Australians at War Film Archive

Well, I was born in Emmaville in New South Wales in the New England district. My father, his father owned sheep properties there but he

didn’t go much on sheep farming so he joined a mining company, Golden Plateau, and they worked at Omeo in Victoria. And when they found gold up in Cracow in Queensland, Dad went up there and he took the family up. We went up after he’d been there about twelve months. I was only about three or four year old when I got to Cracow in 1932.

I went to school in Cracow. I started prep school there and went through a scholarship, and from scholarship I entered the mines. I wanted to, actually I wanted to join the air force all my life. At school every year the school teacher would ask us what we wanted to do and when he’d come to me I’d say, “I want to join the air force.” But anyhow,

I entered the mines as an apprentice electrician and I hated it. I was getting thirteen and fourpence a week which is less than one-fifty [$1.50], and the second year I thought, “No, this is not for me. All my mates are underground earning big money.” They earned about ten pounds a fortnight. So I asked, I wanted to get rid of the apprenticeship and I asked my father to go underground. He said, “Yes, I’ll put you underground. I’ll put you that far down you’ll think you’re next

to hell.” I ended up about nearly one thousand feet down on the bottom levels in the mine on jackhammers, and then I graduated to open-cuts and what-have-you. So I still wanted to join the air force and in those days you had to get your parents’ consent if you were under twenty-one, and being the only boy I the family, I’ve got two sisters, and being the only boy in the family my

mother was always worried I might get killed if I join the air force and they wouldn’t sign the papers. But the day I hit twenty-one I left. And I was twenty-one on the 28th of July and on the 28th of August I was in the air force and came down to Brisbane and went to Archerfield. That’s where I joined up. There were sixteen of us. And I did my medicals and signed on

at Archerfield and took the oath and that night I was up at Amberley. Arrived at Amberley and that’s where I stayed. I did my recruit training course at Amberley, the 91 Recruit Training Course. Christmas came and they sent us home for Christmas leave and I went back to Cracow on leave and when I came back they sent us down to Rathmines, Lake Macquarie, New South Wales to do

our basic fitting. And I was on 56 Basic Fitter’s Course there, and when I finished there we had to go to Wagga. That was the School of Technical Training. And then from there I did number 15 Electrician’s Course and they put me in electrical. I didn’t want to be in electrical, I wanted to be armament because in those days I didn’t have the education to be pilot or aircrew or

anything like that. But Lincoln Bombers, they had air-gunners and you didn’t have to be educated there. But for some unknown reason, they had a reason I suppose, they put me in as an elec serviceman and that’s where I did my electrical course.

When I finished my elec serviceman’s course I was posted up here to Amberley, 3AD [Aircraft Depot], but I wasn’t there long and a posting came through to 77 Squadron. And the WOD out here was a Warrant Officer Disciplinary, he originally came from Cracow. Johnson was his name, Arthur Johnson, and he knew

Mum and Dad real well, and I said to him, he came over and he said, “You’re posted to 77 Squadron.” I said, “Where’s that,” and he said, “Well, at the moment it’s in Japan I think, but it could be in Korea.” So that didn’t worry me too much, but he said, “You’ve got to go home on seven days final leave.” In those days you used to get final leave, and he said, “I don’t know what Phyllis and Oscar are going to say about this.” That’s Mum and Dad.

Anyhow, I went home on final leave and came back and I went to Korea then. Actually 77 Squadron was at Iwakuni in Japan, and I got there and they were coming out of Korea with the Mustangs and training on Meteor jets at Iwakuni. So when they

did their training there the whole squadron shifted over to Kimpo in Korea which is just outside of Seoul. Kimpo now is the international airport for Seoul but when I got there it was just mudflats and two old bombed-out hangars. This was in 1951 and we were the first lot into Kimpo. They’d sent an advance party over first to put up tents for us

and when we got there there was mud everywhere and we couldn’t find these fellows. So the Americans said, “They’re up in tents over here.” Took us over to where these friends of ours were, these other airmen that were supposed to put up the tents, and they were only half put up. There was mud everywhere and they were sitting in this tent on the back of a weapon carrier which is a motorised outsize jeep, playing cards, and they couldn’t get out.

Anyhow, we finally got down to the tents and they were on the other side of the strip and that’s the introduction to Korea. But we went over in an old DC3. They only had DC3’s in those days, the air force. Now they’ve got Hercs [Hercules transport aircraft] and what-have-you, and a few of us on board, some of my friends that I know pretty well, Dizzy Dean and Vic Waterson and Watto Lean, quite a few of us.

We were the first ones into Kimpo. So when we got there

Well, in August

1951 I was posted back home, back to Wagga [Wagga Wagga], to do a conversion course to electrical fitter, and from there I was posted to Canberra, 87 Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, was Mosquitos, and I went over to West Australia with them because they were photographing around West Australia, and me and another chap, Buster McKinnon, he was an engine fitter, we were sent

out to Kalgoorlie and that’s where we stayed for a couple of weeks as the aircraft was photographing around there, and when we finished over in West Australia they sent us back again to Canberra. The whole squadron came back to Canberra and while I was there, I was only back there about a month, and a posting came through to 1 Squadron in Malaya. So I went to Malaya on Lincolns

and I went up there in 1952, October 1952 to January 1954, a fifteen-month posting against the terrorists. They were bombing the terrorists, and I did my tour up there, and then I got posted back home again, back to Amberley and I was only here about fifteen, sixteen months and I got posted to 7th Stores Depot in Toowoomba. And I don’t know why, being an

electrical fitter, posted to a stores depot. But they found some jobs for me to do up there and I wasn’t there that long and I was posted then out to the Woomera Rocket Range and I did a fifteen months tour out at Woomera Rocket Range. I was out at Instrumentation and A range and back in a tech area. After I did my tour out there I was posted back to Amberley again,

482 wing, 482 Maintenance Squadron. Then they formed number 1 Bomber Operation Conversion Unit out here and I went into that and I was about the third, second chap into the squadron there. That was in 1959, and then 1960, I think it was 1960, the air force,

well, the Nigerian Government was getting their independence and they invited the Australian government to send over a representative of the armed forces, armed services. So they took the air force. So I was the electrical chap selected to go with the Canberras. We took three Canberras over and a Herc followed us as a backup aircraft from Richmond. So we

went via the States, right through, right around the world. The first time the Canberras have ever circumnavigated the world, and via the States across to Bermuda and up to Lajes in the Azores Islands off Portugal and then down to Malta and down to Lagos. We were there for a couple of weeks taking part in their celebrations. There were a lot of air forces from the world that

came down. There was the American Air Force, the Russians, the Rhodesians, the British, the lot of them, Canadian, and we had a couple of weeks there during their celebrations and then when the time came to leave, Sir Alistair McMullin, he was the leader of the senate here in Australia, he was the official representative over there and he had to get to Ghana, Accra in

Ghana. So we took him over there in the Herc [Hercules transport aircraft] and then we went up to Kano in northern Nigeria and we were waiting there to get across to Khartoum. And we waited all day and there were vultures all over the place because we were up in the desert, and sitting under the wing of the aircraft out of the sun waiting to get the OK to get into Khartoum. But late that afternoon word came through that

we couldn’t go there. The Sudanese Government wouldn’t let us go there, only under one condition, I think, that the aircrew were the only ones that got out of the aircraft to refuel. And that was no good. Not for the aircrew. So the big chief, the Wing Commander, said, “Wait until nightfall and we’ll sneak off down to Entebbe in Uganda.” So night came and

we took off. I was in the Herc [Hercules transport aircraft] and there was a terrible storm out over Congo and we travelled all night and got up pretty high. They issued us with little portable oxygen bottles and tried to get above the storm but it was terrible. The only time I’ve really been frightened in an aeroplane, and we went to Entebbe in Uganda and stayed there overnight.

Twenty-two years and then I was called up for the air force Emergency Force for four years.

You want to…?

I get you. After the air force I got out and I worked at MLC Insurance for a while and I worked for Woolworths up here in charge of their TV [television] and electrical department,

and I finished. I had about three or four years there and it didn’t appeal to me much, and I went to Swanbank Engineering out here as a Tech Sales Representative and from there I went into the National Australia Bank in Brisbane on their house staff, and I stayed with them for nine years and that’s where I retired and that was in 1988. I’ve been retired

ever since.

We travel a fair bit, my wife and I. We went to England, Ireland. We’ve been right over through the British Isles and New Zealand a couple of times. I took her up to Singapore to show her Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and then to Hong Kong and into China. And then her daughter worked for the

World Bank over at Kazakhstan. Yeah, that’s right, in Kazakhstan. So the wife went over to see her and she went to Moscow and (UNCLEAR) and Leningrad. Then on her way back, the daughter, she went to New York, so my wife when she came back here she went over to New York to see her, and Canada and then down to Cape Canaveral and San Antonio and back via

Chicago and then home. And then I took her on a few trips around the place; some of the little outer places I’ve been to like Kalgoorlie, and we went on the Ghan and up to Alice Springs and I took her to Darwin and Wagga. All around the place. Rathmines, just to show her some of the places. And that’s about it.

My childhood was fairly good up in Cracow. It was a good place to grow up. There were no drugs, nothing in those days. We had our shanghais and our Daisy air rifles and school was good. We were all good school mates and we used to go out to the river fishing and played tennis and a lot of football. Travelled around playing football

to Eidsvold and Monto and Taroom and Monto and all through there and Theodore, and yes, it was good. It was a good place to grow up in, a real good place. One of the teachers that I had up there was Ray Wilkie. Ray ended up on Channel 10, the weather news, and Ray married one of the students there, Joan Hunt, and Joan’s always

a very good friend and her people were real nice people and we were all friends. I’m still friends with them today. We ring each other and we go down occasionally and see them, and they come up here.

Mum and Dad? Mum was very quiet but Dad was a fairly big chap. He worked all the time in the mines. He was alright, but Mum was a very gentle lady

but she died young; cancer. Kidney cancer or something.

Well, Dad was one of the shift bosses at the mine, underground in the open-cut, and he was one of the bosses. Cracow in those days was a fair-size town. There were three thousand or four thousand people there and a lot of men worked at the mine. There was

about three or four mines around the place all owned by the Golden Plateau and they’ve since found a lot of gold up there now. Yes, he worked the mines all the time.

Yes, we used to listen to the news. We had a little STC [Standard Telephones and Cables] radio and we’d just listen to the news of a night time about the bombing of Germany and

I can remember the atom bomb, when they dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. I always used to listen to the news. There were a couple of chaps from home that joined the air force, they used to come home on leave and they were my idols because they were air force. Yeah, it was good.

No. Dad, the mine, there was a wolfram mine

up outside of the town, quite a way out, and they put Dad out there to manager that because that was a protected sort of industry; the wolfram was needed. It’s a metal for hardening steel and they’d harden gun barrels and things like that and Dad had to go out there and that’s where he stayed during the war.

No. Only he’d be away for a week, that was all, while they were mining out there and they’d come home

Friday afternoons and go again Monday and they’d cart some ore in on Friday afternoons and they’d crush it at the mines and they’d send it away.

What? At Cracow? Well it was fairly quiet up there during the war because a lot of the chaps joined up. There were a lot of men from Cracow that joined up. I think at that stage was one of the highest recruiting place in Queensland

for the amount of people that were there and there was a fair-size honour board. It was fairly quiet but we still had dances on every second Friday and pictures every Saturday night, movies every Saturday night.

No, not up there, not up in the country.

The families stayed there, but when a lot of the chaps, the men, when they came back, they’d been away and they’d seen things and a lot of them didn’t go back in the mines. They sold up and away they went; shifted to Brisbane, all over the place: Maryborough, Bundaberg, and sort of went down and down, got fewer and fewer.

No. My uncles were up in the islands and they never say much about it. I was only interested in joining the air force.

I liked aeroplanes. Still do. I’ve got an interest even to this day. My computer’s full of aircraft stuff. I have books everywhere about aeroplanes, but military aircraft, that’s the ones I like.

I don’t know. I don’t know. Well, I can

always remember when I was a young fellow going to school there was a Dragon Rapide, an aircraft, a Dragon Rapide. De Havilland Dragon Rapide. Used to come up once a month to pick the gold up and fly it back to Brisbane and it would land out at a bit of an airfield out at Cracow station, the cattle station, and it was about ten mile out of town. And I used to see this aircraft fly over town and it was the only thing that ever

flew over there. You’d never see many aeroplanes in those days. And I used to think, “Gee, that’s good!” I had an old mousy pushbike and one day I hopped on my mousy pushbike and I wagged it from school. It used to be Tuesdays if my memory serves me correct. So I went out to have a look at this aeroplane and that settled it for me.

I wanted to join the air force.

When I first saw it? About ten.

Just the aeroplane itself. They fascinate me, you know. They’re fascinating; the shape of them, the way they fly and the men that fly them too.

Yeah, and when I was going to school I used to get some pine and I’d whittle

away at the pine and fashion it into aeroplanes and fit the wings right through them, yeah.

I used to make paper aeroplanes and fly them around the place.

I’ve got two sisters. One’s dead and the other one lives at Redcliffe. My sister, the one that’s deceased, she was up at Stanthorpe.

Things that brothers and sisters do; have a bit of a fight occasionally. Yeah, yeah.

Well the only entertainment you used to have was movies Saturday night and a dance every second Friday. Then at home they used to sit around and play cards. We didn’t have electricity up there in those days; used kerosene lamps, and sit around playing cards. But I used

to spend the bit of money I had on things I could get; on aeroplanes, books I could get on aeroplanes.

Yes. I used to check in on Movietone News to see what was going on, listen to the radio, yeah, and read the papers.

No, I don’t think so. We were so

far out.

Mmm.

To my knowledge it didn’t affect it very much. They were then and waiting for their men folk to come home. Some of them ended up leaving and went and stayed with relatives in different

towns, but apart from that…

Cracow?

It was a four-teacher school. The town, the hotel went up in 1936 and we had a picture theatre, dance hall. There were two dance halls. Joan Hunt who is now Joan Wilkie, her father and mother, they had the

picture theatre and the post office. There was a bit of a shopping place there: a drapery and three or four cafes and a couple of butcher shops. We had three or four garages, and then there were grocery shops, Cracow Stores and Charlie Van Barley had stores, yeah.

Well,

I’ve got histories of Cracow even over there in books and some say three thousand and some say six thousand, but I can remember a lot of tents down on the flat, what we used to call the flat. There used to be a lot of people around.

A lot of people lived in tents waiting to build houses and things like that, but there were a lot of people passing through too trying to get work. I can remember Gypsies coming through the place,

and Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Troupe used to come through, the circus used to come through, yeah. It was a fairly lively place before the war.

Mmm, plenty of fights.

Well dance nights were pretty lively, especially when some of the blokes got a bit full and the hotel was straight across the road from the dance hall,

and there were a fair few fights around the place at times.

Some really good grass fights. There were some really good fighters amongst those miners.

Down behind the dance hall. When we were kids we used to look, there used to be a lot of blood and gore and what-have-you around the place. Some of the fights I saw down behind the dance hall.

No no no.

The booze, you know, the way they boozed, get drunk. A lot of drinking used to go on because they used to work hard, drink hard and fight hard. No, all in all

the married, like the families up there, they were good. The kids I went to school with were good. Their mothers and fathers were nice people. They were the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life.

Yeah. When we first got to Cracow, the house Dad had didn’t have a floor. It just had an earth floor and was only two bedrooms. Then the next house he got was a timber place.

The first house was mostly bags and then he got a timber house and then later on he bought a big house at the top end of town up on the hill that belonged to the mines and he bought it off the mines, but that was good. That was four steps at the back and sixteen steps at the front. It was on the side of the hill. Yes, then there was the police sergeant and the police constable.

It was good.

That’s about it.

Well it was the only thing there. That’s the only way you could earn a living. Well, put it this way, when I did the scholarship my father didn’t have enough money to send me to high school, or any of us to high school because high school was

in Rockhampton. That was a fair way away and of course you couldn’t afford to board either. He was pretty well paid being a shift boss at the mine and I think he was only getting about twenty pounds a week in those days. But no, some of the people that left the town went away and their kids did OK. One chap, Merv Cope, he was a butcher, his son, Jack, he ended up a doctor in Brisbane.

There were a few of them.

Well I knew that was the only thing for me.

Not really. I was just waiting to join the air force and I couldn’t wait until I was twenty-one.

Yeah, not real good, not real good

at all. From what I can gather, Dad came back to his father’s place at Emmaville where I was born, back on the property, and I think I remember him telling me he was getting one pound a week to kill rabbits on a farm, and we were getting free board. Grandfather gave them free board and we were just in a shed, but I can’t remember much about the Depression, can’t remember

much about it at all. But I can remember going to school just with bread and dripping sandwiches, tomato sandwiches and plum jam sandwiches, but we didn’t have much money.

We had clothes rationing and food rationing, tobacco rationing, all that type of business; coupons. When I joined the air force too, they had coupons.

They weren’t real easy. Mum made ends meet. I don’t know how she made ends meet but she kept us dressed, kept us fed. I don’t know, she had a lot of worry trying to look after the three of us on the amount of money we were getting. It might’ve hastened her to her grave, I don’t know, yeah.

It wasn’t easy.

Yeah, I can remember that. I can remember that in Cracow. We had yahooing down the streets and bonfires going everywhere. Yeah. I can remember that, and I can always remember Guy Fawkes Day too. That was the fifth of November. We used to, the old

sanitary man, Bob Roberts, he used to make these great bonfires. Used to stack up wood down on the reserve, stack it up as high as we could get it and then Guy Fawkes night they’d let crackers off and they’d set fire to the heap of wood and the Guy Fawkes on the top of it. We had things like that to keep us going. No, it was good.

Very, very seldom. First time I

ever saw the ocean was at Yeppoon. I don’t know, I must’ve been around about nine or ten year old then.

I thought it was the sky when it came up. Have you ever been to Yeppoon? When you come into Yeppoon there you come up over the hill. You look out and there’s the water. Dad said, “What’s that?” I thought it was the sky but it was the ocean, yeah. No, the only time I ever got away was playing football around the place but it was only day trips,

Eidsvold and Monto and around the place, Gayndah. That was the biggest town around the area, was Gayndah at the time.

Yeah, didn’t have any shoes. Didn’t have any shoes at all to wear to school. Yeah, it was alright, fairly basic.

I went into the mines as an apprentice electrician.

Hated it. I hated it because of the money, you see. It was only thirteen and fourpence a week. That was for the first year and then the next year I went up to one pound five a week and all my mates were underground getting nine pounds, ten pounds a pay. So I wanted to go into the mines

then to get some money.

Yeah, I had five years I was underground. Out in the open-cut, the open-cuts on jackhammers. It was pretty rugged. Down underground on the number five level at the main mine, it was pretty wet down there. The roof, there was

all water just seeping through all the time and bats everywhere, millions of bats. I was underage to be working underground. I think you had to be nineteen. And when the big chiefs came up from Melbourne on their annual inspection I’d be down the number five level. We only had carbide lights, and they’d come down to inspect the tunnels and what-have-you and they used to put me in a little

blind tunnel and blow the light out. And you’ve never ever seen dark until you’re one thousand feet underground with no light, and I’d have to wait until they went and they’d come up and pick me up, come and tell me it’s OK, and they’d have their lights and they’d light my carbide light and away we’d go again.

Well, yeah, for them I suppose because it probably wasn’t the done thing

to have a sixteen year old, seventeen year old underground, working underground on jackhammers. And then I went up in the open-cut. I was up there for a while in the glory hole. They call them glory holes. All you had was a rope around your waist and you were on jackhammers on ledges and drilling holes and filling them with dynamite and blasting it all down, and then you’d go underground and get it all out.

Well, in those

days I didn’t mind because I was only young and the money was good as far as I was concerned. When I left I was on contract. When I left to join the air force my father put me on contract and I was contracted to put in tunnels and what-have-you, and I was getting so much a foot, two pounds five a foot. I thought, “Gee, this is alright.” And there were about four or five of us in the gang so the harder we worked the

more money we got. So when I’d get into the relatively soft ground I’d put cuts in about sixteen feet deep so we could get the money and I was drawing something like seventy five pounds a fortnight, which was huge money in those days. But it was OK. I only just went back recently a couple of months ago to have a look and it brought back a lot of memories. Yeah, those days in the mines

were fairly hard.

Yeah, on a shovel, pick and shovel. The hardest part, we had a four-ton truck over at one of the mines and used to cart ore over to the main mine so it could be crushed. We’d have to get on the pick and shovels and shovel up all this blue metal ore and everything on the back of the truck and we’d have about three loads a day, and that was hard. That was really hard, out in the sun. It was

really hard. I’ll never forget that as long as I ever live. It was really hard.

There were a few around the place, yeah.

Up in the open cut, chaps getting blown up. Yeah, just getting hurt underground and falling rock and all that.

I’ve seen a few them, got hurt a couple of times myself.

I just got my hand smashed up a little bit from up on one of the stopes trying to avoid a rock that was falling off the ceiling. I put my hand up and hit me. But yeah, a couple of blind tunnels there at one stage, nearly suffocated. Me and another chap, he’d dead now, they got us out just in time. Went over what they call the Roman North. We went in this blind tunnel to have a look around,

just following the seam, and the air wasn’t real good and didn’t feel too good but we got out of it. No, there were, when I went out to the cemetery just recently when I went home I saw a few chaps there that the name’s were familiar, were hurt or killed in the mines. So yeah.

Yeah, reasonably young, yeah.

Nothing. I don’t remember anything, because they were down in Melbourne. I think they were only interested in the gold that was coming out of the place. They weren’t interested in us.

No, they all had a job and they had their house and that was that.

Yeah, I can always remember Spitfires, Hurricanes. They were the things that, you know, fighter aircraft.

Just the look of them and the speed and what they did.

One of the chaps from up home, well, he didn’t come from up home. His parents lived in… Holt. Dickie Holt. Dick, he was a Spitfire pilot over in England during the war and he was a bit of hero as far as I was concerned flying Spitfires. Yeah, any aeroplanes, they were good.

No. I read about everything. I’ve still got it

all. It’s on computer as well, and Dick died not so very long ago. No, it was, as long as it was a military aircraft, I didn’t mind it, it was good. Passenger aircraft, they didn’t switch me on very much but at least they were aeroplanes.

The wife reckons I’m a little bit callous at times.

