Australians at War Film Archive

Tooronga Road, Tooronga, just up the road up there.

Well, when I was little we seemed to be millionaires or we had a lot of money like I got

a rocking horse, I had cats and dogs, like animals and all that and of course I can’t remember but I’d say about the late 20s or early 30s everything seemed to go bad because the Depression came on and everything just collapsed more or less. The old man lost his job and he got promised a job in Tasmania, so he went over and worked for the gas company in Tasmania and they put men off and Uncle Bill rang from Melbourne to say that Rosella put people on at Christmas

time, come over because Uncle Bill worked there permanent. So from then on right up until the war nearly and I’d say a year or two before the war, Dad went to the Rosella every Christmas because once the foreman knew you, I think his name was Miles, because even I went there a couple of Christmases. And there’d be like say a hundred men outside the office and he’d stand up on a chair and just say, “You, you, you, you,” and of course he knew all the blokes that had worked there before,

they were the ones, the workers he picked out. So, every Christmas we, in the finish I’d done twenty-four trips across Bass Strait before I was fourteen. That’s the way it worked out because Dad had to come over here for Christmas to get a job at the Rosella.

In Launceston, and we lived at a place called Windermere, down the Tamer River, were down there, that’s a little out of the way place,

in fact I went to Sandy Bay School and that’s about a mile and a half around from Windermere, round the way, there’s another Sandy Bay down Hobart where all the good footballers are supposed to come from but that’s not it. The one I went to school in, well I was a champion athlete and I was also, what do you call it, the best scholar, the best everything.

Yeah, cause I was 11 years old and the next kid was 9

and I think there was 9 of us at the school. I was the biggest kid there. But it was about, we used to get, in those days they had a mail cart used to come down from like Launceston to George Town but he used to come down and around the river, a little river road around past Windermere and you used to hang on the side of the mail cart for a mile and a half around to the school but to come home, you’d just cut through the scrub, come through the bush. So there was only,

I think there was myself, my sister Dawn, oh there was three Tuskin’s there and my cousin Zilla.

One of Dad’s brothers came over there because Dad was working for a man called Archer and first of all Dad worked around like the Windermere turnoff, so we had a house there and a dairy. Dad and I’d do the milking or whatever.

And I used to have to go into Dilston, that was two mile back toward Lyson [?] the other way. But when I think Mr Archer gave Dad this block of land around near Windermere, there’s this old church there but I forget how old it is, and we lived there. We only lived there for about I’d say about twelve months or less because there was a bit of a bushfire come through and something happened and not only that but I think it got near Christmas and Dad had to come to Melbourne, to the Rosella.

I don’t know. I was only knee high to a grasshopper then. I wouldn’t have a clue, but he was a pretty good handyman and he was a good axeman too because when we was living at the Windermere turnoff, it was like as I say there was a little white, I’ve got a photo of it somewhere, a little white brick building, there was about three rooms in it, three or four rooms,

and behind that was the dairy. When I was a kid I’d go out and bring the cows in but Dad was, what do you call it, a boss axeman. Usually, there was four axeman or five, at the most there was five. There was a chap called Bob Welsh, but he was a Welshman, no Bob Owen actually, Bob Owen and he was a, every time they’d go into Launceston they’d

take him with them because he was a good singer and he’d get in the pub and sing and they’d get free beer. So that must have been coming on close to the Depression. I went to Dilston first, then we went round to Windermere. That’s when I changed schools, went from the Dilston one, I think there was about thirty kids in it at least.

Apple sandwich lunch.

Yeah but we’re very far apart. There was a photo of Dave there. Dave, my brother is ten years younger than me, or was, Dave died quite a few years back. And a sister Dawn, and there’s five years between me and Dawn, and five years back to Dave, which makes like ten years difference between brothers.

I never seen Dave, hardly ever seen Dave really.

Everywhere. We stayed at Grandma’s house in Swan Street at one stage and rented a house in Church Street just opposite the old Glove Theatre, that’s right, we stayed up above a wine shop in Swan Street down past the old Richmond House.

They’re all gone now, Richmond House and Glove Theatre. I’m just trying to think, one place we was at, oh that’s right, we was up in Church Street opposite the old Glove Theatre, and old Oakey, an old bloke called Oakey used to have one of those little windjammers, they’ve got a name for them, concertina I think they call it. He used to live in a two-storey place just down past the Glove Bridge Hotel and you look out the window and everybody’s coming with their sly bottles and he’d follow them.

I’ve got the music. I’ll never forget him because he used to get me to sing while he was playing the damn thing for free beer.

Oh yes, singing all the time I should imagine, especially when you’re on your own in the scrub down at Windermere. Dad called it hide a while, and it was too, cause it was as I said a mile

and a half to the Windermere turnoff on the George Town road and it was just bush although there were a family of Hills there and I think the old man owned all the area at one time and I think they were split up between I think there was three sons. Cause the grandmother, I called her grandmother, it was only like their mother, she lived right near the old Windermere church on the left hand side of the road. From the left hand

side of the road, I meant that’s only like a hundred yards down to the Tamer River. We seemed to make our first trip up there, come around the bend like a bear speed boat, it laid over. They don’t go to Launceston now the boats, they go to Devonport. They used to go right into Launceston itself. I think it is forty-two mile inland, which is quite a trip.

You’d leave at, I think you left at about 2pm you’d leave Launceston and you’d be pulling up at Spencer Street Bridge, boat used to come right into Spencer Street Bridge, you’d pull in there about 9ish, it was always just after breakfast.

I can remember one of them when I was little because they had handsome cabs out the front and you’d get into the back of these handsome cabs.

No, no, he’d be in 1918, he’d be twenty, I don’t know what month he’d be twenty. May I think, because he was born in

1898 because I’ve got his birth certificate, he just didn’t go to war I suppose.

In a sense I, yes there was uncle Charlie Housen in Tassie and Uncle Bill Stonehouse, one of grandmother’s nephews,

in fact he was, when there was a coronation he’d been over to be like a guard of honour for the coronation. Uncle Bill Stonehouse he also went over, what’s that Bisley shoot they have, champion rifle shots, he represented, like was one of the Australian team that went over to Bisley.

I don’t remember how he went because I was about that high or whatever. Whose coronation would that be, oh that’d be 1936, ‘37 wouldn’t it when what’s his name abdicated, King Edward VIII. He was our near relatives. One of Mum’s brothers got killed in the First World War and

Uncle Dave, no he joined the navy but he didn’t see any action and he stayed in the navy until after the Second World War really. That was Dave Pittan, Mum’s brother. Uncle Tom, he joined the army and he was in the permanent army for until after the Second World War but they were only kids. Uncle Bill,

mum’s other brother, he got badly gassed and he used to wander around and carry the swag more or less around Australia in a sense, or up the coast, east coast, not wandering around in the desert or anything. He tried to join the army in the Second World War and he couldn’t. I can always remember his cough, it was the best one.

From the gas, yes.

Not really, no. They’d have to put their foot on my foot to hold me still to tell me something. I was running around like a stoned WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK all the time.

No, oh only one thing that did always stick out, there was a headmaster, German, von Vurter, I think his name was, and he was the headmaster at the school

in Wellington Street State School in Launceston and every Anzac Day, not Anzac Day, the 11th, Armistice Day all the kids used to have to get out and stand up at the 11th, that’s right it wouldn’t be Anzac Day, Armistice Day, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, and we all had to stand up and whatever, like little tin soldiers. And first thing he used to ask, “Anybody got a pocket knife?” He’d pretend to be writing and, “Anyone got a knife?”

And you’d give him a knife and he’d say, “Good, you’re not suppose to bring knives to school,” and he’d pocket it. But that’s really the only thing that stuck out like for a kid. Very little band waving. Of course, I spent a lot of time down at the scrub too. I’m trying to think of the last school I went to, I think it was Maybury State School. That’s out over a swamp.

They taught it in Launceston. If you passed the sixth grade you left school then but when I came over to Melbourne on our last trip, I was thirteen and I had to go back to school again for three months because in Victoria you have to be fourteen, which sounds silly. So all I did was make paper aeroplanes at the Brighton Street State School in Richmond.

I didn’t know, everybody wanted to get a job because there was no money about. At that time, it was a little bit after that, I went to Cherub Shoes, they used to make children’s shoes in Richmond, and they wanted about seventy-five pound to make me an apprentice, you had to pay

to be an apprentice in them days, so next thing I knew I was working somewhere else. I ended up in town as a presser at the old Smiths Weekly building, Jones, they were dressmakers and I had this big iron and the ladies coats, you’d have the seam and I think you used to soap it, wet it and soap it and run up the seams and they had another bloke that held him in about 20s or 30s or whatever.

He done the proper pressing by hand, iron about aye long. But I was only ever a, what do you call it, a seam ironer or something. I left there, oh I had a million jobs. Used to go to, tins shops were the best, especially in the Christmas period because they’d be making tins for

biscuits and fancy stuff for Christmas selling. So you’d go to William Horsfall’s in Richmond or you’d go to the Rosella. Of course, once I got a job at the Rosella because naturally I fronted up there every Christmas because there was a lot of overtime. You ended up with nearly 35 bob a week.

Yeah, up in the tin shop upstairs, right on the top floor they had the tin shop. They used to,

dad had got a job, they were building, I’m not sure what year it was, but they were building the Alexander Avenue you know, where you follow the river around and come up into Punt Road and he was living out in Fitzroy then, Westgarth-Fitzroy, and a chap that was working for the local SP bookie [starting price bookmaker], he was getting more money off the SP bookie than what he was on the susso [sustenance].

So, Dad used to work this week in his name, Tuskin, and next week, sorry you had fortnight on and fortnight off, and he’d have a fortnight on as Tuskin and a fortnight on as this other name, so this bloke would keep his job with the bookie, otherwise if he got, cause there was people lining up to get a job with a bookie. So he’s permanently employed by the susso in a sense.

No, no. He was a striker

for a, for the bloke that used to sharpen the picks and you know, looked after the tools of what they were using on the road. But he was there for, I’ve got a funny feeling he joined the army from there. Can’t remember him working anywhere else. No he wasn’t sorry, he was working,

he got a permanent job in a tin shop. I don’t know where the hell it was now, it would be around the Richmond area because after the war we was living out at Fitzroy, he was living right next door to a tin shop and he just went out of the army and the bloke said, “I want a job, you getting out, you want a job?” He just walked straight out over the back fence into work. He stayed in that,

that was the first and last job he had after the war. But he died very young, well very young in a sense. I don’t think, well I think he made the pension just. When you were sixty, I think you got the pension if you were an ex-serviceman but he never lasted long after that.

I went into, I tried, a cousin and I were both the same age, Jackie Rundle, and we both went down to Town Hall, you know going to be big soldiers and we got down there and the sergeant looked us up and down, “Oh yeah, how old are you?” He didn’t look up, he wrote our names and ages and addresses and all that and he said, “How old are you?” He said, “When that bum fluff gets a bit longer come,

and you start cutting it, come back.” So he threw us out then. But I got a call up about three months later, I got a call up for what they call Universal Trainees, UTs they used to call them. You had to go in three months and do training, army training, and you’d go back to your job sort of thing. But while I was in that, I just went straight into the Melbourne Town Hall and joined the army because I was in uniform in a sense,

and they accepted me straight away. I’d cut some of the bum fluff off by then.

Just training like army training, slope arms, march round and round the bloke. And they said, “What are you doing?” And I said, “I’d been up the bush droving,” because I thought, they can’t check up on me anywhere around town, and that.

Put in my papers, a drover the first time and they said, “Oh yes,” so they sent me out to, what do you call it, transport unit, about five-hundred or six-hundred trucks out there. Not a horse in sight, natural army. So out there and they said, “Righto, have you got a licence?” And I said, “No, I’ve been away droving, you can’t get a licence in the scrub,” and he said, “Oh right,” and everybody was just like

your first couple of weeks this is your slope and arms and carry on and a lot of the other blokes were taking turns in getting a sergeant to take them out and try them out in the cars and trucks. Broadmeadows at that time was a depot for all the trucks in Victoria, all the transport. From Adelaide there’s a big place over in Adelaide where they used to make trucks and I think also (UNCLEAR) Bend and they’d all go to Broadmeadows

and your unit was going to go overseas, so they’d give you like ten trucks, two utes and a staff car for the colonel or whatever. You may as well say the supply depot for vehicles. That’s all our boys used to do, they’d go down and pick them up, bring them out there and then when the units would go to Pucka [Puckapunyal] or whatever, require the trucks, they’d just drive them up to them and all come back in one truck, take ten trucks and come back in one.

I couldn’t drive, so they said, “We’ll put you in a NCO [Non Commissioned Officer] School.” So they had me out the back of Broadmeadows, screaming at the trees, “Attention, slope arms, right turn.” Oh, you had to see it to believe it. There’s me here and about a quarter of a mile there’s another bloke then there’s, was another bloke, there was about five of us, screaming at trees. I said, “This is bloody stupid,” so I went and joined the AIF [Australian Imperial Force], well I had the uniform

and I could, no bum fluff by then. And that was it, they gave me four days’ leave I think and I had to report to at Royal Park and then from Royal Park up to Pucka, Engineers Depot.

I asked for the engineers because my brother

was an engineer and I wanted to join him, I was using Dad as my brother. If I’d had said my father they would have found out things.

Humm, and like how he was too.

He was over aged and I was under aged. We went through as I say up to Pucka, I can’t remember just how long I was up there,

didn’t seem to be that long, I was eighteen in March and that’s right, they gave me two days’ leave up in Broadmeadows for my 18th birthday in March, of course I was twenty-one then and September we sailed from Sydney but we’d done courses at Pucka, back to slope and arms and all that and

route marching and running around the block, very little engineering knowledge, they had nothing to teach us. Most of our sergeants and that were all First World War diggers, elderly chaps, oh well elderly to us. Then, we went up to Bonegilla and they was going to show us how to make bridges and all this but they never had anything

to teach us. What you’d do, you’d stand on the bank of the (UNCLEAR), was it above or below the (UNCLEAR) and they’d say, “Now what you do, you get this bridge and you put it together and get each side of it,” so it was all imagination.

No, nothing there. Shovels and digging holes, mainly digging holes it was.

I can’t remember using any shell ignite or dynamite or anything like that at Bonegilla. Naturally, I don’t remember using any at Pucka. They gave us what they call you final leave, I think it’s about six days, that’s a guess. Then we went on up to Sydney on the ferry and they took us out to Queen Lizzie [Elizabeth] and

we were on the [HMS] Queen Elizabeth and took a trip down around Hobart town, picked up the [HMS] Queen Mary, she loaded at Hobart town and off and around and next thing we know we’re in Ceylon at a place called Trincomalee. It was a big British, what do you call it, harbour. Well that’s where they used to put all their ships in there cause it was a very deep harbour.

In fact the [Queen] Mary went right in but apparently the Lizzie had a bigger draught and she just pulled out, you could see the Mary right alongside there. We could almost reach out and touch the coconuts it was that deep. Unreal. It would be one of the most beautiful harbours in the world I’d reckon.

I think it took us, I could tell you

there’s a pay book there, it’s got the dates in it.

I’m guessing, it’d be a month, have to be a month. To get to Suez, like to get to Egypt.

I don’t know, I’d say a week. I’m guessing, I’m only guessing.

We were lucky, we were in a cabin and most of the PBI [poor bloody infantry], the infantry, they were mostly down below and I don’t know, twenty men to a little square inch or some silly damn thing. But we were in a cabin that had two bunks each side, so you had four men to sleep in the bunks and two on the floor. Only six of us in it and they had a shower and all, shower was turned off.

Just a little hole in the roof and you’d lean over and turn the tap on and have a shower on. All the others had to go and shower in sea water and we had our own supply. But it was a big mess, you had to go on board the ship to see it. The mess was like the, what was it like, the Exhibition Building I suppose. Like an exhibition too, I think it was damn near a sight too. Oh, it was unreal.

So they stacked on a turn, they gave us fish, fish, fish, fish, fish. Then there was a riot and then we had tinned beef, tinned beef, tinned beef. It was unreal, poor buggers I suppose because it was that far to travel because she was only made to go between England and America, that was supposed to be her set run and

I suppose when you’ve about six times the amount of passengers what you’d normally carry and you’re going about twenty times as far, you just didn’t have the stuff on board or she couldn’t carry enough water.

I think it was thank Christ we’re getting out of slope and arms and marching round in circles at the time. I remember they had the worst beer in Australia on it,

I think it was Swan or something and you had to pay a threepence for a dixie full of it. We had a like a kidney shaped dixie, like I’d say about that round and I think it would hold about a pint and a half, about that deep and just put that in and they’d fill it up. I think it was a threepence or a sixpence, I can’t remember now. But oh God, it’d be all right for removing paint, that was about all it was good for. I don’t know where they got it from but they told us it was Australian beer.

Somebody said it was Swan. But the trip other than that, that’s right, one of the engineers like the ship’s engineers, they had a funeral on board going over, that’s right, they think the heat got to him. Elderly chap, poor chap.

Yeah, they just asked us to stand to sort of thing and you all, they put him over the side with a flag, no that’s right, the flag stayed there because they put

him on a skip sort of thing and they tilted it and his body was wrapped up in canvas, or it looked like canvas, and that slid out from under it straight into the sea. But they said, he was an elderly Scotsman or something but he was one of the engineers on the ship itself. We just stood back in the background and showed your respect. Then we went into

Port Suez I think and from there they put us on a train and we went up one side of the canal to El Kantara I think it was, then from Kantara we went across by like on a ferry to the other side, the Palestinian side, and then got

on a train and went up to, I don’t know but we ended up at a place called Gaza, I think it was, but it was a big training camp for, oh there was artillery, I think the artillery was on Hill 69, that was the name of it from the First World War apparently and there was artillery up the hill over that way, the infantry were down there and we were down over here.

I think it was called Gaza but it was a big engineers training, that was the engineers training depot. That was the infantry training and the artillery all in the one area. When you heard reveille, or when you heard the lights out you heard it, they had about five buglers, they had about ten buglers and we had about three. They all went off at the same time, everybody had to stand still, no matter what you was doing, whether you were half way through a puff, you’d puff half way.

I was there for, that’s right, I met Dad there too, he came up to me. He’d say, “Anyone around here seen young Mick Tuskin?” That was when the boys changed our names then, they called him Argoz, the old man, and they called me, the Wallad, the boy. The Wallad stuck with me the whole way through the army then.

The Wallad, the boy in Gypo,

or Arabic, whatever. And Argoz meant the old man, so Dad was called Argoz and I was called Wallad.

That’s when Dad backed Whittier, be in the 1925 Caulfield Cup. He went out cause he was a mad, mad racehorse man, he followed horses and I don’t mean with a bucket and spade either, like with two bob in his hand.

He backed Whittier, come home and Mum said he filled the pan up with pound notes and said, “We’re changing his name to Whitty,” so I was called Whitty from then on. Till I got old and then they shortened the y off and called me Whit. But apparently a fortnight later he bid her for a quid to go to the races, that didn’t last long.

I think we must have been out Tooronga way then cause we didn’t… Uncle Norm had a garage out at a Tooronga Road and he knocked his eye out with a coal chisel and I must have been walking, toddling because every time, when he came home from the hospital with this big bandage around his eye and from then on I had to have a hanky

around my eye to match it, Mum was telling me later it drove her up the damn wall putting this hanky on my damn eye. I can just semi-remember it, the only reason I remember is because Mum repeating it to me, you know when I got older. I remember a lot of damn things, I had the sorest bum in Melbourne I think.

No, no. The ship didn’t even, nobody

went off the ship as far as I could see. I think all they done, I think the lighters come alongside and filled her up with water again cause as I say having all those troops on board, she was pretty short of water and it was only like a call in for watering more or less, they filled her up. I didn’t see anything else come aboard. We were only there for three days, two days or three days. Cause Billy the Pig was our sergeant and he

was like against the railing, they still had roll call every morning and night even if you’re stuck in, like you’re touching one another. I must give you though the ship was the biggest in the world and it’s the biggest round in Bourke, you at one end, me at the other. But the roll call and somebody said, “Have a look at that bloody shark over behind Billy the Pig.” We all looked over, oh you’re right, Bill. Funny thing, we ended up against the rail and him on the bulkhead of the ship, he wasn’t going to take

risk sort of thing. As soon as all the sergeants and corporals, all the… As soon as they got to the Middle East, they were stripped of their ranks, back to sappers, cause you’re only reinforcements to a unit, not part of, part there-of. Not too many of them, I can’t think of any of them that went back into, got rank. Billy the Pig didn’t.

