Australians at War Film Archive

My name is Norma Martin, my maiden name is Gelling which is very well known in Townsville and I was born in Percy Street in Cotters House, I have a photo of that here.

There was midwives in those days, we stayed there, my mother and father were very young and they rented this house and then Grandma gave them ten pounds and they bought a piece of ground in the next street. Dad started to build the house. His wages were ten pound a week and he was keeping Mum and himself and two children at that time. On ten pounds you

couldn’t do it today and he built the house bit by bit. As he was building it we were living in a fowl house, the tin shed up the backyard. My sister was older than me, she was three years older. Then we went to school at Belgian Gardens. My mother had a goat she used to

milk and we had a cow for milk. Then we had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s for eggs and we used to ride pushbikes everywhere, we never had a vehicle. Mum had a market garden, like a big vegetable garden in the backyard and I used to help her with that so we had plenty of vegetables. Down on the common we used to go down and collect

plums, Burdekin plums, and we used to eat them and make sweets out of them and jam. I was pretty wild as a girl, I was a tomboy and I used to fight, I know what a straight right is and I know what a left hook is. A young chap was teaching me to box because all the kids at school used to pick on me. I was a bit on the hefty

side and I thought, “I will fix them.” So after school I used to sit and wait for them, up in the trees, on the way home, and I used to pounce down on top of them and pummel into them and they never touched me again. One young fellow his name was Fitzpatrick and he came from a poor family, we mostly all did, mostly all poor in those days, there was not much employment, not much money going. My father had a good job in the railway for the Government.

He was a blacksmith striker in the railway and he was there until the day he just about retired, just before he died. He was ninety one when he died. He retired when he was about eighty and he had a heart like an ox but his mind went. He and I got on really well but my mother and I never got on. I was always in trouble, I was always

getting belted for nothing really sometimes and then I got used to it. Anyway,

They were together for years. They got on pretty well. My father was

born from ancestors from the Isle of Man and on my mother’s side, she was born here. They were French, French counterfeiters. They were kicked out of France, Mum’s father and grandfather and they went to England and they got kicked out of there. That’s how they happened to come to Australia. Mum was in Townsville

and my father was born in Charters Towers when they came out here from the Isle of Man. His father worked at the Milchester gold field there, Mullicks we called them, their house was right opposite. He died there at the age of fifty nine, he got gold dust on the lung, a lot of them did at that stage. There was only the

mines to work in and I always say, “He died a rich man, didn’t he.” Mum and Dad got together here in Townsville. Dad used to ride a big Indian motorbike and I think that’s what took my mother’s eye, the sidecar on the side. She was rather a plumpish woman, I have a photograph up there behind me on top. She had three other young fellows on the go

but she picked Dad, he was a nice looking bloke. When you see my youngest son come in that’s what my father looked like, a big tall man with very distinguished looking features. He was a likeable chap, everyone knew him in town until when he died nearly everyone in Townsville came to his funeral.

Dad worked at the

railway as a blacksmith striker and his brother had a blacksmith’s shop at the Causeway and in those days it was all horse and carts and in those days he was about the only blacksmith here and they called it Gelling and Hane Blacksmiths. Everyone used to go there, “Yes, I know Tom Gelling.” As I say, it was a very small town and Dad couldn’t go down the street

everyone would be waving, “Hello Tom, how are you going?” across the other side of the street, “Come and have a beer,” and Mum used to get angry because Dad would be in there having a drink and Mum would be waiting for him. She used to drive a horse and sulky but my mother was a very domineering woman, she was a Libra. She used to weigh everything up. Like a very hard woman to get on with. If she seen a girl walking down the street with a chap,

naturally he would have to be having sex with her. If any girl got married, she would have had to be pregnant and she would write on the calendar when they got married and when the child was born which I thought was very nasty. When I was about fifteen, fourteen, I started sneaking out to the dances and I loved them, I loved dancing and

she used to get very angry. “Where’s that Norma?” She would wake up and find me gone because in those days we had no television just a wireless so we used to go to bed early. I used to push mine down under the window, because I slept on the verandah, and I used to throw a little bag of clothes down on the ground when I knew Dad and Mum were in bed and I used to sneak down the backstairs, jump on my

bike, throw my bag of clothes on the bike and go for my life. Get to the dance, go to the toilet, change my clothes, hide my bike. My sister was already there, she was three years older. She used to go up with her friends. She would come to the door and say, “What are you doing here? Does Mum know you are here?” “No.” She said, “You will get a belting when you get home, I am going to tell her.” I said, “You tell her.” I knew I was going to get a belting, it was worth it to go to the dance.

Anyway, I got there and enjoyed myself, I was taught to dance. Every time I come home I would get a belting. My mother favoured my sister more so than me and that was the whole fact of it. Then I decided seeing my mother and I never got on, when I was sixteen, I decided to leave home. I left and went to

Sydney. I stayed down there and I think it upset her to think I didn’t come back. I came back just for a trip to show them my baby. I was twenty when I had him, that’s the one there that died. She said, “You get back to Sydney, we don’t want you here,” and that was the nastiest thing should could ever have said. I never found out even when she died, I come up, Dad said, “Come up.” He rang me and

told me and I said, “It’s no use me coming up Dad, she never liked me so what’s the use of me coming up.” My sister telephoned and said, “Come up, Dad needs you.” So I came up for Dad’s sake I came up and I looked at the coffin, they opened the coffin for me and I said, “Mum, I don’t know why you hated me.” She was my mother and I didn’t really hate her but I disliked her

for what she done to me. She wouldn’t let me go and see anybody, talk to anybody, in the end I snuck out and I was paid, I got punished, I got raped didn’t I? That was by a married man of about thirty eight when I was fifteen. Then I had to go and get things done,

do you understand? I often think back on that day, I liked the young chap, not the one I got raped by, but I met another young chap after that and he was very nice but my mother didn’t want me to have him. She picked out this chap, he worked in the Allied Works Council opposite the house where I lived and she said,

“If you don’t marry him, you are not getting anyone else.” She picked him out for me. He was just a friend, I was only a kid really, I never had a chance to look around. I couldn’t handle my mother anymore and as I say I was sixteen, he was going back to Sydney, so I got on the plane, I sold my pushbike and the money I got for the bike paid my fare. I got sick on the way on the plane, puking up, I got to Sydney and he

had relatives there so we stayed at their place for a while and they didn’t want us there for long. Of course, it was a big place Sydney to what I was used to up here. Things happened and I got pregnant and that’s when I had the first baby. I thought she would be happy but she wasn’t happy about that. So

I can’t remember any,

no, we didn’t. Even when I was, I can remember when I was about eight or nine and that’s about as far back as I can remember different things. I was a very wayward sort of a girl, I would sing and I would dance and all that. I was carefree and my sister was more hanging around Mummy all the time. I remember it was Christmas and we both got a doll each and in those days you

couldn’t buy dolls they were very hard to come by. They were that celluloid stuff and we woke up in the morning, we had a pillow slip on the end of our bed and my sister and I slept in one bed together, we only had the two rooms at the time and we had candles, we didn’t have power. My sister woke up and she seen my doll and she reckoned mine was better than hers. So she burnt hers and took mine.

She went and told Mum that I burnt her doll on the candle so my mother gave me a belting, she never gave me a belting, she told Dad to belt me. I never ever got another doll. If you go out in the back room there you will find dolls, you look in that cupboard there you will find dolls I’ve got about thirty five of them. I said, “I am going to get a doll of my own one day,” and I did and if she was alive today and

she seen all the dolls she would probably understand why. I thought it was a bit nasty but my sister was always favoured. She went to the West End Tech to learn cooking and sewing, she was a very good seamstress, she used to make a lot of wedding dresses around here for people. When I asked her to make me a dress she wouldn’t make me one so I used to cut up her clothes and try and make things and they all turned out horrible so in the end she made me a few.

My mother, I remember her going to Sydney, I was very young and she brought back a suitcase full of material and I said, “Which one’s mine Mum?” because you couldn’t buy material here, not what you wanted. She said, “None of them, they are all Maggie’s.” It was always Mag’s, Mag was very gifted, she played the piano, she could play the piano accordion,

she could sew, she could cook, I couldn’t do a thing, I wasn’t allowed to, now I have my own piano and I play that myself, by ear. Getting back to when I was younger, as I said, I used to fight all the boys because I had so much anger in me from what my mother used to do to me. If there was any messages to be done it was always me that had to

go. I used to have to ride a pushbike, a man’s pushbike, which was very hard to push, it was an old fashioned bike over from West End to South Townsville to get a bag of meat and the bag used to hang over the handlebars, over the bar, and it had pockets in it like a hessian thing and they used to put meat in it and I used to bring home meat from the meatworks

because my uncle used to work there, Dad’s brother-in-law used to work there. Pompi Bergen, he used to bring home meat because food wasn’t easy to come by in those days and half the time I used to fall off the bike because it was so heavy I couldn’t turn the wheel. One day I seen the nice boy on the other side of the street and I am riding along singing and next thing into a pole, I drive into a pole and I come down onto the

road with meat everywhere. I picked it up and took it home and I was washing it under the house before Mum could see it before I give it to her.

About nine or ten, about ten.

Yes.

Very hard. As I say, we had to go and gather plums, we had to scavenge for food, that’s why we had

WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s for eggs and sometimes we had to kill a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK . I remember I used to sit there with Mum pulling out the feathers and then when she pulled the innards out I had to run away because I would puke. She used to sit with a big tub and do it. We had mangoes, there was a dairy up the street, about two doors up, and I used to go up there and ask Jacky Doyle, he had a dairy and he used to say, “Do you want some

mangoes, come up and get them.” So I used to go up and down and the boys used to chase me. I would jump over the fence and watch the boys and pull them up and throw them over the fence. Then I would jump over the fence and put them in a bucket and bring them home. Mum used to make pickles, chutney out of them and stew them and we used to have them with custard. We could always find a feed. Then we’d go down to Rose Bay

and there would be gherkins down there, they were wild ones but were edible. We ate them. As for doctors, we hardly ever went to a doctor. When we got a cold, my doctor cringed when I told her what we used to have for medicine. A teaspoon of sugar with a few drops of kerosene on it to take the inflammation of our throat away.

Very true. Then, what else did they give us? I used to love China apples, they were a tiny apple and the ripe ones were a soft and browny colour and the green ones you couldn’t eat, they were hard and green. It appears that one tree was brought out from China and it went out from there.

They are everywhere in Townsville now. The seed drops and they come up and the Council can’t get rid of them, we used to eat them and Mum used to give us castor oil or senna tea, when we seen that, we went ugh. I used to take the books out of my school bag and Timmin’s place used to be on the corner and they had a lot of trees there and I used to climb up the trees, they were prickly, but I used to climb up and get them.

Coming home I used to eat a lot on the way and I used to take the books out of my bag, out of my school case and put them in another plastic bag and then I used to fill up my case with China apples and come home and hide them. I used to have a tummy ache and Mum said, “Tea’s ready.” I would say, “I can’t eat, I’ve got a pain in the tummy.” She said, “You’ve been at those China apples?” I’d say, “No, Mum.” She would come down and find a bag full of China apples, we used to love them,

they are like an apple but the real soft ones we used to call snotties. They were the nicest, really sweetie taste but the fighting I loved the best. I used to get in, one boy as I said, he was called Fitzpatrick, he was from a poor family, his mother used to clean offices and scrub office stairs for a living.

I don’t know whether he had any other brothers or sisters but he went to the Catholic school opposite. On our way home he used to call us names so I said to the kids, “I will fix him one day.” So I jumped down on him on the way home from school, out of this big tree. I used to climb up there before he came along and when I seen him coming I used to jump down right on top of him and I used to pummel him.

They sent him home this day, he got up and we were fist fighting, sent him home one day with blood all over him and his mother panicked and she come around to my mother and was going crook and Mum said, “Have you been fighting again? Go on Dad, belt her.” I got a belting every time I would fight. But I used to love it. That boy ended up to be a professional and then he went to Brisbane. He got married and he was working as well as fighting.

He was good, he used to win his fights. So I must’ve taught him a lesson. Anyway, he got burnt at this factory he was working and he looked hideous and he probably didn’t have the money for plastic surgery and he was burnt very bad. I forget what it was, my father told me some years before he died and he said his wife left him, she couldn’t handle looking at him

and he just went to pieces and just drunk after that, I think he’s dead now, it’s a shame. I did have fights in Town Hall, I think that’s where the Commonwealth Bank is now. My father used to be a promoter with a chap called Bill Axford, a pommie chap from Brisbane, he come up here to live. Dad and him got together and got all the

equipment and they used to have bouts every Friday night at the Town Hall and they used to get boys interested, “Oh yeah, we’ll come and have a fight.” They used to get paid for it and I used to come and help him to put on the lunch and that. He would say to me in the end, “Norm, do you want to have a fight.” I’d say, “Yeah, righto, Dad.” He would ask one of the boys if they wanted to fight me and they’d say, “Yeah, sissy, I’ll fight her.” They’d get in and get a shock, I used to win every

time. I used to love it, people would walk out thinking it was the end of the show and then they’d turn around and come back to see me fight. It was great.

Yes, at the time, yes.

It was, because as I say very few girls, a lot of the girls used to shy off me because they knew

if they said anything wrong I would say, “I will get you after school.” I was a real bossy bitch, nobody put anything over me. They don’t really know, we had a chap up here tell my son off and I told him to mind his own business and if he come down here again I would fix him. I would take him to court for discrimination. I was waiting for him to come this morning when you came because every time I get a visitor he comes at me with his hands on his hip and looking like this to see

who you are. He takes the number of the cars down, he’s a German chap and he’s a very, very nasty man. They said he’s a sick man and I said, “Yeah he might be sick but he’s sick in the head.” You wouldn’t do that to anybody.

Yes, public. They were bouts.

Yes, people used to pay, that’s how they used to get the money to pay the blokes that won. You see, there was no entertainment here in those days.

There was nothing. There was no RSLs [Returned and Services League], if you went into a hotel all there would be for entertainment was a juke box and that’s all there was. We used to ride pushbikes around and we used to ride from West End to the Bowling, which was a fair step for a kid in those days. We had no need to worry about cars hitting us because there were no cars on the road.

It says in the book about the army where people put their cars up on blocks because we couldn’t get petrol. We couldn’t buy petrol, it was all rationed, we had coupons.

Petrol rationing?

