Australians at War Film Archive

Yes, well our home was at a place called Alberton. We were originally in Yarram which is about eight miles from Alberton. My father’s father was quite a man before his time really. He was

a builder and stone mason and brick maker and so on. He built some lovely buildings in Yarram. He was an auctioneer and then later on in my Dad’s life he bought a lot of land and he became a farmer, and eventually we went onto this little farm at Alberton which was about three miles from the State School Number One, which is where we were first educated.

I was one of four daughters, the second of four daughters. We attended this State School Number One and from there you went to the Yarram…it was called the Higher Elementary School. These days of course it’s called the Yarram Secondary College, but in those days that’s what it was. From there you could go on to your Intermediate.

That was as far as…no, you could go to your Matriculation as they called it in those days. But I was educated there up until what is now equivalent to Year Eleven and then I went to Melbourne and had one year at a school in Melbourne, Merton Hall, just to sort of finish off my education.

So then I came back to the farm and by correspondence I tried to do my Matriculation, but it wasn’t easy. Taylor’s College, of course, still exists in Melbourne and I did it through Taylor’s. But it wasn’t really easy. I did a few subjects and finished off my education like that.

Yes, well on the farm at Alberton my Dad ran sheep and cattle and we owned an island. Dad owned an island called Sunday Island which was a few, in those days miles, from the mainland, or what ever it is in nautical terms from the mainland.

He agisted the stock over there. There was a big shearing shed and a little house and water. There were two or three windmills. My Dad owned a punt, a huge punt, and he used to transport the animals across to the island and we used to have to help him.

We would stay over there and he’d walk to the various windmills and check them. That was an interesting procedure really. Of course cattle and sheep did very well over there strangely enough, and it was all quite a successful venture.

Yes it was. It was lovely. On one corner there

was a lighthouse, and in those days of course…Sunday Island is close to the entrance and the permanent lighthouse man, a man called Mr Grant, and his wife and his one daughter called Evelyn. I can’t remember the son. I remember staying with them once. But he would have to climb the ladder with the light and put it up on top of the light house

for the shipping coming in and out of the entrance. Of course that’s all been superseded now with electronics or whatever they would like to call it. But that was on one part of the island and that was probably a government thing. And then our little house and the shearing shed and where Dad used to moor the boat was on the other side of the island. Of course Sunday Island is

now a conservation island. When Dad eventually had to sell it, it passed through two or three hands before it was finally bought by a consortium and I think they’re all mainly Victorian based, and it’s now conservation . They’ve got deer, ducks and geese and they rear little animals, kangaroos and wallabies

and all those sorts of things. It’s conservation. They’ve got a little air strip there. And the people have got various places where they live. You can camp, or they’ve got modest little homes, or rather nice places. And they’ve got a community centre, and they’ve got a museum. We’ve provided a few things for the museum, and a barbecue area, and I think they have special times for holidays and so on.

So that’s what Sunday Island is now. They’ve built an enormous pier over there and they’ve got a permanent boat to take the people out. It takes about quarter of an hour I suppose from Port Albert to get out to the island.

It was bought by his father. He was, as I say, a man really before his time. I suppose he thought this was

something a little bit different.

Well I suppose he did. I can’t remember. We used to stay there I know with Dad in this house. And I know there was a huge open fire and we used to rough it a little bit there. Very primitive. I remember the shearing shed was enormous. I think he had a

couple of horses too, and we used to run our own stock of course over there, sheep and so on. And then at shearing time, they had the shearing shed over there, and it was quite a successful part of our farm.

Yes. I know she used to always…I can see her now, Dad saying he was going to the island and she would be packing up

the food for him to take; usually the corned beef and jam tarts and those sorts of things.

It was rather an interesting thing about my mother. Her name was Dodgson, Francis Charlotte Dodgson. Her father was a cousin of Lewis Carroll

who was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote Alice in Wonderland. My grandfather and Lewis Carroll were at Oxford together. My mother’s father migrated out here to Australia, to Queensland, and Mum was born in Queensland along with two other sisters.

They were all born up there. Her father at that stage was running a little newspaper. I think he called it Stanthorpe. I don’t know Queensland very well but I think it was Stanthorpe. When the children, the four children all had to be educated; he was a man of letters…he decided that Victoria would be the best place for the children to be educated. And Mum and her two sisters went to Merton…MLC,

and Uncle Perc went to Scotch and that’s where they were educated. They lived in Kew. I think Mum was only about four when she started school there. Where did she fit in? She was the youngest.

Well, her sister

married the doctor in Yarram, and as the years went by, her eldest sister Maud was one of the first graduates who went through the Melbourne University as a lady doctor. Whether it was while she was doing her medical training that she met Uncle Jack, but he was a doctor at Yarram, and she was also a doctor with him; helped him at Yarram.

At some stage my mother went down to have a holiday with Auntie Maud and that’s when she met my Dad. Dad was a quiet man. Very musical and played the piano most beautifully, and unfortunately none of us inherited his talent. But he was a lovely musician. I think she married him when she was only quite young.

He was several years older than my mother and it was a very happy marriage. They were just like a Darby and Joan. All their life I remember them having a very happy marriage. We lived in a lovely house in Yarram, and then when he moved down to the farm at Alberton it was just like a little square box when we first moved into it, but it was made into a

very comfortable, nice comfortable home. It was passed then by my parents to my sister and her husband after the war, and when they no longer required it, my brother-in-law sold it to his son and his wife. So they now own the original home. So it’s been in our hands all those years at Alberton.

Well the State School Number One was a lovely little school. Of course they’ve demolished a lot of the school…well they’ve left the framework of our school. I’ve got a nice little picture of it hanging in my bedroom which shows just how it looked in those days. We had a marvellous teacher. His name was Mr Mulvaney and he was Irish.

And I remember him so well. He was a splendid teacher in those days. We used to ride to school on a horse, as did a lot of kids. There was a paddock there where we left the horses and I think they had a shed where we used to put our saddles and bridles through the day. At one stage when there were the three of us going to school, my Dad had a saddle made for three, and the three of us rode on the horse.

Which wouldn’t happen too often now I shouldn’t imagine. I don’t know if anybody rides to school on a horse these days. I think most of the parents take them don’t they?

Only about fourteen months, and then there was five years between her and my sister Lesley and eight years between her and my sister Anne, my younger sister. It was Lesley and Anne

who were eventually in the WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force] during the war.

No. His brother was. There were just the two boys in the family, and my Uncle Reg was in France in the war. But my Dad was rather frail in those early days and he didn’t pass the medical.

And anyway in those days I think it was an industry that was producing the food, so he wasn’t involved in World War I.

Very well. Yes very well. He lived in Yarram too. He was a great writer. He was a farmer after the war and he lived to

quite a ripe old age. Then his son was on Rabaul in World War II; escaped. He was one of the lucky ones to escape. His wife was an army nurse and the other two girls who were in that family weren’t in it - or not that I can remember. No, I don’t think they were involved with the army. But Ray was

in the war.

Oh often. He was one of these men who really lived the war…you know like some of them do? They don’t seem to ever be able to get it out of their system. And although his health was pretty good, I think he did suffer a little bit as an aftermath of the war.

I think it was about the trenches…the dreadful….the cold and the mud and all that side of it. He seemed to dwell on it, but I don’t remember very much. But I remember when he came home from the war, and I would only have been about three, but I remember they had a big welcome home for the

war people in Yarram. I remember the horses…well I supposed they would have been something similar to the horses they had over in Egypt. I remember that. All held up in a big paddock. A big welcome home for them. Very vaguely. But he and my father worked of course

together with the two farms. They were wonderful friends really.

Yes I do. And I remember Anzac Day at Yarram because my Uncle Reg used to always lead the parade on his horse, all done out in his old army uniform. Yep. They’ve got the little memorial;

the little set-up in the middle of the street in Yarram. This very day of course, that’s where they hold the Anzac Commemorative Services. They nearly always had the little parade. I remember once I happened to be there and I joined them there in the march. They’ve still got a very active RSL [Returned and Services League] in Yarram.

Well it wasn’t sort of stressed a great deal, not like it is these days. Well it was really only very early history wasn’t it? See we were looking back from the twenties, that was when I was young, and it really wasn’t very long since the war ended. So I think

everybody was settling down to normal living and it wasn’t until the late twenties when they mooted the idea of building a memorial, and in the thirties was when the shrine was completed, or more or less completed, the first part of it. So I don’t remember a great deal about it until much later,

through the war years really.

Yes it did. We went through a very, very tough time in the thirties. Yes. You find it hard to believe. I know Mum had a lot of WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and fowls, and of course we had lots of eggs, and we used to sell them.

After I finished school…I would have nearly finished school, we used to take these eggs and they’d be sold in Yarram, and in those days, in the old terminology, you’d get about four pence which would be worth about three cents.

I remember we used to dread it when perhaps the Bank Manager came down to the farm. We always knew it was a worrying time for my father. Whether they would advance them…my father and mother never discussed business with us. Not like the kids all know about everything these days. It was a closed book

with our parents. They didn’t worry the children. But you got the feeling that it was an anxious time waiting for them. However Dad managed to exist through those Depression years which were so grim. I think the whole situation with everything from the farming point of view was a disaster.

However we had a wonderful childhood, even so. We had little golf links on our place at Alberton. And of course that was lovely. First of all we started a nine hole golf course and of course all the people used to come down from Yarram. In those days it was always the great big afternoon tea. I know Mum always produced

a sponge and the Anzac biscuits and other people would bring sandwiches and so on, and we always had a big community afternoon tea after the games were over. We all played golf as kids, and it was really lovely to have it there. And eventually it was decided that, with our particular property, it wasn’t possible to make an eighteen hole golf links, so they found a site in Yarram, and now I think

they’ve got two eighteen hole golf courses. Lovely golf links up at Yarram.

No, I didn’t but my sisters did. Lesley was a very good golfer, and my mother played until she was eighty three and then had an accident and tripped over her golf bag and broke her wrist, and that was the finish of her golf. But she played right up until then. And in fact there’s a rose bowl in memory of my mother

that is won every year, and I think it goes from person to person at Yarram. I watch with great interest the results of the Ladies golfing at Yarram. But my sister Lesley was a good golfer, and my young sister Anne was an excellent golfer. She was down here of course, and she played in Melbourne.

No,

that was Lucy.

She did. She was a boarder there for two years. But of course because of the Depression they couldn’t afford for me to be a boarder, so I was a day girl and was only there for the year. But it was lovely, and I made some nice friends there, and I’ve got some very happy memories of Merton Hall. And of course I got a warm welcome having had a sister who had preceded me, so that was nice.

It sort of rounded off my education, but I would have loved to have gone back for the next year to do the Matric. I only finished the equivalent of Leaving standard these days.

Here in Brighton. Oak Grove, Brighton , not very far from where we live here. I pass Oak Grove several times a week usually.

And there was a lady in Yarram for whom I was the nurse…the dentist, the first lady dentist I think ever in Victoria. Miss Crombie her name was, and she had a relative living in Oak Grove, Mrs Phillips her name was, with a daughter, Nan. She was a widow, and she had an old lady who used to live there and who did for them.

I can’t remember her name, but I can see her now; I can visualise her. So it was like a home help. And I had a room there with them for the year. It was in walking distance from the station and of course I would hop off the train at South Yarra. If I was running late I would hop on the tram, but if I had plenty of time I would walk up to Merton Hall which is, of course, in Anderson Street South Yarra. Just a nice walk in those days.

So I lived there with Mrs Phillips for that year.

No, I was a little bit lonely. But they were kind, nice kind people. But it was so strange because they were very strict Anglicans and I was an old Presbyterian from way back, and on a Sunday we would start off walking and they would walk to the little church up here on the corner

off Cochrane Street, St Stevens, which was their church, and I would continue and walk down here to John Knox which is on this corner, and believe it or not when we came to live in seventy six Cole Street, Garden Vale, that is the church where I went back to, and to which I attended. I don’t now – I’m still the old Presbyterian but I go to the church down

at Middle Brighton, St Cuthbert’s because that became Uniting, this church here. And I wasn’t happy. I liked the old Presbyterian style, and they were kind enough to arrange for me to have a transfer and I’ve attended St Cuthbert’s, the old Presbyterian church, ever since. But during the war, strangely,

the church service was more an ecumenical service as you probably know, and I love church and I used to go all through the war years, but that was more like a Church of England, sort of half and half. And then when we were married, we were married in a little place called Garfield up here in Gippsland, and every month they took it in turns for the different religions. One it would be Methodist, the next month it would be Presbyterian, and the next month

it would be Church of England and in 1948, the year we were married, just the week after Easter, it was the Anglican Church, and so we were married with an Anglican service for our wedding at Garfield. And so our two children were bought up Anglican and attended Brighton Grammar and Fairbanks schools here. That’s how they came

to be Anglicans.

I wanted to be a school teacher. First of all I wanted to be a ballet dancer. I was mad on ballet. My mother took me to see Anna Pavlova, the great Anna Pavlova when I was young because I loved it. We had a cleaning lady who used to

come, Jane, who would do our washing one day a week and the next day she would tidy all our house. And round my bed I had all these ballet photos and she couldn’t stand them, and every time I came home they’d all be taken off the wall. Then back they’d all go. But I wanted to be a ballet teacher, but in those days there was no such thing as a ballet class in a little town like Yarram. There is now; very successful down there. They win all

sorts of awards. But I had to put that to one side, and then I wanted to be a school teacher. So anyway, back I came after Merton Hall, and my sister Lucy had been Miss Crombie’s nurse and she decided to be a nurse and come to the Children’s Hospital and do her nursing training. She had always had her heart set on being a nurse, so away she went, and Miss Crombie

then engaged me. We used to have to drive. Having driven to Yarram to school all those years with a horse and jinker with my other sisters, which is what we had to do, eight miles through summer and winter. We had to drive the horse, and there was a Presbyterian Church opposite the Elementary School and that’s where we used to leave our horse and jinker. Always late

for school – always, but they forgave the Stockwell sisters because of the long ride. And in the winter when it was so freezing, my Dad used to heat up the bricks and wrap them up in about five layers of paper and put them on the floor of the jinker. We would have a rug over our knees and we would have our feet on the bricks and that would keep us a little bit warm. But you know when we drove home,

if there was something on at the school it would be dark and we would have to light the little lamp on the jinker, and everybody knew the Stockwell sisters of course, so we were as safe as the Bank of England. No harm ever came to us. We were always watched over by all the people along because they got to know us. We used to pick up other kids in the jinker. There were some other kids we used to pass who used to

wait for us and we’d get them in. So after I finished my schooling, it was a continuation of the same until eventually I got my licence and we got the car, and I would be allowed to drive it once in a while. An old Aider[?] Crossley it was. But Miss Crombie had this

dentistry and she was famous too, because she had a huge practice. I think at one stage she was the only dentist in Yarram, then a couple of other dentists came, but it was a very busy time. I was there until my sister finished her training and then…I don’t know…she left the Children’s Hospital and

I got the idea that perhaps I would follow in her footsteps, which is what I did.

I was twenty one when I started at the Children’s Hospital, so I would have been about eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

I was there for a couple of years and I was twenty one when I started my training. It would have been between those years. We had a lovely drama group in Yarram. We did a lot of drama, plays and of course dances. Tennis. I didn’t play golf, strangely. But lots of tennis. I loved the drama group.

And that was something nice to do. But in those days it was just the balls, mainly the balls that you attended. Parties, dancing. When I look back it was sort of a simple type of life but it was good.

