Australians at War Film Archive

I grew up in the Depression. I was at school during the Depression and left school when I was 13 and went to work for six shillings a week for six days a week, doing housework and minding children because you couldn’t even go into a

factory. You couldn’t be employed until you were 14 in a factory or in any, well I don’t know what sort of work you would call it, but 14 was the age that you could be employed.

And then when I was 14 I went into a factory and I did many jobs. I worked as a housemaid, waitress, worked in a café. During the Depression you took whatever job you could find. You didn’t think whether you would like it or not. You just got a job, and different things when I was in a factory. The factory was burnt down, so you had to find something else and I was working in Myers factory in

Ballarat when I enlisted in the army but prior to that I had joined a voluntary service corps in Ballarat. And it was there that I learnt to be a wireless operator so when the enlistment, that isn’t the right word, what?

No, when the enlistment opened for women was first in the air force,

and I applied for the air force and got through everything but the medical, and went back to Ballarat and then the army recruited, recruited was the word I was trying to find. The army recruited and I enlisted in the army and when we went into the army there were no uniforms and we used to be in civilian clothes. And we worked first at Victoria Barracks and from there we moved

to Grosvenor and from Grosvenor we eventually went to Park Orchards. Now, until that time we lived out and in the first instance we were taken by commonwealth car to work and taken home. Then it got to be a truck and then when we were living in, we were living in at the, what’s the name of the golf? Croydon Golf House. We were living

in there and in that time while we were there, Ivanhoe Grammar School had started to, well I think they did a three months’ course there but the girls were ready to come out of Ivanhoe Grammar School, which was the first training school for signals. And so when those girls came out, we were sent away on detachment and I went to Sydney with four other girls and we worked in Sydney.

I can’t remember for how long and then one of the girls and myself, we were sent to NCO [Non Commissioned Officer] school at Ingleburn and from Ingleburn we moved to Bonegilla. And then I went back to the detachment in charge of the detachment and my friend, she went to Alice Springs and I served mostly in Sydney. And then in 1944, I got out of the army

to, I was pregnant with my first child. Fortunately, I was married before I went into the army.

Well, I got this housing ministry home which was available for people who had time in the service and I got the house and furnished it and had my baby and she was 10 months

old before her father saw her. He was home on leave when I was seven months pregnant, came home when she was 10 months old and we lived there. Well, I had another three children there and we lived there for 10 years and then we moved here.

Yes.

Yes.

Good memories. I grew up with two brothers. My Dad was in the railways and even during the Depression he worked, sometimes maybe two or three days a week but there was always work and we were warm, we were fed. My mother was a good housekeeper and looked after us well.

You might have to wear patched clothes or cardboard in the soles of your shoes or something but you were far better off than a lot of the other children at school. We were interested in going to Sunday school and church, or whether we were interested or whether we did go because we were sent, but you accepted things to do, that your parents wanted you to do. You didn’t have a choice. Actually, we didn’t want a choice. I think we were

quite happy to be guided by our parents.

Yes, I remember it well. It was at 3 Essex Street and I saw it recently and the people that have brought it have kept it very nice. My mother would be very happy to see it.

It was a pretty town. It had a lot going for it. It has Lake Wendouree and the botanical gardens.

It was a lovely town to grow up in.

No, I wasn’t going to say walking distance but in my childhood, you walked anywhere you wanted to go. Anything was reachable as long as you walked to it but most people in Ballarat spent quite a bit of leisure time either at the lake having picnics or going for a walk around the lake or through the botanical gardens.

Yes.

He actually enlisted in the Royal Navy in Australia and then while he was in England serving in the Royal Navy, the Australian, Royal Australian Navy was formed and he came out on the - Britain provided the first ship for the Royal Australian Navy,

and he came home on that - joined the Royal Australian Navy in England and came home on that boat.

No, he was born in Ballarat.

No, he wasn’t. He was born in Sydney I’m sorry.

With the, he had joined the Royal.

Because they were enlisting in Australia. There was no Australian Navy

at that time.

Yes, he got out of the navy and joined the army and he was at Gallipoli.

He had what they called a dilly box or a, yes a dilly box full of photos, you know

that he’d travelled the world with the navy, with both navies. And yes, he was interesting to talk to. He’d travelled well and thoroughly enjoyed it but once he was home he didn’t want to go anywhere else. He enjoyed being home. I think most men, I know my own husband was the same. He’d rather be home. He enjoyed me going for holidays but he liked to be home. Possibly while they were away overseas, their one thought was to be home.

Yes, I think so. Maybe their security was at home.

No, no, not to a great extent.

No.

No. My father’s brother who was in the army,

he was killed, but no not really.

Elkwood Street State School. Went to Elkwood Street State School till the eighth grade and daughters really didn’t get a chance to have secondary education. Times were, well there wasn’t sufficient funds for parents to, unless you were well off, which we

were not. We weren’t poor but we were not well off.

He drove a crane, you know that lifts the cargo I suppose you’d call it, in and out of trucks. Loaded trucks and things.

No, at home. Mothers didn’t work in those days. Well, there was barely sufficient work for men for one thing.

We didn’t feel any effects of it because we grew up in it, so we were a lot better off than other people. I mean there were children going to school without shoes on their feet. There were children that didn’t have breakfast and I can remember the Queen Elizabeth old people’s home used to

boil up a copper of soup at the school. And the children that didn’t have breakfast could have a cup of soup at play time and if there was any over, we were allowed to have some too and in a Ballarat winter that was very, very acceptable.

No, never.

Everything was home made and most things

home grown, you know in vegetables.

Yes, and I think we had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s too.

Mmm.

Well, my mother’s father was a butcher, so she was well and truly used to having meat. No, we ate meat and she used to pick the best cuts. I don’t think

she would have cooked it if it was anything less.

Loved it and I hoped that my grandfather might pay for me to go onto high school but he didn’t. He brought me a pair of Bedgegood shoes. Came to see me and said, “I’ve got a surprise for you.” And I was hoping it was going to be school, but he took me down and brought me a pair of Bedgegood shoes. And I’ve got rather awkward feet and the Bedgegood shoes,

which are the best shoes you could buy, but they were too hard for my feet, so my mother took me down and changed them for something else.

No, my mother was born at Daylesford.

No, younger.

Very.

Played cricket, basketball, rode the boys’ bikes. There was always something to do. You played cricket out on the street. You could, you were never stuck for something to do. You know, now I hear the children saying, “Oh, I’m bored.” We never, ever said it. We were happy reading. I loved reading and then I had music lessons,

so no, my time was never, I was never bored.

Yes, I played cricket and basketball.

Well, we went swimming in the baths but not competitively. It was just somewhere everybody met in the summer. You could swim in Lake Wendouree but there were leaches there so you had to be careful.

Yes, it was.

Well, not in the main street, but in Ballarat itself.

Yes.

Maths and English.

Very, I hoped up until the day that school resumed, that somehow I’d be able to go. I would have loved to.

Well, there was no, you didn’t think about it. When you left school, you looked for work. It was just an automatic thing because your

family needed the money and my six shillings a week went straight to Mum because that’s the way things worked. Everything was for family.

I remember seeing the men standing round on street corners

but they were never, you were never scared of them. They were merely standing around talking and for my 10th birthday my grandmother had a half sovereign that my father had brought back from the war. He’d actually got it in his last pay before he went overseas and he kept it in his pocket and when he came home he gave it to his mother as a memento. So, when I was born she said that “When I was 10, she’d give it to me”

and she had it made into a nice brooch that I’ve still got and it’s rather precious to me.

Six shillings a week for six days work looking after two children, doing light housework for a lady that, you know needed help in the house. And I did that until I was 14 and then went into

a factory.

I was a cutter in a textile mill?

Mmm.

Yes, always. In fact one of the girls that I worked with, I’m still in touch with. We lost touch for

a number of years and then she turned up at my door there once and she had seen my name in the phone book here and she was living in Springvale, so she came, she and her husband came down. She rang me first and then came down but I hadn’t seen her for 40 years.

So, we resumed our friendship and we’re still in touch.

We didn’t think so. I guess we were pushed. They used to do a time and motion study on you and once you achieved it, they would up the time and motion study but I never, ever earned enough to pay tax before I went into the army. Well, I was 20. No, I was 21 when I went into the army

but must have been near my 21st birthday. I never, as I say I didn’t pay tax. Well, I would have been 21 in the January and I went into the army in the March.

On my honeymoon. We were married on my husband’s final leave, so we came down to Melbourne

for five days, so that was the first time to Melbourne and really I can remember ringing or writing to my brothers because to go to Melbourne was a big deal from Ballarat. You know you, it’s like going overseas now and everybody wanted to know, “What was it like, and where did you go and what did you do?”

In ’39, I would have been 18.

I was in Ballarat and I think I was working as a housemaid waitress at a girls grammar school

and my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, he wanted to enlist straight away and his mother wouldn’t let him. He was the youngest of 11 children and she was very defensive I think and didn’t think that he should go and he pestered her to the extent that one day she said, “Well, go.” And he hopped on his bike, raced down and enlisted.

Army.

When I was 14.

Well, he was 20 and my parents weren’t very happy about that, so I was allowed out two nights a week and if I wanted to go to church, that had to be one of the nights.

At the baths and as my father said, “Typical, when you’re half undressed.” Well, that was the attitude of people then, you know. It wasn’t my fault and I wasn’t the only one there half undressed.

Lloyd, that’s him there.

Kidnapped.

We were all sitting in my husband’s people’s kitchen when it was announced and two of the boys said, “They were going bush”, and Lloyd said “He wanted to enlist”. And it was with horror I think that we heard the news because you had a feeling it was inevitable

but until it actually happened, it wasn’t bad. You still hoped it could be avoided and especially when Anthony Eden came back and said, you know, “Everything was settled, things would be fine” and of course there wasn’t any television. You heard it on the radio. No, it was frightening. I don’t think it was as frightening as the present terrorist things that are going on because you see it, whereas then, by the time you heard anything, it was over.

Yes, we were aware that there was a problem and then we were relieved, as I say when Anthony Eden came back to England and said, you know, “Everything was fine.” I can’t remember his exact words but he had sort of settled it all down and of course it was. Well, it was only a short time after that, that Hitler invaded Poland and it was well and truly on then.

No, as I say, any news that we did get was outdated. There was no awareness of what is happening now or what has happened in the past week because it would have to come from the area. It would be a long while before the news actually reached Australia.

I’d have joined, yes. I’d have joined anything. I think that, actually I tried to join the land army first because that was the very first group that were organised but you had to pay eighty pounds. Sort of, that was a bond that you got back later but you had to have eighty pounds before you could go into the land army.

And it was something to do with the fact that you would be going to someone who was keeping you and it was a bond for them really but I didn’t have eighty pound, not many people did have. Mostly farmer’s daughters, you know.

Well, he was in the militia at that time and he stayed with the militia until his mother said, “Oh go”, you know, and he went.

Well, as soon as the army enlisted women. I belonged to a voluntary service corps in Ballarat. I had joined that and when we were notified that

Well, war broke out in ’39. We were married in ’40, so I would have joined it late ’39.

Well, as soon as it was formed I joined it.

Well, we used to meet in the drill hall and you only met once a week but you did drill and you did St John’s Ambulance.

We did first aid and exercises and learnt types of aeroplanes to recognise and did various things like that but mostly drill and learning army regulations and all sorts of things. We felt that we were doing our part in the army.

I think we all became friends because in Ballarat, which is a small place in, you know in comparison say to Melbourne. You knew most of the girls. Nearly everybody knew everybody in Ballarat, so girls that you’d only known slightly, you got to know them better. Yes, it was very similar to the feeling of being in the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service]. You were family once you were, well you had a combined interest

Yes.

It was a brown skirt, a khaki shirt, a brown tie and a little, like forage cap.

Of course. We used to march and I think we marched in the streets and well I suppose in a way we were possibly used too as

an advertisement for recruitment.

Yes, I’ve got photos of when I was in there but it was all a lead up and it was surprising how many girls from the voluntary service corps that joined the air force or the army. I think it was the same. You wanted to do what you could to help and the first step was in that voluntary service corps. You know, we knitted and we made cakes

and all those sort of things but you felt more active in taking a part.

Exactly.

Yes. I’m not sure whether the WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force]

had started or during the time we were in the service corps, some of my friends went into the WAAAF. And as I say, I went and tried but was put out on medical grounds for an enlarged thyroid that I had operated on 30 years later because the air force or for the WAAAFs, the medical testing, they gave you the same as they gave

pilots, whereas in the army they weren’t quite so fussy. They didn’t go into all the detail that the air force did, so they didn’t find my thyroid and…

Much more so than the army but I think the attitude is too. It was, possibly they were more strict in, even in their training.

Because it was the first,

I’d tried, well I didn’t have 80 pound to go into the land army and the WAAAF was the next body that recruited, so when I couldn’t get in there, when the army recruited. Then being in the service corps we were aware, we were waiting. We knew that the army would be recruiting and as soon as they, well I suppose the voluntary service corps would have known when they first enlisted and we enlisted from there.

Yes.

It would have been months later because three of my friends that were in the voluntary service corps had taken a flat in St Kilda because they were living out too. There was no live-in quarters for the girls

and they said to me, “If you get into the army, come and stay at our flat.” Which I did, so we finished up there were five, four WAAAFs and myself had a unit in St Kilda. And then I think we, I think I went to live-in at the Croydon Golf House before the girls went. They eventually went to Frognal [?] to live-in.

I’m just trying to think. I can’t really remember. As I say, we did first aid and we would have been, if we hadn’t gone into the services themselves

maybe, well we didn’t know at that time whether the Japanese would be coming to Ballarat and at least you were a body of people that were organised. And if you only knew your first aid and could help but you felt that you were being prepared to help in whatever capacity you were needed. A body of people that are trained together can work together.

Very, very.

Not necessarily so. Some of the girls were older. In those times older was possibly in their late 30’s. Now for instance in the army, one of the lasses that I’ve always kept in touch with and you’ll laugh at the word lass when I tell you. She’ll be a hundred on the 27th of November, so she would have been near 40 when she enlisted

in the army. So, it covered, and another very good friend of mine was 16, put her age up to go in, so it sort of covered a vast range of ages but everybody got on so well.

In the voluntary service corps?

Possibly 50, 60.

Once a week, every Monday night.

And then for the, doing the wireless operators course, we used to meet of a Sunday in Craig’s Hotel and we were taught by PMG [Postmaster General] operators.

First aid and learning to tie knots and things, you know.

No.

No. Well, we were just coming out of the Depression and there was, nobody had money to do anything like that. And I would say that any money that was available was being put into resources for the forces.

Yeah, wanted to do, eager to do.

There was just something fascinating about it. It was something that

you wouldn’t do in normal life. The thought of going into the army as a cook or something like that didn’t appeal and also it was a specialist course and it was nice to feel special. Having come from the Depression through, it was, you were eager to learn new things and out of way things that you would never have learnt other than in wartime was, that was an added thrill I think.

