Australians at War Film Archive

Well my mother was Scottish she was born in Nottingham in Scotland where the first Labor Prime Minister was born (UNCLEAR) was my father was English and he was

born in Bristol and how they met my mother’s sister she was going out to America to be married to a Scotsman and in those days you had to have a chaperone and so my mother chaperoned her sister to America. Daddy was an engineer to America (UNCLEAR) with (UNCLEAR) on a

motorbike to Henry Ford and that’s how they met in America. And then the First World War came 1914, and my father returned to Bristol to take over an ammunitions factory and so we were all born in Bristol. My sister is two years older than myself

and a twin brother who is over six feet and I am the senior twin on my birth certificate. I was born ten minutes before he was. We went to school in Bristol but I was brought up in the countryside until I was five which is now called the Royal Mile where all the Royals live.

At the bottom of the garden (UNCLEAR) and then we went to moved into (UNCLEAR) and I went to school there. In 1939 the war started, well before that and after I left school,

I became a tracer but you couldn’t be a nurse until aged eighteen and so my father came home one day and said would you like to be a tracer and I said what's that? Anyway I went for an interview, and the years before I was a tracer and I did the cadet.

I was tracing Blenheim bombers which they did use at the very beginning. Anyway, in 1942 I went into the WAAF [Women’s Auxiliary air force] I wanted to be a dental nurse and so I was sent to (UNCLEAR) and did my dental course, and there were thirty of us on the course and three of us passed and so the three of us were sent to (UNCLEAR)

to a dental clinic. There were five dental officers there and the surgeries were up stairs and down below was the dental mechanics, they call them technicians today and all. So two hygiene nurses and that’s where I was for part of my dental career. And then

I was posted to Long Newington near Tisbury and I was with this dental officer and once a week we had to go to Castlecombe for the day and help and that’s where Doctor Dolittle was filmed. Anyway we used to go into

Tisbury in the evenings and the pubs were in the little villages and we used sit around and sing and dance. From then

I had several postings, Harcourt, Benson, Cragton, Kissington. Every time my dental officer was posted I was posted too cause there was just one of them. Three days before D Day, which was June the 6th I think,

I was posted to this secret air field and when I got there the whole air field was covered with planes towing gliders ready to take off for D Day [June 6, 1944], and this dental officer and I had to look at all these army men before they took off because once they were in Europe and they had a toothache

you know, they were on the move and they couldn’t be treated. But I have never learned where that secret airfield was. And after that where did I go? Right down south again and then at the end of the war,

1945, we were asked if we would like to volunteer, if we would like to go to Germany for the occupation and I volunteered for that and I was sent for embarkation leave to Brighton. And Brighton was the leave centre for the Australians,

Bournemouth was the leave centre for the Canadians, and the air station had quite a few Australians and I got on well with them and I chose to go to Brighton with a WRENS [Women’s Royal Naval Service] friend of mine and that’s where I met Vic, my husband, and that was just at the end of the war, we went through five years of war and we met then in Castlecombe up in Lincolnshire.

Anyway he was coming back and the Australians were coming back and so I was going over to Germany, to Kirkhaven [?] and then down to Battenberg and I was stationed there for a while, you see the Belgians were very pleased to see us but later I was moved to Germany,

and they were not pleased to see us. That was the early days and I was stationed at Battenberg and the girls were not allowed to go out with out a male escort, There were just shells of buildings were they were living and they were throwing rocks down on us,

but after being there for quite awhile, the Germans who were there we got to know them and some of them were like our own family and they still had husbands and sons prisoners of Russia, and they were there till 1947. And in 1948 the Cold War started

and that’s when they thought there would be a Third World War and my job was kept open for me in the tracing office. So I went back there. But one of the dental officers I had he said at the end of the war he would set up his practice

and I could work for him, but as my job had been kept open for me in the drawing office I went back there and eventually I went and worked for the dental officer. And my husband and I, well he wasn’t, but he had written all those years, six years, so we got to know each other through our letters, and a lot of the war brides

they had come out and they were still coming and then they were starting to take migrants. But we had the very last ship for the ex servicemen in 1951 and so I had the last chance to come out and I had cancelled two trips before that because I didn’t want to leave England or anything.

So I came out on the very last ex serviceman’s ship and Vic met me in Sydney and we drove up, and what sort of country that I had come to, and there was nothing in 1951 but he had a lovely family.

And they took me into their hearts and we had got to know each other through letters but any way I thought I would go home again after a week but you couldn’t get back easy in those days. So really by staying on I got to know Vic and his family and he had decided to go back into the air force again

so was called up and he went back and so we decided to marry, and oh, he was sent to Malaya then and I went home for that year so that was good for me because it broke my home sickness.

And then when he flew to England for a while from Malaya and then we came back and he was stationed at Amberley so we bought a house at Ipswich and that’s where we had our first daughter. She was born in 1954 and later we moved back into

in 1947 am I right 1957, Sue was born in ’54 and Jill was born in ’57 and then eventually Vic came out of the air force again and we went to Pullenvale on acreage,

and they went to St. Aiden’s and later when they left home and married we moved in here and have been here ever since, about twenty years. I have been home a few times and my family has been out here, my brother and sister came out two years ago

and we spent my eightieth birthday at Kenmore Tavern on Melbourne Cup Day, and my brother and my husband won a prize for the best dressed men because they both wore suits and ties and of course, everyone else was dressed very casually.

Well that’s during the war, this was in the very beginning before I went into the air force, I was on leave and Daddy had made the garage into a big air raid shelter, and anyway, this particular night,

we heard the all clear go and my sister and I we rang out into the back yard and normally we could look just across and it wasn’t there any more, and the two houses had been bombed, and so all the air raid wardens were going around and they got the first people out

with a baby, and it had been thrown out on to the lawn. And the next house there was an elderly couple who lived in there and my sister and I could hear someone calling for help, and the air raid wardens came along, and they were all double storey houses so there was a lot of rubbish and rubble on top of them, and said, no one could be alive,

but we did hear them calling. And they came back and they dug this elderly couple out and they were wonderful, the husband had a broken leg. And what happened the bomb had gone between the houses and if they had hit the houses they would probably have died,

and they gave us the things that come out. I still have things that they gave us from the bombs and they said my sister and I had saved their lives. Another thing I remember was just after war was declared,

I was still at home then and we heard all these planes coming over and so my mother and father and my sister, and we rushed out to wave all our planes and they weren’t, they were German planes and they bombed Bristol and a lot of people died.

Oh yes, lots of suburbs and people were killed, and I remember two girls who I went to school with

well after the war and she had a patch over her eye and she lost an eye in the bombing. And yes, but thinking back on the war and having read a few stories I did enjoy those years in the air force depending what age you were. I was seventeen when war broke out

and it was quite exciting and you didn’t see the danger, parents and grandparents, I think of how they would have felt then my sister married a navy officer and trained on the [HMS] Magpie which Lord Mountbatten, he commanded that. Yes, it was very exciting even

on the air stations but having been in Germany at the end of the war how sad it was for the children, and even when I was in Germany and a lot of the people would be coming back and looking for their homes,

and they were taken to the concentration camps, and in 1988 I think it was we did a tour in Europe and I did go to Auschwitz and that was very sad. They have got all these they are like a shop about half the size of this room and they are all sealed and you just look in and they are piled to the ceiling

with suitcases, the next one was piled with children shoes, everything and another one had spectacles and so that was sad and that brought a lot of the war back you know. It was just the age I suppose, and everybody

and then out here I met some English girls who were ten years younger than I was and they were still at school and they were evacuated, one was evacuated to Devon and you know, I have seen pictures of the children with their little gas masks

and they were being evacuated out of London and you know, they didn’t know the people and so we have all had different meaning and for so many people.

Well, we were meeting all the young air crew and you were staying in little villages and you were usually stationed near little villages, the pubs, and you would be singing and dancing, Canadians, Frenchmen, Australians and New Zealanders it was exciting, and I often think now of my grand children.

Harry is fourteen and Grace is thirteen and they are at high school and how different it is and how work is so different now and you wonder what they are going to do, and of course televisions and computers have all come into their lives. My daughters have grown up hearing about the war

and we would all talk air force, and as he said, (UNCLEAR) but our grandson did say the other day,

he was doing his home work and he said, “I think I would like to go into the army or the air force.” And we said, “Oh well you do some training and then you become an officer,” and they are getting all this off the computer I think. And they do go around to the church

and they were going rope climbing on Kangaroo Point and everything, and he said, “I don’t think I will go granddad, what if the ropes break.” And you wanted to go into the army.

I don’t know what I’m thinking of at the moment.

Well yes, until I came to Australia I never knew much about the depression. The only thing I could remember was my brother and I had diphtheria and

we were born in 1921, and this was about 1931 and we were about ten, and in those days you had to be isolated and my brother didn’t get as sick as I did and he got it first and so I was there for quite awhile and,

but I remember Daddy coming for me when I was due to go home and I said we had a car, a Ford of course, and I said to Daddy, “Where’s the car?” And he said, “I haven’t got it for a while.” And I remember Mummy saying, “You mustn’t put as much butter on your bread.”

And that’s all I remember of the depression and I don’t think we had it as badly as you did in Australia. All I have heard about is the depression years since I have come here, that’s all I can remember. But my husband’s family had a sheep property out at Charleston

and they used to feed Aboriginals for jackaroos, who came along for food. So that’s all I remember there. And we were brought up in the country

and we went to kindergarten and I remember the first day my brother and I, we were twins, that they had a Viburnum tree and we used to call it the golden tree and we used to dance around that.

I remember we wanted to go to the toilet so we went together you know, and we were told oh no, don’t go together. I suppose we didn’t care and we were only five I suppose, perhaps four, and we used to do raffia work and I’ve got lots of photos too and they give me a reminder

of our holidays and our little babies. And I have been back and then we moved later to a suburb Stokebishop and we went to school there and then you know, the war came.

Well, I can remember Mummy reading Mien Kampf [by Adolf Hitler] and she and Daddy used to talk about things and we belonged to a swimming lake, and

I suppose, from when we were about twelve and thirteen and we used to go to this lake and we were with a whole group, and most of the boys went to Bristol Grammar school, and they all ended up going into the air force. And really I don’t remember

anything, and people didn’t talk in front of children we were more seen and not heard in those days, so. But I do remember Mummy reading ‘Mien Kampf’.

Well it wasn’t till later and I was older and we talked about it and you know, said about Hitler. And I do remember they were frightened about this man Hitler and we must have heard on the radio because there was no television then and it must have been on the radio where they used to put pieces on

the news and then I remember, you see it was a different time, And my husband and I used to have arguments about it where we were and when war was declared and about the difference in your time. We were told about eleven o’clock on the Sunday morning Sept [September] 3rd Neville Chamberlain would speak to us,

when he declared war and we were all sitting around the old radio you know, and that’s when we heard and there was my mother and father and my sister and my twin brother and… But of course my husband and I have to think now, no you are ahead and he came out of the pictures with his brother and heard

that the war was declared. But anyway, that’s when he heard so it was different for parts of the world. So it was soon after that that the planes came over and bombed and we thought that they were our planes so that was…

No, but I do remember Mummy saying later on before we had all gone away of course, they knew that Hitler had gone into Austria and Poland, and what happened, my sister and I had dark hair, we weren't blond

and my brother was the age when he would have been sent off to the camps for work, and I remember, if Hitler ever gets to these shores I shall gas us all, and of course we all laughed but I think perhaps she might have thought you know, how do you know. Having seen, and it wasn’t till I came here that I read and have seen about Japan and what happened.

I mean we did know and we knew of the fall of Singapore of course, but like a lot people, we didn’t know exactly what was going on, they were too far from it and depending again on what age you were, but I find now

we are very involved with these two grand children. Jill our younger daughter is married and they don’t have children so they are not involved there and Sue, her marriage broke up and from babies we have helped with these two children in Kenmore, and so we have seen them grow up up

and go to school and so we have been involved and sort of been parents again. So you know, we have seen the other side and well, I hope they won't see another way. But I remember coming out on the ship because it was ships in those days and the times that I went back and forth on the ships

and the first time I came out was Perth of course, then Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. But I remember Perth and Adelaide, looking out from the ship and it took eight days in those days I think, and there was nothing and I would just come through the war and I would hate to be here during the war because it is so open

and the Japs they could just swarm in you know, people, so that’s another thought.

Well I was in the drawing office and I was working and I can remember Dunkirk, and that was soon after the war in 1940. And where I got off the bus to go to my office,

there was a park and it had railings all around it and in the early part all the railings were left but as the war went on all the railings were taken down, and you probably have seen in Bath, a lot of the big houses had, and all those were taken,

and they put on these big tents and they brought all over Britain. It was, they brought all these soldiers, they come from all those little ships and boats and all these soldiers and they would be standing all around the railings you know, and they were so glad to be back and to see people. Being not just seventeen yet,

I was shy in those days and when I think I would be stopping and talking, and you see age makes such a difference. But having seen these pictures of Dunkirk and what they went through you realise then what they had gone through.

So that was Dunkirk and that’s what I remember then but I think films, there was one not that long ago about war and it dealt more with the mothers and the children, the mothers having young children still and how they had to battle with the rations and everything.

You see I didn’t have any of that because I mean, we had to be careful perhaps and we had coupons for clothing as well as food and all their friends would give their coupons for her wedding and for the reception and every one gave coupons and I remember that. But I

remember seeing that series and I remember my mother and children, and they would come home from school and they would want this and that you know, and they had a terrible time you know, and there again it’s a different age group. And

I think of my mother and father and seeing us all go off. Well my sister, her husband, was on air sea rescue all around the coast of Britain and my brother went into the air force and went into he Middle East so we didn’t see him until the end of the war actually, although we had seen each other

over the years, after the war quite a few time. I went back or they came out here for our eightieth birthday two years ago it’s the only time since the war that we have spent our birthdays together, so we made an effort for them and they came out.

Well, she wasn’t well read actually, that’s always amazed me that she read that but I think it was because

she had heard about the war, and being older, and everyone in Britain would be thinking of their children going to war of course, and there was that interest. No, Mummy, Daddy was better read than my mother really, he read more and Daddy played the piano. I can remember when he had lessons and when we lived,

oh do you want me to keep on about my mother?

Well my father had this music master come in the evening and I can see us now, we used to creep down the stairs and look through to the lounge where he was and watch my father learning how to play the piano. But going back to my mother,

there were thirteen in her family a big family in those days and Mummy and Daddy were both born in 1883 they were the same age. But I say, two of her brothers went to school with Ramsey McDonald who became the first

Prime Minister in England. Her father was a horse hirer and he hired horses, hired horses out for funerals, weddings, they had a farm, and my mother used to say that they had to carry milk early in the morning you know, to different places.

That’s really all. I don’t think they went to work they just looked after the home with their mother and there were daughters, the brothers went into the merchant navy you know, and her sister had met this boy, a Scottish who went to America

so when he asked her to marry him, she had to have a chaperone in those days, so she was chosen to go out with her but when she got there this Scottish boy that her sister was going to marry had a friend and the friend was my father, that’s how they met, through them.

That’s my mother and until they married.

I don’t know. I always was a bit independent and I see it in my daughter now, never adventurous, and I never wanted to leave England.

In fact none of us wanted to leave, we never talked about going away you didn’t in those days anyway. So no, I was independent in a way, looking at photos, and I was a tom boy they say and this engineer built this big pram and I’ve got photos of it,

and my brother and I would sit at either end and my sister would be in the middle and we had, not a nurse but a lady used to come and take us out in it. And we stopped at a shop I would climb down over the wheels and I have been told that as a child I was a tom boy and

looking at me now is it possible to be, so yes. I liked school. I didn’t especially like the work but I did like school and my sister was very clever and so I thought she was the clever one and I didn’t have to work too hard, but I liked school and they were happy days.

My sister and I both went to a convent, we are not Catholics we are Church of England and when I came out here they are Presbyterian and so the girls went to a Church of England school, and we are a mixture really, but I do remember saying when we were married, if I had daughters I would like them to go to a Catholic school. I had such a happy childhood.

