Australians at War Film Archive

Well, my name is Peter Perrett, I was born in Brisbane. My father was Fred Perrett, my mother was Leticia Alice Perrett.

I was born in Brisbane as I said, and I had, I had a really good life. We lived at Enoggera, originally when I was born, we went to a house at Alderley, rented a house until my father built his house at Pratt Street, Enoggera. My early life

was spent at Pratt Street, I had a brother – a sister, she was born, I can’t remember the date now. Three years, and then the younger brother, he was born another –

he was late, I’ve got it here.

I’ve got it here, that was Anthony, he was born – my sister Jill was born in 1924, my brother Anthony Sean Perrett, was born in 1935.

My Dad was, worked in the railway, he was in the chief accountants office, had a – Enoggera was in those days just an ordinary, working class suburb, quite a nice lot of people. I went to Enoggera State School,

went through ’til scholarship, and then after scholarship I went to the Industrial High School, passed my junior. My mother and father, we had a very comfortable life. Through the Depression times, we were always lucky, Dad always had a

job, and reasonably well paid. Around us, our neighbours, a few of them had a pretty bad trot [difficult time] during the Depression. My interests – my Dad played cricket with the local cricket team in his younger days, that is, when I was young. In fact my mother tells a story that

they were playing cricket, and she called him off the, off the cricket field, to show him I had my first tooth. So, it was interesting, I – we weren’t really church people, we’re Church of England, but when I got a bit older, when I was

fourteen or so, I liked playing cricket, and to play cricket, it was in a church grade, I had to go to church once a month, but I went to the Baptist Church which I enjoyed. So to play cricket, I had to go to church once a month, that’s the cricket team. Now in the, I’m talking about

myself now, at school I played football, and I was a reasonable swimmer, we didn’t have a, naturally we didn’t have a swimming pool, but we used to go into the Valley Swimming Pool, and swim. I used to swim quite a lot. Now, what else can I say?

I hope that was sensible enough.

Well, I started work at OPSM, which was a spectacle making place, and I started work when I was –

1936 I think I started work. There was only a very small staff. I was there, I was apprenticed, there was a five year apprenticeship which bought me to, five years, that was 1941 I came out of my time. Then war was –

naturally war was going for a couple of years, so I decided I wanted to join up, and they considered us as reserves occupation. I was always quite forward, even a little bloke like me was a bit forward, I said, “Well Mr Johnson, if you, if you won’t let me join up,” I said, “I’ll join up as a labourer.” So I went and applied to join the

air force, and very disappointed, they knocked me back, I was too short. I’m only five foot two and a half, you had to be five foot three. So I went back to work, and told Johnno that I’d applied to join the air force, and he said, “We’re in the reserves occupation, we can pull you out.” So I said, ‘Right-o.” Anyway, a couple of months

later, towards Christmas, I went and joined the army, I was accepted, and of course they endeavoured to pull me out, but I said, “Oh no,” and anyway it went through, and that was the start, and I joined the army in December 1941. Being, as an optical mechanic,

I was still, I was mucked around for quite a while, three or four weeks, getting shifted around, and they put me in a trade test too, with a lathe [machine tool for shaping metal or wood] and I didn’t know anything about lathes. So one day the captain came up and he gave a speech about these special forces, and was

asking for volunteers so I thought I’ll give this a go, and quite a few volunteered. So he said, “Well yes, you’re not a very big bloke, do you do anything?” I said, “Well I play football for Norths, I play with Jack Reardon.” “Oh,” he said, “Jack Reardon, he’s the Australian representative.”

I didn’t tell him that Jack Reardon – but I only played third grade. So he said, “Well, good,” and I said, “Yes, I’m a reasonable swimmer, and I do a little bit of boxing.” So he said, “OK, we’ll accept you.” So, that was that start, and next thing I knew, I’m on the train with a group of perhaps twenty or thirty Queenslanders

off down to – we didn’t know where we were going actually, we were on the train, we were going to Melbourne. It was quite a trip down, that was quite a story going down, you can imagine fifteen, twenty, thirty people, Queenslanders, majority of them were bushmen, they were from the bush, and of course they told us a lot of stories.

We got to Sydney, camped in the Sydney Showgrounds, one of the funny things that happened, three of us palled together [became friends]. There was Cyril Rebetzke, Les Whitfield, and myself, so we all – we said, “This is no good,” Les knew some people in Sydney, so he said, “I’ll take you to a party.” So we jumped the fence, and went down to the Showgrounds, and he took us to this

bit of a party. Oh well, came back, walked in the front gate of the Showgrounds, and they said, “You blokes have had your leave!” So anyway, we went onto Melbourne, we camped in the Showground at Melbourne, no, Caulfield Racecourse in Melbourne, and shifted on down to Foster, that’s

near Wilsons Promontory. Of course, we all thought – we didn’t know, some said we were going to be parachutists, and others said they were – We were sent down to Wilsons Promontory, and then we realised it was really tough going, we were – I mean, as you know, I’m not a very tall fellow, but I was very proud of the fact

that after all the training, there was a tremendous amount of training there with explosives and PT [physical training], and some of the – we were there for six weeks, and that was really heavy training, it was very tough. And I was always proud of the fact that in our, in my tent, Herb Narvo, who was a

front row forward who played for Australia, and he failed the test, and out of the, probably the five hundred people that went down there, they picked about two hundred and seventy of us formed the 2nd, as in those days, was the 2nd Independent Company, the 2/4th, no, number Four Independent Company. Now an independent company

consists of about two hundred and seventy eight men, consisting of three platoons, A, B, and C. Each platoon was divided into three sections of about, I can’t exactly – about fifteen men. Then also

they had a, it was commanded by a major, who had a 2IC [second in command], captain, and each section, A, B, and C platoons had a captain, and a lieutenant for each section. Now I’m not making it very plain, but also there was a sig section [signaller section], and an engineers section. So we had,

we formed up the company, formed our first. There was different trainings, there were trips down to, we had – at the Promontory, there was Tidal River, and two camps. Two camps, and oh I could go on for –

Well, we went from Foster by train up to, all the way up to Queensland, through New South Wales, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, out to Mount Isa, and at

Mount Isa we took the trucks across to Tennant Creek, then up to Katherine, where we formed – Now, the whole company, Number 4 Company was spread up to – this was the beginning of 1942. The company was spread almost over the whole of the Northern Territory,

A Platoon were down around the Victoria River, B Platoon were at Litchfield and C Platoon were down on the Roper River, and I was with headquarters in the engineers. Now we, our job, we were out at a station called Manbaloo, south of Katherine, and our job was to

map the Katherine river, and look for any places that would be, if the Japanese ever invaded Australia, where we could have good ambushes, and have cliffs we could blow, and different things like that, which the other companies around the Roper, they did the same thing, and the Daly, where B

Platoon was, and C Platoon was on the Victoria River. So you can imagine how ridiculous it was, that three hundred men, of course there were other troops in the territory, but here we were, covering the whole area in case the Japs [Japanese] ever came to Australia. Our first, well my first experience

was when the Japs, they’d already bombed Darwin, but when they bombed the aerodrome at Katherine. We were just looking around, we saw these planes high up in the air, up, I think there were six or eight of them, and oh gee, they’re nice aren’t they. Next thing, “Thump,

thump, thump,” bombs started coming down, that was our first experience. My job also was to, we on the Katherine River, we weren’t really supplied with many rations, we did a lot of fishing and

catching our own fish and eating them. One of the funny things that happened at this Manbaloo Station, it had a lot of cattle and of course, we had a couple of blokes who were experienced to shoot a beast, and pick the best parts of the butcher, we’d cut the fillet out, and anything. And then roll up, pulled up

the side that we’d butchered and the good side was up. So that the manager of the station, he used to come around occasionally, and he used to ride his lovely horse, Mr Fisher his name was, “Oh gee,” he said, “There’s another beast down, I don’t know, looks like some disease.” See, we’d of course, up in the Territory, beef would only last two or

three days. Because it would go, we used to cook what we could immediately, then it would go. So I’ve often wondered, old Fisher, he must have wondered why he lost twenty or thirty good of his beef, because we used them. But you could understand it, the good side was up, and after a few days it would rot, the result that he used to think he lost cattle through natural

thing, that was one of the funny things.

Six months.

That’s where, the company – we gathered together at Adelaide River, and we knew that there was something on, when the whole company, the whole two hundred, or three hundred of us,

we were there, and we knew that there was something doing, and the next minute, next, well we were there for three or four weeks, and we built the camp, we as the engineers had to go up, and I remember having to dig the latrines through solid rock with a jackhammer, it was terrible. Anyhow, made the camp now, we were quite happy,

get into Adelaide river, we’d go to the pictures and things. We lost one of our chaps there, we were going into the pictures and we were all sitting in the back of the truck, and the next minute another truck passed, and we were sitting over the edge, and bang, it hit him. And that was, he was our first, in our section he was the first chap that was lost. Other companies, other sections had lost

chaps through misadventure, and drowning, and accidental shooting. But then we knew that there was something going on. I happened to go into one of the officers’ tents, and saw this big map on the table, and it started to ring. Anyway, the next thing, we were moved. Right-o, the move, half a dozen of the – or eight or ten of the –

a couple of sergeants, a couple of corporals, and a few of the lieutenants, they disappeared. Anyway, we, next thing we heard, “Alright, pack up everything,” all our gear, all our kit bags, and just take anything that’s, little kit bag, little bag, and send all the kit bags away,

and we moved up to Darwin. Get to Darwin, we realise then of course, all the rumours are flying, we didn’t know where we were going. Major-General Herring [commanding officer of the Northern Territory Force] I think his name is, spoke to us, he said, “Well now, you’re going to an island that is very mountainous, and expect that, you know, that there will be, you’ll be in quite,

a lot of trouble.” So, next thing, we’re on the HMAS Voyager, on the destroyer. You can imagine three hundred men on a destroyer, all the rumours, and then we move out into the harbour, and – I’m not telling this very well.

Right-o.

Got on the destroyer.

Went to Timor, she ran aground, getting us off, then we’re in strife there.

Came back, came back. We were quarantined after Timor, I’ll tell you the story, we were coming off –

Came back, we were quarantined for three or four weeks, came back through, down Alice Springs, on the Ghan, to Melbourne, where we dispersed for our leave. Well after three weeks leave, we – oh anyway, I’m just saying, we

thought we were heroes. When we got to Melbourne, the Americans had just come back from Guadalcanal, and here we were, rag and bone, shorts and things, and they were beautifully dressed with Guadalcanal and everything, took all our, all our – we thought we were heroes. But, they took all our glory. Anyway, that’s our – After our

leave, three weeks I think it was, we reassembled at Canungra. Then it was a similar, went through at Canungra, which is similar to what we trained at Wilsons Promontory, but we were considered experienced troops, and we started off teaching other people about

jungle warfare and all that. Then we get shifted up to the Tablelands. Well, I volunteered for a explosives course, and in the meantime, well a major, a major chap who was an eye doctor, he said – he happened to meet me,

he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Oh, I’m in the commandos.” He said, “God, we need you, I’ll make applications for you to come to the hospitals unit with me.” And the company went off, and I suddenly found myself back at Townsville on the staging camp, and then I’m on the train to Charters Towers,

just a private, and I’m into the 116th AGH [Australian General Hospital]. So one day, I’m a private, the next day, I’m a sergeant, in to helping Major Chapman, and Colonel Scholes, he was another eye doctor, was CO [Commanding Officer] of 116. And so, that was quite an easy life for me, from then on. I helped a lot

with the, arranging operations, and helped in different, around the place, and when things settled down, I was a sergeant. Then things got quiet then for a while, and this is just a funny part about it, they made me permanent orderly sergeant. And one of the jobs was, when the

girls, the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service], and the men went into Charters Towers, we were a little way out, we were at All Souls, and Mount Carmel Colleges, they were using them as the hospital unit, quite a big hospital, it was a six hundred bed hospital. And they’d go into Charters Towers, and nearby, there was quite a big American aerodrome, and this is just a summary that always amuses me –

the lead trucks would come in, and there’d be an AWA [Australian Women’s Army Service], an AAMW[S] sergeant [Australian Army Medical Women’s Service sergeant], me as orderly sergeant, we’d have to make sure they went back to their, well the state that they came home – it was really funny. I wasn’t allowed to go to the women’s lines, but some of the stories, those girls.

One particular girl, she was, ended up as a matron of a hospital in, I’d better not mention her name. She used to come home with her, get off the truck, she’d sit in the – those bloody Yanks [Americans], and her bra would be out. It was very funny,

but that was just a funny part of it. I mean, that was quite an easy life for me, after being in the, after – So then I ended up going up to 2/2nd AGH, and I helped there. And then back near the end, that was getting, the end of the war was coming then, then I ended up at 116 Greenslopes, I forget the

number there, and I helped with the rehabilitation of the prisoners of war that came back. So then, that was the end of my life, army life.

Oh well, after the war, I came back and got my job back, and during the war I happened to meet one of the

chaps who’d been in the Spanish Civil War, and he used to give us a little lecture on socialism. Of course, I became a little bit socialist, and after the war, I came back, and had my job back, I was quite well, a wonderful firm. But in the meantime, those five years, the firm had grown, and there was,

I was in the workshop, with my attitude, I was always the one that, I was selected if there was any industrial trouble, I’d be the one who’d be the spokesman. And of course I was, I got on very well with it, the managers and company directors were marvellous people, very, very well. But my

job, one of – I had to go up if there was any little troubles, I’d have to go up and speak with Bill White the manager, and say, “Bill, look, this and this,” and there was one time when we, the living wage was risen such and such, and it didn’t come round, so I went up,

I said to Bill, “Look, we’re not too happy about this, what has happened?” “Oh,” he said, “That’s alright Peter, we’ll absorb it.” So I didn’t realise then, anyway, so I said, “Thanks, Bill.” Walking down the stairs, I said, “Jesus Christ, you buggers, you’re not going to give it to me,” I didn’t realise that when they were going to absorb it, we weren’t going to get it. So we, we organised a little

strike, but it wasn’t successful, but still, we made our point. But that was my attitude, I was always a little bit socialistic inclined. And that was the only job I had in my life, with OPSM, I went right through until I retired when I was sixty, and I got a gold watch, and a very nice – But I was well thought of, and I always,

always pleased to know that, even now, the apprentices that I taught over those years, see, I was there for nearly fifty years, like, including the war, I’m still recognised. Even the manager of one of the big branches when I go in to see him, he says, “Hello comrade.” That

was about it, that was the story of my life, only had the one job in my whole life.

Yes, that’s about, but I must admit that I had a very happy childhood. Mother and father, father was a,

was a original Anzac [member of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps]. Would you like me to tell this story now?

Now, my father was an original Anzac, he came off Gallipoli, went to France with the 9th Battalion, a Queensland Battalion. He became a corporal, and a sergeant, and then he got his, got a commission

in the field. He did his training at Trinity College, in Cambridge, Officer’s Training College, and then he came back. Towards the end of the war he applied to join the air force, the British Air Force, he was accepted. He was

flying at a place called – learning to fly at Midgen Hampton, which was in Gloucester. Now in Gloucester, he met, that was my mother, she was, she worked at Stroud, and used to catch the train into Gloucester, I’m not really sure, and Dad learning to fly, he must have, I don’t

know the romance part, but he must have known of her, and she used to catch this train, he knew she’d catch this train, and he’d fly along the side of the train and wave to her, see. Her mother said, “I’ve had boyfriends coming on pushbikes, some on a motorbike, and even one

with a car, but I’ve never had one coming in an aeroplane.” Well, eventually he proposed to her, and would – Now the end of the war came, so he went back to England on his leave, and he said, “Rose, would she marry him?” and she said, “Yes.” But she wouldn’t like him to go back to Australia, come back to Australia, she decided then.

He came back to Australia, and he got his job back again in the chief accountant’s office, and naturally, she said, “Yes, she’ll marry him.” So she came out, they got married at St Mary’s Church of England at Kangaroo Point, and well, that, she was an original

war bride. She came from a well-to-do family, she got a bit of a shock when she came out here, but she was accepted by my father’s family, like his sisters. He had sisters, and it was quite a, you know, it was a bit of, you can imagine, it was quite a shock to come out to Australia

for middle-class people in England. When we went back to England, my wife and I went back to England, we went to Midgen Hampton where he trained, and we, my, oh well, my grandfather originally came from Britain, Ferry, in Wales, he came out as a school teacher in –

oh God, I could go on forever about it.

Well, not many cars in those days, pushbikes, and things like that. But as I said, she was a, it was the first one who used to fly along in a plane and wave to her. But my Dad, luckily for him, he didn’t get into France in the air force

because the end of the war came, so he went back to his battalion, and then he was, he came back to Australia. He had quite a distinguished service, he’s mentioned in despatches.