Well, you’re supposed to be intelligent but strangely enough a friend of mine who you would thoroughly enjoy talking to, she was assessed by the army as, what’s the word? As unable to

accept responsibility, so she, you know was just dumped down and she’s presently the Retired Reverend, Dorothy Dowling. And at one stage she was, her parish was three thousand square miles of the Pilbara in Western Australia and she had four churches in that area and tried to visit each of them at least once a month. And she was assessed as

unable to accept responsibility.

When she told me about it and I said, “Tack it up on your toilet door. That’s the right place for it.”

But seeing she got that, I’m not game to ask for my assessment.

You really, you had a feeling of superiority because you could do it. Yes, you were a specialist,

so yes, you really did.

I don’t know. I can’t really remember because you first learn at a slow speed and we had to have 20 words a minute, be able to do 20 words a minute. To be admitted to the army you had a trade test as well as a medical.

Yes.

Right.

I can’t recall. We must, the end of ’39 and I went into the army in March ’42.

Yes.

In ’41, on my husband’s final leave.

He came home on the Monday night and said, “I’m on final leave. We’re getting married Saturday.” Well, we’d been going together for six years, so it was fair enough.

No, well six years. No, not really. We were not engaged.

Well, for one thing the factories were

doing defence work. Instead of making lovely lingerie, you were making long underpants and shirts for singlets, like the grandpa shirt type of thing in a heavy material, for the troops and it was mostly defence work that the factories did.

Yes.

Yes but then in Ballarat there was a,

I think it was at the showgrounds there were soldiers training and then before that, the Americans were billeted in Ballarat, so there were always plenty of boys at dances. You missed your own but, you know there were others there to…

Exactly.

Better choice of word, wasn’t it?

Yes.

Mmm.

Well, this was the Monday night and we were married on the Saturday and in that time I had a white princess lined short frock and matching hat made and I had already made

a blue frock trimmed in pink. And I suppose it was in my mind that we would be married if he was going away. I had that and I bought a matching hat and a little fur cape to go away in and it all fell into place, bought my shoes. And when I told them at work, that I was going to be married on the Saturday and wanted time off, one of the other girls had already arranged, I was a cutter there

and you only have four or five cutters to a whole factory and another one of the cutters had already arranged to have her time off. She was being married on the same day, so the firm was very kind. To be fitted for my wedding ring, I was allowed to leave work and go down with my husband and go back to work and I could take time off. I went for a fitting for my frock and a fitting for my hat and that and went back to work in the meantime. We managed it.

Yes.

Five days, most of which we spent at Victoria Barracks trying to get extended leave and never did.

We were married in March, so he would have gone overseas end of April.

Mmm.

Managing a business for his parents,

a mixed business.

Yes.

Wait on. No, he wasn’t in the army long before he went away. Go on, I’m sorry.

He went to the Middle East.

No, I think I saw him for four weeks in four years.

He would have, I can’t rightly remember. He was away at least 12 months in the Middle East and then they came home and they were only home for seven days and they were sent to New Guinea and he was there until,

he’d had five years service.

Yes, he went away with the 2/2nd Pioneers and came home with the, they reformed the 7th Division.

He was in the 2/14th.

Well, he was an infantryman but then he did malaria control in, did a course in malaria control in New Guinea but otherwise he was an infantryman.

Corporal, he was corporal in malaria control but he, I knew that he would want to be related to the 2/14th, where he

served and served in New Guinea. In 2/14th he was just a private but he was a corporal in malaria control. That’s possibly because malaria control only started with corporals. It’s a bit like cypher [code breaking]. If you go into cypher you start as a sergeant.

Well, I wrote to him every night and you might get

your mail. You might get a couple of letters at a time and then long breaks where you wouldn’t hear from them depending whether they were in places where they could get mail out but you were always waiting for a letter.

Or you might get two or three. They didn’t have a lot of time, I don’t think for writing letters. But no, I heard from him fairly regularly but it might come in batches.

Yes, I knitted him a jumper. This was before I went into the army and he thanked me very much and said something like, “The whole brigade thanked me”, because when he washed it, it was big enough to fit the lot of them.

Yes, we made our boiled fruit cakes and sent them. Yes, you were always sort of making a parcel up. I think it made you feel that you were in touch.

While you were doing things even to send, you felt that you were in touch with them.

A lot. As I said, when he came home and he’d be telling me events, you know that were amusing and I’d say, but all the time you felt that they were in danger. And you’d hear an unusual noise or something you’d think, I’m supposed to remember. You’d look at the clock and think, I’m supposed to remember that time. You know, you’d think it was meant for a purpose that it was

a feeling like a ESP [extra sensory perception] feeling that something had happened.

No, but I won’t walk under a ladder and I like to see a black cat. No, I wouldn’t say normally, no I’m not a superstitious person.

He took a photo of me when I was 16 that he particularly liked and if I met myself at 16, I’d give myself a slap because I thought I knew everything, really did. I knew the lot and it’s only when you get older you realise how little you know but, you know you’re working. You’ve got a steady boyfriend and everything. The world seemed a wonderful place.

Yes, I always enjoyed life. You know we weren’t always, well there wasn’t the money to be going out every night. Like I said, my family, I was allowed out two nights a week, even when I was working. I was allowed out two nights a week.

Yes, we had permanent seats booked at the pictures because the mixed business didn’t close till eight o’clock,

so we were late getting to the pictures. Yes, we went to the pictures each week.

That was big time for me, you know to have permanent seats booked in the dress circle and have chocolates given to you in the pictures. That was really big. You’d go and skate next day at work, you know. No, it was lovely.

No, but I, one

must have been pretty harrowing because Lloyd used to sit on one side of me, the same side and this particular night somehow we must have changed. And when this was so harrowing I was clutching and it wasn’t till interval I found I was clutching someone on this side when Lloyd was that side but I can’t remember the name of it. They were good times and the, you know my husband was very keen on roller skating. I tried it once and came a beauty. I

couldn’t balance on them, so he used to take me to the dance and leave me and go roller skating and come back and pick me up.

No, on skates he danced beautifully, won competitions but couldn’t dance on the floor. “Everyone’s looking at me”, he would say.

Loved it.

Foxtrots, slow waltzes, waltzes,

beautiful things. We did a lot of square dancing too but anything to be on the dance floor with music was wonderful and of course there were a lot of servicemen in Ballarat, so there was always plenty of people to dance with.

Well, it would only be on a Saturday night.

Very.

Yes.

Very much so but no, before the war I used to go dancing. There was a dance hall not far from where I lived in Ballarat and I started going there when I was 14, 15 and as soon as the music

stopped Dad expected the front gate to click. You know, it was only a block away from home. He’d hear the music stop and I was supposed to be inside by then but parents really, parents knew everything you did. Well, if you didn’t tell them, someone that was where you were would in a place like Ballarat, you know.

No, no, no neither could the boys, which was a good thing.

Right there was but then that was in the army too. When we were in the [army], we used to go out with the boys on shift. We’d go horse, well I can remember going riding on the train in Melbourne and going swimming with guys on the shift but they treated you, well I was married and they treated you with a great respect. It was, they were away from their friends and families and we used to do lots of things together.

Yes, no even, well apart from the dances there were servicemen billeted in the house next door to where I was boarding. When we were married I boarded with a friend of my husband that was going away in the same unit. He was leaving a wife and two little children home

and I went and boarded with her for company and it suited me. It was near where I worked and next door

Mmm, and next door there were Americans billeted and they had a piano, the people there. So, I used to go in and play the piano and they used to love standing around the piano, singing.

Yes, lovely. Some of them were only 18, you know, and they went from Ballarat to Guadalcanal and they had a pretty tough time.

They were more or less, they were deployed to Ballarat and were billeted in the homes and some were in the showgrounds and I would say that they were here to, in case the islands were, you know, well we were expecting the Japanese. Japanese were gradually making their way down and after I got out and I was living in Coburg with,

and I had a baby, she was three months old when I moved there. And I can remember dreaming that the Japanese were coming in and I was hiding behind a bush with her and I was still in Ballarat I think when that happened and I was running, trying to hide from them. That’s how close they really were to us. It was frightening for us.

Very much. As my husband said “They were most upset”. There they were in the Middle East as he said, “Saving the country

for guys that were too lazy to brush the flies out of their eyes.” You know the Arabs and such like would just sit and to think they were there saving the country for them when we at home were likely to be attacked by the Japanese. That was very frustrating to them, very hurtful.

Well, as I said, I came down to Victoria Barracks and took my oath of allegiance there and started working straight away and I was living in St Kilda with the four WAAAFs.

They were in the voluntary service corps in

Ballarat.

Or two of them, three of them were.

And the other girl was in the WAAAF. She was from Western Australia.

Well, you had to take an oath to the King, was King George? No, King Edward.

Edward the VIII?

No, that was later I think. It was King, no King George the V’s died before I went in the army. George the VI. It was the present Queen’s father yep. You had to take your oath of allegiance with your hand on your heart.

It’s George the VI.

No, all we had was an armband with AWAS on it and we were entitled to, what’s the fare, a reduced fare, what’s the word for that?

That’s right, entitled to a concession but you had to battle for it because you were in civilian clothes, you know and your armband didn’t mean a lot to a lot of people.

They weren’t familiar with it because, well that was in the early days of the recruiting that a lot of people wouldn’t even know that women were in the army. We’d travel on trains and when we first went up to Ringwood, we’d be on the train. You got a bit cheeky when you’re in a gang and you’re fighting for your country or in uniform. You felt you were fighting for your country and we walked through the

entrance to the, or the exit at the railway station. You know they’ve got their hand out for the ticket and you’d just shake their hand and keep going.

We were, we were. I was.

You really, yes you really did feel that you were doing your part and also the thing was that we actually were doing our part in the fact that we were relieving men, who were then sent forward.

That’s right. Well, the boys that had the cushy job at Vic Barracks for instance, they weren’t really happy about us coming into the army but there was one particular guy who was very hard on us. But if anybody said anything about us, he stuck up for us, but to us, he tried to be very harsh.

No, well he was a sergeant. He wasn’t, but some of those men had been,

one in particular, had been a wireless operator in the navy in the First World War. You know, they were older men.

Mostly navy men.

Not because we were women but because we were releasing them from their cushy jobs and they had to move on but not all of them were like that,

no.

Referring to us as sigis.

Well, we were signal women, was the lowest rank and we were sigis to them. You know and they could say it in a scathing manner but they didn’t mean it. They really, as I say, if anybody said anything about us they’d stand up for us but on the surface

you know we were beneath them, to think women in uniform was not a thing that men admired really.

We didn’t care. It didn’t bother us. We were happy in what we were doing.

Well, Grosvenor was actually the headquarters of the OC [Officer Commanding] who was, he was colonel I think at the time, Simpson, after whom Simpson Barracks have been named. And there’s a book just come out on his life story and

it was his headquarters that were there, so it was pretty hush-hush and there was an armed guard at the gate for you to get in and out. You had to show your pass to even get in there.

Signals.

Yes. It’s still there. It’s a lovely thing. After the war it became an officer’s club and

we’ve been back to reunions there but I don’t think it’s an officers’ club. In the last couple of years it’s been taken over. Well, for one thing the officers, retired officers are getting fewer and fewer and possibly the upkeep is beyond the remaining ones.

Beatrice Street. Between Queens Road and St Kilda Road, in Beatrice Street, near the Blind Institute.

Yes.

We used to be taken by, no, were we taken there? When we first started we were being taken to work in a commonwealth car and picked up and taken home

and taken to work in a commonwealth car but then once we got settled in it was a ute and then from St Kilda, I used to go in by tram. If we had to go anywhere else, if we were taken anywhere else for any purpose, we were taken by car or ute.

Well, it was more like an eight to five job, but then once we got into camp

at Park Orchards, when we were living in the Croydon Golf House, it was shift work.

You were 6 hours on, 12 off. Sometimes 6 hours on and 6 off, depending on, you know what shift you were rostered on.

Operate.

Yes.

You just sat at the key all the time, taking or sending messages.

Mmm.

Loved it.

It made you feel proud to think you could do it and also that you were being involved.

Very, very good. I think that was one of the wonderful things about it. Everybody was equal.

Very, very varied. Very clever people, very wealthy people, very poor people but it was a leveller. Everybody was equal. I think if anybody had tried to get a bit of an upper hand, they would have [been] brought down because you were, you were on level ground and I think that was a wonderful

thing for all of us.

Well, yes, the girls that I went away on detachment with and we’re meeting next week. There’s eight of us meeting at the Sheraton for lunch on Wednesday.

We meet twice a year.

Yes.

Worked at barracks first and then at Grosvenor and then at Park

Orchards and then away on detachment.

The only course we did was a three weeks’ administration course and that was at Glamorgan, which, you know Glamorgan in Toorak. It was taken over by the army or it may have been given for use. I think it might have been just, no, it wasn’t a new building

but we were, while we were at Glamorgan we did a three weeks’ course and it was in administration, learning the administrative side of the army and how that reacts. And learning to recognise different planes and really learning what to obey and what to not, and what was expected of you and the different levels in the army. It was all administrative. It was good.

Well there, they were mostly women instructors. The officers, the first officers into the AWAS were people who’d been involved in girl guides because Sybil Irving, who was our commander, there’s another word but commander will do. She was the head of the AWAS, she had been a

leading light in the girl guides and she also knew the girls that had been used to issuing orders and carrying out orders in that level because the girl guides was a very strong, you know in a very strong way. So, that she used most of those to, she chose them, to do officers’ school and they sort of made the nucleus on the administrative side but we were signals and we were superior.

Well, being in signals we came under the Sig [Signals] Corps for administration. We didn’t come under AWAS headquarters.

I suppose so.

Yes, very much so. Yes, we had to

obey the rules but you knew that was part of it.

Well, I think we’d sort have been broken into it with the women’s voluntary service corps where you were one of a group. Well, you’re not in the army unless you bitch about something, so you always found something to grizzle at, no matter how good things were.

You’d always find something to grizzle at. That was just part of what you needed to do.

Well, for instance when we were still at Grosvenor and the winter was coming on and there were no uniforms for the AWAS, we were issued with men’s greatcoats. That was our first uniform. Well, we carried on about that, didn’t we? They were nearly down to our ankles and big, heavy pockets and then when we finally got a uniform and they gave us an AWAS

coat. Well, we grizzled again because with the men’s you had pockets about so deep. You could go away for the weekend with all of your underwear in there and all your makeup, everything you wanted, in your pockets. You know, you had to find something to be dissatisfied about and we always could if we tried.

You had to keep it above your collar. People that had longer hair, you know could put it in a bun or

do something with it.

No, I had a thick head of hair and wore it short anyway.

He was proud, yeah he was very proud and that gave you a link. You felt that you were linking, you know I felt that I was linking with him because you were both,

you’d both given up your civilian lives for the one purpose. And that was about as close as you could get at that time.