And my husband had been brought up differently and he said no, they won't go to a Catholic school so you know, and when I did come out here and until I actually, and until we went away again I got a job in the drawing office in the City Hall and

the first thing they almost asked me was what religion are you and I remember saying to my husband I have never been asked that in England why do they want to know what religion I am. But it was a very big thing in those days, in ’51, about Catholics, but I think all that’s gone now to a point, maybe its in the hierarchy so.

It was really nursing after having diphtheria. I really wanted to be a nurse. I loved helping the nurses when I got better and my sister matriculated from

school when she was seventeen or eighteen and so I always wanted to do what my sister did and I always thought of her and she didn’t know until not to long ago. I always thought that everything she did was wonderful and I looked at her as a second mother almost, so when she left school, I wanted to leave school at sixteen and you couldn’t go into nursing until you were eighteen,

and that’s when Daddy came home and said would you like to be a tracer and I said, what's that and so it was explained. And that’s how I became a tracer I think, until I was eighteen but then the war had come so I thought… Actually, was my thought after reading through all the things you could go into, was to be an ambulance driver.

But I was not tall enough of course, so that was out and I couldn’t do that and so then when I did go in and I saw all the medical girls, and there were some dental girls and usually there was only one dental girl on each station in the clinic, like where I first went to. Oh I think I would like that, I would be working with one person

and I don’t like working or being responsible for a lot of people, I like to, that’s why I liked tracing actually. So I thought I would like to be a dental nurse I think, with one dental officer and so that’s how I put in for that.

Well for instance, the aeroplane company, the draftsman, well you’ve got the engineers first and the draftsmen who draw out all the plans and then in those days, it is so different now, we had to put the sheets over and you actually traced what you saw underneath.

I mean it sounds I’ve got tracings maybe I can dig them out and show you.

Oh yes you had to be, you had a three month cadetship and I think that’s why my father, being in engineering, and thought I was neat, I would be good as a tracer and I would like that and I did.

So that was what I did then and that was before I went into the WAAF. Actually I haven’t told you this. You couldn’t go straight into your course so when I first went in, and waiting for this dental course they put me on telephones and they sent me to a station

at Bristol, Lusgate Bottom it was called, and so this particular day they decided that they would have this mock air raid, the Germans were going to take us over you know, we were being invaded and so it was all and ohh, and the phones would ring and you had to ring the CO [Commanding Officer] and

all around, you know. And it was just and I would have just hated to be in a real invasion like that. The phone was the main thing and so at the end of that it was a weekend, I think I had a day off or something and I’m not coming back until they send me on this dental course.

I’m not doing the telephones any more. I hated it and so I went home, and this was just outside Bristol and my parents, how long I’m there for and I said, well I’ve got the day off but I’m not going back until they put me on my dental course, and so I didn’t go back the next day and

a WAAF friend rang and she said, “Oh I have just heard on the phone they are sending the SPs, Special Police for you, to bring you back,” because I was over due you see. So anyway, I still said I’m not going back, I’m going on that dental course.

Anyway my father knew the CO of the station, and when I look back and I think that was, in that way, and how did it happen? My father rang the CO whom he knew and he said, “Well send her back and I will see what I can do.” So I went back and they put me in the sick quarters for a while,

I suppose while they were looking into the dental course. Anyway when I came out of that I was sent to my dental course. I just loved it and so that’s what I remember there, and I did another time and I was actually put on charge there another time later on, where was I stationed? Up

somewhere and when the girls went on leave they often took their gas masks out of the cases and we used to put our undies or make up or whatever we were taking and this was on the train and I had this gas mask filled with all my things for the weekend. And

anyway, this soldier got into the compartment and he had kit bags and bags and I don’t know what, and of course by mistake, he picked up my gas mask with all his stuff and so of course, I didn’t have, and when I went back I was put on a charge for doing this, and I mean, we knew we weren’t allowed to because

our gas masks, where were they? And for my charge I had to go and sweep and polish for that week and so that was something that I remember. On the whole I was so glad that I had chose to do dentistry,

and I lived, and I was lucky, I had lived in the sick quarters headquarters with the medical girls so that was another plus, in the medical and dental, we lived separately and we could make cocoa at night and things like that.

I really don’t know, he wasn’t in the war you see, being an engineer, oh well that was the First World War of course, the Second World War and I don’t know if he had retired, I think he had retired and he was too old to go into the services then. I have only got happy memories

of my childhood and now, when I have this daughter who is divorced and got these children and my husband and I both say because he had a very happy childhood here too and a lovely family and how lucky we were that we grew up with parents and a happy childhood, you know.

We weren’t stationed in the villages, it was always outside. When the war started there were lots of pre war air stations, Benson was one that was when I first went there and then outside, they would build a satellite station outside. They

would take over these fields and especially up in Lincolnshire for the bombing and that, and in the south around Oxford which was lovely. Ah no, we used to have a liberty bus and this one bus would take us in usually on a Saturday night or Saturday night, into the local village with,

and sometimes we would all walk or sing. And I remember walking back in the snow a whole lot of us, about six miles it was nothing in those days.

Oh the war songs. No they would be some of Vera Lynn’s

songs and I think on the Liberty buses, some of the boys used to put different words to some of them, we were very innocent in those days. I have spoken since to friends and that and I didn’t even know what a homosexual was, now your grandchildren know it all, you know. But

I can remember when I first went in I went to Gloucester, Innsworth there and I was there for a few days being kitted and before I went up to Morecambe they called the initial march and we learned all that and I remember crying myself to sleep. And having read some of the war brides stories

quite a few of us did that, it was just coming from home for the first time and being with all these different girls you know, that you had never met before and some of them were a bit rough I suppose, the way they spoke but gradually when you had been in for a while and you were on your courses and you found your own friends.

It was different but yes, and in those days too and in the very first days you had this sort of coke fire and you all had to take turns in lighting it and I had many goes. I had not lit a fire before so I think we were rather. Oh well, my

Jill, the young one, oh Mummy you know, you had such an easy life, you got married you didn’t have to go to work, this is what she says and her father was in the air force then, you should be glad your mother didn’t have to go to work. But we didn’t have to go to work because we didn’t want or need all the things you want today.

And I remember when Vic was at Amberley and we bought this house and it was an old Queenslander and we just had Sue then, our first baby, and we had very little, and one of Vic’s aunts came out for afternoon tea and I didn’t have a proper little table so I used the ironing board and I put a cloth over that you know.

Of course she sent us a table after that and we gradually got things. I didn’t have a washing machine in the beginning. Vic first went into the air force when we got married, to Ballarat down in Victoria and we rented a little flat there, they had a copper stove, washing, well I had never used that.

And so of course Vic used to help me lift the sheets out on one of those sticks and the old rowing, and when he was flying one of his friends would come and help me so you know, we didn’t start off by any means, in luxury. In those days we gradually got things. When I came out here I heard about the girls with their glory boxes.

I don’t know about those but we never had them in England, a glory box, but girls used to collect linen and things for their homes and so by the time they go married you know, they had a lot of things. Yes it was the thing and it was also the thing here,

this coming out. I can't think what it was, it was only the Lords’ and Ladies’ children, debutantes, yes. But nowhere in my life did I know a debutante in England, they were only the royalty and the upper crust but out here debutantes. Well by the time our girls came along it was just about out…

Oh no, no way and they didn’t want to be and all that’s gone now but some of it is coming back in all the private schools. Ours go to Kenmore High they are not at a private school. If we had, Sue went to St. Aiden’s and if we had had a boy he would have gone to CBC [Christian Brothers College] because it was a disappointment that we didn’t have any contacts there.

My husband’s grandfather gave all that land to CBC. Mellow House was where my husband was born and it was burnt down and the boarders weren’t in it but they have since built a new part and Mellow was where my husband was born/

So that has a history for him then but we didn’t go there and my daughter couldn’t afford to send Harry there so that’s..

With one and when we went home in the early days I met her and I have a picture of her and I…

But not since strangely enough, but it is funny I can't even remember their sir names. I can remember nearly all my dental officers. I can remember a lot of the boys by their Christian names but I haven’t kept in touch with any of them. And

I grew up with these boys in Bristol, they joined the air force and we all went into the air force it seems but one, Martin, he was one of five brothers and a sister and he was in a Lancaster bomber and they were shot down and they have never found the plane or any of them, but

in London there is a memorial to them, and also in Hendon, because we have seen it, there is also a memorial to these brothers. All the brothers were all killed in planes; they were all shot down, all killed and I have the picture there and they have got this memorial on the wall at Hendon.

I don’t know if you have heard about Hendon.

Well, they’ve got the memorial there, the Lancaster bomber there and they have got a lot of memorabilia there and I think it is all air force, I’m sure it is, yes. And Runnymede, and we are sorry that we haven’t been there and whether we ever get there now,

because that’s got a lot of history too. Did you ever see the film with Tom Hanks where, I can't think now, two brothers were killed and they went to save, Saving Private Ryan, they went to save the third one and they did save him,

Yes, so this was, four of these boys they were all killed.

Terrible really and a sister and it was the sister who gave the windows to Hendon and the windows were given in memory of these four brothers.

Where they lived in Bristol in their little church and the church is going to be dismantled and so she gave the windows to Hendon in memory of them, I can show you that. There was another boy who I grew up with he was in Lancasters and was on a bombing range one day and shot his foot off.

And he felt the gun going off and he pushed it down but it went off and he did three lots of ops [operations] after. They were very brave and they sound brave but you would have to be in that situation you know the excitement of it all and Bader and that.

Bader, Douglas Bader, he lost both legs.

Oh well he lost, I don’t know all the story and he lost both his legs by aircraft being shot down and he was put in one of the camps, a stalag in Germany. He escaped a couple of times and was caught in the end but he went back to flying

and he flew with his artificial legs. I know it sounds awful to think but they were brave but I heard someone interviewed on the radio, it was a girl of fourteen, I think it was, with this pit bull terrier.

And the little girl was on the ground and the pit bull terrier and she asked if she was nervous, and she said, “Nervous? I didn’t have to think. You just had to say.” And I think that’s how it is in situations and when you get older you think back and you think how did you ever or what ever.

So yes and there were a lot of boys killed during the war that I knew mostly air force. My sister went out through all her teen years and into the army and went to Sandhurst and came out but eventually she married this naval man so we weren’t too tied up with the army.

The boss I had in the tracing office, and he went into the army and went out to the Middle East and no, it was really the air force.

Well, we only had one, we were there for three months and we had

a girl, a WAAF girl, and on dental officer and we had to learn. Actually in most they had been dental nurses in civvy before they went in and so they knew a lot of it. It was just that I was determined that was what I wanted to be. I learned right from the beginning and we had to learn all about your mouth

and everything and we also had to make, what they call the models and the bites, and the bite was wax and we had to learn how to do that. And then we had to do that in plaster of Paris, and you had to fit that over and down to the laboratory for the mechanics, and we had to learn all that. Now when I went into a dental surgery,

one up in (UNCLEAR) with one dental officer you were responsible, you had to mix your own amalgams for fillings and for synthetics, the white ones but now when I go to the dentist they press buttons, it’s all done, everything is so different, but I am glad I did the hard way because

I know what it was like all those years ago. So we had to learn from the beginning and we had exams.

Yes, well I did some work after the war as I say, for one of these dental officers who I had been in Bristol, I did work with him until I came out here.

So I really had tracing as a job and dentistry and my two daughters left and I did all sorts of things so I took up yoga and I did Tai Chai and Vic was involved in the air force and their cadets and that, and

I have forgotten what I was going to tell you. No, I was going to tell you, oh yes with the tracing and I saw this advertisement for a tracer in the paper and there was more money in that and I might go and try, and so I went for an interview

it was with this firm and they sent tracers out to different people. They sent me to MIM [Mining Company], they are the engineering people up north, and anyway, and when I finished that job they would send me to another one and I never got to a drawing office.

I was only there for about six months and once you finished that job they sent you to another one, new office and new people and I didn’t really have to do it but I thought I can do my own thing again, and that was the only time. Then, and as I said, I did yoga

and I was doing Tai Chi when this daughter, her marriage broke up and so I tried to help her with babies and concentrate on my Tai Chi and I thought I must go where I am needed the most. So I gave that up and ever since then they sleep here, they have got their rooms here twice a week,

for afternoon tea, and we sort of live between their school and home and so they often come in on the way home after school. So unless we say we are going to be out we see them most days and we go to, well in primary school we have

always gone to their things but now it is a little bit different we only go when we are asked, and the girl plays the piano lessons, Harry doesn’t play anything now. I didn’t have boys but they are so restless. Well I know I was a tomboy but it is different with girls,

but this boy is very restless. He knows everything you see and that’s the trouble, whatever you say, and of course they get it off the internet or the computer and I have been surprised about some of the information he has, but anyway.

I only had one rotten one. I had twenty-six all together and this was in Belgium, as a matter of fact, whenever any of the ordinary boys, not the officers just the ordinary boys, would come for dentistry

and he would treat them like that, he would be horrid to them and he was the only one. And I remember saying if you speak to those boys like that I won't work for you, so I don’t know how I had the nerve. And I had been in the air force a long time before I got to Belgium of course,

but he was the only one I didn’t like and he was really ignorant and that was all I can say. And I think he had come late into the air force and he probably hadn’t even gone through the war but he was one of those who thought he was better than all those boys.

Yes, well mostly, in the beginning of course it was English or British and then as I was sent to the different stations, a lot of Australians, Canadians, South African, and French.

I didn’t like the French much they were too forward cause that’s their way I suppose. As I say, a lot of the boys, I think they respected us in those days even though we were in the WAAF. I have a book there that I have just got a story in

and there is one story in there and we are all very upset because it’s this WAAF that’s written you know, girls were only there to be the pleasure of the men, and this is Peter Robins that has written it. So I don’t know if you have heard of him but anyway, but on the whole the girls we were really quite innocent

in the services. Most of us, I mean there were the odd ones I suppose and I do think boys did respect you in those days, and so it was only the French that looked upon us a different. I can remember the first time I ever saw a dead body at Newington near Tutbury,

and this pilot had crashed. He was a French man and I was staying in the sick quarters there and they asked me if I would like to go in and see him because we did know him, and so I went in and he was just all white you know, where he had crashed all the blood…

So that was that was the first time.

I have forgotten what I was saying now.

Yes, it was at Newington so that sort of brought it home to me you know, that this is real war and know him and seeing him.

I went into the mortuary, do you mean? Well he was just lying there and I forget, I suppose he must have been covered somewhere but he was just like marble really, and he had crashed and his injuries, and you could see the blood marks all over him.

Yes, so, but can I deviate there because Sue, when she left school and she did well at school and she didn’t know what she wanted to do and she wasn’t into nursing or anything, and with her good marks they said physiotherapy and she said, “Oh I don’t know. I’m not into hospitals.”

“Oh no, you won't see blood or anything like that.” And so she went to uni and started physiotherapy, and in the first year they put them with the second year med students to work in with dead bodies and imagine it, and for a long time she wouldn’t eat chicken after it. She said you know, they looked just like dead chickens and that was that. Yes, I didn’t see a lot of crashes

at the station, more of the… I was on the training station, you know where the pilots were training, and it was more, once you got up to Lincoln where my husband was and that. But you go to know them and it was sad if they did crash

or were injured.

Quite a few from where I grew up and especially Martin, this boy who was one of four brothers and all that crew, but also my great friend who I went to school with and she married at the beginning of the war,

and she had… Her husband then went into aircrew and she had one little boy and she was pregnant with the next but he didn’t know and he crashed, and so he never knew she was pregnant. And he and his whole crew crashed and they crashed in Belgium they got (UNCLEAR) for the seven crew,

and look after it. And when my friend who died two years ago, these two sons, they had to get permission from the air force, the Air Ministry to take her ashes over and be buried in her husbands grave. An aircrew of seven and I have got pictures of that there.

And yes, there are a lot of stories and one my husband will tell, it was called Operation Manna and there’s a memorial in Hendon to them too. They flew in Holland at the end of the war but another thing, in Germany and Belgium the people were starving for coffee and cigarettes

and they wanted coffee beans, and they would sent them out. And then we all had a cigarette ration during the war, I learned to smoke and so Mary, this friend of mine, she and I used to give up our rations to the Belgium and some of the Germans and they managed to hide a lot of things.

