Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in June 1924. I went to school for the first seven years at Oxley in Queensland. I was born in Queensland and then I went to school for two years then in Brisbane.

For my first job I was a dressmaker and I was a dressmaker up until the war started. Then when I wanted to join up I joined up, on my 18th birthday, and I wasn’t called up for a few months and I did three years in all. I did my rookies at Sandgate in Queensland and then I was posted to Richmond in New South Wales to do my radar course.

Then I went back to Queensland to the fighter section in Brisbane. Then after that I went down to Coolangatta where the radar station had just been built. I was there for 18 months or so. By that time it was getting towards the end of the war and we knew the radar stations were going to start to close down. I didn’t want to be posted to do office work so I re-mustered to

cinema operator. I came down here to Ascot Vale and I did my course there. Then I was posted to Domain Road for a little while. Then I was married and then I was posted up to Wagga in New South Wales. Then I came back to 1ES [Engineering Section] which is the showgrounds down here. By that time it was almost the end of the

war and I was still there when the war finished. I was discharged in September of 1945. I was married of course so then we lived in Melbourne. We had to rent a house with other people because after the war you couldn’t do anything else. Then we built our own house and by that time I had two children.

We have lived in Melbourne ever since. I did have five children and that’s up to today.

Of course they were the Depression years and my father was in and out of work all the time. My father came from London. He was born in London and he came

out here when he was about 15 although he never, ever had an accent that I can remember except for the word salt. He always said salt, but apart from that, that is all I knew. My mother’s father came from England as well but her mother’s family were from Germany. My grandmother was a first generation Australian with German parents. I often wonder if she could

speak German and I’m sure she could. It is not until it is too late that you find out all these things. I had two sisters. One was 10 years older than I was and one was 12 months younger than I was. We lived in Oxley and I went to school there. It was only a three-teacher school because it was only a small area. I lived

there in Oxley until my grandparents died and then we went out to Geebung in Brisbane because they had a farm and the property had to be sold up. We went and were caretakers at the farm until all the business was done. I went to school in Brisbane each day on the train. Then when I was 14, I was in year

10 by that time, and I’d had a scholarship for those two years. I wanted to continue but my mother said to me, “I can’t keep you on five shillings a week,” so I had to go to work when I was 14. All the girls in my class were 16 but I was only 14. I loved sewing and so I started as a dressmaker and I did that until the

war started, or until I joined up.

Do you need more detail?

I think that was possibly how it was. Dad was a very

quiet person and I think that’s probably what it was, and because he couldn’t get work and things like that. I think that is how he was. My mother was entirely different. In fact, she kept the house going. That is probably why I didn’t know much about the background of my father because of that. I knew all his sisters. He was one of

10 and my mother was one of 10 too. It seemed to be about par for the course in those days. That’s about all.

He was very politically minded and we were always up to date with whatever was going on in politics at that time. In fact, he was Labor. Naturally he would be Labor. Those poor

ones that were out of work were Labor well and truly. He used to help the candidates do their spruiking under the lights in the street and all sorts of things like that. We were very, very politically oriented. My husband is quite the opposite. He didn’t know anything about politics or anything else whereas I have grown up with politics always.

No, he wasn’t a disciplinarian. My mother was the one that disciplined us if she had to. My younger sister was more boisterous than I was. I was a very quiet person. I suppose I took after my father. I can’t remember that. I had a very

pleasant in lots of ways childhood. There are always some problems, but mostly it was a very pleasant childhood. Where I lived of course was eight miles out of Brisbane and it was almost country. We used to pick the mulberries from the tree and light a little fire and cook them in jam tins and go

yabbying and chase butterflies and all those sorts of things. City kids can’t do those things, but they were the sort of things we used to do. I loved sewing and if you couldn’t find me I’d always be under the house because it was coolest, doing some sewing. I’d be making dolls’ clothes or doing something like that.

Yes of course. At that time all Queensland houses were

on stilts. That was cool under there. I wasn’t allowed to sew on a Sunday. We were Anglican, or Church of England in those days, but I wasn’t allowed to sew on Sunday. I used to get down under the house behind the boxes and I used to sew. They were the days when they didn’t do those things on a Sunday. It seems strange

today because even the shops are open now.

Very important. We went to church every Sunday. I went to Sunday School and I went to church every Sunday. I was confirmed in the Anglican Church of England. My father rarely went. We used to go to the six o’clock service because it was cool then and then we used to have the rest of the day at home if it was a hot day.

No, he wasn’t very religious. I don’t think any men are, are they, or very few. That is why there are more women in the churches than there are men.

Yes. I suppose it was my mother.

There has always been that rivalry with the Roman Catholic church. The other religions, no, I don’t think there was. Where I lived there was no Roman Catholic church or school, so in my school the Roman Catholic children were there and they were just one of us and it didn’t make any difference. When I look back probably the Roman Catholic children did stick together more than the

others. There was no rivalry and no fighting or anything else.

No, I didn’t notice anything like that. Roman Catholics would be living next to an Anglican and it didn’t make any difference.

I probably

was but I didn’t realise it. Probably I was but I just loved sewing. I still do love sewing. It s just something that I have always wanted to do so I still do it.

I don’t know whether it is creative or what it is, but I just do. For many years when I was growing up I would come home at midnight and say, “I’d love to just go and do some

sewing and just go and cut out a frock.” Of course I never did. I have always been like that.

I don’t know whether I was or not. Probably I wasn’t. It was something I wanted to do and I think I have got that creativity in me

to a certain extent. Even when I joined the air force and we had to have our hats on straight brims and all the rest of it, I put mine under the tap and wet it. You can see from the photo over there I have got it turned up at the back and turned down at the front. I just had that type of a flair I suppose, whereas my sister was a real tomboy.

She would

climb trees and she’d do Catherine wheels. She did all sorts of things. We played with the boys. We used to both play cricket at times with the boys but she was a real tomboy and always was.

Yes. My father used to barrack for England of course in the cricket and we used to barrack for Australia.

I think it was always England, I think it was. In those days when they used to broadcast the cricket we only had a small crystal set. It was so big and it had two lots of headphones, so the four of us used to sit around with two halves of the headphones listening to the cricket at all hours whether it was on at a

night time or any other time, and not knowing at that stage that it really wasn’t direct.

No one knew that it wasn’t live.

That’s right. That was very interesting when the cricket was on. The four of us used to sit around and listen to it.

I think we just accepted it. I don’t think when we were growing up we realised that there was just so much possibility. When you look back over the years it is very difficult to think of it. It is the same as the kids of today will think we are crazy when we talk about these things but it was just something that you accepted in

those days. They will probably end up on the moon or something. It’s a waste of money.

Very. We had a photo of the queen in the house and in my mother’s bedroom there was a picture of Queen Mary at the Chelsea Flower Show because my father came from Chelsea. Yes, that’s right, and they always called

it home. The family always said, “Home.” My mother didn’t, but all my father’s family called it home. My father wasn’t in the services at all but he had an older brother who was in the permanent army in England and then he had an older brother who served in the First World War but dad wasn’t.

That’s right. There were all those sorts of things. I remember when the duke of Gloucester came out and we all went down to the railway station to see the train go past. There were all those sorts of things. Everything was red, white and blue. We used to do the maypole dance at school and the streamers were red, white and blue.

It was English. That is how it was. It was all part of the British Empire. Even when we went overseas for the first time we didn’t go on an Australian passport. We went on an Australian passport but it was a British passport too, whereas today now you have to go through the

alien gates when you get to London.

Edward VIII. My father was very, very pro-Edward VIII. He said that Edward VIII would go down the coal mines and all sorts of other things whereas no other royalty had ever done that. He was very

disappointed when he abdicated. He had to abdicate because it was the only way that things could have worked out. He was very disappointed at that stage. As far as I’m concerned it was just another thing that was happening in England but their family thought he should have been the king.

I think it was a very big topic of discussion,

well it was in our household anyway and in the papers. Yes, it was. I was about seven or eight at that stage or a little bit older.

I know that there wasn’t much money around. We were never

hungry because I had a mother who was a very good cook. You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that, and that was the reason why I couldn’t go on and do further studies. I wanted to go on to university but of course there was no money to do that. So I was very aware of that as far as that was concerned.

Do you mean the shortage of food during the Depression?

As I say, we had our own WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and we had our own vegetable garden. My mother was very good at cooking and she could make something out of nothing. I was never hungry. One day she gave me two shillings and I had to go to the

grocer’s. Going up I was playing games with myself and I buried the two shillings in this sand pit. I didn’t find the two shillings and I had to go home and I can’t even remember what happened when I got home but I can remember that part of it. Of course two shillings was a lot of money for those days.

I don’t know, it was passing the time

away and just doing things. “I’ll put it in the sand and I’ll find it.” I didn’t find it. I can’t remember what the game was but I can remember that. And I can even remember where it was. I could take you to the place in Oxley where it happened.

They’ve probably widened the road or something by now.

Yes, I knew a lot that weren’t. At the school I went to, I would say most of the boys had nothing on their feet and a fair percentage of the girls didn’t either. There was a lot of poverty in the area.

Well it was to a certain extent but, you know, even today in Queensland the kids go bare-footed because of the heat. They don’t want anything on their feet. It is cooler not to have anything. In those days it was the sign and it is the sign today. They used to run around with nothing on their feet. I couldn’t. I couldn’t go around without anything on my feet. My sister loved to run in the grass without any shoes on but I couldn’t even run in the

grass.

Yes, we used to have lots of swaggies come. I can remember one coming on a Christmas Day in the afternoon. We had the usual ducks. My mother used to get the little ducklings and she used to fatten them up and we used to have ducks and chickens all

year. We had had our Christmas dinner and she made sandwiches and gave them to him and he went off. Yes, there used to be a lot of swaggies around.

He worked at the brickworks and he worked at the meat factory and then I don’t know what else he did. Those are the sort of jobs that he

had. He lost his job at the meat factory because the person who owned the meat factory was standing for parliament and my father was working against him. Yes, so that is where he lost his job. Getting back to the food, we had our own chickens and we had foul so we had our own eggs. My mother used to buy the little ducklings and fatten them up for

Christmas and Easter time. Quite often we had chicken on a dinner on a Sunday and that wasn’t the sort of thing that people had in those days, because she used to do these things we were able to have them.

They didn’t feed them like they do these days. They got the scraps from the table and we used to buy corn, but apart from that

the foul used to just scratch in the ground. Whereas today people say, “Put it in the compost,” the chickens used to eat all that.

Not that I know of. They could have done that and I wasn’t aware of it. I wasn’t old enough to be aware of it. I was seven or eight and you don’t notice those things. It could have been but I don’t know.

You don’t. That is your life and you’ve known nothing else and you just realise that that is just life.

We took the paper every day, and not many people did that, but we always had the paper. After school I used to go across the paddock and take the paper to an old chap who lived in a house over in the paddock. There were very few people who were having the paper but we always had it delivered. As I say, dad was very politically oriented.

I don’t know. I never discussed it with him really. I know that in New Zealand there was a political party called the Douglas Credit.

I don’t know whether you’ve heard of them but it was coming to Australia. For a while he was tempted to join that. I wouldn’t be surprised if that may have been the Communist Party starting off. I don’t know but I always remember the Douglas Credit Party. It did start in New Zealand.

I didn’t realise it was. I don’t think you think of those things when you are a child. Would you have thought of it in your childhood? No. You just accepted that this is life and this is what it is all about and leave it at that.

I loved school. I really loved school.

When I was in year 10 and I passed my exam but I didn’t pass it high enough to get a scholarship for another two years I cried for a fortnight. All I wanted to do was to go back to school. I did love school and I was very good at school and I probably found it easy. My sister hated school.

I just loved the

education and the learning. That’s what I liked about it. I suppose it filled in part of the day, too, but I never thought about it that way I just loved going to school.

I was a very quiet child, a very, very quiet child and I didn’t make friends easily. I always had one or two friends but, no, I was very quiet at

school. In fact, I was quiet up until I was about 40. You have to get over it at some time.

She would rather be out running in the paddocks and climbing trees and that was a waste of time to go to school.

Definitely. We are very much opposites, and of course my

other sister was 10 years older than I was so really I didn’t have a great deal to do with her when I was growing up.

Yes, we got along all right. I got along with both my sisters all right. That is probably why I like sewing because I was on my own.

I also liked reading. I used to read a lot.

They were minimal. Where I lived we didn’t have a swimming pool. I only know one other place in Brisbane at that stage that had a swimming pool. There were no swimming pools. We

didn’t have a picture theatre. There was a picture theatre two suburbs away. When I lived at Oxley we didn’t go to the pictures. We didn’t have any money to go to the pictures. After we lived at my grandfather’s property we came back and we lived in Graceville in Brisbane. We had a theatre in Graceville and we also had one in the next suburb.

There were dances but I didn’t go dancing. I was too shy to go dancing. It wasn’t until I was in the air force that I went dancing and then I loved it.

Yes, it always started off with a newsreel. Then I can still hear the

music. Sometimes it will be on TV [television] and I’ll think, “Yes, that’s the newsreel.” You would start of with the newsreel and then we would have a b-grade film to start with whereas Sherwood would have the a-grade. During interval they swapped over. So sometimes we might get the a-grade to start with and then the b-grade afterwards. Then there were cartoons as well. In

Graceville and in Sherwood we had deck chairs for the seats in the theatre. They were still there after the war and my husband said, “How can you put up with these things?” But they were the only ones that we had for all those years. Not all picture theatres were like that but in the outer suburbs they were.

Some people had a booking every Saturday night or every Friday night and they sat in the same seats and everything else. No, you just saw the people that lived around you and that’s about the only time you saw a lot of them. You didn’t know a great number of people in your suburb. It’s probably the same today. You only just know them around where you live. You might see the kids from school or something like that.

No, I didn’t. What we used to go on Saturday nights a lot was to go to my aunts and play the pianola and just sing and things like that. We would have some supper.

Really I don’t recall much. They had the different ones from England of things that were happening in Europe. Then getting towards the war they were having more of what was in Europe and things. No, I don’t really recall much at all.

We had an ice chest. We didn’t have a fridge. In fact, it was after the war that my mother had a fridge. We had an ice chest. In fact, even when we were first married in Melbourne we had an ice chest for a few years. Water would run out of it on the floor and I’d have to go and empty it if they’d forgotten to do it the night before.

No, there wasn’t a great deal of technology. Actually, there wasn’t a great deal until after the war and then things started to change. And it has been a complete change since then from one thing to another.

The deliver came,

yes. I think it probably was every second day or it might have been every day in Queensland but they would deliver the blocks of about that big. You had to empty the water and remember to empty the water and more so than it was hot than just normal sort of weather. That was all about that. He came every day the same as the baker came every day. The fruit man used to come around with his horse and

cart and milk came every day. Things have changed a lot. The baker used to come. I can remember breaking the tinned loaves over and pulling a little bit out of the top of them.

Yes. I’m sure that they came every day there. When we didn’t used to have an

ice chest we used to have a Coolgardie safe underneath the house. That was the safe with the water around it and you would put the cloth over the top of it and that kept it cool. Of course being off the ground it was cooler under the house than it was anywhere else. The butter used to get very, very oily.

Well, you

see you got them every day or every couple of days. If we had a chicken or something like that you would kill the chicken and cook it straight away. You wouldn’t have it in the house. It was the same with meat. You had to go and buy it from the local butcher’s shop ever day or every two days. In the winter time it wouldn’t be too bad but in the summer it had to be every day. I can remember the

butcher coming around. He had all the ice and he had the bars at the top with different pieces of meat hanging from it. You would tell him what you wanted and he would chop it off and you’d take it in. You couldn’t keep it. There was no way you could keep it.

We accepted it. You didn’t know anything else so you’d just have to accept it. It would be awfully hot but you’d go under the house and the chairs were under the house and there was a fan or whatever. I don’t think children ever, well we didn’t, feel the heat as much as the adults do. Whether they are like that today, I don’t know.

I couldn’t swim and I can’t swim today. We didn’t have a swimming pool. There wasn’t a swimming pool anywhere near where I lived. We used to get out and hose one another. That was one of the things we used to do.

I suppose it must have been about 16 or 20 miles.

Well you se it was a day’s travelling. If we wanted to go to the beach we would get up early, well we always got up early at about six o’clock. Then we’d catch the train into the city and then we’d have to catch the train from the city to Sandgate which was the closest beach. We used to do that a few times a year and all the families used to come and we’d all have a day on the beach because my

mother’s family all lived near the beach. They lived I suppose it must have been about six miles from the beach. So we would all go off and have a day there. My father’s family, we didn’t go out with my father’s family. We would go and visit them but we didn’t go out with them or anything like that.

