Australians at War Film Archive

I was born here in Adelaide in 1920.

When I was 18 just after my birthday.

It was 1938.

1939.

Well actually the Moreton the –

did you say…?

Moreton Bay.

Yes HMS Moreton Bay was in October 1939. I was mobilised – can I talk?

Oh that was in 1939 we spent

Christmas up in Hong Kong.

For about 9 months.

Yes starting in Hong Kong then we went up to Japan but

we didn’t go ashore there but -and we also operated to a point where we could see the Great Wall of China. We also picked up British troops which had been stationed up in that area and brought them back to Hong Kong because at that time we knew that the Japanese were planning to get

involved in the war so we had to evacuate all those troops back to Hong Kong.

Yes round about June or July 1940. I was in sent a message asking if I would like to do an officers’

course.

In February 1941.

Well I was on and off over a period of about 5 years. The break was when

I went to Port Stephens where we were doing training for Westralia to be converted to a landing ship.

Do you mean to have the actual landings or to…

Oh started training – oh that

would’ve been about July 1942.

At Port Stephens?

No a bit longer than that but I was actually living aboard the Westralia for accommodation and food and so on.

Oh that was at Arawe at New Britain and that was an American landing, American troops were landed on the island.

That was at Hollandia, that’s on the north coast of New Guinea.

Oh I should say 3 or 4 months.

After Hollandia the next one would’ve been the Philippines. We did two landings in the Philippines and

also did supply runs as well as taking more troops up into those landing areas.

On the east coast of the Philippines was our first landing and then the second one was in the northern part of the Philippines.

I have to stop and think of the name.

Yes well the first one would’ve been around about November 1944 and the second one was in 1945.

Yeah 1945 – about 1945 and that was the operation which was bigger than the landing at Normandy. The number of ships involved, the number of troops involved was greater than in the Normandy landings. In that operation we had about half a dozen American Battleships. It was

mainly an American organised landing and on the way up past Manila to get to the landing operation we were hit by a kamikaze aircraft.

And then after that we did three landings in Borneo,

There was Tarakan, Brunei Bay and Balikpapan so altogether we did 7 major landings.

That would’ve been 194… 5

yeah 1945. Do you want the time of day or do you want…

I can dig it all up for you.

After Balikpapan we did, oh it was getting towards the end of the war and we were moving Australian

troops picking them up in various places around the islands some were prisoners of war and troops and there were a lot of Dutch and other women and children that we were picking up as well and bringing them back to Australia.

At the end of the war?

Oh that was

February the 1st 1946.

Well the first thing that happened was that we got married and then I resumed my position in the Treasury Department in the South Australian Government.

Oh the naval reserve, yes. They started up again after the war and they invited me to rejoin the reserve and I volunteered to continue on up until my 60th birthday.

For about 4 or 5 years.

Well I applied for and got a position in the Auditor General’s Department. And I stayed with the Auditor General’s Department for the rest of my working career.

Fifty nine. And I finished with the navy in 1960.

That’s all right. I rose in my position in the Auditor General’s Department and became a director so I did very well,

got a good superannuation when I retired.

In 1959. Mm 1959.

Did that help you?

Oh just within a half a mile from here it was in Colonel Light Gardens.

Well it was a post war one because my father served in World War 1 and of course when World War 1 ended then he

got a job in the South Australian Government and was able to get a war service home in Colonel Light Gardens.

Oh there would’ve been 5.

It was a fairly a general design for those days. If you went in the front door it had a long passage to the back of the house

with rooms on each side. He extended it over his lifetime, built a big – because there was 4 boys born to him and so we needed more space and he put a big sleep out on the side with room for 4 beds in it, yes and cellar and you know things like

that. So the 4 boys of course me and my brothers they were all ex-service people.

Yeah I’m the second boy, my older brother he died about 6 months ago and he started off by

joining the 27th Battalion which is a South Australian Regiment and then he transferred in World War 11 and joined the air force and he served mostly over in Britain on Number 460 Squadron.

Arrol Ainslie, A. double R.O.L., A.I.N.S.L.I.E.

the Ainslie of course is Canberra. When my father went over there and got his commission, there’s his picture as a sergeant and I’ve got another photo of him in his officers’ uniform and so my brother older brother he was named

Ainslie because he had been over there in Canberra.

The third boy in the line was Neil, Neil Gray Penglase, he was killed – oh there he is, the photograph in the middle with the sailor’s cap on, he was about three years younger than me. He joined the navy

in World War 11 and he served up in Darwin on a couple of ships and in the depot and then he joined the – a small vessel up there on a trip from Darwin to Cape York and on the way a Japanese Float

Plane came over and bombed the shipped and he went down with it and so did several other member of the crew and he was not quite 21 at the time. The last brother he’s still alive he joined the navy and he

served on cruisers.

… still getting it can’t think … oh god… I don’t see him much because he’s been living in Melbourne for about the last 30 years, Dean was his name. Finally got it out.

Yes, yes that’s right yes. Well eventually because we had this big extension.

Oh fairly well we used to have some fights and things like that.

We weren’t all what you call sporting people. I played cricket and tennis and… the younger ones played golf and so on. But we really didn’t have a lot of time you see with the war coming on it was all happening. They didn’t join,

the two younger ones didn’t join until after the war had started. So I was the first one to get involved. My older brother was in the army reserve but he wasn’t actually called up until he decided that army wasn’t his piece so he decided he would join the air force which he did.

We all went to the same school at Colonel Light Gardens

Primary School.

Oh it was very good. We had very good teachers. The whole area in Colonel Light Gardens was growing because of the birth of all the post war children and at one stage there I had to

do two years in a church yard building nearby but… I don’t think it affected our education at all it was quite normal.

Oh it was mainly Science,

Mathematics and English wasn’t my favourite one but I managed to pass English without any trouble at all. French and Latin, I did both of those until I graduated at Unley High School. I went to Unley High School which is just round the corner from where we live now.

Well one became a navy doctor. I was very close to him he died a few years ago. There was one fellow whose father was in World War 1 in the Royal Navy and

I got to know him pretty well and that probably was one of the main reasons why I got involved in the navy here in South Australia. I still see him quite a lot. He’s not as fit as me but I see him at least two or three times a month.

Oh there’s one who lived three houses away from

me he was an expert in Latin and I got on very well with him. As a matter of fact he nearly became a… what’s that big, when they go overseas, I’ll have to think of that. Once a year they select at the unit from the university

they select a student to go overseas I know it well enough a cousin of mine became one and the Latin teacher just missed out unfortunately but he was a very good teacher. And the English teacher was very good too, I had a very good English teacher. But I managed to pass all the exams with any trouble

and that’s why I was able to get a job in the South Australian Government.

Well they gave me several choices they suggested being a teacher or a doctor or whatever but I didn’t achieve either of those not that I’m sorry because I think being a doctor would’ve been a bit difficult because the war was just about to start because I joined the navy

I concentrated on that.

Yes for 4 years.

Oh yes, yes, yes, the first teacher I had was a lady and she was very good and very nice. Can’t remember much else about that but we had a very good headmaster and in those days we had to march

up and down to our classes. The discipline was really good in those days. It was very active from a sporting point of view. A lot of the chaps I mixed with all became footballers and played for Sturt Football Club and so on.

Mm, that was at the high school.

And also in the church too I played tennis because the captain of the team in the church team yes that was – well that was before the war.

Church of England in Colonel Light Gardens and we still go regularly not to that church we go to another one which is much closer for us

and where I was baptised and married.

Oh his character was very good, very good. The Penglase has got a fairly long…

what do you call it, lived for a long time. Migrated out here in 1840 and some of them made a lot of money because the miners, mining for gold and that sort of thing. No they were all very good.

Cornwall,

yeah they came from Cornwall. And on my mother’s side they had long Scottish history.

Oh yes, yes, well being a military man he saw that we did the right thing. He taught us how to fire a rifle and all those sort of military things. Blow the bugle…

yeah.

A lot of practice, it takes a lot of practice yeah. I was the only one really that was interested in blowing the bugle and I used to go around the ‘Last Post’ and those sort of things and play those.

Oh it was only in, during the school days. I didn’t blow it on the Westralia.

What I did on the Westralia of course – on the Moreton Bay was to join the band.

Oh yes we had a 22 calibre rifle and he set up a little rifle range in the backyard and so we used to

fire there, yeah.

Never heard them complain. No, I suppose it was not unusual in those days. We were teenagers and it was a good start I think for learning military things.

Well not much because he was late getting started. I think he was working for the north east west railway for awhile and when he finally volunteered it was in around about

1916 and he got married and of course his medical test wasn’t very successful so they told him he’d have to hold off for awhile and eventually towards the end of 1917 he was finally called up. He served here in Adelaide and they had

an army camp nearby here and he was in a unit that was attached to there for quite awhile and he used to take the young lads to the rifle range and teach them how to fire their rifles and so on and they made him a sergeant and then he was asked to go over to Canberra and to volunteer to go over

to Canberra which he did and he went to the officers’ training school in Canberra and when he was made a second lieutenant he came back to Adelaide and then he joined the Beoonah, the Beoonah, B.E. double O. N. A. H. and they

loaded up a whole lot of troops on the ship and they sailed for South Africa and when they got there, there was a… the troops went ashore and they got a very bad lot of influenza and a large number of the troops died and

just at that stage the World War 1 ended and instead of going on to England as they had hoped the ship turned around and brought them back to Australia. And here in Adelaide and of course for quite a few weeks here they had to go into quarantine and then they were discharged so that was the end of his service.

I don’t know, I think he told us that it was a good thing to get involved in because of the dangers to our country and so on and we’ve always had that opinion that’s probably why we all joined the different services very early in the piece. You know

in the case of my older brother and myself we were involved in the reserve forces before the war broke out and the two younger ones joined when they were old enough which in those days was 17 to join the navy.

Well he wouldn’t let us get up to any tricks. We all lived a good healthy and clean sort of a life. I think that was probably the main thing. We were all very fond of him of course. He was very involved in Free Masonry, if you know anything about Free Masonry

at all it’s a very honest sort of an organisation and of course that’s been reflected through the rest of us and we’ve been involved in it for – well I have anyway for many many years and belonged to the church as well.

That’s right.

Well he started off as a

clerk just after the war ended then he moved to another department and eventually because the secretary of it, gradually got promoted. So he did very well.

What was the department? I’ll dig it up for you I’ve got it all written down.

Oh yes, yeah right through the Depression.

Oh yes, yes he didn’t – at no time was he out of a job. At one state he

got himself promoted and the government decided that they couldn’t afford to keep all those members of the public service on the normal salaries so they reduced all their salaries but he got promoted just at the right time and he finished up that he didn’t lose any money at all which was good yeah. So he did quite well.

Oh well a lot of it because the Depression started in 1929, 1929 well I was nine and it didn’t finish until about 1935 – 36 and they were all my school days.

Oh well some of the children used to roll up to school bare footed. People were struggling, the majority of them they were really – I don’t remember any of them were lacking in food and clothing but you know it was a very difficult time for most people in the area.

But most things went on normally all the education and that sort of thing. Even when kids turned up to school without any shoes in the summer time it didn’t affect their education and sport and all those sort of things.

Well my father was rather fortunate that he got to know a jockey and he was keen on going to the races you see not that he was a big better or anything like that but he got to know a jockey and the jockey decided it would be a good thing if he and another fellow, in other words three people

all formed a little syndicate and he would tell them, the jockey would tell them what horses to back you see. So they did that and the three of them made quite a bit of money in a very short time. When I say quite a bit it was enough to do all the house extensions and things like that and… but apparently someone found out that they were

involved and the jockey was disqualified and that was the end of the game. So you know but people were up to all sorts of tricks in those days.

Well I wouldn’t call it fixed races it was just a case of the jockeys used to get together and they’d have a fair idea who was going to be the next winner. I suppose it still goes on.

Anyway after my father had retired he joined the jockey club and became their treasurer so he kept the thing going for quite awhile but he used to go – used to go to the races pretty regularly. When he got to the stage where he couldn’t drive himself there

or whatever then I took over and I used to drive him there and drop him off and pick him up afterwards.

Oh pretty close, mm, yeah, I got on well with him. I think I must’ve been perhaps the easiest one of the family. Probably just the right age.

Oh very good too, she was very good a very good cook and she was involved in a lot of things. She played croquet that was her main sport and she became the winner of the croquet club in the area so she was pretty good at that.

Oh yes, yes she used to cook beautiful meals.

Well for instance, of a weekend of course we had a big lunch on Saturdays and we all use to turn up for that all the family there and the quality of the food was excellent.

Oh

roasts and those sort of things. They were popular in those days. You don’t hear much of them now. A lot of people go out and dine and it’s all done for them. In those days the ladies used to be very good cooks no matter where you went. Yeah, I think that’s where Pam’s got her ability from her mother as you will probably find out when you talk to her tomorrow.

Well ours didn’t in fact if anything they improved. My father was very interested in fowls and I can remember having to go down the back yard and feed them. We had 500 WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and he was selling eggs right left and centre around the place. He didn’t make much money out of it but he liked doing it and I got to know

quite a bit about WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s [chickens]. I still get involved now with my daughter she’s very keen on WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and she’s got a property up at Sterling up there 20 acres up there. Keeps horses and WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and dogs and so on she’s still working.

Oh keeping them healthy. And we used

to get up to some tricks with them you know when it was time to knock off [kill] one of them and we cut the head off then let them run around the yard. A lot of people did that in those days. It wasn’t a popular thing but…

Well only for about 5 minutes. Terrible isn’t it?

Oh she wasn’t too happy about that. But what else could you do they were going to have to die anyway so if you chopped the head off and let them run you all had a bit of a laugh.

Oh wood fires in those days even the kitchen had a wood stove in it you know and one of my jobs was to get up in the morning and start the fire and get the kindling going and so on.

I did a lot of that, must’ve been the right age.

Oh that was about it I think because we were pretty busy with our studies at school and a little bit of sport and blowing the bugle. No we didn’t have a lot of responsibilities.

Oh I think she was but in a more feminine way – made sure that we all dressed properly, ate the right food and went to the right church. Yes I think she was very good.

Oh pretty close, yes, yes. Never had

a fight with her or argued with her which was good I suppose.

Oh about medium I suppose we used to go to church regularly. And the church of course had lots of things going like concerts going as well as

religion and then I got involved in the tennis club with the church which was good for me. I think it was pretty good, mm. With my brothers, it was only my older brother I used to have a few fights with. He was a little bit aggressive at times and

I got stuck into him and punched his nose. And from then on we were great mates. I suppose that’s what happened in a lot of families.

Oh I can’t remember now. He must’ve – well he tried to boss me around quite a bit and I think I got fed up with it. It didn’t hurt him.

Oh didn’t have a lot to do with them really because they were so much younger. And of course when the war broke out they were about 4 or 5 years younger than me so I missed out on a lot of their – I didn’t see much of them because I was away

most of the time with the navy. And after the war – of course Neil was killed during the war so that finished our relation there and Dean he got married before Pam and I got married and he lived in South Australia for a few years and the woman that he married was a

Victorian and she persuaded him to move to Melbourne which they did and I’ve only seen them when they’ve come over to South Australia for a family reunion or something like that that’s all.

What years are you thinking of?

Mm, well

I don’t think I had close mates other than the ones that I’ve still got now which I still see regularly. No it was a case of get on with your studies and I suppose high school students now have to do the same they spend long hours studying. I used to study up until 9 o’clock at night and study at

weekends and Saturday and Sundays in between going out and have a game of tennis, yeah.

Oh I was pretty good at Latin which is a good subject to have. It’s a pity they’ve cut it down now these days because so much English has got a Latin base.

Chemistry, I was good at chemistry I got good results with Physics. Those sorts of subjects, English was about my hardest one. As a matter of fact my father managed to get hold of a student teacher who was very good at English and he arranged for me to go along to his house of a Saturday and he would set me

tasks there which helped me pass English. I didn’t get credits or anything like that in English but I did in some of the other subjects.

Yes, yes, yes in those days we had about 50/50 I would think.

Well we only had four girls in our

class but there were other girls that we sort of got to know because of living in the area and all that sort of thing. And, but it wasn’t any close relationships or anything we used just sort of say hello to them and that was about it.

See as far as Pam was concerned I knew her at the primary school and knew her at the church. So we didn’t have any relationship, any close relationship before the war and for the first half of the war other than the fact that I knew her and when I came home on leave a couple of times she was always here before she joined the WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force] and

that was only towards the end of the war in the last 12 months I suppose she wrote a letter to me one day and I thought hello she must be interested so I happened to come home on leave and she got leave at the same time from the air force and we were home together…

Yeah Well Pam’ll

tell you more about that.

Oh yes.

Must’ve been all right because I had no trouble going to the Adelaide University and enrolling there which I did for about it must be a bit under a year and of course the war broke out in September

1939 and that was the end of my university studies until after the war and then as soon as the war was over then I picked up again but this time it was a case of take on Commerce because I was working at the treasury.

Oh I did, the first year I did Physics and Chemistry which I

thought was a good start but of course they were cut off and that was it and I thought well it’s no good me being in the Treasury Department and in the Auditor General’s Department and studying those two subjects.

I just wanted to get a degree first of all what I did with it well of course it’s like any student even these days my youngest granddaughter now

she went to Flinders University for a year and when she got to the end of it she got very good results and she decided didn’t want to do that so she started work for her father who’s an architect, worked in his business, and decided that maybe architecture was a better one so now she’s doing architecture.

