Australians at War Film Archive

Well, I was born at Wentworth, New South Wales on the Murray and Darling junction on the 24th May, 1923. I went to school there, it had a good school. But I had to leave

early from school because my father died when I was barely fourteen. And my mother – I was one of eight children – so she had quite a thing on her shoulders. So to help out I did leave school early. My first job I think was taking care of a little boy. The hotel owners had a little boy but unfortunately he had a dermatitis thing and he was in a bad way. He was only about eighteen months old.

And I stopped there for a little while. And then I think I had – Oh, I’d gone away down to Berry to work for a little while, later on. This was not early, when I was fourteen or anything, before I joined up. And we worked in the fruit place down there, the package shed. And then I thought, well, I’ll come back and I’ll see if I can join the army first. So anyway there were no army recruiting places

around but there was a recruiting van from the air force in Mildura so I went up there and I enquired. So I joined there. They took my particulars and then I came down to Melbourne, the exhibition building and that’s where we were all examined. The doctors and all the rest of it. And I was posted out to Somers, you know, down near the naval base

and there we were drilled and the men were sent there to go overseas, like pilots, etc., etc. And some of them went to Canada, some went overseas. And they used to, while we were drilling the poor things, with all their inoculations some of them were dropping to the ground and all that sort of thing. But that was about a couple of months there.

And then we were posted. I was posted to Laverton. And I was a stewardess for a little while. And later on, I thought I’ll see if I can do something else. And they wanted some people down at Werribee – it was where they stripped the planes. They called it number one crash depot. So I went down there with some other ladies and

for a while we had to travel each day in a van until they had their quarters. The hangars are still there. After a while I’d gone home on leave and I had a telegram from the mob. “Congratulations” So I got my corporal stripes down there. But there was a time at Laverton when I went, as you saw in the picture up here, we went into town and we were marched right along the riverbank when the Kraft cheese place was there

and we went along there and marched right along St Kilda Road in a group and we had our photos taken. And it was quite a time. I think it was about three and a half years I was in altogether. Because I didn’t really get out until the first part of ’46 and I joined in ’42. But I never regretted it. It was a time when everyone was in the war and all those sort of things.

But the sad part I lost my brother as I said, the one in Japan. He died there. Terrible thing. He was working on the ships in sackcloth clothing. I got all this information from a friend of his who’s back here. And he got pneumonia and died. And I’ve met the men who were with him when [Sir Edward] ‘Weary’ Dunlop went out to one of their reunions because he was the 8th Division as well and

I met him three times. This is later on after the war I’m talking about of course. And I went out there and I met the men that were with my brother. But he died while I was in the air force down at Werribee. And Mum was a widow and she had the two boys in a prisoner – and myself in the – and towards the end of the war the eighteen year olds went over to New Guinea

and another brother was involved in that. And he came back because, of course, there was no fighting then. So that’s a bit of my life. Is there anything else you’d like to..?

Oh, after the war? Oh, well, I went back, of course. I did twelve months – we had a chance to do millinery, dress-making,

typing clerical work. I did some clerical down at Werribee. I used to list up the things coming out of the planes. You know, all the things. So when I went back after the war I was able to do come down and do a course at William Angliss [college] – next door to them – where they used to train their chefs. And it was very good. We’d go over to the Victorian markets – you still had your coupons.

There was black market stuff, of course. And we’d buy lovely materials there to make up, and we all had a nice set of clothes when we finished the course which was twelve months. And we used to go in next door to William Angliss for lunch and we had our beautiful meals for one and six! One and six, mind you. Now what would you get for one and six? Eighteen cents. So, that was a good time.

I enjoyed doing that. And then I went back and I didn’t do much. I met my husband after he came back. I hadn’t met him before. So we got married. That was my life. Well, there were other things that happened but you can’t remember them all.

Right.

Is it?

Well, Mum came all the way down from Wilcannia and she was born at Whitecliffs. Dad was at Wentworth. Now this is a bit interesting. His mother, my grandmother, she worked around and she was a beautiful dancer and they used to go and dance.

Worked very hard in the day time and go dancing at night, her and her husband. And they ended up in Ned Kelly country because grandma was working at the hotel and she said she used to see Kate Kelly, the sister of Ned Kelly on a lovely horse. A really lovely horse lady. So that was interesting, you know. And I remember stories about

Ned Kelly’s brother, Dan. He went to school and my grandfather must have went to school there somewhere or around that area because he said, “Anything happened, the boys into mischief or whatever happened, out the window they’d go”, you know. So it was all about that time. So, anyway, that was a bit interesting in the life went by. Yes, grandma used to dance.

I never saw her dancing but before that and I love dancing myself.

Oh, no. Not really. But I’ll tell you what happened though. I’ve told this to the lady at Orange. When I was six the Depression was on so we had to go away and try and find work. And you couldn’t get

much anywhere. So we travelled in a wagon sort of thing to New South Wales and one day we came upon these horses. Circus horses, beautiful horses. They had eaten the grass, and what they called blown. You know lucerne? If they have that they sort of die if they can’t get attention. But that stuck in my mind all these years.

And we had to go to farm houses and ask for food sometimes. I can still remember these things. We were away a couple of years and my grandmother became ill at Wentworth so we came back. So that was the end of that. But it was a time when everybody was looking for work.

That’s what my memories are of that part. So I can’t remember what happened at Wentworth over that. I went back to school there. We survived. There weren’t eight children then. There were a couple more born later on. As I said, I’ve got five brothers and one left and he lives in Adelaide. And I’ve got two sisters younger than me,

much younger. And you know, your life goes on. See I’ve lost my husband. And I’ve got a daughter that’s not very well. Well, she’s all right now but her son – do you remember the Baldy case? Mr Baldy case? [‘Mr Baldy’ abducted children, shaved their heads] Well, he was one of those boys. Yeah. He was only five.

No, not really. I can remember bits and pieces about my family. Like there used to be a man come around – this is talking about my brother that died in Japan – there used to be a man come around and I don’t know whether he was an odds and ends sort of person you know in those days they used to try and sell things or whatever. And he always called Bill his China Plate.

You remember those sorts of things, isn’t it funny? Going right back. This is my childhood. I remember that. Of course, we lived on the river and we went swimming in the Darling [River]. I could swim across the river and back. My brothers used to dive off the bridge. Sometimes if you went in the Murray it was a bit dangerous because that had a lot of holes and things in it. My father worked on a lot of those

boats. The Gem. You’ve heard of The Gem. It’s just a sort of a tourist thing now up in Swan Hill. And he worked on the boats and he used to go down to Morgan. And not long ago when I went for a trip with my sister on the Murray Princess about a couple of years ago. And I thought, “I’ve never been to Morgan and I’ve always heard Dad talk about Morgan.” So, I went there and there’s nothing there,

hardly anything. But that’s where the boats used to go down there and come back. And that’s what he did when he was younger, before he was married. They were married in Renmark actually, my father and mother. Yes.

Well, I don’t know, I suppose, you know, with work and whatever he did. I can’t remember much about what he did after.

Now talking about my grandfather, I realised I was only three when he died. I remember a man with a beard and he used to go out and get wood and he’d bring back the lovely honeycomb. You know, the bees and the honeycomb? And that’s all I can remember of him. But my grandmother lived on until she was about seventy-five. But she was a good dressmaker and she used to say to me,

“What about learning some dressmaking?” And I didn’t do that until after the war. And it was a bit hard at times. As I said, Mum was left at forty, she was left a widow. And struggled on.

Ivar’s birthday was in May so it was in January or February.

I think it was February when he died. And we’d gone to the regatta. There was a lovely regatta every year. And we’d gone down – we had a horse and cart, of course. No car in those days, well, we didn’t have one – so we went down there and he got pneumonia or pleurisy or something. And, incidentally he had a – when he was a little boy at school he’d fallen over and in those days the medical things weren’t so good

and he was left with a foot and he had to have a built up boot. A very good looking man, very handsome. But he used to say – he worked at the hotel – and he used to put rubber snakes in the maids’ beds and all that sort of thing. A bit of a jokester. And he used to say, “Oh, the shit in the boat went down one day.” And he said, “All the girls were crying because they thought I was drowned.”

So you remember those sorts of things. My mother was a nice woman. Hard working, of course. My two other sisters were only small, much younger than me – ten and a half and thirteen years younger than me. So she ended up in Melbourne with my sister

that lives in Glenorleigh so she came down there before she died. And as I said, I’ve got a brother, the one that’s living he worked in the mines in Broken Hill. And he was supervisor but he retired and took a hotel up in Casino in New South Wales. And that’s what happened up there.

And he lives in Adelaide as I said now he’s retired of course. He’s five years younger than me.

I remember the brothers teasing me and trying to frighten me with stories. Not so much stories, but they’d act out – there used to be a serial called “Something Ben Ali”,

a fellow with a hook on his hand – and they used to pretend they were this fellow and all that sort of thing. But my oldest brother when he was seventeen he was mad about the army. So he decided he’d join the cadets which he did. And, oh, you used to see his face in his shoes – beautifully polished shoes. And then he joined the mobile force and they had to have a special mobile force that went to Darwin. They had lovely uniforms and everything.

And they had to be a certain height, not married and they had to have their mother’s permission. Because he was only seventeen or eighteen then. So he went up there before the war and then he joined the army, of course, to go overseas when the war came. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Old Vesty’s meatworks up in Darwin? They were well known pre-war. They were the barracks. He’s described it in the

book I’ve got over there. All the – what happened, and how he changed his uniform over and then how they went through the Suez and they had a spy on board, a German spy, and they got rid of him – the authorities. And he speaks about going through that and when he got over there he was in Crete, no Bardia. Then they went to Crete and that’s where the Germans

captured them. And he said, “We were crushed into this train,” he said, “just like sardines.” He said, “We were fainting for want of food.” Before that he was – went down to nothing, you know. So it was a hard time for them. Not so much, as I’ve said, the other brother – who was tortured and so on.

Well, I can’t remember much about that because we went away for a while, you see? When I was only – you know, I went away. But I guess, it was like everybody. They couldn’t get work. Those days, they didn’t call it – they gave you rations from the police stations, like fresh bread, fresh butter – even butter you got. So that’s what we got if we went and got some of those things.

I don’t know about Wentworth, what we did there. Because as I said I remember more about going away than I do pre – apart from going to school and it was very cold and I used to get chilblains. We had a bridge, we walked across the bridge. It was good times and bad times.

Yeah, you’d see them around. You know, when I went away.

You’d see people walking along. I remember one day my father saw a man ahead of him and he thought he’d get some tobacco off him. And my eldest brother and I had gone into somewhere to ask did they have any food or something. And, anyway, of course Dad took off in the wagon to catch up with the fellow and we thought we were abandoned. And we were running, ha, ha. So he got up there and

he asked the fellow “Did he have any tobacco?”. I think he did. Oh, those things. But apart from that, as I said we survived.

Oh, pretty good. I was all right at school. But as I said, I didn’t get as far – see, we didn’t have a high school there. Later on in years they got a high school there. They built it where the old convict prison – there’s a prison over in Wentworth. It

was a convict one. It was a tourist thing because we knew the lady that used to – she was a sister-in-law of, well, a relation sort of connection with my mother – and we’d go over there and visit her. She was the caretaker, and her husband, of the jail. But then they made it into a high school. But before that we went to what they called ninth grade. But I didn’t get that far because I had to leave because, as I

said, my father died and Mum wanted some assistance. I was going all right at school, I suppose. I remember I was all right at what do you call the Y + C, I don’t know whether they do it now or not. Can you think what I mean?

Algebra, yes. Algebra. I was going all right in that. Oh, one day a little friend and I

had a little play published in the Broken Hill paper. I wrote this play. I’ve never done it since but I’ve always liked stories and things like that and I’m a great one to listen to quizzes and I love quizzes and words and that sort of thing. Yes.

Well, actually my brother was seventeen and he

went away in the army. And the other brother was nearly two years younger, I suppose. Bill, the one that was the Japanese prisoner. And he worked around. And he joined when he was about twenty-one or twenty and he was sent up to New South Wales to train before they went over to Singapore

and unfortunately the Japanese took him. I’ve got letters from him. I’ve still got two letters that he’d written and said he was sending home some Christmas things and they never came, of course. I remember him going. We went down to the train to see him off – the Mildura train. And that was the last we ever saw him. Yeah. So they were hard times in a way, losing people, you know? That was the

saddest part. Families losing their children. Hard times.

Well, I would have liked to have gone on, naturally. But, no, I realised, when you’re nearly fourteen you must realise some things. No, I would have liked to have gone on but we couldn’t afford it. And Mum wanted some assistance and

she did a good job as she did. Because they did, didn’t they, mothers? Had a harder time then that what we had. Yes.

Well, we didn’t get actually now the pensions and all that are here. There weren’t actually pensions I don’t think, but I think she got some assistance from probably the church people. Things like that. And then she did little bit of – I remember Mum working

in a little shop during the war. Like a little coffee and tea – and she used to make sandwiches. And I remember that part when I was away. Yes, there wasn’t a great deal of assistance for widows those days. This is way back in 1937. That’s when Dad died. Yes.

Oh, yes. As I said, I went firstly I think to help somebody in a house. But then after that there was a lady, as I’ve said, the hotel people had a little boy and I looked after him for a while before I went down to Berry near Renmark to work for a while and then I came back and joined up.

I was nineteen when I joined up. That was in 1942.

Yes, I got a little wage. In those days I think seven and six or something. That was the money those days. Oh, before then I went to the baker shop, that’s right. I was in there before I joined up. I forgot that part. I think I got a pound a week there

which nowadays means nothing but in those days was pretty good. And then I joined up, of course.

Well, what else do you want to know? Oh, I used to go to dances. I loved my dancing. I was only fourteen but I liked to go to dance. And we used to have good dances or a ball. And if they had a big ball at the town hall, the women would go around and get all different

ingredients from people. They used to make coffee in a big – what do you call the washing – coppers. And they’d make all this beautiful coffee. And, of course, the cakes and the food was out of this world. It was like all the country stuff. Jellies and creams and cakes and what have you. So there used to be quite a bit of that going on. And we’d go to the dances,

the local dance. And then, I know before I joined up there was an air force – young fellows used to go too and they used to dance in the town hall. And oh, the pictures, oh, the movies – we didn’t call them movies. At Wentworth there was a man that ran it, Mr Bear. He used to do a lot of good work because we used to have our school

sports day which was very good. The whole district would join in. I used to run in the – I remember winning a race one day. One of those underneath the canvas and you had to pick up the oranges and all that. So we did that. And then at the night he had this big thing for the awards, whatever school won. Oh, and we used to dance the may pole. Do you know what the may pole is? You might have seen it in Europe

they have a big pole and the ribbons are all around. You’ve got to hang on to the ribbons and you’d make patterns. It was all very nice. And, as I said, he owned the picture theatre, and the picture theatre had deckchairs. You know, you’d lie back in the deckchairs. Not the seats they have now. But it was all very good and of course we looked forward to it. We couldn’t always go every week, but, as kids, we’d sort of go

fortnightly because you had to have, whether it was threepence or sixpence or ninepence I forget now, it wasn’t very much money. But with the times it probably was a lot of money. So we used to go there and enjoy that. I remember the shops used to shut at nine o’clock and the girls that were working in the shops they would go to the pictures after that. So, yes, those were the sort

of times. All different now.

I know there were some cowboy ones, of course. And you used to sit back and you’d see this coming towards you and you’d think it was going to run over you, or something. Of course, not the things they have now. No, we enjoyed that. I mean, there were some old films, like the old classics. I’ve got Foxtel here and I see a lot of the old movies. That was

when we were kids and then later on, of course. But it was good.

