Australians at War Film Archive

Good morning, Martin [interviewer].

Right. Well, my father met my mother during the First World War. He was in the British Army. He had a very hard war. He was in the Infantry and was wounded and blown up – the usual thing on the Somme, and won the

Military Medal for bravery and he was at a convalescent hospital and my mother was doing some voluntary work there, Red Cross work there actually. He met her and wooed her and after the war they got married.

It was somewhere near in Cheshire. Probably in Manchester, I would say.

She came from Cheshire,

Stockport. My father came from Durham and he was the eldest of 14 children. It was from a mining community and when he took my mother to meet his family, the grandmother, my grandmother, his mother had cooked 21 Yorkshire puddings. (laughs)

I’m sure they weren’t huge Yorkshire puddings but it sounds absolutely too much. He actually, he stayed on for 2 years with the occupation force in Germany in the Rhineland and so they got married about 1920 or something like that. My mother said she doubts whether she would have married him because

if she’d know he’d change his mind because apparently he’d been asked to join the Indian army, and the story according to her is that his mother said to him, “You’ll never hold her. She’s too attractive and those generals will run off with her.” So he changed his mind and came to Australia like many of the officers, you know, sort of a block of land.

Some of it was useless. However, he wasn’t a farmer so he eventually ended up in Melbourne and then went up to Ocean Island. My brother was born in England and they followed him out and I was born here in 1924. I was born…

Oh Dad would have come in

probably ’22 and my mother would have come in ’23. He came first and then she followed with my brother afterwards.

Yes. Yes, quite a few. There were quite a lot and I’ve met or did in the past meet some of them who were around that Mildura area and Red Cliffs and around there.

There were a lot of English soldier settlers there and they had it really tough because it was the early days of irrigation. So some lasted and others moved on. Fortunately my father moved on to Ocean Island, which is Barnaba.

Oh, he saw an advertisement in the paper and said, “This will do me.” You’ve got to remember of course

this was the beginning of the Depression and so we were very lucky actually because life on the island was very pleasant.

Well, we went up in ’31, but he went up earlier. So it was a phosphate island. It was about 180

miles from Nauru and it was a beautiful island. It was very, very lush and the coral reef around and wonderful swimming. The sad and tragic thing about it was the phosphate mining that took place there ruined the island because all that was left were the coral pinnacles and

only in one area where there are still Barnabans, but perhaps later on I’ll tell you about what happened during the war and what happened to the Barnaban people.

No, I was never around Mildura. No, no. He was in West Australia first and then he came over

to Victoria.

I grew up on Ocean Island. I was 6 when we went up.

I went to school in Malvern. My brother went to De La Salle in Malvern. He became a boarder there. We went, my mother took us back to England

for me to meet the grandmother and aunties and after a few months there we came back here, and that’s when we headed north. It was a wonderful thing.

My brother and myself. We left Melbourne, I remember it was on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day

and on a ship called the Nauru Chief. It was a small chief and the Nauruans as it came in towards the reef, they used to sing it in because it was sort of their ship, and I’ve never forgotten the first morning that when we came up towards Nauru. You realised how close to the equator these

two islands are, and it was sunrise and I was on the deck of the ship and I was facing east and the sun came up behind the island and it was huge and golden. You know, it was absolutely blazing and I was just enchanted. It was just so wonderful. But at that time of the year you can get what we call the westerlies. The westerly weather and both of the

islands and particularly Ocean Island had a very treacherous reef, a harbour. In fact there’d been altogether about 9 ships lost there. We drifted for 10 days between the 2 islands because we just couldn’t land and somewhere I’ve got a photograph of when we did land and how rough the sea was. That was terribly exciting for

I’d just turned 7 and my brother was 2 years older than I was and with this just drifting along we had Chinese and Filipino crew. The Filipinos used to catch the sharks and haul them on and they’d cut off the fins, which the Chinese would take of course to make shark fin soup. And

they caught, it was between 60 and 70 in that week. We used to sit on the hatch and scream out heads off as they flopped towards us, you know, but every time they threw a shark overboard more sharks came. It was a very bloody business but it was terribly exciting.

Yes.

The rest over, mmm. So we eventually arrived on Ocean Island.

It was a great reunion with my father and we went to school up there. I had all my schooling there apart from a business course I did in Melbourne.

Oh yes, there were about 120 Europeans. It was a mining island.

The schooling, we had the Barnabans and they used the bring the indentured labour from the Gilbert and Alice and from China. And we had a lot of mechanics, fitters and turners — Chinese and the Kirribus and the Tuvaluans which used to be the Gilbert and Alice. The

phosphate ships would go and they’d pick them up because we ended up with 4 company ships. The Triona, the Triassa, the Triatica, the Trienza, because the British Phosphate Commission was a combination of the British and Australian and New Zealand Governments. That was the ‘Tri’. So they would bring them over to work for 1 or 2

years on there. They’d do a recruit. So we had…there would have been about 1,000 Barnabans who were the owners of the island, and really they had been duped into letting the British Phosphate Commission or, yes it had a slightly different name in those days – The British Phosphate Company?

Anyhow I can’t remember. But they were sort of, I don’t think they realised just what they were signing away — which was for the island to be mined. And it was highest grade phosphate in the world — It was about 85% pure. The difference between Nauru and Ocean Island — Nauru is bigger — about 12 miles in

circumference, but it wasn’t that high. Ocean Island was very high. It was about 350 feet above sea level. Now the Gilbert and Alice — they were all atolls and Nauru was more of an atoll, where as Barnaba had of course been from an upheaval. It was like a mushroom on top of a mountain. As a child we used

to find fossilised fish right on top of the island. It was assumed that it had been under the water at least twice and so there was always these fascinating things and pinnacles and caves. My brother and I we both had bicycles and it would only be about 2 miles, the road around the island. Even though the island was about 4

miles in circumference. We’d cycle along these roads and the number of times I would go over the handlebars because the rain would make furrows. At the same time you had the weather was hot and the humidity was high — it was about 90. The temperature was always about 92. It was a very high humidity so one’s dress was

shorts and sleeveless shirts, and hats and sunshades some times. But we swam every day. Off the end of the jetty which is off over the reef. It was lovely deep water. You could just see the bottom and the fish swimming around and then it slipped down very, very steeply into very deep moorings. Very deep.

That was sheer heaven. We just look back on it with such fond memories. Everybody, all the children who grew up there.

Quite a lot of young babies and children, seemed to be. But at the little school I went to there would be about 10 of us at any one time.

I was always the only one of my age. The schoolmaster, he was an English man and his main task was for the government, because it was a Crown colony. It was of the Gilbert and Alice Islands so it was a colony, whereas Nauru had been a German possession before the First War and the Australians had taken it.

Then when they were carving up the map after the war they made Nauru the mandated territory, Australia being the governing body. It was run on Australian lines whereas Ocean Island was run more on the British line. The schooling, this man, he was teaching native teachers, Barnaban teachers,

but he was also teaching the few European children who were on the island — though we had our own little school house. Yes, it was all very pleasant. In the early days we used to go to school on what we called a flat car. It had 4 wheels and little wooden seats, sitting up there, being poled along. My brother and I

used to have great fun as soon as we got out of the settlement. At times we’d make the fellow who was poling it sit up on the seats and we’d push it. And we progressed to a little diesel motor that went from the village, from the settlement on the side of the island where we lived, out to the settlement on the other side. That was great fun too. Sitting in these little

seats and we used to get up to all sorts of mischief. This teacher had come to me, and it really was hot — the perspiration just used to run off my arm on to my schoolbooks — and he found that the Barnabans didn’t seem to sweat as much as we did. They were probably used to it more. But he’d been down and their beautiful writing. My writing would be everywhere

because of perspiration and he’d say, “Why can’t you write as well as these people can?” I thought, “It’s too hot.” But they did. If they learnt, they learnt very well. I was very fortunate. He was also very artistic and that was a help. And then later on we had another teacher and he was good too. When my brother

was sent to boarding school — he went to De La Salle in Malvern — I was able to escape by persuading my father that he really couldn’t live without me. So I was able to get away with another 4 years on the island, and by that time of course it was getting on for 1939 and the war was looming.

Oh yes. Yes we did. I’m sure if my parents had known just what we got up to they would have been horrified because the loading jetties for loading the phosphate, there was more of a cantilever type further up. The number 1 jetty went…

a wooden jetty. It used to have rails right to the end and when they carried the phosphate out. (moving hands about) If I’d lose my hands I don’t know what I’d do. (laughs) That was mainly used, occasionally for loading. The company had built a landing underneath it and we had diving boards off there and rings, you know, could have a lovely

time. But when this westerly weather was on the reef, which was not far from where we used to swim, but they used to have these very thick, about 4 inch rope looped underneath so the loading boats could be attached to them. So we, together with our island friends, used to slide down on to these

ropes and hang arms and length around and let the waves wash over us. If we’d fallen there was no way we wouldn’t have been smashed to pieces on the reef, so that was something you made quite certain your father didn’t know you were doing. The beaches were beautiful — just white and lovely and we used to go for

weekends. You know a small island like that but you’d get away for the weekend. I remember once a couple of my…a family of friends… There were about 80 single men on the island, or unattached men. I used to have a lot of fun with them. We used to play tennis at night. It was too hot in the day. We’d go swimming

and my parents entertained them a lot. These two were getting married, so their brides to be were coming up on the ship which was about 8 days to get there. They were married from our house and it was a big party. And one of the men, he took his bride on the honeymoon to, we used

to call the camp over on the other side of island, and the sound of the sea roaring in and there were crabs and bush rats and all sorts of creepy crawly things. The crabs of course. That poor girl. She was so terrified he had to bring her back the next day. She just said she couldn’t stay there. All these odd noises were too much for her so they came back to our place.

Yes, there were all sorts of things to do to interest a young lady.

My mother, she was really an amazing lady. She was incredible. She’d make a home anywhere, but during

the war she had been called up and her 2 brothers were at the war so she had to run the family. There were 6 in that family at that time. She was called up to a munitions factory and she became the expert at making 18 pounder shells. There was a Jones and Lampson machine — I’ve heard that story quite a lot of times — they had

engineers over to stand and watch the number of shells she could produce and they were always saying, “Well, why can’t the others do it?” But she was very determined. If she made up her mind she was going to produce so many, she would. Then her sister, she was called up and I remember the stories she used to tell;

The zeppelins went over and the whole works had to be closed down and they had to sit there just quietly all through the night until it was all clear. She had another sister and she was working in a chemical factory of some kind. Sounded like TNT. It boiled up and

exploded, and there was some Canadians working there too. They’d been wounded but been employed there. When it was going up, which I presume was the TNT, they grabbed her and ran up to the moors. But it was very close to the town where they were living and it blew the windows out and quite a lot of people were killed.

She was in a state of shock of course so her was very hard, and of course they were on rations. She still found time to do Red Cross work and that’s how she met my father. She was always homesick I think. She was very close to her

mother and I think she was always homesick. She didn’t like the heat and she was very blonde when she was young, and very fair skinned. She never went into the sun. Therefore she always kept her complexion. She would go out with a hat and a sun

shade.

Yes very sensible but rather a nuisance if you want to go swimming. She wasn’t mad on the swimming so consequently her skin was so fine and mosquitoes were fierce up there. Fortunately they weren’t malaria mosquitoes but people did get a fever — but it wasn’t malaria.

So she would be sitting in the lounge and the homes were lovely. You know, big lounges with shutters to get the breeze and keep the sun out and they had lots of the native matting, cane furniture and they were just ideal for the tropics. She’d be sitting there and the blood would just run down her leg where a mosquito had

bitten her. My father had to make like a tent within the house for her to sit in so the mosquitoes didn’t devour her completely. People with that fair skin found it very difficult so I didn’t sleep with a mosquito net. My father maintained that if a mosquito

bit me it would drop dead and that was it. The word got round, but I think it was swimming and he enjoyed the swimming too. It toughens up your skin so the mosquitoes don’t like you so much. Then during the war my brother, after he’d finished his schooling, joined the Merchant Navy as a cadet and the last time we saw him was in the August

before war broke out, and the company was called the Bank Line. The Bank Line Company, and they’d been coming to the island for years and picking up phosphate and we’d travelled on them sometimes. He went as a cadet with them but that was the last time we saw him because in ’43 his ship was torpedoed and he was lost.

The ship he was on went through the Panama Canal to England and he was in the Atlantic in the North Sea. All those convoys until ’43… so he had a pretty terrible war.

Oh it was dreadful. So the first time the ship he was on came into the Indian Ocean

they were going up to India. He was a Third officer by then or Second officer, and the First Mate and he had to take the place on another ship, a ship called the Tin How because the captain and the second mate had become ill.

They were only about 48 hours out of Durban when a submarine got them, and they said it was the last of the German submarines in the war. It was bad luck but it happened to so many. I mean, there’s something like 38,000 Merchant Navy men whose grave is the sea. Now that

shattered my mother because he was her golden boy and she never really got over it, and after the war she went back. My mother, my father and myself, we met up for the first time in 3 years so it was quite a long while but I’m jumping ahead of myself a bit there.

When we were evacuated of course that was the end of the island until the war was over.

He was a Mining engineer but he was what they called the Head Overseer. He was responsible for all the workings on the top side as they

referred to it. He loved the island. He absolutely loved it and on a Sunday afternoon he and I would walk around and we used to go by the spot where they had the European cemetery. And there were so many trees on the island. Lovely mango trees, you know, huge ones and Ateetie trees.

Some of these tables you’ll see here are made of that timber. We’d walk down by the cemetery and he always used to say, “This spot would do me one day.” And strange enough he died in ’51. He went back to the island after the war as I said and he was buried there. And again it was quite

interesting because when they finished the mining, the Europeans all left and they ceased the phosphate mining, the island more or less just went berserk. It became overgrown with more like a scrub and weeds and things and there were no Europeans left —

there only the Barnabans. It must be about 10 years ago, a little group went back there and the Barnabans who were there, another generation, they didn’t even know there was a European cemetery because where all the pinnacles were they were all covered with this creeper, convolvulus and other stuff

and they were too frightened to go very far because they didn’t know how deep the pinnacles were, because some of the cuttings were 80 feet deep, and so this was all over the top. So they found it, these people who went back, and they took a photograph of my father’s grave there. They went looking for it and it was completely overgrown and the

amazing thing, you could still read the inscription on the stone but the jungle had taken over. It probably has taken over again.

Oh yes.

Yes, conomari quarungwi. (laughs) Yes we did.

We used to go to…they’re wonderful dancers, the Barnabans. They were beautiful dancers. When they were gathered up after the war they were taken to an island in the Fiji group called Rumbi, which was bought with their money. It was all royalties from the phosphate

and so it was bought for them but they always wanted to go back to their own island. Very proud people. Lovely people. But their dancing… Groups go over into Fiji, the various groups, and they’re famous for their hula type dancing.

They have music — bartray. It’s pure Polynesian dancing. It’s lovely. We used to go to have the big hupnamuniaba and you’d all sit round on mats, or sometimes I think they’d have some chairs for the Europeans, but mats are much better if you’re taking part in that sort of dancing.

Enjoyed it thoroughly and if anybody, if the ships would come we’d take them out or if there were any young cadets or young officers off the ships the girls would get them up dancing to the great hilarity of all concerned. It used to be tremendous fun. I can remember, there was one

village right on top of the island, Beconakye. Lovely village. I used to go up there. I had a couple of chums among the old men and when the Pandanus was just, do you know the Pandanus tree? It’s like a big football, the Pandanus. It all fits in in segments and it’s sugar and it’s bright orange. It’s so tough, you have to twist it round

and you pull it through your teeth. That’s why they had such beautiful teeth, and also eating raw fish. Wonderful fisherman. If they were out fishing, get a fish, they’d bite it through the back of the head to kill it and have a little nibble of it. I’d sit down with them and we’d have a couple of baskets and we’d go through, two old men and this little girl would sit there eating the

Pandanus. And then of course when the mangoes were out the same performance would go on and we’d be running with mango juice, but that used to be great fun.

No. The fish, the fish was just unbelievable. It was beautiful fish —

Balata and a whole range of marvellous fish. We were very fortunate because over in what were the Gilbert Islands and Tuvalu, they were terribly isolated. They’d get a ship once in 6 months whereas we would have the company ships

every month. Pre-war it wasn’t as frequent. We had iceboxes and at the crack of dawn the natives would come up with these big blocks of ice and put them in the ice box. Then, particularly post-war, we moved to refrigerators because there was a big powerhouse.

We used to get a list of what they had in the cold store and so my mother would order whatever it was she wanted the next day. There was a big company store. All those mining places are the same, particularly among the

Kirabas and the Tuvaluans — they’d get paid in the afternoon and the store would be open until 9 o’clock so the money would go back because it was a company store. Not like in New Guinea where you had other competition or small shops well outback. They didn’t. You’d find

with the store, you had no choice, you had to go there. I didn’t handle money. Somebody gave me a 10 shilling note once. I gave it to my father. I didn’t want it because we just put everything on account. I wasn’t allowed to eat sweets so

weren’t used to money. I don’t think I’m much better today. (laughs) It was a different life and it was very remote. A long way from anywhere. I’d go swimming in the afternoon and the single men, we’d all go down swimming together and I’d come up and being so close to the

equator, 6 o’clock in the morning the sun rose and at 6 o’clock at night the sun set. It was just like switching off a light. I’d come up from swimming, up this little red path and in our garden, we had a lovely garden. There were lovely Poinciana trees, a whole avenue of them. A blaze of red. Bougainvillea. A lovely Bougainvillea hedge. There was a big pinnacle and there was a smooth seat just for me.

