Australians at War Film Archive

I’m Tasmanian born. I was born down the West Tamer.

My parents had a small orchard holding about nine miles from Launceston. It was at Muddy Creek which is approximately halfway between Legana and Grovesnest [?]. We were known as Grovesnesites. I was just a little ordinary country girl. I suppose it was a little backwater for mainland states, but we were happy. They were idyllic days, really.

Even though I was an only child I got up to a bit of mischief as a youngster. I pulled a bed of turnips up one day, which my father wasn’t at all happy with and I fed them to the horse. That wasn’t very good at all. Another day I picked some of his special flowers from his tomato plant he was cherishing. They were a couple of thrashings I got I think for those two misdemeanours.

When I was about seven I was sent to school. I’d been taught at home by my mother, Jolene. I went to a town school, a tiny school. It was a private school run by a very stern old lady. But she was a very good teacher till grade four. She instilled into us the love of the British Empire.

We had pictures of various parts of the Empire around the schoolroom. We were told about World War I. What a dreadful time it had been, and that the day would come, Great Britain had never been conquered, “But she will, my boys and girls if the children of your generation don’t play their part.” This is in the late 1920s to

early 1930s. In 1939 something did happen, as we all know. Yes, the majority of us played our part. When I left that school I went to a Business College. I wasn’t interested in country life except for swimming in the river. I wanted to work in town

as a typist or something or other. Unfortunately at about seventeen my eyesight crashed and gave way. I was informed then that I could never do any typing, office work or anything again. I could only do housework. I was horrified. Dad was quite elderly, it was time to retire. Mother opened up a guesthouse just prior to the war. I was to help her there.

From that I became a town girl.

A small orchard holding, yes. I can only speak from 1920s, but apparently the boom years for the orchards were from the 1910s and they had lots of little holdings, 18, 20 or 30 acres and all down the West Tamer and the East Tamer were

small orchards growing mainly apples and pears. Some small fruit orchards too. Where you see today grapevines, they were all orchards in my day. Where Grindelwald is today, that was my mushrooming paddock with my father some years ago. Dad also loved fishing. He had a little rowboat which he was very proud

of. He taught me to fish. We’d go out in the boat. Eventually he managed to teach me to swim and I lived at Muddy Creek. I almost swam across the whole creek one day. I seemed to be swimming for miles before I decided to turn back to shore. One early memory of the Tamer days is the great flood of

1929. There just looked like there was a sea of water that morning when we looked out our windows, cos we were right on the bank. It wasn’t nice, it was a possibility we knew it was a wild, rough muddy river. There were bits of flotsam and jetsam floating down the river. Boats were twirling

down willy-nilly. Some we seemed to recognise. There was something up the creek. We couldn’t think what that was. When we looked again it was a barge. It had broken loose - a huge barge. It drifted down and must have come in with the wind and on the tide and got stuck on the mud bank in the Muddy Creek itself. We didn’t know what had happened. During the day we discovered there had been a flood

up the river or flood from Derby and it had come down the North and South Esk at the same time and hit Launceston. Of course a lot of boats were all destroyed or battered to pieces. It was quite some time before the river returned to normal. Amongst the pieces of rubbish that was

lining the riverbank there was an old mangrove stump. Dad thought, “That’ll be good. I can make a pot plant stand for Mum out of that,” which he did. I still have that stand today. It’s just a piece of stump and it’s got a couple of packing cases. One onto the base and one at the top, that’s it. I didn’t go to many dances.

I was very strictly brought up. Boyfriends were a no-no of course. Everything was a no-no like that. Lipstick was a no-no. So I put the lipstick on when I got on the bus to go to town. It’d be wiped off before I got back inside at night.

Perhaps 50/50 there. We were all in the rebel stage of life. It was just the changing. I had to have long hair. I wasn’t’ allowed to have my hair cut. Eventually I cut a strip here and there and a strip somewhere else. Mother said, “Go and get your hair cut,” and I got it cut. I came home

and went and said hello to Dad. Came back inside “Dad didn’t notice, Mum.” By gee he did. “Did you tell that girl to get her hair cut?” “Yes.” That was it. He accepted it then. So I had my hair cut. This was about fourteen or fifteen. Gradually we broke it down and we got away. Went into town to live in 1939.

No, she just taught me the colours and numbers and how to read. I had to start all over again when I went to school, but I think I went through three grades in one year. Cos I wasn’t’ bright, but I wasn’t a dull child,

so I managed to get through.

Up to 30 we had. It was just a very old-fashioned school. There were several private schools in Launceston in those years. I think they lasted to the beginning of the war years and then that was the

end of all those little schools. The old classroom is still going. It’s still there. It’s now a studio for a well known photographer. I’d love to go in some time and say “I went to school in this room.” I’m not game.

Going to school was quite an experience. We had to go on a bus. In those

days it was a canvas top bus mainly for freight and a couple of seats for adult passengers. As a little school girl I had to sit on fruit cases half the time to get to school. Then there was quite a walk from where the bus pulled in. Then come up to Elizabeth Street to my school.

What happened soon after I started school was I landed home one afternoon with two children. They wanted to know where I lived and why did I disappear of an afternoon. How did I get home. So they came on the bus with me. I believe the police were looking everywhere for these children. I was in great trouble next day at school. Apparently these two

young children were quite noted for wandering off after school. Going here, there and everywhere. So eventually I was forgiven.

It’s only nine miles, but it stopped several places. So perhaps it was twenty minutes, half an hour, which would be quite good going. Some days it was much longer, especially going in of a morning. You’d be crawling along through a very, very thick fog.

Not knowing what was going to happen. Whether you hit something or not. It was so thick. That would be what we knew then as Lux Flats, which is now part of almost Riverside.

We were 9 miles from the GPO [General Post Office].

Yes, prices went down. We were by no means wealthy. Very much the opposite I think.

There was always food to eat, cos when you live on an orchard there was vegetables. Dad could fish, there was fish. Rabbits were plentiful. Things like that. So we didn’t starve in that way. We had our own milk and butter. Yes, the people in town suffered. There wasn’t the dole [unemployment benefits] that’s given out today. We used to

have dole queues and coupons. People would turn up at one place in particular that I know of, they were given rations of bread and sugar, flour and a voucher for meat. I think they got that twice a week various families. This’d be in the mid 1930s. Certainly after I left school. That’s how I just managed.

It puzzled me even then I suppose because they always had an appeal for blankets every winter. For the last 50 or 60 years I’ve always wondered why they want the same appeal each year for blankets. What happens to a blanket? If you get a new blanket this year it should last you 5 or 6 years without needing another blanket. I cannot solve it.

A lot of people cannot solve it, except we think they must hock them at the end of the winter.

I think they all had the same, all the small dairies. We all helped each other.

There wasn’t a lot of, cars weren’t plentiful like today. Eventually the canvas top buses gave way to more modern buses and still more modern buses. After I left school and went to Business College, I travelled in.

I did have a job or two in town for a while. Till my eyes crashed. I went back as a junior teacher for a while at commercial college when we came to town. It was a different life again.

No. I travelled into town from the Tamer and came

to town in 1939.

About fourteen. I’d reached merit standard. I had about two years at Business College. From there I went on as a junior teacher, which I loved. Then Mum needed help. She decided she’d

try to run a girls’ hostel. It was something new in town in the late 1930s, early 1940s. She started it and used it. I helped her. I said I didn’t want to do housework, but it was all right, I’d give it a go and help with the cooking. During the early war years.

He retired in 1939. He and a friend went back down the Tamer just about every other day and they got a small block of land where the old packing shed used to stand, fruit shed. They turned it into a little garden, a little toy hobby for them during the war years. They had a wonderful time there. Dad was very keen on politics.

From 1934-1935 he was grumbling there was going to be a war. I heard rumours of war. It was really no surprise to me and it was a relief in a way when the war was finally declared in 1939.

Moral values, certainly.

Very, very good moral values, which I think have stood me in good stead in my life. Both very, they were religious, but not to the point of being fanatics. Both went to church and I went to church with them. Dad was quite a leading light in his

district’s church. Mum played her part. There wasn’t a Sunday school. There weren’t enough children. I took part in church too. Was Anglican. When we came to town I just joined a church in Launceston.

Services, socials, American teas they used to have. Dances, fundraisings.

American tea. They were the thing years ago. American tea was, you’d have stalls outside. You’d go

for morning or afternoon tea inside your house and the various members of the church were one in one stall, one in another stall and doing things like that. That is how they raised funds. So I took part in those functions in my childhood.

There were dances.

I wasn’t’ allowed to go to those. I was too young. Eventually I did go to them. They were in town.

Once I left school and started Business College, sixteen or seventeen I was allowed to go into town. There was a bus Friday and Saturday nights into town,

which had you home by a little after eleven, so you only had a few hours in town. Unless you were staying for the weekend.

I was about fourteen and a half. Something like that. Yes, when I started Business College. It was the thing to have lipstick, so I had lipstick the same as the others.

That was something I could not change. I still like my lipstick. I always have.

She never used makeup at all. Strangely enough my daughter doesn’t either. Or her daughters. They think they’re thoroughly ‘modern Millies’.

I hated English. I loved geography. That was my favourite. Learning of various other countries. We didn’t do much world history. It was all British history that we had. We had very, very little Australia history. That just wasn’t in.

When I think back we were still in infancy as a Commonwealth. About twenty years. That’d be another memory too. 1927 I went into town, crowds and crowds of people. We managed to get a possie outside a shop in schooldays in Brisbane Street opposite the Brisbane Hotel. For many years the Brisbane Hotel was

the leading hotel in Launceston and had Vice Regal patronage. I didn’t know very much about what was going on, but all of a sudden a little gracious figure appeared on this balcony at the Brisbane Hotel standing beside a man in uniform. The little lady gave a gracious wave. That was the Duchess of York, later the Queen mum. So I do remember seeing

Royalty in the very early memories there.

About seven, tot quite seven I think. I’m not sure what time in 1927 they came out. It was after the opening of Canberra and it was quite a thing to go and see a royal visitor in Launceston. That’s how

we did it.

How do you mean holidays?

No, they didn’t go on holidays. Not as we know today. I don't remember Dad ever having a holiday, but Mum took me to Burnie several times to her hometown. I do remember the long Christmas breaks

from school my cousins used to come over from Melbourne and Sydney to their grandmother’s cottage or holiday home which is about half a mile away from us. We’d play together and have lovely days on the beach and paddocks and that. Picnic teas at night. They were lovely years, but that’s all sadly, we grew up and we scattered.

No. I did get to Hobart. Tasmanians didn’t travel in those days. They just didn’t travel. A lot of people before the war hadn't even been from Launceston to Hobart, which is an amazing thing to me. That’s the way it was.

Yes, it would be a long way away cos the roads weren’t always sealed. It’d be rough old narrow roads. Four and a half hours by car from Launceston to Hobart in those days. Some daring people did it in two hours one time. We thought that was very, very fast

indeed. Now I think they do it in less. I’m sure my son does it in less.

We thought it was a very smart little town, but actually I suppose it was just a little backwater town. Tasmania was a backwater when you think about it. We’re always the forgotten state.

A little piece of land that fell off the mainland. We still get mainlanders who say “Where’s Tasmania?” Never heard of Tasmania. “What currency do you have? Where are you from?” We go to the mainland on a tour “This is the oldest newspaper building in Australia. This is the oldest church in Australia. The oldest bridge.” “That’s funny. I’m a Tasmanian, but we have those places

in Tasmania, which is really Australia” But no. no, no. It’s all mainland Australia. They forget about us.

I think so. It’s always been a north and south tension between Hobart and Launceston. Anything north of Oatlands just goes by the board. Always has done.

Yes, more so in those days.

They’ve got better roads, they’ve got better things. If Launceston started something, well, Hobart would have one better. They’re still fighting over football grounds and that now. Used to be a north and south football match every year. A trainload of people would go over

south or north to these matches. Don’t think they have them quite as much now. It’s a different scheme.

It was the mainland I suppose. There was no way to get there other than by boat.

Planes were coming in in their infancy. There was the Una from Burnie, Oriana and Loogana from Launceston. The Zealandia went from Hobart to Sydney. They were the passenger ferries. A lot of freighters. I did know every freighter that came into Launceston. If I didn’t know

the name of that boat I would immediately get home from school, find the paper and look up the shipping for the day to see what boat was in port and where it was from. I loved going down to Guys Point and Inspection Head to see the overseas ships that were berthed there. Or the clam boats and the port going boats. That was a day’s outing to get out there and have a look at these

boats. That always fascinated me. I hate seeing a freighter sinking or anything like that in the paper.

They’d come in mainly for the fruit season and for the wool. The wheat. Whatever they were exporting overseas. Mainly to

Great Britain in those days. Hive of activity I suppose from November till the end of May. Be down in West Tamer for the boats. Not only West Tamer. There’d be Hobart and Glen Valley too.

Launceston.

Devonport has become the major point in the last few years. I don't think, there was Burnie. Burnie and Devonport was jealous too of one another in their ports. These days we’ve only got Earl Bay for Launceston. The maritime college has Point Wharf and Sea World I think.

Sea Horse World at Inspection Head now.

No, I haven’t seen a Tasmanian Tiger. I’ve hear about them. I must have been alive when the last one was alive in the zoo in Hobart, but

I didn't get down to Hobart myself until I was about eighteen for my first visit, seventeen or eighteen. So I didn’t see a Tiger. Whether they’re still around or not, I don't know. They could be. We’ve got some isolated country still here.

No, merit.

Yes. I’d done six years of primary schooling and in those days if you had your merit that was all that was necessary really. I would have been too old for high school. That is where

my teacher was to grade four. I should have left school at grade four and gone to a state school for two years. Then I could have gone onto high school. So that’s how the cookie crumbled.

I just wanted to be a

typist. I was taught typing, shorthand and elementary book keeping which didn’t appeal to me at all. But typing did. That’s all I wanted to do was office work. It wasn’t to be.

I’ve always had bad eyes. I used to write with my nose I was told.

I couldn’t see the blackboard. So I was taken to the doctor and had glasses from, I was ten. “That’s all right. Those glasses will do until she’s about sixteen or seventeen.” Well, that was the belief in those days. At seventeen I decided to have my eyes tested. My sight was in an atrocious state.

I had aggressive myopia. Somewhere along the line there had been blindness in the family. Untraceable. If I didn’t stop using my eyes I’d be blind at twenty. To get that given to you at seventeen wasn’t very nice to take in at all. However I managed it. I’ve still got a little bit of sight left today at eighty odd, so I’m quite happy.

I had to think about what I could do. So that’s when we thought a guesthouse or hostel for girls that Mum could do and I could help her with would be the answer, in town. And to give me the chance of being in town rather than down the river.

Had I foreseen the future we wouldn’t have sold the place down the river. My husband would have loved it, but that wasn’t to be. He was still way, way in the future.

There were two other little hostels for girls. School girls or country girls

who were coming in. It was also very popular for middle-aged ladies who were looking for accommodation for two or three weeks. It was a lovely, continual home when I think about it. Young mixed with old. They used it for three or four years and then my parents moved to Union Street.

From Union Street is when I joined the army.

1939.

Just before the war. 1940 would be the first year when it was fully occupied with students.

Yes it was. It was a home away from home for young students. They didn’t want to go to boarding school, yet their parents wanted them to attend the colleges in town. We had a family of four amongst us. We more or less had dormitories. We didn’t have single rooms as we have today. We shared rooms.

A couple of them were retired ladies who didn’t want to live with their families. So they had a room each, the two of them. They used to come and go. They’d get their breakfast in bed, get up, do their own personal washing, if they wanted a

meal at dinnertime they had their lunch, or if they wanted to go out they could go out. If they wanted to sit down in the afternoon they’d sit down. They’d play cards or play, what was it? Chinese checkers or something like that. They’d play games, talk, one was a friend of Dad’s from his childhood, so they had great times going through the old days together. They

liked it. There were two or three ladies, when their families were going away for holiday, they would book their parent into the hostel. They weren’t happy when we left the area and moved to East Launceston.

I more or less took over the cooking, with a lot of

help from mother, really, but we got by somehow or other.

Just ordinary meals. Ordinary breakfast, lunch and I don’t fancy the meals of today. It was what Mum was used to. Good old fashioned, plain cooking.

