Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Adelaide. I was born on the 29th of June, 1917.

I think I enlisted when war broke out in 1939; I was working at the Adelaide [Hospital] at that time.

Well, war was declared in October, I remember correctly and I would have probably enrolled then. I think.

Well I enlisted then but I was only 22 at the time. And so, and we were supposed to be 25 when we joined up. So I went to Melbourne and did private nursing, for a year

and I came home at Christmas time and asked matron in chief again when I was likely to be sent away. And I think I’d written to her, quite a few times from Melbourne so I have a feeling she probably thought, “Put her in and shut her up.” So I was – yes so I was able to actually sail away on the Queen Mary, on

the date of my 23rd birthday.

We went straight to the Middle East and from there we were sent up to Palestine and from there I was sent with one other girl from Adelaide we were sent to Beirut as

part of a 2/3rd Casualty Clearing station. There were two girls that were previously there that were sent back to Sydney. I really don’t know why, but we replaced them.

I stayed with them during the whole three and a half years I was in the army.

Approximately

twelve months.

No.

Well, I got diphtheria at one stage so I was sent back to Palestine to a base, 2/7th Base Hospital and nursed there. And then I was sent down to Alexandria to

recuperate, so that was my – the only other places I went to in that time.

Up in Beirut.

I’m not sure, exactly how long. We were later sent down to join another base hospital. The 6th or the 7th but for a time, because we were being sent down to

El Alamein. So we were presumably while the getting ready for the battle and sort of organising everything we were with another hospital for about two or three months.

Yes.

The –

I think it was the 6th.

Well we were based sort of out in the desert at a place called, Burjalarab. With

sort of underground, you know, camps in the desert.

Well I stayed with them – I was with them throughout the war.

I would say, about six weeks.

Then we moved to Mersa Matruh. And we sort of went out to investigate a hospital that had been left behind by the Germans and the Italians were running it and it was just a shocking

situation. Was again, it was underground but they’d lost all sense of sterilisation and we took the worst infected wounds and things. I mean, amputations that had to be re-amputated.

Then we went on holidays, our colonel and the dentist of the unit, sort of accompanied the eight sisters were taken down the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. And Luxor and so forth. And we had about a week’s holiday.

We were

back with the 6th AGH [Australian General Hospital] for a time. And then we stayed at a base, near the Red Sea because we were waiting for ships to come back to Australia.

Be about 1943, some time.

Yes I returned to Adelaide and I worked out at Northfield.

Probably two months.

It was just a base hospital here.

We were sent up to Queensland to the tablelands,

and we were just sent – just the 2/3rd CCS, again, and we lived up there for about two months. Prior to going to New Guinea.

Would have been probably I should say about March ’43.

We landed Port Moresby. And then we flew over to Finschhafen.

Twelve months.

Mmm.

Well, I had become engaged then, and we decided that we’d get married if we could get leave so I came down to

to Adelaide and was married in May, 1944, and after that, once you were married you had to stay base, you couldn’t go back to active service outside. So I was stationed down at Dawes Road.

About three months

I think. Then I became pregnant so I left.

Yes, I did. I worked sort of on and off, for ages. After I was married, I did part-time work, had three children, and so I did part-time work, while they were young.

And then I worked down at the Lady Gowrie Kindergarten for about four years. And then I went back to the Adelaide and worked there for I suppose, I did part-time for about five years and then I was on the staff full-time for ten years.

Then I left to go over to my eldest daughter in England who was having a baby, and she’d lost two already so she more or less had to stay in bed, and hatch it. And so I didn’t go back to nursing after that.

Actually

I stayed with her for twelve months. But part of that time was in Germany because her husband was in the English Air Force and they had posted him to NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] in Germany, near Dusseldorf and so after the baby was born, I went with them to Germany,

and then I came home and I was no sooner home and I got a letter to say she was pregnant again. I thought, couldn’t be. But she was. So of course the same thing happened, she had to more or less stay in bed, nearly lost the next one. And so I went – the house and went back. So, yes, that was rather fun.

Yes exactly.

I was born in a private hospital in a street in Unley.

Well,

my father and mother lived in a house up near Golden Grove, and she died about two weeks after I was born. So my father went back to Golden Grove, and to the family home and where his mother lived, and I gather there were lots of other

brothers and sisters, cause there were nine in my father’s family. And then I had a very good aunt who lived in Adelaide and so I used to come to Adelaide and stay with her and then also stay with my father in the country. And I did school work by correspondence

till I was about nine and then came down to stay with the aunt and went to Girton [girls school, now Pembroke], and I was there till I was seventeen.

Yes, it was – it was a gorgeous old home, and I had three cousins, whose

parents had died of TB [Tuberculosis]. And they came, they were brought up there and brought up at the time. So they were a bit like older brothers and sisters. And it was a lovely old place. And I still adore the country really.

Mainly sheep. Mainly sheep and they had quite a large vineyard. But sheep were the main things, so I – as I said, I was very fond of riding, and I had a pony when I was four, and I used to go out on a leading rein then and was, yeah, was especially keen on riding always.

Brenda. Dreadful name for a pony. But

nice, so that was very happy. Then the farm had to be sold when my grandmother died apparently, it just had to be sold, so then my father and he had a sister, that never married and they moved down to Burnside, so then I went and when I was fourteen,

and then I stayed with them. And while I was continue at Gertin, and they had a house in Lockwood Road and I used to walk about two miles I think to school. I had a very happy time at school, thoroughly enjoyed it.

At that stage it was really countrified and I can still remember going home in the horse and buggy which, as I said, my father used to come down and when I was living with my aunt, he used to come down on Friday and take me home for the weekend. And you know friends from school used to go back to Golden Grove and we had

lots of fun, it was a really old house that my great grandfather had come here to settle from Scotland. In about 19- I mean 1840. And I gather the house had, had additions to it but it was a large rambling house with underground rooms where I gather the – his children were taught by a governess, originally but it

had big old rooms.

Well, so many little ones, it was a bit like a rabbit warren, I mean they had two major big front rooms, and then there was a - it was a two storeyed one, one, two, so there were about four rooms upstairs, then there was as courtyard, which probably was all part of the

original, and there was a kitchen and a bathroom and three bedrooms off this courtyard. And then at the back of the courtyard there were four little tiny brick rooms, or stone rooms, I should say, but I think were then used for dear, oh dear. One was used as part of a dairy I think.

But I gather they were the original rooms that had been built when they first arrived there.

Sheep was the main thing. My father, I should mention, my father had rheumatoid arthritis, very acutely, before he was married and so he wasn’t able to be as active as he – I mean he rode horses and he could do lots of things, but he in

those days, they didn’t really understand rheumatoid arthritis, I gather. So he was put in bed, and left there for about six months in hospital and so his knees, without exercise, his knees became totally stiff and they their method of getting them bending again was to give him an anaesthetic and put his legs on the edge of the table and more or less, force

them down. So he didn’t ever bend as well as he should. So, as I said, he did an awful lot of work on the farm but he had to have some help. You know with the more active things. But he sort of supervised it all and as I said, sheep and…

No, wool, mainly I think. I

gather years before when my grandfather was alive, they used to have pigs and all sorts of things. Or used to breed them quite a lot. But as I said, I gather that the whole property was originally quite large in my great grandfather’s time, my grandfather actually sold off lots of it.

So there was only about a third left. And then it went almost down to Salisbury I gather. When they originally settled.

Yes, it was quite big an area.

I really can’t say off-hand exactly.

Yes, a huge old shearing shed, actually

I can show you afterwards there, I’ve got a lovely big photo of the shearing area, shed area.

And we did. That’s the one time I can remember, my father shutting me in the bathroom, because I decided I was going to go down and watch the shearers, I think I was about four or five, and he said, “No.” Cause I gather, because of their language

so up I went anyway, and yes, I can remember they gave me thruppence, don’t ask me why, but I suppose probably to be nice and get rid of me. And I can remember being shut in the bathroom, the only time I can really remember being punished.

He was very warm and caring person. Very nice. Very cheerful, with a great sense of humour. And more- later we met a man who worked for

him when he was about eighteen and he said, what a wonderful sense of humour he had. And yes.

Well, there were, as I said, there were nine in his family, I mean there were nine brothers and sisters, my father was actually

born in Germany, because at that stage, I gather the family were fairly affluent, and they went off on the sailing ship with four children and my father was the fifth one and he was actually born in Germany because they were there for about three years. The eldest son had been born with some problem

and never walked properly and I gather my grandfather had some idea that there was some wonder man in Germany that was going to cure it all. But of course it didn’t, no he was totally in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. And as I said there were nine and my father was the middle one so he had younger sisters living at home, quite a time.

And then they had somebody to come in and help with work. And then these three cousins of mine, the eldest one who was named, Halder, she of course did lots to help on the property, or at least cooking and so forth. Then I think they did have some help in – I think as a child I didn’t take

I mean, you know. I was happy riding and being fed and probably didn’t take much notice of what went on particularly.

No.

Yes. They were.

Yes, she was about fifteen years older, actually and then she had another brother, John, who later

came head of the wine research at CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation] and then Michael who was tragically killed in a car accident, later. But he was a very bright boy, so they – the boys both won scholarships to Saints, they were quite bright little buttons.

I think my main thought was I was always so mad on riding. And I can’t remember particularly sort of any – I think as I said, I was nine when I came to school, and I had lots of fun, with, I used to have, friends

home for the weekend a lot. Or I stayed with other friends, too. And I had one very close friend, Edith Irwin, she later married Chester Willmot the war correspondent and well, the local Golden Grove show we both got horse in and made scones and entered lots of things in the cooking section.

Which were really pretty awful, but we had lots of fun doing it.

Well presumably she was sold. I mean when we left the farm but I had her as long as I was there. And my husband, my father I mean,

he had a old horse that used to be a jumper, and I presume because it was a bit old it was getting to end its days on the farm and I used to have fun doing some jumping with it. Never came to grief in that. But I had a few falls from Brenda, periodically, landing in a

patch of artichoke prickles once. Which wasn’t very good. And yes, I remember, John – as child we often laughed about it because he said, because I was so much younger, he probably wanted to get rid of me for a while, so he said, “I’ll give you sixpence,” or something, “If you can

run round the eight acre paddock before I count to a hundred.” I must have been so dumb, off I went. While he said, one and probably 99, when I came back. So I just was that much younger, I was probably a bit of a menace I suppose.

Yes.

Yes.

Where Pembroke is now. I mean Pembroke was an amalgamation of Guertin and Kings College. So I used to catch two – I used to stay with an aunt at Hyde Park and catch two buses out there. And so I was very happy doing that. Because I said, I did enjoy school very much.

I think probably about 400

or – it was relatively small.

It was grey, grey pleated box pleats. And yes, grey and white blouses. And I think in those days for sports they had these large bloomer arrangements, cause I played basketball. And

with the basketball team. And I learnt music, I was always keen on music. And actually that piano is one of the original ones from Golden Grove.

Well a Mrs Ango, was the headmistress, and she actually was

a family friend I gather of my father’s family. So that was one of the reasons probably why Guertin was chosen for me to go to. I mainly – most of them I enjoyed but I had a maths teacher who I was terrified of. Because she used to, I think I was fairly shy, sensitive

little thing and she had high heels and she was very little and she used to yell and if you didn’t cotton on straight away. And I think probably I was – I just used to turn off. I always blame her for my not being very good at maths. But most of them were – but I mean we laughed about teachers as everybody does.

Or most children do, I think.

A person called, Brisbane Matthews. And she taught me the piano at school and I went – I learnt for a couple of years afterwards. And I passed the exams I needed to. But I’ve always enjoyed music very much.

I don’t know, but it’s something, something, music and gardening things two things I wouldn’t like to live without. I think they’re most necessary.

I can’t remember any one, particularly. I know songs, I was tried out for they were going to have an operetta and they had us up on the stage being tried out with our voices and I do remember that, it was an operetta called, “There was a little spider.” And he had a little side and we were to get up on the stage and sing this

thing and I think I got about one word out every, out of four. Terrified, I was very shy. That was not my scene. I mean I enjoyed singing but as I said, I mean I’d go to orchestral concerts now and I really loved them. Introducing Cedric to concerts.

Well, I suppose my two closest ones were Edith Irwin, who I said became Edith Willmot and a girl called, Helen Payne. And we always sort of did things together. But we sort of latterly had quite a group of about six of us who always used to have lunch together. But they were the

two really close ones and I was a prefect in – you know, last year at school and passed my intermediate and leaving honours. Most of the girls were Edith and Helen went onto university, after school and I was always very keen to do nursing. But I

was too young to start when I left school. So I went to university for a year and I did some science subject and went on with my music for that year and then I went down to Escort House which is a huge old place in

Tennyson. By the beach and that stage it was a recuperation place for children with major heart problems or with TB, children that had TB in spines and so forth, which was pretty common then, I think the idea it was down by the beach so

they used to put children quite often out on frames with just a loin cloth on to sunning them by the beach was supposed to be the best treatment.

Well, I don’t think particularly, but maybe there were, maybe they would have got better anyway because

it was never carried on later, as a treatment. But there were quite a lot of children seemed to have these TB spines.

I think I always, as a child, I don’t know why, but I was always sort of thought nursing would be a great idea.

No I can’t really. But I thought I’d like to be – I had an aunt, one of my mother’s sisters, who was a nurse, but I don’t think she particularly inspired me. I just decided I would like to be. She was a nurse and I had an uncle who was a doctor. But I don't think they

really influenced me particularly.

I would have been seventeen I think.

Doing a science subject, yes. And then as I said, Escort House for the time, but

we were supposed to be eighteen to start training at The Children’s – again, I think I was a little bit early.

Well, just generally nursing the children, feeding them if they had to be fed and washing them and just general nursing duties.

Mmm.

Where it is now.

We lived at the hospital. In nurses’ quarters, was a huge three storey building, facing

the side street that – can’t think of the name of it. Anyway, all as part of the hospital. Very happy times there, I made lots of friends and really thoroughly enjoyed living in there with the others. And one of the girls I trained with who’s older than I am,

Pip Ray, we’re still friends and play bridge together on a regular basis.

There was a Ruth Gunsen, she was Pip McGary when she was training, Kath Cousins, I was very friendly with.

Patsy Minheart. They were close friends.

Probably mainly washing children and learning what we needed to – we had lectures, I got pneumonia quite severely in my first six months. I think probably because I was on night duty and after night duty we used to instead of going to bed, in the early morning, we used to get a boat and row on the Torrens and quite frequently sort of get in the way of some of the crews training. And perhaps go to bed about lunchtime and I think probably I got overtired or something but I do remember having about six weeks, off duty when I had pneumonia because it was the days before penicillin. So you had to go through this period of having very high temperatures and rigours and things, until in those days they called it, “the crisis.” I gather you either got better or you didn’t and well I did get better.

Yes.

I don’t think I noticed particularly anything with the children. It was the time of one of the

outbreaks of – lost the word. No I think when you’re young, at that age, you’re so involved with getting on with life yourself, that I don’t think I noticed anything particular about the children really.

Well, I knew that our property – as I said, I was fourteen when I left Golden Grove and I know that was – born in ’17 – that was during the Depression that – cause the property had to be sold because my grandfather left the will that way. When his wife died it had to be sold. So I’m very aware that it was the Depression then. And

we got seven and six a week for the first year at the children’s, ten shillings the second and twelve and six the third year. So it wasn’t a lot to – I mean you needed help from family to cope. We were given uniforms and we had a one day off. A week.