There was tea, sugar,

petrol, every bit of food and that you can name, clothing was rationed. The clothes we got to wear was hand-me-downs and I remember going to school one day with a dress the woman over the back, Mrs Kennedy, she is long dead now, her husband was a bit of a preacher, Neil, he was a nice chap. She gave Mum this

dress and said, “That will fit Norma,” there was a few clothes. It did fit me but when you washed it, it shrunk right up, it was a crepe thing, it was grey, light grey, and it had all these beads around the hips and from the hip down it went into pleats. Which is very fashionable now and I wore it to school one day and the kids were saying, “She’s got her mother’s dress on, look at her, she’s wearing her mother’s dresses.” So I said, “I will get you after

school.” We used to go down this gully right beside the school, we had to walk through it to come home or walk right around it which was longer and when we walked down there we’d hide behind the corner around from the entrance and they wouldn’t see us, they’d just come down and I’d pounce on them and give them a bashing and I’d say, “That’s for talking about me having my mother’s dress on.” But they never ever seen my mother, if they had seen her, she is this broad, they would’ve

known it wouldn’t’ve been hers. The shoes, our shoes were cast offs again and they had heels this high, Dad used to cut them down to about this high with a saw and we’d be walking like this, probably why I’ve got a crook leg today. We’d put them on when we left home to let them see me wearing shoes and when we got up the corner where they couldn’t see us anymore, like Mum couldn’t see us, we used to take them off and throw them in our school bag

or hide them in the bush and when we were coming home we used to put them on again. The only time you had to go around the gully was when it was full of water and it was raining. There was also a big tunnel in the Castle Hill itself, at the foot of Castle Hill which come down and there was the big gully and there was a gun in there, the Germans had that in the First World War and we were told not to go in there but other kids did and they said there was a

ghost in there. My sister and I and my brother we never went in there but these other kids did. It was very strange, Belgian Gardens wasn’t always Belgian Gardens, it was called German Gardens. That’s how they got the

name from the Germans in the war. The rations, the petrol rations came later and if you had a dairy you had to supply all the Yanks with milk, the civilians got this much and the Yanks got this much, because they had the money.

Some, but very few. Because as I say, no one was rich in those days. Townsville was only about a thousand five hundred people here. There wasn’t factories like there is now. You had to sort of scrounge for a job,

there wasn’t care akers down at the cemetery then, there wasn’t the police, nothing. There wasn’t any motor registries so there wasn’t any of those jobs, so there was no money. My father, I remember he used to say, I would say, “What’s that for, Dad?” He would say, “Well, I’ve got to send this to Brisbane

for my licence.” That’s when he, later on in years, after the war, got an old bomb car, Chev 4, 1927 Chev, and he built it up. I remember when he first got it, it was going and Mum was standing around the wood heap. He had to take it around from the front yard to the back and there was a gate, a fence, with wire gates and he had to

take it through and Mum was standing there guiding him where to put it and he ran over the top of Mum and Mum was, and the thing rolled over the top of her, it was really funny, she didn’t think it was funny, she was alright. Because there was nothing in the thing just a chassis and an engine. Because he couldn’t steer it, because in those days it wasn’t power steering.

I used to work with him at night on that to get it going so finally when the war was over we had a car to drive. We used to go up to the Atherton Tablelands and everywhere in it. Then they used to get the coupons and what coupons you had I’ve got a picture to show you, so much fuel for so many coupons. Like one coupon might be about ten litres of fuel.

In those days they had plume [petrol], you don’t see it now and you had irons, we have steam irons they had irons with a little tank on the back and you’d fill it up with fuel which was called Chalice and you used to have to light underneath it and it used to get hot and iron the clothes. That’s

when my mother used to do the laundry for the Yanks and she started off doing it for one and the next thing she knew she was doing it for dozens. We had a water problem here, we still do if we get a dry season. I don’t know where they got the water from in those days, I was too young to understand all this mechanical business. I knew we couldn’t waste water,

there was plenty of water in the swamp but it was, when it rained, it was, how can I put it, you couldn’t drink it, it was stagnant. It had water lilies growing in it, that’s another thing I used to love. Wading through the water up to here and pulling out these water lilies. It used to fascinate me, they were on the top of the water and when you waded in, you’d pull them up and the stems were this long.

They’d grow right on the bottom and I used to bring them home and Eunice Wing, another friend of mine lived up the street, and I’ve tried to find her since I’ve been up here this recent time because I’ve only been back here two years after fifty five years. Eunice Wing, she’s probably passed on, no body knows her now, someone else is in the house. She used to come with me and we’d load up this big tub that Mum

had full of water lilies, beautiful, pale violet and purple. I used to love picking them and Mum would say, “You haven’t been picking those water lilies again have you?” I would say, “Yes.” When Dad came home she would say, “Tom belt her, Tom, belt her.” I used to hear that ringing in the ears, I still do. She wouldn’t belt me and Dad used to say, “I hate belting you Norm, but you know what your mother is like.” My sister, I don’t ever remember her getting a belting.

I used to think to myself, “Where did I go wrong?” I was just out for adventure, that’s one reason why I left here, there was nothing here. A young girl wanted something but then I fell into the, how can I put it? Run into the marriage with Ron

and that was it. Then I got married again, I had two children with my first husband and I ended up having six to the second one, including twins. It wasn’t until he left in 1970 something, he died in ‘76, about 1970 that he left,

when this lad was two, and he’s forty now, so that would be what? Thirty-eight years ago, and I thought, “What am I going to do now?” I went out to work, I couldn’t get the dole. I had to work to feed them and there was only one lad working and that’s the eldest one up there. I fed them and clothed them.

Then after a while the young one that’s with me now he started to run away looking for mum [me]. He missed Mummy and I had to stop work. Welfare stepped in because the police used to pick him up and every time I come home he was up the police station. I had to stop working but I got handouts from the Welfare then and they

gave me half of what I was earning to feed them and pay the rent but I never missed a week’s rent. I had an old bum car which I got around in and the second son he was learning to be a mechanic and he was helping with that. We got by.

I had three charities working for me at Christmas time.

We went to the dental hospital in Sydney, I used to drive in there but drive now no way.

Yes, there always has been. Ross River was the only one and then they got Paluma Dam up here working. Most of our water

comes from Ross River dam and then they put wells in, I don’t know how they work the water system but they had to put wells in before it was suitable to drink. There was one called the Herbert Wells, that was out where my Auntie Phyllis lived, my Mum’s sister, she had market gardens and I remember looking across and there was this big round thing and I said, “What’s that?” She said, “That’s Wells, Hubert.” We used to call it the Herbert

Wells but it’s Hubert Wells and they got a few others up but every time they searched for water it would be brackish and they couldn’t do nothing with it. Even Black River now down there they don’t have water laid on, we are lucky we’ve got water laid on here. I think our water comes up here at Paluma, up the range. The Black River is

back towards Townsville, not far out of Townsville. We lived down there in the Donga, not long ago before we came here, and their water was pumped, they had to dig down, it’s good water, it’s nice water. But they had to dig and if it doesn’t come up there they’ve got to dig in another place for it to come up. None of them people on there have got water,

they don’t have sewerage. We don’t have sewerage here, we’ve got a pit.

We had to ration. We had to ration, like in a bath you all got in the one bath, the dirtiest one got in last and as for hot water

we didn’t have the hot water on and Dad made up a galvanised container like a bucket, a bit bigger than a bucket and he had a rose spray underneath it and to have a hot bath when it got cool weather you had to boil up the copper. Mum never washed in a washing machine, she never had a washing machine, she used to boil up the clothes and that’s where the Yanks used to come in with their washing, they loved it, they loved the fresh smell of the boiled clothes. Anyway,

we used to boil up the water in this copper and bring it in with this bucket and fill it half with hot water and half with cold and hang it up underneath the house and we had a tin around with a door and when that, we used to get in and put a little bit of water on us and soap ourselves up then the rest of it would go on us and when that finished that was the end of the shower whether you finished showering or not. So the next one

had to go and do the same. So it was, it was really hot up there so we used to normally have cold showers but as I said we had to cut them down. To water the garden I had a drum full of liquid manure and Mum and I used to water it all and we always had spinach and beans and carrots and that. I still grow a vegetable garden today.

Me? I was a dirty girl, about once a week, most times when it rained we went up into the Cunningham’s gully, we’d have a bath up there and the water used to splash, it was just like in a swimming pool.

Because we had no swimming pools then, they are on the strand now. You could not swim in the sea and you can’t here now and that’s years later because they’ve got these little jelly blubbers in it and they can kill you. They are only little jelly things but they have got a lot of poison in them. We were warned not to go into the water but there was a lot of sea lice in there.

As for the water, when it rained we had the swamp full in front of us you’d think you know we’d have plenty of water but there were always water restrictions here and there still is today.

All day. It would take all day, from the time she sorted out who’s was who, she had to mark them with a pen, I don’t know

how she got the pen or whatever but she used to mark them. No, she used to put, we used to have a needle and cotton and red thread was for Fred’s clothes and blue thread was for Tom’s clothes on the edge or corners or inside the waistbands she used to just put a thread through in to know who’s was who. Then she used to boil them all up, they never shrunk or nothing.

Then what she couldn’t boil up she used to wash by hand. After you boil them you’d have to wait till the, because I used to go out with Dad and get wood, we used to knock over stumps in the bush and he’d say, “Pick them up Norma and take them back to the truck.” They’d be all full of ants and there would be ants crawling all over me. I’d get cranky and I’d say, “There’s ants in them.” He would say, “That’s alright Norm, take them back, take them to the truck.” So I’d throw them in and then we’d have to sit on

them, on the wood coming home and the ants would be running up our legs. We used to watch them, when Mum lit the fire all the ants would still be in the wood and they’d come out with the heat. The clothes, anyway, after that, the water got through them and she’d put the powder in and stir them around and you’d have to keep stirring them with a pot stick. Then she’d lift them out,

Dad made a trolley galvanised with a little piece of wood in there, slates of wood to drain and a little spout coming out and the water would after lifting them out of the copper into that, and the water used to run out into a bucket and then she used to take them over to the first tub. We had three tubs, a set of three tubs under the house because we had a high rise house. The first tub it

would still be quite soapy water right? The next one would be rinsed and the next one would be blue water, they would go through all this stage, and then hang them on the line and that would take all day. The next day it would take you all day to iron them. We used to have to fold them and put them into their packages. So each one was tied with a piece of string so the would know which one it was with their name pinned on them.

My brother used to take them over in the billy cart back to the camp and then he’d come back and he’d say, “So and so sent us a package for us,” and it would be a big package of bacon or a big tin of lollies, nice boiled satin sweets. They could get anything the Yanks. They had the money, they would bring Christmas cards back that their wives had sent them or greeting cards.

They would never be opened just in the envelope so we’d open them up and they’d be beautiful cards, wishing you a happy birthday or happy Christmas and they would have all this beautiful tinsel on them. We used to have this cupboard like this here under the house and we used to stack everything on it. They even used to have these French letters [condoms] but we didn’t know what they were then. I said to my brother, “What are they?” and he said, “I don’t know.” They would be still in the packets. There would

be dozens of them. So we’d stack them on the shelf and Dad and Mum never looked at them because it was just a corner underneath the house that we had and one day Mum went shopping and we thought we’d have some fun so we got one out and put some water in it and we tied the end with a string and it got bigger and bigger and then we got the dog and we were flashing it in front of the dog’s face and we were running around the yard with it on a piece of string and the dog would come up and bite it

and water would splash all over his face and we would think that was funny. That was our entertainment, that was things we had to do to make our life liveable you know.

Yes, yes. In the packages and they’d just throw them out.

Probably, they were supplied with them for diseases and things, more so than anything else.

No, they were just supplied with them probably. We did have a brothel here.

That’s right. As I say, we were kids and we were told to look but don’t touch. Lots of things we were told nothing about, we were ignorant of a lot of things because

nowadays people, parents told kids things they shouldn’t tell them really. They are too young, they don’t understand. But in our day we were put to the background. When my mother and father had visitors we were told to go downstairs and play. They had people coming to the house and we used to have to

call them aunties and uncles. Half the time I don’t even think they were. I am asking my brother now, he lives in Townsville, one of them, I’ve got two brothers left, that’s all that’s left. I say to him, “Russell, were they really an aunty?” He would say, “Yes, Norm,” or “No, Norm,” whatever. One woman I didn’t think was an aunty turned out to be an aunty. But that was respect, nowadays kids

call you by your first name, half the time they don’t even call you that, they say, “Hey you.” It’s a different lifestyle now, very different.

I had, there was my sister and I and my brother, the three of us. Then Mum had another one later in life, I think you would call it a change in life, Russell he’s

about fifty-six now and Kenny’s seventy, I am seventy-five and he’s three years younger so he would be seventy two. So it’s quite a big difference. Actually Dad and Mum were very shocked when she fell pregnant with Russell.

I was only a kid, I would have been about fourteen or fifteen. We were shocked too and Dad said, “Mag, can you get on the machine and make some nighties for her.”

When Dad went to work because it was only about a fortnight before she realised she was pregnant and he was born. She went to the doctor because she used to get dyspepsia of the stomach, nervous dyspepsia of the stomach. She had gall trouble and she was always sick and we used to have to help her because she was a big fat woman, she used to eat a lot of fat. She used to eat lumps of fat off the corned beef. Not the silverside,

the other, and the fat used to dribble down there and I used to say, “Mum, you make me sick.” She loved the fat. All the family, all her family were fat. I mean fat, the fat used to hang down there. What was your question?

What happened next she went to this old doctor and he said, “You had better prepare, you are going to have a baby.” I said to Dad, “A baby?” He said, “Yes Norm, we didn’t think it would happen we thought we were too old.” But it happened. As I think now, she must’ve felt the movements but as Dad said she probably

did, but she thought it was the nervous dyspepsia.

No, that’s right.

I didn’t know a thing. Didn’t know a thing. I didn’t know how they were born or nothing. We weren’t give a book, I got my periods and I didn’t know a thing about that either until I got them, and I thought, “What’s this?” and I kept trying to wipe them away.

I got my period, didn’t know a damn thing. I got a book now called Every Woman and I think every girl should read it. It tells you everything right from puberty to change of life. There is a book there on boys, all about manhood, how a man develops. The kids say they learn it at school today but a lot of them

just sit there with a pencil and scribble while they are being told. At one stage there they were going through these girls and having babies at twelve to fifteen, all single mothers.

No, my mother said, “Go up to your sister and she’ll give you something to put on. You will get it every month.” That’s all she would tell me. I had to ask the girls and I said, “Do you get them, what are they

for?” I didn’t think they were for when you had children.

Well, what we were given was a piece of towelling and a belt with two pins. I suppose they had the pads and Modess [a brand of sanitary napkins] and stuff but we couldn’t afford to buy them. Mum used to soak them in a

bucket, boil them up, and hang them on a few bushes in the corner of the yard so no one could see them. We all used to use the one lot of rags. You’d go to school and you’d see this big bulge around your dress, we used to hate it.

Sometimes you’d be on your bike and they’d slide everywhere and you’d end up with mess.

They were in the poor days. I came from a poor family, I married a poor man. The second time I married a poor man.

In New Street.

The one in Percy Street was Cotters House, where I was born.

I don’t remember and I’ve had photos of it since. I don’t remember it.

I remember in the house Dad built in New Street the one behind where they made their home. I remember Dad building it and he used to say, “Hand me up the sticks.” It was of timber and that, it was up high and it was on wooden poles, like the wooden electric poles. But now it’s put on steel posts.

We used to have to still go up the back yard to the toilet but then Dad gradually built a toilet, brought it down closer to the building and put a bathroom on the back. Before that the bathroom was downstairs. We had banana trees and he used to cut them off and hang them up underneath the house and that’s what the Yanks used to love. They used to come over and say, “Have you got any bananas?” They used to love the fresh bananas off the tree. They loved

ice cream, yes. If I was naughty she would lock me in there until Dad come home. Sometimes she would lock me in there without tea of a night and there would be all these green frogs coming in underneath because there was only a little piece of cement on the floor and there’d be all this dampness of constantly showering

the frogs used to come in under and they’d be jumping everywhere and I’d be trying to clammer up the wall to try and get away from them. There would be this much space at the top, from the tin from the bottom of the house and I would be saying, “Mum, let me out.” That doesn’t normally ring.