There were problems. My father had problems with his family. He would go and visit them of a Sunday morning. They lived in the area and he’d just go and visit them and sometimes I’d go with him. I wasn’t as close to my father’s family because I wasn’t close to my father.

With my mother’s family I was. I used to spend my school holidays at my grandfather’s farm. We might go there for a fortnight or go for a week and we’d go over there for Easter and things like that. we were very close to them.

I accepted it. I accepted that that is how life was. We were very, very close. As a child I got on all right with my father’s mother. His father was dead by that time. I think, but I’m not too sure, that they had more money than we did and that was

one of the reasons. Of course my grandfather had a lot of money. My mother’s father had a lot of money so we used to spend a lot of our time out there and it was good. My grandfather had his farm. In fact, that is their farm over there on that wall. They had theirs on the top of the hill and then my mother’s brother

had a farm down the bottom. We used to play with their kids and all sorts of things out there and it was good.

We would leave home on the seven o’clock train and we probably wouldn’t get there until 10 o’clock by the time you had been into the city and then waited for the other train and then gone off again. You probably wouldn’t get there until about 10 o’clock and then you’d come home

late in the afternoon.

We learned abut the wars at school, and as I say, my father had two brothers who were in the army. We learned a lot about the wars in school in

history.

We even back to the Crimea, which I think was a waste of time. Now I think back on it I think it was a waste of time. No, we went right back all through those wars. Even the poetry that we learned – one of the pieces of poetry that we learned was The Burial of St. John Law and that was at the Crimea.

I had a girlfriend whose father died when I was about 14. He was in the first war. Another chap who lived next door to us he was in the first war too and he was gassed. He was a complete wreck and it was really terrible. Of course there wasn’t a great deal that they could do for them in those days so I knew it could be very

horrific. We saw that they were fighting in the trenches and all that type of thing. Of course they talked about Gallipoli but not like they do today. They seem to dwell on Gallipoli just so much. That was about all.

Yes, it was talked about but at that

stage I wasn’t that interested in war, was I? We knew that the Second World War was coming. Everybody could see that it was coming. I say that but then I think actually the Australian government wasn’t really prepared for the Second World War because when it broke out they didn’t have any equipment at all. As Graham said, they used to cut

trees and cut them to the lengths of the rifles and all that sort of thing. We really were very unprepared for the Second World War. I think probably we thought, “Oh well, England will look after us,” and that is how it was felt.

No, we didn’t go to Anzac Day parades. We used to have Anzac Day at school but I never, ever went to an Anzac Day

parade. I don’t think in those days it was really such a bit show as it is today. In fact, I think Anzac Day has outlived its usefulness because everybody and anybody can march on Anzac Day.

Yes, he was. He was aware of anything political right throughout the world. We used to discuss those sorts of things at home. As I say, we got the paper every day.

I can’t really remember much that he did say about it but I know that we had discussed it, but that’s about all. I don’t know which side he was on, I couldn’t tell you. He would have had a side I am sure of that.

Santamaria was after the war. He was after the Second World War, wasn’t he?

I had never heard of him until after the war. Yes, I had heard of Menzies and various politicians. I didn’t take a great deal of

interest in individuals. Chifley was through the war and I was living near Chifley’s house at Bathurst when I was up there when Graham was at Bathurst for a while. No, I can’t say that I remember discussing any of them.

Yes, but you see sustenance wasn’t really anything like it is today. They might have handed out five shillings a week or something like that. Today they get so much more. There weren’t the welfare agencies that you could go to in those days. They used to have soup kitchens where you just got a bowl of soup.

In comparison to today there was absolutely nothing.

Yes, I did.

On and off he had work and when he was off work he was on sustenance, which wasn’t anything really.

I think that it was so widespread. People didn’t want to be on sustenance and it was a stigma to be on sustenance but, no, I don’t know. There were so many that were on it. In comparison to what it is today there was a big

percentage. And you just had to accept that that is how things were and that the Depression was there. You couldn’t do much about it.

Yes, I think there was. If somebody

had an extra bit of something or other they would go and give it to them. With the church there used to be a lot of that. They would help people out. And they would help people out with clothes and things like that. They didn’t do it and let other people

notice what was going on, but it was very much so that they would hand down clothes or knit something for somebody else or something like that and give something along the line. I know that the Church of England minister, and I suppose it happened with other religions too, they would give food and things to

people but they never made a big show of it. It was all done very quietly.

Well today the church is too although the government does provide a much better handout than that. Even today the churches

assist. Anglicare looks after children. In fact, Anglicare looks after everybody and I’ve belonged to Anglicare for 36 years. I know the Roman Catholics have different ones as well like the Brotherhood of St. Lawrence. You didn’t have those big ones in those days and the local parish minister would help people. I should

imagine that he would get donations given to him from anybody that was able to knowing that he would be handing it out to other families.

I don’t ever remember them advertising in the paper for donations like they do today.

That is about all I can think about.

Very important. We went every Sunday and belonged to various organizations within the church. Mum cleaned the church and did the flowers and we used to help her. We used to go to Sunday School

The church I suppose today it would be for the younger ones – no, not for the younger ones because they are not really interested, but we used to put on concerts and things like that for the local community. We used to have a church picnic once a year, a Sunday School picnic. There was some social life

within the church.

No, I haven’t.

Not really.

Yes, there was an awful lot of poverty, there really was. Some suburbs didn’t have it. It is the same as today. Some suburbs don’t have poverty or very little and I think it was always the same in those days. Some had more than others. Where I lived it wasn’t densely populated and I think that there was

quite a lot of poverty in that area. I know that two stations down from us there was quite a lot of affluence.

I think it was just the house they lived in and things like that. There were very few cars when I was growing up so

if they had a car and if they had the telephone on and it was the size of the house and things like that. You realised that they had more than you did. There were very few cars. I only knew three families where I lived who had a car except the grocer and people like that. With families I only knew three. In fact at

one stage where I lived the people over the road were German and they belonged to the Lutheran Church. On a Sunday they used to have the church in their house. All the people would come around with horse and sulkies and they’d have all the sulkies lined up for church. You walked more. Today they don’t walk anywhere and I think that’s a lot of the problem. Everywhere you went you

walked and you just accepted that that is the way things were.

I never felt that way within our family. There could have been some people who felt that way but I wouldn’t know.

I think it was just accepted that they’ve got more than you have and you can’t do much about it.

I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you why my father was so political, excepting possibly that the Depression had made him that way. It made him think that those that have got so

much seem to be getting more. I think probably a lot of people think that today. They were getting more and they weren’t getting on anywhere. They just seemed to be at the wrong level and could never improve themselves. I suppose that was the resentment within the house.

Yes, he thought they could do more, yes.

Of course he thought that if there was a Labor government in they would do more, but when the Labor governments get in they don’t do much more for the people than the Liberals. They all say beforehand that they’re going to do a lot but they don’t do much when they get there.

I don’t think there is anything else I can add on that.

It was a Sunday night and we heard it on the radio. I don’t know whether it was on the news or whether it was on the nine o’clock news. We knew that the war was about to start but it hadn’t been declared and that was on the Sunday night. Life went

on just normally then. It really didn’t change our lives much at all excepting that a lot of the boys were joining up and going away. Then, after a while, a couple of years or so, the Yanks came to Brisbane. Then of course you saw them everywhere. Apart from that I don’t think it altered.

I was 15.

Yes, dad was there. I know that he did eventually try to join up but they wouldn’t accept him and I never ever found out why. It was something to do with health but I don’t know what it was.

I didn’t know many boys who joined up, not many at all.

Well I think it was, “England is going to war and it must be the right thing.”

I don’t think we questioned it.

No, that’s right. Of course they said, “England is going to war. Britain is going to war. We do whatever they do. We are one of the children and we do whatever they do.” I don’t think that people were so politically oriented as they are today. Some of

them are still very apathetic but there are lots of groups who are active in politics. Possibly I think it is because people read more and also there is TV. It is thrown at you every night of the week. That possibly makes you

think about it a bi more. At that stage it was, “England is in it and we must be in it.” I think those days are finished excepting with George Bush. They’ll go off with him, won’t they?

It was at that stage, yes. The

empire was everything. It was God, King and Empire.

To me? When I joined up?

I can’t say for sure but I think possibly it was that way. Probably Dad had a big influence on that. Looking back I can’t really remember that.

The war was on and you had to put up with it. The boys were going off and things like that. Over the years I’ve certainly changed.

I can’t remember that I reacted in any way. It was, “The war has been declared and we can’t do much about it. We’ll have to accept it.” That is how it was. After all, I was only 15. I would say 15 in my generation was certainly different to

15 year olds today.

I was a dressmaker, and I was a dressmaker until I joined up.

Well, as far as I was concerned it didn’t alter very much at all except I can remember rationing coming in.

I had no one very close who was in the services or in the army I should say. We just went along as normal. We saw the army soldiers in the street. And as I say when the Yanks came they came in their droves and we saw them everywhere.

Yes, that’s right. When war first broke out we just went along normally. After a while they built the air raid blocks in the street, down the centre of the street, in Adelaide Street and I think it was in George Street too, and in some of the side streets these air raid shelters were put up.

Yes. That is when they

started to do that.

I don’t know what he said about them or anything else but we used to listen to a program on a Sunday night and it was by Professor Goddard. He was the political analyst and I can remember him always finishing his program, it was a half-hour program on a

Sunday night, and he always finished it with, “Five hundred bombing planes for the defence of Australia.” Graham says he should have said, “Five hundred fighters for the defence of Australia.” That is how he finished it. We were definitely aware of what was going on.

I had an aunt who was in the WAAAF and I had a cousin who was a

month older than I am. She was joining up and I just decided that I wanted to join up too. I had thought for a while before that I might go into the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service]. I had a brother-in-law who was teaching the Morse code but I wasn’t really very interested in being in Morse code. I just

decided that I would join the air force. I liked the colour of their uniform better than the AWAS. That is what motivated me to join up. I think also that I wanted to get away from home. At that stage, you know when they said, “Do you want to fight for King and Country?” I don’t think that ever came into it. I can’t remember it. I just think that I wanted a change. I wanted

something different. That is when I decided to join up. My parents didn’t object and you had to have their permission. You couldn’t join up otherwise.

She is 13 years old than I am. She has just had her 93rd

birthday. She is still alive. She enjoyed being in the WAAAF and she had been in probably from when first the WAAAF was formed which was in 1941. I knew she enjoyed it and I thought, “I will too.” Then my cousin joined up just a

month before I did and that is how it came about. I had no idea what I wanted to do within the WAAAF. I knew I didn’t want to work in the office but I didn’t know what else was available. Anyway, they sorted things out and I ended up in radar.

It is surprising. You don’t think of all these things over the years. As Graham said, I should have said that but I forgot about that.

It wasn’t so much with the sewing. I wasn’t frustrated with the sewing because I loved it but I think it was the home life which was fairly mundane when I think about it. I think at that stage probably a lot of us start to get a bit – I wasn’t rebellious but I thought, “There must be something else in life than this.” At times it wasn’t a happy

family relationship between my mother and father. There were various things like that and I thought, “I’ll get out and go off and do something different.” I have thought back many times and thought, “Why did I join up?” I still can’t come up with an answer. I just did it. I suppose I just wanted to. I didn’t have any

brothers who could join up but I don’t think that influenced it but I couldn’t be sure. I’ve thought back many times since then and I think that I wanted to get away from home.

No, because she wasn’t in Brisbane. She was down here and she was in Townsville and I don’t know where else she was. She was at

Amberley I think for a while. I really didn’t have much contact with her after she joined up.

I just wanted to join up and I didn’t know which one to go to. I never even considered the navy. Then, as I say, I thought I would prefer a navy blue uniform than a khaki one so that is why I joined the air force. It is really difficult to really

think back and say, “That was why I joined up.” It must have been a few influences. I went into the air force because the others were in the air force and I wanted to get away from home and have a different kind of a life. I don’t think I was patriotic. I might have been,

but I don’t remember that part of it. I didn’t know any other girls near where I lived who went into any of the services. I think they thought I was a bit crazy when I did go but I enjoyed it.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I didn’t want to go in to the tailoress side of the air force, or the WAAAF. So when I went in to have a test on the day. Actually, I went in there on my birthday, which is the 19th of June.

You had to do aptitude tests and things and I didn’t know what the air force would really offer. Anyway, it was three months before I got my call up. I used to come home from work and I used to stand at the door and say to my mother, “Has it come yet?” She’d say, “No, it hasn’t.” And I’d throw my handbag from one end of the house to the other because it hadn’t come. Anyway, it did eventually after three months. You will see in the

books the qualifications for radar were that you had to have a good education and you had to have a good speaking voice over the telephone and that was all part of the aptitude test. There was a third thing, but I forget what it was. So I was chosen to do radar. Radar was in its infancy and nobody knew what radar was.

All the girls that I was with all had the same qualifications. They had a good education and a good speaking voice and that is how it was. There were no civilian qualifications at all because we didn’t even know anything about it so there were no civilian qualifications.

To being in the forces?

We all wanted to be there.

When we first went in we were only enrolled we weren’t enlisted. That meant that you could get out at any time. By, I think it was January, the enlistment came in and you didn’t have to stay in if you didn’t want to be enlisted but you were enlisted for the duration of the war and 12 months afterwards. So if you wanted to get

out then you could. I only knew two that got out after that and they had already been in for months and some of them had been in for years. That is how it was. I think there are a few people who said they didn’t enjoy their service life but I did.

Yes. I wanted to go into the WAAAF definitely, but then I used to get so upset because it didn’t come. My cousin had got her call up but mine didn’t come and it was going on. By that stage I didn’t understand why. Having read these couple of books that I have got there, Patsy Adam-Smith’s book and another one I’ve got, I realise why it took a while to get the call up because they had to

have enough to go down to Richmond and do the radar course. They wouldn’t do it for one or two or three people. I think there were probably about 15 on my radar course. That was why I had to wait.

They didn’t object at all. As I said, God, King and Empire and that was all part of the empire.

With any of the women’s services, the civilian population, they didn’t particularly like the women’s services because they thought they would be a promiscuous lot. I didn’t find that the whole time I was in the air force. I am sure there were some, but

mostly we were just normal civilians. No, a lot were very wary of the servicewomen.

Because the men were around of course and you would be taking their men. It didn’t make any difference. I think that is probably what a lot of the problem was.

Yes, that wasn’t worrying me at all because I knew why I was going in and I wasn’t particularly interested in what other people thought.

No, they never objected at all. You had to have their permission. You couldn’t go in until you were 21 without their permission.

Yes, I joined up on my 18th birthday. I can still see going in there and having a medical and doing an aptitude test and all those things.

We had papers to fill out and I can’t remember what the questions

were. You just put down your education and I don’t know whether they asked you if there were others in the family in the services. I can’t remember that. It was a sheet of paper and you filled in all the questions. Then you went for a medical. I must have done a blood test because it was on our pay books the blood test.

Apart from that I don’t know.

I don’t think so. I can’t recall now that it was because the Japs were in the war. It was just that I wanted to join up.

That’s right, it had.

I think there was always that overriding fear that they would be invaded. Of course then you probably haven’t heard of the ‘something line’ [Brisbane Line] – anything above Brisbane they would forget and try and save the rest of Victoria and New South Wales.

I suppose that was all part of it. It is very difficult when that is the atmosphere of everything. You don’t just pick one thing out from another. It is just an overall feeling I suppose.

I wanted to be a school teacher. I wanted to go to university, and when I couldn’t go to university I wanted to be a school teacher. And that is all I ever really wanted to do. I had to scrap all that and that is when I went to dressmaking. I wanted to grow up and

eventually have my own dressmaking business which I would have done if the war hadn’t started. I had to go in a different direction then. Of course when clothes rationing came in people couldn’t get the material. I didn’t work in a factory or anything like that. I worked in a private dressmaker’s salon. When rationing came in of course the

people couldn’t get so much of the material that they wanted. By the time I joined up things weren’t quite so fine with the dressmaking. We used to make for all the society people and things like that. They would come in and you would measure them and then they’d come in for a fitting and another fitting. Everything had to be perfect. We used to make some beautiful clothes in

lovely materials. I knew that until the war was over that would be very quiet. That was one of the reasons I went and joined up. Although I would be still fully employed I knew the time was coming had the war gone on when it would have been different. I thought, “I can always come back to that after the war and have my own business.”

