Australians at War Film Archive

I was born at Alexandria in Central Victoria 19 September 1923. My parents had a mixed dairy farm on the Goulburn

River at Thornton which is out on toward the Hume Weir. Dairy farm, Jerseys, usual pigs, WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and turkeys and all the other things. Dad grew his crops of this and that to feed his stock and potatoes to sell and all those sort of thing. We kids, I am one of 8, the second of 8,

we had a marvellous life even though it was in the depths of the 1932 Depression, we never knew what it was to go without food. There was heaps of that. Plenty of rabbits, there was an old lagoon ran through the property swarming with wild duck. We lived on the lap of the land, a big peaceful patch. Had a very large orchard which mother

used to preserve everything. Jams and so forth. We did very well.

It was to us kids anyway. Rabbits running everywhere in those days, so we chased rabbits, trapped rabbits, ferreted rabbits. Our frontage was to the Goulburn River which was full of Murray Cod and Murray Perch before they put the trout in it and ruined it.

If you ever wanted fish, down we went for an hour or two and home we came with all that was needed. My Dad always had at least 4 illegal drum nets in the river. If we didn’t have time to go fishing we would always get sufficient for a meal. It was a great life.

Yes Catholic family. I remember the early

days two horse buggy and trotting around on these terribly rough roads to Alexandria and wherever we went. Dad was a great one for taking us on picnics; we used to go all over the district. The most weird and wonderful places that was right up our alley of course. Then we moved up in the world, we got a T-Model Ford which was really something.

There weren’t too many cars in the district. I remember when we were small children we would hear these cars coming a couple of mile away over these rough roads and we would race down and swing on the gate and it went past. The same with aeroplanes going over one every 6 months probably and when we were at school the teacher used to let us all out to go out and stare at this little silver thing flitting across the

sky. A far cry from things of today but I suppose it was all part of the times. Money was terribly short, heaps of people roaming the roads looking for feeds or work.

Mother always cooked enough for 2 extra every midday and we invariably

had two or maybe three extra. We couldn’t give them work but we could give them a meal. She always wrapped them up a big parcel of sandwiches for their evening meal. They used to tell us that “There were heaps of places where they put the dogs onto them”. There were other people like my Dad and Mum who were only too happy because we had plenty of food to give them a feed.

They would sleep in the stables for the night or whatever. It was terrible times particularly for their wives and families at home. They left so they wouldn’t be eating what bit of food from the bit of dole money that was handed out, which wasn’t very much. The war changed all that eventually.

I went off at 5 to the little Thornton State School about 1½ mile walk. I had the one teacher for the 8 years. He came there the year I started and he left there the year I finished there. He must have thought he had accomplished his mission in that area.

He had about 30 to 40,

two classrooms, six classes in one room and two in the other. One other teacher and a lass who used to come and look after the bubs and do whatever she had to do of an afternoon. It was a lovely little spot, the same school was opened in 1874 and is still open, it has never been shut in all that time.

There have been Robbs and our cousin Gilmours our cousins across the road in that school non stop for practically 150 years. Half the district were related to one another and the other half that weren’t related to you were related to one another, we think we got out just in time. Later on in life I was at a

cousin’s funeral at Mansfield and one of the cousins from over the road I had a yarn with him and he said “I have some great news for you Frank, I have researched the Robb Gilmour marriages, because there were at least 6 or 8, and I have discovered we are not inbred”. I said “That is the best news I have heard for years”.

Yes.

We already knew. I went through my school years at Thornton and enjoyed them as much as kids enjoy school. Lots of fun to and from school summer and winter. Winter horrendous floods. We had to wind our way

through until they put the second wall in the weir. In summer time our favourite past time was chasing and killing tiger snakes. At home the place was riddled with them because we grew up with them.

I had one brother who got bitten twice but he was the one who volunteered to dig up the unexploded bombs later on. He survived that too.

You got a sixth sense as far as that, I am sure of that, I had a few narrow squeaks but here I am.

I was the only one to be a farmer. I got my Merit Certificate when I turned 13, you weren’t allowed to leave school until you were 14. 1937,

they put a couple of extra rooms on the state school in Alexandra, that was the high school the year it opened. They have had one ever since. There were 4 of us who used to ride bikes from Thornton to Alexandra High School and home every day. Marvellous road but we became very fit.

I wasn’t really interested in high school. The school I had been going to, strict discipline, you could hear a pin drop in the classroom during classes or God help.

When I went to Alexandra it was absolute bedlam, I couldn’t study. What saved my bacon was

at the end of the 2nd term we had Polio plague of the country for about 12 months. They thought we had a case in the district, so they closed all the schools for 6 weeks to 2 months. That has happened all over the state.

Home to Dad and the farm and the cows.

I never went back to school, I left school at 14.

I was 15 nearly 16 when war broke out.

Not exactly, when I turned 16 a month or two afterwards, I wasn’t interested in it then, but I was a very boyish looking 16. I would have Buckley’s [no chance] of getting in plus my father would have objected.

He was a returned man from the First World War.

Not a great deal until I was in the army, when I was home occasionally I learnt more then than he had talked about in his life. Particularly after I came home from New Guinea. I went home to work on the farm which I happily did until I

was 16. Dad had evidently had enough of farming, so he leased the farm and bought a business in Yea, so when I was 16 much to my disappointment. I worked around the district for 12 months, sheep farms and dairy farms and then I was offered a job on the bush sawmill a way up in the mountains in the back of

Maryville, 4 guineas a week, I was getting a £1 a week and my tucker as a farm assistant.

That was big money for a boy going on 17. Away I went. I stuck it for 5 months, it nearly killed me, it was heavy and hard work.

I wasn’t working on the mill, on the saw mill

the food was pretty rough and the work was hard. Come Christmas holidays one of my mates said “There was one of the local fellows who worked in the local butter factory was joining the AIF [Australian Imperial Force], there would be a job there”, so I put in for it and I got it. I went off to work in the butter factory. Great job, thoroughly enjoyed it.

It was heavy work again but at least it was clean. I was living at home and by this time all the soldiers were coming over from Puckapunyal for dances and what not, so I would help in the café. We would have anything from up to 80 to 100 waiting on a meal. That was part of the war effort. The factory, I thoroughly enjoyed,

thoroughly enjoyed that, we weren’t hearing a lot of what was going on but as soon as I turned 18 I wanted to join the AIF and my dad said “No way known I am signing papers for an 18 year old to go off to war”. Having been there himself as a 25 year old. Anyway a month later the Japanese obliged by dropping the bombs on Pearl Harbor and even though I was

in a protected industry before you could say “Jack Robinson”, I got my call up papers.

No he didn’t have any say.

That was the start of my army career.

The army. I went into camp in about 2 o’clock in the morning at Fishermen’s Bend, camped on an old filled in garbage dump, it wasn’t pleasant and for a month they used us as labour for stores around South Melbourne and Spencer Street Railway Station loading trains.

I will never forget the first morning I woke up in Fishermen’s Bend, they were short of tents, we got in about 2 o’clock in the morning, so they piled 8 of us into one tent. We woke up and sat up in the morning and looked at each other, all bush bunnies, some a wee bit older than me. Four of them had never been to Melbourne in their lives before, one had never been to school, could neither read nor write,

I was fortunate I had a few holidays in Melbourne with rellies [relatives] at Christmas. I knew a little bit about the place but I was the only one that did. Come Sundays I used to just nick off and go into town or out to rellies or something or other. After a couple of weeks I thought “Poor beggars”, I volunteered to take these 4

that had never been anywhere in their lives before, they hadn’t moved out of the camp. I said “Get yourselves showered and dolled up and we will go into town for the day”. I said “I am going for a shower now, be ready when I get back”. When I got back they were still sitting there, they said “We haven’t got any leave passes”. I said “Well, I haven’t either. The MPs [Military Police]

might catch us”. Another bloke said “I have got to write to me mum”. I said “I will see you tomorrow morning”. It was rather pitiful with some of the country lads who had never been anywhere in their lives. They did change in time. After a month we got marching orders and I was sent in an advance party to Mount

Martha to get a camp ready for the rest of the crew, which we did. Everybody arrived and we were there down the bullring, we did all the preliminary training. We were a transport company, I had never driven a vehicle in my life so naturally they put you in a transport company but you had to do all the preliminary training. We marched all over the Mornington Peninsula,

drilled around the bullring down near the beach at Mount Martha.

At 18, it was all a new life and you didn’t worry much about these sort of things. I used to love dancing, so I used to go to the dances around the Mornington Peninsula. They would march us here and march us there and we would camp out at night

or two. I remember one camp at Red Hill in the middle of winter under tent flies, we were up there for 2 days. As soon as we got there down it came in buckets. In no time we were drenched all of us. The put me on guard from 10 o’clock until 2 out on the road about half a mile away through the scrub and nobody turned up to relieve me, so after half an hour I thought

“This is no place for you”, I thought “They can court martial me if they want to”, but I got lost in this scrub trying to find my tent fly. Eventually I did, I made my bed with a groundsheet under it and it had 4 inches of water in it, so I was feeling pretty miserable. I just put my hand under and tipped the water out and climbed in between the blankets

and slept like a log until morning. It was still pouring rain the next day, so we gave it away and we all went back to camp. It was one of the experiences I could have done without.

Yes a bivouac. Training bivouac they called it. I don’t know what they were doing scrambling around in the scrub because we didn’t do anything

because it rained the whole time.

New Guinea. After I had been in that company for about six months they formed the 151 up the road and I was with the 16th Supply Company for a start, it was 2 Corps Troop Supply Company which became the 16th Supply Company. They formed a new unit which was the 151 in the area,

every unit in the area had to supply a nucleus of men to make the new company. Naturally they got rid of all their trouble makers first and a few innocents like me. We had a pretty rough bunch of fellows to start but they were bored to death with mainly doing nothing. We had lots of AWOLs [Absent Without Official Leave] and

God knows what else for the first 3 or 4 months until the unit settled down. We moved camp a few hundred yards, half a mile up the road into what the Balcom Camp, one had joined the other, a new camp site. Still no driving instructions.

I was in the unit transport company all the time and we were to be drivers. We thought “They are never going to teach us to drive”.

This crusty old sergeant arrived out on the parade ground one morning and said “You, you and you, fall out over there”. So we fell out. He said “We are going for driving instructions”. Hooray. We piled into the back of a truck and went down the road. We each had 10 minutes behind the wheel of a truck and went back to camp. Anyway 3 weeks later “Right oh, fall out”. Down the back road for another 10 minutes of driving instructions

before each one finished our little turn he said “Back down behind those two trees”. So we backed round between the trees and back out and went back to camp. We thought “We are never going to get a license at this rate”. When we got back to camp he said “Stay where you are until I come back”. He came back 15, 20 minutes later and handed each one of us a license.

That afternoon they put each of us in a truck without another driver and took us down the beach road to Rye which was only an old dirt road with a drop of about 300 feet into the ocean onto the rocks. I was….

That would be putting it mildly. We got there and we got back. Over the next 3 months I suppose I drove 100 miles a couple of times on night convoys and once or twice doing a bit of a job around the Peninsula. The week before Christmas they called 60 of us out and said “Right,

get your small pack and a change of clothing enough to last you a week”. “Where are we going?” “You will find out”. So we all went into trucks and we finished up at Broadmeadows camp. There is 37 ton semi trailers brand spanking new lined up in a row. They said “You are driving them to Terowie in South Australia”. “To Terowie, where is that, never heard of it? But we have never driven semis”. “Oh well, you will be able to when you get there”.

They promptly put us into the trucks and we had to drive into South Melbourne and load them and then find your own way back in the city in semis which we had never driven before.

7 ton, no they weren’t as big as what they have nowadays.

No.

They were not the prime mover; they only had an ordinary sized truck prime mover in front of them to pull them.

What length.

I suppose 2–3 ton trucks length on a turn table like a semi trailer and that was a big deal for us kids.

We thought we were big men. A couple took out a couple of lamp posts on the way home because they didn’t pull out wide enough on bends. They didn’t allow for the trailer behind. We set sail and we got to Terowie eventually which was the ends of the earth. God forsaken place. About 200 miles north of Adelaide out on the spinifex,

red dust and spinifex for as far as you could see. We got there and we got back which was a great experience.

By train.

We went to Terowie and we put the trucks up on the Railway trucks and chained them down, they were going to Alice Springs for the Australian run but we never ever got to Central Australia.

That was in December 1942, in January 43 we were moved from Malcolm to Roble Camp just outside Dandenong because the American Marines came in from Guadalcanal and took over the whole of that camp area.

We were only in Roble for about a month, we got our marching orders. All the trucks were loaded onto railway flats and we set sail for Brisbane. Big deal. That took us about a week and we rode in our truck cabins all the way to.

Yes on the train

but the drivers had to live in their truck cabins all the way to Brisbane.

No. Well they were not the big old Blitz. At least we had a cabin you could spread out in. Most of them were impressed vehicles from industry. The army just said “We want that, we want that and took them”.

They had a cabin in them, later on when we went to New Guinea we only had the big old tyred 4 wheel drive Blitz’s cabin with you cooking you in the tropics and nowhere to sleep, only in the tray out the back. We made it to Brisbane and then onto Murgon

out between from Kingaroy, Murgon, Gympie that area. That was the Brisbane line where we were supposed to stop the Japs when they landed in Australia.

No. We drove over it plenty of times. We moved into a patch of scrub there and they put us to work

making a camp. As most of us were bush bunnies used to swinging an axe but that Queensland ironwood was the toughest timber I ever tried to cut down but we put a camp together. We didn’t have much work to do around the area not with our transport wise a bit here and a bit there,

we were only there until July. We set to work and make this tremendous camp set up and just got ourselves reasonably comfortable and time to move again. While we were there we did have a traumatic couple of weeks, dysentery went right through the whole unit. Nearly killed me, they packed me off to the big hospital in

Gympie.

I think it just ran its course in those days. They probably have drugs now.

I can’t remember 2 days. It took them a week to get me to the big hospital in Gympie. I was there one night and still haven’t had anything to eat

and a little nurse aid comes round the next morning and says to the fellow in the bed next to me, “Come on up you fellows, you are being discharged today”. I said “That can’t be right I only arrived yesterday, we still haven’t had anything to eat for a week”. “It is all right for you lot get up and go”. So we got up and went. I was over the worst of it apparently and we staggered down to a café this chap knew of in the evening and had a huge steak and eggs.

We finished that and he said “Could you go another one?” I said “Without any trouble”. So we got another helping and we ate that and we never looked back.

No.

Yes we were.

That wasn’t a very pleasant experience. That is one thing I really remember about

my stay at Murgon.

No. It was just a mistake somewhere in the system. I guess she probably got into trouble later on. I suppose they reckon they have gone; they will be back again if they are crook [ill] again. We went back to our units and I haven’t seen him from that day to this but I can still remember his name. Corporal Frank Tanner.

He looked after me when I was feeling pretty seedy, he was better than me when we left. After we had a good feed we were right.

I got back to camp, I was only there about a week and they sent me off on leave home to Yea for, I think we had 2 weeks

and that was just out of the blue. I really enjoyed that. When we arrived back at Royal Park staging camp, quite a few of us were sent there, to go back to Queensland they called all the 151 personnel out to one side. I thought “What the heck is going on now?” They said “You are driving 3 ton trucks back to Brisbane”.

Brand new ones that they need up there. We had this trip from Melbourne to Brisbane in the dead of winter. No blankets, no nothing, we nearly froze to death. The frost is.

In those days we took it in easy stages, it took us the best part of a week.

They didn’t do many things in any great rush.

The Hume Highway was there but it was just an ordinary two lane bitumen road.

I doubt it. There would have been a road, possibly bitumen, possibly not because a lot of the roads were not bitumised until after the war.

The country roads up round where we lived you had no bitumen roads, they were all gravel roads and most of the, we went up the Newell Highway, what is now the Newell Highway to Brisbane then and I think a fair bit of it was gravel and there were bitumen in spots. It was a great adventure because I was

19, I had my 18th birthday in September about the time the 151 was put together.

It was training in case we were needed in a major emergency. Pretty boring a lot of the time.

We didn’t have a great deal to do but then we drove our trucks back to Brisbane. Left them there and caught the train out to Murgon, we were only there one week when they closed camp and took all our. When we got

to Queensland we became part of the 3rd Armoured Division Transport attached to the 3rd Armoured Division in that area. The Armoured Division berets and the jackets and everything and colour patches, big deal, that was for 6 months

but then we got our marching orders and we had to hand in everything we were issued with greens, we know where we are going. It was on the Monday, on the Friday we were in Brisbane and on the Sunday morning we were on the boat heading for New Guinea. I had relatives in Brisbane so I spent the last evening, went out and

had a surprise visit. They had lived in Alexandra before they moved there, it was a big family, mainly girls. A couple my age so they gave me a wild welcome. The mother had a block of shops in Hamilton on the Brisbane River just across the road. The ship in those days,

the port area was up the river, I believe it is down the mouth of Brisbane the port area, we went down the river and they were out on the bank to wave me goodbye, so they were out to see me off which was more than most had.

