Australians at War Film Archive

Good morning. Well thank you.

Well I was a child before the war, I was born in 1918. There was four boys in our family

and my father was a bread carter, he had been a sheet metal worker then he turned to bread carting, then he lost his sight, I was about 8, I suppose, when he lost his sight. I was always the kid, the youngest one. We had a very happy life, a very musical life. We all played something, all tried

to play something. We all made a lot of noise and got a lot of fun out of it. Most of us got better, some of us didn’t. My eldest brother played the piano and the banjo, but he died when he was 21. I was about 12 then, something like that and then the next brother played the piano,

he played very well dance music. Of course dance music was all the go in those days, songs and songs with words and things that you wouldn’t understand today. Every song meant something the words meant something. It was a song about something; it was somebody. That went along for a few years and then my brother next to me, Ron;

they’re all dead now incidentally, they were all older than me. Ron my brother next to me played drums he was a drummer and gradually became a pianist, learning picking up from here and there. He used to play the piano to accompany me while I was leaning the cornet in the brass band. I’d play little

solos and things; he’d accompany me on the piano and that sort of stuff. Which was all very nice, we enjoyed it. As kids we thought music was marvellous. We would walk over broken glass to go and hear somebody play or talk to somebody or see him or something like that. When I was about 17, I joined the army in the 30th Battalion

because of the band. The 30th Battalion had a good band and they had a good name. I got the chance to join the band so I joined the band. I was playing third cornet for a little while and I got to be second cornet then I got to be one of the solo cornets. As time went by my brother got quite interested too in brass instruments. He’d never played a brass instrument so I used to show him how to play it and so on

and he picked up the trumpet too. He played the trumpet, the tenor horn, the euphonium brass instruments; we were both keen on brass bands. At one time we were in about four brass bands, we’d go out almost every night to band practice if it wasn’t Arncliffe band, it was Rockdale band, or Bexley band, some other band, Cook’s River Motor Boat Club Band and the 30th Battalion so he joined the army

about three months after me. We were both in the same band it was very good. And they were a good band. Well they were good to us, by our standards they were a top-notch band, but as bands go I suppose they were only about a B-grade band probably. We did enter a competition in 1938, a B-grade competition and we played against several other bands.

There was one band from Melbourne Fire Brigade Band; they were a very good band. They won the A-grade competition that year and we came second in the b-grade competition. Of course that was good for us too, to be second in anything was good as long it was music and we could play and so on. We were both in the army then and we both did camps at the army

in those days consisted of, this was peace time of course, the army consisted of, for the band, practice night once a week, we practiced for about two and a half hours, three hours perhaps and we used to practice down at he drill hall at Walsh Bay, no Millers Point – the garrison

battalion, or the garrison hall, I think it’s called now, the Garrison Church, have you ever heard of that? As you approach the bridge, it is there on the left. We used to practice there one night week and we would have parades, every month or five weeks something like that. We’d go out in the street and march around various parts around

north – George Street North around under the bridge along Windmill Street and a few other streets around there. It was all for practice, which they were very good. Both of us used to do that with thee band and we’d do anything to play in a band, that went on for a number of years. The 30th Battalion band played at the races a few times,

racecourse at Randwick, and we went to somebody’s home at Point Piper, Patrick, I don’t know who he was. He was a big wheel in the, he had James Patrick Shipping and they had half dozen ships or so that used to ply up and down the coast round to Melbourne, freighters. Though we never got on any, it was nothing to do with us but he was a wealthy chap

and he had a beautiful big home. The house its still there, you can see it when you go past on the ferry and a big dome in the middle of it, and a big ballroom. Several times the band was invited out to play a couple of times when there were dances on and a couple of other times like for garden parties. Mr and Mrs So-and-So would wander around eating cakes and drinking beer or whatever they drank on those days and we would be playing in the band,

to us that was really good. Anything to play in a band and we were in that right up until the war started and actually both Ron and I were in the 30th Battalion we were in camp when the war started. Being in the army and being in camp we imagined straight away, “Oh we’ll be gone tomorrow, we’ll be shipped overseas.”

we didn’t know where we’d be shipped to or what we’d be doing but as it happened nothing happened. Of course that was 1939, when they started in England and France and so on. We were in camp at Rutherford, the 30th Battalion used to go to camp, would go to have their fortnightly camp once a year

at Rutherford. There again a lot more music we’d be playing up and down the streets of Rutherford, they’d take us into Newcastle and we’d go up an down the main street and so on. A lot of this of course was I think probably to get people interested in the army because the war had started in England. It hadn’t affected us out here but it had started in England so I think probably that the government of the day wanted to sort of

generate a little bit of, not sympathy but a little bit of, get people interested in the army so we used to play a little bit more. Well that suited us we didn’t mind how much we played. The more we played the better. We were in the camp at Rutherford when the news came over that England had declared war on Germany and of course that meant Australia too and as I was saying

we thought, “We’ll be shipped away tomorrow, we’ll be off to so and so to fight.” And all this but that didn’t happen. When we came home after the fortnight’s camp they just said oh well that’s it go home and we’ll see you again come to band practice each week, which we did. That went for maybe a year, 18 months perhaps and it started to become more serious, the war was much more serious then. But we would only read about it in the paper or hear it on the radio,

we had radio at that time course earlier on we didn’t have radios it was only about 1928 or 29 that people started to get radios and we got a radio, a black box radio and everybody would sit around and listen to this thing and everybody would have to be quiet so you could hear what they were saying or singing. As I said, we’d thought we’d be shipped away

the next day or the next week and that didn’t happen and then the army or the government brought in some rule that, ah to train us up we’d do three months in the army in camp and then three months out, three months in, three months out. That went on for maybe a year, I think they were sort of trying to train up the

young people who were in army, interested enough to be in the army, trying to train us up to some sort of a standard where we knew what day it was it was or which end of the gun, which end of the rifle the bullet came from, that was about all we learnt. Particularly in the band they weren’t so very interested in the band, you know, we were a different entity, “You go and play, you go and practice over there.” while they’d be practicing with their guns pulling them

to bits and putting them back together and all this. We didn’t have much to do with that and we weren’t much interested in that, those things were too noisy and it wasn’t the noise we liked, we liked the musical sound. So we’d go and practice and play and all that. That went on for three months in three months out three months in three months out and then the war was becoming more serious and they were calling for volunteers then

For the I think for the, we didn’t know what it was for, but it was to join the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] see we were all in the, militia, it was all militia until about maybe 39 or 1940 and the war became quite serious then so then they started to get the AIF – the Australian infantry force – and they were asking all of the chaps

in the militia to transfer to the AIF, the difference being the militia was for service in and around Australia you could be sent anywhere in and around Australia to defend etc but they couldn’t send us overseas unless you were in the AIF so they were trying to get everybody to join the AIF. Ron and I talked about it for a little while and we thought no we’ll wait and see what happens,

so we didn’t join there and then it might have been 6, 8 or 10, 12 months later before we decided that this is fair dinkum so we’ve either got to be in it or get out of it. We decided to be in it and we both joined the AIF then. We were out of the 30th Battalion then because we’d done our three months in and three months out, we’d done that twice. Two lots

of three months in two lots of three months out and where I worked they weren’t very keen about this at all. You were there for three months and then you were gone for three months and they weren’t happy about that. Where my brother worked, he worked at Reckitts and they were staunchly British firm and they were very much in favour, “Oh yes, join the AIF, go overseas and fight.” And so on. They encouraged them

to do that, my brother did that. The people I worked for, they were a brush company, and they weren’t very keen on me being there for three months and being away for three months, they’d have to get somebody to take my place and all of that. So I was sort of looked down upon. But after three in, three out, three in, three out so that’s maybe a year

I was called up then for good, but by that time I was married and had a son which I think they deferred a lot of young fellows like myself we were deferred, they’d call you up and go down to Wentworth park, report down there, Monday morning 8 o’clock you’d report and, “What’s your name?” They’d tick you off and say, “Yes, you can go home, you can go home, you go

over there and you go into that truck.” they were sorting out the ones they wanted there and then. When my name would come up and they’d say, “Bandsman? Oh no you can go home.” They weren’t interested in bands. So I was just a private in the army and I was called a bandsman but there was no, that wasn’t a trade they weren’t looked upon as anything just another private. Anyhow I was called up,

the Japs [Japanese] bombed Pearl Harbor 7th December, 1941, and I came home I was at work and heard the news and came home and thought about it. My brother was in camp cause he was single, he was in camp. We talked it over one night and I said, “Well the Japs have started to fight

now they’re in it and they’d come in against the Americans and so on, this looks like its going to be fair dinkum so I think we’d better join up, we’re young fellas.” And he said, “What about the band?” I said, “Well we’ll join in a band. Find somewhere, some band that will take us and we can play our part there.” We always thought that bands were essential the brass didn’t think, so you know a band

was just something – “Oh yes you can have a band or you cannot have a band.” but a band made a big difference, I mean they didn’t realise that. We felt being interested in bands, we felt that bands were very, they could be done without you didn’t have to have a band at all but if a unit had a band to play while the men were

marching they’d straighten themselves up and be more fair dinkum themselves - it was a sort of a morale thing. I don’t think we realised that at the time but it was a morale booster. Anyhow we both we into the, no we didn’t join the AIF at the time, we were both in camp then at Wallgrove he'd

done three months at another camp outside Liverpool then they were transferred to Wallgrove and I was taken in for three months at Wallgrove. Normally I’d have been taken in as a normal private in the army and they'd have been teaching me rifle drills and how to form fours and all this but being in the band, I knew all the fellas

and I just fitted straight into the band and I played my part in the band and we’d march around and change the guard and so and so on putting on a show more than anything. Well that went on for about three months which took us into somewhere into 1942 and things were becoming serious around Sydney and the 30th Battalion were sent to,

it was the whole brigade, the 8th Brigade was sent to the northern beaches and we were camped in French’s Forest, do you know French’s Forest up on the top there there’s a point where three roads meet one goes to Chatswood one went to the beach, to the coast, the other went north to somewhere or other. They had the camp there. It was quite a big camp. From there

they decided the band had been decimated up to a point a lot of chaps had left and some were in protected industries like turners and fitters, people like that they’d toss out of the army, you go back to work and make the guns and make the things, the band sort of depleted but we still functioned as a band. We were sent from there,

my brother and I were put into a mortar platoon, with the trench mortars have you seen those? They’re like a drain pipe, a 4 inch drain pipe, three foot 6 long they aim straight up in the air, drop the bomb in the top, get out the way she’ll go boom and it would go very high but not far. It was more for, it was a sort of an anti personnel thing. You would drop a bomb and it would clear everything

for 100 or 200 yards and knock everything down, and flatten everything. So we were, to learn more about the army they put us into this mortar platoon. So we would assemble this mortar in the dark and assemble it in the daylight but we didn’t ever fire it, cos they didn’t have any ammunition. We had a practice bomb put it down the spout say, “Boom it’s off.” turn the thing out let the bomb come out

the front we’d pick it up and go through it all again. Do that a dozen times until you could do it blindfolded do it in the night time pull the thing to pieces and if the gun came to pieces the mortar came to pieces in about 5 pieces. They all had straps on them they were heavy enough that you could carry it without a great deal of trouble, each piece would weigh maybe 30 pound or something

like that. You’d put it on and supposedly go for a route march, well we would walk around the oval or around for a couple of hundred yards and then right set it up again somewhere else and aim it at nothing or we’d have an aiming point a telegraph pole or a tree something that was stationary we’d aim it from that and that how the thing was fired by moving the base of it around moved around where the bomb was going

to land. We became quite proficient but we had no bombs it was all practice, but it was good practice. We were sent down to Manly Beach to protect Manly Beach the battalion were, they’d dug in sort of makeshift trenches along the beach, dug it out with spades and so on in the heat of the day too, it was summer time

and the army uniform we had shirts with long sleeves like felt, it wasn’t felt it was wool some sort of a woollen outfit. The wrong thing for the wrong job. The battalion was all down there and they had three bullets each, each man was issued with three bullets, now don’t use them unless you have to.

We were going to repel the invaders; we were going to repel the Japs. We were in the, it was quite funny when you look back on it, we were in the southern end of Manly Beach which was called Fairy Bower a lovely little place, we didn’t think at the time but I’ve been there since and it’s a lovely little beach. We set up our mortar, we had a toothbrush which we jammed in between some rocks so it wouldn’t, that was the

fixed point and we’d aim the gun from the mortar to the, well the fixed point, it was like a triangle. Whatever you were shooting at was one point and you didn’t know how far away it was but by knowing how far that was and how far you were and working out the angle you could roughly, you could aim at the thing. So at one stage they gave us, we had three bombs

three mortar bombs and a lot of good that would have done. They would’ve gone in the water probably. But we did have one practice shoot I think they may have been a bit afraid that the Japs were coming. And they honestly thought they were we thought they were too. You know we were told the invaders would be coming and they’d come down from the north and we’d see the ships or the landing craft and they’d land in here and of course

all of our fellas were saying, yeah and I’ll be on the first tram or the last tram to leave Manly, cos the trams used to run from Manly into the city we would have to get out of the Spit and change over trams. They didn’t run across the bridge then, you could go across the bridge get onto another tram which would take you into the city. We were all joking about who was going to be on the second tram, the third tram and the last tram. We were given permission to have a shoot

one day, they must have thought things looked bad, so they painted a drum, a 44 gallon drum towed it right into the middle of the bay, at manly beach right out into the waves and anchored it with a few bags of sand and that drum was left floating there for a little while. We fired our first round was 100 yards away,

the second bomb that we put over hit the thing! I don’t know if it was good shooting or whether it was a lot of luck; the drum might have moved over a bit closer but we hit the drum. There was another mortar, another part of the 30th Battalion, another mortar on the northern headland which I think was [(UNCLEAR)] or Harbord, it might have been Harbord. That was

set up in somebody’s garage. People had gone to the country, the people who owned the house had gone to the country and the army took over the house and the garage and so on. They had their guns, their mortar set up in the garage, they just had to open up the door and there was the whole vista of manly you know and they could fire anywhere they liked. They had two or three rounds,

bombs and they let them go too; they missed. Luckily we hit the thing; well we think it was us. But that was all of that and after three months of that we’d be down at the beach for a week and back at camp for a week, down at the beach for a week and back at camp back and forth you didn’t know where you were and of course the band was actually more or less suspended or held in suspense at that time because some

of the fellas would be down at the gun, some at the beach, some somewhere else and somebody else would be helping the cooks in the cookhouse and somebody would be scrubbing out the dixies those sort of things. So the band was sort of wiped out temporarily. We did three months there and then went back to Wallgrove for another three months. We were in the 8th Brigade, it was still the

30th Battalion and we did another three months at Wallgrove, what happened then? Before we finished the three months my brother met a chap in town, in Sydney who was a base player, a string bass not a brass base a string base player and he was the bass player in the Trocadero Orchestra:

He was being called up into the army in the next two or three weeks, or he had been he might have already been in the army. Anyhow Ron met this chap, Robinson, Reggie Robinson he was a good bass player he said there was a unit, 116th Australian General Transport Company were getting

a band together for entertainment purposes. Their idea was going around to entertain the troops and they would run dances and this sort of stuff. So this was right up our alley. This was a dance band well that made a big difference, so Ron said right away, “What about if we get in with this Robinson’s crowd, this 116?” We said, “Yeah, beauty.” So we applied for a transfer and it was granted I don’t know how

when where or why but the next thing we were taken by truck down to this 116th Australian General Transport which was camped in Marrickville and it was a transport company run along the lines of a private company in so far as there was a major in charge, two or three captains and the lower ranks and anybody who wanted transport could ring them and say I want three

trucks or five trucks or there’s a ship coming in loaded with whatever and we want forty trucks to go to such and such a wharf and pick up all the gear and we’d take it out to, oh we were taking things out to metal places. I don’t know what they were, things in cases and we were taking flour bags of flour to [(UNCLEAR)] Whites, they were out at Moore Park they had a big factory there we took

tons and tons of flour there, I don’t know why because we make flour. We grow the wheat and we make the flour but these all came off a ship and we’d just take this flour out. I don’t know what they did with it must have used for making bread or whether they were storing or not, I don’t know. Don’t know what they were doing, course being a private in the army you didn’t find out anything, you heard all the rumours but nobody knew what was right and what was wrong.

So you just sort of took it and, “Oh yeah.” And took no notice or very little notice of it. Everything thing was, what was the word, I forget what they called it, but everything was, not a big a big joke, it was quite serious but it was a furphy. That was the word that was coined at the time.

Anyhow we stayed in this 116th transport company for about a I suppose year or so that was then broken up, I think, I don’t know why it was broken but I think maybe the Americans and the Australians and whoever else

by that time they had landed in Singapore. Most of the 30th Battalion band as it was then were taken prisoners and finished up in Changi, which was a big camp in Singapore where the Japs put the prisoners. I think it was actually a jail and they put them in there and a lot of them were there for the duration of the war

and of course there was quite a few died. Died of natural causes perhaps or natural causes brought on by a good belt over the head with the butt of a rifle or something, those sort of natural causes. Because they were knocked about something terrible. Anyhow we were in this unit at Marrickville 116th Australian General Transport and it was broken up,

quite a number of us from the band maybe 12, 14 of us all went to Canungra Jungle Training School, which was out of Brisbane, maybe 50 miles out of Brisbane. It was really heavy thick jungle. We were trained there for, we didn’t know what for, but we know now it was to be

trained up to go as reinforcements to the islands, to New Guinea because New Guinea was a hot spot then and they were looking for reinforcements to go to New Guinea: In Australia of course we didn’t have thousands of men here and thousand of men there, I think we had a population of about 8 million at that time, of them half would be women

so that brought it back to 4 million and of that 4 million maybe 1.5 or 2 million were not fit for service, like my father was one he was called up into the army, he was blind. He was called up and they said, “No we don’t want you, go home.” which he did and about a month later he was called up again he was called up three times

I suppose they got his name mixed up somewhere or other and he was called up he got a letter saying he had to report at the Manly Drill Hall, and if he didn’t report there, the police would be put onto him or the army police would arrest him, etc. Well this seemed so silly but of course with the size of it all, the panic of it all nobody took any notice of it. He

reported three times for service he was sent home each time because he couldn’t see naturally he was no use to the army. He would have been a stone around somebody’s neck looking after him. We went to Canungra and we were three months in Canungra training and it was real on for young and old

‘bout 6 in the morning you’d be up and everything, not everything but a lot of things were done at double pace this was to toughen us and teach us what to do we really learned to be soldiers there because in the band we didn’t carry on as soldiers having to be in the army the army was secondary to us. We realised, we

didn’t have any instruments there we were just sent there. Though we did find, somebody found some instruments somewhere or other we got them out we played for two or three dances while, during the three months we were there at Canungra: They’d never had band there and of course this was good for the morale of the troops and we were playing all the known songs of the day that all the chaps would know. Dancing was of course was,

everybody went dancing, almost everybody went dancing so everybody from about 15 up to maybe 30 or whatever, unless he was married then he wasn’t allowed out that sort of thing. Well dancing was on, everybody went dancing so everybody knew music and everybody knew all the tunes, so did we. We use to play the tunes and

the crowd would sing and dance and we would really entertain in the true sense of the word. We weren’t there for that we were there to learn to be soldiers. We were there for three months and we had three dances during the three months, which we’d organised ourselves. But there was no dances, there was nobody to dance with, there was no women no girls it was only fellas but they all came along and danced and sung and jumped around and had a good night and so on

of course there was nothing to drink it was a dry camp for the privates I think the officers, I don’t know about the officers I think they might have had a sly bottle on the side. But for the privates and so on, for the OR or other ranks we didn’t have anything to prep us up we were just doing it for the love of it. We finished our three months there and went into

a staging camp at Yeerongpilly at Brisbane which had actually been a golf course, whoever owned the golf course must have been tearing their hair because the army was running over it in trucks and fellas were marching round in [(UNCLEAR)] boots and tearing up the greens and what not. It was a big staging camp and it was there for the duration it was there for years. I don’t know whether it is a golf course

now or not, probably is. We were put in there awaiting being detailed to various units well our band had come down there was only three of us left then, my brother myself and a friend of ours who was the bass player we were detailed to go and join the 2/6th AGT [Australian General Transport] Company, another transport company.

So we went by train, trip train went north to Townsville they put us off at Townsville and went to this 2/6th AGT Company, reported the three of us and there were a few others too, they weren’t bandsman but there were other fellas, we reported there they said, “Oh no this is A Company or B Company, you’re in

C Company they’re up in the Tablelands.” so back onto the train we went up to Cairns they unloaded us at Cairns. We looked all around up there no there’s no 2/6th Transport Company around here. So we went up to the tablelands, back onto the train up to the tablelands and we went to a staging camp and I think it was Mareeba it was either Mareeba or Atherton but it was up on the tablelands

and eventually they found this 2/6th AGT Company B Company or C Company whatever it was I forget now. We finished up in A Company and they sent us from there, we were there for about a week just enough time to get unpacked, and they sent us from there down to Trinity Beach which was down the coast about 15-18 miles

north of Cairns. They were training the troops for beach landing. We went down in this transport company and they were equipped with 6 wheel drive big trucks mostly that we hadn’t used until then. We were taught to drive those, when we became proficient they

gave a licence on the 6x6s. We would go out on a landing barge we would go out about half a mile or couple of miles pick up 50 or 100 men they would, we’d be on this landing craft the landing craft would turn around and make for the beach and they would make it in a long line this was a sort of a mock attack

that’s what they were teaching us, we didn’t know what they were doing, it was a mock attack. There’d be maybe 6 or 8 barges would come charging into Trinity Beach and as a given signal they’d let the front down the front would flop down and you’d give the truck all wheel drive low range and boom out into the water you’d jump off the end of the barge

and you didn’t know whether it was six inches of water or six feet. Occasionally there was a few went down, which they came up and pulled the trucks out and used them again. There was a few they didn’t – luckily the ones I was on, the truck I had went down to about a foot 18 inches of water the wheels would all drive and you’d come up onto the beach and take off into the sand hills or 500 or 600

hundred yards off and that was it.

No we didn’t find that out then, maybe two or three years later we found out or after the war was over,

we found out. Only because later on in New Guinea we met some of the chaps who’d been in the 2/6th AGT with us we knew them and of course we said, “Where have you been, what have you been doing?” And that’s where they’d been, they’d been to Balikpapan and so on, and that’s how we found out. We were never informed because it wasn’t our place to know. But because we knew the chaps they told us where they’d been and what they’d been doing.