Well she had

two surgeries. She had one in the front of her house. She had a lovely little house right in the street. It was almost like a modern place with just a tiny bit of garden and you stepped into the passage way. On your right as you came in was the waiting room, and on your left was first of all her surgery, and then there was a little work room. She had a technician, Mr Samers,

who did all the dentures, and behind that was his surgery. And also in the surgery in those days of course, for suitable cases they would do extractions under an anaesthetic in that back surgery. Mr Samers would give the anaesthetic and they would remove all the teeth and we would catch them all…not good. But any serious cases would have to go up to the little hospital,

and Miss Crombie would go up there, in some particular cases. There were two of us who were her attendants. One of the girls, one of the kids who we used to pick up from school, was one of the girls who ended up being the other nurse while I was there. She was my Godmother, Miss Crombie, and she was responsible

for all sorts of lovely things that I inherited from Aunty Tub, as we called her. So those were happy days for me, and on the nights of the dances of course, I would stay there overnight. She had a little two story part that had been attached to the back of her house. And her room was upstairs and there was a spare room there. And she had a permanent lady who was her

maid and her cook. She did all our shopping. She was a full time dentist. She was quite famous in that area. She’s written up in all the local histories. She was the dentist and then my Uncle Jack was the doctor, and my Aunt Maud was the other doctor. So it was quite a medical flavour in the family.

Well I think they felt the same as they do now. Nothing’s changed. So many of the young people in Yarram leave after they finish school. They either go to uni or they go to do an apprenticeship or they do a TAFE [Technical and Further Education] education.

There is a branch of Monash over in the Latrobe Valley. And I think there are TAFE colleges. But they just have to move away unless they happen to want to go on the land, inherit and continue on a farm that their fathers may have. This is what goes on now, there’s really nothing much for young people.

The Yarram Secondary College has a very high qualification reputation. They do very well with the VCE [Victorian Certificate of Education] kids. They do very well and they nearly all get placed in unis, and some of them go to Duntroon, and some of them go to these other higher education places, so that’s a big advantage for them. But as far as work is concerned, it’s just a

lovely big country town.

No. I didn’t really. My younger sister was the one who mainly helped my father. She did a lot of riding with him and helped with the farm, but it was only a little farm. It wasn’t a big holding.

Having come through the Depression years…but in Yarram you see, my Grandfather first of all built a block of shops, then he built the Yarram Hotel, then he built the bakery, then he built a garage, then he built a coffee palace. All those buildings are still there in existence now.

As I understand it, the hotel was sold recently for, I think, over a million. It’s no longer a bakery. The shops have recently been acquired by a new owner and he is slowly restoring them to what they were when my Grandfather built them. They’re two story buildings, the shops. There were four shops

and three dwellings above them, flats. So this bears out the remarks that I make, that he was a man… really, when you think of it, this was all around the turn of the century – almost sort of before his time. If you ever have the chance of going to Yarram you’ll see those places. They’re right there in the street; Commercial Road Yarram. And in fact the new owners have put

Stockwell…what does he call them? Not Stockwell Mansion, but Stockwell something or other. He’s got a big notice over the shops that he’s just acquired. They were fascinated when they came to restore them recently because all the original brick work he’s unearthed, and between the four shops are sort of archways of bricks.

This was the style in those days. My sister Lesley and my mother, after Dad died, they organised, they did all the business affairs with the flat dwellers and the people who had the shops, and then when my sister unfortunately died, my mother by this time was very elderly and it was my

task, because I was an executor of the will, to help run the business affairs of our estate. Because it had to be divided between the two families, the other side of our family really wanted the money. So I had to set about trying to find a buyer for the shops. In the meantime all the other buildings had been sold,

so it was only the shops that were still in our possession. And eventually, with the help of a very good real estate man in Yarram, we got a buyer. And when I look back, even though the price is perhaps infinitesimal to what you might get these days, we were well pleased with the price at that time, which was in the fifties. I think it was the fifties.

Yes, there again I got a great welcome there because I had had a sister who had gone through before me. It was the old Children’s Hospital of course. It wasn’t this one. It was the one up in Carlton…you’d know that old children’s hospital there.

I loved my training, strangely enough. It was a privilege to be a nurse caring for children. I had the most wonderful lot of patients that you could ever believe. Of course it was very strict discipline there, far more so than this latter day training. Of course these days to be a

trained nurse it’s a degree, and I think they come and go to the hospitals, but it’s not as such, not like our training was. It was three years training and then six months with adult nursing. So it was three and a half years of training. So I started off there and thoroughly enjoyed my training. You make some wonderful friends of course. I’ve still got some of those friends;

not many unfortunately. A lot of my mates have now gone, and I’m a sort of survivor. Anyway it was a very enjoyable part of my life, and on the third of September 1939 was the day I commenced my adult nursing at Melbourne Hospital, the old Melbourne Hospital in Lonsdale Street.

And practically as I walked up the steps of the place to start my training, war was declared, that day.

Yes, I had done my three years.

‘36.

No. No.

Whether it was that I was a country girl and not very up with this sort of thing, I don’t know. I lived a very protected life with my parents. I didn’t even have any brothers to show us the rough and tumble of life like brothers do. So whether it was that;

no. I wasn’t aware of it. I think probably just before war was declared we realised that something very nasty was taking place over in Europe. But the way Great Britain was trying to negotiate a peaceful solution with [Adolph] Hitler [German Chancellor]…we read about, heard about it, but it just ran off your back like water off a duck, you know.

It didn’t really worry us greatly. But the minute war was declared, I vowed and declared in my heart that when I finished my training, if the war was still going I would enlist in the army. Don’t know why. Why the army? Don’t know. Oh, I know why the army. During that time, one day I was in the city,

in Collins Street, and I bumped into a couple of my friends. An old pal from Merton Hall, a Sister from the Children’s Hospital, and they were striding down the street in their army uniform. They must have been on leave I think, and I thought to myself, it would be the army. Of course you had a choice, you could be air force or navy.

But of course it was very strict for the army. You had to be a certain age and I had all those qualifications because I was older.

At the Children’s Hospital.

Well, we had a Home Sister who

was very strict. The rooms were adequate. No shower recesses, just huge big bathrooms with baths as I remember. No such thing as a shower. Not in those days. But of course you see, I was used to having a bath being on the farm. I remember you’d have a bath in the morning and then as soon as you came off duty you’d have another

bath. The uniforms were all provided and all laundered. Everything was found for you there. The meals, and if you wanted to stay in over your days off, you could and get your meals there. Or if you wanted to go away for your days off you could go away.

We had friends here in Melbourne and I used to go away nearly always.

Well, quite often you’d have to come back to the hospital for the lectures. Whether you were on your days off or not, you had to attend those lectures. So you’d have to go back there for the lectures. I think we used to go to the pictures and concerts.

I think we used to play tennis from memory. They had a tennis court at the hospital I remember…and just be with our friends I think.

Well, I did. There was one. He went into the air force. He came from home.

Whenever he was in Melbourne I know he used to look me up and we would go for a meal or so on together. I was pretty shy in those days and didn’t really go much for boyfriends. You were so tired anyway. You worked six days out of the seven. There was only one day off. Long hours.

Well if it was night duty I think we used to go on at

nine o’clock and come off at seven. And during the day time I know you were on…I know they used to come along and bang on your door and wake you up at six o’clock I think it was, in the morning and go on at seven. And then if you had a broken shift you’d work from seven until ten, and then come back at two and then work through until that next

time. Like that. You’d come to the meals and then go back.

Well it was not lovely like it is these days. Occasionally, once a year, I go back to the Children’s Hospital for their annual past trainees thing, and the food is absolutely gorgeous in their dining room now.

And that’s what they get because it looked to be the community dining room place. I suppose it was adequate. A terrific lot of bread. Everybody put on weight you know. A lot of bread and butter and vegemite…a solid sort of hot midday meal, and light evening meal.

I think for breakfast… I never did eat a very great breakfast, but I think there were always eggs of some description. But I remember they would have fish always on a Friday and it was nearly always Flake. And I’ve never been able to eat Flake since. I took an instant dislike to it. Anything but Flake.

And it’s a lovely fish too. I don’t know what they used to do with it. I don’t like it much. But we used to have lovely roasts, roast dinners, I can remember. And just good substantial tucker I think it was, to keep everybody going.

Very strict. Very strict discipline in those days.

And we were terrified of the Matron, Miss Walsh. Terrified of her. Run a mile to miss her if we saw her coming. She would do the odd inspections around the wards, and it would all have to be spick and span when Matron was doing her rounds. The Sisters were understanding when we did awful things. I suppose we made

terrible mistakes. But for the first year you were nothing but a drudge really, cleaning all the shelves and the window sills and cleaning all the bed pans and that sort of thing. They don’t do that now, not like that. For the last year of your training you wore a special cap. It had a little frill along the back. It was a little plain cap for the first two years,

but for your third year you got this rather pretty frilly cap that showed you were doing your third year nursing. At the Children’s Hospital they had a branch down at Frankston. It was an orthopaedic section of the Children’s Hospital, and TB [tuberculosis] hips and those sorts of patients were sent to Frankston. I happened to spend six months down there

training, which was absolutely lovely. It’s still there, that hospital at Frankston, or it’s really Mount Eliza and it’s now something else. It’s no longer a children’s hospital. If you were lucky enough to go there in the summer of course, it was lovely. It was out on the water and it was especially chosen for

orthopaedics. It was something about the air at Frankston they thought was suitable for a hospital. So that was a lovely episode and one of the highs of my training. One of the lows, of course, was when I had to have an appendectomy just towards the end of my training. And unfortunately it interfered with my training for theatre. Of course when I went back to the theatre to do my theatre training,

the smell of the anaesthetic and everything, I hated it so much that I really didn’t enjoy my theatre training. But apart from that I enjoyed my training.

Not an emergency. I just had a grizzly old pain there and I went back and one of our doctors did the operation. But unfortunately

I had a bit of a setback from that operation because I remember when I woke up I had a dreadfully painful eye. I wasn’t even worried about the rest of it because I had a very painful eye. They whistled up the eye surgeon. Now I never did hear, but I have a horrible feeling that I got some anaesthetic dropped in my eye; ether you see,

and I had to have that all treated and I had quite a long convalescence. Six weeks I think I was away, so I had to hook on another six weeks onto my training to compensate for that time.

Yes,

Third September 1939 was the day I walked into the Melbourne Hospital to do my adult training. Mostly you were sent to the Women’s Hospital. That’s where most of the trainees went, but for some reason I was sent to the Melbourne which was rather a rarity. Not many of the people went to the Melbourne. But I loved the adult nursing.

I worked in a ward where one of our Sisters immediately went to the war. She waited until she was whistled up and then she went. I caught up with her when the war was over, and she was a member of the Nurses Club of course. She was one of my Sisters. She was lovely. I really loved her.

I did some night duty at the Melbourne, and I know I worked in the sep [septic] ward at the Melbourne which was a real eye opener. Very, very different sort of nursing of course.

Septic. The septic ward. It was where we had all the dreadful boils and all those really nasty things, before the days of antibiotics.

Just starting to become the days of penicillin. I think I’m right in saying that, or perhaps penicillin was more in the war years. Of course a lot of the Residents were all heading off to the war. A lot of them died of course. A lot of them didn’t. Weary Dunlop was there

at the Melbourne at that time.

I do. I remember him. I remember seeing him wandering around. He always looked sort of tired looking but I don’t know if that’s why they called him Weary. I think there is a story that attaches to Weary Dunlop, but I don’t think it was that. A lot of the Melbourne residents all headed off to the war.

Bluey Stewart was another one. He’s written a wonderful book I read. He died. There was another one who was a psychiatrist, but he was killed; he died. But a lot of them came home of course.

So I had to finish my training, and I remember one of the orals, one of the

people examining us said to me, ‘What are you going to do, Nurse Stockwell, after the war?’ I said, ‘I’m going to be an army Nurse’. She said, ‘When’s this going to happen’? I said, ‘I don’t know but I’ve got my name down’. You know you had to register and then you had to wait until you were called up. I didn’t really get in until 1941 and the war had been going for – well not two years, but nearly.

By that time I did the six months and then I was a Staff Nurse. I was invited back to be a Staff Nurse at the hospital. And I was down here at Hampton, which was a rehabilitation type of a place, when I eventually got called up. That would have been around about the beginning of 1941.

And of course it took a while to get myself organised.

Twenty five.

No. For those girls who did marry, and quite a lot did…we had a few up on the Tablelands who were married and they were lovely occasions. But then they had to come back to Heidelberg and I think eventually

would have got out of the army. But of course these days, in any of the services they can all be married.

Yes whether it was…I reflect on this sometimes, whether it was something to do with my Uncle Reg.

Whether it was that. And on the days off we had some family friends who were absolutely marvellous to both Lucy and myself. It was just like a second home in Melbourne, and my Uncle, well we called him Uncle but he was really Uncle Miller, had been dreadfully badly gassed during the war and he did suffer frightfully after the war.

Whether it was seeing and hearing that I don’t know. Whether it was because I had enjoyed the adult nursing so much that really fixed it in my mind to look after adult men.

No, she got married. She didn’t ever

do any nursing after she was married. She had met Geoff during her training and as soon as she finished her training she was married. She had to finish her training at Edward Hospital. That’s where she did her six months. She didn’t ever…although she has always been very interested in the nursing game and kept up with most of the things

So she’s very knowledgeable about these things.

Yes, at school. And then Lesley went into the air force as a WAAAF, and then she married my brother-in-law who came out of the army during the war. I know, I was her

bridesmaid, and I was in my uniform. I came down for the wedding. They gave me some leave from the Tablelands when Les was married to Trevor. And Anne went into the air force and she was a technician. She worked on the planes. She was in Sale and various other places as a WAAAF.

Well I think it was sort of an inevitable thing. Funnily enough I don’t have that. I’ve got quite a few of the other things. I’ve got quite a few of those old things in that book there; my little army book and so on.

But I haven’t got that letter. I think I was so excited about it. Then of course as I told Elizabeth, the first thing you had to do was have a medical. Well I found I had to have my tonsils out. So back I went to Yarram and the local doctor, Doctor Martin had left a stump. I had had my tonsils out once before

but there was an infected stump there which had to come out. So I had to have a tonsillectomy and get over that. So I did all of that. Then when I was better from that they did all the other medical tests and so on, X-rays and all the rest of it, and then they sent you off to have your uniform made. You’ve probably heard this a million times have you Annie [interviewer]?

Haven’t you?

Well, there was a suit. I’ve still got my suit there hanging in the cupboard. I’m the only one of the returned nurses I think, who can still get into the army uniform. But I’m the only one. And as a matter of a fact, because we’ve got a big celebration coming up, our 100 years, I haven’t told anybody but I think

I’ll wear the uniform. It’s an ecumenical service down at the St John of God Church down here in Brighton, and then a luncheon at the International. I think I might climb into the old uniform.

You reckon? Any rate, then you were told to go and have your suit made, and I think his name was

Raven Ho or Raven’s Wood or something. Beautiful suits they are, and later on if you’re interested I’ll pull it out of the cupboard and show it to you. Unfortunately I think the skirt’s got a few moth holes in it but the rest of it is in good shape. And with that you wore a white shirt, a brown tie, a rising sun brooch, a hat. I’ve got the whole…the little bag,

a little purse about that big. That’s all you were allowed to carry. A leather purse. I don’t know where everything else went, I suppose into your luggage. That was your official walking out uniform. I’ve got a little photo in the desk there and I’ll show you that as well. So that took a few fittings and so on to have that made.

And then there were the others…the ward uniforms to have made. So you went to the nurses uniform equipment place to have that made. So I went along to this place, and finally they told me that everything was ready for me. So they brought out all these uniforms; I think there were to be six uniforms. Very stiff collars, very stiff cuffs that clipped together with

little cufflink things. There was a little red cape and of course the white veil. This was the uniform. So she brought out these uniforms and lay them on her bench, and the phone rang and away she went. She said, ‘Excuse me for a minute’. She came back and said, ‘Miss Stockwell that phone call concerned you’. At this stage I was to go to Singapore. That was where my posting was.

