Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Red Cliffs,

Victoria, on the 12th of March, 1928. My mother died of a birth tract infection five days after my birth. My father was a soldier settler on grapes, in the Cardross area. I attended school at Cardross,

and for some years remained up there, and then the family moved to Melbourne. By that time, in Melbourne, I had a childhood upbringing that wasn’t all it should have been. Eventually I found work for a firm

called Fred Hessey, military sales of military equipment that was far better than the stuff issued to the soldiers and airmen. I then went to work for a firm called LJ Reynolds, a wholesale butcher, with a view to becoming a

livestock buyer, and at the same time I did a course in meat inspection. At age seventeen and a half, I joined the Australian navy, where I served for a period of almost 13 years. During that period I was drafted to various ships and establishments, the first one being the HMAS Wagga, a ship in reserve at

Geelong, pretty war weary old ships with war crew members waiting to pay off. And I stayed there for some months, and then was drafted to Tribal class destroyer, one of the three, the other two had been Bataan and Warramunga.

I served in Arunta for approximately two and a half years, and was quite a happy ship. Eventually, after exercises and all sorts of full power runs and that sort of thing, we fuelled, worked up and

did a run into the occupation forces in Japan. Probably one of the most horrendous experiences at sea I ever had, was in Arunta when we were hit by a typhoon off Guam, which was absolutely horrendous seas with the ship pile driving, which means the ship would lift over a wave and dig into the next one,

causing the ship to shudder, bulkheads to bend, the propellers lift out of the water; and all in all not a very pleasant experience. We arrived in Yokohama in Japan, went to find that stanchions were bent on the ship, paint torn off it. Well, prior to going in, they were going into Sagami 1,

which is Tokyo Bay, a mine was detected in the fog, and that was quite an experience, not knowing where it was. Eventually the sun came out, and we saw the mine, which was disposed of by a projectile from a Beaufighter gun. On arrival in Yokohama, the starving Japanese were doing anything they could to get on board and keep warm.

They were eating out of our rubbish bins on the wharf, they were trying to get a bit of food off us, which we did give them. It was nothing to find them under the turbines and the bilges and everywhere just trying to keep warm, so they became a very effective form of labour for us. But

just to get all these things that they wanted, they quickly bought our ship back into ship shape condition, painting and what have you. Non fraternisation was in at the time, so we went to various sites such as they were, such as a Japanese temple

and that sort of thing. And to their credit, the allies made a point of avoiding hitting these temples and places of worship; in fact, the Japanese, during the war, were able to remove many of them because some where built with not a single nail in them. After some time in Yokohama, we proceeded

down through the beautiful inland sea, incredibly beautiful inland sea, to Kure, which was the Australian, pretty much the Australian base in Japan for the three services, for approximately about eight, ten ks [kilometres] from Hiroshima. Spending some time in

Kure, we then visited other ports: Kobe, Nagoya, Sasebo, and a couple of other ports around that area, just showing the flag. And then we, with the non fraternisation ban it meant that the only way you could meet a female was to

be in a situation where the Japanese quickly opened up bars and that sort of thing, so you could fraternise there; but you dare not walk along the street with them or anything like that. Fraternisation ban slowly disappeared, there were situations where Japanese girls worked in army establishments, airforce establishments, such as Iwakuni,

and of course, this made it very hard for the non fraternisation people to police, as they got to know them quite well, and eventually went on to bring them down here, or get married out there. Black market was absolutely rife …

Oh, Okay. Having visited all these ports, we went over to Hong Kong, done our tour of duty visiting several of these ports again, and returned to Australia.

Coming back to Australia, we did exercises again, this is in Melbourne, Brisbane and then we went to Noumea, from Noumea to Vila, which was then the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu, I think.

From there, down to Fiji; from there up to Tonga; and from Tonga, back to Australia. That’s about the end of Arunta, I suppose. From there I went to a naval establishment, HMAS

Albatross, in Nowra, NSW [New South Wales]. We commissioned the establishment and spent two years there. After about 12 months there, I moved to crash boats at Jervis bay, American built crash boats, beautiful boats.

From there, I applied for a draft to sea, and joined HMAS Australia, spending some time in Australia, around the coast, down to Hobart for the regatta, etcetera, then back to Sydney, and then I joined Condamine, in charge of training classes. Off the Australia, I spent some time in Condamine, around the coast,

and then went to Flinders Naval Depot to do a petty officers course. I didn’t wish to become a petty officer, so I was able to get around that. I was involved in the Royal Guard at that time. From there, I went to Condamine again,

and after some time, we proceeded to Japan and Korea. The next 10 months, we spent in Korean waters, mostly in Korean waters, sometimes back to Japan for some R&R [Rest and Recreation], operating on both the east and west coasts: on the west coast, as high up as Ch’ongjin, which is

approximately 100 nautical miles from Vladivostok. We patrolled both coasts, until this particular ship, a reciprocating ship, and it required faster ships on the east coast, so we mainly carried out our activities on the west coast, these included bombardments, various activities protecting islands, and that type of thing.

Pretty traumatic, with the shifting tides and sand banks and the ice flows coming down from the rivers and that type of thing; it wasn’t a very pleasant place to be. Temperatures got down to around 40 below zero, and perhaps an interesting point was the, it might seem a paradox but the coldest place in the ship was the boiler room,

as they were pressurised, they had air locked doors, they were pressurised to enable combustion with the furnace fuel oil. This involved large force draft fans, so the faster the ship went the more air was required for combustion of the furnace fuel oil, and the colder it got, and it was nothing to have icicles hanging in the boiler room.

We did our patrols, and usually around 14 days, sometimes round about 24 days. Then we’d go back to Japan, Sasebo, or Korea for three or four days, and then we had an 11 day break around about five months into the operation. We left them, and came back to Australia

via Hong Kong, and Hong Kong, Singapore, Darwin, Cairns, Sydney. I then left Condamine, and

during 1952, I met my future wife in Japan, and I was very anxious to return there. I had a friend in the navy office who I knew very well from my days in Arunta, and I rang him and asked, “Can you get me back to Japan?” He said, “Do you want to go to England?” And I said, “No, I want to go back to Japan.”

So he had me drafted back to Condamine, which was going back there again for peacekeeping. So I then went up and reacquainted myself with my future wife and set arrangements in place to bring her down to Australia to get married. Returning from Japan in Condamine, I then went to a naval apprentice training

establishment, HMAS Narimba at Blacktown, NSW. Then started the long process of bringing my wife down here. Unlike army? and RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] personnel, we weren’t to be in the one place long enough to know anyone well enough to marry them, so all sorts of obstacles

were put in my way, absolutely incredible obstacles, which was all designed to forget all about it; but it made us more steadfast, and I had to go through some pretty traumatic times. But fortunately, I was running transport of this establishment and I was able to get up to Sydney everyday

and be in constant touch with Immigration. All sorts of obstacles were put in front of me; and in fact my captain, who was also involved, could see how determined I was, and eventually he came on side a bit. Having got over those traumas I went up one day to Immigration in Sydney and they said, “Well, everything’s right; you can bring your fiancée down

here but there’s a proviso that if you don’t marry here within one month of her arrival, you must put up a bond of 240 pounds which will be her fare back to Japan.” The last thing I had at that stage was 240 pounds, so he advised me to go down to Eagle Star Insurance, who must have thought it was a pretty good bet, and for the sum of two pounds four [shillings] and seven pence, they put up the bond.

We eventually got married at Parramatta, lived in Blacktown for some time until my discharge in 1958, and then we returned to Melbourne to live.

Arriving back in Melbourne, I sold real estate for a while, then I joined the Commonwealth Car Pool, where I worked for the next 27 years. During that time, it was a very interesting period for me because I was assigned to the Department of Overseas Trade, which had a program of bringing visitors and marketing officers

who were the legmen for the trade commissioners in the various posts overseas. Under the late Sir John McEwen and the secretary of the department, Sir Alan Westerman, this involved a very, very interesting period of visiting all sorts of industries: cotton growing, rice growing,

abalone fishing, pasture seed; a whole variety of industries were covered for the next 15 years. During which time I was seconded for royal visits, King and Queen of Thailand, King and Queen of England, various conferences all over Australia.

On this particular job, then, I would return to the Department of Trade and carry on with them. That was a very, very interesting time of my life, and to see so many industries operating was a real education to me. I retired on reaching age 60, being eligible

for a War Service pension. Prior to that, we had built a War Service home in Ashwood, and I have been in retirement for 15 years, and will hopefully continue for another 15.

My childhood, up in Cardross, were very tough times. My father being a soldier settler, they had to clear the bush: they had to put in their tracks; they had to grow their vines;

they had to plough; they had to do the topping of the vines, the topping of the vines which was tremendously hard work. Things were very, very tough, but we always had our cow and we had our fowls and we lived reasonably well, from the point of view of being well fed and that type of thing.

My father was, came out from England, actually, and joined the army and he went to Gallipoli and was wounded at Gallipoli. Spent time in a hospital in Malta; was buried alive in Gallipoli. And perhaps an interesting point here is, my nephew, who is an historian up in Mackay in Queensland,

went back to Gallipoli in 1991 when they took the contingent of the old Diggers back, and my father took him and showed him where he was buried for 24 hours. My father then went to France, and was wounded in France and was hospitalised in England; went to Belgium in that area and was wounded again and hospitalised before returning to

Australia. My late brother, Jim, he joined the army at age 17, sailed from Australia on the Empress of Japan to the Middle East, where he spent two and a half years. Came back, and after some leave was sent to New Guinea,

where he spent some time up there in less than nice circumstances, I suppose, then came back to Australia.

He was ordnance corps, and then he came back to Wallangarra in Queensland where he was discharged; engagement expired, I suppose you would say.

Not a great deal; you had to drag it out of him. He was a tremendously strong man, and to have gone through that lousy war and to come back and clear the land – what was interesting in those days was, you worked very hard on the property,

then along came the hail storm and wipe everything out, then nobody wanted to buy your grapes anyway. Or alternatively, frosts would wipe your crop out, and that sort of thing. All in all, it was a tough time. We grew peas and potatoes, and that sort of thing, to sort of keep going, you know.

Well we ate fairly well, actually.

Once again, we would go into Red Cliffs, which was about five miles away from where we lived in Cardross, and we got our meats and vegetable; I grew a lot of vegetables, of course. We had our fowl and eggs and all sorts of things, so all in all, no – no problem with food.

Oh yes, we always found something. You had a bike, and what fascinated me in those days was the channels, the irrigation channels crisscrossed the area, supplying water for the irrigation, and that sort of thing. I recall, if I may, on one occasion

there, I decided to – whether this was the start of my naval career, I don’t know – but I decided to build a boat. So I got a large piece of galvanised roofing iron, put stem piece in it and managed to put a trance of some description on the back and set off down the channel. There was a problem with the watertight integrity of the vessel

and it wasn’t long before it went down and I was swimming for the muddy bank on the shore. But all in all, we always found something to do. We had horse, and we used to ride them down to the Cardross lakes, which was the sump for the irrigation area, bird nesting and all those sorts of things. We always managed to find something to do; never bored.

No not at that age. I might go down and feed the horses, but that was about it; collect the eggs from the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, that sort of thing, but no.

Had one brother, yes

Yeah, two sisters

Oh very much so, still do today

Mostly school friends, and that sort of thing. A friend that probably – they were all soldier settlers in that area – so you’d go over to another block, as they called them, you’d have friends on different blocks, and that sort of thing; used to get together and do all sorts of things

Not very much in those days

I recall in, and every Saturday night we would go into Red Cliffs and they had an open air movie theatre there, and we used to go in there and down in the main street of Red Cliffs there was a Chinese café type thing, and we as kids used to go down and look at these Chinese, we had never seen them before so. A few Italians in the area, mainly into grape growing,

wine and what have you. It was no big hassle, it was a pretty healthy life for a kid, walked to school about three miles everyday, you’d walk there and another three miles back, you know; attacked by magpies and that sort of thing, you know?

Oh yes. Yeah, another thing

I recall about those days was that your mother would tie a threepenny piece in your handkerchief which was your lunch for a pie, and there was a way you went to school with a threepence in there, and if you lost the threepence, you didn’t have a pie so, you made pretty sure you didn’t. They were reasonably good times, under the circumstances, with the Depression and everything

No, I would say, generally speaking, on the blocks they were all pretty much in the same boat. Of course, the highlight was when the pickers came in to pick all the fruit and the grapes and all that. There would be all sorts happening in Red Cliffs and Mildura on the pay night, with the pickers, who were a pretty rough bunch.

All in all, as a child I suppose you couldn’t have wished for a better upbringing in that situation.

Oh yes. We went out rabbiting. And used to dig for yams, digging yams and eating them and pinching eggs out of birds’ nests, you know, all those things kids do in the bush.

When we moved back down to Melbourne, I would have been – oh incidentally, prior to this, back in, back in Cardross, I was shifted off, the family sent me to Adelaide, to a grandmother over there; and in fact, the first aircraft I flew in was a Lockheed Electra, which was the same aircraft that

that great American pilot, Amelia Earhart, flew. And over in Adelaide, I found that the house had been burnt down. So years later, it flashed through my mind, “Did they send me off to Adelaide while they could do a Jewish stocktake?”

Anyway, I went home to a nice new home with electricity and everything, funny thing that.

Oh I think so, yeah. I think that’s why I went to Adelaide, but it was an interesting time.

He did show me where he was wounded, leg wounds and that sort of thing. He was an incredible man, my father. After he got back from the Gallipoli pilgrimage in ’90–’91, his doctor was very attached to him, to the point that he said, “Any time you get crook, Jim, I don’t care what time of the day it is, you just ring me up.” So anyway,

my father gave up smoking: he smoked the day he landed on Gallipoli, and he gave it up when he was 87; and he died, when he was 96, and his doctor came to the funeral and he said that I might be interested in what his father died of; and I said, “Yes.” He said, “Old age.” So much for smoking! I guess

if it’s in the genes, you’ll die; if not, you won’t.

I don’t think so. It didn’t kill the old man for all those years. I think I have a few left in me.

I would

think from artillery fire or something up there. And as you probably know, it was a hell of a place. And in fact, they just got him out in time. He was pinned under something, and yeah, and incredibly strong man to have gone through all that and do what he did on the block, and that sort of thing; he was quite a man.

Oh yeah, they were all soldier settlers in that area, the blocks were about 42 acres from memory, we had two of them there in Cardross, but it was a hard, tough life with little return; but as I said before, you managed because you had your

livestock, WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, cows and that sort of thing. And we had plenty of fresh milk, and you made your own butter and all that type of thing.

No, not a great deal. From my memory of school days, it was hardly mentioned, I think; a bit like after the Korean war:

nobody wanted to know much about it.

At that age I suppose I didn’t really want to know anything about it. As I said, my father didn’t want to talk much about it, so

amongst my fellow school children, I don’t think there was much interest. They might have asked their fathers or something; but no, it was just a war that happened and that was it.

Yes, we used to hold them in Red Cliffs, so I used to go when I was a kid. They would march up the main street, that sort of thing.

No, No.

Oh yes, you saluted the flag and that sort of thing. Even at that early age

I questioned what I was doing, being that I am a republican; strange, that at that early stage I would look at it and ask, “What’s that got to do with me?” like.

Yes, I think so, it was drilled in to you; you saluted the flag everyday,

even though you probably didn’t want to. But you did, and toed the line, I suppose. Until my later years, when I got involved in the republican movement. All this camera equipment reminds me when I was thrown out of the RSL [Returned and Services League] for my republican beliefs.

Channel Nine, Seven, Two; oh you name it! Call back radio from all over Australia; it was quite an experience. All I’d simply done, was to ask to rescind my Oath of Allegiance and resign without signing it. And eventually, the RSL wrote back after their main conference and informed me that any member

who no longer wishes to sign the Oath of Allegiance is no longer a member of the RSL; therefore, Mr Lees, the ball is in your court. Well, I think with all the publicity they got – TV and news media all over Australia, the ball somewhat went back into their court; something I’m a bit proud of.

Probably all things being hard to get and all that type of thing.

Concern of how the war was going, obviously with the brother up there and generally just hoping the thing would end sort of thing, you know, and whether we were winning and how we were going.

When war was declared,

I was living in St Kilda. Can’t remember any real reaction at the time; probably any kid, I suppose: let’s go and beat them, sort of thing.

We used to go to the movies,

living in St Kilda, to the Victory Theatre and the Palais Theatre and those places, where I sold ice creams, and did see footage of war going on, in the old black and white…

Let’s win it, I suppose, was the, er ...

During those days, you had all the American sailors queuing around Luna Park, and we used to hang around and sneak in for free rides, and that sort of thing; bought cigarettes off the American sailors, and went skating at St Moritz, and all that sort of thing. Used to muck around St Kilda and play

snooker and pool at a pool hall there, and got a good education. Yeah, all in all, tried to earn some money, splitting wood for a friend of mine who delivered wood, which was hard to get, mainly roots and wood blocks and that type of thing. Generally chasing a few bob sort of thing. Pay wasn’t much in those days, of course.

A very good education there, actually. There were some pretty shady characters around there; you learn a bit off them, a bit rubbed off.

Oh, you know; you had to be street smart, I suppose, that sort of thing.

No, I didn’t really. I think it was luck more than anything else. I think I was pretty nifty on my feet in those days.

Oh yeah, we had our group; one or two of them; I am still friendly with. We like to reminisce

about old times around St Kilda, which is a pretty tough sort of place; not as bad as some, but had its elements of roughies.

No, we had some girlfriends from time to time.

That was going back to about 13, 14, 15 or 16, I couldn’t wait to join the navy, actually; I wanted to get away from all a that.

I think I was influenced quite a lot, living so close to the beach; in fact, when I was 14, I tried to join the merchant navy, which in those days you could. But I was unsuccessful there, so I had to wait until I was seventeen and a half, and went in as what they call ‘a boy’, the princely some of three and six pence a day.

On reaching age 18, the remuneration went to the princely some of five shillings a day: you couldn’t do much with that!

