Australians at War Film Archive

I was born at Wandi

and my mother was very sick when I was born, I think it was diphtheria she had. And they gave me to a woman by the name of Mrs Buckley, she lived at Kimeary and she looked after me for about two months. And they tell me that I used to sleep between Mrs Buckley and her husband in a double bed. And she had me eating mashed pumpkin

with a spoon and my people lived at Kimeary and my father was the manager of a cheese factory, and he also used to buy haystacks for a firm in Brisbane by the name of Henry Dean, used to drive round in a sulky and buy haystacks and get them all done up for the machine and sent to Brisbane.

And then he moved to Mount Tyson, and that’s where I started school, he was manager of the Mount Tyson Cheese Factory. And my young sister Dulce, no, my sister Dulce, she was born before me, they sent her to the convent at Oakey.

And I started school at Mount Tyson State School and with my father we lived next door to the cheese factory. And I had another brother older than me, who was born not far from there, he was born at Pittsworth, that was Laurie. And another one

was born at Biggenden, and I started school at Mount Tyson. And then from Mount Tyson we shifted to Lowood where my father was manager of the cheese factory there, when I was about six. And I can remember

that we lived next door to a hospital and I can remember when my young brother was born, Bob. He’s 78 now, I can remember seeing him. The nurse brought him out on the veranda and held him out and said “Have a look at your young brother”, and I said “Isn’t he red”, I’ll never forget this. And

I went to school at Lowood until I was about eight or nine. And we shifted to Brisbane, and we lived in Pembroke Road, Coorparoo, and we were great friends with the Whites from Whites Hill. I still know the,

two of the grandsons, Paul White and Goog White and Luton White. That hill was named after them. And we used to walk up to Whites Hill, it was a big house with a veranda all round, and they had a telescope and you could look all over Brisbane. And then we shifted from, and I went to the school, St James’s Coorparoo, it was a big brick church, it’s still there,

a big red brick church beside St James’s Convent School. And we shifted from Pembroke Road up to Fifth Avenue and then from Fifth Avenue I went to St Laurence’s Christian Brothers College at South Brisbane. I was to catch the tram in and walk up the hill past that girl’s school. And what’s the name of it? I’ve

forgotten the name of it, and I used to go to St Laurence’s. And I went there every day by tram, and then we shifted from, so Fifth Avenue Coorparoo to Lowington Terrace Dutton Park, my father bought a house there for 30 thousand pounds. And I went to the,

still went to St Laurence’s’. And I got sick once, I had pneumonia and the Christian Brother used to send down four boys every day to see me, I was in bed and we had a private nurse. And I grew up, went to school there, sat for scholarship and I don’t know whether I passed

it or not, I wasn’t a very smart lad at school. And I got a job as a message boy up in the, at Highgate Hill at a chemist delivering messages, chemist prescriptions to people and riding my pushbike into town and picking up supplies for the chemist. His name was Bill Kelleher

and there’s still a chemist shop there, right on the top of Highgate Hill. And I used to pick up supplies at a place, I think they might be still there, Taylors and Elliot in Charlotte Street and AM Bickfords in Tank Street. I worked as a message boy, I was getting 11 [shillings] and six [pence] a week. And Bill Kelleher got me a job with one of his friends as an

apprentice painter. I was with Bill for about 12 or 18 months and then I served my apprenticeship with Bill Sawyer from Warcumber Street, Dutton Park. And used to go to college three times a week into the technical college in where the parliament house is. You never went during the day, you went of a nighttime

and work five and a half days a week. And this technical college, they taught you how to make paint. And I can make real paint, I can make undercoat, and I can make finishing coat. I can, but now they don’t make their own paint, they buy it already made. And I left the painting

business, I painted one house, that was the house next door to my mother. I didn’t finish my time, I worked for three months, I did my service for three months, three years I mean. And I left and I painted the house next door to my mother’s in Ranwinton Terrace. And then I left it because the turpentine affected my health.

So I left the painting and I went up to Gympie with my father. I was about 19 at the time, and he started a fruit shop. And worked with him, we started a fruit run, worked for nothing. I think it was keep and 10 shillings a week and I worked with a chap

called Stan Petski. He smoked, I never smoked. He got his tobacco money and 10 shillings a week. I worked there till I was called up for National Service training in 1939 and I did three months camp at Fraser’s Paddock Brisbane. And that was an

old area where the First World War people trained. And we lived in the same old huts as they lived in, when I finished up training after three months, went back to Gympie, went back on the fruit run, we were doing house to house with the truck. And they called me up, after about three months they called me up for full time duty

with the AMF, Australian Military Forces and went to camp in Maryborough. And we were camped in the showgrounds and then from the showgrounds they shifted out to Tyro and we used to do routes marches from Maryborough down to Pialba we used to call it, they call it Hervey Bay now.

Used to do route marches down there, stay for a couple of nights and then march back. And that’s when we lived at, were camped at Tyro and I knew quite a few people from Tyro but they’re mostly dead now. And we were in camp at Maryborough for about six months and then we moved to Tyro

in a camp there. And then from Tyro we moved up to Townsville and we did a lot of bush training at Mount Spec in Townsville. And then from Townsville, oh, we played football in Townsville, I was in the football team. And we won the premiership, I’ve got a photo of them here. And then

we went from Townsville to Milne Bay, and I can sing the song, the Milne Bay song. I’ll sing it for you later, do you want me to sing it for you now?

On the shores of Milne Bay, where the women wear string and grass skirts, but you’re not in the race especially

if they see your face. I wish the women would cover themselves up around here, for each time to see them they make us feel queer. On the shores of Milne Bay, where the jungle grows down to the sea, pom, pom.

That’s the song. Now the 40, you want to hear the 47 song?

Come on boys and fight, there’ll be no late leave tonight, we’re the fighting 47th Infantry. We like our girls and do we like our beer, we’ll do our best with hearty cheer. And we fight like Aussies can, for we fear not any man we’re

the boys that joined the Anzac [Australian and New Zealand Army Corps].

You like that one?

And I’ll give you the words of it, I’ve got it in paper here.

And we sang it at the last reunion we had in Maryborough a fortnight ago. There was only 13 of us, of the originals from Gympie and Maryborough, Bundaberg and Childers

and Atlo Kilting. But they were all nice fellows and I saw one fellow, he wasn’t at the reunion,

who lived at, he lived at Maryborough, Tex Barlow, he’s in a wheelchair. He’s a great mate of mine, but he’s still going strong. I wanted to take him to the

reunion and he said he couldn’t walk anymore than five yards. And when we were leaving his son gave me a bottle of champagne, 1997 champagne. That was good wasn’t it?

I rang Jack, he’s on the phone, he’s a very nice bloke. He’s one of my close friends, he was

with me at Salamaua and when we went from Milne Bay, I want to finish the story. We went to Milne Bay and we were there, the airport had a strip there and it had Kittyhawks, I think it was 77 Squadron. And we were there we they had that, the Japs had a big raid on it and I heard all these

bombs going off, I thought it was our ack ack [anti aircraft] guns and they blew up our kitchen, what was all our tins going up. And after that raid, oh, a couple of weeks after, they sent us over to Milne Bay to guard the emergency strip. They had a strip there that the fighter planes used to land on at Goodenough Island when they ran out of petrol or got close to, or hit.

They landed emergency landing, we were sent over there to guard it. I’ll never forget it, it gave me the biggest fright of my life. I was a section leader, I was a corporal and we were sitting down beside the strip watching it. We had to watch it because pigs used to dig holes in it, we had to watch, keep an eye on it to see that it was clear for them. And I had, my

section was there, ten men and myself. And a chap by the name of Kevy Quinlan had a Bren gun mounted on a tripod and he was watching. And five of us were sitting down, four of us, playing Euchre. And Kevy said “One of our planes is coming in” and all of a sudden we saw all of the dirt coming up from the strip. It

was a Japanese Zero strafing us. So we jumped up and ran off the strip and he turned round and came back and he strafed the strip. We were lucky we didn’t get killed. And after that, my platoon, there was 30 of us in it, we were transferred to Mud Bay, that’s on Goodenough Island and I was doing patrols around the beach. And that was the time

of the Coral Sea battle and there was quite a few coming in, people coming in from the Coral Sea, Japanese. And one of my mates is a Corporal and he brought round these 13 prisoners.

Oh, my childhood.

My earliest memory is Lowood. And singing when I was about three at the hall. And I can tell you the name of the song, “Little Mr Baggy Britches”, and I cried and ran off. I never, it was a concert they had.

And I remember I wore little boots, never wore shoes those days, we wore boots. And we had a big pepperina tree in the backyard.

I don’t remember a lot of it but it was, Little Mr Baggy Britches I love you, I’ve forgotten the rest of it. But I was only three, I can

remember as plain as day. And, I must have been pretty advanced but I never went for Junior, all my brothers had a big education, I helped pay for them, we had, Bob went to Nudgee College. And we’ve all done well, I’ve done very well in the business.

Oh yes,

rounders, hopscotch, frogs, jumping over each other – hide and go seek, yeah we played all the, marbles. Marbles was one of the main games and we played for keeps. If you lost them your mate kept them, you had so many, yeah, I remember marbles.

Well my

father used to buy them and give them to me, had them in a bag with a string on them. And the dear ones were the proper pebbles, they were the dear marbles. I can remember that well, but people, we were occupied. My mother used to say to us, if we were upstairs she’d say “Clear downstairs and play you’s kids. Don’t hang around up here”. And we’d go downstairs and play.

It was a different world altogether. And I rode a pushbike when I was about six, I used to put my leg between the top bars. I rode a pushbike when I was six, not a little one, a big one. But I can remember that well. But, oh yes, and I can remember the priest coming, oh this is a good one, when I was about eight I can tell them, the

priest coming to my mother and saying “Maude, why don’t you come to Mass?” My Pop was Pop, everyone called my father Pop, he was sitting down on one of the lounge suites. And the priest said “Maude, why don’t you come to Mass? I never see your face at the rails”, that was going to Communion. And Pop said “Father, Maude’s good enough. All she does

is look after kids”, I’ll never forget that.

Oh, my mother. My mother was brought up from Cobargo when she was nine. Her mother died having her and her brothers brought her up. And her two brothers, Ben and Alec, came up, her, they came

up and settled at Springbrook. They were the first settlers on Springbrook. And they used to go over to Montville and work during the week for a rich man to collect money and they’d clear the scrub. They were given, I think it was 360 acres each by the government, it was bushland, and they cleared it and made a farm of it. Uncle Ben and Uncle Alec.

And Uncle Alec’s farm was near Purlingbrook Falls and the house he lived in is still there. Now Uncle Ben, he lived up here, he had Jersey cows. And he sold his farm and moved to Karara and he bought a property there and he had a farm there. And his farm at Karara

is now the Palm Meadows Golf Course. I used to ride my pushbike down when I was 14 from Brisbane to stay at my uncle’s place, stay there and ride back. And I used to ride from down there and back some days in the morning and I’d play tennis in the afternoon. That was before the, when the bridges were first built.

You were paying a toll at the bridges across the river, a shilling toll. I can remember it well and I used to, of a nighttime in Brisbane I used to ride into the city to Edward Street to the Black and White Milk Bar with my mates and buy a malted milk for four pence. They had a big

black and white cow in the window.

My mother was a woman, a tall slim woman, a very nice person. She had a lot of sisters, I think she had about eight, she had about four sisters and about five or six brothers, they all did well. But my mother was a woman, about five foot ten

and slim. And a good worker, she looked after kids, she could cook a meal in half an hour. Even when I was married I used to go to her place, I lived opposite her in Brisbane and I’d go home to my first wife, Di, I’d go over there for a meal and she’d cook in ten minutes. Even when I shifted to Tambourine Mountain, I was there for 22 years, I used to come down every

week with greyhound dogs, I raced greyhound dogs. And I used to come down every Thursday night to the Gabba [Queensland Cricket Ground]. That’s when I was older. But my mother was a very capable woman, and I’ve got a photo of the house we lived in at Dutton Park, not Dutton Park, at Lowood. And that was next door to the hospital, the private hospital. And the private hospital was run by Nurse

Smith and the doctor’s name was Doctor Goldman, he was a Jew. And my younger brother was born there, that’s Laurie, that’s Bob, Robert, he circumcised and Doctor Goldman circumcised all the boys he brought into the world. He’d be dead now, but my mother lived to 90. And she lived in the same

house and she used to get out with a reefing hook when she was 90, a reefing hook and a big hat cutting the grass at the back, in the backyard. And she used to mow the lawn in the front, it was buffalo grass, she used to mow the lawn. And she got, had a big fern house out the back full of ferns. And she used to come over to my place and look at the ferns and say “You pot, re-pot that one”, she

loved gardens. All she had was, she had ferns and pot plants everywhere.

What meals? Potatoes and beans, she used to cook them and cook stews and steaks and puddings, and all sorts. I’d go there of a Thursday afternoon before I’d go to the greyhounds and

she’d have roast dinner for me. Oh, she was quick. She, and she used to, another thing she used to make, make a lot of pancakes. And we’d all sit round this big table and she’d make these pancakes and she’d put them on the table in a big tray. And we’d be eating them with butter and honey and things, and she’d keep making them and say “Have you had enough kids?” and she’d keep giving us pancakes. That might be for a bit, I don’t know a lot

about her before, but she used to make a lot of pancakes. She was good like that. And she always made cakes, always had cakes. Fruit cakes, always had fruitcake in the place. Christmas, she used to make the plum puddings in the cloth, in the calico and hang them up. Always had puddings, she’d give us all, give us a pudding each. And we’d all go for Christmas, go to Mum’s for Christmas dinner.

She had a great big table.

The, at Lowood? The kitchen was on it’s own, it was at the back of the house. You’d walk along a passageway to the kitchen, it was separate. It had a wood stove, wood stove in the back. And in the backyard was an old bakery’s oven,

it wasn’t used, an open one in the open air, and big brick baker oven. It was, and there was a blacksmith behind that again. Mulcairs was the name of the blacksmith. And but the kitchen was, we had a table there with two stools, we didn’t have chairs in the kitchen, you had stools and you sat on stools.

There were chairs in the dining room. We had those chairs, you know the type chairs with the wickerwork bottoms.

My Dad, he was a cheese maker, he used to send me to the hotel that was two doors away, every afternoon. With a treacle tin, and old treacle tin. And I used to get a can

of beer, a treacle tin of beer for six pence and take up to him. And he’d drink it at home. Every afternoon I used to get this beer. And the people that owned the hotel up, forgotten their names, I used to know them. They were there for years, the hotel’s still there. And the house, the house

was still there. I went on a bus trip from Namdeby, no from Simpsons, they’re at Cleveland they’re a 155 club they have. I went on this trip to, out round the Darling Downs. So where do they pull up is right in front of the house that I used to live in. I got out and they took my photo. I’ve got a photo here of me in front of the house. The house,

it was exactly the same.

My Dad was, he was quite a nice fellow, he used to play football when we were young and he used to kick goals when he had, he used to play football when he had five little kids on the sidelines. Used to play in Toowoomba. And he used to kick goals from halfway.

So he was a pretty good athlete, and he played tennis and bowls, he was a good sport. Pop, everybody knew him as Pop, Pop Cork. But Mum, my mother was the one that reared us really. My father never laid a hand on us. My mother had a piece of lawyer cane [climbing vine]. If we gave any trouble, she’d chase us around the house and hit us round the legs

with the lawyer cane. And when we lived at Dutton Park a doctor, he’s dead know by the name of Daniel Lane, he was a little boy. He used to come and play with us and if he got up to mischief he’d be chased the same as we were chased. And his housekeeper used to come down to the back fence, they lived behind us, say “Mrs Cork, you hit Danny”. I can remember her saying

“If he gets, if Danny gets into trouble with my kids, he’ll cop it the same as they do”. Danny died when he was 40, he had seven or eight children. His sons, he’s got sons doctors and physiotherapists and things. As a matter of fact, next Tuesday, I’m going into, no on the 16th of this

month I’m going into Greenslopes to see his son, he’s an orthopaedic surgeon, he’s a doctor. I was in there about two months ago and I told him I used to nurse him when he was a baby. And his mother’s still alive. She lives at Cavaliers Road, Coorparoo.

Yeah, he had Lowood,

Pittsworth, Cambooya, he was in charge of about four cheese factories, because we lived at Mount Tyson. That’s why Laurie was born at Pittsworth.

Yeah, I used to go to the cheese factory, yeah. They used to turn the cheese over every couple of days. Had a big room with

cheese in it, they called it the cheese room and they had big 40 pound and 80 pound cheeses and little cheeses, I don’t know what they were, and they turned them over every so often, that was in the cheese room. And the German farmers used to come in with the milk and with big milk cans on the back of sulkies. And most of them spoke German and my father could speak German

because they, all those Germans that live out there, all their grandfathers were German, mostly, were German. And I can tell you myself, Pop used to say to my mother “Speker myer kafreiz kik”, that’s bacon and eggs for breakfast. If there’s any Germans listening, they’ll know that’s what it is. He could talk German in the finish, and that’s one thing that I can remember he said was “speker myer”.

But it was, they were very good days. But Dulcie, my sister, she had long hair, she went to the convent at Oakey. And she married a chap who used to work for us, a New Zealander, he came out from New Zealand and he worked with us for years. A chap by the name of McAnulty, his family’s still alive.

Most people got around on horses or sulkies. Horses or sulkies and people, young people rode pushbikes.

A sulky? Oh, I can see, they’ve got, yes, two wheels. They’ve got a seat

across it and they’ve got a step that you can step up on to get in one seat on two wheels and they’ve got a little thing at the back that you can carry things on, you can put ports. And two shafts, and you put a horse in there. It’s only got two wheels. Yes, and you, the Germans used to come in, they had dairy farms. Most of them had, only had small farms - 40, 50 or 60 cows and they’d

bring two cans of milk in. And Pop used to just bring it in and it was tested, used to test the milk, and put in great big vats. I can remember that. And they used to put stuff they call a rennet they used to put in it. And it was left there for so long and then they’d get in and they’d turn it over, they’d cut it up somehow and used to put it in containers. It was compressed

and put in containers for so long and made cheese. I can remember that. But it wasn’t like it is now, I don’t know whether they washed their hands before they worked there or not.

Well, I don’t, wouldn’t have a clue where the cheese went to. It must’ve been sold somewhere.

I know that my father was judging cheese at one stage at the show. He used to make, he used to like Gorgonzola, that Gorgonzola. That used to have jumpers in it. Used to love that, he had some in the fridge at, refrigerated at Gympie, I had to put a gas mask on to go in and go and get it. He loved it. Yeah, the other cheese, oh, what’s the,

there’s another type they poke things in it to give it the, goes mouldy inside. I forget what they call it.

Oh yeah, we could go to the show. Not now, but we used to go to the show. Yeah.

Oh, we did, the show, I remember going to shows at Brisbane, I didn’t go, see, I was only about eight, nine when they shifted to, or eight or nine when they shifted to Brisbane. I don’t remember shows. I can remember the, I can remember Pittsworth,

I can remember there.

What can I remember? I can remember, oh, everything, all the stalls and the ring events, I can remember everything.

Oh, they had everything, they had cakes and fruit and all sorts, yeah. And the pavilion there

used to sell bags, I think they were a shilling or two shillings a show bag.

Oh, we used to buy show bags, yeah. We used to get 10 shillings to spend, that was a lot of money, 10 shillings.

I don’t remember. My father had a car. He had one of the first Fords that were built, I’ll never forget it and he used to go up to Talba, when he’d go to Talba he’d back up. Because it’s that steep it wouldn’t get the petrol. He was one of the first to have a Ford car.

Yeah, oh, I can still see it.

Oh little wheels and the hood that used to fold back.

Yeah, it was a double seater. Yeah. Used to start it with a crank handle, get out and crank it. Yeah, I can remember it. Model T, it was a T Model Ford.

Oh, I can remember everything about Brisbane. I used to walk from Fifth Avenue Coorparoo down to the pictures every Saturday, down to Stone’s Corner, Alhambra Theatre, was six pence to go in. And I was a, used to go down to Langland’s Park

and watch the East’s football team play football.

I don’t know, there was a picture every Saturday. They were silent ones. And they got the talkies [films with sound] then. Yeah.

In Brisbane? Cycling, I was a bike rider.

Yeah, I was always a bike rider. I started with a, I started when I was 15, a chap next door to us at Dutton Park, his name was Derrick Massey, he got me into it,

he was a member of Kangaroo Point Wheelers, they call themselves, black with green braces. And he used to go training of a morning. I started off going with him when I was 15, that’s when I was a message boy at the chemist shop.

On the road, we used to go on the road, on Ipswich Road. We used to go right out past,

on Ipswich Road, there was no traffic on it then, right out past Rocklea and back every second morning. There wasn’t much traffic, it was only horses and that, a few, not many cars.