Oh it’s pretty good yes I enjoyed going there but you see it took me awhile because I was working at the same time which meant I could only really do one subject at a time because a time factor came into it you see and I had to do a lot of overtime at

work and so on so it was a bit of a battle between the two but oh no I just sailed through year by year which was good because then I could get promoted at the office.

Well simply from high school. My father being in the public service he suggested that I should give it a try

so he spoke to the ‘big wigs’ [management] and they said, “Oh yes, we’ll send him to the treasury,” which they did and I was office boy there, started off as the office boy.

Oh I used to go and collect the mail and do the posting and messages and things like that and keep the records. It was a little bit boring but that was the start

but after the war when I went back there well then I got involved in the accounting side of it and I found that was much more interesting going to the bank and making up all the pay ins and withdrawals and so on.

Oh on my 18th birthday. 1938.

Well because I mentioned about the close friend of mine who still is a close friend, his father was in the Royal Navy in World War 1 and he had an older brother who had joined the navy cadets so we were getting a fair bit of advertising and all that sort of thing so I just decided well on my 18th birthday I’d better join

the navy. I had a sort of feeling for it for the navy, I didn’t want to join the army cause my older brother had joined the 28th Battalion and although he enjoyed it because he used to wear kilts and all that sort of thing see they were a Scottish Regiment see and he liked all that but in the end he gave it away and joined the air force. So I was much happier with the navy and I enjoyed all the training and that sort of thing.

He was quite happy. No he didn’t have any adverse comments or anything like that, no. Do what you like I think was the way we went. I don’t know why my two young brothers just followed me on the navy they must’ve found out that I enjoyed it and was a good service to get involved in.

Oh at home. I was at home naturally enough and about a week after war was declared I got a letter from the naval reserve to say that – to come down and be prepared to be sent on draught.

Oh plenty for the whole year 1939 in the early days there, actually I got interested in the air force. They used to have photographs of aircraft and that sort thing in the local paper and I saved a whole lot of those but when the time came to enrol the navy took precedent

so, and I’ve never been sorry for it I think I’ve had a wonderful time right through my experience in the war.

I think it was only because I either knew the family that were there and were involved and talked about it. My father didn’t press me at all

to join up. My older brother didn’t either. He didn’t say to me, “Join the army it’s a good organisation.” He didn’t talk to me at all about it I knew he was in it and I knew he was keen to put on his kilts and things like that and go marching but I was quite happy once I joined the naval reserve because on Anzac Day you see we were all dressed in uniform and we marched

with all the veterans.

Well in the early stages it was mainly learning seamanship and gunnery, marching, rowing up and down the Port River and

going on cruises. I did a couple of cruises in the gulf and one where we finished up sailing to Melbourne coming back by rail and we thought that was great so we had a fortnight away on training.

Down at Port Adelaide. And that’s since been wound

up they don’t train any navy here they’ve got to all go interstate down to Flinders Naval Depot.

Oh knots and splices and you know all those sort of things we had of course gunnery was a bigger thing.

We had what they call a loader it was a steel gadget and we had make out shells that sort of thing we had to load them up and fire them, we didn’t fire them actually but they sort of went through the machine and the weight of the shells was about 40

or 50 kilograms so they took a bit of lifting as you could imagine. We did a lot of that. And of course when war broke out that was one of my first jobs was to be put on a gun crews and they were 6 inch guns, quite big ones.

Oh usually the normal duties would be to scrub the decks and clean the toilets and they’d have lessons on different pieces of equipment that were on the ship and

give you a bosun’s pipe and teach you to blow that. I don’t know if you know anything about a bosun’s pipe I’ve got one there you can have a go of it. I keep alongside the phone if I get a rude call I can just grab hold of it and give them a blast.

It’s only about that long, it’s quite narrow and it’s got a little bulb on the end with a

so that when you blow it it makes a whistling noise. They still use it the bosun’s pipe it’s all part of the navy when you’re calling troops to attention and making announcements and all that sort of thing oh yes.

Oh yes it would – yes that’s right sort of. I didn’t blow

the bugle on board the Moreton Bay I only blew the French Horn.

Just being in it and meeting all the young sailors about my own age. And learning all the discipline and the way they

used to have big parades and of course the parades went on right on up until I retired from the navy and I was in charge – after the war, I was in charge of addressing all the sailors and forming them into lines and teaching them you know how to march properly and…

Well I started off as an ordinary seaman which is...

There it is there.

Well it’s an ordinary sailor’s cap which they still wear today the lanyard which is here

around the neck and the ordinary uniform, bell bottom trousers, blue for winter and white for summer. And boots of course, we wore boots, yeah. That was as a sailor and of course once I got a commission that was a different one again you can see the

pictures up there.

Yeah I’ve still got the uniforms here and I wear them on Anzac Day and all that sort of thing so you can have a good look at them.

Oh yes, in fact we were keen to be called, it was a bit boring at work you see in the treasury

so it was great to be able to go into the boss and say to him, “Look here’s the paper that I’ve got from the navy so you know I’ll have to leave you,” and they said, “Yeah that’s okay.” Course a lot of them were ex-service from World War 1 the people working in the treasury in those days. I’ve still got all the paperwork I’ve kept it all.

Just by a small piece of paper where they just said, “You are to report to the naval dept [department] on such and such a date and be prepared to go overseas.” It was very blunt but no we were all quite happy about it there was 65 of us got

the first big call and we all went off to the Moreton Bay.

I think they were expecting it so no they weren’t upset. My father wasn’t, he was quite happy about it. My mother didn’t make any comment because she was used to me going down to the naval reserve in uniform. I used to hop on the train

just from the local station here go into the city then go on down to Port Adelaide in the train I was doing that weekly so they all got used to it before the war broke out, yeah.

Oh in those days it was Germany. They were the main… the biggest nation that started it all off because we were kept in touch in the local paper year by year of how it was developing and it was obvious that

it was going to get worse as it went on and I think even today the situations are heading in the same sort of direction at the moment. There’s so many countries that don’t like each other at the present moment it won’t take much to let it blow up to another big war.

Not in the early stages, no,

no, that’s why a lot of the navy ships all went off to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic we didn’t go that way we went up to Hong Kong and operated up around the Japanese area, yeah.

The naval depot down at

Port Adelaide.

Initially – oh yes right from the very beginning we had to have a medical examination when we joined up before the war had started but once they called us up in 19 – October 1939. Well then of course we had to have another medical examination. It was

pretty simple I can tell you. “How are you? Stick out your tongue,” and so on. And then they gave us an injection and then they put us on the train and we had a sore arm for a couple of days yes, oh yes we certainly had a medical.

Oh yes, yes, I knew them all. Yes I had been associated with them for 18 – a bit over 18 months.

Oh I think we were all the same it was a big adventure. We were quite excited about it all. We were looking forward to getting on board a ship and we didn’t know the name of it the name of the ship until we got to Sydney.

Oh the ones that joined with me and went to Flinders Naval Depot to do the officers’ training

course. There was 7 of us and 6 of us passed and the 7th one he got promoted but he didn’t get a commission.

Oh both I think. Not so much Australia I don’t think because

there was no real danger here not initially it only really became serious when a couple of German raiders came around and created a lot of problems for the Australian navy and we got involved in that at Naru and Ocean Island and places like that.

Oh not really no. We had facilities on – oh you’d mean that be on the day or so before the when – yes what happened there for me was that I went to my friend’s place and he got a few other navy people there, all there to hear the speech

and we all cheered when he said that Australia would be involved. Oh we were quite definite about that.

Oh we all shook hands but of course we all went off in different directions after that you see we didn’t all go to the same ship or anything like that.

Oh yes we had a day in Melbourne. We arrived there in the morning and we left that evening to go on, yes. There was no hanging around, no accommodation or anything like that. I don’t think they even gave us a free meal we had to go out and buy a sandwich or something like that ourselves but we only had a very short time in Melbourne. I think we got in around about –

about 6 or 7 in the morning and we would’ve left about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. In those days you had to change trains at Albury, wasn’t it, yeah, had to change trains to go on and when we got to Sydney of course we were taken by bus down to

Man of War Steps and put on a small tug, all on the one tug, as I say there was 65 of us and we all managed to get on the one tug and then around to where the Moreton Bay was tied up.

Yes.

Quite a lot of the families turned up there, quite a crowd, they were allowed to go on the

station and see us off and of course we were all dressed in uniform. They did give us a meal, see we’d come up from Port Adelaide by train where we’d got – where we were mustered there first of all and at Glanville which was a station just nearby and we joined the train and then came up to Adelaide

Station and then we were taken in to the big dining room there and given a meal and from there we went to the platforms where the families were all there waiting and all saying farewell and getting excited. Of course we were all young a lot of us – most of us were about the same age you now around about 18, 19, 20.

No, no, I can’t even remember that he came down to the station. I must’ve seen him before I – at some stage before I left, yeah.

Oh she would’ve come to the station yeah. No, I don’t think they were all – they just accepted it.

We couldn’t take much at all.

They didn’t have much to give us for a start we weren’t fully committed as a matter of fact we only wore the uniform that were given to us when we first joined up in 1938 and then we were told to bring certain pieces of clothing ourselves and it wasn’t until we got on board the Moreton Bay

that we started to get a bit more. For instance we didn’t have life jackets given to us at this stage. There we were about to go away on a ship without a life jacket. And we were told a lot of things not to keep diaries you know all that sort of thing so I thought of well I’m a keen diary man so I quietly

started a small book and wrote things on it which would’ve passed the censor anyway so I didn’t think it was a problem. We were never asked later about diaries or told not to keep diaries or anything.

On the ship itself, yeah?

Oh before, well as I say

we just had a small bag which we put our personal belongings in which were pretty few and far between and we only had the one uniform which we were wearing and we weren’t given another uniform until we got into the tropics and we had to change over to the

lighter weight clothing. The first uniforms we had were winter weight and then we were given the other ones later and they all had to be scrubbed on the deck to clean them the white ones they all had to be scrubbed.

Well she was big. The other ones

that I did courses on wouldn’t have been more than 500 tons or something like that but big enough to have a crew of about 30 on board and enough room to take reservists on various exercises but on the Moreton Bay of course she was 15,000 tons. She was a big passenger liner.

There were five bay liners, the Moreton Bay, Hops Bay, Jervis Bay and so on so you’ve got five of them and they were all built in the 1920’s and built in such a way that they could take heavy guns and all that sort of thing in case another war broke out. So Garden Island, not Garden Island

what’s the other island there where we were, the ship was in there being refitted with seven 6 inch guns they were big boys and with all the necessaries to store armaments and things like that. We didn’t have hammocks initially

we had to wait until they produced those so that’s how it was so we just had hammocks. We had no heating, October wasn’t bad, the tropics was all right but when we got up to Hong Kong of course it was winter and the heating was coal fires in the mess deck area so they just had to keep those burning

so that was the heating on the ship. All the passenger accommodation was closed off and not required you see at that stage.

A merchant cruiser yes that’s right. Well they closed I suppose about 90% of the cabins

and the ones that were open, left open were given to the petty officers and the officers on the ship so we didn’t – they were all locked off so we didn’t have any access to those at all. It was only when we – later on when we took army officers say that we picked up in say the North

of China that they were occupied by other officers. No so the sailors all had hammocks in the mess deck area you know where your tables and that sort of thing you strung your hammock up. They were – the hammocks were all bound up and put in a hammock

store area you see so what you did you went along and grabbed your hammock out and strung it up to the deck head. Well that was quite good you see and you just jumped in at night and you only had one blanket because hammock you know wraps right around you even in the winter time they weren’t cold.

About 600 yes about 600 we had a lot of English Merchant Service people on board and they had to get use to our ways and we had to get used to some of their ways. But we got on very well with them apparently when the ships were taken over the crew was invited to stay on board

and serve and they were made Royal Navy people. Those that went off probably went off to other merchant ships but those that stayed with us they were quite good. A lot – most of them were engineers they didn’t want to leave their ship so they stayed there and they were very good, yes the engineers.

Well all the sailors were given watch duties and where you slept all the watch ones the red the white and the blue they each had an area where their hammocks

were to be slung so that when say it was time to go on duty up on the upper deck say on the – steering the ship or being at the guns’ crew, being part of the guns’ crews, life buoy sentry and all those sort of jobs, they all knew each other

so a certain watch would have those various duties. So I was in blue watch and friends of mine were in red or white. So of yes it was very well organised you knew exactly where you were and what you had to do. You mustered in the morning at sea or in port and

scrubbed the deck and got it all nice and clean.

Well it was down at Port Adelaide and it was established I would say in the early 1980s because we had a South Australian navy in those days and so therefore they had to build a depot

and they had a ship as well which took part in World War 1 and they – all the sailors were trained down there for – those years from the early 1800s right up until 10 – 12 years ago when they – the

Royal Australian Navy decided they wouldn’t have a depot here any more and now the navy have got a small office at Keswick Barracks here close to the city.

Well the teaching and instructing had gone on for all those years. They had opened the place so it’s got a long history.

Oh it was yes because a lot of the equipment that we had to train with was all World

War 1 yes. So it was fairly simple there was nothing really complicated about it you couldn’t compare it with the other states or Flinders Naval Depot really because they were a much bigger organisation. When I joined we had about 400 sailors down at Port Adelaide tending

there four – any four nights a week and a Saturday that’s when they did all their training.

No they’re not – the Port River comes from out of harbour right up into

Port Adelaide Town and the depot I should say would be around about 50 yards I suppose from the river. It’s not as though the depot was right on the edge of the river there’s a gap in between and they had

a small building where they kept some equipment and where they kept boats for the sailors to train on but that was about the limit of that but the depot itself is what was a very big building and in following years from the time they

started the gradually added more buildings to it for various branches of the navy. You had communications branch you had the offices and the main drill hall which was a very big one and that was used a lot not only for the navy but for big parties and things like that, big events. So

yes the depot was running for quite a long time. Well up until I say about 10 years ago.

No I found it pretty good I didn’t expect to find anything better than what we had there. We had a big platform where

we had a model of HMAS Australia up there it was about 20 feet long I suppose built by somebody and very well done and the platform was used for speakers and that type of thing, yeah and there were other offices all around for various branches of the navy looking

after stores and there was an office for the captain we had there and writers those sort of things. Yes, that’s right within the centre of the drill hall we had a lot of equipment there for

learning seamanship where you could learn how to tie knots, do splicing and climb ropes and all that sort of thing which they still do down at Flinders Naval Depot now. So it’s quite a long history.

Not so much there but in Flinders Naval Depot yes we did there where we had to do a lot more climbing of ladders and what have you but not down at Port Adelaide it was pretty limited there. The top of the building was probably 40 feet high but not as big as Flinders Naval Depot because the numbers, we only had as I say 400 was the maximum

I knew of attended there whereas Flinders Naval Depot had several thousands that’s quite a big difference.

In 1940, see war started in 1939 and I had about 10 months I suppose on board the

Moreton Bay and then I came back to Australia.

I don’t think so. The routines that they ran there

were pretty straight forward and I wouldn’t say that there were any changes I knew of. Course I didn’t serve down there during the war itself other than the first few days to get organised and when I came back after getting my commission I spent about 3 weeks down there but not actually in the depot

itself because I had to get kitted up with new uniforms and all that sort of thing and we had a bit of leave and then we got our appointments to our new ships.

HMS not HMAS.

It’s Royal Navy you see that was the difference we were paid, our rates of paid were paid in Sterling so we got about an extra 25% money than the sailors that were on the ordinary Australian ships. It was very acceptable. But that was HMS Moreton

Bay.

Oh it had about five decks. Well see being a passenger ship you had about I reckon about three lower decks and a couple of upper decks

and beyond that you had the bridge etc. See the ship was built in about 1920 well the early ‘20’s. Yeah so it was a fairly standard type of ship built for those days, passenger ship. As a matter of fact just on the side Pam did a –

went over to the UK [United Kingdom] when she was around about 7 or 8 years of age and she went on the Moreton Bay as a passenger yeah and she’s got memorabilia which is very good I can show you in my diary of the Moreton Bay that –

the prize that she won that we’ve still got here and I’ve had it photographed and I’ve got it in the diary. It’s a big ship, that’s right and very comfortable ship. We went through a typhoon in her and 95% of the crew were sick and I didn’t get sick strangely enough but

they did but oh boy was she rough. I had a movie camera and I took some pictures of it but unfortunately the quality of it was nowhere as good as what you can get today. I’ve got it there but I don’t show it to anybody but.

Well when they billeted the ship the – probably the first lieutenant with a bit of assistance got everybody’s name listed and then allocated a watch to everybody so that

the routine operations of the ship could be properly controlled. And we had loudspeakers and things like that on board ship so we were able to call up say red watch muster on the fo’c’sle or whatever or they would pipe

Able Seaman Jones report to the bridge and do all that type of thing. My name didn’t come up very frequently on the Moreton Bay but on the Westralia my name was called out about half a dozen times every day because of my duties you see but that’s the way the ship operated people were all mustered in watches and

that would apply to your shore leave and all that sort of thing the whole watch would go on shore leave at the same time. And no I think that’s about as much as I can say on that.

Oh well the allocation of coxswains that’s the fellows who spun the wheel on the ship was determined by the petty officer in charge of the

watch so you’d be on watch duty say for half an hour or an hour and then you would stand down and somebody else in your watch would take over. I did that a few times and I quite enjoyed it, it was good to be up there the steering wheel was very large compared to today they’re only

not much bigger than the palm of your hand but they were a big one and you had to use quite a bit of strength to operate it. Other duties would be say… would be on life -

life jackets, life buoys and so on to be responsible for those.