Our time at Buna that was pretty hectic there. We caught an old Chinese cargo boat, an all Chinese crew,

he was Captain Cook believe it or not and away we went.

Just men. We didn’t take any vehicles with us, they came up after us we took over the vehicles from another couple of companies that were there. Some of them had come back from the Middle East.

They were still going. To go back to the ship we sailed up to Townsville and inside the islands which was a fantastic trip for us land lubbers. Apart from the conditions on the boat we had nearly 1,000 men on board, other units as well, no facilities whatsoever not even a,

they put some sort of cook house up on deck, the meals were pretty rugged. Hammocks slung in on the first deck of the ship, cargo deck. Down we go and we have all got our hammock and we get into it the first night. The ventilation was a couple of big canvas chutes down

through a hatchway. There is about 6 or 700 men swaying backwards and forwards in this, you have never heard such weird and wonderful noises in all your life. You can imagine 6 or 700 men living on pretty rough tucker.

No, I am not talking about mechanical noises.

Yes it was. I woke up next morning with a horrendous headache and the stench of the place was unbelievable,

so I thought “That is the last time I sleep down there”. I found myself a nice little corner round behind the winch on deck. The deck was a bit hard but the air was fresh and clear.

To New Guinea, I think it took about 10 days altogether.

From Brisbane to Buna.

When we finally arrived in Buna it was down over into the nets and into the barges and we hit

Buna, one of the little beaches at Buna at Cape Endaiadere where the last final huge battle for Buna was fought out.

Yes, it was months after the battle was all over, the Salamaua/Lae push was on and it was the main forward base for that campaign.

No 43, July 43 when we landed up there and it was August/September before they finally took Lae and Salamaua. We landed there and within 3 hours I was in a truck. They had built a wharf and there was a ship at the wharf.

Barges running in from other ships standing off the coast a bit. It was straight into it; we never had time to think about it much. That was an all night shift. Japanese planes went over at night they dropped a bomb or two on the track but not on us thank God.

Yes.

It was all new, we were a little bit nervous. They never came near us on that particular night. It didn’t worry us too much but then there was one Japanese I guess a reconnaissance plane used to come over fairly frequently of a night and he would drop a bomb here and a bomb there but never

went near us in the scrub, so we thought “He is pretty harmless”. It was straight into action and straight into 12 hour shifts, which meant a 14 hour day and you never got a day off unless you were crook or unless you were changing shifts from they might give you a break from day to night.

No.

You mean on the job. A few of our men did get sent back to Australia for leave but only a small minority. Most of us were up there for over 2 years without any leave. We were that busy. A lot of the other units used to say “God you fellows work long hours”. We did. Straight into it

7 o’clock in the morning until 7 o’clock in the evening. 7 at night until 7 in the morning.

We were only in Buna for a bit over 2 months. The unit was distributed around the area, some of them were down the coast at Oro Bay and a couple of them

half way between because the Yanks had an airfield there. Dobodura Airfield where their bombers used to leave from on that side of the range plus cargo transport which was only about 3 mile down the rough track. The Japs had built this sandy track through a swamp, a lot of it corduroy with coconut palm trunks. If you got off it you

were in big trouble. It was only wide enough for one truck with passing bays here and there. The poor drivers, those who weren’t very good drivers, frequently went over the side. The area was a hive of industry at that stage of the peace there were ships coming in and out, we had mountains of supplies with supplies stacked up. A lot of it out in the hot sun but it was being broken up and being

sent further north at the same time. We were busy bees plus any other transport requirements around the area, we had to supply them as well as the wharf duty. By this time our amphibious platoon had arrived and they were flat to the boards racing out to the ships and they could drive straight in and straight out,

which made it very easy. We were the first company to have amphibious trucks in the Australian Army.

No, that platoon came down on the beach and I never got the opportunity to spend a bit of time there. You would see them in action all the time because they would be running in and out beside us. We all knew one another.

The same company. The other company was out at Nadzab at the big airport.

It was largely, the Australian had fighting units and bombing units, Mitchell bombers and what not. There were 7 or 8 strips there.

Yes. Amazing place I spent

2 months out there when I was doing my stint, I had my first aeroplane trip thanks to the army. To get back to Lae when we landed we caught the LSD [Landing Ship Dock], a big thousand ton just opened up and we just drove all our trucks in and a big hoist filled the deck up top and then you filled the

place and away we went. We left about 4 in the afternoon and I think we got to Lae 8 or 9 o’clock the next evening. They said “You have to get off as quickly as you can” because they were still bombing Lae from time to time.

I went back to Buna, I think 22 September,

I had just had my 19th birthday a couple of days before when the Salamaua/Lae push was really on and we were working on the beach shifting tons and tons of food and ammunition. There were stacks of it everywhere. They had two huge lamps, one on each end of the beach about 300

yards apart, it was a fantastic light, the moon was out bright, it was nearly like broad daylight, and about five past 4 in the morning and I am just backing onto a barge on the beach just beside the wharf and all hell broke lose. I got thrown clean out of the truck, I was backing onto the barge and the first time I backed up I

wasn’t quite square, so I had to pull forward and line it up and I just got the rear wheels of the truck on the barge when everything blew up. I gathered my wits and I am out on the sand. We had pulled all the doors off the trucks because it was too hot with the engine in the cabin.

When I gathered my wits I scrambled under the truck while the rest of it went on

and I thought “I have got to get out of here, if they come round for a second run I am a dead duck”.

Yes, they dropped the bombs. We could hear the planes, by this time I go to race across the sand in front of the truck and there was a bomb crater 8 or 10 foot wide and about 6 feet deep,

4 foot in front of the truck, I backed off that bit of ground 3 seconds before that is how lucky you can be. When I pulled forward to line up the truck and that is exactly where it fell. Yet the truck hardly had a mark on it. It fell deep in the sand and blew straight up and the poor beggars further out were the ones that copped it. It was about

30 odd casualties and nearly the same number injured that night. I lost a tent mate and 2 or 3 other platoon mates. That was that night for us.

You read about these tropical moons, full moon and then we had the whole beach lit up and why we weren’t warned I will never know. We heard afterwards that they

had been warned by the coast watchers that they were coming but army headquarters was about 5 mile out in the jungle at 4 o’clock in the morning they could have quite easily had a big night and bravado issued orders that all work was to continue until the first bombs dropped. It cost about 60 casualties between dead and wounded, hit the ship and put a couple of winches out of action

and there was only unloaded at that end about a third of the ship. Consequently, they couldn’t unload the other end, only to a third down it went back to Brisbane with everything on board still. There was no work on the wharf for nearly 24 hours. The less said the better. Three days later they piled us onto, we buried our dead and

later they piled us onto these LSTs [Landing Ship Tanks], which was probably the best thing that happened and away we went to Lae, a whole new ball game. Just a mud heap pile when we got there. We drove out next morning to a camp area, we were only there for 2 days because there was a bog hole from there into the wharf and there were already ships being unloaded there,

they used to have break down vans pulling us through this swamp, so they decided we better camp on the other side of the swamp which we did until the engineers put a road through for us. Straight into action again - 12 hour shifts. 22 months, I worked 12 hour shifts non stop

Some of them went off their heads and had to be sent home. The nature of the, we had a lot of tropical, most of them got malaria, which meant 2 days in hospital. I was fortunate I never ever got malaria.

Yes we all took Atebrin but that didn’t make any difference, you might not get quite as bad

but I didn’t get it. The only time I thought I was getting it, I had been up there for 12 or 15 months and I knocked off night shift this night and I was feeling dreadful, so I went on sick parade and I walked into the doctor’s tent. He said “Name, unit” and as I said “151 AGT” [Australian General Transport], he never even examined me. He said “2 weeks in hospital, rest, they are killing you”.

Yes, we were always. It always amazed me; we never ever had much friction in the camp all the hours we were working. I think the reason was we were too tired to. Mind you we were walking zombies most of the time. One night I walked into the ward of the hospital, I was filthy; I had just come off night shift and hadn’t had a shave for

a couple of days. The nurse took one look at me and said “Get into that bed”. I said “I will have to go and have a shower first”. She said “No, you get into that bed”, so I did. I woke up, it was dark and swung my legs over the side and shook my head and the little bloke in the bed next to me, a little infantry man with about 4 Japanese bullets through him he said “Are you all right? “God”, he said, you can sleep”. I said “What

time is it?” He said “It is half past eight”. I said “Hell I never got in here until about 8 o’clock this morning”. “No, no he said yesterday morning”. They wouldn’t wake me. I slept for 33 hours straight and I was as good as gold. I had to spend the whole 2 weeks there, so I put in the 2 weeks as an extra orderly for the nurses. One of them her parents had sent her up a few packets of flower seeds; she wanted to plant these seeds

so I said “Well get me a shovel and show me where you want them”. Whether they ever grew I don’t know but I put them in for her.

I had 2 weeks off and it was fantastic but once I had the sleep. I had a strange dream; I dreamt there was a little Chinaman trying to wake me,

he chuckled and he didn’t say anything. The next morning the doctor comes around 8.30 and he said “You can sleep”, and I look up and it is a little Australian Chinese. He said “I tried for 10 minutes to wake you yesterday”. I said “Well you damn near did but you didn’t quite make it”. When I woke up there was a poor beggar on the other side, he is hopping around he had one leg off. He said “You beaut, you beaut,

come over here I want to shake your hand”. I said “What gives with him”. He said “A pretty boring life”, so they have got this competition, a quid in guessing when I would wake and he won and collected over £50 which was a fortune in those days, he was delighted.

It was sheer guess work. Anyway I enjoyed my little stay there.

When I went back to the wharf it was a hive of industry. Vehicles just went past non-stop 24 hours a day. Once the American engineers came in and Nadzab was the main forward air base in the south west Pacific, they had every plane. Biggest planes and bombers, Liberators everything out there, it was unbelievable.

It would have been January-February 1944, it might have been a bit later. We had been up there at least 12 months or more and we arrived up there in July 43.

I went straight back to camp. I had the 2 weeks. I was lucky,

a lot didn’t get it then.

I was there for 22 months, we nearly went bonkers at the finish. After 6, 8, 10, 12 months that things and the war had moved on but we were still a vital supply area, it was the major port for further up. Everything went through

there and through Nadzab.

Yes. All around the Solomons.

We had been there for 22 months and it had been fireflies running around for 2 or 3 months that we were gong to be relieved, we are going to be relieved,

eventually I was back in hospital again for something, I can’t remember what it was for and one of the fellows came and said ‘You have got to get out of here”, he said “We are going home”. “I said “Is it definite?” He said “I think it is this time”. Sure enough it was and I was still in hospital and I didn’t want to get left behind because you could be there for another 6 months.

No this is the 2/7th AGH [Australian General Hospital] in Lae, a full military hospital. They had been to the Middle East first and then they came back up there, fantastic they were. Huge place, full hospital. In Lae when we went there, there were no roads at all and the Putibum River[?] was a little river meandered down through the middle of the area,

the wharf area was on one side of the river, that is the sea and we are facing the land, the river is here and land there, all the Australian area was on the other side of the river. They built a 13 mile circuit road out from Lae right in a big circle and back to where it started. All the Australian units, stores everything were placed

either side of that road right around this. I don’t know how many times I drove round that for the time I was there, 2/7th AGH was about half way round in an area, they set it all up. That is where they set our camp up and it would be 2 or 3 miles from where our camp is.

I knew of one or two fellows who were left behind and they had 2 months more before they were posted back home.

Well there wasn’t much wrong with me. Lo and behold the day they were leaving, a Jeep arrives at the hospital with orders to pick me up. I get on there, I said “I haven’t got any of my gear.

kit, I don’t know whether anyone would take it, they would be loaded up with their own”. “You had better race back to the camp”. It was eerie there wasn’t a soul left. They were all on the ship and I raced into my tent and lo and behold here is all my kit sitting in the tent, natives or anybody could have come along and knocked the lot off. To make a long story short, it was there thank God.

I got into the Jeep down to the wharf and down to the gang plank and they pulled it up behind me.

So I was very pleased to be there. I was an afterthought; they thought “Frank is not here”.

Yes it was.

The 2 months in Nadzab, we used to take turns in being sent out there with a couple of trucks to act as transport to run the supplies out to the aeroplane load them on and then go with the DC3’s out up to the forward lines. Freeze

to death on the way, push the stuff out, usually 8 or 10 trips to get it all out eventually, parachutes, a lot of us was free drop. I don’t know what a lot of it was like when it hit the ground. That is where I had my first aeroplane trip, it was quite an experience. It was an interesting place because you could drive into it in broad daylight.

The first time I was ever out there, I had three 2,000 bombs in the back of my truck, 30 miles, American Negro engineers put 30 miles of all main roads through virgin jungle in 6 weeks.

Yes a lot of them did.

I think in other fronts these were the only ones that arrived. There were heaps of other Americans there too.

A lot of them were in engineering companies, yes. I would say now 90% of the ones in Lae were in engineering companies and when they finished there they moved them onto other areas once they were required. The machinery they had was unbelievable; we had never seen anything like it in our lives.

Well I said we boarded the ship and away we went. We were half way across the Coral Sea and they had put a little news sheet on the board. It was on the Katoomba, the old coastal passenger and cargo ship that we came back on. We did better than

the Anhui on the way up

Yes that is true. We were half way across the Coral Sea when this news sheet went up they had dropped the first atom bomb and everybody thought “What is going to happen now?” We were only too damned pleased we were on board ship heading for home.

We didn’t know what to think. We thought it was an absolutely shocking thing to happen to human beings even though they were Japanese. The prime thought in our mind was we were going home after 2 years in New Guinea. We landed in Townsville and spent a night there and then on the train to Brisbane,

a couple of days on a little coffee pot they had in those days. It was 1,000 miles, it was a long way. We get back to Brisbane and into a staging camp for a couple of days. I paid a surprise visit out to my rellies again, they were pleased to see me and gave me a great welcome of course. Welcome home. Apart from

another little one off. It was a nun actually, there is a little story behind the whole thing and she was very kind to me, only a youngster too.

No she was out, she hadn’t been long out I don’t think.

Then we were getting on board the train from Yeerongpilly one of the pillys anyway in Brisbane at the station about 10 o’clock in the morning and this horrendous roar went up from the crowd, they had dropped another atom bomb in the meantime of course, went up from the city, which was 3 or 4 mile away. We said “The war is over and we are going to be stuck on a damn train”.

A lot of the fellows even though they were going home they cleared out, they weren’t going to miss the celebration. We said “Oh no”. Anyway, as it turned out we were the first train through to Sydney on VP Day [Victory in the Pacific] with return troops from New Guinea and every station we pulled into they had bands, girls, tucker, grog and God knows what all the way to Sydney. The train was like a pigsty when we got there.

So we stopped in Sydney one night, we went the next evening but we did have quite an experience there. They had a general parade in the evening and out comes the old major and he says. “Well fellows”, he says “I have bad news for you, there will be no leave. You are going to relieve the transport unit who have been working their insides out

on the wharves in Sydney for the last two years”. There was nearly a riot.

There was. There was nearly an absolute riot, a couple officers came out and got us calmed down. One of them came down the next morning, he was an old fellow, he said “I have got news, common sense has prevailed you are all going on leave”.

It was. We left Queenslanders in Brisbane,

all the New South Welshmen got off in Sydney and the South Aussies and the Vic [Victorian] fellows went on to Melbourne and the South Aussies on to Adelaide. We landed in Melbourne, I wanted to get off at Seymour because it was only 25 miles from home, but I had to go down and catch a train back to, in those days they still had

the train through to Mansfield. Train back home.

Yes they were, I think I rang them from Melbourne when I went out to see one of my favourite aunts who had been fantastic to us over the years, particularly when I was in the army. Even as kids we used to go down there and have our holidays

and ride all the trains all over Melbourne, go to all the pictures before they ever get to the country and then we would hardly ever see another one for the next 12 months. Home on the train, I got home about 6 or 7 o’clock in the evening, my dad and 3 sisters were waiting on the station and the family dog which was a big old black

retriever, lovely old fellow.

Carolo. It was one of my sisters who was 12 years younger than me, it was her dog. I open the door to step out of the train, the dog sees me and it hit me in the chest and knocked me back into the carriage and I couldn’t get him off me. He was licking my face; he gave me the best welcome home. I finally got him off

and scrambled out. He ran up and down the railway station in circles yapping and carrying on and then he would tear and leap at me again. He did the same all the way down to the shop, the business, which was 2 or 3 streets away. He got under the table when I was having some tea, something to eat and refused to leave. He remembered me.

