Australians at War Film Archive

Yes.

I grew up in Launceston. My parents and brother and sister were all from Melbourne, but I was just born in Launceston. I had a very happy childhood. I was very fortunate. Great parents, loving and fun. We had a very happy childhood. I went to Methodist Ladies College, which is just along the road from here.

It was a very well ordered life, I suppose. A bit different from today’s life, which is a little bit more, oh well, they walk around more and think they’ll do their own thing a bit more whereas we, I think our parents were proud of what we did, and we wanted their love and respect. So life just went on. We just went

to school and played lots of sports. At home played lots of games outside. I was a bit of a sport fanatic. I think I knocked the ball up against the wall ad nauseam. The wall was weatherboard, so you never knew which way the ball was going to bounce. I spent my life in a very

routine way, but a very happy way.

My father was the town clerk and city treasurer of Launceston. After he died they separated. They had two. He was a very genteel, determined, lovely sense of humour. He was that all my life and Mother

ran the home. She always had a live-in maid. She used to work in the vegetable garden. Originally we had two blocks of orchard that were ours, and so there was plenty of fruit and vegetables. Whereas my father loved his flower garden, Mother did quite a bit in the veggie garden. She had a gardener who used to come once a week, or once a fortnight to do the

digging. Old Jack. But she used to do the picking. In those days there was lots of preserving and jam making. Mother did all that type of thing. We had a very big area of raspberries, and then you’d get to the black currants and the red currants and the gooseberries. Then you’d get to the trees and then you’d get to the veggie garden.

So that was her domain whereas Dad, at the weekends loved his flower garden. He alone did that. As a young man he was very good at sport. Once I was in the picture, he was a bowler at weekends. He liked his lawn bowls. He was a very fine-charactered man. I don’t think you could get a finer character than Dad.

All his family were very genteel. I always remember a husband of a cousin of mine said, “If the world was full of Crawfords, there’d be no wars.” So that was the type of life that I grew up into. My brother was 8 years older than me. When I was young, he was a terrible tease. I think my sister and I threw anything at him that we could find. Full of life.

There were plenty of children in the street in those days. The boys always played football out in the street and cricket out in the street, things like that.

Yes. My brother was 8 years older than me. Then my sister, who’s still alive, is 4 years older than I am. She’s doing very well. She still plays cards and goes to luncheons and things so she’s more mobile than I am. She keeps

saying she’s getting very tired and can’t keep doing it, but she still does.

I was born a few houses along from here. Then I grew up in Talik Street, which is two blocks up. So although I’ve been away for about 8 years in the middle, in the army, and then I married a Queenslander. I’m back just about from where I started because we lived just two blocks up in

Talik Street. And in those days, there was paddock one side. When I came home from school sometimes there were cows grazing on the side of the road, so I’d go back down the other side and come up the other side. But of course by the time I got there, the cows had gone round the corner too. They were early days. And of course it’s terrifically built on now. My father never saw Riverside or

Norwood or any of those suburbs. He died in ‘55. So it’s grown very much over the years. But I used to play a lot of sport as well.

I only remember, my brother and sister can well remember the other side of Richards Avenue where we lived

as being paddocks with coarse bushes on it. I don’t know whether I can remember it or whether it is because I was told it, but when I was young there were houses there. When I was 8-9-10, there were houses there. In Talik Street there were all homes there then of course. The outer suburbs weren’t built when I was young because I was born in 1920.

So as I say I was born along a few houses from here.

Certainly part of my brother’s life. He used to go exploring with young boys along the river and things like that. He was older than I was. He and his later wife, fiancée, they often took me Saturday or Sunday morning, Sunday I suppose it

would be, along the river. We had swimming spots along the river down here, which later couldn’t be used. Actually Scotch Open College, their swimming pool was down on the river. But later the abattoirs and other things came in, and that all went. But we have lots of…mainly my brother taking me, we had lots of swimming spots on rivers. They

were great. We didn’t go many family picnics in those days. Dad didn’t have a car at that stage, but my brother used to take me out on these Sunday outings walking when it was early days, just a young man. Because Dad got a car later and so did George, and we used to go further a field then.

No. There used to be a regatta down at Royal Park, but my family weren’t sailors at that stage. No there was always the Henley Regatta, but that was down at Royal Park, down from the old museum. No these are just picnic spots we had. Later,

even after I married Geoff, which was in our 50s, Geoff and I were second marriage, we had some beaut picnic spots out St Patrick’s River way and Edlam Plains. We had lovely picnic spots we often went to for Sunday morning. We went there one day and obviously a group of people fishing, they built a huge bonfire and beer cans and ruined our lovely

little grassy sward beside the river that we used to go to. But we had a lot of lovely picnic spots, including even getting up to Cradle Mountain a couple of times.

I don’t know. My family weren’t fishermen or sailors. We were more city-dwelling people. We’d got tennis courts just below where I

live now and in my teen years I spent my life very much down there. I loved tennis. As well as it being my sporting activity, it was my social activity too. We often had dances Saturday night. I was lucky enough to enjoy it. I played in Tasmanian A Grade, so we played against Hobart, North West Coast,

and you took it in turns. We’d go down to Hobart, and then they’d come up to us the next year, so there was plenty social activity as well as the tennis. Younger than that we used to go to each others’ houses for Saturday night and play table tennis, play music and dancing and singing and things like that. We had plenty of activity and social

life as well as our school. We were lucky at school; I had some very wonderful mistresses. They were fine examples. I’ve been very fortunate. I had a good home life, I had a good school life with fine examples all the way through. Good, very fine-charactered people.

Yes. There was a headmistress, Miss Fox. Her father had been first headmaster at a Houghton College down in, it was out of Launceston somewhere, I can’t remember if it was Ross or where it was, but she was

a very fine woman. Then we had Miss Madder who was a wonderful teacher. She made a subject live for you. I haven’t forgotten a lot of what she taught me. Mind you I couldn’t quote all the Shakespeare she managed to get into my brain, but a lot of the other things I’ve retained. She was such a good teacher. I can remember quite a bit of my

teachers. I suppose when I started school there weren’t, I don’t know how many there’d be. I think we would have got up to 300 and something. Now it’s joined the Scotch College and of course they have a huge enrolment. They’ve gone co-ed [coeducational]. One part of it is for the junior, my old Ladies’ Methodist College is the junior school, and Scotch is for the senior school now.

They have well over 1000 now. In my very early days, my brother influenced me with his activities and holidays. I don’t remember him terribly much as a schoolboy, and yet I can remember earlier things when he used to have friends. They’d build cubby-houses under our house, and they always had

secret entrance words. They wouldn’t let me in until I found them myself, or something like that. We had under our house, my family house was high at the front, so we used to be able to play under there. I can remember a friend who used to live just a few doors down from here, she and I built a mini golf course underneath in the dust.

You know what the underneaths of houses are. We planted this lawn. We’d charge a penny for anyone to come in. This was in school holidays of course. School grew while I was there. I think at least 3 new buildings would have gone up when I was there from when I started. I recently went back to an old girls thing, and we were certainly old girls. There were about 3 of us in out of

80 that were there. It was lovely to see a couple that, you grow away from those friends. Especially when I went into the army, I didn’t see any of my friends for all those years. When you come back you’ve all gone your own way. As you do different things in you life, some of your friends naturally change and go out. They were all very precious memories.

My brother, he did. Do you want me to go on to my teenage years?

My brother became a solicitor. He was 8 years older than me. After I finished school, I went to work

as the junior girl there. Make the tea and lick the stamps and answer the phone. Actually when I finished school, I had wanted to be a pharmacist, but I had discovered the last year that you couldn’t do chemistry at MLC [Methodist Ladies’ College] along here, so I went to tech [technical college] at night to do chemistry and got that. But I then discovered that I needed physics and I knew I’d never do physics in one year, so that had to go by the board.

So I was home for about a year or something like that. I had a lady coming home teaching me typing and shorthand. My mother had a beautiful contralto voice. As children she used to go around the home singing, or sitting at the piano singing. None of us got Mother’s voice. Our house was full

of music. I can remember us getting the first gramophone. We often went to town on a Friday night with my parents and bought records, mainly ballads: Peter Dawson, Richard Crooks, Richard Tauber, some opera. I think I still got an old record of Sheely and Madame Melba [Dame Nellie Melba]. Then I can remember us getting our first wireless.

Not radio. It was my father’s brother was in this type of work in Sydney and he sent us our first radio. It sat on a table with the curtain hanging down to cover like a car battery and then another battery that was a bit smaller, and then two little batteries. Then the radio sat along the top with three nobs,

two for the station, one for the volume, and then two little nobs here. Then you had a loudspeaker that came out with like a huge horn type of thing. That was our first wireless. Don’t ask me what year it was, I don’t know. But we had to have a wireless mast. Some people just sort of had trees. That didn’t suit my mother. We had a very fine thing like a flagpole out in the garden.

So we always had music. There was always music in our home, which was lovely.

No idea. I can remember, no I don’t remember that. I know my brother and father used to love when cricket was on. And they used to like

to be able to listen then, whereas otherwise the music was always in the background. The next wireless we got here was much more like a cabinet, like just the one thing. The gramophone was a wind-up one with a needle on it.

City treasurer. He used to, in those days they didn’t have city manager. I can remember towards the end of Dad’s life, no towards the end of his working life, speaking about a manager coming. It was

again, Dad caught the quarter to nine tram, we all came home for lunch, he caught the one o'clock tram back for lunch and the quarter to two back and then he’d come home regularly at quarter to six, unless it was bowls time and then he’d go. As city treasurer – he was an accountant – he was involved of course in the finances of the city.

I don’t honestly know. Dad wasn’t a man who talked a lot about his work and don’t forget I was the youngest child, so I can’t tell you very much. But I always remember in his ceremony that they gave him at the end of his working life that they said that in his time, the finances in the city had increased

threefold. It was early days. I can remember when the Duke and Duchess of York came out, they were the later George VI and the Queen Mother, as you would know her. They came out. Dad used to have to wear a wig and a gown on occasions like that. I was very proud of him.

Yes, yes.

I’ve got pictures of it. I can remember seeing my father then. I don’t know if I actually managed to get in the front row and saw them, I don’t know that, but I have got pictures of them. I can remember seeing Dad in wig and gown. He used to go to lodge. As a child I can remember hearing him in the bedroom learning things while he was getting dressed into his lodge

regalia. He didn’t in the latter part; this was in my younger life. He used to play cricket on the side veranda with my brother and myself. He was a family man. He wasn’t a clubman. We never had beer in our home. We had wines for high days and holidays. We used

to have at somebody’s birthday, at Christmas we had sparkling burgundy or something like that. I think if my father’s friends came in, they’d have one little whisky, something of that nature. Later on he used to have a bridge before he came home at night. His work was most important. I remember one alderman saying to me as a teenager, “Do you realise your father is guide, philosopher and friend

to all aldermen,” He was a very fine-charactered man. He wouldn’t do that obviously; he’d just be a guide, philosopher and friend in a very guiding, light-handed way. That’s the way he brought us up. We respected what he said. I don’t think we would ever have gone against what he said. He just somehow got

discipline and respect out of us just with a loving, gentle hand. His work was fulltime except in the summer. Then he used to play bowls after work at night, two nights a week or something like that, and on a Saturday. He was a family man. We had a very happy family life.

I’ve got a magnificent

photograph of Mother with the bouquet about this huge. They were married in Melbourne of course. Mother was used to singing solos in Scots Church in Melbourne. She had a lovely voice. They were married in Melbourne. I imagine my brother must have been about 6 and my sister 2 when they came over. I’m guessing that.

Then I was born here.

Wonderful. Again kind, gentle, loving. Yes. Mother, although she had a maid, the home was run, the meal was on the table when Father came home at lunchtime. Meals at night,

Father carved the meal and passed it to Mother who served the vegetable dishes and the gravy boat and served it to us. It was a very, you just accepted it as a regular life, and it was on the table at the same time. I suppose lunchtime certainly had to be for Dad. Life just flowed very smoothly. They had a very loving

relationship. I don’t mean overtly in any way. Dad always liked Mother to go to bed at the same time. He said, “Come on, Dot, come on.” They enjoyed each other’s company. When I was a teenager, they used to go to the pictures every Saturday night together. It wasn’t the going out for dinner. They went to places to go.

I think we only had the Brisbane Hotel and the Launceston Hotel and the Metropole Hotel, but there were no cafes, there were no restaurants. They always went to the pictures every Saturday night together. Arm in arm always. They had friends they played cards with. Mother had her ladies cards group and then they had a couple

that they often played cards with every fortnight. We went to St Helen’s Hotel for our summer holidays quite a bit, with another couple so Dad and Mum could play cards with them. In the day they’d sit and watch us play tennis and Dad would still have his suit on. There were no casual clothes. My father always wore the suit with the vest and a hat. I’ve even got a photograph of

him at St Helen’s watching us play tennis with his suit and his vest and his hat, most likely his pipe, I’ve forgotten. That’s them over there.

Oh yes. Certainly. Mother always dressed very well. She always did. Always looked nice. Dad had an important position

in the city life.

I don’t really. I was you see 9, 10, 11 years. My father still had his position. The only one that would have influenced would have been my brother, cause he’d left school then, and he was to go into law. In those days, even in the days of my children, the only university was in Hobart.

My three all went down to Hobart to uni [university]. My brother was to go, but at that stage I presume Dad couldn’t have afforded to have kept him in Price College, like the boarding college attached to the uni to start with. He had to go a certain, I don’t know whether it was the last year, or the last two years, but the first couple of years, he was articled to the solicitor’s office in

Launceston. He did his first two years of law, which is more or less an arts course, from tutors that had been his masters at Grammar. Two of them I think did their classics, Latin and classics at Oxford. They were his masters at Grammar and they tutored him in his first two years so he had a table

set up in his room. He did his first two years of law, at least, at home. But he did go to Richie, Park, Alfred Green and Co solicitors during the day as an articled clerk. Then he went to Price College and University of Hobart to finish off his degree. I think that was because of the Depression years. My father’s salary most likely was reduced. As a child it really didn’t affect me,

but it must have affected a lot of other people very, very much. I was very fortunate. I just accepted each day as it came. And it came.

I never found anything like that. I went to Methodist Ladies College and lived a very sheltered, happy life,

if I can put it that way. I was fortunate. Dad would have been in a good position, although I don’t know, I imagine his salary may have been cut. I don’t know. I as a 10 year old lived exactly the same way. We didn’t have all the clothing, the things that children have today. We had our school uniform and something for going to Sunday School in and

perhaps one nice dress. All the millions of tops that my grandchildren have. They wouldn’t know how many they have I don’t think. There wasn’t the cheap clothing around. We would just have one or two good things that we could go to a party or something like that. So there wasn’t that much extra spent on the things that the modern child

has. Even my children are 56, 54 and the last one’s 50 this week. I know my daughter-in-law is amazed that my two sons could share the same lowboy. But they went to Grammar so they had their school clothes, they had something for Saturday morning, they had their sports clothes, and they perhaps had better, instead of jeans, perhaps they had a better pair of trousers or something for Saturday night.

There wasn’t the need for all the amount of inexpensive clothes that there is today. Life was different.

No, there wasn’t training. I’m sure my father always wanted my brother to go into law and George was very happy to do that.

He later became a judge and was knighted. There wasn’t the training in the schools for, you know how today they give them a week at an occupation to see if they like it or not. There was nothing like that. My father’s youngest brother, whom I never knew, he died on his way to the First World War, he was a pharmacist. I think I got that idea in my head

from that. I loved science at school. The only science we had was physiology, botany, but I loved those subjects and maths also. They were my three better ones. Languages I didn’t’ like as much. I think because Dad had a brother who was a pharmacist that I think I got my idea from there. We didn’t have the

preparation. A lot of my friends just stayed at home and married and had children. I was home for 18 months. Then when my brother said to me would I like to go in and earn 15 shillings a week, I said, “Thank you very much, I would.” So there wasn’t the preparation for a career. My mother’s sisters, she was one of 8, they were all kept in the

way they were used to be. Beautiful, long frocks. They had huge hats and long frocks and things. None of them ever went out to work. Again, life changes.

When I went into the army? Well you can’t really say I had a career before that, because my wish to do pharmacy didn’t transpire,

so I went into my brother’s office as the junior. Then it just happened that war broke out.

No, not as a younger person. I just took each day

as it came along. I even once remarked that if my father said, “Pack your bags dear, we’re going tomorrow,” I would have said, “Yes, Dad.” My life was just quite regulated like that. It wasn’t until I got into my teens and then gradually of course you live your own life, it’s a natural progression. Then I can remember when I

said to my father that I was thinking about joining the army, he said to me, “Well, you know how homesick you get when you go to Melbourne each year. You get very homesick. But it’s your decision.” He never put that upon us. No, I became more independent, I was perfectly happy to be dependent on my parents in my early life. Then, as I became 17, 18, 19 then of course, you do

become more independent. Through my life down at the tennis courts and then after the war was declared, we all did our various voluntary jobs for starters. We used to work during the day and go to VADs at night, Voluntary Aid Detachment and we learned parade ground drills down at the barracks on a Tuesday night. Then did

first aid courses and home nursing courses and maintenance courses. I think at that stage my mother used to complain that we girls were never at home at night. So life was full and interesting then of course more independent. But I was still living at home.

I was living at home and I was working at Douglas and Collins where my brother was a partner. He’d been in the militia as it was

called during those days, after work, so he naturally joined up straight away. I was there for, I can’t remember, it’d be over a year. We used to go down to the barracks at night to do parade ground work with the Voluntary Aid Detachment and gradually did these other courses, fault finding on cars and maintenance on cars. By that stage there was a

company down here on the showgrounds behind where I live now, the old showgrounds. We used to go down there and drive 3-ton trucks at weekends and things like that. We had a knitting circle. We made scarves and balaclavas, social things at night. That went to the Comforts Fund, which was sent to the boys who by this stage were in the Middle East you see.

That took me up to the end of ‘41. A friend of mine had her husband coming home, he had been released and she wanted to leave her job and asked me would I take her job. So I moved from Douglas and Collins, because my brother had been gone for 2 years by then, and I worked for a wholesale agent for a while. It was at the end of ‘41 that we heard they were forming the army.

Up till that time we were working during the day and doing voluntary jobs at night, mainly the ADs [VAD – Voluntary Aid Detachment]. But they ran different courses, which all qualified us for life. They all helped. You don’t forget the things you learn in your earlier life. You see I even offered to put your sling on, and Geoffrey at

88 is always bashing himself in the garden. I’m always tying him up with steri-strips and bandages and ringing the doctor. They were things I learned in those days. We had plenty of social life through the tennis courts. At that stage a lot of my male friends had gone, so we had these female knitting circles, the ADs and things, but still a lot of company. We’d go to the pictures and other things.

Mother complained we were never at home at night. So life was still full, but we used to listen to the news always. My brother had been away for quite a while at that stage.

Oh yes. I can remember my brother saying, “It’s on! It’s on!”

I can remember that very plainly. I’d have been 19, so he was 8 years older. He was married then, but because he’d been down at the militia, and they were all artillery chaps. He could have been a captain or a major then, I’ve forgotten. They used to have horses.

They were artillery, but the guns were pulled by horses. I think he paid me, no I think I had to clean his leggings and his brass work for 12 times and he’d buy me a yoyo. I was the youngest sister you see, so I brassed all his things and did all his leggings and all the little brass buttons and the little buttons down the side of the,

they wore leather leggings in the artillery in those days. I got my yoyo.

My parents were from Victoria, so in those days you mainly went for holidays to your relations. We used to go nearly every Christmas time we went to Melbourne. In those days

the boat used to come right up to the wharf, even the tram went down to the wharf. I think we always went down by hired car. I think my memory is that. The boat would blow its horn, what do you call it? What do boats have? Something like that. As a child I was always panicking, pushing Mother onboard. I was frightened the boat would go without us.