I never, ever did, did I? That was how it was. Although after the war I did do dressmaking from home for quite a number of years but just bits and pieces.

I suppose

they didn’t have life-long careers in those days. The thing was you got married. I remember I got married and after the war I wanted to go teaching. In fact, I was even offered a job with the Education Department but my husband said, “No wife of mine is going to go to work.” It was infra dig [unbecoming] if your wife went to work. I just thought, “Yes, I could probably be a teacher.” I never even

at that stage thought of getting married. I didn’t have a boyfriend until after I went into the air force, although I had several who would have been if they could have been. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Ninety-nine per cent of people retired from the education department – in fact, you couldn’t teach and be married in those days. It has certainly

changed. I am a women’s libber [women’s liberationist] and I believe that is how it should be.

It has completely changed since then. Nobody expected to

marry and go to work. They expected to marry and have a family and the family took up the whole of your life. Now, of course, it is entirely different. They get married and they still expect to work. I am a feminist and always have been, I still don’t know whether that is quite the way to go about things because

children do need you at home. If you have got one then that is different but when you’ve got a family, we had five, you didn’t have time to go to work anyway. I made all the clothes for the children. I made the girls’ dresses and I made the boys’ trousers and I made the boys’ shirts. I did all those things so I didn’t have time to go to work as well. By the time

Heather was five and the Education Department offered me a job I wanted to go but I never, ever did because Graham didn’t want me to.

I told you. I cried for a fortnight. All I wanted to do was to go on with my education and I couldn’t.

That’s right, yes, it was, but that is what I wanted to do. I wanted to go and have my own business.

I don’t know. I don’t remember any one in particular. There possibly were people but I don’t know.

I don’t even know if we had role models. I don’t remember any at all. I know that Amy Johnson and several of the others who flew aircraft were but apart from them I don’t know.

I can remember Amy Johnson arriving at Archerfield Aerodrome after arriving from England and getting out of the plane and she had a little kitten in her arms. We were able to go up to the plane. It was from here to there and we were allowed to go into the airfield. We saw the plane coming in and it stopped and we went over. They were the things that you never can do today.

Yes. We lived probably about three miles from the Archerfield Aerodrome and we used to walk over there on a Sunday to watch the aircraft. I can remember her coming in.

That’s right, yes. In one of the houses we lived in there were a lot of vacant paddocks around it, and as I said we used to live only three miles from Archerfield. They used to have an air race

once a month on a Sunday. They used to turn at our house and at the tree over the road they used to turn again. That went on when I was a child. They certainly don’t have air races these days.

I should imagine it was. That’s right. It was

wonderful. You could hear them coming. You’d be outside and you didn’t go in for the whole afternoon, you just stayed in the yard to watch the next lot of aircraft that were going to come around.

Yes.

I think I probably

talked to my mother and various women in the family. I can remember the day that I got my scholarship and I was only 12. And everybody else who got their scholarship, if they got one they got it when they were 14. I can still hear my father’s two sisters talking in the kitchen at my aunt’s place and mum said I was going on to further study. She said,

“You are going to let her go on?” Mum said, “Yes, she’s got the scholarship and she’s going to take it up.” She said, “What’s the good of it? She’ll only get married and have children.” That is how they thought in those days. In those days you went to work and you got married and you had children. I wasn’t like

that. I can still see the room and I can see everything when she was saying that.

She was really supportive, yes. I think dad just tagged along. Dad was the one that had the brains and it was just

unfortunate that he couldn’t use them.

To have your own business? Definitely, yes, excepting that private dressmakers were women. One of the places that I worked at when I first went out to work was for two male

accountants. They had about five dressmaking businesses, but each of those businesses was run by a woman. It was a man’s world. I had worked for a few years with a woman who owned her own business. I think probably I got my ideas of that from,

“If she can do it so can I.” That’s how it was.

“If they can do it I can do it too.” She at that stage had a child but she wasn’t living with her husband and that was unusual. She was bringing up her child and had a business as well.

I don’t know whether it really came into it. I could say, “She did it and so can I,” but it was just all part of life. You just went on from one thing to the other.

And after the war.

They accepted it because that is how it had always been. It had never been any different. When you look back over the ages it has never been any different. I think they just

accepted it. As I said, my aunt said, “Why have an education? She’ll only get married and have children.” That is how it was.

I don’t think so. There might have been some. There probably were some. I would say the majority just accepted it. That is how it has always been and that is how it is going to be.

That’s right. Of course also talking about then, during the Depression when you turned 21 the men would lose their jobs because they were on adult pay. Up until then they could do the same job and

get lesser pay. It was very, very difficult. You just accepted that that was life and you didn’t do anything about it.

There was the Pankhurst

Sisters in England so there must have been some underlying part in Australia but I never ever knew of it and it would have been very small. You wouldn’t have known about it really. When I think back now there must have been something but I never, ever knew about them.

That’s right. Go into munitions and do all the things that women weren’t allowed to do.

Then I think the women didn’t want to go back into their old life. Some were quite content but then others weren’t because they had shown what they could do if it was necessary. It’s not that I would have wanted to go into munitions or anything like that, but there were a lot who did.

No, I didn’t really. I was very, very quiet and I didn’t really have any friends, not close friends. There was just my sister and I. I didn’t know anybody who actually joined up and went into any of the services except for my cousin. They weren’t really encouraged. Do you know what I mean? The looked down and thought,

“There must be something wrong there.”

In the services there were a lot of people who were a bit – I never came across it but then I never had anything much in the way of civilian friends.

I had a couple of civilian friends but that was all. I can remember one of my civilian friends when I told her that Graham and I were married. We got married fairly quickly because he came down on holiday. I told her that I was married and I gave her my rank. She said, “You’ve married an officer. You’re too good for us now.”

I never had anything more to do with her after that and after the war. She lived in Queensland and I lived down here. They looked down their noses a little bit, I think, at the servicewomen.

I think they thought that the war was on and we needed the products so we’ve got to go into the

war if that is the only way to do it. I don’t think people objected to it I think they just accepted it.

They can go back into the kitchen. That is how it was, definitely. “The war is over now so you can’t do anything.”

I think it was just accepted that that was how it was going to be. I don’t know because I didn’t have a great deal to do with civilians once I joined up. My mustering was a very secretive one. I didn’t even have much to do with the other girls in the air force. We didn’t

talk about it. We never took photographs. We didn’t discuss it or talk about it at home or anything like that. We never even thought of it. I never even told my husband and he was an army officer. Top secret was my one and his was secret. I never told him anything until after the war. Now when I look back I don’t know whether it had to be quite so secret. Of course it has developed since then and that is

why I probably think that you could have talked about it. But no, you couldn’t talk about anything. I never spoke to my mother and father and I never told them where I was, except they knew I was in Coolangatta at a radar station. They had no idea what a radar station was.

I knew that there wouldn’t be anybody close to me that was going. I knew there was possibly an air of sadness that it was on. It was inevitable. Everybody thought it was inevitable. That is about the only way I can remember it.

I was only 15 so I didn’t think of it at

that stage. I knew there was no way at that age. I know one of my girlfriend’s from school, her brother was in the navy. He was in the navy before the war as a civilian part-timer and I knew that he would have to go. I didn’t really think about it a great deal. You wonder, “What is the next thing?” sort of thing.

I don’t know. I couldn’t say. They might have but I couldn’t say. I think probably they had to be older than that but I wouldn’t have gone into a factory. I was a dressmaker.

My father’s youngest brother joined up. He was only in his late 20s. He did eventually go away and he was a POW [Prisoner of War] in Germany. But none of the others went because all of the others were older in their late 30s. No, I didn’t think about that very much.

Well, I didn’t consider what they were saying about the services because it was what I wanted to do. I knew that a lot of the stories you heard about it were just stories. That

didn’t even influence me one way or the other. I just decided that that was what I wanted to do and that is what I was going to do, but they used to look down their noses. If only they knew. I mean, you met an awful lot of people. There was no doubt about that. You just met them and dance with them and that was about all. They

all had their girlfriends and some more so than others. I enjoyed my service career. It was really great.

I don’t think they knew what they did. We were just in the air force or the army or whatever we did, and we were just all part of it. Actually,

I don’t think civilians are very interested in it, even today. When you think about the army now I don’t think the civilian population are that interested, do you? I wouldn’t want any of my sons to go over to Iraq and I certainly was against the Vietnam War. We had many arguments around the

evening meal table because my husband was for the Vietnam War and the boys and I weren’t. In fact, one of my sons was one of those that used to go and sit in the streets. At that stage he was studying to go into the ministry. He was an Anglican priest. We used to argue about it. Then all of a sudden Graham had a talk when they had their Anzac Day reunion down at the boatshed and he came home and

all those that were down there were against it so he came home and had another think. That was how it was. I was definitely against the Vietnam War. I was not going to have my sons go. Although Ian, my eldest son, he was in the air force part time and he did his six years part-time service in the air force. No, they weren’t going to send any of my sons and that’s for sure.

No, you didn’t really know what it was all about. Over the years you develop more of an idea of what it was all about. I went to Dresden a couple of years ago and that was completely flattened and that was terrible. The people who were killed there, it was shocking. It is the same with the

Middle East at the moment and what is going on. And for civilians it is not them at all it is the government and the politicians that make all the decisions but they never go to the war. They send somebody else’s son but not mine.

I knew they were getting shot at for sure and they were being bombed and everything else in wars that they were involved in. And New Guinea wasn’t the brightest. I don’t think you really understand. As Graham says, “Until your friend at the side of you has got killed you don’t really understand.”

I think so, and even with me now I look back it was a great adventure, but that was what I had to do. It was going to be a great adventure. I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t it. At that particular time I didn’t think about it. I have had a

long time to think about it since. I think it could have been that.

I think so, yes. I don’t think the civilian population really know what is going on.

It is like watching TV and you see someone shot and you just cut to something else but you don’t actually see the casualty.

I think it was only reporting much the same as they do today.

There was nothing graphic about it except that the front page of the paper used to be the casualty lists. Sometimes there would be columns and columns and columns of casualties. I think unless you have actually got someone there who is involved you can brush it aside and it is somebody else’s problem and not yours. I don’t know but that’s what I think it could be.

Not that I know of. I don’t think they would be game enough to. They would have been lynched for sure whereas today people protest and that is their choice. I protested against this

Iraq War and I eventually got the rest of the family to come in with me. I was the one who instigated it and said, “I’m going to march against this.” I think that unless you are really involved you don’t do it. Of course there wasn’t in those days, and you didn’t do those things. People have started to think for themselves more than they used to. It is like, “Don’t educate her, she’s going to get married.”

I think it probably was. Well probably a few like five per cent weren’t but I think we were united, yes. “We should be there. It is not that I’m going but we should be there.”

I think it was the empire. We were all part of the British Empire and the British Empire was the most important part of the world. “We are part of the British Empire so we are important too and this is what we should do.” It think that is what it was.

Yes. Once the

Japs came in that was entirely different then. But to start with I think they felt that way. Also, once the Japs came in and they came down so quickly that is probably why. Then we had a big force in New Guinea. The militia battalions were in New Guinea to start with.

I think they enjoyed it. I think it was so different and they were allowed to get out and do something. I think that is what it was. I might be wrong, but that is what I think. I think that is how it is.

My aunt and uncle had been farmers and they had retired. They came back to train the land army girls. Not far from us they had a farm where they used to train the land army girls. Before they were all unpaid, and it’s not that they got much when they were land army girls, but at least it was a bit more when they were helping out on the farm at home. I’m sure of that.

I think it was something that you accepted. That is how it was. It was a good idea and you went ahead and did it.

We did three weeks’ rookies or I think it was a month. I think it was a month but I’m not sure. My pay book will tell me.

Then we did marching, marching, marching, marching, marching. We had lectures as well and I enjoyed that part of it, I really did. I enjoyed my rookies. As I say I just enjoyed the air force. I didn’t have any complaints. Sometimes you did get a bit fed up. I worked shift work, six hours on and 12 hours off, and we did that for

six days and then we had two days off. Sometimes it was a bit of a drag because you couldn’t go to a dance before you went to work at midnight but that is the only thing. It was fine.

That is right. We did have lectures. Sex, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as sex before I went into the air force. Then we had

aircraft recognition. We had DROs – Daily Routine Orders – for the air force. And there was another one, AFOs – Air Force Orders. They were another lot. We had to learn all these bits and pieces, and I don’t know why because it was never really needed. They were the sort of things that we did. We used to

march in the morning and march in the afternoon. Although most of our marching was done in the morning because it was cooler. September in Queensland can be quite warm.

It was a bit like Graham saying when he went to the Middle East he didn’t know – that was because sex was ever mentioned. Nothing was ever

said about sex or anything else when I was growing up but things have changed today.

I don’t think so, but I’ll tell you why. I accepted that was what was going to be done and I couldn’t do anything about it so I just accepted it.

I think service life has a lot of acceptance in it otherwise you can get very uptight about things. But if you are prepared to accept it then that’s all right because you can’t do anything about it. you can’t rebel so you accept it. It was the same as sleeping in a room with 29 other girls and the 30th was the corporal.

You just accepted it.

No, we weren’t up to the fainting stage.

No, we didn’t have any fainting ones in my lot.

Yes, they talked about everything. There really wasn’t much in the way of prevention in those days and if you did get anything like that they didn’t have very much in the way of

medicines like they have today.

I think possibly because they realised the girls had led a very sheltered life. It was sheltered, very sheltered, as we were growing up. I think they thought that they needed

to point out all the problems that there could be. We only had a couple of lectures. It might have been three at the most. It was given by a lady doctor and everything was fine. That is what I think it was that we had such a sheltered life. There was no sex before marriage. Now they are having sex at

12 or 14.

Yes, I think they did but I can’t remember the details. Yes, I think they did. I can still see the room we had the lecture in.

I think there were probably

120. I think there were four squads and each squad would have been 29 or 30 girls. There would have been four so that is just over 100.

I would think

90 or 95 per cent probably. I would think that. On my rookie course we had a girl who was a chemist so she would have been well into all that herself without having to go to the lectures. I think there were some nurses. I would say anything up to 99 per cent

would have been.

I don’t know whether the general public knew we had those lectures. I couldn’t say. They may have. Up to the time I went in I had never heard of anyone talking about that but then they probably wouldn’t talk either.

Yes, “They are very much aware, aren’t they?” It was a different life, entirely different.

Yes.

When you were on rookies course you didn’t get any lectures on anything to do with your mustering. That was done after you had done your orientation four weeks or three weeks, I’m not too sure. We didn’t get anything like that. We just had

air force orders and DROs and, “Today we will do so and so.” It wasn’t lectures all day. You had your hour off for lunch. You were up at six o’clock and things like that. But that didn’t matter in Queensland because you were up at six o’clock in civilian life because it was so light and warm. By the time you got up and got dressed and went down for your breakfast it would be eight o’clock before there would be the

first main parade. Then you might do drill for an hour. Then we used to go on route marches over the Hornibrook Highway and over the bridge and things like that.

I know it was three weeks. It may have been four, I’m not sure, but that was the time that they did their rookies. I think it was three weeks. In the first week we didn’t get leave at the weekend because I suppose they thought if we went home we’d never come back again. For the other weekends we did get leave. Then I was at Sandgate for a couple of weekends

after that waiting to go down to Sydney to do my course. So I was in Sandgate about six weeks in all. When we were just waiting around with nothing to do I went and worked in the tailor’s shop and made a couple of skirts and blouses for some of the

girls who were a little bit overweight and couldn’t get a uniform. We stayed there for about six weeks and then we went down to Richmond. That was the first time I’d ever been out of the state. Going down on the train, it was a troop train of course, there were no sleepers. I forget how many hours it took but it took more than 24. To be able to sleep the girls – one of them went up on each of the

luggage racks and one slept on the floor between the seats and the other girls slept on top of the seats. We got the tables. In the old trains they used to have a table at the end of the passageway. There were two or three for people who wanted to read or play cards or something like that when they were travelling. We got those and put them across the seats. We slept on top and there were two underneath and there were two on the luggage racks so that made the six of us that were in the

compartment. Of course those were steam trains. With the windows open and the soot coming in by the time you got to Sydney you really did need a bath and your clothes did as well. That was the fist time I was ever out of Brisbane. Then we went to Richmond. We saw electric trains for the first time because in Queensland they only had steam trains at that stage.

