Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Proserpine in 1923, 4th of August 1923 on a cane farm and the cane farm was owned by my

grandmother and my father was general man around the place. I was one of five and I’m the middle one, two girls and three boys and our life in those days was pretty hard because there wasn’t a lot around in ‘23 and because of that the old grandfather had to sell the farm

and left Dad with no employment. And he spent his life in the cane fields during the cane season and during the slack he’d be working on the farms, cultivating and such as that. I started school in Foxdale on my fourth birthday, Foxdale Primary School, on the Proserpine River.

And for years sort of shifted around from one house to another and all in Proserpine for about five years, five or six years and in that time Dad used to go as far north as Cairns looking for work in the cane fields and while he was in Cairns, oh I think he was in Innisfail

he heard about a farm, a dairy farm at Kuranda that was for lease and he thought he’d take it so we all upped and shifted to Myola, just outside Cairns, outside Kuranda and we were there for a couple of years. And during that time Dad being a cane farmer, he grew

the first cane above the range at Cairns and unfortunately we were unable to represent it at the harvest because the landlord caught Dad out with his payments and the farm became to cost a little bit too much and Dad got caught up with one of his payments, so the landlord put him off.

It was pretty hard work. I never became involved with cane but in those days it was a horse pulling accommodated influence. Tractors were starting to come in and the cutting was done by cane knife, hand cutting, which was very hard work cutting cane. They

worked on contract which meant they couldn’t stop for a break and they hoped that their pay would keep coming if they kept cutting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. During the 14/18 [First World War; 1914-1918] war my Mum and Dad broke in horses for remounts, that was

army horses, with Banjo Patterson [famous Australian poet and writer]. They used to do some of his horses because Banjo Patterson used to go around the country picking up horses for the remounts.

Yeah, yeah.

No, they didn’t have physical contact too much with Banjo but they’d get his horses to work but my Mum…in

those days side saddle was the thing and she wouldn’t ride side saddle, she would ride astride. But getting back to moving around in Proserpine, in Proserpine we went to Proserpine State School in the city. It would have been a city by then, yeah.

Foxdale School upriver, Mount Julian on the way to Cannonvale, which is now the seaside resort of Prosperine, what do they call it? Airlie Beach, Airlie Beach and on our way from Proserpine to Kuranda we went to school at Halifax and Halifax was a point where Dad took a job loading sugar.

Today they’ve got the great big conveyor belts carrying it out for them, or loading it up.

Yeah, yeah, in my time, my early time we had to burn because of the rats, what do they call it? Weil’s disease, I think it was Weil’s disease

that the rats used to carry that and they used to have to burn the cane for that but then they found when they burnt the cane it was so much easier to cut because there’s no trash around. To see a cane cutter after the cane’s been burnt it’s like they’d ridden in it.

Never much took notice. As a matter of fact I’ve enjoyed seeing cane being burnt in the last ten years more than before. I sat for a scholarship at Kuranda School and I failed, and I wasn’t thirteen. Because things were still hard, by the 1930s I took a job on a cattle

station outside Townsville.

Mustering cattle and taking stock to rail and meatworks and eating cornbeef and damper. I had five years there. It was a pretty good life and fortunately we knew the family

I was going to, Mum knew the family and so I was looked after pretty well. I was not quite thirteen, but when war started, my brother got a job on the same station and when the war started, he was older than I was,

he joined the army and I was waiting for my time to join the army, but we were a protected industry [a necessary industry whose employees were not allowed to enter the services] and in those days we used to get a call up. Once you turned eighteen you got a call up and if you were in a protected industry your boss just sent it back to the department and the poor old fellow had a pretty big accident and he finished up in Sydney Hospital.

While he was away his wife was looking after us and she slipped up on picking up the mail and I got the call up and I sent it back and I started my army service then.

Yeah there were a lot of us that couldn’t get away

because of the protected industries. As a matter of fact I’ve just got a book, just read it, The Boss Drover, and he was working cattle from the Northern Territory and Western Australia over into Queensland and because he was a drover he was not allowed to join the army and spent his life…in civvy [civilian]

life all through the war.

Well my mother wanted to me to join up. One of her brothers was in the 1914-18 War and she thought that Australia needed defending and she had two, strong healthy blokes.

That’s not quite right but she thought fit Aussie men should be out doing there bit.

I think he thought the same. He was too young for the first one, luckily and too old for the second one but my older brother

he went to the Middle East and the islands and my younger brother he joined the air force and didn’t get out of Australia. My older brother he came back from the Middle East unharmed, came back from New Guinea unharmed and a bit lucky really. There were three boys in the services

and no-one affected by injuries or anything, oh malaria.

No, well being on a cattle station and handling horses I thought when I came down to Brisbane that they would turn me into a Light Horse but they thought I’d be a pretty good anti-aircraft gunner, so they sent me to anti-aircraft.

When I came down we were at the Exhibition Grounds and we were in the chicken stalls, in Brisbane, in the chicken stalls in Brisbane and they hadn’t been cleaned out after the August Show and from there I came down with one

little suitcase and a couple of sets of clothes and it was a fortnight before I got any gear, so living in a tent at the Exhibition Grounds was pretty good.

No, in about 1938, 1938 my brother and I came down to an exhibition and as well

as to go out to Yeerongpilly to see the quarantine station because we had some bulls there, the property had some bulls there and we had to go out and see how they were treating them. We got off the HMAS Canberra at Hales Wharf, not Hales Wharf, How Smith Wharf, used to be under the Story Bridge.

I don’t know where we stopped when we were in Brisbane but we were here for the Exhibition.

Well the Exhibition in our eyes was where we could see some good stock and some good horse work in the ring. I don’t think we went near the cake stalls.

Yeah, it was really an experience to come from Townsville being the biggest town I’d ever been in, to land in Brisbane and trams and all that sort of thing going on.

Trams, being able to get on a tram and go somewhere but the size

of it didn’t, there was no size as far as Brisbane was concerned then because the buildings were no bigger than Townsville. City Hall was the biggest building in the city.

Yes, even the country shows, very important for social activities for country people. You’ve

only got to look at all up the coast were shows all the time and we’d be in the Townsville Show and the Proserpine Show and the Cairns Show and they was always, very popular for people who are interested in stock and all sorts of things, interested in who can make the

best scones.

From there they decided, you do a funny test and I don’t know what the idea of it is but they do this test to find out how good you are or what you might want to be good

at and they found out that I might be good at handling an anti-aircraft gun. So I went out to Beaudesert, Tabragalba Camp and when I started I was ten stone six, and that was sometime in September or other and when I was home after three months of Beaudesert

I was thirteen stone six just from going from corn beef and damper to, living in Brisbane, TOD, do you know what TOD is? Tristram’s Orange Drink. Tristram’s used to make, they were big soft drink makers in Brisbane and Madeira cake, for threepence we used to get a bit of Madeira cake and a TOD,

a stubby of TOD and I reckon that’s what built on apart from the exercise and the handling of the Bofors [guns].

Tabragalba was a cattle property outside Beaudesert and the homestead was down on the flat and all our camp

was up the hill and anything that went on you had to go down to it and when it was finished you had to go back up again, so we got lots of exercise walking backwards and forwards and if you did something wrong and you had to chase the bugle, the bugle was down the bottom and the camp was up the top, and they’d blow the bugle at anytime at all and you’d have race down to the bugle, and you got your exercise that way. Tabragalba was a pretty good place.

The climate was good.

Well it was later in the year, September on and I think we got out there before Christmas, yeah, think we were out before Christmas and there was no cold weather really and I don’t think it rained very much while we were there

either.

Couldn’t tell you now. It was just tents, Indian tents with duck boards [boards used to create surfaces in muddy areas] and palliasse [mattress] stuffed with straw to sleep on and nothing like we have today.

But the camp was as I say up the hill, eat was down the bottom, the showers and things were down the bottom and everything was made so you got your exercise. Handling the guns was good. There are eight guns in an outfit, eight Bofors guns in an outfit and we used to have competitions to

see who could get the guns from trail to action the quickest and the trail was hooked onto the back of a vehicle and action was when you started (demonstrates). Crazy, you think of the Bofors gun on its wheels but when it’s

in action it’s got four legs to stand on and those legs take two men to help put them in place, but still plenty of exercise. So I suppose exercise and good tucker put on the three stone.

No, no, no, we were always first, never last though.

Yeah, I never saw action with it but I reckon they’d be pretty handy. They were pretty straight. When we were doing shooting you could hit targets with them.

They had tracer rounds and you could see them going up and you’d have your target and when you were shooting the rounds seemed to go like that (demonstrates). See the aeroplane is going that way (demonstrates) and the things are going like that,

that what it looks like, they’re going straight up but really they’re going (demonstrates) and that takes a bit of getting used too.

Eight, eight.

Yeah, eight.

I could (UNCLEAR) alright. Yeah,

everyone’s got a number and number one is the boss boy and number eight is the bottom boy and you all have a set thing to do. When you stop number one stands back and tells you what to do and you have to take the wheels off, put the pegs in, wind the jacks

up, level it all up and everybody has, you can’t do somebody else’s job. You’ve got to do your own job. It’s just too far back now to remember. We did a trip down to Southport. In those days the Southport pub was,

oh it’s probably still in the same spot but there was a beautiful, green lawn right out to the beach in front of the Southport pub. We raced down there one early morning, got our shovels out and dug a great, big hole in the beautiful lawn and put our gun in it, had our practice, pulled our gun out, filled it up again,

and left a great big bare patch of sand in the middle of the lawn. Getting around towing the gun we used to have to practise falling off the back of a truck without hurting yourself. The vehicle was doing about forty kilometres an hour and you’re told to unload the truck

and you’ve got to roll off. Some of us broke our arms but most of us got out alright. At Tabragalba, which was outside Beaudesert, do you know where it is? No, you know where Beaudesert is I suppose? All our leave time was spent at Beaudesert and we

we used to go to the dances and there were no girls in the camp so we used to get about eighty blokes in Beaudesert of a night time and there were plenty of dance partners. The worst part of going to the dances was it was in the picture theatre, as well as the hall, and when

you went in you had to take your hat off and you’d put your hat up on top of, in those days the projection room had a roof, a little bit of a lift and we all used to put our hats on top of it and when you’d come out to go home, you might get a good hat or a bad hat.

Yeah, there was, but I don’t think so. I never felt it anyway. Anybody who wasn’t in the army didn’t want to be in the army or couldn’t be in the army but no.

Sawmilling and cattle, dairy farming and a lot of sawmills. I think there were about three sawmills. I think there’s two still there but in those days there were little sawmills all around the place. Tabragalba, I don’t know whether it was a dairy farm or a cattle station because

we didn’t have anything to do with the activities on the farm. I think the tenants or the householders weren’t in the houses anyway because all our officers were living in the houses. I don’t think in Beaudesert we didn’t feel anything against anybody that wasn’t in the services.

Yeah, see Tabragalba the owner’s, they weren’t there because the house was taken over by all the officers. I suppose they just had to go out.

The farm

would have to be taken over for a camp and in Beaudesert I don’t think there was anymore than Tabragalba but I guess around Australia there would be plenty of places that were taken over by the troops.

About three months I think. From Beaudesert they bought us to Brisbane and I did quite a stint protecting Brisbane, with the Bofors guns, never fired a shot mind you, and one of our positions was under Cloudland Ballroom. Did you ever know Cloudland Ballroom?

Yeah, before the war there used to be a tram track run up to Cloudland that used to take the people up to the dance floor and that wasn’t working when the war was on and all our food came in big dixies [cooking pots], big hot boxes from Bulimba, big steel box and we used to have to go down

from there and carry the dixie up, carry the box up with our meals in it instead of being able to go up on the trolley. As well as that one we had one right on the point of Newstead Park. Right down on, you know where the Oxley Memorial is now? Just down below that, almost right in the water.

Another one was at Pinkenba and another one was at Colmslie and I served at all four of those and that was not bad. We had leave every second night. When you were in town it was alright, you could to the dances easily but when we were at Colmslie, you know where Colmslie is?

Yeah, in those days there wasn’t too much transport and you’d have to get out on the road to Wynnum and pick up a lift to get to town and the same way getting home but from there.

In a tent, in tents. The tents were about no more than about twenty yards

from the gun position and there were eight men on the gun and sometimes there might be accommodation for an officer but mostly just the gunners and the sergeants. I don’t know we probably had two tents because those tents they were eight man tents.

It was ridiculous because there was no planes ever flew over us, nothing happened. You just wasted your time.

No, no.

Our headquarters was up on top of Ascot, Hamilton, I can’t think of the name of the street now, but up there. We used to get there now and again, only

if there was a clean up job for somebody because that’s where the officers were.

Oh you didn’t get bored because while you were on duty you might be doing drill or something or other

but once you were off duty and in town you’d have plenty of fun, plenty of dances, plenty of pictures, plenty of picnics. Depends on how you mix with people. I never had any trouble. I had somewhere to go, through the church.