It seemed to be. I’d sit there just to watch the sun go down. We were up on the hill and you could see the whole half circumference and see the sun going down, just slipping down. My father always said to me, “You mustn’t watch the sun when it’s absolutely setting. It’ll damage your eyes.” But it was very tempting because there’d be a wonderful

green light dancing around it, like a corona, and I used to close one eye and sort of look at it. Very simple pleasures.

Well, I had been in Melbourne, actually we were at sea when war broke out. My father was coming on leave. We always came to Melbourne, my mother and I, every 12 months for a quick trip. And every

23 months or 24 months we’d come down on leave for 3 or 4 months. Melbourne was our base and anyhow my father, my mother and I were coming on leave. The ship we were on, we got to Nauru and they transferred us to another company ship and took us to New Zealand and,

as I say, war broke out so there was great activity on board. We were helping them paint the portholes black. They had to be blacked out. Anyhow we went to New Zealand and after a few days there we came over on the Wanganella, which was a regular liner on the run between Australia and New Zealand. It came to Sydney and then on down to

Melbourne. My father, he was on leave at the time and that was ’38, ’39. He went back and I stayed in Melbourne and did a business course because my mother said she wasn’t going to have me like one of those useless

but pretty young island ladies. European, not the native girls. She was very fond of them and that I had to learn something.

Here in Melbourne at Stott’s. It was tremendous fun. Anyhow I was very pleased with myself because it was an 11 month course and at 10 months I was sent out to a job.

That was business management so that was great and I made some friends, and I’m still friends with one of them after all those years. I remember my father taking me in and, well before your time, but there were 2 restaurants, the Russell Collins and the Elizabeth Collins and

the Russell Collins was in the basement of the T&G [Technical & General Insurance Company] building in Collins Street. It was marvellous. Always featuring flowers. All the way around the wall there would be poppies, or gladioli, whatever it was. All the one thing and the food – the most wonderful salads and they used to have Epping sausages and

it was renowned for its grills and very good food. So I met up with these 3 other new girls that day and I said, “What are you doing for lunch?” And they said, “We don’t know.” I said, “Come with me. My father’s taking me for lunch to Russell Collins so you better come too.” So he won 3 extra girls and even when I went overseas

during the war, if he was on leave he’d always meet up with them and they’d go out for dinner or he’d put on a dinner for them.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. Anyhow I could put up with it for 12 months. It just didn’t quite work out that way

because circumstances again, the war going on. When the war broke out, things changed a great deal. Before then we were going back to the island and that was on 6 December

1940. My mother and I. My father was already there of course. We knew that were German raiders operating in the Pacific because the Rangatani was missing and a couple of boats were mined off the coast. As I was saying to Martin before, people think that

Darwin bombing was the first affect of war but it wasn’t. It was these German raiders in the Pacific. There were 4 of them that we knew of and there was another one before. A ship called the Niagara had hit a mine and that had a load of gold on it. I think they eventually got it out after the war.

Anyhow, we wanted to go back to the island and because of this raider activity they said to us that the ship that we were going on was going to go from Newcastle, not Melbourne, so we suggest you go up there or you wait for the next ship.

So we did go up to Newcastle and so we were going along quite nicely with of course the blackout on the ship, and I always used to when travelling on the ships go up to the fo’c’sle and the ship we were on was the Triona. It had a clipper bow. There were 2 — the Triaste and the Triona — they had like a clipper bow

because they used to do the moorings — the mooring buoys on the 2 islands — and they were specially designed for that. So I used to go up after lunch. Respectable people went and had a lie down and had a siesta but I always went up to the bow and lay there looking down through the anchor hole.

Anchor hole? That doesn’t sound right but that’s what it was. Just to see the bow cutting through the sea and sometimes there’d be dolphins and sometimes flying fish and it was lovely. My normal gear — it’s really rather important that you should know this — a shirt and shorts and I had red sandals on this day

and I had all these lovely goodies that I’d was allowed to buy to go back to the island with and I was just coming on 17. I would be 17 in the January. My shorts and shirt were highly patterned with coconut palms. Red and blue and purple monkeys climbing them — most unsuitable

for what was to follow. What was to follow of course was us being caught by the German raiders. There were two raiders and one supply ship. Anyhow I was out on the deck and we didn’t often see ships but also we did see the Japanese, the Mitsui line, which would come to the island

for phosphate although they never landed. The Japanese weren’t allowed to land on the island although there were some there in the very early days of settlement because of the Chinese community we had and Japan was already doing terrible things in China in Manchuria. Anyhow, I was

out on the deck and saw these ships on the horizon almost. They were coming closer and I was fascinated by them. I only saw one because there was one on the other side. What happens when they get close they signal to say ‘stop and don’t send any messages’.

Then I’m quite certain that our radio officer started to send a message. They had a special signal they used if they were being attacked by a raider. He started, and outside his cabin was a lifeboat which was actually the one we were allocated. There were only 6 passengers —

women and one boy on the ship and the 4 Filipino crewman who were working on that boat and on the deck there. This was all very fascinating. I think I was slightly hypnotised frankly because then they opened fire, and what they did, they had, where they had the Japanese

flags they had flaps. They just dropped them down and there were their guns and so the shells started to land in front and over the top of the ship and at the back and then they were hitting the ship, at which stage I decided I better go into the cabin, do something about life jackets, which we did. Unfortunately one of the shells landed where these

Filipinos, not far from me, had been standing and they were killed. I was so pleased when I was up in Canberra a few years ago, 3 years or 4 years, for the dedication of the Nurses’ Memorial Centre up there — the memorial, not the centre — to see that their names were on the Merchant Navy memorial,

as is my brother’s. And I thought, “Those poor boys. So far from home and to go like that.” However they have been remembered and I thought that was good for their families. We waited and the ship was evacuated and we knew, we travelled on the ship so we knew the men and knew the captain.

Eventually he came, the purser came and said, “Okay, off we go.” We knew him well. So we went out on to the deck. I could see why everybody made a quick getaway because where I had walked up to the bow earlier in the day there were these barrels of fuel and if one shell had landed among them we would have been blown up. But even worse, in the aft well

behind the passenger accommodation were these huge tanks full of explosive for the phosphate. So nobody wasted time. They went. We were the last lifeboat and all through this time there was some incredibly funny things happened. I think it used to confuse the Germans because we were always laughing about something

ridiculous. One of the passengers was a dear lady, Mrs Mack from Nauru. She was very deaf and she had this box contraption she used to hold out to you and it had a hearing, like a telephone thing in her ear. So she gave that to me and I tied the box onto my life jacket

and gave Athol Rogers, who was the purser, the hearing piece which eventually ended up in Germany and they found it very useful for making wireless sets. So they were very happy about that. When we got on to the deck the lifeboat

was down over the side with the Jacob’s ladder to go down. The ship was very high out of the water. So dear Mrs Mack went down and she got half-way and she froze, and they were trying to persuade her to keep on coming. Well, our Chinese cook — they had a Chinese cook on board —

he panicked because he’d seen the Japanese flag of the Mitsui line and he thought, “I’m for it now.” He just went over the side and slithered down with his legs out and landed on her head. Poor Mrs Mack. She went down very smartly after that. My mother said, “I’m not going down that thing” and

told the Bosun to lower the gangway. He was a very nice Filipino — they were all lovely. I said to him, “My mother says to lower the gangway.” He said, “There’s no [UNCLEAR].” I said, “Don’t worry. If she says lower the gangway, you lower it.” So he said, “Okay.” So he lowered the gangway and

fortunately it was still calm and so my mother walked on with a hand on my shoulder, you know, regally. Not looking anywhere, just going straight down and we got into the life boat and our First officer off the ship was there. Another funny thing on that day — one of the other women, who was a great friend of ours, was the wife of the Harbour Master.

It used to be the biggest performance to get her on and off the ship, any ship, on to the island because you had to go out on a boat and if there was a swell you had to go at the right moment. Poor Elsie, she’d been having her lie down. She just had her dressing gown on. She came down all on her own, down this gangway, step by step on her bottom saying,

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” She ended up in the lifeboat too. We took off and then the Germans rounded us up. There were the two raiders, one on either side, and the supply ship. The supply ship was called the Cumberland, no Colmaland. And the actual raider, the main raider was the O’Ryan and

the other was the Komet. So they were converted merchant ships. The Colmaland was the Hamburg America line. It has been a freight but with passenger accommodation. We had many names for them actually. The raider was known as the Black Panther because we didn’t know their names and no-one was going to tell us.

We eventually found out exactly which ships they were and so the supply ship would be the Montevideo Maru because that’s the name it was flying under. You know, with their artificial colourings and what have you.

Depended. They had 4

lifeboats into 3 so we were fairly well… it just depended on how many people they had on the ship.

Six. I don’t know. There’d be 8, 10, 12. I suppose there’d be about 40 off our ship. But a ship like the Rangatani would have had over 200

people on board. It varied. The Germans had very smart lifeboats with a machine gun on them. They came and rounded us up. I think everybody has this same experience whether its bushfires, your house is being burnt down —

you save impractical things. You save things of sentimental value. You’ll save a photograph and you can’t eat it and you can’t wear it, and this happens over and over again. People will take something that they don’t really need at that stage. Anyhow the Germans rounded us up and they

obeyed by the Geneva Conventions. They took us on board as prisoners and if they’d left us in the lifeboats I doubt whether we would have lasted more than 2 days because it was so hot. You would have gone made. We were lucky. They took us back to the Triona which was our ship and said we could

go on board and get some personal belongings. My mother said, “I’m not going on that ship again.” So she, Mrs Mack and the boy Keith Harmer, they stayed and we went on board. In that time they took that boat, the lifeboat

to the supply ship and we got things. I packed up a suitcase with a change of clothes for my mother and a pair of slacks and a shirt for me. A few necessary things like a brush and comb, toothpaste and what we could think of. When I went into the cabin there were two young

German sailors and Mum had had my father’s… it was a Rolex dress watch, to take down to have cleaned or something, and he’d picked it up off the table. I looked at him and I said, “That’s my father’s watch. Put it down.” And he did. (laughs) Actually, they were only young fellows and they were helping me so

we had suitcases and threw whatever we could into them. They took it then to the side of the ship and threw it overboard and if it hit the lifeboat, good. If it didn’t, too bad. So we did get one case full of stuff. Then we gathered down in the purser’s office and had a drink. I think the Germans thought

that was too entertaining. I must tell you when we were waiting for the purser to come and tell us to get on the lifeboat, everybody gathered in to our cabin. My mother said, “Well now, you know this is very serious. We are in a very difficult situation. I think we should all say a prayer.” We all said a prayer. “Now,” she said, “I think we all better have a drink!” (laughs)

She had a bottle of brandy there so everybody had a sip of the brandy. So in this survival case I found another bottle of brandy. I put that in too. Then we were told by the Germans to go and get down into the lifeboat but it wasn’t the one we had been in since that had gone.

By this time it was nearly 8 o’clock at night. We’d been sunk at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. So they took us over to the O’Ryan, the actual raider, the Black Panther, you know. It was very black and it had the Jacob’s ladder going right up the side. The pattern then set itself because they were always saying, “You go first

Maureen, you go first.” So I went first. When we got to the top, on to the deck part, these arms came and dragged me over and they had a spotlight and all these sailors, little German sailors in their shorts and shirts. They were agape at this apparition. People said, “Were you

frightened? Were you ever frightened?” I was never frightened because there was always so much to do. But this time I was standing up there, I got terribly angry because I couldn’t stop my knees from knocking. They were knocking together. I wasn’t frightened. I was just so angry I couldn’t stop them knocking so I must have been scared stiff. Anyhow, one of the officers grabbed me and

took me down various alleyways and corridors and then opened up a cabin and threw me inside and there was the captain of our ship, Captain Hughes. It was just wonderful to see him. He said, “Don’t you worry, you’ll be all right. You’ll be looked after.” So eventually… it turned out then that my mother and Keith and Mrs Mack had been taken to the supply ship not the actual raider.

It had a lot of…the men were down in the hold of the other ships and so they took us down to what had been a recreation room. You have to bear in mind that these German raiders had left Germany well before war was declared and they’d gone in around the top through the Bering Sea, right down to Japan

where they’d stocked up. Japan wasn’t in the war so it was quite legal for them to do it. There’s a photograph on my wall in the other room, my memory corner, of a Norwegian Ship with a painting of it in Japan with Fujiama in the background. And they had been in Osaka

at that time because they were flying under the Panamanian flag, and they had seen the German ships being refuelled and thought they were up to mischief. Strangely enough, when we eventually went back to the island we went back on that Norwegian ship under the Panamanian flag with

its lights blazing because it was a neutral ship, even though Norway had fallen by then which was the Panamanian flag. This ship had, it had been I guess a recreation room for the Atlantic climate because it was lined and it was painted

but it would only have had a foot square ventilation and a sort of a funnel that goes right up to catch the wind. No facilities whatever. A table and some benches to sit on. It had been occupied before. It had had some of the sisters, the women off the Rangatani, had been there before

being transferred to the supply ship. They eventually got all the women, children and wounded on to the supply ship. They gave us some food. It was so much better than what we got at a later date. It was dreadful. It was very greasy and very German. It doesn’t go down too well in the tropics because it was as hot as hell.

We were just dripping with perspiration the whole time. Everything led on to another funny experience. It was the next day, it must have been the next day. They had the suitcases that had gone overboard. They’d obviously gone through and in mine they’d found a photograph of a ship

at one of the mooring buoys on the island. What they wanted to know — were there any troops on the island? I said, “I haven’t been there for 12 months, I wouldn’t know.” Whether anybody else told them that there weren’t or there were whatever it was I don’t know but it was rather, it was quite amusing actually when you look back on it, the cheek of youth.

Most of the officers were Merchant Navy men. I had quite an interesting experience when talking to one of them. He said, “Where are you from?” I said, “Ocean Island.” He said, “No, no. In Australia.” I said “Melbourne.” He said, “Well, I’m from Sydney. I’m a Sydney man.”

“Well what are you doing here?” I think I must have said. The fellow said, “I was on leave, back in Germany when I was called up.” He worked with a German company. He said, “My best friend is in the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] and I’m engaged to his sister.” I said, “Oh dear.”

It just shows you how stupid war is. It really is. It just does so much damage but it’s so stupid. There should be other ways but we never learn. Never learn. So it’s very bad. Anyhow, two officers plus the Gestapo gentleman. On each ship there was a Gestapo to keep an eye on them all I suppose. He,

it was like an old fashioned film where the villain sneers and he said, “You are English?” I said, “No I’m not. I’m Australian.” “Oh,” he sneered, “Australian! Undisciplined, Australians, undisciplined. But they’ll make good slaves when we get there.” I burst out laughing. He went white with

rage. He was livid. His hands were clenched. If it hadn’t been for those other two officers I would have had my head knocked off. You don’t speak to a Gestapo man like that. There was another girl off the Rangatani. A little steward. She was from Coventry in England which had just been destroyed just about, and the

Gestapo man on that ship, the supply ship when we eventually met up, he’d come and stand there and he’d turn the radio up so we could hear it and he’d come and say, he’d look at her and say, “Oh Coventry Kaput!” She’d say, “Coventry kaput, nothing,” and she’d say, “Hamburg, absolutely gone!” (laughs). All this terrible argument would go one between the two of them. He hated her.

He’d stand there with a...because they’d looted our ship and they had all our supplies for the island. The beer. They got all this lovely VB [Victoria Bitter] and they’d stand there with a bottle of VB and sneer at us as if to say, “Wouldn’t you like a glass?” We didn’t get a glass. We could smell our lamb cooking. The officers were the next dining area to us.

We were eating the Japanese rice with the weevils in it. It was dreadful food. However that day I saw the other prisoners, the men down there including the men off a ship called the Tirrokeena. They only had one little gun and they’d taken on the raiders.

They had inflicted a lot of damage but most of their crew were killed and the ones that I saw were quite badly wounded. They wouldn’t let us speak except one boy who said, “What are you off?” And I said, “The Triona.” He said, “We’re the Tirrokeena.” That was almost in passing. The next day they caught up with the other

two company ships, the Triasta and the Triatic and we could hear all this trundling going on above and it must have been bringing down the shells for the guns. We must have been right underneath there. They started the shelling and of course all the fumes came down and it was hot anyhow without them.

We were locked in. Even to go to the toilet or the bathroom we had to hammer on the door, except the guards they put on our door who could never speak English. The first time they said, “You go Maureen.” They didn’t even give us a bucket, you know. If we’d been seasick it would have been horrible. Anyway we knocked on the door and he

had his gun. I don’t know what they thought we were going to do to them. I said, “I’m sorry but we really must go to a toilet.” They just didn’t understand. I thought there were a few German words I knew. I said, “Abort.” “Oh,” he said, “abort.” Pushed me back in, slammed the door, went off and came back with two officers where we were escorted to a bathroom and toilet. We were able to have a wash and do

what was necessary. With this shelling the fumes were coming into this area. It must have been dreadful for the men down in the holds. We had no windows or anything like that so you didn’t know. The worst thing was you didn’t know what was happening. Anyhow we said, “Look, it’s terrible in here. We’re finding it hard to breath.” They said, “Too bad.” We just had to put up with it. They struck the

Triatic, the Triasta, a Norwegian ship called the Komatay. I’ve got all the names down here somewhere. The Norwegian ship, the old captain when they sunk him, he demanded from the Germans a receipt for his ship because he said he had to give it

to the owners of the ship when he got back to Norway otherwise he’d be in big trouble. So they gave him a receipt for his ship which they’d just sunk! (laughs).

