucky with the WRANS, we’ve had a good crowd although we’ve lost a lot of our wartime ones now, but they’ve always, all been good workers.

I don’t know, it will, it’s a long way from here to the Gabba [Wooloongabba cricket ground], see, we had our office in Charlotte Street for years and it was a state government building and I got it for them through a son-in-law of mine. And we only pay a small rent; I think its 22 dollars a month plus a share of electricity. Then the building was being pulled down in Charlotte Street and they offered us

out at the Gabba. Well, we really didn’t have any choice but to follow, like in a government building, because we don’t have the money. Like anything in the city area, it’s hundreds and hundreds of dollars a week, well, we don’t have that money. So we decided, actually the rooms are nicer there where we are, but it’s all right for the volunteers from the south side but it’s a bit hard for us. I usually go to Petrie and leave the car there and then get the train to the Gabba and there’s a bus goes across Storey Bridge or get a

cab from there. And then by the time you do that home again, you’ve lost a couple of hours in the day. But I go while I can because there are never enough volunteers in anything. I know there’s an ex-WAAAF and she does a lot of voluntary work down in the nursing home and all and she helps people that can’t read or write, you know, to write letters for them or take them on dental appointments and things. She does a lot of work out here. But she said they’ve never got

enough workers. It’s the same, well, everybody’s busy, so many women work today, don’t they?

By the time you work and rear a family you really don’t have much time left. But I’ve done my bit I think.