Yeah, I applied to go overseas to Lae but they told me I couldn’t go because if Lloyd came home from the Middle East, he could demand that they produce me, so I didn’t get there.

Not a lot but some went to Lae.

Switchboard, from signals but switchboard operators and cipher operators and wireless operators but I would say it was possibly only signals that went.

Trying to think what time we had off. I can’t remember whether we were on shift work or not.

I can’t remember. I would say that we must have.

Yes, but I can’t remember whether we did like Saturday and had Sunday off. I can’t remember. When we were at the admin [administration] school we used to have church parade to St John’s in Toorak and we were living,

while we were doing the course at Glamorgan, we were living at Ben Leady in Kooyong Road. I don’t know whether it was Sydney Coles or G J Coles had just built this lovely home, beautiful and they gave it over to the army for their use and we were living there, only on the ground floor. We weren’t allowed upstairs but of course we went didn’t and had a look and the first girls that went up said, “You’ve got to go.” They had gold taps and

we’d never seen that and they had matching towels and toilet paper and that really carried us away but after all when we’d been home, we’d had sheets of newspaper in here.

No, it could have been in the time of Grosvenor because we, different groups went at different times to do the, it was just three weeks.

Well, we weren’t allowed out. We didn’t go out.

Washing and ironing.

Well, see the WAAAF girls were on shift. I’m just wondering whether I was on shift. No, I didn’t go to work in the night,

not at Grosvenor and whoever was available did the shopping, you know and we shared an iron and we shared different things in the unit. I didn’t go out much because I was married, you know and…

The others were yeah.

Only once do I remember them

having an evening, bringing some Americans back for the evening or whether they’d invited them I can’t remember but I went off to bed because that wasn’t, I was married. You know that wasn’t my scene and one of the Americans said to me, “You’ve got to have a drink of whiskey,” and I said, “No, I don’t drink anything like that.” Anyway, “You must have a sip”, so I finished up having a sip and it’s the first and last I’ve ever had a sip of. It tasted like badly boiled water. It wasn’t

my idea but the girls had them, you know, in for the evening, but not me. I didn’t want to.

Very similar, they did shift work and yes, their signals would have been similar I s’pose, not that we did, we didn’t know what we were sending and receiving, so you couldn’t talk about it. You

sent it in code, you received it in code, no idea what it was about. In fact the cooks probably knew more about anything than we did because, or you know cooks or the, what, serving, the stewards in the officers’ mess. They might have heard things mentioned or anything, but we never did.

That was while we were, I think it was while we were at Grosvenor or even we were still at barracks when we did the Glamorgan three weeks.

The admin [administration], three weeks admin course but then when

we first lived in, we were at the Croydon Golf House.

Yes, living in the Croydon House and working at Park Orchards.

Well, that was the first time we were actually living in, in the army. They’d taken over the Croydon Golf House

and we were billeted there. It was good. We enjoyed that and then we were picked up by truck and taken to Park Orchards on your shift to do your work and then back to the Golf Club.

It was good. Well, a bit like Grosvenor. Everything had been adjusted. At Grosvenor, you know

lovely high ceilings and crystal lights and heavy curtains but it was all blocked out with, they sort of made rooms inside rooms. You know the ballroom at Grosvenor could have been a set of four offices. They used like ply to make office situations and the same at Park Orchards in the

Golf House, they probably partitioned that off but some of us, we chose to sleep out on the veranda, we were given the option, out in the open. Yes, we were brave, we’d sleep out there and it was very cold weather and you’d wake up in the morning, you’d only have your nose out of the blankets and you’d have snow and ice on you. It was freezing but we were healthy.

Yes, we had plenty of blankets.

We were very warm once you got in.

Well, of course we had to bitch about it, didn’t we? We complained about the meals but we had good meals up at Croydon. We had a cook, two cooks in the kitchen there and they catered well for us. I can’t remember exactly what we had but no, we were well looked after there.

No, only remember the powdered egg that tasted like fish. We didn’t have any eggs in their normal state. It was

Real fishy taste and had plenty of bread and jam.

Yes.

Depending the shift that you were on.

Yes.

Yes, we were in uniform by the time we went to Croydon.

We used to get it in bits and pieces. In fact, I’ve got a photo amongst the photos and you’ll see some of the girls in part uniform, some in full

uniform and some not in uniform. It was, depending what sizes they had in at the time. We used to say, “There were only too big and too small.” And you’d get part of your uniform and be waiting for the other bit to go with it. You know you might have a, I think you got your jacket and pants, jacket and skirt in the one but you might have a hat or you mightn’t. You might have the gloves or whatever but it came

in bits and pieces as it became available.

We thought it was.

Yes, much, yes much better.

Yes, they were actually very well made.

In fact, we started with a summer uniform and that was a khaki

frock with a belt, lapels and you had to starch it. It used to crease. We were forever ironing. You know there wasn’t anything like

No, no nothing at all. You had that and it had a jacket to go over it. Sometimes, you just wore the frock but on occasions where

you’re parading or anything you had the long sleeve jacket over it.

It was.

Well, we were on a golf course, so we used to play golf, go for walks. Walk up the, used to walk along the railway line up to Ferntree Gully Station and

back. It was pretty scenery. We’d come down to the city but we didn’t have anything there to entertain us but when you were on leave. Well, some nights you’d have a leave pass some nights and come down to visit somebody that you knew or I don’t know that we came down to go to shows. I can’t remember what we did about that but we’d come down from Croydon to,

or Park Orchards was in Ringwood and we were living in Croydon but we came down on leave.

At Croydon it was good. At Park Orchards, did we eat at Park Orchards? I don’t think we ate there. I think we either had our meal before

we went or after we came back at Croydon. I don’t, no we didn’t go to the men’s mess because we had, if we wanted to go to the toilet we had to go by armed guard when we first went there because there was no, nothing for women there. And the poor guy used to have to march us past the canteen and you can imagine all the guys in the canteen giving this poor, they were saying things like, “What will your mother say when she knows you went into the army to

guard girls on their way to the toilet and back?”

They really did yeah, so no we used to just go on the trucks to work, work as wireless operators and they’d taken over private homes. So, one of the private houses was the wireless room and we’d operate there, then we’d get straight in the truck and be taken back to Croydon.

No, we managed to avoid those because being on shift work and as I said before, we were driven to Park Orchards where we

did our duty time and then back to Croydon, so there was no drill at Croydon and we weren’t at Park Orchards for their drill, so we didn’t do any then.

Well, they’d taken over a private home and converted that into a wireless room and it was just an ordinary sized room with the wireless sets set up in there.

Another room had a fireplace in it but we didn’t use the whole house, but it was just that the house was taken over in the area that they’d made the Park Orchards camp.

I’ve always enjoyed it.

No, not really. We managed to sleep

because the camp would be quiet most times when we were off duty and also we were, at Croydon there was nobody there. They were either on leave, working and we were sleeping. Sort of there were three sections. You know it wasn’t as though the girls were there making a noise or anything. We weren’t at Croydon for very long. We were only there until the girls came out from Ivanhoe and they

took our place and we went away on detachment.

I can’t, I would say that they had so many to a room but I was one of the ones that slept out on the balcony, where we got nice fresh air and frost.

Well, it was very cold and very icy, so I would say it was possibly June, July.

Can’t remember, not a long time. No, I can’t really remember.

In the Middle East.

Well,

no. Their mail was censored. They weren’t allowed to tell you anything and if they inadvertently referred to anything it was marked out anyway.

All the time.

Yes, mostly.

We went to Boronia Park in

Sydney. We were in a camp that was, had been built as a Jewish retirement village and they gave it over to the army for use and our wireless room there was underground. We lived in the building above ground but we worked underground, go down steps and into the wireless room.

It could have been while I was in Sydney or whether, I can’t remember when we would have been aware that Lae was going to be, that postings to Lae were open to women.

I’m sorry, I can’t recall.

Well, I was boarding. I wasn’t living at home. My mother was proud. My Dad was proud. My brother was in the army and my young brother, yes I’d say he was proud that I was.

I don’t know whether

they knew that I’d applied. I applied and nothing came of it. I was told straight away that I couldn’t go because Lloyd could come home and ask them to produce me.

No, I can’t think of that being, I can’t think what that would be referring to. I’m not aware of it.

No. I wasn’t the only one. Anyone married couldn’t go.

Well, we had a detachment, we had a link in Sydney to work back to Melbourne and with heavy wireless group that I was with, they manned their own stations. Well, that’s the reason we were sent to Sydney. There was also a detachment in Alice Springs and a detachment in Tasmania, so that it was for the same reason. You manned the

heavy wireless group links.

Well they, we were the first detachment to go up from heavy wireless group and from then on they changed detachment. Brought people home after a certain time and sent a new detachment up.

Yes, we lived in the building that had been given for, the retirement village.

We lived in the rooms that had been meant for patients that would have slept there. I think we had, I think we had five of us, I think in the one room.

I suppose so but we didn’t spend a lot of time in our room. We were working or we were drilling or we were doing something. You only really slept there.

Yes.

Yes, they’re the ones I’m meeting for lunch next Wednesday.

No, it’s out near Gladesville. It was a fair way out. We used to take a bus up to Gladesville and then catch the ferry into Sydney.

Well, amazing. We’d never seen anything quite as big as that. You know at that time I don’t think Melbourne had multi storey buildings, where Sydney did but it didn’t interfere with anything that we did. We used to go on leave and stay, there was the Women’s Weekly Club in Sydney where you could go and stay overnight and have a meal and

they would have tickets for pictures and different things that were on. A lot of the amusement places, if they had a surplus of tickets, would ring up and say that “They had so many available”, so you’d get a chit at the desk to go wherever the amusement was on. So, we had a lot of free entertainment that way. It was good and it was a lovely club to stay at. They held dances there for the service people.

Yes.

For the first time, well of course you’re stunned. You’ve seen it in papers and seen it in magazines but to really see it, yes I guess we were a bit in awe.

Train and then…

Yes, you were lucky if you’d ever been out of Victoria.

I don’t think anybody ever went out of Victoria until the wartime.

It was yes and the fact that you were enjoying it with friends that you knew, friends that you’d made in the army, it was great.

Well no, I had already left home. I was boarding. No, no not a scrap. I think everyone was eager to get going.

Well, we’d take an oath for the duration of the war and such time after as needed and that we were prepared to do that.

Well, some of the girls stayed in after the war and some I think went through, a lot of them that were still serving until about ’47,

1947.

Well, some have made a career of it. They’re now or they have been in the rank and now they’re retired from the rank.

Well, when you think we’re in our eighties, you’d retire from anywhere by 70 anyway, wouldn’t you?

I don’t know, it could be 65.

Yes, some of the men did and some of the women and of course they attained very high ranks, which was a wonderful career for them.

Well, it was rather strange. When I

was getting out because I was pregnant with Carol, one of the officers said to me “He wanted to have a talk to me” and he said, “It’s nothing wrong. I just wanted to know if”, he said, “And I’m not saying this will happen, but if anything happened to your baby, what would you do?” And I said, “I’d come straight back in the army.” And he said, “I knew you’d say that,” and he said, “Are you aware that if you do that you won’t necessarily come back here. They will send you wherever they need you”, and it hadn’t occurred to me.

So, he was kind enough to suggest that I took six months leave of absence without pay, which I did and of course everything was fine and then my discharge went by the date that I actually left.

Yes, well depending, I was still married wasn’t I? So, I don’t suppose I would have had a, well if anything had happened to my husband

I certainly would have stayed in.

Well, the camaraderie is something that you treasure and it’s something that you have to experience. You can’t put it into words. It’s just something, a bond that nothing can knock it, nothing changing, anything doesn’t alter it. We all care about one another. If any one of us is in trouble, we’re all there.

Mmm very much so, especially now we’re, the girls are losing their husbands and it seems to be that the men do go first and we do, we stick very close because we understand what they’re going through. Those that have experienced it are there for the others.

Well, I’ve thought about it and I feel that it is the same type of people

that would enlist. You’d all have something in your makeup or your, yes in your makeup that, a common bond. As people I really think we’re special. You can ask any one of the people in my group, we are special. It’s not something you can put into words. It’s just a feeling

of caring without, not demonstrative or anything, but it’s there.

Not necessarily. I would say that a leaner in this, in the army, would finish up independent. I think it would strengthen them.

Someone that leans on other people,

you know, that depends on other people. I’m sure that it would increase their independence, give them more strength to sort of act and think for themselves, especially girls that had been cloistered in their family, well similar to my husband. When we were married his mother said to me, “Beryl, you’ll have to take the responsibility. Lloyd isn’t used to responsibility.” Youngest of 11 children, of course he wouldn’t and I used to put the responsibility onto him and he

reacted well. If you’re not given it, you don’t learn how to handle it, do you?

I think it strengthens

your ability to express yourself even. It must enhance your personal strength because it’s such a leveller that you’re used to meeting everyone on that level and responding. You don’t feel less, you don’t feel more. If you felt more and showed it,

you’d be put back level.

I’m sure of it because we learnt that some girls from wealthy families with above average education weren’t necessarily the best people. There were girls in our unit that came from very poor circumstances and they were the salt of the earth. It gives you a different insight into people

and strangely, I think that stays with you. You can pick a phoney anytime, been there, seen that, done that.

Of course, it has to because we experienced things that we would never have experienced in civilian life if there hadn’t been a war.

Makes you grow up when you’re away from home and living with girls who either strengthen you or put you down, depending which way you need to go. It does. It has to. You’re sort of, if you’re in trouble, well you’ve got someone to lean on but you’re not encouraged to lean unless there’s a reason for it.

Well. Well, I can’t remember ever being out of tune with anyone.

No, I don’t think so. Even one of our mates that was, became a lieutenant, on duty she

was a lieutenant but off duty she was still our friend.

Well, she needed to, to carry out her…

Position and you respect that but on leave if we went out together on leave, she was just one of us the same.

Well, I never actually worked with her,

was never on her shift but no, it didn’t make any difference to the girls.

If that’s what you call it.

Well, respect was very strong. We were brought up to respect authority and I think we carried it into the army. That isn’t to say that we liked all the officers or

everything they did but the respect for your senior, well it had to be. On duty you had to show that respect.

Yes, we had a camp commandant

at Boronia Park who was very superior in his attitude and especially to women. He could be quite, he could put people down and he did.

Well, for one thing he had a little English wife, so he

stated that he felt that all women in uniform were officers’ groundsheets. That’s all we were in the army for. He was a very superior, one of those, you know that looked excellent in uniform and smacked the leg with the whatever the baton thing that they, there is a name for it but I forget it, but he was very

high handed. You know, he thought we were lower class or something that, didn’t respect the fact that we could be patriotic and that’s why we were in the army.

He was patronising and to some of the girls that, you know had problems or anything, the way he spoke to them and encouraged them or tried to encourage them, he was way off beam. He was really a bad influence

but they were rare.