Originally it was the Loongana, then it was the Norana, and then later the Taroona, which later became a troop ship. The Norana was pretty ghastly. You’d take a step inside and you could smell the night before’s trip over. We’d take about 2 ½ hours to go down the river and then from memory it was 12 hours heads to heads.

We were going to Melbourne weren’t we?

It was about 2 ½ hours down the river, 12 hours from heads to heads, and then 2 ½ hours up the bay. You went right into Melbourne. It was Port Melbourne. It was right in the city. My sister was a good sailor and I was a dreadful sailor.

She used to come up and say she’d had sausages for breakfast, which made me feel a lot worse. We went over nearly every year. I could remember as a child waking up on Christmas morning and seeing in my pillowcase, this was in my grandfather’s house, seeing a great big Ma-Ma doll in the pillowcase on my bed, so I would have been pretty young then. Mother still had three maiden aunts living at home then.

I never knew my grandmother. That grandfather was the only one I knew. Both Dad’s parents had died before. Actually his father died when he was ten, but Nora and George, my brother and sister, knew his mother, but I didn’t. As a young one, I mainly stayed in my grandfather’s house, which was a lovely home.

Also then I stayed with one of Mother’s sisters. She had three sons who were 10, 11, 12 years older than I was. They were wonderful to me as a child, absolutely wonderful to me. They’d take me out different places; make me feel very grown up. Then I used to stay a lot with a cousin of,

no a niece of my father. The generations got a bit muddled up there. Stayed there a lot. She used to send me out with her husband who was on his doctor’s rounds. She’d give me a little bag of meringues, because she used to make her husband an egg-flip every morning, and she had lots of whites of eggs. So she used to make me a lot of little meringues. So I used to accompany Joe on his rounds with a little

jay and berry plaid, and a little bag of meringues when I was staying with Flo when I was young. By this stage I’d be a teenager. I would have been on my own. Earlier Mother was with us, when we were children. Grandfather was a terrific tease, and he used to call me his little ‘you-did-it’, because I was walking up a path with him, and he had a white beard, and a walking stick

and he’d take it behind him, and tap me on the bottom with it so that I didn’t now where it came from. I’d look up at him and say, “You did it.” He always called me his little ‘you-did-it’ after that. I can remember that much. The boat trips, it was quite an excursion, you know. We had streamers and things. People were throwing madly and waving before you went. But the boats came right up to Launceston in those days. At that stage

I knew very little of Tasmania. I think I’d been to Hobart once. I hadn’t been down the north-west coast until I went down later with sports teams, so all my holidays were spent in Melbourne, mainly in the city.

Oh yes. You were in cabins of four with your little strawberry basket attached to

the side of your bunk. The best way, if you’ve never been on a ship to Hobart, it’s very rough, and I’ve had some very rough trips in it. The ship used to groan, moan and your luggage would move around and you’d hear china breaking. The trips could be very rough on best days. That’s what amazed me when I went to New Guinea. The water up there was magnificent compared to Bass Strait. One

morning, going to New Guinea, I woke up and the water was like a purple mirror. The boat was just slicing into it. I couldn’t believe after Bass Strait that ocean simply could be like that. I suppose we got used to it. When I got to about 17, I was given a seasick pill, and after that I had a much happier life going over.

There were no planes. I can’t remember to tell you when the planes started, I can remember my father going to Melbourne on business with the Melbourne City Council, I suppose, and he went by plane. I can remember standing on the front veranda with Mother in tears watching Dad go over in a plane. He came home and said, “It was wonderful. You could have balanced a cigarette on the arm and it wouldn’t have moved,” whereas we were used to the ships. My sister even

has a huge painting that my father did when he was about 10 or 12 of an old ship, the Coogee. This was a huge painting. She has it up on her wall in her house. In those days it was all ship. We even had girls came to school from down the river by boat. I think they could have been weekly boarders. On Monday they came up by boat

to school. It was beautiful early morning when you were coming back from Melbourne. Coming up the Tamar early morning. It was really beautiful. Once you got inside the heads, you see, the river was calm and it was really beautiful early in the mornings. I don’t remember much about going into the bay in Melbourne. I remember the rip outside the bay, which was always very

rough; known for being very rough. We got quite used to it and accepted it. I remember as a teenager one time, I was on my own. A lady asked me would I keep an eye on her little daughter who was travelling on her own in the cabin with me. I remember that poor little mite was sick all night long. She had a very rough night on it. Now

of course we’ve got the big ones that take the cars and everything, and they say it’s a great trip.

Yes. Two funnels. One trip we had, my sister and I left Melbourne. We were teenagers. We went down the bay, and one of our friends was with an aunt coming back

on it. The aunt had taken a sleeping pill, ready for Bass Strait. She went down to her cabin and went to sleep and there was a fire. Bells were clanging madly everywhere and crew running about and the ship turned round and we went back to Melbourne. So when poor Miss Bruce woke up, she thought she had missed Launceston and she was back in Melbourne. We arrived, I don’t know how we got word to my

uncle and aunt that we were staying with at that time. We had no money left. We had spent the rest of our holiday money, and I remember signalling to them to give us a couple of shillings so we could tip the porter to get our cases off the boat back into Melbourne again. It wasn’t a huge fire. The crew managed to put it out, but they thought it was wiser to turn back to Melbourne. So we set out again the next day.

Mostly when war broke out, nearly, a lot of my male age friends all left, most were prepared to do what they could. It was, well you were just prepared

to do whatever you could. Quite a lot of my school friends, and others joined the VADs. I think there were two detachments. We went to the barracks on a Tuesday night where somebody from the army drilled us madly in army drill. Then a doctor used to give us, after we’d done quite a lot of drill, we then did first aid course, and then

after that we did a home nursing course, then we went to a garage and learned to do maintenance on cars. People gave voluntary time to teach us these things. We had our own little knitting circle where we made balaclavas and scarves and socks. By this stage the men had gone over to the Middle East, El Alamein and over there.

So we all did voluntary things. I don’t know whether at that stage, or when I came home on leave, Dad was a warden I suppose. They used to have to go out at night and make certain people have their blackout curtains, no light shining through. I don’t think rationing had come in when I was at home. I don’t think it came in till later. Again,

I don’t think this happened till later, Mother had a slit trench; magnificent slit trench in the garden, knowing Mother. We had dirt and wood and dirt and sandbags put on top of it. Then somebody said, “Look, they could shoot straight down.” So then she had a magnificent passage with sandbags on the angle outside it. But it used to fill with water when it rained and Dad had to siphon it out. I don’t think that happened until later, until the Japanese came in I

suppose. Dad used to get…he was a worrier. I suppose we all are. But he used to get down and worried about the war news. I can remember that. So I was at home from the war was declared in ‘39, and I didn’t actually get into my recruit school until early ‘42. So I was home those years, living at home.

Most people did their daily jobs and then did something voluntary at night. It was all good preparation. When I went into recruit school, I found I had to do the drill just the same, I had to do a first aid course just the same. I had already done them, so knowledge is never a burden.

He’d joined up in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] already by that stage.

Sorry, before the war, from when he was a schoolboy to when war broke out, he was in the militia, yes, in the artillery.

I don’t think so at that stage. Obviously adults must have been

starting to get worried about how things were. They obviously realised that things were getting worse, and expected that war. I can remember, as you well would know from history, when Chamberlain said, “There’ll be no war in our time.” Then I can remember hearing over the radio, wireless in my day, that war had been declared. But I don’t know to what

extent people in Australia. There obviously would have been known that if Britain declared war that we would have too. We were very aligned with Britain then, more so than now. So if Britain declared war, obviously we would be in it. My brother’s vintage, who were all in militia, and even my sister’s fiancé at that stage, he was involved too. They all automatically joined the

AIF. At that stage the AIF was the ones that could be sent overseas, but there were still units here that would, AIF at that stage. As I suppose my unit was, because we couldn’t have been sent overseas then at that stage either.

In the army, you mean?

In the Voluntary Aid Detachments, we went in Tuesday night and did drill, parade ground work and then the doctor came. I don’t know whether we went to the general hospital or whether we went to the barracks and she came there and taught us first aid. We had to do exams and these things.

Then the home nursing course. I did do a few hours in the hospital. They brought in that we should also do a few hours in the hospital. We must have been an awful nuisance to the nursing staff. They gave us something pretty menial to do, because we really would have been in the way I think, at that stage. But we did maintenance on cars. I remember one time with the 3-tonners, the transport unit who was down here.

We drove 3-tonners down to a beach somewhere and filled sandbags and they were terribly heavy. You had to declutch up and double-declutch down and steering was heavy. They were tiring to drive. I can only remember driving it one Sunday long-distance. We went down to a beach somewhere. And we had our knitting circles and things like that. And women

used to make cakes, and you had a special tin that you put them in. You then sewed calico around and over the top. Not paper, you sewed calico, and you wrote the name of somebody that you were sending it to in these calico-wrapped special willow-tin fruitcakes you sent away. So people were all prepared to do things like

that early days. I don’t remember when the boys first went over to the Middle East. It was the 9th Division went there. The 8th went into Singapore, and they became prisoners of war. 6th, I think 6th Division must have been in the Middle East too. They were later in New Guinea. They came back later and went to New Guinea.

Life went on very much as usual, except the nighttime. I still went to the tennis and went to dances and went to pictures and things like that early days, mainly with girlfriends, because most of our male friends, not all, some were joined up later. But others that had been in the militia were joined up straightaway.

Well, we did our parade ground work. We knew that very well. Then as I say, we did maintenance on cars. A lot of the girls wanted, when the army was first formed, a lot of the early ones wanted to be drivers. They’d already done maintenance courses on these vehicles and a lot of them wanted to be drivers, especially in the early days.

In the army? Well, I felt that I wasn’t a very good driver. I had my

licence, but I never had my own car. So I only drove when my father said, “Would you like to take the car tonight?” and I’d say, “Yes, dear.” And you’d think that you put it in first gear and then let the clutch out, because I didn’t drive regularly you see. I thought I wasn’t a very good driver, and I didn’t think I was that good a stenographer, so I said I didn’t mind what I did. But the girl that I joined with, she wanted to be a driver only. Although we had

walked to school together and gone to VADs together, she didn’t go into the same recruit school that I went into because she wanted to be a driver. At that stage they had quite a full lot of drivers but didn’t have as many in the other categories. There are a lot of categories in the army, an incredible amount.

I think we were supposed to do 60 hours, but I don’t think I’d better tell you what I had to do.

Well, I had to go get a basin of water and a bottle of methylated spirits and say to a gentleman, “Do you mind turning on you side, please?” where I duly washed him and rubbed him with methylated spirits and got out as quickly as I could, and that was my hospital training at that stage. As I say, we must have been an awful nuisance to busy sisters

thinking, “What on earth can we give them to get them out of the way?” I later worked in a hospital for 20 years, so. I think the idea was so they didn’t get bedsores, but most of them had only been in there two nights or something, so they gave us a very menial task to get us out of the way. But you see, that was, they decided we should do some

hospital training, and out of that I think came – I later joined the Australian Women’s Army Service – a sister service, it was the AAMWS, Australian Army Medical Women’s Service, and that was our sister service. They did very much the same jobs, but in the medical side. Now they could have been clerks, drivers, storewomen, anything like that,

or worked in a hospital as aides. All their jobs were in the medical side. So that was why I suppose they introduced us to doing a bit in hospitals. We later divided into the two services.

I think it was late ‘41 that I put in the application, but there weren’t regular

fulltime recruit schools at that time. My course was March or April ‘42. I joined with another girl, but she didn’t want to be called up at that stage, because she wanted to be a driver. So I went down on my own and we had to go to Hobart for medial and driving tests, things like that.

I had a friend up here whose father was widowed, had a big old mausoleum of a home in Hobart, and I can remember staying there. He had a very nice housekeeper. So I stayed there while I went for my medical and things like that and I thought, “What have I done?” I was so lonely because I was on my own, I didn’t know anyone. That was a few days, 4 or 5 days. Luckily he had a pianola. I

used to sit there madly doing this when I was at his home. Then the day came when we were really called up. There was one girl there, I’ve never forgotten her. She had very large hands and feet and a very large head. I again thought, “What have I done?” She was the nicest person you could

ever possibly imagine. She was a lovely person. We were in a home called Alberstoke, which again was a nice old home out in North Hobart, but empty of course. Army beds. I was lucky enough to have beside me, we were 6 or 8 to a room, a girl who was younger than I was, but she’d been to Methodist Ladies College too

and we still keep in touch. She lives down the northwest coast, and we still keep in touch.

Yes, Australian Women’s Army Service then. That was fulltime. You couldn’t decide you’d go out for the pictures or anything. Once you enlisted, you were there 24 hours a day, unless you were given a leave pass, unless it was time you could go out.

Once you were in fulltime, you were in fulltime. We were issued with our uniforms. Winter uniforms hadn’t come through. We had what we called a giggle dress. Like a revered top but with buttons, we wore a tie with it. It was a summer dress. Of course it was getting cold, you had a khaki cardigan and khaki top coat and a khaki hat and shoes and

stockings and bloomers with elastic legs. Then later the winter uniforms were issued, but not until quite a bit later, a few months later. To start with we had the same utensils, tin plates and tin mug and things like that, that the men had. Gradually they did get china, nice thick china mind you, but

china cups and things for us. We’re in army beds. In recruit school we did quite a bit of work that we did in VADs. We had a male drill instructor; we had a first aid course. I can’t remember learning terribly much about the army and that, but there was discipline, leadership, things like that. Not terribly much

in the way of advanced; mainly discipline and marching and learning. At that stage the friend, who later became the head in Tasmania, she’s the first captain in Tasmania and she was a lieutenant colonel in New Guinea, I knew her. It was very hard standing at attention for me when I spoke to her. From the word go, you

always stood to attention to speak to a senior person. So from the word go I never called her Margaret, she was always ‘Madam’ for four years. At the end of that, I used to go and stay with her in Melbourne and she was Margaret again, of course. I knew I daren’t let my thing down, or I’d have done it the wrong way. I can remember oozing to attention in the first place, because it was difficult. It was difficult for a female to stand to attention in front of somebody else.

Well, would you stand rigidly to attention in front of Colin [interviewer]?

So it was a bit difficult. It was perhaps a bit self-conscious? I’m going back to recruit school, and when Margaret first came out I knew her, but it was, “Yes, Madam,” and, “No, Madam.” Once I

completed it was all right. In those days, Margaret, she was Margaret Spencer, and she was a captain. Then there were two lieutenants, Rose Mollard and Margaret Hawker whom I went to school with and lived near. They were both lieutenants because they had worked in the barracks as stenographers so they knew a bit of army life. So they were made officers very early in the piece. Then

there were three of us, Marie Allapard, Peta Page and myself and we went very rapidly through the ranks because the numbers kept increasing rapidly then. Instead of having recruit schools every two months or something, numbers were starting to come through rapidly, so we got very rapid promotions. Then we had to learn what we should do at that rank. So

after my, I think recruit school was only about 3 weeks. You had lots of fun. I can remember this friend and I, we’d never cleaned a lavatory in our lives, and I said to her, “We won’t look.” I can remember the two of us falling out of the lavatory laughing our heads off after we’d pulled the chain and dashed out. There was always somebody to make light of something that was difficult. But you got used

to things. You got used to not living, we were brought up I suppose, I think the only word Mother ever taught us was, “Girls, be modest.” I think that was our total sex education. Then there you were, thrown into rooms with anything. In those days it would be 6-10 in a room. They were big rooms. So you had to get used

to that, but you did. Everyone was the same. There was always somebody to make, you had a lot of fun. You had companionship that was the thing. My father thought I might get homesick but you didn’t get a chance to be homesick, because you all had to whip through the one, there were bathrooms in those days, because it was in a house, and you all had to whip through there very quickly.

You were never alone, whether you were in the bathroom or anywhere.

Yes, but at that stage, they were nearly all young women who wanted, who were keen to join and keen to do a good job. A very good calibre

of person, really and truly, I mean that. They were most enthusiastic, they wanted to do their best, and they were jolly good calibre. We had funny ones and ones who were a bit prissier if I can say that. They were jolly good calibre of women. They really were. Somebody said to me one day that later on they weren’t

of such a high calibre, but I was most fortunate. They were. They were great. There was one, she was older than I was, she didn’t last long in the army. I think because she hadn’t expected it to be quite so difficult. She was a very social person, and I understand, I don’t know whether she, you couldn’t just get out

because you decided to get out, I don’t know whether she got out on compassionate grounds. She later married, so whether that was the reason, although you didn’t automatically get out when you married. I understand she didn’t stay in long. No, they were very good.

A young woman who joined because she felt she wanted to do her bit for her country in time of war and they were prepared to put their best effort into their job. Some jobs were mundane later on, but I was fortunate in that I didn’t strike that. Some lived in barracks in

Hobart later and just went to the records office every day and came back, and went to records every day, or pay quarters or something like that. But I had a far more interesting life. But they all were there because they wanted to. Their boyfriends had gone overseas, and they wanted to do their bit for their country, and I think that’s what I mean, and they all did a jolly good job. They were all

determined to do a job, perhaps to even beat the men at things, and things like that.

It was about the third one, I think. They weren’t fulltime then. So it would be 5 to 6 months after perhaps the first school was called up.

Because they didn’t have enough recruits, you see, at that stage. People didn’t know about it. Perhaps on the mainland there were more, but in Tassie [Tasmania] I guess they just got so many through, once they had 30 they’d say, “Right, we’ll have a recruit school.” Then there’d be a break until they got another 30. Then after I finished my recruit school, I went into AWAS headquarters in Anglesea barracks in Hobart

and learned to do the administrative sides, the daily routine orders and all the millions of other army forms. So I learned all that administrative side. Then we had enough coming through to form a permanent recruit training company. We were all very, no I think, was it at that stage? No it was after I’d gone out to

Broadmarsh when Rose Mollard, who was a lieutenant then, and myself, I don’t think my lieutenancy came through until a couple of months after the first course, when we went out and had, say a staff of 8, I’ve forgotten, but we had to fill palliasses and things and very much learned as we were going. Men

came down from the main Brighton Camp, ORs, other ranks, came down to teach the girls drill. We sat in on everything so that we could learn. Although we had rank, we didn’t have the knowledge and we had to learn as we went. So the ORs and the major used to come down and take the girls for drill. And we were there for those. Then officers used to come down from the main camp

and lecture on, well, army subjects and discipline and leadership and all those things as well and I used to lecture on all the army forms and even the 24-hour clock. You today, with your digital clocks, think nothing of it but girls in those days didn’t know the 24-hour clock. You had to have four figures.

I can remember even lecturing on the four figures. For instance, 0700 was 7 o'clock in the morning; you had to have an 0 before. Well you’re used to these things, but they weren’t. So 7 o'clock in the morning was 0700, and 7:30, you had to have four figures in it always. I can remember it was quite hard to get some girls to understand that the first two

figures always were hours, even if there was only one figure in it, you had to put an 0 before it. So there were lots of different ways of life. And we gradually took over all the instruction ourselves. We gradually, Rose Mollard and I, gradually did the lecturing, whereas after the end of the school you kept so many back on our staff. We always

tried to keep the best ones back for ourselves if we could, because we wanted them as instructors and they became instructors. You gradually delegated discipline duties to them. For instance, they would call up a parade and hand over to you as an officer. They would of a morning at reveille, they would take

rollcall for the girls. They could do it; you didn’t have to do that, except came the day that I was duty officer and I looked at the clock and I thought, “Oh, she hasn’t blown the whistle,” and I went down to the duty sergeant and said, “Quick, quick you’re late.” She madly blew the whistle and turned the whole camp out pyjamas, greatcoats, steel helmets. And I went back to my quarters and there was a knock on my door and she said, “Madam, you have turned the whole camp out

an hour too early.” I wasn’t very popular. I hope I had the grace to apologise. You had a sergeant in charge of each hut, you see, and they did rollcall in the morning. In those days, we wore steel helmets, went through gas chambers, which wasn’t very pleasant.