I was riding a Local. Now, Bob Todd had a bike shop

this side of, on this side of Victoria Bridge, the last shop on the left before you crossed Victoria Bridge. And I used to get one for nothing in the finish, because I rode his pushbikes. Bob Todd, he’s well known.

Well, they were all older blokes, all blokes 18 and 19.

I was with the juniors, the juniors under 18 that all rode together. They were handicap races, they had road races that used to start not far from the Rocklea Hotel every Saturday. And we’d race round on Ipswich Road and back and round past Sherwood. There was a seven-mile course, used to go round to Graceville and Sherwood,

round past the Brisbane Markets. I used to do that every Saturday during the road season. In the winter, we’d race at Lang Park. And that was a bike track, that used to be an old cemetery, now it’s the football field. I can remember the cemetery, a little church on the hill beside it and Lang Park was just beside it.

And we used to race there, I can remember wearing little crash helmets. They weren’t the same as they have now, they were rubber ones, covered with leather. It fit closely on your head. And we wore these, our club colours, used to race in one-mile events and half mile and it was quite good there. And that

was until the footballers took over. But then, I don’t, they had the road racing and some of the members, a lot of us used to meet at the local bike shop upstairs in Bob Todd’s bike shop and have our meetings.

It was black, black sweaters with long sleeves and green colours. Braces down both sides and black pants, black short pants.

Oh, they were pretty thick, they were like football Guernseys. They were pretty hot, they don’t wear them now they wear light ones. But they had long sleeves and they were long. They were, I don’t know what happened that

but anybody would know the Kangaroo Points cycling club.

Well, I was the under-16 champion. Malvern Star had a championship, Malvern Star used to sell pushbikes and they had a championships, under-16’s. They had one from each town and I won the Brisbane one, a chap by the name of Smith won the Ipswich one and there’s

one from Maryborough and Bundaberg, all those towns up north and we had the final at Mackay. And I’ve got a photo of them all at Mackay. They had the final at Mackay and it went out to Eimeo, that’s near the seaside place and back. And the cameraman was on the side of the road and I hit the cameraman and come off. I should’ve won it really. My mate

from Ipswich won it, chap by the name of Smith. I came second. I got on and kept going. But I’ve still got a photo of that where the, had our pushbikes lined up in the front of the hotel where we stayed at. We got all our expenses paid, we got sent up on the train.

Oh I’ve forgotten, I’ve forgotten how long it was. Just I remember the place was Eimeo, it was a seaside

place.

No, I think it was the championship, just the championship. I think it might have been a pushbike or something. But we all, all the good riders had them for nothing. I was riding a Massey at one, when I went to Gympie, I was riding a Massey that I’d won for nothing. And I got another one from Gympie, I forget the name of that. But they give you that for nothing.

And they had in front of Bob Todd’s shop at North, at South Brisbane, just before you get to the bridge, they had a big sign in front of it “Vern Cork rides a Local”. It was an ad for his bikes. But the first one I bought from him, before I got one for nothing, I paid it off at two and six a week.

Then I bought another one from Tommy Wallis for seven pounds ten, I paid that off. Then I got them for nothing, I got them from Local for riding his bikes.

He was taking photos of the race and he was winding a handle. Do you remember those cameras? Yeah, he was there,

he was on a corner. I didn’t see him, he was on, must’ve been on the road. I had my head down, didn’t see him. Hit him, hit his tripod. Never hurt him.

I don’t know, I’ve got some of them here. I’ve got a photo of the team here. And I’ve got photos of the football team that I was in, with the 47th Battalion.

They’re nearly all dead, there’s a couple alive, there’s about six of the old team still alive.

Going to school? I went to St Laurence’s, I wasn’t very smart. I went as far as scholarship and my, all my brothers, brother Bob who was educated at Nudgee,

he was a boarder.

Well, just the ordinary things at school. I left school at scholarship. I think I sat for scholarship and I don’t know whether I passed it or not, I could’ve failed. And I got a job as a messenger boy. But I went to college of a night and I can make paint, I can still make it,

I can make undercoating and I can make finishing coat, all paints.

Well, you use zinc oxide, mineral turps, and oh, what’s the oil? Linseed oil. You leave raw linseed oil for the

undercoat and mineral turps and not much, and linseed oil. Mix it up. But if you make the finishing coat you don’t put as much linseed oil and you put more boiled linseed oil and you mix it. And the old style of paint, sometimes they used to put white lead in. You’re not allowed to do it now, that’s how kids got lead poisoning,

putting their fingers on rails, house rails, and licking them. And then you weren’t allowed to put in, had to be over eight feet high then they cut it out altogether. But I can make varnish, I forget how to make that, but I used to make varnish. But I can still make the paint.

Yeah, I used to work hard. I used to start about six, I used to go down to Bill Sawyer’s place and get all his ladders out and put them on

the truck. I was the apprentice, I used to do the, get all the ladders out and all the trestles, put them on the truck and go to the jobs. And work in the morning, get home about half past five and work Saturday mornings. And go to college three times a week down at, near the Gardens, down where the parliament is. But that wasn’t very, that was the main, everybody worked 48 hours a week.

And my wages with the painting was a pound a week. Apprentice. But I got 11 and six when I was a message boy. But Bill Kelleher got me the job, the chemist got me the job with the painter, so there.

Because the turps [turpentine] used to affect me. We were painting buildings in town, offices, we were doing the ceilings

with flat paint and the, I used to come down and vomit. It wasn’t good. Mineral turps affected my lungs. So I gave it away and I went to Gympie with Pop and we batched, we batched on our own and he started the fruit shop.

Well, he wanted me to come with him, so I went with him. And

when I went there we started a bike club. And we got a bike club built there at the One Mile, they called it. And it was built by Theiss Brothers’ men, they were building a road at Kybong and they were staying at the Atlantic Hotel and they came out with their graders and they graded the one, graded an area. Seven laps to the mile. And we got

cinders from the gas works, covered it with cinders and rolled it. And that bike track’s still there, they don’t use it, it’s covered with grass. And it’s got another name. It’s not the old One Mile, they, it used to be the old bike track. I think it’s a park, I think they call it, I think it’s named after one of the

people that used to be on the council. I’ll think of his name in a minute. I know his name, too, very well. And I’ve forgotten it.

My father started a fruit shop at number three Mary Street. It’s burnt down now. And we lived upstairs.

There was a little shop next door, was owned by Kozminskis. That’s the bloke the park’s named after, where the bike track was built. Kozminski, he’s well known in Gympie. And we had the little shop next door, we were renting it, and we lived upstairs. I’ll never forget it. And we never had a bathroom, we had a big tub for a bath,

bath tub. There were no showers, used to fill the tub. The kitchen was small and we had two bedrooms and I used to sleep on a little veranda. People could see me walking down the street. And over the road was Monty’s café. I could wake up and look at the café, see people walking up and down the street. And he had started this fruit shop. He had an old Overland car,

1926 model Overland car. And I used to take the back seat out and put fruit in the back in cases and go around to the houses selling fruit, with a chap by the name of Stan Petski, from Nambour. He got no wages, only tobacco money. And he used to get his keep for nothing to go out

and selling, we had a good fruit run. And he had this shop in the main street, and he used to go to Brisbane on the train on every Sunday and buy the fruit every Monday and get it sent up on the Monday night. And Tuesday, the carrier used to bring the fruit down and the vegetables out of the shop, his name was Harry Hook, the traveller. He used to charge a penny ha’penny

an article. He used to charge a penny ha’penny to bring, even a bag of cabbage down. Great big bag of cabbages. He’s dead now, I think. And my father bought a cordial, soft drink factory up in Melour Street with a little hand filler. And he used to wash the bottles by hand in a big tub, all the returned empty bottles,

and fill them by hand on a little machine that you worked with your hand. He bought that while I was, before that I was called up for the army, that’s right, and he bought the cordial factory. I was called up for full time duty. And then he would, before I left he bought a new 1939 Dodge truck for the fruit run.

No, we used to go round the houses and had two baskets. And we’d go in with the two baskets, with all the fruit, put them on the front step and they’d buy what they wanted, we’d take the baskets back.

The same as the shop. And the people, I know a lot of people, I remember the houses we used to go to.

We, this was a house-to-house fruit truck. And we had a basket each, one with a little one with eight compartments in it, we’d have apples in one, oranges in another, bananas. And we’d go in, we’d put that down on the front step and we’d put the other big basket with the vegetables in down and they’d say “I’ll have a cabbage”, “I’ll have a pound of beans” or “a pound of onions” and they’d have half a dozen apples.

Bananas were six pence a dozen. Apples for a shilling a dozen. And what they didn’t buy, we’d go back to the car, put the things on and fill up our baskets again, go to our next customer.

They were weighed up before we’d go in, in bags. We’d weigh them up in the shop. The girl in the shop used to weigh them

up. My first wife has worked in there before I married her. I got her a job in there and then I married her. And this is going to be a good story this. And during the war she was still working in my father’s shop. Her name was Lill Wind.

Her real name was Kathleen and they used to call her Lill, everybody knows her as Lill. She worked in the shop, she was my girlfriend. I got her the job. And before that she worked as a housekeeper at Batson’s Garage, they lived up in Wheeler Street with a big garage. And she used to do all the housekeeping for them. And I got her a job at the house, the shop, serving in the

shop. And when I came home on leave she wanted me to marry her, she’d made arrangements for me to marry her. So we got married in the Catholic Church up on the hill. Went up, there was only four people there. And one of them I remember, was Mrs Batson who she used to work for. And I was married there, we came down

the hill, that’s up on Carlton Hill, came down the hill, and I went in the shop and I bought four lots of fish and chips. And do you know where we had our wedding reception? In the Airdome Theatre in the second front seat with a packet of fish and chips each. I’ll never forget it. And I was back on the train to go back to

Bougainville about a week after. I had no honeymoon. And my wife was living in Myall Street in a flat. It’s pulled down now, the other place. Owned by people who used to make hot pies.

Well, I knew

all the people. I knew the Darwin’s, oh, I knew every one of them, most of them. I’ve forgotten most of their names. I used to go round and, every week we’d go and we’d take the baskets in, I’ve forgotten most of the names.

I was in Gympie when the war started. I was called up for National

Service for three months. And then about a couple of months after, I was called up for full time duty.

About the war breaking out? Well, I remember when it broke out they had militia there. The blokes in the militia, I knew them. People used to say “Are you going to

join the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]?”, and I’d say “No, I don’t think so, I don’t want to fight” and then later on I was called up for training for three months’ National Service. Then after three months’ time, they called me up for full time duty.

I think I got a letter. I think I got a letter to call, to go

to the showgrounds. I went to the showground, I’ll never forget it, for an inspection, health inspection. And I can remember the doctor inspecting us and he went over the blood pressure and everything. And I’ll never forget this, he put a rubber glove on and you know what he did? You know where he put his finger.

With everyone. To see if we had piles. Piles or something, must’ve been. It was in the hall, and the hall, this little hall is still there. I drove past it the other day. The little drill hall they called it. And we went in for full time duty into Maryborough, into the showgrounds. And then we were in

the showgrounds, oh, for a fair while and then they sent us down to Pialba, oh for about, I think it was a couple of months. And we were supposed to be guarding that coastline. And it, I met a girl down there, I’ll never forget, this is before I was married. Rita, and she worked at the hotel the Vernon Hotel. She used to wash my clothes for me,

and a lovely girl. And, oh, nothing further than kissing, those days you, there was no sex. You had to do the right thing. And when we moved to Maryborough, because she was working at the hotel as a barmaid, when I moved to Maryborough she got a job at the Central Hotel. And I used to meet her and take her out. And

I’ll never forget, when I went home one weekend she landed along there, she came down on the train, the next train, to meet my people. I’ll never forget it. Stay for the weekend. And on Monday she said “I want you to speak, talk to my father” and I said “Yeah, I’ll talk to him”. Got him on the phone, I’ll never forget it, she’s talking to him and she said, put me on and she said

“Speak to my father”, and I said “Hello Mr Fen”, his name was Fen, Rita Fen her name was. I said “Where do you, what do you do Mr Fen?” He said “I’m a Sergeant of police and I work at the government house”. Oh, and didn’t I quieten down. I was careful what I said, a policeman at the government house. And the funny thing about it, when we moved from

Maryborough, I never, kind of never heard from her again. When I moved to Townsville. And we had another, I’ll never forget this too, before I met Rita I used to go out with the girls, you know, a young fellow. I used to go out with a girl, she was a lovely girl, this is a true story, I shouldn’t be saying it,

but, used to go out with her. I said to, I was a section leader, I was a corporal and my Bren gunner was Joe Biggins, he’s dead now. I said to Joe “She’s a lovely girl, you ought to take her out one night”. I’ll never forget it, and Joe took her out. And the next morning, he said to me “Corky”, he said “you know the sheila [woman] I took out last night?”, I said “Yes”, he said

“She’s only got one tit”. And that’s true, they must’ve have breast cancers those days. I knew she only had one breast. She told me she had a, and I said “How did you know, Joe”, he said “One of her breasts were real hard and she told me she had one breast”. Isn’t it marvellous, hey? But that is a true, I shouldn’t be telling you that.

Oh, I couldn’t do much about it. I had to leave the fruit run and my father said they commandeered the Dodge truck. It was a brand new 1939 Dodge truck with a body on it. We got the body put on in Gympie, with a hood on it over the back. It cost us seven pounds ten, we got it put on in Gympie.

We’d only had, I only drove it for, oh, six or eight months, I was called up early 1940.

Oh, when I was in the army they commandeered it from my father. They took trucks, good trucks, I don’t know what they did with it. We never ever got it back, they paid my father for it. And when I came on my leave they were driving round in, a chap was delivering soft drinks to hotels

and shops in an old Studebaker utility. But my younger brother, before he joined he used to drive the Courier Mail from Gympie to Bundaberg every morning. Pick it up at the station, pick it up in the truck, he used to pick it up with the truck, he used to pick it up from there and take it to, the Courier Mail, to Gympie, Childers,

Maryborough and Bundaberg. Used to go from Gympie to Maryborough, Childers and Bundaberg. Every day.

I didn’t like it very much. But we did a good training, used to do lots of route marches and, we did our training at Fraser’s Paddock Enoggera. And we lived in the sheds that the old First World War people lived in. And if

anybody tells you we didn’t, tell them they’re liars because I’m telling you the truth and I know, I was told when we lived there.

I’ve got a, oh, it was an old army camp, it was a big paddock. I don’t know what it is now but I’ve got a photo of us in front of the shed, I’ll show you, of when I first joined. And one of the

fellows is still alive. That Tex Barlow.

We were sleeping on a palliasse made of straw, covered with Hessian. We never slept on a bed. And never had a pillow. And the army issued us those days, with two blankets. We slept on a blanket and a blanket over us. Never had a pillow, I used to

use, put a towel and my clothes under the blanket for a pillow. And we never had a bed in Maryborough either when I was called up to full time duty. And we were fed in a mess and the mess order used to dish out the things.

Oh, pretty plain. Porridge, porridge of a morning

and a bit of stew or a bit of bacon and egg or something. It was just an ordinary old, the old time meals.

I was a private. And this is a good story too, when we moved, when I was called in for full time duty, as I said, we were camped in the town, in the showground in a tent.

And my father said to me “You’re only getting seven and six shillings a week, Vern, you want to get stripes and get 10 and six a week”. And I was only a private. And they had a thing they called, it was a 10-week’s course they had, a carter course.

And it was a course for NCO’s [non commissioned officers], that was corporals and officers. And I got onto the Colonel, Colonel Patterson, I knew him, and I said “I think I’m as good as those fellows. Can I go to this course?”, and he called me, I heard over the microphone, “Corporal, Private Cork, report to the orderly room”. And I reported to the

orderly room. Colonel Patterson said “Now Vern, we’re putting you in this course. You’re not supposed to go in the course, but we’re putting you in the course”. And I went to this 10-week’s course, and we had a written examination and a practical one and I was in the first five. When I came back, and I beat some of the officers who went to the school. And I said to the company commander, his name was

Aubrey McWaters, he was a reporter for the Maryborough paper. I said “I want stripes, I’m as good as these fellows”, and he gave me one stripe, a lance corporal. And I said “You know what you can do with your stripe, you can shove it”. And after about a week they called me in and said “We’re making you a corporal, Vern”. So I was a corporal, and then they said “You’re only an acting corporal”,

and I said “I want to be a full corporal”. So after about a month, I was made a full corporal. And if you’re a full corporal, to be demoted you’ve got to have a court martial. I don’t know whether you’ve been told that before or not. And I was a full, I was a confirmed corporal. And I was in 7 Platoon, A Company,

and Captain McWaters was the company commander. And my officer in charge was Reggie Barnett from Childers.

Oh, they were doing us, oh, we were doing route marches and exercises and things like that. Mostly Bren guns, learning how to use the Tommy gun, there was no

Owen guns then, use a Tommy gun. How to pull them to pieces and how to use them, how to clean them and taking us on the rifle range and doing squad drill.

Oh a Tommy gun is a, has got a round, it fired bigger bullets. 45’s they used to call them. And if you hit a man with a Tommy gun he fell, he got knocked over, they were pretty heavy to carry.

The commandoes used Tommy guns and Bren guns. But the Tommy guns, the Corporals had them but they took them off them when the Bren guns came in because the Bren guns were good in the mud. When they got clogged up you just pull the cocking handle backwards and forwards and it would clean it and clear it. And we had our equipment on and we used to carry our magazines, six magazines in each

pouch and the grenades on our belt. I used to carry about six grenades, they were a pound and a half each. And they went off in five seconds, you pull the pin out and throw them and they went off in five seconds, about five seconds I think. Sometimes we’d hold them for a while if someone was close and throw it. They were pretty deadly the, our grenades. But a lot of people didn’t carry

them. In action we always carried, the section had a corporal, that was me, I was the corporal. 2IC [second in command] was Tommy Lawrence from Patiya, he was killed, and we had eight other men, I think it was eight. All different ones, they got killed most of them and we got reinforcements from down south after. But they,

we had to take our squad and teach them the Bren gun and how, you know, how to pull it to pieces and all.

Oh pretty big. You had one, a Bren gun to each section, that was a machine gun. And you had, used to change around, altering around, when you were marching you’d carry it for a while and somebody else would carry it.

If I did the initial 10, three months I went back to Gympie, and was called up again.

Definitely got called up, yeah, didn’t want to go but definitely got called up for full time duty.

No. They sent us to Maryborough. We went in camp at Maryborough, at the showground, we were camped in tents. But we did our

in the Alula Park and there’s a, we put, there’s a stone there. They put up about, last year, they put this stone in, in remembrance. Near the hotel.

Well, we knew that, I think it was before the Japs were in the war. We knew that, we thought we were going to Germany, and we, but we

finished up going to, going over to Milne Bay, New Guinea. But they sent us, for a start, down to Pialba, we were supposed to be guarding the coastline. But we just camped there doing exercises during the day with a Bren gun and thing.

Oh, they were blokes that were just ordinary fellows. They were good blokes, yeah. Tex Barlow,

he’s a good bloke, Tex and Tommy, Tommy was one of my best mates.

Well the different train, basic training, they taught us all about the guns, rifle, machine guns. Took us to the rifle range regularly and we fired, and we had route marches, squad drill. And most of it was teaching us about the weapons, the mortars and that and you had to clean the

guns and what to do and going out in the scrub. We’d have an enemy and we’d have one machine gun giving covering fire while we were attacking.

The carder course was, it was more mental, you had to know all about things, you know.

And we took, we had to go out and map reading and stuff like that. They taught us map reading and things like that and all about how to handle troops and what to do if you’re attacking a place. It was a different course, it was a 10-week, a long course. It’s pretty hard to, I’ve forgotten most of it. It was an officers course, how to treat troops and

what to do with them and what to, different commands and. It was, it wasn’t much different to what they taught an ordinary person, only you were the boss.

Well, I didn’t find it hard because I had the textbooks. Pop, my father, said to me “You get the textbooks, Vern, you

learn, you’ll get 10 and six a week”. So I forgot, I didn’t have a beer, I didn’t go out drinking, I didn’t go and stay at the Queens Hotel Friday night and have beer and stay upstairs, have breakfast at the pub. I didn’t stay at the Francis Pub, I used to stay home and I’d stay there and I’d study. I had a pretty good brain, I could study

and I knew, had the exams and I, had asked questions and answers and I answered them and the practical one was go out and take them out on a manoeuvre, on an attack on a place. And how to place the soldiers and what to do.

Well, I found it good because you, I was only a corporal, because you were

closer to your mates. All you had to do was tell them what to do. You’d go out and you’d take them out, if you were in action you’d go out with your section, they’d say, the company commander would say “You go out and do a reconnaissance”, I’d go out. This was at Lewis’s Knoll, down Tambu, this was one of the worst parts. Captain McWaters would say

“Oh, you’d better go and find out where those Japs are and how many’s there”, and you’d come back and I’d say “Well, there’s a pillbox there” and I said “They’ve got a field of fire clear”. That means they’ve got all the bush cleared for about 50 yards round it, “It looks to be about four or five there”. And he said to me “Take your section and go and attack it”.