We went to Richmond and we were there for about a month. It might have been a month or it might have been six weeks doing our course. Although I enjoyed the course the food at the station was absolutely terrible. It really was terrible. We didn’t eat very much during the week and then we’d go into Sydney and we’d eat the whole of the weekend. We would bring some little bits and pieces back and then

eat what we had brought from Sydney and also bought things from the canteen. Now everybody might not have been like that but the group that I was with that is what we used to do. In those days we had reconstituted milk but they didn’t put enough of the milk powder in so it still ended up blue, pale blue. And they used to make blancmange out of that. I don’t know if any of you have eaten blancmange. If it is made properly it is all right but with milk made like that it was awful.

Then we used to have blackcurrants with it and I think that made it eve worse because you’d see the blackcurrants and then you’d see the blue blancmange.

They were all right. I’m not madly keen. I used to be very picky with my food in those days and I suppose that is why. I never ever complained about the food at any other station. It was only at Richmond in New South Wales.

Then we finished our course but we were marched down to do our course in this compound which had barbed wire all around it because nobody else was allowed in there. There was a guard on the gate and everything else and we did our course in there. We couldn’t take our notes back to our rooms to do any extra study.

They had the various radar – they had three different radar screens in this compound so we had to practice on them and learn all the electrical parts and all those sort of things. I often wonder why we had to learn all that electrical work. We also had to learn how to change a fuse on the electric

circuit.

That was at Richmond.

I didn’t mind it. The shoes were comfortable and everything was different. It was very hot. Halfway through we would get a break but there was nowhere to get a drink or anything. There was a shop on the

outside of the camp on the other side of the road and they used to bring us over drinks in boxes and we used to buy them over the fence so we at least had something to drink while we had a break. If we hadn’t had that we wouldn’t have got one. The air force didn’t give us a drink or anything between having a break. I didn’t mind it. I think everything was new and I just accepted it. I think we all did too. Of course in

September it is a bit warm in Brisbane but we survived and that is the main thing.

We had female, WAAAFs. We also had one DWO [?] who was a male. All the rest of them were female. Each of the squads had a female corporal.

She slept in the same room as we did. She was always in charge of whatever went on. She drilled us and then at times of course the DWO would come and think that he could do a bit more so that’s what he used to do. That was all. We didn’t have a sergeant or a corporal RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] personnel we only had the

WAAAF. Then we had a passing out parade after three weeks. All the parents who wanted to come along were able to come that day.

Well I suppose the longest was when we went on the route march. If you walked along the Hornibrook Highway – I suppose it is still there. I don’t know whether they have taken that big bridge down but I suppose it is still there. We used to go for a route march for about an hour and a half or something like that. You would come back tired but you weren’t dead so that was the main thing.

I think that it was probably that with the girls, I don’t think they overdid anything. I don’t think they did with the men either. It was the army who did more of the route marches and things like that. I haven’t got any memories of it being so terrible. It was a lot of fun I suppose.

We used to sing on route marches and that got you going so that was something.

All the modern songs for those days. There was Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant Major and I can’t remember them just like that. We used to sing all those songs and all those war- time songs we sang.

“Kiss me goodnight, sergeant major, tuck me in my little wooden bed.

We all love you sergeant major, especially when you order, ‘Show a leg.’ Don’t forget to wake me in the morning and bring me in a nice hot cup of tea. We all love you sergeant major, sergeant major be a mother to me.” Isn’t that crazy when you think about it but it was one that you could march to.

Off the top of my head I can’t remember them. A lot of the war time songs you couldn’t march to but you could march to that one.

We had to do rifle

training and drill. One night a week we used to go. They had an indoor rifle range and we had to fire in there but that was all. We just did it for two or three nights. We didn’t fire much but we did have weapon training and fire a rifle.

I wasn’t particularly

happy with it.

I didn’t like handling the rifle because it was heavy. As far as I was concerned it was heavy. I wasn’t even eight stone at that stage, I was only seven stone 11, which is under eight stone so I was very thin. I found that a rifle was a bit heavy. We never ever saw another rifle the whole time we were

there. I think a pistol would have been better if we’d have had a pistol rather than a rifle.

I was taught how to fire a rifle but I wasn’t taught how to fire a pistol. The first time I fired a pistol was after we were married. Graham had this pistol and while we were on leave he said, “You might just as well have a go.” I fired out to sea when I was out at Mornington. I suppose you know, a pistol went up like that. It went up like that and

I would never have hit the target, that’s for sure. Then we went down to Richmond. In Richmond that had been a RAAF station before the war and while I was there, there were a squadron of RAAF Spitfires. They *

were resting on leave from Darwin. They were down there for quite some time. Every afternoon at four o’clock the Spitfires used to take off and do a circuit of the aerodrome and then come and land again. So that was exciting because the Spitfires were the aircraft at that stage. The flies at Richmond were

terrible. If you wore a drab uniform, the khaki uniform, and walked from the front gate to the quarters which I suppose took 10 minutes to a quarter of an hour, the back of your shirt was black. It wasn’t khaki because there were just so many flies. I never did find out what brought them down there. I think it was the sheep in that area. On our hats at Richmond we wore

fly veils because the flies were so bad. When you went on the CO’s [Commanding Officer’s] parade you weren’t allowed to have a fly veil on you had to take them off. Of course he flies were still there but you weren’t allowed to brush them off or anything like that. The CO had a horse’s tail mounted in a piece of silver. He used to swat the flies all the time but we couldn’t even put our hands near our faces to get ride of the flies. They were really

awful when we were on parade. I found the living quarters all right. There was only one place that I ever found the living quarters any problem and that was down here at 1ES at the showgrounds. It was wintertime and we were in the Hall of Manufacture. Of course it wasn’t lined and the water used to drip from the

ceiling onto our blankets and everything else. It wasn’t a particularly good area for camping. So, up to Richmond everything was going fine.

You did what you were told. I didn’t find discipline difficult. I suppose I was always a child

who did what I was told. It didn’t really worry me the discipline, but if you’d been at all rebellious probably at times it would have been a bit irksome. I didn’t find it difficult at all. You just accepted it. You knew that when you went in there was going to be army-type discipline and that’s how it was. It wasn’t bad. As I say, with the flies you didn’t even

attempt to put your hand near your face to get rid of them. That was all part of the discipline. Then we used to go into Sydney on leave every weekend. The Women’s Weekly had a floor at the top of their building. I think there may have been two floors. It was set up with dormitories with

beds. We used to go in there and I think it cost us about sixpence for the weekend to stay in those places. You could go sightseeing all over Sydney and have a great time. The YWCA [Young Women’s Christian Association] had a canteen there where we used to go and we were able to buy cheap meals. They were quite

nice. I think it was volunteers who used to work in those canteens. The meals were quite good. I think it was more home cooking than it was in the camp and that is why we probably enjoyed it. Every Friday afternoon we took of for Sydney and we came back late Sunday. As long as we were back by midnight we were all right.

Sydney to us Brisbane girls was exciting because it was so much bigger than Brisbane and there was so much to do and so much to see. We went out to the zoo, which we didn’t have in Brisbane, and you could go on the harbour. We were just walking around and seeing the shops and things because there were just so many. Hyde Park in Sydney was lovely. We went

sightseeing and we saw St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney. It was just another world as far as we were concerned and we enjoyed it. We didn’t have much money to spend but we did enjoy it.

The clubs? There weren’t any clubs. Do you mean like the clubs today?

No, you can’t compare. All you could do was go to the pictures.

That was the dancing. You could go and they had that in Brisbane too. At that stage

I wasn’t dancing so I didn’t go to any of those. I didn’t start to dance until I went to Coolangatta. Then you couldn’t keep me away from it. I didn’t go to any of those places. We used to just go to the pictures. There were so many picture theatres in Sydney that you could always find something that you wanted to go to.

We were always in uniform.

I never ever came across anywhere where you weren’t accepted. You rarely were on your own. You might have two or three girls with you or three might just be another one. When you went on leave and you all sleep together and you get to know one another there is always someone who wants to go somewhere. You think, “Oh yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll go too.”

We never came up against any problems at all. It is surprising because whoever was in your hut or whoever lives in your room becomes like your sister and you just do everything together. It doesn’t matter what it is.

I don’t know whether the army was like that. It probably was because they were living under the same conditions as we were. It was probably the same as we were. We were down in Sydney for about five weeks or six weeks, it might have been.

I’ll say five weeks. Then we were all posted back to Queensland. I can still see the day we were posted. We had to leave the camp just before lunch. Everybody had their great coat and a small case and their kit bag. They were just civilian trains. It wasn’t just for the air force girls. It was for anybody else as well. It was just a

normal civilian train. We were all down at the station and we had to get all this stuff on to the train. OF course the Sydney trains were very quick in comparison to what the Queensland trains were because they were steam trains. For all the girls to try and get all their gear onto the train and hop in before the train took off again some would stand on the platform and they’d throw all their things into the

train. And the other girls were in the train and they would pack them away. I can’t understand why the guards couldn’t think, “There are so many girls and so much gear we’ll have to stay here a little bit longer.” No, they did not. We had to throw it all in. I can still see us throwing those things into the train to get back. Then of course we had to go on a troop train back to Brisbane which was a steam train. It wasn’t an

electric train. You had plenty of time then. I suppose they thought – well you have to go on a normal train. You would think that the air force could say, “There will be x number of people posted to Queensland with all their gear. You might be a minute or two late with your trains.” No, they didn’t think of that.

Then we went back to Brisbane and I was posted to fighter sector in Brisbane. There used to be a couple of guest houses down near the banks of the river near Roma Street Station. The air force had taken over two. I think they took over three. ‘Netherway’ was one of them, and I was in Netherway. They were all more or less side

by side. They were taken over, and all the people who worked in Brisbane, they weren’t on a station. There was the fighter sector and then there were the cooks for the various places and there were messing staff. The girls who were doing the cipher work and things like that we were all in these three buildings right on the banks of the

river. We used to have a mess in each of the residence. As most of the girls were working shift work there was always somebody coming or going so there were practically meals all day and half the night in those places. We slept four to a room and some of the girls slept on the verandas, open to the elements, just with a roof over them. I was lucky, I was always in a

room. It was a noisy place because there were no floor coverings on the floors. It was wood. If you were on shift and you were wanting to sleep it wasn’t the brightest. You probably came home so tired that you went to sleep for a while even if you didn’t sleep the whole time.

I didn’t mind Netherway. We had to then go up to fighter sector on the trams or we had to walk. It was whichever you wanted to do. It was quite a walk. It was right up in Anne Street up near the Anglican cathedral up there and the WD & HO Wills Buildings which the air force had taken over. That was where our

fighter sector was which was very interesting. We had never done any fighter sector work when we were doing our course we only did radar. The girls who worked in fighter sector weren’t radar operators except for a few of us who were waiting reposting. We worked up there. We worked

shift work from eight o’clock in the morning until 12 or 12 until eight. Then we used to do a 12-hour shift over night because there wasn’t much movement of a night time. It was concentrating all the time when you were there. I

don’t know whether you have ever seen a fighter sector table. It is probably as big as this room. The girls used to sit around the perimeter of it with headphones on. On the map in front of you was all the area that you covered. It was probably one or two hundred miles in diameter.

Each girl had a sector that they had to watch. From the radar stations they would phone in to fighter sector. They would give you the distance and the height and

how fast the aircraft was travelling. You put that up onto the board. All the way around the room, as you will see on the photos, there was a higher platform around it where the navy, the army and the air force officers were and various girls doing different other things too.

Every time you put a plot on the board it had a number. The little stands were about six or eight inches high. The top would give the number. Every aircraft had a number so you put that on and then you put the bearing and the height on this in three different parts. You then pushed it on to the area that it had come from. If the officers up the

top could identify the aircraft – sometimes it took a long time and sometimes it didn’t take long at all – it was identified and you had another mark on that little stand which would tell you that it had been identified. Then you had a long pole and you used to pull it back in off the table and wait for the next one to come through.

The girls around the edge talked to the actual operators on the radar stations. We were connected in Brisbane to – Coolangatta wasn’t there then. When I went down to Coolangatta, Coolangatta was connected. There was Pinkenba which is just near where the airfield is now in Brisbane. There was one at Southport. There was one at

Pinkenba and there was another island near Pinkenba and it used to come through there. We also had an American station up at Long Island. We called it Long Island but I think they call it Fraser Island now. That used to come through our sector as well. When things were quiet you could always talk to somebody who was on the other end of the phone.

It was quite good really. When you worked from eight o’clock at night until eight o’clock in the morning it was rather a long night. You could get quite sleepy. I think it is just because it is night time. It is not because you are so very tired because you always came on shift after having a good sleep.

When we were in Brisbane of course we could go to the pictures or the dances or whatever you wanted to do. I used to go home for my two days off. So for a few weeks in Brisbane I was able to go home at the weekends. How are we going?

What can I say about Brisbane?

In Brisbane?

Did we have Americans? I never ever met a Dutchman but it was full of Americans. It really was very much so.

Among the girls we didn’t go out. The girls that I mixed with didn’t go out with Americans. Although the boys that were on the radar station, the American radar station, would comedown and they would want to take you out. My friends never ever went out with Americans. That is a lot of what the

civilians were on about. If they saw a service girl with an American then there was no good behind that. That is probably why the civilians felt the way they did. I think there were a lot of platonic friendships between the Americans and the service girls. The service girls were from all over the place and the Yanks were here and they didn’t have anybody. As Graham often says,

“It is nice to be able to go and talk to a woman for a change.” As I say, I never ever went out with the Yanks. They had lovely uniforms. They were entirely different to ours. And their officers’ uniforms were beautiful. The fabric was just lovely. Of course I was into fabrics, wasn’t I, so I could see that.

And of course, I don’t know whether you know this, but the black Americans couldn’t be on the Brisbane side of the river. They had to be on the south side of the river. You never saw a black American in Brisbane. You saw them in South Brisbane but you didn’t see them in Brisbane because they weren’t allowed to come across.

That was the attitude of the Americans towards the

Negroes in America. They didn’t want anything to do with them. They could do all the dirty work but they didn’t want them to mix with the white people. Of course that was how it was during the war. They didn’t have mixed platoons and things like they do now. It was all black or all white.

That is how it was. I’m sure that with a lot of the black Americans there was nothing wrong with them but they weren’t allowed to come into Brisbane.

To the Americans?

We never even saw the Negroes

because we were in Brisbane.

With the South Brisbane ones you had to go across the river over the Victoria Bridge. They were never allowed to cross Victoria Bridge. We never went across Victoria Bridge because there was nothing much in South Brisbane at the time. It’s not that there is a great deal there now but there wasn’t anything there. There were just a few wharves and places like that. And Boggo Road Jail was over in South Brisbane.

Also the cricket ground was over in South Brisbane too. The Yanks did have lovely uniforms.

Yes, by the boys who were at the radar station up at Long Island as we called it. They would come on leave down to Brisbane and they would

always want to come out. They used to come up and see us while we were in the fighter sector but they never knew where we lived or anything like that. We didn’t mix with them. It is not that they weren’t nice chaps but my mother would have looked down her nose and my father would have looked down his nose, I’m sure, if I had said I was going out with the Yanks.

They didn’t like the Yanks. Australian soldiers didn’t like the Yanks either. I don’t know the date but there was something called The Battle of Brisbane. Have you come across that? They just didn’t mix. I think that a lot of the problem was that the Australian

soldiers were thinking that the American soldiers would take their girls. I think that is what it was, but I don’t know. I think that happened somewhere around the time that I joined up. I don’t know and I can’t remember. I have never actually seen the date for that so I wouldn’t know.

Of course a lot of the civilian girls went out with the Yanks. They did have stockings and they had chocolate and all those sorts of things that we couldn’t get. We wouldn’t have been wearing the stockings in any case.

Yes, stockings.

Of course, silk stockings.

You couldn’t buy silk stockings in Australia but the Yanks had them because they had them in their canteens. Their service women wore those kind of stockings.

In the canteens the American service women had them. There were American service women here.

There were nurses and hospital orderlies and things like that. I don’t know what other ones were here. Of course they could buy them in the canteens.