Lovely. We’d enjoy our dancing. We used to have a man and a couple of people coming from Mildura, Mr Higginbotham, and he played for that. It was good. We enjoyed it. Quite a lot of people used to go. And some of the girls in

those days they had backless dresses, very much backless. Now, there frontless and backless and everything. No, we enjoyed it. I know I was only fourteen but I still loved to go. I couldn’t resist dancing. It was good.

Well, I remember one new year – what did we do? I was older then,

it might have been after the war or before it, during the war, I suppose. No, it couldn’t have been, ‘cause they weren’t – anyway, we went to this – and I wasn’t a Catholic then – we went and rang the bell at the Catholic school and things like that. The boys, I don’t know what mischief they got up to. I suppose the usual boys things, you know. Yes, we went to do that. I remember that part.

But I was away a fair bit. Three and a half years.

Oh, I suppose some of them had it. I remember, one of my brothers-in-law, I’ve heard this from him. When he went to the picture shows in Mildura he used to bring a bottle with him that supposedly had orange juice in it. It has something else as well.

He was too young for the war, but I believe he got into a little bit of mischief. He’s gone now. They lived in Mildura, the O’Connors, and I lived in Wentworth. I didn’t know them then, not till after the war. No, I met Jack at a dance as a matter of fact. It was lovely, dancing. Anything else?

Well, I suppose there was the usual. I mean, times never change really, do they? They had their boyfriends and their girlfriends. I know we used to go up sometimes to Mirbeen, that’s up near Mildura, to dancing. We’d all get in a car,

not our car but cars, and we’d get into this car. And, of course, no seat belts those days. So away we’d go. And that was enjoyable. We’d go anywhere for a dance, I think.

Oh, yes. My eldest brother, one day I was going to meet this young chap

and go to the movies or something and Cecil had his eye right on us, making sure we were doing the right thing. Yeah, he did. He was watching out. Bill was a very gentle, kind fellow. I remember at a dance one night. He was on leave, that’s his last leave,

and he was standing outside and a fellow must have said to him, “Who’s that sheila [woman] in the pink dress?” I had a pleated skirt and a dress on – a dance dress. And he said, “Oh, that’s my sister.” I can remember him doing that. He was very kind to my younger sisters, like buy them things like one of my other brothers as well.

And they used to help out like that.

No, see half of us were older. And there was the two sisters like now they’re sixty-eight and seventy, but they were only eight or nine when I was in the air force. Not very old.

I used to buy them little presents and bring things home for them at Christmas when I was in the air force. They were still at school, of course. They were only little. The others, well, the older brother went away to Darwin, and Bill worked around and then he went in the army. And the others were younger than me. I was

the third eldest of the family. Now, I’m the eldest. Oh, we had our little tiffs. One day, I don’t know whether you want to hear these bits and pieces, Cecil had a nice bike. So, Bill and I got on Cecil’s bike – he was dinking me over to

somewhere – and all of a sudden I can hear him screaming out, my eldest brother, “Bring that bike back here.” So we would try but didn’t get away with it. He went to work for a while before he joined up, before he went away, the eldest brother.

They were, and I think he was buying it with his first wages. I forget what he did now.

Oh, he worked somewhere. And those days people wore suits. You didn’t have casual jeans or casual wear. And Mum was paying off a suit for him to go out. And I think men wore hats more. Anyway, that’s what happened.

Melbourne?

Not much about – we knew about the Harbour Bridge, of course, and all that from school. Not so much about Melbourne until I came down to join up. That was in 1942. And I had some friends that I could stay with out at Brunswick, like if I wanted on the weekends

or on leave. I used to go out there a lot of times.

Not a whole lot. I’d never been to a big city. Dad and I used to go to Mildura to get something from the shops up there because we didn’t have very much at Wentworth. The biggest thing

was going down to see the wool boats unload, for kids. And swimming, of course. We used to go down and watch them unload and the bridge would lift up and they’d go through with their big barges. Because it was a big wool outlet – all around that area, people with sheep – and all these big bales of wool would be loaded. That was about the only things we had, apart from a dance and the pictures. So we didn’t have a great deal there.

Now they’ve got motels and different things.

Yes, they used to have the old Kookaburra thing. Have you ever seen it on Foxtel or on the TV? Well, that was our news. The kookaburra would laugh and you’d get your news. We had two halves. We used to always have a half, then an interval, and then another half. Not like now. Oh, gee, I don’t like

some of those movies. No, it was good fun, the pictures. We used to look forward to that. And I’d nick into one of the milk bars and have a nice hot malted milk, proper malted milk those days, on the way home. But it was good.

Well, apart from the paper. You’d get your Herald but of course they would have been a day

after – you wouldn’t get them straight away. But it was the Herald and the Sun, or it might have been the Argus. I think we had the Argus. Of course, The Age is pretty old. No, we never got The Age. Because I remember I used to follow a little serial, a cartoon sort of thing in the Herald. It was called Tim Tyler.

A long while ago.

Well, I was Presbyterian really. I used to go to the minister, and his wife used to have Halloween. I remember her doing the oranges and she’d take all the flesh out and put something in them. That part. And I did go to the Presbyterian Church there. And later on,

when I met my husband, I became a Catholic. Yes, oh, yes. We didn’t really dash but anybody coming around like a Seventh Day Adventist or the other ones, what’s their name? My grandmother used to put them on their way, anyway. She was pretty – she’d send them on their way. She became deaf.

No, not really. I don’t think I did. You probably giggle a bit in church when you’re young. No, I didn’t go all the time. My mother was Presbyterian and as I said later on in the years when I met my husband I became a Catholic but I don’t go as much as did.

It was a mixture. There was a Catholic School there. There would be Catholics. We used to say, “Catholic dogs sitting on logs.” That was a little saying they had. There was a young fellow called Liston who joined the air force later on in life and he was a very nice young boy and he got that kidney disease.

He died early. Liston his name was. Catholics and Presbyterians and all the rest of them were sort of a no/no together.

No, it was just a little verbal. It was just a thing. Anybody that wanted to marry in those days, not only in

Wentworth but everywhere, if a boy wanted to marry a non-catholic person they would be up in arms and there would be such a row about it. No, you couldn’t do it. It was very bad. Of course it is all different now.

How do you mean?

It would have been to the people. I didn’t have any worries that way. I always said I never wanted to change my name for some reason. I said I wanted to stay McFarlane. Of course I didn’t because you don’t. You might now but you didn’t then.

Sometimes it was very serious. The father or mother would be up in arms if a Catholic met a Protestant. In some families, not every family, there would be some terrible upsets about it. I don’t know how they worked it out. Sometimes they never did.

It varied.

The Empire? Yes. It was strange. We used to sing all those songs, the British songs, about the Empire. I was born on Empire Day and my grandmother was born on that day. This was the one that worked in Ned Kelly’s country. She was born on that day.

Her name was Alice Victoria and she thought it was Alice because she brought her up. That is why I got Alice and it turned out it was Alexandria Victoria after the British queens. I think their birthdays, or Queen Victoria was on the 24th of May which is Empire Day. I don’t think they have it now do they?

No, they don’t.

That business, yes. I always say, “Why have it a month away – April and June.”

Not really. We used to sing all those songs. I heard some of them not long ago, the British songs.

I used to sing them. I can’t sing but I used to sing them to myself. That is what we did and probably at school we had a day. We would line up and we had the flag of course. That will never go away I don’t think.

It was a place that was a long way away.

I didn’t mind doing the Empire thing but apart from that we just learned it at school about that and France and the great fire and the wine districts in France and all that sort of thing. We knew a bit.

Not very. I am Aussie, real Aussie because my people were all born here.

I have got Scottish ancestors. I know that. My grandmother’s name was Buckley before she married McFarlane. Some of her relations came from over there. There is quite a bit of Scottish in the family but it is back, right back.

Well, we listened – on the wireless, we called it the wireless then, we could get news straight through from London. This is later on. It wasn’t King George V, it was his son. We listened to some of those talks about

King Edward abdicating and we also heard the coronation of Queen Elizabeth over the wireless. You heard all that which was good. As I said it was the wireless and it was very good. We could hear a lot on the radio, now it is the radio. I suppose we had connections there but not really it was still Australian. It was all Australian.

Very, because we had a lot of serials which were good. You could get the consoles, the high ones, and you could get the small ones of course. We had a fairly big one at one time and it was very interesting. I still like the radio. I still have one up near my bed and I listen to the quiz at a quarter past twelve at night on the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]. I like all that.

At that stage the boys had gone and were away and that and there was only my younger sisters and the two other younger brothers. I actually had three brothers younger than me.

They have all gone excepting the one I was saying they had later. I was away later on in the air force. We didn’t fight over that.

Going back to just

before we got an ice chest my grandmother had the Coolgardie Safe that you’ve heard about that have you?

It is a ‘30s thing or a ‘20s thing. You would have a safe and they had flannel clothes each side, wet. They would drop down. In that safe you’d put your butter and milk and do you know it was nearly as good as refrigeration. Before the ice chests

they called them Coolgardie Safes. They were very good. If you go around to some of these old places you might see the tourist thing and you might come across one. They were in the ‘20s and ‘30s and as I said they did keep things cool to a certain degree. If you went down near the river and you went for a picnic or something and you put a bottle in the water that kept that cool or butter in something and wrapped up to stop it getting wet that would keep it

cool too. Then we had ice chests later on. People used to come around with a big block of ice but it wasn’t as good as the old fridge. They were good.

Yes, you used to get deliveries. We used to go to the local store and

you’d ask them if they had any broken biscuits. A lot of people did, the kids. They would say, “Oh yes, we’ve got some here.” And you’d buy these biscuits to take home and they were ones that they couldn’t sell. They were quite good but they were broken. We would buy those. I remember there was an old chappie – would this be interesting? There was an old chappie down near the cemetery and boy

did he smell. He would not have had a bath for five years I suppose. Anyway, we used to call him Billy Bran Bag. He would come sometimes near the shops and it was shocking, would he smell. I will never forget that. The poor old fellow I suppose he lived out there on his own somewhere in a shack, or not even in a shack. That was something I remember too. It’s all come back.

No. The bushrangers would have been in the 1800s.

Well, you would hear of it. We didn’t have any as I said only apart from when Grandma told us about the Kelly’s. We didn’t have any there. We didn’t have any robberies but we did have a lot of fires. It was very hot weather. It would be hot for weeks and weeks and weeks on end and you

didn’t get a cool change for I don’t know how many weeks. Then you would get the fires and the men would have to go out and fight them as best they could and not with equipment. There was a bit of equipment but not much. They didn’t have much in those days. They would get bags and just go, “Bang, bang” right along. That was a bad time. That was around the areas.

Ned Kelly, he was. I have listened to quite a few documentaries about this. There are still people that believe he was OK. The old story is that the police came to the door asking for one of the others, to arrest them, and they assaulted the mother, or the sister mainly. He had his eye on the

sister this bloke. Anyway, Ned got to hear of it and that is how all this trouble started. They used to go and take horses and then they began to shoot each other, the police and him. I don’t know whether – people did think he was a hero. They still do you know. In or travels later on when my husband and I used to travel with the

greyhounds we saw where Mad Dog Morgan was. That was on the way to Wagga because I’ve got a daughter up there. Up the other way towards Queensland, it was not Captain Starlight because he was South Australian. It is on a rock, his name, another bushranger so I’ve seen where they used to go. Of course we all know about Ned Kelly’s museum and everything.

I never saw any. I don’t know if anybody had any. I suppose they did but I didn’t get to see any guns. We didn’t have one anyway. I think they used to go and shoot rabbits and things but apart from that it was a quiet town.

Not that I recall, no, they didn’t.

I can remember one of them getting his first car. It was a funny little car he had.

He had this little old one before the war. And the other one in Adelaide he had a car and I think he took Mum for a ride in it one day. They weren’t flash cars but there weren’t many cars around. Up until then

we had a horse and cart. I got in the blooming thing one day. It was up near the showgrounds and I was going along and I wasn’t managing the horse very well because it went into the fence. I haven’t been on a horse like that.

I don’t think so but it could have been.

The oldest brother had one before he went away. He went away in about 1938 or 1937. It must have been 1938. He went up to Darwin because he stopped at Thursday Island and went up.

Yes, I suppose so if you did. There were a few people who had them of

course. I remember the Chinese used to come around and sell us fruit. You had a delivery and he would come around with all these beautiful apples and they were all wrapped in tissue paper in those days. He would bring that around. They had a butcher’s shop. I remember my brother, the one that went to Japan and was a prisoner, he went up to the Chinese one day and they

had water melon and I think he took a piece of water melon. It was a funny thing in those days. The Chinese were frightening people. They weren’t but that is what we thought as kids. They chased him. They always went home to China to die. That was their belief. They would come out here for a long while and if they were going to die they’d go back to China. They had a

vegetable place.

Yes, they did. It was way back in the 1800s. They were here a lot. I have read quite a bit about that. They came out and were working on the gold mines and then later on in the railways and things like that. Of course some of them stopped here

naturally.

We only had those, the people that ran the vegetable place. That was all right. They were quiet people. They would just get on the carts and bring the fruit and you bought what you wanted. They were all right. But as kids you would think, “Ooh, Chinese!”

No, there

wasn’t, not that I know of.

That is a good point. I think they would have worn trousers and probably their shirts might have been a bit oriental. I don’t think so. I can’t remember that part really. I know it was there

up near the river it was. They weren’t any trouble, no. We had a lot of things delivered in those days as you said. You would get your groceries on order. It is all so different with all these years.

I had an uncle. Mum had – from France she had, “Vive La France” on the cards. The cards were embroidered and they were silk and they were lovely. My Uncle George his name was. He was one of my mother’s brother. She had two brothers. I remember that part but he came back all right. He had a fruit block

out at Redcliffe. Have you ever been up there to Mildura?

It is a very modern place but Redcliffe is one of the smaller towns. There are fruit blocks everywhere, grapes.

No, not really. We didn’t see him very much

because he lived away from us. We did see him but not that often. A lot of men didn’t, you know, they didn’t speak about their experiences after the war.

No, not really. He looked all right from what I remember.

I suppose you could say that.

His wife was a bit distant too. You know that sort of thing. They weren’t that close to us. We were at Wentworth and I suppose they were up there. In those days everybody didn’t have transport or didn’t have cars to visit each other.

I think her name was

Muriel. She was a funny old dear or we used to say so anyway. I remember when my brother got married, the eldest one when he came back from Germany, he met his wife in New Zealand. She came over here to get married and Uncle George and Muriel sent down this set of spoons or whatever. They had had them for

years. And I thought, “The mean things couldn’t even buy a decent present.” That is what we thought anyway.

I think so. I don’t know whether it was just her or not.

I don’t think so. I think it was more on her side. I think she was the one.

Mum was pretty close to her brothers when they were younger. There was another one called Bob but he didn’t go to the war.

Apart from George I don’t think there was any one else that went. She lived at White Cliffs then. She was married in

1918 so I guess she came down to Wentworth a couple of years before then. I have even got a letter that my Dad wrote to her before they were married. He was down at Morgan and he had written a letter back to Wentworth. It was all that time ago. Just from bits and pieces – that is what you miss most. When your parents go you have got nobody to

ask, “What happened here and what happened there?” You do miss that. Mum has been gone a long while now. She was seventy-five when she went.

Not very much because I was only still young. I had a dreadful feeling when they announced in 1939 about the Second World War I was sixteen and I remember my father and

brothers talking about the war before then. When they announced that war and that England had gone to war I had the most dreadful feeling. It was an awful feeling because I knew there was going to be a war. I never thought about joining up at that stage.

Yes, you did sometimes.

I don’t know whether there was anyone specifically at Wentworth but there had been. There were people. It was a dreadful thing.

