Australians at War Film Archive

Well I

was born in Fremantle and soon afterwards the Depression was pretty much upon us, and my father who came from a long line of English blacksmiths, had decided to join his father and brothers in the timber industry, about seventy miles out of Perth. Which was a small township called

Holyoake, which was at that time, a number five state sawmill.

Number five state sawmill, which the state owned a number of sawmills throughout the state, they were all state owned. So I was reared actually in very much a country atmosphere, very much so. My father, having been to the war, joined his two brothers who were local, and his

father, my grandfather. And my father lost an eye in the First World War, and suffered that disability of course. But nevertheless, he was able to be fully engaged in employment. And we transferred from the Fremantle School at which I started at, and spent only six months, to the Holyoake Primary School.

Well my mother was born in Fremantle and my father I think was born in Toodyay, in Western Australia. And he was working at the State Implement Works, which was manufacturing steelworks which fitted into his trade of being a blacksmith.

1921.

About 1928.

Well I’m fortunate to be able to remember quite a deal about Fremantle from those days, because we returned there, we had lots of relations there.

And we returned there for holidays at least once a year. Mainly of course at Christmas time. Fremantle was an exciting little place then, and became much more exciting later on and is now much more highly developed of course. But I remember the very slow trams, and I remember swimming, and I

remember generally speaking enjoying the company of my very many cousins. The one I recall had eight children in the family so, and others had less. But it still nevertheless did involve us a great much in the Fremantle area. That went on pretty well all my time until I joined up

when I was 19.

Only one sister, besides myself.

Holyoake is seventeen miles out of Pinjarra, Pinjarra being the junction of the Hotham Valley

train line of that time. Pinjarra is on the main line from Perth to Bunbury, and we always had a bus service, a daily bus service from Holyoake to Pinjarra, so we did have the benefit of being quite accessible to quite a deal of life. And of course Holyoake was

only about thirty miles from Mandurah, which of course now is a very great hive of activity, which we enjoyed very many times, fishing expeditions to Mandurah.

Yes.

Yes, as a blacksmiths. As a blacksmith. I was

working as a fourteen year old.

I was in the sawmill for a short period of time, and fortunately my father was a little more perceptive than I was, and he could see on the engineering side of the locomotive, the traction engines and so forth had much more future than being in the timber mill, so

at the age of about fifteen and a half, and I was quite happy to give up working on an axe, which I found not exactly the easiest of things the day after I left school. So I became an engine cleaner for the locomotive as we had a log hauling situation. All the timber for bringing the logs to the mill, we had a distance of about thirty-seven,

thirty-eight miles of haulage. And that eventually of course finished up that I was fortunate enough then to become a fireman on the engine. And that was a very big jump up. My father was very perceptive which I thank him for in his absence.

Yes.

Yes.

Well, it was a primary school that went to about what we would call form three. That was the highest and then you could go, if you were fortunate, and some of the children went but not very many, to Bunbury High School from there. I left school when I was

eighteen, when I was fourteen, I’m sorry, so I was remained at the school in form two and approaching three, form three. And it was a wonderful teaching school actually, on reflection. The standard of teaching I look back on and find it to be rather outstanding

considering that it was not a very senior school, and that the number of children there was only a hundred and ten perhaps a hundred and twenty children. And of course being, as you get on in school you become the school captain and so forth, so the last day of my primary school I kicked eighteen goals that day. And I spent I might add the last quarter

as fullback. That’s to my disgust.

Might have kicked twenty-five.

Yes well the, when I started, just to give you an indication, when I started work in 1935

it was just getting back then. We actually started on half time, so it was one week on, one week off. And it was similar with a lot of the sections within the timber industry where people were working various periods of time, like three quarter time, and I know it was just coming good when I joined

into the workforce, and I was fortunate enough to go onto full time pretty much within the first three months. And so the economics were taking up and things were getting much better. Of course we were preparing for a war I guess.

Yes, my father was in, well went along with the half time, part time, three quarter time and then to full time just the same as everyone else. Because the blacksmiths were involved in servicing the machinery of the mill and also very much so of the locomotives which were responsible for this log hauling. Over

what was a pretty long distance actually at that time. Thirty-eight miles was a long way to be hauling rakes of logs.

No. There was no, mothers didn’t work in those days, except in the home. She was a real homemaker.

No, we didn’t see much of that in Holyoake, but I do recall it very much happening in Fremantle. Even when we were on holidays there, it was common for people to knock at the door

and ask “If there was any possibility of obtaining a meal?” But in the country in Holyoake, was a fairly small township and that was not in evidence.

No, there were no aboriginals

at the school, but we did play, there were aboriginals playing football in some of the other teams that we competed against. Particularly Pinjarra, Coolup and North Dandalup. But there were only handful of them. But I might add that they were brilliant, especially when the ball got wet.

Dropped it on the ground, broken glass eye.

Yes, but he didn’t wear it very much, especially when I dropped one.

Well as, apparently as a young

child I was entrusted with the glass eye. And unfortunately like small children, they don’t live up to their parents’ ambitions and expectations. And it’s been related to me that it was quite a trauma to find the glass eye crumbled on the floor.

Yes. Well they weren’t that, that was one of the problems.

Strangely enough as we get older and we try to recall that, and there was so little related. So much so that I’ve been to the archives to get some background on his service

life. Although having a father who lost an eye in the war, I was terribly conscious of war, and growing up I was always of the opinion that I would go to the war. Not knowing that there was going to be one even. But when he returned from France, where he lost his eye, he then somehow or other joined the navy for a short period of time,

so that of course made up my mind that if he was in the army and the navy, then perhaps I should try the air force.

Yes.

No, I don’t have, I can’t recall much in the way of discussion about the war except that

one of my uncles was, arrived in England at our relations in England where my father happened to be at the time. And my father was very cross with him, because he had arrived in England with the army, and he had only just turned fifteen, which was a great disappointment to my father. But anyway, my uncle returned safely as did my other two uncles,

but my mother’s brother, he was lost unfortunately, he did not return. So I had the four uncles and my father in the army and one was lost and my father suffered the loss of an eye.

Well it was shrapnel, and apparently he walked for five miles with the eye in his hand,

over duckboards, which were notorious in the fighting fields of France. And it was a, the shrapnel was actually pinned around his neck, or on a pin around his neck when he became conscious of the fact

that he was in hospital and had suffered the loss of an eye, which of course was expecting. Because of the fact that he had had this terrible trauma of being so wounded from a shell blast. And I think that it was something that he was

conscious of during the whole of his life time, because it did naturally make some very major restrictions in his career as a blacksmith.

No, there was very

little in those years in the small town. There would have been a service in the adjoining township of Dwellingup. Which was just two miles away and was really the focal small centre for a number of timber mills around the area. There were other timber mills like Marrinup,

Nanga Brook, there was also Banksiadale and Holyoake. There were four timber mills around the area, and Dwellingup was the focal point. It had the hospital, the hotel, of course that was a very important part of timber mill entertainment. And I think some members of my family were guilty of enjoying that during

the time that I can remember. Not of course myself.

Yes, I had the opportunity of going to

Bunbury High School on a scholarship. But unfortunately most of those that had returned from Bunbury were working on the local milk carts, or in the timber mill and my father couldn’t see the benefit or the necessity of further education. And I suffered that and so did my sister, who was, also had a free scholarship to Bunbury High School,

but however we progressed from there.

Unfortunately, that was the case, there was very little opportunity. And as I said we were seventy miles from Perth and communications and travel, whilst they were readily accessible,

it certainly meant that people would have to board away, board at school and there were very few people in our township were in a position to have the finances to service such an activity. My wife was much more fortunate because she had a father of farming background who sent

all the daughters and the son to boarding school for practically the whole of their secondary life. I might add she matriculated in four languages.

Yes.

The job for a new fourteen year old on the job was to split timber, lengths of timber and stack the behind the boilers that were driving the timber mill, and that was where each and every fourteen year old started.

It was a very good initiation into life really. Quite a surprising situation to come from situation to come from school on Friday and to be swinging an axe for eight hours a day on Monday.

Yes I think, although we were pretty hardened as schoolboys just the same.

No, the timber in the boilers, used for the boilers were usually the off-cuts. And they were also sometimes the short-grained timber, the piece of log, which were not really suitable to be milled. So they were

more or less reduced fairly quickly to a size that would be appropriate for the boilers to use.

No, I was never involved in timber getting, no. I took the other line, some of my school mates did proceed to being timber fellers, which was another aspect and they were of

course then isolated out, thirty-seven of thirty-eight miles out for the whole of the week. And then they would come back on the Friday night and into Holyoake back to their families. But it was a very, very heavy and very difficult lifestyle.

I was only involved in that position for about six months, and then I was promoted to down to the mill, into the mill proper, and I was fairly

competent as regard to printing, and I was involved in the recording of lengths of timber, and also the type of timber which then left the mill and went out and was stacked for curing. It was stacked

at times for periods of some years and of course it did increase greatly in value. And some was also for special orders, they were cut to orders and they were treated and trucked away by the railway siding, from the railway siding in Holyoake. Which as I

mentioned before was on what they called the Hotham Valley government rail line.

It was only jarrah, but it would be cut by four different saws. It would be made, from some very large timber and then

it would be the off cuts from that would go to the next, the smaller bench for further reducing and then they could also take it then for the flooring situation, which would be the last of the rip saws. And these would be made into this

three and an eighth inch flooring, parquetry mainly I think we call it now. And that was a very highly valued product because it had to be completely unblemished with regards to gum or any stain or any detraction from an absolute perfect product.

Well conservation in our time of course was something which we were not terribly conscious of. But having said

that, we were reliant, and I believe very fortunate in the quality of those who were working in the forestry commission. They marked every tree which was to be felled and handled and every feller had his own brand, and every log was distinctive branded,

so everyone was responsible, there was nothing hit and miss about it. And I believe that those men spent the whole of their lives really in the protection of the forest, and selecting particular trees to be felled at a certain time, and then it was possible for the mills to go back over country or land that had been

felled, and then return in another twenty-five or thirty years. And then go back over and get the next product from that particular area. So it was all very severely registered, and I thought, and on thinking and reflecting, those men who spent the whole of their lives

as foresters did a wonderful job. And I find it difficult now to relate to the problems that they are having in the forestry areas. I’ve always believed that properly handled, a forest is a living thing and if it is properly handled it can be harvested and re-harvested. And I don’t know, clear felling of course

is a different proposition of which I know very little and would not like to buy into that.

Well we were very active sport wise, we had our own football team. That was Australian Football, AFL. We had a very keen tennis teams, and we were very much involved in dancing, balls

and mid week dancing and so forth. We played a little bit of billiards, snooker, and cards. We played a lot of cards. There was a lot of interaction family wise in visiting one another, the various houses in card competitions in Euchre tournaments and Cribbage

tournaments and it was surprising really that we didn’t really seem to be conscious of any disability in the entertainment life.

Yes, some to excess at that time, but then that was a

part of the heavy timber industry, heavy work. The younger men were not very much orientated, I can’t recall a great deal of drinking at functions. And it would have been only beer

of course, there would have been no wine, it was hardly heard of, except a bit of plonk [cheap wine].

Yes, it just re-enforced

my ideas that I would be joining some military action. To the point where I was an active member of the local rifle club. I think at about the age of sixteen or seventeen I became a member of the rifle club. And that was I guess something that was in my mind.

Because rifle shooting can be very competitive, and of course it can serve you well if the need be, but it was one of the activities I took part in as well as the tennis and the football. I was fortunate to be a reasonable size and reasonable activity that I was able to hold my own in,

and quite able to be in the men’s tennis team at the age of fifteen, so I was rather fortunate in that field. My cousins were senior and junior state champions of tennis, so I had a little bit of interest in that.

I played state in the state junior championship

one year, 1939 I think.

By then, by 1939 I was fortunate enough for the manager to commend me for my,

the way I’d carried out my work as an engine cleaner and had offered me the position to be a fireman, provided the union didn’t object because I was under the age of eighteen, and fortunately I was not protested about and I was

able to carry on in that position. Which of course was a very financial situation, because we worked such very long hours.

As a fireman we had to keep that engine stoked up and steamed and be responsible for producing the traction for the log hauling.

It was a green timber, the timber was green, we loaded the timber onto the tender of the engine every night when we came in, so we were burning green wood. And we had some very steep grades on the line, because there was no

great earthmoving equipment. If there was a hill you had to basically go over it as best you could, or sort of deviate a little bit perhaps. But it was a very scientific job, because you didn’t get any real practise before you were thrown into the deep end. But nevertheless, by this time I had already

obtained my Boiler Attendance Certificate. Which I obtained five weeks after the minimum age of eighteen years, so I was a sort of aligned and quite happy about the situations I was working in.

Yeah. It’s amazing really, we used to light it up on green wood too, if we could find some wood. There were no provisions for steaming the engine, when you were engine cleaning, you just had to go out and, I suppose sixty or seventy acres, and stacks of timber, you know you’d just go and find something, bring it back, cut it up and steam the engine.

Yes, plus your water. Your water is your important part in your boiler, because you have a fusible lead plug, which if the lead plug becomes uncovered then it melts, and that’s the protection. Because the steam then comes from the boiler and puts the fire out, puts your fire out, and of course protects the

engine from damage. And that is the bugbear of a fireman to ever have a loss of a plug. If he loses a plug that’s quite a black.

Well you’d have to have the,

the firebox has got to be cleaned out, and then someone’s got to go in that small front hole where you feed the timber in, and attach a new plug. And then you have to have water, it’s quite a business, it’s very traumatic.

No, never happened to me.

Oh yes, it did happen, but fortunately didn’t happen to me. Because being a junior of course, being the age of seventeen, I was not entitled to be out on the foot plate, but no, I was up to that situation without any problem, and very quickly proved that I was

suitable. And had I not gone to the war I would have studied for my drivers ticket within two years.

