Australians at War Film Archive

Trevor Langford - Transcript of interview

Date of interview: 17th June 2003

http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/511

Tape 1

00:32 Where were you born?

Hobart, Tas.

Where did you spend your early childhood?

The first part of it in Tasmania, then we moved over to Victoria and I done my schooling in Melbourne.

Where did you do school? Where did you go to school?

Rathdowne Street State School in Carlton.

That’s still there, isn’t it?

Oh I believe so.

01:00 Opposite the Exhibition Gardens.

And how was school? Did you like school as a kid?

Not until the last two years of it. I had a very good teacher in the last two years and I really enjoyed the last bit.

Were you doing any particular subjects in the last bit that you enjoyed?

I was rather fond of chemistry, but it was very basic sort of chemistry but I sort of got out of that a bit.

01:30 And what were your interests as a kid?

Ooh, just general kid stuff I think, nothing in particular.

Did you follow a footy team?

Only at school level.

Did you play any sport yourself?

No, not really.

How about the sea? Did you have a love for the sea as a kid?

Well I developed it because I, it was about 1938

02:00 they had a very severe polio epidemic in Victoria here and it was, they didn’t call it polio then, they called it infantile paralysis. They closed the schools and they, my mother sent me across to Tasmania to my grandparents and I went with me grandfather. He was running a vessel, that one up there, the

02:30 May Queen, and I was with him for six months. I wasn’t big enough to do much work but I just made the tea and done a bit of cleaning up and stuff like that. I didn’t get paid for it. Whenever we were in port on a Saturday afternoon I got me picture money. But when the schools opened up, they was closed for six months, when they opened up I came back to Melbourne and when back to school again and

03:00 I was only about eleven then. But when I was fourteen, I turned fourteen at the end of 1940, and I went back to sea then. I went back to Hobart and went in the ketches.

Did you want to leave school at fourteen or would you have liked to have stayed on for a bit?

Well I did pass a scholarship examination to University High School, but I didn’t want to go, I wanted to go to sea 03:30 cause it was a family thing. My grandfather was a sea captain and me father and it was all the family.

Did you always think then that you would end up at sea one day?

Yes I thought so, cause even when I was very small, me father took me away and at Christmas holidays and that we went on the boat, went for a trip somewhere sort of thing. That was the

04:00 way it was, sort of thing, you know. Because it was the Depression and you couldn’t afford to take holidays overseas and all that type of thing.

So at age fourteen off to Hobart on the ketches then?

Yeah.

What were you doing there? What sort of work was it?

There was timber, always timber. We used to go into places where there was no roads and

04:30 there was a sawmill. They’d take a sawmill in there, the only way in was by water. Some of the stuff they could get in with the draught horses they had. We’d go up little creeks and that, up the Huon River and round the South coast of Tassie, you’d go in there, and we’d take a lot of their machinery in and they’d set up their mill and we’d take their tucker in,

05:00 all their stores and stuff like that, and we’d bring their timber out. The millers had put a little bit of a jetty on a creek somewhere, places like Stringer’s Creek, Seaburn’s Mill or Police Point, Kermandie Creek, they were all little creeks around the Huon River and we’d go in. They were shallow water vessels and we’d go in and we’d take their tucker in and bring their timber out and we’d bring it back to Hobart.

05:30 The trips would take oh anything round three or four days. We’d do all our own loading, and everything like that and unloading and all that and it was, as I say it was about three or four days. It used to work out, we’d do possibly, usually three trips a fortnight and that way, in the summer it was quicker, we could do two trips a week.

06:00 For that we got about three pound a trip.

Was that good money or…?

It would have been for a kid of fourteen.

Yeah, it those days it would have been great.

Yeah.

You say they were shallow water vessels, what was the draught on those vessels, because those creeks aren’t that big?

Oh, about six or seven inches when they was loaded.

Wow.

But they had a centre board,

06:30 there was no keel, more or less, there was only the centre board, but you used to load them down to the gunnels.

So what would the draught be then when they were loaded up?

Oh a couple of feet.

It’s still pretty shallow isn’t it?

Yeah, because you had as much timber on the deck as well as what was in the hatch.

And what was the width across the beams?

Oh it varies, ten, twelve foot.

So you could get up really small creeks couldn’t you?

07:00 You could get up pretty small creeks?

Yeah, yeah, well the bigger ships couldn’t up there cause a lot of them were silted up. Places like the Kermandie Creek, she was very shallow and we had to go a long way up there to.

Did you enjoy the work on the ketches?

Yes I did. It was very hard work for a kid, I mean, it was solid. You worked from daylight till dark. In the summertime you’d go in and load up

07:30 and you’d start at daylight and you’d work until dark, as I said, and if there was any daylight left you’d go down the river a bit and get closer to home. Well that meant you might get back to Hobart in half a day and you’d empty, you’d unload then and next morning you’d take off again and go back.

And were you sleeping on the ship in Hobart as well?

If you were sailing early in the morning you would, but normally you’d go home.

08:00 I used to stay at my father’s place.

And the war’s on at this time wasn’t it? We’re talking 1940–41?

Yeah.

Are you getting much news about what’s happening in the war?

Not really cause only being a kid you didn’t take that much interest in it. Only more or less, the only way you’d realise there was a war on was because the uniforms getting around the place.

Didn’t have any temptation to run

08:30 away and join the navy?

I wasn’t old enough and I wasn’t big enough.

Right. Was there a height requirement to join the navy? Was there a height requirement or did you think you couldn’t pretend to be eighteen?

Oh there was, I think it was sixteen and a half. My brother was in the navy because he was seven years older than me. I think I would have liked to have gone in with him, sort of thing, but as I said I was too young and I looked too young, sort of thing.

09:00 A fresh faced lad?

Yes. Cause I always had bad eyes too, but it didn’t seem to affect me at sea.

Well you don’t need to see that far, do you really?

Well you had to look at a compass of a night, especially in the bigger ships, you stood on watch at the wheel looking at a compass and that was the only light. You’d be looking down like that for two hours at a time and it would play up with your eyes a bit,

09:30 but I think the salt air and the clear air seemed to make a big difference.

Good. So how long were you on the ketches for, did you say, about?

Well I was, the first one I was in, well as I said, I was in the May Queen with me grandfather for six months but that was when I was a kid, but when I went to sea when I was fourteen I was in the Enterprise and my uncle

10:00 was the skipper and I went with him. And I was about twelve months with him and he, he swapped over, he swapped over a smaller vessel and the Taynna, T A Y N N A, she was a much smaller thing. She was only about twenty six ton and there were only two of us on her. There was only my uncle and myself and we were only carrying small

10:30 case timber.

And how long were you with your uncle altogether on those small ships?

Two years. I wanted to go into bigger ships.

So your dad was in the navy, your brother was in the navy, your Grandfather?

No, no,

Your uncle, who else was a seaman?

Oh well, possibly all the family because my grandfather was in whaling ships in the early days and cause my family originally

11:00 came out from Wales and they, me great-grandfather originally, he came out with three sons and one of them got a little farm around the Huon River some way and my grandfather worked with my great grandfather. He opened a ship building yard at Port Cygnet

11:30 and after that grandfather went to sea and he went away in the whaling ships, because there was quite a few of them come into Hobart in the early days. And he graduated, he got his master’s ticket and he came down, like he worked on the ketch and he finished up he owned his own ketches. And then, he, my father and a couple of my uncles went with

12:00 him. One of them joined the police force and he finished up the Water Bailiff. He was in charge of the Water Police in Hobart. He got dragged back to the sea even when he was a policeman?