Well you had to make sure that the life buoys which were up on the upper deck so that if a man went overboard you could through him a life buoy and hope that the ship could turn around and go and pick him up. So

you had to have someone on sentry duty doing that and he was usually on the stern of the ship and of course that’s the roughest part when you’re in a storm because of the ship bounding up and down. But it was quite interesting, I did that job on several occasions and I thought it was good.

Well it was to see the size of the waves you know they were perhaps 30, 40, 50 feet and the ship would go up and down, up and down and you’d go with it of course, yeah that was good, that was quite exciting really.

Well the first trip we did we sailed out of Sydney Harbour and headed south for Melbourne a sort of trial run for everybody to settle in and get used to their various sea duties and that was a fairly rough trip as well particularly going through the rip to get into Melbourne

and the ship was attended to because of the size of the waves that sort of thing to run up in a certain direction the poor old helmsman had to fight to bring it back steady on course but once you got into the harbour there it was easy going and we were only there for about 3 or 4 days and then we

returned back to Sydney and we were only in Sydney for a very few days and then we were on our way up to Hong Kong.

Gun?

Oh gun

watch oh well the guns’ crews would be mustered at their particular gun and one of the members of the crew would be given a task of keeping his eyes open and make sure that everything was going

all right. Well then if they sounded the alarm for action well then the whole crew would muster to their respective positions and we would using telephone communications from the control centre they would obey the commands that were given to them plus other signals that

came through direct to the gunner in charge when to fire and so on.

On the Moreton Bay my action station was number 5 gun on the port side.

And my position was – it was loading the guns. We had two fellows doing the action loading one put the shell into the gun and the other loader had the cordite which is

quite a big piece of armament and then the gunner himself would close the breach and wait for the command to fire. And then of course you’re firing a number of shells well then of course you’ve got to go through the routine as many times as required.

All the time that we did any firing and that sort of thing there was no enemy in our presence so we didn’t have any problem there otherwise we would’ve been pretty busy.

Oh we had a special hold

where the shells were would be stored on the upper deck in special positions and they’re clamped to the ship itself and they stayed up there but the cordite was down below in the hold and they were sent up on a sort of a lift.

Oh… very but in between times when things were a bit quiet they’d get the automatic loader and we’d go through the drill with the loader but not at the gun itself and

of course picking up those heavy shells was no joke. Some of our lads were of course much stronger than me but yeah I managed it but...

Yeah, yeah the main difficulty was handling the weight of the shells.

Oh they did their duty, they had their jobs to do so they didn’t worry about me. Yeah but there were a lot of other duties besides loading guns one was to go up the mast we had a very tall mast and to get up there you had to go to the side of the ship and climb up the rigging to the first top and then you

went vertically to get up to the Crows Nest and I did that several times and I enjoyed it right up there for an hour and then somebody else would come up and take over from you. And of course when the ship was rolling you could look out over the side from the Crows Nest and you had water underneath you and then you’d come back to the other side and so it would go on.

Oh yes plenty of them.

Well probably because when I was a lad I was a great one at climbing pine trees. And I used to thoroughly enjoy going up the pine trees there were plenty of them growing around out area. I used to go along there and climb up and go right up to the top of the pine tree, no trouble at all. I still go up

cleaning gutters and things like that here now and I’m 84. Pam doesn’t like it but...

Yes it is a wonder. No I thoroughly enjoyed doing all that yeah it’s amazing isn’t it? But some of the sailors hated it. But they didn’t press them really they’d ask

before they were sent up to make sure that they were confident. And usually the first time a petty officer would go up with you so the two of you would climb up one behind the other and usually the petty officer would go behind you so that if you slipped or anything like that he was there to hold you, yeah. Yeah it was good.

No, no,

I think in the whole of the 6 ½ years I had in the navy I was sick only once and that was here in South Australia of all places that was down near Kangaroo Island.

They can, my word, I know.

Yeah,

yeah it does that when I’m busy talking and thinking and one thing or another but it’s not a sickness or anything.

Well I joined the YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association] in my younger days and I got a bronze medal in swimming but it was freshwater swimming.

But no I swam on YMCA tours that we did in salt water and so on and I always pretty keen on swimming yeah as I say I got a bronze medal in that which was no trouble but we had plenty of sailors on board who couldn’t swim.

And that didn’t seem to worry the authorities they just accepted that fact but if you had a life jacket well hopefully that would’ve saved you. But we never got into a position where any of our crew even on the Westralia where they had trouble with swimming. I think I’ve got a little – right.

Oh reasonably well but we had a

couple of larrikins and when they initially were told that were certain rules that they had to obey and there were penalties if you didn’t well these two lads decided they’d have a bit of competition to see who could disobey the rules and get away with it. And it went on for

several days and of course they were picked up pretty quickly by the petty officers and they were given say extra work, say out of ordinary watch times such as say after 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the penalties varied if it was just straight forward penalty they would just have to

jog around they might have to do some cleaning work but when they did something that they didn’t like well then of course they’d given them 2 days or 3 days or 7 days extra you see. Anyway it got to the stage

where one of these fellows went to sleep on watch well that’s one of the worst things you can do is go to sleep while you’re on watch and of course he was put into gaol. We had a part of the ship where they were given certain things to do such as picking ‘hokum’ which means that they had to pull all the string

apart for use on ship in other ways. And so this fellow had to do I think it was 7 days. And he didn’t mind all he had to do was to sit down there in his cell and pick hokum yes so

I think the other fellow gave up after he thought it wasn’t worth it.

He went to sleep on watch.

Which is almost fatal. It happened quite often but quite often they managed to talk their way out of it. They say, “I wasn’t really asleep I just had my eyes shut.”

Yeah and of course it would be worse if you were an officer and you went to sleep but really we were too busy as an officer to do that particularly up on the bridge you had to have your eyes open you know for the whole of the watch it could be four hours.

No,

one of the first jobs I had was cleaning the toilets and I’d never cleaned a toilet before I joined the ship you see so I had to learn and I got to do I think I would’ve done it for a couple of months that’s about all and then they changed over an another sailor took over the responsibility of it. But they all had to be clean and a petty officer would come around and make sure it was done

probably oh yes there was no easy way out. I suppose one of the biggest dangers when we were going through a typhoon was seeing that everybody was carrying out his duties properly.

You had to make sure you had your life jacket on that if you were moving around the ship the ship would be pitching and tossing so much sometimes there you’d be going from one side of the passageway to another you had to be careful that you didn’t suffer any injury and so on and some of the sailors

when they weren’t on duty looked around for a spot where they could sort of relax and one of our sailors decided that a great big coil of rope in a more open exposed part of the ship would be a good place to hop into because it was quite steady really you’d go with the ship but

you couldn’t move very much because your shoulders were just touching on each side and he hopped in there and then when the weather moderated we did a muster for all the watches and make sure everybody was there and this lad was missing, couldn’t find him so they had everybody running around looking everywhere until somebody just happened to go up and these coils were about

that high you so – happened to look over and there he was in there. Well of course they pulled him out and he looked awful he was green. He was so sick and he had to be put into hospital and they looked after him there for a couple of days, yeah. So I think he was the only one who ever tried that trick.

Well we arrived in – on the day that we arrived in Hong Kong which was in I think it was in November in 1940 – 1939, November 1939 we arrived in Hong Kong and the typhoon warning signs were up so the ship had to anchor out

in the bay we couldn’t go alongside a wharf of anything like that we had to anchor out so then the typhoon got worse so we had to start the ship’s engines up because the strain on the anchor cable was so great that it could’ve dragged the anchor and we could’ve finished up anywhere. So they kept the engines going to keep the

chain – the cable for not getting over strained and that went on for probably about 24 hours and all the other ships and boats in the harbour were all went straight into the bays to get away from all the strength of the typhoon.

The surface of the water turned to foam and the foam would’ve been about 3 foot thick it was so violent. Anyway it only last about 24 hours and moderated and that’s when we got our orders to head north. So of course we had to weigh the anchor down and set sail and as we sailed

we went past Taiwan and we were still getting quite a lot of the typhoon. Mainly wind and waves were the problem. So it was a good trial out but that happened a few times we had the typhoons and then of course the season changed and

they get them every year up there and a lot of ships have had trouble.

Well just carrying out normal duties so it could’ve been life buoy sentry or cleaning, cleaning the ship and doing all those sort of duties

or feeding the various sailors who were in each group. So for instance we had tables that were round about 12 feet long and you’d get half a dozen sailors on each side and then one of the sailors would have to go off to the galley to get the food and bring it out to them.

So all those duties you see we carried on with all that even when it was rough but of course when it was very rough a lot of the sailors didn’t turn up for their lunch or breakfast, yeah. So those that did turn up often got eggs instead of two.

Only on, only around the fo’c’sle because it dips down and big waves come in over the top and then there was a board, metal – metal board which would direct the water over the side so it wouldn’t come into – down as far as

the middle of the ship. So we wouldn’t – we weren’t taking any water aboard the ship at the time other than what came over the fo’c’sle.

It would’ve been Deck 2, Deck 3, no Deck 3 I reckon it’d be Deck 3.

Oh yes we didn’t get any water aboard in those areas at all. The only water we got on board was the salt water in the bathrooms. If you wanted a bath there was no freshwater they didn’t have enough fresh water or carry enough fresh water

to allow you to have a freshwater bath so you could only have a salt water bath. Now when the Australian sailors saw one English sailor who never appeared in the bathroom and had a wash they decided they’d better do something about it. So the filled up the bath with this

hot salt water and they grabbed him and stripped him and threw him into this and then scrubbed him with big scrubbing brushes and of course it made him go all pink and he wasn’t at all happy about it. After that he never went anywhere near the bathroom without being seen by other sailors. Taught him a lesson. But they were funny like that the English and the Americans were also a bit like that on the

Westralia, even the officers.

Oh yeah the first 12 months, yeah.

Well we were sort of being examined the whole time,

see if you were doing your duty properly, promptly and willingly.

Well you see you always had a leading seaman or a petty officer or chief petty office in charge of operations see so they would know

simply by watching you and checking you constantly that you were performing according to the way it should be done. That’s all part of the navy style.

We were up there mainly well for two main reasons really there were British troops up in Korea and had been there for quite some time and because of the situation

we were given the task of evacuating them down to Hong Kong and then probably from the Hong Kong they would’ve joined other ships and sailed round to the UK back to their starting point. That’s one of the things we had to do. Another thing, and probably a very important thing was to look out for merchant ships that

were operating in the area there going into China into Japan and so on and any that were suspicious or any that had come

from the UK or from the – well anything that was German. Any that were – any ships that we considered suspicious or needed to be taken over and the way we did it was to lower one of our – was to stop

the ship that we wanted and we would send them a signal to say that they were going to be boarded and then we’d lower one of our boats put a boarding party on board and they would then row out to the suspicious ship an they would climb up and get aboard

and then they would take the ship over and stay with the ship and see that it was safely taken down to Hong Kong and then the sailors would just wait there until we got back to bring them back on board again and then the ship would be dealt with probably with the British Government or whatever. Now we did that on a number of occasions and

as we did of course we were losing members of our ship’s company so the way it was done was to use non fighting people, ships – sailors who were had – their duties were to man the guns and communications and other essentials they weren’t given the task of becoming

part of the boarding party and when you get to the stage when you haven’t got anybody left that you could really let go well then of course that was the end of it. You had to signal another ship to come along and take over from you. That was quite interesting. We did not go very far into the harbour areas of Japan at that stage

but we did get close enough to be able to see Fujiyama at night and see the harbour lights and all that sort of thing and then turn around and go out. We had another task was that we were told that there was a Russian ship coming from San Francisco

with a cargo of iron ore destination was Russia but they were suspicious of the fact that it was probably going to be destined ultimately to Germany and we were told to keep watch and see that the ship when it came over the horizon to go

and stop it and put a boarding party on board but what happened was the [HMAS] Manoora – yeah the Manoora was coming up to relive us so the two of us then kept watch and we eventually saw the ship, stopped it

and a big storm came up so we couldn’t board the ship and the ship sent a signal to us to say that they were running short of fuel so the [HMAS] Kanimbla said, “Righto we can replenish your fuel and then take over and send you back down to Hong Kong.”

Now this took some time, it took us about three days I suppose before we got to the stage where the whole operation could be concluded and eventually the ship, which was called the Makovski, was boarded and got safely down to Hong Kong. What happened to it after that of course we had no

knowledge or what happened to the cargo but it certainly didn’t get to Russia. So that was quite an interesting little exercise for us.

Oh I was on one of the gun crews in case we needed to open fire but of course being a merchant ship with probably no guns of her own

our responsibilities were pretty low yeah but no problem at all but I’ve got photographs of it and it was a very interesting…

Oh yes the ship well at the stage would’ve been only about a mile away so we were quite close to the whole operation

yeah. And there was nothing they could do they couldn’t refuse our orders so they just had to accept the fact that they were going to go down to Hong Kong. I suppose the crew didn’t worry.

Well only when we went back to Hong Kong and where we’d get all our sailors back again. So each time you see we’d lose perhaps about half a dozen or more of our crew and of course they had weapons and all that sort of thing with them and we had to do the best we could. But there was no other enemy really in the area there. There were no German ships.

We weren’t worried about the Russians. I suppose may have thought we didn’t the Russians come out and escort their own ships but of course they’d been up against two merchant cruisers and they wouldn’t have got anywhere with that. It was just an interesting little event.

And really it only – the whole exercise started as I said in round about October November and for us we finished – it all finished round about July in 1940

and after that it was all a case of evacuate out – out of Hong Kong, out of – well there wasn’t much evacuation in Singapore because I think they – the powers at be thought they could beat the Japanese and that was their big mistake so we got out of all that because we were out before

Pearl Harbour [American Naval base bombing] by then I was on the Westralia.

Oh we saw quite a lot of Hong Kong and even went into a part of China by the railway from Kowloon to

Chum Chum you could do all sorts of things like that. Once you were on shore leave there was no great problem you could go where you liked and do what you liked within normal regulations and that’s what we used to do. We used to go – we got friendly with some young girls in Hong Kong who lived in a property up at the peak. I don’t know if you know Hong Kong

it’s got a peak and it had a tram that used to run up and down there and on several occasions they invited us to play tennis up there which was very nice and then we went to other places to swim. Plenty of places to shop and as I said about the money we were paid in Sterling so we got more money than the ordinary

Australian, finished up with more money and I was a bit smart too when we were told that we were going back to Australia I went around the moneylenders and the people that were evacuating whether they British or Australian and there were quite a few of them used to go into the money changers

and hand in all their coin and get notes you see so I used to go in there and hand over Chinese Hong Kong notes and get coin and I filled up a back of coin and brought it all back here, Australian coins. And so I didn’t make a lot of money but... it was interesting and successful.

Oh yes got all sorts of souvenirs, Chinese dressing gowns and things like that because I had the family to think of back home you see. I wasn’t thinking of Pam in those days. I brought back quite a few things. I bought a Mahjong [Chinese board game] set-up there the Chinese fellow carved it you know he had the little bone

pieces and he carved all the Chinese symbols on it and coloured it all and I’ve still got it. All my grandchildren played with it. I think it only cost me abut 10 shillings, probably less than that. Oh yes we were into the souvenirs and so

on. The movies weren’t very good there because the theatres only showed one program. So what we used to do is go for one – like if we had shore leave of say from 4 o’clock until 10 o’clock at night you’d go ashore have a meal at Jimmy’s Kitchen which was run by an Australian

and then we’d go to the movies so you’d go and do one movie and then you’d walk across the road to another movies and see that and then it’s time to go back to the ship.

In Hong Kong itself not in Kowloon in Hong Kong and they served a very nice meal there at a very cheap price.

Used the Chinese rickshaws they were great we used to have a lot of fun with those you see we’d get half a dozen sailors and we’d get say two in each rickshaw so you’d have three rickshaws and have a race. We got up to those sort of tricks, mm, it was good fun mm. So we enjoyed our stay up in Hong

Kong and Kowloon. Kowloon was very nice because see you could go – hop in the train and go out to Chum Chum which is the end of the line as far as China was concerned. And there was a big casino which operated there just over the border and we got pally [friendly] with two Australians who were border guards strangely

enough and the British Army by the way had a big unit not far away in a camp there and most of those eventually finished up Japanese prisoners of war but we could go across to the casino and walk around there at – a lot of it was damaged by the Japanese but there was enough there to give you a good idea of what it was like, it was beautifully built and colourful that sort of

thing but we didn’t see any of the gambling or anything like that because they must’ve destroyed all that. So they were the sort of things we could do, yeah.

Well I still don’t enjoy too much rice. I’m very much against rice actually.

They still have an awful lot of it here in Australia yeah but it doesn’t appeal to me at all if I order a meal and I know it’s going to have rice with it I ask without rice please, roast potatoes but no rice.