My younger brother was in the air force, the one who volunteered

He was different, I was a quiet sort of fellow but he was…..

Yes.

He never went away, he went in as an 18 year old and he was doing an aircraft fitter’s course out at

the Showground, Agriculture Showground in the dead of winter. They had them sleeping in little cardboard castles on floorboards palliasses in about 4” of water.

The only member of the family that went overseas. He was stationed in South Australia most of the time and then he went to Wentworth to do his stint. He said a man had to do something that was a little bit of risk in.

He was. We are all still alive but he is pretty sick at the moment. He was a dairy farmer down between Cullinane and Casserton[?] in Casserton now.

Yes I did. It was about January 45, my Dad wrote up to me, it was only twice he wrote to me while I was in the army

and he said “There is a nice property, a bit run down coming up for sale”. I was 21, and he said “I think we could get it very cheaply and if you don’t like it when the war is over you could sell it. You would probably make a 1,000 or two on it”. I thought “In for a penny and in for a pound”. So he sent and he worked all

the legal bit and the solicitors sent all the papers up to me to sign. I took them to my platoon captain, he had to sign them and witness me, a man in his early 40’s from Sydney. When I started telling him what it was all about, he was looking at me, and he said “How old are you?” I said “I am 21”. He said “You look about 17”, which I always did.

He said “You are buying a farm and you are in New Guinea”. I said “The war is nearly over and the worst is gone past and barring accidents, I should make it now”. I said “Anyway we had to make a will, it will all go back to my parents”. “All right”, and he signed the papers and I was a big land owner. When I went back I got out very early

than I would have normally because I had the farm and got an early release, I went straight from living with 400 to 500 men to batching on my own 14 miles out of town, no electricity in a 110 year old pioneer house.

It was heaven. It was a bit traumatic with no company for awhile.

I didn’t eat, I can live without company without any problems, so I soon got used to it. They told me the place was a bit run down. It had about 400 or 500 sheep on it. It was an old couple in their 80’s that Dad had bought it off and they hadn’t done much for years, so there was plenty of work to do. That kept me occupied.

I was there for 10 years, we got,

I built a new home on it to bring my little bride to and then in 51 when the wool prices went crazy, I bought tractors and all the machinery I needed to do the job in a hurry and I went to work. I still had physical problems from my experience at Buna.

I had spinal problems. I have had spinal problems. I was in a couple of rather serious, truck smash ups. On both occasions some other silly clot ran into me when I was parked at about 50 or 60 mile an hour. I spent 10 days in an American hospital after one. They always had ambulances running around the road looking

in case. If you waited on the Australian Army ambulance, well you could be dead before they got there because they were at a base and had to be contacted whereas the Yanks were that little bit more organised.

Yes, you had to. Every soldier had to have a will.

As soon as you went into the army. Shortly after that was the legal procedure that you had to have a will.

No. I suppose I had a couple of hundred pounds which was quite a considerable sum in those days.

No, I didn’t change it. I didn’t want to if anything happened to me it would still go to my parents. I just left everything, at that stage of the peace you had to have a will and I wasn’t married, so I just left it all to my parents to do as they wished with it.

No, they didn’t say that. They said “I had to have a will just in case”, which made common sense. To give you some idea in the change of prices nowadays. It was 510 acres and my Dad paid £2,750 for that.

I sold it for five times that, nearly 10 times that 10 years later because I had put a new home on it and prices had gone up. The young fellow who bought it off me, he just let it go to wrack and ruin the property, he stayed there for about 16 years and he sold it for $60,000 this time and it had 7 titles to it.

The chap that bought it off him did nothing for 2 years with it and the hobby farm business come in and there is now 7 houses on that property and he made over a million out of it.

We took them to our old camp site, they took over

the whole of Mount Martha and Balcombe which were two camps, one beside the other and we moved to Rowviille. For 2 weeks after we landed them they came off the ships and on trains down to Mornington and from Mornington to their camp sites. They astonished us because they still had the muck and mud on them from where they came out of the foxholes. A week or 10 days before the arrivals and equipment were covered in muck and mud,

they looked dreadful. A week later you wouldn’t have known they were the same men, they all got reissued with, they were all terribly sick with tropical bugs and wogs, malaria and God knows what. I was only there for 2 weeks with them; we acted as transport 8 or 10 trucks that were left behind. Which was quite an experience, we found then that the beggars were that delighted to be out of Guadalcanal,

we found them quite terrific.

The first time I had contact with the Americans.

They were only just starting to arrive in the country more or less. We never had a great deal to do with them. I never had any fisticuffs with them or anything. When we met them there were a few we met when we were on leave and that

we got on quite well with them.

Never ever discussed army tactics with them. They were on leave and we were on leave and they didn’t want to talk army and neither did we. Socially on the few occasions when I met them they were. Well, mother

when the Yanks moved into the Seymour area, my parents they used to come across to town to dances and what not, well mother and dad befriended quite a few and used to write to their parents in American to let them know that their sons were OK. They would say “We would love to think of you in the same situation and someone

be concerned about you”. I only had good reports about them myself. There is always every element in every army. We had elements that were always on the prowl for trouble, they seem to thrive on it. Most of us seemed quite happy to let them enjoy life without any hassles.

It was about 25 mile to Yea and another 6 or 7 out the other side to Puckapunyal, I was never in Pucka camp, never.

Yes it would only be for a night. They used to put on dances. Bring a big couple of truck loads of them. It was the same with the Australian Army. They were the same. The few occasions when I was

in the township there was never any hassles.

No. They bought their meals but it was 2/-d. for a huge steak, eggs and salad in those days

and my dad put it up to 2/6d. There was nearly a riot. It is hard to believe we were getting $3/10/- a week and half the civilian weren’t getting any more and they were rearing families on that. It is hard to imagine now, I think it would be nearly impossible to imagine people rearing families on

what they did in the early 30’s. I often think about it myself. Even after the war when we went to work £7 a week, that is $14, that is the

At the butter factory

at Yea, I got a whole £3/10/- there, which was good wages for a 17 year old in those days, everybody else was in the same boat, so your spending was the same as everybody else’s, you are all in the same boat, nobody knew any different.

We all had our little electric wireless, and the newspapers. Newspapers are newspapers, aren’t they? We always listened to the news. I was working when Dunkirk fell, when the Germans over-ran Europe, what was I then 16, I was working on this

10,000 acre sheep property as a jackaroo sort of job, £1 week and my tucker and we used to listen to the news at night and the news was shocking. Everybody was in a state of depression for quite a while, I thought “This is it what can we do now? The Germans have only got to cross the channel and England has got nothing left.”

I will never know to this day why they didn’t.

After a month or two when things had eased up we thought “While there is life, there is hope”. Everybody felt the same. Everybody buckled in and of course all the men had gone. The women in the country and the old men and the boys were astonishing.

They kept the whole of the rural part of the country going nearly full bore. I know lots of farmers’ daughters and bits of lads and old men in their 70’s and 80’s were still out doing what they had done all their lives. You can imagine all the shearing that had to be done and the ploughing and the crop growing because we were feeding half the American Army as well as

our own, it was astonishing.

It was astonishing what the country did with only 7 million people.

There was nearly a million men and women under arms out of a population of 7½ million at the outside, it was unreal.

Yes, that was all the army vehicles we had, I would say 80% was all these sequestered vehicles. The whole of my unit before we left Australia, we never had an army vehicle that had been made specifically as an army vehicle, they had all been impressed from industry and

everywhere.

I don’t know, I should imagine they would, I can’t say with any surety that they were. All our vehicles were just trucks from some industries from around Melbourne or elsewhere.

I think they were directed. Particularly the market gardeners when all the American troops and everybody else came, I think there was some control over what was produced yes, but the dairy farmers they just went ahead as

the women mainly took over. They used to milk the cows, sow the crops and whatever and the sheep properties again, the women were doing it and the land girls; they had the Land Army [Australian Women’s Land Army] which they instigated of course. Those girls did a, I read a history of them, the work those girls did and they didn’t get paid that well either, what they did was astronomical.

The soldier boys never ever thought of that while we were busy doing our bit.

In the army.

We were much more efficient at setting up. As I said we went to

Murgon and we had to set up a camp in practically virgin scrub like timber country. All the farm boys had been used to hard work, swinging axes they revelled in it, but to even get the city boys to dig a post hole was pitiful. They didn’t have a clue how to go about it. That was where we did have expertise over them but then they had expertise over us in

other ways too.

Particularly the office staff and the cooks and the other things, but the basic overall in a transport company we all learnt to drive. You drove your 12 or 14 hours per day and sometimes 20 and that was it and you learnt

maintenance, major maintenance went back to the workshops.

Yes, you were given basic training in running repairs. If your vehicle broke down on the road and it was only something minor you had this procedure you had to go through and check everything until usually you found out what it was.

The only time you ever had to get help was when you had a major break down some mechanical part threw in the towel, well that was it you would have to get a tow truck and get towed into the workshop.

No, they joined in with the rest of us, they had to do their drill and everything with us and slowly with the rest of us we took them out and eventually they weren’t any different to the rest of us except for the odd one or two. The chap who I told you who couldn’t read nor write.

He came from way back in the mountains at the back of Mansfield behind Hume Weir and his father was a forest ranger and there were 8 or 9 in the family. He had been to Mansfield twice in his life and we said “What do you do?”

His speech was real hillbilly in a lot of ways and he was quite an intelligent young man. We said “But what did you do in the time?” We always had plenty to do, there was a whole heap of us and we chased wombats and went fishing and did this. But you would get sick of doing that all the time. “No”, we said “Well what did you do at night?”

“We went to bed early, we didn’t have any electricity, we had lanterns”, he said. “But you must have done something at night”. He said “We played an awful lot of Chinese Checkers.”

He would have handled it all right; he was a real bush boy. When I got transferred off 151 he was left behind, I never saw him again and I was home on leave when I came back from New Guinea, I had over 2 months leave in my book, and I am in behind the counter in the shop one day because the Mansfield/ Melbourne bus used to stop for a cup of tea at the parents’

business café, and there was no petrol, so the bus was always jammed packed, and I am in behind the counter giving a bit of a hand and I looked up and I said “Bill”. He said “Frank”. Here is this rather good looking man with a beautiful navy suit with a beautiful hat, collar and tie

I said, “Where did you come from?” He said “I am just going home for a day or two at Mansfield”. I said “What become of you?” He said “Frank, they kicked me out of the army; I didn’t really want to go because I couldn’t read or write”. I said “What have you been doing?” He said “I have made a packet in munitions”. They put him in a munitions factory. He said “I have had a ball”.

My eldest son, he was a pharmacist in Mansfield for 23 years. I don’t suppose he ever came back to Mansfield but I said “Billy, he wouldn’t have come back to Mansfield,

he is out there at the back of the hills, if you want he will take you out, he knows where every fish is”. He went back to the bush eventually.

I wouldn’t have driven more than 100 miles at that stage.

Quite hairy for a start. Particularly when we went in convoy, 30 odd vehicles down Sydney Road to South Melbourne, so you can imagine we held up all the traffic.

No, I was too damned scared.

I know I was, I suppose there is always just the larrikins amongst them. We made it straight through the city and down under the bridge in South Melbourne, I thought “What are we going to do if we have to back this?”, none of us had backed. We could hardly back an ordinary vehicle let alone a semi-trailer. There was a huge store that ran right through from one street to the other.

All you had to do was make sure you didn’t pull the door down getting in. Right and out the other end. Then they said “You go home under your own steam”. I won’t find my own way back to Broadmeadows through the city, so I got out under the bridge and into Spencer Street and thought “Which street did I have to turn up to get into Sydney Road?” I missed it. The next thing I know I am in Racecourse Road heading for Newmarket.

I knew that area well because that is where the aunt I used to visit all the time, we spent holidays there, lived and I am thinking “How am I going to turn this thing around?” I am thinking “If I go out to Wellington Street and go straight ahead I will run into Alexandra Parade and into Pascoe Vale Road?” I knew it was on the other end of the road where the camp was. Oh beauty.

Out I went big semi trailer and looked about 15 and lo and behold I got into Pascoe Vale Road straight out and into Camp Road and into the camp and lined up with half a dozen others there. One of the fellows looked at me; he said “Where did you come from? You come in the wrong direction”. I said “No I didn’t, I come up Pascoe Vale Road, didn’t you know?”

Buggar Sydney Road and the city too much damned traffic. He said “You know your way around”. I didn’t put him wise. I made it.

No there weren’t. None of us had ever driven semis before.

There wasn’t much traffic on the road. We had a bloke on a motor bike tearing up and down the

convoy keeping control. Where did we stop at Silverston, then we made Adelaide and the Terowie. Brand new trucks, we were breaking them in.

They only had canvas hoods on them but they were brand new for the Central Australian run.

We were running them in. When they gave us these trucks they said “No fooling around in them”. The old lieutenant who was in charge of the convoy, mad as a hatter, the show pony we used to call him, he was a man in his 40’s but he was a real extrovert. He gets on the motor bike this day and he is charging up the convoy and he has got us all near doing 90 mph in trucks.

“Go on convoy, you are too slow up and down the hills on the way to Murray Bridge in South Australia”. We all got there.

No.

Our original CO in the 151 when it was formed was Major T.B. Guest. Guest biscuits, a man about 5’ 2” tall and 5’ 2” wide, and he looked like a beer barrel and he could empty a beer barrel at any time without any trouble. Poor man he was.

These were men in their 40’s and they weren’t returned men at all. I only struck one or two men returned who had been in the First World War, that were in. One of them was a second cousin of mine at Rowviille. He was a nice guy. He was

doing what you are doing interviewing soldiers and there was a whole heap and I get up to him and there is this Captain Robb, when he saw my name he said “Where do you come from?” I said “Thornton”. “Oh”, he said “That is where I come from originally”. So we had a chat for 5 or 10 minutes because the boys gave me a real razz for …

sucking up to officers and so forth

That was just part of 18 year olds, you know what they are like. When we went away with Tubby Guest he went to Queensland with us but when we were going to New Guinea, they removed him but I think the tropics would have killed him. We had a Major Flood from Floods Motor Body Works,

Bendigo he came from. He wasn’t a very popular man.

It was just his whole approach to men, he never ever associated with them, you were just there to do your job and that was it.

That was the impression we got but we could have been wrong because we were only kids and he was a man at least 40. He stayed with us until some time mid 44 and then a Major Mulcahy took over. He was a nice guy, he was a Tasmanian.

I don’t know what his background was or anything about him. He did the job and he did it well. We were that busy, we never saw many of our officers. I must say this for them, the whole of the time I was in New Guinea, I was never asked to salute an officer, only once and that was towards the end of our session there.

He was the last man that ever

deserved a salute. I was sent down to do, I came off 14 hours on the wharf, I was just getting into bed when the transport sergeant came down and said “Frank there is a major so and so of the engineers unit down the road, he has been screaming on the phone since 7 o’clock. This is quarter to nine”, he said. I never had a truck and I never had a driver because we were flat to the boards. He said “The truck just came into workshops

onto the lines”, he said “And I still don’t have a driver, I know you have just come in from 14 hours, would you mind going down there?” I said “As long as you don’t put me back on tonight”. It was too hot to sleep anyway. When I got down there I went into the orderly room and there are a couple of sergeants and a corporal there and I introduced myself, I admit I was a disgrace as a soldier, I was filthy dirty, I had just come off,

the shirt is torn down the front, too hot and about 3 days’ whiskers and a bit grubby after 14 hours without a shower, “The major wants to see you and out he came”. I think they had just arrived in New Guinea and he was another fat tubby fellow and he was really feeling the heat.

He came up to me. First of all he demanded that I salute him, I just said “Look sir I have been up here for nearly 2 years, I have bombed, I have seen my mates killed, I have just come off, I have worked 12, 14, 16, 20 hours in all that time and I have just come off a 14 hour shift”, I said, “About three quarters of an hour ago,

when the transport sergeant asked if I would mind coming doing this job because they had nobody else”. I said “Do you want me or don’t you because if you don’t, I will go back and get into my bed where I am supposed to be?” He stuttered and stammered and said “Report to the sergeant major out there.”

I know I could have, I could have been court martialled but at that stage we were beyond caring.

When we were working nobody ever demanded a salute that is the only man who demanded a salute in New Guinea. In early days I would have never ever had enough cheek to stand up to a situation like that but you do reach a breaking point.

Eventually, eventually. I went out and did the days’ work and I never heard anymore about it.

That was quite a

One thing I did learn to do was to learn to roll, I didn’t smoke, I was 19 and I never smoked except the odd packet, I never smoked I bought a packet of Havelock tobacco and a packet of papers and a couple of boxes of matches and I learnt to roll and smoke. I smoked my head off probably all the way, I

smoked for 40 years before I gave it up 16, 17 years ago.

What smoking?

Nobody knew they were going to be dangerous. Nobody ever said, smoking was the in thing.