You’d go with some of your friends that way but some of the boys had a fair bit of trouble. Grog was the main problem. You’d get sick of what was going on and get on the grog.

Well the closest one

to our camp on the river was Colmslie and I think we used to bypass it as there was more activity in town. The boys that were interested in grog they

used to get it into camp, bring it into camp and that caused a bit of trouble sometimes.

I don’t think anyone got punished but the only ones that got punished was their mates in the tents, by their activities.

Yeah, as far as Breakfast Creek Hotel was concerned

I knew it was a nice old building but I don’t think I was up near it. We used to go past it in the tram going from out to Ascot but Breakfast Creek Hotel, the Gresham, not there now, but the Gresham was a favourite one and so was,

I can’t think of the name of it now, but they’re no longer there anyway. The Australian was one, it’s now longer there. There’s a big bank on that corner now.

It’s on the corner of Edward and Queen, I can’t think. I could take you there now but

I can’t name the street. There’s a bank I think where The Australian was and it was one that had a downstairs bar. That would have been flooded in 1974 I suppose, if it had have been around.

Yes, yes. Well it was for me anyway,

anything underground was, when you had to go down off street level.

Well see before that, before I joined the army, Townsville was bombed and Darwin was bombed

but it didn’t get down as far as us. They had air raid shelters in the streets in Brisbane but we were never alerted at any time to the air raid.

Oh yes, yes, yes.

See every day you had to have your gun ready, have your ammunition handy

and put it back again when you, but I don’t think anybody was real concerned. We thought it wouldn’t happen and it didn’t luckily.

Oh we used to have

arm wrestles and hand wrestles and keep active. I’ll tell you the story about the air raids. When Townsville was bombed I was then still in civvies, and at three o’clock one morning, do you know north Queensland at all? No? The Haughton River, the station I was working on was on the Haughton

River and it was a big sandy river and at three o’clock in the morning we hear a car coming across the river and this was strange. So we go out and it’s a family from sixty miles up the road, towards Charters Towers. They’d got out of Townsville because Oonoonba had been bombed. They were holidaying at

the hotel on the Strand, the Strand Hotel, and they heard about these bombs and the plane and they were in their car and shot through and three o’clock in the morning they turned up. Townsville was bombed.

Yeah, yeah. See north Queensland, you’ve heard of the Brisbane Line? Well north Queensland was above the

Brisbane Line and we were written off [if an invasion occurred]. There was nothing, there was no protection in north Queensland at all. Once you got past Brisbane if the Japs had of come in, north Queensland was gone and that trapped quite a few people.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, north Queensland felt that if they didn’t do something they were going to be lost anyway, so join the services and help protect it.

I don’t think so, I don’t think so. I never

saw any at any rate. Yeah, the schools had them. Schools used to have trenches dug but me not being a school child I wasn’t involved in that.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, they came in 1942, yeah. Never had much to, you had to go looking for trouble if you wanted trouble. I suppose there was plenty about but I never had

any trouble with the Yanks [Americans]. They didn’t worry me. I was pretty glad they were here because they made up the numbers.

They were too well dressed and had too much money.

That was the biggest problem. The Australian boys didn’t stand a chance with the girls. They didn’t have nylons to give away but I think if you wanted trouble you could find trouble but I never found trouble with the Yanks. As a matter of

fact when the Yanks first came out I was outside Townsville and the Yanks built an airstrip at Reid River which was just on the edge of the property I was working on, and we used to have the Yanks come over to the station as visitors. And one good thing that the

Yanks did for the properties around there was they built a road from Charters Towers to Townsville. Before that it was only a dirt road and a really dirt road and where it used to take us four hours in the utility to go from our station to Townsville, to Stuarts Creek, take us four hours, when I joined the army

I went over to Reid River, picked up a Yankee utility and in less than an hour we were in Townsville, on asphalt road. I’ll tell you another story about asphalt roads too. Cattle in the bush never see a railway line or a line and we used to truck our cows, our fat cows to Reid River

on the rail and the Yanks came in and they put a tar road from Townsville to Charters Towers and our cattle wouldn’t cross that tar road. And they’d never seen a tar road before and you could imagine what a tar road smelt like to a cow and I spent about two hours one day trying to get forty four cows across that road.

Didn’t take them long. They had all the equipment, quick and lively. They had the right equipment and right men on the job. The road wasn’t a big highway but it was a tar road that you could drive on. Might have been one and a half cars wide but it was certainly

better than the old dirt road.

Well entertainment grew. Reid River as you can imagine, Reid River was just a stop on the railway and it developed into a nice little entertainment

area for a while, so the troops could visit it. I suppose girls were short but there was something for the fellows to do.

Music, wouldn’t know about their music but we used to have them come over to the station and we

used to play music on the gramophone and they used to have a dance to it. There was only about five girls on the station but you’d get half a dozen blokes that would get a dance now and again. The Yanks came in and they had to put guns, anti-aircraft and searchlights all around

to protect the airstrip and they came onto our property and they did up an aeroplane and surveyed the area and they came to us and said they wanted to put a searchlight in such a position and we said “there would be no good putting a searchlight there because if it rains you won’t get near it.” “Oh no trouble at all, we’ve got four wheel drive vehicles.” They put their

searchlight on a sand ridge and when the rain came on sand ridge country it’s nice and hard on top but underneath it’s all sandy and soft and as soon as it gets wet, we used to call it “spew” and even cattle walking through it, walking across it will dig holes in the ground and go down to the slush.

So the Yanks get their big four wheel drives and they get stuck in it and no trouble at all, they’ll get out. They’ll hook onto a tree so they hook onto a tea tree and pull the tea tree out and black soil flats, “you can’t put a searchlight there because in flood time you won’t get near it.” They put one there and they got stuck.

A bit of a laugh for us yes, after telling them where they could go and couldn’t go, they found out the hard way.

See we became VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachments] then and went down to Canungra to do jungle

warfare training and it was a bit hard to be taken off a lazy job like anti-aircraft and go into hard, physical training and we spent three weeks there.

Yeah, well daylight in the jungle you can’t see very far and you had to become proficient in quick spotting things. They’d have a dummy man flash up somewhere in the scrub and

if you didn’t see it well you were shot. If you saw it you had a shot at it but being a north Queenslander with rain forests up north I was pretty used to scrub country. Infantry training was pretty solid. When I went in there they only had tents, no

duckboards, dirt. You had to take your palliasse and sleep in the dirt and some of the camps had fleas, some of the tents had fleas, which was pretty bad but I never struck fleas. It was pretty rigorous training for a jungle camp.

I did three weeks there and they called for volunteers to go to the commandos and I thought if you to infantry training you might get shot at but if you go to commandos you might be able to do some shooting, so I reckoned I’d join the commandos.

So we did four weeks of that and that was pretty rigorous, that was. Some of the stupid things we had to do was climb up a ladder onto a platform and jump into, I think it was Back Creek, at Canungra camp, about twelve feet of water with all your gear on. I don’t know why but get out of the water with all your gear. One lad got drowned there, doing that.

Stupid I thought. I suppose it might have come in handy because if you had to jump off a boat with all your gear on you’d have to do the same thing. But the crook part of all this was we did four weeks of really rigorous training and we were fit. We were fighting fit and what they did with us was send us down to Burleigh Heads

for a week and in the camp the boys used to get one bottle of Richmond Lager once a week and they get down to Burleigh Heads and boy, do they get on the slops and after four weeks of training and spend a week on slops and then we had to go

back to Canungra, had to walk both ways. Going down was alright but going back up again some of these boys that had been at the pub weren’t real fit. From there they sent us to Townsville, no, they sent us north. We were allocated to units.

Oh it was a bit more strenuous I suppose. In the ordinary camp there were things that we didn’t do, like walking, I’ve got a picture there. We

had to climb up a ladder and walk across a rope bridge, and be able to run across that almost and we didn’t do that in the ordinary training and the water job, we didn’t do that in the ordinary training. Also in the commandos we had to float our gear across the creek. All you got was a groundsheet and your pack and

your ammunition and such, and float it all across a creek without losing it. Some lost it but no, it was a little bit extra but not much really. It was one week extra.

Well one of the things they did stress we had to be trained on our own, a group on our own, because we didn’t belong to any division. In those days we were called independent companies and it meant that we were on our own

and fortunately I wasn’t involved a great deal in the New Guinea area but our boys would be out for days on their own, away from the main parties, checking on areas.

Reflexes was one that they test, reflex actions and how quick you can move if things happen, how good your sight is, but no

when you look at it I don’t think the training there was any heavier than the three weeks of ordinary infantry training. But it was stressed that there would be lots of time when we would be on our own, with about thirty other fellows with you.

Exciting, yeah, I guess it would be exciting. Being training you want to get started to do something and I think that was one thing. They were talking about,

after we finished Canungra we were put on draft to go to our unit and we thought, “Good, we’re going, we’re on our way.” That would have been in November and we didn’t get the boat until January and we spent our time between Cairns,

Brandon and Oonoonba in Townsville. When we were in Townsville there was a wharf labourers strike and there were thirty of us and we were sent to work on the Townsville wharves and that was a really eye opener. We used to have a side haversack, a little

haversack, part of our equipment was a side haversack and we used to take our lunch in that and anything we wanted to drink in that and when we got to the gates of the wharf our haversack would be opened and we’d do our day’s work. When we went out the gate our haversacks would be opened and the wharfies [wharf workers] used to go in with their Gladstone bag, wouldn’t be opened,

and they’d walk out with their Gladstone bag, wouldn’t be opened, and we knew that they had stuff in those Gladstone bags that they shouldn’t have had. They used to drop cases on their side and break them and oh.

Of the wharfies? I’ve never had a very good impression of the wharfies. They worked hard, in those days, they didn’t have a lot of the equipment that they have now,

but I’ve handled wharfies in civil life, shipping stuff away from our firm and the things that happened. I can tell you one, we had a swing, I worked for Hills Industries and we had a swing set all strapped up and two clothes hoists.

And I raced down to the wharf with them in a utility and got down to the wharf and I undid the ropes on the back of the ute and got a couple of sticks to put them on, so as the forklift could pick them up. I had two of the things off and it was smoko time at the wharf. And I didn’t have time to waste and one of

the wharfies came over from the smoko break and said “You’d better put those back on the truck” and I said “Why?” And he said “Well if you don’t, they’ll all go on strike.” I had to sit there for the rest of their smoko time and then they came over and lifted them off for me and I could have been back at work.

Yes, back in Townsville.

I couldn’t tell what it was about now but it meant that there was nothing going to the troops, which we found that out when we got there because when we, we went as reinforcements and we went to Lae and

our camp in Lae for five days all we had to eat was herrings and tomato sauce. That’s all we had to eat, three meals a day, herrings and tomato sauce and that’s all the tucker they had because of the strike.

Yeah, that’s why the troops were sent to the wharves to work, to get as much away as we could.

No, no, not on my ships anyway. We just did our work.

See apparently there is a hierarchy in the wharf labourers systems and the

bosses, they don’t strike, it’s only the wharf lumpers that strike apparently.

We would have done about three weeks on the wharf I suppose and then we were put on the boat ourselves and sent away.

That’s it. The food line had broken down between Australia and New Guinea and that’s what happened. When we got there all we had in our camp out the scrub was tin fish, tin fish and dog biscuits [hard biscuits].

There were about forty of us. Forty of us were loaded into an old cattle boat that had been running cattle on the west coast of Australia and all they’d done to make us comfortable was put lime over

the stink. And because of danger we were told we had to spend our time down below but you can imagine the stink of the hold of the boat we spent most of our time upstairs anyway, out in the open. That was a pretty easy trip.

Didn’t see any of our navy protecting us. They must have known it was all clear because we got to Lae with no trouble at all.

It was taking supplies as well but they probably didn’t get as far as Lae because Lae was the last drop.

On the old boat it was a steel deck and it rained somewhat and we had groundsheets, it’s a raincoat as well as sleeping accommodation and that was all we had to keep us dry as you couldn’t bear the downstairs.

I’ve got a record of all the fellows who went to the unit with me and there’s only about five of us, twenty-eight went to 6th Company and there’s only about five of us left, all got old and gone.

It was a hell of a mess and the Yanks were there and they had an airstrip there and it was real good because the Yanks always had movies and our camp never had movies and we’d hitch a ride to the movies, whichever had the best movie on and sit out the movie.

You’d sit on a log or something but you’d get an air raid siren and it was a Yank camp and the Yanks would all shoot through to their trenches and we’d be left sitting on the log. And the Yanks used to turn up, to get to the pictures they had their jeeps with the padded seats and when they were all gone we used to

rip over and knock the seats off the jeep and sit on them for the rest of the picture.

Diana Durban, Bing Crosby, Hedy Lamarr, Bob Hope, all young fellows then they were. Shirley Temple, we saw some

Shirley Temple movies in New Guinea. That was the only attraction but we were in the camp for about five days, that’s all and we’d leave our camp, hitch a ride, ask the driver if he was going anywhere near a movie and he’d say “yes”, so you’d hitch a ride with him and get to the movie

and after the movie was over it took an awful time to find your way home, back to camp because you had no idea where you were but a lot of fun getting from one place to another.