We met quite a few fellas in New Guinea, New Britain fellas that we knew fellas that were old bandsman we met one bandsman, we did a show with Gracie Fields at Lae and the next day she said, not to me but to the band leader,

“Can you arrange a small group and we’ll go down to the hospital?” which was very nice because they couldn’t go to the concert. We’d done a concert or two with her they estimated that 10 or 12 thousand troops came to the concert. They were everywhere on trucks and up in trees and on top of everything to have a look because she was very, very good, she was a wonderful entertainer, purely and simply an entertainer because she

well she looked very good, but she must have been 50 something I suppose then and 50 to us at 22 and 23 50 was an old women but she still looked pretty good. For us we were behind her playing she was singing she had a good figure, a good shape and she sang beautifully it was well received. But then she decided to take some of the band

and go down to the hospital it was the 2/6th – no, the 2/7th AGH – it was the Australian General Hospital. It was an army hospital, a very big one too, they’d built at Lae. We went down the next day and mistakenly we took a piano we thought she’d have to have a piano. We had trouble getting it on and getting it off the truck we didn’t have any, we could only man handled

the thing. With the weight of the piano and there was only about 6 places you could grab it. We didn’t drop it but it was a nuisance. After the first day we left the piano at home we left the piano at home, at the camp. A piano accordion took the place of the piano and he accompanied her in her little ditties and little songs and things. We walked from ward to ward played a bit here

and played some somewhere else went around the hospital as best we could and it was all that deep in mud. She was very well received and she did a wonderful job and really bucked the men up you could see their faces light up at the thought of Gracie Fields never seen or heard of her, well never seen her and here she is here to entertain us. It was wonderful to see.

there were about 6 or 7 of us from the band along. I was a trumpet, a trombone player came, my brother played the sax, there were two sax’s and the piano accordion the a fiddle we had a fiddle player wherever we

could we would join in, because it wasn’t organised you know she would say we’ll do so and so, she knew all her music too, “we’ll do so and so in E flat.” and the pianist or somebody would give her an E flat and this was the starting note and we all started from that and halfway through she turn around and say, “Make it F and go up a semitone.” and play the same thing but a little bit higher or a bit lower

or whatever to suit her because it was her show she was doing it. We just accompanied and she said, “If you know the thing and can come in and help do so but if you don’t keep out.” So there’d be three or four of us playing something and then she'd go on to something else and you didn’t know it you’d keep out. The accordionists would follow her. But she was very good. We did these shows in the

2/7th AGH, which was a very big hospital. All the beds were all in mud and the sisters used to come out of their, they had a concrete square raised up maybe a foot 9 inches which couldn’t be muddy. That was good that was their office where they sort of lived

and worked and ate their meals when they’d go on to the ward they’d step down into the mud and walk up between the beds. Sorry, sorry about that, but this takes you back.

About all the – all the poor buggers in the beds all shot up and so on. Nothing we could do to help them we didn’t know anything about it.

There was plenty of nurses and wards man they were well looked after in the hospital. This was maybe a hundred miles back from where the fighting was going on. But what I started to tell you was that when we were doing one of these shows we came across a chap in the bed who’d played in the 30th Battalion Band when we first joined it in Millers Point,

Sid Gibbons, he’d been shot up badly. He’d been shot up in Malaya just away from where they were taken prisoner in Malaya: He’d been shot up but I don’t know how he’d come to be back in the Australian Army into

the hospital somebody must have brought him there. Anyway he was there and he was in a bad way. But it was lovely to see him and he was so pleased to see us too, you know somebody he knew. He had looked at the instruments and he looked at the trumpet and patted it and looked at it. Brought back many memories to him too, no doubt.

Anyhow that was the – I’m jumping forward. When we came out of Canungra we went looking for this 2/6th AGT Company we eventually found them ah yes that what I was going to tell you we found this 2/6th AGT Company doing this beach landing

and we were part of it and we were in that for about 2 or 3 months, we became fairly proficient at it. A concert party came through and there was a notice on the notice board I think they called it the 2nd Division concert party will give a show tonight. Well for somebody to give a show

everybody went there was nothing else to do. So we went along and lo and behold we knew half the fellows because some of them had been in the 30th Battalion Band that we’d been in years before a couple of years before. They’d formed this 2nd Division concert party more or less when we were in Wallgrove we were at the start of it and but then we’d dropped out and others had dropped out,

others came in and it had changed around they’d called it the 2nd Division concert party. They were formed and were over in WA at Geraldton they were there for a long time maybe a year or so. Anyhow this concert party came through. We were sitting there and somebody said, “There’s [(UNCLEAR)] and there’s so and so and there’s Les Roland and so and so.” we knew about 8 or 9 of the fellows in the band. So of course

after the concert was over, and the concert was very, very good, very good. George Wallace was the comedian, Mike Pate was the straight man and the announcer and it was quite a number, must have been 20 or 25 men in the unit. It was a very good unit and they were all dressed in civilian clothing and the ‘femmes’ – or fellows who took the part of females

were dressed with their boobs on and their long dresses and their hair all done up and so on. Of course everybody would give them a lot of whistles and cat calls and so on particularly us knowing them. After the show was over we went up to say hello to them, and they were pleased to see us and of course we were pleased to see them we shook hands all around.

After the show they were invited to somebody’s mess tent one of the units there, and of course being with them, we were dressed in army clothes, we went along too, we were on the outside but we went along, “Yeah come along they wont know who you are come along with us.” so we went along to this which to us was a big deal. They had cakes and sandwiches that

somebody had made, cups of tea or coffee, soft drinks and there was beer on. We enjoyed the night sort of and we enjoyed the concert. The drummer who was a particular friend of mine, when I built the house he came and helped me quite a bit later on, but he was a good friend of mine he said, “What are you fellas doing?” And we said, “Oh we’re in this

beach landing group practicing here with the barges, and going on and off the barges and so on.” “Oh that’s no good why don’t you come and join us?” we said, “Can we join?” he said, “Yeah I think so I’ll go and get the officer.” Each concert party had and officer and lieutenant so he went and got the Lieutenant Hughes. He was an older man he was actually,

probably too old for the army. He’d have been 45 or 50 I don’t know quite how he come to be there, but he’d been with JC Williamson’s [theatrical producers] as a prop man for years. He knew all about putting on concerts and shows and all this probably that’s why he was there I suppose. This Lieutenant Hughes came along, our friend

the drummer Les Roland, who’s dead now, he introduced us and said there’s three fellows here from a transport unit that would like to join a concert party can we take ‘em. He called George Wallace over and they had a talk and George Wallace came over and said, “What do you play and are you any good and can you read?” And so on and so on.

We gave him a rough idea of what we could do and who we’d played with back in Sydney fellows that he’d known and so on. He said, “Well, we could do with you fellows.” so he said,” I’ll try and arrange for you to transfer.” So he made the arrangements with the officer and we said, “Well we’ll have to apply to our officer in the transport unit for him to let us go to the concert party.”

they said, “All right we’ll fix all that.” The next day, we went back to camp, the next day who should turn up but this Lieutenant Hughes and George Wallace. They turned up to meet our officer in the transport unit Gibson, Hoot Gibson, I don’t know what his first name was, everybody called him Hoot. He was our officer and Lieutenant Hughes spoke to him,

they just spoke between themselves and then we were called in and our officer Lieutenant Gibson or Hoot as we called him, said, “Do you fellas want to transfer into a concert party?” We said, “Yeah yeah play again, when can we play?” We’d get back into music in some way and he said, “There’s a

gentleman here – Lieutenant Hughes, who we’d met the night before or the day before he’s looking for three chaps to transfer into his concert party. Would you be interested?” We said, “Oh yeah, yeah, very interested, very much so.” Well our officer he was a bit our way too, you know, he said, “I don’t want to hold you up.” because he’d been a trombone player himself, he’d been a

muso [musician]. He played in a Salvation [Army] band in Adelaide we found out talking later on you know. He’d been in such and such a band and such and such a band same thing as us. He said, “Yeah go for it if you can get in there and pick up your instruments, good oh.” We transferred, or they transferred us from that unit to the concert party, which was then the 2nd Division concert party.

We became installed we took all our gear and went over to them; they were in camp at that time at Redlynch, I think, they were in camp. Anyway they took us to their camp we were allocated our tents you know, “Go into this tent or that tent.” And were given blankets and beds and what not. So we were then fully fledged members of a concert party.

We toured around Atherton and around the tablelands, went to camps set up the stage gave concerts. About every second night or sometimes two nights in a row and then move the stage to somewhere else, cause it was quite a thing, it was quite a big thing. It was on a three ton Chevy truck but whoever had built it must have been building a Harbour Bridge

because it weighed about 7 tons and the springs were like this on the three ton Chevy go along the round creak, creak, creak. It wasn’t built for what they were using it for. It was a truck you’d see driving around the street it wasn’t an army truck it was in the army it had been impressed. We found out earlier that the 116 transport company in Marrickville they had the right

to go around and pick out trucks that were doing certain things for private enterprise and the army would repossess the truck or impress the truck, you know we want that truck and they’d take it. I don’t know how they did it. I don’t know how they would pay for it. They’d have to pay something; I don’t know what they would do. But we had a lot of civilian trucks in that unit and we had two or three of this model

37 model Chevy truck which were very good. And one was in the concert party and they’d built the stage on it. The sides of the truck came up maybe 2ft 6, 3ft and then on to that they’d put hinges and another four or five feet went down so that when it was all undone they pulled this out and it made quite a stage, well you saw the picture of the stage that was it,

it made quite a stage. Then they had, we don’t know the engineers or somebody built the ironwork and somebody built a tarpaulin or cut out and sewed a tarpaulin, properly made, and it fitted on so when we were going to a show somewhere we would leave our own camp where we were camped go to the place in the morning set the whole thing up get the

generator working, try out all the lights the microphones and everything. Then we’d, usually we’d have our meal there with whatever unit we were with we’d have our meal, we’d take our mess gear have lunch or have tea, dinner and then we’d get all done up and do the show. Of course we were very well received it was a good show. Not because I was in it, I played a part in it, but it was a good

show because when we first joined them they took us around for maybe a fortnight. The other chaps were still there and we knew them the chaps who we were replacing. One fellow had joined the navy had joined the British Navy and the navy said, “We want him, we want that man so release him.” so he was to go to the navy. Another fellow he was going to be boarded out, the bass player was going to be boarded out,

he had something wrong with his heart valve or something or other. He was going to be boarded out. The third one I don’t know what was up with him but we knew the three blokes and they were all happy to be replaced by three new faces. We went around. They took us around to where they were showing different nights usually about every second night sometimes they’d

show twice and then move to somewhere else. We’d sit in the audience and watch what they did and listen to it all and soak it all up, so that we knew when were there we would be there next week or the week after we’ve go to do what they’re doing. Fortunately the trumpet player – the one that went into the English Navy, the Royal Navy and they had sort of first pull they said the Royal Navy wanted him, and boom

that was it nobody could say a word they took him. Fortunately for me he was about my size so I was given his, we wore a pink coat bright pink coat, it was felty sort of a coat, hot, terribly hot, a white shirt and a red tie, fawn trousers a light, much lighter than yours more like that

no a bit darker than that, but a fawn trousers, tan shoes. We were properly fitted out. When we would come onto the stage when the curtain would open you could hear the gasp, “Civilians!” You know, with civilian clothes and shirts and ties we looked different, this was a morale booster too. Fellas would think, you’d hear them say later, “Gee whiz, I think I’ve got a suit

like that at home, I must get it out and try it on, wonder if it fits.” And all this sort of stuff anyhow we went in to the they transferred us from the 2/6th AGT Company, that was the 7th Division they were practicing for beach landing at Balikpapan too but of course nobody knew we didn’t know what we were doing. When we went into the concert party we didn’t have any rehearsals at all.

We had a pretty fair – it was all written music – we had a fair idea from watching it five or six times we knew what was coming on. We got through it all right, it was a bit of struggle the first two or three nights but after that we sort of fitted into it we were like old hands. After about fortnight we were there for about a fortnight and then they sent the other, the three chaps that were getting out they all came back to Pagewood and they were all,

all the concert parties had been organised into the first Australian entertainment unit, which was camped at Pagewood, that was our headquarters. We didn’t know about that because we’d been down at other units here there and everywhere. Davidson, he was a captain or major, he was a captain I think, Captain Davidson, Jim Davidson, he used to be leader

of the band at the Palais Royale in Sydney, do you know the Palais Royale? He was leader of the band there. He was well known, he was a drummer but a very good organiser conductor he knew what he was doing he knew all about music and so on. Somehow or other he got the job of organising all these concert parties so he organised and got fellas two from there three from there and one from over here

and five from somewhere else and got all these people and sorted them all out into various units into various concert parties. We were given the opportunity to give yourself a name so we called ourselves The Islanders. That’s on the front of that picture; I don’t know what we did with that now anyhow it’s on the front of that canvas. We had a painter, the other trumpet player besides

me he was a painter had been a painter in civilian life, so of course any painting, Greg Ginnery [UNCLEAR] would get out all the gear and he’d paint this and paint that. We had an artist, we had Norm Hetherington, the fellow who did those caricatures he was in our unit, too. He was a lightning sketch artist. That was his part in the show. He was very well received and he was very good at it. He’d come along,

the day we moved into the camp he’d walk around and he’d see somebody he didn’t know and he’d see somebody and he’d think he’d be good one to paint, he’d talk to the fellow and what do you think about this and talk about the war and off he’d go and he’d do on his big board. He had a board 4ft by 3ft white paper, white like butchers’ paper and he would put little dots here and there and he knew what they were.

He knew the fellow; in his mind he knew what the bloke looked like. George Wallace would say or Mike Pate would say something, give some patter about – ‘Our artist was down talking to so and so at the water tank today, or doing something or other, and he saw a chap and he looked something like this.” – and very quickly he’d go zoom zoom zoom and everyone would say, “Ah.”

everybody knew who it was straight away because this artist was very quick and very good. He was a real lightening sketch man. As I said he was the bloke who painted those, what do you call it painted or wrote them or he did those. One was from me playing the trumpet we had a mouse coming out the end and some of the gear that we used to wear but it was a caricature. But anybody that knew me knew that was me knew as soon as they saw it

that was me. Anybody that knew anybody in the concert party they all picked themselves out straight away. So this Norm Hetherington was very good. He was one of the acts, he would be on for maybe five or ten minutes and that’s a fair while when you’re in front of an audience of you know a thousand, a couple of thousand sometimes a few hundred.

that was about all about the concert party. At one stage we were at, when we first went to the islands we went to New Britain and to a place called Jacquinot Bay, which is if you see the map, New Britain is an island like that and there’s a big bay in the middle at the bottom and that’s Jacquinot Bay and we went to Jacquinot Bay.

‘Course we were the Islanders Concert Party then. We were put in with an engineering unit mostly units that didn’t have a lot of people in them they had room to put up another two or three tents they had gear to give us, blankets and mosquito nets and stretchers although as time went on we acquired them all ourselves. We got all of that stuff and we used to carry it around in the trucks with us so we had our own

tent our own mosquito nets and our own everything. Yes we were put into Jacquinot Bay, which was a pretty bay, just like you’d imagine a coral reef out sort of around and then beautiful golden beach then more coral on this side and an island

smack in the middle of it. The island wasn’t very big there was nobody on it but it was well covered with coconut palms and vines and rubbish there was nothing on it. But we got an idea as time went on we were there for a while and the Japs who were in Rabaul they had a good big, they were really organised there. They had airstrips and airplanes and their ships

used the harbour and they had hundreds and hundreds of men and so on. Well we were about, down about that far on the map probably about 80 miles I think down the coast was this Jacquinot Bay and that was as close as we got to them at that time. They used to every, well not every night, but often of a night they

would send over two or three planes. We could never work out why they didn’t send many but we’ve found out since of course they were running out of planes and running out of men and they were running out of petrol, running out of food and ammunition because at this time this would have been 1944, perhaps early 44 something like that, we realised or we’ve realised now they were running out of

gear they weren’t getting supplies and [General] MacArthur’s idea was to bypass these places. He’d bypass Rabaul and bypass New Britain and we were in New Britain. We were in New Britain but we were on the side of the goodies the baddies had been bypassed so they weren’t being fed very well, and they were running short on ammunition running short on fuel and running short

of planes and blokes to fly them and so on but they’d send over every here and there to let us know that they were still there, come over and drop a bomb or two somewhere around where our camp was around Jacquinot Bay. We said to the boss of the engineers, he was a captain, he was a brass band player he'd played in a brass band at Wollongong steel works, he’s only been dead a few years now 5 or 6 years.

We met him of course there and he was a captain in charge of the unit, “Why don’t we” – seeing they come over every now and then, and drop bombs all around the place because it was all blackout, so they wouldn’t know exactly where the troops were or anybody was – “Why don’t we put some lights out on that island put a generator and some lights.” When they come over

that’s what they’re going to bomb and keep them away from us, he said, “Yeah that’s not a bad idea we’ll do that.” so he organised, they took a generator and about a dozen big lights and set them all up around, I don’t know what they was, around trees cos the island would have only been maybe twice the size of our block of land that was all the island was. It had plenty of trees on it so he set this

generator and lights all around there. Sure enough the next time they came over they pasted hell out of that island, they dropped dozens and dozens of bombs and that was a lot for them because they would come 80 miles, they would fly 80 miles down to where we were this before that they would fly down 80 miles and drop two bombs or one or two or three so this is how we knew they were running out of ammunition

and only one or perhaps two planes would come so we realised they were running out of petrol even the lowly privates like us we realised they must be running short. When this captain put this stuff this lights and generator on this island they came over, the first time they came over they dropped bomb bomb bomb bomb, all around here. We were sitting in the dark saying, “You beaut, you beaut, let some more go!”

‘Cause that was using up their bombs, their ammunition and their petrol and what not. We were just sitting in the tents watching. So that was quite good, but of course that didn’t last too long. I suppose we were there for about four or five months but the bombing part didn’t last all that long they must have run out of all sorts of things because they didn’t bother us after 2 or 3

months they didn’t bother us much more, we didn’t see them. They sent a few land parties they came down to within about 10 or 12 miles of where we were but we didn’t see them. It was hard to see them in the jungle even if you looked at them you couldn’t see them you know because they looked like the jungle they looked green. We didn’t see them there but at one stage

I’m not quite sure when they said the officers said, “We’re going up to a place called Wide Bay.” this was about halfway between Jacquinot Bay and Rabaul. Sort of about halfway up, “We’re going there to give a concert but it’s only going to be like a troubadour show there’ll be no stage we’re not taking trucks or anything like that.” so we all

took what we could and we did a show, sort of a cut down version of what we normally did because the fellas didn’t have all the gear to change. We went up in a barge, a landing barge took us up there and dropped us off on the beach. We didn’t have any lights or generator but they had a generator, somebody there had a generator and they’d fitted up a few lights, not many,

just a few they could put on and off quickly when they wanted. We did, they’d built us a bit of a stage, somebody had built us a bit of a stage on top of the oil drums and they put a top over cause it rained like the devil and we played a few songs the singers, a couple of singers they sung

and we accompanied them because we remembered it. A few of the fellas took out a bit of music and had a look at it, “Oh yeah.” put it away and play again. We did a show, I suppose two hours, a lot of it of course was George Wallace he cracked a lot more gags and some dirty ones too because there were no women up there then there was only

fellas and the Japs, they weren’t at the show, there were natives, we had natives at the show. That used to be finny I’ll tell you about that in a minute about the natives. We went up and did this show and it was in a sort of a, it went like that, the ground went like that and they had a bit of hill over there and it was all covered in jungle but it was about 150 yards

across. We didn’t know that night because we didn’t know what was over there you couldn’t see what was over there. The next morning we realised it was about 150 yards or so. We did our show as best we could, a makeshift sort of a show. It was very well received because the blokes had been starved for entertainment of any sort you know, anybody could get up a rattle a tin can and they’d clap and cheer and whistle. They’d been starved of entertainment

and we gave them some entertainment as best we could under the conditions. The femmes got their dresses on and the blokes would make sure they shone the lights on them and of course they were saying, “Don’t show the light on me, if there’s anyone out there they can see me.” well that was the idea of course to show them up. The femmes were quite good; one was named Bride – Phil Bride

the other was Frank McGahan and he was a ventriloquist and he was quite good because he'd have the doll and make the doll talk and crack gags and jokes. That was all right we enjoyed that, but the natives when they would come along they were aghast, they all wanted to get out of the place you know. The doll talking and moving and they could not

work out what this doll was doing and couldn’t work it out at all. Consequently doing shows later on back in Lae as we did a lot there was a barracks no that far away and they used to come up each night, maybe a company of them 20 or 30 they’d come up in trucks and they’d watch the show and that. Of course our officer told George Wallace,

“You’ve got to calm it down a bit and cut out this and cut out that and cut out the other.” And then the natives they were all allowed to come along but they didn’t understand what was going on, they wouldn’t know, they’d look around everywhere and laugh and they’d look around and couldn’t see anything to laugh at and then it’d be a serious part and they’d all start to laugh because they just realised what had happened five minutes ago or someone had told them and we got a, a few times we got a

native interpreter and he would say firsthand before the act went on he would get on the stage and say, “Blah blah this fella and that fella the other fella.” he’d say it in the native, in the pidgin English; he was good at pidgin English. I was never any good; I could never say more than three or four words. But he could speak pidgin and of course they could. He would say, “What’s going to happen?”

So of course when someone would come on to do something they’d clap and laugh and cheer cos they knew what was going to happen when they didn’t know if there wasn’t an interpreter to tell they would sit there and just with big eyes and they shined in the dark and they’d just be all aghast at was going on all the colour and the lights coming on and going off and all the sounds and the shiny instruments and so on. They didn’t

know what just what was going on. We had to tone down, or George had to tone down a lot of the things he said a lot of the gags had to be sort of cut out because there was a certain sort of unwritten rules that there was to be lovemaking or no scenes nobody was to kiss anybody because that was taboo with the natives they didn’t do those sort of things so they didn’t know what the

fellas were doing. The female came onto the stage and the straight man with her he’d ask or say something and he couldn’t touch her he had to keep well away from his mate there he was sleeping in the bed next to him sort of. Because of the, for the sake of the natives that was all changed and they’d change

the wording so it didn’t mean quite as much, well it didn’t mean anything to us.

Yes we went up to Nadzab quite a few times. It was about 30 40 miles west of Lae. It was, there were quite a few units camped up there

and we used to go up and give shows in the opening. We’d find an open flat spot, park the truck, pull the sides down you know, attach all the iron pits to it bolt them together and put the tarpaulin over it. It was a properly organised thing, it was well organised it was very good. So it didn’t matter if it rained and it did rain nearly every day and nearly every night, but it didn’t

matter to us if it rained because we were all under cover sort of thing and the music was all undercover and the instruments were all undercover and the piano was undercover and so on. So the rain didn’t affect us to any great extent except that once you got off the stage you were paddling around in maybe 2 or 3 inches of mud all the time. That was a bit of a nuisance. Especially when they’d go to go on the stage and they couldn’t get up the ladder, there was about 5 steps up to the stage

they couldn’t get up the ladder then they’ve gotta kick their boots off. There was language going right and left, “I can’t get me bloody boots off.” And so on. During the days, or days off my brother and our friend Max Daley, he was the bass player he was a very good bass player too, incidentally he’s dead now too, they’re all dead,

we used to go up there in off times and look around the, there was an air strip well it had been a big air strip for the American Army and what they used to do with their planes they’d fly them for so many hours or ‘til they got shot up and then they’d land the plane, tow it up sideways, tow it up the strip and take it in sideways put a charge in the tails and blow the tail off

it then just leave it. Because to them, they weren’t wasting them they would get another one to replace it. So the Yanks went through hundreds of airplanes and Nadzab was a big flat strip where the airstrip was and where the, the graveyard of the planes, oh, I don’t know how many there must have been hundreds of planes, all sorts of planes you know. Some of the better known ones,

some that we’ve seen in pictures like ‘B’ for Bobby and ‘G’ for George and ‘F’ for Freddy and all these names painted on the sides and various Marilyn Monroe and other shapely equipment all painted on the sides. They must have had good artists and good painters and apparently they couldn’t do that in the Australian Army and Air Force. That was frowned on you couldn’t

write things on like that. But the Yanks didn’t seem to bother whether they had permission to do it or they couldn’t stop it or what, I don’t know. We would often go up there and spend all day wandering around the planes, a few of them we got souvenir pieces of Perspex, that’s like glass and they used it on their domes. We’d get these pieces of Perspex,

Perspex at that time was something new to us; we’d never seen or heard of it then. We’d take it back to camp file it up and make little things, I made a brooch for my wife I posted it home one time. I don’t know where it is now. I made her a few rings and little trinkets and things that you could do. Of course doing it by hand on the side of the bed you’d be filing away, file file,

and next thing you’d file through the bed, through the canvas of the stretcher. You’d do that for maybe, it’d take you a week to fashion it into a spoon and then sometimes it was out of shape and the wrong size and you‘d throw that one away and get another bit and do it again. But all this was just because of boredom, something to do something to occupy your mind. Most of the fellas did it, they’d make rings and all sorts

of things, to get the colour you’d get somebody’s toothbrush, like our toothbrushes are blue, I think ours are blue there and there’s white and yellow, cut a piece off and file it off and fit it to make a ring with a yellow piece or something like that. They’d all come home to their wives and girlfriends, I suppose they’re all in the rubbish tin by now, I don’t think anybody would’ve kept it because they weren’t well made but they occupied our minds for a long,

long time. We couldn’t really practice much around the camps because as you’d soon as you’d start to practice play scales or something, “Shut up, shut that bloody noise up!” There’d be blokes singing out left right and centre to shut up. So you couldn’t really practice very often, sometimes when we’d go away in a truck somewhere get a couple of miles away

in the jungle you could blow your hearts content then, blow for an hour or a couple of hours. That was good but you didn’t very often get a chance to do that so we didn’t practice very often. I was going to say, did I tell you about the time we went up to Wide Bay from Jacquinot Bay the lieutenant said, “We’re going up to Wide Bay, we’re only going to take a troubadours show.” which meant there was no generators, no

lights not much in the way of dresses or coats or anything. It was just sort of; just to entertain the, there was two or three units up there. Their job apparently was to worry the Japs, not that they worried them much and they couldn’t have worried them very much because there wasn’t enough of us. There might have only been, I don’t know how many, it could have only been 100 or 200 Australians

trying to contain maybe 5000 or 10,000 Japs who were in Rabaul. But by that time I think they realised that they weren’t getting anywhere, the Japs weren’t getting anywhere, they weren’t getting fed properly, they weren’t getting petrol they weren’t getting airplanes they weren’t getting ammunition. So I think they must have realised the war was coming to a close or something they must have realised, somebody must have said you’re not going to win or we’re not going to win or something.