I reckoned they were real heroes. They had to be, to go fighting in the air like aerial combat, all that type of business. Even now on the computer I’ve got all these fighter aces there and I like reading about them and the things that they did, the feats that they did,

and the aircraft they shot down, the missions they did over enemy territory, things like that. I reckon they were just it.

Yeah, well I don’t know about heroes. I don’t know whether I had a hero, but my favourite stories,

I always like wartime stuff. Still do. But I don’t like any fictional stuff. It’s always had to be the truth.

I was thinking about me. I wished I had have been old enough, had the education and got in aircrew with a fighter pilot. That would’ve done me, suited me fine.

Aerial combat, Richthofen type of stuff. Yeah, bombing over Germany. All that type of business sort of switched me on a bit. But I used to read about all these heroes in the Pacific. I used to read about Douglas Bader and all the

British aces and Richard Bong in the Pacific; American aces and all those fellows. They were my heroes and the aeroplanes that they flew were just the thing.

Well, I was always into speed and the look of them and yeah,

their durability. Things like that. They just fascinated me, that’s all, like any airline pilots and all that, aeroplanes. That’s their job and that’s what they like. That’s what I liked. I liked military stuff and I like reading about them and reading about the chaps that flew them and their feats and what they did.

Yeah. I can always remember reading about the American air raid on Ploesti, the oil fields in Romania. I can remember that vividly. And the night raids on Germany and the American air raids on Germany and Italy, right through and in the

Western Desert, about the Australian 3 Squadron in the Western Desert, I used to follow that. And the American air raids, daylight raids on Germany, they were terrible. I used to read about those, Schweinfurt and Frankfurt and Berlin and all that, you know, and I could just imagine the devastation. But then I used to wonder what these chaps, these men, used to think up there, sitting up in that aircraft,

the havoc they were causing on the ground. But then again I thought, “Well it could be me too up there.”

Mmm.

Yeah, fairly hectic. I know that. I’d imagine after the aeroplane rides I’ve had since, but yeah.

The guns going off,

the bombs dropping, the pilot issuing directions and orders and what-have-you. Yeah, air-gunners, the noise and the smell of the cordite and things like that: battle.

In those days, I can remember when war broke out but I didn’t think it was going to be what it was.

Like war to me then, it didn’t worry me very much as a kid. Then the older I got I thought to myself, “Well it’s a bit futile,” the loss of life and things like that, and the bombing that went on, the destruction. You never forget it. Never forget things like that.

Well,

I was thinking that we’d win, but yeah, I don’t know. I just thought Britain would win. We’re all, Britain was in it and everything would be right. They’d win and no need to worry about anything, you know, but yeah, I don’t know. It’s a hard question, that one.

They used to listen to the news every night and they were a bit worried about the loss of life and things like that. I think they were a little bit worried about me getting up to the age where I’d have to go into the services and go over there, but the war had finished before I was old enough to join up. I was still going to school when the war finished, the last year I think of school.

Yeah, some of the men used to get what we called ‘dusted’ in those days because you didn’t have the, there was a lot of dust on the ground and it would get into the lungs and then end up with miner’s pertussis and things like that. But the idea was to use a lot of water and keep the dust down. But when I was on the jackhammers I made sure that the water hose was connected all the time, there was always plenty of water coming through

the drills. And then when we’d fire of an afternoon, set the dynamite off in the afternoon, by the time you got in next morning all the dust would be gone. You could see it coming out of the tunnels when you’d fire. But yeah, a lot of the chaps ended up with Miner’s Tysus. A couple of my friends that are the same age as me, we’d played footy together, and they went up to Mount Isa. They wanted me to go with them.

We’d go up there, get into the big money. But they came back. They ended up dying from lead poison from working in the mines up there. They were only young fellows.

Nothing. All we had was a tin hat and that was it. You had to wear boots, but no protective clothing, nothing.

No.

No, not in those days, no. There was only one union organiser around the place and he was working for the mines too. He was underground. So if you got sacked in those days it was a bit hard to get a job again because there was plenty of labour around after the war and what-have-you, but no, no one.

There were no strikes or anything like that and no protective clothing. None of this business they’ve got today. You went in there and you were there. You had to be careful with the dynamite. That was all they used to… Dad used to check to make sure I was plugging the holes right and not handing the dynamite down too hard and things like that.

Who, Dad?

Well

one of the mines that I was working in towards the end, he managed that, the Central Mine.

She didn’t like it all, but what else could you do? See, around Cracow the mines were the only thing. And then right around the place there were cattle properties. That type of business. And of course, I didn’t like cattle. I didn’t ride a horse,

things like that, and there was nothing else around the place. No industry, nothing. Just the mines.

That’s right. And where were you going to go to? Cracow was home, and I’d only ever seen a train once in my life. That’s when I went to Cracow when I was four year old. We went up by

train up to Toowoomba, came up through the back way through Wallangarra from what I can remember, and Dad and another chap came over. One of his friends came up to pick up his wife too. She was coming up from New South Wales, and I think I was only about three and a half or something like that, and the next time I was on a train I was twenty-one, coming down to join up, and the nearest rail station was Theodore, which is only

thirty-one mile away and Eidsvold which was on the other side and is only fifty-eight mile away, and they had trains. But see, you didn’t go to those places because you didn’t have a vehicle and the roads were all rough.

Well Dad had an A model Ford, but around the town I had a pushbike. See, you couldn’t drive until you were twenty-one, couldn’t get a licence until you were twenty-one years of age. And of course around a town like that,

only had two policemen. Everyone knew everyone, yeah.

Yeah, they were nice. All the Cracow girls, they were all nice and they still are. Yeah, they were real good. Yeah, I was always keen on a few of them.

Yeah,

there were a couple there, yeah, oh yeah. But of course when I went away and joined up things were different then. I didn’t get home very often. They ended up leaving and marrying, leaving the place.

Yeah, to the movies, pictures, yeah. We’d go out swimming.

My biggest memory was going to the movies one night. I’ll never forget it as long as I ever live. Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Troupe was in town. It was right down what they used to call the oval, right down the bottom of the town, and I was taking this girl to the pictures. The pictures we called them in those days, or the movies. I didn’t have the money. I thought, “What am I going to do?” So I raced down to Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Troupe and I got in the

ring with a chap and got a bit of a flogging. And I was only young, only about seventeen or eighteen, about seventeen I suppose, and I got ten shillings, which was a dollar. But of course it only cost us sixpence to get into the movies, so I met her outside and bought her chocolate, raced and got the tickets and went in when the lights

were out. I always remember the movie, and we sat right down the front. They used to call it the bleachers in the canvas seats, and I always remember the movie, ‘Frankenstein Meets the Monster’. Anyhow, I was sitting there and the lights were all out and things were getting dimmer and dimmer and dimmer in the eyes, and when half-time came they switched on the lights and I had black eyes.

My eyes were swollen from being in the boxing ring and she took one look at me and cried and yahooed and yelled and went home. That was the end of that romance!

Yeah, go to the boxing troupe when one was in town.

No. I haven’t done it since either.

Yeah.

I had a couple of other girls. I’d taken them home from the dances. They were good girls.

Romance was a bit different to what it is today. You’d go with a girl for about three months before you gave her a kiss, or asked for a kiss. You didn’t live with a girl. You had to get married in those days.

Things were different.

What we spoke about at school, just the boys.

No. None at all at school, no.

Yeah.

Not much at all. I can always remember the first time.

That was up here,

one night after a dance.

Seventeen I suppose, sixteen or seventeen. Yeah, I’d be seventeen I suppose.

Yeah.

Marvellous, never forgotten it. You’ve embarrassed me Nicole [interviewer].

Ellen, I’m

sorry. Sorry.

You’ve got me flummoxed already.

No. Sex was virtually taboo in those days. Virtually taboo.

No, nothing. If you went into the chemist shop, there was a chemist shop there, and asked for a condom… well, you weren’t game anyhow.

You were too embarrassed, you know. You just took your chances.

No, none. None at all. Not to my knowledge.

Twenty-one. The day I hit twenty-one I left and took off and joined the air force because I didn’t- need anyone’s signature then.

Mum was always frightened I’d get killed and I was the only boy in the family. Mum was a little timid lady and I didn’t like to upset her. She was a good scout, Mum, my mother.

Yeah, I can tell you about the day I left the mine. I came out of that tunnel, I’ll never forget it, there was me and another

mate of mine, Viv Jeffries. I think Viv is up in Caloundra now. And Viv and I came out of that tunnel and we went to the main tool store and that’s where all the shift bosses and the manager, the manager was Howard Miller, a big man and he was a nice chap, and the other managers and shift bosses, Dad, the whole lot of them, they were all sitting in there. Anyhow, I walked in, I had my carbide alight and

the tin hat, hard hitter, and Viv was with me. Anyhow, I just walked in and said, “Well, I’m leaving. Finished.” And I was twenty-one on the Saturday. That’s right, I was twenty-one on the Saturday, and this was a Friday I’d left. I said, “I’m twenty-one tomorrow and I’m off.” Dad said, “What’s going on? And Viv was with me and he said yeah, he was going too.

Anyhow, Mr Miller, we always called him Mr Miller because he was the big boy in town, said, “What are you going to do, Maurice?” I said, “I’m joining the air force, Mr Miller.” He said, “Good, I know you’ve always been interested in aeroplanes and always wanted to join the air force.” And he had a yarn to me for a while and everyone’s looking and carrying on. He said to Viv, “What are you going to do?” “Join the air force too.” So he said to me then, he said, “Well, I wish you well.” He said

“You young chaps have been terrific in the mines, real good workers and at times you kept this town going.” And he said, “I wish you well whatever you do and wherever you go.” And he said, I’ll always remember it, “While ever I’m manager of the Golden Plateau there’s always a job for you if those don’t work out.” But they worked out, and he’s dead and he’s buried up there.

I only saw his grave just a couple of months ago. And I went into the air force. A month later I was at Amberley.

Mum was upset and Dad didn’t like the idea of it. After a while he said, “OK, fair enough.” I didn’t want to go back to the mines. But poor old Mum, she was upset about it.

That was in 1949. She died 1954, nearly five years after, the day after I was married. I’d been to Korea and Malaya and back, but she saw that, she was happy that I was happy in the air force.

Well, I’d been waiting since I was eighteen, every day.

I came down to the Exhibition when I was eighteen, that’s right. Was it the Exhibition? No. I came down to Brisbane. A friend of mine said to me, “I’m going to join the air force,” and I wasn’t game. Anyhow, we didn’t join the air force. We went back home and from then on I went out to Archerfield to have a look

at the aeroplanes. He had his vehicle and he’d been to Brisbane before and we drove out to Archerfield and I stood there and I looked at all these aeroplanes and I thought, “You beauty!” There were Mustangs, the lot, because Archerfield was an RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] aerodrome. There were Mosquitos, there were Lincolns around the place and I was fascinated, I was really fascinated, and I couldn’t wait and Dad wouldn’t sign my papers. I went home and I asked. I said, “Look, I’d like to join the air force,” and he wouldn’t sign the papers. So

I sweated it out until I was twenty-one and then I took off. I’ll always remember, took me over to catch the train at Eidsvold which is fifty-eight mile away. Mum came over and the train only went three days a week; it used to come down from Monto. I saw that train come around the corner and it blew the whistle and it was blowing steam and smoke everywhere and I thought, “Gee, what’s going on?” I got on that train and I hadn’t been on a train since I was three year old. Got on that train and I didn’t go to sleep all night,

Brisbane. I had my hanging out the window and there was coal dust everywhere and people saying, “Close the window, close the window.” But the first time I’d ever been on a train. Well, the second time I’d ever been on a train and I was fascinated. I’ll tell you about another train trip later.

That was exciting, but not as exciting as joining the air force.

Yeah. Viv and I booked into a place over in South Brisbane and the next day we went around the recruiting office. It was in Eagle Street then, where the National Bank House is, just across the road. It used to be Qantas House, and we joined up there. There were sixteen of us. Met all these other chaps and

when they’d got us all together, mustered us all together they put us on a bus and took us out to Archerfield. At Archerfield I did the medicals and the signing on. Had lunch out there and that afternoon they took us up to Amberley and we were in the air force, and I was glad. When I went home on my first leave, poor old Mum, she reckoned that was

just it when she saw me in uniform, yeah.

Well, when she saw me. I’ve got photos of her standing there with her arm around me and all that. She was quite proud of the fact that I was in uniform.

She came around then.

I can always remember it. Really

it was what I wanted and I stayed with it for twenty-two years and then another four in the emergency force. I had a good look around, I met the nicest mates in the world, you know. A lot of the chaps, the young fellows I went to school with I’ve forgotten them. I can’t even remember their names, but I never forget the men I was in the air force with, my mates. A good time, good people and the air force treated us well.

When I got out to Amberley the next day, they put you on what they call ‘pool’. They issue you with overalls and put you in pool. So chaps run around and scream their heads off, WODs [Warrant Officer Discipline] and recruit trainers and drill instructors, the works. But there wasn’t enough to start the

recruit training course off. So they put us on looking after the lawns around Amberley. We used to have to go out College’s Crossing around the place with trucks and cart loam, spread it all around on the lawns and I thought, “Crikey, I’ve left all this behind.” I’d been working in the mine for five years and now I’m on a shovel again spreading loam. So that only lasted for about a month and they had enough

recruits then to start a recruit course, and that was about the end of September. Then I had a three-month course out here and that’s when I went home. They sent me home on leave then because everything closed down in those days.

Well, my hopes and ambitions were I wanted to see the world.

I hadn’t seen much. I wanted to see any many aeroplanes, as many types of aeroplanes as I could, and I hoped that one day I might get in as an air-gunner or something like that and fly. But I didn’t because a few years, well the Lincolns went out of service and then they got the jets and they didn’t have air–gunners.

Well,

it didn’t enter my head then. I don’t think it would’ve worried me either because I was after adventure. I wanted to get around, you know. When Korea broke out I said, “Yeah, I could get there.” I didn’t apply for it but I got there.

Yeah, we did our course out here and drill and all that type of business, route marches up to Rosewood

and around the place. I had a good drill instructor. He was a real nice fellow. He was a sergeant, Len Rayner was his name. I don’t know where he is now, he’s probably gone, but he was a fairly humane sort of bloke. This is where you cement friendships and all that on the recruit training course. I’ve still got mates around here in Ipswich that are on my recruit training course. One died just recently, I was at his funeral.

Anyhow, that was three months there and you just do all the odd jobs around the place and guard duty on the base.

I didn’t find it tough. It was good. We had the old .303s [rifle] and I liked going out on the range shooting. I’d do my rifle training and all that. No,

I didn’t mind. I didn’t find it tough. It was good, it was good. After you got used to it, it was good. That’s what I was there for. And when we finished that they sent us down to Rathmines, which is rather a nice place right on the lake, Lake Macquarie, outside of Newcastle, and I did a three months basic fitting course there.

Filing and getting to know how to use tools and all that type of business. That

was real nice at Rathmines. As I say it was right on the banks of the lake. They had Catalinas [flying boats], the old Catalina aircraft and maritime stuff. That was my first aeroplane ride.

Marvellous. I was down on the slipway having a look into these Catalinas and the

aircrew, they were walking around the place and going up in this aeroplane. Anyhow this flight lieutenant, Connolly I think his name was, he said, “Are you interested in these aeroplanes, lad?” It was a Saturday. I always remember it was a Saturday and there was a Mardi Gras on down in Sydney in Rose Bay. I said, “Yes Sir, I’d love to have a ride in it. I’ve never been in an aeroplane.” So he said, “Who’s your boss?” Can’t think of the flight lieutenant that was in charge

of us at the time, the basic. I’ll think of his name. I knew his son out here. And he went and saw him, “The recruit would like to have a ride. Is it alright to take him down because we might be able to use him throwing stuff out,” and all this type of business, and doing the demonstrations of throwing dinghies out onto the water and that. So he said yes, so away I went.

It was marvellous, marvellous to get up in that, well I couldn’t, being out in the lake and these two whopping great engines start up and you’re going along and take-off, down you go. It was marvellous looking out over the water. And they put on this exhibition down at Rose Bay and landed there and took off again and on the way back we

had a bit of a go at some sharks out in the ocean with the machine gun on the back of the blister. I rather enjoyed that, and came back and that was that. That was my first aeroplane ride. I’ve never forgotten it, but I didn’t even get sick.

Yeah, “This is the way to go! This is it!” But I didn’t like the ocean very much, but I,

especially those sharks, but I reckoned over land would be OK.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well actually, no. The noise was more than I thought, especially when they used the machine guns, just practising, and the smell of the cordite and all that, and the hot shells around the place. I thought, “Oh yeah!” And coming up to the cockpit and having a look out through there and watching them fly it…

marvellous. Yes, it was what I thought it would be.

Friendships. I look back over, and the things we did. Going into town, sticking together and the mates that you make, and yeah,

that’s the most… When I look back some of the mateships I’ve formed. That was a very significant thing.

Well, men like me are a long way from home. Some of the chaps I joined up with had never been away from home either and you sort of get together and you’re living in the same huts, everyone’s in the same hut,

long huts, and you get to know each other. It was good.

Well, I suppose you didn’t know what lay ahead. I was glad of it because when I went to Korea there were some of them up there that I knew that joined up with me, or just before me, and we all got on famously.

Yeah. I can’t remember, they’d sort them out. A couple of them on my rookie course, they took behind the….not me…they took them behind the hut and gave them a good old punch up and everything was right after that.

Some of the blokes who could fight

on the course.

Yeah. You weed everyone out. Like you’d pick your mark. The men that you’d pal up with you had a lot of the same interests and like, some of the blokes bet on racehorses. I wasn’t ever keen on racehorses. Still not, never ever gambled, you know,

and they’d play poker and I don’t even play poker, but I’d like to get away. I’d hop on a bus and go into town. Other blokes would be like that too, and have a look around.

Yeah, all over the place.

Well, I used to come into the dances. There used to be a lot of dances around Ipswich. It used to cost threepence to get in on the bus and we used to have to have a leave pass. Have a few drinks at the North Star Hotel and go to a

dance. And didn’t bother about the movies very much because we had a movie house out at Amberley, a real good cinema out there. But generally go into town, have a few drinks and go to the dances.

Yeah, they weren’t too bad. There were a lot of railway workers around here and not very many air force, but kept in

place. We didn’t do very much. In those you used to have to have a leave pass to come into Ipswich and we had air police patrolling around the street, like military police, but they call them APs: Air Police. And they’d walk in the hotels to see if you weren’t playing up or not in fights or anything like that. So pretty well tamed. But the dances were good, the girls were good.

No, not me.

The railway workers I think.

Yeah, a lot of the men around here married local girls, a lot of the air force chaps, yeah. I married one myself.

Yeah, different altogether. All the bright lights and all the people; different altogether. The music…up home we only had a piano and a squeeze

box and a set of drums, but the orchestras all had…different altogether.

It was a real eye-opener and it sort of got me in the swing of things for things to come. When I came down I suppose I was a little bit of a hick, being in the country all the time. But no, it was good.

And guards, yeah.

Nothing, because you didn’t go onto aircraft until you did your training on aircraft, like you did your respective courses, technical courses. But we’d go guards around the aircraft, that was all. Just roam around and look at the aircraft while you were doing your guard.

Oh yeah,

get inside of an aircraft as soon as you could to have a look around, yeah.

Well, the training down there you’re in a hangar. What they call the basic hangar. And everyone had their tool bench and all that. They’d teach you how to file and make models and all that type of business, and welding and all that. Whereas when you’re doing your recruit

training you’re doing route marches around the area up to Rosewood and back, and out on the rifle range, things like that. But then when you got on the technical side down at Rathmines things changed altogether because they were moulding you into different musterings that they wanted in the air force to keep aeroplanes in the air.

Well, at Wagga. When you went over to the School of Technical Training they sort of mustered you out into what they wanted; the categories they wanted. Excuse me please. And I didn’t want to be electrical because that was the last thing I’d want. As I said, I wanted to be armaments with the view of one day I might be able to get into aircrew as an air-gunner, and they

sorted us all out and said, “Right. You’re marks.” and all that type of business, “You’re engines, airframes, electrical, instruments, armament,” all that. They said they were down on electrical. “So you, you, you, you, you, this mob. You’re going to be electrical.” And they whack you on an electrical course. And I was one of them. Then again I didn’t have much of a chance

to re-muster because I wasn’t here that long. It wasn’t long before I was in Korea. When I finished at Korea it wasn’t long before I was in Malaya again. You’re away from the mainstream.

Look after all the electrics on the aircraft. In those days there were the gun-firing turrets, and gun-firing turrets, all the lighting, a lot of things. All the ignition. Things like that.

No, I think it was (UNCLEAR) because the aeroplanes were still all piston engine stuff.

Well, we weren’t actually training. We had the instructors down at Wagga. We were in class. I can’t remember what aeroplanes they had. Oh, Wirraways, and there were Wirraways [training aircraft]. That was about it I think.

It’s just an old, it was one of the fighters

during the war, but you could run faster than the thing now. I didn’t know much about them. They had them out here, but when I finished at Wagga I got posted back here to Amberley. I was down in 3 Aircraft Depot and I was in the electrical section there and all we were doing was making up power looms and things for Lincolns, for the ignition and all that. But I wasn’t on that long and I got posted to Korea.

I was only there about four months, four or five months, and I got posted to Korea and they had Mustangs. I’d never ever seen a Mustang fighter in my life. They were the top fighter in those days and I had to learn all about those. I wasn’t long on those and they went onto Meteor jets. The jets came in

and that was a bit different.

Yeah, and Japan.

I don’t know, it just came out of the blue. See, the Korean War had started and they didn’t, I suppose they wanted, well the air force was only the first one in there, the first ones in there. The 77 Squadron was the occupation forces, part of the occupation forces, the occupation of Japan,

and when the Korean War broke out Bob Menzies, he was the Prime Minister, ordered them into action with the Americans and they went over to Korea with their Mustangs. Or course this was in July and I didn’t get there until early ’51. This was in July ’50, because I was still at Wagga in July ’50 doing my training, and anyhow,

they came back to convert onto Meteors, onto jets. But while they were doing that course I was learning all about Mustangs. There were Mustangs back at Iwakuni, that’s the base where we were in Japan. It was a big maintenance base, 491 Maintenance Squadron, and looked after Dakotas and Mustangs and ah, 30 Comm Unit [30 Communications Unit]. They were Dakotas.

