Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in England on the 12th of May 1919, and we came to Australia when I was 18 months old, with my parents and three brothers and sister. We came to Australia, migrated here after my grandparents had preceded us and come to Australia

and said it was a great land of milk and honey. So my parents, my family came out here. We came and we went to an area in Victoria, in name of, a place called Terang down the southwest Victoria amongst the cattle and dairying industry. And that’s where we grew up with my brothers and sisters. In addition to my family we had another two brothers that were born here in Australia.

There were 6 boys and one girl. The eldest boy was William, the second John, the third was Ted, my sister was Anne, I am George and we had Charles, and we had Len. And we came to this country here, I’m afraid my mother anyway my father apparently appreciated it here but my mother was most upset at the time when she came. Because she found it was quite different from where she came from, from in England.

Because they lived on a big estate over there my father had quite a big job in England looking after cattle and stuff and coming out here it was quite a different thing. But anyway we settled down in this town in Terang. My father couldn’t get the work, the type of work that he wanted to and he finished up working for the Council. And unfortunately he had been injured when he was in

England, he’d been gored by a bull and that also prevented him from ever joining the army so he never fought in World War One and subsequently he caught pneumonia and he died. I was only at the age of 18 months old, my elder was nine or ten and my youngest brother was about, he was only a few months old when my father died. Which left my mother with a family to rear by herself.

The churches and the societies wanted to take some of the family away but my mother decided that she would not do that, she would keep all the family and we would look after ourselves. Consequently she went out to work doing washing and housework, kept us together and somehow or other we survived. Unfortunately because of the situation, my eldest brother, he had to leave school early, he became a very

clever engineer later on, a very, very smart man, and in due course we all left school. Our education wasn’t great but in turn we all left school when we came to the age of fourteen and when it come to my turn, I didn’t even go to that, I went to when I was thirteen and a half and I left school in the Christmas period and never went back. The whole thing then, it was in the Depression years and we were struggling to find jobs and get work

to help the family survive. As we grew up, as we got older the family, the boys left home and each one in turn, the elder boy became the head of the family and watched over the younger ones and made sure that things went along all right. I got myself a job as a, after messing around in the local film, local industry in the local theatre,

I got my job as an apprentice butcher, which I stayed in that trade which I left to join the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] eventually when I became 21 years of age. It was a big struggle there but I joined the CMF [Citizens’ Military Force] or what was known as the militia in the early days down there when I was 17 and a half.

In Terang militia and I

joined the militia at 17 and half. I never got paid for the first 6 months because you never got paid as a cadet. The chappie that I worked for, I did some odd jobs at the local theatre, he was a returned soldier from World War One and he was an officer in the militia as it was in those days. And he sort of inveigled me into joining up and I remained in that. At the start of the war in 1939, we were called up on three

months emergency service which we did defending Port Phillip Bay, looking for spies that we never found, chasing sandflies most of the time, but anyway, because of the situation with the family in those day you didn’t get your key to the door until you were 21 years of age. So I remained as the head of the family until that time also I had, I was obliged to complete my apprenticeship in the butchering trade, which I did. And

when I turned 21 I joined the AIF I joined the AIF and saw.

How’s it coming through?

Terang,

Down near Warrnambool, down the South Coast, Portland, down that way, right down through that area. Not much when we were growing up. The usual family with no father,

we were very short on clothing it was always a hand me down, job all that type of thing. I mean, and you sort of, as one grew a bit more you found yourself wearing the clothes until you finished up you had more patches than you probably had clothes in the finish. But that’s the way it was. We battled along, went to school.

No,

My Mum mainly remained, she was the one guiding factor that kept us. Unfortunately we had little to do with our grandparents, they seemed to just let my Mum battle along on her own, which she did. And with help we had some good neighbours as well, people who assisted and helped out.

The only memory

I have of my father was, on one occasion, he was a very tall man, he was about 6 foot four leading a little boy by the hand to go to the toilet which was down in the backyard in those days, the old dunny that were down the back. And that’s the only memory, the only thing that I can remember of my father. And fortunately but that’s how it was. But Mum, no Mum was pretty stringent, she was fairly strict, she was brought up

Christian and we were brought up as Christians too.

She was a very tall, beautiful lady, she had a very good voice, she was an accomplished musician, she could play anything at all and had one time been asked, before she left England when she was a young woman, to go on the stage in England, she was very attractive woman

and she was very, a very beautiful voice, and as I said she could play almost anything she picked up from a mouth organ to a piano accordion, anything at all. She was very clever but she was pretty strict too, when things got out of hand, when the straw broom come out we knew that things were going to happen so we used to go for cover then because that was the last straw, when the straw broom come out. But

oh no, we all had our turn and of course the older brothers they sort of guided the younger ones along and they kept you in line too, it was their job and responsibility to see that you did the right thing and everybody had his turn to do this. We all had chores to do as you come up, it was whose turn to feed the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, and whose turn to cut the wood for the stove because we had wooden stoves in those days. You all had your little jobs to do and

we all went off to school, 9 o’clock in the morning till 3 o’clock in the afternoon. And gradually as we grew up the boys left school, my eldest brothers they went to work for a firm called ‘True Food’ which was a milk producing factory where most of them, the majority of the younger people in the town found work there. That’s where he started off his career as an engineer. He was throwing 6 foot

logs into boilers, into steam boilers making steam and that to run the plant. Then John started to work at the factory, my brother Ted he was more in the line of work, he liked to work out on the land and the soil and property and that sort of thing and gardening. And he got himself a job on an estate where he was the head gardener and that and doing that type of work.

And as I said, when I came along my job when I grew up, I got as far as the eighth grade, I passed the Junior school and got into my eighth grade but I never completed my education. I finished my education in the army where I got my first class army education which is just same to the leaving Certificate in Victoria which I had to get otherwise I would not have got promotion. I had to get that to get further promotion in the army so,

Well the eldest brother, we used to call him ‘Cyclone’ because he used to whiz around, everything was in a hurry, he was always flying here and flying there. But he was a big, big, boy and a big man and he was a very strong character. He had much influence in our behaviour and pattern and my

second eldest brother John, he and I were very good mates and we did a lot of things together. He was a very, very good bike rider, cyclist. We had a local cycling club and we all rode bikes in those days because we never had other sports apart from playing football which is quite a popular sport but cycling was our sport and John, who unfortunately was killed later on, he and I

were very good mates and did a lot of things together. My brother Ted, he was more of a quiet fellow, more of a shy type of a bloke but he was became the backbone of the family for Mum later on when the rest of us were in various places. Because at one stage of the game there was three of us in AIF my youngest brother, John and myself.

Yeah he was older than me, yes.

When my mother realised that, and then my other brother Charles he was called up in the National Call up and it found that Mum was virtually left by herself with only my sister there. My sister was married, it was a wartime romance and it never lasted anyway, but she came home to stay with mother. Mother

found that it was hard going so she was permitted to claim one of the boys and she claimed Charles to stay at home and to help out on the home front.

No we lived in the town, in a cottage in the town, yes. And, but there was all farming work, it was a farming district around you.

Dairy, it was all dairy farming.

Pardon?

No I didn’t work on

it, No. No but well my Ted, my brother, he went out to work on an estate. And an estate where he was the head gardener and that sort of work but that, was and they had cattle and run dairying herds and that sort of thing. It was a big rural area of milk and cheese and

dairying that type of thing. And raising cattle for slaughtering and that, for meat.

It was, it was very, very tight, but we never went hungry.

We never went hungry because we grew most of our own vegetables, we had our own chicken yard, so we got some eggs from the chickens and we got our, once a year

for Christmas was a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK that we killed, one of our own chickens or a couple of chickens that we killed ourselves and that was our Christmas Fete because we never had other luxuries, but it was hard putting the meals on the table, it was hard for Mum to pay the bills and to keep thing, a roof above our heads. She got a small amount of money from, it was called State Assistance for the boys, which was very small.

It didn’t go very far amongst 6 boys and a girl, but we never went hungry, Mum always made sure there was food on the table and of course myself being in the butchering game helped because we got our meat at a cut price and that helped as well.

Well I don’t, it’s hard to understand it

really. I had an aunt and an uncle. Uncle Bert he worked out on the land, he worked in hotels working as a labourer in the hotels and then he went out onto dairy farms, he was a milking. He never married, he was a single man and I had an aunt who married a World War I soldier who turned, who

died rather young because of what he received in World War I. And she had a family of two girls and a boy but we never had much to do with them at all, they were just kept to themselves.

They were about the same age as us. The boys and that grew up with us sort of thing, similar age.

Yeah in the same town. But we never saw a great

deal of them. Mum was left, more or less to battle on her own.

No they’re father’s side of the family. No all Mum’s relatives were, stayed in England. None of her, none of our father’s family came out, it was my father’s family that came here but none of my mother’s people come to Australia. They only come, cousins have come out here on business and that sort of thing, but we haven’t’ seen much of them

at all. My brother Bill, he’s done a couple of trips around the world, he’s been there to see them. My mother and sister went over on one occasion to see the family and brother Charles, I got as far as the Middle East and I thought at one stage that I might get there because that was the time when there was a dispute as to whether the troops were going to come back to Australia or not or go to England because Churchill

was worried about what’s going to happen over there, and our local Prime Minister here he decided, Curtin, that those would come back to Australia. So we were sitting there it was great coats on and great coats off, we weren’t sure which way we were going, so I never got the opportunity to go to England and I haven’t, I haven’t the desire to go there anymore, not the way things are now. We’ve only got a few distant relatives left, an odd cousin

and I think an aunty or somebody, but they’re well up in the age group now.

Well I’ve always been very proud of it. You’ve seen my flag there; I put that up every Monday morning like we used to do at school. That was one of the things at school you’d put your flag up, we’d assemble around the flag and we gave our pledge to the flag and our country.

To this country. And we’ve always,

and we honoured the flag and I’ve always done that. Here I’ve got my own flagpole, which I put up out there on the thing, and I put the flag up on a Monday and on any other occasion when we’re permitted to fly the flag. And that’s something I’ve always done, I’ve been very proud of my heritage. But sometimes I doubt sometimes, I have feeling about how things are at the present time. They’re not so good.

Australian Flag but it’s got the English flag in the corner you know. Oh no we fly that one there.

We did it at school. It was a regular occasion, every Monday morning all the school assembled around the flag and it was a battle between the boys to see who hoisted the flag up on the flagpole and then you assemble there and you gave my honour my flag, I honour my parents, I obey the school rules and

that was the sort of thing you did, and that was every Monday morning, so I got in the habit of doing that. So I still do it now, every Monday morning I put it up and other occasion when we’re permitted to fly the flag, yeah.

Oh yeah, King and Country.

I think it was King in those days wasn’t it,

King and Country oh yeah.

Oh well I think we were very British. I mean Mum was always very, very British, very English. Because I knew when the cricket was on, she said, “I wish they could get this Bradman out, I hate that Bradman,” she said, when they were playing cricket, because he was making his centuries and all that sort of thing. But she was very, very British. And although I think we still had our allegiance to the old country,

but gradually over the years I think we’ve become more Australian, well that’s what we are now anyway, we always have been.

No the only one that I recall was my Uncle Harry that had married my Aunt Anne and he was a very sick man. Harry

Smith, and we never had much contact with them at all. And local people, I don’t know for some reason, the RSL [Returned and Services League], there was quite a good RSL Club there and that but we probably knew who they were but we never, didn’t very much associate with them. It wasn’t until, as I said later on, when I got to the age of 17 and that sort of thing, that I became

interested in the army side of things and that was through this chap that I knew that was associated with the theatre business and we got interested in that. But I never had a lot to do with early or World War I diggers at all.

Only we went to Church and sang and that, and sang hymns and what have you, and that sort of thing. But at one stage of the game I would become an aspiring pianist and I took lessons from one of the local teachers but I was one of those blokes who wanted to become a Paganini over night, but I mean I wasn’t very keen on the practice side of it, I didn’t do too much of that sort of thing. And when I

got in the army that sort of drifted away unfortunately.

I have a piano, yes.

Oh we always had a pianola, always. Piano, pianola you know the old, play the rolls and that, where most of us did our singing and that. It was a Sunday, on a Sunday evening and that sort of thing, or afternoon there was always a family get together and the old pianola and put the rolls in there and everybody would have a sing song and have a

pleasant afternoon, oh yeah all the old songs.

Oh goodness me. All the old musical comedy stuff that come from the early films and that type of thing.

Oh yes, Danny Kaye, Red,

oh the early ones, of course Old Bing was great, old Bing Crosby with the crooners and that type of thing. And because I could do, I had a reasonable voice. I became associated with the local, we had put on local shows, more or less for loan rallies or that sort of thing, or for the army.

Oh to raise money for

our own troops and that sort of, or for our own people for the town and that sort of thing. To support our own boys. To get, send them stuff, you know the type of things.

Yeah, this was in the late, the early forties yeah, early forties.

Well that’s the local

theatre society, we did put on shows and that sort of thing. Well they put on shows and they assemble them from any, local people that could do anything at all you know, people that could dance or could play an instruments or type of things like that. They were amateur shows, they weren’t professional shows,

but I used to sing the popular songs of the time. Oh it’s, to think of them now, ‘You Made Me Love You’ all the old types of things you know, ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ and all this sort of jazz. That type of thing and then I got onto singing more musical

comedy, stuff from the ‘Desert Song’ or ‘Showboat’ and things like that, yeah.

Always, very much. We couldn’t have, we didn’t have the things that you, well I mean we had the necessities to survive on but we didn’t have any great

luxuries and types of things. I know one time, the school sports were on and I wanted to run and I wanted a pair of sandshoes and they only cost one and sixpence for a pair of sandshoes in those days, 18 pence, and poor old Mum couldn’t afford to buy me a pair of sandshoes so I had to run in bare feet or whatever it was. Things like that I mean, you had the necessities of life but you didn’t get any. I fortunately done a … for a while

I was working or did a bit of work in the local picture theatre and I used to be able to get in free to go to the movies on Saturday afternoons and that sort of thing, and get a bit of pleasure that way, sort of business. And the local skating rink, there was a skating rink, one of the old skating rinks, you could do a bit of skating and that type of thing but in, you virtually made your own pleasure and that sort of thing. You got a football out the backyard and kicked it or down the side street. You got a

kerosene tin and a bat and you got out there with a ball or something and that sort of thing and you made your own pleasures. We were made to do what you could. And we had billycarts of course, we made billycarts and raced them down hills and down over the top of, and down the lake and tip buckets of water down the side of it to make it nice and greasy so that you could get some speed up and go down the top of the, over the top of the bank of the lake and down the bottom on these old billycarts

made out of wood with the four wheels, old pram wheels or something. And you made your own, you made your own pleasures and that sort of thing.

Yeah, girlfriends. Well I don’t know, hobbies were mainly my bikes, my pushbikes and I read. I used to like reading. My greatest pleasure was reading, we worked all the day from 6 days

a week and we used to work late Friday nights, worked Saturday mornings, race some bikes on the Saturday afternoon and Sunday was our day off, cause after, of course we’d go to church too. I always used to like the wet days on Sunday because we had galvanised roofs, and the rain used to pelt down on the roofs and come down there and I’d get a Wild West book or I’d get one of the old Westerns and lay in bed and that was my pleasure for the day,

was to stay in the bed and let the rain come down on the roof and what was it, some of the old westerns they’ve got out, I’ve just forgotten the names of them now but anyway they were good reading, good stories and that was a comfort, that was a real comfort, that was a rest on Sunday.

It was a good day, yeah.

Very little, just the normal holidays.

Oh not far away from home, very seldom, we’d go down to Warrnambool, probably go down there. And oh we used to have, once a year they had a trip down to Port Fairy which was down that way towards Portland, down the line and it would be 3 or 4 trainloads of the kids from the, local kids from the school would go down there, that was

once a year. That was a great day out, poor old Mum spending time looking for the kids getting lost on the beach and wondering where we got to when it was time to get the train to come back home again, it was only forty or fifty miles away but it was a big day out to go by a train trip and go down there. Poor old Mum would spend half the time looking for the kids and looking for their clothes spread on the beach. And we’d get ourselves back again but that was a great old treat. And of course Sunday school picnics and that type of thing

oh we had our pleasures. We got pleasures out of those things. But we used to look forward to these trips away for 6 months beforehand, you know, you’d be garnering up and that sort of thing looking forward to our trip on the train, because we very seldom had trips on trains in those days. Life was very what, very just plain and ordinary in those days,

just plain and ordinary.

We did, all the days were celebrated. Yeah all the days and events in one way or another, we’d celebrate that at school, the Empire Day, yeah. We’d all, we’d gather around in the assembly area and somebody would come along from somewhere from the local (UNCLEAR) and probably have a bit of a talk about Empire Day and tell us all about it and so forth and so

on.

Oh yes, that was a great one. That was a great one, but unfortunately I got, with those things running around with sticks and that sort of thing, I got poked in the face on one occasion with somebody running around with a stick with a bit of a light on it and that sort of business. But that was the night that the poor old dog used to hide under the house, because poor old Rosco he hated it, we had bonfire night, never

after that. He was a great dog, he was a curly retriever and old Rosco, I used to sleep in the sleep-out outside on the front veranda with it, with curtains along the side of it and that sort of thing. And old Rosco used to sleep under my bed and I never had any worries with Rosco there because nobody ever come near the place. But after the bonfire night, with thunder or as soon as he heard a noise, old Rosco was under the bed and that’s where he’d stay, he wouldn’t come out there until the noise stopped

but he was a great, he was a great watchdog, nobody came within a roar of a place while I was there, I never had any worries about sleeping outside. That was quite a thing too, to be on your own and sleep outside in the sleep out. Real thrill you know and big time going out there to sleep on your own outside on the veranda. All these things, an old black cat I had, Blackie. Blackie lasted for years and years but he had a bad

habit, tomcat, and he used to go away. He’d go away on the prowl and he’d come back all battered he’d been in fights with all the other cats and he’d be that poor and hungry, and you’d think he was going to die and then he’d fatten up for about 3 or 4 months, and then he got in real good shape again and then he’d take off again and head off again. He did this for quite a many, a number of years but on one occasion he failed to come back and I never found out until many years later, when my sister or brother told me and said,

“Oh we weren’t game to tell you about it George, but Blackie didn’t make it home one day, he collapsed under the hedge of, outside the house and he passed away.” Old Blackie but he was a real character Old Blackie, but he used to wait for me to come home of an afternoon. I’d come home from work and he’d be sitting on the gatepost when I came home and when you’d get in he would just up and hop on the back of the bike, on the saddle of the bike, and while I wheeled around the back of the house he sat on the bike while I went around there. He’d wait for me, he knew what time I come home of an afternoon, he’d be sitting on the fence

waiting for me. You cannot beat animals, Rosco, you can’t beat for faithful, good old faithful dog and cat.

Well to a point. It was a necessity, but I did enjoy meeting the people and the type of work, although it was hard. I started off as an apprentice,

just doing odd bits of jobs and that and till I got into the trade and then I become an improver, then I finished up being a slaughterman as well and doing all phases of the work. We had our own slaughteryards where we used to pen our, keep our own, buy our cattle and sheep at the local sales and pig and keep them out on the…where our slaughter yards were only about a mile out of

town. And then twice a week we’d go out there and slaughter whatever animals that were required. Probably kill a beast, six or eight sheep and a pig, twice a week or something like that. It wasn’t the best of jobs but still it was a necessity to survive on and then you did shop work as well, we made all our own smallgoods and made sausages and that type

of thing. But it was interesting to a point and it was a hard job. You started early in the hours of the morning and you never knew when you were going to finish and you started about 4 o’clock on a Saturday morning and you finished about half past twelve and then you went and rode bikes for 50 or 60 miles in the afternoon and we thought it was great fun doing that. But you worked, you filled in your hours it was 48

hours a week then but I think we worked about 60, but if you didn’t work you didn’t get paid anyway, so I mean you didn’t have any choice.

Pay cheque on, I got 16 shillings and fourpence I think, it was first 16 and halfpence a week for my first pay and I gave that to Mum, because Mum got that. And after well then I went up to

1 pound 16, I got the second year and then it gradually raised up and after five years, after completing my time my final pay was 5 pound and 12 and sixpence a week and that was after working for about 7 years, and that today, I mean what I got in the first week, wouldn’t buy me a beer today.

Oh god, don’t ask me. Don’t ask me, I wouldn’t remember.

Oh you were lucky if you had an ice cream or a chocolate or things like that. Three pence of jellybeans and all that sort of stuff. We’re talking in pretty small amount now. We’d go up to the local Chinese shop up there and

you’d have thruppence to spend or sixpence to spend something like that. I remember when I used to go to school for my lunch, for sixpence I could get a pie, six pence and two cakes for that and that was my lunch for school, going to school. Down to the local, one of the local shops. Oh treats, ice cream

not a great deal.

Yeah, oh that was a big day, Anzac Day at home, the RSL used to march down through the local streets and we had the cenotaph at the end of the street at the approach of the town. Quite an impressive one too for a country town,

with the names of the Soldier on there that had been from the district, but all the school kids would all assemble there and it was quite a good service, and oh yeah it was well remembered, yeah.

Well we just went along with the school kids and that sort of thing, and assemble there. And if there was a march on or not we’d join in on those and get ourselves down to the cenotaph and assemble

there while the service was being conducted. And after that we’d probably go away and have a game somewhere and that sort of thing like normal kids do. But it, no it was well remembered there, the people, the local people and that sort of thing. It still is, they still have a good RSL club there and quite a good set up.

I used to, well we never got a lot to know about the war and this is one of the things that I think has been really lacking in the Education of the Australian children, growing

up after World War I. We used to hear bits and pieces about the war you know, we’d hear that sort of thing. But I think it was sadly lacking in our teaching at school we learnt about Wellington and Waterloo, and we learnt about all the other great early wars and great soldiers and sailors and all that sort of thing. But we never heard much about

World War I and it’s only in recent years now that people are starting to realise, and I believe myself, that they are going back and getting into this type of thing now and telling the children, not the children now but the grown up people that are growing up in Australia now about World War I and what the soldiers did over there and that. We hear about Anzac Day, Anzac Day comes up it’s a great

kafuffle for about a couple of weeks, two or three weeks and they all go over there to Anzac Cove and that sort of thing, but the history of World War I was sadly lacking in our Education when we were kids. You’d get snippets of, a bit hear and a bit there and that sort of thing.

Pardon?

I thought about it a lot, I thought about it a lot. The only thing I thought

about it was a good place not to be there. But what they, knowing what they did and the rest of it I wanted. I’ve always wanted to go to Anzac Cove and I had one time, and I had arranged to go but circumstances prevented me from going. And I don’t think I want to go there now. Not, I would go not on Anzac Day but I would go at a time when it was, apart from that. To go there when

it was quiet, to go and see the thing and get a feeling of it. I think it’s become too commercialised now and there’s so many people go there, there’s thousands of people there and the atmosphere I don’t think you would get the feeling of being there and if you could go there and see and have a feeling of what actually took place in the place. What I would like to see, would be to go to the various prominent points that we’ve heard about and read about.

To go and see and the trenches and all that sort of thing and I think you would get more of a feeling of the place that way. Then by going there with 10 or 20 thousand people all there together.

Oh, I’ve always, I’ve been more of a cowboy type of a bloke I think when I was growing up, I think I was more Western side of that sort of thing you know, I mean it would be great to be a cowboy and all this sort of jazz

stuff and what have you. Oh it never never really hit me until, well when I got involved in the old militia before then and then I think from there on I wanted to be a soldier because half of life has been being as a soldier.

I think I was a bit of a bloody smartarse

that’s what I think. I was a bit of a cheeky bugger. I think I was always a bit of a you know, I always wanted to be out and I always wanted to be on the move and if there wasn’t anything on in the local town, then I wouldn’t go and if there was a concert on somewhere or a show on somewhere or something else on, I wanted to be in it, I was a sort of a, what do you call them today? One of those people that want to be in, who’s got to be in it

type of thing you know. Wouldn’t matter what it was, whether it was in the local skating rink or was somewhere else I wanted to be in it, to be part of it. I always wanted to be part of things. I was keen on, more on socialising type of things, being part of something and if I could take a part in it like being in those amateur shows and that sort of thing. I got a real kick out of that and I think that’s where I got the idea of start,

of ever wanting to be in the sort of show business type of thing.

Oh very early in the piece, very early in the piece. Oh yes we used to go to, even to the days on the Sunday School picnic we used to chase the little lasses around and around, I don’t know what we were going to do but we used to chase them around anyway. I had a couple of girlfriends as a young bloke, unfortunately the romances

they didn’t last because when the war came along everything sort of, people went in all different directions and they separated and that type of thing. But a number of the local girls that I was a bit sweet on, I think a few of them were my way a bit too. I had ideas with one lass at one time that we might eventually, something might develop but she went away from the town, as I said when the war broke out,

girls were going away down to the city looking for jobs or wanted to go for more excitement and get away from the town because on the whole it was a pretty quite old place. But oh no, we had our share of fun on that type of thing.