They let us off lightly with their bombs. We went up this day, it was daytime we went up in the ship, the barge, it took most of the day to get up there and they let us off and we got in with some infantry unit. I don’t know what they were, don’t know who, they were Australians, but I don’t know what number, what unit it was.

a company of young fellows, well of course we were all young fellows; I was 22, 23, 24. We set up on this stage they’d built us, they’d put up a bit of a stage as best they could with what they had it was out the open there was no cover and they’d put the few lights they had around because they only had one generator we didn’t take any gear up with us, any big gear.

didn’t take the piano it was too heavy we couldn’t lift it. Anyhow there was about I suppose 5 or 6 or 7 musicians there was two trumpets and a trombone. My brother played alto, there was a tenor sax another alto sax.

That was about all, the drummer couldn’t take all of his gear, he took his side drum and a high hat cymbal he couldn’t take all the gear. We didn’t have the space and we didn’t know what we were in for. Anyhow we made enough noise, we made some entertainment, it was mostly we had the two femmes, all the blokes they really enjoyed them, they’d clap and cheer and sing out all sorts of remarks

some not very good, some were funny and some weren’t. These blokes reminded a lot of them of their wives and their girlfriends back at home and so on. During the night here and there they’d put the lights out, everything would be quiet ,you’d hear boom boom, and bang bang bang, out in the jungle somewhere. We didn’t know where it was or what it was but somebody shooting at somebody.

We didn’t know whether it was ours or theirs or what because we weren’t very far from the Japs in Rabaul. I suppose we were probably, I don’t know 6 or 7 miles out, but we didn’t know there could have been camps around there everywhere we didn’t know what was there so it was all a bit of a gamble. But it was well worth while, because the bloke were so starved of, not of food they had plenty of food but they’re so starved of entertainment or

something different or something to look at something to laugh at. So George Wallace in his wisdom – cos he was a very experienced entertainer, he used to play the piano, he’d sing, he could juggle, he’d think up these sketches and things, he and Mike Pate would have these sketches

and you know he’d say something and Mike would fire a few lines back at him and then he’d say something rude or funny or something. Of course the mob would all clap and laugh they all enjoyed that so the night was given over mostly to the talking and singing, the band played a few numbers as best we could without any gear allot of it was you know what do I remember and what don’t I remember

and so on. But we gave them some entertainment, which they really enjoyed, really enjoyed. The next morning we had breakfast there in the camp with them, they brought in four or five Jap prisoners they’d taken prisoner during the night. We saw them but we weren’t up close to them they had nothing to do with us and we had nothing to do with them. We had to keep away, the blokes the regulars would say, “Keep back,

keep out the way.” And we just kept out the way because we had nothing to do with the Japs. But they knew what they were doing, knew how to handle them, what to say to them and how to belt ‘em and that with their rifles and what not. But one of the prisoners who apparently could speak a little bit of English and pidgin, said – I don’t know the exact words, but they’d sat up on the hill opposite and

watched the show and he said the sing sing, which was pidgin for concert, or any group of music was a sing sing, whether they sung or not didn’t matter but everything was a sing sing. They sat up there and – “We watched the sing sing, very good, very good.” you know, these prisoners. Of course I think the prisoners were probably glad to be taken prisoner because they knew they could get food, good food,

or food – the food we had which I suppose by our standards was fairly good. The army looked after us as best they could. That was a funny instance that these bloke had been sitting there with their rifles watching the concert and telling us how much the enjoyed it the next day when they were prisoners. We thought thank goodness they didn’t pick up their rifle and start shooting, and this was apparently why our lights went on and off a few times

and all that sort of stuff. But that was a funny incident, looking back at it, it wasn’t funny at the time but it is funny now looking back on it to think that these blokes were sitting on the side of the hill watching the concert, watching our show. That was about all. We never got close to the enemy really, we tried not to, we didn’t as far as we know, we didn’t except that time

and they got close to us, we didn’t go and look for them they were sitting watching us. But I think by that time most of the Japs I think they were very disheartened, they weren’t being looked after by their keepers whoever they were in Japan and they weren’t being looked after because I think the Yanks were sinking all their ships and they couldn’t get supplies and they couldn’t get this and they couldn’t get

that. One day in Lae we had a corporal I don’t remember his name, would bring down five prisoners and they had a different gear on to us, they didn’t have our clothes on they had their own or what they could best make out of their own. He brought these five prisoners, I think there was 5 or 6, he brought down these prisoners

and he came up and sat on the side of our hut we said, “Don’t go away and leave ‘em, keep your eye on them.” because we were keeping our eye on them too. They weren’t armed, we had rifles but half of us didn’t know how to fire them and didn’t have any bullets anyhow, it’s funny now when you look back on it. I suppose it’s just as well we didn’t have any

bullets or we’d have shot ourselves, shot ourselves in the foot or something. Anyhow these blokes, he brought them down and they were cleaning up, they had long knives like machetes, and they were cutting the grass all around the area and cutting the grass back from the side of the road just generally tidying up the camp a little bit. I said to this corporal, “Aren’t you frightened, Ned, if you left them

of letting one go, aren’t you frightened of one of them getting away?” He said, “No they’re all right, they don’t want to go, they don’t want to get away, they’re quite happy doing what they’re doing, that’s the best they can do.” And he said, “And if they do get away, there’s all the natives around here.” And the natives hated the Japs, because the Japs, when they had the run of the place they looked down on the natives and treated them badly. When the Australians were there and the Yanks they treated the natives

more or less as equals as well as you could and gave them good food and plenty of food and gave them boots to wear and things like that so they liked the Australians and the Yanks but they hated the Japs. This corporal said, “If one of these blokes gets out of line and gets away that I can’t see him the natives will look after him.” I said, “What’ll they do they’ll arrest him or something?” He said, “No they’ll chop him up with their things.” He said there was one bloke the other night was chopped up

and they throw all the parts, cut him into pieces and throw all the parts in all different directions because then in the native way of thinking that was the only way they could never get back together again, he could never come back as a full person because his head was over there and his leg was over here and his hand was somewhere else so the corporal said, “They won’t try and get away, they’re quite happy doing what they’re doing they’re getting a couple of meals a day and they’ve got clothes and boots.” One fella,

he came into our hut one time, he was a bit older than me, I’d have been 24 I suppose or 25 and he might have been 33 or something like that, a Jap. He couldn’t speak English, and I couldn’t speak Japanese and I didn’t have anything to do with him except that I happened to be in the hut. He came around and he’s sweeping around where the beds were, there were no guns or anything

there then, sweeping around the floor and picking up papers and what not and he came across a pair of boots that somebody had gone home and left them, somebody had been sent back to Australia or he’d been sick, there was a pair of boots and they were good boots maybe half worn out, quite big boots and he got the boots and he came up to me and he said, “Boots boots boots.” And I said, “Yes

boots you have.” And I sort of threw them towards him. “Me me me me.” “Yeah you have them.” so he got these boots and he was as happy as anything he went and sat out in the sun polishing these boots and rubbing them with his coat and so on with this pair of old boots that somebody had left or thrown away. There was no holes in them or anything so they were good for a month or two that he could wear.

So he was very pleased that I gave him a pair of boots that wasn’t mine to give. When the war was over we were in Lae when the war finished and they announced it over the PA [public address] system in the, it was a staging camp we were staged in the staging camp and from there we went out and did our shows here there and everywhere

anywhere within 30 miles or so. Because that was about as far as the roads went, if you went one way five miles that was it, you were in the jungle, 10 miles the other way you were into the jungle. There was only the road up to Nadzab, that was about 30 or 40 miles that went up to Markham Valley alongside of the Markham River most of the way, which wasn’t a good road, but it wasn’t bad. Somebody had brought in lots of coral

and put that through down on the road and after a while the wheels of the trucks going over it would powder that up and it would sort of settle it down, pat it down. They weren’t bad roads considering they’re not made roads, but they weren’t too bad. I forget now what I was going to tell you

Ah that’s right, we were there when the war ended

and it was about 9 o’clock one night and it was unusual for anybody to come on the PA system and speak in the night time because they used to try and keep everything fairly quite. Though all around where we were we had lights and sounds and you know the concert party, we’d be playing our instruments and blowing our heads off and so on because this was all secure. I suppose the enemy I don’t know

how far away, they might have been 100 miles away by then you know on the other side of New Guinea where the Yanks were pushing them back. They could have been hundreds of miles away, I don’t know where they were, we didn’t see any only saw a few prisoners. One day our officer said, “Did anybody want to go down to the prison camp?” We all said, “No, no.” Nobody wanted to go to the prison camp. But after a while he said, “Come

down a few of us.” So a few of us went ,there were 3 or 4 of us went down. We went into, they opened the gates and let us in the prison, it was a compound of I suppose about as big as a football field more or less, big compound, they had barbed wire everywhere they had guards, soldiers they all had rifles I suppose they’d all be used to

using them, they were all armed but it seemed to us to be very lax and I said to the officer, “This is very lax, there’s blokes over there reading the paper.” The Guinea Gold used to come out once a week I think or once a month whatever it was that was the only news we’d get a little bit about Sydney about that much a bit about Melbourne about something the football scores which were a month or two old. But I mentioned about this bloke was

reading he said, “Oh he’s all right he’s got his eye on them they’re all right they won’t get away and if they get away and there’s enough natives around here that they’ll cut him up.” He said, “One will get away and the others won’t see him again so then the others won’t go, they know.” He said, “They’re all right, we’re feeding them well.” And they were fed the same meals as we got; we were living quite happily on it, well as happily as we could. Bully beef, biscuits and they’d give the

Japs used to get a lot of rice, they didn’t give us much rice well we weren’t that mad about rice but they loved rice and they’d feed them rice. So being a prisoner they got better food than they did in their own army so a lot of them didn’t want to go back. Anyhow while we were there, there was a Jap came up a prisoner came up to clean around our hut, about the boots, I told you about the boots,

but there was another bloke who came in one day and he could speak a little bit of English and he sat on the end of the bed, on the end of my bed and he said, “How old, how old?” and I said 23 or whatever I was or 25, whatever my age was at the time. And then he said, he waited a while then, “Yu gat meri [woman]?” That meant ‘was I married’, you know, “Yu gat meri?” I said, “Yeah, I got meri.” “Where meri?”

“Home, home.” so he knew all about home and then I said to him “Yu gat meri?” “Yes.” “Where at?” “Over there” – right up the north, so apparently he came from right up the north and I said, “Cold.” And he said, “Oh freezing cold.” so he knew cold. Of course with a lot of movement and explaining what you said you know, ‘cold cold’, and he was doing the same.

he said, “Yu gat pikinini [child]?” so he knew what ‘piccaninny’ was, which was a probably an Australian phrase had been used maybe the natives had heard it or the Japs, he knew it, “Yu gat pikinini?” I said, “Yes.” “How many?” I said, “I got one, one piccaninny.” “Boy or girl?” “Boy.” “How big?” I said, “Oh so big.” he was only four I think then, maybe five or something like that, no he wasn’t five

might have been three or four but anyhow, “I got piccaninny so big.” I said, “You got piccaninny?” “Oh yes, three.” “Oh, you’re lucky; you’ve got three, how big?” And they were bigger cos he was a bit older than me, maybe could have been 10 years older than me and his piccaninnies were probably 10 years older than mine, and his last one was quite a size you know so he could have been I don’t know

and I said, “Boy, girl?” and he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. But that was about as far as the conversation could go and I looked around to see if there was anything he wanted, nothing he wanted he had boots on. Course, that was the trouble, the Australian Army never issued the prisoners with boots, well I don’t think they did, but they used to scrounge boots they’d find them and steal them and do whatever they could, pick them up off dead bodies or

anything that was what they did for boots. So I don’t think, I don’t know whether, I suppose the Japanese army gave them boots, our army gave us boots, but I spose, I don’t know, I don’t know whether the Japanese army gave them boots, they probably did but as prisoners they’d wear out and I don’t think the Australian Army minding the prisoners bothered about giving them boots because

they weren’t going anywhere anyhow and they were probably safer not to have boots they wouldn’t try and get away or whatever. That was quite interesting around there. We were, the war ended then at that stage it ended. We all came out of the hut walking around shaking hands with each other course the big thing that everybody was saying, “The war’s over, we won

the war, haven’t fired a bloody shot.” neither had any of us. I said, “If any bloke had come up to me I’d belt him over the head with me trumpet.” joking of course. That was about the extent of our humour, most jokes and things we’d heard George Wallace had told us all the jokes he would hear them, he had somebody in Sydney or somewhere that sent him along lots of jokes

and scripts of jokes, 3 blokes went so and so and one said this and the other one said that. He had lots of those, he’d put those into the show and we’d hear them all and so we’d heard all the jokes sort of thing. But we were very, very pleased when that was over and then of course a couple of days later we said, “Now when are we going home?” Start to ask the officer, “Don’t know, no idea.” we worried him and pestered him for a while. A week or a couple of weeks later

he said, “We’re going home on such and such a date, but I’ve got to detail two blokes to stay behind as pickets on the trucks.” because our trucks weren’t just ordinary trucks, you see with the army when they finished when they left Lae they all just left Lae and left the all trucks there and the trucks were all put around into what they call a car park, the car park was around the back of Butibum Road

and it was probably 5 miles by 10 miles it was that big. They’d dug out the palms and so on and they put all these trucks and cars lined them up we didn’t know why but I found later that the idea was before we left Lae civilians started to come in from I suppose Sydney and wherever else

and they’d come and look along these, “Yeah, I’ll have that, give me those ten trucks I’ll have those twenty cars.” And they were buying them. That must been the army’s way of getting rid of them because if they didn’t do that they’d just lie on the side of the road and rust away. Because I had a, a fella came to me one night he was flying home the next day, about the next day he said, “Do you want to buy a car?” I said, “No, no thanks, I’ve got five trucks out there I can use

one of those if I want to go anywhere.” There was nowhere to go, there was a beach we did have a beach, Malahang beach that we used to go to, it was black sand and there was a wreck, a Japanese wreck, the Myoko Maru was the name of the ship, cos it still had it painted round the back of it and we used to clamber all over this ship. It was beached and it had probably been beached there for a couple of years because the sand had built up around and you could walk down the side of the ship

belt on the side of it. Here and there you could go in through a hole in the side and wander around but there was nothing in there it was all just wrecked and rusted. but if you got upstairs, if you went upstairs it was all the cabins but they were all butchered there was nothing in any ways decent except at the back we used to dive off the back into the Milford Sound, Milhaven, Milford,

I don’t know. It was a big, looking at the map, as that part of New Guinea went round there and then around there and it was in this big sound, Milford, no Milhaven I think. It had gone in there for some reason or other and it had been bombed probably it had gone it there to beach itself

so, I don’t know why, so it wouldn’t sink or so all the crew wouldn’t sink or whatever. It had been there for a few years and that was our watering hole you know you could always go down to the Malahang River and it was so popular that they built a change room down one end and a change room up the other end, ladies and men, there were ladies there then. We had the, the 2/7th

or might have been the 8th I don’t know. There was a hospital, a big hospital at Lae where they used to bring people over from Singapore and all around everywhere, a big hospital. They probably had other big hospitals too but I remember that one well because that’s where we went around with Gracie Fields.

but after the war of course that had all gone, the hospital was still there but Gracie Fields and so on had all gone and all the entertainment blokes had all gone home they’d all gone home on the Taroona, the SS Taroona, which I went up on the SS Taroona which was a nice ship probably. Although it was a troop ship so you know everything had been bashed around and everyone had names carved in the doors and

that sort of more or less ruined the ship without a refit you couldn’t use any of that I suppose. It had been built for travel from NSW, Melbourne, Adelaide not Adelaide, and Launceston and Hobart. That was where it ran backward and forward taking products from there bringing them up for sale for

tourists and what not that’s what it was built for. It had a flat bottom, well a fairly flat bottom. You know how ships come around like that go down as a keel to keep them upright well this didn’t have that because it was built mostly for river work and close into shore and it sort of came down and went across straight more or less. So it wasn’t flat but it was fairly flat. Which meant that a storm, when we got into a storm or rough weather she really tossed around like a cork and

going over from, I left from Brisbane we went into a force 9 gale; blokes were talking about jumping over the side to get off the thing because it was rocking so much. Quite a few fellas, thought the thing was going to sink but I was never concerned

in that way though I was very y sick, seasick so was everyone else, the crew were sea sick we were all sea sick, everyone was seasick. I forget now what I was talking about.

That’s right I went over to New Britain

on the Taroona and we came back from New Britain to Lae on the Wanganui, which was I think it was a New Zealand ship. It wasn’t a bad ship it was in good condition, it was fairly well painted and all that. All the crowd came; the concert party came home on the Taroona all left about three or four days, or a week maybe a week

it could have been a couple of weeks a week or two after the war ended they came home but two had to stay back. I was one of the two and this other chap I spoke of, Les Roland, he was our drummer and he said, “I’ll stay back with you.” because he had nothing special to go back to. I had my wife and son which I wanted to come home to but I didn’t, I knew I wouldn’t, I didn’t think I’d have a job and I was a bit concerned because

I’d called in on one of the leaves, I’d called in to this place and the owner’s son, who had been in the army and been shot in the foot in Bardia and he’d been boarded out of the army, but he was in there working doing my job so I thought to myself if I go back I’m not going to get my job back he’s got his own son in there and I couldn’t blame him for that. So I was sort of very reticent about, I wasn’t in a hurry to get home though I wanted to come home,

but I wasn’t in a hurry because I didn’t know what was going to happen would there be, would I get a job what would I do, where would I work? I always thought well I could take on music as a profession but I didn’t want to do that I didn’t want to rely on music because music at that stage at that time music was good while you were right in it but you had to be right in it all the time playing night after night after night and you’d get jobs here there and everywhere or get into

one place. But you had to get into these and of course I had been out of them for a few years and I thought I’ve got no chance of getting back into music. But it was always a string I had, a string to my bow that I had the back of me that I could always even go and busk if needed. Of course that never happened. So I was never in a real hurry to come home because of that. My brother, on the other hand, he worked at Reckitts

I think I told you that before he worked at Reckitts, it was a very fine upstanding British Army, flags everywhere and so on, they had supported all the while he was in the army his pay was made up by Reckitts and two or three times they wrote to him in the army they wrote to him and said, “Your job is here waiting for you etc.” So he had something to go back to, he had a job to go back to

to start with and I had nothing. So I wasn’t that fussed about coming home straight away I thought to myself no I’ll wait for a while and see what happens. So I said, “I’ll stay behind.” with the drummer Les Roland, so he and I stayed behind as pickets. The officer said, the officer by then had been changed, Hughes had gone and we had an officer then named, he played cricket

for Manly, Vince Carrick, Lieutenant Carrick. He went and took all the mob with him and he said, “You and Les keep your eye on the trucks.” because on the trucks was all our own personal gear like my trumpet was on the truck, my brothers saxophone and clarinet was all on the truck and all the other fellas had their own gear. The army hadn’t supplied gear to us because

we’d, they did supply it later on, but we had sort of started off earlier before ever the amenities army amenities entertainment units got going we had started off well before that. We all had our own instruments and they were on the trucks too. That reminds me, I never got paid for the use of my trumpet for five years, four years. So because of this I wasn’t

in a great hurry and I said I’d stay on and that’s right the lieutenant said, “Well it’ll only be a week or two, they’ve got to wait for a ship to come in with a crane big enough to lift the trucks.” The trucks, the heaviest one was 8 ton and, “It’s got to be a crane big enough to lift the 8 ton truck.” We had to keep all the trucks together we kept them separated from everyone else and made sure nobody pinched what was in them, because the war was over then and everyone was pinching everything.

I was telling you about the car, this bloke wanted to sell me a car and I said, “What sort is it?” It was a 42 model Chevy, lovely beautiful it would have been a staff car. I said, “What’s wrong with it?” He said, “It hasn’t got a second gear, but it doesn’t matter, you can go from low to top, don’t worry about the second gear.” And I thought well, that sounds alright, “What do you want for it?” He said, “Give us a couple of quid.” I said, “I haven’t got a couple of quid, I've got a pound.” “Alright well give us a pound.” because he was going home in the truck,

on the plane or on to a ship or something the next day he wanted to get rid of it. “Give us a pound for it.” I said, “All right.” so I gave him a pound, that was about all I had cos I used to get a shilling a day, 14 shillings a fortnight entered into my pay book and I would only get that if we were somewhere where I could spend it and we weren’t there were no shops. A couple of places we had canteens and you could go a buy a tin of cream or buy tobacco or

whatever and that was all I wanted a few things like that I didn’t buy anything else, everything else is provided for you, you know. Anyway I paid him the pound and got the car and he said, “What do you want to do with it?” I said, “Just leave it over there, I’ll look after it.” from then on Les and I used to ride around in this car, pull up to the bowser and fill her up and ride around in this car. We were never questioned about where’d you get or where are you going or where have you been.

Prior to the war you had to have a thing called a G2, and if you didn’t have it, you had stolen the vehicle and you’d be charged for it and so on.

