Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Frankston, 9th August 1925, little private

hospital there called Maxwellton, it’s no longer there. It was standing up till about, oh, twenty years back, and I used to see it every time I passed by and I thought, “Next time I come I’ll bring the camera,” I used to go to Rosebud a lot. I had the camera and I drove down and the thing had been demolished, couldn’t trace it, and now I’m not sure which spot it was in.

It’s one of the last corners before you get into the main street of the Nepean, anyway, that’s what happened. I was at the Ballam Park Historic Society rooms there, they’ve a homestead there as well for history, so I asked them did they have a photo of that hospital and they couldn’t find one.

There must be someone with one, it was white stucco type of finishing outside, not brick, with a red tiled roof, and it had an attic up top. Nice house, it would have been a nice house, though it was a small private hospital.

Oh well, I used to go there occasionally as my aunt, my mother’s sister was

a nurse there, she was the matron of it, and my grandmother was there for a time, helping her a bit, living with her. It was not like they are now, and that’s how it was.

Not really, my parents were only married the year before, 1924, they lived at Koo Wee Rup, my father was a returned soldier, they had a soldier’s settlement block,

so he was on that and he grew potato crops. That was in the ’20s, he built our home with some help. Those little albums there will show you. And we were there till about 1934, when the big floods were around Koo Wee Rup area, it’s very flat area, and lost

a lot of potato crops. So we moved on, we moved down the road, only a mile or two, I don’t know why he moved there, and the flood came there, we were washed out. So next year we moved on down to Gippsland, a place called Mountain View, and took on dairying up in the hills, very hilly area. Well, that’s where I remember most,

from there till I left school, which was only fourteen, got to the merit standard in that time, most of us did. A few of my mates in the class, as soon as they turned fourteen they left, they thought they were grown up. But they all did all right, it didn’t depend on how much education. Anyway, I kept going till the end of the year,

did my merit exam, and another girl from another school came to the same school where I was, both on one day. School was closed for the day so we could do our merit exam, big scene, wasn’t it? So that lady who was with me, I never saw her a lot because later we moved away. But every time I have seen her she

always recognises me instantly, but I never know who she is till she tells me. So last time I saw her, about three years ago, I’ve got a photo over there, she was at this back to school, or the district reunion and she, I said, “Look, I’ll take a photo of you,” I said, “I never seem to remember your face.” So I don’t know whether she minded, but we did, so now I’ve got a photo

after all that time, she’s now a widow, so that’s how it’s been. We then went, the school was about a mile and a half from home, we walked there, back each day, there and back, and we never rode a bike, some did. And we had a one-teacher school, afternoons would be a school sewing

mistress, half day, she’d come after lunch. I don’t know what else she did, she came to the district, she wasn’t a local resident, and she boarded at a local farm, walked to our school in the afternoon, mainly that. Mr, who was the first teacher I saw…there Mr Freckleton, there was a Mr Sing,

a Chinese man, later. There was another one, I can’t think of his name, there were a few short times there, but Mr Brisbane later and then a Mr Hogan. Mr Brisbane was an older man, seemed older to us at that time, he’s probably near retirement. He was a nice enough fellow but he got very impatient, he kept, we’d

do homework and bring it in and it was all wrong and he’d tell us we were all blockheads, and we’d stand there and say nothing, oh God, poor Mr Brisbane. And later he left, he must have retired by then, Mr Hogan came and that’s when I was doing my merit, so he was very nice, he tutored me up, he didn’t tell me I was a blockhead.

Main teacher, yeah, there’d be, oh well, over fifty some of the time, two rooms, grades one to four, I think, or three were in one room and the other room was the older age group to fourteen. So he had both rooms to run backwards and forwards to. You know, you never heard of unions and kicking up.

It’s about fifteen miles south of Drouin, is halfway to Poowong, or more than half. Poowong East is there in between, all it consists of is a hall, Poowong East School, but Mountain View, we were all in the same area, they were just named by the pioneers.

Mountain View, all, there was a hall which has only been demolished lately, I was sorry to see, went to Sunday school there every Sunday. A local man, farmer man, he was the superintendent, he did that for fifty years, he’s passed on now, and his daughter I went to school with, Sunday school.

We also worked together for a year at a dressmaker in Dandenong, she was living there for a while with her relatives and put in a word for me to come, the dressmaker lady wanted another hand. So I was doing the hand finishing, sewing, press studs, buttons, hems and all the little finishing bits, and she was the machinist.

Now where am I up to?

He was First World War, he went in at eighteen, he was in, he sailed across to Egypt, he wasn’t in Gallipoli, it was later. Then after a time

in Egypt they were taken across to Marseilles, and then the train up to Paris or to the battlefields, well, they’d go out to the battlefields, then in Paris. But he went in by train from there. He didn’t tell us a lot, but I managed that much. He was wounded, he was at the Battle of Fromelles near…oh,

they have the anniversary every year, Battle of the Somme, in that area. He was wounded in the right arm but he got better, but he could have lost it, it was a huge wound, but it’s amazing he got over it, I think it was his right arm. And he worked as a farmer after that, so never heard any complaint. When he was

wounded he was sent across to England and he was in hospital near London, he was in Salisbury for a while, further out, I’m not sure if that was before he went to France or after. And they met the King while they were there, King George V. And all I remember my father saying, “The King said, ‘Fine body of men, fine body of men’,” that was all he said to them.

Dad’s grandfather, his father was born in Adelaide, his grandfather came out on the, with his wife and two or three children on the boat, Charlotte Jane. I’m a bit slow thinking aren’t I?

I’m a bit slow…oh gosh.

Yes, he was a George Dalziel and his wife was Clementina, she was a…oh, Jameson or Parsons or something, I’m sorry, I can’t think of it, I’ll have to get my book.

But

they came together on the ship, they were married in Shetlands [Islands] and they landed in Adelaide. They did move around a bit, were mainly down near Port Adelaide, and they owned land there. But they also went way up to Maree, north South Australia, where they did, I suppose he was a labourer, farm work. But when the railway line was developing from up north, up that way,

a lot of the Dalziels went to that later on, right through to present day nearly, descendants. Are you looking at me? Is that camera still…?

It’s all right, I just can’t think of names at the minute.

No, it’s just I’m a bit muddled today, I’m not myself. What else?

Well, what would you like?

I started school at Island Road, Koo Wee Rup, a little weatherboard school room, I walked to there, it was a good walk, I reckon it be nearly two miles, it seemed a long way then, from Ballarto Road, it run parallel and that’s Island Road over there and there’s two lots of farms between. And we walk across through there, lot of cultivation being,

potato growing. So we’d go round the edges of these paddocks and I’d go with two or three Elliots, next door to us, whom I’d hardly known, didn’t know anyone when I started school. There was no kindergartens or pre-school activities at all, just grew up and went. When you think about it and what they get now, and I didn’t know anybody,

cause we didn’t mix. However, we walked to school with these, I did walk with them, and they were Merle and Val, I think their brother Dick later, and he died recently, I believe. Merle’s still going, Val died, she’s my age, she was, she died about three years back, but I’d lost touch with them. Merle’s still alive I think, out in Endeavour

Hills or somewhere, she married, they all married. There were two others the Greens, Milton and Allen, they used to walk with us through these paddocks. So that was a big adventure. Well, we were there, well, I started there until we moved to Mountain View, my brothers next to me, he started there, the rest

hadn’t started.

I’m the eldest of four, next is my brother Jack, then my sister, who’s now deceased, Marie, only last December she died, which was a real out of the blue, she had cancer, you know, we never ever expected such a thing. Only last year she was diagnosed, and lasted nine months,

it was fairly advanced, I think. And my younger brother, who’s, my two brothers live at Coralline now, they’ve lived there for fifty years, best part of it, they’re both married with children and grandchildren. I’m the only, I’m out on a limb. Well, after we moved down to Gippsland, to Mountain View, and

Poowong East School, they were a lively lot, lot of them rode horses to school, there was a few on bikes but we walked, we never had a bike or a horse. Although when I left school the next year we all get a bike each for Christmas, we did a lot of riding on them. But when I was going to school I was hoofing it.

Yes, wasn’t too bad where we walked to school, there were little flat areas but a lot of hills around. We had annual school sports where they’d all travel to Poowong for the day, school closed for the day. And they’d have the typical old time school races, sack race, egg and spoon and relay and

those things, but a big event in our lives. And the Poowong Showground or Sportsground had lovely trees all around, wattles and all those sort of light timber, and you could sit your car under there, father when he went, in the shade. Well, I drove round there a year or so back and all those trees have gone, there’s no sign of any more being put in, which

looks so bare, when you know about trees you wish they were still there. We were mainly playing basketball at the school, there wasn’t much choice, the boys played their cricket or a bit of football, girls was mainly basketball.

Mother,

Mum grew up in Tyabb, down Mornington Peninsula, her parents had a small orchard, she was one of four sisters. There were three of them and the youngest, she was adopted, my grandmother went to Berry Street with a relative who wanted to adopt, Grandma finished up adopting one too. She was a

sickly baby and they wanted her to be taken to the country to get fresh eggs, milk, cream and all that. And Aunty, Grandma, rather, was soft hearted, probably I would have done the same thing. So she took here, she lived till she was about eighty, she finished up, sadly, with dementia, Alzheimer’s and everything, cancer, oh, it was sad. And she was such a lively women,

she was a real party type, Mum and her sisters were different, and it’s funny, isn’t it, how it carries through. Yeah, so Gladys, that aunt who died, Alzheimer’s as well as cancer, but it was sad to see her go, she had developing from way back, in the sixties or fifties. When you look back she was always very determined to have the right answer, everyone

else was wrong, she was like that, a bit aggressive. But she was a lively person, she used to swim at Frankston and dive off the end of the pier when we were kids, just to show off. And she could play golf very well and any sport, she could play the piano, she could sing, she had a lovely voice. But she married a navy man,

so she moved around a bit, Sydney, New South…Well, my mother you were asking about. When she grew up, or when they were in their teens, Grandma, who was a bit more forthright or something, she took them to Melbourne, had a house in Richmond, left Granddad home on the orchard, and four years

they lived down there. And she had a little shop in the corner of the house to sell things from the orchard, or fowls, eggs and things. And they would go up at weekends and bring a big crate of stuff back, amazing what they did.

Oh no, they only had a horse and jinker, they’d get the train from Frankston.

They could of got a train from Tyabb, I’m not sure, but if you miss the last train to Frankston, Grandma, I believe, had to walk out to Tyabb, last train had gone, and she walked from Frankston to Tyabb, about eight or ten miles, late at night. Wouldn’t be roads like now, they’d be just a track, bit of metal on them and all the scrub, very scrubby around there,

outside Frankston, still is in parts. My mother, they were in the town for four years, oh, her and her older sister worked at Myer, or another name, with Myer, Mum did some sort of machining and the aunt, her sister did, machined sample blouses

before they were manufactured. So they were good in their work, Mum did a lot of spoke stitching, that was used a lot in those days.

Spoke stitching, edges and things, trimming. Then they, oh, Aunty Violet, the third one, she was still at school, she went to the domestic school in Richmond, she was quite smart, she was the one who became a nursing sister, she died at ninety, about

nine years back. Mum and her sister died, Mum at seventy-five and my aunt seventy-six, they only died three months apart, but the older one was just seventy-six, about fifteen months’ difference. So that was sad, early age for these times, in my thinking.

And I’m past seventy-five, seventy-eight now, seventy-nine next month, if I get rid of all these complaints. My mother, they went back to Tyabb after the war, place in Richmond, I suppose she sold it, I’m not sure what happened, it’s not there now, something else is there, at 1

Gardner Street Richmond, it was. Mum then used to do a bit of sewing for local people, but later on she became the postmistress at Moorooduc Post Office, and she used to drive a horse and buggy or jinker. And she’d drive down to the Moorooduc Station, railway, to pick up the morning bag of mail, and then in the evening she had to drive back,

probably three miles, Moorooduc Post Office is up on the Moorooduc-Tyabb Road, the station’s way down, you know where Moorooduc is?

Well, that station was running then, she’d take that load of stuff back at night, I don’t know how much, but postage, postings. So it was reasonable for those times.

Oh, three or four years, I think,

that’s how she met my father. There was a big orchard down there at Moorooduc in those days called Two Bays and his, his uncle didn’t own it but he was the manager, about a thousand acres, there’s none there now, it’s all pretty well skinned out. And Dad was working there after the war, after he came back, and he would be at the orchard,

either fixing up young trees or pruning and fruit and stuff, picking fruit. Well, he learned a lot that way, well, he had to take crates of young trees that were railed away to people that wanted them by rail, other parts of Victoria for their fruit, maybe other orchards up around Shepparton. So he would be putting his load of stuff there and Mum would be doing

hers, that’s what happened. Oh dear, he wasn’t easy either, not my sort.

He was a hard, hard man as he got older. Anyway, that’s what happened, they married in Frankston, 1924, the first wedding in the Presbyterian Church there, that church now is a Christian Science something,

or rather, it was next to the old post office in Frankston up on a rise there, before you go up to the schools.

Yeah, I don’t know who was doing it before. Oh, Mum was good at figure work, had to balance it all, put in her returns every month. Even when we were down Gippsland there was a little

post office attached, not at the house, it was about a mile away, just a little hut thing, not as big as this room, I don’t think, with a window and a counter. And Mum would go there three times a week, I think, wasn’t every day, the main would be brought from Nyora by road, by car, and brought to this little office, and Mum would have to be there to sort it and people would line up for their stuff.

So it was still primitive.

She kept, oh well, at Moorooduc, well, she got married, you see, and that’s the end of Moorooduc, that’s when they moved to Koo Wee Rup, after she married. And then down Gippsland this little post office three times a week doing the stamps and the parcels and the letters, and home,

the house had the switchboard for the area, the Mountain View exchange. There was about six subscribers, but it was a tie, and you had certain hours in the morning and then the afternoon and then perhaps an hour or two at night. Well, it’s a bit of a tie, and you had that for several years, but in the finish we gave it up, so it was

taken on by a lady at Topiram who had an office there, so they amalgamated, I think, with that. But it was milking dairy, you know, dairy farm, and running a little switchboard and little post office a mile or two away, funny life. And she was walking, Dad didn’t drive her down.

Oh, we had one, but it was wartime and petrol was rationed.