I never came up against him fortunately. You had to just ignore it and go on because he was in charge of the camp. You couldn’t do anything about it and you sort of, you don’t, there was nowhere that you could go to complain about anything you didn’t like, not unless they did something illegal.

Just tolerate it.

Yes.

I can’t recall how long I was at Boronia Park. I had two sessions there but we didn’t really have much to do with him. In fact when we went there first and we were,

they were trying to put us on a roster for cleaning, sweeping floors and things and I went to see the major and said to him, “We’re here for duty only.” You know, “We’re here to operate back home, not here for that”, and he just looked at me and I must have taken someone else with me. Just looked at me and he said, “Sigi, you’re right but seeing you helped to put the dirt there, do you mind helping to clean it up?” Which was an attitude that we admired and agreed to do so

but that was a lovely way to get out of it, wasn’t it, and true. You couldn’t deny it.

One in particular was

the lass I was telling you about who is the Reverend Dorothy Dowling, who has achieved so much in her life. She’s raised five, I think part aboriginal children. Her husband was blind. They built their home with hand made bricks, done magnificent things but she wasn’t an operator. She was taken off the operating or given the opportunity to go into the sig office

as a clerk, which she took but she’s a very capable lady. It’s not everyone that could operate. It’s sort of, you’re using, you’re operating with the nerves of your hand.

Yes.

I didn’t because I was an NCO

there. When we first went up we were in the building that I was telling you about, the Jewish retirement building and then when I came back I was an NCO, so we had…

Yes, and we had a dormitory inside. There were about 20 girls in it. You know 10 beds lined up on each side but the OR or other ranks were out in tents.

Not good but we didn’t really, we didn’t starve and it was supposed to be dietary correct for us because they had people actually handling that sort of thing in the army.

I think the whole thing there was with the food, the fact that no matter what we were eating, we were better off than the men in the field. You always thought of your brother or your husband or someone and what they were doing. I think that was part of our giving, was tolerating.

Yes, we were never hungry. We had loads of bread and jam, every

inch of which went on our hips. Well, we used to do parades and route marches and things like that and you were very hungry but I don’t think anybody lost weight in the army. I’m sure we all put it on. I know I did.

Not overnight or anything. We’d go out for days, like during a day for a long route march but not actually bivouacs.

Yes.

I went to a health clinic in Sydney to try and lose some weight. I was like Mr Five by Five. I was as wide as what I was tall and I went and lost weight at this clinic in Sydney. We did massage and steam and all of this and then my husband came home on leave and next thing I was pregnant, so I’ve always

said, “He owed me what it cost me for that course.”

To everybody, I don’t think there was anybody that didn’t have a mate. Like seemed to attract like and you got on. You’d have your special mates but that was mostly the people you were on shift with, the people you knew best

but everybody was your mate.

I had many best mates. You didn’t just have one because you met, no I’m in touch with so many of them still. We meet every year.

They were. I always said, “I didn’t have a sister in civilian life but they’re all my sisters.”

Well, my eldest brother, younger than me, but eldest brother, he was in New Guinea and my younger brother was younger and he had polio and he was working up in the Snowy Mountains. He was a pay officer with the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

Yes.

He was one of the numbers pulled out of the hat when they, you know they called them up by number and he was…

Thank you, I’d forgotten the word.

Well, when the guys that were conscripted went to New Guinea.

I went in in ’42, could have been ’43. ’43 possibly.

No.

I don’t think,

let’s face it, you had to be 18 to go in and on your 18th birthday you were conscripted. You were either, your number came up or it didn’t and he was conscripted. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he would have enlisted anyway.

Younger.

He was in the fighting.

I can’t remember the battalion he was with but he was actively in the areas where they were fighting.

Yep.

He did.

Well, I haven’t seen him a lot because he lives in Ballarat. No, we didn’t really talk about experiences. I don’t know why

we didn’t except for the fact that in those days, I didn’t encourage my husband to talk because the attitude in those days was if anything bad happened, put it aside and don’t. Go on, you know. Now we realise that they should have all had counselling, all of them should have and be made to, given the opportunity to talk about it. I think it hurt a lot of them too much to talk about it and they didn’t really want to remember but we didn’t give them the opportunity to talk about it.

It was the same with our children at school. If they came home and something bad had happened, put it away, you know and, “Put it out of your mind” was the attitude. Counselling was a thing that was never thought of. Well, as you know, the men that come back from the war now, counselling is available for them but you think of the men that went through the Middle East and New Guinea, there was no counselling and there were a lot more lives and

mates lost then. I guess that had a lot to do with broken marriages and things that happened when the boys came home.

Yeah, and you know, people talk about the fact that so many wars are re-run and always won at RSLs [Returned Services Leagues] and I think that’s possible because that’s one place they can talk about. Now, my husband didn’t talk to me about it but he would talk to the grandchildren.

He’d take his granddaughters proudly to the RSL and talk to them about it or they’d be sitting in on the conversation he was having with his mates and they told me things that I didn’t know.

And immediately became pregnant with another one.

It was. It was very difficult.

He’d gone away, the youngest of the family of 11 and a business that he’d left of his people’s was to be his when he came home and by the time he got out of the army, I had established a home, had the baby, his mother had died, the business had been sold. Really, you think, wouldn’t counselling have been necessary?

This was explained to me by a psychiatrist that he would have, this guy had been in much the same position, whereas Lloyd, he’d gone away and his wife had had a child. But he said with his training he realised the situation and he said, “People like Lloyd would think that if I could establish a home, have a baby on my own, I would be able to do anything without him.” And I can see the logic

in that, can’t you? There was no room for him. There was nothing there. You know when you look back on it now you can see it but at the time you didn’t understand it.

He was a bit like a lost soul. He’d get on his bike and go for a ride and ride for hours, just ride round and round.

Yes,

he was down to five stone something when he came home. It wasn’t as though there was anything you could do about it except try and, we believed the right thing, try and make them forget it. Don’t talk about it, don’t encourage them to and some men I guess could, were able to talk. My husband was never a great talker but some men can. They’d be able to

unburden it and enjoy the unburdening but no, he never talked to me much about it. He’d tell you the funny things but, and rarely tell you anything. Like he told me about one of his mates who was a short guy that was doing a run through the, you know, when they go out and observing.

A patrol, thank you, doing a patrol through the kunai grass that’s quite high and he met a

Mongolian - what are the tall Japanese, they’re Mongolians, aren’t they? - coming the other way with a rifle and they both stopped and looked at each other and turned and headed back.

Well, the kunai grass is quite tall. You know neither of them could see one another until they met on this…

They just turned and went back home.

He’d tell you funny things like that but nothing of actually mates that were killed

or battle times or anything, yet he was on the Kokoda Track.

And Gona and Buna.

No.

No, you’d feel, as I say, you always felt, “Don’t talk about it. Don’t remind him, it’ll hurt to remind him.”

Very, very. The guy that went away wasn’t the guy that came back. How could they be? They couldn’t be, go away a young man and come back a mature adult with a family. There’s no way that they could possibly adapt to that but we didn’t understand that. You just expected them to be so glad to be home,

I used to say, I think the things that I used to think of that would happen when he came home. I was so happy thinking of how happy I’d be, it was better than when he came home.

Very, very. You know all of these wonderful times you were going to have together, didn’t eventuate because he wasn’t the same person and you imagine, how could they, with the traumas they’d been through, how could they be soft and loving

and caring and, I mean everything would seem too small by comparison to what they’d been through, wouldn’t it?

He was so quiet, he never said anything but he’d go for these rides and I can remember him coming back from the city. And where we lived is,

you’ve got to go across an oval from, where we lived then, from the end of the tram line across an oval and he had sat in the shed when he got off the tram, not wanting to come over. And I think it was the fact that it was so different to what he’d had.

Yes.

A near nervous breakdown

and yes, it was

Mmm but I’m glad we stuck it out.

Well, I wouldn’t have been aware because as I say, he wasn’t a man that talked. If he’d talked I might have been able to help more or know but he never told you anything that was wrong.

You were well aware that, there was sort of a desperation in them and I think that was borne of the fact that it was too big a jump and there was part of their lives that was wiped out really. Where, you know we had gone together for six years and it was hard for us. Well, what about people that had only been going together for 12 months or met their husband in uniform? You think of the adjustment

then. It’s no wonder that so many wartime marriages broke up.

I had known him in civilian life, so the man that came back in uniform I knew didn’t necessarily have to be like that.

Yes, yeah.

Yes, he was my strength. I was only 14 and he was 20 and he was my strength because we had difficulties at home and he was my strength and then see that role was reversed when you look at it. As the psychiatrist said to me “He thought I had all the strength because I had done all of that and

I’d actually robbed him almost of his manhood, without knowing that you’re doing it.”

I needed him before he went away. When he come home, it’s not right for a man to need, well he didn’t need me as such. He still should have, but he’d lost that power or something, or didn’t get it back.

But you can see what I mean - that the reverse role doesn’t really work.

It might work today but it didn’t work then when a man was supposed to be the head of the family and take all the responsibility.

Years. You’d have a good patch and a bad patch and it would be patchy and just when you thought it was going to be good,

it would go down again and just when you think, “I can’t tolerate this any longer”, it would happen. But a cup of tea used to mend a lot of things and if we’d had an altercation and one would sort of get over it a bit and say to the other one, “Would you like a cup of tea?” And they said, “Yes”, it was over but if they said, “No”, well it was still on.

It was like a peace pipe.

Yes.

No, I did the horse riding here in Melbourne.

In Sydney we used to, another friend and I used to go and stay at Bondi, stay in the little

private hotel overnight and spend our days on the beach and that was good. That was good relaxation.

No, surfing I don’t think was known then. I don’t recall it when I was younger.

Don’t think so. I don’t think they surfed at all, did they?

Good grief. Never experienced

it.

Yes and one of the things was when we went on leave, you either had to bring back, it was like a pavlova thing with fruit in it. Because the camp food was so basic, you know whoever went on leave had to take something back to eat, always take it back to the people on shift. And I can remember once when a friend and I

were staying, we spent our whole week’s pay on one night at The Windsor. We stayed at The Windsor and we put our shoes out to be cleaned and the next morning when we woke up and we’re being served from silver salvers by uniformed attendants.

Butlers, yes and we rang the shift that was on, this was at Park Orchards, rang the shift and it had been working all night and they were just going off and we’re describing to them what we’re,

it’s a wonder we had any friends left when we got back, isn’t it?

No, not too many. I can’t think what we, well we mostly went down to the beach and there weren’t any dances much in Bondi that, no we didn’t go

to dances in there. It was only if we were in the heart of Sydney and staying at the Woman’s Weekly Club and the dances were on there. That was good.

Full of them, full of Americans but no, I didn’t have one.

Well, yes. The fact that you’d meet them on the beach and they’d want to meet you that night and you’d meet them and they thought if they had a bottle of

whiskey, you were theirs, so we taught some of them a lesson. They didn’t, it was just automatic and I never met an American that didn’t have a swimming pool back home. They all had swimming pools, so they said.

Very attentive yes, different to our men who sort of, easy come easy go. Yes, I can understand women being,

falling for them, very attentive. Knew all the right things to say and all the right things to do and you know, the flowers and the chocolates and of course they had nylon stockings and Camel cigarettes that they could get from their canteen. So, many a girl had an American boyfriend for the reason of getting stockings and cigarettes.

Yes,

I know one from Ballarat that married an American and she’s still living in America. Some of them did. A lot of them went out with them because their own boyfriends were away but in the time we were in Sydney there was, I think that was when there was an American who

did murders here in Melbourne. So, that the Americans anywhere in Sydney or wherever were sort of, everyone was very cool to them for a while. You sort of, it caused a mistrust in the lot of them.

Mmm. That was frightening but the rest of them were very suave and very nice and when we were in the unit back here in Melbourne the girls brought some Americans home

and they were gentlemen. They were nice and one of them that I was talking to, some of them were just lonely and wanted to talk about their wives and their families and things back home.

Well, he was sort of with a crowd of guys and I sort of partnered him for the night, just for the evening and just to talk and he came back again

a couple of times with the boys and I could sit and talk to him but they respected you. I was married. He was married but just to sit and talk and we probably, I probably told him about Lloyd and what we did or whether I was missing him and suchlike, so they weren’t all bad.

Saw them, didn’t know them but there were quite a few black Americans in Sydney, didn’t see them in Ballarat.

In the army? I didn’t think so, not that I knew of. I mean they’re all Americans, aren’t they?

Truly?

No, I didn’t. The saddest thing that I struck, I was on Central Station waiting for a detachment. Detachments were swapping over and I was waiting for the detachment from Melbourne to come up and there was an elderly woman and she looked very distressed,

grey headed, very distressed. And I was talking to her and asking, “What was wrong, was there anything I could do?” And suchlike and she eventually told me she’d been out all night with the Americans, black and white and she had been going out with Americans, cause they were very generous and she was so ashamed. She was half drunk and she was waiting for her son to come in on a troop train and I’ve never forgotten it,

foolish woman.

I don’t know. Maybe she’d made dates with the Americans before she knew that her son was coming in on a troop train but he was coming home on leave and it’s easy to say, “She put herself there” but you don’t know what caused her to be like that. Could have been financial

because they were generous. They had a good pay packet, not like our poor guys.

I don’t think we even saw anybody, any aboriginal people. We certainly didn’t meet up with them. They wouldn’t have come into our thinking, never met one in the army

and no, I wouldn’t know.

No, well they were few and far between anyway. There were not a lot of them, were there?

Possibly.

But there wouldn’t have been a large number of aboriginals in the army anyway, I wouldn’t think.

From a particular area, perhaps from Queensland or?

Right, never, ever met one, male or female.

Sonny, and this was at NCO school in Ingleburn and she used to bring out this beauty case and it had every cream and everything and she used to be pushing and doing this thing where we had a wash and got on with it but she wouldn’t wash her hair. I don’t think she washed her face. It was taking it off with this and putting it on with that, never saw her have a wash and we kept hinting at her and saying,

“It’s time you washed your hair”, and she was a pretty girl. She’d been a beautician in civilian life, so we finally got her and washed her hair, got the water and everything ready and got her and dunked her head in it but this beauty case, you know we used to look at it and think, first, when we first saw it, we thought, how wonderful, and you can imagine having a beauty case in the army. But you know it was take it off with this and take it off with that and pat it with that and…

She must have but even if you’re going to bed, well she wouldn’t be having a shower in the night. We used to have a shower of a morning and that was an episode you didn’t forget. When we were at, where? At, could have been even Falconer Park and you lined up to get in the shower and you pulled a chain like on the old toilets and the water either came

out hot or cold. You never knew which way it was going to come and then you had footbaths of, what’s that purple?

Condies crystals, isn’t it? Condies crystals. That was there to put your feet in, so you wouldn’t get tinea or tinea wouldn’t carry, so it wasn’t a very elegant procedure to have a shower.