They used to fly back and forwards taking supplies over and back to the air force and army. And of course when the Mustangs came back they were still flying and the pilots were going on jet training. They had a couple of RAF [Royal Air Force] instructors out there that came out. The Meteors came out on an aircraft carrier. They brought quite a few of them

out and docked them right at Iwakuni. Iwakuni was right on the coast and it’s a deep-water harbour, just right at the wharf. They’d winch the Meteors off and we’d de-inhibit them, take our - they used to spray them with oils and whatever on their way out on the aircraft carrier to keep the salt water and salt air out of them. We’d have to de-inhibit

them and they would test fly them and whatever, but in the meantime we were still working on Mustangs there. They were part and parcel of the squadron, and they were going backwards and forwards. Anyhow, when the pilots were trained on them we had to go through a bit of training there in the sections on how to operate things and how to look after them, which we did. And then

while the pilots were going backwards and forwards and that, our CO, he was a Wing Commander, ended up a Wing Commander, but Squadron Leader Creswell, he thought, “The ground staff duty crew is not doing much” I suppose, and so they had the two Meteor trainers the RAF chaps trained our pilots on. So to keep their hours

up he decided to have a sort of a dawn patrol, so, “You can go today, and you tomorrow,” and all that. So I got selected a couple of times in that to go to Nagasaki and the Inland Sea, all around the place, the Sea of Japan, just keeping an eye out to see if there were no boats, and all that. Illegal like battleships. I don’t know what they had in those days, but just to

make sure if there was anything suspicious around, just report it to the pilot and then we’d go back. But we’d do those trips around the place. A few funny things happened. Do you want to listen? I can always remember one day it was raining, a day like today, and there was a Tom Stony. He was a sergeant pilot and he was test flying a Meteor that just came out. I think it

was around about eleven o’clock, saw him off and I was heading off to what they call the 77 Club. I was a bit sick from the night before - they used to have a lot of parties up there - and go and get a reviver. Next I see these Japanese running out of the building, looking up and pointing up in the air, and I looked up. You could hear the aeroplane flying around, see this parachute coming down. He got tossed out of the aircraft and right straight through the canopy.

The seat pin that fires the cartridge, that fires the seat out, had gone off and dropped down and he went straight through the canopy. And down he came and the aeroplane was just going around and around, following him around, and then it speared off and straight into the mountain. Into the side of the hill, and I was one of the blokes that had to go out and dig this cockpit out of the

side of the hill - it was wet and red mud everywhere - so we could see what was going on. You could see it had gone through alright because the collar of the cockpit was still there and he’d gone through alright, and they had to get the seat.

They think it was corrosion that did it coming out on the way out and the pin that goes down,

fires the cartridge just like in the old guns, you know. And we dug the cockpit out of the side of the hill. That was one episode. Another one, one night…

He hurt his back and ended up coming back to Australia. It was a design fault, technical fault. A couple of blokes lost their lives.

One chap, Pee Wee Patterson, night flying, a terrible night, rain and fog, what-have-you, ran into the side of a hill in Mustang and that was it. And then we went over to Korea after all the training was on.

Japan was alright. They treated us OK. Plenty to do there, plenty to do.

There was a lot of flying going on. There were a lot of Americans on our base too and they had B-26 bombers and they were backwards and forwards over Korea all the time bombing and what-have-you, and it was a pretty busy sort of a place. But our quarters were good. They quartered us in the kamikaze blocks. The kamikaze pilots, they had nothing but the best. They were three-, four-storey blocks. I always remember, I think I was in

room 72 on the bottom floor. They had the barber shop there and the messes and where you ate, your bar and everything. Everything was there. There was no need to go outside. The dry cleaners, you’d just put your clothes there and they’d take them away and dry clean them. They had the dance hall up the top where the geisha girls used to come in. There was nothing but the best for these Kamikaze blokes because once they’d left they’re gone. They won’t be coming

back. And the geisha girls used to be up the top there, but they weren’t of course when we were there. No way. And we had our fun there. There was boxing tournaments. And then I had a pushbike there. Everyone had pushbikes; it was all flat. Pushbikes or little rabbit scooters, little motorbikes, going to town in Iwakuni itself and have a look around.

It was a big place,

but everything was paper buildings and all that, you know. But they had their little bars and what-have-you, but things were pretty quiet because it was occupation. There were a lot of Americans, but no, spent most of the time on the base.

They were good. The airmen, yeah, they were good, and when we went to Korea we were part and parcel of the

American 4th Interceptor Fighter Wing. They had F80 Shooting Stars [Lockheed fighter] and we had Meteors. No, they were good.

Yeah, they were a beautiful looking aeroplane, a jet.

Just a twin-engine fighter. When they’d start up they’d whine. They’d be up in the air, they’d whine like heck. They could get along

at 500 or 600 flat out.

They’re not real big. Just the two intakes and the cockpit and you stand in front there and the two big, four big cannon ports looking at you, the cannon, and just the wings and the tail at the back and the pizzle. Yeah, they weren’t a real

big aeroplane because they were a fighter-bomber. They came out as a fighter but they made them a fighter-bomber.

Well they were a jet and they were faster, and the others were only piston engines. Of course they were out of date then, the Spitfires, long ago. And then, as I say, I went over to Kimpo and we were the first lot into Kimpo, RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force],

because our flight lieutenant, our engineer, Flight Lieutenant Andy Colussi. I can always remember when he went up on the strip where the Meteors were parked. There was no cover or anything. We were just flat-out in the…no cover whatsoever. Just straight out on the strip, and no

buildings, nothing. So he had a bit of a tent there for a flight office and what-have-you, and there were no toilets, nothing. I can just remember, taking me back to my mining days, Colussi said, “Well, I was a volunteer,” he said. “We’ve got to dig a hole for toilets.” There were only holes, you know, and he said, “I want any volunteers to dig this hole or otherwise I’ll nominate someone.” I always remember this mate of mine, Viv

Waterson piped up, he said, “LAC [Leading Aircraftsman] Hawkins comes from Cracow, sir, and that’s a gold mining town and he worked in a gold mine so he knows how to dig holes.” Colussi said, “You’re it.” So I dug the toilet hole there, and when I went back to Korea in 1999 Kimpo was a massive place. It’s a massive place. Well Seoul is a massive city, 12 million or something isn’t it? And I stood in the terminal there

and there’s jumbo jets, everything all around the place. I thought, “Gee, look at this.” When I was there there was just two bombed-out hangars and mud everywhere and just a strip and a bit of a cross strip. I thought, “Somewhere under here is the hole I dug for a toilet.” And I said, “Look at it now.” Yeah, big place.

Only our tents just down behind the flight line,

that’s all. I’ve got photos there.

Well, there was one main strip that the Americans, well, they all used it. Our aircraft used it, and then there was sort of a cross strip as well and there were two old bombed-out hangars. The Americans over that side and we were over on this side and we had our tents down the end, down our side, and there was a row of slit trenches all around the place. They had slit trenches, and there was a

fence behind us and that’s where all the refugees were. There used to be refugees everywhere, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of refugees with their ox carts and oxen and what-have-you, and all their belongings over their back, and they used to war black garb and a big straw hat. You didn’t know who was who of course and they had all their kids with them. They were just behind us, just like here to there away, you know, the house next door.

Yeah, a bit of a fence

behind us, and all these slit trenches around the place and it rained. And I always remember the rains we used to get there, the slit trenches would all fill up and you didn’t know where you were because you didn’t know who, the Americans used to put them in for us. You’d come down from the strip somehow, ungodly hours of the morning or night and the slit trench was all full of water and you didn’t know where to tread. I always

remember I went down one one night and hurt my knee. I’ve still got the scars on my knee, and came up and all that was bobbing was a hat bobbing on the water when I came to the surface, and that was out in front of your huts, your tents.

They were fairly deep, yeah, because aircraft, for bombing and strafing. But we were up there and there was no revetments, nothing.

Revetments are sandbag things they put the aircraft in for protection. We didn’t have any of that until later. They got them after I left, and we just used to service the aircraft. They’d go out on strikes and after MiGs [fighter jets] and what-have-you, and ground attack. Anyhow, we’d keep them in the air, do all the servicing on them, and we had, there was an old Curtis Commando, an American Curtis Commando,

like an outsize DC4. It had crash landed and it was just over near us and we used that as a smoko room. We’d get in there and get out of the rain and what-have-you. When I got to Japan it was still snowing but by the time we got over to Korea it wasn’t too bad, but I ended up in Korea during the hot weather and it can be hot. There was dust and flies and whatever. We used to get inside this Commando, Curtis Commando to get away from

the rain and what-have-you.

A fair size aircraft. It was only a twin engine but you could walk around inside it, like these DC4s and what-have-you, and that was our smoko room. Aircraft would just go out on strikes of a day and back they’d come and I remember the front line wasn’t that far over. And we used to put bombs

and rockets underneath them and away they’d go and come back and do it all over again and away they’d go again. Anyhow, there was none of this business of five days a week or whatever. It was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You might go up this morning and come back tomorrow afternoon sometime, back to your tent, depending on the number of unservicabilities you had, and you’d be tired as heck and you’d have

a little camp stretcher, about ten of us in each tent, and a pot belly stove in the middle for winter.

Well some of them used to come back with bullet holes in them and shrapnel holes and what-have-you.

Well, we’d fix up, patch up all the holes and any electrical wiring that was shot, we’d have to patch that up too as

well, but then they’d go back over to maintenance in Japan, the Maintenance Squadron, and that’s where they’d make a good job of them. Another one would come back, and yeah, but the Americans, they were just over the other side and we ate with them, had our meals there. A vehicle used to take us over for our lunch and dinner in the afternoon. You had to go right around the end of the strip. You couldn’t go across the strip, there was too much traffic. Aeroplanes taking off and coming in.

They used to use JATO [Jet-Assisted Take Off] to get their Shooting Stars off because they had bombs and rockets under them and JATO had assisted take off . And they’d press a button and a jet engine would help them off. And there was a Korean village right down the end of the strip. I don’t know why they built there because it was the most dangerous place in the world. If they couldn’t get off they’d go straight through the buildings and they were only straw huts, and we’d go around that and they’d take us over to our meals and we’d have

our meals with the Americans, and they were good. They were good.

Yeah, fairly sloppy, some of it. First time I’d ever seen Cornflakes [breakfast cereal] in a little packet. You know, the little packets you get now? You could have bacon and eggs, all that type of thing, beans and eggs and what-have-you, and they’d put a little Cornflake thing, packet of cornflakes on your plate for you and there was milk

there. It was alright. It was OK. Also on top of that, once the meals were over that was it, you know. We’d go back down, go to work back around the strip. Then we’d get a bottle of beer a night per man, per haps, if it came over. There was no refrigeration. I remember I had my 23rd birthday there

in the tent and I tried to save up some of these bottles to have a bit of a party with the blokes. I think I saved about five bottles and we had a few drinks. But the Americans used to come over every Friday afternoon with their vehicle and they’d have a sixteen-mill projector on the back of it and show us movies. We’d sit out there on bomb fins as our chairs, on bomb fins, and watch the movies. And there was always a carton of cigarettes and a carton of

candy as they called it, compliments of the US Government. So you could take your pick, Lucky Strikes, Camels, you name it, they had it all there. Sit up there and smoke up big and watch the movies, drink the beer.

Westerns, yeah, and they had this aircraft that used to come over at different intervals. They used to call him Bed Shack Charlie. He had a little bi-plane,

a North Korean thing. He’d come over right on dusk at times and you’d be sitting there watching the movies with one eye on the movie and one eye on the hill for this aircraft to come over the hill. He had machine guns on him. The bombs they used to throw out after the aircraft, try to get the aircraft on the ground, and of course you’d take off and straight into the trenches, in the slit trenches around the huts, around the tents. But they used to call him Bed Shack Charlie.

But an F80 Shooting Star got him one day, came up over the hill and bang, got him. The fighter followed him in and got him.

No, we weren’t strafed. They didn’t have much. They didn’t come, to my knowledge, they didn’t come that far south with their MiGs [jet fighter]. Mostly go around the Yalu [River], right up the top near the Manchurian border, the big alley,

and get them up around there. I might be wrong.

Yeah, over the, the front line I can remember at Kimpo well. When we first got there it was over in the hills. You could see them of a night time, hear the guns going off, the works. They weren’t too far away. But the Meteors would take off and they’d go patrolling and looking for MiGs and what-have-you. It was a fair way up.

But they didn’t worry us too much, and then after a couple of months there they’d send you over to Japan. You’d have a week’s R&R [Rest and Recreation], Rest and Recuperation. They’d send you up to Kawana or Sasebo. Sasebo was in Tokyo and they were run by the army, leave hostels. And I went to Kawana and it was a nice place. Nice big hotel and nice

golf course and swimming pool; the lot. It was run by the army.

They had everything for you: golf, swimming, tennis, go into town shopping. Ito wasn’t too far away. It was a city, they used to call it ‘the toy city’. Ito. I-T-O. You’d go in there and the Japanese treated you alright. You’d go, Tokyo was a fair

way away, but you’d go up there, but there wasn’t much of Tokyo. I didn’t go to Tokyo. I went to Ito. I liked it, and they’d put on a dance of a night time because a lot of Americans used to come there and they still had American servicewomen and we’d come back to Iwakuni and they’d put us on a, stayed the night at Iwakuni and put you on the train next morning at West Iwakuni Railway

Station and an overnight trip to Kawana, which is near Yokohama. Beautiful trains, beautiful trains even in those days. They had a bar and everything on them, and we’d get there and they’d take us out to Kawana. I’ll show you the photos later, and they put meals on and the army, they ran it. Anyhow,

the thing I must tell you while we’re over in Korea our room was still our room back in Iwakuni. Like I had room 72 I think it was, and your uniforms were hung up in the wardrobe. You’d come back and everything would be dry-cleaned or fixed up for you. Anyhow, I went up to Kawana this time and showed me upstairs to my room. There was no one in there, beautiful room.

I undid my pack and put all my clothes out on the bed and I was going to sort them all out and hang them up and I had to get something because they said, “Come down and have a drink and meet everyone after you have a shower and a shave.” I went and had a shower and a shave and I came back and no clothes. Everything was gone, shoes and everything. I thought, “This is nice.” All I had was a towel around me. So I rang the desk, you had your phone there, and the army

staff sergeant was running, the WO2 [Warrant Officer second class] that was running the desk at the time said, “What did you do with your clothes?” I said, “Put them on the bed.” He said, “I meant to tell you, they’ve taken those to the laundry.” All this laundered stuff, the lot. The room girl took them away. So that night I was roaming around in army fatigues down the bar and meeting everyone, yeah.

Yeah, there were a few of them around, but to be quite truthful I never ever went to one because, even in Korea, because, no, there was VD [Venereal Disease].

Yes. As soon as you got there they give you lectures. In Malaya too, they give you lectures straight away and show you movies, the works, and oh no, I was a bit scared of that, couldn’t handle that.

Going to hospital and the stigma. You know, going on your medical documents. No, I couldn’t be in that.

No, you could control yourself. Some went off the beaten path, but the girls in Japan, they had a lot of them working on the unit and they were all checked, but they weren’t as prostitutes. We had one there, Koko-san, she was

a typist and whatever, a nice girl, well-educated too. They could speak English; been to uni [university].

Not on the base? No, I never ran into any of it at all. Even in town when I’d go into Iwakuni some afternoons or of a night time, never, never, because, well, they were still occupied and they treated us pretty well.

Of course it was different in war, I suppose. But no, no, it was OK. And I was having a week up at Kawana and I was telling the lady that’s where we were sitting at the bar this night, a few of us, and the dance was on. It was Wednesday night, and in came people who were coming in, Americans coming in for the dance, and this chap walked in. He had two women with him. One would’ve been his

wife because she sort of looked like him, and he looked like James Cagney, the film star, a little fellow with a bald head and crew cut hair and all that. They were having a few drinks and I’d been having a few drinks and the girl was a very nice looking girl, something…you and Nicole, but she was sitting at the table. I said to the blokes, “I think I might go over and ask her for dance.” “You wouldn’t be game.” So away I went, over I went and asked her for a dance and

she got up. She was American and we’re dancing around. So I sat her down and I went back again for the next dance. Yeah, no problem. I got up and she invited me back to the table and I met Dad and Mum. They asked me who I was. I said I was Australian, 77th Squadron over in Korea and I was up for a weeks R&R. I asked him who he was. I thought he was James Cagney. He was Admiral Felix B. Stump,

the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet. I’ll never forget it. And the next day I was going to Ito and he said, “How about coming down with us?” And he sent a staff car around and picked me up and I went into Ito and had the day with them shopping. Yeah, it was good. They looked after me, and then he had to go back.

Just shopping and had, we’d go and have a meal in some of their little café things, but they were alright.

He was a nice bloke, real nice. Only a little fellow, but

he was a nice chap, yeah. And not long after that I got posted back home.

Yeah. But I wasn’t up there as long as some of the other chaps. What had happened, apparently when the Korean War broke out there wasn’t that many

people in the air force. I can remember out here at Amberley, when I first got to Amberley there was only about 600 or 700 people out there. That was all over, right through the base, 82 Wing and 3AD. And of course when the Korean War broke out they didn’t have that many in the air force at that time. They’d only just started the permanent air force in ’49, and this was 1950, and they didn’t have that many around and so they sent us chaps up. I’d only been in the air force twelve months

and hadn’t worked on the aircraft and what-have-you, so they sent us up as servicemen, not fitters. You had to be a fitter to more or less to work on the aircraft to sign everything.

Didn’t worry me. I was going somewhere. Yeah, I didn’t worry. When they said Japan I said, “Good, a bit of a look around.” And with the result they found that

you had to go back to do your conversion course onto fitters, see, and then they started to send some of the fitters up. Some of the courses were coming out. So I only did about nine months instead of a full term, about twelve months or whatever it is, but then when I went back and did my conversion I got posted to another squadron, 87, and then I went to Malaya as a fitter working on Lincoln bombers which is different then, and you had your full tour then.

Yeah, pick up my gear.

Just the same thing. They were just Americans, Americans doing most of the fighting. I don’t know about the Australian Army. We didn’t have much to do with the army because they were up in the front. They had them and the Americans. It was mostly air force that we had something to do with, but the army chaps, we’d meet

them back at Iwakuni at times. They’d come back for leave, terrific blokes. I even met one bloke from home, from Cracow, yeah.

Well, Tommy Watson was his name. Tom worked at the mines and Tom was part Aboriginal and he was a real nice chap and his wife, she was nice, and they had about three children, and Tom was ex-army, and he had a good job up at the mine and was well respected around the town.

They’d go to the dances too and all that. And I went home on my final leave and Tom said, “Gee,” he said, “I wish I was back in the army again.” He said, “This Korean business, I’d like to get to Korea.” I said, “Stay here Tom, you’ve got your wife and family, no way,” I said. And lo and behold I was up there at Iwakuni one night in the bar. It was right in our building, down the end of the alley

and there’s the mess where you ate, and the other side was the bar and it was big. And these army blokes, whenever they’d come up they’d land at Iwakuni because it was the Australian base. This time there was a heap of army chaps in and I looked around and there was Tommy Watson. Tommy sang out, and there’s Tom, and he was going over to Korea with the army. But no, we didn’t have much to do with army, only there,

because they were up at the front and we were back. You can’t get the aeroplanes right up the front because they get shot down and you’ve had it, you know. And I didn’t have much to do with them, but the ones I had anything to do with were fantastic blokes.

Not really. I knew they were communists, North Koreans and Chinese.

No. Didn’t even know what they were flying.

No. He was army, see. I didn’t see him anymore after that because he went up.

He didn’t go up, no. He went to Malaya with me, Viv.

Yeah, there’s still (UNCLEAR).

One chap, he’s dead, his wife still lives here, and another one up in Caloundra, a couple in Caloundra and all around the place. Yeah, there’s a few of them still around.

Nothing. You were working all the time, pulling battery carts around and running aircraft and all that type of business. Nowhere to go, nothing to do,

Only a tent just down there.

Well, you’d get up and be out early of a morning and straight on the vehicle, go over to have your breakfast and up on the flight line. And that’s where you’d stay until lunch. And then they’d race you over for lunch and you’d be there until the evening meal. They’d take you over for the evening meal.

But aeroplanes were going and coming and taking off all the time. You’d come back and an aircraft might come back with what they call ‘US’: unserviceability. You’d have to fix that. There was no where to go.

It’s anything that’s gone wrong with the aircraft. Say a generator might’ve gone out or something, you know, something, the pilot’s put it in DD77 [?] that something’s gone wrong, whatever it might be,

and it would have to be fixed before he could fly it again. And then of a night time you’d stay there. They’d have lights, you’d stay there and fix everything up. You had to have the aircraft ready for the next day, so back it goes, and you didn’t have anywhere to go. You’d go down and sit in your tent, play cards. Blokes used to play cards.

Just play cards and smoke.

Yeah, have your bottle of beer. Write home, write a letter home. That’s about all.

She wasn’t real happy at all, wasn’t real happy. Worried all the time I was there.

Yeah. She used to write a lot, letters from my sisters. Yeah, no problem. They were pretty good on mail, the air force. The Dakota from Iwakuni used to fly supplies and that over, always bring mail over. Yeah, our mail would be there, it was good.

Getting away, going to the war, seeing things.

You see, I was only twenty-two. So my idea wasn’t to be a hero. My idea to join the air force was because I liked aeroplanes and I wanted to get around and have a look around the place, and I was putting in for postings anywhere, overseas, wherever I could get. I’d never ever seen much working in the mines up home. So no, I

was open for anything that was going.

The strip?

No. They were out of bounds to us. Dirty little places. They had their oxen and all that in there and drove their old drays. No, they’re dirty.

Didn’t have anything to do with them. They were all refugees all around

the place. We didn’t get into Seoul. Seoul was just, that was the main city. It was just bombed out, it was just ruined. Didn’t go anywhere, not when I was there. I don’t know what happened afterwards like when things started to settle out. See, it all finished in 1953 and I think the air force stayed there quite a while after that. They had revetments and I think they had their own messes and things like that, I don’t know. But we had nothing when we were there,

and when I was posted to the other place I was glad, glad to get out of it.

Nothing much at all because nothing…working on aeroplanes all the time. Like there was no where to go.

Yeah, I was, at Kimpo.