Lived in a street call Wordsworth Street. Yes, lived there and

sold papers on the trams in the morning, jumping off the trams and jumping on again, and selling papers standing in the cold. I think a paper was a penny halfpenny, and then it went to twopence. It was all right as a penny halfpenny; they usually give you twopence, so you got a tip.

Not really in that

way, because there was only one newsagent, in Acland street in St Kilda, so you had about six of us selling, and you had your own area. You only sold from that area, sort of thing; you didn’t earn much, but you were earning something, you know?

No, not really. There were sort of individual gangs, but they didn’t account to much. There were some quite notorious characters came out of, well, the people I did know in those days. One became involved in the ship painters and dockers, and I knew some of them from my childhood days, and later on they went on to shoot each other, or whatever.

No, they weren’t; they were pretty much scallywags. Then they went onto become worse, I suppose. In my case, and my friends’, we came on to become better, and joined the service and got out of that sort of scene, which I probably,

subconsciously, wanted to do anyway.

Oh, no; not at all, no.

Yeah, we did; we had one every Sunday night up in Grey Street, St Kilda, and used to go to them. There was about

six or seven of us that used to knock around together, we didn’t get into much trouble I suppose, breaking the odd glass on a fire alarm, but that was about it

They gave you a nice white coat to wear, and

prior to the movie starting, you sold those little buckets of ice cream. Then you saw the movie for nothing, because you worked there, which was a great thing. Then come interval, you would strap on box of ice creams around you, and you would go off selling them again: didn’t earn to much money for that, but at least you got to the movies for nothing.

Yes, he used to write home. I don’t know that the postal service was all that hot in those days, the letters were scrutinised, and that sort of thing – to make sure you weren’t giving away any information –

on a reasonably regular basis.

Oh yeah, she was a bit concerned about my brother. But he got back, that’s the main thing. Finished up a warrant officer, first class, got out of the army and worked.

I think it was to get away from the environment that I was in, that I could see

was probably not going in the right direction. To me, it was a sense of adventure, to break out and go to sea. I recall sitting down at the end of Wordsworth Street, on the sea wall down there, watching the merchant ships coming in and out, and absolutely wishing I was on one.

Yeah, we were called boys at seventeen and a half, until we reached 18, then you were what they called an OD, an ordinary seaman rate.

It’s interesting, if you want to know about it, the conditions of the navy at that time. Very, very harsh; strict discipline. I’m talking about September ’45, and that type of thing. Punishments were rife, desertions were rife; a typical punishment for someone who is, say, required

a 10 or 20 days cells offence: he would be – talking about Flinders Naval Depot as a boy, as I was then – ship’s company would be piped to witness punishment, the sailor would then be required to

lift his cap smartly off his head to his right hand side, the warrant would be read out in front of the whole ship’s company, a bit of Bligh here, then he would be marched off to the cells. In his cell, he would have a wooden block as a pillow, he would have two pounds of oakum to pick: oakum is two pounds of rope

which is tarred, and he would have to pick that out and tease all the strands of rope out. He was fed three ounces of meat and seven ounces of vegetables a day, and all he had to read was a Bible, which was pretty harsh. So having done this, many deserted.

They were probably picked up again – in those days they would go to the ends of the earth to find you and bring you back. Having done that, you’d probably do 90 days Holsworthy military establishment in New South Wales, which was also a very harsh establishment. Another punishment was known as two and two, when you had up to six months half pay and no leave,

so you could be on a ship with no leave and half pay, they supplied soap, I think and razor blades. Once a month you were obliged to take a nature run, as they called, which meant you go ashore for half a day, even if you got out and sat on the wharf, you had to do it, you know. I’ve no personal experience of it but I know all about it.

So that was a pretty tough old navy at the start. They were mostly all the old wartime men had got out, and the attitude of the officers, many who had been to England, came back with an English attitude and in many cases they had a voice to match.

They were very hard times, really. This persisted, actually until, all this type of thing, into the early ’50s, say, ’45 on to ’53. In my career as a Commonwealth driver, I drove the late Admiral Martin. An absolute gentlemen, who died of asbestos.

I drove him one day at Flinders Naval Depot and we discussed all this. He said, “We had to change,” he said.

Theft, desertion, striking an officer.

Oh, there was quite a few; the punishment depended on what it was.

Oh yes, they were; but as I say, these days, in fact, if you desert, they don’t even bother about you. Back in those days, they would chase you everywhere.

Once again, back to ships reserve and Geelong.

Not too bad, I think my boyhood street smartness came to the fore a lot there.

You got very, very cunning and managed to stay out of trouble.

During the Korean War, actually. For many years, Veteran Affairs wouldn’t accept you if you smoked, you know, for a disability. But we were issued with free cigarettes in Korea by Lord Nuffield, I think it was.

So that sort of shot them down a bit, it’s a bit hard not to smoke if they are lying all over the table for nothing.

No, you bought them from the ship’s canteen.

Yeah, duty free.

On most ships there was a daily ration

a bottle of beer, but you could have more if someone was going down to keep a watch on machinery space or something: first watch at a eight o’clock at night until midnight; the last thing you wanted was a bottle of beer, so you just give it to someone else. They did all right there.

Some funny incidents over that, if you want to hear about that. In the Condamine, we were going up on the second trip, and we had pretty well as much beer as you wanted, so we used to tie a piece of string around them, and in our mess we had two 17 tons fresh water tanks, so we used to tie a cord to them and just drop them down and tie them onto the ladder, so they would just float there, and whenever you wanted

a bottle you would just lift the hatch and pull them up. They decided to transfer some water with an electric pump known as a snorer pump. They lost suction on this and the engineer came down and he got down there with his torch and he is looking around and he has found the problem was that about 110 beer bottles were blocking the suction line. So he wasn’t too happy about this situation, so he decided then that they

would put locks on these and dropped it over and put a lock on it. Well, that was no problem, as they put pins at the back so we just knocked the pins out and lifted it up: business as usual. Pretty smart blokes, sailors, I can tell you.

Oh yeah, yeah, tremendous.

It was known as smuggling in the navy, and the various ways they smuggled beer on board was absolutely unreal. They had what was known as a Smokey Joe’s. Someone would have some booze, so you would find a compartment on the ship, well out of the way, and you would have a big party: Smokey Joe’s

That’s right, yeah.

I could talk about those things for hours.

On this Condamine, I was in charge of the engineers’ workshop. In fact, I had my sleeping bag and used to sleep down there and everything. We had a steward on board who wasn’t a bad mate of mine, so I said to him, “Any chance of getting

some, getting some (UNCLEAR), get a little bit of a party on board,” you know. So he said, “Yeah, leave your bucket there.” So what you would do, is get your four gallon bucket which you put your, what we called dhobi, your washing into. Then just walk down there and drop it there and then go for a walk come back and pick the bucket up and there would be something in there, you know. Finished up with half a bottle of rum, a bottle of whiskey and, I think, half a bottle of gin.

So a few of us got stuck into that, and got rid of that, and the next day the wine caterer, who was a kindly old engineer came up to Spike who was the steward and said, “Look, I don’t understand, we only had several guests on board, and they have drunk brandy and gin, and so on and so forth.” Spike said, “Well, there’s 24 empty soda water bottles there, you don’t drink them on their own

do they?” The old engineer’s walking away scratching his head, Spike had poured all the soda water down the sink, that’s how ingenious they got. Oh yeah, funny times, the old Smokey Joe’s. Going into recent times, 1988, an old navy mate and I went on a container ship back to Japan,

and it was a 42 day cruise, and we were the only two passengers on board, a German registered ship called the Storey Bridge, which went Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Yokohama, Osaka, Pusan in Korea, and back to Melbourne. That was an absolutely fabulous trip. We had our own steward and ate with the officers and the captain. The officers had a swimming pool on board, you could be in the tropics and have a swim in the pool,

wrap a towel round you go up on the bridge and have a look at the weather reports and talk to the officers on watch, things you could never do on a cruise ship, you know, which wouldn’t impress me anyway. Yeah, it was quite a good cruise, that.

Saw an outfit called Sydney International Travel, I got some brochures. They stopped it after that September 11th thing, but starting to come back again now.

We had a barbecue down under the containers every Saturday night at sea, a bit of a Karaoke after, you know. Incredible ships really, in normal naval vessels, when you get out of heavy seas and you get into pretty smooth waters, they stop rolling. With container ships, I think we carried 1200 containers and 40 refrigerated containers,

and they would roll for days after, because you had all these containers up top and 700 tonnes of seawater ballast below. And you got that way and when I got home I couldn’t sleep for the first three nights because the bed wasn’t rolling. Incredible experience, and one I will never forget. No, very, very good. Have a beer whenever you want one; of course, duty free.

Yeah, quite enjoyable; I must do another one, I think.

That’s a bosun’s call, actually, the bosun’s whistle would go, it was usually on pay days, actually, when they could get the most people, and the pipe would go ‘weeoosshh’.

”Hands to, pay and witness punishment,” and that’s what they would say. The poor bloke would stand there with around about a thousand blokes, surrounded, and he’s got the nominee of having to lift his cap off and have the warrant read out in front of all these people. As I say, I think it was a bit of Bligh in there, you know. I suppose there’s better ways of doing it these days, there’s fines and things.

For the times I suppose the culture of the navy was such that these things went on. It all came back to the officers, you would learn very quickly, you would walk away so you wouldn’t have to salute them.

Absolutely no respect for any of them. Occasionally you met a good one. But going back, after I left Narimba, I went to commission a ship in Maryborough in Queensland, Kanimbla, which was a boom defence vessel. It had two big horns hanging out the front of it, and we used to lift buoys and that sort of thing. Anyway, seven of us went up to Maryborough

to stand by, and we were there for about three months, and interesting thing, we had no part of it until we took it over. The Mary River at this time flooded, to the point where the ship, at one stage was 12 foot over the pier, and Walkers, the builders of it, were letting out lines fore and aft. As the ship is going up,

we hoped to hell we would come down and be sitting on the wharf, like. We did our makers trials out in Hervey Bay, and finally a full ship, then a crew came up, which were mostly boom defence rating. These boom defence people were probably the best seaman in the navy: they could splice wires, while the average AB [able seaman] was looking at it because they were

snapping them all the time, lifting these buoys up and bringing them in. So we took over, and away we went, set sail for Sydney and got half way down to Brisbane and we broke down in horrendous seas, and we floated around out there and were in all sorts of trouble. The sister ship, the Koala, which happened to be in Brisbane, came out and I will never forget the relief seeing it the next day, I came out the boiler room, where I had problems down there with bad

oil for the furnace and all sorts of problems. I looked over, and there about 30 feet away was the Koala, so the Koala took us alongside into Moreton Bay, where a civilian tug took over, took us up into Brisbane, and the experts from Walkers came down for three days or four days, supposedly fixed the problem,

and then set sail again. We got half the way down to Sydney and broke down again, and we crawled into Sydney doing about three knots, I think it was. It was about one o’clock in the morning and they put us into the floating dock. We spent about a month in there and they traced the problem back to – when they built the Koala, they had problems with bearings in the engines: the oil filters, instead of being in a Y shape they were in a W shape.

They’d rectified that, and when they said build the Kanimbla, they said, “Okay, build it as a similar ship with certain modifications,” and we had the problems that they had originally, but they have never been changed on the blueprints. So, solved all that problem, and finally set sail, and they went up to doing boom work, lifting buoys – Hayman, Lindeman, South Moll,

Samarai, New Guinea, Moresby, Rabaul, Manus Island, and I left Madison and flew back to Australia from there. But a really good ship, with very fond memories, once we settled it down and it became a very good ship and very good bunch of seaman and mates.

Not really, no, not to the extent that they go on in military academy and all that sort of thing. No, none of that, no.

Bastardisation, yeah.

I think that probably happened amongst the 13-year-olds that went in as midshipmen, and probably went on there, but in the mainstream, you were there with your pranks, but in the mainstream naval, not much, no.

The Arunta was probably one of the most beautiful ships ever built for tribal class destroyers, three boilers, very powerful. One experience I recall very much, we did a full power run from Sydney to Melbourne which was four hours of working up, four hours of full power and four hours working down, which pretty much got us down here.

The speed we got to was something like 36 knots above the design speed because we picked up a current which is prevailing current, north-south, quite a fair way out. It was quite an experience. There was no wind, not much sea, you’d stand on the upper deck and would almost get

blown over with the speed the ship was doing through the water. One stage, we went from full ahead to full astern, which sucked the stern of the ship 9 feet under the water, and you can (UNCLEAR) very, very powerful, beautiful ships. Conditions: living not so hot, you were always chasing water, water was a big problem in those ships, and your main concern

was water for your boiler, nothing else mattered but that. You had evaporating and distilling plants which would push out, say, about one and a half tons of water an hour, distilled water. Had to be absolutely free of any traces of salt in it, of course, for going through the boilers. There was an interesting thing, the operation, talking from an engineering point of view,

your steam is generated from the boilers. It goes to your main engine turbines through three stages. At each stage, it loses a bit of pressure, but it’s still got enough pressure to drive another stage and has still got enough pressure to drive another stage. From that point it’s still got enough pressure to drive, say, a turbo generator, then it goes down. It might be

using a pump, getting steam to a pump and it will lower the pressure, finally finishing up at about four to six pounds in the galley for cooking and that sort of thing. Then the whole thing was condensed into very big condensers back into the fresh water, and that was the system, as it was known, as the closed feed system. But water for showers and that sort of thing.

If you had just left harbour, the tanks would be topped up, so that was no problem; but once you got to sea for a few days, you had to watch: as I say, the main concern was feed water, any left over you got a wash, for washing or showering.

I was a leading stoker, which was firing the boilers, running turbo generators,

running evaporating and distilling plants, all sorts of gun pumps and pressure for torpedo tubes and this sort of thing.

You’d take your engine room watch keeping, were you’d be as a leading hand you would be on one throttle, you had an engine room artificer on the other one,

and you would probably be running an evaporating and distilling plant as well. You kept four-hour watches, usually in three watches which meant you done four hours on and eight hours off. Then you just stayed on those watches until you got into harbour, or you may do day work or something.

Training in

the school engineering at Flinders depot, you done your basic marching and rifles, that sort of thing but then you went to engineering school and learnt basically how the machinery worked, but the main thing was when you went to a ship, someone – and it was entirely different to what you were taught – you knew enough, and somebody would give you, as we would call it, give you a rub round,

which would show you exactly where and what pipes were carrying what, water lines, steam lines, asbestos, I think, even in those days: I am surprised more haven’t succumbed to the effects of asbestos, it was everywhere. When guns fired it came down like confetti.

But during Korea my particular ship fired 2341 rounds of four inch projectiles

and 1001 Beaufighters. Out of the five frigates that served up there, the most was the Murchison which fired in excess of 5000 rounds. The Murchison was the ship that was caught in the Han River. I think I heard everyone of them go off.

Part of the occupation force, yeah

Yeah, went via Dreger Harbour, which is near Finschhafen, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kure and Japan.

Only for fuelling and provisions.

Yes, in Arunta, we went into Hong Kong. Later, in Condamine in ’55, that was the peacekeeping, we refitted for six weeks in Hong Kong wet bar docks.

The first time would have been in Arunta; pretty funny place Hong Kong, actually.

No, this would be 1947, I’d say. It was a strange thing, you would get on the grog and we had all night leave, there.

Your leave would be up at eight o’clock in the morning, and you’d wake up somewhere and think, “Well, if I’m on the Hong Kong side, I’m right, if I’m on the Kowloon side, I’m gone,” because they had the staff ferry running across all the time. “Oh no: which side am I on?” Yeah, a funny old place, Hong Kong.

Oh I don’t think there were many Australians here in the ’40s. It was under Japanese occupation during that time

Oh yes, late ’40s yes, had all sorts of places there, bars, tattooists, half the navy got tattooed in Hong Kong I think. Always running out of money, of course;

but it wasn’t a bad exchange rate to the Hong Kong dollar, but it didn’t take you long to go broke.

Of Scottish descent. I’d have to go back through the family history, but her father was a railway man, and he worked on railways on Scotland and then they came out here. Its all documented somewhere. And then he was very involved in the railway system in Sri Lanka, over there,

and she went too.

I have no idea now, I would only be guessing; but when he finished up, he worked on the Western Australia railways. His whole life was railways.

Yes, yeah

Actually, my father, when he came back from the war he went into, he became a soldier settler, and had just been allocated a block, and he went into Caulfield hospital with tuberculosis, probably as a result of the war, and he marched out of there. He said, “Well, I’ve got a block to run,” and away he went up to Red Cliffs, I don’t know if it was the air or

or whatever up there, but that cured him. He went onto live to the ripe old age of 96.

He served in the Middle East: Cairo, Tobruk and other places around there. Then he returned and went to New Guinea, he was in Wewak in New Guinea, and then he came back to Wallangarra in Queensland and was a warrant officer first class

and married, and had two sons and got out of the army. Two sons, one is in Sydney, one of them is the Asian manager of 3M company, and the other one lives up in Boulia where he is a building supervisor for the shire.

He was a bit like my father, actually; he didn’t talk much about it. Of course, at that age, when you join at 17, and five years later you get out, you are pretty not too concerned about the war: you were there, and that’s over, and I’m coming home,

and whatever.

I was hoping to get to sea; and there was a lot of ships that you wouldn’t have wanted to go on, but I was fortunate enough to go on Arunta.

Then I went to Japan as part of the occupation.

Yeah, I do actually, my first day in Japan, as I said before, almost hitting a mine in Sagami 1, which was Tokyo Bay,

and it was quite an eerie experience, actually sitting there in the fog; and during fog, there is never and kind of seas, it was always flat calm, you know, and everyone’s wondering where this thing is. We picked it up on the radar and – quite a tense time, really, “Where is it?” Anyway, all of a sudden, the sun comes out, and there it was. So we soon fixed that up. First day in Japan, the thing that really

saddened me a bit, was to see the state of the people. They were starving and dressed in rags and terrible conditions. But then the Korean War, as everyone knows, that was the start of Japan’s rebuilding and servicing ships and aircraft and all that sort of thing.

So that put them on their feet, it really did.