I was there twice. I was there on the first detachment, then I went to NCO school and then I went back in charge of the detachment.

You learned all sorts of administrative things

and all the ranks of the army, all the ranks of the air force and the navy and it was all administration really that you learnt. And you had to go there, so you got your stripes, if you’re recommended to there.

It started at Ingleburn. We started the course there and they moved from Ingleburn. It was the only signals

NCO School, could have been in Australia and then they moved it to Bonegilla. And I’m not sure whether they made an officers’ school or something at Ingleburn but in the move to Bonegilla we had a, went down by train and they had an air raid while we were on the train. We had to get out of the train and hide down on the side of the embankment in the dark and suchlike but it was a practise thing for us and someone had a violin and they were playing it, you know eerily.

Someone always makes fun of every situation. This was about two o’clock in the morning, we woke up in the train to get out and this practise was on.

I can’t recall any in particular. We all had a good giggle.

No, not anyone that we particularly, see you never laughed at anyone. You laughed with everyone.

I can’t bring any to name. You know we were doing serious business, you have to realise.

It didn’t make any difference

to me except that you don’t do as much wireless operating because you’ve got to keep records and things like that but it didn’t make any difference with the girls.

Yes, you had to take your turn as orderly NCO for marching and different things around the camp but it was more an administrative.

I just prayed that the girls would do what I asked but there again, the respect for rank was there and you automatically did it. It wasn’t a matter of someone getting down on you or anything. It was a job to be done and that was the way it was done. There was never any ill feeling about it.

I guess we were at NCO school. We were given our opportunities to, we’d take the drill or, you know I can remember drilling a group, no, one of the others was, it was her turn to take the group and I was orderly NCO for the day and she’s trying to drill these girls and get them to march and she was forgetting the things to say and I said, “I’ll take over sigi.”

And I took over and I marched them towards the gate and said something or other and sent them the wrong way, but that didn’t worry me. She was one that would have worn it because the girls knew what I wanted them to do anyway and they did it.

Yes, you were never just one person. You were part of a team. That was the wonderful part. I think

anyone in the army would say that they got more out of it than they gave. We gave everything we had but we got more out of it and I often stop and think, “Where would I be and what would I be doing if I’d never been in the army?” I’d be a little housewife in Ballarat. You know only mixing with my husband’s family and my family. Your horizons spread to such a degree. It opens up something for you. You experience feelings, you meet people

that you would never have had the opportunity to do. You know and I think how widespread my friends are.

Yes. The more people you know, I think the more understanding you get of people. You must. It’s an education. I always said, “I always wanted to go back and do my matric [matriculation] and suchlike”,

but life’s educated me.

Yes, but it wasn’t, life is an education. I remember my Aunty Glad in Sydney reminded me once that I’d always wanted to go back and finish my education when the children were off my hands. And when she said to me, “Are you going back to do that, you know, you always said you would?” And I said, “I find that I no longer need to because I’ve been secretary of so many

school things and parents and citizens and on the school council.” And for instance, at the moment I’ve been 28 years treasurer of the Ladies Guild and all of those things, as secretary of organisations. You have to write to members of parliament and do things and the easiest way to learn is to see how they wrote to you and do it back. You know how to set out your, on a typewriter or anything, to reply in the vain in which you’ve received

it and all, I said to her, “I don’t need to anymore”, because you’ve learnt from experience. You can learn at school but that’s nothing. It’s in the application. Well, if you manage to get the application without the schooling, fair enough.

Well, we were

in the OC [Officer Commanding] domain at Grosvenor, so we saw him frequently but as for anyone…

I don’t know whether he was Major General Simpson then.

No, never saw him, no, didn’t see Blamey,

no, not anyone of note.

Sybil Irving.

Lieutenant Colonel she was. She would have been Commander of, what was?

Of Australian Women’s Army Service, isn’t that what

AWAS?

Yes, we used to meet her at reunions and yes, she would come to the camp but she wasn’t very happy about the fact that Major General Simpson said that “We were his girls”. We weren’t AWAS girls. Well, where the AWAS are called private, we were called sig.

Yeah, but that was our title,

signalwoman.

Yes, we weren’t really under AWAS administration. We were under signals administration which has to be because it’s, with your shift work and with the secret places that you’re at. For instance when we first went in and got our uniforms we had a specialist badge, which was for wireless operators, which we wore proudly. And

then an order came out that we had to take them off because that was showing that we were in a signal unit and it would sort of give away secrets as to where it was.

We were both. We were AWAS and signals. I always felt that I enlisted in AWAS Signals because I took my oath at barracks

and it’s a mute point whether you actually, no I didn’t take my oath to AWAS. I took it to signals, as an AWAS.

A bit like the old Queen Mary, if you’ve seen pictures of King George’s mother, you know she used to wear…

Very much like that, very upstanding and not

sternish, but not affable. Having been the leader of the girl guides, it was just a follow-on for her. It was a similar thing, but a wonderful, lovely woman, lot of heart and she was the right person for the job, she really was.

I don’t

know.

I’m not familiar with her history.

I can’t recall. I would say that we went up, went in in March, April, June, say June, July and I was in Sydney except for going through NCO school. I got out in

April ’44, so I would have been…

I was in the army just a bit over two years and spent most of the time at Boronia Park.

No, I think we’ve covered plenty. I can’t think of anything. I’ll think about it in bed tonight.

Yes.

Well, I came back to Melbourne.

Went on leave with,

Lloyd was home. Went on leave, went back to Melbourne. Must have gone back to Park Orchards and then found I was pregnant and came down to Falconer Park. Well, I couldn’t go away on detachment again, would have loved to have and from Falconer Park I was working at Grosvenor, which was nearby and I did that and at Albert Park

until I got my discharge.

Five months pregnant and the doctor said, “Dear, I think, you know, it’s about time.”

Yes, I had nowhere to go. I had nowhere to go when I came out of the army pregnant and one of the girls in my unit took me

home to her parents in East Preston and I lived with them until I went back to Ballarat to have Carol. And it was through them that I got my housing ministry house because her uncle was the chaplain of my husband’s unit. And you had to have recommendations and I also had one of the captains at Boronia Park who

he had been down, no he came down later. I got a reference from him and on it he’d added another rider and he said, “I’ve written here exactly what I think of you. I’m afraid it will not get you a house but I wish you best.” He was an older man and then when he, eventually he applied for a transfer to our unit. He liked what

LHQ [Land Headquarters] Heavy Wireless Group did and he was down at Mount Martha and he would come on leave. His batman [servant] would drive him up to my place, have dinner, spend the evening and the batman would come and pick him up because we met his wife and children and dined at their home. They lived in Rye which was just up the road from where we were at Boronia Park.

No.

It was very healthy.

No.

Yes, and you’ll love this, thrilled to be pregnant. I really was. We’d got to the stage where we thought it was the, what was the stuff that they used to put in our tea, or so we were told. Something and other and we

were sure it was working.

I was still working when he came home that last time. I had five days I think. No, I think I was, one time he came home

I couldn’t get leave but I was allowed to live out, so he’d be waiting for me when I finished my shift. They might have put me on permanent day shift for that period and he’d meet me and we were staying at a relation’s house in Brunswick. They’d gone away for a holiday and they said “We could use their house”, so we’d go there and then next morning I’d get up and go to work and come out and he’d be waiting for me.

Yes.

Twelve months.

He had leave. When he came back from the Middle East, they only had seven days’ leave.

Before they went to New Guinea.

No, I was, when he had the seven days’ leave

I was out of the army by then. I had Carol, did I or didn’t I? Now wait on. No, he came home, he was supposed to come home on leave and he got into a brawl in Sydney with some of his mates and finished in jail.

And by the time I eventually found him my leave was up, so he used to come out to camp and see me and I could come out at night. Yes, I had a friend or the husband of a friend was in, or had a high position in the army and when he didn’t come, I got in touch with his wife and said, “Can you ask your husband if he can find out where Lloyd is?”

And then her husband would get in touch with Lloyd’s sister because I didn’t have a phone for him to reach me and we’d keep in touch with her and he would say, “He’s alright. I can’t tell you where he is but he’s alright.” And he was in jail in Sydney. In the big, they grabbed, Lloyd said, “He wasn’t actually in the fight but they grabbed a gang of them and shoved them into jail.”

I don’t know. No, it was in the street.

I don’t know.

No.

Only in the news, no, we weren’t aware of them. We didn’t experience them here.

Well, I had the house in Coburg and he came and it, as I say, it would have been, it was July because his mother had died. And his captain tried to get him home and Lloyd was in hospital with, what’s the ulcer? Tropical ulcer in the bottom of his foot had eaten into the bottom of his

foot and the captain got him out of the hospital and onto an American plane which would get him to Sydney and he said, “From there on, you’re on your own.” But he got home two days after his mother’s funeral and then he had to report to Heidelberg Hospital and while he was there, mind you he didn’t go for about a week. He was still, he’s still spending time then he thought he’d better go and while he was in hospital

having treatment, they brought him this order that those people who had had five years service could apply for a discharge, so he applied for it and eventually got it then, was home for good.

Well, he came home when I was seven months pregnant.

I must have.

No, well see, no I was still in the army when I got pregnant and then I had got out and the baby was seven months old when he came home, so that would have been almost 12 months.

Yeah, it would have been. It would have been seven months, to nine months, to 10 months.

Yes.

But he came home for good then.

Yes, I think he only had three lots of leave in four years.

No. It was enough. I think we were just

so glad to know they were still alive.

It was a terrible shock because he loved her dearly and also his security for after the war was gone because she had sold the business but had promised that when he got out of the army she’d put him back into one.

Well, she died and her family, the other 10, nobody said anything about it, so he didn’t get anything out of that so he started with nothing and we’ve still got it. Well, we don’t owe anyone anything for what we’ve got. He was a very passive man. He wouldn’t make a fuss about that or do anything about it. He was very hurt.

He didn’t talk much but he was easily hurt. When I say easily hurt he had reason to be. Before, he had a lovely gold ring which had been made from gold that an uncle had panned and had been given to Lloyd, I’m not sure - someone in the family, father or the uncle had given it to him and his father, who was a lovely man, asked for the ring back before he went overseas in case anything happened to it or

someone stole it. He was very hurt. He really needed that to be with him, I think when he was away. We never saw it again, don’t know who got it.

Could be a blighter but he was and it’s strange how when they die, they suddenly develop wings and you can only think of all of the nice things they did and not any of the bad, or the things that

hurt.

13 years ago, 4th of January in 1970 [1990]. He was looking after me. I was just four days out of hospital. I had a diseased gall bladder removed and he was looking after me and doing the dressings and he died of a heart attack. Doctor had been treating him for ulcers from the Friday till the Wednesday and increasing

his Taganet dosage. He was having heart attacks all the time. Not nice, not nice.

Well, as I say, I’ve just been to Norfolk Island with,

there were three of us, ex army mates. Two of one of the army, two of her friends from Esperance and my daughter’s next door neighbour from Coffs Harbour, so that’s the three of us away together. I’m going to lunch. There’s eight of us meeting for lunch next Wednesday and another one that will be there next week, lives at Frying Pan, which is up from Cooma

on Lake Eucumbene and…

I don’t know.

I’m not sure. Anyway, she could be coming and staying with me next week so we sort of…

We’re in contact.

No, never will, never will, just feel sorry for the last one of us that’s left - that is at a reunion

all on their own.

Exactly, exactly.

Yes, he was.

No,

I can’t recall.

Not a lot except that he was in Gallipoli, he was in France. No, I don’t know a lot about it.

Yes.

He had slight gas reaction from, but nothing that debilitated him.

No.

Well, he didn’t speak to me and I don’t think he spoke to his brothers but we probably didn’t encourage him to.

No, I’m saying my brothers, his sons didn’t, he didn’t seem to talk to them nor did they ask him about it.

Yes, he was the eldest of 12 children.

One brother was killed. Only one went.

Exactly.

No, he was a quiet man, didn’t talk a lot. No, he was a very quiet man. He wasn’t disturbed in any way by the war. He’d been in the navy prior to being in the army.

In World War I, so…

Well, he actually enlisted in the Royal Navy in Australia. They were recruiting in Australia

for the Royal Navy and he joined the Royal Navy in Australia and then in England, he was in England when they formed the Royal Australian Navy and Britain gave the first ship for the Australian Navy and my Dad came home.

No, I don’t think they were married. They weren’t married before the war.

After the war yeah. I think, wait on, trying to think. Yes, he must have been out of the army when they were married because they were married in 1920. Yes, 1920 they were married cause I was born in ’21

but no, we weren’t aware of any impact health wise or mentally or anything that affected my Dad, I’m sure it didn’t. When I’m saying he’s in the infantry, I’m not really certain about that because he was a railway man so and I don’t know whether they put, no, that’s wrong. What he did in the navy made him a man for the railways, so he could have done something in that line in the army, but that I’m not sure of.

Yes.

He drove a crane, an electric crane, which lifts cargo into and out of trucks.

Could have.

Well, you’d be more aware of what a man would be doing, than what I am.

In 1920.

Yes.

So, it was after the war.

No, but she didn’t know him while he was in the army, or they weren’t going together when he was in the army. My father’s family and my mother’s family were great friends and that’s how Mum and Dad met.

Methodist, yeah Protestant.

Yes, he was a Methodist background.

Well, I think his, both his mother and father were born in Australia, so when you say ethnic background, what are you looking for there?

No, English.

Yes.

Church of England.

No, he was born in Ryde in Sydney in New South Wales and then the family moved to Ballarat and it was in Ballarat that he met my mother.

That is, my husband and I did. You’re talking about my mother and father.

No, my mother and father settled in Ballarat. You were talking about my mother and father, now you’re talking about me.

No.

Yes, I was born in Ballarat. I was married in Ballarat and

I enlisted in Ballarat, so up until the wartime I lived in Ballarat, as my husband did.

Well, we’d never missed a meal and we had warm clothing and warm house,

frugally possibly but not, we didn’t go without. My Dad on the railways always had a pay day. It might only be three days’ work a week but there was a pay day, which was more than a lot of people had.

Greatly.

Well, we weren’t aware that we were limited in any way.

It was just a way of life that we knew. I was born in ’21. Well, we were just getting over the First World War and then before they got very far, the Depression times came, so that there was always a limited amount of things. It was only business people possibly that had more amounts of money, could do different things, have motor cars and things like that

but no, we lived alright. You were happy with what you had and we were a lot better off than some people.

There was. It wasn’t like the dole. They didn’t get the money in their hand. They got relief vouches and things to get food or clothing and necessities of life but money wasn’t, you know wasn’t handed out to people.

I never saw it in Ballarat. I wouldn’t say that they didn’t but people were more willing to share whatever they had, with people that didn’t have. I would imagine that someone would take, if they saw somebody sleeping outside, and you must realise Ballarat’s a very cold city. It was very, very cold and they’d take them home and let them sleep on the lounge floor or something like that but

no, you didn’t see bodies lying around, people sleeping out. Maybe the Salvation Army may have had halls or somewhere that they could go.