They were short, the length of this room I suppose, and all girls

were advised to wear bloomers, because the gas could sting you very much. We had respirators and steel helmets. As an officer you went through with each school, of course, whereas the girls went through once, you used to have to go through with them. The gas, you go through pretty quickly, it would sting you, but it didn’t have any lasting effect. As an officer

your job was to be there, you were first up and last to bed. You always went down and did a meal parade; see that everything was all right, camp inspections and everything like that. You’re really there for the troops. It was a good life.

I haven’t a clue, haven’t the faintest idea. I don’t suppose it was

mustard. We didn’t get any blisters. I don’t know. We went through pretty quickly; I can tell you that.

Train us. Because at that stage, later on, steel helmets and respirators were taken from us. I’ve got a picture of a march through Hobart where we wore our respirators on our chest and our steel helmets. When they discovered there wasn’t gas being used, we were allowed to dispense with that.

Broadmarsh. When we first were there we had men who came down from the main camp at Brighton to instruct us. This was our major. He was, they were all great. They were all waiting to go away themselves and they were very happy to come down to us. I remember going on route marches. He was quite a character. He had a good

singing voice, and when we were out on route marches he used to sing the verse to It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, and I’m sure I never knew it before. He had a jaunty way with him; full of enthusiasm. He was great. We also had all our injections that we had to have. Smallpox inoculation. I can remember being on a route march when I’d had my smallpox one. Your arm after it used to get very sore,

red and swollen. I remember going on a route march one still, very sore. He was a very good character. Then our own sar-major [sergeant-major] that took over, she was a great character too. She had lots of fun in her unit. She could be most regimental, but she had loads of fun. Later, here in Launceston I knew her through reunions and she was

still the life of the party. She was great.

My own female sar-major was Meg Armstrong, and she has since died. She died pretty young. When we used to go for reunions she was always full of fun. She was a great person. A lot of the girls who came through, we used to try and

keep some. We needed more staff all the time. We went out with a bare essential staff, and so we always kept two or three to add to our staff at Broadmarsh. Of course it became a much bigger school. It got so we couldn’t hold more in the huts that we had, and we had to put tents up the main road. I think the girls were on the ground then. Just a groundsheet, and I suppose a palliasse. Because you couldn’t really put

army beds in tents. When we were first there, we had a row of latrines at the top of the hill. They had no doors. You had walls between you, but they did put on doors for us. We’re females, we thought we should have ¾ doors. This is early days in Broadmarsh. Our shower block was simply

6 for ORs, two for sergeants, then the boiler room where we had a general duties man who looked after that, and then one for officers. One evening at 5 o'clock, I was in the shower and the boiler man next to me said, “Madam, is the water hot enough?” and I said, “Yes, it’s lovely thank you.” With that a hand came over the top and felt the water, “Oh, good, I’m glad it’s nice for you.” We had lots of funny things. We’d get the odd Peeping Tom of course.

I remember one night, Rose wasn’t with me at this stage. Her husband had come back from the Middle East and I was there on my own for a while. The only officer, I mean. I was censoring letters in the wee hours of the morning quite often. One evening there was a knock on the door, it must have been about 11 o'clock. It was a girl coming back from Hobart with her boy. She had a leave pass. They said, “Madam, there’s a man up the

road,” so I grabbed my whistle and a torch, and a poker I think because I was on my own censoring letters, and we only had a small officers’ mess there. So I went with them up the drive and there were some bushes on the side of where our fence ended. I said to the soldier who was with us, “He could be behind the bush. How about going over towards it?” He said, “You go,

madam. You’ve got the torch.” So I duly advanced towards it and no doubt a body flew out from the bush. He was down from Brighton just to have a…just a Peeping Tom. He was all right.

Just a Peeping Tom. Another night, I don’t think perhaps I should tell you that one, there was another Peeping Tom. That’s all right.

Will you edit it out? At that stage Rose and I were the only two officers there, and we were in the same room. She was facing the window,

it was a hut, but we had our own room in this hut. I had my back to the window, and all of a sudden Rose went like this. With that, footsteps crashed along the back. She said to me, “I at least had my satin scanties on, and you just had your army issue on.” So she was a lot of fun, too.

Yes.

Yes.

Then we went up to Brighton. That was the main camp. We had a battalion lines at the back of the camp. Rose and I were still there together then. Again we were the only two female officers there. We used to go up – even at Broadmarsh – we’d go to the men’s officer’s mess for dinner on occasions when they asked us. They’d see we got home all right. The girls would go up the picture night, or

dance night. Also we had occasional visits from good artists. I can remember a beautiful pianist one night coming to Brighton. So there were things like that. Also, I’ve forgotten whether it was Broadmarsh or Brighton, but four of us went into Wrest Point, now called the Casino, and took a suite for the night, so we could all have a bath, which was a luxury to us.

So we worked hard. When you were on instruction jobs, you were 24 hours a day, because you usually go down to take mess parade, see that all was well and you would be last into bed at night, as I say after lights out, and mostly, you’d be getting lectures at night, too. Not every night, perhaps there’d

be a night where you wouldn’t, to give the girls a chance to do their washing and things like that. But you lived on the premises. Girls would get weekend leave sometimes. Then we went up to the main lines and Rose and I were the only two in the officers’ mess there. I don’t know that I was with the recruit school that

long at that stage. They then decided to form the first NCO School in Tassie and I was made OC [Officer Commanding] of that, while Rose kept the recruit company. I was only looking the other day; I had 8 on staff at the first NCO School, two men and the others were 5 sergeant females, all as I say high calibre. They were all female sergeants, and they were great.

No doubt perhaps one or two could have been administrative, because there’s always the administrative side of things to do. We did extra things from the recruit school: map reading, night map reading and day map reading. Again I had two male instructors at that stage, because I hadn’t done map reading at that stage. I don’t know how long,

how many schools I ran as the OC of the first NCO school, but then I was transferred to be instructor at the officers’ school in Melbourne. Early days, Margaret Spencer, who was the captain in Tasmania at that stage, and Peta Page and myself, who were young, brand new lieutenants, we went over to the first officers’ school in Melbourne. Everyone there was an officer,

NSW, Victoria, all the states, but it was the first school. So we learned a bit more about what we were supposed to be doing. Also I learned – I didn’t have a clue what the mainland was like then – I can remember pulling out of the hat, you had to do a lecturette, and I pulled out the composition of AWAS in Australia. I hadn’t the faintest idea, because I was from Tasmania, so I think I merely based it

on what was in Tasmania. I did attend that first one, but then I went back and I became an instructor at the officers’ training school in Melbourne.

Yes.

Yes. After recruit school, I went to the AWAS headquarters,

just for a couple of months, to learn the A side, administrative side. Then I went out with Rose to form the first recruit school.

Only 2 or 3 months until I went out to Broadmarsh with Rose to form the first recruit company. Then I was recruit instructor in NCO, then I

was an officer instructor.

We learned from the men. We sat in on all their lectures; of course you got their notes. We sat in on all their lectures. We had to learn them, early days we learned all the

way as we went. I think actually you were learning nearly all your army life because I later did a staff school, and boy was that learning. That was a male staff school. So you were learning. Especially early days, we got our rank very quickly and then we had to learn from male officers who came down. We sat in on all these lectures so that we could take over and do them ourselves. We were learning, learning, learning all the time.

Yes. We took over from them. I don’t remember how many courses they stayed with us, I can’t remember that, but we took over fairly quickly, especially the lecturing. I think we had the male parade ground instructors for a while, but we certainly took over from the male lecturers

pretty quickly.

The staff of the army now is quite different. On my side there was G [General staff], which was ops [operations] and training and A, which was administration. Q, quartermaster, is uniforms and everything like that, and Ordnance was the heavy stuff, guns, trucks etc. My side was nearly always A.

So there’s a lot of army paper work. There was a G job, there were the daily routine orders, I remember that very truly. There was a much bigger form that had to be done. Then there was the Bible, which was AMR&O [Australian Military Regulations and Orders], which were army rules and regulations, which was everything from joining to court-martials. It was the laws of the army.

So that was more my side of the instruction and of course parade ground, I did that every day. Then gradually we took…I used to say I didn’t mind the teaching lectures, but I hated the lectures, I didn’t hate them, I didn’t like them as much on discipline and leadership. I didn’t like the waffle lectures, as I called them, because they weren't instructing,

which I preferred.

Discipline and leadership. Well what you gave, it took ¾ of an hour or more, but I don’t remember very much about it. But there was always a lecture on leadership and there was always a lecture on discipline that had to be given them, and I know I didn’t like them that much.

Fine. Just accepted it as it came along. I think I told you interview on the phone, at school I’d been a prefect. It’s not madly giving orders or anything, it’s doing a job. As a prefect you take detentions, or you’ll be on the gate, making sure everyone had their hat and gloves on before they went out the gate, so I suppose I was used to doing

jobs like that. Your army job was a bit similar. No one could go out unless they had their hat and gloves on in the army. You didn’t go out of your camp without your hat on so I think they came naturally to me. You were up late making sure they were back in with their leave passes. Nobody

left the camp without a leave pass, even on weekend leave, and they all had to be checked back in again. You’re always up late, getting them in.

Just, let’s say sometimes they were a little late. I’m jumping ahead, but there was one night in New Guinea when there was midnight mass for the Roman Catholics. There were 385 women

in that camp where I was OC of at the end. It was an incredible amount of Roman Catholics that night that got leave passes that night to go to mass. I was up to about 3am getting all my little darlings back in again so there were things like that, but that’s life, isn’t it? That’s what life’s all about. Hardly ever. I can remember even myself getting the tram from Wrest Point, and

madly running down the road and climbing over the fence to get in the last train to Brighton, that was the last train. If I hadn’t got on it, I mean I had to obey the rules to get on the last train to Brighton Station. There’d be a 3-tonner [truck] there waiting there for you to take you back to camp. I don’t remember at Broadmarsh or Brighton having any AWLs. I don’t really remember.

Oh, yes. I don’t think we would have ever disobeyed our father, and yet he never was a strong hand or anything. You just respected him and did as you knew he wanted you

to, so I’m sure that I was lucky. I was very lucky all my life. I had good examples nearly all the way through. Fine examples. So that’s life.

Fine. They were just, as I tell you I felt I wanted to stand to attention and call Margaret ‘Madam’ all my army life,

they were most like exactly the same with me. They always called me ‘Madam’ and always respected me, yet they were people who mostly, a lot of them would be my friends perhaps, certainly in later life when we had reunions. We just all played by the rules and had lots of fun in doing it.

Yes, that was all I was ever told, “Girls, be modest.”

Yes, and I didn’t know a lot. And I don’t know if this is the place to say it, but I’d never heard the word lesbian, and there I was in charge of 100 women, and I didn’t know even the word, so I learned. We had doctors who gave a lecture to each

course, so we sat in and learned. I’d never heard the word. Didn’t know it existed.

Yes, there would be, I can’t remember to what extent in recruit school. I certainly remember at officers’ school there was more. And especially when we went to New Guinea there was more to be aware of things. It would only be the

one lecture. As officers we were told not to let two girls sleep in the same bed. I wouldn’t have even known why. So there I was at 22 in charge of these women, but we didn’t have trouble. I can remember one night two slept together, but it was freezing cold at Broadmarsh. They said they slept together to share their blankets, and I never queried it.

But later on of course I would have, I suppose. It was freezing cold. We had army blankets, which were heavy, but not very warm. And I think we all smiled later when the huts were lined for the [(UNCLEAR)] and all the paraphernalia about it. We had bare boards, we had unlined walls, we had a space like that between the wall and the roof. No ceiling, no lining, and there’d be a wire

going down where that space was for the girls to hang their face-washers and towels. They often said their face-washers were frozen by morning but they never complained. They’d say it was cold, for heaven’s sake, but they were there to do a job, and things were not comfortable I assure you.

We had a row of latrines, and the girls in the cubicles of showers, again we only had divisions and we did very quickly get a door on it for the females. I can remember taking early morning shower parades and coming back and diving my hand back into the bed, which I hadn't made at that stage because I was so cold. I was just frozen but the girls would have been just as cold themselves.

Army camps are always built at places where it’s bitterly cold in winter and very hot in the summer. It seems to be that’s the way of it. You only, you had your cardigans and greatcoats and gloves and things like that. Again, I had never had a hot-water bottle at home in my life. Somebody gave me a hot-water bottle as a going away present.

I thought, “Oh, yes if I get an earache or something, that’ll be very nice,” but I’ve since discovered, we used to have 44-gallon drums of boiling water outside. There was a dipper and the girls could fill their hot-water bottles at night; I filled mine too don’t worry.

No, not Land Army. At that stage it was AWAS

and AAMWS, it was both at that stage. They didn’t divide them until later on. AAMWS was simply exactly the same categories, but in medical services. That applied to officers’ schools too. The one I went to as a student, the OC of that, she was AWAS, but she was later transferred to be controller of AAMWS.

A great friend, who I shared room with and we had a great friendship for quite a few years, she was a captain in the AAMWS. We were both instructors at the officers’ school. We’d shared part of 6 in a room. At one stage we were in a room on our own. It depended where, you nearly always were many more in rooms. We were close because we liked

the same things, I think.

no. Nothing. I can remember this girl who had been at school with me coming to VADs one night saying that she’d heard that they were going to form a women’s army. I cannot remember how I knew anything more until I joined. I can’t remember that; it was only a matter of months. I don’t know.

Yes. I think it must have been. I don’t even remember going to the barracks here to enlist. I imagine I must have sent it to Hobart, because there was no AWAS in Launceston at that stage. It was all in Hobart, all down south. For your medical examinations and everything, you went to Anglesea Barracks before you actually signed on the dotted line.

I’d be sitting up at night until 2 o'clock in the morning censoring letters. You got that you didn’t read them. A name, they weren’t allowed to put where they were and things like that. Things like that perhaps hit you in the eye and you simply crossed them out. You scanned them I suppose is the right word.

Funnily enough, things like that were more strict early days than they certainly were later on. I don’t remember doing it when I was in officer training. Mind you on the ship going up to New Guinea and things, we were strictest then. I think you found, the further you got away from home base, things got a bit easier. I remember when I was being discharged, I thought, “Oh, heavens above.”

I landed in Launceston and, I’m jumping ahead I’m sorry, I had to go to Campbelltown Military Hospital for a fortnight when I came back from New Guinea, then I came back to Launceston. Then I was told I had to go to Brighton to be demobbed [demobilised]. I thought, “Surely, couldn’t I have gone from Campbelltown just to Brighton?” But you had to stick to the rules and regulations. I thought

things would be more relaxed on the mainland as we staged on the way down, but still in Tasmania you still went from A to B as you had to.

Yes, Broadmarsh. Early days.

They could have said perhaps that their friend Joe had been transferred from Brighton to

Queensland on his way to New Guinea or something like that. That’s what you had to be aware of. Certainly it didn’t matter you being in Broadmarsh or Brighton, no. But if they were talking about their fiancé or husband or boyfriend, things like that.

There was usually a friend, but no more so than civvy street [civilian life].

I think again I was very fortunate. I always had somebody who was a friend. At that stage I had a friend who was in Brighton. He was from Hobart and he played a lot of tennis, so I knew him through tennis. I remember going into Wrest Point some nights with him – not the night, mind you. Only till 11 o'clock when the last train went. We didn’t do things like that in those days. I can remember going to

his family one weekend. He was a good friend. He was a friend, but a very, very good friend. We’d go up to the officers’ mess sometimes for meals and he’d walk me back home across the paddocks and things like that. We were good friends. There was usually somebody, no more so than civvy street. There usually is somebody, isn’t there? That’s the way of life.

Because our numbers were too great. We got to the stage we had tents up the driveway, and they were far from comfortable in our winter. The girls would have been simply sleeping on the ground on a groundsheet and a palliasse and blankets. No such thing as sleeping bags. I don’t

know how long that was, but we were outgrowing Broadmarsh, so we moved up to the lines at Brighton then. Our numbers were increasing quite rapidly naturally at that stage. I’ve got photographs of nearly every recruit school. Whereas we might have started with 40, there’d be a lot more, there’d be 60 or more I think in recruit school, and you had more instructors.

A lot of the front would be with Rose and I in the middle, on the edge were sergeants and corporals and they all gradually, you delegated authority to them you see?

Not long. 3 weeks. I was trying to remember how long the NCOs did, and I can’t, but I think it would be similar. The officers’ course was

I think 6 weeks.

Oh yes. Brighton was exactly an extension of Broadmarsh. Broadmarsh was the first fulltime, so it was a small camp. Then Brighton was simply going on in exactly the same way. You had your own area where you had your own parade grounds. Your

instructors, perhaps you had a parade of the lot, but then you’d break down, and perhaps say a corporal would take a section for parade ground work each morning, even in officers’ school. So you broke down for the same training, especially parade ground work. Then of course in officers’ school you broke down for tutorials and things like that.

I don’t think I can answer that. I think we had been instructed in what we had to do, and the good females themselves were so enthusiastic.

I must admit later on, girls would come before me for some misdemeanour and you’d have to be aware of how to handle it without being heavy-handed, but by the same token to do the right thing by them. I remember very early days, and I was only 22,

a much older woman coming to me with her husband and asking advice. I just accepted it there. Honestly I haven’t a clue what I said but I remember thinking later, “I’m sure if I’d been a married woman of her age, I wouldn’t have gone to a 22-year old single person to ask advice from.” It was because of the rank. It wasn’t because of me; it was because I was her officer,

so I suppose those things were challenging.

I don’t think so. I joined when I

was 22, and it was 1942. I know quite a few who couldn’t join up until they were 18 so there were quite a few who were younger than I am, you see. Some of my Monday ladies, there were 5 of us, there’s one who hasn’t hit 80 yet.

I think I was expecting it to be more of a problem. In hindsight, I think we just turned our back and dressed ourselves and you didn’t look at anyone else. I can remember my sister coming through Melbourne when the staff

were sharing a beautiful empty home. We only had a bathroom; it wasn’t like in camp, you had lines of showers and lines of latrines. She was horrified because I put my head in the door and said that I was going with her to put her on the plane or train. She was coming down to go from NSW to home. She said, “You don’t all share the bathroom like that?” We had obviously got so used to it that we didn’t think about it. One would be

cleaning their teeth and perhaps one would be showering. You had to or you wouldn’t have got through in time. I don’t ever remember, and yet I was a person that never shared with anyone else, there was the only occasion when I can remember it being perhaps a difficulty to start with. I do remember when I first went into Alberstoke – this was my recruit training in Hobart –

that I used to go and shower in the lunch hours. In those days they didn't have shower parades, it was early days, so I used to go and shower in the lunch hour because I was feeling a bit the difficulty of that. You got used to it.