I used to help him

mowing the lawns and getting the wood for copper and we had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and I can remember that my brother put a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK in the pan once. I got the blame for that and I got locked in the bathroom for that and it wasn’t me at all. Poor WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK .

Yes, and the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK was paddling and Dad went up and it pecked him on the backside and he jumped up and went crook and did his block.

He come down and I got the blame for it but it was quite funny. I got locked in the bathroom for that. They wouldn’t let me out of the bathroom so I used to stand there and have a feed of bananas and when they let me out Mum would say, “Do you want your tea?” I would say, “No, I don’t want my tea.” Then she’d come down and see all the bananas gone.

In the end,

as I said, we started off with a bit of timber at the time, he was only on small wages. I remember when my sister burnt my doll there was only two rooms and a little kitchen on the end. There was a kitchen, this is at the back of the house, there was a kitchen on the end there and it had a little section that goes out for a wooden stove to go in there. Later it went to electric and

then there was a little table and chair in there and the dining room, the two rooms, the kitchen and this room. Mag and I slept in there which ended up to be the dining room. On the other side of the kitchen was the main bedroom where Mum and Dad slept, so that was three rooms, it was like that for years. Then Dad

added another room on which was the lounge room in front of the dining room and then he built my verandah up the side and verandah up the front but we all slept on the verandahs. Mum and Dad never slept in the main bedroom then. After years she slept in the double bed in the corner and Dad slept in the single bed there. All I had

was a bed on the verandah and up against the wall. They put a divider across and my sister was in that room. Which as I was saying before it was a timber home, it’s called Queenslander. Now my sister was granted that in the will because she got Dad to change the will when he got Alzheimer’s

disease which I was very upset about and very hurt about. If she had come and said, “Look I think I deserve the house,” it was left four ways because Dad asked me to take him down there and change it after Mum died which I did. He changed it to four equal shares then Mag got him when I went back to Sydney about three years before he died. One,

he had Alzheimer’s, which I say was false pretences, getting him to sign papers when he wasn’t in the right frame of mind and she got him to sign it over to her. We got five thousand dollars and she got the house and furniture and everything. The land. Now, what she done when she got it she sold the land, she put the house up here further in Deeragun there

opposite the police station in that street. Svenage Road. When I come up for the funeral and I was leaving on the bus she was crying her eyes out. I knew what she had done and I said, “Well you got the lot now Mag, there is nothing for me here now.” I left her and went back to Sydney. Then when she found out how much my son left me, “That much?” and I said, “Yes. So what she did, it didn’t work out

did it, Mag.” She started to cry and I said, “Well, you got paid back for what you done.” She left that house and her husband could live in it for as long as he was alive but she left it to her daughter Carol and that’s the one that is bashing her father up now. Which is horrible, she was the pet. She wants to sell it and she is doing everything to get her father out. She has broken all his crockery, we meet him down

there at Deeragun, they forbid him to talk to me. They think I am going to race him off or something and I just want to be friends. We meet him down there and talk to him at Deeragun. He’s been up here a couple of times unbeknownst to them. He is always getting cancer cut off him, he’s got a lot of cancer. So that house stands down there in the bush today,

still a solid house after all these years now. I was a baby of three months old when we went into that and I am seventy five, so it’s seventy five years old that house. It had a few white ants in it at one stage but they were treated.

He did it and he always painted it and he always put linseed oil in the wood to preserve the wood. Now, it’s a strange thing,

today my son, one of my son’s marriage broke up, that’s the one in the picture up here and he had no one else to go to, he couldn’t live with his two sisters, so he found out where I was, don’t ask me how but he found out and he rang and he said, “Can I come up?” and I said, “The door is always open.” I never begrudge my kids. Even though

some of them don’t treat me too good. That’s another thing, they treat me horrible since I come into my other son’s money, that’s how I got the house and everything, it was all through my second son, my other son. Anyway,

In the dining room.

She was a bitch. To put it frankly, she was a bitch. She would pull the blankets off me and do anything to provoke me. She used to get me into trouble with Mum and Dad. “I am going to tell Dad on you, I am going to tell Mum on you.” I was glad when I got into a single bed out on the verandah. But you know what he used to do,

during the night he used to go downstairs and sleep in a camp bed. Do you know what a camp bed is? Two cross sticks like that which Dad made from old timber out in the bush and down the other end, cross sticks, and a piece of hessian and you put it on and it’s nailed on either side and you sleep in that. One night I got cranky with him and I went downstairs and slept in the bed

downstairs and I woke up and found a snake there, in bed with me. A big carpet snake, a body that thick. I looked and felt this warm thing along side of me. I sang out, “Dad!” and he was upstairs, it was early in the morning. He yelled out, “What’s the matter?” I said, “Snake!” He come running down with the gun and he said, “Norm, just stay quiet for a minute and when I tell you,

after I say the third one, two, three, get out of there as quick as you can and I’ll shoot it, but you will have to be quick.” He said, “One, two, three!” and I was out like a shot and the snake’s head come up and he shot it through the head. We shot quite a few snakes there. Everyone used to call him when they had a sick horse or something to shoot them over in the town common.

He had a couple of guns and they used to always be up above the front door and he used to leave them there with the bullets because we used to have a lot of snakes coming over towards the house. We had a snake in the radio once. He turned the radio on and wondered why it was making funny noises. We had a baker coming around at the time and he said to the baker, “I don’t know what’s in there.” The baker had a look because Dad’s eyesight wasn’t too good and he said, “There is a

little black snake in there.” It was about that long and curled up for the warmth around the, in those days they had valves, what you call valves, and when you put the wireless on it would be red, like a coil in them and they’d curl up there for the warmth. They’d come up to the verandah, we didn’t have screen doors, they’d come up the stairs into the door, we had French doors that open out and they’d crawl through there and get

into the wireless. Lucky it didn’t get into the piano, we would have had to rip the piano apart. Anyway, that was alright.

We had a pianola. I will tell you about that in a minute.

Anyway, the radio, the baker, Dad said, “I will get a pair of tongs, get a long handled pair.” So he went downstairs and got them out of his tool chest, come up and he said, “You hold, you can get it in

through there.” There were slits in the back of the wireless. “Put the tongs in there and get it by the head and pull it out or the tail, whichever and I’ll clobber it.” They did and it was about that long. A little baby black, red belly.

I never touched the guns. Dad used to say, “Norm

I will teach you,” and I would say, “No Dad, I don’t like them.” I never ever did like guns. The only sport I played at school was basketball and I think they now call it netball. We used to love it and say, “Yes, I will play,” because we used to get oranges at the end of the game. It was good, these girls used to try and push me around and I was pretty hefty so I used to push them.

My sister and I used to talk and we used to, at times she was good and at other times she was very very nasty. She would listen to what Mum would say to her and I used to say, “I don’t think I should ever have been born, I don’t think Mum wanted me.” I still don’t think she did. I think she only wanted one, that was Mag.

Yes, the pianola, that was a beautiful instrument. It’s still around today and it still works. The pianola, my mother bought it in 1936. She went to Brisbane and to Palings and she bought the piano from Palings and she paid it off from three shillings and sixpence a week. Three shillings and sixpence. All the rolls,

the pianola rolls, she bought them gradually. They were one shilling. I had learnt to sing with a pianola, I used to sit on it and push the pedals and sing. Dad used to play the Swanee whistle. That’s how the Yanks come into it with the Australian army. When they heard the music they come over, they loved music and they loved ice cream.

Mum would say, “Come for tea,” and they used to bring over food and they used to have tea with us. Then we’d play the pianola afterwards and have beers with Dad, they’d bring some beer, and they used to sit out on the verandah and tell stories about over in America and that. My niece ended up marrying one. Lydia Gelling. I’ve got a photo of her but she was only a baby in

this photo, she’s still over there today, she’s a grandmother now.

You had to sit down and push the pedals. Switch it on, you had to turn the keys off otherwise they’d be bopping up and down and they’d bop up and down and you’d think we were playing it and we’d shut the section off where you could see the pianola roll and we used to sit there and kid we were

playing, you know.

That’s what I say, that was a luxury. We were one of about five or six people in Townsville that had one. That pianola was still in that house when Mum and Dad died and I thought that I might’ve got the pianola but no, it was left to my sister the same as everything in it. That is antique

and her daughter, Mag’s daughter got it. She left it to Tracey, her daughter. I believe through John, Mag’s husband, Tracey came up about two weeks ago and took the pianola and I was very angry about that because that pianola sat in that house in the same spot ever since I was a girl and that really hurt because that’s

part of the Gelling heritage.

When the Yanks were here they used to love to hear the pianola and they used to ask us to play different tunes and I’d play, they’d play, but they loved to sing so I used to say you play and I will sing.

Nowadays it’s a bit hard for me to sing.

In those days the latest was the Desert Song, Rosemarie, which I can still sing that one. Charmaine, Sweet Adeline, Rosie O’Grady,

something about a wagon, what was the name of the wagon? Wagon Wheels. Rose of Picardy, and since then I’ve learnt to sing O Marie (UNCLEAR) O Marie and I sang that at a wedding in

Sydney.

Song?

As a child?

Rosemarie.

Yes.

“O Rosemarie, I love you, I am always dreaming of you, no

matter what I do, I can’t forget you, sometimes I wish I had never met you and yet if I should lose you I would mean my every life to me of all the queens that ever lived I would choose you to rule me my Rose Marie.”

Now it’s, it’s on the tip of my tongue, I want it played when I die.

They play it at a lot of funerals now. I can sing it in Latin, (UNCLEAR).

That’s Come Back to Sorrento, an old lady taught me that when I was singing in variety shows in Sydney, I was singing in the

Musical Society in a variety show. We used to travel around everywhere with the troops down there and we’d put on shows for them.

No, it was after the war, they had reserve camps down there.

Yes, loved it, singing and dancing was my two favourite things.

Singing and dancing, as I said, I snuck out to learn dancing and I danced right up until the time when I busted my foot. I don’t know whether I can still dance I would love to go to the dance at the Senior’s Hall in Townsville that’s on a Wednesday night and we don’t go in on a Wednesday night. We go in about twice, sometimes three times a week. I don’t know where my son is. He come back,

I hope the car hasn’t broken down. Anyway, where was I up to?

Yes, so they don’t have a dance around here, they had one the other week up here at Paluma, up further, but I am a bit frightened of going somewhere where it’s a new place. When was the last time I

danced? It was at Gin Gin, they had a dinner dance after the stockmen’s festival. I was selling tickets to that and I ended up winning the rug, it was a nice hand crocheted red rug. I was selling these tickets and they ended up saying, “You won second prize,” and they had this dinner dance, the same weekend, it sort of ran

into the dinner dance and there was this little chap there and he could dance, he was good, he was a real ladies man but anyway we all danced with him.

Kiss in the ring. When Mum and Dad got visitors, as I said we were told to go

outside and play. They had kids too, when Aunty Ivy and Uncle Dan came, they had a dairy, that was Mum’s sister and her husband, young Danny, they only had the one. Danny used to say, “What do we do?” so we used to get a tin, a drum this big and fill it with manure and paper and we used to burn it out on the footpath out the front. That kept the

mosquitoes away and then the girl up the street used to come down, Mum used to buy eggs, she used to send me around for eggs. She used to come down and talk to my sister after school, she’s still alive, I’ve met her since I’ve been here. She used to come, Eunice Wynn and Danny and my brother and my sister and I and we used to all get out the front and we used to talk and that and tell jokes and talk about school and different

things, we used to do anything silly. Then, we played this game of Kiss in the Ring. You go around and we’d pick which one we like and then you go over and kiss them you know. Twisting around, in and out like this, all around. When she would say, “Stop,” we’d stop and kiss the one that was there. It was good. We had to make our own fun.

Then we’d, what else did we used to do. I used to make taps for my shoes, get an old pair of shoes that someone had given me and I used to get tin lids off the food tins, skim milk tins, and I used to tack them onto my shoes or I used to put a piece of string around, but I used to put a crease in them so they’d stay there and then I used to tap. I can still do that today.

Anyway, that was fun, you used to hear these things and everyone used to try and do it, tap dancing. I’ve always loved to try and do archery but now I’ve got arthritis in my shoulders and I can’t do it. I love archery and if that was a sport I could do now I would take that up. Not fencing, archery.

It’s very expensive now.

Yes I did actually. All the mothers used to come up from all the kids I used to bash up. I got expelled from school for fighting. My mother went up to talk to them about it and all the kids were jeering, “She’s got her mother up here.” She spoke to the teacher and she said, “She

fights too much, I can’t have her here, she is bashing all the kids up.” Mum said, “I don’t know how many times I’ve spoken to her, she’s been belted for it.” But I probably got it from my father, he used to be a bit of a wild one. We used to go out duck shooting together and I used to wait in the swamp this deep and he’d pull out the ducks. Wild geese they were, he’d shoot them. Dad and I got on really well, I miss him, he was a real good bloke,

he got on with everyone. He was a likeable person you know. Anyway, yes,

We had to walk to school. We had knapsacks on our back and we put our books in there and I went to school and I suppose there was about ten in my class. We had Mr Winship he was our teacher. There was another

teacher, I can’t remember his name, he was nice but the other one, he was a snotty nose thing. I used to cheat a lot off the girls. History and Geography, I could get through that, I loved that. But sums, I could not handle,

divisions, and subdivides and take aways and all this especially when it got up into the heavier stuff I couldn’t handle it, so I used to cheat it. The girls would say, “Norma Gelling is cheating off my work,” so I get sent around to the headmaster and he’d whack me with the cane. I would think, “I am going to get you one of these days.” That happened right through and that’s when they said they’d expel me

because I was cheating because I started fighting them after school. I had a lot of fight in me.

The cane was bamboo, you know like a duster with a cane handle? I had one here but I gave it to my son. It was about that long and it was cane and it would leave a welt.

When I would go home Mum would say, “Have you been playing up at school today?” Because she would see the welt. “No, Mum.” “What’s that for?” “Yes, Mum.” “Dad will belt you after work when he comes home.” I got used to it in the end, I just used to put my backside out because I knew I was going to cop it every afternoon. In the end I got used to it, my body got immune to it.

I don’t like to talk about the headmaster,

because he used to do naughty things to girls. I only found out the other day he did the same thing to two other girls, they are married now, they are grandmothers now. There is a relation of his I met at the church and I never mentioned what he used to do to us which was very naughty at the time. We didn’t understand much then and we were told to keep our mouth shut, he used to tell us to keep our mouth shut.

He would give you one little whack and –

Every time you would get the cane. Because he would have been in his sixties, late fifties. His wife was very sick so I suppose that was one reason you know.

Never ever did until I come up here three years ago

to see my brother one Easter and they come out to see me and I said, “Did anything ever happen to you at school? What did you think of old Chandler?” They come out and said, “Chandler, he used to do horrible things.” I said, “To you?” and she said, “Yes.” Everybody said the same thing and I said, “I thought it was only me.” He did it to a lot of girls.