The Nazis were coming through and the beautiful materials and that, so glass wear which I still have, and yes that was some of the things.

I don’t think I was serious. It’s terrible because I am serious now you see. I worry now, I worry over my daughters so I think it has come late.

Actually you had feelings and that and I had tears over Martin and another boy but then you went on to the next and you know, you sort of were really upset when you were posted from one station to the next, leaving all those friends and the happy times

and you didn’t know what to expect, but then when you got to the next it was, I can't remember, a station that I was on that I didn’t really enjoy myself, not in the very beginning, but it was a case of you got your uniform in Morecambe and that was where we had to do all our marching and I didn’t mind it. But I have read some of the war

stories in these books and they hated it. But anyway I quite enjoyed that and in Morecambe there were three of us stationed like in a holiday home and all the holiday homes were along the front in those places, the land lady she looked after us. I was just starting with the WAAF and she treated us as if,

and she looked after us there and that was Morecambe. And then I went down to Benson and Abingdon, to the stations and that was different, and this was all before I did my dental course and that was, and you had to salute all the officers and everything.

Very well that’s why that story in that book about the WAAF you know, she’s written, and she was anonymous you know, but yes, very well I think it’s how you are.

Well she has more or less said that she went up on an op you know, with the aircrew as their comforter, to have sex when they were on an op, but I don’t know if you have ever been in a Lancaster, I mean to get from the gunners to the others they had to walk on a narrow thing for one thing.

It was cramped, cold, no heating. No, we have complained about it and then, and I don’t know this particular Peter Robinson, and he has gone over to England to promote his book, it has only just come out and I was going to get more copies and I wrote and told him no, not with that

story and he did apologise. But it’s up to him if that someone wrote that story but I don’t know. But I heard John Laws [radio broadcaster] yesterday or the day before, he writes other books and this is the first service book, and John Laws is over the moon about this book

and telling everyone to read it and buy it. And he said he is coming back from England soon so we will interview him. So I will write to John Laws and say is this the same Peter Robinson, if so he has just written. The book is good, it’s there on the table, all the stories, and I have learned a lot about other people

through reading all these. I have read about three of them so. But I think the world was so big during the war and so much was going on everywhere in the Middle East and the Far East and we were just a little bit but.

Oh yes,

it was and they never really went back, well they did go back up to a point, not like they are today with all the women going out to work. They have to because things have changed and they say they need two incomes, I don’t know.

Well I can't say that because there was only my husband, driving straight up to Brisbane and then I met his family and they were nice as I gradually got to know them all. But I have always seen a roughness here and there was in those days, and when I used to

go into town sometimes I would come home to my husband and have a cry. With the way they spoke I see now it was an abruptness but I don’t know what it was and I make my husband laugh, and of course it’s all from the convict days and then of course they came over from England or Britain.

So it’s around about, and yes there seems there did seem to be and maybe I don’t notice it now but I did notice a sort of abruptness.

Just the way they spoke to you in the shops, not polite and it wasn’t even rude. I can only say

it was abrupt I suppose.

Well on the whole I liked them and well, they were mostly the boys you see. I never saw an Australian WAAAF. I don’t think they went to England. I think they could go to England then join

up and I remember at one stage, a Belgium girl, and she was in the WAAF, and it was after Belgium had been taken by the Nazis and I remember her name was Gabby Gabriel and when the Nazis came into Belgium they hid and her parents managed to get her away to England and she never knew what happened to her sister.

And so she joined up and I never met any Australians over there. I did meet an Australian later on. It wasn’t during the war it was when I came out and I met, where I met her and having met Australians it was quite interesting to talk to her but I

got the impression, because I don’t know if I like Australian girls, because she could do everything and I thought oh gosh, she could cook and everything, and I forget where this was. And I thought goodness, well if they can do all those things I don’t think I want to go.

The aircrew, oh yes, I liked them all but there were some that you didn’t, but now its strange, my husband having got in touch with his crew, a few years ago we went home and we went up to Lincoln, up to their air station and these two Canadians, and one got sick and he couldn’t, at the end

this particular one, and I got the impression having met him later on in life, I think he was a bit of a lad. And my husband said yes he was, and we’ve got the photo of the crew, and I said to Vic, “If I met him on one of the air stations he would be one that I wouldn’t want to meet.” And I mean he is happily married now and everything, and I’m not naive enough.

Well Vic and I always say that we were not married during the war and, because some of my dental officers were married and as war went on it must have been hard for them to live a single life and yet they were married, and any that I did meet were very respectable,

and I’m not saying that there weren't you know.

Oh well, they would have wanted sex. I mean today its all different isn’t it? I mean you hear of the children at school and that’s what worries me about my two grandchildren,

and I don’t think they are into it, but you don’t know do you? And well, I remember when I came out here because my husbands family lived on the river there and its off Silvan Road, and there was a big old Queenslander there and I remember being told that’s where girls went if they found they were

pregnant, if they were single, and they were put in there. And I have seen film later of these girls, recently, about the Irish laundry yes and see, oh so cruel, and awful. And that was the time, and see I went to a convent and my sister and I since hearing some of the things about,

and we say no, our nuns, they were lovely, they were not cruel and those were orphans a lot of them too. But there was a lot of cruelty out here at the beginning. Nazareth House now where’s that and it was in the news not too long ago,

you had a lot of orphans there I think and a lot of things went on there, the dearest little children. So I’ve been lucky. They do say you are lucky where you are born, well lucky or unlucky, or who you are born to.

Oh yes, it was at Brighton on his disembarkation leave and a friend of mine, Irene, and we just had the week there so I knew that was the leave centre for the Australians. And we went there because we liked them and so we were going to the dance this night and you know, we were going to the little pub.

And when we went in there were about six or eight Australians and we were in our civvies [civilian clothes], we weren’t in uniform. So we went in and I don’t know what we ordered and all these boys came over of course, and everybody did in those days, you didn’t wait to be introduced. They came over to talk to us and we were in the services, my friend

was in the navy all except my husband who stayed back you see, and he was shy and they had to go and get him. But for the rest of that week we all went to the dance and we saw a lot of each other. Actually I used to take a lot of the boys home to meet my parents because I was very often stationed near home, especially my Scottish dental officer.

And they were always so pleased to see any of the boys and the boys liked the home cooking and that. I took Vic home after that week but he was due back here in the month so we really had that week in Brighton and a couple of times, when he came to Bristol. But we wrote for six years,

that’s how we got to know each other.

He didn’t stay with us he stayed in a hotel. No he was just another boy. I mean I’ve got pictures of another boy

who came from Perth and he stayed too once, and this was before I met Vic. “Oh what about coming to Australia?” And I said, “Australia? I would never leave England.” Anyway you see, a lot of parents wrote in those days and sent parcels and the Australians were very good at sending parcels to Britain. His mother started writing to my mother and so

we kept in touch through the parents really. But we lost touch and, because that was early 1943 I think, and he was a pilot and he was on the transport, transporting people and eventually he did come out. And the first time I went home and Vic went to Malaya it was by ship of course, he was

married by then and he and his wife met me off the ship and showed me Perth. So that was another, but during the six years that Vic and I wrote I met a few boy friends too. There was usually a boy friend but you went on you know, well with me anyway,

and I kept in touch with boys that I had grown up with or been killed, but yes.

Oh yes, I think if there hadn’t been a war I would have married one of the boys that I grew up with. Yes life would have been different and my sister

always said, “We do love Vic but I wish he had been Canadian because it so much cheaper to get to Canada.” And it only takes a few hours this journey out here and so yes, and we nearly did go back at one stage, and he loves Britain and when I came out here he still had a couple of aunts.

But yes, but Vic could have gone, he could have settled back there but it didn’t eventuate in the end.

Well my sister and her husband was in the (UNCLEAR) and after he went out to Nigeria, and my brother was in the air force and he went into Cable and Wireless

and travelled all over the world, so my brother and sister were all over the world. So when Daddy died I had Jill born so Mummy was going to come out here and stay and help me for awhile but then after a few years, oh it would have been about three years I suppose.

I think we would go back and take her too, and we even had booked the girls into a little private school, we did see it once. And anyway, it didn’t eventuate she was knocked down, she wasn’t killed but anyway, it put every thing back so we didn’t go in the end and Vic, his grandfather was Scottish so he could have gone through.

And his father being Scottish, he could have gone and worked there too. So, and I have often said, “Oh yes, I wish that we had gone because our girls would have had English boys and that.” And this of course, is thinking of Sue you know, it broke up and Jill is married to an Australian boy but well, his father is English but he was born here.

It’s fate, I really think fate. I never thought I would come here.

You mean here, when I came out here? Oh well, we went to London.

Where did we go? We went to some service.

Oh, I don’t know. There was nothing like sex or anything like that, kissing and cuddling in those days, and if it had been like now, where they go and sleep together, how different the services would have been.

Actually if you became pregnant you came out anyway. You could stay in if you were married but you were posted to different stations, but once you were pregnant you had to come out but, I don’t know.

In those day you walked a lot and I think I showed him

Bristol. We had museums and shops and walks and parks and things and pictures, and he can always remember the pictures, that we went to the cinema and what we saw, but I can't. You see, I mean I did come out here and he took me to the pictures and they had those canvas seats,

those things. I thought what sort of world have I come to? I do remember when Vic met me in Sydney off the ship, that’s right he was in a jacket with a half belt on the back and see, I did notice that the men were wearing what I thought was old fashioned clothes. In Britain after the war

and that, the men started wearing the navy blazers with the gold buttons. I mean I think all that’s gone now, hasn’t it? You know, we were five years ahead in our fashion over there. If you went to the pictures the girls wore hats and gloves and I had not been used to, in the five years, to find that was a bit strange going back, yes.

I have gone back in time but not into the war and you know, I was thinking of what I had left I suppose, coming here. I think a lot of it too, it was so far away and it took ten weeks to get here on the ship. And we were lucky I suppose, because in that ten weeks we stopped for three days at every port

through ah, Suez it was, like what you would pay for a cruise today. And the ship was a hotel, we had all our meals and everything. We used to go off each day and we would have three days, Bombay, Calcutta, all those places

right across the world, and of course the Suez, that all closed after but, so that was a great experience. Well there again, that was the last ex service ship, after that you had to pay the ten dollars or after that some people flew and they had to pay everything, and that’s what made me to come because Vic had nominated me three times and then had to cancel it because I wouldn’t leave.

So this last time I thought, if I don’t go now and I want to go, I will have to pay and that really made me come but it was lovely again because everyone on the ship was ex service. Some were married by then and some not. We had a wonderful time then, you know, and we got to Sydney and we all had to say good bye so that was another stage of losing touch with that life.

No, they all came out in 1945 and they were roughly all out here by then unless it was the migrants later. but I just came out at the end, as a late war bride.

Vic joined our service in the war but I have read some of their stories coming out with their babies and it was horrific, cabins six or eight of them and their little babies were ill. And no, have you read any of the war bride stories?

And some went outback and when war started we were sixteen and seventeen so many of us, and they probably had never cooked like me or anything and they had married men who lived in the outback. They had to cook for all these jackaroos.

I would have gone home then I think. I don’t think I would have stayed but they did and they managed. According to some of the stories very few went back but well, it was such a different world and we didn’t know and we did learn about Australia at school but most about sheep stations and all that you know, we had never met any Australians.

I never thought about it really, it was just another of our dominions, no, like South Africa. I might have felt closer to South Africa because you know, the people migrated out

earlier didn’t they. No, I think I just thought of the convicts here and having been to Tasmania a few times around Port Arthur, you know, it sort of comes to you what they went through and how cruel, how we sent them out here for such silly things.

Well I, no, probably sounds funny but there were a few boys in my life but ah well, I must have liked him to have kept writing

and that, and I suppose in his letters and he said things and talked about everything. I tried to get back actually but as a steward he was going to try and get on, but I think a few of them wanted to do that too. No I liked him obviously, from the beginning and I went over to Germany after that

and I met boys there and that was different because I couldn’t take them home. There were Americans there too, and the only American I ever met and I took home and that, was in Bristol and the Bristol Zoo but it had a huge ball room and we always went there for our annual dances.

So they put a lot of the Americans there and so I went to a dance there and I was on leave I think, and I met this boy and he was engaged actually but I took him home and he brought all sorts of things for the mother's, the parents to eat, Spam, and they liked to give the girls silk stockings. And we

went to and they used to send an invitation to the nearest air station for the girls but this was later on because America didn’t come into the war too early. So this, we went to this dance and they came with their bus and picked us up, there were about twenty of us, perhaps thirty, and we went to the dance but half way through in the interval

they had to take us all to the toilet you see. And so they, one here and one there and we were marched there and they were war time toilets they had set up in Britain to go into all these different places, and they had these long, like a long hut back to back and no screen in between. But anyway we were all girls

and we had a good laugh of course, but one man at this end and one man at the other to guard us so that was on an American air field. But I met a few in Belgium but I never went out with any.

Yes, well the only one I took home, John Youick his name was, he gave me a photo of himself with his little fiancé you know, so it was all, it was just friends. No it was, I don’t think I actually went out with him as a boyfriend

or anything. He came home and that was all. I think he was the only American I had as a sort of a boyfriend, and I don’t ever remember being kissed by him or kissing him.

And then once we met in Belgium at dances, I didn’t go out with anyone so.

Oh well, I think some behaved badly but then so did some girls I suppose. I think on the whole

you thought they were rather forward but it was just their way, the Americans. I mean if you listen to them today on the radio yes, I think it was just and when they are away from home and I have heard it said so many times, you know, when Australians you know, the footballers really let the country down and the British were the same in the Middle East I think. And they used to go into all these

brothels and, I mean you hear this but I have never known anybody who has. So yes, on the whole they were friendly and I liked them but I didn’t have a boy friend as such.

I think only when we went to the dances they gave everybody something.

I don’t remember, we probably, we were going on the bus, I don’t know, I can't remember those sort of things. I know this boy John took they called it their PX [Postal Exchange – American canteen unit] I think, the canteen, and they always, if any one was invited out they always

had things like that because we couldn’t get them during the war, no meat or sugar, or butter.

Oh I don’t know. I think we just wore what we had you know, when we, before the war we went to the lake dances.

We were only sixteen and seventeen and we never went to those other balls like you have now, and as I say, when my sister was getting married in 1941everybody pooled their coupons and no, she borrowed a dress I think, but for the reception and the food. And I can remember when I went to Belgium

we were in uniform of course, and for the first time I wore trousers in the WAAF. When you went into the WAAF there were only certain girls that could wear trousers, that was the battle dress and the ones with the balloons you know, the ones put up to stop the aircraft, they had balloons floating up into the sky and to stop the aircraft they would get tangled in them.

And so that was the balloon girl and the MT [Motor Transport] drivers, the ambulance drivers, the girls that drove the little cars for the air crew to get on the planes, they all wore trousers in their jobs. But when I went over to Belgium we were issued with trousers over there.

Oh we could wear, I don’t think at that stage… I can remember the first time that my sister and I put nail varnish on, this was before the war when we were going to a dance and my father said, “Off.” Oh yes, didn’t like nail varnish.

Of course, after the war they got used to it. But we didn’t wear a lot of make up. I don’t remember girls wearing a lot of make up or jewellery. We weren’t suppose to wear jewellery except you could wear wedding rings, and then in the dentistry if you had a wedding ring on you had to either take if off, or if you were mixing amalgams, because of the mercury.

But I didn’t have any jewellery and we had a watch, that was about all, no studs in your ears or your tongue, none of that, and I don’t know if they are allowed all that today, or tattoos.

No, although my daughters have but when we went in, of course, we had to have all these injections on the second day and sometimes you had a couple of days having a fever and everyone had to have that.

I know a few years ago a lot of people

were saying oh, you know, ailments could be there from the mercury in teeth, a lot of people were having them taken out. But I have a few fillings and they are still there.

Oh yeah, that’s my brother and sister up there.