Well, it was a G Class engine, and of course quite up to the, and suitable for the job that it was being asked to do. That was the log hauling. And normally we had to be very careful with the loading, and conscious of what

gradients we had to cope with, and also we had to be conscious also of the quality of the and the weight on the particular loading. And then when we also occasionally had to go down hill, so we also had to be conscious of the braking ability of the

engine, and this of course became the expertise of the actual engine driver. And we would work up to sixteen or seventeen hours a day, which was very long shifts. And then of course at night, there was always the replenishing of the timber onto the tender of the engine, ready for

the next day. And the track that we were using, the railway line was maintained by a gang of fettlers, but they were not given the proper facilities as we know it now. They would have to make a railway line occasionally with no assistance from any

gravel or metal. It was just pretty well made on top of whatever soil was around. Supported by blackboy trees, old sleepers, old timber, anything at all which could be found. With the result that we had some very risky situations to travel over. And it was

quite normal to have derailments. Which of course meant that the logs that were being hauled would naturally crash, they would go in all sorts of directions. And hopefully nobody would be too badly hurt. I worked with a engine driver who was minus a leg because of an

accident that he’d had when there was a big pile up.

Yes, I took a great deal of pride in my work. Because as an engine cleaner I had the brass around the top of the funnel all shiny, and the whistle and the nameplate on the side of the engine. And also

the side, the connecting rods all had been treated by steel wool with thumbscrews down the middle of them. And I took a great deal of pride. And that of course was supported by the management by repainting and keeping the painting on the engines up to scratch, which until that time

very little had been done.

There was only three on the crew. The guard, the driver and the fireman.

You did. You all got on.

Yes, that didn’t seem to be a great deal of problem. There was real competition between the crews, because you had two or three crews generally speaking. And of course there wasn’t a great deal of ambition to be standing in on another crew. Although there were really only three crews, or three available crews, two were the main crews, the others

were reserves who were called upon very occasionally. But we really only ever had two drivers, so the rest was able to be filled in but not the drivers. You were not able to drive a locomotive without a proper ticket.

Yes, we got on

so well together really and the fact that it was a noisy occupation, there was not a lot of time in which to converse. When you were mobile, you were very busy. The fireman was busy, and the driver was very anxious under the circumstances to be watching the line ahead, because

invariably we were pushing two water tanks in front of us. We were, in one way we were going backwards, the other way we were going forward, so for thirty odd miles, thirty-eight miles or so, in many instances we had two water tanks that were actually ahead of the engine, which was a very dangerous situation, which you had to watch

very, very closely. Because the railway line itself was a very indifferent construction. Especially as we were in a high rainfall area, and we suffered quite a deal of overnight heavy falls of rain, which could badly affect the particular form of the railway track we were operating on.

Yes, well strangely enough at Holyoake there were two main families, the Stephen family and the Romaro family. And one of the Romaro’s eventually married my sister, which was a most unusual happening. But the Romaro’s had about four men, and

the Stephens had similar. So although the Romaro’s were really keen mill men and wonderful experts in the timber industry, the Stephen part of the competition was in the mechanical and in the blacksmithing engineering side. But it did create quite a deal of interest,

but there were very many other interesting characters. Some of whom were, had been, spent their whole lives in timber milling, and I think there was a degree of seniority about certain positions in the mill. Of course there was also

the ongoing responsibility of one family of being the saw doctor. Who was responsible for doing up the saws. Now the saws were changed in the mill at ten o’clock and again at lunch time and again at three o’clock, in an eight-hour day. So those saws had to be sharpened, during that

period of time, and the mill just stopped for that very short period. And there was a great pressure to get the saws into place and not be detaining the production from the whole mill because someone was a little slow changing his saw. Because all, when the mill was in progress then all saws were working.

But the particular persons within the mill, from time to time, well of course as a boy, as a younger man, I guess perhaps we didn’t have as much to do with the more senior ones in the mill over the years. Because our time before the war, or before going into the war only stretched over a period of

about seven years, and less than that in fact, five years.

No, that was a figure that would escape me. And I wouldn’t have had that figure anyway in my head, and having regard to the fact that I left the mill probably after about

eighteen months and went into the engineering side.

Well, we were all active fellows as young men. Dancing, by that time we even had a cycling club, the football club, and as we got to the stage of about 39, of course things were starting to

taper off a little bit, because the war had started in 39, so it was a time when even some of the older men had joined the forces at a very early age. And I know some in particular had gone in the forestry call to Scotland in very early in 39.

And so the war at that time was on our mind, but of course we were not really old enough to be involved until about 40 and from then on. But it was all war talk and certainly the idea of joining up was a matter of discussion.

Different ones had different ideas as to whether they should go, and of course there was the opportunity be manpower. The manager of the mill tried desperately to, manpower get me too, just sign the form he said, “Just sign the form, and you can be manpower.”

Reserved occupation. And when I was eventually called up and had

two cancellations, he told me that they were going to mess me about forever and a day, so I might just as well sign the form, but I resisted.

Well, that may have been the case too, and I guess I would not

have had any contact back with the mill after I had left, because we then immediately were involved in the service and literally never returned to the mill again.

Well, I

did enlist, I enlisted initially in about March of 1991, ah 1940. And I as a boiler attendant, because I had to have this boiler attendance certificate, and

the air force wrote back to me and suggested that because of my educational standard I could be considered for air crew. Well that hadn’t really ever crossed my mind, but again being an opportunist I thought, “Well, why not?” So I went of course for this test

on a Sunday along with about a hundred other young fellows and I was accepted. And then given, I might add surprisingly given, quite a number of books to be studied, that I had to go home and study. One I remember was trigonometry, which I had never heard of. The other one was Morse code,

which I had to acquire a Morse code key, and learn that. And there were a number of other subjects that I don’t recall now. But I do remember having to send back these examinations each month, and this went on for some five or six months.

I was still working at the mill, on the locomotive,

still a fireman. And then when I was first called up, the first call up was November the 1st ,

That would have been, I was twenty then, so that would have been 1941. And that was owing to the ensigncies of the service,

my call up had been deferred. So then the next one came on the 1st of December and then it was deferred again. And of course the manager by this time of the mill was very anxious that I should sign the manpower form. But I still resisted, and on the 1st of February I entered the Empire Air Training Scheme at Pearce in Western

Australia.

Well I think they accepted the fact that I was going, and particularly because I had this six months or seven months of doing lessons by the

candle light and by the oil lamps, which of course we had no electricity in those days. And we did have the luxury of one pressure lamp, a Tilley pressure lamp. Which of course had to service the whole family and couldn’t always be made available to that young fellow who was trying to get himself into the air force. So they were really aware of it, and

although my mother had lost her very close brother, she was very apprehensive. But nevertheless she was very accepting of the fact.

No, I was not prevailed upon except by the manager to do that. I was never influenced, it was accepted that

I was going.

Yes, well my sister didn’t endeavour to influence me at all, she was two years younger. I guess the military background that we had really made it acceptable to do, to take your turn.

Well one in particular mate that I am still in contact with, he joined the army. My cousin who was a year older, he joined the army and was in Tobruk, and unfortunately after embark, after coming home from Tobruk and the African campaign,

was sent to Lae and was killed on the beach at Lae.

No. Yep.

Well it really entailed quite a bit of drill work, I remember that. Out on the square. It also entailed getting to know, and getting to accept quite a number of other fellows around you from all

walks of life. And it was a period where you started to get the idea about the need to have confidence in the particular people around you. And Pearce at that time was a permanent air force station, and a very, very nice situation for

trainees to be in. Well unfortunately, soon afterwards we were moved to an orphanage, which became the Headquarters for the Empire Air Training Scheme in Clontarf in Perth. Was a suburb of Perth, and although the parade ground was beautifully grassed alongside the Swan River, as distinct from the gravel at Pearce,

nevertheless Pearce had a lot going for it compared with Clontarf. I won’t tell you some of the background on Clontarf.

Well yes. Clontarf of course, we took it over long before, there was no preparation. It was a decision apparently, a high up decision and we found ourselves there for toileting,

where pits were just dug in the pine trees, in the pine plantations. And a branch was strung up along there and that was where you sat, and it was unbelievable really. We were in, I was particularly one that was I think I drew the chapel where we were

sleeping, we had no equipment such as lockers or facilities for clothes, it was an unbelievable move, and obviously done in a hurry, for some particular reason. And we were actually delayed, the move delayed our course for a month.

And we were there in 24 course, when we reached our next posting, which was Ballarat to do wireless, we were on 25 course.

Yes.

Wireless operator.

Wireless operator, air gunner yes. Well at that time the war was building up, the big flying, four engine aircraft were on the drawing boards, well actually being manufactured of course at that time. And so eighty out of the hundred and ten in our course went

for wireless air gunners, and then about fifteen went for pilots and fifteen went for navigators. So there were a terrible lot of disappointments in there, there was nothing they could do about it. It was purely and simply a decision that was made, you were just old, and I must say that I was very happy

to accept my posting because I believed that I was very fortunate to be able to stay in aircrew.

Yes well, they may have well been

had we been in Australia making allowances for, as they did in the RAF [Royal Air Force] for engineers. Because in our particular crew we were very reliant on an engineer and a flight mechanic, but we didn’t train those air crews here in Australia. And then when we went overseas,

some of them did retrain and some of them did finish up there, some Australian flight engineers and flight mechanics. But those of us who trained here, and we were supposed to be fully qualified aircrew when we left Australia to go overseas. We found out later on that the equipment that we were using here in Australia was a long way behind what we had to use

when we got there.

Well we got to Ballarat and we did our wireless training there on wireless, when we were flying that was

and that was only in the later twelve, sorry in the latter month of our six-month course at Ballarat. And the wirelesses were in between our legs, and it’s very difficult to tune a wireless in between your legs. The intercoms, or the radio, voice

radio was non-existent, and we of course spent five months’ learning Morse code and radio theory. And then for a change we did radio theory and Morse code. And a little bit of drill in between and that was basically about five months until you were just about up the wall. But you did have to obtain,

you did have to obtain twenty-two words a minute in Morse code and you did have to pass all of your examinations. And those that weren’t prepared to carry on with that very sort of mundane course, went off course and became straight air gunners.

And they spent their time in the kitchens, they were not allowed just to go straight off and do their gunnery course, they were retained on course and only went to do the gunnery course when the main course went to do their gunnery course, so it wasn’t attractive really to go off course.

Yes, well that’s the course at Ballarat, I think most people would say, was a very trying course because of its monotony. And also because you were in air crew and you were anxious to get flying, you wanted to get flying, but that was a restriction where you

did very little flying, and it was in you last month. And I can tell you those boys that used to march off to go flying used to be looked at by we rookies very enviously. And they also had the luxury of getting flying boots, and that was a real, that was really something.

No, not at that time, no not there, it was reasonably good that way.

The discipline was very formal, and in those days discipline was not difficult for people. There wouldn’t

be two in a hundred that were really what you might call, these days, outrageous. But there was just one or two, but there were the people who wouldn’t go for a breakfast, and they’d be lying in until the last minute etcetera, etcetera, and there were people I suppose who went away on leave and stayed an extra

half a day or something. But there was not much opportunity at Ballarat for that. We had one night a week, we were allowed into the township, or the city of Ballarat, and then once a month we were allowed one night in Melbourne, or one night away, an extra night away. That was the bounds, and there were never any problems

on our particular course.

Well, we went in and mostly again, dancing, mostly dancing in Ballarat. And the opportunity of having a fresh pie or two, or just an extra meal. And when we came to Melbourne of course, we again were dancing, or a little bit of a river trip or something of that nature, but the

time was very restricted because see on that Saturday when you did come to Melbourne. Well you came to Melbourne on a Friday night, well by the time you got to Melbourne it was something like eight o’clock at night, and you had to leave on Saturday night at seven o’clock to go back again. So it was just twenty-four hours really, and it didn’t give you a great deal of time to get very far

or doing anything much other than get to the city and enjoy the bright lights.

Well, fortunately I didn’t suffer from air sickness, which wasn’t uncommon of course. And I think trying to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing

was so engrossing that we were back down again very soon after realising that I was airborne. And of course always being very trusting of the pilot in front, of being a very senior person, and not realising how traumatic it was for him to be flying this trainee wireless operators around when basically

he wanted to get off over to the war and in a fighter plane. But nevertheless we survived.

No, we didn’t have an accident whilst we were there in Ballarat. Little Wackett aircraft, it was a very reliable little chap.

And we didn’t go very far, our flights were about an hour duration. And we would do a circle around, some ventured down as far as Geelong when they shouldn’t have. And they put their trailing aerials out and shot up their old schools down at Geelong. Some of them ventures from young pilots,

but all in all it was a fairly safe situation. And of course, Ballarat, the altitude around Ballarat is not in any way dangerous. So we had good facilities and good servicing, so fortunately I can report that we had no accidents at all.