2/13th AGH [Australian General Hospital], and this uniform was a lighter weight material I think they made for the hotter climates. She said, ‘That phone call was about you’. She said, ‘I have to make you different uniforms. You’re not going to Singapore, you’re going to the Middle East’. And that’s how I escaped being a POW [Prisoner of War].

The funny thing

was, my mother was always a little bit vague. She was in an absolutely fever when she knew I was going to Singapore. After that she didn’t miss a beat. It didn’t worry her. And that’s where I ended up, in the Middle East. So I needed all the uniforms to be made again. So eventually I was all equipped. Everything was all ready and then I got the word to say I was to go

out here at Broadmeadows which was a little staging camp. One of my mates out there was a girl called Beryl Woodbridge who ended up a POW. She went to Singapore. One of the other girls…I have a feeling she died up there. But she was at Broadmeadows too. I’m not absolutely certain about

that, but I know Beryl was, because she came through the hospital at the end of the war. That was part of my army experience. I was with the hospital that went to Singapore to repatriate all the prisoners of war.

It was lovely. It was a little staging camp. And funnily enough, the man who was in charge of it was a man called Major Garlock. After the war, years later, when I was married

and decided to go back to nursing, I saw there was a vacancy over at a hospital in Brighton called Padua. I applied to nurse there and who should be the matron but a Matron Garlock. It was either his cousin or his sister. It was an unusual name and that’s how I remembered the name. But it was really just a staging camp. It was a little camp hospital

in other words. I think we just had a good time there. I don’t remember doing much in the way of nursing. It was like little RAPs [Regimental Aid Posts]. I suppose there were wards, just let me think. Yes there were wards, little wooden wards, but the orderly did everything. The first time I ever had the advantage of having an assistant

with nursing. He was the one who just steered you along the right course. He knew exactly what you had to do, the Sister had to do. We always had a wonderful affinity with the orderlies though, and all the patients and medical staff. People ask me this, ‘Were the boys, the patients ever rude to you’? Never. Never.

I suppose I shouldn’t say ‘Never’. There were perhaps just a couple of episodes which I can recollect where I might have had a bit of a falling out with the boys. But in the main they sort of loved us around I think.

No. No.

No.

I suppose we did when I joined the unit,

but not there though, we didn’t have to do any marching. But I know, over in Egypt….now just a shake. We went first of to Gaza, that was very – the staging camp was, 2/1st AGH, everybody went there. Then eventually I came back to my hospital, which was in Egypt on the Suez Canal, El Kantara.

That was a big, huge big tented hospital there. The 2/2nd AGH; there’s the little thing about it up there. And that was my hospital for all the ensuing years.

Only a short while. April, May, June, July, August, September, six months.

Yes, ‘41. Then we left in September and got to the Middle East at the end of ‘41.

On the Queen Mary. The movement order was to travel from Melbourne to Sydney, and from memory I went by train…

can’t remember if I was with anybody, but I know I was in with a group because I know we were met and taken straight to the ship. Yes straight to the ship and it was the Queen Mary sitting in the middle of Sydney Harbour, and just a little bit further along was the Queen Elizabeth. The two of them were there, and then all the naval ships,

and there were a few other ships that were carrying troops. Of course they carried an enormous number of troops as you know. I think somewhere in the vicinity of 2000 or something like that. It was so big, the Queen Mary, that there was no way you could tie her up.

We were taken out to the ship on sort of ferries, I suppose.

Yes. At home, we had farewell leave. But I never contemplated anything happening to me. I can be quite honest in saying that.

It gave you a very, very satisfactory feeling to have a naval vessel to …we did for a while with the Queen Mary until we left Australian waters. We had an escort, a naval escort. Coming back from the Middle East we had a naval escort all the way. And it gave you a very comfortable feeling to know you had an escort. But apart from that,

I suppose my poor old Mum and Dad shed buckets of tears but I don’t remember…I suppose I did. I suppose I was because I was always a bit homesick right from the word go. Right up until my married years. I was still homesick when I had to say goodbye to Dad and Mum.

I didn’t know I was going to Palestine; to Gaza though.

I don’t know if we knew where our hospital was until you got there, to where the actual posting was. It was Middle East. We went over on the Queen Mary. We sailed with the Queen Elizabeth, and it was a sight I’ll never forget, looking across and seeing this other enormous ship because I had never been on board a ship before, and

then we struck the most frightful weather. April you see it was, April…no, September. Through the Great Australian Bight, dreadfully rough and I know I was feeling very squeamish at this stage and I was advised by one of the boys who said, ‘Look if you’re feeling seasick don’t come down in the lower decks, get right up on the top’. And I always did that. I got up on the upper decks where there was plenty of air.

And that did help. They said, ‘Always eat. Even though you mightn’t feel inclined to eat, always eat’. There was no use not eating, just give yourself a bit of food. It helps to counteract seasickness.

Beautiful. I think we occupied a cabin and there were four of us in it,

with all of our cabin trunks. So you can imagine it was huge. We had our own en-suite. We occupied a cabin that had originally been occupied by a very famous actress. The Queen Mary used to sail from America to England, America to England…Betty Grable or one of these people had occupied it. So there was four of us

in the cabin, and of course none of us knew each other, but we soon got to know each other. It was such a beautiful ship of course. We had the opportunity when we visited America, which is where the Queen Mary is now as a sort of restaurant, out of Los Angeles. You can go and visit it by bus and Jim and I went to see the Queen Mary a few years ago.

I tried to look for it but it’s all different now. It’s like a big shop and restaurant. It’s not the same as it used to be. It’s still got the same woodwork that I remember. It was huge of course. We had the time of our lives because we didn’t have to do very much. There were a swag of nurses and we only had to do a very little bit of nursing in the little hospital. Nobody seemed to get very sick. But I went down unfortunately with that

upper respiratory track infection and I was quite sick on the boat. Lost my voice and I was still sick when I landed. The minute I got to Gaza I had this upper respiratory track infection still, and I got dysentery and sand fly fever and the throat and everything, and I went straight into the hospital.

So that’s where I spent the first little while. I couldn’t have been sick right from the beginning though, because while I was there I had two trips, one to Jerusalem and one on another day to Tel Aviv. A day trip. So I must have had a bit of time when I was alright before I actually went into the hospital.

Yes. What is now Sri Lanka, Colombo in those days.

The ship called there; Trincomalee was the name of the port. That’s where they refuelled and we landed there and had a lovely day I remember and went up to the mountain. It’s a lovely little island, Colombo. We stayed there twenty four hours I think. Then

we ended up by going up the Red Sea to the Port of Suez and that’s where we landed. We were brought into the shore on these big sort of flat things and then transferred by train to El Kantara. That’s where we got off the train and crossed over.

Then we had to board another train on the other side of the canal and go to Gaza from there.

From there we were transferred to Gaza, and the 2/1st AGH which had a big hospital there was established at Gaza. It had lots of living quarters for transit army nurses coming through. See, we were all reinforcements for the hospitals. It was then

that we were told which was to be our hospital. And as I say, unfortunately I was sick and the Matron of the 2/1st AGH was a lovely looking lady, and on this particular night in the tent I couldn’t stop coughing. I kept everybody awake and I felt simply frightful, so I struggled over and found the hospital. I knocked on the door and she answered the door, the Matron.

I said I’m feeling dreadfully sick and I’m keeping all my friends awake, is there anything you can give me for my cough? She said, I think we’ll put you into the hospital. So I just went in like that. I remember that. I think we’ve lost her since. I don’t think she’s alive, Matron Falls. But she was lovely. Anyway, I must have got over that little episode and that’s when I had the two trips.

The trip to Jerusalem one day…

It was absolutely incredible. We were driven, and I remember them telling us about…you wind your way down through, past all the various hills to get into Jerusalem. I remember them telling us all about that and the driver describing it. Of course the army, they were good like that. We would always get a chauffeur-driven army car

if you wanted anything. We always did up on the Tablelands. They would always lay one on for you if you had a day off or something. So we must have had a load of us, about four or five of us, to go to Jerusalem. We went to the old city, I remember that, and we joined up with the New Zealand boys for a tour. We were lucky enough to strike a tour. At that time

they were redoing the part where presumably where Jesus was executed; put to death on the cross. They were either refurbishing it or reconstructing it because there were places we couldn’t really see to the best advantage but we saw the place where Jesus was presumably

…the little grave…I didn’t ever get to Bethlehem; just did a tour of the old city. The Wailing Wall we saw, I remember that. Then either before the tour started or afterwards, we were filling in a bit of time – it might have been afterwards – we walked outside the old city walls,

and quite close was a huge big sort of auditorium. We walked over to have a look to see what it was and I could hear this lovely music and it was a symphony concert going on or a rehearsal. Well, you know how musical the Jewish people are. So that was lovely. We listened to that for a while. I can remember that on the day. So that was our day. What would you

see of Jerusalem in a day? You know it was so long ago and I wish I could go back. But I wouldn’t go back now, it’s just too risky at the moment.

I’m just trying to think. I think they packed us a lunch. I don’t know if we did have to go and eat

anywhere. Not from memory. But the day we went to Tel Aviv we ate in one of the restaurants. But I wasn’t very well that day. That was the day I started to get the dysentery, and of course that put me into hospital. I went down with dysentery and the sand fly fever. Back into the hospital I went. Well then, unfortunately

all my mates, the ones who were going down to the2/2nd, they all departed and I was in the hospital and I was left behind until I was better. Then I was sent down to the convalescent hospital in Cairo. That was absolutely gorgeous. I was telling Elizabeth. There was a sick nurses’ house out on Gizera Island which was

in the middle of the Nile.

Tel Aviv was of course, from memory, a bit of a swinging city. Different to Jerusalem. Modern, very modern. And from memory it’s on the water. I remember seeing the sea.

We were driven all around and so on. We just wandered through the shops. It’s really just like a big city. Nothing of any great interest, like in Jerusalem. But I think I was nicking in and nicking out of every available toilet, so that wasn’t very pleasant. But you didn’t worry about it too much. You just got what everyone else got when you hit the Middle East.

And of course I suppose it was the water or whatever it was. But that was just one of the things you would get. But any rate home I went and into the hospital and then of course down to Cairo for convalescence on this lovely island. A lovely little island it was. There was another person there from Sydney. I can’t remember her name. She loved walking early and

she was always ready for anyone who was a starter to walk. Well, I didn’t mind and we’d walk around this island first thing in the morning, early about sixish, and get back in time for breakfast. They had care for people, you just rested. They had a few excursions if you were well enough. We were shown all sorts of the highlights of Cairo while I was there. I was there I think for a couple of weeks

getting better. Then eventually from there I went back to the 2/2nd and caught up with my friends.

On the canal. At El Kantara, just back a little bit from the canal. In fact from the canal you could see the tops of the ships going along the canal from our hospital. That was heading

towards the end of the year.

Yes, ‘41.

No, because Tobruk and all those awful battles that had been fought along the Mediterranean were over and won at that stage. The only one

that was still looming was El Alamein. And that didn’t happen until after we left. Although we knew it was going to happen, Annie, because we had a staging period while we were waiting for our ship before we all came home at Suez. And on the skyline you could see all this absolutely constant parade of military ware.

We knew something was looming, and of course our 9th Division was left in the Middle East for that war, and the 7th and the 6th Division were brought home. This was all this political thing that went on between our Prime Minister and Winston Churchill. And he demanded that our two divisions come home because by that time things were very dicey up in Singapore and the Far East.

And of course our hospital was to come home.

I can’t remember. Well, I know I worked in the officers’ ward, and at that time we had a patient there; a very well known name from Sydney,

a young man. And I think it was a sort of paralysis and he had to have a Special. And I was instructed to be his Special. And I looked after him, I know. And I know I was in that ward at Christmas time because we had the great big Christmas party, I remember. And funnily enough

for the entertainment we were told there was going to be a ballet that we were going to watch. Well I pricked up my ears because of my old love of ballet, and it was a male nurse. It was the first time I had ever come across anything like homosexuality. You know, we didn’t know anything about it. We didn’t know a thing about homosexuality, and at that age, can you believe this. When little kids of twelve or fourteen or even younger know all about

it now? We didn’t. Well this vision came on to dance the Dying Swan. He had the tutu and the pink ballet shoes and the everything elses. And I was absolutely dumbfounded, and I remember one of the – I don’t know who he was, one of the officers – said to me that he was …they made lovely male nurses and I think it’s a marvellous profession for the homosexual.

And he was an orderly, yo u see. So there he was doing his bit for his country despite the fact he danced the Dying Swan for us for entertainment at our Christmas party.

He did. With the lovely background music.

Yes. We had lovely music. In fact we had lovely music organizations throughout my whole army nursing. Over in

the Middle East, say once a week, everybody would gather and they would rustle up the records. In those days they would have been those big old ones you know.

Yes, that’s what they would have been. We’d have a musical evening. And the same when we were in Queensland, we still had those musical gatherings. I used to go to them every now and again.

So that was a nice diversion.

A lovely Christmas! And of course the wards turned on gorgeous…even all through those war years, the wards had absolutely gorgeous Christmas parties. I remember one year, a ruling came from the CO [Commanding Officer] that there was to be no alcohol. Well fancy having a party with no …so anyway they decided in our ward – our ward was the ear, nose and throat ward – and they decided they’d make some fruit

punch. They had this enormous container of this so-called innocuous fruit drink, and I don’t know how many bottles of whatever went into it. Everybody was as silly as wet hens after the party. You can imagine. So much for the CO’s instruction I think. But we used to have lovely celebrations like that.

Birthdays and that sort of thing. If some of the staff were having birthdays they’d turn on a party. But anyway, I looked after this young man. He had a craving…he said he wanted some avocado. So would you believe this, our food department rustled up one from somewhere, I don’t know where. It was the first time

I had had an avocado. I didn’t know what it was. Aren’t they called officially avocado pears? Well I thought it was a pear. Anyway they got it for him.

I don’t know if I should mention his name.

He was a Hawdon. One of the Hawdon boys. I know he had to be invalided home. He was dreadfully sick. But we rustled

him up at the 2/2nd AGH. Now our hospital was lucky enough to have Sir Benny Frank…no, not Sir Benny…the first doctor to do all the plastic surgery. And they had a whole ward of it in our hospital and I think that was where he first started.

All that wonderful rehabilitation. I didn’t ever work on that ward but he did have a ward at our hospital.

Well it was a big tented hospital. We lived in a tent of course. There were four or six of us in a tent. It must have four of us. And big EPR [Emergency Preparedness]

tents, the big square ones. Then the wards; from memory they had the sort of tented sides, and then like a little constructed central part, and then another part on the other end, and that would be another ward and this would be one ward. They might have been both medical wards.

When I got over there, as I say, things had quietened down a little bit, and then all the preparations to dismantle our hospital. I know that was what we were doing. Packing everything up and dismantling the wards. More or less sort of in limbo, waiting for our movements. And then of course we were all moved down to

Suez, and all domiciled down there. They had a big staging camp down there, and finally we were all shipped out again on the Strathallan on which I came home. That was a much smaller ship and that was the one of course that had the naval escort. But it was quite fascinating.

Well Cairo was of course…all those museums and important places,

they were all shrouded in covers and anything of importance had been taken and hidden away. I don’t know where they had them all, but I think they had. But it still had the market, the Muski, where there was the trinkets and jewellery and perfumes. Of course Cairo is very famous for all its beautiful perfumes. Whether they all come from Paris or not I don’t know. But that’s one thing I remember about it. You would walk into a stall

and the predominant smell of the lovely French perfume. And going down on one of the train trips, there was a young Egyptian and for some reason or other they started to talk to me, and they said to me, ‘When you’re in Cairo come on in. We’ve got a big emporium, a big store’. So I went into their store as I remember and said ‘Hello’ to them. But I remember the French perfume there.