Well, in the beginning I didn’t notice it, when you’re very young, but he was, oh, he was a strong man, real worker, I thought, and did a lot of cultivating of the crops,

and you’ve got to dig it all, it was all by hand, you know, with a shovel. He had a man come and do it, help him, he’d pay to get them to do it. Oh, once, there, he had a load of potatoes all on the top of the lorry, and the poor horses, draughts, couldn’t get it to move, it was sort of bogged, very wet country if it had been heavy rain, got a bit

bogged, and oh, was he swearing at the poor horses and yelling and going on. And I was there about this high and I’d never seen him like that before and I was sort of, what would you say, petrified or something, and then he must have seen I was there, didn’t notice when he was doing his nana. And he said, “You’d better go inside,” but I’d already heard him,

it was too late. But Mum said one other time, years later, after six weeks’ marriage, first time she ever heard him swear, so he must have been doing something outrageous then to do his temper, had a strong temper. Oh dear, so then, oh, he was unusual, I don’t know if the war made him like it, some came back quite good, but I don’t think it did

him any good.

No, he didn’t join any RSLs [Returned and Services League] or go to marches in those days, he did start going, I don’t know if he went from later when we were here or over at Bayswater, Mum and Dad were there for a while after Berwick. But he was probably going from about then, in his older years, because

while he was working he couldn’t get away.

Oh well, farming, if you do your work you’ve got to keep at it.

Yes.

Oh, we didn’t have machines, one neighbour next door had them, he’d been there much longer, and the family on the other side had them, but we didn’t.

So all of us were involved to help, morning and night, before school and after school, there was no playing around. So we were father’s little slaves and we’d have to rush to school after that, it was always a rush, because we’d be up there till about half past eight in the shed helping, we’d round them up and we’d milk one or two before we got away. And

then we’d have to rush back to the house and swallow some breakfast, get cleaned up and dressed and off to school, it was a bit of a run. So I’ve always felt I’ve never stopped rushing, to be on time, it seems to be, oh, what would you say, it just seemed to got in my system, I’m always running. Anyway, anything else you’d like to know, I can’t think.

Oh, well.

Oh, would be about sevenish, half past six, seven. So, you know, we did it, when you’re young you don’t realise, I do now.

Well, I was the eldest and I always felt, the others didn’t seem to worry, they would play around and fool around and take their time, but when

I come home from school we’d have something to eat, my mind was on, got to round the cows up, was a hundred acre property, had to go right up the back and call them and call them. And they’d wander back slowly and we would be milking late, till eight at night, my father would work till nearly dark, other work, the horses, and then, see, we wouldn’t have tea at night

till after eight, so it wasn’t exactly what they do now, no TV, only Dad and Dave at seven o’clock, if you were lucky to get in to hear it. And then the battery in the wireless would go flat.

Oh, I suppose Monday to Friday, if you missed, if we missed an episode, not that there was much happening, others at school would listen to it. I mean,

that was all there was, and we’d have to ask them the next day what happened last night. And there used to be Martin’s Corner as well, all in that half hour or so, six thirty or seven, that was our highlights.

Oh, well.

Oh, we were the ones, Mum and Dad I don’t think worried about it. Well, we’d try and get down early enough to hear it, they’d

still be up at the milking shed, the dairy, there was separating to be done and the cream off that. We were selling the cream then and we kept a few pigs to drink the milk, then later we converted to milk selling.

Yes.

Oh, in our place was around forty, by hand, milking by hand,

so it was a bit of a tire. When they moved to Berwick, I was about, going on sixteen, we had machines later, I forget, but we did have machines after.

Oh, we sold it to Poowong Butter Factory, or later Korumburra,

they have a carrier come round and pick the can of cream up from the front gate, we had to take it down. But in later years they used to drive right in, pick it up, but early days the track wasn’t as good, winter conditions would be pretty risky for big trucks, so that’s what happened. Later we sold milk, I

think went to Drouin later. So we had a sample of Poowong, Korumburra and Drouin.

Not when we arrived there, just a little lamp, I can show you one, it’s up in the bedroom. And we had an Aladdin, once a week we put that on, because they eat up the kerosene, but a lovely light, nearly as white as that. But the ordinary little

kerosene lamp was about that high with a glass cover, you had the keep the wick trimmed or it would go off, to keep a nice light. So that’s how it was from when I was baby right through to when I was about fourteen, when electricity was being brought through, so there was big events then.

Oh, the first time, I’d been away and some of the family were home and I was away and they never let on the electricity was on till we got home, and I saw all these white lights, it was amazing, it was real blinding. Lights in the sheds and in the house and on the veranda, oh, it was a big event,

but all the district was the same, they just got it about then.

About ’40, might be ’38 to ’40, I’m a bit hazy.

Yes.

Yes, unfortunately I didn’t get to high school, but some of them were sent onto high school, the parents probably looked ahead more than my

parents, I think all they thought, my father in particular, just leave school and you work, go to work, you don’t go on and on schooling. Whereas nowadays it’s go on indefinitely, don’t they?

Well, I could write essays at the time, or they called them compositions then.

One year we had to write on Empire Day, that was, not kept up now, is it? I think it’s in May and stems back from Queen Victoria, that particular day, I think it was her birthday or something. And, well, oh gosh, I’m trying to think, oh, I wrote this essay, but

I don’t have a copy of it, on Empire Day, and I must have done reasonably well cause it got a book prize. The book I have is in there, but I’ve never read it cause it’s all about war, the First War. My father read it, he devoured it, read it right through, but it didn’t appeal to me.

Oh no, I forget, we must have been tutored up on it,

or through our lessons. Yes, I think if I’d had more schooling like me grandniece I would have done what she’s done. I think it used to appeal to me, writing. For a bit of a past time, my own past time, oh, one period there I used to write up a little page, between my schoolmates and me, a little newspaper,

I called it the Blue Gum Times, it was only a page, and one schoolmate, she would do nice drawings, she could paint or draw. So I put a, picture on it and do all my little bits in small print, it was only a stint for what I was like.

Oh, I suppose…

Yes, you counted them.

Yes, I don’t know how many’s in that group, I’ve forgotten, but that was the average. But there were bigger classes earlier years, way back after the First War, they had big families, I haven’t got any of those, cause we weren’t in it.

Yeah, Chinaman, well, he was tall, he was quite distinguished looking, I remember him because he wasn’t there long, he boarded, they all boarded locally in someone’s farm, at their home. He was there for a short time, and it was winter, and through getting up early and milking cows and getting your hands all wet I would get chilblains

and my hand would be covered with them, fingers, in the winter, every winter I never missed, the other family didn’t seem to get them, oh, Jack, my brother, might have got a bit. Anyway, they used to weep, and this teacher Mr Sing, he was so kind about it, he was concerned. But I don’t know, they’d dry up when the weather improved. But I always remember him, but he didn’t stay long,

I can’t remember, there must have been reasons, but I can’t remember, they come and they go. We had two or three lady sewing mistress teachers, one in the beginning when we were there, Poowong East, was Miss Mary Malcolm. She come from Melbourne and she seemed to be there of a morning as well, I don’t know why that

was. Anyway, she used to like getting little plays together or singing, a lot of that, and she even had me singing on my own, I can’t sing now. And she used to get the headmaster in to hear me sing. But after a while I got self conscious and I stopped, funny, isn’t it, I just went through a stage, and then I got self conscious and she got mad with me, she slapped me around the legs, cause I

didn’t sing up. So of course her making a commotion about it didn’t make me sing any more, it was that sort of person. Well, she moved on, I believe. Then there was a Miss Florence Smith, she was there for a while, she was a lovely lady, she was a real lady, and she never seemed to be impatient with anybody, and I liked her, I’ve

got an autograph book there and she’s got one in it, I’ll show you later, with a sketch. There was another lady teacher came again later, before I left, her name was Miss Marie Munt, and what we remember about her, when she arrived she had her nails painted green, green, you know, way back in

1937. She’s not in those pictures, unfortunately, but green painted fingernails, it was an eye-opener. I know the others had their nails very nicely polished, but this one turned up with green. Anyway, she finished up marrying a local fellow, we saw them years later at one of our back to’s,

down Gippsland, and they used to grow African violets and sell them at the country markets. But he died last year, and I’ve heard that she’s in a nursing home in Melbourne somewhere, got Alzheimer’s, I think, she may be gone by now, I don’t know. But that’s what happened, you don’t know, do you, what’s ahead.

Well, she was an eye-opener.

She was all right, I suppose, just couldn’t take our eyes off the nail polish, us little green country bumpkin kids. I mean, now everything goes, doesn’t it? So by then I’d left school when Mr Hogan was there, he’s since deceased, Mr Brisbane would be well gone, Mr Freckleton deceased. I wanted to see him again, but I never

got to see him, he had, a lot of children didn’t like him, especially boys, because he was very quick with the cuts, the straps on boys if they were kicking up. And he wasn’t popular, they all knew you’ve, watch yourself with him. Anyway, I used to be a bit dumb on the long division sums, I mean,

we were taught in a roundabout way but I couldn’t seem to get through to the bitter end of it. And he one day took me up to the blackboard, all the rest are sitting in their desks and he goes through the whole thing step by step, so that I would cotton on. I liked fractions at the time, but at that stage I was a bit thick in the head. But

that’s what I remember about him, he was so kind enough to bother, which, that’s what you need sometimes, is personal tuition.

Yes, just rough and tumble, I wasn’t the goal thrower, Jean, that tall girl in that photo, was always the goal thrower, she’s now a bowler, she’s always in bowls, been athletic all the way. She’ll probably go till she’s ninety.

Her father lived till he was in his nineties, he was at the First World War too, he was a prisoner of war in Germany, I think, so he didn’t get too battle-scarred, but he lived a good life. So I’ve always kept in contact with a few of them from there.

No, we didn’t have any other, not like now, over the road there, the teens, they’re into their teens, their mothers are running them every night somewhere, there at school all day, they’re home for tea and then they’re off, lessons or games somewhere, at one of the sports areas. I feel sorry for her, she’s never at home, she works all day as well. So we didn’t get

that, you come home, you stayed home, no outings again. Once every so often there’d be a social evening at Mountain View Hall, which about wartime there was one or two fellows joined the army. One joined the air force, and he got a send off and everyone turns up, big night, bit of dancing and speeches and presentation to the person going. And

one in particular who joined the air force, he went away, he was shot down, he got back, I think he was a prisoner too, came back after that, but I never saw him again, I have his autograph too. He died a few years ago, there’s still family of his, not his parents now, his

sister and perhaps a brother.

Ah, yes, Sunday two o’clock there was always this scurry around in the morning, after cow milking, we would have a roast dinner, Mum always did the roast Sunday. We’d have to do some Sunday school lessons, and that would always be done at the last minute, and

then a big dinner and then run off to Sunday school by two o’clock. Mr Henry would have us sing a little hymn here and there, and we had a lady that taught the class, she also was good at the piano. I believe she’s still going, she married later and moved Gippsland somewhere, Alma Richardson was her name.

Anyway, there’d be a Sunday school anniversary every year about, oh, late in the year when the weather’s warmer, we’d all get new dresses, Mum would always make a new dress for us, so that was a big event, and a hat. So we’d be practicing for that, a few Sundays, and Mr Henry, the superintendent, he’d have a violin, he’d be playing

his violin with our singing, and the pianist. So it was quite an event, not much like, not too many of those happenings, but it was something. In those days it seemed quite an event. Saturdays after I left school the girls were in a basketball team that visited other schools,

or girls from the school on the Saturday. Usually going into their teens they’d be left school, so I went to that for a while. One of the ladies drove a car, which wasn’t everybody, and she’d drive us to the various places for our game. Oh at the Mountain View Hall there’d be a bit of a dance here and there.

I remember we started off there one night, they said to the men to get all the girls up, so here I am up on my feet doing the barn dance, big adventure. The hall there was quite impressive, I thought, I wouldn’t know what’s happened to all their pictures they had, had a lot of

pictures of the local councillors in the shire, or pioneers of that era, in the 1890s I suppose. Well, all those pictures, I wouldn’t know where they’ve gone, the halls gone. And they had a library, I guess it wouldn’t be what I’d read, very old time, they really did try to keep people interested in things in early

times. Cause as people travelled more it wasn’t as necessary, like to other towns. Like, Warragul was a big town for us, it has a library, now it’s quite an impressive place, and an art gallery.

Not very often, my parents only went about once a month, get the main

necessaries like sugar, flour, heap of meat. Oh, we used to get the butcher calling though on the farm and he’d sell the meat once a week. I forget if Mum ordered it in advance, I think she could have, so they’d deliver.

Yes.

I was still at school, would be ’38, ’39, I forget.

It was on, though, when I was at school, I must have left in ’39. Yeah, there was a lot of war talk there, big headlines in the papers, The Age, I only ever saw The Age, pretty dry. There was no children’s part in it, the only part I really read much of was the memorial notices, there’d

be little verses and they’d be about that long, each notice. They still do things like that, but in those days they were real poetical and that was about all I could read in them. So I did like reading and writing, like I just mentioned. But not going further, I didn’t get any further with it, sadly.

Oh, when it first was announced it was a Sunday night and we were listening to a, oh, Lux Radio Theatre or something on the radio and it stopped about half past eight, a big announcement was made. I think was Mr Menzies, he said, “War

has been declared.” There had been a lot of leading up to it before, it was on the way in. Well, then it finally happened, the Prime Minister in England was Mr Chamberlain, I think, he had trips over to Europe but they couldn’t seem to stop it, just like they can’t stop it now. It was hard to believe,

I mean, I knew about it and I knew the Japanese were somewhere in the background, they weren’t actually involved then but they were in the news. And it was all about planes and bombing and I used to lay awake at night thinking, “Oh,” you could hear the planes, imaginary, it was rather, even though we didn’t know a lot about it it just hit you.

So that happened on a Sunday night, my parents didn’t say anything that I can recall, I think they were stunned because they’d both been through one. So there was very few words said about it. Well, they, I’d be fourteen approximately, so four years later I joined the WAAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force]. What happened in that four

years the war was going from then, September, I think it was…well, it was still going strong in 1943, and by then I think the Japanese were in it, well, they were, that’s when all the prisoners were taken up in Singapore. Oh well, I was fourteen, I was home from school after that, when I left. Oh, I had a year

of piano lessons before we left the district, a local music teacher from Drouin, she would ride a horse out to Mountain View and she would stay overnight at one of the homes, not our place, and take pupils to this one house, we’d all go there. And every Monday was my music lesson, cause I was, left school, the others had to do

theirs after school. So that was a bit more interesting.

Yes, mostly. Oh yeah, big chords, they don’t play it with chords now, it’s all single notes. I did go for lessons again, oh, about fourteen years back, I went for a while but I stopped playing when I stopped lessons. But it was okay at the time,

but then I just dropped it, the piano sits there idle.