Yeah I wanted something, but I don’t know what I wanted. I

was satisfied in the, to a way, to a point I was satisfied with my life where it was but I realised when I, when we went to different places when I, when we were riding bikes and that we used to go different other towns and go to Stawell where they ran the Stawell gift and go somewhere else, to Colac and sort of thing. There was a bigger world outside when you got over the first hill there were a lot more hills and that type of thing. And that

became quite a strong point at the end of the war, not to digress but when I came back people said, “Oh you’ll be glad to go home now.” I mean, “You’ll be coming back to Terang,” and I said, “No way in the world,” I said. “When I got over that first big hill I found there was another big hill and when I got past that one,” I said, “I found there was another,” I said, “No.” I said, “I won’t be coming back here to live,” and they said, “Oh you’ll come back, you’ll be wanting to come back one day, you’ll come back.” Well that’s

fifty nine years ago in May and I think it is and I haven’t been, I go back there on holidays, I like to go back there but its, there’s nothing left for me there anymore now. Nothing. I’ve got a brother who’s still alive there, I’ve only got one brother left now, he’s the youngest fellow, Len. He was in New Guinea, he done his share too. He’s got property down there, the family as they got older and we go over that, did quite well

actually. My nephew the one that we had nothing to do with Smith, he owns about half of Warrnambool now I think, he’s got about 15 houses and about half a dozen plants or factories, but my younger brother he’s got property down there, he runs beef cattle, down there around the old home town. He’s brought out a couple of properties there and his sons, he’s got sons now that have both got farms in the area, so they’ve done, the family have done quite well.

From those that did get away oh well they’ve got, have done quite well I think, so anyway. My eldest brother he became a Steam, an Electric Engineer, he had his own plant in Adelaide over there. He was manager over there for about 30 odd years and he was on the Board of Engineers he’s a very, unfortunately his education was curtailed, he had a Scottish Teacher that wanted him to go on

and he went before the authorities in the local town of Terang, but this was the type of place it was, and said that you’ve got a boy there that’s got great potential and he wanted him to go to the Church of England school, we were Church of England and he wanted him to got to the school.

Quite a bit, quite a bit. But anyway getting back to this they said, “Oh no, we

couldn’t have him, he’s the son of a council worker he doesn’t,” you know, “we wouldn’t have him, he’s not eligible to go to this Church school,” which curtailed his Education quite a lot, but apart from that he still beat the system and became a very, very clever man, a very clever man.

What had subjugated, we were. We were considered, we weren’t, you weren’t, and we were treated in that way.

Treated by that people.

Well we felt that we were under, them, so they treated you as though you were just the ordinary old working, old class. I mean you had no status at all in the place you were just a working man’s son and that sort of thing, and you weren’t classified to be in amongst the elite part of the town at all people. You had to prove yourself

to get anywhere in the place yep.

Oh it did affect the family, I’m sure it did and you felt that, well I didn’t realise it, when you look back over the time you don’t realise it at the time, you accept. We accepted what our

situation was and we got on with it, right. We did what we had to do to survive, but when I look back over the thing, I think to myself now why did we ever let ourselves, in many cases, do the things that we did, or had to do to be able to survive to keep it. But we didn’t consider ourselves to be on a par with some of the other people, well that’s how I felt anyway but I’m sure that my brothers and my mother didn’t feel that way

I’m sure they didn’t. But that was a feeling that I had anyway.

Well it, you didn’t have a great future, you had to accept what ever was going, I mean the fact that you could get a job, in other words, through the Depression years if you had a job you were lucky. You were lucky to have a job to go to work.

Yes, yes, bit of bust out of it. But I mean as a kid as I said, I was, until I was 18 or 19, I grew up, you just went to work, you did your job and you just fitted in the local atmosphere in your status in the town.

It was, it give us a chance.

We used to go into camp for 2 or 3 weeks a year and that type of thing. And gave you, you met other people, other lads, chaps and there although there was plenty of boys in the two that you knew and went to school with, we all had our gangs and you belonged to this gang and somebody else’s gang and that type of thing. You, but it would give you a bigger outlook on places as I said, when we went on call up to go on this when the war started we were called up for 3 months service,

we went down to Melbourne, down there we were on the Port Phillip Bay, we were guarding, looking for spies and that sort of thing down there, and all that type of thing, but I mean it got you out of the local, it got you out of the locality and got you out somewhere else. And you spread yourself amongst other people, other men.

Yeah, 1937.

Oh it was just as I said, this fellow that I used to do

some work for in the local theatre, he was an ex-World War I and he was an officer in the militia and he said, “Why don’t you join up?” And he talked me into it. He said, “There’s an advantage in getting in there,” so I just took it up and I decided to go in there, to give you an opportunity to go to. We used to do rifle shooting

at the local rifle range and (UNCLEAR) things like that and gave you a bit more socialising with other people, and they used to have dances and that type of thing where you met, you had the ladies and that sort of business, so yeah, it give you a better outlook on things.

Well I was

more engrossed in, we read about everything in the papers and what you heard on the wireless and you couldn’t help but hate the idea of it all and what was going on, what was happening. I would have joined earlier than I did but for the fact of my position as being you know the oldest one left in my family and

being the breadwinner or part of the breadwinner, that I stayed where I was until I was 21. But if I had the opportunity I would have gone before that, I’m sure I would have joined up before that. But I wanted to go, I wanted to be in it. But I had other mates that I had gone to school with, local boys had joined up and were on their way and one of my… Yeah we were talking about…

And I said I would have probably joined up earlier than I would to the AIF, only to the fact of my position at home, that I had an obligation to stick there until I was 21 and also to complete my time, I had to complete my, I was indentured to these people for trade, you had to complete

your…

Oh I’ve always wanted to be, I wanted to be a drummer, I wanted to be a trumpet player, I wanted to be everything, but I never ever got round to really doing any, sticking to anything long enough to do anything, piano (UNCLEAR) I wanted to be everything. The only thing I did do, after I come out of the army I wanted to do,

I forget what it was that I wanted to do, anyway, but they said you had a choice of something they gave you, you know, to do some work, to do something anyway. I chose voice production and I did three years of singing, I learnt from one of the teachers, one of the top teachers in the city and I eventually come and did me examinations down at

the conservatorium of music.

Yeah, militia was a carry over from probably World War I but in the militia

they taught us in basic infantry, (UNCLEAR) rifles and that sort of thing, the old 303 rifle and we used to go to camp at Seymour, and you’d go down there for two weeks and be around the countryside and shooting up the place and doing all this sort of thing, but doing the normal infantry type of work. I became a very good shot and I’ve got a marksman, I got my marksman badge, I’ve got

to do, I became a very good shot. Unfortunately, well not unfortunately, but I was a left hander, I can’t close my left eye, I can only close my right eye, and the rifles were built for a right hand shooter which made it very awkward, but anyway I top the shoot in that as far as I became a good shot with the rifle, but it was very awkward and that’s the thing that I can never understand or I can understand a point, why they never ever produce a rifle

that are, a left hand shooter can handle, with a bolt action on the left side instead of the right side, because to be able to do the thing when it come to reloading and that sort of thing. No I

learned to shoot, but as I said being awkward, trying to fire then you had to reload the rifle, you had to bring the thing down and muck around and put another magazine of rounds in there, 10 shots or whatever it was and it was very awkward for a bloke to do that right and I can never understand, because later weapons, later on didn’t matter whether you were a left or right hander, I mean you could fire short arm weapons like that sort of thing, you can fire from the hip and that type of thing. But the old 303

she was, it was a great rifle and a very good rifle but was very awkward for shooting. But of they taught us the basic infantry tactics. I remember going down at Seymour down there where they used to bring in these remounts after they’d been out for nine months, they used to bring them in, the horses because the officers rode horses in those days right, they were mounted and they had the old ambulances then

were horse drawn ambulances right, so we have a battalion parade on one occasion all the officers were mounted and the next thing the Colonel and the 2IC [2nd in Command] and a few of them, they’re off, they’re flying flew the air because these remounts, they hadn’t been broken in, they were wild as anything. The only fellow that was still on his horse was an Adjutant I think , and because he was a good horseman, he could ride a horse but these remounts they were really

wild. And the ambulances, the horse drawn Ambulances, the only way that they could stop them, there was a place down there called Mount Pucka, Puckapunyal, was to run these horses up the hill to slow them down to stop them because once they got started you could imagine they’d been out in the grass for nine months and they were taken off, going flat out. That was a real circus, of course you could imagine how the troops were enjoying themselves to see their officers dismounting from their horses in the most unethical ways.

Oh dear or dear, Puckapunyal, it was a great place down there. You’d arrive in camp and they’d say, “Where do we sleep tonight?” and they’d say, “Well you see that big heap of boards over there?” “Yeah,” “See that lot of canvas over there? Well if you put those tents up and put those boards in there,” he said, “you can sleep in there for the night, oh you sleep on the boards.” And they said, “What do we sleep on?” and he said, “You see those bags over there?” they were called palliasses right,

they were big bags, he said, “You fill them up with straw over there,” and he said, “you put them down there on the floor and you sleep on them for the night,” and that was the bed that you slept on in the early days. It wasn’t terrible comfortable I can assure you because a lot of blokes would stuff it full with as much straw as they could get in it and fall off the bag. And yep so it was rather, it was rather

interesting to see all these things happening down there, Puckapunyal. But Seymour has been the basis of army training there from oh just back to World War I there I think, it would be that long going there, it still goes down there now, Pucka is still one of the main camps for soldiers down there. They’ve got all their armour transport.

This pre-war?

Oh that was the militia in those days, called the militia. I only went in there I think once a year. Once a year for a fortnights camp and

yeah that would be about it, once a year, yes, go down to Seymour or, yeah mostly down to Seymour go down there and around Puckapunyal.

We did extra training but that was more on the local side of it at home, more weekend bivouacs and type of things like that. But

not any great extent into training away from home or in camp for any period of time. It wasn’t until the outbreak of war that we were called up to go on that 3 months Emergency Service when the war started.

Oh it’s hard to say,

hard to say. I, well

Mmmm.

Well when the war broke out we were called up immediately and we had to go in to do this 3 months service. We didn’t have any, there wasn’t any alternative to go and they had to find people to replace you in your jobs at home. You just had to go along and do what you were expected to do. So we, as I said we finished up down in Victoria guarding the beaches around Port Melbourne around

Port Phillip Bay and we spent the time there guarding lighthouses and patrolling beaches and looking for strange things that may occur, or lights that might happen to pop us or any strange people wandering around and that type of thing. But oh it was, it was interesting but nothing great exciting about it at all.

Oh we could see, we knew that the war had started and that sort of thing and it was obvious to a lot of people, the boys I think that they had in mind through that experience that they would go and they would join up. See what happened was that this battalion that I belonged to, the

2321st Militia Battalion, Victoria, they wanted to go into the action, they wanted to go as a whole battalion because they had all the staff, they had all the officers, we run from right through from people from our locality through to Geelong, right through the whole district there was a gathering of a lot of people from different towns and areas and

they were keen about going into the army, the AIF as a whole battalion, right but the powers to be would not let it happened and it wasn’t until later in the war that they did have militia battalions that were actually came into the army or came into there, they still remained as militia battalion but they fought in New Guinea, they were the ones that turned the tide up there. What they did, they picked the officers

and those who wanted to enlist out of the militia and they virtually automatic went in as officers and other ranks into the AIF and that was because they had already had previous training. When I eventually went into the AIF I was only a matter of a few weeks before I was a corporal and a matter of a couple of months and became a sergeant because you had the previous knowledge and the previous

training which was a big help to those fellows when they did join up. But we were very disappointed that they wouldn’t accept the battalion because it was fully manned with officers and other ranks to go in as a fighting, we could have gone in right off the jump but they wouldn’t permit it.

Yes they went in, quite a few of them. Yep.

I was still back at work, at home I was still able to come back, I was still doing my trade, I was still working in the butchers, the butcher as my trade and attending the night and weekend parades with the militia but

basically I was just doing my job and helping out on the home front with Mum and that sort of thing. My younger brothers were still, still had Charles and Len were still there, and they were still going to school.

Oh

very supportive, they, a lot of fellows from the country area joined up, a lot of people, a lot of my mates, my school mates and that I know one of the first ones, a Colin Londringham one of them, he was one of the first who were killed in Tobruk and they joined in, some them joined in as soon as they the thing started, they went in straight away, they wanted to be in it from the

start and others just continued to join up as their time comes along. I met up with them later, in later years when I got over there, I met up with them later on in different places when I, as I moved around in my service in the AIF I met them in New Guinea, I met them up in the Middle East and other places, but they preceded

me in going overseas.

I sure did, we were in. It was when we were in the in camp at doing one of our annual camps at Mount Martha in Victoria.

We were doing one of our annual fortnightly camps and the first lot of AIF people came in there as well in the area down there, and of course we were called chocos in those days, you were a choco [chocolate soldier, militiaman] and there were many a dust up there. There was a local dance of a Saturday night and we were the ones that were there first of course, and we’d be in there and got hold of all the local birds and all the rest of it. But when the AIF come in there

they wanted to show off that they were now in the AIF and all the rest of it and there used to be a few local brawls in the local dance halls of a night time. I found my way out the back door, I knew where the back entrance was so when I had it there with my girlfriend I said let’s get out of here now, it’s time to get out of this joint because a blue going be on any time. And it was sad to see what happened when they first come in there too.

The some of the girls and the locals went really off their nut, they got on the booze, they’re on the booze and that sort of thing, and it was for a bush laddie to go down there and see some of the women in the state they were in, drunk and that sort of thing, with these soldiers and that it wasn’t the best of sights. Oh no, we were Chockos, we weren’t the big AIF. There was a lot of discrimination between it yeah.

Mostly from the soldiers, mostly from the army buds, you know big AIF business and that sort of thing, and of course the people were swayed naturally when those who had volunteered to go overseas and you’re going to, you’re just going to stay here, stay back and sit here and watch what’s going on and that sort of thing. But I don’t think, a lot of

people don’t realise the situation people are place in, right. Because a lot of people probably, they wanted to stay in their own unit as well in the hopes that they would go away as complete unit rather than be have to split up and go with other groups. There wasn’t, in the locals we never got much, although there was a, probably a few of the old local ratbags would probably say why don’t you join up and

this sort of thing and do that sort of thing. Well when you’ve already got a couple of brothers already gone and that type of thing its, they don’t sort of realise what it’s all about. But

Well I said to Mum, “Well I’m 21,” I said, I’ve decided that I’m going to give it up.” Actually the business I was in I

was a shareholder in the business, it came with the shop that we had. I started off working for him but eventually we became partners with other people. And things were bad because of the situation in the local town and that sort of thing. And people were allocated a certain areas to buy their food from certain, there was a number

of butcher shops in the place, certain people would to buy from certain shops and that sort of thing. And we became, well, it wasn’t viable, we gradually went down the hill until we were getting to the stage where we were going, we were going broke, so we decided to give the game away. There was a number, quite a number of shops in the town folded up because of the situation in which they were placed. It wasn’t a matter of choice it was a matter of where people

was told to go and buy, you know where they could go buy their food because of the situation. So anyway actually as it happened we sold our business up or what was left of it. I got out of it and that was another reason why I got out, anyway I was out of the business, I didn’t have anything more to do with it and decided to give it away.

Oh well, she accepted it

as something that was going to happen anyway. She probably realised it was going to happen eventually. As I said we all at one stage, the six of us were all at one time, had joined up the army. And oh she wouldn’t be happy about it but that’s the way it was.

Oh the eldest brother he went down, he finished up in Melbourne, he got down there in

Manufacturing in this engineering business and then he went over to Adelaide and took over a big factory in Adelaide there where he was the Manager there for 35 years. John, he was working out in a factory and got onto the local PMG [Postmaster General] but unfortunately he was one of the last ones to go on and as they were putting people off when the war started he was put off work,

and he was out of work and his wife, whom he’d married, had come from Melbourne, so they went down there to live down with relatives and that. He couldn’t find work anywhere so John he finished up joining the army anyway, he joined the AIF. He was one of the first ones to go. My eldest brother joined but he was, because of his work as an engineer, he was seconded out of the army and he was forced to manufacture

stuff for the army. He was making gas bottled stuff during the war for the army, so he was taken out, John. Anyway he eventually couldn’t get work and he finished up joining up and he went overseas, over to the Middle East came back and then he finished up going to New Guinea and coming back again. My other brother Ted he joined up in

the army and he was down in charge of the stores in Port Melbourne, where all the bulk stores were issued from there that went out to the troops. All the supplies food and all that type of stuff, he was down there for most, spent years down there in that position down in Port Melbourne in the stores. And then it came to me, well I wandered around but you’ll find out about that later on, but

the younger brother hadn’t joined up when I left home and went away, but he eventually joined up and he went to the Armoured Corp in Western Australia and there was a thing that was going on then when an older brother could claim a younger brother right, and he claimed my younger brother, John claimed the younger brother to go to join him in with the Engineer group, they never ever met. The young fellow

Len finished up in New Guinea and John stayed here in Australia, after he’d had a trip through New Guinea he come back here he stayed in Australia, and unfortunately it was later on he was killed in an explosion down at Wagga, where 27 of them were killed down there in an explosion 1945. He was killed on his birthday in May 1945. So then my

Charles was the second youngest brother, he was called up, it was a National Call up, they were all called up for service, of a certain age, when they got to a certain age, because of the situation which so many of the boys away and in the army and that, and my mother with only a sister at home to help support, she claimed him out of the army, she was allowed to do that. So Charles he stayed at home and helped out with the family, he was

a gardener by profession and worked for the local council and worked in that type of work and he helped to support mum while we were away, while the rest of the boys were away.

Well, we went down, we had to go from our local, where I lived in Terang we went down to Warrnambool to enlist down there because there wasn’t enlisting in our local town. We went down there, three or four other guys went down with us and we enlisted down there in Warrnambool and we were given a ticket, which enabled us to go down to Melbourne. We went down to Royal Park

there on enlistment where we were dished out with kit and stuff and all that kit bags and your various other clobber and all the rest of it. And then we went on to what was called a selection parade and we were approached by an Officer and remember this coming out, this guy coming out there, there was about oh, 40 of us I suppose sort of guys. And he started talking to us about how good it was to be in the Provo Corps,

to be a Provo, right, he said, of course the guys that were with me, Les and some of the other boys they were all six footers, they were all pretty big blokes you know, pretty tall fellows from the scrub. And he started talking about the Provo’s and joining the Provo’s and all the rest of us. Anyway he went along and each one he said what do you want, we’d already decided beforehand as we were in the Infantry, we wanted to get into something

where we didn’t have to walk so much so we wanted to be in the Artillery. So he went along asking people what they wanted to be and all the rest of it. Nobody was going to be in the Provo [Provost, military police], and he come to me and I said, “Artillery,” and next bloke next to me, “Artillery, Artillery, Artillery, Artillery,” anyway he got a bit shirty and he was expounding about Provo business, “You get two stripes, you get a corporal when you join up,” and some bloke from the rear turned around and said “Stuff

the bloody, Provo.” So the old boy in charge he just said “March them off, Infantry.” So we all marched off into the Infantry, we had no choice then. But we went from there up to Bacchus Marsh which was a training area now for recruit training and that’s where we kicked off from there.

Some of the guys that I’d been with, some of the guys that I’d been with in the militia, they were blokes that joined up as well and other fellows that I’d gone to school with and pushbikes with, in the bikes and that sort of thing, some of the local boys. Yeah and we got up there to this place at Bacchus Marsh there and we were on this, we were allocated to the 2/5th Battalion which was

the 6th Division group, right as reinforcements to them cause this is in 41. Anyway I was selected to go on a promotion course, which I did. I was a sergeant and I lost contact with these blokes, brothers that I joined with because from there I went on to …do you want to cut from?

Do you want to

speak about my army side of it now

No, I see, well anyway from there on I went to, after that we were waiting to go to be posted because the crowd that I’d been with had gone, and we were seconded to a group that was at Puckapunyal, at the time it was the Transport Company for

the Armoured Div [Division]. The Armoured Div were situated in Western Australian and they stayed there for most of the war. Anyway we were seconded to them as Infantry Instructors to teach these armoured blokes Infantry works and that type of stuff. And they got the word that they were going to go overseas or they were going to move. The Armoured Div was moving. Well at the thought of being able to go overseas, I decided, ‘Well I’ll stick with this mob,’

because I joined up to go overseas, not to stay in Australia. Anyway as an outcome they went all right, we finished up going to Alice Springs. The Transport Company went to Alice Springs up there. And our job at Alice Springs was to transport the stores that arrived by the old train that come from through, from Alice Springs up to where the line broke at Larrimah.

It was then carted from there on up to Darwin. This was a rather a, a rough old trip, there was no road there when we went up there first it was only a track. Later on when the Americans came along and they built a highway between Alice Springs and Darwin, right. But they’re talking about building a railway through there now but in those days they didn’t have it. So we used to cart and

it was 6 days, 3 days up and 3 days back. With convoys of trucks carrying stores and ammunition and all the rest of it.

Well she’s a pretty wild old place, flat, not much of anything. We were camped beside the Todd River; it was pretty much of a wild old place in those days cause we’re going back a long time ago. And

very barren outside of Alice itself. And of course the land between Alice Springs and Larrimah where we went was virtually flat, scrubby stuff with all that type of thing. The stuff gets from Melbourne up to Alice Springs

Yeah,

How the stores

arrived at Alice Springs was another story too, because most of the stuff came from the stores, the bulk stores in Port Melbourne, loaded on trains and then it went through to Adelaide to Rowie where it was offloaded there and loaded onto the old Ghan, which is the old train, which took about 3 days to get from there to Alice Springs. Then the stores were offloaded there and we picked up the stores and we carted them through to a place called Larrimah

which is about another 6, 700 miles up the track, off loaded there and then reloaded again and carted through to Darwin. And this was one of the greatest setbacks I can see towards the war effort because of the transhipment, of having to change and the amount of manpower and the changing from one thing to another, about 5 or 6 times before it landed at where it was intended to go.

I doubt if half of it, it would be lucky if three quarter‘s of the stores arrived at the place. What wasn’t broken or smashed or probably knocked off on the way going up there, I mean it was a lot of handling of stores to get it to its destination.

Food stores, ammunition, general stores type of stuff, right. And we had these convoys of trucks; you might have 40 or 50

trucks with a few semitrailers. I had a truck of my own that, I was a Sergeant and we used to be the tail end Charlie. Go up behind to make sure that all the other trucks. There were times when those vehicles could be a hundred k’s apart because they were just spread out over this dirt. It was a dirt road, dust road, sandy road no (UNCLEAR) and it used to knock, the vehicles got knocked about

and shockingly knocked about, they’d fall apart on this track. But we had staging camps we used to go through from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek was the first stop, these are well known places now to people. Then to Larrimah, then to Banka Banka, and then to Elliot, Larrimah and these were staging places along the track where we used to stop for a cup of tea and that sort of thing. But it was three days to get up there and

then three days to get back. We had a day break and you loaded up again and started off again and went up and you did it all over again, carting these stores up there.

It was hard work and hot work and dirty work. And it was outside of Alice Springs there was a place called the Graveyard, if you wanted something, if your truck was falling apart, if things were falling off you went out there and you cannibalised one truck to get something, bits and pieces for the other

because some of the vehicles probably only done a few miles. And that was when they first introduced what was called the Blitz wagon, the big Blitz wagon and at the time they were bolted together with nuts and bolts. Well the first couple of trips we had up there, the things virtually fell apart, they finished up having to weld the cabins and the vehicles to stop them from falling to pieces on the way. I had a Chev [Chevrolet], 1308 Chev my wagon, (UNCLEAR) which was a great

old bus too, she kept us going well. But some of these vehicles, and the tyres pressures in there because you’re driving on sand and heat all the time would expand the tyre and that, the tyres, the outside tyre would peel off and you’d see the whole complete tyres of trucks alongside of the road, with vehicles stuck up here and there. My job as the sergeant at the back, if anything went wrong. With a truck going north, you’d grab a southbound truck

that was empty, you’d offload your load and transfer the load onto the one going North till we broken down until you got up to where you were going, up to Larrimah. Flies were the greatest menace of all times. It didn’t matter, you could drive a hundred miles and never see a fly, but the moment you pulled up and stopped they were there in thousands they were, they were all over you. They’d drive you nutty they would. But anyway going through but we had some rather

funny incidents. They could have been funny, they could have been serious too I know on one occasion we were driving up there we used to have these semitrailers running out in front, they were carry 500 pound bombs for the air force, air force Bombs. Anyway on one occasion we were driving behind these semis and they started rolling off the back of the truck and hitting the ground. Fortunately they weren’t primed because otherwise I probably wouldn’t be here to tell you the story about it now, but it was a shocking

thing to see these 500 pound bombs rolling off the back of the semis and bouncing off the road, it was quite a while before we got the driver to pull up to get his reload, to load them back on again. But on another occasion there, this was rather a humorous occasion once. One of the boys were driving one day up there and he was in the middle of the convoy and he looked around and the tarpaulin on his truck was alight. Anyway he’s got 5 ton of what is ammunition

on the back of it. Anyway, all sorts of explosion. So when it came to the, by the time we arrived there, we were well back, by the time we were there the only thing that was left was the outside frame of the vehicle, that was the chassis, there was only the frames and doors left, the rest of it was gone, blown away and burnt. Anyway they had an investigation afterwards about it, about the vehicle and they fronted the driver up and the officer in charge he said, “What

action did you take when you saw the canvas on fire?” he said “I didn’t bloody well take any,” he said “I shot through and left it.” With 5 ton of ammunition on the back here and a truck on fire he said he wasn’t staying to find out what happened to the bloody truck anyway, but that’s all that was left, completely only the framework. We heard it from, we were miles and miles away, but we heard all this hullabaloo and stuff going on we thought the war had arrived on our track. It was this truck that had just blew away and disintegrated,

there was nothing of it left. But

No, what the hell can they do with the bloke, he wouldn’t be hanging around there when there’s 5 tonne of ammunition going up. (UNCLEAR) unload it or do something. Anyway

Well you get them off, you just roll them

off a, whatever they’re in, they’re in the carriages or whatever they are. (UNCLEAR) you’ve got a forklift or you’ve got a lift or something to get them onto them and get them up, or jack them up onto the thing. Roll them onto the back.