That was one thing I remember. And then the beautiful mosques with the minarets. But the one sound in Gaza that sticks in my memory was the noise of the camels at dusk. They would all come back from wherever they had been. Their keepers yelling out to them as they came traipsing back in,

coming home. I remember that. It was a strange sort of noise.

No. Only at the hotel. No, not much at all. We all hunted around in packs. I know when we travelled out to see the pyramids we went with a group, and

we stopped at Mena House which was the first port of call just adjacent to the pyramids. And then I have a feeling we were with a group of Aussies and we climbed up some of the pyramids. I didn’t get very far but some of them did. They got right up. You can scrabble your way right up, almost to the top. Some of those cheeky devils, the boys. But I only got to about the

first layer. But I can remember the Sphinx and having a look at that. That’s quite close to the pyramid. Then I remember we were invited at night by a couple of New Zealand fellows, and we went out and saw the pyramids at night. We went out in a gharry; you know that’s one of their hansom cabs, horse-drawn. I remember that. Who it was and what their names were eludes me.

Oh yes. You did when you got down to Cairo. Of course there were nightclubs.

I remember there was a doctor who invited me to accompany him to this nightclub and of course there was a terrific lot of belly dancing and that sort of thing. It was quite a learning curve for me I can tell you. But mostly that

sort of thing, wobbling around. And singing and dancing and that sort of entertainment. Talking of entertainment…the musical groups and concert parties that entertained the troops were absolutely out of this world. Absolutely marvellous, some of the concerts we saw.

You think back and think of a concert party like Bob Hope and how he used to…with a team of gorgeous people. Ours were equally as good. Wonderful they were. Lovely dance bands and different items and all that sort of thing. They had them on and off, wherever I was. Every now and again you’d hear there was going to a concert and everybody would roll along to it

if you were off duty. You were wild if you weren’t.

Yes …oh no. These were Australian concert parties.

Oh yes. They did. I just loved all that side of it. All that sort of thing, any dancing, always intrigued me.

Yes indeed.

We didn’t drink, not much, although I can well remember – and I’ve told my grandchildren this, my two grandsons in particular – I remember one of the boys telling me on the Queen Mary, ‘Marg, the safest drink for you to drink is whisky and water’.

You can be as safe as the Bank of England with whisky and water because you can say, ‘Just put a drop more water in it’, and you can make it last the whole evening, with the minimum amount of alcoholic content. And it’s so true. But of course the youngsters these days, they don’t go for the top shelf much. It’s mostly the beer they like.

No.

Well the beer has the most horrible effect on my grandson, one of them, so he finds that rum and coke is quite a safe drink.

Yes. And a bit more coke. But I don’t remember anything, but I have got in that book, I have got a menu that happened at the Continental, but whether it had drink on it I can’t remember.

I’ve got a scrap book there of all my things, anything of importance starting from day one.

Well, one of my mates was a girl called Sadie Thomas. She was on the ship going over to the Middle East. She was at the Alfred Hospital training. We were together at the 2/2nd. It just so happened we were sent to the same hospital. I shared the tent with her when I got back

from Cairo. We went to Cairo together. In the meantime she had fallen in love with a man called Philip Woodward and they ended up marrying, and he ended up a judge in New South Wales. They had three daughters, one of whom is here in Melbourne. So we watched that romance go on, even down in Cairo,

Philip was there when we were on that holiday at Christmas. She was one of my friends, but she died last year which was sad. When you think of our age we’ve done pretty well, haven’t we?

Yes, I reckon. So she was one of my friends. That little photo I told you, Rolly was from the West. Pat was from the West. Those two who have died. They joined our ship going over.

Mostly my real mates were those who went over to the Middle East. Another one called Molly Sutherland, she has died. Her photo isn’t there. But we all really stuck together. We all moved from there. We all went up to Queensland to Watten first of all, and then up to the Tablelands. We all followed much the same path.

And Sadie, of course, was married from Queensland. She had to leave the hospital there. And she wasn’t in the hospital which was selected to go to Singapore, but Rolly was, Rolly Brooking. And another friend of mine called Margaret Lloyd. She has subsequently died, and she was one of my great mates which went with the hospital to Singapore to repat the prisoners of war. So we

were pretty lucky. We sort of stayed together most of the time. The only time I was parted from those friends was the last few months of my army, which was up at Barranquilla. I lost them then. I left them then. I was on my own then.

Rumour had it that we were going to

Balikpapan, or one of the places along in that New Guinea part. But of course we didn’t ever get there because on the water, on our way home, Singapore fell. So instead of going direct there, they brought the ships home. First of all we landed in Perth, and then came around to Adelaide and that’s where we disembarked on

St Patrick’s Day 1942. March the seventeenth. Yes that’s it. That’s the day. Then we were domiciled in Adelaide. People put us up for such time as we got our next movement order, and I think we were there for about ten days in Adelaide. And they were lovely, the people. I know

where I stayed with a family…I can’t remember their name but I know the suburb was Woodside. That was where the hospital was, and we had an AGH at Woodside. But we got old welcome home in Perth, of course. Well, Rolly was from Perth and so we were entertained. We went out to her mother’s and we all had a nice shower because we had been on board ship for a couple

of weeks. We all had baths and showers and freshened up.

No. Well I suppose we did. I don’t remember doing any nursing on the ship, unless they had their own crew on the ship. I don’t remember us doing…going over I remember doing a little bit on the

Queen Mary, but nothing on the way back. I don’t remember any.

Then we went home on home leave, and then we had to reassemble. We were given a couple of weeks I think, or something like that. Then we had to book into Heidelberg. And we were all at Heidelberg and I know I lived in the nurses’ home there. There was a lovely nurses’ home.

I’m just trying to remember…I think I was on night duty there, but nothing very much in the way of nursing. And then before you could say Jack, our hospital was moved and away we went to Queensland.

I think they were so happy [to see] me home that it was just one big…it was lovely to catch up with all the rellies and that sort of thing. This would have been in 1942, so the war was at a pretty dicey level in Europe. The Middle East part of it, and it was before El Alamein, that was coming up.

The big El Alamein war. So it was – really we were a long way from the action then.

Well it was so hush hush. They didn’t want to frighten everybody. It was hush hush. You didn’t sort of hear very much about what was going on.

I don’t think we realised about the frightful POW situation. We got a little bit of news because our hospital used to bring out a little daily paper, you see. And it was all done through radio in those days and they’d have all the latest messages, and you’d get a bit of an idea of what was going on over in Europe.

I suppose we followed it vaguely but hoped that everything…I think when it came to the crunch at El Alamein, everybody was sitting up and taking notice. But by the time we got to the Middle East, the Tobruk business, that was all behind us. And Crete and Greece, that was all over and done with.

They were all behind us.

Yes, I probably did. I think travel does that for you. I was lucky enough to have had a very easy time. When I read some of the histories about how hard the hospitals had to work,

and if you’re ever lucky enough…now a girl came to me recently who was doing a thesis about her old mother, I think it was, who was an army nurse in World War I. How they worked was absolutely…and she asked me if I would proof-read this thing she was writing. Which I did, pages and pages and pages of it, but it was an eye opener to me

how those women worked under the most appalling conditions. And she was in the Middle East, and strangely enough, she had mentioned Trincomalee and Colombo and El Kantara and all the various places and other places that I knew. It was quite interesting really.

A very short time, and then away we went. We got to Brisbane, then we were shipped out by train through Charters Towers, through Hughenden and out to a godforsaken place called Watten. Rotton Watten we immediately called it.

Way out in the sticks. Stuck out there in a tented hospital. We were there for about a year, I think it was. I have got the history of it over there in one of my books. I should have had a read of it just to familiarise myself. But what they had in mind, this was their master plan,

was that by this time, with what was going on up in Singapore, they felt that if they had various stages of hospitals, if they had to retire back there would be a hospital to take care of casualties, you see. So we were put there with this in view, but then they changed their thinking and it was decided then I suppose,

to select the Atherton Tablelands as a training ground for thousands of troops who were going to New Guinea. It was similar sort of vegetation and the lie of the land was not unlike New Guinea. That’s where they trained thousands of Australian troops; up in the Tablelands.

So of course they had to establish a couple of big hospitals up there, and ours was one, and the 2/6th AGH was the second one. Their hospital was through the trees. You could almost see it from ours. So there were those two hospitals together, and it was a CCS, a Casualty Clearing Station, and a couple of minor ones. So we were the ones that took care of everything. Well then they started to bring casualties down from

New Guinea. Mostly I think they had been treated in hospitals in New Guinea first, invalided down and staged through our hospital, and then get sent home for further treatment, or to the big hospitals like Heidelberg and Concord. Where all the capital cities are, they all had big hospitals established by this time.

I suppose they were from where the boys had been training, in and around about there. I think there was a place at Charters Towers where they were. I can’t remember. I know they used to come in by ambulance. I know I worked in the medical

ward and I was on night duty for a while there also in the medical ward. Then of course what happened was that it was hit by the cyclone, like a monsoon. Completely blew down the whole hospital. There was not one tent left standing. Not one.

It did. It did. You could hear the roar of it coming. You’ve read about these cyclones that hit the north of Queensland. They come in, Cyclone Tracey, Cyclone this and Cyclone that. But one definitely hit our hospital followed by the most torrential rain. There was not one tent left standing.

In the meantime they were starting to build what was to be a permanent hospital, with a sort of headquarters and buildings and so on. So of course, all our tents were blown down so we were moved up to some of these temporary quarters up there. That’s where we slept I know, and they rustled up temporary accommodation for us in the interim. As a result of the cyclone

it was decided to disband all ideas of a hospital there. In the meantime their thinking might have changed and the Atherton Tablelands was selected. Some of us were sent to a little hospital in Townsville. We worked there for a little while. I remember Sadie and I were sent to a ward where we had to get the ward ready for admissions

for patients. The hospital was right on the water, right close to the sea, and very, very heavy sandy situation. I can remember we trudged around through all this sand. It was very heavy going…making up beds and so on. That’s what we did there, just helping out temporarily. And then eventually we left there and went up via

Cairns by train up onto the Tablelands to the first temporary site of the 2/2nd AGH, which was Rocky Creek. It’s marked ‘Rocky Creek’ there now. You can check that. They had set up a sort of hospital. It was in transit when we got there. We were still in the tents.

Well…see up at Atherton we had a skin ward, ear nose and throat wards, medical wards, nurses ward, officers ward, theatre, administrative block, nursing…all our nursing home part

and that part of it there. I suppose there were dozens of tents. I’ve got a picture of my tent which was painted by one of our patients. He was in our hospital for two months. A man called Franklin Bennett and everybody had these paintings done. And I’ve got three out in the passage there. You asked him to come and paint your tent or whatever. I’ve got a painting

of the entrance to our hospital with the boom gate and the little guard tent. Then in the distance are some of the wards, that’s one painting. Then I’ve got a painting of my tent. Then recently I was sent a third, but that is different. That’s a computerised picture of one of his original paintings that came into the possession of a friend,

and because she knew I had two, she sent me this third one. The widow of that patient of ours wanted to know if anybody had one of the entrance of our hospital. Well I had one. At great expense I’ve had it removed from its frame, all redone and photostat copies taken of mine, and she’s very thrilled about it. She’s still alive, that wife. But he was a man

who was our patient for a long time, and he was sort of like an amateur artist. I’ve got the paintings there. So there would have been many tents. Then all the quarters of all the staff. You see I’m just talking about the nursing quarters. Well, all the men would have had quarters somewhere, I don’t know where. I was never privy to seeing inside any of their quarters. Never.

Just about I think. I know we used to be escorted home to the outbound fence around our tents. I think it was a fence. I can’t remember properly.

Yes that’s it. Up in Egypt every night there was a film. They had an open air film

at El Kantara, a big open air thing, and they had seats like recliner seat things. And every night there was a different picture so that was something you could go and see in the evening when you were off duty.

I suppose they were the ones that were being made in those days. You know the Betty Grables and probably the Broadway melodies of something or other, thirty two

or whatever it was. Those sorts of films I think.

The Tablelands, we had the concert parties of course. We must have had a big community room because I remember one concert party, and the leader of it was a chap called Eddie Cordroy. Well Eddie and I struck up a bit of friendship. They danced

with us. It was a dance folly to their lovely music. I know I read all about Eddie after the war, and he went back to New York. He was a musician. He was a pianist. A lovely pianist. I remember him. I don’t know whether he’s still around over there in New York, but that’s where he ended up I know. But I remember that concert was in a hall so we must have had a hall there.

But we didn’t have pictures at Atherton, not that I can remember.

Atherton. But there was the Officers’ Club. The hotel had been taken over and made into the Officers’ Club, and that was where we had lovely times. Lovely meals and then there would always be a dance band.

Of course all the units had a dance band. Most of them had a little band. So you had a variety of music and they’d engage a dance band you see, and of course we were officers. By this time we were officers. We were all officers around about the year 1942.

Lieutenant. Or, the Sisters in

charge of the wards were captains, and our matron I think was a major, or a colonel. But we were just the also-rans, the lieutenants. Of course we would be invited to all these lovely evenings. Or alternatively out at the headquarters they used to turn on the most wonderful dinners, and we’d perhaps receive invitations.

My cousin’s husband was a doctor, and he was with one of the headquarter things. I caught up with him. My brother-in-law, my future brother-in-law, was on the Tablelands. Some of the boys from Yarram were on the Tablelands. A couple of boys I knew from Wesley College, I caught up with them. You know you ran into these sorts of people up on the Tablelands, so I always had plenty of

people who would take me out. Take me to the Club.

Well I worked in the officers’ ward first of all. I don’t remember anyone really very sick there, but I suppose they were. I think it

was mainly medical nursing. Out there in those conditions in the jungle, they got all these nasty things like sand fly fever and those sorts of things. So a lot of the wards were medical. I never did work in the skin ward. I finished up most of my days on the Tableland in the ear, nose and throat ward. I was

assistant to Major Brighton who was the war nose and throat specialist. We had our own little hut, and of course it would be arranged from out in the units for the boys who wanted ear nose and throat examinations. Sinuses, ears, all those nasty things cropped up in the jungle and

we were very busy because of that reason. So I spent quite a bit of time there with him. And we had an adjacent ward for anybody who was really sick. For tonsillectomies, septum operations, nose operations and this sort of thing. I did quite a lot of work for quite a long while in that.

Yes, and for the sick nurses.

Yes they did. I had to Special a general once. I can’t remember his name, but he had gout in his foot.

It was a very painful thing too.

He was nice though. He was pretty easy but it was a pretty easy sort of job. He had to be hospitalised until that foot got better.

I can’t remember anything specifically, but I do know this. That up on the Tablelands

I was with a little group that used to have to go out on safari. They were making a study of the mosquitos and the sand flies and the effect that it had for malaria and that sort of thing. But it didn’t last very long. That little session didn’t last very long. I remember going out a few times and I remember working in a ward

where they were experimenting with artificial malaria, and from memory it was a voluntary thing. The patients were volunteers to come in and be given malaria while they made a study of the treatment of it. I remember working in that ward for a while.

No, but they were very sick. Malaria is a wretched disease, of course. We probably treated a lot who came down from New Guinea.

With Atebrin and…it’s really a fever. It has to go through the cycle. They run these raging temperatures. We had to sponge them

to get rid of their raging temperatures. Cool sponges and that sort of thing.

I don’t remember working in a ward where we had a lot of wounds. But it was a matter of where you were placed. Which branch of nursing where you were working. The ear nose and throat part was the predominant part

for me. And out at Watten it was a medical ward. Some of the sick, some of the boys…I remember we had to sponge them in bed. They weren’t allowed out of bed at all. So those must have been malaria.