Came down once, was that before I was married? When my husband was first in the army, came down to Melbourne one

weekend and my husband, he was my boyfriend then. Another girlfriend and I came to Ballarat and he had leave and came to Melbourne and I met him there but no, we came to Melbourne for our honeymoon and that was a long way then, from Ballarat to Melbourne. People wanted to know what, you know what did you do and what was your hotel like? People didn’t really have the money to travel then.

Anywhere that you did go, you walked.

There were, a lot of soldiers were billeted

in Ballarat in the Ballarat Showgrounds.

And Australians.

Australians. I don’t think the Americans came to Ballarat until the Australian soldiers were moved out because I’ve got an idea that they moved into the same place as the Australian soldiers had been, which would have been the Ballarat Showgrounds and, but some of the Americans were billeted in private homes.

No, the ordinary soldiers were billeted in the main in private homes and those that weren’t billeted had the, they were camped in the showgrounds.

No, they didn’t charge them. They just billeted them, fed them and kept them. As far as I know they weren’t paid.

I could be wrong there but I have no recollection of them being

paid.

They not only had a reputation for being generous, they were generous. They could woe the girls with the taxis and the flowers and the chocolates and the Camel cigarettes and the nylons, things that we couldn’t get.

Of course they did.

Why wouldn’t they? Exactly.

Exactly, yeah.

Well, I know a sister in law of mine who was going with an American at the time lived about three doors from where she worked but he would pick her up by taxi and drive her home, just, you know it. They had a cute way about then, they certainly did and as I think I told you before, there wasn’t one that you met that didn’t

say they had swimming pools and magnificent homes back in America. Whether they did or not, I don’t, most times I don’t think they did.

Well, I think some of our girls that married them and went home, soon found that they didn’t have them.

Yes. No, not divorced.

And their husbands came here with them.

A lot of Americans liked Australia and Australian girls marrying them, if the girls got homesick and the man was reasonable, they would come back here. A friend of mine was married to an American. Don’t know whether she married here. I think she did, married here and her husband went off to the war and then when he got back to America, she went to America and lived there and then they came back here.

Well, I think Ballarat welcomed them with open arms because the influx of money and they were generous spenders. It was a boost to any town to have the Americans there.

The men that lived there didn’t like them but

Well, this is right. They were a novelty and they were,

they knew how to woo a girl. I’m not talking about me because I was married, so it didn’t occur to me but I know how the other girls felt about them. They felt proud actually to have an American boyfriend, felt it was an achievement. You know, our boys were away.

Well, it wasn’t long before I went into the army, so all of that, well I never really

shared that. As I say, I was married but no, the young girls had a wonderful time. Treated, you know to be taken out for dinner and taken to a show and flowers and chocolates and the taxi. That was a thing that never happened in Ballarat. No Ballarat boy would have ever met that, you know.

How were?

They just resented them. They resented them deeply. They could do without them and I suppose when you think about it, most of the able men were already in uniform and it was strange in the fact that a lot of the Americans who were already

married or had girlfriends back home. They just wanted company to go out and dance and people to talk to. There were good and bad amongst them, the same as there would have been amongst our Australian men overseas I guess.

They would be telling the girls that they owned big homes and farms and suchlike, you can bet your sweet life.

No, we only actually had at one stage an influx of American soldiers and the ones that were in Ballarat then moved out and went to Guadalcanal. We never saw them again. Girls wrote to them and kept in touch with them for years but then as their lives developed, they lost that link to them.

It was a busy town, yes.

Never saw one, no I never saw one in Ballarat.

Hispanic, what do you mean by Hispanic?

No, they all seemed just American guys.

No, not really.

I’m not saying they weren’t there but I’m not aware that they were.

No, they just seemed very similar to our guys really.

They were suave. They knew the right thing to say. They’d been there, done that, you know. They were jumps ahead. Our men were more quiet but these guys just overwhelmed the girls, they really did.

Yes, I think they’d seen too many films before they came and they knew what Americans were supposed to be like and they were like Americans were portrayed in films. You know something unreal, something that wasn’t Ballarat type at all.

Absolutely, gallant, you know, bowed, do the whole thing. They’d nearly spread their hanky for you to walk on in a puddle. They knew all the lurks.

Exactly, it was competition that they couldn’t keep up with really.

No, you ought to know better than that. Australians are Australian. There’s no put on. No, they didn’t try to compete. It would have been false for them to do

so. You sort of accepted it with the Americans because “flamboyant” is the way you always felt about Americans, even if it was only from seeing films but they are more flamboyant. They know the words to say. They really know how to act, not that it was always sincere but they knew how to make you feel good, to make you feel important.

Exactly and it worked.

That was about the only time I was ever in Melbourne until I was married and we came here for our honeymoon.

Didn’t know Melbourne.

Now I’m just thinking back before that, some years before that I had worked in Melbourne, in St Kilda.

Another lass and I came down from Ballarat and we got lost. We went into the city on the St Kilda tram and we couldn’t find Flinders Street Station to find the tram to go home. No, we went in on train and couldn’t find Flinders Street Station, so we got on a tram that said St Kilda and it didn’t go anywhere near where we lived but we walked the rest. Melbourne was a strange place to us.

And also it was, people weren’t easy to know in Melbourne, where in Ballarat everybody knew everybody, more or less. You either met them at dances or at churches or shopping or you went to school with them or Sunday school with them, whereas at Melbourne, you didn’t know who your next door neighbour was.

Well, we had a Labor government, didn’t we? Well, my Dad and my grandfather were both, well my Dad was President of the Railways Union and his father was busy in

the Labor Party, so yes we were very Labor party orientated but then the attitude then was if you were a working person, you were Labor.

Automatically and some people still think that today but why should it be?

I think so. I think people are better educated to think for themselves and they don’t necessarily follow what the family did. People didn’t read as much, they didn’t hear,

well they had, well radios at that time were non existent but you didn’t hear anything, therefore you followed your family pattern, but I was lucky. My mother was on the committee of the Women’s National League and my Dad was President of the Railways Union, strict Labor and Mum was National Party, so it left me free to do what I wanted to do.

Well, the National Party actually became the Liberal Party. It was seen to be different. Business people were supposed to be Liberal and working people Labor, which I’ve never understood and refused to accept. I can’t see that any difference can be made between people because of their income, not in their thinking. It’s the same as religion or politics, anything that you have. It shouldn’t

depend on your income. It depends on your belief.

And that’s a bit hard with the government at any time, isn’t it?

Yes.

Well, you were very aware that there was a Communist Party and you were aware that it was dangerous but you daren’t criticise it because you didn’t know what would happen to you.

Yeah.

I don’t think so.

No. I can’t think of anything good that they did do. Their attitude and their reasoning was that they wanted everybody to share equally which was alright when you had nothing, but I had a brother in law who was very communistic when he had nothing,

and then when his land was subdivided and he was a wealthy man, he didn’t have any part of it, didn’t want any part of the Communist Party. He used to have the soapbox and be in talking in the Yarra Bank where people used to gather and listen to politics and religion, anything that people wanted to preach about but no, their attitude, well did it matter? They had nothing. Nobody could take anything off them but it doesn’t make it right then to

fight for what other people have got if they’ve earned it correctly.

There was a fear of communism.

Yes.

It was something that we couldn’t understand or comprehend or believe in and they were strong, they were a strong body. You felt that they were powerful and felt that they were capable of

doing underhand things.

Maybe combined with the Depression, it would have made people who didn’t have anything. Coming out of the First World War and into a Depression, they’d never had a chance to have anything and that’s possibly the reason that they fought to establish

communism. They probably felt it was an unequal balance, those that had and those that did not but that situation exists now.

Not my mother.

I don’t know what made her different. She was a woman that thought for herself and it could have even been possibly deliberate. Well, my mother actually came from a business family. Her father was a butcher and she probably mixed with wealthier people than my father’s family did, so she

may have felt that she wanted to retain that balance, doesn’t always have to be a good reason.

Not necessarily. It can be antagonistic attitude too, can’t it?

Dad never used to say anything. He’d let Mum do what she wanted to do. Mum never tried to stop Dad going to Labor Party

meetings and I think that’s the way it should be.

Not to any extent.

No. My Dad thought a lot of Billy Hughes.

Yeah, thought a lot of him, we all did. Yes, we all thought good of him. He was a strong minded man. He wasn’t easily swayed

and I think anybody admires someone with the courage of their convictions, whether they agree with them or not. That’s a democratic country, if you have the courage of your convictions and you can express it freely.

No, he was a Labor man, wasn’t he?

Yeah.

See Archbishop Mannix was here in Melbourne and not being a Roman Catholic, I didn’t follow anything that he did. You would hear of him but it mainly interested Roman Catholics.

He was a strong man and he was archbishop through a difficult time,

you know.

I can remember as a child going to school and the Roman Catholics would walk on that side of the street and we’d walk on the other side of the street. You wouldn’t walk

on the same, and they’d be singing songs like “Protestant dogs sit on logs” and we’d be singing similar things back to the Roman Catholics but it was a bigotry.

I wouldn’t think so. I think it was.

Well, I’m not going to stick up for him either.

A man’s entitled to his convictions and he had plenty of them. Roman Catholics, I would say thought they were right and we were wrong, thought they were more important than we were and I guess in a sense

we were aware of that feeling of superiority because they were a tight knitted band. Where Protestants were still divided, being Methodist, Church of England, Baptist and suchlike and they had the numbers and in Ballarat, it was well known that you couldn’t get a job in the public service unless you were a Roman Catholic, the post office, the city.

Yeah.

Well, when I was going to school.

Yeah, don’t even bother to apply. You had no hope.

Meaning, when I saw they were all Catholics but Catholics were combined as Catholics, where Protestants were divided by Baptist, Methodist, Church of England and various other, Salvation Army and suchlike,

so that the actual numbers of those were smaller. The Catholics were combined in the one.

Only if you were Roman Catholic. It didn’t matter what religion you were in other positions, although I wouldn’t say that if you were a regular church attendant and your family were, that someone that was in business and went to your church

that you wouldn’t have a hope of getting a job there but not in the public service.

It wasn’t a secret army.

My husband was in the militia as a boy.

No, I wouldn’t know a thing about it. Before the Second World War?

Anything we knew about the militia wasn’t bad. It was, they were like, they were organised, almost like the boy scouts or a group.

You would have, I guess we felt and were aware that they were organised in case anything occurred but you never worried about the fact that the militia would ever had to be active. My husband, as I say, was in the militia as a boy up until the time he went into the army.

I just feel that the war was a great leveller.

Because everybody in uniform was the same, your religion didn’t make any difference. You were all fighting for the one cause. You all had the one purpose and no-one queried whether the girl next to you was a Roman Catholic or what they were. We all went to our individual churches but never in the army did I ever see any

segregation because you were or you weren’t.

I would say.

Yes.

What I’m saying, yes there was conscription.

My brother was in the conscription. He turned 18 and, as you probably know, they drew lots with numbers and his number came up.

Mmm.

I’m not really aware of what they did.

I think conscription in the Second World War was you were given numbers and they took either the evens or the odds.

They weren’t given a choice. They were called up and I don’t know that they were given a choice of a unit but it appeared to me

as though, say all of the guys from Ballarat that were in the conscription would be in the one battalion or one group. Because my brother and a mate of his that lived near us, gone to school and had been a good friend of my brothers, they went into the same unit.

Now, when I said before about conscription, about different religions

in the First World War, I don’t know in the First World War about that. I’m saying that in picking up after the First World War there could have been divisions there and then into the Depression because after the First World War it was the same thing. In the country trying to get back to level, there weren’t a lot of jobs. Well, before, at the time of the First World War, actually there were not a lot of factories.

There was not a lot of, when you think of the different jobs, would have mainly been farmers, would have been the biggest employers.

Yes, they were.

Proud of me.

No.

No, I was married and a free agent.

Did I say there was before?

I don’t think so because there never was.

I think they thought I was doing the right thing for me.

Well, I was the first girl from Ballarat to join the army.

I believe there was a write-up in the paper.

No.

I was in Melbourne.

No we, I was at Victoria Barracks living out, working at Victoria Barracks but living out with four WAAAFs in St Kilda. We had a unit in St Kilda.

Before they were living-in and before we were living-in, we were all living in a unit in St Kilda and going to work each day and coming back to there.

I was the only one

but three of the WAAAF girls had trained with me with the women’s voluntary service corps in Ballarat and when they took this unit, and I actually went to the air force first and had I got in, I would have been with them. So, they kept the vacancy for me when I went for the army and when I got in there, I went and lived with them.

Women’s

voluntary service corps?

That was in Ballarat.

Not really.

No, it wasn’t administered by the army.

When I say it wasn’t administered by the army. I don’t know who administered it.

Yes, I would say a similar thing, similar set-up. We did

first aid certificates and learnt to tie knots and learned to recognise different aircraft and did exercises, drill.

Yes.

Well, that was the only thing that was available for girls to do. At that time not even the air force had started recruiting

for women.

Yes, I wouldn’t know.

No, it would have been ’41 because I went into the army in March ’42 and these girls would have enlisted in the WAAAF, I would say before the Christmas. So, it would have been ’41.

It wasn’t a yearning by the women. It was a need by the army and the air force and the navy. Really, what they needed us for was to recruit and go in to release men to go further forward into areas, you know that

women couldn’t go into.

You mean in the army?

That was only because I was in signals but no, there was a very wide area of recruitment. I don’t know whether people actually recruited

no, they wouldn’t. They would have enlisted just into the AWAS or into the army and then they would have been placed where they were needed, depending on their qualifications. If they had particular qualifications, that would be used to place them but in the main, let’s face it, girls that had been clerks could have turned round to be cooks or they may have applied. I don’t really know because the girls that went in with me,

we went in as wireless operators. We’d learnt wireless operating in our voluntary service corps, so we didn’t go in and be placed anywhere. We went into signals.

Well, we only met the AWAS that were in signals and all of those

there in signals liked being there. Other AWAS, look there was so many varied and different things you could work in. Officers’ mess, you could be a telephonist. You could be a clerk. It was a wide range of necessary positions there. I mean mess orderlies, you name it.

Well, it was the same as conducting a city I suppose, Q [Quartermaster] stores or canteens. There was a wide variety and I wouldn’t really know whether people chose or whether they were chosen. Maybe at a training school, if they did a training school they would show their aptitude for certain positions and that could

help in being placed in a particular position in the army.

Well, I lived with four of them. Very good, very good.

Well, we were doing similar work. They were wireless operators too, so it was similar what they were doing and what we were doing.

Once you get into uniform you’ve got to bitch about something. It’s not necessarily true, but you automatically found something to grizzle about. You know if you made it too good, you would never have got anything, would you?