Oh no, no, he went back to his job in the railways.

Oh yes, he told, in fact,

not so much me, but my younger brother’s children, they, they tell me stories now that he told them about the war.

Oh well, I had a great respect,

yes, I had a great respect for both my mother, and my father.

Yes.

Oh well, a few things.

No, he didn’t really tell me, although I learned a lot of, we’ve got a book, the 9th Battalion book, I read a lot of stories of the things that he, he was – he quoted like a lot of things, of Fuzzy Hairs [indigenous Papua New Guineans], and the bombing, and shelling, and things like that.

I heard a lot of stories, terrible.

No, no, not so much. He let me know, and he warned me. When we were – he didn’t, I think he realised when we came up from Foster up to the Territory, we came through Brisbane,

and we stopped at the exhibition grounds, and I let him know that we were there, and then I think when he saw that we had a bit of a to-do at the exhibition ground, and they wouldn’t let us out on leave, and our sergeant major, we almost took over, you know. I think he realised then, I was in a pretty

tough unit. Then he started to, you know, he realised that the unit I was in, was no ordinary unit.

None, no, none whatsoever, he just took it as, I suppose, they had a little bit of glory, those First World War flyers, and he just was being,

he’d been through the infantry, right through, and I think he just thought it would be a good idea, but it was towards the end of the war that he went into flying.

Yes, I’m reasonable.

No, no, but I knew about them.

Now this is something, see my Dad was, he was, took the pay down to Coolangatta, from Brisbane down to Coolangatta, and naturally he carried a lot of money, and he used to have a pistol, and when I was about twelve, he said to me, “Would you like to have a shot with a pistol?”

So, he used to bring it home, you see he’d be late home, so he took me out, and gave me a few shots. Of course, that interested me a little bit, and I’m afraid that I become interested in guns and he didn’t mind that, and we lived at Enoggera, and Enoggera

was not what it is now, we had the big range here, the Taylor Range. Another friend of mine, he had a Remington automatic, and I bought myself a twenty two, and we used to go shooting on the range, and I’m afraid now, I look back now, we shot anything that moved which wouldn’t be acceptable these days. The poor frilly lizards, and blue tongues,

and wallabies and things, so that was something that I considered helped me later on, when I was in the army, that I knew how to handle rifles and things, see. So that’s –

Oh yes, I don’t think she liked it much, but still – Another thing

that she used to talk about, I used to, we used to trap birds. I know it’s not accepted these days, but I had a, we used to make snares out of horse hair, and put stakes up, and put the snares all down them. The greenies, they’re parrots, they’d walk down, and they’d get caught in the snares, and

I’m at school one day, and I got called to the office, “You’re mother’s here, she wants you to come down!” There were twenty five birds caught on the snares, I had to go home and let them all go. It was very funny, I thought, I don’t know. You make a loop, see, and a parrot walks down and puts his head through it, and he gets caught.

They probably don’t do it these days, but anyway.

Make like a loop, see, and a horse tail, tail of a – So she had to come up and get me to let all these birds go, cause they squawk, and –

Yes, yes.

My sister, she went to the grammar school, she did quite well, she was a very attractive girl.

Not particularly good, no, reasonable, reasonable, but not particularly good. Now, do you want to, do you want to know anything about our later life, after we were married?.

Well, just that my brother, my brother was a lot younger than I was, and naturally, he was a carpenter. So he had three children, and we had two – four, yes, he had four children, and we had two. So we decided that we’d like to, being a carpenter, we’d

like to build a house up at the seaside. So we went up, and bought a piece of land at Perigean, which today is very high class, but we had it right on the water, right on the seafront, so we built this house, I was interested in a – this is another story, anyway,

we pulled our trailers up and built this house at Peregian, and we had fifteen years of really wonderful holidays there. Of course, when the kids got a bit older, when they were seventeen or eighteen, we realised that the time had come when we were up at Peregian, the kids were in Brisbane. When we were in Brisbane, the kids were up at Peregian,

with the result that we thought now, this is not getting really good, because they were seventeen, and eighteen, and nineteen, and twenty, and I think, “We’ll sell it.” So we sold it, and we thought we did particularly well. Now that house today has just been sold for a million and a quarter.

Well no, this is, this was twenty five years, over the period, see, now if we’d held on to it, but that’s what I mean, we don’t know, see, but we had a marvellous – my brother and myself, my sister had died before, but we, the family, all kept together, and we had marvellous holidays up there.

Well no, unfortunately, he died, he had an aneurism, and he died. His wife now lives at Bribie [Island], we’re still very friendly with her.

Yes, I had a foxy.

Yes, I’ve had – all my life I’ve had fox terriers.

I don’t know, I guess I like them.

Yes. The first one was Nibby, the second one was, oh I’ve forgotten, the one that he had out here, Glory, she was a lovely dog.

Well, yes, yes, they had Chinaman’s gardens,

where Pickering Street is now, the industrial area, that was all Chinese gardens. And Jimmy [slang term for Chinese] – and we used to catch fish, and eels, and sell them to Jim, to Jimmy, and they used to cook them. Oh yes, and we had the big army camp at Enoggera. I was always interested, my Dad took me over, and they had,

they had the butts there, the rifle shooting, we used to go and watch the rifle shooting, and then the kids, when I was going to school, we used to go up behind the butts, and get all the spent bullets, use them in our shanghais.

Don’t you know what a shanghai is? It’s a fork

with a rubber –

Yes.

A slingshot’s a little bit different, a slingshot is a shanghai.

Oh yes, Dad and I used to, we had a wood fire which we were very proud of. We used to, my mother was a very good cook, and we’d, we’d go down to the railway and get the railway sleepers, the old ones, and we’d bring them up, and we’d saw them up into lengths, and then we’d chop them up for wood – and another thing, Guy Fawkes’ Day was great,

we – in front of our house at Enoggera there was a big paddock, and three or four of our families – and we’d drag – just before November the 5th – we’d drag bushes, and have a great bonfire out in the paddock. Of course, they stopped that now with the crackers and things like that, that was really good.

We were quite a little group, little family, like the neighbours, we were quite neighbourly.

Oh yes, throw downs, yes, tom thumbs, bungers and rockets and things, that was early days.

They were sand in them, didn’t they have sand in them?

Yes, throw downs.

No, not really, no, I did follow it a little bit. I knew more about, after the war, of the troubles in – as I said, that friend of mine that fought in the civil, the Spanish Civil War, he told me. I knew about in 1950, more about the troubles in, in

pre-war, than I did then, I didn’t worry much about it.

Yes, yes, that’s another thing. We had – we were very proud of the fact that we had a wireless, one valve, and a rectifier I remember, and we used to listen to the cricket from England at midnight,

we’d listen to the cricket on the wireless. Of course then, we got better wirelesses later on, but we had an early wireless.

Would be, yes!

We’d be – at midnight we’d be listening to the cricket in England.

Yes, yes, and a Sunday, and a Saturday.

Yes, well, ’cause I didn’t have much, my brother, I didn’t have much. When he was young, I was in the army. Yes, he played hockey, but I played quite a bit of sport. I was never much good, but I,

I played, I did reasonable, I played not a bad – being small I used to get knocked about in football a bit.

Oh yes, that was another one of my problems, I could never dance with the tall girls, see.

Yes, yes.

Yes, yes.

In the what?

Yes, I used to, I learnt dancing, as I said, I had a bit of trouble, because – oh I did reasonably well with the girls, I was always reasonably popular.

I don’t know about that, I was a bit cynical sometimes,

but still, yes.

I don’t know whether, you should ask them, not me.

Oh it was the old time dancing, the quick step, the foxtrot, the waltz, and the Pride of Erin, the usual, the old style. Of course, during the war, the jitterbug came in, I was never much good at that, I was a bit,

I was past dancing then.

Not particularly much, a little bit, with the church group. We used to

have the Sunday school picnics and things. Yes, before, when we were about seventeen or eighteen, we’d go out a bit I suppose, nothing really serious. As I said, playing sport, I used to go sailing a bit too, and unfortunately sailing, Saturday you’d get in late, you’d have to clean the boat, you’d be – I wouldn’t say

I was a, any –

No, no.

Yes, I was never in Scouts, no. I was in the YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association], but no, I was never in Scouts.

Yes, yes, I was down at the station

getting my weekly ticket to go to work, it was a Sunday night, Mr Menzies [Prime Minister 1939-41 and 1949-66] –

No, somebody told us, then I heard it later on.

I don’t think that I thought very much about it. I was a bit concerned, I knew that, what my father had been through, and I – you know.

But there was, we had the period of the early war, business as usual, Mr Menzies said business as usual. But I did know some people that went away, the 1st Division, the 6th Division, I knew some fellows that went away and that, some older ones than me went over to Africa.

Yes, yes, I did

quite well, I liked it. I had to go to night school. I started on twelve and sixpence a week, that would be a dollar twenty.

No.

Yes, yes, I paid my board.

We had a little group of guys, we were never, I wouldn’t say that we were particularly interested in girls.

No, no, that was one of the things when I, that’s, when I laugh now. At school, they had their singing lessons, “Evie Watt and Peter Perrett, you go down and do the gardening.”

No.

Well, I don’t know, but I must admit that I, during the war, I learned a lot of songs, I used to sing songs, the army songs, I can still sing them, my wife goes crook [gets angry].

Oh yes.

Yes.

Yes –

\n[Verse follows]\n “Beautiful, beautiful Queensland,\n Where all dumb fellows go,\n They thought they would be parachutists,\n But that,”\n

See, there was other words, I’m putting in the –

\n[Verse follows]\n“Beautiful, beautiful Queensland,\n

Where all dumb bastards go,\n

They thought they would be parachutists,\n But that was no go.\n They went out to look for the ack-bar\n They found him asleep in his tent,\n Surrounded by – ”\n

Oh no, I can’t remember!

No, that’s just. See that’s, the ack-bar,

ack-bar was a, when we were in, at Foster, we had a, I don’t know, the Wilson Promontory is very mountainous, there was Mount Oberon, and we had a stunt that we divided up two sides. The ack-bar was one side, and I’ve forgotten what we were, then we used to fight, have to

fight each other you see.

\n[Verse follows]\n “So we went out to find the ack-bar,\n We found him asleep in his tent,\n Surrounded by –\n

Anyway, that’s another one.

Oh fellows were there, bricks on beds.

And there’s other songs. Then I copied some of the songs that the fellows from the Middle East had told us. Oh, I just can’t think of it now, you’ve got me, but anyway, we used to sing as we marched, as we did our stunts and things because we did a lot of,

a lot of long marches. We used to, one of the letters there, I was reading how we came, we had to do twelve miles in four hours up in the Territory.

As we went along, we’d sing.

Oh yes.

Yes.

Oh yes, he was quite annoyed, and I told him, “OK Johnno, if you – I’ll join up as a

labourer,” he said, “Oh no, I’ll let you go.” Because we had a, I was the original apprentice. When OPSM started in Brisbane, there was only, there was a manager, two tradesmen, myself, and a girl, and now there’s probably a hundred and fifty today, more, there might be more, but unfortunately they’ve been taken over by

an Italian firm now.

No, no.

An optical mechanic, making lenses and glasses.

I had the chance, that’s one of my regrets. When I came back from the war, I had the chance of, under the rehabilitation act, I could have become

an optometrist, but I was a bit silly, I didn’t take it up.

I did alright, we did alright, as I said, I was very well thought of in the company.

No, I hated work, that’s what I said, as soon as I got sixty, I could get a pension, I

retired.

Actually, I can’t remember really, I don’t – I think they accepted it, it was inevitable I thought.

Oh well, I think he realised, oh well, I can’t really

recall.

Well, I was pretty fit and I say so myself, I was exceptionally fit really. I played football, I played cricket, I did boxing, good swimmer.

Yes, I went to the Exhibition Grounds, in Brisbane.

No, on my own, no, I was by myself. Although I often look up now, see my number was QX26127, and I look up in the,

in the death reports of people who were close to me, although as I said, the group that went down from Brisbane to Foster, we were all about the same numbers, same army numbers, see we all joined up about the same time.

Yes, yes, as I said, I was sent down to Ascot Racecourse, and then they started to muck me around with trades and things like that. That’s when I, when Danny O’Connor, Captain O’Connor, that’s when I volunteered for the special

forces, see.

Well they, typical army, they didn’t know, shipping us around, and ended up at Grovely, at Gaythorne, and then they didn’t know what to do, they had a whole stack of people, they didn’t know what to do with.

Well groups, well naturally sorting us out.

Oh, about a month.

Nothing, just getting marched around, nothing very much at all.

Yes, a start of, but it wasn’t really, it wasn’t anything like the army life I got to expect down at Foster when I was in the, when I went to the real army, I suppose it was – No doubt there was infantry battalions that were getting trained well at Redback, but I never got round to them.

Yes, sleeping in tents, yes.

Not teaching us anything.

Well they just, they were sorting us out I suppose.

Well this is what I said, they put, they sent me to, gave me a trade test. They sent me into use the lathe which I’d never seen

in my, and they gave me a lump of steel with a file and said, “Cut out a square,” which I had no idea.

It’s too long ago to remember.

Yes, Captain O’Connor.

Yes.

Well that was, yes, that was the idea I suppose, he wrote it up as a bit of a glamour place. As I said, we thought they would be parachutists, but that –

I can’t recall, there was probably a dozen or so, and then he knocked back a few,

and picked a few, and then that group, as I said, I can’t actually remember how many, there was about twenty eight, or thirty, and half of them ended up in the 2/4th.

Yes.

Yes, and then we went to

Foster, down to Victoria, down to Wilson’s Promontory, and then they sorted us out again, and as I said, out of those five hundred that ended up there, the two camps, well they picked out about two hundred and eighty of us, of the ones that did reasonably well in the training.

No.

I’d never seen, I saw snow the first time on the way down, looking across on the Alps, and then Foster, then Tidal River, which was, well it was really tough going there.

Well, it was, we had to get up in the morning, and we had to run up over Oberon, which was a fair sized mountain. Then we’d have lunch – have breakfast, then we did all our training. We did PT training, rifle training, making grenades, blowing up

holes in the ground, and blowing down trees, being taught general, a lot of demolition stuff. We’d be taught how to blow a train line with gun cotton and plastic high explosives and fuses, and all that. Well –

It was sabotage, really.

We thought we’d be put behind lines, and blow up things, and destroy things.

No, oh well, yes, I suppose it was, yes.

Yes, well we did, one of our most successful – on Timor – one of our most successful raids was when we blew the road between Dili and Manatuto, which is where the Japs – the big cliff and the road there – the Japs used to use it, and we snuck down, and that’s a

long story. We had to bring up six tins, fifty pound tins of amanol, which is a high explosive, had to bring them up from Batano, right across the islands, and then go up and we blew a section of the road, to stop the Japs from moving, driving between these two towns. It was, it was a success,

although the Japanese were pretty clever. They had the road going again in five days time.

No, no, there was only eight or ten of us did that, we wouldn’t be, probably six of us at the end of the day.

But there’d be a lot of people involved in bringing the amanol up from Betano, and right over the island.

Oh yes, but that’s what we were trained for, yes.

Oh yes, I didn’t mind it. It was quite strenuous, and it was

general demolition. It just, serious army training, rifle firing, and route marches, and throwing grenades, and things like that. There was a couple of chaps killed in there, which was unfortunate, with explosives, and short fuses.

Yes.

You know, I can’t really remember, but probably they knew I was going, yes, and then I used to write them the letters, the letters are all there, as I read them.

Oh yes, I’d never been out of Queensland.

Yes, the ones that went down with us.

Very, very good friends all throughout, even now, there’s not many of us left.

In fact, there was a funeral last Monday up in Caloundra, unfortunately I couldn’t get there, but he was one that came down with us. There’s not too many left now.

Yes, yes.