Excitement. You know, oh look at this, look at that, look at this, it was unreal. But we didn’t see much really. They gave us leave, like when we were at the training camp we got leave for so many,

twenty would go this week, twenty go next and they took you on a run around like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Tel Aviv but just like a cruise, so if you want a heart stopper go over there and jump in a bus that an Arab’s driving and just wind around the mountains and see how many times your heart stops. Gee, tell you what,

and they’re driving on the right hand side too, on the edge.

Yeah, I got a couple of photos, actually not, I got a photo of like just say Bethlehem, Jerusalem, but you could be anywhere west of the world, and Pither, Tel Aviv, no I haven’t got a photo of Tel Aviv,

cause I said to a couple of the royal engineer boys, we was drinking with them in a café or what have you, and we swapped our little like a little button on your cup, so mine ended a shiny one cause mine was black all the time, cause their dress uniform they got brass buttons from head to tail and ours were all dark, it was brass underneath, it was just coated black with like black lacquer of some sort.

So he got mine and I don’t know if me son’s still got them or not cause he joined the CMF [Citizens’ Military Force], he was in there for about twenty-two, twenty-one, two or three years or something. I think they give ‘em long service at twenty-one and he got that. Other than that it was just wandering around the different places. Where’d we go from there, that’s right,

we went back to, they took us down to Egypt. We had to go down there to Sweet Water Canal I think they called it, and then we saw the Bailey bridge can you believe. It was the first and last time we seen one though. They had one there, you put it together and then one each side and you run it out. Dad had been shifted, he was at training (UNCLEAR).

Then they went up the desert, the first time he was blown up or something and he fell on his back and hurt his back somehow. He was lucky, he went to hospital and of course all the rest of his unit went over to Greece and Crete, so he was still in hospital. Of course not too many of them came back, nearly all POWs [Prisoners of War]. Well that’s what he was doing when I got there, he’d been in hospital. They put him in the old and bold then. That was like guard duty at different

points around Palestine, Egypt whatever.

More guard than patrol, just guarding the camps and there was always a guard on an army camp naturally. He was in, well they called it the old and bold, blokes they reckoned were too old or not fit enough for active service but they kept them over there as I say for more

or less for guard duties, put it that way, guard duties. He left like, when he left Gaza the training camp in Palestine and as I was saying before we went down for the Bailey bridge business, he’d been shifted down and there was a bridge across the Suez Canal and it used to be closed for traffic across the canal but they’d open it up, so they could let the ships through. Well, he was on guard on the what would you call it, the Palestine,

it was still Egypt but it was the Palestinian side of Egypt and when we was going down we went through a border patrol, well we only stopped, they just waved to us and we drove straight through. There’s traffic running up and down there all the time as you can imagine from Egypt to Palestine and when we get down to the bridge, here’s Nibs on guard on the bridge. Everybody give him a big hoy, like

good on you Argoz and all this business, they were giving it to Argoz. But the camp we were in was just over the bridge and Ismalia they called the area and that was like his camp, they’d just drive out and change the guard every eight hours, twelve hours or whatever they were doing. Anyhow, he came into that night and when you go

from Palestine to Egypt or whichever, you change your money from Palestinian to Egyptian and so on and he said, “Don’t put your money in the tent tonight to be changed over.” “Why?” “Do as you’re bloody told for a change, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since you born. Don’t hand your money and tell your mates not to.” I thought there’s something going on her, so I said to me mates Doc Mannix,

Bud Williams, oh there was about five or six you know, you sort of get into a little group of your own, I said, “Dad said not to put your money in for change over tonight, wait till tomorrow.” They said, “What would that old so and so know.” I said, “He told us not to.” So we told a few others and they said oh what have you. So I think there was five of us didn’t put our money in. That night the sergeant that had been in the camp for so long

took all the money out of the safe and shot through to Cairo. I said, “What’s the story?” Well, he got sick of being on the base all the time, they put him at base and he applied to go back to a unit, any unit’d do, he didn’t care but he said, “Right that’s it, if they’re going to keep me at base I’m going home.” They caught him in Cairo naturally after he’d spent all the loot and he got what they call SNLR, services no longer required. But he had to do boot for a while first.

But that’s how he got out of it.

Oh he knew. The sergeant told them all, he said, “I’ve had this, they won’t put me back in my unit, I’m shooting through.” I suppose it would be a bit of a drag really, he was just sitting there, a maily, for the rest of the war or whatever or he thought he was going to be. So we done our training there and then back to Palestine. We passed Beersheba on the way

too, I’m sure we did. Cause that’s the only time we went by road and there was a big cemetery for Australian soldiers of the First World War. We wanted to stop naturally of course, stop here mate, let’s have a sticky beak. But even up in the Gaza area it was a case of back to digging trenches and that, digging holes, making slit trenches,

fox holes, we called them fox holes, don’t know if it was. That’s when we dug up a lot of old First World War gear, bits of saddles, broken bayonets, scabbards and you know, just in fact we went away with leather belts and leather bandoleers but they took those off us when we got over there and gave us the English stuff, the webbing gear.

But we were finding bits of webbing and, naturally the First World War diggers thought this is good, look at what I’ve found. We did have one big bang there I remember, that’s right, because there was an English destroyer been sunk near Haifa, I think it was near Haifa, and they got all explosives off us and they said, “It was no good because it had been under the water and they weren’t game to use it again,” so they give it to us to play with.

We had the biggest bang you’ve ever seen in your life. We put it all in one big, dug a big hole, put it all in and set alight to it. Most of it went off but I think the navy used a cordite, I think they called it, bunch about that long bit like spaghetti, red spaghetti and they apparently put the shell in and put this sharkar and it went off with a bang, bang whatever. But that instead of igniting, that just caught fire, we had best fireworks you’ve ever seen.

I don’t how much we put in there. Really a bang. Just fun and games.

That’s when we was allowed to play with gelignite and dynamite, I can’t remember the other one, but they showed us how to make Bangalore torpedos and how to blow things up and what have you.

What parts of bridge, they’d have electrolyte and say, “Now that part of the bridge, you put your explosives there and that will blow that bit, which will also give the weight to pull that bit down and so on.” Bangalore torpedoes – that’s where you get a tube like a steel pipe, so just trying to think how long they were, I guess about three feet long, no it’d be more than three, might’ve been

about five feet, and you’d fill it up with gelignite, block one end and fill it up with gelignite and put your fuse and what’s his name in one end and what the idea was, you’re supposed to crawl forward and put it underneath the barbwire, ignite it and then skittle back as fast as you could. Of course the idea was that the pipe would blast off in strips and rip the barbwire in pieces

so the infanteers could get through the gap in the wire I suppose. Not that we ever saw any wire but that was theory. What else did we do there? That was nearly all digging trenches, trenches seemed to be the go, dig as much as you damn well can and as deep as you can. That’s all we done there. Oh, they had pictures shows there too cause Dad took me to the pictures,

he said, “Come to the pictures.” I paid his fare the old bugger, that was the idea. He was wrapped in Ginger Rogers, really wrapped in her. They tell me later that when we came home, when they was getting ready to that, the 8th Army was getting ready to do that run up to [El] Alamein, they give him a job driving a truck see and they had Ray “Ginger” Rogers on the side of it.

Only twice, once at the training camp and then again down at Ismalia, on the bridge. That’s the only times I saw him. When we went to join our unit they put us on, said, “Righto,” I got a little bit ahead of myself there too.

They had me down for the 2/10th Engineers in Malaya when we was at Pucka and I said, “No way, me brother’s over in the Middle East,” I said, “I’ve got to go to the 2/8th, they said, “Oh, we’ll see about it.” I was lucky there, I got out of going to Malaya because all the boys in Malaya got locked up by the Nips [Japanese]. It’s like as I say, I claimed Dad as my brother and you were allowed to claim your brother, for some reason

I don’t know, you could go and join them, stay together or whatever. Of course by the time I got over there, Dad had left the unit. We left Palestine, we went up to, said to reinforcements, “Right, you go to there, you go to there and you go so and so and I think there was between ten and twenty of us sent up to join the second 8th, they were already up in Syria.

So they took us by train I think to Damascus and nobody was allowed in Damascus they reckoned, you weren’t allowed to go in on leave or anything. I think we organised, there was five of us Doc Mannix, Nugget Coonan, Bud Williams wasn’t with us,

was about five of us anyhow, we decided to go over the fence, we were in a big private school that they army had taken over and I mean a big private school. It was like a staging camp, you went there and then you were sent there and different places from Damascus. So, over the fence we went and when we came back, we were a little bit

the worse for wear, weren’t we. Poor little Nugget Coonan, he’s only a little bloke, and we couldn’t get him over the big fence, so we got some bloke with a camel and sat him on top of the camel then pushed him over and he fell over the other side and he’s yelling out, “You better hurry, there’s a bloody parade on.” We got over there and our mob had gone up, hadn’t they and we were almost left behind. The parade was nothing to do with us, it was like all the other blokes were all lined up.

We were only like going up to the unit, we hadn’t joined it as yet. So they got two provos [Provosts: Military Police] and put them in charge of the five of us to take us to the unit. I know we had about four bottles of cherry brandy, good stuff. It changes your colour, you become a red Indian. They took us up to a place called Rayak up in Syria and there was,

it was about eight or nine o’clock at night and it was freezing, it was very cold, I’ll never forget that. They said, “We’d give you something to eat but the stew’s frozen.” They had like a big boiler, like what you boil your clothes in, what do you call it?

Yeah copper. And it was half full of stew and we said, “Don’t worry, we can light it, bit of cherry and brandy and woof.” They said, “Where did you get the petrol from?”

So we had a stew there and the provos were sitting there having stew with us, our guards. I’ll never forget that. Up to the unit and said, our lieutenant said, “Well, this is a nice way to join a unit, isn’t it, five of you being led by two provos.” That was Alex Crawford, he was

originally in the 2nd Engineers and I think he was a sergeant major for the unit I think, I’m not sure but I think he was. I know he was a sergeant when he got the Military Medal and then he got what they call a field commission, made a commission in the field, made a lieutenant in the field sort of thing. But he was our lieutenant for a few years. Alex. I think he ended up after I left the unit he became the

major in charge of the unit, so he went well. Alex. He (UNCLEAR) somewhere there. Who else was there? I can’t think. The unit changed around, we was up in Syria putting a tank trap across a valley.

Place called Djedeide and that’s where we got Botswana Landers from Africa, they were miners, big and I mean big boys, all Negroes, what you call African Negroes. Say our camp’s here and the road’s up there, about seven or eight trucks come along,

pull up, coons jump out and putting up tables and chairs, what’s going on out the front there, all sticky beaks. Officers get out and they sit down at the table and the natives are running around serving them. They’re having their lunch on the bloody road out the front, the engineers. Do you think (UNCLEAR). Unbeknownst to that they went and camped a little bit further up and made camp and they were to be our labourers on the tank trap. Poor buggers were freezing to death. They just had like a Pommy uniform on and nothing else.

No underclothes, no nothing. So we made a rouseabout and locked up all the ones working for us, they had underclothes, didn’t they. Cause we had plenty of warm clothing, in fact I’ve got a photo of us there somewhere, we were issued with an English uniforms, like a, what would you call, one with the little belt at the front like a jacket and pants,

not a coat and pants and they were warm, and English long johns and fleecy lined singlets, or flannels, I’d guess you’d call them. We were warm. These poor buggers, they’d come from the middle of Africa and they’re standing there with a uniform. If you’re going to get them in tune, you got to get the best set of drums you’ve ever heard in your life.

Digging, that’s what all the shovelling was for. They thought, this was just before Christmas 1941 and they thought that the Germans were going to cut down through Turkey and come down to the Middle East that way, come down to Egypt or whatever, Palestine and Egypt. So they thought to slow them down a bit they’d put a

tank trap right across this big valley. Apparently, the coast was like, they could cut the coast off pretty easy because in places, the mountains went very close to the coast, you know it only meant blowing the road here, there and there and nothing could get round. This valley, I don’t know, there’s a name for it I can’t think what it is, anyhow this valley runs right from Turkey right down

towards Palestine, Jordan River area and their idea was to put this tank trap straight across the valley right at Djedeide, or just outside Djedeide in Syria. And that was our job, to dig this tank trap. So they sent these Botswana Landers, ex miners, I suppose you’d call the pioneers or something, and they were just like our

manual labourers. But they knew the game better than what we did because we were putting, we were digging a tunnel under the road and we were going to fill it with gelignite, what have you and if anything did happen, we’d just be going to blow the road and that would cut that bit off. So make the tank traps complete across the valley and the idea of that is we come in with jackhammers and drill in,

then put chargers in and blow it and cause they were experts at that, they’d been digging mines, were well trained miners. Every time you’d blew a charge, you’d threw the air hose from the compressor, you’d chuck that in as far as you could and it’d blow all the dead air cause there was no oxygen in there once you’d blown your charges. And

Doc Mannix, who’s a cray fisherman, he’s number one mate of mine, he was a cray fisherman down at Queenscliff area, he went in and we were just sitting there smoking and (UNCLEAR) something or other you know, black boy runs the best in the world and one of the coons run past us, and I mean he run and he run in and he dragged Jack out, his name was Jack Mannix, Doc Mannix, he dragged Doc out by the legs. And we said, “What’s he doing

the silly black coon?” but he’d seen the hose when they chucked it in, it had turned around and the air was just blowing out, it was all just dead air. Doc had gone in and just went bomp, just straight down. And of course, naturally they were number one chum after that, weren’t they? In a sense he saved Doc’s life, you may as well say that. I think there’s a story about that in the book I wrote for the 2/8th Engineers.

Oh, we were terrific mates. We treated them like we treated one another. They had to stand to attention and all that with their officers and that, they were a little bit out of this world in a sense. They were natives, that’s it.

Oh yeah, they come good.

Well, they’d been working in the mines for years apparently. They went in as young fellas. It would be hard to guess their ages, I’d say between 25 and 35, but I think they were picked for the damn size, they were all over six foot, there wasn’t one under six foot, honestly. When they lined up, they were unreal.

But then the snows came then and when I say snows, it really snowed. It was wintertime and I think it was before the 7th of December. We didn’t hear about the Japs attacking until after the 7th, well after, before anybody told us anything about it. I’m just trying to think. That’s right,

the snows came and we were still trying to dig but the ground is like concrete, honestly. It was a waste of time and not only that but gelignite, if you freeze it you’ve got to be ready, if it gets cold or freezes, it’s just like you’ve only got to drop it and it will blow. So what we used to do was take a piece in our pocket of a morning when we was going up to the tank trap, get it nice and warm and mouldy and then put it on the radiator or the compression and just stick a match to it

and of course it would melt the frozen water inside the radiator, stand by with a bucket of water and chuck it over it, otherwise you’d start the damn thing. I remember that part, plus coming down the hill on a sheet of iron, thinking it was a toboggan. And of course poor old Dick Wheeler, he had a Syrian friend

and he remembered the Turks coming down in the First World War. He said, “They came down,” and he said, “They annihilated anything in the way went under the swords,” and of course he told Doc Mannix, “But don’t worry, we’ll protect you, not Doc, Dick, Dick Wheeler.” He never come home one night, well one night he did come home and they gave us Nissen huts from England. They’d come out and put these up because like with the snow

and that they’d just fall straight off or roll straight off and we had Nissen huts and we even had little fires in them like, they had a name for them, they were like a little oven and it was in the middle of the hut to warm the hut up a bit. And Dick came in one night full from this bloke’s place, full of arak and what have you, Black Boy Rum, just went in and put his hand on the fire, we said, “We’ll see how long it takes and he said, [swears]. You should have seen his hand.

And this night we lost him and we had to go out and find him. It was snowing like nobody’s business. We found him, he fell in a hole like a snowdrift and what was he singing, “I’ve got twopence to lend and twopence to lend and sweet FA [fuck all] to send home to my wife.” And they were all saying, “He’s over there, listen, I’ve got threepence to, there he is there.” He’d got hot and taken his clothes off.

Good stuff that arak.

No, I didn’t like it. It was a very clear liquid and you’d only put that much in a little glass, say a glass that high, and put that much in then, you’d fill it up with water. It’d just fizz a little bit and go white but ah, I don’t know. We used to drink a local brew called Black Boy Rum, it had a black boy on it and used

to get off and paint you after you’d gone through the first bottle. That was our keep warmer, you know have a couple of them. The 2/8th Battalion they was just up from us, what were they red and white? I know they had a blood and bandage I think they call them, red and white colour patch I think it was. It was white with something anyhow, but they used to

God knows what for but we used to put a three man patrol in the village of a night and alls you do was go in there and sit down and drink Black Boy Rum. And of course, we’d meet the boys from the 2/8th Battalion, they’d come in there. But they got sent home, that was after the 7th of December they got sent home. But the Green Howies, English infantry mob, they took over from the 2/8th Battalion and they used to mount an eleven-man patrol. You’ve got a village that’s like,

for the Germans to get you, they’ve got to sneak down from way up in Germany somewhere, down through Turkey and got to come into the village. We didn’t get on too well with the Green Howards because they were a little bit efficacious, you were on the patrol you were supposed to patrol – do you want a drink? I went on leave with them once to the what’s a name, the 2/8th Battalion they was, it was about,

cause naturally an infantry battalion, there was a lot more of them, say there’s a thousand men to an infantry battalion, whereas to a 2/8th Field Company, even at full strength, I think there was still only 250 men or something like that. And they were half strength. But anybody who had enough pay in their envelope, they put a notice out one day, before you were allowed to go on leave, you had to have money to pay your way, you couldn’t just go on leave with nothing. So, being single,

a lot of the blokes were married. They were all like tradesmen, like engineers naturally, brick layers, painters. Think of something, yeah they were that too. So I had enough money for leave but I was the only one that went on from our mob, as I say the mob was well under strength, really under strength after (UNCLEAR) and there was only us reinforcements and the blokes that had been in hospital or been left behind. There was very few that got out of it.

So, I went on leave and I was, they had taken all these trucks off the Froggies [French] when they first, the mob that went up to 7th Divvy or part of 7th Divvy, and they naturally took all the Frenchmen’s trucks. But they were like big high sided trucks, you ever seen the trucks that they carted the sawdust in? They’re wooden sided, very high, say about that high, and that’s the trucks we were going into

leave to Beirut. And you’re all crouched in there and it’s freezing damn cold naturally and about two or three trucks in front of me, I think the 2/8th, I think they had boys in one or two trucks, like their own, and it was a CCS truck, we called it CCS, it was a Canadian Chev Steel that had like steel sides about that high

like all the way around it and steel structure. That was coming the other way and the raiders were in there. So we took the box off completely off one of the 2/8th Battalion trucks, I think there was six killed in it, and to get past them I know, that’s right I lost my hat there because I put it under a blokes head. All the other trucks were backed up, say about five or six, there was only about ten trucks altogether going in on leave and

we was about three or four back, I’m not sure, it might have been only two or three, and naturally everybody got out and rushed up to see what they could do. We were putting them on the side of the road and that, and that’s where I lost my hat there, I put it under a bloke’s head and somebody said, “C’mon, you’ve got to get back in your trucks, we’ve got to clear the road.” So I run back and got in the damn truck, we was going past it and I said, “My bloody hat’s there,” and they said, “We can’t stop now.” What they done, the truck drivers took us up on

to a railway line, jumped the line like on one side and went up past the accident and then back on to the road again. So the first thing I did when I got into Beirut, I had to go buy a cap at a second hand shop somewhere. So I ended up instead of having a hat on, I had a cap. I got into trouble over that too. I’ve got a photo there taken in Beirut of two of the 2nd Pioneers,

they were in action up in Syria when it was taken. Funny thing 2nd Pioneers, I struck two of them in there, I think there was some in the truck I was in too. And I more or less knocked around with them because I was the lone ranger on me own. Later on, a couple of years later, that’d been before Christmas ’41 and then in

1943, they were coming home, the 2nd Pioneers and on the way home they were just aboard ship and the ship just pulled in Java and they just marched straight off the ship into prisoner of war camp. That’d be organisation plus wouldn’t it. I don’t know the story of how they come to go straight into, there was some reason behind it. But all their trucks and

their transport, like the whole section of transport, were all on another ship and that came home. And they reformed them when they came home and, like they did with us, like they did with everybody I suppose, they just filled them up and made another unit. Cause I struck them again in the middle of a place in New Guinea called Tsili Tsili. They

went down to, they flew in by plane, that’s another story. We were lucky, we come home. So we had a big… So after, what else did we do up there? Oh, working at Ras Baalbek seeing all the ruins, and what have you. Into Ras Baalbek, seeing half the ruins.