And I said “It’s too dangerous”, I said. I said “It’s too dangerous, they’ve got a field of fire”, “That’s an order, that’s an order. You’ll be charged with cowardice if you don’t go”. And I said “Righto”. And he, one of the blokes, he used to be in the kitchen, Ces Pretty, he was in

my section, never had the training. Tommy Lawrence was 2IC, he was there, went round, Joe Biggis was the Bren gunner. Joe went to the right, we got within a hundred yards, we moved up slowly. When we got to the open space Joe started to fire across, we kept moving up and he kept moving up. And when

we got about 20 yards from there, they started throwing grenades down and we started firing back. And Ces Pretty, I hadn’t met his father yet, he just stood there, he was frozen he got killed, dead. Tommy went to ground, he got hit in the shoulder, he was beside me. All went to ground and fired.

And the Bren gunner, he was giving covering fire, he was firing at it and then we had to retreat. And Tommy said “Get me out of this, Corky”, he was up and I was, grabbed him by the equipment and dragged him and he’d been hit in the shoulder. Then they fired

and they got him in the legs. Ces was dead. The other blokes were down where we went back. We had to go back because there was too many there. We’d fired at them all but they were in the, in with logs this pillboxes, we called it. We got

Tom out. I got him out, I dragged him down by the equipment. Then we had to take him out, you weren’t allowed to take natives within 500 metres there, had to carry them out. And we carried him out, took us about an hour and a half, two hours, we got a hundred yards from the place that we got, or half way down we got trapped by Japs

and were held up again. Had to take him to one side in the bush, and Tommy died from loss of blood. A hundred metres, about a hundred metres from the doctor. And he was talking to me two minutes before he died. Marvellous, isn’t it. But these pillboxes, we should never have attacked it.

It was up on the mountain, on the side of a hill like that. And they finished up taking the place and they got the mortars on it, they had to get the mortars, the three-inch mortars. And they got, we got a few blokes killed there. And they got a company to attack quite a few Japs there, got quite a few killed, blokes from down south and that,

and a lot wounded. I think 65 of us out of 120 arrived at Salamaua. I know there was 22 in my battalion out of 30, the rest were killed and wounded. I didn’t go out, I got that scar there, it was a grenade, I didn’t go out with that. I didn’t even report it, put a sticking plaster on it.

I could’ve gone out with that but I didn’t want to leave my mates. That’s why the scar’s there. That was a bit of shrapnel. It’s not on my discharge. No scars, “scars – nil”. I never went to the doctor. I just got, and they’ve got me being discharged from Brisbane, I was discharged from Redbank.

I didn’t like it. I said “It’s suicide going there”, and I won’t mention the captain’s name, he said “You’ll be charged with cowardice if you don’t go in”. And I said “I don’t want to take Ces because he’s a cook, he’s had no training”. That’s true, I didn’t want to take them in, I knew what it was like.

And he’s not in it, he got sent back somewhere else and they brought up another captain to Lewis’s Knoll. And the name is named after him.

I don’t know, but they brought him up and they brought another Lieutenant up. He had the red tabs on his shoulder, he was

from Duntroon, from the army training school at Duntroon. He came up, we got reinforcements from the south and some from up round Cairns and round that area. We had two lots of reinforcements. There was 120 in the unit and we got two lots of reinforcements. And most of the trouble was round Salamaua, before we got to Salamaua.

Well out down round the coast, nothing much down at Pialba, only there for a while. But Townsville we did most of the training.

Yeah, we went from Gympie, went from

Maryborough at the showgrounds, we went down to, some of us went down to Pialba then a lot of us went back to Tyro and from Tyro we went to Maryborough. We went up on cattle trucks, on a cattle train, on a train. And my section was up, we went in the back of the truck, a train truck. I’ve got a photo of us taken

at Rockhampton. And we used to throw the kids pennies, the kids used to pick up pennies. And we were camped at Stuart, that’s near the jail, there’s a meatworks there. And we were, some of us were camped at, oh, I forget the name of the place now. And we used to, we did our training at

Mount Spec in the mountains. Used to go up in this mountain and do the training there, it was jungle. And we went from Gympie, from Maryborough, we went over to Milne Bay from there.

Oh, 1940. I’ve got a photo of the football team, premiers,

and I’m in the photo. I’ve got a photo, I’ll show you before you go. I think there’s six of us alive out of the football team.

Oh, the army life was all right. We got leave of a weekend and night, Friday night. It was quite good they, but we never slept in a bed. It was quite good,

we did mostly route marches, slept in the open. It wasn’t a bad life.

The blokes were pretty good, you got to know them well because they were like brothers and sisters. You were beside them, you know, you’d go and have a shower together and you’d go eat together and go to the pub together. And I tell you another thing, I can say this,

up at Townsville, I shouldn’t be telling you this, there’s a place they call The Causeway. And there’s brothels there. And we used to go to the brothel, a couple of us used to go there every Friday night and stand in the queue. And we’d send our, we’d wait till we got near the front of the queue, there’d be about six in the queue. And the Yanks used to come up in Jeeps,

they had more money than us, and they’d say “How much do you want for your queue, Aussie?”, we’d say “Ten dollars”. They’d give us 10 dollars, we’d give them our place in the queue then we’d go to the rear. We’d do that of a Friday night, people couldn’t, they couldn’t make out why we had so much money. We were getting 10 dollars for our queue in the, at the brothels at The Causeway. And one of the blokes, I’ll tell you

about it is Tex Barlow, he’s in Maryborough, I saw him the other day, he’s in a wheelchair. But he wouldn’t go in there, we could have a cup of tea if we like, we were on a picket, some of the army run a picket. You know, they do a picket to keep the men in order. And that’s a true story.

I never went in no, I had, we had girlfriends of our own. The place was full of Yanks [Americans] up there.

That’s the first time I saw the Americans was in Townsville. Yeah, they had plenty of money, they were on big money.

Oh, we didn’t mix with them much, they were, they always had more money than us. They used to go to pubs and that and we’d meet them. Oh, I met them in Gympie, that’s right, I met them in Gympie. They were in, they were out here

at, they were out here near Beaudesert, they were camped there, the Yanks. I knew a Yank from there, knew him after the war. He owned a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK farm. He was a great friend of mine.

About Pearl Harbour,

where were we there? I think we were at, oh, we were in New Guinea but I think we were at Buna or somewhere like that, Buna or Gona or somewhere like that. We went right through from Goodenough Island to Nassau Bay, Buna, Gona, Tambu Bay, Mount Tambu. That’s where we got them all killed

at Mount Tambu, at Lewis’s Knoll. And we went to Lae, and I left them at Lae and went to the ANGAU, which is the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit. They wanted district servicemen and I think it was the bloke that told the biggest lies that got in. I got in out of, everyone put in for it. It was issuing rations to the natives in compounds and things

like that. I got in and a bloke from Maryborough that was an accountant, he got in, forget his name. And they sent us up to Goroka, lovely up there. And we were up at the, had a compound and there’s all the natives from Kimboo and those places, Mount Tambu, it’s a lovely area.

No, we knew we were going to Townsville but, we knew we knew we were going to New Guinea

eventually. But we were there to defend Townsville and that area.

Oh we knew, we thought the Japs were attacking, we started we knew the Japs were attacking New Guinea. And I think the first place the Japs were up, one of the first places was Milne Bay. And they, we went

up there and the Aussies, there was an airstrip there but the Aussies moved in there with their Kittyhawks.

All we were doing was just watching, we were supposed to be defending the coast. Just doing our training and in camp there, waiting for the Japs to attack.

Yeah, the camp, the main camp was at Stuart near the jail, not far from the meatworks.

Oh quite a while, I was there, I can’t remember the time, and I was at, I was down there at one stage, down, oh, where the air force at Lae had, used to go out

into the sea. They’d run along and go into the sea. They were, some of us were at Garbutt and we were camped at some river down, I know the name of the river. There was the Ross River there and there was the Busu, that was a fast running river. And

we were camped in Townsville for quite a while, in the town itself then we were out at Stuart near the jail. Just trying to think of the place that I was at for a while. We were camped on some river there. There was the Busu River and another river.

Townsville was a nice place, it was full of Yanks, everywhere you went there were Yanks. But it was quite a good place. That’s where I met that

girlfriend of mine, down at Pialba. I’ll never forget that. I can mention her name, Rita Fenn. I don’t, I hope she’s still alive. I haven’t seen her since. I’m trying to think of that river that we were camped on. I know there was Malahang Strip,

airstrip and it used to go under the water and the Beaufort bombers used to go from there.

It’s right in, no, this river is right in Townsville, it’s a creek. There’s Ross River’s in Townsville. I’m trying to think the name of this creek we camped at. Oh, I know it, the woman next door knows, she used to live at, she lived in Lae after

the war. There was nothing there when I was there, it was all flattened.

I left, I went to ANGAU. I went to Moresby then to Goroka, and then from Goroka over to Milne Bay,

over to, not Milne Bay, Torakina. Over in Bougainville. And the Yanks were there, the Yanks had just arrived. The Seabee’s [US naval construction force], they built airstrips. And I was with, looking after a lot of natives in a compound. And when they knew I had infantry experience they sent me up with the commandoes,

with the 2/8th, with natives that knew the area, that volunteered to go there. And we were camped with the 2/8th Independent Company. That’s where I had a lot of experience there.

Well, the Seabees’s were good people. I met quite

a few people. I met Bob Crosby’s brother. He was in the band, they got a band there to entertain them. And he was in the band and I got invited to see it. I was in the front seat. As a matter of fact, I got him a parrot from there, they had pretty parrots. I got him a parrot, I don’t know what he did with it. What’s his name that other Crosby? He had a band too,

didn’t he. Yeah. I met quite a few Yanks there. And then I met, we were unloading the ships for the Yanks and I had a line of natives with about 50 in and we were unloading the citrus supplies for the Seabee’s. And the natives were from New Island

and that other place, all that area, oh, I’ve forgotten the name of the place. Oh, they were nice natives but the ones from New Island were different all together, they weren’t very modest. They’d be in the line and they’d want to go to the toilet, they’d just go to the side, pull their pants up. And when they go for a swim they

go in the nude. Well, the other natives were form Manus. And the Manus Islanders were a lot lighter colour and they were mostly ship’s crews, they lived on the coast, they were taller. And the New Island ones were darker, and they weren’t modest, they’d swim in the nude. But the ones from Manus would put their lap lap on.

They used to say, when they’d be in the, if they wanted to go to the toilet and they wanted to do a number two they’d say “I want a peck peck, master”, and they’d pull up and go in the bush. And you’d stop the cargo line of the carrying the cargo up to the troops, the military were there, would come over and you’d wait for him to come back. And they’d come back into line. No washing hands or anything like that after, I’ll never

forget it, and they used to wipe their bottom with grass.

Our own blokes, we buried our own blokes, but I think later on most of them were dug up and taken to Moresby or Lae, to the cemetery. But we buried our own blokes when they were killed,

at the time. And we put their name and everything on it.

When I first went to New Guinea we went to Milne Bay.

By boat.

Quite good, quite good.

Oh, I don’t know, it might’ve been the Manunda,

I’m not sure. I’m not sure what on it, what one it was. But I came home once on that, it used to be a local ship and they made an army boat. Came home from leave once on that. I don’t know, I forget the name of the ship. And it wasn’t long we got there and then we had that big raid. And then from there we went to Goodenough Island,

and from Goodenough Island, my section, my platoon was in A Company, number seven, seven platoon, we went to Kiriwina Island, that’s in the Trobriand group. And we were guarding an air force, it was a thing for, oh, I forget what they call it, for detecting

the planes for when they left, the Japs were in Gasmata and those places before, it was right away over near the Japs.

Milne Bay, all I can remember of it was the bombs we got. We got quite a few bombs. The Japs used to raid it, and we had, the Yanks had ack ack there. We had our own ack ack

guns, anti-aircraft guns.

Well, we didn’t do much action, we were just at Milne Bay. We, and we only saw Japs over on Goodenough. But I was with the 47th, the 29th Brigade,

and there must’ve been a few of the troops there just before us and they sent us to Goodenough Island. But this Kiriwina, I’ll never forget that, I was sent over with this seven platoon to guard this radar.

We went over on a sailing boat without a motor so they wouldn’t hear us. And we were camped on the end of the island, I’ll never forget. The Yanks landed, they didn’t know we were there, they blew the reef away and they sent me down, the company, the platoon commander said “Go and have a look, Corky”. And went down, and here’s the Yanks, they took us prisoners. They didn’t know Aussies, and they

thought we, they didn’t know, I said “We’re from Australia”. We found out they did their training at Panama and a lot of them were Indians. So they freed us after two days, but they’d blown away the reef. But before we went there, I’ll never forget this, they lined us up, they got us together and the doctor said “There are lots of girls on this island and they’re pretty,

and they wear little mini skirts and they mostly live on seafood. It’s a coral island. Don’t have anything to do with them, you can be friendly but don’t touch them because there’s a lot of venereal disease there”. When we went there they used to come up, sit on our knees, they had little skirts and they used to be very

friendly, and they were pretty girls, and they were light coloured. And a lot of us used to speak a bit of Spanish, they were brown. And they used to swim, they used to swim in the nude and of an afternoon they’d go out on the reefs with their little mini skirts picking up

different seafood. And they’d come into the camp, sit on your knee. We weren’t game to touch them, and the boys used to say “Koom ah see see”, and that was “Come over” and they’d pull up their skirts. You could look at them but that’s all you could do. I’ll never forget this, this went on for over there for about, I think it was three months.

And we used to swim with them and everything. When we went back to Goodenough Island they told us that it was one of the cleanest islands, Kiriwina that they had there, there was no venereal disease, there was no disease there and we never even went near them.

None of them, they weren’t game to. They weren’t game to, yet they sat on our knee.

That’s as true as I’m here.

Well, all we did was do patrols up along the beach. And the Japs used to come, there was a channel, canal right beside us and the highest point was about 50 feet and we were camped on it. Air force had their radar on them and we were guarding them. We used to

see the Japanese subs. Planes used to fly over and this is true, we were on Goodenough Island when we saw that 120 planes go over and they had that raid on Moresby.

And there were Zeros flying round and round us and I saw a Zero shot down at Goodenough Island and the pilot jumped out. He was shot down by one of our Kittyhawks. I’ll never forget that. And our section, our platoon was at Mud Bay, I don’t know whether they still call it Mud Bay. That’s where the

13 fellows were shot by this Lieutenant.

Only for two, they kept us for a couple of days.

They didn’t know Aussies. We heard all this noise. We heard all this noise and the company, and the platoon commander said “Go down Corky, and have a look, see what’s going on. Someone has bombs going off down there”. Went down there, the Yanks grabbed

us and held us for two days. I said “We’re Aussie”, they kept us, then they found out, when they found out we were Aussie they said “Oh, we’ve never been to Australia”. We found out they did their training in Panama.

Good, gave us cigarettes and everything. Yeah, we went back to our camp.

Yeah, they thought we were, well,

they didn’t know, half of them didn’t know. They’d heard of Australia but they didn’t know Aussies were there. Funny, isn’t it? Well, they had to keep it quiet because it was a radar place. But, oh, they took us back and lined us up and said “You’ve done a good job, boys. There was no, you never touched the women. There were no diseases in the place”. I can remember Kiriwina, like to go back there, beautiful island.

I went to Salamaua. Not to Salamaua to, back to Goodenough Island again. And then from Goodenough Island I went to, we went over to Nassau Bay on an LCI, Landing Craft Infantry. I’ll never forget it, we went down

a walkway down beside, down the front of the ship and stepped into about six foot of water up to our necks and got all our packs wet. And we landed and there were Japs, and we pushed the Japs back, there were Japs there. About a couple hundred metres in, I’ll never forget it. And then we went from, we camped there for quite a while and we went to from Buna, Gona and all that area there, pushed the Japs back along the coast.

The landing?

It was funny, we walked into water. We all walked down, we went across on a Landing Craft Infantry and walked down a walkway that goes down the side of the front of the ship. The front of the ship was facing the, was in about six foot of water. And we had to go down the front and had to, landed in water.

We weren’t being

shot at, we were lucky because our own planes I think had been bombing that area. We had our own planes that had been bombing that area before we landed. We mostly had support.

When we got in there we didn’t see them, we saw them after, after we landed we were attacked. But we pushed them back. But that was an unusual

one but a good, an experience that you never hear of. You never see the, you should never have had it in the first place. Because they should’ve cut off their supplies, we should never have been fighting in the jungle, because they were up in the mountains and everything. If they’d have cut off their supplies, the Japs would never have been near us. But they were getting their supplies in all the time.

We were pushing them back.

Well, you get to a stage where you know you’ve got to do it. You feel, when you first go in, you know, you get nervous. But after you’ve been in it for three or four months you get to a stage, I got to a stage where you kill me or I kill you. And I was never nervous.

And even with the 2/8th, anyone was up there, I think Selby, Major Selby was in charge. I know they said to me “You’ve got a fortnight up here” when I was at ANGAU, if you show any sign of being frightened, you were sent back. They sent their own troops back to LOB,

Left out of Battle and they were on the coast. They were behind the Jap lines, they were in front of our own troops. That was the commandoes. And all we were doing was, they were, we had natives that had lived in that area that knew it, volunteers. And they used to, we

used to go out with them, finding them and taking the, telling them where the Japs were and come back and camp, take them in. They used to go out of a morning, early morning, and raid them. And I, at one stage I had a bad ear and they sent me back to the hospital on the coast, I had an infection. I was out for about a fortnight, they sent me back to them again. I was with a chap by the name of Cliff Hoskins

and another bloke, I’ve forgotten his name. And if I went out to do a, went out to doing reconnaissance work, he’d always volunteer to come with me. And we used to take these natives. A couple of times we were jumped, as they call it, caught on the track. By, the old tracks where the Japs had to go bush.

Now, after the war a chap, a good friend of mine, that was up with the commandoes, with ANGAU we were doing this reconnaissance work and carrying, taking their parachutes back to their headquarters. His daughter

was left with me at Dutton Park after the war. He brought her over to me when she was four years old. His wife had cleared out and left him with four kids, I think there was four of them, and left this little girl with me. And I educated her, sent her to the convent’s school, sent her to a boarding school out at Oxley, she did

nursing at the Mater hospital, she got three certificates, three nursing certificates. She finished up flying with the Flying Doctor in Charters Towers. She came back to Brisbane after about two years, she was a girl about 24 and wanted to change her jobs. She said “I want a break for a while

from the nursing”. So I got her a job at the Camp Hill Hotel as a barmaid, and she was there for six months. And the chap that owned it, I won’t mention his name, said she was the best bar lady he ever had and then she went back to nursing again. And she finished up going over to New Zealand and I believe she’s married to a surgeon with about five kids. And I haven’t heard of her

because I’ve been shifting about a fair bit since, you know. She must be still alive. But I met her younger brother that was born while I was with her father. And the father named this boy Willy, because he came home on leave and he went ‘ack willy’ that was AWOL, Absent Without

Leave, and his wife was conceived. And when he told me that his boy was, his wife was having a baby he said “What will I call him, Vern?” and I said to him “You were AWL when he was, you were ack willy [absent without leave] when he was conceived, why don’t you call him Willy”. And his name is Willy, and strangely enough I met him at the Coorparoo RSL [Returned & Service League] about

six, seven years ago, oh, it must’ve been, might’ve have been longer, I met him at the RSL. I went there with my brother and he said his name was, what his name was, Hoskins, and I said “Is your name Willy?”, he said “Yes, not William, Willy”. That was his name, and he’s still alive. That’s a pretty good story, isn’t it?

Well what he did, he dropped Fay, her name was, he came to our house at number two Lyndon Street Dutton Park, it was sold the other day for four million, 37 thousand dollars by auction. It was a street off Park Road

West. Cliff Hoskins dropped this little girl in because his wife cleared out or something with another man and left him with the kids. He dropped Fay in, said “Will you look after Fay for a little while for me, Vern?” and I said “Yes” and Lill said “Okay Vern” and he said he was coming back in a fortnight, he said he was going to see his brother.

And he didn’t come back. And I found out later that he joined the army and went to Korea, and he got killed in Korea, so I’ve been told. I haven’t seen him since or heard, and I believe he was posthumously decorated, Cliff Hoskins.

He wasn’t, no, he wasn’t, he was from ANGAU. He was one I met there, he was up

with me with ANGAU, Cliff Hoskins. And I was with the 2nd, the commandoes, the 2/8th Independent Company they were called. There was a chap there by the name of, oh, he writes a book, he writes books. Peter Pinney. You can cut this out if you like,

we used to do reconnaissance on the, to find out where they were. Sometimes he used to come with us and he was a Jap, one of the Jap, one of the commandoes. He would never kill a Jap when he was asleep, he would always wake him up, grab him by the hair, and cut his throat. He’s written a couple of

books since, and I think he’s changed all the names.