Yes, well that’s an interesting story, the gunnery, because at the time we were flying, we had two kinds of aircraft at Sale where we did our gunnery course. One was a 1924 Hawker Demon, which had two cockpits. The

pilot in the front and the air gunner in the back, standing in the back. And on your harness you had an attachment, which you hooked onto a monkey strap as we called it, which stopped you from falling out of the aircraft. It was really a bit hair raising, because you had to,

you had a Vickers gun on the side of the aircraft, and your exercise was to shoot your bullets onto a raked, a clean raked area on the ground. In fact it was so-called the target area. And the targets were numbered, and if you

could actually work out which targets, if you saw it the first time around you were doing well. Usually you had to go around a second time, much to the absolute horror and protestation from the pilot. Because you hadn’t even pulled the trigger, but after a day or two you got used to that. But someone down on the ground it was their responsibility to count how many bullets made an

impression on your particular target. Well, we were never quite sure how good our aim was, but it was a very hair raising exercise, because when you put your head over the side of the aircraft your nose disappeared and your sight, it was almost impossible. But anyway that was the way we were trained, and after

seven hours of gunnery we were qualified to go to the war. But I must also say that on the other aircraft, on the Fairey Battles, it was an awful aircraft. It was the most terrible smelly aircraft. And it carried three, you had the pilot and you had two gunners, and you had to change over. One gunner changed over and he stood up and

that wasn’t quite so dangerous as the other aircraft because you wouldn’t fall out of it, but it was the same procedure. Shooting at these targets on the ground, that was the first exercise. Then we proceeded then to having an aircraft tow a drogue and we were then able to shoot at the drogue. Well of course yours truly had to shoot

the drogue away. When I was on my turn I must have hit the wire that was carrying the drogue. So there was no drogue left, so I don’t think I got a score on that one. However my gunnery report was very favourable nevertheless, so I must have hit something on the ground if I didn’t hit the drogue.

The gunnery position was in a similar situation to a little Tiger Moth. It was immediately behind the pilot and it was just a round hole you might as well say. It would have normally had a seat in it of course for normal transport, air transport. But

in our case of course we had to stand up to have access to this Vickers GO [gas operated] gun, which was a primitive sort of gun, but nevertheless quite an accurate gun. And it didn’t give you very much trouble, and you didn’t suffer from any stoppages from it. And it was quite suitable for the job, not that you would ever see another Vickers GO gun during the war, but still

I suppose it was what was available. And it was a very exciting situation I can tell you. When the aircraft left and you were airborne, until that monkey strap got a hold of you again it was very frightening for the first few times.

Yes, we were shooting at these squares that

these targets they called, which was just raked soil. And of course you had to be reasonably low, and even so you still had a very steep angle that the gun was pointing downwards. That’s the reason why you had to be fully standing to make it all possible.

Yes. Yes you were only just looking over the gun. More or less was an open gun, there was no such thing as the electric bomb sight or gun sight that we had in the, later on in the bigger aircraft and of course

turrets where we had proper electrical sightings.

Well in England we got quite a shock really when we were put into an enclosure and we came and made our first contact with the type of wireless that we were going to be

possibly using. And it was Marconi wireless as I recall it. And we had not been told really whether we were going onto Bomber Command or Coastal Command or in what capacity we would serve. I presume that this Marconi wireless was in general use for most aircraft. And we did

a substantial course, equal to the time probably that we had spent initially in Ballarat.

Oh absolutely. They were pre-historic by comparison. These were very good wireless. Very good wireless, very suitable for the job in hand. And

ultimately of course when we eventually finished up in West Africa, a very capable means of communication.

Well you do find that some people you have very little in common with, but yet because of their initial they may be the very next person along side of you. And in your early service career you are lined up for the issues of clothing, and

your next issue would be webbing, and your next issue would be if you’re lucky enough to be high enough on the list to get a rifle. Fortunately I guess I wasn’t with a name on the S’s, I didn’t get a rifle, I wasn’t high enough on the list to get a rifle, there weren’t enough for me and others

in my section. And then of course the other one is the needles, the injections. They also came, and somehow I think, I used to think when it came time for injections they used to reverse the alphabet and so the Z’s came first. We only had one Z in the group. But and also

that meant that you were basically organised into thirty’s for your accommodation in the huts. And that meant that you were automatically in the same grouping again. And so it was a fact that compatibility of the immediate persons around you was not necessarily

what you would have chosen, but nevertheless you had to accept it and grin and bear it on the basis that you were only going to be in this particular situation for perhaps two months. It was much more important when you got to wireless course and you were there for six months. And of course later on, when you lived on board aircraft

with one another, it was very important then.

Not difficult so much as a different standard of behaviour, different standard of living, different standard of background. And a lack of tolerance in some instances, but generally speaking

you could make your friends just a little few numbers away from you without too much trouble. And one has to remember when you have a group of twenty-five or thirty young air crew going to war in a hut, then there’s quite a deal of

good mateship banter, and sometimes it gets a little out of hand.

Just the month before we left Ballarat, that would have been about October in 1941, 1942, I’m sorry.

Yes, well that was, CO [Commanding Officer] Fairburn was the commanding officer, was the CO and his initials were the same. And he was a very strict disciplinarian, and he was quite one for ceremony and we were awarded our

sparks so called, for our radio. We had a little clip that went on your arm to indicate that you had reached this stage. And then of course you didn’t get a wing until you passed out your gunnery at Sale and then you got the air gunners

wing. Which was the ultimate, that was the ultimate.

Not quite as much as at Ballarat actually, because it was a very short course, it was only about a month duration. Well certainly less that five weeks, and everybody seemed to be in a hurry. The war was more advanced and there seemed to be

more pressure at this time, and we of course were expecting, and naturally expecting to go overseas. And by that time the normal procedure for most of us was to go overseas. And ultimately we did, after a little bit of embarkation leave back to Western Australia. Eventually returned to Melbourne and

departed for overseas. Through United Stated of America fortunately.

Well that is very difficult to recall really. I know that it was only about a week, and we were to

join a ship, just a cargo ship to come around to, from Perth to Melbourne. And we were on the ship I know on New Years Day in 1943.

But I don’t recall a great deal of that last embarkation depot leave because what, splitting up between family and I think only one girlfriend, the time was, and by seeing a few relations and so forth,

it was a very, very traumatic time really, although very exciting as a twenty year old.

I guess I was conscious of it but being an optimist I’m not sure

that it really sunk into me. But, about the dangerous episode that we were then embarking on. It was just too glamorous then, after all this was a very exciting situation for a twenty year old, especially coming from the background as I had before.

Yes, we went to America on the USS Westpoint, which was America’s largest passenger ship, which had been converted to a troop carrier. And there were eighteen hundred aircrew, Australian aircrew on board, and we went via Auckland.

We got ourselves nicely dressed and presentable to go ashore at Auckland, and we weren’t allowed ashore, so that was a little disappointing. And we also, the idea why we called into New Zealand was to get, there were wounded Americans to be picked up from Guadalcanal. And so

we proceeded to San Francisco.

Well fortunately we didn’t see very many of them. We had very limited quarters and very limited movement on the ship, naturally blacked out of course and very, very little movement.

The conditions were reasonable, except that when we asked if we could have some tea instead of coffee we found ourselves fronting up to large urns of black tea with very, very large blocks of ice in it. Which was really almost too much for us, but nevertheless that was their idea of tea, and if you didn’t drink coffee,

well you deserved what you got.

Yeah.

No, we had a, just a two tiered bunk. We were not in cabins quite,

although we must have been, I just can’t recall too much detail about it. But because it was, the nature of the ship being a passenger ship I’m sure that we would have been allocated six or eight in a cabin.

No, we were all sergeants at least. There were, we had only a very few officers that were commissioned off, directly off course. In our case we had six out of the hundred and ten that were commissioned off course and the rest were sergeants. The officers would have had different quarters I’m sure,

but we were not in any way encumbered on board the ship. It was a nice ship and it was a nice voyage.

No, no the ship was too fast for a convoy and it sailed on its own. Which we often thought with eighteen hundred aircrew, Australian aircrew, it would have been a very nice

target. But we did seem to make our way quite safely anyway.

We landed at San Francisco, and then we trained from there, we were entrained, we went on the rail to a place out of Boston. We went to Boston actually,

and our camp was at Camp Mile Standish at Brogden which was thirty-five miles out of Boston. And nine hundred of us went to that section, and nine hundred of us went from ‘Frisco to Canada. So those that went to Brogden were on their way then to England, for further training.

Before we were qualified to take up the various appointments on the different aircraft.

Well it was very exciting because there were a few of us that always seemed to be able to look after ourselves, and we had a lovely drawing room at the end of

one of the coaches. And I must admit that it was not a great deal of hardship in the trip. We did have to take it in turns to serve some of the meals, but we didn’t understand how you could have so much, almost unlimited ice cream with any meal that you liked. And

it was really quite an exciting trip really. And a very, very friendly trip. Apart from the fact that at Albuquerque where we stopped, we were allowed off the train for about an hour or two and we could barely understand the

accents of the people of the Americans of that part, and they couldn’t understand us, they just couldn’t understand us at all. All we were trying to get was coca-cola I’m sure but anyway we overcame that eventually.

It was always very good. American food was always very acceptable. Very good, they looked

after their troops. I assure you that the train trip in America was about five thousand per cent better than the train trip from Perth to Ballarat, on the trans-continental.

Well, we’re going in nice huts, it was snowing time. It was very cold, and it was the only time where I ever recall where officers came around to call the roll. The officers had to visit the sergeants in their nice warm quarters

to make sure that we were where we were supposed to be. But it was a very nice staging post, because we were there for approximately five weeks I think. And we had other than again a day every fortnight I think it was in the mess, that was the only real

requirements we had to perform in any way. So it was a matter of having a visit to New York and generally speaking you were passing through. And of course we went to Boston and we were very well treated. We were quite often found ourselves

being feted at girl’s colleges, and having some very nice dancing and so forth. And it, Aussies were very popular, I can assure that we got even with those American serviceman that used to steal our girls at the dances in Australia, we really recovered a little bit of that. They got a bit of their own back.

No, just waiting to go onboard the [HMS] Queen Elizabeth from New York to Greenock in Scotland, and on there were twenty-two thousand troops on the Queen Elizabeth. And we slept on three tiered bunks. And we had no accommodation, kit bags were under,

or on the beds or alongside the beds when you were in them. And we had two meals a day, and the meals would be, we had to fill the seats down each side of the mess tables and then the food would be brought and put on the end, and we found that it was not a good position to be on the wrong end of the mess table,

but nevertheless we still survived.

No, the Elizabeth was also too fast, and didn’t sail in convoy, but she had all these troops on it, and just didn’t have any problem. But nevertheless,

one was very apprehensive about the type of situation we were sailing into. And we were nearly, I think three days unloading at Greenock. Because we all had to come off in pinnas and barges because she couldn’t get into the berth, she was too big.

She wasn’t very far out, but it still took a long time to unload, two or three days to disgorge all the people on it. I think twenty-two thousand.

That was, no, it was some, it would have been February. End of February.

Oh yes, and then when we did get on to land we were straight onto blacked out trains and then we went direct onto Bournemouth. And as you say it was late at night, and it was dark and cold. But nevertheless it was all excitement, we were still going to war

but we hadn’t reached it. We were just about there.

No, it was dark and we were lacked out, everything was blacked out. All windows of course and we had no encouragement to be moving around, and were not allowed off the train.

Well, Bournemouth we had very good accommodation. We were billeted in what would have been very nice buildings and houses which had been by that time of course, by 1943, had been gutted for the particular purpose. And then your mess was a very large building like a pavilion.

I think they called it the pavilion where there’d be many hundreds having their meals at one time. And very beautiful place Bournemouth. Again we were then just waiting to be posted somewhere else to do our, what turned out to be a new wireless course and then later on to

do radar, which at that time we had never really heard of.

Yes, well we were treated as most people are by Americans, very generously. So

much so that when we went into restaurants, people would pick up our tab and insist on paying for our meals and we couldn’t speak too highly of the generosity. And when you consider that basically they had never heard of Australia, but you were troops and you were in blue

and you had wings on you, so obviously you must be flying. And they were most generous. Very, very generous to the point of almost excess to impress on you their friendliness and we certainly enjoyed that period of time in America.

Well, we were not terribly fazed, I don’t think with Europe. We were just getting to understand that things were

starting to really get serious and we were arriving, we knew we’d be arriving in England in a very serious stage of the war. Because in 43 things were not going exactly as we had hoped or as we wished. And later on getting to England of course,

we found out. But in America they were very conscious of the war, but they were more orientated towards the Pacific then they were to Europe. So your reports were more in the field. And of course we did not know until after the war, that while we were doing our initial training in Pearce in Western Australia

that the Japs were bombing Darwin and Broome. And there we were preparing ourselves to go to war and we were already at war without knowing it. And it was most amazing that we did not know that Broome and Darwin were being bombed. And we could not understand that we were even being trained to dig trenches and to get into

trenches and so forth in our initial training and then to think that all this time had lapsed, another twelve months. We were fully trained aircrew, not quite as fully trained as we found out. But for all intents and purposes we were fully trained aircrew and yet we were going overseas and leaving Australia. It was startling to think back of how

publicity could have been kept so quiet.

We didn’t find out until we came back home. From overseas, didn’t find out, I mean I finished up actually serving in Broome, and it wasn’t until I saw the wrecks of the flying boats in the bay at Broome and that was

my first indication that Broome had been bombed.

Oh yes, well the rations and the restrictions in food. And general awareness, everybody was on a war footing. I mean the movement, everybody,

the movement of everybody. And there were troops of all nationalities, of all different uniforms. And there was so little you could do without, you were in the services. I mean with the ration cards and the food was just very restricted. Very restricted, whereas in America you had no restrictions.

I think from recalling we would have been in Bournemouth about, just long enough to have an air raid and we were strafed. And one cannon shell was about

eighteen inches above one of the beds in our room. Which fortunately we were not in the room when it took place that would have been more startling. It was bad enough just to know about it and to see it, but we were there I think about five or six weeks before we were then sent off to do a new wireless course. Which was in Hooton Park and where

we found a whole new wireless set-up. Which we were then expected or thought to have known, but had not seen. But then we of course, we spent a period of a month or so on this new Marconi radio and

qualified then to go on and then do a radar course, which was very exciting, that was really new.