I got some photos of Baalbek and what have you.

All right. We seemed to get on with them all right. There was a bit of a shindig. We had the locals, naturally Arabs, I suppose you’d call them Arabs or Syrians, Syrians might be better I s’pose, working for us and they had,

like the men were all working there and the women were working here sort of thing, they were all just like labourers. So we put on a turn, we said, “Well listen, the women are doing three times as much work as the men but they’re only getting nine pence,” I might be wrong on this but I can check it later, it’s in my book. They’re getting nine pence a day and these bludgers are getting a shilling a day, like from the pay. They said,

“Oh, oh well we’ll take it up.” So the officers were invited up to the village in Djedeide to talk it over, they came back drunk and the pay stayed the same. The Arabs reckoned that a woman could never get as much money as a man, no way known. It didn’t worry us really at the finish, we thought it was only interfering with more or less, I don’t know whether it was religion in their minds.

So the women still got nine pence and the men still got a shilling.

Oh yes, in fact being useless at anything else, that’s what I started doing. I had a gang of Syrians and I did have a photo of them somewhere, but their idea of building a road is to take each little brick individually, put it in place and hit it with a hammer.

So you had twenty blokes across the road putting little bricks into place and hitting them with a hammer. And then they put screenings over it to go in between the rocks. You ended up with a very good road though, I’ll give you that end. Your base underneath, like there’s not many crops or anything like that, there’s a lot of rock work around this particular valley, in fact it was all rock.

In the Roman times they’d even dug an under water channel and they had openings here, there and of course there was one opening right where we were going with a road, that’s normal. So we just put down some iron, steel, and put some sheets of iron on it and poured reinforced concrete on it and made the road over the top of this hole.

That had been done, they tried to tell us that the water was running up hill. So, they reckoned that the Romans, you know back in the Roman days, they’d made a siphon underground which brought the water higher than the water there. They had a lot of lights out, they were carrying on. I can’t think

of who it was, it was a bloke, a sergeant from a survey mob come but with his (UNCLEAR). Now the water’s running that way and that water up there, that’s going that way too, now how could that get from there to there, he (UNCLEAR). Of course, he was also working on the tank trap at the same time, telling us to go there and there. I think we was only there for about, I think the snows had stopped us, it must have been after Christmas

when we left there. Cause we come back and they said, “All right, you’re going home,” and we come back, back over the mountains again, we didn’t come down the way we went up. We come back over the mountains into Beirut, we come home that way, I can’t remember exactly how.

Well, we found out say about a week after Pearl Harbour Day that Australia was at war with Japan, we wanted to go home.

Not much to think about it, we couldn’t work out what the hell had happened really. Somebody said later, “The Japs attacked

the Americans at Pearl Harbour and Australia declared war on them.” We said, “What are you talking about?” I never ever found out what happened there. You hear that many different stories.

No, just through the mouth more or else. Because your girlfriend’s at home they write and say, “Americans take Pearl Harbour,” they wouldn’t have a clue about it. Only get what they

read in the paper. But as I say the 2/8th Battalion, they went, they seemed to go home very quick like. It might have been the 19th Brigade because the way the war went, that if you was here and that mob was going to action you went with them. If you was over there and you belong to them bad bloody luck, you stayed there. Because like the 2/8th Engineers

was a corps troop, you know the triangle, and the 2/3rd went to England, they were supposed to be the 19th Brigade Engineers, they put the 2/8th Engineers, which was corps troops, they put them in the 2/19th Brigade, this is all going on what I’ve been told. And in the first campaign up the, in the desert when they went into action,

like the 2/8th Brigade became 6th Division and they went with the 19th Brigade up the desert up to Libya and what have you. Then they came back, don’t ask me how, they went to Greece and Crete and when I joined them, this is like after all this had happened, I didn’t get over until 1941 late, about September, I think by the time I got there, and the

somehow along the line, the 2/8th became the 17th Brigade, which was originally the 2/2nd Engineers. Don’t ask me how it happened. From then on we stayed with the 17th Brigade, I was in Ceylon with the 17th Brigade, we came home, we was the 17th Brigade on the Salamaua track and I came back to, they came home, I wasn’t with them, with when they came home, I was in Anglen [?] then,

and then they went back up to Wewak, I think they were still the 17th Brigade.

That’s right, we went up through Beirut, come down a different way. First time we went up there we went up through the Jordan Valley because they were talking about a lot of people, historical, they were talking about the Turks came down here in 1915

or and so and so went up here in 19, the Light Horse and all that. We went from Djedeide to Baalbek, I don’t think we went to Baalbek but we cut across the mountains to Beirut in Lebanon. We must have come the coast road because somebody was

commenting on the fact that a railway unit from the Australian Army had found, they were putting railway lines around the mountains or something, and they found in the water below they could more or less see an old statue, not of Venus De Milo but it was a female statue and it was a couple of those years or whatever, I wouldn’t know for sure about it but that’s the story

we got. Then back down to Palestine to Dimra and we semi-reformed you know, we got a few more reinforcements there and in fact some of them went over on the Queen Lizzie and the Mary, they joined the unit even though they’d sailed the same time as us. Then we left there. The railway unit, wouldn’t have a name for them, just

they were a railway unit and either repairing or building railway line around, it would have to be Lebanon I should imagine, and they found this statue, that was only like in passing as we were coming down somebody brought it up but they knew about it. Then back to Dimra as I say and we got reinforced again but most of them were the ones that went over with us on the Queen Lizzie

and the Mary, they both ended up in Egypt, the Suez Canal, whatever. They went from there down to Egypt. I can’t remember, there was two ships we come home on: the Arunta and the SS Orontes, one of them went to Ceylon and the other we went from Ceylon to Melbourne on, whichever one we went

to Colombo non stop sort of thing, slow but short and Colombo, we camped in Colombo was only a matter of a week or so, I think then they shot us down towards, not to Galle Face but down towards Galle Face. It’s a big well known place apparently and we were stuck on the beach, every night we were supposed to go down to the beach

and guard in case of Japanese invasion didn’t we, but we had no bullets, we had nothing and we thought, well we’ll throw sand in their eyes, but somebody said, “Well they wear glasses,” so we said we’d throw something at ‘em anyhow. So that was a bit a alert on for I’m guessing for about two or three weeks but that’s only a guess, but apparently there was a big battle, Coral Sea or something and the force

that was mobile around, they didn’t know where it was going to, the Americans and I think some Australian ships were in it too, they knocked the stuffing out of them and they had nowhere else to go or something. They just pulled us back off the beaches sort of thing. It was only of a nighttime, I don’t know what the story was that. So they said, “Right, we’ll start work now,” and the first thing we did was there was a bridge

near Koggala Lake and we were supposed to make that ready to blow as quick as you can. So we dug underneath the bridge and we put all our gelignite and dynamite and whatever we had hold of, put that all in, then about a week later they said right, apparently ever year the beaches are about twelve foot high, like they come off the sea and slowly go up to about

twelve feet and behind it is a stagnant pool and up past the pool again is a big lake and I think a lot of Australian flyers were there but they were flying boats on this Koggala Lake and they said, “Well, when the monsoon comes, it tears this beach away and the water in the lake runs out and then

these fish come in and spawn. When the lake goes down, there’s rocks and that under the water and that means the plane’s basically going to get the backside torn out of them when they land, so that was our first job, to go and blow the rocks in this lake.” And then somebody said, “Oh well, you can put a dam across.” You can imagine you’d stop the (UNCLEAR) about two feet from the mouth of it, couldn’t ya? With a stick. But when the monsoon did

come, we were like near the mouth of this stagnant water, say about three or four feet deep right near, you’ve got a sand bank up and when the monsoon, it just whipped everything out. And I mean whipped, the sand just disappeared, the water actually came in and flooded, not really flooded but filled the lake a bit more, by the time it got through the trees and what have you and filled it up to a good depth, and

we were catching fish in our arms, I’m guessing fish about that long, catching fish in your arms. Think about it mate, they’re coming in to spawn. I don’t know what sort they were, must have been deep sea fish of some sort. Then the lake empties out again and the sand gradually builds up like in between time, nine months, twelve months whatever. And then the lake was lower, so we had to go back and blow some more rock.

We done that. I’m trying to think of a time, I think I had my 19th birthday going there, so that would be about April ‘42, April, May ‘42 and then they sent us out building roads and bridges and that’s right, we built one bridge and I’ll

never forget this, they put an elephant to test it. You’ve never seen anything like it, he put that foot down, I think it took about a minute to put the weight on one foot at a time to see if it was all right. He was awake to us I think. He stood the test anyhow, I think there was a (UNLCEAR) in one of the unit. Prior to that

I was in hospital with dengue fever. I got dengue fever while I was working on a road – that’s right, when I got the dengue fever and I was carted off to the 2/2nd Field Ambulance and I was there, I don’t know how long I was in, it might have been a fortnight, ten days something to a fortnight, then I went back to the unit. But while I was in the hospital, that’s right, I had a flea bite on my leg and

it turned into a tropical ulcer about that big. When we had finished the bridge, we was all talking about this elephant and how careful it was, this big officer, Steel or somebody, this big engineer anyhow, him and colonel I think, he come out to inspect the bridge and that and he said, “You go and get that leg fixed,” and he had a go at Crawford,

he says, “Get that man into bloody hospital, look at it, his leg’s weeping,” and like a big sore about that big, it ended up that big. So I ended up in the AGH [Australian General Hospital] in Colombo with about 500 other blokes all with bloody (UNCLEAR) sores. They had them everywhere, wherever you scratched it’d get in and of course if you didn’t treat it straight away, it’d just grow and grow and grow. But they used to say to you, “Save the

cellophane off your cigarettes,” but they were using maggots and of course, “A maggot will only eat dead meat,” they told us. So they put the maggots on and they’d just sticky tape the name, a name, over the top, so they could watch it you know, and it’d clean it up. Oh that’s right, something else come in then that we’d never heard of before, M&B [May and Baker] tablets or something and they used to grind them up and use them like a powder. Where blokes would be in there for about

three months trying to get these sores sort, they were getting cleaned up in about a couple, three weeks. Otherwise, they’d be in there for months waiting for it to gradually heal you know. One day somebody come around and they said, “Right, anybody who can walk, the boat’ll be in the harbour,” say it was Monday, will be in the harbour Wednesday, anybody who can walk down to the boat, can go home. Phew Jesus, blokes were saying, “Will you carry me?”

They didn’t walk at all, just walked out, got in a bloody truck and went down to the wharf. But those who were fit enough went down, so I went and that’s when they said, “Righto, what you doing with your kitbags?” They were full of tea. They had all their kitbags full of tea. I said to them, “Where do I?” “Chuck all your rubbish out and get as much as you can.” “What’s this?” and they said, “Oh well, you can’t get tea in Australia.” I said, “I got something about that, got a letter about rations and that.” And they said, “Yeah well, we’re gonna take some tea home.”

So I filled me kitbag up with tea, didn’t I? So did everybody else. When we got on the boat to come home to Australia, there’s tins of 50 cigarettes, you know Capstans or whatever, English cigarettes, play something.

Players, that right, Players. 50 cigarettes for one and threepence.

You’re joking. Shook all the tea bag out the back of the truck, it was the biggest cup of tea you’ve ever seen in your life, and we filled our kitbags up with cigarettes. Then when I come home and seen Dad and uncle, Dad was, no Dad wasn’t home then, he was still over there. That’s right, I stopped at Uncle Harold’s because Mum didn’t have room, she was staying at Aunty Linda’s, and I was just saying

to, Uncle Harold said, “Where did you get all the cigarettes?” And I said, “On the boat.” “They’d cost you a fortune,” but I said, “Well there’s no customs or tax or whatever.” He said, “How much did they cost you?” “For 50, they cost me one and threepence for 50.” Fair enough, Uncle Harold, he had the time of his life. I think he smoked himself to death in three days.

It had been nearly twelve months, I think it was under twelve months, although I went away in September and I come home in September, so you could say twelve months. But I took, I tried some cameras out. There was one little Bakerlite, it was a popular thing from wireless sets, a little Bakelite camera, I think it was about five and six pence or something.

I tried it out up at Pucka but it wasn’t worth a buck, so it ended up I bought a, seven and six it cost me for a Kodak Browning, I think they called it a 620 or something. I took photos everywhere I was. It was a popular size, you could almost get the lolly shop if you could get a film for it. Every chance

I got, naturally I took photos. When we came into Port Phillip Bay into Melbourne, I got the camera out to take it but it had like a skin on it and it was glued, what would you call it, yeah like a skin all round it. That just slipped apart in the tropics, it had rotted. So I just dropped it over the side. So that was the end of me

seven and six camera. I didn’t have one up in New Guinea, should’ve, we got some good photos up there.

Oh terrific, home James and don’t spare the horses. I think they gave us, they took us up to Trawool just outside Seymour and I think they gave us about ten days’ leave and then back to it again. Guess what

then, up to Kapooka then, slope arms, march around, left turn, right turn. That’s all you seemed to do, they’d find something for you. Then we went to, from Kapooka we went up to Greta. Greta that’s right, that’s where Blackie got his hand blown off.

They had all the infantry spread out, charging

here and there and they had the engineers, our boys, we made quarter plugs of jelly with a short fuse on them and you’d have a box of quarter plugs there and you’d pass them up to the bloke, you had a bloke behind you with a smoke, and he’d just light the fuse, they picked them out by height, you know young strong blokes about my size or Macca’s size. Young Macca’s throwing them but something happened, Blackie was

passing up to Macca and whether Macca was looking out to where the last went or something but they dropped it and it fell in the box with all these bloody quarter plugs of gelignite. And Blackie, they told me was a like a miner from Western Australia, was only a young bloke, but he knew all about explosives and that but he started looking for it and of course up it went and blew his hands off.

They were both stripped, just blew his hands off him, sounds silly now but young Macca, he died young too. I think he was invalided out of the army, but he was standing behind Blackie, so imagine how much Blackie gets, Blackie couldn’t see, hear or anything last time I had seen him at Korea. Last we heard of him, he’d married his nurse, well she had to look after him, didn’t she? There was nothing he could

do about anything, poor bugger. Then he went back home to Western Australia, that’s the last I heard of him. And a few years later someone wrote back to the unit and said, “That he’d died.” And young Macca, he died young too, whether it was, could’ve of been due to being so close to it. In Greta, I went into hospital there, didn’t I? In with tinea in the wrong spot.

Wrote a letter down to a ladyship and said, “I’m in bed with tinea,” and her mother wanted to know if that was the name of the nurse, tinea. Then the unit, that’s right Bud Williams and I were both in hospital, he was in with haemorrhoids and I had tinea and the unit moved out and they went to the Tablelands, then to New Guinea,

to Port Moresby, around to Milne Bay, back to Moresby and over to Wau. So Bud and I, when we came out of hospital we went up to the Tablelands, up to Port Moresby, at this time our unit’s over in Wau mind you, up to Port Moresby, around to Milne Bay, back to Port Moresby and over to Wau. That’s organisation for you. But we were in Milne Bay for a while

and they just took us around there and dropped us at the staging camp and this bloke said, “Oh engineers, good, I want a water-well dug,” but we said, “You won’t find water here.” He said, “You will, I want it dug there.” After we went down through, Bud was now telling this, cause Bud was a, what do you call it, they’ve got a name, but he used to go around

prospecting for mines for a company and he’d say, “Dig here.” Bud knew. Bud Williams was his name, big New Zealand bloke, half Maori and they’ve got a name for them, what the hell do they call them, diamond something, they’ve got a name for these blokes but they’ve got an idea where you might find gold and they’d put down a trace and try and find, or look for traces, sorry

anyhow, Bud said, “There’s no sense.” But Bud was used to all this and he was saying, “Now, this is the first sea bed,” and this would be about so many years old, he’s telling me all this and we’re digging down about, we’re digging down about eleven foot, no water, no sign of water. He said, “Yeah, we’re down to about the sixth sea bed, you can see the difference in the sea beds, that’s all we were doing in Milne Bay.” We learned something from the coons there, the natives, they give us some natives, they were no good, they were just like akka boys from the bush.

And they said, “We’re going bush now,” and I said, “What are you talking about going bush?” He said, “Going bush quick.” Prior to this about five or six American two-tailed wonders, Lightnings were flying out to sea and they said, “Baluse belong to Japan.” He come up and said, “How do you know, baluse belong to America (UNCLEAR) when the Americans flew out to sea, the Japs would come and bomb us.” I said, “Ah bullshit, what would you know, get down here you black bastard, carrying on.”

You wouldn’t want to know, they went down and they come in. We never found water and then we said, “When are we going to get back to our unit?’, and they said, “I think these captains that were running them staging camps kept you there just to keep themselves in a job.” I’m sure they did. Then we chased them back to Moresby and then we flew into Wau but of course the Wau battle had been over by the time

we got there, apparently the poor buggers were jumping out of planes, getting shot and getting chucked back in again cause the Nips were down the bottom of the strip at the time. What did we do then? We went up to the unit; the unit was outside Wau at the time on the way to Salamaua. They were putting bridges and trying to make like, so they could put what they call a jeeper, make a road good enough, so they could take a jeep so they could bring supplies up instead of having to use native labour

all the time. That’s all we done, from there I was there for about a month, three months, four months, whatever. We were on (UNCLEAR) more or less looking down on Salamaua, that’s what your aim was to get from Wau to Salamaua and they called out for volunteers to join ANGAU [Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit]. And I said, “Now that sounds like a good job to me,” so I joined ANGAU.

In both places, like in Syria I’d been bong bashing as they called it, so they called it everywhere, that’s like looking after the locals and using them as labourers and in Ceylon, I ended up doing the same thing when I had the swad sore when I went to hospital. But on the Salamaua track they made me work, well in a sense, it was still

cutting down trees and dragging logs and carrying on like stone WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s. I forget how many bridges we built, like every ten yards you built a bridge just about cause it was just quick, water, water you know. I was just thinking old Macca, Bob McKenzie, chap that played for Melbourne, his Dad was another old Argos, he was in the First World War in the navy and he, we were sitting,

we’d just finished this bridge, that’s a bloody good bridge that, we done a good job, and old pop, old Argos was sitting there on the running rail on the side of it on a lump of tree about yay big, and next thing arse over kettle, he went backwards, what’s wrong. And it was a Nip plane and we didn’t hear it cause it was right at tree top level and it came at us and where Macca was sitting, we was looking straight at it, we all had our back to it. There was a bloke sitting in the back like this

and taking photos. So we reckoned Macca’s backside’s in the Tokyo News cause we went backside up. It was unreal. They’d always do a story, they’d come over regular and take photos, we used to pose for him in the finish.

Lots of funny ones, whatever.