Yeah. At one stage he was escort to the Governor. He lived on the Government Estate, along near Government House and he stayed in the police force until he died and he was in the water police right up to the time

12:30 he retired. But then he went back to the sea on a part time basis and running ferries and stuff like that.

Right, so two years on the ketches, on the timber ketches, so you would have been about sixteen by this stage, wouldn’t you, after two years? Did you think about joining the navy then or was the merchant navy a bigger attractor for you?

No, I sort of got interested in

13:00 the civilian type side of the ship but I did want to join the Alma Doeppel. She was on the run then and she was running across here to Victoria and South Australia and I wanted to join her and there was a job going to come up. I knew that because a relation of mine was

Another one?

Yeah, he was one of me cousins.

Right.

But he was going to pay off here. He

13:30 got his time in and he was going to pay off and I had arranged to join her as an ordinary seaman and when she came in and unloaded, and the navy commandeered it, so I missed out.

A troop ship?

No, she went up the islands. She was, the Alma Doeppel, she was floating around here, she was around the bay here for some time. She was a training ship actually, they made of

14:00 her. But she went away up to the islands, so that left me without a job, but the Kermandie come in, that’s that one up there, in the, the full master and she came in and I found out there was an ordinary seaman’s job going on her, so I went and seen the skipper and got a job.

So were there still a lot of sailing ships around in those days?

A lot of the small ones, yeah. There’s only one left now and she’s

14:30 a heritage job, that’s that one up there.

What’s that one called?

May Queen.

The one you started out on?

Yeah.

Oh right, crikey. So you would have learnt how to rig sails and mend sails and stuff like that?

Had to learn how to prepare sails and hatch covers and all that sort of thing. As a matter of fact I had to supply my own gear, because I’m left handed

15:00 and none of the ships ever carried a left handed sail maker’s palm.

I noticed you were left handed, I noticed you were left handed so sail maker’s palm, what’s that?

Well it’s a sail maker’s thimble, but you wear it over there. I could show it to you, during our break I’ll go and get if for you and show you, I’ve got one, I’ve still got it here. But the other things like, you had to supply yourself,

15:30 your knives and things like that.

We’ll come back to that because I’m interested in that sail making and sailor skills. So you can really call yourself a sailor because you worked on a sail ship.

Well we were, yeah.

And what did you do on the Kermandie? What were you carrying there?

Well we were carrying general cargo. Normally we’d carry, we’d take timber from Hobart,

16:00 we’d bring it across to Melbourne or Adelaide and then we’d take general cargo back. If we were in South Australia we’d take wheat, we’d go up around the gulf area and pick up wheat. It was pretty heavy for a little boat, about a hundred and sixty pound in a bag. That’s a fair weight?

Yeah. Heavy than I was. But you got used to it.

You must have developed

16:30 a pretty strong frame on you?

I was always a bit solid, I think although I was small, I was pretty healthy, I think.

Were you one of those guys where, you know, they say, “It’s not the size of the man in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the man that counts”?

It could have been a bit of that in it?

Did you have a bit of a temper on you?

No, not really, pretty placid.

But if someone picked on you, you’d look after yourself?

Oh yeah, we had some pretty bright types and that

17:00 in the Kermandie.

Well as you say if you were just a fairly small fellow you would have to look after yourself on ships like that because?

Yes, especially a thing like that because they like their beer and stuff. Well not only beer, they drunk anything. The cook would have to watch out for the vanilla essence and stuff like that.

I’m sure they weren’t shy in coming forward and giving you a whack behind the

17:30 ear too?

Yeah, that was the norm in those times. If you answered the bosun back you got a clout across the ear. Until you was an able seaman, until that time you were a learner.

And learning involves a lot of whacks behind the ear?

Yeah.

Did you enjoy it on the Kermandie?

No.

Why’s that?

Well she was too dirty, we had to supply everything ourselves,

18:00 your own bedding, your own eating utensils. You had to supply all that stuff. There was no refrigeration on board, the meat was kept in a pickle barrel, a brine barrel. After a few days the cook didn’t have to reach in to get it, it walked out.

It sounds charming.

Couldn’t have a bath at sea. If you wanted a

18:30 bath you had to wait till the cook got out of the galley and get a couple of buckets of sea water and warm it up on the galley stove. And one bloke there he didn’t bother. Just kick his sea boots off coming down the companionway and roll into his bunk, oil skins and all, didn’t worry him.

He would have stank.

He went three weeks like that one trip.

He would have stank to high heaven.

19:00 Oh you got used to it, you were all in the same boat, sort of thing, you know.

Exactly, literally all in the same boat. I imagine then the Kermandie, being a sailing ship and being pretty rough and ready like that, must have been sailing like they would have sailed in the 1800s, you know, and that same similar conditions?

Oh, she had an engine in it, but she used to only weight her down I think.

It was good ballast, that’s all. How long were you on the Kermandie for?

19:30 Six months.

A long six months?

Yes. Too long.

It took us three weeks to come from Hobart to Melbourne on a trip.

Why was that?

Got weatherbound and we had headwinds all the way. We were laying under anchor in shelter for a couple of weeks of it.

Wow, that’s a long time from Melbourne to Hobart.

Yeah.

20:00 Coming up the East coast of Tasmania or the West coast?

East coast.

East coast, yeah, then through Bass Strait to Melbourne?

Yeah.

There was a lot of Jap submarine activity along the East coast of Australia. Was there much around the South and Bass Strait area?

Well there were mines. We found out after, after the war we was told, cause during the war you weren’t told anything, you didn’t know anything about it. But there were I believe around about 1943

20:30 we found it was pretty bad for submarines.

Japanese submarines?

Yeah, Japs, mainly Japs I think. There were a couple of German Raiders around but we never see anything of them. I don’t think they’d hit us anyhow.

So in 43 were you still on the Kermandie?

No, no I got out of her about I think it was just towards the end of 1943.

You got out of Kermandie?

At the end of 1942 I got out of her, sorry.

21:00 All right and from there?

I paid off and I come to Melbourne and I joined the Seamen’s Union and a job came up with an Adelaide Company ship, the Mundella. And I had six months more to do for me able seaman’s time and I stayed in her for the six months. She was running from

21:30 Sydney down round to Adelaide, across to Western Australia. I stayed in her for the six months, I got me time in.

Was she a better ship than the…?

Oh yes, I thought I was in a palace when I went on board her.

Really, was she a sailing ship, too?

No, she was a steam ship, a motor ship. They had sheets on her bunks and three hot meals a day and I thought I was home, it was beautiful.

22:00 So six months was all you needed for your able seaman?

Yeah.

Did you stay longer than that or did you get off after six?

I got off after the six months cause there was no able Seamen’s jobs became available in the ship, so I didn’t want to stay an ordinary seaman, so I paid off.

And what did you do then? Did you find another ship somewhere?

Yeah, I come back to Melbourne and I joined the Iron Monarch, BHP [Broken Hill Proprietary].

22:30 job. And I stayed in her till just about the end of the war and just, I think the war in Europe had finished and I paid off and I went down to Hobart to see me father and that and I joined the old Era. Wasn’t long in her but while

23:00 I was in her the war finished in the Pacific so she went to lay up and paid off all hands.