And worked fairly longer hours than they do now I think. Worked at least eight hour days.

Well, I used to – well at first mostly go home to either my father or my aunt, I think, really. And then as I made close friends,

we used to go out quite a bit together.

Well, I mean the usual ones of pneumonia and they used to have a lot of children with ear problems.

A lot of surgery of course. I worked in nearly all the wards. I remember the very severe heatwave we had, I think it was 1936, when the temperature was 117 and we had stone floors in the nursing home and I think two of us slept on the floor because it was much cooler than

being on our bed. And the only cooling system was in the babies’ ward, which they tried to keep especially cool, had a cooling system that had water outlet, and we decided that we’d sleep on the lawn. And not realising that the outlet from the cooling system was going down that lawn. Woke up

in the middle of the night just about swimming, do remember that. We had a very strange night sister, she was quite a personality and a character. And she used to go to the – we were supposed to be in by, half past ten at night, she used to come to the nurses home and she would

sign off the – we had to sign in when we came home and she would sign off the end of the book so that anybody later would be in big trouble. Well, I remember one of my special friends, Patsy Minheart, she was about six foot, two tall and with very long legs and I remember her sort of dashing up the stairs at about five at a time, with the night sister with the torch below trying to see whose legs they were.

There was quite a lot of funny incidences with her. She was a very, she was a strange personality, because she used to tell us all that we were much too loud on night duty and I felt at the time I got off night duty I’d almost lost my voice. Had to whisper everywhere. And she used to cook pig’s trotters, at night. For

her picnic with her, with “Uncle,” supposed uncle. And at one stage she was in the sick nurse’s ward and I was nursing a woman she had her tonsils out and the so called, “Uncle,” used to come and brush her hair at eight o'clock in the morning. So I decided he was no uncle. I found

some children at one stage they had a very bad period with infection in the babies’ ward and children that had come in with – one little child that came in with pneumonia, and was almost better and the parents were told they could take it home in two days, suddenly developed this frightful diarrhoea

and nothing they could do – the child died within twelve hours. I found that really hard to cope with. It was such a bad outbreak, said it was almost like cholera and they moved all the babies out of the ward until that was totally cleared. I think, yes, I think the sort of

quickness with which babies particularly sort of got worse, we had a very severe – strict sister in the babies’ ward wouldn’t have any dummies. And but it was a tradition that people on night duty used to have a few dummies in their pockets to

quieten the babies at night. And unfortunately one of them forgot to collect them all. And they were discovered and the sister was not pleased.

Well you just hoped they’d I mean you weren’t expected to pick them up and nurse them very much but you just turned them over or

fed them or did something to try and quieten them. But as I said, it was a tradition this dummy business at night. And it was a very strict rule that we would never smack them. Because I remember one nurse did smack one, once and the child sort of held its breath and almost went blue. And so I can quite understand why those rules were made.

And another rule was that you never left a child in the bath alone, ever. And again, on night duty somebody left a child and went to get its I think the child was about five or six, but went to get its towel and so forth and came back and the child was having an epileptic fit. Fortunately nothing dreadful happened,

but she sort of grabbed the child and rushed down the passageway – I found it quite traumatic some of the children with tetanus. I was, at quite an early age I was put into nurse a child with tetanus. And they had such frightful spasms. Particularly somebody came to clean

its mouth and that was in itself, was enough to send them into a violent spasms and they were nursed totally apart from, in a solitary room. That I do remember very clearly because this child was in the cot with the bed sides down and I was sent in to special it and it had this

awful convulsions, it would just about throw itself out of the bed. I can still remember being very carefully trying to get round to the door to call for help. Without letting the child fall out of the bed. That was – and also children with breathing difficulties, they often used to have steam kettles, so that it was a moist

atmosphere for them. It can – also that would have been in my first year, I was left one night to special one of these children. I felt that quite stressful at that age, because the night seemed a long time, when you’re sort of shut up with these children. I think – and then I worked in surgery quite a bit, too.

They at that stage they had the most dreadful habit of - one surgeon, had the most awful habit of trying to outdo his previous record for tonsillectomies in that time. So the children were brought in by their parents, they apparently used to only guillotine them then, not do them as they do now. And the

parents took them home later that day, so the children were taken into theatre, then they had a recovery room where they were looked after, till the mothers came but it was a dreadful practise. Because one child would be being taken into the theatre while the other one was almost bleeding and being taken out of it. It was awful. But this one doctor that

used to do this. And we used to have to wear aprons down our back and hold the children over the shoulder so that they could sort of, it was awful. But those days have gone, fortunately.

Happy days, were the other nurses. But it was very. I mean it used to weigh, I mean you couldn’t help thinking about the children. And of course the parents were not allowed in with the children other than visiting hours. So it must have been awful for the kids.

The three years that I needed

to – at that stage you got your full certificate after three years, which was ridiculous because you had no experience with adults until you did exams and all about adult nursing, so that’s why I chose to go to the Adelaide for six months to get the experience, which I thought was most essential.

Well I seemed to get into all the strife in the world, because

well, first of all, one thing I should say, I suppose, the superintendent at the children’s hospital as I was finishing, I was rather keen on doing social work, then. Really keen on doing social work. And he talked to me loud and long several times and said I should do it. But at that stage,

you know, having earned twelve and six for the last year, I was rather keen to get out and work and earn something a bit more than that. I really didn’t feel like I could afford to do this social work, really then. But the Adelaide was so vastly different and I was always glad I trained at the children’s [hospital] because they always did have time to teach you properly.

How to do things, whereas at the Adelaide, I thought you had to sort of find out as best you can, but I certainly enjoyed the experience of it very much, but one incident that happened to me, I happened to be on duty when a woman had the radium needles taken off her nose. She had five radium needles on her nose and she was allowed to

walk round. And I was the only one on at lunchtime when they came through and moved them. And they checked with the chart that she’d had five on, but when they were removed she only had four. Well, I being the one at the time was the one rather on the mat as to what had happened to the other one. And I was sent to the matron and I was sent to the medical superintendent. I always imagined I’d be in Yatala [South Australian prison] before long.

And the ward had to be – no linen was sent away no dirty dressing, nothing was to be removed from the ward till this was found. And one of the nurses said, she remembers seeing something looking like a pin on the floor but to bother, I won’t pick it up, I won’t sweep it up. And so about two days later they got Professor Kerr Grant from the university – he had a special

radium detector and it was found in the down in the rubbish tins, quite a distance away. But I can remember being quite terrified at the time, and –

For cancer on the nose. Those sort of things I think it was learning the different rules of the hospital. Somebody had died and

the ward when I was there and the doctor asked me to get permission from the husband to do a post mortem and I thought well we didn’t do such things at the children’s but in all innocence I asked the husband’s permission and he signed it quite happily there was no problem at all. But one of the sisters came along and she really

ticked me off, you know, how dare I do such a thing, but I think it was learning new rules in a different place. And we had very good experience because we were sent I was sent to theatre ward and all the sort of things that totally different and the theatre ward I can still remember being – you were on duty there from about four till eight on your own and I can remember this man

and he’d been in shackles cause he was very severe head injury in a car accident and his wife had been involved too. And before the others went off they decided to take him out of his shackles and he was sort of quite delirious I can remember him getting up and walking down the passage and saying, “Where’s my wife?” And I thought, there was just nobody

else about at all. Fortunately with a bit of persuasion he came back to bed. But I can remember a few frightening things like that. And the only thing we did at the children’s at all, was to go over to the Adelaide while I was there, while I was at the children’s to watch the gynae [gynaecology] obs [obstetrics], because they felt that was totally different to any

thing they’d do at the children’s.

Oh with the gynaecology, when – yes. And there was a doctor, who joined the navy and he more or less used to come into this gynae ward and he did look very grand in his naval uniform, and it was always a standing joke cause all the women used to get out their best

bed jackets and best perfume and everything, when he was about to do the rounds.

I don’t remember any formal graduation. At all. Not at all.

I think I was very relieved but I can’t remember any special celebrations at all.

Well, I decided to go to Melbourne and I had an aunt and several cousins there. That I knew and that was like a home base for me when I wasn’t working and so I

joined up with – no I went to St George’s Hospital in Kew and I worked there for – they put me on night duty for two months. And I didn’t like private nursing, nearly as much, I thought after the children’s and the Adelaide where people were genuinely sick, that some of the patients really expected you to be more like a maid to them, or they wanted

too much time patting pillows and so forth. I really didn’t enjoy that because they didn’t seem to be the really sick patients in the same way. So after two months on night duty, I decided to leave and I joined a private nursing depot, which you could live in and then

they sent you to cases, people rang this depot to get private nurses. And so I did that for about ten months.

I think it was at Kew or one of those major roads out in the eastern part of Melbourne I think. It was

as I say, we could live in there as a home and then be sent to these various cases. And that was quite an eye opener. Really had a lot of amusing incidences, I think the first one I went to I was to nurse an elderly man who I think he had bronchitis or something, and his son picked me up and I was not ever having done such things before, I was slightly nervous and then he said, “Oh I suppose you’re

so used to this.” And I said, “Oh yes.” You know, being quite blasé. And the very first night, I wasn’t used to being woken up at night, the very first night, I sort of went to sleep and the patient woke up and next morning he said, “I rang the bell, but you didn’t hear me. So I came in and put the light on, you still didn’t hear me. So I pulled your toes, but

you still didn’t.. so I went back to bed and took some cough mixture.” And I thought – which I thought was rather priceless but he survived quite well fortunately. And then I went out to the – was sent out to the country to nurse a child. That – there was great to do, it was a small country town and there was a Polish doctor there – he was the only doctor

in the town. He didn’t have a car, he didn’t have a bike, so used to walk to all his patients. And there was a frightful fuss at the time because some child died of diabetes whilst he was there and they felt he should have woken up to it sooner. But he used to walk around and he used to have a pack of mints in his pocket and sort offer you mints along the way.

So I spent about a fortnight there. And then I went to another patient whose, I think this bloke he didn’t – he had – he wasn’t very sick anyway.

About 22. But

this – it always amused me because he wasn’t very sick, but he was apparently, he wouldn’t do, well his wife said he wouldn’t shave and he wouldn’t do various things. So I’d never shaved a bloke’s face in my life and he had very dimpled chin, you could – by the time I went in and out of his dimples he got better very quickly. So as I said my private nursing time was really quite funny.

Actually I was at the Adelaide when war broke out, I was at the Adelaide at that time.

Yes.

At the Adelaide nursing, Adelaide Hospital.

On the radio. And I can remember we were very shocked.

I remember a friend of mine, Betty Westwood, who’s still alive, and I being together at the time when we both enlisted at I think pretty well straight away. But because we knew we were much too young, we had to wait. That’s why I went off to Melbourne. And then I finished up in Melbourne nursing a woman, psychiatric woman, which was really rather sad, I was

doing a twelve hour shifts in a private hospital with her. And was nearly Christmas time and I thought, it’s time to come home for Christmas, so I think I did about a month with her but I found that very trying. Just being shut up in one solitary room with and a psychiatric patient was not a nice thing.

I think I felt it was – well it was something you wanted to do for you country and I was to a certain extent I thought – I think at that age, it was an adventure. And you also wanted to look after the boys that were going away.

Two years.

Well, he was always very good. You know, as long as I wanted to and was happy, that’s fine.

No, I

hoped to, because I thought if I kept on asking long enough, they might give in and that’s what they obviously did.

No, several comments in letters that I have that I wrote to my father, I just said I had a feeling that the war could go on indefinitely, but I

also made several comments, “I do hope that this stupid war is over soon.” I mean, you know the tragedies of a lot of the boys was just awful.

I don’t remember any – that hasn’t – didn’t obviously make a large impression on me at all. Particularly, I think at that age, you’re so busy with your own getting on or doing your own thing, that I don’t remember restrictions and things particularly badly then at all. Really.

To matron who had been the matron, she was the matron in chief here, she had been the matron down at Escort House when I worked down there. So I felt I knew her,

reasonably well.

I think I wrote to her probably three or four times. I perhaps wrote to her about three times. And then when I left Melbourne to come home for Christmas, and then of course I went to see her. And then I was put in the army.

I really don’t know. I really don’t know. As I said, “Put her in and shut her up.” Was probably the only way I looked at it.

Probably down to Keswick I think, I have no clear memory of exactly where, but I imagine that because then

we were issued with uniform or we had outdoor uniform made by Flair the tailor, in Adelaide so we were issued with shoes, I do remember we were first billeted at a boarding house on South Terrace we worked

down at the showgrounds, the gas company and other places were turned into wards. And we were issued with these army shoes, which were really plain brown lace ups and told to rub our heels with methylated spirits or we’d have blisters on them. And I was very proud because I was very conscientious about that and didn’t get any blisters where some of the others had.

So it was good exercise, we used to walk from South Terrace across to the showgrounds. Each day to work.

We might have done a bit of marching, I suppose we did. But I can’t remember any particular ones and then I went up to Woodside, I was stationed up there for a time too.

I do remember there must have been an outbreak of mumps they had a lot of boys there with mumps. And they brought, I suppose any cases, same as civilian hospitals today. I can’t remember anything in particular. I do remember

I got pilitis, when I was down there in my early time and was quite sick for a time and was admitted to Dawes Road, for a week or so. Do remember that very clearly. But I found the boys were very I mean, if they weren’t – unless they were really sick, they were very cheerful and easy to cope with.

No. No, no. We were

nursing the ones that were sick.

Well I found it rather refreshing cause they were young and they were bright and was probably – yeah, more cheerful situation than nursing well, some people that

some patients that would be a bit neurotic or elderly people that were you know a bit grizzly or I mean, I found the young guys were so cheerful and uncomplaining, it was really a probably a very happy situation. A great sense of humour, I think their sense of humour was something that always struck me, it seemed, I mean even in serious situations they always

had this wonderful sense of humour.

Yes.

Well, again, there was an army camp at Woodside and it was during winter and it was very cold. I do remember that but again, it was just people with flu [influenza] or you know, a fracture or something.

Same as you’d get in civilian life.

Well there was one lass that I was particularly friends with, called Pat Moore and she was an English girl who happened to be in Adelaide with her sister, when war was declared, and so she joined up and we were great friends until she

later in the war she transferred back to the QAs the Queen Alexandra Nursing Service, but she was my special friend I suppose, she was red hair and freckles and she had a wonderful sense of humour. I remember those days people – females tended to have

they’re called, scanties, which were like pants with a button on one side and so you never occurred to me the buttons could pop off. And we were in uniform in Hindley Street and quite suddenly my button popped and sort of, my first instinct was to pull them up which was not quite the right thing to do and so I sort of felt – well I’ll had to get rid of them,

so I gave an almighty kick and landed them on the boots of the soldier standing on the footpath and I was down there where Miller Andersons used to be and I sort of rushed into the shop to buy handkerchief, I was laughing so much I was almost crying and Pat with her very English sense of humour said, “Oh my friend has dropped her handkerchief.” Oh dear, yes well very funny incidence.

I didn’t wait to look, I flew into Miller Andersons. I do remember that, we were in uniform, I don’t think I wore things with buttons on after that. Oh dear. No she was great fun. Great fun. Yes there were lots of others that I was very friendly with but she was a special one and it

was she that went to the casualty clearing station with me.