Yes. It cost me a pound for that car and we used it for quite a bit travelling backward and forward to the beach. We didn’t go to Nadzab in that because it wasn’t a four-wheel drive and you couldn’t go through the rivers. We went up that way a couple of times for something,

I don’t remember what it was, might have just been joy riding. But we went east fairly frequently and we used to go to the beach nearly every day cos it was hot. Every day was hot, in the middle of winter it was hot still hot. I was madly making scarves on a little loom thing that I’d

dug up from somewhere I’ve still got one of them in there too I’ll show you one after, all coloured wool, the red cross girls used to give us the coloured wool you could go and ask them for it and they’d give you a ball of this and a ball of that and I was making a tartan. Of course I didn’t know what the tartans were but a few red there and a few green some that way. I made some nice scarves and sent them home to my wife. As I say I think

there’s still one there, they were hand made, they were amateurish but it were something for me to do. When I wasn’t driving around in the car I’d be making scarves and we’d be rasping away with this Perspex making rings and bangles all that sort of thing to fill in time. I found I could

make silver wire, you get a two shilling piece and belt it enough times on the bumper bar of the truck with a hammer, bang bang bang bang, turn it over, bang bang bang, belt it long enough it would soften the silver in it and you could make wire of it. A two-shilling piece would come out to about that long and you could make chains and bangles and chains, but they were very amateurish.

I looked at them after I came home my wife said, “Do you remember you sent me this?” I said, “Throw it away, it’s rubbish.” It was mostly rubbish and I think it all got thrown away, if she didn’t throw it away I did. But it did fill in a lot of time. We used to go looking for that for this Perspex and there was nothing else on the airplanes that interested us, it was no good to us, compasses and all those sorts of things. I s’pose if you could’ve got one

and brought it home, you could have – sold for I don’t know, 50 pound or 100 pound. They were expensive instruments but they were useless to us we didn’t want a compass we knew where we were going. But as I was telling you about us coming home, the officers detailed the two of us; I said I’d stay with Les the two of us would stay behind. We took them

down to the boat, down to the Taroona two or three days after whenever it was, we drove them down to the wharf which was about four miles to the wharf, that was another thing driving down to the wharf the road was about two miles in from the ocean and here and there they’d ploughed or bulldozed roads and then

they’d bulldozed into the jungle and cleared out about the size of a football field and that’d be all packed up and loaded with stores of some sort, I don’t know whether it was food or I don’t know what it was it might have been clothing or could have been ammunition could have been anything. One side another one of these football fields there were parachutes, I don’t know whether they were for people or don’t know what they

were for but there was a few parachutes hanging out and of course Les and I thought, “We’ll get some of these.” so we cut the strings took ‘em back to the tent. We used to make doilies out of ‘em, sort of weave ‘em around and at the end fluff it up with a toothbrush make a doily. It’d take about three days to make a doily, which was probably worth 5 pence or 6 pence somehow in those days. That used to take up a lot of time.

anyhow this day we took them the unit down to the boat and waved them goodbye and off they went. The officer had said, “Don’t worry you fellas will be home in a week or two they’ve only got to wait for a ship with a jumbo crane to lift the truck.” So we waited and waited and waited and the weeks went by and waited and waited and we had no officer, nobody was sort of in charge of us, we were generally at a loose end, nobody told us

to do anything nobody told us what not to do. We were just on our own with our five trucks. These were camped outside, parked outside our hut that we were in. we were there for six months and he said it’ll be a week or two perhaps. But there was no officer to get in charge so I used to say to Les, “Les, how about if you go down to the wharf and chase them up and see if we can get to know somebody and

see if we can get a ship with a jumbo crane.” That’s what we wanted. So he used to go down and occasionally I’d go down and we got to know a few of the blokes got to know their names, “Oh you’re the fella that wants the jumbo crane, yeah no threes no, haven’t got any ships coming in, there’s not –” They’d look up their list, “No nothing coming in this week, or next week.” or whenever. Suddenly one day, “Ah there’s a ship coming in, it’s a cattle boat.” We said, “We don’t care what it is, don’t give a

[(UNCLEAR)] that’ll do us as long as you can put the trucks on.” “Yes it’s got a jumbo crane on the front.” so we said, “Right, we’re going home.” I said to Les, “Go and see the officer and tell him that we’ve got five trucks and we want to go on this ship.” So he went and saw the bloke and he said, “We’ve got five trucks and want to go on this ship.” “What’re you taking the trucks for, put ‘em round in the car park and leave them there!” We said, “No they’re all loaded with gear.” “Oh what’s in ‘em?” He wanted

to inspect to see, I suppose probably quite rightly, he might have thought we had a lot of guns or dynamite or bullets or whatever in it. But we unpacked one of the trucks let him in let him get in and have a look around and he could see there was all instruments and all our drum gear and then there was another one, he opened the wardrobe there was a couple of wardrobes bolted on to the side of the truck so they wouldn’t bounce about and this was for the femmes, he opened one of

these he said, “What the bloody hell have you got here?” we had all these dresses and furs and coats and hats and shoes, ladies shoes, course they used to wear the whole lot ladies shoes and all, and they were dangerous you know walking around on the uneven stage and they weren't used to high heels. But one look in there and he said, “Yeah I can see what you mean, yeah righto, you’re a concert party, good, go on this next ship and take your five trucks with you.” So we got our five trucks

down onto the wharf and when the ship came in we went and saw the stevedore and said, “We got five trucks, and a couple of them’s loaded.” He said, “What do they weigh.” I said, “Well they weigh 8 tons.” “Oh oh well, we’ll have to put them out the front, we’ll get the jumbo crane to lift that.” so they did that and he said, “What’s the others?” I said, “They’re all the same.” They weren't, the other ones were light ones, my truck was empty.

I had row of seat down either side bolted on to the wall and we used to use that as our bus to go out to the shows and back and the blokes could get dressed at the camp with their dresses on get into the truck get out at the other end and they’ve all got their gears and their makeup and everything and wigs on and the whole bit so it worked out well. We had a jeep which belonged to the officer it was there for his

use and the bloke said, “Well you don’t want to take that back.” I said, “Well no, we don’t want that, that’s not ours, you can have that.” We gave him that that one I don’t know what happened to it, it probably went into the car pack. Went back to the camp I said, “Les I’ve got to sell my car.” He said, “Leave it there.” I said, “No I’ll see if I can sell it.” So I went into a hut a little bit further down than us, I said, “Anyone want to buy a car?” “Oh yeah, what sort is it?” I said, “A 42

Chevy, staff car, no second gear.” “Oh what do you want?” I said, “A pound, give me a pound.” well a pound was a fair bit and it was a lot to me getting a shilling a day it was you know, quite a bit. He ummed and ahhed for a while and I said, “Well you can have it for ten bob.” He said, “All right, I’ll give you 10 bob.” So he gave me 10 bob, that was 10 bob, well you wouldn’t know what 10 bob is would you? It’s about the

equivalent to a dollar, so I said, “You can have it for a dollar there’s the keys and there’s the car.” “Beauty, right, good.” So I left it, I sold the car for 10 bob. We got on the ship, because of our trucks on the front we got on the back hold they covered the hold and put a tarpaulin over it and all the troops got down we had 600 on the ship, it was a

freighter and it was to carry a crew of 12 so you can imagine how big the mess, the kitchen, the galley. The galley was, it wasn’t as big as our kitchen out there, one cook and one washer upper and that was it and he catered for 6, for 12 men that was the captain and all the crew. Well when we were on the ship he did the same he just catered for the crew and the crew ate on their own and the captain and the, a couple of

officers. We got a Wilds cooker, what they called a Wilds cooker; I think Wilds was the name of the maker, who made it whose idea it was I think. It was like on a semi trailer on a square frame and they’d built it up like a caravan not unlike a fairly modern caravan built it up with steel a steel roof on it,

they put in it a steam cooker and a pressure cooker, well that is steam cooker, they had a pressure cooker and then a steamer and a couple of other things water tanks to hold water and all that. It was the thing that was made up so that a company of men going somewhere could hook it on the back of a truck or a car and take it along with them and they’ve got their kitchen all set up with a couple of blokes working in it cooking and doing whatever.

Anyhow we got one of those cookers brought it down onto the ship got the fella to lift it straight onto the deck, it was a steel deck, and they lifted it onto the deck right alongside of the back hold where we were, we lived on the top of the back hold. When they got the canvas over of it, it was quite good it was good underfoot we were on the top of the hold and we got plenty of fresh air all the poor blokes down below 600 of them all a bit like this,

poor buggers. Anyhow we had a, Les and I had a good spot, we were on top of the hold so we got plenty of breeze and half the time we would, they had a tarpaulin over the derrick that came out the crane thing they put that down and lashed it down and put a tarpaulin over it like that. It was just

tied down a, the sides open at the ends and breeze flowed through and it was lovely we lived on that we slept there and ate there and did everything. Somebody was – there was a sergeant cook and a few other fellas were told off to start getting the evening meal ready. We left there on a Sunday afternoon, maybe 2 o’clock or something like that and they started to get the fire going under this cooker

and we got out up this sound maybe, perhaps 10 or 15 miles and suddenly bang! Everyone said, “Submarines, submarines, torpedos.” But then we said the war was over there couldn’t be a torpedo we looked around and here’s the cooker it had blown up they had fired it up too much it had got steam up and the whole lot blew up it had most of it had blew over the side. There was just a crumpled a shell of the thing there

and the captain came on and said, “We’ve just lost the cooker.” There was a few of the blokes were hurt but they didn’t get hurt too badly somebody doctored ‘em up and they stayed on the ship because it didn’t matter, see we were going home.

Yes we were going home and it didn’t matter much what anybody did or said or what you had to put up with it didn’t matter and he said, “We can go back to Lae and get another cooker or we can feed you baked beans and biscuits all the way.” We said, “Right, baked beans and biscuits, never mind the cooker.” so we didn’t have a cooker.

That’s what, then they picked a loading party, or a, loading party that’s what we called it, but there were about 8 of us used to go down to the they had a, the front, no it wasn’t the front there it was behind the front hold was another hold which carried the ships gear, the ships their food everything they wanted was all down in there and we’d

have to go down and open the, lift the lid off and let ourselves down on ropes and get a tin of, the tins were 4 gallon kerosene tins, do you remember seeing those, about so square and maybe that deep get a kerosene tin or two kerosene tins of baked beans, put ‘em on a rope the fellas up the top pull ‘em up take ‘em round and we set up the kitchen

near the cooker, that was where the kitchen was. The kitchen was a long length of plank on two sawhorses that was the kitchen. No top no table no nothing. The officer of the ship said, “Well now we’re not going back to Lae to get another cooker you’re all happy to go home.” “Yeah, yeah, anything just take us home.” So

we were 11 days on this ship, it was a real slow one, and it stunk. I used to pity the poor fellas that slept and lived, well they didn’t live there most of them were up on the deck nearly all day but they’d go down there to sleep. The smell, the stench of it and they said it had been scrubbed out and scrubbed clean and so on and so on but there’d been cattle living there and they’d been carting cattle somewhere it was a cattle ship.

The captain said, “Well it’s a cattle ship you knew that when you got on.” Never mind, we’re going home so that sort of fixed everything up we were going home. So each day we would go down and get one or sometimes two tins of baked beans and bring ‘em up, no tin opener didn’t have a tin opener so we got an axe, we axed around the top and peeled half of it back. We didn’t

have any serving out gear because that had all gone over the side with the cooker things for turning meat over, all that had all gone and peeling and ladles, all that had gone. For 11 days we had baked beans, cold baked beans because they had no way of heating it cold baked beans and biscuits, army biscuits, do you remember the army biscuits, did you ever see the army biscuits,

you know those lattice biscuits we’ve got out there they were like that only maybe twice the size or three times the size about that thick and they were as hard as the devil and if you tried to chew them you’d almost break your teeth many times they would. We found the secret was to soak it, soak it in salt water or in anything, in water or tea anything, soak it for a little while

then you could eat it and it was quite good and they were very nutritious, cos they had a lot of vitamins or whatever this had all been built into the biscuit because they were built, the biscuits were made to send to troops and blokes that were away and couldn’t cook and all that. But you could eat a biscuit and chew it and munch it all day and it would keep you alive for maybe two or three days or whatever. So that’s what we had, these tins of baked beans,

cold baked beans and dog biscuits, that’s what we called them, dog biscuits and you could have whatever you liked, you know one ladle or two ladles well we didn’t have ladles. They fixed up mess gear, one of the mess gear and ladled it out. You’d come by with your gear and you'd get it and that was open from 6 in the morning till 8 or 9 at night and you could go whenever you liked, there was no breakfast or lunch or dinner it was just there if you wanted it.

Which worked out all right because there was 600 of us could you imagine all lining up to go in to get a meal. So it worked out quite well we were still eating baked beans and dog biscuits, when we arrived in Sydney, we were still eating it.

I don’t know what day it was we came down. It was 11 days we were on the ship, it was slow, very slow, I don’t know why, whether it was old or worn out or whether they had it slow so as not to make the cattle sea sick or what, I don’t know why, but it went very slowly because coming down ship after ship would pass us,

you know we’d see old decrepit old tubs would flash past we’d all be singing out, “Give us a lift, give us a lift, give us a tow.” Anyhow we were 11 days and we just had the same diet. We landed into the wharf which was number 2 Circular Quay, that was it’s name, number 2 and it was the second wharf, it’s right where you know where the Opera House is? Well it’s the side of the Opera House but not the first wharf the next one.

That’s where we landed that’s where we pulled up. Of course the war had been over for 6 or 8 months by then so there was nobody there to meet us, my wife was there and Allan was there. There were, I suppose there might have been 100 people and the troops came off, the 600 came off and they had army trucks there and they took them out to the showground

I don’t know what happened after that. We stayed on the ship because we had to wait for these cranes to lift these things so I asked the stevedore in Sydney, “Can you get ‘em off here now?” he said, “No no, you can’t take them off here, you've got to go around to…..” some other bay, Walsh Bay or Wattle Bay, some bay around near, more Balmain than anywhere around that way.

We went around there and the wharfies [wharf labourers] came on and they worked slowly and slowly and slowly everybody watching everybody else that they didn’t do too much and it took about 3 or 4 days before they could get, they lifted off the other things on top before they could get to our trucks, but they got them off anyhow eventually after 4 or 5 days of us living on the ship. We used to go up to –

there was a pub in Balmain and we used to go up there and get a hamburger or steak and eggs or whatever of course we couldn’t afford anything very much my shilling a day didn’t go far. Les was little bit more; he was more wealthy than me he used to get 2 and 6 a day I think. Anyhow we did that for a few days because we had the five trucks then we had to lock them up so that nobody could get into ‘em and watch them more

from being broken into and stuff stolen because we knew what was in ‘em but we didn’t tell anybody. But we knew it was all our gear our saxophones and trumpets and trombones and all sorts of things. Which were very dear to us but I suppose a wharfie wouldn’t think anything of it. But anyhow they were all right nobody ever touched the trucks and we were there for three days and nobody came

to get us nobody told us anything. So I said to this Les, “What about if I go out to Pagewood and see if we can get somebody to come back and drive the other four back?” So he said yeah that was a good idea so he stayed with the truck and I took the empty one which was my truck drove that out to Pagewood saw the sergeant. out there told him explained to him what had happened and he was very sympathetic

he said, “Yeah I know you want to get home.” I said, “Yeah that’s right we want to get home too.” So he said, “All right I’ll send four.” I think he sent four or five drivers down, and down on the wharf we two said to the blokes, “There’s the five trucks now, they’re yours, take ‘em do what you like with them, but don’t open them, cos we had our gear in there, don't open them until one of us is there.” because I wouldn’t put it past anybody to steal

you know, see a shiny trumpet there and take it home for the son or the kids. Anyhow they took them out to Pagewood and they were lined up there, we went home about four days, we had about four days leave and we went back they were still lined up there. We got a party of blokes to unload it and carted all the instruments in and put them under lock and key because our concert party had been broken up.

They’d had leave and they’d all back and been broken up and there was three or four of them went on another tour it was a war loan tour they used to have these tours you wouldn’t remember them would you? The Commonwealth Government I suppose would embark on a war loan or they’d put out a war loan and you could go to a

post office and I think for a dollar, no there was no dollars, I don’t know whether it was a pound or five pound or what but you'd buy a bond and you d pay your five pound say and you got a certificate saying the government owed you five pound plus interest. Well you'd take that and put it wherever you liked and in say four years or five years you'd take that back and you'd get your pound plus 10 shillings interest

or whatever it was. It was peanuts to most people, but people who had money bought a lot of these war bonds because the Commonwealth needed the money to, well to pay off the war, and pay the army and pay off the navy, and so on, that was it. We had four days, Les and I had four days off, and we went back and said, “We’re due for leave.”

and they said, “Yes, well we’re going to.” what’d they call it, disembark, “You’re going to be put out of the army.” I forget the word they used.

No not default, no. They had a word, which meant you were going to be demobbed – demobilised – that was it. See when you went in you were mobilised when you went out you were demobilised so you went off the army pay. So instead of

asking or instead getting leave again, we’d had three or four days we were sent out to the showground where all this was done and went through about 10 blokes asking questions and we’re giving the same answers to all of them and we were demobbed there and then and they wrote out our pay book up full you know, full paid up to I had about 25 pound or something in it. Well 25 pound was a lot of money then in those days.

It was a lot of money to me. So I got me pay out then, we got deferred pay, we used to get a shilling a day deferred pay but you didn’t get that that went to your account and when you got out of the army you were given a bankbook with that deferred pay in it but you couldn’t draw it. You could only draw it or use, on

you could buy a house, you couldn’t take it and drink it at the pub you couldn’t put it on a horse, it was only you could buy a house or you could buy land or you could invest it in something. There were certain things you could only do with it. I didn’t get mine for a couple of years and when I did get it I put it as a deposit on the land that we bought it went towards paying for the land. But by the time I got it was

open then anybody could get it and you could get it and drink it if you wanted or bet it or gamble it or do what you liked. But that was maybe a year or 18 months after the war was over when you could get your deferred pay for any reason because some of the reasons were silly fellas would get their deferred pay go into the first pub and drink it, shout for the whole mob and perhaps get rid of a hundred dollars, or pounds not dollars, perhaps fifty a hundred pound at the one

time, all get drunk and, “He’s a real good bloke.” but he comes out drunk and broke and so on. There was a lot of that went on, not officially it was all unofficially. So that was about my experiences with the army and the war and

I waited, I had, I came home in February 1946

and I had leave til May because I hadn’t had any leave while we were away I had leave til May so I said to Lorna, we lived in a flat in Rockdale we were well off really living in the flat because we had the flat before I went in the army and I was playing music of a night so I was getting sort of not double pay but almost double pay so I

was quite well off. Well off for a working man in those days, they way it was looked upon. We had this flat we stayed on in the flat for 10 years all together, but we stayed on after the war we stayed on for maybe a year or two years or something like that and I went back to Wilds, the brush makers, for my job and

“Oh very, very sorry, that job’s taken.” His son was doing it. I said, “You’ve got to give me back a job, I’m entitled to a job and I’ll go and see the army and see that you do.” “There’s no need to do that, no, don’t do that, don’t do that.” nobody wanted to get mixed up in legal things nor me I didn’t want to get mixed up. He said, “We’ll give you a job and you’ll be on the same pay that you was on before you went away.”

and I said, “Right that’ll do.” So I took the job. But I was sweeping the floor and cleaning the toilets and doing all the nasty things, they wanted to get rid of me. I felt that they did, they didn’t ever say that they were always happy to give me the job you know I was welcome. I stayed there for about 6 months and I’d had enough of it then

so I left there and at the time my brother had come out and he’d gone back to Reckitts and he got his old job back. He was driving a semi trailer carting black lead, it used to be loose black lead it wasn’t done up in packets or anything and he’d come home of a night and he’d be black, filthy black and he’d have to scrub his hands and scrub his body and scrub his head and all that to get this black lead off. But that was normal

for those days, the company didn’t do anything about cleaning you or no arrangements made about that. He’d been working there about 6 or 8 months he’d got home earlier than me and he went back to work there and he was carting this black lead and he said that was a rotten job and he’d taken on a few music jobs but he didn’t have his saxophone so he’d borrowed one and

he’d taken on a few jobs to do but it wasn’t the same. You know it wasn’t a pleasure anymore it was a chore. They all, everybody used to be “Why’re your hands so black what’s your, you’re all black around the neck and black around the ears. Haven’t had a wash for weeks or something?” Blokes used to say that to him. So after about 6 months he got out of there and he got a job down at CV Hollands which was the – they

were the Chevrolet or General Motors agents in Rockdale, agents for General Motors. But the Yanks hadn’t started to make cars, so they weren't getting any cars. But Ron got a job there he used to grease the cars and trucks and wash them and so on. I was telling him I was dissatisfied at Wilds and so on he said, “Well, look why don’t you leave there and I’ll ask down at Hollands for a job down there.” so he said

he spoke to Clarrie Holland who was the big boss, he was the owner there used to be owners in those days they weren't all corporations he was the flat out, straight out owner. He said, “Yes I’ll give you a job I’ll give you a start but I want you to be in any time.” He wanted, I said, “Yes I think I can do that.” he wanted me to wear a collar and tie and a white dust coat and I would

go and accept a car from you or anybody, “Yes sir, no sir, yes sir, we’ll do that sir, yes we’ll look after that sir, yes.” I had to be a mouth piece for Clarrie Holland and he was very good, cos I went to him a few times and said you know, “I’m having a bit of difficulty with this one and that one.” “Leave it to me I’ll talk to them I’ll sort it out.” which he did. Anyhow I stayed there for 6 months I suppose. A chap that

I’d gone to school with came in with a little Morris truck brought it in to Hollands he said, “Hello what are you doing here?” I said, “I work here, I’ll accept your truck and I’ll do this and that.” “No, no, no, don’t do all that I only want this done.” And he told me what he wanted done. It was just a service I said, “Yes I’ll look after it and I’ll give you a ring when it’s ready.” so I got the service done and rung him, he came back to pick it up and he said, “Is this what you do?” I said, “Yeah this is me job, I’ve gotta sort of

smooth you over, pat your feathers down and tell you what a nice bloke you are and how good your car is, with the women too how good they’re car’s running and so on.” I taught one woman how to drive a car she had a late model Pontiac and was worried about, it used petrol all the time, “Every time I pull up it I’ve got 6 gallons of petrol and so on.” so I said, “How do you do, what do you do, take me

for a ride in your car and tell me what to do.” So we got in the car and she pulled the choke right out and hangs her bag on there, started the engine and took off we drove up around Bexley. I said, “Do you do this all the time?” she said, “Yes, all the time.” I said, “Do you know what that’s for?” she said, “That’s to hold my bag.” Hold her handbag, she had full choke. Of course chokes were manual in those days and you pulled it out just to start the engine as soon as it was a little bit warm you gradually eased it or

pushed it right in so the normal driver had got rid of the choke before he’d done a mile. Well she’d drive all day with the choke right out. It’s a wonder the thing went, it’s a wonder it didn’t choke itself and stop like they often do, or did. But she didn’t know the difference anyway I told her I explained to her what it did, what not to do, “Don’t put your bag on there ever put it on the seat.” And so on. I got on all right with everybody

sold a few valve grinds and decokes and new engines to a few people. Clarrie Holland was very pleased and so on. I thought, I talked it over with my wife I said, “I like the job, I like what I’m doing I like talking to people and selling them things.” Even though I didn’t know what all of the things were that I was selling. A radio, “We’ll put a radio in your car.” “Will it be a four valve or a five valve?”