Yes, yes we were being peeled off. Some were falling by the wayside as they got sent to different courses. And, but we were in the main,

we had quite a number of our own group, and we ought to have had probably the best part of forty I would have thought, forty or fifty who went from Bournemouth went to do the wireless course. Others would have been by this time gone off to other destinations

to take part in different facets of aircrew.

We had, yes we had only about two out of the six were with the radio course that we went from Bournemouth. But they were not really officers

in the sense of being disciplinary type officers, the were purely and simply, they were our own aircrew. They were our own trained aircrew, and they were just commissioned off course. As we were sergeants they were, and by this time we were flight sergeants you see. So we were going up the rung.

Yes, oh yes. Yes we were and later on of course we were split up very much, we had no control. We still had Australia House in London of course was a place where we called and we had our own air force personnel

in London, and who oversaw our activities but there were very few completely Australian squadrons. In fact only 10 squadron and 461 squadron in Sunderlands, flying boats that were I think, basically all Australian crew. Otherwise I think we all got, I’m not quite sure

of that I think, I probably should be a little bit more specific about thing, I shouldn’t be so specific about things I’m not quite so sure on.

Yes, it was a very

traumatic experience. And of course the strafing of course was followed by our own fighter pilots in a dogfight, which was rather exhilarating perhaps to watch. But not very enjoyable to be strafed

of course, but nevertheless that was very brief fortunately and I was not aware of any casualty other that a hit and run. Which, of course, is quite often a tactic. Whilst you were around and taking out and occupying a lot of people, a lot of aircrew and a lot of

aircraft. Even if you only come out with one aircraft then you might have to tie up eight or nine chasing you. And then, of course, that will be born out further on with our episode of being supporting and securing and protecting convoys, where one submarine can tie up squadrons of Sunderland flying boats.

But if we’re not there they have a picnic. And that was the same thing with the strafing on that particular occasion. But there was only the one time that our actual building was hit. So it was our first baptism of fire.

We were just away coming back from the mess, which

of course was not very far away. So it was quite a threatening situation, typical of war. It’s important to be in the right place at the right time.

Yes well, it was quite an

enlightenment really, to find such advanced wireless as compared with what we had been trained on. We had been of the opinion naturally that our wireless in Ballarat where we did our wireless course was fairly prehistoric by even ordinary standards. And the Marconi

was of the highest of the developments of wireless at that time. Very colourful by, the sets themselves had reds and yellows and different coloured knobs on them and so forth. And of course a far greater capacity. And later on of course it became very important when we were in West Africa

to have a good range. Although the wireless was also often off, wireless silence had to be observed because you could hone in on wireless if you were operating it. So it was again a very necessary course to upgrade ourselves. And to be conversant so that we could go, we did

not know where at that time where we were going to be posted, or what aircraft we were going to end up on. And so it had to have something to do a general course so that you would qualify for wherever you were sent. And that finished off being somewhere we had yet to find out.

No, we did the radar course at

We did the radar course at Carew Cheriton which was up near Chester.

And that was of course something completely new and some of the early aircrews had no knowledge of it. And at that time we first became aware that we were channelled towards Coastal Command. Because radar was not of much consequence to Bomber Command. We

of course used radar for searching for U-boats [German submarines] and also of course for our protection of convoys. And it was that stage that we found out, and I might say we were unhappy some of us to find that we hadn’t been consulted or given any chance to decide where we were going or

what we were going to be flying on or anything else. I suppose it was the case with many people and many aircrew, they never had any choice, they were just told where they were going.

Well, we thought we would like be on four engine bombers, quite a few of us. But by the time that we had done the radar course,

we were then waiting for postings after that, and that was the time when we lost sort of most of our mates, or most of the Australians. I was in charge of a group answering to a warrant officer, I was a flight sergeant, and I was responsible for these two flights, about seventy-six men I think,

in Blackpool, and we were just waiting on postings. And each morning we would read out asking for volunteers to go here, to go there, go everywhere else. And one morning I failed to read out what the warrant officer thought should be read out but I told him

that that particular posting had been filled. To his astonishment I had filled it with three others and myself to go to Sunderland flying boats. And we left one of our friends behind and he went somewhere else.

Yes, yes. We thought Coastal Command was not as important as Bomber Command, but of course when we got onto Coastal Command and realised the necessity and importance, although it might not have seemed as glamorous if you could call

Bomber Command glamorous, it was so vitally important for the survival of the total war effort, that the convoys should get through unscathed or as unscathed as they could. But then of course we found, experience is a great thing of course down the track if you know as much as you know now you would realise. But

then at that time we were terribly surprised that we had been allocated to Coastal Command. It had never been mentioned, but as the instructor said, “Well, you’ve done radar, you’ve done a radar course, you’re automatically on Coastal Command.” So thank you very much.

Oh yes. Yes, we had mates that actually

made it through to flying in Bomber Command by that time. And they of course were very, very early in their courses too. We got more harrowing experiences later on after we came back from Africa, back to England. Well then we learnt quite a lot more about the experiences and of course some of our mates being shot down and prisoners of war.

We weren’t quite, I guess aware of the attrition of Bomber Command when we were so anxious to get onto it.

Well the radar course claimed that you could pick up a petrol drum in the ocean

at four hundred yards. We found that if, when we were doing that exercise, if you placed your hand on your co-aircrew member doing the course, if you put your hand on his shoulder at that time, it was much more accurate than trying to find this drum at four hundred yards. But of course the real value was that you didn’t

look for a drum of petrol or a drum of oil or anything else. The real thing about it was that you could pick up these, your base stations, at such a distance. And of course you picked up the ships. You could pick up conning towers of submarines too, if you were close enough to them of course. But it was a wonderful asset,

particularly so in our efforts out in West Africa where we had absolutely prehistoric facilities, and flying aides, we had radar was almost, I wouldn’t like to be out there without the radar, because you could turn your aircraft around and say you were dead ahead, base station was dead ahead a hundred and eighty miles

away, but that was because we had such very good clarity of radar in Africa. Whereas it wouldn’t have been nearly as good in the English Channel and in the English atmosphere.

No, we were trained on aircraft.

And we were trained in Ansons and there was another aircraft, I think it was a Beaufort. Beaufort was a nasty aircraft, but nevertheless they were the aircraft and they were suitable for the particular exercises. It was purely and simply a matter of, and it wasn’t a very long course, it was only a course

of about oh something like twenty, thirty hours. And it was a matter of just getting used to handling it, and finding out some of the details of the machine. It was enclosed and it was, had a green screen and it was a matter of getting used to recognising different objects.

And being able to go out and get the feel of shipping and land etcetera, so you had the chance to save your aircraft if you were in storms and if you were out of sight or under cloud and everything associated with the difficulty of navigation.

Well the Beaufort seemed to have

no room for anybody in it, except crossbars and booms, and we did lose one of our mates in a Beaufort, because you had no chance in a Beaufort if you had a bit of a prang. You just couldn’t survive that, I mean it was all right for the pilot in the front, but the aircrew in the back, it was

very bad aircraft.

No, no, and you got thrown through it literally, you had very little in the way of support or protection. There were some situations where you weren’t strapped into seats or you did some of these courses without much protection. Without parachutes too

in some cases. Besides one must also say in fairness you weren’t flying high enough really in most cases for a parachute, a parachute would just get you into trouble, you’re better to take your chance and hope that you can find somewhere that’s not too dangerous to land.

No, we did have an identification call IFF. Which was Information [Identification] Friend or Foe, and I forget really how that really operated, but it was a device

whereby we thought the Germans didn’t have anyway, and it would operate on a friendly, well Information Friend or Foe, it was just meant to inform us that anything approaching was friendly. How that was done I’m not too sure, but all I know is that there was a

plunger on our particular aircraft in later, when we were on operations, where it was mandated that someone was responsible to go and explode that, so that it couldn’t be taken over and used. Or whatever little secrets were inside it couldn’t be ascertained by the enemy.

Yes, had to blow this Information Friend or Foe little machine up, yep. But that was fortunately something that we never had to contend with. Where we were, didn’t have much unfriendly fire where we were, we were mainly concerned with the elements and lack of servicing. And very prehistoric activities

where we had no maintenance, and we were relying on the aircrew to service themselves. And fortunately we were too far away for the enemy aircraft.

Well it was just like a table with the radar

in front of it and a screen around. A black petition around it so that it was able to be darkened because you did a lot of daylight flying as well as night time. And I understand that, and I met the person the other day at the Sunderland reunion, a man from Ballarat who apparently

had designed this little cubby hole. Because when they first got radar it was just sitting there and they couldn’t, the definition wouldn’t come up and show to advantage, so he designed this screen around it. And then as the later Sunderlands were produced they came with their radar enclosed, properly enclosed. But there

were two, only two operators on a Sunderland trained for radar. And we were two Australians, wireless operator radar air gunners. And I was appointed at one stage as the squadron wireless radar gunnery leader, and I never found out what that really involved, except that I was supposed to

keep the wireless operators up to scratch I think, and perhaps the radar operators up to scratch. And we had two tail gunners, straight air gunners, so we didn’t have to do too much about the gunnery.

We went to Alness in Scotland to do an Operational Training

Unit, and it was there where we became a crew. A most amazing set-up where all the aircrew names were in a certain room and you were allowed to crew up yourself, you were allowed to take your pick. And there was a date up on the board in which time whatever crew

you were in, and you were made up in ten, ten in a crew, and you had to have a pilot, second pilot, navigator, flight mechanic, and a flight engineer, two wireless ops [operators], a wireless operator mechanic and two tail gunners. That was your crew of ten. Now you were left to your own devices,

for a period of about I think perhaps nearly a month, perhaps not quite a month where you just went into the mess and you did training. You did wireless training and you did radar. I suppose the pilots did navigation, and the navigator did navigation practise

and so forth, and it came the day and that was it. And when our day came we had a Canadian skipper, an English second pilot, an English navigator, two Australian wireless operators, a Welsh flight engineer

an English flight mechanic, an English wireless operator mechanic, an Canadian tail gunner, and a Portuguese national tail gunner. And that was our crew of ten. Now we talked before about compatibility, you can imagine how

difficult that one was.

We just chose ourselves, we put ourselves in. And sometimes someone would move you out of a place overnight, they would fancy someone. It was really unbelievable almost, to think that’s how you got crewed up, and there was so many crews there, there would have been

a choice of ten crews. It was really amazing to think that that was a means of getting together. But then when you think of it I guess, it’s harder to think of any fairer situation, and it’s hard to think that you could possibly find a situation where having made a decision you didn’t have to be

aware of it or that you had done it, or you had been involved, so there we were.

Well, we chose I think on the fact that we liked the skipper, the Canadian skipper and the navigator was an Oxford University boy, a little bit plummy,

but he looked like he knew what he was about. Then there was my Aussie mate whom I never flew an operation without, we joined up the same day and I never flew on operations without him. I don’t quiet know how we found the rest, the Portuguese national, he was a cruel looking fellow, we thought that he would probably be pretty good

in the rear turret. And from there on I think it must have been luck because we had an excellent crew, and a very compatible crew and it needed to be as it turned out, because when we got on operations we had to live on board the aircraft. Cook, fly, cook, fly. And spent almost half our time living on board the aircraft.

There’d be very few aircrew ever had to do that.

That was 95 Squadron West Africa based at Bathurst, and we did detachments to Sierra Leone, to a place called Jui that was the river. Sierra Leone at Freetown. And Port Etienne was where we,

that was north of Bathurst. It was beyond Dakar and it was on the border of Spanish and French West Africa. And Port Etienne was a bit of a misname, there was no port there, we just landed in the open sea. And we spent in total, out of our ten months on 95 Squadron, we spent something like eighteen weeks

at Port Etienne, where we lived on board the aircraft. And we had no facilities, there was a very small detachment of RAF personnel in charge there, and the French Foreign Legion were, because it was French territory, the French Foreign Legion were there. And we got our rations and we brought them onto the aircraft. There was no mess

as such. We had just tinned meat. We had flour, from which we tried to make scones on our two primus stoves. And we had I suppose American spam [tinned spiced ham] or bully beef, one or the other. And it gets, the Sunderland flying boat was very large, we considered it large.

It was a twenty-seven ton four engine aircraft. And a beautiful aircraft. But when you put ten people of different nationalities, and different backgrounds on board. And make them live on board, and then fly, and then come and sleep and then spend the days in between flying because you don’t fly every day. And then two of you have to take in turns for providing

the meals for the other, for the ten of you. And you have to provide meals when you are flying, it is, can be a very stressful situation. And fortunately we were able to cope with that and we were able to be a happy crew.

Yes, we would have had, of course instructors with us, as we would because we were there for probably six weeks or so. And we would have, when I say six weeks, we would have been flying for about six weeks and we would have been flying together for about a month.

And but with the, we would have had instructors, we might have had two or three instructors, so it just would have been a matter of taking it in turns. And then we did go and do a couple of trips out to Scapa Flow, out north of England, Scotland, right up into the cold areas.

We qualified by that for our first campaign star, which by then was the 1943, I mean 1939-43 star, which later became the 1939-45 star. So we were

very proud to wear our first ribbon before we even got out to Africa.

No, no it was a great surprise to us. We were as I say crewed up, and

then just purely and simply said West Africa. Well, we were the only crew that went at that time to West Africa. There was another crew, well, it didn’t go to 95 Squadron, but there were other squadrons down there. There was 95, and then there was 204 at Freetown, and then there was 270 at Lagos. And we were the only ones that went to 95 Squadron.

We then had to go down to Pembroke Dock to do a little familiarisation down there, sort of further training. Just for about a week, and we flew around to 10 Squadron and went through the balloon barrage one night and we just hoped that our navigator and our pilot knew that there was a balloon barrage there.