Very much grey. And I’d worn grey at Guertin and so I really never buy grey now, I felt I’d had long enough in it. It was grey frocks, for working, it was grey uniform with white

collars and cuffs which were starched and a veil, sort of muslin which was stiffened. So it stuck out. Which I think actually they were – they looked nice, think we had red capes, sort of flannelette material for warmth and then we had grey skirt and jacket

for outdoor wear, with a brown tie and white blouse. And long grey coats for the very cold weather.

We had grey hats with a band round them. Band and the badge, I think around it, I’ve got the red cape still but nothing

else.

I think you were rather proud of it. I mean, I think that’s how I felt. I felt it was something rather special. Really enjoyed it at the time. Yes, I think proud to be wearing it.

Yes, I think people, yes, I think they had a certain respect for people that, you know, for army people.

At least that’s what I’ve always found.

I don’t think anything in particular. Not that I can remember. Was just nursing as usual. I mean,

if I did, I don’t remember it.

I didn’t really have a clue. And it’s interesting, I’ve got a photo of us – several of us going to Government House which I gather every group did prior to going away. And I was looking at the photo last night and there are

two or three girls there that were posted to Singapore, one of whom was a lovely person, was one of the ones who was killed over there. So it was really the luck of the draw. Where you went. I had not a clue.

End of tape

We lived on South Terrace, and walked across every day. To work. Don’t remember doing any night duty there, at all. I think it was all

daytime work.

No, I think – yes, I think it was a flat. It was a sort of army accommodation for us. I think there would have been about six of us, perhaps. I couldn’t remember who the other people were.

Yes, by the army.

I think the uniform was issued, but I think we bought the outdoor uniform. But I’m really not positive about that.

All I know is that we went to Flair The Tailor, to have these outdoor uniform properly made. And as I said, I think we paid for those. But everything else was provided.

No, I think we bought our own stockings. Which were

sort of browny colour. I think, with brown shoes, or, you know. Sort of normal stockings.

I worked in what is now used as the gas company. I do remember that, that’s the ward I had. And I

think there was an outbreak of mumps, perhaps at that time. And I think we had a lot of patients with mumps.

It was a building in the showground area. It was

yes. Probably is all changed now. But it wasn’t a very large building, I didn’t have a lot of patients there I think, there would have been about perhaps 20. Wasn’t very large number.

Yes, it was just set up as a temporary hospital at the time.

I would say probably about two months. Two or three months and then I was sent up to Woodside, latterly and from there I was sent away.

I’m not sure. Some of them, not all. I think some of them, did. And perhaps - I think Pat Moran the girl that I was especially friendly with, I think she did go up there at the time. And maybe

they sent us up because we were going away soon.

South Terrace. I’m really not sure of that, those first days. I’m really, not positive, but I know we became quite close friends.

Well, I think when we

when I enlisted, I probably met her. And we just clicked straight away.

The main thing I can remember, it was so – it was probably in May, and early June and it was so cold. Very cold and it was just – just

I mean there were a lot of men out in camp up there and it was just, like routine nursing, the same as you’d have in any hospital. With possible fractures or tonsillitis or just any of the diseases people normally had.

Yes. yes, that

was the only – they were the only ones.

In huts. They – if I remember correctly. Yes, I have got a – have got photos somewhere of us up there.

I don’t think so. Not in those days. We had to be toughened up.

No, I don’t think we did. I’ve always been one to –well like when we were going away, I – or when I’d been on night duty, always take far more than I would need, always think, well, I might have time to read, or I might have time to sew or I might have time to write letters and take everything, probably

use nothing. But I’ve always been one of those sort of people. I think I had more luggage to take away than most people.

It could have been a palliasse, it could have been a mattress, I really don’t

remember. And I didn’t – unfortunately I didn’t keep any letters from that date to refer back to.

I think we used to have to go – we might have had to go for marches. I know, Cedric said they did lots of marching round there so I guess probably we did some

to the – I’ve got a vague idea we did, do some marching round the place there. But it was quite a small camp so it was a very friendly atmosphere.

I think she was just called as senior to the – there was nobody

in particularly high rank. I don’t think.

I was just a lieutenant. Throughout. A lieutenant, just two pips on my shoulder. I think that’s what we automatically went into the army as a lieutenant. And it was only – yes most of us were lieutenants, there weren’t many captains, or

around the place, I think it was – the matrons became majors, I think.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. We were treated as officers.

I don’t think so. None at all, except perhaps you had a little more control over telling your patients what to do.

Well, mainly all the normal sort of flus and pneumonia or fractures, I think, I’m sure some of the boys must have had some injuries from training. But just the normal run of the – there wasn’t anything in particular.

I’m not sure. I’ve got photo of it, but I really don’t know what particular, I presume it would be, wherever the main camp was, for the soldiers. Would have been near to that.

Or near enough anyway, to that.

I don’t remember anything particularly at all. I think it was just a general, friendly you know crowd with all and sundry.

But I don’t remember any special things then, at all.

I think we messed separately.

Probably just tried to put on more clothes. I do feel the cold, and I’m sure I would have had long

woollen socks or something to cope with. Yes, I’ve always felt the cold a bit, so.. yeah. There was a polio epidemic, but I think it was over by that time. That’s what I was trying to remember when I was at the children’s there was a very bad polio epidemic. But

I can’t recall having polio cases up there, but it was very rife around Adelaide at the time.

Well, I left actually in June, ’41, so perhaps I’ve got my dates a bit wrong, because I wasn’t at Woodside for very long.

Yes.

Well, I think we certainly listened to the

radio a lot. We would have heard all we could on the radio. I don’t think we had papers particularly, but probably – I don’t remember, I suppose we must have had days off, but I don’t remember coming to town very much – I think we were probably stationed out there all the time.

I was delighted. You know, to be really going.

I think everyone was so glad to be posted and knowing what they were doing. Rather than sort of waiting. Waiting and

wondering was, obviously people were very happy if you were sent off with people – happened to be sent off with people – friends. Cause that didn’t always happen. So, yes, I was very happy about it. As I said, I think it was at that age, it was a bit of an adventure.

I don’t think I did in particularly or at least I wasn’t particularly concerned about it.

No, I don’t think, might have had a week, to get ourselves ready and to go, but that would have been all and I - like it was nothing special.

Well, we had a routine thing, we had to have all our

uniforms obviously. I’m sure I would have taken books if I’d had room, we had – I know we had to have – take a flask of – it was routine, we had to take a flask of brandy. And I didn’t really like brandy at the time, but it was routine thing, we had to. Not quite sure why,

but we did. And we had to have a haversack, I mean a roll up, army sort of – tin trunks, tin trunk about so big. A haversack, and another round canvas thing like a thing you put tents or something in.

Like a sausage bag, we had those three bits of equipment always. But mine always seemed to be bulging and I read a letter recently where I’d – I think it was –yes, I’d found a mouse had got into my sausage bag at some stage in – when I was up in Syria and Pat Moran, not being very keen on mice, Pat Moran and I got up on the bed

and bashed it so hard to try and get the mouse out that I had to be issued with another one. Which was larger and I thought, well that was great. But yes, and also I’d packed a packet of Persil [laundry powder] which I commented in amongst my luggage because I thought I was going to do all my own washing and that had sprung a leak in the packing, that was a bit of a problem too.

And I suppose lots of letter writing stuff, that I would have taken, no doubt. But I mean, we must have had, I – we had to take our own stretchers. They were all our own stretchers to – bedding was all part of a –

Yes. Yes. Stretcher to sleep on.

Cause I made comments in letters about putting, going to a certain place and putting our stretchers up. So we must have had to do that.

Yes, I think I took one civilian thing with me, cotton frock. And I have got photos that – in Egypt that we were

all out in civilian clothes, but it was very rarely, we were uniform all the way otherwise.

Well, I must have had them I’m sure.

Yes, yes. Melbourne was as far as I had been before. Was, it was quite fascinating.

I guess it was, I think. We had a terrific list of things we had to take. And I can remember making – I was quite keen on sewing

at that stage. I can remember making a frock all by hand. So I must have taken sewing equipment with me, probably took books to read. But I can’t remember any other particular things, I don’t think radios or things like that were allowed. I shouldn’t imagine.

And well, just the ordinary night wear and dressing gowns and things, I suppose. Apart from our other stuff.

I don’t

remember having a passport. So whether that was all done with our army thing. But I suppose we should have, shouldn’t we.

Went by train.

To Sydney.

No, I don’t really. I remember being very excited, you know this fact that we were really sailing off. Yes. And as I said, the trip on the Queen Mary was really quite exciting.

Very exciting. I mean, we worked hard and I was quite a good sailor. Other than one or two nights, and so a lot of them weren’t so I had to work most of the time. Which probably is better than being seasick.

No, only once, I can remember this flask of brandy and thinking, I wish the thing would go down and be done with it. And I

think I had a swig of the brandy then, to kill or cure. That’s the only time, other than that, I was quite a good sailor. And I remember feeling very seasick.

I just thought it was so huge and you know, quite magical. And being officers, we usually dined at the captain’s table and were treated with lots of respect.

And one thing I do remember, I mostly worked in the casualty room, on D-deck, which was quite busy because, again, soldiers sort of broke legs or got diarrhoea or did all the things that people normally do. So we were quite busy.

And they had a boat drill up on A-deck for the sisters. And I was on D-deck and once the first time I tried to go up to – when the alarm bell rang as it did every day, as a practise for emergencies. I tried to go up to A-deck but with about 20,000 troops going down to D-deck, cause that was their station for boat drill, I decided it’d be better

to be drowned down there than be trampled under foot, trying to go in the opposite direction. So I never really did go to boat drill. That was practical common sense. But they organised in our time off, lots of games, we had table tennis, and quite a lot of freedom and fun really. They had special races and competitions

and I’m apparently won first prize for the deck tennis. Got a silver rose bowl, and I realise, which I’d totally forgotten till I’d reread these letters, that I’d come second in the obstacle race and described the obstacle race, of having to get through a tyre, hanging so high on deck and

under something - tarpaulins with flour throughout it, and it sounds quite exciting. And then I think I’d come second in a three- legged race and I was no runner, so that was, I felt quite excited. Yes, I’d commented there that the captain had given out the prizes and so, some of the

boys on board had jokingly said, think he gave us a kiss as he gave our awards and somebody dared me to put my arms round his neck too. But I didn’t fall for that one. So actually we worked hard but it was a happy time. I was sharing a cabin with another sister that I wasn’t

particularly friendly with and she used to enjoy having a very good time in the evening, so she wasn’t a very good living companion. But as I said, it was a very busy, very happy time, because we were given lots of freedom and good fun.

I don’t remember it, particularly but I guess there was. But it was a very busy and you know, exciting time.

Oh, no that’s where the ward was. At least that was the room where any casualties were treated.

I think we were probably on about B-deck. But as I said, my general, I commented in letters, after we arrived, how much I missed everything on the Queen Mary. It was all such an exciting life. And also I think

you became quite friendly with quite a lot of the boys and you know you sort of – when you arrived in Taufiq I think was where we landed. You felt you didn’t – a feeling of not knowing what they’re going into.

I think it probably was, yes. Think that would be right. I kept in touch with some but they were all sent in different directions. And yes, I saw some of them again, but as I said, everybody was sent off in different directions.

Oh yes, yes, we had – I think we had dances on board and as I said, you know I had mixed doubles with various games on board, that sort of thing, it was lots of fun.

I think only a uniform. I don’t think we were allowed

anything else.

Yes, well I think there was – everyone was fairly relaxed, it wasn’t till you arrived the other end that you suddenly realised that everybody would be going somewhere and you knew not what. You know.

Would be happening after that for them.

No, I don’t think it stopped anywhere. Didn’t have many – the storage and things around because it was at that time was supposed to be a very quick ship that could avoid or you know, other enemy ships.

Well, I think yes, we went up on deck and they had lots of steamer chairs

and you know, we could relax a lot. Really. And no doubt read or but I think I can remember really more that the activities, there were always games to be played somewhere. I don’t know whether we had card games we probably did. I was always quite keen on card games.

I don’t think I was really apprehensive at all. At that – I mean, I think I was much more apprehensive when we arrived in Palestine, you know the – yes I can remember, and I think sort of arriving in Port Taufiq,

they were singing the Maori’s Farewell and that’s all that sort of thing. I think which is quite – as I said, I suppose I’m particularly emotional to music, and that sort of made you feel you didn’t know where – what would happen to them. And is that enough for the Queen Mary?

I think it’s rather a mournful tune. And the words are fairly emotional I suppose. And I think with lots of troops all singing it. It sort

of rather brought home to you that you weren’t exactly going to a party.

That was very trying, I have got details in the letter but we arrived there and we were to go by train to Palestine and

we had to cross the canal and the Arabs were incredibly slow about doing anything. I don’t think they were very keen about the Australians or English and we were offered I remember, black tea, was boiling hot, was in the middle of summer, over there, because I left in

June here. We were offered black tea with goat’s milk in it and lots of sugar and I thought I’d rather die of thirst, it was revolting. Somebody eventually got me some tea, minus everything else. But we had to hang around there for hours before they decided that they would move the train. And then I think we got to the other

side of the canal and I think it took us about 24 hours to get to Palestine and a lot of it was because the Arabs just weren’t going to hurry. Purposely I suppose. Because I know in one case, they were just waiting for them to couple up to more carriages,

and they just wouldn’t. So, whether they were on strike or what, but we were hot and tired and sort of sad about leaving the ship and it was an awful – and a lot of the young thing – Arab children sort of coming up sort of near the train, begging for money or something, it wasn’t

a really happy beginning. It took us I think 24 hours to really get to where we were going. And – which was I think the 6th AGH, we were sent to them for a time. Which was out in the countryside, part of Palestine. And

I would have been there for about a week, I think before I knew we had a posting for the – Pat and I had a posting to Beirut. And then we were taken via staff car – were put on a train first, and then we were taken by staff car up to Beirut. But I can remember being out in the paddock and there were lots of camels and I was,

quite fascinated that there were camels and mules and things around. It was all open countryside. And then we, as I said, we were taken up to Beirut, that was all –

Quite well really, because I said, she had a great sense of humour – would laugh at most things.

She had a lovely English expression, if things weren’t quite right she’d say, “I think it’s a bit thick.” This was her common expression.

No, it was just such a big – it was such an – I think it had

about 200 nurses there and I don’t think I knew any of them particularly and it was just such a different environment. Was all one big adventure then. I know that all the camels and animals around the place intrigued me.

I don’t think I did. Cause I think they were, I may have, worked somewhere but I do remember we definitely put up our own stretchers and bedding and stuff so we obviously carried all our bedding with us.

Not then

I did later, in Egypt.

Well we went by train first, to halfway, to Beirut and then we were met by cars. Staff cars and taken to Beirut and we were billeted

in a group of flats that the Vichy French had just recently left. I mean, just left, so that there was quite a lot of china and stuff around the place. I’ve still got a rather nice little French head on the wall here, that I mean, they were left so people took what they wanted.

End of tape

Quite comfortable. They were two – it was a three storey building and there were Arabs living on the bottom floor, and four of us were on the next floor and four of us on the top floor.