Nobody had a clue what the end result health wise would be. I learnt to roll my smokes and they were all on the flats, and we would tear along and we would jump from one flat to the other and half a dozen of us and get together and have a game of cards and when I think back now

how crazy it is because we did have one serious accident, we were north of Sydney and this chap’s driver is sitting up on the cabin of his truck facing backwards, not facing the direction he was going, you couldn’t shout across, you couldn’t hear anything. We came to one of those railway bridges with the big steel girders across the top and everybody was screaming and yelling at him, “Get down”

but he got hit on the back of the head with the girder.

It was over a big wide river bed right against the bank at one end of it but there was another 200 yards of bridge just across the grassy flat, as luck happened there was

the up piece was over the river and there were a couple of big willow trees growing on the bank below and as luck happened he dropped, he got pelted out of the truck and he must have dropped between the sleepers into one of these willow trees which broke his fall before he hit the ground. He didn’t drop into the water,

he would have drowned. They couldn’t pull us down because we were gone another 10 or 15 miles before we got to a station. We eventually heard that he was still alive when they found him with serious head injuries and they raced him off to hospital. He spent the rest of his life out here in a Military Psychiatric Hospital. He used to come to our reunions and he was

and you could have a yarn with him but he was never able to work again, it left him severely brain affected. He knew how to look after himself but he had to live in the psychiatric hospital. He lived for another 35 years or more.

I can’t think of any real major things that happened, not in Australia. I suppose there were in other platoons but in my own particular platoon because once we went to Queensland we were divided up into

when we were in Mount Martha, we lived in a huge camp area in tents and you all ate in the one big mess hall and it was a sort of community and you got to know everyone. Once we went to Queensland we were divided into separate platoons of about 60 to 80 men with an officer in charge and a couple of sergeants and

corporals and lance corporals and whatever. You had your own cookhouse, completely separate entity you could function as a unit on your own. When we went to New Guinea we had our headquarters and all the different platoons were except for the ducks and the air maintenance, the air boys we were all in the one area but you still lived as a

separate entity. You met the fellows down on the job but you didn’t mix that much, you never had time. You were either trying to sleep or at work.

I got my call up papers and I reported and

they just wheeled me out into a transport company, I didn’t have a clue, it could have been infantry, it could have been engineers.

I was quite happy to think I would be driving for the military. I thought I was very fortunate to be landed in a transport company. A few fellows who had brothers in infantry

divisions and you could claim your brothers, so they did.

If your brother was in, I am in 151 Transport and if I had a brother in New Guinea fighting in an infantry division, I could put in a claim for my brother which would be put in our headquarters office and it would go off and in due course

your brother would land in your unit. They would call him back, but it would be rather foolish to bring your brother from some other unit like mine into an infantry, there would be a much bigger risk, you could get killed.

In Murgon.

You mean camp wise.

We were moved up there and became part of the 3rd Armoured Division and we were to act as transport for 3rd Armoured Division.

Every division had their transport companies attached to them. We became part of the 3rd Armoured Division. Probably when we were sent there they needed a transport company and because but eventually when things quietened down and they thought the Japs weren’t going to land in Queensland that we were needed more urgently where we went, so they

posted us out, we were an independent company, in our history we were under at least 4 or 5 different divisions. When we went to New Guinea to start I think we were under 3rd Division command and then transferred to 11th Div [division] command and then we were under 9th Div command when we first went to Lae, when they moved on we

came under 1st Army Corps command and that is where we finished up for the rest of the time. We were an independent company where some of the other companies were attached permanently to their division. They could send us anywhere, well they could send anybody where they wanted to but we were more likely to send us where required because we were set up as an independent transport company.

In the army?

I went in on 2 March and it wasn’t until July the following year. We were bored to death but it wasn’t so bad once we went to Queensland they kept us busy setting up camp. We were still doing army transport work around the area

like trips to Toowoomba and possibly Brisbane and all around the area. It did help to make it a little more interesting.

You were young and silly, you felt you were in the army and you wanted to do your bit. The ultimate was to go off to New Guinea; we knew we wouldn’t be in the infantry,

so that was a big. Don’t think I am a coward or anything but why take the risk if you didn’t have to?

Yes, he was the more reckless, even as a young fellow he would come home with black eyes and God knows what, he was a real devil.

Whereas I would talk my way out of it as necessary most times.

You mean life in the country.

We were too young, I was born in 23, it was about 29 to 33 until the war was, basically the Depression years. I was at the age where kids don’t worry much

about anything. We had a very interesting life and a full life as we all had our jobs to do. We would care for the stock and poultry and everything else around the place. Look after the vegetable garden was the boys’ job. It was pretty good as far as we were concerned as we didn’t realise the full reality of the Depression apart from seeing these unfortunates roaming the

roads looking for work and for a meal. Some of them were people who were professional people who had a much better station in life than even as small farmers. The point was we grew all our own food, we never knew what it was to go hungry. I realise now that the parents never had too much money but they were better off than

all those who were on the dole walking the countryside. My childhood as far as I was concerned was very happy. I had plenty of playmates; I am one of 8, the second of 8 so we amused ourselves.

He was, he was a returned man from the First World War. Middle East, Palestine and Light Horse he

was in. He wasn’t all that keen on his 18 year old son going off to war but he had no say in it eventually.

Only after I came back from my war.

When I came back I had 2 months leave and

he sat down and he started asking me about what happened about what we had done. He was in the Light Horse and then I started asking questions about what he had been through. Even when we talked about it, I tried to bring up the subject before when we were teenagers; he said “Oh, you don’t want to hear

about that, it is not for young people”. He was quite happy to discuss his experiences in Palestine mainly he was only away for about 16 or 18 months because he got diphtheria for a start, jaundice and he was invalided on a hospital ship,

so he saw about 6 or 8 months service when they were in action. It was a totally different set up from a desert or semi-desert to what we had in the jungle and the fighting men up there.

Yes. We always got on extremely well. He was a charming, delightful man.

We always got on extremely well. He wasn’t a disciplinarian, I only remember him giving me a belting twice. We must have been really doing something we shouldn’t have been doing. We always got on very well together.

You bet. My young brother and I through the summer, as soon as we finished all our chores, we used to go tiger snake hunting because the flats where we were living were swarming with the damn things, they were near the house and all round everywhere. The things we did there if

my parents had known we would have been in big trouble. The same as with the river, we were half a mile from the river and in summer time we would strip off and dive in anywhere and everywhere and if my own children had done the same I would have been appalled. We all learnt to swim. I will never forget one occasion

I think mother was in hospital when one of the infants arrived and we had a 20 year old cousin from Mansfield looking after us, a very highly strung lass, God help her with our mob, we had to amuse ourselves we had this old 1,500, 2,000

gallon tank, two of us are in it rolling it around and the other two are throwing bricks and rocks in front of it to make the journey interesting. My brother was round the front and my sister round the back and she picked up half a brick and threw it over the top, it hit him fair on the skull and made a bit of mess. He had an old hat with no crown in it on his head,

it must have burst a little artery because blood was pumping about 6 feet out the top of his head. He ran around and around in circles until eventually he collapsed in a heap, I said to sis, “Oh Mary, I think you have killed him this time”, which didn’t help the situation. The next thing he started to come around. You can imagine the ungodly mess, blood and gore and filth and dirt when he collapsed in the

dirt, so we carted him over to dear cous, thank God her boyfriend was visiting her that weekend, a very staid young man, so we got to the door, we sang out, “Amy, Norm’s hurt.” She came to the door, took one look and gave a shriek and fainted on the doorstep. The young fellow came over, just stepped over the girlfriend,

and carted him in, “Right oh kids, water, bowl, basin, scissors” and God knows what else and he said “It is not too bad, it is only a very small hole, it has stopped bleeding I think he will be right now”. In the meantime the girlfriend rallied round and did she pay out on him for leaving her lying on the floor

while he attended to the lad. I think it was the end of a blossoming romance because he disappeared off the scene after that. Some of the things, it is a wonder we didn’t kill ourselves.

You’re joking.

I remember two or three occasions in my life when the doctor was called to the house. People didn’t go to the doctor; they doctored themselves unless it was something really serious. Occasionally the doctor would come. I went to hospital to have my tonsils out.

I was 14 at the time, I had just left school and we had at this stage, we had a chap in his 40’s, a returned man from the First World War, he was working for my dad milking cows and so forth and my parents were in Alexandra doing the shopping and this chap and my younger brother and myself

were milking the cows, milking machine of course and I went out to where a big 20 bale (UNCLEAR) it was only used about, and I went to stir the second lot of cows up before we brought them in, and I had a quiet old nag, I used to hop on her back and ride her around and she knew what to do, stir all the rest of them up

and she had little curly horns that tipped up with needle points on them, poor bugger thought it was a joke, here they stand with a big stick and give her a wallop at the tail end, she gave an unholy roost with fright and I went straight over the head, caught my jaw on one of the little needle point horns. Ripped the whole side of

my face apart. Went down in the cow yard dirt. You never saw such a mess again. They took me over to the house when the car pulls into the gate. Poor old mother comes racing up, very efficient, bottle of peroxide “Oh my God”, she said, “Off to the hospital”. Rang the doctor and he rang the hospital and in I go and I

had about, he did a magnificent job, it was only hanging by a whisker on the corner, about 30 or 40 stitches inside and out. You can hardly see anything, it’s in the creases.

You can’t see it at all because it is in the crease of the mouth. That was a rather upsetting little episode. I recovered, the doctor said it was

incredible the jaw wasn’t smashed to smithereens, no problem. The next brother to me, he was bitten twice by a tiger snake, once as a little fellow and once when he was 8 or 9 but he survived.

They had to take him to the doctor for that. Dad was never around when these things happened; he was always down the paddock working.

We had a good neighbour about 300 yards away on a dairy farm across the road. The wife was quite well to do, she had a nice A Model Ford in those days, that was a big flash car. Mother would promptly ring her and off they would go to the hospital. All neighbours, everyone helped one another in emergencies.

Yuk.

I couldn’t stand it, I don’t like milk much even now, I saw where it comes from. I remember my brothers, they loved a cup of tea before we started milking, they would get a great mug full of hot milk from the cow but I couldn’t stand it. A lot of people didn’t know, milk was milk.

Well I have been away from it for 40 years, I was 40 when I had to give up my own farming activities mainly because of my spinal problem I could no longer bend or lift or get down on these things. To get down to the cows was a struggle. They said “No more farming for you”, so that was it.

It did, it took me quite awhile to readjust. That is all I had known all my life apart from 4 years in the army. When I came home I got out of the army and went straight out on my sheep farm. I didn’t know a thing about

sheep farming, never had anything to do with it. I had a couple of good neighbours who helped me find the way through the early days. I worked in the shearing sheds a few times and picked up a lot of information from the shearers and one neighbour in particular and his wife, we became great friends of course, were a tremendous help.

I learnt to class my own wool and after a couple of years I thought “I am in the game”, so I thought “I might as well learn to shear”. So I sheared my own sheep and I would shear all the neighbours with another chap and we would shear 20 or 30,000 every spring between us. Quite a few thousand,

I did that for about 6 years but then back, very quickly got to the stage that I couldn’t do that for a start.

No. Now they have supports they put round your tum which would have been a fantastic help which would have taken the weight off your back. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the challenges,

you just put your head down and bum up. I was no gun, [a gun shearer – the fastest] about 130, 140 a day was my limit where top shearers would do 200 or 300. I was 26, 27 before I started a bit late in the peace.

You listened to the wireless and my Dad always got his newspaper but I can’t remember reading the newspaper much in those days. We used to listen to the news on the wireless but we were,

I was 16 when Dunkirk collapsed and everybody all age groups, any thinking person whether they were a teenager or not were quite concerned what the ultimate end would be, it looked as though there was nothing to stop the Germans at the time, then Italy came in and then Japan a bit later on,

they had a good show of winning their effort out here in the Pacific. You didn’t, being young people you didn’t let it affect your life or anything like that. We still went to bed and had a good time. When I went into the army,

you were concerned, vitally concerned being young people, you are always pretty optimistic I think.

I had a fair idea what they were about because I have been an inveterate reader and historical and history of any shape and form,

the lives of a lot of the noted people down through history. I have always got 4 or 5 books sitting on the shelf there, sometimes I am reading 3 at once.

Yes. For a start I read all the boys’ books.

No.

I read all Charles Dickens by the time I was 14. I enjoyed them so much I tried later on to go back over, I couldn’t get really involved, so it was just a stage I went through apparently. I was the known bookworm in the family.

My sister who is about 12 years younger than me, they could never find us, we could occupy ourselves with a book. I have always been a book reader.

They were. There was a church hall in the town. There would be a dance on there one weekend

and the next weekend it would be about, there were 3 or 4 dance halls right on the outskirts of the shire and they sort of took turns in putting it on. A couple of mates always had a car; we would find our way there anyway. Each end of the shire would be some

fellows and girls who would come from the next shire which spread the talent round a bit. In every direction we went made it more interesting. We used to have good times; we used to have a ball. A couple of the young fellows would bring a couple of bottles of beer which you weren’t supposed to be drinking around the hall. “Are you coming outside? I have got a couple of bottles out there.” You would sneak out,

big deal.

No, you just wore your. None of us had too many sets of clothing in those days. You would have one good set of sports wear and maybe a couple of pairs of sports trousers and you were damn lucky if you had a suit. That was it. Everybody was in the same boat.

Yes. The girls always did their utmost to make themselves appealing as possible. We enjoyed our youth and of course through the war years the football

competitions disappeared, the annual sports events disappeared and so you had to make your own fun. We were fortunate our church there, we had a little social club that used to meet

on a Sunday evening thing, we built a tennis court on the church grounds. We had all sorts of social functions. We used to invite the young people of the other denominations to come to. In those days half the time their parents wouldn’t let them come, it was Sunday when we had these functions, we were catholic and we were heathens.

All these functions of a Sunday. Summer time we used to have hay rides, picnic events.

Yes we had a great time. We would hire the local carriers; he had a little horse wagon, delivery wagon, so we would hire that for the day often

bikes and one or two would have an old car but we would all get there eventually.

18.

By this time we had left the farm for the 12 months before I went into the army.

I worked in the butter factory in Yea which I, thoroughly clean job, heavy work, but I was used to that. The war had been on for so long that you didn’t have any high expectations, I didn’t really miss anything, I probably really looked forward to going into the army because everybody else

was in the army. You just thought and accepted that until war was over that that would be your life whatever happens. We enjoyed ourselves before I went into the army but when the Japs came into the war, the Japanese, every young fellow who was available; 18 year old was called up.

No. I was footloose and fancy free.

Once the Japanese came into it and things were the way they were the situation, he accepted that as what had to be.

Dad of course before I went off told me to be wary of loose women and the usual things that dads try to tell their teenage sons. He being an old soldier and things looking so desperate they had what was know as the volunteer defence corp. All the old men that

were left behind. They formed themselves into every shire I think, A company of VDC [Volunteer Defence Corps] men, a lot of them old soldiers and lot of young kids and all. I can tell you this; they were armed better than I was for the first 12 months I was in the army. They had rifles, grenades,

stacks of gelignite for blowing up bridges and God knows what and I was in the army for 7 months before I got a rifle. They didn’t have any. They had them for the Defence Corps but we in the army, they never had any rifles to give us. Eventually we got one but it was rather weird not having. They had sufficient in each

unit for training purposes there were 3 or 4 to a platoon, Bren guns and we were trained in everything but we didn’t have one to use, it was after 6 or 7 months.

It was. When they brought all those troops home from Dunkirk, they left everything behind, they had nothing to put up a battle with across the channel, it was weird

that they didn’t.

They left just about everything. The debacle like Dunkirk was they were busy trying to save your life let alone that is going to be a hindrance to you getting out.

Yes no trouble at all. I had one mate, he was only 18, 19, he came from Footscray, he was a slaughterman by trade

all the one year we were down on the Peninsula during the lamb slaughtering season, we were at Mount Martha which is right down the other side of Mornington. He took off for about 4 or 5 months, He got up every morning at

5 o’clock. Why he ever came back, he came back to camp because I was answering the roll call for him every morning putting myself at risk. He would catch the bus and then the train from Frankston to Footscray, slaughter lambs all day, be out on the town half the night

but he would come back. He would get into camp about 1 in the morning and he would be up again at 5. He did that for 4 or 5 months slaughtering lambs until finally they caught him. One morning he was that dead beat he couldn’t go, so he came on roll call parade

and the old sergeant and he called his name and he answered. “Oh”, he said, he walked down he had big thick glasses and he is peering at him. He said “You belong to this platoon; I haven’t seen you around before”. “Of course I do sergeant”, he said, “I will be keeping an eye out for you in the future”. So that was the end of the lamb slaughtering. He did that, well if I hadn’t covered for him,

he wouldn’t have been able to do it. Lots of people when we first formed the unit we had a lot of chaps who had been bundled out of their other units because they were trouble makers. Well we had it was pretty hectic for 3 or 4 months until the unit settled down.