Oh, I doubt it, I don’t think I could, I mean, I can read music, it’s so long since I’ve played it. My cousin plays when she’s down, she’s a bit better.

Oh, that was after we moved to Berwick.

About ’41, early ’41.

Oh, Mum’s mother died, my grandmother, and my cousin Jim was born the same day, May the 29th, at Dandenong. Grandma died at the hospital and my cousin he was born the same day, but I don’t know which came first, whether he came first

and Grandma knew or whether she, I don’t know enough. I think she might have been told, he lives up at Euroa, he’s sixty-five now, near enough. That was one thing in 1940. I had a holiday at my cousins at Tyabb for a fortnight, which was a big deal, I mean, I’d never had a holiday, only day trips.

And this is when my older cousin, who’s three years older introduced me to going to dances, tutoring me up for the local dance while I was there at Tyabb, they had them every week or two I think. Cause down there they were near the military camps, at Balcombe and Hastings or Cerberus,

the navy. So there was plenty of competition.

I guess the barn dance again, and the Palmer waltz and those sort of things. Oh, at home my parents weren’t into dancing, they just didn’t think of it, they didn’t want me to go dancing.

So it was only after I got to Berwick that I finally did get there, but I was a real Cinderella for a while.

I did go eventually.

Oh, Berwick, they were just the Saturday night country dance. Be the Pride of Erin or the Palmer Waltz, those sort of old time ones.

Oh, there was some livelier things, they’d have the Albert’s Square, floor couples, that was always a highlight, get thrown around. People were happy with all that.

Not always, there was those from Dandenong during the war,

a few, I think. Yeah, there were a few. When we were at Berwick on the farm there would be military manoeuvres or movements around, I think they just rehearsing what they might have to do elsewhere, like mapping and surveying and all that stuff. I don’t know what else they did, but I know

they come onto our farm there and I know me father give me a lecture not to go near them, “Don’t you go down there, beware,” so that was that.

Oh, I wasn’t game, not with my father, so I didn’t get too forward, very timid. Another time at Berwick

later, when I was about seventeen perhaps, an air force plane landed in Berwick, not on the airstrip that was there, just where now is the Berwick University, do you know it, Clyde Road? Oh well, there’s a university there now, the airstrip’s gone, there is an airstrip, I think at Peckham, I’m not certain. But anyway, this plane landed in,

not on the airstrip, up a bit of a rise, didn’t crash, it seemed to just make a forced landing. And I don’t know what caused it, whether they’d run out of fuel, I wouldn’t know. Anyway, all the district goes down to see what’s the plane about. So in the afternoon we were allowed to go down, even my father came. And load of young fellows off it, all in air force peaked caps and

things. So another girl my age, or around my age, she was pretty chatty to them, so we got quite friendly and my father actually let me stay behind, he went off home to do the milking, I wasn’t expected to go, which was an amazing thing. And so one of them I started, we exchanged our names and addresses, and he wrote

for quite a while, up until I was in the WAAAFs, and I suppose that sort of influenced me a bit. But sadly the letters cut out, he was up in Darwin, he’d been at Tocumwal, where I was but only ahead of me, he’d gone by the time I got there. And then he was up at Darwin for a time, still writing, and I used to write, and then after that no more,

and I just thought, “Oh well, he just doesn’t want to continue,” so I didn’t write either, so I never knew any more what happened. But I used to wonder, I thought, “Maybe he’s, he must have gone to the islands,” which he had, I found out later. Anyway, when I was in Sydney about twelve years back, he came from Sydney, I mean, early years, I wouldn’t do it, I was so timid, I thought, “I wonder if he’s still around, I’ll

try and find out.” So I rang the same name, but not his name, wasn’t under his initial, it turned out to be his aunt, she was ninety, she was an old maid like me, but she was so nice to talk to, she had a voice like a young women. And she told me about that he had come back from the war, been up in New Guinea, I suppose, not certain.

But she said he died, she said thirty years back. Anyway, he had married after the war, someone he’d met after, so I asked her about the widow, so she gave me her name, her number, so I was able to contact her. And we met another time, and she hadn’t known him in the air force, so that was

something she didn’t know about. So she didn’t know about me having written to him. But that’s what happened, I guess he was posted and he never got the letters, or vice versa.

Well, only by pen, writing, only the meeting the day of the landing there, then they went later, we weren’t there when they left, I don’t know how long they were there, I dare say that day they moved on.

They came from Sale, they were down there, don’t know where they were going, perhaps to Point Cook, don’t know. So that was my first meeting up with wartime service people.

Oh, dairying there.

Yeah.

Well, at my age, I’d left down where we were at Poowong East, well, when we got to Berwick I had no friends, no schoolmates, like my sisters and brothers were still at school, so they soon met up with others and palled up, but I never had any, really, until I met Gloria, who was living along Clyde Road. She used to travel to Melbourne every day on the train

to work in Flinders Lane, she was a secretary or something, clerk. She and I got to know each other from me going on the train to Dandenong, where I did the dressmaking job with my school friend. So I had that company, but around Berwick I knew nobody. So it took a while for me to get going to dances, and that was thanks to Gloria. She

had a young man, she was three years older, she married him later, he went to New Guinea too after that. So she lives up at Croydon, Gloria Welsh, I thought you may have interviewed her last year, or this year, she’s now a great grandmother. Nice person, she’s never been any different as far as I’ve, she

was mature in her teens, she’s still a mature motherly person. She’s our WAAAF branch secretary at the moment in Melbourne, at South Yarra Club.

Maybe.

Well, it was pretty quiet, Tuesday’s market day,

was then and got a bit busier. Oh, big bluestone curbs on each side of the street, was open gutters and the bit of cement over a gutter here and there, very old. And there was shops along one side. On the Town Hall side there was Crumps, they were a big grocery, hardware, everything, Crumps,

they were the big shop there. There was a butcher on the other side, I forget their names, and a dentist and a library, very ordinary. I was there only a year, because Miss Tucker, who we worked for, was engaged to be married, so she finished up to get married, and women didn’t come back to work when they married in those days

unless they had to, so I’ve never seen her from that day to this. Jean may have heard from her once, but that’s about all. She was living out Keysborough, she married a man named Smith, so how would I know? Anyway, that’s all built up now, so I wouldn’t know where they are, she’d be, she could be ninety.

I was only a teenager.

Oh, it was okay, well, you were very closed in, you didn’t meet anybody. I’d be quietly doing the jobs she’d give me, Jean would be quietly doing her machining, she was not a talkative person, so it wasn’t exactly suitable for me was it, I got more tongue tied.

We were upstairs, we weren't down on the street level. Williams, the shoe man, were in the same building, along street level, but they had a store in upstairs and we’d have, nice young fellow used to work there, he used to race up and down the stairs. But I never got too acquainted with him, but funnily enough his friend was a friend of my

sister and brother in law, cause they got married around the same time. But he’s still around, he’s up at Echuca, he did marry. But I always think of him as a handsome teenager.

No, I went once, I left, well, when Miss Tucker married and closed the business we were out of a job.

Well, I was home again for a while, and before I forget, my brother Jack, the older one of the two, he worked as a telegraph messenger boy at the Berwick Post Office and postal deliveries and things. The girl in there at the estate agent was leaving to get married, not married, to join the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service], army. She was a

year or so older, so she put it to my brother to ask me if I’d like her job at the estate agent, just clerical work. So it finished up I got that. The boss was in the army, he wasn’t there all the time, so he had a man, retired man be the manager while he was away. So I worked there and he only put in, oh, a couple of hours, it was not very busy, wartime

there was nothing happening, no buying and selling, it was only letting, renting and that. So I had to collect the rents and bank it everyday and keep up the entries of what happened. There was a stationery shop attached with it, not that that was busy either, it was pretty dead.

Oh,

a few, but I didn’t know them, living at Berwick, I got to know of them later, but I never really knew them. Gloria, this friend of mine she knew everybody from fifty miles around, that’s at Berwick.

Well, there were the send-offs to fellows going.

There weren’t many girls in the service much when I was first in Berwick, but then the papers started advertising for girls to join either the army, the WAAAFs, I think the navy was later, the WRENS [Women’s Royal Naval Service], or the WRANS [Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service]. And this girls whose job I took over, she joined the AWAS, the army, she still lives at Berwick, she’s back there,

she’s now been married about fifty-odd years. She’s been running a shop in there for about forty or fifty years as well, a dress shop, still there, I believe, but I think she’s finishing it up now. Oh gosh, what else?

Oh yes, yes, all the blinds had to be black at night,

no chinks of light, it just seemed to be part of the, no lights outside, we’d have a lantern perhaps, yeah, it was like that. What hit me was the newspapers and all the headlines and the lists of casualties, that was in, The Age didn’t get, The Sun, and there’d be miles of names, hundreds, and

there’d be the missing, missing believed killed, the POWs [Prisoners of War], the wounded and whatever else. Oh, it was just hundreds, we didn’t keep the list, but oh, they were endless. Then there’d be photos of fellows that were killed, later they’d put in a little picture of the fellow, it was pretty harrowing. Another period there I was knitting socks

to send to the soldiers, we all volunteered to knit socks, so they’d provide you with the wool, I think, I forget, Mum did it. And then you send them back. So one time when I did a pair, I don’t think I did many, put my name and address in the sock, oh, months later I get a reply, he’s over in the Middle East. And he wrote for a while,

but I was very junior and I think he was much older. And Jean, my friend I worked with for a while, after me writing for about a year I felt, “I don’t want to keep up with this,” so I said to Jean, “Would you like to write to this fellow?” He come from Sydney, another one. So Jean lapped it up and she wrote, and in the end of the war she met him,

turned out he was a married man. So he was a bit older than us, but she went over to Sydney and met him, I don’t know where she stayed, whether she stayed with his wife and family I don’t know, I can’t remember. But that was a big letdown when she found that out. So I must have known something, mustn’t I?

No, I know there were those,

bit cheeky, at a distance.

No, he didn’t say anything to me, nor Jean, she only found after she met him, I don’t know how it was told.

Oh, just about the pictures they’d go to see, out in the military for the day, this is when they’re training, before they went into action,

I think, I don’t know if he’s at Tobruk. But he was in Egypt at that time, so I really can’t be sure, cause they weren’t allowed to write much about what they were doing, but they’d fill up a page or two. No, I didn’t keep his letters, I don’t know, they just diminished, just disappeared, I have two or three there of others. I had a heap of them, but I burned them all and now I’m sorry, because they would have been good in a folder,

cause they were how they were at the time. But few of my cousin, few of, two or three others I wrote to.

Oh yeah, well, I did have a pen friend another time, he was in the army, it was while I was in the WAAAFs, we were all there at Toorak, we were housed in Toorak when I was working

at Victoria Barracks, that’s after I was at Tocumwal. And rather than live out I lived in, and they had these big old mansions and they put all the girls in there, but the furnishings were not there, we had our air force stretchers, straw palliasse, army blankets and things and lockers, but none of the original furniture of the house.

All that was left was the big mirror on the mantelpiece, oh, it was big, about half the size of that, on the mantelpiece, a marble mantelpiece, marble fire place, every room had it, that’s the way they were done for heating. So, oh, I’m sleepy.

Getting sleepy.

Oh well, that was twelve [shillings] and six [pence] a week, when I was at the dressmakers previously that was ten shillings a week. And the weekly train ticket was ten shillings, from Berwick to Dandenong, so anything extra I wanted I had to beg from Mum, for a pound note. And then at Berwick, twelve and six a week I managed to save

about, while I was there, I didn’t stay more than a year, about eight pound, well, I didn’t go anywhere to shop, there was no shops much in Berwick, and that’s the way wages were.

Oh yes, well, the war effort, apart from knitting

those socks, going to home nursing lessons, lectures, I missed out on the first aid, they weren’t there at the time, the doctor was just running home nursing. If I had had first aid plus the home nursing I could of tried to be in the nursing side, nursing aid type of thing, not a sister, I mean, they’ve got to be qualified before they join up.

So I didn’t get that, I mean, I didn’t speak up enough, I was terribly dumb. I believe they put on my, when I joined up, I’m jumping ahead, aren’t I, one of the girls who worked in records said they had on my record I was a shy country girl.

Oh yes, I was terrible, well, we didn’t have any social life, not our crowd,

our family. Oh, it was only after you’d, mixing, you’d get more confident, took years. You wouldn’t read about it. Well, why I was at the estate agents, there were these recruiting campaigns and the van would come into Berwick, didn’t see an air force one, it was an army, AWAS, and those sort of

people. But I wasn’t quite keen as I was on the air force, the other lass moved to go into the army. But I had this cousin in the WAAAFs, and Gloria, they were all three years older, so I seemed to have that leaning towards air force, as well as meeting those few fellows, all that stuff. And

I hung off and hung off, and then when I was getting up towards eighteen I sent for the papers, or sent in an application. Then they send you things, and eventually you’re called up for an interview, so that was a big trip to town, 104 Russell Street, which is now behind, do you know that St Michael’s Church, Collins Street?

It’s corner of Russell, it’s an older church, well, it’s now called St Michael’s Uniting, it used to be independent. Anyway, the recruit centre was along Russell there, on the corner of Little Collins, and it was in old building which was originally a car display, motor car display rooms, and they took that over.

Very ordinary building, now they’ve got about a forty-storey high building on it, do you ever go into Russell Street? Oh well, it’s in there, but anyway, 104 is nowhere to been seen, so that’s where I was enlisted, or enrolled to start with. Mum came with me that day, then while I’m in there getting all the tests, or

aptitude or interviewing, I don’t think I said anything, and they just made me an office orderly, just doing a bit of office work. But later, up at Tocumwal after the training, they re-mustered me to a clerk, which was something to get a bit further. And then I was posted back to Victoria Barracks. Up there, Tocumwal, they were all for me to get

through as a clerk, because they said, “You’d never get anything down there,” they reckon, so they were pushing me. They were very nice up on the station, I enjoyed that.

I was called in about December, I was eighteen in the August, I was called in before Christmas, I don’t think I got

home for Christmas, I just can’t remember, I think we were all down there.

Oh, she wasn’t, she had been in a year or two by then and she was stationed at recruit centre, she was a clerk there, she did typing, I don’t know if she did typing and shorthand, don’t think she did, she was more of a clerk, bookkeeping

everything, she was pretty smart. I mean, they put her in there immediately, she didn’t do her rookie’s training, just straight into the job. But that was earlier, about ’42, ’41, ’42, they were only starting up then and they needed the staff, so she was qualified to do something. Where me, I didn’t have any qualification, so they didn’t put me there. But Gloria’s told me since, or

a couple of the girls from the rookie’s I was in are there, but they must have been into that typing work before to be selected, but I lost track of them too.