What was it? We had just plain mince, stews, casseroles,

vegetables, and pudding of some kind. Steamed custards, could be jelly, could be fruit pies, apple pie. Anything. You’re hungry? I’d better not tell you what happened to one apple pie then.

All right, I’ll tell you. But I didn't make it. By this time I was married, some years later on. My mother had made this great big apple pie, huge one. She still had two or three girls. She said “Well, if they didn’t have it this day it’ll do tomorrow for something” and put it in the cupboard.

Next morning I went to get the apple pie out and looked at it in horror. There was only about a third of it left. My father loved sweets and loved puddings. He never went to bed at night without helping himself to a bit of pudding. Usually there was a little placed in a bowl for him.

Mum called me. “He couldn’t possibly have eaten all that pie overnight on his own, but he has. It’s gone.” She didn’t ask me. I knew what had happened to it. I was married, I was waiting to go to the Islands to live. I’d gone out with a girlfriend who was living in the hostel with Mum. We’d been to the pictures. We came home and we were having

our supper. By this time Mum had apartments. There was a couple there. They were having their first child. They were with us while their own home was being built opposite. Pauline had been taken to hospital and in comes the husband, Jim. Quite happily celebrating his daughter’s

birth. We had a cup of coffee my friend and I. Out comes Dad. “What’s going on here?” “We’re just finishing supper, Dad.” “Right. I’d like some pudding. Jim, would you like a piece of apple pie?” “Don’t mind if I do.” So the two men sat down with this apple pie and that’s what happened to Mum’s apple pie. She never

did find out. Jim’s wife and I have often laughed about it since. We had to tell Pauline the joke too.

Yes, but there would have been enough the next day. If Jim hadn't been there we wouldn’t have touched that pie, but because Jim was there the two men shared this pie. That’s where it disappeared, but Mum could never

work it out.

No, not really. I had plenty of time off. 1939 the war changed

Launceston. All of a sudden soldiers appeared from I don't know where. They must have been training at Elforn [?] before enlisting. Organisation started to get busy. We should do this, we should do that, for the war, train for something. Various organisations. There was

air raid precautions. Groups to VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachments] were formed. They thought in about the early 1940 the air force would have an Air Training Corps. They were formed. I was mad keen to be in something, so I joined that.

This was all voluntary. We marched in the 1940 Anzac Day march. Our first uniforms were white boiler suits. A couple of the officers were in khaki. Eventually we had khaki uniforms too. The idea of the Women’s Air training Corps was that if they ever had women called

into the services the Air Training Corps would be given first priority. VADs would be for the army. Don’t know what the navy had. I’m not quite sure what year it was formed. We began in 1941. Western Junction was formed as an elementary flying

school. They had a Silver Wings canteen in Launceston. Air Training girls were helping there. During 1941 they started enlisting for the services. air force, navy and I think the army were the last. I know I applied for the air force. I was under twenty-one so I had to have my parents’ signature.

So I went for the exam. I messed up the eyesight test. So I didn't get any further. I was rather disappointed by that because by then I thought I should be doing something for the war effort. What could I do? I didn’t want to go to a munitions factory. I wanted to do something really worthwhile as I thought.

I was knocked back for the air force so that was it. I wasn’t getting anywhere cos the other services were supposed to be even harder. But things were still not going very well with the war effort. Our boys were, well Singapore had fallen, and Timor. We lost our 40th battalion in that

disaster. They were the prisoners of war. Eventually I did join the army. Meanwhile as Air Training Corps we were put through our courses. We were trained in drill and first aid, air raid shelters, air raid warning.

I remember I had to attend these rehearsals. I also remember City Park and Prince’s Square and I suppose the Royal Park too had great trenches dug in them. They were the air raid shelters. Air raid shelters were built. Soon after war was declared they locked up our shop windows, they were boarded up. There

were dimmed streetlights, they were more or less blacked out. At times there was total blackness and you had to black your windows out as you blocked out my windows today. All windows were blocked out all through the night cos no light could be showing. Seemed ludicrous for poor little Tassie to have all this when mainlanders were still having bright lights everywhere. When you think

about it though, Tasmania would have been a very good stopping off place except for the distance. They could have come in to Hobart, straight up the main road, taken all of Tasmania and from there they could have hopped over to the mainland quite easily. Fortunately for us it didn't work. It never happened. In

1943 a family arrived back from Sydney I think. Their father had been called up as a Naval Reserve man and he’d been posted elsewhere so the family returned. Until they got accommodation they were boarding with Mum. Their aunt was really one of

our paying guest and one of our very early paying guests and she still stayed with us. The oldest girl decided she was going to join the army. So she went down and put her papers in. I remember saying “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to put your papers in for the army? I would have joined with you.” We went down and got the paper and I signed and put it in.

Then I went for a test. “You won’t get in. You know you won’t get in. Your sight won’t let you get in.” I had the medical tests, I got through the sight test. There was a very strict lady doctor and another gentleman doctor. There was one test we had to do, we had to touch our toes without bending

our knees. So I did it. “Repeat that.” I did it again. I did it a third time. I was not faking it. I could do it. It was something I could do. I left that examination room very disheartened. “I’m not going for x-ray.” It was somewhere in George Street

where we had to have our first examination. We had to go to, it was St Margaret’s Hospital in those days, for the x-ray. I can remember this little army corporal flying down “Who said you weren’t going for the x-ray?” Get dressed quickly and get in the van.” So with that I got dressed very smartly and up to St Margaret’s.

I was quite sure if I got as far as the x-ray I would get the rest of the way. From St Margaret’s I walked home. “Well, I’ve been for the x-ray, mother.” Within 3 or 4 weeks I was in the army.

Yes. I might have faked it

a little bit. I knew what was coming. The air force were very, very tight on sight. Whatever it was I didn’t pick up something. There was just a little bit of difference in the army test and I knew what was coming and I just faked that. What I wasn’t’ faking was the touching of the toes and that, because I was a very stout child, woman, the doctor really thought

I was faking it and I wasn’t. It was something I could naturally do. So that got me into the army.

I don't know, but she thought I was. Not faking it, fluking it would be a better word. She thought it was a fluke. It wasn’t a fluke. I think I could still touch my, I used to be able to bend my fingers over. Not everyone can do it. You can get so far down, but to actually touch your toes is quite an achievement.

That was the test. Dear doctor putting this through. That was that.

We were put into groups.

Some learned to do fabrication work. Morse would be another one. Whatever categories there were for the air force. The girls were being trained to eventually relieve men. By 1941 the pick of the girls were getting through. So that would be 1940, about eighteen

months from when it was formed to when they were really enlisting for the air force. As rejects we just kept going, but it was gradually dwindling. The main thing was the Silver Wings canteen. Gradually we saw the end of air training as I knew it around about 1943-1944. It was a forerunner I think of the Air Training Corps today

where both sexes can go.

We were rostered on to work various evenings. It was open every evening I think. Western Junction was a hive of

activity with a lot of air force personnel there. Ground crew as well as training ordinary pilots. The boys wanted somewhere to go. It was just a big room, billiard tables, a fire and a fireside where they could get cups of coffee or tea and things like that. That’s how it was formed.

Just make a cup of tea or just help. There was always a supervisor, an older person with us. We weren’t there alone.

The airmen? Yes, I got to know some of them. I had a friend quite a few years. I did

have one or two. When I joined the army my interest went to the khaki and not the blue.

City Park and Prince’s Square.

Some of the older ones probably took it seriously. My father and his generation, his thinking was certainly taking it seriously. The rest of us, I don't know. Sometimes there

was a relief when things happened. We’d heard about it for so long it was a relief when it actually occurred. I think it became a farcical thing in the end, the blackouts in Tasmania. I mean blackouts. There’d be no streetlights. You had to know where you were going. The thing about that period was that I had no fear at all

of going anywhere. I could leave the centre of Launceston and walk home to Newstead or walk home to Union Street on my own. Didn't worry me at all. In pitch dark. If you’d go along Elton Road there were lots and lots of soldiers still at Elton camp for a while. You had no fear at all even though you were in the dark. Not today, I wouldn’t go out

the door, that’s how times have changed.

Mainly Tasmanian men, yes, it was. We had a 2/12th.

I think they had other mainlanders with them. There were two battalions in World War I. The 12th and the 40th and they both belonged to Tasmania. So when the Second World War came along the 12th became the 2/12th and the 40th Battalion the 2/40th. Amongst our guests or boarders, whatever you like to call them, was an officer’s wife from the 40th Battalion and her

little daughter. They came to us at Newstead and they stayed with us til the end of the war. She didn’t hear of her husband again from late ’41. She sensed that something was wrong. She was very hostile because the officer

commanding the 2/40th was a Tasmanian, but they thought he was too old so they replaced him with another officer from the mainland. Yes, the 2/40th were taken prisoners of war as we know now, in Timor most of them. This particular officer discovered that he was killed.

He crashed into something racing from one point to another to warn his troops. He was killed in action and yet he wasn’t killed by enemy fire. She was rather annoyed. Before she was officially informed of what had happened to her husband it appeared in the paper. A returning POW [Prisoner Of War] fellow officer came back and

“So and so and this happened and so and what happened to this other one.” It wasn’t very nice at all to find that out in 1945. Her daughter, his daughter, had a glorious voice. We heard her going up the hall singing Ave Maria. “Is that the wireless or is that Cynthia?” It was Cynthia. Cynthia went on

to become quite a good singer. Not a top opera singer, not quite as good as Sutherland [Joan Sutherland - opera singer], but she was round about her age group and became a teacher of singing I think in Sydney. She didn’t come back to Tasmania. Cynthia Johnson. Cynthia Townley I think she is.

Newstead was the original. There’s Newstead down there somewhere and that’s where we were. When I say there, we moved from Newstead to Union Street. Newstead was a new house. That was sold so we looked around and we rented this old, old place

in Union Street. Quite an interesting old place, it had been a lovely home to start with, then it became a private hospital, which during the war the private hospitals closed down too. So mother thought that would make a nice guesthouse. There was a garden there with plenty of land for father, he loved his garden, so we stayed there.

Yes, but when I joined the army mother decided she wouldn’t have all boarders. There was accommodation, you could let rooms and they’d be to themselves. Shared accommodation, or shared conveniences. You had your own little kitchenette and a bed in your room, but you shared bathroom and toilet facilities. That carried on for many years.

No. There were one or two characters. One, I don't know where she came from, but she wouldn’t come anywhere else but to us. She had to come. She liked Newstead. She followed us to Union Street. When mother died

she still followed to where I was, which was back at Union Street. She still came several times.

I don't know if she liked apple pies, she just liked, I think it was that she was an old-fashioned lady. I was brought up on high morals and we kept a reasonably high moral establishment. Till the last

few years when the kids have beat me.

Not so much high moral establishment as a well behaved establishment where there was no abuse of women or men or drinking or things like that. It was just a normal home

life. A clean home life. Yes. I know things would have gone, but when we got up there they didn’t interfere with anyone else, so that was all right. I think this old lady thought she could be quite safe from any attack or fear of meeting a drunkard in the hall or anything at night. I think that’s

what appealed to her.

I don't know.

I didn't have a lot of boyfriends,

very few actually. Perhaps I was too prim and proper. It could have been that, I don't know. We had our fun, but we didn’t get up to the mischief the kids of today get up to. Nowhere near it. We wouldn’t

have dared. Our parents wouldn’t have put up with it. My kids have got away with far more than I was allowed to get away with. Though they’re finding out now as their children are growing up what things are going on.

I wouldn’t get away with,

I’d be expected to be home at a certain time, sober. If I dared to come home drunk I don't know what would have happened. It’d be very daring for me to smoke. That would have been a no-no. No, I didn't smoke.

Of course we smoked. A little bit. I didn’t smoke much, though we did smoke. I remember once honestly answering a friend’s question that “yes, I do smoke occasionally.” Mother was out of the room, but she came into the room to get the tail end of it. “What’s that? Ruth does not smoke.” “All right Mum, I’ve told you the truth. I’ve told your friend the truth.

I do smoke occasionally.” From that day to the day she died she didn’t realise that I did smoke occasionally. I had spoken the truth, I did smoke occasionally. They never saw me smoke. I got out of it that way. She must have smelled it on my breath and my hands.

In those days it was occasional, but in the army years, yes, I did smoke perhaps 10

cigarettes a day. That’s not heavy smoking. Very light smoking.

Yes, yes.

Most smokers used to roll their own those days. I suppose a heavy smoker would go through forty to sixty cigarettes in a day.

We had a set routine in the army where I was for a while. We’d have so many cigarettes a day and that was it.

No, I was never a drinker. Yes, I’d have a social drink, but no, I was never a drinker. That was because it didn’t appeal to me. If I wanted to drink I had a chance to go and drink.

Especially when I turned 21 there was nothing they could do about it, my parents.

No, we were more or less all the same. There’d be one or two who'd have an excessive drink. One or two would be heavy smokers. But apart from that, no.

Going to the pics [pictures] I think was the main thing. I wasn’t a dancer, I couldn’t dance. I’m not musical so I can’t dance. That seemed to be the main thing.

Gils would go with girls if the boys were away. They had their boyfriends away so we’d go as a gang of girls. That was the main thing.

Whatever was coming. We would go to the Plaza, the Princess, the Star. There was a very, very popular film,

but it was too pricey for us when it came to the Princess, so we waited for it to come out at the Star, which was the return theatre out Novo way. And there was the Majestic. You had to have a very, very good film to go to the Majestic. Yes, we saw anything and everything that was going. We were quite into films. Sometimes we had the backseats downstairs and sometimes we’d take the good seats upstairs.

About two or three shillings difference, which was probably a lot of money in those days, but today, well, I don't know what they are cos I don’t go.

No. You had the ice cream boy that would come around at interval with ice creams or sweets. You could have that.

That’s’ something new that’s come out in Tassie just lately I think. Popcorn. No, there wasn’t the fast food chains around in our days. That’s quite new now. It would have been very, very, I don't know what in those days. That wouldn’t have been in at all.

You would dash out at half time and if you wanted fish and chips there’d be a fish and chip shop somewhere where you’d go and get your bag of fish and chips and have it before you went back into the theatre. You were always allowed chocolates. Each theatre seemed to have a sweets bar.

Quivers I think, Fantales, chocolates, always chocolate, Cadbury. And ice creams. Peter’s Cream Betweens and Cones was another one. High cap things in paper caps.

Yes. You’d start with a newsreel I think. Then there’d be a shorter film, interval and then the main film. Then you’d come out about 11 o'clock and they’d be helter-skelter down the street to catch the last bus or tram home. Trams mainly.

That’s something that’s disappeared from town completely.

Tramlines? The tramline used to run from Mowbray or somewhere out Mowbray way, right through to Carmila, just on the southern outlet or southern part of the city. That was one line. It ran up here

from the city to Wentworth Street. It went out to Newstead from the city, up to Ballan, it went up West Launceston. And it did go to the wharf for boat days. Then they brought in,

there were a few buses on other routes, then they brought the trolley buses in. Then they got rid of the trolley buses and go the buses up to the Metro system of today. The trams were very good. We liked the old trams. It was only twopence to go in of a daytime and twopence at night. Then they brought in ticket. We were rather clever at knocking what the conductor’s punch was. So we’d have a few

tickets and we’d save them when we saw this conductor with such and such a punch we’d show him he’d already punched our ticket. Probably punched it three weeks before, but that didn’t matter. We got away with it. We were cheats. I wasn’t the only one that cheated.

Jeanette McDonald, Nelson Eddy. I loved those. The one we couldn’t afford was the big one Gone with the Wind. That’s when we went out to the Star to see it on its return. This Above All, Waterloo Bridge, all the films from mid 1935 to 1945,

those 10 years would be about films I saw. After that I didn't see films.

Cary Grant, Ronald Coleman, Issy Howard, Nelson Eddy, Tyrone Power,

was there a Robert Green or somebody Green? Clarke Gable, Robin Echet, can’t think of them. I’ve forgotten them.

Yes, there was always the Players’ Society. They put up plays two or three times a year. There were

concert parties, there were concerts. There was the yearly competitions, which drew quite a following, which yes, I did go to the competition. We’d go every night while they were on. There was church entertainment. I did belong to the church when I came to

Launceston. I joined the church. I belonged to their badminton club. I was a Sunday school teacher in the church. Yes, there was entertainment that way.