And the hospital had been an old school. A large Catholic school. Which had been converted into a hospital, which wasn’t very far from the flats where we lived, so we just walked to and fro to work. Which was all very convenient. And the people – the Arabs on the bottom floor had a donkey and

you know, we all had a photo taken on the donkey. They were really quite pleasant people there.

They didn’t seem to mind, I didn’t feel there was any antagonism towards us at all. Which I did feel, in Egypt and Palestine, at times, very much so. And that’s probably one of the reasons why we

took so long to sort of, get to our destination when we left the ship, as I wrote in a letter, I’ve never felt so – my comment, I’ve never felt so tired and dirty in all my life. So it must have been trying, I gather.

Yes, fully furnished.

I think so, or whether we had beds there or whether we used our stretchers I wouldn’t be sure.

Mmm.

Yes, we shared quarters there.

I think we might have got some pot plants from somewhere or something. Some such thing, but I mean, we couldn’t – we couldn’t sort of get – whatever was there, we wouldn’t have got curtains and things like that, used what was there. And we ate at the hospital all the time.

We didn’t sort of eat there at all. It was mainly sleeping quarters really.

It was two storeyed, I think, if I remember rightly, whether they knocked down walls, I really don’t know. But it was very easy to work in. And I did some theatre work there, we worked

for twelve hour shifts all the time we were there. Because with just eight of us, I think we were either on night duty, or day duty, so we needed that – and we’d have 70 to – about 70 patients in a ward and you had – there were lots of young guys who were orderlies that

did the – you know most of the dirty work, as it were. But we were sort of left, you were in charge – responsible for those patients and responsible for drugs and things. But they did most of the dirty work around the place, as it were. But they were very nice guys and very cooperative, I don’t ever remember having any

altercations with any, you know, very cooperative and easy to work with.

I think it was a concrete floor. Yes, I think that’s right. If I remember rightly.

Yes, quite well lit. There’d been a lot of Indians working up in the mountains, you know, when they were fighting so we had quite a lot of Indians as patients and we had Indians as stretcher bearers,

and of course some French and English. Had quite a variety of patients. But quite a lot of Indians and I became very friendly with a English officer, army officer, actually he’s one I became engaged to and he had been working in India, prior to joining up. He came from Manchester and he was tied up with the cotton trade

and he – so he sort of had a book of Indian phrases, which was, I found marvellous to sort of try and ask them where they had a pain or something, was all very difficult if you didn’t have the language. But they were very cooperative and very pleasant to work with. We had them as stretcher bearers and we had

several other nationalities. We had Pakistanis at one stage. And the ones that have the turbans, we had them. But they were all very polite and always very cooperative. Never remember having any problems with them.

They took that perfectly well. I mean they probably had jokes, I’m sure they would have had in their own way, had jokes about them but I can’t remember ever, any animosity between them at all. It was always very cooperative, but again, I’m sure they had lots of jokes and laughs, perhaps, which the other ones would

the opposition wouldn’t have realised.

Quite well resourced, really. They had quite a good surgical theatre, cause we did do quite a lot of operating. I said, we took it in turns on night duty and day duty,

I finished up working in a ward that had everything that was infectious and it’s a wonder that everybody didn’t get all the other infections that the other people had, it was mumps and measles and chicken pox and diarrhoea and tonsillitis, all one big happy family together. And I finished up getting diphtheria myself at one stage. And my throat

was a bit sore but I didn’t feel very sick. But they decided they’d take a swab, and so I was diagnosed with diphtheria and I was sent down by ambulance to Palestine to this 7th AGH and was nursed there because it was all they were concerned about heart complications if you weren’t – but I didn’t feel very sick, I was

just, more bored.

I think it would have been perhaps about six months. So then I was sent to – as I said, to be nursed in Palestine and then I was sent down to Alexandria to a convalescent home.

Well they were Australian and British and French and Indian,

they were the main ones.

Well, they had been, I mean the war had only just, was just finishing I gather in Beirut, I mean in Syria generally, and these must have been army that were left there in occupation, after the

Vichy French were officially conquered. So there just must have been people just looking after the various posts.

I can’t remember wounded ones. I mean we had theatre and we did surgery but whether it was from wounded ones particularly, I’m not quite clear whether the war had completely finished elsewhere, I’m really not sure about that. That stage, I’d have to check.

Very well run. Yes,

they were very efficient doctors with this, other than Pat Moran and I, the other staff were all from Melbourne and Sydney. And there were no Adelaide doctors but there were, they were very good surgeons, they were very – yeah, all of them were good, they had an x-ray specialist, surgeons and

physicians, but they were very competent, very pleasant to work with.

Well my – nurses, person called Dorrie Vines, who came from Victoria, and the second in charge was Temple Smith, and she was also from Victoria and Temple Smith worked in the theatre and I did a lot of work with

her in theatre and they were very good, they were delightful. Dorrie Vines was a very good senior person. Yes, one I respected very much. She organised things well. And well, she had that pleasant authority without being bossy. But was very understanding.

You could always ask her things.

Well, scrub up and you know, prepare all the instruments for surgery and scrub up as one would in a normal theatre.

We had special autoclaves, I mean things to boil things in and autoclaves for autoclaving all the

swabs and you know, those sort of things. They were all quite efficient, as I felt our sterilisation was really very good.

Well the swabs were always made, I mean you just got a roll of cotton wool and that would

be one of your tasks, perhaps on night duty. If you had a spare moment, you’d just roll them into cotton balls and I mean, we would – always made our own, swabs. Also we probably made some of the gauze dressings too. That were- you cut and folded – or if you had patients that were not sick, but just perhaps were there

in a splint or something, you would hand out a lot of those jobs to them, to keep them busy. A lot of that sort of stuff was anything you could get them to do. To help, we would do, or the patients were very good at handing out meals. If they were mobile and not very sick. They’d do anything to help round the place. Was a lot of – cooperation.

Altogether.

I think they were quite good. Can’t remember actually but I’m sure they were quite good. I can’t remember anything that I – you know I particularly disliked, the only thing I can remember from the children’s hospital, they used to have lemon sago pudding about three times a week and I hated it.

But I can’t remember anything unpleasant there. Was quite good really.

Yes, they were. They’d be – as I said, I had about, I commented that I had about 60 or 70 patients in the ward. Well we seemed to be nearly full all the time. And then if they needed further treatment,

if we couldn’t cure them in a relatively short time, they were sent by ambulance down to Palestine to one of the major base hospitals. I mean, if they had fractures that had to be out of action for weeks and weeks, they’d just get sent on by ambulance, further along. It was definitely sort if dealing with the immediate

things.

One sister, one sister and probably two orderlies.

Well, I suppose they just probably gave us a whistle or something. I really can’t remember, particularly but as you say, you didn’t sit at a desk and you wrote up what you had to about the patients, briefly probably at the end of the day, or before you were going off, you’d write up basic things in a book

about patients, how they were or what was what. But there wasn’t all the red tape there is today. It was – and I can’t remember any things really going astray from things not being properly handled.

Oh yes, it is quite

a lot of responsibility. Cause you had to keep, particularly I made a comment in one of these books that I was tired, and I had 70 patients, I’d had 20 odd discharges and about 20 admissions, so sort of keeping the turnover, I suppose you were young and you –

I suppose you did.

At times, I suppose we’d get tired, but also we had a very good social life at that time. There was an American university right on the coast by Beirut which was beautifully set up and had a lovely swimming pool and our colonel had organised that any time we were off we could get

he would have a bus that could take us down to the swimming pool. So we always made use of our time off to do that. And I was very friendly with one of these English blokes that had a lot of mules and horses and there was an English veterinary thing, cause they used horses a lot because it was such a hilly area.

And so I could always get somebody to take me to the riding place. And in my time off, I could always get a horse to ride so I was – thought it was wonderful. I mean, when we were off duty, you did relax, you could go and have fun.

No, I think it would have been a six day week, six days I’m sure. And then you did your stint on night duty too.

Twelve hours, I mean, yes.

It is really, when I think about it now.

As I said, probably you never worried too much, you were so tired at the time, you went off duty, that you slept well. As I said, I’m sure that’s how we coped with the El Alamein thing, which was also tragic because you were so tired, you went to bed and slept.

All over the place. I used to go down to the beach, because Beirut

was right on the coast. Beautiful rides on the beach. And the lovely hillsides around there. And Pat Moran was great keen horse rider so when we were both on night duty, we’d be able to go off and have a wonderful time, several hours during the day. And once we went to the Beirut racecourse, and that wasn’t a very good idea because I had an Arab steed that

took off and I really was lucky I didn’t sort of crash somewhere or it didn’t stop or look like it wanted to. Fortunately I stayed on. But as I said, the horse riding was wonderful fun for me. And then as the Vichy French had gone all the nightclubs in Beirut were in action again and so being the only

female nursing sisters around the place, we invariably got asked to go and you know, out to dinner and dance if we were free, so as I said, it was a very sociable war there.

No, that’s something that was quite something, I decided that I’d better get some jodhpurs made and having done leaving honours French at school

I thought I knew all about it. But I went to this tailor and asked to have these jodhpurs made and he talked about some new style of English jodhpurs where they had I don’t know, one fly or two flies in a different place, well my French obviously wasn’t too good, because I finished up with a pair of jodhpurs with about four flies, had to take them back and get them changed. Yes, I had lots of problems with my French.

I went to have my hair cut and I only wanted a little off, and the only thing I could think was, un pur, so I sat in the chair saying, “un pur.” And just about got shorn. And what else, oh yes, I went to, they had rope sandals with, yes we must have worn civilian clothes a bit there because I can remember these rope sandals and you could describe how you wanted them made, one row

rope or two rows and I was explaining all this, I thought very well in my French and the guy had long greasy hair and he put his hands through his hair with a wild gesticulation said, “Mon dieu, les Anglais!” And I thought, that’s what he thinks of me. Anyway I got my sandals eventually but I had lots of funny experiences thinking I knew my French very well.

Cause they were nearly all French speaking people in the town. So we had lots of fun with that.

We wore a uniform then. I didn’t wear a uniform riding, but we definitely wore uniform nightclubbing. And that’s when I was going out with this English bloke

that I became engaged to.

I think through the horse riding, I think he had the horses or something. Or whether he was a patient I’m not sure, I think I met him through – and he was a very good dancer. And so yes, we used to get a taxi from where we were billeted down to the

main dancing place and one particular night the taxis all went on strike, so we walked back to – which was quite a distance around the coast road to my – where the hospital was, he was stationed quite – two miles away or something, and there were a lot of ambulances sitting around with nothing to do, so I said, having two pips on my shoulder, I said, “Take him home.”

So they did, but the matron next day wasn’t very impressed. She assured me that you didn’t send your boyfriends home in ambulance I thought I was about to be sent back to Australia. Not a good idea. And it was during the time there, I can’t – it must have been when I came back after diphtheria I think, we became engaged and then

they discovered that he had a TB kidney. And he’d been, as I said, he’d been in India, prior to the war with this cotton trade and he probably picked it up there, I should think. And I think the other was slightly infected and they eventually decided that he’d have to go back to England. So at that stage I thought the war was going to go on for another 20 years, so I decided that we ought

to get married, sort of on paper. And then they had to send me, cause he was being sent back to England on a hospital ship, so I thought, well if I was his wife, they’d have to send me to England too. And I mean, I went as far as getting the marriage bands, ready and the church much to my CO’s [Commanding Officers] horror,

and he talked to me loud and long for about three evenings I think. And said, he was old enough to be my father, and if he was, it was a very foolish thing for me to do, because he said, he had a fifty, fifty chance of recovery because it was long before the days of penicillin and those sort of

antibiotics and that because his other kidney was infected you know, so I listened to him eventually and he wrote to Bob, who was sent down to an English hospital in Palestine and explained it so, well I had – I listened to him eventually. It was a very difficult decision. Really. But he did die within a couple of years, or perhaps three or

four years. You know we corresponded and so, yes, that was quite a – you know I was very much you know this is the way to go. Cause I thought the war was going to go on for another 20 years. So..

He was a very nice man. He was I think he’d been an anaesthetist in Melbourne, as I said, they were nearly all Melbourne and Sydney people. Very nice man.

But, as he said, he was old enough to be my father. Later, sort of after the war, I went and had dinner with he and his wife in Melbourne – he was a lovely person, he really cared about us I think. Gave us lots of privileges which we could never have had in a base hospital with hundreds of people. He knew

that two of us hadn’t been to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. When he knew we were going to be moving down to the desert so he sent us up.

Hard to remember exactly..

Very good dancer. Yes, I mean, so good that I never minded getting up first on the floor because he was a very good dancer.

I’m trying to think of some of the music, but “Day and Night.” Ever heard of that? That was a very popular thing in those days.

Yes. They were. I mean, mostly that was dinner too. There was a sort of dinner dance thing you went to.

One of the places I used to go to, sometimes and have drinks first which I thought was just an ordinary little bar, and talk about naive, I didn’t realise till long after that it was a brothel, it was Madame used to have a squeezebox [accordion], but of course, you imagine they all went in there and thoroughly enjoyed the music and we – they all used to go there and

have drinks too. Didn’t have a clue. Cause they had very good cocktails and then you’d go onto the dance afterwards, you know.

I can’t remember how I found out. I think it was probably after the war that I learnt that it was – there was a woman with a concertina that used to play and it was just, as far as I was concerned, it was

just a nice happy, musical place to have a drink. Dear oh dear.

I think I probably was, yes, I probably was. Never thought of, you know, didn’t occur.

I had a very sore throat and I thought I had a slight temperature. And I felt very tired. And because I must have reported with the sore throat or one of the doctors must have noticed that I had the sore throat and because of the diphtheria patients

being in the ward, they decided that they’d do a swab to be sure.

Straight down to Palestine in an ambulance. To the 7h AGH to be nursed. I got very bored there. Cause I

didn’t feel terribly sick. But sort of was forced to stay in bed for a certain time. I think I read a lot.

I think I was there for about three weeks and then I was sent down to Alexandria.

In a convalescent place and I was down there for a couple of weeks I think probably five weeks in all.

Oh yes, I thought Alexandria was lovely. And as I said, again, met quite a lot of people. I knew and we used to go out there.

Very strict rules, you had to be home by ten o'clock, there,

Oh we were meant to be convalescing. So that we didn’t get too tired I suppose, probably very sensible.

Oh because I

enjoyed music and dancing and I was all for the more the merrier. Probably.

I think – well I – really as I said I enjoyed Beirut and the

climate and everything, very much. I always thought that that’s the place I’ll come back to live. Because the climate was just beautiful, we had the opportunity as I said, of swimming whenever there were tennis courts at the university we would play on our time off so I felt we had the best of everything. Didn’t feel it was very hard war there at all.

At Alexandria, no, it wasn’t worth it I think you know you had to toe the line to the rules. Pretty well. Probably was sensible.

Yes I did, later.

Yes, I might have gone then, I’m not sure, but I did go to the pyramids and had a ride on a camel and went to – oh what’s the name of the place? There was a wonderful eating place, near the pyramids where I went to eat you know

for dinner one night. Think that might have been, think it must have been when I was down there. Because you met up with other people, I met up with other people in Alexandria. I met, would bump into people from Adelaide that I knew, doctors and people that I knew quite well. And – or relations and then invariably you’d go out with them, you know for a meal or something.

Back to Beirut.