Well, Cyril Rebetzke was, he was a fencer,

and he did fencing out west. He taught me a few things, he taught me how, different things about wire, tying wire together. But apart from that, there was Les Whitfield, he was an older chap. And the three of us, well now – see, do you want me to? This

is quite a – we did all our training at Wilsons Promontory, Tidal River, and we formed the company. Now, Les was in A Platoon, Cyril and I were in 1st Reinforcements, and well, we had four days leave, we realised we got pre-embarkation leave,

I think it was four days in Melbourne, well the three of us went together, and we stopped at the Federal Hotel, eighteen shillings a day, which we thought was very high, and Cyril and Les liked to have a beer, well I wasn’t too keen about that. I went to visit a friend of my father’s, who

was with him over in the 9th Battalion, and he was, Charlie Pizzi, he had a very nice place, and he drove me around. There’s another thing, they, Cyril and Les, went to the races, and I came back, and they said, “Did you have a good day?” and I said, “How about you?” “Oh, no good,

we’re broke.” So they said, “What we’ll do, we’ll pool what money we’ve got, and divide it by three.” So, I had all the money, and we put it on a blanket, and divided it up three ways, then we had another friend, who’s father was a bookmaker, lived in Melbourne. His name was –

gee, I’ve forgotten, he got killed in Tarakan. He took us up to Ferntree Gully, to his – they were pretty wealthy, and we had a lovely time with them, I’ve got pictures of them. Oh, what’s his name? Forget it now, anyway, that was our leave. Another thing

too, before our leave, we had a uniform parade that we got presented, given our uniforms. Now we had a different uniform to the Australian uniform, we had the English type, we were quite proud of them, and we were given a night’s leave to go into Foster, and of course,

mine didn’t fit me too well, and we went into Foster, and these ladies said, “Can I help in any way?” and I said, “Yes, my uniforms need alteration.” They said, “No trouble at all,” and then they raised everything so that I had a perfect fit, they cut them down, and adjusted them. Those were the ladies from Foster.

Civilians, you know, we went in as a group, and they met us, they were the local Patriotic Society or something, whatever it was, so I was grateful to them.

That was a deciding thing that helped, yes, well it decided me to join

you know, I just felt it was the right thing to do.

Yes.

Well, he just said that he wanted volunteers for an

important job, which was reasonably dangerous, or something like that, and that’s about all I can recall.

Oh yes, I suppose it did, yes.

No, no.

No, I didn’t think about it at all, didn’t even, and as for

patriotism, I don’t, I wasn’t really, no patriotism came into it at all. It was just a young fellow with, just a thought of something different, and exciting.

A bit of adventure, that’s right.

Well, we used to have to go out on stunts, what we called stunts, where we’d have a pack, and a rifle, then we’d have to go over. The big one was the 3921 [wireless set], down to the sealer’s cove, which was right down to the end of the point, which was – and you’d be out

for three days, three nights, and almost living off the land, and well, it was just cold, and tough going. I used to give up sometimes, but a couple of big fellows used to help me out. It was just heavy training, over

mountainous country, and then there would be no shooting or anything like that, but you’d be, you’d have to carry your rifle with your ammunition.

Yes, there was a lot of that, what do you call it? Self defence, things like that.

They used to all pick on me ’cause I was only a little bloke, and they’d throw me around you see. I used to get a little bit back sometimes.

Yes, they’d put a headlock on you, and you know, and different things, they’d throw you, and pretend to stab you, and all that business.

I used to slip around, I knew a little bit about it, but big fellows would knock me around.

Yes, we had, for explosives we had pressure switches, which you know, you’d put under a book, and

attach it, and they’d go off as soon as the book. Time switches, set times, and oh, a lot of explosive, and teach us instantaneous – we had, I’ve forgotten the name of it, it was instantaneous fuses, and otherwise, other ones were timed switches, and things like that.

In fact, they still have similar ones in the army now, they tell me.

Yes, well yes.

Well, I think that comes naturally you know, to camouflage, and all that business,

and creeping along, and different things like that. I think to anybody with any sense, it comes naturally to do it, anybody who wasn’t used to it, well they were the ones who lost out to it.

No, not really, no, I was a reasonable rifle shot.

Yes, that’s right.

Well, they just disappeared, they were sent back to their units, or were sent somewhere else, just didn’t. You were speaking about those songs, there was something came to my mind.

Naturally, when we first got down to Wilsons Promontory, we were all a little bit – well I suppose I know I was, but we got together, and there was the group of us, and probably a few others, who came from Queensland, and we had West Australians too, and I think they came at about the same time as us, and we got into this, they had a big hut there,

a mess hut [military dining room where service personnel eat or relax] I think it was, and one of the lieutenants, Nicolay, he was a sigs bloke, and he said, “What about a sing song?” and he knew all the ribald [vulgar / bawdy songs / jokes], he knew – so that put us on a – right from the first start, that we were accepted. See independent company as I might have explained, it was a major, 2IC,

a captain of each section, and then a lieutenant. Well, we became, not so much friends, but you know, you could rely on the fellows, they became – naturally, you wouldn’t want to have a, a private wouldn’t want to have an officer as a friend, but you’d know that he would appreciate you, and you’d appreciate

him. So that was the spirit altogether, of the independent company. See, we were a group, we knew most, you knew most of the three hundred blokes in the, or if you didn’t know them, you knew of them. There were some particularly prominent fellows that you knew

about.

Well, you were, you realised you were a mob, you associated with each other. It was just a mutual feeling. We had some crook blokes, and some really wonderful fellows.

One particular fellow, he ran the two-up game there, and he was pretty tight with his money, and I happened to have a pretty lucky trot, and I won about fifty or sixty pound, and then I got out of it. Well, he was really sour on me, he said, “You lousy cow,” now that’s some of the money I took to Melbourne

with me, and that was, his name was – anyway, he had a bunion, and he used to – what was his name? And he really wanted to get out of the company, and he used to get on parade, and hit his boot with his foot, so he’d try and make his bunion bigger.

Anyway, after I got out of the company, they tested men for glasses, and they made his glasses, and I saw his name go through. Oh God, I wish I could remember his name, anyway, I had to parcel up the glasses, and I put a little note with it, I

can’t remember, “How’s the bunion going?” See, so it went out there. Next thing, about three weeks later, I heard – this was in the Tablelands, I heard, “How the devil are you?” they all knew about, about big fellow, I can’t remember his name. So it went over very well, I said, “How are the bunions going?”…Jock Joiner, Jock Joiner, “How’s the bunion going

Jock?”

Yes.

Shorty.

I didn’t care, a few us of had nicknames, Swede Swanson.

Well he was, Swede Swanson, he was – Swanson was a Swedish name.

Bugowsky, Fred Bugowsky, he got killed, Jake Jacobson.

Really good, we were, the lot of us were pretty – we had

some very tough fellows there, they were marvellous, some of them. One particular case I remember, we went, this was on – I think this was down to Sealer’s Cove, I was absolutely exhausted. Anyone, we threw a grenade into the sea and we got some fish, and they said, “Gee, we’ve got no

matches, how are we going?” He said, “Oh, there’s a hut back, a couple of miles back, I know they’ve got frying pan and matches in there, I’ll run back and get it.” Here I was absolutely exhausted, and he ran back two miles, and come back with a frying pan and matches, and we fried the fish. There was another case when we got to Canungra,

this was after we came off Timor, we were on a two night stunt, and we – I was exhausted again – and we were at the bottom of the mountain where Binnaburra was. I don’t know if you know Binnaburra, it’s a hotel on top of a mountain in the mountains up there, and

they said, “There’s a dance going on, you can hear the music, lets go up and go to it.” Here I was, they went running up this five, or six, seven hundred feet mountain to go to the dance, to get up to the dance, and here I was exhausted, and there they are. Just shows you that some of them were tough.

Oh yes.

Well yes, although we – it was all very secret – although we managed to get – I noticed that I sent a telegram from somewhere we were coming through, to Mum to say, Dad, that I was in

Brisbane see, so we got –

Well we were told – mind you, we had our colour patch, and we knew if it was a distinctive patch, like even now, anybody said you wore the double diamond, it was quite a distinctive colour patch.

Yeah, we were told that we were –

No, we didn’t know, all the rumours that, like the batman [orderly assigned to serve a military officer], the CO’s batman had let out a few hints, but we, no, rumours all the time. We thought,

before we left Foster we got issued with what they called a sea kit, that was a little white hip bag with sandshoes and a couple of things in, well we thought we were overseas. But then, that got taken off us, so we knew that wasn’t. Typical army, they didn’t know.

Well, all the batmans, they all had their different rumours.

Well, they spread like wildfire.

Oh yes, often wondered what was going to happen to us.

Well that was,

see, that was another rumour. On the way out to, after we got off the train in Melbourne and we went down to Foster by train, then we got onto trucks, and then we were in the trucks and look out, and there’s an aerodrome there, and oh yeah, “That’s what it’s going to be!” It wasn’t, it was only a rumour, see that was rumours, rumours all

the time.

No.

Oh the train trip, that was an epic really. Can you imagine six or eight days in the train to Mount Isa. A couple of them –

well, it was Newcastle, we got a lovely feed there, I can remember that. Then at Palmwoods, that’s a town up near Nambour, there was a chap loading pineapples there, and of course the blokes got out and started pinching his pineapples. He said, “For Christ’s sake, take the pineapples, but

leave me the cases,” so we had pineapples all the way up to Mount Isa. But that’s some of the, they shouldn’t have done it, but still, they did it, and then the other story is, we got to Jarrah which is well out in the desert, south of

Mount Isa, the train had to stop there. On the hill opposite, there was the pub, and of course, the blokes got off. The train had to stop for water, anyway, they got into the pub, and were drinking away, and they tried to get them out, the officers tried to get them back on the train. Gordon Hart, he was an officer,

he was one of the blokes who was going, “Come on, we’ve got to get back on the train,” then the barman said, “Don’t worry,” he said, “They’ll get back on the train, because I’m the driver,” and he said, “As soon as I leave.” So the driver of the train was serving them a beer, so he said, “The beer is off.” He got on the train, and then we went on to Mount Isa.

It’s a little, very small town, like a real western town there, up on the hill, I’ve got a –

No, no, except we know that we were going to the Northern Territory, because we were facing that way. It was all, see by this time the Japs are in the war –

and we used to get up and help the firemen stoke the train, you know, go up and down. We had a couple of Bren guns [machine guns] on the train, to shoot down any aeroplanes that came around, which is silly now, but it was all serious at the time, had a tripod up, and a Bren gun.

That was true, that was absolutely true, that was one of our jobs in the territory, we had to look where – I’ll tell you a story of when we were, we were out at Manbaloo, and they asked for about ten blokes to come into headquarters, which was at Katherine, so we came into Katherine, and our job

was to train these Australian Aboriginals. In those days we called them niggers, you see, the Calendar Bay niggers were coming down to be learned, to be taught how to use .303’s. Well they were – Calendar Bay is on the Gulf, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, and these particular natives were dead set against

anybody with slant eyes, because the Japs used to come down, and the pearl luggers [pearl collecting boats], and they’d raid them, and take their women, and things like that, and they were dead set against anybody with slant eyes, so they sent these blokes, these natives down, and they were tall, big fellows. Of course, they were shy for a couple of days, then they used to take

the mickey out of me [tease], they’d pat me on the head, and you know – and they gave us little grass, wove a grass armlet around our arm, that was a friendship, but we didn’t – they were wonderful natives, there were about fifteen of them, and we couldn’t teach them too much, but you’d be on guard at night,

and you’d feel this hand go down, feel this little arm, oh God, they’d give you a fright, and you’d be walking through the bush with them, and suddenly they’d go like that, and quiet, and they used to have sticks with them. And then whack, a flight of birds would come over and they’d throw the stick and knock them down, three, or four birds, marvellous.

But we never succeeded in teaching them, but the idea was that in case the Japs did land in the Gulf of Carpentaria, at least there’d be some people that would – we could set to train. But I don’t think we were really successful, we had them for a week or two, but we weren’t really successful. But the thing I got about, they were all really good styles of fellows,

but they loved me, they used to pat me on the head, “Oh Shorty, Shorty.”

Oh yes, it was, it happened quite a lot in the early, in the 1930’s.

Oh no, no, this happened

before, this happened when they were – the pearl luggers would come down, it happened on the west coast as well, all around Arnhem Land it happened, but these particular natives –

Well we didn’t, we couldn’t, we didn’t really know their language you know, but we knew this is what had

happened, or our seniors knew that, people, the administrators knew.

Oh we tried to show them how to use a rifle, give them a shot, but they didn’t –

Yes, demonstrating how to use a .303, and I suppose that they were sent back with .303’s, I wouldn’t know, but

that was our little job, about ten or twelve of us had to, there was about eighty of them – eighteen of them came down I think. One came down – this is another story – on the way down they came down in a utility, and one of them bashed his eye, oh, big, bad cut across his eye when he got there. So Joe Boothman, our RAP [Regimental Aid Post] Sergeant, said, “Oh, I’ll fix you, I’ll sew it up, but I’ve got

no anaesthetic.” He said, “I’ll try it without that,” and he just, he sat there, the native sat there, and Joe put about twenty stitches in without anaesthetic, and sewed his eye up. Gee, they were tough fellows.

Oh yes.

Oh yeah, well in Katherine the natives around there, they could speak English, but these were wild, wild aboriginals, they hadn’t had much to do with white people at all.

No, never, although my father used to speak to them when he was young, my grandfather was a school teacher at Cardwell, and he used to tell me about the

wild natives that would come down and get their rations, and their blankets, and things. That was the only thing – I had nothing to do with them, no.

No, I hadn’t known, I didn’t know much about them, I’d read Lasseter’s stories, Lasseter’s Last Ride,

about the gold mine, but I didn’t know too much about them at all.

Well, we were spread out, all out over the, as I said, the Roper, the Daly, the Victoria, the Katherine, and our job was just to do – in fact I’ve got the order there,

we were to, oh well, just be there, and behind. If the Japs came, we were to hide in the hills, and obstruct them in every way, but I think the fellows that were on the Daly, they went right down to the mouth of the Daly, they

picked up, I’m sure they picked up the footprints of the Japs had been recently in Australia, they must have come over and had a good look at it. That’s another rumour, but still, it probably went back to officials.

No, no.

Some of the fellows in the Daly, oh yes, they saw them, yes, in fact they helped an American pilot who’d crashed, who was in a dog fight, they saw a few planes coming over.

Yes, that was the only time, yes, that was the first.

We were a fair way away, but we had out slit trenches, and of course we all ran up and got in the slit trenches and then heard the, “Thump, thump, thump,” but they didn’t do very much damage, but still it was a bombing raid, that was our first encounter.

Oh yes, I mean it made you a bit more eager to get to them I think.

Well, our role was, we were on the Katherine River, and we mapped the river, and looked out for advantage spots. We made flat bottomed tin

boats, punt type of things, out of galvanised iron, soldered them up and everything, they supplied us with those. Well, we went along and mapped the river, and looked for advantage places where we, if the Japs came, we could set up a place for ambushes, or where we could mine the river to blow it in,

and things like that, that was all.

Well, along the river, high up and look along the river, so as they came up, you’d have a go at them. We learnt that later on in Timor, what to do.

Yes, yes.

Oh dozens

and dozens, yes.

Oh yes, I think it was quite, I can’t understand why they never did. We were open up there, then.

Oh no, there was a few troops then, and the Americans were there then.

The Americans were there in fact, near the headquarters in Katherine there was a lot of cyprus forests up there, and very close to the headquarters was an American group, saw millers, and they were making coffins and crosses out of the cyprus that was growing up there.

Preparing, yes, making –

“Oh God!” But I’ll read you something out of the book, do you mind if I do that?

It’s about something that happened up in the territory, it was –

See we were a bit short of food, and some of us got into an American, where they had their cold stores, and we pinched some of their sides of beef, and of course there was a big report went back, and we got paraded. This major from the –

some high up or something, or headquarters, he paraded us all up and said what a – he was in a jeep, he drove up and down, parading, “What a mob of bastards we were, thieving cows,” and while he was doing that, there was Danny O’Connor, captain,

undoing the, taking the shovels and things off the jeep behind him cause we were short of – and he got the shovel and the pick from the side of the jeep, and the major, anyway, that was the last we heard, he was going to report us all, but after that, that was the last we heard, and he went back, and he found that Danny had pinched. So that’s a proper

captain. Later on I’ll read it to you out of the book, it’s a marvellous story.

Not very much, we didn’t have much to do with them, no. They were building a road, the north-south road, and there were a lot of negroes there. I’ll tell you another thing, yeah, that’s right,

I had a bit of a tooth ache, anyway they said, our sergeant said, “I’ll arrange for you to go out to this American hospital, you’ll have to walk out,” it was about five miles out of, I’ve forgotten where we were, Katherine, so I said, “Right-o,” and that time, I had a Tommy gun [.45-caliber submachine gun] and I had to carry our – we were fully armed

when we were up there, we were ready all the time. I had this Tommy gun with a, I think we had a bracelet with forty fives around us you know. Anyway, I’m walking along, and this truck, this big jeep stopped, “Where you going, digger?” “I’m going out to the hospital, Sir,” and I realised they were officers, and they said, “Oh, jump in.” “Cor blimey, what’s this you’ve got here?”