Only badminton. I loved that. Summertime we’d go swimming.

Sometimes we’d go down near the mud hole. Other times we’d go up to the basin or if we could get on a bus we’d go down river to the beach. That was the best of all. River strip was all right in those days. The Yarra Whittey [?] used to still go down the river

especially on a Sunday and we’d go down for a day’s down to Georgetown on the boat. You might get time to have a swim while you were at Georgetown, you might not.

About eighteen yes. My parents refused to accept the fact that I had bad eyesight, so I was

sent to another doctor in Hobart. I had to go back to him about every six months for quite some time. That’s how I made the first trip to Hobart. One trip down to Hobart I went down with my cousin. It was time for a check-up. War had broken out.

Was it September 1939? We got to Bridgewater and we were pulled up and the car was examined. I think it was soldiers that examined the car. “Right-o, on you go. Green’s the password.” Reg drives on. We get to the other side and we were pulled up again.

“What’s the password?” Reg looked at me and I looked at Reg. We mumbled “Did he say ‘green’?” “Right, on you go.” The password was ‘green’. Why they had to pull us up, every car was pulled up before they could go south from Bridgewater or north from Bridgewater. That was quite an experience. I suppose that was our first experience of

war conditions.

I knew quite a few in the 2/12th. A friend was in the 2/12th. 279 was his number, so that’s a very low number.

I think I did come across TH1 [?] too and TH4 through my army life, but Jim certainly was a low number and his friend was 290 and somebody else down the river, quite a few of the ex-Tamer boys were 2/12th. One I think became the director? What is he? Assistant Director of the Repatriation Department in Canberra. So

yes, he was a Tasmania boy that one.

No, it was all censored. They might say something but that was but out. We couldn’t get it. Jim would write home. He went to England. His group went to England.

Eventually they were Rats of Tobruk. They came home and then they went to New Guinea. From New Guinea they came back to Tasmania. We used to be able to tell how many years service they had by their blue stripes. Whether they had one, two or three years overseas service.

No, wouldn’t see them in Launceston as much. But from 1943 yes, there were quite a few. I think I must have been in the army in Hobart. Yanks hit Hobart. I mean, “Hit Hobart”. Thousands of them. Boats just came in

and unloaded their troops. It was the first port of call for quite some time for the Yanks. Their first leave. We came there and they made whoopee and the girls had a wonderful time and the shops had a wonderful time. They bought the shops out. They had the money, they spent and they bought everything and left Hobart a very dirty city with cartons all around the place when the ships departed

the next week.

They left money behind, but they also left, well, they spoiled West Point. It was never the same after the yanks had even to Hobart. West Point was an exclusive place till the Yanks hit it. Then every girl went to West Point after that. And every boy too

I suppose.

Well I got the call up notice, so I had to go down to Anglesea Barracks. And someone had suggested that such and such a girl in such and such a shop was joining up, so, somehow or other, someone arranged that we meet, so we met, and we were travelling on the same train together that day

to Anglesea. Two more girls joined us at Western Junction I think, there were four lasses on the train. Alright we got down to Anglesea Barracks, somebody met us and quite a few, we were, what’s the word for the night, billeted for the night at I think it was the Salvation Army

Red Shield Hostel or something. And next morning we had to go to the barracks at such and such a time. That’s where we were sworn in and given our numbers and then kitted out. And we ended up getting out to Brighton about, four o’clock I suppose in the afternoon. It wasn’t Brighton actually, it was Broadmarsh and we were allocated to tents, four to a tent,

so the four girls that were together on the train, we all managed to share a tent. We’d no sooner arrived there a whole bus load of army girls, you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry, they were the departing rookies, they’d finished their term and they were leaving, they’d finished their

training, they were on their postings. Oh, madam heard that somewhere or other and she wasn’t at all pleased, so we had to learn how to make our beds for the night, straw palliasses on a tent floor. May, It’s getting pretty cold down in Brighton and Broadmarsh at that time of the year, had to walk miles to the ablutions blocks and

the toilet all, no not toilets, latrines, sorry, I think that’s the word. We had our first meal of course in the mess, what did we have to look after, did we look after a cup and a plate and a spoon I think. Oh well we managed that night in bed, that was alright, we got our bed made, we got the bed, we got quiet by lights off

whatever we had for lighting, I don’t know what we used, forgotten.

Two pairs of shoes I think, two pairs of stockings, two pairs of pants a shirt, a couple of shirts, a jumper, a great coat, and a skirt and a tunic. Unfortunately as I was so big I couldn’t have that, they didn’t have one in stock to fit me, I had to have one made.

So I had to wear a great coat for the whole of my rookie days. Comes the next morning, and there’s a whistle, it was dark and it’s cold, and it’s freezing, anyway we got out on the parade ground, we lined up, out on the frosty ground, we had to do roll call, then we went back and then we had to get dressed and get to breakfast, and in my great hurry to get to breakfast

or something or other, I walked into the tent pole. Bang, what happened, my glasses were all cock eyed. Oh, can’t see, so this poor little (UNCLEAR) was put on a sick parade report, or sick report, and the RAP [Regimental Aid Post] ward, I think they managed to straighten out enough for me to see, but no, I said if I can get to Hobart I can get the glasses fixed.

Yes alright, you can go off for the day, you’ll be escorted into Hobart, you’ll go on the duty bus, so I went on the duty bus and I had my escort and I got my glasses straightened at the opticians at Hobart, I knew where they were. But no that wasn’t enough, I had to go to the eye clinic just for a check up.

Well I had the check up, this test and that test and that other test, room full of men and women of all services I think, or mainly army, but there were air force and navy there too, muttering away to themselves, thank goodness the big knob is not around today, the, the boss man’s not around, thank goodness, easy day, he’s terrible. Well

I missed the duty back at two o’clock and I missed the four o’clock duty bus back, I’d have to catch the six o’clock train back. Alright, I’d do that, I had to wait for this test, one test to go. And there’s an eruption coming through the door, a big burly looking officer walked in, went into his office. That AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service] out there, send her in to me, what’s she doing?

I was the only AWAS in the room by this time. Oh, one of the staff said, I’ve just got to do that test sir, oh well I want to see her. I had to go in and face this great burly officer. Trembling, I was frightened, I was scared, so he looked at me, yes, yes, yes, he looked at my glasses, these aren’t prescription glasses.

Yes sir, they are sir, oh no they’re not, they’re not prescription glasses, where’s the prescription go and get it. Is it here in Hobart, I said yes, go and get it. That meant I had to go back down to the optician to get a copy of this prescription. I had no hope of getting that six o’clock train did I, or whatever time it was. Oh well it’s the midnight horror then. Eventually I get back to the clinic with the prescription,

by now there’s another long queue and I’ve got wait my turn again. Oh well I’ll wait here, and I went in, I handed him the prescription, don’t put me out of the army please sir, meanwhile I was thinking this was going to be very interesting, very interesting indeed with this prescription. Don’t put me out of the army please sir. Oh no I’ll give you a new pair of glasses

how are you after all this time? It was his own signature in the prescription. He was just having me on, made me catch the midnight horror back to Brighton. The midnight horror was the train that left Hobart the main, where’s the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation], near where the ABC is now I think it was the main Hobart station. And it stopped at every little suburb on the way to Brighton, took about an hour or two

an hour and a half to get to Brighton, from Brighton you had to be conveyed by bus to your camp, so that was my first day in camp.

Because of the number of stops and it came up to Launceston, you didn’t get up till, about seven or eight o’clock in the morning. It was known as the midnight horror, because it was a horrific train it was a combined passenger

luggage, or cargo train and if you , perhaps one carriage or two carriages and the rest would be just cargo or whatever freight or whatever was coming up and it would stop at every siding and any little place on the way and shunting backwards and forwards, that was, it was known as the midnight horror. After that it was plane sailing, hopefully.

At Broadmarsh. The next day we were called in, why are we, when do we start rookies, we’re not doing any training, why are we here? The rest of you are coming in later, well we were known as the holding platoon, nobody told us why for quite some time, but, we were in, my particular age group were in the manpower quarter.

Or bordering on it, where manpower [The Manpower Directorate] said you will go and work so and so, so and so and so and so. And the army had grabbed us ahead of manpower and so that was why we were in ahead of our time, to beat the manpower call up. So, what will they do with this twelve, or thirteen or fourteen, or whatever it might have been twenty of us altogether waiting for training.

So we were just, some were dispatched to kitchens, you’ve had previous office experience, yes, alright you get over to this office and you go somewhere else, that’s how we filled our time until we went into the rookies training from tents in Broadmarsh we were the first one’s in huts in Brighton, we were the first rookies school at Brighton itself, previous to our school it been done at, Broadmarsh.

So, we were in the (UNCLEAR) lines I think at Brighton.

Yes, yes it was. Or in my day it was, when I was there, the few weeks I was there, yes it was. Probably used for something else before AWAS came into it. Because when the first, the first few rookie schools, one might have been on the mainland and there were several on Calejit [?]

I think, various places around Hobart and gradually they had a few at, Broadmarsh and then onto Brighton.

Well for us? Holding, because of the

manpower, the army had pulled us in, they wanted recruits for army, they wanted, whether they’d gone through our applications and decided that we’d be good candidates, I don’t know, but they were beating manpower, manpower were stepping in. Manpower seemed to work perhaps it was a 25 year old, I don’t know how it went, 25 year olds and

down, or whether it was going up, as you reached a certain age, you were man powered automatically man powered, if you weren’t working or if you weren’t in a reserve occupation, you were just placed where manpower wanted you to go as a civilian, and that wasn’t going to serve my country at all, in my way of thinking so I beat the manpower, and that’s why were in the holding platoon.

I think it might have only been three weeks, I think out rookie school was about a month, we finished I think in July, end of June or July, really July and from there we were posted to our units.

We were

to be the next intake or next official school or AWAS, yes, and the rest of the girls that made up our school, arrived the day before the school actually started, some were just army girls and we did have 12 AWAS who were already in the services as AWAS, but hadn’t done a rookie school , so they came in and joined us. Then the fun began in earnest.

A general going through of army procedures I think which would be lessons and lectures. Then there was route march, route march after route march after route march, in all kinds of weather, we were given

ground sheets I think to put over our coats, it was wet and it was quite often wet. Seemed long days, we had to be up early and we’d be going I suppose to 10 o’clock at night, but we did have a little bit of time off during the day for meal times and I don’t think we always had a lot of lectures after tea at night. It was more entertainment or

whatever was going on, danced whatever they had at Brighton itself, which was still the main army camp for Tassie. The route marches we’d go down out to camp and way up to Mangalore, or back almost to Bridgewater, depended on which side of the road we went. We had a

female drill instructress and by gee she was strict, she was very good. But she made us work and we really worked with our route march and lines, falling in and falling out and we had to number off, and we had to go according to height, right up the line, oh yes I’m taller than you, I’m taller then you, oh that’s not right.

And all of a sudden come on you up there, and I’d go six or seven paces up to the right, and all these girls would look at me, because I was a stout girl, didn’t look tall, most indignant to find that I was taller than actually when the (UNCLEAR) you had your tall ones at front, and that’s how they sort of sweeped it that way. So anyway.

Just ordinary shoes, walk up shoes, lace up shoes, they were very good shoes they supplied us with though, not just common old cheap brands, they were the brand shoes, of the day. They were good brown shoes. Yes.

Oh, no, I think they were just

probably wasn’t to go, whatever your size was, if it was a five or a six, and you might have gone in width, and that was it. And of course if they were too tight and you got sores or anything after a while you would grumble and they would have to replace the shoes and that’s all there was to it. As long as you didn’t dispose of them you were alright, you could change your things provided they were well worn or you had a reason for changing them.

But you were in strife if you lost them.

I think we had a male instructor too but mainly female, not it was a more or less, completely, probably the first one that really had a complete female officer, or whatever they were.

With the exception, I think it might have been a man who would instruct us in procedures with gas masks and things like that, little, more a little sideline, not so much a sideline, but what’s the word, well I suppose they were essential lessons but not long lessons, might only be a half hour segment in the day or

something. But on the whole they were females. Yeah.

Army procedures, AMR and O’s [Australian Military Regulations and Orders], you had to know the ranks of whether you were a

corporal, recognise by your badges what rank the officer was, where they fitted in the establishment and that was drilled into you pretty thoroughly, all army procedures. And then you were really taught to march and you were given instructions in gas, gas mask, use of gas masks, going through the gas chambers

things like that. Yes.

Oh we had to have the gas masks on, we went through a room I think and the quicker we got in the quicker we got out. We didn’t linger very long in that room, but I suppose it was a very necessary part of our training to know just what to expect. We also

had our fair share of injections and, we got a, vaccination thing too, they were all given to us, that all went through the rookie school part of the training. Vaccinations was a couple of days before rookie school ended. And you weren’t very well for about the ninth day or sixth day or whatever it was, that’s when the vaccination

would hit you. And a lot of people didn’t like the vaccination, a lot of people would keel over, and, even men would keel over when faced with vaccination.

Smallpox, yes Smallpox. The other injections were for whatever you had, Cholera and you name it, it was all part of the army

all army personnel had to have it.

Yes, yes. I don’t suppose you’d be in the army if you were a conscientious objector so they’d be the only people that would be able to protest, so we just had to have it whether we liked it or not, we were in the army, we did what the army told us. We had to obey AMR&Os.

army what, or military orders or whatever it was called…

I think a lot o f us did. it was tough but I don’t think it was as tough as the girls have had it today.

Nowhere near, we didn’t do half of the training that they go through today. Not from what I’ve seen on TV, definitely not and we all knew it was only going to be three or four weeks, they couldn’t put us out really, it was set time and as soon as that time was over, well we’d be posted somewhere and then we’d really begin our army life. Oh yes the first thrill of course once we were in the army was who was going to get the first letter from someone or

that. We were all waiting for our letters, and looking for them.

From home or from boyfriends or sweethearts, or whatever yes. Yes I was one of the first to get a letter, and he wasn’t an army boy, he was an air force boy.

Hm.

Well you see I would have, had I had the choice, I’d have been in the air force in 1941 not the army in 1943. I met him at the Silver Wings Canteen that boy.

I think he ended up in Mackay, or Bowen or something up in Queensland. He was at Western Junction a Tasmanian boy, but he was at Western Junction so when he came home on leave we’d see each other and that was it.

We were friends, real good friends. But nothing more.

It may have developed into something later, I don’t know. I wasn’t interested later on.

Yes, I suppose it did, but when you look back and you think of all the ones who

were going together in 1938, 1939, and who married and who had fifty, sixty years of happy married life, they weren’t such a bad crowd of people after all. They were the, they why marry, why young, you’re too young but they’d come through a lot, far more than today’s marriages. So yes, no they, those people that married and were parted during the war they’ve

survived a lot.

There’s something there.

Yes.

Well we eventually had our passing out parade I suppose,

we had to have a written examination, I don’t know where I came in that, I just passed, I certainly wasn’t top of the school or anything, nowhere near it. Then we had that wretched smallpox injection, then we were given home leave. That meant I could come home to Launceston for the day, for the weekend, first leave home.

Then came home, various ones, then we went back to Brighton and from there we were given our postings, and we didn’t see a lot of those girls again. Some of them I never saw again, the girls that were in the rookie school, we just went scattered all around the state or interstate. Some yes, I’ve kept in touch with.

One I found after about 40 years.

No. I was so keen to get into the services I didn’t care what I did, I’d do whatever was needed, wherever I could go. But because I’d had previous office training, that helped I think and I was just

posted to movement control, I didn’t know what movement control was at all, really, but I soon found out. And, I suppose, oh you’ll go to movement control and you’ll be billeted at 23 AWAS Barracks, which is Lindfield. So to Lindfield Barracks I went, and that was another experience.