Well, as I said,

two of us were sent off for two days and we saw it, you know as much as we could of all that area. Of Bethlehem and Nazareth and you know, the main things. I suppose the main tourist resorts. Really. And then I did go down again before this

person I was engaged to, Bob went back to England my CO, let me go down to spend about four days and I think I stayed in the English hospital that he was being nursed in and I spent about four days then. And I think I had another – yes, I did, I think Pat, was allowed to come down too.

And we you know, visited various things in Jerusalem during that time. So I really had the two visits there. I was going to say, the colonel was very good to us, and he arranged various trips and you know

time off duty, and we went to the Sea of Galilee, one stage, which I thought was just gorgeous, so pretty and so we went at the time when all the wildflowers were out, it was beautiful. And we went up to the Cedar of Lebanon, you know, where all the pine trees are. And I had photos of their cars being, the snow was so high, round the

side of the road, was quite – so – and Balbec was another place where there were wonderful ruins from way back. We went there for trips, he arranged anything that he thought would be of interest to us, round about, which was marvellous. And then we did go up to Tripoli, to work for a short time. Before we moved off.

And Tripoli was very basic and we were all in tents again. I think we had to take our tent with us, too, I’m not too sure about that.

It was very primitive, we were in tents and not very many facilities at all. And the Arabs were very anti British or Australian, I think, I mean I wouldn’t have trusted them I think they would have pinched anything they could. And the town was rather

grotty, it was well, after – I mean we were spoilt in Beirut, cause it was all so civilised but it was a great feeling of not liking the British around the place.

Well, I didn’t well

I suppose I probably put things away and locked things up in my trunk or things, and I think we would have had our actual camp would have been pretty well protected because there were people around all the time. But I just didn’t like the atmosphere at all.

I don’t remember being particularly, we

probably made rules that kept us safe, I feel.

Well, it was all under tents, as far as I can remember. I think the hospital site was, you know big tents as well. All established in that way.

Again, just anything that was around. There must have been a lot of – I mean there must have been a – quite a large contingent of Australians and others sort of there having one the war against the Vichy French, they presumably were making sure that they kept it.

We did have a few, I think, yes. We were – exactly how long we were at Tripoli I can’t remember, it was a comparatively short time. Like a month or two but then you know, I decided to move on.

nineteen –

Think it might have been ’42. Think it would have, because yes, it would have been, definitely ’42, because I was up in that region for about a year and I sailed away in June, ’41 so it would have been definitely into ’42.

Yes I do. Cause I made comments in letters to my family about that, being concerned about it and saying I’d made several comments about the war, saying the Russians were doing pretty well, and making comments about America coming into the war.

And to the effect that perhaps that will hurry the end of the war. Feeling that it, you know, I think I made those comments in ’42. Maybe the war will all be over soon. That obviously I was keen for it to finish.

Well, I thought they couldn’t do anything else, but you know. And I

think I thought about time too, because like with the First World War they didn’t come in till halfway through. And I think I thought it was time they had a go too.

I think I didn’t realise, I mean I hadn’t realised till

a lot later, about the bombing, I was amazed the other day when I read in a book, how many times Darwin was bombed. I vaguely heard about a submarine in Sydney Harbour but I really didn’t have any idea how really sort of dangerous it could have been for Australia. Don’t think I had a clue. I don’t think my family

cause we didn’t get any papers, and probably they wouldn’t have mentioned that sort of thing on the wireless there and I don’t think my family sort of made comments about it being you know, possibly dangerous here. I don’t think I had a clue.

One or two did, but I was pretty fussy about saying we were going somewhere or going south or something, yes, I did have one or two that were censored.

No, I must have mentioned some town or place that we were likely to go to, but I think perhaps two were.

That I must have, you know, I just mentioned something I shouldn’t have.

Probably was, yes. I don’t remember anything particularly nasty at all. Really. It

wasn’t till we got down to El Alamein I think that really saw the stuff that horrified me.

No I don’t think we did. I think from there we were packed up and we were sent to 6th AGH hospital to stay there until such

time as they were ready to this onslaught and – in the desert.

Oh we were all put in the different wards as we were only there for a temporary time we wouldn’t have been in charge of wards, we’d just be working in a ward, with other sisters and so forth. It certainly wasn’t as busy there.

Probably – well probably wasn’t for us, because we weren’t in charge, we weren’t responsible for everything.

Oh yes, we did, we knew that we were going down to the desert later.

No. No. Didn’t have a clue.

Well, I think we were probably told that we were going to be in dugouts, or working in dugouts, and sleeping in dugouts. But they sent all our

trunks and everything got sent because I’ve got a priceless photo, you know in the middle of the desert with a bit of stuff round it there, I think they brought our trunks down to us I think for because we only just had our basic stuff with us, for us to get any other things we needed. It’s the most priceless photo because there are all these trunks in the middle of the desert and people

vaguely looking for various things. It was quite primitive. They had a loo, out in the middle of the sand with a hessian thing round it, it was very basic. And as I said, I worked in the theatre all the time, I did twelve hour shifts in theatre during that time.

I haven’t the faintest idea. I might have packed more uniforms, there or something, there must have been – we were aware that we should be there for a fair while, we’d need other things. And we did sleep on our stretchers in these tents.

Dug under ground.

I think we were – no doubt they were setting up the main part of the unit before they brought us down, because they would have had to organise all the trenches and digging and so forth. I think we were brought down perhaps a week

before to get ready. To help set up everything. Think that would be about right.

Well very well, really, I mean, being underground, well I think it had to be because there was such an onslaught of firing and bombing and everything else. It would have been hopeless if we

hadn’t been. It really worked very well.

I think they had a few steps you know dug in. But we were near enough to the actual battle field that they started bombarding at – I mean it was the British attacking – they said they were going to do it at

ten o'clock at night and you could hear it, so clearly, where we were. And we had the place about four or five hundred people in by midnight, which just –

Well, I suppose just high enough for us to stand up and move around in. Really.

Yes. Yes, I have got some photos of, some of the areas where

we were. And we slept in – think we had two to a dugout for sleeping. You just slept down there.

There must have been, don’t know why we had the loo above

ground but we did. There must have been about I think there were about four wards. Because I mean, they brought them in if they possibly could, they were sent on, straight on to Alexandria where the 7th AGH had come. If they could be sent on they would but

there was the theatre and I worked in the theatre all the time, and beside the theatre we had about ten beds, of the most seriously were injured, so we were reshuffling them round. Sort of onto the operating theatre and then out to a ward. I think there would have been about four wards that had about 100

in each ward. Four or five wards, I think.

Lantern. Lantern all done with lantern light.

I think it would have been about an area a bit bigger than this room I suppose,

I mean we had all the theatre and surgical part up one end and the seriously injured ones were on beds round the edge because we were like, I was supposed to keep an eye on those as well as the theatre part.

Well we had autoclaves again, I mean those autoclaves were used for sterilising things. And there were, and sort of silver I’ve forgotten what containers for boiling instruments, I mean we boiled everything, the instruments were always boiled. It was only the dressings and things that were autoclave.

Well, don’t remember exactly what they had on the floor, I don’t remember, but there must have been – it must have been fairly well built or you know, constructed so that it was a firm floor, or otherwise we would have had sand everywhere wouldn’t we. They

must have probably dampened it all down. Whether we had mats on or some sort of grass mats on the floor or something, we might have. Should have asked my friend, she’s – this one that I said, is here now, in the hospital, she’s got a great memory for the details that I don’t.

I think you didn’t have much time to think about – you know, we were told that’s what we were doing and perhaps we probably were a bit apprehensive about it, but I think we were told just before hand that we’d be going there and nothing was said much until nearly the end because

I suppose, again, it was a very secretive thing when they were going to do it. Probably not told till the day before when the actual war bombardment was to start.

Well, I’m sure our colonel would have told us that

this battle was about to take place and we would be you know, just very busy and what we had to do, but I can’t remember exactly what he said.

Well, I think I can’t particularly

but I can remember we were pretty apprehensive, because we knew it was about to start. Yes, it probably was, I think we were quite apprehensive about it and being sure we were ready for it.

Probably round about half past ten, or eleven.

And I was on night duty at that time, so we worked, as I said, twelve hour shifts and the doctors and the surgeons were just incredible, they worked for that night, and the next day and the next night, they did sort straight through. Because they were just sort of coming and in at such a speed.

Well, they were just awful, I mean, perhaps legs that needed amputating or really bad chest wounds that were just such a variety of them. And as I said, there was no time to sort out the Italians and Germans they were all put on the stretchers, they were I mean

were stretchers of course, for all of the patients. Low stretchers near the ground. And they were all put in beds side by side, next to an Australian or I mean, they were just patients. And that’s when I always thought, how stupid the whole war was, because they were all offering each other cigarettes, you know I thought, two minutes before

trying to blast each other’s head off. But they were marvellous as patients, the Germans particularly were very appreciative of everything that was done. And so they were treated sort of there, sent onto the hospital before they were sent to POW [Prisoner of War] camps.

But as I said, you were just so flat out trying to resterilise instruments and you know, keeping up with everything. You were very flat out.

Well, I really, the colonel must have you know, no doubt instructed the doctors but I thought

they were just incredible the way they just kept going. Because it all had to be done. And I think the priority of trying to do the sickest ones first, I still remember there was this Scottish doctor who came in and his arm was this shot off, except for a few threads and well, we sort of stemmed the bleeding but he was

very adamant there were more serious ones to be done first. I think you know, it was a bit like the first part of a film, you wondered how they all got on afterwards.

Well, I think mainly giving each other cigarettes which was a friendly gesture isn’t it? And as I said, they were very courteous as far as we were concerned, appreciative of anything

being done. Yes, you know, it was just, as I said, we worked twelve hour shifts, but nurses didn’t do more than twelve and you were just so tired an exhausted that you slept. As I said, I’m sure when you were young, you coped with these things. I mean, now, the thought of it is just horrifying, but

I mean, well it had to be done so you got on and did it. And didn’t have to, I mean you were so tired when you went to sleep, you didn’t have time to worry about what had happened, I think particularly.

Oh yes, I think that’s why they – yes I did. I mean they were, they could laugh about almost anything. You know, there was never any whingeing or moaning about things, you know. They’d help each other in any way possible.

And any of them that could – unless they had legs blown off or something, that could walk around, they’d do anything to help really. I mean, with meals and things they’d do things to take meals round or help each other, but you weren’t really nursing them and – the way you would in an ordinary hospital.

Well, to sterilise all the instruments, and set up for whatever they were about to do. You know to set up the appropriate instruments, for amputations or whatever it might be. Suture stitching people up, it was definitely basic stuff. To

if they were badly wounded, to so that they’d stop bleeding or they would stitch the people up so they had – and from there they’d be sent by ambulance down to the major hospital.

Very, very, very young. And I mean, it was all just tragic.

But as I said, they never seemed to grizzle. But I don’t remember any of them complaining particularly. They were probably so shocked themselves. And we did give blood transfusions, we did have certain amount of blood transfusion, transfuse people if necessary.

Yes.

No. No. They would have, no it was emergency stuff, really.

Well they were the same ones we’d always had, same ones with the unit, but they were so good.

They were very good. As I said, I never remember ever having to get – you know, get cross. I mean, well if they were a bit slow or something perhaps you would hasten them along but there was never really any antagonism at all, with the others.

Well, I mean you could hear the planes going overhead, you could hear the guns, tanks, I mean it was just one big roar. And then I think when everybody

started coming in, well you probably heard it in the background, but you’re so busy doing what you had to do that you didn’t take much notice particularly.

Oh it was a lot of boys would talk about it, you know, a bit, but as I said, I think you were so busy trying to cope with the immediate problems

of dealing with these people, which was, I mean, the orderlies of course would do any basic stuff, for us. Get drinks for them, do anything like that. But I said, I do remember this – it did stand out in my mind, this English – Scottish soldier with his arm hanging off, you know and that

was a bit the general attitude, you know, “Don’t worry about me.” I don’t remember, I don’t – a few of them I suppose must have died there. But I think being in theatre you didn’t – you well, didn’t see that side of it as much cause you were busy trying to

stitch them up or do something.

No, I don’t – perhaps one or two, but you know hardly any.

Well, as I said, I think because – well you had to cope.

Really, I think it was bit of a shock to the - everybody, it was a bit horrific cause you realised how ghastly it was. Absolutely. But as I said, our colonel was marvellous he was very understanding.

I don’t think so. I think we were

too busy doing to really you know, you were there and that was to be done so you didn’t really particularly – I don’t remember being frightened, at all. I think it was a very good team spirit amongst everybody, there was never any – I can’t remember any sort of ill feeling with one another or – really.

Probably about five days. And I think they seemed to be coming in pretty continuously really.

Well,

they must have been well organised because I suppose they were sending them from Alexandria, you know supplies to us. I guess, probably ambulances coming to pick up patients would be delivering what was – supplies, I mean that would be the logical thing to do wouldn’t it?

I don’t think we did have a break, you know I think we were – I’m sure there were more people coming in all the time, you know, that maybe thought they were alright at first but you know, didn’t afterwards.

I think that’s right, that’s where I’m not too sure of. I know as Rommel retreated down the desert there was discussion – the colonel used to say, “We’ll be moving.” Yes, we must have had a time when we had a bit of a lull because I remember asking him at breakfast time, “Where are we going now?” Because every time – as they got further, we’d be going to such and such a town or we’d be going to something else and

as I said, some of the Arabic names were very strange and we were stationed at this place called, Burjalarab and I said, “Where are we going now?” And he said, “We’re going to sit fast.” And sort of – I very naively said, “Where’s that?” Yes. It was quite a standing

joke. Even when we had dinner later years later in Melbourne, still remembered that little faux pas, and I said, “Well Mersa Matruh and Burjalarab and all these strange names, I thought, Sitfast, was just another one.” But we did move on to Mersa Matruh then.

Somewhere near the beach I think.

And from there we went to this hospital that had been left behind – where patients, they were nearly all Italians, it was run by Italians, but we went to this hospital that had been left behind and that was just the most appalling sight because again, it was underground. And I suppose it must have been several weeks, you know since everybody had gone and left them.

And they’d totally lost any sense of management at all. Well, they probably thought they’d just die there I suppose. But I mean, any bedpans or anything was just being turfed out of the window. There was no sanitation, they had a few bowls that were – that had disinfectant

with instruments in them and flies floating round and it was just awful. And they were all, I do remember they all had grey blankets and they looked so sick. They looked about the colour of the grey blanket. So we had to sort all those out, the doctors and I mean, some of them were quite delirious cause they’d had amputations that had become infected,

so we took those people back to our hospital and re-amputated legs that were infected and some of them had very high temperatures they were very sick so all the really sick ones were taken back and then the ones that weren’t too bad were taken to other hospitals and into prisoner of war camps.

I think there would have been about 50. And that, as I said, they just looked absolutely frightful. Probably felt it too. Because they just didn’t know what was going to happen to them.

Yes, there were a few that were mobile, they must have been helping each other, I don’t know what they’d done for food, but I do remember that they were just you know

tipping urine and everything straight out the window. It was just an awful sight.

I think they were frightened, more. Fright more of what was going to happen to them. I mean they probably hadn’t been fed properly they were looked so pale and anaemic and the Germans were very polite. And very grateful for anything

that was done. I remember one Italian spat in my eye, but I forgave him for that, cause he had, you know, he was almost delirious with a very high temperature but he was not pleased. But as I said, he was sick, I think he didn’t know what he was doing.