We didn’t have a gun. One or two of them had guns on. The Rangatani was badly hit and the ones that were hit at night…

If they had a gun and attempted to fire it, they really gave it to them. The Rangatani, they used incendiary shells and the ship was blazing. The same with the Triatic. When they hit one of our friends from Nauru, her little boy was

blown through the cabin into the cabin above. It just depended where you were. They didn’t like you having guns. They sunk you anyway whether you had them or not.

That’s right, and I remember

shortly after that we were being taken up to the bathroom again. I think I thought, “Oh, I’ve left my life jacket.” This German officer said, “Oh, you don’t need that. If anything happens to this ship, you won’t need a life jacket. We all go, you’re one of us!” (laughs)

So that wasn’t very cheerful.

There was only 6. When the Triatic was sunk there were 4 more joined us. That obviously was a temporary arrangement because the day after they must have taken pity on us because they took us up to a cabin up on the deck level.

They said, “Don’t look out the porthole.” As soon as they’d gone, I looked out the porthole to see the Triasta, which was one of our company ships. She was beautiful. Just a lovely, lovely ship to travel on and just as she was sinking, just going down. It was terrible.

Oh well, the friends that you made were joining up. I knew quite a few boys and some of the chaps from the island. When

we were eventually evacuated, accommodation was very hard to get because there were people coming from Hong Kong and Singapore, Indonesia and from up north, New Guinea. So accommodation was really hard. I remember

we had a flat and it was so cold we nearly died. It was in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, and my mother went to the real estate office which was there and this woman said, “Oh, no no.” My mother said, “Would you put my name down in case you do get something?”

She said, “Yes. I suppose you’re from Singapore or somewhere like that.” Mother said, “Actually I’m from Ocean Island.” This woman looked at her and said, “Did you know my brother, Bill Sloggett?” Mother said, “Of course I do. I entertained his mother when she came up. He used to come and play bridge with us.”

“Oh,” she said, “isn’t that wonderful.” Now he was a very funny boy but he joined up early in the war and he was over in Canada with the air training scheme. I think just about the first time he went up in a plane it crashed and he was killed. So, you were aware of what was happening. I think we were very much aware of what was happening.

We used to go to the Palais de Dance. You’d dress up in long dresses. They were always having farewell to the boys who were going off and so you’d go and dance with this wonderful dance floor, wonderful orchestra and all that generation of men could dance.

I think because they didn’t have television to watch they could all dance. All the ex-servicemen basically could dance and dance very well. Servicemen I should say. At some part during the evening we’d go over to Luna Park and go on the Big Dipper and then come back and dance, then catch the last train home to Brighton. We didn’t have cars. They weren’t around.

No. I was in a hostel. That’s where I got to know Brighton very well because one of these girls that came to the Russell Collins, they were New Zealanders and they lived in Brighton. They had a business over here. An importing business. Used to get lovely

seafood and stuff. They were very good to me. I used to spend weekends with them. This hostel was called St Anne’s and it was on the corner of Nicholson and Victoria, I think. It was a huge grey building. It mainly had country

girls who were attending the teacher’s college. It was all country girls who stayed there and odd people like me. There were teachers there too and some nurses. It was run by the Sisters of Mercy. They had the big caps. It was lovely.

That’s right.

A funny thing happened. She’d given me £5 which was a lot of money so I’d splurged on records and I had all these jazz records, Lionel Hampton, all my favourites. You could buy a lot of records for £5.

The other thing was, the book I was reading at the time was Gone With the Wind, which was a huge book. Now the Germans got that and the records and it was on the Komet and the men off our ships, The Triona, The Triace and The Triatic.

Most of them were in the fo’c’sle right at the front of the ship. The Germans had put a line through, a speaker through so they could hear this music. One of the records I had was ‘Run Rabbit Run’ and ‘We’re Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’ and they unwittingly put this on and they all collapsed into laughter because it was very anti-German really.

It suddenly went off and they never heard it again of course. They only ever heard it once. Every one of them had read ‘Gone with the Wind’. I didn’t hear this until after the war of course.

Just to get back to the island as quickly as I could. I think we knew that time was running out.

Because of the possibility of the Japanese coming into the war, but we had no idea that they would do such dreadful things. Basically that was it.

All I wanted to do was get back to the island.

Not at all. I didn’t ever want to leave that island. I got back there because when we got off the raider and got back to Australia in about the May,

we went back to the island.

We were on the raider from 6 December to about the 21st. It was interesting. They came — this was on the supply ship — they came in one day and the captain. The system they had, they had a Herr Marks.

It was quite amusing. He was a German chief engineer and I think what their plan was, it was generally assumed that they had a spare crew on board. They had hoped to save, say the Ragatani, that was the logical one. It was laden with food for England. It was the biggest of its kind that had ever left New Zealand. If they could have captured that

and run the blockade it would have been a great prize but that Radio officer got his message off, so they shelled it. With going back to the island, I worked in the company office for the 4 months we were down here and then I

worked in the office on the island while I was there, so I wasn’t just beachcombing, much as I would have liked to have been but that was good fun. They came not long before the Japanese came into the war. This Norwegian ship was back there.

The captain was having dinner with us and the manager of the island and somebody else. The big thing came up that they had to get Maureen off the island. It seemed to be the big thing. So the next day we sailed off with a couple of suitcases and landed in Melbourne with a couple of suitcases. To get back to the story about the estate agent —

we had a flat that afternoon. We were very lucky to have it. It was in Fitzroy Street and we were very happy there. We had it until well into the ’50s.

You know the Gatwick Hotel there?

Do you?

Oh, I know. Well we were in Bellbrae, which were the units

next to…32 it was. 32. It was great. Loved St Kilda.

During the war and also you could go anywhere and you weren’t too far. If you were in the city and had to walk home, you could walk home.

Yes.

Well it was

obvious that they just did not have enough food. They had nearly 1,000 prisoners. They sank 12 ships. Something like 78 tons of shipping loss. It had been a very successful tour of duty for them. It was obvious from the rations we were having that they couldn’t cope with it

for too long and the conditions were pretty rough.

No, they were very busy. They had planned to drop us either on Ocean Island or Nauru. They were going to destroy the phosphate workings. When they sunk the ships off Nauru and they even

saw one of the ships ablaze. So they knew what was happening. They saw this dark ship sail right past. What they did was take us to what was the Bismarck Archipelago, New Island. And the German, Herr Marks who was in charge of the prisoners

came in one day. He was a very nice man. He told my mother that he had been a prisoner of the English in the First World War and been on the Isle of Man and been treated so well that any prisoners he was responsible for, he would treat well. He came in and said, “Ladies I’ve got a lovely surprise for you.” He had

Mr Mack who was our chief engineer, and poor Mr Mack had just been in his boiler suit having a lie down when the ship was shelled so he’d given him a pair of trousers and a shirt and a Panama hat and whisky. Mind you, our whisky off our ship. He’d said to him,

“As one chief engineer to another.” I think Mr Mack must have had some inkling that they were not going to be put ashore because he said, “Be sure to get in touch with my wife and tell her I’ll be okay.” So he must have known something. When it came to the point, firstly we were going north

and they took us up to an island up near Truk. Truk was the biggest Japanese overseas base. The Americans didn’t even try to take it, it was so heavily armed. But there were other islands around there. They tied the three ships up together. We assumed it was Truk. They refuelled them of course.

This was an amusing episode because they celebrated. They had every reason to with all those ships that they’d sunk and all the beer that they had off the Triona. They always had a party on one of the other ships but every now and then a group of the sailors would come and stare.

Where my mother and the older women were was like in that Cormaland — you had cabins along each side and across under the bridge you would have the separate lounge-dining room and a couple of other dining rooms, and one of them the officers were still using but they gave us

the other area. Instead of having them down below they had them up on deck. The women and children. The wounded and the women with children were in the cabins. We younger ones were upstairs on an area of deck behind the bridge which they had fenced off with canvass all the way around and they’d given us little stretchers

which they’d laced to deck. We were in a terrible storm, shocking storm one night. You could hear the fans being flown off the wall and crashing and the propeller going out of the water and whizzing around in the air, you know, and slap, bang. I never prayed and I prayed all night, you know. “Holy Mary, mother of God, save me now!”

It really went on. We just had to hang on. But when they were having their party, some of their sailors, because at 6 o’clock we had to be battened down, the sailors, some of them got an old record player they had, an old gramophone out and the only

record they had in English — guess what it was?

It was ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’. (laughs) They played it and played it. This young woman from England said, “Go and tell them to stop making that racket!”

Eventually they went away. That’s right, she did complain and the answer was again from Herr Marks who came to see how we were — “It is their ship, you know.” These ladies that were with mother were getting

very frightened of these young sailors staring at them so mother said, “Okay, we’ll go down to one of the cabins,” where the women who had children. So they all piled in there. So this meant that all the ladies from the lounge had disappeared. Poor Herr Marks had to leave his party and come and find them; “Mrs White?” They always assumed she was in charge. “What

are you ladies doing down here? You’re not in your area.” She said, “Well, Herr Marks, the women were getting very nervous about your men. They’re getting drunk and they’re staring at them.” He said, “You know, it is their ship!” Same old story. She said, “Well, it’s not nice.” He said, “Well look, you take your ladies back.” He said, “Not

one of them will touch you. You’re perfectly all right. Go back.” So they all came back again.

No. They were very well disciplined. No, it was just the lack of food

and the conditions. The conditions were bad, but they could have been worse. When you think of what the prisoners of the Japanese went through.

Well, going back to the Rangatani first. You keep thinking of things. It was a long time ago, you know,

but it’s all still very vivid. All those experiences are, although you don’t think of them for ages and they pop back. I have here a piece of propaganda put out by the Germans where they buried a girl and she was a Red Cross nurse who’d come out on a Polish ship, the Bettori, which had brought out to New Zealand

about 500 evacuee children from England. They sent some to New Zealand, Canada, America to escape the war and they were accompanied by nurses from hospitals like Guys and St Thomas and St Bartholomew’s and this Red Cross lass. They had Polish men and women who’d escaped to England.

They were off the Bettori. They came out also to look after them. Now they were on their way back to England on the Rangatani when it was taken prisoner and this poor girl was so badly wounded. There were about 21 of them very badly wounded and she

died so the Germans gave her a military funeral. I’ll show you this piece of propaganda. When you look back, it was so hypocritical when you think what was happening with the people they were putting into the concentration camps and it said, ‘We wouldn’t do this to our women. Our women have higher things in life to do.’

A whole load of rubbish. They brought the men out of the hold and played ‘I had a Good Comrade.’ The whole works. They probably meant it. They probably didn’t know what was happening. They were away at sea and they probably didn’t know. You hope they didn’t know. As I said, they

were very badly wounded. Their clothes had been blown off so they gave them sheets to put round them and they eventually got them into some sort of shape and we found some clothes in some of the suitcases. We did what we could. The doctor, who was excellent, said he needed help and was there a nurse? There were several nurses and he picked on one and she was highly

capable while he was patching people up. At one stage he came out — I heard this after from them. We were still not yet taken — He came out and looked at this line up of these English women and he said — they were just sitting there — “Don’t you English women ever cry?” Quick as a flash

one said, “Oh we couldn’t possibly, we don’t have any handkerchiefs.” (laughs) One of them had lost her arm and quite a few of them, I used to spent quite a lot of time picking splinters of glass out of them. They’d been knocked about quite a bit but the others were fine. They had to, even when we landed, they had to go

all the way back to England by sea. They had that ahead of them.

It would have been. That’s how they had to do it. We were talking about…

He came and, this was the captain of the ship,

“Ladies, it’s nearly Christmas and I have a lovely Christmas present for you. We are going to land you at an island which is in the Bismarck Archipelago.” I thought, “Oh, New Island.” Of course it was all German territory before the First World War. He said, “I know this island very well. My father planted

every tree [UNCLEAR] Plantation. It belonged to my father and I was there as a young man.” So of course he knew the area so he was in and out among the reefs. The 3 of them landed us there and this poor Mr and Mrs Cook who had the plantation. I think it was Steam Ships or one of those island companies. It might have been Burns Philp.

They were the managers and they came the 10 miles over to the other side of the island on a dreadful road in an old truck to meet them and he was big and she was a big lady. When the Germans told them they were going to have visitors for dinner, like 490 of them, she just burst into tears, you know, because she said, “How can I feed them?” They used to get their supplies

every 3 months if they were lucky up there and that all went with the women and children the first night.

They had some cattle on the island and they left a lifeboat but they needed the food. You’ve got to see it through their eyes that they needed all the food that they had.

Anyhow, we were able to get local paw paws and things like that. They blew up some fish in the lagoon and Mother was put in charge of the kitchen and have them make a stew out of the meat.

I’ve got a little spoon in there that was carved out of a piece of coconut fibre. The men, they made these bowls out of half a coconut and a stick underneath into the hole so that was your bowl. You were eating with a spoon. So everyone was kept very busy. It was on a lagoon and it was very pleasant. It was malarial and a lot of people got malaria but the

men of course were under the coconut trees and they just built shelters on the lagoon and they just had to make do with what they could. This was the New Zealand Fleet Air Arm fellows. They were so resourceful. They had things up and running for themselves in no time. Catching a

wild pig which they gave me a big slab of. It was probably quite revolting but it was delicious.

We couldn’t understand. Again we were sitting there on the beach waiting for the island men of our ships to come ashore but

they had men on each of the 3 ships. They had a party, an official party of the 3 captains and a film, I think they shot it. They took lots of photographs. So they said to me again, “You go and ask them when the men are coming off.” So I rolled up

very politely… (phone rings) Should I stop? (short pause) Where was I?

That’s right and their entourage. I had to go and ask them where were the island men and one of the women from Ocean Island, her husband was on board. He was coming down so I bowled up and this time I wasn’t

in my bright shorts. I had a pair of slacks on. I was more respectable and said, “Excuse me sir, can you tell me when the island men are coming ashore?” He looked at me and he said, “Young lady, do you know there’s a war on?” I said, “I think I’ve got a fair idea.” He said, “Some will be put off and some won’t.

So you’d better be careful.” I said, “Thank you very much” and back tracked. I said, “We’ll just have to keep on waiting.” Sadly, they only put off 4 of the men and the others ended up in the German prisoner of war camps, which was 5 years they had. That was really a blow. Now how they worked it out, the captain of the supply ship and the captain

of the Komet, they put their prisoners off. The captain of the O’Ryan had said, “No. So many of them are Merchant Navy and they will go back to sea, even if they sign a

letter saying they won’t.” He said, “They will get back to sea. I’m not putting them off.” That’s why they had this group of men taken to Germany.

Oh, it was. Another 400. They had a dreadful trip back. They were amazing. I only heard this from someone this last week.

They used to net them up as time went on as it was a long way out of the hold for about half an hour and they had it in groups. The day before they got to Bordeaux in France this Eddie Simmons said to the German captain, “Oh, you’ll make Bordeaux by nightfall.” He

was amazed. He said, “Who told you?” He said, “We’re seamen. We could work it out.” So all the way they had a map and they were able to work out by the tides and the sun. They knew exactly where they were being taken just by observation. It makes you realise that’s how the

old Pacific Islanders used to get around. It’s amazing, isn’t it?

There was another couple who were Seventh Day Adventists and they had the timber mill over the other side of the island. It was quite a big island and it became

an air force base during the war and Anna Harbour for the navy. It was 80 miles from Kavieng, which is the main town in the New Island group. And the Germans had left a life boat and said not to

do anything about it for a couple of days. However, Mr Cook, a First World War man and he was a wonderful man. This big, hearty fellow and he was cunning. He had a motor boat hidden up a creek. So he and a couple of the captains off a couple of the ships, he let them take it

and they went 80 miles to Kavieng, who wouldn’t believe them when they said there were these 400, nearly 500 people. Anyhow, they had the Government Schooner called the Leeanda. That happened to be there so they got that off. But on the Christmas Eve, we still didn’t know what was happening

and there was Father Kelly who had been with the children as an escort and he was a mission for seamen too. He was there, so out of the suitcase that I had was a lace tablecloth so they used that as an altar cloth. Mum always used to bring it down if we were coming on leave.

It was quite a big one. I had saved my prayer book. He had nothing and they set up an altar right on the beach by this lagoon with coconut palms all at the back and it was…you’d never forget it, but it was so Hollywood. It you tried to do it people would…it was a little bit…I don’t know if you saw Paradise?

Some of those scenes they look phoney. It looked very much like Hollywood. They’re not. They’re unreal. Anyway, all these men came through the coconut plantation with flares and some of those who’d been able to get the kerosene lanterns from the store. The Polish men and women,

they had their lovely voices and they sang ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’ in Polish and it was just stunning. Just as we’d finished the mass at midnight, a plane came across and dropped tobacco for the chaps and said the Leeanda would be there in the morning and be bringing

breakfast for us. We were very…as he said our prayers had been answered so that was lovely.

Oh yes it was very quick — a direct line. That was good. I had another lovely experience there. There was a friend of mine who was a young bride and she’d been at the Tivoli. One of the

showgirls, you know. Feathers and nothing else much. She was very sweet and she had this long blonde hair. As the days went by it got darker and darker and darker. We were always getting banished because she and I would sit and talk about the food we’d had and the food we were going to have. I remember, one day she said

to me, “Oh, what day is it?” “It’s Friday.” “Oh.” She had a little lisp. “Oh, my poor Fwankie!” I said, “Why?” She said, “Well, it’s Fwiday and he will be having fish for dinner and I wonder if he’s going to say, ‘I wonder if this fish has nibbled my Lowi’!” (laughs). She was absolutely gorgeous.