I don’t know because I didn’t have much to do with the Americans you see except when I

used to talk to them on the phone or they’d come down to the fighter sector and we’d see them then. They’d take the girls out and give them stockings and chocolate and things like that and send them flowers. They were great on sending flowers I believe. I didn’t have any flowers sent to me but I believe that was the sort of thing. In America, if you looked at films in those days they were always sending people

flowers on the films. They were all really lovely and I’m sure the florists made a fortune out of them. It was the same with packaging. On the films they had all this wonderful packaging that we hadn’t even thought of. You saw them on the films and you thought, “Isn’t that lovely.” They would go shopping and they would come home with these boxes and they’d have ribbon on the top and all that. We didn’t have

anything like that at all. You were lucky if you got a paper bag but you didn’t get anything else now. Of course now we’ve got all this packaging here.

I don’t know whether it stated then but that is the sort of thing. The Yanks used to send flowers and things like that.

Yes, even here after the war we didn’t get packaging I suppose until the last 20 years. It might not even be that long. The Yanks always apparently had it. I suspect that it wasn’t the general population because on the films they make everything look so glamorous and you’d see these things on the films. Any of the American

boys that I knew were quite good. They were quite nice. They would be acceptable at home if the parents didn’t have preconceived ideas.

I know they did.

It was October 1942. I did three weeks rookies then it was about three weeks after that that I was still stationed and waiting to go to radar. That was at the end of

October. I came back to Brisbane at the beginning of December of that year and we went to fighter sector. There must have been about 12 or 15 of us that came back up there together. The same ones that had gone down to do the course came back together. We didn’t all go to Coolangatta. Some of them went to

Pinkenba. There was another radar station just out of Brisbane but I just can’t remember. There was also one at Southport. The one at Southport was a different type of radar. The one at Pinkenba was attached to a squadron.

If need be they could send a squadron up. They would find the plots and everything else and send it in to Brisbane and then the air force would decide whether they would intercept or not. When I was in Brisbane at one afternoon, at about two o’clock, we had a number of unidentified aircraft coming in cross the

Pacific. They were unidentified for a long time. Then they were eventually taken off the board. We were all ready to send out aircraft. They were eventually taken off the board and I often wonder what happened and whether those aircraft turned back if they were coming from a landing craft or whether they were birds. It could have been a large number of birds,

quite large ones. I often wondered what happened that day. We thought, “Yes, we’re going to do some intercepting. We’ll have something to do,” but it never came.

The book over there tells you that you had to have an above average education and you had to have a good speaking voice. There was a

third one there and I don’t know exactly how it is worded. You had to be very self reliant and something else. I don’t know what it was. That was the way you were selected. As I say, the day that I enlisted had to do all the different questions that they asked and also I had to

read some of Shakespeare on the telephone. They couldn’t give anything specific for radar operators because there never was radar in Australia before. That is when cathode ray tubes were just coming in like we have on our TV. That was the

beginning of the cathode ray tube.

Wherever they wanted me to go I was prepared to go. They just said, “Radar.” None of us knew what radar was.

I thought, “Oh well, this will be something new and I’ll be right.” I thought, “I can do it. I can pass any of the exams.” I was sure I could pass any of the exams and so that is why I thought, “This will be great.”

No, we had no Americans, they were Australians. They were RAAF personnel, all sergeants and flight sergeants but we had some officers.

They were all Australians. In fact, we didn’t have any American equipment at all but later on I did see American equipment and it was awful. They were well behind us. The Americans had a station at Canungra, up in those mountains up there. A few of us girls went up there one weekend to have a look at their equipment and things like that.

We stayed there for the weekend but it wasn’t as good as ours was. We trained on three different ones. One was a British one and on was an Australian one built by AWA [Amalgamated Wireless Australasia], which was a smaller one.

The AWA was able to be dismantled and carried. The AWA was I suppose about four feet and about so wide. They were able to dismantle that and take it into New Guinea. It was smaller equipment than I worked on. That was

AWA. That was wholly owned in Australia and built in Australia. Then we had another one which was RF7 and that was the one that was outside Southport. It had a very big antenna. It was much bigger than our antenna that we had but it was bigger equipment again.

The men, the RAAF, I think we had good relationships with them, although at first I think it probably was a bit difficult for the men to accept the girls. I had a couple of

boyfriends who were in the army. I think they accepted it. There was always a certain percentage who didn’t want them women and in those days women didn’t have the same status as they do today. It is not that I think it is still 100 per cent yet. I think we were accepted. The

boys accepted us and particularly the boys on our radar station. There were probably 30 girls and about 18 boys I think. That was about all there were on my radar station. We were right on the cliff at Point Danger and it was a beautiful position it really was. We got on well with the boys. There was always a

mechanic. On every shift there was a mechanic and he was a male mechanic. There were no female mechanics. So there were five mechanics, they were corporals, and then a sergeant who was in charge of the five of them. On every shift there was one mechanic. When he got bored with tampering with the equipment he would come into our

part of the equipment and just sit and talk if there was nothing going on. We had a good relationship with them. You have to in a situation like that because if there is anyone arguing it is rather difficult. When you think of the size of our doover, that was where we worked, it was called a doover. How big was it. I suppose it was about as wide as that and over to about there. There were no

windows. We were just in there with no windows. We were very, very close to everything because the equipment was in there as well. I didn’t know of anyone ever having any problems.

That’s right. In fact one of our mechanics married one of the girls from the

orderly room. They both came from Tasmania.

Surprisingly they were the only couple that I knew. Nobody else did, no. We all had very good relationships with every one of them. If you went on leave – when I was at

Coolangatta that is when I first started to dance. Every night of the week there would be a dance down there. If it wasn’t at Coolangatta it would be at Tweed Heads, so if you were on leave you would just go to one or another. I used to just go and listen to the music but I wouldn’t dance. Anyway, this sergeant mechanic one night he said, “You’ve got to get up and dance.” I said, “I’ve got two left feet.” So he pulled me up and after that I didn’t ever want to

sit down. I never sat down again for the dances. We would go off as a shift together and just dance. There were quite a number of Americans down there because there was a convalescence depot at Coolangatta and they used to come to the dances. They were quite all right so long as they didn’t expect me to be doing jitterbugging. The white girls didn’t. In fact the

WAAAF girls couldn’t do it because their skirts were too tight. They couldn’t do any jitterbugging. It was a good relationship. You get very close because the shift was just four girls and one mechanic and you get quite close to them. The girls slept in the same room excepting the corporal. There was a corporal WAAAF and

three ACWs [Aircraftswomen]. The ACWs slept in their own room and the corporal slept in the corporal’s room. So we got very, very close to one another. At Coolangatta the air force had taken over three houses out in the main street. It was the first street down from the hill. There were civilians living in all the houses all around. We just had these three

houses. The boys had their house near the orderly room on the top of the hill and then the girls had their two houses down the bottom. We slept three to a room. You were lucky if you got three to a room now I’m looking at the layout. A lot of them slept on the verandas but the verandas were closed in. The shifts all slept together. You didn’t have one from the shift up that end and another one up the other end, you all

slept together. You needed to because you were sleeping when others were coming and going all the time. If you were together it was a little bit quieter and you could close the door if you wanted to when you had a room. It was just bare boards and folding metal beds.

I have never ever told you anything about filling the palliasses, did I?

Every time you were posted to a station you had to fill your own. They would give you an empty bag and the straw so you had to fill your own bag. We slept on palliasses on the iron-framed bed. In Brisbane we had mosquito

nets as well and in Coolangatta we had mosquito nets because you needed them. It was the basics of everything. There was an iron and an ironing board in the kitchen. The kitchen wasn’t used as a kitchen it was used for ironing. Then downstairs we had a tub to do our washing. We had a metal bath about three foot in diameter

and it was just a tub. There was a cold shower but if you wanted to have a warm bath you had to stoke up the fire, stoke up the copper, and boil up the water to put it into this metal tin to have a warm bath. Nine times out of 10 you would just have a cold shower because that was the only way. We had a toilet down at the back of the yard so it was very, very primitive if you think of it in that way.

Apart from that I enjoyed Coolangatta. When we had hours off we could go down onto the beach. I didn’t swim but all the others girls did. You could just lie on the beach if you wanted to and that was when the Americans would come along and they’d see you on the beach. I know two girls that went out with Americans but there was nothing in it. They just went out for company.

It wouldn’t have been. That would have been entirely different. There was a perception of what Americans were like. They were very fast, very fast. That was the perception of the

Americans and I’m sure they weren’t much different to what the Australians were, but it was just that everybody perceived them to be like that. The Americans that I met were quite nice.

What was the family’s perception of an Australian soldier?

Well just like a normal Australian because they

were normal Australians and they came from normal Australian backgrounds so they were accepted but not the Americans because you just didn’t know, “No, not the Yanks.” That was the sort of thing.

They didn’t but then of course they didn’t know the Australians did they?

Yes. And you’ve heard of the song, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’? Have you heard the story behind that? We used to think it was about Tipperary in Ireland but it wasn’t that at all. That was the red light district in London and it was called Tipperary. It was only in the last four or five years that we found that

out. It wasn’t only the Yanks in the Second World War it was the Australians and everybody else in the First World War.

I don’t think they knew. Communication wasn’t as obvious as it is today because there are so many forms of communication.

No, they didn’t realise that at all. But with Tipperary every time I hear the song now I think, “Red light district.”

You just automatically thought it was in Ireland.

I don’t think they did. My husband had to censor all the mail from his platoon while they were away. He said that one of the chaps that was in his platoon had written home to his

wife. He had only just got married before he left. He wrote home to his wife and said did she mind if he went to the brothels? Of course Graham never got the answer to the letter that came back to him. He said that chap did go to the brothels because he ended up in a special hospital. We don’t think of those things or we didn’t think of those things. Now of course it is entirely different.

Communication is just entirely different to what it was. I never thought of it, men might have thought of it but I don’t think so.

If they were married they would have been absolutely devastated I would say.

There was no sex before marriage in our day. It just wasn’t the sort of thing that was accepted. I am sure it went on in lots of cases.

The men who weren’t married?

Well I don’t know.

The girlfriends at home would have been devastated too but you didn’t think about it. It didn’t go on until you were married so you didn’t think about it. I guarantee that in lots of cases it did but just the same it is not like today. It was more from the male point of view than for the girls, probably.

I’m talking from my point of view and it may not be everybody’s point of view. If I was engaged to somebody and I found out that he was going to the

brothels the engagement would have been off. Whether everybody thought that way or not I don’t know.

I don’t know that you could be angry with the army because they were being realistic. They were hoping that those

places would be supervised. Whether of course they were or they weren’t, and they didn’t only use the brothels, but I think the brothels were probably well supervised.

I think the women were more circumspect than that. It just wasn’t accepted.

No, I don’t think so. There would have been a few because there are always a few but, no, you didn’t carry on like that.

My corporal when I was at Coolangatta, she was married and her husband was in New Guinea. She was a little bit older. She was about 22 or 23. Her husband was in New Guinea.

Definitely.

As I say there were only two girls I knew at Coolangatta who ever went out with an American. They were just platonic friendships. I knew that because one of the girls eventually was on my shift.

I suppose when you look back you must expect that you will meet somebody from another country and like them enough to go out with them. That doesn’t mean that it has to go any further and you want to marry them. You just had somebody to go out with. There were some

Australians you wouldn’t go out with. You had to pick and choose.

In that time I think the girls grew up, or the soldiers did too, and they had different expectations. I don’t know any personally, but I know there were that went off and married somebody

else. A lot of them in the first place weren’t engage to marry anyone but they just had boyfriends. I had a friend in New Guinea that I used to write to. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He thought he was but he wasn’t and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. They liked to get

letters and I think it is the letters that make them a little bit closer to home.

Yes, I’ve heard of those. I didn’t know of anybody who did that but I know that they did get ‘Dear Johns’.

We don’t say WAAAFs, we say WAAAF. You don’t say RAAFs do you?

Sorry to do that, but it is a WAAAF. There is no plural, it is just WAAAF. We all belong to the WAAAF. We were talking about dances, weren’t we?

There were a lot of civilian boys at the dances too besides the servicemen and there were a lot of civilian girls, too. I never went out with a civilian. I only ever went out with army. I only ever went out with the army.

I never went out with any of the air force. There were a lot of civilian girls always at the dances. There were dances every night of the week at Coolangatta because there were convalescence depots all around. They used to come down to Coolangatta or they’d go over to Tweed Heads. At Tweed Heads the

ballroom there had these punkahs. You know the things that go backwards and forwards. I think they probably had them in Ceylon too. They go backwards and forwards to keep the room cool and they had one in the ballroom at Tweed Heads because there was no air conditioning in those days. I loved dancing.

I don’t know. I never ever discussed that with the men I don’t think. Graham didn’t go out with civilian girls. It was only a fluke that I met

him. It certainly was a fluke.

He had malaria a few times in New Guinea. Each time they had been sent back to the mainland. This time he had a particularly bad bout of malaria so he was sent down to Brisbane, to the hospital in Brisbane. Anyway, he was due to go to Warwick where he knew a girl in the

army at Warwick. He was due to go to Warwick Convalescent Depot but he had leave overnight and he met some British sailors and he went on board their ship. He had a bit too much gin to drink because there was nothing else but gin and he wasn’t a drinker. All he can remember is somebody waking him at six o’clock, one of the native crew, waking him and saying, “Six o’clock, master.” He said, “Oh I

should be back at the depot.” He was in hospital but he had leave for a few hours and he was still there at the hour. He caught the next train back to Redbank to the hospital. He went through the main gate and he went up to the hospital and he saw the troops coming back down the hill. They were the ones that were going to Warwick. When he got into the hospital, of course, the sister there was really ropable. You know, “We’re trying to make you better and

you’re carrying on.” So then he didn’t go to Warwick and he never went to the girlfriend in Warwick. Then he was sent down to Burleigh Heads, and it was while he was at Burleigh Heads and I was at Coolangatta and we went to this dance at Chinderah and that’s where I met him.

Yes. We were the only two WAAAF there. And my friend who was with me she was the girl that was married, she was the corporal.

And it had actually been the wedding of one of our other girls that day. Diane had worn Shirley’s wedding frock and she was really down. So we went down to the dance that night. That is when I met Graham. I only saw him four times before we were married. It was about six months or seven months or something like that. Then he was going back to

New Guinea and we got married. He never, ever went back to New Guinea because they said he couldn’t go back to New Guinea for at least six months because his malaria was so bad. He had an enlarged spleen. They said if it got any worse the only thing they could do was to remove it. I think the prognosis was that one in 20 would live. Anyway,

he had it for years after the war. He still had it when we came to this house. I only met him four times until the day we were married.

Well, I was only 20 and you couldn’t get married before you were 21 without your parents’ permission.

I was down here and I sent a letter to my parents. I had to get my father’s permission. God, your father’s permission. I’ve still got the telegram. It said, “Please yourself but consent is given.” That is how much they wanted me to get married. Anyway, we got married and we’ve been very lucky.

That’s right, because at Coolangatta you would be on the beach and the Americans would come down to the beach too, and the Australian soldiers used to…one Sunday afternoon they had a big lifesaving rally. They had lifesavers from all around. They had an American team and they had an army team and all things like that. That was the sort of thing they used to do

to make life more bearable for the troops.

It wasn’t bikinis. It was before bikinis. It was a one-piece suit. It had straps over the shoulders and just short ones. Some of them had little skirts on the bottom part as well. They were just little short ones and the same length as the shorts.

That is what they used to wear.

No.

I don’t remember anything like that. I am sure they didn’t. It wasn’t the culture in those days. They might have had it up here.

Yes and we were right there at the

beach. We would go out of our back door and go down into Rainbow Bay and that was our beach. We used to also go down into the main part as well but that we our beach down there at Rainbow Bay.

I think they thoroughly enjoyed it because it was a very relaxed area and the weather was beautiful.

The Americans had taken over some of the hotels there. That was their convalescence area. I think they all appreciated it. It was great, it really was. There was a convalescent home at Burleigh Heads. right on the beach at the river there, and that is where Graham was. All the tents were pitched right down to the edge of the water. It was a

lovely area it really was.

There would be wounds from New Guinea and malaria. What else I wouldn’t know. I suppose if they had had any operations of any description. I don’t know what they were but it was quite a big camp

there.

If there was anything that would stop them from travelling they had to stay there close to the convalescence depot. If they had malaria which was very, very prevalent they could come on leave. The buses would bring them down to Coolangatta or

sometimes they even walked. Graham walked from Burleigh to Coolangatta the day after he met me. Then I was on shift and he wasn’t able to see me. Madam said, “No you cannot.” So I didn’t go. Madam said, “No,” and the guard said, “No,” and that was the thing. He had walked form Burleigh Heads to Coolangatta that time.