Oh they finished up picking them up anyway and eventually getting them back on there. With a lift to get them up but

it was quite an exciting occasion to see these things rolling off the back. Oh dear, yeah they’d have to get a special wagon up there to get it up, get a forklift up to get it lift up off the ground. But

We didn’t have a break there, we came back.

We’d come back to Alice Springs, you do you dobe, you’d get cleaned up and have a bit of a break and then get ready for the next

lot. You’d get loaded up for the next trip up, one day off.

Oh yeah we had our canteen across the river. And I remember on one occasion there when the rainy season came, it comes all in one, one day. So we happened to be over on the other side of the river where the canteen was and the floods came and we couldn’t get over the causeway because we couldn’t get our vehicle back,

so we were on the right side, we were on where the canteen was and we stayed over there until the water receded enough for us to get back over the other side. But it all happens in, it all happens at once the rainy season there. The Todd River becomes a flood and within a day or so it’s all disappeared, it’s gone.

It was wild and scrubby and all the white ants, you know the ant mounds, are all over the place, everywhere you went you’d find these. On one occasion, I used to carry a spare, we had a spare driver and across the back of your truck, the one we had, there was room for a guy to get up there and have a sleep, you could change, you know you could change drivers anyway. I must have dozed off this day and we run off the road

and the next thing I know there was hands and legs and arms all down there trying to grab hold of the steering wheel, but we finished up hitting one of these, white ant, these ant hills and by gees I’ll tell you what, they stopped the truck too, they’re solid hard, yeah. That was, created a bit of excitement but I mean. You’re never likely to, a herd of Brumbies would come dashing across the road. Wild horses there, there are even camels, they’re likely to appear out of anywhere.

And when they get in amongst the convoy they really upset the applecart a bit. But

Oh yes, on the Todd River there, they were always there (UNCLEAR) and that sort of thing. And around Alice Springs itself. We never had much to do with, you’d see them around the place but… They had an amphitheatre there in Alice Springs for entertainment where they used to show movies, it was I went back there many years later and I went and had a look at some of the places

there was nothing, there wasn’t much left of it there. But I mean you could see where the Amphitheatre was. You’d sit up on the bank and the picture theatre was down, the screen was down the bottom and you could watch. but, oh no wild brumbies and camels but on the way we used to stop at these stopping places (UNCLEAR) the local people were quite good to us, they’d give us a, you’d get a cup of tea and a bickie

or something along the way. I know in Tennant Creek, I think a bottle of beer in those days was 5 shillings a bottle, in those days that’s back in 1941, five shillings a bottle because it was all carted all up there. Outside the hotel there was a stack of bottle there that high, it was like a mountain, a miniature mountain and some guy at one time later on, decided it would be a good thing if they could get all these bottles

and bring them back down south because they used to re, you know refill the bottles and do that sort of thing. I think he’s, I don’t know what happened to him, I think he soaked his ship on the way coming down or something happened to him, I don’t know what happened to all the bottles but it was a great idea at the time. But there were mountains of these bottle outside the Tennant Creek.

Oh occasionally, occasionally if we were carrying beer on the way up,

some of the cartons might get broken or something would happen to them on the way. You know the odd one here or there, that sort of thing could happen along the way. But the people were quite good to us. When we got to Larrimah, when you had your meals, you had to have your meals inside, wire, you know fly proof inside, you couldn’t eat outside you wouldn’t be able to down your meal because the flies would carry you away there was that many of them

up there. But the Devil’s Marbles, they’re called the Devil’s Marbles you might have heard of them, they’re these great rocky outcrop and it’s amazing how they balance, they just balance on top of rock. They just balance on these rocks and they like the other attraction up there, you know the big

Ayers Rock,

yeah these are another place to go and see, but these Devil’s Marbles there they precariously, they sort of balance on there and you wonder how they’ve been there for hundred of thousands of years and how they never sort of roll off. Not much excitement up there except the fact that you were kept on the move all the time, we were busy.

Oh we knew what was going on over there yeah.

We heard it all and we, another chap and I who had been seconded to this group, Smithy, he and I we got a bit jack of this job, we were there for about 6 months, at Alice Springs. Anyway we got ourselves, relieved from there and we went back to Victoria and we went out to

a Training camp at

Yeah we went out to Watsonia, outside of Melbourne, which was a recruit training camp and

we were there for some times training with the Recruits out there. Anyway the word came that there was a draft going overseas and as a reinforcement for the 2/24th Battalion so I managed to get myself on a draft and we finished up going over to the Middle East. It was in July, August of 41,

yep 41. Anyway got over to, got to the Middle East.

The Devon, on a troop carrier called the Devonshire. It was a British troop carrier (UNCLEAR) Troop Carrier. And when we got on this ship, the first night out we came up and we loaded

on here in Sydney, and the first night out I was sergeant of the guard. Well there were twenty five points, positions on the boat that had to be, sentries placed on. The Officers of course were up top and the sergeants on the top deck, the second deck, a nice and lovely set up up there. And all the soldiers were downstairs,

were down underneath in the cargo holds all down the bottom, it was a dreadful bloody situation down there. Anyway I mounted the first guard and we go out through the heads out there on the way, no lights to be shown and all this sort of thing and all the virtual points to be, sentries on the guard. So we mounted this, the first relief I put them on. When I went down to get, we went outside the heads and of course we’re rolling and rocking around out there. A couple of hours later I

want to go down there to get some troops, they’re all, poor old, they’re all crook, they’re all sick, they’re all seasick down the bottom. Anyway I managed to get a few of them that I could get up the steps and get them out there and planted a few sentries anyway, the rest of them had to stay on duty, if they were on all night. And including myself and there was hell to do, there was lights being shown out through windows, cause this time there was, it’s dangerous to go out through the heads

down there because of all the bloody strife. Anyway the next morning I got fronted before the captain of the ship and he said, “What happened, sergeant, you were on last night?” I said, “Well,” I said, “the officers came there and we got, they all bolted up and he disappeared,” and I said, “I tried to go around and get the next relief to put the sentries on and,” I said, “I they were all crook and I only got a few blokes to get on there,” and I said, “the rest of them had to stay on there all night

and stay on the job.” He said, “That’s all right sergeant,” he said,” you won’t have any more duties onboard this ship,” he said, “you wait till I get hold of the officer in charge of the guards.” I don’t know he, he copped a bloody, he copped a bucket full that bloke because he went off and left us to (UNCLEAR) but anyway I did no more duties on the thing. We were on sea for 6 weeks because at that time they were worried about submarines and all

sort of thing and we took a wide deviation, we went way out oh miles out to get to where we went, we finished, we arrived up at Port Tewfik in Egypt. And we were offloaded there and we went up to…

Oh well I had 40 odd blokes there that I had to look after. And we kept them

interested in doing map reading and lectures and type of things like that. Oh your expectations going over there, you didn’t know what was going to happen or what we’re going to do but,

Oh no it was more exciting than anything else. On one occasion there, I mean we all had to carry our Mae West and wear your Mae West, it was a lifejacket, right, all the time. And we all had our

stations, emergency stations where you had to go, in case there was an alarm you always had your boat stations to go to and that sort of thing. And you can imagine when you’ve got a thousand, a couple of thousand troops on the ship. You’re going down the bottom and they’re all trying to get up to get to their boat stations. And I didn’t have my Mae West on me on this occasion and I’m trying to get down stairs to get

to my cabin or wherever it was to get my Mae West and there’s all these hordes of people coming up. So the only bloke that was there on his boat station without his Mae West on was a sergeant in charge of his mob, that didn’t go down very well with the mob either. But anyway that’s what it was like.

Yeah, we knew what our destination was; yeah we know where we were going. We knew we were going to finish up in Egypt or wherever we were going.

I’ve no doubt about that but we had escorts with us, we went around to Fremantle to pick up troops from there, from West Australia and the roughest thing we ever had was the Gulf through there. My god it bloody, the super roughest bloody seas you ever struck, that where all the poor buggers were crook all the time, going through there, seasick. Some of them never ever, I had a mate of mine, he was a Sergeant he never put his

foot on the ground, as soon as he put his feet on the deck he was crook, he spent most of his time on his back. He was crook all the time.

It never worried me at all, not to a great extent, for some reason or another. I survived it all right. Anyway we got eventually to where we offloaded there and went up by rail up to Gaza we got off at Gaza, we went by truck

and we got up to our the reinforcement camp at Gaza Ridge where we did a bit more training there and that sort of thing.

Yeah we were doing, we were being further training in infantry and that work and that sort of stuff. I know that the,

and we were getting sorted out who was going to go where and who was going to go what, to what unit, to where we’re going to go, or what Company or what other thing. Anyway Jock, old Jock Roden was CSM [Company Sergeant Major] in charge of this thing, of our mob there and he said they just received a new weapon called a two inch mortar. And he said to me, “You’re a sergeant,” he said, “here’s a book, go away and read it and then come back and tell me how to use this thing, right.” It wasn’t a very difficult weapon but I mean

it was a two inch mortar. That’s how we learnt to use a two inch, he said here’s a book go away and read it then come back and show these other blokes how to use it. But we did rifle range there. At Gaza they had an open rifle range there, we used to go down and do shooting and that sort of thing. You’re doing Infantry work. And one of the big surprises I got is they used to march us down to this rifle range

and we went through a cemetery. It was a World War I from the lighthorse people that were there in World War I. And we came to this thing, there were trees in there, the gum trees and the (UNCLEAR) tree, beautifully kept and it was kept by the local people over there and it was a World War I Cemetery from the guys from there. It was like an oasis in the desert where this cemetery was,

Gaza, I was quite surprised when I saw it and very pleased to see that you know, the way that it had been looked after. All the old blokes from World War I.

It was all a big, it was one big what you call it?

excitement you know it was a, it gave you a time to reflect on it but the whole thing was something of expectation you know, what’s going to happen next, what are you going to do next and that sort of thing. So, but it did give the time to think, or somebody didn’t get home, the got left behind here but at least they were looked after the ones that were left there in the desert.

After we did our, more training and that we were allocated to certain positions. I was allocated to A Company as a Sergeant, Infantry Sergeant to go up to when we go up to, Alamein anyway eventually we got there. We went by rail and then we went by truck…

Mmmm, later on yeah.

We were taken straight up to our positions at Alamein and I was dumped off on the side of the, in the desert, nobody around me, nowhere nothing there and I thought to meself, ‘This is a new way,’ and they said, “Oh there’s a headquarters there somewhere,” a wireless station or something or other. But you couldn’t see anything, everything was underground you couldn’t see anything at all. And while I was sort of half dazed there,

a bloke appeared from out of nowhere and walked over to me and it was a fellow I went to school with. And he said, “What are you doing here?” and I said, “I’m waiting to go.” I said, “I’ve been posted to A Company to go on the line,” and he said, “well where are you going to go?” and I said, “What are you doing?” and he said, “I’m with the carrier platoon,” and I said, “Oh yeah,” he said, “we’re just camped over here on the ridge over here across the road.” And he said “You might as well come over there tonight and stay with me, stay with us over there

tonight and you can go up to A company tomorrow morning.” So I went and I stayed with this guy for the night. Anyway we got talking about old times and all the rest of it. He said, “By the way we need some drivers and that here for the carrier Platoon, for the carriers,” and I said, “Yes,’ and he said, “What about staying with us?” And of course without thinking I said, “All right O.K. I’ll stay here.”

(UNCLEAR) but I didn’t realise that it was going to cost me my rank by staying there, right. So after I, well I’d been posted to the carrier platoon, when it came payday I realised that I had been reduced in rank, that I was no longer a sergeant now, I was only a corporal. Anyway that’s by the way, there were other guys that had been there a long time before who deserved

to be promoted into the job before I got there. So I stayed with the Carrier Platoon.

They were a support, well more of a support role but they were on call. They were placed in positions where they could be called up. If there was a hot spot somewhere where they were coping some flak and

they needed a bit of support like you might have machine gun positions that were annoying, pestering some of the forward positions, troops and that they’d call a carrier forward. We had a Vickers gun and a Bren gun mounted on the carrier right and they’d call up some support. And you get up and race a couple of carriers up there and blast them out and give them, pepper them up with some stuff. And then

you could also be called up for casualties, when casualties are bring back, stretcher people that were not walkable, couldn’t walk. There were stretcher cases to come back, you’d pick them up and bring them back. Ammunition, take ammunition forward or food stores and that. We had forward positions where our job was to go carry the stuff forward and give support wherever it was needed, that type of work.

right.

It was dangerous work yes, you never know what was going to happen I mean there was a lot of stuff flying around and that sort of thing. We had a, on one occasion I was driving forward and the corporal in charge of the carrier, I’m driving down here and I’m looking through a small split and we’re going forward and anyway

he started to hammer me and hammer me and hammer me on the head. I stopped the carrier and I said, “What’s the bloody wrong, what’s the matter?” He said, “You silly bastard, you’re in the middle of a minefield.” And I said, “How do you get out?” and he said, “The way you bloody well got in,” he said, “back the bloody thing out.” Anyway we got out of that otherwise I wouldn’t be here talking to you about these bloody stories today mate how I get. All the minefields were marked out; you had certain markers where you went through certain, on certain tracks and that sort of thing.

And you knew where you were going, but anyway as a new son there I wasn’t really conversant with it or anything. And he really giving me the hammer, and he was really hammering me and I stopped and what’s the bloody hells wrong he said you stupid bastard, he said we’re in the middle of a bloody minefield, and I said oh that’s probably a good reason to stop anyway. So we got out of that. But you’re likely to run into anything at all.

That’s one of the reasons well I get treatment for the ears. We had a real blast outside the carrier one day and bloody shell and something was blue and we got shook around a bit inside the carrier, I ended up getting knocked around a bit, I didn’t get any out shock wounds and that but you can imagine turbulence inside a bloody carrier, bloody knocked around a bit. Knocked a bit of skin off my arms and things and that sort of thing.

Oh no we were just driving the carrier forward and going forward, cause things were happening around you. And there was an explosion outside the carrier. Something landed outside and went off. A bloody bomb shell or something which caused us to you know throw us out of gear a bit, fortunately it didn’t blow us away. A couple of carriers got direct hits and blown away.

But later on it wasn’t a wound, but it was skin was knocked off, became infected and I had to go into the casualty clearing station there and get some treatment. It was an English Casualty Clearing Station. This is when we came out of Alamein and when we came back to a staging camp at Amiriya.

Oh well the one we had, the earlier ones were used with a joysticks, to drive them with one. By the time I got I there it was they were driving with a steering wheel right and gears like a normal car, gears. Oh, they were, well there’s not a hell of a lot I can tell you about them. They were just made

out of a metal carrier and inside you had your stores inside that you wanted, your ammunition and stuff inside the carrier. Basically that is your outfit, your framework of your carrier, whatever you needed inside and maybe a few rockets, berry pistol to fire if you wanted to for a signal type of stuff, your ammo, maybe you might have some,

some sort of water carrier, water. That type of stuff.

Well it depended on what you were doing, normally there’d be yourself and the driver and the carrier commander, you could have a couple of other guys in there as, for gunners but they could cord if they

wanted to, extra troops to go forward of a position sort of thing. They could put them onboard and sometimes they used the Carrier personnel as Infantry as well. They’d put them in a carrier and take them up to wherever they wanted them, to a hotspot somewhere or they wanted some extra support. You’re a universal vehicle you know to get things about. You could move around quickly, you could get up to

one of the guys there, we had a driver, a Queenslander, Jackie, he could push it up, he’d get 40 ks, he’d get 40 ks, 45 ks out of his carrier on the flat. But there was one problem with them, you could also get them bogged, they’d get bogged in the sand. If you get bogged in the sand you’ve got trouble, you usually finished up having to dig the bloody things out or get them towed out by somebody else. I know towards the end of the business

there we, the Americans came through our lines at the end of, when the thing was at the end of the business. The Americans came through our positions there and on one occasion we were there, a guy came up to us and he said, “Hey you guys,” he said, “can we get a lend of one of your little tractors,” and I said, “What’s the matter?” and he said, “We’ve got truck bogged down there.” So “Oh yes,” so we go down, we hooked the carrier

onto this truck and we finished up we buried the carrier as well. We finished up with 3 carriers and a truck bogged, we said, “What have you got in this bloody truck?” “Oh,” he said, “a lot of material stuff.” It was a light LAD [Light Aid Detachment], it was a truck, a repair truck and it had a bloody great laden with all sort of heavy equipment inside. And he sunk it in the sand we finished up having

to dig this thing out and then carry the whole bloody lot. We had to dig it all out because he buried it, he buried the thing, oh dear it was about 20 ton of stuff I think he had buried in the thing. We eventually got it out and they went on their way, anyway the Americans went by their by, “Can we get a lend of one of your little tractors to pull our truck out of the bog?”

Oh there was a lot of stuff flying about right, I mean you were always aware that you were likely to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was a late comer actually to the (UNCLEAR) but there was still a bit of stuff flying around, not a great deal of stuff.

I can’t say that I was every involved in any great problem or getting out of the way. Our position was in, it was called the Hill of Jesus, it was near Tel el Eisa Station we were, our carriers were dug into the ridge that run across down to the water. When we were out and about, well you just had to be careful where you were going and what you were doing and that sort of thing. I did not participate

in the first part of the attacks of it. I was there in the clearing up, mopping up stages of that part of it so I came in for the clearing up the odd spots here and there. And doing the general duties. Oh we had planes coming around of a night time and that sort of thing and the odd bomb thing you were getting from the

the enemy side of it. But I myself was never really in any great danger of being knocked about, as I said I was towards the end of the show that I was there when it was the cleaning up, mopping up stage of it. You might get the odd shot here and there but I mean nothing of any great extent of my part of it.

I did get the odd bomber coming around of a night time, we didn’t get much, and drop the odd bomb here and there. ‘Cause as I said, and I emphasise this, I didn’t get into it until the closing up stages or the cleaning up stages of it. There was sporadic type of fire. By the time I got there our people were well on top of the war

and they had them on the move and on the run and they were chasing them out of the place. So virtually I was more of an observer than I was as a participant.

I was, yeah, yeah. But I felt that I would have like to have got into the business sooner than we got over there but the situation was

by the time I got there, they were still, people were still underground, they weren’t sticking, they weren’t wandering around to do anything at all. There was still, action was going on and stuff was coming in but it was only sporadic it wasn’t a great concentration of firepower and that. As I said the odd plane buzzing around, more of a night time than of a day dropping the odd bomb here and there. Well as far as I’m concerned

I wasn’t never ever exposed to any great extent of danger.

Oh, as I said we had a couple of explosions that happened outside or exploded outside the carrier shook us around a bit, the odd

shot here and there but not any great, I was never in any great position where I was going to get, copped too much of it.

We had our holes dug into the sand, we burrowed into the sand and we had makeshift stretchers, we had a piece of canvas or anything at all hang down over the front of it, for sleeping, there was two of us in the, tunnelled into the side of this hill,

just with the bare sleeping necessities there. A bit of something to drape over the front to keep the dirt and stuff out of it. Pretty rough old position but still at least you weren’t laying on the ground. Fresh water was, water was a problem there but we used to be able to get the water, get the salt water from down from the waterfront, down from the sea. And we used to

wash in that and bathe ourselves in that and we’d have a half 44 gallon drums cut in half, filled with sand, petrol, there was no problem with petrol we had plenty of petrol, we’d pour all the petrol in there and you’d warm up your water on that. And you’d get you water, heat up your water, stand on an old ground sheet and have a shower with nothing on, or not a shower you’d have a bath or a wash with nothing on, you’d just sponge yourself down and get yourself dry. The Aussie

was always keen about keeping himself clean and dry. Petrol was plenty, plenty of petrol at the time when I was there, plenty of petrol. Salt water, but fresh water. We had a pet mouse in our dugout in the sand. We had this little mouse that used to run around of a night time when you’d wake up and you’d feel little sifts of sand falling down on your face, coming down there and it would be our pet mouse that used to run around the top. We had a little shelf cut around the

top of the inside the dugout. He used to visit us every night this little mouse, I don’t know how he got there or where he came from but he was there anyway. But little incidences like that, and as I said it was towards the latter part of it. Outside back some quite the distance from where our dugouts were in this hill, we had our toilets, our thunderboxes

as we called them, there was a row of them outside, back many, quite a lot of fair distance from where our position was. And the boys used to go out there of a night time, and of course all the new mugs would come along like me and get out there and half way through the night you’d go out there to do your business and the next thing some bloke would fire a very pistol and here you’d be with your pants down around your ankles and you’d be racing like mad trying to get out of the way because you didn’t know what was going on, whether it was

somebody was attacking us or there was something happening. And then you find out it was one of your mates that let fly with a very pistol just to light up the place, to excite the place a little bit. The bastards they were. Oh dear, oh dear the things they used to get up with.

Oh some of your mates would do that.

Oh my mate was Stan Onnolly [Connolly?] a bloke I went to school with, Stan but the buggers would do anything, that was a pet one of that,

and of course a new mug would come out there. Pitch black, you’d be out there quietly pensive and out there and the next thing you know somebody would let fly with a very pistol. We, after things quiet down again and that, we started travelling around in the Carrier and we came across, we got hold of an Armoured Car, Armoured Vehicle that had been blown out, knock out of action and it had a point five cannon in it. So

we decided that we’d use that, we’d put it on our own. So we got this thing out and we stuck it on the side of the Carrier and one night we let rip there with a few shots down there and the next thing over the wireless comes “what’s going on down there, who’s starting the war down there, what is it all about?” We got in the poo over that lot. Anything for a bit of excitement of course when things have quieten down now and things were levelling off,

that sort of thing, just to create a little bit of something or other. But after it settled down we got to have the, they actually captured our battalion, 2 of the German 108 mm [actually 88] gun was one of the best things that ever come out of the war, it was this German, it was anti-tank, anti-personnel

and anti-aircraft, it could fire at triples ways and it was one of the ones that would knock all our armoured vehicles out, it was one of the heaviest ones that the Germans had. 108 mm and it was one of the things they dreaded because it bloody well made havoc with the armoured vehicles because of its penetration and that. But it was a magnificent outfit to see it moving across the desert with the

troops carrying it or towing it and the gun (UNCLEAR) it had quite a set up, when they set it up this gun. It’s firing mechanism and all the rest of it, it was quite an outfit and it was one that was dreaded by our people the 108 she was really a great piece of artillery that was on the enemy side of it. But, and then we had a look around to see what was going on

I, there was the people that used to make the graves, take care of the personnel.

They were responsible for the location of graves

where fellows had been killed and that and they’d go out. And I went out one morning and they were out there, they were making crosses for those that had been killed in a recent encounters up at the Tel el Eisa Station in the, between our position the Hill of Jesus and the Tel el Eisa Station, well it’s all part of one.

I saw the name of one of the fellows that I used to ride bike with, one of my mates from my hometown, John Noonan, Corporal and where he’d been killed, he been killed in this particular spot there. And there they are with all these crosses there, making them to place them in position from where the guys had been killed. And that sort of brings the memory back home to, you know, the fellows that you’d been riding bikes with and hadn’t seen for quite a

while and you just happen to be walking out one day and you go out there and you see his name on a cross, you know and where the position where he was killed. It brings it home to you all right.

Yeah I knew he’d gone before, yeah. A lot of the local boys had already, as I said they’d joined up and gone beforehand, John.

It was, it was yes. I knew other ones that had been killed over there and that, earlier in the piece and different ones but that was the first. It sort of brought, it was a bit of a shock when I saw it there, the cross there with his name on it, Corporal John Noonan, yep. Anyway we, we used to get around

in the carrier and go round and have a look around the place and have a look about and see what’s going on. Anyway we went out one day, Stan and I went out and we got stuck in a sandstorm, called a ‘khamsin’ and when the sand blows over there that’s it. You don’t see anything at all, you’re just stuck there right that’s it. And we just sat there in limbo

I don’t know for how long it would last, it might last for all day and might last for hours. Anyway we decided we’ve got to find our way back again so we saw this great thing there, it was called a cable layer, it belonged to the Kiwi’s, the New Zealanders. It was a cable layer and Stan said to me, “I think I can get that started”, anyway cause we were a fair way away from where our position was and anyway Stan says

“You’ve got to start it,” cause he worked on a farm and he knew how to drive tractors and all this sort of thing. Anyway we give it a go and we got it started, and then we got the engine going and we drove this thing back to approximately where our position was and we left it. Then we got out of it. Anyway the next day, the next morning blokes come over there, “Hey you guys any of you blokes see our bloody cable layer around here?” Somebody knocked it off. “Oh no, no we haven’t

seen it, we haven’t seen the thing.” This cable layer, they have a number of cables and they run it out. “No, no we haven’t seen it mate, no it was any of us here.” (UNCLEAR) and we decided to knock it off. Oh dear, oh dear, yep. But oh there’s a lot of stuff laying around there, there were tanks here and bit of pieces here and that sort of thing and all that stuff.