Why he changed the names?

I don’t know, but he was as quiet as wanting. I came to meet him, see him in Brisbane, meet him in Brisbane, he was living in a houseboat in the Brisbane River for quite a while and he was jailed at one stage for bringing gold in the country. He went over the Himalayas

and he was, they tell me, he told me he was jailed in Perth for bringing gold into the country after the war. But he was quiet person, he used to write to his mother and you wouldn’t think he was like he was, Peter. Peter Pinney is his name. He was a good soldier. And I was with, the captain’s name was, in the commandoes,

was Captain Donohue and the major was Major Selby. I think Selby was in charge, and the original commander of the 2/8th was Major Winney and he was called the Red Steer because he had a red beard, he had red hair. He originally came from Singapore, he was a

planter, so they told me. They told me he got killed early.

Yeah, it was, yeah.

Well the story was, a friend of mine, another corporal brought the 13 young

prisoners back to Mud Island. They were young, like only young kids, Japanese they were.

Well I brought them back the last, was with them for the last couple of kilometres, they were miles then. And the company platoon commander said I’ll take them, I brought them back.

I met the corporal that brought them in, I forget his name, and I took over and he went for a rest. We went to meet them and my section went to meet, we brought them back. And one of our section was taken with the, with our platoon commander, I won’t mention his name, they’re both dead now, to take round back to headquarters

to be interrogated by the intelligence. And after about a couple of hundred metres around the beach away from us, we heard the noise, machine gun fire. And I went round and had a look and the 13 had been shot by the platoon commander. And the chap that was with him was Tonto O’Connor, he

didn’t shoot them. He was, he worked for us after the war, he was a mate of mine, he was in my section at the time.

We were very unhappy about it. But we had to just carry on. And from there we moved to, went over to, we went on the boat

where we landed in New Guinea again.

We weren’t told much about them. We were told they had bombers and war ships and things. We were told that they’d landed in New Guinea, that’s all. And we went down, when we were going to New Guinea we went through the straight there, some

lovely islands there. And nice views there, it’s a beautiful place. But we weren’t long in New Guinea before we went to Goodenough Island.

Oh, our platoon, we didn’t see much of the battalion because they were scattered. But the platoon I was in were round the

airstrip. That’s where we had the, where we were strafed. That was the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life, a Japanese Zero coming down strafing us. Where the dirt popping, you see the dirt flying up from the airstrip, it was a dirt airstrip, the dirt flying up.

No, we were lucky, none of us got killed. We ran off the airstrip into

the scrub and they came back the other way and strafed again, none of us were killed. So we were a bit lucky.

Only air defence was a Bren gun on a tripod. Kevy Quinlan was on it. He died in Brisbane.

We were all strafed, the lot of us.

We ran for our life, we had to because what could you do? We saw the dirt coming up from the ground from where they were firing, they started firing on the dirt before they got to us. And we ran for our lives, see we got out of the passage of it. We’re lucky we saw the, one of us saw the dirt. Kevy was firing at it, he said “It’s our plane, I think”. We didn’t start firing until we saw the dust.

He said “It’s one of our planes”, we didn’t realise it was a Jap plane. We thought it was one of our planes coming into land. So we went for our lives.

No, we never had any weapons there, we were sitting in the open. No, we never had weapon pits. But we had weapon pits on Goodenough Island.

Inside, but not where we were, we were right beside the airport. They dug weapons pits over at Mud Bay but, oh, it’s an experience you never forget. But from Mud Bay that’s where we went to, we landed at Nassau Bay. And we went on the coast.

Well, we went through from, we were never camped, never in a tent or anything from there until Salamaua.

Kept advancing all the time, pushing them back.

It was Buna and Gona, Buna.

Well, we were with the,

we were following with the, I was with the infantry then. Oh, in ANGAU you mean?

Oh with the infantry?

First time we fired a shot, Goodenough. Oh, Goodenough was, I fired a shot there. Yeah, I fired a shot, at different times we were on patrol we saw the Japs and we fired a few, quite a few times we fired shots. And we were fired on different times by, we were strafed, we were,

but we were under cover. But being in the open, sitting in the open, that was a different feeling altogether.

Well, you don’t feel, you don’t get as nervous because it’s different altogether. For me, some people got nervous, they shook. Some people had, were nervous. But I never

got nervous because I knew they kill you, you kill them, they kill you. You didn’t like it, you were frightened to a certain thing but you went about your job. I was never, real nervous I’d never thought I’d come back. But they say,

my mates, say the good die young, but we’re still here. It’s pretty right. All the goody goodies as we used to call them, they’re not here now, sorry to say. And the ones that used to go AWOL and do the

wrong thing all the time, most of them, not most of them but some of them are alive. Of the footballers there’s six of us alive, they tell me. They told me last week, six of us are still alive. But I didn’t like it, I was pleased to get home. And when I was discharged they said “Do you want a medical?” and I said “No, I want to get home”. So I didn’t

have a medical, I wasn’t inspected by the doctor even. And they gave me a discharge at Redbank and they said I was discharged at Brisbane, on my discharge papers. They called that Brisbane.

The first time I ever saw a dead soldier was on

Lewis’s Knoll. There were soldiers killed but I didn’t see them, they were in different platoons. Each company had three platoons, I was in 7 Platoon A Company and I saw them but the other platoons were, oh, a hundred yards away. They were killed but I’d never look at them, I’d keep away from them. But I saw the ones

that were killed with me, and there was a few of them killed with me.

Oh, it, we cried. They, it’s a funny thing. I never cried when I killed a Jap but, your own, it’s different.

But it was all for a good cause. We’re still here, that’s the main thing. But I see them at different times. They, even when they were wounded we spoke. See, different, they weren’t

sick before they were hit, most of them, they could talk. They’d say “Get me out of here, Corky”. But Ces Pretty, he looked at me and said, I said “Get down, Ces” and he stood there, shaken. He was shot dead. I’ve never told his people, they’re still in Gympie. Because he should never have been there in the

first place because he never had experience. The others had experience, see, Tommy, all the others, Tommy Lawrence and the others, they all fired shots, they were all firing up the pillbox. And I had the machine gun, I had the Bren gun. I was throwing grenades and,

we were throwing grenades at it, we couldn’t get them in because it’s only a little hole they were shooting out, see. But, see, when you’re fired on like that you get back, you get out of it.

Well the Lieutenant, we never said too much because I didn’t see much of him. The only time I saw him was at reunions.

I saw him a couple of times. He was killed, he lived in, oh, I’ve been through it the other day, Childers, used to drive a tractor, a train, a cane train. And he, they tell me he got killed in a car crash, he got burnt to death. And all my mates were happy about it, we didn’t like him shooting the prisoners. Were all upset about it.

I don’t know whether that’s ever been told to people like you but I’m telling you that it’s true. I won’t mention any names. He shot them and the boys know that too. And one bloke’s still alive that can tell you too. I saw him the other day, he’s in a wheelchair, I was talking to him, Tex Barlow, he’s a mate of mine. Tex wouldn’t take a, he wouldn’t take a promotion because

his wife got paid full wages all the time during the war. He was the XXXX [beer brand] representative for the Wide Bay and Gympie, Maryborough and Bundaberg area. That’s the Castlemaine brewery, that’s the people that make the beer and they paid his wife right through the war and he wouldn’t take promotion. He’s a very smart lad, Tex, he’s up in Maryborough still alive, he’s in a wheelchair. I called to see him

and he gave me a bottle of champagne. That’s good.

Happy. I thought “That’s good”, I felt happy. And you know how we found out why they were, I didn’t smoke at the time, I started smoking in the army. You know how

we found out whether they were dead or alive? We’d light a cigarette and put on them and if that burned, they jumped they were alive. A lot of them used to kid they were dead. There were bamboo trees, there was a lot of bamboo trees there. That’s how we found out, but a hot cigarette on them. We were issued with two bottles of beer a week and two ounces of tobacco, ready rubbed

tobacco. But I started smoking during the war and they gave me 40% pension for that. I never got a pension till I was about 79, I never got the full pension. Now I’m on an EDA [Extreme Disability Adjustment]. That’s from, I think that, I had a bad back in the army but I didn’t have a medical to get out. I said “Let me go, I don’t want a medical”.

And I’ve had a bad back for years and I still get a physiotherapist comes here every week.

Doggo, yeah, that’s doggo, yeah. We lied doggo a lot too. Have you ever heard that term? Oh yeah, lying doggo, yeah.

Yeah,

lied doggo, yeah, I’ve experienced that. Yeah. We’d put a cigarette on to see if they were alive. They’d be lying there and they’d be, have grenades under them. Yeah, that’s, I knew that lying doggo. Yeah.

Yeah, I’ve encountered one. Beside some bamboos, big bamboo shoots, beside the bamboos.

Yeah. But the Japs kept retreating because we had, planes used to strafe and they used to bomb different areas there, come to us and bomb. But we had artillery at Milne, at Mount Tambu, I’ll never forget that and they’d, we had

artillery at the mountain, before the mountain. And they used to send an O pip [observation post], do you know what an O pip is? That’s a bloke to, a radar bloke that used to tell where the Japs were, where to fire. And they’d, had four guns, I think there was four guns in the artillery back at

Tambu Bay or somewhere there. And they’d fire one shot, that was a long shot, that would go ahead of the troops. So one shot behind it, one shot on us, blew the kitchen up, the next shot was on the troops. And all, they blew our kitchen up, that’s true. None of us got

killed but they blew the, we heard the tins going. That’s ranging, getting the range, they fire a few shots. And when they got the right range, where the fire, where the Japs were they’d say “Fire” and they’d fire a series of shots, the O pip, the chap up the front and tell them where to fire. And they’d fire 10 or 12 shots or more and blow up the Japs.

We liked them coming up, we liked them, because they were blowing up the Japs. We didn’t get them until, actually until Tin Can Bay and Tin Can Bay we got a lot killed at. We got Japs at, we got the artillery down at Mount Tambu Bay,

that’s where we first got them.

Oh they were shot, yeah. I took some prisoners, the Japs, I took a few prisoners with, I was with a patrol with Peter Pinney and Ces and a few others. And the day that, in the area we grabbed Japs from

along the track that were walking in the back. We grabbed one Jap, we’d take him and they’d be taken prisoner, he’d go back for prisoner.

That was Japanese prisoners were taken back to the headquarters for the chaps to interrogate them.

Intelligence. They were taken back to the Intelligence.

No, anyone did that, that was the commandoes did that. They were taken, I’d be with the natives, yeah, they’d grab the last bloke. Probably an officer or something, take him back to headquarters and they’d send him back to the Intelligence to interrogate him.

That was lying

doggo, as you say, hiding behind the roots, the roots of big trees, yeah. Oh, that’s how we’d find the Japs, lying doggo, as you say, in Kunai grass in behind big trees and this. And they’d walk past and we’d, might be six of us or 10 of us and we’d race in and grab one of them from the back end.

No, I’ve got a couple of souvenirs in there. I’ve got a thing in there from one of the Japs, I don’t know what, I think it’s a cigarette case. I took off and brought it home, it’s in that drawer in the cupboard there. Yeah, we got lots of things, we just didn’t bring them home.

Yeah, well there were booby traps there.

A couple of blokes got it, I don’t know their names, but there were booby traps there on the tracks. They had them.

Yeah we did in some, not tracks we walked along. We set a few booby traps. I didn’t do them, it was the engineers did that I think. Yeah, I was in a rifle company. But it was a good, it was an experience that

I think we should never have had it because I think they should’ve cut off the Japs’ supplies and the Japs would’ve starved out of it. See, the Japs were getting supplies all the way up the coast of New Guinea.

They were in pretty good condition. But I, we were pretty thin because our meals,

most of the time, were a tin of bully beef, 12 ounces between 12 people and a packet of dog biscuits. That was a meal. And when I went, and we had, when I went on patrols we had the dry, the biscuits, the tins of biscuits. The dry, with the commandoes we had the dry,

the ones that were in tins and that. Mostly had, up in the front was bully beef and biscuits. That’s true. Never had a kitchen, you never cooked you were just issued with tinned beef that might’ve been stew

or something like that. Tinned stew and tinned beef. But mostly up in the top, front line was bully beef and dog biscuits. That’s why we got so thin. They were all, nobody was fat, all slim. We had a kitchen at Lae, got feed from the kitchen at Lae because they had a kitchen there.

And when we arrived at Salamaua, I was one of the first troops to walk in there, we swam that Francisco River. You know how we got across it, it was fast flowing, a real fast flowing, it was like the Busu in Lae that’s a fast flowing one. They threw a rope across and they tied the rope to the tree and we pulled ourselves across on the rope.

When we got we found a bloke, a native tied to a tree with his head cut off. And I believe that tree is still there on the Isthmus. And we were one of the first to go into Salamaua. And the chap from, the lieutenant from Duntroon, you know what he did? He lined us up and had us in a squad.

At Salamaua. Where the Japs were. We’re pushing them back. He got us all lined up. He had a red tab on him, he was from Duntroon. We soon objected to that. The blokes that were left. Captain Lewis was there, he was still with us.

Buna? Well I can’t,

don’t know much about that, there were just Japs and that, we were just in the jungle. We kept moving back, we were at Buna. We never had a kitchen, just camped out, never had a tent, we just sat there. See, we walked from Nassau Bay right through to Salamaua. We went from Salamaua to Lae by barge.

We never had any kitchen, we were issued with rations. And we had a cook walking, there might be a cook with us that’d open tins of bully beef or tins of, we’d open our own bully beef, we had tins of Irish stew and that.

Oh, some days we might go 200 yards. Depends on how far

they were away, we just walked ahead, inland from the beach, we used to do it. And at nighttime we’d sleep on our ground sheets. We had a ground sheet and half a blanket. That’s all we had, never the tents. And we’d get a bottle of water a day, we’d get from the creek and we carried it, and we’d get from the nearest creek the,

and when we were up on Lewis’s Knoll up on the mountains one man from the section would go down everyday and take the 10 bottles down, bottles of water and fill them up. That’s all we had every day, was a bottle of water. We never cleaned our teeth because they didn’t use our water for, we used it for drinking. And when we got to Lae, there was a dentist there, he never took, he didn’t do any fillings he did all

extractions. That’s how I got these teeth out and I’m going to the dentist tomorrow, here. I got molars pulled out that should’ve been filled, at Lae. There was no fillings, only extractions.

Not much, no, they weren’t really active at

night. We got, sometimes we got those, we got shells at night, they were mortars, two-inch mortars, little mortars. That’s what they had mostly, mortars, they used to put on us. At Lewis’s Knoll they mortared us. That’s how a lot of our blokes got killed, with their mortars.

Yeah, we could hear them

coming. Yeah, that’s how a lot of them got killed, with mortars.

Oh yes. Oh yes, we used to dig in, we’d be dug in for a couple of weeks before we’d move, we’d forward before we’d dig another weapon pit. We wouldn’t dig a weapon pit the first night, we’d dig a weapon pit, it might

be three times. Buna, then another one at Gona, then another at Milne, we’d dig them as we’d go. They were long narrow ones about two foot deep. Up in the mountains we had weapon pits too. And the company commander would say “Keep your heads up, boys”, he’d be down the bottom. I won’t mention their names. Yeah we had, they attacked us at, up in the mountains, they used to attack us.

Never had a change of clothing, I never. I never wore a singlet or underpants but we’d have a bath every, we’d go down, oh, every couple of weeks we’d go down below, have a bath in the creek. But with the commandoes I never had a bath up at,

when I was with the commandoes. We used to bath in the creek, we never had any showers, we used to go in the creek with our clothes on. And when I was with Captain Dunshay, that was the captain, Captain Dunshay. And Major Selby. I don’t know whether they’re alive. And the doctor, Doctor White, he was with us.

And they were Jews, Doctor White was a Jew.

With leeches? We had a lot of leeches going up to Goroka, they get you and the fact, they get on your skin and get round your ankles. And they’d get in, they’d bloody go in your boots. We got a lot of leeches there in, going up, there was more leeches up

inland when I went to Goroka. I went from Nadzab from Goroka by foot, I walked that. That’s where I was, I mean Nadzab is not far from Lae. I was at Nadzab there for quite a while.

Wipe them off, that’s all. They’d land on you, get on you, the leeches, on your arms and your legs. In your boots they’d get on the ankle

and your boots, your feet would bleed. You couldn’t do much about them. There were a lot of them, little black ones, they’re up there, leeches.

The mozzies [mosquitoes]? Oh, they were bad. We had our own mosquito nets, that’s one thing I kept. At Salamaua, Mount Tambu, my section had the,

we carried the tank gun. My platoon were tank, carrying the tank gun. And they dumped it at a creek down before we got down there, we got to Tambu Bay. When we got up to Tambu Mountain the company commander said “Where’s the tank gun?” I said “We dumped it”. He sent me back with another bloke, back a day’s walk

to bring and we brought it back the mountain again. They didn’t need it because there was no tanks on the mountain. We carried that tank gun all the time. Any other bloke who’s in the infantry will tell you that. In the 47th Battalion, we had a tank gun. Anti-tank gun, weighed about 26 pound, pretty heavy thing. And I was sent back to get it

because I knew they dumped it in the creek. We got it back.

Pod, who told you that? Who told you that?

Hey? Pod, used to call me Pod. That was my nickname. Hey? Who told you that?

I don’t know, that was my nickname, they called me Pod Cork before I went in the army.

Where’d you get that from?

Did they? Yeah, I’m known as Pod Cork.

Yes, Pies O’Donohue. Now, I’ll tell you something. You know how Pies got his name? His name is Jim, he’s dead now. He went into Maryborough

when we were camped at the showgrounds, and he stole a pie cart. And he took it round to the next theatre and he was selling hot pies. And they caught him, it was a horse and cart. So after that they called him Pies O’Donohue. And right up till he died, he called himself Pies. And one day I was walking down the street with him and a woman said, we bought tickets in a charity. And I said “Vern Cork

Lyndon Street, Dutton Park” and then Pies said “Pies O’Donohue”, his name’s Jim, Pies, and the girl wrote out “Pius” and he lived in Trafalgar Street at the Gabba. You know how he died? He got drunk and he, he lived in an attic above a house and there were stairs on the outside of the house to get up to it. And he

fell down one night and hit his head on the concrete and it killed him. And he died owing me a pound. You know why? Pies used to get drunk, used to drink a lot. And he got paid every fortnight and he’d run out of money and he’d borrow a pound from me. When he’d get paid he’d pay me the pound back and a week after he’d borrow another pound and he died owing me a pound.

And he worked on the Princess Alexandra Hospital, on those girders, those 10-inch girders. He used to come down lunchtime and go to the Norman Hotel have a few beers and he used to walk on planks 10 inches wide. And he thought his name was Pies. And Tex Barlow, his name’s Herbert. Another fellow from Gympie that

we picked up last Friday, took him up to the reunion at Maryborough, Sailor Pierce. They’ve all got, all had nicknames.

Well, they didn’t have much sense of humour because you were,

all you did was sit about or, you didn’t do much. No. Oh, we used to tell a few jokes and that and we got a letter about every month. And do you know who used to send us parcels? When we, after we went to Salamaua we went to Lae. And do you know who used to send us parcels, a woman

that owned brothels in Sydney, I’ve forgotten her name. She had a couple of brothels in Sydney.

Cake and all sorts, chocolates. And I had a girlfriend in Sydney, I’ve never met her in my life. Her name was Peggy Bedford. I had a photo, she was, she used to write to me and I used to write to her,

never met her in my life. Her name was Peggy Bedford, penfriend.

That was Cliff, that was the fellow from ANGAU that I was with the 2/8th commandoes with.

Yes, they gave, see, when you’re with ANGAU and those places, every 12 months they give you a couple of weeks off or if you had a death in the family or your mother was seriously ill, they’d give you leave. Compassionate leave for a week or something like

that. But this Cliff Hoskins, I used to visit him after the war, he lived at Palm Beach. And I haven’t seen him since the day he gave me Fay. I’ll show you a photo of her after, lovely girl, yeah. That was Cliff. See, you had good mates, I used to go down to his place and stay there. Another good mate of mine was Lionel Tobin,

he was in the same company. He’s dead, he was from Gympie.

Well, I was in the infantry and when we got to Lae, they called for, they wanted two men for ANGAU, the administrative unit. And everyone put in for it to get out of the army. It was in district services, that’s patrol offices and issuing, looking

after compounds with natives and that in. Everyone put in for it. And I might have told you before, the bloke that told the biggest lie got in. I said “Oh, I’ve had experience doing office work and doing things like that”, but I didn’t, and I got picked. They had a [UNCLEAR] and another fellow who was an accountant, he got picked. That’s how I got in ANGAU. And I might have told you before I went to

Moresby and up to Goroka.