It was, it made me feel good because

I thought, I felt dirty and thinking I was the only one and you think in those sorts of things, like the same time when I got raped and I used to think it was my fault. But it wasn’t because you are told to shut up or you will cop it. There are a lot of people speaking up about those things today, even boys in boys’ schools. Here at Ingham and at a

Catholic Church in Sydney I used to go to with my friend until I went to Baptist, it happens everywhere but it shouldn’t be.

I would just say I had been sent around for doing this or doing that. One time we had to write an essay on our

cat. Of course our cat always messed on the mat. So I wrote, “My cat shits on the mat,” and of course I was brought out. “Norma Gelling, come out here and show me your paper,” so I showed him. “Why did you write that?” “Well, that’s what my cat does sir, you told us to write a story on the cat.” “Go out to the headmaster.” I copped it then, things like that you know but

nowadays it probably wouldn’t worry them.

I knew it was wrong.

I felt pretty guilty when I came back, I felt like socking him one. But me being a kid and him an adult you can’t do them things. After, I don’t know if his wife knew about it

but you couldn’t, who were you to tell. If you told your parents they wouldn’t believe you anyway. Same as the time I got raped when I was about fourteen and that was from the dance. He asked me to go down and have a drink. Of course it was hot and they didn’t have drinks upstairs and a lot of them went downstairs and we were sitting down beside the

river and it happened. Put a handkerchief over my face with ether in it. Of course I didn’t know anything about it and I woke up and that’s when I lost my virginity, I was a virgin until then.

It was after the war, that, it was after the war, and he used to keep chasing me and I used to avoid him.

I would say, “I am going to tell my father if you keep coming at me.” So after work I used to get on the bike as I left I was expelled from school at fourteen and I had to go straight out to work. I used to race down on my bike and I used to get to the causeway and meet Dad and then he’d disappear. He knew that Dad was there protecting me.

I wasn’t the only one, he got another girl pregnant.

No, I didn’t tell them about that, they reckon I was playing up with all the boys. I wasn’t.

She hated me, Mum hated me, she used to make up all these stories, she was a terrible woman.

I think it was because of her parents, her father was off with another woman and left the mother with about ten kids to look after and she had to go out to

work at thirteen to help look after the others because you didn’t get the dole, there was nothing, you had to go out and work for what money you got. I think that hurt her so she took it out on me when I was born. I used to give my whole pay packet to Mum and then when I got the bike on lay-by, time payment, and I had to take money out of it to pay the bike before I

come home she hit the roof. I had to pay it.

We didn’t go to school. We had correspondence school they called it. We come out the front and the paperwork would be in the letter box,

mix up of some sums, some geography, some history, and we had to read it and then answer it. The answers used to go out in the, when we finished them, a day or two after, we had to put them in the letterbox, because you didn’t lock the letter box, the teacher used to come round and pick them up and take them back and check them. That was the only way we could have schooling, that went on for

months, we weren’t allowed to go out in case we got shot. They were very close to taking over Australia the Japs were. They got into Lae in 1941.

I don’t like the Japs, and it’s stupid the way they tried to have the war on to take over

this country and now we are trading with them, actually we are their sister city. Townsville, they would never get in here, it’s a port, I’ve seen the big boats down here when I was up three years ago and the Japs were on the boat and the only thing I could see was teeth, they put all these mighty boys on the wharf and

they took sugar away with them and other stuff. There must have been fifty or sixty cars on the wharf, ready for delivery, and they’d take stuff away. Great big boats they were.

Air raid, yes, the siren used to go and then we’d have to run. Dad would say,

“Come on Norm, off we go,” and we’d have to go into these shelters that they built.

Shelters? There were two kinds I remember. One in town was this sort of stuff, cement. They were built up like a little room and we used to go in there, but down.

We used to go down steps and go down and in and under and we used to have to sit and huddle there together until the siren went again for the all clear. We knew which one was the all clear and which one was the one to go in. If you were around home and we could get out in time we used to run up to the park which was behind us and we used to have five or six shelters for everyone to run in, you’d see everyone running from every direction.

You’d run in and the ground, underneath like a big hole. They used to have boards on the ground and in the ground we had little shelves with candles, tin food, openers, and everything we sort of needed for a few hours or if we were there overnight, blankets. We used to sit there with a blanket around us and if we were

hungry we had bottles of water. Nobody would touch them, nowadays they would go in there and make a mess. On top we had the tin with turf over it with just a little hole where you go down in. There was a bag hanging down, everything had to be blocked out of light, no light in Townsville, nothing. It used to be as black as your trousers.

How I felt about them? Well, it was scary. Very scary. We used to think we are not going to remember, we are going to die. The worst thing was when my father went out to pick up dead bodies, he didn’t have to but he seen this plane go out

and we ran for the shelters and when we come back Dad wasn’t there and we thought, “Where’s Dad?” We were worried and then he came back a couple of hours later and he said he was helping pick up the bodies. Which wasn’t a pretty sight, they were all charred, the plane didn’t get up.

American plane,

big bomber. Do you want me to get into the war part of it?

There was the airstrip, it was only dirt, just all dirt and we used to go over there and play, ride our pushbikes around. They only had little planes to go from here to there

in it and when the Yanks came out in hundreds the Allied Works Council, they were men from all around Australia and the Yanks started building the aerodrome, they put down the asphalt runway. Then they put in an international airport and then they took that away for some reason but now they built another one. There is one here

now. There was always activity going on, planes would go out, planes would come in and they would fly so low you would think they were coming through the house because that house where I showed you, the house was here, there was a small space of land and then the swamp and then the airport. We could walk over to the airport but there was a fence along there

and a dairy there where we used to go and all the cattle would go off their brain when they heard the sirens going and the planes going out. Chooks wouldn’t lay, because of the burr of the engines. They would go crazy, they wouldn’t hatch eggs they wouldn’t hatch chickens.

At first a lot of the people in Townsville rejected them.

“What are these Yanks doing here? We don’t want them here.” Because people here were struggling to survive. It was only, I call it the one horse town, you could ride a pushbike from one place to the other. None of those shopping complexes were here. It was just Flinders Street,

Flinders Street was the main street. There was no bus terminal in town where you can go down south, there was no Motor Registry, you had to put your license and registration together in an envelope and send it to Brisbane with the money and then they sent it back to you. There was nothing like that. Cars would have big holes that you could put your head through yet they still drove them and still registered them. Along this

highway here there would be that many cars dumped and even in town some of the streets you’d see cars where people had driven them and there was no wrecking yards, there was no, like in Sydney you’ve got Simms Metal where you take the bomb cars to and melt them down. Here, they were dumped on the side of the road you just, if they run out you just left them there and got another

car, we all got on the best way we could. They were there for the picking.

Yes I remember them, they were nice looking blokes. But as I said I was only a kid and if I was older I probably would’ve gone for a few. They were very nice speaking even today the twang gets me and if you can listen

closely the Canadians have got pretty much the same twang as an American. I say, “Are you American?” They say, “No, I am Canadian,” and they get upset if you call them American. I’ve got a friend in Gin Gin I used to write to, Mary Ellen and she’s Canadian and I call her American and she says, “Don’t ever call me American, I am Canadian,” but she talks real Yank, a real broad.

We met up with them through the laundry. How that started my father made my brother, Kenny, he was three years younger than me, he would have been, I was about twelve I suppose, he would have been about ten or nine. He made him a billy cart and Kenny used to pull that around. He used to go over the

common and get manure and he’d come home and put it in the cart and he’d bring it home to Mum for the garden. One day he came home with all these trinkets and I said, “Where have you been?” He said, “I’ve been over to the Yank’s camp,” it wasn’t far from home, you could see them there. He said, “They’ve got all these pretty things.” I said, “Don’t tell Mum, you will get a hiding.” So that’s when we put them underneath the house in the

cupboard. Then they started giving him laundry, “Would your mother do some laundry for me?” A lot of women were doing laundry for extra money to come in because they had the money, an Australian solider didn’t have any. They had the nice uniform, that’s what the girls used to go for. It was a khaki, a nice lightish colour khaki, like the colour of sand. It was a

suit but it smooth and when you ironed it, it was real shiny like satin. They had the little cap, they were very smart looking, they had the nice gold insignias on the sleeve. Wherever they went they looked real, none of them looked like a ruffian. The army soldier sort of didn’t care much, he looked more like a ruffian.

But we had a lot of relatives in the Australian army and at first I thought they didn’t get on but it wasn’t until some time later they found out that when the Yanks came we had some Australian soldiers there and Dad introduced them and said, “This is Mum’s brother and this is another relative.” They spoke to them but out in the

street, a lot of the Yanks, a lot of the civilians didn’t like the Yanks coming in and a lot of the Yanks didn’t like our Australian soldiers and the Australian soldiers didn’t like the Yanks. There was a lot of prejudice amongst them because the Yanks had more than what the Aussie soldier did, they had better food and everything. The Aussie soldier was served up slops

because the Yanks used to grab all the fruit and vegies, they used to grab all the milk and the Aussie soldier used to get the scraps. It was the producers around Townsville, like there must have been about eighty dairies around Townsville that used to supply them with milk after the war ended it ended up to be about three. They used to stick around the ice cream parlours the Yanks did, they loved ice cream

and the Australian soldiers never got any. We used to make them comfortable at home. Mum used to put on tea for them, they used to come over, the Yanks did, and Mum used to put on tea. She used to make a nice, I think you call it quiche now, it was a tart with like an egg mixture and bacon and that in it and it was lovely and they loved it.

Mum used to make about three or four of them, they used to come over for tea and we used to play the pianola. They would thank Mum and send over cigarettes for Dad. In those days you couldn’t buy cigarettes. Pall Malls used to be about this long. Have you ever seen them? Big long cigarettes and Dad was a smoker in those days, he gave it up not long after the war. Chesterfield

cigarettes, Pall Mall, Camel, you couldn’t buy any of them. They used to send over cartons of them, not packets, cartons for giving them comfort, they wanted the home comforts. You couldn’t blame them, they come out to a land where they didn’t know anything, they thought there were savages here, they didn’t know what they were in for. You see, we treated them nice, they treated us nice. Of course Dad had too many cigarettes and a bloke at

work said, “I haven’t got a cigarette, where are you getting your cigarettes? I’ve got none and I would love a smoke.” Dad said, “I will sell you a packet,” so he gets to sell a packet and make a quid out of it. Then –

What they lived in? Yes love, they lived in, you just imagine a tank, a water tank, a galvanised iron one with the ripples,

galvanised iron, and they go round right? You cut one of them in half and put it up that way, that’s what they lived in but big ones, monstrous big ones. There is still one left that I see today, I think they demolished them all after the war, there must have been hundreds of them, there is still one around in North Ward where they made it into a furniture factory, it’s on the main road going around to the Strand. If you had

come that way today you would’ve noticed it along the side if you come along Dunlop Street.

It’s on the right hand side going back.

No, we weren’t allowed, being a young girl we were a bit scared of you know, things. We were told to stay out, my brother could go over.

But no, we made them welcome at home and we made the Aussie soldier welcome. Mum had a brother in the army, Uncle Dick and she had nephews, Uncle Eddie, and a friend from Brisbane, George Hedge, I can remember names.

But the

Negroes, didn’t like the Negroes, even the Yanks themselves didn’t like the Negro. They heard once that there were some girls in a certain part of Townsville would give them a good time so they went out there. It was all false, the girls weren’t going to give them a good time, it was just a dance and the Yanks got told of something and they started to rape them,

there was a big fight on and the MPs [Military Police] were called, a big blue, some of the Negroes walked off and we never ever seen them again, and I think something, I think they were shot but there was nothing said about that.

How do I know it? Reading.

Not at the time, no.

I didn’t like them, they were scary. Like, I mean, my sister she used to talk to this Joey, he used to come around and drive this big ten wheeler, one day she was coming home from town where she worked in a little shop dress making in town and she was riding her pushbike. There was no vehicles of ours here, only the American vehicles and the Australian

army, it was all army vehicles and just the people in Townsville only rode pushbikes, that’s all they could afford, we had no petrol. She rode up alongside of the ten wheeler and she says, “Joey,” and it wasn’t Joey at all it was this American Negro and she got such a fright I think she might’ve wet herself. She got pedalling on her bike and got away and went up a side street t get away. She come home and she was panting and Mum said, “What’s

the matter?” She said, “I thought it was Joey driving this truck,” and you know how you ride a bike and hang on to the door and say, “Hello,” and she said, “It was this Negro,” and he was saying, “Where you live missy,” and she said, “All I could see was this black with white teeth and I flew.” They were really scary, I think they would’ve got into a lot of trouble if they stayed longer, lucky the war was only on for about three years.

Not really. They liked the white one. What girls did was get with the Abos [Aboriginal people], Negroes, American Negroes was they’d force them and some girls would get into trouble. But then I suppose that happens everywhere.

Yes.

It might be incriminating the woman but she worked with my sister. She had a black baby but she didn’t keep it. It was very sad.

I

happened to be there at the time. They had a lot of midwives around town and they had a lot of midwives in different places like Ayr and Homehill and they used to make money out of the girls. You’d go to the railway and got on a train, go to the railway and the taxi blokes would know who was who.

They would always escort her with her mother or father or be lonely and standing there and you could see they were pregnant. They would come and pick them up and say, “So and so,” and the girl would nod and they would take them there. Actually one place was a place where all the taxi men used to live and they used to sleep around on the verandahs, it was like a cover up because in those days it was a no no.

This midwife would have the main rooms in the centre and that’s where she helped the girls. She was doing the girls a favour because who would want a black baby in the family, especially an American Negro. Did you ever see that Mandingo, same thing, they put it out with a pillow when it was born. They put him in a pot of boiling water because he was

fixing the white man’s missus up.

No, she didn’t like them. She told us to stay away from them. They were big men, my father could never have handled them even though my father could fight, he could handle himself. He knocked a black gin out once in the pub,

my father, he was in his eighties. I reckon that if anyone was taking me now I would still have a go.

He didn’t like them at all, he said, “I don’t know why we have to have them, there was enough Australian army and white Americans out here.” Townsville’s population tripled when the men came out here, it went from about one thousand four hundred to about forty

thousand. There was a lot of them here, Yanks everywhere.

Yes.

There wasn’t a great deal of them here. What they lived in was called

igloos. Those big half tanks, they were really big, there must have been about five hundred of them over at Garbutt, that was just one place. They were out near the Ross River, they did have an airstrip out there too but it was only a small one and then they found it didn’t work so they wiped that out. They all went from Garbutt.

No, the white ones.

I am not quite sure where they lived, I only seen a few of them in town in the ten wheelers and we kept right away from them. As I say, they were probably here for a purpose, but what purpose I don’t know. As I say, they used to come over to home

and if Dad was alive today he would tell you they were good blokes. They used to bring bacon and not just a kilo, a box full like this. They would bring it over and we’d have bacon for months. If we weren’t home, which we mostly were, they would put it in a safe under the house and we always had bacon and we had our own WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s for eggs.

Then they would bring the boiled lollies and then they’d go there too in that safe.

Yes, there were two sisters, Lydia and Charmaine, they both fell for Yanks. I don’t blame them, they were nice looking girls.