No, I never saw anything like

that. They probably stopped in Brisbane. They would stay in hospital until they were well enough to go out and they would be discharged on crutches. Those at the convalescent homes were just there until they were well enough and then they could go back their units wherever they were. I think Graham was evacuated to Australia three times from

New Guinea on hospital ships.

A spleen is here and it used to come up like a football it would swell so much. If we went to the pictures and it got

to problems, if he got too warm, he would have to warn me and we’d have to come out. That is how it manifested itself with him. It was on his spleen. It doesn’t always attack the spleen but the type of malaria that he had, B1 or B2 or something like that, he had the others as well. He never, ever had

cerebral malaria because that kills them. That is very serious.

It was a lot less worrying than it was him getting shot at. That didn’t come into the equation at all.

No, it didn’t worry me at all except for he may go back to New Guinea and may never come back here. That was more worrying. Of course we were hoping that that was getting towards the end of the war although they were still fighting in New Guinea.

Life had to go on because if you let it worry you too much it wasn’t worth living. So it was just normal life. For civilians the war really didn’t impact on them much at all. The only thing was the

petrol rationing and the food rationing and clothing and they could get around that quite easily. My parents were tea drinkers The English are always tea drinkers. They never had to worry really about the tea ration. And the meat, if they had their own chickens and things that would equate with some meals and there was always some meat.

I don’t think the civilians really had much to worry about at all during the war. There weren’t that many cars around so the petrol rationing wasn’t affecting many people.

I enjoyed my time at Coolangatta and all of the girls at Coolangatta I got on well with. I must tell you a couple of funny things that happened. Just outside the CO’s orderly room we had these white stones. They had been painted white so that you wouldn’t trip over them at the night time. Why you would be going to the orderly room in the night time, I don’t know, but anyway he had them painted.

The boys decided that they were going to get rid of these stones. One night when we were on shift in the night – I don’t know who was on shift. I was on shift I know but I don’t know who was on the other hours of the shift. The boys picked the stones up and they threw them over the cliff into the water. The next morning the CO was ropable because the CO’s stones had disappeared.

No one would be owned up so he gave the whole station CB [Confined to Barracks], confined to barracks, that is C-B. So we couldn’t go on leave and we couldn’t do anything. We had 24 hours CB. No one owned up of course. On the next night shift, it must have been the same boys I reckon,

we used to have posters that you could put up. This poster that they put up was I suppose about 18 inches by two feet. It was one of the silver-crested cockatoos and on the bottom it said, ‘God help me to keep my big mouth shut’. I don’t know where it came from or anything else but we did laugh. This was on the

doover fence. That was one of the things that we had CB for. We lived in a civilian street and there were two houses separated by a little narrow street but there were five houses in the street. The civilians used to come up from the town and go for a walk along the street and all the rest of it. They were able to do that. They used to drop al their papers and things,

lolly papers and all sorts of papers. So we were confined to barracks one day and had to do an emu parade. Do you know what an emu parade is? You had to go around and pick up all the papers and all the rubbish like an emu does. We had to clean up the street. We were CB for that day. We had to go and have an emu parade in the street. We were ropable because the civilians did it. We didn’t do it and we had to clean it up. That was our

CO. That was the same CO. There are some funny things that happened but those were the two main things. That cockatoo was great. With Coolangatta what can I tell you.

No, the whole time I was in there I

got on with everyone up there. The room that we worked in, our doover, as I say was about that square. It had equipment about that wide so there wasn’t much room for four girls. We had a plotting table. The girls had two radar screens, two cathode ray tubes side by side.

We worked on that. One of them scales the distance and the other one gave us the height. When you know about radar you know how to calculate those things. We could pick up ships about two miles close to us in the water but then we could pick up all the aircraft for a couple of hundred miles. The antenna goes round and round.

We had the two cathode ray tubes with the equipment and the girls sat side by side. Just over on the right hand side of the girl on this equipment there was a small table with the telephone connected to the radar station in Brisbane. If a plot came we would call the

distance and the height to the girl on the plotting table. She would plot where it is on our area and then she would tell the girl on the phone who would transmit it to Brisbane. That is how the radar equipment worked. There were no windows or anything in that room. It got terribly hot in the summer time and terribly cold in the

winter time. There was a room exactly the same size with all the mechanical parts. That is where the radar mechanics lived. It was just one mechanic on each time in case anything went wrong. So that is how it was. That was our station.

The antenna turned 360 degrees. The civilian population didn’t know what we were. They knew we were very, very secret but they didn’t know what we were. But they were getting cranky because when the antenna swept over the land it interfered with their radios, so they weren’t too happy about that. Even if there was a war on they weren’t going to be interfered with.

That is how it was there. This would never happen today. We had our evening meal at six o’clock and then you couldn’t get another meal until seven o’clock the next morning. If you were going on shift you got it at six, otherwise it was it seven. So we had nothing all night to eat. We used to be able to get

some things from the kitchen, some dog biscuits and tins of goldfish. Do you know what goldfish are? They are sardines set in tomato sauce. That was all we could get to go on shift and we got some cheese and some bread. In the wintertime when it was cold we had a little one-bar radiator, so big.

We used to toast the bread on top of the radiator and then put the cheese on top and melt that. That was all we would get whether it was winter or summer. There was nothing to drink or anything else. Today they would make sure that there was equipment. They’d probably have a microwave these days so they could reheat their food. After half past

five in the afternoon you would have your afternoon meal and then you went on shift at midnight and you didn’t get anything to eat then before you went. Actually, we didn’t think much about it because they were the rules and regulations so you did it. I’m sure they don’t do it like that these days. They don’t have the

primitive conditions either that we had in those days. That was all accepted. The men lived in tents so I suppose we thought everything we did was fine. Of course a few of the girls were engaged and expecting to get married after the war. We were all getting our glory boxes together. Even if we weren’t engaged we were getting bits and pieces.

Over at Tweed Heads there was a shop that from time to time used to get different things in. They sold chinaware and all that type of thing and household things. When he knew that any of the girls were looking for any particular thing he would keep it. The

civilian population didn’t get it, he’d give it to the girls. They could buy it from him then. I don’t know anywhere else that happened but there was this particular chap that had this store in Tweed Heads that would keep it for us. So some people didn’t look down on the service girls.

That was in 1943 or 1944. In 1944, you could see that the war was, we hoped, coming to an end and the troops were going further back. We knew that they wouldn’t be having the radar stations in Australia because they didn’t expect any air raids in Australia. Every now and again they would call for volunteers to go and re-muster,

to go into another mustering. So one of the girls and I decided we would re-muster and that is when we came down and did our course at 1ES at Ascot Vale. We were able to get the same pay. We weren’t going to drop our pays. We used to get six and eight a day, which was the top WAAAF pay.

There was no way we were going to drop down to five and six a day. Then I came down and did that. Something else just flashed into my mind. Radar girls didn’t make many friends in the WAAAF because they weren’t allowed to talk about what they did. So you could really

only mix with girls who were in the same boat. I remember we used to have jeans. They were not the jeans trousers. They were like the men’s overalls and we called them jeans. The radar girls used to have a round red ball there that had been put on with paint. When we came down to do our course at 1ES there were two from

Queensland and I think four from New South Wales that came down to do it at the same time. They took a photo of us and I can’t find the photo. We are all sitting like this so everybody can see that we are radar girls. We really didn’t want to re-muster but we thought that was probably the best time because we could choose wherever we wanted to go to then. So we came down and did a month’s course down there.

ACW, that was all. On a radar station there were only four corporals and they are on charge of the shift. There were no sergeants. There were just four corporals and all the rest were ACWs. I don’t know any radar operator that was any higher than a

corporal. Even the mechanics were only sergeant except for there was one flight sergeant who was in charge of the mechanics. Then I came down here and did my course. It was so cold after Queensland. You can imagine coming down here in May to do a course and there was no heating or anything else. And going out to Ascot Vale

where they lived in the pig pens and all sort of things in those days. We had the Hall of Manufacture but I don’t think it was much warmer than it was in the pig pens. I think that course lasted for about a month. I’m not too sure but it was about a month we did. We did a lot of the electrical things that we had already done in

radar but everybody on the course hadn’t been radar operators. There were other musterings as well and they had just decided they were going to re-muster. Every now and again they would have a sheet out and it would say they wanted volunteers to re-muster to whatever the vacancies were.

When I did finish that course I was posted to Domain Road. The air force had taken over some of the big houses on Domain Road and I worked for a while down there. When we were at Domain Road we didn’t have any barracks. You had to find your own accommodation unless you wanted to go to the barracks, which were miles out. It wasn’t worth doing that and to come in

every day. So two other girls and I lived in a flat in Albert Park. A woman down there had let rooms to service personnel and we each had a room in a flat. I still know where he flats are. They are still there.

Yes.

We had two different equipments and I can’t remember their names. I didn’t even think to try and remember those names in my head but there were two different lots of equipment. We had to be able to service

them and replace the valves. If the equipment broke down we had to decide what the problem was, and if it was fixable and we could fix it we did. We had to be able to change the fuses just like in the electricity box.

We used to have training films. We did training films but every now and again we used to have a Mickey Duck, which was a Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse sort of thing, just to give us a break so that the people who were watching the training films were having a rest. We used to call them Mickey Ducks. We showed films to all the engineering students at

1ES. From eight o’clock to four o’clock I think we did that each day. Then I was stationed at 1ES. Once I had finished my course I was stationed t 1ES. You don’t know why they post you, or if they want an extra

body somewhere but that is when I went to Domain Road after that. I enjoyed my time with 1ES as far as equipment and things were concerned. Bell & Howe was one of the machines that we had. I can’t remember the other one but there were two of them that we worked on. We had to be able to

mend the films and all that type of thing. Anything that went wrong we had to be able to fix on the equipment. That was 1ES. I did eventually go back to 1ES after I was married, but I wasn’t married at that stage.

What else can I tell you about it?

Yes, that’s right they were too making training films.

I didn’t have much to do with that

but they were making training films. Of course the equipment was very primitive to what it is today. I can’t tell you a great deal about the making of the films but they did make them down there. All the engineering students used to come

down to 1ES, I think, from right throughout Australia, except for those that had to work on aircraft which couldn’t be taught in a classroom. They had to actually do the work on aircraft like at Richmond. That is where they used to work on the aircraft when they were doing their courses. During the week one of the

mess places was in the kitchens of the Flemington Racecourse. When they wanted to have race days and they didn’t have them every week I think it was every fortnight they had a race day. The RAAF had to go out of Flemington for the weekend so they definitely had leave for that weekend because that kitchen couldn’t be used. We just had a

gate we could go through if we wanted to go to the races. I had never been to the races in my life but one weekend I went to have a look to see what it was all about. We just walked through the gate from one to the other and it didn’t cost us anything. I think my mother was horrified that I had been to the races because my father was a gambler and the last thing she wanted me to do was go to the races.

It was all an experience and I had fun and I didn’t even have a bet but I did go to see what went on.

There really wasn’t much difference because at every station you go to they all have the same routine. It is up at

six and breakfast at seven or half past seven and the first parade at eight o’clock. There was lunch at 12. They have all got the same routine as far as the station is concerned excepting when you are on shift work and that is when it is entirely different. You still have a routine even if you are on shift work. You would come off shift and you could have your breakfast. If it was a night shift you would have your breakfast and if it was a

day shift you would have your lunch. If you were going on you would have your lunch. If you came off the midnight shift, what did we call it? I can’t remember. You would come off shift then and have your breakfast and go to bed. Often we used to go for a walk along the beach when we came off shift at six o’clock if the weather was beautiful. Even in the wintertime we would just put our hats and coats on and go off down to the

beach just to get a bit of fresh air for a while. Then we would go back and go to bed for a while and get up in the afternoon and probably go down to the beach. When you are on a station rarely do you have to do shift work except if you were cipher or one of those musterings. The general orderly rooms and kitchen staff they didn’t have to. They just worked a normal shift.

All stations were more or less the same. It really didn’t change. I wouldn’t think it would have changed from 1939 right through to 1946 it would be exactly the same routine every day. Did I tell you about panic night? I don’t think I talked about panic night. Tuesday morning was

always the CO’s inspection and he would inspect the whole camp. On Monday night there was never any leave because that was called panic night and everybody was he building to get the place ready for the CO’s inspection the next morning. You had to clean the toilets and clean the bathrooms and wash the floors and do all those sorts of things and do the dusting. Everybody was

assigned to a certain thing, and that was called panic night. Everything had to be right so that when the CO came around the next morning everything was perfect. My gosh, if it wasn’t perfect you would be hauled up and that was for sure. So that was panic night. You hadn’t heard of panic night? When we were on the

radar station we still had panic but it wasn’t like in the bigger stations. That was entirely different.

Rivalry? They didn’t like radar because they didn’t know anything about it and it was all so secretive. So that was one of the reasons why the girls kept to themselves.

We never came across the AWAS or the WRANS , never ever. I never

met an AWA and I never met a WRAN all the time I was in the services. I would see them in the streets but I never ever met them. I didn’t even speak to them so I wouldn’t know but within the WAAAF, no. That is why the girls when they had their photographs taken made sure you saw the red mark for the radar. It wasn’t that we thought we were better than any of the other musterings, it was just that we couldn’t talk about it. It is very easy when you are

talking in a group to let things slip. Even the slightest bit you can let slip. That is why you stuck together all the time. It was, “You’re radar,” and they’d look up to the skies. Apart from that, what else did we do at 1ES? There used to be a place

down in East Melbourne that I used to go on a Wednesday afternoon to pick up any films that we wanted to shoot, like light-hearted types of films and not training films. I used to catch the tram out there and pick up some films and bring them back to the depot at Ascot Vale.

Apart from that that was Ascot Vale. There wasn’t much that happened there at all. After radar it was a bit tame. When I finished my course the girl that I came down to Melbourne with she was posted to Townsville so I didn’t see her again. As I say I was posted to

Domain Road. I didn’t do the photography and things but they would do a lot of photography and developing of films and all sorts of things that had been taken at the various aerodromes. I suppose of all the

places Domain Road was the least enjoyable of the lot.

I don’t know. It was only a very small one and I don’t know how I fell foul of the CO but I did. It was all right but as I say after radar it was just not enough stimulation I don’t think there.

It was all right. I had never been to Melbourne before and I used to go on leave with the other girls and that sort of thing. We used to go out to dinner. I had never been out to dinner before until I came to Melbourne. We used to go to Mario’s, I think it was in Exhibition Street, and it was lovely.

It was an Italian Restaurant, yes. In fact,

we had our pass-out parade and our pass-out dinner there when I finished the course at 1ES. At the other courses I had been on we didn’t go out for dinner or anything else, but we had a pass-out night there. The waiter tipped the soup down my back so I will never forget that. It was one of these high class Italian restaurants and it went down my

back.

The Americans were here. Yes, that’s right. I never got into the social scene in Melbourne really. I know that there was the place down in –

once I went to the Glaciarium to the skating just to see what it was all about. Then they used to have dancing down in St. Kilda Road. I never got around to that really. The girls that I was with we would go and have a meal out or we’d go to the pictures but they weren’t dancers so we never went to that type of entertainment. We used to go to the

newsreels in Collins Street. There were two different theatrette types of thing. You had to go down into them. One of them was down under one of the hotels and the other one was further up to Swanson Street. They had our films showing and it was all newsreels, the whole lot, so you got everything that was going on in the war and all those types of things. We used to go to a

newsreel or we’d go and have a meal. We used to go up to Flinders Lane and there was a place up there that the service girls used to go to for a meal. That is the type of thing we did. We didn’t go out a great deal. We didn’t have that much money to go out. I got six and eight a day and that was the

top one. Some of them were only getting five shillings a day, five and fourpence a day. Three and six it started off at. There was three and six, three and eight, five and fourpence and six and eight. The girls down the bottom they didn’t have much money at all. You didn’t have to buy your clothes but just the same you couldn’t throw around that much if you were only getting that much a day. The army were only getting five bob a

day. Now when you see what they are getting it is a big difference. It is an extra thousand dollars a week if you go to Timor. That is a good way of getting a deposit on a house to do that. What are we up to?

Are we still up to 1ES or can I go on?

That’s right, 1 Engineering School.

It was all training films.

Was I happy? Yes, I didn’t mind it because I had done radar and to do the other one you had to be a little bit that way inclined. No, I didn’t mind it.

As I said, we lived out when we went to Domain Road because there were no barracks. Then I think it was a shilling or two shillings a day extra if you lived out. I can’t remember what we paid for the

flat that we were sharing, but it couldn’t have been much. During the war a lot of people did that. If they had spare rooms they let them out because there was no building houses and things as such. That is why when the war finished it was difficult to get a house of any description to lived in. Many of us shared houses for years.