Oh well I’ve put up with rice at times but for instance

in my navy – back in Australia in the navy days we didn’t see rice on board. I don’t think the sailors like it very much. It certainly applied to me I got bored with it, it hasn’t got much flavour. Probably you feel that way too. Yeah…

Oh we never went into the naval depot they had a big area of wharves and so on where small ships like destroyers and that could go in and secure. There was an English Depot Ship here which

I spent about 10 days on when we were waiting to be put on board a ship to bring us back to Australia. That was there so we – that was tied up there and we were given simple jobs to do while we were on board there just lookouts and that type of thing. But the

naval base as such wasn’t like an ordinary naval base it was just a place where the Royal Navy ships used to come in and out the destroyers and the other small ships and there were facilities there for instance I went and had a tooth pulled in – by the dentist there

and they must’ve had some other medical facilities there but I didn’t need any of those. There was a big place where the sailors could go and get a bed a night I used that a couple of times when they gave us more or less weekend leave. And

other than that most of the sailors just used to go ashore say 4 about 4 p.m. or if it’s a Saturday or Sunday you’d go midday go ashore and you’d stay there until you’re either fed up with the place and catch the next boat back to the ship or else you’d go overnight into one of the navy

I can’t remember what they called them now, where we could stay overnight. They’ve got them in Sydney too, sailors go ashore there and stay overnight.

About 9 months.

No, no the Moreton Bay went round to the UK but 7 of us joined a Dutch ship as passengers and we came down to Finders Naval Depot. So we had

to join the Dutch ship as passengers but we took the opportunity while we were on board to brush up on things like navigation, communications and other things so that we could then when we got to Flinders Naval Depot we were able to start lectures and so and like for instance in navigation

we already knew a lot of the stuff that they would be teaching down at Flinders Naval Depot the same with communications we had to learn oh what do you call it dot dash…

Morse Code yes that’s right, we had to brush up on Morse Code and so on, yeah.

The Serooskerk, S.E.R. double O. S.K.E.R.K. Serooskerk, it only had accommodation for about 12 passengers but it was just a cargo ship really but they were very good to us. They set up a swimming pool on board the ship which we used coming through the tropics and we had a great time there. We had deck space

there where we could throw quoits and all sorts of things like that around, yeah. Very good food the Dutch gave us food that you wouldn’t dream about so that was very, very good but other than that we didn’t have anything else to do but just loaf around and…

Oh well the Dutch food, well it’s a bit hard to remember

but it was all very well done. Very, very nicely cooked and that sort of thing, eat as much as you like yeah so we thoroughly enjoyed that. We made a couple of stops on the way back. The first stop was at Bowen in North Queensland and the next stop was Sydney where we offloaded and when we got to

Sydney of course we had all our souvenirs and things like that all nicely packed up and one thing and another ready to board the train and the customs boys came on board and had a few words with us, “Where are you from and so and so and so and so,” and they said, “Oh that’s okay, off you go.” So we didn’t have to hand anything over not that we had anything really that was duty – it just all came in virtually duty free which was good.

Then we just went by rail straight down to Flinders Naval Depot, offloaded all our stuff and then they said, “Right you’ve got 3 or 4 days leave you can go – you can all go to Adelaide.” So they gave us a roll of tickets, back to Melbourne on the train and came home and had about 3 days home and then back to start our course.

Well it started off a signal was sent from navy office in Canberra I suppose,

that were asking for sailors who had certain qualifications whether they’d be interested in doing an officers’ training course. And the 7 of us sort of got together and had a bit of a chat about it and the said, “Oh yes we’ll be in on that,” you see so we all put our names down. And there was another lad from

one of the other ships came with us but we didn’t know him until we got on the Serooskerk that’s the Dutch ship to come down and so that’s where it started and what we had to do was write to our parents and ask them to send a letter to navy office saying what our

education standards were you see so as soon as they, in my case for instance, they found out that I’d finished my secondary education and passed and that sort of thing that was – they gave that a big tick and that was right and the same applied to the others, we all had the right qualifications. I don’t think there were any

of the Moreton Bay lads who didn’t apply because of that factor that they, because they knew straight away that they wouldn’t have a chance and so of course from then on it was just easy. Down to Flinders Naval Depot and carry on through the course. Some of the subjects were very, very simple,

seamanship for instance that was a good example there we all got credit for seamanship it was, you know we had had so many years of training. Gunnery was pretty good too because we had all operated on guns whether they were 6 inch or 3 inch guns with the anti aircraft guns. Communications, well of course that was probably one of our

weakest points but once we learned a little bit about communications as we were able to do when we were coming down we all passed that without any trouble. What else was there?

Why was…?

Well because that wasn’t our

main duties on board ship on the Moreton Bay. None of us, yeah, none of us had done any communications at all you see. When we got down to Flinders Naval Depot there were 2 or 3 fellows there that had been on communications and that was all and of course they weren’t any good on gunnery and so on and of course they didn’t get any commissions yeah which

a bit difficult for them really they didn’t get a chance yeah no but, so we all sailed through Flinders Naval Depot and that lasted about 3 ½ to 4 months down at Flinders Naval Depot there yeah so we were flat out with our studies and so on. One of the officers was sick for a fortnight and so but he still got through all right because I suppose while

he was in the depot hospital there he could read all the books and learn the ropes and he was another fellow, he’s still alive and he got a Distinguished Service Cross as well so he and I were the only two out of the seven that got that which wasn’t bad two out of seven, yeah.

Oh well it’s you know it was exciting it takes me back a lot. I suppose my age comes into it too. Oh yes you’ll be able to read about it when you get to that stage there and you can see what – what Canberra said about me and what the King said about me

and so on and my report to the captain, mm, it’s good.

Yeah I will. Spending a lot of time on the family history as well you see so that’s quite a big job I’ve got it all on the computer.

Oh the tests were at each part of the course so we were

judged progressively as we went through and it was only in the end when we each came up for an interview by several lieutenant commanders and asked us about like some of the questions you would ask like schooling and things like that and then they just said, “Oh we’re very satisfied with you and you’ll be going back to your depot

and to your homes for a short while and then you’ll be appointed to ships,” so you know it was all fairly simple because they desperately needed us which was a good thing. And we all did well but only two of us of course managed to get a decoration mainly because of the areas we operated in. For instance if I hadn’t been

on the Westralia and I’ll tell you about that a bit later on how I got the job.

Yes I was here for about a month during which time I had to get kitted up, new uniforms and all that sort of thing which took awhile because we had to get the uniforms made by Myers incidentally so and get ourselves ready

and some of us were allocated down Port Adelaide to do some work down there simple work. So as soon as the appointments came through well of course we were on our way.

A sub lieutenant

Oh completely

yeah everything cap, uniform, you know jacket yeah the whole lot complete change. There was no similarity at all. We were quite proud of ourselves strutting around Adelaide in our uniform. Went into the office and showed them all my new uniform they thought it was great.

Back at the treasury of yes had to go back and see them all there and proudly swank around. Oh dear.

Well it didn’t

affect me much in the office at all I just worked in there and said hello and walked around and shook hands and that sort of thing and I said, “In a couple of days.” I said, “ I’ll be on my way to go and join a new ship,” so…

Oh we went dancing. I took Pam to a dance so that was good. We went out to dinner a few times.

Had dinner at home and so on but it all went so quickly and a little bit of time we spent down at Port Adelaide had to go down there and do a few things.

Oh yes, yes, yes… we were friendly but nothing beyond that. She might’ve got a kiss I don’t know. It’s probably all it was because they were very early days it wasn’t until we you know towards the end of the war and we were writing regularly to each other and

went home on leave of course we went dancing again and went to the theatre and that’s about it. And then of course when we got to the stage were we got engaged well I was on my way again. The last six months of the war so all we could do was communicate, yeah.

Oh down at Port Adelaide I was called down there and they had a letter for me and that told me my next appointment

and I think that was about all I had to do was to get the rail ticket and be prepared to go because we went at different times. Well there were half a dozen of us all appointed to different ships although 1, 2 no 3 of us all went to the Westralia.

Oh there was Ray Evans…

Ken McLaren, no that’s not right not Ken McLaren he was the one that didn’t get his commission. Who was the other one? Cyril McGee.

Oh we thought that was great because we didn’t know much about the Westralia

only really knew the name because the ship had been operating from the time war broke out mainly in the Indian Ocean so she got a bit of a reputation there. And she was manned purely by Australians of course and when we joined she had

just started operating up around Naru and Ocean Island after the German radar had come down and blown up all the cranes and things like that that were used for loading the ships with fertiliser.

In Sydney.

Yes.

… saw the ship? Oh I was very pleased it was nice – well the three of us were together you see and it was just a case of moving together and getting a launch to take us out to the ship. The ship was in Sydney Harbour so it was great, yeah. We just walked up the

gangway and they had the cabins all ready for us so we just were given our cabins and taken for a tour of the ship and they told us roughly what our duties would be and so on and we just accepted it and carried on from there.

Yes well see the first

thing they took us to see was of course the wardroom and we were told about meal times and all that sort of thing. We met some of the people in charge of all the dining area and the rules regarding the bar and what have you.

Well they only had – they’d open it for certain hours, at certain hours and the total of your bar expenses were only, I think it was an equivalent of a couple of dollars per month. So it was pretty limited and that applied to all the officers. The

sailors at that stage didn’t have any drinking at all no beer or anything which they got – did get later during the war. We were showed our accommodation, toilet facilities and all those sort of things. We went down the engine room and had a look around there not that we had any responsibilities in that area and then we had to

talk to our gun crews and our responsibilities so it took a few days to settle down on board and get to know where things were and what had to be done with the responsibilities at the guns, meet the guns’ crews and talk to them and I had one 6 inch gun

I was responsible for and that would’ve applied right up to oh almost up to the time we went up to Port Stephens which was nearly two years.

Oh it was on the opposite side of the ship from the previous one it was on the starboard side.

Just up aft all the cabins on the ship it was a more open type deck there. There were 7 guns, there were 2 up on the fo’c’sle, 2 in a well deck, so that’s 4, and there were 2 where I was one on

starboard side and one on the port side and then one on the stern so that made up the 7, 7 guns.

There were 7 in the guns’ crew. So you had your gun layer and then you had communication sailor with telephones and things

and you had the two that loaded the guns. What else did we have? Oh there was two that operated the movement of the gun you know up down left or right. So as a sub lieutenant I was responsible to

see that everything was done correctly. And I’d already had the training you see on the Moreton Bay so I knew all the positions and how to fire the guns and all that sort of thins so that’s where it was easy from my point of view and a benefit to the navy.

Oh you’ve got handles that you turn and some go up you know that way

and others go round that way.

Oh they’re not really heavy they – I think the guns are well balanced so no, they’re not that difficult. No you can move from one position of the gun say from say 45 degrees of the bow

to 45 degrees off the stern and you could do that within probably about 30 seconds or so. You could move it very quickly from one position to another and then the same with elevation up and down was fairly simple but you could only get the elevation up so high you couldn’t shoot aircraft unless they’d have to be sitting on the water.

Oh they were good. They never objected to what I ordered them to do. No they were quite good, yeah. No I had no problems there.

Well they quickly found

out that we’d been on armed merchant cruisers before you see so they straight away knew that we’d had quite a good bit of experience. In fact our experience is equal to what the previous crew members had so it was no problem there.

They were lucky that they got us it made life a lot easier for them. If they’d got strangers, like for instance a chap who had been trained in communications and was – had enough expert – not experience but educational

experience to get a commission well then he would’ve had a bit of a battle to catch up and learn the ropes but we already knew the ropes and we just blended in very well.

Oh yes…

That’s right that was one of the first duties as well as gunnery

was to be watch keeper and your watch keeper’s job and his position was up on the bridge. And initially of course, because we hadn’t been on the bridge before other than to steer the Moreton Bay, we had to learn about the ship’s compass and duties and responsibility with

that. Keeping good look out, we had a couple of sailors manning machine guns, one each side of the ship we were responsible for them. Communications with the engine room, we had to know who the captain was and the captain’s orders that sort of thing.

And as far as navigation was concerned we had to check the charts at intervals and make sure that we were on course and so on. When we were in convoy it means that you’ve got to keep your station on other ships which is a big responsibility really. I can tell you a bit more about that later when we were in convoys because

they weren’t just one or two ships they were you know dozens.

Well we worked what we called four watches. A lot of ship work either two or three watches depending on the number of the crew and

where you’re going and what you’re doing but we were in four watches which it made it a bit easier, a lot easier actually say if you divide you 24 hours you really only did about six but we used to work what we called four watches because the 4 till 8 watch in the afternoon was split into

two otherwise you’d be doing the same watch day after day after day. If you’re on four without splitting the dogs or the dog watches, well then of course you worked your 4 hours and you’d start off say midnight you’d do the 12 to 4 and then you’d do the 12 to 4 in the afternoon, see.

And of course it gets pretty boring, a bit tough if you’re stuck midnight to 4 a.m. day after day you don’t get – you’re not changing your watches where if you worked the dogs you’d start off do you midnight to 4 a.m. and then your next one comes along form 4 a.m. to 8 am. And the next

one comes on from 8 to 12 then 12 to 4. Well it wouldn’t be 12 to 4. 12, oh sorry, from 4 to 6, and then you’ve got someone else takes over from 6 to 8 and from then on the cycle is such that you’re not doing the same watches day after day.

The dog watch is from 4

to 6 in the afternoon you see. Now if – they call it a dodge watch and dodge the routine.

On small vessels, a very small vessel they sometimes don’t split the dodges, depends on how –

they can sometimes organise it themselves you see. We nearly always split the dodge. And then you’ve got, and often – well most officers have got other duties to do. They do censorship and oh lots of other little jobs they do. So it’s better to do it you know

in the way we do it, just the way we were used to doing it. After you’ve had 4 hours keeping station in a big convoy you know 4 hours is a long time with your brain turning over and cause you’ve got some much to keep your eyes on you you can’t let a second go by without looking at it, looking around to see where the other ships were, where they’re keeping

station and some of the get up to all sorts of tricks and get in your way and you’ve got to take evading action and so on, yeah.

Well not when we were at sea because as a watch keeping officer up on the bridge well you had your routine to

go through there but other than censorship well you could do that when you were in your own time off. You got to take off time for meals and all that sort of thing and you’ve got a part of ship’s duties as well. See I had a hundred sailors was my responsibility because I was in charge of the all the landing craft and the cruise at random,

so such made up of a hundred sailors and their personal records I used to – I’d have to keep those up to date Their health and all that sort of thing make sure that they didn’t get sick and if they did well they’ve got to know that their short of on one

crew or something like that. They had to know all about that.

650. And that didn’t include about 30 army fellows who were responsible for looking after all the troops that came on board and there location the cleanliness of their

locations. Yes they had a big job and then loading and unloading on operations whether they were any of the 7 landing operations or whether they were training of all the troops over a lengthy period.

Well being a merchant ship it was a bit different to what you’d expect to find on a destroyer or a battleship or whatever you see. That’s quite different but so we had the compass in the centre of the bridge in a forward position in other words

up near the fore part of the bridge. There was a captain’s chair over on the port side. The communicators had their spot on the starboard side. The chart room where all the charts were kept and the records of the ship’s movement and that sort of thing was just a little bit in the stern.

And the communication part where you’ve got the voice pipes and other things some was telephones and so on and some was voice. Like for instance I could ring the engine room and talk to the chief engineer and that was a pipe, what they call a voice pipe and you’d just call up on that and

you could talk to the engineering chief or his offsider. If you want a bit more speed a couple of extra evolutions on the propellers you’d ring him up and tell which you need to do to keep in station you see otherwise you can creep up on a ship in front of you or drop back on a ship behind. Yes you’ve got all those sort of things

to keep in mind so the officer of the watch is a pretty busy fellow and responsible.

I’m not sure that all the ships have got them these days I think it’s more electrical but it’s a pipe about that diameter and it’s got a plug on the top that you pull out

and then you shout down and they get the message down in the engine room, yeah. It’s pretty straight forward but they use it quite a bit at times, yeah. Otherwise with the revolutions you can turn a little handle and that tells them down below. It rings down below and then they increase or decrease the number of revolutions.

An English Captain by the name of Hudson. He was all right he wasn’t very communicative. I mean he wouldn’t stop

and have a yarn [chat] with you while you were up on the bridge there which you could on an occasion when the ship was operating on its own. No he wasn’t that type of fellow but we didn’t have him for very long actually while I was on board. It would’ve only been around about 6 months I suppose then he got transferred back to the UK

Yeah, which you would expect, we had a mutiny. You know what a mutiny is I suppose? You’ve heard of it? Yeah that’s right.

Well it was brought about we were operating up off Darwin. It started off we had to

escort a small vessel like a tug towing a – towing a… oh what do you call it… I’ll have to think of that, anyway we had to take this

tow up to Darwin they needed it up there. It’s the sort of thing they use for lowering in the water and vessels come in, small vessels could go in and then they’d lift it and pump it dry and then they’d carry out repairs underneath the vessel. Anyway we got to Darwin all right and everything was okay

and then we had a few duties there going out on patrol up towards Timor and around into the Indian Ocean just short trips and then we got instructions the ship was to be taken back to Sydney for some maintenance. So anyway

we got down to Cairns and while we were there, we’d only been in there about 24 hours or so, and the captain got a signal to say that the ship was to go back to Darwin and the sailors didn’t like it they said, “Oh we’ve been on the ship long enough now we should be off to Sydney and have a bit of leave,” so…

Well from the time I’d joined it which at that stage would’ve been 12 yeah 12, 15 months, yeah, yeah, so anyway the objected and a couple of ringleaders went around trying to get sailors to agree to have a mutiny. So all of a sudden

they – some got hold of the bosun’s pipe and said muster on the fo’c’sle which is the fore part of the ship. So all the ringleaders and their friends all went up on the fo’c’sle you see which meant that they couldn’t raise the anchor and get the ship moving. The captain goes up on the bridge this English – this

captain and he was ropeable so he pressed the alarm button and everybody had to close up at their action station which meant that two sailors got up on the bridge and manned machine guns up there and of course they took their instructions from the captain or the officer of the watch whoever it was. Anyway,

the chief bosun’s mate he was a senior non commissioned person on board he went up and he ordered all these sailors individually to go back to their action station and quite a lot of them did they went, they accepted that fact but a whole lot didn’t

they wanted to stay with the mutineers so I must mention before this I got dingy fever in Darwin and of course I still had dingy fever when we got to Cairns and I was in my bunk so all I could do was listen to what messages were coming through on

the means of communication but I couldn’t get out of bed, I wasn’t well enough. Anyway in the end, they found out who the four ringleaders were and we put them in our brig and there they stayed and then the ship was –

oh no they were put ashore, that’s right they were put ashore and the ship sailed for Darwin and of course by the time we got up to Darwin I was back on my normal duties again. Then of course the next thing was that we had to go down to Sydney for the court-martial and so the ship went

down there and of course the court martial took a couple weeks or so to go through. I had no responsibilities at the court-martial but a couple of the officers did. They were on duty to see who went in and out to the meeting. And the four of course went to gaol in Sydney. I don’t know how long they were there but it was for quite a long time.