See all of a sudden the siren would go and the movie would stop and then there is no more lights,

all the lights were out and when the air raid was clear the lights would all come on again. Sometimes there’d be three air raids, three warnings, no air raids would happen but three warnings and you could imagine sitting watching the picture and all of a sudden it was dark and it would come back again.

No, could have been at times when we weren’t at the movies

because there were bombs dropped in Lae while we were there. But from there we had a beautiful trip, my first aeroplane ride, from Nazdab airstrip to Gusap airstrip in the Ramu Valley, in an old DC3 [aircraft], all just sitting in it, no seats in it, all just sitting on the walls of the plane and

you’re able to look out the window, and both sides were the mountains. We were flying up the valley and oh, the mountains were awful close this side and then they’d be awful close this side and all the planes used to stay down below the mountains for protection. That’s the first plane ride I had and oh, it was really scary because you thought those wing tips were going to touch the side of the mountain.

We got out at Gusap, Gusap was the airstrip and the kuni grass, you’ve heard of kuni grass I guess? It’s something like about eight foot high, beautiful stuff it is. I don’t know what it’s good for. We got away from the airstrip into kuni grass and jeeps had been running through and

you can see the tracks, and we had to follow a jeep track and you couldn’t see either side. The kuni grass was up eight foot high.

Yeah, yeah, because we didn’t know where we were going, they just said “Follow this track and you’ll come to the camp.” That’s when I joined the unit there, February.

Gusap, Gusap, in the Ramu valley. I’d say it would be a beautiful tourist spot. There was nothing there except tents but on the side of the mountain, beautiful grassy slopes, not kuni grass, just ordinary grass and a big backdrop of a big mountain behind it, which we learnt all about later on.

We only had tents of course but the natives had their huts. I don’t know whether, there was a village down below but I don’t know whether the natives that were in our camp had anything to do with village. They might have been our own native boys, our carriers.

It would have been a good place to have a holiday because down the bottom there’s a nice river. I might go back there and make a picnic area.

Well when we got there we were sent to a feature called the Five Hundred, 500 feet up in the air and to

get there was a pretty solid climb and the natives used to carry all our food up. We didn’t have to carry any food up and you’ve heard of Shaggy Ridge and Five, Five Hundred was down there and up there was Shaggy Ridge, straight across and our job when we got there was to sit there and

watch Shaggy Ridge to make sure that nobody came up from Shaggy Ridge to get over the airstrip. They had to get over our mountain to get to the airstrip behind us and that was our first job. My first job anyway with the unit was to protect Gusap from the Japs coming off Shaggy Ridge because Shaggy Ridge, the battle for

Shaggy Ridge had just been over but there were still plenty of Japs down in the hollows, around the area.

No, no, I spent my time in New Guinea and I never fired a shot, never fired a shot. I was never shot at in New Guinea.

I saw plenty of their camps because when we were on Five, Five Hundred a gang of us had to go down across the valley and up Shaggy Ridge and we were looking for ammunition that the battalions would have left behind and had to mark it, leave signs so someone could come along and pick it up later on and we went right over the

top of Shaggy Ridge. And so help me, I don’t know how our fellows ever got over there and protected themselves, well some of them didn’t get over. A lot of them died but it was like walking up a camel’s back, terrible. We had difficulty getting up without anybody in front of us trying to stop us and when we were coming

back to our base again, we’d been wet for three days and I developed a funny cough and it got to the stage where nobody would go out at night time on the perimeter with me because I couldn’t stop coughing, so they packed me back down the mountain, back to base and from there I went to hospital and had an antrum operation in Lae.

And when I was discharged from the hospital I found out that our unit was ready to come home, so I was able to come home with them.

Mostly food dumps. There’d be no tents, no tents or anything like that but there’d be food dumps, rice bags and all

that sort of thing all spread around. See they wouldn’t have time, they’d spend a night in a camp, that’s all, but they’d have food there and also ammunition in their camp.

It would stay there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll tell you about one in Borneo later on. I came home, back to Australia and spent nearly twelve months on Atherton Tablelands, at Kairi, and my family had moved from Kuranda to Mareeba, while I was away and Mareeba,

you know where Mareeba is? Well Mareeba’s on the Tablelands and it’s twenty odd miles from Atherton and our camp was between Atherton and Mareeba and we were allowed out at night time until twenty three fifty nine, with leave passes and into Atherton only because Mareeba was out of bounds, because

Australian 1st Army was in Mareeba and that was, you couldn’t mix 7th Division troops with 1st Army.

Entertainment, hotels for drinking are only big enough to supply one big group of people and if a 7th Div gang

all got down there on one night well I mean the town would be wiped out almost and also to protect one from the other I suppose. Because it was out of bounds I couldn’t go home, could only go to Atherton and that was a bit stupid as home was only twenty six miles away. One difficulty was that we wore black berets and when you went on

leave of a night time you had to go out with your dress on, with your black beret and the black beret was a dead giveaway. I’d hitch a ride down to Mareeba, go to the pictures, go to a dance, go to the church group and I’d have no hat on but I’d have a uniform on and then when I put my beret on it was a dead giveaway

and the provos [provosts, military police] used to pick me up. The provos picked me up and take me back to their camp, the 7th Div [Division] provos used to pick me up and they’d take me back to their tent and I used to sit there until about two o’clock in the morning when they were going back to 7th Div and they’d drop me off as a letter in the office, saying this bloke was picked up in Mareeba.

So I’d have to front the CO [commanding officer] and after about six attempts he knew I was going home but he wasn’t going to stop me and he said “If you come back again I’ll have to put you on a charge.” And he said “I can save you all that trouble. I can get you a leave pass to Mareeba every night.” He said “What you’ve got to do is look after Maurie

Davies” and Maurie Davies was our intelligence officer and I thought “Well what does that entail?” And he said “You’ve got to polish his clothes, you’ve got to iron his clothes, you’ve got to wash his clothes, you’ve got to do all for him, become a batman [officer’s servant].” So I thought it over. “If I can get home I’ll do it”, so I took a batman’s job. I had to look after two officers and we were camped on the bank of a little creek with running water and it was no trouble

to take a kerosene tin and a cake of soap and go down and wash his clothes at the creek, and boil them up and bring them up and iron them and I learnt how to iron.

You had to look after all his clothes which for an officer he’s got to have nicely ironed clothes, nicely polished Sam Brown, make sure his meals are on time, when you can. You didn’t have much physical contact with him,

except in the morning you’d go and find out what he wanted done. Washing and ironing was the main thing, in a camp like that. I mean I don’t know what it would be like in a base camp somewhere but once I’d done the washing and made sure his bed was right for night time

that was the end of the day almost. If we went on a route march I would make sure he was dressed well so he looked alright for the rest of the gang, but no, there wasn’t a great deal to do. The main thing of course was that I could get a leave pass to Mareeba instead of to Atherton.

No, I didn’t have to do any of his work, he was an intelligence officer. It didn’t mean a thing to me and he was just a bloke that I had his clothes to look after and his tent to look

after but none of his duties were dropped down to my level.

You didn’t have to collect his food because there’s the mess.

They had an officers’ mess, a sergeants’ mess, and an ORs [Other Ranks] mess and they were in the officers’ mess and sometimes I had to go and peel spuds in the officers’ mess but it was mostly just his private matters.

Yes, you’d have to, there was no

other duties really. When you were in the camp at Atherton it was route marches and exercises and all that sort of thing. Well I still had to do route marches because he’d have to go too and well exercises, we were all involved in that but not as much as the boys that were in the lines.

Officers were officers but no I think in small units it was different to being in big units. See there was only less than three hundred on our unit roll

and officers and men were all mates almost. We never had any real trouble mixing with them. We didn’t go in their mess but on duty they were just like all the rest of us.

Yes, I’ll say, yes.

No, no, no. See when I took the job on I had to leave our lines and go to headquarters lines which meant that I didn’t live with the rest of the boys.

My tent was in the headquarters area which meant they’d be away on a route march somewhere and I’d be at home; I’d be at base I mean, not home. It was a bit of a blow but you’re okay, the job has to be done.

Yeah, you see I was fortunate really because I didn’t know any of the boys before I went to New Guinea. I only spent time with about twenty boys while I was there and then I took sick, went to hospital,

away from the unit, came home and was only about three months I suppose with the unit before I took the job looking after the officers so I didn’t get to know a great deal about our own unit, the 6th Company fellows.

The hospitalisation?

Yeah, I’ve probably still got the same problem. I had an antrum operation which involved peeling your face back and working on your nose, and it was a bit of a thrill really with things sticking out of your nose, drains and all sorts of things but I think I’ve still got the same problem. I’ve always had nasal problems.

But what was happening was every couple of minutes I’d have to cough and I had no idea what was wrong and when I got down to Lae they said it was an antrum problem and they operated on me.

Well as far as I know they peel your face back and they scrape all the muck around that’s in behind your nose and then stitch you back up again.

Yes, there must have been some infection that had got in there earlier that had caused the problem but I never really went into what they did but I know it was awful flaming sore for a while.

Yes, in the field hospital in Lae.

No, didn’t effect my anymore, although all my life I’ve had a nasal problem but didn’t

make me cough. The hospital in Lae was handling all sorts. Apart from operations there were fellows that had been wounded and shell shocked and gee some of those boys were in a bad way. Their nerves had gone on them and

it was a real worry and some of them never got it, come home wrecks. Young fellows just gone to pieces, what did they call it?

Jungle, they had a name for it, jungle fever or something, that sent them mad.

No, some of them had come from Brisbane. We had a couple of fellows

have been mentally affected that I’ve known for years. They’ve gone now.

No, no, no, they could have come from anywhere. As a matter of fact I don’t think I can remember anybody who was in the next bed even. Some of them

were wounded, gun shot wounds but I don’t know if there were any others with operations for my sort of operation. When I got out of the hospital I found out that our unit was waiting to go home and they packed me off and it was a good thing to catch the old

boat to go home. Didn’t have to go back up the valley.

At the hospital? Beautiful, beautiful, yeah, couldn’t complain about the staff. Some girl nurses, some boy nurses but they were all, as

they should be, nurses have to be good.

I’ve got no idea, no. I probably didn’t even see him, yeah, got no idea.

No, through here, take your top lip, peel your,

and when I came back of course I had stitches all inside there and it was a bit of a problem for a while. I think the stitches had just gone away because I don’t remember ever having them taken out, those type that disappear. There were sticks

in my nose and some out the side of my mouth and I couldn’t eat for a couple of days because of all the things in my mouth. Before I got into hospital I was

sent to a CCS, a casualty clearing station in the valley, in Gusap and there were boys that were shell shocked and screaming mad and terrible. At night they’d be out screaming, terrible

but I was fortunate, as I said in New Guinea I never fired a shot and never really had to face them but some of the boys that tell the stories of what went on, it was stupid, a real worry. And now it’s all happening. After

we came home we thought we were going to have a peaceful world and it hasn’t stopped since.

Yeah, yeah, because in the battalions you’ve got three hundred fellows in a company and they’re all going together.

But with the independent companies or with the commandos there might only be four blokes go out on a patrol and they might come back and they might not. Most of them came back but some didn’t and nobody would know where they were. They might have been shot off in the first hour they were away

or they had no contact. The only contact was if they get back and tell them what was going on. The idea was to get around to the outside and find out where the enemy was or how many enemy there were and report back in to the battalions.

And taking off, two or three blokes taking off on their own had to be pretty scary but they overcame it and came back with some good information at times. As I say I was fortunate as I never had to fire a shot

and I didn’t have to kill anybody, which was a good thing. Don’t have blood on your hands.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, until it happens you don’t know you’d react really.

I don’t think there’d be too many that would run away but you don’t know.

Mainly discomfort

because you only had one set of clothes, and couldn’t have a bath, unless you jumped in a creek with your clothes on but yes, well some of the boys almost starved to death because they couldn’t get back from where they were but they did it.

No, no, no. I think they did a pretty good job on most of us, getting us ready for it but I don’t think until you get there

and are involved in it, you would have no idea of what to expect.

I don’t think I noticed it really but I suppose there was. It would be pretty hard to explain what they’d be doing

to you I suppose, but I suppose they did. I know we were left in, in Canungra you’d be left out at night time, three or four fellows on their own, for a couple of nights on our own and I suppose that was and you’d have to be able to get on with, there’d be no good having four fellows

out on their own if they’d argue and fight all the time if they didn’t get on with one another. As I said we went over Shaggy Ridge looking for ammunition dumps, our own ammunition dumps, and

there were times when I’d have to help this fellow and someone else had to help me get up the range, up the mountain, so we couldn’t believe how fellows could get over and protect themselves, Shaggy Ridge.