Quite good, quite good, because you had a houseboy, had a personal boy looked after you. I thought it was good. But I was only a corporal in there, I was a corporal when I went in. No, it was quite good. I could speak to him, “Call him name belong you. You no can sack im talk belong me. All together what name?” That means “what did you say?”

“Bring im me camon hapnay” that means “bring something to me”. “Me lapoon”, that’s old. And we say “Me killim you”, that doesn’t mean kill you, that means hit you. “Me killim fillish” that’s Pidgin English, means doing it properly. I know the Pidgin English, I used to get in the box and say “All together manny in im talk”. See, every line you had “turn talks”, had a fellow from different areas and he’d just

speak Pidgin. And you’d speak Pidgin to him and he’d turn the talk to the others. That was up at Goroka. So I learned the Pidgin English in no time. If you’re living with them all the time, you pick it up. There’s one works here in the kitchen, from Manus Island. She said “I’m from Manus”, and I said “I don’t think you are”, she said “Why,

Vern?” I said “You’re too dark and you’re too little”. And she said “Oh no, my mother was from New Island”, they were little and blacker and she was right, I was right. Veronica, she works up here in the kitchen.

Oh yes, yeah, the Sepik’s are real cheeky ones, from the Sepik River, oh, they’re cheeky and they,

Oh, they’re, they give you, you know, get up to mischief and do all sorts of things. But the Buka’s, they’re the real black ones, Buka’s. But the ones from Manus they were nice. They’ve got a place there now where they’re keeping these refugees. It’s a lovely island. Manus. They were the light coloured ones.

But I found they were quite, the natives were quite good. But they called them indentured labour. They signed them up for so long. They didn’t get much money but they got bed and breakfast and all, they got fed. And they carried cargo at 45 pounds a man on their shoulder. And you had different, I had about 40. Before I went to the

commandoes then only had a couple. Oh, it’s a good crowd, I know most of the, people from New Guinea used to call them Territorians. And I know the, knew the Lae brothers, Jimmy Wilkins. Jimmy had a couple of Marys. All those old locals

had their own Marys, but we didn’t. The people that lived there, they knew all about it, see. But Jimmy was a nice bloke, Jimmy Wilkins. He lived up near Goroka.

Oh, there’s a couple, I won’t mention any names, a couple of ANGAU blokes I knew. They had their Marys. Yeah. See, I got married then, I was married and I

did the right thing. Because there’s too many people they talk, you know. But, no, a lot of them, a lot of those ANGAU fellows had, I mightn’t, shouldn’t be telling you this but a lot of them had Marys, they call them. But they all had a houseboy to make your bed and do your washing, quite good. And you had a bed to sleep and, quite good.

Oh, a lot of them weren’t happy there but they couldn’t leave it. Because they were indentured, they were signed up and they weren’t allowed to leave. They had, there was police boys there, at different places they had police boys. But when we’d go on a, with a cargo line, carrying supplies, we’d always have a couple of soldiers with us

more or less walking in front and behind to guard them. And you weren’t allowed to take natives, this is true, I hear these stories about the Kokoda Trail. You weren’t allowed to take natives within 500 metres of the front line, and that’s true. And some of them say “Oh the natives”, those natives that carried the wounded out, they were

safe because they were, they weren’t right up the front and they had soldiers walking with them. They were good, they were good natives.

With natives, yes, I did at Bougainville. I did with the commandoes, I went out with, well, we had a couple of volunteers from Bougainville and they were up there permanently with us.

And when we’d go out, they knew the tracks. We’d go out and we’d show the commandoes where the tracks were and where the Japs were. It was up near where the volcano is.

Well the ones I had with me were quite good.

I had a boss over me who was, Cliff I think was the sergeant, I was only a corporal and we had another officer there, there was three of us. And the two of us used to do, go out and, with the natives because we could speak their language and then every now and again they’d, we’d go back and we’d bring back 20 natives from down with us in the front line, bring them up and they’d carry the parachutes back.

And this is a good story. I was coming back after taking the parachutes back, and we never had a change of clothing and I saw a nice pair of green trousers hanging on the tree. So my pants were all torn and, never had a change of clothing and all torn, so I took these pants off the tree and tried them on and they fitted me. So I wore them back. I got back to the headquarters, at commandoes, that was in the

jungle. And they had a little space cleared where they used to drop the stuff, come down low and drop by parachute, some it was free dropped just kicked out, thrown out. And when I got back, 10 days after, I started to scratch. I said to Doctor White, I said “I think I’ve got a rash down here”, he said “Take your pants off, Vern”, I took my pants off and he said “You’ve got the crabs”, and he said “They’re all over you”.

What had happened, someone had had the crabs and they dumped the pants. He said “You haven’t got a change of clothing, the only way to get rid of them is to put blue ointment on you”. So, he had blue ointment, I put blue ointment all over myself, and the trousers, he said “Well, you’ll have to boil them up”. So we got an old Gardner and White cake tin, put water in it and boiled my pants, I got

round with no pants, no underpants and no pants for about two hours until they’re killed off, I put them back on wet. And that’s a true story. And I said “What do you boil it for?” he said “To kill the eggs”. What had happened, the eggs had hatched and I got the crabs. And they’re like freckles. That was the second time I had them, I got them at Tyro too, and we put kerosene

on and took the skin off. And they had a crab tent. And how I got them, in the camp at the showgrounds, there was a tent in, just inside the front gate was the crab tent. Anyone who had the crabs had to, were isolated and I used to go and play cards with them and I caught the crabs there. Yeah.

That was stuff for killing crabs. That’s blue

ointment. You can put that in your archives, that’s something new. But you had to boil your clothing because the eggs would hatch in 10 days and you’d get crabs. Some of the blokes got them up here, all over you, under your arms, they’re like freckles.

Good. Well, the commandoes had a doctor all the time. And they infantry had one back at headquarters but we were never near headquarters. We could be a couple of

miles from headquarters. A Company might be away, oh, right away. But the commandoes, they had, there was only 60 people. There was only 60 people up there and we had our own doctor, Doctor White.

Yes. Now this is true, when I was in the infantry up at

Salamaua, I had the Reverend Duff with me, he was up in the front line up at Lewis’s Knoll with my section. He should never have been there. And he used to have a service before we’d go in. Catholics and all, were all there, they’d all be, the lot of them. The Reverend Duff, I met him after the war.

I think he finished up, I think he was moderator of the Presbyterian Church. If you make enquiries you’ll find the Reverend Duff. And he wasn’t supposed to be up the front but he was with me and my section. I used say “Get down in the weapon pit”. Padre we called him. He should’ve been at headquarters, and what he’d do, he’d give the service before we’d go in action and have an attack. And if anyone died,

he’d be there to give them a service.

Oh, he was good, yeah, he was a nice bloke. He came and saw us at Brisbane, when we had the soft drink factory, I used to make the drinks, I was upstairs in the syrup room. And he came in, the Reverend Duff, I said “Oh yeah, how are you?” oh, I think he finished up moderator, yeah, all the Presbyterians

know him. But that was before they had the Uniting Churches. But, yeah, I don’t know what happened to him.

Oh, he’d give a service for about 10 minutes. And Protestants and non-Catholics and booze [alcohol] artists, they’d all kneel down, they’d all be, they’d say the prayer after him. Yeah, they’d all say “Our father who art in heaven”, yeah.

The lot of them.

Well you’d, we’d go out on a reconnaissance, see, I was a corporal I’d go out with Tommy Lawrence, my 2IC. We might be out for 2 hours and we’d be sneaking around looking and we’d find out whether, where their weapon pits and where their pillboxes and things were in the jungle.

And then we’d go back and the company commander would say, if it was a big, what happened at Lewis’s Knoll they finished up, instead of taking a section, then they took a platoon and a company. They took a company in there and I went in on my own with one section, to take one pillbox.

They call them pillboxes, they’re machine gun posts. You know what a pillbox is, you ask any

infantry, that’s what they called them.

I don’t know, we called them pillboxes and they had, Kunai grass was the big high grasses round there. Used to hide in the Kunai grass and watch them, and get behind the roots of the big trees, the roots used to come out and, wait for the Japs to come along the track and open up on them. But oh, no, I had a lot of it, I had these two-inch mortars used to come round us.

And hand to hand was up close, 100 metres, 200 metres at the most from us, yeah.

One bloke, I won’t mention names, shot himself in the foot to get out. Self inflicted wounds. Quite a few did that. A bloke from Maryborough got out.

Another bloke got a Military Medal, I won’t mention names, he should never have got it. My mate should have got it. He took the machine gun off him and fired it off his shoulder when we were attacking. And the bloke was there unarmed, he got a Military Medal for facing the enemy unarmed.

Well, he wasn’t firing it properly. He was a

machine gunner, had a Bren gun, and my mate took the gun off him and fired off his shoulder and he got a, there was an officer there from down at Duntroon I think he was from. He said he faced the enemy unarmed. He got an MM [Military Medal], I saw him the other day, he’s still alive. He signed his name with MM after it. And all his mates know what happened, how he got it. I won’t tell you his name.

He was a captain.

He said to me “If you don’t”, I said “I don’t want to take him”. He said “If you don’t”, no, he didn’t die we got rid of him. He was taken away and Captain Lewis came up and took over.

No, that was only a

story. In the commandoes, if somebody showed any fright they’d send them back to LOB, Left Out of Battle.

Oh, well if you panicked. See, lots of blokes, quite a few of them used to shake. Because you get fired on by Japs you, poor old Joe Biggins used to give distributed fire

with the machine gun because he was shaking. That’s what I used to call it.

Oh, there’s a lot of them that should’ve got, see, you couldn’t get a military medal unless you were witnessed. You had to have an officer present or something like that. I couldn’t go back and say what he

did. He’s got to be in something big like an attack and an officer present. See, if you face the enemy unarmed in an attack “Oh, he was brave”. But he just did it because someone else grabbed his machine gun and put it on his shoulder and fired. Lionel Tobin, a good mate of mine, he’s dead, I played football with him, I’ll show you some photos before you go. But,

no, Tex Barlow, I saw him last Friday. And that’s the bloke that gave me the champagne, dear he’s a lovely bloke. He’s from, I’ve had some good mates. It’s a funny thing about them, after the war Lionel Tobin used to come out to my place, bring his kids down, he wouldn’t even ring he’d just arrive. I’d go up to Gympie to stay with him.

He’s like a brother. You get that close to them, when you’re with them for that long, and you’re relying on them, they’re more or less like brothers. Now, I met blokes up there at the reunion last Saturday night at Maryborough, they, some of them had carers. They couldn’t, they said “Hello Vern, I think I know you”, and they were good soldiers, minds are gone, other

blokes on walkers. Other bloke, Col McLennan, show you his photo, deaf as a bat, Col. He’ll probably see this, but he’s a nice bloke, he lives at Bundy [Bundaberg]. Had a good job there too, they all had good jobs.

Oh, you’re thinking of, yeah, you do think of your own people. But Tommy Lawrence, that got killed, that died, the

chap who died when we were taking him out, he got word that morning that his wife had twin boys. I might have told you this. And I’ve been trying to find them, and the Lord Mayor Alan Brown, I met him the other night, he’s resigning, he was Lord Mayor last year, I said “Could you find them? They live round here”. And he hasn’t found them yet. They’d be nearly 60. They don’t know how their father died but I could tell them the whole story.

He was talking to me the minute before he died, just died from loss of blood.

Oh about, everything, you know, general. Well, all he was doing he was, didn’t talk much he had a bomb dressing on his leg and just had bandages around him. See, we never had any, we only had a stretcher-bearer with us. And he didn’t even, they don’t

carry the stretchers, they just supply you with bandaids and bomb dressings and things. We carried our own blokes back. And on our way back we struck Japs and it took us a long time to get back. He died of loss of blood. I’ll show you a photo of him after, he’s in, he was in my section, I’ve got a photo in my albums here.

Yeah, made us worse. Made us worse, made us want to kill the bastards. Excuse the language. But, yes, we cried. Grown, big strong men, tears in our eyes. No, it made us all keener. It did me, I don’t know about other blokes.

Oh yeah, they, over in Bougainville with the commandoes, one of them there, I’ll mention his name. Peter Fitzgerald from Ipswich. He had his stomach, all his intestines hanging out and the doctor put them back in but he died. Another bloke had a bit of his ear off. Oh yeah, they were dreadful. See, you couldn’t bring them out in the commandoes. They were right up behind the Jap,

more or less behind the Japs. Between the Japs and our front line.

I didn’t want to join them, I was sent there with ANGAU. And the reason I was sent there, I think was because I had infantry experience and I was with fellows, for a start, over in Bougainville,

I was in a, looking, issuing the natives, the natives with rations. All the natives were in a compound. And most of those natives were from missions. And most of the missions over there were Seventh Day Adventists. I’d say “What religion you?” and they’d say “Me Seven Day, master”, Seventh Day Adventists. And they were darn nice boys too.

And I met quite a few Seventh Day Adventists on Tambourine Mountain, good friends of mine. But the missioners all left and then they got knew people in and I was sent up with the commandoes. Because I knew the Pidgin English and I was with, had infantry experience. And all we were doing was going out with the scouts, with the natives

that knew the tracks. They knew the different areas and there were tracks through the scrub. Just near that volcano where they get the copper from, I think it’s copper they get from there.

I thought I’d be, district services was patrol officers, it was a clerical job. And I finished up doing the lot.

I was issuing rations, looking after, helping look after compounds, and at different times I was doing native labour, that’s a different part of it. With lines, with carrier, cargo boys they called them. I finished up at different times with the cargo boys. But I was actually district services. Any one from ANGAU would know what they are. They would do office work

usually and they’re more or less got easy jobs. Issuing rations, so much sugar and so much edible fat, so much rice. Issue every day or every week, every day. And the natives had their own cooks in the compounds. And we lived in our own places built by the natives. Oh, we lived pretty well. They lived pretty well in ANGAU.

Oh yeah. We, when they’d go in there was only 60 of them there, 60 in the 2/8th Independent Company. And they used to do, have raids of a morning, early of a morning as a rule. And we used to go up with them, some of us. See, we were more or less getting,

with the natives that were taking them up. We were doing a bit of the reconnaissance work. That’s how I knew Peter Pinney.

We’d go out, get ready at dark and they used to attack at sunrise, most of them at sunrise. We did that in the infantry, too. Early morning attacks. Get them when they’re all asleep. Only

have one bloke sitting asleep. They’d sneak round and shoot him and they’d raid, go and raid them. Oh yeah, there’s a lot too it, a bit of night work and yeah, and you slept. One thing about the commandoes, the ANGAU, the natives used to make us beds out of saplings and put canvas things across and we had beds off the ground. And the soldiers,

the natives built them for them too, for some of the commandoes. But they had an LOB, Left Out of Battle. And quite a few people were left out of battle. There was Captain Dunshay and Major Selby, they used to send fellows out if they were panicked and had nerves or whatever you called it, he’d go to LOB. As a matter

of fact I met one fellow in Gympie, I won’t mention their names. He said “I was in the 2/8th”, I said “No you weren’t”, “Yes I was, I was on Bougainville”, he was an LOB, he was out on the coast. He wasn’t with the front line because I knew all the front line.

No, it wasn’t frowned upon, because some blokes are naturally

nervous. No, it wasn’t frowned upon. But he took, he wanted to fight me, I said “You weren’t in action”. He’d been telling everyone he was up fighting. And as a matter of fact we had a fight, I was at a dance up at Red Hill and he wanted to fight me. I said “You weren’t in the front line”, “Yes I was” and he’s coming, a big bloke he was. And I finished up knocking him down in the middle of the road, we had a fight.

Oh, it had a few notches in it. I shouldn’t be telling people this.

Oh it was witnessed kills with the, I got them with the infantry and commandoes, witnessed ones, you put notches on. My first wife

told me someone pinched it. 20 years after I found out she threw it in the Mary River. You’ve seen those daggers that, I got it in the commandoes. About 10 inches long and got grooves either side and they sharpen them on an oilstone. And my first wife, Lill, Kathleen her name was, she didn’t like it. I’m

not supposed to tell people that. I shouldn’t have a dagger.

Well ANGAU never had daggers, but I had one.

Oh, I got one from the, one of the commandoes. I think it was Captain Dunshay or one of them. One of them gave me this and I said “I want one of those”. And they sharpen them with an oilstone,

they’re nice. And do you know why the grooves are on either side? Do you know why bayonets have got grooves in them? So you can pull them out easily. You twist it and pull it out. That’s the reason. But these daggers, oh gee, they were nice, they were sharp. Only about 10 inches long with a wooden handle. And every witnessed kill, that was your, you had to have an officer or someone that saw it, you could put a notch in it.

Fair enough. And that’s how, you might see in Peter Pinney’s book, I think he’s got it in the book, why he’d never kill a Jap while he was asleep. He’d always wake him up and cut his throat. Peter used to write home and tell his mother he was happy, having a good time. You’ve never struck a man like, only a little man.

O I had, I think I had about six on the thing, notches. Oh, there was quite a few others I think that I’d shot, with other blokes, in attacks with machine guns. See, you don’t know really.

Witnessed is when someone’s beside you that sees you.

It’s got to, if you were on your own you couldn’t, see, you might be out on your own, lying dog as they say. And you might see a Jap on his own, you pick him off. You couldn’t count that.

Yes, pretty close. For me it was over the road. Yeah. With mortars, they were using their little mortars that used to go up and come down,

little two-inch mortars they had.

Oh only when you were close up. Yeah, when they’d have the raids of a morning, early morning. But I never, they weren’t witnessed kills with the dagger, some of them were shot. No, you don’t, they weren’t ones killed with the dagger, they were mostly ones that were shot or killed with a grenade.

Once, to finish a bloke off.

Oh, he wasn’t dead. Jap. He was beside a, there was a lot of these, not these palms, these bamboo trees growing there. And they had a habit of getting around the edges of them and in them. Yeah.

And the bloke we put the cigarette butt on, woke up so just put the dagger in.

Not hard, no. No, I had no syndromes after, do you know why? If you’re in the jungle, well I had 840 days in action.

That wasn’t sitting at Moresby, that was from Milne Bay, Goodenough Island, Buna, Gona, Kiriwina, Mount Tambu, Salamaua and Lae. Then I went to the ANGAU then I went over to Bougainville. I had nearly three years in action, am I lucky. And

I’ve got on my thing “No scars” and that’s it. Look. Milne Bay, I got that, I got that at Salamaua, Lewis’s Knoll. Never stitched, put a plaster on it. Was a grenade thrown out of a pillbox and Tommy Lawrence was killed. Wasn’t killed then, Ces Pretty was.

Captain Lewis, this Lewis’s Knoll was named after him. Everybody loved Captain Lewis because he used come up the front with us. See, the other captain used to get behind and say “Keep your heads up, Corky” or “Pod” and he’d be in the weapon pit. But Captain Lewis was with us all the

time. And anyone that was in A Company, 47 Battalion will say that he was a good man. I don’t know where he is now, I don’t know whether he’s dead or not. But he only came to us at Salamaua, at Mount Tambu.

Oh, I knew most of them in the platoons. See, there was

120 in a company, I knew them but you forget their names. Now when I go to the reunion, when you see their faces “Oh, I know you, you’re Jim Gerard”, he’d say “G’day Pod”. See, they, it comes back to you. But this Tex Barlow, he lives at Queen Street Maryborough we call and see him every time I go up. He cries

every time we go I don’t blame him. But I, we tried to get him to come to the reunion, we offered to help him, he wouldn’t go. And his son was there, Rex, he said “He won’t, he’s just given in”, he said “Look at me, I’ve had it”. See, not like me, I try. I’m either in hospital or I’m walking.

And I’ve got to go to the dentist tomorrow and on the 16th I go and see a bloke about, Doctor Lane, at Greenslopes Hospital, an orthopaedic specialist, about my back. Doctor Julian Lane, I nursed him when he was a baby, his father was a doctor, a friend of mine.

Oh, oh, only about two I think, they were from down south. I think there were four, about four killed, four or five killed. Yeah, there wasn’t a great number, there was only, there was 23 in 7 Platoon and there was about 33 in it altogether.

There were 23 of us walked into Salamaua, well that’s seven, 10, about 10 were killed and we got reinforcements before that, at Lewis’s Knoll. We were the ones that copped the action at Lewis’s Knoll, that’s at Salamaua. And we swam the Francisco River, they threw a rope across and then pulled each other across. And then we went

from Salamaua by barge to Lae. We didn’t have to walk across the Markham, the Markham was a, oh the river, we were camped on in Lae was the Butibum can you remember that? The Butibum, anyone from there will know it. See, my mind goes blank and comes good. But there was no

buildings there at all, oh, everything was flattened because the bombs, the Yanks had bombed it before we got there, see. We didn’t kill any Japs there. But, yeah.