We slept on the floor, on palliasses still at Brighton, in the rookies camp, after we left rookies we got beds, I think they were just one big hut, you get to Lindfield and there are huts but they’re in cubicles, the centre aisle, from the front door to the back door, there’s a

an aisle and each side of the aisle there were cubicles of two beds, two beds, two beds, partitioned off that way. Oh well, my partitioned bed mate was a Corporal Lois Line, alright, but she wasn’t there the first night or two. Anyway, I was starting to feel the effects of the vaccination,

I managed to get through the first day at work, lasted till five o’clock, then I got home to Lindfield, but I don’t think I had tea that night, I was feeling pretty sick but the next day I was alright and that’s all my vaccination was to me but for some that really bowled them either. Corporal Line eventually returned from leave or from wherever she’d been, oh yes we chummed up. And she took me under her wing.

She decided she didn’t like the barracks that she was in, she was going to go into the house, and the next thing I know I was in the house with her. She said, I had hay fever and I couldn’t stand the such and such and such and such so I went along too, and we had the most gorgeous room possible, along with two or three others, at Lindfield that was, anyone could have.

Still a barrack room, but still it was a room, I think there were about seven or eight beds in it. Lindfield had been a lovely old home, commandeered by the army for quarters, for AWAS quarters, well the army, I think the government commandeered quite a lot of the homes in those days for various military purposes, or air force, whatever they wanted.

And, they had verandahs they had built, they’d extended some of the rooms I think or added on, perhaps pavilions, verandahs, the mess room, I think that was added. There were rooms upstairs and downstairs where we were. There was the Sergeants mess and the Officers mess. All the kitchens were downstairs,

mess rooms were downstairs, there was a sitting room downstairs, whatever we called it, recreation room. Laundries were downstairs, somewhere or other, gorgeous gardens, beautiful gardens, old tennis court. And there were three, I think there must have been about six large army huts in the grounds, two or three were for Sigs [Signals] , one was for,

the ones that were on night duty had to sleep in one special hut, I don’t know how that worked, because they’d be forever changing, changing their huts. And as I say we had this lovely room, it was over the main dorm, but it looked also out over the harbour, Sandy Bay Harbour which is beautiful.

Also in the front was the, there was a small, I think there was a latrine there too, but there was a shower, then there was a big room, a lovely big room which was the RAP, I think we called it the RAP, and another room, and most of the officers were accommodated in the house. So I was rather privileged to be a little rookie private and with

Corporals and other ranks.

They were still there, we were altogether. We were still mucked around and messed around, and that, whatever you like together, yes. But once we got out of our rookie school, we didn’t have to wash up or do that. We had kitchen staff and, what did they call them.

Kitchen hands will do, they had to the washing up and the serving, and more or less, not the clearing away so much as al that sort of work we didn’t have to do kitchen chores at all, it was all done for us, just like a boarding house in many ways, we’d appear for our meal, go on up for our meal, get out meal and eat and then we’d be off.

Yes I think they had to clean away.

There was an officer in charge of the 23 Barracks and some of the other officers would be at the headquarters and that would be billeted also at Lindfield Barracks.

Oh there

was a room for all, there were another couple of privates there as well, but it, you had to be there more or less on a health reason and somehow or other Lois had worked it for me to be there too.

Well I did get hay fever, but it wasn’t the excuse she was making, whatever her excuse was, she, she was a very nice girl, she was a very strange girl, she could never go on a parade, she would faint. Anything she had to march

or on a parade, she would faint. I’ve known her to spend a day in the RAP, and get up at night she was alright, and she’d go dancing till all hours of the night, so I think a little bit of it was an act with her. But we were still good friends, we still are, it was her brother who went on to become our Assistant Director. So,

and I did know of her and her family before we were in the army.

All sorts of tricks I suppose, but I couldn’t teach her to smoke, she wouldn’t smoke, she was one who never smoked.

She knew every trick in the trade I think to get around things. Her dad

was a World War I man, her uncle was a World War I man and her uncle was also still in intelligence in the Second World War, so, it was, she knew all the trick to the trade, how to get the most out of anything.

No she was in, A Branch, G Branch, A Branch I think, no she was over in the main block, Movement control was in

a little old office, or a little old building on the left as we went up to Anglesea Barracks. Convict built building, it was only a small detachment, but it was an important detachment I suppose really. It had to be.

No. That, that was all part of what, wasn’t a part of army days.

What I learnt at Business College, that was all, that’s where that came in. If you had any aptitude, a lot of girls were trained, they picked it up, or the men, if a girl could do it, a man could go from Brighton to nearer the front line, that’s how things worked.

From Brighton, yes I did, yes. It was movement of personnel, mainly on duty, not so much the (UNCLEAR) side of it, because that was the lad’s job, but if they were moving one, or 20 or 50 troops, they had to go on a movement order and you had to know where they were going from. Tasmania to the mainland, and somebody on the mainland would take over the next part of the journey.

Part of the job would be big movements of troops from say just on camp exercise and you’d have a train, the boss knew exactly how many carriages he would need, how many carriages of this type or that type he would need to move 400 or 500 men or personnel. I want so

many of this type of carriage, so many of that type of carriage, and I want it at such and such a time and that was how it was worked out. It was one hush, hush thing, very hush, hush at the time. It was an exchange of prisoners, or to be an exchange, I think it was the Orangi [Oronsay], it’s a very big ship,

or, wasn’t that big by today, but 40 odd thousand ton boat came into oceans here, I think it was oceans here, and they had a troop trained from Brighton or whatever they had these prisoners, had obviously come from the mainland, so I suppose they came from the ferry to one station and then they were held in Tasmania till the boat came from overseas and they put them on board.

It was quite a hush, hush operation getting all these German, Italian, mainly, mainly German I think prisoners on board, to get away. One or two very well known, or supposedly very well known spies amongst them. So that all passed off pretty smoothly in the end, so that was one thing.

Yes.

Well they weren’t in Tasmania all the time, they must have come from the mainland sometime, from some part of the mainland to Tassie, I assume they came by our own ferry, which would be the Oriana, I’m not sure about that. Because they were already I think in Tasmania when I got to movement control and they may have been several weeks in Tasmania somewhere. But it would be all behind

very high security fences and things like that, and be all very hush, hush.

Yes, yes, Tasmania would have been their final staging camp before they were put on a ship, I think it was the Middle East they were going.

I wasn’t, no, but some members of the staff would have been. The typists would have been the one’s doing the movement orders or whatever, typing had to be done, and everything was hush, hush as I said. The staff was, three girls, it was about a staff of ten, I think.

Perhaps more, there were a couple, who were away, and of course we had the three or four up here, but this was all Hobart.

Well we had a major, he was the head sherang of the group, a couple of captains, and a lieutenant, couple of warrant officers upstairs. We had a,

oh yes the old Major had his batman from World War I, he was part of the yard crew or something, he was there, and there was a Don R [despatch rider], the railway had an officer, a man, not two men, and there were three army girls and a junior clerk. And we all had jobs to do, the girls were mainly moving

the paperwork that, the typing that that had to be done. Every officer, every person that was on duty would have to have a movement order before they could proceed to the next posting. And that was our job to do all that, to up and get it all up, probably done in triplicate or more.

Well it’s a piece of paper

so long, foolscap paper I suppose, and it would say that private, or whatever your rank was transferring from one unit to another unit, it might have been in South Australia, wherever and we were forwarding him on, he had the authority to go and to travel on, he didn’t have to do any paying, we would authorise his travel on the train or bus or whatever it was. To get him to

Melbourne, or wherever, he’d get to Melbourne and he’d be taken over by other movement control personnel, another detachment. We were Seventh Movement Control, but I think we became third, second or Third Movement Control, Tasmanian detachment. Our head office was, AHQ [Army Headquarters] Melbourne.

Oh, it wouldn’t take that long, just getting it typed up. Wherever it had to go, or wherever he was to be posted to, if there were 50 going, well I suppose they’d come in from whichever unit was being moved, an officer from there would come in and it would be arranged through the officers and the

girls would type up what was necessary and hand it back to the major and out it would go. We got into trouble one day, it was a very hot day in Hobart, Hobart can get very hot really, and we’d open the windows, we had no right to have the windows open, so our old yardman told us.

Don’t you know you shouldn’t open windows in an old stone building. You keep them shut and you keep the coolness in, we didn’t know so we thought it was alright to have the window open to have a bit of air in, this was the girls. The girls weren’t popular that day at all for letting the hot air in. That was one thing, well eventually I got tired of typing movement orders, so I went upstairs with the

warrant officer and we did the bookwork upstairs. There was quite a bit of bookwork and, you had to record all the letters, all the mail that went in and out, all of that had to be done. We’d never start work of a morning until we’d had our cigarette, we’d pause for morning tea and we’d have another cigarette, we’d go off for dinner, out, home, wherever, we wouldn’t start work in the afternoon until we’d had our cigarette, and then we had our afternoon cigarette

and perhaps I’d have a cigarette at night. And that was my sum total of while I was working in movement control.

Occasionally, it depended who I was with, if I was with a group of girls who smoked, well yes I’d have one, if not, well I didn’t worry, it was just a social thing

having it at movement control. The girls, the other two girls did and they were heavy smokers, and I don’t think Rex was a heavy smoker. I didn’t indulge heavily. While I was at, billeted at Lindfield I became a weather forecaster, I had an affinity with the mountain, with Mount Wellington and we were up near Mount Wellington, it’s right up the top end of Davies Street.

And I could look at the mountain and feel I could touch it, and if I felt I could tough it, it was going to rain. So, we’d go on parade before we left, and we’d have to march down, or line up before we left barracks to go to work each day, lovely sunny day, lovely fine day, and I announced one

day it was going to rain, we should have our coats, it’s going to rain, oh nonsense, so off the girls go, we all went off, I think I got my coat, well before they got home at night they were wet, that wasn’t funny at all. It happened again, and one day I heard muttering, what did Ruth say, what did that girl, what did Plummer say, did she say it was going to rain, yes.

Darn we’ve got to go back to the house to get our coats. They learnt that if I said it was going to rain, it would rain, and often Lois and I would leave the barracks, oh look at the rain, look at the mountain, come on we’ll make it and we’ll race up Davies Street and as the rain was starting to fall we’d be running down the drive to the house, it was just uncanny that I could, that I had that sense in feeling with the mountain.

Never noticed till then, it was just

something that I picked up while I was at Lindfield and even if I go to Hobart now, I can still sense when it’s going to rain, when there’s rain about. It was uncanny really, that I could say, yes we’ve got time to get from A to B before it rains or it’ll rain before we get there. I knew it, it was just something I knew. That was one incident.

our room got rather untidy, so we got down and cleaned it out one day, and we obtained some shoe polish, tan shoe polish, and some rags and we polished the floor, it didn’t look bad when we finished, but we were very messy, but the officers got an idea, the Lindfield officers got an idea that the whole barracks could be cleaned up.

So we were confined to barracks for the weekend, that wasn’t funny, we’d done our job. So we’d grizzled, Sunday morning we grizzled, we wanted to go out, can’t go out unless your rooms are tidy. Our room was tidy so they inspected it, yes it was tidy, right you can go to church, so we marched ourselves to the cathedral for the day and then out for lunch, we got out of it that way,

out of being confined to barracks. Well Lois was in quite a few pranks too, New Years eve we celebrated in Hobart, Lois and I, she wasn’t a drinker, neither was I, but we collected buckets from somewhere or other, and there was the little office boy in my movement control. He was a

very, very what, a wowzer boy, didn’t have a drink or anything, so we left a whole lot of empty bottles on his verandah as a New Year gift, and somewhere or other there was a speed sign, or a stop sign or something that had been dropped somewhere or other and we dragged that and planted that on the, on our boss’, my boss’ lawn. He also lived in a house, in Davies Street, it was on our way home to the Barracks, well, you

so and so girls did that to me when, he was having a party that night and goes out, farewells his guests and here’s this sign stuck on his lawn, his precious lawn. Because of all the lawns in Davies Street his was the neatest and cleanest and tidiest of the lot and he took great pride in his lawn. Yeah, Lois and I were up to tricks that night. New Years day I think, 1944 was the hottest I’ve ever seen in Hobart.

It was a record temperature of 104, 104 or something, it was a very, very hot day and we got sent home early in the afternoon, because it was so hot it was just horrible.

Oh when we got home, yes it was, our house, yes. And don’t forget it was a two- storey house,

and yes there was breeze that would come up the bay late in the afternoon, we always got that but the barracks was well sheltered and it was sort of hot, the room wasn’t so, the house, our office wasn’t so hot, but when we left that to go across to the other block, it was really, really hot air, as hot as anything you’d get anywhere in Australia. That day, that particular day.

I suppose it was pretty strict, you had to have your leave pass. You had to be in at 23:59 [11.59 pm] or have a very good excuse why you weren’t in at that hour. You could ask for a later leave pass, you had to check in. It didn’t worry me, I just automatically

obeyed, there were others that did break the rules and they didn’t get on at all, and they were always fighting, but if you, you obeyed your rules, you didn’t have any trouble. The last incident would be the, it was quite a, no it wasn’t the last one, it was the one before, there was a thunder storm one night, we had to have lights out

at 10 o’clock or 10:20, whatever time it was, we had one girl in the room who would never have lights out and would very, very seldom were they ever out before midnight, because there was always someone or other out on a leave pass, so the rest of us might have been in bed with our lights out, but as soon as the missing person came in, the light went back on. Anyway this night, it might have been a Thursday night, when we all supposed to be in by eight o’clock, no

late passes, we were in bed, we weren’t supposed to smoke in bed but this one was, and all of a sudden, there’s a knock at the door and a head comes round the door, what are you girls doing and why haven’t you got your lights out. The sir in charge

was doing the rounds and private so and so, why have you got your tin hat, because it was going to thunder ma’am. We’re holding our breath, and what was I doing, Private Plummer what were you doing, just getting out to put the light out ma’am. Well I was in a little alley corner and above on the, the wall above me was a wall light, and it was my job to put it out and yes I could have been getting out to put it out, so that was alright, that was accepted.

Alright, now be quiet, for the night, yes, yes ma’am, yes ma’am, and she turned the main lights out as she went out. Well the room erupted then, because down in the bed with Woodie was her cigarette, we expected that to go up in smoke anytime. Yes, within five minutes the light was back on and Woodie had disappeared to do her hair up in curlers for the night,

and she never came back tot he room till 12 o’clock, but that was just one little incident. The last incident also at Lindfield would be a Woodie one too, someone was muttering that someone was snoring, it was Woodie, I wish she’d stop snoring the other one said, this will fix her, and I picked up a bag and shot it at Woodie, so and so, so and so threw that,

I know who’s it is, I’ve got it, I’ll know who it is, well she did know, that was the day I received orders to march up to Launceston, so I went home and packed my things at Lindfield, and collected the thing I’d thrown at Woodie the night before and I never returned to Lindfield, so Woodie knew who the culprit was.

Yes, Woodie was a very rebellious one. We were given the, confined to barracks one weekend, but Woodie didn’t stay, Woodie definitely disappeared for the weekend.

I think to a hut up on the mountain somewhere, probably Ferntree somewhere or other. She wasn’t going to be gated, no way.

Well nobody, there wasn’t a check in,

so nobody knew where she was, we didn’t know where she was. She got away with it, she got away with it.

Somebody would answer for her. Somebody must have answered for her.

I don’t know, I didn’t have to do it, so I didn’t do it, I suppose I would have done it at the time. Thinking back, yes.

She’d have, probably been

Confined to barracks, go to work at the normal time and return at the normal time and been confined to barracks for the rest of the night, and that wouldn’t have suited Woodie at all, she’d have, I don’t know what she’d have done, poor Woodie.

She escaped quite a few things, yes.

When I was told, I was sad to leave Lindfield, all the gang there, I’d settled in and I was quite happy there and, could come and go as I like more or less, I had a few friends in Hobart, relatives and friends, pre-army days friends

and I loved going on the ferry to Dan’s Point, that was beautiful, love those cruises on the river, so it was rather a shock when I was told, you’re only going up for six weeks or something or other, I don’t really know the reason for the plane coming on except I can only think of is that the ferry was taken off for overhaul, which meant that there was no boat between Tasmania

and the mainland and they brought in air force planes to ferry service personnel backwards and forwards, and that was extra work for Launceston so that’s how I came up to Launceston, you got your home up there, I was the best one to go because I had a home to go to. But that became a, 1943, 1945, 1946, oh about a two year job.

There was nothing in Lindfield, I had no job at Lindfield.