I’d always been fascinated by Japan, actually; right back to my childhood days, when I used to have a toy, ‘made in Japan’, like, and I would think, “I’d love to go there.” And eventually made it. I think I spent about five years in total in Japan. Great people, actually.

They were led into war by these militarists, and that sort of thing, but basically they are very fine people. My wife and I went back a few times, and the people there couldn’t do enough for you, sort of thing.

No,

I don’t suppose I did, really. I think with the publicity and thing, I realised that it had happened, sort of thing; but no. They are incredible people, the Japanese. You would expect hatreds and things, but it didn’t affect you personally; probably weren’t too concerned about. Once you got into their culture, and that sort of thing, invited into their homes and knew them, that sort

of thing, they were very nice people, really.

Oh yes, yeah, I can only talk for the navy there, because the survivors of the Canberra, and those that were taken POW sort of thing, they probably would have had a different attitude

towards the Japanese than, say, the sail... of sailing up to Japan on one of the ships that went up there.

I served with sailors that had been a POW; in fact one is still alive up in Queensland.

He had one hell of a time, and he signed on in the navy: you could still see marks in his back where he had been jabbed with bamboo and that sort of thing, but he never held any great hatred for them, even though he had a real tough time. He was sunk, picked up again then sunk again.

It was, actually, yeah. I think he was picked up

by them, he sailed on the Oryuku Maru, I think it was, which was torpedoed by an American submarine. So then he went up to Japan and was a POW there, but he never held any great hatreds towards them, no doubt a lot did but I suppose it’s in the individual: “Oh, that’s happened; let’s forget it.”

Some bore grudges for many years.

Oh yes.

This was when I first joined up. All they were interested in, with the exception of a few, was getting out of the navy. They were like some of the ships; they were a bit worn out,

and all they wanted was out. But you still meet them today. I think it’s pretty well all forgotten about. One interesting thing was the psyche of the Japanese people. When you’ve been married to one for 42 years –

and she was quite westernised, my wife; she spoke pretty good English and never, ever struck any animosity in any way, certainly not from her family. Recently she spent 16 months in a nursing home over in Oakleigh, about six weeks ago.

Her nephew came down, his wife and two children, they were only here in Melbourne for two days. So I took them over to see my wife, who was in a lovely nursing home; and the difference between Australian children – Australian children would see an auntie, grand auntie or whatever she might have been, they go and give them a hug and that sort of thing.

They don’t do that, the Japanese, very reserved you know. I thought to myself at the time I could imagine an Australian kid doing, “Hello, auntie,” like; but no, they don’t do that, they just give a little bow.

Bombed! Is the best way of putting it, hardly a building standing, wretched living conditions just eking out a living as best they could. Of course, what put them on the path was the black marketing: soaps, cigarettes

saccharine tablets – we used to get a yen a tablet, I’m sure it was worked out. This is Condamine, ’52–’53, sorry no, Arunta. We would go over to Hong Kong, and I’m sure it was just to replenish soap and cigarettes and stuff you could sell on the black market, you know, which we could do, but the Americans, there was no way they could do that. In Sasebo, in Japan, is quite a big port.

They had two big beer halls there: one was Takara Suka, and the other was Cloud Land; and they were the only two places you could go and fraternise. You would go and see the girls sitting there with the American sailors, and as soon as the Australians came in you could see them leave the Americans because they knew we had the money from black marketing. Interesting time, that.

Yeah, I’ll say it is, yeah. In 1952, when I first arrived in Condamine for Korea, I was a driver. We carried a Land-Rover on board, and they decided that, “Well, we’ll leave the Land-Rover and the driver aboard.” We had a depot there called HMS Commonwealth, so I thought, “This will do me, I’ll see the war out here,” like, and I was running confidential hand mails,

which would come into Iwakuni [?] from Australia, go up to Iwakuni and pick them up, then I would catch a train to Sasebo, which was an overnight trip. And I did this for nearly a month, and then the ship arrived at Sasebo, so I thought, “I’ll go out and see the boys,” like, “How are things going in Korea?” like. Anyway, there was the captain standing over there and he said to the first lieutenant, “What’s he doing there?” And he said, “He’s our courier.”

He said, “Well, we’ve got other means of mail direction now, get him on board, get him to hand his pistol in.” So I handed my pistol in and that was the end of that little caper. Fortunately, we were going back to Kure, where all my gear was. Anyway, worst thing I ever done was to walk on board. It was a funny depot, that HMS Commonwealth.

It had Australian sailors, there but you couldn’t get them out of the place, you know; they didn’t want to go anywhere. One of them who is still a good mate of mine and married to a Japanese, old Davo. A commander came up there and said. “I want a list of all the ratings here or anyone that’s been here for over two years.” Well, he nearly dropped dead to find that some of them had been there for three years.

In Davo’s case, later on he got sent home, he had been there for over three and a half years, so he came back and he joined the Shoalhaven, another sister frigate of the Condamine; sorry, he went to Darwin and the Shoalhaven came up and was on its way to Japan. As we could do, we went aboard, “Does

anyone want to swap a draft?” In other words, do you want to go south rather than go up north. This bloke says, “Yeah, I want to go home.” So he swapped a draft, which means he walks off there and he walks on there. So Davo got to Japan, and he was the ship’s driver. So the captain says to him one day, “Davo, I wonder if you would do me a favour.” Well that’s strange, doing the captain a favour.

He said, “Yeah, what’s that?” And he said, “Do you know the Whitehouse in Kure?” Davo knew every house in Kure, having driven around it for three and a half years, so he said, :Yeah, I know the white house,” which was an upmarket brothel. So he said, “It appears I left my braces there. I was wondering if I could pick them up?” Davo says, “Yeah,” and jumps in the Land-Rover. First lieutenant says, “Where are you going?” “Doing a job for the captain,” he says.

So up he goes, and the girls bring out the braces in a nice box with the ribbons tied round it and everything, and Davo gets it into the Land-Rover, gets on board and goes to the captain, and he said, “Here you are, sir” and hands them over, and the captain says, “Remember, Davo, not a word.” Talk about having the captain in your pocket! Just a funny little thing.

Yeah, so Commonwealth had cells there, and there was a waiting list to get in for blokes that had played up on Australian ships that came in. At nighttime, there would be chaps in the cells and there would be the quartermaster there with his little cabin and his logbook and his pistol and everything. Of course, the girls would come down and they’d invite them in and they would go in and have a yarn or whatever with the chaps in the cells, like.

Funny old place.

Yes yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah. Prostitution was rife there, so was venereal disease, for that matter

Oh yeah. Well they, mostly, they were very quick off the mark to earn some money and you still see them in there wartime uniform setting up there little stalls selling this and that.

All sorts of little dolls and

trays, Mt Fujiyama, and that sort of thing. Souvenirs and that sort of thing. They were pretty quick off the mark with all that, they got into that very quickly.

Yeah, and then there were trips to Hiroshima.

You could catch the bus up there – and the devastation of that place!

I think a lot went there. I didn’t go there, funnily enough, and I still think that to this day, in fact a friend of mine that just lives down the road, ex navy, I think he’s getting the effects of radiation that was still there. He went in very early, about late 1945, trudged around in all that stuff.

Yes, and they’ve got this association called … I forget the name of it, but they’ve been fighting for years for these people, not only from Hiroshima in Japan, but Maralinga and Monte Bello and all these places.

They won’t admit it, the government, but they’ve had pressure put on them for years, probably hoping for everyone to die out and do something for the few of us left.

Pretty well subservient, they realised they were gone and

a lot of them worked for our forces, of course, in transport and all sorts of things. Our people became very friendly with them, actually; used to meet them down town and get invited into their homes that sort of thing.

Let’s say you worked in an army establishment, and you were in transport and this chap was in charge

of servicing vehicles or whatever, and then he might say, come home and meet my family. I got on very well with them. The longer it went on actually the better it got, in that respect. Of course when the non fraternisation ban broke down they knew that they had no hope of continuing that, and of course the Japs were getting married, some of them got married Shinto, the Japanese religion, they very smartly got sent home.

That was in the early days of ‘on frat’, but they could see it was breaking down, it was pointless trying to keep it going. And then eventually, it was mainly army till then, of course, then a trickle on to the navy. Then a friend of mine did what I should have done, instead of going through all the problems that I

went through get my fiancée down here. He simply bought his fiancée down as a tourist, and as soon as they got here, they got married. Something I should have done, but didn’t know anything about.

Only that they were there, and they’ve got gravestones over at Broome and around that sort of place, but I never had any personal contact with them at all.

Oh yeah, some of them soldiers up there made a lot of money.

Well, civilians had the yen, we needed the yen to spend, so we would sell them cigarettes,

saccharine tablets, they had no sugar and saccharine was very much in demand. Sugar and soap, particularly soap. For a cake of soap you would get100 yen. It meant that you hardly touched your pay. In fact, in the army, at one stage, they had to do something about it, because the soldiers weren’t using their pay books.

Somebody must have said, “Hey, hey what’s going on here, then?” Some of those soldiers up there was unreal, some of them had been there for six years. They had cars and Japanese wives and living in Japanese houses, and you couldn’t get them out of Japan with a bulldozer, until I think it was Army Minister Ford went up there and said, “Get some of these back to learn to speak English.”

They had a ball, the occupation forces.

No, no, no. The only advice you got was on venereal diseases before you got in. It was very funny the navy, the medical officer would address

the ship’s company, say, in Hong Kong, and as we were approaching Hong Kong, he would say, “Keep out of Wanchai, the district there, there’s a lot of venereal disease there.” And of course, when you got into Hong Kong where did all the sailors head for? Wanchai! They communicated, some spoke English.

They were mostly that worked in establishments, army and navy air force. A lot of the girls in bars, they spoke English, they were known as beer halls, wherever you were, you’d go into places like Kobe in Japan, and the whole street is beer halls,

the music blaring out ‘The Wheel of Fortune’, and all those sorts of thing. So you’d go into a bar and you’d meet a girl, and the next day you get back on board, and they would always have these little match boxes, they give you these match boxes and you would wake up the next morning and think, “What bar was it, where was it?” And you’ve got to go back there. Have a look at your matchbox, show it to a taxi driver, and he would take you straight there.

Yes, there was the Koreans, there were quite a few Koreans in Japan, they weren’t highly regarded by the Japanese, that’s for sure. I think the Japanese, having over run their country,

but they were mainly in leather making and all that sort of thing, they were incredible. You would get these traders come on board and they used to sell to us as well. All the food came from Japan: tomatoes and bread and everything. I’m sure they were Korean, they would make you a pair sandals, in the morning they would place your foot on a piece of paper and they would draw around your foot

and that afternoon you had a beautiful pair of sandals, they weren’t very much liked by the Japanese.

I think a lot of them hadn’t, because a lot of them were subservient to the Japanese. It was said that the worst guards were the Koreans because they were under the heel of the Japanese.

They were pretty brutal from what I have heard, from ex POWs. But the Koreans I found are very, very tough people, although we have a good relation with the Korean veterans association, we attend their church in Malvern every year, we go there and you can see that they appreciate what we did during the Korean war.

Oh they probably were, they were getting a bit back, I’d say, return the favour.

No.

No, but I can understand that it would have happened, yeah.

They really look after us the Koreans, we have a church thing at St Paul’s Cathedral once a year and their choir comes in and it’s really worth listening to.

Probably stay there

two or three days, refuel, reprovision, but I still say to this day it was an opportunity to stock up on your saccharine tablets and what have you, I’m sure of that, couldn’t have the army beating us at that. You had different currencies up there, depending where you were;

there was always Japanese yen, of course. I was going through some stuff here the other day and I found two 10,000 yen bank notes, so I thought I would take them to the bank with the exchange rate what it is, the bank manager came out. And I said do you want to pay it into my account or give me cash, so he’s up on the computer there and he comes back and he’s looking at them and he said,

“Are they Japanese yen?’ And I felt like saying, “Well they‘re not bloody Afghanistan yen,” like; but I got $230 for them. But getting back to the currency, you had the Japanese yen that you could trade anywhere and you’d go to a place like Sasebo, which was American run, then you had scrip dollars, American scrip dollars, you went to somewhere the British mainly were, and you went on to what they called BOF,

British Occupational Forces, so there would be times there you’d be moving around using three different forms of currency. In Hong Kong in ’55 they had a special rate for us, conversion rate for Australian dollars to Hong Kong dollars. I thought, there’s an opportunity there.

I was in charge of this mess, and I used to get all of their money, convert it into Hong Kong dollars and then take it to shore and buy Australian money with it, a tidy little earner there for a while, until they woke up to it.

Not that

you knew, probably they did through someone they trusted down on the lower deck, if you’re doing this can you do it for me, sort of thing. But certainly not to the same extent that we did it, no.

Oh yeah, maybe the skipper said to his steward, “What about converting this for me?” You don’t know, but perhaps it went on.

Oh yes, we had money rolling in everywhere, pockets full.

I can’t really speak for them, except that they were an occupation force, that’s about what it was, to secure different places and that sort of thing, make sure there were no problems with the Japanese.

All in all, they got on very well with the Japanese.

No, although they may have but I know in Condamine in Korea we

were guarding an island up there Taedong Paengnyong-do, I think it was, and we went and got orphans from this island and brought them on board and fed them and went back down to Japan and bought them toys and all that sort of thing. That’s just this particular ship, no doubt it went on in other ones. Nine Australian ships served in Korea, so I suppose the others did much the same.

That would be 1950–1953 the Korean War, and then peacekeeping in 1955. ’50, where would I have been in ’50?… Oh, I would have been at

Albatross, naval air station at Nowra because Condamine didn’t go to Korea until ’52–’53 and other ships had been up there before us, so it was a case of one would go and tour of duty and then another one to relieve it, and come home again.

In Arunta I was probably up there for eight or nine months, and then 10 months, I think in ’52–’53, Korea Japan, and then another 10 months peacekeeping. Peacekeeping was never any guns going off, that sort of thing, we just patrolled the coast and sort of

watched the fishing fleets, it had all quietened down of course by then. So it was much better than ’52–’53, I can assure you. One of the problems you had up there, we were fired on.

Some of our ships, the Bataan took a hit, and the Murchison up at the Han River. If you were on the upper deck, you knew the coast was over there and you knew that’s where the firing was coming from, and you would go to the other side of the ship if you weren’t doing something, if you weren’t on a gun or something you’d say, “Oops, I’d better get over this side,” but down in the boiler rooms and the engine rooms, you just didn’t know where you were: all these guns going off;

was it coming through that side, or is it coming through that side, a bit traumatic down there, it would have been nice to know where the coast was.

I got back in ’53, ’54,

and went up again in ’55. These recruits I was training were off the Australia, and when they went to Condamine, I had 26 of them, I think, which were engineering people, and when hey decided to send us up again, they retained these instead of sending them back to the Australia … no, this is ’52–’53;

yeah, between ’50 and ’52, I had these training classes, and then they decided when the ship was going back, it was going to Korea, but they would keep these on board, so which meant in effect that there were probably overall in an age, probably the youngest to serve, because they were all recruits just out of recruit school

doing training; “Okay, we may as well keep them on there,” you know. So they were the youngest. Look at photos of them now, and they look about 15 or 16. Yeah, they done a good job.

Yeah. yeah, we got back here, up there ’47–’48,

and as I said to Colin [interviewer] before, the Arunta went to Noumea and New Caledonia, Tonga and back here, so we’d sort of filled in space for that period.

The Condamine was a river class frigate,

one of five. The last frigate actually built here, built in Newcastle, and it originally, it was commissioned in 1944–45, done fisheries patrols around New Guinea, and then it returned here. And then

we, and then with the training classes, I moved around Australia: Perwola [?], Wallaroo and Adelaide and various different places; and then it was allocated for duty in Korea. Originally we were to go to Norfolk Island, taking stores up there, everyone thought at the time, this is beaut, like: two week cruise up there. We were at Number One buoy at Sydney Harbour, and then they moved a corvette along side, took all our stores off us, the stores that we were to take up there and took us back alongside the cruiser wharf, and then we went in for an extensive refit before going to Korea. As ships went, they were very, very good ships, they carried plenty of water, unlike the destroyers, and fairly good sea ships and conditions not too bad.

Just being in the engine room branch, you’d done your initial boot camp and then you went to engineering school, which gave you basic knowledge of ship propulsion systems and that type of thing. You did all sorts of things, you’d go into dry dock, scraping propellers and that sort of thing.

General engineering, machinery, pumps, turbo generators, main engines, steering gear, you pretty well were pretty good at your job, and of course you always had engine room artificers who were tradesmen: boiler makers, fitters and turners and that sort of thing; you worked in with them.

In 1950, I would have been on HMAS Albatross Naval Air Station, Nowra in New South Wales. I done about two years there, and went on to crash boats at Jervis Bay. Which were beautiful craft, American built V12 Hall Scott Fender engines in them,

and your life on those was picking up someone who had got ill on a merchant ship or something, all hours of the day and night, not often. Mainly chasing aircraft carriers that were night flying and that sort of thing. General anything that had to be done around the place. You went ashore from your boats, you didn’t live on them, and that was quite an experience to have

served in those. That was part of Albatross; it was their marine section, they called it.

We always had a pretty good system amongst us, sort of a gang, if you like;

we always knew where each other was sort of thing, you know. So he’d say, “Where’s so and so?” “He’s gone to Korea on the Bataan or something. So of course with the ships relieving each other and coming back, you always found someone that you knew and drank too much beer with them and pretty well knew where each other were.

All I really wanted to do was to get to Korea because of the benefits that ensued from that.

Oh you know, eligibility for war service and a possibility of disability pensions all came into it.

We always carried Chinese on these ships up there, they would run the ships laundry and do all your laundering; not that it worried us in the engine room: we used to do it off the steam drain off a pump and just hanging it up, and by the time you had finished your wash it was all dry. But we carried about four or five each time, every time we went up there.

As soon as a ship had been relieved they would just transfer to the one that came up.