Well, they were more apprehensive

I think and for that reason I think they were apprehensive of what we were going to do. Really. I mean, you know, normally they’re such a bright, happy lot of people, aren’t they? I mean, I think they’re lovely, but they’re very highly strung and they were probably very apprehensive of what was going to happen to them.

I think we were probably told it was going to be underground, and so forth and you know the main thing.

No, I don’t know I presume we must have been told before we went, but presumably our CO must have been told of it,

you know I gather the communication had to come back that they’d been abandoned. But that is one sight that’s always horrified me, I think they looked so distraught.

I was pretty horrified, you know, really horrified at the time, you know but I said then, they just arranged for ambulances to take the worst of them

away. It was just the total despair I suppose, because they wouldn’t be aware that they’d ever be found. Probably thought they’d just die there, I suppose.

I think I tried to make signs or something.

I don’t – you know, you didn’t probably – well, a bit of sign language or something probably.

At Mersa Matruh, yes.

Yes, it was. Yes.

End of tape

Well, I suppose probably having legs, well I suppose, any sort of wounds, really. I mean, stomach wounds, they wouldn’t know what was going to be hit or what complications they could have from it or arms or – I mean legs or anything. But I think they’re just so brave, cause they were just

into it. And whether it was guns or strafing with planes overhead, you know, they had to just cop it and whatever. So I should think them losing a leg would be one of the things that would be worst, to me.

Not really, no. Not particularly.

Well, not that I can remember. They may have but I really can’t remember especially.

Well, I think that was above ground, well it was just very much a basic tent with

our stretchers in it and well, very basic necessities, you know, loos outside and was definitely desert sort of life. Quite but as I said, I think if you can make fun of anything if you’ve got friends around you. Don’t you?

Well, you coped but it was just so hot. And when we had – I think a couple of really bad sandstorms and that was just horrible. I imagine that the boys only thought about fighting, it must have been terrible.

Well we mainly stayed in the tents and you know, hoped it’d all finish soon.

Couldn’t do much else about it. But I mean, we were never rationed with water or anything but I know the troops were very much rationed, I mean, the people in Tobruk had about a pint of water a day, to wash and drink and everything else.

I think I did, a bit

actually, I think I made some comments afterwards, but mostly we were under shelter all the time, when we were working, so it didn’t really sort of, get out in the sun very much. I mean, we didn’t go for walks or anything as such we very much stayed in our own quarters.

I don’t remember our food rations, it wasn’t certainly bully beef and biscuits, we really had fairly good meals, as far as I can remember, I mean we had two good cooks in the unit and I can’t remember being worried about the food at all. We took it all in our stride. But I don’t remember bully beef and biscuits.

We went down to Aswan and Luxor, Valley of the Kings all that area. So we went down the Nile on a boat and then I think we were put into cars or

jeeps or something. And taken to our accommodation and spent about a week down there and that was most interesting, It was interesting and fun. And yes, saw an amazing amount of the old – you know, Nefertiti [Ancient Egyptian Queen] and all the old tombs and so forth. That was really very refreshing after our time.

And then we came back to Cairo for a short while. And I can remember we went to the pictures with them – this lass that’s down in Dawes Road now and we took a taxi, we were staying in Cairo in a hotel or something and we got a taxi to go to the pictures and we were staying

at the Cecil Hotel, that’s right and the taxi driver had somebody else with him, you know, he took us, well we didn’t think anything of that. And they said, “We’ll come and pick you up afterwards.” Didn’t think anything about that, thoroughly naive and they came and picked us up afterwards and instead of taking us back towards the taxi, they started heading off towards the desert, area where there was this

base hospital. And yes, we were both a bit terrified, then. Cause the English were not liked, by the Arabs, I don’t think at all. And we sat up like two little Miss Prims, in the back of the taxi, “Not there, go the other way.” And they must have listened to us and they drove down some dark little alley and I remember we

managed to get out in the middle of some back street somewhere and walked back to the hotel. But we were both quite nervous. Cause they obviously knew where we’d come from, but I suppose, whether they had other ideas in their minds or what, they had, I don’t know. There was a hospital in the desert so maybe they were a bit dumb about it. But anyway, we got back safely.

This friend of mine, Con Vox [?], who I see down Dawes Road now.

I think we must have had a few days in Cairo, because I can remember thoroughly enjoying

going round amongst the shops and trying to beat them down and I mean that was the way to go, to beat them down in price. And I had a feeling though that nobody really cared for the Aussies or the English or anybody else, I mean, we were useful cause we might buy some of their products but I didn’t really feel that they were very friendly. They’d pretend to be,

but I think it was sort of more to sell things to us. So that was about the last time we had and then we – as I said, we were camped down near the canal and I’ve got some crazy photos of us being stupid, outside our tents, waiting till we knew what ship we were going to be sent back on, sort of, freeing around in our pyjamas outside

of the tents. I’ll show you those later if you want to. And we came back – is that right, are we coming back now?

I think we were really pleased. Personally I was, really pleased. My friend actually we were being very friendly with in New Zealand and they

were staying on so she probably wasn’t as pleased. But I was glad to be coming back this way.

I don’t think so really. I didn’t say – one thing, that I commented in letters, was great fun while we were there, running into friends and family, relatives and a couple of

well the doctor that was the superintendent at the children’s when I was there, Dick Palula [?], I’ve got it in a letter. Ran into him and we had a chat for two hours and cousins and various people that you did seem to run into people you knew, you know, when you were travelling round as we did. Which was good. But coming home was the thing

we were really pleased about.

Not anything like the wonderful trip on the Queen Mary. It was a comparatively small ship and we were all kept in a very small space. You couldn’t mingle round with everybody else, very much. I mean, for meals you did, but there was none of the fun and games that we had going over.

Yes, I’m sorry, I forgot about that. You’re right.

That’s right, I must have been going up to Palestine and there was a total blackout as there always was and I seemed to be falling over things or not, falling over things but it was difficult and he got off when we stopped at a station and bought a small Aladdin lantern, a tiny one, and I was most

impressed with this. So actually, no, you’re right, I met him at a dance in Cairo. Don’t – somewhere other, or he – must have met, I can’t remember exactly where I met him. Whether that train was the first time. But I know we went out to dinner, we went to dinner at some hotel

or eating place, which had quite a good reputation but there was a bit of a fight amongst the troops and Arabs and everything else and I remember, we got out quickly cause there were chairs and tables going in all directions. Yes, I met him on the train, that’s right and the lantern. That I do remember. Then I didn’t see –

It was a very strong blackout on this train, and it was quite difficult to even move anywhere, so he ran off at a station when we stopped and he bought a tiny little Aladdin lantern so that amount of light was apparently alright for us to have. So that was a great help. You could at least see what you’re

going to some extent, but otherwise, of course they were very fussy about blackouts everywhere.

Yes, he was in the 2/48th. He was a captain in the 2/48th. His name was, Wallis, so was mine

until more recently.

No, he came home on a different ship, somewhere around that time. But yes, I came home on the Il de France and I can’t remember what they came back on. There was another girl

on a boat coming back who was engaged to somebody on another ship in this convoy and it was quite the joke of the ship because she’d arrange with her fiancé to get up on deck at five o'clock every night and wave a white handkerchief to him. Well, you can imagine in a convoy, and mist and fog and 10,000

miles away, it was quite a standing joke and I’m sure he couldn’t have ever seen the white handkerchief. And she was a very bad sailor and she used to stagger down afterwards and demand a brandy. Because she felt ill. I think their engagement had broken off by the time they got to Sydney so. Yes, it was just a very funny incident.

Think we must have come into Sydney first and then I suppose I came back by train then. I’m not too sure about that and then we had leave for about a fortnight. And then I was sent out to

Northfield to this base hospital to work. And I had a very nice matron in charge who had been at the Adelaide when I worked there. And she was lovely, she was very understanding cause she put me in theatre again, but I said, I didn’t want to, I’d had enough of that for a while so she listened and put me into ward instead.

I think I wanted more to do with people

I mean, in theatre they’re always you know unconscious, I’d rather have ones I could talk to. Actually. Yes, we were about two months, the only funny incident I can remember, because being in uniform, I think you were quite proud of your uniform you could get away with a lot that you couldn’t in civilian clothes, I think. And there

wasn’t much transport, from Northfield in those days, but I wanted to get, I had some time off and I wanted to go to town, so I got chatty with the milkman who in those days had great you know, metal cans of milk. I remember being – so I got the ride in and he dropped me off in front of Government House all in uniform. And of course I couldn’t possibly get out – to jump out from the back so he

put this milk can down and I thought since, I must have looked very funny descending on the milk can as a stepping stone, but I mean, I got there, I didn’t really mind. You could get away with things. And then we were told we were being posted up to the tablelands, at Atherton and we went up there for

I think about two months. And we were to be acclimatised to the tropical conditions then the 9th Division, cause the 9th Division was the one mainly in El Alamein. So we seemed to be attached to them, from there on and they were going up to New Guinea for the Lae landing, and so

once they’d landed and it was comparatively successful, we were sent up after them.

Don’t

think so, I mean they talked about snakes and so forth, don’t think there was particular training, we were quite some way from any of the town, so you had to hitch a ride with somebody, if you ever wanted to go into Atherton proper. I know that we had a – he was a dentist and he had a pet python and he used to

or perhaps he was – anyway he used to go around into the ward, to see these poor unfortunate patients, with his python in his bag, dilly bag and I mean, if it dared popped its head out, the poor boys with malaria with the high temperature would you know, really think they were quite you know, quite having illusions.

And then one day, so I believe he got a ride with a he was going into the local town and some brigadier or some high powered person offered him a ride in the car and this python got out, Percy the python, nobody could ever find it sort of must have got down into parts of the car, that was -yes, he was quite a funny person, but of course we had mainly malaria and

tropical diseases up there, so it was quite a different sort of nursing. We probably were briefed about the different types of things and then I think we were put on to Atebrin to vent malaria before we went up to the tablelands. They were very strict about that.

Yes, it was. Yes. And dengue fever too, which was, they had up there. And they certainly got very sick, I mean very sick and very high temperatures. And they would become quite irrational at times.

Some would, yes be a bit troppo, but they’d be troppo with their wounds and so forth, with the high temperatures – and I haven’t got it here, unfortunately I must have given it to my daughter, but I had a lovely

painting done of Drega [?] Harbour by a Sergeant French who was at war and I think it was a peace offering because he had malaria but he was always going off to paint a sunrise or a sunset, he was never there when I wanted to give him medication or do anything and so he gave me this rather lovely painting as a peace offering when he left. Which

was very nice.

Yes, when we got up in New Guinea we were then told that we had to go into men’s pants and shirts and gaiters and the – but they didn’t have time to have them made, so we got

men’s khaki pants out of Q-store [quartermaster store] and shirts and so forth but we had to have gaiters and boots and totally covered, they were very fussy about that. And ironically I think there was one sister that was probably the most conscientious of all, we were supposed to cover our hands, the only part, show and face, a with

this oily ointment stuff, all the time, particularly in the evening when we were not working. And it was awfully greasy and if you wanted to write a letter, you couldn’t because it would muck up all the paper but I wasn’t as good as I should have been, and this lass from Sydney who was just wonderful about it, was the only one that got malaria.

Which was rather unfair. But in my letters I’ve said, “I hate this place, and I hope I never come back again.” I hated the climate, it was so tropical, and I made comments which I’d forgotten about but that our showers were about halfway down the hill, or a quarter of a mile down the hillside, and

I said, by the time you got back to your quarters again, you were so hot and sweaty it was almost a waste of time.

We were flown up to Port Moresby and we spent about three or four days there, and then

think we were flown to Lae, and then went by transport to – oh dear, to Finschhafen.

Think it was a fairly

big plane. As I said, there were two CCSs combined there. I’ve thought of the name of the other person in that photo. She was Langham and she was in charge of the whole unit.

And the 2/2nd CCS

combined.

Because I think we had quite a large hospital and we needed more than just the eight sisters. And we had quite a lot of wards.

It was sort of on the side of the hill and there were a lot of American Negroes in camps round about,

and I don’t know if they thought they were going to rape us all or what but we were almost enclosed with barbed wire entanglements, and you couldn’t go out anywhere, sort of by yourself. There was a beach not far away but well, we just couldn’t go. So you had to be escorted by somebody other Australian officers or somebody

to really go anywhere. We had a few parties in the mess, you know, asked other people in for drinks or something, but we were very confined, we weren’t really allowed to move much at all.

They were all tents, big tents in the clearing, behind Finschhafen it was very hilly, it was you know, very hilly

land. They were very fussy about blackouts because the Japs did come over that way on bombing raids at times. And one nurse that was there for a short time, she apparently lit her little hurricane lantern to go to the loo at night and she was very quickly jumped on by I think some of the orderlies that were about, you know. Because

it would have been just an awful tide that the whole hospital chaps coming by, when they’re bombing things.

Yes, I don’t think they would roll up the flaps, you know

to – when there was night – when it was cooler. And of course, it was just all the dirt underground, I mean underfoot. And an awful lot of skin diseases, they seemed from the – being in the tropics they seemed to have a lot of really nasty skin diseases. And it was while I was up there that the

sulphur drugs and penicillin first came in. And they were so expensive and so rare that you had the patient had to be either on the SI [seriously ill] or the DI [dangerously ill], the seriously ill or dangerously ill, to get these penicillin and drugs. So they seemed to be half dead before they could even get them.

And they were so rare, it’s amazing.

Well very bad eczema, we did have some typhoid and things too. Can’t think of all the other but very bad eczema, from the heat.

Psoriasis, I suppose.

Raw and sort of sometimes bleeding from it too.

Well, we had certain ointments and things we put on them and they just – I mean they weren’t really sick in running temperatures

and things, they’d just have to be treated with these ointments and things and perhaps hang around for weeks, until they were cured. They weren’t, as I said, they were quite bright and perky and they weren’t sick so they used to usually get lots of things to do, you know. To hand out meals or sweep the floor or do something.

Well we probably used gauze, rather than cotton wool because that would stick, put it on with, and we’d probably wear gloves to do it, so we were very careful about our – not infecting ourselves with it. So they really – it’s not difficult patients but they

used to get rather bored of sitting round all the time, so we’d try and find lots of jobs for them to do. I mean, some of them I think preferred not being out fighting, they probably preferred to be there, but they weren’t really sort of physically sick.

Probably 30 or 40, I don’t think they had more than that there. For me it was the humidity which of course caused all their eczemas and things, but it was that humidity that was so really trying and particularly having to wear gaiters and boots and things, you felt you wanted to have sandals and be in bathers. But it was just so continuously

humid and very high rainfall. A lot. Usually towards the late afternoon and evening. Would absolutely pour.

Well, it was dry from the tent being over it, but it certainly got rather messy. Whether they put sawdust or something on it at times, I don’t really remember but it was very messy.