That was at Portsmouth and of course we sitting behind wireless and radar and so forth, didn’t have much access to view or anything else. And next day when we were due to take off we saw that balloon barrage, we just couldn’t believe that anybody could work out

where or how they got through those balloons. But of course, naturally they were all itemised and located appropriately, and anyone who was supposed to know about them would know about them, except us visiting aircraft we hoped. And it was a very, sort of point of interest, and a great discussion point for some considerable time afterwards, about

the visit down there to Portsmouth. And that was 10 Squadron, which was the only entirely Australian Sunderland squadron. 461 Squadron, where we were actually just left from to go to West Africa, they were all Australian crews, but the personnel behind were RAF as well as Australian. But where we went we were just the two Australians.

No, we went to this place called Wig Bay and got this new Sunderland there. We picked up the new Sunderland there, that was near Stranraer, somewhere near Stranraer was the township I think. And Wig Bay was where the Sunderland must have been flown to from where they were produced. Whether they were produced there or not

I don’t know. But anyway we had DW 107, beautiful new aircraft. But we got a shock, it wasn’t like other Sunderlands we had seen that were all white. This was in camouflaged colours. So we had a camouflaged DW 107 with a nice new Mark III, with Pegasus engines,

twelve hundred horsepower engines. So we had the very latest and we were very happy with it.

We flew from Wig Bay down to Pembroke dock, and that’s where we did those few exercise around there, bit of familiarisation, before we went to flying to Gibraltar. A very,

very interesting night going to Gibraltar.

We had stars following us and we were sure that they were enemy aircraft because we had been warned that they, enemy aircraft sometimes sat on the ocean and when they heard us going over they took off and surprised us. Well they wouldn’t have surprised us because we could see everything that was around and that was moving.

The stars and all they worried us. But anyway we got to Gibraltar after some eleven and a half hours flying, I think the last two and a half hours in daylight, and thoroughly convinced we didn’t know where we were going, but I’m sure that the pilots knew where we were going, because we on the radar, we knew where we were going. But very interesting trip down to Gibraltar and then ultimately

down the west coast to Africa.

Oh yes, we knew we were headed for Bathurst then.

Oh yes, well we knew we were going to be on convoy escort. Yes, we did more things then escort convoys as we found out. We escorted destroyers, and we escorted other things at times. And we looked for

pilots that were lost or who had ditched apparently. But in the main our job was to bring the convoys around safely, and we never lost any shipping in the twelve months that we were associated with the coast. And of course the other boys further south, down Lagos and Freetown,

we were all interlaced. And then we would come up, and we were the last to hand over towards the Canary Islands. There must have been another squadron come over from Gibraltar I guess, down.

We were only there about two or three days.

Well it was, I remember it was very good for food. You had, you could actually have meat, and you could actually have eggs, fresh eggs. And I can remember

that was our main impression of Gibraltar. We did have an opportunity of going across the border into Spain, La Linea, but we had to put civilian clothes on and never bothered.

Oh well, there was moorings there for it, there was always moorings out in the bay. In the Mediterranean part of it, I guess.

No, well we did have our own inflatable dinghies but they were for survival. But they would be serviced by a pinnas coming out from a pier somewhere. And of course they would be expecting us,

and someone would have told them we were coming, and we would have appeared at the appropriate time I guess and they would have been waiting to come out and get us. But we were very much confined to no wireless of course because that was the taboo, especially on that trip.

No, you moor it up and you leave it.

And we found that was a good idea as it turned out because eventually ours flipped over on its back, with its depth charges. But that later on.

Well in the first instance you would be delivered to the Sunderland by a pinnas or by some watercraft, generally speaking from some nearby pier. And you would enter in the front hatch, which contains all mooring up winches and the

ladder leading up to the top deck and it has at one small corner the toilet. For me it would enter into the wardroom where there is a table, which could be erected for the use of either feeding or mapping if that was

necessary. And then you would enter from the wardroom into the galley. Well, the galley contained a small stove in which were the only means of cooking, the two primus stoves. And very little room there, but you had a hatch which was able to be raised for ventilation

on both sides of the galley. Then you proceeded through, going towards the tail of the aircraft, and then you would come across nicely arranged eight depth charges, which beneath them was a cleared area, which of course in our instance was not used for any other purpose that when we required to sleep on the aircraft.

Which in our case we spent practically half our time living on the aircraft so that was a very important area. Then from that area you would then walk up a gangway type of passageway, which was leading to the tail. It was raised naturally

by the, the reason that the tail had to be in line with the second floor or the upper level of the aircraft. And that was where the tail gunners had to eventually sleep also, and make their way up to the turret. Which was a four gun rotating turret. And then going back, if we went up the stairs to begin with, we would

get to the navigator’s table, which was just in front of the main spar. Which when we wanted to proceed further above the depth charges, where the batteries or accumulators for servicing all electric requirements of the aircraft. And forward of the navigator

was the radar compartment, which was immediately behind the two pilots. The skipper would sit on the right hand side and the second pilot on the left had side. Just on the other side of the aircraft, adjoining the navigator was the seat for the wireless operator. And then if you proceeded over that main spar

on that same second level of the aircraft you had the flight engineer’s panel which was all his instruments, and a seat for the flight mechanic, and also a position for the wireless operator mechanic. And that was the end of the second floor, or the upper floor of the Sunderland.

So that was basically where we all sat when we were taking off. Of course no parachutes, they were not allowed in Sunderland because it was a far greater danger to be parachuting out of an aircraft over water then it was to stay with it. So that was basically the

arrangement or configuration of the aircraft, and the depth charges of course went from that position in the lower deck, they would be activated out of openings in the side under the wings. The depth charges would therefore be between the outside floats and the side of the aircraft if you needed that

procedure. And of course there was also in the upper deck, was the entrance to the mid upper turret, which was a two-gun turret in the Sunderland Mark III. I failed to mention that forward of the, after having arrived at the front hatch, the,

all the chains and the mooring up equipment was actually above the front turret, which had another position for a point five cannon. So that was something that was either manned by either air gunners, wireless air

gunners or tail gunners.

Yes, there is just the one person at the time. And I think the scariest situation is when your intercommunication plug comes out and you find that you are up in the

tail on your own. And quite often, quite a lot of movement in the tail of the aircraft, and also it’s a position whereby it’s necessary for taking bearing for the navigator. A flare is thrown out, which of course alights on contact with the water, and the tail gunner

is responsible then to turn his turret and report the variation of drift for the navigator. So it’s an important part and hopefully he doesn’t have to do anything in the way of shooting.

No, it’s very much a part of the aircraft, at the,

combined with the tail and the ailerons etcetera, of the aircraft. It’s beautifully built in and quite comfortable, but you were very lonely, very lonely.

No, where we were, of course we were in semi-tropics and tropics most of the time. And with the Sunderlands you don’t fly very high for the simple reason that you’re

searching the ocean, either with radar or visually and you’re watching very astutely. And of course your radar operates at a level most efficiently, around about the two thousand feet mark.

Only on one occasion that we dropped the depth charges.

We anticipated that we’d seen a submarine conning tower that was reported by operations to be in the area, but we were never in a situation to ascertain whether we had been successful or not. We presume that we were not successful because had we been successful, we may have seen some debris.

Well, it was entirely by observation, and it was really a report from the nose turret to the skipper through the intercommunications within the aircraft. But it wasn’t the same as say Bomber Command where you had someone who was an actual bomb

aimer. It was just by turret and by the judgement of the pilots.

Well we, it was about a twelve hour flight from Gibraltar to our base at Bathurst. We broke the flight the first night by

staying at a French West African base of Port Etienne, which was on the border of Spanish and French West Africa. And that was a nine-hour trip and we stayed there one night. We were not terribly impressed with the, as there was no facilities there. There was no actual RAF facilities

or squadron or mess or any way in which one would get a meal. So we were very anxious to fly on the next day to our base at Bathurst. Little did we believe or know that we were going to spend such an enormous amount of time at Port

Etienne throughout the course of our tour in West Africa.

Well we ventured forth to the, from when we were picked up by the pinnas and delivered to the pier. We were then transported to the

station, which was of course officers and sergeants and other ranks. It was a reasonable set-up and a reasonable base. And unfortunately we were allocated into transit tents. So we were just put into tents temporarily until accommodation was allocated to us. But in actual fact

we were sent from Bathurst, from our base, back to Port Etienne in French West Africa, within three days. And we were there at Port Etienne for three weeks. And during which time of course, as I have mentioned before, we had to live on board the aircraft. We had to fly, we had to come back, we had to sleep

on the aircraft. We had to prepare all our own food, and we found that as a new crew getting to know one another, substantially better, much more quickly than one would have expected, but it was a time when we thought, “Well, this is a part of our job. We’re there

to help and guard convoys and that was the situation.” And later on we were to spend much longer periods even at Port Etienne.

Well we were, our flying times were really based on the

appearances on the convoys. And we would generally speaking take over from other aircraft from aircraft squadrons further south. They would bring and protect the convoys up the west coast, all headed of course for the United Kingdom. So we would spend varying times,

very rarely more than twelve hours at a time. Our flying range was something in the, mainly in the maximum of fourteen hours’ flying time. Therefore, when we were stationed at Port Etienne, there was nowhere else to go when we got home. Irrespective of the conditions for landing,

we did not have any contact from the base. There was no contact, we were relying entirely on visual surveillance of the ocean conditions and landing conditions. So we were at a very risky base, by way of lack of facilities and lack of any communications. So we had to land,

and Port Etienne, although it was called Port Etienne it was actually just a indentation on the coast, and we landed on the open sea, the open ocean. And it was a very traumatic exercise returning to Port Etienne of a night, because on one or two occasions we would come back and the flare path, which was supposed to be three flares

to indicate which way the wind was going. But we found quite frequently that there would be only one flare that had survived the weather and we were to take our choice as to which way the wind was blowing, because there was no guidance from any facility and it did prove to be a very dangerous exercise.

Well probably there must have been, there were actually a few RAF servicemen there and there were more Frenchmen there, and I guess either, they may have taken it in turns, because there would have been times when a Sunderland from the French squadron at Dakar would have been in the

area as well because we worked in with the French Sunderland squadron from Dakar. As we did also from the squadron, 204 Squadron from Freetown in Sierra Leone. Where we flew to occasionally and spent nine or ten days at a time in Freetown. So it was an overlapping situation really, depending on

serviceability of aircraft, flight conditions on bases, and the southern part of Bathurst and Freetown of course were much better serviced by our own personnel and they were both reasonable bases. With the proper mess and proper accommodation etcetera.

Yes, a little over.

Well it gave you a much greater range to go north of Port Etienne. It allowed you really to have a range of six hours north of Port Etienne, and there were times on one occasion where there were three aircraft searching for four United

States fighter pilots, very close to the limit of our range, up near the Canary Islands. That was north of Port Etienne, substantially north. What or how fighter pilots were considered lost there in that facility I do not know. But nevertheless that was a case where we had three aircraft on what they called a CLA,

a Creeping Line Ahead, searching for these American fighter pilots. But that was the reason I believe for us being at Port Etienne. It gave us an extra range, because the Sunderland only had that fourteen-hour range at the maximum, but mostly it very rarely exceeded twelve hours.

Well, you progress quietly at a given distance ahead and down the side of a convoy. Or when you were looking and searching you would just go forward a certain way to make sure, well when you were looking for fighter pilots you were mainly operating by visual

appearance or visual observation. Whereas with a convoy you would have an arrangement with the person in charge of the convoy as to how far you would go ahead or behind. Mostly ahead was the governing point. Because the person in charge of the convoy would

instruct our second pilot by Aldis lamp, not by wireless, by Aldis lamp, as to the speed of the convoy. We would not be aware of the speed of the convoy. And a convoy would sometimes consist of twenty-eight ships and some escort vessels. Perhaps it would be sixteen and some escort vessels. So we would get our instructions as to basically

as to what we were supposedly we were going to do as regards to how far our creeping line ahead would be, for the security of the convoy, but that would depend greatly on the speed of the convoy. And the speed of the convoy of course was really governed by the slowest of the ships in the convoy, and of course

our job was to find stragglers and to inform the leader of the convoy, the person controlling the convoy, we had to report any of those ships. As you might imagine a convoy of twenty-eight ships stretches over many miles and with our radar we would proceed around the convoy and along the back of the convoy, then up each side, just

trying to protect to make sure that there was nothing going to happen to any of our convoy.

It would be some designated officer of the escorting vessels that would be in charge. And that would be obvious to our pilots. They may

even have been instructed at briefing as to who that would be. But every convoy did have escort vessels with it, and we were added protection for them. Because naturally the convoy’s just had to get through, they were the life blood of the United Kingdom and the whole of the war effort for Europe to make sure that those convoys got through.

They’d come around the horn of Africa, South Africa. Where they were amalgamated from at that point I’m not sure whether they were, they would have been serviced at ports along the way. I guess many of them would have been from Australia. But they may also have been coming from the Indian mainland or other parts of,

perhaps even the Dutch Indies at that time.

That’s right, we had no, we were prevented or it was advisable except in an absolute emergency to break radio silence. We were listening, we could listen but we could not transmit.

No, occasionally there would be another aircraft there. Mainly we would be there on our own, 95 Squadron aircraft. Unless of course just occasionally there would be aircraft transporting

down the west coast, transferring to some of the other squadrons. They’d be delegated to go to some of the other squadrons as replacements. But it would be mostly just the 95 Squadron, or alternatively one of the French flying boats from their squadron at Dakar.

Well it wasn’t terribly regular.

Sometimes you would five or six or perhaps ten days without a convoy escort, and other times you would be flying consecutive, on consecutive days. And also that would depend, the amount of flying you did and the time you spent on the convoy would depend on the serviceability of

your own aircraft. Because you had to remember in that location the weather conditions were such that they were very harsh on the aircraft, on the aircraft parts, working parts. And the fact that our service was non-existent at a place like Port Etienne, we had no service.