Don’t talk to me about VE Day. It is a sore point with me. We haven’t been to Wagga yet. I was in Wagga after that. With Graham being an officer he felt that he had to look after his troops and give them their lunch because they had a big

lunch. The army provided a big lunch on VE Day. We were married at that stage. I wanted to go into the city for all the celebrations and he felt compelled to go and wait on the tables for the troops. I stayed home and did the washing. That is why I always say, “I would have loved to have gone in and just been as crazy as all the others.” But I didn’t. I stayed home and did the

washing.

I was down there at Domain Road when I got married. The chap who was the squadron leader, Rosenthal, he was annoyed

because I got married and then I had some leave in Bathurst because Graham was down at the training depot there. He was a bit annoyed that I got the leave so he had me posted to Wagga in New South Wales. I arrive there at two o’clock in the morning. The station is miles from the town and they didn’t expect me. I had to sit and wait until it go to daylight on the station.

Then I wasn’t at Wagga very long. I don’t know how long I was at Wagga but I was only a couple of months there. Then I came back down to 1ES. At Wagga I worked still doing training films and things like that. The air force had taken over two of the hotels in the main street of Wagga and the WAAAF had one and the men had the

other. I wasn’t actually on the Wagga Station, I was within the town. We used to work from one of the places that they took over in the town. I don’t know what was actually housed there before but it was definitely a commercial area. I was doing exactly the same there. As I say, I came back to 1ES

again and did some more work there. When the war finished I was at 1ES.

Some of them were 20 minutes and some of them were 40 minutes. You can’t sit and watch films for too long particularly when it is a darkened room because the boys would go to sleep. That is why you didn’t have

long films. They could get up and go outside and have fresh air for a while and then they’d come back in and have another one. Then of course they also had to go and practise what they’d seen on the films, so it was 20 minutes or 40 minutes. I have seen a few asleep while the films have been on.

It was for

all engineering subjects. It was even soldering or things like that or it could be a whole engine that they would pull to bits or a part of an engine that they would pull to bits. They used to have a lot of electrical equipment that they had to work on so they were dismantling this and putting it back together and things like that.

It was an interesting thing. I never expected that I would get involved with that type of thing, but I enjoyed it.

No, I didn’t work the cameras but I used to do things for whoever was doing the

filming and that because it was being involved. You would say, “Sit there and sit there and do this or do that,” sort of thing. Then there would be someone behind the cameras doing it. Also, when I was at Domain Road we were

sending balloons off into the air to get different altitudes. It was weather films that we were making there. We would have to go to the aerodrome down at Laverton. We worked from Laverton a few times. They would let the balloons

go and film them and get all the answers that they wanted out of whatever that was in the balloons could provide.

There wasn’t a great deal there but it wasn’t bad for a country town in those days and it certainly has grown since I was there. Our accommodation was quite good and where I worked in the town was good. It was very cold because it was in the wintertime. Then all of a sudden it started to get very hot

because they don’t have a very long winter, I don’t think, but it was cold there. I think we were accepted. We were right in the centre of the town and we took over all the best places naturally. All in all, Wagga was quite good. There wasn’t much entertainment there. I think they had a picture theatre but I don’t think I ever went. Apart from that, that

was about all at Wagga. We weren’t on the station we were in the town. In fact, I went out to the station for church parade and that was the only time I went out there. I can’t remember how long I was in Wagga.

We didn’t. We talked to them in the shop if they were serving us but apart from that we didn’t mix with the locals at

all. I don’t know whether the locals like us or not. We just didn’t do that. As I say, I wasn’t there long enough to really get settled down. Then I think after that I went on leave to Bathurst because Graham was up in Bathurst and I had leave while he was up there.

I was still doing the same work as I was

doing when I was at 1ES. I did exactly the same with the training and organising the despatch of films out to the station and all that type of thing. It was exactly the same really.

No, they were only training films. We didn’t have

much in the way of light entertainment except for a few Mickey Ducks. Apart from that we didn’t have much else. They were all training films.

Of course it was all aircraft bits and pieces. Of course if they were updating their qualifications within whatever trade they were doing, they had to have instruction and that type of thing, and that was on the films.

I don’t know how used to make the films. I think some of them were made at 1ES, but I’m not sure.

They were all technical. There was nothing else. Even at 1ES it was all technical. We used to get a bit of music at the beginning of it and a technical film and that was all it was because it was instruction for the courses they were doing.

No, it was all technical. There was nothing like that at all. We didn’t do any propaganda or any newsreels or anything like that it was just technical things.

I think so. I would say that for their time they were well produced.

Today if you compared them with the reproduction today you would think they were terrible but for the time they were quite good.

They used to come into the city and we used to show them where we were stationed in the city. Some of them went out to the station itself but most of them would have their

half-hour films or whatever and it was in town. Of course we had to repair the films and anything that went wrong as well.

Yes, that’s right.

I would have preferred radar, but still, beggars can’t be choosers. I didn’t mind it. It was all right but it was so

different from the radar. You felt that you were really involved but when it was just all films and things you didn’t feel it so much.

Yes, and it was interesting because you never knew what was going to turn up. I remember when we were at Coolangatta one night, an aircraft got lost coming up

from – what was the station? It was northern New South Wales. I can’t remember it. It was on a night flight and they got lost over the land. We found them. There were things like that where you knew you were doing something.

I suppose it was, but it never gave you the same satisfaction. You weren’t involved as much. You put the film on and saw it through and you took it off and if it was broken you spliced it and apart from that you really weren’t involved a great deal in it.

I found it very easy. I wasn’t a very talkative person anyway, but I found it really easy. You really only mixed with those that were involved. You didn’t mix with other musterings at all.

We didn’t see documents at all. But when we did our course we were

told that that is what it was and so you just accepted it and never talked at all. Once you had finished your course and gone out to the station you were just using the equipment. We had one WAAAF officer and one RAAF officer at Coolangatta, but our WAAAF officer was never allowed to come near the doover. I only saw the CO there once and that was the only time I ever saw him once.

The WAAAF officer wasn’t allowed near it. She didn’t know what went on in the doover, and that was how it was.

She wouldn’t know what it was about. She had never seen anything like what was inside there. We just didn’t talk about it.

I don’t know that I

did. I couldn’t say. I can’t remember how I felt but I don’t think I did. It was just a job that had to be done and that is what you did.

No.

We didn’t know. I often think that it could have been the radar that affected my eyes but I don’t know and it is too late now. At least if I had known I would have been able to get my glasses on the free list. I can’t now.

I don’t know any other WAAAF radar

operators at all. I haven’t kept in touch. I did for a few years but I haven’t for a long time so I don’t know.

No. Everybody got on quite well together and there were no

problems at all. As I say, it was more like a family because there were about 20 girls and there were only five mechanics. That was just a little family and that was all right.

No, I hadn’t known any. The only male radar operators that I

knew were those that were sent out of Australia. When we were at Coolangatta after they had done their radar course some of them did come up and have a couple of weeks with us before they went off to New Guinea, but we weren’t allowed to go out of Australia. We all thought it would be most interesting to go to New Guinea because of the

aircraft. You didn’t get very much down south. Even Townsville would have been better. It would have been most interesting in New Guinea. Graham would tell me, “You wouldn’t want to go to New Guinea.” But it would have been interesting that’s for sure.

The WAAAF? No, the WAAAF weren’t allowed out of Australia.

Radar operators would have

jumped if they could have gone. Yes, it would have been very good.

If we were going to go to New Guinea we would have got closer, wouldn’t we. In Australia there wasn’t a great deal of action. As I say, Townsville would have been better but even there I think they only had a couple of raids up there. It would have

just been flights in and out of the Americans and the Australians that we would have picked up.

By that time it was too late to go to the Middle East.

I don’t know. We didn’t consider it I don’t think because we knew we couldn’t. As I say, the Australians were back in

Australia before that.

No, I’m against that. I think the girls should have their own service with their own WAAAF or RAAF officers, and not men. They should have their own officers. I don’t like this ‘all in together’. I don’t think,

I’m saying this and I’ll probably get into strife with some people, I don’t think the girls who are joining up today are the same type of girls who joined up during the war that I was in. I think that they are more aggressive. I think that they are much more aggressive than we were. Then again that was the way we were brought up and today there

are a lot of more aggressive women around. Even I, a feminist, can see that.

For one thing I think they should have their own officers. They

can be dealt with by the women officers, who think differently to the men. They definitely do think differently, although, as I say, a lot of the girls are more aggressive and they are a lot more butch than we used to be. That is just my way of thinking anyway.

I think it would be wonderful to be flying fighter aircraft, but then you’ve got to think it all through. You know, “I’m dropping those bombs down there to kill everybody.” If there was a war on I suppose you would think, “That has to be done.” I think it would be wonderful to be able to fly an aircraft.

That’s right. They can go anywhere but of course we weren’t allowed to leave Australia. I think I object to the army girls going off all in the same platoons and

companies and everything else. I don’t know how they manage I really don’t. Then those girls want to be there so they are not thinking how I think.

I think they lose a lot of their femininity, 99 per cent of it. There are those terrible uniforms and they have those great big boots. You see them down in Rosanna shopping centre with their great big boots and their

camouflage uniforms. There is nothing glamorous about them and there is nothing feminine about them. I think they throw femininity out of the door when they go into the army. I think that the other services – well of course in the navy they go to sea now don’t they? I don’t think the WAAAF go into that so much.

I don’t like it at all.

Well with men being what men are and they are all on the ship and they don’t get off for months. I don’t like that at all.

I do. I know that some women are even captains on the ships. I don’t like that at all. As I say the army and the navy have a different strata there, don’t they? I don’t know a great deal about the

RAAF, but I don’t think that they are so much involved like that at all.

I don’t think so. Probably

when they come up against that they just realise what they have got themselves into. I think actually you can’t visualise that when you are in civilian life until you do actually get into the services.

Yes, because the men aren’t going to become like the women, are they?

Yes, I think so. They probably had a lot of male hormones to start with I think, so they don’t mind it.

Yes. I think that they had to have the choice whereas we didn’t have the choice at all.

Each generation has more of a choice. That doesn’t always say that you choose the right thing. With lots of these situations you don’t really know until you get yourself into it.

In a separate service, yes, I think

so but of course that will never happen now and a lot of women don’t want it that way.

No, I wasn’t there very long because I went back on leave up to Bathurst because Graham was down here for six months at the training depot up at

Bathurst so then I took some leave and went and stayed with him. He was in camp but I was in town and we’ve got some stories there we could tell.

Yes, I was married.

We were both in Bathurst.

Well, Graham went off to Townsville to start with. He was going back to

New Guinea and he was then made B Class and had to come down here because of the malaria. That was when he was sent to the training camp at Bathurst. I lived in the town, as a lot of other officers’ wives did. We rented rooms in the houses up there. We had the use of the kitchen and the room and that was what we lived in. The men used to get in as often as they could from the camp.

They had to be back in camp and they used to come out when they didn’t have leave too, officers and all. We weren’t up there for very long and then Graham got sick again so they sent him down here to Heidelberg. I came down and then went back into the air force. I didn’t keep on with my leave. I went

back to 1ES then.

I think you accepted it. You knew that was going to happen in the first place. I had expected that Graham was going to go back to New Guinea but he didn’t so I could at least have him at home for some of the time.

He didn’t get caught though. They would come into Bathurst of a night time and we’d go to the band concert in the park and things like that. Then the men would go off back to camp and the women didn’t have much to do in Bathurst, I can tell you. There wasn’t much in Bathurst to do. It was only for a short while.

It could have been longer but as I say graham was sent down here to Heidelberg. He was in Heidelberg for a while.

They weren’t caught. That wouldn’t have been easy but they got through it I’m sure. They had enough wits to talk their way out of things I think.

Yes. He would be back in the camp by six o’clock in the morning if they were lucky. Of course all of them were doing it. It wasn’t as if it was going to be much in the way of swaying what happened in the

war. It wasn’t that sort of thing. They did their duties of the day time so that was the main thing.

Well, I wasn’t married when Graham was in New Guinea.

I was pleased that he didn’t go back. I was very pleased that he didn’t go back. I made up my mind that that was what was gong to happen but then it didn’t happen so

that was all right.

No, not until after we were married. Not until he came back down here permanently but before that he never talked about it at all.

No, I didn’t really.

I didn’t have

time. You have got an overall picture of it because you see newsreels and that type of thing but really we didn’t ask. We didn’t really have much time to get onto those subjects.

I didn’t really have much to do with the other wives because we were all separated in different houses in different areas of Bathurst. We might see one another if we went up the street or something like that, but apart from that I didn’t have much to do with the other wives.

I don’t know how long it was that I was in Bathurst, it must have been probably a month or something like that. It might have been six weeks but I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to meet the other wives really.

Well, it didn’t really changed until after

the war.

I didn’t go to dances any more. I really never got a chance. At Coolangatta, that is where I used to go to dances all the time. Afterwards I really didn’t have – we used to go as a group up there.

When I was at these other places we were never there really long enough to form any friendships in groups so I didn’t do much.

I started to write to Graham when I was at Coolangatta.

Letters were the only thing. I have still got all this letters and I think he has still got mine. That is why I say, he keeps on saying, “She proposed to me.” And I say, “I’ve got the letter that proposes to me.”

Yes, that’s right. I’ve got that letter.

He was up there and I was down here and he couldn’t very well, could he? He tells me the story that he sat down to write the letter to say, “Let’s become engaged.” Then he tore up the letter because he thought, “What’s the good of getting engaged, let’s get married.”

After I got my father’s permission, yes, I did.

Not really. It didn’t change them at all they just went on as normal.

No, it was nothing like that at all. He didn’t

write anything like that.

Just for about a month or six weeks. Then I came back down to Melbourne.

Yes, that’s right.

After I came back from Bathurst I went back to 1ES at

Ascot Vale and that was where I got my discharge from. I came back there in February, I suppose, and the war finished in August. I got my discharge at the end of September so I wasn’t back very long before the war was over.

I didn’t do filming at Bathurst, it was just at Wagga. Then I went to Bathurst on leave.

There was nothing at Bathurst. There was the army, but no air force. That is when I was on leave and then I came back down to 1ES.

Well, VE Day came and went, and let’s say that I was glad it was all over. As far as celebrating, I didn’t get any celebrating. We were just pleased that it was all over and not knowing what was going to go on after that getting

back into civilian life.

Oh, VE Day? I wasn’t thinking of VE Day I was thinking of the end of the war. That just came and went I think. It wasn’t really anything. We were pleased it was over, over there, but apart from that it didn’t really affect us at all because we were still in with Japan.

That was only for two or three months but just the same. Graham was away. He wasn’t down here.

I don’t know. I think that by VE Day everybody knew that it wouldn’t be very long before the Japs were finished.

I don’t know that I thought England would because I thought they had had their fair share over there. I thought the Americans might have put more of their resources into the pacific. Then of course they dropped the two bombs on Japan.

At that stage I thought, “The war is finished. That has got rid of it.” That was good. I didn’t really think they needed the second one. But as the years go by I don’t know that they should have dropped the first one because the Japs were finished before that and then they destroyed the whole place. All the

people and all the agony and all those things.

No, not really. You really couldn’t grasp the magnitude of it. To think that one bomb could do all that when you think of all the bombs they had on Dresden. It wasn’t only the bombing of it, it was

all the radio active residue after it which was so terrible for the population. Actually, I think a lot of them that were killed were better off than those that were even than those that were living.

I don’t know. I can’t remember. So much has happened since then and you’ve read so much and seen so much that that

also colours your memory to a certain extent. No, I can’t remember.

People were sick of the war and they just wanted to get it over and done with. They thought, “This will finish them off and they’ll

decide to surrender now,” which they did. Then they dropped the second bomb.

You change your mind because you get as much of the facts that you can get and you think it through you think differently. Also I suppose as you get older

you think differently, too.

Yes, he wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to stay well and truly. I got out in September. I had my discharge at the end of September and Graham had his

discharge before Christmas but it didn’t become effective until January. Then we had to settle down and have somewhere to live and all that sort of thing and start from scratch. We didn’t even own a bed at that stage.

Yes. I would have liked to have taken my time getting out but I didn’t. I would have liked to because you could apply to get your discharge if you were married and the war was finished. I did that, but I would have liked to have just hung around until they said, “We’ve had enough of you. You can go home now.”