And so that was 1945 you were off the Era? Was she carrying war supplies as well during that time? Yeah she did among general cargo. She was carrying calcites from Hobart, from Risdon in Hobart,

23:30 across to Melbourne here.

And what else, sorry, what did you do after the war, once you’d signed off the Era?

I signed on various ships. I think the first one I joined after the war was the Ellaroo and we went from Melbourne to Newcastle and the BHP strike started and so they laid us up. Kept us aboard for a week and then sent us home.

24:00 She was a very comfortable ship that one, they’d just been all done up. Cause we had to pay off because of the BHP strike.

That was, so was there much change between wartime and non-wartime for the merchant navy fellows?

Yeah, as far as conditions went, cause during the war they were,

24:30 the conditions improved a lot because during the war they made an agreement with the Seamen’s Union not to cause trouble, sort of thing, and they brought back old ships that were more or less condemned before the war. Well they were rust buckets.

Were they unsafe?

Well you wasn’t allowed to use a chipping hammer around them,

25:00 it was only the rust holding them together, a lot of them.

Crikey.

They had to keep them on, because that was the only shipping they had. But after the war they started to get new ships and improving the older ships, like that were able to be improved. They started to put instead of one big fo’c’sle, you’d have a room this size and there’d be twelve bunks in here.

25:30 That’s pretty cosy.

Yeah, cause everybody’s smoking too. It would be like going into a fog, trying to get into the door. I get a disability pension because of that.

Were you a smoker?

I did become one, had too, everybody else was smoking, sort of If you couldn’t beat them, join them.

You had no choice really, did you?

No, well you developed a habit even before you started

26:00 smoking.

And so how long were you in the ships for?

Altogether?

When did you sort of wind up?

In the late fifties?

What caused that?

Me wife made me.

What did she say?

Oh she nagged, she didn’t actually nag, she just at me all the time to give it away.

Where were you sailing at this time? Were you doing long trips?

Around the coast. No I wasn’t actually.

26:30 I was, because of her I joined Hyman ships that were only running between here and Tassie and I was home every fortnight.

For how long?

I was a couple of years in those things.

How long would you be home for each fortnight?

A week, something like that.

And what did you do after the ships?

Well I came ashore at my wife’s urging and I got a job in an office in the Gas and Fuel Corporation. It was a good job but I couldn’t

27:00 stand it. The walls was closing in on me. I stuck it out for a couple of years and I had to get out of that. It was a collar and tie job, you know. I joined the Tramways as an overhead linesman and I was quite happy. Stayed there for twenty years.

You must have been happy then.

Yeah, I was one of those people who enjoyed getting me hands dirty I think.

If you’re going to be on a ship, you’ve got to get your hands dirty.

Yeah.

27:30 All right, well we might, I think we’ve done the brief sketch there. We’ll go back to the start and we’ll have a look at things in a bit more detail now.

Yeah, righto.

How much time have we got left on this tape, Stella [interviewer]?

Here you are, here’s me watch.

Great. So you were born in the 1920s, weren’t you?

Twenty six.

In Tassie? Can you remember anything of those early years in Tassie as a small boy before you came to Melbourne?

I can just remember my grandfather,

28:00 Mother used to take me down, cause when they was be overhauling the ships and painting and stuff like that, they’d take me down. I must have only been three or four or something like that. I can remember those times.

What did the ships look like to a three or four year old?

Big.

Did they look like magical, you know, exciting things or just big things?

Just, as I say, when they were overhauled they’d be on the slip

28:30 and they’d be to a little fellow they’d be huge, but they weren’t really. To me they did at that time, I think.

And do you remember your father being away a lot at sea?

Well to me, when he came home it was a big thing to me, sort of thing. He did get a job going at Blue Water at one stage and he was away for three or four months

29:00 I think, cause that was during the Depression and things were pretty tough and he had to take what he could get. And that’s when my mother brought me across to Melbourne here. My brother stayed in Hobart but I, she brought me across here and Dad used to come home because the ship he was in never went to Tassie and that’s why they come to Melbourne.

29:30 As I say I done me schooling here in Victoria.

Your Mum must have missed your Dad an awful lot to move to Melbourne, just to be there when he came home?

Possibly, I think there was a bit of animosity between Mum and her in-laws, sort of thing, my grandparents. Not actually my grandparents as much as her brothers-in-law and their wives and that.

30:00 Cause Mum was a Melbourne girl and Tasmanian people, at that time, tended to be a little bit insular sort of.

That must have been hard for her, being away from home with (UNCLEAR)?

Yes it was, well it was the same with my wife in later years. She didn’t like it over there.

What sort of woman was your Mum? She must have been a pretty strong lady to…?

Oh yeah, she was reasonably strong I

30:30 think. She went to work in a fruit cannery, I think, during the Depression to help things out and she used to make all my own clothes, all the time I was about ten I think.

Was she a good seamstress? Yeah I think so. Well she used to sell some of the things she made so she must have been pretty good.

How does a family survive in the Depression when the husband’s at sea all the time? Does the shipping company pay his wages into…

31:00 an account in Melbourne?

I think Dad made an allowance, cause Dad had a small ticket. He was an officer sort of thing, so he was a little bit better off than being in the fo’c’sle sort of thing. But he would have got a better pay than just an able seaman.

You said he was on Blue Water ships, where was he going, do you know?

I think he was

31:30 going over to Europe and around England and that.

On merchant ships?

They were all merchantmen.

How did the Depression, can you remember how the Depression affected you as a child?

It didn’t affect me so much because they always made sure I got enough, sort of thing, but I think it hit Mum pretty bad and me brother. Cause a lot of the people, especially

32:00 around the ketches and that they were working for just your keep.

What was your brother doing? He was seven years older than you, wasn’t he?

Yeah.

What did he do before he joined the army?

He was in the navy.

The navy, sorry.

He was on the ketches, same as me. And fishing boats, he was on a few fishing boats and that.

Where were the fishing boats working out of?

Hobart, mostly Hobart. But they used to go all around the coast of Tassie, over to

32:30 Flinders Island.

What would they be catching?

Crayfish, shark, scallops.

And you mentioned you granddad was in the whaling industry?

Yeah.

Were they based in Hobart then or around Eden?

Yeah, there were quite a few based in Hobart.

That would have been a wild and woolly way to make a quid?

Yeah, it was pretty hard too. But at that time the whales used to come right up into the Derwent River.

It’s a different world now, isn’t it?

My grandfather used to tell

33:00 me that some of the whalers used to work out in dinghies out of town.

I was going to ask you that because I’ve read about up in Eden they worked off the beaches in dinghies, and it was the same in Hobart, right up the Derwent River they came?

Yeah.

What whales were they? What kind of whales were they?

I don’t know, really. I think they were humpbacks.

Wow, that’s amazing. And when did the whaling industry wind up there in Tassie to that extent?

33:30 Must have been long before I was born. I can remember around the second hand shops and that you could buy pieces of scrimshaw work, made from whale bone. I had some of it here at one stage. I gave it to me daughters. Did your granddad do scrimshaw?

He may have done a little bit, but I can’t recall him ever doing it. He used to make model

34:00 ships.

That’s one of the great lost arts I reckon, scrimshaw. It was beautiful stuff. Did you ever have, I guess that was finished by the time you were on ships wasn’t it? Scrimshaw would have been finished by the time you were on ships?

Oh yes, yes.

What would he make the model ship’s out of? Whale bone or bits of wood?