And after Shaggy Ridge that would have been about the time we could have called it quits because I reckon after that the Japanese were on the run but yet we still kept going. I reckon the last twelve months of the war could have been done at home because the Japs

had no supplies, they were cut off everywhere and still away there.

You mean once we came back to Australia?

Wouldn’t have been in Lae but I don’t think there was a great deal done for shell shocked people in 1914 or 1945, not like there is today, all the counselling that we have. Whether it does any good or not, I don’t know

but in ‘39-‘45 there were fellows that came back with problems and they just went away and endeavoured to get over it on their own and they did. They came back in again but all this counselling we never got counselled. And

most of the fellows that came back from Vietnam, whether they were affected or not, they all went through some sort of a de-shocking I suppose. Maybe theirs was worse than ours but we came back and were given a discharge and sent home.

Not for me because I had no problems

but I think some of our boys could have been looked after better than they were. Grog was the easy way out. Now if they could have stopped some of those fellows early there might have been some benefit but once…alcohol is a pretty solid…has a terrible effect

on people. I like a drink now and again but don’t like it that much.

Uh?

I don’t think so.

There might have been in town but no, not a great deal. They were just ordinary troops but they did get mixed up in a few stoushes with the Americans in Townsville. One of our companies had a bit of a war of their own in Townsville with

the Yanks but I don’t think that was anything to do with that they were commandos. I think it was because they were Australians. There were places in Townsville that were out of bounds to Australian troops and Australia was ours, not the Yanks. And when I came back from New Guinea

I was staging outside Townsville and I used to work outside Townsville and I had friends in Townsville, girlfriends and boyfriends and when I was staging at Thuringowa, go into the dances and lots of Townsville was out of bounds to Australian troops and one of the girls that I was going to a dance with

said “Oh we’ll go to the Troc”, yeah I think it was the Trocadero they called it, but she said “It’s all Yanks” but she said “I think we’ll be right” so there were only about three other Australian lads there and the rest was American troops and we went out alright. We didn’t have any problems but I think if you go looking for trouble you can easily make it.

As a matter of fact after the dance was over I was camped out at Thuringowa, Thuringowa’s about twelve miles out of Townsville, and two of the Yanks said “We’ll take you back to camp.” “Yeah, alright.” “Where about is it?” I said “Thuringowa”. “Oh no problem” and they got a motorbike and sidecar

and they took me out. I was sitting on the pillion seat and one fellow in side car and one bloke on the motorbike, all the way back out to Thuringowa, so I mean the Yanks were the same as anybody else.

No, no, no, as a matter of fact they didn’t want to be with me. You could imagine sitting out on a sentry job watching out over the valley at night time and you’re coughing.

I never heard of any in of ours but I guess there were plenty that put on an act to get out. But it would be pretty hard because you’ve got your RAP, that’s the Regimental Aid Post, and then you’ve got the

doctors for the unit and they’d soon find out if there was something wrong with you or not.

No, we didn’t hear anything. We didn’t know where anybody was really. I suppose if we’d have known

everybody else would have known, the Japanese would have known, but no, had no idea. See we didn’t even know that Darwin was bombed. The people didn’t know that Broome was bombed, not until after the war, things were kept.

When we came back to Australia I reckon we could have almost stopped then and I think a lot of people thought the same thing and why we had to go for another eighteen months I don’t know. I reckon we went to Borneo for nothing.

Lost lives for nothing, because they couldn’t get food, couldn’t get anything.

Yes, I don’t think there ever much doubt about the moral of the Australian Army. They were

there for the job and they all felt the same just about. There might be the odd one or two but I think they all knew they had to be there. Yeah, and there’d

be, you’d only need a few in the unit and that would upset the whole really, so no, never, I don’t think any of our boys would have felt bad about it.

See the 2/6th, there’s twelve companies, twelve companies and because they’re small units they’re close to one another, closer I think than battalions and

because they are in, they work in small groups too, those four or five fellows get pretty close to one another, which wouldn’t always happen in battalions. Because there would be twenty fellows go away in a battalion, from a platoon and it would be different

to having close contact with three or four.

Being stupid.

I suppose quick thinking, quick reactions, and being able to shoot straight but reactions would be pretty important because you’ve got to do something on the spur of the moment, which the battalion boys have to do to but more so I think in the

small groups.

There would probably be a sergeant, a corporal and two ORs. Sometimes be a lieutenant,

yeah, not always an officer but always a sergeant. See there is about four, yeah the sergeants would be about one to four in a platoon, yeah, about one to four I suppose,

twenty one in a platoon, about five sergeants.

Other ranks, other ranks, yeah. NCOs [non commissioned officers], officers, NCOs and ORs, other ranks.

No, there’d be more navigational learning than the

battalion boys would have I suppose because this small group, in the battalion would be one or two fellows who’d have all that knowledge but when you’re in a small group you’ve got to know it yourself.

I don’t think so. We’d be sent out at night time and have to find our way to where we had to get to and you’d get your little compass. I suppose the battalion fellows would have to do the same sort of thing or somebody in a battalion would be, but not as many in the

battalion as would be in our units.

Oh no, I don’t know. I think it was just as you went along. I think I know what you mean, would they pass

the knowledge on? Well they probably do because otherwise there wouldn’t be any new corporals or sergeants, would there? I wouldn’t have noticed that sort of thing.

No, no, no, no, there would be a fellow,

there might be one fellow who might be a signalman, he might be carrying a pack on his back with a battery in it and a walkie-talkie to talk to base, but once you get far enough away you might as well throw it away because you can’t hear it anyway. Not too many of them would go

out with much more equipment than a bagful of rounds and their weapons, Owen guns, Bren guns.

Uh?

Owen, little Owen. I’ll tell you a story about Owens. When I was up on Five, Five Hundred I had an Owen gun,

had to keep it nice and clean and when I was taken down sick I had to leave my Owen gun up the mountain and I took back a signaller’s rifle and the first morning down there on parade and they had a rifle inspection and with a rifle inspection you have to take the bolt out of the rifle

and the inspector looks down the barrels. And the rifle I’d picked up from up the mountain from the signaller was pretty dirty and they came along and inspected it and they started to go crook on me and I said “Well it’s not mine, it belongs to a bloke up the mountain” but the sigs don’t use them very much.

The Owen gun, that was a mighty little weapon. Never used one in New Guinea or Borneo but we used them in training at Canungra and when you point at something you’re pointing at it and with an Owen gun, see an Owen gun is down here and if you see something and you point, you’ve got to hold your arm and you’re pointing your finger

at your target. You’ve got no sights and of course it’s automatic, it gives a spray, but as I say at night time at Canungra they used to have bodies pop out of the scrub and you had to take a shot at them, well once you pointed your finger at the thing, you’d stand a pretty fair chance of hitting it, but not like a rifle where you’ve got to get up,

sight it. When you point at something your finger takes it where it’s got to go.

The main things was to look for small pockets of Japanese and shift them out, which happened quite a number of times. And try to make sure that everybody was going far enough away, going backwards instead of forwards,

that we were going forward and they were going backwards, because we didn’t have much to do with the battalions at all in the valley. Our boys were really on their own, less than three hundred fellows and they’d be out patrolling.

At one place, Kaiapit, Kaiapit, I wasn’t there but our boys were; I think it was something like forty or fifty fellows were able to beat off five hundred Japanese, by just tactical. Maybe they’d given up or not

but I forget the figures but very few of our boys wiped out a big bunch of Japanese. That was one group of Japanese that wouldn’t take part later on somewhere. Some of the actions were terrible. I didn’t see them, but

I’ve read about them since and been told about them from the fellows that were there and it was unbelievable the stupid things that go on during the war.

The main thing was to go out and find out where they were, estimate how many and go back and tell the battalions, how to get there and what was there. That was the

main aim in the first place, not to be actively be in the action. It was to get the battalions up to take it on but sometimes it was too late and they had to do it while they were there.

Yeah, you had to make sure that all the high points were in your control, not theirs, which was the problem with Shaggy Ridge. They were all on top of Shaggy Ridge and were able to pass all around them and they had to knock them off.

All we were supposed to be doing was to make sure that the Japanese didn’t come from down in the bottom, over the range to Gusap airstrip. Shaggy Ridge was here, Five, Five Hundred was here and the Ramu Valley with Gusap airstrip was there and they could have come over our feature and got down to Gusap airstrip.

About twenty at a time, about twenty at a time because we had other features as well. The one that I was on was Five, Five Hundred but I don’t if you’ve looked at the area. There’s two great big spines running along in New Guinea, one here, big valley, another one

here and another one here, and along the valley, one side of the valley was Five, Five Hundred and further up was more features that some of our fellows were on.

Ours was Gusap, down the bottom. It was on the base of Five, Five Hundred but

the fellows who were on the other features would have had to march out two or three miles to get up the other one. A story about coming down from Five, Five Hundred, I was pretty crook and it was almost a ladder, almost like climbing up a ladder to get up there and it was always wet and slippery.

And I had to come down and a sergeant from up the top he had to go down to and he took me down and if he hadn’t of been with me, I wouldn’t have got down. I would have been dead on the way down I reckon but I always reckon he saved my life, took me down safely. He’s still going. I was talking to him the other day. He’s an old bloke

like me now too, playing bowls.

Well there wouldn’t have been because the natives would never have gone up the top. At night time we had to have a blanket, it was cold,

but no, the natives would have made the track to get our boys up there but that was climbing over and hanging onto trees and getting yourself up.

With the New Guinea natives?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, my word. They were friends.

They were friends because wherever the Japanese had been in control, they’d abuse the natives and they didn’t like them at all and some of them would have had no political leaning. A Japanese

was a man and an Australian was a man and they were people but apparently the Japanese mistreated them and they didn’t like them. You can imagine if the Japanese paid them enough or gave them enough tucker they’d do all sorts of things for them, which they did, some of them were against us but the majority, I’d

say, in New Guinea more than ninety percent of the natives were on our side.

No, no, no. You’ve probably seen pictures of the natives hauling our boys around on stretchers and leading us across rivers. Every time they talk about New Guinea they show the boys, leading them across the water.

That was on all the time and as I said we didn’t have to carry anything up the mountain except our equipment. They carried all our food up and very handy. I don’t know how they got on for pay. Maybe they never got paid because

they weren’t in our pay.

No, no, no, same, exactly the same, six bob a day. That was pretty good money, six shillings a day, every day of the week is pretty good, especially

with your food thrown in. Now I was working before I joined the army and you only got paid when you worked and it was better pay in the army than when I was working. Hard to believe but that was right, six and six a day was pretty good money in those days.

Yeah, yeah.

But I never ever saw him there because he would have been back at headquarters and I was up on the mountain and then I was in hospital but I had a fair bit to do with him afterwards and he became. It’s very confusing here.

Three independent companies or commando squadrons became commando squadrons in a regiment. When the boys came back from overseas, over the desert, they could no longer use tanks so the 7th Div Cavalry Regiment,

the Regimental Headquarters, had to get a job and all their cavalrymen had to get a job, so what they did was kept the headquarters intact and then all their ORs and officers were sent out other units. Could be battalions,

could be anything at all, but they all had the opportunity to stay with the regiment and join the commando squadron, which some of them did. But it meant the tank regiments had three companies. We were Three, Five and Six and 6th Div had three companies and 9th Div

had three companies and I think, there were twelve of them altogether. I don’t know what happened to the others. They mightn’t have got a div headquarters but we became 7th Div Cav [Cavalry] and when that happened our intelligence officer went to 7th Div Cav and when I went to be his batman I went to 7th Div Cav and I became 7th Div Cav, not the 2/6th Commando Squadron.

Yes, yes.

As well as taking in some of the regimental fellows from the tank units.

Yes but our intelligence officers would have to be in touch with intelligence officers from all other units around the area to find out and let them know where the enemy was and it was all done by funny

little radios.

Every unit has sig units. My wife was a signal woman but she didn’t go to New Guinea and they have their radio packs and miles and miles of cable and that’s how they keep in touch with

everybody behind them. About four days before the war ended in Borneo, getting onto Borneo now, our signal unit was damaged pretty badly by our own artillery, with a drop short and

blew our sig tent to pieces. But that was a job for the intelligence people, was to keep in contact with everybody around, not just themselves, not just their own units but we had to know what somebody else was doing in the area.

Didn’t always know but most times we knew where everybody was.

Yes.

Yeah.

Some of the troops.

I never had training in mortars, no,

no, no, just rifles, Bren and Owen and the hand grenades but never handled a mortar.

See there’s a thing too, all that heavy stuff was carried by the natives. They did a big job, yeah.

Yeah, the big obstacle was getting down and you’d have to hang onto trees and things and you can imagine what coming down off a steep, muddy mountain would be like? And all I had

was a rifle to carry. I didn’t have any gear at all. I had my haversack I suppose but no extras and yeah, have you done any mountain climbing at all? Mountain climbing on dry mountains is pretty good but mountain climbing on mud is not much good. And as you know it rains every day in New Guinea

almost so it’s always mud, but as I said if I hadn’t of had someone with me I probably wouldn’t have got down. But I did and from there I went to a casualty clearing station after I’d been marched out of the unit and spent about three days there and then they flew me down to Lae.