After they decided that we weren’t going to Norfolk Island, we were refitted at Garden Island. We worked up, as they call it, you go out

working the ship up, and then doing a shake down cruise, which was shaking everything down, so to speak. Then you fully provisioned: oil, water, provisions, then to Cairns, refuelled and reprovisioned in Cairns, Darwin and done the same thing there. Went to Singapore from there,

and Singapore direct to Japan. Then we started our operations in Korea and trips back down to Japan, down the Shimonoseki Straits, either in to Sasebo or Kure.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you might be in –

say you have just done a patrol, 14 or 15 days in Korea, and you went back to Kure or Sasebo. Kure was our favourite, because Sasebo was quite Americanised, had big PX [Post Exchange – American canteen unit] and all that sort of thing. But Kure was little Australia sort of thing: it was like coming home; going to Kure, and you had your favourite bars and head straight for them.

An interesting thing happened, actually; this was the second trip up in ’55. I’d got ashore early, and as usual, straight over the gangway and headed up town, another chap and I, a petty officer decided to go and see a movie. So I was sitting in the movie, and they flashed onto the screen that, “All ratings from Condamine return to your ship immediately , there is a typhoon alert.”

So I found out later that they were actually chasing chaps up the wharf: “Come back, come back,” like, and of course they were heading the other way. So the next morning I woke up and I’m in a hotel, and the rain is pouring down, so I thought, “Have a bottle of beer and see how things go.” So I had a bottle of beer for breakfast, and then thought, “Well, what do I do, I’ll ring Commonwealth

and find out where the ship is, if it was at the wharf where we usually tied it up.” I knew where it was, but then I didn’t know where it was, so I pretended I’m in the army, and I said, “I’m in the army and I’m trying to contact a mate of mine on the Condamine,” and they said that’s it’s gone out to a storm anchorage. So I thought, “What else to do? I’ll go to the Commonwealth.” Get a taxi over there, and I suppose there was a third of the ship’s company already

There; they had escaped, so to speak. They took no notice of the British red caps saying, “Get back to your ship!” “Okay, yeah, yeah okay, I’m going in a different direction.” I’ll never forget it, they sent out work boats, and took us back on board and there’s the captain and the first lieutenant looking at us as if to say, “You’re a shady bunch of bastards but there’s nothing we can do about it.” He didn’t know a thing about it. One of the fun times.

They were pretty well overnight, sometimes two nights, depending on the amount of oil and provisions you had to take on board. You’d get enough for what we called ‘a runner ashore’ you know, two watches, and one would go off one night and one would go off the next. What they did do was,

there was two ships – the other one was the Murchison, I think. They didn’t like having two ships in the harbour at the same time, tied up along side each other: you’d been at sea for a few weeks and they were frightened of a brawl breaking out, so they would send one; in our case, it was out to Magnetic Island or somewhere. Generally, you got on pretty well.

So going up there was just (UNCLEAR) Singapore and Kure.

The worst weather conditions – you get pretty bad ones, not like the typhoon we hit in Arunta, that was absolutely unreal that,

how we ever survived it. They were loading everything that moved down to the bottom of the ship, began to throw the gun barrels over the side, it was a horrendous time. They had life lines rigged, and of course, if you were engine room personnel, you had a boiler room there and you had another room there and then you had your engine room and then you had your gear room. They rigged these life lines, which was like a piece of rope with a ring around it, running a cable the whole length of the ship,

and what you would do is wait for it to come up at a reasonably even keel and you grab this thing and run like hell down and then grab a torpedo tube or something to get in the engine room. And that was bad that, probably the worst seas I’ve ever been in. It was an interesting thing actually, when you got in those conditions there was very little talk, the usual banter and

sort of thing and your mess decks, you know, just disappeared, I think everyone was dam frightened, nobody made a joke and nobody spoke much. Yeah, quite interesting, that. That was by far the worst seas I’ve been in, but anyone who’s been to sea has been in heavy sea sort of thing, you know. But that’s the most memorable, in my recollection.

My first day in Korea was a patrol on the East coast. I’ve also got that documented that it was just a patrol up and down, firing a few guns here and a few there and that sort of thing.

Then, as I told Colin before, which had only done about nineteen and a half knots was considered too slow for the east coast so they sent us to the west coast. Protecting islands and gunfire and that sort of thing and then getting trapped in the ice, that was not a very nice place to be.

But you did all sorts of things, you might pick up a Korean, you might pick up a couple of Americans from somewhere, or off another ship, then you’d fuel off another tanker, in fact Condamine into the side of a tanker up there. Instead of going to port we went to starboard, and we ran right into the side of it and just about wrecked our bow

to the point where the captain of the tanker refused to give us our mail, sorry a ship called the Cossack, C class British destroyer. And he refused to give us out mail, and we finished up getting it about four days later off a tanker after he’d warned us to never bother to come along side us again. They did transfers; they might bring over depth charges or mail or whatever.

So he wasn’t too happy with us, so we then had to go back down to Kure, and it was interesting to that, we were thinking this will do, five or six weeks in dry dock while they fix this and we got down there and the Japanese were, all you could see was torches burning day and night. They completely fabricated a new bow and put a new bow on it, and I think we were gone in about 48–50 hours or something, back up there, yeah

yeah, big hole in the bow. Then there was the occasion when we were reported sunk, the Russians apparently had reported us sunk, and it was picked down here in Australia. and they sent a Canadian, it had got through to Tokyo of course, they’d sent a Canadian destroyer up to take over from us, we had for all intense and purposes been sunk.

With radio silence we were the only ones that didn’t know anything about it. We went back down, still not knowing anything about this, I stepped a shore and an army bloke says to me, “What did you get off it, mate?” And he saw the Condamine tally, I said, “Get off what?” He said, “The Condamine, it sunk.” “No, it just got in,” like, you know. Going down all the bars

the girls, the blokes had there pennant ships and (UNCLEAR) and that sort of thing and they had black ribbons hanging off them and all that sort of thing. It was quite interesting, that. We were the only ones who didn’t know that we’d been sunk.

Japanese beer halls, bars everywhere, the whole street would be full of them

Oh yeah, as soon as the ship pulled in you were already dressed and you stepped ashore and you headed straight for your favourite bar. They had all this music blaring out … dear oh dear.

Very little, actually. I only went ashore twice in Korea. Once in Ch’on [Ch’ongjin], that was second trip, peacekeeping. The other one

during the war in Pusan, which was pretty much a mess of a place. And years later, when I went on the containership, I went into Pusan, and of course the difference to what it was when I was there in ’52–’53 was quite different.

First went to Pusan, oh dear,

it was pretty much a shambles. You were advised, I remember an American MP [Military Police] advised you were not to wear your watch to shore, never to wear fountain pens because they would tie one of their long hairs out of the head and

tie them around and whip fountain pens and things out of peoples pockets. Yeah, it was quite a shambles, Pusan.

You had the 38 parallel, which divided the two Koreas. On the west coast, we

went up as far as a place called Ch’ongjin, which was right up in the Manchuria sort of thing. About 100 miles from Vladivostok, so we were well up there. One hell of a place and we operated there with the Missouri, the American battleship.

You could actually see their projectiles as they were sending them there; we were all about that size compared to it. I remember remarking to one of the petty officers, they always had a big tall chimney there. And I said, “It’s a wonder, with all the shots that have been fired into there, that they haven’t knocked it over.” And he said, “Give us one range finding shot and we’ll get it with the next one.”

But it’s there, and they used to know where they are sort of thing; so the last thing they want to hit is this chimney, because they knew where they were when that was there. The Missouri, when it fired a full broadside, then it moved 15 feet in the water the other way: what fire power!

It had 16-inch guns,

just below, the Musashi. The Japanese had the largest battleships ever built, Musashi and Yamato, which are 18-inch guns. I’ve got a model of it out there. You could do a lot of damage with 16 inch guns, that’s for sure. We worked there, we were always under the American seventh fleet, they told us where to go and when to go and how to go sort of thing.

And on my ship’s banner out there, I’ve made note of that US 7th Fleet, which is on it. We recently received a commendation from the Americans, the medal and ribbon for service with the service 7th Fleet. Like most of these things, you get them years and years and years later, sort of thing. Then we got the South Korean presidential situation,

and that was interesting, sitting up on the wall there. It was presented by Sigmund Rhee to the 7th Fleet, which was us, and the air force, 77 Squadron. Never to the Australian Army, because they never served under the US in the fleet. And for years and years we never got that, and I believe that Menzies didn’t like

Sigmund Rhee, and it was only in recent years that we were able to get it.

I didn’t think much about it really, we knew the North was coming down and the South were the goodies,

I suppose, and the North the baddies, and that’s about it; you knew which side you were on, and that was it.

Only what I had read in the papers, we used to get advisors come on board. In fact one of them was an Australian in the American army

advising you what to do if you were captured, get them from time to time.

Might say something like, if you are captured they’ll try to get information out of you to the point they’ll put a pistol to your head, but don’t be afraid it won’t go off, it’s more to coerce you into giving them information.

You get them from time to time, you’d get the odd American. I never forget the time one came on board, a marine. I don’t know where we picked him up, somewhere. We were taking him down somewhere and he got on board with his carbine, so the first lieutenant said to him, “We’ve got provisions for you to leave your weapon here, lock it up and make sure it’s okay.” And he

turns around to the first lieutenant and says, “Sir,” he said, “a good marine never parts with his rifle.” He eventually surrendered it. In fact, we had him living in our mess deck, he said to me one night, “Hey,” I was lying there, first to sleep, and next thing this fella grabs me by the shoulder, “Hey, you got the middle watch.” Shook the wrong bloke.

The Murchison, they picked up Korean POWs and that. One time there, the only place they could find to put them was the potato locker. We used to have this big potato locker on the upper deck. I think they got in there the best feed they had had in ages, raw potatoes.

Patrols, up and down the coast. I think we steamed 17,000 nautical miles in Korean waters.

That’s what it was mainly about, guarding an island to make sure that the North Koreans didn’t cross through it. In the ice, that was the worst winter in Korea in 10 years, they reckoned, the 1952 winter, and the ship would just become iced in, which was quite a problem because these ice flows were coming down from the rivers and the

the problem was to maintain your anchorage because the ice flows could take you onto sand bars, or it was a continuous shifting scene on the sea floor, and at times there, you had both anchors out and the propellers just turning around just to keep away, like, rather then wreck your anchors.

Absolutely stinking cold. You only had two small radiators in a room a little bit bigger than this, you’d have 26 people in there, watch keepers moving in and out on watch all the time, eating and bringing your food down from the galley. By the time you got your food down, we had these trays which were pretty shallow, and you put your meat and vegetables in there and your rhubarb

and custard in that one, and by the time you got back to your mess it was all mixed up, your rhubarb is in with your meat and potatoes and your custard what have you. You’d sleep with your spare hammock over you, you’d have as much as you could. We were very badly, we just weren’t prepared for this, and eventually they got some reasonable winter gear for us,

singlets and that sort of thing that are designed to, as you move they cause friction on your skin and you are supposed to get warm, then you had tablets to thicken your blood and all that.

I forget exactly what they were, something to thicken your blood, whatever they did in terms of keeping you a bit warmer.

Then you would go and get water out of a tap and that would be frozen, the water line to the tap, and not much fun at all.

It’s a situation where you have a head on sea, and the ship will rise over

a big wave and will then turn and dive into the next one, which has an effect of the ship shuddering back like that and eventually getting some forward propulsion until you done it again like, that was a very frightening experience that one. We got out

of it. I think we got pretty well into the eye of the storm and it was quite eerie, actually, from recollection. everything was all of a sudden very calm, the sky was a yellowy colour and just an eerie feeling. And then all of a sudden we were out through the other side of it; it wasn’t as bad as the first time, but had to go through it again. So when a ship has paint ripped off it, you know it’s been in some pretty heavy seas.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently, up at the Naval association he was on there, one of the few chaps I remember from the Arunta days, and I said, “Do you remember that typhoon we got into going up to Japan?” He said, “Do I ever!”

I suppose they were about 30 feet or something like that, they were tremendous!

It would spray all over the ship, of course frigates, the Condamine and that sort of thing you could mainly go from fore to aft without going into any weather, but the Arunta, the tribals, you had your bridge ship structure there, the funnel there and another one there, and then she was all open deck all the way down.

Yes, funnily enough. I tell you it was the eye because that’s when I say, everything became eerie and calm. Then there was getting out the other side. That wasn’t too bad but, nothing like the first part. I think we were in it for about three days from memory. And of course, what was happening was, as we’d last provisioned at Dreger

Harbour near Finschhafen in New Guinea, by the time we got up round Guam where it’s hit us, we had expended quite a lot of fuel and water, which made the ship higher in the water so this was part of our problem. We certainly had enough to get to Japan and that sort of thing, but as you are expending it

you’re not making it and the ships going up even more. Bit more of a buffeting. I believe at one stage there they had charges, we were that top heavy, they had charges set under the main mast to let that off,

which also was a problem in the Condamine in ice. This affected your stability, all the ice on your superstructure and masts and all that.

Because we were top heavy, the ship was top heavy with all that mast up there. To enable us too get a little bit lower in the water. I’m not

100% certain about that, but I believe it was a proposition at the time. I don’t know what we would have done without our main mast. Interesting thing, too: when you refitted up there in Japan, we’d go into docks and you’d be in and out of docks for what we used to call an arse scrape – they scraped the bottom of the ship and do maintenance, take pumps away and

bring them back; and they would do anything: guns the whole lot, they’d do it in a fraction of the time that it would take here or Garden Island. They just virtually descended on the ship and knew what had to be done and all the stuff taken away, and back the next day sort of thing.

That’s the way they operated, as distinct from Garden Island,

where they weren’t in too much of a hurry to do anything.

You just had your job to do, you done it. If you had a watch to keep and someone would shake you ten to midnight and say, “You right?” And you’d say, “Yeah,” and go an have a shower or

hop into his hammock and you’d go on watch. And you always had your coffee and your bacon sort of thing on the pumps down there, the top of the pump was always very hot. You’d make bacon sandwiches and that sort of thing and cook a bit of steak down there, but the behaviour of the ship, as I have said before, in very, very heavy seas nobody spoke and nobody joked much.

We were all pretty frightened, that was the reason: What’s going to happen next? We’ve just got over that one, what’s the next one?

No, not so much in Korea, I suppose. I don’t recall any really heavy weather in Korea. In fact, in Condamine, one of the heaviest seas I suppose I was ever in, I was going up to Adelaide,

we got a bit of a belting going up there. On my later ship, the last ship I was on, the Kanimbla, they had; in fact they lost a seaman off that after I’d left it. You had these two big horns out the front for lifting up buoys and things, they lifted up a ship, I think it was a one of the Viscount aircraft

that crashed off Sydney, I went down over the bay and they lifted that. They were tremendous ships, they had winches and could do all sorts of things, only a work ship. We’d struck some pretty heavy seas on that. One would come right between these two horns and it would run down about at a depth of 18 inches, two feet you know. And they had what they called hatch combing, they would build up,

there would be the door and where the door bottom was, was above the deck level, so would allow water to run past. Had an interesting thing in the Kanimbla, we left here to go to Sydney. I was down in the boiler room and they rang down, slower stern, so I thought,

“Okay, slower stern,” so I whacked the sprayer on, or took one off, and the ship just kept on going on the stern on the stern on the stern, and I thought I, “Are we going to bloody Sydney backwards?” I found out later that what they were doing was stretching a piano wire from station pier to Williamstown dockyard to get the exact distance across. Anyway, got over that, and we’re heading away to Sydney,

we got off a (UNCLEAR) light up there, and I’ll never forget this, and I went down and done the forenoon watch, which was eight till midday, and looked out there, and there was the Gabo light, and that let me off the afternoon, and dogs and went down to keep the first watch that was eight till midnight, and there was the light still there. It took us a day to pass the Gabo light

I think it was the only ship in the navy that steamed minus one nautical mile in a day, we just weren’t going anywhere; could have finished up in New Zealand or somewhere.

They were pretty much the same, they consisted of –

you had an idea where you were, all these place names that are on the banner out there. The Americans would say, “Okay, you are going out there to do a bombardment, watch movement of communist troops in that area,” or whatever and you just go and let go with your (UNCLEAR) for about four hours or something like that, and then you’d

probably turn off somewhere and do the same thing somewhere else. They had a system of firing a gun, a single projectile every four hours at night, and it was a hell of a thing. You’d be sleeping at night in your hammock, just come off watch and BANG, stuff would come down from the deck head, the roof

I don’t know if it was of any use, because I think it let the communists know we were still there rather than anything else. In the main, it was patrols and firing on different places.

Yes.

Oh yeah, if you were off watch you would go and have a look at it, yeah.

All the guns crews, they might say close up A gun or B gun or X gun or Y gun and just one gun would do the firing. They fired on us when we were protecting an American minesweeper, and that was interesting too: the ship that we relieved was a British Frigate,

The Largs Bay, I could be wrong there, I think it was one of the bay class frigates, anyway. It had done the same thing, and they wheeled the guns up over the hill and they blew its funnel off, or hit its funnel, but our skipper was a bit wiser than that, and when they opened up on us and the minesweeper, what we would then do is

point the ship towards where the gun fire was going and move out, so we got out of range of it, which the other ship didn’t do, had a beam on situation to the guns and I guess it got clouted. But there was always the uncertainty, you never knew when they were going to wheel something over the hill and belt hell out of you, because you go quite close at times.

Yeah, yeah

Well once again, unless you were on the upper deck watching and that sort of thing, you wouldn’t know where it was, “Oh well, it’s coming from that side; I better get over this side.” As I said before, if you’re ever down a machinery space and the engine room and that, you didn’t know which side the shore was,

“Is it coming through there or is it coming through there,” like, you didn’t know where to look for a bit of shelter.

I can’t say much more than I said about it.

Pile driving is a situation where a head on sea, and you’re probably looking at 30 to 40 foot waves, the ship will go over the wave like that, and reaching the crest of the wave, the bow will then go down and dig into the next wave coming, this has the effect of the ship shuddering

and virtually not proceeding forward and then the propellers lift out of the water and then the same thing happens again until you get to the next one. We just called it pile driving.

No, no.