Oh yeah they would’ve allowed them to yes to get some leave. Yes that’s right and then we started off and then the next thing we were up in Darwin again and then the beginning of Pearl Harbour.

Well from the time I joined in Sydney,

the Westralia was operating up at… up at… well the two places I mentioned earlier.

No, no, no, before that…

oh heck we spent – we had several trips up and back there the ones where the Germans had knocked out all…

Yeah that’s right, Naru and Ocean Island and we operated up there and we were going backwards and forwards from one island to the other. We’d leave in the morning and sail to another island and stayed there overnight and then sailed back and we kept doing that backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards or sometimes

we’d go around each island just keeping an eye out that there weren’t any more German raiders in the area so and then we got time off like only during daylight to go ashore and to go for a trip around the islands which we did which was very interesting.

No,

no not – you mean when the German raider was there.

Oh no, that happened before I joined the Westralia.

So that would’ve been oh 19 – 1940 I would reckon sometime around about 1940.

Patrolling in case the Germans made another

attack on the island because you see in shelling the equipment that they used there to load and unload ships they destroyed, did a lot of damage to them, they became inoperable, so that the farmers back here in Australia couldn’t get any fertilisers for the

farms, that’s what it was all about. Of course the Westralia’s responsibility in the end was to get a lot of the women and children off the islands and take them down to Brisbane. And take army personnel up there to Manly Island, yeah.

Only the [HMAS] Manoora and the Westralia they were the two that operated in that area at that time. The Kanimbla was still I think over in the Indian Ocean.

Ocean Island?

The Manoora.

Yeah.

Well we communicated with each other of course and we whoever was – the principal officer there was on the Manoora and he decided when he’d be at Naru and we’d be at Ocean Island and when we’d go

backwards and forward. And how far we would go, you know whether we’d go out a hundred miles and circle around and come back all that sort of thing.

Yeah well it was after Naru and Ocean Island that we went up to – started off by going up to Darwin

and then of course we had the… trouble there… the mutiny – we had the mutiny and then of course we went back up to Darwin and it was while we were up in Darwin that Pearl Harbour happened and do you want me to go on from there?

Oh we had a new captain,

I said the first captain was Hudson the English fellow, who was the second one? Leave a gap there and…

I’ll tell you who it is.

That’s right yes we were up there. Just before that the [HMAS] Sydney had been sunk and we were getting

the messages coming in from all sources but we didn’t go out into that area because there were other naval ships operating out of Perth. We were getting the messages all right but we couldn’t do anything about it and, but as soon as Pearl Harbour happened the Australian Government

sent army personnel into Darwin itself they were nearby in the Northern Territory there to go to Timor. So they all rolled up there in the train, the troops did and there were two ships detailed to go to Timor was the Westralia and we carried about 500

army troops. Now what was the other ship’s name, I’ll have to think of that one, I know it well. She was a real humbug of a ship because the stokers

used to let the ship’ s fires go down and of course to get the ship’s heat up again so that the ship could sail usually took about 3 or 4 hours and that was a real nuisance every time we were ready to go the jolly ship said, “No we can’t go.”

So anyway we eventually got away and we went up to Timor and left all the troops up there and we came back to Darwin and from Darwin we went to Port Moresby.

Oh they were all right, we had plenty of room to accommodate them on board the ship and it was only about a 4 or 5 day trip to go up to Timor. I didn’t know at the time that one of the army fellows on the ship was a cousin of mine. I didn’t find out until after the war when we went over to Perth to

look him up. But the other ship of course was bombed in Darwin when the Japanese came in and she was sunk in Darwin Harbour. Oh what the name of the darn thing, but she had a bad reputation because of the way she – the engines operated she’d

speed up then drop back then she’d speed up again and drop back oh it was crazy.

Oh no trouble, the sailors had their duties and responsibilities and the army were in separate

quarters and they had nothing much to do except get up on the upper deck and sit around. We weren’t in any danger at that stage. The Japanese hadn’t gotten very far they weren’t doing any bombing in our area. It was about another, oh would’ve been another six months I suppose before they

started on Timor and then later than that on the attacks in Darwin and we were well out of the way by then.

Oh all right.

Well it changed considerably because we had to get out of the area because the Japanese were starting to

attack all along the islands towards Timor. Now they didn’t actually make an attempt of landing in Timor for about 3 months or so but by then we’d moved out to Port Moresby to pick up a few troops there mainly ones

that were sick and had to be moved to take them down to Sydney. And then from there, I think up to about July we didn’t have a lot to do other than a few small troop movements.

No they wouldn’t have been wounded.

Just sick, yeah.

Well there was no fighting in New Guinea at that time. There weren’t very many troops there anyway and the Japanese hadn’t landed there. It took them some time to get organised and try and get an attack on New Guinea.

And I think that situation sort of stayed for quite a few months and in that time we had returned to Sydney for a refit to make the ship into a landing ship. There were three ships involved in the landing ship

organisation. There was the Westralia, the Manoora, and the Kanimbla and the refitting was done in that order although, the Manoora was the first one to start training aboard ship. The Westralia probably needed a bit more complicated alterations to the ship so it stayed in Sydney

for a little bit longer and then when the were ready well then, no, before they were ready the Westralia was told to go up to Port Stephens and start training up there with boats that were provided non landing type of boats but a lot of them were just boats that had been taken

from the owners in Sydney Harbour they were pleasure boats. So there was about 16 or 18 of those boats were escorted by the Westralia up to Port Stephens and in the Port Stephens the Westralia anchored in the bay

and the boats were used for – to start the first lot of training of troops. We didn’t have very many Australian troops up there but we didn’t make an attempt to get used to the idea of landing operations but it wasn’t very long before we were

given landing craft of British design to start training in earnest. So the idea was we would pick up the troops off the beach and then circle around and land at a particular time, appointed time land them on the beach. Now that didn’t last very long either before the Americans

appeared on the scene with the type of landing craft that we continued to use for the rest of the war. So it was all very elementary in the early stages but the Westralia carried out these alterations without having been refitted in Sydney but as soon as the new depot at Port Stephens was completed

everybody had moved out of the Westralia into the shore establishment, and the Westralia sailed down to Sydney for a refit. And for the next 2 or 3 months the refitting went on and we were able to do our practice landing operations picking up troops from the beach

in the bay and then landing them in order designed to give them the proper experience for future operations. Well this reached the stage where the Westralia was just about ready and the decision had to be made who were going to be the flotilla officers of each of the three landing ships.

Well it just happened that as far as the Westralia was concerned the senior sub lieutenant at the time was reluctant to want to take on the job he’d been married and his wife had a young baby and felt he’d be quite happy to stay at the depot in Port Stephens for the time being and I spoke to the

secretary to the captain there and said to him, “Look I’m quite happy to go to Westralia if you can arrange it,” you see and being a South Australia, “Oh,” he says, “I’ll look after you.” So the next thing I got the appointment as flotilla officer for the Westralia and they sent me down to Sydney to take up the position on the ship. Well the ship was in a bit of a mess they were still doing a lot of work on the ship but it gave me an

opportunity to check around the ship itself have a look and see what was available and talk to quite a few of the people who were in charge of all the alterations. And then they sent a signal to me to say that the sailors would be arriving on such and such a date which they did and I had to get them on board and talk to them,

allocate their various duties and responsibilities and sort of get things started. Well then the Westralia work was finished and we moved away from Garden Island where it was being reorganised and we moved out and from there we were able to start

hoisting and lowering the American type of craft which was pretty good because it was the whole process was designed for that to happen. Anyway the sailors all got used to being on board and had settled down all right and then the next thing they told us we were on our way up to Port Stephens to resume the training up there because of the

dangers of getting into Port Stephens into the first part of the bay, it’s in two parts and to get into the first part was fairly open to the sea which meant that Japanese submarines and that sort of thing could come in and probably torpedo the ship so the Westralia was put further into the bay, well in about another mile I suppose

and surrounded with various types of buoys and nets and that sort of thing to stop the possibility of the submarines having a go at the ship. Well we were there perhaps for a couple of months and training furiously to start our operations.

And then we moved from there up to Brisbane, pick up some of the Westralia fellows that had been up there doing some preliminary landing practices and then on to Cairns. And we operated around Cairns for quite awhile doing landing operations with army people

from the area and once we got used to that then we started to move further north by taking troops up to Port Moresby and from there to Milne Bay which is the part of New Guinea which is like a double tail and we operated from Milne Bay a lot up and down

the east coast of New Guinea until all the fighting had been completed at Buna and Sanananda, etc., when the Americans decided that they would land on,

now what the… oh I forget the name of the place where we went, and the Americans must’ve had about half a million soldiers up there, Bougainville, that’s right in Bougainville. So we were in the Bougainville area there for oh, probably about six, at least six weeks. And during that we were

doing intensive landing operations with the Americans. We picked them up on a Tuesday, the troops, off the beach, pick them up on a Tuesday and do a dawn landing on the Friday and then we’d go the Saturday, Sunday and Monday and clean the ship and get ready for the next unit and we did that oh probably about 4 or 5 weeks

which was very strenuous for the crew and also particularly the not my sailors who managed all the landing craft and that sort of thing and I was absolutely flat out [busy] myself. Once that was complete, do you want me to press on from there?

Well you see

we had 18 landing craft and they were all my responsibility and all the sailors that operated them. As I said I had about a hundred sailors and my responsibilities were to make sure that they carried out the duties in the proper manner. In other words they had to start by getting aboard their landing craft

which were then loaded into the water and then they were formed up into groups and went ashore to pick up the American Army fellows and bring them back to the ship and once we got them all aboard then the landing craft could be cleaned or whatever was necessary and hoisted onto the ship ready

for the exercises so the first day was all getting probably organised. The next morning the American troops were taught how to climb the rope ladders and how to you know go up and down into the boats and were taken for a bit of a run around and brought back on board again and the boats were all hoisted up and we went through that

two or three times over a period of 2 or 3 days and all the planning was made for each unit to be ready for a dawn landing. The dawn landing would’ve been calling the navy fellows about 4 a.m. and then getting the boats ready and lowering the

boats into the water, getting the troops to climb down the scrambling, get into the boats and then move out to the area where the boats were – moved in circles, so we’d have about 3 or 4 circles of boats so you get about

six boats in a circle and say 3 or 4 circles and then at the appropriate time I would lead them, get hold of the first group and take them in towards the beach and then progressively the others would start to follow in formation and they would get near the beach and they would fan out into line abreast and

land on the beach and the troops would get out and the boats would move off and the next wave would come in and then we’d all go back to Westralia.

36 that’s not counting the crew yes that’s right. And the crew were responsible for the operations of

the boats. In other words they lifted the ramp up and down and manned the guns that we had on board as well you see but these were all without, we didn’t do any firing or anything like that because the enemy was well and truly at the back of Bougainville probably about 30 miles away.

With diesel motors, they all had

diesel motors and they were reasonably fast. They probably do about 15 or 20 knots yeah.

No, no they weren’t camouflaged. Later on, after we’d done a couple of landing operations in other areas I asked the Americans if I could have a different

sort of a craft because I was a flotilla leader and they said, “Oh yes that’s a good idea this is what you should have.” So they gave me one that’s the one where you saw me with the flag up in the photograph there and I didn’t carry any troops in it because it was a smaller landing craft. So they ordinary landing craft were all identical except

two big ones which carried, well it could carry troops or it could carry tractors and ambulances and all other vehicle type ones.

Well we had long steel arms sticking out from the side of the ship and each boat had two arm – went to two of the arms and all the steel cables and that were tied on to that and the motors that drove the hoisting and lowering were up on deck and they were manned by ordinary sailors of the Westralia

so that when we started off the boats arrived at the Westralia and they got to a position under the two arms and the sailors up on top lowered down the winches which were hooked onto the boat and then hoisted up and secured up there and they just strung and hung on the side of the ship.

Well there were… 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 I think 10, 5 each side from memory, 5 each side, and then aboard ship we had 1 in the forward hold – on the top of the fold – hold and in the midships we had 3 up there one sideways

and 2 – 2 sideways and 1 thwart ships and then the two big, big, big landing craft that we used for tractors and all that sort of thing were in the rear – on top of the rear hold and in each one of them was a smaller boat, landing craft. So they

all had to be hoisted in and out from their various positions it was quite an operation the best we got I think was round about 12 minutes to get them all in the water which wasn’t bad considering some had to be particularly in the stern part of the ship had to lift two out and put them over the side and then come back and get the 2 big ones and put them over them over so it worked pretty well.

But that wasn’t my responsibility until towards the end when we started to change the crew of the ship and then we had less numbers on board and then they said to me they said you can be in charge of the hoisting and lowering of some of the boats which I had to do on my own.

Well it was all upper deck really. We had to have the… on the ship we had – where the boats were stored on the ship itself they had to have proper

fittings so that the boat could sit in there quite neatly and then be secured on each side so that if the ship was rolling and that sort of thing and it was quite safe there which meant that you, you know, when you’re hoisting things out you had more things to do to disconnect the boats ready to be picked up and put over the side.

Oh I’m sorry.

Well we had really only one occasion when we had a real problem, one of the landing craft was ready to lower all they had on board were the crew… 2, 3, 4 was the coxswain, the

driver and 2, 2 sailors and the way the sailors on board hoisted and lowered the boat depended on the operation of the sailors up on the top deck. Now one of the winches was made in such a way

that we could lower two boats from the one winch and to do that you had to move a lever to switch over the way the system worked anyway they – they were ready to lower one of the boats into the water and when the operator up on the deck went to move the

lever he pushed it the wrong way and of course the sailors standing in the landing craft were just there with their hands on ropes as a safety precaution and all of a sudden the boat just went ‘swit’ just like that and of course their hands were hurt as they went down they hit the water and it burst the

landing craft, the landing craft went straight down underwater with the crew. So it took them a few minutes for the sailors to come up and they all came up all right and I think it was only one of them that went to the ship’s hospital just for a check up but otherwise they were all all right so…

It wasn’t at Port Stephens, it wasn’t at Bougainville, I can’t remember exactly off hand without looking up my diary.

No in practice, mm, fortunately, yeah. Another occasion

oh we had a big derrick at the stern of the ship like a mast and the facilities for hoisting and lowering cargo or boats or whatever and one of the – when we were hoisting we used to hoist the two big ones two large landing

craft first to put them in position and then we would have two other landing craft waiting to be hoisted in and put inside the big ones. Anyway we got it all ready, got the big ones in and on board and we were ready to hoist the first of the smaller ones and when

they got it about halfway up one of the cables broke and of course the next thing because it’s a derrick it swung away from the ship like that and took the boat with it and it pulled down the big mast, oh it was about that

diameter and bent it flat I’ve got photos of it and of course the boat went down but underneath it was another boat which had come up into position to be hoisted so one boat landed on top of the other and pushed it straight under the water so there was another incident but fortunately there were not casualties. We were very…

Mm,

yeah.

Oh a trip to Sydney. We had another one where we had Americans wanted to take a particular boat with them so we left one boat behind in Milne Bay and picked up the American one but in the picking up process we didn’t know at the time that the Americans had filled

the water tanks on each side of the landing craft with water and of course when that was picked up the weight was too much and we lost a boat there.

Filled it with water? Oh well they were going on an operation I suppose they thought they needed to take some fresh water with them. I didn’t query that one it just happened.

Oh the American navy we had no trouble with them they were good. They were very thoughtful people, they knew what was going on. We used to entertain them from time to time particularly when they got thirsty cause they were alcohol free and still are in the American navy so they used to

delight in coming over and having a drink in the wardroom. But the American soldiers that was a different matter the Australian didn’t like them at all. And that applied to the Australian Army too in New Guinea they didn’t like operating, trying to operate with the Americans because the Americans particularly around Buna and places like that they didn’t like

to come forward and get to the front line and do the fighting and of course the Australian – and they didn’t operate as efficiently as our Australian troops did because a lot of our Australian troops had already been into the Middle East and fought there so they weren’t at all popular.

Oh they were made out of plywood, thick plywood about that thick they were very strong so we didn’t have much trouble with them at all really. They had good motors in them to drive them no they were all right I think they still,

still make them the same today. It might’ve changed the design a bit but they were made by an American firm and there was a video made of the whole of their operations which is quite interesting, mm. So the Americans seemed to know what they were doing when it came to that and when they were building Liberty ships and all that sort of thing they did quite a good job.