Oh yes, we still write long letters to each other and, but we phone too, about once a month we ring my sister. She hasn’t had any children, her son died, but five years ago and I did fly over to be with her, she lives in this little National Trust building

in Somerset and it’s got the school and it’s just like a little English village, so that’s lovely. They have lived there since her husband came out of the navy and they, I am just as close to my twin brother you know. This is his second marriage. His first marriage, his

wife, she got arthritis and it developed more you know, where she was really sick and in hospital and the only people who went to see her or give her any sympathy were the Mormons. And his three children eventually became Mormons you know, but my brother never did and it broke the marriage up,

and so. But his is married now to Sylvia and she is divorced.

No, they don’t unfortunately, no.

Since they have left home they have never lived, they are, but not like my sister and I which is rather sad I think. I mean they are in touch with one another but no, I don’t think there is that closeness there.

Well Sue is probably, because having children, oh yes, she is very good and she’s got albums to pass on to the children, and being a Kindy teacher and that, oh yes, she has got lots of things in that way for them. She’s interested in all the history,

and Jill, not so much because she hasn’t children and she had two miscarriages and couldn’t have any more, so she hasn’t got children and its different.

No, I haven’t got them and they weren't love letters actually.

But he always says that I threw them away and I don’t know if he has got any of my letters. What did happen I think when I came out and we were married and Vic had to go to Malaya for that, and wives couldn’t go at that stage and so I went home for that year. And I was home sick, so his father lived on the river, he had this room and we put a lot of stuff under

the house, and his brother Alistair was going out to South Africa and we say that he threw a lot of our stuff out. That’s where the letters would have gone but I can't remember them as love letters.

Oh no, I don’t think about them. I think because Vic is who he is, he is a lovely person and if he hadn’t been such a lovely person I don’t think I would have been as happy or had stayed with him. I think his nature suits mine. We are opposites and we admit that we are opposites.

No, not in everything well some things like, well we both like war pictures, not the stuff we have today. And I like sad things and reading a book. I only like true stories I don’t like fiction really.

The opera, and I like the tragic opera and he loves Gilbert and Sullivan which I like too but he doesn’t really like tragedy, I don’t know. But we think differently but we get on well together. As my grandson says, I’m bossy. My sister, when she was here, once told them

I used to be called ‘bossy boots’ and I didn’t know that for years. I have that sort of nature and my grand children heard this and well, I do say in a marriage one of you, and it is usually the mother, the men are working and away all day and he comes nearly, at home, at bed time and he has a lovely part

of playing with the children, and you’ve got all the, and you’ve got to make the rules. And with Vic, he was away quite a bit so I was on my own with them and you do become the boss, and because Vic has a very soft nature and accepts what I decided and he will leave it to me.

Sometimes I say, well you decide and even when we have, how about you decide. Well anyway, you would think opposites would… No, I have never been sorry that I have married him and I do like him and maybe I wouldn’t have been as happy with him.

And I think our natures might but they were more exciting in things and that was the age probably you know. I remember one boy and he had a car when no one had a car, he was the only boy that had a car and it wasn’t like the cars today.

Oh well, as time went on it was harder and then I had Jill as well, and I wondered why he came out after, and moving around a bit, and the children had started school and that, and yes, I was getting restless then.

While you are single service life was lovely then children come along, it is different.

Well I suppose everything, the way of life, Bristol, and I half lived in Bath. And I don’t know if you have ever been to Bath, and now when we go home we make that our base. I’ve got relatives

in that area and then my sister in Somerset and my brother in Cornwell but we don’t stay with any other relatives, but we are there and we visit and so.

Oh well no, the things that I had asked, no, they don’t have that here. Now strangely enough

the flap jack that we call, that that you have just eaten, when I was at home that was a recipe given to my mother, actually by a lady who came from the north of England because it’s simple. It just has butter, oats, syrup, and sugar in it and you could make it with your rations, and so it was made in England with

Lyall and Tait syrup. And when I came out I couldn’t get this and I had to have well, CSR [Colonial Sugar Refining] and it didn’t taste the same and I couldn’t make it. Well only recently, I mean it just shows you you can get it here now, Lyall and Tait syrup and so I tried it and we don’t like it, back to the CSR syrup.

But I can't remember there were things and things that I did find. Foster Clark custard I used to make when the children were little, that went and I do see Foster Clark now, but that disappeared here and I am used to a lot of the food here now.

But there were no supermarkets and I used to have this little Egyptian, he had a little shop in Indooroopilly and you would go there and order your things and in the afternoon, and he would bring the box around with all that you had ordered, and I think Coles do it today.

And yes, he was an Egyptian man, so.

Oh yes, well I woke up feeling very sad actually, not a happy feeling really, and I had no one of my own here, brother, sister or my parents, so I woke up and I can remember thinking,

oh I won't see any of them. But then it was a happy day and we were married in the Presbyterian church and my father in law gave me away and my husband’s sister Mary, well she was married then so she was matron of honour and Alistair, one of Vic’s brothers, he

was best man, and Vic had another brother, he is the doctor one in Towamba. And we were going to get married on this certain day and we had to change it because of the minister, ‘cause he was operating or something, and so that brother didn’t get to the wedding. But we only had a week before Vic was called back into the air force,

and that’s why his family rallied around. His sister took me into town and I bought a faille suit. I wasn’t married as a bride it was called faille, like silk.

It was turquoise, just a skirt and a top and a little

white and yes, it was sort of a silky suit.

I think so, yes. I had them and then, as I say, we just had the week for a honeymoon. We booked at the Pacific Hotel at Southport,

and it was there then, and I think it has gone now, I’m not sure. But one of Vic’s uncles had this house at Mermaid Beach so we actually went to the hotel but we spent the week at the holiday house at the beach.

Oh yes, we did but we just spent the days at the holiday house.

So after, Vic was posted to Ballarat, but he had to go straight away so I went a month later.

I know, it’s strange.

Well I don’t know. Anyway, this is rather a funny story. And so we went to Ballarat and I went a month later and

he had to do a wireless course having gone back in, and so all day he was away and we stayed in this hotel at Ballarat. And so I had all the day to myself on the beach and that and there were some other wives there and some children. But of course I was fancy free at that time. It was all right, but anyway, this particular time I had been on the beach

and some of the boys had come back from flying and they were in the hotel drinking and looking out at the beach, because it was right down near the beach, and I was coming up from the beach. I knew what time they were due back and this friend said, “Look at that.” And Vic said, “Oh…” But I can't tell you what he said.

And anyway, Vic let him go on for a while. And then Vic said, “That’s my wife.” And so anyway, that is that story and he is married now. But yes, we were there in Ballarat for awhile and then that was when Vic had to go to Malaya for the year and that Malayan war was very you know…

We were married in ’51, so that was about ’52.

Mummy and Daddy, my parents and, I keep on saying Mummy and Daddy which you probably think is strange but when, to my dying day, and when I go over there and I mustn’t say Mummy and Daddy.

Mummy died when Sue was two and, did I say ’54? So it was before Jill was born so it was ’56, and Daddy was sick and so I flew home with Sue, and she had her second birthday and that was a journey in itself. I had

this cradle in the front of the plane and we went through America that way, and so, anyway we went that way and she wouldn’t go into this cradle at all and she wouldn’t go to anyone you know, she just clung to me. Even when I went to the toilet she would just cling to me and wouldn’t go to anyone, and then in Honolulu, you know, people offered to take her

and I remember the pilot sitting next to me and he said, “Oh, its hard. I’ve got children.” And of course at two, and I have read since that two is a terrible age and remember, to take them out of their own surroundings at that age. But so we saw Daddy then and he didn’t die then he died

when I came back. And we were there six months and by the time we flew back, we came back through Singapore the other way, she was as good as gold because she had met a lot of people in England, and you know, taking her and all my family. So she was two and half then, and in those days they let the children play in the aisles, puzzles, and imagine today, you are not allowed out of your seat are you.

And so she played with a lot of children who were going out to Singapore with their parents in the holidays. They went out to be with their parents so that was then. Of course I came back and we had Jill so that was then. And then I took them both home,

one was twelve and one was fourteen and they were at school. And we had a special trip for British people for ten weeks you know, so I took them both home then, and when I think they were so good. And so we had some work to do in the ten weeks so that they wouldn’t get behind with their work.

I used to make a lot of their clothes, and I can't sew today, and I had an old Singer machine and you worked it with your knee and it’s still in the cupboard. And so the night before we went I was making these little bags for them to put their work in for this work they had to do,

and even in the plane they would do some of their school work because it was a long journey. So we were over there for ten weeks and what I had each ten weeks worked out as to where we would go. And of course all the relatives, and I had lots of relatives because I mean, all the elderly ones they have all gone now.

And in those days they were all there so each week, I had an envelope for each week and I would put inside where we were going and how much money I would want and if I over spent that week I would take from the others. And that’s how I managed because really, in our day women didn’t do much with money.

And in the air force they had their own money and they made an allotment to their wives and that, but they paid all the bills and Vic did, so I didn’t know anything about money in regard to looking after, so I thought you know, ten weeks. And I knew how much money I had so I had it worked out

if there was something that I wanted to do. And take them to different places, go up to where my mother was born and we wanted to go to Scotland. Anyway, and so we were in London seeing some cousins and we had, I think we were having another week before we were going somewhere else and I said, “I’m taking them up to (UNCLEAR)”

And he said, “Oh no, you're not going all that way and you don’t know any one.” And we went into the travel place I think, and we booked on the train and went right up into Scotland, and we found somewhere to stay in Edinburgh, and I arranged the next day to go to (UNCLEAR)

And I said this is where my mother was born, it’s on the sea but I don’t know where but I would love to find where she was born. We got talking to this gentleman, a Mr. Stewart and I said, “Do you know any Morrisons who lived here?” And “Oh no, I have lived here for a long time.”

But he said, “Now I’ll drive you around and there is an elderly lady and she is in her nineties and she would know the history.” And anyway he found her and she told him where the Morrison family had lived at Clifton and anyway this farm house, and it was all farm land in those days,

where my mother had been born and the house had been made into a pub. And I’ve got all the pictures you know, called the Clifton Hotel or something. And so we found where my mother was born and this gentleman stayed with us, and I’ll drive you around. And he drove us all around Gordonstone you know, the school where Prince Charles went, the shower where they had to shower in cold water every morning and

then he said, “Well when are you going back?” And I said the next day and he said, “Well where are you staying?” And I said well we have to find somewhere, and he said well you must come home and that. And we went to his home with his wife and two sons and the two sons spoke in Gaelic and we couldn’t understand a word they said.

Anyway, it doesn’t get, and it was summer there, and it doesn’t get dark until midnight and you know, at ten o’clock it would be still light and that was good, and he told us a lot of history and well, so that was a sad trip.

Oh yes.

I can't remember but we didn’t get much but we got all our food and everything, and any money we got, and anyway, I think maybe our parents gave us, I don’t know. The boys used to borrow

and he said in all his service life he never sent home for money. I think perhaps they paid my bus fair because I went home every weekend but no, we go so much money and we got enough I suppose, because we bought cigarettes and what they call a NAAFI [Navy, Army, Air Force Institute], but we got all our food.

Well it was, oh gosh what can I liken it to here? Well a tiny Coles where you could buy chocolates, sweets and oh cocoa and anything you wanted to take for supper. And also there were a lot of voluntary services the CWA,

the Country Womens Association. In fact I just heard yesterday they have a stall here at the show here and the amount they have to pay for insurance and we listen to 4BC all the time and you know, they are up in arms it’s a voluntary service and that was another thing I haven’t told you, I did voluntary work at the Royal Brisbane. Shall I deviate there?

When the girls left home and before I did the yoga and all that, I wanted to do something and I went to the Royal Brisbane and I worked there on a voluntary basis and when anyone had to go to another ward or part of the hospital I used to take them. And once I had to take a patient to London House,

and I don’t even know if it’s there, it’s the mental patients and they shut them in a room by themselves. They lock them in and it was terrible I thought, because you had to knock on the door for someone to open it and then you get a key to lock the door behind you. And they put them in a padded room so that they don’t hurt themselves. And so anyway, later I worked up at St. Andrews Hospital.

No, not here but my dentist is English and he has lived here for a long time and they have all these modern things now, and I think how different,

but I’m glad that I had to do it.

Oh yes, you know I can't think of one song. At lunch time I will ask Vic and I’ll tell you. Well ‘Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye’.

Oh yes often. Even today, anyone who can play the piano, about ten years ago this elderly lady came to live next door here and she came out from England to her nephew and she’s up in Bundaberg, but she could play the piano.

She was in her eighties and she used to come in and play and we’ve got ‘Lily Marlene’, that was another one. ‘Underneath the bridges beside the barrack square’, I can't sing.

That’s something I can't do.

Oh that was a song, ‘Lily Marlene’, well no, she was a person, a French person. I love French songs and the way they sing and Vera Lynn was lovely and she would go out to all the troops, she was a sweet heart.

I didn’t know anything about Nancy Wake until I came here, and I did so much research on the war when I came out and got her book and I stick up for her today. And the Australian’s didn’t give her that medal and she is in a terrible way and I believe she has gone back to France. Yes, she was the ‘White Mouse’.

So that, I know that. And yes, I have learned a lot about the war in Japan and a few years ago they were having a trip to the Kokoda Trail and I got all the papers, and I would have loved to have gone on that but the children, probably family reasons, and I would have like to have gone on that.

Do you know, when I read some of these stories now and they give dates, and I do remember some of the dates and, like some of those terrible things in Japan, you see dates. And oh, I was stationed there and I was having such a lovely time, like the Jews, it was all kept, we really didn’t know.

I think I felt at the time, I was back at the dental office then,

it was not exciting enough for me and it was terribly had to settle down after the war you know. Five years of excitement and moving and meeting different people and then going back. First I went to the drawing office and then I went to this dental office and meeting different people, and it wasn’t exciting enough I suppose. And so Vic was still writing and telling me about the nominations,

and in those days, you had to go to Kangaroo Point if you were nominating, and whenever he came in they said, “Oh you’re back again. Hasn’t she come yet?” And so it was just a whole lot of things, a bit of a rut after the war, and it wasn’t quite the same.

Some had been killed and some had gone you know, Bristol all the places we went to. And I think it was just restlessness and then Vic saying to come out, and this was the last time for the ship and so, but I think I came, well I know I came thinking I can stay two years without having to repay.

‘Cause even if you came out free you had to pay it back, and so I thought it would be lovely to see him again and go out on the ship and all the excitement again of moving on. And my parents, they had met Vic and they liked him and over those years his mother had written to my mother,

and his sister came out too and saw her. And I think it was all those things. And I thought well, if I don’t like it when Vic and I would see each other again maybe I would want to come back. And I think at that stage I knew that I could go back, and see, when I did get here I was ready to go back

because it was all so strange, so old fashioned. And I did get home sick again having come from, we were a close family I suppose. I mean looking back now I think how could I? A few people said that, how

could they come to a strange land they don’t know. I mean all of us, we had a short meeting and some of them stayed.

Close enough that if I stayed we would marry.

But it was all airy-fairy in a way and I just wasn’t sure, and after moving on all the time and never knowing where you were going. And I didn’t forget to tell you that when I was in Belgium, it was the first Christmas after the war I went through to Brussels on

Christmas Eve and it was the first since the beginning of the war, and all the lights were on. It was snowing and it was just like fairy land you know. That was the first Christmas that Europe put it’s lights on, it was just like fairy land. But anyway, that

was how I came out I think.

Well they didn’t think, they had been used to us going and coming I suppose, and my brother was away again with Cable and Wireless and he came. And the first time I came out one of the stops was Aden and he had been posted there with Cable and Wireless.

And you know, we thought that would be lovely meeting there after awhile, but then just before I got there he was sent to Tripoli or somewhere, but we didn’t meet. It was an exciting, depending on your age, an exciting time to live and if you were married it would have been different again.

You’ve seen pictures of them going off to Iraq and leaving their babies and that, and a mixture of times for older people, parents to see if there was a real war and you know, it was a real war because Hitler. I would not like to see our grandchildren go off

but, so you know, it would be different. But I think with my parents having travelled to America, they were single when they went, maybe that spirit was there. I never, never thought that I would want to leave Britain, times change.

Oh well, Vic has just told me about the ‘White Cliffs of Dover’ and ‘Barkley Square’.