I said, “It’s a Tommy gun.” Anyway, when I got out to the hospital, they dropped me there, and I had my tooth fixed up, and it turned out, it was the CO of the hospital, and of course, being a hospital unit, they don’t carry arms, and here I was in the jeep with them, with the Tommy gun, and they were, “Oh blimey Aussie, what have you got there?” and I had to walk back, see.

Oh marvellous, yes.

Oh yes, we, mind you, we did all right, we weren’t too bad, it was a bit irregular, but still, when we were out in the bush, we had to look after ourselves.

See, even in

the territory, we used to have to do our stunts, and – that’s another thing, we did a night raid from Manbaloo, it was about fifteen miles or twenty miles into headquarters so they arranged that we’d do a night raid on, an imitation, on headquarters. Anyway we started off early, and it got night time, and they gave me the compass, and we knew that

the railway line went, was between us and headquarters, and they gave me the compass, and I took the bearings, and it was two o’clock in the morning, and there was a whole platoon, about fourteen of us, and we thought we should have been on the railway line by now. I’ll give it another hour, and they said, “Shorty, check that bearing.” Anyway, I checked it, and I thought, “Cor blimey,

we’d been walking parallel with the railway line, oh God,” they gave me hell about that. So that’s how you learn you see, I’d made a mistake, and of course, you know in future, that’s something you’ve got to recheck. With a lens of a compass, you take a shooting on a high mountain or something like that, and then

you’d walk on that bearing, so that’s something you’ve learned, see, so if that was in action, you’d be pretty well no good. There we were walking parallel to the railway line instead of crossing it. Anyway the stunt went off all right.

Yes.

Well, we were in Adelaide River, and then we realised there was something moving. As I said before, we had to pack up all our unnecessary gear in our kits, and that was taken away from us, and we were only given our field kit, which was haversack [backpack], and

pouches and that. Anyway we moved up to Darwin, of course we knew there was something on. As I said before, there were rumours flying, and I had naturally, I think I might have mentioned before, I went to, happened to go into Gordon Hart’s tent, and I saw a map of Timor, see, so that was one of the rumours. Anyway

we got up to Darwin and assembled there, and then Major-General Herring came out, as I think I might have said before, he gave a little speech to us, and wished us good luck, and told us we were going to a very dangerous place, there were mountains, and then we got onto the destroyer, and out we went

into the harbour, we were stuck out in the harbour for a little while, then we went through the boom gates, and a destroyer – Well you can imagine three hundred, we were all scattered around, and we were under the, one of the for’ard guns [guns at the front of the ship]. Oh, we were given haversacks that’s right, kit bags, sleeping bags, oh beautiful, they were really first class

sleeping bags, lovely. We were in those, and I happened to go along, wandering around, and I went down the side of the ship, the destroyer, and then the bloke, he was, must have been the galley, and he was cooking steak, and I said, “Gee, that’s good,” he said, “Oh, I’ll make you one,”

and he gave me a steak sandwich, and it was beautiful, anyway, that was a part of the story. She’s going through, the destroyer’s going through the, moving along quite nicely, and then night comes, and of course, we were all asleep, and suddenly the destroyer stops, and of course we all woke up, and then she stopped,

and takes off like a shot, and zig zags and everything, like that, and we all thought, “What’s happening?” Anyway, the sailors told us that they’d picked up a sonar of a sub [submarine], but they couldn’t do anything about it because we were all around the decks, and anyway they said, “Anyway, don’t worry, because we’re a lot faster than the sub, we’ll get away,” so that was another rumour. Anyway, we

wake up next morning and what amazed me was that the flying fish were all coming aboard, it was lovely to see them, it was a smooth sea, and the flying fish. Anyway we got to, towards the afternoon we could see in the distance this little mountain formation. As it got closer, realised how big

the mountains were. We came into Betano Bay and we were given, we hadn’t been given many instructions on how to land or anything like that, but we come in, we watched, came into the shore, we were three quarters, half a mile off the shore, and all ready to go ashore, and then we heard this

bump, bang, she hit the – So naturally there was, a few of them had gone, already into the flat bottomed boats, and gone ashore, and the captain, he, you know, started to do manoeuvres, he dropped the anchor and tried to pull itself, but she was stuck, and

the reports were, later on where we read, he could have, see it was twin screw, he could have got off, if he’d been able to put the, the portside, the left side propellers on full blast, but there was people there getting off. So anyway, she ran aground,

and then of course, a big panic, that was night, getting dark at night. We, the engineers, we had to help with getting explosives and ammunition and stuff on, we stayed on, kept on the boat, but a lot of the company got off. The second, the 2/2nd Company were already on Timor then, they were the originals, they were the, they were the ones,

the heroes really. So they were there, and they helped, each section went to their corresponding sections, where the second company were to their headquarters, they were spread all around Timor. We were getting things off, and getting the stores ashore,

and morning comes, and of course, we’re, a few of us were still on board, and then the planes, the Jap planes came over and started bombing us. Because they’d already, evidently every morning the plane flew round, just checking things, and of course, they saw that the destroyer was, and they radioed to Dili Aerodrome, and the bombers came down.

They shot down one, and in the meantime, we’d got ashore, and we were taken under, the second blokes took us up from then on, and of course the poor old boys who were getting the hell bombed out of it. Now this is a thing that I always, when I think about now how they get, how,

you know these days, anything goes wrong, they give them instructions. What do they call it?

Counselling, yes, there were these sailors from the Voyager, had to get off the Voyager, she was getting bombed hell out of it, had to get down, walk down three or four miles during the day, down the beach. Now they

had to go back to, luckily there were two corvettes came and picked them up. Now, not one of them got counselling. They probably got a fortnight’s leave, and they were back at sea again. In the meantime, we’d been taken in charge, the Timorese were there with their ponies, and the 2/2nd blokes took us in hand.

Now we had to, we went up to a place called Fatuk Maquerec, that was our first stop, we got a feed up there and of course it was all very strange, and I was attached to B Platoon then, and their headquarters was at a place called Fatuk Maquerec, which was inland, which was 2/2nd company headquarters. So naturally, here we are, B Platoon,

we met up there, and all very strange, and the Timorese were there, all helping us and things. We started off next day, and all very serious, naturally, and the 2/2nd blokes weren’t a bit worried because they knew the Japs were a long way away. We walked,

marched around the mountains all that day, and then the afternoon, the 2/2nd blokes said, “Well, there’s Fatuk Maquerec, over there,” and the guys over there, and the next thing we hear gunfire, of course, we thought, “Gee whiz,” we all ducked, they were having a go at us see, because – a joke, see. They knew

that there were no Japs for miles away, but they only wanted to give us – oh God, I didn’t know what to think. Anyway, we get into Fatuk Maquerec, and then each section, that was headquarters, each section got sent out to their own little areas. I was stopped in Fatuk Maquerec for a while, then it was on then. Of course,

the Japs knew that we were on the island because the Voyager was there. Then of course, that’s when they started to come down through all the islands. We were naturally, we were pretty, we had never been in action before. We spread around, and the 2/2nd blokes looked after us, we had

a couple of ambushes, and the first time I saw a Jap in my life we opened up and got a – went, I don’t think we did much good, then went for our lives again, see, and hid again, and moved around. It was just a matter of hitting them, and shifting. Bren guns were good, they were marvellous.

A couple of ambushes, and then a few quiet times. One of the ambushes we had, was going to be very successful. We had information that the Japs were in a place called Maubisse, and they were moving towards

Sabi , there was about a hundred of them. So Danny, Danny got about twenty eight of us, which was a big group because we only moved around there in little groups of six or seven. Anyway he got twenty eight of us, and we walked all day and all night to the road, looking over Manatuto. We could look over and

have, no, no, Maubisse, and we could see the Japs there, and there was a lot of them, and we set up a wonderful ambush position, I think we had three Bren guns and about another fifteen or twenty of us with rifles. But what had happened, on the way over, the group, a big group of men moving across like that, they’d been,

natives had seen us, and of course, some of them were pro-Jap, they’d got in and told the Japs that we were there. In the meantime, there was Same, which was further down, that was, the Japs were there, and they started to come, we heard, they were coming around behind us. So Danny called the whole thing off, and oh, did we have a struggle to get back, that, it was real hard

because we didn’t know where the Japs were, and we had to keep going all night, anyway we got through and got back to headquarters, that was, that was a failure, but it was, we would have inflicted big damage that time, but still. There were a few successful ambushes. As I said before, one of our, we blew a few roads, and had a few small ambushes.

But I tell you, I was, we were sitting up, three of us were sitting up on a hill, the Japs were mortaring [a mortar is a muzzle-loading high-angle gun with a short barrel that fires shells at high elevations for a short range] a position further over, there was nobody there, we knew that, and blow me down, if a mortar didn’t come over and go, hit the tree above us, and there I was, running around,

blood all over my head – I’m still alive. Anyway it was just, it was nothing, all I did, I lost that tooth, so that was my first experience of something serious. Evidently a mortar must have gone astray, and we were sitting, three of us were sitting up there, enjoying it, watching the silly cows mortaring this

village which was about half a mile away, where there was nobody there. But one stray one came over and hit this tree, luckily the tree, it hit the tree and it went off up there. God, I was frightened, I had blood over my face from the stones, but I thought, “Well I’m still alive!” Anyway, that was my first experience of something serious, but I had a,

had quite a few, I fell off a track, and in fact, it turned out I broke my leg, but it wasn’t seriously, so I was put in charge of horses. Christmas Day I’m all by myself with eight or ten horses and Timorese, and in the meantime – I could speak a bit of Timorese,

’cause we lived with them, and we were going along this valley, huge mountains each side of it, and I looked up, and there’s umas [houses], that’s a Timorese village, I could see them on fire along the ridge. Of course, our native fellows, they were all scared of God, that was Christmas Day, and I thought,

“What am I going to do?” So I kept going, and luckily the river branched like that, and I had to go, the natives were guiding me where to go, I was going up to a section up in the hills somewhere, I can’t remember where I was going from to – where to, but luckily the river divided and I went that way, and the Japs followed the ridge around,

they went the other way, so I went on. That was a lucky escape for me. The other one was, I was in Timor with the horses again, there’s a, some, on top of the mountains there was big, grassy, open areas, then a bunch of trees. So I had about six or eight horses with me,

with the Timorese, and I said, “Let’s get up there, and we’ll have a spell [break / rest].” We went under the trees, and then I heard this motor, this aeroplane, and blow me down, we’d all got under the trees, and this old single engine slow old plane came along, I could see him through the trees, following the track where we’d come along.

There he went right past us, and I could look out, from here to Grovely Station, and there he was, I could see the pilot, and the fellow in the back. If we had gone on, we would have, he would have copped us [killed us] – anyway. Another story, this is, I was, had a group of horses, and I was by myself, going from

Fatuk Maquerec, down to headquarters at Alsai, I think it was Alsai, yeah. Anyway, on the way down, it was a day’s trip, the horse I was riding, I’d packed myself up with a rifle and a bandoleer [broad cartridge belt worn over the shoulder by soldiers] and two or three grenades. The horse I was riding goes lame, I had to walk. So the natives were all curious at what a grenade was, so when we got along,

as you – the mountains, quiet mountains, and the tracks are only that wide, anyway, I looked over and there was a herd of goats over there, and they were having a go at me about these things I was carrying. So I said, “I’ll show you,” and I pitched two of the grenades down amongst the poor old goats, and of course, they went off and a few of the goats got knocked around, and I felt sorry for them. So I opened up and shot them.

Anyway we get into – in the afternoon – we get into headquarters, and there’s a group of, a group of people coming out, a patrol coming out. They said, “Where have you come from?” I said, “I’ve come from Fatuk Maquerec, through Turiscai, they said, “God you’re lucky, the Japs are shooting the natives up at Turiscai.” So I didn’t say anything,

they went off about six of them, and I get into headquarters, and one of the sergeants could speak Tetum [indigenous Timorese language], and Dutch, and I saw the natives talking to him and everything, and then I had to go and tell him, he said, “Go and see Major Walker.” Next thing, “Private Perrett, report to Major Walker.” “Of course,” I said,

he said, “What happened?” and I told him. He said, “Cor blimey, I could, you know, I could put you on a charge.” I said, “Well, I thought we’d come through a lot of rain, and I just wanted to make sure that the grenades would work.” Anyway, next morning the patrol comes in, they were out all night, well they heard about – they gave me hell. They were going to – what they weren’t

going to do to me, because they were out all night.

Japanese, yes, I should have told them, but I didn’t, they were out, and that’s a friend of mine, Royce Gardiner, he was in the patrol, he said, “Never forget that!” That was one of the funny things that happened.

They were, yes.

Yes, we relieved the 2/2nd, they were the original, they were the heroes, they were the ones. We live on their glory. They were the 2/2nd, they did a marvellous job in Timor.

Yes, yes, and they came off. Because things were getting

rough then, what was happening, food was getting short, the Japs were slowly moving in, they were – natives were going back to them. See, we, they were loyal, we had, the natives were very, they were Roman Catholics, it was marvellous to go along and hear them whistling local armour and all the – it was marvellous

to listen to that. We each had our creado, he was the chap who used to look after us, carrying our pack, and if we got tired, carrying our rifle. Well the Japs, what was happening, they were moving closer, and closer, bottling us in, so when the 2/2nd left, of course, it got worse for us, and then food was getting shorter.

Another thing, our few ambushes that were successful, what the Japs were doing, they’d send out twenty or thirty natives in front of them, who were pro Jap. And then of course, it wouldn’t give us a go at having a go, and we had to have a go at the natives first, so the order came we were to come off, or

we presumed that, it was all very silent, and another thing, my little section, our little section, we were all back, and we knew that there was something on because Happy Hammond, our lieutenant, they goaded him a bit, “Those Yanks in Melbourne Happy, you know, they’re going through the women over there, your

wife over there!” Of course, he got mad, I mean it was terrible, but then we realised we were coming off Timor, sections one, two, three like that in a group, we were moving down, and we were,

five, or six of us, we went down to the, it would be the northern end of Timor, down onto, into the flats, and I had been raining solidly, and we were wet through, and we had to, we knew that we had to meet up at the, I’ve forgotten the name of the beach that we were to take off. We knew by then that there was something on.

Well for two days we were going through these flats. Of course me being short, I was up to my shoulders in water some times, and we were all, we knew that the Japs were five or six hours, six or seven hours behind us. Now this is where I, there were a group of us, and of course now being wet through, our privates got a

bit raw, so there we were, hanging out, tied up with grass. I often laugh about that. Anyway, you’ve heard, it was terrible, the HMAS Arunta came in to pick us up, and by the time we got there, it was chaos because the stupid army

had sent over flat bottomed boats and they were absolutely useless. They bought a lot of the Portuguese women off, and the Portuguese, and three quarters of our mob had got off, or a good half of them had got off. By the time we got there, there was, they had volunteers, there was twelve of them left on Timor to observe, that was, they

were to see what happens. Anyway we were told, “Take your bolts out of your rifle and pitch your rifle in,” and I – ”Anybody that can swim, swim out.” So I said, “I had a little,” I had dog tags on, and a little pouch there – oh, that’s another story too.

I had notes in, five pound notes, in there, so, they said, “Look, you’ll have to strip off, and swim out,” so I came off completely naked, and I swam out, and this, the Arunta sent in the boat and it had a blue light on it, and it was moving up and down, just outside, about

three or four hundred yards off the shore, just off the breakers, gee, I was pleased to see that light. Anyway, no clothes on at all, just this little pouch, and I got pulled on board, and of course, it’s very, very rough, and they took me on board, and I sat down, and it was

red hot, the – on the steel deck was hot, oh gee, so the sailors gave me some of their clothes to wear. And of course by that time, nearly all of us were aboard, or everybody that. We had to leave our creados, which was terrible to think that we had to leave them. They’d, I gave mine,

I think I gave mine everything that I had, I couldn’t give him my rifle, but I gave him any money that I had, and I can’t remember what else. Anyway, of course the Arunta, she was quite a big, fast destroyer. The captain, luckily

he’d ordered that he was to leave an hour before. Well we were only a hundred miles from the Jap, the big Jap aerodrome. Anyway, it was cloudy, and then he just went, opened up, and went straight, and oh, it was, it was just

terrible to think that we left those people behind, those creados, and there we were. And of course we were all in pretty bad shape, we were pretty hungry. They fed us up, oh there was soup, and fruit, and everything, tinned fruit salad. Of course, we were as sick as dogs.