As I say, their father was an ice man, Phil Gelling, and he only had the two daughters. That was another thing, ice was rationed then, the Yanks used to get all the ice because we never had fridges in those days, you had to be very rich to have a fridge, there would have been only about three homes in Townsville that had a fridge. If they

did, they would have had kerosene fridges. It wasn’t until later years they brought in electric fridges. Townsville was right behind the times of every other town. As I said, he was an ice man and the Yanks used to get first priority to the ice and then the civilians next, the poor soldier, he hardly got any. We

always got on because our Uncle Phil worked, he used to deliver it and that. Then we had these two big things and you used to dip the ice and bring it in and he used to sing out and say, “Hello,” to us and we’d have it already there with newspaper to wrap around it to keep it longer. As I said, his two daughters fell for the Yanks and one of them,

she, Lydia, she married one, she was very attractive. I think she had two children, she’s still over in America with him and she’s still there. Charmaine she didn’t go back, she ended up with one, she’s got grandchildren, actually my brother still writes to her over in America. I think it’s Canada she’s in, Canada.

Yes, they’ve been together all this time. A lot of people in Townsville say, “She married a Yank, that won’t work out.” But then a lot of them girls married the air force that were here too, the Australian air force. I know a young girl named Myrtle, Myrtle Hammock. She lived next door to a camp which was in Strathpole Street

and she used to go in there and talk to them and she got on to this one fellow and she ended up marrying him. My mother was very, she used to write down when she got married and when she had her first baby. She was terrible. To find out if she was pregnant when she got married, that was the whole fact of it. She had to get married, I had to get married, my sister had to get married,

most women do. So what’s the thing about it? I can never understand my mother. Never understand her.

She didn’t like it at first but afterwards she said it’s her life

and it had nothing to do with her. He was a nice bloke Uncle Phil. All the Gellings turned out to be pretty rich people. The Isle of Man, you’ve got to be filthy rich to live there now. It’s a town of race horses and motor bike racing. That’s where Dad come from.

There are magistrates in the family, now we’ve got a policewoman in the family. Before I die I would like to go over and have a look at this town. There was a chap who lived here, Peacock, do you know Peacock, what’s his first name? His wife was on television, he

came from the Isle of Man, he owned race horses and everything. So we are of a mixed breed aren’t we? I think if we look back we will all find we come from ancestors from overseas. Which I am going to look into our family tree on the Gelling side when all this is finished.

Because we are related to Samuel Marsden, well that lad is. His granny married into the Marsdens. Kim, the one up there with the tattoos, his name is Kimberley Marsden. His father’s name was Cyril Marsden, his father was named Henry Marsden Martin and it goes on there in the family. There was a priest in the family on the

Marsden side.

My school days.

When we got to school?

It was just an ordinary one horse town as I said and the school

I suppose there were about ten to twelve to each class. Mostly men teachers. The seats were just wooden stools right along and there used to be a girl there, what was her name? Coombs.

That was her last name, I can’t think of her first name now, I’ve got a school photo of her. She used to wet herself and I’d be sitting there in class and all of a sudden I’d feel this wet and I’d look down and I’d put my hand up to the teacher to say, “She’d wet all over me.” He had to, you know, told her to go and get changed and that so she’d go home and wouldn’t come back but I’d be there all

wet. It used to stink. Then she was the dunce of the class but as she got older I heard she done a lot of good work for the Red Cross here when she married and got into her old age. Her sister used to knock around with my sister, Alice Coombs, Fay Coombs was her name.

But there was two others I used to stick with called Buff Benton and Alison Morgan. Now, if you know much about names you will find Benton is a very striking name and Morgan is a very strong name, well they weren’t just strong names, they were strong people. When I wanted

help with a fight, sometimes I’d get into a fight and I’d pummel my way and then others would come in and I’d end up with about four or five of them to show this thing out and they used to come over to clean them all up. It was great fun, I used to love fighting. They used to call me the Fighting Gello because my names was Gelling. “Here comes the fighting Gello.”

Many a times Mum used to have to go up to the school about me and in the end they , “We can’t keep her any longer we are going to have to expel her.” I didn’t mind, I went then out to work and earned my own money.

They were quite nice, they never interfered with the girls.

Mr Winship. He was a bit sort of lenient with me, he used to try and

help me but I had this one here with me and Jason the youngest one. Jason still can’t read or write, he couldn’t read or write because they go through the lessons so quick. He married a girl and her mother was a school teacher, she taught him to read and write and now he can write a letter but sometimes he might ask me about the spelling of a

word and I will tell him.

Mr Winship, he was nice. This other lad can’t read, he can only sign his name because I sent him to a school where they help them and it didn’t do much help. We had beautiful big trees in our school, ground,

it’s still there today. The trees are still there. I drove up there the other day but there is a lot more foliage in the trees now, at one time you could see the whole school but now its covered a lot with the trees and it’s at the bottom of Castle Hill. So you can imagine all the water that used to come off Castle Hill when it rained it used to come down and into that gully.

It was clay and the gully used to be all this yellowy water in there in the end. We used to swim through there to come home but sometimes it would get very deep in the centre so we used to have to evade it and go around. Actually, I was up there about three weeks ago in the car and I just sat there and just looked at it. It brought back memories of when I used to walk through there and all the fights I had.

A young boy come through on a bike and said, “Are you alright, lady?” Because I drove right up to the fence. I said, “Yes love, I am just looking and bringing back memories.” He said, “Did you go to that school?” and I said, “Yes, many years ago, you wouldn’t have wanted to go to that when I went there.” He said, “Why?” I said, “You probably would’ve got knocked out by me.” He said, “Why, did you fight?” and I said, “Yes, I fought alright.” It was funny.

What would happen?

They’d pull your hair or pull your clothing. I’d say, “Get your hands off,” and they wouldn’t so I would just push their head down and hit them on the back of the head or if they come close I would give them a straight right and a left hook. Do you know what that is?

Straight right and left hook

and an upper cut.

I gave my brother an upper cut and lifted him off the ground and ripped his foot open. Boy did my mother tell Dad to give me a belting. Because we had this tin all around the garden and at that time I was only a girl then and the Allied Works Council was on this piece of ground on the front and they worked with the Yanks on the streets and that

where trees had to be cut down or roads to be fixed up. We only had dirt roads here. Just dirt and two tracks, no asphalt roads. They’d bring these big ten wheelers trucks out here and they were driving on these dirt roads so the Allied Works Council had to build roads and fix up the ones that were here. My brother was picking on

me this day and all these Allied Works camp had just come home from work and were going to have showers, they had showers and toilets over there, there must have been about forty huts. The chap I ended up marrying he was the sweets cook there, I’ve got a photo of him out the back, that was the one my mother picked out for me. Anyway, Kenny picked on him, my brother. He was tall, whimsical and

stalky because he was so tall because he had long legs. I said, “Don’t pick on me,” and I grabbed his arm and he said, “Do you want to fight me do you?” and I said, “Yes, I will have a fight anytime,” so he punched me and I punched him back and then he come at me again so I give him this upper cut and I lifted him I think about two foot off the ground and he ended up on this tin and it was about this far out of the ground and it was old tins that Dad had cut and tarred and it had a sharp top, and he went

over it backwards and cut his leg at the ankle, a big cut like that, and he had to go and get stitched up. Blood poured out everywhere. Of course the blokes in the front of the camp come over, “Fight on,” and they were watching me and the more they were hooraying me the more I fought. Then I lifted him to go, “Don’t go near her.”

My father taught me. We

had a young chap, he was Dad’s apprentice on the runway and he always wore black and he was sweet on my sister. I don’t know why she didn’t marry him, he was always a nice bloke. He lives in the Gold Coast today, Alfie Gough. Actually we’ve got a policeman up here by the name of Gough and I thought they might be related but he said he didn’t think so. Anyway, he, Dad got him

into the ring, boxing, he called it sparring. Alfie bought a set of gloves and the punching ball, punching bag, and it was round, on a swivel, not like the big ones that they call them the bag the big long ones, this was a ball and it was made of

leather and you had to have it on a swivel. It fell about this far down and we had the high house and Alfie had it hooked under there. Of course I would go down and I said, “Can I have a go,” and he said, “Yes,” so he showed me how to use it, slowly, bring it in like this now pummel it and go like this real fast. I loved it and you’d bounce around on your toes.

That’s how I learnt. He left it there and said, “While I am at work during the day you can use it and when I come up on the weekend I will show you, and we’ll pummel it together,” and that’s how I learnt to fight using this ball. I wish I had one today, I’d still pummel it.

Alfie used to fight at the Town Hall where I used to go and fight. But Alfie wouldn’t fight me.

Yes, because Dad used to ask me to come. “Do you want to come Norm?” I was always around where Dad was, fixing the car, bringing in wood for the copper and to cook with, mowing the lawns and bringing in the horse. We had a horse named Nigger, he was wild. We used to have to feed him

and then we used to feed the cow, we had a cow, we had a horse, we had two horses actually. Whiskey was over in the paddock, he was old Whisky, he died of a snake bite. Then I had the cow, the Jersey, for milk, and we had goat for milk and she had kids and we ate the kids. We had roosters, hens for eggs.

You had to have all those things in those days, you couldn’t afford to buy them. We were lucky to buy food for the animals but we used to take them out and pen them out in paddocks where we had fresh green grass and then we had the little section in the corner of the yard fenced off for vegetables. It breaks my heart today when I go to that place and there is nothing there, not a thing. My sister got the lot. Not even a

post, a tree, nothing. She took every brick, every bit of wire net, she sold the block of ground to the Department of Housing but they haven’t built anything on it. I go there and I look at it and I think, “Gee, all the things that happened there.” It’s all gone and where the Allied Works camp was there are all trees,

young sucker trees, bush trees about ten foot high, and they are all in the front where the camp was. A lot of them were from Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, just ordinary men working to help out. The more that worked the more Yanks were here fixing planes, they used to

send over planes and used to assemble them here. The less the Japs could get in, because they got into Pearl Harbour. The reason they didn’t get into here was because of the reef.

Probably why she hated me so much was because I was so much like her, but she was a Libra and I am a Taurus. I am an

open minded person but if you do the wrong thing by me I will kill you. That’s what a Taurus is like. I can usually pick people by their faces whether they are good people or whether they are going to do me wrong. I study faces. I wished I could read them, I did when I was travelling at one stage but it was very spooky, very eerie, I don’t do that anymore. I suppose that’s the French gypsy in me.

I wanted to be a singer a dancer, an entertainer. I did go around a lot of, we called them Talent Quests at the time, but now

Yes, they had Talent Quests.

I did a few in Townsville but there was always a girl called Bridget Bourke. She loved herself to death. She used to go around

singing, “Goodbye little yellow bird, I’d rather play with you, I love you, little yellow bird.” I can’t remember the rest of the words. She was real skinny and had a freckly complexion, you couldn’t put a pin between the freckles and red frizzy hair and she used to win over me. I think it was because her mother knew the people running it.

So I gave up in the end. Anyway, she got pregnant to this bloke who raped me and she kept the baby. She tried to get him to marry her but Percy was already married, he’s dead now of course. I believe, I asked my brother where she was, I was going to talk to her and see how she, over the years I don’t have any grudge for her, she hated me because she knew he got to

me, but I didn’t want him. I was only fifteen and he was thirty-five and he kept chasing me and I didn’t like him at all. I believe she went up to Cairns when I asked my brother where she was, I just like to know how they fared out over the years. The bloke I did like was Jimmy MacLean, he used to go to this ballroom dancing and he was the one that taught me to dance, beautiful dancer,

the poise and everything you know. I don’t know what happened to him, I think he went to Brisbane and married a girl named Sheila Tolhurst. I would love to meet up with him again to see how he fared out, he might even be dead. My mother used to say, “He’s an alcoholic, just like his father.” Because he used to have a drink, everybody used to have a drink in those days, there was nothing else to do up here.

There was no casino, there was no museums, there was nothing.

They were good. We used to do the Gypsy Tap, Pride of Erin. We used to wear, I used to go with my sister to make me, this is after the war, to make me flared dresses with a flared skirt and when you twirled around you could see your knickers and your legs. In those days we couldn’t buy stockings so we used to get a crayon, an ordinary crayon and run a line

up the back of our legs to make it look like you’ve got stockings on. The Yanks could get silk stockings but they used to give them to their girlfriends. That’s when we used to

Well they were just ordinary halls. Heacley’s was the main one

it was near the Winter Garden Theatre but the Yanks used to have their own dance and I was too young to go to them. I more or less stuck to Heacley’s .

The Forces weren’t allowed to come to ours. Only civilians. That’s where a lot of girls got into trouble going to the dances right?

No, I didn’t go to any of their dances but the halls were quite big and they’d have celebrations. They’d have balloons up when it was someone’s birthday or Christmas time, same as every other celebration. They had a band, Bob Patworth, that’s going back a long way. I was fourteen and now I am seventy five, hell.

Bob Patworth, he was beautiful, a lot of brass work in it. You’ve heard of Louis Armstrong’s band, you’ve heard his band? That was what it was like. You’d want to dance if you’ve heard it. Like some music you can just sit and listen to but his music you just had to get up and dance, your feet were itching to dance.

Townsville here. There

was about four of them I think. One on the piano, two on the sax, one on the trumpet and one on the drums and they were good and then there was the MC [master of ceremonies]. We used to have a dance which I don’t see now, and it was called the Monte Carlo and they’d put you in a, that was the hearts, that was the clubs, spades, and diamonds. You’d get up and you’d

get into diamonds or this one. You’d have your partner and then the band would start and you’d dance. But they would have the card there. Whatever, when the music stopped you had to get into one of them spots. Then he’d have a card and he’d pull out diamonds and everyone of those diamonds had to sit down.

The band would start again and he’d pull out hearts. For instance, and they had to go and left the other two. They kept going until they ended up with two partners, one from each and then it ended up to be one and they’d win it and get a prize. I forget what they used to get now, the little prizes. It was good. We had the Albert’s,

I don’t know if you’ve heard of that. The Albert’s dance was a dance where you were on either side. It’s like square dancing. You’d have a partner and you’d have your hands, hold hands like this and you’d go in and come out and dance around with this one, then you’d twirl around with that one when he sung out the thing and then this section might go and

you’d stop and they’d go, it was really good when everybody could join in. Of course, the progressive.

Just the ordinary, you’ve seen the progressive haven’t you? You don’t know what the progressive is? You’d have your partner, you get up and dance but before you all get up to the floor

you are all in a circle and then either the girls on the outside and the men on the inside, two circles, then you’d go to the person next to you and they’d dance with you and then they’d twirl you around and you’d go this way and the men would go that way and you go to the next partner and he would go to the girl behind you and it would go that way. That’s

the way it went and they’d go around and around and I think we’d go around about four times. Everyone loved the progressive because you got to dance with everybody. Then if a bloke liked you and he’d dance with you, you would say, “Come and give me a dance later.” So you’d sit down and they’d come over and say, “Would you like to dance with me?” and you would say, “Yes.” You’d single one out. It was very good, but I got cranky if anyone got Jimmy.

I loved Jimmy, he was my first love actually. If it hadn’t been for my mother it might have worked out.

Yes, we had to hide our feelings away from Mum and them. Funny thing is she came up to the dance one night, I don’t know how she got up there, and she seen me dancing with him. I

looked and I seen her and she come in the door and sat next to Mag and I thought, “Oh my God, Mum.” Because she was a good dancer, a big woman, but she was good on her feet. She seen me dancing with Jimmy and she had never seen me dance before. He was like a professional dancer, lovely, jazz waltz and get in close and the fox trot and the quick step.