And one day there we got a hell of a shock one day I hear this tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, and I thought (UNCLEAR) and there’s this platoon of coloured soldiers they were, they were on our side but they came marching out of the desert from somewhere another and heading off in another direction. I don’t even know what nationality were they, some of our mob anyway, but they

come out of the desert and they were about as black as what it could be in the desert. They were heading on their way somewhere out of the way, dressed up in all their gear and stuff on and off. Yes, there were bits and pieces laying around there, there were bits of tanks, trucks and planes you name it was all there, everything was

there, pieces. There were even some, they weren’t our bodies there but there were still some bodies, they were still there laying out there in the desert that hadn’t been collected, someone or another, some of the Indians or something. But that was about it from that side of it.

You coped mate, you coped. We used to be, we used to have to take it in turns to go to the cookhouse to get your meals in the carrier, go and pick up. It was just a tin shack there with a guy was cooking with a Prima Stove inside. You’d go and pick your meals up and bring it back

and back to the line. Because we lived on bloody herrings in tomato sauce, and bully beef and you name it. It wasn’t a very good menu as you can imagine. And the ground was strewn with V for Victory cigarettes. These V for Victory cigarettes were given to us from, I think they come from the Poms or somewhere, but nobody would smoke them, you could go and pick them up, a packet of them laying around the desert. They would kill

anyone, they would kill a camel these things, they were shocking things, these cigarettes, V for Victory. But they were laying about the desert. Oh I don’t know, but the desert was desert that’s all there was there, there was desert, you’d see the odd mound here and the odd mound there. As I say, you can never have, the greatest thing in the desert is finding your way around because things just change virtually over night, the contours of the ground and things like that. That’s,

things get blown away, there’d be a hill there one day and probably a few later on it’d be gone. It changes so quickly, the terrain, pretty flat. But that was one of the battles out of the stage Tel el Eisa Station and the Hill of Jesus where we were camp, our position was in there, was the scene of a pretty bitter battle in that area, around that way.

Tel el Eisa, the cutting.

Yep, we got leave after, we didn’t get leave until after when they eventually pulled out of Alamein we drove our carriers, we had 80 k’s, 60 miles to position back to a

place called Ameria which was outside of Alexandria right. And we had to drive, we drove our carriers all the way back to there, to this staging camp. They were British carriers, as I said they were British carriers and they were the later models. The ones we got were the earlier were the one that you had to use with the two handles on them. The one that I drove was the one with the steering wheel but we drove them back to the staging

camp outside of Alexandria there. And we were there for a, because we were with the carriers we were the last to move of the whole, of the whole, all of our troops had gone, we were the last to move, we were there for a month waiting outside Alexandria before we moved back to Palestine. That’s another story in itself. You’re talking about leave. Well while we were there in Amiriya

the troops, I got crook there as I said I got a bit of meat knocked off my hand and arm when I was in this carrier and there was a casualty clearing station at Amiriya and was run by the British. And my arm got infected and I finished up, they told me to get myself over there. So I went over to this

casualty clearing station to get my arm fixed up. Anyway when I got in there, there was only a couple of Australian, Australians in the place because it was an English, Pommy clearing station, anyway I was in there and I got some treatment in there and I finished up getting my arm, getting it sort out. It looked like I might have to lose a few fingers or something but anyway they got it straighten out, cleaned up. But while we were in there, it was most funny

from the Australian point of view. When the Doctors came around there the guys would say, “Listen, the doctor, the Medical Orderly’s coming around, the MO [Medical Orderly] will be around shortly you better get yourself sorted,” and I said, “What do you mean?” and there’s these blokes laying there with their arms and their legs out here, their arm out here and they’re all laying to attention and they’re stiff as boards and the rest of them, and I said, “What a lot of bullshit,” you know, I mean, they expect the Australians to be laying and all this sort of thing, to attention. Well the doctors

come round to inspect the blokes that had a, it was as funny as a bloody circus. Anyway there was only another one Australian and myself in this place and we got onto one of the local boys one of the local kids to go over to the NAAFI [Navy, Army, Air Force Institute] stores. The NAAFI store was run by the British, same as our canteen store right, and get booze for us, get some grog and the beer over there was

mostly Canadian beer which is between 9 and 12 per cent alcohol right. So anyway we get the boys to go and get some beer and bring it back and they wondered why we weren’t getting, recovering too well because we used to plant it in, there was another bed between us, and we used to plant the bottles in the bed and had it all nice, and get on the grog. Anyway while I was in there, there was a character, he was a mad crib player, played crib, cribbage

and I, if I opened my eyes, the moment I moved he was on the end of me bed with a bloody pack of cards and a crib board and he drove me crazy, and I said you’re going to drive me mad, I was frightened to move, because as soon as got open but anyway that was part of the business, we played cribbage all the time. Anyway there happen to be another casualty come in one day and they put him into this bed where we’d planted our booze so the next thing we know we were out, we got booted

out of the hospital anyway, we got booted out of the casualty clearing station, they said no wonder you blokes are not recovering too well you’ve been on the booze, on the grog. So they kicked us out of the place. Anyway we went back and while we were waiting there we had almost a month we were waiting there, we had leave in Alexandria whenever you wanted to go in there or whenever you wanted to go on leave, you’d go into Alexandria.

A nice place but some strange and (UNCLEAR) things, and of course you go in there and they had canteens for the boys to go in there and you could go and stay in there at the canteens or go wherever you wanted to go. Mostly the boys, the first thing we wanted to do, was go in there, we went into the barber shop, I think I had about 4 shampoos to try and get the sand out of me hair, because it didn’t matter how many shampoos you had you never got rid of the sand out of your hair, it stuck there all the time.

And then of course you went where the boys normally go, go into different place and that sort of thing. You find yourself at place of ill fame or something like that, and the boys would go there. Bloke had been cooped out there for months and months, out in the scrub, you expect them to be young and fierier, they go and get themselves sorted out and then the next thing they do is get onto the booze. Get as much booze into you as you could.

Yeah well, the British, they were under control of the Police, the Redcaps, the British [Military] Police. In Alexandria they were under control there of the police and they actually had police stations in the brothels themselves. And when you went in there they check out on people that went in and out, they checked out credentials and all the rest of it. But you also knew those people that did visit the

regimental brothels they knew in there, they knew that wherever they went that the girls were clean, they knew that they were not going to go out and find themselves with a load of something else that they didn’t want. And cause the pickup dolls out in the street or somewhere else, anywhere at all you just opened yourselves to anything at all, I mean you could, likely to catch any sort of thing right so.

Pardon?

Oh yes,

yeah. Anyway the guys that frequented the ‘staminas’ [?] or the brothels they called them.

Staminas, I don’t know whether that was for the brothels or for the …….what was that for the stamina’? I don’t know how that popped up there, somewhere I don’t know,

I think I got my wires mixed up there, staminas anyway they were brothels, or regimental brothels but anyway the guys went there, usually after they’d been in there and then they had to go and get a check out and get a clean out and that sort of thing. The MOs and that sort of business. So the guys that frequented there were never going to be worried about getting something they didn’t want. But

they had some wonderful entertainment in these places. I remember we went to one, it was a type of cabaret type of place and one of the young girls, she was like Judy Garland type if you can go back that far in the 1940’s, that type of entertainment on. And this young girl with top hat and tails, I was always sorry that I never ever kept her name or that because I reckon that she’d turn out to be probably one

of the best entertainers because she was only about, at that time she be about 14 or 15 I suppose, but she was a really magnificent entertainer. What happened in Alexandria over there, when things got rough in Europe, a lot of the Jewish people came over there and musicians and you could go into coffee houses, stamina’s, that’s what I’m talking about,

you could go into coffee places and bars and that sort of places and you’d hear some of the best musicians, and probably in the world, were playing piano or violin and that type of thing, little groups in various places. And they were some of the best musicians that you’d ever wish to hear anywhere at all, you know. They were just playing there to survive. But they got out of Europe because they heard, they knew when the bloody shit hit the fan and they were getting out of the place so they got over there.

And you could go into these places where you’d normally go for a drink and that sort of thing and find these people there and they’re beautiful, beautiful music. A lot of beautiful women, some of the Jewish stewardess they were beautiful, beautiful women they were.

A lot of them were very nice people. Oh we didn’t get that much time to and that but I mean you visited place. They had a place there where you could

go for the troops, I think. We finished up going broke, I remember going into the pay office there one day, they had a pay bloke in there and I said, “Can I get some dough?” He said, “Well, let’s have a look at your pay book,” he said, “Well, you owe us a couple of quid [pounds] now but” he said, “it’ll be a while before you get paid,” so he gave me a few more, a couple of quid anyway better get out of the place.

So we all finished up after a month, we finished up broke, we were all broke. We’d been on leave for a month and most of the guys were broke. And we loaded our carriers on Christmas Eve 1942, right. And to load the carriers on, we had about, I think there was about 30, 40 of these carriers you had to drive on from the start and all the trucks

were coupled up to one another, they were flat tops and you drove along and you drove along until you came to your position, to wherever you stopped on there and then they chain them down onto the flat tops and all the rest of it. And then all we did, we had a canvas cover over the top because it was a four day trip for us to get back to Palestine. Anyway we load up on Christmas Eve and it’s the first time I believed in Father Christmas because

about 3 o’clock in the morning, my mate Stan he (UNCLEAR) he says, “Hey mate wake up,’ I said, “What is it?” “Booze,” grog. So we get up and we get out and two of these big box car were lined up there and we get out, the first thing I saw was two Indian soldiers laying along the railway line with their rifles tucked in their arm and our blokes are in the car unloading this truck, laden with booze.

It was all Canadian grog, all the stuff anyway. So they unloaded this stuff and you get a case of beer each and they were quart bottles of bloody the Dows Black Horse beer, 9, 10 per cent alcohol, a case of beer each for each carrier. Everybody was in there and they were knocking stuff off left, right and centre anyway. And we left there, we must have got the drum that we left there 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning we pulled out

of the station and that was the first time that I believe in Father Christmas, I don’t know whether it was Santa Claus or what. Well what happened on the four days getting back to Palestine is a rather a sad story I’m afraid, they all got drunk and they fought one another, they fell off the train, they fired very pistols at anything that was going along the line. They set fire to thatched roofed houses,

and oh it was a real shemozzle it was. If they couldn’t find anybody to fight with, they’d fight amongst themselves, anyway we were all drunk. They got so bad that the train driver, he wouldn’t pull up, he’d pull up along the line somewhere outside a station and we were all under open arrest when we got back to Palestine, including the boss, the Major in charge. We got back to

Palestine anyway we got back to Bedoun , Gaza.

Oh it would be about, oh about 30 of us I suppose.

Vaguely not a hell of a lot, vaguely. About 30 of us, when I said there was about 40 carriers, no there be about 30 carriers

I suppose 25, 30 carriers I just can’t remember the exactly the numbers but anyway we had them on there because we had carriers from different ones. Anyway, before, as I said, we were all drunk and when we got back to Palestine, we got back there and the Major had to front up, the officer in charge he got up and what happened we were fined the three bottles of beer that we would have got for Christmas because all the troops got 3 bottles of beer for Christmas. And we still had enough beer

left that we still carted back with us, that we took back to camp, and when we got back there we had those American tents they were called ‘bell tents’, big square tents, big tents anyway, and our blokes who got into one of these tents and we stacked all the grog we had left, we put it all in the middle of the tent and made all our beds around the outside of it and we got stuck into the booze again.

Got stuck into the booze again and more fighting going on amongst troops outside, it wasn’t a very good, I don’t think it was a very good time for all us, somehow but anyway we all enjoyed it. It’s good to have a wild old time, but that was a trip that I’ll never forget as long as I live. 4 days on this train, yes, yes, and we were all on the

booze.

No, no.

There was nothing else we could do except what we did.

The had thatched roofs on top, we didn’t set villages on fire but there were thatched roofs on some of the old huts and they’re firing these very pistol

at them and they let go at anything and all they would and some of these guys and that sort of thing and they were wild. Wild and wild, woolly west. We were really in the poo, we were when we got back. In the poo, 4 days of that. But by boy, if you ever wanted a headache you get onto that Dows Black Horse beer. Gee that was solid beer. Anyway we got back to

Palestine and then we got on leave when we got back there we eventually got things quietened down a bit there in the camp and we got quietened down and then there was more leave, blokes caught up with themselves and more leave, we went into Tel Aviv and that was quite a business in Tel Aviv. There was one of the incidences there at,

I think it was, I think it might have been in, anyway we’re going through, I think it was in Alexandria, we were going through there, anyway we, truckload of us going in on leave and going on the back of a truck and we hear this voice coming over the fence, “I tell you, I’ve been in the British Army for 25 years, I’m a lance corporal and you’ll do…” so and so. Well you can imagine what the twenty,

what the truckload of Australians said to him, tell him to go and get stuffed you know, goes over the fence to this bloke. The poor bugger over there he tried to get some discipline out of his soldiers and of course as the mob goes past bloody ruffians and they tell him to go and get …..? Oh while we were in Alex [Alexandria] there was a discrepancy between the poor and the rich,

with a poor funeral they carry the casket, you see them in movie on the news and that, they carry these caskets on their shoulders or wherever they’re going and they’ve got mourners coming behind and hire all these mourners and they mourn and they all wail and they groan and they bung on acts and all the rest of it, and then we come to another place and here’s this hearse with horses with plumes hair, you know,

headrest on them, all beautifully done up and the hearse, that’s for the rich people you see, that’s just the discrepancy between the poor and the rich. And to see the, differentiate you know, between the thing, but this magnificent carriage with this plumed horses and all the rest of it and the other blokes walking down the street, crying and walking down and carrying it on their shoulder, that was the difference between the good, and the poor and the rich there.

No mate, not really they were a real, they were a real rabble, the poor is a poor. But in Tel Aviv when we got down they had the Jewish quarters were out of bounds there in Tel Aviv to us. There was the Arab side of the town, you could see the difference between the people,

the nice homes and the Jewish part of the place was all nice, white homes and all the rest of it. And of course down the other end of the town was all the rubbish and scrabble that came along you know, shacks and all the rest of it. There was just so much difference between one thing and another. But the Australians didn’t do anything at all. I think it was in,

I think it was in Alexandria, we were going there one day and we were going along in trams, all they do is ring bells and clang, clang. We never pay any fares, we said Bob Menzies would pay for it, we wouldn’t pay for it or somebody else would pay for it, we won’t ever pay for it anyway. But anyway we were going along there one day and this woman was walking along there with a basket full of sticks on her head, you know when they carry it along there with a thing and a little bloke

about 5 or 6 walking along behind her. Anyway it was a great thing over there for some reason or another everybody had shanghais the blokes were all were making shanghais, (UNCLEAR) there was nothing better. The idea was, the storekeepers would put all their bottles and things out on shelves outside of the front of their shops and that sort of thing. Of course our blokes would come along and they’d have lumps of lead or whatever it was (UNCLEAR) and they’d be peppering these things as they are going past you see.

Anyway some mate decided he let out of the tram, he let fire and he hit this old girl fair in the backside, anyway it threw up in the air and she turned and she started to give the kid a belting because she reckon he must have kicked her in the behind or something, oh dear but anything for entertainment (UNCLEAR) But the poor old shopkeepers when he saw us coming in future (UNCLEAR) he’d be out there grabbing all there bottles of stuff and running inside.

Oh dear, oh dear, I know it was probably the wrong thing to do but it was letting off steam, right. What else have they got.

Yep,

Yes I’ve got a photograph of it here

Well when things quietened down over there at Alamein, the 9th Div [Division] concert party came through and put on a show for us there and they said to me, “You on the carrier,” they said, “listen we want you to go

over there and sit on the hill over there and just keep your eye out in case something might happen over there.” So I went over there with a carrier. And while I was over there, I’ll go back a little bit. When things quietened down people started to appear out of holes in the ground and things that were built into the sand. People started to appear out of foxholes and out of their trenches and that sort of thing,

and heads would appear, sort of thing. Prior to that it was all desert you couldn’t see anybody or anything at all. Nobody was walking around or nothing; people were all down below ground. Only, unless you had to get out and go round somewhere do something right but anyway. (UNCLEAR) And things quietened down a bit. Anyway the word come that a concert party was going to come through. So they said you get over there with your carrier and get over there and keep an eye over there where this thing was, it was on this hill. Anyway

while I was there this old beaten up,

I’ve got a habit of playing with things. Anyway this bus came along with a truck following along behind it. They pull up in the middle of the dirt, the desert there, they get out, a lot of people get out of the bus and then they get out of the truck and they start to unload it, out comes a few

floorboards on the ground to put their gear on, and out comes a piano, and out comes drums and different things. And guys and muso come out there and they set up their thing and they did a show for the boys there on the ground. They had comedians Eric Cameron, I remember him, they had singers, Jack Conway singing ‘Boots, Boots, Boots, Boots’ moving up and down again. ‘Freddy, Freddy, Freddy, Freddy’,

a violinist come out and did a turn and quiet a number of acts. And they had muso’s, musicians there as well. And they put on a show there for about an hour or so for the troops there. And it was the first thing that the blokes had seen for a long, long time. And it was most enjoyable, most enjoyable.

They appreciated them

they really did, they did appreciate them particularly over there. I mean or anywhere at all wherever they turned up I mean let’s face it up in the (UNCLEAR) of those places, they turned up, right up in the front, wherever the troops were. They went wherever troops were, they didn’t always go as a group, they had troubadours, had blokes, people that go by themselves, one or two would go up somewhere with a piano

accordion or somebody would go up there and that type of thing. But wherever there were soldiers they were, that put the entertainment into the job and that was the first taste of it there.

No.

Oh well for the situation and for what they did, it was quite good, quite entertaining, I thought they did very well. They didn’t have any loud speakers, they had nothing at all, it was just raw, you were just there

and you did the job there on the ground. Oh it was very good, quite good.

No, not at that stage, no. No. No it wasn’t until we got back here to, we come back on the New Amsterdam a 46,000 tonner I think it was, 46,000 tons I’ve got it in the, anyway we came back on the ship

and a number of other ships, and we come back to Australia in January 1943, we came back to Australia. And we unloaded at Port Melbourne there and of course we all went on 24 hour, well we went up to Seymour and we were freshly kitted out and sort out and given leave and we went on 24 hour, 24 days I should say leave

and we went home for 24 days leave when we come back. Coming home on the ship was quite a thing, there was a, this friend of mine, this mate of mine he was a pianist, Wally, Wally Nat and he played piano and piano accordion and that sort of thing and we used to, and there was entertainment onboard the ship. Different ones would sing and mostly that sort of thing or play music. Wally and

I used to go and entertain some of the girls, the ladies there who played piano and we’d sing for them, some of the girls. Because there was the 6th AGH [Australian General Hospital] one of the Hospitals, one of the General Hospitals come home with us on this ship as well. There was, oh I forget how many, 1000 or 10,000 a hell of a lot of bloody people on the ship anyway, thousands of them there, it got all the figures and things there. But we made our own entertainment on the way coming home

on the ship, amongst themselves and that sort of thing.

Oh, ‘Make Believe’, things like that, that type of stuff. (UNCLEAR) songs, and modern stuff.

Oh they probably had their own,

make up their own songs I think, but I mean. Oh there was one little ditty they used to sing there, “I’m a lousy greasy gunner, I was stationed at Matruh and I had a little dugout in the sand where the fleas would play around me as I settled down at night. In my flea bound, bug bound dugout in Matruh. Where the ground was covered over with Bully and Meatloaf and there’s marmalade and jam we saw

but few, but we’re as happy as a clam in this bloody land of sand in my flea bound, bug bound dugout in Matruh. Where the windows were of Hessain and the doors are four by two and the sand bags let the howling blizzards in. But we’re happy as a clam in this bloody land of sand in my flea bound, bug bound dugout in Matruh. Where the fleas around,” no I’ve forgotten it now. “Where the fleas around us, around me as I settle down at night…”

I’ve forgotten I’m afraid; I’m losing my memory.

That was there, that was what they used to sing, that was that gunners. “ I’m a lousy greasy gunner, I was stationed at Matruh..” and it goes on, “and I can hear those bloody Eyeties [Italians] as they circle round at night in my flea-bound, bug-bound dugout in Matruh. And I often wish I had a girl to sit upon my knee, to relieve me of

this pain that I’m in. Oh my god how I would love her if this a home she’d make, in my flea bound, bug bound dugout in Matruh.”

‘The Quartermaster’s store’. “There was

beer, beer, beer you can’t get near in the store, in the store, there was rum, rum, ding ding, da, da, dum in the Quarter master store. My eyes grow dim I cannot see, I have not brought my specs [spectacles] with me, I have not brought my specs with me.”

And then it goes on, “There was rum and there was this in the store…” that’s the Quartermaster’s Store and all that sort of jazz. But not any songs.

Oh when the mob gets together somewhere, when you’re probably having a booze up somewhere or something like that. When you’re having a bit of a singsong or a get together.

‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’, of course that was (UNCLEAR). ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go, it’s a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know. Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square, it’s a long, long way to Tipperary but my heart’s right” ….that one goes back to World War I job, that one.

Oh well it was always, whenever we got in the sergeants’ mess or whenever we got a bit of a booze up they’d say all right, I’d be always the one that would start all the singing off and that sort of business. I was always, they were always looking for me to go and give them a bit of a song.

Oh no I sang a lot when I was a kid. I sang in the local shows and the local, I sang in talent shows, I think I ran second, the bloke who run, I think the bloke who won it did a Popeye the sailor act or something. I think I got 10 shillings for running second in it. “I’m in heaven when I see you smile,

smile for me, smile Dianne. And though everything dark for all the while I can see you, Dianne you have lightened a lonely home, pray for me when you can and no matter wherever I roam

smile for me, smile Dianne”.

Oh yeah I did that in the talent show. Donald Davis was a tenor, you would never remember him, an Irish tenor and he used to sing those sort of songs, that sort of thing. But I always wanted to be a tenor, but when I went to go,

to actually do voice singing they said, “No you’re not a tenor, you’re a baritone, an operatic baritone,” in other words I can sing tenor and baritone, I can be both.

Oh yeah, anywhere at all. Anything at all, yep. Anyway when we got back after our leave we were go back to Seymour

and then we went from there up to the Tablelands, up to Rocky Creek, Cairns in that area up there. Rocky Creek Wondecla and they were training, we were training men to go up the islands. They were training them in water crossings and all this sort of thing. Wrapping your rifle up with a in your ground sheet and all that and pushing your gear over and wadding across rivers and all this sort of thing. And one day Wally came to me, Wally

Ness my mate, he said to me he said listen mate he said they’re looking for guys, the 9th Div concert party, the one we had seen in the desert were looking for people, they wanted people, they were looking for people that wanted to be in it. He’s a piano player and I said I suppose so, what do you reckon and he said I’m going to give it a go, and I said oh well, I might as well give it a burl and see what happens. So I finished up shortly, the

9th Div Concert party up in the Tablelands. And while we were there we did, they did shows around in the local area. Moving around in amongst the local area and just stick up a backdrop somewhere and go out there and virtually do it on the ground sort of thing. They didn’t have any really, unless you had a proper stage somewhere to do the show, it was just a matter of going out and setting up wherever you could.

There wasn’t any audition mate,

Well you get in there you sang a couple of songs, you’re a singer or whatever you did. If you were a driver you could drive a truck, the had vehicles. But mainly because I could sing right. And you also filled in as a utility, I was a character

parts right, you would always be doing shaners [?] and that type of work like that and as long as you could fit in doing something or other, you’d fit into the parts and do different parts of the show as well as being part of the chorus where they all sing together. Well you did your bits and pieces and that and get themselves sorted out. Because they were a bit, they were sort of a bit disorganised at that time up there. And after they’d been up there for

in the Tablelands for, oh up there probably a few months. They were all called, all the concert parties from the various areas were called back into Sydney, to the Showgrounds in Sydney. And that’s when became under the auspices of the amenities, Australian Amenities. Which included film people that used to go round showing films and that sort of thing

concert parties, anything to do with the amenities side of it for the troops, we were all congregated at the Showgrounds there and we were, our crowd was stuck in a Bruce Mall building, bike shop or whatever it was, Bruce Mall Malvern Star Bike. And as the crews all came in there together and Jim Davison from the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Commission] Dance Band fame he was the head of the business, then

he was a Major. He’d come back, he had taught at the Middle East with Jim Gerald with a show over there, an Australian show which also incorporated some of the local talent. It wasn’t this 9 Div part, it wasn’t that, I don’t think it was part of that mob; they might have been part of it. But anyway when we got back to Sydney, they brought them all in together and they sorted them all out and they weeded out a lot of people

that obviously they didn’t want or people got out of the thing. So we went from there out to Pagewood studios where they made the films out there, originally did some of the film work out there, and got the people together and sorted them out. And they got a crew together, you’d have a one party would consist of about 24 people right, you’d have your band, half a dozen, 6 or 7 musicians

you had, oh George Wallace Junior was our comedian, Mike Wallace, Mike Pope was a straight man, we had, you had muso’s, we had singers and what else did we have in there. Novelty dancers, Mister Squiggle, he’s

one of the guys you’re going to meet one day from the ABC fame, Norm Hetherington right he was one of the members there he used to do his show. We had a ventriloquist, we had a magician, they were all a mixture of various entertainers’ right. Get a mixed up group, and once they got them all together then they packed them off to, and away them went to various tours.