Very suggestive. God he was low. That other one too

that was just down below the summit and when we got up to the summit, course the infantry by this time they’re fighting the Nips pushing them back towards Salamaua like the 5th, 6th and 7/2nd Battalions and they’re taking it in turns to go in for a week or whatever and come back, have a rest and then go back in, take a battalion at a time. We gradually moved, all we was doing was following them up,

making roads and what have you, or trying to. There was a little Australian, little old two winger they was using as a mail plane, chucking mail out to us, and you wouldn’t want to know, two Zeros got on to him. Well, they did everything except sit on a bloody tree limb and pop, you had to see it, these two things, he’s doing about twenty mile an hour, make that 100, 90

whatever, he’s doing that chug, chug, chug, and they’re screaming down at him, 400, 500 mile an hour, whatever they’re doing, I don’t know. But he just turned around and by the time they got there, he was all the way back this way and then they got cunning and they nearly run into one another. It was the best entertainment we’d had since I can remember when. But I think they must have just about run out of petrol but he disappeared and we couldn’t see him cause you’re up on a hill and there’s trees here and the valley goes around there. Course there was a crashed

Biscuit Bomber down towards Lae, like we went up and around like that and Lae was there and there was a Biscuit Bomber there. Course we nearly set on top of that at one stage, that’s where you wanted your camera.

Seemed long to us – bang, bang but it’d be only minutes I’d imagine.

I think they made about five or six attempts at him and then they had to go back for juice, I think because they were really flying fast, the faster they went the slower he seemed to go. But he just stayed, as I said he did everything except sit on a branch like a bird, honestly, he was just along, then he’d go that way and they’d be coming down like rrrrooar and once they got their run on, I don’t think they could pull over to him, so he’d just turn around and go back.

It would have to be minutes, entertainment plus by the air force. He never came back again that bugger, we never got any more mail from him. Came in from the days of Wau itself. That’s the first time we struck the Biscuit Bombers there chucking stuff out. What do you call it dehydrated tucker,

tins of meat, tins of onions, tins of spuds. There was potatoes, onion and meat in four gallon drums, four gallon tins not drums, kerosene tins. First bloke to fluff in the tent got a bullet through his ear.

Poisonous.

Really was, everybody had crook guts. I think when I came out of the army I went around and told me doctor I said, “The wife’s pregnant but I’m getting the morning sickness.” He said, “Oh that’s a joke, an old woman’s tale.” I said, “I‘m bloody crook of a morning, I mean I crook,” and I was. I was sick as a dog every morning and went crook at her, “It’s supposed to be you not me.” Anyhow, I had a duodena ulcer, didn’t I?

I reckoned that was it though, that was the worst tucker I’ve ever had the whole time. The poor buggers that were prisoners of war, if they’d sent that to them it would’ve killed the poor buggers. It was just dehydrated and you were supposed to put water with it and bring it back again. Didn’t work, I don’t reckon. Of course the best feed we had on that Salamaua track was, Bud got an idea

and they made him the cook for a while. You were split up in sections, like a section on this part of the road or section on that part sort of split up into sections and headquarters of course was always down at Wau. Bud got an idea, the coons used to get issued with bully beef and biscuits, so he got onto a supply of biscuits

and for breakfast every morning we had porridge made out of biscuits and salt, no sugar just a bit of salt, he said, “Give it a bit of flavour.” That’s when I went and said to Allen, one of me mates, Allen Cameron, he was going to join ANAGU with me but Crawford wouldn’t let him go cause Allen had had a bit of experience in

blacksmithing and he was sharpening the picks and that and he said, “You can’t go, you can bloody go,” he was glad to get rid of me.

I went back down to Wau, that’s about a day’s walk away roughly, I think nearly. I walked down to Bulolo and that was like an, there was two

ANGAU blokes, so it was more or less an ANGAU Headquarters like for that area and that’s when I met up with this old chap Bill, I can never think of his second name but he’d been in New Guinea pre-war on the plantations and he knew the lay of the land and he could speak pidgin like the coons could speak it, maybe better I think, I think he was teaching some of them. I joined with him,

I was only the rookie and everywhere that he went I followed like a little lapdog. As I say he was no bloody chicken, he’d have to have been in his fifties I’d reckon, he’d have to be. But as I say he was an old New Guinea hand, he was number one handy for them and that’s what ANGAU was made up of mostly, of old New Guinea hands and a few of us young rookies from

the army sort of thing. But they cut a big mob of coons together there and said, “We’ve got to go and try and make an airstrip.” I said, “Wait a minute.” They said, “Oh well, you’re an engineer, you’ll know about this.” So got all these natives together and we went walkabout. I don’t know how long it took us but

we went to a place called Tsili Tsili, I’m guessing but it’s about half way between Wau and Nadzab and of course this is like behind all the fighting and all that junk, this is way back in what’s you call it, the Nips are up there and you go around there and stay there. So the idea was we took all the coons, they cut up 44 gallon drums into strips and they cut the pieces off like that and the coons

used them for cutters for cutting kunai grass. They must have known all about the area before we got there because all we did was walk down, I think it took us a couple of days, I can’t remember, it took us a while, we walked down and what we did we had to cross about five streams, I remember that because one of them, Bill said, “Don’t fall in there mate, you won’t last five seconds,” because the rocks were still rolling in it. You ought to hear the noise, it was unreal. So

we went down to this Tsili Tsili and he said, “Now where do you reckon would be the best spot?” And I said, “Yeah, that’ll do, I wouldn’t have a clue in (UNCLEAR).” So we cut down the kunai cause the ground there is like going down to the bay down here, it’s flat as a pancake, all the hills are over there and from the hills to the river it’s just flat.

And I mean flat flat. Apparently, over a thousand years or something this river goes down that way and then it changes, in the next thousand years it comes back again and that’s all it does all the time these rivers, they go backwards and forwards and levels the land out. So we just cut a strip big enough for the Dougs [Douglas] to come in and in come the Douglas’ and they had miniature dozers and that

and we’d be there for say a month or two, doing one strip, and I think in about four weeks they put up five strips. Ours was running that way and they put all theirs off it. They bought in sheets of iron, they’ve got like holes in them and it’s got like a ridge down on each hole and they turn them down and they interlink them and that makes a strip,

they put that on level ground once they get to ground level. The dirt would be too soft for the fighter planes to come in, they’d dig in or what have you, I forget what they called them, they had a name, but anyhow they put in about four strips while we were standing there. All we were doing from them on was making camps for the American pilots and of course all the mechanics and what have you, all their engineering staff, but

the strip that we put in, we were right up this end and right down the end, that’d be like going down river, they bought in a little Australian unit and they had those little Austers, I forget the name for them, little airplanes anyhow for spotting planes, but they didn’t bother the strip, they just got out, got in their planes and went across the strips and went up in the air. Austers, is there an Auster plane?

It was some name like that, it was only a single engine, single winged engine thing.

No, not Oxford, Auster, I can’t remember now. I always remember looking out from my camp way down here about a mile down and down here you’d see this little thing go across the strip like a beetle. Take off just straight across the fields.

44 gallon drum strips, that’s all.

All we done is cut the kunai down. If everyone would dig the kunai up cause the dirt underneath was that soft and that it was better to try and leave the roots in to hold the dirt together, that’s what we worked out anyhow. Of course, when the Yanks come in they had these little miniature dozers things, they didn’t have to really level cause the ground was that level in a

sense. But if they seen a hump they’d just take that off but they went down to dirt level and of course theirs was too soft, so they bought these big steel strips in, they interlinked with one another. When they landed you’d hear them clanker, clanker, clanker. Sounded like a train going past. Cause up our end

Bill shifted the camp for some reason, I don’t know what it was, first time I’d seen, in fact I only seen one of them, but it was an American plane with a cannon in it. Think about it. All you seen was at the front, I remember it was a two proper job, fairly big plane, wasn’t as big

as a Doug but it was a bomber, one of their bomber planes, and this cannon sticking out the front of it, as you walked towards it, it was on your left, so it’d be on the right side of the plane, oh about ah big, about 75 millimetre roughly I think they called it. I said to the bloke, “How do you go with that bloody thing?” And he said, “It’s not bad being stationary in the air because every time they fired the bloody thing the plane stopped.”

Whether he was having a go at me or not? Then we shifted over towards the hills and then they bought, as I was saying to you before about the 2/2nd Pioneers coming home and reforming, guess who flew in the Dougs? Guess who come up in the Dougs? 2/2nd Pioneers, reformed. I said, “Bloody long time since I’ve seen you blokes,” but I didn’t know any of them though,

naturally because they’d reformed. That’s what they done to us when we come home from the Middle East, the old Victorian Unit, oh one or two Sydney blokes, a couple of Tassies and odds and sods but Victorian Unit and all of our reinforcements were New South Welshmen. Apparently, an engineering unit in New South Wales and they just said how many

volunteers or something to go into the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] and they just bunged the whole damned lot of them in with us. But they were all young chaps like me, whereas before it had been as I say elderly, or to me elderly, like 35 years old, poor old buggers. A lot of them were close to 40, I think and a few of them well over too, just quietly.

As I say when he first came home they were living in Egremont Street I think it is, up in North Fitzroy up past the football ground or well past the football ground, can’t think of the big street, Scotchmer Street, that’s the big street that goes across of course, he used to drink at the

Empress of India down one end of it and I can’t think of the other pub now, but at the other end, he was in between the two. I don’t think he got a job as an SP bookie there either, no he didn’t, that was another pub he got a job as an SP bookie, he was only working for the SP, not doing. As I say he got a house down in Egremont, I think it was Egremont Street,

anyhow that’s another one further down and right next door going out into Nicholson Street was this big factory, it was a tin shop or we called it, a tin shop but it made aluminium and tin stuff and it was a big factory that came right into the dead end street that Dad’s back gate was in, so he was just jumping over the fence. So we stayed there because if it was any handier. He still couldn’t get out of the damn habit though, when I was a kid

dad had this little house, he built it where the chap gave us a bloke of land, the Archers, and water, naturally you didn’t have water to waste there, so Dad would go out and he’d have a dish of water outside on a table sort of thing that was built on the side of the house. That dish of water, Dad would wash with, Mum would wash next and I was last with one dish of water. So when I went out to see him at Egremont Street, guess where he washed?

Out the back, over the gulley trap, turned the tap on and not too much wasted water and washed under it. No dish or anything, just under the tap. I’m just trying to think, something happened, Mum got crook, she got really crook and she went up and Aunty Linda and Aunty Tweeda.

Her sisters they lived up in another street just off Scotchmer Street and they, she more or less stayed there. But old pop Pittam was alive then, that’s right, cause when he died and when he died there was a bit of fight who’d get the pipe and pot. Uncle Jack wanted the pipe and they tossed for it, who got what. You’d bury both of them very, very deep, I’ll give you the drum.

Course old pop Pittam, he was on a pension and his rent like living with his two daughters used to pay for the firewood. The flame’d get that big and he was the best spitter in Melbourne, phew and he could put it out. You had to see it. There was a baker shop on the corner of Scotchmer Street and it was a big bakehouse and had a big brick wall where they baked the bread and he’d just get up there and lean against it in the wintertime,

he wouldn’t light a fire at home. He had this dog and he’d cough and the dog would move his head like that and the spit would go past. You had to see it, it’s silly I know. Anyhow, when old pop died there was a blue over who got his pot and who got his pipe and then he lived in a hut at the back of the house. It was only like one of those singled fronted places and you went down the passage, one bedroom

two bedrooms, kitchen, that’s it. Then out the back there was a bungalow, they called it I think and Mum went there, so the girls, her sisters, could look after her properly and Dad, I can’t remember where Dad went. Something happened and Dad, I think he was over at Aunty Tweeda’s over the road cause they all lived in the one street. They were all Tassie girls but they come over and more or less got together after the war ended

or during the war. That’s right, Mum died. She died up at St Vincent’s [Hospital] and then Dad got real crook, so Dot and we brought him and Dot more or less looked after him while I was working and that you know. Ended up, he went down to the Alfred [Hospital] and he died. He’d only be 60 something, 61, 2 or 3 if he was that. I’ve got a funny feeling, I can’t remember him getting a proper pension of any sort.

Anyhow, he passed. I’ve lost track now where I was. That’s right, our kids were little then, that’s after the army, after the war. Anyhow, I was talking about when he came home from the Middle East and I came down to see him and he went crook at me cause I was always out with Dot instead of going down to the pub with him, 6pm closing and it came time, I was down for a

week, nearly for a week and I was starting to panic a bit and I’m the only one in jungle greens. All you’ve got walking around Melbourne is all the blokes from the 9th Divvy and that in their uniforms and all two bob millionaires and what have you. So I said, “Listen, I’ll have to go back soon,” so I went in to town and in them days on the spirit of progress, if you wanted a reserve seat you had to pay two and six etcetera, so I got a reserve seat, no ticket just a reserve seat. So I got on the train and I’m sitting in the train and the

conductor comes through and everywhere the conductor went, he checked your tickets. Two provos are with him. So he comes up to me and I said, “Oh is that it.” He comes around and trying to look, show us it, give us it. So I give it to him and he says, “Is that all you’ve got?” And I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “Oh well, I’d better click it I suppose,” and he went click, done and he let me through. Like this is on the train and the train is moving and the two provos talking to one an other and they went up and up and I never

got caught. So I went back to Sydney for two and six. The funny thing, that’s beside the point, but when I was with ANGAU and I come home and I was a sergeant and I wanted to get back to Sydney, they put me on a train and I was two days overdue, difference, isn’t it?

That’s right, cause as I say he come out

of the army and I still had this cap I bought, there’s a photo of it there somewhere, he said, “What are you doing with a cap on?” He said, “Give us the cap, I’m getting out the army and I’ll hand this in and you can keep the hat.” So I swapped him. And then I went back to, as I say I come back nearly for a week from Sydney,

and Bud’s still there and he says, “You might as well stay, these bludgers are just sitting on their bums here doing nothing.” Finally, we left there and then we went to, we chased our unit. Wherever our unit went to, we went. We went up to Townsville, up to the Tablelands, back from the Tablelands, up to Port Moresby, our unit’s

already in Wau, around to whatever, I think I’m repeating myself here. Where was I, in Bulolo going to Tsili Tsili. Did I get there? I got to Tsili Tsili.

Not really, nothing to talk about. It was mostly like relations, did you see so and so and, he asked me naturally about a few blokes who were still in the unit

like, that he’d know like Nugget Armstrong and old Dick Wheeler and somebody else that was a mate of his. When you’d get into a unit, like three of you would sort of get together, of you as mates or four or maybe five, might be only two of you, you don’t know, it all depends. But he had, as I say Nugget Armstrong was one of his best mates and what’s his name,

photo of his somewhere, what’s his name, was a prisoner of war, president of the 2/8th Company, you know the returned soldiers thing. You form a unit.

Association sort of thing, he’s the president. I’ll show you a photo on after. Anyhow, where did I finish up? At Tsili Tsili, I think.

At Tsili Tsili, we put this airstrip down, Yanks come in and I think there was only three fighter runs off towards these mountains and of course nobody was supposed to know we were there and all this bulldust so about, things are going all right and all of a sudden Nips must have found out about us, so they come and blew the dust out of us, didn’t they. But they weren’t strong enough by then, you’ve got to remember by this time

half the Nips were evacuating everywhere and moving further up north. What did I say, it would be, it’d be late ‘43, very late ‘43, may have been early ‘44. I got me licence at Nadzab, so it was before that.

1st of February ’44, so it would be very late ’43 at Tsili Tsili and I think I told you before the 2/2nd Pioneers had reformed and they come up, they flew them into Tsili Tsili. I was still with old Bill and they said, “Oh well, you’re the youngest, so you can take them down to Nadzab.”

They were supposed to come down and they were going to bring troops in from the 9th Divvy I think to take Lae and I was going to take the 2/2nd Pioneers down and shoot them across the river to attack Nadzab, which was like all in the one area sort of thing, just one road to the other. But anyhow, I never had malaria all this time but all the blokes were falling down like flies with malaria but they put it down to when I had dengue fever on Ceylon, they filled me up with

Quinine and they reckoned the Quinine had stopped me from getting it all this time. And we were on those yellow things, the Atebrin and I don’t know what happened next thing, I know we got all the troops, I had to get them across the river first, we’ve got all the coons lined up and all the pioneers equipment that they had to carry and tucker, you name it we had it, there were a couple of 300 hundred coons, lined up, got ready to go, marched off and I woke up in the Yankee hospital.

I said, “Wait a minute, what am I doing here?” They said, “You flaked.” “How could I bloody flake?” They said, “Your natives brought you back again.” So I didn’t get to Nadzab, so I ended up in an American hospital there, that’s at Tsili Tsili. It wasn’t a hospital really, it was a bit like a canvas camp with doctors and orderlies and that but I come to there and they told me that I’d flaked out

on the track. I said, “What’s wrong with me?” And they said, “Only malaria,” and I said, “Oh well, everybody gets that.” And I went to sleep again and next thing I know I wake up again and I’m bloody red hot and I think what the hell, I’m in a fire but I’m on top of stretcher and this Yankee colonel is taking photos of me. They brought me up on a litter on top of a jeep, so apparently he’d take photos of that in different positions then they was holding me and then one bloke, there was only two of them, so he could

a look at me with his camera and apparently the bloke was too tall, so he put a shorter bloke there, so he could get his camera and I’m laying under the bloody sun on fire. I said, “What’s going on?” And he said to the bloke, “Oh he’s coming to, quick, just go down a little bit,” and the bloke went down that way and I went out on me head on this steel that they make the landing strip, all this strip lining

stuff. Next thing I woke up and I’m sitting not in the hospital but outside a hospital in Moresby and I’ve got me kitbag and I’ve got something else and I’m thinking what’s going on here. People are walking past me, what the bloody hell’s going on. The Yankees, apparently one of the blokes come out and says, “Are you coming in or are you going to stay there?” And I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “A couple of Yanks bought you down here in a jeep,” and they just put you here outside the hospital, they just put me on the step and left me there.

Apparently, there was a bit of a rush on, I don’t know whether it was historical or not, whether there was a big write up about it, I think it might have been hushed up. But apparently an American or a Liberator had taken off and the 7th Divvy were lined up in trucks and it had sprayed them and they’d all caught on fire or something outside in Moresby. I don’t know much about this because as I say I was half asleep and half (UNCLEAR) and of course the

hospitals were flat out with all the burns cases and that, apparently there was quite a lot of them. I don’t know whether it’s in the records or not. Of course they just shoved me under, that’s right I woke up, I kept going out all the time and coming back, anyhow they must have filled me up with Quinine or something cause I come to and I’ve got a bloody oxygen thing over me like a canvas thing with a plastic front and I thought there’s a bloody sheila there and there was, it was a nurse.

Anyhow, I said, “What’s been going on?” And she told me and said, “You had a bad case of malaria but you’re all right now though, we’ve fixed you up.” I thought fair enough, I came good and then I don’t know whether, first time I’d been to ANGAU headquarters at Moresby and I got a, I don’t know for sure, but I think they might have shot me out on leave back to

Australia. I think I come on leave anyhow, I know I came home once. And when I went back they shot me, I went back naturally to Moresby to headquarters and then they shot me from there to Nadzab where I was heading for. And of course old Bill is there and he’s got more bloody coons than you can shake a stick at. There’s people, I’ve never seen so many people. There was big American coons driving trucks, there was,

that’s right we was done, we had a big camp down the end of the strip, there must have been a thousand at least natives there working for the working bees. That’s right, then they started getting air raided, the strip was there and right down the end of it was the ANGAU camp with all the natives, so three air raids and we shifted over the other side. All they were doing was coming down the end of the strip and shooting up and then taking off.

Then we went over the other side of the camp. That’s right, it become real modernised. They even had about a mile and a half down the road they had a theatre, an American theatre because I tried to get some American natives to go back to the camp, put them up the back side, better not tell you what they said, I left them seated there. I wasn’t used to them, never seen an American Negro in my life before.

That’s right, then they done the road up from Nadzab to Lae, and that’s when I did see the American Negroes and they were the best truckies you’ve ever seen in your life. The only semi-trailers you seen here before the war were those big timber jinkers that used to go up the hills and bring back the timber. That’s the only semi-trailers you’d see around Melbourne. They were throwing these things around as if they were jeeps.