She got up and she started to dance, I didn’t know she could dance, she danced all right. When I come home she said, “I see you are a good dancer now. Who is your friend?” I said, “It’s Jim.” That was all she said. She got up and danced with different ones and she enjoyed the dance too. See? I thought I was going to get in trouble and that was the first time she seen me dance with Jimmy especially.

No, he was from Rowe State, and I was from West End, I went to Belgian Gardens.

There was a Catholic school here and ours was a state school up further.

Yes, there was a lot of prejudice there.

They used to sing out names to us and the state school used to sing out, “Catholic dogs live on logs,” and then it would start. They’d give us names and I’d say, “I will get you after school.” We had different ways to go but I used to climb the trees, I was good on climbing. Hook my bag around the tree and when I seen them coming down they’d just about get

under and I’d jump down and I’d pounce on them.

The war? It was in ‘42, about March, I think, in ‘42.

No, not ‘39, in ‘41 the Yanks got in here, tried to get in here in 1941. They got into

Lae, that’s up near New Guinea isn’t it? They tried to get in here in submarines and the reef stopped them. But it was actually I think Rollingstone, the bloke at the pub and his wife, the owners, they were on the look out and they seen them coming in but they didn’t get right in here.

They were in the First World War. Don’t talk to me about the Germans, I hate them, I’m sorry.

The one up there has been very nasty to us but he’s got a friend over in Germany. He wished he had married her now, Angelica. I think he blames me for a lot of that.

At school? As I said, we didn’t talk much about it at all because we were kids and were not told anything. We were told to shut up and worry about ourselves and not worry about anything

about the war, the war was an evil thing.

I hate war, I think it’s useless killing. What’s the use of it. A woman raises a son, starts off as a baby, he’s beautiful, he comes from under her heart. He grows up and he’s called in

to go to war and he gets over there in another country and he gets killed. What for? What was all that for? I’ve never got over my son dying. He was a man, he was forty-one, a year older than this one. It’s, I don’t know what he died from, I think it was a heart attack because he was a big man,

it’s just stupid. What are they fighting for now over in Iraq? What are they fighting for?

Yes, we had parades and they all come up in trains. They had a reunion up here and I was to come to it but I couldn’t get up here at the time.

The parades were spectacular, everyone walking along the street. We had a friend always used to be on a stark white horse called Billy Strike and he always led the processions of the parade, he was always in front.

He was a friend of my father’s. He led the parades. These you are talking about, they were everywhere. They were down in the Strand, in the middle of the town, they were at the

Garbutt, a lot of people had them dug in their own yard, down at Pallarenda they had barbed wire down at Rose Bay beach which goes around then into Kissing Point which is another section of the war. They had oyster beds down there and my father sold his truck to them.

After the war there was some left and they had oyster beds. Some Yanks stayed there. They ran oyster beds down on Kissing Point around that corner. They bought the truck to bring them up to the market in. During the war they had all this curled up barbed wire and it was on the beachfront. Any enemy

got in there they’d get all tangled up in this barbed wire.

No. Where the Strand is you look across and you see another beach and that’s where it was. Rose Bay. It’s on your way back into town. Goes down and there is a shop on the corner I think and it goes down into Rose Bay. You will see a sign that says Rose Bay beach.

We didn’t go to

school.

No, we weren’t allowed to go to school in case we got killed if they come in. It all happens in seconds. There was about five thousand Yanks out here at the time. They took over this place.

It was an army town.

Joey Voitervicks. His name, he was Polish. We called him Joey Waterworks. He was a nice chap, he was married with about three kids over there in Poland. He was very nice.

He used to come out and I would say, “Joey, can I drive your truck?” Mum used to do his laundry too but he used to bring his own over. He would say, “Do you think you can drive?” Here I am only a bloody kid and I say, “I can drive,” and he would say, “I will show you,” so he’d sit on the seat and we’d go up the street and back down, it wasn’t asphalt just dirt and I’d sit on his lap and I’d

steer it but he would have his hands underneath and he’d use the pedals and everything. The kids in the street would see me and I would say, “I’m driving see?” and I felt real great because I was driving, it was a big truck, a big ten wheeler, it had ten wheels. I thought I was real smart driving this truck. It’s a strange thing, do you know what I learnt to drive in? A big Ford

tow truck, nearly as big as, a big Ford. If you didn’t use your clutch right the gear box would crash, it was called a crash box. You had double shuffle, to put that gear down at the right time. I got my licence didn’t I? I was the only woman around that area that I knew of that drove a tow truck. It was great, up and down the streets of a night, up and down.

His father had a business then, a wreckers yard. He always had the car but he left the tow truck at home. One day I had to go down to the next suburb and get meat for Christmas, it was Christmas. I said to him, “How am I going to get down there if you are taking the freighter?” It was a Ford Freighter. He said, “You will have to walk or get the bus.”

So off he would go down the pub with his mates and I said to the second eldest boy, he was pretty mechanical minded, “Come out and we will see what we can do with this truck.” It had no key, you just turn the switch and press the button. I started it and it wanted to start but it wouldn’t start. I said, “Lift the bonnet and we will see what happens.” Lifted the bonnet and he had plastic on it. If the carbie got wet you’d never start it. So he took the plastic off and it kicked over.

I got in it and I moved the gear stick and it wouldn’t work so I put the foot on it again and again and it worked so I drove it all the way down to the next place in one gear. That was the first time and then I got in there and got the meat. When I come back it was in the car park and there was a chap there looking at me. I was about seven months pregnant

and I made this dress, it was a nice dress, it was out of a curtain piece of material and I had godeh [additional strip of fabric down sides of dress] of another colour and then I walked over to the truck with the bag and threw the meat in and jumped up on the step and then into it and this bloke is going, looking at me as if to say, “Is she going to drive that thing?” I got it back, I fiddled with the gear stick and find where reverse was and

drove it out, he was looking at me. His father come home and said, “How did you go down and get the meat?” and I said, “I got down there.” The kids dobbed me in and said, “She drove the tow truck.” He said, “You haven’t got a licence,” and I said, “Well, you took the car.” I got my licence in the end.

Christmas in where?

It was very, very

slack, we couldn’t get much because we didn’t have much money, we had to have coupons. Like to put a wedding on everyone said, “I want your coupons, and your coupons and his coupons,” to get food enough for the wedding. As I said, I only got one doll and my brother only got one train and we were lucky to have that.

No, not at that age. We had weddings at our

place. One lady was Katie Kurnellis. She was a dark woman, mother was Aboriginal and she lived around the corner. She used to have a koala bear, a real live one and it used to sit up on the post and she would feed it with gum leaves and we used to go around and watch her feed it. It would never stray, never stray. Then she, we had this wedding at the house

and they supplied everything but we just put it up. We had the piano going, she had the minister come out and marry her there and we had a big table underneath the house. Dad got all the seats, stools set up and everything. It was really nice but we didn’t have a great lot. What we had to do was make do with what we had. My mother’s

sheets were patched and patched and patched. In those days they weren’t colours , they were just white. When she died I looked at them and said to Dad, “These are more patches than sheets.” He said, “That’s right Norm, Mum’s had them ever since you were a kid.” I said, “What do we do with them?” He said, “Toss them.” I had to get rid of them. All them years he still had them.

Blacksmith. He was a blacksmith striker in the railway. Like fixing trains, he had a government job that’s why he wasn’t brought into the war. Anyone in a government job wasn’t called into the war. He fixed carriages and engines and made things like in those days you couldn’t go and buy a tool, a hammer,

chisel and saw, whatever, but you couldn’t go and buy specials things to fix things. So he had to make things. If you know what a blacksmith does, he can make a straight thing into a bent thing. By putting it into hot ashes and hammering it with heat and that’s how he made that shoe horn.

The shoe horn

when the Americans –

Well that shoe horn, I don’t know how it came to be about in a way, they might have seen Dad make one because Mum had one at home. They took a fancy to it and they said,

“Where did you get it?” and Dad said, “I made it.” They said, “Can you make me one?” and he said, “Yes I can make you one.” He said, “Can you put my insignia on the aeroplane?” and that’s actually the leg, where is it now?

That insignia there was on the side of the plane that they have, the Yankee planes and some of them had the whole leg, the lady’s leg and they said, “Make it like that,” and so Dad shaped it into a leg which you handle here and you put this in here and you just bring it up. It’s nice when you polish it up.

Dad engraved all around here, he was very good with his hands in making things. He could make a lot of tools, anyway, he used to give these to the Yanks and they used to come over with the bacon and cigarettes and the lollies. We used to do things for them and they used to do things for us. Everyone loved that shoe horn, there was a lot more but I think my nephew has got them and he won’t part with them. I’ve had that in the cupboard there, I keep

it there, I don’t know what they are going to do with it when I die. I was going to keep it in a museum in Charters Towers where he was born, that’s where his ashes are under a tree there opposite the Mullicks where his father was working, working on the mines.

No, he never changed.

Not really. The trains we didn’t have the passenger trains then. It was the, the Yanks used to come in trains and they use to, and the Australian Army used to

travel in trains but most of the civilian, and no, I wouldn’t say he had more work. He always had plenty to do and he used to teach this apprentice which was my sister’s friend at the time. He was nice, I wished I had married him if I was old enough.

Yes, I used to go in there and he used to say, “Norm watch the sparks,” from the coal and all that. A lot of the men used to come over and give me ginger nuts, I don’t know why, but their wives used to put ginger nuts in their lunch, probably because they couldn’t buy any other biscuit and ginger nuts were readily available and cheap. He would say, “Do you want a ginger nut, Norm?”

and I would say, “Yes Dad.” I didn’t know that the other blokes had given them to him and he would say, “Go over to my coat pocket and pull them out,” and he’d have ginger nuts in the pocket. Even when he come home from work sometimes when I wasn’t in at work we’d race down to the corner and say, “Have you got any ginger nuts Dad?” He would say, “Yes, right,” and he’d give us some. He was a loveable old man.

With food?

We didn’t have chairs, Dad made them, we had a wooden table and we had a stool so we couldn’t sit and rock it like this, we had to sit up straight and properly on it. If we didn’t eat our meal we had to sit there on that stool and our back ached until we finished our meal. We used to get tapioca for

dessert, which was cheap then. Mum used to make it with milk, have it with milk. Sometimes bake it, baked rice, rice was very cheap and it was very filling. We had the milk from the cow and the calf. I used to hate this tapioca and we had to sit there until we ate it and in the end I would shove it down my neck

and I’d say, “Finished now Mum,” and still have a mouthful and she would say, “Swallow that,” and I’d be frightened to and I’d go for my life up the back yard and spew it all up. We used to call it frog’s eyes, I hated it. Now I would eat anything.

Well we ate meat, but we only had small amounts of it. We did have meatworks here, we had

Ross River, Alligator Creek, and that’s where a lot of the men were employed at those meat works. Then there was up around this area was pineapples. This place is noted for pineapples and if you want to eat a pineapple buy one up here, the shop with the garage has them and they are beautiful pineapples. They are grown here and the Pacers grow them.

We had meat and vegetables, vegetables were good in the garden. The meat, well we could only afford cheaper meats. As I said before, my mother used to cook the roll of corned beef it was rather fatty, she would cut the lumps of fat off and eat them and the fat would be dribbling down there, it used to make us sick. I used to like the lean corned beef.

We had ordinary meals but we didn’t have a great deal of them. Mum used to make pasties, the mince and vegetables in it, about that long, the whole baking dish, the length of the baking dish and she used to cut them for us with some potatoes and that, we used to grow our own potatoes. We used to have beans growing on the fence. Sometimes the goat used to come over, we used to

keep him in the paddock, he would come over and eat the beans.

We had good food at Christmas, we had the, I am thinking back. We had, I remember we used to get a pudding and it had threepences

in it and I used to dive for all the threepences in the pudding. We had, I think, one year a baby goat. We had our ham, but we didn’t have a lot of it, we had one or the other. Whatever coupons you had that was what you could get.

As I said, the more coupons the more meat and veg. Coupons were for meat, clothing and petrol. Most people didn’t use their coupons because they couldn’t afford to have their car on the road.

No.

I can’t remember having a birthday. They were out. I didn’t even get a twenty-first birthday, I didn’t get an eighteenth one. No, I don’t remember any of them, they were a luxury.

The Americans had these parachutes, I think they brought one over because we couldn’t buy knickers at the time. We had to keep patching the ones we had. The elastic would go and you’d put a pin in them.

They said they could get a parachute and Mag, my sister, could make them. I don’t know whether they were seconds or the cords didn’t pull out when they used them so they were to be discarded, thrown out. He said, “I will get you one.” So this Joee Verdabich I was talking about he come over with one, one day and he said, “There is your parachute.” Well, if you know parachutes, they are all cut on the cross, the material. It

gives on the cross not on the straight and that was better because the material gave when you sat down, they didn’t split. My sister made them and she made a few pairs for each of us, Mum and myself and her but the elastic was hard to get. We had to wait for the specials to come on in town and you could only get three yards at a time

and the same with the lace so when we knew they were coming on we’d dive in and we’d throw the coupons over and we’d get them. Then I would go out and then my mother would come in and she could get some and she would go out and my sister would go in and she would get some so we had enough to put in our knickers.

That’s right, I’ve had a few here myself and

I’ve had to throw them out.

They were beautiful, lovely and soft, you wouldn’t know you had them on. But around the leg we didn’t put elastic around them, we saved them for the waist. But my mother didn’t like the loose legs she reckoned they were a short cut for strangers. So my sister used to sort of pull them in with the lace but a few of them I got I put lace on them at the back of them

because when we went to dances and our dresses flared up you could see the lace on the knickers and we called them gorgeous gussies. Actually they come into fashion years later for the tennis girls, do you remember? My friend down in Bateau Bay used to have a market and she used to make them, I forget what material, they were swami satin she used to make them out of and she used to

sell them at the markets for the girls and they used to buy them for their tennis rigs, you know their tennis outfits. They looked quite nice too.

He was just a friendly type of a guy. In those days as I say I can’t understand people here today, a lot of them are very arrogant they sort of don’t want to know you.

In those days people were friendly. If we were out on the verandah and they went past, we’d wave and they’d wave. I don’t know this day he pulled up and he said, “Hello,” and I think one of us was playing music, it was after school. He said he loved the music and could he come and listen. Mum said, “Yes.” So he came in and he listened and then he said it was

nice and could he come again and Mum said, “Yes.” So in the end he was a very good friend. I had a book with all their autographs in and I don’t know what happened. When I left and went to Sydney I think my mother destroyed it because she hated me having anything. Dad asked me for it years later but I said I hadn’t got it and

I don’t know where it went. I should’ve kept in touch with him because he was a really nice bloke. Not that there was any love affairs there because I was too young and my sister was only sixteen or something. Mum had her bloke already picked out. They were just friends that came to the family and sort of mingled with

us, I think they were sort of glad to get away from the camp for a while and have a life amongst civilian people, right?

I can’t remember a lot of the things they told us. I think Joe said he was married with about two or three kids. He wasn’t an attractive man but he

was nice looking to a certain extent but he had a heart of gold, he was a good hard man. Because he gave us the parachute, we gave him a couple of them and he was wrapped. They all sent them back home to their wives.

Yes.

There was no love there really.