I can remember, it was no good going underground, down in the bottom, was sick and spewing everywhere. So three of us got tied together and they said, “You can’t stop on deck because you’ll go overboard,” cause it was so rough, and she was moving along, she was going at thirty eight knots, which was very high speed, and

they tied three of us together, and there we were, and I went to sleep. It was the greatest relief ever. Anyway, when we got to Darwin, we got back, there was quite a

welcoming. Major General Herring was there, and he wanders up, and you can imagine, we all had these bears, and we were in different things. He welcomed us back and said what a good job we’d done. Anyway, we were quarantined for three or four weeks, quarantined, getting us well, Then

we got leave. Came back through, down to Adelaide, from Alice Springs on the Ghan, and that’s where I got into something, I can always remember. At Terowie, the ladies there, it was early in the morning, they had fresh, corned beef sandwiches. We were feeling much better then, we’d had nearly three or four

weeks I think, quarantine, but that was, that trip out, it was terrible to think that we had to leave those creados. Portuguese shot themselves on the beach because they couldn’t get off, and then the Japs were just behind them, they were there the next day, so that was the story.

A lot of them got murdered, some of them lived. We went back in 19.., [he means 1995] with ‘Australia Remembers’, we went back to Timor, to Dili, and it was, the Indonesians had it then, and we tried to get up to where we had these OPs, observation posts and, but they wouldn’t

co-operate with us at all. We, perhaps we did the wrong thing. Well the government arranged it under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church, and of course that was Muslims, and we, we were helped by the Catholic Church. Of course, wherever we went, we were trailed, and Bishop Belo [Bishop of Dili], do you know the name at all? He’s the

Bishop of, he got the [Nobel] Peace prize. Anyway, he is a Roman Catholic, and he got a group of us together, it was quite a group that went over, the government sent us over. He said, “Would we mind going to Church, take Communion?”

I said, “Well I’ve never taken Communion in my life,” anyway I went in, there was quite a few of us, I took Communion. And when we came out, the Indonesians were photographing us. That was –

’95.

Oh yes.

I don’t think we got any orders, we just said, “Follow those

2/2nd blokes.” Then our sergeant, then when we got settled up at Fatuk Maquerec, then we started. Our orders were, we were each section, there was, as I say, Danny O’Connor was, Gordon Hart, Alan Dower, they were the lieutenants, they took sections. A section went up to, up to

OP Dili, observation post in Dili, we went to OP at Poona. See, we could watch the planes take off, and those were the planes that we think, might bomb Darwin. So they’d wireless Darwin that six or eight planes took off, so they’d be prepared in Darwin for them see, or we’d say – we could see right out to sea,

one time I remember, we looked out to sea and we saw five or six warships going down the coast, well that probably went back, but some of the other things, I might speak of the other things later on, a lot of the foolish things that happened. See, one particular time the bombers, the Australian bombers came in, and they dropped

eight or twelve. They wanted to keep the Japs out of this village because it was a centre village, and they dropped eight or ten ton bombs, I think, I don’t know whether they were five hundred pound, or two hundred? Five hundred pound I think, anyway, about five of us, four of us were sent in, a couple of them went off,

and then the rest of them didn’t go off and they were laying around, some were buried, so five of us, three or four of us, I can’t remember, were sent in to get the numbers of the bombs, and the colours. Of course, we didn’t like that, we looked at them through the field glasses and read what we could, and the colours and went back, and they wanted – because they expected sabotage, see.

Anyway, a couple of days later, no – so things existed, go in again, and get them again. Luckily, by then the Japs had taken the town over, they were in the town. I don’t know what happened to the bombs, I don’t know if they ever went off, two of them went off but we were a mile away. Of course, the valleys were very deep. You’d sit on one,

and we could look across, it was only about from here to Mitchelton away and see, you could look, but then to get there you’d be down, and up a day almost. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to those bombs, if they were still there or not, whether they went off, or not. They expected

us to go in and have a look at them.

Yes.

They were already there.

Well they didn’t teach us very much, we followed them, but they, we did our own thing. We

copied some of their own ideas, but we went down on our own, we did our own ambushes, and under protection of, might have one or two 2/2nd blokes with us. But mind you they were, when we got there they were pretty well knocked around, they were in a pretty bad state. A lot of them had malaria and things. Their officers were

very good, Bill Laidlaw, and Nesbitt and, yes, they were very good.

Yes, yes, actually I can’t remember much, but we followed them and then we went out, it didn’t

take long to realise. The natives helped us a lot, they told us, “Ema fuik,” that was a ‘wild man’, if another native came in, they’d realise that he might have been pro Jap, so ema fuik, see, you’d say, go to Happy and say, “Look, somebody said

such and such is ema fuik,” and he’d say, “Well keep an eye on him.” In the end, I know it’s pretty bad, we’d let the natives look after him, and I don’t know what they’d do, but he’d disappear anyway. You always had to be careful. See you can understand the situation that the Japs were taking over Timor when we got there, the 2/2nd

had done a marvellous job, but they were bringing the Kupang natives up, and that’s from the south, from the south Timor, they were from Kupang, and they were pro Japs, and as I said before, they used to put them out in front of them, and we’d have to knock a couple over before we got to the Japs which we didn’t, weren’t always successful.

See they’d, mainly around Timor, mainly tracks, and they’d, you’d have to follow the track, and actually they’d come up, well some, there were some roads, when I say roads, they were just dirt tracks like, but they were ten or fifteen foot wide, but other things, they’d have to come round narrow, round the mountain.

There wasn’t many times that they came completely over the hills like, they’d always follow the track around. Well, we’d have information that such and such, a group would move out of Turiscai and we’d know which way they were going, the natives would be able to tell us that. Well we’d know that area, well, we’d wait.

Very often we’d fail, but still, sometimes we did alright.

The ambushes, yes.

Oh yes, yes.

Well, usually – an ambush usually was about three or four hundred yards. But if somebody got behind you, you didn’t know where

they’d come, or there might be somebody else come round behind you, or from another direction see. The Bren gun was a marvellous gun on Timor, it was very good, we had quite a few Brens. The Tommy gun [.45-caliber submachine gun] wasn’t so hot because it was a short range, it was alright if you got up close, but we never got very close to them really, or I never did, but some of them might of.

Well it would, fifty shots see, in a, I think it was fifty, I might be wrong, but a whole magazine. You could carry six magazines and that’s two hundred and, I think it was forty, I’m not too sure. But two hundred and forty rounds you could put off in three or four minutes, and then go for your life.

Well we always had a, that was something we always planned, a way out. Sometimes it would go – a couple of times it went wrong, but mostly, the few I was on, we knew the way to go.

Yes, yes, the small numbers.

Well the only one, the most I saw, we estimated a hundred and fifty Japs, and there was five of us, and that was from about four, four to five hundred yards. Well you know, we did quite well, I suppose we got ten or fifteen of them.

Oh yes, we didn’t seem to worry much really, you’d go for your life, it’s when you – at night is the trouble, when you, see we lived with the natives, and if you had to move back, where you get a good rain, it’s raining all the time, you’d get wet, and then – of course food was always the trouble too, the natives used to

look after us, sometimes you’d get a really good feed, they used to use pigs a lot over there, and we’d live in the umas, they were the huts, you’d climb up the bamboo and get inside, they were quite comfortable, they were flea ridden.

Yes, they’re straw, and built up like a bamboo, they used a lot of bamboo, bamboo all the time. If you wanted a drink of water and the creek was down there, they’d go down with a bamboo, hollow it out and bring you up a drink of water in the bamboo, and then they’d make their huts out of,

bamboo floor, bamboo everything, but some of the Portuguese villas were very nice, but we didn’t, the Japs mainly had those, they were nice, very nice kind of concrete houses see, but we lived mainly in umas.

Oh well, it was quite good, they were – I tell you, we walked into this – this is early in the piece – we walked into this village and they were taught to tuan, tuan, tuan [respectful term for older man]. We walked in, and the xefe [chief], he was there and he had his four daughters

there, and of course they were bare breasted see, and the blokes were oh, “Look at this,” you know. And of course, I mean, I must say that the Australians were quite, we had a few cases of fellows who interfered with the women, but not very many. But to walk into this village with the xefe, that was the chief and his four daughters

lined up, welcoming us, and they were beautiful young women, Asian nationally, but bare breasted, that was the thing. Oh gee, of course it was a bit of a shock for us fellows, the new fellows, the 2/2nd fellows, they knew all about it, it was quite a thing.

Oh no, it was just a shock to see these young women, and they had these lipas [sarong], a lipa is a, I’ll show you one if you like.

Well, they’re women particularly, woven thing like that, and they wrap it around themselves, beautifully done.

We wouldn’t do anything about it, I don’t think so anyway, I don’t recall. One 2/2nd fellow was notorious for it, but I don’t know what happened to him really.

No, some of them, no they, some of them

appreciated it, they thought it was great to have a white baby you know, some. This is what I heard, they accepted it.

Yes, we were quite fluent in Timor – Tetum when we left. I can still speak a little bit of it, but very, very, very little, I’ve forgotten it.

Bondia di’ak ka lae? [Good day, how are you?] that’s – Di’ak mak barak [Very good] I knew, Man’tolun, man’tolun [egg], that was chicken, I think, or egg. I can’t remember it now, but we, we were quite, we could understand each other,

“Manu kokerai,” that’s morning, early morning. Besik ne’e you’d say, “How far’s Fatuk Maquerec?” “Oh, besik ne’e,” that means, “Not very far,” but you wouldn’t know.

No, no, but it was all up in hills, and –

Mainly food, I can’t recall the name of it. They used tuaka [palm wine], that was a drink they used to get from the palm tree, we used to like tuaka, that was

quite a nice, slightly alcoholic, they used to brew it. And they had a rice brandy too, they used to test it, if – pour something into a container, if they lit it, if it set fire, that was good. What was that – di’ak, di’ak [good].

I don’t

think, we wouldn’t be game to I don’t think, it would be too dangerous. I never, well somebody probably did, I never heard of it, we were always, tuarka, we used to like, that used to come out of the palm trees, that was – cut a drip out of a palm tree, that was quite good, some were better than others.

No, they’d put it

into a container, into a bamboo sometimes.

Yes, we had cock fights. See they had their own cocks, they used to have a spade thing. Well particularly that I know,

we could get a good one, and we could feed him up on corn, which they couldn’t afford. That’s another thing I want to tell you about, how we had our money. We could feed them on corn, and that would give them a little bit of thing, and we’d back them see, we’d, they loved to bet. Now, if a cock lost, they used to wring its neck.

They’d jump up, and they were excellent at picking a good one.

Well, a potaka, a potaka [currency] was about one and – I think it was worth about one and eight, I think, one and something. One potaka, so many potakas they’d bet. Of course we had a lot more money

than they did see, so we used to bet it back as well, but that was what I wanted to tell you. See they didn’t like paper money, so planes would parachute twenty cent pieces in, ten cents. Not twenty cents, two bobs, shillings, and – but this is the stupid part. They dropped them out of an aeroplane, and

six hundred pounds worth of two bob bits it takes, it’s a big weight, it’s like a, you’d put it both sides of a horse to carry it. They dropped the damn things and they come down, and instead of putting them in small amounts, they put it, the most I saw was five hundred pounds worth dropped, and of course, it went all over the place, of course there’s everyone picking up money.

That’s where we used to try to get paper money, guilders they were the Dutch guilders, or the Australian notes, which weren’t very many, but that’s what we. Naturally we’d pinch, when money fell like that, we’d always have some, or we used to try and get some and change it for notes so we could carry it. But that’s how we used to pay,

they loved the silver. So Australia used to send over all this money in silver, and drop it out by parachute, and as I said, it was stupid, it took a long time to wake up, if six hundred pounds worth of silver hit the ground, it would go all over the place. And that’s another thing with supplies, it took them long to wake up

that dropping seven pounds of bully beef was absolutely ridiculous because you’d open the tin, it would go bad, you couldn’t carry it around. I don’t know, there was a lot of –

Well, even a big drop, in small piece, small tins, these damn

big tins would come down, hit the ground, some of them would split open as a result when you opened them. Well the Japs would know there’d been a drop, or somebody would know, and how could you carry a seven pound, you’d open it, and it would go bad in a couple of days, so we used to give a lot of it to the natives to eat and of course they loved it.

Yes, yes.

Well naturally they’d know, somebody would tell them there’d been a supply drop, but they were, we had it pretty well under control. We had areas where they’d know where to drop them.

Well I think they would have, yes.

Well yes, yes.

Well there was plenty, it was a hilly country, and there were lots of ways to hide, plenty of places to hide, like mountainous, and things like that.

Burning umas, yes. See, well it was a very deep valley, and it was Christmas Day, and I was going from one place to another with six or eight horses along the valley, where the river was, then I realised the Japs were up on the ridge, which was a big, high ridge,

it was two thousand feet up, and very steep, they were up there, and naturally, I don’t know whether they saw me, but I know that they were there because they were burning the umas, you could see the smoke. As I said, it divided, the river divided, and I had to, I went to the left, and they went to the right. I don’t know what happened to them, but I went to –

I had to go to, that was where I was going, see the natives were guiding me to this, it was one of the platoons, one of the sections, I was taking something, supplies up to them or something or other, and I knew where I was going. It was just lucky that they went that way, and I went that way.

I can tell you what, I was a bit nervous, the natives were worse still, they were the ones who were

frightened see, ’course when they got frightened, I got a bit scared too, but you’ve just got to know what you’re doing.

Oh well you just go, when you’re in a valley like that there’s only one way to go.

When I got to, I can’t remember,

the section I was going to, there were ten or fifteen Australians there, see, and they would have known that they were safe there because the natives would have told them.

Oh just, just going, plodding along, getting the natives to move on. The kudas, that’s the horses, just get them to move along.

No, no, the Japs, they were a long way away, they were just like, well a big valley, a thousand feet. They probably could see me, I don’t know whether they did or not, but they wouldn’t come down because it would be too far, too hard

to get down.

Yes, yes, it’s a strange feeling, you don’t know where, sometimes –

Yes.

Oh yes, this is what they, how they contained us. See they, any natives

that, any village that supplied us at all, well other natives would tell the Japanese, and they would come in, burn that down. That’s where we were losing our supply, the rice, and potatoes, and figs, sweet potato –

Well yes, similar, yes.

Yes.

Well naturally they would, if the Japanese controlled – you take yourself, you wouldn’t tend to, you had a blunt stick to fight them with, you’d naturally –

But still, we had a B Platoon, where Bill Gibbs was, they had on OP on Dili, and they used to have a couple of natives go into Dili to tell that what was happening, and come out. So we had loyal fellows like that.

Kupang, Kupang.

Well, they controlled Dutch New Guinea, that’s where the 2/4th, 2/40th Battalion were taken POW [prisoner of war] down there, they controlled that completely, and that’s where some of the 2/2nd fellows came from, came up to where the 2/2nd were camped,

just outside of Dili. And that’s where 2/2nd fellows, they, when the Japs landed, they went to the hills, and that’s where they had planned that they would go, that’s why they were so successful.

No camouflage at all, no, but some of us threw our tin hats away, some of us, some of them carried them all the time, but I didn’t wear one.

Oh, just shorts and shirts and not very many of them, boots were our trouble.

And one time, the Laklo, that was the river we had to go along a couple of times, our boots fell apart, that’s where we got supplied with boots. That’s another thing, they dropped the boots, and they never tied them together in pairs, and they come down, and here they were, running around trying to – God, it was ridiculous, and we were trying to match up shoes, I don’t know how we

won the war with some of those things that happened?

Well, it was beautiful, the valleys were beautiful some of them, and oh, I can’t remember. A Platoon were in a good area, they were in an area where there were some lovely orchards

and good rice fields. But then the Japs, that’s where the Japs came in, and they took that over, chased us out of there, and that was – it was good food, and down the other end where we were, a little bit, there was not so much, it was a bit drier. Corn, we could grown corn and potatoes, sweet potatoes, and

buffalo.

Oh yes, in the Territory we lived, we got supplies, plenty of supplies, but we lived on our own quite a lot. You know, did our own cooking, and all of that, and

each platoon, each section, some of the sections in the, on the Daly river, they used to measure the tide. And crocodiles, huge crocodiles, I didn’t see extra many crocodiles but they, I think they had a boat, yes, they did have a boat, there was a lot of,

plenty of water, but there was, a distance between some water. One day you’d be able to have a drink of water, fill your water bottle up, and then you might have to wait for a day or so because you didn’t know where the next water was.

No I don’t think so, I think that

you accept it, and you learn a few things. One thing I was always proud of, that when I went to Kenmore I showed them how to catch lobsters. I’d get a, I’d learned this from somewhere in Queensland, a bit of lawyer vine, you know a lawyer vine has got a spear on it. Anyway I showed them, they used to try

to catch these lobsters in the fresh water over there, and they’d, I showed them how to get a spear and then poke it down a hole, and the old lobby would come, and then you’d jab it and pull it out. So I reckon I taught them something over there, only lobbies that long, lobsters that long. So they really took to that, they were in the sides of the creeks,

and they’d come out, and I’d show them how to jab it and then lift out the lobster, and then we’d eat it of course.