The bow of the boat digs into the next wave coming. So you’ve got a situation where the ship goes up this way, and there’s the next one coming up here and it will dig into it, which sort of has an effect of trying to propel the ship backwards; in fact, I think it must stop, actually. Then the ship will probably

straighten up until the next one, and it goes over that wave and digs into that one, you’ve also got forces from both sides of the ship at the same time.

The tactic you follow is to proceed as you are and rather than try and turn the ship, because if you try and turn the ship, then you’ve got a real problem because you could roll it over.

If that same 20 to 30 foot wave or whatever is hitting the ship that way, so the main thing is to proceed straight ahead.

The force of the sea slows you right down, yeah. Of course, at this stage you’re not trying to speed that ship at all because that just accentuates the problem.

I don’t know, probably about 10, 12 knots, just about enough to keep your head way.

There was a few bumps and bruises come out of it because, you know, another thing about it is that you become very tired in these conditions after a while because you are

continually bracing your self and looking for something to hold onto, it has the effect of tiring you out.

No, never. An old saying in the navy, ‘The old seasoned drinkers never got seasick’. They were probably sick all the time.

Yeah.

It was quite calm in there, actually, if it was the eye of the storm. I think it would have to be because, as I said before, it was sort of an eerie feeling, the seas had smoothed out and yellow sky and quite an unreal feeling.

Then we went out through the other side of it and we took a bit of a buffeting but nothing like the first occasion.

Oh yes, there were stanchions bent, there was some damage to the ship itself, particularly paint torn off, of course.

Strips of paint from the hull of the ship.

In terms of the ship rolling?

Yes, some ships

were worse than others. For instance corvettes were bad sea ships. Frigates such as Condamine were reasonable sea ships, tribal class destroyers, I suppose; reasonable, yeah. Of course, then when you get down to smaller ships it’s a different thing altogether, such as the air-sea rescue ships I was on – they’d climb straight out of the water, coffee grind turn in the air,

all sorts of things like that.

That was the Condamine. I was never on it when it was on the fishing fleets up there.

Once you got out of Australia, you were pretty well straight steaming, without doing, although they do exercise with other ships although I was never involved in that, my involvement with was around the coast, say, working with the cruiser Australia and various manoeuvres and that type of thing you know.

No that was the Arunta.

That was mainly, I suppose, a retiring present for an admiral. The involvement there, of course, we went into, I think it was Cairns first, then we went into Noumea, and like most, we knew going to ports in peace time,

there’s always competition, sport and that type of thing, you know. I was involved in a boxing contest there and a four-round bout against a French Legionnaire. So I took one look at this Legionnaire who had a crew cut and cauliflower ears on his cauliflower ears and I thought to myself, “Well, I’m in for a pretty rough night here.”

I survived the 1st round, and in the 2nd round, my second threw the towel in. Which wasn’t a bad idea, before I finished up in hospital for the night. He said to me later, “You might have got well and truly beaten, but you threw the best punch of the night.” And I said,

“Which was that?” “That right hook that hit him fare and square in the kneecap.” Then there was other sports there and then onto, (UNCLEAR) was it, (UNCLEAR SAME) and the New Hebrides, as it was then. More sports and that sort of thing there, and onto Suva more sports and going to shore, I think we had about five days in Suva.

Then we took the wife of the Governor of Suva up to Tonga for a visit up there to Tongatapu, and I think we stayed a day or two with the kids all over the ship, climbing up gun barrels and everywhere. It was interesting, after they left the smell of coconut exuding from there bodies remained in the ship for days.

Then we came back to Sydney from there.

As best you could, I suppose, it was a terribly cold place. The whole ship was cold, you had these two small radiators

either end of your mess, which didn’t punch out too many BTUs [British Thermal Units – a measure of heat]. You just wore your thermal underwear, when you finally got it. Duffle coats, the string singlets I mentioned before and anything you could do to keep warm, you just grabbed your spare hammock over you

and get as much, wear anything to try and get some warmth. It was pretty cold place.

Not so much in the ship itself, apart from the superstructure, with snow and icicles everywhere,

but it didn’t affect in anyway the running of the ship. The big thing was purely and simply, our ships weren’t designed for that weather, they were designed for conditions down here on in the Pacific, so that made it very tough. We used to receive victualling stores from American ships from time to time to

supplement our own rations, which was mostly chicken and turkey and all things like that. It was certainly never a worry about cooling your beer down, that was already done for you. And we had a good little canteen, you could buy most things you wanted there: soft drinks, cigarettes and chocolate and what have you,

that open for a certain time each day, enabled you to get what you want.

Yes, see once you’d kept your watch, whether it was on a gun, engine room or a radio room or radar or anything like that,

your time was your own for the next eight hours, and then you’d play cards or a game we called ‘huckers’, and various other board games. Take away the time until your next watch, and do your washing and your ironing or whatever you had to do.

Mostly patrols and weapon firing onto the Korean peninsula.

Yeah, we were, yeah.

Bloody frightened, actually, because I was in the engine room,

and as I mentioned before, you didn’t know which direction they were coming. If you were on the upper deck, where you knew the coast was there, so you could hop over this side just in case, just a natural reaction like, you know. But down the engine room, if something comes through here and hits the steamer, I’m probably dead, because I don’t know which side I’m facing, facing the shore. Once a projectile of any, four inch, five inch anything like that.

Once it’s hit an engine room and busted a steam iron or something like that, you had all sorts of problems. It could do all sorts of damage to the machinery and the crew down there.

I suppose,

as I just said, if a projectile comes through there you’re probably dead; and of course, it could hit a magazine with the same result, the whole ship would go up then. You had this fear in the back of your mind, where’d it hit. You’d think, if it hits the mast it isn’t too bad, if it puts a whole in the funnel that’s not too bad, but if it hits a magazine or an oil fuel tank or something like that, well that’s it, you know.

It was always a fear at the back of your mind.

Oh yes, in many cases superheated steam. Interesting thing about superheated steam you can’t see it. Superheated steam, if there was a steam line there, and it had a

small hole or crack inside it, it would cut you in half, superheated steam, and you wouldn’t know it was there until it had vaporised all over sort of thing. It was dry steam, simple as that. So that was always a fear that that happened.

Not on our ship, no.

No, not at all, no rabbit’s foot or anything like that.

Oh yeah, I had a certain superstition about them, I suppose, as all mariners did. Interesting thing, in those days there it was nothing to see an albatross sitting up in your

rigging or something like that, or your jack staff the pole that holds the flag. Then when I went up in a container ship, I said to the first mate, I said, “You never see them, they used to fly around the ship.” And he put it down to the changing El Nino and that sort of thing, whether there is or not, I don’t know. Yes the old albatross. It saddens me these days when they catch them in long lines and all that:

beautiful bird.

No, some tried to bring monkeys and things like that back on board from various places, but they never lasted for long, the Royal Navy ships, they would have a monkey swinging around the bars and the place but not our ship. Some tried to

smuggle things on board but they didn’t last too long, they went over the side I think.

We arrived in Kure,

we departed home from Hong Kong for home.

I met her in 1952 while on 11 days rest and recreation leave at a place called Tsuruga beach on the inland sea of Japan. I met her there.

Oh yeah, we were just swimming off the beach a bit and she was laying down sunbaking and I just got talking to her and it sort of went from there. We didn’t have much time at this stage of course towards the end of the tour of duty so we corresponded when I got back to Australia.

And eventually after all the hassles of getting her out here we eventually got married in Parramatta.

No I didn’t, not at the time at that stage no. She was living with her sister in Hiroshima and her family were a bit spread out over Japan down to Shimonoseki and Hagi.

I hadn’t had the opportunity in the short time before we left to come back to Australia.

They were a rice growing family. Yes they were reasonably well off. Her brother was the detective chief inspector of police in Hagi

city and her mother and father lived out on the farm sort of thing; they have both passed on, of course. Her brother and her sister, who’s still in Hiroshima, and another sister in Shimonoseki, she’s still there. So fortunately, we have this nephew who’s a school teacher up there, the one that was out here a month or so ago,

and he speaks pretty good English, so I keep in contact with him. He wrote to me recently, that’s right, and I’m heir to part of a rice paddy up there, which I couldn’t care less about, but the government’s going to put a road through it, and the two sisters and my late wife are heirs to that, and he advised me strongly

if I don’t need it, take it. In other words, it would cost too many complications to say, “We’ll give half to her and half to her,” sort of thing, you know. So I’ll do that, but he said in the letter that he would like her ashes sent to Japan. So I thought, “That’s fair enough, send her ashes to her native land,” sort of thing. The sisters wanted them, and I started to think to myself, “What the bloody hell do you do,

do you put them in an envelope and post them up?” Anyway, I rang the funeral director and he said, “No, that’s not a problem.” He said, “We just put it on an order, and it goes to Springvale and they send it up to Japan.” So I contacted Springvale and they said, “That’s no problem; they go up in two plastic urns and we send them to the address you supplied and that’s that.” So I’m quite happy about that, the two sisters will get them and yeah, a good idea.

I don’t think so, I don’t think there will be any problems there. I was surprised: the funeral directors, they’re geared to all these things; there’s people from Italy and Greece and everywhere, you know so they’re all geared up for doing it, I would say.

Yes, the army was well established by this time, they’d already had some of their wives down here, some had had children and that sort of thing. In Japan, they come back, in fact a friend of ours, he was a warrant officer in the army up there and it caused a hell of a problem, because he was born in Japan, so for all intense and purposes he was a Japanese national

but it caused problems, the Japanese are very thingo about these things being exactly right. So it caused a real problem until some diplomat woke up that this sort of thing was unusual but it did happen. I think in other words, they wanted to know what he was

doing as a Japanese national living in Australia, quite a bit of complications for old Joe at the time.

Back to Sydney.

Back here

in ’55. I was back here in ’53 until I went up again on the Condamine in ’55.

’53 and ’55 I went to …

where did I go then? I think I went to a couple of shore establishments in that period, yeah. Balmoral, in Sydney, and Flinders Naval Depot down here.

No,

not really. Nine times out of ten, you would go into Sydney, so you had all your favourite watering holes up there and huddled around and found out about your old mates and where they were, got together and you know, have a good time. they had a place over there called the Royal Naval House, it was known for many, many years as Johnnies, and the meeting place there was known as the snake pit,

which was a bar down below and I could tell some stories from that snake pit, I can tell you. Especially on pay night with the fleet in and a couple of English ships in as well, there would brawls and all sorts of things going on. It was the meeting place because the pubs closed at six, next stop was the snake pit that went till about nine.

Oh very much so yeah, yeah, I’d say more so than the other services. You’re in a situation, you’re on a ship in heavy seas and it’s dark and you’re getting belted from one place to another, and it does build up that camaraderie that probably doesn’t exist in the other services, because you are all in the same boat, something happens, it happens to all of us, you and me.

No doubt about that.

Oh yes, usually you went on leave, you’d go to your home state for your leave, but you might have a day’s leave or

you might be in port for a month. Then you would just go to your favourite watering hole every night or whatever. You weren’t duty; if you were duty that night, you’d be off the next night and you’d catch up with them all.

Don’t know, probably much the same.

They drink anything. I don’t know if it’s any different. They tended to probably drink more, because apart from your bottle of beer that you may or may not get at sea and not want it, see, depending if you had to keep a watch or whatever. I think they tended to get stuck in when you got in to port, harbour.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

The Condamine again, which was unusual for anyone to go on the same ship three times, which I did for the training classes, Korea and again for the peacekeeping;

very unusual, that.

No actually, I probably wouldn’t have gone peacekeeping, but this friend of mine, who was a navy officer, was an ex petty officer, engineer’s writer, engineer had a writer who was his clerk and kept movements and

the papers of individuals, promotions and that sort of thing. I contacted him and he asked if I wanted to go back to England and I said, “No, I want to go back to Japan,” so he arranged it then that I went to Condamine for the third time.

In contrast to the ’52–’53,

it was very nice, very nice; no guns going off, just patrols and keeping an eye on different things up there. Of course, it was an armistice and still is to this day, so there was a possibility it could break out again, so we were prepared. But it didn’t eventuate so it was pretty easy compared to ’52–’53.

Patrolling, at this stage the Cold War and this sort of thing coming on, there was a possibility that it could start again. So we were there in case it did, simple as that. I think most of the American ships were still up there,

big possibility it could have started again.

Just normal shipboard life, keeping your watches. In my case a bit of maintenance around the ship, things like pulling the siren down and cleaning it up, running the engineers workshop for anything that was required, pretty humdrum existence really, but

very much in contrast to the previous period.

No, not really. It can be a terrible place in the summer. Fifty five was the spring, and they call Korea ‘the land of the morning calm’, because it absolutely beautiful in the spring.

And you would look out and think, it looks a bit different to last time. All in all no problems, always the thought that perhaps it would break out again, which was a distinct possibility, but all in all it was a quite easy.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a problem actually, because

when you got caught in the ice you didn’t quite know if they were going to wheel a gun up from behind, knowing that you were immobile sort of thing, that was always a thought at the back of your mind, yeah. This ice was terrible stuff, when you were steaming, my particular mess deck, you’d port hole would be about there and you’d go through it and all these big chunks

of ice would be scraping alongside of the ship, ‘BANG BANG’, which was not very charming if you kept a middle watch, that’s midnight till four a.m. You got into your hammock and all this was going on, not pleasant. We did have a chap go over the side actually and go into it, I forget, remember how much they gave you,

if you could get him out in about a minute that was about it, what actually saved him was all the heavy duffle coats and stuff he was wearing that enabled him to keep floating so they could get him on board again. That’s what actually saved him, strange as it may seem.

Gee, I’ve got it documented in the Condamine book, I can’t recall, I think he just slipped

and fell over the side, but it was dirty looking stuff, this pack ice: you’d see cows and what have you floating in amongst it.

Well they would get washed down, most of it came from the rivers, frozen in the rivers and then came out into the sea and estuaries. Of course farm animals would get caught up in it. It was nothing to see a poor cow with its feet up in the air.

The procedure was to keep moving because of these changing shoals and the continuing changing of the mud banks and things like that, and if you’d have gone to ground on one of those you’d –

well anything could have happened. Our captain was pretty competent, not very well liked, but I suppose he took us there and brought us home and you can’t ask much more than that, I suppose.

About 10 months again.

Went ashore in Korea in ’52, ’53 in Pusan and went into Pusan again in ’55 and Chongchon in ’55. Chongchon was way up on the east coast, which was the scene of quite a battle up there.

’55 they were still cleaning up the effects of the war, you know. Bombed out buildings and unhappy people walking about the place, it’s a different thing today, they’re all built up again, you know.

Pretty much so, yeah, can’t think of anything outstanding, no. No it was, I suppose to some extent, more a pleasure cruise in comparison to ’52–’53. I think our longest patrol was a 28 day one in ’52–’53, and I think they brought them down to about 10

or 14 days in ’55. So we go back into Sasebo, Kure or Yokohama or something like that. You did exercise as well, other ships up there, we were an anti-submarine frigate Condamine. You had two types, anti-aircraft or anti-submarine, specialising in anti-submarine, and we’d go out for exercises in American submarines, and oh,

Condamine was that good at it, they sent us back after about three days, we found a submarine and trailed it and let it know we were there and dropped a hand grenade over the side and, “Oh, got us again!”

The noise of it would let them know that you had found it like, they’d here this bang and, “Oh, got us again!”

Oh well, we knew what depth it was and everything like that, we had asdic, and would pick all that sort of stuff up. Very handy, asdic, it would pick up shoals of fish and I remember second time up on Condamine, we dropped a pattern of depth charges, which is nine depth charges, we had depth charge throwers and where they just dropped over. And what they did they just set to them

to whatever depth they wanted it to explode. It was quite interesting really, whether they’d be set at a shallow depth they drop, say, two of them, and a geyser of water would go up in the air; and the next one to be dropped at a greater depth, and another big geyser but not as big as the first one; and then finally, when they are down to, I don’t know how many fathoms, but you’d just see the sea ripple like. Then we used to just drop our boats

and just go round and pick up the fish. If you went round from the first one the fish would all be blown to pieces and then down the bottom there’d be manta rays and all sorts of things coming up, used to get a feed of fish out of there, anyway.

Dropped the boat over the side and, yeah. No, because we swum in the deepest water in the world when we were going up there in ’55. They pulled up into the, we were going through the Marianas Trench, and went swimming there. And I think the Marianas Trench is something like 15,000 fathoms, which is six or seven miles deep there, yeah.

Yeah, in fact we used to go to a pub down the road called the Rock & Roll in Woolloomooloo, the roughest pub you’ve ever seen in your life. We never took much notice of them.

Oh yeah, all those, oh yeah.

No, most of ours was pretty conventional dancing, yeah, had a bit of dancing.

No, I suppose they do these days, I don’t know.

Some were very stern disciplinarians. I don’t know if you watched that thing on the Voyager last

night, did you, the Voyager from Melbourne? He was hard done by that captain, the captain of the Melbourne. They tried to blame him for the whole thing like. He got a terrible deal and behind him was an Admiral Harrington, who was probably the most disliked in the navy.

The only thing we referred to officers as, were pigs, they were always known as pigs, “Oh, that pig over there,” like. Once again, the culture of the navy was such that you could say they treated like rubbish and we reacted accordingly, made us vagabonds, thieves or whatever. Modern-day pirates

and what have you, and that was the culture of the navy at the time and Harry Harrington was one that was intensely disliked.

I didn’t serve with either of those, I think; no, I didn’t. On the largest ship I served in, I managed to avoid aircraft carriers,

my friend and navy officer made sure I never went to aircraft carriers or survey ships. Survey ships would leave Sydney and they would be set up on the (UNCLEAR) on the Great Australian Bight and they would be there for weeks and weeks. Everyone hated them and so the largest ship I was on was the Australia, and I can’t even remember who the captain was. I had two captains in Arunta:

Frederick Norton Cook, he was with us in the occupation; and I can’t remember who the other one was, but the first thing when sailor’s get together is, “What are you on? What’s the skipper like?” They all knew, like, they all knew what they were like.