Fellows would be missing and misbehaving and abusing sergeants and God knows what.

Full as bulls. They had a canteen on site because the old major he would be down there boozing with them each day, they would close at 10. Each day on with the canteen staff until 2 in the morning before he staggered out so they didn’t get much encouragement. Just the ordinary everyday

things that young fellows do, particularly when they are bored to death. The government, which a lot of them were, I must say this once we went to New Guinea and they were put to work, they were fantastic, that was all that was required. Constant work and they got it.

They were forming a new unit and every unit has a percentage of reprobates that are just a damn nuisance. The authorities, their sergeants and they are always going up and when you get an opportunity to get rid of them you do. They got rid of them into the 151.

Some of these were chaps, the odd percentage were chaps who had come back from the Middle East. We had a small percentage of them; most of us were 18, 19 year olds. They were no example to a lot of the younger fellows.

I was a good guy. I was just a quiet, I had to make up the numbers, why they picked me I wouldn’t know. There were, a lot of fellows, a large percentage were ordinary young fellows like myself. A lot of them country. We had a large percentage of country lads from Mildura to Albury, from Portland to

Albury. It was unreal from all over and then about one third from all over Melbourne, all suburbs, all walks of like. When we got 150 odd South Australians and Broken Hill ites, they came from all over South Australia and then just before we left they put over 200 New South

Wales men in the unit. They came from Bourke to Eden and from Port Macquarie to Wentworth. All over. We had a mixed bag of personnel. They all blended together and did a terrific job.

He missed out on,

it was what we had been doing for months and months only just repetition. To finish up with that young fellow he hated the army and when we got marching orders to Queensland he promptly disappeared. He eventually arrived back in Queensland after doing his term, 6 months or 6 weeks in the boob. He,

the moment we got marching orders in Queensland he promptly disappeared again. I never ever saw him again. I did meet up with an old tent mate in the original unit, I was in Lae when I was doing a job and I drove into this unit and here is this fellow with 3 stripes on, and we both recognised one another

I said “What happened to Murphy?” Murphy was the name of this fellow, Mick Murphy. “God Frank you wouldn’t believe it, I was home on leave a while back and I walking down Collins Street and I see this young fellow nicely dressed in a suit pushing a pram coming towards me with quite an attractive young woman and you wouldn’t believe it, it was Murph.” I said “He got out of the army”. He said

“They gave him a dishonorable discharge, they got fed up with him”.

We had about 6 when we left for New Guinea. There was always that small percentage. They were against army life in every shape and form. We had several who had spent half their life in detention,

they would just clear out, they would be caught eventually. They might be out for a month or two but eventually they were caught. That was just part of army life.

We didn’t think about it, “I wonder how long Murph or Jones will be out. When will we see them?” We didn’t worry about them. No,

when you are 18 or 19 you are not overly concerned what the other bloke is doing really.

Stockade is an American term.

Jail. Spend a night in the boob or even around country towns, if you got drunk and

disorderly you got thrown in the lock up. “Oh he spent a night in the boob”, they would say.

They were Chevs, Internationals, Fords, they were everything.

They were impressed from industry and they were all sizes from 1500 cwt to 2 to 3 tons, all shapes, cabin jobs in those days. We learnt to drive in them and they did the job, we never took any of them to the islands with us they would have been useless. The wheels, we would have never got

a hundred yards, we would have been bogged to the axle.

We carted them into their camp and I lived with them for 2 weeks. About 8 or 10 of us to act as transport for them. It was quite something different - all these Yanks. Poor beggars a lot of them were very

sick because they opened the canteens for them and with the strong Australian beer they were only used to the weak American stuff and they were sick fellows. They would make an awful mess of themselves, in fact 2 or 3 of them dropped dead in the canteen. They shouldn’t have been drinking at all, they sorted themselves out eventually. When they got all their new equipment

they looked 10 times better than we did.

All tropical diseases. All wogs and bugs particularly because they had been living in foxholes for weeks. There were areas there, because there was a terrific battle there in Guadalcanal. At one stage it looked as though the Japs were going to push them out but they managed to hang on but they were really in a

mess when they got off that train, that was a couple of weeks, 10 days or so by the time it took them to get them from there to Melbourne.

No lasting friendships. You would stop and have a yak and a yarn but you never made any real, I wasn’t there long enough.

No, none of them wanted to talk about anything that went on at that particular stage. Maybe they would have later on but it was like a lot of our fellows, most of our fellows who were in the thick of it they didn’t want to talk about it. They had seen too many horrific things.

Pretty well much the same. They were a little bit different but overall

I met when I was home on leave, my parents befriended 2 or 3 and they used to come when they were on leave where they get a little bit of home life. They were no different, they came from nice families. Mother for years she wrote to a couple of their mothers. She started up a friendship with them.

No. She wrote to them but she never met them but they were happy to think that they were looking after their sons a little.

Overall I didn’t have much to do with the Americans. We had a lot of Americans in the area in Lae, thousands of them on their side of the river but

we never had time much. The Negroes were the biggest characters particularly if there was an air raid on. They were unreal.

Not long after we used to have our

pictures and the Yanks had a lot more than we had, usually the same films went around. A big open air, you took something to sit on. This Negro engineers’ unit would move in, they came to the pictures this night, it was early days, and about half way through the movie

the green light star goes up, that was the air raid warning within 20 minutes of the base, they go “What dat, what dat mean”. They said “Nothing to worry about”, because eventually the red star went up and we all quietly picked up our drums and started moving out.

One of the Negroes said. “What are you guys leaving for?” I said “See that Red star up there, that means there is Japanese bombers within 2 minutes of us.” You never see a place empty so quickly in all my life. They really took off and because they disappeared in a hurry in the dark being black.

I had another funny incident with them, it wasn’t funny for the girls, it was with the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service] arrived in Lae which was only 4 or 5 months before we left. There was no danger by this time. We had the job of carting them into their camp. They battled around and they found canopies and tarps to put over the back on the trucks, which we hadn’t used, we didn’t know where they found them, well the girls were

highly indignant because they couldn’t see what was around them as they were being taken to the camp. A little corporal about 5 foot nothing got in the front with me, she said “The girls are very upset. What have they got the canopies on the trucks for?” I said “My dear, wait until we get up the road a bit and you will know”. We had to drive through the middle of 2 American Negro camps

of engineers. We arrived there and I think there must have been a thousand of them giving the girls a wild welcome. The little lass in front of me went dead white and never said a word. She said, “I can see what you meant. I wouldn’t like to meet one of them in the dark”. I said “You haven’t got any fears, wait until you see what they

have got waiting for you to camp in”. It was like a concentration camp. We had to put it up. 10 foot steel mesh fence with an overhand and a whole company of soldiers as guards for them. I don’t think they released too many for paperwork. The same number had to be employed as guards. They did a good job, a bit of company for those who had time to,

off to spend an hour or two with female company. We worked such long hours, very few ever got very much opportunity to go out with the girls.

No. There were thousands still in the area although it had by that time a lot had gone through to the north.

Plans had all been made that if the Japs had managed to capture Port Moresby they tried from the sea the old sea battle put the kibosh [finished that] on that,

they actually won it but didn’t know it. They turned back and went back to Rabaul and they were in a much better position, when it was all over they had sunk a lot more of the allied shipping than we had done of theirs. Then they tried coming over the top and again they failed and that was the end of their efforts to take Moresby. If they had got

Moresby, well Lord knows if they would decide to land in northern Australia. Apparently they were prepared to allow them 1000, in 750 miles or more they were going to let them take over. They would have taken some to get them back out. There were 20 or 30,000 men on that Brisbane line. There were thousands of us, yes.

I don’t know but they wouldn’t have been too happy naturally. There were a lot of people north of that line. Cane sugar plantations and a lot of farm land. It was just being young, we didn’t worry too much about the plan and so forth, we

would not have let them advance that far but we had to do what we were told.

Early on yes, they expected thought they would take Moresby but the first time the Japs were beaten in battle was at Milne Bay by the Australians and then the next lot was on the

Kokoda Trail and from then on, and in Guadalcanal by the Americans, they threw in men as though there was no end to men. Taking of all those Pacific islands was a terrible cost of men’s lives but we couldn’t afford to do that, we didn’t have enough men.

Or the arms that they had. They were much more sophisticated

than ours in a lot of ways.

No, I never met anyone who had come back from New Guinea. Can’t remember ever having met because when we were at Murgon, a country area, a little country town,

thousands and thousands of troops and they had a big air force base at Kingaroy. Right at this moment they were putting up a big memorial park at Kingaroy for all the unit who were on the Brisbane Line. The whole of the 3rd Armoured Division was based along there plus infantry battalions

and everything.

Chinese boat about 7,000 tonner and just an old cargo boat.

We were quite happy to

be going and we weren’t all that impressed when we saw what we were going on. Being young was all part of the big adventure of course, we would have been disappointed, if we hadn’t gone overseas like a lot of our troops didn’t because they were sent over to the West Australian coast,

they spent over 2 years or more just sitting on their tail ends up and down the coast waiting for the Japs just in case they arrived. The pity of it all is that they weren’t entitled to a lot of the concessions that returned men who went to New Guinea and you went where you were sent. We were quite happy to go at long last, we were sick of sitting on our tail ends more or less

around Australia.

It was after I hit the beach they found a truck somewhere and I was in it.

Yes. 25 months. We were still doing the 12 hour shifts

when we left the unit that took over from us, just went straight in, we left all our trucks. They were just all handed over workshops and everything so they just walked in and took over our trucks and they just carried on like we had done.

It was about 8 or 9 months after the battle.

No, it was just the same. It was just as it was.

It was quite an eye opener with all these big coconut plantations and there was hardly any in one piece

or shot to bits with shell holes everywhere and junk and rubbish all lying around. A little sandy track through the middle of it. A corduroy track through the swamp that the Japs had put in, wide enough for one truck. That road went down to Oro Bay up and down the coast, so we finished up with our platoon scattered up and down the coast plus the

amphibious trucks, when they arrived they were camped just beside us. There is quite an interesting story about the amphibious trucks. The night of the bid air raid there were 6 fellows asleep in their tents

Buna. Apparently they were camped on a little,

a bit that ran out just across from where the wharf was, they must have had a light or something they dropped several bombs through their camp, and this is unbelievable, one bomb went through the tent between their beds and buried itself about 8 or 10 feet in the sand and blew up and threw the men and everything sky high and they were hardly injured.

A few bruises and scratches. They had to be all re-equipped, tent, clothing everything. It was unbelievable, one little cook fellow, he landed on the tent about 10 yards away, he was somewhat grazed. He was a rather highly strung fellow; he never stopped talking for 2 weeks after that. It was unusual, unbelievable.

Where we were camped, my platoon, on the site of the battle. There were these little, by this time the kunai grass had all grown up and the native boys came in to clear the grass for us but there were all these little bumps and humps and slit trenches,

the water table was only down about a foot, 15 inches and when they were killed in their trenches they just scraped a bit of sand over them. When they brought the graders in to clear the area, they got about 60 of them in there. They even got 2 in the floor of our cook house where they were cooking our meals. It was.

It did me a little bit, yes.

Particularly if some goon had placed a skull with a tin helmet still on it, on top of a blown off coconut palm just outside the little fly wire thing they gave us to eat in. I didn’t eat in there.

No, it was a rude awakening. A lot of us it was the grim reality.

Seeing one of my tent mates was killed, seeing your mates killed and wounded all around you that was pretty yuk. It hit us.

I was in the truck and he was over on the wharf only about 50 yards away.

Yes. There were about 30 odd fatalities, not all our unit of course.

Some of ours and all the other work parties, some were the ship’s crew.

Yes at Buna.

Yes it was, the other ones had only been an odd bomb dropped here and there as I said half the time they dropped them anywhere and everywhere. We weren’t really worried, we thought “If this is the best they can do, we haven’t got anything to worry about”, but of course inevitably the real thing happened.

It happened again in Lae, not long after we arrived we were camped on the Busu River which was a mile or two from the wharf. The put us out there so we wouldn’t be in an area. They came over this night about 9.30, they must have seen a light or something because we were all under cover, down each side in the jungle

down in the kunai strip which gave us enough space to put our tents up and to drive our trucks out of site and they splayed a whole stick of bombs down the opposite side of the kunai strip which my unit, platoon was on. It made an awful mess of the equipment. We had one fellow killed and

another 3 or 4 wounded, it could have been a lot worse. That was the last. After that we saw this one morning for about 3 hours it was three flights of bombers went over about 20 or 30 in each flights, 3 flights, if they had barrelled out of there I think they would have just about

finished off the Japanese air force because we never had any serious problems after that but they made an awful mess of the air fields of Rabaul.

That was just after my 19th birthday.

Well it did.

Well for all of us it was the reality of war hit us for the first time but we were fortunate in one sense, it was only about 3 days later after we had buried them, we went on to the LSTs and were carted off to Lae which was a whole new ball game there.

More air raids there for a start except for the one when they bombed our unit you could keep out of the road more or less if you kept out of the wharf area until it was over and then we would all go back to work.

I think it is bound to. It made us all more determined to do our job and do it well. There was a different feeling in the whole area, we hated leaving our boys behind at Buna, eventually they were exhumed and buried in the big cemetery at Port Moresby,

the ones that were killed at Buna, and we have got another 3 or 5 in the cemetery at Lae. We had 2 or 3, they got burnt to death and a couple of more died of other injuries, one or two killed in the action.

Yes. It did with me. We had a real reason to do what we were doing then because we were a vital part in the whole situation there because we were carting and transporting

bombs by the hundreds of tons out to Nadzab. A lot of the American materials. There were American transport companies, we all worked together. All passed through the same checkout system where they had American and Australian clerks booking everything out. The only difference between the two: the Americans booked

one load of this or that, whereas the Australia Army booked out one truck load of this and so many crates of that, they didn’t trust and they had good reason, they didn’t trust us.

On one occasion we had 30 miles, we had to take them out to Nadzab out to the bomb dumps, that is where all the bombers were, right up to Liberators, which were the biggest bombers in the world at the time, one of our chaps a couple of them run off the road,

dumped all their bombs out and they all had to be loaded back on. One truck caught fire, it overheated apparently, and of course up she went. We tore down the road 2 or 300 yards and stopped all the traffic coming, stopped the truck and then he ran the risk of running back past the truck

Yes. Eventually the whole lot just went.

Wrecked the road they had to get the bulldozers in to fill the craters and move what was left of the truck. Apart from that they had to be all, they all had their explosives in them but they had to have their fuses put in before they went out on the planes.

The only danger baring was a sheer accident it was a truck catching fire or something like that.

Landing Ship Transports [Trucks].

Landing Ship Transport [Trucks] were the big barges for moving stuff on water. The ones that drove into the beach, the front opens

and the big ramp hit the beach. The ones we moved from Buna to Lae on were over 1,000 ton; they looked like small ships except that they were hollow. Flat bottomed.

They were like a small ship, they were quite big. I will never forget on the convoy from Townsville to

Buna across the Coral Sea there was one in the convoy. We had 3 days of very rough weather in the Coral Sea, nearly everybody was sick as dogs, I wasn’t, I was a good sailor apparently but I was watching this thing out the back. Without a word of a lie in the rough seas it was going straight up and you could see the whole of the bottom 120

130, 150 foot long, flat bottom and it was rolling sideways at the same time.

No keel, how in the name of God those fellows, they only had a crew of 8 or 10 on those, the quarters and engine room are in the rear of it, when it opened up you just drove your trucks into it on a ramp and it was hydraulically lifted them all

up to the upper deck. They would fill the upper deck and then they would fill the bottom area. With our shift, it was all vehicles which were loaded with a lot of equipment. They also used them for loading supplies onto the beach and they would unload straight out. They were an amazing piece of machinery. Then we had the small boats

you could put on 1 or 2 trucks which they had around Lae and everywhere which they unloaded the ships with. At Lae we finished up with 2 wooden wharves and a pontoon wharf. There was no use putting in wharves because where the sea

and shore began there was very little beach, the water went straight down 200, 300 or 400 feet, the Owen Stanleys are only the peaks of the depth below and they had terrible trouble building wharves because the water was too deep. Big ships, 10,000 ton ships could pull into within 15 feet of the shore. That is how deep

the water was. They were putting in wharves with this magnificent timber they were harvesting in the islands, they had a saw mill unit somewhere out in the forest over there, it was the waste of good timber because the wharves never stood up for any longer than 3 or 4 months at the most. There was a terrific undercurrent. You would go down one morning and half the wharf had disappeared. The only constant was the pontoon one.