Some accepted

very easily indeed. There were others who didn’t. Again, this needn’t go in. I can well remember some of the men from Brighton. I used to enjoy – I played a lot of tennis – and I used to enjoy playing table tennis. They had a senior officer that they weren’t very fond of. They bet him that I could beat him. He didn’t think that. So I went up, best of three and I won, extended it to best of five,

and I won. I don’t remember deliberately playing. I just played. He took off very smartly, but they were delighted. He didn’t like females coming in, but the majority accepted us. I can remember a friend of my brother’s who was in the navy. At this stage I was working in Victoria Barracks in Melbourne. He said,

“I have to salute my friend’s younger sister,” cause I was senior in rank to him; but all in good spirit. I think there were some. I know a job I had later on, he didn’t want a female officer doing a male officer staff job. I wrote everything that I had to write

and I had to submit it to him, and he altered it nearly every time. So I started keeping these copies and one day came that I wrote it the way he wanted it written and he wrote it back the way I had submitted it a short time earlier. So I showed it to him, and he said, “Well, I just felt like writing it that way this day.” He obviously, he was never nasty to me, but he never wanted me

to have the authority to do it. So he obviously, that was very much later in the piece when I was on a male staff school. I was very fortunate to have done it. This was a posting in an infantry section of the Directorate of Organisation of A Branch, H

No.

That didn’t go through Parliament till 1944 I think it was. It got suggested in 1944. Sorry, sisters had been in, of course, in general hospitals. They’d been to the Middle East and physios had been with them. They had become part of it and some permanent VADs, but there were very few. I don’t think

we even realised they existed. It didn’t go through the federal government until late ‘44, and then it passed early ‘45 I think. We were the first lot to go. There’d been a group of AAMWS went to the AGH, the Australian General Hospital, at Lae a few

months before us. We went up in May 45. Originally, see the army was formed to release men for front-line duty. They say it takes 9 people behind the scenes to keep one in the front line. In the army, I think there were 20,000 army; no, there was air force, navy. Air force was the biggest.

Then I think we were 20-odd thousand and the WRANS [Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service] were the smallest. But the original idea was that we would release men to go forward. That was what our main role was, so it wasn’t until early 45 that we could be sent overseas. It had to go through Federal Parliament first,

because it was not meant for that purpose originally. When we went to Lae, it was well and truly safe then. There had been the battle at Lae, Nadzab, but 1st Army had moved up and it was well and truly safe when we went there.

End of tape

When I was at Brighton, I then moved from recruit training to be the first OC of NCOs training in Brighton. I had a staff of about 8. Couple might have been in administration. I had 2 males on that staff because we were doing map reading, which I hadn't done.

So again, you’re learning all the time. Then I could take it myself then. I don’t remember how many schools that went through. There would have been lectures, but I can remember map reading. Of course there’d be leadership and things, because they had to learn to do their jobs. I don’t remember that it was going very long before I was

told that I was to go to Melbourne to be an instructor at the officers’ training school in Melbourne, so I flew over to that. When I got there, the school was on bivouac. Each school and the officers’ school always went on a bivouac. So I had to cool my heels for a couple of days until they came back from the bivouac. The officers’ training school at first wasn’t on

a very male-based staff training. We were very fortunate shortly after I went there to have a male posted to us as an officer in charge. He was a major. He’d lost a leg in the Middle East. He’d been to a G2 staff school, which is a grade higher,

majors and above, because he could no longer be in the front line; he’d lost a leg, he won the MC. He was great. He was chief instructor, and we had 6 female instructors under him. There was an AWAS captain who ran the establishment; the cooks and the cleaning and she ran

all that side. But he was the chief instructor, and we were 6 instructors under him. Now again, we sat in on lectures, we gave our own lectures. Again I lectured on the A side, the administrative side. He put it on a very sound staff basis, instructing. I don’t think the officers coming through would have known that staff consisted of G,

A, O [Ordnance] and Q that I explained to you. That used to be the same at all levels: LHQ [Land Headquarters], army, corps, division and battalion. You’ve got those four sub-divisions all the way through, each one broke down into umpteen different pieces. It doesn’t today. My son’s in the army and they adopt more the American style now. But he put it on a very sound basis. We used to sit in on lectures

and then we would have to take our section for the week in tutorials on the lectures that had been given during the week. We took them for tutorials. We took them for parade-ground work each morning. Then at the end of the week we would compare notes and take over another section. We’d swap around sections. So 6 weeks we’d have all had a section for a week. We commented on the calibre

of the students that were coming through. Major Little – again I was very lucky in that he was a great person – so we learned from him as well as passing on our knowledge. I was there for quite a while. It was in a magnificent home in Toorak. We had the flagpole out the front where

we used to have taps at night [final bugle call, flag lowering]. The lecture hall was a lovely ballroom that had double French doors opening out onto a grassy sward, with steps going down into a croquet lawn, tennis court, which mind you was only used for drill. It was a beautiful home, but empty. Bare boards, army beds, you know iron beds, and I don't remember how many were on the staff. I know there were six

male instructors and Major Little. Then we had captain, I’ll think of the name in a minute, she did the sort of admin [administration] side. We had visiting lecturers would come in, medical man, and we had our controller. The army was very lucky in the controller. She was Colonel Sybil Irving; she was dignified,

she was intelligent, she had a gentle sense of humour and she was practical, thank heavens. You had to be. She was a wonderful example. She would always come and give a lecture to each course that went through. So we had visiting lecturers that were in senior positions, because Melbourne was the home of the LHQ, Land Headquarters was in Melbourne.

It was the head base. So we had visiting lecturers and I’m trying to remember in which subject they were, but I know they were medical and I know Colonel Irving always came. I was very fortunate in getting to know these people. Then the controller of the AAMWS, she had originally been in AWAS, and they wanted a controller. She was a very fine woman. I was very fortunate to know her. When I worked in

Melbourne at the barracks, she used to often ring me up and play tennis to get her out of the office. So they were fine examples of womanhood, they really were. I can remember Colonel Irving after the war; she didn’t like the term ladies. I think she saw that as a bit prissy. We were at a reunion and she was calling “Gentlewomen, gentlewomen,” she

much preferred that. She was a very fine example. She was practical. I can remember her saying to the officers, no, the sergeants who were coming through the officers’ school, “You will have to mix to go in officers’ messes. Don’t make a fool of yourself with having too much to drink in the officers’ mess. In your own mess,

if you wish, try out what you’re comfortable with. If you get invited to a formal mess night in an officers’ mess, you stay for one or two drinks afterwards, but then you will excuse yourself so the men can get on for whatever they wish for formal mess night.” So you didn’t make a fool of yourself. She gave…as I said she was practical. I can remember her giving them that advice, which was darn good advice because we had to

mix with the men all the time. She always came to formal mess night when I lived in a barracks, no when I lived in an officers’ mess later on, she always came to formal mess night with us. So I was very lucky. I thought I would stress the fact that she was our controller and she was a wonderful example. We were lucky.

Major Little was simply chief instructor of our officers’ training school. Colonel Irving was Controller of 20,000 women. Although today’s females go into the army as the men, we didn’t. We went into the Australian Women’s Army Service,

then we were seconded, if you like, to work in male units. We always came back to an AWAS barrack. In each state, there was an AWAS Headquarters where the policy was made. So they made…she had excellent staff. I remember one, she was a lawyer. She was a very nice woman. Then she had another

lieutenant-colonel on her staff, and they would have made AWAS policy. Later we had education officers, amenities officers and so the policy of putting them into units and all things like that would have been made at AWAS Headquarters in each state. So she was responsible for the overall policy of Australian Women’s Army

Service 20,000. Then for your work, you were seconded to work nearly always in a male unit. Major Little was chief instructor of this officers’ training school. I think they came through; it would have been 6 weeks. We had 6 instructors, so we each had a section for a week and we compared notes at the end.

It was amazing how the instructors differed. You would get a section, and they’d ask you a question, and they’d say, “But so and so told us that last time.” And you’d think, “Oh, wait till I get my hands on her.” So when you had your meetings, you’d say, it was better to say, “I don’t know, I’ll find out and I’ll let you know tomorrow.” Then you could go to Major Little and he’d tell you which it should be, and you’d

say to this other person; she was gorgeous, she was full of fun, but she couldn’t have cared less I don’t think, what she gave ‘em. It was funny, by the end of the six weeks, the instructors were pulling, I don’t mean everyone, I was going to say, pulling against each other but I don’t mean everyone. We needed a break between schools to get back together again before we, because we differed on our opinions

on some of them, you see. It was only natural.

Fortnight. Something like that.

I had one who I was closer to than the others. One

who became an amenities officer later. She was a delightful person. She was absolutely full of fun. She was the one who’d give them the wrong answers sometimes and I’d feel like wringing her neck. She stood out because she was different. She was the most happy-go-lucky of us.

I think when she got the opportunity, she’d smoke non-stop. She was the most happy-go-lucky of us, yeah. The rest of us were more, we stuck to what we should be doing.

Not terribly, but I can always remember hers. I’d say, “Why didn’t you say you’d let them know the next day?”

They’d say, “but Miss so-and-so didn’t tell us that.”

No idea.

Well, take an infantry battalion. You had an adjutant. Now he’s not out shooting guns, he’s in

the office and he has his staff; there’s gotta be pay, there’s gotta be your daily orders and all the day to day administrative things of running anything. My side, I think my lecturing side was mainly on the administrative side, but in taking a

section, I had to take all tutorials in all lectures, which for instance, I can remember A Branch had 13 sub-divisions at the top. It broke down to even more. I had to learn the different G and Q and what they had in them. I had to take tutorials on all of them. We mainly had lectures on staff at that stage.

We had the good old disciplines and leaderships, which went on. We used to go for a bivouac each school. You went out with nothing, you cut a trench for your latrines and you wove your hessian zigzags and sewed on a little flapping door down the side. Your

staff went out, you dug a pit for the cooking, and we were in tents. We took them there for map reading, things like that. I had one lovely occasion of night map reading. We had a male warrant officer. Again he’d been in the Middle East. He was a fine specimen. He was very regimental. Saw me ironing his shirt one day and nearly died the way I ironed and gave me a lesson in how I should iron my shirts.

He was always beautifully turned out and very regimental. He’d set all the compasses for this night march. We were in Mount Martha in Victoria in the camp. He’d set the compasses that you walked on such and such a degree for so many hundred yards at night. You only had a tiny little torch to look at your compass and go by. I had my section, and we ploughed down for

yards and yards, and it turned out it was an old American rubbish dump. I’d taken my section down this. You can imagine, when I got back to camp what I said to him. He discovered my compass was a few degrees out, so we weren’t very happy about that occasion. We slept on the ground, just on the ground sheet.

I can remember digging a little deeper hole the next morning and one of the girls went past me and said, “Goldmining, madam?” Madam was digging a bigger hole for her hip. I’ve forgotten how long we would be out. I supposed barely a week. I always got bitten by a bull ant. I can remember that because we always sat on the ground. You took no amenities with you. That was so that if you had to, you could live in the field. Each of

us instructors, we had our section that we took out there.

Yes, we did, because I’ve got one when I was in Brighton. I’ve got some photos of it, and yet I don’t remember it. The same thing. You lived on the ground, or if you found a box you were lucky enough. You’d put cross-sticks in the basin on it so you could wash on it, and your latrine was simply a trench.

We had little cross-sticks so that your roll of toilet paper sat off the ground, so you learned that you could if you had to be out in the field. Yes, we did at recruits. And we certainly did it every officer school. I think we were in for longer in the officers’ school. That was at Mount Martha we used to go to each school.

It would have been over 12 months, I think. We moved up to a bigger house. We must have grown bigger. And the staff still lived in the lovely home where the school had been, but we went through a fence to a huge very old house. It had ceilings twice the height of this, and it had a long

drive with big pine trees in it, and the students all slept upstairs at night. The lecturing and everything was downstairs. One of our staff had to go and sleep up there as duty officer every night. My friend had done the first week, and she said to me, “It’s so eerie. It’s huge, it’s empty.” They were all upstairs. You had to see that they

had lights out upstairs and did your duties then. Then you came downstairs, which was completely empty during the night, to your room. It was dark and the big trees used to groan and moan. She said, “It’s horrible there on your own.” I had to go up the next week, and the next week I was there and I got into bed, and there’d been a murder in Melbourne. I was just reading the evening paper in bed. I turned my light out,

and I could hear footsteps coming closer and closer with a torch swinging. I was going further and further down the bed. A voice at the door said, “Are you all right, madam. I knew it was horrible up here, I came up to see if you are all right.” I could have murdered him. It was the male warrant officer we had. He came up to see that I was all right. With a torch mind you because it was all dark.

Yes. They were beautiful old homes, but they were empty. Then Major Little informed me that he had recommended me to go to a male officers’ staff school. I loved being instructor at the head officers’ training school. It was a great life: fulltime because we used to have night lectures as well. We’d have nights off, mind you. Saturday night

we’d go out to dinner or out to the pictures or something like that. You were there virtually fulltime.

If you were duty officer, you would be up very early. But if not, your lectures started at half past eight, like yours would be. Then you usually had one lecture at least at night. Not every night, because there would have been times when we all had to do our washing and things like that,

so there would have been nights off. We would have visiting lectures. I can remember one artillery officer. Why on earth we had him, I don’t know. He came and was telling us about how the artillery marched forward at set times. He had a magnet that he could fling onto the board, and he’d say, “Good old

Bowler was there, and good old so-and-so was there, and the infantry fired again at a certain time.” I could always remember saying to him that, “If the infantry don’t advance at that same speed that your artillery’s firing, you’re going to fire on your own troops.” I’ve never forgotten it. He said, “I do hate war, don’t you?” I could have

slapped him. Later on, I was upstairs taking him off. He was being shown around the school and there was I saying, “Good old Bowler there and good old Bowler there, and I do hate war, don’t you?” I turned around and there he was. So you see, funny things did happen. As I said, Major Little had put me forward to go into this male officers’ training school

called Grade 3, which was the captains. Again, I was very fortunate. I think there had been females at the course before. There were 4 of us and 60 men. I think there were females at the next course, and I think that was it because a lot had come back from the Middle East and were ready to go into staff jobs. They had been fighting positions, and so more men were

coming through for staff jobs. So the school I went to was in Brisbane. It was in a boys’ boarding school, and we had holes for windows and doors, but there weren’t any windows or door there. This is where we slept, we 4 girls, and the men were down in the boys’ boarding section and we were in the main school of course, for lectures and things. That was all staff and

nearly all the men had been in fighting units. That’s where I met my first husband. He’d been in the Wau/Salamaua campaign. There were a lot who had been in the Middle East campaign as well and been in New Guinea campaigns. They were all getting late 20s, 30s so they were ready for staff positions.

So there were 4 of us. We’d go on day trips where there was one girl to a 3-ton truck and the rest would be the men. Lots of lectures, all on male staff work. You’d go to your pigeonhole at half past five at night to collect what you had to do before the next morning and nearly died. We were doing

things like operation orders, battle orders, précis. Précis for administration purposes, you set headings. They made things pretty tough. When they gave you a battle order, you had to take it down on talc [acetate, a transparent sheet covering a map, upon which you can mark symbols, write words, etc]. You’d

call it something else; it’s clear over a map. You had to take it down very quickly and then come in and turn and read it back to them. Major Little had said to me, “Learn your conventional signs,” which I didn’t need as a female officer. These conventional signs were for male enemy infantry battalion or friendly infantry battalion or

all kinds of signs that meant different units. So he was a wonderful help to me. I was able to quickly drop them around my board and I still remembered a bit of shorthand. I think at staff school I was able to help others in that because I got it down, because I knew shorthand and things, and I was able to get it down. So I helped others in that. But another exercise I had to do was with one other male,

was loading a male unit onto planes with their right weapons so they landed with all their right equipment and everything. Now I was very fortunate in having him. He’d been in an infantry battalion, and was a clever chap, so I think we were able to pull, I knew far more about staff, because I’d been lecturing staff, but they were able to help me in a lot of other things.

I remember one intelligence one. We were given scraps of information, and from it you had to make up an enemy order of battle. That really didn’t make sense to me. I don’t think I’m a lateral thinker. I can remember putting at the end of my paper, “This is not all my own work.” It certainly wasn’t. It was male staff work.

It was for about 10 weeks. They always gave you instructions very quickly to try and rattle you. It was interesting.

Yes, I think we were all, one could have been in NSW recently, but

I think we all started off from Melbourne.

No. one had been an adjutant in an infantry battalion. We had an infantry company in Tasmania, sorry recruit company in Tasmania. She had been an adjutant in a recruit battalion in Victoria. They had far more people, so she was

on the A side too. Adjutant. I don’t know what the other two had done, I’ve forgotten. I don’t honestly know what postings the other three got. I did get male postings; I don’t know what they got because we were all separated. We’d end up in troop trains of course. In a troop train, I’m digressing again, in the troop train you had 3 bunks, and

I didn’t with them. We had our own compartment. In a troop train you had three bunks up the side, and in the daytime you let the middle one down so that you sat down. As the officer in charge of that compartment, it was your job to see they all got through the one and only washroom and toilet before the next stop. So it was a breakfast stop or whatever it was, and then again at night. You were the last one to bed because you had to make sure they all got through

that one washbasin and toilet. They weren’t very comfortable. You were always rather dirty. There was one poor lass, her job was a train, what were they called, supervisor on the train. I can’t think of the right word. I’ll get it soon. She did trips from Western Australia to Victoria

in charge of AWAS on that train. They would often run out of water. I saw her in Melbourne because she came to our unit to stay before she went back again. She was grey. Her skin was grey. That was her job, so that wasn’t a… OC [Officer Commanding] Train, I suppose she was. I can remember, even from Brighton on occasions, I can remember a male sergeant coming to me and saying, “Madam, you’re OC Train.”

I’d think, “What?” because I was the only female sitting there. He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll report back to you” because it had all males on it coming up from Brighton. That was her job from Western Australia over to Melbourne. It wouldn’t have been a very cosy spot, would it?

We wouldn’t have known what battle conditions were like. Major Little had lost a leg. I had a close friend, whom I used to play tennis with down here,

he’d lost a leg in the Middle East. He was back. So we obviously knew things had been pretty terrible for them in El Alamein, Tobruk when they we besieged there. But until you experience something, you don’t really know what the conditions are like, and they didn’t dwell on it. If you met a chap PW [Prisoner of War], he never dwelt on it

later on, so I think we recognised that things were very difficult for them, very difficult. But they accepted the fact that they were there to learn to be staff officers. We had a long break at lunchtime, because it was Queensland and they used to like us to play sort if we could. So

they were just like you.

Yes, without the beard. No, they didn’t dwell on it. They were there to learn. Some of them you could tell found it difficult. I was lucky in that I had been lecturing for years in recruiting, NCO and officers. Some of them who had been in fighting units

had never been lecturing in their lives. We had to do our own five-minute lecturette and then pull one out of a hat and do another one. I can always remember one. He had his back to us the entire time. He was telling us actually what he’d done in action, “We went along there, and then we came home down that wadi, and we did this. We were all over there.” He’d obviously never been used to lecturing and yet

he would have been later on. He’d have gone as staff. He found that side difficult. I found other sides very difficult. Yet some of them used to ask me, “What are the 13 things that belong to A Branch?” because that was my side. I didn’t have their side.

No. When we were told that volunteers were going to be called for New Guinea, at that stage I was in a male staff job after I had done that school in Queensland, which I wasn’t happy in. He was correcting my letters. I didn't

mind it, but it happened every single time, which I thought was a bit rich. So I can remember thinking that I would volunteer for New Guinea, but only if I was going to be of some use. I can remember trying to think how I would word it, because I wasn’t really breaking my neck to go, but if I’d have been of any use in going, I was prepared to go. I think that’s the way I tried to

word it when we had to write our voluntary thing. I think that’s the way I worded mine because I felt I was a bit useless, to be honest. I became a captain in that job in Victoria later, as I’ve written to my family and I think I’ve found myself doing the most mundane job that I had done the whole time. So I

got promotion and I didn’t feel I was doing a worthwhile job, so I did volunteer for New Guinea. I remember telling my father that I had, because originally we weren’t to go outside Australia. He simply said, “Well, you couldn’t very well do anything else, could you?” So

I was advised that I had the position of Admin Officer to the Deputy Director of Mechanical Engineers.