Very little. Very little indeed.

And of course in the ward where I was at in Singapore, I was in the one and only surgical ward, and of course there we had mainly the boys from the Burma Road. The amputees. They were probably, most of them, over the worst part. See, Weary and the other marvellous doctors up there – Bertie Coates was another one I think – they had done the operations

and they were more or less recovered, and they came to our hospital while they were assessed for the trip home. That was a wonderful military exercise. Practically every one of the POWs were invalided home within two months. That’s just about as long as we were there. A very quick operation.

No.

Apart from this little newspaper which used to come out every day, just a sort of resume of what was going on around the war in the war, not really. That’s a strange thing that you should ask that,

because we really weren’t aware of it. I suppose much the same as all the civilian population. We never knew that Darwin had been bombed sixty four times. Certainly not the civilian population.

No.

We did know it had been bombed but we didn’t know it had gone on for six or seven months, which is what it did.

No. I bumped into a chap who lived with us. A school boy and very great family friends of ours, and he was a pilot. This was a very strange coincidence. I was down in Cairns.

It must have been after we had closed our hospital, because I was invalided…some of us had been sent down to the Cairns Hospital to help them out. They were very short of staff. I think it was then that I heard that John Piper was in Cairns and in hospital because his plane had crashed. So I remember going in to visit him and the most extraordinary

thing happened. He crashed his plane, or his plane crashed in the harbour in Cairns, and who should be in a ship that picked him up out of the water but a cousin of mine who was in the navy. He was the doctor. He was a Rutter, and it was Uncle Jack Rutter who was at Yarram. And his son was John Rutter and

he was in the navy, and he was the one who, when they scrambled John Piper out of the water, who should be the doctor waiting for him but John Rutter. Interesting. John was dreadfully badly injured but he lived through the crash, but to his misery he had to wave all his mates goodbye to New Guinea. They were all training these Air Force boys up there. I think

he flew Spitfires or something like that.

I think I was in Queensland all up for about three and a half years, until the end of the war…no, I was down in Cairns, that’s right, at that hospital when the war finished.

I remember I was on night duty and the word came through that the war was over. It was funny, I remember being in the ward, and of course we couldn’t believe that it was true, and one of the boys walked the entire length of the ward and he only had pyjama pants on…they never wore tops really. He walked the entire length of the ward

on his hands. That’s how he celebrated the war over.

I suppose we couldn’t believe it was true after all that time, wondering what the future held for us. Well then, our Matron was the one who was selected to take the small hospital to Singapore, and she selected a few from our hospital, but we were a conglomerate.

A lot of people from other hospitals; it was a mixture. So before you could turn around, the 2/14th had been formed, and we must have come home, and we sailed to Singapore again. We went on the Duntroon and went up

through the Whitsunday Passage to Darwin.

No, out of Sydney. We must have come home, and probably had a little bit of leave and then got to Sydney again. We weren’t put straight on the ship there. I know I stayed with a cousin of mine and they took me to the ship I think, from memory.

Well, we considered it was an honour to have been selected. We knew exactly the composition of the hospital. There were just about five or six of us who went from our hospital, and we stayed a couple of nights in Darwin then we went through to Singapore.

And our hospital was selected…the site of the Singapore Hospital was the same site…that’s where the original hospital had been. A Catholic college.

I should know this because I know I had to pick up the mess fees from everybody.

Nurses, and then there would be all the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service], the VAD’s [Voluntary Aid Detachment], we had them with us. We had physios of course. I think probably the Red Cross. We also had the establishment, all the doctors. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess as to how many there were. You see nearly all the wards were medical.

There was just the one surgical ward.

We went on the Duntroon and when we finally came home we came on a British Merchant Navy ship. See, they rustled up everything that was on the water, every conceivable way to bring the boys home and the girls…the POW girls came through our hospital and went into the sick nurses ward, of course.

And that’s when I saw Beryl again, Beryl Woodbridge.

We came ashore and went to a little…it was either the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] hospital or it might have been the army hospital.

That’s when we all had a shower again because you know what it’s like on board ship. We stayed overnight. I think we just caught our breath there. I’ve got a feeling I got an invitation to…I know I did, the Matron and I, to a Corvette. I happened to know…I received an invitation from the commander of this little ship and

we went over there. It was like a little submarine. It was a small ship, and I remember we were shown over and given a meal there. We were taken over by one of the small boats. That was all very exciting. I can’t even remember his name now. Somebody I must have nursed.

Yes. VE [Victory in Europe] Day, and Dunkirk. I remember we were all given news of that. I think once the Americans

came in, there was more publicity about what was going on.

There were a lot of Americans training up in Cairns. And at one stage it was interesting. When I was in the ear nose and throat ward, I shared a tent with a girl called Irene Garrity

who was on the staff in the ear nose and throat ward. All of a sudden there was a nasty infestation of a strep throat that went through the ward. And when they took the culture from everybody, Irene and I were carriers, and we were sent down to our holiday place which was on Trinity Beach down near Cairns. And I remember that’s where all these Americans had all these boats –

these flat bottomed things where they opened up the back and everybody leapt out. We’d see them training all around us on Trinity Beach where we were.

As little as possible. Villains they were.

Oh you know. You know what the Yanks were like. They would take advantage of you if you didn’t watch out.

Yes you did.

I never worried about the Aussies. You could handle them alright, but those Yanks were different. Although I did know two very nice ones. One was very fond of Irene and one was fond of me. I forget where this was. Where would this have been? It would have been somewhere around there probably. I know they trotted us around and took us out to dinner. They were a couple of nice ones.

Yes.

Just as well perhaps. What you don’t remember you don’t worry about.

Yes. Up at Atherton, the next big town heading towards Cairns is Mareeba. It had a huge American Air Force Base and they had a hospital there.

And we were envious because their girls wore beautiful nylon stockings and we had to wear those old thick lisle things on our legs. We were very envious of them. They were very smart. Very smart. We had a few socialisings with them. They invited us to their hospital and we invited them back to our hospital for a bit of socialising.

From memory they were good scouts, the same as our lot. You all talked the same language. We had quite a bit to do with the British girls too on the Canal, on the Suez Canal. They had big British-based hospitals there. We had a bit to do with them.

Any differences? I think nursing’s nursing whichever language you talk, isn’t it? I have a feeling the Aussie nurses had a pretty good reputation.

For nursing!

Oh they were terrific. When I look back, when you think of all those young men…I mean, there’s nothing good about a war. And to think they rallied around so quickly. I wonder, and I say this to my grandsons – I’d like my second grandson particularly to join the Reserves because he also had a terrific interest with anything

to do with the army….because of his grandfather and me I suppose. I wonder if we were confronted with the same thing, whether we would get the rallying around like they did back in those days. I remember some of those boys who came into my ward in Singapore, they were only babies then, and they had been on the Burma Road.

They were only young. Minus legs and so on.

It saved…it had to be fought. You can shoot the blame on Germany in the first place, and Germany and England not being able to come to some sort of successful negotiation.

I think Mr [Neville] Chamberlain [British Prime Minister] did his best, but he just came tottering home with his umbrella and his briefcase and words and promises which didn’t come to anything [reference to 1938 Munich conference].

I world. I said that to him just the other night because he said to me, ‘Do you know, Ma Marg, I feel as though (and he’s twenty two now), I’ve missed out on

something. When I think of what happened to Grandad, and what happened to you, I haven’t had anything like that happen to me’. So I said to him, ‘Well Ben, the only way you can do anything like that is to join the Army Reserve’. And he’s just nearly finished his Ag Science Degree. And when he’s out and about and finished that, I said, ‘At some stage would you give thought to joining the Army Reserve’?

And my other grandson who’s just been staying with me – he’s practically lawyer now – he said to me the other night, ‘Ma Marg, the Army Reserve isn’t for me, but I think it would be for Ben. But I don’t see anything wrong with it because one of my mates belongs to it. It’s not very exacting but he reckons it’s terrific’.

They might have to.

It wouldn’t worry me. Another thing, I had an uncle who was a major in the permanent army. Uncle Perc, my mother’s brother. Whether I’ve inherited this I don’t know. If I hadn’t met Jim straight after the war and

we got married, I probably would have stayed on in the army, because there was great promotion. You could be a major or you could be a captain. You could move through the ranks if you were prepared …some of my mates did. I feel like that. I’m just so closely…they’ve made me a life member of the RSL. I won all their medals.

I’ve even got the Meritorious one, which is their highest award. And because I’ve been so interested in it since after the war; the fact that I’m married to somebody who went through what he went through. Whether that’s had anything to do with it, I don’t know.

No, I don’t think so. Although I do know that nurses carry a gun now. But I think possibly – if we had a group, I think we did have somebody over

in the Gulf. We would have had to have…with our fellas and girls over there. But it’s a different ball game altogether now.

I’m not happy about them carrying a gun. I think it just should have been kept as nursing and kept it at that. That’s my opinion. But of course, you get in a place like

Iraq where they were. It was even dangerous in Qatar – that’s possibly where our hospital was based. I’m not sure. I haven’t heard any details about it. I do know that some of them went. But they were practically wiped out with that missile. Not that a gun on your hip pocket would be much good if a missile was going to hit you.

A different thing altogether now. It’s more dangerous. This terrorism…I think it’s a slightly more dangerous thing we’re facing up to than actual outright war. With that at least you know where you’re going. But with terrorism, do you? Look what happened in Israel this morning.

Another sixty people injured, I don’t know how many dead.

Sixteen. How are you going to cope with suicide bombing?

Yes, with the Japanese there was. Yes there was.

It probably was the start, wouldn’t it have been?

I remember when we were pointed out Balikpapan. I think there had been a frightful performance there. I know Bruce Ruxton, he goes back there, I think it is. It was a shocking performance that took

place there. That was pointed out to us as we sailed past there. Somebody must have known how bad it had been there. Then of course we got to Singapore. The Japs were still there. They were still around our hospital site. We saw them there. Mind you, they were being strictly watched over and made to work.

Yes, I think we did know in the end.

I don’t know if we realised the gravity of the casualties. But it certainly ended the war didn’t it? It ended that part of the war. It brought it to a very, very

quick end. But at such a cost.

It appeared to be a very busy shipping harbour because they were getting everything in that they could get the boys home on. Everything that floated. And then by air. Hospital ships and aircraft. Any way they could get them safely home.

I have a feeling that I remember seeing a lot of sunken things in the harbour. Of course with Singapore you just sail and sail, and you think you’re never going to get there. A huge, tremendous long run up into the port. But I remember seeing a lot of shipping still in the port.

Well of course, very much the same. By this time the war had been over for a little while and things were starting to get back…running around, you know, all the local people. I think we were almost taken straight out to this site and told to get ourselves settled in. We lived in a house

there. There were three or four of us in a little house with rooms. We had bedrooms. I think I had a single room. I don’t remember sharing one in that little house.

I remember we were taken straight from the ship, straight to St Patrick’s College;

a boys’ school which had been the previous site for the hospital beforehand. As I say, we were immediately asked to get settled into our living quarters. It wasn’t a tented hospital of course. It was buildings. So that was nice. And I know there was a beautiful chapel there of course,

being a Catholic School. But it was stacked absolutely from the floor to the ceiling with all the desks and things from the school. Originally you see, and I think it was kept like that even while the Japanese were there, they didn’t bother to remove any of the desks from all the classrooms. But the classrooms were the ones we used for the wards. And the ward where we were was a building.

That was the one surgical ward. It was rather primitive. I know we had a little primus stove that we used to boil everything, instruments and so on. None of your modern equipment. Not there. But the beds were comfortable and the place was clean. One of the highlights of

the time that I was there, was we admitted an Indian and he was either a Gurkha or a Sikh or something like that, with all the turban around his hair. And to his misery, he was dreadfully depressed, he had to lose a limb. In India if you were in any of the military services and you lost a limb, that was just a disaster as far as, apparently,

their tradition. And the second sad thing was to get him sponged and clean, we had to take the turban off his head. And of course that’s another thing. They didn’t like any women seeing them without that…it’s got a name. You know that turban that they have around their head.

Yes he would have been. And of course that was a sad thing that had to happen.

However he was appreciative, I know, of our care for him. So I suppose he was repatriated back to India. You never knew once they left where they ended up. But I’ve often thought of that young man. He was only young. We nursed him in a special ward though. He wasn’t out in the main ward. We put him in a little room of his own

because he was so upset about the whole set-up.

He must have been. He was either a prisoner of war or he was an injured soldier, because they had had to amputate one of his limbs. But even those boys who came back from the Burma Road, and even back then, and that was in 1946,

they all spoke of Weary Dunlop as an angel. That was how he was revered. I can remember them telling me that, that he had been just so marvellous up there.

Only as a resident at the Melbourne, finishing off his residency. He might have been the Registrar. I just can’t remember. But I know he was at the Melbourne when I was doing my six months at the

Melbourne.

No, I didn’t. Whether he came through our hospital or not I can’t remember seeing him. But look, he would have been in the…if there was such a thing as the officers ward there, that’s where he would have been. Mine was just a general ward. Or he would have been nursed

privately somewhere. We had a sick nurses’ bay, of course. I remember the day when Miss Sage, who was our Matron and Chief, was visiting us and she would arrange that she would take one of the nursing sisters with her and fly to Sumatra to say ‘Hello’ to our girls on Bangka Island. They flew them all back.

They came into the sick ward. And of course, as I’ve mentioned earlier on, when I knew Beryl Woodbridge, she was one of them who came through. Well I would have had to have been introduced to her. I wouldn’t have recognised her. I couldn’t. So many of them were all blown up with that Berri Berri, which of course was the thing that worried them so much. Their teeth were all frightful and they were so

thin. They couldn’t cast a shadow. There were all so thin. It was dreadful.

Well we knew about Changi. We knew about Changi Camp. We knew that was a camp where the POWs had passed through. As it so happened, an old family friend of ours who was a warrant officer was a POW, and

he must have got wind of the fact that I was there, and an invitation came to me with a group of my mates to go through and have a look in Changi. He was on the medical side of it there. He showed us that little RAP [Regimental Aid Post] there where they evolved all those amazing instruments they made out of knitting needles and bits of wire. You name it.

All that amazing stuff that they produced because they had nothing better. I remember that so well. But when we went that day, most of the Australians were gone. They were all back in our hospital or on their way home. And it was mostly the Dutch who were still there. They just looked exactly as you see in all those photos of the people who were in the Changi camp;

wearing a G-String sort of thing, a lap lap thing, and just so thin, all of them. They were just lying around and waiting for such time as they were all invalided home.

No. And if it had been the present day of course, we all would have been counselled, wouldn’t we?

See, that word has just evolved over the years. That word ‘counselling’. It’s just a new form of treatment now isn’t it? I can’t remember at any time having lectures or anything along those lines. You just nursed as you were taught to nurse, and dealt with them as… As I say,

from my memory, I can only remember twice that I crossed swords with a patient. One of them was in our ward there in Singapore. He was just this young man, very young. He only looked like a kid and he used to sound off constantly about how wild they were up there. That it had taken so long to rescue them. And of course they didn’t realise

that we had just watched the most gruelling war take place, A, first of all in the Middle East, and B, in Europe. And he possibly wasn’t aware that they had been fighting them so hard to get the war won over there, so when did anybody have any time to do much about the POWs? They were all so exhausted from that war.

This was a new area over here. That was a later area, the Singapore one. I mean it possibly was sad that they were all up there under those frightful conditions.

I think I asked advice of the other patients there. I said how do you deal with this sort of a young fellow?