And on one occasion it was the responsibility of our own flight mechanic and our own flight engineer to change one of our engines which were unserviceable. And that was a Herculean experience for them, and for everyone else as well. Because the facilities, this aircraft engine had to be flown in by another aircraft, another Sunderland. And the manhandling of an aircraft engine on water, without proper

handling equipment is a real feat. And then to have to elevate it up to the wing at the height of the Sunderlands and to get it so that it works which is terribly important, I thought we had the best engineer that we could have possibly had.

Yes, yes that took a number of days I can assure you. We were at Port

Etienne on that time for a number of weeks.

No, we had very little fraternisation with the actual aircrews, because of the fact that you spent so much time out on the water, you were separated to such an extent. And it was very rarely

that the French aircrew were needed to stay at our base at Bathurst. Because it was relatively close to their own home base. Whereas when we were at Port Etienne, they were still two and a half to three hours from Port Etienne themselves.

No, we didn’t have a lot of association with the French at all. We had just the experience of having to rely on them at Port Etienne, basically for producing and providing us with fresh water, which was desalinated salt water. And I can assure you that the facility for desalination was not

very good. And we got two containers of water, which were about two and a half gallon of size, for our crew of ten, every second day.

Well we found that they were not exactly

enamoured with the idea of flying. And quite frequently we found that they were, if we were on standby crew to fly at night we found very frequently that they seemed to be unserviceable. And when Paris was retaken they indicated that they were not terribly anxious to be involved any further.

“They were very singular in their nationality” we often thought. But then perhaps it’s the devilment in young Australians at the time to think about those things, perhaps they weren’t true.

Well, it’s a very interesting question because it’s very hard to recall how you could possibly spend the time, with ten people on board an aircraft. We were able to and we did swim quite a deal. One of our favourite

activities was to open the rear hatch, which was the way up to the tail turret, and it was quite a way off the water, so we were able to dive and we did quite a bit of diving. But that meant swimming around the aircraft and coming in the front hatch, and whilst that filled in quite a bit of time, it did become a little bit mundane

after a while. The other thing we spent quite a deal of time on, which was to launch the rubber dinghies, which of course were our safety devices if we had to ditch at any time. But we used those quite a deal for rowing, just as exercise. We could row to the beach and walk, and again swim from the beach. And no one had ever taken

any precautions to know whether it was dangerous to swim. But there was very little to do, because that was where, at that point the Sahara Desert came right to the ocean, there was no vegetation, there was no grassy knolls or anything. It was really a desert outpost.

Yes, we did fish,

not terribly successfully. We could see fish, but we didn’t have the means to catch very many. And I can recall that we spent a lot of time trying to spear them out of the galley windows, or out of the hatches in the galley. And I do recall that we were very unsuccessful. But it would have been a

welcome change of menu if we had been successful.

We would be picked up by a barge and taken to the pier and then we would have, there’d be a vehicle there to take us to the very small camp, where we would draw rations. Which were bully beef, tinned

bully beef and tinned vegetables, and a little flour. No, there was practically nothing else that we were able to have, and it does become stretching the imagination as to how we were able to utilise that meagre type of ration, or that consistency of the sameness, and stay for so long and

efficiently fly. When in normal occasions in England aircrew were given special rations even just to go out and fly at night. It was something that was a major plus to be able to get these lovely rations in England because you were in aircrew, but it only happened when you were actually

flying. So it wasn’t something that you got carried away with. But in Africa, when we were at Bathurst of course or Sierra Leone, where there were proper bases, well then of course the food was not a lot better, because you didn’t have a lot more variety, but then of course you did have bread. But at Port Etienne there was very little in the way of bread. And if

it was then it was a type of French stick, long narrow piece of bread, and that was not very often that we were able to get that.

Yes, well we had tea but no coffee, I think we were not terribly akin to coffee. Most of the crew, but of course the Canadian boys would have been

but again we had of course tinned milk, and we also had no shortage as I recall of actual tea, because although we couldn’t, we couldn’t light our primus stove when we were flying until at least half an hour or so after we had taken to the air,

we could then light the primus stoves and we could make tea. And we could warm anything, a very meagre warmth, I might add.

Yes, well a little over twelve hours was, I think the longest trip that we actually did. But quite frequently it would only be ten hours, or sometimes

we might be called back to our base for various reasons, or it was our turn to be back at base, put it that way. And we would sweep a convoy track, and we might be only on the convoy for five, six or seven hours. Or perhaps we might have information from operations that there was a submarine passing down the area, which they seemed to be able to track

and roughly know where it was. So that was a time when we might possibly fly of lesser hours. But just over twelve hours was the maximum flight that we conducted.

Well, we would eat, someone would prepare it,

someone would be designated to prepare the bully beef or open the tins, and the vegetables and the oven was a very prehistoric type arrangement. I suppose at that time it was considered to be reasonable, but there was no such thing as cooking or preparation of food. You were just either, you liked the bully beef or, we might have been lucky,

we might have had the luxury of some Spam. I’m not sure, I can’t quite recall that, but that would be the maximum. And I do recall the second pilot and myself one day when it was our turn, of course two members of our crew when we were not flying were designated to be the chefs or the cooks. And we tried to cook a pie

one day, and the crew carried it unanimously that it was far better to have the bully beef as it was rather than in our pie. So from that time on there was not too much experimentation done.

No, I don’t think we were hungry, I can’t recall being hungry and I can’t recall

us losing any great quantity of flesh or having any problems really as regard to health wise. I know some, we did have a little bit of trouble with lack of washing water, of water, through some

of the crew not shaving regularly then they did find that we did have a couple of occasion where there was problems with skin. Skin dermatitis or something of that nature. But it was mainly because of they think not shaving and not having enough fresh water for washing.

No, there were practically no local people other than the French Foreign Legion themselves. And the few RAF personnel there, and he only inhabitants, that you could call inhabitants was a few tents of Arabs as we knew them. And they had no facilities,

how they existed it was a mystery to us. They must have surely been given some food from, by the French. There must have been some arrangement, but there was no more than two or three tents, and there wouldn’t have been any more people there, I wouldn’t think on my recall there wouldn’t have been any more than twelve or

fifteen people in these few huts. What they did or why they were there was a mystery to us, which we couldn’t ascertain anyway, and probably at that stage we were so busy on our own mission there was no great interest in it. But we did observe them coming down to the ocean and swimming sometimes.

No, that was separate. The French that flew in the Sunderlands in their squadrons were airmen and they were based at Dakar. The French Foreign Legion of course I believe was purely and simply there so that nobody else would be there. They were sort of protecting an area that

people wouldn’t want to come there for any reason, other than it was a strategic position to be in. And it was designated French responsibility, because it was French West Africa. Therefore, each nation as all the European nations at that time, all had portions of Africa, and it’s only in the last fifty

or sixty years that those responsibilities have really been handed over to fresh nations, to the new nations.

No, we had very little activity because we were confined really into

being on the aircraft. And we really from recalling, had very little other than, just purely and simply seeing, and the fact that we couldn’t speak a word of their language, and they were probably similar to us. So we had no fraternisation with them. Although I do remember that our

skipper, our Canadian skipper did on a couple of occasions seem to make friends with one or two of the French sailors when there was a small sailing ship in. But apart from that we spent our time either sunning ourselves on the wing, playing cards or swimming

or rowing. There was very little else to do. And, of course reading. But that was a limitation, there was quite a limitation on what we could do or where we could move. And I think it would be pretty obvious to anyone, a Sunderland flying boat, although we considered it large, after two or three weeks, in fact six weeks

in one stretch, where you had to spend and live on the aircraft. And then fly, and then land and then make your meals when you were flying and then make your meals when you came back. It was a real test really to your wellbeing health wise and as to how you’d cope. Fortunately we didn’t seem to have a great

deal of trouble. Except that the Portuguese tail gunner found it very difficult, although he spoke good English he was not in the habit of being so restricted. Nor were we when it came to that, but he seemed to find it a little bit more difficult than we did, and he found

crewing up was slightly more difficult. And of course there was competition, when you were just two tail gunners, you had to work together and there’s always someone has to do it, and there’s someone who perhaps doesn’t want to do it as much as someone else does, and there’s things to be cleaned, there’s guns to be serviced, and there’s the turret

to be washed and tested. So it was just a little irritation, but I must admit that it was very minor. Very minor, but he was a little bit of a loner as one could imagine. He was an actual Portuguese national and no one could work out, that we came across, as to how he got into the RAF. And when he got back to England and he wanted

to be discharged from the RAF I believe he had just as much trouble trying to get out. Had a lot less trouble getting in. Perhaps it was the time of the war, how the war was proceeding at that time.

I suppose it’s,

I think it’s fair to say that the skipper and the navigator commandeered the ward room. There were only two bunks in the ward room, and they seemed to think that they were the senior persons in the plane, so they had the ward room, and as I recall the second pilot he slept in the forecastle, that was just inside the

front hatch. And then of course from there on you had to state your case pretty strongly to get a position. And I think the flight mechanic and the flight engineer who were very important people we thought, and the second Australian wireless operator, radio operator and myself,

we were able to, and I think perhaps the wireless operator mechanic might have qualified for a lie down blow up kind of bed under the depth charges. But the tail gunners, they were definitely relegated to the rising slanting walkway up to the tail turret. So they

had no choice, they were in our situation of lesser, lesser status obviously. So that was basically the way we slept and the way we got along. And once we had a position, that was the position, you didn’t change. I think perhaps because we didn’t try and make any changes, we

were accepting of the situation the way it was, and we had ten people, we had to get on with and we did.

Well it was very difficult, you could just perhaps get further out on the wing than the person next to you, if you happened to be on top of the wing. You could perhaps go and

perhaps get into the mid upper turret and sit there on your own and reminisce. I can recall quite frequently actually, reminiscing of past experiences, such as my work on the locomotive in the timber mill. I can go over in my mind all the levels of water that I had to have in that

boiler at a given time in a given place on the length of railway line that we were operating on. And it was amazing how vital that was to you at times too, to reminisce. And I guess that everyone else on the crew were basically doing the same. And there was always some very good banter really, because we were so

different. We could always, the two Aussies could have quite a difference of opinion with the Canadians, and then Basil our navigator, Basil Haning from Oxford University, well of course we were able to have a lot of arguments with Basil. And we had arguments I can remember over farming

and over our standards of living and over our sporting ability, and so on. And it’s just amazing really to think back, in fact I often wonder really whether the logbook can be so accurate as to prove to us that we spent just on half of our total ten months on operations,

doing the six hundred hours operational flying, and almost half of it was spent on that aircraft in isolation, living on board the aircraft. It does make you wonder just how efficiently you could operate, and I would venture to say that R [RAF] 95 squadron was highly regarded as a crew, and yet we

had that time away from Squadron Headquarters, more than other crews. And it just seemed to fall our lot, whether we were so amicable with one another that our officers in charge observed that, I’m not sure. But it did seem to be an unusually long period of time for one

crew to spend on that sort of detachment.

No, we seemed to accept that situation. There wasn’t a lot of questioning actually in air force days. You were told to go and fly,

you were told what to fly, you were told where to fly and not necessarily why you were flying in many instances. You could see a convoy and you knew why you were flying, but when you were told to go out and search for a submarine with radar, and visually, visually and with your radar, which you would do both things at once of course, you would have pilots viewing them,

you’d have, your gunners would be in their turrets. All points would be manned, and you would also be operating on the radar. Well there was only three operating on the radar, really only two trained, the two Australian wireless air gunners were also radar operators. One or two others may have liked to look at the screen for a while and there was no consequence in

letting them do it. But as a matter of fact I always took over the operation of the radar as we were approaching base, as first wireless op. And I would naturally be responsible for watching and advising the navigator as to exactly where our base station was. But in the course of Port Etienne of course we

didn’t have a base station. So we were not operating in a normal way there. But when we were near our base we had the opportunity of homing in directly, we could go straight in and know exactly where we were, we were not really dependant on a navigator in the last eighty or a hundred miles from

base. But it also, you could get very long distances with your radar in West Africa, which didn’t apply in the English Channel. You could get reading of up to one hundred and eighty miles from your base station, so it was something that you really had to contend with

as much as you could get carried away with your ability to be definitive with, as regards to the distances. And you didn’t know or realise that your ability out in West Africa was probably a lot better. But perhaps if you were quite a deal further south, quite into the more tropical area, we rarely flew much below

six degrees north of the equator, that was about the furthest south we got. And that would be on detachment from, when we were based flying out of Freetown out of Sierra Leone, we only did that on a couple of occasions. But that was again a

reasonable base. Freetown was properly manned and properly, plenty of RAF personnel and facilities, but we were only there on a few occasions.

Well I was fortunate in that I always went to the briefing as first wireless op with the skipper,

the captain and the navigator. And we would be briefed only when we were flying. And the rest of the crew would precede us to the aircraft, the wireless operator mechanic would be responsible for making sure the alternators were all topped up with

the acids that he had to add to them. The, one of the tail gunners would be responsible for, or two of the tail gunners would be responsible for pumping out the bilge. To make sure that we weren’t going to have difficulty taking off because we had water in the bilge, we wanted to be as light as we could. And also it was someone else’s responsibility to pump up the

water into the toilet to make sure that that was operating. And then the next problem was of course to slip moorings, that did give us a lot of trouble in our base at Bathurst, because the current there in the river, which was a beautiful river, it was a really great flying base actually. It was the Gambia River and we had nearly four miles of water

there. But it was very tidal and the buoys which had two cable attached to them which we had to lift off them with a hook, leaning out the front of the aircraft out of the turret with the turret wound back, the front turret was wound back, and we had to

lean over the front and lift off the or let go. It was really more, I’m confusing it all, it was really the difficulty of mooring up, it wasn’t quite so difficult to let go, but of course once the pilot started the engine and took up the slack towards the buoy then we had to very quickly

undo the bolts from the shackle and, we were supposed to replace the cable on the hook, on one of the hooks on the side of the mooring up position. Now that sometimes was not possible and if we were not quick enough

and the captain was getting very worried about running, or passing the buoy alongside the aircraft, which is what we were trying to avoid. But certainly when we were mooring up it was very difficult, because when we came back at night very often, and in the day it didn’t matter, but it was much more difficult in the dark. But especially if the cables were around the

buoy and someone had to jump in to try and disengage so that we could moor up. And the skipper all the time was trying to be ready to cut the engine, because it was all very short period of time allowed, and have to regard the fact that when we were at our own

base there were quite a number of other aircraft around. Whereas when we were at Port Etienne we didn’t have the same troubles because the pressures weren’t so great. Because there were very few, if ever another aircraft there when we were there.