No, well we had sterilisers, we had the autoclaves and sterilisers, I mean they were fairly compact things that you could move anywhere. I don’t remember having trouble with it, with that. Previously as far as our own personal clothes, I think we always seemed to be having

our uniforms done for us, I think certainly not in the desert but in Palestine and Beirut and everywhere, we had all our uniforms laundered for us but here we had to do our own. And you – and iron them. With a flat iron in a palmar stone and I found at the time you’d work twelve hours and then chuffing away with

a flat iron and a palmar stone, wasn’t very exciting. I soon learned that you could fold pants, and sleep on them under the mattress and got quite good creases. So and I think it was because – well, it was just the climate was what got me, more than anything, I always said the frangipani was the only thing I liked about New Guinea,

and I think probably if we had had any diversions, I mean we had the occasional drinks party in the mess or a concert party came up I think twice and somewhere nearby and did concert. Which was pretty exciting. Otherwise life went on in the same old way. Really.

Think I really worked twelve hours most of the – think really all my time in the army. That was the way the shifts were run and you know staffed accordingly.

No, some of them, well the matron

moved some – I can’t remember where she moved to, she didn’t but Pat Moran the friend of course, had gone back to England, stayed in England, stayed in the Middle East. So some of the girls that had added to our numbers in the Middle East, I mean when they wanted more for a certain if they

had, you know having more patients, some of those – there’s one in Western Australia who was one of them, and I still keep in contact with her. And with this one here. Those two I do remember, but most of the others were from the 2/2nd, ones whom I didn’t know and it certainly made me realise how lucky I was to have been with this other crowd, before because

they were such a happy, you know, active mob.

I think I had to myself. I think we each, you know I can’t remember clearly where we slept or whether we had wooden huts that we slept, I think we might have had wooden huts that we slept in.

I remember the cubicles – I do remember why I remember that with there were about six, seven showers in a row and then there was just a huge open area where everybody dried themselves and we walked up this bally hill afterwards, quite something.

Well, I think you had the separate cubicles for the shower but there were no doors on anything, then you just, was just one large room where you all, you know dried yourselves.

Didn’t worry me much, but I think it did some of them. Quite noticeably.

I can’t remember, but I know some of them that were fairly shy, they didn’t like it at all. Perhaps try and go and have a shower before everybody else, or later or something. But by that time I was used to army life.

End of tape

Well, it was handled very carefully and yes, very well I think because there was one lass who became pregnant and when they realised she was pregnant, she was sent down

from New Guinea, down to a base hospital or to a hospital where she eventually had this babe. And she was engaged to somebody, somewhere else and they accepted the situation – accepted the child, so had very happy ending. I think that the powers that be were very

helpful and understanding of this happened, because I suppose as anywhere in life, this does happen. So they were fairly sympathetic to the girls if they did become pregnant.

Well, I think they accepted that it was perfectly natural that they would.

I mean, we went out – yes, I mean, there wasn’t – you could go out for a picnic, as long as you had somebody with you in New Guinea, or you could entertain them where you were – you know where you were living. But you really – there wasn’t anywhere much to go really.

There was – I don’t think we ever had any films. I do remember this live musical show coming up there. Yeah, but I do remember a nurse being told that she was very friendly with this bloke to look him up in Sydney and she duly looked him up and the wife answered the door.

Very embarrassing. I think there were quite a few situations like that. Which I suppose were inevitable.

I suppose that’s the wrong word. Well people became friendly with people when they’d been away for so long and thought they’d like to just see them

again, probably they’d been too far – too long away from their family to – and probably thought they’d never come, might have been just a friendly gesture, “Do look me up.” And the one thing I can remember which was most exciting, we had a pilot in the ward, pilot of

what are the planes that fly on water, that land on water.

Yes, he was a pilot of this and he said, as a treat and thanks for looking after him, he’d take eight of us up in this plane in round that area. And we had a wonderful ride, except that his co-pilot had

never flown these sort of planes, and we he came to landing, he nearly landed us in a fishing boat and we circled round the harbour many times before we got down. And I couldn’t help thinking, then, of people back home, being rationed, and there we were using I can’t imagine how much fuel you know, riding round, in a joy ride sort of having

a great time. Wasn’t very good really.

I think it was guarded very carefully. I’m sure they had people on patrol all the time but as I said, we were in this enclosure

barbed wire enclosure and very strictly not allowed out.

Well, whether it was partly a restriction on freedom or the climate, but personally I just felt the war was going on forever, I really didn’t care for it at all. During that time, now the

person out in – the captain I’d met in the Middle East, he was posted up there too because he was with 9th Division and so I saw quite a bit of him, I mean he would, when he could, he would come and visit. Think he borrowed a motor bike from somewhere cause he was stationed some distance away. So he used to come and he’d be allowed to stay and have a meal with

us and I think colonel in charge of us was very nice, he you know, offered to put him up for the night occasionally, cause he was a fair way away so I really saw a lot of him during that time. And we decided that we’d get married. And so I put in for leave to come back to Adelaide and

I was told I couldn’t – I had to do my twelve months first and eventually I was granted, we were trying to arrange that we both had leave at the same time, and I knew when the 2/48th was coming back. So I asked for leave at that time.

From civilian life? Well, I think perhaps not

having brothers and sisters, I rather enjoyed the companionship of people your own age, and fun. I did enjoy that very much. And because the people I was with were very pleasant, very cooperative so there was never any ill feeling or animosity. And I think that was, so it was a happy atmosphere to work with.

Work in.

I can’t remember their names.

Oh no, they were all Australian. They really were nearly all Australian there and we had the odd American as patients, we didn’t have any Japanese at all as patients.

The only thing we were aware of was their bombing raids that went overhead.

No. Not really.

I don’t recollect having any particularly. Perhaps, I’m sure there might have been

but I guess we were just told to do at the time. I can’t remember any particular, except that I know that blackouts were the important part. And that was a bit trying for twelve months, I mean, you couldn’t read at night, properly or anything. That I think that

and as there was nowhere to go, it became a bit depressing. I think if you can go out or read or take your mind off things, it’s very different.

Well, I think mainly that you didn’t have any lights on. Of any sort. I don’t think it was blacked out, like this,

it was just no lights allowed to be used at all. But we might have had a torch I suppose. To, well you have to, to see some things, wouldn’t you?

Very pleasant. Very pleasant.

Didn’t have the same sense of humour as our boys. Well I don’t think the American sense of humour, films or anything, I don’t think it’s a patch on the British stuff, do you really? I think it’s – just much, I think the British sense of humour is much better.

But they were, they were very nice.

No. No, I don’t think we ever had any Negroes as patients that I can remember. But they were more on guard, round the place.

Well I really didn’t have a lot – I just had them in as a patient and out again. I didn’t ever have very much to do with them.

Other than as a patient. I didn’t – we didn’t – I don’t remember them ever coming to mess parties or anything.

Well,

I think I was sort of, very concerned – I felt it was, again, I felt the war was going on forever, I felt it was a never ending thing almost. We used to listen to radios somewhat and I very much noticed when I came back to Adelaide I thought how much harder it was for wives back here, wondering what was going on, that when you were

in the scene of action, or even for example, when I was on the tablelands, and they were planning the Lae landing, there was always somebody coming through your camp who’d been there or who had heard that it was a great success and there were practically hardly any casualties. That it was much easier to be

amongst it as it were, than being back in Adelaide where there was probably weeks before you really knew what had happened. That did strike me very much. Much, much harder for the women I think. Cause you’d always run into Joe Blow or Joe Somebody and he knew somebody and you know, the thing had been a great success – well it was so much easier to know what was going on.

Yes. Yes. But as I said, I think you felt it was quite interminable at the time. I think that’s one of the reasons why I – shouldn’t say that, but I’m – why I decided to get married, because I felt could be another ten years of war.

Yes, I did, think we had – yes, I felt they were very different, very different ideals

and code of behaviour from our own people. So I certainly was glad I didn’t have to nurse any.

I don’t think they were coping nearly as well as they were in the Middle East. Because I think they were a bit

despondent about the war situation, generally, and I think they hated the, again, the climate, a lot of them. And I think it was the uncertainty, whereas in the desert, cause everything was desert and it was hot and it was sandy and awful, but you could see what you were doing. But I think this creeping around in jungles amongst trees and not being sure what was hiding round the corner, was

much more stressful for them, because it wasn’t like the straight out clean fight, it was much harder for them.

Well, they had I think they were showing stress, I mean some of them became a bit

I think there were boys sent home that were suffering a lot of psychological stress getting a bit troppo, from the general conditions. I was going to say, I remember when I was later down in Dawes Road, there were a couple of patients there that had been sent down there as psychological patients and

they were terrified of going back. And they really had people fooled for a while because they had a bucket of water and they pretended to be fishing, and I think they got the fire bucket from the ward or something, and they made makeshift fishing lines with string and pretended to be fishing, I think they realised it was anything not to go back.

I think I did when I used to hear the bombers coming over at times. I really did.

More fear of them than had felt anywhere before.

I felt the war could be going on for twenty years. And I thought, well if we were going to get married, why not get married and I think probably I was keen to have a family and so we decided to get married and have a family. But it took a lot of persuasion for

them to give me leave at that time. I remember coming down, I eventually got it, but I mean there were many letters written sort of, and I had been up there twelve months so I was entitled to leave after twelve months so I was within my entitlement. And I got myself down as far as

not Brisbane, further up, not Cairns, Townsville and I was to find my own way as best I could. And anyway I think I ran into some airforce bloke and he said, “Oh, we’ll pop you on this plane, if you’ll go under an assumed name.”

and my name had to be Yeeke, I think. And of course being, and when they did a rollcall of people about to get on the plane and of course there was a male bloke by the name of Robertson, when they did the roll – called my name I sort of, almost automatically responded and then sort of said, “Oh no, my name’s Yeeke.” And I thought I wouldn’t be very good

as a spy. Anyway I got on the plane and got back here eventually. And then we were married in Adelaide and had a fortnight, my husband had a fortnights leave and then he went to Borneo at that stage.

I wore

a short frock, and a short pale blue frock, and a black hat, don’t ask me why, but I mean people didn’t wear, you know, wedding frocks as such, I think there was so much restriction on materials and anyway, I sort of as he only had a limited time, we got married about three or four days after I got back and

then decided to have the time you know, after that rather than fiddling around with too many special things. And I remember an aunt of mine I think had bought the hat for me beforehand so I didn’t like to not wear it and yes, it was just a short pale blue frock.

Yes, we had a reception and I can’t remember where

that was. I know we were married in St Peters College chapel. And I had a cousin that I’m very fond of and still see a lot of, who was a bridesmaid, but we all wore short frocks. And where we had the reception, I wouldn’t have a clue. And he had a fortnights leave.

We somewhere up the river for the first week and then we went over to Kangaroo Island, he had a brother and his wifewho were living on a property over there and then we went over there for the second week.

Well, I thought it was much harder because you didn’t have a clue, you waited till you got a letter which could be you know, weeks. So really, you didn’t have a clue what was going on. I mean the official news didn’t come through for weeks later after things had happened. The mail – admittedly he was very good at writing, and the letters did get through quite well.

That was something.

No. Definitely you were just a little nurse back here.

Well, I missed it all very much, I wasn’t you know, too excited.

I think you miss the companionship with the other people and yes, Dawes Road was quite good to work – you know a place to work. But I did, I realised it was much harder, and all the rationing and things here. Had no idea how much rationing I had no conception of what they’d been

putting up with here. I mean it was quite hard I think, with their rationing.

I would have lived at Dawes Road at first. And then we rented a small flat on Duffy Street, just down here. And then that’s where I was when I had my first child,

and yes.

Well, I think the petrol, the butter, the sugar, the sort of basic things.

And I think meat was rationed. If I remember rightly. I realised that wherever you were, you were so concentrated on your own little part that you really didn’t have a big picture of the whole, what was going on. I did mention in a letter about what was happening in Russia and I had mentioned about the Japanese in Pearl Harbour but

I had no idea until more recently how badly Darwin had been bombed. And I didn’t realise how much real fear there’d been of the Japs as you know, coming to Australia. I think I perhaps hadn’t realised that as much until more recently when I’ve heard of Cedric’s experiences. And what was really going on in New Guinea.

I think you were so confined that you listened to news but it didn’t – not getting papers or things, you didn’t really – at least I didn’t realise.

Yes, I think they were at that stage, still, I’m sure.

I don’t think I even, I don’t think that occurred to me then, I really don’t. Don’t think it really occurred to me. I think after leading such a busy life with so many people round me always, it was quite a challenge

to settle down here. Quite a challenge.

Well, I think you missed all the companionship that you’d been used to, the girls you’d been used to for three and a half years. And friends I’d been to school with, well one of them had gone – one of my close friends had

gone to England, the other one had married and gone some – the previous close friends I’d had, had moved on and I caught up again with some of the friends from the children’s but everybody had been getting on with their own life, you know. It was quite strange coming home for a while.

I missed, you know my father and family I was very happy to back with them. Can’t think what else. I suppose – well,

wide open spaces of New Guinea. No, I’ve always sort of rather liked country and space and so forth. So not that Adelaide’s very congested.

I was nursing in the officer’s ward, for the whole time I was

there.

I think some were very stressed and from their war experiences, I can’t remember any of them being acutely sick,

they were perhaps long term in – you know wounds that – or perhaps ones that had to get used to having lost a limb, or something like that. But there was no particularly stressful nursing, I don’t think.

Oh it must be frightful. Absolutely frightful. I should think.

Well I just think it was something they just had to – you had to try and jolly them along, and well I find if you can make a joke of something just jolly them along that they’ve got to persevere with

it. I mean, there’s nothing else to do. Than try and get on with it. Really.

I think they were all – I feel they were fairly stressed after the experiences they’d had, really

stressed. But tired and weary of it all.

Yes, well yes, they would try and do anything, but I remember this incident because it was just so funny. I mean they improvised so well with these fire buckets of water.

That every ward had two buckets of water for extinguishing flames and they’d made these make up fishing lines of string and had gone to quite a lot of trouble. And when the doctor came round to see them they pretended to be very keenly fishing. I thought it was original anyway.

Not really. They laughed, I think the doctors laughed about it but they could see through it.

I can’t remember what eventually happened to them. They probably

they realised they were badly stressed, they probably wouldn’t have forced them back into action, because they wouldn’t have been any good as soldiers if they were so stressed, really.

No, I suppose some, this is

might have been what some of them had. Really but they didn’t seem to deal with this situation, I think it’s only more latterly they’ve recognised these problems. Perhaps after the – you know last war and Korea or wherever. I mean, you were sent to a psychiatrist and probably told to get on with it. I think. Don’t think there was very much

recognition of it as a problem.

Yes they were, they were given quite a lot of

freedom, really.

Well, I think as long as they didn’t appear alcoholic, I think that you shut your eye to a beer or two.

Which was I felt, only natural. As long as they didn’t appear alcoholic or they weren’t abusive or difficult, as long as they were toeing the line of what they were supposed to do. Think you had to shut them up.

Oh. That’s a big question.