And I stayed there as I said until the rest of the gang was going home.

In Gusap, right near the airstrip. It was between our unit and the airstrip and the airstrip, you can imagine what the airstrip was like? The planes would get bogged on it and they’d have to be dragged out, in

the mud but the casualty clearing station, all they did for me there was give me a great big bowl of what in it? Something in it to try and make me stop coughing but it didn’t work, so that’s why they sent me to hospital.

Yeah, I come home from New Guinea and I think it was, we came into Townsville, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Townsville, but the Strand at Townsville and there used to be

bougainvilleas on the cliff face and we sat out and we saw the sun come up on those bougainvilleas as we were waiting to come into port, beautiful sight, bougainvilleas, beautiful red.

Yeah, you’re still in New Guinea, we’re still in New Guinea but going to Borneo we had seasickness. We went over on LSTs, that’s landing ship transport, and on the side were pontoons. You’ve seen an LST? You’ve seen a picture of one no doubt.

Righto.

Yeah.

No, no, no, on the wharf. Pretty good

harbours there apparently, deep water and you’d just walk up the gangway, no trouble at all.

I can’t remember. It was a big one, a big one, an old passenger one

but I can’t remember. It’s probably on my history there. I think it was then that Bernborough and Flight were racing in Brisbane because all our boys were backing Bernborough. You’ve heard of Bernborough I suppose? You’ve never heard of Bernborough? Good Lord.

Bernborough was one of the top race horses in Brisbane, well in Australia. I forget where he came from but at that time he was winning all the big races, the Doomben Cup, and the Sydney races and on the

radios on the ship the boys were all putting their money on with a bookmaker. I can’t remember what ship it was. We came home, the second time we came home we came home on the Kanimbla, and that was a beautiful ship.

Yeah.

Oh you’d soon find a bookie.

Yeah, and we had our own bookie, on the Tablelands we had our own bookie and he ran all the races every Saturday. As a matter of fact because I lived on the Tablelands I had my own portable radio and I

used to get ten shillings a Saturday for the blokes to listen to the races on.

Uh?

Yes, it was a big thing, two up [gambling game involving two coins], every camp there was a two up game and cards. Coming home,

we’d have played cards, played oh what did we call it? Pontoon, pontoon, we used to play pontoon twenty one hours out of twenty four, all night sittings, all day sittings. And probably didn’t lose anything, but didn’t win anything.

Yeah, I suppose so because all camps had their own two up games, card sharps. Didn’t matter where you went you could get a game. Gambling, I suppose it’s the same all over

the world but it seemed to be a pretty strong gambling crowd in Australia. Just look at every day, you can go down the TAB [betting agency] and you can bet on anything down the TAB.

No, see there used to be sessions

and there were three pubs in town and one would have a session at ten o’clock and one would have it at twelve o’clock and one would have it at two o’clock, right? And when the beer ran out at one pub you went to the next one and that’s what the boys did. And it’s on for one hour or two hours and there’s a bloke in the bar

and he’s buying for the blokes outside, pass it out the window in Atherton.

I think a blind eye. I don’t suppose it was legal but you didn’t see too many sly games knocked off. The officers

take part themselves. On the Tablelands too we used to have movies and our camp had a big screen and all 7th Div was on the Tablelands at the same time and the battalions used to come over to our screen

and if there was no room out the side of the screen, you went round the back and watched it through the back.

I don’t know what they’d be, I don’t know what they’d be. You used to have to stop and rewind.

I don’t know, I supposed the unit belonged to 7th Div, I don’t know.

I don’t know, I don’t know. We used to just sit out and watch it. I don’t know where they got it from. But I suppose five brigades would come to our movie nights

and it was on the parade ground and over the back of the creek and the parade ground would be crowded. There was nothing to do.

Yeah, yeah, and football matches and I think they used to play AFL [Australian Football League – Australian rules football] and our crowd

won a couple of championships for divisional football team.

Yeah, yeah, played on our field too, on our parade ground.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah.

I don’t know why but they used to have a boxing ring at Kairi. Kairi is a little town outside Atherton and we used to go there for boxing, outdoor and some of our boys were involved in it. In fact I think one of our fellows was divisional champion at one stage and

get it clear in my head. All these boxing rings was stupid.

No, no. I had a couple of games of rugby union on our Tablelands game but being a bush kid I didn’t have much to do

with…I don’t ever remember playing a competition of cricket even. We used to play cricket at school but not, when you’re at school and you only had thirteen kids in it and that was our school and there was five in our family and

when we shifted home and went to a little town they had to get hold of a place to open a school and when we left they’d close the school. At Lucinda Point, you’ve heard of Lucinda Point? That was one place and we got there and we went to where the school was and there was no

teacher there, so Dad got in touch with the policeman and said that there were five kids that wanted to go to school, and where would they go? And he said, “Next week you’ll have a teacher”, so we five and there must have been another nine, there must have been and I think we had about fourteen kids in the school before we had a teacher and there was nine kids that had to be shifted out

of Lucinda Point to go to Eames School or somewhere, were able to come back to their own school. And that happened when we went to Kuranda, a little school outside of Kuranda. They opened a school there and they closed it when we left.

Yeah, you see, talking about Atherton Tablelands, I was born in Proserpine but I travelled up as far as Kuranda, to live in Kuranda, finish my schooling and what started us on this? Yeah, schools, yeah, but before I went to work on the cattle station

we were always able to have access to horses because my Mum and Dad handled horses before they were married for remounts during 14-18. They used to break them in for Banjo Paterson.

Yes, I guess that’s what it meant,

remounts. Old Banjo Paterson had a fair bit to do with remounts and they used to handle some of his horses, so we’ve always been, I’ve always been horse minded anyway.

Yeah, yeah, I probably didn’t see one for three years, four years.

You mean the army?

Yeah, I’d go to the pictures.

I used to go to Mareeba. My sister lived at Mareeba and I used to go and visit her and my family were always involved with the church and when you went to Mareeba,

when I went home to Mareeba I went to a church function, went to the pictures or went somewhere with the church group, pictures and dances, that was the main thing. Sometimes you’d get to Cairns and go to dances in Cairns. To get to Cairns you had to hitch a ride and hope for a ride back but they were not very far apart.

Yeah, our family moved around quite a bit during our early life and wherever we went if there was no church or Sunday school my Mum or Dad started a church or Sunday school. I’ve always been involved in the church, except for

four years that I was in the army and I didn’t have much to do with them then but we belong to the Uniting Church up here and have done since 1950 something and regular attendee and it has always been a part of our life.

Well you could go to church,

not in the camp very often, but when I was working in Brisbane on anti-aircraft, I used to go to a Presbyterian church at Kalinga. I picked up with a girl at a dance one night and she belonged at the Presbyterian Church at Kalinga and I used to go there and have Sunday dinner sometimes and go to church.

Yeah.

Yeah, not chase her round.

Yes, I’ve got a book written by our padre. He was padre for three different companies over his period and down, I think the only church services I attended

while I was away would be Catholic ones or Salvation ones but never ever went to a Presbyterian or Methodist service. They weren’t there but there was always a Catholic one. As a matter of fact the Catholic bloke used to come to Five, Five Hundred every second week while the boys were up and they were up there for about three months I think.

And the Catholic bloke used to stagger up that mountain carrying his little box of…

I don’t think so, no, no. There would be a little service at the graveside if there was time

for it but I’ve got a couple of pictures of the boys being buried. Religion didn’t come up a great deal in the army. Nobody ever got stuck into religion very much.

No, no, never.

As I said I was on the Five, Five Hundred the enemy was way down there or behind us somewhere and nobody was injured or never fired a shot there.

Yeah, my younger brother, yeah. That was a good day. At that time of course we were camped at Kairi and able to go

home to Mareeba because I had a leave pass to Mareeba. And outside Mareeba was an airstrip anyway and also paratroopers and they had a unit up there and our home was open to the troops all the time and in that photograph a couple of the boys used to come to the church groups,

and my brother and yeah I think it was fourteen people there. There were a couple that weren’t in the picture but that was the sort of thing that happened at home all the time. Our house was full of boys or girls.

Well there was five kids, Mum and Dad and five kids and everywhere we went, I might have said it earlier that our home became a church, in the country like, and always had Sunday school. Neighbouring kids always came to Sunday school and that went on all my early life

and then later on, didn’t matter where Mum and Dad went with the younger ones of the family, there was churches, start something or start Sunday school until we got to the Burdekin area where there was already established churches. My eldest brother was in a

transport company in the Middle East and New Guinea, in Bougainville. My oldest sister married a 6th Division man, and my brother next to me and joined the air force and served in Sydney on Catalinas, maintenance of Catalinas. It

was pretty late in the war then and my youngest sister stayed at home and she was the only one that came to the Burdekin with the family. She was still young then. All married, all five of us married and two gone. My oldest sister died about two years ago and my brother died at Christmas time, last Christmas.

Kids, there were kids and we met one, got in touch with us and one thing that she mentioned was that she used to come to Sunday school at our house and I haven’t seen her since her in sixty years.

Yeah, in the neighbourhood Mum was always looking after people. The one that contacted us, her mother had trouble with the pregnancy of her little brother coming and Mum looked after this little

girl while her mum was in hospital and she was the one that said she always remembered coming over the river to come to Sunday school. Dad worked on the cane fields, as I said. When we lived in Mareeba he worked on the Public Estate for the Improvement of Roads. It

was on the building of the road between Cairns and Mareeba, Cairns and Mareeba mainly and they moved down to the Burdekin and Dad worked on the cane fields in the slack season, which is when the crushing is not all on and they do all the cultivating and all that sort of thing.

Pretty good apparently, pretty good because everyone wanted to own cane farms until about eight years ago and now is the only time that sugar has been bad really. Came good just before but it’s gone off again now but sugar has always

been good.

Tummy full, yeah just to have the gang of young people together was good and they weren’t all local people. There were Victorian boys there who were a long

way from home. Their mums and dads were having their Christmases in Victoria or New South Wales and they’d have been missing out and they were able to have it at our place.

Well no doubt we would have had maybe two roosters and a plum pudding.

In those days you didn’t go out and buy a frozen WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK . You went out and killed a rooster and plucked him and cooked him and had plum pudding and tons of orange drink or mango juice or some other juice.

Yeah, we used to put threepences in, yeah.

Mum used to put threepence in and if you won a threepence it was yours. I don’t know what the idea of that was. It just went out when they bought in the new coins because they were poisonous or something. As a matter of fact we had Christmas in July and there were three plum duff plates each had fifty cents in it, up here at the church the other night, fifty cents,

it’s big money nowadays.

Yes, he must have been away, no, that’s my younger brother that is there, that’s right. He was in the air force, he was in the air force. Yeah, the other fellow was still away, the big fellow was still away. I can’t remember, it’s a long time back.

No, no, we talked about what we wanted to do. My brother, the bloke that was over in the Middle East, he told us a lot of his escapades getting through Africa, through Crete, through Greece into Crete or through Crete into Greece and he was a transport driver,

carting equipment and he reckoned they had some fun getting around because they didn’t know where they were going. They were just following the lead.

I think the family thought

the war was never going to end because in ‘44 things were still fairly hot but my Mum was a real patriot. She reckoned we had to defend our country and her brother was in the army in the old days and

she reckoned we should be in it too. She was really proud to have three boys in the army, my God. But she always thought a lot about us and I have a beautiful poem that she wrote for me and I guess the other two boys got one too.

It was voiced, yeah, yeah. I used to get a letter from Mum every week. I didn’t always write once a week.

Well on the islands we didn’t get the mail very regularly. We used to get four or five letters at a time

but it was pretty important. Everybody waited for it and you’d see long faces if there was nothing turned out for them and contact with home was pretty important. Some of the poor boys didn’t have any home and they’d always want to read somebody else’s letters.

Things

that were happening at home.

It was good to know that things were still the same at home, the family was still together.

We may not all been to church on the same day but Mum and Dad had been on Christmas morning and the young sister, but it would have been a spiritual day.

Yeah, long route marches, long route marches.

We were camped at Kairi and cross over the highway between Mareeba and Atherton and on your right hand side there’s mountains there and we’d climb all around the mountains there, on the head of Walt’s Creek and it enters the Barron River, Walt’s Creek and it’s pretty rugged country, not rainforest country.

It’s open forest country and we always hear about all the rainforest in north Queensland but there’s an awful lot of open forest country, that’s not heavy jungle and it’s pretty hard route marching through rocky country and we were going to go to tropical country.

Nobody was real keen but oh no, it was a break away from the camp sometimes. You’d get stale around the camp and go for a fortnight out in the bush, living out of a bag.

No, didn’t have much education as far as fluid was concerned but you did without tucker quite a bit. Even on the Tablelands we used to take very little food away on a march. I suppose that was to get us used to being without tucker.

Whatever you could carry, biscuits.