They were unreal, they could feel the road, I’m sure they could. That’s how I met them, first time I met them. What happened there, something, they gave me a licence to drive a jeep, that’d be ‘43 wouldn’t it, and cause they had us a personal boy and I used to take him a lot with me cause he could speak, some of the boys couldn’t speak

Pidgin, so I’d tell him, and he’d tell them. I was teaching him to drive while I was driving around, thought I may as well, better teach the boy something. So, we had a flat tyre didn’t we, going to a job one day, so I changed the tyre. Do you understand now? Yeah, yeah change the tyre, good. So I finally got him but I’d only let him go about a mile away from the camp because if he'd got out on the road with these big semis and that carrying all the junk up

cause until they built the strip at Lae this was the number one strip for the whole area and of course they were supplying it from the sea and that from Lae and this Yankee Negroes were powering up the road hundred mile an hour no worries, and anyhow I said, the boy come in one day and he said, “Master, truck, he broke down.” I said, “What do you mean it broke down?” He said, “I fix him but he no go.” He’d

changed the bloody wheel but he’d run out of petrol. He’d fixed it?

No, the boys as soon as they seen it, they just flashed, they were gone, I don’t know, we wouldn’t know there was a Jap plane coming and they’re heading for the bush. I’d say to everybody, “Get in the slit trenches.” “What are you talking about?”

Sure enough, as soon as you seen the natives heading for the scrub it was on. They were uncanny, really uncanny, had a feeling for them I think. I know I got into, he was a bloody sex maniac at (UNCLEAR) air force, like I was right in the side of the lake and I could see some boys over there in the other one, so I ran into the bush and I called out to them to come and I had to cross the strip to the other side and there was a slit trench over there, so I shot

them, they shot, they go like lightning and I just jumped in this trench and next thing I’m getting oh, oh, oh. Bloody air force officer behind me shaking me, he was frightened. I said, “Wait a minute.” I’ll never forget that. So I got out of the trench and said, “I’ll take a risk that the bloody Japs will get me.”

Nothing, he was shaking too much. Poor bugger. We got a few air-raids there but

then as I say the Japs were getting pushed well back now. I think they must have been cause after this, well after this, I ended up at Hansa Bay and there was about five fighter strips there, and I mean strips, the kunai, and they’d done the same as what we’d done at Tsili Tsili, all they’d done was cut the kunai down and by the time I’d got there the kunai’d grown again and there was about 50 planes there like in amongst the kunai but you couldn’t,

you’d have to get up in a helicopter or something to see them but you’d just walk around and I’d never seen so much equipment. And they also had there Chevrolets and American cars and English cars that they’d bought from Singapore. It must have been a real big Japanese area there. But as I say that was about another six months later at least.

Cause I worked around Nadzab, then I got attached to some American air force bases there, they said, “You’ve worked with the Yanks down at Tsili Tsili, you can go and look after them and see what they want because you know what they do and that.” That’s where I started to get all the cigarettes because at the end of every month they get three cartons of

cigarettes and two cigars I think it was, so I was on their list. I got a photo, the big photo out there, that’s one of their spotter, what do they call the planes that go up and take cameras and just take photos?

Yeah, they strip them down, take all their guns off them, so they can

get away fast and fit them out with cameras, so they just fly over enemy positions and take photos of enemy whatever, enemy stuff. Actually, I had two photos but Dot got her handbag pinched and the little photo I sent home that the Yank gave me got nicked. I got one out there, I was making a camp with some of me boys.

Where did I go from there? How the hell did I get out of Nadzab? I think I went on leave from Nadzab. They sent me up to pick up a Yankee pilot once and a message came back on the grapevine that the Yankee pilot was in place, he was spotter pilot,

spotted planes sorry, but he got into trouble. He wasn’t shot down or anything but he crashed landed up in the back of the scrub somewhere, three mountains away, you count by mountains and I brought him in cause he had, that’s right, I didn’t go on leave the first time, I didn’t go on leave until I got to Nadzab, I must have come back from the hospital to Nadzab, I was driving a jeep and then they sent me up to get this pilot bloke,

cause he gave me a beautiful set of binoculars and I mean a beautiful set, you’d pick up a Nip (UNCLEAR) at about 100 feet and I brought them home.

The pilot gave them to me. I said, “What are you going to take back?” He had some gear, I think he only had his revolver and I know he had a revolver cause I was thinking what’s he carrying that bloody thing around and there was something else

cause his plane had crashed and the natives had brought him to a village and we went to the village and just picked him up and brought him back again and he only had what he carried from the plane and he said, “You can have these,” and he gave me these, oh the case is that big. It only took us three days to get him back, no shooting

guns or anything like that, just go and find him, he’s lost in the mountains, they knew where he was cause from village to village they send word back. By the way, those glasses I took them home and gave them to Dad and said to Dad, “They’re American property,” and I said, “Put them in the wardrobe,” so he put them in the wardrobe till after the war sort of thing. Next thing, I get a letter from Dad saying one of me uncles, one of the Stonehouse, thought they might be worth a quid. So he took them trying to pawn them, didn’t he?

He done three months for having American property in his possession, something, words to that effect Dad said. What was his name, Stonehouse from Tassie, Basil, was it Basil? One of them. So he said, “You lost his glasses,” and I said, “Are you sure it wasn’t you, you old bugger?” He said, “No, I’m free.” I didn’t go on leave

from the hospital at all, I went back to Nadzab. I went on leave after, it had to be after Nadzab because I brought the what’s a name’s home. That’s right, I come home on leave, I did too, I come home on leave from Nadzab because they brought in if you’d been away for over twelve months you were supposed to get leave every

twelve months, they brought it in. I come home, I went back to Moresby and from Moresby they’d taken Madang, and I went from Moresby to Madang and my first job there was just unloading small vessels, not big ones, just like stuff that was taken up to the troops along the coast you know. Loaded up

or unloading or whatever coming back. We were unloading stuff from the big ships like they dropped it on the wharf and then putting into smaller ships to go up there. I was there for about a month or two, that’s right, it must have been ‘45 or very late ‘44 cause that’s the first time I heard of Curtain Skirter’s Cowboys. You heard of them? It was a civil construction corps, and Curtain

naturally come in to it and they called them Curtain Skirter’s Cowboys or some silly damn thing like that. But they were tradesman, carpenters, brickies and that and it was that quiet by then that they were building places like in places like Madang. I was only in Madang for about a month I’m guessing, Madang and then that’s

right, trying to think how went around, Madang then we went to Hansa Bay. Hansa Bay was the big one with all the planes and motorcars from Singapore.

You didn’t keep them that long, that was the trouble. See I had, the first boy I had was personal boy, was like from up in the mountains of New Guinea and he was all right, good boy, and

then when I went to hospital and I come back and I went to Nadzab then I got another boy but he’d been brought over from Rabaul by the Nips and used as slave labour to put it, used same as us only he didn’t get paid or half feed. He was a big boy and in fact he had plates of meat like that. You’d yell out of a morning, he was only about 16 or 17 or something, and you’d yell out, “Righto, where’s

that bloody hot water for a shave,” and that. He’d come running, put one foot on top of the other. I used to always go like that as soon as I’d seen him coming. He’d go over, used to take him two to three trips to get the hot water to you. He tried to over please, you know he was that happy getting away from the Nips, said, “They used to beat the hell out of him.”

Mmm, he said, “Oh no good.” Ask (UNCLEAR), no way. But he was a terrific kid.

I say he was only a kid really, grown up maybe 21, poor little bugger. Then something happened at Madang, I went bush. That’s right, some idiot colonel or captain or something, somebody told him that there was Nips up in the

mountains and we’d just vaccinated all our coons, you know when you put the stuff on and scratch it with a needle, vaccinations or whatever, and we’d done all our, Bill and I’d done all our boys, that couldn’t be at Madang, anyhow this bloke got the idea that there was Japs up in the hills, so he was going to take a battalion up in there, he was going to

carry on like. Bill said, “You’re the youngest, off you pop,” he passed the buck, he was a terrific bloke. So we’d just done the coons and you never had a vaccination, have you for small pox? That’s what it was, leaves a round ring on your arm. I had two of them. But you get a lump under your arm and it aches like buggery, you’ve got to more or less walk around with your arm

up, it’s like a tender lump. We ended up having a blue with one of the lieutenants, one of the under the Colonel bloke. I said, “Look at my poor bloody coons, they’d just been vaccinated,” and of course they’re carrying ammunition and tucker for all these infantry blokes and of course one slip down and off comes the scab and it’s running. In the finish, he said, “You’re not going back, I’ve got to take my coons back.”

So he went and seen this colonel, the colonel was going to put me on a charge over that. Nothing happened over it. That’s right, we went through one village, a German missionary had been there before the war, and there was a case like one of those with a lift up lid, wooden case, it was three quarters full of stamps. Stamps, you know little things. Three.

I put me hand in there and said, “He must’ve hidden something in here.” Nothing in there bar stamps. If you’d been a stamp collector. But they were from all over the world, how the hell they got to him. He’s up back of beyond. They’d have to go to a place like Madang or somewhere like that, then they’d have to be carried like by boy or how else could they get them up there in the mountains? Well, he’d have to have his supply line, of course he would.

You’ve never seen so many stamps, honestly just stamps. He’d gone, he disappeared. Alien camps somewhere back here in Australia.

Well, all our blokes

that I’d seen they was wrapped in them. You had your blues with them but that was only when they first come in, like Kanakas, bush boys. They’d come in and you’d get a little skinny thing about this high and all he’d want to do was just sit down, you know on their haunches on the ground. Tell you what, you had him for twelve months and you had a bloke this tall and he’s telling you what to bloody do. Not really but that’s how good. They just

like, they were well fed, honestly. On our Salamaua track, the ANGAU natives were better fed than what the soldiers were and I can say that with no worries at all. They got biscuits, they got rice, they got bully beef. We’d give then two bob for a tin of bully beef. Other parts, I wouldn’t be able to know, I wouldn’t have a clue but that’s

for sure on the way to Salamaua, you’d bet a quid on it. I can’t think of anything else up there.

I don’t know.

No but there was big bushfires in ‘39 because I remember Coles brought out silk shirts with zip fasteners

silk, what zip fasteners, modern times, two and six for a shirt down at Coles in Smith Street, Fitzroy. And the aunty had a boarding house in Victoria Parade, it’s gone now, with about ten or twelve rooms and they had a little, down the back you sort of went down on an angle like that and there was rooms down the back where the horse and carts used to park like in the old days and I’m pretty sure that Mum and Dad were boarding

up there because Aunty Linda had this place and Aunty Tweedy was there and Jack Lewis I know cause he’d just got a job on the silver tops driving a ‘38 Chev, I think I remember because it was silk, that was swell. There was Jack and another chap from Tassie both working on silver tops.

Yeah, this would be early ‘39, middle,

early to middle ‘39. Dad couldn’t drive then and he didn’t get a job. That’s right, he was rigging, he was working as a rigger then where they were doing the big tanks for Shell out over the river in the Footscray area. As you go over the Westgate Bridge, now if you look down hard on your left there’s these big Shell petrol tanks, oil tanks well he was working on that because Uncle Jack was working on the silver tops

as I said and Dad said, “Come down here.” He said, “You’ll get a job, put your name down as a rigger, it’s worth a quid, double what you get on the cabs.” Uncle Jack said, “Oh no, I’m not a rigger,” and Dad said, “You don’t have to be, just come down and I’ll show you.” All you have to do is climb up walls and all that junk. So ended up the two of them were working down there as riggers. And Uncle Lal, he was from Tasmania but he stayed on the silver tops. I used to love to go out and just sit in the cars.

But Dad joined the army from there because the bushfires, when did the war start? In December, it was late, wasn’t it?

Well it must have started before the bushfires, there was big bushfires in ‘39 and I remember all the write ups about people getting burned to death and all that up in the hills where all the timber used to come from, I can’t think of the name and that’s when I bought that shirt cause

I put it on, I couldn’t wait, just went around the corner in a lane and tore me old shirt off and put this thing on. Walking back up Victoria Parade, I got burnt from there like from my shelve to shelve from the hot wind and apparently the silk. I was red raw when I got home with this beautiful shirt. That came off. That’s right, Dad, before Dad went in the army he tried to cut a limb down in this backyard,

there was some big trees, it was a decent sized block by the way this house, and it was actually three storeys. There was a storey underground that went down to the yard, there was a storey there, there was wash houses and that down there and there was another storey like at Victoria Parade level and then there was an other storey up the top, so there was a lot of rooms like a rabbit warren. In them days people couldn’t afford to rent houses

and that, so they’d just have a room and an ice chest on the landing. Leave your shilling on the ice chest or your six pence or whatever and you’d get a block of ice delivered to you. I know that because I done a shop after the war, I done an ice round. Dad fell out of the tree. I’ll never forget it because first thing Mum run down and she opened his mouth and took his teeth out. I said, “What are you doing that for?” And she said, “It’s always the first thing you do if someone falls down unconscious, if they’ve got false teeth you take them out.”

That’s where I learnt that.

Yeah, of the war, may have started. Dad didn’t go in until 1940 like when he joined the army, so it could have been late ‘39 then, the war may have even started. That’s right, he joined the army from there. I’m trying to think where Jack joined it from.

Oh yeah, he’d just knocked himself out, that’s all.

That’d be late ‘39 just before the bushfires or around then you know. I was trying to think of how uncle Jack got up there because Uncle Jack used to live down in Rose Street Fitzroy, oh no that was in 1937 because I stayed at Uncle Jack’s and Aunty Tweedy’s next door to the Moonee Valley Hotel in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy because I backed the

(UNCLEAR) in 1937, I had six pence each way on it. And they used to have what they call one armed bandits on the counters of the bar. Say there’s the till and the bookie there and the bookie had his sheet underneath the till, so if you went and had six pence each way he pulled the sheet out and write down six pence each way and went and pushed it back under. And next to that again was a, I used to call them fruit machines, I think they got barred during the war or something.

It’s like the things you press a button now. A slot machine?

But as I say this was 1937 and of course I put six pence in it and I won seven and six, which was yippee, yippee doo, you know. The trump won and I went with Dad somewhere, Aunty Linda was living out in Fairfield before she got the big boarding house and I went out to Aunty Linda’s and he says, “I’ve got about, I think

it was the same seven and six I’d won on six pence each way on Trump.” I said, “Oh, let it ride two bob millionaire, let it ride on the Melbourne Cup.” Wouldn’t want to know it, it won that too but that was months later. Aunty Linda married a chap called Blake and I think they owned half of Werribee at one time but they were larrikins. The two boys come back from the First World War, that was somebody else, I did know in the army, and they were both gassed,

Bill and um, Bill and uncle, anyhow. Blakes. They owned a big block and the boys, when they come back from the war they lost all the money cause they’d buy a motor car, it’d break down and they’d just leave it by the side of the road and go into town and buy another one, they were two bob millionaires. They lost all the land that they had down there but they still had blocks of land up in Fairfield, out Heidelberg Road, Fairfield on your right hand

side.

Well, he was born in 1898, so actually I think the limit was 39 or 40, I’m not sure,

He was 42 but he put his age down to 38 I think it was, yeah because you had to be under 40.

That’s what I told them and of course I got called up

in that Universal Trainees. I don’t know how I got called up because the only reason they had the same date that I’d told the sergeant at the recruiting barracks. Unless something happened along the line, I honestly don’t know. But as I say I got called up, in fact there’s a photo in me pay book of the uniform that I had on with the colour patch of the Broadmeadows camp, you know.

I just grabbed it, I thought beauty newk,

I can get in this way, I’ll get in that way. It was just an easy way of getting in.

Oh, to catch up with Dad. More or less. It was the only way I could go about it. But all the young kids, everybody wanted to be in the army. It was unreal. Some of them that got in, there’s a photo of little Titch there somewhere and Titch couldn’t even fire

a gun. He was about that high, wait to you see the photo of him, you can see him standing there, he’s got no finger. So he used to use the gun like this, and the gun was bigger than what he was. But I’ve got a photo of him in the Middle East.

In the finish they took anyone but some of these blokes I think

enlisted up the bush and that and the local doctor all right and passed them and that’s how they got in. But at first they were very strict at first. But nothing really happened, they were going that well, Aussies take the western desert, Aussies charging, what was they signing, what’s that one the girl sang somewhere

over the rainbow, “Oh we’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz,” they sang that apparently as they charged up the desert. Course you hear these things, don’t you and take them with a grain of salt.

Yeah, I don’t think, I’m trying to think, I think Dunkirk was, although when I went in don’t forget Dunkirk’s over

and Tobruk was just about starting, they were coming back the desert then, not going up it, they were coming back. But all the young blokes, every young bloke, the blokes that were under aged wanted to get in and some of the ones over age didn’t want to get in.

Go away and see what the outside world was like.

You had no other hope of getting there, no way in the wide, wide world would you go overseas. I don’t know. Jack’s going, oh yeah I’m going too, oh yeah Bill’s going, I’m going too. It was just around, I can’t think of any young bloke around me that didn’t want to go, oh except for one bloke. When I was in the Universal Trainees,

they said, “We’ve got to take so many trucks up to Darwin.” This is well before the Japs or anything like, whether it was March or April. It’d have to be February or March in 1941 and it was only like an outpost – Darwin. One bloke said, “Oh, you’re not gonna send me up to Darwin,” like he was only going bush in a sense. I think in them days

you couldn’t drive to Darwin. We were supposed to drive to a spot and put the trucks on a train and that would take you to the other place, then you’d take them off and drive the rest of the way. There was no road up there at the time, not right through from Adelaide to Darwin. You’d have to check on that for me.

I wouldn’t have a clue. He was one of our mates, Browny. We got drunk one day and we were out in Prahran, living in Surrey Road, Prahran,

and he lived in a big two storey, big, great two storey place, there’s a row of them, and you went in and there was the stairs going up that way and there was a big glass window and then it come back up towards the front. The rooms was about 15 feet high, so it’d be 30 feet minimum from to the floor to top ceiling really and we was half whacked fiddling around in Chapel Street or something,

we’re going up and Browny had shot through, didn’t go back to Broadmeadows cause he thought we was going the next week. We weren’t going for another two months or something. So we’re knocking on his door and someone said, “Who’s there?” And we said, “We’re the provos, we’re looking for Private Brown.” Crash, he come down the stairs and went through the window and jump on a lean-to against the back of the house, on to that roof and out the back and we never seen him again.

I’ll never forget that. Allan was going with, Allan was sweet on one of his sisters at the time. Poor old Browny.

I wouldn’t have a clue. At that time I was a raving ratbag kid or sort, more or less. Walking around selling

bicycle seats at that age. Of course it was like you were going, oh yeah going over there, beauty newk, you know number one.

Not then, things had really come easy then.

Really came good. See before the war, like in the Depression part itself, as soon as you got to eighteen you got the sack.

Course that was it, no family man, nobody twenty-one or over could have, unless they were in a good trade and their relation owned the factory or something. They had to be real good tradesmen or been in there permanently cause I went to Horsfall’s twice and he said, “How are old ya?” I said, “Seventeen.” I wasn’t, I was only about fifteen at the time

but I was a big kid, so I said, “Seventeen,” cause I thought I’d only be there for like what they call a summer run or whatever and when I turned eighteen, boom out. That’s right, I went there after the fruit season because I worked at Roselle in the tin shop. When I went there, they said, “Have you had any experience in the tin shops?” I said, “Yeah, I worked at the Rosella but the fruit season’s over,” so they put me on. They still had a run on,

I don’t know what it was for cause they told me. Anyhow, in March they gave me the sack cause I turned eighteen and I got about thirty-two and six a week instead of about twenty-five bob or whatever. And then the next year I went there. They used to make like Christmas tins and that before Christmas, I’m trying to get my times right cause there was a rush on for biscuit tins and chocolate tins and fancy

stuff that you give away at Christmas time and the Rosella went right through to fruit season. Anyhow, I went there the next year and the bloke looked at me and said, “Oh yeah, how old are ya?” I said, ‘Seventeen,” oh yeah, be same again next bloody year, you’ll be seventeen again won’t ya? But the next year, I didn’t go back, I was sixteen then and seventeen the next year, so I went in the army sort of thing. But everybody like wherever you went, if you was under eighteen

you got a chance of getting a job, over eighteen, “Sorry mate, cost too much.” In the Thurston’s nut and bolt factory, I didn’t tell you about work there. That was a, fairly good summer job too, no good in the winter time cause your hands got too cold. You used to put nuts on bolts, used to get a shilling a thousand, just putting nuts on bolts, work that one out. They sat in a big tin lined, what would you call it, big opening like

that with sides coming down and in the centre you had a little wheel going around but it was serrated, so that it would grab a nut. So you’d have a pile of nuts there and a thing would come with an overhead lift and it would tip the bolts into your bin as you called it and just one, two, three. You got used to it after a time and you just flicked the backwards. But the girls were over in another part of the factory and they used to do all the very small nuts and bolts.