No, not really. I am just trying to remember if there was anyone that I knew especially and I can’t.

I didn’t see that many at Wentworth like that. They had gone to war because we’ve got a good memorial thing up there with all the names. My brother’s name, the one that went to Japan, he is on that too. They have an Anzac Day up there still.

Especially the eldest brother and my father. They used to discuss it before my father died. He died in 1937 so it was a little bit before then that I could hear them talking about it sometimes. People must have known there was a war coming. When they announced it, it was the 3rd of September 1939.

No, not much about that. We didn’t know that history, not then. There was plenty of it after. I can remember seeing papers with all those people and skeletons and all that sort of thing and the people were so thin. It was all in the paper during 1942 and before that.

It was about what would happen I suppose. I would have been about twelve or something I suppose. This was before he died. I was fourteen nearly then. I might have been about twelve and you wouldn’t be taking a whole lot of notice but you

knew there was something happening. I remember that part though and they did discuss something like that. As I said, my brother went up to Darwin and this must have been after my father died.

No. I don’t remember that. He was around then and before then. It wasn’t until

later on that you heard the stories like that.

Yes, it would be. We all know it is twelve thousand miles away. It was only in the papers and on the radio. There wasn’t television then. I will tell you what, we did

hear, sometimes you would hear the fighter planes broadcast over and you would hear the sound of battle on the radio. That was not the First World War of course. Talking about the First World War, when I was in the air force there was an old gentleman and he was a gunner and he’d been in the First World War. He taught us a bit of rifle

shooting, or tried to teach us anyway. He would say, “Come on youse girls, come on.” We would go to the rifle range at Laverton. We used to say, “We’re not sheep.” – Ewes! He was a nice old fellow, I haven’t got it now but out of an aeroplane propeller he made me a little jewel box for my twenty-first while I was still in the air force. He had been a gunner in the First World War but he was trying to teach

us rifles.

They were terrible. I felt awful. I had a fear because there was a war coming. Even though it was over the other side. Of course straight away men were joining up and all that sort of thing early

because 1939 was the first part of it and there were quite a few that joined up. In those days the men were badly trained. They never had the proper guns. Sometimes they’d be trained here with sticks mind you and not the proper rifles until later. A lot of the men were not conscripted, they volunteered. There were some

conscriptions later on but not at first. A lot of people didn’t have proper jobs or anything so I think a lot of them joined not only just for the country sort of thing but to get somewhere. Of course a lot of them didn’t come back naturally. The First World War took a lot of men. I’ve got a book there that is all about the women’s services right

back to nursing way back to the First World War and an awful lot of men got killed in France and places like that.

Well, the eldest one was in Darwin by then and he joined up straight away. He went to the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]. The other

one, Bill, joined up – he was taken in 1942 or 1941 I should say. He must have joined up in about 1940. He went up to New South Wales to Bonegilla. I think there is a place called that. That is where he did his training. It was the 8th Division 4th Anti Tank. That is what

happened to him. As I said, he had his twenty-first birthday over there. My other brother, the eldest one, he was on his way over to Europe and he had his twenty-first in, they used to call it – it is Sri Lanka now, Colombo over there.

Greatly because a lot of the men went. That is why they had the women’s services. Our service started in 1941. You mean the Second World War don’t you? The air force ladies were the first women’s services to take the place of the men. Then the Land Army of course they came on board and they had to do all the farm work which they were very good at too so

it relieved the men to go away.

Some of them went early. They had to do their training first. Some of them joined later when they were of an age to do so. A lot of people put their ages up. There are cases of fourteen year

olds. It wasn’t so much perhaps in this war but in the other war. They would put their age up. Some of them were found out and sent home but some of them were only fourteen when they went over there. You will hear those old gentlemen talking about it. They will say, “Yes so and so was fourteen or I was seventeen or fifteen.” It must have been terrible for them.

She was pretty hardy but as I

said she had those two boys as prisoners and me in the air force. It was not easy for her.

Mum I would say would have been a bit worried of course because having boys in the family you would be because you’d know that eventually they would be going into the army.

It was more the army than the air force then. There were a lot of air force too like pilots and so forth. I mix with them now at the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force]. Some of the old gentlemen there were pilots.

Not necessarily. You didn’t have to have a lot of education to get into the army, not if you wanted to

be just an ordinary foot soldier, infantry. If you wanted to be an officer I suppose they would have to have it. A lot of those boys from Wentworth if they had the money they would go away to college or go away to school because as I said there was no high school at that time. There was nothing like that. There was no college there so a lot of them went away to colleges and came back, especially the people out on the sheep stations. They would send their boys

away to school. Quite a few of them would be quite well educated but quite a lot of others weren’t. You didn’t have to pass – you were taken and you could be a farmer or you could be anybody as long as they got men.

Yes, in the First World War they had the Light Horse and that would have been very, very handy. They used to get the brumbies. Walers they called them, the horses. They were known as Walers. They would take these horses from Australia and they were a very hardy horse as you know.

If you have seen in any of the RSLs [Returned and Services League] the saddles, there is one at Frankston, I don’t know how they ever carried them because they were so heavy. They were leather things.

Which one? The eldest?

He had a great thing for the army. He was always interested in it. From the age of sixteen or seventeen he was a

cadet and then he went up. He didn’t have quite enough education to be an officer but he got as far as lance corporal put it that way. He just liked that sort of life. When he went up to Darwin there was no war but then he went across. He didn’t realise of course that he’d be a prisoner and all that sort of thing. They were in Bardia which is in the desert and then they were taken to Crete and they were starving there at times. He was a fairly

big fellow and he went down to nothing. I saw an old photo and it was unreal. Then of course they took him to Germany and he was there for four years.

Partly I suppose, yes, he would. He didn’t realise the war was actually on when he went away. It was only in about 1938 when he

first went up there. Partly I think some of them did it for adventure, a lot of them did. They thought, “Yes, we’ll get into it.” They didn’t realise what a horrible thing war is.

Yes, some

would and of course some young fellows they liked adventure. I don’t know, I can’t speak for a lot of them, but I think some of them went for the thought of helping. I think my brother did and my other brother did especially too the younger brother, the one that was prisoner in Japan and also on the Burma Railway. That was a horrible thing.

Well, you had to have coupons of course and you couldn’t get much of this or much of that. I must say though we did all right at Laverton in the air force. We had good food. But a lot of people just at home they didn’t have a great deal. You couldn’t get butter and you couldn’t get things like that. There was horrible Nuttelex. Have you ever heard of it?

You can still buy it and it is the most horrible margarine you have ever tasted. It was shocking. There wasn’t much of that around, good food. You’d have to have the coupons of course for tea and all the food.

It was probably not long

after. I can exactly remember the right day but not long after. They had to have those rations and it was for everything like clothing and food.

That is a good question. Well, I

suppose not having – at least you could get something but not a lot. If you had run out of tea or run out of other things if you didn’t have the appropriate coupons you couldn’t get any. I guess that going away and not really having – it is not that we suffered a great deal when we were away when I was small. At least we could get something from as I said the rationing.

It wasn’t called the dole, I think they called it rationing. You would get fresh bread and fresh sausages and things like that while we were away. That is while I was small and not during the war I don’t think.

Dad died in 1937 so it was past the Depression by then. We

managed, you know. The boys were working at the time before they went away.

Well my two brothers were in the army and I used to worry about them and I thought, “I might join the army.” As I said before there were no recruiting vans at the time. So, the air force van was there in Mildura one day so I joined the

air force which I’ve never regretted. I think you think you are helping out and doing some things for them.

That is the recruiting van. They’d come up to country places and went around and saw if they could get anybody to join up.

I must have found out from an advertisement or something because I know I went up from Wentworth to Mildura that day.

Yes, I think I did, yes. They had the van there and they just asked you a few questions and tell you when you’ve got to come down to the city, to the big smoke.

Yes, and as I said the air force ladies were the first women’s servers in 1941.

The others might have been in the same year but not at the same time, the navy and the army. Yes, it was very good.

Well, I suppose I did. It is a big thing to be doing isn’t it? I had been away from home before. I had gone down to a place called Berry to work. It is not as if I had – a lot of the girls when they

joined up they had never been away from home. They were sort of a bit wary of things, you know, but it didn’t worry me that way. I was sent down to Somers as I said before to do my initial training.

My father was gone by then.

I’ll tell you what. You won’t believe this but the papers, ‘The Truth’, were not very nice to say we were the officers’ groundsheets meaning that we were having sex with the officers. Of course they tried to – the women weren’t welcome for a while. Even men in the government they weren’t too happy with us being women in the service.

“No, women can’t do this and can’t do that.” For a while we were labelled not very nicely and it was in the papers even and that wasn’t very good. That wasn’t so. We were just as good as anybody. There might have been some girls that were a bit lax in their morals but I don’t think there were many.

We were very angry about that of course.

That is what they said, yes.

She probably didn’t see it. She wouldn’t have been buying ‘The Truth’ or anything like that because ‘The Truth] was very, as you know – I don’t know remember that paper do you?

It wasn’t a very good paper was it? All the scandals came out in that paper.

They were quite good, you know. I would tell people and of course a lot of them didn’t. There wouldn’t have been many women coming from Wentworth. Truthfully speaking, I think I was the only one from there if I remember. There might have been somebody else afterwards.

Anyway, I just went down and got on with it. The conditions – you want to hear about that?

When we joined up you had to fill up a mattress with straw. Palliasses they called them. That is what we slept on and there were no sheets. There were grey blankets and each morning they had to be perfectly folded.

There would be an inspection and you had to have everything neatly in your locker and blankets neatly folded each morning.

Yes. Somers and when we went down to the other places at Laverton and at Werribee. We had sports. We had tunnel ball and things like that.

Yes.

Yes.

At the exhibition buildings there. There were a lot of people going through there. There were doctors and all the rest of them.

Everything. There were womanly questions

and all the rest of it like, “Anything wrong with your chest?” and all the rest of it.

Not really. They had to be asked I suppose so that was it. It was a bit embarrassing I suppose for a while but they have to do that because they have to make sure you are pretty fit to join the service.

They were men.

Later on when I was at Laverton, I have a spot on my eye that I cut when I was a kid. My brothers had tied string to a little dolly’s pram I had. I snipped it open with a knife and it flicked my eye. One day I had about half a dozen eye specialists down there at Laverton looking at it. They said, “You are very lucky you weren’t blinded in the eye.”

It was quite good. We did a lot of drilling and all that sort of thing. Some of the sergeants, we had one little short drilling person who used to take the drill and she wasn’t very high – you’d better not put this in the thing – it was “the duck’s bum” or something. She was short

and she used to have a voice on her that used to yell out. There were some funny parts sometimes. You’d have a bit of fun. We had dances there at Laverton and movies or picture shoes. One night we were in the picture show and it was Boris Karloff in one of his old films. They used to take the bodies – in Scotland medical men used to have to take

bodies from the grave for the mortuary or somewhere for them to study on as doctors to be. Anyway, we were all quiet and there was a bit of tension in the theatre and some fellow sings out something and everybody jumps. It was a good little old-fashioned horror movie.

My first what?

My first date?

Not at Somers. I never went with anybody down there. We had a lot of work to do down there and we were drilling all the time and learning to be in the service. No, I didn’t have any dates there. I went out with a couple of fellows when I was at Laverton.

Oh sorry.

I thought you said, “Date.” What did you say again?

We’d go out on the parade ground and do all the proper marching and how to turn and drills and all that. As I said, the men were all falling down because they were going overseas and they had inoculations and we used to think, “Look at them, they’re all falling over.” Then we had to do a lot of

learning the ranks from all the services from admirals down to ordinary people and the seamen or the air force down to the ordinary people. We learned all that. We were there for a couple of months and then we were transferred to where we were going.

They were in a way but we used to take it. They weren’t that bad. Some you wouldn’t like but they were all right. That was down there at Somers. We did a lot of marching.

The women were doing the drilling. We had women drillers, not men.

No, not then. Nowadays we are all in one now. We used to be – the WAAAF is Women’s Australian Auxiliary Air Force, with the three As in the middle. We were – I’ve gone off track for a minute. We had the women drill instructors for us down there. We didn’t have men to do that.

Now it is different altogether. Nowadays if you joined the WAAAF or a women’s service you are as one with the men. Even with the air force now, ex air force, we are all RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] we are not WAAAF on our own. We were different then. Then we had to learn all the

ways of the air force and planes and things like that.

It was marching and how to quickly turn and all that sort of thing. You wouldn’t sort of go in a straight line all the time.

It was all interesting though to learn these things. You don’t forget it either. I can still march as well as I think I did then.

You don’t forget it. I wouldn’t be able to do that then. I like marching. I don’t mind all that. I like marching.

Yes, but we soon learned to do it. The only thing was if somebody did something wrong the whole lot would be punished. They weren’t punished but they wouldn’t get leave or certain things. One causes the whole lot to be. At Laverton we were in rooms and we had to polish our floors because it was an older

part of the building. In the front it was a brick building but where we were was the old weatherboards and you had to polish your floors because they were lino [linoleum]. There were no carpets but now they do. We did that and cleaned out the bathroom facilities. There were two to a room. I remember one girl, she had a sister and the sister was a kleptomaniac and she used to take things.

You know what I mean?

Yes, compulsive. She used to take things and she had to go. Down at Werribee we were all in one hut and you would meet some funny types. One girl was a pretty big girl and she was trying to be a ballerina. That was fun. You would meet them all.

Yes.

We had summer uniforms, drabs, a fawny colour, like that more or less, like your trousers. We used to starch them all and we didn’t have washing machines. We had coppers and the like. We used to do that and we had to iron them all. With the blue uniform which was –

talk about your name [Serge – interviewer], serge they were. They were really rough. You had a blue shirt and you used to have to starch the collars. We had big overcoats, heavy overcoats, and hats on. That was the winter one and the other one was the summer. We had a bit hat, a bit like an Akubra but not that high, it was just a flatter type of hat with a badge on the front for the summer. They called them drabs

and our underwear, boy! And we had lisle stockings. There were no silk stockings but we got used to it.

Well, no, not really I suppose but they weren’t exactly smooth. Serge is very heavy. It had a straight-line skirt with the little things at the side. You do it up a bit like a man’s

waistcoat. You know the little buckle at the back? You had one on each side of your skirt and you did it up like that. Those were the days all right.

They were for the day. You will see over there that there is a photograph of me in that one I described, the winter one.

We looked all right. We had a belt here.

Well, we’d get up early of course and have our breakfast and have a shower. Then you would go into this room. And it depended on what you were doing, we were out on the parade ground quite a bit or we were learning like I said about

all the ranks. You had to learn all that. There were quite a few things you had to learn about the air force. That is what they took us down there for. But Somers, we went back there fifty years later and it is now a children’s camp down there now.

No. At the time we learned it all. I couldn’t tell you the higher up ones, not exactly, now. We do have a lot of men where I go to the air force club there are quite a few of the older ex pilots. They do a lot of voluntary work in there.

As I said, all about learning to be in the air force and the ranks.

No, that was mostly that. What else did we learn? I suppose it was mostly drilling really and a bit of lectures.

The men, you mean, you know? Now, when men came back from overseas – I am getting back to the army now. When men came back from overseas in the army they used to get what they call – they had a name for it and I can’t remember what it was. It was to calm them down sort of thing.

They had that but I didn’t hear much about that in the air force.

No, it starts with an M I think.

I think a number nine or something was a pill or something. I just can’t remember all that. It was bromide.