Oh that was one of the ship’s sailors not one of mine. I wasn’t responsible for him but no it was, I think it was just unfortunate that he moved the lever when

he shouldn’t have that was the only serious one that they made but they had an officer up there in charge of all the winch operations and he must’ve been looking in the wrong direction when they were trying to switch over form one part of the operation to another. Yeah it was just unfortunate but luckily we didn’t have any harm done not in the long run.

No, no it was just unfortunate, yeah. I was just trying to think where I was at the time to see it all happen it was pretty close to the spot where the mast at the stern went over, I was standing pretty close there so I was able to see the whole operation. But it was just

unfortunate this fella had all this water on board his landing craft, the American landing craft not one of ours.

Oh it bent the mast just as though somebody had got hold of it and bent it like that it was all held together but bent so they had to – when we got back to Sydney they had to cut it off and rebuild it. I don’t know how long it took

to do that probably about a week or so, yeah.

No this would’ve been up in New Guinea area where that happened, in fact I think it was…

Oh yes we had to we couldn’t get it done anywhere else.

Went back up and did the landing at

Hollandia and to do that, do you want to know a bit about that one? Landing at Hollandia?

That’s the first one.

Mm, mm that was the first one well that was done by Americans, they used Australian landing ships for the operation, mm. And the Americans did all the,

the work, the convoy work. They looked after the convoy and the American soldiers did the landing but our ship carried them and the boats because they wanted to keep the boats there. They wanted to be able to use the boats after the soldiers had to reach the beach.

So all we had to do was turn around and go back to Milne Bay and get organised for the next landing which was Hollandia.

Not very successful at all unfortunately only because the Japanese got wind [found out] where they were going to land and how they did it of course I never found out. But they had troops waiting on the beach

for the Americans and quite a lot of Americans got killed in that operation. Fortunately there was no fire on our ship or any of the American warships none that I knew about anyway. But when it was written up later they said they never tried any more landings

of a similar nature in New Britain. After that they landed in other areas where they knew it was safe to land and then they operated on land from there. As a matter of fact a friend of mine who is going to be interviewed probably by you he was involved in that operation and there was something like 30,000

Japanese in New Britain at the time the Australians only had a very low number to fight them. So they didn’t do very much fighting because the Japanese kept their end of the island and the Australians kept the other end but anyway you’ll hear all about that in due course. We didn’t go up there and do any other landings in that area.

Oh quite some time later yeah they kept it pretty quiet, yeah. So we had to then get – once that was over then we had to get busy and start getting organised to do the Hollandia landing which was only a small one but it

helped the Americans a lot because they were able then to use Hollandia as a base for attacking the Philippines. So Hollandia really was just a big harbour where the ship’s could be brought in and assembled

in a very organised way and then be formed up into convoys for going up into the Philippines and of course our role was to reinforce and see that the ships all came and went to their anchorages and so on. And then all the plans for the landing

in the Philippines were being worked out by the Americans because that was their main concern to capture the Philippines and General MacArthur [American General] could then hold up his hand and say, “Oh well I have returned.”

Oh yes

that was – oh well no we left our original craft in Milne Bay and I had to leave the crew in Milne Bay while we went off and did that landing. The crew weren’t too happy about that happening they wanted to be in the action but for about 2 weeks they had to live in an American camp ashore while we went on up

to do the Arawe Operation yeah and then came back.

Well because the Americans man their own boats you see so it was no good taking our sailors there and returning with no boat so it was all worked that they – the Americans would use their boats and probably in a way it was – it

worked out all right because I don’t think too many of those boats would’ve survived. The Japanese might’ve blown them up or something whereas our boats were safe in Milne Bay.

Yeah right.

Well the landing at Hollandia was organised by the Americans in that they did all the planning work they supplied

the troops we supplied the Australian navy support, the cruisers, and etc. Aircraft and the landing, landing ship the Westralia. The landing was a fairly straightforward one. There weren’t many Japanese on the beach area

of Hollandia but it was necessary for the Americans to get a harbour which would enable them to carry the fighting on up to the Philippines. Well the operation there went easily and it went well. There were a couple of mistakes made but generally we were able to land all the troops without any

hassle at all. The Japanese when they saw us coming must’ve retreated and the American troops landed without much trouble. The only problem I knew of at the time that one of the – after we’d landed the troops one of the American aircraft came in

and strafed the beach and wounded some of their own Americans. Fortunately the American troops had set up a tent there where they had a doctor and they were able to look after the wounded and we got them aboard one of our landing craft and brought them back to the ship but I think

one had been killed, that’s right and we brought him back to the ship to take him back to their own area which was further south of New Guinea. So that was unfortunate but the advantages they got from Hollandia were very

great. So great in fact that General MacArthur himself came up and set a big headquarters well back about 10 or 20 miles from the beach head and they did quite a bit of planning from there. In the meantime we were just running trips backwards and forwards Australians into New Guinea

and also we were starting to train American troops in Bougainville.

Yeah.

Well they had to set up the harbour there, it wasn’t what you call a very safe harbour because it was pretty well wide open they had to set it all up and of course the ships that came in by the dozens were the American… oh

what’s the word for it – they built a hundred thousand darn jelly ships they were very quickly built. It’ll come to me in a minute, they were virtually launching them one a day. That’s how the Americans had it all designed and set up they built them in parts and then

brought them all together and did the assembling in a matter of 24 hours which was really incredible there’s a book been written about it all, and as soon as they were ready they put a crew on board and loaded the ship up with all food and ammunitions and all type of things. Victory – oh they were Victory ships was one type and then they

sent them out into the Pacific Ocean across there in convoys and also across to Britain getting ready for the landings in Europe, it was quite a big project and the Americans did that well no doubt about that so in Hollandia itself it was really a big task was to arrange for the ships to be properly moored

and some of them waited there for weeks and weeks before they could move on up to the Philippines so it was quite a big operation I wouldn’t say they were very efficient at it but in the end it worked out all right for everybody.

Here we go again.

Getting a bit keen.

No after Hollandia no we went off to Bougainville…

… to get ready for the landings in the Philippines now Bougainville had been occupied by the Americans and the area that they occupied was only a few square miles. Bougainville was a big island. There were a lot of islands all around that particular

area which is east of New Guinea and we were sent over there to train the American troops that were on the island and get them ready for the landings in the Philippines. So what happened was that we arrived on the scene, Westralia was the only one there to do the

job and we found out that we had about 4 to 6 weeks continuous work training the Americans by picking them up off the beach in units, taking them on board ship teaching them how to climb ropes and getting into boats and that sort of thing and then do that for about 3 or 4 day

and then do a dawn landing operation and stay ashore after they’d landed and then a few days would pass and then we would pick up the next lot and keep doing that until the whole exercise had been completed so it went on for quite a few weeks and what made it so strenuous was the fact that my sailors in particular, the ordinary crew on the Westralia just carried out their ordinary routine duties but

my sailors had to be up early to get their boats in the water and get the American troops on board and take them in and bring them back and have them practising climbing scrambling nets to get up the ship or climbing down the scrambling nets to get into the boats it was quite strenuous for the sailors and of course I was on the go the whole time making

sure that everything went smoothly. So it’s no surprise I got pretty tired of that but anyway once they’d all been complete well then the Americans said, “Righto well we’ve done all the planning we’re ready to do the first landing in the Philippines.” So what we did was we picked up the first shipload of troops which was about 1500 of them and moved up to

Hollandia spent 2 or 3 days there while all the convoy work was being finalised and then we set off for the east coast of the Philippines.

The Americans did it all, yeah, they had all the equipment the photography was excellent. They knew the Philippines

because of a long occupation that they had there in various parts. The Philippine people knew the Americans whether they loved them or not I don’t know but they were they seemed to be a pretty sort of peaceful sort of people as far as we were concerned but of course when we did the landing operations our sailors moved along the beach and they’d landed the

troops walked around talked to the Filipino people and then they the Filipino fellows came out to ship circled around and tried to sell us young pigs and get soap and things like that which our fellows threw down to them. We picked up a pig there, a little piglet only about that big and we brought it back to Brisbane

and by then it had grown to a giant pig and the customs weren’t at all happy about that it finished up they took it and that’s the last we saw it. But the sailors all loved the jolly pig but anyway that was a good…

Yeah it did have a name, I’ll try and find it for you.

Yeah anyway the Filipino people were no problem as far as we were

concerned now on each of these landing operations we did a couple of runs. In other words we did the initial landing and then we went back and picked up more troops and took them to the landing spots to reinforce all those that were there. And of course some of those that went in on the first landing were either wounded or

killed so there was a lot to be done. And then the Japanese didn’t like the fact that the Americans had landed on the east coast of the Philippines and they tried very hard to drive them away. So that went on for quite a few months before we did the second landing in the other part of the

Philippines. But no that operation was very good and it was good from the point of view to that the American and Australian warships were all able to get into the area where the landing operations had taken place. The Japanese decided that they would

attack that particular harbour, a very big harbour, and they got a very powerful force together and came in and attacked the Americans and Australians there. They came in at night, the Americans and the Australians were already for them and the Australians – well there’s one the –

the [HMAS] Arunta was in that part of the battle as well as the HMAS Australia and [HMAS] Canberra and so, it was a pretty big fight.

You really want to talk to someone mainly who was on one of the other ships and get a different point of view because we didn’t actually take part in that

because the shot us off back to Hollandia to get out of the way but that big battle of course made a heck of a mess of the Japanese they sunk battle ships and battle cruisers and all that sort of thing. So that was out of our – out or our area but at least we did our part right in the beginning of landing.

Mm, mm.

Oh yes.

Well the convoys are organised by a group of

navy people they work out, they get the names of the ships that are available to be formed up in a convoy and they determine how many lanes of ships you’ll have, the speed of the convoy the route that the convoy takes and all that sort of thing. Now, Brett knows a little bit about this because he’s been up in Darwin there what they call naval control of shipping

up there and I involved in naval control of shipping after the war in Port Adelaide.

No…

You can get on to that a bit later or tomorrow. No well that is the problem is to get it all set up first of all and then each ship is given the

convoy – a copy of the convoy orders that tells you your position in the convoy, the speed of the convoy, the route that you’re taking all the necessaries to operate in a professional manner and then of course the officer’s of the watch had all got to be told their responsibilities and so on so as a watch keeping officer as part of my

Responsibilities, as soon as the convoy is ready to sail well then the navigator gets us going and then he hands over to the watch keeper and after that you just follow the ship that’s ahead of you but of course that’s only a very early part of it because you’ve got obey all the rules of the convoy which means that you’ve got to keep a proper

course and speed and so on which is not easy because they’re big ships and you’ve got to make alterations to your speed, the speed of the ship and make sure you’re dead on course and you’ve got the equipment to do all that fortunately. So leaving Hollandia

in a convoy of what we have we would’ve had about 60 or 80 ships with escorts out beyond the convoy itself and away you go and then the next you find that you get about half way there and the Japanese come over to try and torpedo the ships. Now that landing, the first landing we did in the Philippines

one of the Japanese aircraft came right across the width of the convoy which was probably 5 or 6 ships wide he dodge every ship except the one just ahead of us. And when I say the one just ahead of us he came between the two of us. He dropped his torpedo fortunately a little bit early

instead of just skimming along under the water the torpedo started to jump and it went up and down like this you see and it went between our ship and the one ahead of us and then headed straight for an American destroyer further rover well did he do a quick about turn to get out of the way but fortunately the Japanese pilot of course

was shot down and that was the end of that and everybody cheered and we carried on, the convoy carried on.

Well if a ship is sunk well of course that creates quite a problem because the rest of the convoy has got to dodge, get out of the way, that’s the first thing you’ve got to do

and then after that if the ship goes down maybe one ship might be able to go and rescue a few of the crew or depending on how serious the situation is you try and do what you can to try and save as many people as you can.

Well sometimes they just – all they can do is just

the rest of the convoy carries on and that one’s left on its own for the time being. It’s a difficult decision to make really. It would’ve happened more in the Atlantic than out here. I don’t know of any incidents where anybody had to drop out other than when we did the second landing on the Philippines. There one of the aircraft carriers had to drop out it got hit by a kamikaze just ahead of us.

I was up on the bridge and I watched the whole thing the kamikaze came down and hit the aircraft carrier and oh boy what mess all our aircraft and to go off and find another aircraft carrier to land on, it was pretty serious and the ship was very badly damaged fire and all that sort of thing and had to drop back and they must’ve

saved themselves put out the fires and one thing and another and limped along so that by the time we did the second landing and turned around to come back we were able to pick her up and convoy it back where she could get to one of the islands where they could do some repairs and perhaps even send her back to America.

That was for

us yeah, oh what was the name of the bay… the old memories not too good is it?

Hey?

No it wasn’t a gulf, it was – really I ought to have the book alongside me and I could give it to you quickly.

I can find it I might remember it.

Mm,

Here we go again.

The entrance to the island – the Philippine Islands was quite a wide one you could see both sides of the entrance no trouble at all but the big bay was very long, very deep and

could hold probably a thousand ships if you wanted to put them all in there and as far as we were concerned the entrance and that sort of thing was quite easy and straightforward because we went in and we had our allotted area that we were going to land all the troops on. Other ships, that had troops, they went off to their areas and landed them and at that stage we didn’t have any

action other than that incident that I mentioned about the aircraft and the torpedo. That’s when we first landed there and got that going and the natives came out and we talked to them and they talked to us and one thing and another and that was fine. And then the next day we turned around and sailed back to Hollandia to get more troops.

And we went straight up there and got to this spot in the Philippines, went in there and as we got close to the beach, the same beach we were going to land on a Jap plane came over followed by two American Kittyhawks which shot him down. And everybody cheered it was just like being at

a football match so that was good. So that whole operation was pretty straight forward now at the top of the gulf there was a fairly large city and a couple of our ship’s officers decided that they would like to go and have a look at the city you see so I said, “Oh well do you mind if I come too?” and they said, “No, all right.”

So we got one of my boats and away we went, didn’t have far to go and we got up on the beach, on the wharf at the beach there and had a quick look around and after about 5 minutes having a look around and deciding it wasn’t a very healthy place to stay we hopped in our boat and came back to the Westralia. So that made it pretty easy from our point

of view but that was – it was more or less at that stage that the Japanese decided that they would come in and see if they could knock out all the landing force and that sort of thing in that particular part of the Philippines.

Most unsuccessful they lost practically every one of their ships that they sent in they were sunk of course the Americans had these

torpedo boats and those fellows were pretty game they just roared in and dropped their torpedoes and sank destroyers and larger ships and then just circled around and came out. They were very fast you see they were doing – probably doing about 45 knots which is pretty fast for a boat and that’s what made it so successful. And the

Japanese lost a lot of fighting ships in that operation which was a good thing so that made it a lot easier for us when we were preparing to do the next landing at Lingayen Gulf, I can remember that one, Lingayen Gulf which is in the north western part of the Philippines, north of Manila.

Oh yes, yeah.

On that trip, none that I can remember no, no, see they were Americans and Americans set up their medical groups as quick as they can, as soon as the troops land they’ve got the tent up and ready to hand out their medals and things like that. You know about that don’t you?

You didn’t? Oh if anybody gets, an American gets wounded the first thing they do is to give him

their medal, yes, that’s right.

Oh no, no, they look after their fellows in that way I don’t know if they’re as quick as giving them you know some medical help.

Again.

Which pocket did I put it in?

Does it show up on the video?

Oh or is it on the glasses.

Well the two landings weren’t very far apart but our main job was to

go back to Bougainville and get more troops who had already been trained for landing operations and bring them back to Hollandia and form up for another landing in the northern part of the Philippines and this was a much bigger operation, in fact it was the biggest operation we did

out of all the landing operations that we did. It was a mighty operation because there were so many ships were involved in it. And they were arranged in groups so that they – some of them were just a few miles apart groups of ships others were days apart and

in other words they were reinforcements and that sort of thing so it was a very very big operation. The battleships led us in and they did all the bombardment and that sort of a thing and that was a bit of a problem for me because to land our troops on the beach we had to go under the guns of the battleships and they were terribly noisy as you could imagine. We could see all the shells going they were big shells

and not only that although they travelled at a fair speed you could easily see them going in and exploding on the beaches and that sort of thing. And once their battleships had stopped firing well of course we could go in and land our troops. And that was all well organised, very well organised. We had small vessels stationed at on the

way in to make sure we kept correct time because we had to hit the beach at a certain time and we couldn’t travel too fast otherwise you’d get them out of order and that congests the ship – it congests the beach, the beach head where we had naval people on the beach making sure that the troops got inland as quickly as they could and all the

material and vehicles and that sort of thing got off the beach cause whilst they’re all on the beach they’re an open target so you know all our landing operations were planned along those same lines, yeah. No that was a very big landing and then of course after we’d landed all our troops and

vehicles and food and all that sort of thing which took the best part of a day we had to wait off until everybody was ready and then we’d form up into a convoy and head back to Hollandia to get more troops so we did a couple of runs up there and by the time they’d got all settled in the troops themselves had got through to Manila and the fighting was just about over which was a good thing.

Lingayen Gulf.

You’ll find it on the map anyway Lingayen Gulf.

Oh… I’d be guessing. Oh must’ve been – on the first day

I reckon it probably would’ve been 50,000. It wasn’t a very wide beach but the harbour itself was pretty wide we could get all the convoys in there without any trouble at all. Yes, no, I don’t know the number there but I don’t know where General MacArthur was at the time whether he was close by on a battleship to go and land

I don’t know that part of it.