No, they used to use bits of timber, especially Huon pine, King Billy pine, stuff like that.

And would they be doing scrimshaw and making model ships to sell and get a bit of extra quid or just for a hobby?

Oh I think he only done if for a hobby.

34:30 Cause I know in the house they lived in there was model ship’s all over the place.

And what sort of bones was he using, whale bone or like sperm whale teeth for scrimshaw, what was he working on, the ones you had around here?

It was only made out of timber the stuff he made his boats out of, his models out of.

What about the scrimshaw?

35:00 Oh I don’t know that he did much of it, if he ever did any of it, but I was, the stuff that I seen they made things like crochet needles and knitting needles and things like that. But knitting needles with fancy tops on them and stuff like that.

When you were a boy in Melbourne at Rathdowne Street

35:30 Primary School what sort of games were the kids playing at lunchtime?

Oh, just normal kid stuff, alleys, and they’d be playing football and stuff like that in the playground, cricket in season.

What was your favourite lunchtime activity?

Well when I got older I was always on traffic duty in the street, like the lollypop men do now, they had the older boys doing that.

Was there that much traffic around then?

36:00 Along Rathdowne Street it was pretty hectic, especially brewery wagons, those great draughthorses they had.

How long would it take to pull up one of them? Would you have to put the stop sign up?

They were pretty good those things, as big as they were.

So was it mainly horse drawn traffic along there?

No, there was a lot of motor traffic, cars usually. Cause the licensing,

36:30 the licensing bureau, the motor vehicle licensing was just along the street from us.

Oh it’s still there. It’s been there for a long time then there.

It was part of the Exhibition Building at that time, it’s moved now though.

Yes, further down on Lygon Street now, isn’t it?

Yeah.

This is a slightly indelicate question but all these big cart horses and stuff along the street, there’d be a lot of poop on the street, would that be cleaned up?

Yeah, it didn’t last long.

What would happen to it?

Good manure for the garden. See a woman run

37:00 out with a bucket and a spade and shovel it up, still be warm.

Good for the roses. Yeah.

Did everybody have a veggie garden in the Depression? People trying to scratch out a few extra vegies?

I don’t know that they did. We had one. I remember the house we lived in, at one stage it had a dirty yard. It was only, wouldn’t be much bigger than this room.

37:30 Had a little bit of a garden, think we grew a few peas, beans, or something. Then somebody must have won some money or something and we concreted the yard, that was the end of the garden.

That was a shame.

Yeah.

Did you get postcards from your Dad, from overseas?

We did, yeah, Mum did. We never kept them for some reason, I don’t know.

Did they have pictures on them of exotic places or?

38:00 Oh, yeah, round Ceylon and places like that. Because it was Ceylon then, it wasn’t Sri Lanka, sort of thing. India and places like that, he’d send things over.

Were you one of those kids who kept a map and would plot where he was?

No, no, not really. I think I was too young in the beginning, because when I,

38:30 as I say when I was about eleven I went over with Grandfather and that sort of took all my interest sort of thing, being on the boat with him.

Did you have a wireless at home?

In later years, yeah.

When you were a little kid though, no wireless?

No, had a wind up gramophone though.

What records did you have? Can you remember any of the big hits?

Can’t remember now, Home Sweet Home was one of them, I think.

39:00 That got a bit of a belting.

Would you dance as a little kid, or would you sing along or?

No, I used to sing a bit. I would have liked to learn to play the piano but we couldn’t afford it. Someone gave me a banjo mandolin and I learnt to play that.

Were you good on the banjo mandolin?

Not too bad, I can’t play it now though.

What were your hits? What was your signature tune?

39:30 Oh I don’t know, all sorts of things. I didn’t learn music, I just picked it up by ear sort of thing but I don’t think there was any particular tune that I liked, as long as they had a bit of a bit to them I think.

All right, we might change the tape.

Tape 2

00:31 Trevor tell us about the milkman, the milkies?

You’d hear them early of a morning, there was very few milk bottles. Everybody left their billy out, or their jug or what all. You’d hear them early in the morning. You’d hear the horse coming down the street and the next minute you’d hear the front gate bang and the milky would leave the milk and he’d give a little bit of a yodel.

01:00 What would they yodel?

Oh just general yodelling, sort of thing. No particular tune, and when they come around to collect the bill they’d yodel.

I bet they’d yodel a bit louder then?

Yeah. The baker used to have a cart also. He didn’t even yodel. Did they have their own little call or…?

No, just, “Baker!” or something like that, you know. They used to come around later in the day.

01:30 We had a fella had a room at our place and he was a milkman and he used to take me out sometimes of a Saturday.

Was that good fun?

Sitting in a cart behind a horse, that was good.

Did he give you sixpence for helping out at the end of the day?

No. I didn’t help him, I just sat there with him.

Right. You would have felt very important I reckon?

Yeah, it was good, envy of all the kids.

Oh yeah, definitely.

02:00 Did the rent man come around every Friday or something? Do you remember that?

Oh I think Mum had to go to the estate agent to pay the rent. An uncle of hers, we were rather lucky, an uncle of hers he sold up a place in the bush in South Gippsland and he came down and he was pretty sick and he came down and told my mother he’d buy the house she was

02:30 living in if she looked him, sort of thing. He didn’t live long after that. Bought a beautiful old house in Murchison Street, Carlton and bought two of them for eight hundred pounds at that time. One was recently sold for a million dollars.

Crikey. So he bought this house and you guys got to live there

03:00 with him.

Yeah.

Did the house become your Mum’s when he passed away?

Yeah.

Oh that was a nice little way to end up.

Yeah, she lived in that house for long after the war, a long, long time after the war.

Carlton’s a pretty fancy part of town these days?

Tis now, yeah.

What was it like in those days, in the thirties?

Oh it was one of the better working class suburbs. It was reasonably close to the city where we were.

03:30 Were there Italians there then, in the ’30s?

Yeah, they were all fruiterers or something like that. They weren’t bad, they were quite nice people.

Yeah, I’m sure they were.

Cause they all became Greeks when the war started.

Tell us about that, I’ve heard about that.

Well they, overnight when Mussolini came into the war,

04:00 immediately they’d be Italian shops one day and the next day you’d come around and there’d be a big Greek flag painted on the window, a Greek citizen.

Did that fool anybody?

Not really.

Wow, that would have been very strange for those Italian people then, I imagine. Would have felt…

It must have been hard on them, I mean they, cause even after the war when they come out, there was a bit on animosity between the Italians and Australian people.

04:30 They’ve turned out to be good citizens, I think.

I know early on in the century around Carlton, Fitzroy and Collingwood, there were gangs called ‘pushes’.

Yeah, I can remember them.

Were they still around then when you were a lad?

They were just starting to die out.

What do they remember of them?

Well there used to be one down Collingwood, down around Johnston Street. It was called the Don Mob,

05:00 but they was pretty bad. There was others that was one lot they was all crippled fellas. They called themselves the Crutchies. They had to be very careful, they was worse than a man with two legs, those blokes.

How were a bunch of blokes with one leg going to terrorise you? What would they…

Pardon?

How could a bunch of blokes with one leg terrorise you…?

Belt you with a crutch.

So what would these pushes do? Would they hang around on street corners and stuff?

Yes,

05:30 they was all right, they were sort of, well possibly like the Mafia, they were localised, territorial sort of thing, “You don’t move into my territory,” but they caused more trouble between one another than they did to the normal citizens.