And they just said to let it roll off like water off a duck and not to make a big issue of it. I think I might have said, ‘Well, you’re here now and be thankful that we’ve got you here, and you’ll be home before you know where you are’. That’s all they wanted to do, all the boys that I can remember. They loved the music, and Annie tells me that your heart’s with music, and we had the gramophone

with the old records and it went morning, noon and night. It never stopped. They played the music over and over. They loved the music. They couldn’t appreciate the food because they were all blown up with the Berri Berri and all those awful diseases. But they did eat and they tried to make the food appetising for them. But they couldn’t eat very much. Jim will tell you. They

just couldn’t, after all that long time with not eating anything other what they could lay their hands on. It was like an ulcer diet they all had to be on, practically. Little bits and often. But they loved the music but all they wanted to do was to get home.

One I loved…I think it was ‘Calendar Girl’,

or, ‘I love, I love, I love the Calendar Girl’. I think it might have been that one. I know it was one of my favourites. I used to love it of course. It might not have been ‘Calendar Girl’ but I know I’ve got one in here of ‘Calendar Girl’.

Neil Sadaka or somebody. One of those wasn’t it?

Was it? I don’t know, I’d have to look it up. It’s kicking around in there

somewhere. No, they just loved the music, and I don’t think we were able to…I can’t remember taking them anywhere on outings. But we were visited of course. One of the highlights of the time was by Lord Louis and Lady Mountbatten, and they were our official guests. And Lord Louis with our commanding officers…I

can’t remember who our CO was, in fact I can’t remember them anywhere. That’s awful. And our Matron and Lord Louis and his Aide…I remember they came to our Ward. I know I had to be all dressed up with the hat and the veil and everything, the cape and the long cuffs and everything else for this very special occasion. I’ve got some nice little photos

of that. He was in the Far East of course, visiting the British troops in India and elsewhere, and probably their prisoners of war in that area. But you know, we were driven around…we had a few little outings while we were there, to the zoo and

I remember going over the Causeway thing, up into Johore is it, to a palace or something. We did a few little outings like that. But we didn’t have much time, not long enough to know anything about Singapore. They’d all just settled back into their normal routine, more or less.

But I can’t remember the patients going for outings. I don’t remember anything like that provided for them.

No, not much, no. But of course we did have wards of them up at Atherton. They were the diseases they had picked up in the jungle out in all their training and so on. Those things that bit them, you know…not ticks but leeches.

Yes, that sort of thing.

The odd case of those I think there were.

Well, easily digested sweets and soft foods that slid down easily. See, some of them didn’t have any teeth much left or they needed a lot of dental care, probably.

That sort of thing. Just very easily digested food and very little amounts.

Deaths? In Singapore you mean? None in our ward, but there could

well have been. As I remember it, these amputees were all hopping around and hobbling around on sticks and crutches, but I think probably whatever had happened to them up where it had happened, it had had time to more or less heal over, and there wasn’t a great deal to be done to them. They were just more or less recuperating, and just waiting to go home.

Not there, but they would be sent down to Heidelberg and Concord and those big hospitals. Then they got it. I think we had physiotherapy for them to perhaps sort of help them get into better shape.

Oh I think so. I think we had a theatre going as well, probably for all sorts of things. I had nothing to do with the theatre. In fact I don’t even remember whereabouts in the building it was. You more or less just worked in your own little area. Perhaps I would have gone over to the sick nurses’ ward and said ‘Hello’ to the girls

over there.

The girls? No. They wouldn’t talk…like Jim. I don’t know that he had anything much to say about his POW days until about thirty years after we were married. He would never discuss it, never. He just suffered all the nightmares. I had a beautiful black eye eight weeks

after we were married. We were sleeping together and I must have moved and out came a hand and caught me in the eye. I think nights were the worst thing for Jim, I know. The nightmares.

Well, we were only away for about two

and a half months all up. That’s how long it took to get them all through. As I say, it’s never failed to intrigue me what a very, very smooth military exercise it was. To be able to get it going and move them out so quickly. Everything they could lay their hands on, every type of ship or plane…anything at all that they could get the boys on,

and girls, they got them out. Those who were well enough…but then some had to wait of course, for the hospital ships and planes that would be equipped for them.

I don’t think in your most impossible wildest dreams you could imagine what it would have been like to work on the Burma Railway unless you were there. I mean, in our civilised society, no amount of description would help you at all to visualise what it must have been like. And it’s only when you read the books, like Weary’s books

and the other various books that have been written about it since. I mean, can you believe that they would tie anybody up like they did with him. He had the same miserable type of treatment that they meted out to the boys if they played up when they weren’t pleased with those Japs. They tied him up to a tree or whatever it was that they did.

No. I had no idea it was as bad as it was. That’s all come out since. We saw for ourselves what it must have been like in Changi, and that was a great enormous sort of covered over tent with

the sides that rolled up I think because of the heat, and then they just had palliasse type of bed things. Long, long rows of them and I think this is where they slept. And I think they made them work as well. You see them on working parties and so on. They weren’t allowed to lie around all day. The Japs made them work unloading ships and doing all this sort of thing.

And then just back to somewhere to lay their heads at night. In that fierce heat too. It’s very hot in Singapore in the summer, I know. Grim times they were. When we were there of course, the boots were on the other foot. It was the Japs who were doing the work.

We could see the working parties. It’s a funny thing about the Japanese. You could always smell them. They had a smell about them. You could smell where they had been.

This old family friend. He was a warrant officer and he had been a POW. He was, as I say, in that little

RAP, like a medical unit.

Well he didn’t describe it, he showed it to us. Just pointed out, ‘This is where they used to sleep and this is where we would do all their dressings’. It was like a little casualty clearing station.

No,

he didn’t. I don’t remember them making a big deal of it, and for goodness sake they could have. No, it was sort of a thing that happened. As I understand it from Jim and his cronies that I’ve met over the years, none of them talked about it. You just didn’t know anything about it…not for years. They talk about it now.

They will. I can’t help but make a comparison because when I finished up at Barranquilla, I worked in a ward where we nursed the POWs, the Italians. And of course we cared for them…we nursed them the same as we nursed any of the wards. They got the same sort of treatment, good food. They

were as happy as could be. They did nothing but sing and carry on. They used to have working parties, but the things they loved to do, gardening and this sort of thing around our hospital. And when you think…I know comparisons are odious, but when you think of the ways we looked after our POWs…they came from Ceduna or wherever it was. There was a big POW place at the top part of Victoria.

Sick ones came over to our hospital at Barranquilla. They were very, very pleasant patients to care for. They got good treatment at our hospital.

No. I don’t

remember ever even seeing any. I remember seeing them working on a working party across the way a bit, but no.

No.

I don’t remember much conversation going on about it. It was just part of your day’s work. You went on the ward when you were rostered on, and came off when you were finished the time there, and handed over to the next person. That was the ward where I was. I was only in that one ward all the time.

I also was the Treasurer of the sisters’ mess. The money that I had to collect. This is what I was saying…I should have been able to remember how many of us there were. And as such I had to go into these stores on occasions, buying up stuff for the food and our requirements from a big army service store, I suppose it was.

I know I went in with a sergeant or someone. I know we went in and ordered up different stuff for our sisters’ mess. It was nice food there, I remember that. It was sort of tropical up there with lovely fruit and that sort of thing. I know the food was nice up there.

But as I say, I can’t remember the locals doing anything for us. Not like they did up at Atherton, where all those ladies’ organizations did all those afternoon tea parties. And of course there were lovely places where they’d take the boys for drives…Lake Eacham, Lake Barrine. A lovely part of the world up there.

I remember I was quite horrified at the fact that so many of those young men had had to lose limbs. I remember that. That was

one of the first reactions to working in a ward like that. Just the sadness of it.

Yes. They were different to, say, the boys I nursed out at Watten.

Rotten Watten out there. As I say, I can’t remember why they were there or where they had come from. I know the ward where I was, was a medical ward, and they were all suffering from medical things like gastric and that sort of thing.

Yes. The ward where I was.

I think it was because the experience that they had come through was quite different from anything, at that stage…that was early on in the war. Up at Watten that was only early ‘42. Now we’re looking at, ‘45, ‘46, and of course a lot of water had flowed under the bridge

by then. For all of them for that matter…if I was to have nursed some of those original patients that we had at Watten in 1945, they might have had a different aspect about it all. But it was all pretty early days then. Then when we went up there…all this took a bit of time. By the time we got up there and got

the hospital going again, and we moved from the temporary Rocky Creek to our permanent thing, all that took time of course to get it all going. I know I worked in the officers’ ward, and that’s when I had the painting done in Queensland, up at Atherton. Then I think I did a stint on night duty, and then

I think then I went to the ENT [ear nose and throat] ward.

No. No. Or how we were getting home, and as I say, we came home on a British Merchant Navy ship.

Well, the war was over you see. I think there was a general feeling of relief about the fact that it was drawing to a close. We knew that, I think. We knew that we had to make a big decision about where our future lay,

and just got on with the job at hand and got yourself home. And then had to think about where you went from there. And that’s when we heard that the government was establishing this arrangement that whatever you cared to nominate, they would foot the bill for you to do. So I decided to do my Midwifery, which ended my army days, and it was financed by our Federal

Government. Anybody could nominate anything. You could be anything that you wanted to do. You could go on a farm or you could…sometimes I was rather sorry I hadn’t wanted to be a doctor. You could do any course. As it so happened I did two certificates. I ended up as a Triple Certificate. I got my Midwifery and Infant Welfare. So once we

heard there was going to be that system, that’s what prompted me to leave the army. You had the choice.

No, I don’t remember any. No.

I just remember the medical people and being a merchant navy ship. It wasn’t very big. I forget its name but I know we came here into Melbourne, came in the Bay, and that’s where we landed up here at Station Pier. I remember my sister was there to meet us. She must have known. She must have been able to get the message that we were arriving.

I went home for the leave and set about making arrangements to do my Midwifery. I did all those preliminary arrangements. And I decided to do it at the Royal Women’s, and ‘Yes’, they would accept us. There wasn’t much of a waiting list. I didn’t have to wait very long. We were able to wear the same old

army uniform; the grey ward uniform which we had been wearing. We didn’t have to get a whole new set of clothes. But do you think it was tough though, after all those years, to get back to studying. But I went through – there were two or three of us who went through together. Not my friends; they weren’t my particular friends.

I palled up with a couple of others from other units who were doing their Mid at the same time. Then we went from there, and one in particular was a pal of mine. She also went on and did her Infant Welfare at Berry Street. It’s no longer a place where you can do your Infant Welfare but it was there in East Melbourne. So we went on and did that, and that was all financed by the Government.

Yes. At the end of the war.

There at the Women’s Hospital in the nurses quarters there. And at Berry Street in their quarters there.

Not then I didn’t. No, it wasn’t until after I was married, and after

I joined up at the Returned Nurses Club in 1946. That was when I joined up, but I didn’t have much to do with them until after the kids were a bit older. I started to go to a few of the things. I always helped them with the collection days like Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. I always helped on those things,

and any of the special occasions I would go to those. But it wasn’t really until the kids were right off our hands that I really got involved a great deal with the RSL, and that’s when I did. I ended up being the secretary of the Returned Nurses Club for six and a half years, and I was president. And I was a counsellor with the RSL and it went right through all that.

I could have stayed on in the army, which would have been nursing out at Heidelberg or those hospitals, you know the army hospitals, or if you really wanted to make it a

life career, a permanent thing, I suppose you would then take whatever was offering. Some of my friends got promotions. Some were captains, some were majors.

Yes, a lot of the nurses never married. A lot of them didn’t.

I think it was probably the answer to what was really a sort of contentious problem that was facing you. ‘Where do I go from here?’ Would you try and get back to being on the staff of the Children’s Hospital? Well I had already done that. I had been a staff nurse there.

I didn’t think about doing that, having been away from children’s nursing and so on. I think it was just the solution…eventually I wanted to be a missionary and to go out into Africa or somewhere. But prior to that, this friend with whom I did my Mid and Infant Welfare, she decided we’d go to England.

We were all set and ready to go to England; she went, and I met Jim. And I cancelled the idea of going to England. I thought I might have gone over there to Guy’s Hospital for a refresher course in children’s nursing. And subsequently some years later when we were in London I went to have a look at Guy’s Hospital and so I got an idea of where I might have landed.

But I met Jim and I had him with me when I went to look at it and I said, ‘This is where I perhaps could have been’. That was the big children’s hospital in London.

Infant Welfare. Well, all I can remember was how difficult it was to get back to studying after all those years of not studying. It was really solid going. You were assisted. They had good tutor sisters and so on, and

at the Women’s Hospital we were welcomed there. They welcomed us in spite of the fact that we were all probably much older than the young girls who were doing just normal training. We were all getting rather ancient by this time after all those years, so it was different.

I can’t say I really enjoyed doing that training, but it was a means to an end. I eventually passed it, and then I almost went straight on from there. In the meantime we had made arrangements to do the Infant Welfare, which was a more technical type of training. It’s to do with

food and all those types of requirements for babies and so on, and little people. That’s what Infant Welfare is. So I was almost right back to where I had started with little babies and children. I loved that training. Loved the Infant Welfare. But midwifery is all a bit frightening.

You know, you have to attend so many births and then assist with so many births. I remember on one occasion when a little child was born. It was most frightfully deformed. It was one of these that they couldn’t allow to live. It was dreadful. Those sorts of things were a bit of a rude awakening. But it goes on.

It was sad. This is life. You get lots of lovely little babies and then you get the odd sad case. You just have to pick yourself up and get on with it. But I remember one in particular…a frightful little baby that was born.

But they’re the exception, not the rule.

Like doing my training? In Berry Street in East Melbourne, and that was a shortish thing. I think it only lasted nine months, and during that time you had to do a lot of pastoral work. Go out and visit new mothers

who were in the area. The arrangement then, and I don’t know if it still exists, is that once a baby is born and it’s sort of noted down, arrangements are made for the nearest Health Centre Sister to visit the new mother and baby and make quite certain that everything is alright. I went all over the East Melbourne area, you know, Grey Street, all those parts, visiting various new mothers there.

That was lovely. And the Berry Street office was only small, but you’ve heard perhaps of Karatani? That’s the New Zealand course that’s a similar one, and out in Footscray, the Tweddle Baby Home. That was another place where you could do that Infant Welfare. But we elected to go to Berry Street.

My pal and I.

We had done our Mid together. We decided if we did our Infant Welfare then we’d do it together and apply to go there. Which is what we did. She was from the 2/4th AGH. She has subsequently died, which so many of my friends have, which is life for you. But I didn’t ever use that third certificate.

I used my Mid a lot because after our two kids were older and could be safely left with Jim, I went to a hospital here in Brighton, and I was there for fourteen years on night duty. We did a lot of Mid there. We did a lot. We did everything except accidents. We did tonsils and appendix and all manner of everything, plus midwifery.

I did a lot of Mid there. It’s no longer a hospital as such. It’s on Claire Avenue just over there. It’s been various things since then, but it’s been divided up now and I don’t think it’s a hospital at all. And after that I did a lot of geriatric nursing. That’s the hardest nursing I’ve ever done in all my nursing life. That was really tough going back in those days. I don’t know if they’ve made it a bit easier with lifting machines

and modern technology and so on, but it was heavy going with all those heavy patients. But it had to be done. I ended up in the hospital just down here in New Street. That was a nursing home. I worked until 1973. From when the kids were about six and five I suppose.

That was early in the fifties, so I nursed for about twenty years after that.

I didn’t work at all because I got married straight away. I was married in 1948. I did the course in forty seven, I suppose it was,

and then married Jim.

We’ve got family friends who live in Kew. Actually my eldest sister was at Merton Hall. The girls of this family went to Merton Hall and we became family friends from way back. Jim was a POW on Ambon and one of the boys was a prisoner of war.