I said, “Oh yes, that’s a nice thought isn’t it?” She and I went for a walk along the beach by the lagoon and the islanders were so frightened they’d run into the bush. Maybe their villages were inside the bush but they weren’t near us. So we walked along and we got a bit tired so we sat with our

backs to a big log that had come over the reef. As we were sitting there, these bushes parted and these women from New Island, they’re very tall, handsome. Not like the New Guinea people. They were more Melanesian but they were very tall and the short hair

which they had dyed with lime. This yellow hair on top. They came out and they had a big basket and a big knife, a machete and they came over and knelt around us. They were patting us as if to say, “we’re sorry.” They started peeling pawpaw and fruit and fed us as if we were children. They were so sweet. Talking all the time but they couldn’t understand us.

We couldn’t understand them. That was really lovely.

Well that’s part of it because it’s out of sequence. Yes, it was interesting.

We were talking about the war years. Ocean Island and Nauru were bombed the day after Pearl Harbour was bombed. Why they picked those two little islands to drop their bombs on? The guess is they were on their way back from Peal Harbour and decided to have a go at

dropping the bombs. Amazing. They’d evacuated all the women and children and I’ve told you that we’d gone down earlier, a couple of weeks earlier. But the Westralia went up and took the women off and also the Trianza, I think was there.

The men on the islands were trapped and it was very hard. What they did, I think it was in…I’d probably have to check on this — the Japanese declared war and there was nothing happening up that way because no ships would go there,

around the islands. And then there was a French light cruiser. She was supposed to be the fastest light cruiser in the world. She was French and she was in Sydney Harbour when France fell so that’s more or less where she stayed. Now, the story I heard, whether it’s true or not, was that half the crew were

free French and the other half were Vichy French, so every time it went to sea something seemed to happen to the motors. But it did one magnificent thing. It went up to Ocean Island and Nauru. It was very fast. The men were prepared and they blew up what they could and destroyed what records they could.

They left the Nauruans and the Barnabans on the island because nobody could imagine that the Japanese could be so terribly cruel. But they took…there was some Chinese left too on Nauru but they took all the Chinese from Ocean Island and most of them from Nauru, and the Europeans. What happened

was, they got them all on board. They were at Ocean Island within an hour at dusk and then they whipped down at high speed to Macateea I think it was, where the Trianza was, up in Vanuatu, or near there.

And that’s where the Trianza was waiting for them so they put all the men on that. Then they shot back and got the rest of them. So they eventually got them back to Sydney. Now none of those men would have survived if it hadn’t been for that. As it was on Ocean Island,

the government representative, the company representative stayed to look after the Gilbertees. There was a Radio officer, Arthur Bursar and the old Catholic priest and the German brother, and they were all treated very badly and

starved, worked and starved to death. They all died under mysterious circumstances in the hospital. The same happened on Nauru. They beheaded a couple of them — Colonel Chalmers, Dr Quinn. Those were all people you knew and I suppose that’s why that’s all

so vivid in your mind. Then the Japanese, they moved a lot of the Barnabans and the Nauruans and the others. They moved them to an island up in the Marshalls, [UNCLEAR] or Caroline, one or the other and they gradually took them out,

bit by bit. At Nauru there was a leper station. They put them in barges and took them out to sea. That’s how they dealt with them. Just left them.

Yes. We had a leper station. I remember they moved them over to Nauru. I always remember Father Pushabay carrying people in his arms.

He used to look after them, and whether they shot them or whether they just left them, it was a wicked thing to do.

I can’t remember. I can’t remember.

Yes. That’s what they did.

They put everyone to work but they were short of food too of course, because as the Americans moved in more, they took more sea and islands, the lines of communication were cut off. The island was overrun with pumpkins.

Rotten pumpkins when they went back to it. They shipped some of the islanders, some of the Ocean Islanders, some of the Barnabans to a couple of the islands they had in the Gilbert group, Kiribas and others they took. And the Nauruans they took up near Truk, the Marshalls.

They were treated very badly. They kept about 100 Kiribas. They kept them for fishing on the island because they’re wonderful fisherman. They were doing all sorts of things. When the war

was finished, two days later they got them all together and they had some of them digging holes — one for each man in that little group. The last of them they lined up on the cliff. They tied them together and put

cloth around their eyes and they lined them on the cliff and they shot them. They fell over the cliff. You only need one person to survive and then you can start to get to the truth. They thought they had destroyed all the evidence and this one Gilbertees man, he fell and his friend was from Tuvalu

and he fell on top of him and heard them shooting, then stabbing others if they were alive. He pretended to be dead and then when he heard that they had moved away, he bit his friend on the shoulder to see whether he was alive or dead. He didn’t move so he said he was dead.

He got into…on the beaches there were these lovely caves underneath so he waded up in one of those and he heard the Japanese come back. That was the next day and they towed the bodies, took them out over the reef to get rid of them. They thought that they had hidden everything. At night he went up and

there were lots of caves and pinnacles. On top of the island, we used to go as children — we had to go with someone — there were what we called the Bonga Bongs and you’d go in through an opening and there was a big pool of water. Lovely clear water and all the stalagmites and stalactites. Wonderful. Magic. He must have been around there somewhere.

He’d come out at night to get a coconut or something to eat if he could find it and he was too frightened. He heard noises and then he heard bugles. By this time, that was December. August 15 through to nearly December and he heard somebody speaking his own language and he thought they must have gone.

So he came and followed them. They turned round and they got an awful fright because they are very superstitious. I know as children we used to say, “The spirits are coming.” They really got very frightened when they saw him because he hadn’t been in the sun and he was almost grey. He spoke to them and said who he was. I’ve got his story floating around here somewhere. They flew him down to

Torokina to the trials of the Japanese commander who said everybody had been taken away. Then he had to admit that he’d forgotten. He was despatched and it was just as well that they had someone that should take that responsibility.

The next morning, we were up bright and early. Here again the women and children

were in a separate little bungalow they had there. We took over the poor Cooks’ home and we young ones were sleeping on the verandas, using our life jackets for pillows. Wouldn’t part with a life jacket. Like many of the tropical homes in that part, they had what we called the meat safe inside,

which was an enclosed meshed room. And some of the nurses were in there and my mother was in there too and whereas we were pretty used to island ‘rats’ as we called them, but these poor girls… There was complete pandemonium because one of these bush rats had got in the

meat safe with them and they just went right off. They were just terrified. Screamed their heads off. Mother had been sitting there, she had been watching it. She was sitting in a chair.

Oh big bush rats, yes. Bigger than the small rats that we would see here. Much bigger than mice.

What they had, which we were all very amused about — Mr Cook had given them a .303 gun. They’d had a guard on and they were never sure whether it was to protect us from the men or protect the men from us. So this fellow with his gun came running in and we didn’t need to use that.

Mr Cook said, “I can’t understand you women. You put up with all you’ve been through, no tears, no nothing. A little bush rat undoes you completely!” They were terrified of it. Anyhow that next morning, which was Christmas Day, we were on our way to

Kavieng on the Leeanda with the women and people with children and the rest of the women. It was a trip we need not have taken because when we did get on board the Nallor it turned around and came straight back to pick up the men. We weren’t to know that so this is what whoever organised these things worked out. Now

the lagoon was lovely and before we left they’d given us bread as they promised, tins of peaches and a small towel each. My mother said, “I wonder what the towel is for?” As soon as we got out of the lagoon we knew what it was for. I was sitting in the bow with my legs dangling over the front and we went out and I was wet through in two

minutes. It was known as Stormy Island and that 80 mile trip was a very stormy one. Very rough and one by one these poor, particularly the Polish and the English girls, they were so sick. But they really had nothing, not enough to eat for a while. It was all very unpleasant, so Mother was going round with a bucket and I was going round with a bucket

and I said to her, “How are you feeling? You don’t look too good.” She said, “You should see yourself. You’re a bit green around the gills too.” Anyhow, we eventually got to Kavieng with a lovely big harbour. We saw the Nallor in the harbour and they told us that the European

community, I think there was about 19 or something like that, had all got dressed up nicely to meet us. The raggle taggle mob we were. They’d put off their Christmas dinner to share it with us and the doctor who was there took one look at us and said, “A decent meal would kill them!”

He said, “Back on board. Off to the Nallor.” So we went out to the Nallor feeling absolutely dashed and shattered, missing out on our Christmas dinner! When they met us, oh it was sheer heaven. They had hot baths and bunks with lovely sheets on them in the cabins. They just gave us bread and butter and cheese

and cups of tea. My mother, who didn’t drink a great deal and certainly not beer, she used to say to this fellow waving our beer, “You know when I get out of here, when I get off this ship, I’m going to order a dozen bottles of VB.” And a lovely person called Allen,

she was very, very nice from Tasmania, she said, “Yes, and Mrs White I will join you but I’m going to order a dozen lemonade!” (laughs) They were talking about this, what they were going to do. Which we did. Isobel Allen, who died a terrible death

after the war. After that experience. There’d been a bit of a riot on Nauru and a Chinese had been shot by a European, keeping order. So there had to be retaliation and they picked someone. This was a Tong sort of thing and they picked someone

to do a murder and it happened to be on Isobel and her husband, who were living in a remoter area. They weren’t right in the village, they were further out. On an island you couldn’t be too far out but it was more isolated. They killed him and they killed her,

chopped her, and then all the ants came, it was dreadful. On a small island like that it was devastating. I wasn’t there at the time but I remember being so shocked that such a lovely gentle person should end up being killed like that. Anyhow, that’s that. They did get someone but they …

The trial was held in New Zealand or it might have been in Townsville. But they think it was set up. They had been set up to do it. Probably drew straws. Where did we go from there?

Then we took off and we first went to

Rabaul and they gave us some soap and stuff, whatever they could, which was very nice of them. It was the Rabaul Red Cross and then we took off. Of course, the ship was crowded. It was the same with the German raiders. They just weren’t built to take that number of people.

Going to the toilet, you more or less had to line up. Take it in turns. We then came on and arrived in Townsville where we met, and strangely enough I came across some papers yesterday from the NSW Red Cross of what they supplied for these people in

Townsville. It wasn’t so bad for us because we had friends and we had our head office in Melbourne, but the people who had to go back to England and they had nothing. So there were suitcases and shoes and all nice new clothes for everybody and we were very…I was very impressed by that and thought,

“I’d like to work for the Red Cross one day.” Funny enough we had a very nice girl recently come to a Red Cross meeting. I’m a member of Brighton Red Cross now. Retired. She was a social worker that the Red Cross had sent over to Bali to help find out what the people needed and

she came to tell us what they’d been doing. She said she was 7 years of age when she and her parents escaped from Vietnam. She said they got down to the camp in Malaysia. I said, “You were up on Trenganu?” She said, “That was my first contact with Red

Cross,” because they had the message service and the tracing service. Sending message service for family and other things that were very well received. She said then, “I’d like to work with Red Cross one day.” I thought, “That’s exactly the reaction I had.” You can imagine

500. We had a special train. The trip from Townsville to Melbourne I can assure you was vile. It wasn’t vile, it was quite a lot of fun actually but those Queensland trains. The old steam train and you had the bunks and the settees were can and I remember going to sleep and I was in the top one.

I was asleep and it felt as though it was running backwards at high speed and we were going to crash, but we didn’t. The soot and all the grit. You’d scrunch on it as you walked down the corridors.

Right. Gets into your skin. We had a bath at Rockhampton, I think it was. Every little station we stopped at.

It wasn’t only the Red Cross. It was Country Women and the Salvation Army also helped tremendously. Everywhere we stopped there was fruit and more fruit, ice cream and cold drinks. This happened all the way. You know, the war had come to Queensland. It was very exciting for them.

He was on the island.

Yes. Mother had just come down to do a bit of shopping

and bring me back. Anyhow, we got to Sydney. They treated us like film stars. When we got to Sydney and the Gowries, he was Governor-General and Lady Gowrie who was the President of Red Cross.

They came to the hotel where we were being looked after. She said she’d like the island people to come over to Government House because they were in the Sydney place — Admiralty House, I think they called it — and have morning tea. They sent cars down for us so in due course we get into this car and

I was on a little dicky-seat. Mother was agitated because she didn’t have any gloves to wear. We felt very privileged to have this done to us and then she looked at my neck and she said, “Your neck’s filthy.” So not only did she not have gloves, she had a daughter with a filthy neck. It was all sooty so there was much

spitting on the handkerchief. They were all trying to get me cleaned up. There was one young man from one of the ships. He was one of the engineers and he was with us too. I’ve often wondered about this because I mean it was about the 8th or 9th of January, which is pretty hot in Sydney, but we were very well looked after.

They were charming to us. Lady Gowrie was saying to this boy, “You know, you’ll be travelling through the night and you’ll be cold. I’ll get you one of my husband’s coats.” She got a beautiful, one of those lovely black, like a mohair coat. Probably his best coat. “Try that on. Oh yes that’ll be fine.” He was delighted. I’m sure he kept it for years.

I thought, “Funny, the seasons are all wrong,” but that’s a fact. Quite a lot of them went down with malaria and that night, that Christmas night, there’d been a torrential downpour and that probably brought the malarial mosquitoes well and truly. These men had nothing to protect themselves

with so there were a few sad cases, but reading through this Red Cross report they looked after the people so well. The ones that were in hospital and they arranged dentists. People had lost everything. They needed a lot of things. I was very involved with the Ash Wednesday fires and you’d

be amazed at the number of people who had left teeth in the glass by the bed as they had escaped. (laughs) Tremendous number.

She certainly, on the train — we came down on the Spirit of Progress — she was very feverish that night. I think she had a slight touch of it.

Commission.

We were family all of us. A representative came up to Townsville to meet us and give us some money. When you think of it, you know

on the Nallor, none of us had any money to pay for the things and I hope they put a bill into the Phosphate Commission, because we just walked away and got on the train.

Yes.

A Merchant Navy Ship, yes.

No, it was

going and it had just stopped at Emarou…not Emarou, at Kavieng. It was on its way to Japan and we understand with horses. Japan wasn’t in the war for another year, or later that year, ’41.

Oh we had so much publicity, but then again, the next

day again the Battle of Bardia in North Africa was on with the 6th Division. We were pushed off, we were old news.

We were pushed off the front page, yes.

Well, for one thing it was not easy. My father was needed on the island and

he was going to be there and come down on leave at the normal time so we decided we’d go back.

Yes. You don’t belong anywhere. You just can’t go ‘round living out of a suitcase so we

went back on this Norwegian Ship, the Nortarn, and that was marvellous. It was a beautiful ship. She was eventually torpedoed and sank in the Mediterranean but they were so charming to us. It had only been built in ’39 and in fact it was getting out of Norway and going up the channel

when it was stopped by the British navy. It hadn’t even been registered at Lloyds so it was a brand new ship. It was lovely.

The company, they wanted us to go back of course because of my father who still hadn’t seen us. So they said this was the Norwegian Ship which was

flying under the Panamanian flag, so it was neutral. We went off feeling very cheeky with lights blazing. It was doing the run between the islands and New Zealand and that’s when it came up and were evacuated and we went down on the Nortarn again. That was quite interesting.

Recently they’ve named a room after me at Red Cross Headquarters in Melbourne. A few of us have been around a long while and so they named these rooms. And I was telling a friend of mine who is also with the Red Cross in Adelaide — I said, “Guess which room they’ve named after me?”

She said, “What did they do?” I said, “It’s the disaster planning room.” Because everywhere I seem to go there seemed to be a disaster of one kind or another. It was never planned. It just seemed that I always happened to be there. So that was very funny but this trip down, we were going into

the Bay of Islands, going down into Auckland and we were up on the Bridge with the Second officer and one of the men from the island who understood morse code. We were watching all these ships blinking at each other and it was winter, cold. The sea looked dreadful, grey and angry.

This fellow said, “My God. They’re signalling to stop!” Siegert looked and said, “Oh, I better get the captain.” They said, “Stop, you’re running into a minefield.” So you felt like putting the brake on. We stopped.

The captain came up and he was a lovely man, he was a gorgeous man. Captain Johan Von Dahl. Forest owner, proud father of two daughters and part-owner of this ship. Actually when his ship was sunk I think it broke his heart and he died in America.

He was always saying, “Stop confusing my officers and stop your playing!” (laughs) They were so kind to us but spoke English with a very American accent. He used to refer to things like the ‘boggers’. I remember one day we were having a picnic

on the top deck and he had these canvas director’s chairs and it lurched a bit, or maybe the ship lurched. He picked it up and threw it overboard and said, “The boggers.” We were so much in a minefield that the navy ship (starts talking to her cat)

came up right behind us in the very path that we had and just went about 30 feet the other side and these two captains put on the greatest performance because they had megaphones and they were literally abusing each other and we’d called in at Nelson

to get the directions of where we were to go. They didn’t know the mines were being laid by the New Zealand navy. They hadn’t told them. They didn’t tell us. Anyhow, these two captains went on abusing each other. At one stage they both put the megaphones in their ears and listened for the other one.

That just about cracked us up completely. What they said was, “You reverse very slowly back the way you came and then follow us.” Then they took us right in by the coast. The next morning we were in Auckland and there was a deputation of the government and the navy. They were almost giving them bunches of flowers. There were a lot of red faces.

But wouldn’t it have been dreadful in that cold weather.

The reason we went back to my home was because the company wished my father to stay there as long as possible, but I think I told you

we went up on this wonderful Norwegian ship and I worked in the office up there and it was very pleasant. I think that everybody knew that time was running out. Then the same ship, the Norwegian ship, came back in and the captain, the manager of the island and a couple of other people were there and they said. “It’s time to

start moving the women and children off Ocean Island and Maureen has to go.” So the next day we sailed away. It was really a very heartbreaking experience for me because the Barnabans came out in canoes with leis and

flowers and waves and you had that feeling that you would never see it again.

