TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL HISTORY RECORDING Accession number S00564 Title (WR/7) Wright, Daphne Mary (Petty Officer Telegraphist) Interviewer Thompson, Ruth Place made Chatswood NSW Date made 5 April 1989 Description Daphne Wright, Petty Officer WRANS, interviewed by Dr Ruth Thompson for the Keith Murdoch Sound Archives of Australian in the War of 1939-45 Discussing pre-war employment; work with the Women's Emergency Signalling Corp; training Air Force recruits in morse code; formation of WRANS; joining the WRANS; posting to HMAS Harman; training as wireless operator; leisure. DAPHNE WRIGHT Page 2 of 16 Disclaimer The Australian War Memorial is not responsible either for the accuracy of matters discussed or opinions expressed by speakers, which are for the reader to judge. Transcript methodology Please note that the printed word can never fully convey all the meaning of speech, and may lead to misinterpretation. Readers concerned with the expressive elements of speech should refer to the audio record. It is strongly recommended that readers listen to the sound recording whilst reading the transcript, at least in part, or for critical sections. Readers of this transcript of interview should bear in mind that it is a verbatim transcript of the spoken word and reflects the informal conversational style that is inherent in oral records. Unless indicated, the names of places and people are as spoken, regardless of whether this is formally correct or not – e.g. ‘world war two’ (as spoken) would not be changed in transcription to ‘second world war’ (the official conflict term). A few changes or additions may be made by the transcriber or proof-reader. Such changes are usually indicated by square brackets, thus: [ ] to clearly indicate a difference between the sound record and the transcript. Three dots (…) or a double dash (- -) indicate an unfinished sentence. Copyright Copyright in this transcript, and the sound recording from which it was made, is usually owned by the Australian War Memorial, often jointly with the donors. Any request to use of the transcript, outside the purposes of research and study, should be addressed to: Australian War Memorial GPO Box 345 CANBERRA ACT 2601 DAPHNE WRIGHT Page 3 of 16 Identification: This is Ruth Thompson recording an interview with Mrs Daphne Wright on 5th April 1989 and we're sitting in the sunroom at her home. I wonder, Mrs Wright, if you could first tell me a little bit about your family background; where you were born, when you were born and so on? Ah, well, I was actually born in Chatswood - not very far from this street we were living - and I was the third child of my parents. ... There was about fourteen or fifteen years between my brother and I and then about sixteen or seventeen years between my sister. So, I grew up more like an only child because they were well and truly grown up by the time I got to my teenage years. So then I attended the convent school at Chatswood and after that I went to St Patrick's College in the city, at the age of about thirteen I went there, and continued on till I was sixteen. Did my Intermediate and after that I ... the nuns were very good, I loved my period I spent at St Patrick's. And then at the age of sixteen and a half, I think, I finally - I did a bit of temporary work for a while which I didn't ... which I thought was good to find out where I wanted to be. I had quite a leaning towards writing and ... so I eventually was sent to a position at Universal International Pictures, the ... In those days all the big picture companies had their own exchanges here in the city. Universal had an enormously big one down in Kent Street. So the then assistant - it was a woman - to the publicity director had also been a graduate of St Patrick's. So when she wanted somebody else in the office I was lucky enough to be ... to get the position. So I then became, more or less, her secretary and the publicity director's secretary. I loved this work; it was very, very fascinating and interesting. A wonderful company to work for, Universal Pictures, and ... so I stayed there and enjoyed it and through them I got to know quite a lot of the young people that were in independent acting and things like that. I was only seventeen at the time then. And one of the young men that came from what was then called 'The Film Weekly' who did all the work for the distributing com[panies] like Hoyts and everybody like that, they did all the distributing information. He used to come into our office a lot and he belonged to what was known as the Independent Theatre Group which is a very old and famous one and I forget the name of the woman but she was the head of it for many, many years, and he belonged to that, and he was so enthusiastic about play acting and that that he, with a few other friends, formed another group and persuaded me to join it. Well, we used to meet every Sunday night in a peculiar place. It was a Russian emigrant who carried on this ... um ... Mischa Burlakov Ballet School down opposite the Quay in ... up above an old restaurant there which smelt of onions and everything like that. So we used to meet on a Sunday night there. (5.00) Consequently, this young man, Kevin [Brennen?], he became quite famous on radio and went to England and - he was a very fat boy, he'd probably be about three years older than me, about twenty at this time - and he was like a junior Charles Lawton. He had a wonderful speaking voice. But he ... eventually I know he went to Britain and he was on radio quite a lot and then he was in early television programs. I used to see him but I've completely lost track now on. However, it was Sunday nights we used to meet there and how I'm mentioning it is is that it was at one of those Sunday nights that war broke out and I can always still distinctly remember that Sunday night about ten o'clock when the Prime Minister announced. So your DAPHNE WRIGHT Page 4 of 16 immediate thoughts were all the young men you knew, you know, probably going to war. So ... that was where we were at ten o'clock that night when the ... we were at war. So you were listening to the radio? Yes. We all listened to the radio because we'd been rehearsing, you see, for this play we were going to put on. Naturally we knew that there were going to be announcements; everything was coming up to that. So I remember it was a Sunday night as far as I can remember and ... about ten o'clock, I think it was Prime Minister Menzies was at the time, and he announced that Germany had not accepted the ultimatum from Britain and consequently the Empire was at war with ... state of war existed with Germany, so ... How did you ... what did you think that your role in the war might be? Well, I didn't think anything at that time. I was only seventeen then, and I didn't immediately think ... your thoughts went immediately to the young men you knew. My thoughts went immediately to even the half-a-dozen young men that were in the ... you couldn't help looking at them and thinking, 'Well, life is going to change enormously for all of you'. You didn't think so much of yourself, but you thought of the ... and of course it was way over in Europe. It didn't ... you didn't feel it was close to your shores and that, but it was ... it was a rather devastating feeling at that time, to realise that you'd been reading up all the preliminaries to ... trying to avert war. Naturally you felt apprehensive, so ... I think it was a bit of bewilderment you felt. Did you think of yourself as British at that time or Australian? Oh no, definitely Australian. I never ... but I always had a strong feeling towards Britain as being the Mother Country and that, even though my parents weren't British you know, they were ... I was about a third generation Australian, and no, I always had a distinctly Australian feeling but you had that ... I'd always been interested in history and had a very sound knowledge of the European theatres - of countries - and I felt a great sense of loyalty to the people in Europe and Britain at was going to happen to them now. Just going back a little bit to your childhood, you went to a Catholic school. Was religion ... did religion play a large part in your upbringing? Yes, it always had. And so you ... sorry, I'll just say that again. So when you enlisted, did you say that you were Catholic? Yes, it's on my documents here. And were there other Catholic girls joining up? Not in the four ... first fourteen, no. There was no other Catholic until quite a long time. One of the other groups that came in ... later on, towards the end of 1941, there was one Catholic amongst them. But the Parish Priest of Queanbeyan was also the Chaplin to HMAS Harman, DAPHNE WRIGHT Page 5 of 16 so naturally, one of my first duties when I went to Harman - the first Saturday after we arrived - I went and made myself known to the Parish Priest ..