Oh yes I think so. They, when we used to, occasionally we’d shoot a monkey,

and they’d lop it’s head off, they had knives about that long, like a jungle knife, and they’d chop it’s head off and eat the brain raw, and when there was a stillborn foal, they’d have a party, they’d eat it. That was, they’d roast it,

and the way they used to eat was, give it a bit of a sear, and pick the meat up, and put it in their mouth, and cut it off, do it like that.

Oh no, oh well, we eat pig.

No, I don’t think I did, I was never as hungry as that.

One thing, another, one of the experiences I had, there was three of us getting chased. As I say, we were both exhausted, and our creados were carrying our stuff, and they weren’t too bad, and he bought me a strip of bark about that long, he said, “Chew this!” I chewed it, and I was

right, right, it was some drug, I don’t know what it is, it would be cocaine or something like that, but oh anyway, I went, I was right for about two hours, and I got out of it, but it was a strip of, I don’t know what it was, a strip of bark anyway. I never did find out exactly what it was, but I know the three of us,

it helped us.

Well I don’t know, perhaps I never did, but it’s something I always remembered, but this stuff, whatever it was, it give us a kick for a couple of hours.

Oh yes.

Yes.

Well we used to, see ’cause we had our locals, they’d take us up a track up the side where the Japs might go past us or something like that. See they knew, and it wasn’t as close as that, we might be a half mile ahead of them, or a mile ahead of them.

Yes, oh yes.

Yes, sometimes we’d watch them go past, otherwise we’d get right out of the road and then just go to a little village, or something like that.

No, no.

Good trackers? No, they weren’t, didn’t worry about that, and another thing we used to do, we used to direct the bombers to come in, the Mitchells [B25 Mitchell bomber] and the Bostons [twin motor medium bomber and fighter, heavily armed for offensive and defensive warfare]. The Mitchells were flown by the Americans, and we knew very well, as soon as we saw a twin

tail come in, and there were three of them, and they were bombing a town, wouldn’t know, they could go anywhere, but as soon as the Bostons came in, they were the single tail, they were flown by Dutch pilots, they would put the bombs exactly where we wanted them to go, or we’d hope that they’d go. We always laughed, “The Americans!” There was a case that we were on the OP

at – this well known case, it was written up in our book, we were on the OP at Pep Poona [Poona], and three or four Mitchells came over, and they bombed somewhere, I’ve forgotten where they bombed, anyway it was quite special bombing, anyway on the way back they flew over us, close to us, because we were up, and, “Hitchcock,

Hitchcock,” see, we were listening to them on our radio, we were on their same wavelength, and, “Hitchcock, there are three zeros on my tail, there are three zeros on my tail,” and then his leader comes on, “There are no zeros on my tail,” he said, “Hitchcock, Hitchcock, my motor’s gone.” Anyway we, they went past us, then we radioed Melbourne, or

radioed, they said, “What happened to Hitchcock?” and the next day, or a couple of days later, “Hello Aussies in Australia, on Timor, Hitchcock crash landed on Bathurst Island, how did you know?” We were listening to them.

We had, towards the end we had marvellous ones, we had 108’s, and 209’s. 108’s were a small one that was battery driven, but the 208 was a big one, it had, used to have to have a charger you know, a petrol charger. With a result, we’d leave the, put the charger down in a valley, and muffle it, that’s to charge the battery and then just leave it,

and we’d know where to pick up the battery see, but that was a big one, it was a bit awkward, but towards the end we had, I wasn’t a sig [signaller], but we had a little air force one, it was beautiful, it was really good, we could use that, it was mainly Morse, because we had our code, it was a square. I’m not talking from – only very slight knowledge here,

and then you’d have to decode, and that’s what our sigs used to do, decode.

Oh yes, yes, that’s what happened to the OP on Dili. See, they could have direction finder, that’s why they used, it was really, that was very dangerous up there because

the Japs knew that they were up there, and they were trying to find out, and they’d have to change their spot every now and again. That was B Platoon, they were up there, we were, OP, we were on Aparna, that wasn’t too bad.

They’d have to go five or six hundred yards, or a bit further, or into a, perhaps into a cave, well not so much of a cave,

into a hollow in a, depression. See there was only six, they used to change, there’d only be six up there, and they used to watch for the planes to take off, and they’d get the message back to Darwin, or if, as I said before, we could see the sea, they’d see it too. But if there was war ships moving along, well

we could let them know within an hour, and if they wanted to, they could be back within five or six hours, if they wanted to.

Batteries, wet cells and dry cells you see. Wet cells was the one with a, you know, the charger, you know, the one with a petrol. One time we were rushed off,

with a charger going down the valley. We came back the next day, and its still pumping away, and nearly used up all the petrol.

This is before we got to, before we were on the island, and it’s true. The Japanese were very worried about, that they weren’t making an impression, so they bought a general

over, or a high ranking officer, they call him the Singapore Tiger, and he was very good at organising. Well they, I nearly got his name, anyway, they bought this lot of Japanese out with him, and he rode a white horse. This West Australian fellow, he’s a very good shot, and

they bought him out, he was about, five or six hundred yards, and he knocked him, killed him, and that caused great dismay. In fact, he was, they, from what I can think, was told, I’ve got a story out there, I’ll check on it. They boiled this fellow up in a drum and took him back to

Japan because it was such a disaster for them. But it was a real shock to the Japanese that we got this high ranking officer the first time he went out. But that was something the Japanese did, they used to wear white uniforms the officers, and they probably, I only saw it on two occasions, come out on horses

out in front. They soon learnt that was the wrong thing to do.

Yes.

Well, oh yes, we heard Damien Parer were coming over, so a group of us had to go down to the beach,

I think it was Betano, to pick him up. So naturally, this is why I’m featured in it so much see, ’cause it was only about six or eight of us to pick him up. A party came over, and they had some war correspondents with them, Damien Parer, and there was a party of say six or eight. But the stupidest thing is, the English war correspondent was sixteen stone,

he was a big fat fellow, and of course, the joke was, “Hey, hanesan kuta ba tuan!” [he’s similar to a horse for a man!] Oh no, no, they wanted a horse for him to ride. So we hid him, hid him, that’s as far as he got, he didn’t got more than half a mile off the beach. We picked him up, or they picked him up on the way back, so that was

the result of the war correspondent from, the English war correspondent, he was a huge fellow. And then Damien, he came up, we took him and showed him, he met the bosses of 2/2nd, and Major Walker, and then, OK, he wanted to know a bit more, how they put the wireless – see, it’s

a long story that, the 2/2nd, how they got in touch with Australia, they were out of touch, they didn’t even know they were there. They made up a wireless out of spare parts, ‘Winnie the War Winner,’ we called it, and even our sigs, when we were in Australia, were warned to listen to this frequency, and, because they, they didn’t know

that the Australians were there. Well anyway, they finally contacted Australia, well that’s when supplies started to come in, they got, they sent the HMAS Kuru, and the HMAS Larrakia, they were the two small boats that used to come over from Darwin quite a lot, they sent them over with supplies, and everything, that’s when contact was back with Australia. Well naturally, Damien Parer wanted to go up and find out, and they – this

is what I always – broke my – watch a television now of – I don’t believe it, because we just put on a complete act for Damien Parer, like they made up the, I mean the original sigs did the acting, and how they got the generator going to make up

this wireless set, then he wanted to see some action. Well, it was a bit quite when he was there, the Japs, they could have taken him where the Japs were, but they didn’t want to do that, so we put on an act for him, to burn up a village and all rush in and shoot, so that was a complete action. Mind you, I’m not denigrating, he did a marvellous job in New Guinea, Kokoda, was marvellous,

but even some of that was acted, I know that ’cause I know fellows who did it, but this is the thing that when I, when we saw the film you know, we laughed at it because we knew it wasn’t true. Now the story is, my sister was in town, she was in the army then, and my parents heard

her come running up the road, “I’ve seen Peter, I’ve seen Peter.” “Oh God,” they said, “What do you mean?” she said, “He’s on the film,” then they realised where I was see, because she recognised me, and that was the time of polio, and my young brother Tony, they wanted to take him in and show him, but he wasn’t allowed in the theatre because of the polio, you know. So they allowed him to

stand at the back of the theatre to watch this news reel see, so then they realised where I was.

Well I did, it was one of the letters there, but still they were all censored,

those things were censored, but that was, that’s the part I got at, there we were, we came back, that’s what I said, when we came back to Australia we thought we were heroes because this, Men of Timor, was on. Then we got to Melbourne, the Americans were already there, they’d come from Guadalcanal, which was a bigger show.

Oh yes, but not this one that, not the one that we saw in the film see.

Yes, but they didn’t want to take him up, it was too dangerous.

See if they’d taken him up where the Japs were, because it was,

Japs were probably fifteen miles away see, so they didn’t want to take him up there. Anyway, sending this – it was the funniest thing in the world to get the Timorese to get a pony for this big fat fellow, and only little ponies. No, no, they wouldn’t have it.

Yes, that’s it, that’s what I said,

the stupid things they did.

Well, I’d like to see what he did write about it, he was a British man.

Oh he was very nice, very sincere young fellow. He was only young because he’d seen a lot of service in the Middle East too, before.

Then he went on to make the Kokoda Trail one, which was excellent.

No, he was killed later on. He went over to the Americans, I think he had a bit of an argument with, I’m not sure of this, so, he went over to the Americans, that’s when he was killed.

Yes.

Yes you know, we had our leave in Brisbane, I enjoyed that.

Oh yes, too right, well we had to come back, we got forced off, we were defeated like they – they forced us off.

We just didn’t have a chance, we left a group, a small group were left, a Sparrow Force [small guerrilla force], and they came off on a submarine, that was some of our fellows, they lasted only about six weeks I think. They were just left to observe what had happened. Then of course, Z Force [Services Reconnaissance Department] parachuted over

from 1944, 1943, ’44, ’45, they parachuted different groups into Timor, into some of the safe areas, just for reporting. A couple of our blokes, Phil Wynn, Jack Shand, sigs, went over, and they used to parachute them in, and then bring them off

on boats. They had small, the Larrakia, and the Kuru, were small, about fifty five footers, and they’d sneak in and bring them off.

Yes, yes, Cyril was, Les was in A Platoon, I didn’t see too much of him, he got killed in New Guinea.

I was in engineers, it was just the way. He wanted to get Cyril and I into A Platoon, but somehow –

Oh yes.

In – I think we were down further down,

I can’t remember where, a bit south of Darwin.

We were pretty sick, a few of us had malaria and dengue [fever], and I had a bit tropical ulcer on my foot,

and everything was wrong with us, we were in a bad way, and they were worried we might have brought diseases off the island, and spread it, so we were just being looked after, and we had a few boxing matches, and a few cricket games, and things like that, just resting really.

Yes, yes.

I’m very lucky, I’m exceptionally lucky. A few of them have been very sick, and mentally a few of them, a couple of them have gone. One of our lieutenants has, pretty bad way really, mentally.

Yes, I consider – of course I wasn’t a much of a drinker at all, and I never smoked and I looked after myself over there, because I used to swap, well I ate a lot of fruit and things like that, well I looked after myself.

Yes.

Yes, yes, we went to Brisbane, I think we had three weeks leave, I had quite a nice leave, and I met – Then we went to Canungra.

Yes, quite a lot of the district, with the film, like even now, we belong to Probus [a club for active retirees sponsored by Rotary clubs], and one of the girls said, “Oh yes, you were in Timor,” that was, I said, “God, that was thirty, forty years ago.” She knew, like even now, people know that –

it was simply because of the news reel thing, and my young brother, Tony, of course, he was, he had to go to school, he was at school, and he’d have to get up and tell the class. Oh yes, it was quite a homecoming. As I used to say,

I was never, it never really worried me, I never thought much of it really, I just accepted it. I was never a very demonstrative person.

Yes, yes.

Yes, very lucky.

Oh yes, yes.

Well I was very lucky then, as I said, my Dad was ex-army and in – we were, he was in the Masons [Freemasons], I never belonged to the Masons, but he was interested in that, and a couple of other things.

Yes, a couple,

yes, actually I can’t remember, a couple, they knew them.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, yes, she was very attractive,

she had a lot of American friends unfortunately, I didn’t agree with her, she used to bring them home. Dad was, he could tell some stories of those different American friends. One chap was quite a, a Texan, and he used to tell Dad about

how he just didn’t do any manual work, how he had one of the negroes to do it. He was a real, what do you call them?

Whatever it was, Dad was greatly impressed by it.

No, she was too sick, after that she got quite ill.

Yes.

I do remember something about it, but I think I was out of Australia, out of Brisbane, when that happened. See, we had a big camp at Grovely, here, and I lived at Enoggera, which was on the Grovely line. Yes, we had,

a couple of the – Bedey, Swede, myself, we had our stoushes [fights] with the Americans, they were two big blokes, and I remember once, they were going to do these blokes over and I was behind them. Swede said, “Right-o!” ‘Bang,’ and he put his fist back,

and he hit me in the chest, I went over backwards, and they – yes, we had a bit of fun, it was a bit silly, but still – looking back at it now, it was stupid.

We were probably jealous of them.

They had everything,

yes, it was a bit silly.

Oh yes, absolutely, that was true, they were, they had a way with them, “Ma’am,” and they had a way, different to us, we were pretty uncouth I think, compared to them.

Yes, yes.

Yes, yes, that was, I think a lot of that would be probably true.

Oh yes, well they had everything, they had a way with them. Oh, I was friendly with some of them, I knew quite a few of them.

No, nothing much, although we had gone, next thing we were down in Canungra, then next thing we were up in the Territory, up in the Tablelands, then –

Well Canungra was an extension of our training at –

Foster,

Wilsons Promontory, and the 2/2nd, and the 2/4th, we were first in there almost at the beginning of the jungle training so we were prepared to, we were used as specimens of what we were supposed to be experienced about it, see. So that’s where we got a lot of our reinforcements, ’cause a few of our fellows were knocked

about, then we bought in a lot of reinforcements into our company.

Yes, almost, very close to the first.

Jungle training.

Oh no, I’d say they’re similar.

That’s where most of the people that went to New Guinea, new ones, went through Canungra or the Tablelands, before they went to New Guinea, as training. See, we were becoming more sophisticated, we were doing, they knew what to do, because they’d already had Kokoda, they were experienced, and they bought them back and probably used them on

the Tablelands, it was. See we were moving along in New Guinea then, I didn’t go to, I was only in New Guinea for a little while.

I went to Milne Bay.

No, no, I went over, yes – after Canungra, after the Tablelands, that’s when I came. Then I came, I was only there for six weeks, that’s when I got,

when I ended up at 116 AGH, back to Townsville.

Yes, yes.

2/4th, yes.

Yes, yes.

Experience, I didn’t see anything over there, it was just a trip over, and a trip back.

Yes, I had malaria, yes.

Luckily I’ve never, I’ve only had one attack since.

It was exactly the same as we had at Wilsons Promontory. The route marches were the same, the gunnery, the same – not so much

explosives.

No, not much differently – well people used to say, of course we always had that little bit of extra – that we’d been in Timor, same as the people who’d been on Kokoda, same as the blokes from the Middle East,

Rats of Tobruk, see we were similar, we had that little bit of – but then, there was a lot of young people coming on, there was a lot of reinforcements see, and the Australian Army then was becoming, the Americans were taking over in New Guinea see, we weren’t used so much, Australians weren’t used so much, the Americans were doing a lot of

the good work up there then.

No, no, we were used as an example, but no instructing. Some of our officers went over to training.

No, no, one happy service for me after that. It was, as I said, I was a sapper [military engineer] or a private one day, and a staff sergeant the next day, so went from six bob a day, to twelve and six a day.

Yes, yes I was, I saved a lot of money.

Well there’s, Major Chapman arranged it all, he approached the – what was his name – he approached the ADMS [Australian Director Medical Services], they, Australian Army Medical Corps, the colonel in charge, Colonel Fraser,

he said, “Peter Perrett would be helpful to us,” see, or similar like that. So they said, “Right-o, bring him back, send him to Townsville, put him in a staging camp, send him up to Charters Towers, 116 AGH!”

I was happy about it.

No.

I was happy to get out of it, I’d had enough.