Yeah, that thing last night, that thing on TV. The true story of the Voyager and the Melbourne, there’s no doubt about it, who I did know in the navy was Stevens, he was known as Drunken Duncan Stevens, he was the cause of the whole thing, there’s no doubt about that.

I drove him one time when I was in HMAS Penguin, which was Balmoral naval depot.

Yes, old Drunken Duncan. Oh, they went through it last night, he ordered a triple brandy from his steward while he was off Jervis Bay when the boys went down. Got hit. Interesting ship the Melbourne, sunk the Voyager, taken back to Sydney for repairs and then sunk an American destroyer called the Frank E Evans,

I think it was called. But that wasn’t the Melbourne’s fault. So it never fired a shot in anger and sank two ships in Melbourne, finally taken away for scrap and that was that.

Oh yeah, very much so, occasionally you would strike good ones – they were mainly ones that had come up through the ranks. Reached warrant rank, and onto lieutenant; in fact, a mess mate of mine, I still keep in touch with him, he was a leading stoker, like myself, in Condamine in Korea, and he finished up a commander in the navy, so it could be done, but they were the ones, they’d come up through the upper deck,

they weren’t full of bull like the others were. Of course there treated, when a senior officer told them to jump they said how high sort of thing, so the whole culture of the thing right up until the late ’50s you could say, was this you know, the attitudes of the officers, particularly the ones that had been in England, came back with a pommy accent and an attitude to match it, you know.

They’d been over to Whale Island in England, which was a big gunnery school over there. Oh know they were quite bad really, didn’t make for a happy life.

And overbearing, “You, that rating, here,” that sort of thing. Then they’d give you a blast and that sort of thing.

You got a bit to used to this and you got a bit to cunning, you kept away from them, you see one coming so you go another way, just in case. They were not very well liked, with a few exceptions, Robinson, he, captain of the Melbourne he was very well liked, and they crucified him, as was seen in that movie last night. He was an

excellent bloke, I’ve spoke to people on the Sydney in Korea, and they’d be sitting on the flight deck and they’d have a night in the tropics and he’d come along and have a talk with you. Very few did that.

Oh, there was silent contempt, yeah.

Never saw it used much, but it did exist, I think it was a charge from memory, yeah.

I’ll say it is, yeah, well same with the off caps tradition. I suppose at least the navy let you take your own cap off instead of someone snatching it off your head, you know.

They did really, the first thing when you knew you were going to a ship, the first thing you would find out who the captain was and you’d say, “I know,” like, you know ,and you knew you were going to a pretty unhappy ship. On the other hand, if he was pretty well liked you’d say, “You beauty,” like.

Very unhappy, I think.

It just permeated down through the officers to the chief petty officers, petty officers and permeated through and came to the point where people would do anything to get off the ship, particularly survey ship, they did everything to get off them. They were ships that, if you got on them it was very hard to get off them.

Blokes would do two and three years on survey ships and they’d never get off them, and a very good friend of mine, a great friend, he was on a survey ship, I can tell you a bit of a story about him, if you like, he was a very good mate, I’ve got his name tattooed on my arm. He was sent to this Dreger Harbour, which is near Finschhafen in New Guinea. His wife

here was playing up, so a troop ship came down from Japan that was running up there, Kanimbla and Manoora running up and down all the time with troops for the occupation. So he slipped aboard this Kanimbla and got dressed as a soldier and as soon as he got back in Sydney the naval police were waiting for him and he got 42 days cells at

Holsworthy military establishment, military prison. Then the navy turned around and sent him back up there again and that’s what they would have done, chances are you would have gone somewhere else, to another ship and they virtually said, “Okay, you’re going back there,” so he went back there. Eventually he finished up on survey ships

and he hated it, he done everything, always trying to get off it. Any ruse at all because they were terrible ships, you’d sit up in those places for months and months. Anyway, he thought, “I’ll get round this,” he had a wheel spanner, which was what we used to open wheels, valves and he smashed all the gauges in the engine room.

Steam pressure gauges and that sort of thing. So they sent him over to Balmoral, a mobile hospital, then they sent him out to Concorde the military hospital in Sydney. They gave him shock treatment, you’re supposed to, having had shock treatment, I don’t think they even use it these days, but my doctor was telling me that they are supposed to watch over you very closely.

They didn’t watch over him closely, and he walked into the Parramatta river and slashed his wrists. That was an example of the navy at the time, to send a chap back who’s had a reason to come back because his wife is playing up then to send him back up there again; didn’t make for a very happy person.

a lot of incidents like that, particularly up there at Dreger, three of them I think, stole a work boat and they were coming back to Australia in it, these three sailors, a bit of a funny one this. They loaded what they thought were 44 gallon drums of diesel oil on it, which would have got them down to Australia somewhere.

And it turned out that it was drums of DDT [Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane], which didn’t work too well in the diesel, so they finished up bringing them back.

Oh yeah, there was, on the Condamine, I wasn’t on it at the time. They brought some girls on in Adelaide and brought them back here to Melbourne,

it happened from time to time.

Oh no, they wanted to be with their new boyfriends, I think. You had a problem finding spaces in the ship to keep them, yeah, that happened.

Oh yeah, you wouldn’t take them if you were going for a fortnight or something like that, if it was a quick trip for two or three days they’d get them on board, I don’t know if they ever got them off again. But they made their own fun sailors, they got up to all sorts of antics, bloody things, I remember one time I was in Whyalla,

everywhere we went we were hounded by the police, and I only found out later why, the Warrego, the survey ship had been in there a week before us, and they went up to the town hall or something and carted the dunny down the main street and everything. They got in all sorts of trouble, so when we got in there, the police were in no mood for sailors, they’d had enough. So this mate and I,

everywhere we went we were hounded by the police, so we went into a railway yard and they had one of those big towers with the lights on them, so we had a couple of bottles of wine and we got up the top and we were giving the police everything, and they didn’t know where this noise was, and they were going around and around trying to find us. So comes the next morning we sort of sober up and have a look down and I say to Pete, this is the one that become a commander, I said, “Long way down,”

and he said, “Yes, you go first.” I said, “No, you go first,” and we very gingerly got ourselves down off that bloody big light tower, yeah.

Dear, oh dear, ashore you would get up to all sorts of capers, chasing around pubs and all that sort of thing.

In Sydney, at the time, you had the infamous Ziegfield’s and the nightclubs where people got shot and all sorts of things. We’d dive into the those places after the snake pit at Johnnies. You’d go down there because the booze was on to about 11.30 at night. Up the Cross, Kings Cross, and just having a bit of fun like, you know.

They were funny times then. Bellfields Hotel, Metropolitan Hotel and a lot of venereal disease around Sydney at that time and they had a section at Balmoral Naval Hospital known as ‘the tent’. So you’d be in the pub and say, “I haven’t seen old Bill around lately.” “Oh, he’s out in the tent at Balmoral.” And they used to call it ‘the tent’ – the house that Jack built.

Did exist, I suppose; no more or less than the other services. Oh yes it did, some ships more than others, some had none at all.

Probably a bit of each, I suppose; everyone, I suppose, knew who was gay and it was up to yourself

if you went along with these ideas or, you know. Nobody really harassed them or anything like that.

There was the famous story about the Australia, I think they were up around Noumea at the time during the war.

There was what you call a daisy chain and it was pretty rife on there. Somebody was going to report it and they threw him over the side and grabbed hold of a rail, and the story goes, and I think it’s probably true, they got a what they called a ‘pusser’s dirk’ – it’s a seaman’s issue knife – and cut his wrist off, and they rounded them up.

It’s getting a bit vague now, the true story, but they were going to hang him from the yard arm, that was all organised. And I believe the American ships moved in, they’d never seen anything like this, and then the then King of England, whoever he was, he stopped it you know. That was quite a story.

All having a go.

Well, how should I put it?

Yeah, well you’ve got your homosexuals there, and he’s up him and he’s up him and he’s up him and he’s up him sort of thing, that’s what is known as a daisy chain, similar to the daisy chains you made as kids.

No, no, if whoever it was you were talking to was in the navy the same time as me, I doubt very much that he says that all this didn’t exist, it did! No doubt about that. As I say, everyone knew who it was, and nobody seemed to worry too much about it, if it didn’t effect you, who cares, you know.

Oh yeah, we had them. I could show you certificates from that out there. Yeah that was quite a thing, crossing the line and all sorts of strange antics went on, all a lot of fun.

Oh there was blokes dressed up in,

they used to carry a lot of what they called ‘rags old’ which was our rags and things which we used for all sorts of cleaning purposes and that sort of thing, they’d dig amongst them and find an old skirt and a top, put it on find a wig of some sort and put that on. And then King Neptune would be up there and they would be throwing soap or whatever over somebody, and all this sort of thing, quite a funny sort

of antics. Something I always kept up, every time you went over the equator that happened.

One of the rituals actually, and this happened to us in Korea, the youngest member of the ship’s company became captain for the day. And he would eat in the ward room and,

in fact he was a mess mate of mine, he was only about seventeen and a half or something. Made him captain for the day which meant he could order whatever he liked and everything, so he says, “Well, I’ll have a whiskey and soda,” so they brought him up a whiskey and soda, and after a while he thought, “Well, I’ll have another one of those,” and in the end they were just putting a bit of Coke in it or something in it and he got as full as a boot.

He’d only drinking Coke and soda, that happened quite often.

On no, just captain for the day in the wardroom with the other officers and that sort of thing, the captain never ate with the officers, he always ate on his own, which was a tradition and I suppose familiarity and that sort of thing. The only time he ever went into the wardroom

was when he was invited down on mess night or something like that, which happened on occasions like birthdays or something.

Oh yeah, very much so. Yes he had his own steward and he had a day cabin and a night cabin.

His night cabin was up near the bridge so if anything happened he could be on the bridge in very quick time.

Oh familiarity, you’d have a commander, commander ranking of the ship, his first lieutenant, who would be lieutenant commander, but he was always ‘sir’ to him, never any familiarity

Perhaps ashore they would call them Bill or George or something like that, you know. Oh no, that had to be done and he was the supreme commander of the ship, because if anything happened it fell back on him, you know. The old story, you go down with the ship sort of thing.

Pretty much was really, yeah,

but once again, that was the custom in the navy. They didn’t familiarise except on these odd occasions. It was, as you say, a pretty lonely life.

Oh yeah. What used to happen, when you spent a long time at sea living shoulder to shoulder with your mess mates: animosities would happen, but you kept them under control, then when you got ashore they’d break out and there’d be a bit of a biff up and that sort of thing.

Then later on it was all forgotten. It was all a problem of living in close proximity day to day, inevitably little trifle’s became big trifles, but once you got ashore and had a bit of a dust up with each other and it was all forgotten.

Oh yeah, that was a punishable offence fighting on the ship. In fact, I had a very big fight on the Condamine with a mess mate of mine, big bloke he was too, and we just about destroyed the mess deck. We used to have these gash buckets where you put all your tea leaves in, and thing and we just about destroyed the mess between the two of us, he was a stoker and I was the leading stoker. We had a right old biff, I pulled him out of his hammock and

gave him a couple of black eyes and then he put his fingers in my eyes, so the next day he said, “I suppose you’re going to run me in,” which I could have done, run him in, charge him. But I said, “No, no way,” and we got in to the harbour had a few beers and that was the end of that. Yeah, those things happened.

I can’t remember now, but it didn’t take much for this to happen. If you were in a shore establishment or something like that, you can walk away from it; but in a ship it would sort of fester until you got to the point when you had a bit of a dust up and thing. Once ashore and a few beers, all forgotten.

All the product of living as we did, shoulder to shoulder sort of thing.

That’s right.

You’d do this day after day after day after day at sea, when you’re in harbour, he goes home, and he goes out on the booze somewhere, he’s on duty on board, it’s a different atmosphere all together, once you were at sea for a long time, these sort of things manifest themselves, but there’s very rarely ever any long term

animosity involved in these things, just a flash in the pan sort of thing.

Yeah, you did get them, I think they soon got the message that there wasn’t much point in that kind of lifestyle, they sorted of melted into the scene.

No not at all.

Oh yeah, that’s right, yeah. Oh yes, you couldn’t be that way for too long, mostly I think they thought, there’s no point in pursuing this attitude, but very rarely did you see that.

With the depth charges all sorts of things would float to the top, sharks, manta rays and sea snakes and all sorts of things would come up, you know. You d see some Spanish mackerel or something and you’d pick them up and bring it on board an eat them.

Oh yeah, a lot

of flying fish, in fact I was standing in the mess one night and we were up in the tropics and we had the scuttles, or pot holes, scuttle we called them, and chap standing next to me, and the next minute he’s flat on his back and I thought, “What’s going on here, what hit him?” It was a flying fish, come straight through and hit him fair and square in the side of the mouth. But in the Kanimbla, when we were doing all that boom work and we were going from

Samurai to Moresby and we had a cod line out, on the end of it was a piece, ‘couta fisherman use, just a piece of timber with a hook on it, because ‘couta will eat anything that moves. And we had it rigged so we had a little bit of string going across there so if anything took that it

snapped that and rang the bell, must have towed that thing for thousands of miles and we left Samurai this morning going out on the China Straits, the next thing the bell rang. And we were pulling in these Spanish mackerel about that long, bleed them down the hose pipe, pull in another one, pull in another one, more fish than you could shake a stick at, for weeks.

No, no. I know some ships did, no always fairly good, you might get a bit of repetition in the meals, oh we had this yesterday sort of thing but all in all the food

was pretty good for the conditions sort of thing. We baked our own bread at sea and all that; today, they just take frozen bread and that sort of thing. Quite an interesting thing, when they commissioned the new Arunta, being a crew member of the old Arunta I went down to the commissioning at Williamstown dockyard, and there was about 40 of us, and they took us on in two groups. I had to laugh, our group was led by a young

female sub lieutenant, and she’s showing us around and explaining things and what they do these days to what we did and that sort of thing, and there was a young bloke, I suppose he would be 25 or something, he kept saying, “What’s that for? What’s that for? What’s that for?” And he was really getting on her goat. So we get up to the bridge and we’re standing on the bridge there, and he says, “Why isn’t there a watertight door there?”

And one of the old crew members said, “Well, if you get water up here your not worried about waterproof bloody doors!” That shut him up. But the ships of today, when I was driving this late Admiral Martin down to Flinders Naval Depot, the one I had a good talk to about old times, I said, “How do you think a Tribal class destroyer today,

in a hypothetical battle with a FFG [frigate],” one of the later destroyers. He said, “The Tribal class destroyer would be blown out of the water before it saw the FFG,” so that answered me question.

We went from there back to Kure, from Kure to Hong Kong where we went into the Hong Kong Whampoa dry dock for six weeks. What the navy considered, funny thing they did this, no sorry we left from Yokosuka, not Kure, it was the first time I’d seen it in the navy, we had to have the refit,

and it was cheaper to do it in those ports, you often did it in Singapore or Kure or Hong Kong. So the captain gave the ship’s company the option of where we refitted, whether we refitted in Japan or whether we refitted in Hong Kong. So mess by mess they took up the numbers, and of course I wanted to stay in Japan, I didn’t want to go to Hong Kong, I’d been there before.

So it was a close vote but Hong Kong won, so then we had our refit there. It was pretty extensive which meant it didn’t have to be done at a much higher cost in Garden Island.

Oh yeah, very much so, the size of the buildings and all that sort of thing.

What used to happen when you went in to Hong Kong, there was all these bum boats, they used to call them, and they’d be waiting, they would know when you were coming. And they had these long poles and they would sit in these boats and as you would come steaming up Victoria Harbour, I think it is, they’d hook on to the rails and they’d clamber up there to present their credentials to the first lieutenant saying, “I’m a tailor,” or, “I repair watches,” or whatever, and they would stay on the ship all the time you were there.

You’d get a suit made in a day, you could have watch repairs you could do all sorts, side parties they used to call them. And when you left they just waited for the next one, they did pretty good. But in Hong Kong, I wasn’t over wrapped in, I’d been there a few times and it was all right

for a port for a while, but I could think of better ports than Port Moresby.

Actually, when we went up on the peacekeeping, we went up to Kobe in Japan, which pretty well after Kure became my preferred port, because during the war there was a lot of Europeans in Kobe, Australians,

New Zealanders, running businesses. They never worried them, they just didn’t out them in concentration camps or anything because they knew they couldn’t go anywhere, yeah I liked Kobe. The biggest thing for us in Japan, it never happened to the aircraft carriers, was we got all night leave and in Kure, you’d go ashore and, “Ooohhh!”

Hooting and roaring and carrying on, but you never, ever were late back, and they get the taxi round, your leave would be up at eight o’clock. They had a guard on a gate there, this would be winter time with a big 44-gallon drum with wood in it and everything, blokes would be pulling beers out of their watch coats, watching the time and pulling the tops off and having sippers. Then around about

three minutes to eight, away you’d all go and get back on board, because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be going ashore the next night, stoppage of leave for being adrift. Going back to that Noumea thing, I got on the booze one night and finished in a coal cellar, resplendent in whites they call sixers. I woke up in the morning and there’s a black

native policeman poking me with a stick. And I got out of this coal cellar and you can imagine what I looked like. I got out, it was like a coal chute and I thought, “Well I know the boat’s not coming in to pick up a bit of mail until 10 o’clock so I may as well go and have beer.” So I sat under a big tree out there and had a beer and went back down, I thought, “It’s about time I started going down.” So there was a wharf there where the boat was coming in,

a jetty type. And there was a wharf here, so I thought I would take a short cut through there. There were about 40 legionnaires training there and they said, “No, you go round that way,” and I said, “No, I’m going through this way.” The next thing was the ‘click, click’ bolt of a gun so I went round that way, and the boat arrived and I sat in it and there’s

half the ship’s company. Only one man adrift, that’s me, laughing their heads off at the look of me ‘resplendent in whites’ and I got two days’ leave and pay for that one. Unlike the United States navy, when you get stoppage of leave and pay or leave you didn’t do it at sea, which meant if you got four days it was four days to the next port, well you stepped straight off again. The Americans, they didn’t do the stoppage until you got into harbour.