Quarter inch and all that.

No, that was a good one cause you used to get a shilling a thousand. But even there, apparently the pay rate you didn’t make enough to be eighteen, they did have jobs there for boys eighteen but they were on a lathe. A chap used to set a lathe up and they used to put the treads on the bolts. The lathe was

put a bolt in, flick the lathe and it would chuck it out the side and put another one in. But while I was there they brought a thing from America, what do you call it, it drops everything down the bottom and up in the middle, it came like a hollow thing like, and it tipped the bolts with their heads facing down and an arm grabbed them and nutted them. So we lost our jobs, didn’t we? They done the girls

first cause they made them for the little nuts and bolts and then they brought up to the end where we were. But I already left by then but I seen them putting them in. And knitting mills, I used to go there in the wintertime cause it was a warmer job. That was, the Jews were coming out from America and that and they were finding them jobs cause I was working on a great big wheel went around that used to rip the

wool, you put the wool in bulk and it would spit it across and sort of go slowly up and it’d go through two teeth, had a name for it, teaser, I think they called it a teaser and it used to tease the wool and it’d blow it back into a room behind and they’d take it out and put it through a carting machines and all that, they had all the machinery there. But I was working in there and then they took me out of that and they put in an elderly Jewish chap that had come

like from you know overseas and they put me outside and they were showing how to do, I think they called it a carting machine that used to make the, it would put the wool together and put it on a bobbin, how does that sound? So I ended up out there and that was another job if you were eighteen and doing that and you were good at it, you stayed on. But we were making wool blankets, army blankets before the war started in

1939 cause I remember they used to put on them 99% wool, made by knitting mills, Richmond, 99.9% wool. I can still remember that cause I remember thinking they’re going to have a big army here somewhere, they’re all army blankets.

Somebody must have thought something about it. This was early 1939, this is winter, this is before the war started.

The big skipping girl sign was just down from us down in Victoria Street.

No, no such thing. Might have been paper talk but who reads the paper? Who was going to spend a penny on a paper? You’re joking.

Well he was a rigger, he put himself down as a rigger. First of all,

he went and seen, he was the first one I seen to make, you know they call them Hills Hoist, he was the first one to make them before Hills was born, Burt, he was a blacksmith anyhow for the council or for the susso, he was a permanent blacksmith and he used to sharpen the picks and shovels and all that

for the blokes that were working on the susso but he made a Hills Hoist, now that would be 1938 but it was the same as a Hills Hoist but he had it linked to his, so if his wife came out and said, “Put the washing on, turn the tap,” not the one that went into the sink but another one that had a pipe going down, and it was hydraulic to lift the hoist up. I seen that cause I was only, I’d be fifteen then,

yeah I’d be fifteen or sixteen cause I used to go and sometimes they’d give me a beer if I went over there cause they used to take two bottles and every Sunday they used to meet, his daughter married a carpenter.

Yeah, he was the blacksmith that Dad used to work with. Dad was talking to him about joining the army and he said, “What you want to do is join the engineers but have a trade.”

So he taught Dad how to make a pair of pliers, not like electricians pliers, those like that they use for pulling out nails and that and that was the trade test to be a blacksmith. Dad had shod horses in Tassie and that and he’d done, shod horses all his life more or less since he was little and he worked with this blacksmith and he had a good idea of the goings on but that

I don’t know how about but he ended up joining as a rigger cause that’s what it says on his discharge paper. I always thought he’d join as a blacksmith till I seen that, something must have happened along the line. But I know Burt, was his name Burt? He used to live off the parade in Carlton, I can’t remember his name.

Somebody had to go and said, “What are you joining for you silly old so and so?” and he said, “Well I’ve had a good life.” I thought to myself well you’ve had a good life but you had to get on a boat to go to this job and boat to go to that job and boat to go to that job, backwards and forwards, good God unreal.

Not really, I don’t know how he came to join but he said I missed out on the last one, I remember

him saying that. They was all having a shot at him but Uncle Jack, nobody thought he’d join the army, but Uncle Jack, he went in as a rigger too, neither of them were riggers really, they was only working on the Shell, working on those tanks and put themselves down as riggers and said, “Well that’s fair enough, we’re riggers, aren’t we?”

Not really, they were just known as miners more than anything, they were called sappers but they were more or less known as miners and tradesmen of sorts. We had bricklayers, an ordinary private would get five bob but if you were a bricklayer you’d get seven and six, not that, all you’re doing is marching round in circles, sloping arms,

but you still got seven and six, or six and six? You got extra pay anyhow. Different trades got different pays, carpenters would get seven and six or whatever cause that’s what you were supposed to be doing, building things or repairing and that sort of thing.

Bailey – b, a, i, l, e, y. I know it backwards.

You wanted to get people across from this side of the river to the other. That’s what it was used for.

They used it for trucks, yeah you could get trucks on them. It was sectionised, it was pieces and they clicked together and you’d get ten blokes on this side and ten on that side and you’d run it out sort of thing. But the only time

as I said, I ever seen it or used it was Marley in Egypt, it was only on practise run. They had one there, I don’t know whether they had any more or not but I never see ‘em.

Well they come out on the trucks, they bring them out on trucks. If an army’s retreating, they blow the bridges up, so naturally you bring along your Bailey bridge and put it where the bridge was, so it stays on the same road and all, that sort

of thing. The span, I often think of it now and say how long was that damned thing? What would it cover? I don’t know cause I only seen one once. All this about Bailey Bridges for this and all that. I think the engineers put one over just up from Swan Street Bridge, not Swan Street Bridge, St Kilda

Road, what do they call it? They put one just up from that anyhow – nearly the botanical gardens. They put one across there for some, it wasn’t the centenary but it was only a few years back and I meant to go in a have a look at the damn thing and I didn’t get in there.

Oh yeah, “Got any money and I’ll shout you a drink,” yeah.

he gave me a drink all right. Goat’s milk and bloody raspberry juice in a Lady Blamey and he said, “Here are, cheers to Lady Blamey.” I said, “Lady Blamey?” They used to get the beer bottle and they’d have a hot iron and make a ring like a circle, put it over the top of the beer bottle and get the glass as hot with the red hot iron, put it on there and then just pour water and bang, it’d cut it off clean like you just took the top of the bottle

and you had the big part of the bottle as a pot and they called them Lady Blamey’s.

Naturally. I don’t know, wouldn’t have a clue. That was already named by the time I got there, Lady Blameys.

No, he was paying. Like David and Dawn, what do you call them? He had to pay money to Mum.

Whereas I, as a single is getting five and six a day getting put into me pay book but Dad had to pay about, he’d get about one and six a day I think. Maybe less, I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing. But of course he’d have no money naturally by the time he’d bought his tobacco and whatever. And of course he’d been on leave in Haifa or somewhere, hadn’t he?

Yeah, he said, “How much money have you got?” straight away.

Fun and games.

He was always broke Dad, he was a mad gambler, he was always broke.

Chasing sheilas I suppose, that’s about the only thing

I can think, well I was anyhow, Dad wasn’t cause he was, but I busted me elbow when I was a kid and I got a job at, I can’t think of the name, there was a tin shop in town right up the top end up past the Victorian Market, I can’t think of the name but anyhow, I was playing Cowboys and Indians when I was knee high to a grasshopper when we were over in Melbourne on one of our trips

and I was chasing another kid and I hit me elbow on a rock and me arm went straight down. So I’d broken the bones in here somehow. They took me up to, Mum took me up to Digby, the chemist in Swan Street, Richmond, up past Richmond House, he was the local, anything broken or done you went and seen him. So he got some sticky tape and he put me wrist on me shoulder and he taped me round and round and round,

he said, “That will heal.” So off we go to Tassie, don’t we? We were supposed to go back to see him a month later and take off the bandage or whatever but off we go to Tassie. So in Tassie, we went to the Launceston General Hospital and Mum said, “The man fixed his arm up in Melbourne but we had to come over here cause Dad got a job somewhere,” and they took me in there and said, “Oh yes.” So they took the tape and it

had what do you call it, knitted but like that. So he said, “Now what I want you to do, see that thing over there,” he put me arm on his leg somehow but it was awful because he had it that side somehow and he had his right leg up and he said, “Now you see that thing over there,” and I said, “Yeah, what’s that?” and bang, he broke it. He said, “That’s they only thing I can do to mend it properly.” He strapped it down that way. He said

“Now what I want you to do is, just use your right hand all the time and lift things.” He said, “It’ll come good.” Naturally we went down to the farm, so here I am carrying one bucket at a time, instead of one in each hand, I’m carrying one back to the dairy to get the cream. It come real good and was all right for a while. We come back to Melbourne, gone back to Tassie

come back to Melbourne again and I was working, one of the first jobs I’d had too it was. It was a tin shop, don’t know why, just have been attracted to tin, and they had like boxes on wheels and they put the tins in them to take them, you done something to them here and you take them over there and I was pulling this and something went click. The bone stuck on my funny bone. So after doing loop to loop and what’s a name they,

one of the blokes had a car and took me into the old Royal Melbourne [Hospital], which became the Queen Vic [Victoria Hospital], which became defunct and they cut it open and they took the little bits of bone out that, when this bloke broke it, they was just floating around and one of them had got jammed in there. The army, in fact I think it’s on my discharge I got a hole in my right arm or something, or a scar on my right arm. So that was that, you can see the difference in my hands, that one’s been like that

for a

I’d be about fourteen, fifteen. One of me first jobs, so I’d have to be fourteen cause as I say, I was running around from job to job when you first start off. But it was somewhere where there was a quid or whatever.

Not much, there was nothing else to get up to.

See I remember there was no beer at the training camp at Gaza, so like Dad said, “He’d shout a drink after I gave him a quid,” but I can’t remember where the bloody beer we got when we went on leave.

Oh you know lots of things. Running here and running there

and hiding here and hiding there.

You’d be with blokes from the Kiwis, you’d met the Poms and either drink with them or fight with them – one of the two, it was always just drinking or fighting. I remember when I was on leave in Beirut, I was trying to get in to, two boys from the pioneers that I was on leave with said, “We’ll meet you back at this café,” and I said, “Fair enough.” So I come back in a gharry, you know like those horse and cart with a big dip and you open a little door

at the side and jump in. And I come back as full as a family pay, whatever and I’m getting out and there’s four Red Caps outside, Pommy provos outside this café, and I get out and they say, “Where are you going?” I said, “Going in here,” and they said, “No, you’re not,” and picked me up and threw me back in the gharry, threw me back three times. Finally I said, “Bugger this, I’m getting hurt, drive on.” Apparently there was a big blue in there between the Aussies and the Pommies.

Just as well I didn’t get it, I’d have got my head kicked in. But that’s all you done, you just went around from place to place whatever.

Oh it’s a long story really, I’ve got one sheila’s address in there, Maria Horobo. Yes, she was in Beirut, French girl, she worked in a, in fact I bought films off her.

Took her out a couple of times. I should have rubbed it out of there too but it’s in ink.

I just went in and changed some films. I must have looked like I had money because she went out with me a couple of times.

More or less pictures or something silly like that because I don’t think, she didn’t drink. I had to go and meet her family, she said, “I’m not going out with you because Mum and Dad said not to go with any Australians, they know what they’re like.” So I had to go and meet her parents and they said, “All right, you can take her to there, you can do this but you don’t do that.” Fair enough, so I did that, did what they told me.

But only as I say, we called in there, was only in there three days for on our way back, don’t know what the hell we stayed there for so long to tell you the truth but one of the elder chaps had a clock he’d had for years while he was in the army and he took that in, we didn’t have much money when we went through that time, that’s right, and he sold his clock and of course the three of them knocked off to the local and what he says

“You comin?” “Nup, I got to see a sheila down at the photographer shop,” so I got out of that one.

Three guesses, what would you sell your famous clock for? They said, “They got a quid for it too,” it was an old wind up clock. Sell anything. Before we left the tank traps

when I was on the tank trap we had a, all the seamen had Pommy uniforms on up there and they had all our gear, like our kitbags, we were all still down at what’s a name, well they gave us, so we had a big jumble sale on the top of a tank trap out the back of track selling to the wogs and what have you. We did have a quid then that day.

Yeah, boozing and carrying on. Well that’s what the Frenchman said anyhow but I didn’t believe a word he said. Would you?

Yes when we was on the Queen Lizzie they issued us with, they used to call French letters, what do you call them, condoms I think you call them now, they gave us with about four or five

each and they lectured us on diseases, the doctor would say, “50 today and 50 tomorrow.” Even in the mess hall they had a big meeting in there about it, be careful of this and that. That’s right, they had a newspaper on the Queen Lizzie, just the Queen Elizabeth News,

and there was a poem in it about blondie and the balloons. Well blondie, there was a girl going around and around the Queen Lizzie while she was in the harbour waving to us and we’re waving back and somebody got the bright idea, he’d write a letter home and tell Mum about the big ship and all this. Wrote a letter, blew up one of the French letters and over the side. Oh that’s a good idea and next thing you know there’s French letters floating all around the bloody ship, so they made a poem about this blondie

and the balloons. She was going around and busting them and taking the letters out, they hadn’t been used, they weren’t second hand. I lost that damn thing, had a fire down in Primrose Street where we used to live and I had two kitbags cause when you got and somebody’s going to shoot at you, they take your kitbag off you and put it back at base more or less and sometimes you bypassed it, you know come home on

leave in shorts and shirts and something would happen and your kitbag’s at Moresby and you’re down in Melbourne and then you’ve got to do this, so they give you another uniform and you get kitted out again, so I ended up with two, Dad ended up with two kitbags. After the war, we got a letter to say that your kitbag is in Victoria Parade at the bottom of the hill there used to be, come down the hill towards the,

before the brewery and on the same side and on the corner of a street that went to your left, there was an army store there and you went in and gave your licence or something to show who you were and this is about two years after the war and you got your kitbags back.

Not really. See the blokes that were doing the handling were nearly all ex-miners and that as I say, all tradesmen of some sort, but as I say Blackie, he was supposed to be a miner, you know that was his job in Western

Australia. But that was here in Greta, NSW, just playing, bang bang. I can’t really remember anybody getting hurt, there was a few close calls like you know a misfire here. When we was making a tank trap, making the tank trap I should say, the only one I ever worked on, you’d jackhammer right down as far as you could go and then you’d

put say about a quarter to a half plug of gelignite, you’d drop that down the hole and that would go bomp and it would make a bit of a hollow, so you could put as much as you like down there, and then you make a line say 6, 7, 8, 9, maybe 10 at a time on a length. Then you’d light that fuse and I think they brought out an instantaneous one too, I don’t remember using it though, ours was nearly all done by fuse work.

You’d try and get the fuses to all go off together like, if you could like by the length of them, you’d light them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or whatever and then go for walkabout and come back and of course they’d go woof and you’d already cut the face down and that was a little bit deeper, so it’d give it another little bit of a hollow down at the bottom plus blow the face off, then get the shovels out and start chucking the dirt back over. Then when the tanks came over they had like a brick wall

more or less right in front of them. Then there’d be a bit of a hill and go up and go down and boom and they had no hope of getting out. Course they overcome that finally, they made tanks, so that the tank had a deep hollow underneath it and one tank would go up and another tank would just go over the top of it. So they told me, I never saw it of course. But that was the idea then and I made pill boxes behind, so they could put machine guns or whatever in it.

There was a few you know misfires and you’d say keep away from that and sneak up and drop a quarter plug something to set off what was left in there anyway, in case the fuse was damaged. But I honestly can’t think of anyone, only thing some brainless idiot got the idea that you cut down coconut trees and the grounds level and you could put an airstrip in there.

Six years later, when you’ve cut down twenty trees. But we started up trying to do that, must have been Colombo and Galle Face, they said, “We’re going to get you to help us build an airstrip,” some bloke had worked it out. But we were meant to cut down the coconut trees. Good God. If they had chainsaws it would have been

a beauty, no hope because the coconut tree goes into the ground and it’s just fibre, fibre, fibre. There’s thousands of fibres around it holding it in. And even if you blew it, it’s still just bits of wood hanging on to bits of wood, hanging on to bits of wood. You could keep it up for three days. And I should imagine if a plane comes in to plane on that and you’ve got softer ground, then a hard lump, then softer ground it’d tear his wheels off.

That was in New Guinea, yeah but this was in Ceylon. But the native had elephants, when we cut the trees down, we cut them into that section and that section, just big enough for an elephant to put his trunk in and pull it up on his what’s a names and take it away out of the road. I think we cut down about half an acre before they woke up we’d be there for ten years. But one day, a bull elephant they started up

the old compressor, we finally got that, that was in Ceylon, the one that we had up in Syria. Course I told you before all our gear went to India and we went to Ceylon, so we had no ammunition, nothing. But when our gear came to us, we got our old compressor and we was using the compressor there to try and make a hole in the middle of it and put a charge in and blow it. But as I said,

it just spread out, it all stuck together, so you’re going around with little axes cutting all these – stupid idea. But when they started the compressor up, the bull elephant went berserk, never seen natives disappear so quick, peow. I said, “What’s going on?” One of the English blokes that was there, one of the English (UNCLEAR) said, “The bull elephant’s gone, we’d better go and hide,” so we did. I don’t know what happened,

I think it just disappeared over amongst the trees somewhere, thank goodness. But I said to Cyril, “Why would it go wild, was it male female business?” He said, “No, no, that bloody old compressor you’ve got there, when you started it up, it frightened Christ out of him.”

Yes, at Hansa Bay

I was supplying, I was on me own for a while and then old Bill, thank goodness, he came up there, and where I had coons more or less sleeping under trees he said, “Don’t stop here, this is the wrong place for the natives,” and he went out to a point and he organised them properly cause I wouldn’t have had a clue what I was doing. He had them, next thing I know, he’s got rows of nice huts and we got out on the point with no smell or anything

cause we were right on a beach, not a beach really, an endless coral, it’s about seven or eight feet under water and when the tide goes out you can walk out for about half a mile of salted coral with holes in it or fish in it, water snakes. He was the chap, other than him I’d have been walking around in circles like a stung WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK , he knew what he was doing, he’d handled natives for twenty years or more.

Course, I know at the same place, at Hansa Bay, there was a lot of stuff from Singapore, there was ships and cars and all that but there was also quite a lot of Japanese stuff like plus their aeroplanes and there was a little motor and it was a 4WD [four wheel drive] like the same as a jeep only nothing like a jeep, it had a V nose and round back but it only had a,

have you seen an American motorbike? They’ve got like a V motor and that’s all that was in them, exactly the same size as Harley Davidsons but it was just like it had been taken out of a motorbike and put in. It was a terrific little thing.

I could say to twenty coons, “Go down there and start doing that, and I’ll come down and see you later,” and another thirty go down and see that bloke and help him do this and so on and then I could jump in this thing and run around them instead of walking. You wouldn’t want to know, some officer seen it, I went somewhere, that’s right, I could send the coons up on their own to supplies the boys that I was attached to, 3rd Division,

or 5th Division? Infantry blokes, but they were to stay this side of the Ramu River but they bought the 6th Division back for a second time or 17th Brigade? And they went up to Wewak and they were to keep the Japs contained between the river and the what have you. But naturally they kept attacking, didn’t they? But these boys weren’t allowed to go across the river, just keep Japs contained in that area but we were supplying them. Like you’d walk up today,

take their tucker and that up and walk back tomorrow. If they had any crook blokes, they wouldn’t be wounded, they’d all be just sickies. But they told us, they had one bloke up there that was crook and to send somebody up like with the natives to organise it because they were trying to tell them to bring the bloke back. “Tell him to bloody walk back.” What was wrong with the poor bugger was he had like an appendicitis pain, one where he couldn’t lay down, coons wanted to lay him down and he couldn’t lay down, that was the

argument. So it come back on the wireless cause they had a line up to them, “Would you please send somebody up here to show these bloody natives what to do or whatever?” So I went up there and all I done was got them to make a sit up, so he could sit up straight. As long as he could keep his tummy without straightening it, he was all right. So it only took us about a day I suppose to get him back. But that’s about the only time I had to go up there.