Well, I originally, I was about the nursing bit, well, they couldn’t get enough together for that. My cousin, she was doing nursing, like that sort of work, nursing aid type

of thing, she had done both, first aid and home nursing, so she got in. But she was about twenty when she went in, she was a bit more mature, she was more a, well, she lived in Tyabb all her life, and her parents always, most of their lives. So she knew everybody, she was confident and she was also, I’m rambling a bit,

she was also in a queen competition for the Red Cross, raising funds for the war effort, and she won. There were several girls, and she was like queen of the everything, really did her good, you know, that sort of thing.

Mainly the newspapers, probably plastered up around the city anyway. There weren’t, a lot of people were against women in the service to start, they seemed to think you’re just nobody. Girl next to me at Berwick, when I said I was thinking of joining up, “Oh, I wouldn’t join that,” quite hoity, as though they were scum. Anyway, I did join, but

she never did.

Oh well, it was just this particular van went through. No, I wrote down for my, I didn’t see anyone before for WAAAFS until I went to Melbourne. But I’d heard a bit from my cousin and from Gloria, so I had a bit of an idea. I also was, but I wouldn’t open my mouth, I fancied doing

telegraphy, they wanted more, had to do Morse training, and here I was at home Morse coding something and I was teaching myself, but when I got down there I didn’t tell them anything.

Yeah, roughly, just the common phrases.

I forget, it was just somewhere on

newspaper or somewhere, I can’t remember. But I was interested in that, but I think it was pretty hectic to train, to do that course. Another girl I met later at Tocumwal, she’s another Gloria, she’s New South Wales, Armidale, from up there, she was training at Ascot Vale, and it was evidently pretty hectic and she broke down on it. So

she was posted to Tocumwal, didn’t finish that course, but she had a knowledge of signals and procedures, so they put her in as a signals clerk up at Tocumwal and she was in the same big office I was in, orderly room they called it. These are all out near the hangars, way out. We’d go out each day on buses from our living quarters.

Well, I can’t say word for word.

Oh well, I had to get my parents’ approval, for one thing. I can’t remember what’s written on the forms, but that was the first, and I think he had to, my father had to sign or

say, “Yes she can go,” which was amazing, cause he was so, what would you say, restrictive about everything else. Anyway, I got the letter when I was to come up for my medical and interviews. Well, that was before I was actually called up to go into camp, that would be a month before, I guess. And

oh, it’s a big day in the centre in there, well, the interview first, which I can’t tell you anything, I don’t know what they said and I don’t know what I said, except I was allotted to be an office orderly. In some ways I think I’d have preferred to be a steward, because you’re mixing around with more. Anyway, oh, what next….

oh well, the call up date, going to camp came later. So I got in there, stayed overnight in Dandenong at my school friend, who lived there at the time, another one, Linda, and she worked in town at Aspro, they were where South Bank is now, Aspro, and she worked in the laboratory. So she escorted me into town, because I’d never been on my own before,

and she took me right up to the corner of Russell Street and Scots Church there, and after that I was on my own. And I got to the place very early, about eight in the morning, and there was no one about and there was an air force chap showed up eventually and he started to say something and I burst into tears, had a bawl. Cause I realised then I’m really breaking away from the apron strings.

Eventually we seen again, look, I can’t remember what order.

I don’t know whether I had the medical then, I must have had it earlier to be passed to go in, so on the first time I went in, that was an ordeal. You may have heard from others, you’re seen by the doctor and there’s two or

three of them just sitting there and you’re getting quizzed and questioned and examined, there’s three of them there. And then you put on a stretcher bed thing and they check you all over and ask you the most personal questions. Oh dear, it was something for me, cause I’d never been out before. And oh, things like your periods, when was that last, when do you expect the next one and all this

blah. And I was rather irregular in those times, so I felt a bit stupid. Anyway, he was all right, let me in. Oh, it was a real initiation when you never talked about any of those things, I mean, my mother never even did. So only from my friends, I would have had nothing. So it was really a

traumatic time for me, but I kept on going, didn’t back out. And then approve, I suppose, health-wise, I know I’ve only got that medical history from my, the records the other week, I’m going to ask more about it, and on my dental bit, when I was in camp I had all me wisdom teeth taken out, they’d only been, I mean,

only through a month or two. And this women dentist out at Larundel, she pulled them all out while I was on rookies. And I read these records I got the other week and there’s no entry in the dental record that I had my teeth extracted. So I’m not pleased about that, cause I don’t think they should have been taken out.

No, they were wisdom teeth, I don’t know why they did, I still don’t

know. So at the time it was, you’re getting all this done, and then she did other things, fillings, and while she’s drilling away there’s the parade ground out the window, she’s looking at the parade while I’m getting drilled. The dental nurse beside her, I knew her face, I’ve never forgotten it, and you know, I met her later, I was in the PMG [Postmaster General’s Department] after the war on the switchboards and there she was,

the main telephone exchange for the city. So I got to know her and I said, “I remember you, you were the dental nurse out there,” Betty Atkinson, she was. I said about that incident with the dentist drilling and looking out the window, oh, she just laughed, but she smoked heavily, this girl. Anyway, she’s passed on, I did visit her several years back out at, not Lurundle

Brighton, she was in a nursing home, this dental nurse girl. She knew me, but she was a bit away with the birds, but she’s since passed on, she was almost crippled, she had back problems, I think she used to ride horses, must have had bad falls. So there’s those things. Then the day of going into

camp, that was the day we called in, that was the day I met Nancy. There were a few other girls, I’ve only got their names by chance in an autograph book, and oh well, we were all there strange to each other. But Nancy was the nicest, I thought.

Well, I remember Nancy being there, the others I remember vaguely.

But after we were on the training you were racing around all day, every day, marching, physical, some time of the day and then air force procedures, and then you have a gasmask attack, or a trial, going into a locked, not locked, closed up place where there’s no windows and they let the gas out and you’ve got your mask on. I think you’ve got it on,

no, you don’t have it on, you’ve got to put it on as soon as you feel the gas, just for a test to see how you’d react. But we never had them with us on the station, there may have been but I can’t remember, I’m a bit hazy.

Vic Barracks?

Oh, out there, well, the first job you do was to fill your straw into palliasses

for your mattress, if you didn’t put much in you had a very thin mattress on a cyclone wire stretcher, but we did it. I always slept, so it didn’t worry me, I don’t know if I had enough in or not. And we had to make our bed up each morning, fold the blankets, certain method, bank them up like that on the end of the bed and fold the palliasse.

I don’t know if it was everyday or once a week you had to do it. Well, after camp when we were out at Toorak or Tocumwal, once a week there would be inspection, and everyone had to leave their bed, mattress, blankets, pillows, everything, all folded very methodically for inspection. And a kitbag had to be there to, my kitbag’s out in the garage.

Oh, it would be out there at Lurundle. Uniforms, the blue one wasn’t ready, they were still being manufactured, but we got our other one, the drabs, they called them khaki summer uniform. Skirt, shirt, and a khaki hat, that was our summer outfit. But the

winter blues were winter time, its was the heavy surge tunic stuff with a blue shirt and a collar, press stud, or a stud, the collars were detached. So you always ironing your collar and you’d starch them to make them glossy and keep them firm, then a black tie, get used to tying. That was in Melbourne, but up

at Toc we wore what they called jeans, they’re an overall all over with buttons down the front, they were the jeans and a blue beret while we were on the station. Only that picture, you just looked at dressed up on a Saturday for that parade.

Yeah, that was. The blues were

not worn at Toc [Tocumwal] while I was there because it was hot, hot right into late autumn, I got back just before the winter to Melbourne. Well, then I was in my blues, going to work. We were housed, well, I was housed out at Toorak cause I chose to live in, others chose to live out where they had to feed themselves, look for accommodation. But I’m glad I chose to live in, because you met a lot

of other lasses. And you had your meals and you had no worries, it was all included.

That’s right, well, it was all tiles and glossy, chrome here and there. I don’t think there were any doors on the bathing areas, showers, no doors or curtains, I can’t

be sure but everyone else says there were no curtains or closed doors. Bathrooms, they were all sort of open, cause it was for these mental cases originally. But we had to get used to it.

Well, I suppose I just followed the mob, didn’t seem to worry me, there was so much activity I didn’t seem to

have time to think about it. Meals, parades, I’ve got an exercise book there if I can get it out later, little bit about it. Oh, then you had needles, vaccinations, smallpox was one I think, or typhoid, one of those,

and several others. Would be listed in my pay book, I think I’ve still got the things we had. It didn’t affect me that much, but some did get quite sick, some would get quite a heap on top of where it was vaccinated, but I didn’t seem to have all those problems. But at the end of the six weeks I got a terrible cold, I think all this

rushing around, it was hot weather, getting cold on floors doing our exercises and hot out on the parade ground. I think it all added up and it just hit me, and I’d never had all those things in me life, cold or needles.

Well, I wasn’t trained for clerical work,

some before me, for some reason, were sent to Adelaide and trained as typists, but they didn’t send me to anything.

Oh, it was mainly air force stuff, you weren’t taught anything about what job you’d do, it was just air force knowledge, procedures.

Yes, oh yes, you were on the parade ground morning and afternoon,

hour or so at a time. Just go on and on, we’d be in these new shoes we were issued with, and I was hard to fit because I’m very narrow there, it was ages before I got a pair of shoes to fit. So it was pretty hard if you didn’t have a good shoe. In these same shoes the whole six weeks until they wore out.

Oh dear, what else…oh, you were issued with stockings, they were thick sort of, not these, they were heavy cotton stockings, tanny colour, seam up the back. And you had to wear those till they were washed out till nearly that colour, and then you’d go back to equipment stores, you had to hand in your

old ones before you got new ones. It’s all that sort of rigmarole, especially wearing, all your lingerie or underwear was provided and that was all cotton, everything.

At Lurundle, oh, it was a very open area, very wide, with dozens of us all in the one area.

That’s how they were housed for the next lot, the mental cases, after the war. We were upstairs somewhere, there was more than one storey. Oh, there was administrative offices somewhere else, it’s all there like that now. I have been out there since to visit someone, years ago, but not lately, it’s pretty depressing to see those.

Yes, she was around, I don’t really know who was next to me.

Well, I met her going out to Lurundle on the tram or bus, I forget how we got there. We must have had a bus to take us right to this place, cause the tram didn’t go that far then, I’m a bit hazy, I don’t know if Nancy

could tell you. It’s funny, you think you’ll never forget but some things do. I can…

Every day for an hour or two, and then we’d go on a route march away from the depot, and there in that area was Mont Park where the poor souls from the

First World War, still there, some of them. And we’d be marching along, and one in particular used to be in a military outfit, but he was a mental case, but he was roaming around, they let them roam some of them, they did then. And he had a row of medals on here and he’d come along and salute us and all that sort of thing. And he was a poor thing from the First War, I suppose, I don’t know about

the Second cause, I really don’t know. So we’d see that sort of thing on our track, route march. Then it would be very hot days, what, equivalent to about forty now, would be a hundred then or something, our instructor, she was a Corporal Jessie something…oh, gee

I’ve always known her name, it’s gone. She come from Albury, I believe, but she was our drill instructor, she was okay but you never got any informal chat with her, she kept to the rules. And, well, when we did these long route marches, hot weather, she’d get over the hill way out of sight from the depot, we were allowed to have a sit under a tree for a while.

So that was something welcomed, just sit under the tree, bit of shade. So it was a real mammoth business getting drill parades every day for six weeks.

Oh, out there it was more side road, hardly went out on main roads, there wasn’t much out there then, it was very countrified

like everywhere else, Berwick was country, right through to Dandenong it was just farms, and yet only thirty miles from the city Berwick was. And, oh well, there was a big pass out parade at the end of the course, you know, none of us had a camera, we never got a photo of it, films were scarce, but some did get pictures of

their own parade, but ours didn’t score. You’d have thought someone would have had a, like, in the drill instructors even, to keep tab of their own training, so we didn’t get any, sorry to say.

Oh no, not ours, they were milking cows. Some, I think, might have, but I can’t remember any

special in our group, some I noticed did in other groups, depends where they came from. Some of the girls, I don’t know how long they lasted, some weren’t up to it, they were collapsing and falling by the wayside, and other girls would be tearful at night, real homesick. Even though I was leaving home for the first time, once I broke away from headquarters there,

recruit, I didn’t sort of worry about it, just went along with the flow.

Not really, but when I was given the posting, which said Tocumwal, and I knew of Tocumwal because my aunt had lived there, but had never been there. So oh, I thought it was the end of the earth, getting posted up there,

over the Murray. And I had to ring my parents from town and say, “I’ve been given a posting to Tocumwal,” whereas I was expecting to be just in Melbourne. When you’re in there they ask you, “Where would you like to go, city or country, home or near home area?” So being obedient I put down Melbourne to be nearer home, and they sent me to Tocumwal,

so that used to happen, girls would get sent opposite to what they expected. And another girl on the rookies was going there to, her name was Irene Day, she was a little blonde, pretty sort of a girl, but we weren’t close as far as friendliness in the training, but she was on the train with me to go to this Tocumwal. And I was,

I became ill, I had this awful cold and they cleared me to go, they check you out, and she said, “Oh, you’ve only got a cold,” the woman doctor, not mad on women doctors, not mad on women dentists. And she said, “Oh it’s just a cold,” and yet I felt not meself, I reckon I should have been home in bed, but that was summer. So I was to get off the next morning, 7 am from Spencer Street,

so I stopped the night in East St Kilda at a relation and I had to get in there by seven, so it was pretty hectic, and especially when you’re feeling off colour. So on the way up I must have been seedy, someone offered me an aspro, there was no water to drink it, here I am pushing this aspro down, and after that I was sick all the way to Tocumwal. And the other girl, Irene,

she was kind to me then, but when we got there, about eight-hour trip, we asked, as we got off the train onto the platform we line up, the sergeant or corporal or somebody yells out, “Anyone sick fall out.” And I was that pleased to hear it, to hear that someone was interested, so I was the one, I don’t recall anyone else. Next thing I’m in the medical

sick quarters getting checked out and carryon. Then they shove me into an ambulance and I’m taken out to the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] hospital called Barooga, Number 5 RAAF Hospital Barooga, it’s on the way cross country to Cobram, other side of the river. And I was in this ambulance and I thought, “Where am I going?” I had no idea. And all I could think of was getting to somewhere nice and green,

cause it was all yellow the country, it was just all sand, real drought. Finally I got put into the hospital and I was there for two weeks, I went down from nine stone to eight stone. I don’t know what I had to eat, I can’t remember, but I think I was pretty sick for a while, they called it gastric or something on my record. And the medical man, he seemed an old man but he was probably in

his fifties, he said, “What have they sent you up here for?” he said, “They only send the bad ones up here.” That’s what the doctor said, so I wasn’t in a funny mood about it, oh well, that’s what they used to say for a joke, cause it was so out of the way, seemed…But I enjoyed it while I was there, after the two weeks I was recovered and I

went to the job I hadn’t even seen.