That was only a 3 week period, you know.

Not in comparison to what other people went through.

It wasn’t pleasant.

What do you mean, by which issues? What would happen to you?

I think most people are like me. You take each day as it comes and you cope with it.

If you don’t want to think about the unpleasant things, you just don’t think about them. I was 17. I just wanted to enjoy life. The Australian Army had sent a battery up there to protect us. I don’t know who they were going to protect — Australia? Thank God they got off. And life is for living and you could say to anyone

of my age who went through war, “Life is for living and if you’re living and you don’t enjoy it, you’re a fool.” I don’t know what else to say.

What’s going to happen next? Those people are neurotic. The average person, in many ways

perhaps they’re foolish. Many people have been trapped. After all there were so many Jews from Germany who could have got out of Germany. They didn’t think for a moment what was going to happen to them because life is for living. It’s all very well in hindsight

to say, “I should have done this, I should have done that.” But we’re human being, we don’t. Do you?

That’s right. I mean, if you thought of dangers, you’d never go outside the front door.

Oh yes, and barbecues on the beach and all sorts of nice things. We knew…we were worried about my brother — we knew it wasn’t going to last.

Oh God! (laughs) It was like a mad film. You thought, “This couldn’t possibly happen,” but it did. Then when we were in New Zealand a couple of days with our two suitcases. Fortunately my mother and I both had something long to wear.

A skirt or a long dress or something and we were put on the Monterey, which was the Matzan Liner. And I think I told you earlier there was something like 21 millionaires on it. It wasn’t like our small ships. My mother was horrified when the waitress who brought her a cup of tea expected a tip!

We’d been spoiled on the little ships we travelled on. It was tremendous fun and fortunately one of the men, you know they have how many knots you do during the day, and he won the prize which was about $200 or something. So he was able to pay for our drinks and we were quite respectable. That was an experience and that was the last

trip ship as a luxury liner.

In Sydney and you know there’s nothing more exciting that coming through Sydney Harbour Heads at dawn. It looked lovely. We got the old Darling Spirit of Progress. There’s one thing I

will never forget. We did a few trips on the Spirit of Progress and there would be many of my vintage who would still remember it. For breakfast they had lamb’s fry and bacon like you’ve never tasted in your life. It was magnificent. Back to Melbourne.

Yes, it wasn’t long before the Japanese came in. So we were like many refugees that arrive in a new country like Australia with two suitcases. Fortunately my father had packed or we packed before — we only had 12 hours to

get off — a camphor wood chest with the precious things like photographs, which you can’t eat, but things that were special to us. They turned up 4 months later. They’d been God only knows. I still have the camphor wood chest over here. Eventually we got a flat,

I told you, in St Kilda. So we had to the two suitcases. We had to go and buy a bed, table and chairs and gradually built up. You see my present home today, apart from a couple of things my mother brought back from England, all started from nothing. We’re not the only ones.

I found a job.

She eventually found a job. She was doing voluntary work. It wasn’t satisfying enough for her and then when my brother when missing in ’43

she was so depressed she went to her doctor and he said, “What you’ve got to do is get a job that you can get your teeth into.” So that’s when she went and took over the running of the Blue Triangle Club which was run by the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Well fortunately he was on leave

just before the beginning of the war with Japan and I remember him coming in and we had to go out and buy a couple of beers. He came in and he said, “Do you think that I’m going to live in this dog box?” They took my mother over for the night

to the Prince of Wales. He said, “I can’t stay here.” She said, “You’ll be very glad of this dog box,” which of course he was and she was a natural home maker. We entertained – I can’t tell you how many people we entertained in that little flat in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. If it wasn’t my father bringing home soldiers on leave

it was my mother bringing home sailors that had jumped ship and she’d get in touch with me and say, “Oh, these dear little boys have been torpedoed twice and they’re just children, Maureen. You look after them.” I said, “What I am going to do?” I’d take them down to Luna Park and take them on the

Big Dipper. That was too frightening for them, I think. Feed them up with lollies. They were just children. One little boy had been a lift boy. They were babies. They’d been torpedoed 2 or 3 times. I remember we had one little boy down for Christmas dinner and my father — he joined the army again.

He was on leave and he was with the ordnance department because he was a mining expert — We had such a good meal. My father said, “I think I’m going to have a rest.” He went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed and this poor child went off, he was so full and the two of them were out, fast asleep!

Padre Oliver is a name that would be remembered. He was a Church of England Mission for Seamen and he came to my mother one day and he said, “You know, Mrs White you’re doing a wonderful job here but every now and then your heart overcomes your mind and you must stop hiding these boys who have jumped ship!”

Some of them had had more than they could bear. So she’d give them jobs — “Clean the windows, do this, do that” and feed them. So it was no use doing what you’d call charity work unless you have a heart and oh, there was some funny episodes.

I remember another story she told me. She was going in the tram, home late at night. We had no cars but fortunately St Kilda was so close to the city, and she was sitting there and she always talked to people. She was sitting next to a lady and she said,

“Where are you going?” and she said, “Oh, we’re going somewhere tomorrow. I’m a pastry cook.” My mother said, “Are you now?” She said to my mother, “What are you doing?” and she said, “I’m running the Blue Triangle Club. It’s just on Christmas and we’ve got so many mince pies to make,” and this, that and the other. This woman said, “I’ll come

in.” She just worked. See, she was always able to attract people to come.

Oh, now that’s going back. I think I might have worked in the office for a while. This is at the BPC [ British Phosphate Company].

I think then I got this job with the Americans because they were paying very good money. So it must have been about that time. It was funny experience because the first American hospital to go into New Guinea was assembled at Trelor, just

out of Seymour, and they wanted a secretary. Very young secretary. I was quite competent. To help with, to complete inventory of all the equipment, everything. I applied for it and I got it. So I went up to Seymour and I spent about 3 months with them.

That was a wonderful experience. They were such fun and they were going off into battle and I did all this inventory. Colonel Wilkinson. As a matter of a fact only recently I sent away some photos I’ve got to a museum in America. They said they wouldn’t have seen anything like this

because at the weekend they’d come down — the Royal Melbourne Hospital became the American 4th General Hospital. It was taken over almost before it opened by the American army so that was full of Americans, the whole thing. This hospital out of Seymour, we’d get into 2 or 3 ambulances,

come down to Royal Park, just next to the hospital where they had baseball matches and it was so much fun and then afterwards we’d go down to the flat in St Kilda where my mother would have had a spread, all sorts of good things. If my father was there, there’d be something

to drink. There was always something to drink. I kept up friendships with them for years and years. After New Guinea they went to Burma and then I lost touch with them, but you don’t forget the people you’ve met along the road.

It wasn’t desert. It was a beautiful tropical island.

I was very attractive then. (laughs)

Some little angel up there.

You see, even though I was living on a very isolated island, I literally was brought up by adults. If I put too much lipstick on or if I did anything wrong, they’d tell me. We had ships coming in. We used to entertain them so I met people

from all over the world. I adored geography. It was isolated but it’s the people you meet and if you’ve got a receptive mind it has that influence on you. Well that’s what I think anyway. I’m very fortunate, you know.

I’ve got a very good memory. Mind you, next year I might be quite ga-ga, you know! You’ve got to keep your fingers crossed. Everything I did and saw impressed me. Wherever I’ve been and I’ve met so many people and every now and then,

every now and then they come to mind and I think, “Now who was that?” I certainly, I think I was rather bold.

No.

Oh, that was just cheeky.

I’ll tell you a story. It goes back to when we were going up to Ocean Island. My mother, my brother and me — to join my father. He was at De La Salle and I was at St Joseph’s Convent next door. Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth and the

mother superior had said to my mother, “Leave Maureen with us. Don’t take her up to those strange islands up there. We’ll look after her.” I think they were probably thinking that she would make a good nun. They were very wrong. The sister who used to teach me and there are some things I feel very ashamed of.

Everybody does, you know, things that you’ve done wrong. I was taught to be honest. I sound like Rivkin! (laughs) You don’t tell lies. So this dear nun who’d been teaching me and my mother was there. We were there to say goodbye and she said,

“You know, Mrs White. Maureen doesn’t like me.” Now that’s a very dangerous thing to ask a child — particularly one who’s told to tell the truth. She said, “Do you Maureen?” and I said, “No.” She said, “Why?” I said, “Oh look, I just feel embarrassed — because you’re ugly.” Now isn’t

that disgusting? No wonder I’ve never forgotten it. So occasionally when I feel like saying something’s ugly I think, “No, just stop and think of the…” Imagine having to live with that all your life. She roared with laughter. She knew. She knew and she was putting her finger on me. Isn’t that dreadful?

I think

parents should be very careful. (laughs).

Then I came back, still with the Americans, and they had a postal department. I’ve got wonderful references

from them. It was the American post office which was handling all the mail from Americans going back to America including those incredible, what did they call them? You know, the photographic ones. They used to print down to about that big. (indicates a 2 inch square with hands) Do you remember what that would be?

They were photographic and Kodak did all of them. People used to write out on these forms their letters and they’d go to Kodak and in miniature they’d be flown to America. You don’t know about that? Interesting. Anyway, I was the secretary to the commanding officer, who was

a very nice and proper young man. Now, I forget the building. It was up the top of Collins Street, about 550 Collins Street. One of those old buildings. We were right on to the street and there were two doors into his office and all the postal staff were there. It was fine but he smoked 8 cigars

a day. Not little. Big cigars. All the chaps in the back room organised to come in, open one door, leave it open and go out the other. He’d always say, “These fellows, they don’t know how to close doors!” It was dreadful. All that tobacco. They were a great crowd.

They were into all the mischief around Melbourne that you could imagine. I’m sure they were into the black market but they were very nice, but the one thing they couldn’t cope with was the Australian accent. They just could not understand what Australians were saying. You probably don’t think we have an accent. If you’re an American, they couldn’t understand

it. They’d say, “Maureen, come and answer this. What the hell are they saying?” It was quite straightforward to me.

I don’t think my accent has ever changed. It’s not an English accent.

And an English teacher. My father was very strict. No slang. Speak correctly. Hold your shoulders up.

No, no. People have always said, “You’ve got an English accent” but I haven’t really. I just speak correct English. Yes, so that was great fun. From there we were moved down to Port Melbourne. Do you remember the old mission for seamen down there? They took over that building. Now that was an incredible

experience. People don’t know, today can’t imagine what Melbourne was like in those years. I mean, it was inundated with American servicemen. Also, they knew how to be nice to ladies — like giving them bunches of flowers and

this that and the other. A lot of them were just nice young fellows. Lonely, away from home. There was one — I had friends, still have them — who lived down in Elwood. You know the marina there? They had a house there. Now the ships would

come in with troops and there was a Japanese plane that had been sighted that flew over Melbourne and they evacuated this troop ship with several thousand on it. They went right down beyond Elwood with their little heat-up food. They were right down there. All round Albert Park.

This woman opened the door and there were these Americans sitting out there. She said, “What are you doing?” They said, “Ma’am, we’ve just been evacuated. We’re just going to get some breakfast.” She said, “You’re not eating that stuff. Come in.” She gave them bacon and eggs, gave them a really good meal. Then they went back and then they were off. They were on their way to India, probably. The other interesting thing,

the darker side of Melbourne was, I don’t know, the aggressive ladies of the night or noon or morning. Before there was a sign of a funnel of smoke coming up the harbour — because we looked right down over Station Pier — they’d come out of the woodwork.

There’d be anything up to 200 or 300 women there waiting to pounce. Here they are. God, it’s the same group as last time and it just didn’t matter what colour they were — they grabbed them and took them off and ripped them off, no doubt.

We were always intrigued. How did they know when the ships were coming. They must have had someone down at Point Nepean or Point Lonsdale or somewhere down there saying, “Hey, there’s some ships coming up.” There were other times, I don’t know if I was working with them then, but when the Second 9th Division came

back from the Middle East and they were really angry. The first clash was between the Australians and the New Zealanders, because there’s a very funny association between Australians and New Zealanders. The men. I found this out when I was working in Japan with [UNCLEAR].

They hate each other unless there’s a third party there. Then they gang up against the third party. It’s a love/hate relationship. They had a battle from Port Melbourne to the city. A good old punch up. Then there was another time — this was when I was working with the Americans

when the 2/9th came back — the Americans in Melbourne were confined to barracks for 2 days because the Aussies were coming back and they were going to get them for pinching their girls. These things happened. They really did happen. It was very funny to watch.

Any nice man. (laughs) I was very lucky — in ’43, ’44 I was engaged to a 6th Division man and 6th Division men hated Americans, but I met him through an American nurse. Anyhow he swept me off my feet.

At the same time, I was working with the Americans and I met a very charming marine colonel. Everybody loved the 1st Division, the marines. They were a great crowd. They’d been through battle. A lot of them had malaria. It was a friend of mine,

it might have been my mother, this fellow collapsed and he was shaking all over. They said, “Oh, it’s another drunk American” and I said, “That’s malaria.” It must have been another soldier — “He’s not drunk, he’s got malaria.” They were very much liked and welcomed. I remember going up to Ballarat

when a lot of them were up at Ballarat and they were giving a farewell to the Ballarat people who’d entertained them. I was invited up with a friend of mine and we went up and it was at St Patrick’s College Hall. It was a great do. You very seldom heard anything said against the marines.

They were very popular. Fortunately, this particular one — and he lived at the Gatwick, which we talked about earlier — he’d spotted me and I lived next door. He got introduced. He was a very nice man. He used to take me to all the big dos and things and when I became engaged,

older man — it was much safer. I was given permission to go out and he was given permission to take me out. It was rather funny because he’d been coming and having a drink with us before going off for dinner. My father was in the army and my fiancé was in the army. Mother said, “I think we’re in real trouble entertaining this American.” I said, “I don’t think we need worry. As soon as they meet him, they’ll like him.”

My father, “Oh, come down to the yacht club” and they got on well. I heard from him for years and from his wife and it was this…it was a crazy world. It really was. If you were young and out working hard, playing hard, that’s fine.

Mmm. I don’t talk very much about my personal life. That personal. He was a fine soldier. He was in New Guinea but he became

insanely jealous, and if a man is insanely jealous you don’t marry him. That became very obvious and there would have been…they like you because of your personality, your independence and what have you, but once they think they’ve got you

they try and change you. I could never change. I think that’s enough on that subject anyway.

How I joined Red Cross, I always had this interest and during the war we did first aid and gas things, all those things one did during the war as civilians. Then I met a friend of mine who

was with the Red Cross Field Force, and it was only formed as a Field Force in 1942 in the Middle East. There were only about 300, 400 of us and it was to help the

service people in hospital and be the link between them and their families to provide…I think what people don’t understand is that in those days the hospitals were only given the basic army rations, so it was Red Cross who provided all the extras like fruit juice, the fruit and all the

amenities. The Salvation Army looked after the troops in the field but it was the Red Cross role, under the Geneva Convention, to look after the sick and wounded. So she joined and I thought, “That’s for me.” So I applied and was accepted. I spent time at Heidelberg doing basically a training course. You had to have the ability to do

craft work, which I had. You had to be able to run libraries, which was no trouble. You had to have a range of personal skills and I was very lucky because I was slightly underage, that I was accepted. I think I was accepted because of my experience on the raider.

They thought, “Here’s someone who can obviously cope” and so I was accepted. My first posting was to Bonegilla, the 106 AGH [Australian General Hospital] and many an ex-servicemen would know that because there was Bonegilla and Bandiana. It was one huge army camp. Huge. The hospital,

we had the accidents that happened there but I used to go into Albury to meet the hospital trains when they came in and a number of the patients of the hospital trains had come from New Guinea to Townsville then by train. And the ridiculous thing about it was when they got to Albury they had to have another train

because the tracks were different. We had some very funny planners. Anyhow, I’d be there waiting for them. It seemed to me that in the winter they came at 6 o’clock in the morning and in the summer they came at midday because it was either very cold or very hot. I loved the work and all the hospitals I worked in —

I really enjoyed them. The troops were the same. Exactly the same. Some would be transferred to our hospital and I’d be taking down their contacts, the next of kin to let them know this was there they were. And

also we had a very wonderful woman which many of the ex-servicemen would have known — Lady Vera White. She was Vera Deakin. Deakin’s daughter. No relation. I’m White but no relation, but she was an incredible lady. She was responsible for so much. In the First [World] War and the Second [World] War. She was one of those sort of grand, those people

were in those days, they were incredible women who got things done because of their position. They were really quite amazing. She’d phone up and she’d say, “Miss White, there are 3 families coming up on the train. Would you arrange to meet them and find accommodation for them.” Now Albury and Wodonga

were literally garrison towns because, if the wives could go up to visit the husbands who were in camps, they’d be up there. I knew every pub owner in Albury and Wodonga and farmhouses and I was always able to find… she was a woman with no such word as ‘no’. It had to be done, so it was done.

The other thing we got there were men — and you have to remember who were A1 fit when they went to New Guinea — and we had a couple of hundred TB [tuberculosis] patients. In those days tuberculosis was basically treated with silence, a bit of sunshine, you know, just looking after.

It was just before the days of [UNCLEAR] and streptomycin. Unfortunately we lost quite a few. We had one ward of men from the Royal Navy. About 20 of them. They were desperately ill. It was so hard to see them but the walking ones, we used to take

them, we’d be invited by all those little towns, Talangatta, Yackandandah, all those towns around there. If they had a race, we’d bring a busload of men. So we’d get permission to take the busload of men out. Of course, the first thing behind the stand was the bar and coming back they’d be singing and I’d say, “Now, we’re getting near the hospital. Quieten down, otherwise we can’t take you out again.” They were very good.