Kimpo. K-I-M-P-O. Yeah, that was the air force base back up there. But before me they were all over the place, the Mustangs. They were

with the Americans. They were at Po Hang and Hung Hum and Hung Hoong [?] and all around the place, right up the north. Of course you’ve got to remember that we were being pushed back and forwards all the time, down at Pusan. I was at Pusan for a couple of weeks.

I just, any aircraft that were coming out of Korea, any of the Mustangs on the way back, if they had’ve come down, if there was anything wrong with them, had any engine troubles or anything like that, or had to refuel. When I was at Pusan

there was just mud everywhere. Just mud, just tents, you know, and rain. Rained all the time. Pusan is right on the coast and when I was up there in 1999 we spent a couple of nights there and it rained all the time. It’s a big city now, about 4 million people, but when I was there that was the only stronghold left for the Americans and there were plenty of Americans and they pushed the communists north again and then they’d come back again. No, you

couldn’t go anywhere, only when you went back to Japan on R&R. That was the only time you got around.

No.

No. There wasn’t much, right throughout my air force career officers and enlisted airmen, a different mob altogether. They didn’t have much to do with them at all.

We used to have NCO [Non-Commissioned Officer] aircrew, NCO pilots, sergeant pilots. They weren’t too bad. In Malaya though they were a bit different. They had an NCO aircrew mess. We never saw much of them. It was fairly segregated in those days. They weren’t very friendly, we didn’t have much to do with them.

I had,

there was what, four or five of us there in the same mustering, and Danny Hogan, he was the corporal, he was in charge. Danny was a real good chap. He came from Subiaco in West Australia. If ever this goes on TV and Danny sees me he’ll probably (UNCLEAR), but he was a real nice chap. He was the NCO, and then I had, there were another couple of chaps, Ron Dixon and Jimmy Dury were a few of them. Ronnie

Beggs and myself. They were real nice chaps, but we were all the same grade; grade 2 or whatever it was in those days. We were all servicemen and Danny was the senior man. They gave him two stripes so they could sign off our work on the forms, you know, the DD77. No, they were good, they were real good.

No. We didn’t do anything real major there because

if anything major needed to be done they’d send it back over to Iwakuni.

We’d just marshal it in, man the fire extinguisher and then just cut it off and check for any electrics. Check to see all the electrics were OK and if the fitter armourers needed a hand to bomb-up and arm-up you’d give them a hand. Pull the battery carts around so they could start up and put power in the aircraft so they could work.

Just like down Brisbane airport, you see the chaps racing around in their little vehicles, yeah.

Put bombs in the bomb bay and under the wings.

I wasn’t involved in that because most of the fitter armourers, the armourers used to do that. It was only a matter of a jack here and put the bombs up and put them under the wings.

But I wasn’t involved in that too much because we just kept an eye on all the electrics. You didn’t delve into another bloke’s trade because if anything went wrong and you did the job, you got the blame. You shouldn’t be in there.

Well, we’d just check lights and power onto the thing. They had to have a run up. You’d check the generators to see that everything was charging. You’d check the batteries to make sure they weren’t

overheating and things like that, you know. And check any wiring in the wheel wells and around the place and check for holes.

They were alright. From what I can remember of them they were OK. Some of them went onto big things, be air vice marshals and what-have-you, major generals or whatever you like to call them. Air vice marshals in the air force. Yeah, one chap, he was a sergeant pilot, he ended up an air vice

marshal up in Toowoomba, a bloke by the name of Collings, and he was in conversion with me. He was a flight lieutenant, but he had a brother there but he was ground staff. No, they were OK from what I can remember, but we didn’t, they’d tell us what was wrong but we weren’t real palsy-walsy. They were different altogether, and I found that all the way through, even when I was an instructor down at Wagga,

we weren’t really friendly with them. I wasn’t anyhow.

Yeah, that’s right. But some of them were good. Some of them were just so-so.

Yeah, some of them did, yeah. I don’t like to say too much about them. Some of these chaps are electrical and they got commissioned and

if you weren’t real friendly they’d get back at you then. A couple of chaps, no, I don’t like to say too much about it. I was one of the old blokes. I was probably in the air force a lot longer than some of these chaps but they ended up commissioned. See, they could get back on you like a thing, 207, your conduct sheet, and all that type of business. You didn’t know anything about it. They marked all that, you know.

No, I can’t. I don’t know much about it.

It was for promotion and things like that. If they didn’t go much on you they’d sort of snarl you on that. At times you’d know what it was, but I don’t like to talk about it because I know a few things that happened and who might be seeing this.

No. Some of them,

I don’t even call them my friends. I wouldn’t want to. They’d get back at you. Anyhow, it was alright, it was OK. It was an experience.

Yeah. There were a couple of blokes there, one chap got sucked into the intake of the jet but he got out of it OK. Stan Julius was his name, and Stan’s since died.

I think there were a couple of pilots collided.

He was a friend of mine, Stan. I was standing there on the fire extinguisher when it happened. The pilot, he was standing right near the engine and of course there was air sucked in so you could keep it going. Stan righted the cowl and he’s looking in there and the next minute he’s sucked in, but the wings stopped him. The wings come right through and

the wings stopped him from being sucked right through. His feet were sticking out. I got him out and asked if he was alright and he fainted and that was it. When I saw, I didn’t see Stan anymore after I left Korea. Stan, when he died I saw his funeral notice in the paper but it was down south somewhere. Apparently he must’ve shifted down south. See, a lot of these chaps were single and they end up marrying

girls from down south, wherever you might be posted, and of course that’s where you stay. You’ve got a family and what-have-you, and one of Stan’s daughters I think wrote into the paper about it, that when he was sucked into the aircraft he was never the same since. He got such a fright, you know, it was a terrible thing. Only for the wing he would’ve been sucked right through. A couple of the Americans up there were sucked into Sabres and that.

Of course they come out like mince meat at the other end. But according to his daughter he never ever got over it, and sort of affected right up to the day he died. A couple of other chaps.

We just pulled him out. The pilot shut the engine down, he did, and we got him out and he seemed to be alright, but they took him away. The Yanks had a bit of a hospital there or something and he was alright.

He seemed to be alright after a while but it must’ve played up on him from thereon. But I came home not long after that.

The wing goes right through the cowl. You’ve got your cowl there like that and sucked in and you’ve got the wings in the Meteor that goes right through and that stopped him from being sucked right in.

I didn’t see them, but apparently they were coming back after

an RAF chap and one of our blokes and they were changing places on the outside so they could come back in formation. One went the wrong way and, “Kloomp!” hit each other smack bang on the, smattered on the strip. But right through the air force you see all these things, but I was pretty lucky I didn’t see much of that. I must’ve been in good squadrons I think.

Yeah, the aeroplanes taking off. See, the Americans had hundreds upon hundreds of aircraft. They had hundreds of aircraft, they were going and coming all the time. Fighters dropping bombs and fighting and all that. Just down below us was Su Wan, they had Mustangs and later they had Sabres and that was Su Wan just below Kimpo, and they

were going and coming all the time. Going up after MiGs and chasing them, and some of their aces, Jibara and a few of them, Connolly, O’ Connor, yeah, Connolly, they had quite a few aces up there, air aces.

No, because they used to chase them right up to Manchuria. They didn’t come down that far. But see, they didn’t know what they were, whether they were Russian or

Chinese or what. So they didn’t come too far. We could see Russia wasn’t in, supposedly wasn’t in it. Either was China until towards, for a while anyhow, until Lagow [?] came in. But they didn’t come right down. Well, the Yanks, the Americans, they had aeroplanes going all the time. They’d keep them away. They had to keep away from the base because they had a lot of aircraft on the ground. If they came in and strafed

them they just wouldn’t, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It was an eye-opener, put it that way, to me. It was a real learning curve for me. I wouldn’t have missed it for, when I look back over it now, yeah, it was an education, yeah.

The things that happened and the people that do these things, like these pilots. Some of them are really game, and the way people live and it’s different altogether. Up home there was only kerosene lights and you’d blow the light out at night time and nowhere to go, only Friday and Saturday nights. But there things were

going and coming all the time, you know. Yeah, it was a real education.

Well, I got posted back to Australia, posted back to Wagga to do my electrical fitters course and when I finished that they sent me on leave. I went home on leave to Mum and Dad and everyone in the town there. It was good, and a couple of dances, a

welcome. It was real good. And I got posted then to 87 Squadron. It was a Mosquito Photographic Reconnaissance Unit at Canberra, based in Canberra in those days and that was the end of 1952, towards the end. No, the middle of 1952. That’s right, because I wasn’t with them long. There’s a story attached to that. So I went to Canberra

and I got there, well, I was on leave up at Cracow, and talk about train travel. I was on leave and they said, “We don’t know where you’re posted.” This was at Amberley out here. No, Wagga, sorry, Wagga, and while I was at home the rain set in. In those days you used to call them monsoons. I couldn’t get to Eidsvold to catch the train back because of the flood,

and the only place I could get out was Theodore and go up through to Rockhampton that way. But anyhow they sent a message home to the post office to tell me I was posted to 87 Squadron at Canberra and then they said you’d have to get out the best way you can. So I went right up by train to Rockhampton, bearing in mind they were only old coal burners in those days. Came down to Brisbane, all night in the train to Brisbane

and then over to South Brisbane to catch the Sydney Mail. Down to Sydney and then change trains there to Goulburn and change trains there, down to Canberra. The orderly sergeant said to me, “You’re the new elec fitter for 87 Squadron?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I’ve got to take you to the, orderly officer wants to see you.” And I didn’t see any Mosquitos. See, 87 Squadron had Mosquitos, Mosquito fighter bombers they were during the war, but they were converted to photographic reconnaissance,

and they also had Mustangs, 3 Squadron. I could see these Mustangs but I couldn’t see these Mosquitos, and I walked in, saluted him and he said, “Don’t unpack because you’re going to Western Australia tomorrow by train.” Because they only had DC3s in those days and the whole squadron had gone over to photograph Western Australia for the government, you see, aerial photography, and there was only the

few chaps that had been left behind as a rear guard party, and I joined them. Seth Sheffield was one. There was only about half a dozen of us. But anyhow, I stayed that night. They gave me a bed on the unit that night and I didn’t unpack. I was pretty bloody dirty. I’d been travelling for a week in coal trains and what-have-you, and hopped on the train again up to Canberra, up to Goulburn, changed trains at Goulburn,

then down to Albury. You had to change trains at Albury in those days, and then down to Melbourne. Then to Adelaide, then up to Port Augusta and hopped on the Trans Continental then and over to Kalgoorlie. I fell over when I got off the train at Kalgoorlie because of my feet. My legs were all, and then overnight, while I was there it rained like all heck and the train was…When I got back,

finally got back onto the train it was choofing out [leaving] of the rail station to go to Perth and the engine derailed, so we were back for another four hours. Finally got to Perth.

Gee, I tell you what, I must’ve been on the train nearly two weeks I think, and anyhow, that was all the way right from Theodore right around to Perth, Rockhampton around to Perth, and

we did our, we were only there about four or five months. I was out at Kalgoorlie and me and another chap, Buster McKinnon, they used to station us all around different areas, Wiluna, Forrest, all around the place, because the aircraft would go over of a morning seven o’clock and they’d photograph at 25,000 feet and do this aerial photography. They’d take hundreds of thousands of square miles

at a time and we had to be there in case he was forced down. So Buster and I were in the Oriental Hotel, they put us in there for a fortnight. We never got out of the place because the aircraft never ever came down. When they rescued us we looked like glow worms, and we just had to stay there in case the aircraft came down. And I still, even to this day, I still belong to the Mosquito Association down at,

well, it’s not at Canberra now, but they’re restoring a Mosquito and I only got another application for them yesterday, and I still belong to that association.

Beautiful aeroplanes, Rolls Royce engines, sounded nice. And the Mustang, two of the nicest aeroplanes the air force ever had, the sound of them. And photographed over there and left there Good Friday to come home. We had to hop on the train and come back again,

all the way back to Canberra. There was a lot of the squadron blokes were back on then, were coming home. Anyhow, I got back to Canberra and I was only there a couple of weeks and they said, “You’re posted.” I said, “Where to?” They said, “Malaya.” So I had to come up here to Amberley and do a bit of a course on Lincoln bombers and off to Malaya.

For the government, for mining and all that type of business.

I was picked to go to Fiji. The Fijian Government, they wanted the whole of the islands photographed for different things; navigation.

No, that was then. When I came here I was going to Fiji when we came back from Perth, but the posting came through, and some of the squadron went up to Port Moresby to

photograph around, aerial photography around New Guinea and around Townsville. Photograph for mapping purposes, north Queensland and that. But anyhow, I got back to Amberley here and had a couple of months here just to learn about Lincolns. They’re the big bombers, the one you saw out there in the photograph, a huge thing, and on my way to Malaya.

They were a huge aeroplane and they had four engines and turrets, nose turret, mid upper turret, tail turrets, big things. Carry a stack of bombs.

All the electrics. We used to have to look after the turrets, everything, you know. And during your spare time a few of the fitter armourers a hand to bomb up, 1,000 pound bombs up in

the, you’d winch them up and all that, 4,000 pound cookie bombs and all that type of business because we were against terrorists, the communist terrorists. And I was up there, fifteen months up there.

No, because I was only home about a month. No. I started to miss things.

I’d go on the front verandah and I’d look out and there were no aeroplanes and not many people around the place. All you could see was scrub in front of you, bush.

Yes. I could hear the workings of the mine. I could hear the twelve o’clock midday whistle blow and that took me back a bit. Then I started to miss the noise

of the aeroplanes and all that type of business. I can remember that vividly. Different altogether. It got in the veins, but everything was so quiet. You’d go down town, there’d be hardly anyone down town because all the blokes, they’d be up at work see, underground. Mum would be home, I’d sit there and I’d talk to her for a while and my sister, one sister would be home and the other one was a nurse. She was over the hospital, and I’d be walking around town, some where to go. And I’d go

into the pub and have a drink. Mum didn’t like the idea of that. I tried to keep out of that. But no, nothing much.

Not a fanatic. The minister of religion, he only came around once a month but Mum never missed church, ever.

Mmm.

I think, I don’t know. It’s hard. The people, I don’t know, the people that I knew didn’t seem the same because of the people that I’d met. I don’t know, I didn’t seem right at home. I was always sort of tensed

up. I wanted to get going again, you know, and no, I missed it. I missed being away from aircraft and that and away from that life.

Yeah.

When I got married two of my air force mates were best man and groomsman at my wedding, and when, one was already married and when the other fellow got married I was best man at his wedding,

yeah.

Well, I was a bit jumpy. Still am, I think. I don’t think I ever got out of it. I fly off the handle fairly quick, whereas when I was at home nothing worried me very much because there was nothing doing.

When you’re in the air force you, even when I got married and my children came along and you’d have to get up and get the bottles for them of a night time, I never slept right. Still can’t. All the broken sleep. You never knew when you’re going to get to bed some nights especially in Korea, and in Malaya it was the same. Broken sleep and things like that. When I was home you’d be in bed at

nine o’clock or something like that, eight or nine o’clock at night because you were working hard in the mines underground and all that. But in the air force there was all this broken sleep. You were on duty crews and night flying and all that waiting for aircraft to come back in, especially out here night flying on Lincolns. The Lincolns would take off around about seven or eight o’clock and wouldn’t come back until two or three or four o’clock in the morning. Been right out to Alice Springs on cross country flights and all that and you’ve got to wait for them to come back. Duty crew

hut, duty crew yourself and one of each mustering and sitting there waiting for the aircraft to come back and they’re playing cards and cooking up a bit of a meal because you get your rations from the mess. And it was right over where you worked and as soon as, in the morning, when you think you’re going to go to sleep, work starts. All the chaps are coming in to work and you couldn’t sleep or anything like that. No,

and I’ve never been able to sleep properly ever since.

We weren’t working twenty-four. You didn’t know when you were going to work.

You didn’t now when you were going to work. You’d go from here now up to the strip from your tent. You didn’t know when you were coming back. It didn’t matter because there was someone to talk to up there instead of sitting down in the tent by yourself. So you spent all your time up on the strip.

Yeah, yeah. Time would go faster.

Yeah, that’s right. I started to get itchy feet, I wanted to get going again. But sleep was my main thing. I’ve never been able to sleep properly ever since. I don’t know what it was. Even now,

some of the things remind me of Korea and Malaya. Some of the things you did and you wish you hadn’t have done, and in my married life, like flying off the handle, getting into a rage and all that, and the kids. Wrong, wrong.

Yeah, I think it was the start of it, but in Malaya too. But I didn’t see as much as the army blokes saw. I didn’t see as much as a lot of the air force blokes after me. At least I was there at the beginning.

I never,

while those aeroplanes were taking off and coming in, I never felt under threat at all, you know, never ever. But if they looked like coming down over the hill I was only hoping they’d get us out, that was all, yeah.

Yeah, you could hear of a night time. As a matter of fact you could see them up in the hills, see all the flashes from their guns and that. See, Korea is very hilly and you can see a long way in those hills.

At times. Some nights you flat-out getting to sleep. Yeah, wonder what was going on. Things were, a little bit more activity than usual up there. But no…

Yeah, that’s, yeah. When I came back from Korea

just flew into Mascot. No one there to say hello, nothing. They just put you on a bus, take you into town, put you on the train and you were off to Wagga or took us out to one of the army places out there to have a shower and a shave and a meal and that was it. Even when I got out of the air force I wasn’t, no one there to say ta-ta, you just out the gate and gone after all those years. You weren’t

wound down. But yeah, and to go to Malaya so soon after too, and which I liked. It didn’t worry me, but in later years it’s starting to get at me a bit. The wife will tell you about that. I know I get a bit jumpy.

I’ve got nothing to be jumpy about. We’ve got money, we’ve got my car, I’ve got

my wife. We don’t owe a penny in the world and we’ve been around all over the world, the works, but the older I get the worse I’m getting, you know. I don’t know. Now, I got to bed, even last night, this didn’t worry me at all about this, but I had this interview today I was wondering how it was going to happen, but every night, now I go down and I get my paper of a morning and I don’t read it all because I know

when I go to bed, say at ten o’clock, I went to bed at ten o’clock last night. I was awake at twenty-five past, twelve-thirty. I get up and I have a cup of tea and I read the paper. I go back to bed at about three o’clock and I was still awake at five o’clock this morning, and when I went to sleep I woke up at six-thirty and I thought I’d been asleep for a week. But this happens every night, not only last night but it will happen again tonight.

All you keep thinking about is my service life, things that happened. Some of my mates that aren’t even here now. I’m not trying to be, you know.

It was never taken off. Even when I got out you weren’t de-loused, whatever you like to call it. When you go in, alright, you’re indoctrinated into the service, but when you go out

no one’s there to say, “Thanks a lot.” When I came home from Korea there was no one there to say thinks or anything like that. They just gave me two medals and two ribbons and away you went. You went to Wagga and you did your training there. The same when I came back from Malaya, there was no welcome home or anything like that.

Yeah, and I don’t know, the people,

whether they knew half the time what was going on. Now last year, Anzac Day, the Korean contingent lead the Anzac march for the first time ever. I went down but I didn’t march. I didn’t even bother about going in. We had this Anzac Day the first time ever. I was the president of the RAAF Association here for nine years and I ended up a life member of that and I’ve been a member of the RSL [Returned and Services League] for over thirty years. I used to go to these things, but I don’t

now. I like to get away from them.

Yeah, I reckon they’re all after OAMs [Order of Australia Medal] and what-have-you. No, the less I’ve got to do with them now, the better I like it. I like to be by myself.

The terrorists, the Chin Ping terrorists, the communist terrorists, they were coming down trying to take Malaya after the war,

and we, the RAF [Royal Air Force] were there. We were on an RAF base, Tanga. They had Hornets and Brigands there and we had Lincoln bombers. Used to go off bombing near the Thai border, all over the place. They’d get these terrorists. The army would get them in a certain area and box them in and call the air force in to bomb them. And we used to bomb-up and away they’d go and drop the bombs.

Then they got these big cookies. The bombs, they’d explode about a hundred feet above the ground. We used to call them cookies. They’d burn everything, coconut palms, monkeys, everything that was under there, terrorists, the lot. We used to call them cookies, but we were bombing up there for about fifteen months.

When we first arrived the group captain called us in and we landed at Kalang airport in those days.

Called us all in and told us about the women. Keep away, because the Japanese, they (UNCLEAR) all these women as much as they could seeing there was that much disease around the place, and that was the first thing.

Yeah, showed us movies, the lot.

Yeah.

Different places were out of bounds to us, and the main street of Singapore which is now Orchard Road was out of bounds to us, and Lavender Street, full of brothels. It was that far out of bounds it wasn’t even funny. If you were caught in there and caught in uniform it was seven days cells. You couldn’t wear a uniform because the terrorists, you didn’t know who was who. You could be in Bugis Street or one of these places and you could be sitting next to a terrorist and didn’t know it. You could be knifed or anything, shot, and

that was that. We couldn’t wear uniforms or travel on a bus or anything like that. We used to get a taxi. When you went to town you’d have to go by taxi because you had to go through jungle, mad miles and all that, and they used to throw grenades into the buses.

Yeah. Well, it was different. There were people everywhere. Like the only people I saw in Korea

were the refugees on the tracks going for their live, but in Tanga where we were there was the Tanga village just outside the gate. They were all over the place, and there were troops all over the place and Singapore was close handy, and it wasn’t out of bounds to us but you couldn’t wear your uniform in and you could go into town, and of course it was a big place, even then. But I didn’t get in there that often because we were working most of the time

and bombing up aircraft and the Lincolns were going and coming all the time. It wasn’t a holiday.

Just a long hut, that was all. And we used to have, had our own showers which we didn’t have in Korea. When I first got to Korea I didn’t have, well there were no showers or anything. The Americans brought us around some water one day, a water tanker.

Well you

didn’t. The first time I had a bath. I’ve got a photo there to show you sitting in a bath all soaped up pouring some water over you. You had enough water to just have a wash and of course you’d sponge yourself and that. But in Malaya we had huts, four huts, and in the middle was the showers and ablutions and toilets and what-have-you. And then we had a couple of girls, women there, Lucy and another. They weren’t room girls. They used to

do all our sewing and all that and we used to call her Lucy Sew Sew Girl, ten cents, everything. Sew a button on your overalls or anything like that, ten cents, and darn your socks was ten cents. She and another girl there, they were real nice, and Lucy, she was Chinese. I’ve got a photo to show you, and the Japanese grabbed Lucy. She was a good looking girl, and put her in Raffles as a prostitute.