This is at the start to go to New Guinea.

I did the staff school for 10 weeks in Brisbane.

It was a male school and it was all male staff work. It was G, A, Q and O. Nearly all the 60 men there had been in fighting units, so they had to learn about staff, which was behind every army, every corps, every division, every battalion. Most of them had been in the active side. We did all kinds of things.

One time we went to an exercise. It was another army battalion there. There was a cavalry unit there with tanks and flamethrowers. I think we reckoned there were about 2,000 men and there were us 4. It was simply we were observers as such, because

and it was an exercise for the men, but we were simply there as observers. We were never in the frontline in those days. Girls now are. I’ve got a grandson and he’s been in East Timor and the driver was a female. In those days we females were not in the frontline. I can remember that day very well.

There were 4 of us to about 2,000 men, and very much different from what we were doing. We did go out on day exercises. They were map-reading exercises. Maybe also learning about ground. Where you would put a battalion. Where you would put a regiment and artillery. All this was new to us.

As staff you had to learn to do these things. It was intensely interesting for me, because we did battle orders, we did movement orders, we did all kinds of things. I knew just the basic Australian staff, but that went on into male units, which I hadn't struck before.

Goodness knows. I might have just stayed in staff in Victoria Barracks in Melbourne, or I could have become an officer in charge of a barracks on the mainland. Females lived in army barracks everywhere. Even when I was doing staff work in Melbourne, I lived in a female

officers’ mess. Admittedly the officers, which I was then, were in huts out in the back garden. But it was the female officers’ mess in Melbourne, again a lovely home in Toorak, but we were in huts out the back sleeping, but we had eating and living quarters in the main part. Majors and above had rooms in there. I could have become an OC of a barracks somewhere or something like. Or again

I could have gone back to instructing. Having done the staff school I suppose I’d have remained staff.

No, mainly writing. Reading the things that you had to read, and then writing an order transferring

so and so from A to B in accordance with the instructions that you’ve got. It was mainly writing. It was a 9 to half past 5 job, or whatever it was. I lived in an officers’ mess. I really didn’t enjoy that terribly much, but that was when we heard they were calling for volunteers for Lae. So I did.

No, ‘42 was when I joined the army, when I actually got in. It must have been early ‘45 or late ‘44. We got to Lae in May 45, so we’d been staging for quite a while before that. A month,

6 weeks or something. You’d volunteered before, so it took a while to get the call-up. It’d be late ‘44 I suppose or early ‘45. Then a lot volunteered. I think a lot wanted to go from what I’ve heard since. I heard that my posting was to the Deputy Director General of Mechanical Engineers as an administrative officer.

He had lots of other staff captains: one for the craft, one for optical instruments, I suppose infantry, artillery. They had workshops at Lae base. We were the administrative. I was 1st Army [Headquarters]. At 1st Army, there was only I think 1st Army, which consisted of all huts. Lae was only army huts. Mechanical engineers had a workshop at

Lae base. There were other administrative officers there. We took a very large number of sigs [signallers] with us. They did decoding and all kinds. We had a very large proportion of sig [Signals Corps] officers and ORs that went up with us. I think there were 4 sig officers and that was the most, most of the others

were one in each branch. They did shift work. They were on duty 24 hours a day too.

Yes. We all staged, we went up by train and staged in Brisbane. We all started off by being staged at Fraser’s Paddock, which was the name of an army camp, like all the other army camps.

There were too many there, so I was put in charge, I think only 50, and we went over to St Lucia, which was the university there, but it was in the grounds, army huts in the grounds of the uni [university]. We staged over there. We were given all our overseas injections and we were outfitted with our tropical gear: boots

and woollen socks and gaiters and trousers and safari jackets and the same hats as the men, although we folded them differently. So it was a period of medically having all the right things, and the totally different uniform. All our uniforms we’d had all went into storage somewhere in Australia. We wore trousers and woollen socks, which were very comfortable in that

heat, boots, which were beautifully made, and lovely gaiters over those and safari jackets. So our outfit was…I think we got our mosquito nets. We eventually got kit bag, valise, suitcase, a little haversack thing you wore on your hip. I have got

a list actually of what we were outfitted with somewhere. That all happened in Brisbane. We had a parade for Colonel Irving I suppose it was, before we went. The day before we sailed, we had a church service. The night before we sailed we had – I think we were there about a month – but the night before

we sailed I had to go through everyone's kit that was at St Lucia with me, and the others over at Fraser’s Paddock the other officers would have done the same over there. So that everyone had exactly their right kit and they knew exactly what they had to carry on board with them, and what had to be in their tin trunk. We all carried exactly the same. We carried a mug strapped to our haversack, and I think we carried our valise

and our little suitcase. Everyone carried identical stuff with them and they had a big tin trunk as well. Then we went down and boarded the Duntroon in Brisbane.

In this I was duty officer, none at that stage, because my job over DGME, Director General Mechanical Engineers,

I was an individual there. There were two AWAS sergeants and a couple of others, stenographers, typists and things out in the office, but I was just simply part of the draft. We all were. You took your turn at being duty officer. That would be as usual last to bed and the poor OC Ship had never had so many women on the ship with men. I think he was terrified

they’d all get off together or something. We assured him that they wouldn’t. They were all jolly good. I was amazed at seeing the men’s quarters. We had cabins. If you’ve ever seen inside the hold of a ship, they were in simply a black hole and they had bunks all the way down the side with a ladder running down. They had to sleep in this jolly hold with simply a bare light globe. I looked

down and thought, “Poor devils, they must be cursing us,” but I suppose they were always fully laden like that anyhow. A lot of the men came up and slept on the deck at night. Of course you can imagine it must have been awfully stuffy and horrible. I was amazed when I saw how the poor devils were actually going off to fight. We were simply off to do work back at base, typing and all that sort of thing. It was a lovely trip up.

The waters were so calm from what I was used to. There was one of our fellow officers, she was an education officer, she is, or was, a beautiful pianist. She used to play for the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]. There was a saloon that was specially for the officers, both male and female, where we could sit. She used to play Clair de Lune If you’ve

ever heard Clair de Lune played on a beautiful tropical night over the water, it was magnificent. She could hush it completely. No, we all had our areas of duty. We all had life jackets which we carried all the time. We had to. I think we had life drill most mornings so we all automatically knew where our stations were if needed. We carried these life jackets with

us and laid them on the deck and used to lie on them if we weren’t doing anything. You had your period of being on duty and seeing that everyone was in their bunks at night, normal things that you’d do.

I was a captain then. I think the trip up took about 5 days. Again I’m not quite sure. I remember

waking up in the morning when we arrived. We had arrived when we were asleep. We woke up and our first glimpse of New Guinea was the Markham River. The rivers up there flowed terribly strongly because of the heavy rains. The Markham River used to bring a terrific amount of dirt out with it. So the brown extended right out into the water from where the Markham River came out. Then

you saw lush green flat, so you didn’t know how far back it went; lush green, and purple mountains. They seemed to be straight behind it. The mountains up there were purple even though they looked close to you with a cloud across them. So the flat area was very green. It went back. It did rise in undulations; you went from the flat to the mountain. There was one mountain that

was all covered in kunai grass, which looked like green velvet. It had no trees on it, but it had this grass and in the wind the kunai grass would wave like velvet pile. Then when we got there, Colonel Spencer, she’d been up there by plane earlier, and she came out and climbed up the side of the ship, the ladder, then she and Captain

Hornsby and myself were offloaded into a landing barge and came off and went to the barracks first. So we were there for when the girls came off. I imagine they all assembled in the rec [recreation] hut and we allotted them to their sleeping quarters, which were 20 each to a hut, I suppose.

Yes. The ship stopped offshore and then you came down the side of the ship

and landed into a landing barge. And the landing barge brought you inshore.

War had finished there. There had been a battle in the Lae-Nadzab area, but that. It was won by a lot of chaps parachuting in, mainly in the Nadzab area. That would have been quite a while before. So all that was at Lae

when we got there was 1st Army, which is all staff, the hospital and Lae base. There was nothing in Lae except army huts with thatched roofs and louvered sides for ventilation. We used to have some natives who were working, cleaning up our huts when we got there. They were under the umbrella of an

organisation called ANGAU [Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit] which was the Australia New Guinea unit something. ANGAU controlled any native labour that worked. You didn’t have to control them. They came sometimes doing gardens. Later we had Formosan prisoners of war working in the gardens there. So when we first got there we were all allotted our huts. I suppose after a

couple of days, we eventually all went to our various jobs. We would march over to…while I was at 1st Army, which was, I can’t tell you how far away. We didn’t march regimentally, but we still were in formation, up to 1st Army and then we all separated to go to wherever your units were. They had sawdust floors and

perhaps a grey army blanket on top of your table as the desk. They were louvred huts. We were supposed to work at night except picture night, which was outside in the rain, and you could go to the officers’ club, or I could go to the officers’ club, being taken by a male,

and the girls had an other ranks club. Other than that you just would’ve between your barracks and your work. You came home for lunch. When I say home, that’s back to the barracks. So I worked over at 1st Army until war finished in August. Actually war finished in Europe

the day after we landed or the day before we landed, I’ve forgotten which, just in that area. My first husband, I met him at the staff school that I did, he had been in the campaign from Wau to Salamaua. At that stage he was still fighting up in the…he went back to his unit and was fighting up in the Wewak area, which was further up than us.

So I was involved with staff things there.

No. Wait a minute, there’d be sisters at the hospital, and there were some AAMWS, which was our aligned organisation. They’d been there just a few months before us, because they went up

to the hospital. I think they mainly worked in the hospital, maybe as a stenographer or something like that, but actually helping as aides in the hospital. The one that I’d been so friendly with in the officers’ training school, she was in charge of them, Captain Cave, she was in charge of them up there. They were there before us, but they lived at the hospital. I think there were only women on the hospital base there

before we got there, sisters and that.

First of all I went over to [1st] Army, and I worked as the administrative officer to this Director General of Mechanical Engineers. There was another male administrative officer. So that was writing again. Writing instructions and things. Reading an awful lot and initialling it, and

passing it on. I remember I sat opposite a lieutenant-colonel; he asked me to write a lecture for him. I was very pleased I had taken notes from previous schools on mechanical engineers, and I still had notes of those. So I was very fortunate that I took those notes with me wherever I went. That was mainly writing instructions in accordance with what I’d been given orders coming through.

Yes, completely, but on the administrative side. Moving somebody, a man, person, from his unit to such and such a unit, something like that. Then once a week, the director would have a meeting with all his staff officers. It was quite interesting for me, because the others were giving technical advice on what their side were doing; water boats, optical instruments or something like that.

He had this meeting once a week with all his staff officers. I didn’t have to give very much at that, because mine was just writing, but it was interesting to me.

No. It was very much laid down. There was another male admin officer too.

From things that came from higher up, we would write instructions moving somebody from whatever unit they were in to somewhere else; something of that nature.

To be perfectly honest, I can’t remember. I can always remember writing the lecture for the lieutenant-colonel when he asked me, but it was a sense of humour. I put at the end, “I can’t finish this lecture without referring to the wonderful work AWAS has done with mechanical engineers,” not for a moment intending him to take it seriously. I just put it in for a joke. He said, “I don’t think I’d better say that.” So I’d only meant that as a joke at the end.

The work I did was pretty mundane at that stage. There was a sergeant in the same section of the hut – it was divided into sections. She had a map behind her and together we moved things on that map. I cannot remember if we were moving units or bodies or what we were doing,

but we kept a map behind her. According to things that came through, we moved things on the maps. Perhaps it was units, I don’t remember. But how many there’d be, there was colonel’s office, then I was in an office with a lieutenant-colonel and a sergeant where I was. Then out in the main office, there’d be 10 or 12 both male and

female. It was lovely, totally different. It was very silent. It was sawdust floors and I always remember walking back from work at night, I must have gone I think at night sometimes by transport. So you’d be dropped at a central point and you’d go off to your various units. The PR [Public Relations] chapter

used to broadcast music over the whole area at night, loved The Nun’s Chorus. I can always remember walking to my unit at night on a very quiet…no sound, because the sawdust was there, and the jungle nights got very heavy. I can always remember even when I hear The Nun’s Chorus now, I can still picture and smell that

atmosphere. The humidity at night was terrific. If you walked back to work, you couldn’t sit straight down. You’d sit for a minute and walk slowly round your office, then sit again and try for a while longer until you gradually got rid of it. The humidity was terrific. We were wet through at night, much more so than daytime. We’d go to the pictures and sit in the rain at night. I don’t know whether it was once a week or once

a fortnight or what it was. I’ve forgotten. You’d have closed camp night. Nobody went back to work that night because you did your washing and ironing and whatever. We also had an open camp night – this is back in AWAS barracks now I am – where girls could ask their male friend into the rec hut; only into the rec hut,

not around the area. You could ask an officer into the officers’ mess. ORs were not allowed to mix with officers. So you had a closed camp night. Closed camp night nobody went out, but you had open camp night say once a week where the girls could invite a friend into the rec hut. They 300 and something sat there talking to their boyfriend,

until it came time to kiss them goodnight. Then when you were duty officer you had to try and move them out the gate, There’d be big lights like this, and they’d be saying goodnight to their boyfriend, you had to try and move them on. It would take you a good ¾ of an hour to get them out the gate. When war finished, Captain Hornsby who had run the barracks from

the day we arrived, she wanted, I don’t think she was Welsh, she wanted to go back to Australia, and I was transferred to run the barracks. She had it running on oiled wheels. All the staff were wonderful. There were a lot of very fine, I had an adjutant and a quartermaster, they were officers. Then there were a lot of very fine sergeants who all

knew their jobs, enthusiastic, very fine young women. A lot of them were my friends later on. Stayed with them after the war in Sydney and places. They were a great group, they really were. They volunteered; they were all good at their jobs. One I was friends with, her father was Moderator-General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia. She was a very

beaut person. Then when I was in charge of the barracks there, again it was like a 24 hours a day job. You had good staff, they all knew their jobs, but you were the overseer of everything. You did camp tours every day, camp inspections every day, things like that. We had a barbed wire perimeter fence

that you checked regularly to see that holes hadn't been cut in it. A lot of funny things happened. I remember writing to my mother saying, I had my own hut at that stage. As an officer I had my own lines and my own room, but when I took over the barracks, I had my own little hut, which was no bigger, wouldn’t be as big as this room I don’t think, and the louvred open sides of course.

I wrote a letter home and said, “Things are getting bigger every night. I wonder what’s going to happen next night. I had a lizard in the bed tonight,” one night, and then the following night, two wild cats had a fight in my room, and the third night I was awakened by one of the girls saying, “Madam, quick there’s a snake in the hut.” So I went and got the guard for that because they were armed. I thought they could shoot at a snake more than I could. Then the next night

I was awakened by one of the girls saying, “Quick, madam, there’s a man in the hut.” He had got under the mosquito net. We had green mosquito nets with plain on the top. You had to unfold them at 5 o'clock each night so you eliminated any mosquitoes from getting in. He’d got under the net and the girl was quite upset because she’d awakened with this individual in with her. I said to her,

“Would you like a little sip of brandy?” And she said, “No thank you, madam, it’s all right, I’ve had one” and I never said a word because they weren’t allowed to have grog, but I didn’t think it was the moment to say anything about it. We all had Atebrin every day. Atebrin tablet. I think the sergeants must have taken a hut each morning for Atebrin parade. As officers we had them on our table and we took one.

We all went yellow. The girls who had dark hair went a much more saffron colour. Coming from Tassie I’m sort of pink and white, so I didn’t think I looked much different until we’d get reinforcements from Australia and then she looked quite odd with her pink and white skin. That was to stop us from getting malaria. Some girls got sick. If they

did, they came back to Australia. I mean really sick, they came back to Australia earlier, and they had to be down at the airbase very early because the planes had to leave early to get over the mountains between Lae and Moresby. They had to leave very early. So when I had the barracks, we didn’t have any transport attached to us,

but you could order transport from the transport company. I would go with them down early in the morning and see them on a plane back to Australia. I think only a few went when I was there, about 4 or 5 I suppose. Perhaps for reasons, their mother was very ill and rather than waiting for the boat to bring them home, you could get extra leave for things like that.

They were just different things that happened from the daily things. The day the war finished, the colonel had told me he was going over to one of the messes. The outside staff decided to attack me. We had to wear our hair off our collars. By that stage I had great rolls, you see. You had to have it all back off your collar. So

they were attacking me, pulling out millions of bobby pins and pulling laces out of my boots and things like this. I was trying to fend them off and the general rang and asked to speak to my colonel. I said, “I’m sorry sir, he’s not here.” He said, “Well, find him. Don’t you know there are men still being killed up in the Wewak area that don’t know war’s finished?” Here I was trying to fight off these individuals at the same time. Thank heavens I found him. The general

was not very pleased that my colonel wasn’t still sitting at his desk at that stage. So it wasn’t till after that that I took over the barracks.

No, the only thing, early. Lightning bombers had a double fuselage. They were

American. They used to go over us in the morning when we first got up there. After a while they didn’t so we saw nothing of any action. My future husband was up there still fighting. I don’t think it went on that long because war had actually been declared finished by the

Japanese on that day, so it couldn’t have been more than a week or fortnight or more before it really stopped. I remember we all went…the Chapel of Lae was built on exactly the same lines, the thatched roof with louvred sides and everything. I remember going there that day.

Yes, but I can only say to you as I said earlier. Yes, we were concerned, and also there were women with us. Now, Colonel Spencer, her husband, she knew originally or was told, could be a Jap POW [Prisoner of War] and she was waiting to hear, but he’d been killed, and she didn’t know until the end that he was killed. There were others who had husbands

that, if your husband was in the services, you were allowed to remain in the service, and some were waiting to hear if their husband was going to be safe or not. It depended what area they were. Margaret Spencer had known for years that her husband had been a Jap POW. And I think he might have been cited as missing, I’m not sure. But he’d been killed right back

in the early days, but she knew nothing other than he was missing. So she didn’t actually hear until the very end that he’d died. Yes, you were concerned. Until you experience something yourself, you don’t honestly know what it’s like. You think it must be terrible for them. I think the first campaign my first husband

went through was very hairy, the Wau/Salamaua one. He got a mention in dispatches for work he did there. That was dreadful terrain; jungle fighting that type of thing. They had to fight their way over the top of a range down into Salamaua. Salamaua was a…we had a rest camp at Salamaua

later. It was going out into the sea. One side was on the open side, and one side was on the inland side. Very narrow. We had a rest camp down there and you could go to the beach that side or the beach that side. When I say rest camp, it only consisted of a few huts. That was well and truly after the battle that had been won there by Australians from Wau to Salamaua. That had been difficult terrain, I

imagine a la Kokoda type, in that Wau was up in the hills, in the mountains, and they had to fight their way over. I can’t think of the name of the ridge, I did know it, down to Salamaua and the sea. So yes, we knew things were going on like that, and yes you were aware and worried about them, but

you couldn’t have experienced it unless you were there, which we couldn’t have.

No. After a while, was it after I took over the barracks? Yes, of course it must have been. After I took over the barracks, my fiancé as he was then

applied to his unit up in Aitape to come down to Lae and be a staff officer at 1st Army where I was. So the last few months we were up there together. Christmas Day 1946, one of our sig girls was on the phone and the Prime Minister arrived at the airport without advising anyone.