It has just come back to me. I haven’t heard that word for a long while. There were some people who used to go – I heard after we’d been to Somers and we went back to this reunion a few years back for the men from overseas and that. There weren’t many WAAAF that went down there. We used to have a man who lived down the side there and

he was a commissionaire after the air force and he was an MP [Military Police], a policeman in the force. He said, “You didn’t know”. I used to go down to the beach and all these girls were down there with their boyfriends cuddling up and the rest of it. It went on. Some of the girls wouldn’t care. They had to be pretty careful because you’d be thrown out if you did

anything like that. If you got pregnant out you went. Now you can have a baby while you’re in there, a married person. I know a married navy person and she’s got children and she can still be in the navy.

There was one I think, only one that I heard of.

Yes. I suppose that happens in life doesn’t it? It would have to happen in some services.

I guess so. We were

told.

No, not a great deal. In those days sexual attitude wasn’t discussed like it is now. It was sort of hidden wasn’t it? I don’t know about you but in my day – things are very open now and you didn’t get that then but not as much as you would now. They will discuss anything and show you anything now.

They would know that some of them would be. Not every man was like that. There would be some, yes, while they were away. A lot of them would go to brothels or whatever.

No, not really, but we knew about the

bromide thing to keep them down at a level so they wouldn’t get too frisky.

I don’t know.

I think that would be about two or three months. I joined in the September. Yes, it must have been three months because we went to Laverton I think in December or January and I joined on

September the 30th 1942.

I was just sent down to Laverton and some girls went over to Victor Harbour over in South Australia. They went everywhere. The girls did a lot of work. There were a lot of different occupations.

Well, perhaps once a fortnight or once a week. We got a whole thirty shillings for wages fortnightly. And when you got to corporal or anything you got a little bit more. We would go into town, or I would anyway, and they had different places you could stay if you wanted to. In town you could get your hair done and do

things like that. I would say it was about once a fortnight I think or round about that. Then you would go into town or do what you wanted or go to the movies or whatever. Laverton as you know is almost a city now but then it was only a few places. We would go out to the little steak house and have a steak sometimes. There was nothing there then. That was about it in Laverton itself.

Quite a bit, yes. When I had leave, yes.

It was a sea of uniforms of course. Everyone was in uniform, there were a lot of people. There were all those sort of things. There was rationing. I stayed with people at Brunswick and I would go to a dance out at

Prahran which they used to call the modern/old time. You would get on a tram for about threepence. It was unusual.

I went out with an American one night. I was with friends. There were a couple of us, two or three of us and we met this chap.

I never saw him again. I just saw him one night. That was a very whatsaname issue with our men because they would bring out their silk stockings and not nylons so much and give the girls presents like that. Of course, our fellows didn’t have those sort of things and they used to have big fights up in Brisbane.

I remember my husband told me about that. He wasn’t my husband then. There were a lot of issues like that. Of course, we had that big murder – remember the talk about the murder? The man came out and murdered the girl. As a matter of fact the name was very similar to a girl I knew, Hosking. Well, I knew some Hopkins up in Wentworth and they were living down there in Melbourne then.

The girls were. She was Gladys Hopkins and it was Gladys Hosking that was murdered by the American soldier.

That’s right. Yes. That’s his name. That was a big case. They were camped at, they called it Camp Pell then, near the zoo.

What do you call it? That park?

Royal Parade, yes. One time it was all housing commission there. The Americans took over the Royal Melbourne Hospital. They took that over and they also took camps at Camp Pell so there were a lot of them around at the time. Some of them were good and

like everybody, some were bad. But they were the war years.

Well, there could have been but I didn’t see them. I think there were some arguments, yes. As I said, they took out the girls and the Australian fellows wouldn’t like that because they didn’t have the money.

They weren’t very much liked. Even in the army, I remember my husband saying. They used to get all this good food, really luxury stuff from America. And the Australian boys would have – what do you call that stuff in the can?

Bully Beef. So there was a bit of

goings on there.

One night, yes. One night. He was all right. He was very kind to me. But I didn’t go out with him again. We only had limited leave, just a couple of nights or a night. We didn’t have a lot of them. Unless your annual leave go home back to your home town. It took us all day. We had awful trains.

Steam trains. And all the soot off the coal and that would get on to you. If you stuck your head out the window you’d be blinded nearly. But I remember one Christmas we were going up there and it was very hot and we didn’t get back to Wentworth until about twelve o’clock Christmas Day because it was so slow going up in the train. But we’d get off at different places and have

something to eat. But it was an awful old train. I didn’t go on a troop train anywhere but actually a friend of mine did. She went up to Amberley right up the top of Queensland – big American air force base. So that was up there. They were good days. Never regretted it.

Well, you could go to dances over at the Trocadero which is where the cultural centre is now. Oh, other places – out at Prahran there was dancing. I’d go with my friend. Her husband ended up as a prisoner of the Japanese and didn’t come back. He came back but he was in a bad way for a while. But we’d go out

just to socialise. I met a boy from Wentworth one day and we’d go out to the movies. Just someone I grew up with. I didn’t see anybody else much I knew from there. But we could do that. And not being very far from Melbourne, it was only about fifteen minutes in from Laverton. It wasn’t very long.

Yeah. I’ve been there.

Oh, I can’t remember much about that one. I can remember more about the one out at – what do they call the one out at Prahran? That might have been Leggetts. It used to have the shiny things up the top and they turn around as you dance. And the lights would get on it, you know. yeah, we did all that.

Yes.

Oh, we had good music in our day. The music now! I don’t know whether you’re a music fellow, or not. But, oh look, we had beautiful songs and beautiful dances. We liked the older time ones. I don’t mind some of the stuff. I like rock’n’roll. I can get up and rock and roll and do all that. But I did like the big bands. We had some wonderful big bands around.

Not necessarily here but overseas like Glenn Miller and all those. There were some good bands. They were good times. I loved dancing.

Vera Lynn. She was the

force’s sweetheart. She was English. I heard a record the other day of her and she was good. She was called the force’s sweetheart. She’d sing to a whole lot of soldiers. And very nice. And of course old Louis. I loved old Louis Armstrong. People like that from during the war I’m talking about. George Formby from England,

the comedian. Did you ever hear him? He’s good. I don’t know whether you like that sort of thing or not, but you’re younger. Much younger.

Different era. But now when they sing a song the songsters repeat the words about six times or more. No, I liked the older type of ones. Really. Well, there’s some good songs. Like Roy

Orbison and all those. Oh, great. All those sort of singers. Even Elvis [Presley]. I heard Elvis singing – I listened to a program on late – this particular one is more religious things they ask about – but they play a thing, you know he said, “I’ll play this Elvis,” and he had a lot of his gospel singing,

and he was marvellous. Not only just his rock’n’roll, but he really could sing gospel. He had a good voice for that.

Yes and all those black girls. Ella Fitzgerald. They were really great. I like talking about the thirties, forties. She was good.

All those sort of things, yes. Those sort of musics.

Oh, some happy tunes. And jitterbug – my husband and I before we were married when we’d go to a dance, the jitterbug was the great thing then. It wasn’t rock’n’roll or anything. It was jitterbug. They’d toss you underneath and fling you up. I couldn’t do it as good as some of them but I did it.

They were the dances. Other things as well. Barn dances.

Yes a lot of places did. Yes, they did. Mildura – I’m talking about Mildura for a lot of the dances. In Mildura itself they were very good.

A lot of people used to do it – go to the dances. So, I’ve had some worries but life’s going on. And you get very independent when you’re a widow. Like my husband has been gone thirteen and a half years but I can happily, I belong to these

ex-service clubs and I can go to different things. It keeps me going. I go out to them quite a lot. Reunions over in Adelaide. Hobart. They have them everywhere.

Then?

Well, there was one – I’ll just close that door.

Oh, no, I can’t get up, can I? It’s annoying me. This particular one I used to go to was very nice. It was up at Russell Street. Or it might have been at the top of Collins Street. And it always served a lovely meal for those days. But that was one particular one I used to go to. I can’t remember its name but it was very good.

Top of Collins Street, on the right. I think it was Collins Street. But it was nice inside and all that sort of thing.

Well, for a while I was working as a stewardess, serving meals and things like that. Washing dishes sometimes. At Laverton that was. And then when I went down to Werribee I was doing more clerical work down there. They stripped the planes, the old planes

that were no good any more. And then you’d have to list all the parts. Put them in order. Than hangars are still there, I believe. I’ve never been back to them. They were doing up a big Liberator not long ago. And while we were at Laverton, G for George, you’ve heard about that – the big plane, the Lancaster in Canberra in the War Memorial. Well, it was a

particular bomber used in England. And this particular plane came out to Australia and Isaac Isaacson flew it from Darwin down to Melbourne and I was there the day it landed. And years later I went with my daughter and son-in-law over to the Canberra War Memorial and it was there. And you could not believe that that big plane could get up in the air. The wheels –

huge. Anyway, it was deteriorating so they’ve just finished doing it up. I’d love to see it again. I must go over there and see if I can see it.

Huge big ones they are. They’re very big. So they were doing the English bombing. And night sorties over Germany and all that sort of thing. But it was a very big plane.

Oh, no, some days it probably would have been. We occupied ourselves. We had a canteen to go to if we wanted at night time to have something to eat or drink. We had different things to go to. No, I didn’t mind it. When you’re young you can put up with those sorts of things.

Or now?

Then.

Not really. No. Sometimes. You went out with different ones. But not for long. Some of them would move away or they’d get transferred. Sometimes you struck a married fella and you got rid of him.

They wouldn’t, no. Not always. I didn’t go out a

whole lot with boys. I mean, I did now and then, naturally.

At Wentworth. When they were around, when I was younger, my eldest brother always used to keep an eye on me.

Well, not exactly. Just a big brother type of thing. Because he was the eldest.

Well, there were some women who used to hand out white feathers [sign of cowardice]. Now, if they thought you weren’t in the army and you should be, or say you were in civvies [civilian clothing], or on leave or something

There had been cases of men getting passed white feathers, especially in the First World War. And that was to show they were cowards. It was a terrible thing to do to people because sometimes men were actually only in civilian dress and they’d been to war. No, there were some cases where men kept home. They weren’t allowed, what they call

free to go. But they didn’t need it. I think most everyone that applied went. Unless they were medically unfit.

That’s right. Something like that.

Oh, yes, they were put in jail.

No.

There wasn’t very many of those, no.

At eighteen towards the end of the war they had to go away too to New Guinea. But they weren’t fighting actually by then. The war was really over by then. Six years is a long time

for a war. I mean, there are longer ones but that was a long one. The First World War was four years.

Give out those white feathers? Because they didn’t know any better, I thought. Why do that to people? They didn’t know whether that man

had been in the army or not. It was just something they did.

Well, they’d find out, I suppose. If they saw a man in civilian clothes they’d hand out a feather. Or send him one in a letter. It’s been known. I’ve read all about this. I haven’t come across it personally, but I know of it.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s what they did?

They wouldn’t know. They’d still give it to you.

It would if you were getting the feather.

I don’t know of anybody personally, no.

But it was done.

Well, I did. There was a pen-friend I had. It was a man. He got married to an English girl. He was English. But I used to just write and he’d write back. Back and forth. But I can’t remember his name or anything like that now.

But that was all pen-friends sort of thing.

No, just during. I don’t remember how I began it. I’ve got no idea.

No. I just came back and then I met my husband just after the war. 1946 or ’47. I did the course for twelve months – the dressmaking down at

William Angliss and then I went back. It was about 1947, I think, I met my husband. Ask away. You might prompt something out of the deep.

They were just like –always had that kookaburra laughing and then you had your news. What did they call them? News something. They always showed those before. Then you had an interval. There were two lots of film before interval and after. So you’d get two full pictures. Or a

cartoon thing. But I didn’t go much in Melbourne. Mostly I was talking about before in Wentworth when we were growing up.

Oh, yes. That was at Laverton. Boris. His name was

Harold or something, that’s not his real name. But he always had the horror ones. We had a lot of people going to the movies. Pretty big picture theatre there at Laverton. Quite a lot. When we went down to Werribee it was different down there.

We didn’t have any. There were about five hangars, big hangars. And different things we done in them. And cold winds come across from the mountains. Very cold.

Well, as I said, he was getting these bodies to work on and he’d

prop them up in this cart he had and he’d take them to the medical students and they’d examine the bodies for their work. But it was the way it was done, all the tension building up, somebody sang out all of a sudden. Some wag [joker]. And he just had everybody jumping. Just for the minute. But it wasn’t always horror films, there were other films.

If you’d go to the theatre you’d get a newsreel of that, yes. You would.

No, not for a long while. We used to see the men and

all the people evacuating from France. Lines and lines of people going out of Paris. And out of France. And you’d see people walking the best way they could and they’d carry something. And it was really bad. Until the Americans came and liberated them. And the allies. Yeah, it was a big thing

Excuse me, would you pass me over a tissue?

Well, as I said, we had what they call drabs which was the summer one. A fawn colour, a beigy fawn. Khaki like, not khaki, not as deep as that. And the others were blue, very dark navy.

They were the winter ones.

A beret, no, only for work. If you worked in the overalls. You saw the overalls in that little photo. And we had a cap with an air force badge on it at the front, and the summer ones were a larger hat, flatter. Not like an Akubra

but flatter. And good shoes. Rayall Merton, they’re still around. Very good shoes.

Yes. Rayall Merton. They used to have a saying, “Of comfort you’re certain if you wear Rayall Merton.” That was the saying about the shoes.

Yes, Bombay bloomers. Almost, yes. Ha ha.

Well, that was just the issue of the day. A lot of them had their own issue but you were supposed to wear all their stuff. Big thick stockings, well, Lisle stockings weren’t thin. But now it’s all different of course.

Big thick overcoat which was quite good in winter.

I think I went down to Werribee in, I think it was early ’44.

There was still another year of the war. Yeah, I reckon it would have been about 1944. I can’t remember. Yes, it must have been then. As I said, we used to travel up and down by van from Laverton to Werribee until they built the quarters, or had the huts ready. Because they were

huts. Long ones with all these girls in it. I used to take a little squad of people in when I got a corporal, I had to take the girls back after their work, line them up and read out all the names. Absent, you know, the absent ones and then you just marched them back to their work. So I remember doing that.

Not so much training there. We did down at Somers, the men

were there for a while – the ones that became pilots. They had to go overseas or they went to Canada because Canada was a great training place. So a lot of them went there. But at Laverton, there’s planes coming in and it’s got a tarmac and all that, but it’s not like a training base. It was a working base. What was I?

There were a few planes coming in and out but it wasn’t a specific training place for pilots. They had a lot of workshops for men and different things like that. I don’t know whether it’s still going or not, that place. They were trying to get rid of it.

Deaths?

Yes, because we went up to reunions in, oh, what’s that place up near the Edward River? Oh, isn’t awful? Anyway, we went out there and we went on a tour around the place and they took us out to where the camp was that the men used to train. And a lot of them were dead within the cemetery that had had accidents during the training. And the same with Mildura –

it was a training place. And they used to try to dive underneath the bridge and all that sort of rubbish. Really daredevil stuff. And the famous Bluey Truscott used to be up there and he used to do all those sort of things. But he didn’t get killed there, he got killed later. But there were deaths. Because of their activities, you know.

Oh, down at Werribee it was more obsolete, finished with, they weren’t any good any more. They just used to strip them there. I don’t know what they did with the pieces or where they sent the bits and pieces out of them.

Well, we did have a lot there. Like the old ones. Only for the planes to be stripped down.

I can’t remember the names of them, no. But there would have been

our Australian, oh, what have we got? I can’t even think of the darn names of them now. No, I can’t remember the names but I know there were a lot of old planes down there. Yes.

Well, some of it. Yes, I did some clerical work.

Well, you’d just write up – they’d have certain numbers on the pieces that you got out of the front of the plane or the back of the plane. You’d just look for a number, write it up, what it was. And I don’t know where they went to then. We had an office down there anyway. So that was mainly for that.