Major Walker. Major Garvey came over, Major Walker. That was something else that I wanted to tell you about our company, it was mainly Melbourne based, we had South Australians, West Australians,

Queenslanders, New South Wales, but Major Walker was a marvellous person. At the end of the war he said, “Now, as a group, you’ve all got to stick together,” so they arranged a group of the Melbourne people and they formed a committee, and they had a painting group, and they’d go round to

each other’s houses, and paint it. From then on we formed an Australian 2/4th, which combined us all, and we had our reunions. We didn’t go to the first few, but we’ve been to every – in the corner over there, you’ll see a plate, do you see it with.

That was the 60th, they had reunions

every year, and we go to the reunions, and we have a marvellous time. This year we’re having it at Coolangatta, but unfortunately, our numbers have dropped with the result it looks like the finish, because they’re dying every year, see, but that was one thing together, we, Major Walker kept

them together, the result that we have this group that we have an annual, a letter out every quarter, a magazine, so we all get together.

All these years, yes.

Well we have our committee, mainly in Melbourne. That’s the unfortunate part about it, now that they’re starting to –

well, they’re all eighty or something like that, and they just can’t do it. So this year, we’re having it at Coolangatta, and it’s been going on, that’s the marvellous part about it, a company like ours, we’ve all stuck together all throughout. Association, other associations, other battalions have done the same thing.

Oh yes, yes. Although I, touch wood, I haven’t really had any hard times, I’ve gone along pretty well, a couple of medical problems, but –

I only just, more or less on the beach, and came off again. I had nothing to do, nothing to do.

On a liberty ship [American cargo ship].

No.

Yes, yes, put down the, in the hold, didn’t come up, but then, I came off, came back in a LCI, landing craft infantry, that was easy, that was, you got looked after then.

No, oh yes, a few army blokes.

Yes.

No, no, he got killed later on.

Well that’s why, I arrived at Charters Towers at midnight. Somebody came, transport came

and took me back, and I, they said, “You’ll have to camp in the, in a office there,” see it was a big hospital unit. Anyway, I got up in the morning, and the RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major] comes in and says, “Oh, you’re Peter Perrett, we’ve been expecting you, Major Walker wants to see you,” oh, “Major Chapman wants to see you,” and I saw Chappy, and he said, “Oh Peter, good to see you, now I want you to help me.

Now you’ll be a staff sergeant from today, I’ll put you in charge of the, the RSM will look after you.” So I settled in, I took a few days to settle in, and then I used to go and help him, he was a bit of a character. He had a clinic in Townsville so we used to drive down in his car,

he was a real, he had all the rackets [deals / illegal enterprises] in the world going for him. He used to get his own petrol, sign, and we’d drive down, and I used to help in the clinic in Townsville. You know, they’d go through, and he’d find out what was wrong with them, and if they had to be admitted to hospital, and sometimes I’d have to stop at the Showgrounds, other times I’d stop in his flat on The Strand,

which was marvellous, he was a real nice fellow. Anyway, after that, they, see it was a big hospital, 116, they had the aerodrome there, and they used to fly a lot of the wounded in from New Guinea, and you know, there’d be work to do like that around the hospital,

and well, then they decided things were moving on, they were getting towards, well that was 1944, late 1944, they hadn’t the use for a big hospital, so they moved us up to Jungara which is just outside of Cairns, and then of course, I was still in the hospital unit there, and I used to have to go

up to 2/2nd AGH, and 2/6th AGH up on the Tablelands, and that was, that was just to help out. Major Herkus was up there, well known eye doctor, and that was quite an experience for me.

Well I’d bring

them in, I’d, they’d all be outside, and I’d, “OK, get your rank, number and name,” etcetera, etcetera, “Now you’re seeing Doctor, you have a referral from your Army Doctor, what’s the trouble?” “Oh yes, I want to change my glasses,” I’d say, “Where are your glasses?” And I’d refract them, give them, I’d look through and check the power of their glasses so Chappy would know everything,

then and I’d pass them over to him, and he’d do whatever was necessary. Whether they have to go to hospital, whether you give them a test, and then he’d send a script out to me if he wanted a test, and I’d send that down to Brisbane, and they’d make the glasses up, and they’d come back, and I would send them out, off to where they were going to. I was just a message boy, really.

Oh, not particularly, they’d go through – no, you wouldn’t know them very well at all.

No, not really, no, you’d just, well you’d, it was like a morning’s work.

Just put them through to Chappy, and he’d decide what happened to them, then he’d send them back and, “You have to be, you’ve got something wrong with your eye, we’ll arrange for you to be sent to the eye clinic at 116, or the 2/2nd AGH,” John Hirkus, he was the surgeon up there. That was, just what a receptionist in town does, to an eye doctor.

Yes.

Oh yes he was, he had six children, and we were, I used to stop at his place on The Strand, in Townsville, and his wife was, she was somewhere high up, somewhere in the government or other, and she wasn’t there, but occasionally the kids would come up, and

they were all sizes, and I remember he opened two bottles of beer, and the three kids were there, they were only, then he poured out all these glasses of beer, and I thought, “What’s the?” then he said, “Here you are Henrietta, here’s yours,” and he handed them, kids, and we all had a beer. Then

Major Hirkus was the one at the 2/2nd AGH, this is something that happened. I hope that it doesn’t – it’ll probably go on, it’s all going on. One of the generals came in, major general somebody or other, got his glasses, and he said to Hirkus, “There’s something wrong with these,” and Hirkus said, “Oh they’re all right, Peter will help you out.” He was

an elderly person, and he got three or four steps down, and he said, “They’re all crooked,” and I said, “Oh General, I’ll help you,” and next minute he falls down, and Hirkus comes out and says, “For Christ’s sake Peter, get those glasses off him,” and I whipped the glasses off him, went and checked them, and Hirkus had made one of the, it was a high cell, I don’t know whether, he’d put it about fifteen or

twenty degrees off axis, and written it down, or the – whoever had made them up had made a mistake, and the old, poor old general, major general whoever he was, everything was at an angle, see, but I had to laugh at Hirkus, “For Christ’s sake, get those glasses off him off!” he knew there was something wrong, and we whipped the glasses off.

Yes, poor old fellow, he was an old, well when I say, he was probably about sixty at the time, he was older than me I remember, then we had to square off.

There was one particular trip.

Well I was returning from leave from 116 AGH, and I called into the ADMS, the Assistant Director of Medical Supplies that, he

was the chief of it, and I said, “I’ve got to go back.” “Oh, they said, we’ll arrange for you to go back on the Red Cross plane,” I said, “Right-o, good, good,” they said, “Somebody will pick you up.” So we went and picked up, and we went out to the aerodrome, got onto this big plane, it was a – and it had a big – there was about twelve or fourteen of us, about three

or four women, and five or six in the men, and it had a big bubble in the front, it was a converted bomber I think, and of course, they, a couple of blokes said, “We need to go to the toilet,” they said, “Oh well, there’s a tin out the front, out there,” and they closed the compartment, they closed up, and, of course, we used that,

and the girls said, “What about us?” they went out, one of them went out, and there you are, it’s a perspex, oh it’s almost as big as this room, those, and there you are looking down at the ground, with this tin. Of course they came back, and they were busting to tell the girls, laughing about it. That was a thing, it was just a side that I thought was

very funny, and lo and behold, my Dad said, “What happened to you?” I don’t know whether I spoke to him over the phone. He said, “A week after you left, MP’s [Military Police] came round the front of the house and one around the back,” and they said, “Does Peter Perrett live here?” and Dad said, “Yes,” they said, “Where is he?” he said, “He’s gone back,” they said, “Oh, how come?” he said, “He went back

on the Red Cross plane to Townsville.” They said, “Oh, that’s alright,” see, they were checking, they thought I’d gone AWL [absent without leave] because I hadn’t reported to the, whoever it was that arranged the transport back on the train. That’s just a – something I thought was very funny.

Yes, see, this just shows how some part of the army was quite good.

Yes, I’m almost non-combat, yes.

Well completely different! Here I was just,

almost running my own little show, with only a doctor of course, and Colonel Skulls the CO, and Major Chapman, they were both eye doctors, and they both used to argue about the different techniques they had for conjunctivitis, was one of them. Doctor, Colonel Skulls believed in a dural, that was a

soothing, but Chappy would believe in a copper sulphate, he would put on, and it would react. I felt sorry for some of the patients he treated with copper sulphate, it must have been terribly painful, it was a reaction for conjunctivitis. I don’t know whether he was experimenting, but they used to argue which was the best.

Well they were all red when you’d see them. See copper sulphate was a, I used to make a little block for him on the end of a pencil type of thing, and he’d rub it on, couple of them were terrible.

No, no, you could see that they, I don’t know, I can’t remember whether it cured them or not,

that was just two very different techniques of two eye specialists.

The same as ordinary, of course we’d get the patients in from New Guinea where they got injured in the eye. Well, they’d operate on them, I didn’t have anything to do with that, but they’d operate on them, and put them into the wards.

But I was only for the, where they were more the outpatient type of things.

Well after that, Chappy would go off to his ward and look after them, and I’d have the rest of the day by myself.

Go and do my washing and my ironing, and sit around and read a book, perhaps kick a football round, or something like that,

kick a ball around.

Yes, yes, that’s what I just thought of, that people would like to know, that the army wasn’t too bad for some people.

Well I just put them through to Chappy you see.

Just get their particulars, and as I say, get their script if they’re already wearing glasses, find out what that was so he wouldn’t worry, and put them through.

No, nothing like that, the nurses would do that.

Yes, yes, that was towards the end, right, when I

went out to Greenslopes, I had a little workshop then, I used to make them up then.

Oh some of them were terrible, see they used to fly them in almost from New Guinea, straight from the battle field, from Finschhafen, or towards the end,

where the 2/4th ended up, at Tarakan, but that was towards the end of the war, that was very close to the end of the war, and they’d have, they had quite a big eye, there was always something going wrong, and there’d be surgeons, they’d co-operate with the doctors and, with the eye doctor.

Yes, yes, fascia maxillary, yes.

No, no, but I can tell you a story about fascia maxillary, one of the 2/2nd fellows in Timor got hit in the – extremely bad, and we were, I think we were about five or six days, and we had sulphanilamide, and they put sulphanilamide. That was

early time – on Tex’s face, and they got him down to the boat, and got him back to the Darwin, and I think he was, say he’d be well, weak after he was wounded. At almost the same time, one of our fellows got hit in the finger, and we got him to the boat within

a day, and he went into fascia maxillary. Well they did a graft on his – well I’d never seen, after I met him after the war, I thought it was an awful job, it was just like a sausage. But this Tex, the one that we thought was badly injured, he was fly blown, and you know – oh they did a marvellous job on him, he was almost perfect. Just shows you the differences,

different techniques. One of them we got back, and oh, it was terrible the things that they put on him.

Oh no, that was just, that was in Timor, that was up, when we got to North Timor, I don’t know where they went.

With fascia maxillary?

No, no, it was just the skills that I had already known.

I think they were experimenting, yes, I wouldn’t know, that was more scientific, I really wasn’t aware of that.

Yes, a couple of them were blind.

Oh yes, you’d talk to them, try to talk to them, I didn’t have much to do with that.

Well it was in Charters Towers, there’s two public schools there, Mount Carmel, and –

Mount Carmel, and, oh I’ve forgotten now. Two big schools, well they took the schools over, and used them for the wards and hospitals. All Souls, and Mount Carmel I think it was, anyway, even now they’re well known, one’s Catholic, one’s Church of England.

They made them into wards and operating theatres, and things like that. As I say, it was a six hundred bed hospital, which was a lot of patients.

Yes, a lot of nurses, a lot of men, lot of males too.

Oh yes, yes,

that’s what they said when they made me, when I didn’t have a couple of weeks, didn’t have anything to do, they made me fill in as orderly sergeant, that was a real eye opener. Meeting the lead bus come in, and making sure there were no shenanigans going on, and here was me, little me, ordering blokes around.

Well,

they wanted, the men would want to take the girls back to their quarters and they weren’t allowed to do that, and the girls wanted to go to the men’s quarters, and they weren’t allowed to do that, more or less, I’m exaggerating a bit there, but there was, they enjoyed, it was life.

Well, you tried your best not to. There was always a lady,

a woman sergeant there, she looked after the ladies, the women, and I’d try and get the blokes. Some of them would be half full, you’d have to get them, make sure they went back, they were back on time, it was just –

Oh yes, yes, you’d pull rank on them then.

Well,

I don’t know, I don’t recall them ever outranking. I was only warrant officer, but if they outranked me, I don’t think they’d be in it.

Oh yes, dozens, there was – I mean it’s just life, it’s just what would happen, it happens today probably.

Yes.

Oh well, yes.

No, no, but up at Rocky Creek, 2/2nd, the corporal, the sanitarium corporal – see they’d put out in the men’s line, they’d put out tins for night use, see, save them

going out the back, you’re supposed to go in a tin, see. He’d put these ten or fifteen tins along the men’s lines, and he could never understand why the women’s line, he’d put them out on the women’s line, they were never full, there was nothing hardly in them, see. He could never understand that. We used to always have a joke about it.

The ladies didn’t, the women didn’t, they used to go to the toilet, see,

and the men. That’s only, perhaps you can’t see the, can you see the point? The ladies wouldn’t go out and sit on a tin, it’s just a – we used to laugh about that, poor old fellow, took him a while to realise.

Oh yes, yes, well in the, they had a special code for the, when the patients came in, women

patients, if they were pregnant, they’d have a special code. Of course we’d, the sergeant who was in charge of that, he’s always say, “Well so and so came in with,” I’ve forgotten the code, DX or whatever it was, then she’d have to go back, she’d be pregnant see, poor women.

Yes,

they’d be sent to Brisbane then.

Yes, yes, I don’t know what happened from then on, I don’t know anything about it.

Oh yes, there were some marvellous ones, yes, very attractive women.

No, I can’t remember, no,

a couple I knew very well. They had their romances and things like that, and there was weddings, and we went to, in Cairns we had a very good wedding. One of the sisters, they were officers at sea. I’ll tell you another story, see, in Cairns, at Jungara, we used to go crabbing down at the Barren River,

we’d do alright, we’d catch quite a few crabs, and we always had trouble with transport, we couldn’t get, we couldn’t order transport. A couple of the sisters, the older sisters, they were real characters. Mind you, when I say, I’m talking about old, we were only twenty, twenty two, and they’d be about forty, see, which we thought was very old. So a couple of them came up to Nobby and I, we were the ones that used to go

crabbing quite a lot, we’d made our own crab pots, and they said they’d like to come down with us, and they said, because they could order transport, so right-o, so we went down to the Barren river, and we used to hire a rowing boat. Anyway, we went out and emptied the pots, and we had about six or eight crabs, and Nobby was a bit of a character, and these two old girls who were sitting up the front of, we had a rowing boat,

and I think I was rowing, and Nobby let the crabs go, there they were with their legs up in the arm, oh gosh we laughed at that, they were real characters. The crabs were all over the bottom of the boat, and there they were. Anyway, they got their share of crabs

to take back to the mess.

Yes, yes.

Yes, yes, I got friendly with quite a few of them, I can still remember, we’re, I’m still friendly with a couple of them, I knew them well.

We used to have what we call a state party, especially at Rocky Creek where 2/2nd was. Across the road was Dingle Dell or something, I can’t remember, it was a little, nice little grove, and a pond, and we’d, ten or fifteen would go over, and we’d have grills, and of course with sergeants, we used to, we could have access to the sergeant’s mess, we could

get grog [alcohol], and we’d have, you know, yes, we’d have parties like that.

Oh yes, yes.

Yes, they had the groups that used to come up and sing, they had concert parties,

and we used to entertain them in the mess after they’d had it. There were different well known ones, I’ve forgotten what they were now, and then we had, also had the male – they’d, the male, what do they call, they dress up as women, male revue [revue; variety show with topical sketches, songs, dancing, and comedians], they were quite, really good. We used to entertain them in the

mess afterwards.

Well they were when they were dressed up, they were quite, you could hardly tell the difference. When you met them in the mess, they were all – in fact I met one of them, I went to school with him, and there he was doing a female impersonation.

No, I didn’t do any, but we

used to have their dances in the, yes, a couple of them could play musical instruments, and we’d have parties and things like that.

Oh, you’ve got me, I’ve got them on a tape in the car.

Blue, what is it? Blue, I play them every time I go out in the car. White Cliffs of Dover, Hang out your washing on the Siegfried line –

“We’re going to hang out our washing on the Siegfried line, ’cause the Siegfried..” oh I can’t –

My grandson likes them in fact, when I put on a tape in the car when I take him to school, I put on fairly classical ones, he says, “Take that off and play your army ones,” he sings along – Lili Marlene, I can’t remember them all now, you’ve got me.

Oh, I love them, yes. Joyce Formby.

You wouldn’t know Joyce Formby, would you? No.