Nothing really at that stage because they were living out, so it was more like I was at that stage doing a daytime job.

No, I never heard any grizzling from them.

No. Actually, it was much later I think when the navy actually recruited for women.

Yes.

No, we just thought we were the best. We knew we were the best.

Signal, AWAS signals. Ask any of the girls in my unit. They’ll tell you the same thing.

There was a pride. There was a distinct pride. You felt proud to be part of it and it was and it was rather wonderful after coming out of the Depression to have something that you could be proud about. You know you’d

taken jobs, not jobs because you wanted them, you took them because they were there. It didn’t matter what you wanted to do. You didn’t have a choice and yet to go into the army and be doing something worthwhile, it built you up as a person. It built your own self esteem. It also gave you great independence, when I think about it. We might have grizzled about everything but at least we had our food, our clothing. We knew what we were doing.

Of course.

Yes, it wasn’t easy and when my daughter was born it wasn’t easy to be there on my own and he was in the Middle East and to see other

women with their babies and their husbands coming in and making a fuss of them. It was pretty hard but you didn’t blame your husband. There was nothing they could do about it. It wasn’t easy setting up a home with a baby but having a new baby and never having had one before, you had a lot to learn and your time was pretty well taken up. You didn’t have time to be sorry for yourself. I suppose I was at times

but you kept thinking about how wonderful it would be when they came home, made plans. It wasn’t by choice, I don’t think that any woman just, couldn’t say that anyone enjoyed the fact that they were rearing children on their own. I wasn’t the only one to be doing it. It was hard on every woman.

He was.

Well, when I was 14, 15 in those years and my Mum and Dad were not getting on and I was very unhappy about it, he was my strength. I could lean on him and he was old enough to be able to talk to me about the situation and make me see that my Dad wasn’t all that bad and yes, he was quite wise. He was my strength

and that’s why we married. He wanted us to be married before he went away because he wanted me to be somewhere else than home with my parents, so yes he was.

Affectionate but not demonstrative. I don’t think many Australian men are demonstrative.

No, he was a product of his time.

Yes.

Loved his fishing, loved skating and lots of things. Yes, just a typical guy of his time.

Well, I think I was probably lucky in the fact that I’d known him for six years before we were married

and a lot of people did marry after a short relationship because of the war. You wouldn’t have the same balance there. I mean I knew him pretty well after six years but it wasn’t difficult. I wasn’t the only one doing it. You hear more stories about the women that let the men down. You don’t hear about all the good ones that didn’t.

Very, very efficiently yes, and a lot of women were with that common ground, that common bond but I was lucky. My army mates used to come and visit me and come and spend leave with me, especially the ones that were away from home, knew that they could come out and have a meal with me or come and stay the night and I enjoyed that. I still sort of clung to them.

I didn’t leave the army and leave my friends, far from it.

Yes.

I would think so yes.

I wasn’t lonely for company. I had the girls to be in touch with. I missed my husband, I missed him terribly but you couldn’t do anything about that and, as I say, other women that lived around me. Their husbands were away too because the area that I lived in was mainly or only for people that had something to do with service, either a mother with sons

in the forces or wives with husbands in the forces. So, there was a, I think everybody, even whether they were in the army or whether they were out, you all had a common bond. Very few people were not touched by the war. You know people, your neighbours would have a son that was away. My next door neighbour had two sons that were away at the war. I think you were there, that

when there was a need or you were feeling down, there was always someone who had been there and done that and could support you and you did your supporting when their times were bad.

Golly it,

not till Pearl Harbour, when the Americans came into the war and I think we always wanted them to but Pearl Harbour really was the time you felt that the change was coming, there was some hope then. Up until then, you didn’t know how long it would go on or, we felt here in Australia that we would be taken over by the Japanese.

Yes.

I think I told you before how I dreamt that I was hiding behind a bush with my baby in my arms, dodging the Japanese, trying to get away from them approaching. I can still remember it. It was far from funny. It was frightening.

Fear.

No, I didn’t to back to Ballarat. After I got out of the army I got this house at East Coburg.

In the army.

Can’t remember.

Was it in ’42?

I can’t really remember. My brain isn’t as young as yours. We were in constant fear that we would be attacked, that we might lose Australia. The bombing of Darwin was frightening when you think

back. It was, that was really close.

I can’t remember. I tried to but I can’t remember.

Probably on the radio, no I can’t recollect what I was doing. I’m afraid my memory isn’t as good as that.

I think our worst fear was that Australia would be taken while our men were still in the Middle East. We felt a lot better about it when they actually came back and went to New Guinea because you knew they were fighting for you but without them, we were just wide open. But see the conscription, my brother, his unit, they went to New Guinea ahead of the men coming back. They were sort of pushed in

before the trained men were available.

We didn’t rush around in the streets throwing up our arms or anything but everybody was very concerned.

Australians are not a demonstrative race really.

You felt that yes, you were going to be overtaken by it. Couldn’t see a way out of it at that stage because we, well we were on our own and our best men were overseas.

I suppose if it came to the worst, the women would have got in there and fighting too, not as far as I know were any of the women in the army trained to do that.

I never heard them say so but I think even civilian women would have if necessary.

In the front line?

I can’t see it as being really possible or workable, I really can’t.

For one thing, because of physical reasons with a woman. I could see that

for instance with a menstruation problem. I can’t see that being very easy to cope with in trenches or out in the wilds. I don’t think it’s feasible really and I don’t, well I wouldn’t say that women are not strong minded enough to cope with it but I don’t like the thought of it. I don’t really think it’s feasible. Maybe

in the navy if they have their own quarters and suchlike, but not in trenches. Not in fighting from the ground level, not a female type of thing to do.

At school.

Yes, I am and in, well in, I reckon such like the women are fighting now, aren’t they?

They cope I suppose but I wouldn’t like to be coping with them. I think the way that it was done in Australia where the women actually took the men’s jobs in the army to release the men to go into the fighting areas. I think that’s the better way to do it and why wouldn’t that have been possible in Iraq?

Of course it was.

From my experience, I don’t know. I must have been dumb in the army because I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

We were more disciplined people in our day than they are now, more capable of discipline. Now anything goes. You want it, you get it but we didn’t. We, with the Depression and the First World War, we were disciplined people. If we weren’t disciplined people to an extent, there wouldn’t have been many women waiting for their men to come back.

You’d have made a life for yourself that you wanted at the time and been selfish about it, because that’s what it amounts to when you want everything and you want it now.

How many do you think would enlist? How many do you think would enlist?

I don’t believe they would. If

you read the papers each day and read the letters to the editor. I’m sure they wouldn’t. Some would but a lot would enlist possibly if they thought it was, if they were looking for work. Even then, I don’t think they would. They’d sit back and wait for some mug to go and they’d take his job but I don’t, no I don’t think the stamina

is there. Maybe the stamina’s there but it’s ill used, you couldn’t.

A bit of both, yeah.

I don’t think people, no people were strong. People were strong,

strong minded.

I would say so.

Yes, yes.

And it hadn’t made you want the unexpected. It made you more thankful with what you had.

Yes, very much so.

Yes,

you were. You weren’t given anything. Let’s face it, now you know marriages break up because the government will pay. It will pay for the children. In our day if you, more marriages were saved by the fact you couldn’t afford to run one home. You certainly couldn’t afford to run two.

I think a lot were unhappy but they worked their problems out and then when you get to retirement age and your family have gone, they’re the best years of your life. When you’ve stuck it out together, you’ve battled through it and you get to that stage. It was the best part of our life.

Yeah.

Well, in our teenagers

we were going through the Depression, then we went through the war and then we battled for years with, well we had five children and doing that on one man’s money wasn’t funny. We came down here. My husband built this house and we lived here without water, without running water, without electricity, didn’t even have, we had kerosene lamps and kerosene fridge.

I don’t think people would do that today. They move into a house and they’ve got everything there at the time and we never, we didn’t have credit cards. If you didn’t have the money, you didn’t have it.

No.

So is debt.

Well, you lived on what your husband earned but if you wanted to buy a kitchen setting, you could lay-by it which meant that it was paid for before you took it home or you could do it on time payment. And most times it was six months interest free and after that you had to pay interest. Well, you jolly well made sure you paid for it within the six months, whereas now

the height of interest is so impossible, isn’t it? And, but if people use their credit cards correctly and not pay any interest, but then the credit companies are not very thrilled with that either, are they? They depend on that for their living, so they encourage people to spend more than they can. It amuses me to see people who just finish paying for their car, so they think, “What else will we get?” You know get on the

credit card again. You can get anything easily. It’s keeping, it’s the problem and also this, I think one of the silliest things is the fact that young people can go bankrupt. I have a granddaughter who’s been bankrupt twice. It doesn’t bother them.

Lack of moral fibre is right but it comes from their parents and strangely enough, we reared their parents but what we taught them isn’t as attractive

as what they can do for themselves.

I think it’s lost something.

No, I think we were probably very naïve but I think the benefits

and the depth of feeling and the depth of caring and all of those things was our value. I think that was, I’m glad I lived in the era that I did live in, despite the two World Wars and the Depression, I still think we had more value and what we’ve got is more valuable to us. Even if we haven’t got very much, it’s still very valuable to us, whereas

you know the people now, they move into a lovely home but they’ve got to get a bigger one and they’ve got to get a bigger one and it’s not giving them the satisfaction that we got. You know we felt that we achieved something. When you paid for something and you had it but it’s not all sort of hesitantcy. You’ve got it now, but will you keep it?

I don’t envy people who have everything now because I’m happy with what I’ve got and I haven’t got much but I’m very happy with it. It’s mine and yet we’re the parents that brought the present generation up that spend eagerly, whether they can afford it or not. I can’t work it out.

I really can’t. Whether they’ll be a reversion of that with the younger generations now, whether, I don’t know how it would occur except by a Depression or a war.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Of course you resent it now because you feel that all of the issues that you tried to teach them, all of the values that you’ve tried to give to them, doesn’t mean a thing to them.

Well, at first you feel as though you’ve been a failure as a parent but then when you look around and see it happening to so many

you know that lots of people you know that are very good parents, that it doesn’t matter. You know, I can remember looking back, going back say seven or eight years and thinking, “Aren’t I lucky?” Five children, no divorces, had three since and I was talking to someone the other day who had four children, four of them divorced and this is my age group. When we sit talking about our families and suchlike, there’s very few

families that haven’t got divorce. We never did in our day. For one thing, you couldn’t afford it and no one wanted you with five children anyway, so you were stuck, but the moral fibre you’re talking about, we had to have that and work through it. I think the quote of Malcolm Fraser’s, “Life wasn’t meant to be easy” is very, very true and I think if your life is easy, you don’t get values.

Facing bad times and facing responsibilities gives you character. There’s a lot of character absent now. It’s, “I want it, I’ll get it.” You’re going to make me prime minister now, aren’t you?

Don’t you knock my John [Howard], or I’ll give you Simon [Crean] and then you’ll have something to talk about.

Yes.

Connelly Avenue which runs from Murray Road around in a horseshoe, just outside Pentridge Jail and the look at that wall every day kept you honest.

You’re lucky. You stayed outside the wall like I did.

If you’re honest, that’s what did it.

1944.

My husband was overseas. I got out of the army and had my baby and it was a housing ministry area and houses

were being allocated to service people and I went, I actually went to see that house before my baby was born. A lady from the housing ministry took me to look at it and then they kept it for me for three months until I went home and had my baby and came back. She thought I should wait until the baby was three months old. Went back to Ballarat and had my baby and came back when she was three months old and took the house over and furnished it

and lived there until my husband came home, lived there on my own until he came home and we lived there for 10 years and then we were given the opportunity to buy it. Previous to that I was renting it or we were renting it and we were given the opportunity to buy it and what they did, was a percentage of the rent that we’d paid was used as the deposit. They used that as

a deposit instead of us having to find a lump sum of money. I think it might have amounted to 70 pound but at least that was the acceptable deposit and then we were paying the house off and we’d been down here for six weeks. When we only had the one room, we might have had two rooms by then, been down here for holidays and we went home and a vacuum cleaner salesman came to the door and was

trying to sell me a vacuum cleaner, Electrolux. And to put him off, I said, “It’s no use me even thinking about it. We’ve just been to Seaford and we love it and if we’re going down there, there’s no electricity.” I thought that will end his argument. Instead of that, he was an estate agent as well on the side and he had sold our house by the Friday. I saw him on the Monday. By the Friday he’d sold our house.

He said to me, “Do you want to sell your house?” And I said, “Hadn’t even thought of it.” He said, “Would you sell it?” I said, “I hadn’t thought anything about it.” “How much would you want for it?” And I said, “I don’t know. I’ll speak to my husband about it.” And when my husband came home from work I told him what the fellow had said and I said, “He said to put a price on it.” So, my husband put a price on it and he said, “If they’ll take that, we’ll sell it.” And they did accept the price.

So, we sold it and then we had three months while settlement and everything was going on, so my husband took three months off work and came down here and went on and built the rest of the house. So, that’s how we came down here, and why we did it was to pay, we had the first, you know sheet showing how much we’d paid. What do you call it? You know like, a statement of what we

paid and we’d paid about that in interest and that, no that in principle and that in interest, was going to take us something like 42 years to pay it off, with interest. So, we decided that we would sell it and came down here. Lived here ever since and have never been sorry we moved, didn’t matter there wasn’t water or electricity.

Well, we didn’t have to pay for the house. With what we made on the other one, it paid for the material for this one. It wasn’t easy but it was practical.

Mmm.

Well, we had a brickie in to do the fireplace and things like that and plasterers in to put the plaster in, electricians to do the electrical things but my husband built the house

and we had four children when we came here. And then another one was born here and it wasn’t long after he was born that we got the electricity on, which was a help because if ever my husband was away, as builders do, you know, they have, building houses away and he’d be away and I’d be trying to light the kerosene, petrol lamp and it would always blacken or burst or something would

happen to it. It was no good, but having electricity was great. Still no main roads and we didn’t have the water on then but they came later.

That’s right.

The back of our house, do you know where the little bridge goes, well our house was the nearest house to that on that side of the

road, on the oval side of the road.

Yes, there was a Coburg swimming pool there but I think it’s a bigger one now.

Yes.

Yes, they had a small swimming pool and a little wading pool.

Yes, off Murray Road.

Yes. Well,

Newlands Road, I don’t know whether Newlands Road was even formed when we were living there. I think that might have gone in later when the school was, isn’t there a school in Newlands Road?

I think the road might have been put in then because that was all Chinese market garden. From the gardens down to the Merri Creek was all Chinese gardens and market garden there.

Yes, we used to go there for picnics. It was lovely for the children. There was swings and seesaws and things there and the pool, was lovely.

Yeah.

It was.

Isn’t it?