She tried to get through to the duty officer from the army I expect and said, “Quick, the prime minister’s here” and he said, “I’ll go put more water with it.” It was Christmas Morning. And she desperately tried again and said, “I mean it. The Prime Minister is really here.” I didn’t hear that story till later, but I was rung in my quarters to say that the Prime Minister had arrived at our barracks. Christmas Morning I hadn't done any

inspection up the lines. I wasn’t going to on Christmas Morning, so I hastily grabbed a girl and said, “Quick, grab the line and make sure all is well.” I’d been to the church and I’d been to the hospital to see our girls that were in there, only with dermatitis, there were always people in hospitals with dermatitis, painted purple. Then I went over to greet the Prime Minister and show him around. He was a very nice man. He was,

wait a minute, Chifley. He was a very nice man. So he turned up unannounced on Christmas Day.

To see us as we were I suppose. He didn’t just go to us; he’d been to other units. He went to Lae on Christmas Morning unannounced. The only other unusual thing

was one day at my desk it was, it sounded like 3–ton trucks coming, two or three 3-ton trucks. Rumble. Coming in the drive. There was a lot of noise and your light was always just a bare globe. I looked up and my light was going like this and I realised it was an earthquake. I can remember yelling, I was in my office at the end of the orderly room, which was quite a big hut, and so I

can remember yelling, “Everyone out” then I went straight up the lines to see that all was well. As I was walking, the ground was undulating, a bit like if you come out of a lift if you come down a long way quickly. The ground was undulating and all the electric wires were swinging like this. Thank heavens nobody was injured. The air force had their camp down on the coast, and they were wondering if they’d get a wave,

you know a tidal wave. But no doubt they had a bigger one, but it didn’t do any damage. I was just weary. I went straight up the lines to see that all was well. Nobody had fallen down the deep pit latrines or anything else. So that was a rather unusual happening.

No. We were all all right. Didn’t last

that long, but it was just a funny feeling, especially coming from little Tassie where things like that didn’t happen.

Just for a Sunday. It wasn’t being used then, but it had been where the air force was based. I remember, I don’t know what it was, where the airplanes had landed, was shimmering

in the sun. It must have been some metal stuff they had to put down. There were Americans. When we first got to Lae, they tell me there were Americans waiting at the gate for us, but I think they were shooed away rather quickly. I don’t ever remember coming into contact with any Americans up there, but they must have been there, because the men often, not often, I remember giving

one of the Australian chaps I knew a bottle of gin and getting back a nice Ronson cigarette lighter in return, so they were obviously still there. The first time I went on a picnic out on a boat, the men were allowed to request these things, and we had squab and aspic in a tin and I’d never had such a thing, but they got those from the

Americans. So obviously they had a bit of swapping of things that they wanted. We had our officers’ mess and we were allowed a monthly ration I think it was, of a bottle of spirits and beer. I was never a beer drinker, but the water up there was ghastly because it was treated.

So the tea was horrible, the water was horrible, and what we called lolly water [soft drink] came in beer bottles, and you never knew until you opened it whether it was going to be pink or green or what colour it was going to be. So about three of us in our mess had put a beer bottle on a block of ice in an army trunk in our mess in our lunchtime. We’d have a glass of beer before our mess at night, because it was a lovely cool drink then.

But the girls were not allowed to have a spirit ration. I think it was a bottle a month or something that we had. If they wanted a drink, they had to take their mug to the canteen at half past 5 before their evening mess, and they weren’t that keen. We found that their beer quota, which could have been the same as the men’s I’ve forgotten,

built up very much. The store behind the canteen had a lot of beer in it, because they didn’t always feel like going, standing down there with their mug in the canteen at night. So sometimes I’d pass some of the…the boys would send over a trailer and I’d pass some of the beer over to some of the messes the men had, because I was reluctant to stop it. Once you stop something you didn’t get it again. So I was reluctant to stop the ration,

but the girls didn’t use it all. I remember Colonel Irving came up, and I was showing her around the camp. You can imagine, the canteen was big, because there were 385 of us, so your soaps, your chocolates, your toothpaste, all things like that had to come from the canteen. It was like a shop. And the beer was behind the canteen and I thought, “I hope she doesn’t ask to go in there.” And she said, “What’s in there?” So I took her in and she just looked and…

They were very responsible, very good, beaut people. They really were. I sort of knew that they had been out with officers, which they weren’t supposed to, and they were late back. I thought, “How do I deal with this?” Because

I couldn’t make an exception to the rule for them and yet they were so good at their jobs, and such fine people. Heavens above, you all do things like that in your 20s. I can remember they came in with hats on, salutes very well before me. They all knew they’d overstepped the mark and I

can remember finishing up by saying, “I don’t wish to see any of you in front of me again.” They went out of the office. So they didn’t get gated or anything, but I can remember saying, “I don’t wish to see any of you in front of me again.” That was the way I had to deal with that one.

Yes, of course. You had girls who had their own problems, who would come and talk to you. At that stage,

earlier I was what you call a social smoker. We nearly all smoked in my years, but you didn’t smoke much during the day. You smoked when you went out at night or something like that. I think I smoked more in New Guinea because sometimes if a girl had problems and wished to come and talk to you, sometimes you’d say to her, “Sit down” and I’d offer her a cigarette if she was a smoker to try and relax her.

I had quite a few things like that, naturally. Well you imagine with that number of people you did. We were permitted to go on picnics, officers had to be 6 females and 3 males. Men had to be armed if we went on picnics. I think ORs, Other Ranks,

I have forgotten, I think they had to be about 15 to 10, a bigger number anyway, to go on picnics. Of course they had to have leave passes. I signed ‘F J Crawford’ thousands and thousands of times, because they went on picnics at the weekend, or not to go to work, to go to the club or anything like that, to go to church, they all had to have leave passes,

because it was only your barracks and where you worked that you didn’t have leave passes.

The men seemed to know spots, sometimes beside the river. I remember there was one place; I haven’t a clue where all the others went. I’m sure there was a lot went on that we didn’t know about. That would always happen, wouldn’t it? I can remember being on

one beside the river. I can remember the Lae base cemetery, not going for a picnic there, but I can remember going to the cemetery there. The officers’ club was quite glamorous in its way. It had punkahs, about this deep; they’re big things that waft backwards and forwards to circulate the air. Thatched roof of course. In stead of the sides being filled in to here,

they were just a crisscross. And the rain always used to pour down. Then the end was a bit like an open veranda, and the Busu River used to crash by. There were all little fireflies at night that used to be aglow if you went out there and looked. We had natives that waited on us there. You ordered your food by number. They were

very fine-looking specimens. It always amazes me that now they dress western ways and when I was there they wore all native as such. They wore lap laps and they’ve progressed a long, long way in a few short years. It seems short to me anyway.

The girls did get out on picnics and things like that.

Yes. He’d be from a male army. There was only army there. It wasn’t native. We did have Formosan prisoners of

war working around the camp, but they’d be under the charge of an Australian soldier.

I don’t think I did. I think I simply looked after the girl and we would never have known who he was. It was dark; he’d have gone for his life. Used to check our

boundary fences quite regularly. They were cut from time to time. As I said, we had a barbed wire fence around us, so we always kept an eye on those, and checked those. I don’t know that we had that many that came in illegally or got out illegally. You certainly checked those regularly.

When you came home on leave, you were given coupons, because your parents back here had coupons then. So I think we were given tea, sugar, butter coupons to give to our parents when we were home on leave. We had very few clothing coupons. We could only buy bras,

pyjamas I think. That’s about all we could buy. I was in army uniform for 4 years. Not out at all. Of course now life is different. If chaps are home on leave, they wear civvies [civilian clothes]. We didn’t in those days. We didn’t have the coupons to wear them anyway. We were up there

quite a few months longer. You can imagine the chaps that had been in for 5 years were brought home first. Although war finished in August, we didn’t come home until the following April. Again, you had to check everything before the girls would go through, everything they were taking on board. We left quite a lot behind. So I imagine some

administrative with all our cooking gear. We came home as personnel, so I imagine some other organisation cleaned up our quarters and everything after. We left them clean, but I mean all your cooking stuff and things like that. We didn’t bring all our beds, all that sort of thing. When I say beds, they were canvas stretchers. You had a blanket and 2

sheets and a pillow. I haven’t a clue where our sheets were laundered. There must have been an army laundry somewhere. There must have been. No doubt we went to an army Q store [Quartermaster store] every week and got our clean sheets. I can’t remember those details. They certainly weren’t within our barracks. There must have been a laundry for the whole of the army somewhere in Lae. So on a certain day

it would be your units, to change your sheets. We did our own personal washing. We officers were lucky in that we had an Australian girl who had the help of a native girl to iron our jolly safari suits. So we were lucky. The girls used to do their own. They took great pride in it. Those safari jackets were starched within an inch of their lives.

They always looked. We used raw starch quite a bit, to freshen them up sometimes at the end of a day. That wouldn’t have been a very pleasant job, ironing safari jackets for umpteen people; it’d be horrible, wouldn’t it?

Great. We had our own bra and that was about it. We had army issued

pants, slacks, and we had woollen socks, which I thought first in New Guinea would be dreadful, but they were wonderful. They were very comfortable. They absorbed the perspiration I think. The boots were beautiful leather, not heavy boots like the men wore, more a softer, pointed boot, lovely soft leather. Australian gaiters. Then at night we could wear our own cotton socks.

I’m not sure of that, but shoes, our own army shoes and American gaiters. Don’t ask me where we got American gaiters. We must have swapped somewhere along the line, I don’t know. With these shoes you had to wear American gaiters because they had a flap that fitted over the shoe, where the Australian gaiter just came round the top of your boot then came up your ankle. So when we went to the club at night, we were able to wear shoes and American gaiters.

Keep the mosquitoes out, I imagine. Also, while we were there they used to spray a lot. Some army health unit sprayed a lot the mosquitoes. You had to roll your sleeves down by 5 o'clock and put your nets down by 5 o'clock because malaria wasn’t a very nice thing to get.

Compared to the poor men who’d been up there fighting before us, we lived very well.

No. It was a general hospital in Lae. That would be more for people

who were working as I was working, in army. They’d have had a hospital up in the Wewak area, and they would be brought back to Australia. They would come back for RAP [Regimental Aid Post], that was your first point. Then they’d come back to another part, say to a general hospital, and be brought back to Australia. No, we didn’t.

Our job was to replace men to go further forward. So we were rarely with men who were actually in fighting unless you’d met them and then they’d gone off, they’d be your friends and they’d gone off and the males came to and from all the time. You really didn't get to know each other very well, because you met in unusual circumstances, not in everyday life. You’d meet, I met my husband at the

staff school where we were for 10 weeks. He took me home to his family in Buderim some weekends when we had leave. Then letters went back and forth until he came down to Lae where I was. You really didn’t get to know each other very well.

In front of everyone.

Most likely had been. Most likely back working on base like we were. Again, the males were not supposed to fraternise with the ORs. I can remember one night, breaking up a couple who were kissing and saying, “Come along. Move it.” Time was up and the light was on, they were all saying goodnight at the gate in quite a big area. This

gentleman’s face came up and said, “Hello, Jean.” He’d taken off his pips to come in, you see, because they were not supposed to fraternise, officers and ORs were not supposed to fraternise. So it was very much laid down what you could do and what you couldn’t do.

I don’t know. They most likely found it worked that way. It was very much so up there. Even the men, they had their mess for lieutenants and captains, and the next mess is C Mess for majors I suppose and lieutenant-colonels, then you finally got to B Mess was full

colonels and that. Then I suppose you came to the top. I can remember playing tennis with four from A Mess. When we first got there, we were a bit of a novelty. The Governor-General, who was the Duke of Gloucester came up to inspect us, came into the mess. I’ve shown you a photograph with Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey; he was head of the army. He came up and we officers

were introduced to him and we had a parade for him, then he came into the mess for drinks. So we had a few visiting dignitaries who came to us. It was especially at first. Yes, we came home on the Canberra. It was quite a while after war had finished. Then as we came home we had to go into Bowen because there was a cyclone.

We went there to wait for the cyclone to get ahead of us. We had 24 hours there. Then we staged at Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Launceston. I went into Campbelltown Hospital, Launceston, got married, went back over again, back to Queensland. Although we were staging, we weren’t in charge of our girls then. They became

staff about those places, as we staged, so we were looked after. So life was pretty, well I could go into my cousin’s place for instance, and things like that, as we came home.

It all just fell into place. I can only say it fell into place each day. I can never remember any massive step. You all had a job to do.

As an officer, there was no feeling of superiority. You were there to assist the others in a way, yet naturally you had to be prepared to take responsibility. So it all just fitted in.

The sig girls had huts, because they used to work 24-hours shift work, so they had to have a hut that was a little bit removed so they could sleep during the day. There’d naturally be barrack staff around the barracks constantly so they had to be able to sleep during the day. I think earlier in the piece, some of

the girls, I’ve got a photograph, when I was going to army and working and I never knew. Captain Hornsby who had the barracks before me, she’d arranged a hockey team. They were playing I imagine it was ANGAU, I don’t know, because they had a swimming pool. Some of the girls used to be able to go to ANGAU and have a swim there. We didn’t get…no that’s wrong; we could go down.

The beach was black sand. Black. And hot as anything as you can imagine to walk on. I can remember one time out on a boat; you were allowed to take your slacks off out on the water. I suppose I had the army giggle dress on. My shins were bare. Out on the water the breeze was just heavenly compared to our barracks got no breeze at all.

It was heavenly sitting there. The next day I had a blister from here down to here. I can remember the sister, an army sister who lived with us on a medical, pouring cold tea on my blister that had come up very much, because I couldn’t get my boots on. All the beaches were black sand. They weren’t very pleasant. It was too hot to lie on; you couldn’t lie there sunbaking, it was

just a question of hastily getting in the water and getting out. At Salamaua we had a shark net around so you could swim at a certain area. We were told before we left, medically, not to let water in our ears. He said, “Don’t put anything in your ears smaller than your elbow” because you could get tropical ear as they called it. We were made aware of things like that

before we went up.

We didn’t get any. Plenty of dermatitis; a lot got that. I don’t think there was anything very serious in the time we were there. Some, as I say, came back on compassionate leave; a couple came back

through mentally having worries and came back. No, we were a pretty fit, healthy lot at that stage. We’d been given all our shots you see, against these things. I can’t remember all we had, but all the needles were duly pushed into us. We had our Atebrin every day. We took salt tablets or you could take a large amount of common salt, but you had to take your salt every day. We

were weighed every month. I went up at nearly 11 stone and came back at 9. We had powdered eggs; we had powdered milk. The females for some reason were allowed one egg per something or other. You never really had it on your plate. Occasionally they went out on a picnic, but they were usually green when you opened them. They were not at all pleasant. So we had powdered eggs and powdered milk and the water

had a lot of chemicals in it. It was horrible-tasting. Got used to it. So you lived on dried food, reconstituted dried food. When we came back to Brisbane, we were staging there. There was a lovely little shop there called Holiday Inn or something like that. It could be full of AWAS New Guinea girls having milkshakes,

pancakes with ice cream and cream on them. We were starved for real milk and real things like that. You got used to it; you accepted it. They did very well with the food. The girls did the cooking in our camp. Imagine cooking in that heat for that number of people. It must have been pretty terrible.

They didn’t complain, they were a happy lot.

No, it was only down the road. There were only army things there. I took the barracks over when

Captain Belle Hornsby went, Belle, she was a girl, went back to Australia. So I took over the barracks then. She’d left it in very good hands. They were a great bunch, they really were. There were a lot of you, so you had one sergeant just doing postal work, one sergeant doing pay work. Mind you they had an adjutant over them, but it was a large number all the time, to

be catered for. The canteen was very big, and the girl, who was a sergeant then, she has been incredible since. She’s been head of NSW AWAS, she’s been head for the Returned New Guinea AWAS, she’s been on the committees for all the women’s memorials at the war memorials in Canberra.

She’s full of beans. She still is. She’s been a representative going to various things. As a sergeant, she was capable like that then.

OK. I didn't have to turn the

camp out then, like you did in a training thing. So I would normally shower and dress and go over to the mess for breakfast where you had a paper. Everyone took a leaf of it. It broke up. It was printed in New Guinea somewhere, so there are all these kinds of different units there. It was an unstated rule, you didn’t talk at breakfast. We all got a

little bit of this paper to read. Can’t remember what breakfast was. It was no proper meal. I can remember the young lass who was a sergeant in the kitchen. I don’t think she cooked the meal, I think it came over from the main meal. She was great. She was lovely. Then I would go over to the orderly room, my office was on the end to the orderly room. Most likely

do a tour of the camp with one of the sergeant-majors we had there. Would be back in my office, because there would be paperwork coming though all the time. You’ll notice on a photograph of my desk, there’s an in tray and an out tray, most likely a pending tray too. So those things came and went all the time. Signing millions of leave passes

OKing for girls to do different things. If they had problems when they came to you. If you were duty officer, you took your turn at being duty officer; so did the others. You would certainly be last to bed, seeing the camp closed down each night.

That everything looked as it

should look. A bed was as it had to be, and in New Guinea they had a wardrobe made of masonite I think it was between each bed. Perhaps two were back to back. So although they were 22 a hut, they were a little bit more private. They had their canvas stretcher they had their steel trunk, and they had a masonite

so-called wardrobe. I don’t know how many suits we had, say 4. So really, you didn’t have much to put in it. They did have a little more privacy in their hut there, because they had their wardrobe. Each cubicle you went to would be identical. You made your bed in a certain, well you didn’t have much to make on your bed, did you? You only had the one blanket and two sheets and the

mosquito nets were up during the day. I suppose I went into the Q store and the canteen and the kitchens of course, which were very big and very hot for the number that was. And saw that it was all the right stores got there, things like that. You had payday. Although you had your pay

sergeant, an officer always took pay parade. I can’t remember taking pay parade myself, but most likely I did, and the adjutant would have taken pay parade. The things that you do in everyday life. If you imagine in your everyday life that there were 385 of you or something, all that you’re doing went on in a similar vein, except

that you were restricted completely and utterly to live by the rules and regulations. Lunch hours people used to take their jackets off perhaps and put a giggle dress on over the top of their trousers and do their washing. I think we had longer lunch hours. Of course when I was at army we went back to work so many nights a week. You didn’t have to go every night. If it wasn’t closed camp night

and it wasn’t open camp night and it wasn’t picture night, you went back to work, only till about 9 o'clock.

All the provisioning for the people there and the people further forward. The mending, the mechanical stores that I was

involved in and there was one part called Mil Sec [Military Secretary], I think they were responsible for the movement of officers. It was G Branch that would be responsible for operations going on at Wewak. Q Branch

would be responsible for stores and everything. 1st Army was, at Lae, the base for everything that was going on in New Guinea army-wise. So be it Wewak, down at Salamaua, Port Moresby, wherever it was you have your headquarters here to administer all those day-to-day

things that went on normally. You think of the feeding, the stores, the medical, no medical didn’t come under us. We had our own sick bay of course. Your day-to-day slings and plasters and everything that normally would go on in civvy life would go on in army life too.

Yes.

They were all in male units. The largest proportion we had were sigs, but the others were clerks, typists, no drivers up there. We weren’t allowed to drive. There was a male transport company, you requisitioned for that if you needed it.

If somebody took me to the officers’ club, he’d drive in a jeep that he would have requisitioned from the transport company and we’d have gone in the jeep. We saw the natives that put on sing-sings for us on occasions. I’m trying to go on with your train of thought and I’ve got lost.

Yes. A great number of clerks in the office in mechanical engineers where I was, there were clerks and typists. I’m wondering how many there were there. That was only one small part of the whole lot. You’d have some in ordnance.

I’m trying to think what other categories there were. They were mainly, our own staff would have been quite large at the barracks, but they were mainly sigs and certainly no drivers, they were clerks they were typists. What else would there have been? I don’t know, too long ago.