All right, it took them awhile to knock out all the Japanese that were there but once they’d done that and with the fighting – earlier fighting in the Philippines there it didn’t take long before the Japanese were completed eliminated in the Philippines which pleased MacArthur no

end, yeah.

Well the weather was fine for a start the number of ships that were there, there were hundreds of ships there different sizes, battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers kept away

because there was no need for them to be in the vicinity because they might’ve been easy targets if they were just sitting there. No it was, we weren’t there very long we would’ve stayed there for the first day and then we formed up in a convoy to move out the next day to go and get more reinforcements so that was our role.

Beyond that it’s a bit hard for me to say other than what you can read in the books that have been written about the landings.

Well the Japanese didn’t stick around for very long I know that. But the landing craft that I was in we went right through to the beach but by then

by the time we land there with the bombardment over the Japanese had all disappeared there was no actual firing going on close to the water’s edge. We would’ve been ducking for cover if it had’ve been. No I think it was a pretty successful landing there was no doubt about that and by the time we got up there for the second reinforcement well that

was a piece of cake [easy] because there were no Japanese within miles and we had no idea what was going on at the front line but we were able to easily off load all the cargo and equipment that we had and the troops and turned out to be quite successful that part of it.

No that was on the way up in the initial landing at Lingayen Gulf. We got close to being offshore from… from… what’s a name… Manila. Manila was probably about 40

or 50 miles on our right hand and we were in a big convoy. There was an American aircraft carrier called the [USS] Kitcun Bay. They named a lot of their aircraft carriers with the word ‘Bay’ and Kitcun Bay, I remember it well. Everything was going fine as we approached

the Manila area when next thing a flight of Japanese, suicide planes came over and they first attacked the Kitcun Bay and I’m not sure whether there was more than one but at least one of them hit the Kitcun Bay and caused

a tremendous fire on the ship which stopped any other aircraft from landing there and gave the crew of the Kitcun Bay getting the fire out and saving themselves. Well nobody could rush over and do anything for them. The destroyers all had their responsibilities in case of a submarine attack and all that sort of thing. So she

was left to follow us but not far behind was another big convoy coming through so she could just travel slowly and have a lot of protection anyway well then not long after that suicide attack the next thing we see a kamikaze

one coming and diving the Westralia. Why he picked the Westralia we don’t know it’s anybody’s guess but he must’ve thought we were a big ship and a good target with a lot of troops on board which we were and he came down on a vertical dive. Well I was standing just near the bridge I was just keeping a general eye on things because I wasn’t actually on watch at the time but I was standing very

close to the bridge and as he started to come down I thought to myself, “Crikey, this is a dangerous spot to be,” because that’s what they do they go for the bridge and try and kill the captain and all the senior officers and so on you see. Well I quickly looked around and the only place where I could get under anything was one of the ships ladders going up to the bridge

which virtually gave me no protection whatsoever. So I just kept looking up and saw it coming down and after talking to other officers on the other ships in the convoy the Australian that is they all said that they reckoned we were a goner because he only had to hit the bridge and boy oh boy we would’ve been in real trouble but fortunately he didn’t he – he – our guns were

firing up at him and they must’ve hit him and I don’t think there was any doubt about that and from talking to our own crew they reckon they got him, it may have altered his course it may not and but he hit the ship right on the stern but only a very small part of the stern so that the only one that got

wounded was a sailor up in that area. What he was doing I don’t know but what it did was it affected our steering so the ship started to turn to port which is to your left but fortunately although the steering was slightly damaged our engineers got up into that area and quickly corrected

it so that we were able to get back into our convoy position without any trouble but that was a heck of shock not only to us but to all the other ships who thought we’d had it. Which we hadn’t so, you know.

Yes that’d be right.

Well we were so used to preparing for other landings there was

sort of similarity between them all really just getting from the designers and preparers of all the operation plans and things like that was sort of out of our control all we had to was to wait until we were given our orders and instructions. We were to attend a conference and points would be asked as to

whether we understood what – all that was involved. The representatives from the Westralia were usually the captain the first lieutenant who was responsible for all the ship board operations and myself. And we would be given copies of all the plans so that we could take

them back to our ship and study them up and then take it from there. Our responsibility was to explain to the sailors who took part particularly those in the actual landing operation itself.

Yes, yeah the one in particular was the one that’s on the video tape was actually a practice one but you could almost say it would look as though it was an actual landing operation. Yes that was done there yes and

it was well put together by this Australian photographer working for the Dutch Government.

Yes we had one practice run to get the troops to go through the processes of climbing

our ropes and getting up and down in the landing craft beyond that they couldn’t do much because of the nature of the area we were in really we had to wait till be got to the landing area Obo 1.

As far as I know we did exactly what we’d rehearsed the only thing about

it was that the Manoora had one of the troops on their ship he lost his balance when he was climbing down to get – getting into one of the landing craft. He was – he had over his shoulders a base for a…

what do you call… for a… a base for a… oh for a weapon that you drop a bomb into it and away it goes, I’ll think of it in a minute. The Australians used them,

a lot of them anyway he had it strapped over his shoulder it was very heavy I suppose it weighed half to three quarters of a hundred weight and he slipped and went straight down into the water instead of into the boat and I suppose the boat had drifted out from the ship just a little bit and enough room for him to go through and that was the last they saw of him. He went down there was no way he could offload it and get up

so they were pretty upset about that.

In Tarakan during the landing yes that was a shame.

Well it wasn’t what I’d call a straight forward operation because for a

start the Japanese had used railway lines to try and stop the landing craft from going in and landing on the beach. So they had a whole lot of all those pegged into the sea there which meant then when we got there because the tide was running out pretty fast, we weren’t getting close

enough to take advantage of the higher tide. And we finished up, I lost one of my boats there because one of the railway lines had been cut short or something or other and of course the boat settled on top of the piece of railway line and of course it punctured the boat. There was no way that we could get the boat up

off the piece of railway line so all we could do is just leave it there and get those who were on board out and on to a jetty which was nearby and it was getting very low tide so that you can tell by just looking at the photograph there that you virtually needed a ladder to get up to get to the top of the wharf and that wasn’t easy.

So there were a couple of examples of the problems we had now we also were faced with having to unload the landing craft with all the food and stores and things like that and this meant that they had to be hoisted with rope – ropes and dragged up to the top of the

jetty. Well when we first thought about it when we were in there with the troops I thought to myself, “Oh crikey, we need ropes,” so I had to get one of my boats to go back to the ship and get as much rope as he possible could. Well he came back and then we were able to cut it into lengths that were suitable and then the

army boys came down, we asked for army boys and air force fellows as well who had been offloaded if they would help drag in all the stores up on to the wharf and then have it trucked away inland. So it got pretty congested as you could imagine and it was very slow means of operation. All the other landing operations we

did the boats were able to spread out along the beach and they could all be individually loaded either by the sailors or by the beach party that were provided there to get it all unloaded off the boats so they could then go back to the ship and do another cargo run. So that was a real problem there and a bigger problem was the

fact that the ship had been given some aerial bombs to take ashore for the aircraft and used on a landing strip which they were going to build. Well we loaded them in first of all and when we got to the jetty the wharf to have a look and see what we could do there was no way we could lift it there was

no means of hoisting it. The weight would’ve been perhaps two, three hundred pounds so all we could do was – I think there were about three of my boats were loaded with the bombs, so all we could do was sit alongside the wharf until we could work out what was to be done. Well fortunately, I went around the other side of the wharf and I noticed that there was a

barge there that had been used by the Japanese but never damaged either by them or by us fortunately and I thought to myself there’s a good opportunity so I got a couple of sailors to go and get this barge and tow it back to the ship, which they did, and the ship was the captain anyway was delighted when he saw it coming

and I sent a message to him to say that we had got this and I recommend that they put all the aerial bombs in it. Well they not only but the aerial bombs in there but it was a pretty big barge and they filled it up, I’ve got a photograph there which you can see, and they were able to tow it back and leave it for the air force or army to sort it out at their leisure. So it meant that

by the end of the day which was around about 7 or 8 o’clock at night, it was daylight, towards the end of daylight we were able to finish our unloading and tell the commodore that we were ready to sail when they were and got a message back from them to say that, “No the other ships hadn’t finished their unloading and we wouldn’t be able to depart

until the morning.” So that gave me an opportunity to get a bit of rest but I was on duty next morning just before we sailed and we got going around about 9 o’clock I suppose and around about midnight – midday, around about midday we were a

hundred miles or so away from Tarakan and steaming along quite steadily and all of a sudden I noticed – I was officer of the watch, I noticed a Japanese mine floating right ahead of us. So I pressed the button called the captain and said, “I’ve got to alter course we’re heading for a mine I’m going starboard.” He said, “Right I’m coming up.” So by the time he got up there we

had the wheel over and the ship started to steer away from it and when we got level with it it would’ve been about 20 or 30 feet away from the ship so we were very pleased about that and fortunately we had a destroyer escort there and we signalled him and he came over and by the time he got near it we were perhaps

3 or 400 yards away he opened fire on it and blew it up. So that was a big save I was rather proud of that. Then of course we went back and got more reinforcements and took them to Tarakan and by then fighting was pretty fierce and the Australian troops one of the biggest problems they had of course was to knock out all the Japanese at that part of the island and

because of the nature of the soil. It was an island that was afloat with oil. The troops were able to start their tractors and other machinery there by just digging a hole and getting the oil out of the ground which was rather unusual but very helpful. So we only did a couple of runs there to Tarakan.

Oh well there was a sniper not very fire away which he kept firing shots every 10 or 15 minutes towards the jetty area. From what I could see he didn’t hit anybody fortunately, he

didn’t do any damage but it was a bit of worry for awhile and so cause we were definitely under fire, yeah, but…

I think it was just a rifle. It was only a small weapon but where he was and how far away he was I had no idea but by the time I was ready to go back to the ship somebody either got him or he

retreated and we managed to finish what we were doing without any further problem.

Yeah I always had a pistol but I never fired it. I never got close enough you see to do that so…

Well I think having been through previous operations the first operation is usually the biggest worry you don’t know whether you’re going to survive or not when you find that you have survived well you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re not going to survive, well you’re gone and that’s it. And that’s what I felt all the way through. I didn’t have any fear

of being knocked off even after my brother had been killed. I thought, “Well I’ve survived and I hope it stays like that.” I felt quite confident about that.

Didn’t seem

to be, no, perhaps they didn’t know where he was it’s no good just firing blindly and thinking oh I might be lucky to get him. No it’s not easy so I think they were a bit reluctant to open fire because see somebody else’d approach from a different direction and that could’ve happened in New Guinea anyway. So

Tarakan was very interesting I didn’t know until after we’d finished all the Borneo operations that I or any of the other flotilla would’ve got any rewards or awards out of it, it can as quite as a surprise you know everything went quite smoothly and everything was all right what did I do that

was worth it, yeah, so which is good luck.

Oh yes, yes.

Well it probably belongs to the owners of the oil companies that operated in Borneo. It was a pretty old barge but it was still afloat. I don’t think it was a Jap

barge. I called it a Jap barge but because they were the previous owner, yeah, so that was quite successful, yeah very good. And it was – I think it was a harder fight than the next two landings that we did in Borneo.

Well because of the dangers of trying to get the boats to the shore to get the troops unloaded and all their cargo and all that sort of thing it wasn’t a simple operation of a nice wide beach where the tide was right, when you lowered the ramp on the boats they were able to get out without getting their feet wet and all that sort of thing it was very very simple we

with the beach being – being filled by the Japanese with all these railway lines and things like that made it impossible for us to actually land on the beach so it became a very difficult operation to get everything off.

Well pretty muddy yeah pretty dirty and slushy but none of us walked in the water because there was nothing to gain by walking in the water it was just a case, even the troops we tried to land them on the beach but there was no way they could get right through.

The tides were fairly high and low offhand I can’t remember the measurements now but at high water it probably around the jetty there it must’ve been about 10 or 15 feet

at high tide that’s from low water that’s about 15 feet so that’s a fair drop.

The one that we left behind? Oh you mean my landing craft that we tied them up side by side at the end of the jetty and we couldn’t do anything about unloading them because they were flat out trying to

use the ropes and get it off but the landing craft were cleared one by one which took quite a while. As I say the whole operation took all day because of that if you look at Lingayen Gulf it was a case of go straight in onto the beach and within 10 minutes the boats were turned around and going back to ship to get a second run. And that would’ve

applied to Leyte and other landing places so Tarakan was the worst from that point of view but we made it that’s the important thing.

Oh yes all except of course that we left behind and that was replaced when we got back to

Morotai the Americans had some, or somebody had some spare ones so we managed to get it replaced. It didn’t cost us anything the Americans just handed them out without any worries at all so that was good.

Well they all seemed to be pretty good they didn’t hesitate they were ordered to get into the landing craft and land on the beach and there was no hesitation there no. We did it so often and to so many even though it might’ve been their first landing there in a lot of cases there where the troops were

picked up on one of the bases and put on board the ship and away you go and you learn the drill on board and when you get there you can just get off and go and do what you’re ordered to do, mm, yeah. It’s pretty dangerous of course but if you survive well it’s good,

yeah. No that was a – it finished up a success but it was pretty difficult for us and later on of course the Australian troops had a terrible time there because of the nature of the fighting and all that sort of thing, mm. We were spared all that. From the beach we could see large oil tanks, very large oil tanks

which had been bombed and some of them were still burning. I’ve got photos of those. So yeah it was quite an experience, mm.

Yes, yeah that’s right. Yes well we left after the landing at Tarakan we left in a small convoy. Some of the ships there stayed on because they had to finish their loading but we were sent off to get ready for the next landing operation and we hadn’t gone very far when

I was up on the bridge and it just happened to notice ahead of us probably 2 or 300 hundred yards ahead a mine floating on the water and I thought gee this is pretty dangerous so I pressed the alarm told the captain that I was altering course and he came racing up on the bridge and saw the mine pass very close on the

port side. So we just went by quietly and got past and in the meantime got in touch with an American destroyer that was escorting us and they raced over and had several shots at the mine and it exploded it so you know it was a small event but a successful result.

It was the first time I’d seen one of those mines to go off and I was glad to see it.

Oh they’re big, they’re a fair size they’re bigger than a washing machine and they usually float about about half way above the water that was the type I

suppose it was but whether it was meant to do that or whether it had been laid by the Japanese and it had broken off its chain or whatever it was they used to tie it down below I think they used to like to keep them out of sight so the ship coming along could hit it without it being aware. That’s how a lot of the ships got into trouble particularly

in the Atlantic with floating mines. Yeah well they floated but they were kept down below the – around about the depth of an ordinary ship say about 15 or 20 feet or thereabouts.

Well my recollection,

I didn’t see any aircraft there but I knew that the Australian Aircraft had been bombing the oil tanks that were there but by the time we’d got in to do the landing they were still smoking but I reckon that the Australian pilots reckoned they must’ve knocked out any Japanese

that were around and there weren’t many aircraft there or even further into Borneo. I think the Philippines operations had knocked out most of them, mm which is probably fortunate. So Tarakan was successful from our point of view but

difficult.

Oh we went back to Morotai then to get ready for the next operation which was Brunei Bay. It’s on the other side of Borneo on the western side of Borneo. That was a fairly big operation

but it didn’t give us any problem other than we did have one Japanese plane that flew in circles round and round for about half a day while everybody was having pot shot at hit and blackening the sky but they didn’t shoot it down so that didn’t excite us very much.

Otherwise the landing was easy the only thing that disappointed me was the fact that, my boat was very close to water’s edge after we landed the troops at there and I was just sitting talking to my crew and the next thing an American, a fast American boat came racing up towards us and I thought,

“Hello, what’s going on?” And the next thing they pulled up very close to me without touching the sand and a young officer jumped out of the boat and he came over to me he said, “Is it safe to go ashore here?” and I said, “Well,” I said, “the troops are probably about 3 or 400 in off the beach because we’ve landed them and they gone right through and they were out of

site.” So I reckoned they must’ve been a few hundred yards away. I said, “I reckon it’s safe to land here.” And the next thing 3 or 4 senior officers jumped out of their boat the next thing out comes General MacArthur, I recognised him as soon as jumped out so I gave him a very good salute. He didn’t bother to look at me or greet me or do anything. Now

a decent general or senior officer I thought would’ve been the first fellow to go over and shake your hand and say, “Oh well I hope everything’s going all right?” and I had no one there taking a photo that I know of. So I didn’t get a medal for that. Isn’t it amazing, General MacArthur.

Blamey [General Thomas Blamey] wasn’t with him I remember that but a couple other lieutenant generals a couple of Australian ones and a couple of American ones with him. That’s funny what did I do with my tissue?

What in so far as the Australian’s were concerned?

Oh me, well I think I’ve changed my opinion of him since I read the book about his life.

Oh yes, yes it was a much smaller operation although that part of Borneo is pretty vast and once we’d know out, oh well once the Australian troops

had knocked out the majority in the immediate area there was nothing much more for them to do really. There’s a – at that stage I don’t think they knew abut those that had marched from Brunei and only one or two survived which was a terrible thing. I don’t like Japanese I can tell you.

We had a Japanese girl come and stay with us for a year. My daughter was living next door to a woman who was rather keen on looking after Japanese visitors and this young girl was a student and she went to the college just over the road here and my daughter said it would be very convenient

for her to come and stay here and give her accommodation. So we weakened and said oh well I suppose. Well she was quite a nice girl but we found out you know some of the funny ways that they do things and that sort of thing because she was here on her own and no family or anything like that she was prone to go off

and go round the town and go for walks and all that sort of thing. I don’t think she was a bad girl but we weren’t sorry when she finally decided that she would go and find another family that would look after her. But the family that she went to, she wasn’t too happy after awhile because they had a couple of small children of their own which meant that

she was tied more and couldn’t get loose.