No, my mother’s brother was in the war, he was Australian, but he came back, Uncle Eddie, he was in the war but he came back.

George, my mother’s brother

No, that was all hush-hush and we weren’t to mention it in case it got into the hands of the enemy. There was a house up here at the back of Rollingstone, which they took over, it was a radio station, they weren’t to show anyone where it was in case

word of that got out, it was all hush-hush. Rollingstone, he played a good part in the war, that Bushy Parker I was telling you about before, he was born here, he was only a young man and he was a flyer and he was overseas and he got mixed up, the Germans got him, he got into the wrong hands, and they had him and a few others put into a prisoner of war camp

there. That was during this last war. He escaped about four times, I’ve seen the picture. You will see him planning the escape and in the end he got out and they shot him. He was only about twenty-six so they’ve namde the park up here next to the shop

Bushy Parker Park after him. But they used to bring up on the train up here for the camp that was up at Mount Paluma and that was as far as it come and it used to come down in trucks to pick it up, take it from the Rollingstone Station. So they had a fair bit to do up here but there were camps everywhere.

I didn’t know a damn lot about what was going on. As I said, we were told to shut our mouth and we weren’t told anything. We just worked things out for ourselves. But it was strange,

you’d go outside and there would be all these army blokes and very few civilians around. It was really scary because you never knew what was going to happen, but I preferred to have the Yanks in the town than the damn Japs but to think they are trading with them now I think it is ridiculous. All the countries they fight against they end up friendly with them, what’s the use of it? Even now with Iraq, what’s the use of fighting there?

No, I still don’t understand. All I know is the Yanks were here and they were here to protect us and now they’ve made Townsville a defence town. I doubt if any foreigner can get in here because they’ve got Lavarack.

Barracks and there is army out there galore. You go into town and you go into McDonalds and an army bloke will come in. You see, the other day we saw a convoy of about ten of them and it’s got “driver in training” but a lot of them when they needed them to go over there to Iraq they take them from Townsville here. Because they’ve already trained them. We were in McDonalds once and I heard one of them say, “When do you go?” and he said,

“Tomorrow.” The next thing I pick up the paper the next morning and it’s got, “So many troops taken from Cluden, Lavarack Barracks to go overseas,” and they are only young kids of about seventeen or eighteen, it’s a damn shame.

Not really, all I know is that we had to go to these shelters because if we didn’t then there was a bomber around then we’d cop it.

Yes, we knew it was the Japs and they did try, they tried hard to get in here. They wanted to take over Australia,

they wanted it as their country. They sort of, and we had to douse out all the lights, every light and we had to put black curtains up like that so you couldn’t see in. It got very frightening at some stages there because I wanted to go for a ride on my bike and I couldn’t.

We had louvres in the front and we’d look out the front through the louvres. They had a big searchlight. I am not sure whether that was on Magnetic Island. I think it was. The searchlight would have been about, it looked to be about eight foot in diameter a round, big light, it lit up like day. It used to go around and around and then it would flash

back. Sometimes it would come around and if were on the front porch watching it they’d hold it there and we’d go like that because we knew that they were checking the place out and we’d go like that to say, “It’s okay over here.” But they could pick up any enemy or anything with that so if anyone tried to get in Magnetic Island if the light was on there no one would get in through

there.

It was, we couldn’t go to school, we couldn’t go out with our friends, we couldn’t have, we just had to sneak around and watch for everything in case the enemy was hanging around.

No, I don’t think there was anything we could’ve done. I mean, the Yanks took over all the houses, if they could do that, as this chap said to this woman, “We will have to take your house,” she was only newly married and just got into it in Chapman Street, they only just finished building it and moved in and he come around and said, “We will have to take over your house,” and they had

no option, they just took them over, they were to pay them for it but they didn’t, they just said, “Find another place.” A lot of people went south. They didn’t evacuate everyone out of Townsville, they just went south and what was in Townsville, that didn’t want to leave, they stayed but they had to be very careful and do what the government told us to

do. But, where were we up to?

That’s right. He said to her, “What if the Japs come in, they would certainly take it over. So isn’t it better to let us take it over instead of them?” So then they decided that’s the best way to do it so they let them take over.

They went south, south was all right. But up here, this is the port, this is the big port, big ships still come in here. Young fellows from Iraq when they come out for a break, or you know, we’ve seen two ships in here from over there fighting and they’ve had the aeroplanes on the

deck. When they come out they head out, because they’ve got the money, and of course the girls all drive their cars and head down to town, they are going to town because they know the Yanks are here and they pick up the Yanks and they take them out and dine them and wine them.

I didn’t know the exact names of the people.

Yes, they went off in their cars, what did have cars. Others walked, whatever way they could get, they started walking, whoever came along picked them up, some of them had horse and buggies. We had a horse and buggy but not during the war, no, after the war.

Just a bag of clothes, whatever they had to carry.

We had logs coming down from the mountains, they had the AWC [Allied Works Council] workers up there bringing down big logs to help build around here, to put in posts for landings and things like that from Mount Spec, timber loggers.

We also had a brothel. We were told to keep away from there. We used to see this blue little light and I said to Dad, “What’s that for?” and he said, “You stay away from there.”

The blue light, yes, it was a very pretty light. I would say, “That’s a pretty light,” and he would say, “You stay away from there,” and I would say,

“Why Dad?” and he said, “It’s got nothing to do with you, you stay away from there.” I found out later it was, I just thought they sold the prophylactics there but the Yanks were already distributed with them at the camp. It wasn’t, it was the brothel where the men went there, the army men, the Americans went there

for the girls. The girls were making money out of them but you had to go behind that place and in, it was very hush-hush.

No, but I have cleaned brothel windows in Sydney. You know they have behind the window, in Sydney, they have a big wall built there because one of the taxi men asked me, “Do you work there,

do you?” Because I was a young girl working there and they are young and I said, “No don’t be silly.” He said, “I thought you worked there.” Because you had to go around the back to get in, go around and get my money.

Yes, we used to go over to the fence and we could see all the planes. Some kids snuck in but we wouldn’t go in because we thought they were going to shoot us

because we could see ack-ack [anti-aircraft] guns and everything you know. It was on the edge of the dairy and we used to get our milk from this dairy and he, when we didn’t have the cow, we had the cow and the calf, but when we didn’t, we knew the chap anyway, Mr Griffy and his kids, we used to watch the planes from there, we used to visit them. The cows would

go off and wouldn’t give any milk, when the bombers used to go out, they were big bombers, when the crash was on we weren’t there, we had come home, we had to wade to the swamp to get there, the siren went and we had to run for the shelter up the park. Anyway,

Dad went, we heard this crash, even when we were up in the park and Dad said he was staying there and he wouldn’t come, he wanted to have a spell so he stayed there. He sat on the front porch and seen it all, he said it just went boom up in the air exploded and down it came, there was a fault in the motor or something, an American bomber

and it just went and burst into flames. He went over there and he said, “The bodies were just like bits of dead meat,” he picked them up and they were just burnt and charred, about five of them, you couldn’t know who they were so you couldn’t tell them. They had to let relatives know in America who they were, they just had to check who was there and who wasn’t there.

That was very scary he said. He come home and he was vomiting and Mum said, “What’s the matter with you?” He said, “I’ve been over to that plane crash, I’ve never seen a ball of fire in the sky.”

Not with the planes there, but there was some coming down out in the water,

they call them flying planes, I think you call them sea planes. I think that was with our air force. I can’t remember when that was, they had to try and go out and get it, they got it and dragged it back. Dragged it back with a four wheel and rope.

No, they swam.

We just, I used to do all my mother’s cleaning, my sister used to sew, that was her living. Later on she went out to work in town in a shop but at that time

she was at home working under the house. She had a machine set up on a big square. Dad put these timber like flooring in for her and she had her machines there. Later on in her years she got the overlockers but she sewed and I used to go upstairs and do all of Mum’s cleaning

and Mum used to sit down and talk to Mag. Then I used to go up to the garden and weed the garden and water it, help Mum with the washing, that’s about all I could do. She had a big ornament, like the one around the corner, and it was on top of the piano and I was wiping it down and I lifting it and broke it. Well, “What have you dropped up there?” I said, “I’ve dropped your lady with the grapes.”

She brought it all the way back from Sydney, or Brisbane or the other. She said, “You’ve got to get me another one.” I never ever got one until after she died and I went to Sydney, no, Brisbane it was, and it was in the markets there. But it wasn’t painted, I painted it, so that’s the reminder of the lady with the grapes I dropped.

Beltings, it’s a wonder I’ve got a backside today. Folded over his belt, the belt, not the buckle end, he used to fold it over and whip me with that. Because it was only because Mum would say, “Belt her.” He would say, “I hate doing this Norma, but you know what your mother is like.” She would stand there and make him belt me, she would watch him, my

bloody oath. I used to hate it and grit my teeth. It wasn’t very nice.

I didn’t hate my father for that.

I didn’t hate him I hated my mother for that. Go to Sunday School? Not in those days, as I said, we couldn’t go out the door really.

We did later. We went to the Garbutt Sunday school, I had to wade through the swamp.

Yes, we couldn’t go before because that was right over near the airport. I’ve got a bible in there that was given to me in 1948, that was after the war. I was in the Band of Hope, I had to abstain from

intoxicating liquor and beverages to get others to do the same, I had to put my hand up like this and swear. I did for years but it wasn’t until his father left that I started to drink. I was a barmaid, I went to work as a barmaid when his father left, and I never drank. They used to call me the barmaid that didn’t drink. Sober barmaid.

I wished I had sex with the boys, now seeing I was accused of it. Look at all the fun I would have had.

You wouldn’t like me to tell you, would you?

Other people are going to hear this aren’t they?

She used to finger me, that’s correct, that made you look didn’t it? To see if I was wet or dry. And how do you think I felt? Fourteen years of age, fifteen years of age and Dad used to say, “Maude, you don’t have to do that.”

It’s no wonder I went out, I got myself pregnant, yes, to Jimmy, my first love. That’s now I know that girl got rid of her baby. I often fret over that baby because if she hadn’t’ve interfered, I would’ve married Jimmy. He wanted me,

she made my father go after him with a gun. He fled here, he went to Brisbane. Seeing I was accused of doing it I ended up doing it, but I was raped in the first place by the other bloke.

We met at the dance actually, we just cottoned on to one another like that.

I liked his dancing, he come over to ask me to dance and we just looked at one another and I just melted in his arms. You know when you’ve got the right one, you don’t think?

He was about, I was about fourteen or fifteen and he was about seventeen or eighteen, a couple of years older than me.

No he wasn’t. A lot of them worked in the council on the roads and in the railway, government jobs, they didn’t have to go to the war. It was mostly the ones that were in their twenties that were called up into the war.

I didn’t keep the baby, I wished I had’ve. I hated my mother for making me do what I did. Right? But what can I do about it, I was young,

she was my boss then, she was my mother. Actually, I’ve had a daughter in the same boat as myself but she kept the baby. I wanted to, but it was too far and she said she would adopt it out when it was born but she kept it. She should never have kept it. I reared it. But she

married and she had two children, that’s the one that had the accident and one’s dead and got killed in the car accident. The other one is living, she is about nine now, I haven’t seen her since she was about two when I went to the funeral. They don’t want to know me because I am a bad lady.

It was in 1942, I don’t know what month but they had this cannon they brought out from overseas. They asked my father would he make a rail to sit the gun on over at Magnetic Island, I think it was a show piece, like to attract tourists

so he spent hours and hours with this railway line heating it and bending it and heating it and bending it so that it would become a circle because a railway line is straight and to get it bent you had to heat it and get it to a certain heat and keep pushing it around and around until it finally got into a circle. But you couldn’t do it in one day, you had to do it bit by bit. Then take it over there, they got it taken over and

when he got over there they lent him this jeep to get around in, he could still drive then in 1942 and he travelled all around Magnetic Island in a jeep after they put this machine thing fixed it all up and they thought it was great, it is still there today. He was happy to make it. They did have a bit of excess work

because the carriages, to put extra things on, extra carriages, different shape, to carry the load of guns and machinery an everything to use in the war on the trains and that’s what Dad used to make, help out and make.

No, I

went over there when I was a girl. I haven’t been over there since. My mother said I used to go over there sunbaking in the nude. If I had the figure I would’ve. Can you imagine me sunbaking in the nude? That was after the war when I was about sixteen, before I went to Sydney, she reckoned I was sunbaking in the nude.

Yes, when it finished they, when the war finished, during the war we didn’t have, you couldn’t just pick up a phone and ring up and get directly to the person, when you picked up the phone there was actually, I don’t remember any phones being on in anyone’s house, there was only public phones. The hospitals might have had them.

You’d pick the phone up and the woman on the other end, the exchange, she would say, “Hello, V for victory, number please.” I had to tell you what a lot of cheeky ones used to answer back.

“S for –,” and the receiver used to go down and they wouldn’t get their call. Once a friend of ours was with us and we had to go to hospital to see his sister,

she had a baby, and we were coming down and we had to walk down and it was very steep and we had to get back home to West End. She said, “V for victory and number please.” He said, “S for –,” and she put the phone down and we didn’t get a taxi, we had to go into town and get one there. Had to walk down the steep hill. What was the question after that?

The planes went across, and you know how they write things in the sky? They got “War is Over, Peace,” written with the planes. Then there was a big procession and it went from Flinders Street down the bottom end right around to the showground, everyone just joined in the march. Everyone blew trumpets and sounded horns and whatever they could. Cheering and everything.

I can’t remember what I did, I don’t think I did much, I think I rode my pushbike down to see everyone marching in the street. I hope I am not alive to see the next war that comes out, if any. If the, what’s their name, if the Indonesians get out here,

we are dead, they want this place now. Isn’t it funny how everybody wants Australia. Somebody said to me the other day if they had the choice of which country they would live in it would be Australia. They don’t know how lucky we are here. We’ve got everything that we need, everything is at hand, we don’t have to

barrack for anything like the ones overseas. Half of them poor kids have got nothing to eat and the dirty water they’ve got to drink. The church I went to when I was living at Black River, I was living in a shed, it wasn’t even as big as this room, bed there and a sink there and a cupboard there and a little stove in the corner and we worked in their yard for that roof.

That’s when we decided to stop travelling and buy a house and that’s when we looked and we found this one. Whilst we were there we, where was I getting, to something.

It’s gone now.

After the war, as I said, I wanted to sing, I wanted to dance and I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere up here. I just come home one day and my mother was saying to me, “Why don’t you go to Sydney with Ronnie. I don’t care how many Ronnies you have, marry Ronnie, I don’t care how many little Ronnies you have.”

I said, “No I hate him.” Then one day, I came home from work. I worked at the Townsville General Hospital –

My father got him out of town, my father was chasing him with a gun. Young Jimmy.

Wouldn’t you, if a man was after you with a gun. Poor bugger.

I never seen him or heard from him since that day.

I would like to see him now if I ever found him. Just to see how he fared out and if he’s on his own, we could be friends. It’s a sad thing when people choose your partners, they don’t know the right ones. Well, Ronnie was all right at first and after that he changed.