My job was to type out the movement orders, or whatever typing had to be done through, each, where do I start. Each branch seemed to have their own office work to do,

and they had typists to do it, or male or female, they had to do it, it had to be done by somebody. I suppose just like an ordinary little business and they all sort of wove in together to one big one.

Not really, not that wasn’t really my job, no.

The boss knew what that was about and we would do his orders but you just learnt about it. I don’t think ours was a very major job really compared to the mainland jobs, now the mainland movement control must have had horrific times getting large numbers of troops from A to B,

that was (UNCLEAR) different again.

Well it’ll be moving to the mainland, some of them would be to permanent postings to various other units on the mainland or schools, I had a lot of schools on the mainland, for NCOs [Non Commissioned Officer] or specialist schools,

you’d go to those. Some would go to officer training schools, wherever there was a need or there was compassionate moving, on compassionate grounds if you were Queensland say and you had a reason to go back to Queensland they would move you to Queensland or wherever your home state was. So all those had to be moved and

they couldn’t, they could go, I suppose it’s just like buying your airline ticket today, an airline, our movement control ticket would take you, would take the personnel wherever they wanted to go.

Not really in my time, I think that was by 1943

most of the, or the bulk of the movement had occurred, they were mainly men coming home on discharge or on leave or repostings. But by, by having girls in the office, it received men to go to positions nearer the front. Or perhaps to the front.

Tasmania was served as I said before by ferries and by 1943 there was only one ferry left, the old Una [?] had long since gone to scrap so had the Loongana. The Nairana was getting old, the replacement one for the Nairana

was the Taroona, and she had been commandeered by the army early in the days, and I think she was wrecked somewhere or other, on, or beached perhaps in Darwin, somewhere. She did return to the service after the war, she was a two funnel vessel and she was originally a new ship but she came back as a one funnel ship. The old Nairana was the only link between mainland Australia and

Tasmania for people, for ordinary civilians, as well as troops, unless we brought in a troop ship, often the Nairana was a troop ship for the day, for a voyage. And hat meant that there were no civilians on her at all. you can get 300 or 400 passengers on her normally and you get 550 as a troop ship and they’d be, bunk down in

any place, wherever they could. I understand she was never without an escort at night, she was being watched all the time, they had Paravanes [anti-roll equipment] on her, she was coming back once and all of a sudden she stopped and veered off in the other direction, and I know that December 1944

she must have been a full troop ship that day, coming back with mainly men and women, on leave for Christmas, by this time of course I was in Launceston, my Launceston boss was great on rumours and he had heard a rumour this day that submarines had been sighted, don’t know whether it’s a wild goose chase or not, it’s going down to Davenport. Mightn’t find

any boat when we get there because of the subs. We were in the staff car and we round the bend as we approach Davenport and here coming through the heads is a ship, yes, the old Nairana had made it. Oh no they hadn’t had any trouble on the way over, I knew several people on the, on the vessel, friends were on it. that’s alright, I thought oh yes alright boss, you had a long story again tell us. But about

eighteen months later it came out officially, yes, subs had been seen the week before Christmas and the week after Christmas of 1944 and yes boats had been sunk. So it wasn’t a, a furphy [rumour] at all, it was a genuine thing that the boat could have been and she would have been a prize, because that would have cut an ordinary person off from the mainland too.

Oh yes, yes

it was always there. But you get rumours and you don’t know what’s true and what’s just rumour.

I think we had twice weekly sailings,

it’d be all hustle and bustle one day and then day of the actual sailing would be very, very slack because all the work had been done. We’d booked for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty whatever was going on the boat, or three hundred whatever was going, one day she’d leave from Launceston, the next trip was from the coast. Coast days the men would go down overnight and stay overnight,

and then from, they’d meet the boat as she came in in the morning, Burnie or Devonport, and then they had, checked them out to see that everyone was on board, that they’d booked and that all was accounted for before they came back, so we often had two nights away. Always one night, often two nights, but it was very little work in the

Launceston office for the one that was left behind, you just had to be there to man the phones.

Always two officers, two members would check, coming off in the morning and going on at night the sailing, just to make sure.

Yes they’d have everything, no they,

not from me, that’d have that from Hobart. That would go through the Hobart office we were checking the actual numbers. Somebody in authority wanted to know how many army were going and how many navy were going and how many air force were travelling on such and such a day, so you had to put them down in their order and check them off, or hopefully check them off or they said they did, they made out they did.

No you’d have, we might have one hundred, the air force might have had twenty. navy might have had some so we, they do their own movements, this was army, but as a bulk. We’d take the whole together then, three services into one, as a total.

Yes there had to be, yes. LTD [Leaving Transport Depot] were rather hard to get on, they didn’t like coordinating with movement control because they thought they were doing it their way but they had to say whether they’d have twenty or thirty on leave or, we’d have the duty personnel and they had the one’s on leave but they had to be put together to make a total.

Leaving Transit Depot. And that was quite a big depot here.

Oh no, it was, I suppose it was key store and it was it seemed to be the office, that was for all the ones coming through leave. They went to LTD and the duty personnel were, well they’d go through their own units but their units would

handle it with movement control. We were only a backwater really, to what the mainland would have been, just a little backwater, but there still it was a constant flow of people.

Don’t think so really. 111th was the hospital, convalescent home was Evandale, and there was a camp hospital in Brighton and there was the Repat [Repatriation] Hospital in Hobart and there was also a specialist hospital somewhere or other in the midlands, which may have taken

mainland as well, I don’t know. It was known as, that was hush, hush because that was the VD [venereal disease] one, they might have had others. So yes. The ones that would come from the mainland to the hospital to the 111th were mainly I should imagine Tasmanians returning to their home state.

They’d been treated and there was nothing more that could be done for them on the mainland so they’d come to the back to Tasmania.

Ambulance,

yes.

It would have been coordinated originally, probably by whoever, which of a, Victoria and we’d just make sure there’d be an ambulance, or we’d give the okay for an ambulance to meet them. A lot of that was done just hospital to hospital I should imagine.

Oh no, no, I remember the boss getting very angry with the yanks, think they know everything.

Some Liberty Ship captain tried to cover, take a short cut, and ended up in Frederick Henry Bay or something, beached the vessel, he thought that was the shortcut into Hobart but it wasn’t he had to go around the long way, but he was trying to take a shortcut. So that wasn’t very, nice at all, he lost his ship through it I think.

Didn’t, had nothing to

do with it, just, we had to okay and it, list it happened I suppose.

No I didn’t have much to do with them, they, not with movement control, they’d go to A [Administration] or Q [Quartermaster] branch, yes they’d go through, and we saw, who did we see, James Stewart, we saw James Stewart one day, oh,

all these officers going through. The girls were very glamorous, the American girls, their uniforms were very, very glam, yes.

They must have been on leave or else, if an American, a lot of Liberty Ships came in, there were always Liberty Ships. They, what the, oh they were the freighters they had built

in Seoul or wherever it was during the war and they’d get a load of cargo and whatnot and that’s how they would move people and cargo, through the Liberty Ships, didn’t matter if it didn’t last very long, it was getting the, goods from A to Z in a hurry and Hobart had a wonderful harbour. When you think that the two queens [Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth] used to berth in, either (UNCLEAR) or anchor in

Hobart Harbour. And, there was, you’d see six or eight ships anchored there, waiting, not big, but the Liberty Ships we always thought they were the same ships, they weren’t. one would come into the wharf and load and then go back and anchor, then an other one would come in and when they were all loaded that’s when they’d depart in convoy. So that’s how they were operating.

I love looking at ships. But that’s about all, I wasn’t interested in going aboard, that didn’t worry me at all, I just liked looking at the ships from where, perhaps that harks back to my father who loved sailing and had been a sailor for a few years.

No. No not in Hobart, I’d go aboard down at Tamar, yes.

No not during my army years no. No I just liked to look at them, you’ve come from there, you’ve come from there, that’s alright I knew, I liked to know what’s what in the ships. If you look at the Hobart

harbour today, it’s nothing like I remember it at all, there’d be six, eight, ten ships all in at the berth at the one time, there were many wharves in those days. But of course that’s what, sixty years ago.

Yes, yes, there were always sufficient carriages and they would stop at Oatlands, no they wouldn’t go to Oatlands, Boratta I suppose, or York Plains and the Red Cross would had out coffee or pies or something like that. Whoever were going, how many troops are on the train, oh so many, right, and they

would provide the refreshments for the troops coming through and the same at this end, I think they were always there. They were very good actually the Red Shield in those days.

They would be on a boat train, yes, and they’d have their, oh well, officers probably travelled first class I’m afraid the troops

would travel in the dog boxes. Or the dog carriages, I think they were the ones where you were shut in, about eight or twelve to a compartment. They weren’t all corridor carriages, they were what we called the old dog box carriages, which got mighty uncomfortable after a ride or two, yes, after an hour or two on the train.

I suppose the Provos [Provosts - Military Police] would go looking for him, but unless he had a very good excuse, for not going, yes well he’d face a charge, he’d be known as AWOL [Absent Without Leave] and, and on the

wanted list until they found him.

No just report that the man was missing or that’s about all. Don’t think they took the names of a man as they went aboard, no they wouldn’t have much, only the numbers, they’d check if there were ten to go, they’d check if there were ten, they’d have to account for ten, if there was one missing,

well who’s missing, that’s probably when they’d take a roll call. missing personnel. When I came back, to Launceston, it was, as I said the planes flying in every day, 37 squadron they used to fly in everyday, a plane load of army or air force, mainly army personnel, and fly out with a load. It was only to last for the six weeks, but

it lasted about two years. Gradually they got less and less and less, and thankfully by 1944 and certainly 1945 the things were coming to an end fortunately, but then it was the slowing down period. And still things to be done and troops to be moved and returned to their bases and home towns

and all that.

1944, February 1944. I went back to Hobart I think in, roughly June 1946. Only lasted a few months, I was discharged

in1946 and then I stayed in the office as a civilian for about another six months.

1944, from February 1944.

Oh yes, yes. It was a bigger office, double the size staff in Hobart.

That’s of course head office. We were the detachment we had out lieutenant, later a captain, a sergeant a corporal and myself, there were four of us to start with. It was to be temporary, I was to be there for six weeks or eight weeks, the weeks passed, oh no they’re keeping the service going so I went on and on. Came to June, I wanted a trip to Melbourne.

I’d never been on a plane, so I got a trip on a plane didn’t I, just for a weekend or an overnight. Well, that was an eye opener I think the plane, I think I’d caught a Lodestar, or a Dakota or a DC [Douglas air craft Company] something or other, there’s one with sort of a twin spikes on the tail of it, it was a freight plane.

If there were seats they were just bench seats down either side of the plane and you’ve got, the baggage were right up the aisle and you got to, sit on the baggage or put your feet on the baggage and that’s how you travelled, no seatbelts, nothing. In the dark, couldn’t see where you were going. We eventually landed at Laverton and that was my first introduction to Melbourne. And then the same thing happened coming back, of course the same

plane back the next day. Well next thing I think might have been a duty to Melbourne. If there were a lot of females going well they’d have a female staff on the boat sometimes, so right I got that. And, Lois and I had a holiday in Melbourne

with another friend, we attended a Melbourne Cup, it was free for the services. And quite a crowd at the Melbourne Cup and we got lost and in a jam, it was a crowd wanting to go forward and a crowd wanting to come the other way forward and we were in the middle of it, anyway we survived it.

We backed the winner, so we had a happy day.

Sirius, yes, I do remember that, Sirius, nearly didn’t back it because we were weren’t too be sure and we were told to back it by two notorious losers, they never picked winners but they both told us to, told me and told Jean my other friend who was with us to back this horse. But we did,

And it goes onto end of 1944, yes right.

My staff. Yes well they had the control of the, it was an air force plane but we had control of who went on the plane, and there were more people

coming from the mainland than going back, so I was able to get in somehow or other and I managed to get home too. And this one was duty and then

Duty is a duty on the boat.

Involved going on the Nairana and she was mined waters. So that was alright.

Then, I told you about the going down and meeting the boat at the end of 1944 for Christmas, comes 1945, and the girl I was in the army with, one of my tent mates was getting married and I wanted to go to her wedding, but it was on Tuesday and I couldn’t get off Tuesday’s no I couldn’t get it off.

The boss was going to Burnie or Devonport or wherever the boat was leaving from that day. Taking one of the other, taking one man with him or two men with him. So I had to keep the office open, so I refused that wedding invitation. Then, before he left, on the Monday night, he said oh you can have tomorrow afternoon off if you like. Could have knocked his head off, anyway, on a Tuesday there was nothing to do, it was always a dull day when

the boat was coming in from the coast, once the train left with the boat people on, there was nothing much to do at all it was just a matter of being there to answer the phone. And, a soldier came in, he wanted to know where his kit bag was, he’d sent it home, and it hadn’t reached home and where was it, and so I told him to come back the next day and I’d find out for him, but he managed to stay the afternoon just talking over the counter

to me, it appears he was on discharge, he was on his way home, to his home from Tasmania. Asked me for a date, well alright if you’d like to come up to my home, I’d go out with him. And that’s how I met my husband. I remember yes, I raced home from work about six o’clock and changed,

Why are you changing, why are you getting out of uniform. Oh I might have a date Mum, oh, oh, yes I don’t know, if he turns up I’ll go with him if he doesn’t turn up I won’t, that’s alright. Okay, he turned up, and we went out, we went to the Plaza. And until then I hadn’t seen him with his hat off, and though he was an army person in the afternoon

he was in civilian cloths at night. He took me to the theatre and he took his hat off and I found he was bald, oh he’s too old for me, but it made no difference. And, by the end of the week, he stayed a few extra days in Launceston, by the end of the week I knew where I was going to head. And two years later I did.

Over to King Island.

Meanwhile I had the first date with Alec, he asked for another one, and oh yes, you can’t go tonight, you can go Saturday night right, the night he wanted to go, yes where was I, I was out with Don wasn’t I, Don was going back, Don was around and he was going back on the boat on the Saturday, so I said goodbye to Don as the boat sailed out and I went out with Alec on the Saturday night and that was it, it was goodbye Don forever and

on with Alec.

Airman.

Oh about four or five years, yeah about four years I reckon. We were friends but it could have deepened when, I think we were both waiting to see what was what with the war. And after that well that was it. Don was also a bit older than me but Alec was certainly eleven years older than me.

I don’t know but I’ve never changed. That gets me to 1945, well things started changing then it looked like the war was coming to an end. A lot of the movements were running down and people were starting to come home on discharge and that. VP [Victory in the Pacific], no VE [Victory in Europe] day came,

then we got the rumours, VP day was very close. And VP day was a dreadful day in one way, because it happened to be my birthday. And there was a dear lady at home, boarding, or a paying guest we’ll call her, who was very, very religious, fanatically religious, she was a Catholic,

fanatically religious about her religion and apparently it was Our Lady’s day in the church and on Our Lady’s day, and on people’s birthdays you can do what you like, so she doused me with water, first thing in the morning, cold water, I wasn’t very happy about that, then I went off to work but when I got home at night, she’d been so upset by the noise and row that was, not

row but celebrations that were going on she really did have a breakdown, a mental breakdown, she never returned to our place, or not at that particular time. She really did have a mental breakdown because of the way she was so fervent with her religion and it was a special day to her, but it was also a special day to everyone else as a celebration of war ending, it was just too much for her.

Well after several days with the boss being quite prepared for the end to come, it finally came, nine o’clock, that’s it, it’s official he slammed his receiver down from the phone, that’s it, we’re closing the office. Nine o’clock we walked out, the field service driver was there with the ute [utility truck] to pick up any railway stuff, and we piled into his car, some of us, or his van, whatever it was, his ute,

his van and we chased into town, we went up and down Brisbane Street all around the streets having a wonderful time for a couple of hours, and eventually it got home and then we went into Launceston itself, Brisbane Street, now the Avenue I think, the old Brisbane Hotel, they turned free drinks on for everyone and there was dancing in the streets. So that’s how I remember VP day, then there was a change,

they were coming home from leave, what about the boys that were all POWs and that they all had to be moved back. One day, soon after the war ended the boss got his discharge and we had a new boss, and this particular day was a Saturday and the orders were given that any POW had to be expedited home as

quickly as possible, but they had to have a clearance, and a medical clearance and everything first, well Saturday’s in Northern Tasmania, everything has sort of shut down, there were no buses to the coast, there were no trains, the trains had gone the plane was coming in at one o’clock or half past one by the time, the men were cleared it would be too late to catch anything, what will we do with three men. Bit of staff

car them home, so staff car it was, the staff car driver was a girl, so I was given the job of, unofficially escorting the driver, so at three o’clock two Aussies set off in the staff car and we had three men in the back, we had a pit stop at Elizabeth Town, the first boy was to go somewhere to Davenport, we drove all around Davenport looking for where he was to go, eventually he found it.