They had wooden ones at one stage going but they didn’t last all that long but they kept building more when they were really needed because there were 10, 15, 20 ships waiting out in the bay waiting to be unloaded. Some of them would eventually go off somewhere else, they would advance further north. It was unreal. It was a real eye opener for us country boys. A port in full blast it was

For 24 hours a day, it was just one continuous roar in that wharf area between the hoists on the ships and hundreds of trucks. You could stand on any given point when Lae was at its peak and the trucks went by tail to tail 24 hours

a day. That is how busy Lae was when it was the main forward base. It was the main forward air base; you had to see it to believe it. There were 30,000 men in the area between the Americans and the Australian troops all going flat to the board doing their thing.

I have photos of them if you want to see them.

The amphibious trucks. They were a pontoon truck; they didn’t look like any other vehicle. They had huge float cylinders down each side of the

truck, it was very difficult to sink one, in fact one driver at one stage he is out and the ship stood out about half a mile from the beach and they were unloading drums of fuel into it and they put too many on board and it slowly disappeared quietly into

the sea and he had to swim for it eventually. Eventually the drums came unstuck and it just reappeared on the surface. They had to tow it in and give it a good overhaul because the sea water

They had a screw at the back, and then when they hit the beach they had 4 wheels on them, the same as everything. They are just an ordinary truck.

They just came out of the water onto the beach. There was a nice little beach round the Red Beach around the corner a bit from us and they could come in and land on a sandy beach and just drive straight out. They would drive straight out, they had a whole range of gears out of wheel drive into propeller. There was a propeller out the back.

You just drive straight out to the store or dump whatever, unload their load. It was weird.

If the sea got too rough, which it didn’t all that often, well they would pull out for awhile. A couple of our fellows, they took them from Lae to Finschhafen. We had another,

a few trucks up there for awhile helping out there including a couple of the ducks. One of my mates was one of the crew. I said “How does it go?” He said “We had one rough day”, he said, “We had half a dozen passengers, army fellows not from our unit we were transporting them”, he said, “They panicked a bit”, he said.

It was strange a very good friend of mine from for 40 years now he was telling us, he was in the army up there, “Frank the worst day I ever had in my life”, he said, you know “Those amphibious trucks”, he said, “I went from Lae to Finschhafen on one of them, I thought I was never going to get home”. I said “One of my mates was driving that one and he told me about the rough trip they had up there”. I said “They belonged to our unit”.

Yes. Lae to Finschhafen that was, they would have to refuel, they would have a couple of drums of fuel and refuel on the way probably. You could cover a fair distance in them.

No, one thing I was sorry about I never ever got, I was never in the amphibious

platoon even if we were there for 2 or 3 weeks it would have been a great experience. I was on land and did my stint in the Biscuit Bombers too but I never got onto the amphibious trucks, worst luck.

It was. Unusual but I think I told you they were sent to the American 151st General Transport,

which was somewhere in Europe and by some strange mistake they arrived in Sydney. Somehow or other we finished up with them. It was quite amusing only about 6 months before we left up there the 2IC [Second in Command], who was responsible for getting the trucks got a bill from the American Army for 30 amphibious trucks. They sorted it out.

I don’t know the real story but we finished up with them. Six months before we left up there they took them off us and they went further up to where they, Balikpapan or somewhere or other up there.

They were covered with sand or gravel. Talking about them we had our own corduroy roads through about half a mile of more of jungle, which we built ourselves. “The mad mile”, we called it. Headquarters and drivers who were supposed to be off duty, we didn’t have any bulldozers or anything, they cut

through themselves through this tropical jungle and cut it all into lengths and corduroy the whole road. I spent one day on it myself because I was too busy driving trucks. I was corduroying one day being an axe man and a country lad. When we were corduroying it right through side by side and by this stage

there was an American job, we dropped off a sling and we were unloading it off and it dropped into the ocean, they managed to haul it out and bring it to shore. They didn’t want it, it had been under the salt water, they didn’t want so they left it there. Our fellows from our unit got hold of the thing and managed to get it out to the unit.

A notice came round our routine orders “Anybody capable of dismantling a bulldozer and cleaning it up and putting it together again”. Well an 18 year old mate of mine was in the tent with me at the time. He said “I can do that”. I said, “When I was 16 my Dad brought a new tractor, it was a real lemon and he couldn’t get it out and it was down in the big shed

about 400 yards from the house, so to fill in the time I stripped it down to the last bolt and I just had it all stripped down when my Dad walked in and he said oh I was in big trouble. I put it all together again I never even had a washer left. He got the job and he stripped it right down. He had rows and rows of pieces and he warned anybody shifted a piece out of the row would get shot.

He washed it all down with kero [kerosene] and oiled it all up and put it all together and we got a tremendous amount of work out of that bulldozer.”

It was because not only for our own unit which we were right on the Busu River with big gravel banks, so they bulldozed a track down to the river and then they set up a spot where they could load the gravel on the trucks. Units all over the area borrowed it -

the bulldozer. We didn’t have any bulldozers, we had picks and shovels. The Americans had the bulldozers. It was a godsend but it showed the initiative of the Australian troops, they never let any thing go to waste, it did a tremendous job.

Things that happened

I have got one on the ship on the way to New Guinea. When we left Townsville they decided they needed a little more anti-aircraft

gunneries, so we took half a dozen Bren guns with us, so they set up the Bren guns here and there around the ship and appointed crews of about 4 to each Bren gun. Yours truly was chosen and I got the bridge of the ship where Captain

Cook’s quarters were. We were a pretty untidy looking lot anyway we set up the Bren gun; it was a 24 hours a day job and I spent the trip from Townsville to Buna on the bridge. We camped there and everything and

dear old Captain Cook, he was a man of about 60 odd, a dapper little man about 5’4” always dressed in white with a white beard and a white moustache, his little table outside his door, a Chinese steward who looked after him, every morning

the table would be set with a snow white cloth and silver cutlery, cruets the works and his bible in the middle. Out he would come sit down, read a passage out of his bible and then have his breakfast and the day started. We all looked with envy as to what he was getting for breakfast. Did you know for the whole

trip he never spoke one word to the gun crew whatsoever, we were about this far apart for most of the time, we thought this was weird. The most intriguing we kept on the decks but the Chinese crew would be around at 5 o’clock in the morning with the hoses, they would hose the decks, they thought it was a hell of a joke if they could possibly catch you they would give your bedding and everything a good wash

they would. It was a bit of a challenge. The really funny incident was they put a little hell hole as a cook house on the deck, to cook for these 1,000 troops that were on this ship which we discovered after, what was underneath was high explosives,

the food was something dreadful so 2 corporals from my platoon were bakers by trade and they decided there would be plenty of flour they would make bread rolls as something decent for the troops. Off their own back and it was a hell hole to work in so for the whole trip they set to work and make these beautiful bread rolls. That was on the way up.

As a favour apparently they were making them for the crew, they were allowed to have a fresh water shower in the crew’s quarters which were right down under the stern about 3 decks under the stern of the ship. This day they had finished their baking and

one of them, a character of a fellow he was down having his shower but the powers that be they decided they would have a sort of an anti-air raid practice so they had a 3.7 ack-ack gun on the rear of the ship, so they let go with that. When the shell burst all these lighter they had

two or three banks of larger machine guns which were part of the ship’s army plus all these Bren guns we had set up and we had fire on this shell burst that was the plane you see, so 3.7 goes off and all hell broke lose, everything opened up you never heard, the ship shuddered when the 3.7 went off and all this

start up with a hell of a racquet. This poor beggar, he hadn’t been told anything about it, he was under the shower, the ship gave one hell of a lurch when the 3.7 went off and then all the machine guns went off. He thought “Oh my God, a submarine”, he thought we had been hit by a torpedo, he is stark bollock [naked], he said “He hit the deck flat

with not a stitch on. What the hell is going on out here?” It was the joke of the whole platoon for the rest of his career in the army.

He got one hell of a fright, he thought “I have got to get out of here”, he was down 2 or 3 decks at the rear end of the ship and it was amazing how he really got mobile.

Most of it was pretty straight forward. The corduroy traps were a trap; you always had a small percentage of fellows who were absolutely hopeless drivers. One fellow

he tipped his truck over on its side 4 times in 3 weeks off the corduroy track. He hit another truck and they would have to get breakdown wagons to haul him back on. One of the most interesting was the trip from Lae or Labu we used to have to put our trucks on barges and head across the bay and across the mouth of the Markham River,

a little spot called Labu and this track ran from there to Wau which was 90 miles into the mountains and it was a hair raising trip the track. At one stage the kunai hill was about 2,000 foot high and the road just snaked up this ridge. It was that steep if your truck stalled through overheating, which was quite possible,

there was no good putting your brakes on the road was so steep it just slid backwards. We used to travel up about 300 or 400 yards apart to give the drivers time to get it started. The driver would try and get it started and if it wouldn’t he left it and it went over the side. There was at least 20 trucks in a huge pile about 600 to 800 feet down this gorge which when you looked down there to keep your mind on the job.

We never lost one, thank God, but coming down was worse than coming up because you were looking straight down there. It was a weird and wonderful trip. At one stage about half way along we used to go round this little mountain top, so one day there were 4 of us going up and we stopped to have a look

and see what is down the other side. We knelt down on the road and the rock shelf went way back and the Bulolo River was about 1,000 feet below us just a little silver stream. We shot back in those trucks and got out of there and every time in future when we went we used to scoot around that, we never stopped to

have a look in future.

Then you got to Bulolo the old gold mining settlement, there were 2 huge gold mining dredges still sitting there, they were enormous, they tell us all of that had been carted in there by air and put together these huge dredges. There was nothing there, they had a scorched earth policy and the little township had been totally wiped out

and Bulolo to Wau was about another 2,000 feet further up and it snaked up the gorge that the Bulolo River flowed through. The Bulolo River was quite a big stream when it came out the other end but the river gorge was that the water flowed through, was about 30 feet and

they had cut a road out of the rock face, 5 or 6 miles up one side and then believe it or not there was a swing bridge they had put in, in civilian times, concrete pillars on either end and big cables across the river with decking. I was about the third truck back,

we stopped and we had a look at it and there was this wall of raging torrent about 40 to 50 feet deep and if you went in you had Buckley’s. We thought “Oh, we have to cross it”, it went bucket down and we thought oh, my turn came. I headed in, nothing only a couple of cables on either side,

not enough to hold you on if you went anywhere but in the middle, I think that was even worse than the first air trip dropping supplies from the air with this trip over this swing bridge and then the road was cut into the rock face for another 3 or 4 miles on the other side before you

came out more or less level country, a big bowl. The air field at Wau was on the side of a hillside. It was really steep, they had to circle round and round to even land on it. There was nothing left there except one house. The Japs got to the edge of the air field there and when they destroyed

it, our forces decided they were going to try and keep them out of Wau but it wouldn’t have been much use to us, it was like this. Evidently they were landing troops by air, the Japs on the edge of the strip shooting at them, some of them never got out of the plane. They were either dead or wounded on the plane,

when the plane took off and carted them back to Moresby and the rest headed into the scrub. The infantry managed to stop them. It was an interesting trip because the natives were, if you pulled up at the roadside there would be a whole swarm of these native men, women and kids, poking about. We thought “Are we going to get out of here or not?”

It was a break from the wharf work the 12 hour shifts. The 2 or 3 trips I really enjoyed once I got over Kunai Hill, it was hairy and the bridge. Strange thing the village across the road from us, a couple moved in there last about 6 months ago, they spent 8 years in New Guinea after the war

working up there, he is an electrician. He said “Were you ever in Wau?” I said “Yes, I was.” “Well, you have been over the swing bridge?” I said “Is it still there?” He said “I have been gone for a long time, 30 years or more but it was still being used when I went there, so whoever put it up did a mighty job. Fully loaded 3 ton trucks going over it,

unbelievable.”

We didn’t, it was rather frightening.

Yes. They had 2 or 3,000 in a huge native camp in Lae who were from all over the islands,

they had been brought down fighting the Japs of course. The Australian forces used them as work parties, all dirty jobs around the place. Spraying all the stagnant ponds and everything to keep the malarial mosquitoes at a minimum number. Around the camp areas and everything.

In the petrol dump, which was just down from us, thousands of drums of all different types of fuel just spread out in 10, 15, 20 drums in each lot. We didn’t put it all together of course and they would have them unloading that. I met a most interesting

man there on one of the work parties. He was about 6 foot tall, beautifully built man, if he had been white, feature wise he was, he would have been a really handsome man and he spoke English better than I did. I said “Where are you from?” He said “I am from Port Moresby. I grew up there and I went to school up there” and he had been to high

school and I said “What on earth are you doing working here on this job?” They could have used him somewhere else to much better value I think because he was a highly intelligent man to talk to.

I wouldn’t know. I was amazed he wasn’t in the infantry battalion. They had several battalions

of troops, they did a fantastic job in behind the lines murdering poor unfortunate Japs. They were very efficient soldiers, that is what they had done all their lives in back of the mountains. I had one experience I had taken a load of stores out to this Papuan Infantry Battalion; it was out near Nadzab in the scrub,

I found my way into it. White officers, the sergeant majors were black, very efficient and one of the chaps in the office said “Do you mind taking a couple of native infantry men back to the headquarters in Lae?” He said “We have just discovered them after nearly 2 years

in behind the lines way out in the mountains murdering Japs. They claim to have killed about 80 odd Japs.” I thought “Oh my God.” He said “They have still got their uniforms on when we found them and their 303’s are in beautifully kept order”. He said “They are around the back there. Go and have a look at them.” They were about 5’2” stubby, thick set, little fellows,

ugliest pair you ever saw in your life. I said “How are you?” They grumbled back at me. They were speaking in their own lingo. I said “I will take them as long as they ride in the back”. He said “Oh yes”. I took them back and took them into headquarters there. The officer “We are dying to hear what these two fellows have to tell us, they have evidently done

a fantastic job way back in the mountains.”

Well, that is where they live. That is what amazed me when we went on the first trip on the biscuit bombing, we roared over one end of the Owen Stanleys range and to get over the top we roared over this huge valley,

it had ridges on each side, way up there you would be 3 or 4,000 feet up and out on the end of a ridge is a native village. How in the name of God they lived. I suppose they caught wild pigs and they evidently they had gardens but it didn’t look a very good spot to try to

live apart from the jungle. We saw several of these villages right in the middle of the jungle right on ridges and everything. They were used to the country.

Mainly when you thought about it at the time you soaked it all in and over the years particularly when I was working around the

farm on my own and I would go over all the different things that happened which probably helped my memory, things that you hadn’t taken a great deal of notice of at the time. When you had time to think about it later on it was actually unreal, incredible. Fancy me doing that or being there.

They packed all,

they would get a call from signals or somewhere up the front “They needed ammunition, someone was in trouble they needed food”. Maintenance units they were called, they were just like a huge store and they packed all the materials that was to be dropped there and we would cart it out to the plane and load it in.

It would be done up in packs about 3 or 4 feet high, one on top of the other and roped around, so it wouldn’t come apart and a parachute would be tied on top with a long lead about 30 feet with a clip on the end and you would

load up 2 or 3 ton of this onto this DC3, no door on the back.

Yes, no door on the back, you nearly froze to death when you got up about 8,000 feet. I had never been so cold in my life. Then some of it would just be, you dropped it at about 3 to 500 feet,

some of it would be cans of stuff in hessian bags, you just kicked it out. I don’t know what it was like. That was to feed the natives apparently. I did read where occasionally a soldier would get killed by a flying can of bully beef from this dropped stuff. Then you took off.

The first trip I did it was about 100 degrees at Nadzab, we only had shirts on, torn down the front. These 2 American pilots walked out in this blazing heat with fur lined leather jackets and fur lined boots. I thought “What gives with them?” We soon found out

once we got over 5,000 feet, I think we got up to 8,000, we nearly froze to death, I have never been so cold in my life. It was a 4 hour trip. Eventually we got over the drop area and the first trip we came over a little mountain knob and then down and then level out. We did 8 trips before we got it all out.

We were sweating like pigs by the time we finished. We then went straight back up to 7 or 8,000 feet or more and froze to death even more. I was damn glad to get out of the plane onto the hot tarmac when we got back. We clothed ourselves a bit better before we went on the next trips. When you got over the area they give you warning and you tie,

how we got it out of the plane was we stacked it in front of the open doorway and one of the lads would sit back against the other side of the craft and put a leather belt around himself and we all sat in front of one another until we got to the fellow right in front and he would have his feet up against the

craft to drop it out with his feet. Modern methods. That is gospel. The lead was clipped and was clipped to a wire that ran down over the roof of the aircraft and it dropped down to 30 feet before it whipped the cap off and the parachute opened,

that was so it would be clear of the plane before the parachute opened which could have been disastrous of course. We had 7 or 8 trips to do. You have heard of the coast watchers, brave men. We supplied them too. They had a Liberator,

because they went right out to New Britain, the Solomons to all these they were way out behind the Japanese lines to radio through all their movements and they had to be supplied so the storeman would load up all these packs specially because they had to fit in the bomb bays, and we would cart them out and load them all in

the Liberator bomb bay, load in a certain way and it was an 8 hour trip at night. They used to do this 8 hour trip to all these coast watchers and then drop them to them. Every now and then you would get an emergency call. We got one from one crew that were in the back of Rabaul, all they had was 3

men and half a dozen native boys, and the Japs had got onto them but they had managed to get out but one fellow had a broken leg and they wanted us to send crutches for him and more supplies. They had to leave a lot behind but they had managed to take their radios with them and they had found another spot where they had set up, so we had this huge pack of supplies.