As I said, they called it 1CRD which was Number One Crash Depot.

You did it every day sort of thing. So there were different pieces from different planes. So they’d have to be packed, the men would probably pack them up and send them off to where they were needed. I suppose

re-useable.

I’ve got two cards from the prisoner of war in camp in, when he was in Burma, railway and that.

All they were allowed to say on it was, “I am well” but they weren’t well. That’s what they were told to put that. Mum had these and I’ve got two of them. They’re like little letter cards. And the other brother, well you’d be lucky if you got something now and then. But he did write once and say that he wanted some boots because it was so many degrees below zero in Germany, so my mother

sent over some boots to him that he wanted because it was snowing and everything. But he was – they had them in a place that was all locked up at night, of course. As I said, they weren’t as badly treated as the Japanese prisoners but they still had to do certain things. And if the women talked to them

or anything like that, they had their hair cut off – the German women – and big placard put across here to say that that they were talking to the prisoners. And when the war was over they got them,

marched them nearly all over Germany. They didn’t know what to do with them. Because the Americans were coming in and all the papers were coming down to say that they were being liberated, but the Germans kept marching them around for quite a while.

Yeah, well, you know, it was sad for everybody, those days.

Anything else?

It was quite good after a while. It was the men that didn’t like it, like the high up men too.

Some of the politicians were against us for awhile and then they realised that we were needed and then it went on from there.

A-C-W Aircraft Woman.

Woman. That’s what you

start off with.

Hmmm?

Yes. That sort of thing.

Yes.

I was away on leave and they sent the telegram to say “Congratulations from the mob”. Which is to say they heard about it down there before I did actually.

And I’ve got the telegram at home. The days of the telegrams.. So I got that home which was quite pleased. So that was towards, I’d say that was towards – later. ’44.

Oh, I think that was when that big D-Day [Allied landing at Normanby]…. You know, we were pushing back the Germans. At times England could have gone under, but it didn’t. Yes, D-Day was the big turning point.

What do you mean “share”?

Oh, she wasn’t a friend. She just shared the same living quarters. I didn’t know her that well but I know that she did it.

Not mine. Other girls she took. Her sister was quite nice, they come from Kyneton, up the country. She was quite all right, the sister. But not her. I don’t know, it’s a sort of disease, isn’t it? Taking things that you don’t really want. That’s why they call them kleptomaniac. No, she didn’t take mine.

But we got on quite good together, the girls. And we shared a lot of things together.

Well, I had one lady from New Zealand but I haven’t heard from her since the war. She went back. But I never saw her in a skirt or a dress

until she went back and she sent me a photo of herself in a skirt. Because she always wore her overalls all the time. There’s a lot of people that I haven’t seen. Like when we go to reunions we rarely see the people that we knew because they come from all over Australia. And it’s very hard when you go to a reunion you look up the names in the book but you don’t see many people that you knew. There was one lady,

she lives not very far from here – East Brighton. She was in my room at Laverton and she was posted up to Queensland so I never saw her again for well over forty years. And she knew who I was but I didn’t remember her until she said her name. But anyway I remembered it. She was in the same room as me at Laverton until she was sent away up to Queensland.

You would, yes. Once they went home and all that sort of thing you wouldn’t hear. Unless they were at a reunion, but it’s very rare that I found anyone that I knew.

Oh, yes. It was a big change.

Everything was different. You were in a service which was the air force for me and I felt as if I was doing something good.

If I’d have been home you’d just do whatever work you got, which wouldn’t be the same. So we often say we never regretted those times because we were you in the service. I didn’t anyway. Never have.

Oh, you got on. As I said there were all types. All sorts of girls.

Well, you do come across people but they didn’t show like that. If they were wealthy they didn’t show it off. There might have been one or two, but not really. Not the ones I came in contact with anyway. They were all right. Some come from different backgrounds. Naturally, they were all different.

I know one lady, she came in a bit later in the war. We used to call them, “Oh, you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry” This is ones that had been in for a while, anyone new came in, the new recruits – we’d say “You’ll be sorry.” Just one of our little sayings. And she used to be on the trams, this particular one I’m talking about.

Never saw her afterwards. Never saw her again. After those times we were together down in Werribee. And we used to go out and pick mushrooms in the fields and have a cook-up on the mushrooms. Beautiful. Sometimes a bit of a picnic down near the water, the river there.

No, this is up at Werribee. There’s no

Murray up there.

Oh, yeah. I think that’s been there a fair while. You see, Werribee now is cut off with traffic. Then we had an institute where we’d go to dances, then there was a movie place we’d go and see. I remember seeing for the first time Casablanca with Bogart and Bergman. And that was the first time it was out in about 1944.

Or ’43. ’44 I think it was. Yes. The first time I’d seen it there. So they had something there but now people don’t go through it as much as they used to because it’s all freeways and things now.

It was shocking to hear. My husband was up there actually during the bombing. He was in the army then. The bombs would come and they had to run to the trenches with anything they had on. Sometimes they only had their boots on! Or their underwear or something. And, anyway , he said it was bad. A lot of bombing. Yes, he was there while the bombing was on.

That was in ’42 was it? Or ’43? It was bad, wasn’t it. I’ve never been to Darwin, it’s the only place I haven’t been to. I’ve been to all the capital cities, not to Darwin. Alice Springs we had a big

reunion last year. Alice Springs. The first time I’ve been there.

Oh, I still don’t – I haven’t forgiven them for their cruelty. I realise that the younger ones are not involved in that sort of thing, but we never forgot them – what they did to our men. It’s shocking. They had them working, even if you was ill you had to go to work

on the railway and it was all day. Twelve, fourteen hours. I’ve seen clips of Weary Dunlop’s – I’ve got a book of his over there – he had to make up tools out of anything when he was a prisoner to help the prisoners. And many a time he stood in front of – if a Japanese was going to kill a soldier he would stand in front of that soldier

and many a time he nearly got killed. But he didn’t. They realised that he was a good doctor. He operated until he was about eighty and he wanted to go on. I’ve seen him about three times.

Yes. We used to have what they call – I think they still have it – Veteran’s Week. He came out to Heidelberg

There was a tea dance. This is a few years back. He was dancing with all the girls. He loves the ladies. He was dancing with us and kissed us goodbye. He was really nice. I believe he was funny too because, not funny in a way but he had a temper. He’d taken his sons down to Portsea one day and he pulled in at Rosebud or somewhere to get some ice cream for the kids. Anyway this young fellow

got a car and got in front of him – took his parking spot he was going to go into. He got out and punched him. He was a good rugby player, you know. One of the best in England.

Yeah, he punched him.

No, I didn’t see it but it was well-known. A lot of stories there. I’ve got a good – people that knew him in that book. It’s very interesting. But he did help the men.

Matter of fact on that “Fifty Years On” the book over there on the paper, that was the opening of the day his statue was unveiled. So that was nine years ago.

No. You’ll find a few people like that too. And they used to go in droves over to the

Canberra War Memorial and all that sort of thing. Little cameras out.

I’ve been over there two or three times. We went into the museums, the art gallery, and we went into Parliament House to have a look. And we went to

the war memorial itself. A lady gave us a good tour of that because usually if you go in by yourself you find your own way around but she explained a lot of things. It’s very interesting, but I believe it’s better now. I know a lot of people do forgive and forget. Even Weary Dunlop

he said, “I’ve got no hatred.” He didn’t have the hatred against them. But he did try to make up his instruments. It must have been pretty hard because he had to save a lot of lives. There were other doctors as well. I met a gentleman up here – I used to go to Legacy. I don’t now – and there was a doctor there that was over there as well.

So they know all about it. But Weary Dunlop, he trained as a doctor at the hospital St Guys in London. But as I said, he was a good rugby player and he come from a farm up past Benalla.

Well, the only thing that stopped them really

was the petrol running out. Even our planes they’d go out a certain way to contact them and there was not enough petrol, you see. The planes weren’t made to fly long distances then. And of course they had to come back or they crashed or whatever. And the Japanese they would’ve landed – they did try and land. Well they sent those two in Sydney, you’ve probably read all about it. Those two torpedo –

not torpedo – submarines, little submarines. Yeah. I think I actually saw one of those once. They bought them to Melbourne, to have a look. Yeah they would’ve landed all right if they could’ve.

Oh I don’t know about taking it. But I do believe that in Japan they trained even the little children and the older ones with sticks, sharp sticks or

anything so if an enemy had got in there while the war was they would’ve attacked them with these sticks and things you know. Sharp things. Oh yeah it was very touch and go I think for a while. Wouldn’t want them – yellow hordes in there. It’s bad enough now with all the – we’ve

got a lot of people here of multicultures. Not that I’m against everybody.

Yeah. He had to go over to New Guinea, but not to fight. They – for some reason I suppose – well there was prisoners over there – they may’ve – but that particular brother

we used to call him Mick but his name was George – he – unknown to me he joined up again in 1956 I think for another two or three years. This is after the war of course and I didn’t know that he went to Maralinga where the English put their atom bomb. So he got all this cancer and he died, you know it was all over his face. And everywhere. And he died up in

Queensland after the war, of course.

Oh I reckon Mick’d be gone, well it’d be well over ten years now. Like he worked at the – he stayed at a little hotel up there in Casino, not Casino, Sarina. There’s a place called Sarina up near Mackay. And he was up there, he was a bachelor he didn’t get married. And

anyway he got this blooming stuff from the fall out. They had a few of the soldiers there you know. So he didn’t end up very well. But of course they didn’t realise – nobody realised how bad that stuff was you know. I didn’t know he was there. I just thought he was in the army again. But that’s what happened.

But when they were eighteen years old, as you said, they went across – they had to join up and go across there.

Who?

No. Only two baby sisters then. They were young, very young. I’m ten and a half and thirteen years older than my sisters.

Yes.

Yeah. No I didn’t have – five brothers and two sisters.

And I was the third eldest.

Well they were initially joined up, the idea was to free the men from their occupations here in the airforce or army or whatever – that was the idea, to let the men get away to serve overseas. There were still a lot of men back here, like in Laverton we had about two or three thousand men there I think.

coming and going you know, some of them went away, some of them came back. Well that was the idea, letting the men go so the women would take their occupations. Which were quite a few and there were so many different things you know. Wireless stenography and all that. And oh, loads of stuff you know, truck driving, driving,

armoured cars – like not the armour cars, but driving the officers around, I don’t know who did that but that was some of their jobs. All sorts, and nurses everybody. Quite a lot.

Very good, they did a good job, we were always praised about our work. They took to it very well, they did

a good job.

Oh no we had quite a lot of women, I don’t know how many now – you’d probably find it in some of those, that Women at War, it might be in there. That was a very good, you know about everything there. They did, you know, got on with it.

And they did, as I said, they coped very well. I don’t know how many of us altogether, I couldn’t tell you that, like in the air force I mean.

Oh I suppose there would be some work. Some of them worked on planes. They went out and worked on them,

mechanically sort of thing. Well I suppose they did find it, I don’t know for sure. I know there were women working on planes and as I say, any job that the man was doing, we did.

Well some of them didn’t like their daughters

going I suppose – but I didn’t have any worries that way, Mum understood that, because you know she had, I had brothers in the army but that all right and I was nineteen, it was though I was seventeen or eighteen. And some people had to get their mothers permission if they were eighteen I think. I think eighteen you had to, so that happened too.

But it was a different thing altogether for a lot of people. As I said some girls hadn’t been away from home and they were sheltered, a lot of sheltered lives that way.

Oh I never met any of the mothers, so I don’t know. But I suppose they just thought it was part of their work you know, they had to get used to it.

Well I suppose in civvy life you might’ve, but no I think they just were proud of their work and done it you know, I don’t think there was anything unlady like. Some people might’ve thought so and the old fashioned people, you don’t know. But

as a group we worked well. And we had to salute the officers and all that sort of thing and we saw the bad side.

Yeah I guess so. Because like some of the work wasn’t always –

down at Laverton – oh I came across different ones, some were cooks. Cooks or whatever and a lot of girls were from Western Australia and South Australia, I met them all from different states, because I was initially from New South Wales. And I met girls they used to do the parachutes, fold up there – I wouldn’t’ve liked that because you felt as if you had a responsibility there. Well you had a big one.

And they used to fold parachutes and make sure that they were all right, because the pilot had to depend on that. And those sort of things. There were so many jobs, I couldn’t say how many. But some of them did as I say the wireless stenography. They went to schools for that and learned and

Frogner was one of those places. You heard of Frogner? It was a depot out of, in Melbourne, I went there one day and played cricket. I never played cricket in my life. No it was a place they learnt those sort of things. A lot of girls were stationed in Melbourne, in and around Melbourne itself – Toorak and

as I say, headquarters like the airfare, along St Kilda Road there, the barracks along there, some of them were there. Different places there were, didn’t have to move away much did they? They were there in Melbourne itself.

Liberating? Well I guess they would wouldn’t they?

If they had, depends on what they did in their civilian life. A lot of them were in offices I suppose and different things like that – they’d find it different certainly. And the discipline, you had to be saluting and making sure you didn’t do the wrong thing and all that sort of thing. You had to make sure that you obeyed the officers

and things like that. That was their job because they were higher than you.

With the other life? I wouldn’t say so. Because the girls hadn’t got to that stage

by then, they were young enough to – there were a few older ones like I know one person that, she lived down not far from here, she’s gone from this life now. She was married before she joined, I don’t know how they allowed that because I didn’t think they did. And yeah, they were mostly single girls like of course, we went from about eighteen to nineteen, twenties. Some

were a little bit older. Some of those ladies would be in their nineties now. We had nurses, like air force nurses and all those sort of people. And we’ve met Norma Young before she died because she was a member of our ex-service ladies, you know of her life? Very interesting. You know the nurse

Sumatra? Well she was a nurse in the – I think she was an army nurse. Oh very interesting life. Became the only woman president in Victoria of the RSL out at Pakenham way. Well she had a hard life and she was with that lady that got shot while, the only one that got a way – Bullwinkle, she’s gone now too.

Oh I wouldn’t say so. They didn’t know what was coming, we had to find our way in the air force, we had to find – we didn’t know exactly what it was we were getting in to. We soon found out, we had to follows the rules and just go along with it.

That’s how I felt anyway. I mean you just had to do it. Once you were in, once you joined up, you don’t back out unless you were ill or something.

Oh quite a lot. I mean it’s the different sort of life altogether, because you had

service you know – it’s a different thing altogether. You’re not going home every night or you’re not doing your usual things at home. So it’s a different thing. You’ve got to mix with a lot of people of course and different types of people. I didn’t find them any – oh quite nice a lot of people, some you mightn’t like or I remember a –

you know the homosexual, we didn’t hear much of it those days, but there was a fellow that used to be a ballet dancer and he used to run around on a bike I remember this, at Laverton and the men used to tease him like anything. They’d say awful things about him because he was a ballerina dancer. Well how strong have they got to be, you know they’ve really got to have muscles. Anyway I remember him but I don’t know what happened to him whether he went away or not. So he was

teased awfully you know or spoken too – you know what men are like, suppose they called him a queen in those days and all that sort of thing. But otherwise you never found anything really awkward or untoward, everything was pretty good.

Oh no, it was all finished by then. Although some people did stop in

they’d want to rejoin – just after the war there was a new lot of women joined up. And they called them WRAAF – WRAAF Women RAAF. But they, that was when the war was over from the fifties or forty fives onwards. And there’s still some around there’s a one girl, one woman lives here, she’s in her sixties. They’re much younger

than us of course. But no, they – they might if they were in the office or anything like that, they might go back to an office job or whatever.

On the boat?