I didn’t know, I’d say “It’ll be a radio and it’ll go and you can put it on to all the different stations.” because in those days they were all valves, they weren't like radios today, all valves and four valves went better than two, and five went better than three and so on, but I didn’t know much about them. I sold a few radios a few valve grind jobs I sold a lot of work for Hollands, sold a few engines and valves, rings, and bearings a few times

that was a sort of a, if you wanted new rings you needed valves and needed your bearings done and they don’t ever do that now. The cars of today don’t wear out like that. But in those days they did, they wore out so I sold a few new engines. I talked it over with my wife and I said, “I like the job I’m doing, but I can’t see that it’s going to lead anywhere. I don’t think I’ll get anywhere with it.” And she said, “Well why don’t

you take up your music again.” I said, “Well yes I think I will, but I don’t want to rely on music.” because music was you know, you’re in today you’re out tomorrow and you work for a week for somebody and he says, “No no I don’t like the way you play it or I don’t like something, you’re out.” or if somebody comes along and he thinks he’s better or he likes him better or he’s a better fellow or something and you’re out then you’re out of work. I thought, I said, “I don’t want to rely on music I’ll take it on as a sideline again.”

Which was a good sideline because before I went into the army I was making double pay, I was making my wages of a night and then working during the day and I was quite happy with that I was good money, good for then. I think from my weekly pay I was getting about 4 pound 18, which would be the equivalent of well I don’t know what you’d,

nine dollars say about 9 dollars a week, but I was going out and playing of a night and I was getting 12 or 14 dollars for the week. I was making more out of that than, so between the two I was making fairly good money, well for those days and for my training and knowledge and all that it was good for me sort of though if I had aspirations of being a director of a company it wouldn’t have been any good. But for me it was quite good.

but anyhow I said to the wife, “I don’t like the job so much, I like the job I like talking to the people and all that but I can’t see any future I think as soon as somebody else comes along they might toss me or they mightn't want me.” I thought of a lot of things a lot of reasons why I could lose that job. So I stayed about 6 or 8 months and not only that I had itchy feet like you may have heard

ex-army or navy or air force people say they get itchy feet and you can’t, you feel it, you’re tied up too much to one thing. What’s around the corner, you want to see what’s around the corner something better over there perhaps or maybe not as good but it’s different so you want to change. But I had that I had itchy feet a little bit cos she said, “Your feet are getting itchy.” Yeah she could read me like a book

and I was getting itchy feet, I wanted a change. But as I was saying this chap that I used to go to school with brought this Morris in for something or other, grease I think or something like that I sold him a little bit more than that and when he came back to get the car, get the vehicle it was a little

wagon he said, “What are you doing working here?” I said, “I’m doing this you know this is my job.” He said, “Come and work for me, me and the old man, we’ve started a business in Arncliffe.” which was only another mile or so the other way. I said, “What is it?” He said, “We’ve started a hardware business.” During the war his father had taken a job with the procurement company, not a company

it was a government run thing to procure

Well I suppose they’re not good. I don’t know much about the earlier days like up until I was about 8 I don’t know, I don’t remember much about it. But we were kids used to play

around the street we lived in Turrella, near Turrella Station in the, what we called the gully in Dowling Street there. There was my mother and father and three brothers. The eldest one, well to go back I was 8 or 9 as I remember and I was going to Bexley School, I don’t know what class I was in, probably fourth or fifth something

like that. We were allowed to stand, kids with bare feet, and I was one of ‘em, you didn’t have any shoes we stood on the tarred big area, tarred – this was the assembly ground or assembly area, all the classes would assemble there and whoever was in charge would read out the instructions for the day or that was normal business.

Any of the kids that didn’t have shoes were allowed to step over onto the other kids’ feet because the tar was so hot it’d burn your feet you couldn’t stand on it. So not having shoes I was allowed to stand like this, one on that kids’ foot and one there and if the that kid didn’t have shoes on they’d move him around until somebody with shoes sat there, or stood there. Not only me but there was quite a lot of us that didn’t

have shoes at all. Kids at that age barefoot they nearly all went barefoot, maybe the bank manager’s son had shoes but nobody else had shoes. I remember I got my first pair of shoes when I was 11 and they were a pair of sandshoes what we called then sandshoes, I don’t know what you call ‘em know I don’t think you can buy ‘em. They were like canvas, with a white

sole sort of a rubbery sort of thing, they didn’t last very long canvas used to wear out. That was my first pair of shoes; I was 11 and that way when I joined the Rockdale Boys Band that was my firs taste of brass instruments and this was why I got the shoes because I used to walk from Turrella to Arncliffe to school. I went to Arncliffe School then and from there I’d walk

from there down to Rockdale shopping centre where the band hall was I would go to band practice. They were teaching the cornet and so on. After that then I would walk back to Arncliffe and back to Turrella, so I did a lot of walking. I used to get a lot of stone bruises on the feet and things like that, maybe my feet might have been a bit tender or whatever. But anyhow I was given my first pair

of shoes at 11 and I was over the moon with these shoes because there was so many kids around who didn’t have any shoes. Anyhow as time went on I got to realise the value of a pair of sandshoes and got to understand a bit more about the family and so on. I was 10, I think, when my father went blind

and of course things were grim, very grim from then on. He got nothing for a while, a couple of years maybe a year and then he got a, something from I don’t know who it was from whether it was the Blind Institute it wasn’t a pension I don’t think, but he got a pension when he got older. He got an old age pension when he was 65, but at the time he’d have only been

about 45, 47 something like that. My eldest brother who played the piano, played quite nicely and he used to play the banjo too they were popular in those days he developed something with his heart the valve or valves or something with the heart and he had no energy whatsoever and he was very sallow in complexion and he was sort of ordered

to bed and take this, digitalis I think they gave him and he used to have this every three or four hours or whenever it had to be taken regularly but he was useless sort of he couldn’t get out of bed for anything, he couldn’t walk any distance he could walk to the toilet and back and that was about it and we he come back he’d be ‘puff puff puff’ like that, for maybe five or ten minutes, until he sort of got his breath.

To me and to my other brothers I suppose and to Mum it was just a, he had a weak heart that was all; I understood he had a weak. But it gradually got worse and worse and worse and he died when he was 21 which left just the three boys and Mum. The eldest boy, the eldest brother then, like he was the second eldest so he became the eldest brother he was

about 19 or something like that, Ron was about 17 I was about 12 or 11, 12, 13. No Ron’s two years older than, there’s two years between all of us. When I was say, 10, Ron was 12, George was 14 and Harry was16, it was like that. Course it went like that all the way. But he died when he was 21 that would make me about 11 or 12, I might have

been. That was big shock to me because he used to encourage me a lot when I was learning the cornet I went to the Rockdale Boys Band and they gave me a Cousnon cornet, French make not a very good make but it was a cornet. I used to practice it and I’d bring it home and Harry would want to know, “What did you learn today, what did the teacher tell you about today?”

‘He taught me the scale of C.” “Play it for me.” And I couldn’t play it but I’d make the fingering and blow it as best I could and he’d say, “Now can you do the next one, do the scale of D.” I didn’t know what D was. So I was gradually learning the music and learning to blow the cornet and he used to encourage me and ask me questions about it, he couldn’t blow it of course. Well that was at that time. George

was I think 18 or 19 and he got a job as a boot repairer. They used to have places around the city round Sydney where you go in take your shoes off they’d repair them you’d put ‘em back on and walk out. Sort of instant repair shop, they don’t have them nowadays I don’t think but he got a job there. He was taught how to cut the leather and put the last on it and

put it on the last and belt the leather down and all where to nail and where not to nail and all that he was learning all that. So he was working and my brother Ron he was still at school so things were pretty tough. The only income the family had was the few shillings my father was paid or given from I don’t know who it was, it might have been

the Blind Institute or somebody like that. It wasn’t a government pension; it was some charitable place I don’t know what it was. I was only a kid of course and I didn’t understand these things. If I asked questions I was told to shut up and mind your own business, as kids were. Well things went along like that, my brother was buried up at Rookwood [Cemetery].

Things went along for the next few years just sort of from week to week. My mother started to make sweets, lollies and I used to go round of a Saturday go door to door to sell, try to sell bags of lollies for 6 pence. A bag or caramels or bag of toffees or something was 6 pence. But a lot of the time of course

people didn’t have the 6 pence, and if they did, they wanted to spend it on something else. So that was a difficult thing to sell we’d go all day long all around Arncliffe up around Bexley with this basket, this weighed about a ton by the end of the day, because I was a pretty skinny kid. When I’d come back I still wouldn’t have sold maybe three or four. “Oh well, never mind, try again tomorrow.” So I’d take them on Sunday. So I’d try Saturday and Sunday and collect

or get what I could and just come home and put it in to my mother she handled everything, she made the sweets and so on. So that was about all the income for the family was the few shillings my father got 7 something, 7 and 6 pence or something and the few shillings that my mother got from the sweets so that was it. So we used to live on a lot of soup, boiled up soup, vegetables that anybody around could grow

and cut ‘em all up and put them all in and boil it up. I don’t know whether there was any meat in or not, there might have been a rabbit or so, we’d sometimes get a rabbit around Turrella there was quite a lot of bush around the back, back end of Turrella and Bardwell Park and the back end of Bexley as kids we’d go over with catapults try and try and catch a rabbit or hit a rabbit if you could. You couldn’t kill ‘em cos you know they were pretty quick things,

but if you were lucky, and you landed a stone, you’d knock him out or knock him over and race up and grab him. They’d go in the stew things like that. I was going to Arncliffe School then, I’d graduated from Bexley, which was a school you could only go to sixth class, I don’t know what they call it now probably I’d have

been maybe 12. Anyhow you had to leave Bexley that’s as far as the school went. So the nearest school then was Arncliffe. So I used to walk to Arncliffe every day. I went in to seventh class, which they called first year and the next year went into eighth class, which they called second year. At the end of second year I’d sit for an examination, which was what they called the intermediate certificate, and I was doing well, I was going quite well at school. I enjoyed

school. I liked to go, and enjoyed all the various things I was learning shorthand and history and geography. I still like history and geography, shorthand, I couldn’t even write my own name now but I was doing well in shorthand. When I was I wasn’t 14, yes I had turned 14 in the May and about August or something of that year

I was offered a job working at Vicars Woollen Mill, which is not there now its gone, I think it’s a shopping centre but it was over in Marrickville. Ten shillings a week.

I didn’t want to go I wanted to stay at school and my mother said, “Well you can’t stay at school you’ve got to take this job.” it was ten bob a week, or ten shillings a dollar, in today’s language. Of course ten shillings bought a lot more than a dollar would buy today.

So I took the job and I was a mule spinner that was working on a mule a big long thing about 80 or 90 feet long and it moved in and out like this with all spindles on it. And it’d draw the yarn, draw the wool, draw the yarn from a spool and it’d spin it and then it’d wind it as it went in it would wind it. It was a mill spinner. I quite enjoyed that too I learned a lot about mules and how they worked and what, how they worked and

why they didn’t work sometimes. I worked there until I was 16 and Vicars decided, Vicars who owned, this was the Vicars, the big English company Vickers – V.I.C.A.R.S – not the Vickers gun people, machine gun, not them. Vicars, it was a family concern,

worldwide and they decided to move all their mules they bought another factory out at Northmead you know Northmead bit out from Parramatta: They brought a factory out there and they had mules, so they decided to move the mules from, there was 2 4 6 8 9 11 13 – they decided to move the mules from Marrickville

to Northmead and they said, “Anybody that wants to keep their job you’ve now got to Northmead, your job’s not here anymore. It’s up there at Northmead.” I was just 16 and I was only a kid really and I talked it over with my mother and she said, “Well you’d better go because there’s nothing here, you can’t get another job doing anything else.” And we needed the 10 shillings or I was on about 12 and 6 then,

It seems laughable now the amount of money but of course 12 and 6 was a sizeable amount I suppose for a 16 year old.

To get the cornet – the brass band at Rockdale of which I was a member they’d given me a – it belonged to them they’d leant it to me. I had one of their cornets which

I used to play. I didn’t get my first cornet till I was about I suppose 18 or 19. Somebody saw it in a pawnshop near Central Railway on George Street, 25 shillings. I had some – I had about 7 and 6 or something saved up and somebody else gave me 2 bob and somebody else gave me 2 bob and so on and eventually I got the 25 shillings

and I went down and bought it. That was my first cornet. It was silver-plated and it was knocked about and dented in and bent and so on. I used that for a few years four or five years. There was still plenty of life in it and during that time I’d saved up a few shillings and I had the dents knocked out and had it re-plated, and of course it looked like a new instrument then which it virtually was.

I played that ‘til – I started to take dance jobs then and really you couldn’t do that on a cornet. You needed a trumpet which is virtually the same thing but a different shape. The blowing of it was the same; the fingering the same music was the same the sound was pretty much the same sound. The cornet was a bigger louder sound it was too,

a bit too loud and brassy for a dance band. So when I was about 19 or 20 or something like that I sold the cornet and bought a trumpet I got my first trumpet. I had about five after that, different makes, different models so I finished up with a British made Besson, which was a beautiful instrument. It was my last instrument it was lovely. Easy to blow, free

beautiful intonation beautiful tone everything about it was good and when I decided to sell it was here it was lying here and I said to Dot one day, “I don’t know what to do with this trumpet I can’t blow it I don’t know anyone to give it too.” I’d ask my son and he wasn’t interested, grandson – no, he didn’t want anything to do with instruments, didn’t know anybody I could give it too so I thought oh well I’ll sell it. I went to the agents,

Besson agents who were in Killara or somewhere, St Leonards or somewhere over the north side. I took it over there one day. Cleaned it all up course it was clean and I polished the case it was in. Took it over there and I said, “What is this instrument worth?” The fella said, “Where did you pinch it?” I said, “I didn’t pinch it, it’s mine, my instrument.” I gave him my name and address and so on showed him my driver’s licence which was

fairly new at the time, “It’s my instrument and I want to sell it, what would you say it’s worth?” he said, “Well we don’t buy instruments. We sell them. We’ll sell you a new one of that model, but a couple of years later younger, a couple of years younger for 1500 dollars.” I thought, I said, “Well I want to sell it. I don’t know anybody to sell it to.” He said, “Well we’re not interested in it.” I said, “Well what do you think would be a reasonable thing to ask?”

He said, “It’d be a steal for somebody at $1200 or $1000.” I thought, “Beauty, 1000 dollars!” And came home and put it aside for a while and then I decided to sell it. I put an ad in the paper I thought $800 that sounded better, somebody would snap it up at that. I put an ad in – not even a phone call,

nothing, so I waited for a month, 6 weeks put it in again and dropped it to $400 still nothing nobody’s interested. I waited another month dropped it to $200 nobody was interested in that. But the day that the Georges River Bridge opened, the new you know, the flat bridge not the iron one the other one, the day that that opened Dot and I walked over there

to see the opening and have a look at it and have a walk across the bridge walk one way and walk back the other way. There was a band of mostly kids mostly boys a few girls brass band of all learners or beginners and they were playing in a fashion they were playing some march and so on. I thought, “Well one of these kids might be interested in buying my trumpet.” so I went to the band master and I said, “I’ve got a

beautiful Besson, large bore Besson trumpet, beautiful condition it’s a beautiful instrument.” he said, “Why do you want to sell it?” I said, “Well I don’t play it anymore, I can’t play it anymore my lips won’t vibrate.” He said, “Well really trumpets aren’t used in brass bands.” which I knew but a lot of people used them but he said, “I don’t know of anybody that would be interested in buying it. How much do you want for it?” I said, “$800.”

I said, “I took it over to Besson’s agents and they said anything up to 1500 to 1600 would be the new price.” but I said, “say $1000 even $800.” “No there’s nobody interested.” Anyhow I left him my name and address and after the bridge had been opened and the day was over we walked home we were sitting outside there on the back veranda and a knock came at the door.

There was a chap and he’d been on the grog [alcohol] cos he smelled of it and he said, “Are you the fella that’s got a trumpet to sell?” I said, “Yes.” he said, “Well I’m the fella that’s interested in buying it. Where is it?” in a very brash sort of way. I said, “Well, here it is here.” I got it out and showed it to him. He said, “Does it work?” I said, “Yeah it works.” So he said, “Play me something.” so I played a couple of scales on it for him they were pretty rusty

because I hadn’t blown for a couple of years then. He said, “Yeah that sounds all right, just a minute.” And he went to the door and he said so and so, come in. And so in came this girl a girl about 12 or 13 came in and he said, “Is that like the trumpet you want?” “Yes that’s it that’s the one; get that one for me Dad.” “Righto.” He said, “How much is it?” I said,

I think I dropped it down a couple of times anyhow I got two hundred dollars for it. He pulled out his wallet and peeled off $200 that’s what I got for it. It was a shame to see it go. I wish now I had never of sold it not that I could’ve played it, I don’t suppose but you know it was so dear to me and it had given me so much pleasure and I had enjoyed it so much over the years and the

trumpet would still be in good condition I would imagine if the kid had looked after it, but she couldn’t play it so she said, “Will you play something on it.” And I played a scale and I played Irish Eyes Are Smiling – she knew that. So she couldn’t get a note out of it. She said, “What did you do to it?” I said, “I didn’t do anything you’ve got to make the sound here and so on. It was a quick ten-minute lesson and she went off and I got my $200 that was my trumpet. I haven’t had one

since.

Nothing, I wasn’t born until 1918. It was all over. I was born in May 1918 and the war finished in what November, that November so it must have been going pretty hot when I was born but of course I don’t remember that. But

the First World War, the first I heard about it was when I was at school I might have been 8 or 10 or 12 or something and there had been a war on and there’d been a lot of men killed and there’d been a lot of Australians killed but to me at that age it just went in one ear and out the other. Didn’t mean much.

Why did I wait? Well that’s fairly easy to answer. I waited because I’ve never been one to rush into

things. I like to, whatever’s on or whatever’s new I like to wait and find out, work out for myself what I think is going to happen and is this right is that right is this wrong? Are they right or are they wrong et cetera, so I waited those few years because a lot of other people that I had spoken to said, “This war can’t last – it’ll be over in a year.” I thought to myself well now I’ll disrupt

my working life and everything just for one year so I just waited and that year became two years I think three years about three years before I joined the AIF. Then I, well I wasn’t pushed into joining the AIF but it was suggested, presented in such a way that I felt obliged to do it and I did. My brother and I, we decided to join the AIF,

because at that time it meant nothing to us, it meant no different to us. We were playing our instruments and that’s what we wanted to do. We knew that if we joined the AIF and we went overseas or somewhere there would be a band there somewhere we could get into and play. We were totally, we were totally into music, we wasn’t interested in the war or anything

else for that matter. When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor that really that annoyed me, got my back up then. You know I thought, “Well if they’re going to do that to a big nation like America, who was big then and they are big, bigger now – if the Japs do that they must have an ace up their sleeve and they might come over here.” So I thought, “Well, I’ve got to get into it now and do whatever I can.” But when I joined

I thought I was joining the army, well I did join the army but straight away I got into a band somebody said, “Can you play anything?” “Yeah I play the cornet.” “Oh right, you go into the band.” I was in the band sort of on and off from then on. I enjoyed the whole lot of the musical side of it, enjoyed that enjoyed playing music to anybody and everybody that would listen and to myself I listened.

Did at that time? No they were just an enemy. An enemy was an enemy. It didn’t matter what brand they were or where they came from. They were an enemy and they were going to perhaps come here and harm me

and my family. I didn’t like that that’s why I put my name down and joined. I wasn’t a flag waving must be in the front row I wasn’t that, I was never that sort of a bloke. I was always a little bit reticent about joining things until I found out what it was, what was going on. I wasn’t proven wrong too many times I was a few times

but a lot of the times I was proven right.

It was wonderful to get back into the, when I got into the army with Ron, it was wonderful. We were great mates; we played together even as kids we used to play throw stones at each other and push each other around

on bikes and scooters and things when we were little kids. But the music helped us because he’d come home from somewhere and, “I’d heard so and so – ” And he’d get out his clarinet or saxophone or cornet or something and play it and I’d learn it. The next thing we’d have a duet going or something. It was always of interest, music was always interesting. That’s why I can’t understand the kids of today. They’ve got no

idea of music at all, no idea of musical appreciation. Most young people today they want to get a guitar and go strum strum strum, which means nothing they’re happy with that, not only kids but adults, professionals on the television strum strum strum, one chord it means nothing. It can’t mean anything to them either unless they’re deaf.

The standard of music today is absolutely shocking. Of course I was sort of brought up on music in the big band era, what they called the big band era which was sort of from the early twenties up ‘til after the war which was sort of my period of from when I was old enough to

hold a cornet until I was old enough or too old to play it and give it away sort of. I was interested right through there with all the big bands and all the bands we played with we used to try to emulate their sound cos they have a sound all of their own Yanks have a sound all of their own. Now I’ve got a pretty fair idea what it is but I didn’t know then but I spent 20 years trying to find out.

And most of it is practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice and when you’ve finished practice more sort of keep at it all the time day in day out whenever you can. I’m sure that’s what they have to do to stay up there. They had, have some beautiful bands not these guitar strumming bands not those, the real musicians

the trumpets and saxophones and trombones and violinists. They’ve got some marvellous musicians and it must be because the competition is so good.

The militia that was when I joined the army the first time before the AIF.

We would play in all the Anzac Day marches. Any march in the city, or any march anywhere that wanted us we would give our services. I don’t know that we ever got, well I never got paid but maybe somebody might have I don’t know. But we played at some turnout at Burwood one time I do remember we did another one a Parramatta marched down the street and back again from Kogarah,

Kogarah station to the Kogarah football ground, Jubilee Oval played down to there one time and played back another time. We’d go anywhere to be able to play. When I was in the Rockdale band, the senior band that was later we used to play on a Friday night up and down the main street of Rockdale, which was quite a busy

street in those days, not with traffic with people. Now it’s just full on with traffic all the whole time both ways if you’re not careful you’ll get knocked over and run over and killed. It wasn’t like that in the olden days though, I shouldn’t say the olden days. That used to be every Friday night we would play there and we used to play some lovely music a lot of the

operetta’s the things that a band, that you wouldn’t think a band would paly and they don’t today I don’t whether they don t have it or they don’t want to play it but Maid of the Mountains, I can’t think of them now but there’s a dozen or so different things. Da da da da da da – I can’t think of the name of them. A lot of the things that are

the operetta’s that, what’s her name, Shirley no, she’s a favourite of Dot’s, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald they sing a lot of the operettas that we used to play at the band, at the street, and the people used to even chime in and sing sometimes with the – in the brass band. People that knew the thing would sing it.

It was beautiful. And then Sunday afternoons we used to play down at Brighton Baths there was a rotunda on top of the, which is all steps now but it was a band rotunda then. We used to play down there of a Sunday afternoon all those same operettas and light operas and that sort of stuff and brass band music too brass band marches anything at all. And it was all good,

good fun, terrific enjoyment we never got anything out of it never made any money from those things but I found later that I could make more money playing at dances, dance bands, so I sort of got into the dance band line and did quite well out of it.

(Hums)

You’d know that that’s a typical thing. Oh yes they’re beautiful all the old band music.

Sousa was an American composer and he wrote some terrific brass band music particularly marches. Sousa’s marches – he must have written a dozen or more and they’re all good, very good

marches well written and beautiful melodies and beautiful tunes and well arranged for brass bands. All of those I used to love playing all of those Sousa’s music, Alfred’s music, a few English composers that made music but nothing like the Yanks. Sousa and his crowd of that day they created beautiful music. And not only wrote it but they

played it.

Oh gee there’s a dozen or more they’re all in 6/8 time, nearly all in 6/8 time. I don’t know that I could even remember one but if somebody gave me a cornet and I could play it within 10 minutes I’d play the tune for you. I don’t think I could remember them

now don’t even remember the names of them. Under the Double Eagle. The Stars and Stripes, these were all of Sousa’s music. Can’t remember how they go, course my memories not as young as I was 50 years ago.