I have wonderful memories of that hospital. A lot of the staff, the sisters were either back from the Middle East or down from New Guinea and there was a wonderful spirit. We had a Sergeant Major there who was absolutely spot on with discipline and he

decided that the sisters must go on a route march wearing gas masks. I don’t think I care for this gas mask business. I said, “No, no no. That doesn’t appeal to me.” Of course, Red Cross was always counted in with the sisters. What they did, we had to do. I said to him, “You know, this is

really against the Geneva Conventions.” A straight out lie. I admit it. Of course it wasn’t. So I didn’t have to go on the route march. We were in the middle of Victoria-New South Wales going with a gas mask. I just thought it was stupid. So I didn’t go. There were some individuals that you

meet. I remember this Fitz and Halfpenny. We used to say, “We’ll meet up on the first day in November or October after the war at the Australia Hotel and we’ll have a few drinks.” Well I was off somewhere else by then. Well I did meet up with Fitz a few years later, who was another lovely boy. He was a young De La Salle boy.

Jimmy and he was very sick. It was his 21st birthday and the day before they said they were going to have a party — “Get a cake and we’ll do this.” In these long wards, there were 40 patients in the wards and there was the Blue Room. That’s where they usually took them to die.

He was up towards the end of there. I’d heard he’d had a massive haemorrhage so I went in and I said, “You’re a fine one. We were going to have this party and you go doing that.” He said, “You know what? I have a hole in my lung that you could drive a jeep through.” Sort of, you know, “better that if you can.”

Anyhow, he said, “I’m not going into the Blue Room.” I said, “Don’t. Don’t you go into that Blue Room. You stay there.” He did. I saw him about 2 years later at Heidelberg. Still going strong. I don’t know how long he lasted but it was long enough for him to [UNCLEAR] and they could keep him alive. Then there was another one. A little wiry man. He was

illiterate. There was a lot of illiteracy in our services. What people have to understand, this was a legacy of the Depression. They had to go out and work if they could get it. Anyhow this chap, I can’t remember his name, I used to write to his wife for him. He’d been a

a jockey I think, or bookmaker. He was a jockey. Tough little fellow. I said to him, “What do you want to say to your wife?” “Oh, nyaa, nyaa!” I used to write the most loving letters. She must have thought something very strange had gone wrong with him. I said, “You happy with that?” He’d go, “Oh yeah, yeah.” I said, “Listen,

what about if I teach you to write?” He looked at me as if I was mad. He said, “Why do I want to write? I own my own house. I’ve got a bank account. I can sign my name and I’ve got you to write my letters for me!” How was that! He didn’t want to learn to write. He could read the horses, I think. He could read a little bit. So all these characters

you met. On your day off, you’d go down…the commanding officer, he was a South Australian. He was mad on growing things like tomatoes but with the blood, Red Cross blood, once it was out of date he used to put it on the tomato plants. Well the tomatoes were big and ripe.

I’d go down and get a couple of slices of bread and a tomato and an onion and we had bicycles because it was a big hospital to get around. We had bicycles there. We didn’t need the bicycles there as much as we needed them at Morotai. I’d go off on the bicycle with tomatoes and bread and make these sandwiches and the country around

there was unbelievable. I loved it, loved it.

The end.

We had all sorts of wards — you had the surgical ward, the eye ward…

Yes. Firstly, I’m not a nurse. I was also on the welfare side. The nurses had their role to do and we had ours. We worked very closely together of course.

It’s always a danger with long-term patients, which TB’s are. I have seen a number of nurses and social workers who’ve married their clients or their patients, and sometimes it works out beautifully, other times it doesn’t but

that’s life. Yes, Kenner, the VC [Victoria Cross] winner, he met his wife who was a nurse, a sister at Heidelberg and he married her. It’s the same as working in any profession.

They’re going to go, yes. Oh you might have one but you’ve got 39 others in the war. We always tried to give equal attention. It’s like people looking after children.

When I was in England I brought back migrant children as an escort. I have 5 little boys and if you paid more attention to one, you’d see the other faces literally drop. If you gave a cuddle to one, you had to cuddle them all. It’s no different with patients. It’s very hard and if the

people who do pick out, or show…I mean, you always have your favourite but if they show it, it’s not fair to the others. We’re all different.

Well, from Bonegilla I was posted — you had no say where you were posted — I was posted to Northfield

in South Australia to the 121 AGH. All the hospitals were good. I enjoyed that. They had long-term patients there but one of the main reasons they’d taken me into the field force was because I came from the central Pacific. I knew the Solomons, I knew the tropics. So in typical army,

or it might have been Red Cross, thinking, they sent me to coldest place you could imagine, which was Adelaide. I nearly died. It was dreadful. Not the hospital, just it was dreadful. The CO [Commanding Officer] of the hospital said, “They’ve made a mistake. You should be going to Torokina in the Solomons.” I said, “Well,

that’s what I thought.” “Oh no, you’re going to Adelaide.” So okay, I’m going to Adelaide. The huts, they’d just put the huts up because they’d been under tents until then and a lot of nursing staff were Adelaide girls who’d come back from up north, so they used to go home at night.

So there were very few of us actually in the Mess. Also this terrible wind there, it was quite appalling. We were there. It had been an infectious disease hospital which we had taken over. Up on the hill was the prison and on the other hill was the mental asylum. I had my little radio

with me and there was always someone escaping from one of them. The windows wouldn’t close, they’d squeak. To go to the ablution block, the water was beautifully hot but you were so cold, if you’d put your foot in it you would have burnt it off, so you’d fill it up with cold water and you’d add the hot water bit by bit. Anyhow that’s when the war ended.

I was coming home on compassionate leave to tidy up my romantic life. I packed everything. I thought, “I am not coming back here.” People were lovely, it was just…it was only 7 miles from Adelaide but it could have been 70.

The tram stop was 10 miles away. Anyhow we managed. So then, while I was there they said, “Right, how soon can you be ready to go to Morotai, to the 2/9th AGH?” I said, “As soon as I get my tropical gear, I’m off.” That was a wonderful experience.

From Melbourne, which was my base.

Well, I’ve got it here somewhere. The company office had a cable; “It is with regret that we announce that he is missing.”

That’s why the prisoners of war who died in Malaysia and the people who died on the island, the men who were lost at sea, anyone who dies where there’s no known grave or you don’t know whether they’re alive or not alive. He was a very good swimmer.

The message we got was that he was on a raft. The ship sank in two torpedoes. Sank in 4 minutes and he was on a raft with the radio officer and 13 lascars. They drifted into the coast, it was off Lorenko Marks in South Africa. We were very good swimmers but I don’t think he realised probably

how weakened he must have been after all those years of probably rotten food. He left the raft, but he had to come back and then it swept out to sea. The next day they came back in. He said, “I’m not spending another night on this raft. I’ll get ashore and get a boat to rescue you.” He was swept one way because the currents are very fierce

and so are the sharks, and the raft was swept the other way. The tragedy was they were picked up an hour later and he was never found. That was the hardest thing for my mother. Well, for all of us but her particularly because she always expected that he would turn up. And my father. He would come…

My father’s youngest brother was with the 2/27th Division in Rabaul and he was lost on the Montevideo Maru which was packed full of people from Rabaul. It was torpedoed by an American submarine that didn’t know it was packed with prisoners. He was lost and his youngest sister’s husband died in the

2/29th in the cholera camp. So as a family, we lost a lot. But so did others. All over the world. This is why war is so…I can’t imagine why we don’t learn. But we don’t. I don’t think we ever will. It would only take…I know what I meant

to tell you which I’d forgotten earlier. It comes back to the kindness of people. Just before we were put off the raider, a young German sailor came to me and he had a little parcel in his hand, wrapped up in newspaper. And he said, “You’re going to be landed. You remind me of my

sister back in Hamburg. She’d be the same age as you.” Of course Hamburg was getting hell bombed out of it at that stage. He said, “I can’t give her a present, but would you accept a present from me?” It was a block of chocolate. Now that block of chocolate must have meant a lot to him. It was probably 18 months since they’d left Germany.

Wasn’t that nice? Again, that gets back to how stupid war is. It was just a nice gesture. Another day a young sailor gave me a billy can of water — real water because we only had salt water on the raiders — so I could wash my hair. I had it all cut short at that stage. So these were all

bits and pieces that flash into your mind. Goodness gracious, one might think one’s mind might burst one day because there’s so much in it.

Not immediately. It was a few weeks

after — 5 or 6 weeks, something like that. See, they didn’t bring that many of the prisoners of war home immediately as they were too sick. So they were coming down through Morotai from Hong Kong. They were coming through from Malaysia.

The planes would stop there. There was a big reception area where we would go and look after them. “Talk.” That’s what they’d say — “Talk. What won the Melbourne Cup?” You had to have the Melbourne Cup, the football clubs and the horses. “The horses — I don’t know. The football — I don’t know.” They’d say, “It doesn’t matter if it isn’t true, just keep talking.” They hadn’t seen a

woman for 3 or 4 years and they just wanted you to talk. A lot of them really were very sick. The ones who were too ill, they came in. We had 2 or 3 wards and also we had a ward for the Indians, the Sikhs who

were with the Sandakan Death March, and they’d been found and oh God, they were more dead than alive. The nursing they got was beautiful and it was just so good to see them getting healthy after having been treated like that. They were wonderful. Another friend of mine, Wyn Skelly —

she was Skelly and I was White — we flew up to…I hadn’t met her until we got into Brisbane and so we were there to catch a flight up to Morotai and days passed, days passed. In service times you never know what happens. At midnight we were told to be out at

Amberley Airfield at 4 o’clock in the morning. So out we went and it was quite a few miles out of Brisbane. There was no-one around. We were there and we found a building we could get in. About 6 o’clock a lady came along with a trolley with some tea on it and then a Colonel turned up with 13 airmen.

At 7 o’clock in the morning the crew nonchalantly strolled on and it was a Liberator aeroplane. I thought, “This is great.” They called the names off and of course S and W were at the end. One of the crew who was calling out the names went, “Skelly,” and Wyn said, “Present.” He looked at her and said, “White.” I said, “Present.” He looked and said, “My God, women!”

Well I wasn’t used to being treated like that. They were horrified. I said, “Oh well, come on.” I know why they were horrified. There were no toilets, no seats — we sat on mailbags. We had to stand in the bomb bays to take off. There were slats of wood because they had to have the bomb bay doors open. Not nice looking down and seeing the earth

falling away from under you. It was packed with carcasses of meat, barrels of beer, eggs. All stuff for the hospital for the prisoners of war. We took off all jammed up like sardines and then we went back — “Curl up, curl up.” Have you ever tried to sit on a mail bag? Everything’s square. Nothing’s round. (laughs)

I said to Wyn, “This is fun, isn’t it?” 10 hours from Brisbane, Amberley, to Darwin. 10 hours! The wonderful thing about it, they had the big square, I don’t know if you call it a window, but it was open. We could look out and see right out over that wonderful country.

All the riverbeds, it looked marvellous. No food. So everybody just did what they wanted. The second pilot came down and he said, “How are you getting on?”

My friend said, “I’m terribly sorry, but I simply must go to the toilet.” He said, “You what!” “I must go to the toilet.” “Oh,” he said, “Well look the other way, I’ve got to go first.” (laughs) Well, it was all right for him. He went down to the end of the plane. Next thing he’s trying to tack canvass on to aluminium to make a bit of a curtain.

I thought, “Don’t worry.” Then he went down with a red bucket. Put that down there. He came back, “Madam, it’s all yours.” So poor Wyn, she was very proper, she looked absolutely embarrassed. She had to step over all these men who were lying on the floor. It was all corrugated.

Anyhow, that was over and he was chatting with me and I said, “I’ve never seen the inside of a cabin of a Liberator.” “Oh,” he said, “come on up.” You had to climb up these stairs and go in. “Oh,” I said, looking at the seat. I said, “Isn’t it fascinating?” We came to an arrangement. I could have the seat for an hour and then he’d have it for an hour. Wyn, she was furious with me.

We are very good friends but she’s never forgiven me. I said, “Each man for his own.” So that was great fun.

She was left with the mail bag. I used to come down every hour and say hello. We got into Darwin and went up to the hospital and had a meal and a shower. They said, “Come back, we’re taking off.” It was another 7 hour flight to Morotai.

So off we took and while we were standing in this bomb bay, somebody happened to put their hand on a barrel of beer or a crate of eggs, and it cracked through the wooden slat. The Colonel said, “Oh my God!” So up the little gangway he went. “I think we’ve got a problem.” I could see us all

trailing out under the plane by this stage. Anyhow the crew came down and they were so nonchalant. They poked it with little bits of stick. They said, “The trouble is we’re overloaded.” So they offloaded the 13 airmen and all their gear and they said, “You two may as well stay.” They got used to us, I think. So we stayed and they said, “Look, the only smooth place on

the plane is the slide leading up to the front gun turret.” They’d taken the gun out so the wind was howling through. We took it in turns to sleep, one on the top, one on the bottom, feet on shoulders and then we’d turn around the other way. It was very cold. He found a blanket and put over us. Then we got into the heat of Morotai,

and it was hot. So that was the beginning. Now that was all under canvass. It was a big hospital and we did need the bicycles to get around. She was with the 2/5th, I was with the 2/9th. It was a marvellous experience.

Oh yes. It was a different sort of thing because you were wearing boots and gaiters,

trousers and long sleeves. It was quite different.

Oh, plenty of palm trees because we were in a coconut plantation. I was in a tent on the edge near the road and the ablution blocks were way over. You had to weave your way ‘round. The coconut trees were all planted in rows and if a coconut fell on your head

you wouldn’t be much use to anybody. So we always had to dodge the coconuts and the ablution blocks. They weren’t terribly pleasant. When you’re young, you can cope with anything. You really can because everybody’s in the same boat.

The patients, most of the patients, not all, had been in the Pacific for quite a while. But the prisoners of war, I felt it was one of the most privileged things I’d ever had to do for the Red Cross. They were so great.

They were naughty too. I’d go down to the ward and whatever they wanted they could have. They always used to have a beer before their lunch. They’d say, “Have a beer with us.” I said, “I’m on duty, I can’t have a beer with you.” They said, “Your duty is to keep us happy and if you don’t have a beer with us, we’re not going to be happy.” So I’d have a beer.

Then I’d have to get back to the mess and with the heat and perspiration, I’d be stinking of beer. They were so grand, and a couple you could see probably weren’t going to make it. The ones that were so thin and couldn’t stop eating. It’s amazing to me, and I’ve had quite a lot to do with the prisoners of war over the years.

Anzac Hostel down here in Brighton, I’ve always had a lot to do with. How they ever survived. What they went through is amazing. It really is. It went on for so long. It was so cruel and I think, being a prisoner,

it’s the degradation of it and the way they were treated as if they’re nothing. Unless you’ve got a strong spirit, many of them must have felt they were nothing. It takes the spirit away from people. I knew Wilma Young and Betty Jeffries

and Vivian Bullwinkel. They were amazing. Their strength of character. To survive what they went through. I admired them so much. Anything I could ever do for a prisoner of war, any ex-servicemen in a way…but again I think I

inherited that from my mother. She said, “Never judge them” if they behaved badly. “You don’t know what they’ve been through.”

I think I was there about 6 months. By then as soon as the prisoners of war got fit enough, they came back to Australia. We had all the other patients there.

Some casualties. The normal wear and tear, you know. Skin diseases, accidents, malaria. All those things that happened to people in the tropics. A lot of them had been up in the islands for quite a long while. What people don’t realise is how long it takes to

move troops from an area back home after. Not like today. You just get on a plane and fly. There were lots of troops who were stuck in Bougainville, the Solomons. All over. All over New Guinea. To get them back home. The war was over but also there was an awful lot of mopping up to do.

Well, for one thing they had to go back to Ocean Island and Nauru to find out what had happened. The war Trials, I went to war trials in Morotai and it was an amazing experience. There was an admiral and an army

Japanese brigadier, I think, and they were both blaming the other one for the atrocities. I thought, “This is dreadful.” And the army one, he was [UNCLEAR], the only Japanese in the golf club in Tokyo. I said to someone as

we came out after the Admiral was condemned. I have a feeling it was the Newton where they had beheaded the pilot. It was Newton and I said, “They’re both guilty.” He said, “Don’t worry. There are 15 charges that the Dutch have against him, so they’re both going to go.” They were just so dreadful and yet, when I worked…

One thing I have learnt is that hatred is the most destructive thing. I had every reason to hate the Japanese. Every reason. I had 2 years in Japan and it’s almost as if you’re a normal person, it’s impossible to hate a

whole group of people. When you see the women working in the paddy fields. The Japanese people were treated dreadfully by their own Government. They had a dreadful war. I had a room girl, I always remember her. She came in one day and she said, “Oh Maureen, husband do come backoo.” Her husband had disappeared

over to Manchuria or something years before and he suddenly returned. And she got “giggle, giggle, giggle.” You know Japanese girls — “giggle, giggle, giggle.” She said, “All same Indian. Skin dark.” I said, “Really?” He’d been working out in the snow and got burnt. I said, “You happy?” She looked at me,

“Mmm.” Wasn’t too sure. (laugh) The way she said “Husband do come backoo.” I also saw it in…I worked for 12 months in Germany when I went on my working holiday in ’50–’51 to Europe. I was offered a job with the YWCA [Young Women’s Christian Association]

because I’d met them out in Japan. They said, “You’re just the one we want. Go and run a club for us in the Rhineland.” I said, “Yes, that would be lovely.” I lived in a place called Trosedorf and working at Varnaheind which was a big air force… it was all occupation force. I met a couple of people,

English, who’d had a terrible time. One who’d been in Gibraltar when it was bombed and she’d lain under the rubble for a day or two with her husband dead beside her. How they’d ever picked someone like that to allow them to go to Germany? She was manic and they were just horrible to the German staff.