The best thing we’d ever take was dog biscuits. Dog biscuits, have you ever heard of dog biscuits? Dog biscuits are like Sao size and they’re as hard as board and they’re real good. Once you eat them they seem to swell up.

Yeah, yeah, dog biscuits. See we never carried a lot of ammunition and before we, we had basic

pouches in our equipment to carry ammunition but we’d fill them up with dog biscuits and eat the dog biscuits as we went along.

Have you been to Cairns?

Have you been to Kuranda? Yes, did you go on the train to Kuranda?

Well the Edge Hill camp was right at the foot of the range and it was on a nice little sloppy hill and all we saw at Edge Hill camp was our two meal

lines and a night without no cover, just out in the open and then walk off in the daylight, before daylight to go down to the wharf. We were only there in the Edge Hill camp for a little while but it would have been a beautiful setting, right at the foot of the range, nice green.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well our gang was told that we were going to 6th Company and we knew that they were in, oh no, you’re talking about Borneo now.

Yeah, well we didn’t know what part of Borneo but we knew we were going to Borneo. We didn’t know

whether it was north Borneo or south Borneo but we knew that we were going to Borneo and we would have known that the day we were put on the draft I suppose. But what happened at Edge Hill for us was we were all asleep, some of us were asleep I suppose but during the night some 9th Division fellows came in off the boat and were going to stage at Edge Hill and when they

walked through our gear we were all lying there with all our new gear. They picked up our gear and went back into the camp and we got up in the morning and some haven’t got their blanket and some haven’t got their shoes and we had to be re-equipped before we got on the boat. See the boys came back from the island with all worn out gear and all this nice new stuff straight away.

Well the

Q [quartermaster] store was a bit worried about it I suppose but they couldn’t do much about it. Some of our boys went down to the wharf barefooted because they didn’t have any boots but we got them all onboard.

On a LST, which is a landing ship transport, and on the side of the LST were pontoons

so they could get the transport off the boat and we pulled out of Cairns and for the first twenty first hours we went backwards in a storm and an LST is not a very comfortable little ship. And on the side were these pontoons which were strapped on and about eighteen inches

away from the wall of the ship and there’s a gap in between and every time the waves came they’d hit the side of the ship under the pontoon and lift the whole ship up and through it over sideways for a while. She was rough and gee we were sick. It was cruel but all one afternoon and all one night and

we finished up way down near Cardwell somewhere before we started to make headway to go north.

Oh you could hear the water hitting the pontoons, wham, and you could hear the whole thing go like this and there was no down below deck. It was all on top of the deck and we had to sleep on top of the deck and you could imagine the waves rushing up the side of the boat

and over the deck, it was beautiful.

We didn’t.

Well these are Yankee ships, LSTs were Yanks and Yankee crew and Yankee kitchen and Yankee galley and the boys

were pretty off colour and my Mum had come out on a boat from England years ago and she said “What you’ve got to do when you get seasick is eat. Don’t stop eating because if you stop eating when you’re retching it’s tearing your inside out.” She said “If you’ve got something inside to throw out it’s a lot better.” So I thought “Well the best thing to do is keep eating” and you’d walk down from the up deck down into the very

hot galley, pick up your food, eat it down there and then walk up the top again to wash your dixies, and the dixies only had hot, salt water to wash your dixie and after eating something greasy down there and what the water was like and that made the boys more sick than ever.

Yeah, it would have been good food, good solid food and it was mostly stew, stewed meat but they had real good bread loaves and things like that, cooked on the job it was a pretty painful few days.

Yeah, yeah and when we went to New Guinea

we never saw any protection at all but when we were going to Borneo we had little fellows diving around us and big fellows out the side and corvettes were racing around us to make sure that we were protected. There was quite a long line of LSTs.

I couldn’t tell you because you could only see two or three at a time as they raced around.

The protection they gave us seemed to be a bit much for what was onboard really. I don’t know how many LSTs and how many boats were in the convoy but there seemed to be more protection than convoy because we couldn’t probably see the ones that were further back behind us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose it was blind faith in what was protecting us.

Playing cards, playing cards, everybody had a pack of cards. Played cards and tell stories and tell lies.

That’s a hard one. It’s

so far back that you’ve forgotten what happened there. Six blokes would be around a blanket playing cards and they’d be there all day.

Yeah, yeah, used to play pontoon, black jack, twenty one and poker and there was nearly always a sly game

with dice, not the pennies because you couldn’t throw a penny up but there was plenty to do and you couldn’t get much chance to read.

Yes, some were saying they were going to do this and do that and some of them were able to do it. I had no idea what I was going to do after the war. I reckoned I was going to go back to work but I didn’t know where for sure because when I, my brother and I worked on the same station and my brother joined up and the boss was okay.

He said “When you come back you’ve got your job back.” So while he was away and it came time for me my boss had a fall off a horse and finished up in Sydney Hospital, this was from north Queensland, and finished up in Sydney Hospital and while he was away his wife was in charge.

When he was there the mail would come and he’d take the mail into his office and my call up would be in the mail and he just sent it back because it was a protected industry and while he was away the mail came and instead of going through it carefully his wife just handed me all my mail and in it was my call up. I never said anything to anybody. I just filled it out and sent it back and then I got

called up.

Yeah.

Yeah, we went to Morotai first and from there we got onto a liberty ship I think it is, or one of those big Yankee tin tanks and get to

Borneo in the afternoon and we could see the land in front of us, way out there and during the night the navy and the air force had the place, it was just bedlam. You couldn’t hear yourself talk. The blast going over, bombing and shelling Balikpapan and we could see a

red glow and that was wiped out big oil depots and flames going everywhere and come daylight they’ve got landing barges beside the boat and we scrambled down the scramble net into landing barges and the water’s going like this and we’re all a little bit seasick

and they raced us into the beach, dropped down the front of the landing barge and we’re into the water. And the water is about three or four foot deep and I’m carrying a Bren gun and everything goes under but we had no opposition on land and

we made our way up. Some went through the oil installations and we went around it. The boys that went through the oil installations they were 3 Company, 2/3rd Commandos, and they went through the oil companies and they were telling us that in places they weren’t game to stand still because it was so hot, the ground was so hot from the fires but we went round, we

went through the bush. But come nightfall we had to settle down for the night and that was about the scariest night I’ve ever had because all night they were sending up fairy lights. Fairy lights were shot up into the air and there was a great big flash light comes out of it and you could see all around and every time they sent a fairy light you dug a little bit deeper down.

Just the countryside around. There was a lot of grass country there, inside from Balikpapan beach, no scrub until you got further out but you could see little hills and knobs all around and we were in a bit of gully and looking out into the open

from the gully you could see all nice country and it was nice and green at midnight.

It was what you heard.

Well now and again we’ve had thunderstorms around here and the thunder; you sometimes get the rolls of thunder that keep going,

and that’s what it was like, all night, boom, boom, rumble, rumble and you could see the flashes as they landed and they were going over our heads. The cruisers were outside.

Do you mean with us?

No, we weren’t sure what was, we could see it all there but we didn’t know what it was. We could see something flaming and we had no idea it was an oil installation, Balikpapan and it was a terrible waste. The railway, steam engines, almost melted away. You know railway steam engines?

And when you jump out of the boat and go down the scramble net and you’ve been wobbling around on the boat all night and thinking what is going to happen and the old tummy is upset and the boys were sick as anything on the landing barge.

You do it a few times at practice. It’s alright getting down but you ought to try getting up with a full pack. When we finished in Borneo we came home on the Kanimbla.

Well I’m no longer with 2/6th. I’m with 7th Div Cav Headquarters and because I was a batman; I become a runner and I’m running between the headquarters and the companies and take messages from the boss, the cap [captain] or the lieut [lieutenant] or whatever and bring

them back and helping fellows that are wounded, helping them back to headquarters.

From here to the shop, sometimes closer.

A kilometre, less than a kilometre at times because they kept moving up.

And the action sometimes was over an area of a kilometre between start to finish of it and I don’t think we lost very many lives on the first day but a lot got wounded going back, so they were able to go back again once they were patched up.

So to pick up a message it was in a can and you’d take it to whoever you had to take it too and that’s it, and if he’s got one he puts it in a can and take it back again.

No, I don’t think so, no, no, no.

Yes on your own, yeah, because it was a very safe area, very safe unless somebody got in behind your front troops but that didn’t happen.

Come back again; come back with any messages he might have to send back or get out of the area as quick as you can. Helping the boys back to the RAP, the first aid post, I didn’t have to carry anybody back, I just walked back with some of them.

Yeah, yeah, I didn’t see any stretcher bearers though but they’d have to be there somewhere because there’s a first aid section in the unit.

No, no, you were just called to headquarters and say, “Do this”, and away you’d go and do it and come back.

Yeah, yeah, wouldn’t know what was in the message.

All day, all day and sometimes into the evening but sometimes in the evening but mostly things quietened down of a night time. I don’t know why.

Wouldn’t have a clue, I didn’t have to say anything, just do it.

No, wasn’t fired at.

You could hear it up front all the time, yeah, but I was fortunate. I was

never in a dangerous position.

Must have, good luck.

No, I never, no. I don’t think I even saw Maurie.

When we did the landing I was separated from him altogether, so he’d have to look after himself then.

You didn’t know anything. You didn’t get to know anything.

Yeah, yeah, it was mostly relaxed really as they were there to do a job and they knew what they were doing but there was no great panic and everything just went along quietly.

Yeah, yeah it was a job. Did what you were told to do. I don’t know if you can say that you enjoyed it or not but it was something to do.

Yeah, yeah, didn’t notice it at the time, it was just something.

We landed on the 1st of July and the war finished on the 15th of August.

The cessation? Yeah, we were up

along the highway and they bought us all back down to the beach at Balikpapan and set up a camp there and because there was a lot of POWs [prisoners of war], some of our fellows were occupied in looking after the POWs and so as to keep everybody occupied, us as well as the POWs,

we used to get big army trucks, shovels, go down the beach, fill the trucks up with sand, and bring them up and dump them in the camp area and the Nips [Japanese] used to have to load the trucks for us and we used to have to stand guard to make sure they loaded the trucks. That’s about all the activity we did at Balikpapan, except chase up and down the coastline with the different two up games. Go to

the air force had a strip just along from where we were camped and go there for boxing nights. Used to have a beautiful boxing arena there, out in the open but nice ring. Some of our boys were top boxers. One of them was a division champion at one time.

And we waited there until, oh August 15th, about mid September I suppose and they were looking for volunteers to go for an occupation force in Japan and they asked anybody who wanted to go to Japan on occupation force and I didn’t want to go, some did.

Then there were still some left there to be given a job so they sent us to Celebes to Macassar first. Went to Macassar and went to Parepera, a little town up north of Macassar and our job there was, see it was Dutch territory and the Indonesians and the Dutch weren’t real friendly to one another and I don’t know whether we were there to keep the

Dutch away from the Indonesians or the Indonesians away from the Dutch. We were there until well after Christmas, some time in January I think it was. January or February we came home and while we were there there were lots of things you could grab as souvenirs and some of our boys

had miles of silk they were going to bring home and I had a lot of tobacco I was going to bring home, all stuffed in our kit bags and some of the boys had three kit bags of stuff as well as their regular gear. The day before we were told we were going home on the Kanimbla or the HMAS Katoomba, Katoomba I think it was, they tell

us we’ve got to go up the scramble net, so you can imagine the big scramble to get rid of, and there was boys trying to sell the stuff back to the Indonesians as going up the scramble net it was easy coming down. As I said it was easy coming down the scramble net to get down to the barge but going up with a full pack was pretty heavy.

Yeah, I’m not too clear as to how early it was but they just came round when we were on parade and told us the war was over and that was it.

“You can go and have a rest for a while” but one thing I do remember is the Sunday after peace was declared we were all at a church service and the padre was there and they’re singing Nearer My God To Thee and there is some rifle shots happening down in a bit of a gully and

three of us went down to have a bit of a look and as we were going down the boys were all singing Nearer My God To Thee and when we got down there it was a Nip depot for food and somebody had set off, we thought it was a rifle, but it must have been a grenade. One of the Nips had set off a grenade. There was still a few Nips around and yeah, walking down the road singing Nearer My God.

No, I don’t think there was a great big fuss made. You’d have thought that once the war was over there would have been a great big, but I think these things happen and that’s it.

Yes, I’m not to sure how they were told. In fact some of the Nips on Morotai where we all rendezvoused before we went to the islands, to Balikpapan or Tarakan, they didn’t know the war was over. There was still Japanese on Morotai when we were there and they used to come in and raid our kitchen so how they got to know I don’t know.

But after the war, a couple of days after, a couple of us had to go to 31st Battalion lines. I don’t know whether we were on a message or whether we were just going over to see some of our mates, but when we got over there, just before we got there we heard a bit of a blast and there was a Nip came into the camp, into 31st lines,

and somebody spotted him and the poor silly coot jumped in the latrine trench and pulled a grenade on himself. Because it was there belief that if they were captured it was wrong. He could have been free now. He was in the latrine trench.