Then we drove on, to (UNCLEAR) for the second boy, he knew exactly where he was going so that was quite easy, we found his place, and as our car pulled up, the door, the front door flew open and down the steps comes this lady, and out the gate, oh, you girls, you’re the most welcome sight, you’ve brought my darling son home to me and that to me made my service in the army worthwhile.

Come in and have a cup of tea, no we can’t, we’ve got this other man to deliver, so we delivered him to Wynyard which would be, oh perhaps another 30 miles on down the coast. We delivered him and we went back to Burnie and we had out tea and we filled the car at the army depot ready to come home, we were still only supposed to be on, at Burnie on the way down to Wynyard, and here we are, we’re already.

Anne and I to come home so we came home and we get back to the service depot, field service and the duty driver for the night drove us home and we were home and we were home six hours after we’d left Launceston and that was, that made the army for me that thing.

No that was the only time, and that was just a fluke because it was Saturday

I was supposed to be off duty at midday and because of, Anne was on duty, she was the duty driver till whatever time and the man was on later, so that was just it. And from then on the, POWs, they were coming home in lots, quite a big lot at once and then there’d be dribs and drabs. Personnel were changing all the time

and you were running down on a lot of the army work by then. It was a much more relaxed office after the end of the war than it had been. And by middle of 1946 it was, the office was closed in Launceston and I returned to Hobart, till end of March but I came out of the army in October.

1946, October 1946, 23rd of October I think and I had so many days leave on top of that so it actually took my service through into the next year. But I continued on as a civilian in the same army office, as I was discharged from, so I got a discharge and I raced up the stairs, and we called it G Block, or main block,

and I was near the commandant’s office, swung a salute and he swung me a salute, next morning he came past, good morning, no longer Corporal Plummer, good morning Miss Plummer, good morning Sir, no salutes, it was wonderful.

We were doing, it was done through, not so much movement control by then, because they were coming into our state, that was the end of their journey. They weren’t coming from, or they weren’t coming from Tasmania to the mainland, it was the other way so we didn’t have much work to do at all, just see that they were moved on as quickly as possible to their home destinations.

Normally they’d go on a bus or a train, to the nearest

town and there, somebody would pick them up there I suppose or even their parents would meet them.

No that would be all done from Melbourne, all done through, from another office. If it was army transport well it would be, reckon a bus, get a bus, and then go by bus, army bus. Also give them rail

passes to go on the train.

He joined the army from King Island, he was in 6th Field, or 16th Battery, 6th Field Regiment, or something or other, they’d been on the Atherton Tablelands and he actually left Queensland and went to Thursday Island, but again it was getting slack

and he didn’t think he was doing anything worthwhile and his brother was a farmer on King Island and he was man powered out to work for his brother on King Island and he was on his way home when I met him. And he was looking for his luggage, well I knew where his luggage was, we’d had this box in the office for some time and it was to go to King Island but nobody knew anybody by that name on King Island, there was a Mrs. A. Crack but there wasn’t a Mrs

Alec Crack, it was a Mrs A. Crack, so the boss wouldn’t have that, that wasn’t the right person, it was only Alec’s mother of course but that didn’t matter. It went back to Melbourne, so when he came back the next day I could tell him where his box was. And why did we know it, because it was such an unusual name. We thought Crack was a dreadful name, perhaps we still do, though I’ve had it for many, many years.

So that’s about the end of my army life I think.

By the late, oh in the 1930s the airlines were established, there was the Ansett, was it no, Coleman Airlines, and Australian Airlines, Australian Airlines and before the war ended they had established TAA [Trans Australian Airlines] so there were the two airlines, up till the establishment of TAA, the Australian National Airways had

priority. And we could use them but after TAA was established, all military personnel were to go by, if they were going by air they were to go by the TAA line, the government line, that was an order that came in. Yes, flying was becoming more popular, it was also subject to control, if we had a

well a person going on leave was number eight, but if one was going on duty urgently he’d have a number one priority so a civilian passenger would have to step down, to allow that personnel to go and I think the idea of, that was the idea of bringing in the Dakotas, the air force planes, they could do it directly from Laverton to Laverton, Laverton, Western Junction Laverton without worrying any civilians and

there was also freeing up the boat, allowing more civilians to travel on the boat.

There weren’t many. There wouldn’t be many that would travel by commercial aircraft. Because, most of the people from then on

would be coming into Tasmania on discharge so if they were going anywhere they were going as civilians, and that wouldn’t be any concern of ours, except in the case of the island men who would be returning to Isle of King or Flinders Island, we would have to get them to their home destination.

We’d have to book their seat, and tell them they’re on the plane such and such a time and give

them their voucher for it and they just go and, King Islanders were alright, they’d go on the plane, some of the Flinders Islanders wouldn’t, we’d give them a plane ticket but they wouldn’t go on it. Especially the Cape Baron Islanders, they insisted on going on a boat, we didn’t like that at all, no, they weren’t going on a plane, they were going on a boat, and of course they were cobbers with a boat so they went on the boat didn’t they.

No, no they did that themselves, they probably had their plane ticket in their pocket but wouldn’t worry, wouldn’t use it, so we couldn’t help that if they wanted to go on the boat, they went on the boat themselves.

How, what sort of details?

No we didn’t get to work any earlier, unless the boat was due in earlier,

we started eight thirty. And you’d get the bookings for the next boat sailing, how many have you got and you’d make sure you had enough berths.

Well the various army departments would have to send into us, the navy would give us their quota of say, we’ve got ten, twenty and the air force would say well we’ve got twenty on the boat two and from that we’d total up

right, we’ve got a hundred or two hundred, how many berths we wanted and how many females and what did we want. And if they were over the, three hundred and ninety-six, two hundred and ninety-six was the limit with civilians, right she’s a full ship, you can’t have any civilian passengers that day. It was just a, an army vessel, and we had to day as to who would go on that vessel.

I would help make it, the boss would make the call, it would be his responsibility to make the call, and I want to, say we’ve got four hundred men to move on Monday, we can’t have any civilian passengers and that is just how you would work it. And I’m quite sure no one realised just how vital that Nairana

was to keep the sea lane open to, to the mainland. Even for civilians, there was no other way of getting there unless you went on a plane and yes the services were once, perhaps twice a day and they were only small planes, I don’t think they’d be bigger than what, thirty-six seaters would be the biggest in those days, I’m not sure.

Ended up with five, well the boss had an officer to himself and then there were little desks in a small room, so you can two girls, two girls and Jack, I don’t know where Jack fitted in, oh we had another room built on that’s right, he had that, we used to do MFO too, which is Military Forwarding, yes Military Forwarding Office, which meant if you wanted to send

equipment home or forward it would go from our office to the mainland office and then they would on forward it or hold it in Melbourne till such time as we knew where it was to go, so we managed it was just a little, a little wooden hut I suppose or a prefab hut just inside what was, the main entrance to our Launceston Railway Station, it’s not longer there and it’s completely changed the railway

station, I remember when it was just black with people coming home at five o’clock at night, leaving the fire way workshops, or munitions or whatever they were doing. There was just crowds and crowds of people and there’d be trams pulling up to take passengers, you’d be hanging onto the outside of the foot rail of the tram. It sounds hard today when you see a tram or a bus with only three passengers on it, to believe that thing happened but it did.

A different kind of bustle, a slower bustle, but a bustle, because all the Mills were working there was the Waverleys mills, the blankets, Kelso and Kims, they were another one. There were the woollen mills, the Patent Ball ones which I think employed about two thousand people I think, in their heyday.

And they were small mills too, so yes it was a busy place. Now I understand it’s more academic than a manufacturing city.

Right on at the end of the platform, right at the end, just inside the main road.

We didn’t actually book anyone on the train, not from Launceston the only people we booked was for the boat trains. If you were just going to Hobart, well we just saw that you had a seat, and we’d take a number or there’s twenty going on that train, there’s ten going on that train, we just kept a tally of the numbers that were travelling. And somebody had to tally every train that left and also the ones that arrived during the daytime,

just to get an idea of the movement of people.

I would do it sometimes, but mainly the sergeant, he liked to get out, any excuse to get out. Any excuse to get out, and any excuse to get into town too, especially if you could have a punt on something or other. Love to go on a Wednesday, love to go on Wednesday, where did he go, he went to the bookmakers club didn’t he.

So Monday morning was a hard luck story. He’d have a string of bets, of tickets, if that one had won, and that horse had won, I’d have won so much. He never made his fortune, he lost more than he ever won. And once war ended, you realised that your army life would come to an end eventually.

It had to and you had to move forward and by then I was ready to move forward I think.

It was an army job, but I was living as a civilian.

Once the army, once I was finished my duty at five thirty at night I was free to do what I liked till next morning, if I wanted to go out I could, I could go wherever I liked. As long as I reported to work on time, and stayed there my time, I was right. I think in the end we got Saturday’s off too, so we would only work a Monday to Friday job and perhaps one in three or four weekends we had to do a Saturday, I don’t think we ever did Sunday.

Just to keep a number of, just to keep it open in case there was any needed to keep the office open for that.

The boats would come in on a Saturday, but once that was out, that was it for the day. And whoever was doing the boat would do it would have the rest of the day off or else have the Monday off, another day off, get it back that way.

Rotate it around, yeah. Amongst the men, they liked doing the boat, they really liked doing the boat. Because as I said one was a punter, and he loved to get out, any excuse and he was out and away from the office at the wharf or something he could call into the bookmakers club very easily. Oh yes, that was, I’m just going up to the canteen, well the canteen was across the bridge wasn’t it. But it wasn’t very far from the canteen up to the bookmakers club so we knew where the man was,

unbeknown to him.

Not very often, I was the one that anchored the office, the office minder I suppose I was. Well, girls were not doing those sort of jobs, we still had the, what are they, the male chauvinist pigs is that what they called them.

And the boss and the sergeant were very much male chauvinist pigs when it came to that, they were men and they insisted on doing their men’s duty and that’s what they did it, I could do what I liked in the office and keep the office going. But that was it.

Oh I did, but it fell on deaf ears most of the time.

Oh yes I did get a few trips out, and if I wanted to go up the street, if I wanted to go to the canteen, we could always have an hour or half an hour or whatever, off during the day. Unless there was a boat day, so we managed, we survived. The staff changed, and we got some bad staff, very bad staff, never mind we put up with them.

Well the captain, he was a funny little man, the regional captain but as soon as war ended he more or less got his demob [discharge], and we had another captain.

Thorpe. Captain Thorpe, the second one really was the 2IC [second in command] in Hobart and he’d only come up sometimes,

he was a lovely man in many ways. Married man, perhaps I better not say his name.

Oh but I might, the first thing he did when he hit the office was to pick up the phone and ring around the girls to get a date, unbeknownst to his wife, so we’ll let it go at that.

Then we got a, we had another man, he was water transport, somehow or other the water transport came into us too at the end and he was in charge of us too for a little while, and he went back to Hobart, we had a sergeant from the mainland, I think he started drinking at ten o’clock in the morning and was still drinking at ten o’clock at night, he’d be stone cold sober in the morning

and how he did it I don’t know, you thought he was stone cold sober but he was drinking continuously the whole day and right through the night. He didn’t last that long, the other one was a young man, I don’t know any kind of stories over, money started to disappear from the office, and I don’t know, I think it was him. In fact I’m sure it was him.

I know he did time later. Not in the army, there were army prisoners too doing time in the prison camp, which was at Cowra. They made out they were, yeah, I suppose they were doing time, they’d act troppo [crazy] and all kinds of things to get a bit of attention.

What the?

Well you’d see some of them in town, and then I had one or two trips to the prison camp on a duty run with, unofficial for me but official for the driver, they did the run into Campbelltown, the LA 115th [Land Army], and Cowra was on the stop on the way down,

and I’d go into the camp and you’d see the men, they’d be just rolling around the camps, making out they were troppo or anything to get attention or anything to put a story on, some of them were good men, some of them were bad men.

To get out of, they wanted to get out, they’d try and put a story on to that they were troppo so they wouldn’t have to stay in prison, quite capable of knowing what they were doing, but they were trying to work point so that they could be free.

But whatever they had been put in prison for they had to pay their duty, the same as any other civilian prisoner. There was not many people knew there was a prison in Tasmania but there was, maybe that’s where they held those first prisoners that I mentioned, the

exchange of Germans.

Everything was hush, hush, it’s all secret. Well, they, they didn’t want the enemy to know what was going on so they tried to keep it, the same as they use all kinds of techniques

today to keep thing secret. But each country seems to be able to break the other one’s code.

That’s all I know about Cowra really.

I was hitching a ride for the day and that’s when I should have learnt to drive a car, I never did learn to drive a car but when I was with the delivery boys, that’s when I should have been having lessons while I was in the army.

Wasn’t thumbing a ride, it was oh “What about a trip down,” “Yes we’ll take you down any time you like to go

if you like to be ready at such and such a time in the morning,” and yes I did.

Yes.

No. no, I just, well I was allowed board, from the army so I paid mother board, oh yes we had to do our washing up and our own washing and things like that we all did that

but no I didn’t, I didn’t have to. So that was it. It was just like a civilian job except I wore a uniform, didn’t have to wear my hat if I didn’t want to because I knew where the provo was and I was ahead of her going into town, she was still having her breakfast when I’d leave home.

The Provo, well we had a Provo [Provosts – Military Police] girls and she was one of our lived at home with me

or with Mum, so she’d be having breakfast and I’d be on the way to work so I could wear what I liked or go carry my hat she wouldn’t catch me, she was a very nice girl but a very prim and proper girl.

Oh they might have done but there weren’t many girls really in Launceston. Certainly not by the time Pat was with us.

One, two, three, there were about four girls, LTD, there was only about 10 girls altogether in Launceston, stationed in Launceston, that I can recall. The Pay Corps and one or two hush, hush girls, don’t know what jobs they did but they were hush, hush. They had offices in Cameron Street and I don’t know what they really did, censoring things I think, mail that was sent, or messages things like that, I think

that’s what they were on.

It was hush, hush, what are they doing, hush, hush, oh yes, right. So these little things happened in Tassie, but we didn’t worry about them. Long since forgotten.

I don’t know, I don’t know.

No, no I didn’t.

You wouldn’t have got it out of her anyway, that particular lady, no I don’t know what they really did there. They thought it was very important, but we weren’t so sure. It might have just been an experimental thing that they were trying to do. They do experimental things today, and they probably did in those days. I’m sure they did, no doubt they’ve always done it.

Hm.

We knew each other but we didn’t know each other, we probably knew others, one or two I knew before the army I’d either gone to Business College with them or I’d known them at school or somewhere or other along the line that way. Yes.

I think there were four at LTD, a couple at Pay Corps, I certainly knew here before the army, myself and this hush, hush girl I knew her before the army. There weren’t that many, one or two we didn’t meet up with at all. They kept to themselves very much.

Yes well we only branch, we only had branches, the main was all in Hobart, we weren’t the main centre of it at all. Launceston, yes I suppose it’s a biggish town, but then I’ve found it’s not, it’s only a small town really. Still, yes it’s grown, it’s grown over the years.

It’s still growing that way with houses, it’s grown out. But lots of empty houses in the centre of town, waiting for mainlanders to come and buy them out.

Up here? Oh we were rather exclusive I think, yes. There were a few WAAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force] a few naval girls too.

Naval girls were very few in number but they were very exclusive, so we were all good friends, that, we were friends, yes, but not buddies, how we say it now, not bosom pals I suppose, but we were friends.

Well I still went around with a civilian group of girls, girls I’d known from school days, and we still stayed together, some of them had husbands or boyfriends away and gradually we formed a group and then gradually we all went out ways, as time passed by and the boys came home.