Oh, not till I got there, no I was only given my mustering, which was office orderly, so that meant I was in the office room where you do chores. And oh, they were all nice people, few older chaps, I would consider older,

some of them I think were married men, air force. And there was not many WAAAFs there then, there was only about two or three of us in that area. And then Gloria came up from Ascot Vale, so she and I were chummy, she was older, she was twenty-four, I was eighteen. Another girl was a typist there, her name was Isla Moffitt, she was a

dainty little thing, very tiny, blue eyes, blonde, curly, natural blonde. And oh, I didn’t get that close with her cause she was always busy at her typewriter, I did more the correspondence that came in and the correspondence that went out, kept records of everything that went out from the station where I was. And then it had to be ready by a certain time, end of the day,

to go through the system, to other air force stations probably, all that official stuff. So there I was.

No, I’d been home earlier in the month, had a couple of trips home, I think. No, not when I was posted, that was it. So, oh well, I got through, but the sickness bit

knocked me. And when I was put in there, I don’t remember anything except one WAAAF opposite me, in the bed opposite, and I got to know her later, she was Audrey…oh, she married, Bensley, Audrey Bensley. And she was a plump girl, black head with a bright face, and she had a bad knee,

I don’t know what else they could do for her, but she was there as long as I was, maybe longer. Anyway, although I’ve known her over the years, right through till about four years back she always had this knee problem, so I don’t know if she got any compensation out of it, or pension. So that was one girl I remember clearly, Audrey.

Another one came from Portland but I never saw her again, depended where they worked, you’re getting tired, I think.

Oh, the one from Ascot Vale, oh well, she was a nice person, I don’t know if she was in the same living quarters, isn’t it funny, you can’t think, but we seemed to be together a lot cause we worked at

the same area, we’d travel on the bus together and all that stuff. But she was older and she’d been a schoolteacher in the country, but she never went back, after the war she got married. She got married before the end, actually.

Well, see, this training course she had at Ascot Vale, I believe, is very strenuous, Morse code and telegraphy stuff

and goodness knows what other pressures to learn all the codes, and type up and read the Morse, read it as it comes through and translate it. Well, she cracked up, and yet she’d been a teacher and all that, but she was also a bit asthmatic so I suppose it all got ahead of her. But she was a pretty girl, I’ve got a photo of her somewhere.

Yes, it’s true, cause some could speak out more, but with our setup my father was so sort of overbearing.

Not very much, Mum would brush you off, sort of. “Oh, you’ll find out someday,” that sort of thing, she would never discuss it on the spot, whatever you said

or asked, she was funny, she was very Victorian, I guess, almost. She was born in 1900.

Well, on the rookie’s one I knew, or remember, she was very matey with me on the course, but she was the one who was posted to 104…

That’s poor Nancy’s autograph, she wrote nicely.

Hmm?

This is an autograph from my friend Nancy Erm, 111030, Number 1

WAAAF Depot, Lurundle January 1944, “In your golden chain of friendship regard me as a link,” that was Nancy, way back. There’s a few others in there.

Well, that one is from the earlier, from this air force chap who we went to his big send off in the district, Mountain View. And I

sent this autograph book home with his little sister, would she get his autograph, he did that. But I never really got to talk to him because he was going away very soon after, but we were at his farewell. Well, this is his autograph, from LAC [Leading Aircraftsman] K. Collins, he was Ken Collins, that’s his death notices back in, long time, ’75,

I just thought it was recent, that’s the year my mother died, well, that was from the war. This is his autograph, “How wisely fortune, ordering all below, forbade a beard on woman’s chin to grow. For how could she be shaved, whate’er the skill, whose tongue would never let her chin be still?” how’s that, LAC Collins, poor chap. And the

next one underneath, “You never hear a bee complain nor hear it weep nor wail, but if it wish it can unfold a very painful tail,” so I don’t know if he said those out of his head or known them, he must have. That’s Mum, she put…

From my mother, M E Dalziel,

3rd February 1939, “Two in a hammock were having a kiss when all of a sudden they landed like this,” it’s a common one, common autograph in those days.

Yeah, so Mum had that in her head.

Oh, around, yeah, vaguely, yes, I just got that book, that was the

earlier book, I was still at school with that. You’ll see there, I’ll show you a little sketch done by the schoolteacher at our school, oh, she was lovely lady, she’s deceased now, she married a local chap too. I had it earlier, want to keep that with it…

this one, she took it home one night and brought it back next day. I thought…

About a smile, I don’t think it’s hers, I’ve had it again somewhere else. I just like the sketch she did, it’s so quaint.

I had it with me, these?

I don’t think I took that one, I have autographs in here from other girls, there’s another one, there’s another, there scattered over the time. That’s one from a chap up at Tocumwal – he was very artistic.

I did see him years

later, he lives up at Ringwood, last I heard, he come from the Western District.

Yes, we did about teenage years, yeah, lots of them from the air force in here. This girl I was friendly with at Vic Barracks, she’s now in a nursing home in Launceston, Alzheimer’s, and she was quite a

smart person, I would have said she was more than average, cause she could talk. She wrote that originally, then she wrote that about fifty years later, she was still passable then, but she’s in Launceston, anyway, that’s the sort of thing.

Well, a lot of their names are there where I hadn’t got them

elsewhere.

Out there? Well, the corporal who trained us on the marching and drilling, she was called Jessie Vincent, I thought of it afterwards. The officers, you never had much close dealings with them. There

was one, Flight something Lieutenant Storey, but I really can’t tell you.

Yes, from what I can remember, in charge of us they were women. I can’t remember a, RAAF fellow talking at us, there could have been but I can’t recall.

Because it seemed so far away, I mean, I did go, I didn’t stop. But when I was up there and then being posted back to Melbourne I cried me eyes out, Mum thought I was awful, not wanting to come back, because I enjoyed the life up there, it was easier, not citified, it was out in the open air, everyone was relaxed, that’s the way I remember.

Oh, that was the office work I was telling you before about, all the mail between the stations, I had to fix up, or register, keep records of it and parcel them up and fix them up for posting. Through the system, I don’t know if they went through PMG or special flights to somewhere.

Oh, inwards I would,

just to see who it goes to, yeah, that sort of thing. But I was only eighteen, didn’t absorb it all.

Yeah, well, it was a certain time very afternoon, it was collected and I had to race and get all this through, to be addressed and ready to go.

Well, it was brought into our room, office orderly room I was in, yeah, it would be brought in of a morning. The afternoon I had the outward…

It’s so long ago I can’t tell you much.

It was not hard, heavy going work for me, I mean, what Gloria was doing on signals was more exacting, well, I guess mine was too, but didn’t look at it like that.

Oh yes, that’s what made it, the atmosphere, they were all a bit older, I’d say. There were three buildings, three wings and the admin office one side, like that. And one room was the drafting, drawing section, one of the office areas. We’d meet

of a morning for our morning tea outside, break, morning tea break, the cook or the chef at one of the kitchens they had for the airman used to send over a batch of scones for morning tea. And we’d have our cup of tea boiled over an open fire outside, so that was a nice little interlude, get acquainted with the others. And they were younger

air force chaps, there were no girls in their office. And some were nice, one, he apparently fancied me and he never asked me direct but he asked another chap, I forget which one, would I go out with him to the pictures, but he wouldn’t ask me direct. So I accepted and went, but shortly after I was posted,

so that was, and he was on leave or something, so we lost track. But I did catch up with him again, he’s now over eighty, he’s on his own down there, lives at Carrum, we used to go out occasionally but no more than that, now we don’t, fizzled out.

Oh, there were opportunities, yes.

Well, the other lass, who was the typist, Isla Moffitt, her autograph’s in there, there was another airman chap, I don’t know if he was in our office or the drawing office, he was a little man and she was little, she was a little doll, they matched up, they got married. But I was posted back here, so I didn’t see them after that. But I’ve read of their golden wedding one time

in the paper, but I didn’t do anything about it, then I read he died since, so I sent her a card and wrote about meeting up at Toc and that, but I never got an answer so I don’t know if she’s away with the birds. You don’t know, so…

Yeah, for Liberator pilots, there were fighter planes, but you see, I didn’t work

closely to those areas. But the Liberators were trained there, the crews, one I met through the years, going up there, he was a pilot, there were two pilots to each lot, eleven crew on a Liberator, and they’d go on bombing missions up on the Pacific from north-west Australia, some. Others,

I don’t know much else about it, they were bombers, they’re huge. There’s one down there at Werribee in the hanger they restored, but it’s not a flying machine, it’s just to look at. But they’ve restored it to everything else, they had to get parts from all round the world cause they’d demolished them and melted them down after the war, and then someone

got the idea to restore one. So they had to scrounge everywhere, American, anywhere, I think they were made in America originally.

You’d hear them, cause we were in the office all day except for lunch. You’d hear engines in the distance quite often, there’s a lot of repair work going on. I was on the area called 7 Aircraft [Airframe]

Repair Depot, I think it was, 7 ARD, and they had areas where the engines are restored or renewed or whatever. And they’d be going all night, some of them, to do whatever they have to do. They were put inside big cement blocks so it wouldn’t wake all the farmers, but we still heard them, so it

would be hard for those sort of people. I can’t tell you technically.

Little blue book, I don’t know where it is.

No, there’s a little book about Tocumwal, it’s probably in that heap.

Yes, it was warm climate, well, it helped me get over what was wrong with me going up there, you know, at the hospital. And I suppose that’s just what I needed, plenty of sun and open air.

Wasn’t there long enough, they did, on a Wednesday, have a couple of hours of afternoon recreation, the girls, the WAAAFs. So we’d go down, being hot weather, to the River Murray and have a dip, it was a sandy beach, which was quite nice. It was very strong current, that river, but we’d go in,

none of us got drowned, but people have. And another time there was a steak picnic they called it, now you say barbecue, so this particular night, don’t know how it’s all worked out, but here I am at this steak picnic, at night, down on the banks of the Murray. And when you think about how we’d have steak when it’s rationed. Well, it turned out this friend I knew, who’s down at

Carrum, it was his 21st, and I’d never heard of 21st mentioned, but apparently it was his birthday. And he came from up there and he knew the butcher, so they got the steak, I’ve only heard he passed away, not long ago. So that was nice thing, but I didn’t have a lot of social…There was the picture shows, a dance or two, had a big theatre

and a hall for dancing, wasn’t there long enough.

I did at that time, I don’t get dancing now, I had a hip replacement a few years back so I don’t do things like that, scared a fall will muck it up if I fell.

Oh, you’d wait to be asked, typical country style. Yeah, I mean, that’s about all, I can’t remember too much else. But it was a big affair, big band, or there’d be musical people on the station, play. But at the time I was posted they were starting to develop a bit of theatrical stuff, dramatic society or that sort of group. My friend

Gloria, she was there longer, she could sing and she was in demand to sing, you see. She had a beautiful voice, I thought, don’t think she sings now, she’s over eighty. But she was quite a star, she had pretty hair, goldie, curly, not blonde and not ginger, something about it, just that tinge,

I thought so anyway. Oh, when I was in hospital my mother hadn’t been advised, I didn’t advise, I don’t suppose I was with it, and after a couple of weeks nearly a telegram comes that she hasn’t heard from me. See, after I got there, there was no, say, “We’ll let your parents know,” nothing.

I’m in this hospital ward nearly getting over it by then, and this Red Cross welfare social worker, she came in to me, I think she contacted my mother, but she’s the first person that showed me interest, took a long time, though. So I don’t know what they’d have said, who’d they have notified if I hadn’t got there alive,

it was strange when I think about it now.

I got this telegram and then I guess I’ve written back, I can’t remember much else. When I got discharged, of course I was back into the living quarters with others and going to the job.

Oh, there’d be about, oh,

more than a dozen, they were built like houses to make it from the air to look like a village, a country town. The Americans built the station before they went away, and then the air force took over. But they built these cottages and the roofs were camouflaged like military stuff is. And that’s where we were, unlined, they

weren’t lined like a house here and it was summer then, luckily for me, but in the winter I believe they were freezers. You only had two blankets, I don’t think you got a third, but the others, they had the winters there, so I wasn’t there then. But it is very cold inland at night.

Oh,

there’d be about six on one side, then there’s a big partition, no passage, just open area, a partition and a door into the other half. So I can’t remember that side, I can’t remember which girls I had there with me, cause we were all in different areas, we weren’t all together in work, there was a stores section and administrative section, signals, telephonists

somewhere else, so you didn’t meet them all. Only meet them now, meeting some now who were there. I was up there about May this year for a weekend reunion for WAAAFs who were stationed there, and they also, Tocumwal Rotary members put it all together,

a dedication ceremony, and they made a footpath which they called the WAAAF creek walk, bit of a mouthful, along this creek that runs down to the Murray. It’s quite pretty, I’ve got some snaps there, and they built a little pavilion with all the information about the wartime WAAAF. It was all done by the Rotary, but the government gave a grant for it, so that was our

big weekend. The Rotary fellows, mainly farming chaps, had a coach, run us all around the district to see everywhere, out to the hangers of the aerodrome, we were given the VIP [Very Important Person] treatment. But I can show you snaps there, over there in the folder.

So there were more WAAAFs there than those who were stationed there, they have never had it from other stations, ours is the first to have any recognition. On this coach run around the area, the district, we also went over to Barooga where this hospital had been when I was a patient there, no longer there, but I’ve got photos,

there’s little photos in that book I want you to see, little booklet one of the men up there’s put together, got that over there, it tells you more than I can. It’s in that heap somewhere, I hope.

I’m so dry in the mouth.

I suppose I can’t tell you a lot, he could have told you a lot. He talks it off as though he’s memorised it, no hesitating.