Send you out and away you’d go on your way. The first time we went out we finished up going up to Brisbane and up into the Tablelands again the area up there, around Brisbane and worked there.

For me what made it disorganised it was, sort of, maybe it might be the wrong word, I might be doing them injustice as far as that sort of thing. To me it didn’t seem as though we had a, well I was just a newcomer so maybe I might be interpreting the wrong way in saying that. A schedule of what we were going and where we

were doing and what we were doing, not really organised probably when I say, what did I call it.

Well it was just the normal sort of shows that went around there, we were doing with the singers and violinist. The same sort of people that we had over in the desert, what had appeared in the desert, it was the same crowd virtually, doing the same stuff. Johnny Howard the comedian and that

sort of thing and different ones, the same sort of stuff right. From female impersonators, doing sketch work. I worked with Johnny Howard and sketch work. They had comedians and singers and that sort of thing. And maybe my interpretation of the time, but as I said you just went out and whatever you did your job and that sort of thing. Maybe

disorganised mightn’t have been the right word but it was sorted, it wasn’t. Well you weren’t really organised into a like they were later on, as they became later on in the piece.

Oh, no trouble, not a lot of trouble. I done a lot of work, I done quite a bit of work at home before that in shows and that sort of thing,

so it wasn’t foreign to me to be able to go out and do that sort of thing.

Well it’s, I should let’s say that they polished the shows right, when I saw them, what I’m getting at, when they came back from overseas they probably,

they’d done a lot of work and they were probably due for a break you know, type of thing. Well the shows they did down there under, the show they did, the unit shows were under their own through their own organisation like the 9th Div show or the 6th Div show and that sort of thing, the people they had organising,

and no doubt they knew what they were doing and that type of thing, and all the rest of it. But when it came down to Davison he was, I’m not saying the others weren’t professional either, but he was the professional, and the sort of shows they put out on the road wanted to be something that’s presentable to the people. Not only did they show to the troops but we showed to all in the cities and before the public as well, the type of show that you could put on, as good a show you could put on anywhere

right. And

Oh he was the boss cocky. He became, he went over with this show, over to the Middle East there with Jim Gerald, he was the boss in charge of it then but when they come back to Australia after they’d been over there. Gerald went out of the business and Davison became

the boss of the entertainment when it was part of the Amenities became a group of people, right it became a more solid and he became the boss of it right. And he was a professional and everything he wanted to see was to be professional because I mean a lot of the people who came into the, like myself and went into these concert parties and that were probably amateurs

right, but because they could do something they were selected to do it, right if they could do something or sing or play a instrument or that. They probably, or many of them, although the people we finished up with were all professional musicians, the majority of them were all professional musicians and professional entertainers. Some of the best that Australia ever put on had ever seen. Because I think the ones that came originally from the concert party and that, I wonder if they

were selected out of the troops themselves. They all come from the troops anyway. Everybody that became anyone of into the shows originally enlisted as a soldier, right. You didn’t enlist as an entertainer; he enlisted as a soldier but was because of his ability to do something they were seconded into doing this, the concert party.

Yeah.

Oh well if people couldn’t play their instruments. See a lot of people came in who were amateurs, could play musicians and all that sort thing but probably couldn’t read the dots on the paper. Particularly the drummers, I mean drummers and that sort of people, drummers they learn to play themselves and type of thing, but we had one of our drummers was Richard Smith he was a timpanist for the Australian Symphony Orchestra, I mean you had people there that were the tops, which he got later

on that came into the entertainment side of it. But the original blokes like myself, they just pulled them out of the ranks, people that could do something. They formed, they wanted to get entertainment, they could see that one of the most important things they could have for soldiers is a form of entertainment. So they provided their own entertainment. My wife was a ballet mistress for the army, from the army girls;

I mean they provided entertainment as well. It was a matter of if you could do something, get up and do it right. And when Davison took over and it became more on the professional side of it, I mean if you couldn’t blow the notes that were on there or play the notes that were on the music, you were probably lucky if your stayed, a lot of people just disappeared when they came back from, into Central area, into Showgrounds before we went out to

Pagewood, and Pagewood became the place where they actually picked the people to go, that were going to stay there and go into shows and go and do the tours and that sort of thing.

Oh well you took your chances with others, you had to go on your ability to be able to do something, I mean if you weren’t of any value, I mean you had to be

able, they must have considered that I was worthwhile to keep in the show and to do what I was doing, to stay on.

Oh no before you went out, before the show went on the road, you had to do your complete show in the theatre down at, in Pagewood and if he considered that something wasn’t up to scratch or you weren’t good enough or something or other

you’d probably find yourself, you’re on your way, I mean you had to do, we had to do the whole show before we left to go on the road or what we were going to present when we went outside. So if they considered you weren’t good enough for the show or you weren’t able to do what they wanted they probably say you better find yourself somewhere else to go right.

Oh we just known as 4 Detachment, Number 4 Detachment Australian Army Entertainment

that’s all we went under. I’ve got photographs, we called ourselves the Islanders, anyway that Norm did some stuff for us there. But oh some of them were, see they went from 9 Div Show to Kiwis to Tasmaniacs, the 6th Div Show and that they all went from there, that’s when they brought them back to Australia and brought them all together at the Showgrounds,

they then lost their identity they were no longer the 9th Div Concert party, we became, well most of us and that disappeared into other groups, 1 Detachment, 2 Detachment, 3 Detachment, 4 Detachment, there was after about 20 odd Detachments right, we became known as a Detachment and we were number 4 Detachment that was our designation from there on.

Oh we had to have the show completely.

Oh no, no, no we were just 4 Detachment that’s how we were. Well we had professionals in there, we had the line up with Wallace Junior, Mike Pate, Norm Hess, some of the, you know good professional

musicians, we were all pros and it was a top line show, it was a top line show there was no doubt about that.

Oh Wallace used to do his acts about out, we had different shaners with Wallace and that sort of thing, some on Middle

East type of thing, dressed as bloody Arabs and what have you. It’s very hard to describe it, just a comedy shaner. And then he used to do work with Mike and George used to do straight between the two of themselves. Oh just ordinary sort of stuff that come off the Tivoli type of business.

Bit hard to explain exactly what it’s all about because all a lot of fun and games it was.

Yeah, most of that stuff, yeah. Well the blokes, a Tivoli type of show, you wouldn’t remember that far back would you, do you know anything about the early Tivoli shows.

Well Stiffy and Mo and all that, gags and all this sort of

stuff. There’s a bit of blue stuff in it and all that sort of stuff type. But we found out that, one thing we found out with the show that we did, when we went into certain places in there, we had to do the whole show before the general in charge of the area and if he didn’t like what was in the show, he’d say, “Look I don’t like that, that’s suggestive or something else, you cut it out,”

you just did, strangely enough the Australian soldier, although he must be a bawdy old character himself in some cases, he didn’t like the dirty side of the stuff, right. ‘Cause remember one time when Bob Dyer and his troop come up there, they did shows up there and they started to put on the sleazy stuff and that sort of thing and the blokes howled it down, they didn’t want it. They just wanted straight, good, clean entertainment

and that’s what they got. Oh you did put in some suggestive, probably a bit of suggestive side of it and that sort of thing but nothing really outlandish at all, but the blokes wouldn’t, didn’t want it.

No, Dyer come up there and put in his toe and they started to do this sort of stuff and they got, they didn’t go for it at all, didn’t want it. They wanted good clean wholesome entertainment, the blokes.

They’d had enough sleaze, they’d seen all the (UNCLEAR) and the crap they wanted to see, they wanted. No, the old Red Robby, General Robertson, when we were up there at one place in the Islands, we had to do the show for him, the whole lot on his own, just he and a couple of sidekicks. And if there was something in there that he, there was one thing there that was a bit suggestive, Mike and George did, he said, “I don’t want that in the show, cut that out”. Something about having baby (UNCLEAR) pills to have babies or something

or other. Something, it wasn’t anything really serious but he just didn’t like it.

We had female impersonators. Right some of them were excellent and some of them were a bit baggy. Some of them were very good, excellent. Billy, we had one 6 foot bloke he wore a size 4 shoe, he dressed

beautifully, played the piano and sing. Billy, Billy, Billy, oh, my memory’s starting to go now. Anyway he was excellent and some of them were really good, some of them were really good. We had one with us was a bit of a bag, she was a bag but anyway. They were very good actually. Oh dear they used to call them all by their names, Susie and

what else were their name, oh they had all names for themselves, they were real characters they were, them lot. They’d try you on to you know some of these characters. I know when I went out to Pagewood, first out there, got amongst some of these there and they used to bring me cups of tea when I was on guard or duty of a night time out on the gate out there and they’d bring you cups of tea. But once they found out that you were a square, that you weren’t interested

in that side of the business. I don’t say that all of them were that queer but some of them were really, you know that way inclined. Once they found out that you were straight, that you preferred women’s company and that, they left you along, they didn’t bother you. But they turned out to be good friends. They were always very handy to sew buttons on shirts or to do any (UNCLEAR) things like that. But they become, they were very good, they were very good.

Some of them were very female.

Oh well, their habits and their speech, ‘oh darling how are you and all this’. “Oh dear, oh dear I’ve had a terrible day today.” “Look I can’t do a thing with my hair.” But they were the real women, they were the real female you know. Some of the others were real baggy, we had one there and she was a real bag. Her makeup used to run all over the place but she

was a real, she wasn’t one of the better ones I’m afraid. But some of them were very good. I danced with some of them; we used to do an opening to the show. We’d open the show, our theme song was ‘Strike up the Band’. We used to open the show with all cast and full band for the show. ‘Strike up the Band’ and away we’d go and then they open up and they’ve got to do a ballroom scene with one of the girls and then another guy there was a tapper and he’d open the show with a various thing.

Oh no they were, they were very good in their own way.

Vaguely, vaguely. I didn’t know much about them but I realised later on when I got to know about these people. Some of the people you met earlier in your life, you wondered why they did certain things or make certain things or that sort of thing. But being a dumb

mug from the scrub, I mean that all bounced off you, you know you wouldn’t know what they were talking about or what’s going on. But you some became to realise who was what and what was who.

Oh I think so. Well not so much when I joined the unit, when I joined the army first, I think when I first got in there. Oh no I think by the time I got there I’d learnt most of the tricks by that time.

Pardon.

It was, it was, yeah. Oh yeah you used to see some strange things at Pagewood there. With people rushing around and screaming and yelling and doing all sorts of things. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” and all this sort of thing, “I don’t know what I’m going to cook for the Officers tonight.” They had them working

in the Officers’ mess and different things and all that sort of stuff. They were real characters, but then you’d hear somebody else would be practising away on a piano, and somebody else next door would be singing and something else was going on somewhere else, they had all these building there with people all doing their bits and pieces, getting themselves ready. I know that’s where I first met my wife. To the later part, that wasn’t until late in 1945, 46.

‘Cause they never allowed women into the Entertainment side of it until late in 1945, 46 and I saw this little doll running around, the little girl dancing around at Pagewood there, flitting backwards and forward and I didn’t know what she was doing, but she was going, she was a ballerina, and she was going from where she practised her dancing and that sort of thing, routines she was going to do in the show and what have you.

Yeah we went on tour, later on together, that’s how I become to know her but that was late in the piece 1946.

Not really.

No, no they were just looking for guys that wanted to do things and I had no intentions of it. It wasn’t until Wally came along and said, “Look,” he said, “they’re looking for people, are you interested, do you want to be in the entertainment?” I always was interested in entertaining right because I had done quite a lot of it, done a fair bit of that all through my life, from the time I was a young bloke

so possibly that more of less influenced me, I thought we’re going to the entertainment side of it, there’s a good chance of learning a trade, if you want to be an entertainer. I don’t know really, would find me, it’s just that he came along and suggested he said, well I’m going to, and we went away together overseas together so perhaps, maybe it was a bit to do with being a mate and that sort of thing that might have influenced me to do it.

But I didn’t have any reservations about much at all.

Pardon.

I thought it was a good opportunity yeah. I thought it was a good opportunity to do something that you wanted to do, that you liked doing. And as the General said in the thing there, the fact that you’re entertaining the troops, you’re still doing your job,

you’re still doing a worthwhile job in army which proved later on because of the way that we were received wherever we went. I mean it doesn’t matter where you went the troops thought it was bloody wonderful that you come to do something for them. Whether it was two or three of you or whether it was the whole show they used to really enjoy having the blokes there. Because what entertainment did they get, some of the poor buggers got nothing at all you know. They might get an odd picture show.

I remember seeing that Pommy actor, Charlie is me Darling, something or other, Tommy Trinder, do you ever remember, would you know him?

Oh what was it, what was the name of the show. And here we are stuck up in the bloody islands there, pissing with rain, sitting on a bloody 4 gallon bloody tin with a ground sheet over your head, when on

comes this bloody load of crap, (UNCLEAR) and I thought oh Christ, it was that crook we sat through it and (UNCLEAR) I said I’ve had a gutful of this bugger, wet arse and we’re drowning and we’re bloody sitting there and on come Tommy Trinder, now what was the name of that bloody show, I forget it but it was that bloody crook, it was bloody awful anyway. But you see they didn’t get a lot of current bloody movies or things like, they’d get the few odd movies

here and there but they relied on people to actually do things. And a lot of guys entertain amongst themselves even though they may not be in the entertainment side of it, they can do things. I can remember going once into a canteen somewhere and I don’t even remember where it was.

Where are we now?

Pagewood.

We went up to,

on our first trip out of Pagewood was up to Brisbane, up around, in the area up around there.

It’s the same as performing anywhere else.

Oh yes I’m sorry I get it, right. Oh it was a full size show, we could take over a theatre.

We did shows in the main theatres in Brisbane as well, full show, we did the whole show. And as well as, we went out to wherever there was a camp for us, for troops. If normally, if they didn’t have a stage, I’ve got a photograph of the stage and did Mike show you anything about the stage, and that sort of thing.

We carried our own stage with us. One of the vehicles

was a stage right. And wherever we went, the sides of the vehicles dropped down and the whole box and dice and it became a stage, we had props and everything underneath and the top. It was a full size stage and we carried our own, we had our own power plant we took with us. So we had lighting, we had the whole box and dice everything wherever we went. All your props

and stage stuff and the whole lot. So it was virtually a theatre moving on wheels, right. And it was just like setting it up in the theatre, we were just doing a show. But it could be out in the middle of a paddock somewhere, probably wherever the suitable place for it. Hopefully it was on a flat level of ground because on one occasion we did a show in one place and we were on the side of a hill and we all came out

to do our start of the show, “Let the drums rolls out, let the bugles call ,” and away we went and everything started to move and we looked like the whole box and dice was going to finish up down the bottom of the hill, it was just by sheer luck that the thing didn’t go any further because it looked like we were all going to finish up in amongst the troops down the bottom of the hill. Oh dear that was a close call. But that’s where we all started off, set up the show. But we were quite capable of doing it inside a theatre, which we did in theatres, and that sort of thing

we could do the show inside.

“Let the drums roll out, let the bugles call, let the people shout, strike up the band, let the cymbals ring, calling one and all, let the people shout, strike up the band. For there’s work to be done, to be done, there’s a job to be done, to be done, come you son of, son of a gun, make your stand, let the cymbals

ring, let the people sing, hey leader strike up the band.” And that’s the way we used to start off, right. And then you’re into the rest of the bits of pieces, and away you go. I did that on Mike Page, This is Your Life, I sung that at the start of the show. Remember they did his This is Your Life on the TV?

Did you?

Did he tell you all about it? This is

your life; remember they used to do it. They’re still doing it now over on the TV show. By the way, well your opening show, was virtually, you rehearsed so much that you were virtually doing what you done before you started off. You’ve got yourself on the way to go out there and you just go out and set up the boys. The boys go out, we haven’t got into that yet

but when we get to it, if you want me to talk about it. To go out of the show anywhere at all, right. I was the driver, I was the boss’s driver and I looked after him, he was an elderly gentleman, he was an English, an old actor from over in England, old Frederick Hughes he was. He was a bit over-aged to be in the army but because of what he was in his life, old Frederick, he appeared in a couple of local films here anyway but he was an old English

actor. And my job was to take him around and look after him and make sure he got where he wanted to go and all the rest of it. And we used to go ahead of the show. If the next move was to go from here to say Brisbane or one camp to another or some site, we used to go ahead. I’d take him along and we’d get everything sorted out before they get there and then the boys would arrive with the buses and that and get themselves settled in. We’d find out where they were going to lodge, where they were going to be, whether they were in camp and where they were going to eat,

where they are going to find out all their, we were an advance party for the show as well as taking part in the show. But the boys would come along and when we found out where they were going, they would then put up there, they would erect a stage, get everything organised and we set it then for there. We’d probably be in the one position there, we might be there for a week. There would be different people come in from different crews to see the show. You wouldn’t just probably put it up for one night but I mean we’d probably be in a position there, find a location

where the troops were in various areas around you so that they could come at different times and visit the show. So you may be in one position, well when we were in the Islands you might be in one position, there might be one place there for 2 or 3 weeks or something like that. But Fred, Freddy, dear old Fred we used to go along, and I’d take him along and look after him and made sure he was ok and we’d get everything organised, sorted out. I was his carer, looking after him right.

He was a lieutenant in charge. He was an old theatre bloke, real old thespian from way back, old Fred. He was a dear old soul, Freddy.

No he never appeared on stage or anything at all. He did in England I believe. I believe he was a pianist at one time or something in his early days.

Oh what, oh what, I’m buggered if I know (UNCLEAR)

No you just, well you sang your normal number and (UNCLEAR) you rehearsed. But I just sang the normal everyday songs that were going on.

‘Amore, Amore, Amore’ and all that, just the local popular songs that were going at the present time (UNCLEAR)

Oh,

“Sergeant Major on Parade” (UNCLEAR)

“What have we got here? Lonely as a desert breeze, I may wander where I please, yet I keep on longing, just to rest a while. Where are sweethearts’ tender eyes, take the place, the place of land and skies. All

the world forgotten, in one woman’s smile. One alone to be my own, I alone to know her caresses. One to be

eternally, the one my worshipping soul, possesses. At her call I’d give my all, all my life, and all my love endures. This would be

a magic world to me, if she were mine, all alone. At her call I’d give my all, all my life and all my love endures. All

this would be, a magic world to me if she were mine, all alone.” That’s the sort of (UNCLEAR), a bit rough, a bit rough.

And that’s the sort of thing, then you’ve got your modern.

Something from the Desert Song.

That would be a shaner, the desert or something like that you know with the set round, something there with a bird along. With a bird alongside singing to it, that sort of thing.

Oh anyway at all, that would have been.

What have we got here. We’ve got a bit of desert song, Oklahoma but that was a bit later than the early war days, isn’t it?

‘Some Enchanted Evening’, ‘Because Of You’, I think that might go back, how far back would they go?

This is more of a pop song, have you heard that one?

No, that was a bit later on I think. ‘Oh Rosemarie’, I mean you’ve got that. I don’t know what else. And then ‘The Mighty King’ are only different in name, cause they are

treated just the same by fate. “Today a smile, tomorrow a tear, we’ll never know what’s inshore. So learn your lesson, before too late. So be like I, hold your head up high, till you find the

bluebird of happiness, you will find, greater peace of mind, knowing there’s a bluebird of happiness, and when he sings to you, though you’re deeply blue,

you will see a ray of light creep through. And so remember this, life is no abyss; somewhere there’s a bluebird of happiness.”

And where do we go from there? And that’s the way that goes. And then he goes there on to say, “The bed and the poet with his pen, the peasant with his plough, it makes no difference who you are it’s all the same somehow, the King upon his throne and the jester at his feet, the shop girl, the actress and the woman on the street. It’s a life of

smiles and a life of tears, a life of hope and a life of fears, a blinding torrent of rain and a brilliant burst of the sun, a biting tearing pain and bubbling barking fun, and no matter what you have, don’t envy those you meet. It’s all the same, it’s in the game, the bitter and the sweet. And if things don’t look so cheerful, just show a fight, for every bit of darkness, there’s a little bit

of light. For every bit of hatred there’s a little bit of love, for every cloudy morning, there’s a midnight moon above. So don’t you…” Oh dear, I better get back on that one, “So don’t you forget for you too can find the bluebird, you will find happiness, contentment

and the rest for if you be like I, hold your head up high, soon you’ll see a ray of light shines through and so remember this life is no abyss, somewhere there’s a bluebird

of happiness.” That’s the way it goes. Yeah a bit rough mate on the outside.

But I like to sing some of the later ones, “Well, I could have danced all night…” Because I like singing the pop songs now. “Because

of you there’s a song, in my heart. Because of you my romance, had it start. Because of you the sun will shine, the moon and stars

will say you’re mine, forever and ever to part. I only live for your love, and your kiss. It’s paradise to be near you, like

this. Because of you my life is now worthwhile, and I can smile because of you.” That’s how it goes.

That the sort of stuff I like to sing now, more pop stuff. I mean this stuff is all right when you were singing, well when I was doing stuff, when I was singing good stuff, but I mean now I’m a pop singer. “Oh sweet Rose Marie it’s easy to see.” Don’t get me started.

Oh some of the early days. “You made me love you, I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to do it. You made me love you and all the time you knew it. I guess you always knew it. You made me happy, sometimes you made sad, and there

were times dear, you made me feel so bad. You made me sigh for, I didn’t want to tell you, I didn’t want to tell you. I want some love that’s true, Yes I do, indeed I do, you know I do, now you may give me what I

sigh for, you know you’ve got the kind of kisses, that I’d die for, you know you made me love you.” They’re the songs we had to sing in those days right. Old Bing Crosby, yeah.

Good

good, oh yeah. Oh yeah you get good responses off people. Oh they were good responses to all the stuff, you see, and the show, good.

Would you like to hear some?

\n[Verse follows]\n “There was movement at the station for the word had passed around\n That the colt from Old Regret had got away,\n

And had joined the wild bush horses – he was worth a thousand pound.\n And all the cracks had gathered to the fray.”\n

Would you like to go back over this, just stop for a minute.

No I didn’t do this, I didn’t do poetry in the show, but did you want to do it now? It was not part of the show.

I do it now, I do poetry now, as a matter a fact I’m recording some of the stuff now.

Banjo Patterson stuff, ‘Man from Snowy River’ and all that sort of stuff, I’ve been doing that. But I didn’t do poetry in the show, so I mean you can scrub it.

Well you start off with your opening

of your show. All your opening shows. You’ve got all your cast and start off to (UNCLEAR) and then it drops into, as I said we would do a little stuff, with one of the female impersonators. You would do a bit of ballroom dancing and then we had a tapper that would come out and do, and now we show you something a little more serene and give you a variety of dancing right.

And then Mike and George would come on and do some patter there, doing this part of the show. The band would probably do a number. We had another Ronny, we had a baritone in the show, Ron he used to do this, probably come out and do a number or a couple of songs.

You’d have the magician come out and do an act, do his turn. Norm would come on and do his drawings and that type of stuff. There’d probably be some more and do a skip with George, the man that never forgets. George would be sitting at a table there with, behind a table and

all these guys would come in and be asking questions about that, “I forget, I forget, I forget,” and I used to come in there, cause I’m written up as a despatch rider with bloody gators hanging down and hat on the back of the head and (UNCLEAR) I come in there and salute him half a dozen times or so.

He’d be sitting at his table there, Ronny Patten was his name, Ron would come in and as I say, I would give him a salute and all the rest of it. “Did you fix the hole in the fence?”

He said, “What hole in the fence?” He said, “The hole in the fence.” And he said, “I forgot.” And then George would come in and say, “I forget, I forget, you blokes always forget, forget, forget. Every time you come in to do something else. I forget.” Anyway I’d come in there and I’d give him about half a dozen salutes and he’d say, “Hang on there mate, you’re about five in front of me,” he said, “wait till I catch up.” I’d saluted him about a dozen times and I was dressed up a despatch rider with gear hanging on here and there and all the rest of it, looking like a bum. Anyway

he’d say, “Now we’ll start again and here we go again. I’ve got a message for you,” and he said “Where is it?” And I said, “I’ve forgotten it.” He said, “You forget, you forget, you forget.” And as I’m about to leave I say, “Can you lend me something, can you lend me some money/” And he said, “Why?” And I said, “I forgot my bike.” So all this sort of thing would go on all the time, with patter going on all the time with George. And the finish George would get up and say, “I’m a man that never forgets,” and he’s got nothing on below his belt, he’s got no clothes and no pants on so when he walks out in front of the audience

blackout, He’s the man that never forgets anything but he never had any clothes, he probably had a pair of briefs on underneath. “I never forget, I never forget.” But this is totally, goes on for five or ten minutes with all this sort jazz. And then he used to do another one. The modern way of inventing children with this pill gag, gave her the pill gag.