”There will be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover, just you wait and see.” I can't sing. And Barkley Square, no I can't think of it. That painting up there, that was ages ago it was eighteen years ago,

and it was some little painting, Kenmore, and I said, “Oh that’s the white cliffs of Dover,” and so I bought it thinking it was the White Cliffs of Dover you see. And so I have a cousin in England, he sent me a post card and it was this picture and on the back it said ‘Seaforth’.

And we went home and the next year and he said, “Are you sure?” And he said, “Yes, I lived there and I know.” But it is so like Dover and I think of it as Dover, and they have just been advertising Noosa, a new place called Seaforth, so I think it might be after that.

It wasn’t a luxury ship really and they did put us, and there were six of us to a cabin, and it was hard because there were some married couples on the ship to be separated. And I have got I sent a picture,

into one of the war books and they put it on the front of the book but it was good. Well I can always remember my family seeing me off at Hampton and that was terrible to think that you had actually done it and you didn’t know.

I mean in the air force, you had the air force looking after you but going off like that and not knowing anybody, even on the ship. And I think a few of us had tears you know, sailing away and not knowing if you would come back, thinking

you know. But once you got away and we wrote a lot and my family wrote. At each port you would go for the mail, and that there was a couple I met, they were married but they were separated. Betty was in the same cabin and they were the only couple that came to Brisbane, everyone else got off at mostly

Sydney. So we all, well I left them because Vic drove me up here and we did keep in touch for awhile which was good, but then they went to Tasmania. And so that was when Vic was posted to Ballarat and we went to them for our first Christmas, it was our first Christmas out here.

But he got sick and he got a goitre and he was told if he you live in Tasmania you have to take iodised salt, so they moved to Melbourne and we didn’t write for a while. And I had my children and they had theirs and you lose touch. Well we have over the years you know, no one off the ship that I have kept in touch with at all.

Well there was swimming pool and there was table tennis and there really were, all the things that you get, it was nice. You know the food was good, the cinema and of course, with each port, Malta. I can't remember,

I have them all written down somewhere, and just about three days in each port. The only time I was sea sick was coming through the Bay of Biscay and most people get sick there and we were sick there.

And trying to have a bath in the water on a ship you know, the salt water, the salt water wouldn’t lather, but on the whole yes, that was exciting going to all those places and going to different ports and buying odd things, material.

Well in Bombay I got a lot of beautiful material because as you know, they have those saris and I had dresses made here. But there is a vase over there and I had two but one broke so there is still one of those. And anyway yes, I didn’t tell you, this was when I went home, when Vic was in Malaya and so at the end

of the year he flew back to England. He managed to get an air force trip back for three months and that is actually when I know I became pregnant with Sue, so. And he had to fly back, after three months he came back on the ship but I stayed awhile longer. And they thought that I should come first class

coming back, being pregnant you know, but anyway I didn’t like it. Well I was still young and people who could afford first class were all the elderly and I found that a bit boring, so I used to go down to third class and so I spent a lot of time down in the third class with the younger people.

And that was when I came back that time. So yes, that was the ship coming out and going home again and coming back and after that. Of course, it was all air travel and the next time I went home and Sue was two, and then the time after that we had Jill, and then at school they

were twelve and fourteen. And then I have been back a couple of times on my own. Actually Vic and I have never travelled on a plane ‘cause he always had to go with the air force. And then I went home a few times on my own you know, and the first time we travelled together was not long ago, was 1988 when we did a tour of

Europe and since then I haven’t wanted to go on my own. I have never minded, it was different then and I did go on my own, when my sister’s husband died fours years ago, and it was very sudden and I was gone within a week, going on my own so. Oh yes,

we did stop that time, we had a stop over. Usually we go on straight through but we did stop in Singapore and Vic wanted to go back because he was stationed there and we stayed the night in Raffles it was before, I mean it is a luxury place now but then it was very run down after the war. I don’t know if you have seen any of the war films,

a lot of the women were put in concentration camps they all came back to Raffles. It was very nice old worldish. They have done it up now and it has lost a lot of it’s character, it’s for the very rich now. But that was nice and in the morning they had breakfast out in the courtyard and they had canaries all around

in cages singing away. So that was that time and we did this tour of Europe, right through Europe, Belgium, Germany, Poland and when we were in lots of those places it was very strange for Vic because he had never been on the ground at the end of the war, he had only bombed.

And some of the buildings were not built up again and the Wall was still there, and we’ve got pictures of the Wall as it was it came down the year after. And we have got pictures of the little crosses you know, some of them had tried to escape from West Germany was it, over the other side and they were shot crossing.

And yes, then the next year it came down and so that year and the year after we went back again and we were able to go into the other side. It was so different you know, the Russians had had it. And also Hesse, who had flown over Scotland

who had agreed to take a mission from Hitler. He flew from Germany to Scotland towards the beginning of the war but they imprisoned him and then after, when they went to Nuremberg with the trials, they wouldn’t accept that he was going over with a peace mission and put him in, gosh, what's the name of that prison? Anyway,

but the year after they raised it to the ground and he was imprisoned there and he was the only prisoner. He was there for the rest of his life. And I don’t know why they did that to him, he was Hitler’s deputy actually and he was in the Russian zone, you know, in Berlin. They had the American, Russian and British,

zones ‘cause he was in the Russian zone in this prison. They said he had to stay there for the rest of his life, he was into his eighties and that. So that’s what I remember from that, but they said that if he had been in the British or American zones he would, after so many years. But we went to Nuremberg and we asked people where the trials were because I have the book,

and no one would tell us, no one would talk about it you know, they didn’t want to say.

Well it was where the ships came in of course, and I can't remember,

I think we got away fairly quickly, and actually it was, Vic had written and he said he would be meeting me in this utility. Where, now in England we had what we call shooting breaks, well they go off shooting, the Royals and all those people, and they have wooden slats all over them, they are like a

four wheel drive. Anyway that’s what I thought he meant, a utility you see, the same sort of thing. So of course I thought he was meeting me in this and when we got to the car it was what you call a utility with no back. And he had had that on the farm but it was a fairly new one so that was my first thought.

After seeing too, the old fashioned clothes and all that. Anyway we were half way up somewhere, and we have rain in England but I have never seen a storm like we ran into. We had a trunk and cases in the back and in this terrible storm he had to put a tarpaulin up

and he asked me if I would get out and help him and I said well I don’t know if, I said it, now we can't remember. I thought an English boy would never ask me to get out. I mean we don’t have storms in England like that but it was. Anyway we had heavy rain and so I didn’t get out, so that was another thing.

And then we had to stop at, I think it was Gosford, and we had one night we had to stop, and so of course we had separate rooms and it was this little old hotel with lino on the floor and an iron bedstead, and they had a black out. All the lights were out the first night

and we had to eat by candles you know, so really it wasn’t good was it? But Anyway so that’s why I haven’t got happy thoughts of arriving.

I suppose a bit thinking of him

and seeing him although he had sent photos, well not really, and thinking of him in his uniform as I had seen him. Six years later, I suppose, I don’t think he was that different in civvies and I think that was shock to a lot of girls actually. You had only seen their husbands or their boyfriends in uniform

so that makes a difference. So it was just all strange and leaving the ship and the friends you had made you know, it was a little bit, I don’t know how to explain, just not knowing or what you had got yourself in for. And someone said was there a welcoming party.

A lot of war brides who came out early they did, they had a welcome party but no, only Vic there of course. Because we had to come up from Sydney the ships didn’t come in and I don’t think they still do. Yes, at the port they had these, like voluntary, like CWA girls and the babies,

to look after them. But no, it was different, yes different.

Oh, he knew because I went as far as Sydney and he was going in the air force, and I went down to Sydney so, yes, but we were ringing daily because I had been with him and his family. So I came back and when I got back of course, his family knew about me wanting to go back.

So we told them that we had decided to marry and they couldn’t get us married quickly enough. That’s why we were married after six years because Vic was going back into the air force and if Vic had gone back into the air force and we hadn’t been married I would have gone back to England because I had no one here. And if we had probably come together again he would have come to England.

But I must tell you about the time later on when my mother was coming out, my father died and my brother and sister were at that stage and see my babies and go back later when my brother, so she came out on the ship to Sydney and we had Jill and that’s right, I had stopped feeding her.

So I had made these bottles up and put them in the fridge because I was flying down in the morning and the ship was getting in early in the morning. Anyway when I got to Sydney they said the ship has been delayed and won't be in till tomorrow morning. Well I had nothing but a handbag and I wasn’t expecting to stay

and so I thought well, I’ve got to stay somewhere tonight and he told me to go to one of, I can't remember, one of the posh hotels in Sydney but I have forgotten where it was. So I got a room for the night and they said, “Where’s your luggage?” Well I didn’t have any of course, and I explained, “Well I’m sorry, we don’t have any.”

And I couldn’t believe it because I had never done anything like that before. Anyway I explained about the ship and I said, “You could ring.” “Sorry but you can't stay here with no luggage.” So I was a lady of the night I suppose.

So I got outside and I thought whatever will I do, and I don’t know who I spoke to. Well I was standing there in tears and not knowing what to do and I went to the YWCA [Young Women’s Christian Association] in Sydney and I went and explained and they were lovely. But

really, yes. So that was that and I went and met my mother in the morning off the ship. So that’s all come from the war really hasn’t it.

Yes, well I think it was Gosford somewhere.

No, ‘cause I think we just kept going, well we may have stopped to have something to eat, I can't remember. I can remember thinking there is nothing, nothing, nothing, you know, it was 1951. And when I got here Vic’s father still had this sheep station out at Charlton he had a manager and he lived in Brisbane.

After I had decided to stay they wanted to take me out there and I said no fear it was enough to come to Brisbane. So I never went and eventually it was sold and I still don’t want to go out. People say about the war you know, the Hall of Fame out there at,

anyway out there somewhere. No, I have no wish to go the outback at all and Vic nearly, but I suggested that he did go back there. He had a friend in the air force and he was going to do a tour but he didn’t do it.

Oh well, I knew Brisbane was a big city. Oh well, I didn’t know how big behind, even from my school days, I knew the capital cities, yes. I suppose I imagine it to be more like Bristol and if I go back to Bristol I wouldn’t like to live there, they’ve grown you know.

And yes, I used to go skating, ice skating after school days between that and the war but I think it was blitzed during the war and then the university bought it over, yes. And I said my grandchildren went ice skating to Arcadia Ridge the other week, “Oh Gran you used to go ice skating you know.”

Well we drove up to where my father in law lived, and she had died two years before so I never did meet her.

And there were aunts and cousins which I met in the end. This other brother was there and as we drove up I remember he came out through the gate and put his arm around me and said welcome and I cried, yes. So you know, he was a dear, so

I was very welcome, yes. Well I do cry easily you know, and my sister said I would cry as a child to get my own way. But I love to go to a film and sit and cry through it. But I think I get a lot of pleasure now and a lot of people

and Vic and I often say how many happy memories Vic and I have to look back on. Things change, your children have your own, apart from your grandchildren, and they have their own interests and they don’t understand and Vic and I are lucky still being alive together because I think a lot of these war brides in the books, they are on their own and their husbands have died

or have Alzheimer’s. And I know Nancy has a bit of a problem so I think we are lucky in a way that we have reached this age with the same interests. Well when I say the same interests, we are different which has probably kept us together and he has a wide variety of friends and everyone knows Vic. And when he retired

I had to get, and he didn’t have a sport really except flying and he did have some flying lessons and it was too expensive, and I said well you need a hobby and but no. So, well you know, you can do the shopping every day and he loves it. He goes every day

with the shopping list and everyone knows him and since the kindy days with our grandchildren, we’re getting to know the high school children and all the ladies know my husband, and they all tell Sue, “Oh your lovely father.” So you know, that’s what he does and oh well, I’m busy all the time and sometimes I am cooking more because when we have the two grandchildren,

and there are the four of us and now we feed my daughter and the grandchildren and there are five of us, when am I not going to do the cooking?

Oh very strange, the houses, yes, those were the things.

Where my father in law lived then, the first house then it, actually have you heard of Lady Cilento? They were doctors and they eventually bought the house we had our wedding reception in and its called Glen Towers and its down off Benson Street.

So he just built a storey up on stilts and it was filled in and so it wasn’t a Queenslander but it was still a wooden house. But next door there was this great, big, old Queenslander right on the river there, and so that’s now Glen Towers. So

that’s where I came but my father in law was there, and Vic and his brother, they had the three bedrooms in the house so I went to sleep in the aunt’s house next door, a big old rambling Queenslander. And I remember the first time I walked in, it was so dark they had all the dark blinds

and the first thing I wanted to lift them up and let the sun in. And over the years I realised that it was because of the strong sun. So, you know, so I slept in her house but I ate over with my father in law, but yes, so it was just so strange. And I often say now

you don’t hear people very much but in the morning Vic and I will go for a walk about six or half past six and a lot of people in Kenmore walk in the morning early, and down in one part of Kenmore, down low, there are a lot of pigeons and it reminds we when I woke up the first morning in this aunt’s house and these pigeons were all making this noise and I thought what's that strange noise you know. I had never head pigeons

like that. I mean they have pigeons in Barkley Square but not in the suburbs and I hadn’t heard them and I hated them for a while and I have got used to that now. and it just makes me think of that first morning.

No, the order came through for the dental nurse to go and I went on the train

and then a car was there to meet me at the station, one of the air force cars, and it took me all through this country and we drove in and the whole field was covered with the planes and the gliders were all attached and it was three days before D day, when was it?

No, before that, June, and yes, so then this dental officer arrived, he had to come too, and it was all secret and we didn’t know where we were. Anyway we had to, any of the ones, they were they army boys going off you see, and the air force in the gliders and they had to come to us for

any emergency treatment ‘cause they could have been for days going through Europe and then at the end. Oh well, the early morning of D Day [June 6, 1944], all the noise, all these planes taking off with the gliders. So, and then

seeing, I think it was the next day that we went back to our old station and it had to be secret. And its funny and I wish that I had done it before, but you can get the address where you can write to Innsworth in Gloucester, this friend told me, and get your whole war history, she wrote and she said after so long she wasn’t sure if they got all the places.

So I have only just sent for it and I have asked if they could tell me where this secret air field was, it was near Oxford I think, and I hope that they can tell me but I don’t know. I think I have told you of a lot of the air stations over there, I told you earlier.

Oh well no, there were twenty-six dental officers but sometimes they changed. Now let me think. I started at Innsworth and then to Morecambe and then from Morecambe I went to Benson and Abingdon peace time stations.

And then there was Stanton Harcourt near Banbury, there was Kisslington [?] then was Lusgate then Castlecombe. That was nice, we went for the day, very historic.

Well they made that ‘Doctor Doolittle’ film, it was all done in the little village and it is a beautiful village and near Bath. And yes, when we went over a few years ago my cousin who lived near Bath, he took us back to

see but it was a satellite station and a lot of the satellite stations after the war, they just let them go back into almost fields. But that is rather sad to go back and see those. But Tisbury was the nearest little town and so we went back there and we went to this hotel

where they played croquet on the lawn. But anyway, I wanted to get a post card and we went in and when we went in we were talking and I said I had been stationed there during the war, and he said I’ve got a book here and he brought it out from under the counter.

And he said lots of people have come back and they have said they were stationed here during the war and enjoying the war, and they wrote their names and addresses and I did put my name and address in. But of course, this was well after the war and I looked through quickly and there were so many, so I expect there are lots of places like that.

Do you know I can't remember which station I was on but we all sort of went mad, and I think it was near Oxford. I think it was somewhere, where’s Churchills, its quite historic

I remember. But I can't remember, but I think you find the boys like Australians and Canadians, they were very naughty in fact, because in Brighton and Bourne they used to have these you know, where you changed on the beach and I think some places here have them now, and they

burnt a lot of them. Vic was there at that time but a lot of them did, and Australians were not known over there for, they didn’t like taking orders.

I don’t know, but yes, they were rather naughty some of them, they did get that name.

What, at the end of the war? But no, they were noted for that and going down on the beach and the beaches were still wired and that, out so far you could go on the beach, so that had to be careful and they all got a bit merry I suppose.