No, no, wasn’t flying, some of the girls managed to hitchhike, so to speak, from one state to another. They were

there much longer, got to know the ropes, no, I didn’t get that opportunity, but they weren’t easy rides they were unlined planes and pretty rough, they weren’t like passenger liners. I mean, those fellows who flew those bombers, there’s no lining and they’re freezing when they’re up high, so wouldn’t be my scene.

They used to fly those Liberators out at five or seven in the morning, they’d be all day flying, about four hours way up to the island areas, drop their load and then another four or five hours back, so it’s a lot of petrol to carry, isn’t it? Well, I know the big things do now, but for that time of history. So, oh well

once they dropped their load, well, they cruise home. But this crew I met that helped restore it at Werribee, they said they used to take a guitar and a fellow with the guitar would sing all the old ditties on the way back, just to keep their head high. And there’s be a chap down in the nose bombing, like right at the front, the nose of the plane’s

glass or that Perspex stuff, he was right at the front. And there’s the midway, chap there, and you’ve got the tail, and the pilots are up higher. So if you’re ever down at Werribee you might like to go in, but I believe the work isn’t going on now, because those roofs of the hangers are asbestos, or that stuff there, going on about now with all that

risk of your lungs.

Well, recently it’s fallen through, fallen, so they’re not allowed to work in there, so I don’t know how they’ll get on. The plane has to be moved eventually into a museum wherever.

No, hardly knew about

them.

Well, I believe there were but I don’t know much else.

She could have said more about it maybe, but I wasn’t there, I was posted by then, and she was starting to get onto the stage to sing, she had a lovely voice. The main one I ever heard her sing was called, Silver wings in the moonlight,

that was her special, I thought.

No, not then, no, I said I lost that cause of the nasty schoolteacher, lady.

No, not with me anyway, no, things were staring to happen when I left, I don’t know why it just started then. I think earlier

they were too busy getting the station going. Oh, there was more people by then, thousands up there, there were only about four or five hundred WAAAF, at the top total. When I went I don’t think there was that many, but they came in later, so that released the fellows to go further north. Most of these chaps in those office

areas I was in, they all got posted further up. The one down Carrum, he was posted up to Borneo, and oh, another one, oh gosh, I’ve forgotten, another one went there somewhere, but they all got moved on, so that’s how, the WAAAFs weren’t popular, probably, with some population cause they were sending the fellows to the front, but that’s how it was done.

At the weekends you could go, well, you could go in, off duty I mean, not while working, and we’d walk into Tocumwal itself. It was a very small town, there was two or three hotels, they’re still there,

corner shops and milk bar, but nothing elaborate, perhaps a grocery. Well, they’re much the same still, but the hotel, I remember, I didn’t go there to drink or anything, it was a very old one, still there, it, I stopped there since, at a reunion I went to, it had a little extra on it, they called a motel. But when I was posted back to Melbourne

I had to be up there at five or something in the morning. And they run me in in this air force van to wait for a bus, and I sat there and sat there and sat there, and I don’t know who woke up to it, there was no bus coming. I think the air force fellow who brought me to the stop must have come back later, and I had to then be taken all the way over to Cobram, which was about ten miles

to get the bus there, it wasn’t coming to Toc. So I was run over there to catch that, then we got to Shepparton, get the train, what I remember. And then I had to hike down to Victoria Barracks, St Kilda Road, Melbourne all since 5 am I’m doing this, this is about middle of the day by then, and I had to report there. But I didn’t start work that

day, I was asked, the girl who was on the desk, personnel they called her, personnel clerk, was I going to live in or was I going to live out? And I had never done those things, living out in a city area. So I found out then I could live out at Toorak in one of those big houses the government took over. So that was arranged, and here I am, off out to Toorak.

And that night, when I’m still getting settled in, the girls come into the big room we were all housed in, the rooms would hold eight beds, enormous rooms, bigger than this area, big as this house, nearly, big square rooms, beautiful big rooms. And the girls are coming home from their jobs and they said, “Oh, we’re going to a 21st,” one of them was 21,

so it was in town, Bourke Street, at Florentino’s, where, I’ve never been in my life. It’s still been running, I think, it might be finished now. So here I am at a 21st the first night in a place like that, in my uniform, so that was something. So it was a big day, from four o’clock in the morning at Toc, for someone

not used to these things. So that lady, she was a WAAAF of course who had the 21st, she later married, so again we were invited to her wedding, we were still in the WAAAFs, out at Malvern, Central Park or something. That’s where the reception was, I forget the church side of it, perhaps it was only the reception.

She’s, as far as I know still living, but she never comes to our gatherings. So those are the sort of happenings.

It was caused through, I always was very upset, you know, cause I was just getting settled in up there, after a few months.

The girl who I said was the typist, little blonde doll, she had a sister at Victoria Barracks whom I never met, but that sister and her got their head together and made application for compassionate posting of the sister in Vic Barracks to be with the other sister, which was clever. And I was the meat in the sandwich, posted to fill her,

this end, her spot. I don’t blame her for wanting to get away, it was not like a station, we all stuck in little offices with glass doors that you couldn’t see through, like opaque, and all the big officers all had their own offices, and I was in this small office telephone, what work I had to do. There was a squadron leader there

for a while but then he got posted away, I never heard from him again, and I was on my own in this little office, so I was rather isolated. And the man I worked to was the warrant officer, he was in another office, and the big air commodore, whatever, Wackett, I worked for, he worked for rather, I was just the little clerk, he worked for this big man, Wackett,

E.C. Wackett, he was either group captain or air marshal, I think he finished up as one. He used to invent that Wackett plane way back, he had a brother as well, both into that. So he had a lot of engineering skill, design, but I never had close contact with him. I remember he saw me one day in the

lift and he give me a smile, so that was amazing. Everything was very hard, not like they do now, you didn’t talk freely to people, he didn’t either, wrapped in his job. There were others that worked for him, wing commanders and the warrant officer. One wing commander there for a while, his name was Marshall,

the only contact I had was to take them in a cup of tea and a biscuit, miserable. So even then they never made any conversation, not that I did. But only a year or so back I read that Wing Commander Marshall died, he was in his middle eighties, but he was a handsome fellow then, and I had cut it out,

it would be like that exercise book. But he was only living down here in the Mornington Peninsula in his retirement, but very active community work person. So it was interesting, but I never knew what happened after he left, after I left. The others I’ve never heard of since, oh, the warrant officer I worked with, Warrant Officer Merrett, he was a bachelor,

and very official, very conscientious person, and he was all right, he was no trouble to me as far as boss goes. But at five o’clock when we’re due to knock off, or around that time, he’d always come and start a conversation, yet through the day you never got boo from him, and I didn’t make any, but of a night he’d

always want to start talking. And I was itching to get my tram, cause it was winter, getting darker and darker. So I didn’t take him on. Anyway, he got posted later, towards the end of the war, and he just went as quickly, didn’t hardly know he was going. But he finished up in Japan at the, with the occupation force, and he was there for several years.

However, I didn’t know all this until this year, I went to his funeral, but I never saw him from when he was posted, I should have made contact when I read of his sister’s death a few years ago, and I thought, “I should ring,” but I never did. And I heard he never married and neither did his sister, she worked in Myers for about fifty years and they both lived together in Kew, I did

see where they had lived. But I saw the notice and I thought, “I must go to the funeral, even if I’ve never contacted.” So when I got there I found it, at East Kew, there weren’t a lot of people but they were mainly relatives, cause he wasn’t a person that mixed, I shouldn’t think, he was wrapped in his job, that type of person. And one of the ladies at it was a relative or an in-law,

cousins or something, she gave the eulogy. Oh, she was very well spoken, and it turned out she was a cousin to the women who took over the warrant officer’s job when he was posted, she was a cousin to that lady, who was Vivienne Kinnear. She was a WAAAF officer that I worked with, worked for, she was nice, she died also, went to her funeral. But I don’t see them

over the years, you don’t hear of them. Anyway, I went to this funeral over at Kew East, and the lady, I’ve forgotten, her surname was Turner, she got talking to me, I think she thought there must have been a romance or something, well, there certainly wasn’t. She wanted to know how well I knew him and all that blah, I said, “Oh, I only worked for him, I didn’t know him apart from that.” So

it was quite a nostalgic day, going back through all that, couldn’t get it out of my head for days, it finally goes. It’s funny, isn’t it, how when you remember back, oh, you mightn’t think so yet, when you get to this age, it gets you worked up inside, reliving it.

I don’t know all the figure work.

Oh, only about January till May.

It was around that time.

Yes.

Oh, that what was I was talking about, all the mail inwards, I was dealing with the correspondence in and out.

Inwards I would have to open it up and direct it to wherever it belonged. And I think I had to register everything that came in. And then later in the day all the outwards, it was not very heavy going, but it was busy. That was the main thing I did.

’44.

It was a long rectangular building, room, there was a counter at the front end where work come to from outside, I was up near the front and Gloria was on the other side near the front, on her signals job. But I can’t remember who was there, but there was a typist further back who was the one who claimed her sister, she met her husband there at,

he was in another area but he was there, around, they married. She married an Alf Kerrison, they used to call him Titch and she was a tiny thing, honestly, they were so tiny some of them. She was a little blonde, pretty blonde hair, blue eyed. So I never met the sister, so I don’t know if she was similar. There was a Flight Sergeant

Spicer, I think, there was a Spicer, oh…look, I forget.

Oh, there was a sergeant behind me, flight sergeant, but I can’t think of his name. He wasn’t very chatty either. I mean, didn’t help me because I was quite, if they didn’t talk I wasn’t going to.

No, not really, you just went in and you were given that job to do and Gloria and I were the most friendly to each other, cause she came after I did from Ascot Vale, she was a New South Wales girl. She couldn’t come to our reunion the other week, too far, too complicated, the travelling,

cause she’s over eighty, into her eighties. But I sent her photos and she’s written back wishing she’d been there.

Oh, we were pretty obedient, well, we had to have our line up for our dinner, at the mess, and that would be after you got back, about five or six o’clock. Where you queued up,

you had your enamel plate, I’ve still got it out there, that was one of them, you had two or three, but one I kept, could keep, and cutlery, you kept, it was always with you and a pannikin, mug type of thing. Don’t ask me what all the meals were.

The meals?

I mean, the type of meal, I do remember frequently

we had prunes and rice. Then we used to get scrambled eggs a lot, be powdered, scrambled. I guess we got a lot of sausage stuff, it’s hard to visualise.

And the girls behind the mess, they would have the big trays of food and deal it out to you, there was no chat with the girls, very officious,

just push ’em back at you, funny, wasn’t it, we were in different, areas you see.

Yeah, they were, but they were another world from us.

I don’t know, they were just different, but I know you never got to know them, cause I wasn’t in their quarters, I don’t know where they were. They would start early in the morning, I should think, getting breakfast going and

dinner later, tea at night, or whichever way you put it.

Never heard any complaints, but I mean, I was only a junior, not to my knowledge, the girls all did their jobs, never heard anything outrageous or downgrading.

Only once I, a girl had been over the fence on the Saturday night somewhere, she must have come in late, and she must have been out having a few drinks somewhere, and she was put on the charge, on the mat. And I had to escort her into the office where the head fellow listened to her case. I didn’t do anything, I just went in with her, she had to have someone

with her.

Oh, I don’t remember, I forget what they punished her with, probably confined to barracks, I don’t even know who she was now. But that was rather an eye-opener, that some of them got caught.

Oh, there’d be a guard at the main gate, and maybe they’d find another spot to get out, or get in

late. There were incidents, but I didn’t see much of it, it was only that effort that I witnessed, going into the charge, view the charge.

Oh, their living quarters were a different area, girls were all one area, don’t know where the men were, never saw their part. It was a big spread of buildings,

now it’s the Tocumwal Golf Course, no sign of it, and I believe they moved the front gate where we used to be, to come in further back, where it was up further, nearer the town. So it’s all altered, although I hardly knew it had. But the golf course is beautiful green, when we were there it was just desert, no grass, it was that colour,

sand, it’s very sandy up there.

Oh well, that’s all been built and firm, whatever they did, that’s what the book tells you.

They built it in weeks, or very short time.

Yes.

Well, it seemed busy, but I mean, I didn’t go into all that, I only just was one little figure.

Well, there seemed to be a lot of activity.

I didn’t hear of any, but I’ve heard of accidents after I left,

but I didn’t hear. Every time I’ve been to reunion up there they always tell you about, the others who were there in that time, this poor chap was getting parachute jumping from one of their planes, and all the others got out okay, safely and landed. But this poor chap, his parachute caught on the tail of the plane, and apparently it was quite a big, oh,

thing to try and help or save him, and they couldn’t. And by the time they did land I think they cut off the parachute, I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know if it’s in that book, when he was picked up it was too late, he was dead. I don’t know, it was terrible by the sound of it, cause he was hanging there flapping around, you see, and everyone on the ground, who were there,

could see what was going on, it must have been a terrible time for witnessing, young fellow. There was another, at the end of the war, I wasn’t there though, a WAAAF died, she’d been on sick parade but they didn’t seem to treat it very importantly. And this girl who was, the telephonists knew her and she’s buried up there, they’ve got a little section for the service people,

there’s a few there who died there, and she’s buried there. She was only twenty-one and apparently the sick parade, going there didn’t help. So whatever was happening, she got up in the night, no one apparently noticed, and the next morning they found her dead, she’d collapsed and choked with her tongue, no one was awake. So that was shocking, wasn’t it?

No, something was wrong that she was going on sick parade, but they brushed her off, or said, “You go back to work,” or something. So you see, there were tragedies, I didn’t know her.

Oh well, that’s me upbringing.

Oh well, most of the girls I met up, especially in Melbourne, or up there I didn’t go out with that many, but in Melbourne, where we were living in Toorak, we’d go out in groups of three or four, mainly, never went around on your own, hardly, unless you had to go visit somewhere. I visited relatives around,

you were popular, you were in uniform, everyone wants you to come over, and then home at weekends. I didn’t go out with them cause I’d go up to Berwick, I was sort of split between the two. Whereas at Tocumwal it was totally Tocumwal. What else did you say?

Well, most of the girls I was with

at Toorak were a bit older, there was one, oh, two in their middle twenties, quite grown mature women. She wasn’t married, Melva, one of them, she come from Port Pirie, she had a boyfriend then, but he was up in the islands. So before the end of the war, he was down on leave, they were married here in Melbourne. But when the war finished she went straight off

back to Port Pirie and that’s where they lived, he was from there. I met him once, I saw their wedding in Balaclava and I have seen about, oh, five or six years ago, I drove myself to Perth, Adelaide rather, and included driving up to Port Pirie so I’d be able to meet her. So we did, I stayed

at her home, only a weekend, so that was a bit of a revival, from ’46 to ’96 or so. So she was much the same, still smoked, you know, I often wonder if I, I never smoked but you get the smoke from them, cause in this big bedroom I reckon half of them were smokers. She was

then and she still is, I haven’t heard from her lately, I must check her out, I think something’s happened. Like Nancy, I’ve got to check out.