Yes, well it wasn’t terribly difficult at our base,

or even at Freetown as I recall. Because both bases were really on a river situation, but it could be quite rough because of squalls, because of the wind. And tropical activities. But at Port Etienne it was entirely different

because it was open ocean, and I can assure you, the noise when you hit waves, five or six feet of waves then you have a great deal of apprehension about how far you are going to go before the nose goes under. But fortunately we lived to tell the tale.

Well, we were always very conscious of servicing the aircraft properly, and our crew I believe was a very accomplished crew. We had difficulties because, getting off, flying off, taking off

in other words because we were subject to a great deal of build up of barnacles. And it was something that we did from time to time, especially when you spent long period of time not flying. When I say long periods of time, if you were ten or twelve or perhaps you might be two weeks without flying sometimes.

You would often swim around with a scraper, and free anything that was terribly obvious. And on one particular occasion I can recall we had a maximum as I believe of take off time. With full bore, four engines, flat to the stack, flat to the boards,

of about three minutes, and we had done that once with the engines white hot, and then the skipper decided he would have another go. And I might add when you are trying to get a plane off the water you rocket. You put it into nose down and then all of a sudden it shudders

madly as you bring the nose up as you’re trying to get it off. And the Sunderland has steps on it, so you have three steps to assist you to break the drag in the water. So it’s so beautiful the feeling when you have been up the slip way and you’ve been attended to in the way of maintenance, and the barnacles have all been

taken from the hull, as compared with what happens as you spend a little bit more time on the water, and you get nearer to the next time when you are entitled to be taken up the slip and re-serviced. But I can remember very, very vividly the skippers remarks to me, when I was cheeky enough to him to

intrude on the intercommunication. When the skip said, “We’ll give it another go,” and I said, “You’ll give it what?” He said, “Steve, I said we’ll give it another go.” And Steve from now on was very quiet, the skipper had spoken and we didn’t get off after another three minutes.

And when we got back to the mess I can recall the skipper, he was approached by the squadron leader, the commanding officer, who more or less said in a rather gruff tone, “You didn’t get off Davis.” Well I thought “The Canadian and the English association was going to end right on

the spot” when Davis said “I will get off sir, when I have got a serviceable machine to take off.” And it was one of the highlights, and one of the very few confrontations I can recall, with our skipper being so upset about the lack of proper servicing of the aircraft, when it was entitled to be serviced.

And I might add that it was very soon afterwards that we put the aircraft at the end of the slip to be taken up for servicing, it may well have been soon after this particular incident. And a squall came up, a squall, one of these lion squalls, very vicious. And they would come up so quickly that the wind,

the tide wouldn’t have time to change with the wind. And our aircraft went over on its back. The wind went down into the mud and it was flown over on its back. At the base of the slip way, complete with depth charges, and that was the end of DW 107, and I might add that was the

end of our tour. We no longer had an aircraft, and within two weeks we were on our way back as having completed our tour of six hundred hours. And back to United Kingdom.

We did have access to information

and we did have as I say quite a decent base there at Bathurst, but as to the state of the war, we were not, I don’t think vitally well informed. We just assumed that the war was still to be won. So much so that when we returned to

England I applied to go back again on operations, thinking that that would be very necessary. But soon afterwards it was indicated to us that we were starting to take charge and that we would probably be sent back to Australia for demobilisation perhaps. Although

the Pacific war at that time was still very much alive and well. But I don’t think we were very conscious of the fact that we were, when we were in West Africa, had we not lost our aircraft, I would believe that we would have been perhaps expected to stay there for a considerably longer period.

It was only the fact that we lost our aircraft and there were no number of aircraft spare then there was no alternative but for us to be repatriated to England.

Yes, I can quite honestly say that we were getting

conscious of the fact that we were approaching the end of our tour. And it was common to do tours of about six hundred hours in Sunderlands, and it wasn’t uncommon to do two tours, and that would have been an acceptable situation, but rarely did you continue on beyond that tour period, without

having a break. Now we had no chance really of then going back onto operations because of our aircraft. And so we went back to England, and then we were posted around to various stations around England.

We were very fortunate really,

because we travelled on a Dutch passenger ship, from Freetown in Sierra Leone, and it was a very nice ship. I recall there were Indonesian waiters. We must have gone back though within a convoy, because the ship, I’m sure, would not have been fast enough to go roaming around

the West Coast of Africa on its own, because ships didn’t go around on their own except when they were war ships. In which strangely enough we sometimes found ourselves protecting and in association with them whilst we were out there. But it was a very nice little ship and we got back to England safely

to fight another day.

When we got back to England one of my first postings was to a, what was called Brackley was the name of the town or the location was Brackley, in the northern England. It was an

ACAC Brackley. Which meant it was an Air Crew Allocation Centre. And I was relieving an acting squadron leader, an Australian actually, it was an Australian posting apparently. And I was relieving this acting squadron leader, and the RAF group captain who was the commanding officer, he had a great penchant for Australians apparently. He had a great love

for rifle shooting. And I was able to engage him quite a deal in rifle shooting, about all what we did about kangaroos, etcetera. And he was rather obsessed with this young Australian officer, and he invited me to be his new acting squadron leader, but I insisted that I had

wanted to go back on full flying duties, and that I had volunteered to go back on full flying duties, and that I should adhere to my original request. And he was quite generous about it and said that if that was the way I felt then perhaps that was quite right. But perhaps on reflection there were times when, then having been soon afterwards been informed that I was

going to be shipped back to Australia, perhaps I might have had a few little disappointments that I hadn’t accepted his invitation.

Well whilst I was in England, right throughout my time in England I had quite a lot of

foot trouble. I had very severe disability in the joints of my feet, and so much so that before we got to operations, and whilst we were in the situation of crewing up at Alness before we went to West Africa, I had to have a pushbike to ride, I couldn’t walk.

So I had to ride the bike from where we slept in the huts, because the huts were all scattered around, they wouldn’t put huts together for aircrew if they could avoid it, because they didn’t want to lose too many aircrew with one strafing. So the aircrews lived in smaller accommodation away from the mess. And I would have to ride to the mess and then have our meals and that,

and then I would ride to the end of the pier on the bike to get onboard the aircraft, and to do the training. It was rather strange that they allowed me to do it actually, I suppose I was insisting on doing it because I wanted to stay with the crew. But nevertheless, when I got back to England again, of course being out in the tropics the feet got a lot better with the warmth

and sun and everything, and I didn’t have the trouble out there to any extent. And when I got back to England on the hard bitumen again with different activities and the cold, and I got trouble again. And coming home I can recall my absolute desire to get myself perfectly fit. And I sat out in

as much as possible in sun and warmth to get my disability straightened out, or overcome it as best I could. And I was fairly successful and didn’t have a great deal of trouble until I then, when I got back to Australia, the Perth

weather was quite reasonable and suitable. But I did take the opportunity then instead of being posted to a station around Perth, with that in mind of taking a posting to Broome, which I knew was even much warmer again. And I never had much trouble from there on

Well, I was very fortunate really, I had the opportunity of either being posted to an accounting position in Perth itself, or to take this transportation movement position in Broome. Now, I had not had any experience of Broome, but I thought

it was probably a very nice idea to go north because after all the war was still very active, and it meant that again I was very closely associated with flying. Because as transportation officer of Broome I was responsible of the ins and outs of everything of Broome, either by ship or by air,

and there was no road transport at that time.

We’re talking about July, July in 45 that we went to Broome. And it was a seven-month period that I actually spent in Broome, but it meant that

37 Squadron Dakotas, they were twenty-one seaters, they flew around from Essendon via of course various places, such as Perth and Fairmont and Corruna Downs on their way to Broome. And a squadron of Dakotas would come down from Darwin with personnel coming south, and Broome was

the changeover situation there. And also from Broome we had what we called 7 Communication Unit, which was flying Ansons and they were responsible for delivering the, all the food and necessities of life to the stations around at

Derby, Wyndham, Nookanbah, Corruna Downs and to Exmouth Gulf, so it was a very enjoyable posting. And I was very fortunate that I had still wished to be involved in the flying activities rather than an accounting position.

Yes, I was there on the night that

the war finished, it was a great excitement. I think everybody almost in Broome was at the open-air films that night. And it was a great tooting of horns, vehicles going everywhere, and Broome was quite an active place actually because there was quite a number of stations around there. Radar unit or

not stations perhaps, there was only 79 OBU, Operational Base Unit. But there was a wireless unit, there was a radar unit and there was a medical unit.

No, there were only the nursing sisters in the hospital which was responsible for not only the nursing of the

services but also of the civilian population. And of course I might add a lot of the civilian population, or most of the civilian population was not, they were indigenous people or the leftover of the pearling days with quite a few Asians and Indonesians

and Japanese successfully engaged in their previous activities of pearling. But some of them continued to live on in spite of the war.

No, there was no internment there, the people I speak of there were really crossed in their

age groups and of an age that would not have required them to be anywhere but where they were.

Well I had the responsibility eventually of actually, well perhaps before, while the war was on until such times as the war,

peace was declared we were very active. But of course immediately everyone was wanting to get to south, and I had the unenviable job of having a transit camp from the interlacing of these aircraft from Essendon around to Darwin. I had almost two hundred people in the transit camp.

And everyone of course wanted to get south, and I had to, it was very difficult for me, just really on the surface I suppose, but when you have an aircraft that only takes twenty-one people and was very limited with baggage etcetera, you haven’t got a lot of margin. But we did have access to some shipping, so fortunately that was a bit of a godsend

really. But then again you had that great rise and fall of tides there, almost forty feet of tide, which created problems for the shipping of course and the movement of ships. But I finished up having to send almost all of the equipment from the area of Broome

south. It was my instructions to ship it south, which created quite a lot of work, needless work I might add. When everything had to be branded, it all had to have a number and a lot of it must have just been wasted, must have gone into someone’s second hand place. But they were very many things of course, like twenty-five

KVA lighting plants, generators and that type of equipments of course, along with tents and so many different variety of articles of war. And they all came south on the state shipping line. And eventually, although

the period seemed to be, it was only a seven-month period, there were only two officers left. Well one left when I left, after all that time, all those numbers of people were out of that area in such a short period of time. It was amazing really how quickly they disappeared. But it had been a very active area, very pleasant,

quite many houses around it had been deserted because of the war, and because of the fact that there were some twenty-five or twenty-six aircraft destroyed there when the Japanese bombed Broome in 1942. And the wrecks were very obvious, and so war was never very far away, and the people had not returned to Broome,

they just left their houses and many service personnel were able to just walk into a house and be there while they were posted to Broome for a period of time. And we were only living in tents at 79 Operational Base Unit, but we did have a proper officers’ mess and sergeants’ mess, etcetera. So life was reasonably easy by

war standards, and quite comfortable during that period.

Yes, well I can remember particularly that my friend, May Waters who was a nursing sister that I was friendly with, also Eileen Eaton and

two other nurses. On that particular night I had one of their superiors there who was perhaps not quite the type that celebrated. And it was rather difficult as to what we would do actually, as to what we would do with this very senior nursing sister. And somehow or other she was persuaded that the time was right

to retire, and from then on I’m sure we had a very friendly evening, and a very, very late night, because it was something that, it was unbelievable really, and it had happened so unexpectedly. It wasn’t as if we were sitting on the edges of our seats waiting for it to happen. Communication were so very

poor at that time that just the very fact that peace had been declared just seemed to be almost untrue. But it was certainly a wonderful, wonderful night, not that there was a great deal to do in Broome. But certainly we must have I think, I think at that time having been a teetotaller for most of my service life, perhaps I might have even had a beer.

Or perhaps two.

A total of about a bit over seven months actually. And I really had to refer to my good friend, my log book to record actually the time, it

just didn’t seem possible that I was only there for that period of time. But yet that shows me that it was the time, it was from July to the end of January in 46, when I returned then, under instructions, back to my base which was actually one of the suburbs

in Perth. And it was a base on the Swan River, Crawley actually, it’s a suburb of Perth. And then my next posting in that position actually was to become the air priority officer and ultimately also railway transport officer for Western Area Headquarters. So that took me then eventually from

Crawley to a permanent station, back to where I’d started in Pearce, just out of Perth.

Yes, occasionally we would have a weekend off. Of course when I came back from overseas I would have had some embarkation leave. And I can recall going home

and taking some of my air force mates that I’d actually joined up with, the day I’d joined up and we’d been right through the war. And I think I took two or three of them home and my father had put on a big, quite a big reception in as much as a dance was a big occasion at that time. So the hall, the local hall was filled and we had a very, very merry night.

But after that, after having gone to Broome and then returned again, I did have occasions to go up to my parents, and actually played football for the local team for a few months in the winter of ‘46, represented the air force

mid week and the local team on the weekend. So I must have had a little bit of time on my hands in the position of Air Priority Officer and Rail and Transport Officer. It was getting really almost then to a nine to five situation because this time was getting on towards the end of 1946 you see.