That’s amazing, the Crutchies, I’ve never heard of them, but I must look them up.

They were around Richmond I believe, round Swan Street somewhere.

Was there any push activity around Carlton?

06:00 Yeah I can remember around, there was a little square, a little park, a place, around the place where I lived, they used to get around there of a Saturday night. They never interfered with the kids, they was always all right with the kids.

What would they do? Would they just get drunk and?

Oh, they’d just get drunk and make a noise and play up.

And the polio epidemic.

06:30 When did the polio epidemic start?

It must have been about 1938. It had been going for some time but it was getting pretty serious and it was hitting mainly kids, mainly children and they decided to close the schools to stop the spread of the epidemic, sort of thing, to try and stop it.

07:00 Of course they didn’t close the theatres or anything, they still had the Saturday matinees and all the kids got to them and everything. I mean the kids were still running around the streets, they were still spreading the epidemic, still spreading the disease sort of thing. That’s when me mother turned around, me uncle came over here with one of the boats and he brought a load of apples over, and me mother asked him to take me back to Tassie with him,

07:30 back to me grandparents and they looked after me, sort of thing.

She must have been a bit sad to let you go, I reckon?

Oh, she was, but she thought it was better for me, cause it was much better over there, although it colder and that over there, much cleaner air and stuff over there.

How many people did the polio epidemic affect? Did you know many kids that had it?

There was quite a lot from the school I was in.

08:00 And how would it creep up on them? Would it be a sudden paralysis or what?

I believe it was started with a stiff neck, a lot of it and then it was started with paralysis in the legs, and they was put in an iron lung. They were in an iron lung for months. The children’s hospital, I believe, they had to get extra iron lungs for them.

Would people die from polio?

08:30 Yeah, there were, the older people did I believe.

It must have been a frightening time because there was nothing you could do really was there? You just had to…

No there wasn’t the medication and stuff around like there is now, sort of thing.

Apart from closing the schools did they do any other precautionary measures?

I believe there was some inoculation sort of thing, but don’t know if it did any good.

And you mentioned when you went to Tassie the air was a lot cleaner and so forth, do you mean

09:00 in respect of having polio around or was Melbourne polluted in those days?

Well there was always a certain amount of pollution because it was a lot of people used coal fires, and stuff like that, and over there it was all wood fires, and stuff like that and the air was much cleaner. It still is, even though there’s a lot more industry over there. But well around Collingwood and places like that the air was pretty thick because

09:30 a lot of the boot factories they had boilers and stuff in their boot factories and they used to burn leather. They used to burn all the scrap leather.

That would have stank.

Ooh, I say.

Also would they tan the leather down there or just make the boots there?

Where? In Hobart?

In Collingwood.

Yeah, I believe there were tanners and all that down there.

And before we head to Tasmania, just two last questions about Carlton, were you a Carlton football fan?

10:00 Not really, I think everyone barracked for Collingwood in those days.

Did they? Everybody?

Just about.

Kids who lived in Carlton. Who were the heroes of kids then? Were footy players the heroes, or movie stars or…?

I think the footy players. Football, sort of thing, at that time wasn’t like it is now. They were just ordinary blokes, they weren’t heroes, sort of thing. Normally they would be

10:30 given jobs in a fire brigade or something like that, in those times. There were blokes like Hayden Bunton, the Coventrys, he used to play for Collingwood. Roy Cazaly, he was one of them. All of those blokes were around at that time.

Did you go to the footy? Did you go to the footy much?

Couldn’t afford it. Sometimes we could sneak in through a hole in the fence.

11:00 Would you do things like kids did to make money like collect bottles and stuff like that?

Yeah, beer bottles were beaut, got halfpenny for a beer bottle. An old wine bottle that was beaut, got penny halfpenny for a wine bottle.

So would you get out into the footy grounds after the game and collect all the bottles?

No, the cleaners and the groundsmen used to, they used to go for them. We used to sweat on round the parks and stuff like that.

11:30 What would you spend you halfpenny on?

Save it up for Saturday for the pictures, for the matinee.

All right, tell us about the pictures? Who were the heroes at the pictures?

Oh, I don’t know.

Was Gene Autrey around then?

No, he was later. There was Buck Jones, ooh, who was the other bloke? There was a few, Ken Maynard.

Were there any Australian serials or they all American?

Mainly American I think. 12:00 I can remember one, there was one movie I seen when I was a kid, I think it was called the Orphan of the Wilderness, but I can’t remember much about it.

Was that an Australian movie?

Oh and The Sentimental Bloke, cause that was an early Australian movie.

What did you think of Aussie films then? There weren’t many but did you…?

I think they were more of a novelty than anything else.

12:30 Although I believe the film industry started in Australia, it seemed to be taken over by the Americans, the Americans and the Poms.

Yeah, for sure. All right, lets go to Tasmania. Do you remember the trip over with your uncle?

Vaguely, I think it was pretty choppy.

Bass Strait pretty choppy, is a very mild way of describing the way Bass Strait plays up…?

13:00 Yeah it wasn’t too bad cause I was in one of those things, weren’t too comfortable. Had to sleep in the wheelhouse if I remember.

Were you scared or excited or?

No, weren’t scared, don’t think I was excited actually. Cause I was a bit depressed about having to leave Mum, I think. I wasn’t really a mummy’s boy but she was more or less the only family that I had,

13:30 she was the one that looked after me, sort of thing.

I imagine any eleven year old kid, any eleven year old kid would be depressed at leaving their mum?

I was all right once I got over there with Grandma and Granddad and that.

I have a picture in my head of your Granddad, as an ex-whaling man, with a big great beard and a pipe

No.

and a woolly jumper, what did he look like, what was he like?

Well there’s a painting round here of him. You have a look at it after. It was in a pub in Hobart

14:00 I seen it, I was down there last year and I seen it and I said to the bloke, “That’s my grandfather,” and he said, “You’re joking.” I said, “No, I’m not.” No he was a very kind man to us, because he had a shocking temper. He was known as ‘Stormy’ around the coast, around Hobart,

14:30 but he was very good to us. You didn’t answer him back though. I remember I answered him back once and I can still feel the clout, even when I think of it now.

So he was very much spare the rod and spoil the child, was he? That philosophy??

He had six sons himself, sort of thing, he was the boss all the time.

What did he look like?

Just a general like grandfather.

15:00 I don’t know if I can explain it actually. He was, they tell me I look like him sometimes. I had a moustache for some time and they said I was the living image of him with a moustache.

So he had a mo?

Yeah.

I thought with the navy you either had a beard or were clean shaven up until a while ago?

Oh that was the navy, we weren’t navy.

Sorry, I keep making that mistake.

15:30 So that rule about whiskers doesn’t apply in the merchant navy?

No. No, it was only in the navy.

And was your Grandmother still alive at that time.

Yeah. She was over a hundred when she went. She died about 1960, I think.

And what sort of woman was she? 16:00 When she was younger she was a very kind woman. But as she got older she got, I don’t know, she was always grumbling, sort of thing.

We’ll just wait till that helicopter goes…

You get a lot of that around here.

Going, going,

16:30 gone. So how did you find settling in then with your Grandfather and your Grandmother?

All right.

Were you straight out to work with him on the ketches or were you at home for a while with your Grandmother?