There was a difference and there’s something about the services that brought out perhaps the best in us or the worst in us but it also brought out great comradeship and mateship which was lacking in civilian life and it’s still evident today. We still come together as a group of people, that, experienced something that civilians did not experience.

There was a difference. Perhaps I had the best of both worlds as I was as service personnel and I still had my civilian friends as well. And didn’t grow away from then because I was back in my home town. Not that I wanted to be back in the home town.

Oh yes I would have gone to the mainland or wherever

I could have gone, I would have gone overseas if I could have, wherever the army would have sent me I would have gone, that’s what I was aiming for, but it didn’t happen, but never mind. I’ve had a fulfilling life I think.

Yes I suppose you could, but then my papers were marked vision, and that was going to handicap me wherever I was posted, I would have that handicap of bad vision wherever I was and be grateful that I was accepted as a member of the services and do whatever I could in the home base. And that’s what I learnt to do I suppose.

Never asked them. Two of them were friends from childhood, so they didn’t join up they were happy with what they were doing, but, I wanted a little bit more of life, actually of the three I was the only one that married. So perhaps that answers the question, they were happy with what they were doing. What they were had decided in life.

The fact that I wanted to do something for my country. We were, I was brought up to do service for my country whatever it was,

to serve to help other people to give time even voluntary, in voluntary organisations, and that. That is how I was brought up and that’s, I suppose how I have lived my life.

Not really, they’d become, anyone that was coming back into Tasmania after the war and would be coming on final postings or final discharge

so you wouldn’t have much to do with them at all you’d get them to Brighton or where ever they had to report and that would be it, you wouldn’t see them again. They’d be discharged and they would be melting away into the civilian population very smartly.

Hm, they did yes. But for air and sea travel

when the air force plane was going and when the Nairana was going, they had to give their numbers through to the army and they were the coordinating ones. So if the navy had ten females, you had to make sure there were ten female berths for the navy on that particular sailing.

With the other troops?

Not so much after the war ended, no because there wasn’t the same volume of trade going or people travelling to the mainland, they were coming back on discharge and a lot of them got their discharge as soon as they could and took it. As soon as you had your numbers up or days up, your service you were technically discharged if you wished to.

I chose to stay in it a little longer, and that’s how it suited me.

The Military Forwarding Office.

It was part of us.

It would be a separate office I imagine, well it was there was a big depot in Melbourne where a lot of the troops had their winter uniforms and when they got to Queensland they didn’t want their winter uniforms so they’d send them back to the base and they’d be stored till such time as they came back to, to Victoria or whichever state they were from. And vice versa, if they had a lot of summer things,

they’d be stored in Melbourne waiting till they came back and went onto their home state.

Well if we had anything in our office and you came in with your vouchers saying this is my voucher, or receipt for such and such a deposit of, goods, where is it.

You’d find it and hand it over and that was it.

You’d have to track it down we didn’t really have any storage at all, the only one I really remember is Alec’s things and, because we couldn’t find his name anywhere on King Island, though we inquired, the boss decided that wasn’t good enough and it went back to Melbourne

which was the, probably the storage depot for Tasmania as well as Victoria. One assignment of army kits and bits and pieces arrived on the boat and they’d been pillaged and we had a room full of bits and pieces. Where’d they’d gone through things and ratted this bag and that bag and nobody knew what was what, eventually I think the army

probably the Provos came and took it away I know there was a photo of us, the other army girl and myself, in the paper, front page sitting amongst all the rubbish. And got the daylights blown out of us for letting the photographer in and taking this photo but never mind we survived.

We didn’t know it was all mixed up, nobody knew who it belonged to.

You would send, oh a nice china plate home, and you were bring a doyley home or you were bringing something home to your wife, your sweetheart or what have you and it was in your kit bag and somebody had looted the bag and it was busted open, well you didn’t know who it belonged to, it’s quite a mess that one. That was after the end of the war and I suppose everyone was grabbing everything they could find.

Well most of them were inquiring from Hobart, because that would be, we wouldn’t hold anything, Alec’s would only be held because he was King Island, and we’d have to go through the northern office, most of it go through from Hobart or Brighton, Hobart, Anglesea, or, in the main store in Victoria.

Wherever that was. I imagine it was a very big building somewhere or other, that took all the army storage like that.

They were commercial, they were Australian National Airlines, there was no alternative there but Australian National Airline so you had to use them, but you couldn’t use them if there was a

DVA on the same route.

We would give a voucher, a signed voucher to the airlines office. And the authorisation would have to be from the officer in charge and you’d take that up and they would issue with the ticket, no doubt that voucher was then sent on to the finance officer in Hobart or whoever they made the claim to.

Much the same I suppose as DVA [Department of Veteran’s Affairs] works today. Yes. So what’s your next question.

Yes, people were just having a good time, rejoicing that war was over.

Anything.

Anything, they were just, it mightn’t have even been a dance but they were just happy and singing and, perhaps all joining in on Auld Lang Syne and things like. It was just one happy moment, and each group had their own little thing to celebrate I suppose. And I only saw that little bit down in the main street no doubt there were others, other celebrations.

In fact I know there were but I wasn’t there.

That was the day, yes. And that’s what turned her, people were making too much noise in the street, for her because it was a deeply religious day to her

and we just shouldn’t have been making so much noise.

No celebrations at home, other than just everyone was happy and perhaps a celebration drink, and a perhaps a special tea or something like that, but it was the noise that would travel up from the town and she could hear it and you could hear it, from Union Street, you could hear all the noise that was going on because the, everybody

had their hooters going from the buses or what have you they had noise, if they could make noise they were making noise and they were cheering and having a jolly good time and drinking too, so of course all laws were broken that day. So that was the end of the war, it was rejoiced, hopefully there wouldn’t have been another one, but I’m not too sure.

No, oh, we had a special hospital somewhere in Tasmania, I don’t know if it was out of Oatlands or out of Ross, it wasn’t talked about very much but it was know as the VD hospital. And if patients were coming to be treated in Tasmania, that’s probably where they were

coming to be treated, because all precautions had to be, were taken to prevent the spread of that disease. Especially the people that were cleaning the patients had to take special precautions, so that was something that went on with a few people knew about it I suppose, I haven’t got a clue myself, exactly where it was, except that I know it was there, but it was well isolated

from the general public.

Probably be, yes I don’t know, yes they could have been, as they return our return men yes it could have been, I’m not sure.

They could have been flown in I’m not sure, I’m not sure about that at all, I just know there was a place, or they could have come in on an overseas, yes an overseas ship to Hobart, and transported up quickly and no one would know, again that would be a hush, hush operation.

Oh they might have known about it, yes they might have known about it, they could have done.

Yes I’m there until about June 1946, so I was there about ten months, it may have been a bit earlier, that I went back down to Hobart.

That was in 1945 yes, soon after war ended

that was very early after the end of the war. Most, most of the were home by the end of 1945 I think. Majority would be home by then or at least in Australia. Only the very, very sick ones that would be remaining, they should have all been released. Though some apparently were not.

I think so.

I think Mrs. Hemsley summed it up very well really when I think back, I’m not too sure if she didn’t have two sons prisoners of war, but she certainly had Bernie, and we did deliver him home safely to her.

No, they wouldn’t contact us. Who (UNCLEAR) I suppose, another office would do that, they would be responsible for contacting next of kin, or parents

or what have you and they were advised, they had either found a grave, or evidence of a death or else they had found a live man himself. It takes a lot of time sometimes to find somebody, there were unknown service personnel who nobody knew whether they belonged to, where they lived or anything, but they were found, there were various organisations that traced these people back.

and found them. I had a cousin who was lost in New Guinea, he was found in some hospital in Queensland I think, but nobody knew who he was and it was only through an organisation tracing there and another organisation picking up that they traced him and found who he was and he got back to Tassie, sadly he was never the same again.

I imagine the war graves and that part of the army would come into that. Don’t know that they bring many bodies home unless the parents or next of kin wished it.

probably do more now, the ones that found in later years.

Things were winding down,

shops were going, were gradually being restored to pre war looks again or normality and parks returned to normal and the air raid shelters were pulled down and streets returned to normal. Traffic was increasing, car, more cars were appearing. It was a general change around there. I don’t think there was any unemployment at that time, I think everyone was employed, either building homes or

busily doing things, being ready for homes and making things, (UNCLEAR) things like that yes.

Oh I had other things in mind by the time, yeah, the end of 1945 I definitely had other things in mind which came to fruition

I suppose, eventually in good time.

Well I became engaged in 1946, and I married in 1947. And I took on a totally different life.

1945, about

fifteen months later I was engaged to him, twelve months after that I married. I think our courtship was more by letter than anything else. See I didn’t see much of him in that time, he was on King Island and I was here, or in Hobart but I didn’t waver and neither did he.

Yes. By the time we were married he’d

left the dairy and gone to work on the mine on King Island.

Scheelite. The southern hemisphere, it might been one of the world’s largest Scheelite mines was on King Island, Grassy was quite a big township in it’s heyday. I think it first started in World War I, closed down for a while and reopened before

the war, before World War II, kept going for about, twenty years, twenty-five years, maybe a bit longer.

Well gradually the office was closed and there was no need for

all the checking and personnel it was all done from Hobart, so I went there to that office, then they closed that office and I went over, I think it was A Branch I went to, I’m not quite sure of that now, I know it was near the commandant so, it was in that office some, main block and they were doing the same work, I was doing the same work forms and moving people and that, to another department of the army.

And, when I left, I just, came home to Launceston and prepared for my marriage, unfortunately I could not go to King Island at the time, because there were no houses available, so I had to wait till the house was allocated and they would not allocate a house to a single man, so you had to wait till you were married before you could put in for a house. We survived.

Oh they had a mess. Single men’s mess, there were huts for men for single men and they had middle, it was, oh it’d be the same as an army hut and an army mess, yes they had those.

Yes.

I think it was A Branch, what we called A Branch, I’m not quite sure of that. Movement control was no more because there was, well there wasn’t a movement control or no necessity for movement control any more. So that was it, we just closed down, carried on in another office and they took over.

Probably six months, maybe a bit longer, they closed down soon after I went to Hobart Movement Control, and I went over to A Branch and from A Branch, I was certainly in A Branch, I’ll call it A Branch when I was discharged, October, November, December, January, February, yes about four months

there after as a civilian.

Hobart, all part of the main army Anglesea Barracks area.

Transfer to A Branch and do the same work in A Branch, and they do the same work in A Branch, yes.

A Branch, well they were, oh you’re asking me something now, sixty years ago.

I don’t remember what they were doing, I’m not even sure whether it as A Branch or G Branch. But each branch had their own set things to do, and one dovetailed into another, A Branch would be responsible for this and G Branch would be responsible for

something else and the next branch would be responsible for something else to make up the whole.

I think so yes, and G was General I think.

Oh yes, yes the, whoever was in control of Movement Control, “I’m finishing up on Saturday and you’ll transfer to,

it’s been taken over by,” we’ll say it was a, “By Major Harris on Monday,” so it was just a new place to go to a new office. So I moved from a little office at the back of the barracks to the main building.

I’d been discharged, when I was discharged from A Branch, back to A Branch as a civilian.

No I had the same office. No I had the same office in A Branch that I had as a army girl when I was a civilian, same boss, only he was, he was army and I was civilian, so didn’t have to sling him any more salutes.

Well they were employing civilians to do the work, they no longer had girls, girls were out and the next lot of girls didn’t come in for three or four years after and they started bringing girls in again. The AWAS had to be wound down because they were only a war time thing, a wartime service and they were wound down and became later on, the WRAACs [Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps], who in turn had become the Women’s Army.

Or part of the whole army now. Yeah.

Yes, I was in the last parade of AWAS. Official parade of AWAS in Anglesea Barracks and then there were very few left after September 1946.

Very, very few left but they could transfer to civilian jobs if they wanted to, if they didn’t want to, well they could get right out of the army and away from it altogether.

No we knew it had to come and we were quite happy to for it to come, we were more or less civilians by then. There were no barracks,

we were living in we had to live out or board out so that was alright.

Well I hope we achieved, we hoped to achieve peace, but I hope we achieved something

that proved that girls could do jobs and I think we were the forerunners of today’s army girls and today’s oh what are we, all demanding this that and the other. Feminists? We weren’t really feminists but we were the forerunners of that movement I think, we started it. We started it because we saw a need

for the country to have men ready to go to war, already to go to fight for their country. I don’t say we should fight for, we shouldn’t be the aggressors but if we are aggressed, if that’s such a word as aggressed, then yes we should fight for our country. If we’re put under stress, and they’re attacking us, well yes we fight back but not, not to be the one to start it.

That’s how my thinking may have changed over the years.

That evolved from it I think, I don’t think we

no we didn’t have that in mind at all we had, we wanted to serve our country and we served as best we could. And if the next generation took inspiration from what we were able to do, what our service girls were able to do, well we did achieve something perhaps. But I don’t know.

I don’t think we were. I don’t think we were, it’s only now in hindsight that we look back and think oh yes, well we must have been the forerunner of, the hooha that’s gone in some circles today.

No I think it was more I said male chauvinist pigs, yes, but it could be, they were gentlemen who were brought up to expect to do things, and males had their jobs to do and women were more or less in the home. we started the movement for all women to go to work, and that could have been the difference there. Until the war a lot of people didn’t go to work at all, after the war girls wanted to continue to work in many cases and they did. And that was the difference there.

1946. Well by then there were very few AWAS left, so I think we had a day when we were all called to have a final parade, and a final photograph taken of the ones that were still in the services and that would be it. And after that well we were

being discharged very quickly and very rapidly.

They had already been discharged. Some of them had been in from 1941, and as their, point system or whatever they had, as soon as they had those points up or three years, or they’d married they could come out of the services, and once your points were up, if you wanted to you could take demob, if you wanted to continue if there was a vacancy for you, you continued.

And then, by September 1946 everyone was just about ready I think to move onto a new life. And see what happened.

No, what that day? No it was just a day where we had to march onto the, round quad, yes, and then have our photos taken, after that we were allowed to go home so we were free

for the day. I’ve got an idea it was a Saturday morning that that parade was taken, I’m not sure.

No, it was, it was a quiet day, it wasn’t a day full of fun or that, no. It was alright.

No she was long since out, she was one that took early demob. I think she got out on health reasons.

As I said, Lois could always pull a string or two. So I think that was the end of the army, probably the saddest day was when I said goodbye to everyone at in the army headquarters and came back to Launceston. Then the new life was to begin.

What?

In Hobart, which would be for me, whenever I finished in February or early March, and that was, that was the final straw then, I’d cut my ties then with the army, picked up my final pay and home I came to Launceston.

No, no, didn’t have a send off no. Well most of my friends had gone on from the army.

There were one or two left but most of them had moved on, I had civilian friends in Hobart, yes, but not, not army friends, oh Lois was still around in Hobart. I still saw her. Yeah, and I think I was too busy after that getting ready for my, my big day.

Well in my day you had to have a glory box didn’t you, you had to have clothes, you had to have things in your box like, household goods and things like that, so I had to collect all those up and, very busy squirreling things away and we didn’t have a lot to choose from because we were still rationed with things. and if you wanted something special, well “Sorry you know there’s been a war on we haven’t got that in, and we don’t have that as yet,

it’s coming sometime” and very basic the things that were available for us, but we managed.

Hm.

Didn’t get heirlooms but I got quite a lot from my mother, so yes I was well set up.

Well she’d give me the necessities of the home, see we didn’t move out of home until we were married in our day, these days the girls are leaving home what eighteen, nineteen, and they’re set up in a flat and they have their, they’ve got their towels and their sheets and all that and their cups and saucers and things like that, their all, everyday things are there. It makes it very hard for people that are going to give presents though.

But never mind. I survived over the years and I had a small wedding, in the church I’d been attending since I came to Launceston. Dad gave me away, I had a short honeymoon, unfortunately Alec had to go back to King Island and I had to stay here for a few weeks but I eventually made it to King Island.