See, and yes –

Happy memories, yes, wish I could remember them. I’ll send Iris down to get the tapes,

and I could.

Well Jungara was an American hospital that we took over. It was altogether different to our Rocky Creek. See there were two hospitals at Rocky Creek, 2/2nd, 2/2nd, they were two big hospitals too. This was getting towards the end of the war, and they were

starting to wind down because we weren’t getting so many casualties, and the Americans were getting the casualties, and they were sending them to their hospitals.

Yes, a couple of them, yes.

They were, yes, a few of them went through Tarakan, not too many of the originals went through Tarakan.

Oh yes, yes.

Oh no, I was glad I wasn’t there, it was a bad campaign Tarakan, we lost a lot of –

You could get that book there.

Oh, about eight.

Well some of them, but that was left to the officers

to do that, but they gave the Portos, the Portuguese they were, we supplied them with weapons, and also they trained the – the Dutch were there too.

Yes, quite a bit, yes, not so much the Dutch, but the Portuguese.

As I said, some of them were

arrogant, and some were very helpful. I found, personally I found them rather arrogant, they were used to, as I said, they treated the natives pretty harshly.

Yes, real colonialists.

Yes.

Well now, they used to get up and sing from mountain top to mountain top, I’ve forgotten what they call themselves, but they’d yodel, then they’d talk to each other that way, and that’s how the word got around, from hill

to hill.

Well, more or less yodelling, but a type of yodel.

No, I didn’t hear too much of it really, but I knew they did it.

Well, they’d talk to us.

As I said, I could understand quite a bit of Tetum, and then the 2/2nd blokes were excellent in Tetum, and that sergeant that I referred to who spoke when I had to go in with Major Walker, he was excellent in Portuguese, and Tetum, he could speak it fluently.

Well we had our safe, we had our safe areas, we knew it was no Japs within miles simply because there was, the natives would tell us there was no Japs, and they, the bigger towns, they were in Same, perhaps they were in Maubisse, or Ma Bu, or

Remexio, or Lete Foho, we’d know that. See they weren’t there all the time, they’d shift around. Well they couldn’t do it, they didn’t have enough men.

Oh yes, they used to, the xefes would fix up, they’d know.

Well some huts, there would be twenty or thirty, and others would be, Fatuk Maquerec, there was one big one and five or six little ones, that was our headquarters. Laklubar, there was probably twenty, and Manatuto, there was –

oh that was quite a set, quite a big town, there were a lot of mud huts and things, and Maubisse was quite a – it was a lot of Portuguese huts there, and umas.

Well the set-up – there was, that’s where the sig was,

and then all it would consist of – a sig, or three or four sigs because they would take it in shifts to be on all night, and then the commanding, the company commander, and perhaps, it might be a small section there, and then he’d send out his orders, like, “Move section, section to go into,

up to Hatu-Lia,” or somewhere, and just around like that, see. When I was – only twelve men sometimes, to shift them around.

Shoot Japs! No, I’m only joking, there’s nothing else, just follow

the orders.

Well, you’d try to give them, how many, fifteen, or a hundred, or fifty, or such and such, and they’re moving towards a certain town, or else, that’s about all.

No, no, just – you just send back the movement, “Moving towards certain town – ”

Too right, yes, they sent the very slow, the old chaff cart, like

we used to shoot it down sometimes, but it was no good, because you would reveal your position, and as I say, the time it went past me, the time I hid in the bushes, he was only level with me, he was just slowly going along, following the track along, two, like one, a pilot, and one in the back with a machine gun, just going along the track, he’s looking for someone

to shoot at.

No, we never got bombed, no, never got, I never did. Some of them might have, I don’t recall, I never got bombed, no.

Yes. But I must admit that the air force, our air force, they used to do a lot of strafing, that’s where we’d send

a message over, that there was a collection of Japs at a certain town, and if we could pinpoint it, the Beaufighters [Bristol Beaufighter; twin engine fighter] used to come over too, and they did a marvellous job. They’d open up, we used to, we used to light a little fire, and as soon as they could see that, if they could, they’d open up just after that, and straf that, three of them in line, and they’d –

or two sometimes – and then they’d strafe whatever was in front of them.

Oh yes, yes, not very many.

I think they did, I’m not really sure.

Well, that’s a bullet that fell in front of me,

that’s my lucky charm. I was laying, very small, it was a very ineffective ambush, and I was laying down, and there was a few Jap bullets coming, and suddenly, this one fell in front of me. If you have a look at it, you’ll see that it’s been hit by another bullet. I don’t know where it came from, but it was

coming towards, and then got hit, and you can see where it’s hit by another bullet. There it fell in front of me, and I picked it up, and I’ve kept it ever since. Bought it all the way from there in a little pouch. I had, had to swim out with it, and I’ve always kept it as a lucky charm. I don’t think it would have hit me, it was probably, I don’t know where it was going, it got

hit by another bullet.

Well I had a, with my dog tags I had a little pouch made out of, I think it was made out of canvas or something, it had some, a few notes in it. That’s another I was going to tell you about, Happy. Happy was our lieutenant, we used to bring a horse round to Happy

and say, “This Timorese wants to sell this, he wants forty petakas.” Happy says, “Oh, give him thirty.” We’d give it to him, and three days later we’d bring the same horse around to Happy, and say, “This Timorese wants to sell this horse, he wants forty petakas for it,” and he’d say, “Give him thirty.”

It was the same horse!

Well we used to share it. Poor old Happy, he was a wonderful person, luckily he’s dead now, I told him when I met him at a reunion. “Oh, you buggers,” he said, “I knew you were doing it.”

He was

in charge of the engineers, yes.

No, no, you were always, always realised that your superior officer was your superior officer, but they treated you fairly, and you treated them fairly.

Well we knew each other.

Oh, we’d all run in the same direction. Oh no, he was in charge, like he’d tell you what to do, and he’d have his orders of what we’d have to do. He’d explain it to us, and we’d accept that,

but you were, it was always, he was your superior officer, and you did what he said. Not exactly, but still.

No, never, right from the start. Of course, the 2/2nd were all bearded, so – our CO always shaved. That was the thing, when we came off,

there was a great to do [fuss], we were ordered, we were only off four or five days, and we were ordered to take our beards off, oh yes, that was a great to do.

No, we wanted to leave them on.

Oh I don’t know why, just to leave them on, status symbol.

Yes, a bit longer I think.

I can’t work out, I tried to work out dates, but I messed them all up, but anyway, say months, but longer perhaps a bit longer.

In Cairns.

Oh big party, yes.

You talk about before, about whether I was dating any girls or anything up there, well I was a bit friendly with one girl, and she was a bit keen on the driver, and he didn’t drink, and I remember my friends, seeing the war was over, I remember my friends having a go at me, they reckon I was trying to get him full, that’s how, the other side, I mean –

but anyway, we had a big party with the girls and everything, it went over very well.

Well we were a bit out in Cairns, we were a bit outside, you don’t know Cairns at all, do you?

Out at Redlynch, past Redlynch, that’s out towards the Barron River, on the bottom of the range, see?

Well I came back then, after that I came back to 128 Hospital, which was at Holland Park, that was a big, another big hospital, that was right at the end of the war, then we started processing the POW’s, putting them through, and

helping them, and that didn’t last very long, that closed down and I went back to Greenslopes, which was the hospital then. We put the POWs through, I helped them, put them through.

Well, looked after their illnesses, see,

separated them, how we could help, who were really ill, and then whatever happened. At the same time, this is another funny thing I always think. I worked with a doctor, oh, I’ve forgotten his name now, he was a well, he was a – when I, he used to ring me up and say, “Pete, what have you got in powers,

we’re a bit short of lenses, I’ve got a chap here who needs a 175/075,” they were powers. He said, “Have you got anything like that?” and I’d say, “Oh no, we’ve got a 175/050,” and he’d say, “That’ll do, give it to him,” so I used to write that down, and they’d make that up. Now, after I was discharged, gee, I’ve forgotten his name now, he was an

eye doctor in Brisbane, and he was the most particularly, really fussy. In OPSM we used to make up a pair of glasses, and the people couldn’t perhaps complain. Anyway, they’d go back to doctor, and he’d ring up and go crook, he’d say, “It’s two degrees off,” which is minimal, and

I always used to think, “You cow!” If I could, only like to say, “You remember in the army how you used to say, give it a go, anything,” but he was a well known doctor, particularly good doctor, but he was in civilian life, he was so particular of the work we did, in the army, he used to say anything could go. That just showed you.

Well yes, they decided they, I was indispensable, no, just that I had a small job to do with the POWs, you know, and I lived at home, and I used to go out to Greenslopes from Enoggera.

Yes, they had a points system, yes. My points were fairly, I could have got out if I really wanted to, but I thought I was being helpful.

Terrible, some of them.

Yes, yes.

Yes, probably yes, I’d say so, they needed a lot of help.

We put, probably five or six hundred through. Not for all eyes, for a lot of things, yes.

No, they were, this was a little bit, see they’d already been recuperated, this was some three months that they’d be, or four months, that

they’d been back. So they, it was just a follow on, and then I got my discharge, got my deferred pay, I went back to work straight away.

No, no, I was always a bit canny – and then I, I was welcomed back, they were very pleased to see me, and I went back, in fact,

I went back to work in my army boots.

Still in Enoggera, I lived with them, yes, I used to catch the train into Wickham Terrace.

Twenty four, twenty five.

Well, there was a girl at work who had a friend,

and they used to go out together, a male friend, one of the optometrists, and she said, “I’ve got a good friend, Iris, worked with the Country Party,” she was, and I’ve got some very good stories to tell. Anyway, she said, “Would you like to come and meet her?” and I said, “Yes,” and I’d just bought a new car, a Hillman Linx, I’d saved up and bought a new car,

so that went down very well. No, I think, Eric, I can’t remember – anyway, we went on a blind date, and I met Iris see, and everything was, I liked her, and she seemed to like me, and we went for a while and had , you know, I met her parents, and she met my parents, and anyway, I said, we used to go over to her place on a Sunday, her sisters and her brother,

used to all meet and play cards, play a game, anyway, play games. So I asked her, I said, “I’d like to get married, would you marry me?” and she said, “Oh yes, but you’ll have to ask my father.” So the old fellow, he was a very

self made man, he was very good at speaking and writing, and he used to sit in the corner and smoke his cigarettes, and at this big kitchen table we’d play cards, and this Sunday night I said, “Right-o, I’ll ask him.” This Sunday night I went over, and we were all sitting around, and the next minute, everybody’s gone, the old fella’s there, and I’m there.

So I went over and I said, “I want to marry Iris, is that alright?” “Sure, that’s alright,” so everybody came back in the room. Iris hates me telling this story, but I just had to laugh, he was a bit of a martinet, he was quite a strict person, but anyway, it went alright, and we got married, and everything was right since.

Well it was organised, see.

Iris had told them, “Pete was going to ask my father about getting married.” I love that they all left the room, and here we were, just the two of us.

Well we got married, and we, first of all – that’s an original painting or drawing

of the flat we had, up there, it’s an original – we had a flat for a while, then we came out and had a look at this bit of land, it was this piece yes, this was fifty odd years ago. There were no roads, it was just a paddock, so we bid for it. Went up and in those days, there was a limit, and we posted a limit. And the auctioneer, Iris was there,

and he said, “Do you want it?”, and she said, “Yes,” and he said, “Sold.” So we built this house, my brother – in the meantime, Iris was bridesmaid to a girl who was in a building company, his father owned the company, Chapmans, and they built the house for us, and my brother worked on the house, see, so there you are, that’s how it happened, we’ve lived here ever since,

fifty two odd years I think it is.

Yes.

Yes, well it must be fifty three years since we’ve been here, because the house was being built while we were in the little flat.

Oh, I don’t know, everything,

nice nature, etcetera, etcetera.

Not particularly, she doesn’t appreciate it sometimes.

Two children, yes.

Yes, both adopted.

Oh good, good, they liked her, they liked her from the start, everything was happy really,

we’ve had a pretty good life, except the death of my brother and my sister, that was two tragic events. My sister died a terrible death really, very painful, and my brother had an aneurism, that was pretty sudden. So, and as I said, we’re a happy family, we built the place up the coast, enjoyed that, had marvellous holidays. When I was young, my Dad always,

we always went for holidays, we used to go to Maroochydore which I don’t know if you know of, the North coast? And he had an old army friend, the butcher up there, and they used to speak French to each other, and we’d go fishing, I loved fishing, I fished a lot.

No, I’ve given it away, not – I’ve caught a lot of fish.

Yes.

Fifty, I think I was there for fifty, yes.

Yes, counting the five years, or six years I was in the army, yes.

Oh well, they were a good firm. As I said, I was

treated very well by them, simply because I was, I had slightly socialistic views, and I used to represent the workshop, and that was, we got on quite well, the management and myself. We both, and as I said, it’s a Sydney firm originally, Mr Champion, and

Mr Howarth, and Mr Harding. Now Howarth came up, only met me twice, and on our long service, we took a long service, and borrowed my father’s car, and we were walking along Macquarie Street, and I see him walking down the road with Sir Garfield Barwick who was our, who was the company’s solicitor, and I saw him looking at me, and he looked me up and down, and I knew

who he was, and then he passed and he turned around, “Peter Perrett.” He’d only met me twice, they were really good managers, a very good company, very good, treated us very well. They offered us shares, and when we,

we first started off, they paid us a lot of bonus shares. Well, that bonus shares bought us all our cars, we had cars all the time, that was a marvellous kind of thing.

That’s what I say, I go into the manager now at Wintergarden, and he says, “How are you, comrade?”

Yes, quite a lot.

Some of our fellows went with Fred Hollows, yes, they had a lot to do with Fred Hollows. I never knew him, but they –

I never had the opportunity, never offered it.

Yes, I ended up with a reasonable job, no great job, no great advancement simply because I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I used to tell them what to do, which didn’t go over too well you see.

Yes.

Well there is one very slight thing that caused me great, I hate talking about it. I was taking a group of horses down, along a track,

which you realise is not too wide, and I knew it was a safe area, and suddenly, somebody at the, I was behind, all by myself, and suddenly there’s a disturbance at the bottom, and I turn around, and they are all coming up the, up the track, one behind each other, straight up at me. Of course I panicked, and leading them was a little

Timorese boy, and I didn’t know what to do, and I pulled out my revolver and shot him. Simply because, they would have taken me, see,

it was terrible. He was only a lad, I saw the bullet hole go in his heart, and they tell me he died. Anyway, I stopped them, and we went on, and – yes, that was, that’s the only regret I’ve got,

and I’ve nightmares for years. Apart from that –

Especially when he was a, I got friendly, friends,

but I panicked a bit, naturally, and I had to turn them, otherwise they would have knocked me off the track.

No, no, just, they, there was twelve horses in a row see, and they panicked down the bottom, and somebody said the Japs were there, and I knew very well that they weren’t there because our company, they’d –

and they turned around, I got them round, and turned the horses on a little narrow, and they all came back up at me, and this poor little kid was in front, and I had to stop them. I should have shot in the air, but –

Oh well, I get over it, but I still think of it, I still remember it, that was forty five, fifty years ago, no – yes, sixty years ago.

Hmm?

Yes, all over in a second.

Oh yes.

We were all, everybody, the whole company, we had a few blokes who were a bit crook, crook ones,

they got weasled out, we had some very rich fellows, we’ve got a few millionaires in our, few left now.

Oh no, we’ve done alright. I could never be, I would never like to call myself a Communist, because I’m a capitalist.

Oh no, we’re dead against that.

I think we’ve got to have service,

we’ve got to have service. We’ve got such marvellous technique now in the army, and the navy, and the air force, the machines they’ve got now, they can pick up these rockets – and things that they can do now. Oh yes, I think we should have it, I think we can spend too much in the army, I mean, we’ve got experts to tell us

what to do.

Yes, I’m a republican.

I think it will be, I wouldn’t know, wouldn’t guess. No, my mother’s English,

my Grandfather’s Welsh, he married a Polish woman my grandmother, Grabovsky’s, and they are both anti, except for my mother. Actually, my father was a bit Royalist, he was, yes, but we come from a, I think we come from a anti-British, not an anti-British,

not pro-British family, see, looking back at my family tree.

My daughter I think, follows me a bit. My son, he’s not married, he’s the eldest, he’s got his interests in gardening,

in a – he grows bromeliads, gardens, he sells stuff like that. I wouldn’t know what his thoughts are, no, I think he’d be a republican. My daughter, actually I wouldn’t know, she’s happy just as she is.

No, nothing much, just that I’ve always been proud to be in the 2/4th, and I think that we’ve stuck together well, and we did a good job. That’s about all I think.

And I’d like to thank you, too.

Good.