None of them drank to my knowledge, if they did it was very little. We didn’t go to those sort of areas, we didn’t go to hotels, so drinking wasn’t as widespread

as you see now. Some might have, but I didn’t see it. No, they all seemed to kind of mother me, as though I was the baby. And we’d go to Leggett’s, to the dances there, and I can show you a photo there, several of us, just little snaps, that was pleasant. We’d go to,

oh, up in Collins Street, Masonic, there was a hall up top end of Collins Street called the Masonic Hall, it was a nice, well-conducted dance. There were dances at another place called Trocadero that’s down where the Concert Hall is, was. That’s gone, that area where all those entertainment centres are, State Theatre and everything, that was just open ground with a few

cypress trees and this Trocadero dance hall. And that was not recommended to go to Trocadero, all sorts turned up there, so I only went there once or twice. You know, certain places get a reputation.

Well, they were mainly gone by then, when I came to Melbourne, they were moving north.

So Melbourne had been invaded by Yanks but they were going by the time I joined the WAAAFs, only saw one or two.

Oh, they all seemed, the few I saw seemed very nice, but that was their style. All perfectly tailored uniforms, oh, they appeared very gentlemanlike.

Oh, they had one scare for a while, he murdered about three women in Melbourne, one American, it was before I joined the WAAAFs, so that put the scares into the women for a while.

Oh, I can’t remember, no, I don’t think any of our WAAAFs I was with did. No, can’t remember,

they were going out, they were thinning out. But they’d been in Melbourne for a while and a lot of girls married them, married many and settled in America, some were successful and some weren’t, some got some rude shocks. They thought they were going to well-off people because the fellows looked so well off in their outfits, some finished up in slum areas, they weren’t like that at all.

I heard of, I don’t know of any.

No, I don’t remember any. There may have been in some areas, but not that I recall. No, you just had to behave yourself, which we did. The girls I was friendly with

were mainly interstate, there was Sydney and Adelaide and the lass at Port Pirie, Queensland, didn’t know many Melbourne, and my friend from Tasmania, Dot, she’s the one with Alzheimer’s now. They all seemed to me more with everything that I was, cause they were mainly people who’d lived in

towns or cities, the ones from Sydney. And Melva from Port Pirie, well, she grew up there and she knew everybody, and Audrey in Adelaide, she’s still there, she’s widowed now, they all seemed a bit more ahead of me.

They seemed to be.

Dot in Tasmania only a year older than me, and she was down the other end of the corridor

in another statistical office where they did a lot of figure work, and she was good on that stuff. She used to come to me, mainly I think cause I had a telephone, she’d ring up her current boyfriend from the phone. But where she worked there was about six in the office, cause she couldn’t make those little private calls there, so she got to know me, she knew I was on my own. So I got to hear how she was,

bit forward to my way of thinking, and he was an American she used to ring, but he wasn’t in the army, he was a civilian, so I don’t know how he fitted in or why he was here. But it didn’t come to anything, but she was always ringing him up, I don’t know whether he got sick of it. But she was a card, she’d have it all worked out what to do and where they’d go.

She did marry later a chap in Tassie, but she walked out on him in the finish and yet she knew him quite well. Oh dear, I wasn’t daring enough to do all that.

No.

Lois, oh, my brothers used to torment me and call me Hephzibah,

it was about the time your Hephzibah and Yehudi, Hephzibah were all the go, I don’t know why they called me that, cause they’re dead now, those musicians. She was a pianist or a violinist, the same as Yehudi, they were all the go there during the war, or after the war. That’s the only name I’ve had, oh, my father would call me Lowie

at times, I think he did more Lowie, I don’t think he said Lois.

Oh, it was less interesting than up at Toc, it was all these numerous files that would go into these engineering

RAAF offices, all double Dutch to me, they’re top secret but I was handling them. I mean, I had to record they’re movements, and then I’d have to take them top secret to wherever they go, to a certain office or certain section of the registry. They weren’t just let anywhere, but I mean, it was all engineering jargon, didn’t mean anything to me.

I don’t know if it helped the war effort.

Yeah, don’t know, all the planes were flying at that time, so I couldn’t say what happened from their work.

Just office hours, hour for lunch, trot up round the gardens to the shrine or up those areas.

Spent a lot of time around the gardens in lunchtime hours, didn’t go into the city much. I was very nervous of the city when I first started, because I’d never been much there, and Gloria, who was at recruit centre, she lived in a Salvation Army hostel right in the city, Spring Street. And at first when I come back from Tocumwal she wanted me to come there,

but I didn’t, I’m glad I didn’t. She stayed there the whole time she was in the WAAAFs, and lots of others. But I’m glad I was out where I was. Oh, one night she wanted me to meet her in the city after work, it was when I was first down from Tocumwal and there was thousands of people, it seemed, packed, and

I was new to it all. And I waited and I waited, I don’t know if she ever turned up, because I didn’t wait any longer and I went straight off back to Toorak. I just didn’t know what happened to her, and I still don’t know, I should ask her. Whether she came or waited at the wrong corner I have no idea, so I bolted home, back to the barracks, to Toorak.

Oh, under the clocks [Flinders Street Station entrance], this particular night was up the corner of Bourke and Swanson up there, that’s if I had it right, that’s where I waited. So I really don’t know what happened, but I didn’t wait, I waited but she hadn’t turned up, so I got nervous, all these millions, hundreds all around you, I wasn’t used to it.

No, the girls were no problem, they might have said something behind my back. The one in Sydney and another one, they were from over there, invited me over there once for a few days on my leave, so I did that. I stayed at the home of one, Merle, she was nice person,

easygoing, she smoked, though, she was always short of cash, always borrowing, so I had to draw a line with her to say I couldn’t afford to loan, cause she couldn’t always pay back. And you saw how little I had in that passbook, didn’t you.

Yeah, we went, I went up, we didn’t go together because she had, probably a free voucher for the certain ones that go on leave,

and she went earlier because she had more time and I only had a few days. So we meet when I got to Sydney, day or two later. And oh, she give me all the directions to go out on the train to, what’s that place, Chatswood, over the bridge, I mean, never been to Sydney. But her mother or father, I’m not sure, you go in and meet her, she doesn’t know here, so

she came and met me, but she wasn’t going to. But it’s an awful place, Sydney, if you’re not familiar, I’ve been there a lot of times since and I’ve stayed there on my own to go to reunions and I’ve got around, found my way easily enough.

Didn’t know whether you were still there.

Oh, what else can you ask, oh dear?

Oh, that was very nice, I love those old houses, it’s demolished since.

As soon as the war finished, in Clendon Road, Toorak, only a few doors from St John’s Anglican Church there, where all the posh weddings are held.

It was two storeys, it had verandas all round in that patch, not patch wood, diamond-cut tiling, upstairs veranda, no, there wasn’t, I thought there was, there might have been part of it, but not our room. And a lot of wrought iron, real old fashioned. But it was lovely, it should have been preserved. Well, they had a little, they had a swimming pool which was

something, some of the girls used it, and there was a little pond, or a little waterway with a footbridge over it, fish in the water. And beautiful trees, they’ve all gone because of these blooming flats they built, and they were huge trees that would take a hundred years to grow and they wiped them all out. Oaks and spruce and all those English things,

probably rhododendrons and stuff like that. There was a tennis court nearby, big place, big grounds, like a botanic garden, so I thought that was terrible when I heard it was done away. But the house next door was where we went for our meals, called Coonac, it’s still there, I believe it’s up, been up for sale one time,

twelve million or something. It’s got a big high stone fence all along Clendon Road, where it is, it’s along, doesn’t go back that much, we were one side of it, our house, where we were.

Yes, we never seemed to get it when you wanted, it’s the worst tram route in Melbourne, I reckon, still is.

And of a night after work waiting for it in St Kilda Road there was no fence to protect you, and you’d be waiting on the tram stop and the traffic whizzing by, seemed enormous then, I think it still is. And you’d just be waiting there of a night, tram after tram before they’d turn up. There seemed to be about one tram to two of all the others,

one or less, it was terrible, I’ll never forget it to this day.

I suppose they didn’t think they needed so many. And of course being in the WAAAFs you had to stand, you couldn’t sit if everyone else, if there were civilians not got a seat you had to stand for them, because you were on a concession fare. So that was

most of my time standing, so you’d try and read a book while you were standing.

Anybody, I don’t remember teenagers, but really, I suppose, school times there would be, but we were later. Yeah, we did all that, the women always sat inside and the men always sat out in that open section, but now I notice men sit inside

as much as anywhere. But in those days it was always women inside and men outside, on that open bit in the middle, had their smokes out there. That was trams, seemed to spend a lot of time waiting for trams. And then I would, I went to night school for a while while I was in the WAAAFs, all the way

across to Richmond Technical College or something to do dressmaking, bit of lessons. And you’d go down to Chapel on the tram, number 8, then you’d have to wait for a Chapel Street tram up to Richmond, and then wherever this college was, another tram along to there. In the blackouts, not nice light up, so did that.

Yes, I think we must have been told about it, they were available, I made a dressing gown or something at the time.

No, no, nobody seemed to be, if you were going to be out late

or overnight you had to have one of those little leave passes signed and authorised. I don’t remember anything outside as a guard, no, not there.

Oh yeah, there was what I, the huge rooms, about eight, two that side, sometimes I think there were three that side. And my side,

well, the fireplace along there, there was only me that end and one over there, the fireplace with the huge mirror. But where I was I was in the corner had a window there and a window there, it was quite well lit for daylight. Melva was next to me, she was the chain smoker, or near enough, and then another girl Val, she smoked, she died later, not in the WAAAFs, later.

Kept in touch but she was having health problems, oh, I think a lot of stomach troubles, lost half her stomach, she couldn’t eat much, and she smoked, she drank coffee and she smokes. Nice person, but it was terrible to see she couldn’t have got out of that. Oh, there were others, one I visited

in Adelaide since, she’s now in her eighties and I hadn’t seen her for about fifty years, I knew her name because she’d married before she left the WAAAFs, she was in the WAAAFs married, like Nancy. And I thought, “I wonder if she’s still going in Adelaide.” So I rang up and she was there, so I’ve seen her again and I write, or we ring once in a while. She was

a nice person, well, they’re all in their eighties, I’ll be eighty next year if I make it, you never know, do you?

Oh, well.

Get this bronchitis, thought I’d be getting pneumonia. Anyway, it’s nice to keep up with them.

That’s right, well, I

haven’t tried to find all of those. One I did feel friendly with, I can show you photos after, in a frame in the passage, she come from Gunnedah, way up near Armidale, so when I went through there in the early ’90s, I drove up to go to Queensland for my nephew’s wedding, I’m getting clogged up.

Oh, I’m

right, so I tried to track her down cause I’d given up, we didn’t keep contact, we thought we would but we didn’t, she got married later cause her name was changed. But having been born there, and her father and mother had a store, cause everyone knew the name. So I rang around, but most of her relatives didn’t know where she was. Then one said

their elderly aunt might know. So they gave me her number, so I rang her and she was able to give me her address, cause she kept in touch with her aunt. So we did meet, not immediately because she was living then down at Tuncurry, Foster, do you know there? Down, oh, I don’t know if it’s above Port Macquarie or below, down there.

So she had married, but there were no children and she and her husband had retired to there, they were, he was a teacher and they were up in the mountains near Talbingo, somewhere else. It’s an apple area, growing area, the foothills of the Snowy in New South Wales, and they lived there for thirty years, so I’d never have found her, would I? But when they retired they moved

to this unit which had been her parents’, so they inherited that. However, I finally met her on my way back from Queensland, and where I was booked in, it was a hostel for backpackers, it was the nicest I’ve seen, it was like lovely flats, and where she lived was only a few doors away. So I met her

next morning, but her husband called on me the night before, cause I’d left a note at their door, they weren’t there, and he came up later and said, “Well, we’ve been in Sydney all day, she’s too tired to come out,” they must have got bad news because he didn’t tell me. But he said, “Next day, come down,” and I met Elaine and she looked as good as ever, but she’d just been told she had cancer. So they were very

subdued, but she was very good the way she faced it. But she didn’t make it, six months later she was gone. She was a good singer too in the WAAAFs, Elaine Westerweller. So I haven’t seen her husband, but I have had a couple of words with him on the phone, but only to see how he’s going,

not lately, though. So he does a lot of bushwalking, big, strong-looking chap. So that’s what happens.

No, I never got too close, no,

I suppose I could have but I didn’t. Yeah, he was nice, I was always sorry we lost contact, I don’t know what happened with the letter business, cause his wife hadn’t known him then. And oh well, she talked to me about his health and that, it sounded to me he had nerves or depression or something after he’d been up north.

But when we met they were young fellows, about twenty. Oh, he was, he wrote nice letters. Anyway, oh well, that’s the end of that one. Then there’s another pen friend I started to talk about through, when I was in the WAAAFs some fellows in New Guinea wanted to write to some, the WAAAFs. One of the girls must have been writing. So we were all given, oh

no, we sent a photo up of the several of us and they picked who they wanted to write to. I mean, things happened then, I don’t know why I did it. Anyway, now he picked, this particular one picked mine to write to me and it kept up for quite a while till the end of the war. And he said he was coming down, write to an army address by a certain date. But I procrastinated,

got a bit of cold feet, I suppose. And yet another girl there, she met one who’d got down sooner and she was all yack about it, but nothing come of it, that was one. And I don’t know about the others, however, this fellow, his name was Steve, he was a builder, in the army he was what they called a sapper, they do building bridges and whatever’s needed, he

wrote good letters. Anyway, when I didn’t write back by that date, I was down in Gippsland, down at my friend’s, no letterboxes there, and it was on me mind I must try and write, but I never did it. So never heard from him, but he knew I lived at Berwick, when I left the WAAAFs, and I guess in those days thirty miles seemed about a hundred miles, from Melbourne,

so we didn’t catch up. But oh, about ten or twelve years ago it got a bit nostalgic, and that’s when I probably tracked what happened to the one in Sydney, and this one, well, I didn’t know where he was. Anyway, I rang some other, who had the same surname and he was a cousin, he lived over here at Mount Waverley, and I told him the story of the pen friend writing business.