It was pretty good, it was jungle training at Mount Spec. We were in there for a long time. We used to go up in the mountain and

sleep out and have attacks, like mock attacks and that. On hills, machine gunner would be alongside and we’d advance, and I’d say “Down” and they’d all go down. Yeah, military, infantry training. And all about the guns, we used to, when we were back at camp we might have a machine gun there and we’d pull it to pieces and they’d all have their turn of pulling it to pieces and putting it together

and cleaning it. And we’d go to the rifle range and, yeah, on the rifle range and we’d do guard duty and things of a night. And when we were camped on the, at Stuart I think they call it, near the Stuart jail, the meatworks was there, they used to make, kill beef there. And we got to know the meatworkers and they used to bring us, drop

us fillet steak on the way home, and the, they used to ride their pushbikes home into Maryborough, they’d bring us steak. Oh yeah they were good people. I shouldn’t be telling you that because I don’t think they paid for it.

Yes, oh, it was really, when you were there you more or less looked after yourself. See, not your, see, you more or less lost contact with the ones above. You’d be in your platoon on your own. You’d be camped, oh, might be 100 yards from the next platoon. And the only time you’d see the captain, when he called into headquarters.

But, no, it was an unusual style of life that, oh, I don’t know what you’d call it. Everyone, now, you worried about your friends more, not like it is in civilian life. If somebody got sick you’d worry more about him. See

when I got that eye, that mark on my eye, I didn’t go out with that. The stretcher-bearer he just said “You better go out”, I said “No, I’m not going out” and they put plaster, that’s why the scar’s there, it wasn’t stitched. It’s not even on my discharge there, it wasn’t reported. No, oh, no, there’s lots of things I could tell you that went on but

they were all pretty good they were. But you never got letters, you never heard from your people. You got a parcel from your wife or your father or something about every couple of months. Letters, oh, they took weeks to get home.

I used to write letters now and again when I could. But see, you couldn’t carry much because you carried everything with you.

And you only had one lot of, what was it, a bottle of water a day. That’s not much, is it? And a dixie, you’ve seen them. And a spoon. And you eat out of the dixie. I don’t know what’s become of the dixies but in the base camps we had, they had the cooks at work and cooked the meals. We have a mess orderly

he’d be, they call him mess orderly but he’d help in the kitchen. But the football team in Maryborough, in Townsville, we got fed better than the others. They gave us steak and all sorts, because we were in the football team. This is true. I shouldn’t be telling you this. But we got fed a lot better. Yeah. We used to train every second day,

oh, yeah, the footballers, they were famous.

I knew them all. Lionel Tobin, I saw Colin McLennan the other night. He was the only one there that’s alive that I saw and he told me there was about six still alive. But what happens they’re 85 and they can’t get about.

Oh it was shocking, I was upset, you go there and you see blokes that were big strong footballers and they look and say “I think I know you”, and they’re fellows that you knew, you know. And they had somebody with them, a carer. But that’s life, isn’t it? And some of their sons were there, 60 year olds they were.

Oh no.

Well we had plenty, we used to, that used to come up from company headquarters. We had plenty of ammunition. We had a, each section had a case with magazines of ammunition for the Bren guns. And I had an Owen gun, I had two pouches and I think it was

eight magazines in each pouch, right? And you used to hang the grenades, I used to carry four at a pound and a half each on my belt. So we had plenty of ammunition. Because when we ordered that, I’ll never forget, when we ordered that artillery D, when one landed and blew the kitchen, blew the cook out, the bloke who, the dishes and everything. But they what, what they did they

fired three shots. One ahead, one behind and when they get on the target the O pip, the chap in front says “You’re on the target now”, then all the guns fire. And one of them was dropping them short and they were landing all round us. But we didn’t see them, I think they were the 17th Field Artillery, I’m not sure. But you didn’t see them.

But, no, see, when you’re in the front line you don’t see other companies, you’re in A Company, B Company might be, oh, half a mile away. So you’re not all together, A Company’s in one area, B Company’s in another area, C Company’s somewhere else, D Company is a machine gun company. But they had Bren gun carriers

down on the flat. And this is an unusual thing, my young brother, Laurie, he’s dead now, he was in the business with us in Brisbane, he claimed me. He joined the army and claimed me and he came up to Lewis’s Knoll. Anyhow, I’ll never forget it, he brought three big chocolates up. And you know what I got? One piece of it. All my mates said “Give me some of

that”, and I shared it with my mates. And he was sorry he claimed me then. He said “I didn’t know you were going to come up”, and they told me where, he was at headquarters, he was with the machine gun carriers. And he used to drive a truck or something. And the funny thing about it is, when I left and transferred to ANGAU, he claimed me again, and went to ANGAU.

Well you can claim an older brother. A younger brother can, say if you were in the army and I was a young brother I could put in a claim and claim you and go with you. That’s what he did. Young Bob said, when Lottie was joined, joined and they sent him to Brisbane, he rang back two-day’s time to his father “Dad, get me out of here”, he volunteered and he wanted to get out of it. Then he went where I went. I didn’t see much of him, see, when we were in the

business we all had our own jobs. On the truck and making, we started with two trucks. We finished up, I think Bob said we had 36 trucks in the finish. We had a pretty big business. All the oldies now us in Brisbane, Cork Brothers. And I left them at 65, I think it was. They bought me out, I said “I’m getting out of here”, and I started on my own. But we did, I did well

on my own. But we’re still good friends. Bob is a good lad, he’s only 78. My mother used to call us, she lived till she was 90, we’d go and visit her at Dutton Park. And she’d say “Yous kids never come and see me”, and Dulce was 60, that’s true. If Dulce was alive now she’d be 92. And Greg’s down the coast,

he’s at Runaway Bay. He’s 89, he wasn’t in the business. He looks like me only he’s meaner.

No. What, he was too old.

No, he didn’t, no. He’d come from Bega.

In the army?

Yeah, I had cousins in it. There was about three Verns. I’m named after a famous English tenor. Vernard Bennett. And all my father’s brothers had sons, Vern. And there was one Vern was killed in, up at Darwin, I think he was a fighter pilot, Vernard Cork. He was shot down I believe. He was up at,

Vernards, a couple of them, three of them I believe, named after this Vernard Bennett. And my father was, his ancestors were Huguenots [French Protestants]. You know the Huguenots? Well they were kicked out of France in 1624, Protestants thrown out by the Catholics. And their name C O R Q U E and they changed it to C O R K with no E. Anyone in England

with C O R K that hasn’t changed their name have got to be related. And the Lord Mayor of London was related. And I’ve been over there, travelled and I’ve been to the place where my mother’s ancestors were tried. I think it was Sussex, England. They’re both from up Scotland. They were prisoners. One of them was Elizabeth Hastings

and the man was James Winters. They were sent out, one was sent out for housebreaking, a musician in Scotland. The other was sent out for larceny, Elizabeth Hastings. And they were sent out to Australia. Elizabeth Hastings must’ve been a partner for one of the officers, evidently she was very, a very attractive woman

of Italian descent. And very attractive and James Winters was a musician and they got married at Parramatta. I’ve got it here somewhere, I can’t find it, I don’t know whether Bob took it or not. It goes right back. My mother’s great-grandfather and great-grandmother were both convicts. And my mother was a Gillespie, and that’s a common name, common Scottish name, Gillespie. And I’ve

got, one of my uncles died down south and he left his, part of his will to his housekeeper, so much to the Methodist Church and the rest to his nieces and nephews. And he had, I think it was 48 nieces and nephews. I had to send my birth certificate down, that’s why I got it, it’s in here, the birth certificate.

And I got 750 pound. And you know what I bought with it, see that television? I’ve had it over 20 years. My wife said “Buy something you’d keep”. So I bought that television. I forget his name but he made, had a bit of money. And the other uncle, it was the first the first settler on Springbrook, was Uncle Herrick with an H, H E double R I C K.

He’s on the stone, there’s a stone, memorial stone at Springbrook, first settler. And there’s a place up at Springbrook called Cork’s Flats, it’s a big long, big flat named after him. And my uncles, my mother’s fathers and brothers, they had farms there, they were Gillespie. Ben and Alec.

Well, you never had a change of clothing. You’d wash your clothes in the creek. Some of them had singlets, I didn’t, I never had singlets or underpants. I just had long pants and a shirt.

Army boots.

Never wore gaiters up there at all. Just wear boots and no gaiters. And a tin hat we used to call them, they call them helmets, we called them tin hats. You know, the unusual shaped ones. We wore those when we were up at the front. And when we were back from the front we wore the ordinary cheap ones, you know.

Yeah, you had to.

They’d fall off.

Because they weren’t much good, they only came to as far as your ears. Oh, we had the tin hats, yeah. And we never had the camouflage clothing, we had the ordinary khaki clothing.

Well you wore them until they fell apart. Mine, my pants, I had a big hole in the knee and I had, when

I was with ANGAU with the commandoes, one of the legs, I tore it off, I had one leg, when I got the new pants off the line and I got the crabs. No, now, I believe they sit at tables and have meals with a menu if you join the army. I said to the troops, I never slept in a bed for all the years I was in the army. And if you want to prove it ring Tex

Barlow, I’ve got his telephone number and he’ll tell you. Or ring Col McLennan and they’ll tell you. We never had a bed, we slept on a palliasse, and never had a pillow. And the mail, you never got mail, oh, different altogether.

Oh it was like heaven, back in

a bed again, in your own bed. And my wife, she’d moved into another flat, another flat in Myall Street. It’s pulled down now, an old house with flats in it, she was living in a flat. And Charlie Fenegis lived in another flat. And I went back, worked for my father in the soft drink factory for about

three months, and he said, the war finished about a month after I got out. And there was three of us in the army. Laurie was with me, Bob joined the air force and he trained as a pilot or a, not a pilot, aircrew. I don’t know what it was aircrew, he was up at Kingaroy. And the war finished before he was sent, he was supposed to go to Canada and the war finished. And when we

went back to Gympie he said, Pop said “There’s nothing in Gympie for you three big blokes, you’d better go to Brisbane”. And I worked in the soft drink, little soft drink factory and I learned how to make the soft drinks. And we used to wash our own bottles and make, mix it up and make it. Every bottle used to, put it in with a ladle. Moved to Brisbane.

Hand ladled with a ladle with a funnel and a little ladle. Two ounces,

four ounces in this big bottle, two in the little bottle and filled by hand. Pop said to us “There’s nothing here for you big blokes, you go to Brisbane”, I had about 1000 pounds deferred pay, that was a fair bit of money kept out of your pay. And Lottie only had a couple of hundred pound because he wasn’t in long, he joined up later and Bob had nothing, I don’t think he had any. And Pop leant us so much money, I don’t know what it was,

and we paid him back, he said “You’d better go to Brisbane and start a soft drink place”. Came down to Brisbane and we rented a big shed opposite Wellington Road. You know Wellington Road? There’s a big shed there, and there’s a big building on it now I think it’s the electric light company, seven-storey place. We were 109 Logan Road and we camped, we batched in there for about six weeks, we put a

concrete floor down, put a room upstairs, built a place for the trucks to back in. Bought second hand machinery, put it in, with the money Pop gave us that I put in. We batched and he had a bloke by the name of Clyde Jones with us. He was an ex-army fellow. He used to work for my father in Gympie, he was a Middle East bloke. And Clyde used to do the cooking for us

when we were batching. I’ll never forget this. One morning, I said “What’s for breakfast, Clyde?” he said “Fried pies”. And this is true, he’d bought some pies the night before and he heated them up on the, he broke them up in the frying pan. Fried, have you ever had fried pies? And that’s a true story. But poor old Clyde stayed with us all his life, till he died. And even when he finished up, he had his long

service, he kept coming to work. And I said “What do you keep coming in here for, mate?” oh, he to get away from his wife. I said “What do you keep coming in for Clyde?” he said “To get away from May”. May was a big fat woman and she used to hen peck him. And, but he died suddenly. But that was Clyde Jones. He lived at Chinaman’s Creek out near Skyruns Creek outside Gympie.

But everyone that worked for us, most of them we kept all their lives. The chap was it, we had, our accountant. We got him from the St Laurence’s College, from his senior, gave him a job in the office and let him go to college and pass his, do his, finished up an accountant. He worked for us until, he left us, oh, when we sold out.

And I think he’s in town now, he’s still alive. And they tell me he bought a milk run six months after he left to do exercise. That’s what they tell me. And they say he’s back doing accountancy. And everyone that worked for us got their Long Service pay. Bob looked after that, my young brother. He was the office boy and when I was younger I used to make the drinks. And they were pretty well known, they were good drinks.

Oh yes. If you wanted to go and do a wee, my young brother says it now, you’d say “I’m going to have a quarter to three”. If you’ve got to go and do the other number two,

you say “Jimmy Brits”. Sounds good enough, doesn’t it. Bob says it.

Oh I don’t know, it’s pretty old isn’t it? It’s been going for years. It’s like ‘lying doggo’, that’s an army saying. Used to lie doggo. But they used to call them latrines in the army. You dig a hole about two foot deep and squat down over it and fill it in with a bit of,

you had a shovel beside it, fill it in. Take your own paper down to the toilet. I don’t know anyone that ever washed their hands afterwards. Personal hygiene wasn’t much good, was it?

Oh, newspaper. A bit of newspaper or something. I think they might’ve had toilet paper, I’ve forgotten. But I can remember, this is true, when I went out to Heldon once with my wife,

went out to, they lived at Heldon my wife’s mother, relations and everything, lived at Heldon on a farm and I went to the outdoor toilet, and they never had paper. Do you know what they had? For wiping their bottoms, excuse the expression, was corncobs. With the corn leaf, you know. Sounds good, doesn’t it? A stack of corncobs in the corner. True.

No, I never saw Guinea Gold, we never got the paper. No.

Well, you didn’t know much about it at all. You had an idea how it was going in your area. But you didn’t know much about where it was going in other

areas. But that Kokoda Track, they call it, it’s not the Kokoda Track. It’s really, this is true, you can argue about it with anyone, the proper name for it is the Kokoda Trail. All the soldiers knew it as the Kokoda Trail. But I walked up it when I was up at Moresby and it was known by the soldiers as the Kokoda Trail. And now they say the Kokoda Track.

And I’ll stick by that. You hear it on the television about the Kokoda Trail, and you see blokes being carried out. And the natives weren’t allowed up, right up the front. If anybody argues with you, you can tell them that I was in ANGAU looking after them, the natives the second half of the war and I know.

Oh, some of them when a bit, I used to call it peculiar. And quite a few self-inflicted. Shot themselves in the foot and things to get out. But quite a few.

You’re looking at one of them that used to do

it. At Lae we used to make Jungle Juice and we used to call it Gizmo, can you write that down, Gizmo. And we used to sell it to the Yanks for 10 dollars a bottle. It was nearly pure spirits. I had a still with two of my mates. And we used to boil up the sultanas and things,

you know, and the sugar and everything in a big, in a Gardner and White’s tin, one of the big coke tins. Used to boil it up and put it in the thing and let it ferment and put it through the distiller. And it used to drip down and it was, come out nearly pure spirit. Used to bottle it and call it Gizmo. We had that on the quiet, it was hidden, on the, near the

Bunybun creek or river. I shouldn’t be telling you that.

Yes, it was pure spirit. Practically pure spirit. We used to sell it to the Yanks.

It tasted like pure spirit.

No, it wouldn’t, we used to break it down. It was nearly 100% pure spirit.

Yeah, we called it Gizmo, a bottle of Gizmo. I remember that name. We had this still and I’ll never forget, they found it after a couple of months and they wanted to know who had it. Nobody had it, oh no, they got rid of it. But we were drinking it amongst ourselves and selling a bit to the Yanks. Proper distilled stuff. Used to just sell all sorts, put sugar and anything in it, let it ferment and put it through the distiller.

No, it was like pure spirit. Yeah, if you distil something, it’s like distilled water.

No, this was about, they reckon it was about 80% pure spirit. The slower you do it the more spirit you get. And we used to break it down,

break it down with a bit of water or something. Oh yeah, oh, don’t tell me about that, I know all about that business.

Well my father used to brew the ginger beer and hop beer and all around in Gympie. For the soldiers that were camped in, during the war, out at the showground, for the light horse. I knew a bit about the brewing after the

war. Knew about it when I come home on leave. Pop used to show me he used to, all the ginger beer was brewed, boiled up with ginger. Make a hop beer, you don’t make, you don’t see around now because it’s hard to make it without spirit in it. And do you know that lemonade has got spirit in it. The essence is made from spirit.

It is. Lemonade essence. And do you know what the oil of lemon is made from? The leaves from the lemon tree. And it’s mixed with pure spirit because, and you put one ounce to the gallon of sugar. Gallon of, tub of sugar to the gallon. And you put your citric acid with that

and put a bit of lemon flavour as well.

Oh, we went with the cooks and that, we used to get sultanas and that, you know, you can brew anything, fruit, anything at all. Let it ferment and it comes up and you put it through the distiller. You let it come up, come down and come up again and

then you distil it. The more sugar you put in, the more spirit you got. It was clear when it came out. Oh yes, it was really nice, nothing wrong with it, you didn’t keel over. And that’s another thing, they tested us all for hookworm. And the fellows that never had hook worm, I’ve never told people this before,

it was about six of us from A Company. Do you know why we never had hook worm? We used to drink this Gizmo, we used to drink the spirit. And these hook worms are in the lining of your stomach, they tell me. And I don’t know why, but we never had hookworms. And all the others had hookworms and they used to said “What do you do that the others don’t?”. I knew what it was, it was drinking the Gizmo. We never got hookworms.

And that’s never been told before. I was a bit of a larrikin.

Yeah, the times you were saddest when your mates got killed or wounded. But you never, I never felt low, but I used to get angry and you’d want to get in and, you know,

you really. It’s a funny thing, it’s like hating somebody. I never had nerves, quite a few fellows did. Like machine guns, you had to watch them with machine guns because they shake. But you do, I can tell you do, before you go in you get nervous. You’re on these attacks you go in and you know what you’re going into. But it seems to go on, you know, after a few months.

You seem to reconcile yourself, you think “Well, you’re going to die in the, you’re going to finish up killed so you’ve got to do what you’re up here for”. But I honestly think that the returned soldiers that were up in the front line should be treated a lot better then they are. It took me a long time to get my pension and I had that bad back for years, I had it in, when I was working in the cordial factory.

I wore a brace. And I know I got it from carrying the, those guns and ammunition like the anti-tank guns and the Bren guns. Up hills and all that. I had it in the army, I had bad backs in the army and it used to come on me, you know. And after the war it got worse and took a long time to convince them. And I kept appealing and going again and I got 40 for smoking in the army

and I appealed again and got 60 and 80. I finished up getting an EDA, assumed disability. And that’s what I’ve got now. I go to Greenslopes now in the hospital and they’re quite good there. But I’ve got a gold card [veterans pension card] and that’s good.

He wasn’t supposed to. I won’t tell you

whether he had a pistol or not. I don’t think he had one. But he was with my section. His name was Duff, the Reverend Duff. You make enquiries and you, with the Presbyterian and ask them if they know Reverend Duff. He was up with A Company, 47 Battalion on Lewis’s Knoll. I think he’s passed away, but a lovely fellow.

I’ve spoken to Presbyterians here, and they’ve heard of him “Oh yes, we knew the Reverend Duff”. And he used to have a service every time we’d go in. Everyone was his religion, Catholics, Protestants and all. But he used to bury them, when they’d bury them he’d have the service. I wish he was alive now, he could tell you a lot about it, Duff, Reverend Duff.

He was never with headquarters, that’s where he should’ve been. But what could he do there because all the companies were all out.

Oh you had to, you had to carry a gun. Yeah, you had to, well they made me go back and get the anti-tank gun that I dumped, told them to dump.

All I took back with me was one of my mates and a mosquito net. And went down the bottom of the mountain, Mount Tambu, and in a creek where we dumped it and brought it up again. Which we never used.

There was A Company, 47 Battalion, we were up on Lewis’s, up on Mount Tambu. We came up form Tambu Bay and we went to this mountain and we went to a knoll, we’ve come across Japs at Lewis’s Knoll they called it in the finish, Lewis’s Knoll. We went up with Captain McWaters, he was the

captain of our company and we struck the Japs and we were there for weeks. And the Japs were attacking us with two-inch mortars and things and we were going out on patrols, finding their pillboxes and finding the Japs and we were attacking them. The sections, started off with sections attacking them. I went out with my section. Another section went out to attack another area. That’s where I got Tommy

and other blokes killed, got wounded, weren’t killed, wounded, attacking pillboxes they call them. They were machine gun posts. And then they brought a platoon in, that was 30 men. And they finished up the whole company attacked them. And we got them in the finish, got the lot. And we advanced and crossed the Francisco River

where we swam across, were pulled across by a rope. We pushed the Japs across there, they were there too. We were fighting Japs, chasing them and getting shot at. And went into Salamaua.

Oh Lewis’s Knoll, I’d say oh about six weeks or more, more than that. I’m not sure of the time but it was a fair

time. They brought a Bren, we had two lots of reinforcements. They brought up one officer from Duntroon with the red epaulets on his shoulder, trained officer, he came up.