Sometimes I don’t even remember who I am, it’s not quite that bad but it’s sort of getting that way.

All the popular music of the day all the glen miller type music, Benny Goodman music, Harry James type music. Big band stuff. We used to play all of those. Don’t have any of them here now.

It’s all memories to me beautiful memories

Yes I have, I’ve picked it out and I’ve put it on tape and I’ve asked my wife that if

I die first will she play that for me. Can’t think of the name of it now, anyhow that was my favourite we used to play that night after night after night. American Patrol was

another thing, we used to bash that night after night after night. Yeah all those dance music, yes all those music all those compositions were so meaningful they all meant something and where there were words the words all meant something not like the words of today there’s no words to

music today. Nobody seems to write them there’s no lyricists about. You hear them on the TV and they get about three or four words and that’s it they just sing those three or four words over and over and over and over again ten twenty times until somebody stops and that’s music they say. That’s not music at all to me but I might be old fashioned.

What moves me? The melody the beautiful melodies. I’m no singer I never was a singer, Dot’ll tell you, I sometimes sing harmony with her. But I’m never a singer. But I know the thing when I hear it.

During the war? Not that much different to what it is now. It was a bustling city then, not bustling as much as it is now but it was a bustling city there were plenty of people about at night time especially.

Mostly dancers people going to dances coming from dances. You don’t see that today. There aren’t any dances today. If they opened a dance today, they wouldn’t get anybody to go I suggested at one time some years ago Rockdale Council were – they were having trouble with the juveniles and the young people around. I suggested to Alderman – the alderman for

here, can’t think of his name, but I suggested to him, “Why don’t” – they’ve got the town hall there – “why don’t they open the town hall up of a Saturday night or any night or whatever night put in a decent band playing some decent music what I term decent music a good band and throw the doors open to all the young ones to come in and dance for free and have a wonderful time.” They tried it and about two nights or

three nights. Nobody turned up. The young people don’t want to dance. They don’t understand about dancing, I don’t think, to my mind dancing was wonderful, and always was. Boy meets girl, girl meets boy you dance together you talk together you get to know people, people get to know you. That doesn’t happen today; well I don’t think it does,

not in my circle not in that circle.

No, no, no, you could go to a public dance and I could walk along to you and say, “Do you mind if I have this dance?” You’d say, “Yes.” And you’d get up and we’d dance around two or three times or six times ten times or whatever and if I danced well with you and you danced well with me and we didn’t tread on each other’s feet or didn’t

fall over I’d say, “I’ll go back there again.” Ten minutes later there might be another dance. Dances lasted about quarter hour with a few minutes break between them, say, 10, 12 minutes and every quarter hour another dance would start. Course they weren’t all the same dance there was about a dozen 20 different dances and if I danced well with you I’d make a note of that I’ll go back to that girl, girl with the red shirt I’d go back a little while later –

“Do you mind if I have another dance?” “Yes.” And you’d get up or you’d say, “No, no, I’m busy, I’ve got a sore foot.” or something, or make up some excuse. There was no etiquette I don’t think. I don’t think there was any etiquette anybody could sort of go and ask anybody to dance. They just had to say no if they said no that was it you didn’t go back there again.

Not much,

very seldom. At weddings you know if I went to somebody’s wedding or something like that where I wasn't playing I would get up and have a few dances usually with my wife. Well she and I danced together not permanently but for maybe, well I go back with my wife she and I, this is not being rude

but my wife and I – my first wife Lorna, and I used to sleep together when we were three months old. My mother and her mother both worked at a woollen mill in St Peter’s and they were girlfriends as they got older they got married and her, my wife’s father Sid Morley, they used to live next door there, he knew my father so the fathers

got together and the women got together and they used to visit each other, when they got married they used to visit each other fairly regularly because people did that in those days. Instead of going, whatever they do today going to a nightclub or something, people would go visiting to the other people and sit there and talk or laugh or joke or sing or do whatever they liked play music or play cards or something like that. They the Morley’s

had Lorna she was a month older then me so she would have been born in April 1918 I was born in May 1918 and course when they would visit us they’d bring their little baby daughter over and I would be in a cot somewhere I don’t remember any of that but as my mother used to tell me this – we’d move you over and put her in alongside of me,

or if we visited I’d get bunged in the cot with Lorna: Many times later years later when we were married somebody would say, “How long have you known your wife?” I’d say “I’ve known her all her life, I used to sleep with her when I was three months old.” which was true but not the way they thought. We knew ourselves all our lives as we grew up we knew each other

all the time of course and went dancing several times dancing with her. Not that much because I was more interested in music in playing the music she was more interested in dancing she used to go dancing here there and everywhere. Her and two or three girlfriends would go up to the Rivoli one night and go to the Regent the next night and go to the Rockdale Town Hall the next night and then go somewhere else the next night. Course there were dances on

everywhere every little town, not towns but every centre there would be dances old time sometimes old time dances and jazz dances and this is what made everything go, made the world go around in those days everybody danced and they all danced and enjoyed themselves not went out to go out and get full of grog and put on a fight, that very seldom ever happened very seldom. I never saw it happen

anywhere everybody was much more friendly than they are today. People are not friendly today well most people are not. You are.

Before Japan well Japan was in, in right from almost the start weren’t they?

In England yeah. Well people were concerned but I would say not more than just concerned you know, “Oh there’s a war on in England.” people were getting killed and dropping bombs bad luck you know that was it. You couldn’t do much about it well there was nothing we could do about it. I remember somebody, might have been the sallies or somebody like that used to come around asking for donations of tinned food

and they’d make up packages and send to somebody. They’d have a name and address Mrs Jones, such and such a street, North Hampton or East London or something, and you’d give them a tin of jam or tin of packet of Weetbix or something and that would go in a parcel which would go to Mrs Jones at wherever she lived. That used to happen fairly frequently

during the war, particularly early in the war. But then later of course it got round to be a bit more personal for us. Our blokes were getting caught up in amongst it and everyone was sort of looking after their own.

Not scared until about 1942, and then they were very scared because we all realised particularly

we in the army this is when we were down on Manly Beach there protecting Manly or protecting Sydney and dug in at Manly with three bullets, you know, you thought, you used to think, “What can we do if they come over in barges or something as they probably would or boats or whatever what can we do?” There’s nothing we can do just hold ‘em up a little while ten minutes or something it’d be all over.

We were very scared and so was all the civilians were very scared. My mother and father they were still alive and they lived at Dee Why and they thought seriously of, we built them a house at Dee Why – this was early in the war and this is where I first learnt the carpentry to build my own house – they were seriously thinking of selling out and going up the country somewhere

Boollamagoog [fictitious town] or somewhere or other. I said, “Well that’s a bit silly because if the Japs do come and land here it won’t matter whether you’re here or in Boollamagoog, they’ll catch up with you just the same so all you’re doing putting it off for an extra couple of weeks or month or whatever they’ll get you in the long run.” And I think that’s what would have happened. I said, “No I think you better just stay where you are.” So they stayed where they were.

That the Japs would invade that’s what we thought that’s what I thought would happen. They would invade but I didn’t think it would happen here I thought it would happen in North Queensland somewhere. They get a foothold on the land where they can go and pick up grass and eat it. Feed themselves as they go because that’s I think one of the things that cooled them in the end their lines of communication were too long too far distant

and we found this out from Rabaul. See, they weren’t keeping their men supplied at Rabaul and these were the outposts of Japan then. The men at Rabaul they were giving it away, what’s the use of going on, sort of thing. And many times they’d just throw up their hands and they wouldn’t surrender somehow or other this was driven into them you don’t surrender. They wouldn’t surrender but they’d go and get themselves killed

or they’d cut their own throat or cut their belly out. The Japs used to do that to themselves well that saved someone else doing it. The people who, mums and dads and people who lived around like around say the coast and most people in Australia live around the coast, go 100 miles from the coast, 100 miles from the sea, anywhere you like and you’re out in the bush.

There’s nothing out there sort of thing except farms and cattle and horses and that sort of thing. Everybody lives close on to the coast. Once they get the first 100 yards they’ve got the whole lot we’ve got no way of stopping them if they’d have overrun us we’ve got no way of stopping them certainly not by arms because we didn’t have any. The same things happening now today

the same things happening you go anywhere to any army base somewhere and try to pick up a handful of bullets and you won’t find them. The blokes don’t know what they are, “Oh we’ve got some on order they’ll come in so and so.” And all this sort of business. I remember when were in the 116 at Marrickville, the sergeant of the guard, the guard would be picked out at night and they would, we had a lot of trucks we had about

5 or 600 trucks there and they or often thought that somebody might get in to sabotage the trucks to blow one up and the whole lot would go sort of so they had a guard and they were fairly strict with the guard but the guard went around with a bayonet a bayonet in his hand or in the sheath, scabbard that was all he had to guard the place if somebody came around with a gun of course he was gone.

The sergeant of the guard who was a personal mate of mine later in life, Sydney Walker very nice bloke, he used to say, “If you’re not quiet, I’ll pull out my gun and shoot you.” And he had a holster for the revolver which his rank required him to have but he didn’t have a revolver he used to have a Herald in there, a folded up paper put in there to bolster it out you know, to look like he had a gun. He couldn’t get a gun, there wasn’t enough guns

when they got a gun they didn’t have any bullets. I think the only people making bullets in those days were the Lithgow small arms factory and they were working about 3 shifts but all, what they were producing was all good stuff but it was all going north because that was where it was required. Required in places like New Guinea, New Britain, Singapore, and all that and everything they were making was going up there. We weren’t getting it because I suppose

The brass thought we didn’t need it and as it happened we didn’t fortunately.

When were in Wallgrove we used to get weekend leave, which was a Friday and Saturday or a Sunday and Monday. Then when we went to

the back of Brookvale, can’t think of the name of it this is where my memory goes we were camped in there about 3 miles in. when we were there we used to get one day a week and you could pick any day you liked but you couldn’t all go on the one day you know there’d be the Monday crowd they’re the Tuesday ones and they’re the Wednesdays, they’re all banking on – I mean the army

was banking on the fact that if anybody invaded they wouldn’t get the lot of us all at once. But a lot of units it was up to them and a lot of the units they would all go away at once and had they been invaded or infiltrated or something they wouldn't have been there and I think that’s what happens today in various places like what’s the one they were talking about the other day in South Australia where they had the

migrants sewn up there for a while I think they were all going on leave at the same time or all have the weekend off and leaving them and they were getting up to all sorts of trouble. I do think that the brass whoever they are or whoever they were don’t think properly or they don’t think, how can I put it they don’t think like the little man like I would think. I’d be a little man

I would think of these sort of things. I don’t think they ever think of that. I think they are sort of sitting there in their high backed chairs, “We’re safe we’re right we’ve got a battalion over there and we’ve got some over here.” They don’t think that what about the one that comes from there or the one that drops out of there. The police force even the same to a lesser extent but I think they feel the same way and treat things the same.

No, no. Bandsman were, bandsman they wanted to do that sort of thing and the fighting soldier well he couldn’t play an instrument so he became a fighting soldier or a footslogger or whatever and he did whatever he had to do. No there was no pressure was no animosity anywhere, if you were a bandsman well you were treated

just the same as anybody else. At one stage the army talked about giving making a bandsman making it like a trade, I think, in the army during the war. I think they had, privates were on 5 bob, no it became 6 shillings a day that was your pay and you could keep what you wanted or whatever you wanted

and you allotted the rest to whoever you wanted you know I could allot it to you or allot it to my wife which I used to I always thought her need was greater than mine I was looked after with food and water and everything so I only kept a shilling a day, and gave her the other 5 shillings out of my 6 bob and she used to get an allowance too. I don’t remember how much allowance she got.

She battled by. She had a sort of a part time job working at a fruit shop in Rockdale. Allan my, the baby she would leave him with her sister-in-law I think or cousin-in-law or somebody in the front flat. Thelma would mind Allan for the afternoon while Lorn went and worked or the day or the Saturday or whatever and we battled along all right like that all through the war. Of course we didn’t live

high, but we lived and we ate all right and we did pretty well.

Well no, I don’t know of anybody I don’t know of that ever happening. I was always treated well and my brother wherever we went

we were we always found everybody was, nobody was against us everybody was friendly and, “You’re one of the band blokes oh yeah come in.” or whatever band bloke or a bandsman. No there was no animosity toward bandsman, not that I ever found. There might have been quietly or silently, I don’t know.

Well mostly we didn’t find out mostly you went to bed and you woke up and you were moving somewhere else or you didn’t know about where you were going. At times you’d know that somebody would drop a word that you were moving out next Friday. And you just took that for granted, oh righto, so you were moving out next Friday.

Now if you were wise you didn’t say anything they used to say, “Don’t tell them at home, just disappear.” So I used to do that so my wife couldn’t turn around and tell somebody else I don’t know who but tell somebody else whatever unit I was in, she wouldn’t have known half the time what unit I was in. I sort of played it safe. I didn’t tell her too much. I didn’t know anything myself, but I didn’t sort of say,

‘I think we’ll be going to so and so’, ‘I think we’ll be doing this’. But we did work out a code a rough code, Dot did with her husband too that when we were sent overseas on the first letter home I would say, “I saw Doreen today.” Well when my wife got the letter she’d say, “He’s gone to so and so

he’s gone to Jacquinot Bay.” as I did and then a couple of days later, you might move to somewhere else. Then you could sort of give them a rough idea of where, “I saw so and so who was 10 miles north of me today.” or tomorrow I’ll be up 10 miles further north. But nobody knew where you were you didn’t know yourself either half the time. When you moved you just moved because you were told to move.

Yes I went on the Taroona: my brother and I were detailed as pickets to go with the five trucks our five trucks you know this was a general thing with the concert party five trucks, four or five.

In this case it was five. We were detailed to picket these trucks. We had to go with them and stay with them all the time one of us had to be there if the other bloke wanted to go and spend a penny well he had to go on his own and you had to stay sort of thing so that you always had a finger on the button of the truck or whatever. You were looking after it. That went on all the time the whole time when you were a picket you were like a guard so it’s no good of you being a guard

if you were asleep you’ve got to be able to rely on your mate to be awake if he’s supposed to be awake he’s, you’ve got to rely on him being awake so that you can have a sleep or something like that. There was no other rules. But when we went to New Britain we went down took our five trucks down to Glebe Island wharf and the ship came in, I don’t remember the name of the ship,

cos the Yanks didn’t put the names on like we do like we do now, I don’t know whether we did then, we have the name and the port that they where it comes from but they didn’t during the war there was no name on this big grey Liberty ship it was. And it came in and we were loaded on one afternoon we were loaded on, and during the night I developed

quinsy, I think or something; something with the throat got all sort of choked up and I was couldn’t breathe and Ron didn’t know what to do so he rang the unit the concert party and told them that I was sick, would they send a doctor or an ambulance. So down came an ambulance and the blokes had one look at me and said, “Hospital straight away.” so they put me into hospital. I was in sergeants’ building in the showground

the army took over the whole of the showground during the war and the sergeants’ building was one of the big cafeterias there and that was an army hospital sort of. I was in the hospital there for a week. The ship went of course and Ron went with it and I was in for a week. They gave me two days off and I came home for two days then I got crook again my voice went like it’s going now and I went

back in for another week and then when I was let out of there I had to report back to the concert party the entertainment unit which was at Pagewood where the – you know where the – do you know Pagewood at all? You know the big shopping complex there East Gardens, that’s right, where East Gardens is. That was the headquarters. It belonged then to the Fox Films I think, I think it was Fox Film unit or Fox Films something. Cinema, Cine,

they used to make shorts and horses and races and football and all that, Cinesound – that was it. Well that was there then before the war and the army took that over I don’t know what happened to the film people but they were tossed out and the army took it over and that became the headquarters of the entertainment units. That what I was going to tell you

so anyhow I reported back that day to the entertainment unit and they just said, “Right, go and get yourself a couple of blankets and sleep in there.” And whatever and I was there on stand-by there for three weeks well apparently they were waiting for a ship to take me to wherever it was I didn’t know where it was I didn’t know where Ron had gone and of course he didn’t know himself until he got there.

I forget now what I was going to tell you.

Well that’s always in the back of your mind, always. You don’t know where you’re going so you don’t worry too much about it because you mightn’t be going there you didn’t know

where you were going and of course the world’s a big place. They said, “You’re going to New Guinea.” well New Guinea’s a hell of a big place too. You could be in New Guinea for 10 years and nobody would find you if they weren’t looking for you. So you know you didn’t worry about those sort of things. It was pointless worrying about them, because there was nothing you could do about it apart from going AWOL [absent without leave], never thought of that and I wouldn’t have done it anyhow. But I suppose a few people did a few blokes did and some got caught some

didn’t. No I felt that I joined up to see it through as much as I could and as well as I could and as I said before I wasn’t a sort of a John Wayne type soldier. I was more of a quiet soldier. “Carry on your fighting over there and leave me alone I’ll sit nice and quiet here.” I’ve always been that sort of person and I carried that on

well all my life. I’ve done all right so far I’m still alive anyhow nobody’s killed me yet maybe not ‘til tomorrow or something.

Well I felt sure I would because we were in the same unit and we had running numbers. I was 145477 he was 478 so my number was next to; I was one number in front of him.

Well I think we felt we’d always meet up again. It was rather unusual there were a lot of brothers in the army it was rather unusual that we were able to stick together the whole way of course probably because we both wanted to do the same thing. We were both interested in music we both played instruments and I think because we were like that we sort of managed to stick together

although it wasn’t difficult. We never fought we never argued or fought, so only about music. Argued about – he played a wrong note and I would tell him, “It wasn’t me, it was him.” These arguments used to go on all the time but they were all more or less in fun. Oh no, Ron and I got on well because we used to play together in civilian life before we went into the army and when we came out we played again we went to the, not Barradines,

Pacific Dance, Rockdale Town Hall. Laurie Slater had the band 16 piece band. It was what we wanted, a Glen Miller type band and we both went there and said, “We’re out the army now. Can you use us?” “Yes. Certainly come up next Tuesday night and start.” which we did. We both played with the Slater Band for well he did for about 10 years I stayed with him for 18 years. The whole time we

played Monday nights, Wednesday night and Friday night at Petersham Town Hall, Tuesday night at Rockdale Town Hall, Thursday night at North Sydney RSL, Saturday night was our night off, Saturday and Sunday with nothing to do. I played every other night but I enjoyed it, it wasn’t like work to me. It wasn’t work cos I enjoyed it so much. I probably could still enjoy it

too if I could get around and do it I’d probably enjoy it but I don’t know who I’d find that could do it also with me. No Ron and I got on well, and we were very good in this respect that I would know what he was going to do next and he would know what I was going to do when we’d be playing something we’d be playing something along the playing a number

for a dance, I’d just sort of put my bell over there and back and carry on playing, and he’d know very well what I was going to do next and he would do the same. Well this I suppose being brothers and having played together all our lives, played music together all our lives we got to know what the other one’s thinking which was very good very handy. Of course fellas used to say, “How did you know he was going to play that?” I’d say “Oh I know.” I don’t know how I knew,

but I knew he was going to do that.

Well you, when you say close do you mean in distance?

We got along well, got along well. You know we asked each other, “Where’ve you been and what have you been doing and what’s it

like?” Because we might be there next and so on all that sort of thing. We’re going; tomorrow we’re going to a reunion of the first Australian entertainment unit at Redfern RSL [Returned and Services League] Club. We have a lovely time, we don’t do anything, we just all meet there sit around and have a beer have a couple of beers and have lunch and yak yak yak, and everybody catches up with everybody else,

what we’ve been doing lately. Of course then all the lies come out, “I’ve just done a fortnight at the Sydney Town Hall.” or “I’m playing down at the Opera House for a week.” or something but they are all in fun. That was the name of one of the concert parties – ‘All In Fun’ – AIF. They each thought of a name for themselves as I say the one I was in we were called The Islanders

I don’t know who thought of the name but that was The Islanders and that was painted across the front of the stage of the canvas stage. And of course when we go there tomorrow there’ll be half a dozen from the Tasmaniacs another half a dozen or three or four from somewhere else another three or four from Number One Amenities

all the different units which we’ve gotten to know over the years. Some of them we’ve known since before the war and we played with them before the war others you sort of lose track of them and you’ve struck ‘em in the army for a year, or two years or something. And you lose sight of them again, don’t see them for ten years and see them again then. We’ve got a trombone player that was in the band he lives down at Wollongong very nice fellow, Hoepper,

he comes up to all the turnouts. Sometimes his wife comes she’s not too well but sometimes she comes. He always comes up and we have a good old natter about, “Do you remember so and so and do you remember the night so and so.” you know. It’s good, it’s very good. Brings us back together. We often, he and I, often talk about the nights in

Jacquinot Bay, and do you remember the night so and so did so and so. And we, one night, we finished showing there was a Yankee crowd had come in two or three days before and they’d been moved half a mile away sort of thing and we thought, somebody said well like during the day, “Wonder if there’ll be Yanks at the concert tonight?” We were always conscious of the Yanks because they had so

many blokes that were so good at what we were trying, battling to do, they did it so easily. They had so much competition, top competition that they were good at everything they did, musically. I'm not saying that they were all perfect gentlemen they weren’t there were just as many scoundrels in that army as there were in any other army. But Hal and I were the after the show was over the sergeant picked out, “Right you

two stay, you picket the guard, the stage.” And all the rest would go back to camp and we’d be on the stage all night. Stay awake or asleep one asleep one awake that was our job sort of ‘til daylight or ‘til somebody came and relieved us. And this particular night, Hal and I we were talking after the thing putting his instruments away and he came along, “You two be the guard tonight.” “Righto.” All the rest went we were the guard

and about 5 minutes 10 minutes after all the lights had gone out there was a banging around the front of the stage and we thought, “Now what the devil’s that?” It was a couple of Negro Yanks and they wanted to see the meris – “Where’s the meris, the white meris?” these were the two female impersonators that had been on there singing and dancing and what not they wanted to see the two white meris. We said, “There’s no white meris, no white

meris, mate, they’re just the same as us same as you and same as me. They’ve got the same things and all do the same things. They’re not white meris.” “Oh yes they are. That little one, she was good.” He was, Frank McGahan, he was he was good at what he did he was a ventriloquist and when he got all dolled up he looked good too, you know he looked good to a starving Negro.

It took a while for us to convince him that he was a fella –

In New Guinea. We always enjoyed ourselves better there maybe we had more time there perhaps. We didn’t know anybody, didn’t know any, and they didn’t know us I don’t think, except by the name, you know, The Islanders are

playing here on Tuesday or Sunday or whenever. But we always found them very receptive and I think it might have been because the natives there, there was a lot of natives lived around Lae and they all used to come to the sing sing, they didn’t quite know what was going on but they always came along and they all clapped and cheered, when they got to know when to clap – they wouldn’t clap in the middle of the thing, they’d wait ‘til it stopped. Then they’d all clap and cheer,

that sort of bolstered up the audience a little bit. They didn’t do that so much in New Britain because the natives there, well they didn’t know us, they didn’t know what was going on. Somebody would tell a good joke, and it would just fall on deaf ears. Then they started to roar laughing when somebody else would do something else. We had a magician, Domesto, he called himself. Cec Dalgleish was his name, he was a Melbourne chap.

And incidentally he just died about three weeks, month ago. Been around about my age. He was a very good magician, very suave, his dinner suit, top hat and white tails and the coat over the back and that and he would go along to, I’ve seen him do this a half dozen times, he’d go along to the natives sitting around and go like this 2 shillings they knew what a one bob and two bob was

They didn’t know anything about the other coins, everything was one bob or two bob. And he would pull out a 2 shilling piece and the eyes would light up and they’re all looking round their friend and the first chance they’d get, they were into him. They’d pull his hair out pull his ears looking for more 2 shilling pieces. That was quite funny to us. But they used to do that they did that a lot or a lot more in New Britain, I think that was,

because they may not may not have seen musicians before, whereas perhaps in Lae they had. I don’t know.