She used to tell me. Lucy and I hit it pretty well because I used to talk to her. Dad used to send me up parcels, what they used to call Queensland Parcel Supplies, and food wasn’t the best up there, and he used to send me up these food parcels and they were, well Queensland Parcels Supplies used to do it and they’d make up a food parcel and they’d send

it up to me and there’d be raisins, there’d be things, nice things in it and cakes and what-have-you. And I used to give Lucy some of these raisins and currents and some little cakes. She thought it was magnificent and I used to hit it well with Lucy, but ten cents for everything.

Yeah.

They took her into Raffles, Raffles Hotel.

Raffles Hotel, that was the top-line Japanese place then. The Japanese troops, and they put the girls in there and Lucy told me about it. Then they had another girl up there. She was in charge. If you went down to Bugis Street there were prostitutes all over the place and one, the leader of the

prostitutes up there was Dumb Dumb. They used to call her Dumb Dumb because the Japanese had cut her tongue out so she couldn’t say anything after the war and she was the leader. She was the queen, and she was good, old Dumb Dumb. She’s see you when you’d go in and, “I don’t want a girl, no way,” you know, and her offsider was another little one and they used to call her Kitty Dumb Dumb because she didn’t have a tongue either. The Japanese cut her tongue out. Yes, Dumb Dumb and Kitty Dumb Dumb

Yeah, apparently, must’ve been. See, when the war finish, 1945, I didn’t get up there until 1952, end of ’52, so it had been over for seven years, but you could still see. I still think today you can still see where some of the rifle bullets, where they hit the concrete and whatever. But it was fairly basic, Singapore, when I was there in 1952. Like Seoul in Korea, there was nothing left of Seoul hardly.

Very, very primitive. Working out in the open just like here, no shelter, nothing. And they had steel matting on the strip for wet weather and snow and what-have-you, so the aircraft wouldn’t go sliding around. We had no shelter

whatsoever. Later on they got all these sandbags in and made revetments and I think they put up buildings and what-have-you, but pretty primitive when we got in there.

There was only a tent. There was a wooden floor. I think they were American tents. Correct me, I don’t know. They were put up for us. In one of those photos there you can see it’s had timber a little way up the side and there’d be about

ten blokes inside and a couple of little steps in front and you had your little stretcher about that high, had a little wire stretcher and a pot belly stove in the middle and a couple of hooks to hang your overalls and that was it. You’d walk outside and there was just a row of tents either side and

your wash basin was outside and you’d just have a wash there and you’d just wash yourself the best way you could because we didn’t have showers, and all your slit trenches around the place. Eat with the Americans over the other side. We had our vehicle and the vehicle would take us over. They’d just stagger the meal. Away you’d go and have

your meal and back again.

A couple of weeks I think. That was a photo there.

It was terrific. I can still remember it. And someone, I forget, Viv Waterson, pouring the water on me, but they got away when they saw all the soap on me, photo of all the soap on me, but the water was fairly cold. There was no heating.

It was hot, it was very hot, and a lot of flies and a lot of dust. Bit of wind would come up, and of course the jets were creating a fair bit of dust too when they’d start up. But there was one extreme to the other, but I got out just before the winter thank goodness.

No, only a little bit. When I got to Japan there was a bit of snow around the place and snow storms, but not like some of the chaps after me.

No, very hot.

That’s right, that’s the thing. You’re flat-out living with yourself half the time. Didn’t have any powder.

Open the flaps of the tent, yeah. But no, it was fairly primitive. I look back at it now, I don’t know how I did it. It was very primitive. I thought it was fairly primitive up home in Cracow where we lived, but this was a lot more than that, a lot more primitive.

Well I knew there was a war on,

but I didn’t know how big it was. I think, well it was only just the North Koreans, but apparently, and then the Chinese came in later, but it’s supposed to be, they told us it was a police action. It wasn’t a war, it was a police action. It was supposed to be a police action and there was 50,000-odd Americans killed there and a couple of million civilians. And our squadron, we lost quite a few blokes, like aircrew

and that. I think there was around about fifty of them shot down and taken prisoners of war. See, the Americans had troops and that. They must have nearly a million troops up there. It was fairly big.

No, it was supposed to be, started off as a police action because the North Koreans had come down over the 38th Parallel. To get them back out it was only just a police action to get them out, but they

wouldn’t go and it was on, and the Chinese came in and helped them. That was the police action. It went for three years and it still hasn’t finished. Still haven’t signed the armistice.

Well, because Bob Menzies said so. When it started, the occupation, the occupation forces, 77 Squadron was part of the occupation, because when I

first got there we wore the British Commonwealth Occupation flashes on our sleeve. But when the Korean, I got up there just after, well, six months after the Korean War. When the Korean War broke out the squadron were packing up to come home. Bob Menzies said, “Twenty-four hours and you’re in. You’ve got to go in.” He ordered the squadron into action along with the Americans. This culminated from there.

Didn’t worry me. Well I was there and it didn’t worry me. I was only young, a young fellow, and I was after a bit of action, a bit of adventure. That’s all it amounted to.

No, didn’t know anything, not much at all. Well, when I joined up

in 1949 there was only just the occupation forces and nothing much else I don’t think. Apparently there was a lot of seeding going on, but look at it today, it’s culminated in all of this today. When I was a young fellow I didn’t think much of this. It didn’t worry me very much. All I wanted to do was be in the air force and get around and see the world.

Yeah, according to the book. I get it on the net. See, they were there for three years after I left and apparently there were a few loss of lives after that.

There were a couple of pilots there, and back in Japan, yeah. I wouldn’t know.

I knew the sergeant pilot. Pee Wee Robinson, I knew him,

but the other chaps, oh, there’s Mitchell, I knew him and I knew Tom Stony, yeah, knew the NCO [Non Commissioned Officer]. I knew the two RAF blokes. I didn’t have much to do with them.

Well two of them collided over Kimpo coming back into land, and Pee Wee Robinson, he ran into the side of a hill one night doing night flying in a Mustang and that was that.

No because I was on duty crew, but I heard it. You could hear it on the (UNCLEAR) EG, like the radio and all that because they were in contact with him, but all of a sudden there was silence and that was it. So, no, that was, yeah.

We were virtually sort of by ourselves over the other side of the strip. We didn’t have anything to do with the army. They were up in

the hills, but we were there. Our main job was to get the aeroplanes serviceable, get them bombed-up, armed-up and get them away. The Americans over this side, and all we did with them we just had meals, but we were attached to them under the fighter interceptor wing. But we had our own CO [Commanding Officer], Squadron Leader Creswell, and I don’t remember any Americans coming. They probably did. I can remember the chap coming around, driving around with a 16-mill projector on the back of his vehicle

and all the cigarettes and the candy delivering over to us.

Nothing. I didn’t know them. No, I didn’t.

Yeah. I wasn’t personally involved with them. They were nice chaps. Pee Wee Roberts, he was a nice chap too. That night he’d been in the duty crew hut and then he, saw him off.

And then there was another fellow too, this, he was the flight sergeant in charge of my section. He got killed in an aircraft up there, Ozzie Haines. He got killed going up to Tokyo. Ozzie wasn’t a pilot but he was sitting in the back seat and the aircraft crashed and he was the boss of the section. No one could get over that for a while, you know, because he was here today and gone tomorrow, gone this afternoon,

and he was the flight sergeant in charge. And after I left there, the old flight lieutenant, the bloke that nominated me to dig the toilet hole, he got killed in the back seat of a Meteor too. It crashed, but this is after I came home.

Ozzie, yeah. I can still see him. It’s,

I don’t know. Well, Ozzie was the Flight Sergeant in charge of 491 Maintenance Electrical. We were 77 Squadron but we used to use their facilities while they were training on jets because we were 77 Squadron. But my boss was Danny Hogan, the corporal bloke. Danny from Subiaco, he was a nice chap. You’d go over to Korea and you wouldn’t see these blokes for a while.

Only when you came back from R&R or to go home or something like that.

He was a nice chap, Ozzie Haines, yeah. He was a nice chap from what I can remember. This is 1951, but he always treated me pretty well, you know.

I think they were all pretty upset about it

because he was a pretty good boss from what I can remember.

I don’t know. I came home not long after that and I don’t know.

Yeah, there was another chap there, Reg Duleary. I think Reg might’ve taken his place. Reg was the Sergeant. Reg ended up a Warrant Officer when I was at Wagga as an instructor. He used to tell me,

yeah, they were pretty upset about it. But us squadron chaps, we didn’t know. We were by ourselves and we didn’t know much about these maintenance blokes. If you went on a week’s R&R back to Japan they’d send one of the maintenance chaps over to take your place and they’d be there for a week and when you went back they’d get the aircraft back to Japan. Just rotation, you know, so you didn’t get to know these aircrew very much and you didn’t get to know many of the maintenance chaps

because we were going and coming all the time.

I still think of them, but it’s one of those things I suppose that happens. I can remember at Malaya a couple of people lost their lives up there and I was at the funeral firing party, and you go to work the next

day and they’re not there, not there in the office, gone. But you don’t, well, I don’t forget it. It’s there all the time. Like if I’m here by myself I’ll sit down. Yvonne might be in bed or she’s away somewhere and if I start reading about something all this starts to come back and you start thinking about these things and about what happened and the day it happened and what-have-you.

The refugees, the heat, the flies, the dust. Yeah, I can remember the aeroplanes. There were aeroplanes all over the place going and coming all the time. The smell of kerosene, burning kerosene, because they’re all jets, and the

troops. Troops everywhere, airmen. Another thing too, the Americans used to keep, 77 Squadron blokes, used to keep them pretty high regard. We’d go for our meals and there’d be a queue mile long and they’d say, “Up here guy,” and straight in the front, you know. They’d always put us in the front. They were good.

Well, a pretty good relationship. We’d

meet them on leave and they’d come back to Iwakuni. A lot of them were based at Iwakuni, and you’d get to know them. That’s the same with me, I met quite a few American chaps back here in Australia. I met a few over in America, and real good friends, you know. But no, they were good.

Yeah, always. I think Australia has got a good reputation all the time with Americans, all the time.

The look of the poor buggers. They had nowhere to go and they were up and down. We had a little, our little, we had a little Korean chap, Pak Sun Yip was his name. I’ll never forget it. Only little, a little boy. He didn’t know where his parents were and he didn’t know whether they were dead or still out being herded around as refugees. The communists would come in

from the top and of course they’d all leave. They’d go to the south to try to get away from them. As soon as the communists were pushed back, they’d go back again to try to go to their land, into their villages and what-have-you. And Pak Sun Yip, he never ever found his people, when I left anyhow. But he used to come in and just clean the tent up a little bit for us and we’d get some food for him from the mess, from the American mess. We’d bring food

over and give him a feed and all that. But he’d sleep wherever he could. At times he’d sleep underneath the boards of the tent and that, you know, because he didn’t know where his parents were and all that and I don’t know whatever happened to Pak Sun Yip because when I went back to Japan to go home Pak Sun Yip was still there, still in Korea with the blokes. So I don’t know whatever happened to him.

He was a nice little chap, nice little bloke, yeah. He, only a little fellow, you don’t know

how, they all look the same. You don’t know how old these people are and he was only a kid, but I suppose he would be about twelve or thirteen. Might’ve been more, but he looked after us and he’d be sitting there when we’d go for a meal. He’d be sitting on the step waiting for us to come back because we’d have something to eat for him. He’d be sitting there at meal times, he’d be sitting there in the morning. He’d be sitting there all the time, but he’d always make himself busy. He’d clean up inside and you know, clean the floors, everything like that.

He wouldn’t get in with those refugees as they were going. He didn’t know where his mother and father were. He didn’t know whether they were dead, but we used to look after him.

A lot of sign languages, no problem. They learnt, they learn a few words.

A little bit, yeah, only a few words.

No,

but yeah, he was a funny little fellow. I often think of Pak Sun Yip, wondering whatever happened to him. Poor little fellow, didn’t know where his parents were. Was all in the world by himself amongst all that mob.

I would just look out the back. All I can remember is looking out the back behind the tents. See, there were only tracks in Korea then. There weren’t any highways that I know of, and you’d see them. They were all over the place. They wouldn’t even look at you. They just kept going, and hundreds of them, thousands of them. They’d just keep going, just walking. That’s all they’d do, and you couldn’t keep them around the place. They’d overrun the joint. Probably thieve everything

around the place and they’d overrun your tent, the works. You had to keep them, well, they weren’t allowed on there. They might get, clog up the airfield and things like that, the runways and that. They’d get on the runways. You didn’t want that, so they had to keep them away.

I’d never had to be in that position and I thought, “Gee..” Well, you know, it’s a thing you never forget. But it’s happened. Things like

that happen and it’s still happening. What’s the world, it’s a pretty crook old world, isn’t it, when it’s still happening? There’s refugees all around the place now. I couldn’t get over the amount of refugees all around the country. You couldn’t do anything for them, couldn’t do a thing. They’d just keep going, roaming around the place. They had ox carts and things like that.

What, any particular aircraft?

Well the thing that I remember most, I’d stand there with our Meteors. They didn’t have JATO take-off, J-A-T-O,

jet assisted take-off. I used to stand there and watch these F80 shooting stars coming up along the strip and it was fascinating to watch them. They’d have two thousand pounds of bomb under their wing. They’d be going for their life and he’d press the button and up it would go. There would be smoke everywhere and up he’d go, and the noise, and like I thought, “Crikey!” I’ll never for get that. JATO, jet assisted take-off.

And when I first saw it I didn’t know what was going. I thought the aircraft had crashed. But no. I remember all that. I can remember aeroplanes one after the other all over the place, and I can remember one day we had an American chap came in on this Shooting Star and he only had one wheel down. Couldn’t get the other two down. He was only a young chap too, only late teens I suppose, and

we were listening on the meejeep [?]. They were telling him what to do, go around and around and burn off fuel. He started to break down a little bit and they were, he was starting to panic a little bit, but anyhow they got him down. He made a good landing on one wheel, but the aircraft pulled up right down the end of the strip and he jettisoned his canopy and out he got and straight down along the wing of the aircraft, was over like that, going for his life and the whole aircraft blew up. He’d only just made it,

and I thought, “You beauty!” I could’ve shook him by the hand after everything he went through trying to get him down, like the control tower trying to get him down. He was only a boy too, but he made it. I felt like racing up and grabbing him by the hand, but everyone was clapping, you beauty, you know, and away he went and the next minute the whole aircraft went up. Those things like that they stay in my

memory.

No. There were some nice fellows amongst them, but they’d come back from a mission, you’d talk to them to see what was going, like ask them if everything was OK and what was wrong and what-have-you. But they didn’t have much to do with us. From what I can hold, or right throughout my air force career I didn’t have much to do

with aircrew, officers and that.

Yeah, the way they’d go, you’d think, “Gee, I wish I was there.” But it was a bit hard. You get used to it because you’re working on the things and that’s the next best thing anyhow, you’re working on it. You got to know the blokes who were flying it. I had a lot of respect for them, the pilots. I

had a real lot of respect for them. I reckon they were game, you know, but they didn’t mix much, with us anyway. They mixed amongst themselves. But no, it used to fascinate me to see all these aircraft going. I wish I had have had the education to enable me to be there.

Yeah, well without us they couldn’t fly. If anything was wrong with the aircraft and they couldn’t take off, that was it. If some of the wiring was shot out or generators had packed up and starters and all that type of business, they couldn’t get the thing off the ground. No aircraft in the air force can’t operate without ground staff,

because the pilots don’t fix them. The pilots only fly them. But you’ve got to have the ground staff to do all the maintenance on them. That’s why these chaps go to the air force technical college to learn all this stuff.

Yeah, it’s always in your mind, yeah, but you’ve always got an NCO checking it, checking your job. He’s got to sign for the

work having been completed and checked and all that, and that was that.

Well, knowing the systems, all the systems on the aircraft. You get that way that after a while you know the aircraft. You study up the systems and you get to know that,

if anything goes wrong you know where it is, you know. Yeah, getting to know the aircraft and know your job.

It was only Mustangs and Meteors, only two.

Right throughout my career in the air force I worked on quite a few different type of aircraft.

Yeah.

Well, one was a jet and one was a piston engine

and the Meteors were light years ahead of the Mustangs at the time in all the electrical systems and all that type of business. Yeah, big difference, big difference.

Yeah, they’d come back at times a bit cranky, yeah.

But there was nothing much you could do because it happened in the air and it had been signed off as being OK and he had accepted it, and that was it. That was it.

“Don’t you know how to do your job?” or things like that. They’d storm away and wouldn’t say much. But the chap they’d go to would be the engineering officer because he always had a couple of bars. He was a flight

lieutenant and he’d go through them mostly, and then the engineer would come and chew you, have a go at you about keeping an eye on things. But then the chain of command too, it would come down from the flight sergeant to the sergeant and the warrant officer and right down to the bloke who’s doing the job, and he’d be under supervision all the time anyhow.

I wasn’t real

worried about it because I was fairly confident in what I was doing and I liked the aeroplanes and I was fairly confident in the systems, and besides that I was confident in the blokes I was working with, my own mustering. They were real good. They were good chaps to work with and they knew their job, but there was nothing I was really worried about.

No.

Not that I know of because when you get into a place like that you’re fairly close-knit. The aircrew, well I never had a drink with them at all, but later on I think they had a bit of a bar and that there and I think they might’ve come down and had a few drinks with the blokes. I don’t know. I have

socialised with them at various times. Not in Korea, but back in Australia and there’s some nice chaps amongst them. When they’re away like that I can understand that they could be a bit toey because after all they’re the ones that are doing the fighting and they’re right up there, up high and doing the fighting and all that. They want to know that everything is OK, and you do your best to make sure that everything is OK, and I think everyone trusts everyone else.

You’ve got a lot of faith and a lot of trust in your mates.

Same thing. A couple of chaps up there that were friends of mine here in the electrical section went up there, and yeah, good, real good, all mates. Came back and still mates. Went

to weddings and we’ve been mates all our lives. When they went to meet the maker, always go to their funerals, the works, you know. Yes, never forget, never forget them.

Just the fact that being a long way away from home I think. Just being in a war zone. Like we were ten thousand mile away.

It’s a long way away from home. They’d say, “What did you do?” What can you do? You’re twenty bloody two years of age, you’re ten thousand mile away from home, you’re getting a bottle of beer a night per man per haps and a carton of cigarettes a week and a carton of candy and you’re by yourself. I can remember sitting in the tent in Korea of a night time and you feel like crying. You start thinking about home. If you got a letter from home you start reading the letter, you know, tears come in your eyes. You look around

and all you see is the bloody tent walls, and you look up, the aircraft up in the strip. There’s aircraft over here going for their lives and JATOs, assisted take-offs, the works, and you look at these letters and you think Jeez, ten thousand miles away from home and it’d be raining or dust or snowing. Of course you form a bond with all your mates. One of the blokes might be asleep. He’d

wake up and say, “How you going mate?” “Yeah, good.” “What, are you reading? A letter from home?” They’d tell you the things that were going on at home. No, it’s things you never forget and mateship that, you couldn’t buy it, couldn’t buy it at all. I’ve got chaps that come around here and the house is open all the time and the same when I go to their place, and their wives and families are life-long friends. Never forget them.

Being over there, as I say, you’re ten thousand mile away from home and just living in tents, just eight or ten of you in a tent. Of course, when you go up to work if anyone’s a little bit behind in their trade you’d give them a hand, whatever you could do, you know. We’re all in it together, as they used to say we’ll all throw on a guernsey, have the same guernsey on. None of this business sitting back and waiting for someone to finish. You’d hop in and help him.

The same when you went on leave. I can remember on leave a few fights we had. They got into fights, you’re in there giving them a hand too. Well, it’s always the same in the services, but amongst the civilians in Wagga and around the place, some of the towns you’d go into, you might get in with the locals, you might get into a brawl with the young fellows that didn’t like you, that had been in the service and jealous and what-have-you. Of course, if your mates were in, you were in too. I’ve

seen a few. But you’d look after yourselves wherever, look after him. No, it’s a long way, as they say a long way from home, and that was it.

Yeah, I used to look forward to my letters from home. Yeah, my sister’s still got, she’s seventy-three years of age and she’s still got letters I wrote to her from

Korea. Mum’s dead and my other sister’s dead. I don’t know whether they’ve kept them. Her husband’s dead, but my other, my youngest sister down at Redcliffe, she’s still got these letters from home that I wrote from Korea.

You couldn’t write too much at all because your letters were censored. You’d just say that everything was OK and that all’s well, but what I’d write about,

about them, about their health. I’d write about my dog. I had a dog, Lucky, and I’d always want to know how Lucky was, a little Pomeranian and all that, and how some of the rellies were and all that, but you wouldn’t say much about anything up there. You wouldn’t talk about the, you’d say, “Everything is OK and I’m well. I haven’t been sick or I haven’t had any flu or anything like that.” You could’ve had bloody flu but you wouldn’t worry them, but

that’s all. I’d want to know how the dog was and how the uncles and aunts were at home and how the kids were, yeah. That’s the only thing you could write about.

No.

I didn’t see.

At night time you could see the flashes from up in the hills.

Well I suppose when you look at it that way and look back at it, it was a fairly nerve-wracking time of my life, but then I don’t think it worried me that much. I was a bit worried about getting out of the place. When they said, “You’re posted home,” I didn’t,

I said, “OK, fair enough.” I was out like a flash, but no, they, I don’t know. The night time used to worry me a little bit with these aircraft going off. You didn’t know whether you were going to get one through the tent, and you didn’t know if you were going to get any of these refugees in through the tents. I suppose it did worry me a bit, but I suppose you get used to it after a

while.

Yeah, all the broken sleep and the noise. As you say, the noise, and the smell of petrol and that. I could never ever get to sleep; couldn’t get a decent sleep. Yeah, the noise was all the time, aircraft taking off and

going and coming all the time. The Americans, they had a lot of aeroplanes.