Oh only a week or so and then Grandfather come in, cause I was at a loose end and they tried to get me to go to school, like they took me down to the

17:00 school, and because I come from Melbourne and the epidemic was on they thought it was better that I didn’t go to school amongst the other kids. So Grandma didn’t want me under her feet all the time so she must have asked Granddad, or Granddad said he’d take me away with him. There was enough room on board, there was accommodation

17:30 for four people on the board, cause I had a bunk to meself.

Were you sleeping in the same room as the other men, though?

There was two blokes slept forward, in the fo’c’sle and Grandfather slept in the cabin aft, and there was another bunk in there and I slept in that.

How was it though going to sea for the first time with your granddad in his boat, a working boat?

18:00 Oh I was rather excited, I think.

Can you remember what it was like?

I suppose it would be like a kiddies first trip in a ferry down the Yarra, something like that.

Did you get to do any work with him, or you just watching?

Yeah, I used to, I couldn’t handle the timber or anything like that. I wasn’t big enough, but I used to make the tea, and light the fire. I could boil spuds and that. He showed me how to boil vegetables and

18:30 things like that. And that was my job to clean up. I done the cleaning up and all that sort of thing and if we was in port, if we were unloading or loading or anything like that, I had to run messages and things like that.

Did they have a nickname for you on the boat? Did they have a nickname for you?

Only when my father was there, cause I was the same name as my father and they called me Tiny, but it didn’t last, I got rid of that when I

19:00 got older.

I bet you did. You mentioned before that your father would take you for trips on boats, on ships and so forth in holidays, was this before or after this time?

Yes, well it was before, there was sometime before, once, just before, it must have been 1939 before the war started, it would have been in January 1939, he, I went over there and he took me

19:30 for a trip, he owned a fishing boat, he bought a fishing boat at that time and he took me away on that and we were away for a few weeks. Went right up the East Coast, up around Flinders Island, we was crayfishing, and we went right round Flinders Island, Cape Barren Island, Clarke Island, all around there. And I see one very interesting part of it, there was in between Flinders Island and

20:00 Cape Barren Island, he said to me, I was down in the cabin, I think I was getting the lunch or something, and Dad called me up, and he said, “Come and have a look at this,” and I went up and there was a big three-masted barque sitting up there, and she’s on a reef there, on Vansittart Reef. And here’s this thing, at that time, in 1939, she had all her spars were in place and everything, looked just like she was at anchor there,

20:30 and I said to Dad “I’d like to go in closer” and he said, “We can’t get any closer.” There was a nasty bit of a chop running and I seen photos of her after and she’s gradually falling to pieces, but it still had the figurehead on and everything. It was a big steel barque; the Farsylinder was the name of it, a big Norwegian thing. I never forget that, she really stood out.

That would have been an amazing sight to see. Yeah,

21:00 it was, it was really good.

Do you know anything of the history of that ship? Do you know anything of the history of how it ran aground and what happened to the men?

Yeah, instead of going to the North of Flinders Island, for some reason he went to the, went between Flinders Island and Cape Barren Island and this Vansittart Reef, it’s very bad there,

21:30 and he went on that and he realised he was on it, and they dropped the anchor and they got all the hands off. He went to Melbourne and got a salvage tug and he went back to try and get her off but she was too hard on, they couldn’t her off, so they just left her. They pulled all the important stuff off her, whatever cargo they could get, they got off, but I believe some fishermen went back to get the figurehead,

22:00 they couldn’t get her off, she was welded on. She would have been worth a fortune if they had of got the figurehead.

Yeah, do you remember what the figurehead looked like?

No, we couldn’t get close enough to see it.

Gee, Bass Strait’s a pretty treacherous waterway isn’t it?

Yeah, it was. Well Grandfather reckoned it was the worst in the world, cause Grandfather had been around the Horn and everywhere, been around the Cape of Good Hope and.

When you think about it, you’ve got the Pacific Ocean

22:30 there, and the Indian there, just trying to squash through that narrow neck of land…?

Yeah, I’ve got a book here with all the wrecks in Bass Strait and there’s thousands of them.

Did you ever have a chance or a need to call into King Island at all on your trips?

Yeah, I was, only in peacetime. I used to go in there when I was on a ship called the Narracoopa. I used to go in there and pick up cattle.

23:00 But as a matter of fact I was barred from the only pub on the island.

I think you’ve got to tell us the rest of that story?

We took… (TAPE STOPS)

So you got barred from the only pub on King Island?

We took a load of beer over there, almost a full load I think it was. It was put ashore, the wharfies took it up,

23:30 and when we knocked off, about half past four, I said, “I’m going up to have a beer.” So we walked up to the pub and it was seven pence a glass at that time, and I walked into the pub and said, “Give us a beer.” He put the beer in front of me and I put seven pence on the bar and he said, “Another threepence,” and I said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “It’s threepence air freight,” threepence a glass air freight on the beer. And

24:00 I said, “We just brought you up about a hundred bloody barrels.” And he said, “Yeah, I’m still using the stuff that had to be flown in.” I said, “I’m not paying, I don’t want it, I’ve changed me mind,” and picked up me seven pence and went to walk out. And the copper was behind the bar, the sergeant of police, he was the other side of the bar. He come around and he said, “You owe that man ten pence.”

24:30 I said, “No, I don’t.” I said, “I didn’t drink the beer.” He said, “That doesn’t matter, you ordered it, you drink it.” I said, “I’m not drinking it,” and he turned around to me and said, “Get out of this pub and don’t come back.” And he said, “If I catch you on the island, I’ll arrest you.” I said, “I won’t come on your bloody island then.” And anyhow the next day he come down and the policeman come down and he called the skipper out and

25:00 he said to him, “You mightn’t sail today, I’ve got one of your men under open arrest.” The skipper said, “Which one?” and he said, “That bloke there.” We was loading cattle up. “That one there,” he said and he said, “Yeah, that figures.” Anyway he pulled me up into the wheelhouse and he give me a talking to. He said, “I’m like the king on this island.”

25:30 He said, “You don’t cause trouble on my island.” Anyhow he said, “You’re barred from the pub.” I said, “Good, it doesn’t worry me.” Next time we went over there it was King Island Cup Day and we started taking our own beer over with us, take half a dozen bottles for our own use. And the next trip was King Island Cup and they had visitors from everywhere,

26:00 used to come over for the Cup and they declared it a holiday. It was a public holiday, so we didn’t have to work and we had his beer on board and he never had a skerrick of beer in the pub and he come down and he asked us to take his beer off and we said, “No, it’s a holiday, we’re sailors, not wharfies, we’re not touching your beer.” Anyhow the skipper come down and asked us, “Will you

26:30 move it? I’ll give you double time for the day.” “No, we don’t want it.” We’re sitting there having a bottle of beer each ourselves and we wouldn’t touch it and he’s got all these people up there dying of thirst.

So you got your own back on him?

Yeah.

Good on you.

Anyhow the policeman come down, and he stood on the wharf and he ordered us to, and we said, “We’re on our territory now, we’re not on your territory, and we’re not touching the beer. If you want the beer, get

27:00 it yourself.”

So did they?

Ah? No. They had to drink top shelf till the next day, till the wharfies went back to work.

The lesson there is don’t cross...

Oh it wasn’t long after that the pub burnt down anyhow.

All right, let’s talk about with your grandfather, how long were you with your grandfather as a kid, when you were?