It didn’t happen. It wouldn’t have been probably much longer than that. They were discharging everybody. I think another thing that coloured it was I didn’t have anywhere to go and live. We would have to start from scratch and we had a few dishes and that was about all we had.

I enjoyed it. It was interesting. I liked the people I was with so that makes a big difference.

I think it did, that’s right. I think after the war the feminist movement really

took off because before that although the Pankhursts were around earlier it was never really accepted anywhere, but after the war things did start to change. The women saw that they could do things. It was the same as the civilian women who worked in factories and all that. They didn’t get a chance to do those things before the

war. It was always considered that they couldn’t do it. Then they showed them what they could do and that was the beginning of wherever we’ve come. I don’t know whether we’ve come in the right direction but I think that was the beginning of it.

I think so. I think they did to.

They were able to do it so they decided, “Yes,” they could. It was a long fight after the war before they really started. Even with the Education Department, if women got married they had to leave the service. They couldn’t stay in it. Now of course the majority of them are married women. I think so.

I don’t know that it was anger. It was probably disappointment in lots of ways. I don’t think it was anger. I think the anger has come since then with all the various people. At least I suppose it was an inch or two along the line and we had to

start somewhere.

Not with a husband like mine. I would have liked to have but then of course I was

pregnant with my eldest son, who just turns 58 in a couple of weeks time. I wouldn’t have been able to have worked then, but I did have sewing at home from time to time. When we didn’t have this and we didn’t have that I would work and buy the clothes line and those sorts of things. I don’t think the girls today appreciate those

types of things. They think you are crazy when that happens but that is the way it was, you didn’t have anything.

He knows that I would have liked to have gone back into dressmaking or I would have like to have gone into teaching but, no, I was a married woman and you couldn’t do that.

I think the

challenge most of all was where you were going to live. We didn’t have very much money. We had nothing. Graham had his deferred money and I had a bit of deferred money but very little. Then we had to start off and buy our bed and we didn’t have a fridge. We had an ice chest and things like that. Then you had to buy your civilian clothes.

You didn’t find it easy just like that to settle back into civilian life. Then I had to learn to cook. I had been cooking but I had to start a family and do all those sort of things or a household. It was a challenge, let’s say, but I don’t know that it worried me.

It was worse for Graham. It was much worse for Graham than I think for me.

I think I did. I don’t know. I can’t say. Did I?

Actually, I think that we were very lucky. We didn’t have any problems at all really. There were always some problems but I don’t think we had any problems, and looking back, I don’t think we did. There was nothing serious. We wouldn’t be 60 years on would we if there had been anything serious.

I was very quiet and Graham’s a good talker so we used to get around. We discussed things and all that type of thing and it all worked out in the end. Of course, when I got out of the air force, Ian was born eight months after that and then we had to

settle down and we were all right. I think everybody has their problems but I don’t think we had that many, not really. I think probably accommodation and furnishing things were the problems.

Of course, during the war all these things were difficult to buy and then there were so many getting their discharge after the war and there was a great drain on all those things. You got things when you could. If you saw something you wanted you got it if you had the money of course. That was another thing. Of course we wanted to save for a house.

We did buy a block of land. We bought the block of land with Graham’s deferred pay although we didn’t build for three years after that. We got into our own home within three years. It wasn’t this one it was another one. We didn’t have

enough money to build through war service because you had to have a certain amount of deposit before you could get war service home loans. We had to get a home loan from another organization so we were paying the higher interest rate. That is how it was. They weren’t loaning enough money for us to

get war service at first. We got war service when we came into this house, but in the meantime we were paying civilian interest and everything else.

I probably think that it was after my WAAAF service. I don’t know that it was there before but it was after the service. I think I probably realised just how many things that the men seemed to be in charge of or influence the women. That is what they thought and they thought that was right.

It wasn’t really what the women wanted. That was when I first became a feminist. I think that is probably when it was.

I think so. I think it could be.

No, I think my war service influenced me in my way of thinking.

That’s right.

In the air force?

No. I just found out that if I wanted to do something I could. I changed from one mustering to another and I found out that I was

capable of doing it. So then I just thought, “I’m capable of doing anything that I want to.” You have to work within restrictions when you are married but I just thought I could do all those things. That is when I became a feminist and thought, “Women can do anything they want to.”

I think possibly a feminist then, and I would have changed my mind over the years and taken on board, for the want of another expression, things since then. I just felt that men always thought that they were the ones that knew what was

best and I really didn’t think that way at all and that is when I started to become a feminist.

I knew out of the two of you, you would be saying that. Women can do anything that they want to if they really want to. It has taken a long time for it to come

through. I have got two daughters. While the first one was growing up, feminism wasn’t as strong as it is now, and she is entirely different to the next one, who is nine years younger than her. The young one if she wants to do something and she knows she is capable of doing it she does it. That is why I think

today feminism has changed to a certain extent, but it had to start somewhere. I suppose my generation thought of it differently to the Pankhursts’ generation. Although they started it off, they didn’t get that far along the line and our generation didn’t get much further. Since then, I think a lot of changes have taken place.

She is a ratbag. She has got good ideas but I think she goes overboard in lots of ways, she really does. That is what I think. I don’t think you have to be aggressive like that to be a feminist and she is very aggressive. I think you lose a lot of your feminism when you become aggressive like that.

Yes and more so the second one than the first one. Then of course they are entirely different personalities too. When my older one says that Fiona did things differently to what Heather has

done, that is only because feminism has grown since then. I think also Fiona was stronger than Heather, and if that is what she wants to do then that is what she does even now. That is how it has been.

There is a lot in feminism today that I don’t say I don’t entirely agree with, but I just question like bringing up children and going back to work and things like that. That is because the men have structured the working place as they have and it is very difficult for a woman to pick up her career after the

children grow up. I don’t believe in putting the children into crèches. Some of them go in when they are only six or eight weeks old. I don’t believe in that. I think you do have to have a few years with the children. If you are not there, you can’t discipline them, and as they get older you have got no way of disciplining them. That is why a lot of them problems are there today.

It is easier to let them do what they want to when they’re young, but as they get older they find there are so many problems because of that.

I don’t know that I could say there were any specific ones but I would say,

“If I can use that equipment and I can use that equipment I am capable of using another lot of equipment and therefore I can do anything I want to do.” Apart from that I couldn’t say.

In the air force, the group captain was the highest. I think Claire Stevens was only a group captain and that was as high as they got. I wasn’t impressed with any of them. Actually, one of my radar friends was about 25 and you weren’t able to do an officer course until you were at least 21.

She was 25 and she went off and became an officer. She was just a friend. Funnily enough, her name was Palmer and her name was Ottoway. We were both in the line one behind the other and I ended up a Palmer, too. No, I just don’t know. She was 25 and she was doing exactly what I was doing so she was able to become an

officer, but I wasn’t because I wasn’t old enough. She was a nice girl.

I didn’t really mix with many. There was only Squadron Officer Black who came from Tasmania and she was an older person too. I was impressed with her

but I don’t think any of them really influenced me at all. I think it was just that you became aware that you could do things that you weren’t able to do before the war. Women just were in the kitchen and after that they got

married. Or they got married and they were in the kitchen and that is where they were supposed to stay for the rest of their lives. Why I and a lot of others thought differently after we’d been in the services was because it showed us that we were capable of doing more than getting married and going into the kitchen. That is probably what it was. I don’t think there was any

particular one that influence me at all. In fact you hardly ever saw them.

I think it was positive. I came out not such a meek and mild little thing as I went in. Even though I didn’t come out very aggressive, I

wasn’t as meek and mild as when I went in. I realised I could do all the things and those were the things that I wanted to do and I wasn’t able to do before the war. I found out that I could do it. I always thought I could do it but that didn’t mean I was able to do it. So that’s how that was.

I can’t remember. There were plenty of discussions I know that but it really didn’t impact on my life at all. I

don’t know that it even did on Graham’s life except that after the war he continued into the citizen forces, the part-time forces. Of course he was involved in a lot of those things. It didn’t really influence or impact on my life bringing up the children. I was aware of it and we discussed those things but, no, I don’t think that it did. It

wasn’t until Vietnam that things hotted up and that is when we used to have arguments at the meal table.

No, because the children were tiny and that was just after the war so it really didn’t make any impact on me at all.

For one thing, I thought that we shouldn’t have been there, and also I had two sons that could have been called up. I didn’t think for what they were fighting for in Vietnam that my boys were going to go. My

eldest son was in the citizens air force. He used to go off for a weekend and train. He is an aeronautical engineer. He trained with the citizen air force. Actually, we found out later that his name actually came out of the barrel but because he was in the citizen air force he didn’t have to go. He did serve six years. Our second son, he

definitely wasn’t going. He used to go and sit in the street in Swanson Street or Bourke Street or whatever it was.

That’s right.

An objector, definitely, but his number never came up. But he wouldn’t have gone. Even if his name had come up he wouldn’t have gone.

I didn’t think it was any of our business to be there. It’s like in Iraq. I didn’t think it was any of our business to be there. It wasn’t affecting Australia and it was just the North and South Vietnamese and if they wanted to have a fight then they could fight amongst themselves and then decide what they wanted to do. I don’t think that we should have been there any more than in Iraq.

I didn’t really know the complete politics of it, but even so, it was nothing to do with us. It wasn’t our business to be there. It was just like as if part of Australia was fighting against the other half. It is actually Australia’s war. It is not for any other

places to come in and say, “We’ll take part, we’ll take sides.” All the way with LBJ, that was. We used to have lots of discussions at the meal table. We were all against dad who thought we should have been in a war.

Then one day after a reunion with his battalion he came home and he thought the opposite. So, all those years that we had talked didn’t make any difference. When he got in with the others they didn’t think that we should have been there either so he came home thinking differently.

Why did the veterans feel that they were against it? I suppose they could see it from the same angle that

I was seeing it on. It was just a waste of life and it wasn’t anything to do with us anyway.

He thought they should be there. At that stage he was in the CMF [Citizens Military Force] still and he thought, “Yes, we should be there.” I’ve got a funny story to tell you about this. We used to discuss this around the evening meal. It never got hot and we’d come to blows or anything, but we would discuss this. It was the days when the boys wore their hair down to their

shoulders. One of our boys had short back and sides like dad and the other boy had hair down to his shoulders. We would be discussing things and he would turn to Donald and he’d say, “Get your hair cut.” We knew he was losing the argument as soon as he said, “Donald, get your hair cut.” At this stage Donald was 20. I think it was because he was in the CMF and the

others that were in the CMF with him, the other officers there, it was not that they were going to go but they were all for it. That is probably what it was. Anyway, we came through in the end and he didn’t believe in it either.

I won’t answer that question.

No, I won’t answer that one. It’s because probably I know the background more than a lot of people because Graham is involved with an ex-service organization. No, I won’t put that on

tape.

No, I wouldn’t give names at all. I feel that they are out for all they can get the Vietnam Veterans are. There are so many of those that are TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated] and all the other bits and pieces. Those that fought in the Second World War, they got absolutely

nothing when they came home, yet the Vietnam Vets who were there for only six months or so feel that the world owes them a living.

I think for Agent Orange, yes, I’m all for the Agent Orange claims but not all the other stress things.

I think with Agent Orange they really have a claim on that but I don’t think Post Traumatic Stress, no.

I think we got over that on our own, didn’t we? I don’t think we need to put that down.

I don’t think so. They say they weren’t welcomed home and all of that but the Australians in the Second World War weren’t welcomed home.

I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know.

We’ve discussed this a lot.

We have discussed the Vietnam Veterans a lot, and I do think that. When you think they weren’t there for that long either whereas

in the Second World War they were away for years.

I think it is not only the Vietnam Vets, I suppose I think it is society as a whole are out for all they can get. If they think they can get some

money out of the government, well, they will try.

That’s right. Our boys could have been there. That doesn’t mean their fathers think the boys should have been there just the same.

As I say, it is a topic we talk about quite a lot, I suppose. I suppose these ones that are over in Iraq, they will come back and be wanting just the same. As I say, the Agent Orange, yes, I think they have got a case there.

I think so, yes. Even now you think of it and you’ve got lots of memories. I think probably

ex-service women, our war service was really hardly war service when you think about it. Although we weren’t home and we did as we were told and all that, it was entirely different from the men’s who went away. That is what I think about it.

When you look back on it, it probably wasn’t either but at the time you thought it was. The empire was coming into it and you thought it was…you see, the politicians tell so many lies that you don’t find out until after it is all over and it is too late then.

It is a bit like Iraq with all the lies that go on. I think the girls had it easy. There were some girls who went to the Middle East. The VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachment] and things like that and the nurses went there. Some AMWAs [Australian Medical Women’s Association] went to New Guinea but I think they were just at Port Moresby

on signals and things. They didn’t do any fighting or anything but they were in an orderly room. Even the girls who went over to the Middle East as VADs, they weren’t anywhere near the fighting, they were there in the hospitals.

They were all subject to discipline the same as anybody else. I don’t think the discipline was that bad that you couldn’t comply although there are some people that don’t like discipline of any description.

I suppose getting married was the one. As far as war service is concerned I don’t know. It was being able to go onto a radar station and actually work on the radar station.

That was what I went in to do and it was very interesting. It was just very interesting. Radar was my speciality. I enjoyed all my war service. I am glad that did. It was great. It certainly was a change from civilian life anyway.

I don’t know.

I suppose in those years I grew up, because I

was only 18 when the war started and when I went into the air force, those were the three years that I grew up. Before that I led a very sheltered life. In those years I came out into the world. I had lived in Brisbane and I had never been any further out than Brisbane. It was just in that surrounding district. Then I came

south and all sorts of things like that and living with all the girls in camp. I only just had my sister at home. I think you develop certain skills of living with others even though you are happy living with them. They were a diverse lot. It was just like living with a family. I was lucky. I got on with all the

girls that I lived with. Apart from that I couldn’t say.

How open?

When I was in the air force?

On the shift we were very communicative but I wasn’t a great talker but I could listen nicely.

That is what I did in a lot of cases, I just listened. In fact, I’ll tell you a funny story. After the war I met a couple of the girls that I knew. One of them said to me, “You know, you were the quietest girl amongst us and you were the first

married.” So I often laughed about that. It was true. I got married before any of the others did. I probably thought of a lot of things that the others weren’t thinking. I did grow up a lot during the war that is for sure. I still had a lot of growing up to do after the war but I did grow up.

I thought this would come up along the line somewhere. No, I didn’t know anyone who was a homosexual. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have known a homosexual but, no, I didn’t know any at all.

It wouldn’t have been discussed.

That would never be discussed even if you thought it you wouldn’t. I didn’t even know what a homosexual looked like if there is any sort of a person who looks like a homosexual. That was never, ever discussed amongst the girls at all. I could say with ninety per cent of us it never entered our heads. It might have done with some of the older girls. They may have been more aware of that.

I think homosexuality only came out in the last 20 or 30 years. I don’t think that it was very obvious before that. It is probably only in the last 20 years. I am not saying anything against homosexuality. I think that is the way they are born and that is the way they are.

It was never obvious and we never discussed it. We never thought of it.

That wasn’t a topic.

I didn’t even

come into our thoughts. I don’t think it even came into our thoughts in those days. Perhaps we were very naïve. When I think back, I don’t know anyone at all, but as I say, it was never discussed.

No, I didn’t feel that way at all. I didn’t come across many senior officers. When I was on radar I only had a male and a

male and a female officer. You wouldn’t step out of line with them. There was never any social interaction with them at all. The sergeant and corporal were just there. They were just one of the crowd. Had I been on a large station it may have been different but then I was only on a small station.

Then of course when I was at 1ES I didn’t come across officers there. There was a sergeant, but that’s about all I came across. It really never came into it. You were just one of the crew and did what you were told. If you had stepped out of line that would have been a different thing but you just did what you were told.

No. That has only come in, in the last few years.

There was no such thing as sexual harassment, no.

I thought we all got on very well together. I might have had my eyes closed but I didn’t know of anything like that that happened. That type of thing would have been discussed amongst the girls in the barracks, I never came across it.

As I say, I don’t know that there was any of that during those days. It is entirely different now.

I think that he didn’t go out with civilians.

He was very protective just the same after we were married. He could get jealous.

I don’t think there is anything that I haven’t talked to you

about.

No, I can’t think of anything. When I had my break I was thinking over things and, no, I think I’ve told you about everything that I could tell you and in fact probably a lot more than I should have told you.

Thanks very much.