They didn’t know their background. I felt sorry but she should never…there were some people, their hatred and you could see it destroying them. That’s terrible. Hatred or hate is the most destructive element. You can despise, you can understand it but hatred is dreadful.

No. Not really. That was the thing they wanted to put out of their mind. This is one of the tragedies. From my understanding the families, and it was the same with the Vietnam men, the families were told not to discuss

it with them. It would bring back bad memories. So you had this breakdown where they felt that people weren’t wanting to listen.

I wasn’t in a position to see that at that stage. They were sick. Some,

they might not want to talk. Okay, perhaps they were disturbed. You don’t know. The nursing sisters would have had a better idea, but I did have a lot to do in later years with the patients at Bundoora and that’s where quite a few of them ended up. They were very disturbed.

To whom?

I suppose, looking at it, probably people they felt they could talk to — Salvation Army or Red Cross or the sister. I think there were so many people involved and

okay you could see the psychiatrists but they were probably more interested in healing or treating the condition. Like shock treatment. It was terrible.

Oh no, they wouldn’t have had the facilities up there.

Heidelberg, Ward 15. I’m not saying they were all prisoners of war but I had quite a bit to do with that ward. I was working out there when I came back from Japan and for some it was helpful, for some it wasn’t. To me it was a terrible treatment.

Mmm. (nods head)

Yes, it’s a bit shattering.

Yes, it’s like a mad house.

One shouldn’t say it… off record. (puts hand over camera and laughs) Some very strange psychiatrists around at that time. I don’t know if they’re any better today.

Well, we were closing down at Morotai. We lived in tents and it was really rather funny because it was a tradition in the services — you leave your place of abode as you found it. So with a tent,

it’s a tent. We were lucky. I was sharing the tent with an army sister who had a friend in the engineers so we had a wooden board put down. It was a great spot for centipedes and spiders. There were so many creepy crawlies and snakes.

Somebody was leaving because it was all winding down, we got a refrigerator and someone gave me the most wonderful radio set — you could pick up San Francisco, anywhere. I was flying out. We had to leave all this stuff and there was the other little gift you had. You were given 2 bottles

of beer a week and a bottle of spirits but it was a dreadful brew which was South African brandy. It was quite revolting. So we had all this stuff and every time another sister went you got all her stuff, so I was in the last 28 to leave. I was flown out.

You had to clear your tent. So I had a working bee to get the refrigerator, the holder and the bottles of stuff. Try to give them on to the next one. Nobody wanted it any more. We got rid of it. To leave your tent as it was when you came in to it. This is quite a funny story actually. I saw this bottle of

South African brandy and you had your water bottle and I thought, “I’m not going to toss that away.” I filled my water bottle up with it. Those army water bottles are sort of ‘enamelly’ on the inside and we were coming down and I was sitting there and the CO of our hospital and the brigadier in charge of

the region was at the top and the airmen on either side, or the troops. It was getting very rough coming in towards Darwin, those big cumulus clouds. That didn’t worry me. I think I was a bit tired. I didn’t have much sleep the night before, and the CO came and said, “It’s getting rough Maureen. Take one of these tablets.” “I’m fine thank you.” “You take one

of these tablets. You’ve got your water bottle.” I thought, “Uh-oh, is this the end of a beautiful friendship.” So I said, “Later.” He said, “No. Now.” So he went back to his seat and I thought, “Oh well, there’s nothing else to do.” I took the top off the water bottle and it went off like a champagne cork! This aroma of brandy. So I took a swig of it and all the airmen are winking at me saying,

“Pass it around, Sister, pass it around.” I went fast asleep and next thing we were in Darwin. I think probably why he was insisting I take it; was just before Christmas and this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a hospital really. We had a planeload of patients flying out on a medivac to be home for Christmas

and some of them had been patients for quite a long while. Funny, I remember this boy’s name was Green. I used to say, “That boy Green.” A friend of mine, an air force sister – she was medivac – let her flight sergeant go. She said, “Look, you’ve got a family at home and you’ll be home for Christmas and it doesn’t matter to me, so you take this flight and I’ll take

the next.” This planeload of our patients a week before Christmas, took off and disappeared into one of those big clouds. Never seen again. We were just shattered. Losing those people and that was after the war. It seemed so wrong. So I think he had that on his mind, you know.

I don’t know. It was funny.

Going up to Japan, I went up on the Westralia, which was a troop ship at that stage. We got around the top of Australia and we got to Darwin and

Darwin was a wild, wild place but I happened to have a friend from Melbourne who was up there buying war surplus goods. He was going to make his fortune. There was stuff lying everywhere. He did quite well out of it. He looked after us while we were there because a man called Yorkie Walker

was the head of the unions up there and every time a ship came in, they hadn’t had beer for a few weeks. They had to get the wards, 2 wards ready at the hospital to take in the casualties from the brawling and they thought they’d be clever

and put the beer down underneath other stuff. The wharf labourers nearly wrecked the place. They got the beer, all went and got drunk and declared a strike. They’d had no fresh vegetables and stuff so the community was waiting on that. We were stuck there for about 5 or 6 days. They drank all the beer, did all their brawling and ended up in hospital, then they came back to work.

It was back west – an incredible place. We thoroughly enjoyed it, as we were able to go and have a little bit of a look around. Then we sailed on up to Kure, which is on the inland sea and it’s about, I think it would be about 20

miles from Hiroshima. We were going about 40 miles further down to the air force Bekair, which was the air force Base which was on an old Japanese Naval Air army Base, so it had the air strip and we were living in the buildings occupied by the pilots and crews. We went

down through Hiroshima. They used to have to come up and get supplies and stores because the RAF [Royal Air Force] – I was attached to a RAF hospital. They’d been in India and they really had nothing. They took over the Japanese hospital and the Australian Red Cross provided all the light diets because they had only the army rations. And so

we provided all the extras, light diets and this sort of thing and the fans and the refrigerators, curtains and the lot. That was my responsibility. Again, you had a whole range of patients because they had the New Zealand air force, the Australian Spitfire squadron, Indian Spitfire squadron

and all the various other groups of service troops. It was quite busy but it was very pleasant living on that air base.

I’ve got all the dates here somewhere.

I think it might have been March, about March when I went up. We’d been told that nothing would grow in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb but when we were there weeds were springing up everywhere. We stopped at the station. It was shattering, it was such a wreck. Bridges were up like

that and the smell… With basically at Kure where the ships landed it was acetylene gas where they made all the miniature submarines. It was that sort of a smell. So we were quite [UNCLEAR] when we reached our destination.

Their living conditions were appalling. They’re very resilient people but their conditions were not good.

Yes, some.

And the hospital which was run by one of the convents, the nuns, they had a lot up there.

No, mostly European. We used to… the black market was rife and everybody up there got a tin of 50 cigarettes. Dreadful

cigarettes. I forget his name – one of the big business of England, and they really were dreadful. All the troops used to sell them for the black market to get Yen, chocolate and all sorts of things. On the base they’d catch the Japanese going out

with this loot and then they’d go through the process of finding it and then it would come back to me. I had all this stuff and the boys used to say, “Gee, you must be on a good wicket!” I had all these Red Cross supplies. “Gee you must be on a good wicket!” I thought, “Oh, you are idiots.” You know – as if I would be. Much as I might have been tempted

to buy a nice big string of pearls I certainly wasn’t going into the black market for you, thank you. So what we’d do, we’d make up these big boxes of all this stuff and take them up to the sisters at Hiroshima so they could sell them on the black market to buy things that they needed. It was a very circuitous way of doing it but

I made very good friends there. I was the only Australian in the Unit. There was only one other man – a Major and I were the two in khaki. All the others were air force. We used to go out on picnics and I’ve still got friends that I made in those days. We had an earthquake. Everywhere I ever went there

was drama and that was just before Christmas. It was 5.6 on the Richter scale. Knowing what Japan was like. Where we were they had the air strip going out but they had a retaining wall between us and the inland sea about 8 foot high, so if that had gone

we’d have been turned into fish.

Too long. That’s the funny thing with earthquakes – it depends how long they last. If it’s only short it’s not so bad but this was 5.6. Quite long enough. I was sharing a room with one of the RAF sisters and they were the Naval, you know with bunks along and a locker and wood.

Sometimes the mice used to get under them. Mice. Ask me, I’m the expert on them. We had the wire mattress. Anyhow, the snow was on the ground. It was only just before Christmas, it was very snowy. I suddenly felt everything not only going that way but going that way, going that way all at once. I said,

“Mickey! It’s an earthquake!” I leapt out of bed, grabbed my greatcoat and said, “Come on, get out!” and then found I couldn’t go anywhere because everything was moving so you can’t go anywhere. So I got back into bed. You could see all the power lines swinging and flashing with light, so then they must have switched the power off. I then said, “Mmm.”

We’d always been taught that it was the second quake that caused the real damage.

I said, “I don’t like this.” So you’ve got to stand under an arch way so we stood under the arch way by the front door. Then the Kiwis came – they were upstairs. They said, “Oh, nothing. We have them everyday in New Zealand.” That did a lot of damage. Cracked all the walls and you know they’re

big because those buildings were just light timber. We had one go up in flames next to us, so it was an utter mess. There were 40 gallon drums. They were just tossed over.

I was sent there by Red Cross to be attached to the RAF Hospital again to care for the patients on the welfare side and be

in touch with their relatives. You’ve got to realise, there were no social workers in those days, or very few. There were only a couple attached to the army so Red Cross had to do that role. Red Cross and the padres. So that was a role we had to fill in. We had,

when I first went there we had the encephalitis scare. It wasn’t really a scare… I suppose it was, but every 11 years in Japan they had this encephalitis, which is an inflammation of the brain fever. Nasty business. So we all had to have these injections that America had produced from cow’s lymph

or mice’s lymph or something and it was most the excruciating injection. It was like a red hot poker going into your arm. That wasn’t nice but men, poor devils, they would just keel over so I was helping with these injections. Unfortunately one of them, a lovely boy, got encephalitis

from it and he was quite crazy and I was writing home to his mother and he was saying, “You know, my mother and my sister have been killed in the most dreadful accident.” It wasn’t true so I wonder if he recovered? He probably did.

Oh yes.

Australia.

Because Red Cross are the official auxiliary attached to the medical services of the armed forces. So that photograph of me in my khaki uniform – just like an officer’s uniform. In the wards we wore just a button down dress.

It was still a uniform. We didn’t have badges of rank. We had stripes because when it was formed in ’42, a man called Alfred Brown was the Secretary General of Red Cross, National Red Cross and he said, “No.” The British Red Cross had pips and crowns. He said, “It doesn’t suit the Australian soldiers,”

because pips and crowns indicate officers, whereas as a stripe doesn’t mean a thing to them. You’re still recognised as an officer for your Messing and all those sorts of things. It’s true. The men would tell you things they wouldn’t even tell the sisters because they didn’t look on you as being an officer.

I think we were seconded to the army and paid, not much mind you.

I’ve got my papers somewhere. I can’t remember. It was 9 shillings a day or something like that. I really can’t remember.

I’d have it down somewhere. The privileges that you got, you lived with the sisters, you belonged to the officers’ mess, their mess. You had those benefits.

2 years. The first 12 months we were not

allowed to fraternise with the Japanese. We were not allowed to eat Japanese food because they said it was for hygienic reasons. It wasn’t. There were thousands of American troops and then the Commonwealth troops that if they’d have eaten the food…

the Japanese were getting on to pretty much starvation rations. We were down on the inland sea. If you went by train or flew to Tokyo and its country, it’s a coastal country. I think only one-eighth is arable, seven-eighths are mountains.

Every town was destroyed. Not necessarily the village all the time – every factory. The Americans had pinpointed it all the way up. They were beaten before the bombs fell. It was obvious. But without those bombs they would never

have given up. Never. If the war had gone on another 3 months, I doubt if any of the prisoners of war would have come back. They were at the end of their tether. They were dying after they came back.

Always polite, just very polite and you were polite to them

unless you felt you needed power as some did, and they would just take that. Once the Emperor had said, “Give up,” they just did. You wouldn’t know what they thought.

Yes. Mind you, the men had been fraternising the whole way along with the girls.

That you’d never stop but it was not approved of. Yes, but there was a big divide. We made our own pleasures among ourselves really. We’d go and

see tea ceremonies and that. Some people got through but we certainly didn’t, not to any. It was a pity but it was much the same in Germany. Everybody could speak perfect English and I was trying to speak German and they said, “You’re the first English speaking person we’ve ever met.” Here

they are talking beautiful English to you.

’48. ’46 to ’48. Then I went back to the island and spent about 8 months there. Real beachcombing. Then of course I had to come back and start earning a living. So then I came back and that’s when I went out to

Heidelberg and then I went overseas on this working holiday in England and in Germany. When I came back I was asked to join the head office to help them reform the branches – the Red Cross units, because there were about 700 during the war.

Once the war was over they went back to their own organisations but they were still on the books. My first thing was to get rid of them all. Find out what you’ve got and build it up from there. So we built it up to about 500, which meant that I travelled…you name it in Victoria, I’m sure I’ve been there.

It wouldn’t be international. It’s a truly international body.

Not at all – it can’t. The principles are humanity, universality, unity, independence, neutrality. No, no. You see, you’ve got it in the Muslim countries

and it’s the Red Crescent. Now this happened when it was formed. By calling it the Red Cross and when I was working in Malaysia I had to explain to some elderly Muslim gentlemen, which I thought was very clever and a bit cunning. They wouldn’t have the Red Cross in their state up in Kota Bharu because they said it…

it was the word ‘Cross’ that upset them because it was Christian. I just said, “You know the Christian symbol?” They shook their heads, “What is it?” “Long, short, short.” (Draws cross with finger) “You know the Red Cross symbol?” They looked at me, “Yes, short, short, short, short.” (Draws cross with finger) It’s not the same.

That started with Turkey, and Iran wanted the Red Lion and Sun.

Exactly. Same principles. Exactly the same principles and each country has equal standing at Geneva where

the head office is. Now you’ve got the Red Cross Societies, you’ve got the International Committee of Red Cross, which was set up by Henri Dunant over 130 years ago after he’d seen the carnage at a battle in Solferino where 38,000 were killed. No medical people to look after them. Because they weren’t protected,

they would be killed. You know – “if you’re not my friend, you must be my enemy.” So that is the International Red Cross – made up of Swiss citizens who will employ other people to help with any disasters or things like that. They are the guardians of the Geneva Conventions, right?

They’re the ones who go into the prisoner of war camps. The ones who are trying to teach people about the principles of Red Cross and how to treat one’s enemy. Millions of lives have been saved. They’ve got the Tracing Agency. There were

millions of names. People are still being reunited, you know, after the war, after all this time. They’ve been missing for so long.

What you have to realise that I, along with many other of my ilk, had been through the war either in the services or in the workforce and worked pretty hard but also

a lot of the girls that managed to save money – not much but it only cost £110 to go to England in 1950. That was by ship – 4 weeks, 3 meals a day and there were 4 of us in the cabin. There was an exodus

of healthy young Australian women who just thought, “Let’s go.” There were over 1,000. I went on the Altralto. There were 1,000, and about 21 men. Managed to snaffle a couple of them. They were fun. So we took off. That was only one ship. You couldn’t walk around London without falling over an Australian or someone you knew or someone who’d been on the ship.

So many of them hitchhiking. They were everywhere. I had a group of friends, nurses from the Royal Melbourne, other Red Cross friends and 3 of us had a flat in London. A semi-basement flat in Kensington. The Royal Borough. It was a meeting place for quite a lot of the friends and

also, because I’d been attached to the RAF, I had a lot of friends from the RAF in Japan who of course were back in England. So I had quite a few mates and that was fun. I was also very lucky there because at some stage I got a skin cancer. You can see I’ve got a scar right across my face. (indicates side of face) I’d been operated on at

Heidelberg but there was still a bit left. My commanding officer from the RAF Hospital had a little party for me and he’d worked with Sir Archibald McIndoe, the famous skin specialist, a New Zealander. He made the faces of pilots who’d been burnt and eye lids and noses. He was the most wonderful man, and

Johnny Jenkins had worked with him and he said, “I don’t like the look of that.” This was in the middle of a party. There was a Group Captain Morley – he was the eyelids man. He said, “Come here and have a look at this face.” “We’ve got to have that fixed and Archie will fix that.” I said, “Archie who?”

“Archie McIndoe.” A group of us had been sending parcels to the guinea pigs because there were a lot of Australians whose body had to be remade. This was earlier. We’d been doing it earlier in the war. I said, “I’ll be washing dishes in his Harley Street rooms until the end of time!” “Oh,” they said, “No.” I’ll tell you I’ve been very lucky. They said, “Archie wouldn’t

charge you. You’re Red Cross and you’ve been attached to the RAF. Don’t be ridiculous!” and neither he did. I was at East Grinstead, which was the big hospital, for 3 weeks. And he did a new operation on me which was to cut right around there (indicates under eye towards ear), swivel it round but took a huge piece out there. (indicates directly under eye) When I came back to Australia I looked as if there’d been a brawl

you know, [UNCLEAR] or somewhere because I had this livid slash. My mother nearly died. She was horrified. It faded and I was just so lucky because if it had gone on it would have got deeper and I wouldn’t be sitting here now. So I’ve been very fortunate. Thankfully I’ve really kept extremely good health. My last 10 years of working, I had

one day off with a bad cold which I didn’t want to spread. So that’s a pretty good record.