The base, well pretty good, sometimes when they were going home

Laverton only had a very narrow train station, platform. Oh I reckon it would be no wider than that and boy when they were going home you were lucky you weren’t pushed overboard. You know they weren’t thinking, they’d just push you around to get on the train. On leave, you know if they were going out. But otherwise, all right. We’d soon put them in their place, no they were pretty good.

They weren’t rude to us or anything like that. They had to put up with us anyway, we were there.

Yeah, yeah. They would always work in together.

No I didn’t actually do that but I said we would have. No I mean we had to do it, we were

sent there to do these things, I mean it’d be too bad if they didn’t like us. No they were all right. I think a lot of those men some of them had been overseas or were going back or they’d come, worked there for a while maybe then sent somewhere else – New Guinea or all the places around.

I guess so, yes. Yes I think so, yes. They’d have to be because there weren’t enough men there to do what was needed so that’s why women, they formed these services. 1941 was our lot.

Oh I can’t remember any specific case

there could’ve been maybe but, I don’t remember that part. You know, nothing was ever said to me.

As I say the only thing the silly papers were saying about us and they must’ve tarred us with the one brush because they used to say all these nasty things you know, that was paperwork that was not men and also as I said before, even some of the politicians didn’t like women in service

and they reckon we couldn’t do the job or something like that. They soon found out different. But we didn’t go overseas, but we had a stipulation when we joined up that said if you have to go overseas you’ll go. Meaning that that was the idea, it was only one or two – I know one woman that was in New Guinea, air force lady – or ex army,

no she was air force because not many air force went away, one or two. But there were army people that did go somewhere. No we didn’t go overseas.

Well I know there were some higher up fellows, yes ..

Oh we’d think it was a lot of rubbish, you know.

We didn’t take any notice of that, but they did say a lot of things at first – they soon forgot about all that.

Well I suppose they did in their own little minds I don’t know. No I don’t really know because, a lot of people went back to their normal work or they went back

to get married or whatever. And carry on. After the war, some even stayed in a bit longer in the service. But most of us got out. As I said I got out in forty six, when it was over in forty five. So those next couple of months I still stayed August forty five to February forty six.

Oh at first I did a bit of mess duties, you know like meals and the hall and setting up of tables, but after that I got a transfer down to Werribee – oh they called us an aircraft hand. But I did all this clerical work there, more clerical work than I did anything else. So, yeah that was all right.

No not really. No, because I was used to being one of eight children I had to do a lot of things when I was only ten. So I was used to doing things. You’ve got to with a big family and I was the only girl for a long while.

Oh well it was a different life for them but as I said it was mostly single girls in so there wouldn’t have been, there might have been – I don’t know whether any married – once you got married you had to go out, out of the service so they’d find that different wouldn’t they? Not many of them got out, you know.

No, not really, after a while you know just that silly paper talk – we just laughed at that and said oh that’s a lot of rubbish and all that. And we just got on with it and did our work and that was it. And you know, we couldn’t do much else could you? I enjoyed it, I mean I still never regretted being in there not a word because it was

something different and you were doing your job.

Well I guess I would’ve at the time. But see the nurses were the ones that got that, they really saw a lot of stuff, they must’ve been as hard working as any man – like you know they were almost to the front line.

The nurses did a great job. Very hard working, very good. Not like, we didn’t see all that blood and stuff. No they did a wonderful job.

Well you realise when you read things and see things it must’ve been

horrific, you know it was terrible things and when you read about the First World War and the trenches and mud up to here you know, it must’ve been shocking and as I said that book, the Women at War, it described a lot in that. And there were so many of them that got killed – more than the World War II people, I’m pretty sure about that.

Oh used to worry about my brothers of course and when you heard these terrible things that’d been done to them, especially in Japan – the Burma Railway and that’s when you start to worry, that was bad.

Well I didn’t know exactly what happened, I knew he was on the railways and that was bad enough, but since

I’ve had all this run down from his friend when he was with him when he died and he said Bill was at Hellfire Pass which was pretty bad and he said a lot of other things and of course they were beaten and all that sort of thing. So that was awful and as I said earlier I’ve got a couple of cards that my mother had from him and you’re not allowed to say anything, what’s happened to you, you just say you are well, but you’re not well.

And I had two cards there and I got a letter from my brother before he was taken prisoner and he’d written that when he first got there in Singapore. And he said how hot and it was always raining and all that sort of thing. But they swam the rivers once with his friend I know that because all his things got wet. See this other man brought back my brothers effects for my mother when he died.

He was cremated – they did that, they cremated them. But it was a terrible life.

They couldn’t tell you everything I suppose, but they did tell you what was going on about Germany and Hitler and all that. And showed a lot of pictures of the men that the Jews,

that were persecuted and rounded up to go into the gas chambers and you’d see them so skinny beforehand. And even the prisoners in Singapore they show them so, nothing of them, they’re so skinny. No flesh on them hardly, so that was pretty graphic yes.

Oh they didn’t tell you that but you know that through different people and also what you read – not the papers so much they wouldn’t know especially which ones whatever it was happening to. But they knew it was happening.

Well I think sometimes they could be. Well that’s news to them isn’t it?

Everything for news. And they’re not always right, not always. Same as now days.

Well in a truthful light I think they should. Not in a glorified one. We had a wonderful man called Damien Parer,

I think you’ve heard of him, he was a war correspondent. He was very good, bringing back pictures and you know photos and that. But he was a good war correspondent. Well even Churchill was a war correspondent.

Not in that way, they wouldn’t tell you that. We’re learning things now, especially about Darwin and so forth that we hadn’t heard before. See after fifty years they let you know, after fifty years. No they don’t tell you everything. And they wouldn’t say, they’d try to put that in a positive light. Because it looked a bit dicey for a while.

Yes I think so, because I listen to a lot of history documentaries. They tell you what’s happened really, and I think that’s more to the truth then what the papers would be. Because the Germans were, they sent over those buzz bombs and all that, but they were getting bombed as well, but not the buzz bombs, just the ordinary bombs – when I say ordinary bombs, they’re bombs. And

but they thought they could take Britain. They found out different. It wasn’t a very big place to take.

They realised

it wasn’t good because – see they already had a war twenty years before that so a lot of them knew what war was like, you know I mean they heard from the men. Though men don’t talk about war very much. I found that out myself, they don’t. They don’t talk much about it. And when they come back – you know, but they realised it wasn’t too good. Wasn’t a good thing.

Well no war is. And now it’s worse because they can send a thing from here miles away can’t they? But it was pretty bad, you know – war, I don’t know why they have them.

Yeah oh, we didn’t like the idea of it. Especially when you saw pictures of

and they weren’t falsified those pictures of the – people say now not everybody, there’s a few – oh there was no holocaust, but we saw it all before our eyes on the screen and on the papers, and that was pretty right. And those six million people being killed and put in gas chambers is not nice, very bad isn’t it? Shocking. I don’t know

why they didn’t get that man before this, Hitler I mean – they tried, they came in with an attaché case one day, put it down near him and he only escaped with a bit of an injury. And of course the others were shot for it, some of the men were shot for it. They’re terrible those dictators, it happens everywhere about half a dozen times now.

I think we did, yes I think I heard about that before. I don’t know when but yes I think I knew about it. I don’t know why I often think to myself why couldn’t they have got him before all this because he had bunkers on him we know that – and he had all that sort of thing. But he was a horrible man, horrible – to think up those things

and to have people go along with it, that was worse wasn’t it? Goebels with his propaganda and the others – Goering the air band, he took his own life in prison. He was given a, they didn’t know how he did it, how he killed himself but – how he got the pills, but somebody must’ve brought them in or he must’ve had some money or something and paid the attendant

anyway he killed himself in prison. And the man that came from Germany in the plane that landed up in the Scotland, what was his name again? Hess? Anyway he ended up in prison for a long long time. Wonder what his achievements were, what he was going to do? Must’ve known he was going to be caught.

Oh we didn’t have – oh I didn’t come across any of that or know of any, there could’ve been but I didn’t know of any, no.

They said, what’s that about sinking ships – a loose lip

sinks ships. So all those sorts of things were around you weren’t to say anything. You couldn’t tell anybody, your letters were cut out [censored] if you said anything about the war. Like if you knew anything and you said anything in a letter, they’d cut that bit out – the people that went through your letters. If you like a soldier, if he knew where he was going in battle or

he knew something about the battle if he put that in a letter to home and it went through the people who read them – they had to read them before they went out – they’d cut that out they wouldn’t let him pass that information on in case it got in the wrong hands which was easy enough.

We thought they were pretty awful and pretty bad – you know like horrible and inhuman. Because to do that to people, doesn’t matter who they are, is a shocking thing. I still think about that you know? About them being gassed and burnt in those ovens it was just – well you can’t understand it, can you? I can’t,

not a man to do that to people. And half of them, like they were Germans but because they were Jews he’d take them like that. And they’d put them in a train from anyway and they’d bring them in to Germany – oh not just Germany others places, Ireland or some name like that. You can’t understand that sort of life

what they do to people.

No we had a few here but not like it is now.

Who? The Australian people? Oh I suppose they thought if they heard that sort of thing they knew they’d be very upset about it. A lot of them had

connections overseas and of course the men fighting over there. No not very good.

Not as much as we would know now, through – I mean we did get a lot of correspondence through newspapers and radio but of course there was no television and things like that. We see everything

almost right at the line now, but not then of course, no. It was very, you’d read about it or you’d see it, hear it over the news and everything.

Well I could not understand why

that man with his yelling out and screaming at them and talking about things how they used to adore him almost – there’d be crowds of people listening to him. But how they could stand it. They didn’t know of course about the burning and the Jews and the gassing. They said they didn’t, but they must’ve known something. Yes it’s a terrible.

No but a lot of it didn’t, but still during the war we knew about the gassing because we saw the pictures of them then.

Mm, you’d see it and terrible …

No before then. Well like you see all these people and also where they put the mass graves and shot them into the grave. Oh they were horrible people as I said how could they do that to people, they were inhuman. But they did it didn’t they?

Well the Japanese were worse with torture like although the Germans tortured

like a spy or anyone like that. Like that lady called Churchill, there’s a lady called Churchill, not related to the minister, she had her toenails taken off and everything. She was a spy for Britain. And we had our own white mouse [Nancy Wake] here, you heard about her? Well we actually saw her. We’ve got a garden in Melbourne in the botanical gardens we’ve got a garden dedicated to all women in service.

Nurses, everybody and she came to unveil the plaque that day, this is before she went back to – oh a few years ago anyway, in the eighties it was – then she went back to France or somewhere later on. Now her life, she could shoot anybody, she’d shoot if the wrong person was doing something, you know the Germans – and they were after her, they chased her everywhere. But she was, oh, must’ve been

oh how could she do it? I don’t know. If she’d been caught she would’ve been for it, you know they would’ve done terrible things to her. But she didn’t get caught, but her husband was killed.

Only apart from a few pictures in the papers and that you know. Not really, we didn’t see much of it until after, when they were being released and all that.

Just terrible.

Well not hatred, yeah in a way, but I just can’t forgive those. I mean they say you should forget, but you don’t forget ever. I can still see my brother, he was only twenty three and he died like that. And others were beheaded – just for the slightest thing. Beheaded or whatever.

I heard of – in part of Borneo there was men tied up with barbed wire and they had a go at them with the swords, oh there were some shocking things done. You can’t be there, when you were around at that time.

Yeah I guess they would, because when my eldest brother came back he was getting married after a while to this lady he met in New Zealand – a girl, well a young woman and he came back through Paris and he stayed in England for a little while with some friends, a Polish friend he had and then he came back via New Zealand

but he seemed to be all right – I don’t know what he was like in married life or anything. But he used to speak, you could tell he had a bit of an accent of the Germans, he’d been there for four years. And of course the other one didn’t come back, but there are men now, like there were – I think all men that have been to war, they’ve got something wrong. My husbands was a bit on the nervy side, because I remember his mother used to say

“Call him up in the morning and he’d just about jump six foot in the air” because you know, something’s playing on their minds. It’s not quite as bad as the Vietnam people but it’s bad enough. A lot of them were very nervy and very, what do you call the word, can’t think of it now, but not good. But you notice all the men go

the men population that dies more than the women – especially if they’ve been to war. There are a lot of widows.

Well yes in a way yes, I was doing a job. I might’ve wished I was doing something else at the time, perhaps something better I don’t know but that’s why I transferred down to the other place. And

it was all right, yeah.

Well I guess so yes, all in my capacity at the time. Because you learn a lot as you go on, a lot of things enter into your life and you learn a lot more.

Oh the first job,

as I say, the duties and the food and all that and getting cups and plates out and doing all that – oh nothing marvellous but it was all. I mean it was a job wasn’t it for the war? Somebody has to do these things, like there were cooks of course and all that sort of thing. Everybody had to do what they had to do and helping each other.

No. But I tell you what we had to wear gasmasks or have a gasmask with us. And some of them, I don’t remember doing this, but some of them went through the gas – to test the gasmask, they went through this gas thing, but I never did, I don’t remember doing it. But I had a gas – oh ugly things they were those gas masks you had to carry around,

yeah. We had a kit bag – oh sorry, I’m demonstrating too much. A kit bag, we had to, if we wanted to take that on leave or anything you know, but I don’t think I ever hauled mine around. But we had one of those blue ones and all those sort of things you know. As I said we had to learn a little bit of rifle shooting, I don’t know how good I was, but we did that for a little while too, but we had to learn all that.

Oh we’d just lie down we didn’t do …

We’re back.

Well it was in a way wasn’t it? It was really taking over mens jobs and then of course after the war women were much freer to do things, some of them would probably do that kind of work when they go out you know – so as far as I know I supposed it would be

like that.

Not really no. I can’t remember feeling like that no. But it was good, everybody liked the end of the war of course, that was great. And we all thought about going home because as I said some went earlier than others home, out.

No as I said, they were – if you got married you had to go out. And though I don’t think, although as as I said, I knew that lady that was living down this road here further down – it’s the door it’s not quite fixed up, you know when you open that side door at the front.

And I think, I think she was married before because one day when we were at the club she had on it Happy Anniversary and we worked it out that for thirty five years she had been married. And that was after the war because – so we worked it out, we were back in 1935, so that’s how we worked it out I think she must have been married earlier, because she was older, older when she joined the WAAAF

I think she was an officer I’m not too sure.

No. No I didn’t know them before, only through Bet coming through the club – Betty Edge her name was.

No Laverton and Werribee – mostly at Laverton and then down

to Werribee.

No no, it’s like I said I don’t think there was a lot of training of such as pilots or anything. Like there was aircraft there but no so much of a training side of it – like there were other bases for training. Mildura was one.

Where?

I come from there.

No no no, not while it was on, I had to go home on leave.

Good, but only for the trains of course, the old steam trains.

Oh you get all that soot. You know the stuff blowing off the coal driven trains and you get all dirty

and everything. If you put your, if a window was open or anything like that but otherwise, we got there. But it was late, sometimes very late getting there. There wasn’t electricity or anything like that. No. So that, I didn’t go on the troop trains, they were worse.

Yes, my friend had to go on it once, she was stationed at Amberley which was up in Queensland and Iris

said that, she said you know you’d be stepping over sleeping people and you wouldn’t have any room and people were sleeping up in the things alone – you know the things where you put your cases and things like that. So that was a troop train. And after the war when we did that ninety five, fifty years on, we went into Spencer Street and there was a whole big gathering there and we had a little

ride in a troop train just to – they showed people what it looked like. So we had a little ride down the track and back and that was a very good show that day. That was well after, like ninety five.

No, no there could have been. No didn’t hear anything about that. I didn’t actually know any, apart from m brothers

being on, they would have been on troop trains at times. But apart from that I didn’t actually know anybody else on troop trains. Of course of them had been – no I didn’t hear about that part. Could have been.