I was six months during the epidemic

27:30 period, and Grandfather died, I think it was, he got sick, he was still running the May Queen in 1940, but he got rather sick. He had stomach cancer, I believe, and he didn’t last, he went off in 1942. He was only seventy two, or something like that, he wasn’t a really old man.

28:00 The way he worked, he was a hard worker all his life, sort of thing, but my father took over his work, took over his boat the May Queen, and by that time I was with my uncle.

When you finished with your grandfather the first time though, when the epidemic was on, you went back to Melbourne, did you feel like going back to school, or had you had enough?

28:30 No, I didn’t, I thought I was too grown up to go to school.

How old were you? Thirteen?

No, I wouldn’t have been twelve at that time. I think I might have been almost twelve.

And you said that the last two years of school you had a pretty inspiring teacher?

Yeah, he was very good. He’d been in the first, he

29:00 was in Light Horse Cavalry in the First World War and you’d be having a history lesson, might be about the Middle East, about Israel, Palestine at that time and he’d sort of drift off the history lesson and start talking about his experiences in the cavalry, sort of thing. And he was most interesting and he was a really good man, he was a

29:30 great teacher. He got more out of the kids than a lot of them did, sort of thing.

Can you remember anything he might have said about the First World War, his experiences there?

Not really, only general stuff, sort of thing. He used to talk about Jerusalem and places like that, that he seen and he was with another bloke, a bloke that was in the Light Horse, a bloke called

30:00 Idriess, he was a writer, and he was with him and Idriess wrote in his books, a lot of the stuff the teacher told us.

And was he the one who encouraged you to sit for the scholarship for high school?

Yeah, he said to me when my mother said we wouldn’t be taking it up, he said, “It’s a shame, he’s a rather promising sort of a student.”

30:30 He said, “He absorbs a lot.” He said, “He can’t put it on.” I could never put things on paper but I could, I sort have had it in me head.

And you didn’t want to go to high school, or your Mum thought, you’d better get a job?

No, I didn’t want to go to high school. The money wasn’t too bad then, there was a bit of money around at the time as things were starting to pick up with the war work and the things. 31:00 But I don’t know, I just didn’t want to go. I didn’t feel like it, I thought I’d had enough school. I don’t think it done me any harm, cause I learnt as much at sea, I think, as I would have in a classroom.

Oh I’m sure you would probably learn more. So what year is this then, thirty eight, thirty nine?

It was, that was in 1940 when I left school.

Right, so the war’s already broken out, can you remember when the war broke out? Is that a date that sticks in your mind?

Well I think,

31:30 at school I think they told us that the war. Heard the adults talking about it, you know, that there was likely to be war and all that sort of thing, but I think the school tried to drum a bit of patriotism into the kids, sort of thing.

How did they do that?

Oh, by giving us little flags to carry round, and all that sort of thing.

32:00 Cause it was all the Union Jack then, nobody thought about flying the Australian flag then, it was always the Union Jack.

As a kid did you feel like a British subject then, or an Aussie?

Well we were British. I mean we were closer to the time that people come out here, especially in Tasmania. Tasmania was always very British. They are very English people over there.

32:30 So you didn’t think it was strange that you got a Union Jack and not an Aussie flag to wave?

No, well we flew the Union Jack in the school. I mean the history we were taught was always British history, there was very little Australian history.

Yes, it’s a funny thing that, isn’t it?

Yes. I think that’s why this is a good thing. Teach kids in the future about some of the things that happened in our time, sort of thing.

Yeah, for sure.

33:00 And your brother joined the navy, when did he join the navy?

Well it must have been, I think it was late 1939, I think.

Can you remember him in his uniform, around the house?

Yes, I can remember him. He was tall and thin and he used to wear his uniform skin tight. It took two of them to put his jacket on him.

And so is this one of the famous tiddly uniforms he had made?

Yeah, yeah, that’s right, yeah. And he had a

33:30 battered old hat. They not allowed to wear things like that now. I see a bloke in a march with one, I said to him, “My brother would have killed for that hat.”

Was that the thing to have, a battered old hat?

Yeah, it made you look like you’d been in the navy for a long time.

Oh I see.

And your collar was, they boiled it until it was almost faded white, things like that. I remember he used to come home

34:00 on weekend leave when I was down at Flinders and he’d bring all his mates home and all you could see on Sunday morning was white shirt fronts hanging on the clothes line. They be getting them all ready, tiddlied up to go ashore and chase around after girls and stuff like that.

Would they get your mum to do the washing or would they do it themselves?

No, they’d do it themselves.

Sailors and merchant men are like that aren’t they? They’re very self sufficient.

34:30 Well we had to do things for ourselves, because there’s nobody else to do them for us.

Yeah, on ships they have, sailors do a lot of work that’s normally considered, in those days, women’s work, don’t they? Yeah.

They do their own sewing and…

I done a lot of sewing for me wife. If I wanted a button sewn on, she’d say, “There’s a needle and cotton, do it yourself.”

So your brother did he look like a dashing, sort of grown-up, soldierly

35:00 kind of fellow to you? Did he look exciting?

Oh yeah, cause he was always a bit taller. He’s not now, cause he’s in a pretty bad way now, but at that time he was pretty sort of larrikin.

Did you see him again before you went away? Like did he go to war and come back at all? Did he have any tales for you of action?

No, not really. I remember him once, he

35:30 came home once through mid week. There was a group of them came in, just called in, only called in to get a cup of tea, and he had all these other blokes with him and Mum was talking away to one of them and she said something, “Are you one of Jack’s mates?” and he said, “No, I’m his prisoner, he’s in charge of the naval patrol.” He was the bloke who’d take them back if they were absent without

36:00 leave and they’d arrested him and they’d taken him back and they’d pulled their arm bands off and brought their prisoner in for a cup of tea.

Very civilised of them. What did your mum think of that?

Oh, just one of those things.

Was she a good, you know, go with the flow kind of…?

Yeah. Oh yeah, she liked the boys coming in. Even when I used to take my ship mates home too and they were always welcome.

36:30 A couple of them, sometimes they’d come and stay at home and if I wasn’t home they’d come looking for a bed, sort of thing. Might have to sleep on the deck but they were welcome. Get a couple of blankets and…

That’s good, good natured, kind woman.

Oh yeah, she was kind enough.

So 1940, your brother’s joined the navy, you’ve given the big thumbs up to high school, I’m not going there, and you head back to

37:00 Tasmania, did you go back with your uncle at this stage?

I think I went back on the Nairana.

By yourself?

Yeah.

Big grown-up fourteen year old lad?

Yeah, I got put in a cabin with a couple of soldiers, a couple of young blokes. They looked after me, they were pretty good blokes. I can remember those fellows.

Cause you wouldn’t send a fourteen year old kid by himself these days on a trip like that. You wouldn’t be allowed to, it was a different world then

37:30 though.

I think kids were different then. Most kids they left school at fourteen, they went to work and that and it was the way they were brought up. I mean, well my grandkids now, they were all eighteen and nineteen when they left school, I mean, even a well educated kid at that time left school when he was sixteen.

And who met you at the dock in Tassie?

38:00 The ship only went to Launceston, I think, if I remember rightly, and you had to get the train then.

You got the train by yourself?

Yeah. I had a letter, somebody give a note. I think somebody took me down to the train, took me to the station, it might have been one of the ship’s officers, I can’t remember

38:30 now. And they took me to the train and put me on the train and I think I was met down in Hobart.