One lot with crutches strapped down, whether they got them I don’t know. Away they went. We weren’t allowed to go on that trip. They said “We don’t need any manual labour, too far and too dangerous”, so just the aircraft crew went on that. That went out regularly that run around the islands. I did have the honour of loading it a couple of times

We did it.

Not that I know of. There was always the fear you would get tangled up, but we would make sure we had all the leads. We were always frightened that one of us could finish up out. It seemed a crazy way of doing it but that is how we did it.

No, not when the door was open all the time. When we got up about 8,000 all the fellows were up the front, I said “I have got this far, I want to have a look see anyway.” They said “Don’t be silly”, anyway I sneaked down the other side of the cargo hold and came back on the bottom side and hung onto things

and had a real good look out but it was rather frightening except when we were roaring up these gorges with razor back ridges on each side. The wing tips seemed to be only 30 or 40 feet from each wing no more, I was really pleased when we disappeared out of the gorges.

A large percentage, probably 50% never came back because the Japanese eventually they were doing their utmost to trace them all the time. Some of them were out on little islands in the sea between the major islands and if the Japanese actually traced them they had Buckley’s, they had nowhere to go

because they would send in a platoon of troops and they would slowly do the whole place over. They were on the course of the bombers into New Guinea into Rabaul and New Island or wherever else they were sending them from. A lot of them were ex men who had lived gold miners and people who had lived in New Guinea for several years.

The cousin I told you that I visited in Brisbane before I went and when I came back the daughters of that family were married to mining engineers who lived in Bulolo during the war.

Small world. They promptly got turfed home the girls, the wives and the two husbands joined ANGAU [Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit]. One of them was home on leave

when we left the night, I visited them before I went on board the ship for New Guinea, I met this cousin’s husband, only for half an hour then they were going out somewhere, it was weird. We had been up there for quite some time, 6 or 8 months and again I had just come off a 12 or

14 hour shift and the transport sergeant says “Frank, I have a quick job for you would you mind going?” I said “No”. He said “There is some sergeant major down at ANGAU, he says he is in the Native Administration Unit, he is nearly coming through the phone, he has been screaming for a truck to shift a party of natives for an hour or more” and he said “I haven’t had one”. He said “There is one just come back on the line from the workshop”

and I said “I will do it for you”. I get there and I walked in and he is jumping up and down like a blow fly and did he barrel me for not being there. I said “Now just a minute, I know this fellow”, it was the cousin’s husband that I had met for half an hour. When he was nearly finished I said “Now just a minute”, I said, “You have got to hear my side of the story

first, I have just come off a 14 hour shift on the wharf”, I said, “We didn’t have a truck, this one has just come off the workshop and I have just come off shift”. He said “I don’t know you, how do you know my name?” I said “You’re Rene Kelly’s husband, aren’t you?” I said “I met you in Brisbane just before the night

before I came up here”. He didn’t remember anything about it. He back pedalled because it threw him out completely. I got his natives and carted them where he wanted them and then I went home. Three or four months later I went on sick to the doctor for something and I walk into the doctor’s tent and who should be sitting there but Alec. I said “How are you Alex?” “Not bad Frank”. He said “I want to apologise for the first that other day.”

I said “It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t my fault, what the heck, it was just one of those things that happened”. I never saw him again until 1950 and my cousin had come back down to visit friends from her young days in Alexandra and had called in at my parents shop in Yea to say hello.

I happened to be there, we had a great old yak for a couple of hours. He is dead now, I never saw him again, he had a business in Bribie Island, he had buses and a ferry from Bribie Island to the mainland before they put the bridge in. I have been to the cousin’s since but he was

gone, he died in the meantime.

No. The field ambulance units did all of that.

You had a vehicle that you drove all the time but then it could change from time to time too.

We had 6 semi trailers in the unit, each platoon had 2 each and I was one of the drivers, so I did a lot of driving of the semis and then you would be sent anywhere on a 3 tonner as well. You didn’t actually, but they left one man on one truck and made him responsible for its maintenance and everything if possible.

We frequently got to go and take such and such if yours was out of action or someone else was driving it at the moment.

The old Blitz buggies were pretty hard to make comfortable.

A big old 4 wheel drive ones with the huge tyres, which you needed, otherwise you would be perpetually bogged

until they got the road put in. The engine was back in the cabin between the two bucket seats and they were pretty basic bucket seats if you could scrounge a cushion it might have helped a bit but that was about all.

We suffered tremendously from tinea and all that sort of thing because of the heat,

it was hot enough outside without having this hot engine with it. We pulled all the doors off the trucks and none of the officers ever said anything. It was nearly impossible. A lot of the men had tremendous trouble with tinea complaints; some had it all over their bodies. Head, everywhere, it was shocking. The only cure was to send them

back to the cool climate on the mainland but strangely enough a couple of times in hospital they had a tinea ward. I used to think “Why in the name of God do they keep them here?” They were in a terrible mess. That was the way it was.

No, in the first place when I got pelted out of the truck in the

air raid I evidently did something to it and then I was in two truck smash ups. Both times I was stationary; I pulled up on the side of the road. Once was in a semi trailer beside the Lae airport at 2 o’clock in the morning and the lights went out on my vehicle, they had been on and off for a couple of weeks and I said “Look, we have got to get these lights fixed; no we can’t leave the vehicle off the road.”

I said “What about me?” They went off and there was a little make and break point under the dashboard and it was an American truck with very bright lights coming towards me and I sort of scrambled down under the dashboard to try and find where it was, one of my unit trucks who was a real speed fiend, he was in a 1,500 weight Blitz, a small one.

He told me afterwards that he had it flatten to the boards [accelerate quickly] seeing what it could do, he couldn’t get it over 55 [miles per hour]. He hit the back of the semi at 55 mph, he didn’t kill himself, it buckled the chassis. I had the truck in gear, switched off, it buckled the chassis between the cabin and the turntable, both sides a big angle line.

I woke up in the American hospital about 5 hours later. He said “I thought I had killed you”. When he scrambled out of his own vehicle I was hanging upside down out of the cabin with my feet caught in the pedals. The American ambulance came along and picked me up and took me down to the American Hospital. I woke up

looking at a gorgeous brunette American lass.

No. It was the only time I saw her. I briefly came too and when she opened her mouth that ruined it, she had one of those real nasally southern accents and then I thought I had dreamt it. Years later, I didn’t know at the time but my sergeant had come around

to the American hospital to see how I was going and this poor beggar was dying of cancer in Sydney, he was a Sydneysider, must have been 5 or 6 years ago, so 2 of us and our wives hopped in our car and drove to Sydney and spent a day with him. He thought it was fabulous. We had dinner with him and his wife that night

and he said “Frank, remember that time you were in the American Hospital”. I said “Yes, I do quite well”. “Wasn’t she the most beautiful nurse that girl who was looking after you?” I said “Was she real? I never saw her again”. He said “Yes, she was real until she opened her mouth”. He said “Didn’t she have a terrible accent on her?” Marie’s eyes were nearly popping out of her head. He said “Well, it was true,

yes it was true, she was there”.

We carted everything that came off the ships, everything, even coffins for the American Army. As soon as we landed at Buna the food there was chronically

disorganised apparently, we were carting in 100 and 1,000’s of tons of food and stacking it in heaps out in the hot sun. Broken crates and everything and it would all fall out. We were backing trucks over tins of condensed cream and all this sort of stuff from the mainland. We thought “We are fools if we don’t have a bit of this”.

We would shove something under the seat in our truck and then put the box of something back in the tent. We put a little bit extra to make the rations a little bit better. Yes, we did but not in excess because you had nowhere to keep in anyway, particularly in the heat. We made sure which, even when we carted

truck loads of vegetables back. The first time I went up I stopped at Bulolo with a couple of army fellows in a little hut there; I wondered “What the heck was I going to collect in Bulolo?” We drove around early next morning through the jungle scrub, it wasn’t very high for about an hour and all along the track, it was just a track,

there was a great stack of pumpkins. I said “Where do these come from?” He said “They grow wild in the bush” and he said “I have had the native boys out collecting.” We filled that 3 ton truck with pumpkins, they were just growing wild in the scrub, there were just these stacks of pumpkins along the

track. An hour or two later a couple of trucks came back from Wau fully laden with green vegetables from this native market garden. There were two army fellows permanently in charge of it and we used to go up every couple of weeks and come back with truck loads of greens. The only portion we saw of it was what we pinched, there was never any issue. I think the most of it

went to the 2/7th AGH and headquarters they were fighting hard, they had to be well looked after.

Yes. We got a small portion of it, put it that way.

No, not much of that went on, not bartering. It was you helped yourself. If your mates were out of something and you had plenty of it you might say “Here is a couple of cans of this or a couple of cans of that”, it was mainly tinned fruit we went for, the tinned sausages were pretty good.

We had in my platoon a fantastic little cook, Nigly he was about 5’2”, 5’3”, skinny little fellow in his mid-30’s and his wife back home, a very irritable little man easily stirred up and of course you always had those who would make the most and he would fire up. I found him quite a good little fellow. It paid to keep on the good

with him, he would come to me “Frank, we are getting desperate”, I said “What do you want?” He would tell me what and sausages if possible. If you could you would get a box, but you would only take the one box of it. This would tide you over until the next lot of rations come in. That is how we existed; we always had a little collection

in a box under our tent with a lid on it. We used to put everything. We might get cakes soldered up in tins from home, it went into the box and it was a community sort of thing that was the way we lived.

It was, it really was. This chap had a wife and 3 little daughters

and then we had another chap from way down the western district, they sent him home on compassionate leave because he was in, someone from around the district had written his wife that he wasn’t doing the right thing, that was the bug bear every now and then some fellow would get a letter, usually from someone else in the district, saying his wife was playing up and so on,

It did unsettle the married fellows. The majority of our fellows being only kids more or less weren’t married so we didn’t have that problem.

Well they had to send them home for a month’s leave but they always came back. I don’t know whether they sorted things out the poor beggars. Of course

it happened right throughout the whole army. A lot of the fellows weren’t doing the right thing when they went to the islands, let’s face it. It was war time and it was a whole different morality.

Nowadays it seems to be the way of living. Men and women,

you looked to live together let’s face it and I knew plenty of couples who were very loyal to one another but there was always that certain percentage. I even know in our own town in Yea you knew what was going on but that was it.

I know one chap in my tent and I was talking to him one day he was 26 or 27, he had the most beautiful wife, but they had made a pact like that, she could do what she liked and he could do what he liked but of course after the war the marriage fell apart ultimately.

It is like I have always said even with our young people these days if you sleep around with 100 people before you get married how in the name of God, either way male or female, how in the name of God are you going to stick with one person for the rest of your life? That is my view.

We were noted for the furphies [rumours] that went around. Just as a past time we used to start a lot of them up ourselves. I was a quiet,

they always reckoned I was unusual for a young fellow of 18, I wasn’t a mad headed rabbit player like my mates were, lovely fellows we got on like champions, they used to call me old sober sides. I would start up furphies particularly when we were going home or something else. I could always do a bit of straight face and keep it up.

They would believe me before they would believe a lot of others. We had another fellow and his name was Murphy too, he was a doozie, he was always coming home with wild excitement “I heard down at headquarters, something or other”, they would all believe him.

No, there was a lot of characters and

you could tell them (UNCLEAR)

The usual horseplay amongst one another. When they finally bought we got two bottles of beer, I don’t know if they were issued but you had to pay for them1/3d. a bottle

13c. a bottle

And they hadn’t had any for quite a long time and I didn’t drink much at all, so most of the time I sold mine to my tent mates who liked their beer except for special occasions when I was particularly cheesed off. The first time I ever really got stoned in my life

they had a big military detention camp in Lae and there were American servicemen, British sailors and Australian servicemen, there were servicemen from all over the world in there for murder and God knows what, huge barbed wired entanglement around this, guard towers and machine guns and everything. They were extending the prison camp and

they had a bulldozer there and some silly fellow left the bulldozer inside the compound, one of the chaps in there knew how to handle a bulldozer, so the first opportunity he got after they had knocked off for the day he hopped onto the bulldozer and fired it up and lined it up with the guard tower with the fellow with the machine gun on top and cleaned that up for a start, and then lined it up on the barbed wire fence. He cleaned up about 30 or 40 yards of

fence. About 70 or 80 of the prisoners just off and out they fled. They were all over the Lae area; they found some of them hidden down in the bottom of American ships, the sailors were quite happy to get them out as soon as they could. It took them about a month to round them all up but they couldn’t go far.

All scrub where you could only go by air or by sea. Each unit until they repaired the whole setup had to put up a tent and a barbed wire entanglement, they provided the barbed wire around and we had to guard half a dozen of these prisoners. It was my first time on duty on guard, I was on from

10 until 2 in the morning but it was also beer ration night, so I wondered over to the unit lines and got my 2 bottles of beer. When I went to collect them, two sergeants and a corporal from my tent and they have got about 20 bottles of beer on this table they had brought in from all the

non drinkers, we had quite a few of them. They said “What are you going to do with yours tonight Frank?” I said “I am going to drink it”. They said “Put it there and join us”. So we did. I did. I had never had a drink in my life. We cleaned up all the beer, and one sergeant said “Wait until you see what I’ve got hidden in the scrub”. He disappeared for 10 minutes, we thought he had fallen

into the bed of the Busu River which we were camped on, it was dry in that area, he arrived back with a bottle of Old Soldier Rum. We had a neat glass full each on top of all the beer we had drank. There had been a truck load of off duty fellows to the picture night somewhere or other,

there was a little track you could drive a truck down through the unit line, with the truck to let them off. In the headlights were 2 sergeants, a corporal and a buck private, belting hell out of one another.

I don’t know what started it, we were beyond starting anything. They sorted it out and it suddenly dawned on me in my stupefied way that I was on guard duty,

so I staggered out and down the track down towards to where I had to go through the entrance to the mad mile where the trucks had to go through to the traffic control tent. There was a lantern hanging out the front of it. It was the only time I saw three lanterns where there was only one of them alight. I staggered into the guard tent and the sergeant there the best mate of one of the sergeants I had been drinking with. He said “You all right Robbie.”

I said “I am fine”. He said “He is drunk, it had never been heard of before” and then he went on. “Look what this bloke is doing to good living young fellows”, finally he said, “Can you go on guard?” I said “Yes I can”, but I couldn’t, I was sick as a dog in no time, so he sent somebody else out to do my shift and I had to do 2 until 6. I took my groundsheet over with me and my rifle bayonet and spread the groundsheet out on the ground

and sat down on it and the oncoming guard woke me up at 6 o’clock in the morning. By 10 o’clock I was out kicking football with the prisoners.

It was. I think I have only been stung [drunk] like that in 3 times in my life, that was the first time. I have never been a drinker, not in a big way.

I pulled into this about 9 or 10 o’clock at night this big semi trailer and the fellows start loading, I thought “They look like coffins; usually they are only buried in a blanket”. I, finally I said “What are they you are loading on?” He said “What do they look like? Coffins”, he said “Well that’s what they are”.

I said “But our fellows don’t use coffins”. He said “The Americans dig them all up and put them in coffins, the bones and send them home”. The American cemetery was just down the road on their side of the river. I hid round there with this load of coffins and there is half a dozen big American Negroes to unload the, big 6 footers, they are as funny as

a bag full of monkeys amongst themselves. They get them down and one fellow opens one up and says “That looks fairly comfortable”, he said, “I think I will try it”. So he lays himself out in this coffin, so they promptly slammed the lid shut and lock him in it. They unloaded this huge semi trailer; it was stacked up pretty high. Finally I said “If you don’t open

that coffin, he will be dead in there, he will be smothered”. “Oh no, he will be right, he is tough”. Finally when they finished they opened it up, he was fine. They said “How was it?” He said “It was a bit hard on the shoulders and the neck didn’t fit too good”. One fellow said “Well you are the only ….. to ever complain anyway”. When they started

I was on the road to Nadzab, you took a deep breath and held your breath and put your foot down, it was hell for about 400 yards.

It was terrible, nothing worse than the smell of human carcasses.