Might have been a couple of times but usually the coons did it themselves, they knew what they were doing, they’d just make a stretcher, throw the bloke on and bring him back. But they had to come back, to get up there the shortest way was across the pock pock hole, like there was a bit of a creek but it widened out and in this particular spot there was a big tree, and I mean a big tree, as big as the one we had cut down the back yard here, and

how wide it would be guess, anyhow no worries of falling off, you could walk straight across cause they had four of them carrying this bloke and they had to put it to two to come across the pock pock hole. He said, “What’s the idea?” I said, “It’s the pock pock hole, we’ll carry you across but I can only put two on, but don’t move cause it’s full of pock pocks.” “What’s a pock pock?” “A crocigator.” “What’s a crocigator?” “I’m not

sure, there’s an alligator or a crocodile, it’s one of them.” Poor bugger is sitting up there, he forgot about his stomach. Once you get across the pock pock hole, you was only about an hour’s walk and you were back in the camp.

Oh yeah, they were friends, neighbours, all the time. Dozens of them.

All sorts.

I was writing Her Majesty a letter one night and I had a little kitten, the kitten must have been left over from the old camps but it was only, like from the people during the war or maybe the Nips had them, I don’t know. But that was outside Madang, Bill was there too, he organised the huts for the coons and

out on the peninsula again cause I think he used to make them do their business in the soda water, in the sea sort of thing to keep the camp clean. I was writing Dot a letter and there was two young blokes come up from one of the infantry battalions, they’d only just joined ANGAU and I’d only been in for about twelve months when they came in, and I was writing Dot a letter and I got all these

papers from the Red Cross from one of the battalions, and I’m writing Dot a letter and this little kitten’s hooking me, little bugger, I grabbed it and put it on me lap. And here’s a snake beside me and I’d never seen snakes, this was in the evening, not in the day time, what’s a snake doing around that time of night? And he’s eying this little kitten off and I said to this bloke over there, “Quick, there’s a bloody snake right beside.” Biting me nails.

He said, “Ah, don’t be so bloody silly.” He wouldn’t take any notice of me. I’ve got the kitten and I didn’t know what to do. I said, “Have a look under the table, please.” He said, “Jesus, there’s a snake there.” I’m sweating, I’d lost about half a stone by this time. But all it was doing was trying to look for the kitten, it didn’t come right up to me, it was there. What did he do, he done something, ah that’s right,

there was only dirt under the table, we didn’t have any floors in this hut, anyhow he kicked something at it and it went back and when it went back, me and the kitten went. It was right there, I don’t know how long it’d been there. But I’ve never seen a snake wandering around at night. This was like a hut, just had sides and like a leaf side and where it come from God knows.

He’d get through the leaves anyhow.

No, that’s they only one I ever seen really. A lot of the boys in the Middle East and that would have a dog and somebody had, mostly dogs that I seen. Although our cook in Colombo had a damned monkey in the kitchen, monkey poop everywhere, there was a big blue there. Two choices, he went or the monkey went. The monkey went.

That’s about the only ones that I can remember.

I don’t know, it stayed in the camp. I wouldn’t have a clue. Coons might have eaten it in the finish I suppose.

No,

only that bad tucker on the way to Salamaua, that was the worst. That’s the worst tucker I’ve ever ate anywhere.

That dehydrated stuff. Like your stomach just turned and turned and you just fluffed and fluffed. Sounds silly but that’s all it done, burned, burned your tummy out.

No, our first meal at what’s a name though,

we was all standing at a table, first day we arrived there and it’s just coming on lunch time, so we go into the big long mess huts, or they were tents really, tents joined to one another, and stand to attention, I’m sergeant so and so, and we’re standing to attention and there’s about five

thousand bloody blowflies and there’s opened tins of Herrington tomato sauce, good God, somebody went, “Don’t move that man.” Funny thing, his tent fell down that night on him, I wonder how that happened. He had us stand to attention I’m not joking and they just had these tins opened and in front of every man I think there was about half a pack

of the biscuits we used to get, half a pack in front of each man and I think one tin served four men. But the blowflies were eating the damn stuff, we wouldn’t have got any if we’d stood there another ten minutes. That’s one I won’t forget, never forget it.

I don’t know, it collapsed on him in the middle of the night.

Don’t know how it happened. Nobody knew how it happened either, but it fell down. There was pickets everywhere around there of a night-time in the camp cause they reckoned that the, I know I did three days’ pack drill for it, you had to take the bolt out of your rifle and put it in your pocket and you had to put the chain through and lock your rifle to the tent pole, cause the Arabs would come in and knock them off.

So we were out doing something and smarty Tuskin, sapper Tuskin report to the dental tent. So I run back to the tent, put the chain through, locked it and run and come back. “Sapper Tuskin report to the orderly.” I’d left the bolt in the rifle, didn’t I? “Three days’ pack drill. Serves you right.”

Nothing, there was nothing to do, nowhere to go. Just have a look in the pay book, there’s nothing been taxed. I know we got comforts once up in Syria, you know from home because Aunty Ruby had made me a beautiful cake and everybody wanted a bit of it but

it was in like they’d made the cake in a round tin and then they’d soldered it, you know so it was kept intact inside, and you had to cut the tin off the top of it sort of thing. I’ll never forget that one, oh this is good, oh this is good. Next thing a crowd around you. That was Aunty Ruby’s cake. And one Aunty’s still alive

too, she sent me a lot of stuff, a lot of woollen stuff, Aunty Mae, Uncle Jim’s wife, she’s up in the hills up here. I don’t think she’s much older than me, oh yes she would be, she’d be ninety something.

Mostly letters and junk like that. Always seemed to happen around,

as I say in the Middle East they gave you a comforts one parcel and also things from home must have come and they held them back, so that you got them at Christmas. But they’d told people at home here, “If you’re sending over stuff for easter and such and such, have it ready to be posted by the date, so it gives them time to get it over there by boat and delivered to where you were.” But that’s the only,

I can’t remember getting anything again really. I might have been all right had I been in a battalion or still back in the engineers or in a company rather, but ANGAUs were funny, as I say there was like only two of us, and then there’d be one of you but you’re out on your own for say six, seven months at a time just with a bunch of natives and that’s it.

Like Bill and I spent and there was another chap I was with for a while, he was much younger than Bill, Jack somebody, because he kicked a snake into my face. We was walking on and those little snakes with the thin tail and it struck at his boot. I more or less seen it and said, “Watch your boot.” He looked down and kicked back and it hit me in the mush, bounced off.

That was the back of Madang.

Yeah, it never struck me. They strike like they bring their tail around to their mouth to get a grip to get in but of course it was like flying through the air and just bounced off me. Jack somebody, he kicked backwards and I was only about from here to half between the doorway to him

and we were just going the track yacking about something or other, next time I go to town I’m going to buy five blondes, ten gallons of beer, you know talking away, natter, natter, and I said, “Watch your foot Jack,” and of course he just seen it out of the corner of his eye and he kicked it, well naturally anybody would kick it. I had another turn with a snake too Dad sent me, something happened, the mail cart broke down when we was around the Yarra

round near Windermere. That’s right, he said, “Go back, you’ll have to go back to the Windermere turnoff and what’s his name is going to leave me some cigarette papers at the turnoff at the house where we used to live and the mail will be there but pick up the Hills’ mail,” I forget their names now.

Yeah, this is when I was a kid. Pick up the Hills,

there was two old ladies, Roses, and somebody else that Dad had to go milk their cows on Sundays because they were Methodists. The Hills’ were further round past us going back, towards town was the two older ladies with a bloke looking after the orchard, then there was the, I can’t think of their names but the Methodists, and then us. So as I say about a mile and a half

back, you follow the Tamer River then you go up to Cherry Tree Hill, that’s about half a mile from our place, and then about a mile back was the Windermere turnoff. I go back and I’ve got these letters and Dad’s cigarette papers and I’m coming back, wandering around like a stoned WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK , what would I be, about eleven, and

I put my foot over like that and there’s a black snake there. And I don’t like black snakes. The mail went up in the air and I went like that. I picked up the mail, Dad said, “His cigarette papers were wet.” Boy was I trouble. Snakes. Oh and Aunty Ivy, I told you it was Depression time, and Uncle Harold and Aunty Ivy came over to stay and me cousin she went around to the same school as us but the little girls

were allowed to get in the mail cart. It was only one of those old canvas hood things with the big yellow spoke wheels you know. But to get to, from a place half up the hill, you went down this little rise then there was a big gutter and then the road. Of course over the other side of the road and down and you was in the Tamer River about 200 yards or what have you. But Aunty Ivy and Uncle Harold came straight from Melbourne down to the scrub,

there was nothing for bloody miles and she swears this bird came, you had to see in the middle of the scrub, used to be light brown and tan coat, and she was going down the hill and there was two little birds down there and they were having babies and I was looking after the nest and that and whether a snake had got on to it or not but there was this dead log, there was this tree, I could stand on the log and I could reach this little nest where the baby birds are. Aunty Ivy’s going down there,

somebody was going to pick them up and take them into town, into Launceston, that’s what it was. She’s got this fur coat, down up like a (UNCLEAR), she was knee high to a grasshopper to start with, and next thing she’s in the air. She flew across the, we didn’t have a proper gate, only had two posts and a rail on the posts. She jumped that and landed in the middle of the road. If the Olympics had been on, she’d have won four gold medals.

But it was a black snake, that’s what it was. It was right beside us. It was impossible. If you’d asked her to do it again, she’d have fainted, she nearly fainted anyhow – what am I saying? This is in a fur coat and all, even her handbag I think. Saints.

You just sweated all the time, or seemed to sweat all the time more or less. In the Wau area, we seemed to be a bit higher up in the mountains and whether that kept us of a daytime, you sweltered but we seemed to sleep well of a night. What I can remember because some places you didn’t, down in the flats near the swamps and that. I don’t think

we even had mosquito nets there. I can’t even remember. I know they gave us mosquito nets in Ceylon after about a week or two.

No, never had any of that. Bloke called Atebrin Bill, he was a chap in this thirties too, wasn’t no chicken, he used to come up the track, come up

today like and stay up the top part and then walk back tomorrow but he was saying, “Now, are you sure you’re taking your Atebrin?” That was his name they called him Atebrin Bill. He was a terrific bloke too. I got, what do you call them, piles, haemorrhoids, and I said to him, “My backside’s killing me.” He says, “What have you done?” And I said, “No,” and I was still a virgin too, no arguing about that, he says “Well you better go down to

Wau,” he said, “It’s no good me fiddling around up here, I’m grubby and all that. Go down there where it’s clean and that and they can have a go at you.” So I go down there and the bloke says, “Bend over,” and all this. Next thing, he’s got a pair of rubber gloves on and he said, “Bend over,” and peow. After he put his tent back, he said, “You can go back now.” So guess what, I got three and six pension for that after all these years.

No, actually I got it two or three years ago.

Yes, I’ve been (UNCLAER) three times I think. But that’s where I was foolish, you know I should have although the doctor I went to up in Dandenong Road he sent me in to get operated on for haemorrhoids down in Queens Road I think it was,

down near Queens Road, and he said, “I’ll give you the bill.” I said, “How about putting this on the army?” He said, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Fair enough, behind the times. So next thing I know they sealed me up too tight, so I had to go back and get operated on again to loosen things up a bit. I said, “Well this is costing me a quid, I’ve got three bloody kids.” One’s going to, we’d just come up here I think,

yeah one was going to high school, one was going to central school and one was going to Prahran Tech [Technical College]. “They’ve all got to get uniforms, so I’m a millionaire, aren’t I? I’ve been broke since I bought this joint.” He said, “Oh no, you can’t charge the army for it,” so I paid for it myself, didn’t I? Idiot!

You didn’t have a uniform, you only had shirts and trousers, you know everything was green and you just wore them and wore them. I can’t remember really, it was pretty good material apparently, I can’t remember it. The only time you might tear it on something you know. Especially when you’re cutting down trees and dragging things through

the scrub and what have you. But other than that, I can’t remember even sewing anything up or anything really, honestly. It might have been real good material, before made in China came into being.

Nothing, wouldn’t have a clue, wouldn’t know what was happening anywhere. I remember at Hansa Bay, the boys there, the headquarters, they had a number eight army set, was a wireless about yay big, yay wide and yay thick, would be all

valve job, but they run a wire from their radio tent about a mile to a tent, up to the huts where Bill and I were with the natives and they could get 3DB Melbourne from there. From Hansa Bay, that’s up around New Guinea almost up to Dutch New Guinea, or that close to it, up on the other side of New Guinea.

But they could get 3DB Melbourne on it. And of course they only had those ear things and what you’d do, you’d get one of them and you’d just hold it, and have it on a swing and you’d put a pin through a piece of cardboard and make it half oval, you cut it and then you fold it like a bell, put a pin in there, stick it in and you just let it lay on the ear plug and it becomes a loud speaker.

Something I learnt off the wireless blokes.

Only one thing, I already knew about it because Uncle Harold used to make wireless sets when we were down the Tamer and he used to use, of course you couldn’t buy anything, so he used to use the telephone ones. There were a few telephone booths around Launceston were short of ear plugs. He used to use them, he used to make crystal sets and was real good at making wirelesses, Uncle Harold.

He learnt it off Uncle Norm I think, Norm Hawkings.

I don’t remember. I can’t remember, as I say I’ve got the 1945 newspaper out there, I found it amongst all this junk I’ve been hooking up for all you blokes.

Yeah, we got married on July 28 and of course the last day of our honeymoon we was in Launceston when VP [Victory in the Pacific] Day happened and of course the pilot was one of those old Dougs that Dot and I went over on for our honeymoon, he flew over Launceston and you could see all the people like ants forming circles and that in Brisbane Street and Tamer Street,

in Launceston. I knew that place cause I’d been backwards and forwards that many times and then when we flew over to Melbourne he flew like Collins Street and Bourke Street and all the same thing again, like ants making circles and that. He told us when we went up in the plane, that’s when we knew the war was finished. He said, “You know the war’s finished, don’t you?” and we’d just got on a tram and got a taxi and gone out to the, I’m trying to think how we went out to the aerodrome in Launceston, I can’t remember.

But the pilot of the plane more or less told us that the war had finished. There was no rush, you didn’t go out, get on a plane and take off in two minutes them days, you went out there and fiddled around for an hour or something and then got on the plane and then the plane took off. By the time we’d got airborne, he said, “Have a look down below,” so he tipped the plane and flew around that way and then he tipped it over and tipped it over and went back around the other way, so people on both sides of the plane could see it.

And he done the same in Melbourne too, terrific pilot, wasn’t he?

Yeah, as I say as soon as our honeymoon finished, they stopped the war and we started our own, or something like that. Been going ever since. Fun and games.

No, we got married at All Saints up in St Kilda,

up near Chapel Street and Dandenong Road, All Saints.

Yeah, went, there was no time to book halls and all that sort of thing. We just went out to Aunty Linda’s place in Fitzroy and had what they call a wedding breakfast at night-time. Then a bloke that used to work for Uncle Harold when he was running a book for an SP

bookie, he drove us from Aunty Linda’s down to Uncle Harold’s and we stayed there the night, and then went into town and got the plane from Essendon. What was his name? Deafey or something, he was half deaf. Oh he was a mad driver, God struth. I’ve had some funny drivers in my time but I’d never go with him again. But he was half deaf and he used to say, “Hey,” and I’m sure he heard you the first time,

but what Uncle Harold, I told you he made wireless sets and he was pretty good at anything to do with wireless, but he had a lending library in Lennox Street, Richmond where you took a book in or took a comic in and give him a penny and he’d let you take one of his like a penny to swap over. But down the side street where all those big flats are now in Lennox Street, down one of the little side streets, he had like a two-door garage that opened and it was just like a shed

and of course the whole block was only as narrow as the front of the shop really but he used to have Deafy out there and Deafy would say, “What do you want?” And the bloke would say, “I’ll have two bob each way on so and so and five bob straight out something,” that was a big bet. But what’s his name wasn’t doing anything, he was just taking the money because Uncle Harold had a little microphone just inside the door and where he stood he could hear every word and Uncle Harold was inside

with earphones on writing it down. So if the coppers got him he’d say, “What books? You keep bringing these bloody things up.”

Yeah, the war finished the last day of our honeymoon and I had to report back say the day after and I think it was a bit lax because I reported back and then I got an extended leave, like because the war

finished the last day of our honeymoon. I’m not sure but when I reported back they told me, “I had to go back to New Guinea.” I said, “Righto, fair enough, out to hospital.” So I was taken out to Heidelberg Army Hospital, went out there, came back again and they said, “Well, we’ll give you a little job for while.” So I had a job, I used to have go to the big army barracks

in town, was a big building opposite the old Melbourne Hospital and they’d have papers ready for me. I’d get the tram down to the station and take all these papers out to Watsonia. So I get out to Watsonia and I give it to them and I stay there for dinner, don’t know what the hell I was doing out there for that long. Then they’d give me papers and I’d bring them back to the big

barracks like the big headquarter barracks up in Swanston Street up the top and I’d give them the papers and go home. Next day, go in, get all these papers, take them out, swap them over, take them back in the afternoon. It was like all records of different blokes that were getting discharged or in hospital whatever cause I seen my own army records out there. I seen a little note there, “Dear Ms so and so,

I’m very sorry but we are not allowed to disclose the home address of our soldiers.” I said, “I don’t want to see you any more.” That was it.

Shh. That’s right, then the next thing I know I went in, cause I was a sergeant, they sent me, that’s right, at Watsonia they said,

“What we want you to do when you go out to Watsonia, this time you will be coming back by jeep.” I said, “Fair enough.” They said, “Don’t get the train, we’ve organised it.” So organisation, fair enough. I take the papers out and give them to them, then they introduced me to two young girls, two AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service], that’s right and I was a sergeant and the bloke that I was in contact out there with, apparently I was supposed to be under him.

And he was a lieutenant and the sergeant was the bloke I always spoke to and he said, “By the way, I’m sorry but seeing you’re an acting sergeant, we’ll have to put you back to corporal.” He said, “You don’t look like going back to New Guinea, do you?” And I said, “Not if I can get out of it.” He said, “Fair enough.” I said, “But there’s only one thing wrong with that, every time I come in here I look at it and I think about it but I keep forgetting to ask, it says when you’ve been an acting sergeant for more than three months,

you are made a sergeant.” He said, “Oh yes, how long you been a sergeant?” I said, “About twelve months.” He said, “Oh sorry,” and I became a sergeant. I’d been an acting sergeant, don’t think I was ever made a corporal cause you’re out the scrub, who’s going to go looking for you to say you’ve been made a sergeant, they just tell you you’re rank’s been upped and that. So I became a fair dinkum sergeant then and not an acting one. Anyhow, I said,

“I’ve got to meet a girl out here or something, I’ve got to meet a jeep one of the AWAS’, out there is it?” He said, “Oh yeah those two out there, they’ll be taking over your job.” I said, “What do you mean, this is a good job this?” He said, “I don’t know what the story is but the girls will be driving the jeep into town, picking up the papers of a morning, bringing them back, then taking the other one back, like so they

stay there the night. So the two AWAS in the jeep took the best job I ever had in the army over. I’ll never forget that.

I said, “What do I do now?” And they shot me out to Royal Park, I think it was Royal Park, and said, “Oh yes, engineers, yeah what else?” They said, “You’re scheduled to go back to New Guinea, aren’t you?” I said, “No, I’m not,” and they said, “I think you are.” I said, “I’ll bet you ten bob I’m not.” So that’s right, I went back to hospital again.

I went twice, they were fair dinkum going to send me. I had a cold shower and ended up at Heidelberg again. Come back to them and they said, “You might be too crook to go back you know.” I could’ve told them that. They said there’s a job going up at Albury. What a bugger, I’m enjoying this being home every night. So up to Albury I go to CRE [Commander Royal Engineers] at Albury, I couldn’t tell you his rank now, I think he was a captain.