Test the water going down the sink?

That’s a fallacy, I think.

Yeah, yeah, I forget the real reason for it but no, it is a fallacy.

Can’t name any specifically, but there were some unhappy ships,

mostly, I would say, in survey ships, spent a long time at sitting in outlandish places doing, survey work, soundings and all that. There were probably one of them that wasn’t, you’d meet friends off ships and ask how they were going on there, “Bastard of a ship,” or something like that.

And yeah, there were, as I say, I can’t name any, but there were ships that were known as good ships and not so good ships to be on.

Yeah, once, and I go back again to survey ships when

they sat in places like Spencer Gulf and around the west of Australia, Abrolhos Islands and all those places. It was just repetitious, no sense of we’re going somewhere and this sort of thing, it was a grind situation, day after day.

Oh yes, they could make a lot of difference, they could make life pretty hard for you.

I think once again, you go back to the culture of the navy at that time, and right up into the ’50s,

the attitude of the officers towards the crew members of ships, which all that had the effect of doing was making us cunning, avoiding them wherever possible, if you saw one coming this way you’d go the other way rather than salute him and that sort of thing. That was a pretty much an attitude and you got very cunning and smart, very wise

and kept out of the way as much as you could.

Well, the ship is a different thing but I’m talking about establishments. On a ship, you never really saw a great deal of them because there was always something doing on a ship. You were either coming off watch or going on watch or something like that. When you got into harbour, occasionally you got

first lieutenant would come down to complain about some greasy stoker left his marks on his new paintwork, come out of his boiler room or engine room and left grease all over the place. All in all, in my opinion, you just tried to keep away from them, except your own section engineer, in our case was an engineer and he’d come down the engine room, particularly when the ship was

entering or leaving harbour, and he had his writer there who would, as they rang down, slower stern or something, he would write that down, “Stop here, half a stern this one.” He took all the movements. Some of the engineer officers, particularly the ones that came up through the ranks, that came up from being engine room artificers, say, boiler makers or turners or fitters or any of the trades,

sometimes from stokers, they were pretty good because they had lived on the lower decks and they had come up from it and they had a certain rapport with the blokes. Some would come down and you’d be at sea and you’d be cooking a steak or something like that and they’d come down and have a feed of steak with you. Generally, an engineer

in a particular branch as engineering, he couldn’t afford to be too much of a bastard because he was your divisional officer, he was fairly close to you in a lot of situations. I’m talking smaller ships there, not aircraft carriers.

I suppose you knew them and disliked them, you just kept away from them, if you saw them you went the other way, as I said before, you didn’t have anything to do with them.

That’s largely the way I went about it, anyway. But some of them, as I said before, we never called them officers, they were just known as pigs you know. “Oh yeah, who’s this pig coming up here?” Once again, it goes back to the culture of the navy at the time, that’s the way they treated us and that’s the way we

treated them back. I think it’s a far different navy today, you’re pretty well on first name terms, particularly in submarines. It had to change as Admiral Martin said to me, “We can see we’re getting nowhere like this and it has to change.”

Their attitude.

Oh yeah, yeah.

I mentioned it before, actually,

when I was a commonwealth driver, I drove Admiral Martin, who was the captain of the Tobruk, or one of the destroyers, I think he was. And the Melbourne in Korea, and he was very, very well regarded by the crew. Some had the nous to say, “What do I want to go and be a pig,”

sort of thing, “Let’s go and have a talk to them.” See a sailor sitting down playing a game of mahjong or something on the flight deck, he used to go along, “How you going boys,” and have a talk like that, you know. And it made for a very happy atmosphere on the ship. Some would do this and play sport with you, a game of soccer or whatever, chances are they’d be playing

and they would be with you after. But at the same token, if you stepped out of line, then you copped it. You were aware of it, you knew it and you didn’t let it worry you too much say, “Well, I’ve done the wrong thing, he’s a very nice captain but I’ll cop what he gives me.”

Everyone had his action station. If you were on watch in the machinery space, boiler room, engine room, gear room or wherever, you were there and that’s was your action station if you wanted it or not. If you were off watch, you might be in a damage control party,

ready to shore up if the ship gets hit, shore up the holes wherever it made it. Everyone had a place to be in action, even sick berth attendants, they’d stay in their sick bay, the cooks they just carry about their duties, but everyone was

allocated a part of ship to go to in the event of action. Yeah, it was pretty well worked out, actually.

Yeah, at times.

Normally at sea, and your steaming steady, it’s quite easy, everything is running okay, no problems, and … but then there was the other side of it, when you had to get in and do boiler cleans and bilge diving as we used to called it, cleaning out the bilge and all that sort of thing, cleaning out oil fuel tanks, oh they were lousy jobs.

A boiler, a Yarra three-drum water-tube boiler. You had to, your steam drum and all these tubes going down to your water drums with your sprayers of heated oil going in, igniting, then all these tubes would get soot in, and the boilers after a certain period would need cleaning, so the whole thing would be shut down and you’d have to climb

inside the steam drum or in the water drums down below and you’d have to clean them, scrub the wire scrubbers, oh you’d come out black as the ace of spades and that was a vert distasteful job; and in fact, they used to let you go ashore a bit earlier, the used to let you go and have a shower before anyone else, when you were doing that. As for oil fuel tanks they’d pump out as much

oil as they could then you’d be lowered down into them, first of all they sent a light down to make sure there was no explosive gasses down there, and then they’d have these squeegees and you’d squeegee the side down until you got to the bottom and then you’d haul it up in buckets. Terrible job that, boiler cleaning and you’d do the same in water tanks, and this is thought to cause a few problems, with

ex engine room branch sailors these days are claiming compensation because they used to use epoxies and paint the inside of the tanks with these epoxies and that’s thought to be cancer producing you know. Bilge driving, well you pumped as much of that as you can then you had to get down there with buckets, and they were filthy the bilges, particularly on reciprocating ships where

you had your engines going up and down like that, and your lubrication for your eccentrics that were part of the whole reciprocating system, and you had this sugi, that was a mix of mineral oil and water, and you’d throw it in and it came out like a real yellowy type of thing, when the ship speeded up it would fly everywhere, of course you’d be wiping it

off your face and everything like that and a lot of it would finish up in the bilges, so you had to get down there, absolutely filthy covered in God knows what. Not very pleasant jobs, those, boiler cleaning, then you’d have to go and clean out the funnel, you’d have to climb up inside that and clean that out, you know.

Depending on the size of the ship.

Probably a Tribal class destroyer like that model out there it probably would be two metres wide, probably two metres long by about a metre wide or something like that. That was not a pleasant job climbing up there. They had a ladder inside and clean it.

Full of soot, yeah.

Hardly at all, it would go down to a dissipater as soon as it hit the hot tubes, from the fires in the furnace, and not much went down, probably rain water wouldn’t last two seconds.

Then what had to happen in the boilers, and only the engineer did this, was when the boiler was completely cleaned he would get in top, and I forget how many, he had all these tubes, and he had all these, I think there was 144 of them, and he would have to drop these ball bearings into the water pump, and if he dropped 15 down,

and he’s marked these tubes off with chalk, he’s dropped 15 and only 14 have landed at the bottom, that means one of them is in the tubes, and if it stays there, when the boiler is lit up it’s going to cause a problem, it’s going to cause a hot spot in the tube or something like that. So that was his job, he’d be down there and you’d drop them in, and if 144 came out then the tubes were clear.

One of the big things was making smoke. You tried as often as not, not to make smoke, because it didn’t appeal to the first lieutenant or the captain. The smoke was going also over their paintwork and that sort of thing. How you did this was by direct combustion of your sprayers into your boiler, your oil heat had to be right.

If it weren’t, if the oil was too cold it would cause smoke, but when you got it just right there would be no smoke at all, there’d just be haze coming out of the funnel. They also had, we used to delight in this, whenever it was called for, which was, lay smoke screen, which used to happen in battle. They had a valve there

which would inject cold oil straight into the furnace, because this cold oil would immediately turn to black smoke, we used to love it when they would say, “Make smoke.” “You beauty,” like! But it didn’t happen very often; in wartime, it was used quite a lot so they didn’t expose themselves to other ships, enemy ships and that sort of thing.

but noisy places, you had turbines screaming, turbo generators screaming and all this sort of thing. Reciprocating ships such as the Condamine, they were pretty noisy because they had these cranks going up and down, triple expansion engines, another triple expansion in other words the pressure of the steam can drive that piston down,

and it’s still got enough strength and power to drive a smaller one down, and the exhaust of that drives another one down and the whole things condensed back into water again.

Well, as I might have said before, were the boiler rooms

which you think would be the hottest you know, but they weren’t, because of pressurisation and force draft fans. The whole ship in general was pretty damn cold, I suppose the only place was the galley where you could a little bit warm or you could lean against the funnel with your back to it and you’d get a bit of warmth there, nothing to see four or five sailors standing against the funnel trying to keep warm,

at least their back, anyway. No, the cold was quite a problem; I think it would kill me now if I had to go back into those conditions. Oh, we got by, I suppose; today’s ships, of course are entirely different. See, the whole point was that our ships weren’t built for those conditions up in North Korea and up there, they were

built for up here, and that was the big difference … I suppose I would do it all again.

No, never.

No.

I think it’s just probably in their make up and that sort of thing, I was telling Colin earlier, the blokes that drank a lot of booze never ever got seasick, and I suppose they were sick half the time anyway, so it didn’t make much difference, but it was an interesting thing that. I felt sorry for people that did get seasick.

They really hit it hard and they, mostly, with chronic seasickness they didn’t keep them at sea, they just sent them to shore establishments and they finished their time there. A seasick sailor is a sailor that couldn’t do his job; for instance, these crash boats I was on in Jervis Bay, well they spent half the time out of the water.

What they used to do there was, a new crew member would arrive and the first thing they would do would be taken out Point Perpendicular, out through Jervis Bay, and if he got seasick he was gone the following day because they just couldn’t afford to have anyone seasick.

Very fond memories of those beautiful American built vessels, they were based on the torpedo boats the Americans used, powerful, phew.

Daily routine depended on which branch.

Daily routine would be pretty much ship keeping, making sure everything was running okay and everything. Then you always knew when you were going into action, you always knew that. You’d hear a pipe go over, “Guns crews close up and Beaufighter gun crew close up,” which meant head for your guns, then you just waited for it to happen.

Half the time you didn’t know what they were firing at. They did, but normally if it was sailing from point A to point B, well you just went about what you normally did at sea.

In hammocks, in say, Condamine, Arunta, Australia, Platypus, which was an old World War 1 submarine repair ship, I think they had bunks on there from memory, from when I was on there. Kanimbla later on had bunks, but hammocks were good to sleep in, nothing wrong

with hammocks. Of course, when the ship is rolling, they all roll together so they’re bumping against each other and waking you up. First thing you do was sling it out, you had a hammock bin there and you just threw it in there until you slung in there again. You went ashore you say to a mate, “I could be back late, will you sling me hammock for me?” “Yeah, no worries, I’ll sling it for you,”

and you got back and toss yourself in there.

Not always a hammock, in Condamine, I mostly slept on the cushions, we had cushions, tables where we ate of course, and then we these cushions and lockers behind them where you kept all your toiletry gear an that sort of thing, so I used to just wedge myself in between the table and the lockers

at the back because I wouldn’t fall out, and sleep there, blanket under me another one over me, a bit of a pillow and that was all right, save slinging a hammock.

Oh yeah, yeah, you sort of got used to it, you’d say, “Today we’re rolling,” sort of thing, or, “Today we’re pitching ahead.” But you got used to it. I often wonder how safe, how many of us escaped asbestosis, because

everything on the ship was asbestos, as you hauled yourself out of the hammock, chances are you’d reach up and grab a pipe that was lagged in asbestos, grab that and throw yourself out, and it was everywhere in ships, not today, they wouldn’t go near it.

Mostly 3/8 plate was the hull.

I suppose you could go back into shipbuilding and how they were built, what sequence propeller shafts and that sort of thing were put in, your tanks for water and oil and that sort of thing. They pretty well knew how to do it and they just sort of build up from there. A galley goes in there for the cooking and this goes in there, up further for your radar, communications

and all that sort of thing, and your bridge. They were pretty well built, the Australian ships; in fact, better built that the Americans: our ships were riveted and theirs were welded. I think we’ve gone back to welding now, or what do they call it – the plates already there sort of thing.

Slap it together and … but some were slow some were fast and some had certain tasks to do and some where fighting ships, so there was a pretty big variation in them and got down to water lighters and things like that that carry water out to ships and oil fuel lighters that go in,

oil, fuel out to refuel ships and a lot of ancillary stuff like that. Work boats and general purpose vessels.

Yeah, your ship was either a turbine ship or a reciprocating ship,

which was the up and down pistons just like a car. Turbine ships of course were faster and they carry, say, three boilers, where a reciprocating ship such as a frigate would carry two. Later on in the Daring class, I think they went to Foster Wheeler boilers, and these steamed, where we would steam a

350 PSI [pounds per square inch], the Foster Wheelers steamed, I think, at 1250 PSI super heated steam. With super heated they were different to ordinary the Yarra water tube boilers where your steam was generated in your steam drum, and then through tubes it was back down closer to the furnace fires.

So it became super heated. Much more powerful. Amazing thing the system of a ship where water conservation was paramount, everything was done to save it, because you had a main feed tank

always, from memory, in the engine room, I forget how much it carried, how many tonnes. But when a ship accelerated, this meant more sprayers went on, more water was required for the boiler and you could see this tank going down, like. When you stopped, all this steam would be condensed and sent back to the main tank, so you would see it go up again, very little

in the close feed system, there was little wastage of water, just used and used and used. Very efficient system. Motor ships of course, back to the Kanimbla, which carried a fair amount of water, it was what they called a fire tube boiler. In other words, instead of all your fire going into these

tubes, your steam drum, the tubes went through the steam drum, so that your fires went through there and not nearly as efficient as the other boilers, there was no need for it to be because they weren’t built for speed or anything like that, and water purity wasn’t as much required.

It didn’t matter if you had a bit of salt water in those ships.

Quite a few of them, I suppose; probably every port in Australia, for starters

All around the Pacific, into Japan and Korea, all around the place, various islands, New Zealand so on so forth. Good ports and bad ports, some of them weren’t worth going into.

Oh, Bangkok was one,

that never turned me on much. Then there was the ports you really looked forward to going to, because you’d been there before and you’d go to your favourite bar in that port and, “Oh, you’re still here,” and that sort of thing, a lot of fun.

You name it, we got up to it. Spent a bit of time at sea, done your job and that sort of thing and you got ashore and you really let your hair down, a lot got into trouble of course, coming back adrift, getting into fights with the police and all sorts of things,

and they would front the first lieutenant or the commander and get their punishment from the captain. Probably, depending how bad it was, probably get a few days of stoppage of pay and leave, something like that. They get up to some very strange things, sailors.

It’s just a matter of which one. One occasion that comes to mind, amongst the hundreds, I suppose I could think of. Three of us came back in Hong Kong

and we were pretty full, we’d been drinking whiskey and everything. They had a Royal naval establishment there called HMS Tamar. So half way back through this Tamar, and it had been raining for days, and there was a great big pool of water, and there was a bloke called Darky and Shorty and myself, and for some reason we finished up in this

three or four inches of water, throwing punches at each other, throwing punches left right and everywhere, and I woke up in the morning, just throw all the cushions on the deck we just grabbed blankets and slept there instead of slinging hammocks or anything like that. And I woke up in the morning and popped my head out of the blanket and I said, “Have a look at me hand,” it was up like that,

and Shorty was also a leading hand, good mate of mine – saw him the other day. He said, “What about your – look at my eye!” And he had the greatest shiner you’ve ever seen in your life. Our uniforms were all torn to pieces, the English sailors broke us up apparently, and they called for Darky. Darky came from Streaky Bay, South Australia, and the officer of the day wanted to see him. He said, “Parker,

the situation you came back on board, was a disgrace to yourself and a disgrace to the ship, and as for the two leading hands with you, the less said the better.” We were all good mates, they were the sort of thing that happened

Yeah that boxer, he fixed me right up, I had one look at him and

thought, “Oops a daisy, I’m in for a rough night here.” He’d have killed me if he’d kept going; fortunately, my second threw the towel in.

Oh, that was in Noumea, yeah. That was in the main town, the town is –

what’s the name of it – The Grand something Hotel went along the top, and the main street came down the side, and we were up there eating frog legs and who knows what, we didn’t, apart from myself, I was the only one that drifted. Oh, then we had a riot on board and they called

guard, and all the blokes falling over, finished up on the tiller flat, the tiller flat was where your steering motors were. And they just sent them down there, and the next morning a lot of them confronted the captain and, you know. Had an occasion in Darwin, we had this young cook on board, and he and his mate decided to go on strike, food in the navy

was known as scran. “We’re not cooking the scran,” so the first lieutenant said, “Get the buffer,” who was a chief petty officer, he said, “Put them in the tiller flat.” I’d had enough up in Darwin, up the top with all the machinery down there, with heat coming out of it and everything. Five minutes later they came out, “Well cook the scran, we’ve changed our mind.”

Oh yeah, you had some funny people, some funny people in that navy.

Better dressed for a start. This navy today, they sent them back to looking what

Sea Scouts would look like, you know. They put them in stovepipe trousers and all that sort of thing. In our navy, we more or less slowly redesigned our uniforms, so instead of being a V front we brought it out to a U front and the lanyard which you see today up round here, we disguised it around what they call the silk, and just out it out down the bottom.

Because the issue uniform you had, we didn’t like it very much, so most of us went to civilian tailors, navy tailors specialised in navy uniforms, and there was sort of agreement , nobody said much about it, and then all of a sudden I think it was an admiral came along and like so many of them do, they want to leave their mark

as they’re getting out of the navy, so he left his mark to putting them back today like sea scouts. I would say that the uniform of the Australian navy today is the probably among the worst in the world, but on the other hand they don’t go on shore in them like we did, we always wore our uniform ashore and today they just wear civvies.