He was one of the boys of that family and he had said to Jim; made him promise that if anything happened to him during the war, after the war he would go and visit his mother. His mother was a widow living in Kew. Jim promised he would. Well he died about three weeks before war ended, and after the war Jim went to visit the family. Now I was doing my Mid at that stage – no, Infant

Welfare. I was up to my Infant Welfare at that stage and I used to go out to visit family friends who lived at Mt Albert on my days off. But on my way sometimes I would hop off at the Kew junction and walk up Princess Street and visit this family. I blew in there one night and Jim was there. They were all playing cards, the family. He had a little car, a tiny little thing,

and he said, ‘Where are you heading, which way are you going’? And I said, ‘I’m going to Mt Albert after here’, after we had had the evening, all of us together. So he said, ‘I’ll run you home. I’ve got the car outside’, and that’s how I met him. We were married in 1948, and Tony was born in 1949 almost to the minute of the nine months.

It was all official, and Shirley our daughter was fifteen months after that. They were almost like twins. So then we gave it a day because we were both well into our thirties by this time. These days, of course, you’d probably go and have more and more. It doesn’t matter how old you are these days. But we thought we’d call it a day after Shirley. So we only had the two;

our son and our daughter.

Well he was a very frail man of course. Well you can imagine after three years and ten months as a POW. He was freelancing around the city, selling. He always wanted to be a salesman, Jim. He came from New Zealand originally and he came here when he was very young.

He shot all around Australia looking around, but he always wanted to be a salesman. So that’s what he was doing, representing different firms, doing bits and pieces like that. Then he was offered a job, a good job with a good firm, and he was with them for many, many years. That started us off really. We were both as poor as…you got a deferred pay after the war…you’ve probably heard of that. Well that’s about all we did have

as far as money was concerned. After four or five years I started my nursing again and that was helpful. That’s what helped educate our kids. It was a help, but as the years rolled on, Jim did better and better, and he ended up in the country. He was a manufacturers’ agent representing about seven firms for different things; mostly

furniture, bedding, furniture and that sort of thing, in the country. And that’s what he did right through until he retired.

Not really no, I didn’t. As I say I was in my thirties, and we’ve always said it was desperation on both our parts. But after fifty five years together, I suppose you might say it was a bit of a lucky strike.

Yes that’s true. Actually the boyfriend, Harold, he was in the Air Force. He had a marvellous experience war time. He went over to Europe and he was on a flying boat or something.

He had a terrific war time experience. He was just one of the locals, and then there was another one down there who wanted to…he would have settled down with me if I had been so inclined. But I was only young in those days, and I came away to Melbourne as I say, to do my nursing training. I wasn’t thinking of getting married. But there was one, another one, a third one, and he was

really the one I wouldn’t have minded settling down with. But that didn’t work out either. These were all boys that we knew when we were young.

Oh we had thousands! I don’t know how many proposals of marriage I had during the war. Some of them were legitimate but some of them were illegitimate I think. There were always…we had a lovely time, particularly up in

Atherton. Lovely time, and they would like to have someone to go to the dance with and have a meal with. They seemed to enjoy the company, women’s company, and I imagine that was perfectly normal. But really you didn’t dwell on it much. A few of my friends – one in particular – she met the love of

her life. He was a doctor. He was up on the Tablelands. They married, and Sadie my friend, she married Phil in the end. But so many of them didn’t. They just went right through the war.

Well I remember one lass in particular. She came from Western Australia and we were all thrilled about her wedding. It was lovely and everybody rallied around and I think we all managed to rustle up a few bits and pieces;

things to hang over the arm, like the wedding things. She was married in uniform. Mostly they got married in their uniform when they did get married. They weren’t brides or anything like that. My sister, even though she was in the WAAAF, she was lent a lovely dress. Because of the war in that time, with all the clothes rationing, it was hard to find enough material to make a wedding dress.

They were few and far between. Actually the wedding dress that I had was lent to me, and that was after the end of the war. I was lucky enough to just step into a friend’s wedding dress with all the bits and pieces. No, everybody…no we were thrilled. You could probably see the writing on the wall, that there was a big romance going on. I suppose it was gossipped around the place.

I never cared for gossip though. I never liked to be bothered with gossip much. People love all that sort of thing, but I never cared for it.

The conquests.

I think you always were quite happy to know that you had the nice date. That something nice was looming up. Dinner or a dance. Because of the fact that I had a few rellies up there you see, I got some lovely invitations. In fact, unfortunately I’ve handed

it into the Archives, but I had the most marvellous seating plan once. I went to a dinner…it was through another friend of ours from home, and he was in the Commandos, and this was a dinner that they had. And there were about four generals and all the bigwigs were there. Our matron was invited to this dinner party and because he wanted a partner…Jack, he invited me. And of course we had

both come from Yarram, from home. That’s how I managed to get there, and with one of those formal things. It was one of those when they passed the port all around. You know, very formal. Marvellous. And there was this beautiful dinner plan which I had mounted on a little piece…and all those generals and people signed it. It was signed by their name, so it’s really quite a

unique thing, and I handed it to the Archive people at the RSL. I thought that was something they should have. It was rather special. But the story of the painting that was done of my tent. When Jim and I went to Canberra, this was years later you know,

the first time we went to Canberra. We went to the War Memorial and we just browsed around, and sure enough it was hanging then. It’s not always hanging Annie, it’s not always hanging. Sometimes they put some up and they put some down. If it was Ruth who you told me had one done, hers probably does this to. On and off. But on this particular occasion it was hanging. And so Jim asked permission; could he take a photo.

I’ve got a photo. I’ve got a photo of the original painting. The kids have got one and I’ve got a little one framed here.

Mainwaring. It’s over here the painting. I showed it to Annie. Somebody has sent me the copy of this one from Canberra with all the details. Mainwaring his name was. He was a war artist

from Adelaide or from South Australia.

We had a flat here in Brighton. Very troublesome years they were though, because when I look back, we had these children very quickly, very little money, and Jim was very sick.

At one stage, quite soon after we were married, they whistled up the POWs and he had to be admitted over here at Caulfield. They discovered that they all had a sort of a worm infestation that would attack the body and the heart in particular. So when they were all called in to be hospitalised…I think it was for at least a month he had to be in hospital, and they weren’t allowed

out of bed, not for one minute. It was very, very serious this particular type of worm infestation. But they were all treated. Whatever they do for it, I don’t know. And I can’t remember what the treatment was, if I ever knew. So he was never troubled with it after that. Not after that initial thing. That was one thing that was a trouble for him.

Straight after the war he had to be admitted to Heidelberg with a very severe ulcer on his leg. He had to have a big skin transplant and so on, and be treated for the beri beri and the dysentery and malaria. He was never really troubled much with malaria after that…they can get recurrences with that.

But it was just that he was emotionally troubled. But he was a doer, a hard worker. And the fact that he had survived the POW days. I mean, he was a stayer.

He was fiery he was. Very fiery in those days.

I did. It was my nursing training I’m sure. Somebody else might have packed their bags and gone.

But I understood.

No.

Well I suppose what you don’t know you don’t worry about. So possibly if he had discussed it a little bit more fully at the time, I might have been more able to understand why he behaved like he behaved.

I’ve got to be quite truthful. They were awkward early years, and with two little kids, and he didn’t understand children and I did, having experience with the children behind me. I must say they were pretty stormy old days, those early ones. And he liked to get out with the mates of course.

I don’t think he realised that he was a family man, and you know they liked to box on a little bit in those days.

Yes. Jim will be the first to tell you he did. That was another thing to cope with. I don’t blame them for it. Anything that would perhaps

help them get through what would have been very stressful memories…to perhaps try and forget a few of these things. As the years rolled on, of course he drinks very little now. Perhaps a couple on the weekend with a couple of his mates, but it’s no problem at all now. It was then. Of course, you get the slight repercussions with the children.

The kids found it a bit difficult to understand. But at the same time, he was a very hard worker, and to the best of his ability, a good provider. Away a lot of course, particularly when he went to the country. The kids and I…I really had a lot to do with the children.

But they were at two good schools so we gave them the best start we could give them.

Well they all wanted to know how I got it, for a start.

I think I was quite honest and said it was a nightmare that Jim had.

Well he was very popular with all my family. I think they knew that Jim and I were happy and we had found each other, which was something at that stage of our lives. They were very understanding. They were well aware though that we had our problems.

But unless you meet a problem head on, even when you’re young…most problems, I think, if you bite the bullet you can get through it. We just had to wear it and get on with it.

A couple of times I did. Yes, with this friend I had done my training with. She was like another mother in Melbourne to me. I probably would have discussed more

with her than I did with my own mother. And I did with her. She was well aware of the fact that I went through some rather difficult times early on. I didn’t ever…not very much with my sisters. Not with my family. It was the done thing not to burden your family with your problems. I felt that that was a bit defeatist.

Well I have a feeling that Rob Newman, who had been interviewed by you people, not the pictures part of it, but the talk part of it. She was married to one who was on Ambon you see. I have a feeling that Robbie has told me that her history

was similar to mine in those early days. But they went on to have many years of married life, and happy married life. I think she’s got two or three kids.

We always went to the reunions. Always on the first Sunday in February there’s the pilgrimage to the Shrine, and apart from perhaps a couple of

years, we’ve never missed them. We used to see all the wives at those things, but no one ever seemed to say much about their problems, if they had them. You didn’t. You didn’t discuss your problems with anyone else. I don’t remember telling anyone.

I think I would have, having had seen what Changi was like, and perhaps I would have been able to visualise what Jim’s POW place was like,

and although…little episodes of things that have come out over the years are quite staggering. The fact that he shouldn’t be here really. His working party were all beheaded, and he happened to be in the little hospital on account of that bad ulcer. So he was saved. They were all caught pinching the food you see, and they were all beheaded.

And that was another family that he went to visit in Sydney. He promised Jack Trollerman, he lost his life in that episode. He was Jim’s great mate, and he had promised him that if anything happened, he would visit his mother. She was our dearest friend for years. She used to come here every year and have a holiday with us from Sydney.

He was just one of the lucky ones there. If your number’s on the ticket of course, that’s how the cookie crumbles. But I think I would have understood. I honestly think my nursing training would stand you in good stead to an eventuality like that. I just buttoned up.

He’d come home perhaps and have had far too much to drink, and I would have given up in despair waiting for him to come home. I’d be in my bed and he’d come staggering up the passage with a cup of tea. He used to always say, ‘We’ll have a cup of tea’. I could hear the cup of tea come wobbling along the passage, half of it in the saucer. Always the cup of tea, which was perhaps the best thing that could have

happened. Believe it or not I have never seen him with a hangover. Never. And I don’t know why…particularly in those early days when I look back. He’d be up bright and sparkling the next morning. He never suffered a hangover. One of the lucky ones. I think. But he saw the light I think, and of course a lot of his work, you know what travellers are like, a lot of their work is done

over a drink, particularly in the country. There’s nothing much else to do other than go and have a few beers with the boys and so on. I’ll say this though, I don’t think he ever drank very much when he was on the job. He never would go to hotels in the day, always at the end of the day. And that was probably his saver.

He didn’t smoke much and I think all that was helpful. He worked for good companies and they expected the figures. You know competition was, even back in those days, pretty keen in the country.

Cope? I had a lot of other interests you see. I had all the RSL things and the club things. I had

school things. I was on the mothers’ committees at the two schools…Brighton Grammar…well Tony went to a State School first and then Shirl went to Fairbanks. And I was always on the committee…the mother’s groups and that sort of thing. All those activities. And with Jim being away so much as the years rolled on, I was called upon to do what mothers do. Go to all the footy games and swimming comps. You know what it’s like with kids. Somebody had to represent the family.

So that kept me busy. Then of course my nursing. Two nights I used to do on night duty. Two nights out of the week, and then later on two nights and a day. Day duty at another nursing home down here. So I was involved with nursing for three days, then I had the church activities. I was President

of a little group that worked over here for Alzheimer’s Place early in the sixties. I was President for twenty or thirty years at that place. These sorts of things kept me busy. Treasurer of the old footy Mums. I had all these activities which kept me busy, and the home.

Well, not that it bothered me. You see, I was one of the lucky ones. I wasn’t a POW on Greece or having to escape from Greece. I wasn’t at our hospital when they nursed thousands of troops when they came in from Tobruk and places like that.

They really worked hard, but I didn’t have to work terribly hard.

A good war. No. It was never a problem. And of course Jim, after the war he joined the RSL. He joined the cricket section and he played cricket with the teams

until he was fifty eight. We always went and took the kids. We always took a plate of food and that was lovely. We made some very nice friends through the Beaumaris RSL and the cricket section. That was a lovely activity for Jim on the weekends in the summer months. And then footy in the winter. He’d take the kids to the footy. His weekends were

nice.

Well, with a father who was probably upsetting me, it probably showed. Kids aren’t silly, are they? They can see what’s going on. I think they resented it.

Not so much our son; he was tolerant. But my daughter who was fiery, I don’t think she liked it at all. She’d scream blue murder at her father. But Tony was rather a quiet sort of kid when he was young, and I think he must have talked it over with his mates or whatever. But he never appeared to let it bother him as much as our daughter.

I don’t think Jim was aware of it to that degree though. I think any man who drinks a lot…he didn’t drink that much, it was just that he liked to socialise with his friends. He was that sort of a drinker. He was never one of these cupboard drinkers. Nothing like that. I was lucky like that because I had a friend who’s husband was.

He was an absolute alcoholic. Well Jim wasn’t like that. It was just social drinking. He just loved to have a few beers with the boys. He couldn’t see any harm in it. We didn’t smoke much. We didn’t gamble. But he’s always loved entertaining. Loves having friends around. Loves just to have people

for Sunday roast. We’ve done a lot of entertaining in our day, a lot. The school, the cricket. We’d ask all our friends to Christmas parties. We have done a lot of entertaining, and he loved that. That gave him great pleasure. He was always very helpful. Always attended to all the drink side of it.

You know the great big trough out there with the ice and full of grog and all the rest of it.

I was a frightful cook. I remember the first time I cooked tripe and it all went sort of green. I think I threw it all out. I thought it had a disease or something.

That’s what happens if you have a particular type of onion that makes your tripe go green. All you have to do is put a whole lot of parsley and milk and it neutralises it. I’ve learned that over the years. But Jim was easy to feed. He would eat anything, and I eat practically anything. But I must confess I was a very poor cook. I’m still nothing startling in the way of cooking, but I’m a basic cook.

Just the ordinary old stuff that’s good for you. That sort of cooking.

Knew nothing about it.

Well I had been brought up very strictly really by my parents about…the little bit we knew about or they spoke about sex, it was always to be very circumspect and to keep men at arm’s length, and to be absolutely sure

in your mind, and if you met somebody then be sure it was the right one. That was how I was brought up. That was the sort of education that our parents gave us. Therefore, as far as my personal experiences, that’s how I operated. I wouldn’t allow any hanky panky. Not that it didn’t happen. They tried. A lot of them, particularly here

in Australia. Not so much overseas. I wasn’t aware of it much while I was in the Middle East. But up in the Tablelands, they perhaps would put the hard word, but I would never agree to any sex.

I never remember any discussion

about sex…never. Sadie of course had Phil. That was a sort of permanent thing. Whether they had any sex before their marriage I wouldn’t know. You didn’t talk about those things Annie [interviewer], back in those days. I mean you do now, but nothing stays the same anyway.

I suppose it would be pretty boring if it did. I mean, it’s so open now even amongst little kiddies. Even when I made the reference to homosexuality, sex, you just have to turn the telly. Like that show last night…luckily my sister rang me in the middle of Casanova. I couldn’t be bothered with all that was going on with that show. All the sex absolutely there for you, right on your television.