I went over to the island in 1946 and met his, first of all I think in 1945 I met his sister, she was a patient in St Margaret’s, or then St Vincent’s Hospital, and I think I heaved a sigh of relief to see that she was white, yes that’s racist I know, but when I first met Alec he was a, almost a nigger with sun tan. And I knew from

army experience that there were half castes on Flinders Island but I wasn’t sure about King Island and when I saw my sister in law she was as white as white as white, so I decided well he must be a full white person, not a half caste, and that relieved me, sorry if I’m racist there, but, that was how I felt, all those years ago.

He had told me but I still wasn’t sure, maybe the name was something to query, such an unusual name. Still is an unusual name.

I don’t know, I think I would still have married him, I’m sure I would have.

I don’t know that my parents would have been very happy, but I was well and truly of age, so they couldn’t have done much about it.

That’s right, yeah. I didn’t swerve once I met him that was it.

King Island was an eye opener. I thought yes well Tasmania was a backwater, but King Island, well, what was good enough for grandpa was good enough for the next generation, the next generation after when I first got there.

Very conservative, very, very back countryish, very few sealed roads if any sealed roads, perhaps half a mile of sealed roads,

the rest was either just gravel or corrugated tracks with the strip up the middle of grass, it was very, very basic, very. There were a few nice homes on King Island, yes. And I met a few people before, I stayed on the island a fortnight before I was married, a year before I was married, met his family

and his friends.

I hadn’t any family so yes I quite accepted my sister, that sister in law and I met another sister in law, she lived in Launceston at the time,

and I did know her sister actually from pre army days, she was a (UNCLEAR) person. But Alec had, four brothers, and yes, four brothers and four sisters I think, so I was going into a large family. And he was the second youngest in the large family so he had grown up nephews and nieces didn’t he, so it was

quite, quite a thing to have a huge family around me. But I suppose I was a rebel, I thought things should have been done differently, but never mind, we survived. Why haven’t you got sealed roads, it costs too much, but it would save the cars, oh no, no, no it’s alright, and that was alright for my generation but by the time my generations children were growing up and grown up,

they were demanding and getting the sealed roads and the telephones and the hydro and all the things that we normal city dwellers take for granted, it wasn’t on King Island. Luckily we had electricity at Grassy that was supplied by the mine, but unless you had a generator of your own, there was no other electricity on the island. I think they’ve got wind power there now.

Which is quite different again.

Which is very, very different to anything else, a mining community I think would be a mining community no matter where, totally different, outlook on life. There’s rank, there’s staff and they

have their, they are staff and some of them are very much so, and then there’s the ordinary worker and some of them are better than staff really when you came to think about it but no staff wouldn’t think about that, oh no. So they were quite hard really for me, but I threw myself into church and I threw myself into the CWA [Country Women’s Association] and eventually made friends.

So yes I found things to do.

No I just, well everything was just dovetailing in and, first child was coming and the second and the third, so that all fitted in, it was all part of, remember we were the ones that were still, even though we had been pioneers in the army and that we were still orientated to being a home maker, and we didn’t look for work.

It was only a few years later that that ground swell of every one wanting to work came to the fore. And there wouldn’t have been many opportunities on King Island for a married people to work. And actually as a miners wife, you were quite well paid, the miners were quite well paid. It was quite a good paid, well paid job on the whole.

My children were all born on King Island, there was quite a good community hospital there and they were all born on King Island. Yes the first doctor was excellent, he was an excellent doctor, the second to last doctor wasn’t so good, he was good but he wasn’t to the pick of the first one. He was a migrant doctor, but a very caring doctor.

There was only the one doctor on the island, so the sisters had to be highly qualified because they had to administer the …, the ether or whatever they gave you for operations and that at that time, well now they can’t, they’ve got to have two doctors to do that.

More or less I suppose.

No,

oh no, no, no.

I don’t know where he was, he certainly wasn’t with, that just wasn’t heard of, that wasn’t heard of till next generation. By then it was, it was coming in for the fathers to be present at the birth of their children. It was frowned on in my day, oh dear, no, no, no. As for home births, goodness me no.

No, they were traditional and I was probably one of the last home births, and after my age group there was all hospital births for quite a long time. It’s come back now to being traditional, if you wish a home birth, you have a home birth, it’s swung back, but no for a few years not it was just, oh no, taboo. Very hard to get.

Where at the hospital, no, no. There would be the nursing staff and the doctor, Alec’s mum was an old lady, she’d be, in her seventy’s at that stage. So, but she was quite happy to see another grandchild, there were about forty grand children I think the total.

Oh yes, you’d stay, you were there about ten days, you weren’t allowed out oh no, you stayed in at least ten days so I had ten days each time I had a child I was in hospital for ten days, that was quite, that was alright, I survived.

I got my first wish and that was a daughter, and then I wanted a son, and then I wanted another daughter, but I didn’t get that I got another son. And as time went by I was in the CWA as I said, and the church guilds, yes with the church, became a Sunday School Teacher for the church, had a combined Guild

then the Uniting Church and the Anglican church united as a, as a guild and as a Sunday School, this was at Grassy, so perhaps and that we were years ahead of the rest of Australia, or the rest of Tasmania in combining our efforts.

Country Women’s Association? We have a meeting we’d run stalls, we were interested, it’s not got the same input that it had sixty, seventy years ago.

when the CWA was in it’s heyday, Tasmania didn’t want King Island as CWA, they weren’t interested so they joined the Victorian so actually we were members of the Victorian CWA. And they were very forceful prominent group of ladies in those days just pre war and just after the war and they, I think they did a lot of good for the country and they achieved a lot for the women that were working on

country projects. You had to be a, if you were a city member, you had to have some tie with the country to be a Country Woman, a member of the Country Women’s Association.

I think it was a meeting of people with like interests an outlet for talking over their problems on the land and just a social outing.

Farming problems and King Island had a very large soldier settler scheme going

so there were a lot of people just starting out, they were mostly returned men with blocks given to them, carved from native forest or virgin land I suppose, they’d never been farmed before, some of them were successful and some were not, there were lots of problems there. Eventually I think the CWA folded.

What the CWA folding?

They had a very tough time getting established. It was alright, you had to work your farm, if you didn’t want to work your farm, or you didn’t work it, well it just went back to bushland, so you would be a failure. But a lot of the men, they took their blocks, but they left their blocks and they went to work at the mine, because that was a

well paid job. And Grassy had about, about 1000 people altogether in it’s heyday which is quite a substantial little town. We had a school of over 200.

Well they’d just give up their blocks, walk off their blocks, or sell them to, the one that was really working hard, and was going to make a success of it, would buy up the poorer farmer, so I suppose half a dozen would buy up a dozen other blocks and they’d have bigger farms and they would go ahead and make a success where the ones that didn’t want to do farming were

quite happy to go to the mine, get good pay, and didn’t have to do, work seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year, which is what farming really is. Yes.

I think

they were happy to get off the farm, a lot of them were city people who’s never been on a farm before, knew nothing about the land, but it was a chance to, to get a job after the war, it was provided free more or less and you had free house rent I think for twelve months and things like that it was all part of it, part and parcel, a lot of the men were just not suitable to be farmers, they didn’t want to really be farmers. They liked the, the, fact

that they owned the home and the fact that they could do this that and the other, but when it came to milking cows , or having six or seven days a week, on no, no, no.

It would be cattle, a lot would be, a lot would be beef, raising beef. King Island’s about forty miles long by about seventeen miles wide.

Flattish, there’s not many hills, not many mountains, Flinders Island is totally different, that is a mountainous island and a bigger island I think and less people. King Island is known as the island of wrecks there were a lot of little ships wrecked around King Island,

some had been deliberately led there by wreckers, who would put false lights out, and of course they were coming out through the strait and you’d make for it and, there was nothing there except a very wild coast and that was the end of your ship. Lots of graves there, lots of people, lots of lives lost on the various wrecks on King Island.

Oh yes. Yes.

No not now, it’s too long ago, it all happened well over 100 years ago mostly in the late 1880s or 1890s I think that’s when that was really in, in swing. Then came the children

going to school. We had one lovely visit back to Launceston with the three kids. The two elder ones and I went to Hobart for the day on a train, got up very early in the morning, very early and we got to Hobart and we joined the crowd and we found a point where we could stand or sit and we waited and we waited

and eventually a car drove past, conveying the Queen and Prince Phillip to Government House. Then after she left again, so we saw her twice in and out of Government House, so then we went down into Hobart itself and she drove past while we stood again and waved to her, and caught a train home so that was our visit in 1954 for royalty, to see royalty. So I did see the Queen and the Duke, having seen her

mother, as the Duchess of York many, many years before.

No, no. We were back every, just about every twelve months, in fact I came back with Catherine as a three month old, brought her home as a three month old baby because I had to show everyone my wonderful daughter, and her grandparents wanted to see their first, only grand daughter,

and we brought our sons home too, in due course of time.

I certainly did, there was no other way, but they were only little planes, twenty-two seaters or eighteen seaters, whatever they were, then they got to, what’d they go to, twenty-seven, thirty-six and they gradually got bigger, the planes, as the years progressed.

I don’t think he was really that keen on the land, he liked it, but I don’t think he was that keen and he was quite happy as he was as a miner and it was very good money until it ran out, the mine ran out. The mine closed in 1958, everyone was more or less made redundant, so by that time my parents were dead, we had the home

here so we came here. And the kiddies were nearly ready for high school, the two elder ones, so, we came to Launceston and here we stayed.

He was a shell driver, it was an open cut mine, oh yes I think it went underground afterwards, that was the second time, he was, he was in the open cut with the shovel then he became a I think

he was a (UNCLEAR) driver too at the end.

Could have been, yes, it could have been, you had to know what you were doing and where to place the machines and that. There’s danger in all mines. After it closed, it closed down for a few years and then it reopened and it thrived again for another ten or so years after that. But it’s just a ghost town again now.

Oh minor ones, minor ones, I don’t think anyone was killed while we were there. Not in my time, not in those eleven years, there had been accidents since but we weren’t there.

I enjoyed it, I liked coming home, I liked seeing my friends and my parents. And you had to get off the island I think at least once a year otherwise you’d be coasty, so once I was here, and once I had seen everyone I was quite happy to go home to King Island, that was home.

Coasty, well that’s a condition of cattle on the island, something to do with the lack of mineral deficiency on the coastal parts of the island, you got to move the cattle from that and we used to say that, women or men, they’d be coasty if they were irritable and that, so they’d wanted to get off the island for a break. So that’s the reason for coasty, the word coasty.

Yes, in the grass and

whatever they eat or drink, there was a mineral deficiency on the island, they have corrected it to a large extent now, but that’s all in it’s infancy in those days and of course, anyone would say oh, “Crabby, I’ve got to get off the island, I’m going coasty” that was the expression, so that was just something off the island.

My closest friends, I had one or two very

good friends on the island, one was an older lady. We were interested in our church and in our CWA and our guild and that was that and I certainly had my nephew and his wife, or my husband’s nephew and his wife and Alec’s family were around, they were all on the island at that, yes they were all on the island except one. One sister I never ever did meet. She wasn’t on the island in my

time. She was floating around somewhere or other in Orange, but I don’t know where she is today, I doubt if she’s still alive, she’d be a very, very old lady.

Well Alec was redundant at the mine there wasn’t anything, he didn’t want anything on the island, we didn’t, we thought he wouldn’t. We had a house

here we either had to sell the house here and move to the mainland, or come here and do something, so we came here. And we stayed here and the children went to school, late, primary school and right through their secondary and matriculation years, so here we stayed, so it was time to sell Union Street and come here.

Very isolated, you had a, you didn’t have a ferry service, you had a little boat, a small ship service for food

supplies, you had your plane service which I think was just about every day, Melbourne to King Island, to Launceston or vice versa. And, that was about it. You were very dependant on the boat for supplies of food, everything was more or less imported, air freight was coming in, I think one of the pioneers was

was one of the men on King Island who set up a small company and pioneered air freight. You had to buy up, instead of one pound of sugar you had to buy a bag of sugar just in case you didn’t get supplies for a month or two months.

There were two stores a little store at Grassy and there was a big store in Curry that supplied the whole island, I suppose he had a monopoly really of things.

It was a very, very countryish in 1947, 1948, it hadn’t changed much when we left in 1958 but there’s been a big change now, all the things that I said should have been there and, 1947 were there in about 1978, or 1980, when I went back.

No, no I don’t think so, I don’t think there were ever

aboriginals on King Island, they were, taken to Flinders Island and from Flinders Island I think they must have gone to Cape Baron Island, that’s where the half castes came from. There are aboriginals on King Island, but they aren’t local, or say local or actually born on King Island, unless there’s some now children of aboriginals who are on King Island, living on King Island,

and you couldn’t really call them a part of King Island, not originals. There’s King Islanders but not, not of a family group, not as a clan or a tribe.

Friendliness, willing to help one another I suppose, getting and doing things together and making your own fun and your own amusement and getting to things like that, own dances, you had your own fund raisers and, you did what you could and you rose what you could for charity, for whatever you liked to call it.

Yes I think so I was always doing something for

something or other.

The isolation the fact that you cannot get off the island unless you have a plane. Isolation would be one of the worst I suppose, you can’t jump in your car and drive to Hobart to a totally different town. Or you can’t, if you’re in Melbourne, you can’t jump in a car and go over to

Adelaide or a big centre in Victoria. It does make a difference if you’re confined, when you’re just confined to a little, what is it about seventeen miles to about forty, rather restricting.

Somehow or other I think they did move. People would come together and help the person in trouble,

and on today’s payments to, to loan people, I think they would manage very well really. See, that is how it has changed in sixty years.

No I don’t think so, we didn’t do, it wasn’t there in my day, it certainly wasn’t there. If a girl was in trouble or

financially insecure, her family or friends would rally around her or the same with a man, they did it that way, they came together as a family and looked after, after people.

I think so. But we didn’t know who they were.

Well you wouldn’t, especially at the mine.

You could have an assumed name, you wouldn’t know who they were or what they were until such time as something came out, six months or 12 months down the track, oh, oh yes, right.

Not really, not that much, if you were a stranger on the island you had your story and it was accepted. And then you’d find out 12 months later what

the true story was.

No I can’t really, myself. I, I heard this story, there was a man working at the mine he was one of the bosses and this woman arrived with two children on the island, she claimed they were his etc, etc and she was his wife. That could be true, that could be false, I seem to remember that same man, he never owned up, but I think he was a

sergeant that I knew in the army. He was dealing with the movement of prisoners between Victoria and Tasmania, and he was known as a greasy provo but I remember this man’s name from those days, from army days and I’ve always thought that maybe there was something there in that story. Can’t prove it no way of proving it now, too long ago.

So she came to the island, claiming that he was the father and that she was his wife etc, but there was always a shadow of doubt that that wasn’t quite the case, they lived together certainly as man and wife, they were known as a couple, yes.

Oh they were accepted, yes. Oh yes he was a staff man, so yes she was accepted, yes.

For medical facilities we had a health scheme that was run by the mine, and we had two bush nurses who were very, very good nurses so you could have treatments there and the doctor would come out once a week and, see patients, so on the whole it wasn’t too bad a life. Schooling was alright, started as a little two room school but it ended up as a,

I think there were six classrooms at the end, it was very well equipped just before the second closure of the mine, it had a gym room and all the gym equipment and baseball, basketball courts and what have you, they had everything, swimming pool, it was really an excellent little set up for Grassy. Sadly that’s all gone by the board, though they are trying to, re, what, re allocate, or relocate people

to King Island from various places and they’ve also got a scheme going where they’re bring children over for a term to live at Grassy at various hostels and that that they’ve sort of built to learn about life on the island and to give them a break from the city life to the country life. But I don’t know whether that’s working or whether it’s even going, but that was on the pipeline last time I was over there.

But that’s always been there. But it cannot supply the whole of Australia, if you heard that story, it just cannot supply the whole of Australia, he loves pulling the wool over people’s eyes, that particular man.

It’s my brother in law. So whenever we hear stories about King Island being able to supply the whole of Australia, we think

“Oh yes, you’re at it again boy” so we don’t take much notice of that. But yes it is very good quality meat. Very good quality cheese.

It was always there, at one stage Alec was originally a cheese maker, what did they call it, up at Wickham. So, that’s going back 70 years I suppose.

Probably went to Melbourne. King Island is actually closer to Melbourne than Flinders Island. Yes it would go to Melbourne I should imagine, some would come here but most would go to Melbourne.