No no, everybody was pretty receptive. Never got any cat calls from anybody, you know, “Shut up go home put your gear away.” never got any of that sort of thing.

Don’t ever remember anybody getting up and walking out in the middle of a show or a concert. They were pretty good, most of the blokes that we had. George Wallace was very good. He could make things funny; he could make nothing into something funny. He could walk into the room and wouldn’t know a soul and within five minutes you would all be laughing. With the things that he would say and do

and could do you know he could sing and he could dance and tap dance and play the piano. He could do almost anything. This was young George Wallace; did you ever know, ever heard of George Wallace the father? That would be the father, he was the comedian. He was on when television started and he was on at the Tivoli and all that. Well this was his son. But the son was the image of the father wore the same sort of gear did the same sort of slapstick comedy

and would walk across the stage and fall over three times and all that sort of thing. This would make – the natives would laugh, they think that was real funny, the white masta fell down.

I don’t know, don’t know. Probably always been a softy probably. When I think about you know fellas that I knew and been with and spent time with, taken risks with, and things like that. And you think he’s dead or he’s gone. Funny how some fellas affect me like that.

Other fellas I just say, oh well, bad luck you know, he’s lived a good life, and he’s gone, and think nothing of it. But other blokes I don’t know why they seem to affect me more so.

I don’t know. My mother particularly, but she’s not a bloke, as you know. When I think about her and the hard

life she led, and what she had to do and what she had to go through to bring us all up and we’ve all turned out all right. Well we’ve turned out – we’re not world beaters but we’ve all been all right never caused her any heart aches or anything. But I feel so sorry that many times I should have done more for her and didn’t think of it at the time and now I feel you know I could have done that and I could have done that and I should have done that.

It’s too late of course.

That didn’t worry me. I feel soft toward somebody I know not somebody I don’t know. If I don’t know a person, well he’s just another person. But if it’s a fella I know

I feel very soft toward him. I don’t know why. Don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m not a softy but I feel that I am, don’t know why.

Well to me they weren't female impersonators, they were just blokes. He was my mate and I was friends with them all, but they’re no different to me they just wear different clothes. Because they weren't well they weren't female

impersonators in the true sense they were only playing a part, those, well – the fellas I’m talking about were just playing a part, and they played a good part and they played it well. I don’t know that any of them were fair dinkum I wouldn’t know that. But they were all mates of mine, friends of mine. I had no special feeling

towards them. They were no different to anyone else.

Well not that I know of, I never found anybody present any difficulties at any other time. Although we did have one we had one bloke, Phil Bride he was aptly named Phil, cos they all called him Phyllis, Bride was his name though. I found him all right, he was a sensible bloke, you could have a sensible conversation, you could have an argument with him and call him a silly bugger

and he could say the same to you; you know part friends and all that. But he did earn himself a name rightly or wrongly with some of the entertainment units cos he was in several of them they moved them around, he was in several of them and he was supposed to have so the story went, he was supposed to have entertained some American seamen when their ship would be in port

or spent some time with them. Might have been quite harmless time for all I know. That’s the only, I’ve heard about him I’ve never I’ve always spoken to him and spoken quite well he was always all right. He did seem very effeminate, you know, he’d, “Oh dear me, oh dear, oh dear me.” And he’d call you ‘love’, and that’s a bit unheard of in men’s circles, to call a bloke ‘love’, but he’d call you ‘love’ and, “Yes dear,

what did you say, dear?” Darling, love and all that we used to just say, “Shut that up!” We would take no notice of him. But he was the only one that ever, well I never had any trouble with him never had any problems with the man. Course they only play a part, as we know they only dress up and they’re sort of acting as

somebody else and many times to somebody’s amusement, well all the time to somebody’s amusement. They were good. But I was quite pleased when toward the end of the war the brass at Pagewood started to send out females to shows. They started they did a

I forget, French Without Tears, was one of the shows and there was three or four girls in that. Boeing Boeing, that was another one that was popular at the time there was girls in that. Do you remember that? Boeing Boeing, it was about a pilot, I think he was a French pilot, a pilot in the French Air Force or something like that. And he had a

girl in Paris and a girl in London and another one in New York or something all set up in flats and he’d fly over to this one and she’d have some other bloke in the flat with her and she’d have to put him under the bed, or put him outside or put something over him, until this other fella went and then something would occur with the other one and the other one and this pilot would be going in all directions and they wouldn’t know when he was coming, where he was coming,

or when he was coming. It was a farce, a comedy. It was a good comedy and it was good for the girls in that they all played good parts. There was no funny business, cos the fellas all went along with it these would be pilots. One had to adopt an American accent another bloke was a Frenchman and someone else was somebody else. Sometimes they'd forget their lines and say the wrong words things like that often used to happen.

But they were all nice people, good, nice people. I suppose if you got right down to tin tacks that some of them would have had a hard word or a harsh to say to somebody at some time that’s inevitable. Somebody gets on your nerves day after day and at sometime you let go and say shut up, or get out, or something. I know I’ve even said it to my brother

and I wouldn’t hurt him for quids. But you say shut up, or shut that up, or get another reed, or do something, you know, say something after you think I shouldn’t have said that that was the wrong thing to say.

And that’s what they were all those all in together.

I don’t know I think they were just as tolerant but it was looked upon as being a little bit more risqué than it ought to have been or it was. But people knew when they came out on to the stage they either came out wiggling themselves or doing something, you know, you knew straight away, or everybody knew straight away

that it was a fella. And they did their bit and they were looked at all right they were all looked at I never heard any harsh words pass anywhere bar the usual, “You were lousy tonight.” or “I had a bugger of a headache.” or something they'd say, you know, and things like that, which were normal things. Never ever heard anything bad.

They were all pretty good people but show people or showbiz people I think are well I think they’re all pretty good people in the main here and there you might strike a snag but in the main they’re pretty good people.

Only once, only once and it was a female impersonator. Billy,

what was his name, Billy. This was on the Tablelands and he’d had an argument with one of the other fellows. And he’d been on the gin, he used to drink gin – neat gin – and he’d been on the gin this day. It was afternoon and he was running around looking for an axe, course everyone was saying, “What do you want an axe for Bill?”

“I’ve had an argument with so and so and I’m going to split his f-ing head open.” And this was, he shouted this out a dozen times and he’s running around with this axe and somebody grabbed the axe from him and of course that quietened him down while he had the axe, he was running around, he was going to split this bloke’s head open. I don’t know what happened, it didn’t matter to us we took no notice of it. He was an older man, quite a bit older, we were – I’d say

between 20 and 30 mostly – and he was a bloke perhaps 40, 42 or something like that. He was boarded out of the army after that trip, when we got back from that trip, he was boarded out. I don’t know if because of the age or it might have been other reasons don’t know. He was a single man but he used to get on to the gin used to smell like a gin bottle.

He’d come round and, “I’ll tell you about so and so.” And he’d breathe in your face we’d say, “Go away Bill, go away go tell him over there he wants to know.” But that was just the occasional he was the only one that I remember that ever did or said anything that he was going to hurt anybody else. Even Phil Bride, he never ever said anything about hurting anybody or no plans to attack anybody or do anything. He was always

a bit the other way, you know, “What do you want dear?” You’d say “Oh Phil, where’s so and so?” “Oh look, if its not there, darl, if its not there, darl, it’s under there, dear, or it’s somewhere else.” This, he made you feel a bit silly if you were around with other fellas and he’d be calling you ‘darl’ and ‘dear’ and ‘sweetie’ and all this sort of stuff. These are names I use in reserve for my wife, but he didn’t.

I took no notice of it. Didn’t matter to me, he wasn’t, well he was talking to me many times he’d talked to me I never took a bit of notice of it. I was perhaps a bit more tolerant than the some of the other fellows some of the younger ones and we had a few younger ones. They’d take offence at being called ‘darl’ and ‘dear’, it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care what he called me.

And as regards the entertaining the Yanks or the Negroes or whatever it didn’t matter to me either I didn’t care what he did it was his own time it was himself he was injuring he wasn’t injuring me. I didn’t worry about it. Gee I think I’ve mentioned a few names on this, can you rub out the names?

Can you rub out these names that I’ve mentioned, I’ve mentioned his name. I don’t know whether he’s alive now. Although he won’t hear it nobody hears this, do they?

Yeah but not, won’t be on the TV or well how would they hear it?

Oh well, the fellow I’m talking about he wouldn’t hear it. Because he wouldn’t be researching anything but the bottom of a bottle of gin with the label or something. Oh yes I feel safe now. Who else did I say? I shouldn’t have mentioned names should I? Oh well I haven’t said anything derogatory about anybody else I don’t think.

Well I always feel I am tolerant.

Oh yes I quite believe that. Yes that would happen fairly easily. But if ever came against or came

up to an effeminate person and he’s not doing anything to me I don’t think I would do anything to him just leave him alone. I wouldn’t say I’d go and throw my arms around him and tell him how much I missed him for the last week or something I would never do those sorts of things. In other words I think I would steer a bit clear of effeminate type people.

Felt quite good. I was used to looking out, playing in dance bands, I was used to looking out to the – at a

town hall full of people, you know. 500 people they were all looking at, not at me, they were all looking at the band and I was quite happy about that. Never worried me at all. I was never an exhibitionist some fellas some musicians were. They go too great lengths to prop themselves up in front of somebody or do something special but I was never a great enthusiast or I was never an exhibitionist.

Just leave it at that because I was just an ordinary bloke so and when we played for various concerts and that didn’t matter whether it was for 100 or 500 or 1000 sometimes we played we’d do concerts for might be 30 or 40 people that’s all there was that might have been a gunning placement only 15 people or 20 people 5 of them were asleep anyhow so the other 9 or 10 or

whatever, we’d still put on our same show, same gags, same jokes, same music, same everything. It was a sort of a set show and we didn’t interfere with that show, so everybody knew what everybody else was doing right through for that two and a half hours. And if you didn’t once we got to know the show it was a package deal it wasn’t somebody singing and somebody doing something else the whole

thing was a package and if there was anything missing out of the package you noticed it or we noticed it because ‘that’s wrong’ or ‘that’s doing the wrong thing’, or something like that. But the whole thing doing the whole show was just night after night after night you could almost do it with your eyes shut as a matter of fact some of us often used to do it with, you wouldn’t open your music. Your music would be there, you wouldn’t bother to turn it over, you knew what was coming on next, chaser for this

or lead in for something or other. We used to have a lead in the lead in for everything was (hums). What was the name of that it was thru first part of something that Judy Garland used to sing and the chaser was The End of the Rainbow, (hums) that was the chaser sort of thing the lights would go out and on would come the next act.

You’d be playing Pretty Girls, like a melody or something for the next act. And if anybody came in, if the wrong person came in well of course they realised it wasn’t their music it was the next blokes music it was somebody else’s music. So the whole unit they all go to know got to know what was going to happen next. It became a bit mundane at times, but you couldn’t change it, cos then you would throw the whole works the whole thing out of gear.

But when we would change it when we would come back to Pagewood which was our headquarters we’d have leave somebody would get the trucks oil changed and so on because the trucks didn’t need much maintenance, because they never went anywhere though we took them everywhere with us but at the end of the week we might have done 15 miles or 20 miles or something. Well trucks last a long while doing short distances like that.

I was issued with a new brand new Ford, it was a Ford V8 one of the last of the side valves one of those it was a good truck three tonner. I got that about a week before we left Pagewood when we went to New Britain, we used it all over there I towed Max Daley’s – his Ford got stuck and I towed that

out, and he towed me out of somewhere else. They had chains on the front, big long pulley chains with a winch on it and we’d use that to pull each other out, or pull each other along or something. Due to all of that and all the driving around there, which wasn’t very no distance then we came over to Lae. We did a bit more distance there, but not much and when we came back to Sydney, brought it back to Sydney after doing the two circuits,

my truck only read 600 miles. So it was still a new truck, it hadn’t been run in. It had still only done 600 miles. I don’t know somebody would buy it second hand and get a good buy. We didn’t do not like here you do hundreds of miles, knock off hundreds of miles in no time, but there there’s no miles to go there's no road, no tracks even to do hundreds of miles, and you can’t do any speed anyhow, cos whatever miles you do,

you’re in low gear and all the wheels are going up and down over the logs or rocks or whatever, and you’re not doing many miles at all.

We thought that.

I don’t know. I don’t know that my spirits ever got low. I didn’t think or look at anything differently at any time than any other time. I never got depressed or felt low about anything ever that I know of. Not even

since the war. I guess I – no, that’s wrong; I was a little bit dispirited and a bit low before I retired. Yes I felt very hardly done by which I thought I was maybe I wasn’t and I might have been looking at it wrongly.

No never. I always enjoyed it and I think they all did in their own way because different people have different ways or preparing themselves for something or getting ready for something. You might go you might think it’s very important to

put on lipstick and eye colour to me that doesn’t mean a thing. We used to have a makeup box, they used to supply the band with a makeup box and it was a joke between the whole band. Nobody ever knew where it was. “The makeup box?” “Oh it’s in the front of the truck, I think, or might’ve been, nah, I don’t know where it is.” And they'd get it out and they’d be polishing the rifle butt with it and all this sort of stuff. Nobody ever wanted to use makeup box. In it there was powder

we did I think for Gracie Fields somebody came round and made us all up because we were going to be photographed on stage. We were behind her and they were aiming at her and of course they were getting us too and they were making sure there was no shiny foreheads, faces or, we got powdered up for that never lipstick but got powdered up fairly heavily for that. We had this makeup

box and my brother was the keeper it was his job to look after the makeup box he never knew where it was. “When did you fill up the makeup box?” “What makeup box? No, no haven’t seen it for months.” No that didn’t sort of ever crop up. Well I always felt myself that all the people that were there they came to see and hear. They didn’t care whether you had a scratch across your face or a black eye or whether your nose was

bent or if your forehead was shiny. They weren't interested in that they wanted to hear what you had to say or do or sing or play or whatever and enjoy it and go away happy. So I don’t I was never interested in the makeup box, never worried about it maybe my face might have shone I don’t know, better that I don’t know. I don’t know.

We were photographed one time up on the Tablelands. I don’t know who did whether it was Fox Movie Tones or some new crowd. I saw it once and I didn’t realise it was us until it was nearly over I thought “That’s us!” it had been on for I don’t know maybe two or three minutes and I’d been watching it and enjoying it, “Oh yeah we used to do that. That’s us!” I didn’t realise that I was there and I didn’t I couldn’t

even see myself.

Whistled, shouted, they didn’t stamp their feet because it was on dirt and all mud or water they whistled and shouted and clapped. Mainly applause and whistling and throwing up of hats and things like that. They were more maybe a bit more sedate them they would be today.

You know I think today you get the occasional loud mouth that asks some stupid question, you know, “What did you tell your wife this morning when you woke up?” Or something like that silly remarks meaningful maybe to them but meaningless to everyone else. I think you get that occasionally now but we never got anything like that. It was all

good straight out applause and they really enjoyed it because as well as seeing the show and hearing the show you’ve got to remember that they hadn’t seen or heard or done any of that hadn’t seen us for three months, four months, five months so if you, you would react the same way if you hadn’t done something for five or six months and suddenly somebody comes out and does something for you or to you, you think, “Oh that’s strange,

that’s lovely.” And does something nice I mean you know you would want to applaud or clap or something and I think that’s the way most of the people looked at it and they enjoyed it and so on. Because often after a concert or be it a dance and we played for quite a few dances sort of unofficial dances we did two or three dances for the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service] Barracks at Lae and we met a very nice

woman, Amy Millgate. She organised it all she’s married now what’s her name? Taylor, Amy Taylor. I’m giving names now I’m mentioning names I shouldn’t do that should I? Anyhow she’s a very nice woman a very nice person she was only maybe same age as me roughly give or take a year or two. I’ve met her once since

the war, I met her once out at the Royal Easter Show my wife was with me we went in the pub to have a beer in the bar and who was there Amy, I said, “Amy.” And she came over put her arms around me give me a big kiss. Lorn said, “Who’s this, what’s going on here, what’s this?” I said, “This is Amy Millgate.” she said, “No its Taylor now.” she’d got married and she brought her husband over, he was a policeman and she was a policewoman she was the first policewoman in

New South Wales, I think, and her father was a policeman. Millgate was their name and she was Constable Millgate, but I think she probably not Constable Millgate now her name’s Taylor, anyhow, but I don’t know that she’d be in the police force. Well she wouldn’t be she’d be my age she’d have been pensioned off 20 years – age, yeah what am I thinking of? I’d like to meet her again, she probably wouldn’t know me.

But she was, she organised these dances at the ORs’ [other ranks] barracks this was right up our alley because we could play number after number after number and play on for three hours without a stop. And we were emulating the Glen Miller band – as we thought – and we were trying to do that we maybe succeeded up to a point I don’t know if we were ever that good. Well we certainly weren't that good. But we used to play a lot of

their music it had been some of it had been photographed and sent to us copies of it and so on. And we played a lot of their music and we used to play it at all these dances. Did these three dances for the AWAS Barracks, and they were very appreciative and they were all girls but of course for the dance the girls invited in some fellows and so on. We played for another couple of dances at the 2/7th AGH, the nurses had a dance

there I don’t know what it was for probably I don’t know just for the heck of it. We played for a couple of their dances that was good and we played a couple of dances for the nurses at Jacquinot Bay there was a hospital there that was the 2/8th and we played for their dances a couple of times and they were good we enjoyed those too and they said they enjoyed it.

Had some nice words to say to us, there's not much. They could say just thank you and we enjoyed it that was it. We said thanks for having us we enjoyed it too we enjoyed it probably more than they did because we were doing what we wanted sometimes they were dancing with blokes who they didn’t want to dance with or didn’t like or something. We were doing what we wanted to do which makes a difference. I suppose in housework there are certain jobs that you

don’t like doing but you feel you have to do them but you don’t like doing them so you’re pleased when they’re over and done with and you think, “I wish I didn’t have to do those. I’m getting hoarse.” You think, “I wish I didn’t have to do that.” but when it’s over and done with, you think, “I’m glad that’s finished.” So there’s there are jobs like that. We struck jobs like that too which we didn’t like but we did them.

Oh yes, hundreds probably generals and all, some of them were generals. We had to play at – when we were at the 116th it was a different band this was an earlier band there was 16 in the band and we used to play the same sort of music you know the all the big bands used to try and emulate

Glen Miller. He was the king but anyone any other American band because we used to play that style of music, and that was the music that we got that was printed and given out to us. It was nothing for general so and so to be there and his lady and general somebody or other. There was three or four generals there at different times and they'd usually come up and, “Thank you, chaps.” or “Thanks, boys.” That was sort near enough, they wouldn’t want to shake your hand or anything,

but just, “Thank you, boys.” It was all good so we didn’t mind playing for the generals or anyone we’d play for anyone.

The Gracie Fields one, mainly because of Gracie Fields. We played that was at Lae right next door to the canteen.

there was maybe 12 000 or 15 000 people nobody knows how many they came for miles. They used to start to walk from, the natives used to come from up near Nadzab which was 30 or 40 miles and they would start to walk down all the week to get there to down to see something special and she was something special. And she was not advertised, but told by word of mouth and over radio 9 Channel 9 – no station, was it

NG9 New Guinea 9, I think or NG9. That was the station radio station. I think it was the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] might have set it up and they'd been talking about it for a couple of weeks Gracie Fields was going to appear here there and everywhere but she appeared at Lae alongside the canteen and they used to come from, as I say, miles away. And they would pick

up melons and things and bring them along and sell them. Everything was a bob. A melon was a bob, two melons was a bob, two yams a bob, everything was a bob. They’d sell them along the way then they had a bit of spending money and they used to be allowed into the canteen and they could buy, they couldn’t buy – there was no grog but they could buy soap or toothpaste or they’d sell them whatever they had, biscuits. Sometimes the canteens had biscuits.

But that was a marvellous concert because she was so professional and we went on as soon as it got dark which was it wasn’t ‘til about half past eight we went on and we did our show, compressed it. They cut out two or three of the acts and we did our show the ones that George Wallace thought were the best. We did that and then they introduced Gracie Fields and she came on, and she tall and thin,

lovely, looking all painted up to the nines. Her paint must have been half an inch thick on her face when you got up that close, and we did get up close because she came along and thanked us all, you know, as close as, “Thank you for your music tonight.” you know, she was that close. And you could see the paint an inch thick on her face. Because she was a woman of maybe I don’t know 50, perhaps 50, then so to us at 22, 3 and 4, she was an old lady. She was somebody’s grandmother.

But she was so well respected and so much enjoyed from all the crowd they all clapped and cheered and clapped and cheered and went on and on and on for ten minutes or quarter of an hour and she came round and thanked us all each section of us personally. “Thank you very much.” And in her second half, she said, “I’ll freelance a bit, do you know – ?” or “Any of you

that know – ?” Going home, no going, coming home, coming home going home (hums) a New Zealand, going home?

“Now is the hour it’s time to say goodnight.” that’s what it was, Now Is the Hour, that’s the thing I was trying to sing, “anybody that knows that, join in, it’s in F.” so she knew all about what she was doing. A few of us knew it we, I knew it from lugging playing at Christmas parties, New Year’s Eve dances, and things we always played that. So we played that and we played

the chorus of it, and she turned around and said, “E flat.” went along in a different key because this suited her so she knew what she was doing every step of the way she was very, very good. I really got a kick out of that. I enjoyed her, my grandmother she was 50 when I was about 25, 23 and 4 or something. I enjoyed her singing and I enjoyed that concert more than I enjoyed any other

and it was mainly through her. I only met her to say “goodnight.” that’s all. At that concert it was on a built up stage I don’t know who built the stage but there was a little room like a toilet room, toilet-sized room on that end, and one on this end.

And the, somebody, it was one of her handlers, might have been her husband, when she came there was her husband and two or three handlers were with her, and there was an army, an army sister and a couple of majors or something, there was two to three army hangers-on with her all the way, I suppose in case of accidents. And she had an army sister with her, in case of accident I suppose, in case somebody throwing something, or somebody falling down and

breaking their legs. And her husband, Monty Blue, he was a nice bloke too, he was an Italian, or he’d been an Italian, and he spoke English, good English, but with an Italian flavour, you know, “You lifta that up there, and putta this over there.” That sort of English. But he was a very nice fella and he said, “Now all you blokes, that’s the men’s over there

don’t use it, cos nobody wants to empty it. But that one – that’s the ladies. Now keep out, everyone keep out of there.” And everybody kept out. No, they looked after, the army looked after her, they did the right thing. She, don’t, I don’t think, well I don’t know whether she used the ladies or not. But she’d been there two and a half hours, or two hours I spose. The whole show went maybe three, three and a half hours. And everybody went away very happy, and very satisfied.

Including us. It was good.

Yes. The night we put our little concert on for them we couldn’t do too much because of the blackout restrictions and the proximity of the enemy and so on. The next morning some of the chaps that had helped us in and out of the barge and that, I don’t know what

battalion I think it was the 28th Battalion some of their fellas all young blokes and the Japs had taken the Tol plantation a couple of weeks before and they got a lot of our young soldiers and tied them up to the palms and bayoneted them purposely or for practice and that was an awful sight to see

and to think that these were young blokes like ourselves or younger. First time maybe in the army or first time away on the islands and you don’t expect to see that sort of thing and this was awful to see. We only saw the holes in the palms where the bayonets had gone in some of them twenty and thirty times by the look of them. We didn’t see the soldiers, and we didn’t see the Japs. But it was just awful to see.