Mike and that would come out there and say they’ve got a new invention now, he said, “All you need to do now is you take a pill,” he said,

“you put it in there and you stick it in the oven..” or something or other and the next thing you know you’ve got a kid. But the whole thing finishes up, after they go through all this business about the pill gag, and he said, “Oh yeah you’ve only got to take this pill and you don’t have to worry about anything else, the man is not needed anymore.” It comes up in the finish he says, and the tag line is, “Give me the old fashioned way.” It would always come up with a tag line in the finish you see, but they go through a lot of patter. And then he used to

do another one about he’d come up, he was making love to his girlfriend, ‘Love Letters’ I think it was called. He and Mike would get onto this business about, “I’ve come to press my suit,” he said, “I haven’t got, I’ve brought my iron with me…” and all this sort of business, it was all gag stuff that went on type of stuff. Patter, it was very clever they were. And then there were different gags, through different shaners of the Eastern, Middle East stuff and that sort of thing,

patter. A whole conglomerate of stuff you know intermingled. We had a guy that played the vibraphone, you know the vibe, they come out and do a turn. Norm would do his sketch, ship on the thing, do the magic acts, well we didn’t have any tumblers in our sort of thing, but then you’d have a band and apart from that

it was just a mix up of the whole bits and pieces but all done in it’s right. Everything run like clockwork, everything passes and went, it was all correlated I mean you’d go outside and change into something else, and another guy would be doing something else but you all interacted with each other all the time, with interaction sort of business, yeah.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, come to that later on mate, we’ll come to that later on, that’s a lot later on. Do you want to hear about that now?

Well, when we came to the end of our run, after being all over the Islands and everywhere, we finished up at Lae. This is back in 1945, end of 45 before Christmas, November. And Gracie Fields was out here in Australia,

touring Australia, right. We got to Lae there and Gracie Fields was going to do a show for the troops, very good. And we had to do the first half of the show. Our show put on the first half of the show, so anyway that was all right. So they had the stage all set up there for Gracie and all the rest of it and it was where they showed pictures. It had a bit behind the front stage and the back behind the back stage for it and that sort of thing. Anyway

and it comes to the day when they’re going to put the show on and all the rest of it and they’ve got the stage set up. We go to have a look at it. Anyway they’ve got it set up there and behind us a big curtain, the big drop they had there. Somebody decided that Gracie might like to go to the toilet while she was doing the show or something like that. So they got a one-man thunderbox. You know what that is? It’s a one-man toilet all right. So they got that and they stuck that behind the stage for her. And then they thought it looks

a bit bare, so they got a five pound prune tin and they put some of the native flowers in and stuck it up there all right. Of course the time comes for Gracie to come along and Gracie takes one look and says, “What’s that thing there?” Of course that broke, this was behind the stage that tore the place down anyway. But prior to the going on to the show, all the red brass, you know all the red caps [staff officers], all the big deals, you know the colonels are all

humming around and bumming around and all the rest of it to see who was going to be the big deal and all the rest of it. Anyway we put on the first half of the show and all we got was, there was about 10,000 troops there, I wouldn’t know how many, there were just thousands and thousands of bloody troops. “We want Gracie, we want Gracie, we want Gracie, Gracie, Gracie, we want Gracie,” and we got hammered with Gracie. Anyway come the time that we’d finished our half of the show and Gracie who they wanted,

Gracie was going to come on, and of course all the big wheels are humming around there and all the rest of it. Anyway she said, “Oh by the way, who is your compere for the show?” and I said, “Mike Pate, Corporal Mick Pate.” “Well, could you ask the corporal if he could introduce me to the audience please?” You should have seen all these deflated egos go down like a bag of wind. You know all the blokes that all thought they were going to be in on the act. But Gracie she got on there and she, for the next hour, ¾ of an hour, she just killed them,

she was the greatest, greatest entertainer, one of the greatest I’ve ever seen. She was magnificent. And while she was there, she was married to, not an Italian, Monty Banks he was a comedian, but she did all the, she went around the hospitals and did all the shows and various places. It was our job to carry her piano, she had a piano and we had to cart it, lug it around everywhere and put into the wards

for her and that sort of thing. But she was a terrific, terrific entertainer but she was the worst looking bloody army doll you ever saw. She wore one of these army outfits with the, that the women army wore with the army hat on, Australian hat on and the long, she wasn’t a real good looking soldier I’m afraid but she was a hell of a good entertainer. Terrific and that was that part of it there.

That would be the biggest crowd we ever say, yeah.

Oh it was just, people all had gathered there, the war had finished, we were there at Lae at the end of the war, right. Finished there while we were there. And all these people were there, were waiting for going tranship home and getting out of the place, coming down from the Island and different

places and of course they were advance headquarters, Australian Army Advance Headquarters was in Lae too. And there were a lot of people there, there was a hospital there as well and women, women’s army, there was a hell of a lot of people in the place there at Lae. But there were a hell of a lot of troops there as well. But that’s why there was just so many gathering, so many people in the area at that time. Under normal circumstances they would not have been there, but it happened to be at the end of the war. And when the war had finished

people were assembling there and waiting to get out of the place and come back here to Australia. ‘Cause we were there for, we were stuck there for a few weeks. And some of the boys hadn’t come back, they stayed to bring back our vehicles and that had to stay there over the Christmas time because they couldn’t get transport back before that. But we got back here before, got back to Australia before Christmas, before December, yeah. But oh no, it was just a big show because

it wasn’t so much, it just happened to be the people that were there.

Pardon?

Oh yeah we met and we had a talk with her. Yeah she was great, she was a great lass.

All right just like you and I. She was no, there was no ha, ha, there was no big note time or anything at all about her. They say thank you boys for bringing the piano in for us and that sort of thing. She used to do a little bit of interacting with her husband, he was a

comedian this Monty Banks and they put a, tell a few gags and that. But oh no there was nothing, nothing flash about Gracie she was just one of the girls, she was good, great.

Oh no, no, I might have been in one of the sketches or something like that. But I vaguely remember it, but I’ll tell you what, my stay in Lae was very dim, very dim, very dim because it was all over at that time there

and we were left behind there and I happened go to, I had a jeep of my own, I used to drive, I had a jeep of my own and we got to know some of the girls from the hospital (UNCLEAR). They also had, I must tell you this they had a stockade there for the women’s army inside and you could only get in there on a special pass but because we were army

entertainers and George Wallace and Mike Pate and those sort of things we used to be able to get into the women’s stockade right and go there and talk to them and entertain them and that sort of thing. We had some good occasions there and I met a couple of lasses, Kevin Caporn and another mate of mine, he’s in Western Australia. I don’t know whether you’re ever going to get over to Western Australia, there’s a couple of guys over there, ones a violinist, he was my best man at my wedding. But anyway we

use to got in there and go in to the girls, and got to know a couple of lasses in there and we used to take them out for drives into the scrub in the jeep and that sort of thing. And go out for a run around and that. One of the (UNCLEAR) very pally with one of them, very nice girl. But I used to go down and pick the beer, the beer entitlement for the mob, for the outfit so I rolled up one day in my jeep and I go down to

where the grog was being dispensed from and who’s in there dispensing the grog? One of the blokes from my home town. He’s in there, he’s been in a store, he’s been a grocer in his day, so apparently he got into the stores when he got into the army anyway. But anyway he was in there dishing out the grog, I can’t think of his name, it doesn’t matter. Anyway he said, “What are you doing here?” and I said, “I come down to pick up our ration,” you get so many, the officer gets so many bottles of spirits and the diggers

get so many bottles of beer and that sort of thing for rations so much a week. Anyway he said, “What do you want?” and I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “What do you want? You can have what you like.” So we used to be able to fill up with plenty of booze and go out for runs out into the scrub and different things. This is not on record I hope, and take the girls out for a run and that type of thing. We had a

very good stay there but it was a very hazy stay I know that. And one of our, who happened to be the leader of the band then at that time was, he finished up a bishop in Canberra. Very good musician it was his birthday when I was in Lae so I managed to get plenty of the good stuff for him and poor old.

Anyway he’ll remember his birthday as long as he lives, that fellow because he really got smashed that night. But he was a good muso, a good trombone player and good muso and he became our bandleader later on when Wally, our previous bandleader had left the show. And oh, he became a Bishop in Canberra. But you wouldn’t want to talk to him about his army days, and one of our mates met him one time

he said, “I vaguely remember being in the army back in those days,” and that sort of thing. Neville Chynoweth, Neville Chynoweth.

No he wasn’t one of those. No, he was a good quiet lad but it happened to be his birthday while we were there and they come to me looking for more booze, they run out of grog so they come down looking for me to get him some beer. So we got him right all right. I used to make my homebrew too and some moonshine and good stuff and that sort of thing.

We fitted him up all right, he remembered his birthday.

Oh don’t talk about it. It was a terrible concoction, anything you could put in it and make it, drinkable.

Oh no, I used to go down to the kitchen and essence of lemon was one of the favourite drops that goes into it. Because the cook, he wouldn’t often use it but he’d often drink it

himself, I know that. But oh you made it up with a brew of that and a bit of local stuff and make a rough or make it a bit of a bash. The trouble is it never brewed long enough, they wanted to drink it before it brewed too long. It was pretty rough stuff, we all used to finish up looking like Al Johnson in the morning, all your face, all your teeth was all bad from drinking this bloody booze, it was shocking stuff. Polaroid booze.

Not really, not for the fact that she just took them away, that’s all, just carried them away, she was just so good. They really loved her, they really did, and she was great. It just happened to be one of those off, you know, offshoot experiences that you just happen to be there at the time, it was wonderful. Yeah.

Old Gracie.

No we went up to a place called Jacky-Jacky, it was right up in Cape York, right up in the top of Cape York Peninsula and we. Well another mate of mine was in the show, we went up with the vehicles and came up and took the vehicles and that up on

an ordinary cargo ship. We went up there and took the stuff up and the boys come up, they come up later on. We offloaded at Jacky Jacky there, this is a place up there that very in the north. A lot of people don’t know but there was a whole division of troops in there during the whole, most of the war. They were placed up there for reasons, in case anything

happened down here then they would have troops on the ground up there. But when we got up there, a lot of these blokes were getting to the stage where they were going troppo, they’d been up in the Island, they’d been up there that long. They had been making bits of planes out of perspex and making you know all sorts of gadgets and sort of thing, to occupy their time. But they’d been there for so long. And we went out, there was an air force, there was actually an air force base out

there, we went out to do a show for them. And this was away in the scrub, it was wild country. That’s when we first come to hear of a taipan, it’s a snake up there. I mean a deadly character too. Put the wind up most of us there. It was pretty raw country up there in Cape York Peninsula, and there was a hell of a lot. We just did our show there

but it wasn’t the greatest of places to be in.

Well they’d been there that long, basically they’d been based there for so long. Guys, when you’ve been there in the one place for so long they go a little bit sort of you know, get a bit lost in the place or troppo, they call it troppo. Been in the tropics too long or being stuck in the one place for too long

with virtually doing the same thing over and over and over again for probably a year or two years. But they were stuck there for nearly the whole of the war. The whole division of troops, a lot of people don’t even know they were in the place up there.

Oh well I don’t know, as I said they were making hobbies, making bits out of plastic, different things like that. Finding things for themselves to do, carving things out of stuff and that sort of thing.

I know it would be hard for them, I mean they couldn’t be doing exercises all the time or doing that type of thing because it was just a static situation where they were. I know what we used to do, what we did when we were up there, there were a lot of good oysters on the rocks, so we went oyster picking, we’d go down there and with these oysters on the rocks, we’d take our bayonets out and pick the oysters off the rocks and all this sort of thing and have a great old

time, beautiful oysters. Which became rather an embarrassing situation later on when an incident happened when we got further on in the islands, when one of the blokes, but we haven’t stepped away from that yet.

Well later on up there when Freddy decided to have, I think it was up in Merauke, Jacquinot Bay or whatever it was, somewhere. He decided he was going to have a parade one day and inspect us. So he gets us out on the parade

and we get out there, all the boys and our magician says to Al Gleese, when he gives the order of command to fix bayonets the bayonets wouldn’t come out of the sockets because they rusted in there, because we’d been picking oysters down in the salt water and his bayonet was stuck in his cabin, so he said, quickly to me, “Lend me your bayonet,” and I said, “No bugger you get your own bloody bayonet out.” Anyway poor old Fred was inspecting the rifles, he was

a character, Fred with dark glasses on he was looking down the barrel. ‘Cause we were suppose to always have our weapon to be able to, we could have been called upon any time if there was an action there, to actually act as infantry to go and do the job. God help them, it never happened. But anyway old Cec couldn’t get his bayonet out of his cabin and Freddy was looking down there with his dark glasses on. And he said, “They don’t look too clean some of these rifles boys.” (UNCLEAR)

Wallace decided to distract the troops, he was half way up a palm tree or a date palm or something or other bunging on an act. It turned out a real circus, poor old Fred with his, cause he’s Kiwi (UNCLEAR) as he called us. But that’s what happened from digging oysters off rocks. The old bayonet would become stuck in the (UNCLEAR)

Oh not, some of them were.

But Cec, he had a bad habit, when we were camped up there in one of the places we were at, I think it was up Merauke. Anyway Cecil would come in and he’d throw, take his gear off and he would throw it on my bed, cause he said, then he would go and lay on his own bed and have a camp, see we were on stretchers and in tents and in stretchers. He persisted in doing this, anyway I come home one day and I find his gear all over my bed, so I just happen to pick it up

and I hurled it up into the scrub. So when Cec came in looking for his gear, he said, “Where’s my gear?” And I said, “It’s up in the bloody bush up there,” I said, “and it will be up there,” I said, “every time you put it on my bed, that’s where it’ll finish up.” So I hoisted his gear up into the scrub, oh he was going crook at me I said, this is anyway poor old Cec, he was a character. Cec could never find anything, he never lost anything. I know we moved, we had a move to set up, to go away. We move from one location to another

and old Cec, he said, “I’ve left me gear behind, I’ve left me gear behind.” Anyway they go all the bloody way back, Myers goes back to get his gear and when they get back there they found out he’d left his shirt or something behind or something or other poor old Cecil, he wasn’t very helpful I’m afraid.

Oh I don’t know. I was in a bit of a ….oh they were all good mates. Mike and George,

well there was George Wallace, Michael Pate and George Pomeroy, we were pretty close together. Whenever we went anywhere we were stuck very close together. Mike, George and myself cause whenever we went anywhere there would be the three of us together, would be there together, we stuck together pretty close. Well we all had a fairly good, close bond, but because of the situation with me…

With Old Fred, I’d be moving, I’d be separated from quite a lot while they were doing the preparations for, building the stage and that sort of thing. Old Fred and I would be off somewhere else preparing for the next trip or doing something else. I didn’t actually become involved in erecting the stage work and that because I was also with old Freddy doing something else. Taking him into town

or doing whatever he wanted to do or organising whatever was required for the mob to make things all right. So I didn’t, but Wallace and Georgie and Darcy Caffrey [?]. Did Mike ever speak about him?

He was a piano player, Darcy was a good little mate of mine too, a very good mate. Oh and Eddie Smith the violinist from Perth over there, he was the best man at my wedding.

Anyway Eddie, when we got married in 1946. But there were a couple of little groups, sort of stuck together, different ones. But I treated them all much the same, much of a muchness. They were all good blokes, good bunch of jokers.

That’s what I’m saying troppo, they were bored, bored.

Oh they thought it was bloody lovely. I don’t think they’d had anybody there for god knows how long, had anybody in the place at all. Oh no we were well received. Yeah, well received.

I don’t know that we ever become really celebrities but I mean anything that would be a distraction from what they were doing or something else you know, was always welcome. As an entertainment side of it that was good. I remember

we stopped at the, we went to the air force. On one occasion we were there and after the shows were over we were always invited into the sergeants’ mess or somebodies mess for some supper and usually a few grogs but I think I was driving the truck, I don’t know what I was doing driving the truck but anyway, I had these guys in the back of the thing and all the way back to the camp they were screaming out to me, “What are you doing?” They were bouncing around the back like nobody’s business because I think I was half full of chirp juice or something right,

they were getting a pretty rough ride. ‘Cause there wasn’t any roads, they were all tracks and that sort of business. But I don’t remember a hell of a lot, we weren’t there for a hell of a long time at Jacky Jacky. We got out of there and then we went to Thursday Island, to T.I., which became a base at Thursday Island. And I remember there we were housed in the old school house, there was nobody

there they were all taken away. And they had an anti-aircraft battery right up behind us on a hill behind us and everytime they fired this thing the bloody place nearly fell down, it shook and all the gravel and shit and garbage would come down from the top of the hill, landed on the top of the building and we didn’t like that part of it at all. But there was a staging for us there and we went to all the various, we went to all the islands from there, we went

to a number of islands, we used to go by pearl lugger or a an army work boat or something. And we went to all these different places, Hayman Island, Goode Island, Edmonds Island all the places around there to do shows. Probably wouldn’t take the whole mob, just take some of them.

It wouldn’t be able to take all your equipment and that. Well we did a show at Thursday Island but you wouldn’t be able to cart it all on these pearl luggers and other bits and pieces. You’d just take a troubadour show, take half the show with you, those that could carry their instruments and singers and comedians and that sort of thing. And do that sort of show for them.

Oh no you just took along your number of guys that were able to, portable

gear and that sort of stuff and do a show, do it either standing somewhere in the (UNCLEAR) wherever there was a set up for you to do it in. It didn’t make much difference where it was.

Well it, as I said anti-aircraft battery at Thursday Island but all these other places, outlets were,

there were only a small groups of they could have possibly engineers or some specific group they might be radio wireless or something. They weren’t big groups of soldiers, they were smaller groups of specialist kind of people doing a specific job there right. Maybe an airstrip or something like that. Although there was an airstrip on Horn Island. I know that was a great old

one up there. I know we’re coming down there on occasion on Horn Island and driving a truck down there and I took a wrong turn and next thing I knew I was in the middle of, I was underneath the bloody wing of a bomber and I wondered what the hell was going on. Where the airstrip was I’d taken a wrong turn and I’d gone in there, instead of going down the road, when I should have gone down the road, I finished up under the wing of this bloody plane. So I’m in the wrong place I think. Anyway it was in the

dark and I got out of there all right. But yeah Horn Island.

Majority of them were Australians.

Oh we didn’t get up to Dutch New Guinea, up into Merauke River, Dutch New Guinea, Chocolate Bay, they had the Dutch air force up there but

I think Mike and I, we went over there, I think someone might have got a fly with them one time, got over with them. With the Dutch they were running a most unusual lot of flyers. They’d go out and if they didn’t see anything, I don’t know if they were looking for anything in particular, they’d drop their ammunition before they come back to land and then they’d come back and land. But I’ve got an idea that they weren’t terribly keen to get involved in any of the, any combat sort of stuff. So the boys went out there to go

with them.

Oh there was an air force, say that airstrip there, some of our blokes used to go over there and see them, have a talk to them and that sort of thing. I think they even got invited to go on a fly with some of them. I didn’t get over there with them.

Not a lot, not a lot. They were around. I know when we did a

show there at some of the places they warned us, they said, “You’d want to be careful with your female impersonators,” they said, “because some of these guys out here, they haven’t seen women for a long time and some of the local indigenous population they get a bit, they go a bit funny, when they see women,” sort of thing. But they’d come in from the hill and all around everywhere when we put shows on, they’d be all there dressed up

in their finery, the locals.

Oh they’d have flowers in their hair. The boys, they had very little women, mostly men so not very many women there at all, mostly men and they were dressed with feathers in their hair and all the rest of it. Of course the headhunters and that sort of thing they’d be getting round there with all their beads and bangles and jangles and all this sort of stuff. I remember one

occasion there they put on a dance for them in one of the local halls for some of the officers and that sort of people and it was the strangest thing you ever saw. Up one end where we had the band from the show and the people were dancing and up the other end, and stuck in one end were all the head hunters and their mates and standing there and they stood there, stolid and ridged for hours on end and never moved and just watched the antics, they couldn’t work out what our people were doing when they were dancing around,

they wondered what it was all about, you know they couldn’t understand it, but they looked like, at any minute they were likely to break out and throw a spear at you, that’s just how they were. ‘Cause they were still head-hunters there when we went up there.

No, no, they tell us when we went up. When we first arrived up there that some of the, a couple of the original diggers that went up there went out on patrol and never came back again,

they had an idea that they had disappeared when they might have been knocked off by the old head hunters for a bit of a feed. But the rivers and that sort of thing, you had to be careful when you were travelling, when going across from points to, from one place to another, the river was running at 8 knots an hour. I mean if you didn’t land where you were suppose to be on the opposite side of the bank you’d probably finish up 10 mile down the stream or somewhere. It was a pretty dangerous sort of a place

at times to be in.

Up in Merauke in the Islands there. Crossing the river, Merauke River and getting across. We were camped, at one time we had this, it was big hut and it was flywire all around the building, we were inside there, we all had beds to sleep on and all that sort of thing,

and we were camped beside a big swamp, and this swamp was renowned for types of snake and animals and all that sort of thing in there. And we were camped beside this anyway, one morning, one bloke, one of the blokes, there was about 10 of us in this hut, in our beds and all the rest of it. One bloke went to get his ground sheet from out under his bed one morning and he pulled his hand back very smartly and there was a snake under his bed. Somebody yelled out, “Snake!” well there was about

10 blokes trying to get out through the front door at the one time, they couldn’t all get out, they all bolted. And we found out afterwards they got another one, well they got a couple of snakes in there because what the blokes used to do, they have probably been eating something of a night time, leaving crumbs and stuff around there and these, however they got into the place, they’d get into the place looking for something to eat and that sort of thing. And when the natives come round in the morning and they saw it, we eventually got in there and killed these couple of snakes and put them outside

and they come down there and they go, “Oh, bad em, bad em.” Bad, so lord knows what they were, they could have been anything.

Oh, in the jungle itself you’d get clawed up in bushes and type of stuff, danger was in. I actually

got into, from swimming in the water up there and some of the backwater off the beaches I finished up with what is called ‘tropical ear’. It’s an ear infection, it’s in the water itself, you had to be very careful where you were swimming because some of the water would come in on the tide and would lay in pools and on stuff and that and if you got into this sort of water or were swimming in that or got into that sort of stuff, apparently this bug or whatever it was was in there,

and there was quite a number of the fellows finished up with this tropical ear. And irritation, and it got so bad that I when I was at Lae I had to go into the hospital there and have my ears cauterised because it grows inside like a hard cell, a hard crystal like type of thing in your ear, and I had both of my ears cauterised when they cut bits of pieces out.

And when I came back to Australia I had a lot of trouble with my ears, ear trouble and that and I still have it now. I’ve got to get compensated for it but you’ve got to be careful in there. I hated the jungle, the jungle I got, I had the impression that the jungle wanted to encase you, it always felt that it was trying to claw at you and grab you. I didn’t like it at all, no it wasn’t for me.

Oh yeah there was, oh yeah. And I used to think of the little piccaninny, the boy, little lad and I said by gee whiz this kids up here are well fed and all the rest of it, they were getting around with little potbellies. I didn’t realise until afterwards that they were malaria, malaria makes your intestine swell and they were little, potty

little boys and that sort of thing. That’s another thing I had up there, I finished up with that too when I got home, malaria. You pick up all sorts of things in the jungle. You’ve only got to scratch your hand or pick something up and the next thing you’ve got something else. it gave me the impression that it wanted to grab hold of you. And then they had a vine there called a stanaswy [?] vine, it was a kind of a creeper if you got near it it would hook into your clothes and hang on

to you, you know gripping you, it was a curse. It wasn’t the best places to be in the jungle. And rain, Christ all mighty rain, the tide used to go out there, and she’d go down, would go out, and you had to be careful when the ships are going in and out on boats and that sort of thing. You’ve got to come in on the tide and that sort of thing and go out on the tide otherwise you’d find yourself out. The water would come in 20 or 30 yards the tide would come

in back and forwards and that sort of thing. There was an air force crowd up there, they started off, I think they said they were a half a mile from the water when they first went there. When we got up there, before we left it was virtually within 10 yards from where their buildings were, that’s just how much the water came into the place. And the crocs used to come in and like to come around there as well and get in under the huts and different things like that. It wasn’t the best place in the world.