Probably doesn’t matter much, just for ceremonial stuff and things like that. No it was a step backwards that.

End of tape

Yeah.

That was a long process. In the navy you weren’t supposed to be in one place long enough to know someone well enough to want to marry them, unlike the other services. For me, this was quite a big problem.

It started a process that lasted two years, with people checking on her family in Japan, the Japanese government wanting to be assured that I could keep one of their nationals. Permission from the port chaplain, who didn’t know me from a bar of soap, various obstacles put in my way. Fortunately,

I was in the situation, whenever I was in a shore establishment, I was in transport. I was in Ourimbah at the time, which was an apprentice training establishment at Blacktown, and was able to get up to Sydney whenever I wanted to, so I would go up there almost daily, to Immigration. I got to know on a first name up there and continually making enquiries about how things were going, “Oh, there’s a hold up in Japan,” and so

on and so forth, which just went on and on and on. Eventually I went up there one day and they said, “Everything’s okay, you can bring your fiancé down.” So I said, “Great!” “There’s a proviso, you’ve got to put up 240 pound, and if you don’t marry her within a month of her arrival, well that’s her fare back to Japan.” The last thing I had was 240 pound,

so they advised me to go and see Eagle Star Insurance. They must have the thought it was a good bet, for the cost of two pounds four and seven pence they put up the bond. When I did get married in Parramatta that was the end of that side of it. We lived in Blacktown for about six months and in (UNCLEAR) Road.

No, I wouldn’t say a White Australia policy. There was still animosity to the Japanese to some extent, certainly none ever to my wife shape or form. There was no problem there.

I think it eventually died out, this animosity. People come to know the real Japanese, who basically are very nice people it’s just unfortunate the warlords or whatever changed them around, the point of kamikazes and suicides.

No, not really. I think anyone (UNCLEAR) we accepted sort of thing, not much I could do about it, but no, never questioned why. Actually, what broke it open was very, very hard even for army people until the Gordon and Cherry Parker, he broke the ice to bring them down and that opened up everything then,

but he had a hard time.

No, no, as I said before, a lot of these Japanese worked in the establishments. They did the cooking, they all sorts of things, run transport and … no, no they made life easy for the BCOF people, lot of respect.

And they were treated well, once they got to them and got to know each other, they became quite friendly. In the early days I think they gave a few of them a whack behind the ear or something like that, eventually got to know each other very well. One particular as a Japanese when the transport section of HMAS Commonwealth, the Australian Naval Depot, he was very highly regarded amongst the people in the depot, you know.

Well, I’m talking about the early days up there when they, these troops going from here to here, a lot of them, I should say, went direct from New Guinea and Borneo in the occupation, and they weren’t too happy with the Japanese, because they heard about the atrocities and things that had happened.

A few of them got sat on their butts and whatever you know. But that eventually faded out, and had a reasonable relationship. I think some years later, Japanese came down here and visited the Australian troops that they knew there.

Mmm, very adaptable the Japanese, they can sort of move in very well in situations like that and a lot of them become very friendly with Australian troops.

No, I would say they might have been ex soldiers, possibly

were, and then they worked in these army depots and establishments and got to know them that well, some of these soldiers had been up there many years, you know, six or seven years, of course they become very friendly with them, and later on, when things got good, they had the money and that, and come down here and look up the odd digger, yeah that happened, yeah.

Oh yeah, you know, no, I think there was a difference between the early ones that went up from New Guinea and those that went straight to Japan. I believe that a lot of them had the option of coming back here or going up there, you know, in the occupation. So they were the ones that went up and said, “We’ll square a few things off here,”

and knocked them around a bit. But the later ones that went up in BCOF and that, well they didn’t have the same sort of attitude as the ones that knew, from Borneo, New Guinea or whatever, were more involved in them as an enemy sort of thing.

The women charmed them really, the Japanese women are very adaptable and they’d charm anyone. People used to say to my wife, Chinese friends of ours, actually -

my wife was a POW in China, actually, and I remember (UNCLEAR), “We should be enemies,” and my wife would say to her, “Mrs She, you and I didn’t start it,” and that would be the end of that, “I didn’t hate you and you didn’t hate me.”

Oh, I don’t know.

They say they’re more docile, they make good wives. There’s no doubt about that, and the Japanese female of the species, apart from being very adaptable in their schooling years, they learnt everything, apart from the three ‘R’s and that sort of thing, they learnt how their husband should be dressed, they could knit, they could sew, they could cook.

It was part of their curriculum you know. They were very well set up for marriage, put it that way. I suppose you’d get the odd Australian girl who wouldn’t know how to cook this and sew that, how to darn a sock, they knew all that.

There’s nothing I dislike about them at all.

I just happened to find this very quality lady and married and lived for 42 years with here, a very, very lovely person. I think to point that up, St Winifred’s, which is

in Oakleigh, about seven minutes drive from here. Most of the staff were Philippine, a sprinkling of other nationalities, and they just doted on her, you know. She still had all her marbles, as our doctor said, which was a good thing. When I went over the day after she died to pick up her belongings they’d lined them all up and everything,

and there were tears everywhere. And the fact that six of them came to her funeral, points up what a person she was, because these are the sort of people that are seeing old people pop off every day, and they don’t get emotionally involved or anything like that. They certainly did with my wife, which was pretty gratifying to me.

I think it goes back many, many years, as I might have said, before to my boyhood, ‘God save the King’, and all this sort of thing, I used to think to myself

“Who is this person?” like, you know. Then I got involved with the Australian Republican Movement and I became involved with that to the point they made me an ambassador, subsequently kicked out of the RSL for my republican beliefs. Attended meetings for the republican movement, bitterly disappointed when we didn’t get the referendum

up, but I think we will get there, I think if we can get a plebiscite, very simply, do you want an Australian as head of state, “Yes, no, couldn’t care less.” That’ll be the start. I blame the PM [Prime Minister] for this a lot for the way he manipulated the whole thing, the old story of divide and conquer. Course, the movement, they

did a lot that they shouldn’t have done, you had people that were jumping up and down saying we should have this and should that, and so on. So it was a pretty torrid time, the loss, but I think we’ll get there. My philosophy is that

I’m a very proud Australian, I owe allegiance to no one or anything but my country and not a foreign, unelected, non resident queen. That, in a nutshell, is about my reason, you know. I know and appreciate there will probably be problems changing

over, but there was so many obstacles put in the way, the Governor-General, what if he does this and what if he does that, that sort of thing. Another thing that sticks in my craw, the representative of this foreign queen can sack an elected government and she cannot sack her own government. That, to me, absolutely stinks!

So, as I said before, we’ll get there eventually, I guess. I hope to live the day when that Union Jack on our flag gets replaced with our beautiful coat of arms, or whatever the people decide. I just hope that day won’t be long away.

No, not at all.

No, no never, not at all. I go back to there, a big thing was the way they sent in our troops to be slaughtered in World War 1, that was absolutely disgraceful, that, send the Australians in, they knew they’d get slaughtered, you know, it’s well documented the places they sent them (UNCLEAR), and places like that.

That had a big influence on me, too. I find it difficult to find people to discuss this with, like you know to say, “Look, let’s have a sit down and talk about this like,” that’s all, you know, “She’s right, so why change things?”

The Ruxton attitude, and, “Why do you want to change it for?” and all this sort of thing. I get up the RSL, and they might mention that I’m a republican and how I used to be a member until they tossed me out for my republican beliefs, occasionally you might meet a fellow republican, and other times there was just a stone silence, they just don’t want to talk about it, which I find a bit disconcerting.

Anyway, that’s the way it goes. I think if we can get the plebiscite, that’s a start and then there’s a way forward from that, you know.

Oh yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah. One thing is, accuse me of being is a racist because I was married to a Japanese for 42 years. Oh yes, no problem there.

I’m very pro American, despite what’s happened in Iraq and places like that. At the back of mind is, America saved this country, what anyone, despite what anyone likes to say you know, during World War 11. I hope we’ll get there, we’re pretty well organised the ARM.

Get all sorts of correspondence from them, even down to things like how to reply the letters to the editor and all that. I didn’t like to, was the fact that Ruxton called us ‘Chardonnay’ and ‘Rabid, chardonnay sipping...’

some bloody thing. I replied to that, and I got that in the paper, along the lines of there’s plenty of ex servicemen that have republican beliefs. Hopefully we’ll get there, I’m involved with the movement. They write some pretty good stuff too.

They’re right on the ball with it, there waiting for the right opportunity to bring it up again. See, most of the parliamentarians are republicans, even Costello and people like that, oh, and my local member, Anna Burke, she was telling me, she said was hilarious up in parliament one day, they asked the republicans to go to one side and the monarchists to go the other,

and she said, you should have seen them crossing over to the republicans. I think once Howard goes, I think we have a good chance. I think Costello, if he takes over, will probably allow plebiscite.

Oh yeah, absolutely,

and I can’t understand it, with his intelligence, he’s obviously an intelligent man, why he sticks to that. I mean, if we were attacked today, you can bet the Poms wouldn’t be down helping us you know. Hopefully it will sort itself out, I really, really do because I just can’t see us going like this … on and on and on.

Let’s have our own president, let’s have our own flag, I got a pamphlet the other day, this is funny. It’s put out by the Veteran Affairs and the Pharmacy Board, it’s along the lines of asking your pharmacist what your medication is doing, that sort of thing. Now, would you believe there’s a British coat of arms on it, and I thought, “What are we?” like, you know?

Wouldn’t be a bad idea, I’ll take up the (UNCLEAR). It just can’t, I think the younger generation are probably the key to it, as they’re coming up, they’re no longer required to sing, “God save the Queen, oh well, look at ‘God save the King’, who sings that now?

Very few people. Ruxton, and a few older people around the place, that’s dying out, even things like trade with England, I don’t think that’s much these days. I Just wonder why people cling to it, I just can’t understand it, why not say, “Hey, hey I’m a proud Australian, I want my own flag, I want my own president,” you know,

this sort of thing, instead of clinging to their coat tails.

I think yes, in terms of, had the north taken over the south,

I think, their next objective would have been Japan, yes I agree that was justified. What cost the North Koreans the war, no doubt at all we controlled the sea lanes, they didn’t have any ships of any sort, something about 400 UN [United Nations] ships

in Korea. In fact, I’ve got the names of them out there, all sorts of ships, battle ships, cruisers you name it, they had it. So once you controlled the seas, you pretty much controlled the war. Aircraft carriers flying off planes and that sort of thing, they had no answer to that. Of course the Russians kept out of it, they could see the implications of them getting in to it, you know.

In fact, Russians were known to be flying for North Korea. That was a small contribution, so the war might have been over once the UN started marching north again, and of course, the Chinese came into it and back they went again, and it was one hell of a stoush!

I think not many people know the total casualties in Korea was about something between three and a half, and four million dead.

The Korean War was pretty well forgotten because it happened so soon after World War 11. People were sick of war. Oh yeah, another one started up here, couldn’t care less sort of thing, you know.

I think that was the attitude of the people, really.

I always thought UN would win it you know, because of their sheer fire power, their control of the sea and east and west,

all the troops from 21 nations, I think. I think 21 nations involved in the UN, a lot of them like Turkey, I think, they were just support units. Others supplied just hospital ships and that sort of thing, medivac situations and that sort of thing.

I recall one incident in Korea, we were very close in and there was a hospital ship laying off about a nautical mile from us, and all of a sudden, there was these guns going ashore ‘bang, bang, bang’, oh, it was pandemonium! Then that quietened, down and all of a sudden you saw these helicopters coming in, exactly like you see in ‘MASH’, with two people strapped to it,

one after the other, dropping into this hospital ship. You could see them racing and taking them down. I forget how many planes went back and picked up more and picked up more, you know. Yeah sticks in my mind that one.

I don’t suppose at that younger age you, you live day by day I suppose,

you took a philosophical point of view, if something comes through and hits the magazine, “Well, I won’t be going back to Kure,” or wherever, and you just took your day to day as it came along. Part of the problem, being in our branch was, you never really knew where you were, you’d say, “We’re on the west coast,” but where are we on the west coast?

Are we right up north or down south? I don’t know where we are.

No, it’s pretty well slipped into oblivion now, the only time I remember, a committee member of the Korean Veterans Association and we hold our meeting and then we have a few beers and

the army blokes start talking about the conditions they had, they were pretty dreadful, they would go out for a leak and it would freeze up before it hit the ground, living in ‘hootchies’, they called them, with rats and bloody lice and Christ knows what they didn’t have. Oh, the cold I’ll tell you, Vic Day, who runs the Korean Vets’ [Veterans’] Association, president, he’s a good friend of mine,

I saw men crying with the cold, so they were dreadful conditions. They lived with petrol fires, they used to make petrol fires to try and some warmth. They’d go out on patrols not knowing if they were coming back. POW, they captured some of our people, they had it pretty hard,

tried to indoctrinate them and things. We get on well the three services in the Vets, we never fight amongst ourselves, you always find the sailors gravitate to each other, which I suppose is natural, but during the day and the afternoon you’d be joined by a couple of diggers, you were all one happy family. You don’t always talk about

Korea, of course, but that crops up every now and then. One said to me, having seen that photo on the thing he said, “Did all this ice and stuff on the ship, did it effect it in anyway?” I said, “Yeah, it had affected a few ways, instability of course when there was all this ice hanging up in the rigging,” and this sort of thing. We’re sorted of interested in each other to ask about

their own experiences, it’s very interesting. A sailor would ask a soldier about different things and vice versa, makes for a happy family. We get on pretty well

Well, I can’t really say, because

to me, they were just an enemy over there, they were going to sink us or we would start shelling them, any sort of, whether they were Chinese, North Korean or whatever. The Chinese people were volunteers, they called them, didn’t mean a thing really, it was just them and us sort of thing, really.

You didn’t really hate them, because you didn’t have any real reason, none of them had done anything to you sort of thing, he may kill me, but I may kill him, sort of thing. No real hatred as, say, a POW would have had of the Japanese, having been knocked around and half starved sort of thing, you can understand hatreds coming into that, no, none of that.

No, we saw a lot of aircraft flying around. What would happen is, if somewhere ashore, say UN, Australian or whatever troops were being heavily bombarded, we could call up aircraft to go straight away to their assistance, that happened quite a few times.

They knew their position, they’re getting belted around here and then ‘BANG!’ Next thing, there is aircraft helping them.

One actually, we lost three or four aircraft of the Sydney, of course. There was one that was suspected of being flown by Russians,

and we went over to try and salvage, but another one of their aircraft came down and shot it up, which left the suspicion that it was a Russian pilot. Had it been found to be a Russian, it would have changed the whole scene of the Korean War.

Yeah, his own people. That would have changed the whole concept of the Korean War, had those Russians been found to be flying for North Korea.

In other words, they are in the war too.

No, not really, I never did. I know of people that have.

No, I can’t say I ever did, occasionally I might have a flash back to some sort of incident, never worried me at all. Don’t want to be going to psychiatrists or whatever.

Eh, no, I can’t say I enjoyed it, no. It would be wrong to say that. I was there and I did what I had to do, to some extent it was an adventure, I suppose. The fact that my father and my brother had been to war, I suppose, World War 1 , Middle East,

New Guinea, and I go to Korea, so sort of a family tradition there with three wars. No, you’d mixed emotions, you’d be sailing along and think, “God, things are quiet round here!” and all of a sudden there was guns going off left right and centre, you got pretty scared then, yeah. The uncertainty of what was going to happen, you know.

Always at the back of your mind was, if a projectile was fired and hit a certain part of your ship, there was a lot of parts they could have hit and not caused too much trouble, if they hit a magazine or something like that, well that was the end of it, and you.

No, I didn’t see a great deal of her in Japan. Once we decided to get engaged, well then

I didn’t have to worry about her, a very loyal person, and I knew nobody would win her off me. You probably saw the photo, that was the sort of lady she was. They thought a lot of her at the nursing home, in fact they gave her a Japanese doll in a glass case it was wrapped in. She was quite a lady.

You would never find anyone that would say a bad word about her. Sense of humour, especially at duck opening time, I was a duck opener, a pursuit of 30-odd years and she just used to see the way I mope around, you couldn’t get any sense out of us two or three days before a duck opening. Our mind was elsewhere,

so in the end, she’d be happy to see you go, like. And give you a big welcome when you got home.

Oh yes, yeah, there were quite a few of them. It happened from time to time, they just more or less discharged them as unsuitable for naval service.

Others that done time in Holsworthy, say about 90 days cell time or imprisonment time, they gave them just what was known as a ‘Snailer’, service no longer required, and that was that.

Oh yeah, there were some, as soon as they got here, more or less they, for whatever reason, they just deserted. They chased them and found them, quite often living with unsavoury ladies around Kings Cross, a lot of them, weren’t hard to find, go up to Kings Cross, like, and get them.

Only back to Pusan on that container ship, yeah.

But a funny thing, actually, happened there. We went ashore in Pusan, the mate and I, and we finished up going to a disco, and first of all, we went to the seamen’s mission, which is nothing like a seamen’s mission here, it’s got like meals and poker machines and all sorts of things. This girl came up to me, and

it was a Japanese who’d been married to a Korean and spoke English, I think she must have known, whether she owned this place or not and she said, she went up to a chap on a booth was collecting the money as you went in. She spoke to him and we didn’t pay anything and eventually, quite funny this. We were due to sail at 1am and

at about 11.30 I decided to go back on board. A bit worse for wear and singing me way through the dockyard there, and in the meantime this Korean immigration officer was aboard the ship, and he was worried as all hell because he couldn’t go home until he’d signed me off, you know, anyway he was going up to the cabin, and my mate

to Tom, “Is Mr Lees back yet?” And Tom would say, “No, haven’t seen him,” go down to the captain and was sending the captain round the bend. “Is he back yet?” And the captain says, “He knows what time we are sailing.” He was having a laugh to himself. Anyway, at around about 12.30, I think it was, I staggered up the gangway and there was the immigration officer with a big smile on his face, he could go home. Sign me of and go home.

No, not really, I think we’ve pretty comprehensively covered it, and actually, I will be pleased when it’s finished so I can go and have a couple of beers!