Oh, it was pretty, you couldn’t move, yeah. Oh no, you couldn’t go ahead, had to keep your head down. But that’s another thing, when we got to Salamaua, this officer from Duntroon,

he got us out, there was only about 23 in our platoon, got us out doing squad drills, lining us up. And we said “What are you coming at?” you can imagine how we bucked. We used to put on a turn, if we got a bad officer, we’d put on a turn about him because the officers of each platoon were supposed to come with you.

The company commander, he was back at headquarters, he used to give orders. The captain was company commander and a lieutenant was platoon commander and the platoon commander used to come with you. But he’d never walk in front, the corporals with the sections would go in front with the machine guns. And the sergeant would be up in the front, he’d be there just behind you.

Well you were responsible for I think it was 10, a corporal and I think eight or 10 men. You were in charge of them, that was your section. A corporal is in charge of so many men and a lance corporal is second in charge. If I got killed or got hurt, Tommy Lawrence took over, the second in charge, the lance corporal. And that’s in the infantry.

And the sergeant was in charge of, he was in charge of three sections, he was behind them. He’d line up each section together and give us orders. Orders that were given to him by the platoon commander, he was a lieutenant. And some of the lieutenants were good, they’d come up in the front with us, others weren’t as good, they’d stay behind and get down. Down in the weapon pits. One commander used to say “Keep your head up Corky, Pod, keep

your head up”, and he’d be down the weapon pit. I won’t mention his name.

Well it wasn’t hard because you just had to do it. You were told to do it. We were taught that if you’re in the army, you’re fighting for your country, you’ve got to do what your company commander tells you. If you were ordered to go out on your own, you’d have to do it.

One company commander that we got rid of said we’d be charged with cowardice if you don’t go, I said “You can’t go there, suicide”. I said “They’ve got a field of fire cut”, that means all the trees cut down. Anyone that’s in the army will know what a field of fire is. And he sent me in, with a section. He said “You’ve got covering fire”,

we had a Bren gun, he goes to the side, he gives you, you advance, you’re getting, you keep moving in front, fire across, fire, you see. Yeah. It’s suicide. Half those blokes that got killed, they should never have been killed. What they should’ve done, this is true, and I think most of the heads of the army will tell you know, cut off their supply.

Cut off their food supply and they would’ve died. Because they were eating eggs, fruit and all sorts of stuff. And when we’d capture places they’d have rice, they lived on rice and stuff. But if they cut of their supplies they wouldn’t have it.

Oh, very short service.

Dig a hole and bury them and the reverend say a few prayers and cover it up and they’d put a, something with his name and everything on it. I don’t know what happened to them. I know they gathered them up and took them to, I think they took all our crowd to Lae or Moresby. I’d like to go back and find out where they are. Because I know lots of them, quite a few of them from, oh, down the coast, down New South

Wales. A lot of them from Sydney. One of my penfriends, Peggy Bedford, never seen her in my life, lives in Sydney. She used to write to me, said “You’re a lovely bloke, Vern”. I said “You must be nice”, I never met her. Just a penfriend, used to write letters.

Oh that was at Salamaua. He was tied to a tree.

And he had his head, he was tied to a tree by, with a rope and his head was about six foot away.

Oh, with the commandoes, yeah. A chap by the name of Fitzgerald from Gympie. Oh, I hope his relations are not listening. He had his stomach hanging out. And they put it back in, Doctor White, but he finished up dying. His stomach was hanging out, they cut him right up in here. Oh, quite a few

blokes. Another bloke with his hair cut off, with the commandoes. I don’t know whether he lived or not. See, they had their own surgeon. They didn’t, couldn’t get them back to the hospital really quickly. If someone got really sick you’d have to stay there.

I got lost, yeah, once.

I got lost up with the commandoes once, for quite a few days. We got jumped. Never reported, I don’t think it was reported. And I got back. But you can live without water for, you can live without food, but you can’t live without plenty of water there. With creeks.

Oh, just got jumped

on the track by Japs. Got fired at and you go bush. Got fired at and you go bush and you can’ find the track again. I’ve you’re with natives, two natives, they just go for their life. They get out, they know the way out, but you don’t. I got out, I just followed the water down and got out.

Oh, I think it was about three or four days, I’m not sure. Might’ve been longer. I was pretty thin when I got

out. Because you can go for a long time, not without water, without food. I had dry rations, I had tins. Used to have tinned rations. Had about four day’s supply you carried with you. They all had, in the commandoes.

What I was thinking? “How do I get out?” And you move of a night, not of a day. You

move in the daytime, the Japs are there.

Just lie dog, as they say. Keep quiet and move of a night, follow the water down. Because all creeks go to the water.

Yeah, you’re sleeping. You sleep of a night. It was hot at, every night was warm. It used to rain of an afternoon about four o’clock,

and it was real humid. You’d never catch a cold, you’d be dry in an hour. Even at Moresby. Different weather to this. Every day it rained, nearly every day you’d get heavy rain.

Oh, alright, I just took it, didn’t worry me in the least. I’m a different type to you think,

what you think I am. I’ve never changed either. I was out, when I first came here I was out walking, when I first came out of hospital and I got out the front gate. And two young kids were sitting on a footpath and they came and they said “You old bastard, what are you doing here?” One of them came up and gave me a shove. You know what I did? I gave him a kick in the groin with my knee and a chop on the back of the neck. He dropped

to the ground, and his mother came out and said “What happened to him?”. I said “He picked on me”. I didn’t tell anyone about it, I just came home. They live just up the road, on Winchester Road, I don’t know who they were. Some blokes about 18, some young, I call them hoodlums. Yeah, I haven’t forgotten what I learned in the army.

You always had someone with you, I always had a, mostly I had Cliff Hoskins or someone with you, or a couple of natives that knew the area. When we were out, we’d go anywhere we’d take a couple of natives or one native with us, like as a guide, that knew that locality. But we knew,

the blokes that we had with us knew where the, knew that area, knew the tracks.

Yeah.

No, they, when we were unloading the cargo ships with the lines, the lines of about 40, oh, it wouldn’t be that, about 30. So they’d unload the cargo

off the big ships. No, we never got, that was, they’d moved forward from there. They had, that was near Torakina, where the Seabee’s had the airport. And that was before I went up with the commandoes. That was when I was back at the compound with the natives. I took a line of natives up to unload the ships.

And they worked so many hours unloading the cargo, putting it on hoists, and they’d take it off and I’d bring them home. They were boys and they’d come back of a night and go back of a morning and unload the ships.

No, there was no Australians there when I was there. There was no Aussies there. They came later. The Yanks were there with the

Seabee’s first, then the Aussies came.

Yeah, we went over just after the Seabee’s had landed. And they were, they started to build an airstrip. And we had natives there that were locals and we were feeding them and had a compound. And the work boys were helping them. And the Yanks used to do, there was lots of Yanks there, they had a camp, Yanks came over and camped there.

They call them the American Seabee’s, they’re pretty well known. They were engineers I think.

The Yanks? They were good to us. They gave us cigarettes and beer and everything. We were, oh, we were good. I got Bob Crosby’s brother, I might have told you, I got a parrot for him. One of the boys caught a parrot. Pretty parrots over there, green and red and all colours. Lovely parrots.

No, they, well the cigarettes, they gave us lots of cartons of cigarettes. And we bought some of it. But we got most of it, I did, and my mates got it, some of it for nothing. When we were with the commandoes we were issued with two ounces of tobacco, two bottles of beer a week. And we used to get the beer

sent up sometimes, dropped by parachutes. Used to put it in the creek and cool it off. And the blokes that didn’t drink, we used to drink it. We had quite a few that didn’t drink beer. Oh yeah, you meet some types there. But the Yanks were good, they were, I think they were engineers. But they had entertainers come out from America. What’s Bob Crosby’s brother’s name? He’s got a band.

He had a band and he was there, I sat, I got a good seat in the front seat. No charge, this was just to entertain the troops.

Oh, were they what. They had better meals and all. Oh, we only had the ordinary bully beef and they had kitchens and everything. They had good food and they were

getting a lot more money than us.

Oh, we all did, we were all cranky with it. Because the Yanks were getting big money, we were getting six shillings a day. I was getting 10 and six corporal and four and six a day for my wife. And deferred pay, so much deferred pay. That was saved for whenever you were discharged, they gave you deferred pay, a cheque. My

wife was getting her four and six a week. But there was one bloke in Gympie, Brennan, he had 17 kids. And they tell me, he wasn’t in our battalion, they tell me he was in the army and they discharged him. You know why they discharged him? He was getting more money than the colonel. He was getting so much for himself, so much for each kid. He had 17 kids, he had, I think it was something like 16 under

16, and himself, he was a corporal. He was getting more money than the colonel. And his family’s still in Gympie, a lot of them, the Brennans. That’s a good, that one, put that in the archives. He had lots of kids. And the Brennans were very good people, they lived next door to the Australian Hotel in a little house there.

We took Atebrin [anti malarial drug] every day, little yellow tablets. And we never got malaria while we were there, but when I came home I got it. I was in the old Greenslopes Hospital and there’s only one room there. And again I was in the hospital that the Americans had out at Mount Gravatt. The 112 A

GH [Australian General Hospital], I think it’s a housing commission area now. I was in there with malaria. And it wasn’t far from the Nursery Road crematorium. And when I was recuperating from malaria, I used to walk up to the, with one of my mates, up to the crematorium and pick up the flowers that were on the

coffins and bring them back. And this is true, I got to know the fellows in the crematorium and they had ovens in there. They used to heat up and they used to get red hot those ovens. They take the flowers off the coffins, I don’t know whether they took the fittings off or not. And you know that I’ve seen them burnt in

there and they sit up, when the coffin disappears they sit up. Nobody’s ever heard that before, hey? But I got to know them at the crematorium. I’ve been there to many a funeral but I know what they had behind. In those days they had two ovens and they used to get red hot and they’d warm them up. They’d have their service then they’d push it through a

curtain. And then they’d, whatever they do and they’d put them in the thing and there, the chaps working there, they’d be all dead now. They used to say “We’re cooking a few today”. Not very nice, is it?

He claimed me, yes. He brought chocolates up to me and all my mates took them off me. He bought,

I think it was three Cadbury chocolates that he bought from down the canteen, headquarters to give to me.

No, I said “What are you doing here?” he said “I claimed you”. He said “I’m sorry I did” and Bob, my younger brother, said two days after he came to Brisbane, after he joined, he rang Pop to get him out of it.

“Get me out, I don’t what this”, so he was a volunteer really, he was a volunteer.

I don’t know, I only saw him the once, he was down at headquarters. I don’t know, and then I went to ANGAU. The first time I saw him was at Lewis’s Knoll, came up to see us there, made a special trip up. Then I didn’t see him until, I didn’t even see him later on till I was

discharged. And I believe he was in ANGAU, must’ve claimed me again. So I don’t know much about it, where he was, but he must’ve been near. Because he was with a mate of mine from down the coast. Ray Brice, he was in ANGAU and he said “I was with your brother all the time, Laurie”. And Laurie, one of Laurie’s best mates was Jack Casey, he’s come from

Maryborough. Everywhere you go you see signs “Jack Casey’s Toyotas”, “Jack Casey’s Toyotas”. And I met him up there, he’s about 85, met him last Friday night and his son’s got the place. And Laurie, my younger brother, he was Jack Casey’s mate and Jack was in the 47th with us. He’s still alive. I think he’d have a bit of money because he’s got agencies everywhere.

And he, but down in, Maryborough hasn’t changed much, all the houses are all old. And the, they’ve got a brand new RSL with poker machines, everyone plays the poker machines. And the Lord Mayor is Alan, what’s his name? I know him well, I’ve met him. His a, shook hands with him he was at, comes to the meeting.

He’s leaving this year, he’s been the Lord Mayor for about, I think it’s about 12 years. Nice bloke.

I was discharged because I had the points. You got so many points if you were married,

and so many points for the length of time that you were in the army. And I got out on the points system. Now anyone from the Veteran’s Affairs should know that, some of them say they don’t. They don’t seem to know much about it but I got out on the points system. And I wasn’t discharged from Brisbane, I was discharged from Redbank. And I didn’t have a medical.

Because they said to me “Do you want a medical, Corporal Cork?” and I said “No, I want to get out of this joint”. They said “You’re pretty healthy”, I said “Yeah, I want to get out of it, I’m alright”. And I got my discharge papers.

I don’t remember how I got it. I don’t know, I was in New Guinea,

when I left them, I didn’t come home, they came home. The infantry, 47th came home and I stayed over there. They came home here for I think it was six months, I’m not sure. And they were camped in Brisbane and I stayed there. I only came home on leave. Then they went back, they went back to Salamaua. Not to Salamaua, went back to Torakina, to Bougainville and that’s where I met them

when I was with the commandoes. I came back and I ran into one of their patrols, their forward patrols. I was coming back and, back with the natives.

What do I remember about it? I remember being happy, getting back to Australia again. And I was happy about getting out. I was only out of it, I don’t know how long, it couldn’t have been long.

I think it was about a month or so and the war finished. They all came home and they all had medicals and most of them got pensions.

I came back by, I think it was a, I came back to Cairns. I came back once on a ship. I think it was the Manunda, I’m not sure, one of the ships, to

Cairns. And I went on leave from, came down on leave to Brisbane. And had a big red moustache then. I grow a red moustache. And I came home for a week or so and then I went back to the islands again, they flew me back. I went back by train to Townsville I think it was and I got, put me in a staging camp

and I had priority to go back. And I went back again. After I had my leave. Then the, I think the 47th were still here. They went back, I only came back for leave. When I joined ANGAU it was a New Guinea unit, see, and they stay there, you don’t go, you don’t come back here. Only came back for leave.

Staying in the army? No. I didn’t want to stay in the army. I wanted to get out of it. I was pretty well treated, one thing about it, they were pretty good to us. I’ve got nothing, I’ll say nothing against them. The only thing, I didn’t like the food. And I didn’t like the long route marches when we were training. We used to walk from

Pialba to Maryborough and back, that was nothing. That was a route march. And from Tyro to Maryborough when we were training. No, they treated us pretty well. But we had iron rations. See, the reason why you weren’t crooked on people, every one of us in the company were treated the same, even the captain. He was living the same as we were. See, when you’re in action, as they

call it, everybody is the same. But when you’re back in the, on the mainland, oh, it’s different altogether. The captain has, he lives, the captain’s living in the, he goes to the captain’s headquarters and he has different meals. Got a different cook and all there. Different altogether with the lieutenants, they get treated better. But when you’re an ordinary corporal or a private, you’re out

living in the tents on a palliasse.

Oh, I don’t know, it wasn’t too long, I don’t think it was too long. I used to go up, get weekend leave and that. But I was in a staging camp at, to be discharged out of Redbank it was. I was there for about three or four weeks I think. And

they said “Do you want a medical?” I said “I don’t want a medical”. They probably won’t believe that, but it’s true, I never had a medical but I got my discharge. But all the fellows that stayed in, all the ones I know, they all had medicals. And some of them, one bloke “I had a sore knee, I got 40% for that”, another bloke got something else. Some of them got a small pension

and I tried, I was a fair age and I tried for a pension. And I had that bad back for years, ever since I came out the army.

Oh it’s good, happy. Everyone gives you a hug. I’d walk down the street at Gympie “G’day Vern”, “How are you Charlie?” cuddle you. I’d be home on leave, I’d go to the dance, they’d all come up and put their arms round you,

yeah. “Oh, where have you been?” see, nobody knew much about you. Oh, they were happy to see you. Yeah, when you come home, oh, plenty of friends. See, years ago you knew everybody in Gympie, I knew practically everybody. I think there was only 6000 or 5000 here when I was, now there’d be 10, I’d say, or more. But you knew most of the people.

Even with the shop, we had the fruit run when I was younger, I got to know people, got to know a lot of people there. And my father used to, he was a funny man old Pop, he used to say “All the girls in Gympie have got big legs from”, “Why Pop?” “From walking up hills”. See, the main street is Nash Street, it’s in the gully. Nash’s Gully they used to call it, that’s where they first found gold. And our shop

was number three, right up near the Town Hall, right at the top end of Mary Street. And now it’s all trees and some Lord Mayor’s got in there and he’s altered everything, changed the lot. And Woolworth’s and Coles, they’re all out on River Road, we used to call it. I don’t know what they call it now. They’re all out round, on River Road.

I went back to Gympie and then from Gympie we went to, three of us went to Brisbane to start the business. Oh yes, and we borrowed this money from Pop, my father, and 1952 we paid him back this money. I don’t know exactly how much it was but I think it was in the, over 1000, paid him back his money and we bought him a

brand new Chev sedan. I’m not kidding.

Well I knew, I was home when the war was ended. It wasn’t long after I was discharged. Everyone was celebrating in the street.

Well it came over the radio, everybody knew it. Oh, they were all

happy and out in the streets and everything. Yes. And the others, all my mates were still in the army then and they brought them home and they discharged them. They put them, gave them medicals and discharged them. I should’ve stayed in, I’d have got more I reckon.

Oh, not really. I went to work for my,

with my father. Washing bottles and making soft drinks. And then he said “Get out of this place, there’s nothing for you blokes. I’ll lend you some money” and we built this place at, rented this big shed at the end of Balakalaba Street at the Gabba, 109 Logan Road.

You miss your mates, you miss them. But you’re happy to be with you’re family. Yeah, your wife and that’s happy. It’s an unusual feeling, you’ve got to experience to know it. But I told you about my wedding, didn’t I? About the wedding breakfast. I saw where Mrs Batson’s daughter, Athley, I saw her up at the Gympie, Back to Gympie Week a month or

so ago. And she’s a grandmother, she’s a woman about now, she’s about 65, Athley. So it’s a small world, isn’t it?

Oh I missed them. I missed the dead ones. You think of them. You can still see them. I could take you back, if you took

me to Salamaua out to the bay there, I could take you up to Lewis’s Knoll. It’s like that the track, covered in mud, I could take you to where it is. It’s a knoll on Mount Tambu, a knoll sticking out. It’s overlooking, it’s got, covered in trees, it’s overlooking Salamaua, you go down a hill and you cross Francisco River and you go into Salamaua. And the trees there, that this black fellow, this native

was tied to, I believe it’s still there. It’s a pretty round tree. This bloke was, I believe it’s still growing there. But nobody would know about that, all they did was cut it down and, see, things went on that nobody knew about. See, lots of things went on in the army that you’d never know about. I could tell you about different natives from different areas, what they were like.

And that place where they’ve got this camp where all these migrants are trying to, Manus, it’s a beautiful island. It’s a lovely island, Manus. And if you lived there you know the people, they were lighter colour.

I joined the army, I joined the RSL, I think that’s when I got this, enlisted. I joined the

RSL I think it was Lae, when about 50 of us joined the RSL then. And they’ve got me down as enlisting. But I was called up, I was in the military forces before most of them, one of the first one in. I think I was at Fraser’s Paddock in 1939 when they had the first National Service trainees. You can check on that, it was 1940 or 1939,

I think it might have been early in 1940. And they say I joined the army in 1943, you saw on that thing, premier footballers. Oh, I was well known, all knew Pod Cork. Even when I went to the reunion. Blokes that I didn’t even know from other companies, “Oh, you’re a footballer, I know you, you’re Pod Cork”.

With the RSL? Yeah, I joined the RSL. I’m still a member of Tambourine Mountain and I’m a member of the incapacitated at Wynnam, I’ve never been to a meeting. As a matter of fact, I paid my 20 dollars, I sent it to Mrs Blaine, she’s the secretary and she wants to know what goes on here, she’d like a tape of what goes on. She’d like to know a bit about it, she wants to put it in the magazine. She’s the secretary

of the incapacitated, I’ve never met her. But I’ve spoken to her on the phone, I told her that you were coming. She sounds a very nice person, she’s never seen me in my life. But I go to Gympie, I’ve stayed in the army at Gympie. And they don’t even know down here that I’m in the RSL. I go up to Gympie, up to, not to Gympie, up to Tambourine with Bob.

I don’t drive in the open, I drive locally. He drives me up and I go in the procession and I go to the dinner they have and I go up different times when they have dinners, go up for the meetings and that. Not meetings, I usually go up and they, every year they have a dinner, they invite their members up and Bob comes up with me. And they’re all dead, most of them are dead that were in it, they’re all younger

people. They’re quite nice people.

A lot. You think about them when you’re on your own. Different times you’ll wake up of a night

and everything will come back. See, even when you see them, I saw some of them on Friday, you think of them as strong, strong men. And now they’re getting around with walking sticks. They’re bits of larrikins, I’m a bit of a larrikin. I’m a bit,

quite a few of them there. Like, I called and saw Tex, he was a larrikin. He’s got a son there looking after him. He’s got a lovely home on the Brisbane River. That’s the fellow that his wife got paid his wages all the year, all during the war. Col McLennan, he’s from Bundaberg, he had a good job there, I think he worked for the government. Oh, yeah,

Jimmy Gerard, he was another mate of mine, he was there. He’s still going. Still has a joke now and again. I sat with about four or five of the originals, you know. Some of them now I, that I didn’t know, their sons were there. But I think they counted about 15 out of about 40. 15

locals, 47th. I’ve got the names of everybody that was at that meeting if you’d like to see it. Would you like to see them?