Well, I can remember going up to Kawana, going shopping, of course with the admiral and his wife, and the dancers of a night time. At night time they’d always put on

a happy hour type of business. This is back in the big leave centre. You’d get down there, everyone would get down there and she’d be full-on all the time and they’d have card games, then the Sukiyaki night. That was I think Tuesday night or Wednesday night or something. We’d just go down the Sukiyaki hut. You could see how all the uniforms were all done nice. The Japanese used to do that for us at the laundry, it cost us nothing, and

the girls, they’d be the room girls looking after your room, but they’d put on their kimonos and they’d come down and they’d serve you all the Sukiyaki, all that, and that was good, and you’d have a rice wine. Then you have the beer. After a while you’d be singing and carrying on and it was good. But they had their, they had their own beer, the Korean beer. They red label and blue label. Red label for her majesty’s forces only, but the girls used

give us some rice wine, heat it up. No, it was good, it was fabulous. Then have a round of golf. Chick Pin night, Chick Tin or something his name was, he was the, Chick Tin or Chick Pin, he was the pro golfer, a Chinese bloke, and you’d go out and he’d give you a few lessons and then they’d have a caddy and it was nearly always a girl, and she was the caddy. Then

you’d go around and you’d do your nine holes or eighteen holes. It was always, the nine hole there was always a bar and it was always manned. Like they’d have a Japanese working behind there. Yeah, you’d have all that, it was good. You had the swimming pool, you’d go swimming, but the Sukiyaki nights were good and every night in the bar was good, and the meals were spot on, they were right on. It was all

waitress service and all that. No, that was the good part.

They were nice. There were some really nice ones amongst them; lovely. There were a couple that they had in the hangar back there at Iwakuni, they were university-educated and they could speak English. But they ended up typists and what-have-you. Some ended up waitresses, the works, because money, you see. They wanted money.

They were hardly getting anything after the war, so no, they were good. They were real nice, some nice looking ones amongst them.

No. I was a bit keen on one up there. Koko-san was her name. Koko-san, yeah.

No. Can’t fraternise. Just to say Koko-san was real nice. They, I can’t get into, you know, but they always…wool, they always wanted wool. They’d always knit for winter and all that. So I thought there’s something there. I used to say to Mum, “Send me up some wool.” And then these

big parcels they used to send up to me, there’d be these skeins of wool. I’d give it to Koko-san. She’d knit herself sweaters and all that, and while I was over in Korea she used to knit me these little socks and send them over on the aircraft for me. She worked on the unit too and she could, afternoon, she had a pushbike, I had a pushbike. ‘Dootensha’ they call them, I’d meet her down the main

gate, cycle into town. It was good, nice.

Yeah. I still think of Koko-san. I often wonder what, she was a nice girl. She could speak English pretty well. She went to the University of, I think, Osaka. I often wonder what happened after I left because they didn’t have much at that stage of the game

because they were still under occupation. I often wonder what happened. Of course, when you’re ten thousand mile away you can’t do much.

Yeah, fifteen months. Malaya, I think it was more active than Korea when I look back over it because

the aeroplanes were a lot bigger. The communists, you didn’t know where they were, they were infiltrated amongst everyone. You’d go into town, into Bugis Street or all over the place, you didn’t know whether you were sitting next to one, and out on the base they had a picket fence right around, a steel picket fence, fairly high, and the Malay Air Police used to do patrols around there because these communists

or terrorists tried to get in to bomb the aircraft. A couple of times there the Malay Police went out in the night time to relieve their mates on shift, didn’t come back and when they sent patrols out to have a look they found all of their throats cut because of the kunai grass, the long grass and everything around the perimeter, it was that.

And snakes, I remember the snakes; cobras. But night bombing: you didn’t know what time you were going to knock off at times because they’d go night bombing as well and it was pretty well spot-on that it was going all the time. But when we’d go into town you’d have to watch yourself.

Well,

this Chin Ping, he was with the British during the war, during World War II when the Japanese took Malaya, and they took off into the jungle. They went up to Thailand, all over the place. Of course the British, when they surrendered this mob, they’d gone. Anyway, this Chin Ping, he wanted to get rid of the British out

of Malaya then. The Queen, not knighted him, but they gave him some whopping great medal, or the King gave him a whopping great medal, and he wanted to get rid of the British then and he wanted to take over Malaya. So there were thousands of them and they started to come down and infiltrated with all the local population. They’d get into the villages all over the place. They’d get in the rubber plantations and

get out these peasants to get on their side and get rid of the British. Of course when it was all over, the Malayan Emergency they called it, the British, they sent their, they had army, navy, air force and of course we had the air force up there. They’d sent one squadron up and try to defeat them. I believe there’s still a few of them going today right up to the Thai border. They bombed right up

there too. They tried to bomb them into submission. The army, the British Army and the Australian Army, they were up there too. They’d bottle these people up in the jungles and call for air strikes to try to obliterate them. They’d just melt into the jungle again.

Yeah. The Lincoln aircraft was a big four-engined thing.

It was the follow-on from the Lancaster; the Lancaster bomber during the war. And you’ve probably heard about the Lancasters over Germany and the big four engined-things and the Dam Busters and all that? The same aircraft, only the Lincoln came after the Lancaster but it was too late when the war finished to use it. But the British used it and it was four-bladed, big engines,

four-bladed prop and would carry twelve thousand pound of bombs and ammunition, the works, and they were there… Well, you saw the squadron in front of one, and they’d wreak havoc around the jungle.

Well yeah, they were big. But I did a course, two months course here when I left 87 Squadron and came up there before I went to Malaya,

but they were huge aircraft, and plenty of work to do on them. And of course we used to help the fitter armourers to bomb up on those and they carried a big bomb, the 1,000 pounders, the 500 pounders and 4,000 pounders, yeah, big cookies.

Well,

I don’t know. I was an elec fitter then, they’d re-mustered into a higher group and I could work, I was free to work on all aspects of the aircraft. I was a bit limited up in Korea being a serviceman, and I could work on all the aspects of the aircraft and it was a lot more interesting.

Well, the bomb turrets for one thing.

Well, the Lincolns had gun turrets, I’m sorry, gun turret in the front with a couple of machine guns, point-five [0.5-inch], and it was up and down, and they had a twenty-mill [20mm] cannon in the mid-upper and half way along the back of the aircraft, and two cannons, and the turrets used to rotate. The big one used to rotate and if anything

went wrong with that, that was pretty hard to fix because it was fairly intricate. Then they had the tail turret right at the back and the gunner in there and he had his four machine guns that used to go up and down and around. They were fairly intricate. And the bomb circuits; you had a lot of circuits for the bombs, and look after all that. It was just a big aircraft and there as a lot in it.

Yeah.

Well, it was a friend of mine. He was an elec fitter too. He’s dead now, I won’t mention his name, but he got up to do a servicing in the aircraft and he’s in the cockpit and he must’ve hit the wrong switch and the bombs dropped, but they weren’t fused. When they take off and get in the air they’d fuse the bombs, put the cap, and

they all dropped down on the tarmac, ‘clunk clunk clunk clunk’, one after the other. Everyone’s looking, they all ran for the hangars. Yeah, that happened. Of course if they had’ve been fused they would’ve gone off and blew us right up yonder. But that happened down on the tarmac. Up there they had the maintenance hangar on the tarmac, the tarmac area down the bottom. Maintenance would pull the aircraft in and

do up to a ‘D’ servicing. Anything bigger than that they’d fly them home to Australia and fly another one back. I didn’t work much in the hangar. I didn’t go much on the hangar working on aeroplanes. I liked being on the tarmac where it was all happening, and we had our tents down the flight line, out on the flight line. That’s where everything was happening and that’s where I worked mainly, and you got to know the aircrew there,

because it used to carry seven or eight men, gunners and what-have-you. You got to know them. That was fairly good, but the only thing that was a bit uncomfortable up there was the heat because you’re right on the tropics and you get in the aircraft as well and burning. You’d have to go down the back and crawl up into the aircraft and do servicing and what-have-you and it would be burning hot, and get under the wing to get out of

the heat. Your tarmac would be very hot, but a lot of nights up there you didn’t know when you were finishing. You’d come back silly hours of the morning, two and three o’clock of a morning. The aircraft would come back and it there was anything wrong with them you’d have to fix them and then you had to refuel them too. You couldn’t leave them overnight because of condensation. You’d have to refuel them and they carried a lot of juice, petrol.

I don’t

know, about one thousand gallons. I don’t know to be quite truthful. A lot, there was a lot of fuel tanks. No, it was fairly full-on up there and they were there for eight years bombing the terrorists. But we had our good times. We had a couple of Christmases up there. The RAF was there, it was their base, RAF Base Tanga. We had Christmas up there and…NAAFI [Navy, Army, Air Force Institute]

They had their NAAFIs.

Well they used to put a Christmas dinner on. The food wasn’t that good but all the beers and what-have-you, a bit of a party. Yeah, it was good. No, had a pool on the unit and used to go to the pool. They had Chinese cooks there and they used to cook up toasted

sandwiches and what-have-you. Then just outside the gate was the Tanga village, you’d go down there and do your shopping and buy clothes. All the tailors knew you. It was good.

The Tanga village? Wasn’t many there, but they had a bar, had a couple of eating houses. They had a big place at the back where all the bearers used to stay, all their rooms and what-have-you.

But yeah, you’d go down there and you could have some meals there. It was good, they’d look after us and it was quite good. It was on the main road into Singapore, Bukit Timah and Singapore. No, it was alright.

No. No leave until you came back. Then we’d go into town. You’d go through the, they had nice hotels in Singapore even then, but we’d go to Raffles and

a rickshaw ride occasionally and into the Cockpit, that was another place we used to go to. But you had to watch it. As I was saying just a while ago, when looking back over it now, it was a bit of a worrying time in Korea and there. You didn’t know what was going to happen at times with all the activity around the place, especially too in Malaya. They didn’t like us, like the communists, because

of all the bombing and what-have-you. I was in the football team up there. We had the South East Asia football team. We used to play for the Sanderson Cup. I don’t know how they got the name, the Sanderson Cup, Sanderson. But we, 1953, we won it for the first time and the football teams are there, and they played the final over at Changi and we won. We beat the

RAF and the big gun in charge of the South East Asian Air Force, Air Marshall the Earl of Bandon, and his 2IC [Second in Command] was an Australian, Air Vice Marshall Scherger, Frederick Scherger. And he’d come to the footy games and present the cup. Scherger, he was a pretty nice bloke. He ended up Air Chief Marshall Sir Frederick Scherger in Australia. He’s been dead a long

time now. But yeah, the Sanderson Cup. We got around playing a lot, a lot of football, and they even flew us up to Kuala Lumpur once to play football up there. We used to play on Poppy Day, they call it Poppy Day, the 5th of November. Back here we used to call it Remembrance Day or something. Anyhow, they flew us up there in a couple of Lincolns. They flew us up and played up there, stayed the weekend.

That was a good thing, being in a team, because there were a lot of teams around the town. There was a lot of English. They had navy, army, air force at different bases, so it was good. We also played against the Fijians.

Yeah, and the Chinese University there; the University of Singapore. All young fellows. Yeah, it was good, plenty to do.

The South East Asia Air Force, the English, they organised. We beat them. Yeah, it was good. But I had fifteen months there and I got posted home.

All Australian, RAAF. All RAAF chaps. The squadron, just out of the squadron.

See, there was only 135 of us in the squadron, so there wasn’t many of us, but there were a lot of English. They had Sunderland flying boats, you name it, Vampire jets and Hornet fighter-bombers; the works. And English WAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Air Force] and English army girls. There were thousands of English up there. Singapore was a big base, the English base.

Our base, Tanga, was over near the straits, the Johor Bahru, over near the straits that go across to Johor Bahru. They were all around the Singapore area. We were a few mile out of Singapore, on the road to Malaya.

Yeah.

But we were still, we were on an RAF base. There was RAF, Royal Air Force, English, and RAAF. We were what they call a ‘lodger unit’ on the base. We were there for years. We had the bombers and they had the fighter bombers.

Alright, good. Yeah, they were good.

Yeah. They’d have a maximum bombing effort. I always remember the maximum bombing efforts. You’d be up there at daylight and you’d be loading up bombs. You’d service your aircraft according to your own mustering and then you’d give the fitter armourers a hand to do all the bombing up and arming up and all that. And the aircraft would take off and they’d be away for a few hours, and back it would come. And you’d

do any US’s, unserviceabilities, and you’d refuel and get it ready again for the next time. But it wasn’t only one, they were going and coming all the time. See, we had something like twelve or fifteen Lincoln bombers there and they were going and coming all the time. It would be pretty well full-on. The weekends would come, you could have a day off, they’d roster you on a day off. And Wednesday afternoon,

I always remember Wednesday afternoon. You’d have Wednesday afternoon off because of the heat. They’d send you down to your hut, it was just a long hut, and I think there were sixteen beds on either side and a cement floor. You could have a sleep if you wanted to, but every week they’d have inspection, foot inspection for tinea. Inspections if the boys got naughty

going to town, get things they shouldn’t get. They had an inspection alright.

Yeah. ‘Short arm inspection.’

Yeah. You’d stand there and they’d inspect you.

A little bit embarrassing, but that didn’t last for long. They’d check the tinea, was a big thing. As a matter of fact I think I still get it.

See, every afternoon it was saturated with, the place would be saturated, monsoons every afternoon.

They just give you powder to clean it all up. We had a big medical there, the RAF had a big hospital there at Tanga, but just foot powder.

He had to go to another hospital over at Changi. They had a place

over there.

Not that I know of. I don’t know, Nicole, I don’t know, but I think, I don’t know. Never had it.

Yeah, quite a few of them. Even married chaps. They’d end up

over in the hospital.

No, they’d take them away, but we’d have to drive past the hospital if we were going somewhere playing football and of course we’d always sing out and whistle to them. But it was bad for that. You had to watch it. Our CO, he was right onto it.

At the gate. If you went outside they’d say, “Take these with you.” We couldn’t travel in buses. I think I told you before, we had to travel by taxi wherever we went because of grenades and being ambushed, whatever. If you were caught in a bus you were charged, yeah.

No. I didn’t

go out that much. I wasn’t game half the time.

Yeah, it was. Down around Tanga at that stage of the game, 1952, they were full-on then, and later on, Butterworth, right up along the Malay peninsular, things were a lot better. No, the early part of it they were all infiltrated all over the place. You didn’t know who was who.

I don’t know. I think it was OK. I always remember the poor old English airmen didn’t get paid too much. We used to get our pay plus an allowance and our allowance was as much as what they’d get in pay, and all these tailor blokes down in the village they knew everything. Everything that went on they knew, and they knew that we used to get pretty good money

and the English didn’t. As soon as we went down on our pay day, went down, by the English pay day everything, sales would be on. Nice shirts, you used to get nice Arrow Shirts and Van Heusens and all those type of things, and they were good tailors as well, knock up trousers and that. On their sale day, the English sale day, the prices would be down, but as soon as our pay day came, up would go all the prices because it was Australian

pay day. And we used to give money to the English chaps to get us some shirts on their pay night. But we used to get as much in allowances as what they got in their whole pay. I think the locals seemed to concentrate on us because we had more money. They were a pretty shifty mob when they liked.

They liked the money. They were good salesmen.

Not many in Malaya. In town, yes, some of the things in town that happened, we used to pal up with the Americans and we palled up from the American Embassy and they used to take us, like the girls and the men, they used to take us around to where they were staying and there would be

parties and it was good. But funny things, well a lot of funny thing happened in the mess or in the NAAFI. We used to have our fun nights and all that. Yeah, I don’t know.

Well, down at the pool. That’s about it, pool and drinking up

in the NAAFI, the top NAAFI. That’s what they call their canteen. Lord Nuffield started those off and they used to put on pretty cheap beer.

No, not for us. In the senior NCO mess they did. See, they had three messes, there was the officers’ mess, no, four messes, officers’ mess, sergeants’ mess, aircrew mess, aircrew NCO mess and the

airmen’s mess. But we weren’t invited to any of their do’s and they weren’t invited to any of ours that I know of. No, football took up my time. I used to play a lot of football always. Footy was on all the time up there. That’s rugby league.

Sometimes twice a week, might be three times a week sometimes. See, they’d come over to

play us, these other teams, and take a turn about, but it depended on ‘the exigencies of the service’, they called it then, whether they gave you time off or anything like that. Some nights you’d go into town and have a real good time. There was the Happy World and the New World and there was Bugis Street which was good.

It was just a big place where

you could eat and they had, like Luna Park, a bit of a Luna Park thing. Happy World and New World, yeah. But there was a lot to see in Singapore. As I say you had to watch yourself. You didn’t know who was who. But the locals around the place, around Tanga there, they knew us and they were good. They were always good.

No.

No, I got that when I first joined up here. I got that done in Brisbane.

They were all the rage then.

Twenty-one. Hey?

RAAF.

Yeah, I got it done down in Brisbane. Ten shillings then.

A pretty good crowd. All the squadron would be there and of course most of the base. Tanga was a big base but there were only one hundred and fifty of us there, but

a few hundred English, and yeah, they’d all turn up to the football to barrack for their team.

Yeah, rugby league. No, sorry, rugby union. You couldn’t play league in the services then because it was classed as a professional game so they had to play union. Yeah, it was pretty good.

Who was he now? One of our chaps.

Yeah, I think it was Jimmy Thomas. He was one of the coaches. They were a couple. I’ve got the photos there. I can’t think. Arthur Knight, he was one of the coaches. A couple of them there, I can’t remember their names, but if you want to have a look at the photos they’re all there, later on. A lot of these names now have escaped me. A lot of these chaps have gone too. They’ve gone up yonder

I don’t know whether I liked it, but I put up with it. It’s just one of those places. I was sent there and you make the best of it, but I didn’t cry about being posted back home. Everyone looked forward to going home. See, the heat, the heat was oppressive and you know,

I don’t know. There wasn’t anything really, see, it wasn’t that long after the war. Singapore then was not like it is now. Singapore was just a big kampong village when I was there, 1952, and Raffles was there. If you went into Raffles it’s a fair way away and they were a little bit snobbish in there because all the

millionaires used to get around there and Chinese millionaires and what-have-you. We were friends with some of these plantation owners up-country. They used to call it ‘up-country’. They’d be up in Malaya and they’d come down and their wives, and they’d come down and spend a few days in Singapore and we befriended a couple. They befriended us, and we used to look forward to them coming down. They came down in armoured cars and all that.

Well,

through going into the Cockpit, the top class hotels. They had a lot of money because they had plantations, but they were nice. Everyone, Australians got on well with anyone up there, anyone. Every time I went out they were very good to us, and yeah,

quite a few places. A couple of places there you couldn’t go to, the Cricket Club. The Singapore Cricket Club, pretty poshy. There were still a lot of English up there, a lot of real pukka style English that were there before the war.

How did what?

Good, good. There’s one there, him and his

wife, I can’t think of their names now, they used to ring us when they were coming down town, coming down from up country, and tell us that they’d be down and where they were staying, and we’d go in and see them and have a few drinks. Then all go out on the town. But you’d have to watch yourself. You were pretty safe in Singapore if you stayed around the mainstream, the nice places, kept going

to the nicer places. But Bugis Street, you were likely to get knifed sometimes at times. You didn’t know who was who. I saw some nice old brawls around there between the English and Kiwis [New Zealanders] and all that, yeah.

Yeah, these Fijians, them and the English, they got stuck into it, and of course you used to have the

English Air Police, Pommy Redcaps [British Military Police], they used to patrol the place pretty well. But this night they sort of got out of hand and everyone took off. I think there might’ve been a few terrorists around the place too that were throwing in the heap. There was gun fire and knives flashing, the works, and they took off. People running all over the place, a blood coup. I think there were a couple of Fijians stabbed that night. We didn’t go back

to the place. We heard they were stabbed, murdered, you know, terrorists.

Yeah.

Yeah, we had a couple in Singapore. Some of the, over fares, what do you call it? Rickshaws and that, they’d

start, wanted to swing punches and what-have-you, yeah. But a couple of stoushes down at the British Club in town. Wasn’t that much to worry about. We’d go into town too. They were great bingo people, the English, and they had their British Empire Club in Singapore and we used to like going in there. I always remember Viv,

Viv Jeffries, the chap that joined up with me from home, he came to Malaya too, and Viv and I were out on the base this night and we didn’t have any money. What are we going to do? So we raked up enough to get a taxi into town and Viv said, “We might see one of the blokes and borrow some money in town.” We went around to the British, to the UJ [Union Jack] Club and they were having the

bingo game and it was the jackpot. So we had enough for two tickets and I got a ticket and we were doing pretty well. I won it. I think it was twelve hundred straits dollars in those days, which is a lot of money up there, twelve hundred. We were right. It was Friday night and we stayed in town the whole weekend. Then got a taxi home on Sunday night.

No, not much.

Yeah, we drank up well and ate well. Went halves in it, six hundred here and six hundred there, yeah. I still remember that. Old Viv’s standing up on the seat watching when I was doing all the numbers and I think it was number seventy-six or something was the last number, and when seventy-six came up Viv gave such, “Cooee” the whole place stopped and watched who won it. Big place, a lot of people in

there.

Viv, he was a real nice chap. He worked with me at Cracow in the mines. His folks had died. Viv and I, we were friends. There was Viv, myself and another chap, Eddie Plumb. Eddie’s dead now, but he wasn’t in Malaya with us, but we were all in the air force and we worked together in the mines and then we were together in the air force. Viv, instead of, he used to board

at the hotel up home. No, the single men’s quarters. Anyhow, he ended up boarding with my sister and her husband and he was like just one of the family and we joined up together and I was groomsman at his wedding, the works. I think he’s retired now. He lives up in Caloundra. Yeah, we look after each other.

Yeah, he was a good footballer.

Viv could play anyway, he was half-back, the works. He was a pretty nippy little bloke.

I played out on the wing. When I was younger, in my younger day I did a fair bit of foot running around the place up home and around the joint. Even at school, win all the prizes, and I used to play on the wing.

They were alright,

pretty heavy, throw a few punches.

Ours because we ended up winning the competition.

I think the ones from Changi, they were pretty hard, and there was Salita, and I don’t know, there were about half a dozen teams, yeah. The Chinese University,

they were pretty nippy. They were only young fellows and they were pretty nippy.

There was nothing else. Like what other, I can’t remember a tennis court unless it was over the other side of the strip. I don’t know, but no, everyone seemed to play football. The Poms were always football mad and of course I used to play football up home and I took it on again.