Germany? Well it was an occupied country for one thing. Where there was still an awful lot of rubble around in England, the Germans are very tidy people and they’d cleared up all a lot of the rubble.

There wasn’t that much about and they were getting on with it. I was not far from Cologne. Fortunately the Cathedral… I was talking to RAF people who had strict instructions – “Never bomb Cologne Cathedral.” One bomb had fallen quite near it but it was still there. It was a very interesting experience.

The club I was running was for the occupation people so we had a library and activities. The little club where I was living in Trosedorf was right on the edge of a wonderful cemetery. I’ve got a thing about them. I like cemeteries. The European ones are much more attractive than ours.

I was there on All Souls Night. It was fascinating. I was cold and dark and you suddenly saw all these little candles coming from every direction. People coming to put them on the gravestones. Little candles. The place was full of squirrels. It was a lovely

spot but my work was about 20 miles further on. Funnily enough, when I wrote to my father and told him this is where I was he said, “Isn’t this extraordinary. When I was in the occupation force after the First World War, I played cricket at Trosedorf.” He was in that same area. That

was one thing. I remember going to a nightclub one night. That was a little bit different. Men dancing with men and women with women in those days was a little different. The singer who’d being trying to con one of our party who was an air force pilot

then going off, leaping on the back of a bicycle, motorbike with her husband who was the band leader! Very strange things happened. I only met one person who admitted to being a Nazi or being in a Nazi party. No-one wanted to know. Can you blame them?

That was interesting.

She was a very nice girl married to an RAF pilot and she said, “Yes I lived in a small town and there was no question – you had to be in the Hitler Youth Movement.” She said, “You were given a uniform and authority. You just had to be in it.” She’d been through the

Criminal Denazification Court and cleared, but you could see that there was no way you could stand out if you wanted to survive. It’s all about survival. Another thing that upset me… well that didn’t upset me but this did – The men who’d been prisoners of the English and the Canadian and Americans

were all fit and healthy. Those who’d come back from the eastern front, they might have been 20 but they looked 40. They were physical wrecks and the other thing – just during the Christmas period I went into Cologne and walking down quite a small street. I was looking at some windows. There were

ex-German soldiers, sitting in the snow. Some with limps, some without and I almost wept. I think I did. People just sort of walked over them because they’d lost the war. This is a terrible thing to treat your ex-servicemen like that. Mind you, we didn’t do much better after Vietnam.

Remember that none of us had much money and we were all working and

using that money to go to the theatre and the opera. Do the things we wanted to do. I went off to Ireland and had 3 fabulous weeks there. So it wasn’t all dining at the Ritz. We were lucky, we hit the jackpot a few times.

It was just living and absorbing the atmosphere. I wasn’t that mad on history at school. I loved geography but I didn’t like history but it all became alive and it was amazing how much you remembered, and I think that’s a fascinating thing of going to Europe. Coming back to Melbourne, I

get furious when I hear the radio – “There was nowhere to eat in Melbourne. You couldn’t get a decent meal.” That’s a load of rubbish. There were excellent places to eat. The Latina – we went there before the war when it was in Exhibition Street. I was only laughing with this friend,

the one who came to lunch at Russell Collins, because her father had a gas producer vehicle. It had the big gas thing on top. The four of us used to get in. We were smart. We were just too smart for words. We’d go into the city and we’d park the gas producer opposite the Latina and go and have a lovely

meal. The food was beautiful. It was always good food. And Mario’s and the Society and the Ritz. There were a whole group of places. The Menzies Hotel. I find it extraordinary that we could afford on our low wages to go to those places and to the theatre.

We used to go to all the Union Theatre productions. Today, I can’t afford to go to the theatre very often.

What did you see?

Was it any good?

But $52.00 you see.

Mmm.

The ballet? I don’t know. We could afford to do it.

The Copacabana. The Embassy. During the war I used to go to the Embassy. They always had my favourite song.

The Chantandore. No.

I suppose it was the sort of person you were. If you want to, find out. But a lot of the population didn’t. I remember all sorts of places. I remember being taken one night to a little Russian place up in Carlton. It was all lovely Russian food. All the pickles

and stuff.

In St Kilda, yes. We kept the flat until we moved. Of course the old boys’ club. Lovely toasted raisin bread. At the Gatwick, one of the friends I made there. There were two of them. One was an Irish girl who was a teacher and

the other was this Russian girl, Vera. She was from Hong Kong and she was actually from Vladivostok before and Shanghai. She was the most beautiful looking thing. She used to wear the brightest orange lipstick. She just was gorgeous and she went to work at a munitions…well called up like people were…

factory and they all called her ‘Comrade’ and of course she was a white Russian. She used to go right off. Now she had married a British Army Major and he was captured. She got away. She had a twin sister and she went to America. Vera. The men used to just look at her and almost keel over. She was just so lovely. She was sweet. She was bad, but she was sweet.

Her husband survived the war. As soon as the war was over she went off to Singapore to try and find him. They finally met up and they went back to England. She used to write to him every night and smother the back of the envelope in orange kisses. He never got one.

Yes.

When I came back they said, “Come back and help with the development.” That was in ’56. So I was involved in Red Cross and ’61, that’s when I started to buy the house or build the house.

Then I was offered a job at Uralla to do their publicity for 4 years. They had their big appeal, the first Telethon and all that sort of thing and that was great. Also, I couldn’t afford to stay with Red Cross any longer because I had other commitments and they never paid very well. This was a bigger salary and a car so I took that. I loved it,

loved working with the children. It was very satisfying. And then I was asked if I’d go back to Red Cross at the national level again which was the field force – that’s all the overseas work – to go as a general service officer. So firstly I was supposed to go to Indonesia and so I was learning Indonesian, a crash course.

New South Wales division had never had the Red Cross calling. The March appeal which I’d been involved in the beginning of that here. So they wanted us to send someone up to show them how to do it. I was sent up there and in 5 months from beginning to end we set it up and it was very successful. So I was living in Elizabeth

Street in Sydney but I was working very hard. That was fun. It was very nice meeting them, except you don’t say in Sydney to anybody that you’re from Victoria. I’d say I’m from National Red Cross. So what happened then? I didn’t go to Indonesia – I was needed in Malaysia.

I spent 18 months there and while I was there I worked in each state including Sabah and Sarawak. 4 weeks in each of the 12 states and I travelled about 20,000 miles around there. You name it I’ve been there again. Working at every level in the kampongs. I liked the people so much. It was very good, very satisfying. Got on very well with them, particularly

the Secretary General, who’s Chinese Malaysian. We were like sisters – we just thought alike. Then the riots broke out there.

’69. They were setting up an ambulance service. One of our helpers had paid out of his own money about 60,000

Malaysian dollars because the British Army were moving out. So at minimum cost he bought 3 ambulances, water carriers, all these army vehicles to set up the disaster relief because flooding is prone and all the rest of it. That was wonderful. Then he got them sponsored off –

the tobacco companies and the banks. So he got that money back. I always remember Ruby Lee almost going out of her mind. “He’s committed us to $60,000!” “He’ll get it back.” Now that was very fortunate because when these racial riots broke out they were very nasty. They were right after the elections and the Indians and Chinese had gained more votes

than they ever had and this was too much for the radical Muslim section. All Malays are Muslim but this radical section – it was political, it was stirred up. They were going to take over and you know the Malay word is “amok.” Run amok. They went amok. Not so much the local

people from the kampongs in Kuala Lumpur but they brought them in and stirred them up. They did dreadful damage. The young people were having a party for me because that was my 4 weeks that I was spending in Selangor when one officer, one policeman came

up to get their youngsters. They said, “Don’t let any of them go. There’s trouble down in the town.” We were up on a hill. It was starting to burn. So we kept the youngsters there. Now the 16, 17, 18 year olds were so well trained by the British in first aid it made it much easier, but then we had a call from the hospital

where one of our volunteer doctors was working saying, “You’ve got to get the ambulances out. The hospital ambulances aren’t going to go out any more.” They were stoned and they were too frightened. So we took the ambulances out and another Australian friend of mine was up there because we’d been running a training course at the Outward Bound school.

He’d been working in Indonesia. So he took one ambulance, I took another. We didn’t see each other for 36 hours. We were flat out. I went in to one area which was very Chinese – stalls and hawkers and very Chinese area. They’d gone through and it was burning. There were roadblocks all over the place. I went to the medical clinic and there would have been about 12 people

horribly slashed. I had to make the decision – which were the first ones to get to the hospital. There were 4 young Chinese nurses. The doctors weren’t there but fortunately their phone line was still working. Some of the lines were being cut. These girls were doing the most fantastic job.

They were so sweet and so we managed to get all of them eventually out and into the hospital. It was a bit hairy. Being stopped at one o’clock in the morning by an army patrol. Only the army, the police and the Red Cross were allowed

out. With guns pointing at us. “Get out of the ambulance.” To my horror, here was a young Malay soldier with a red cross on his helmet pointing a gun at me. I found out that particularly with the Malays, if you

smile at them, they can’t resist smiling back. So I smiled and said, “Oh Padang Mara.” He smiled at me and I thought, “Well he’s a medic but he shouldn’t be carrying a gun.” I thought, “They don’t know what Red Cross is about,” which they didn’t. We got in touch with the chief of Staff. We had one of the International Committee

men down from Cambodia. “Oh,” he said, “yes.” He was a charming man. “The Geneva Conventions, I think they might be in the library shelves.” They weren’t teaching them. They had no idea. I don’t know if it’s getting any better. But those young people were so wonderful. They worked so hard. But there were some very, very funny experiences.

Talk about getting careless. A lot were trapped, just ordinary, been to the cinema, family groups and as they came out the army opened fire on them and some of them got out the back door and fled up to a police station but they were trapped in there. We went along and as we walked in the foyer of the theatre there was a poor old boy propped up against

the wall in a pool of blood. I said, “I think he’s had it,” with which he went, “Rrrr.” I said, “Oh, he hasn’t had it, you know.” Don’t jump to conclusions. That’s right. I went and spoke to the people and said, “Stay there. We’ve got some trucks coming. We’ll get you out.” That’s the highlight. You feel that’s all very dramatic and wonderful. So most of the work

of course is 90% routine. Then you get this 10%.

Right. It’s exactly the same. The tragedy today of course is the Geneva Conventions. “If you’re not with us you’re against us.” This guerrilla warfare. Then no war is declared. Only this. There was no war declared in Vietnam. There

was no war declared, so they say, “Oh, it’s not clear cut.” The war starts on this day and ends on that day, like the ’39 to ’45. Third September. Definitely with guerrilla fighting – “If you’re not with us, you’re against us, therefore if you’re against us, you’re the enemy.”

Yes I did. I came back and I helped out in Canberra and I’d already helped in New South Wales. I did some work up in Queensland and all the way I’ve just been so fortunate. I’ve met such wonderful people and I think the country people are just

the salt of the earth. They are generous. They work hard. They work so hard for Red Cross and at the present moment there is a big hoo-ha going on about the Bali things. I’ve got the statements here. There is no money lost. It’s all accounted for. Once you get the press get their teeth into you and it’s amazing how people are

prepared to think the worst.

In ’89–’90, but you don’t retire from Red Cross. They never let you go. Brighton Red Cross gave me 12 months off and then I joined them so I

had their transport service which they had, which was very good. Then I took over the Meals on Wheels where we had 300 volunteers do the Meals on Wheels here in Brighton until the amalgamation and we all got sacked. All our volunteers got sacked. They had 300 in Sandringham and they put it out for tender so it’s a meal delivery now, whereas

our members were giving so much more to the people they visited.

Well, I’m a member now.

I could have. I could have but I was so busy away unless I can of course be a definite member. But one of the things you couldn’t get

was a War Service Home Loan if you were a woman. That made us so mad. You think of people like Betty Jeffries and Vivian Bullwinkel were not considered entitled to get a War Service Home Loan. By the time it came through, most of them who had great difficulty had done it themselves, the same as I did.

It would have made so much difference.

Old boys’ club, I think.

I’ve always been too busy to…that’s just one thing, no. I was asked to join the RSL

at Caulfield but I’m not a clubby person in particular. I’ve got too much to do with my time. I do enjoy the Returned Nurses Club and I’ll do anything to help them. The rest of the journey of course was Papua and New Guinea. I had 18 months

up there. That was working all over – training staff and helping them because again it had been a European dominated society, paternalistic society but before it could become a Red Cross Society in its own right at independence it had to have local office bearers. It had to be a Papua and New

Guinean Society. Europeans could join it but it had to be Papua and New Guinean. So I had to set about trying to get them, train them and help them.

In Port Moresby, which is purely the most revolting place. It’s like a bad country town. It’s dusty and, you know, it’s all right if you’re up on

the hill above the dust level but I was near the hospital. It was so dusty and hot. Yes. Funny place. Outside, Lae, Rabaul, Bougainville and all those places. They were lovely. But not Moresby.

When was it? 21 years ago.

Oh, still dangerous. I had a flat in a handicapped children’s centre. We had a flat there and I had that. It was right opposite the hotel. It was on the main road and the entrance was – unless the centre was open –

to my flat was up through the back door, the kitchen door. It had louvred windows but there were always rubbish cans and car smashes and breaking glass and I used to shut that off. It was very hot so I used to go to sleep with the fan on. I’d had someone in for dinner and went to bed

and I was lying sort of face down and I heard the smash of glass and I thought, “Oh God, there they are again. Breaking things.” I turned over and thought, “That’s funny. It looks as if the sun’s up and I haven’t been asleep that long.” I turned around and the light in my lounge room was switched on and there was a local standing by my bed.

I turned around and I’m not a swearer but I gave him a few bursts. I said, “Get out!” He ran out. Only a young fellow. Grabbed my bag. The staff found it the next day on the hospital wall. He’d taken my fountain pen, my money and stuff. He’d smashed the window and been able to open the door. Today, you couldn’t live like that.

You’ve got to be behind wire and so many of the people… I get news from up there and it’s terrifying. I must tell you a lovely story. You’ve got to have good stories. There was the top social worker from the League of Red Cross. The International was more the wartime and disaster. The League are development and disaster relief.

So this lovely French woman, Monique, was there. Just so elegant, and she was coming out to see what progress we’d made – “Are they up to the mark? Are they ready for this role they’re going to have to take?” So I had to take her to…I took her to Rabaul, Lae, and the Chimbus are very fierce. Do you know much about New Guinea? The Chimbus are very

wild but, not Patrick, Michael was a Chimbu and he was bright – he used to bound upstairs, “Hello Maureen, what are we doing today?” Really great until it was decided, not by me, to send him to Goroka in charge of that area. He decided he’d be like the Europeans and take Wednesday afternoon for golf and had a very nice

wife and 4 children. He took off with another woman. He had a lovely flat. He was really a wild man. We bought a new four-wheel drive because once you get off the main road it’s very wild country. Magnificent. It is so beautiful. Break your heart it’s so lovely. Anyhow, after a couple of months with this new

vehicle, just before we’re going off on this trip from Goroka over the Dahlo pass which has sheer drops of 2,000 feet to Mt Hagen, he rings and says, “Maureen?” I said, “Yes Michael, how are things going?” He said, “Unfortunately, the vehicle was hit by a tree.” “Oh,” I said,

“that’s sad. Terribly sad. Whereabouts?” He’d gone off the road. I said, “Well, you’d better hire for me a Holden car.” So Monique, after our trip around we arrived at Lei. Anyway we came to Mt Hagan and this car, because it’s

a local, it’s not their best car. In fact it wasn’t a very good car but it had got us there. We took off and we got to Mt Hagen and stayed a couple of days there and did what we had to do. I drove. I wouldn’t let him drive but when we got to the top of the Dahlo Pass where this terrific drop is, you have

a creek running down over lots of little stones, then it drops down. Nice little thing. The road was very muddy and there were always slides. We were coming back and it was St Patrick’s Day. I thought we had to get over the pass before nightfall.

Here we are coming along the road and a trailer has gone off into the ditch. The motor part is down in the ditch and the rest of it is over the road. Can’t get past. Out of nowhere in this remote spot, two or three other big trailers turn up and they put on a performance. How to get the trailer out of the ditch. About 40 locals turn up, just wearing their arse grass

and their bows and arrows, watching all these antics. They could have gone in there, picked it up and put it back on the road. The person who was organising all this nonsense was a big brawny fellow with a mop of curly hair and a can in his hand and he was giving all the directions. I said, “Please, I’m sure we could get by if you moved it a bit.” “No, no. It’ll only take another minute.” Time went

by and finally they got it moving and he was swinging his arm around saying, “You little beauty!” Expletives every second word. As his hand came up it took his hair and he whipped it off. He was wearing a wig! He was a big brawny hulk of a fellow and he had little curls all over his head!

Well, the first thing I think I must say is that I have been extremely privileged in my life by the people I’ve met and the people

I’ve worked with, and particularly my Red Cross involvement and the trust that people have put in me and the friends that I’ve made over the years. And even though you lose touch with people they’re still your friends and hopefully I’ve been able to help people. I’ve been well and truly rewarded

but the greatest reward is if you have achieved something through your efforts. Meeting people like you and I thank you for coming. I think it’s an excellent idea to have this sort of thing on record. I’m just sorry it didn’t happen years ago because there are some wonderful stories that have been missed out on.

I’m quite certain you’ll get the number that you want and I look forward to seeing them. Now you’re going to have them on a web-site?

Thank you. Thank you Martin. Thank you Annie [interviewer].