So things were starting to soften up and ease up a bit.

Well, my priority was to go further and stay longer in the air force. And I did arrange with the commanding officer of transportation and movement for Australia, who was Group Captain Ross, who was stationed in Melbourne. And I did give myself

the luxury of a flight to Melbourne, seeing as though I was Air Priority Officer. And I arranged to go to Iwakuni as a Transportation and Movements Officer.

In Japan, an island of Japan, south of Japan. And it was quite a base, of British Commonwealth forces. And one of my friends

who had been flying one of the aircraft at Broome had received a posting to go to this particular place, Iwakuni, and I thought it was so unjust that I was really the person who should be going, and he didn’t want to go. So the group captain agreed that I could go in his place. But because the

cabinet had not decided on the ultimate number that would be retained in the air force whether it would be sixteen thousand or seventeen thousand, there was some degree of doubt as to whether my seniority was high enough to be retained. I would certainly be retained as a flying officer if the numbers were seventeen thousand, if they were sixteen thousand there was just a chance

that I may not be retained. So seeing that that indecision came about, that squashed my ambition to continue on in the air force, and I immediately got a new ambition and that was to get out and get a position as soon as possible. Having received the group captain’s letter, which I still have,

I then decided after arriving back from Melbourne and having had a trip and taken the opportunity of aligning a position with Trans-Australian Airlines, informed my commanding officer who was only about the same rank as myself,

that I wanted to be discharged. Which he agreed quite readily with, but that was Monday morning, and I told him I wished to be on TAA [Trans-Australian Airlines] second aircraft out of Perth on Thursday night, which he was horrified by the idea. But the real strength in my position was that I had a beautiful 1942 Chevy with

utility, which I was entitled to as the Air Priority and Railway Transport Officer, which he didn’t have one. So we came to an agreement, that he was quite happy to take my 42 Chevy utility under his charge, and I was able to go on TAA’s second aircraft out of Perth on Thursday night. And I began with TAA as a traffic officer,

which was really a glorified booking clerk really. I wasn’t flying, I wasn’t in any way associated with flying, except that it was still an airlines. And it was a very enjoyable time, which was a nine til five in theory hours, qualified because it was ten guineas

a week, that’s ten pound ten shillings. And it was really a shift situation, shift work, because we worked from about six thirty in the morning until about ten o’clock at night or something of that nature. And the office was in Swanston Street. Or I should say to begin with the office was in Lonsdale Street in the back of Myers.

The original TAA office was in the back of Myer’s, it was a part of the Myer building. And our buses to the airport were the green government transport buses. So that was the early days of TAA and it was a very enjoyable time, but I had other fish to fry soon after that. And went farming.

Well, my wife who was originally Sister May Waters from Broome.

We got married in Melbourne, in February 1947, having started with TAA in December 46. So my wife, new wife

had a farming background, and she had farming relations in Victoria, who we visited and who prevailed upon me, who had never been on a farm, that farming was a very good idea and that I should consider it very seriously. And May, my new wife

did not object to me being involved in farming, and we finished up purchasing a hundred acres. A dairy farm really. Or we proposed to make it a dairy farm at Pakenham, which was thirty-five miles from Melbourne. And we proceeded on that basis, and we were near to

some of her distant relations and they were very close by and very helpful. And we proceeded to turn around and milk some cows, like about forty cows. It was a very new experience really, milking cows. And especially when I started off buying ten heifers who have very small teats and are very hard to milk. But we got through that,

built up a beautiful new dairy and new cowshed and new milking machines and so forth. And we were quite happy with that situation except that other things had beckoned and I decided to take a little extra after hours work, as if the dairy wasn’t enough. But being young and ambitious

I presented myself to a program which was being instigated more or less in Pakenham or that had just started, and that was the factory, food factory, Reilly Canned Foods. And having started there, very soon afterwards we started a new factory of which I ultimately became the foreman of.

And so that was the end of dairying. I only dairyed for about two and a half years. Because you can only afford to be sick from about nine thirty in the morning to about three o’clock in the afternoon and when you’re dairying on your own, it’s sort of, not the best of occupations.

No, life was too busy really. There

was always something new happening, and I found that TAA was all very new and very exciting because everybody wanted to fly, to get used to flying and do flying like that they had never done before. Then of course, although I was only with TAA a period of sixteen months, eighteen months

to then go farming, there was just so much in it, to learn, and just so much to do on this new piece of land. It wasn’t really new, it had a house on it, but the house had to be painted, everything had to be done. It had to be re-fenced and everything had to be put on it, and I had to learn all the tricks of the trade.

Yes, I put it down of course to my original application where I applied to join the air force as a boiler attendant and I was given the opportunity to join aircrew, and I took every opportunity to stay in aircrew when many people fell by the wayside. And then

to come back a commissioned officer and to have the opportunity then even after coming back from overseas, to carry on and have quite a number of positions of importance and responsibility. It just seemed to be a progression. I said in one of my earlier reports that I was an opportunist,

I didn’t believe in missing any opportunity that there was to advance. Which of course will be proved a little bit further on the track as the case.

Well, whilst I was at Pakenham I qualified for a soldier settlement farm as a dairy farmer,

and then one of my wife’s relations, closer relations, her father’s brother had their own original farming property which was fine wool sheep at Cavendish, just out of Hamilton.

And we visited there whilst I was with TAA, and although I went dairy farming at Pakenham, when I became foreman of Reilly Canned Foods, obviously I couldn’t go on dairying, so I sold the dairy herd which I had worked up to

numbers of about forty-four was the maximum I was actually milking. I sold all the cows and then put sheep back on to the property, when it had actually had had sheep on it when I had purchased it, just before I got into the dairying. And I put sheep back on, and then qualified with soldier settlement then for a sheep farm, as well as a dairy farm.

And the land board said “Well, how come last time you were in here you told us you were the best dairy farmer in Victoria and now you’re telling us you’re probably the best sheep farmer?” But anyway, they must have swallowed my line because after many, many applications I changed my application form and indicated that my wife

was a bigger partner in our business than I was. By reason of our financial statement, and that one change meant different to being considered in the proper light. As a person who could be assisted in the rural finance and settlement commission, and I did get the allocation at Meredith, which was a block

that had been allocated already, previously. But had not been confirmed, and I was able to compete with sixty-five others and win that right to take up five hundred and sixty five acres at Meredith which was suitable for fine wool sheep, and it was in a fine wool sheep growing area.

Yes, well we did give it a good shot.

Well, it’s interesting how things happen in life, because I had come from a Labor Party background

really and I had voted, when we were overseas I can remember getting voting papers that we had to fill in. And when I was at Pakenham I can remember there was an election and I happened to be called upon by the sitting member who was a Country Party man, and of course by this time

I’d been five years farming and now I’d gone to Meredith as a sheep farmer. So I was very rural orientated, and during the course of my time at Pakenham I had done some small business course that was available, and, but to answer your question directly.

I had just a knock on the door by one of the local young men whose family had been farming at Meredith for very many years, quite a big property owner. And we were adjoining the, my block was adjoining the township ran right down to the township boundary, and was very accessible. So he called in and knocked on the door and asked me if I’d come to a meeting.

Well I think I was only elected as vice president that night, but by the end of my second meeting I was president. So the Liberal Party, I was in the Liberal Party straight away. And that just led on and on to more and more involvement in politics.

Well I stood for

pre-selection unsuccessfully in 1956. For an upper house seat, which was decided in 1958 and it was won by the Liberal Party, my very great friend eventually, the honourable Murray Byrne. And I had to wait another, I was runner up to him, and I was promised support

from many farmers on the basis that Mr Murray Byrne, young Murray Byrne was although only twenty-seven at the time, he was a well known solicitor in Ballarat. And many farmers said well we, and he had been runner up in the federal pre-selection of 1955, and many farmers said, “We are going to support Mr Byrne this time, but we hope you will

try another time.” Well another time didn’t come until, unfortunately the member for Ballarat South had been taken very ill and had to retire from parliament in 1963. 1963,

he had to retire. And the position was left open for a very long time, he was still alive, but not able to go to parliament. And I was pre-selected in 1964, and won the seat of Ballarat South, and at the pre-selection was asked would I go and live in Ballarat if I won pre-selection, if I won the seat

that was… and I did win the seat. So I had to keep my word, so I did go, moved from Meredith and we were in Ballarat because I’d made the promise and in politics you have to keep promises.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years, a very good pleasant time. A near neighbour of mine

was the premier, Sir Henry Bolte. He was my most illustrious constituent. And we had a lot of association actually. I was, before being involved in the parliament, I used to do some harvesting for him on his farm. So we did have a good, quite close contact. And

I thoroughly enjoyed being in parliament, and I represented the parliament in 1974 as a representative overseas. And visited three other parliaments, and reported back I am sure adequately. It was,

as an acting speaker, I had the interest of being an active speaker for six years. And retired voluntarily from the position, having pre-selection for the 1979 election, but decided to retire back into my seed business, which I

had established back in 1957 whilst I was on the farm at Meredith.

We were, we were in government for twenty-seven years, twenty-seven consecutive years.

No, I was mainly concerned with, and that being mainly a federal field, I was very orientated towards the rural situation and state development. I was chairman of the all-party state development committee.

On a couple of occasions, we used to vacate the presidency, and I was in fact chairman of about five of the parliamentary party committees at one stage. Finally, they were, I think, wise in deciding that perhaps if you had two chairmanships it was probably sufficient, so I had to forgo a couple of them.

But it didn’t mean any extra involvement other than extra responsibility, there was no extra perks with them, there was no extra salary, and it was just a matter of being responsible to organise the particular group of members of parliament who were allocated to that particular section of parliamentary

regulations and also of the bills and legislation that everybody has to study.

Yes, well when we went to Meredith as soldier settlers there was a great influx of course into this small township. The station property was cut up into twenty-eight blocks and allocated.

So we had twenty-eight young ex-servicemen immediately in the area, as well as the local residents who had returned from the war. And I was president over the period that I was in Meredith for some seventeen to eighteen to nineteen years. I was the president on about five

occasions or for about a period of five years. And also the president of the Soldiers’ Memorial Hall Committee, which we renovated completely, and we had extension too. And we ran, the RSL ran gym cars, and we had great activities, we had great sporting days and it raised a lot of money for

Red Cross and for other organizations such as Red Cross. We were very active in the rural fire brigade, I was a member of that, of course the offshoot of then was the sporting teams got a new life, just blossomed. The cricket team, the tennis team, I was playing in both of those. Fortunately, I didn’t endeavour

to go into the football, but we had a great deal of activity and the RSL was really the centrepiece and had their own clubroom eventually. We had our major presentations of Belle of the Ball and all of that involvement. And I represented Meredith on the District Board in Ballarat

for about ten years. Thoroughly enjoyed our activity.

Yes I did because I was,

I think that’s born out by the fact that I am still to this day in 2003, am still in direct contact with the second pilot in England, who is still in England, he was an English pilot. And a tail gunner, one of the tail gunners who was a Canadian and he lives in Canada. So to this day I am still

in contact with them. I have been in touch with the captain, our skipper, until his death just recently. So yes, I’ve reminisced quite a deal and now I’ve also, am a member of the Sunderland 10 Squadron and 461 Squadron Club,

because as far as I know there were only three Australians ever served on 95 Squadron. So we can’t form up a club on that number.

Well it does in as much as

my children, when they’ve gone overseas have called on some of our crew. It does in as much as I sponsored the navigator’s married daughter here to Australia. My youngest son called on our skipper in New York when he was overseas. So we have quite an association.

It was just a pity that we did lose contact with some, and some passed on very early. My own particular Australian one, as air gunner that I joined up the same day with, died some thirty years ago. So that of course creates a gap that you can’t really replace.

No, I think we were fortunate in as much as that we didn’t have a lot of combat as such. You had the same frightening experiences as servicemen and

as civilians had in England with the buzz bombs and the V2s, the rockets. You had that trauma which you had many close associations with, too close associations with and concerns about. Well, when you saw all the people who lived in tube railway stations and slept there every night, and had to

contend with that type of terror, I think that perhaps we had our problems and our dangers where we had served, but we didn’t have the fierce experiences that perhaps some people had in both, in any of the other services really.

Well I think, I find that war is a terrible thing. Yet we seem to make

so much advancement in science and in other ways during wars. It does make me sad really to think that we cannot somehow or other find a way in which we as a people

can accept one another without this terrible conflict which creates so much misunderstanding. Its nature, human nature is a terrible thing. But personally of course many of us who served in the war will reflect on the basis that it changed our lives. It

changed our activities, it changed our way of living, it changed, it improved a lot of the standard of living. We saw great advances, and many of us didn’t go back to where we had left from. We had been experienced and we’d been educated to a greater extent and in many ways. And we’d learnt to accept different things, and we’d

mixed with people, which we hadn’t had the opportunity to do. We mixed with different nationalities, we’d become more tolerant, and yet we see so much intolerance still behind us, and still within in the world.

Well, I think it’s a great opportunity for me to be involved and I’d just like to say that I appreciate that I have been located and found, and that I have had this opportunity just relating these experiences,

as humble as they are, and as mundane as perhaps some of them are. Nevertheless, I proudly wear my ribbon. I am proud to, particularly the Atlantic Star which is allocated on behalf of those who served in the Atlantic. And that’s the convoy situation and how important that was. And

just the opportunity of serving my country, like so many others did. And some much more, shall I say, with greater honour than I may have had the opportunity for. But nevertheless I feel it takes everybody to serve and if you can serve the nation when called upon then I would

hope that any of my successors may not have to have that requirement, but if they did then they would find their responsibilities would be the same as I found them when I was nineteen.

Thank you.