Yeah.

They wash your clothes, make your bed and they, all, they’re really good. I didn’t have a personal boy up, when I was up with the commandoes but when you’re like at Goroka and in Moresby and different

places you have a personal boy that looks after you. Does your washing and cleans your shoes and works in the kitchen for you, oh yeah.

No, I grew the moustache when I went to Bougainville. And I grew this big red one. It was red. You wouldn’t think of that, you wouldn’t think I had, I had more or less fair hair, brown, light brown, but this

moustache was red. And I came home on leave with it, after the war I came home with it and everybody said “Get rid of that” and I just shaved it off. And I used to curl it. It wasn’t a beard, it was a moustache.

Wouldn’t you want to get out of it when all your mates were killed? Hey? I wanted to get out of it. I thought “This’ll do me”. Practically everyone

in the company applied. All my mates applied. Wouldn’t you?

It was part of the army, yeah. They always had, yeah, they were part of the army. ANGAU was part of the army. Yeah, you wore a uniform and all and you were part of the army, oh yeah.

Well it’s, they didn’t call it infantry work. I was up there with natives that knew the district, see, and knew the tracks. Follow? That’s how I came to be up with the commandoes.

Yeah, you’d go out.

Well you wouldn’t go, you wouldn’t touch them. You’d go out with the natives

all on the different tracks and you’d find out, they knew the area. Follow? And you’d see where they were, you’d sneak in or hang, just lie dog or hang around and watch, see how many were there, because you had the natives with us. Then you’d come back and you’d tell them then you’d go in, some of the commandoes would go in and attack them.

Well we weren’t supposed to but we used to be

beside them, near them. We weren’t supposed to be right up the front. But we were right where they were, we were camped five metres from there.

Maps, oh yes. That’s what I learned at the carder course, map reading and that.

Oh, we didn’t have, they weren’t

much good on Bougainville. But we learned map reading in that course I did, learned map reading.

The commandoes did. Yeah, the infantry had, they had radio communications. Yeah. And they had an O pip that they call it they, a fellow up front with an observation post. And he used to, they

had the three-inch mortars. We were about a couple of hundred yards away and they used to, the observation post was up the front and they used to direct it. One of the people who were there was Ces [Roy] Deserio. He finished up getting decorated, he lived in Gympie. He’s dead. I met his son in Bundaberg at the last reunion. But Ces was a great mate of mine

his father was a Greek I think. Lovely bloke, Ces. And he used to do the observation post with the mortars. And they decorated him in the finish. So they tell me. He’s in that, one of those photos that I showed you.

Well some areas were very thick and other areas were Kunai grass,

were long grass. But up at, where the fighting was, was mostly pretty thick. It was pretty thick. It was like more or less jungle. But it had been, a lot of it had been bombed by the Yanks before we went in. They’d come over with their bombers and bomb the area and we’d go in, but they never killed all the Japs. The Japs were in,

down in tunnels and they used to bury themselves. And we used to throw grenades in, if we’d take a pillbox we’d throw grenades in , they’d go down below and they’d be killed in there. But, oh no, they bombed that Mount Tambu, the Americans. They, all the trees were flattened on one side of it

and there were still Japs alive there, they were underground, they were still in there. Surprising. But where we were at Lewis’s Knoll, we had, it was pretty thick, pretty thick jungle.

You wouldn’t see much at all. I think they were all frightened by the bombs. You didn’t, I don’t remember many. Oh, you see those birds, pretty birds with the wings, what do they call them again?

Birds of Paradise, yeah see those. I saw a lot of those when I marched from Lae to the airport near there, Nadzab. We walked on a track, a lot of them, there were a lot of Birds of Paradise. All pretty birds. And we were at Nadzab,

at one stage and they, the, some of them jumped, from the parachute, jumped out of a plane, the artillery. I think it was the 17th Field, I’m not sure. And we were there to guard them. And they threw the parts out and they jumped, everything then, the guns and all by parachute. At Nadzab. And that’s where I went, I was in

ANGAU then, that’s when they sent me over to Bougainville. No, they sent me to Goroka. That’s where we struck the leeches going up the hill. That’s a lovely place, Goroka. And there’s Mount Tambu. You see that dish the fruit’s in, the oval thing, that was brought home from New Guinea

from the natives, they built that. And there was a thing they called a Tambu axe, I never ever got one but they made axes. But that was brought from, brought home. Fine isn’t it?

Oh yes, yes, we found out about their culture. Yeah. Some natives were different to others.

The New Island natives were different to the others. They were very modest. And other natives weren’t they were just, no wait a minute. No, they weren’t, they weren’t modest. They were the ones who would take their lap laps off when they got hot. Others would never take them off.

There was a different, some of them are little fellows and some of them are blacker than others. And the black ones are Buka’s, we used to call then Buka’s. Most of them from Bougainville and those areas are black. But I learned the Pidgin English pretty quickly because I was on, there was about three of us with about, oh, about four or five hundred of them. Up at Goroka, and that’s known, if you, I think they

holiday there now, it’s a beautiful place, I think they grow coffee there now. And they had a hostel there where they were keeping natives and we used to feed natives. Goroka, it’s a lovely place.

Yes, I’d like to go back and, I’d like to go back to Salamaua and look at those places. I wouldn’t like to go to Goroka because you have to, wouldn’t go to Lewis’s Knoll because

you’d have to walk up hills, up a great steep hill. Probably about two hours to Mount Tambu. I’d like to go and have a look at those places. I’ve seen Kokoda Trail, I’ve seen that, haven’t been far on it but I have walked in, and it’s not the Kokoda Track. And anybody that tells you it was the Kokoda Track, you tell them they’re not right. And you ask any old New Guinean

they’ll tell you, it was the Kokoda Trail. Yeah.

Well, it rained practically every afternoon, you got a heavy downpour. That’s why we never wore sweaters or singlets. And you could be wet, you could go in the water and wash your clothes, with your clothes on and your boots and all and you’d be dry in an hour.

Unusual weather. You were never cold, I was never cold. But Goroka, yes, cold there. Just a few thousand feet up. I don’t know how high it is but it’s pretty high. Lovely place. Lovely creeks. And they had an aerodrome there, not an aerodrome an air strip, and we used to have to watch that too because a lot of wild pigs used to dig holes

in it. Had to watch that. And the planes used to come in and out to Goroka. That’s before anyone lived there. And we had all the natives from the Timbu, that was in the mountains, the Timbu.

Yes, we had priority.

We did with the commandoes too. We got, when I came home I was in the

staging camp, they called my name out and put me on the first plane. So I came back, went back on one of those seaplanes. Yeah. What did they used to call those?

Catalina. Yeah, and had priority. And the 2/8th Commando blokes were picked out. But the ANGAU, “Any ANGAU men here?” “Corporal Cork

fall out”, on the next plane. I didn’t like it, I’d rather stay in Townsville in the staging camp. Because we used to get leave, when we were in camp in Townsville before we went overseas, we used to get sometimes we’d get Saturday night leave or so. I used to go to Ingham with two or three blokes. That was when I wasn’t married then.

We used to go to Ingham and the girls were beautiful. They were young Italian girls and most of them worked in the, some of them worked, one worked in the ticket office in the theatre. Now, all their fathers are growing up and they’re Aussies there now. But during that period there was a lot of Italians in Ingham.

Well you couldn’t do much about it. You just had to go back to the staging camp, well I went to the train and went back to Townsville then went from Townsville straight back, by train. It was pretty hard to leave home, that’s why a lot of them went AWOL. That’s how I got Fay. Cliff went

AWL, I used to call it AWL not AWOL. I used to call it AWL. Cliff went AWL and his wife was conceived and then he said “My wife’s pregnant”, “Call him Willy”. I’d like to have a yarn with him again now because that night I didn’t say much to him.

Well they were days, they were the best days of my life that I

missed. They were between 21 and 24, see. They were the good days when they should’ve been about. I missed the good, they were good times and I was in the army all the time. And you only got leave every now and again, once a week, Friday, something like that you got leave. And in Maryborough, oh, this is a good story. When we were camped in Maryborough we used to get leave for the night, you know, at different times.

And we’d go and we’d drink at the pub. And we’d pinch a pushbike, all the people rode pushbikes. We’d jus grab a pushbike and ride it home and leave it outside the showground and the police used to come and pick them up and take them away. You ask anyone from the army, 47th, they’ll tell you. All the girls rode pushbikes there. And one weekend

I stayed at the Queen’s Hotel. It’s not the Queen’s Hotel now, it closed down. And I was, put my name down to stay the night. And it was only about, oh, it wasn’t much six shillings a night or something. And I knew the people in the hotel and she’d give you the key to go, give you the number of the bedroom upstairs. I went to bed one night, one Friday night, and about half an hour

after in comes a bloke to the same room. Not Tex Barlow, another Barlow from Gympie came in, he was in the band. He came in the room and he said “What are you doing in my bed?’ I was in bed I was asleep and he woke me, I went downstairs and I said “What are you doing, you sent him to the wrong room?” he went into the wrong room. Came into my, Dennis Barlow it was.

Used to be in the, used to run the Eta peanut butter brand in Brisbane for years. Yeah, he came, he was alive, I think he’s dead, I don’t know, he could be dead. I don’t think he’s alive. But another night I stayed at the Francis Hotel. This is true as I’m here. I went to bed upstairs, went down for breakfast and the cook was putting on a turn.

And I won’t mention the chap’s name, he’s dead now, this is as true as I’m here. He took a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK [chicken] out of the oven, he did his business in the pan and put it back in the oven. It’s as true as I’m here. And he was a no-hoper, he was from Gympie. I won’t mention his name, he’s dead. But we used to have

bed and breakfast at that pub, lots of times. They only had one bathroom upstairs, you all used the one bathroom. And mostly for breakfast they’d give you sausages and eggs and gravy. Or steak and eggs, for breakfast. That was a good meal when you had Friday night leave. That’s a true story. I can prove that.

Oh, we knew who did it. I won’t tell you the bloke’s name. And the, and when the officer that was burnt, I won’t tell you his name, we were happy to see him go because he shot those poor prisoners on Goodenough Island.

Got sad, got real sad.

Oh, they were like kids. Because

some of them could understand a bit of English. They were only 17, 18, young ones. They were all from boats, they’d landed off a ship. See, the air force were coming from Milne Bay and the Coral Sea battle was on. And they were bombing, I think it was Beaufort bombers and strafing them with, I think they were Kittyhawks they were using. I think it was 77 Squadron. And how I knew, the planes used to land at

Goodenough Island, emergency landing strip.

No, very little. Didn’t see them much at all.

No, we talked to them, there wasn’t many there. There was only about, there wouldn’t be half a dozen. No, there wasn’t many there at all. They just, this thing picked them up coming from Gasmata and they’d send a message to

Moresby and they knew they were coming, see. And we went there from Goodenough in a sailing boat, a boat from New Zealand with no motor and they couldn’t pick it up.

Well, as a matter of fact they didn’t affect me much because we worked pretty hard. And we started that little business and we bought two trucks, army trucks,

maple leaf trucks, they were army, ex-army trucks. We bought them, a couple of hundred pounds each. We made the soft drink in this shed with a little filler, second hand filler that we bought from Claude Horace, he’s dead now. And we had a, we used to wash the bottles by hand then and we bought a washing machine.

And we used to go on the trucks ourselves. Laurie, Bob, the bloke that was there and myself used to go during the day canvassing from house to house. We’d go and knock “Soft drinks, would you like to buy soft drinks? Three and six a dozen”. And we’d carry a little bottle of lemonade “Have a sample of it if you like”. And we built up a drink run.

We had two trucks then we got another truck, and we got another truck and we finished up, I left the business and Bob got vendors in. We didn’t pay them. When I was in it we used to pay a truck driver and an offsider.

Oh, any skills? Yeah, oh,

not in the army, I learnt a bit when I was doing my apprenticeship, I learnt a fair bit about acids and water and stuff in the

People’s management.

Well you

were in charge of the section, all you did with them was led them. You’d say “We’re going on an attack, follow me”, “We’re going to attack this area” or “We’re going to a certain place” and you’d have your section and you’d be training in the camp and if you were in a, it was at the back of the camp at the headquarters, you’d have a bit of practice. You’d have the fellow on the machine gun putting them

Oh well you’d,

they, you weren’t much different to the, in your section. But you were the leader of them. You were the section leader. They were, you were given the orders and you had to take your section. Company commander would say “You do this, Corporal Cork”, and you’d just take your section.

Oh, it’s good to meet people there. But you

think of your mates. I go. I go every year. They have a supper and everything but they’re all the younger fellows, there’s only a couple of the old ones left. And we go in a Jeep behind the band.

Oh yeah, march right through every year. Marched and I got to a stage where my legs play up, Gympie is a fair

distance, it’s about half a mile. So I go and ask to go on the Jeep, sit in a Jeep.

Oh, the Australian flag. It wasn’t the 47th because they didn’t come from there. 47 come from Gympie, Maryborough and Bundaberg, it was just an ordinary Australian flag. They had a flag bearer there hold it, and a band. And the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides and all, they’d all march.

They’re lucky. They’re lucky; they’ve got a good life. And I’ll tell you something. Don’t say anything against the Yanks. We wouldn’t be here only for the Yanks. And you can put this on the internet if you like, they saved us in New Guinea.

They were there with their bombers and things. The Yanks were there, I’m not kidding. The Aussies were doing, oh, more or less in the front line, I think some of the Yanks were. I’m not sure, but we were, they were there for us. And that’s why we should help them. When we had trouble the Yanks came and helped us. And when the Yanks

get in trouble, they want us to do something, help them. You ask any man, person that’s alive during the Second World War, you can thank the Yanks for us being here.

General MacArthur, he was a pretty good man. They tell me he lived at, he had a place at Highgate Hill.

Yeah, had a place at Highgate Hill not far from where I lived. I was in the 29th Brigade. I think it was the 42nd Battalion and I think it was the 15th or the 61st Company. We had a bit to do with the 61st, Cameron Highlanders. I was with them for a while. They were Scotsmen, used to wear the kilts. They come from, most of them come from Ipswich. And the 15th I think

comes from Brisbane, round Brisbane area. Yeah, and the 29th Brigade, 5th Division. They were a good division.

To be truthful, he wasn’t very popular. I think he had something to do with the police force, didn’t he. Yeah, and he wasn’t very popular. They carried him up at Goroka at one stage, he came up there one stage in New Guinea,

the natives were carrying him across a creek and we gave them the nod to drop him. And they dropped him in the water. He wasn’t very popular but he probably did a good job. Don’t hold it against me.

I wouldn’t have a clue. I don’t think so, I could’ve been taken, I don’t know. I

was always up near the front, up near the Japs. I was very seldom at, I was never back at the headquarters.

We thought, we were happy about it. It was good. It’s a funny thing, I’ve never told you before, the common Australian military forces, not the AIF, they were called Chockos [‘chocolate soldiers’, slang term for the militia].

I was a Chocko, they called me. Chocolate soldiers they were called. And a lot of them went through more than the AIF in New Guinea, they were all that crowd up at Kokoda Trail, they were just Chockos.

I did at Lae, that’s why they got me enlisting, I did at Lae. We thought we’d get more benefits, a lot of us, quite a few of us did. Crossed over, we just said “I want to join the AIF”.

No, never said anything. No, they weren’t with us, we were the Chocko company, Battalion. 5th Divvy [Division]. And we just joined just to be AIF, “I may as well join”. They’ve got me enlisting, on the internet, funny isn’t it? And this business

of Kokoda Trail, oh yes, they go back and visit it. And I know for a fact because I was in ANGAU, you weren’t allowed to take those carriers within 500 metres of where they were firing shots. You had to bring them out yourself and then give them to the natives. Unless they were doing the wrong thing, but that was the law, from an ANGAU person.

ANGAU they call themselves.

What stands out? Lewis’s Knoll and mates. Continually we were getting mates wounded. Every day we were attacking, every

second day or something, section and attack a company, getting chaps wounded.

No, not really. The only people that have nightmares are people, this syndrome, people that got, not too many of my mates had trouble because we were up

against our enemies, they would kill us, I kill you, and you kill me. You never had any syndromes. But from what I’ve heard a lot of those people who were over in other wars were killing innocent people. Viet Cong, I might be wrong, but I’ve been told this by Viet Cong returns. That they were shooting from,

they’d go to a village and kill everyone. From choppers [helicopters]. Most of them have got, that’s why they’ve got syndromes. I’ve no syndromes.

Not much, never. Didn’t tell Jess that, I never mentioned it to anyone. Hardly said a word about it. Now I talk more about it than I used to. Never said boo about it.

Well when the war finished, I never hated them. It’s a funny thing, isn’t it. I never hated them. But out in the jungle I did. But later on, I didn’t hate those ones that were shot because they were kids. They were unarmed.

But I hated them when I was in the army. They wouldn’t take prisoners. Japs wouldn’t take a prisoner. That’s true. In Salamaua they didn’t ever, I don’t know of any prisoners that were taken there. But over at Bougainville they were taking prisoners from back on the tracks, the ones that were hanging back, they’d grab them.

I think they’re good. I lived on Tambourine Mountain for 22 years and I used to walk my greyhound dogs, I used to train them. And I lived on the main road, that big house you see. And I used to get my photo taken with Japanese, with the dogs, with a Japanese each side of me. I might have killed their father or grandfather. They’re nice people.

Yeah,

I did. I liked them. That’s unusual, isn’t it. I got on, saw lots of them up at Tambourine Mountain. Now there’s, a lot of the tourists come from Tambourine Mountain, from the Gold Coast. Some of them get, some of them come up there to get married?

No. Only Yanks. I didn’t see an Australian one. I was never at the base long enough. We were always out, you had to be back at the base for that.

Yeah. The one at Torakina, at Bougainville, that’s where I met Bob Crosby’s brother. And that’s, he had a band there I think.

And I got a front seat. I got him a parrot. I’ll never forget it.

No, they’re the only two we used to sing.

Oh no, they used to, no I forget most of them. But they were the main ones. But it’s a funny thing. The last reunion,

they said “We’ll close the reunion then”, this is about half past nine, they started about six o’clock. And they had the meal and everything and about half past nine they closed it, at 10 or quarter to 10. And I said “Wait a minute, everybody listen, we’re going to sing the song”. There was about four of us. Sailor Pierce and what’s his name, the two blokes from Bundaberg, got

together, we started singing the song, everyone joined in. “Come on boys and fight, we’ll, there’ll be no late leave tonight”, we sang the song.

Come on boys and fight, there’ll be no late leave tonight, we’re the fighting 47th Infantry. We love our girls and do we love our beer, we’ll do

our best with no fear. We do our best, we fear not any man. We do our best because we fear not any man. Or what was the other words, I’ve got them in the thing there.

We fight like any man, we fear not any man, we’re the fighting 47th Infantry.

But the one I, “We love our girls and do we love our beer” is a good one. And it finishes up with “Pom, pom”. Do you know what it is in Pidgin English? Pom pom? I shouldn’t tell you on this. Pidgin English for intercourse. Natives used to call “pom pom”. I think only our company used to say that “pom pom”. I’ve got, in my mind I

forget things.

Yeah, that’s a good one isn’t it. You ask anyone that was in ANGAU, they know what it means.

And “kai kai” is meals, in Pidgin English. On Pidgin English “ima lapoon”. “Maski”

means don’t do it. “Bring me come”, means bring it over and put it here.

Altogether mannie him talk. Maski (UNCLEAR) me long you, you fullow. You no can talk. Altogether mannie him talk belong me. That was, oh, there’s lots of words,

there’s lots of odd words in it. Like maski and lapoon, finni, and killim means to hit you. I’ve forgotten most of them but I know “Call him name belong you” that’s Pidgin English. “All the same what name?” is “what did you say?”

Master. Master.

Master Cork. Yeah. And, they had to call you master. Yeah they, and I used to get up at, on a box up at, on the hill up at Goroka where we had the big compound of natives. We used to get up on a box and we had lines of natives from different villages with a turn talk

at the head of each line. And you get up and you say “Altogether man, you hear him talk” and you’d talk in Pidgin English and the turn talks would be at the head of the line and they’d turn round and he’d tell them in their language what you said. See Pidgin English is, it’s got odd words in it.

Well, I’d say.

I’d say I miss all my good mates. And when I saw them the other week it brought all my memories back. But I can say it’s a good thing. And my advice to people is, they can defend their country

but in a different way. They should never been up in the middle of the jungle against, killing people. That’s all I’ve got to say. Thank you very much for putting me on. And I’d like to get a copy of this because I’d like to take it to, give it to some of my mates up, to the next reunion

up at Maryborough.