Yeah the old diggers would know more than. They were young diggers then,

youthful.

Oh I don’t know, I never come across them I suppose and now it’s different isn’t it you know – it’s almost allowed everywhere but I don’t know, I’ve never heard of it you see. I suppose I wouldn’t be too shocked – I wouldn’t be so, I’m not shocked now so

I probably don’t know what would’ve happened when I was nineteen or twenty.

Yeah there would have been some. Some soldiers got ‘Dear John letters’ [letters informing that a relationship is over] as they called them to say that they’ve – didn’t want their husbands back. And a girlfriend would say she didn’t want her boyfriend any longer she had somebody else,

it went on yeah. The Dear John letters.

No I didn’t, no.

Oh a certain amount yeah. We had one girl that used to go out at night to meet her boyfriend like down at Werribee I’m talking about – she didn’t join up until,

oh it would have been towards the end of the war, you know the last one when we were down there. I’d say 1944 anyway. And we know that she used to out and meet somebody and come back – you’re not supposed to be out after certain hours, but she did.

No no not really, she might have told real friends but not acquaintances.

Oh there’d be dances and dresses and make up and their boyfriends I suppose, if they had boyfriends they’d be talking about that. All those sort of womanly talks you know and what they were going to do and what they didn’t do and, yeah I think that’s what would’ve been the most things.

Oh nothing out of the ordinary, just – nothing really scandalous. I don’t think they’d tell you everything would they?

You mean boy and girl of just friends?

Oh not really.

You know we’re all, I think being in the service you’re all under the one thing and you can all relate to each other because you’re in that group. It’s the same thing nowadays, we find that we’re a very stronger group for being in that service you know and we can all relate to each other about our experiences and things like that – so yes it’s different you know.

I don’t know whether Frank was in – I think he was in the army, I’m not too sure about that. Because it’s – I didn’t know Betty until later years.

Oh I think there were some yes. I don’t know I never heard much about them, they don’t tell you, you know but there were some girls who had boyfriends overseas or husbands. Not husbands but girlfriends, ah boyfriends I get mixed up you see – that’s what late AL’s do to you. Not late AL’s, delays. Yeah so it would have been a bit trying for them, you don’t know what happens to some people

overseas. See they could be missing, sometimes people get telegrams that would say, so and so was missing that means they didn’t know if they were dead or alive. They could be a prisoner or anything like that when they’re missing.

Not really, no no – I mean I had,

as I say that lady that was with me at Laverton we were in the same room, we’d just talk – we’d do normal things and do normal things you know. So, not really no – nothing dramatic. Just talk about the normal everyday things you know.

Nothing. Nothing we never heard the word.

I doubt if we’d hear the word. It’s a word they came into, they were around I guess, you didn’t talk a lot, you didn’t hear that word during the war much. It was mostly later that you heard it. No we didn’t see any of that, there could’ve been some you don’t know. Although I don’t think it would be – it would be heavily frowned on of course, you know. So, excuse me, I’ve got a bit of a drip on me.

Yes well you know, we didn’t hear that word. It was a word that didn’t come, homosexual – because they weren’t called homosexual they were called queers or queens – all that sort of talk you know the men – or sissies or whatever. But it’s a bit of a surprise when you do see them around, because now days it’s different, then you would have got a shock.

Well you wouldn’t have known, you know you’d think, “Oh two women together ohh”, you know I still don’t like that so.

No no we didn’t – I didn’t know anything personally no. I didn’t.

No

no. See they were words – when in that time, things weren’t discussed like they are now, not out in the open they were hidden words in a family even you know. No I never seen, as I said they used to call the men different names if they thought they were that way.

Oh we didn’t get any lectures like that. Not that – I can’t recall any lectures about that. Truly, no I can’t recall anything. Might be some places they might have but not as far as I know.

No, not that I remember.

No. No.

Yes very much.

Very good and still does

if I go out in a, I’ve got a jacket with the air force emblem on it and we have our medals – we have medals and if we go to the Anzac march for instance we have the medals on and our badges, like the air force badge and I’ve got a legacy one as well and you do feel good. And I always feel a pride, I get very emotional music wise when the

bands play and I’m in the march and you know I can really step out. It is good – but you got to have the band near you, we don’t often get a band close to us and if we do it’s better than, you march better, you know, very good. Especially the Scottish band. They’re lovely.

Yes, yes. Yes

we used to you know, put your full outfit on and if you went out anywhere you were dressed up like that, it was good.

Oh no you didn’t sort of condemn them for that you know, but there were a lot of girls came in, so we didn’t say oh you should be in the

forces or anything like that. Because I guess whoever didn't join the forces such a lot of them went to the land army. And they did a remarkable job they really worked hard. Harder than us. Much harder. They did a very good job. And now they’re allowed to mark in the marches and they weren’t at one time. The ex land army girls.

No well – you weren’t, you know, it was voluntary to join up, it wasn’t anything else. So if you wanted to join up you did. And everybody didn’t of course, quite a lot of people didn’t want to go,

I suppose, I didn’t have the urge.

On the base? On not really, it was just for everybody. If a dance was on you’d go along if you wanted to. It was quite good.

And we had some good music and all that you know. But troops didn’t actually, the base down there, there were a lot of men but they went as I said, some would be sent away somewhere and not necessarily overseas they could be some other base or they might be sent overseas but they weren’t – they were mostly working on the base.

Not soldiers no, it was an air force base so no soldiers.

Oh well I guess there would be some. For a while and then they would have been sent somewhere else you know.

Not at that stage – I don’t think anybody thought they could ever be a pilot, where now they are of course. No, No I didn’t hear anybody

express that opinion. I guess they might have but not to me.

To fly?

Maybe. Oh I don’t know, we didn’t get a chance to do any or that we were just ground people.

Oh I didn’t hear anybody say anything about it.

Not that time. That didn’t come into force until the modern times.

No I didn’t hear anything like that. They just got on with what they were doing, that’s all they were allowed to do anyway. No there was no talk – I didn’t hear any talks about

being pilots or anything like that. I suppose sometimes they might’ve in their own minds but we didn’t hear it.

Well when it went to six years you thought gee when’s it going to end? You know it went for a long long time. We just hopefully prayed that it would end you know. Sometime soon.

You know people were celebrating when it did.

Well they would have been a bit scared I think. They would have been thinking well, invasion. As I said, if there planes hadn’t run out of fuel which they didn’t have long range planes then – they would have been further in I think, try to anyway. There was a line up between, oh I forget what they call it, I think it’s near the Northern Queensland and further down, there’s a

line that’s sort of if you were past that line – just an imaginary line sort of thing, I think you were counted as being in the war zone sort of thing, because it was towards top of Australia. No we – I think if they’d had long range, if their planes hadn’t run – they wouldn’t be any further or try to anyway. Some of our men went out to meet them as I said before

and the petrol would run out and some of them crashed you know. But they couldn’t go too far they’d have to return to Darwin.

Oh well I think some people were very – like you mean the civilian population? They would have been a bit worried and scared, well I guess so

yes well anybody would I think. To think that they could come – bombing was bad enough up there, you know they tried, they tried to get in.

Yeah well we always say he returns and he always said he’d come back to Corregidor and he came here you know, Melbourne – you knew that did you?

He came to Melbourne and he had a talk with the Prime Minister and so forth, some people didn’t agree with him but I think he was all right, you know. He was a general and head of everything but he came over here to get men to go with him. Went over to Corregidor. But it was a famous saying wasn’t it –

I return – that’s not the words, when I return or something, but it was a famous saying anyway. Everybody used to say it.

Well that was a well known saying, oh I must return – that’s not the right phrasing, there’s a proper phrasing. I shall return, you’re right.

I just couldn’t put it together.

Well after it, it was well known in the, we used to say it anyway. We used to say, “I shall return”, I’ll be like MacArthur, “I shall return.” We still say it. It’s just one of those things you get hold off, you just say these things.

Well I think we were lucky enough, well I’m not crash hot about all the American ways and all that. But I think we had to have help. I think we would’ve gone under a bit if they hadn’t come in. We didn’t have enough people to fight off everybody – fight off the Japanese and everybody. And the famous, I don’t know whether you know this, but there was a fellow called General Gordon and he left the troops behind in Singapore – come home.

And everybody said oh what a horrible thing to do, you know. Just left them for dead and he came home, he didn’t care about the troops.

Yes, I mean they were quite – I’ve heard of some good ones, there’s a lot of Americans out here on the bases up – what do they call them up in the Northern Territory – there’s an awful lot of

people around Alice Springs and that. A lot of Americans working there. Oh no, some of them were quite good. But I think our men because they used to give the girls all these luxuries it wasn’t so good. And they didn’t like the idea of the Americans doing that because the girls would go to the Americans. Because a lot of them married Americans, they were war brides.

Not personally no I didn’t.

No I didn’t.

I heard of them, I think it was, not necessarily during the war I heard them, but after. There were brawls yes.

Between the Australian men and the Americans.

Yes mostly yes.

Well I suppose they didn’t have the money to spend like the Americans seemed to have.

Oh I guess some of them would do flowers and chocolates or whatever, but not everybody. No I don’t know much about that part of it, because I never, like we weren’t allowed that situation.

No.

No we never had anybody down there not that I know of, no. No. They were mostly up at Amberley’s as I said was a big base and there was a lot from there. Liberators and things like that were then.

Ah ha, I heard about him after the war. Brothel owner, you know that? Oh they always say big man,

great man General Blamey. Yes I did hear that. I know that for a fact because one of the people who go to the club, her husband was a policeman at one time and she said he told her about it. Yes.

And he was the owner of a brothel… stuff like that.

Yeah I wasn’t very happy about him at all. You know they always say these big men stuff that they say about them, they’re always a great people – they’re not, not always.

Oh well we all thought about the boys on the Kokoda Trail and of course I didn’t know my husband at the time but he was over there. In New Guinea and different places and he said you could hear them talking at night the Japanese and not far from where they were and all that. He told me that bit, but they never talk as I said, you won’t get many men to talk about their experiences in wars.

Not a whole lot, some might. But they were certainly bad at the time.

Yes I think so, the chocolate soldiers I think they used to call the militia. Chocolate soldiers.

But they did their bit over there though. They were in New Guinea.

Oh I don’t know for sure. Probably because they weren’t fully into the AIF business. Imperial Army.

I don’t think I’d know the difference –

they’d have the same uniforms so you wouldn’t know much difference.

Well if they were – they did their bit you know. Yeah. But see being away from all that in the service you didn’t see a lot of the army, unless they were on leave or whatever but you didn’t seem them on the base or anything like that you know.

Yes as I said, I’ve never regretted it. And I said to someone not long ago, no we didn’t regret it. They all agreed it was a good time of their life to do something like that. I mean not many people would realise, there were quite a lot of ladies doing it,

women doing it – or girls we were then. No, no none of us were regretting any of it. So there you go, now we’re old ladies.

No I don’t know, because in Israel they do, they’ve done that for a long time.

I don’t know, well I suppose they’re in that army and they’ve got to do it don’t they? Like that girl that was taken a prisoner in Iraq – that American girl, well they got to serve the same as the men almost. I don’t know whether she went into the gun part, like into the firing or anything, probably did, you know. No I don’t think they should. Although they

joined up to do that you know.

Well if they want to do that sort of thing they’ll do it. You know it’s there – if they want to join up and do that, they don’t have to. I do think they’d find it a bit different though wouldn’t they? In the firing line.

Well we’ve heard of cases haven’t we? That has been the modern times of course I’m talking about, because there were no girls in the navy then. Like going out to sea with men. Yeah well

it’s a bit dicey isn’t it? Yes. As much as they stop that sort of thing, there’s a lot of men. Not a lot, a few girls.

Yeah well I suppose you would, but more so wouldn’t you, but those were different times, a long while ago. And now it’s modern times, but yeah, we

wouldn’t have thought of it I suppose, you know girls joining up and going on a ship. Like same as the men, we didn’t think of those things then.

No I don’t think so, not from what I can here. No I don’t think it’s that changed, I think it’s always been there, you know. I mean it’s a really volatile situation isn’t it with a lot of men on the ship like that

and a few girls, naturally they’re going to try anyway aren’t they? Depends on the strictness or whatever – I don’t know how they work it out.

Yes. Oh yes you always understood that, yes.

Yeah we had common sense. There were a few girls that would be wanting to go out with fellows and that sort of thing. We used to call them

I suppose you’d call them flighty – flighty or whatever. And yeah there would have been some like that. But it was pretty strict you know you couldn’t do what you wanted. What else – we’re getting to the end.

Oh everyone was happy it was over of course. Even thought there was still rationing and there was still that sort of thing. I think it was a little while before they were finished with rationing and coupons, things like that. But everybody was quite happy the war was over.

And the ones who had prisoner of war people or like relations they were a bit concerned of course, they came back after but, wondering what they were like and that.

No only my brother – my eldest brother. Because I met him when he was discharged, a friend of mine went and met him when he came back to – I think they were discharged at Camp Pell

and that was in ninety oh – it was after, I don’t know how long after the war, not quite sure.

Well that was mainly the ones that went over to New Guinea, the ones that went to the Eighth Division were sent from mostly here

Australia – but the others came back as you said. Ninth Division came back and Sixth Division. I think it was the Ninth Division that was sent mostly over there.

Settling back?

Yeah I think we all did for a little while. You’d been in a situation where you with a lot of people in the huts and in the camps. And you come back to an ordinary life and you’ve got to get back to civilian clothes. And all that sort of thing. And I remember buying some stuff in Melbourne

before I went home, a couple of dresses even though I’d made things later on. And yeah getting settled back it takes a bit of time. Then I had a chance to come down to Melbourne to do a dress making course for twelve months which was good. Especially when I had children.

Oh

how do you mean? Well a lot of them – a lot of things happened to men while they were being soldiers, that would take them a lot of time. Sometimes they never settled down, you know quite ready. And there was always some little thing – what they went through – it affected them a lot. Especially anybody who’s been in the gas attacks and all those sort of things. The gas was more

the First World War I must say and they used mustard gas and oh, it played terrible havoc with them, their health. Terrible things. And but you know a lot of nerve shattered people coming back – men – so that was bad.

Well it didn’t – apart from my brothers you know being taken like that.

Oh well I came back and carried on and went to work for a little while and met my husband later on and married and had children. So first of all I did the dressing making course for a year. And

we used to – I came back and stayed in Melbourne and stayed with people – and went back to Mildura. My mother had shifted up to Mildura from Wentworth by that time. And so I went and lived in Mildura for a little while until I got married. And as I said my husband was in the railways. So life went back to normal.

Well in a way. He had a few – he was a bit nervous after the war. It’s something that a lot of men went through. It affects you and some worse than others. Not good. Like he didn’t lose any limbs or anything like that but there’s other ways of affecting you.

Not much no. As I said men didn’t, they didn’t seem to talk about their war experiences that much. Now and then or something. I’ve got a Japanese sword upstairs that he brought back and we’re supposed to hand them in. Like with all the stabbing and that the police said – I rang up the police station one day and I said, “I’ve got a Japanese sword here.” And he said, “Oh how long have you had it?” I said, “Oh fifty years.” He said, “Oh

well it’s like an heirloom isn’t it, we won’t worry about that too much.” So I didn’t hand it in you know. Anyway that’s what they like you to do. Anyway this sword is not the officer sword with all the jewels in the top of it, the hilt. It’s just got the normal sword about this big, this long, the blade. So I hope nobody’s been chopped with it.