Yes, they worked in all those categories. Pay corps. I don’t know whether there was a records office up there or not. Certainly an awful lot worked in Hobart in records office. I don’t know whether there was a records office. I can go in my book and find out, but again that was clerks and typists. No drivers up there.

We had officers in amenities; we had education. This is later on, you see, all these different categories came in. We had army ed [education]. We all had, I don’t know where on earth she got it from, but we all got the most beautiful bedspreads made of like a voile – this was New Guinea – on top of our

blanket or sheet; little pretty floral voile that had double the quantity of material all around the side. I certainly didn’t make my own. I think the girls must have made their own. The amenities officer must have acquired yards and yards and yards. This wasn’t until we’d been there for quite a while. All the beds had these pretty bedspreads on them. I think mine came

home with me. Somebody made me, don’t ask me who, made me a dressing table that was a top painted blue, and it had two wings on it, and it had some of this pretty, no it had some blue and white material somebody got from somewhere like on wings that I would turn out. A man had made me like a trunk out of masonite.

A lot of the men there wanted things to do. They weren’t all flat out. Don’t forget war finished in August. Some were making gloves out of chamois, things at nighttime, something to do because we didn’t have all the outlets to go to. I remember one chap gave me a pair of chamois gloves he’d made. Some army ed officer

had taught him to make it, I don’t know. I know I had a very nice trunk, which is still under the house, made of masonite. I don’t even remember the man’s name who made it, and I don’t think he made it specifically for me. I think he made some for others. I’ve got a nice little picture of a pencil drawing of the church, the chapel we had in New Guinea. I think quite a few got that. Somebody must have run them off

on something. It’s got a little wooden frame around it and not glass but that sort of, you call it something you put over things. It’s like a clear plastic; it’s along in the hall. So they did things like that to give themselves something to do at nighttime. This was when war finished. I don’t remember censoring letters then.

When we went up we were pretty strict that we were not allowed to throw, I can’t even remember where the cigarette butts went, but we weren’t supposed to throw them over. Men especially weren’t because their units could be traced from different areas and things. You weren’t allowed to tell anyone you were on final leave. When we came home of course it was different. Life was different on board then.

We staged all the way down then. I think I’ve nearly done it.

Yes, I got down there once. Somebody said to me she got down there twice, but I only had a few days down there. It was just to give you a break. I don’t think you did anything; you just lay

around and read and had a swim. I didn’t have any part in the running of that camp. So obviously there must have been some…I don’t know whether they were male personnel or female personnel. We must have gone down there by boat, small launch sort of things.

You only spent a few days down there. Perhaps you went for a bit of a walk. At the end of this was a great hill, which you could climb. At the bottom of that there was a Jap wreck. At the end of the beach at Lae, there was a Jap wreck on the beach at the end. You didn’t climb in it. There were rust holes in there, but they were there I can

remember. I’m sure a lot of the people that were there would have different stories because they did different things from me.

No, I don’t think so because I don’t think there’d be anything like that. I think they’d be all normal civilian type buildings there now. There was nothing there except army huts.

Somebody said that they went back later and they couldn’t even find it because imagine the jungle grows up pretty quickly. They couldn’t even find where our camp had been. I don’t remember what area the base covered. You had roads that went out to the hospital and we went

for picnics, and I went up to Nadzab, but I can’t remember going very much outside the area within a certain radius.

Washing and ironing. I don’t ever remember reading. Never remember reading in my four

years. We wrote letters home. You had your own washing and ironing to do.

When Belle Hornsby went back to Australia, we had a fancy dress party and it was wonderful the things the girls came up with. This sergeant who ran the canteen and later has been most active in NSW, she was Carmen Miranda. She had one of these

bedspreads that draped around her. And she had a dinky-di [genuine] pineapple on her head and she was wonderful. She was Carmen Miranda. Do you ever remember Carmen Miranda? There was another group. They were a wedding party. One was the minister, there were padres there, so she had long, I think I had a

photograph, but I gave it to

The fancy dress party. That was when Captain Hornsby was coming back to Australia after the war finished and that’s when I took over the barracks. We had a fancy dress party for her. The imagination and where they managed to get the things from was incredible. You’ve got Carmen Miranda. There was another group that did

a wedding. The girl who was the minister, her father was actually at that stage the Moderator-General of the Presbyterian Church in Australia. Tall girl. She had a collar and a long black gown on, and I think she had a little black robe thing hanging down here. She was a very pretty girl. Her name was Spencer – after all these years. She was the bride. Where they got a white frock and veil I haven’t a clue,

I can’t remember. There was the best man. He was a girl in a dinner suit. Wait a minute, there was a unit in Lae at this stage that was an entertainment unit. They would have no doubt got a lot of their props from them. They formed a whole bridal group. I think there were three bridesmaids and three males in dinner suits, they were all female of course. They were a beautiful group.

The two that won, one was a swagman and she had a partner with her. They were dressed as a swagman and something else. They won the prize for the best dressed. Colonel Spencer, who was a very short person, she came as Red Riding Hood. Don’t ask me where she got that from. You can imagine what she looked like. She was a very short lady and she had a hood and everything over a white dress; this red hood. I was with a group, I don’t

remember what we were supposed to be. We had our uniforms on, but they were all mucked up with paper medals everywhere and our hats were odd. I think we looked like a bunch of football…oh, there was a football team. They must have got that from the entertainment unit that was there. A whole football team. They were dressed in all the same tops and everything. I don’t think I can remember all the others. We made

our own fun and that’s what you had to do a lot.

I don’t honestly know. We certainly looked very weird. We had uniforms on that were undone at the boots and undone at the cuffs and we looked a mess. Our hats were all bent and things like that. I don’t honestly know whether we thought we were swagmen or what on earth we thought we were. There were a group of us, but I don’t know what we were. Somebody with little imagination, that’s me.

I always say that I’m not a lateral thinker, I’m an up and down thinker. But there you are, you make your own fun.

Yes. I can only remember one act where I think, whether they were doing Shakespeare, and the female sat on the male’s knee and

I remember there was a bit of a row about it because they thought they were getting too friendly. I can’t remember the whole thing. I can remember good artists coming up. I don’t remember what they put on, but there certainly was an entertainment unit there because there were other units there, where these girls got there. ANGAU was the go-between

between the army and the natives and Australia. So I would imagine that some of these things came from ANGAU, but where the girls got these. Belle Hornsby was still running the place then. She was in the group that I was with an awful mess all over us. I don’t know what we were. You had to make your own fun.

I don’t in New Guinea. Isn’t that funny, I can remember a wonderful pianist coming to Brighton. He was wonderful. He was a well-known artist and I don’t remember. I’m sure there must have been because picture nights you sat there in the pouring rain. You had your hat on. Gradually the rain was so heavy that it came through your hat and ran down your face and gradually it came up your legs, up your boots and gaiters and pants, but it was warm rain

so you never bothered changing or anything like that. But the rain, every night it fell down. I think every night. In the dry season, it just fell down at night. In the wet season, it fell down day and night. It was very heavy rain but you didn’t worry about it.

Colin, you’re taking me a long way back. No I

don’t. I can remember sitting on benches outside with a screen. I suppose you saw the picture through the rain. No I don’t remember. I suppose they’d be the films that would be still showing in Australia at the time. But I don’t particularly remember any of them. In civvy life, perhaps you had a

newsreel and a picture and halftime and things like that. I don’t think we had that, I think we just had a film. It was fun. Did different things.

First it was very difficult. I can remember hanging out an open…we were inland, we got no breeze at all. I never remember

a breeze, let alone a wind. I can remember leaning out a louvre and thinking, “If I could just get an updraft.” There was nothing. So all right you did have to gradually get used to it. The air force place was down on the sea and they got a sea breeze. I only remember going there once. I went down there one night to their mess. I only remember that once. I think nearly all lost weight.

I suppose that would be the climate and the humidity. I remember when I was in Melbourne on the way back that the wind in Melbourne, you know how it chases you around corners, well it went straight through me when I came back, so you noticed the difference when you came back home again. It did take you a while to get used to the humidity

more than the heat. It was the humidity that won. I used to have a thing that was handed down from my father, which I’ve handed down. I call it my itches. After shower, if I’d get straight out of bed, before the sisters came in the morning I always had bare legs for a while before I’d get in the shower. Because my legs were always in pants and always in a humid atmosphere, I started to get these dreadful

itches after my shower. It didn’t matter what time of day I had my shower, I’d be dripping wet with irritation and I’d be sitting with a blanket around them to try to get them hot again. I didn’t know what to do. One day, purely by chance, I sat on the steps of my hut without my long pants on, just with a giggle dress on. That night in the shower I didn’t get the itches. I’ve since asked a doctor,

my father used to get them and I’ve passed it on to one of my sons, two of my sons I think, and I asked a doctor one day, “What is your cure for pruritus,” because I think that is what they call it. He said, “I can only tell you to try and keep an equal temperature and equal humidity before you get into your bath or your shower.” I nearly asked to come home. That nearly drove me insane until I discovered that

day where I got fresh air on my legs. That night I didn’t get my itches. But it nearly drove me potty because half an hour you’d feel as if you could nearly tear yourself apart. That was because of the humidity. I learned by accident how to beat it.

I don’t remember. When you went into the Lae hospital

nearly everyone was painted with purple paint. That was the cure for dermatitis. I can remember going visiting girls in hospital. I can’t remember whether it was anything more. A lot I think did get dermatitis. I didn’t and yet I was live with very sensitive skin to get the itches.

It was only one mess night. I remember very little about it. The sea breeze was the thing that I remember. They asked us down for mess one night. I can’t remember any more than that. Especially towards the end when I was in charge of the barracks, the officer girls would go into a unit at night. Say they were going to an ORs mess at

night, an officer, which was more often than not me, would go with them. I’d spend the evening in the officers’ mess, but I would accompany them there and come back with them. So they never went. And yet they were allowed to go on picnics in a group of 15 or more. The men had to be armed then.

Yes, quite right.

No, I never remember having to do anything like that. I think if they had anything, they would go to AWAS headquarters. Margaret Spencer was a colonel and she had Lucy Crane the captain and some sergeants. They were in AWAS headquarters. So that

would be policy. If they had any problem, they would have done it through the AWAS headquarters officer, which is always in every state in Australia and up there. There was always an AWAS headquarters for the whole area. Margaret Spencer had her own hut and she was a lieutenant-colonel. Anything like that would have been done through them. I was only in charge of their

behaviour and living quarters.

Yes. The sergeant would know. There was a sergeant in charge of each hut. She did rollcall every morning, so nobody was ever late.

There was a rollcall done every morning first up, usually just in their pyjamas in their hut it would have been in New Guinea, whereas in Brighton we had a greatcoat and a steel helmet on. I think in New Guinea it just would have been in their hut, standing beside their beds. She would have done a rollcall each morning. So there weren't the opportunities for things like that. It was

discipline handed down through the ranks.

At home?

Yes, cooked our meals.

As a young person we had several, but then we got to the stage where we had two sisters. One came to

us each year, and the other one went home and looked after her father and single brother. They alternated each year for 20 years or more. Mary and Edie. They used to do babysitting for me and my grandchildren. Sometimes, later on, I would leave my baby, who’s 50 this week, in the cot at Mother’s and

Mary or Edie would look after her while I drove my mother to town. They cooked the meals, did the washing and ironing and the cleaning of the house. They did all the cooking. They always didn’t eat with us. We just tinkled a little bell and they came in and took the dishes out. Then when I married and it was my turn, I was the one who did the cooking and the bringing in and out and everything else. Did the lot then.

Life had changed very much by then.

In units they did, but in the mess we had a private, King, I can remember her name. She had a native girl with her and they did the washing and ironing of our

safari jackets and trousers, but all the girls did their own. We did our own personal washing, but they did our suits. I don’t know whether the men had the same or not. I think they had A, B, C, D messes according to ranks. So whether they had any help or not I don’t honestly know. When

I was an instructor in officer school; we did all our own ironing and everything then. New Guinea was the only place where I didn’t. The sergeant-major was horrified the way I ironed a shirt.

Only officer with officer, and ORs with ORs. There was always somebody waiting there. I think nearly everywhere you were, you struck up a friendship with somebody, be it a Platonic one or a more intense one. But that’s the same in civvy life, isn’t it, exactly the same.

I think the first picnic I went out on somebody was with me most of the day. He featured rather largely in my life for a while. That was when Brian was up in Wewak. When he came down, that one had to move out. Then the one that I’d been friendly with in

Brighton, he turned up in New Guinea too. I said, “No, Brian’s coming back from Wewak,” so he went out the door. But there was always somebody of course, there always is, isn’t there. But you didn’t get the opportunity for the lives that you people lead today because you didn’t have the opportunity. I think the only time you were ever alone was in a jeep or something like that. You had a driver in the front who knew every word that was going on in the back.

There wasn’t the opportunity for much. No doubt a lot of things happened that you perhaps didn’t know about and things like that. Still.

I think there was a certain amount of feelings.

The same as there would be, I always felt sorry for the driver in front, he never said a word, but there’d always be. And you wouldn’t be in the jeep that long on your own. It didn’t take that long. Obviously there was petting in the back of the jeep. That. I suppose, went on everywhere. Part of life, isn’t it, in the 20s?

Because he had to sit there driving, and I bet he was thinking, “What in the hell’s going on in the backseat?”

They never said anything.

Letters. Yes, we wrote to each other. When I was in Melbourne,

the one that was in Brighton with me, we were writing to each other. Then we got separated through different postings. I’ve forgotten where he went. Then after Brian came in, I remember telling this Paul that Brian had come into my life. So Brian and I used to be writing to each other, so that went on all the time. They didn’t have to censor those.

Oh, I suppose so. No different from civvy life, I assure you. Different from today’s life; very different from today’s life. We were far more innocent; originally we were far more innocent than today’s young ones are.

Through our parents, we had a pretty high moral upbringing. I used to go to church, but I wasn’t brought up terribly strictly. I think there was always a feeling that you didn’t want to let your parents down or your superior officers down or whatever. So there was a pretty high standard.

I remember one time a chap asked me out, this was back in Melbourne, and I can remember saying, “I suppose I’d better find out if he’s married” because I didn’t believe in going out with married guys. I asked him and he said, “No.” Don’t ask me how it got back, but it did get back to somebody, and I was informed that he was married and his wife had just had a baby, so when he rang next time he got the boot.

All those things happened.

Whenever you liked. Whenever you had time. I used to write regularly to my parents and to whoever was the current flame at that stage. I can remember my mother had a Christmas cake made for me, and she insisted that I have it for Christmas Day and my father went to post it, and they said, “It’s too late for

sea mail, it has to go airmail.” Poor Dad was horrified at what it cost sending this jolly cake up by airmail. There was another chap. I don’t suppose you remember, there used to be a double loaf of bread. You could break it in half. His mother scooped out all the middle of that loaf of bread and put in I don’t know whether it was a bottle of wine of something and the bread protected it, you see? I used to love raspberries. I thought,

“I wonder if I can get Mother to put a jar of preserved raspberries inside a double loaf of bread for me” because you longed for fresh fruit. I suppose we got pawpaw, we must have. Yes of course we did. But we didn’t get much fresh fruit or veg up there.

Yes, it got there. I’m sure there were plenty of others to eat it too.

He worked in Mil Sec, was a staff officer. We got engaged up there on Christmas Day, the same day as Mr Chifley arrived, then we both came home on the same ship, the Canberra. Although I still had plenty of female work to do,

we had times on the boat when were could walk around the deck together. He was a Queenslander, and so he stayed there and I came back down here and we knew we were going to get married straightaway. I landed here and I had to go into Campbelltown Hospital for a fortnight, came back and got married, and then went all the way back to Queensland

and had my first child up there. Brian was in the bank originally. His parents were older, and they had retired and they were in Buderim, which is nothing like what it is now. They had retired to a small place that was just virtually four rooms on stilts. They had their own little banana plantation and a cow and an outside toilet,

no bathroom. I remember going there with him and he wanted to try his hand at farming. He’d been in the bank for a while. He couldn’t settle very well. So I’d always said I would never go on the land, but we joined his parents at a bigger farm. We had pawpaws and bananas and we had an irrigation area where they grew cabbages and beans and

things like that, lemon trees, pineapples. We never made a go of it. We virtually lived off what we produced. I think we had eggs every night for tea because we had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s. We were not making any money, that’s for sure. So his parents – his father had been an agricultural master before he retired – and I had a very wonderful mother-in-law,

she arranged that he get a job in a school as agricultural master, and she went as assistant matron. She realised we weren’t making any money, and Brian and the father weren’t getting on. So they went off and we had to sell the place. We came back to Launceston. Pete was born up there, my eldest. I came back here just before Greg

was born. He was the second one on the list. Brian got a job back here in a building society, but things weren’t very good. He was there for 17 years. We had quite a social life through the barracks because Brian was still interested in

army things. We used to go down to United Services Institute, which was originally an organisation for ex-officers. I used to go down too for lectures. We used to have functions in the officers’ mess and things like that in Launceston. Then when the children were about 15, 13 and 9, something like that, I got a flat on my own with them. We had a very

happy 10 years. I went and got a job as welfare officer at the Launceston General Hospital and I worked there for 20 years from when I was 41 until I was 60. There were no social workers in those days. I virtually did the same work, but I avoided a lot of counselling because I wasn’t a qualified counsellor. But it was a great job, because we sent a lot to Melbourne,

we sent a lot to Hobart. We had no renal unit or cardiac unit here, so we used to fly people to Melbourne and babies to the Royal Children’s in Melbourne. I was responsible for arranging all the transport that went on between hospitals, all the bills for them all came back through me to OK, because I’d arranged them and I’d OK all the travel. My best effort one time was I was sending somebody back to the Burnie Hospital. Oh, rang the Burnie Hospital

and I just said, “Welfare Officer Launceston General Hospital, patient’s name Joe Bloggs, Ward D, he’s ready to go back to you, but it’s your charge because you sent him to us.” The man the other end said, “To whom do you think you’re speaking?” I said, “The Burnie Hospital.” I had an undertaker in NSW. I haven’t a clue how it happened, but he was going along with me because

I was saying, “Patient’s name, he’s in Ward D,” he was thinking, “Come and collect the body.” But when I said, “It’s your charge, you sent him,” he realised it couldn’t be right. So I went and told the Administrator I’d put up the telephone bill a bit that day. I did a lot of home visits and every day brought something different. It was a good job. I had my three children

there. They were all still at school. We didn’t have much to come and go on, but we managed. They all went on to degree lives.

No. I was at home, wife and mother until

then; until I went back to work at 41 years of age.

1961, that’s right. My parents lived down only a block away. We didn’t have a car because at the end of the war we didn’t have any money. You had a thing called deferred pay that they took so much

out of your pay, but it was very little. It gave us a deposit on the first house. So my father was older and getting pretty sick then. He wasn’t that old, but he’d had a very bad heart attack, so I gradually went with Pam, who’s 50 this week, I had kept a cot down there and I’d pop her in the cot asleep

and perhaps take Mum and Dad into town or something like that. They used to lend me the car if we wanted to go out at night. They were still very good to me. I was still close to them then. Dad died fairly young because he’d worked to keep us all very well. He wasn’t a man that

kept much for himself.

Yes, he was working at his job then. He also, when I came home on leave, discovered he was night warden. They used to go round looking for chinks of light and things like that. Luckily nothing ever happened here. But they did these things. He took his turn doing things.

I don’t know what age he’d be. Pete was only 2 when Dad had a very bad heart attack and they wrote to me in Queensland. No, that’s wrong, Pete was only about 9 months when I came down from Queensland because my father had a very bad heart attack. After that he went back to work, but he gradually went downhill. I think he died in his early 70s.