But he had two or three WOs [Warrant Officers] and about three or four sergeants. A CRE, that’s like a headquarters for engineers and you go out like you’re a sergeant, you go out to supervise a job out at so and so and I go out and supervise. Me first job was going out and looking after would you believe Italian prisoners of war and at Bonegilla, they’re doing a

like making a brick culvert sort of thing, so that of course the water when it comes, it comes that fast and the soil just washes away, so they were making a, reinforced it by making a brick culvert just exactly the same as the what’s a names were doing up in Syria, would you believe a little while back? So that was a good job. And then they brought out a notice that anybody had so many points could leave the army, get a discharge.

I think having the overseas service and being married that made it, if I hadn’t been married I would have to had stayed in for a while, but being married, I think if you had four kids you just walked out the door, if you had a wife and four kids, even if you’d only been in twelve months or something but wife and kids counted more than anything. So that’s how I got out of the army. I was wandering around Victoria more or less

from say 28th, not the 28th, two weeks later, some time in August till 7th of December I got my discharge.

Yeah, I went into it.

I put in cause Uncle Harold was a painter

and I always reckoned that was a terrific job that, so I wanted to be a painter and decorator so they said, “Righto,” and they put me down. Like there was thousands naturally put down and we were living out in St Kilda, I think just near where we were married really, a little street behind the (UNCLEAR) theatre and I was working somewhere, I can’t think where I was damn well working, anyhow I was working somewhere and I got a letter to say my time was up

and I had to report to the school in Errol Street, North Melbourne, it’s a big old two storey building, it was a school, Errol Street State School it was years ago, so I spent 18 months there getting abut thirty bob a week or something, I know we were poor, poor. I was there cause that’s when we got the caretaker.

Uncle Jack was there, we were both in the same class cause he’d been a rigger and now he’s gonna be a painter. Fun and games. We got on to a lurk there, the caretaker had like up in the bell tower, 60 or 70 feet up cause we had a 60 foot ladder and it wouldn’t reach the bell tower, that’s what they was training to paint up the sky, God knows what for,

but he pulled a rope and bagging fell down and blocked the bell tower in and he caught pigeons, didn’t he? And we found out that the bloke down at the pub around the corner, off Errol Street, he was the president or vice president or something of the local pigeon club. Take a bag of pigeons around, “How much for these mate?” “Well

that’d be about twelve pots, right.” Uncle Jack and I used to stagger home on our bikes cause we rode pushbikes then. How the hell I got back Prahran, I don’t know some nights. We split it up, what we’ll do, we’ll have three each tonight and come back next week with another dozen or so pigeons and we’ll spread ‘em out a bit cause we were just getting too damned drunk on pigeons.

I’ll never forget Uncle Jack.

Yeah, you done eighteen months in the school with like a chap teaching you to paint, you had to make your own paint there too, they even had the white lead and 100 weight drums of it. But drums of white lead are very, very heavy and the drums were only say that thick and yay round.

Like that was a 100 weight of white lead and you had to mix it, make the paint yourself put it that way. This chap taught how to make it. Well you done 18 months there and then you had to go out and for two years you had to work as an apprentice at a painting firm. I was lucky, I went down Church Street, Richmond, Mac and Lorry, MacPherson and Lorry and they were like a hoi polloi painters, there’s no,

they didn’t go out and give a price, you rang them and said, “I would like that painted and I would like that painted, I would like that done in that colour,” and they’d bring the nightie out and the ceiling done like that or what have you. So that was like all cost plus work down there, like the Toorak of the south, I suppose you’d call it in Brighton. I done two years there, that’s right we had a trip up to the bush with them. Are you interested in that, a bush trip?

Terrific. I used to ride my bike to the pub every night. Got real used to it, couldn’t think of a better way. Although the biggest worry in them days was housing cause well you just couldn’t get a house. Then we were very lucky

an elderly friend of Dot, I shouldn’t say that, a half elderly friend of Dot, her mother, who was actually her elderly friend, she was living in a house on her own in Primrose Street, Windsor, so she said, “Tell Dot, they can have,” cause we had Ray then, the eldest boy, he was born, and she said, “Tell Dot, they can have the next room,” she had a front room,

bedroom, next room was a bedroom, empty and she was on her own. So we were there for about twelve months before the old lady died. Although it may have been only six months because I think she may have went to live with one of her daughters and she died at her daughter’s place say about twelve months later. We were there for, I forget how long now. Dot had

Gary there and Carol cause the kids were pretty close together, there’s only about eighteen months between Ray and Gary and eighteen months to Carol. So you’ve got three kids in three years in a sense, haven’t you really?

Well you couldn’t because I told you when we come back from the Middle East all our reinforcements were New South Welshmen, there’s more 2/8th Engineers up in New South Wales than what there is in Victoria cause as I told you before they were like the old mob, all old tradesmen you know, going on to their 40s a lot of them, a hell of a lot of them. There was very few youngies in it.

When I think back through the unit there’s very, very few youngies cause most of them are old tradesmen. They’ve already got wives and they’ve already got families and you just lose contact with them. We did have a yearly reunion but first of all one was out near Dad’s place out near Carlton, one of the first ones and

they went somewhere else and we finally ended up at the engineers depot in Batman Avenue, you know going towards the city. Of course then the sale, something belonged to the federal government and they sold it to the state government and the state government threw us all out, naturally. I think it’s still empty. We reckon if they put a soccer field there we’re going to go around and plant mines around it, that’s what we think of them.

Well we used to hire the sergeants’ mess at the engineers depot, I think they called it the sergeants’ mess, and we’d just go there once a year, we used to always go there the day before Anzac Day, like the 24th of April and it’d just be a meeting of all the

boys, no women or girls like now and we’d just drink beer and tell lies most of the time, that’s about it. We had one bloke there, bit of a sing song. There was a goanna in the front room or the front of the hall, and he’d get up and play, or somebody would play it, couple of nice clean songs about they dug up father’s grave to lay the sewer, and what’s

her name, Queen Farida, there was a ditty about her.

“She’s the queen of the wogs and the jackals and the dogs, (UNCLEAR), oh Farida, give us (UNCLEAR), oh Farida give us (UNCLEAR).” Yeah, well it used to go like that.

Can’t think, that’s the one I can (UNCLEAR).

Oh yes, gosh strike me, if you had a wheelbarrow you could’ve filled up for the local market gardens with manure.

Well mostly, “Do you remember this?” It was more, “Do you remember that?” “Do you remember what’s a name?”

“Remember Dick Wheeler?” “Remember Ra Ra Woods?” And all that junk. But then as I say we come out of there, we were having it the last few years going down to the Frankston RSL [Returned and Services League] but it’s fallen off this year. What was it about two or three years ago our secretary died.

It was a big meeting, wasn’t it? There was four of them there. I was late for the meeting, so I became secretary, didn’t I? I never had a vote. But don’t forget out of the four there was the treasurer, president, vice president and I was the fourth one and I became the secretary. Last time we’ve had to fold up cause it’s just not worthwhile going all the way down there. So it ended up we folded up and I think

we had about 1,400 dollars or 1,500 dollars, so we gave, they gave 1,000 dollars to the local, the one that looks after kids and that.

Legacy, Frankston Legacy, I think it’s the Frankston but they gave 1,000 dollars to them and we’re just going to drink the rest, eventually. I wanted to change my name to Legacy and they wouldn’t let me.

No cause I never seen any of them really to tell you the truth. There was a couple of derelicts, but they were derelicts before the war, Smit Spy, I shouldn’t say they were derelicts but they were the local. Little Nugget Coonan, I struck Nugget Coonan one day sitting on the bank step and he was counting his money. I said, “What are you doing there Nugget?” And he said, “I’m going to the pub.” I said, “Get home, you drunk little bum.”

Little Nugget Coonan, that’s the one on the camel we had to chuck over the bloody wall cause he was too small to get up to it. Smit Spy, he lived in Prahran. I used to see those two a lot, well not a lot, once or twice a year at least cause they were moving up and down the same street really. Other than that I wrote to Doc a couple of, Doc Mannix was number one of me number one mates, he lived down at Queenscliff. Well, you can’t get a tram to Queenscliff, can you really?

He was a cray fisherman. Alan Cabrabel, he was a mate. I seen him wandering around a couple of times. Then I started knocking around mostly with Doc’s brother when his wife would let him. But not really, didn’t see anyone really. I can’t think

of anybody that was, you know. No. You’d only see them at the reunions, that’s about all and I didn’t go to the marches much cause me kids when they were little, Ray and Gary, they used to wear Dad’s medals and my medals and they used to march with the unit. They were in the scouts too, weren’t they? Oh good on ‘em.

No.

I don’t know. Earlier I seemed to be too busy trying to get a quid. When I finally got the, when I started off on my own painting, I thought this is it, I’ll get it now and then I kept getting crook guts, you know bloody ulcer’s playing up. So I had to chuck that in. But I got a, what really made me chuck it in,

when I was working painters were getting sixteen pound ten a week and I was in partnership with an Irishman that had come out like after the war, Jack Jackson, he was a painter in London itself, like England. I said, “How do you get on there painting in the winter, how’d you be painting in the snow?” He said, “Inside jobs or get another job.” But we got a contract to paint twenty-four houses up in Sale, they were all Housing Commission houses,

like it was one of those in the papers to say prices wanted, so that worked out at about 3,000 quid. That was all right, so we split that up and I ended up with about say, after paying our wages and there was three of us then cause there was an old painter that I knew, Jack Brydson, he was a First World War digger, and I’d worked with him. When they’d done the Duntroon up, I worked on that for eighteen months like turning it from a troop ship into a

back to a vessel, like a liner. She got outside the heads and caught fire, didn’t it? Went up to Sydney and got done again. Aw, the money lost in that. And I asked Jack, I said, “Well, I’ve only done a trade course and I’ve done my apprenticeship,” this must have been about five years after I’d finished painting,

being a painter proper and they give you a licence or whatever it is. I said, “How about coming in with us?” I said, “I’m going up to price some houses up at Sale.” “How you going to get up there?” Well I said, “A mate of mine, Vic Dunhoppy, is the postmaster at St Kilda and he’s got this big Packard,” and I said, “I promised to take Dot’s mother and father for a run, so there’ll be Dot and I, you, Jack

Dot’s Mum and father.” How can you get them in a car?” I said, “It’s a Packard,” was too, a great big thing, 100 miles to a gallon and you had to have coupons in those days to get your petrol. So Jack said, “I’ll come up with you.” I said, “You can give us a hand to price them,” and he had worked for us on a couple of jobs and I said, “How about there’s just the three of us doing it and we’ll just go a three way split.” So fair enough,

so we all went in this Packard. As we were going up doing about 90 mile an hour around the Mortar Hills in this thing would you believe, oh it was beautiful. But the only think the choke kept coming out and of course it’s sucking more juice, so I said, “Here, keep your finger on that damned thing.” It would just vibrate its way out. I wish I had some sticky gum for it. Anyhow, went all the way up there and back in the one day and we took, of course in them days you didn’t think like you do now about going to a pub for lunch, them days

you’d have to be millionaire to do it. So we put a price into them and we got them. So I spent the, my own car was a 1929 Plymouth panel van. That’s what I forgot to tell you, I bought a shop when I come out of the army and I still had this old panel van but I used to use that to go down to the Duntroon and gives blokes a lift

cause it was 13 (UNCLEAR) and to get that you would have had to get tram, train or whatever but I could drive four or five of us down there and used to give me petrol coupons from somewhere. Anyhow, that’s where I met Jack.

No-one, there was no one to talk to. Dad would ask me you know, “How did you go at so and so?” Oh yeah, it was all right. Especially, every time we came to back to poor old Jack Lewis, Uncle Jack with the coon’s cigarettes. But not really. I can’t think of anybody, even old Spud, Dot’s step father, he was a First World War digger and

he’d say, “How did you go?” And I’d say, “All right.” Although his brother Bill, he was a prisoner of war with the Nips and he came back and he didn’t last long after the war either, poor old Bill. I don’t know, they just didn’t seem to talk about it.

Having too good a damned time being home I think. More interested in something else, like being skinny as a bloody,

I think I was seven stone six and a bloke touched Dot on the bum, we were looking for furniture around the corner from the Union Hotel in Chapel Street, two young bucks come along and I wasn’t near Dot and she was standing over and like looking at something in the window and I was over here and I turned around to say something and one of the young blokes touched her and, “How you going love?” touched her on the bum. I said, “Watch that mate, I’ll knock your so and so head off.” I went towards him and he just pushed me and of course I fell arse over head and she punched the two of them up.

Teach them a bloody lesson, sorry miss, sorry.

Don’t know, hard to say, isn’t it? Don’t know, I’ve never drank so much till after. Although I did drink a bit before the war. But as I say, like when my guts kept getting crook and you had to work out how much money’s this and how much money’s that,

so Bob Foster, his Dad owned the Richmond Iceworks and he said to me, he said, “What’s this I hear about you doing all those houses up at Sale?” He said, “Are you going to keep on painting, are ya?” I said, “No I’ll have to give it away, I’m a bit too crook in the tummy, too much worry or something.” Old Doctor Wiegold was colonel in the army and he told me, in fact I didn’t even apply for a pension he said, when I told him I have morning sickness, he said, “Oh yeah,” and all this bull dust,

he said, “You haven’t got morning sickness, I think you’ve got an ulcer in your stomach.” So he just sent me to get an x-ray and then I come back and he said, “Yeah, you’ve got an ulcer.” I said, “What’ll I do?” I thought I was going to bloody die. He said, “Well the first thing,” and he’s got his hand on the desk and he’s got a cigarette and the ash is falling off as he’s shaking, “Well the first thing you’ve got to do, you’ve got to give up cigarettes.” Oh yeah. And no more grog, no more this, he give me a bloody diet. I’ll tell you what.

So I said, “Fair enough.” I tried to stick on this diet till I got weaker and oh God. Honestly, I thought I was going to get blown away in the next wind. So I went out one day and got full as a family (UNCLEAR) and got some fish and chips and Dot’s got all this bread and milk for me. Chuck that out the bloody door. Haven’t looked back since, in a sense.

But it was all worry. He said, “First thing you’ve got to do, let somebody else worry about what you think you’re supposed to worry about.” So from then on, I couldn’t care what he said.

Yeah, he said it’s more worry than anything old Doc Wiegold said. He said, “Every time you,” he said, “Even if you’re crook on someone, a little drop of acid’s going to drop in your belly and burn a hole in it.” So he said, “Don’t worry, just tell them to get stuffed

and walk off.” Doesn’t matter what happens. So more likely I’ve been that way ever since. “What about paying the rent, what about this?” Let them worry about it. But when Bob Foster, he said, “How much does a painter get?” I said, “Sixteen pound ten a week.” He said, “I’ll give you twenty quid a week and pay your taxi if you come and work for us.” I said, “What have I got to do?” He said, “Only trouble is it’s

a two o’clock start and you finish at ten in the morning.” I said, “Well what’s the joke?” He said, “Well in the summer time, they had three ice trucks and one big K-5-ender that they used to cart ice in, something like the trucks I was talking about before only not boxy, it was longer and used to hold five ton of ice. So I had to take the truck, that was my first job of the morning.

In the wintertime I’d go over to Richmond to the Richmond Iceworks and I’d get five ton of their ice, bring it back and park it in the street near the ice depot down in Inkerman Street under the railway bridge and to your right, street runs up to Elma Road, park it there and the chaps that had the ice rounds with their horse and carts and their trucks and that they used to come and just take a ton off or whatever and then I’d go back

and had another truck then. Then I’d race down to Brighton and I’d get the duals I used to call it, one little truck with dual wheels. That used to take two ton. Get another two ton and bring that back and leave it in the yard and then they’d still come in and help themselves. Then we had a chap working for the iceworks delivering ice, Bob Wheeler, and I’d take his truck down. That only held thirty-four something hundred weight. So I’d do five loads again for breakfast.

And that was a good job that. And then sometimes I’d go over to the factory. But in the summertime that was my permanent run. In the wintertime, I’d go over to Richmond and get five ton and just bring that back. I’d only get about half cause they only use about half the ice. In the summertime it was a six day a week job, fair enough and

Sunday you could always go and buy a block. As I say, that was the summer run to the Brighton Iceworks but the winter run was to Richmond. Cause Richmond couldn’t make enough ice to supply all their customers. That was a good job that. I used to give free ice to butcher and get free meat. Free ice to the milkman and get free milk.

And don’t forget free ice to the bread carter and get free bread. I used to (UNCLEAR) of a morning and have bread, milk, whatever on it.

Oh I was lucky, everywhere I went they stopped fighting, they had to, too dangerous. God struth.

I’ll think about it. I was supposed to go to Malaya, claimed Dad as my brother and went to the Middle East. They’d all come back from Greece and Crete and Dad was in hospital, Dad come out of hospital, he was okay. Then I went up to Syria, the war had finished up in Syria and all I was doing up there was digging tank traps and roads of course and what have you behind it.

The nearest thing to going in to actual fighting itself was in Ceylon when I say the Yanks flew the Coral Sea Battle and they didn’t come there, did they? Few Hail Marys and what was it something, thank goodness. And in New Guinea being the sappers I was behind the infantry, the AB [AOB: Advanced Operational Base] were in the front doing all the

fighting and what have you. Then around to Tsili Tsili. If I’d have pointed my finger I think the war would’ve stopped, I should have pointed it earlier.

Oh yeah. You only go where they send you, don’t you? Thank goodness they didn’t send me. But the boys had a very rough time before I got there, wherever they went

especially at Wau apparently. They were just getting out of the plane and they were chucking some of them back in. But as I say, I arrived after that. Very lucky.

Pull my head in when necessary. Naturally, I learnt

a lot about mateship and friendship and that. Good blokes and what have you. I met a terrific amount of terrific blokes which I’d never know, no way known would you have known them in real life, in civvy life.

Yeah, mm. But as I say when you come home,

like one bloke’s at Geelong and another one’s, they’re everywhere, they’re all over Victoria, spread out like (UNCLEAR) met being in the one unit sort of thing. Other than that, I had the time of my life, in a sense. I reckon I did anyhow.

It’s hard to say, it might have been in myself. Not really. Dot was still there, Mum and Dad were still there. Little brother had grown up, little sister had grown up.

Not really, course there was plenty of work too, that was the number one thing. You could just walk out and get a job in five seconds. Please come and work for us, that was the saying. I was lucky in work too. I had good jobs, as a painter I had a good job except being crook but not only that knocking off early, my mate

Chapel I met through the Inkerman, a drinking mate down the Inkerman, Billy Duncan’s pub, and actually Jack and I started off we bought an old house in South Yarra down near where the Heckly used to be, in a little street that runs off Chapel Street. We put down I think 250 quid each, oh no it might have been only 250 quid

we put a deposit on it and we were doing it up. We thought we’d get a quid on the side because I had plenty of time off and Jack would work in with me. Then we sold it, something happened. A bloke came and offered us, you couldn’t buy houses, they were scarce as hen’s teeth and somebody asked us for a price, say we paid 1,500 quid for it,

they said, “We’ll give you 1,600, 1,700 for it,” whatever it was. We said, “Right, you’ve got it.” Give us a couple of hundred, paid the rest to the estate agent. The estate agent went crook at us, he said, “You’re supposed to sell it through us.” We said, “Bad luck mate, we’re asking you to run the business,” so fair enough. Something happened after that. Jack Jackson, the Irishman, he was going

back to Ireland and he tried to shoot through with the money, he got the money, we said, “Jack, you can work it out with the agent,” cause the agent was going crook at us. He was supposed to pick up a boat here at Melbourne and so we told the coppers to grab him, we knew he was going. Next thing they say, he’s gone to Sydney, he’s going to pick the boat up there. So we had to pay the coppers’ fare up to Sydney to grab him. Anyhow, he come back and we got 200 quid out of it each. But like you know,

plus our money back. So I said to me mate Tommy Moore, “You want to have a go at another lot.” So we bought two blocks in Prahran and we done them up and we got half way through it, we paid 3,000 for them, 3,000 quid of course, and a bloke come along and offered us 5,000. I was painting the front and I dropped the brush and said, “Where’s the money mate?” That’s how I got the deposit for this house.