Oh, he was interested, all for it, and he said, “Oh, he’s married, he’s moved around a bit he’s a builder,” just worked in his own self, and they moved a few times, but they had retired to Inverloch. But he gave me his details and I did get in touch, when I rang he answered the phone, he remembered me all right,

he was quite nice on the phone, so I explained all that about…

I got in touch.

And he told me that, he didn’t say why he didn’t contact me when he knew where I come from, I don’t know, he probably got cold feet to. But he lived,

actually, he came from Warrandyte, so that would seem a long way, wouldn’t it, see, that was out in the sticks then, like Berwick. Well, he said that used to go down to his relations at Edithvale, and I had an aunty at Edithvale at that time too. But, cause I didn’t know all his side of it, and while he was doing these trips

to visit the cousins or whatever he met this lady who later become his wife. He said, “It took us three years to get around to getting engaged,” so they weren’t rushing, and then they did marry and he’s got three sons. And then, oh, he told me all those sort of things but we didn’t keep on ringing up, I sent a Christmas card a couple of times and he did. And I sent

photos, or copies of photos, I sent one way back. Anyway, later I was on a trip with the Victorian National Parks and they actually went down to Inverloch and they had an hour lunch stop in the gardens there, do you know it, Inverloch? I believe it’s going ahead now, like, you know how they’re going these days.

It’s losing its little, isolated area, quaintness. And they were retired down there, so having already spoken on the phone and that I rang from the park, or the post office phone I mean, and I just, his wife answered, so we had a little chat and I said we were here on this trip for an hour, just wondered if it was convenient, would

they like to come up? Well, she was very nice, she said, “Oh, I’m just washing my hair, but I’ll try and see what he’ll do, he’s out in the yard tinkering.” And finally they did come up, and I was with others from the tour, the local, we were regular goers on these trips, so they came. And that’s where I’ve got the photo, over there somewhere, and that’s the only photo I’ve got, like,

of that time. So I sent one to him later, but we haven’t kept up. He did tell me how he and his wife went up to Queensland every winter, probably up there…oh, somewhere near Coolangatta, just up from Coolangatta and all that. But although I was up there one year I didn’t like to intrude,

I hadn’t talked about coming up, so I haven’t met them again.

Only the once.

Oh, that’s back about ’91 or ’92, but that was after forty-six, nearly forty-something, getting up to fifty years.

He was still as slim and very like the picture I had, except of course he’s older, but very fair.

His wife was quite charming, she was nice, on the phone she said, before I met them, she said, “I said to him,” when she knew I’d phoned that first time, she said, “Why didn’t you go and meet up?” and he said, “Oh, it seemed a long way,” so that’s the end of that.

Oh, I was always timid,

I don’t know, I wasn’t cheeky enough. Perhaps being with the other girls and that sort of thing, cause they knew about it, might have been different. I was very cautious, cautious Lois.

Yeah, mainly long, I did get a few outings with others, air force, when I was at Toorak there

was one man, air force chap we met, I was with the other girls, Leggett’s, and it turned out he knew Melva, my friend from Port Pirie, she was there with me. And she knew him from air force, somewhere else, and he must have had his eye on me, so he had a dance with me, few, one or two, I forget, and then we all went home together, like to be home.

So we met a few times but it fizzled out, cause I’m sure I didn’t show enough interest or didn’t talk enough, you know. He was very nice, it was just me, so I don’t know what became of him, I think he was South Australian, but he was rather nice. There was another air force chap, he was an air crew trainee,

one of the WAAAFs arranged we go to the pictures with him, I go to the pictures, he wanted a friend. So that was another flop, it went but didn’t come to anything, he was probably shy as I was. Yeah, that’s all, there’s other meetings, of course, I can show you a photo over there, see in that frame, it’s one I was smitten with.

He was a teacher, I used to go to night school in my forties, when I got my leaving and all that sort of thing, I got quite interested in study for a while, which I should have done in my teens. And it was through the Postal Institute, see, I was in PMG and a lot of our employees were there, do their higher education.

Like me they didn’t go long enough at school, they weren’t as old as I was, though. However, he, this fellow in the picture there is one of the teachers and went to two years where he was the teacher, he mainly taught English and all that stuff tied up with English, Literature and all that. And he was a good tutor, anyway,

oh, I just, I’d been overseas before that, when I started all this study, and I was just getting on a bit old for it. So I did my leaving and got through with it, seemed to be no trouble. But later I thought I’d go further, VCE [Victorian Certificate of Education] type of thing, it was HSC [Higher School Certificate] then, no, I wasn’t the same then, I didn’t have that teacher, see.

So I did adults’ English subject up at that, it was for adults at university, we all sat, just as essay thing, and they passed me on that but I didn’t continue. I went, oh, I tried going back to the rest of it, the rest of the year, but by the end of the year I just seemed to not keep up with it,

so I flopped and I got tired going at night, be out three nights a week, get home about ten. I mean, I couldn’t do that now, I was doing it then but it was getting a bit much.

Rewind, back flip.

Oh, I’m exhausted.

What time is it, would you like a cup of tea, it’s quarter to four.

Would you like a cup of tea or coffee? You on now? Well, I was there a good two years, and although the girls I got to know, I enjoyed it well enough, but it was not like being at Tocumwal.

You were isolated a bit, in little office parts, no one seemed to know who was in the next office, or I didn’t. The typing pool was near me and they were nice girls but didn’t seem the same, cause they weren’t service girls, the young typists, so I didn’t sort of get in there very much. I think they made me welcome, but it’s just me, I just couldn’t seem to assimilate.

So when the war was over we, well, we headed into the city the day it was actually finished, after the Japs, I’d say. That was exciting, people, you never saw anything like it, thousands milling around, you couldn’t push anywhere. And that was a hectic day, so I was in a few more months and

then by the April I was discharged, in ’46. Once the dates come up, the girls were getting posted back, or going back to their own states. Well, with, when the war ended out at Toorak there we had to vacate those houses, pretty well immediately, must have been the agreement with the government

and the owners. And next thing we were all getting moved, those that weren’t discharged, down to Albert Park Barracks, there was living quarters there, great long huts around by the lake, as you go down around that bend from St Kilda. And these other parts, there was a lot of barracks there for wartime things, administration, and that’s all gone, they demolished that

a long time later, about thirty years later. But we were there for a few months, where we were housed, that was all right, but wasn’t the same after that. But then we suddenly all went our own way, then I went back to Berwick for a time. That’s when I, after that I took that job at that Grosby’s

machining slippers, which was something I’d never done. But it’s all part of it.

Yes, in a way, but I think once you got away from it you just had to adjust to other…

I should have shouldn’t I? Should have.

Well, I

went to this job, I didn’t stay home and go and milk cows, and oh, then my sister was pretty lively then, she was out of school by that time and she had a regular boyfriend whom she married at twenty, she was married fifty-four years when she died last December, she was fifty-four years married in October. So that was her last outing, I was up there and we went

to dinner at the local courthouse hotel in Nathalia, where they lived, nice refined hotel. So that was her last outing, but she wasn’t much good that October, and about that time she got the news that no more could be done and then they said, “You’ll be in hospital soon,” and within three weeks she was in hospital. She was there about six weeks, it had gone to her liver, so that was fatal.

Even though they treated her it didn’t help, it made it worse, it made it aggressive. So it was sad, because she was very active, sport and gardening, everything, very active, more than I am, and fit, always seemed so strong and fit, so that was hard.

Oh, my sister always stayed home, she was always a different category to me. Cause she met the fellow she married around that time, so she wasn’t going anywhere else, and after a three-year engagement, big wedding, 1949. And there was the wedding at Berwick, Presbyterian church up on that hill, and I was bridesmaid

and his sister was bridesmaid, two of us. And I made my own gown for it and she made her own wedding dress, she was going to a tutor with dressmaking, she made a good job of it, very nice, satin with pearls embroidered on. So it was quite an event for her, and for me to witness. So then afterwards, after, that’s ’49,

well, in ’47 I’d resumed going to, back to Melbourne to do the dressmaking course, I was able to get through, there was ex-servicewomen, rehabilitation training, give you an occupation.

Oh, the men, I didn’t

hear much of that, but there probably were difficulties for some to get back into it, see after that women went to work. Before the war very few, apart from single women, married women were always home with their apron on at the gate, seemed. Never heard of women going to work, unless they were widowed and had to perhaps, oh yes.

Oh yes, jobs were easy to get, didn’t seem to matter with experience or no experience, but the lady, forelady there, she was very nice, a Mrs Ennis. And the finishing off slippers were taken back to their factory in Brunswick and they’d do their soles, we only did the uppers, the felt part, or leather.

Oh, it was all right, but you’ve got to keep your head down all day. Then I went dressmaking after the training, I was suppose to keep going for interviews until I got something decent, but I give up easily and I went to a dressmaking factory, sort of a factory in Chapel Street, called Gallops. They did work for Myers and all those big shops, so they weren’t rough, they were well made.

So I had to machine dresses, you had to make about four a day to make your money. So that was always a trouble, over my head. I stayed there for about eighteen months, then I give it away and went to the PMG, became a switchboard telephonist, which was a change from sewing. And that had its moments too, you know, pressure of getting all the calls out and

calls through, trunk work it was. Although I was at Windsor for five years before, they were more local calls, there was no automation like dialling in your own home, not in certain suburbs.

They did the sub, they’d turn their handle, I guess, you’d plug in and ask them for their number, what they

wanted, it was very repetitious. Trunk lines was a bit more interesting geographically, got to know all the towns, and over the years I see these little towns we used to call. It clicks then.

Some place like Birchip, well, often those are not direct line from Melbourne,

you’d have to go through a bigger exchange in the country, somewhere, perhaps like Horsham or somewhere up further. And the girl there would give you a line, when there was a line, and you’d have to wait until there was, and do other calls as well. You wrote everything on dockets, and they’re priced later when the calls finished, at a pricing area.

Yes, we had little clocks on the board, they were like laptop, tabletop switchboard, there were no plugs, it was all keys, and on the side you tapped your numbers up, like the flat-top phone. That was the beginning of changes.

Oh, about six weeks at that, same when I joined Windsor, six weeks.

A few, yeah, a few, not a lot, most of them, well, ones I knew had gone interstate, home, I hardly knew any locals, only Gloria, she’d married and moved away, she moved to Ringwood, she’s at Croydon now. Well, her name is on your books, or been done last year, she’s one of the early ones. Oh, it’s been

an experience, the whole thing, for me anyway. The only thing is I stayed on the shelf, I think that’s why I keep all this in me noodle, because if your, the others all got families, now they’ve got their grandchildren, well, that’s what they think about. Although they’re coming back to our meetings as they get older, when they were busy with families they couldn’t come, not

as easily, so many more started later to come to our regular meetings.

Not many, there’s one lives, oh, she wasn’t in the WAAAFs, she was a telephonists. Those in Tasmania, that one down in Tassie, she’s a single, we weren’t together at work but we knew each other there.

She had a good job after the war, she was secretarial over in Tassie. I’ve met her at reunions, she’s had a little touch of polio, so with her walking she has to sort of throw the foot a bit, I didn’t hear about it at the time. But when I met her last time, four, five years nearly, she told me about it, I could tell then,

but I hadn’t really noticed. Well, she moved herself into a retirement village at that time, but I haven’t been in touch lately. You know, it gets a bit wearing to try and keep up with them all, it was all right when I was younger but now I’m kind of hesitating.

Oh well, I do take notice what they’re about.

I’m worried about Melva in Port Pirie and Nancy, Audrey in Adelaide, she’s living with her daughter and family since she was widowed, she sold up their nice house, I think they must have worked it all out before her husband died, he knew he wouldn’t last, cause he had cancer. So I saw them a fortnight before he died, we knew it was coming. So he was very brave,

he’d been a naval man in the corvettes, nice fellow. Oh dear. Yeah, we’re all slipping now, on the downward slip.

’75, she was aged 75, oh, she had a hard life in a way, especially on our farms, she worked outside

as much as inside the house, my father never said to her, “Stay inside and have a break.” We always had to line up, he was all for everyone, hands on, and other ladies never went near the shed, farm wives, some didn’t.

Oh, in those days

she would have only been in her forties, she’d be about forty-six when I discharged. Oh, she was still pretty good, she was thinner, tall, but good on her, she never had her hip replaced, which I’ve had.

Only home on the farm, she didn’t go out.

No, there was a Red Cross branch in Berwick but Mum didn’t leave the house, she had a full day with just being at home on the farm. And she didn’t drive a car and really didn’t get to know the neighbours that well to talk about going. But Gloria, who I mentioned, her mother was involved in the Red Cross, she was always on committees, but she didn’t have to stay home

and milk cows, she was free to go, but she drove a horse and jinker. But she dropped dead one day in the town, well, she was very overweight and I believe she was diabetic, and I suppose it was a strain on the heart, so Gloria’s outlived her mother. She was only sixty-three, where Gloria’s eighty-one or two, so different lifestyle

with their diet.

Well, I think at that age it’s a good time, I wouldn’t care to be regimented now in a group like that, but at that age you can do it.

Or you adjust quickly, the same with the fellows if they go in the army, young, I don’t know about now, cause they’re fairly different styles, aren’t they? I mean, most of them are anti doing any of that, but there are a few. Oh, it was an experience, but for me, but a lot of the others have had other experiences since with their families

and all those things. I’ve got plenty of nieces and nephews, about fourteen or so, but see, I’m in here and they’re all in the country. The eldest ones, the two nieces, they’re fifty-three, fifty-four this year, they keep in touch here and there, but very rarely do I see them here, cause they’ve all got their own lives away.

One’s at Finley up past Tocumwal, the other one, she’s out at Sunshine, but she doesn’t come here except when her husband brings her, she’s, although she’s only fifty-three she’s old, fifty-three, cause she’s got a lot of physical problems. Lame, needs her hip redoing, overweight, blood troubles with clotting, thrombosis sort of thing, and she’s only fifty-three.

She’s got two sons, she’s now a grandmother, so that’s a chalk up. She had only the two sons, her husband still works, so they’re quite all right.

I don’t know what else to say.

I don’t regret any of that, it’s just later things didn’t go the way I hoped,

so just adjust.

Oh, they’re there, but not next door or anything, so I don’t wear out my welcome. And I don’t mix as much lately around here, I used to see my neighbours much more, but lately I’m staying in more, I think the cold weather, I visited one Sunday, she’s my age, up here,

she just fractured her wrist last week, so that meant a visit. They’re all widows, nearly, but this one isn’t, she’s got a husband waiting on her. But the others who are widowed, three or four, so we all sympathise.

Thank…