Won’t

chase you out with it. But I’ll tell you a little story about that. My middle son Michael, he was – at twenty one he was a sales person and had a car and he had a flat. And he wasn’t quite twenty one. And anyway he heard a noise in the flat and he had the sword with him at that time. And he jumped out of bed and I think he had red pyjamas – probably doesn’t wear them now – anything at all – but he had red pyjamas and he went, “Hoy.” You know

real loud noise. Of course they ran like anything. Normally you see a sword coming at you. So that frightened them off. But I keep it hidden – I used to hide it from the kids. Because when the boys were little, my grandsons, a couple of them would have been brandishing this sword around. Very sharp if you had to use it.

Yeah well he just went, he joined

up in Mildura. And then he went to Darwin first, he was up in – he got a lot of things wrong with him. He got malaria, dengue fever which is another thing they get, up in the tropics up further. And he went to New Guinea after the bombing. He was bombed a lot in Darwin. Then he transferred up to New Guinea and because he as single he had to stop behind when the war ended to

guard the Japanese prisoners. And he came after ‘cause the married people were sent home first. But his people had a fruit block, you know fruit grapes up in Mildura.

Yes he was. Because he fell over and hurt his knee once while he was on guard duty – oh a patrol – that’s right he was on patrol and he fell down

a sort of a hill thing and he hurt his knee. But he wasn’t limping or anything later in life, but it was still sore at times. But he didn’t lose any limbs or things like that.

Oh I never asked him too much, no.

Well a few things he told you but they don’t talk about it.

Just about the Japanese and you know –

oh and he’d go out on the locators with the natives. Very nice people he said over there. They’ve got high morals. And even though they’ve only got much on, they don’t wear much. And he said they were very good. And he never – being a Catholic in those days you promised at twenty five you – until you were twenty five you wouldn’t drink beer or smoke. So anyway his mother wrote over and said, “Oh well you’re in the war

zone, why don’t you have a drink of beer?” So he said the first time he had it he went out on locator and of course the sea was high and it was waving around and he thought it was the beer but it wasn’t of course. Yes he used to go out with the natives. And also he said the most beautiful singing in the church. And when the war was over he took some fruit cake from somewhere and gave it to the nuns that were released.

They were prisoners. But he used to do a bit of what do you call it, sparring with a boxer too. He helped a boxer, what do you call it, when they do their practising. He wasn’t a boxer himself but that’s what he did. So there’s a photo up there when’s he like a young man, pretty strong looking. He was six foot.

Not really. I mean he got hurt in the knee. Fell down and hurt the knee.

Did I?

Oh he knew people that were, you know gone.

He did have a drinking – he did drink a fair bit when he came back.

Oh I don’t know, his mother’d –

he was living in his family home then. Until we got married, he was all right then. But towards, later in life he went off it for years, about thirty odd years. So before he died. Yes. Yes he did drink a bit when he came back.

Before – no he didn’t drink for thirty odd years. When he died in 1972, ‘92

he hadn’t had a drink of beer oh for say, about twenty or thirty years.

The first part of it he had…

Oh you just sort of went – you know make sure that everything was all right and you had a few quarrels over it I suppose, like all – see they had the longest bar up in Mildura. Have you heard about the bar up there? It’s one of the longest bars in

Victoria. It’s called the Mildura Pub – Bar – Club, it’s a club. And he used to go there sometimes or the hotel. With his mates.

Well you never heard their – they didn’t talk to you about it.

Well you heard about it but you didn’t talk about it to them you know. No we didn’t talk about it to each other. Don’t think there’s anything else I can talk about that.

Well as I said when he first came home his mother used to call him in the morning and he would jump, you know from fright, I suppose something to do with being over there.

No no he didn’t talk in his sleep. And he didn’t smoke until he went to the war. And then he smoked during the war. A lot of them did because of

tension and nerves and that. And he didn’t smoke before breakfast, and he didn’t smoke in bed though when he came home. I never took it up. I had plenty of chance to take smoking up but I never took it thank goodness. We had cards to buy tobacco or cigarettes. I used to always give them to somebody else.

Oh nothing very

glamorous, I worked for a while in a packing shed, packing fruit. You know putting it into cartons to send away. Raisins and those sorts of things, grapes. Not fresh grapes of course, they didn’t do that till later on, just the dried fruit. And then – oh I got married as I say in 1950 so that was you know, then I had children of course.

Oh all right. Oh very good, yes, very good. See he didn’t know me while I was in the service, until afterwards. I met him at a dance actually. It was at the Catholic school too.

Anyway the priest got up the next day and said, “Oh I found a bottle, an empty bottle, who’s been drinking here?” I don’t know whether it was Jack or not. Oh that was a good dance.

Yeah. An O’Connor. Yeah it’s a long while ago now. Fifty – what have we been married? Fifty four years if he’d been alive.

Oh yeah but I didn’t do that work until after I come back, the packing shed part. I’d been a nursemaid to a little boy while I was young. Younger than that before the war.

And a couple of other little jobs. And it was all different of course. Your war service is different from anything else.

Three in Mildura and two at Moreland. You know the hospital there, the Catholic Hospital?

Five children. Eight grandsons and one girl. But some of them are in their thirties now the grandsons. And I’ve course I’ve got great grandchildren too.

Up in Mildura. 1950, 1951 and ’52. And eighteen months between the last two of them and a year between the first two girls.

And then we had two boys after about five years, or four years, four and a half. And – no four and a half between the last two boys. And they looked alike for a long time. But Martin’s a big bloke, he’s really a big man. He used to work at the brewery. Not now – they put them off. They retrench them and he works at the – he’s a storeman, he works

out at Brunswick where they make the knitting wheels – the knitting wool. Pretty busy at the moment, they get a lot of overtime at the moment. He’s got a unit out at Oak Park. He lives out that way.

No Gary, my son Gary that lives in Adelaide, he’s fifty one now. Well at that age they had to be eighteen or twenty – eighteen I think it was or twenty.

His name came up. Like they drew out these marbles and his birthday’s on Boxing Day. 26th December and we saw on the screen 26 and we knew it was him. But Gough Whitlam the Prime Minster at the time he recalled them, he said, “No we’re going to stop the war now, we’re going to withdraw.” So he didn’t have to go. Which we were quite pleased about of course. But he would’ve gone he said later on.

He said to me one day, he said, “I would’ve gone.” But they’d stopped it by then. He didn’t have to go to camp or anything. But he did get his name drawn out. Yes a lot of boys did. Five hundred were killed in the Vietnam War, five hundred Australians.

I wouldn’t go silly and be all protesting in the streets or anything. But

we knew it was a bad war and it was a very sneaky thing because those, they used to get up in trees and shoot them from ambush and it was terrible for them. It was the worse war for them I think than some wars, other wars. As far as you know ambushing and all that sort of thing. Wasn’t good. There’s a lot of people here and they went mad in Melbourne. Protests and protests.

Well I wasn’t, I just thought, ‘Oh it’s a terrible war,’ but I wouldn’t go onto that business of protesting out in the streets.

Well I don’t’ think – I don’t know why – I know you’re to help another country but I can’t see the sense like the Iraqi business. You know they had to get that fellow I know he’s bad

the leader, Hussein. But I don’t see the sense in getting your men killed like those American soldiers are still getting killed. And it’s – oh it’s unreal. So I don’t know whether I agree with that or not. I know we had to get rid of that monster, as far as the other part, innocent people being killed and all that. Civilians. Mm not good.

Yeah that’s right. Terrible terrible. And Stalin, when Stalin was in power he used to starve his people to get the farm’s produce to sell and he’d leave his farmers and all that starving. Oh he was a monster too. No good.

Well yeah we knew he was bad you know. Yes. Stalin and – they should’ve put them all in something and put them out to sea and sink them. Hitler included. No there were some monsters. They don’t think of the people. Very bad. But the Communism that was – like the

Chinese went into that and they had to sort of – everybody had to own all together – like they owned all the farms and they had to sort – that’s what it was all about – they all – the whole people owned, they didn’t actually own it because the leaders had a lot to do with taking the money and that. But they called the Little Red Book and you weren’t allowed – you couldn’t do anything wrong. You’d be in trouble.

So it wasn’t – and the case – I remember the Petrov’s case. 1950.

Yeah. I remember that. I remember the day, the lady, the wife was nearly put on the plane by the fellows taking her back to Russia. And they got her off, the Federal Police got her off the plane. She only lived up here, they lived up at Bentley I believe. And they had – I saw

a documentary one night and they had to change their names. They changed their names after they were allowed to stay here. So nobody knew their right name after that. But it’s a bad thing, not a good thing Communism.

Yeah well that would’ve been a good thing. I don’t remember that, when did we have that?

Yeah probably probably.

Well we should’ve, we should’ve.

Oh well it’s not a good thing is it? If it’s done the right way maybe but not the way they did it. See in America you know about the – how they used to say, “Oh you’re a Communist.” A well known actor would be brought up before the board

or a well known person, a singer. There was a black singer, very good, Robinson. Or Robson or something. He was bought up before the committee and accused. See they call it McCarthyism, the fellows that run this thing. That’s what I was telling my grandson. He wanted to know about that not long ago.

Yeah they were the ones that were questioning the people that were bought before them. Whether you were guilty or not you know.

Yeah I like me rock and roll still. Oh I can get up there and rock and roll. Yes I liked the dancing. Of course I was married then and had two or three little kids in the fifties. And it was good, we used to go to parties in the street. Funny thing we used to go to New Year’s Eve parties

in the street to different houses. Different years. And when television came in I don’t think anybody went anywhere else. Well if you didn’t have a television you went to somebody’s place and watched it. Or they invited you in if you wanted to watch you know. So everybody didn’t have one all at once. So we got ours in – oh I forget what year – but it wasn’t straight away. Then everybody – when the parties – there was no parties.

They didn’t want to go to parties then.

The sixties? Yeah that was the Beatles time wasn’t it?

Oh well it was starting to come out in the open.

Yeah. Well they – I don’t believe in all that.

Well Women’s Liberation’s all right to a point. But when it comes to like Germaine Greer [feminist academic and author], all her nonsense. I think a lot of girls, now this is my opinion, I think a lot of young women with the way they dress now like, and also their attitudes towards men – now these cases lately. Rape cases and all that. Well those girls follow those boys into situations where they could be

you know, and I think it’s not all the boy’s fault. That’s my opinion anyway for what it’s worth.

Well she’s too much for on the – like you know, the real woman’s side, like not having much to do with men at all and not agreeing with their side of things. And I don’t like that. She was too much the other way.

That was then because I don’t think, she’s not much heard of now. And that’s just an opinion. I mean I’m pretty open. I’m not a prude or anything but with different things, I think you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

Oh I don’t go to any degree about it you know. I believe in rights for women but not to go overboard.

Not really. I mean

I don’t want to be – I don’t mean I want to be over ruled by men all the time like a husband or men, but I don’t agree with too much of the other way. I don’t think it does anybody much good.

Well the word feminism is – it’s all women of course. I can’t put it into words just at the moment.

But no I don’t think – we can go too far as far as that goes. You know the woman’s taking over everything in the role. Almost man like.

No but I mean we know that there’s partnerships now. They don’t say husband or wife or they don’t say boyfriend or girlfriend. They all live together

now and I remember my eldest son and he had a girlfriend that he lived with and my husband said, “Gary what are you going to do?” And he said, “Oh I’m going to live with Linda,” and Jack was outraged. And anyway he said, “I’ve got two younger boys here, we can’t have that going on.” So anyway what did the two younger boys do when they grew up? Did the same thing. So give up then. No I’m used to it now. Yeah.

You’ve got to go with the tide sometimes.

Oh I think they should have some ambitions. Yes I mean there’s a lot of things that are good. But they go overboard sometimes you know with things. Being too much, wanting things their way. I know there’s good business women and there’s good in all but sometimes they’re

a little bit more, you know, wrong in their role – it sort of takes the woman part away from them, you know the feminism.

Well we did have social values and we had good morals. Now that’s all gone you see. Our morals were good.

Oh well yeah

well you didn’t, well a lot – I know there’ve been sex going on before marriage but a lot of it didn’t. You waited till you were married and then you went on from there. But no it’s a hard thing to say because we don’t know what everybody was like. But it as frowned upon that sort of thing, the open business. Even in the fifties. ‘Cause that’s fifty four years ago you know.

Oh. That jumping into bed in movies and all that, no thanks. No they can have that. I don’t like it.

Oh what is the difference. In what way? There’s a lot of … Well everything’s open isn’t it?

Like we talk about – we couldn’t talk about sex when we were young like this. We couldn’t talk about a lot of things. But now it’s sort of – even the kids talk about it see and it’s all open. I mean if a girl had a baby a bit before my era she was shut away, she was locked up. The family wouldn’t acknowledge that she had a baby. They’d lock her up in a room somewhere. That’s how they were.

She’d have the baby yeah.

Well sometimes it was adopted out, other times it was brought up by the grandparents. But that’s what the life was like.

Well they’d let her – when I say locked her up she’d be locked away while she was pregnant you know. So they wouldn’t want anybody to know. But now, they want three thousand dollars they’re going to get pregnant now.

Oh no. I think there’s too much of that between young people you know. You know school girls having their babies and things like that.

Not then no no of course not. No.

Oh no I’m not saying rock and roll. But the sixties were– well what did happen in the sixties. Because I was married and you’re looking after your children, you’re not taking too much notice of a lot of other things. Oh I don’t know, just life went on. We just lived our lives daily.

No well I’ve written, sometimes I wrote a little story about my life in the air force and so forth and before that. And you know they know, they know what went on. Well they don’t know everything. You don’t say – but they know that I was in the air force and such and such. And they know Jack was in the army.

No. You don’t dream about – no. No you finish all that part of your life so you didn’t dream – you knew about it, you still remember about it of course. And all that, but you don’t dream about it.

Well they were a strong memory yes.

Well quite often because I go to – been going to these ex service places, you do think about these things. You know and we go down to Frankston, ex service ladies. And everybody’s got their little badges on and their jackets and so forth. And you’re all one then. It was very good. But there’s

English ladies go there too. They’re ex service people. And all the clubs – nearly all the clubs you go to are something to do with ex service. You can’t forget it, you know, you’re all one then.

Oh no. Well I suppose everybody wishes

they were young you know. No I have a good social life and I go out a lot. Some days I go out three days of the week at a time, get a bit tired of that. And then sometimes you go two days a week. And then you go shopping over at Southland and walk around there.

Yeah I

think some of them were still around. I’m not too sure about that.

No no no.

Oh I don’t know. I didn’t take any notice then. Got on with me own things.

No but I mean I was home then, I was back in my home.

Yeah I was back home by then.

The first part – I got out of the service first part of 1946 but then I went back to Wentworth. Oh Mildura, Mum was in Mildura by then that’s right.

How do you mean now?

Oh well I suppose – a lot of them were quite welcome in houses. Some of them used to get invited to houses and stay for the night or they had meals there. And some of them were welcomed. But I don’t know much about them really. That’s I say, I only met one or two. I didn’t

see them that much around because we were in the camp you know.

Well there could’ve been. Yeah I think there’d be like a lot of countries. Now when they went to Korea and Vietnam, especially Korea there was half American,

half Korean babies you know. A lot of that went on with the troops. I suppose Australians did too, I wouldn’t have a clue. I think they would’ve. I’m pretty sure they would. So there was half – even the black, half black and half white.

Yeah.

No not in Egypt.

Oh well the First World War you’re talking about?

Oh yeah yeah.

Oh I think so. I think we all knew that men did. I don’t know about every man but quite a lot.

No but you read different things and you hear it. And you know about it anyway.

No not nurses. I know of people nowadays, but I didn’t know anybody there special, no. How’re we going?

No not really. Only like after the war and… no nothing more. Nothing that comes to mind at the moment.

That’s all right. Thank you.