Well I’ll tell you a trip we did from Jacquinot Bay we went up to Wide Bay, that’s at Tol Plantation where some of the troops that were, when the Japanese got into Rabaul at the top in New Britain, got into Rabaul some of the troops got away from there and fought their way down

through the jungle, come down through this place called Wide Bay where the Japanese caught up with them and massacred them all, killed all these troops there. And we got there after this had happened but when we got there we had a look around in the plantations, where they tied the guys up to trees and banana palms and that and they’d actually bayoneted them and shot them there in the place there. And there was a wreck of a plane that had been shot

down in the place too. But that’s the worst place I’ve ever been in my life, it never stop raining from the day we went in there and this brings up… We went from where we were located in New Guinea by a barge, you know what the barges are, they’re open barges and all the rest of that. And all we took up, we took up the truck with a stage on it and as much stuff as we could get on the barge,

and we get up there and we go, and we went along the coast in the swell of the coast and the waters rocking all the time and Smithy and I, this is Eddie Smith and I, we were smart we got in, sat in the truck, in the front of the truck while the ship rocked backwards and forwards. Anyway a couple of the smart blokes they decided to sit on the hatch over the back of the barge and all the fumes

from the motors were coming up through there and they were sniffing this stuff all the time, and the next thing you know they were crook, they were sick and on top of that we had a tenor singer there, Don Beltham over from Adelaide or Western Australia, he’s a beautiful singer but he was about 16 stone and old Don at the same time he wanted to relieve himself in the toilet and he was hanging onto the rail at the back of the barge being sick and

also doing his toiletry at the same time as the barge came up and down and the water came up and down and was slapping him on the behind as we were going along. Poor old Donald wasn’t enjoying the trip at all. And we got up to Wide Bay and you can only get ashore, you had to wait until the wave went in and as the water went in you drove off onto a ramp and come ashore. I finished up leaving the spare wheel of my wagon,

anyway it finished up in the drink somewhere because I got caught going in. But rain, you’ve never saw rain like it in your life. And we had these stretchers with the crossed legs on them at either end of them and we set them up for the night. Well when I set mine up it was that high off the ground and when I got up in the morning it was level with the mud. You’ve never saw so much mud in your life, it never stopped raining. And when we did the show, the top of the

tent was over the orchestra, was filling with water, it kept filling and filling and you know what happens, if you dare touch that or anything happened to that, the whole lot comes through straight down onto of the drummer and all the rest of it. So we were very careful we didn’t do anything there, didn’t do anything wrong because otherwise we would have all got drowned. But as it was even the female impersonators as they come off the stage were running around the back and digging drains around the back to get the water to run away from behind the

stage, there was just so much water there, it was just water all water. The worst place I think I’ve ever been in, bloody awful mate, bloody awful.

No, no we kept going all the time. I thought we were going to have to pack it in that night but I’ll tell you what if the thing had have busted, the canvas had a leak above the top of the stage, that would have been the end of it we would have been all washed out, but I’d never,

that was the worst place that I’d been in, Wide Bay.

Oh yeah, we used all the stuff yeah. We had our own generator, generated our own power right. We nearly lost old Freddy too, one night.

We nearly lost our, the bloke that operated the generator. There was a power failure one time and he had to get it started

kick started it, and he took the full kick of the whole thing and nearly sorted him out, poor old Fred. What was his name, I can’t remember. Freddy Fisher that’s right, Freddy Fisher. Yeah it nearly took him out, poor old Fred. But we had, we were a completely independent show we had all the stuff we needed to do it on.

We didn’t. If you got to, well there were workshops, nearly all the places you went to there were workshops where you go and get your trucks fixed and that sort of thing. I would imagine there were electricians and stuff like that. Freddy was an operator in the movie theatres when they used to show the news, the short features and all that sort of thing.

He operated the movie projectors before he went into the army, and when he came out afterwards too. Both he and Cec Dalgleise the magician, they both worked in the theatre. They showed all the news and short features and all that sort of thing right, somewhere in the city, yeah Freddy. Oh no, we were completely reliant only when we had to go,

was when we were reliant on people for accommodation, for food and that sort of thing wherever we went. Whatever the troops ate we ate, right that was it.

No other than you might be invited into a mess after the show and that sort of thing, you might be invited to go in there and have supper in the sergeants’ mess or something, you maybe get a beer or something like that, but we just got treated the same as everybody else virtually.

Plenty of stuff, no we used to do, probably play a few gags on one another. I don’t know what they were up to. But as I said most of my time was spent away from the men, but oh no they entertained each other. I know when we went to Brisbane, we were in Brisbane there on one occasion we went down to this swimming pool down there, we got barred from there anyway, eventually,

while we were in Brisbane. ‘The Oasis’ it was called, right in Brisbane, and we took over the swimming pool and we were diving off the high tower and doing back flips and Wallace and them were spearing in from the side and creating, nothing really bad but I don’t think the locals, they told us not to come back in future, they didn’t want us there anymore.

George was a, George was an excellent comedian, he could dance, he could play piano, he was a lug merchant but he played a good piano and he was a good entertainer too, George, he was very good. He used to do drawings for the papers or for magazines, I’ve seen like that.

Like Norm Hetherington, Norm used to do a lot of stuff and that. He worked for the Bulletin, Norm before the war, he was a, he did the Parliamentary caricatures and all that sort of stuff, Norm. But George was a good, he was very good too. He’s a bit eccentric George, a bit like his old man, you don’t remember old George Senior, you wouldn’t remember him. But young George was, the unfortunate part about George in one respect, that he was a dead, he was a dead ringer of his old man, he

was exactly the same as his father in appearance, in his actions and everything he did, he was more or less just a younger George Wallace right. And I think this might have killed his, or some of his aspirations later on because he was so much like his father when he was doing work in the, when we came back after the war, he went back into show business and worked in the Tivoli and he became the resident comedian in Brisbane up

there in a theatre, local theatre up there. But he was very clever George, very clever. He was a sober bloke, he might have an odd beer or something but he wasn’t a tippler, Mike wasn’t a hell of a drinker either mate, for those days. I think I’d be about the worst bugger amongst the others, but I had a bit more training before I’d got up to them you know. Yeah.

Oh he likely to come and put on any of the acts, and he’d bung on a turn somewhere and he’d put on an act, a bloody clown act or something or other and he’d really bung on a bit of a turn. Anything at all to bust up to, you know to break up the people. You’d probably be wanting to be doing something serious or something or other and the next show he’d be putting on a bloody act like a bloody goon or something or a baboon, bunging on some sort of an act. He’d tried to break them up all the time to get a laugh out of the blokes

and that sort of a thing. But

Oh yeah he was a character, George. George was very much a character. He was a, I think he, yeah he eventually got married to Marjory, Marjory got married. But yeah I think he was a character, George. He was a real character.

Well Mike, he was in the theatre game. I don’t know what he was before he started in the show business. Mike, he had something to do with the, he had something to do with, in shows yeah, I think he was more in the legit theatre I think, originally, if I can remember rightly before he came into the business. And of course later on he got over to America into the, it was a….

Oh Mike was always one of those that, very impressive and never, always searching for material for stuff for writing and that (UNCLEAR) He was a writer, and things and that. He had a great imagination too he could, he could make a short story, like I’ve been telling you, spread out over quite a lot. But oh

he’s pretty straightforward sort of a bloke, Mike. ‘Cause he was always interested in the theatre and that, the theatre and that sort of business.

Oh no I, George Wallace and Darcy Caphrey could both play piano. They were

pretty close together. I don’t know that Mike and George, apart from working on the show, that they had a hell of a lot toward, Mike was a bit of a one out sort of bloke in some respects, because of his the theatre side of it. When I say that I don’t mean that he wasn’t part of the show and that sort of thing. He followed, he went in certain directions himself, Mike. But they got on

all right together, they were all right. But George was a real character he was, he was likely to break out on anything at any time.

Yeah Cec was a, he was he called himself ‘The Maestro’, he was the, he was the magician, he had a magnificent appearance on stage but you could never ever find anything with Cec. He was a character, he

was a real character, Cec.

He would work with cards, split rings, the ring gag and oh the usual stuff with cards and that sort of thing. Oh and disappear. He had one act that he used to do where he changed places with his assistant. He had this trunk,

he used to lock himself in that, where he have, and he changed places with his assistant in the trunk within two minutes and all the rest of the thing. We were doing the show up in the islands somewhere and it’s stinking hot, anyway Cec, he puts his assistant inside the trunk and of course they’ve got to put up a cover in front of him and all that (UNCLEAR) and in two minutes he says I will change place with my assistant. Anyway Cec, all went well, everything went

well ‘til we come to get Cec out of the box and we couldn’t. What he’d done instead of giving the keys to the lock, right, he had the keys in his pocket and he was in the trunk, he had to, we couldn’t get him out, we had to drag the trunk off the bloody stage and bash it open to get him out, and he said, “What’s wrong, what’s the matter, what’s going on, what’s going on?” We said, “You silly bastard,” he’d have suffocated if he’d have stopped in the bloody thing.

But this was Cec though, he was a lovely bloke but and he had a magnificent presence on stage, but he oh gee, he was a character Cec, he was a real character with his acts and things.

Oh one of, oh no, Billy Delaney, he

was Australia’s number one tap dancer one time. Anyway he was very (UNCLEAR) he used to like..

Well Billy was a very eccentric bloke, Billy. And he was a very good tap dancer Billy. But he got on stage one night and I don’t know what happened, he slipped and fell. And anyway he threw a bit of a fit, he said, and he went off stage, he said, “I can’t go on, I can’t go on.” He threw a bit of a willy.

He was always a female impersonator, right Bill. Anyway she threw a bit of a willy and went off the stage and that sort of caused a bit of a banana. She just had a bad day or something, I think he used to get into the, he always had a teapot there and he was suppose to be drinking tea but I think it was a little drop of gin. I think Bill used to get on the gin occasionally on the side. ‘Cause I got a whiff of it there one time but I thought to myself, hello old Bill he always had it in his teapot you know, he’d have his little teapot and drinking from that.

But he was a good dancer Billy, no he was very good. He wasn’t a bad sort of a, he was fairly, he was a lot older than us though. He wasn’t too bad though as a female impersonator, Billy. He was a character.

No, no you never drank before the show. You never drank before the show, no. I know,

Wallace accused me of, one night there were a couple of blokes in the show that were very clicky blokes and for some, I don’t know what the reason was but they told Wallace that I had been drinking before the show. There’s one thing in the show you never did, you never drank before the show, never. And as god is my judge I never did that and I would never do it. I never did it.

But he had a shot at me afterwards, after the show. And he, I got the word that I wasn’t to come on stage, anyway I went on and I did my routine that I did, what we normally do. And afterwards, and I went over and I tackled Wallace and I said, “What’s the bloody score?” You know I was really pissed off I was. And I said, “What’s going on?” And he said, “Oh you’ve been drinking,” I said, “No I have not, no way in the world.” Anyway

old Freddy, this was in Brisbane, in the theatre I think it was. Anyway Freddy was there and he was telling somebody, I think he might have been a Salvation Army Officer or something. He said what a fine bunch of boys and all the rest of it was going on and there I am abusing bloody shit out of Wallace and telling him he can shove his show up his arse and all the rest of it and so.. I was rather, I was really bloody, I was really

bloody pissed off I was you know, because that’s one thing I never did and I would never do. I mean you never did that, there was no drinking before, there wasn’t that much drinking after the show. The only time you went and had a few beers was if you had a day, if you had a break and there weren’t any shows on or you were doing something else. No way.

Not much at all. I don’t

recall them having any blues (UNCLEAR) from what I can understand, I don’t recall them having any great blues at all, they had difference of opinion. Maybe there might have been something over the music, about how you play things that but I mean that’s part of the band’s problem to sort out amongst themselves. Maybe an entrance or something or other, or maybe change something around, the way the show was run and that sort of thing, But

no.

No, no it wouldn’t be that at all. It’s, somebody was being a bit of a smartarse was having a shot at me about it, having a shot about something, why I don’t know, I’ve got no idea. I don’t know.

Oh you’d have a bit of a riotous crowd sometimes,

but not really, we never really had any great problems with them. Not really. No they always have, they might have a can or beer or something like that, no. No we never had any great problems at all not in that respect.

No, I don’t recall anything, not really,

no. No wherever we went, they were, we were welcomed to see us. I think I know, Mike probably told you we went to, where was it? We went to Jacquinot Bay or where we went on one occasion, where we were allocated an area to go into and when we arrived there the only person that we found was a Major and he was wheeling a wheelbarrow full of dirt or something around. The camp hadn’t been completely, hadn’t

been organised to prepare to receive people right. So old Freddy went down, I took Freddy down to the boss down there and he took one look at it and he said, “I’m not going to go here, my boys are not going to go there.” So we decided to, we went down to the engineers or somewhere else and found another place to camp cause this old bird reckoned that, while we were there he was going to use us to rebuild his camp for him and we decided we ain’t going to be in that at all, old Fred. So we’re not going to be in that no way, not his boys. Anyway we didn’t have

time to do that sort of thing, we were doing other things. Old Fred.

Yeah I was his offsider.

Oh he was a bit of an eccentric old bloke, he’s an old ex, an old ex, well he wasn’t ex, he was in the theatre in England, a bachelor and how he got where he was

was possible the fact that he did a bit of movie work and that sort of thing in Australia, in the entertainment. How he got in, he was 50, he was over 50, 52, or 53 or something when he got in the army, I mean he was a bit over, long in the tooth but I think it was because of his experience in the theatre game and that sort of thing that they gave him a guernsey. But poor old Fred he was harmless. I used to look after him, cart him everywhere he went, look after him, make sure that he was right. Made sure that he had

his baths and all the rest and made sure that his clothes were all right and gear was organised and everything for him.

Yep, yeah.

Yeah, us blokes…

Us blokes we carted him and put him everywhere right, we did everything for him.

Oh he had his own tent, he’d have his own quarters or if we were in a camp

then it was an established camp, he’d have a room somewhere of his own that sort of thing. But when we were, if we were in camp, he’d have his own tent with his own gear and all that sort of jazz, look after him, does whatever. Make sure he was all right dear old Fred, he’s a character.

No, no Fred wouldn’t know anyway, old Fred he was alright.

I used to take Freddy, when we were up the Tablelands I used to take him into the clubs, the Officers clubs, wherever there was somewhere for him to go. I used to take him in and leave him there and then go and pick him up later on. He’d give me a time to go and get him and pick him up and bring him back to camp and he was usually quite cheery by the time I gone to pick him up and bring him back to camp. Oh he was all right, we got along quite alright, quite well together.

Except on one occasion we were in, oh we were up in the Tablelands up there somewhere, cause I used to drive Fred and look after him. Anyway we, each of the blokes although they did certain jobs in the show, one bloke was the Transport Sergeant and another bloke did the clerical work for the show, they all had jobs, little jobs on the side.

Part, side jobs to do. Anyway I used to take Fred on the Tableland, I used to take him into Cairns and there to go to the Officers Club or somewhere, then I used to shoot out to the 288’s to go and see a girlfriend of mine right. So because I’d have to wait 3 or 4 hours for old Fred, I might take him in at 7 o’clock and pick him up at 11 o’clock or something like, (UNCLEAR) So I used to go out and see my girlfriend out there, I had a girlfriend out at the

AGH [Australian General Hospital], as a matter a fact she was very good because she gave me a hospital bed mattress so I was the only mug sleeping on a bed mattress in the camp and that was very good. Anyway this Sergeant, he was a Sergeant anyway but he had a shot at me driving the camp, he said, “You’ve been using the vehicle for your own use,” I said, “Why, what do you mean?” “Well,” he said, “when you leave Fred in there and you go and do something,” and I said, “Yeah that’s right,

that’s what I do,” I said, “what do you expect me to do, sit outside for 4 hours, outside the club or something and do nothing?” “Oh no, you can’t do this,” and you can’t do that, and something else. I said, “Look here’s the keys you find somebody else to drive him,” and I threw the keys on the table. Anyway they got some other poor bugger off (UNCLEAR) and they got him driving Fred and it lasted about 2 days I think it was.

And he came back to me and he said, “Fred’s not very happy,” and I said, “No I wouldn’t expect him to be.” Because we used to call him Fred, he was a lieutenant but… He said, “He’s not happy.” “No he’s not. I wouldn’t expect him to be happy;” I said, “What’s wrong?” “Oh, he said this is not right and that’s not right and this is wrong and that’s wrong and he wanted to know where you were.” “Well, did you tell him?” “Well,” he said, “I said you weren’t driving him anymore and he said well you better get him back here bloody quick, he said, because

otherwise he said there’s going to be strife in the camp.” So he came back, he said, “Will you take him back, to drive Fred?” And I said, “On one condition,” I said, “I do want I want to do when I go in the vehicle,” I said, “it’s my vehicle I do what want, and go where I go.” “Alright I don’t want any, I don’t want any more, I don’t want any more... “I never had any more trouble after that mate no more trouble because the only one, the only bloke who could handle old Fred was me. He wouldn’t have anything to do with the other guys and that sort of thing. Because you had to treat him like a,

he was like a baby, he was an old man but you had to just humour him and take him and get him organised and that sort of thing. I remember him coming ashore at one of the islands there, he’s got a pillow under one arm and he’s got rubber boots on, gumboots and he’s stuck out in the water and he’s calling out, “George, George come and get me, help me George!” He’s stuck in the bloody water, we had to go, he couldn’t get ashore, he had to walk ashore from off the barges, poor old Fred stuck out

in the middle of the bloody water and he’s calling out for me. I said, “Come on Fred.” Anyway but we were more friends than we were anything else, he was a good old friend and a good old bloke. And we got, because of that and I’m not saying because I say it, but everybody was happy, everything went along all right and the guys and everything was ok. And as long as everything was going right, Fred

was all right, the troops were happy, cause I knew if Fred was ok the boys were all right, they were getting a fair shake and all that. He could be bloody, the same old bloke could be real bloody cranky if he wanted to be too, you know if things weren’t going right, he’d get shitty.

I didn’t, didn’t have to, I didn’t have to. He went where he wanted to go and as long as he got where he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do.

I had a bit of free time, I didn’t have much free time to myself because we were mostly on the road, I mean we might go from Cairns from Atherton down to do 40, 50 miles or 100 miles if we were to go somewhere else. So your time was taken up but as I said I spent most of my time with Fred looking after him and that. And that’s why I didn’t see so much of the other guys who were working on building the

stage and that sort of thing right. And of course when we travelled together later on by buses, I was always driving when George Wallace became, he was promoted to a lieutenant later on, this comes in later on in the business I don’t know whether you want to talk about it now.

This comes in after we got back from all our travels in the islands and all that sort of thing. We came back to Sydney in 45, late 45. They started,

then a lot of people went out of the army, when their time was up could get out, they left. And then they formed this Lone Show Rally that went around Australia all right and showed in Brisbane in the bit theatres, we showed in big camps set up, Puckapunyal and we showed at in Melbourne in big theatres and all that sort of thing, went around Australia.

And I used to drive Georgie Wallace then because I was always looking after the boss. I wasn’t George’s, I’d been promoted at that time, I wasn’t, I’d been, I just used to drive George around. And we did the road shows, but that was in 1946 and we also used to do shows in on the radio, it was an army radio stuff, we used to

do choir singing on the radio in the city, one of the shows there. But we went on the road in 1946 and did all these rally shows, went to Brisbane, went all over the place, down to Melbourne. And that’s where I met my wife, that’s when they brought women into the service and allowed them to come in. There was a couple of singers and one was an acrobat

and another one with Mum was a dancer and when we were getting around and going to different places I got to know the wife and then the romance started there.

Oh God yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Oh well we were soldiers basically but within, we become, we weren’t, we become entertainers, we become something different right. Your role in the army wasn’t how you started off, originally as to be a soldier, to be a front line soldier, although we did go up into the front, wherever the diggers were and that sort of thing we could still hear the popping going off and that sort

of stuff. But I mean it changed, it did change dramatically right you become well sort of a semi-civilian I suppose. If you want to look at it that way. Maybe I’m wrong in saying that because we were still soldiers, we were still under command of army rules and regulations you still had to do what you were doing, you were, you had to obey the rules and

regulations and laws are subject to army discipline. I mean you were still part of the army right, but you were a different separate part of it.

Yes, it sort of faded away after a while and become lost with the other part of it, because I spent so much time after that with the entertainment side of it. Yeah, it was

a brief interlude in the middle of it, right. I had rather a mixed sort of an army career, scattered all over the place between here and Alice Springs and here and there, and there and a bit of everything, bit of potpourri.

Pardon.

Oh

in some respects it was. But what you miss out on now is that and it’s something that I’ve, we’ve tried to get. You sort of, when you came out of the army, what happened at the end of the business. Instead of somebody doing something, there were over 400 entertainers what should have happened, somebody should have got together, some of the officers or someone in charge of the thing and formed an association afterwards like the different units.

have formed different clubs, you know RSL groups, but formed an association of the entertainers, it was never done ‘cause people scattered, they came from everywhere, they came from north, south, east and west, they weren’t from any local identity you know as far as a town, a mob all came from such (UNCLEAR) they were scattered far and wide they came from everywhere. But they never did anything about it, it was only by pure

accident that we ever got off the ground with the army entertainment side of it.

Oh it would have been a big, it would have been a, well you’d had all the cream of the entertainment world, you had everything and from that they’d be a supporting group for each other

right and you’d have representatives of them no doubt, a lot could have been done for the member of the association as far as continual. See after the war they did two shows at the Tivoli, ‘Army on Parade’ I think they called them. I don’t know whether you’ve heard about this or not, you know of it, at the Tivoli. But they had about 5 comedians on there all vying with one another to get

laughs from the audience right. They killed each other, there was George Wallace Junior, there was Buster Nobles, there was well you’ve got half a dozen all these people on there, all trying to get gags out the thing, they had two shows on at the Tiv and that was as far as it went. That was it. But they had a Kiwi concert party from

New Zealand, they kept going and they travelled and toured for quite a long time after the war, they toured all over Australia, the Kiwis were very popular right. And something like that could have been formed from the Australian better part of it, well you could have got half a dozen shows as far as that goes. But if they had wanted to make one show out of it, one good show. They could have got a good show, a great show, it would have been great and toured because people were left to a loose

end, a hell of a lot of people when they come back and they could have toured around Australia, well they could have toured anywhere at all and it would have gone down very well indeed. ‘Cause in, after World War I I believe they had ‘Pat Handler and his Diggers’, they had some form or entertainment out like that. But I don’t know why it never happened, why nothing was done about it. Because Davo, although he didn’t go to England until

after, some time after that, he went over to England in charge of the light music, I know I’ve got a bit of an itch.

I’ve got a bit of itch on my shoulder.

Anyway he went to England in the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] over there I’m thinking of the music part of it over there. But it was only by shear accident that we got underway,

but this was back in, well this was 1980. I mean 46, 15 or 16 years had gone past by that time. It was surprisingly though, we still finished up, I still had 100, we had 100 people on the books but it could have, they could have had something really decent if they had got into it earlier and started about it.

Yeah

Oh well, now you’ve got me. Oh, we were in

you’ve got me,

We got over there and the Americans come in there with, one incident over there, they came over there and we got in amongst them and they had brought in a new four-inch mortar that they had been testing out and they had been shooting and we done a show for them

the night before, or a couple of days before, and we went over there to go and see them. Anyway they let go of one of these mortars and it went off as it left the barrel, we were a long way, we were fairly way away, we were just observing what was going on with this shoot, anyway they finished up cleaning up, oh quite a number of their troops got injured, they all got hit around the waist and this sort of thing, mulled over quite a lot of them out of that. But they were up there,

not far behind the front line in New Guinea and that sort of thing, they were up there when the Yanks came into it, our blokes were up there as well.

Pardon?

Yeah, yeah.

Well most of them, some people died as a result of it, but most of them got hit, it came out, as it come out of the mortar, the four inch mortar, it just spread out like that, it exploded as it come out of the thing and

cut out those that were around them, it just cut them down. I know what mortars are because I’ve used them myself and this stuff just scattered around there and blew them all, the ones that were standing around there, it was something like 20 odd plus on. I think there were fatalities out of it afterwards but I mean the damage it done was all in this part of the body and chopped them all to pieces yeah it wasn’t good. But when I say we got close, well we’d be

probably a mile or so behind the line but I mean it was up, not that far away. But…

Yeah, people went up there, individuals. One or two guys would go up there, what they call troubadours right, or three or four guys would go up there and

maybe with an instruments or a singer or something or other. And just do a show rather than cart, you wouldn’t be able to cart the whole lot in there and do that. Probably in different parts wherever they could get someone there, while the troops come out for a bit of a break, from out from behind a line, while they were there somewhere in a bit of a base and the boys would go up there and put on a turn for them sort of thing.

It is, it is. Because if you lose the morale, if your troops lose morale then you’ve got, you’ve got problems, right. Problems. And in all my history as far as a soldier is concerned if you’re the boss you have to be the best and you have to give them leadership right. And you’ve got to be able to

….in other words if you can’t do your job properly you won’t find, your diggers won’t be able to, they won’t have the respect for you and they won’t perform as well as they should either. So you’ve always got to, if you’re in, if you’re the boss you’ve always got to be the best right.

Yep,

Well you’ve got to do that because otherwise somebody else is

waiting to take your job right. You’ve got to show, lead by example that’s what you do. You show what you want, you set a standard for your troops, for the people underneath you and you expect them to come up to your standard. If your standard is down, is not good and you except things that are, go wrong and allow things to go wrong and that sort of thing.