I was at home when he was sick, and I was able to be with them at that stage when he was in hospital and very ill. At that stage, I wasn’t working. My brother and sister were still working, so I was able to be with them more then.

My brother was lieutenant-colonel in charge of an artillery unit in Darwin. He was there when it was bombed. My sister was working in the Commonwealth Bank here in Launceston. My brother has been dead for quite a few years now. Nola, my sister, is still doing very well indeed thank you. She says she’s getting forgetful, but she says, “So what?”

Just. In May.

Yes.

I remember one of the girls who worked in intelligence unit. I remember her being very excited that soldiers had landed in Borneo, so we knew things were gradually drawing to a close. I honestly don’t remember them saying

when the bombs were dropped. We knew quite a few chaps who were prisoners of war. Colonel Spencer’s husband, she didn’t know whether he was missing or was dead. We knew quite a few who were. I never saw them when they came back. They staged I think in various places, because I had a friend who was a podiatrist and she was in the AAMWS, and she was

into Borneo, somewhere like that, to be there for chaps that came back from Singapore and Changi. She was attached to the hospital. But I never saw them. They would have come back before I came back to Australia.

Yes, I think so. I tell you, the last day they attacked me. Then we just went on. Life was pretty easy after that. Mine was still fairly routine because I was running where they all lived. So the routine was very much the same for me. I imagine a lot of the work wasn’t. They still went to work,

because we were waiting for a ship because we were very near the last to come home, because we were the last to go up. I imagine everyone's job was getting very much less. Mine did at DGME [Director General Mechanical Engineers], at mechanical engineers, so I imagine everyone else’s did too. Life got easier for them. But the part of living in the barracks and the day-to-day, your closed camp nights, and your open camp nights and your picture nights and things all went on exactly the same.

War finished in August and we came home in April, so we were there quite a few months. Life was very pleasant. I still worked. If you live on the job, you do work at night too.

My days were often day and night, but they were not stressful. Not going flat out. It was routine, pleasant work. Then we came back on the Canberra. Took a while to come home. They made us stage all the way down. I know I had to see medical people all the way down because I got a complaint just before I left, so I

had to see doctors as I staged in Brisbane, in Sydney, in Melbourne and Launceston and Campbelltown and back again. So no doubt at each staging point, I was no longer in charge of them then, they belonged to the staging place where you were. I think you only stayed say 3 or 4 days at each staging place, but I have forgotten the exact timing of that.

Yeah, I went to Campbelltown Hospital when I came there, then came back to Launceston, then I was married and travelled back up to Queensland again in a jolly train, sitting up all night. There were no sleepers or anything in those days, so you sat up all night. I remember going to Adelaide, we went to see Brian’s father’s family who were

from Adelaide. We sat up all night. It wasn’t very pleasant travelling in those days.

Yes.

No, we did have, I think it was Brisbane, we drove through in trucks, and people were on the side of the road and waved to us. Most likely they had been

told, because there were people out waving to us on the side of the road, but that was all. There weren’t many Tasmanians who went to New Guinea. There were a couple of sergeants down the coast. They were beaut girls. They were great. There was a sergeant from here; she’s since passed away. A couple of them, mostly they’re all gone.

I didn’t know the Tasmanians very well because I left Tasmania fairly early. When I came back here, we decided to form a reunion. I didn’t know any of the girls in the reunion. I suppose there were a lot that didn’t know others as well. But through going to reunions, I was the first president of it, and through going to reunions over these years, I have made very precious

friendships. We don’t talk about army days. Occasionally some silly thing comes up, but it’s just a common bond, I think, that you have. There’s one lady – she’s 87 now – she came down from NSW to live here. Through those associations she deliberately set out to meet others and come to reunions and

so she’s met lots and lots, and through church. She’s a very good churchgoer. She is very happy in Launceston now, but the ex-army meant a lot to her.

Ex AWAS and AAMWS Association of Tasmania. One day after we came back, the sergeant who’d been in New Guinea with me, whom I didn’t know before,

she asked me out for a luncheon. She knew Launceston girls that I didn’t know because we’d been to different schools and these girls had been her friends before she went in the army, but I didn’t know them. We went and had this luncheon and I met somebody afterwards and she said, “I wish I’d known. I’d love to have gone to it.” So Gwen and I decided that we should form a reunion or an organisation. So we really didn’t

know how to start very well. She worked at a place called Harrup’s, and she came home one night with the constitution for the Beef Breeders’ Association, and from that constitution, we made a constitution for ourselves because we didn’t have a clue what to do. We were finding our own way. Then we decided that, I think we formed before Hobart did. Then Hobart formed. Tassie has always been funny. Hobart and Launceston has always been a

bit of a… So we decided that the headquarters, this was up here, should alternate: Hobart could have the headquarters one year, and we could have it the next. This was early days. I went to Hobart for a reunion, and I was the president then, and Meg Armstrong, who was sergeant-major and lots of fun, I had her primed to stand up and propose that we had the headquarters one year in Hobart and one year in Launceston.

When the time came, Meg wasn’t there. She was sound asleep, and I was waiting for her.

With Pete definitely. He was in school cadets. In those days in all schools, they all had school cadets, so he loved it. His two parents were going to functions at the barracks and there’d be marches through the streets that his father was involved with, so obviously

Pete had a love of that all his life. Because of his eyesight, he couldn’t do what he wanted to do, so education was very much a second choice for him. But Pete’s a workaholic. He’s a very honest, hardworking citizen. He worked at night for his

masters degree. After they had their children, he’d be with them as a father and I think he used to study after 9 o'clock at night or something. He was a worker. Anything he goes into, he puts his all into it. He’s a very loving, responsible son to us. Even this year, he’s already saying, “We’ll be up for Christmas Day.” His eldest son

is coming home with his fiancée and they’re insisting that they’ll come up here on Christmas Day to make sure we have a hot Christmas dinner. And that’s Pete. I’ll have all the things for the second course, but they’ll provide the first. Last year they came up and gave us a beautiful hot dinner. Although I was saying, when I was young, I used to do it. They always used to come, and now it’s their turn. Earlier, Geoff and I

used to drive down, but then that drive got to Hobart because all my family went to uni in Hobart, because there was no uni here then. I remember one year, Pete came up and got us for Christmas dinner, and then Greg, my second son, drove us back again on Boxing Day. So they’ve been very great children. I don’t know what the word dear is.

They’ve always kept in touch. They’ve always lived their own lives to the full, which is something I insisted on. So long as you’re not hurting anyone, live your lives, and they all have. But they’re still mindful that I’m here. So there’s Pete now. He’s an A1 medically lieutenant-colonel in the career that he would have

loved. He’s very proud because he’s got a son who’s now at Canberra doing his army officers’ course and Pete is able to see them fairly often. He will graduate on the 9th of December. I’d love to be able to, but I can’t. And James is top of his class at present, at Duntroon. So his father is expecting him to get this sort or honour at the end.

I am.

And Greg is my next one. He’s my expeditioner. When he first left uni, a group went to the Himalayas. Don’t ask me how they afforded it, because I didn’t have very much money at that stage, I’ve forgotten. They climbed there. You had to pay to climb certain mountains. They didn’t have enough money to attempt Everest or anything like that, but they certainly climbed high mountains. He’s climbed in New Zealand and

Scotland and France. This is all camping life. Pete’s my one that likes beautiful things. Even now, at weekends, he goes at every opportunity for a beautiful…he’s travelled very widely recently, even in St Petersburg and seen beautiful palaces and things. He sees all the little detail and he loves gardens and things like that, whereas Greg is all camping.

So he went to a lot of places in his youth very much so on the cheap. Even America he’s been, climbed there. He loves his southwest mountains. He’s recently been, I don’t know what his category was, they recently did a film on the lives of Truchanas and Bombovski, two wonderful photographers in the southwest. Greg was a bit of an adviser on where they photographed from or something

like that. He’s been to the Antarctic four times, a lot as survival officer, because he used to instruct climbing on the organ pipes at Mount Wellington and in survival courses each year. I think he still does, and I said to him, “Surely they’ve got younger ones to do it?” He often goes with the group that’s going down to the Antarctic and before

they go, he instructs them on survival techniques. The last trip he went on only this last year. He went down in charge of the expeditions and stores, then they were involved in getting the Polar Bird out. He said, “It’ll satisfy my love of seeing the place and I’ll only be away for 3 weeks.” But of course they had to get the Polar Bird out. First of all they went in and they couldn’t get her out, so they

took the expeditions off in helicopters and took them into Mawson, back to Australia and then into Mawson. Then they went back and the Polar Bird out. I said to Greg, “I read in the paper where you broke tow ropes and things” and he said, “Mum, we broke everything there was to break, but we eventually got her out.” So instead of it being a three weeks’ trip, I think it was nearly a six weeks’ trip. But that was quite recently. He runs his own electronic

engineering place from home now. His eldest, he’s the one that, Jack, he’s doing the trek and he’s the one that seems to be interested. I think he wanted to be a pilot in civvy street. Then they discovered he had colour blindness. I believe that’s very common in men. I didn’t realise that. Greg’s never been interested

in the army. If anything, he’d be a pacifist. I don’t mean extreme, I mean he was very happy to go along with my life, and Pete’s life, but he’s more a conservationist I suppose. He loves his mountains. He loves all that area. Even about a fortnight ago, he took two little girls plus the father for the other one and built an igloo

up Mount Wellington. So the two little girls slept in their igloo overnight. The two fathers I gather, slept in a trench alongside because they only built a small igloo. But Greg knows how to do these things. Then Pam, my youngest, she did science at uni. She was first of all a science teacher up at Rockhampton, because the lad she’d been going with at uni was in civil engineering

and he got a job up there, so when she finished uni she went there. Then she came back to Tassie. She taught in girls’ schools, the boarding girls’ school in Hobart. She taught science and maths there for quite a few years until she had her family. I think she taught even at different spells while she was having her family. I know she and another group

set up another childcare centre, Puddle Ducks. She was involved in civil things. They’ve all played their part. Then she went back to work. She was involved in a Double Helix Club. It was a science organisation that used to go to different schools showing even primary children just to get that interest in little scientific things.

In recent years, she’s been the secondary science teacher at the Woodbridge Marine Discovery Centre. Schools send classes there. They take them out on the boat; she goes too. She’s involved in dredging. She has to keep up to date with her lifesaving, and she’s even done a deckhand course at the marine college here, because she goes out on the boat with them. So she has knowledge

of the things she has to do. I understand that they go out on the boat and do dredging fish and things like this. Also, while they’re there, they’re taught lifesaving things as well. The captain of the boat does a certain amount of teaching. Then they come back to the centre and the centre’s got all kinds ranging from a touch tank – that’s only about that deep on top of the table so that classes can touch

and see the fish – right to tanks as big as this room. Bigger. And she loves it. Because she loves it, she’s very enthusiastic. She’s a good science teacher. Recently she was on television because, it was a something shark they caught just out dredging and it had a baby. One day

they got, they just caught the big fish. When they came back to work recently there was a baby. Places quite far afield have been trying to breed this fish, mammal whatever it is, in captivity and haven’t’ been able to. So they got a lot of publicity. I’m still waiting for the newspaper article that she’s supposed to be sending to me about it.

They were terribly enthusiastic. They were being contacted from Townsville, there’s a marine science centre up there. Even I think overseas about this thing that just happened to have a baby. But she loves it.

In the last few years they’ve asked me to

write. Pete asked me first of all to do it; Pam’s second daughter, Rachael. Pete had James who’s at Duntroon and Tom who’s doing his architecture course. Greg has Jack, who’s at Matric [Matriculation] and Joe who’s last year secondary. Then Pam has one at uni, Katherine, and Rachael who’s at matric and Simon who’s just 12.

Rachael’s been typing it up for me. I think I’m paying so much a page. I’m not quite sure I have paid so much so far. I’m not sure whether I’m up to date with it. I’m to be advised when she does more. So originally I did it very basically. Pete said, “Mum you haven’t given us the feelings, the thoughts. You’ve just given us the postings.” So I went through it again and

Rachael’s been doing it on the computer. So it’s been brought back to me to edit. I’m inclined to use army terms and army lettering. “OC, what does OC mean?” things like that. So between my writing and army terms, I think Rachael has done very well, she’s typed all I’ve given her. I still haven’t sent it back yet. They obviously all want to

know, and they all wanted to know about my early family life too. So I did that. I think it’s wonderful how you remember the good times. I said to them what a wonderful family life I had. And I said, “But I can remember lying in the bath thinking, I’ll get sick and then they’ll be sorry,” so I must have done something naughty and been chastised for it, but you forget. So that’s good. You remember the good times. They were nearly all good.

I’ve got three great children. Last Christmas there was Pete and his wife, his two sons and their partners, and Pam and her three children and they all came up and back in the day. They all got on well together and served us a lovely hot meal and tidied up and never knew they’d even been here by the afternoon. They all went to Hobart again.

They are, I noticed in answer to a question Jack asked for his thing. One question was, “Have modern day children changed?” And Pete’s answer at 56 was very like mine. I said, “Yes, my life was very orderly and we always wanted to not let our parents down.

Our life was far more orderly. Your mealtime was the same time every night. You sat down at the meal all together, but today’s I think are far more, ‘The world owes me a living’. We came along with more ‘I owe the world a living’ both in my school and

in my family life.” I said at the end, “I still have hope that there are plenty of young ones who will come on and play a part in the community.” I think we were encouraged to play a part in the community. We were. Even in tennis I loved it, but I used to also help young ones and just play your part in the community. I hopefully told mine to live their lives. You only get one

go at it. So long as you’re not hurting anyone, live your lives to the full. Pete and Joan, since their sons have grown up, they haven’t travelled before, but they have travelled every school holidays, even the three-week one, they’d go to Singapore or Hong Kong or somewhere like that. The last four-week one was between Norway, Denmark, St Petersburg,

would it be Lapland or Greenland? Anyway, just up into that in 4 weeks looking at all the beautiful palaces and gardens and things. He, when he came back, would give me his albums once he’d gone through and done his selection of what he wanted, he’d leave his albums with me, plus his diary, so I could have some interest in my life here because I don’t get out.

They’ve done a lovely lot of travelling since their sons have grown up. They’ve seen a lot of the world now.

Yes, I think I did. I enjoyed being a mother.

It wasn’t a hardship. They weren’t difficult. We had a very happy life with them. They in turn have turned around and repaid. No, they all had their 21st birthdays at home. But it was more simple perhaps than it is today.

We had a lot of fun. My brother, he is a very intelligent man, but he also loved company, and he was a very interesting, most intelligent man that had a terrifically wide area of knowledge and interest. His library would range from practically something from

the history of the Roman Empire to something of a sexy book. He had a terrifically wide interest. He loved going on picnics. He was a judge. When he was appointed a judge, he wasn’t able to entertain or go out as much among people, because you might have a barrister at that party and you couldn’t speak to him. So his wife was wonderful. She used to entertain quite a bit at luncheons

and things for him, at his own home. They had a lovely group of friends. He was a very popular man because he was so interesting. He loved Cradle Mountain. That’s where he wanted his ashes to be scattered, Katherine, if you can’t hear me. Yes she can. He loved Cradle Mountain. He was on the board that named various areas,

I can’t say the word. I can really say it, but I can’t at the moment. He loved his mountains too, as well as being a barrister and later a judge. He loved his mountains. That didn’t come from my family. Dad was quite a genteel city man. But George loved his mountains. They used to have some wonderful

parties up Cradle Mountain, say 4 couples, when their families were grown up. They’d madly walk all day and they’d have some pretty heavy nights I think. They had wonderful fun. He loved life. He was terribly enthusiastic until he had a very bad stroke, and then he became a very sick man. All that was taken from him. So he had a pretty tough end after the type of life he loved.

He was a most entertaining man.

It was a great life too.

No. I was a wife and mother and thoroughly enjoying that. Circumstances were such that I realised I had to earn my own living and so then the children and I moved out. I realised that I had to earn a living to support us all, so that’s when I looked around for a job. Didn’t

have a clue what I wanted. I was very lucky. I was always lucky. I was very lucky in having a friend who was chairman, who was on the board at the hospital. He said to me, “They’re looking for a welfare officer, are you interested?” I said, “I think I could be.” I didn’t really know what a welfare officer did. The first three weeks were pretty ghastly because they hadn't had one and nobody knew what I was supposed to do. I didn’t know either. I’d go

to the wards and say, “Can I do anything to help?” and they’d say, “Well, what do you do?” and I’d say, “Well, I don’t really know.” But gradually, that was the first three weeks, and that was horrible. I didn’t know, and there was nobody to tell me what to do. I gradually made myself known to social security and all the charitable organisations. I was fortunate in having a cousin who was a senior social worker at the Royal Children’s in Melbourne. So I contacted her.

She was able to tell me how to keep records, how they kept their records there. So I gradually worked into it and it became a very fulltime occupation. They opened their first psychiatric centre here, and they wanted me to go to Adelaide for extra training. Both psychiatrists had a go at me, and I said, “No,

I know myself. I think I would take that work home at night, and I need to change from being a welfare officer to being a mother as soon as I get home.” No, they assured me I wouldn’t, I would just normally take it in my stride because you can’t expend emotion on every case. They obviously had learned to cope of course. They said I would too. But I don’t know. I wouldn’t do it. I felt I

was more cut out for being in the general part of the hospital rather than the psychiatric work, because I was worried that if I’d get home at night I’d think, “Should I have done more for somebody or other?” And I didn’t want to take that into my home where I turned around to become mother to take her to ballet and somebody else to take to debating society or something like that. So it was a good life. I used to get home about quarter to six and become mother again.

I think you had wonderful experiences in the army where you had to turn round and cope with a situation that you hadn't encountered before. You certainly

learned more knowledge. You learned to mix with more people; you learned to get on with more people. You had to get on with people. So in life I don’t care what it is, knowledge nearly always comes in handy. It’ll find its way. Your experiences and your knowledge always support you through life. That’s all I can tell you. It

did. I never carried army into hospital life. The fact that I’d worked with a lot of people I’m sure helped me. The nursing staff were great. They supported me very much to start with. The officer staff supported me. Doctors that are here now, they came through as first year, out of uni chaps, they’re all specialists and things now.

I always remember them coming through. They still remember the old girl coming along. The present doctor came through as a young doctor and remembers me from those days. No, I think your experiences and the knowledge you gain are never lost. They always help you cope with a bit more. They do.

I think I’ve covered everything very well, Colin. I think I’ve made you very tired. But as you can tell, I’ve had a lovely life, I really have; a most interesting life. There were very few Tasmanians in the army that had the experiences that I had. So I say there’d only be about 15 or 20 in the whole of Australia who attended a

male staff school where we had to do ordinary battle and things like that like men did. That was a wonderful experience whereas our female jobs had been very different. A lot just stayed in their barracks in Hobart and went each day to their same job, whereas I’ve had so many different experiences, met very many more wonderful people.

No, because I’m not a rabid feminist. I believe the sexes compliment each other. We’re very different, and

I believe that we each have a part to play. When I was on my own with the family, with the children for 10 years, I coped with everything because that was how it had to be at that stage. Then I was fortunate when Pete was the last one to leave home, because he was teaching at Lilydale to start with, and the others had gone to uni in Hobart. Pete was getting married and I met Geoff.

So I was never alone, you see? He came along at the right moment. No, I’m not a rabid feminist, because I don’t believe we’re capable of doing everything. Men are far more equipped muscular-wise that females are. Females are a lot better at some jobs. I do believe that we are better at some jobs than men. But men are a heck of a lot better than women at other jobs.

So we have to play our parts together. Sometimes you really feel you could do that, but it’s better to get on with life. Have you finished now Katherine?

I certainly, I’m not a Germaine Greer in any shape or form. I think she’s

way off this planet.

Yes. Thanks very much.