Not all that much changed to what it is now because it’s all very close. In the Sydney Road part, very little has changed there except that the languages on the shops. Where it used to be all in English, now it’s very multi cultural, isn’t it? But no, the actual shops haven’t changed a lot. I only see it if we’re going through, going

to Sydney [Road] or anywhere like that but the surrounding area, well of course it’s advanced a lot going out from Pentridge, out where the Newland school is. It’s developed a lot along that way but where we lived, there’s no way you can extend there because it was backing onto the Merri Creek and on the other side, as you know off Elizabeth Street is the cemetery.

So, you can’t move anything there and then actually right through from the rest of it, from - what did I say the name of that street was? Doesn’t matter. Where it goes right through from East Coburg, it goes down through Preston and it always was, even then houses are close together. It wasn’t open space, so it really hasn’t altered to any extent. It’s only that it’s gone out further towards Fawkner. Fawkner and

out from Reservoir. Reservoir was there but the Reservoir Lake but there wouldn’t have been anything at the back of the lake and there probably is another suburb there now.

Well, they were mainly ex service people.

Yes, they were new when we moved into them.

I think so. Ours was a

double brick, three bedroom. The rooms were small for what you’d have now but no, it was a very nice home.

Nothing wrong with it. People used to say, “Fancy living just so close to Pentridge.” Now if anyone got out, they weren’t going to hang around, were they? They were more inclined to get straight into town or

not hang around. In fact I can remember one time the prisoners that got out and were up on a chimney thing in a roof and carrying on and we didn’t know anything about it until we saw, heard it on the news. You didn’t see anything. It wasn’t an annoyance or a bother to us, certainly didn’t worry about it.

I don’t think he was hung in Pentridge.

Didn’t the Americans?

They were responsible for whatever happened to him, whether he was hung. I don’t know whether he went to Pentridge. He would have gone to an army installation, wouldn’t he?

He wouldn’t have been tried or was he tried? I can’t remember whether he was tried in a civil court.

I imagine he was so the Americans would have dealt with him.

No.

No, we didn’t have any Americans in Australian then I don’t think.

I would think so. I would think that they were probably back home by then.

My husband, I can’t recall. He was in hospital and had, a tropical ulcer had eaten into the sole of one foot and his mother died and I sent word to him. And the

captain of his unit got him onto an American plane that would get him to Sydney and then he said, “You’re on your own from there.” Trying to get him home in time for the funeral but he didn’t make it, got home the day after she was buried and while he was home. He then had to report to Heidelberg Military Hospital after he got home and while he was in there, an order came out, stating that those men who had served five years could apply for a discharge, which he did.

So, he didn’t go back to the battle areas at all.

That would have been near the end of ’45.

No, he had a collapsed lung with pleurisy and I think it was, he didn’t get a pension or anything for it. His lung collapsed with pleurisy

and I’m not sure whether it collapsed with malaria but twice he had a collapsed lung. He was alright.

No.

He was brought up

with Christian beliefs. His mother was a church going woman and I was too. Whether he had Christian beliefs, I never heard him speak against it, but I didn’t hear him speak for it either.

No.

No, went as a child when, you know his mother and father took

him along or no, not after the war.

Well, I always went to Sunday school and church as a child, taught Sunday school when I was about 14. And then when I started going with Lloyd and if I wanted to go to church it had to be one of my two nights out a week. I didn’t get to church very often but then in Coburg when I was

there with my baby and then having the other children. I started to go to church there and kept on there and then when we came down here, I was going to St Aidan’s in Carrum because at that time there used to be a road through from here through up into Carrum. You didn’t have to go out on the highway, so yes, I’ve always been interested in going to church.

I don’t think so. I don’t think that altered me. My prayers might have been more extended. You had more to pray for and your prayers are

strengthened. It helps to know that it’s not just you, that you’ve got help, something to rely on. It’s a foundation I think to sort of help you to cope with problems. I know it’s important to me.

No,

not at all. No, it’s a daily occupation with me. I say my prayers daily and I belong to a prayer chain where a group of us pray for the same people and as people need prayer. We put them on the list and pray for them daily and we update that - say once a month and those that no longer

need the prayers. But in the meantime if anyone needs prayer, we put them on immediately and then you ring the next person in the circle and it goes around.

It didn’t personally affect me,

so I don’t really know a lot about it. I was in Malaysia in 1968. My daughter and son in law, my son in law was in the air force and they were living on Penang. And I went over and spent about seven weeks with them when her second, no the third baby was being born over there and I went over and I met the British

airmen and, you know that they mixed with British and Australian airmen that were there. They were stationed at Penang and working at Butterworth but the war didn’t affect me, not personally.

The papers would have been full of it here because we had Australian contingents

in Penang and at Butterworth but my son in law was a military policeman but actually from where they were in Penang the army and air force men would be flown to the war areas. I’m trying to think where it was. They were flown from Penang to, can’t remember

but they would fly for a certain time. They’d be over there and then they would come back. They might go for three months and then come back but they weren’t in a combat area the whole time.

We thought so, didn’t we?

Would have thought it would be.

Well, you felt as though you were living in a peace loving world again and you could rebuild it and it would be meaningful and never, never dreamt that we could face another war experience like we are now.

No, not to a great extent. I don’t think that we were terribly involved. It wasn’t a frightening thing. It didn’t look as though it would encroach on Australia. That was the worst part of the Second World War, the fact that we could have been overtaken.

No, not personally.

No, not a threat to Australia.

No, didn’t feel a personal threat.

I don’t think so.

No.

That’s still here? You know, it’s sort of,

you have periods where communism isn’t talked about and I guess you have an awareness that there is an underground communism there but it didn’t affect us. We didn’t suffer because of it. You were aware though that it was still alive but sort of just quiet and I wouldn’t have thought that a lot of people would

have been involved in it. I know that certain people that I knew were involved but I don’t think it was the, you didn’t feel that it was going to be an overbearing power. It might be an irritant but not in control.

No.

To those that had loved ones there

it certainly would have.

No.

No, I didn’t. No, the ones that I do know has been mainly through their membership of the RSL.

Small to me because I wasn’t personally involved with anyone that was taking part in it.

Well, Vietnam was a

bigger cause of worry I think to Australia because we were more heavily involved in Vietnam and knew people who had sons there and knew wives that had husbands there. So, we were more concerned about that but we didn’t feel an invasion threat, which is the worst feeling I think in a war. It’s bad enough to have your men go to fight it somewhere else, but the thought of them invading and being in control

is a far worse feeling.

Not at all.

I wasn’t really aware of its politics.

I wouldn’t say I disagreed with conscription. Volunteers would be better

but maybe, I’m not aware, they may not have been able to get enough volunteers. I would think that if volunteers were available, conscription wouldn’t have been essential. That surely would be a last resort thing, wouldn’t it?

No, I didn’t have any direct

contact at all.

I thought the protests were very unfair and a bit as though people didn’t have character. It sort of set in as though people didn’t have the quality of giving or wanting to be involved, as we’d

known it. It was, I don’t really want to. Well, nobody ever wanted to go to war. You wouldn’t find a person that really wanted to go.

In Vietnam?

In protests?

No, I felt that it was unpatriotic. I think if your country had a need and if your leaders feel that it was valuable to be part of it, yes I feel that

unpatriotic it would appear to me.

Well, they were handed white feathers.

People that thought that they should go. It wasn’t done a lot in the First World War. It was a practise more or less but yes, I know people that got white feathers.

Possibly they were in protected industry or something but it’s not everyone that knows, that even knew what was a protected industry and what wasn’t.

A white feather is a sign of a lack of…

Or LMF.

Yes, I would say so.

But not everybody that went to the war was killing.

I don’t think that any, I don’t think that my husband

went in wanting to kill anyone. It was defence that they were thinking of and they had to be prepared, if they were attacked, or if they had to attack, whatever they were ordered, but I don’t think anybody goes to war wanting to kill and a lot of people that went in surely have been doing clerical work.

There were a lot of men employed here in Australia, a lot of men that never went anywhere, so it wasn’t necessary that they went in, it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t even applicable that they would go in to be killing.

Certain aspects of it.

The fear of Japanese invasion but that doesn’t bother me now. I could think about it now without worrying about it because it hasn’t happened.

The possibility of it, yes.

I don’t have any long fears regarding the war. No, I don’t look back in horror on things because nothing horrible happened to me. Things that upset you, like with your husband away and

fearing they wouldn’t come back, with a brother away and children of people that you knew, but no horror, no actual horror. Fears and bad dreams, things like that, but you don’t carry those till now.

No, I wouldn’t think so, don’t recall doing so.

No.

Positive, yes I think it helps you to become a bigger and better person because the more contacts you make and the wider your knowledge is, I don’t think education of any sort ever

took anyone down. I think it has to uplift you and make you a bigger person. I often think, you know, “What would my life have been if I hadn’t been in the army?” Which is different to thinking about wartime but I can’t really say anything bad about the wartime except the fact that my husband was involved.

And you worried about him and my brother but my life now is vastly different to what it would have been had there not been a war. Look at the spread of friends that I’ve got. You know that’s been wonderful all over the years to have such a large number of friends and to feel that you’ve got sisters. They’re all sisters.

We enjoy meeting together and we don’t really talk about the war except to laugh at photos and things or funny thing is that, things that hurt you and you might have cried about, now when you look back on them, you laugh about them. In hindsight, they’re funny.

You mean our activity with?

Yes, I do. I think it’s very sad, this Amrosi [Bali Bomber] is saying, you know when you look at him or listen to him, you feel that he’s been brainwashed. America or Australia or Britain has no idea of going in and taking over their country. I mean I think every man that is there will be happy when they get back home but they’ve obviously been brainwashed to believe that we want to take their country over

and that’s not true. I don’t believe that America does and I’m darn sure Australia doesn’t want to and Britain wouldn’t either but it’s sad to think that those people can be masterminded to such an extent that they don’t have a thought of their own. It’s only what is being drilled into them. Do you feel that?

Well, my husband used to taunt me with the fact that every war had a religious origin and sadly he’s right. Look at the religious wars that have been, they’ve always been religious wars, haven’t they? But then politics was

religious. Religion really ruled everything. The present rate it’s going though with the younger generation not going to church and not believing, possibly wars will stop. If there’s no religion, there’ll be no wars and I don’t think that’s a benefit either.

No.

I don’t think it instils anything because they’re not accepting it. It’s not an active part in their life or their thinking, so I don’t know what they’ll rely on really. I recall when I was in Malaysia and some of the British airmen were going home and they gave them a send off party in a private home and at the time I was on a

church vestry and I was just sitting next to my daughter and this British air, someone must have said something about me being on a church vestry. And this British airman came up and stood in front of me and said, “I’m an atheist.” And I said to him, “Congratulations”, and went on doing what I was doing. And he stood there and he said, “I said I’m an atheist.” I said, “I know”, and I said, “Congratulations.” So, he went away and came back later and he said, “Why did you congratulate me?”

And I said, “Well, it’s obvious you’ve never met a situation that you couldn’t cope with, but when you do and you call on God and he answers, you won’t ever deny him again.” And I believe that a lot of people only know God through reaching a depth where they can’t cope themselves.

It’s a bit like, “six of one and half a dozen of the other” you know, might as well take a bet because you’ve got nothing to lose but if they’re

answered and they know, then they’re on the right track, aren’t they? I don’t think any person can live entirely alone and within themselves. They’ve got to have something to believe, something outside themselves, something stronger, more powerful or whatever, to help them cope through situations that seem impossible.

If you didn’t have a belief, why would you bother? You’d just give in straight away, wouldn’t you? The only thing is, some prayers take a heck of a long while to come true. You know, “I want it now” but it doesn’t work that way and it’s strange how things are solved in ways that you would never comprehend,

never dream of. You know if you were trying to solve a thing and it’s not going, if you just let it go and pray about it, and it happens. It’s, this has happened to me so many times. It’s just amazing. The problem is solved in a way that would never have come to you. The impossible can happen, as long as you’ve got faith and strength enough to wait for it to happen. When you’ve done your utmost, doesn’t mean that you don’t face problems.

You do, you face them and go as far as you can but I think everybody does that but some give up when they get to that stage, whereas if you’ve got faith, I think it gives you the strength to hang on knowing that it will come alright, not in the way you want it possibly, but the situation will be right. I’ve found it so and it’s great for me.

No, I enjoy it. No, I enjoy it very much. I like mixing with different age groups and different sort of thoughts, reading or just in art things, studying,

playing, cooking whatever but there’s so many diverse things that you can do to make your life more full. I haven’t got time in any day and I’d much rather be like that than to have nothing to do at nine o’clock in the morning. You know, what’s the use of getting out of bed? You’ve got to have something in the day to want to get out of bed for, don’t you? Well, you’d find it the same.

If you’re not working, you know and a day goes, it’s wasted.

Well, when I say nine, I know people who have done all of their housework by nine and they’ve got nothing to do. They might get up at six but people you hear them say, “I’ve got nothing to do.” They’re not looking. You know there’s the Pink Ladies, there’s Meals on Wheels, there’s, go and talk to a neighbour,

you’ve only got to walk to the corner and you’ll find a lonely person.

Yeah.

We all need someone.

It’s a pain that

no, you, and you can’t explain it to people, to the extent that sometimes - most times I’m envious when I see elderly couples getting along hand in hand. And then at other times I think, “At least mine’s behind me, not ahead of me”, the pain, you know that they’re going to experience. And the closer you’ve been, I think the harder it might be.

Not loneliness. You can fill that. It’s the aloneness, the aloneness. Nobody cares whether you get up in the morning or not. It used to worry me. I’d think, I could stay in bed for three days and it wouldn’t affect the whole world, not one scrap, but now I’m too busy. I’ve got to get out anyway but I can remember going through stages. You sort of go through stages

after my husband died where you didn’t want to go on. It was too hard to go on and I suppose everybody has their own feelings in that situation but it feels useless. It doesn’t matter, I always say it took me about seven and a half years to really make my life because for the start, you don’t want to give up the life you had, so therefore you

follow the same pattern in so many things. You want to hang on to it and then you get to a stage that you realise that you’re on your own and you’ve got to make a life. You’ve got to pick up the threads and you’ve got to make new interests. I mean the person you are up until the time your husband dies, is not the person you are afterwards. For one thing, the meals you cook are meals that you know he’d like. Now the things I eat, my husband would

drop if he saw, he wouldn’t eat them but I love them. The places you go, the time you come home, the time you get up, the time you have a cup of tea, anything, is entirely different.

Yes.

I’m 18.

No, I’ve never got older than 18, no, and as long

as I don’t look in the mirror, it’s ok. I can keep my illusions but you don’t feel any older. Look we frequently say to one another, “This wasn’t in our plan to reach 80, never dreamt you’d ever get to 80”. Nothing, another thing is, “Nothing about old age we’d recommend to anybody”. That’s a common saying amongst us and it’s true. You’ve got your aches and your pains and things and but

we’re still here. That’s important.

You’re hard up for pleasure, I can tell you. Desperate could be the word, couldn’t it?