Oh yes, and the time I took Sue and Jill home when they were twelve and fourteen, to Brighton to show them where Mummy and Daddy met, and I remember it was a rainy day and we were in rain coats and it was just pebbles not sand. And anyway, all the Australians were stationed in the metropolitan

and we were all, and if we went to a seaside beaches which were all taken over by the service people training and they were huge, and they had proms to match and all the luxury fittings. And by the time I took Sue and Jill home the hotels were back as luxury hotels.

So anyway I walked up and I showed them and this is where Daddy lived here for awhile, and the Australians were here, and we were sort of looking up and there were a lot of steps going up, and I was showing them, and down the steps, came down, and his hat and his gloves, you know,

what do they call them?

Yes, came down to see, you know, we were standing there and he said, “Oh could I help you?” And I said, “Oh yes, this is where the Australians were stationed during the war and I was just showing my daughters.” “Oh would you like to bring them in and show them?” Well

as I was saying, it was raining and we were in raincoats and oh well, up the stairs. Well we only went into the foyer because it was luxury and I suppose they thought their father had stayed there, so that.

I don’t know, now I think my husband is game to go off and that I am far more staid now, and for a few years when Sue was on her own, we used to share a holiday and we would all go the same place, and Noosa, I don’t know the old motel,

right on the front and that. We used to go there, it was very basic and now it has been made into a luxury hotel. And now of course, all the Melbourne people come up and we can't go there anymore it is so expensive. But for a few years we used to go up there, right on the beach and we shared our holidays there, so what did you ask me?

Well I have always been home sick, I am still home sick for England and my family. If I could lift them all up you know, I would go back but I don’t know, and this is the first year that I have felt the cold really, but I felt cold and I said I don’t think I could stand the winters there

although they have all got central heating now. It’s not like when we grew up with just a fire in one room but I don’t know. Well we are all getting, well my sister is eight-four and my brother and I will be eighty-

two so we are getting on and so I haven’t got that longing apart from going home now, with all this going on, with travel and war, it is not on our minds, at the moment anyway, because we are still helping Sue with the children and we are needed here anyway. But when someone asked me once if anything happened to Vic would I go home, and

because I couldn’t go home now because of the children and the grandchildren, they are family you know. So I don’t know unless you’ve come from another country I don’t think you would ever really understand. If you have a close family and so many people since I have out

all the aunts and the uncles and some younger cousins, a lot of friends here. And actually, because I was late in marrying, I was twenty nine when I married, and we were late having the children because of Vic going to Malaya, we were fairly old parents by the time our children went to school.

My friends at school, the other parents were a lot younger seven years, ten years and so you know, I have kept in touch with some of them.

Yes, well I feel I have got two families you see, that’s my birth rite and I don’t trust politicians and perhaps I shouldn’t say that, yes they might say you can have dual, and I know people who have taken dual and they might say, and you don’t know what might happen.

They might say that if you have got an Australian passport you have to give the others up and so I just won't. And it makes no difference since when I came out here I have been able to vote. I think it was if you came out years later you couldn’t vote until you had been here for a few years but I could vote.

The children of course, they are Australian born. Vic got, he used to have a British passport you see because Australia was a dominion and you all had British passports but then the laws changed and he had to give his up. And so now we go separate entries

at the airport and I get a visa now to come back in and I have said no, you have got to become a citizen, and you can't live here then I shall come back as a tourist.

Well I didn’t tell you about the Land army. It is a little episode in my life and I never talk about it because I was sort of talked into that. Well I wanted to go into the air force and sometimes you had to wait and this friend of mine went into the Land army and we had gone through school together and she said you know, the Land army and I don’t want anything apart from having

a pet dog, and I don’t want anything like that. And oh no, we will go into the horticultural side, plants and the seeds and I said oh that’s all right and so we went. I was only in it six months and then of course I moved into the air force. We went, we had to go to this college and it was called a

horticultural college and we had to get up in the morning and they had porridge on the stove and you had that, and then you had to go into this big shed and sort seeds and everything for about an hour and then you came back and had breakfast, and it was all about plants and that.

Yes, and we were where a lot of the boys from the air force were stationed around there, they used to come in at the weekends and see us and so that was just an episode. And from there we were sent to Cheltenham and so but she stayed on in the Land Army but I went into the air force.

Yes, well I always wanted to go into the air force; my brother had gone in and all the boys that I had grown up with, so that was.

No, I couldn’t really cook when I got married but I sort of learnt and Mum was Scottish and everything was home cooked, and

cooking, and soup and veggies [vegetables] and that. And I still have a book with the pages that she wrote all the recipes out in, my father had written some of the recipes and there is one recipe, Mummy said now don’t let Sue get near the stove while you are cooking

but no. So I’m just a plain cook and I have lots of Australian friends who love to do wonderful things but she can do them in a minute. And no, I’m a plain cook, just do fresh veggies and roast potatoes and all that. Usually Vic and I have a small salad at lunch time,

perhaps something else at night and the children come in twice a week, and Grace goes to Girls Brigade and she comes in and has a shower. It is only around the corner and so I cook then or sometimes we have fish and we bring fish and chips in if they come in unexpectedly, we might have a pizza, but yes.

Yes Baptist. Now my Sue was never that religious, she went to a Church of England school and that, I think it was since her marriage broke up and years later, because she had the baby and she moved into Kenmore and

there was a singles group around there and they did things together, mothers and fathers. And they would go on picnics and that, so she joined the church there and that’s what they do, they go as a group or you know, and with the children. And now the children have got into the next lot and they are teenagers.

So Grace goes one night a week and they go to what they call Eight Nine, and go on a Friday night and do all sorts of things. Well they went skating, all of them, the boys and the girls and sometimes they go to a bowling place.

Well I in those days very few women had money. Today women have their own money, a lot of them.

Well they go to work don’t they but apart from that I think a lot of them stay together even though they weren’t happy and especially women who went to the outback you know. And also they had no one here probably, I don’t know, but I think it was the time and then things changed for women during the war,

they didn’t want to go back to home life, I don’t know. I have always said that if you have children you should be there and especially until they go to school, and when I hear about a few weeks away from maternity and I mean, I might be speaking, I might be saying the wrong, but this is what I think and I think those poor little babies

going to strangers and they are so important. And I know children can still go wrong, and of course there is drugs and everything that we never had. I suppose the worst thing in our lives is the smoking but my husband still thinks that (UNCLEAR) what they have got in them now, I don’t know,

through the war years and we both did. And when I knew I was pregnant with Sue that was it, and I said no I’m not smoking you know. And we didn’t know really in those days that it was really bad. I had to have a salad every day and drink milk and those sort of things, yes.

And when I did have Sue and it turned out he was away flying when I was due to have her, the day after, and of course I didn’t have my mother here or anything, and we hadn’t actually moved into the house. And a cousin of his said now you must go to the ladies’ hostel which was in Bonny Avenue, and it was a hostel

Lady Cilento had for women and girls way out in the outback you know, who had to come into Brisbane or the big city. And of course they couldn’t go straight back and so they went there. That’s where I ended up because you know, I didn’t have Vic or anyone so I had them both at the intermediate.

Well, it wasn’t private but it was a bit better than public. I don’t know what they have now they call it the Women’s now don’t they?

Yes, you had the Royal and the general and the intermediate, and I suppose they thought

like a private one, I don’t know.

Well my husband took me to the door and he didn’t go away until the next day, but yes. Well I went through pregnancy, well I didn’t worry but anyway, he was on leave

I think that day, yes, he had the day off because he knew that it was getting near and I had these pains so I thought we had better get in, so we got to the door of the Women’s that part, so the matron whoever she was, the sister, oh yes, now kiss your husband good bye and through these

big glass doors. And they knocked it down and Sue got a brick you know, they were selling the bricks if you had been born there. Anyway so say good bye to your husband and kiss good bye and they took me, and that was four o’clock and she was born at nine o’clock that night. I was very, I mean Jill will say

you don’t know what pain is Mummy because she gets these migraines, and I did have two babies you know, and you do have pain no matter. But anyway, that was that, well actually the hospital, they rang the doctor and said, anyway it ended up a sister brought Sue into the world.

The doctor came in and he said oh your first baby, and oh, I called in at the club so that was Sue. And so yes, and Vic was going off the next day, flying and that’s when I went to the Lady Cilento hospital a week later. I was in there a week I think and when I had to go they called a taxi for me and the sister carried

Sue down and they got me into the taxi with a baby in my arms and a new baby and nobody. And anyway, one of his aunts who lived over at Ascot, she came and saw me there and I was there a few weeks and I was really glad that I went there because they had staff nurses and sisters and they taught you about feeding,

and all that. The baby, Sue, was in a little bassinet right next to me. I had my own room and I met a lot of nice girls who had come from way out, who had come to have their babies and that. So that was good that place. I don’t think they have anywhere like that now.

Oh yes but it was a worrying time with a new baby and nobody, and a few years later a friend of Vic’s took him flying and he had a wife and she had a new baby at the same time and we were very close,

and our husbands did not tell us that they had their wives there with new babies. And we said, you know, we could have been such good company. Men don’t think, well that generation of course. You said about when I went in and even my husband, and frankly I couldn’t imagine having my husband there.

And I mean, today they all do so we were different old fashioned.

Oh yes, he was pleased, yes.

No, and I’m glad and I wouldn’t have liked them to, ones enough.

After, you know, although he loved flying, if he goes up a ladder he is not so good.

You do find that with different heights you know.

When the children were growing up, oh no, I didn’t sew then, it wasn’t until I had the children and I went to a Singer’s class, you know.

Oh I just made their baby things.

Oh well I must tell you that story. Well you see, my father in law, and they had been so good to me and that so when we were going, I think it was when we were going off to Ballarat,

and I thought I must, and he always had his whisky before he went to bed, so I thought I know I will get him a bottle of whiskey. And so Vic was away and so I thought now where can I get some whiskey, we were only around the corner from (UNCLEAR) and so I though that’s where I will go.

I walked in and I went into the bar you see, with out thinking I just walked in and walked up and there were only men there of course. They all turned around and whistled. Well I don’t know if they whistled in those days ‘cause the feeling that, and so I realised that I had done the wrong thing and I so I thought well, all I can say is, “Oh well I know you don’t do it

in Australia but we do in Britain.” Well I mean, you know, you couldn’t go into the bars so much because it was just all open for anybody and you could get, but I said I just want a bottle of whiskey for my father in law and they all wanted to buy me a drink and so, I know I remember that, and

I know Sigrid Thornton [Australian actress], well her mother chained herself to that bar.

But another thing that I noticed, that I didn’t like a lot of the pubs mostly in town, we didn’t go to the them and they had tiling all around them you know, outside probably they haven’t got them now.

But they just looked like bathrooms all these tiles and probably they haven’t got them now, and Chris is smiling over there.

No I mean after the war I never went into a pub again, with an escort and into a lounge because it was no, it was different during the war. There were places where you could go and you were all away from your own home way out in the country half the time, all those air fields were just near a little village and in the village there and

just a country pub there. Like, well if you have been to England you would know the pubs and that and yes that was different, but no, I never went in and would never go in now.

Yes, we didn’t know a lot of people where we lived pre war and then with the bombing

and that, you all go to know each other and said good morning and on trains and then after the war they were rather more reserved. I think I would say English people were reserved and you had to be sort of introduced and even now you can go into town or somewhere or even in Kenmore,

they say hello and I will say who was that , I don’t know. But they will still very often, will say, especially if they are of the same age group. Being this age it has it’s, what shall I say, it is good in some ways because your are not shy and if I meet people now

I can't think of their name and I will say now, oh you will have to tell me who you are, and I have met a few people through the children at school you know. And well I don’t mind saying that now, whereas before you would pretend that you knew them, you know. So age has a few good things.

Oh well, I don’t know that I do if I don’t know them, no I don’t.

Well this aunt I stayed in her house next door, she was staying up at Eagle Heights.

It’s a lovely old home, it’s burnt down now and probably before your time, and they had big fire place and chintz chairs and old cat that full of ticks. But anyway, my husband drove up and the next week to meet her, she was an elderly maiden aunt.

And so I say Tamborine, and that lovely old place, so that was one of my first memories of going up in the first week and thanking her for letting me stay in her house, and yes. So, but then, that’s right I saw this add

in the paper for a tracer you see, and so this was the City Hall and I thought well I can't get back yet anyway, and I don’t know what I’m going to do and I got the job at City Hall in the drawing room, and so Alistair, that’s Vic’s brother, he worked in the city and so he used to drive

me in but he was (UNCLEAR), but Vic has always been family and he had maiden aunts and they used to go to the theatre and places. You wouldn’t know the Cremorne, they have rebuilt the Cremorne which was the old one, John McCallum, John and

Googie Withers, well his father owned it. We used to go to all these places, these maiden aunts used to take us to all these places. This brother Alistair was not family minded, he would never go to any of these things. Eventually he went to South Africa with his job and married a South African girl and they live on the Gold Coast now. Yes

so I went to the City Hall as a tracer there. See I liked my tracing job because I was always with men mostly, I suppose I must have liked being with men. Anyway I can remember it was very cold one day and oh yes, I used to get cross with some of the draftsmen you know. In the

lunch break they would go off and shop and do the shopping, some of them were married and they used to go out and stay out late and they used to come and tell me not to work so hard because it made it bad for them. We had to, you know, we had strict rules in England and yes, then one got me a heater once to put by my drawing board because I was cold. But then that’s where they asked me

if I was Catholic and I thought why are they asking me that, I have never been asked that before and you had to write in the air force what religion you were, but I just thought that was strange. So yes there were a lot of strange things, I mean you would think them strange even going back to Joe and all this is going on about Joe.

Although Vic thinks he was good about law and order and I mean the things that happen today with law and order, one wonders where it is going don’t you. Well when I came out here my father, when he didn’t like anything he would write to the newspapers

and have his say and that and when I came out here there were a few things I didn’t like. Oh I can't remember now but I used to say to Vic you know, I’m going to write about that, and I used to write and I don’t even remember if I got replies. But then later on when things came up that I didn’t like Vic would say, well why don’t you write and I said, what's the use they don’t change things.

So that’s how I got there. But I must tell you also when we went home we listen to the open line a lot because it helps when you are working and you hear all the news and we don’t read the papers and so John Kerr, he comes on at midnight and he came on this night and we were

preparing to go back to England for this reunion for Vic with all his crew and John Kerr came on this night and said, “Now has anybody got any stories to tell me?” And he said please ring up and I suppose we were going back and everything and so Vic got on the phone and said, “Oh well this is a story

from the war years and we are going over for this reunion and two are coming from Canada.” And so John Kerr said I will give you a private number to ring and when you get there give us a ring and tell us about it. So after we had a couple of days there, we’d gone back to the hotel that night,

and they had a whole thing and people came from all over Britain and so we worked out the time and so Vic rang him and he was very interested in all, and I was talking in the background you see, and he said, “Put your wife on.” So I had a chat too about it and so that was another episode.

Yes, I can't remember but even now I will say whatever is that and he will tell me.

No, there were words and I gathered what they were but luckily Vic has never said anything, but in fact he is so often taken for English and he was asked in England, where in England did he come from?

He used to do this, because Australia was written on it and that’s where I come from. No, I think I can't remember lots of things like that. It’s a long time ago now.

Some of the words I still don’t like but I don’t remember what they are. But I know my grandchildren, especially the way I say a word, oh you see I like to say Woolloongabba, its all ‘Gabba’ and you see, I can't say that and the Ecca, and it just jars on me.

And I have to say the exhibition and so of course I get pulled up. It still jars on me when I see and hear girls called sheilas, but I just heard John Laws say the other day, oh what his name? Warne, again with that girl and there’s all things about the cricket.

Yes, Shane Warne [Australian cricketer] and this South African and Shane Warne’s coach called her something, sheila, and she is going to sue him and he is going to apologise for what he said. But anyway, but I just hate it when they say about the sheila’s but they don’t say it as much now.

And I tried to work, and why did I have to choose to live in a country where they call the girls sheilas and I tried to work out one day and I think it must go back to the convict days, and probably there were a lot of girls come out from Ireland or Scotland they their names were Sheila and they used to talk about those Sheilas, like several

called Sheila, that’s what I worked, but I don’t know where it came from.