I wasn’t real keen on them. As a matter of fact never had been real keen on them because they were involved in battling China for years before and my Mum had a cousin who was a missionary in China and a couple of times he had to send his family home to Australia

at one stage because the Boxers were rebelling [the Boxer Rebellion] but the Japs were involved in China and down the coast there for quite a while before. We didn’t like Japanese and of course in those days we were getting a lot of Japanese china and all that sort of thing and everyone went “It’s only Jap stuff”. Today we’re lapping it up.

No, I don’t think I really had any real hatred for anybody but I was a bit displeased with what the Japanese were doing but living in the bush we didn’t have any radio at home but we used to get papers now and again and we’d hear what the Japanese were doing

and in 1942 when Singapore fell, we just couldn’t believe it, that they were down so close to here, how it could happen. And Darwin was bombed and we knew nothing about it, Broome was bombed.

No, the main motivation was the war was on and we had to do our bit but Singapore falling really made everybody realise that Australia was in danger.

And when Darwin was bombed and we didn’t know about it and I was reading a book there and the fellows were bringing cattle through from Western Australia into Queensland and one evening, just before dark, they saw three little planes flying around and they were down low and they weren’t our planes. But what they were doing was

photographing the road from Darwin down, the Japanese planes. We didn’t know that was going on. There was nothing in the news about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well how could they get

in there? They must have had some fun there that night because there was a ferry or something damaged fairly badly wasn’t there? We’ve heard stories since of people that were there, today’s people I’m talking about, couldn’t happen.

I’ve forgotten when it was now, forgotten when it was. I was manning the guns late in 1942, beginning of 1943 but I can’t remember the date now.

No, no, Sandakan, we knew there were POWs up there but we thought when the war was over they were all safe. They certainly weren’t and all the time that we were, after the war was finished, this all happened after the war, we could have been

up there trying to rescue them. See there was fellows on Tarakan and they could have come over, bit of a bungle at the end of the war apparently. There was arguments between Dutch, Poms, Yanks and Australians and I think that had a bit to do with it.

See they were in three different territories, Dutch, British, yeah only two, Dutch and British because the Americans had Manila but they didn’t have anything on Borneo.

No, no, no. As I said we used to take them out to the truck to

load up and there might three of our boys go out and two of them to hold the rifles and we’d go in and shovel the sand with the Japs and see who could beat them. They were just POWs, they were human beings, the same as everybody else.

I don’t think war time events have got a great deal to do with peace time. I mean they were enemies then but when the war was over things have got to get back to normal again, and there you are. Every year we have a commando day in Brisbane at the Shrine

in Ann Street, and just after the pub was opened up above the railway station, Central, we were on our program, and a big crowd were all standing on the little bit, do you know Anzac Square? Yeah, all standing on the footpath in front of the Shrine and about fifty Japanese tourists came down out of the hotel and walked across the road.

Made us feel good. But it’s alright to say they were our enemy and there’s boys who can’t have anything to do with Japanese but I think peace, but we’ll never have peace while people

have got enemies. We thought after 1939-1945 that things were over. It’s worse now than it ever was. We’ve got boys away now serving

and I don’t think Iraq should have been a battle area. We should have been able to negotiate but negotiations were failing and things were still going on in Iraq that shouldn’t be going on

and the Coalition of the Willing thought they’d be able to do something about it, well they have done something about it. They’ve got an Iraqi Government now which you hope is going to be able to carry on but there’s terrible things going on over there, fighting one another.

Yeah, how much more time have we got? Because you haven’t got up to when I got home yet. That’s the most important when we came home. We had our home leave and because I was single

and had no family I didn’t have very many points. We had a point system to get out of the army and I came back in, I’ve forgotten when it was. But I was over twelve months in Brisbane, I think over twelve months in Brisbane waiting for discharge and because I left my job to join up I wasn’t real popular

and I didn’t have my job to go back to. I had a job. I knew before I went to Borneo that I had a job to come back to but it didn’t make a difference to the army. They could have me out and gone but no, because my points weren’t up I had to stay there. I was stationed at Brisbane where the swimming pool is on Gregory Terrace, big building out there and

all down below was our camp and I was operating, my job was operating a little switch phone at night time for the camp and my wife was in the army and she was a switch operator at Victoria Barracks. And at night time there is not much business going on on the lines and

you’d ring Victoria Barracks and talk to the girls there and they’d ring us and talk to the boys here and I got to talk to this Dorothy and she said “There’s a dance out at Indooroopilly, it’s on”, so one of her cobbers was a real livewire and she digs up about ten blokes to go to the dance at Indooroopilly.

I went out to Indooroopilly and was dancing with this girl that I’d been talking on the phone and she told me she came from Sydney, she was from Brisbane, and the girl that invited said “That’s Dot over there” and I said “Oh you’re Dot from Sydney” and she owned up then that she wasn’t from Sydney. So I smoked at that time and I took out my

cigarettes and I said “Have a smoke Dot?” And she said “No, I don’t smoke”. I said “What do you do for cigarettes?” So I got her cigarette ration. I got married in August after, because I had a job to go back to in north Queensland I went back on the Gilbert River, which out in the Gulf Country. Got out there and there was no place for

young marrieds so I thought “Well I’ll see if we can get down to Brisbane”. Because we were engaged before I went up to the Gulf and I came back down here and she’d lined up a job for me at a sawmill at Mapleton, Maleny, Flaxton, yeah Flaxton

and while I was on my way down from north Queensland the damn place got burnt down. So I’m down here without a job and hoping to get married. So eventually I got a job, the fellow who was running the mill up there, he got me a job in the Brisbane mill and from then on I’ve been in Brisbane ever since. Got married, two girls, three grandkids and still got my wife

in there to look after me.

She didn’t smoke. No, she was a nice lady, yeah. In those days she was a very attractive young woman, still is. Getting a bit old now.

Yeah, she can dance, she can talk, she liked picnicking and all that sort of thing. I worked for seventeen years with the sawmill and they sold up and then I went to Hill’s Industries, Hill’s Hoists, and worked there for seventeen years and then knocked off, knocked off in

December 1982 and been doing nothing ever since. Travelled around Australia for fourteen months and when we getting ready to go Dot was saying “Oh we can’t be away that long”. And I said “If you’re going to go around Australia you’ve got to do

all these things” and we’d look at brochures telling you trips out of Perth and trips out of Darwin and most of them were three day jobs and we added all those day up and said “No, we can’t come back in six months”, it was fourteen months after we came back. Had a pretty good time.

Travelled up and down the coast and down to Wagga [Wagga] every year since 1983, go down to our reunion. It’s on in October again this year and others are so poor and the blokes are getting so old that they say it might be the last one.

Yeah, just to keep in touch

with the fellows that you were with and over the years, in the early days after the war the reunion was men, blokes going and then they all started to think they’ve got to have somebody to look after them when they came home, so they started taking their wives and since they’ve been taking their wives we’ve been having a good time. And some of these girls, like somebody living in Melbourne, and Victoria and Sydney and New South Wales,

they’d never heard of them and now they’re good cobbers. Go down to a reunion and “This one’s there”, right, “Where’s this one?” “Oh she’s sick” and real good friends. It’s pretty important to keep yourself

active as much as you can. I was a station hand, working on cattle stations and I had to knock off school at twelve and I didn’t have any higher education and I came to Brisbane

and worked at the sawmill yard for a while and became a yard manager and when they closed down I started with Hill’s Industries as a forklift driver and became despatch manager for northern New South Wales and Queensland. So I haven’t done too badly for an uneducated…I don’t know where these young fellows that

are doing university now days are going to finish up. They’re going to finish up doing much the same as I’ve done because there is not enough work around for the university students. I’ve got two grandsons, both done university and not using the university education on their work. If they had taken an apprenticeship by now they

could be well on the way to earning big dough [money], in carpentry, plumbing, electricians, short of them all.

You mean life education?

See living in the bush you don’t have very many contacts and when I joined the army it was the first time I’d ever been together with more than twenty fellows and it was a bit of a shock to the system and I think

being gregarious, you call it, you get along. If you were an easy mixer I think life goes on if you’re an easy mixer. If you’re a solo bloke, you don’t

get very far. Since the war I’ve been active in local community groups, the church group, the old Progress Association, School of Arts, I was the secretary of the School of Arts for about ten years and I’ve been treasurer of the Banyo Sub Branch of the RSL [returned and services league] for thirty something years, had to keep myself

going.

No, I think that’s born in you, I think it’s born in you. The army could have helped I suppose but.

Well again it’s being able to mix. In the army you mix pretty well and I think that would have assisted me a lot in mixing. I’m not a loner. I like to have company

and I know that the army would have caused that. Could be.

No I don’t think my army life had much to do with that at all because the organising has

come since, or helping organise. Our local sub-branch just had an expo, an aging expo for old people up at the university up here and we had fifty something different associations up there,

for aging telling them what they could do for them and I was part of that organisation, getting it going. For the last two years we’ve done that, helping the old people. It must be different people are born different ways I suppose. My family

have always been in the business of helping somebody. I think that comes from a family trait. I do Meals on Wheels twice a month, helping the poor old people that can’t get out. Some of it is terrible.

No, it had to help me in getting out, see before I joined the army as I said, ten people would be a crowd. Well being in the army you get to mix

with other fellows and other people and that made it easier to mix. I mean on a cattle stations you’d be a week, two or three fellows on their own, and then back to the station for the weekend and it was not much social life and the army

spread it out I suppose. I would hate to have missed the five years. It was a real experience. I’m here.

There were some that didn’t come back but I’m here and the five years wasn’t a bad way to spend it. I don’t want another one though. I wouldn’t like to see my grandchildren have to go.

No, I don’t, see society just goes along and being not too concerned until I was nineteen, society has just crept along

and I’ve gone along with it. Whether the war years had anything to do with it or not I couldn’t really fathom out. I think the war time must have made a big difference to different families. Families have lost parts of their family and it must make a big difference to them but to our family, luckily

we’ve been safe.

Yeah, her experience took her away from Brisbane,

which gave her travel. She was in Townsville when the war finished, working on a switchboard and all the people were downstairs celebrating and she was working the switchboard. She tells some of the hair raising experiences which she had, which she never would have had if she hadn’t have been in the army. One was, we were talking about eating dog biscuits,

she and a cobber had gone up to the Tablelands, must have been from Townsville, and they were hitching a ride out of Atherton back to Cairns or somewhere and she got a ride, oh no, it was down here at Warwick, it was Warwick. She got a ride on an army truck and they found there was dog biscuits

on top and they started eating the dog biscuits and when they looked at the packet it’s got “Made in 1914” on them. The truck was taking them to the dump and they didn’t realise that. As I said we met while she was in the army and when

oh after I’d been at, we were camped at Gregory Terrace, and the girls all came from Indooroopilly Camp to Gregory Terrace as well and there was only a fence between us and it was real handy. Didn’t have to go really far to pick up your date. Gregory Terrace it’s changed somewhat now, hasn’t it? With

that swimming pool and all along the top there. You could walk from Gregory Terrace, we had a dance place in Albert Park, just around from the end of Gregory Terrace where you go down towards the city and it was in Albert Park on the back there.

Real good night there. I don’t know who ran it but it was always a good night, a good dance night.

Well we hope to look after people who are unable to look after themselves, raise money for different charities, ex-service charities

and we’ve got a pretty big business the RSL now. They’ve got homes, war veterans homes and give towards them. You’ve got to keep money coming in for charities.

We have a welfare group which goes around looking after handicapped people.

I don’t think our forces had anything to do with that. We just left it like it was.

I don’t recall anything happening as far as restoration was concerned. All we were doing was looking after POWs and enjoying ourselves. I think maybe the Dutch, see it was Dutch territory and they would have had their finger in that.

No, there could have been but we weren’t involved in it. We did have a big parade just after it finished but I don’t think it had much to do with the surrender. It was just to tell us all it was over and we’d be able to go home but that would have been weeks after.

You talk about Lady Blamey, General Blamey [General Thomas Blamey Commander-in-Chief, Australian Military Forces (AMF) and Commander, Allied Land Forces] was to come to our parade and we were lined up at nine o’clock in the morning in Balikpapan, and it wasn’t very cool weather, and he turned up at twelve o’clock and there were boys passing out on the ground, rotten old coot.

We just had to stand around all lined up for three hours.

Before he turned up, in the heat and everybody was real happy because he wasn’t the most popular man.

Well I better not go into any details because they might have me up for.

Yeah, because he was supposed to be the leader of the Australians weren’t very pleasing. He was against MacArthur [General Douglas Macarthur Commander-In-Chief of the Allied Forces] on

quite a number of occasions and if MacArthur hadn’t have been, I didn’t like MacArthur much either but if MacArthur hadn’t of been involved in the 1939-1945 war we might still be wearing slit eyes. He, being the General, being the boss I suppose it made it worse but him not turning up. Comparing him with the old Pommy,

the old Pommy, oh, from the desert, he came and interviewed us and he turned up about five minutes early and we weren’t even ready for him and gave us a good talk to. Oh, the English, the British general, no, I can’t think of his name, Mountbatten, no, not Mountbatten,

the bloke who led in the desert. Doesn’t matter, against Rommel [Erwin Rommel German Field Marshall].