But it was good, it kept us going. It was real good, and one chap, Bill Pearson, Bill was a friend of mine. Bill now lives up in Bundaberg. He ended up representing Queensland against New South Wales in football, rugby league, and Viv Waterson. Viv’s dead now, but Viv was in Japan and Korea with me, but they ended up

playing for the state. They were good, and Bill, he was a good swimmer, he was a good athlete, his daughter was Michelle Pearson. She was in the Olympics and I think this other young Pearson that swims too, I think he’s a grandson. Yeah, he was a good footballer, Bill. He used to play centre to me. It was always good to have him close handy. He was a big bloke, yeah.

Yeah, quite a few

times. There’d be night flying, night bombing and all that, and I’d have to, it was my turn on, so no problem. But there was always a party after the game. Invariably they’d have to come through Singapore on the way home and they’d pull up in Singapore and get down Beedo [?] on the waterfront, eating all this Chinese food. We didn’t know what we were eating half the time.

Yeah, I always liked Chinese food,

even now, yeah.

No. I was a bit keen on the one that took that photo. That was down at Bukit Timah. But she was a bit hard to get. She was playing her cards, rather than, no, they were a bit hard.

See, in those days there wasn’t many foreign people out around here and the immigration not like it is now, but they were nice, they were nice.

Yeah, I think some of them were married, yeah. You see, when they went back

to Malaya again, when they had Butterworth going, things were different altogether then. I think a lot of them married girls up there. Same as in Japan.

No, there’s not much difference. Australian women are, nothing like an Australian woman, beautiful. But no, they sort of kept their distance

a bit because, I suppose because, should I say, a bit racial, you know? Not tension or anything like that, but different religions and different customs and cultures. They weren’t prepared to give any of that up I don’t think at that early stage of life, but things might be a bit different now. I don’t know. I’m a pretty old sort of bloke now. I’ve been married a long time to an Australian girl.

Well, you didn’t worry because you knew you were there for fifteen months and you were gone, you were home whether you wanted to or not. So you didn’t get into any real relationships or try to get into any relationships, and you couldn’t bring them back to Australia because the immigration wouldn’t let you, at that stage of the game. But we knew we were there only fifteen months.

Yeah.

The girls in the pool on the base, they were always nice to us. They’d serve behind the counter and all that type of business in the pool restaurant and all that, and they were always good. The women down in the village, they got to know you and they called you by your first name. But there was none of this business, you didn’t chase them for sex or anything like

that. Or didn’t see any of the blokes chase them for sex. They were friends, you treated them as friends like old Lucy Sew Sew Girl. They were good boys and all this type of business. But if anyone I think stepped out of line they’d soon know about it. It would get around. But no, they were good. It didn’t worry me.

That’s right, yeah. Flight Lieutenant Colussi, he said, “I’m going to be the first to christen this.” I said, “Just a minute, sir, I dug it.” I had to dig it, I forget the dimensions of it now. It had to be six feet deep, it to be enough for two

seats. So they got some timber over from Japan, they just knocked up the seats and what-have-you, and put some canvas around it and Colussi went in there. I was sitting next to an officer. It didn’t worry me, I didn’t do anything. They put a bit of a ribbon type of thing at the front and cut the ribbon, and here we are both sitting there. I didn’t get a photo. We didn’t have cameras. Colussi’s sitting there and I’m sitting there

and that was the thing with the toilet. He was going to be the first seeing he was the engineer. I said, “Just a minute, I dug the hole.” I can still see Viv Waterson saying, “LAC Hawkins, sir, he comes from Cracow and he’s an ex gold miner and he knows how to dig holes.”

Yeah. Then we had a bottle of beer I think then, one of our

bottles of beer.

Yeah, I was coming down one night from up on the strip and it was pouring rain, pouring. Been up there and helping Danny or some of the chaps, some of the wiring had shot up and I was coming back. I don’t know, it must’ve been one or two o’clock in the morning. There was water everywhere, just a sea of water.

Tripping along and next minute I’m straight down in the slit trench and I nearly drowned I reckon. I woke up and got out and I hear this voice say to me, “Come here and have a cup of cocoa, son, you deserve it.” It was the Salvation Army chap and he gave me a cup of hot cocoa I think and a bun. And I didn’t notice him there,

and then they were the only ones I ever saw up there when I was there. From there on this chap always used to give you a cup of coffee or a cup of cocoa and a bun. I’ve always given to the Salvation Army ever since, always. Never knocked a Salvo [Salvation Army member] back just because of that. But here I was nearly drowned in the trench, in the slit trench, and, “Come and have a cup of cocoa, son, you need it.”

Yeah, marvellous people, marvellous, yeah. I remember that Salvation Army chap. I don’t know how long, they were probably over around the American base too. I don’t know, they were probably all over the place, but I can remember him there. I don’t know for how long but he was there a couple of times as far as I knew.

Yeah, funny

thing. I used to like it, but yeah, what tickled me was Hawkeye. My name was Hawkins and my user name on the internet is Hawkeye77@Optusnet.com.au. When I went into Optus to

join them the chap said to me…I used to be here with another internet service provider and I just had Hawkeye, and he said to me, “What do you want as a user name?” I said Hawkeye@Optusnet. He looked up for a while and he said, “Hawkeye’s gone.” I said, “Hell.” He said, “Any reason why?” I said, “I was in Korea and I always had

the nickname Hawkeye with my mates. That was my nickname, Hawkeye.” He said, “Gee, what you can do, you can put a number after it.” I said, “Well Hawkeye77 because it was 77 Squadron.” So he said, “Yeah, good.” So that was that, and my password I had Kimpo51.

They were. I still think about them, yeah.

No. I used to watch it. No, not where we were. It was good. It was a good try. It could have been with the Americans. So that’s how the Hawkeye77 came along.

Yeah. The army chaps used to come down to our lines, the tents, because towards the end we got a tent and made a bar in there and the counter was made of ammunition boxes and they used to slip down because they didn’t get any beer rations to my knowledge. They’d slip down and have a couple of beers there from the front, and away

they’d go again.

Nothing. They wouldn’t say much at all. Things were a little bit hot, and that’s about it. All in a day’s work to some of those chaps.

Yeah, they were always muddy or dusty. Yeah, they didn’t get much sleep, not in those fox holes. I’ve got a little mate here now. We went back to

Korea in 1999 and poor little fellow, he’s army, but you’ve only got to say, “G’day” to him and he jumps. He’s bomb happy, especially at night time because they were in the fox holes and Korea is hilly like that, both sides.

Could’ve been, but it’s a long time Ellen, a long time. I can’t remember.

No. The negroes, they were good, they were real good, but no. They were always happy to have us around.

Yeah.

I got a letter from the government to say that I hadn’t voted in an election down here, state election, and I don’t know, they must’ve sent it home to Mum and she forwarded it on to me, and then I didn’t worry about it. Then she sent me up another one, it was a final notice about not voting. So I thought, “Hang this.” I sat down in the tent one night and the chaps were there. I said, “Look at this.”

Wrote them a letter, said, “Yes, very sorry I haven’t voted in the state election at such and such a time but at the time I was in Korea and still am and I can’t tell you where it is and what-have-you, but I know being government you’ll find out. So if anyone is game enough to come up and take my vote I’d be only too willing to cast it.” Never heard another thing about it. Never heard another thing.

“What’s going on around the place? The cheek of them!” Yeah. I think it was about one pound or two pounds there in those days, they were going to fine me. Here’s me up in Korea ten thousand bloody miles away up in a combat zone getting threatened about not voting.

No, never heard another thing about it. If someone had’ve come up I would’ve given

them my vote, cast it. Didn’t see a polling booth anywhere.

No. I don’t even know, I can’t remember what year. It must’ve been 1951 or something, yeah, it would’ve been, but no.

We’d just have to make sure that all the firing circuits weren’t armed or anything like that because anything might go off. Then we’d just give them a hand to lift up everything and all the bombs would be anchored in the bomb bay, different parts of the bomb bay.

Yeah, 1,000 pounders.

They were on trolleys. They were pushed underneath on trolleys. They had a tractor, push them in

trailers, pushed them underneath. Then they had a winch, a hydraulic winch to winch them up, and that’s the way we did it.

No. What, on the strip or on the tarmac or anything like that? A rocket went off one day. The English, they’d taxi down

a little bit of a hill right down the end of the strip if they were loaded up. They’d go that way because they’d get a bit of a run down hill, head off out over the sea. I think one day they brought their Vampires in and one bloke had his head blown off because he went down to plug in the rockets and apparently the power was on to the rocket and of course as soon as he plugged in the rocket, whoosh, and the back blast got him and blew off half his head and the rocket’s

going along the strip. There’s that one.

We were over with the Lincolns. Over here, the strip was facing that way. The aircraft was facing that way and it went straight up along the strip, along the ground.

He was an RAF chap, wouldn’t have known him. And there was a big warrant officer we had up there. He went up country. They used

to go up to Fraser’s Hill which is up at Pahang, in the state of Pahang, for a weeks R&R. But I don’t know what happened, I didn’t get a weeks R&R all the time I was there. It didn’t worry me because they’d put you on a train. You’d go up and they’d issue you with Owen guns and what-have-you because of terrorists. So it didn’t worry me that much. I didn’t care about it. And upstairs there was this big chap, I’ve got photos of him there, and he fell down the steps,

killed himself. They flew a Lincoln up to bring him back. I can still see that Lincoln coming in. They had him in the bomb bay done up in canvas. Open up and we had to lower him down and they buried him in one of the cemeteries in town and I remember I was on the firing party and

it was pouring with rain. It was pouring and we’re all standing there and the grave’s just here and waiting for the coffin to come and I looked over and it’s half full of water. Anyhow, they buried old Heath. That’s the way they buried him, put him down, filled it all in but it was half full of water. And he’s up there. But I don’t know if anyone else…

No, only the army. I didn’t know any of them because we didn’t, the only time we’d ever see them was sometime in town in Bugis Street if they were down from up-country, if they had a few days off. They might have just a couple of days and they’d scoot down or they’d come down in a vehicle after. No, that’s…

we used to see the Fijians a bit. But no, no, didn’t see them much at all.

Well you were on guard all the time. You’d go into town and you’d really be on guard. I never, I didn’t like to drink too much in town or anything like that because

if you got a bit full you didn’t know who was watching you and of course they’re after money, the whole lot. They’d stab you quick. They didn’t want you because you were fighting against them. So I got that way towards the end. I didn’t like the idea of going into town because it was getting a little bit close to coming home, and I wanted to get home. I wanted to come to Australia, but

you had to keep your wits about you in town. You couldn’t wear your uniform in town because it was a dead giveaway. If you were caught in town with your uniform on they’d take you back to the cells, to the RAF gaol or you might end up in Changi or somewhere. You weren’t game to wear your uniform.

Well I don’t know how we got there in the first place. Even in Korea, I don’t think it had much to do with us. I don’t think it had much to do with us at all. The same as what’s going on now in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re in with the Americans there, but we were in with the English in Malaya. We seem to go in with all these countries, back them up.

No, I look back over it now. I don’t think we should have been there.

No, it didn’t worry me. It was another adventure as far as I was concerned. My whole idea was to get around, to have a look. I look back now, excuse me, my throat too, it must be catching. No, I

look back at it now, I wonder why we were there. I don’t think there was any real threat to Australia. Excuse me, please.

No, I’m right thanks. And I don’t know, I’m not politically minded, but as far as I looked at it I wanted to be in the air force, it was a job and whatever came along I took it. No questions asked. I was getting paid for it and I had a bed and three meals a

day, free dental, medical, and that’s the way I liked it, but I liked the idea of getting around.

What, left?

I used to read a lot about countries, I still do. I like geography, always liked geography. I don’t mind history but I like reading about countries and people and their capital cities and rivers and all that. I’ve got atlases and everything on the computer. There’s another culture now, when I went over to Nigeria around the place and the Sahara and Abacano, the dye city, things I’d read about, and I found, “Gee, I’m here,

and a boy from the country who’d only seen a train twice in my life, and I made it.” That was my reality. I’ve seen these things and I never ever thought I’d ever see them. It was only through the air force that I did see them, and the air force was good to me and gave me a good look around. If I had my time over again I’d be back in the air force and I’d stay until the day I… there’d be scratch marks on the main gate the day they try to get me out.

It was real good. In my day it was good. I don’t know, it’s different now, but in my day there was more in the air force than what there is now and the aeroplanes weren’t as sophisticated as they are now, but the friendship was there, the work was there, the play was there. It was good, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

That was OK. I

didn’t stay too long anywhere. I got back to Malaya here, and I got married in 1954. Then 1955 I got posted up to 2nd Stores Depot in Toowoomba. I don’t know how that came about, but I got posted up there, an electrical fitter on a stores depot? So I was only there about sixteen months and I got posted out to Woomera.

I met her at a

mate’s wedding. He joined up with me. He was one of the sixteen that joined up, Des Fowle, and she was bridesmaid and I was one of the best men. He had two best men and that’s how I met her and we married and we were married for twenty-five years. Three children all grown up now. Grandchildren, I’ve never ever seen them. They all went with their mother, so you know, haven’t seen my grandkids.

Never will, I don’t suppose. The boy is twenty-one I think and the girl is about eighteen. They live here in the same city, but that’s another thing. And my son, he’s up in Darwin.

Well, they reckon time heals everything. I married Yvonne twenty-five years ago, a terrific lady, and we’ve been around a lot

and she’s looked after me. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with her, and still am, and as I’m getting older and older she’s looking after me more and more. She hasn’t even got to ask for anything, she’s got it.

Well Woomera, that was a bit strange, Woomera. I got posted to 1 Air Trials Unit

and I didn’t have much time with 1 Air Trials Unit. As soon as I got to Woomera, my boss was Squadron Leader Anderson, and he said to me, “I’m going to send you out to the range to Mr Phil Forest. He’s an engineer out there.” There was me and another air force chap, Frank Matthews. Frank was an instrument maker, not fitter. And I ended up out at what they call Test Shop 2

out at A Range in instrumentation. And I was out there for nine months and my job out there was to, well I had a Land Rover and I had to go right out to the kinny [?] posts and the contrives [?]. They were cameras that used to track the rockets and that across the sky. In those days, that was 1957, it was pretty well full-on out there with all the rockets and that around the place and I used to have to go right out and check all the electrical gear out on the kinny posts and the contraves

and check all the batteries. I had a young chap with me, he was an offsider, he was a civvy, and he had to check all the batteries for water and what-have-you and anything else. Like a messenger too, I’d take anything out that they wanted. There were a lot of girls used to run the kinny posts, the camera posts, and further out, it’s thirty-five mile contraves, the men used to operate those, and see all the rockets go over and all the aeroplanes being shot down and that.

I had nine months out there working at Test Shop 2 with Phil Forest, was his name, and he had a few blokes in Test Shop 2 and he was a nice chap, a real nice chap, ex-army bloke during the war. He looked after us. Then they brought me back into what they call Tech Area in Woomera. That’s where all the aircraft were, and I was 2IC of electrical in there looking after all the aeroplanes, servicing

the UM2 Meteors [target drone] they used to shoot down. They were brought out from England. They use them as target drogues and we’d service those. Although they were radio controlled we still had to service the things. And they had these Canberras out there, radio controlled Canberras, and they also had a couple of helicopters and they had the Wingeal [?] and the Beaufighter. And the big boss out there, he’s dead now, he was a Beaufighter pilot

during the war and he had this one and only Beaufighter left in the air force. They had it out there for him. It was his hack. I had six months there and then I got posted home.

Bloody hot. There was nothing at Woomera very much then. There was about three thousand people. There were women, like blokes had their wives and that, but I went out unaccompanied. I went out on what they call a remote area posting, and it was fifteen months

and I had to take out all my leave before I went because Darwin and Woomera then were remote areas, but there wasn’t that many air force out there at the time. It was nearly all civilians and they belonged to the Department of Supply and they were the ones that had their wives up there. But a lot of air force guys who were there on fifteen month posting didn’t have their wives, and mine, she was up in Toowoomba, and while I was there

this, they had RAF there. They had navy. You’d see these navy blokes getting around in the desert. Everything was different rockets and all that, you know, and while I was there this engineer officer, I always remember him, Flight Lieutenant Blackmore, and he was a real nice bloke. He was an RAF chap, and his offsider, the warrant officer engineer used to be the warrant officer in 491 Maintenance in Japan when I was there. I knew him real well.

He came from Walgett, Bill Carlson was his name. And anyhow, the Flight Lieutenant Blackmore, he called me up. He said I was in charge of two blocks of, two huts, big huts there. One was RAAF and one was RAF and he got to know me pretty well and he was in the hangar where I worked and he got to know me through work and he called me in and said, “Hey corp [corporal],” Maurie he called me, he said, “There’s a posting here for you.”

“Where to sir?” My fifteen months were just about up. He said, “The Antarctic Flight going down the Antarctic.” I said, “No way in the bloody world. I’m not going down there.” I don’t like the cold. Besides I hadn’t seen the wife, I only had the one boy, and Christ, he was only a couple of months old when I went out there and of course this is fifteen months then,

and I said, “I can’t hack that.” He said, “I agree with you. As far as I’m concerned you’re going home.” He must’ve had a little bit of pull somewhere along the line because the next minute I’m posted back to Amberley and that’s when I saw my young fellow, my son, for the second time and he was walking around then. He called me Dad. Anyhow, I was here. They posted me to 482 Maintenance out here at Amberley and I

was here twelve months or something then they formed his MO1 [?] Bomber Conversion Unit out here. They train pilots that come in, they could be ex-, could be fighter pilots, bomber pilots, transports, but they’d have to go through their Canberra jet bombers, and I was in that the second day they formed it. There was me and two other chaps were the first three in there; Ray Martin

and Joe Campbell and myself when they formed on the 21st of January, it was my sister’s birthday, 1959, and I was in there until the middle of 1960. And unbeknownst to me I was up in Toowoomba on leave. We used to do duty crew out here and duty crew would start Wednesday and go right through until the following Wednesday, and you stayed

out there in the duty crew hut and did all the night flying and what-have-you, and I used to take my wife up to her mother and father in Toowoomba. And when you’d finish the following Wednesday they’d say, “Right, see you next Monday.” You’d have that time off. Of course I’d go up to Toowoomba. Anyhow I was up at Toowoomba after this four days and my old mother-in-law came in and she said, “There’s an RAAF car out the front here.” And she said, “No, an RAF chap wants to see you.” And it was Doug Grandon.

He was one of the drivers. He said, “I’ve got to take you down to Amberley, they want to see you. Squadron Leader Robertson wants to see you.” I didn’t know about it. It was this trip to Nigeria. He said, “I’ve selected you to go to Nigeria for their Independence.” So we took three Canberras over and the Herc followed us and we did a world tour out of it.

There were a few broken noses after that, a few noses put out of joint. I don’t know, he just selected me because I’d worked on Canberras for a long, long time. I worked on the first two that came to Australia because I’d had jet experience on Meteors in Korea. Well he selected me and that’s all I know. We went to America right through and came back and said, “Thanks very much.” Anyhow, my boss,

Squadron Leader Dollison, he said, “No problems at all.” The next thing I knew I’m posted to Wagga, the RAAF School of Technical Training as an instructor.

Yeah. In Nigeria it was good. They looked after us. We put on a good show there with our Canberra jets and the old Herc and the Russians were there, the Americans, Canadians, Rhodesians.

Who else? There was heaps of them, United States and that and Princess Alexandra, she was there. She was the Queen’s representative.

Terrible. It was brewing, everything was brewing. It was hot and there were lizards everywhere. I don’t know how, excuse me please, I don’t know how this happened. That’s right, out on the, out at the

airfield we met these blokes. They were Australian chaps and they were oil drillers. A lot of oil in Nigeria and they were oil drillers and we got friendly with them, and their big boss, he was invited to be on the welcoming committee for the Princess and all that type of business. Anyhow,

he put on a bit of a night for her out at what they call the Bush Hut. It was out where they were drilling oil and they had this Bush Hut. It was good too, it was really good. They had a bar and everything in there, and there she was, and us. He invited us out and we had a whale of time that night and she was good, she was really good, her and her entourage, and no one worried us. We had a real good night.

It was different

altogether. They were big people and their language was, they were fairly dark. No, Lagos wasn’t a real nice sort of a place either.

Well, when we left we flew, I was in the Herc. Sir Alistair McMullin, he was the leader of the Senate out here in Australia.

He was the Australian representative there and we had to take him over to Accra in Ghana and drop him off there. And then we went to Kano in northern Nigeria, right on, up on the Niger River, and it’s a dye city on the edge of the Sahara. And we were waiting to try to get across to Khartoum, to get across through to Aden and eventually they

said no. The Sudanese Government wouldn’t let us go in there, so our Wing Commander said, “There’s only one thing to do.” They got onto Entebbe in Uganda and it was English then and they gave us the OK to come down there. So we said, “Wait until dark because going over the Congo we don’t what they’ve got there.” because the Russians, they were in Accra in Ghana. There were aeroplanes everywhere, all transport aircraft,

and when we took off from Kano to go to Entebbe in Uganda at night time, that’s when we heard that the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Balewa was murdered. They got him and slaughtered him and burnt him and what-have-you, and that’s when a lot of trouble from Nigeria afterwards, after their Independence celebration, and that’s where we heard about that. So we

got down to Entebbe in Uganda. Stayed there a couple of days and out over French Somalia up to Aden and stayed a couple of days there, an RAF base at Khormaksar. All the Arabs, a lot of thieving went on there. They said, “Don’t leave your wallet hanging around anywhere.” Didn’t see anyone around the place. I left a couple of biros, nice biros, and wrist watch and what-have-you and came back out of the shower and everything was gone.

So Arabs…. and then we had a couple of days there just cleaning up, shopping and servicing the aircraft and what-have-you. It’s an RAF base. Then we went from there down to Gan in the Maldive Islands and that was just a refuelling place for the RAF aircraft going from Khormaksar; they’d go via Gan to Singapore. And their Gloster Javelin fighters, they had to

refuel at Gan and it was only a refuelling place. A Wing Commander was in charge and I think there was about ninety ground staff there. The funny thing about it, the day we got there, or the afternoon we got there, the Wing Commander met our Wing Commander and he said, “The Red Cross girls are coming in.” Once every six months this lady, the Red Cross would send someone out to write letters and see the chaps were OK

and if they wanted anything to be taken home. So they brought her in. We’re all having a drink in the mess and welcomed all of us Australians, welcomed her, had the evening meal and at six o’clock they lock her up. She’s the only woman on the island and these chaps used to do twelve or fifteen months there, these RAF blokes. So we left there and flew down to,

what’s it’s name?...down to the Australian territory there? It’s slipped my mind. Cocos Island. Spent a couple of days at Cocos. This was RAAF then, an English, RAF base, and RAAF base. Well actually there was all-weather places there then and the air force put in the strip at Cocos and we had a couple of

days there. They had an RSL there. Then we flew onto Pearce, down to Perth and had a riotous couple of days there. Chaps that we knew and men that we knew at the air force base, and we flew home from there back to Amberley. They made a tape out of it, a video out of it, but I gave it to my lad in Darwin, took it up a couple of years ago.