Oh yes, I hate mosquitoes and all those things and I suppose I’ve got more used to them. We don’t

have air conditioning in the summer so the place is really closed up. We haven’t got it upstairs we have to put fans on so we don’t get them in the house. But oh, I used to get bitten a lot when I first lived here and I think a lot of people did coming from Europe. I used to go years ago when the girls were at primary school and we used to go up to

Binnaburra. It wasn’t expensive you know, none of us can afford to go there now, it is so expensive but they just had the huts there and it was lovely taking children up there, the food was lovely and they made friends or they would take their school friends, but the food was wonderful.

And we used to go off on long walks and we would pack lunches and so we had many holidays up there and we also met friends and they would come back the next year, and this year that we went up and it had been raining and it had stopped there and we were walking though all the wet rain forest, and Don, this husband in front of me,

all the husbands, wives, and children together, and he had a white shirt on and through the back of his shirt blood was oozing and it was these leeches, you had to pick them off. And so I said I would never go up there again but Grace was up there a while ago and she said yes, the leeches are still there. Where are all those things that seemed to be affordable in those days?

They are beyond, well you have to be fairly affluent today to go, and there are so many single parents, and Sue couldn’t afford to go, this age can't you know. They have relatives in New Zealand and they always wanted us to go and I always said any money that we have

is to go to England and we can't afford and go and spend it in New Zealand. But little Tasmania I used to go there with Jill, three times, we used to go there with the air force camps and take the air force cadets, so she and I used to go down on a tour and do a tour around and it was lovely, and she and her husband had their honeymoon there.

When I used to get a letter and it was a letter mostly, ringing was pretty expensive and now we can have an hours chat and it is not too bad.

Yes, I would sit and cry over letters but then there was so much going on bringing up children and you know, I mean we didn’t want, once we tried to go to an air force dinner and we had friends who used to take their children

and leave them in the car and that, so one year we thought well, we might try it but we weren't happy and we were in and out all the time to see if they were all right so we didn’t go out then. But I did have a lady who used to come and look after when we had Jill so about twice a year I suppose, we would go

to dinner or something and we would go to the theatre twice a year and that wasn’t very much but otherwise we didn’t go anywhere. On picnics to visit, you know family, cousins and that but mostly it was home at night. But home life is a bit different

now because of the television and computers and we go to the school fetes, we quite enjoy them and we also go to St. Peters school fete and they have a junk place and we go, this old computer which is upstairs because when the children are here Harry always says, “I have homework to do grandpa and I should go home and do this.”

And of course he would take him and come back and so the old computer is up there so when he is here now if he has homework and he will go up and you hear about these chat rooms. See there are so many things aren't there and I listen to the talk back and I hear so many things about all sorts of things, advice and

my daughter doesn’t hear all this because she is working and so I write things down you see, and when I see her and I say, “Now I heard this today.” But I tell them so, but I suppose Vic and I grew up and you might call us

home bodies in a way, our generation and you know, and you were saying about the pubs where the young people go and you’ve got to watch and take their drinks with them, and they all have got cars, a lot did in my day I suppose,

and were starting to get cars and there wasn’t the speeding. And I did learn to drive when the children were little but five years ago I had a problem, you wouldn’t know, I think only six of them came into Australia. It was a Ford hardtop I had it for twenty six years but then it got too expensive for the parts and so

I said right, I’m not driving and so I haven’t driven since then. It was funny Sue went to a car rally with some friends four years ago and actually it was someone from Ford who brought my car, and she said, “I think that’s Mum’s car.” And so they went around to get

and have a look and she was looking at it and the owner came over and wanted to know what she was doing. This was my Mum’s car and it was all done up beautifully, it was at this car rally and so he said would you like a photo, sit in it and so we have go the photos and it’s all done up beautifully but it was a nice car

and Harry says, “Now why did you sell that car grandma?” But I don’t drive.

I slept at his aunts, and I mean when I was at City Hall we were out for lunch

and I wouldn’t do the cooking and they were so used to doing the cooking with three boys because his father lived out on a sheep station, and of course they had to cook and his wife had died then, so I did the washing up.

We stayed there, that was after our honeymoon and Vic went straight off to Ballarat and that’s where we had a flat down there and after that we came up…. did we come up to Nedlands Bay where the air sea rescue boats are? Something like that.

And then he was going to Malaya I think, that’s right, back to his father, back to his father’s house and he came to Sydney and saw me off on the ship and then the next day he went off to Malaya with the air force, that’s when I went back for that year. It was good because I have met, and read stories

of the first war brides.

Wonderful, I can remember thinking I’m home again, but then coming back that first time I knew what to expect and I would see houses on stilts and you know, I felt or sort of thought I was coming back.

Well it will never really be my home and I have been lucky. We have usually lived somewhere nice. Well we didn’t move around a bit in the first stage but that was all right and once we had children I just wanted to settle.

I suppose I am an old fashioned grandmother now.

I don’t think there were any, overall it was just a general, oh it’s so different, and I didn’t like some of the

things and I don’t think I saw anything that I thought, oh I thought this is lovely and this is much better, I think you just take it all for granted, you just move into the next stage. Well the next stage for us is probably going into a retirement home.

Ten years ago I had a friend and she’s much younger and she said you know, you should, you and Vic should have your names down because it’s hard to get into retirement homes and Vic and I said, oh no, we will probably never want to go but anyway Vic does ‘Meals on Wheels’ and

one day we thought, well perhaps we should put our names down somewhere, so we put our names down at Brookfield and every year the matron will ring up and say, “Mrs. Henderson we have a cottage coming up, are you ready to come in?” And I say, “No we are not ready yet.”

She never rings any more now. But you know, Vic said at one stage, oh I would quite like to go into a retirement home, it would be easy, everything is done for you , the maintenance, the lawns and everything and I said well you go.

But I know it’s not fair to leave things to your children and, but we just can't do it at the moment because we are too involved with the children and the children are, I don’t know how long it’s been, going but Kenmore and some of the schools have a German emersion class,

some schools, I think St. Peter’s have French or Italian and they have to speak in that language and learn it too. Grade 10 which is next year for Harry they do an exchange to Germany and he will go to Germany and they will have a student here

to speak in the language and you know, the families have to agree so the children can learn and speak better but they have to start, Sue had to go to a meeting, they have to start washing cars and get money for their fares and spending money and they can stay for three months

at their own expense and I don’t know. But it would be nice to go back to England after because when Vic and I went over that last time on the plane we tried to walk around and we were at the back window there and there was a young girl and she was from Kenmore High and she was going over to Germany for emersion and I said, “Ohh

my grandchildren are one day.” And I asked her where she lived and she lived in Wongbell Street and she lived opposite so that was funny and then I told you she was going to England afterwards so I don’t, we’ll see.

No once I left the WAAF you know, that was the war and it was all different, anyway everyone had gone. No, well when he first went back I wanted to go with him

and then Malaya came up because that war was in trouble there and so as I couldn’t go, I was delighted I could go home for the year and I didn’t want to stay here on my own because we didn’t have children then so that was exciting for me, so I was going home for that year. When we did have the children I was on my own

and he would more or less fly off for a few days, it wasn’t for a long time. But also as the children, as I say, got older and we knew that school and everything would be coming and we might have to move and I got used to

his family and I didn’t want to go off to Sydney or Melbourne where we didn’t know anyone and this was family to me.

Yes cousins, and strangely enough two Henderson’s married

the Phelps family here, that was Sir Robert Phelps, his grandfather, and so he had five daughters and three sons and so two daughters married two Hendersons, there were seven brothers I think.

No, I have always got on, nice family. We saw lots more of them when our children were growing up but like their children have gone on and got married and the picture taken of Vic at that air force birthday at the beginning,

I think they wanted to take it over the camp or whatever and they fought to keep it as an airfield and she always marches on Anzac Day I don’t march, not me, no.

No when I’m young I’m different, old age, I think of them marching and it doesn’t seem right. I never said that to anyone and anyway I wasn’t with the Australians but I was with the English WAAFs and they wear a uniform.

Everyone must work out what's right for them but even in England I wouldn’t march over there.

I never feel that I am old I don’t mean that no, but I think you have got to grow old gracefully and you’ve got to, well I haven’t got to sit and knit.

I had to show my granddaughter the other day, I can show you plain and pearl but no well, I just, well I wouldn’t march and I like to see the men and I used to always go in and see Vic but I don’t stay on Anzac Day. We go to a service in Kenmore with the children and the school but then I like to come home. Vic goes on

to the city march and I like to come home and they have a lot of war stories and the ones on the fall of Singapore, and apart from those from Europe, and I just love them and that’s my day and I like to come back by myself and watch that.

I always think of the boys that I grew up with that died, Vic always thinks of his friends who died, the crew and he did have a cousin who was killed and in the air so I just, I mean I didn’t know his friends and we spent all those years in the air force,

and we didn’t know each other, strange. I mean I met so many different people in the war and yet I didn’t meet him until the end so we’ve got to sort of, well I know more of Vic’s because I haven’t kept in touch with the girls and you do here, the army and the navy it is not the closeness, and it is these air crew boys.

There were seven in a plane usually and that photo that’s a Lancaster [bomber] that was given to Vic by his family on his seventieth birthday, always at the birthday they have the Lancaster that flies over Brisbane you know, he has

I had to promise on his coffin if he goes first I have to have an air force flag. I will have to get permission from the air force and I said I want a Union Jack and I want it on mine, you might have to put it inside the coffin. I heard someone this morning,

oh we listened to John, and someone had died and he has had someone, oh and he plays golf, and he said, “Oh well I’ll have golf sticks put into my coffin.” Golf sticks, you do hear a lot of funny things.

No well when I got the letter to say you could get upset and that I said to Vic, “Well I think that’s funny because I’m not going to get upset.” But I do understand those people

in Japan, that way it was a terrible thing that the army went through, and all that and the concentration camps, and I have read a lot about the Jews and having gone over there I think oh, and we just recently, what was the film we have just seen? It was a true story,

yes The Pianist and all that and having gone over there and seeing all the people and yes it’s all those things you see. But we didn’t even lose anyone close which is amazing, but I’m lucky that my brother went through the air force and I had two cousins, they went into what was called then the (UNCLEAR)

in Bristol, and that was just before the war and a lot of the boys joined up a few months before the war clouds were coming. And these two cousins they went into the Yeomans [territorial cavalry regiments of the British Army] together and it wasn’t until about ten years ago the eldest one Henry sent me a story about their war.

I found it so interesting because it was so different from ours and they had to die before their horses and so when war, just before war was declared and they had to take them up to,

up north and they had to ship them across to Europe and they sent to the Middle East. After a few years the Yeomanry became obsolete and they became tank officers and so they were in tanks and they were in the Middle East, I forget, with the army.

And so and in this story he wrote it was so interesting when we came back after five years because we didn’t know what had gone on in Britain and it was very hard to put much in letters and you couldn’t take photos but so, they didn’t know

the things that were going on. They just had to worry because they knew that Britain was being bombed and that was another stage of the war they had to wait until the end of the war and read about what was going on.

Definitely you see things differently, your single days are over and even before your children, both of you, and then when the children come they are the most important thing in both our lives. And

oh well, they still are once you bring a baby into the world, that’s it and they are sort of with you in thoughts forever and if they ever did any thing like you read about, children do terrible things, you might be disappointed but you would never stop loving them. You hear of children murdering and do awful things but your child,

could not stop loving them, you would think to ourself where did I go wrong. Yes, you are bound to change and you lose that carefree spirit I suppose.

No, didn’t actually worry. I think I just drifted into it all and I think it comes naturally in a way and I might have worried more when I got married because I couldn’t cook.

But yes, I sort of tried to remember seeing what my mother was doing, just plain things like cooking was alright and so they wrote out and told me things and that.

Well my children would say I was. I suppose I was in a way

but when these two girls went to school they seemed to have a lot of homework and they knew what was expected of them and they would get home, well I had to pick them up usually after school, at the railway station at Indooroopilly, and there were no buses.

Before I went I must have everything organised. I have this friend you can pop in, and oh with them, before I left the house I would have the afternoon tea ready on the table and when we came home we would sit down and have afternoon tea and perhaps talk a bit about the day or what's happening the next day, then

they would go off to their rooms and start their home work they used to have a bath or a shower before dinner. Dinner on the table at a good time when Vic came in, and then as they got older they had more homework and they would go back and finish their homework, and then bed usually by nine depending on what age they were.

But when Sue got to really her last year or two, and she had a lot more homework and she would be up till nearly midnight, and I remember lecturing her, “You are not to stay up late you girls, you know, doing home work.” If you hadn’t don’t it at a certain time you had to stop. Now we notice with

our grandchildren especially Harry, he always says he hasn’t got any, he has done it or you know, he doesn’t know and they don’t seem to get much homework now they are at Kenmore High, and they have got friends at private schools, St. Peter’s who are neighbours, and they get a lot of home work. Grace does more and her

Harry is average and he is not given his whole potential, and going back to our children, it was expected of them I suppose, and if you say I was strict I suppose if they hadn’t done it I would say isn’t it time to do this or that. And Sue became a prefect

last year and so we drove back through Kenmore, and sometimes I would stop there and shop and Sue would say I’m not getting out of the car. And I found out later because they had to wear hats and gloves always in those days, and as a prefect she had to tell them to put them on, to put them off and didn’t like having to do that and that was why,

of course. I see all the school children carrying their hats and they are not so strict today.

Oh I did. Well I can remember more with the grandchildren because they did sleep here when they were little just to let Sue have a night out.

Yes we said a prayer always “Gentle Jesus meek and mild look upon a little child in my simplicity and suffer me to come to thee.” The one that I grew up with and so I taught them that then I they would want me to sing some hymns and it got in the end there were about six,

and we were singing all these hymns.

Oh gosh, ah I can't think and its only a few years since that stopped. Now I can't think, well known ones, ‘Jesus Bids Us Shine’,

do you know that one? “Jesus bids us shine with a pure clear light like a little candle burning in the night. In this world of sadness we must shine, you in your small corner and I in mine.” Oh and I had to sing that and they were sleeping in different rooms

and I had to go to sing the same one.

I can't really, yes so it was hymns but they still stay and in the last two years I say, “Do you want me to say prayers?” And they say they can say their own so we don’t any more.

When they were little and they had their bath and I used to go in and there is a box up there and that was for them to reach in those days, and it’s still there, and I used to sit there and they would tell me all these different stories so you know, about Kindy and school,

and I would relate them to Sue and they would tell me more things than they would tell their mother. Even now when Grace is here and she is quite a big girl and sometimes she will call, “Grandee come and sit with me,” or “Wash my back,” or something and of course, Harry doesn’t want it anymore, so it’s in a way been like having children again

and having a boy here and like everything I suppose, like everything, you just accepted it. People say, “Oh you are good grandparents having all that.” But we have both accepted it and it is no trouble to us. A day will come when they don’t want to come anymore and it’s getting a bit like that with Harry.

He wants to be with his friends sometimes at the weekend and that’s how it is and I say to Vic, well we do what we want to.

I think they are lucky and I think that Sue is lucky to have us in that way, being on her own, and I have said I just don’t know how a single parent

can manage on their own and of course, even opposite here we have two families living together.

Well I wonder what they will remember.

In Australia, no I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else now but here, the children went to kindy and so I have built our lives around and I would like to be able to go home in the summer time especially while we are all here. My brother and my sister,

it would be lovely to be able to go home for a few months but we couldn’t afford to do that but you know, I don’t think about that and with all this business well, I wouldn’t want to go now anyway. But the time may come and we are all in good health, touch wood, we have been very lucky in our age group.

My mother did die out here eventually and I sent her ashes back, and I always did say yes over the years I wanted to but I have changed in the last few years

funny they have got a little cemetery out at Brookfield and we went out there and we did think both of us, that’s where and Sue she is a bit sentimental like that and that would nice, it is quite and peaceful like. But I said you know, things change so much and they might lose that little cemetery, it might not

be quiet and peaceful the way things go and builders come in and that. And we actually went to see, a lot of Vic’s family are buried in Toowong cemetery and we spoke to the, I forget, is it the sextant, but anyway, because we wanted to make sure where his grandfather is and we hadn’t been there for a long time.