This was the Casanova one last night. And in the middle of it my sister rang me up. I just happened to glance at the telly while I was talking at her. It was really revolting what was going on. But we never talked about sex. Never.

Yes. We had a couple on our staff that we often wondered perhaps whether there was something there. I still don’t know. But I do know they went on together after the war.

So I don’t know. But if they were lesbians, that could well have explained why we thought what we did about them. That there was something a little bit peculiar about those two.

No.

In the main you’ll find, I think, that nurses aren’t the gossipy type. Not many of them. You’ll get the odd one who likes to have a good old mag [chat], but not really I suppose. I don’t know why it didn’t enter into the scheme of things, but it didn’t appear to. I remember once a friend of mine who became engaged,

came to me very troubled. She said, ‘Marg what am I going to say after I’m married because I’ve had a pre-marital association with somebody else’. And I think I remember saying to her, ‘Look, would it matter? You’ve found the man of your choice, is he going to mind?’

It was probably a nine day wonder as it often was, and I said, ‘I don’t think I’d let it bother you too much’. They were dear friends of ours here in Melbourne. They’ve both died since. They had a very happy married life.

Yes…

no. Now, when I say we never talked about sex, I remember another one of the girls I knew who had to go away. I think she might have been pregnant, and she went away and had a…I remember her saying she had to go down to Innisfail or one of those places where they apparently had a clinic. That was one, now you come to mention it, I remember that one.

So I mean, that’s life, Annie. Whether it was war time or…nothing’s changed. You read your Bible and what took place then, and will continue to do so as long as human beings exist on this earth I suspect. It’s just one of those freaks of nature isn’t it? Sex. You have to watch the birds and the bees.

There were always a few things that you kept very private. I think that was one of them.

Yes you’re right. As far as sexual relations with Jim and I, we just had a normal sex life. Very satisfactory when it lasted, but towards

the latter part of our lives of course, that’s when it ceased. I developed some medical problems and it wasn’t giving either one of us any pleasure. Jim was in the country. I was too hot and he was too cold and we had separate beds and this sort of thing. We just went through this period in most people’s lives when you come to a sort of satisfactory arrangement. And I must say this. These later years of our lives have been absolutely happy. None of those problems

have ever been of any great importance to us. We just settled into a nice old routine. I consulted a doctor over the troubles that I was having and he explained to me that it was a medical situation, and in my case it was making sex most unpleasant. So we gave it away. Simple as that.

Yes, just normally.

Yes.

Yes, a few times. Who doesn’t? But in those days Annie, I didn’t have any money.

I certainly had a profession. But where would you go with two little kids, without any money? These days, a lot of the girls are working, drawing in big salaries. It doesn’t really faze them much whether they stay put or move out. You were obliged to stay put. There was no alternative, hard as it was at the time. I’d be fuming under my breath and

wishing that I could start away again. But I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t now. Because really, these later years of your life are the really happy ones. Tumultuous early years of married life for any married life. I would declare that there would be scarcely a married couple who don’t go through some stormy periods in the early part of their

married life. When you’re bringing up little kids and all that has to be coped with.

Yes. I felt he needed a stable home and that’s what I’ve always tried to provide for him. A place where there’s nice food, and clean.

He’s a very clean man and likes everything spic and span. In fact he’s a bit more fussy in these later years than I am. I say, ‘Oh blow that, that can wait until next week’.

Yes, well he’s quite fussy.

Well anyway if that’s how he operates it saves me having to worry. But I like it nice and tidy too.

Yes it’s very comfy.

Well, my two remaining sisters are both widows.

Lucy, the eldest one, her husband suffered greatly from his New Guinea experience. He ended up with cancer and died. She’s never remarried. Then Lesley, the one who married Trevor, the one who was up on the Tablelands, and whose bridesmaid I was, she had cancer and she died quite young. She never had any remissions at all. She produced four children,

and we’re all a very, very closely knit lot, and it’s all those children, three of them who are still alive. Her daughter died of cancer. Cancer runs in our family. My grandmother died; my sister died; her daughter died; her son has had two brain tumours. My younger sister has had cancer; my elder sister’s daughter has had a cancer,

and they seem to think it does run in a family. Anyway, that was Lucy and she had three children and they’re all adult of course, now. All with grandchildren the lot of them. That was our family then. Then Lesley’s family, and as I say there were four, and they’re all in Gippsland. They’re the ones I see when we’re down at our holiday house.

Then there’s Anne, my youngest sister, and her husband was very tragically killed coming from our holiday house at Port Albert. He had a car accident and was incinerated. He was a doctor, an ENT [ear, nose and throat] doctor. She had two children. One’s a doctor and one’s a trained nurse. But they’ve been married and she’s got grandchildren. They have a lovely little unit over in

Mercer Road in Armadale.

Well there’s Tony. He’s had a tragedy in his life. He married Moira and had three children, and eight years ago on her forty sixth birthday, at Port Albert at our holiday house, she had a massive brain tumour and died by lunch time.

Through the night they got her to the Monash Medical Centre but I think she was only on life support from Yarram. They flew her down here but she died. So he was left with two boys, eighteen and fifteen, and a daughter, twelve. He had a furniture factory. That’s his furniture. That’s got our telly [television] in it.

That’s some of his furniture. Anyway, two years ago he closed his factory. He couldn’t cope with the competition. All the stuff that’s been imported from Asia, chairs and tables and all the stuff that he was producing. It would have been cheaper for him to buy the stuff than produce the stuff. He employed over thirty,

and closed the doors before trading…insider trading, like John Elliott. If you’re in a business…that’s what absolutely frightened the daylights out of him…if you’re in business while it’s insolvent or going downhill then you can be up for millions of dollars.

So he closed the factory, wound up the whole business, paid off the thirty staff and walked away without a penny. So have a guess what! We had Tony and our grand daughter living with us here for a year. The year before last. He had to come home. He went back to his bedroom. Jim had to vacate the room and join the marital bed again. Not that he minded, he didn’t. We coped very nicely in there in our twin beds.

Our granddaughter was doing her VCE [Victorian Certificate of Education]at that time at school. So we went through all the painful experience of doing our VCEs.

We did. 97.3%, which was great, wasn’t it? Up in that front room. That was Tiff’s room. I had no idea that the VCE

was so hard and they had to work like they had to work. So we had them here living. We had to go through the experience of seeing poor old Tony without a cracker. I wouldn’t like to tell you how much it’s cost us both financially, emotionally and every other way. But we all survived. He got through it. He did get a job with a mate, but he left that job and then last

year he got a much better job and he’s doing very well. He has remarried after eight years and she’s lovely. Another Annie. Anne-Marie her name is. Are you Anne-Marie?

She’s Anne-Marie, but they call her Annie. And she’s lovely. She’s fat and she’s a good cook, and she loves him. She’s very, very devoted to Tony.

And they’re as happy as a couple of sandboys. The kids all get along well with her, which is important. We’ve just waved goodbye to our grandson from Adelaide. He was sleeping in that end room for two nights out of the three. The other night was a wedding night, and we were all invited to this wedding, but we didn’t sight our two grandsons. I don’t know where they got to, but wherever it was they survived it.

So we had him there. We’ve had Ben, the one who’s doing Ag [Agricultural] Science. He’s been working in the front room.

No, these are Tony’s children. And Tiff is at Monash doing Arts/Law, second law. Shirley, our daughter, has been married twice. She’s as radical, or was when she was young, as Tony was conservative. You never could have got two different people.

She’s done everything wrong, Shirl. Two failed marriages…well not completely failed. This last one, he’s rather nice, but the first one was a disaster. She’s got two boys. One’s seventeen and one’s twelve. The one who’s twelve plays the violin very nicely, Martin. He’s up to Grade Three or something. Playing very nicely now. He’s been musical since

he was born, practically. Shirley has Tony’s grand piano. She plays the piano. My father was musical you see, so hopefully a bit of music is coming out in them. Shirl plays the piano. She’s got the two boys at a Christian Community School out at Coffs Harbour and she lives at a place called Bellingen. One of the most beautiful places in the world.

It’s thirty five ks [kilometres] from Coffs, right in amongst the mountains. She’s a trained nurse. She’s also a trained artistic therapist. Do you know what that is? She’s a masseur…a therapeutic masseur. She’s just completing the history of the Bellingen Hospital. She’s writing it

and working at the Bellingen Hospital. She’s got a beautiful home at Bellingen, and we fly up and visit her from time to time. She’s now a most devoted and lovely mother and daughter. But she’s still got a few …

Yes a few. Should we have all her problems…? Unfortunately

the first husband was English so she’s never had any help from him for the care and education of her first son. The second father, let me quote, is good. He has educated Jollian [Julian?], but he lives in Switzerland. The second husband is an artist, and he does the most lovely Chinese paintings,

with cards and calendars and little gift cards and teaching schools and all this. He commutes up and down the coastline, right up and down as far as the Queensland border. She doesn’t see him very often, and he has four children living in the Blue Mountains, and he has to commute a lot and look after his own kids. It’s a very strange arrangement, but they get on like a house on fire when they’re apart.

Yes it does. But they’re very devoted to us all. And she’s a good daughter when we see her, which isn’t often, unfortunately. But I’m in the process of writing her a letter, and I’ve left a little space about this big, and I said when the day has finished I’ll scribble a bit more and tell you how it went. I write to her every week and then talk a lot on

the phone. That’s Charlotte Lesley. Charlotte was my mother’s name.

There was always a church service in the army. There was always one on the ship going over. They had that and it was quite a moving experience when you sung a hymn, For Those In Peril On The Sea. So it’s there if you want it. I’ve always found a love for my church. Not that I’m what we used to call a bible banger, I’m not.

But it pleases me to go every now and again to church. So when this church became a Uniting Church, I didn’t care for that form of service as much as the old Presbyterian where you get the readings from the Bible too, you get the hymns and a nice sermon. Now our minister has got some sort of a throat defect,

so he divides his sermon up into three little sections. That’s a good idea. With a long sermon you tend to think, ‘Oh I wonder if Jim’s remembered to put the roast on?’ and that sort of thing. Your mind wanders. But when it’s divided into three you have time to relax for a minute and start all over again. He’s nice. He visited me so often when I had my heart attack. He is very good with his pastoral care. He

came two or three times in hospital. He’s visited me two or three times since I came home. That’s what you want with your minister. And it’s close and handy. It’s only five minutes away from here.

Yes, I

would have to say that quite truthfully. I would. I don’t know if I’m a person like a couple of Jim’s mates. That’s about all the conversation…they sort of dwell. I think I was saying, some people never really get over the war time. One friend in particular, and we love him dearly, he was in the air force during the war

in England, and funnily enough that Harold who was my mate, they were in the same 10 Squadron over there. And he speaks of Harold, but I haven’t seen him for years and I don’t know what happened to him in the end. He’s quite obsessed with that,

and, I’m not always talking about it. It’s not the only thing I think about. But when I look back, it did play a very important part of my life. The friends I made.

A lot of the friends I made after the war through the Returned Nurses Club, and that’s how you got all our names of course, from the club wasn’t it? Our secretary tells me she submitted about twenty eight names.

Well, until last year when Anzac House was all remodelled, we got together quite frequently. And while I was on the committee, see, we always had the committee meetings

once a month and the sub-branch meeting every quarter. Then social activity once a month so that kept us all together, but then the whole thing closed down and they had temporary accommodation up in Latrobe Street, I think it was. Right up there somewhere. Just an office. And the wheels fell off a little bit. But now they’re back again in Anzac House but we’ve only got a room, an office. We used to have a lovely big reception room

with toilets and a little annex part. We had all that before, and an office, but we’ve only just got the office part now. But we’ve got the use of all the facilities in there. It’s all been upgraded. It’s not quite the same as it used to be. It was a great old meeting place for parties and that sort of thing. We had such a lovely room. It was occupied from World War I days,

and it was originally all furnished by the old World War I sisters. But it’s no longer ours and it’s all been re-done, the whole of Anzac House now. It’s very up market now.

Yes, our president was in Vietnam. She was the matron-in-chief until

she retired, Lieutenant Colonel McCarthy. Jan McCarthy. She was in Vietnam. We’ve got somebody who was in Korea and we’ve got several who were Vietnam. Then, I don’t know about the Gulf War. You know we had a medical team that went over and they were attached to that American Hospital ship.

I don’t think there were any of ours there, and I don’t know who was in the team. After the war, after World War II, back in our club rooms, we still had a lot of World War I sisters and lovely ladies they were. Lovely gentle women.

When I was secretary in there, we used to have an afternoon party for the Salonika ones and the Indian ones. There were two sections, and they used to come in and I would put on a nice party for them. Lovely they were. There was no ill feeling at all when they handed over to us after World War II. But there seems to have been

reluctance to now hand over from some of our people over to the next lot. Not that there’s a great number of them, but there are some. But you see, we’re all old now and we should hand over very gracefully to the younger ones. And be thankful that someone is going to keep the home fires burning for us. We’ve still got our communication and our letters

that come out from time to time. In fact there should be one in the mail today. It’s coming out in a day or two according to our secretary. We’ve got our welfare section that looks after the sickies and so on. So we should keep on for as long as it’s necessary. And then of course in the army we found this. In our unit there were the originals

2/2nd, and there were the reinforcements. There was a big division between them. The originals didn’t like us a bit. They had to lump it whether they liked it or not. That was a real problem area. That created a lot of heartache it did. And also whether you were returned or whether you weren’t returned. That was another

very sad situation. I mean all the girls who enlisted in the army, all were prepared to go overseas. If it was their bad misfortune not to be chosen, it wasn’t their fault. Everyone was prepared to go wherever you were sent. Some worked liked navvies [labourers] during the war in places like Ceduna under frightful conditions in those little hospitals.

They worked very, very hard but they weren’t able to wear a returned service badge. That created a lot of ill feeling. A lot of army nurses could have belonged to the RSL who didn’t and wouldn’t because of that. Now isn’t that sad? Unnecessary.

Not really. No, not really. They worked very hard in Vietnam under shocking conditions. And the Korean War was of course…nobody ever talks or speaks or does anything much about it. That was a nasty war too, they said.

Then there was the Malaysian conflict. We’ve got Billie Lindsay who belonged to that. We’ve got one member. She’s our one member who nursed up there. And Butterfield, and no one seemed to know very much about that. We know more about the Vietnam War than those other two.

Yes they do if you’re prepared to listen, they will.

And one bit of ill feeling, of course, was the medical units that were sent up and which weren’t defence, and they worked in Vietnam, and there’s been ill feeling between them and the ones who did go up there. Which seems to have spun out a bit.

They can belong to the RSL, they can. But there’s been a bit of ill feeling about their entitlements. I’m not sure about all the details of it. I don’t know very much.

But I do know that I have heard that there’s a bit of ill feeling between them all, which is a shame really. It was a horrible war anyway, wasn’t it, that Vietnam one?

Yes I do, because they had all that Agent Orange

and I think the casualties were very similar. Probably similar to the ones they nursed after Tobruk when they had those terrible casualties, but then they had the added napalm and so forth. That must have been just frightful, and whether they’ve been

able to prove that has affected the veterans and their subsequent children I don’t know. They do seem to think they can associate it. The deformities.

Only that from the point of view of my personal association with a veteran, I can’t speak fondly enough or dearly enough of the soldier. We were all treated with such wonderful respect. As far as the defence forces and the care and help they gave us movement-wise,

everything was always done for us. I remember that so well. That was always done excellently I always felt. As far as our Government was concerned after the war, they were able to help us do the things we wanted to do – that was another big plus. And subsequently, having been married to a POW, I can only be grateful

to the Veterans’ Affairs. We have never had any axe to grind with them. We’ve received nothing but help from the Department. I’d like to end on that note.

Thanks Annie. Thank you.