So that was that trip.

About five weeks I think.

Yeah, it was good.

Yeah. At that stage it was the first time Canberra had ever flown right around the world, the Canberra jet bombers, and I’ve got a placemat there of one of the aircraft that went over.

That was marvellous. I was proud of that feat,

to be selected for that. And I saw the States, went through the States and they gave us a good time all the way through, and the press coverage was good and the air force had sent a couple of photographers along and PR [Public Relations] blokes. Yes, it was on the news and Mum used to read all about it in the papers, and photographs. It was good. I liked it.

We came back here.

Of that journey? The most significant thing was the night in the Bush Hut in Lagos with Princess Alexandra and that. We had some fun there, it was good.

Yeah.

She was good. Sit there and she was drinking, having a drink, yeah, no problem.

We were drinking ouzo. But through the States there were a couple of incidents in the States there I remember real well. They were good, the people, the way they treated us. Sacramento, they took us up to Sacramento and had a night up there. It was good. The people invited us up and he was well-to-do, him and his wife and family, and Reg Hockey and myself, they had us there for the weekend and couldn’t do enough for us.

He had a ranch, couldn’t do enough for us.

The Nigerian Independence celebration from England. They got their independence from England and they asked the Australian Government to send representatives of the armed services over and they chose the RAAF.

Yeah.

It was good. There were thousands upon thousands of people and they’d put on everything. It was like Expo, you know. It was a big, just a big thing they put on, parades, everything, fly-pasts. We had to do the aircraft, of course. It wasn’t very far away, and we put our Canberras up in the air and did aerobatics and everything for them, and all this type of business, and this Sir

Abubakar Belawala, they took him for a ride in the Herc, the bloke that got killed, their Prime Minister and all that. No, it was good. They put us in a nice hotel. There wasn’t much to do in Lagos, but we didn’t want to because there was always something going on in the hotel at night. There were dinners put on for you and all that type of business.

Yeah.

Everyone was dancing and carrying on. No more British rule, yeah. See, Lagos was a big city. They had three million there and it was big. No, it was just real celebrations about getting their independence. It was good. The parades of a daytime out on their big parade grounds and there was always something going all

the time, like Expo.

Yeah, about three days after they started rioting and carry on, shoot each other. A lot of these countries once they got out of British rule that’s what happened. They sort of couldn’t handle it and away they went.

No, because we’d gone. We heard all about it, yeah.

It was good to see these other places, like right across America and then we were out in Bermuda. Had a weekend out in Bermuda and then up to Lajes in the Azores Islands and Malta.

Yeah, I can still see, we were going from Malta down to Lajes across the Sahara, and I can still look out the window of that Herc, away the heck down and see the desert, and just

see the little snaking camel trains and all that, and there they were right down below me. It was good. When we got up to Kano we were waiting to get across to Sudan and they wouldn’t let us in, all the vultures, vultures everywhere hopping around all over the place and under the wing of the Herc getting out of the sun. You’d look up and here’s

this vulture looking at you from the wing of the aircraft, hopping around all over the place.

When I came back from Nigeria I was only back four or five weeks and they said, “You’re posted.” And I got posted down to the School of Technical Training at Wagga and that’s where I stayed for the next five years.

Instructor. Electrical instructor. It was quite good. I quite enjoyed it. It was a big school of technical training then. All the air force technical

musterings went through there plus apprentices, and my boss, Wal Howie, Flight Lieutenant Wal Howie, he put us married instructors with the apprentices. The apprentices would come in, they were only fifteen or sixteen year old boys, but then he had the adult single instructors, he put them with the adult trainees that came through. So we had the sort of fatherly influence

on them. See them into bed of a night time and you’d do your weekend duty out there and make sure they’re all there and in bed, they were there to do their chores in the kitchen and all this type of business, just to make sure everything was right. They’d get one weekend off a month or something, but they’d go into town, or one day go into town. They found out where I lived and they’d come around, and of course the wife used to cook up Anzac

biscuits and what-have-you for them, just some of them. I’ve got photographs, and there’s a lot of them now they’re in their late fifties. A lot of them live around here and they’re still friends. So I was an electrical instructor there. There wasn’t much, it was good.

Yeah.

Well I,

what was that? That was twelve years, twelve or seventeen, I can’t remember. Well when I joined up first it was a twelve year engagement and I got used to it then. I was really used to it and I liked the air force, and there was five years on top of that. I did another five years, and then there was another five years on top of that. I did that and it was twenty-two years, but marriage problems and all that and I got out to try to fix up everything, otherwise

I would’ve stayed until I was fifty-five. Would’ve given me thirty-two years, thirty-three years or something. But that’s the reason why I got out, otherwise I would’ve stayed and gone right through. But however, those things happen I suppose. But I wanted to do my twenty odd years, twenty years. You had to in those days to get what they call the DFRB [Defence Force Retirement Benefits Scheme] retirement business which is quite good.

They were just a nice aeroplane. I liked everything about the Canberras. They were a real good aeroplane. The English Electric Canberra were number one.

I don’t know. They were fairly simple to work on. They were a good aeroplane. They’d carry a good bomb

load. They were fairly fast, you know, and they could do just about anything.

They’d gone right around the world on one hit.

You always do in an aeroplane. They had to take ground staff with them otherwise refuelling and anything that went wrong. I didn’t get much trouble, but

see, they’ve got detonators around their canopies and hatch and we had to take a fitter armourer and they’ve got to be changed at certain times and what-have-you, and you’ve got to have ground staff and an electrical has got to go with them to do all the electrics on them and check to make sure there was no power on when they were doing detonator changes. We didn’t have to do that because they made sure the three aircraft we took were

right up to scratch with ready to go, that we shouldn’t have any trouble. We didn’t have much trouble either. We didn’t have any det changes to do or anything like that. So no, they were a good all-round aeroplane, the Canberra, they were a real good aeroplane.

Yeah, there was a big welcoming committee when we got home, a band playing. Yeah, everyone blowing whistles and running around and around in circles

and kissing. No, it was good. Headlines, it was on the news.

They’re still a bomber. It’s still a bomber, and they had a couple of (UNCLEAR) the Canberras.

Yeah. They were phased out when the Phantoms came in here in the 1960s, towards the end of the ’60s, and then the F-111’s took over. But no, they were a good aeroplane.

They had them for a long time, from 1953 I think, onwards.

You could start to see all the new technology was starting to creep in on the electrical side, all the electronics. See, things were pretty simple on the older aircraft, but then things started, technology

started to advance until such times the F-111s came in and you had to really have a good education and go right through the mill.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, with their bombing techniques, all

their bombs, their rockets. Like some of the stuff they’ve got now, we never ever had it. Never even thought about it. When I was at Woomera they were only starting on all this rocketry business and it just went on from there. So we just got to the stage now, I don’t know, you’ve got to be pretty well up with it now to be in there.

I was a bit apprehensive when I went down there because Wagga, when I first went through Wagga in early 1950 we used to refer to it as Belsen because there were only trainees going through there, and terrible and the living conditions weren’t the best. We only had old wartime Nissen huts, and then when I went back after I came back from Korea nothing much had changed, and

everyone, they didn’t like the idea of Wagga. But when you were posted down there on staff as an instructor things were different. Things were a lot different, especially when you become a senior NCO: waiter service and waitress service and everything in the mess and all this type of business. No, things were a bit different and I did five years there and I rather liked it. The wife and kids, they liked it. Well not so much the wife. She was the only child in the family,

I think she wanted to come home to her mother and father, but the kids liked it. We used to go up to the snow, Falls Creek, and they liked that. They could go out the river fishing, the Murrumbidgee, and they were into sport at school and they were both good scholars and they liked it. When I got posted out of there they were real upset about it.

Still is.

They used to have programs, what you had to do. You’d do whatever came up. There was heaps of things. They’d go right through the whole aircraft: aircraft lighting, tarmac lighting, batteries, elec technology, DC [direct current] motors, DC and AC [alternating current], and all that type of basic stuff right through. The apprentices used to do three years there and they’d

take them right through.

Well there weren’t any apprentices when I joined up. The apprenticeship didn’t come in until about 1949, 1950 or something like. That’s when they came in.

Yeah, they’re good.

I wouldn’t say they were different but they know their job and

they’re nice chaps. Friends of mine even now in the computer classes and all that, they’re ex-apprentices and they were good. When I came out of Wagga and you go back out on the squadrons again you see them coming through. They finish their apprenticeship and they come through the squadrons there. Yeah, real good. Real good chaps.

Well, I’d

rather the squadrons, that was the best thing. I didn’t like the idea of going down there because I can still remember the days when I went through. But as I say it got better and better when you’re there as an instructor. No, it was alright, it was educational. I had no qualms about it at all. As a matter of fact I look back and I rather enjoyed it and I liked the idea of all the apprentices there.

I had a real good time. They treat you with respect and we used to take them over to Sydney for trade tours and through some of the factories that dealt with the air force and we’d stay at Richmond air force Base and go daytime by bus into town through all these factories and it was always good to be with them. They were good, real good. They grew into real good members of the air force and

some of them made high rank.

No, some of them, there might’ve been. Some of them, a couple of them didn’t want to be there and they missed home and all that. Some of them were only fifteen or sixteen year old, they just wouldn’t learn. So it was easy enough for them to get out. They’d just tell their people they weren’t suitable and a lot of them, some of them didn’t want to be suitable.

Some of these chaps were put in there because of big families and the money didn’t spin around, just didn’t go around. Some of them didn’t want to be there. A lot of them wanted to be there. But they were a good lot. The apprenticeship scheme at Wagga was real good and I don’t think… I’ve sat down and I’ve harked back and I’ve thought and I don’t think I could point my finger at any electrical

apprentice that I had at Wagga that played up or anything like that. They ended up nice chaps, real nice blokes, yeah. It was always a pleasure to see them.

No. I came back from Wagga, I was there from 1961, July ’61. I got there American Independence Day, 4th

of July 1961. They said, “You’re here for five years,” and I left on American Independence Day 4th of July 1966, and I was posted 3 Aircraft Depot down here, sergeant-in-charge of Canberra servicing, electrical servicing on Canberras up at Aircraft Repair Section. I was only there about nine months or something and I got posted to army Aviation out here as an instructor. Just in the army,

just on their ground stuff and I was with them for four and a half years before they went up to Oakey and then I got posted on the F-111s. I was only there nine months and I came up for re-engagement and I got out.

Only just teaching the army chaps that were doing aviation. They had helicopters and they had fixed-wing stuff. I had a trip to New Guinea out of that. The old Major sent me up to New Guinea.

Just

sort of a farewell, thank you type of business just before I left. He said to me one day, “Have you ever been to New Guinea, Maurie?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Well, how would you like a trip up compliments of the army?” I said, “Fair enough.” So a servicing team went up and I went up with them and didn’t have to do anything. Had a fortnight up there while they serviced their aircraft in Port Moresby and

that was good. Came back and I said, “Thanks very much, Lou, that was good,” yeah.

All we did was the, I rewrote the syllabuses on all the musterings, the airplanes, electrical engines and all that type of business, electrical instruments and taught them all the paperwork all the

publications, all that type of business, and then they’d take them down the hangar and put them through mechanical know-how down around there and we’d just take them around, show them, introduce them to the aircraft and take them around the different sections and then they’d showed them at the sections. But no, we used to look after them, mostly all pen and paperwork I had then. I got promoted to flight sergeant and didn’t have much

to do; mostly pen and paper.

Syllabuses and things like that, not much.

Yeah, it was going.

As a matter of fact, a friend of mine, he was here the day before yesterday, lives out of Texas, Jack Ellis. Jack was electrical and he was in Vietnam

at the time and I was supposed to be Jack’s relief in Vietnam. I was supposed to go to Vietnam. Anyhow, it was knocked on the head. I didn’t know what was going on and I asked the major, “I’m supposed to be going to Vietnam. I want to go.” “No, you’re not,” he said “We want you here as an instructor.” Because I was Wagga trained and all that, and he said “No, you’re staying here Maurie.

Besides,” he said, “You’ve got a wife and family and you’re too bloody old.” Just like that.

About forty. I’d say about forty I suppose. Yeah, around forty. He said, “You’ve been around, you’ve got what you want. When you get out you’ll have Vet Affairs and all that and you’re entitled to Vet Affairs.” I said, “Fair enough then.” He said, “Besides that,” he said, “The army pays.

The air force doesn’t pay your wages now, the army does, yours and your wife’s, her allowance and what-have-you.” “OK.” So he said, “That’s it.” So I was supposed to be Jack’s relief, but then…

I don’t know.

I don’t know. I wasn’t with, as I say I was with the army and when I left the army

January ’71, 1971, and well, they were winding down in Vietnam then but I was getting ready to go on the F-111’s, get back in the air force.

Well, I went over to F-111 training flight. With my instructional capabilities I didn’t do much because basically

all the young instructors that were going to be instructors were over in America and the F-111 wasn’t out here. They had the Phantoms here then. They were waiting for the F-111s to come and they didn’t get here until 1973 and I got out in 1971. But see, they were on the drawing board for a long time and these instructors, they were coming back from America but no aircraft to instruct on. But they were doing classes. Chaps had to go and do all the classes

and I was a Flight Sergeant, I didn’t do anything. I did the paperwork.

No. What do you mean? Ride in them? No, but at the end of our building they had the simulator which is the same thing. So I used to have a ride in the simulator occasionally when I had nothing else to do. But no, and it was nine months and I just wound down. They said, “You’re posted to 36 Squadron at Richmond.” The new E-model Hercs [Hercules transport aircraft]

and they didn’t even have them out in Australia then. They still only had the A models and it meant going over to America to do all the course and whatever. You go in the company. And I had enough problems and troubles at that stage of the game. So my boss, who used to be with me down at 3AD, he was a corporal but at this stage of the game he was a Wing Commander and first-name basis and all that. No, I won’t mention his name because he’s (UNCLEAR) and I told him. He said

“How about a trip to Malaya?” He said, “I’ll see about getting you a trip up to Malaya where you can take your wife and kids. You’ll have an amah [housemaid] to look after the kids and all that type of business.” I came home and no, didn’t want to go. So being a good husband, I thought in those days, I pulled the pin and it still packed up.

Yeah, it was.

All the tripping around. Wasn’t home that much. Spent a lot of time with her mother and father while I was up in Toowoomba while I was away, and the rocket range around the place. The only child in the family and sort of indoctrinated a bit. That was it. I’d come home, the kids, they didn’t, well they didn’t know me very much, the two young ones

and sort of grow apart. So I don’t know.

Not real well. It still troubles me. Even when I went to Wagga, it was fifteen months before she came down there. I was down there for fifteen months, and yeah it still troubles me. I don’t let it interfere with my married life, but what troubles me is that I don’t see my kids and I haven’t seen

my grandkids. The two girls, I see my son occasionally. He’s up in Darwin and I didn’t see him for twenty odd years because I didn’t know where he was. No one would say anything and they don’t talk to me. The girls went with their mother and I haven’t seen my daughters since 1978 I think it was, and one’s had two children, a boy and a girl. So he must be about twenty or twenty-one. I haven’t even seen them.

So I haven’t seen my grandkids. I’ve learnt to live with it now because my wife and I, she looks after me and I look after her.

I think a lot of that started it off too, because it was going on since 19. Started off I think about 1960 when I went to Nigeria, and I got worse when I came back. I think it

sort of pulled a trigger a little bit. Now I’ve got hypertension, blood pressure and all that, I’ve still got it and I’ve been treated for that for years and I’ve had a heart attack. Yeah, had the lot. So I just take it easy now.

I used to come home, I used to get, I wouldn’t be aggressive

but I’d go and yell a fair bit and I used to have nightmares. This is after I came back from these places. I used to have nightmares a lot, and I used to get a bit aggressive…and the kids. I remember the kids. They’d shake their head and they’d get out of the road and away they’d go, and the wife would say, “I think I’ll go up to Mum’s place for a while up to Toowoomba,”

and away they’d go. I’d book in and go out to Amberley or even stay home by myself. I used to own a house across the road here and I’d stay by myself.

I think, well, before I went to, I hardly ever had a cigarette until I joined up and I never smoked in front of my father and mother and I never ever drank in front of them. In my day you had to be twenty-one before you went in a hotel.

When I joined up we didn’t even have an airmen’s bar out here, but I think with the work you were doing and the pressure, I think it started a fair bit of that off. I still have a couple of drinks but I don’t go into hotels. I’ve got it here. My wife doesn’t drink but she doesn’t mind me having a drink. While she’s getting tea I sit out on the patio here and have a couple of white wines. My

mate comes around, Bill over here. Some nights they come over for dinner or we go over there and we have a bottle of red. Shirley doesn’t drink and Yvonne doesn’t drink, but Bill and I, there’s only four glasses in a bottle of red and we just have that, and that’s all I worry about now. But I think when the marriage went on the rocks I (UNCLEAR) that trigger and away I went. I did hit the booze a bit.

When I married the wife, when I married Yvonne.

When was that? I married her, it will be twenty-five years coming up in September, 1978, and I was divorced in, she left me 1979 I think, but I got divorced first up about 1977, ’78.

I’d love to see my grandchildren, see what they’re like, yeah. See what they grew up like.

I wouldn’t know them if they walked past me,

yeah.

Yeah, I was the only boy in the family and even my sisters, they would’ve liked to have seen them, you know. Well, that’s life.

No, I’m right thanks.

Mostly job satisfaction. I liked the job and I liked what I was doing, the travel, the friendships that I’ve got, still have got, yeah.

No, but I wanted to. No, the air force was a good life, good service, good life, yeah.

Well, I’m proud of the whole fact of being in the air force and I’m proud of my war service and I’m proud of being in the air force, and

well you can see my medals and I’ve got life membership of the RAAF Association. Yeah, that suits me.

I’d do it again. I’d do it again tomorrow, the same thing. Yeah, very important, proud.

Well, the fact that these blokes went away and put their lives on the line for their country and for their fellow man, and yeah, they were good men. They were good, they knew what they were doing. Good men.

We were lucky to have men like that.

Well, I think if we didn’t things would be a lot different now, towards up the northern part of us. But I wonder a little bit if it ever happens again if we’ll get away with what we got away with before,

protection, whatever.

I think it might be. I’m going on seventy-six so I don’t think it will worry me too much.

I know a lot. And a lot of them

remarried and made lives for themselves again. I’m lucky because I had a second chance and I got a good one. I used to live across the road there, but there was nothing ever in it, you know. We were just neighbours that was all, and Yvonne, I was relegated to living in a hotel. Everything was sold up under me. It was in joint names, but everything was sold up under me.

Anyhow, friends of mine that had the hotel, they were friends of Yvonne’s too and I ended up taking her out for dinner one night. No ulterior motives or anything like that, just being neighbours and all that, and invited me around. I knew her daughters and that, and invited me around for a meal and it started to blossom. That was twenty-five years ago and they’ve been twenty-five good years. I’ve taken

her all over the place as well. She’s been, well when I married her she’d hardly ever been outside the backyard but now she’s been all over the place, Russia, Kazakhstan, America, Canada, you name it, China, New Zealand, Singapore, British Isles, all over the place, and I think she’s worth it.

No, not much. I don’t like to talk about it much. I

suppose I probably should because I get a little bit nervous at times. I get a little bit cranky. I think she knows, but I think she thinks a lot of it is caused by the previous marriage and not being able to see the children. I think she thinks along those lines a fair bit. She’d be pretty right too. No, it’s good to have a second go. Not too many men get a

second chance. But I’d still love to see my grandchildren.

I don’t think so. But when my son rings and he calls me Dad, and I hadn’t seen him for twenty odd years, that sounds good to me, but Grandpop would be good.

No, I hadn’t seen him for twenty odd

years and it was through my wife that I found him in Darwin. He’s a dental technician, and she said, “We’re going up.” And I’ve been up a few times and he’s been down. But the girls and their mother, they don’t want anything, they live here too. Both got good jobs.

What? Yeah, I’ll never forget. Very upsetting. Well, especially not being able to see your own children, especially your grandchildren. Now the boy, I think he must be about twenty-one. Say if he’s got a girlfriend or say if he’s married and they have a child, it’s a great grandchild and I’ll never even see that. But

no, they, but I think about it a fair bit. Then I think about what I’ve done and it sort of evens it out.

Yeah, I like it, yeah. I go to the Air Force Association meetings and all the marches, the works, but now I’ve got, see, I wear these stockings, vascular disease.

I don’t go to any of that now. The wife says I should but I leave her go out. I’m getting to old for that.

1 Squadron.

I had a lot of fun with 1 Squadron playing footy and all that. Up in Korea it was a bit rusty up there, but 1 Squadron was good. They were a good mob of blokes, we had a lot of fun,

a lot of fun.

I went to an 87 Squadron reunion back in 1994 down at Richmond and I met some of my old mates from there which was good. I didn’t even know a couple of them it had been so long.

They recognised me, but I went

to 1 Squadron reunion, this 75th, I’ve got all the invitations there, 75th anniversary of 1 Squadron out here, and gee, that was the best do I’d ever been to and all my old mates had come from all Australia, yeah. Old Hawkeye and all that, we had some fun, we had a ball.

Yeah, “Remember the times,” or, “Remember the day this happened,” or, “Remember the time that happened.” But to

sit down and talk to any normal person outside of that, I wouldn’t do it. But this 1 Squadron do, it was fantastic. Yeah, met some of the chaps I hadn’t seen since I left Malaya.

Yeah, I can remember them right through.

Yeah, Bugis Street. Old Bugis Street. Crikey, used to be good, some fun

nights, yeah. Fun times and hard times. Some of them were hard times, but I always take the good with the bad.

No. Just I’m proud of what I did, why I did it and the

friends I’ve made for ever. I like that. And that’s about all I’ve got to say and a couple of nice interviewers like you girls, they’ve done the right thing.

It’s been a pleasure having you two girls here.