So we went up to see it and it is a huge grave, right up the top and we went back and spoke to the sextant, and I have probably got the wrong name, and he said, “Do you know that grave is big enough for twenty-three people?” Or something, it’s a huge grave, this is for ashes not bodies. And

“Did you know there is plenty of room if ever you think of that?” But we haven’t spoken to Sue about it, we haven’t done anything we have thought well, Toowong cemetery will always be there and so we could have, our ashes could go in there and you just have them on the side there.

And I have thought, well my brother and sister they will go long before Sue and it’s on the cards that they will go first and Sue is the one we have to think of to go to their parents grave.

So really I have to think of them and probably it will be here and may be Toowong cemetery.

Yes, you could walk around for ages, actually at lunch time I used to go around the cemetery and take my sandwiches because there was the

drawing officer and it was so interesting and I know the lady who does the genealogy, she is up in Hervey Bay, and she is English and every year she goes home and she goes around all the cemeteries, all her history from all these little churches and villages.

I expect it has even, for after the war and the way I think now because when I see films I think oh, I was that age then but what if I had been the age when I had just seen that film, or the one I did see of the mother trying to struggle with the,

she had little children. And yes I suppose it does and I do think, and Vic and I say we were lucky to be the age we were when the war started. I wouldn’t have like to have been evacuated to strangers, I wouldn’t have liked to have been a parent so

we think it was good the age we were. And I suppose it’s not like you see these films when you see Singapore when it fell, and some of the films we have seen with the soldiers in the mud and firing line, you see we didn’t have that, the air force up to a point was different. But

the air force had the best side of it especially if you were on the air stations. I was put up to promotion to dental officer and they wanted to promote me and I didn’t want it. They usually had one dental nurse on every air station and if you became even a corporal you couldn’t just be a corporal

and be a dental nurse you know, a single dental nurse, you had to be lower than that and you had to be just a nurse and I didn’t want to go. I liked the clinic when I first went there in Scapenes, that was good because there were all the dental officers and all the other nurses

so that was very good in the beginning. But as I said, when I went to the air stations and I was just one and could live in the sick quarters and that was good and I just didn’t want promotion. And it meant that you had to take more responsibility, you had to take a drill occasionally, and you had to do all sorts of other jobs and I have never been a person who wants to be in charge of

people. I want to do my own thing.

Well no, I didn’t feel like that because I had the children then and my job was to be a mother you know, the year after we were married, and I was still on my own

when I went home and he went to Malaya really, you know. He was over there and we wrote and it was like the war years but I went home and it was lovely seeing everyone and being with family again. But I came back and we had our family, he didn’t go away for a long time, for two or three days flying or…

He used to take boys on camps and that. My job was being a mother and that was it, the children. But it was strange when I did come here the Australian thing was to have four children - you had to have two to replace yourselves and two for Australia. You have probably never heard that,

but this is Vic’s brother, the doctor in Toowoomba and his wife, they have five children and we used to go up and visit them and they used to say, “Come on you’ve only got two.” And anyway, to carry on the Henderson name and you need four, I used to say and it really was, I felt it was all I could manage to bring up two children and Vic was quite happy.

And he never said he wanted more and quite happy with our two daughters, and that was a thing that I did hear, and very often you would hear, “When are you going to start a family?”

Exactly yes, because yes, I put everything that

I could into it and I knew me, and if I had had more I would have loved them and I suppose I would have managed. But I never went on the pill, we never had the pill in those days. I suppose I was lucky.

There might have been that’s why there are divorces, but now a days there is the pill. But you see I’m not, I won't take pills for anything and maybe, well I don’t get headaches or anything the only thing I have had done is my veins stripped once.

Well I don’t remember

‘cause after I had Sue I got veins and then I had Jill and they seemed to, and I had injections and they were painful. But then they did the stripping because they do come back and so I went into what's called St. Herons Hospital, right opposite the museum. But I mean its not there now so that’s where I had them stripped. But I mean, I

have got veins down but they don’t ache and they look awful and Vic doesn’t seem to mind. I don’t worry, so no, I don’t like taking tablets and I do worry about all these tablets and of course migraines. But the girls do take different things so

you know, and then this oestrogen, what do they call it, there has been a lot, after menopause there was a lot. But I went through that and I didn’t know it and I don’t know why all the fuss. It’s the same with having babies and I think there I was lucky. I mean have had times in my life when I have been sad

and that.

Oh, I don’t know. We watch all the documentaries that come on and only on the weekend was the one on SBS [Special Broadcasting Service] about the Cold War starting with Russia and I said to Vic and I had just gone when that started,

Germany in 1947. In ’45 the war ended and nearly two years, in ’47 I went home and in ’48 the Cold War started and the Russians nearly had a Third World War.

Oh, that I could say was one of the saddest times seeing the Jews and people coming back and all the buildings were bombed. And we had it in London too. Even Jill our younger daughter will say she has seen some of these and the awful things that happened to the Jews

and she said once, “How could you have gone and bombed those places?” Civilians are getting killed and it was the same the other way, well we were bombed and how many people were killed in Britain and that was war. Yes that was, and I heard a story the other day about

a family, they were Jewish, she was the daughter and she was only a few months old when the Nazis came to Vienna and they fled to, a lot of people fled to Belgium, oh you know, Hitler will never get over there. And anyway when he was marching

to Singapore and when Singapore fell they came here as refugees and were put in concentration camps and we did the same in Britain. And you did here remember. But this daughter said when they in Vienna and she had an aunt who was not Jewish

you know, through marriage, was not Jewish and they had to flee and her father was a sculptor and a painter. But they had to leave everything and this aunty managed to get it out and save it all through the war, and they were amazed. And now of course, I’m not sure if they are here.

I forget where they are now they were living, but anyway they got all this back and all his wonderful paintings and he didn’t see it like the daughter, and he saw the sadness of it you know. But she saw how valuable it is and how wonderful and it’s all in the museum and she has given it to some museum.

I don’t know if it’s here or where, I can't remember but she was saying the (UNCLEAR) and what happened to them, it wasn’t that different and he saw the sadness. And I suppose that, and when I do use any of the things you know, that that couple gave us

and I think oh, this came out of that bombed building and I still have, from the dental branch, we wore little wings on our collars in the centre, so I kept them and I had one made into a broach and I kept the other. So only a few things like that I keep but

Vic still has the air crew, had their books the aircrew wrote where they bombed and how many hours, all the aircrew had those.

Well probably I think they just, they accept it and they probably don’t really understand you know, because you do see your grandparents or parents.

But Sue is very interested in everything you know, and Jill hasn’t been with us since she, oh since she left college. She travelled overseas and then she was married and we don’t see a lot of her and her husband Steve, he is lovely they suit each other.

They have no children and he idolises her. She seems to draw boys who are very possessive and she did have a New Zealand boyfriend but really we were glad that she didn’t marry him because she wouldn’t talk to anyone else. But he is lovely and they do suit each other but he was an only child and he is rather possessive of her

you know. But it is good for them we just worry if something happens to one of them you know, having no children. But for now it’s good, they have got each other and that and I think that is why Sue and Jill aren't so close. She hasn’t got any children and unless you have had children you cannot understand so much. And that’s, I mean we are trying to understand this generation,

its very hard for parents today with drugs, and the discipline isn’t there. And you know, and the things you see on television and even those soapies they are not suppose to watch them you know. You see them in the ads, the aggression

in the faces and it comes out in the children and lucky it hasn’t in these two but because, while they are with you it’s alright but it’s when they get out into the world, and I shouldn’t be saying all this with your little girl, what is she two?

About three was the perfect age with both of them and I think three is…

Well every age is lovely, three seemed to be just the right age for so many things.

Well I can't understand the navy. Now, for instance,

and the navy, they go away on a ship and I don’t like that. They are so close aren’t they and that’s different and we did see, well it wasn’t a film it was news, where these sailors were so cruelly treated. I forget now, it was a couple of years ago, but not that, I don’t know, I think

it’s a lack of respect and it comes from what we were saying earlier, about manners. It doesn’t mean that you are sissies. Well we used to call the sissies it didn’t mean what they think we mean today, it was just someone who they had good manners

because that’s gone. And in a lot I think, those bad things are publicised and you see and look at the terrible things in sport today the roughness and the soccer. And some of the parents they are saying, “Come on Johnny hit him.”

And then there is Shane Warne and all these things, taking money that they shouldn’t and even these big firms you know, Skase [Australian businessman], and things like that. There is so much of that today, you do wonder who you can trust and what you can trust.

Oh well, I have said over the years, oh the horse and buggy days, and I remember when we lived in the country the milkman used to come with the horse. No I don’t you think everyone would be glad.

I’m glad of my life as it was and I mean, I wish now that my parents were still alive and I perhaps when they are older I would want to and oh, I would look after them more ‘cause I’m older now and you change don’t you?

They didn’t need us looking after them I suppose, and I never thought. Now when Sue became a kindy teacher at Christmas she would get them to do a little play and all this you know, and she always asked me if I would go, and she was a kindy teacher for a lot of migrant families over there. And so all these grandparents

would be at these Christmas things and they would take the children to kindy and I remember saying to Sue then, “I would never want to be a grandparent.” And I never even thought I would be needed, that was the thing, and that’s why it’s strange that we have become grandparents like that.

But there was never, oh you know, I have heard parents say that it was a chore for them. I think it would be nice one day and we could do what we want, what day is it, the children are coming in for afternoon tea and we are not needed for anything on a Thursday and we are going into Indooroopilly or into town.

And people, they say, “Oh no children around today?” And we say, “Yes this is our day off.”

Oh well I hope so, yes I suppose you do.

Well I think

it’s wonderful doing this because looking back to the First World War, I mean I didn’t know anyone in it, but I had a uncle that was in the South African war, the Boer War. It would have been lovely to hear more stories about the First World War. They are doing and have done some now and we always avidly watch anything.

I think this will be good and it will be good for future generations and we don’t know about the future generations they are so different and the only thing I can think of is bringing up your children, you tell your children what your mother said and you have your children and their children. And I have said to Sue, saying things

that I remember my mother saying and I think things are passed on and without realising you know, you will probably do the same and you most probably have already without thinking about it. So I think this is wonderful, and your jobs and that, and I was going to ask you about your job.

Yes a great interest although we have felt the same about family,

keeping in touch with family and responsibility. But yes, the air force and the Irish Club here once a month, they have the Aircrew Association and Vic has always gone to that and I have recently, going with him and they are all ex air crew and so it’s great.

And the mess again, and some of the wives come and some are widows and there are some widows there so. And once a month we go and we have lunch there and talk about the good times and most of them were in England you see, up in the Lancaster bombers and the squadrons or the Asia/Pacific you know.

But yes, so.

Not so much but I suppose I live more with Vic’s world now being here and I don’t know anyone here who was in the, well I am getting and I have got to know in the last two years,

and as I have met Nancy Kaiser, you may interview her, I don’t know. That was strange because we have quite a great and we meet for coffee sometimes in Kenwood and that, so we talk about things, but she was on some air stations, and in fact that was where she met her husband. Mostly she was in the hospital

and so she has a different perceptive.

Well, it was only last year that they had this big reunion here and they came from all the states and we had three days and the first day we went on a tour and the first day we had lunch

in some hotel. We didn’t stay in the hotel only the ones from the different states and the whole day tour up the north coast. And then the second day, we all had lunch in this hotel in Brisbane and the third day we all went to the south coast. so.

But it was nice meeting them and it was nice making new friends but it was very hard. They are not from my past and I think you will find, especially she lives in Townsville and she is coming to stay in a couple of weeks, she was English and she was too young and she went to Devon,

poor girl. But we went all through kindy with our children and school and we have so much in common with those years. Here no one out hear wanted to talk about my life in England and so I have really integrated into Vic’s world here, so it was nice hearing those last year.

It was like meeting someone new again.

Well it might have although, well Vic was in the air force

when we first married and once we came out he went into real estate and he was going to do you know, up in the tower… what was it when they came out of the services they could do a course and the air force would pay for it? And he put in for this course up in the turret, you know, where they let…

Yes, so he did a course there and then they cancelled it all and that was that, and so he went into real estate. So he virtually came out of school into the air force and so. But that was wireless and he didn’t get into that so he went into real estate and he was in that for years really,

until he eventually retired out, and he said how it had changed and he had to do a course, a certificate. Now you can just go in and your word, you were loyal with your word. Well you had to write contract for sale and between the real estate people it was a gentleman’s agreement but it gradually changed over the years. And he came out then

and he was still so involved in the air cadets and going to all the meetings and that virtually took on his life so really I had been in his world.

Well I like the climate, I don’t like the intense heat but then I’m finding that I don’t like the cold. The climate is good, I don’t know I suppose to me it is home now. But England will still be my home

and I call this my second home and it really is my home as you can see. And every day around the family, me and that and if you told me I had to go and live somewhere else apart from England and I don’t know if I could. I would have to take them all with me and go back and live in England. Now even now just Vic and I, I couldn’t leave the children,

they are really our lives but then so are my brother and sister. I don’t know what I will do when they are just not there. I often think of my friends and my school friend who died two years ago you know, and I think of her not being there and sometimes, I always keep in touch with her sons now, and I can't believe that she is not there. So it’s easy I suppose,

if they are still there and if they go before me, I shall not really think that they are not there.

Oh well that’s true yes, I think so. I’m not religious I have never been very religious. I went to Sunday school and the girls went to a church school and,

but then since Sue and Jill’s away and since Sue has been to this Baptist church which is really Vic’s church which is St. Paul’s up in Spring Hill, and that was the family church. And they have got windows done to all the aunts you know, we won't ever have that but that’s his family church and we have always gone there over the years.

Now with the Baptist church we have been going to it when the children are in their little plays and we don’t like it because it is all this you know, the singing, but you know, it’s a huge church lovely, but it’s not my way of praying. And if I’m passing the terrace I love to go up and pray or sing because that was built by the convicts

and I just get a lovely feeling going in there, it is such a lovely church and it’s old worldish and I just like to say my own prayers now and you know. But I’m not really religious and I know that Sue is a bit disappointed and I don’t want to go to church any more.

Well we do go, they have back to St. Paul’s once a year and we go regularly and Vic’s never been the one to say, “Let’s go to church today.” So yes, but oh yes I can't say this is my second home and oh yes, I love the people really and I suppose I have got used to it.

And I remember the first time that I ever spoke on the phone to my brother he said, “Sheila you’ve got an Australian accent.” And that was in the early days and when the children went to school and I said one thing, they have to learn is the art of speech, we call it elocution at St. Aiden’s they called it the art of speech and they hated it but I was sure.

But I think they still have got an Australian accent, I can still hear the Australian accent sometimes you know. It didn’t really do any good and I suppose I have got used to here, and we have been lucky we have always had lovely neighbours and we have a couple from Vietnam but they came out before the war and they married but they are a lovely. But

we have had a few different ones but they are the latest ones and a lovely couple and they think we are lovely to accept them sort of thing, and we have always had. There is a Scottish family in here in fact Vic was the only Australian, they’re both Scottish, I’m English and an English next door and an English lady two doors and

they have all been here a long time, and Vic was the only Australian in about five houses. It has changed a little bit but yes, we have been lucky where we lived and it was good for the children you know. They had animals and acreage and that and I remember saying when I first came out, that was before we went out there,

I said, “Oh I wish the children could grow up in England, going to the fields of blue bells and primroses.” And we used to go mushrooming and then Vic used to say, and this was after and they have grown up in a different country and you know, the acreage and all that, and it’s true.

And Jill was the one that liked the horses and now Grace is mad on horses and of course, Sue can't afford to get her riding lessons but she goes to the disabled school and helps there occasionally. But no, I suppose I should end up saying I love Australia you know, because of my husband and family and I have had

a good life here and I don’t know what sort of life I would have had on the other side you know. But again, it’s fate once again that I met Vic in Brighton and just chance that night and that we kept in touch because as I say, I met boys from all over the place and… but anyway that was

here and I’m still here yes, you see, life, you don’t know and you’re not married yet and Heather [interviewer]