That was all.

No, but I think I remember reading a few years after the war remember reading something about it somewhere where they’d well they'd captured some and they bayoneted a few. But there was quite a number of them like there could have been

15 or 20 of them with all these, and these palms – course they’re banana palms and coconut palms, and they’ve all been there for donkey’s years and maybe all sort of trunks like that but all the trunks of all their trees are all spongy you could very easy to stick a sharp knife in two or three inches. That’s what apparently happened.

But we didn’t know any of them. Didn’t see any of them, but the blokes were telling us that this is what had happened, had happened a few weeks before, or a month or so before, before ever we got there but we didn’t see anyone.

Oh not much. With the

foot lights you know you don’t see anything much past the footlights. You can see the first two or three rows of faces and it’s just a big sea of anything you wouldn’t, your own mother or brother could be there and you wouldn’t even recognise them, cause you can’t see them. The footlights shining and the side lights on the stage all shining on you well that’s what it’s all about is to show us up to them not them to us and when you look out, you don’t

see anything, really, just a lot, a lot of people. It’s like when you if you’ve ever stood up on a town hall stage to sing or say something, you can’t see what's going, if the lights are all on you can’t see who’s down there you can’t tell if your mothers there or your brothers there or aunty or you're just looking out at a lot of people.

Well when they put the lights on

at interval and when they put the lights on at the end they put the lights on for them to all get up and pick up their petrol drum all walk home with it that was the only time. Somebody – often somebody would look through the pull the curtain aside have a peek through before we started to see if there was anyone there. Sometimes it’d be teeming, the rain would be teeming and

when I say teeming it was really teeming. You couldn’t see through it, it was so heavy, the rain. Not all the time but quite often you would get showers like that and they might go on for half an hour or so somebody would look and they'd say, I won’t say the word that they used but it was teeming down words to that effect “Delay it for five minutes.” so we’d just sit there for another five minutes and George Wallace would say “Righto, give it another go have a look it’s cleared up a bit now. All right we’ll start

now.” so off we’d go and start. That would often happen when they couldn’t see well we couldn’t see them they certainly couldn’t see us. But surprising how the people they used to sit there in the teeming rain the really teeming rain like the heaviest you’ve ever seen it rain around here they'd be sitting there with their ground sheet around here over there, hat

like this, watching. And then somebody would do something “Yeah.” they'd all clap and cheer and whistle then back down again for the next bit or it’d fine up perhaps. “Cause it often used to do that be, well you couldn’t tell what the sky was like but it would be teeming with rain and five minutes later it would be sunny. And it was never cold. That was the best part, or the beauty of it. You could go out and stand in the rain in the daytime

and you’d get soaking wet you could take your clothes off and wring them out you’d be soaking wet but that would stop, the rain would stop just like that. Just like as if somebody had turned it off and it would start the same way not a cloud anywhere, and then down she’d come, well, it would stop the same way and within say quarter of an hour you were bone dry. All your clothes were dry, everything would be, steam would be see the steam coming up off the ground

from the palms and steam out of the puddles course the ground would be hot too I suppose the atmosphere would be hot and dry. But I didn’t mind the heat so much I was pretty lucky I suppose it affected my brother more so than it did me. He used to become distressed at times with the heat

but I didn’t, the heat never worried me very much. I didn’t mind the heat. The only part that I didn’t like that if it was teeming and you were out in the rain and the heat the mouthpiece used to slip around my face put it up to blow and the mouthpiece would go sideways on the water. You’d be trying to wipe it dry and put the mouthpiece back again. That was the only little bit of worry, which was nothing.

Oh wonderful, terrific yeah terrific. Yes we’d sometimes see other we’d meet somebody somewhere at any unit and he’d say, “Come and meet my brother.” And we’d say, “Same unit?” “No he’s just come to visit us he’s over so and so some other place.” The

two brothers would meet you know and they'd shake hands pat each other on the back and say you know how are you doing how you going and have you heard from Mum, this that and the other, talk about letters they'd had or written. But that was just momentary two or three minutes five minutes and it was all over so the bloke would go back. Ron and I were together all the time 24 hours a day we slept side by side. He was in that stretcher – no, he was in that

stretcher – I was in this stretcher. We were together all the while and playing together of course. He sat two away from me always had a trumpet player here a trombone player there then there was the tenor sax Ron used to play the alto. He was never very far away and if we were detailed to do anything the officer

would say, “So and so you go and tidy up so and so and that, you Hoggs, you go over and do so and so.” And he’d send the two of us, the Hoggs he’d call us, course that meant the pigs too. But that didn’t matter. So we were always together and it was very good.

Oh yes mostly quietly you’d get homesick but you’d sort of put on another face and go out and do whatever you are doing do your bit. Everybody used to get homesick, as you would, if you were away. You know, away from your family for months, three months, six months, you get homesick. That’s what makes me laugh. Sometimes we’ve seen on

TV here, all the wives and family down to meet their sons and he’d been away for 2 months. I often say to Dot, “2 months! A whole 2 months what about the poor buggers who are away for 2 years and didn’t get home?” You know, so they’ve got it pretty easy today and they can cover so much distance in a couple of days or in an airplane we didn’t have any of those things before you could get home you had to go through hell,

maybe a fortnight in a boat or something like that.

We used to play, we’d play duets and play things. “Have you ever heard of this?” And

you’d play something. “Yeah I know that.” And he’d finish it off or I would finish off what he had started things like that. But away from the instruments we’d play cards, read books didn’t have any didn’t have the magazines like they’ve got today and we didn’t have newspapers we had the guinea gold that was it that was all you could get for another week or a fortnight. No it wasn’t al that boring there would be boring times when you would think I’ve got nothing to do but of course

we didn’t get bored so much in that respect because we always had access to the trucks we could always go down to the beach or go up to somewhere else or go over to somewhere else or go and see somebody over in the different unit that we knew different band and hear them play. When we were in Trinity Beach in this training for the Balikpapan landing, the camp next door – the unit next door to us was

the 2/2nd Pioneers. And they were all pretty tough blokes, pioneers mostly, everybody in the pioneers were pretty rough and tough and so on you know and they'd shake your hand and you’d look to see if it was still there when they finished. They were all rough tough blokes they built themselves up to be that and they all plan to be rough and tough and they are rough and tough because they’re pioneers. But anyhow they were practicing one day, having a band practice

they had a band a brass band about I suppose 15 or 18 in the brass band and they were practicing one day and we wandered over to their camp, which was 300 or 400 yards further along the beach than us we wandered [(UNCLEAR)] in the tent and we were looking in, “Do we know any of these blokes?” No we didn’t know anyone. Ron spotted one bloke he knew from Melbourne, “Yeah there's so and so I remember him.” fellows we’d known about

or read about or talked about then when they stopped playing the bandmaster came over and he said, “You blokes interested?” We said, “Oh well we’re bandsman too and we’re just having a look and having a listen. What was that you just played?” “So and so and so and so or whatever it was.” He said, “Come and have a blow with us.” And we did we went and got our instruments and had a blow with them and we played a couple of marches or something and the next thing he said, “We’re changing the guard

tomorrow night. How about coming over and giving us a hand?” You know, we said, “Yeah, sure.” So the next night we made sure that we could get away we went over with our instruments and joined in. of course our uniforms were all the same so nobody knew who we were nobody knew we were ring-ins except the band. They were pleased to see other faces and hear other sounds and course different players have different sounds. I was playing the trumpet, which is

a bit unusual with a brass band and all the blokes could hear the trumpet coming through because it’s a bit a little bit more shrill or piercing it’s a sort of a not sharp but it’s sharper but it’s not sharper in musical terms its more piercing. So they could hear that they came around and thanked us very much for our help and then they were playing

they had an engagement one Sunday afternoon to go up to the to play at the hospital at Mossman, Mossman hospital. A public hospital but a country type public hospital. Probably a dozen beds in the ward and one or two wards or something like that. We went up with them and they said there’d be so many of us go so we went back and saw

our officer and we said, “Can we take a couple of trucks?” he said, “Yeah sure.” so we took our truck each took our truck and took the band and all the hangers on all went up there and they’d set up on a lawn in front of the hospital and they had a program worked out a few little light operas and a few waltzes and couple of marches and all that sort of stuff and we played for a couple of hours two or three hours. And they

were very appreciative. And the officer of the pioneers came down and thanked us very much for giving them a hand. Then somebody, a woman came up from the town, and said – and she cornered Ron and said, “We’re having a dance in at the picture show tonight, what about coming down and playing?” he said, “Yeah we’ll come down.”

So Ron and I and about three or four other blokes, we all went down to the picture show. They’d moved all the seats, they didn’t have them screwed down, and all the, like what sort of seats would you say, folded, collapsible seats, there were about ten together, collapsed it and pull it away. Moved all those, and sure enough, the entire town – well not all the town, but all the young ones – would come in and they were all dancing, all free. And they had a great night,

they danced along and we played a lot of the Glenn Miller music, and so on, and we enjoyed ourselves too. We had a good night, and then when it was all over all the Pioneer Band got back into our trucks and we took them back to camp. We all had a wonderful night. There was no pay or anything attached to it.

Yeah well that’s a bit difficult (laughs).

Yes that’s a bit awkward. Well, the officer in charge – our officer – would speak to George Wallace. He was in charge of the concert party, the entertainment. He’d speak to George, and he’d say, “Now you’d better cut it down, we’ll leave this out and that out.” Cos he knew the show as well as we did, and “Leave that out, and don’t do that other gag about so and so, and don’t do this and leave that out and put this in.” And so on,

that’s how we overcame it. There was one; no I can’t tell you about that one that was another that was a glaring bad example.

No it was a picture there was a picture night we didn’t know. This was at Wongabill, we didn’t know and we just went to the pictures. It was a picture I can’t think of the name of it

But it was all about airplanes of course the airplanes were all little by-planes and little flappy about ones not modern airplanes. What was her name she’d been a pilot somewhere and somebody said, “Have you ever flown this plane?” She said, “No.” He said, “Well get in, and take it for a ride.” as if anybody would do that

into an airplane they’ve never flown. Anyhow she made a remark and flew it along and somebody in the audience made a similar remark. And next thing all the lights come on and the bloke stood up, the colonel, and said, “The next bloke that opens his mouth and says that, is on a crime sheet.” So of course that didn’t happen. He said something it was just you know somebody said something out of place and there were nurses there,

nurses from the local hospital.

Ones with lots of bad swear words in it, those sort of jokes you know and jokes, well I can’t tell you I don’t, I better be safe and say I don’t know. But they you know pretty bad well they weren't bad to the fellas because

everybody knew about it but it wasn’t the right thing to say in front of a lady whether you knew her or not. And of course these there was half a dozen ladies there this night, and nobody knew about, we didn’t know they were there, it wasn’t our fella that got up and sung out, but somebody did.

Oh yeah it didn’t make any difference to them. They got on well with the nurses, you know, they used to go around. It used to be

funny, they'd come around, “Give us a look at your curls, love.” They’d be feeling the curls and see what the wig’s like, and, “Where did you get that dress?” “Oh, this came out of the stock down at barracks.” or something like that. They’d talk about their dresses and the blokes - the femmes used to talk about dresses and stockings and net stockings and sos and so. Grace Brothers had a special on something or other that they’d buy. They’d be reimbursed

by the army. They’d buy girdles and all sorts of things. But it was all taken with a grain of salt, as far as most of us were concerned – it didn’t so much what they said or did, so long as they didn’t say or do it to us.

No one moment – there were lots of moments. But no one moment stands out. Except the Gracie Fields deal. That’s always stood out in my mind – I felt more proud that night, and I wasn’t firing at the enemy or anything. There was no enemy there – they didn’t come. But I was just so proud to feel that, well she was recognised

as one of the best in the world, and here she was thanking us for helping her and we were just lowly privates, you know – bandsmen. That was one of the proudest moments I ever remember. Course it’s a long while ago, and you forget a lot of things. As you get older you forget quite a few things, things that happened years and years ago.

In the army? Oh yes. When we did the three months training, jungle training, at Canungra – that was the hardest. And that was hard, really hard. They did it for a purpose – we didn’t realise that at the time. But since then I realise that it was all done for a purpose, and it was a good purpose, and they really did harden us up. An we were really

fair dinkum front-line soldiers then after that. That was hard, one of the, I remember one of the exercises, you used to get two rifles and they weighed nine pound each, and that’s roughly thew equivalent of a house brick. So you get a house brick, two house bricks, put them down on the ground, pick them up – that was easy enough. But then you’d have to bring them up like that slowly; I can’t get my arms up,

but you had to bring them out level and hold it there and the sergeant would be saying, “Hold it, hold it, hold it, higher - right now you can sort of let go.” And you’d all go down – it was really hard and I strained my stomach muscles trying to hold them up. I got a couple of days in bed for that. I got my tonsils out

in the army, at Lae, 2/7th and they said there were quite a few, well 6 or 7 tonsil operations done this day, and I was done, and so were some of the others, they pout us all into bed, and the next afternoon, I got up, I was walking around,

and all the blokes were saying, “What’s wrong with you?” Their throats were so sore, and they were vomiting. I said, “I dunno, I don’t know what they did.” He said they took my tonsils out, but I didn’t know, but I asked the sister the next day, I said, “How come I’m up out of bed?” I was serving the meals to these blokes so that the sister wouldn’t have to go down in the mud. I was carrying along for these blokes in the bed, “How come I’m doing this and they’re not

even out of bed?” “What’s so different?” She said, “Oh well, you were done with a – ” I was the first one done, I was an experiment. They didn’t tell me, but I was a trial. What do they call it, when they give you an injection to knock out your finger, say?

Yeah, but there’s a word for it, just knocks out one part – local. “You was done with a local

anaesthetic.” And what they’d done they’d injected the all around the tonsils, on both sides. I don’t know how many times they’d injected it. The first one, it hurt, but after that I didn’t feel it. They went to work and cut them out. And I was wide awake, and they were saying, “Open your eyes, open your mouth, open your mouth, don’t close your mouth, open your mouth.” I opened my mouth, I was a bit dopey. And after it

was over, they said, “Right, you can go to sleep.” So I went to sleep for an hour or so. And the next morning I was alright – I got up, and had some, what they called ice cream – which wasn’t ice cream, it wouldn’t set. And some jelly, which wouldn’t set. So I had ice cream and jelly for breakfast. But I was alright, I was up and about, and the doctor came around to have a look. They were very interested, and he was showing the other blokes around. Not the fellas,

the other doctors, what he’d done and how he’d done it, and that. They were going to adopt this method for taking out tonsils in the tropics. This was apparently something different because they said any cut or abrasion in the tropics goes bad very quickly. You know, say you’re here and you cut your foot, cut your hand or scratch your hand, a day or so it heals up and it’s right, but in the tropics it goes bad.

I s’pose it’s, I don’t know what it is. Probably more germs around in the heavier air, or whatever it is I don’t know, but any cut or abrasion or anything in the tropics is very serious. Mine was good, so I was right, I was helping the blokes around and I made some, I think I told you I made some scarves on the loom. The doctor came and said, “Will you make me a scarf? I want to send it home to your wife.” To his wife.

I said, “Yeah – what colour?” I didn’t have many colours, I said, “Yeah, I’ll make you a scarf – give us another 3 days in the hospital.” So he wrote out ‘Another 3 days in hospital’. Dong nothing, and I made a scarf for him.

A fairly big contribution.

It took the boredom out of, say a thousand blokes - it took the boredom away from 900 say roughly – something like that. It relieved the boredom for hundreds and hundreds – thousands of people. That’s about all we did – we didn’t perform any miracles, or didn’t charge anybody for anything or to do anything,

but I feel that it’s a necessary, entertainment is a necessary part of life. Just imagine yourself, if you couldn’t go anywhere, or you didn’t go anywhere, or you didn’t do anything – it’d become very boring, just did the same thing day after day after day. Of course when they’re away like that, that’s what they do, same thing day after day after day. And somebody comes along and does something different, wear something

different, and put on pretty coloured flashing lights, and all that, as the concert party does. This is something different, they talk about it for a week, or a couple of weeks after, they’re yakking about the concert party, and the yarns about this, and the jokes about so and so. Some of them they’re not real good – some were a bit risqué, but in the main they were good, very good. It was good for morale, maybe they didn’t realise it,

but they were all uplifted I’m sure. They were all uplifted, even if it was just for that day, or a couple of days, and during that couple of days they all talk about it. So I think it was very good.

That night they would, but after that they wouldn’t know you. You were just the same as them, and they wouldn’t know who the devil you are – you’d walk past them on the street and they wouldn’t know you.

Oh, good show – good show tonight. That bloke on the so and so was good. The fella that played the marimba phone, that was beautiful. Or I liked so and so, or I liked this. I didn’t think much of that sort in the pink dress, this was one of the femmes, and so on, they’d give us good compliments, and sometimes there’d be some not so good, as with the concert party itself. Sometimes we’d be better one night than another – we wouldn’t know why.

Well you get good days and you get bad days – I suppose you do too. Some days everything works out good, the next day it’s rotten. Well, it’s the same with a concert party – the same thing.

Oh yes it was. In the army you sort of get used to do, doing as you’re told, and if nobody tells you to do it, you don’t do it, whatever it is. But when you come home, when I came home, I was de-mobbed. It was hard to

get into a new routine. I lived in Rockdale, I was only 5 minutes from the station, and I worked when I first came back, I went back to Wildes, the brush-makers, which was right at Redfern Station. It took me 5 minutes up to the station, 20 minutes on the train, 2 minutes round to work. But it took me weeks to get this into my mind, that I’ve got to do that at such and such a time. I wasn’t used

to that, and hadn’t worried about times for years, 3 or 4 years without worrying about time. And suddenly I’ve gotta watch that I get up there for the 8 o’clock train or the 7 o’clock train or whatever it is, I’ve gotta do that yeah all by myself, nobody there to help me. Going to Redfern, which was nothing, but you’ve gotta do it yourself, and you’ve gotta think, “What do I wear?” I used to say to my wife, “What’ll I wear? Oh I’ll get my greens out, my jungle greens, and I’d start to put them on,

and she’d say, “No, don’t put them on – you don’t want those.” I’d say, “Why not? Alright, I’ll put something else on.” I’d forget about what to do – not that I was forgetting, but it was out of the ordinary, it was unusual. Had to do unusual things, that you didn’t do in the army, so you were learning, you were quick to pick it up, but you were learning something different. Learning a new life, and I would imagine that everybody that’s been in the services

would find the same, and when you’re let out you’re let out on your own. And you’ve gotta think for yourself, “Oh, where will I get a trade? I guess I’ll go to so and so.” You’ve gotta think about it – in the army you don’t think about anything. The less you think about, the least you think about, the better. The better off you are. Do as you’re told, and do it – that was it. That was what I found when I get out – I was 2 or 3 weeks

sort of worrying me when it came to lunch time, they’d, the girl in the office would ring the bell – lunch time. Ah lunch – where will I get my lunch? There’s no canteen here, it’s only a small place. There was only about 15 worked there, and everybody brought their lunch, and if you didn’t buy it you had to go out and buy it. If you didn’t bring it you had to go out and buy it somewhere, I’d stand there thinking, “Now where’s my lunch? What do I do for lunch?” “I go,

no, I can’t go there, I’ve gotta go round the shop.” So I’d go around the shop and get it, and of course by the time I get my lunch and get settled in for lunch the lunch half-hour would be over. The bell’d be ringing again for me to start work. That took 2 or 3 weeks to sort out. That sort of annoyed me, and having to think about what time for a train – why don’t I just wander up and get on a train whenever? That’s what I do now. Course I couldn’t then, had to be at Redfern

by a certain time to start at half-past seven. That took a while to, well not a long while, but 2 or 3 weeks, to get used to the idea of thinking for myself. And doing things for myself that I hadn’t done for 4 to 5 years.

I don’t think it’s affected me at all, or changed me, well I don’t think, but I wouldn’t know that. You’d have to ask somebody else. I don’t know, I don’t think it’s changed me, I don’t think it’s

affected me. But as I say, I don’t know – somebody else would tell you that.

Oh yes. It was quite good – we had some wonderful times in the army – wonderful times. Of course you always, looking back, you always think of the good times – you don’t think of the bad times. Somehow or other everybody does this I think – the bad times go out of your mind, and you think

of the good times. All the time, and I’ve noticed this, when we meet for these meetings, like tomorrow, we’ll all talk about something or other that somebody did, it’s all good, funny stuff. Something to laugh at, and you don’t think about what happened the day so and so the wheel went across and cut his leg off. You don‘t think about that – you’ve forgotten about that.

No, I don’t think so – you’ve covered everything. You’ve covered more than I’ve remembered in years. No, everything that I can think of.

I didn’t do anything really; well I don’t think I did very much. I certainly entertained a lot of people.

That was the good part; don’t worry about the bad part. The bad part – I’ve forgotten those. The bad parts like at Canungra – that was a bugger of a time, but we had to do it, and we did. I don’t worry, I don’t think about that. I try not to think about that, but there was a lot of good come out of that. I met a few good fellas there. Good, genuine, honest, hard-working blokes

that knew what they were teaching you, and they knew how to teach you, and you learned the thing, because later at some time or other you’d do something, and you’d think, “Ooh, I learned that at Canungra.” You know I remember so and so showing me how to do so and so, and all this sort of stuff – little things, Canungra was tough, was hard, but it was good. Looking back, I’m glad I haven’t got to go and do it again. I couldn‘t do it again, run up a mountain,

I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want to do that.

No I couldn’t (laughing). No. No I don’t remember them really; they were all jokes of the day, of that period.

The sort of jokes that, did you ever go to the Tivoli? Oh. Did you ever go to the Tivoli? Well you’d remember what you saw at the Tivoli, the jokes, risqué jokes, close to the wind sort of jokes. They were funny, and you laughed at them. That’s what, that’s what Wallace did, he told jokes and he had a way of telling jokes. He was funny to start with – you’d sort of laugh at him before

he got to the end of the joke. He was that sort of a fellow – a good bloke; in his sane moments he was a very nice fella. Then after the war he got married, and had 2 or 3 children. We went to visit him once up at Surfers Paradise, just before he died. No, he was a good bloke, he was good at his job too, he knew what he was doing and how to do it. But jokes were, like jokes, but – you know how

they tell jokes on these shows on the TV. They go a little bit close to the bone, but they’re not too bad, you can’t take offence sort of thing. Well that’s what it was all about. Here and there, when there was all fellas, and he went a little bit further then – he used to go sometimes a little bit too far, and the officer would pull him over the coals. And say, “Hey, you’d better cut that joke out – there’ll be trouble if you don’t.” and so on. So he was sort of,

he was looking after George Wallace, so he didn’t go overboard. And Mike Pate, Mike was very good – he was the straight man. He asked all the questions, and of course George Wallace came out with all the funny answers. They were good together, worked well.

Oh no, a fella came up to another bloke in the street and said so and so, and then some woman walked past and they said so and so

to something or other. They were just ordinary sort of jokes, ordinary jokes that you’d tell at home but not quite. Some like that, you know. And there were the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman went into the pub to have a drink together – those sort of jokes. And so it goes on. Then there was the Yank, the Australian and the somebody else, the Jew went in to have a cup of coffee, and some other joke would come out of that.

They were clean jokes; they were good jokes – funny jokes. They’d make you laugh, and that’s what it was all about.

You’re welcome. Quite welcome.