You can do, as my last job as the Command RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major] of Eastern Command for four years, I had free entrée into any unit in New South Wales, I could go. And I knew when I went into that place after I’d been there for half an hour or so, whether the unit was functioning well or whether it wasn’t. Because if people come to you and start complaining when you got into it. I had open

sesame particularly when the warrant officers and the senior ranks could come to me and say well they’ve got problems and that sort of thing. If you get a lot of complaints from people then you suddenly know that something is wrong somewhere, that things are not going right, there’s obviously something wrong with the situation, either the leaders are not doing their jobs properly or there’s something wrong. Because when you get a lot of people wanting to

get out of the place or go somewhere else and that sort of thing, or transfer from jobs and places, they’re an unhappy lot right. But if you go into a place and things are happening and guys are working, things are moving, troops are happy doing what they’re doing, it’s a different atmosphere all together. But that all depends on the bloke. There’s two people that run a unit and on a Regiment and that is the

Commanding Officer and the Regimental Sergeant Major because he is responsible right for the top, for the whole box and dice and you are responsible to him for the conduct of the troops and their actions. I found that out because I did, we don’t want to get onto that now, do you want to talk about that.

We went to Lae,

we were at, we just come back from the Islands and we finished up in Lae and the war ended there.

Well the, everybody was happy; we got down amongst the girls in amongst the (UNCLEAR) and all that sort of thing. Oh the usual old go and have a few sherbets, we all got together and had a few drinks and that sort of thing.

Oh yes they had them inside in this stockade right and as I said the only people that could get in if you had a pass to get inside. Wallace used to be, that’s where he put on some of his best acts in there, he used to bung on an act and that, Wallace used to get in there. We used to go down there and put on acts for the girls and that sort of thing. Have a singsong and that, but they didn’t drink a lot of stuff. We didn’t go to the canteen and that sort of thing. But there weren’t any great hilarious stuff down there. I think it was

more sobriety than anything, I don’t think there was a hell of a lot ripping up and that sort of business.

I don’t know whether we were there, or arrived there at the end of the war, I don’t know exactly where I was when it stopped. We were somewhere in the vicinity anywhere there either going there or being near the place, anyway we got there. That’s the end of the war, yeah.

No, no, we never run into those people, no they were all gone or out of the way before we got there. No.

Oh I think they were just sort of thinking, they were filling in time. They weren’t, it actually weren’t there that long before we got back, what, we would be there 3 or 4 weeks I suppose before we got out of the place. Oh they were just enjoying themselves. Oh, the ‘Legit Show’, that there was one show, one of the groups was called the ‘Legitimate Show’ they were there at the same time as we were there so there was a bit of

interaction between their group and our group to. Two of the tour groups were there.

Maid of the Mountains, type of thing like that, right they were that type of thing. ‘Legit’ they called them the… (UNCLEAR).

Oh they were all the same people, they were all show people. All much of a muchness.

Oh I don’t think so. I don’t know, you might have got a bit browned off at times, if something goes wrong, if some minor thing might happen to somebody or another but I mean, basically no. I was one of those blokes that just rode along with the thing and then just enjoyed it as

it come along, take it as it comes. Nothing worried me too much.

Well after we, what when I finally discharged or what?

Well we did, that was the Commonwealth Loan Shows that we did

they had this, quite a big troop of people and we just did the tour around the states performing in theatres and the bigger camps and that for the troops to the Loan Show.

Pardon?

Yeah good, they were quite a happy group. Quite a good group. A big busload of them and

it was quite a good set up, we didn’t have to take, cart gear and stuff with us because where we went there would be theatres and that sort of thing. We didn’t have to worry about cart, sticking up stages and all that sort of jazz I mean we were going into Legit Theatres and into big camps where they had the halls and places there for us to put the shows on. So you didn’t have to worry about that part of it. But they were a happy group, quite a happy group.

Yes.

Yeah, that was when we had anything to do with them. Yeah they came in, out to Pagewood when we were out there, when we came back from Lae, when we to finish of the business. They came in out there at Pagewood, there was singers and there was contortionists and as I said, my wife was a dancer, there were various people that

ditched up, legit actors and that sort of thing. Theatre.

Oh well I never used to see much of them again when I was travelling on the stuff. I used to take George, George Wallace, he was the Lieutenant, he was in charge of the mob. We left old Fred behind when we come back from the Islands, we left Fred left us,

he came home before us from Lae, he came before we came down and he left us. We caught up with him later on when we come back after the war, at the end of the war. I used to drive George and the others all went by bus. There was a busload of them and they were a happy mob, they were always singing and all the muso’s and actors and actresses and all the rest of the thing. But on a couple of occasions some of the boys

wanted to take some of the girls out and that sort of thing. My wife, she wasn’t then but she was, she liked to mix with the girls and all that sort of thing but she wasn’t interested in going out and whipping up and all this sort of jazz. She was engaged to be married to a sailor from overseas and I was engaged to be married to to someone else at the time. So anyway, on occasion

we were down at Wagga or somewhere and they wanted to go out, they wanted me, they wanted somebody to partner, her name is Ena but we called her Midge because she was just a little tiny thing, Midge anyway wanted somebody to partner to go out with them so as to make up the numbers and I said all right I’ll go along anyway. But anyway she decided, “Look I’m not, I don’t feel it’s right about going out and that sort of thing.” And I said, “Well it’s not going to worry me,” I said, “if you don’t wish to go

out,” I said, “I’m quite happy to go back to camp or wherever we’re staying in the buildings.” Anyway from that start, she must have thought, ‘This bloke’s all right, he doesn’t want to go out and rip off the place and anything at all.’ And anyway we just become friends after that. So whenever we’d gone anywhere we used to get together. When we went to Brisbane we got together, we went to Melbourne, we just became friends that was all. And we were out at

Wagga, what’s the big camp out at Wagga? Anyway we were out there and on one occasion we did this after we done a show there or something. One night we were sitting down by the river and the swans are floating up and down the river and all that sort of thing and (UNCLEAR) and I said, “What about later getting married?” And she said, “I’m engaged,” and I said, “So am I.” And I said, “What about we get married when we got back?” And incidentally the fellow she was engaged to his name was

George, my name is George too. “Oh,” she said, “Oh yeah, I think we might do that when we get back to Sydney, we’ll get married.”

Oh well, a girl from down local, at the local, down in Victoria down there, a lass. A wartime romance anyway, but anyway, a local girl. Anyway we get up there and we decide to get married ok, we’ve got to get married.

So she rings up her mother and she said, “I’m getting married Mum,” she said, “yes I’m marrying George.” She said, “Yeah,” “But I’m not marrying the George that you know, I’m marrying another bloke.” So when we got back to Sydney here after it was all over, I wasn’t very popular on the home front because I think this other bloke would have been a front-runner or something, but obviously, I think it was more of something that mother wanted and not what Mum or my wife wanted. Anyway

we come back here and we got married in the May.

1946 and I stayed on, I didn’t get married [?], I was discharged in June in 1946. And we went to live in a unit around on Bower Street which is up the other side of Manly, up there, on the hill side, up north side. So it took a while, for a while to become part of the family but anyway it all sorted

itself out eventually and so on and so on.

And I mixed with all these people and that’s the reason why there was no way I could go back and live in the country, bush town, not that I’ve got anything to do against country bush towns (UNCLEAR) but your visage had expanded to the stage where you were talking and working with people.

It was a great adventure; it was a big adventure for me, for a guy coming from the bush and the scrub. Down there with a very small circle and hadn’t been outside the local old area for that sort of thing, for the getaway, to go to the place

and mix with the people that I’ve met, and serve with the people that I’ve served with and to visit the places that I’ve been able to go to which you would have probably, never under normal circumstances been able to go or see the people with whom that I have associated with over the years that I still, are now, 63 years ago, we still are friends today right,

we’re still mates, that’s really something. Whether it would have been the same way if I had gone from the local fellow and probably would have joined with some of the local people, I’d have probably gone back to the same local area and that sort of thing and been still living in that. But I doubt very much if I would have remained in the country area because your life expands, your experience that you’ve experienced, you’re looking for something bigger.

There’s nothing wrong with being a farmer or living in a country area, a lot of people would probably want to go back there but I mean there’s a great big world outside, one that you’ve never experienced before. And would never had have experienced if it hadn’t have been for the war. Take the bad side of it out, there was a hell of a lot of good side in it as well. And the people, as I said, that still today, we’re still mates today and this is 1941,

40 this is 62 years or 60 odd years gone by. And we still have a group together that we still get together now and we still have time together. Which is very gratifying for me anyway, the way I see it.

She was all right, she was ok. Yeah she was very pleased

we got back, she’d aged a lot and she wasn’t, she hadn’t been well, she was having a bit of problems and that sort of thing. But oh she was all right. After we come back, it wasn’t while we were away overseas but she did go overseas to see, after we’d got back home, she did go over to see her family in England before it was too late and she come back home. I

was back in the army again when my Mum died, back in 1970 when Mum passed away. But she was glad to see her boys home, she was always pleased to see her boys, yep. Very proud of them.

Yeah well actually, what happened is he’d done his time, he’d served in the Middle East and come back with

Engineers over there, he came back here to Australia, they’d gone through to New Guinea and they’d done service in New Guinea and came back here to Australia, this is 1944. He was due to go back to New Guinea again but he had, what he had in those days when you’d accrued a certain number of points, depending on your enlistment time, after so many years service and that you are entitled to get a discharge

and he was awaiting on his discharge. At the time he was a Sergeant, he was with the 6th Div Engineers and he was an instructor with the Engineers and we had a dinner, when he came to a luncheon that we had up there at Christmas time in ‘44 in the Tablelands and I’ve got a card here with his name on it and we’ve got the menu, I’ve still got the menu of the dinner we had there anyway. But he went

back, instead of going back to the Islands, which may have been a different story he went back to Bonegilla, down in Wagga to where the Engineers Training Camp down there and he was instructing in ammunition and that sort of thing and he was blown up in a bunker, nobody

knows what happened, it transpired that 27 fellows were killed in the blow up. Something happened that went wrong, there shouldn’t have been that number of people in there and but anyway it happened and it’s, no one could ever really pin down what happened to, what caused it the thing, but something, someone did something, or something happened and it blew the whole lot up.

I was in, I was in

New Britain or New Guinea one place, I received a telegram to say that he’d been killed. And it was the 21st of May 1940 it must have been 1945, it was 45. Yeah we were still up in New Guinea at the time. Yeah it was rather a bit of a smack in the face that was. Because he was due to go out, he was killed on his birthday, 21st of May. He was due to go out,

he was on his time out. It was a tragedy, but still.

I just, we just went on and stayed on there, what could I do. There was nothing I could do really, they weren’t going to fly me home from New Guinea, there was no hope in the world anyway. Fortunately I had my brother, Ted was home and some of my other brothers were home and were able to, Charles was there and my sister was there. They had someone there for her

to have some support. But I mean there was no way in the world that I could get away from up there at that time.

Oh I think people were more outgoing, more hospitable towards one another. I think the war had

made people feel that they weren’t isolated within their own little selves that, particularly people that lived in outer, like country towns. They were absorbed in a bigger crowd of people, people had mingled with others and that sort of thing and I think that people themselves, it had caused them to open their hearts if you can put it that way, open their hearts towards other people.

People who had probably lost, people who had got wounded or injured, I know one of the boys I went to school with, he had a backlash from, was in the artillery and he was blinded and coming home and he was such a cheery bloke and all the rest of it. One of the sisters that nursed him coming home married him. Be totally blind and come back to the town, moved back home. But I mean people were more outgoing I think they were more inclined to help one another or

be prepared to, you know assist one another and give a hand out sort of thing. Whereas today I think it’s all gone back the other way everything seems to be now for themselves, there’s too much selfishness in the business now. People are not as much outgoing, I don’t think they’re as outgoing as they were they’re more selfish I think at the present time.

Yeah,

I got engaged back in oh god I can’t remember, 1941, ‘41 it must have been ‘41 to ‘42. Don’t ask me now mate I wouldn’t know. Anyway it was one of those romances that didn’t last or didn’t go, but anyway but that is long past,

that’s history now. She’s probably married and got half a dozen kids by now. Anyway she’d be as old as I am anyway now, just about over the 80 mark, yep.

Well I wasn’t sure when I come out, well I’m still a butcher by trade and I still have my trade because when I went, got back to get assistance from outside

they were helping soldiers to rehabilitate themselves, they gave me tools of trade, like to work and I went back to work here around Manly and I would became a relieving, like people going on holidays and things and that sort of thing and given different... I work at a number of different shops around Manly here relieving people going on holidays or breaks and that sort of thing.

And I got a job with one place there. It became a permanent job but I couldn’t stand being cooped up inside and the shop and the money value to me from when I was in the game from shilling and pence into, you know the amount of money they were paying for things, I felt like I was robbing people but I was charging them what was paying for over the counter. You think, ‘God

we only paid sixpence a pound for sausages but now it’s five bob [shillings] a pound,’ or whatever the price was in those days you know. It seemed, everything seemed so strange to me. It seemed, anyway I stuck at it for a while and a friend of mine of the family came to me he said, “Look they’re looking for a bloke to run a newsagency down here in Manly, they want a bloke,” he said, “would you be interested in it?” And I thought yes

bugger this, I’ve had this business of being you know (UNCLEAR) it was more of any outside job, papers and that sort of thing, you know newsagents, delivering papers and this sort of thing. It was as much outside work as it was in the shop, so I felt that it would be more and it was only around the corner from where I lived up there, so I decided yes I’ll give this a go anyway. So I went down and I worked in there and I was quite happy at that store and I finished up managing the shop there while the boss used to go on his holidays and that sort of thing. For a couple of years.

Oh no we did some local stuff here and that sort of thing but I, while I was in this thing I studied singing for 3 years over there, and I went over there and there was no money in the game. It was very hard to get into it in those days. This is back in ‘49, ‘48, ‘49 right, three or four years

after the war, ‘50. It wasn’t easy to break into the game then right and I, what happened then was a couple of mates of mine that I got to know say oh why don’t you come down and join the CMF there was a battalion down here at Manly 17, 18 Battalion, why don’t you come down and join the CMF, you know part time soldiering and all that sort of thing, anyway they

talked me into it. I said, “Bugger it, I’ll go down there anyway”. So I finished up joining this CMF here at Manly and we were doing the usual training and that sort of thing and so on and so forth. And we got a request they wanted some assistant instructors to go into camp with the school cadets. You know the school, did you ever get into the cadets when you were at school and that sort of thing. And I decided

oh well bugger it I’ll go in anyway. I got off from where I was working and got a couple of weeks to go into camp for a couple of weeks or whatever it was, a month. And I went up to Singleton up there and apparently I impressed the powers to be because they said, “Why don’t you come back into the army and make a career of the army?” And I hadn’t thought about it anyway, I thought, “Oh well, I don’t know how Mum’s going take this,” (UNCLEAR)

anyway I decided I needed to settle down, I was wild and woolly, can you imagine after 9 years of wandering around how you would be settling down, and I wasn’t a very good husband I’m afraid, I was a bit wild and woolly. It took a lot of settling down after I’d been walking about virtually for 9 years, having their own independence, it was 6 years of war time anyway.

I mean, you were

a free soul more or less, weren’t you, to a point. You didn’t want to be tied down and all those sort of things. Anyway I said to Mum and we talked about it and she said, “Oh well if you want to join the army, the Regular army I’m not going to stop you from doing it.” By this time Mum had established herself, she had a ballet academy down here in Manly which went for 40 years, she taught her own, she had her own career in that which in a way was a helpful. So I went in,

re-enlisted in the regular army and I thought bugger this, I was 31 at the time. I think I was just about at the age where they wouldn’t accept anymore. And I went in and finished up out, the first thing I finished up was out training National Servicemen out at Ingleburn, right. I went back in as a corporal anyway I was a sergeant at the time in the CMF and anyway they went back and said we’ll accept you back as a corporal, but anyway. It wasn’t long before I got it back. So I was out there training these National Service boys

on one side of the road and then I went across the road and joined the regular battalion and I went over to Vietnam and fighting in Vietnam. And I was training these boys there. And I was out there for some time and then I got a transfer, into this Cadet Corps business, regular army of course but training the school boys and school cadets and that sort of thing. And then I got a posting. I was down at Goulburn for 2, down there, in the cold and snow down there for a couple of years and then I come back

to Sydney and I was posted here in Sydney. I gradually got my rank, I got promotion to a warrant officer class 2, I served in different places, and then I got promoted, went to the course and got promoted to WO warrant officer class 1 and I was posted to Newcastle up there as a Regimental Sergeant Major then I came back to Sydney then I went to..

I had the Sydney University Regiment for 3 years as the Regimental Sergeant Major there when the VC [Victoria Cross] was our honorary colonel, you know, he just died recently. Governor of New South Wales.

Cutler, Roden Cutler, yeah I can’t even think straight. He was our Honorary Colonel over there at the time.

I was the RSM over there for 3 years at the University. Anyway I went from there to the Victoria Barracks and the last 4 years I served my service at Victoria Barracks as a Command RSM of Eastern Command. And I finished at 55, I had to leave the army, and come out of the army then.

That’s right.

I was going to volunteer

to go and they said, “Listen mate, you’re too old, we don’t want you”.

I don’t know mate, because I’m mad I think. No, listen mate, just stay home and behave yourself, you’ll be all right.

Probably, could be, could be. But anyway it didn’t happen so I mean as far as that go. But overall my army career

extended for 38 years from the time I started ‘til I finished. With a break in the middle, a couple of breaks in the middle, 38 years of service. But I never ever left the army I’m still in it, I’ve still got my uniform there, that was only taken a year or so ago, this year. I can still get the same uniform on and I still round up the boys on Anzac Day up there at the RSL. I belong to. I’ve been doing the dawn service at Manly since 1946

down here, fully booted and spurred uniform and my pocket knife, so I’m actually, I’m army indoctrinated, it’s been part of my life.

I don’t know mate, a bit of both, a bit of both. We go down there, my mate and I, Fergie he’s a piano accordion player Fergie, but he never travelled with us, but he’s an excellent piano

accordion player, unfortunately he’s crook at the moment. He and I go down to the nursing home here, we entertain the old ladies, where Mum is, where my wife is down there. We do a turn for them down there, put on a show for them for an hour or a couple of hours down there. Once a month for them down there. And nearly anywhere else where they want us to go and put on a turn.

Well all I got from that was some people they said, “Look, don’t think because you were entertainer that you didn’t do your part in the show.” They said they were needed just as much as what the soldiers were needed because that was what they wanted, they needed some relief from what they were doing, right. They needed relief and they need new, brought them something that they didn’t have.

So you played your part in doing what you were doing right. So be satisfied with what we did.

Well I thought that, if I was bringing something to somebody in someway, making them feel, forget their problems for the day and making it help them to feel happy. And realise there was a little bit more than what they were doing. Then at least I felt that satisfied, that what we were doing was

worthwhile anyway. It’s satisfaction in knowing that you did something that was accepted and appreciated by others.

It was, it was. It really was appreciated. I can go through a hundred names of people here now that I’ve still got on the books. Some of them find it hard as (UNCLEAR) Australia ever

had and they gave up their time to go in there and that and they still all join up as soldiers, but I mean they went in there and they gave their time not only over there during the war but they went to Vietnam and they went to Korea. I only got mates that appeared there and done that, all that show, and after the war and overseas. But the group that I’ve got, that we’ve got, I

insisted, well we didn’t insist, but they had to be entertainers who entertained the troops between the beginning, the war years right from the start of the war ‘til the end of World War II. There are other entertainers that came from civilian life and all that sort of thing but the people on our books had to be those people who entertained between those years of the war years.

Not much of it at all. Pat Hannan and his Diggers, we didn’t know much about it, I mean I know that they did do some tour after the war, World War I. You’re talking about World War I. There was some entertainment; I know there was Pat Hannan and his Diggers and some of the really old entertainers that, there were a couple of old ladies here for years, have been around here for years, they’re as old as the

hills, you know had entertained in World War I, but very little was heard about it, (UNCLEAR) we never heard much about them at all.

No, not really. Oh I suppose so. But we did at the time what we thought was the best thing to do, right. Whether it was the right thing

to do or not I don’t know but we did what we thought was, we did what we thought we were doing the best thing we could do right. So we had to be satisfied with that.

No, the sergeants’ mess, always. There was always a singsong in the Sergeants’ mess, always it didn’t matter where we were.

When we were in camp at Singleton with the diggers, there’d be 40, 30 or 40 Warrant Officers there all together, we’d have singsongs in the mess. When I visited other messes, “Sing us a song, George, come on, sing us a song,” and wherever I went there was always, you were always welcome to sing and they wanted you to do something for them you know. And I felt while you can do something why not do it, right.

Well it was a war that had to be won.

We won that one.

At the time

There’s no, nobody’s won any wars, the whole

world is upside down at the moment, everybody’s fighting everybody else, there’s no peace at all. We won the war, when, we had to win that war right, but they never ever stop hostility, that’s what you’re saying. They never will, not the way things are at the moment. When we were in the Middle East in 1940, ‘41 it was the same over there, they hated each other’s guts, they did,

the Palestinians and the Jews and they’re still the same today. They’ll never change, no way in the world. And the Muslim groups and the different religious groups, the whole thing unfortunately it all comes back to one thing it’s all about religion. Nobody can live together they all reckon that they’re right.

No,

I can’t see the answer; I know what the answer will be. The big chief upstairs one day will say, “Listen I’ve had enough of this rubbish.” He won’t drop the atomic bomb, he’ll blow the whole lot away and I think that’s what will happen eventually. That’s what I honestly believe. When the world gets itself into such a state. Well what do you think of yourself, you’re a younger man, how old

are you fellows?

I’m only twice your age, it doesn’t matter. How do you see the world yourself today? I mean I’m going on the other side I’ll ask.

There’s one word, there is one word which covers the whole of what is happening at the present time. I’m not saying it from the people overseas but from our speaking world here, there’s one word and it all boils down to one thing, what is happening in this country at the present time and other places in the world, particularly when I see it happening here in Australia, and it terrifies me, and that one word

is discipline. There is no discipline at all, 6 year olds are telling you that they don’t like their teacher so their teacher gets the sack, 10 year olds are telling that they want to leave home and leave their parents and their parents have got no control over their children. The police haven’t got any control over them no one’s got any control over anybody all the do-gooders in this world say you can’t do this and you can’t that and what

have we got. We’re going to have the biggest bloody mess that you ever saw in your life. Because there is no discipline. Now in the army, if you’ve got an army and you’ve got a unit and you’ve got no discipline what have you got? The biggest bloody rabble of all times, you must have discipline and that’s the whole thing. That’s my view of the world at the present time, with Australia there is no control because nobody

is given, has got that control. You can’t smack your child now – you’re ill-treating your child. You can’t abuse us, you can’t make a kid in school stand up and say he didn’t do his homework last night because that is over-bearing on the child. You can’t remonstrate with them at all, you can’t do anything. Up to the age of 16 or 18 or whatever they are they’re going around, you see what you read in the papers, there are gangs of them going around wrecking the place, look what happened the other da,

the kids having a birthday party and a bloke comes along in a car and rams it into a mob of people and kills them. Now where is there any discipline, where is there any control.

But what do you put it down to, you yourself. How did you come up through, did you have discipline in your home when you were a boy?

Well sure, did it hurt you?

No it didn’t hurt me either. You get a different perspective in the world, you’ve got to think about other people, not selfish all the time. People think of themselves and think oh bugger this I’m all right Joe, but it’s what those people that are coming up now, what sort of people are they going to produce. Oh god, I tell you what mate, I fear for the future, I do.

No this has nothing to do with the war at all, I mean the people. This is what’s transpired over the last 20 or 30 years. We are gradually just getting, further and further into the mire.

By going back into the army. Discipline. Subject to discipline. Some people are amenable to it some are not. Some people need discipline, some people don’t. At the time it was probably a good thing for me, I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t have gone back in the army, what sort of future I would have had. But the fact that I had to obey, you had to

toe the line, you had to obey certain rules and regulations it settled me down.

This was self-discipline within yourself.

This is self discipline, instead of going out like I used to go out on Anzac Day when I first come home from the war, go and meet your mates, go down the pub and get pissed and probably turn up a day later or something or other and all this sort of jazz you know. I mean

that is self discipline, there is discipline but I mean the self within your self. You must have control of your own self otherwise you’re ratshit right.

What was it?

Gee now you got me now, Roscoe. I don’t know whether we did the same at the finish or not. I can’t even visualise?

‘Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye’, probably one of those things.

Yeah, We had another one there, ‘Goodbye From The White Horse Inn’. No, ‘Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye’.

Well you want that one?

I’m not too sure whether it was or not.

Well Gracie used to sing that, that’s what we sing down there when we finish our concert down there with the show, what we do for the old ladies and that.

We right? “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye, with a cheer not a tear make it gay, Give me a smile I can keep all the while in my heart while I’m away. And while I’m over there.” Block,

I’ve gone off the track.

I’ve got onto the lights of London for a minute. “Wish you luck as you wave me goodbye, with a cheer and a tear make it gay, give me a smile I can keep all the while in the heart while I’m away.” Dear oh dear oh dear, “Till we meet once again you and I. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye, with a cheer

not a tear make it gay, give me a smile I can keep all the while in my heart while I’m away. ‘Til we meet once again you and I. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.” Or something like that anyway.

Well if this should ever go before the public’s eye, I just hope that they enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed doing it for you and perhaps from it you might see something that you think is worthwhile,

and you might consider that it is worth keeping in mind and there maybe something in it that you might like to practise yourself. And I wish you luck, wherever I am whether it’s up or down, Good-bye and good luck.