I don’t know whether they all had, the Americans were doing it of course, they had masks

but even so that wouldn’t help. Talking about cemeteries the Lae cemetery is the one I was talking about, we hadn’t been up there very long, we were still having to be pulled out of bogs, it took you an hour and a half to do a couple of mile through this depth of mud and for a whole week I was allocated the job at the Lae cemetery

helping to put it together, once they got it set up they go out and dig up all our own fellows wherever they are buried, way out in the mountains and so forth on the map and they are brought in and buried in Lae or Moresby. I worked there for a week when there were 2 graves in that cemetery,

none of the lawn section at all, they were just putting the thing together. We have got 3 or 4 of our fellows buried there to at Lae. I have seen the photos of the cemetery since and I think “God, I worked on that for a whole week with the truck shifting trees and whatever with these fellows when that place was first started”.

No. Now at our, I suppose it would, my daughter and her hubby, she had a great uncle who was buried in France and they did a trip around Europe recently and they got all the particulars and went and visited

the grave which was the first time that any relative since 1918 or 1917 had ever visited the grave. The daughter said “It was quite amazing, they both broke down and cried”. They spent an hour or so there looking and then they went back next morning, she had bought a scrub rose bush to plant on the grave and said “Farewell to him”. At least he has had

someone visit him. I think if I went to Moresby where my mates were killed it would be quite emotional.

Yes it is, but of course we were fortunate we did not have a great number killed, not like in the infantry.

We did have our few we left behind I think about 10.

I have been the Secretary for 22, 23 years now had it thrust on me in 10 seconds flat one night, I never escaped and never likely to. There is only 3 of us left out of all the

fellows who were actively engaged in the Association, there is only 3 of us left in Melbourne, it was here. Some of them have never come to a reunion even. It got beyond it, there is the president, secretary and the treasurer, we got a couple of other chaps up country who are on the committee. We ring them up.

A lass who does all our, she is a returned navy lass from the Gulf War and she does all our typing and sets out our newsletters beautifully.

It all happened with me not knowing much about

it. I was on the farm up the bush without much contact and I think it was 1946, a group of them got together and called a meeting and organised the whole thing. The point was with our crew we came from 3 or 4 states and all over 3 or 4 states and when we came back we all went on leave each in his own separate

state, when we reported back to our staging camp to go back to our unit, the unit had been broken up, so we never ever got together as a unit after we came back to Australia. It never gave us a chance to organise anything. It took a long time to, we never ever had any rolls to find out [?] to know where fellows were. Eventually I think it was 1950/51

I got a letter from the, they finally run me to earth, they used to hold the reunions in Hawthorn at that stage of the piece, I went down and there were 80 or 90 fellows there.

It was fabulous, it was 1945 to 1951, it was 5 or 6 years but then I more or less attended regularly ever since, I think I have only missed one or two in all that

time. We had South Australian fellows they organised their own committee over there and Broken Hill ties in conjunction with the South Australians but they also had their own little organisation too, there was another lot in Sydney and now in latter years

there has been a reunion for the last 10 or 15 years at Caloundra in Queensland. There are quite a few Queenslanders and there are those who go up to spend the winter up there. We have been up there a couple of times to that gathering. Sydney once but we have had over the years 2 reunions in Victoria, 2 in South Australia and 1 in Broken Hill for about 50 years. That petered out about 3 or 4 years ago.

They used to be fabulous weekends; they used to come from all over to Broken Hill.

Amazing. We had a transport sergeant, one of the ones I was boozing with the first time I ever got sozzled, he finished up a millionaire. He started up his own little

transport business in Orbost of all places. First of all he cornered all the local transport right throughout Gippsland more or less and then he finished up with about 30 semis travelling all over the state and all over Australia. He sold out for a couple of million to a big American company and then retired to Surfers Paradise

many long years ago, he’s still alive, barely, he is just having his third open heart surgery but he has survived up to date. He is a year or two older than me; he would be in his early 80’s now. I will be 80 in September. Two or three of our fellows finished up millionaires. We had

one chap, he was a man in his 30’s, we all thought he was the most hopeless, helpless fellow you ever saw in your life. I think he didn’t like work. They finished up giving him two stripes and putting him in charge of the mail. That was, I suppose he did other things in headquarters, they would have probably given him something else to do. That fellow finished up with a huge haberdashery store in St Kilda.

I have only been to St Kilda twice over the years too, he is long dead now. The most unlikely looking candidate, we thought, obviously he was quite good in his own sphere once he got out of the army. There were two or three others did the same. Just before the last reunion a couple of months ago,

a chap, one of our fellows from Mansfield rang me and he said “Sandy Powell from Beechworth died”. I said “Sandy Powell, that blighter”, I said “I have been sending him newsletters for 23 years and I have never had a word from him. I was going to stop sending them.’ He said “He has just died”.

He practically ran Beechworth all that time, Mayor of Beechworth in everything, fire brigade. Everything that went on in a little country town, he had a finger in and I never heard a word from him in all that time.

Yes.

There are a few. I kept on getting addresses over the years. We advertised in New South Wales in the local papers and the RSL [Returned and Services League] paper for people to contact us from the unit and we got quite a few who wrote down and said where they were from and others someone else had given me their address

and I sent them a newsletter and they sent it back and said “Don’t bother sending that to me, I don’t want it”. About the army again, not even their mates.

I was home on leave just before I went to New Guinea and my brother was in the seminary studying to be a priest at Ballarat, I went up to visit him and one of his

(UNCLEAR) who had just been ordained his sister was in the convent, his young sister in Murgon, just to get me to go and visit the poor girl because she never had any visitors because she came from Sydney, up there she would love to have somebody to visit her. He gave me some excuse to go and visit her to get me to go. The very first Sunday I was back I thought “I will get this out of the road.”

I went into the thing, it was a special day on for the church, there were crowds there, I thought “I struck a bad day”, I went over to the convent afterwards and asked if I could see the sister? I gave her name. The old darling who was at the door she gave me the once over “Who are you? Why do you want to see sister?” I explained to her. “Oh”, she said, “Well come in”.

She was the most gorgeous girl, she only looked about 17 or 18, I don’t think she was long out of the novitiate. She was that delighted to have a visitor, took me inside and brought me afternoon tea, cakes and biscuits and she was a real outgoing personality, we chatted away there for about 2 hours. Lovely. She said “You have got to come and visit me again”. I said “If you are going to turn on the afternoon tea like that again, you won’t keep me away?”

Next morning we closed camp, I was issued with greens and by Friday we were in Brisbane and on the way. She thought she saw a few troops in greens on the street, those who had to go to town, she thought “That I bet that is Frank’s unit and he has been sent”. She wrote to me to my brother to ask “What was going on?” and he wrote back and

said “He has gone to New Guinea”. She wrote back to get my address and she wrote to her provincial in charge for permission to write to me while I was in New Guinea and strangely enough she got it which was most unusual. I get this letter; I had been in Lae about 2 or 3 months

and one of the fellows said “Murgon”, some of the fellows picked up the mail, it was in a female hand, “Who did you have in Murgon?” I couldn’t think of anybody, I didn’t even meet a girl while I was in Murgon, there were tons of troops there long before we were. Anyway I opened it up and sure enough she told me dhe had permission to write to me while I was

in New Guinea. She used to write lovely letters and say a prayer for me I suppose, she took me under her wing prayer wise. I wrote to her the whole time every couple of months. When I came back by this time she had been moved to Brisbane, so before I went to my relatives I went out and found the convent,

which was on top of the second highest hill in Brisbane and it was a 100 degree day, I panted up to the door, and a little nun comes out and I explained “Could I see Sister Candice?” ,”You must be her soldier boy home from New Guinea. Hang on wait, I’ll get her.” I hear these flying feet and beads rattling round steps

and she came to the door. I think I got the most gorgeous welcome from anybody from that little lass. She flung her arms around me and kissed me and hugged me and “Come in”. I spent the whole afternoon; they gave her time off to spend the whole afternoon with me, delightful afternoon. The only thing: she paraded me in front of the 12 or 15 nuns, I was paraded before the lot.

We spent the afternoon together and it was just on dusk, she said “I have to go Frank”, she said, “You realise that I can’t write to you again”. I said “I fully realise that”. She said “Where are you going now? Well come with me”, and we walked over the front out the top of this hill and you look straight down over the top to a bend in the river to where the old aunt’s shop was.

“See that block of shops down there, my great aunt owns them.” She said “Isn’t that lovely”. That was the last I heard of her until about 5 or 6 years ago through another nun who was stationed in Brisbane, who was Marie’s bridesmaid, she found out that she was in a different order and whether she was still alive or not

and she was and they gave me her address and I wrote to her, she was in Brisbane. Anyway I never got an answer until about 4 months later I get a letter from Ireland and she apologised for not answering straight away but the day she got the letter she got orders to go to Pakistan, this is a woman in her 70’s and they had her sent up there

but they turfed her off to Ireland when the hot season started because they said she would never stand it at 112 and 114 degrees. She wrote me a beautiful long letter. What that woman hadn’t done, she had about 6 university degrees. She had been all over America to the universities, Belgium to a huge University there and astonishing.

After that I haven’t heard from her since, whether she is still alive I wouldn’t know. She said she would write to me when she came back to Australia, but I never ever heard. I have heard since that she is back but whether she is still alive or not, I don’t know.

It was. I told her what I had been doing, my large brood and so forth. What they were doing,

which was really nice to contact her again, it added a little something to my stay in New Guinea, it gave me something to look forward to because they were always interesting.

Yes it was. It was a pretty,

it was the constancy of it, no entertainment, no light side to your life at all. The only thing was the picture movies and apart from that and then most of the time you were too damn tired to be bothered but we had to have some outlet. I will never forget one time I went to the pictures,

Red Skelton, comedian, I thought he was the worst comedian under the sun in this picture called I Dood It. I was too far away to walk home; I had to wait for the truck. A month later I decided I would go to the pictures again on a different side over on the American side and when I get there I Dood It, I was completely cheesed off.

About a couple of months later I am transferred out to Nadzab for the biscuit bombing episode and we decided to go to an American set up one night and I get I Dood It. . It was appalling. You had very little scope in entertainment there.

When I say that there were several American concert parties - Carol Lange and Bob Hope.

No, I was always on duty, I never got to one of those and they must have had half a dozen in the period I was there. Some of our fellows that were off duty got there but I always managed to be down at the wharf. Going hell for leather [working hard].

You could swim in the ocean except me because I went swimming in the ocean and I got what they call coral bug in the ear. It finished up a very painful episode, I finished up in hospital because you nearly went mental because this thing ate away the inner wall of your ear and it got infected, you nearly went crazy.

I couldn’t even go for a swim.

The depth

People went swimming but it was at your own risk because there was always the possibility if you were like me, there were quite a few fellows like me who couldn’t. The coral bug seemed to like the inner ear very well.

Some of them would go round in the jungle and what not but they always ran the risk of tripping over a trip wire on a Japanese booby trap.

Yes.

You always had the go getters. Our Sandy Hill, the South Australian fellow who had the distillery, we had our main

maintenance platoon and then each platoon had its tiny workshops where minor jobs were repaired and a mechanic there. This chap, he had a lot of spare time and he made souvenirs out of aluminum

crashed aircraft metal, all sorts of things. Sold them to the Yanks, sold them to anybody who wanted them, he set up this distillery out in the scrub behind. A proper distillery and he was always “Can’t you get us a drum of dried apricots or anything that would ferment?” He would wonder around the scrub and come back with a bag of native bananas, everything went into this

drum until it was putrid and then he distilled. He used to charge £50 a bottle to the Yanks because it was dynamite.

I never ever tasted it. I used to have the odd bottle of beer but I had more respect for my insides. I just arrived back, I had been on night shift,

about 10 o’clock in the morning there were two lots asleep in the tent and this American jeep about 20 yards away pulled up with two Yankee doctors and two Yankee nurses, one of the officers said “Hey guys, is this the place where you get the steam?” I said “Steam, what are you talking about?” He said “You know drink, somebody told me you get some here”. I said “I don’t know about that”. He said “No,

don’t bother all we want is something to drink, it is our day off.” I thought “If you drink this it will be a day off all right”. I went up and said “Sandy in the workshop, there are a couple of American officers down there and they want to know if this is the place where you get the.” I said “Have you got any?” He said “Frank, you never know what they want”. I said “No, I think they are on the level”. He said “I have got a couple of bottles.” I said “All right, I

think so”. “All right”, he said. I went back. I said “You are in luck if you hang around awhile”. Down come Sandy with his bottles and if you hold it up it looks like water, distilled water. “You wouldn’t be having us on guy would you?” Sandy said “No”. “Can we try?” Sandy said “If you try, you buy”. They took the top off and drank.

I thought “He was going to die, he was gagging and carrying on”. He finally got his breath back and he said “Try that doll”. He hands it over to the girl.

American nurses. The nurses they had with them, she finished up down on the floor of the jeep, before she recovered, good stuff and they forked out their £40

and away they went. I hope they lived because….

It burnt with an invisible flame. That is how pure it was.

One of our fellows had to go off to hospital after it. Then they put a little bit in the bottle and filled it up with water or whatever. It was dynamite.

Another chap, an American pilot who used to fly into the Lae strip with a DC3 every now and then from America and he would bring back crates of women’s underwear. Silk stockings and bras and panties and all this sort of thing. He had a roaring trade.

They sent them home as birthday presents

It was weird, by this time they had put in a little freezing works and chilling chambers and we were getting a bit of fresh meat, it was being delivered around and we got a bit of fresh meat. Our lot were delivering it and I got the job

of delivery truck for awhile around all the units. Start about 5 in the morning and down to our own air force units and I came to the cook at the air strip. He said “You are just the boy I want to see”, he said “I have got a real good thing going, it is getting a bit hot”, he said “You could take this over, you are running around

and you could make”, it was in the underwear department. I was thinking seriously about it and I wasn’t meant to do it because a couple of mornings later I slammed a big steel truck about 6 o’clock in the morning, nearly took my finger off, it is still flattened and made a real mess of it. I had to go to hospital to get the nail off,

fixed up a bit so I never went back on the meat truck, so I missed out on the opportunity to get on the black market, thank God.

Well, it is just

brief world news and a little bit of Australian news. It was only just a small regime of what was going overseas, which was the only way we got any news on what was happening overseas in Europe and elsewhere. We only got the major battle results and

we never ever knew that America had nearly bombed the tripe out of Japan. That was all news to us when we came home. We never got any of that in our news.

Japan? In Lae. We got the Guinea Gold that came out once a week.

It was fairly frequently.

I think it was printed in Moresby and delivered around the troops, it was only about 3 or 4 pages. Pretty basic but it was better than nothing.

I suppose you could if you wanted to but it was never advertised around the platoons, maybe headquarters

contributed a bit of something.

No. It was just a little plain news sheet. It was much appreciated, better than nothing; it kept us aware that there were other things going on in the world.

No, a little minor

but nothing, there wasn’t room for it. A little bit of news from capital cities. No gossipy type of stuff.

For about 12 months or so it was so because we would be

at the dinner table and someone would say such and such. “When was that? What happened?” “Didn’t you know?” “No, No”. We didn’t hear anything where we were. Half the time we didn’t even know how the war was going.

We were half way across the Coral Sea on our way home when they dropped the first atom bomb, I think we were in Townsville when they dropped the next one,

we met Brisbane on VP Day, the first troop train through on VP Day. We knew the war was over then we were back in Aussie.

When we were on the station getting aboard and this tremendous roar went up and we are being put on

the train and this young lieutenant he looked about 16 or 17, he just got his pips, evidently some wealthy family, because he wasn’t old enough to be a lieutenant as far as war concerned. He marched in to our sergeant major and said “Could he take charge of the troops for the moment?”

“Yes”, he said. He stood up and he said, “Right chaps, the war is over”. That’s it, turned on his head and walked away. We all gave a cheer and that is when some of the fellows said, “Oh, we are going to miss out on all the fun”. 8 or 10 of them just quietly disappeared. We will catch a later train home. They were not going to miss out on the festivities on

in the city. I suppose you had been away for 2 years or more, you are entitled to let your hair down a little bit. We had a wonderful trip home to Sydney on the train.

Yes, they were bitter when they went away and they were bitter all the time they were there. They were the fellows who when we

sent newsletters to them after said “Don’t bother sending anything to me, I don’t want, I hated it and I don’t to hear any more about it”. They would have been the minority, most of the blokes were here and the war is on.

It was mainly married men, and a couple of young fellows like my friend Murphy,

he was a lovely fellow but he hated the army and we had a few like that and they went AWOL every opportunity they got and they didn’t mind spending a week or two in the boob when they got back because they would be only back in the unit a couple of weeks and they would be off again. Finally they got dishonorably discharged which is what, unless they got sent overseas

to get rid of them.

No, not that I know of. If you were. I have never heard of anyone who it affected but it is possible.