He was a cook and he wouldn’t cook a wretched meal. We had the kids and I would say, “Look after the kids.” “Yeah, all right.” I would go next door, I was making dresses, I learnt to sew myself in the end and I was making a dress for the woman next door. This was in Sydney and I went to fit this dress and I come back and I said, “The kids are quiet, where are they?” and he said, “They are all right, they are out there.” I went out there and they are in the kitchen making a cake and you should have seen it. Food from one end of the kitchen to the other.

So I did my block and I said, “You were looking after the kids go out there and clean the kitchen.” But he wouldn’t clean, wouldn’t get off his backside. As long as he had a book or something to read then that was it. There was no telly in those days of course. So the kids got a belting and I felt like belting him too. Anyway,

Some of them stayed.

Some of them did stay back. Most of them went back, it didn’t take them long to get on planes and get home. I mean, wouldn’t you if you had a husband waiting for you over there. Some of them stayed here, some of them got married here and some of them got married and went back over there. I think there might be still a few living here today that come out here in the war and got married here, they’d be grandfathers now.

That man down at the shop, did you meet Dick? He’s a Yank.

He’s American, the owner of the shop. Dick Richard Chamberlain or some name like that, Charleton or something, Richard Charleton, he’s American. He come out here after the war and he took over that shop.

There was nothing down there, there’s still not much down there. There’s a big shark down there right where they take the boats out.

Well most of them went to the abortion, I mean, it’s a hard thing to say, but I think they were all young, they were only in their twenties and didn’t really know what they were going in for and they thought it was love but it was just infatuation with the

uniform that drew them to them and their language, like they talk with a drawl which is very nice. When they got pregnant, probably their parents didn’t agree so they had to find places to go to. I think very few kept the babies. I’ve got a niece, actually, she’s my sister’s

granddaughter, she married an Indonesian chap who come out here on one of the boats in the port. She got pregnant to him and she went back to his country and she had the baby. That was about last year I think and she’s still over there. She’s a bit home sick, but she’s stuck with him. She was a wild one, I didn’t think she would stick, she drove over her mother in the car. Of course the poor

mother is dead now.

Causeway. Up the railway.

No, that was the brothel. What was it like? It was a house and it had cover up around the outside.

Like I mean cover up, it had people living on the verandahs which weren’t supposed to know, it was all hush up, in those days it was a nasty word. The actual activity was on the inside of the house in the middle section. There were four rooms and a verandah all the way around. The midwife was in the

middle of the room and she lived there as well. An ex-matron from the hospital. The taxis used to take you there and they knew what was going on and they’d take you into the matron and she would say, “There’s your bed.” She would say, “Come in here,” and you’d go into another room and she would do her job. Then you just walk around and do little jobs whatever she told you to do, mop the floor

and that, and you’d be aching but you’d do it. Then within a day, the next day, everything would be over and then you’d come back home.

Yes.

No anaesthetic.

The girls would help one another. They would muffle their cries.

It wasn’t very nice, was it?

They didn’t want the men out on the verandah hear them. But the men knew what was going on. The Americans well they were probably, half of them were probably married that got the girls pregnant, what was the girl supposed to do, carry it for the rest of the life? It’s a hard thing.

Yes.

He would have been, what, fifty-six, fifty-seven.

No, I wish there had’ve been.

She was a big woman in this one particular place, very firm but very pleasant you know.

She knew you went there for a job and that was it. She would say you had to help one another.

There would have been about five. Five of us. This girl didn’t know that I was in the same predicament that she was,

and she said to me, “Don’t you tell anyone in Townsville.” They just thought she went away for a holiday. I didn’t tell anyone, never ever knew, didn’t tell anyone until now, even my sister. I didn’t tell her, I don’t even think she knew, this girl never told her. Didn’t even tell her boss.

No my

Dad. I wouldn’t like to go through that again.

Only one evening, about two days and a night. That was not far from here, I can’t say the town,

it might still go on some time late after that I don’t know. I like to forget those things.

Has anyone else said that in your interviews?

After all, they get lonely and the girls see the boys there

and you know a little bit of affection. What can you expect? We are all human aren’t we?

No, there wasn’t in those days, none whatsoever. As I said, I didn’t know where babies come from. I thought you had to get cut to get them out. I didn’t know what a period

was. I was all blind to that sort of thing. I always suggest now, they bring it up at school but I always suggest it’s better if you sit and study a book because it’s got everything in the books. Especially the Every Woman for the girl and Man’s Body for the boy. Shows you everything, month to month how it grows and how your body changes from a little

tot and grows up to different stages. The kids of today, because they, I’ve got a granddaughter in Sydney and she’s only about nine and she’s parading ten and she’s parading around in high heels and hipster jeans and little tops and lipstick on, she thinks she’s about twenty. She’s going to be a model and she walks like one too, she’s probably going to be a good one.

But I don’t believe in pushing kids too far ahead, let them grow up naturally because they are not kids long enough. You see a baby one minute and the next thing he is walking around.

I loved being a mother, I loved babies. Even now when I see a baby in a pram I pull up and talk to it and coo it and that and I say, “You look lovely,” and they

smile at you. It’s beautiful, you know. I’d have babies now but the only thing I can’t stand is their squealing, especially if they are teething. That’s the only part I didn’t like. I had one granddaughter that just screamed and screamed all the time from the time she was born. I don’t know if she still does, she’s eight now. She screamed and then when the mother had the accident I couldn’t

handle her and the other son come down and he took over he handled her. He said she was all right now, I couldn’t handle her.

What was difficult?

I can’t say much there, I mean,

we didn’t have an abundance of everything but what we did have we had to get by with you know. I mean, if there are two bananas there and five to feed you cut them all up into sections to give to each one but you don’t just hoe into one yourself. You had to share. What didn’t fit my sister Mum gave to me.

She was bigger than me and we couldn’t go out nowhere and we had no phone because as I said, there was no entertainment, nowhere to go. The only thing, just after the war there was these bands, Salvation Army bands used to play down on the Strand and they used to have

rotundas there. Now they’ve pulled all them out and they’ve got other things on the Strand and those (UNCLEAR) wasn’t there, just rotundas all the way up and shrubs. It was a place where the drunks used to go, you’d go down on a Sunday evening to have tea and have a picnic and listen to the band and you’d go and play hide and seek behind the bushes and that and you’d find a drunk there or a

black fellow out to it. So you wouldn’t go behind that bush anymore. One little girl was murdered down there, a toddler, by a Samoan when I was young. So we were scared off that beach for some time.

No, I don’t remember.

Yes, they come home but we didn’t know what they come home on, I can’t remember what they come home on. They just turned up at the house, that was my mother’s brother, Uncle Dick and Uncle Eddie. Eddie Morris. He was another relation.

George he was one from Brisbane, he went back home to Brisbane after the war, we never seen him after that. That’s about the only two I know.

After the war?

None of them I don’t think were really

happy.

That made me happy. I learnt a lot since with the dances. I won two jazz waltzes in Brisbane since the war, not long before I came here and I

suppose I’ve got that to thank to teach me. But mostly we just used to go for rides on our bikes during the war and we had to be careful if we heard a siren we had to go for the nearest shelter. I don’t know.

It didn’t affect me that much. Kids in those days didn’t worry so much, they just did as their parents told them. We just didn’t know what was going to happen next, we just kept going with what was around. As for childhood,

as long as we had a meal and clothes on our back we didn’t worry so much. As I said, we come from a poor family, I married two poor men. All I worry about now is my kids and whether they are all right.

Eight. Two to the first husband and six to the other

one. Twin girls amongst that. One lived for five weeks and died with Pinks disease and then I had a love affair of four years and I had another child with him, another boy, he was English, he looked like Errol Flynn, he was a good looker and a good dancer too. Lovely dancer, he used to glide on the floor,

a bloody woman took him off me didn’t she so I lost him. Oh well, but I’ve still got the boy, he’s in Sydney and married with four kids now. That’s the way life goes I suppose. If I can’t hold them what’s the use in trying to keep them. I think they are all sorry now, even

his father. He was sorry after he left, he was murdered in Perth, they said he had a nervous breakdown and fell down the stairs drinking, took the drink, I don’t think so, I think he was bludgeoned over the head. He used to drink and get abusive. He was living with a prostitute and I think they had their pimps and I think

they got to him. I don’t think any man, I will swear on the bible, a drunken man never hurts themselves. When they fall they fall floppy. But I didn’t have the money to go to Perth and fight the case. He was buried by the time I come back to Townsville. When I heard about it, I thought, I had young Jason, he had a fall over a weir on a hard cement,

it must have been about a ten foot drop. He was only a baby and he never hurt himself. He had a broken collar bone but it went down. It come up like that but after about three weeks it was flat again, it mended. I don’t think a drunken man hurts himself, I think they, they fall too floppy and too soft you know, that’s my

opinion, I am no doctor.

Sometimes I wish to God I wouldn’t wake up.

Other times I think well I fought cancer, I fought every other thing that’s been around. I’ve been here for the kids, I’ve pulled him through his

crisis, I lost him nearly five years ago. The other son had a bad accident on the motorbike, I nearly lost him. I just think I must be here for a purpose, I must be here to be here for them.

It made you hard, it made you really tough.

Made you believe that you’ve got to be tough to survive this world and I used to take a lot and now I know you have to stand up and be spoken for.

Yes, I mean, you get somewhere and you’ve got to stand up and be spoken for, you’ve got to fight for your rights you know. Like I fought them and I reckon I still have fight in me. I’ve been in a few, what do you call them, not so much

arguments as a few setbacks and I fought through them. I fought through cancer, I fought through with this foot and I was off for weeks and they reckon it wasn’t broken. It was broken in two places. But down in Gin Gin in Bundaberg where it was x-rayed, they couldn’t tell me. It wouldn’t heal and I was still wearing a slipper, when I come up here, a shoe on this foot and a slipper on this foot two years later.

When I came here I went to the doctor at Deeragun and she sent me for an x-ray and there was two hair line breaks there. But it was mending but it wasn’t mending properly. It mended with a lump on the bone so now I am on Fosamax. I take one every Friday and that’s for osteoarthritis, you see my hands, it’s got the big knuckles.

Sometimes yes, that’s why I keep trying to play the piano because they double up. They just go stiff sort of sometimes.

My mother used to, as I said, she did the washing and us, my sister and this girlfriend, Vera Edwards,

as I say, she’s still alive and she used to go to school with us and as I said, we had to make our own fun, so this day we decided to dress up. We got a uniform each and a cap and we dressed up in these uniforms and went out the front and got our brother to take the photo which I have here today. It turned out quite well and that was years ago and I’ve still got it. It was fun

dressing up in them, we thought we were Yanks you know, but the Australian uniform we didn’t want to put on, not that we had anything against the Australians, but it was a hard uniform. How they put up with it I don’t know. It must have been very hot for them, in the winter it was that thick woollen flannel stuff but the ones they had they had a

white belt, this khaki thing with a serge thing but a very thick serge on their summer uniform and it had a white wide belt about that wide, but that wasn’t a nice uniform. And they had the gaiters, boots with gaiters around their ankles. But not the Yanks. We had fun dressing up in them.

My mother always used to repair them too if the zippers went in them she used to put new zippers in for them if we could get the zippers, at the time we used to take them out of older things, if something deteriorated and the zipper was good and the buttons, we used to cut them off. I still do today, I have a bottle with zippers in them and I had a big jar, my daughter took them, now I’ve started another jar. I often have to go through it when I lose a button. I think

most people do, you can buy them at second hand shops, they charge about four or five dollars for a jar of buttons. Zippers, I’ve got a drawer full there. I am a good person that scavenges at the op shops. I suppose because I was brought up going through the op shops you know. Most of our clothes, even for kids, came from the op shop. The only time they got new clothes was from the welfare stores.

That was when their father left me and I had to go to work and I wasn’t earning a great deal of money. I think it was forty eight pounds a fortnight, no, forty eight pounds a week. Then I went, forty eight pounds a week I was earning, when I had to stop working because he kept running away,

I was getting forty eight pounds a fortnight to feed us all. They come down so I had to go to charities, even now I still go to charities. But that doesn’t worry me. These come from charity, this come from charity. I am quite happy, I feel quite comfortable going there. Some people say, “I wouldn’t go to an op shop.” What’s the difference?

It’s still clothing. I offered a chap once clothing. I got it from cleaning out houses and it was good clothing. He was a man and he always used to walk the streets, we called him Tommy Twohead in St Mary’s in Sydney. He had a big lump here, cancer, tumour. I said, “Would you like some clothes, I’ve washed them for you.” They were lovely and clean and he always looked dirty and I thought I would take them and give them to

him out of the goodness of my heart. So I knocked on the door and said, “I’ve got some clothes for you, would you like to have them?” He said, “Not today, not today.” He more or less told me to go so I went and put them in the clothes bin for St Vinnies [St Vincent de Paul]. He wouldn’t have them. He’d rather get around in those dirty old things.

No I don’t think so, just that everyone was glad to see the end of the war so that we could get back on with our lives and I think things were a lot better then. People were all on edge before that, like during the war, they didn’t know what was going to happen with their lives. We couldn’t make plans, we couldn’t sort of say, “I am going to Sydney,” because you couldn’t get a train

or a plane or anything to Sydney or anywhere as a matter of fact. As for celebrations they were all put off and when the war finished as I said, they wrote “Peace” in the sky and everyone cheered and everything. We decided then it was time we started living and getting on with our life. We all cheered and everyone got on with their life then which was good.

I rode bikes down town and then Dad started fixing the truck up and we used to go up to Cairns in it, little old Chev Ford, it was good, it went, it got us there and back. I remember one time we went to our relations, he had a cattle station up the road here

further at Euroga Siding, we had to go through a creek full of clear crystal water to get there. It was one Christmas and we stayed there about three weeks. Dad used to like going out and mustering up the cows you know and we used to go out and pick pineapples for Auntie Jessie and she always had a fuel stove, she always had kettle boiling on the side of the stove

and there was always a tap on the stove with hot water. You fill up the thing and there was a kettle of hot water and she’d make a pot of tea and she’d keep it going on there and just pour the tea when anyone wanted it and a big pot of either stew or steak and kidney just sitting there ready. That was there day or night. She’d keep it stoked all day and night, keep the little shed warm for us. Next morning she’d put a few sticks in it and it would

flare up again and away it would go again. We used to love going up there and this year they killed quite a bit of cattle and Dad come home with this ute full of beef, cold beef, a whole cow and we had to put a cloth on it and sit on the meat on the way home to get home. We sort of tried to sit to the side because it had sides on it but your legs would go over the meat you know and when we got home we’d have

blood all up our legs and that. It was good, we had the meat, we had to find people with fridges to put it in for us, some of it we had to give away we couldn’t keep it all. It was very good. Those were the days when things really, you know, you had to fight to get things, and yet you earned it better. It was better

because people today are given things and they don’t appreciate it. When you’ve got to go out and work hard for it that’s when you appreciate it. Now yesterday, I got a carrot out of the yard and I brought it in and I picked a bit of the bottom of it because it had a sort of funny bottom. I tasted it and I thought, “That tasted like a carrot,” and to think I grew that, it was really nice to think I grew it,

it was something that I achieved. I am waiting for the tomatoes to come ripe too, they are not ripe yet. That’s when I am happy, rejoice, the results of that. One day I will get back to my dancing, I think the singing is out with my throat now because my lungs are all scarred. But the good Lord pulled me through that, didn’t he.

I hope it was of some good to you.