Well a Lady Blamey, I don’t know why poor Lady Blamey got that name or got that named after her but a Lady Blamey is

a beer bottle, right, with the top cut out, cut off, the spout cut out and you do that by putting water in the bottle and getting a string wrapped around the neck of the bottle so far down, just above the bend in the bottle, just

around the bend and you wrap a string around that and then set the string alight. It heats the glass up and you can lift that top off because it touches the water and it breaks the glass and leaves a nice, clean cut. And a Lady Blamey is so as you don’t have to drink your beer out of the bottle. You get your Lady Blamey and you get your bottle of Richmond Tiger

which is what all units got and you poured it into your Lady Blamey and drank it, Lady Blamey.

We never saw them because they were still there when I left. I left Balikpapan and went to the Celebes

at Macassar as occupation forces in Macassar and so I don’t know what happened in Balikpapan after that.

Yeah, 7th Div was still there when we left. Some of our boys were still there, fellows who were getting close to discharge and didn’t have anywhere else to go but I went down to Celebes.

See we don’t know what they were like in their own camp.

We never had POWs before the war was over.

The POWs that we handled were mostly reasonable behaved people. Nobody wanted to get away because I think they had wakened up to be

alive after the war and not to be a hero for the Emperor was better than being a hero for the Emperor. But no, as I said, three of us would be guarding them and one would probably get in and help shovel and have a race to see who could shovel the most shovels.

There must have been some decent people in the Japanese Army. I don’t say they’ve all got to be, we see some awful things, especially as you watch Changi [television series about Changi, made c. 2000] and the war camp that we’ve been seeing and gawd, there’s some rubbish in that.

Where we were was a little township, Parepera and there was a, we never ever got out of the town. It was suburban houses and the suburban houses must have been owned by the Dutch. I’m not too sure because some of the Indonesian homes that we went into only had slat floors.

The Indonesian people are very friendly. Used to take us in and invite us out to dinner and my gawd, the tucker we used to have to eat.

I don’t know where they got if from but it was a lot of chicken, chicken and pork and you saw chicken and pork all around their houses all the time

but they were really friendly.

Well you can see houses in our suburban streets much the same as some of them. When we were in Parepera we were living in houses, not in tents, in houses that belonged to the Dutch or Indonesians and they were just the same as our houses,

a kitchen, a couple of bedrooms, small landing out the front.

Oh yeah, there was conflict between the Dutch and the Indonesians, yeah.

Well the Dutch got out so they must have won their arguments.

Yeah, the main thing was to make sure that the Dutch and the Indonesians didn’t get into conflict and while I was there I never ever got invited to a Dutchman’s house but we were invited to plenty of Indonesian Celebes peoples, so I

think the Dutch were a bit hard to get on with.

No, no, maybe the officers had

more to do with the Dutch people because I think most of the Dutch people that were there were officer type. All the ordinary Dutch had gone; the working class people had gone.

I was real angry. I thought

when we got off Borneo that we were going to go home. As I said I had a job to go to and if I hadn’t have had a job to go too I was just as well off where I was I suppose but because I had a job to go to I reckoned it was stupid to be hanging around and then to spend another twelve months in Brisbane wasn’t real good.

Yeah, have you never seen one? Well it’s an artillery piece that travels on four wheels, towed behind the vehicle. When it’s being towed it’s got it barrel pointing out the back. When it has to be put in operation the truck

pulls out and leaves the gun standing and you have to, it has four, two cross pieces and they are on jacks. The gun sits in the centre of that and the wheels are taken off and stacked against the wall somewhere and there’s two

plough seats on it, on each side and they’re to raise it or lower it or turn it sideways.

Working out like that (demonstrates) and with a battery operated one they have a predictor

which you look through the predictor and sight the thing up and almost electronically. And it tells the gun what to do.

Yeah, the gun is set up ready for action and it’s hooked up to this predictor and no men on the plough seat. They are there in case the predictor breaks down but they don’t have to

do anything because the predictor tells the gun what to do. Don’t ask me to explain the predictor too much but once you’ve got your target in sight it relays the message to the machine on the gun and lines it up there. You have to be a specialist to operate the predictor. It’s all

written down in there but it’s too far back for me.

No, only on manual, never operated a predictor. Don’t know why. Maybe we weren’t round long enough on the job. If I’d gone away somewhere with it I probably would have handled a predictor, but no, we were all manual.

Yes, the manual is looking through the sight. There’s a ring in front of you with the cross in the middle and you line that up on a plane.

Right, that’s manual.

No reading, no reading, you just see it there and that’s supposed to give you enough trajectory to fire your round

and be far enough ahead of the plane when you’ve seen it for it to hit it, if you’re lucky.

You know what a 303 bullet is like? Well you know what a bullet is like, a shell with a thing in the end, that’s it only it’s about this big, about that thick

and there is about eight in a bundle and they slip down into the magazine and when those eight are gone you slip another eight in, all in a little bracket and they are incendiary, not incendiary, they’re tracer, not all tracers but

there is a space of tracers [illuminated fire] so you could see where they were going to, beautiful at night time.

I’ve forgotten, I’ve forgotten. There was eight so it was probably four, every fourth one would be a tracer.

Yeah.

Yeah, he’d be the corporal yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah number two and number three were probably the blokes on the gun, number four and five would be loading ammunition and up to six, seven and eight might be carrying ammunition. They all had a job when the action was on.

If they were doing the predictor that was probably it.

I should have got my book out, shouldn’t I?

Everybody is on getting it jacked up because there’s two big tubes

this big to shove into place and jack it up.

We went down to Victoria Point, with live ammunition and a little aeroplane with a drogue [target towed behind an aircraft] behind it and you fire at the drogue and we didn’t hit the drogue but we hit the wire, by accident. Missed the drogue

as it was too early apparently and we did that at Cleveland somewhere, on the beach at Cleveland. I wasn’t too familiar with the area at the time because I hadn’t been in Brisbane very long and we went to Southport and dug a hole in front of the Southport Pub but we didn’t do any firing there. That was all,

the thing would be in travel and you’d have to race to a spot, get it ready and after you got it ready, pull it out of there and race to another spot and we had about four spots on the Gold Coast that we buried our gun in.

You just had to keep going and remember what you had to do. If you didn’t do it for a week, you’ve forgotten.

For five years in the army

I was only on active service for less than twelve months, and the rest of the time was in training or in waiting.

I’ve always had a fair bit of patience, patience. I can get pretty cranky sometimes but no,

I suppose not having anything to do and having to put up with it you develop a system for patience. Never thought about it.

Real tough, real tough. Walk all day, run half a day I suppose,

but we were pretty tough. Canungra made you tough. I was reading the other day about an air force crew that went down to Canungra and they were about eight miles over. Yeah continuous

exercise must make you pretty tough. I’d hate to be there.

No, I didn’t walk in a sawmill, I didn’t work in a sawmill, I worked in the yard.

Did I tell you earlier that the place got burnt down?

Yes, when I came to Brisbane, at Whinstanes, I was working the yard, first off just as a yard hand. That involved unloading rail trucks, unloading

our own mill. See we had three country mills as well as our Brisbane mill and the timber came in on rail wagons and that had to be thrown off by hand. This was before forklifts and cranes came in and then after I’d been there a while I got a job as an order-man and an order-man helps the salesman pick out his orders.

He does all the hard work and while I was on that we had a big gantry crane and the boss asked me if I’d like to learn to drive the crane and oh yeah, I said I’d have a go at it and so in 1955 I got a plant operators ticket to drive a seven ton overhead gantry crane. Used to run two hundred yards across

the paddock picking up logs and loading things on trucks and things like that, big electric crane. It was a great job. You had to be pretty careful putting logs into a mill. You’d lift a log up and it had to be at the right point of ells and you’d pick it pretty easy. Logs are big one end and small the other end and well you’ve got

to, you can’t pick it up by the middle, you’ve got to pick it up by the middle of the weight. And from there as well as being the assistant crane driver, the fireman in the sawmill, it was a steam sawmill, the fireman was the official crane driver. I was only his relief. I became, I got out of the job of order-man and became a salesman and that meant

when the company got an order for some timber from some builder, I had to pick out his order and send it out to him. Then we shifted from Whinstanes, to Banyo, just across the line here and when I came down here the fellow who was the yard foreman at Whinstanes he retired and I got his job. I was the yard foreman here and that would have been for about

four years I suppose and then Hornibrook’s sold out. Well Hornibrook had owned us and Hornibrook and Balderstone are building the new building there opposite the Treasury Building, same Hornibrook. They sold out and Hill’s Industries bought the ground and I was the last man employed by Hornibrooks

on sawmill ground and I got a job with Hill’s Industries as a general hand. I progressed from there to be despatch manager, sending material all over Queensland and all over New South Wales.

Clothes hoists, laundry trolleys, swings and things, ironing tables.

It was all metal stuff, yes. The clothes hoists, you know what a clothes hoist looks like, right? Well the clothes hoist in our area was a bundle of arms and a straight upright, two pieces and they’d send it out and you’d make your clothes line, antennas, made antennas and delivering them. Head office was in Adelaide and everything came up by road transport to Brisbane

and in 1982 they said they’d had enough of me and said I was old enough to go and get the pension so they retired me and that was a long time ago.

Well I was interested

in the community while I was at work, right from 1947, after I married.

Yeah, Anzac Day is a day we should never forget and we’re instilling into our younger generation that Anzac Day shouldn’t be forgotten and we’re winning.

The school kids really work for Anzac Day nowadays. Anzac marches, I’m not real happy with Anzac marches. Anzac marches are supposed to be for veterans or maybe one representative of a past veteran but not for kids.

We have a parade here on Anzac morning where the school kids can take part, all school kids can come down and march on Anzac Day and we have a real good programme down here but when you’ve got little kids marching on Anzac Day beside grandpa, it’s lovely to see grandpa and grandchild together but it spoils the march. We have a band so as we can keep step

and if you’ve got grandfather looking after a grandkid, you’ve got twenty blokes in the march and you’ve got four grandkids with grandfather, all out of step, the whole crowd is out of step. That is what I’m against. As a matter of fact Sydney is having the same trouble with the little ones being involved in the march, which is lovely for the family but

no good for an Anzac march because the Anzac Day march, in Brisbane could be over in two hours easily, start to finish, but it doesn’t. Now they start forming up at nine o’clock in the morning and you’re not finished before midday and it’s a real shamble. Pity really.

So as people in fifty years time are going to know what was going on. From here

I hope we are going to be able to keep going and picking up from the fellows who are away now and the people in that war years will know what’s been going on. History shouldn’t be forgotten and if you don’t have things like this, history will be forgotten. I would like to spend about three

days down in Canberra, three days, but it would take days and days to go through Canberra [War] Memorial, wouldn’t it? To look at everything and that’s what people should be interested in doing is seeing is what happened, and who did and some awful things have happened but some good things

have come out of it.

I hope, yeah.

I haven’t got any real plans. The next move is down to Wagga and I’ve still got family in north Queensland and we want to get up to

see some of them again. I’ve just lost a brother at Christmas time and his family are all up there, all up at Ayr, in the cane area but no, I think Dot and I will just be plodding along taking it easy.

Do it, do the same. I’ve got no regrets with my life. I’m still able to live comfortable, have a roof over my head and there is people around that it’s hard to understand how they get down so low as far as their living standard is concerned because

we’ve got pensions, we’ve got charities, we’ve got all sorts but we’ve got people that have got no roof over their head. So I don’t know who to blame for that, themselves apparently. And we’ve never had money to throw away but we’ve

managed to get by. We eat well but as far as giving anybody advice, just live and make sure you do all the right things.

I haven’t seen the product of this but some very interesting programmes would come out of this and people going,

how do we get to see them? Can you go to the archives and look them up?

I gave my ticket to the internet away because I could not work it. I’ve got a computer out there.

Well Australia’s war time experience in both 1914-1918 and well going back to Boer War [1899-1901], I think the Australian soldier has been among the top fighters in all three

areas and that’s something to be very proud of, not that there was a war but that they were able to take part in it and do a really good job. That’s one thing. We should do all we can to prevent war

and it beats me how we’re going to do that. So many people who have got nothing else on their mind but being on top. Over in Iraq now if we can get these religious groups to settle their

arguments and settle down, maybe we’ll get peace but all the time we’ve got religious battles and we never get anywhere. They’ve all been made the same way, they all look the same but they’ve all got different ideas. Maybe we should ban all religions, I don’t know

or find one that everybody can agree on. You see some of these crazy groups that get on TV [television], religious groups, with people falling on the floor and you wonder who had been struck.

Righto, good.