I would say, I think I was caring, and sympathetic, and pretty fussy that doses of medicine or treatments were done as exactly as they should be done. And I think that’s one thing that perhaps they’re not as conscientious about now. I personally,

very strongly feel that this learning it all at university isn’t as good as the practical experience as you go, cause I don’t think they have much idea of the – they may know technically what’s – and I admit I should hate to be

back nursing now, cause there’s so much technical stuff they have to know, far more than we did. But I think they forget sometimes that there’s a person with feelings that owns the body they’re looking after. I think that does get forgotten. And I know I was a patient, I fractured my spine about fifteen years ago playing half-court tennis

and I was a patient down in Dawes Road for a time, and there was a nurse there who was in the middle of her course at Flinders and she was working during her holidays to get practical experience. And I was in a four bed ward, and there was dear old lady who had cancer somewhere and she was waiting for her operation and she really quite sick, and this girl

got her out of bed to make the bed and so forth and somebody came along and said, “Morning tea is ready.” So she just left her high and dry and went off to morning tea. Well, I couldn’t help her cause I wasn’t allowed out of bed, but this poor old thing was so fraught and so sick, she sort of crawled round back into bed and pulled her blankets over her but I feel that they didn’t have the sensitivity to

finish what they were doing. Rather, tea’s there, off we go. And later she came round to take my blood pressure and those days they had rather heavy metal boxes that contained the blood pressure things and she brought her kit and brought it along and dropped it on my feet, and I thought well I’m glad I didn’t have a fractured foot before. But there wasn’t the sensitivity to people. That

you only learn by experience, I think, not from sitting in lectures.

I think it’s always important to be sensitive to other people’s feelings or to have

yes, treat them like human beings, not as, you know, just hand out a pill. I think it’s very important, terribly important, really.

I think I was probably getting a bit depressed about the whole thing because I felt it would go on for ever more, almost, I mean you couldn’t see any [end] until the bombs were

dropped on Hiroshima and so forth, I think you couldn’t see any possible – although I must admit as far as England was concerned their landing D-Day landing and so forth, they seemed to be doing wonderful things there. But I think the Japanese side, you felt was a bit never ending.

End of tape

Didn’t see any cause we were totally locked up.

Oh yes, yes. I would have seen, of course I would, I would have seen the locals then. But we were

fairly – we weren’t given much freedom to wander round, so you were really confined to the hospital area, where you were billeted.

Well, I mean it was just that we were told we’re not

to go out of the confines and so I didn’t. And really, there was nowhere to go. On foot. Whereas back in Beirut we had cars supplied to take us here, or take us there. We were out in the bush and there was nowhere to go anyway. I did – with the

my husband I later married, he did come and we went for a picnic – walked for miles up the what they call the Sattleburg Track was where a lot of the fighting took place at Finschhafen, we went for you know a great picnic and a walk up that area, but it’s not the sort of thing you could do unless you had somebody to accompany you.

I suppose, yes. Some of the American Negroes looked fairly powerful looking, aggressive models, I think it yes, I certainly wouldn’t have cared to have been raped by them.

No, more from there was a whole company of American Negroes and I think they were more concerned about that, but that’s what we were told. And they were billeted not far away.

He was Donald.

I can’t remember going out – certainly didn’t ever go for a picnic or anything. Anywhere. As I said, we were really mainly confined in our time off, we were confined

and when we were doing all our own washing and ironing, you had really quite a lot of chores to do anyway. But I can’t remember going down to the beach at all. The beach was quite near. But we might have been taken down there, for a drive one day, but I can’t remember anything special.

I think it was well, I just hated the – I felt the climate, I felt terribly tired in that climate. I hate humidity now. You know, really don’t like it at all. And I think that sort of continuous heat and then a lot of tropical rain,

certainly wasn’t very easy to live with under those conditions I don’t think.

Well, you just got on with it, you know, I suppose I was luckier than most because I had my fiancé visiting me periodically so I had those

things to look forward to. So I was really probably luckier than a lot.

I found it almost eerie in the area the jungle area. And

as I said, I don’t like that climate. There was nothing much to do except work. There were no diversions and then they – well you had to be fairly fussy about the malaria and trying to be covered up properly and so forth.

So as I said, it wasn’t a place I’d care to go back to.

Oh yes, no, I said, the boys as – I mean they were marvellous, they really had wonderful sense of humour and they, oh yes they’d sing and carry on.

“Mercy Nursie,” that was one of them. They’d sing, “Somewhere over the rainbow,” or something cheerful like that. I mean, a lot of the well known wartime songs they would sing happily. I’ve still got letters that I’m being a hoarder is not a good idea. But letters that

the – when I was in the Middle East I think. With a couple of the sergeants that used to work in various things, I think I sent – I organised the girls to send them – they were sent off somewhere else, and I think we sent them some presents or something. And they were very tickled.

Well, I just thought it was a bit of a joke,

really and I just thought, I mean you heard it so often that you treated it as just a bit of a joke. But I found the boys they had a great sense of humour but they also had a great respect for you that I never, ever, I sort of had any situations where I thought they were difficult or embarrassing or anything else.

They did treat you with respect. And that was something I really appreciated. I appreciated their cheerfulness, too and how they would cheer each other on in difficult situations.

No, I can’t really remember anyone. As I said, I can just remember this artist that was never there, but he wasn’t really difficult – most of the others always toed the line. Quite well.

Yes, yes, just anyone, don’t think I had anyone very famous. Not that I can remember. Didn’t have General Blamey or anybody, I saw him I think

he came up to New Guinea I think for one night when there was a concert being produced and didn’t have anyone particular, well I suppose we had a few majors and that sort of thing, but they were very, they didn’t impress me particularly.

Well, I mean

they weren’t very high ranking or anything, to be afraid of.

I suppose they did, they wouldn’t be human if they hadn’t. I think, for giving medicine, I tended to stand there and saw them drink it, I mean, not leave it and let them go and tip it down the sink, I would rather stay there while it was drunk. Or give them some cheek if they were not going to.

I suppose, we gave injections quite a bit but I can remember a funny incident at Adelaide when I went back, I hadn’t done nursing for a long time and I went back to work in for a year in the dental clinic, in the fifties I think, I hadn’t given an injection in that time. I was so busy working out in my mind how

you know the exact point you had to inject them, and he was a Maltese and I said, he had an infected tooth, so he had a course of antibiotics for it, and I said, “Come on bend over and I’ll give it to you just there.” And

he didn’t straighten up afterwards and I said, “Oh come on, you must have had lots of injections before.” He said, “Notta, likea that one.” That nearly took my confidence forever more. I mean it wasn’t the right place I know, but I watched him walking to the car park, rubbing his bottom and I thought, you nearly shook me, my confidence in going back to nursing. He never came back for the next one, either.

I must have been living at Dawes Road, when I was working there.

When I left, I you know, when I was pregnant, I left. And bought this small unit on Duffy Street.

Half a house with one bedroom and one sitting room, one kitchen.

Think I worked for – yes, I think I worked for perhaps a couple of months. Then I don’t know if they decided or I decided to leave.

That, I’m not sure about.

Well, it would have been – I was married in May, probably about July I think.

Only July or August.

Yes about August. I fortunately felt quite well in all my pregnancies I didn’t have morning sickness or any of the unpleasant things people have, I felt just fine.

Down at Keswick.

No, we were allowed to keep my uniform, but unfortunately I wish I had kept some of them, bits and pieces particularly for Anzac [Australian and New Zealand Army Corps] marches cause I think it looked so much better than people tootling along in civilian clothes. I think I kept the red cape and that’s about all. But I probably wouldn’t – I did keep the grey skirt for quite some time. I did wear – use that and

wear it for a while. Quite a while but the rest I think I’d moved house a few times and I thought, well I’m sick of carting these grey uniforms round, I’m not going to be really wearing them again. Particularly as they were grey, I decided I needed something brighter and more cheerful than grey.

No, I don’t think it was a consideration really. Cause I think having as I said, having had a child you well, that was my first priority and caring for her. And she was a very bright and bubbly child so that kept me quite busy.

Well, my husband came home for leave about that time. Or after she was born I think we arranged that she

hopefully that he’d come just after, so that I wouldn’t be in hospital, he had a week’s leave because he was doing a special course in Canberra as a transport officer, some such thing and we arranged hopefully that he’d be able to come when I was home from hospital. So to arrange it all conveniently I asked the specialist I was going to, to

induce me so that I’d have the baby on – work it all out scientifically. So that worked fortunately. So I was sort of home by the time he came back.

No, husbands didn’t seem to do that in those days anyway.

Nobody I don’t think. No, don’t – I went to place at North Adelaide which doesn’t exist now, the specialist I went to was one of the places he is and I was also I think we were up on the top floor, first floor, the ground floor was for lasses that were having unwanted babies,

it was run by the Salvation Army. Can’t remember the name, it was as a hospital it was quite good, so – but I wasn’t too mad about the staff, I can remember as I was, I think I was brought in on the Sunday night - oh I know I was there

had this injection or whatever you had and I was walking the veranda for days it seemed. Everybody else round me seemed to be having babies, I was most annoyed. Not at all impressed with that.

Yes, I remember hearing about the atomic bomb. I suppose there was a feeling of relief the war’s over but couldn’t help but feel how absolutely horrific it was for the Japanese – it seemed quite horrible really. On the other hand, I think if it hadn’t

happened, they probably would have gone on, for a long time. It’s hard to make a judgement on that, isn’t it? Was horrific, it was rather ghastly really.

Well, I think everybody was just joyful, I can’t remember going out to any special celebrations because, as I said, Wendy was about six months old then I was quite preoccupied with her and because my husband came back from Borneo, and he was sent to Tarakan, too

I think that’s part of Borneo, isn’t it. But I realised, I thought, being married, it was much harder to sort of imagine what they were doing. Where they were fighting and things. Much harder.

Probably, perhaps

a month, I think. I’m really not sure about that. Probably a month. I mean, took time to sort of sort themselves out and he was a transport officer, he probably had to see, you know see that lots of other, that was what he did have to do. Had to sort of see a lot of others off on their way first.

It was good, it was good. I mean, he certainly wasn’t used to babies, but I mean I can laugh if I think about it now, I remember us having to go out somewhere so I gave him the baby’s bottle and said, “Feed her while I’m doing something else.” I think the teat must have got blocked and he must have come back quarter of an hour later

nothing’s happened. Couldn’t quite, yes. Quite unused to babies.

Not that I was aware of then, but in hindsight, I think he probably did, he probably suffered quite a lot because he was right through the war, he was

in Tobruk originally where they got this a pint of water a day, he was there for quite a long time. So I think he probably – without realising it, I think he probably suffered from quite a lot of stress. Cause he seemed to have been in the firing line, all the time. He did get wounded,

somewhere, I think it was in El Alamein I think he had a - it wasn’t a major injury or anything, but then again sort of upper New Guinea, he again hated fighting the Japs and of the creepiness of it all where it wasn’t open warfare.

He didn’t like it at all. So I think he probably did have a certain amount of post traumatic stress but they didn’t recognise, I mean there wasn’t any talk of such things in those days you just came home and got on with it.

I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t think I did

really. I mean I’ve always been one to dream and have dreams but I can’t remember that sort of upsetting me particularly. But I mean, I still do, and when last year when it was just my son and I living at home, he said, he got up one night because I was making such an awful scream,

or noise in my sleep. I can remember sort of trying to get away from somebody and I couldn’t quite yell, you know, have you ever had dreams like that? And the noise doesn’t seem to come out. Or it comes out in the most peculiar sound, and he, yes, he said he came in to my room he really wondered if somebody was really trying to strangle me. But so whether that was all part of

you know.

I don’t think we did properly. I think it was sort of put aside as that’s over and I can’t remember doing that, we

it was more deciding on getting jobs and you know, what we were going to do.

I can’t remember having any problems, probably I had friends or relatives that perhaps didn’t use all their rations so they would

give me some. I’m sure, or if they were in England, the rationing was still going on, I know. Because I remember sending food parcels to the mother of this bloke I’d been engaged to. And they were still heavily rationed and they were you know, more than grateful.

We sent tinned meat

and we sent tinned fish, I think. I think we sent sugar, wouldn’t have sent butter I suppose, because that would have been, I think sent dried fruit but the tinned meat they were, or tinned ham they were more than grateful cause they’d been rationed so tightly with it.

I don’t recall. Really don’t. No. I suppose I could find all those things out, couldn’t I?

At home?

I think where we were going to live ultimately, we lived in that flat, till after the next child was born, and then I think she would have been about three or four months, we bought some land at Netherby and built a house there.

My mother-in-law lived quite near me and I mean we had a flat on the corner of Duffy Street and Wattle Street and my mother-in-law just lived further up the road up Wattle Street and she was very good to me always, very considerate, you know, helped with this or mind the baby or

and the aunt that I had a lot to do with as a child, she was also very good. They were both very supportive of minding the children when they were young so it was very lucky, because I think otherwise you felt you – think suddenly I don’t think people realised you suddenly having a child you seem to be, you know, you’ve got to think of them first, second and third, rather than

but I don’t remember difficulties, I think learning to start cooking all over again, cause I hadn’t, living in the hospital I hadn’t really done a lot of cooking or bothered much about it, so that was quite something. I can remember giving, I remembered all the invalid recipes that I’d had,

when I did my nursing training, one was a steamed fish and steaming it between two aluminium plates and I remember giving my husband steamed fish in that way and he was probably used to crumbed whiting and chips and so he said he really wasn’t an invalid. Wasn’t too impressed with that. So I think I went and – that’s right,

I think when I was pregnant with the next one I went and had some cooking lessons, I seem to – it was either cooking lessons, or dressmaking lessons I think I went and when I was pregnant with one of them, I seemed to rush off and do lessons of some sort. What else? He was quite good at cooking if he felt in the mood,

but not cleaning up the dishes afterwards.

Well, Beirut, I don’t know about, satisfying, but we certainly, it was a very happy time. I suppose it was – I mean apart from working hard, it was fairly carefree, and all entertainment at your fingertips

I mean it was, it was very happy time because as I said, we had transport laid on to take us wherever we wanted to and it was a lovely city and we had horses and tennis courts and swimming pools. Sort of at hand and it was an adventure, going into Beirut and shopping

and trying to talk French to people, I could understand mostly what they said, but speaking it was another thing. They didn’t understand me, anyway.

Well, I think the companionship of the other girls was something I really valued and as I said, kept in the ones I had quite a bit to do with always kept in touch. We had so much

in common. I think I respected and was so impressed with the way most of the boys coped with these dreadful situations, I think their sense of humour and their comradeship amongst themselves and helping each other, and caring for each other, I think that was quite outstanding.

I don’t know. Trying to think. No I can’t think of something special.

We seemed to be always so busy, you know, you didn’t have much time to sit back and when you were working, not much time to sit back and think about things, really. I don’t think anything sticks out particularly.

Well, I hope there’s more tolerance and understanding between nations so that we don’t get to war. But unfortunately it seems inevitable because it’s happened all down the ages. Doesn’t it? If only they could, I think nations could try and

talk things out, sensibly, without rushing to war, it’s more – well it’s more greed. Wanting – greed or – there’s not enough balance between nations now, I mean the fact that there was so many nations that are so poor and children starving and while others

well, such as ourselves you feel there’s so much unnecessary trash I think in shops and things you see shops full of trinkets and fiddle de diddles and I think it’s all – it’s really frightful when other – when there are children starving. If there was more balance, I’m sure – more balance in the world, of money.

I’m sure that it sort of – it’s either greed or else it’s people attacking because they’re hungry or you know, there’s not enough equality. In my humble opinion.

Well, I hope, as I said, I hope there won’t be more wars, but I think this can only happen if there is more understanding between and appreciation between nations. Understanding of each other. Really. And

I feel, it’s terrible that people like Hitler could – who sound as though he was a maniac anyway, be put in the position of power, to do the things he did, that if people were more aware, of the sort of people they were putting in power, I feel that’s important.