Balikpapan

No, no, we didn’t anyway. We didn’t know enough really to make an opinion on that, there was still plenty of Japs around to be beaten see Singapore for instance was still and the countries that

the Japanese had occupied all around that area there they were still battling along as much as they could so we still felt that there was a lot to be done. We thought that perhaps the next exercises we would do would be to go to Singapore but it all happened fairly quickly and it made a big difference. So we didn’t go there we were just given

the task of going around to the islands picking up all the people that had been captured and wanted to get home. So we picked up quite a lot of prisoners of war and others.

I can still tell you a little bit more about that, yeah.

Yeah sure.

Mm, yes, well I think the last landing was probably the most straightforward and efficient one that we did. The main reason is that we had an excellent beach, a nice straight beach

covering quite a long distance and we were able to negotiate the beach because the tide was just right for us. So it was just a matter of forming up after we’d pick up all our troops and set off for the beach. The Japanese were

very active which was a little bit of a worry for us because as we were heading for the beach the Japanese started firing mortars, mortar bombs and we got splashed by them because they happened to hit the water and not us so we were pretty fortunate in that respect. By the time we landed the first troops which was quite straightforward they

jumped out of the landing craft, raced up the beach. They were using flame throwers and things like that and of course the Japanese didn’t last any length of time once the flame throwers got busy with them which was good and from then on it was quite exciting for me to be close to the beach because I was there in case my boats needed assistance to be rescued or whatever

and watch the Australian troops go up a sloping hill and using their flame throwers and having a go at the Japanese and virtually they got very little fire from them because the Japanese were very close to the beach and they knocked them all out very quickly so the

Australian troops were very fortunate that it wasn’t difficult – that part of the operation wasn’t difficult but a group of American and possibly Australian photographers came over in American aircraft with the purpose of taking aerial photographs. I don’t know what caused the problem

but the next thing the plane hit the water and fortunately there were plenty of boats around they raced over and they managed to rescue, I think they rescued everybody I didn’t hear of anyone dying as a result of it. But for quite some time afterwards there was flotsam floating around, flotsam floats around on the surface and jetsam goes to the bottom. There was a lot of

flotsam going around so that when it came time for me to leave the beach and go back to Westralia I had to go through all this flotsam that was there nothing worth recovering or anything like that it was like paperwork and parcels and things like so we didn’t stop and pick up any of it we just kept on going and I never heard any further of what happened to the people that were on the plane

but I assumed they must’ve all got picked up somehow or other whether any of the got injured or not I don’t know but that was a fairly straightforward landing. We didn’t do a second run which is the only one that was all completed on the first run As I say it was all very simple the beach was all nice and straight and the troops were

able to make good headway up the beach and chase the Japs and I don’t think there were many Japs left on Borneo after the three landings. I don’t think so. I don’t think they would’ve given in but they could’ve all been shot and killed.

No but we did assume that there was a possibility we would go to

Singapore and start operations there but it didn’t eventuate.

Back to Morotai and from there we were given orders to go to various islands – the islands had received Australian troops once the

surrender took effect go to the various islands and get ready to pick up the prisoners or the Dutch or other native people that were there and take them to certain places to be looked after.

Oh not far from Tarakan or Morotai actually we were still in that area so we were able to go from one island to the other and as soon as we got there was did what we were asked to do was to pick up all these people and take them back to Morotai.

Oh we were all thrilled we thought well this is good because we can start thinking about going home so no that was really good. There were some who were prepared to stay on but

no the large proportion of those on the ship were quite happy to be given their marching orders [told to go home].

Oh yes we went to the Treasure Islands which are not far from Bougainville and the sailors went ashore and played cricket and football on the beach and we had a big party

and somehow or other the cooks organised plenty of food and that sort of thing and we had plenty of beer on board to give them all a bottle of beer each so that was good, that was quite a good celebration so we did that but mostly we were going around picking up troops and one thing and another on various islands.

At one of the Spice Islands… now I could tell you the name if I…

I can look it up – I can look it up in the book and give it to you.

Well actually I think

the Japanese must’ve got the message fairly early because they made sure that the well the ones that we mainly picked up were Australian troops that had been prisoners of war probably from Singapore or places like that. We picked them up their health was fairly reasonable they’d been fattened up because by the time we got to them it was about 2 or 3 weeks had

gone by it doesn’t take long once you get good food to start putting on weight and we spoke to them and asked them how they felt about it all and all they wanted to do was get back to Morotai and either fly back to Australia which most of them did. The Dutch people, I don’t know where they finished up but we probably took them to Morotai and

left them there and then they would’ve arranged for them to be flown out to other places but the women and children well we did our best to look after them. The sailors were very good with the children. They made swings and seesaws and you know out of timber that we had on board and entertained them the best they could.

The mothers were well fed and looked after and given good accommodation and they mixed around with the officers and the sailors, talked to them. I talked to several of the ladies and they told us a lot about what they had suffered during the time that they were prisoners which was a long period it was

about 4 or 5 years for most of them and the Japanese gave them a pretty rough time and they didn’t hesitate in telling you what the Japanese did to them and all that sort of thing which you know shudder made us shudder at the thought of it all.

Well they were friendly people they could speak good English.

Oh about the accommodation, terrible accommodation that the quality of the good. The behaviour of the Japanese was pretty shocking with some of them but not all of them. Not all the women got treated roughly. I think they were rather fortunate but some of them had a

terrible time. I don’t thing they were prepared to tell us to say too much to us you know not that we wanted to hear too much too I think but we felt very sorry for them but rather pleased that we were able to provide them with good accommodation on board the ship and good food.

Are you talking about the troops?

Oh well I think it was much the same. They were just – most of them were just locked up and in camps and all they really had to do was grow vegetables and things like that partly for themselves and probably partly for the Japanese. None of them mentioned any

problem they had as far as health and comfort was concerned because it was all pretty minimal. It’s not easy – see a lot of the fellas don’t talk see after the war when I went back to work we had a young officer in the treasury there and he wouldn’t talk about it other

than just to say that he hated officers. Well you know I expected that because some of the officers who were prisoners didn’t look after the lads, which was a shame but they weren’t all like that some were quite good but some weren’t.

That we had to make sure that every Japanese that we passed had to salute us whether you were an ordinary sailor or an officer they all had to salute us which the Japanese did quite happily. They were probably glad it was all over too. Of course a lot of our officers went around a lot of places where they could get all sorts of

souvenirs like swords. Someone came back to the ship, one of our officers went down to one of the stores and he came back with about a half a dozen swords. But by the time they handed out about three I think to the senior officers including the engineers and so on they got passed

the run out of swords so that was the end of that. And a bit later on they went to another place there and they decided that they had one sword left over so they gave it to me you see. I looked at it and it didn’t look too good it was in rough condition and one thing and another. Anyway I bought, I picked it up and took it home and I hung on to it there for about

oh I suppose 10 or 12 years I had it hanging on the kitchen wall there and the kids used to laugh about it and one thing and another and they’re occasionally feel the blade which was very very sharp I had to be careful to see that they didn’t start throwing it around anyway I saw an advertisement in the local paper one day where a Japanese

fellow was in North Adelaide hotel and he was there to buy Japanese swords. So I said to Pam I said, “Oh,” I said, “this is only sitting up there I’ll take it and see how much I can get for it.” And I thought I wouldn’t get much it was a terrible looking thing and when I got to the hotel and walked in there, there was another officer ahead of me I think he was a bit younger than me,

army officer, he went in and he had this brilliant looking sword a bit like mine there all gold and glittery and one thing and another and we went up to the cabin or the room to see this Japanese fella, no actually there were two of them there one fella couldn’t speak English and the chap who was doing all the buying he couldn’t speak English. Anyway this fellow with the glittery sword the door opened and they beckoned him in and he was there for

about 3 or 4 minutes and he came out and he looked as cross as anybody could look and he still had his sword in his hand see. I thought hello what the devil’s going on obviously he wanted too much or they’d offered him too little and I thought I don’t expect too much for my old looking thing you see and I went in there and before – when I first got the sword I found out how you could pull them to pieces

and in there you can see the engraving on the hilt and that sort of thing and in Japanese probably the name of the family and when I looked at it I thought to myself well this one might be worth a few dollars. Anyway as soon as I handed the sword over they quickly pulled it to pieces and yabber yabber yabber and they were talking together to each other for quite awhile so I’m standing there wondering what the devil’s going on

then all of a sudden he said to me, “He said 100 pounds,” because that was back in those days and I said, “I’d like 150.” “No way,” he said, “No way 100 pounds if you won’t accept a 100 pounds you go out that door.” I thought “Well, 100 pounds is better than nothing,” so that’s where I left it. Quite an experience.

No, well the captain didn’t say anything really, I think he might’ve left it

to the first lieutenant and others to be as friendly as possible and look after them well it was obvious that the common sailors on board were quite happy to do all sorts of things for the children and the mothers that were there and the prisoners of course we would’ve treated them the same.

Oh pretty old clothes the women. The children didn’t have much

of course it was in the tropical area so nobody was wearing very much at all.

They’d received some clothing, army clothing, so shorts and shirts and boots and it was interesting to see and talk to the ex-prisoners

because one of the first thing they’d do is go like this and pull up their trousers and the bone was only about so big and the trouser leg was like and doing that made you realise exactly how thing they’d really got so we were very sympathetic towards them but all we could do was feed them up and hope for the best yeah.

I think their mental health at that stage was improving anyway. They might’ve been very upset initially but they sort of got used to it I think and put up with it and hoped that they would live. Quite a few of them did but then of course a lot would have died of illness, diseases and things like that. There were plenty of diseases there

and it was bad enough the Australian troops that were landed on the beaches there they had to go into areas that were pretty bad but they took chance. And even on board ship there we had a lot of sailors there well I only got dingy fever which lasted about a fortnight but other people like one of the friends that I showed you that photograph where he’s standing alongside me

in the depot at Port Adelaide there that he was also awarded with a DSC [Distinguished Service Cross] and he’s had nothing but bad health ever since the end of the war. I tried to get in touch with him he’s married a woman that worked with him and she’s still alive but she won’t have a bar of me. She won’t tell

me why when I try and ring him up she hangs up and I found that very disappointing because he’s a very nice fellow, he’s a very knowledgeable fellow, he’s very well educated. Even after the war he ran a business and made a lot of money but his health gradually deteriorated more and more and more and he’s 84 there’s only a

fortnight between us.

Oh no I was just discharged

Yeah they gave me, I’ve got a copy of it there, to say that my service is now completed and that was more or less the end of the

communication until around about 5 years later then they sent out an invitation to reservists to rejoin the naval reserve and I thought oh well why not I’ll keep it going and so I did that and that kept me going right up until I reached the age of 60.

Oh pretty quickly I think because I had so much to do. We bought a brand new house. I had to go back to university and get started there and that all happened of course before I rejoined the naval reserve.

No I was glad to get back and give the navy away but I was still quite happy to join the reserve because I felt that there was a need to look after the young fellows who were interested in joining the naval reserve and pass on some of my experiences.

Used to run classes there and teach them seamanship and gunnery and things like that first of all which was all pretty straightforward to me and then we got a number of young officers from the colleges. They were young college boys who were made midshipmen you see which was a start

for them and then they gave me the job of teaching them navigation that was the main one I did that for several years and then from there once they learned quite a lot about navigation and a few other parts of naval training they formed the…

branch – formed a branch of the naval reserve for shipping control. And we had a navy commander, reserve officer, down at Port Adelaide there and he was too

busy doing things so although he was given the task of getting it all set up he passed it all over to me and said, “Here there’s a job for you to do,” and we had a group of about a dozen naval officers including an American Officer and we went down to Port Adelaide on a weekly basis and I taught them naval control of

shipping and got good results with them yeah they all enjoyed it so we went on the naval control of shipping over quite a number of years going interstate and down to Flinders Naval Depot and doing some studies down there in other branches. Went to Nowra,

to Garden Island and we also did fortnightly cruises or duties in other ports and places there over quite a long period.

Oh nothing really

because we had a lot of officers who were keen on organising dinners as a military club and going to other functions joined the United Service Institution and – USI, and been associated with that since about 195…

1958 I suppose I have and I still go to their monthly meetings and monthly lunches at Keswick Barracks. Pam and I both go there and we both have got our duties are receiving the guests as they come along collecting their luncheon fees and

selling raffle tickets and give them their badges – name badges.

The navy…

As a young adult?

Yes I suppose 18 would’ve been a young adult.

Oh I think it kept me on

the straight and narrow [out of trouble]. Gave me a lot of entertainment, a lot of adventure, I didn’t go right round the world with them I had to do that independently. No it was good. I enjoyed navigation and those sorts of things. Of course gunnery was well behind me because there was never the opportunity to take part in any of that.

Oh I did go down to Flinders Naval Depot on one training course and there were several new officers who were doing a gunnery course and they were short of a gunner and I got asked to join them because they had to do some firing of guns you see and when we went to the gunnery range down

at Flinders Naval Depot, they gave me the job of being the gunner and reach loader and all the rest of it you see when it came to do the firing because I had so much experience I knew what to do and how quickly to do things and that sort of thing so I was quite prepared to when they said, “Fire,” to make sure it fire straight away

where some of them left it for awhile while they thought about it, should they fire or shouldn’t they. So you know it was funny but yeah.

I don’t think

pride sort of came into it it was probably after the war when I went to Government House to get my award and my mother and father came with me and of course Pam, and there were several other naval officers there that also got awards and I knew them. There was, one of them was a Westralia officer so

that was quite good. We were all very pleased about getting an award. I don’t know what the awards were for the others other than the fact that their name appeared on the list. Like one was an engineer officer well I don’t know what he could’ve done that would’ve been a – that would’ve earned him a Distinguished Service Cross but that’s what he got. Usually you get that for being in action and usually

the engine room boys are all down below making sure that the engines are still going a bit different but anyway I don’t want to be critical about that.

Well it means a lot because when I first joined the reserve it was January 1918 and Anzac Day of course is in

April so I already had a uniform I knew how to march and the naval reserve all formed part of the parade. That was the first one that I went to after that it was all war time and we didn’t have any marches steaming around

and after the war of course yes it was started again and I don’t think I’ve missed any of them since then. Go along there, particularly the Westralia boys, Westralia, Manoora and Kanimbla we all form one big group in the march and we mostly knew each other so it’s good to get there and talk to them and

one thing and another yeah so I think I’ll keep going as long as I can.

Oh the numbers are the big thing, that’s down, but the rest of it’s all right. We all greet each other and talk while we’re marching yeah, no it’s all right, it’s quite good.

Oh remembrance of course. Yes it’s good to talk to the lads, find out how they are if they’re still battling with their health as a lot of them are. Yeah it’s good to greet them, yeah. I’ve been along to a few

after the march, lunches but I got a little bit bored with that because most of them get down and they drink and that sort of thing and it really doesn’t entertain me. Pam doesn’t march now she did for a few years but she’s not a long marcher now which is a pity in a way but she likes to see them on the television.

And she’s got plenty of friends that she still talks to.

Oh well I would like the family to remember me really. I’m working on the family

history and I’m trying to get as much information as I can so that I can pass copies on to them. It’s a bit hard for young people now to know what we went through. Reading about it is one thing but being involved in it like we were is completely different.

But when it was over we were glad to finish we were all the same.

Oh yes, it’s very popular. See we have navy nights at the naval military club and we

used to have a lot more when the reserve was more active. All the junior officers used to turn up and they were told if they didn’t turn up they were in trouble. So we had quite a bit of discipline as far as that was concerned but of course now that the nature of the reserve has changed, here in South Australia anyway, in Sydney and Melbourne I believe it’s still very very strong because they got a depot and we haven’t which is a

pity. Now if anybody wants to join the naval reserve they’d got to go to Flinders Naval Depot first where they take it from there it’s a bit hard to know. I get the Navy News through the AUSI [?] and they’ve got a big article in that for the naval reserve but all they talk about is those in Brisbane,

Sydney, Melbourne the rest of the States don’t get a mention.

It’s a bit hard to tell them that they should understand what

we stood for and how we coped and all that sort of thing but how do you do that a lot of young people these days are not interested in the services and so on but a lot of them don’t go to church now like they used to I don’t know it’s very difficult

you can’t communicate to them really. It’s all right if I go up to the RSL [Returned and Services League] at Blackwood here because most of them have either had some association or their sons and daughters those who have had an association during the wartime but it’s hard to talk to them even. I don’t know, I’ve taken my grandchildren

up to the RSL up there but when I say we’re going up to the RSL they don’t say, “Oh good, we’ll come with you,” they don’t you see. Mind you they’ve all been studying and one thing and another they always haven’t got the time. Our two sons for instance they had about five years each in their university studies and

I didn’t suggest that they got involved in anything until they got all their exams out of the way which they did and then they took off overseas. The dentist he went over to the UK and was in London for a couple of years and then up to Glasgow for about 10 years. The other lad he went over and toured the world

as an architect and when he got back he started a business. Well you know you can’t get involved, when you’re staring a business you can’t get involved in military and other type of things so it’s not easy. But they’re still good people, yeah.

Oh it’s a pleasure, a pleasure for me. I’m sorry I let you down in some spots there.