Did the letter just say ‘Put this boy on a train’? Yeah, something like that, yeah.

It’s a nicer world in some ways.

Yeah. Oh the people were different I think.

Do you think it was a better world in those days?

Yes, I don’t think, it changed, but I

39:00 don’t think it was really for the better in some ways.

Right we might change tapes there.

Tape 3

00:32 Tell us how your Granddad got the name ‘Stormy Jack’?

Well he was in a regatta and a few of them together and he was in the lead and he swung round the buoy and he had just made his turn and the one coming behind him, a vessel called the Burnganna, she was a slightly bigger vessel than him.

01:00 The jig boom swung across his stern, the wheels right on the stern of those things, and as the jig boom swung, to save getting thrown, getting knocked over the side with the end of the jig boom, he had to grab hold of it. And when it swung away, he was still hanging onto it and he had to finish the regatta on another vessel. He done the regatta and some of the old timers

01:30 they told me you could hear him bellowing all over Hobart. He was so wild, after that when they seen him coming, they used to call him Stormy. And they put it in the local paper, the Mercury, and somebody took it down to him and he screwed it up and put it over the side. He wouldn’t read it, “I don’t want to read that so and so thing,” sort of.

02:00 Ever after that if anybody ever mentioned to him, he’d just about kill them.

If they called him Stormy?

Yeah, that’s why they called him Stormy, because of his temper.

Well it’s a very accurate name isn’t it? Crikey. Did you inherit that temper?

No, I don’t think so.

Right, you’re on this train from Launceston up to Hobart, who met you at Hobart?

It might have been me brother, I think.

Was he down there as well, at that stage?

Yeah. He was working in the

02:30 ketches.

So he hadn’t joined the navy yet?

No.

Ok, so this is about?

1938.

That was the first time wasn’t it?

Yeah.

The second time you came back after leaving school, what year was that? Was that about 1940?

That was 1941, when I went back down there, that was January 1941. It was only a few weeks after I left school.

03:00 And so this time you’re going down there to work, aren’t you?

Yeah.

And did your grandfather take you on board with him at that stage or?

No, I went with me uncle. And what sort of man was your uncle?

Oh, he was a very good man. He was very kind sort of a bloke. I got on very well with him actually, but he died a few years ago. He’s the bloke that gave the material for that book to the fellow.

03:30 He stayed at sea right to the finish.

And you were working with him on the timber ketches straight away?

Yeah.

How much, was this on the May Queen still?

No, that was on the Enterprise.

And describe the Enterprise for us, what did she look like?

She was much the same as the others, but she was about 40 ton, I think. But she

04:00 was a very clean vessel. Owned by Jones & Co, the jam people, IXL, but she was a very clean vessel, but hard work, the same as the others. She used to use, carry bigger timber and she was brought ashore, loaded and unloaded with a mechanical winch, like a motor winch.

You had a winch on deck

04:30 or that would be on shore?

That would be on deck.

How many masts did she have?

Two, she was a ketch.

How many sails did she carry?

The same as that one up there.

Can you run through those again for me?

Normally she only carried a mainsail and a mizzen and a jib and a staysail.

Was that when you started to learn to sail craft?

More or less, yeah.

Tell us about the things you had to learn, like repairing

05:00 sails, what would that involve?

You had to patch them, normally if they were badly worn it was done by a professional sail maker, but any small stuff, you’d do it before it got to bad, sort of thing, cause it didn’t last long, only had to be a pinhole and a decent wind would soon make it bigger.

And how did you repair

05:30 it, what would you do?

Oh just sew it, put a little patch in it.

What were they made of?

Heavy, duck canvas, light weight canvas.

And you said you had to use a thing called a…?

Sailmaker’s palm.

What was that made of? What did it look like?

Leather, leather with a little metal insert in it, which you used to push the needle through.

How big were the needles?

06:00 I can show them to you afterwards, they was like heavy darning needles, three sided darning needles.

And what would you be sewing the sails with?

Hemp twine.

So it’s pretty rugged stuff, isn’t it?

I can show, I’ve still got some, I can show it to you.

Well we’ll have a look afterwards, but for the purposes of the camera it’s good to get your description of it. So you would be repairing sails, sewing patches on sails, you learnt about rigging and so forth?

06:30 Yeah, rigging , I did all sorts of splicing and that sort of thing.

What does splicing involve?

Well joining rope together, or putting an eye in a piece of rope.

How would you put an eye in a piece of rope, for instance?

Bend it over, and weave the strands through its own part, sort of thing.

And the ropes you were using in those days, were they all hemp ropes?

No, they were sisal, manila.

07:00 Manila was popular because it was very strong. You also used coconut fibre in some cases.

Did the ropes all have different characteristics? Like a hemp rope was good for something and a sisal was good for something else?

Yeah.

What would they be used for?

Well the manila was the most popular, but it was the most expensive, it came from India or somewhere.

07:30 But just for general work, just for normal sort of work you used sisal.

What was manila rope made of?

It was a grass, but I couldn’t actually tell you what it was, it was very much finer fabric than what sisal was.

08:00 Ok, so there was sail repairing and you’re learning splicing, what other things are you learning on board?

Oh, just general seaman ship, how to steer, get to know a bit about the weather and learn the compass and stuff like that.

Did you still use the stars in those days at all? Did you still use the stars?

Not so much in the ketches, because we used to use, used to, we didn’t sail at night, sort of thing, it was through the day.

08:30 If we were caught out anywhere at night we would go and anchor somewhere, under shelter.

Would you have to learn to read the stars? Was that part of your job as well?

Well, I didn’t, but to get a ticket I would have. I would have had to learn celestial navigation, but I was the only one of the family that didn’t.

Well we won’t tell anybody.

Pardon?

We won’t tell anybody. So were you painting the boat as well and stuff like that?

09:00 Yeah, you done that, you done all that yourself.

This is a ketch, it’s a wooden boat isn’t it?

Yeah.

So what would you have to do to ensure the wood didn’t get wormy and rotten and stuff like that?

They were overhauled every twelve months. You went, you pulled it up on the slip and a

09:30 surveyor comes out. They check, the surveyors checked it all out and everything, made sure she was still seaworthy. And they made recommendations about anything that wanted doing and we had to go and do it. It was the skipper’s responsibility to see that it was done and then we, to do that we were paid the equivalent of a trip to do that, and

10:00 instead of going for a trip we worked in the slip and on the painting, done any repairs, removed any rust, anything like that.

Chipping barnacles off?

Yes, scrapping all the hull down and doing the, giving it a coat of boot topping and all that. What’s boot topping?

Well it’s a special paint they use under the water, under water sort of thing, to help preserve the

10:30 And how many crew did she carry?

Oh the bigger one’s they carried three, sometimes four, but on the smaller ones, as I said, the Tyanna there was only two of us.

And on the Enterprise, was that one of the bigger ones?

There was three of us, yeah, there was the skipper and me self and another lad.

And so what would a trip be? Tell us about a trip. You’d

11:00 leave Hobart in the morning say?

Yeah, possibly. Sometimes at daylight. Especially in the summertime you’d leave at, according to the weather. If the weather was bad you couldn’t go, sort of thing, but if the weather was good, if you had a good wind, you’d leave at daylight. Usually stay on board that night, leave that night and you’d take off and go down, well all depend where you go.

11:30 Some places were further than others. You’d go down, in the bigger ones we’d go right out, sort of out round below Bruny Island, round there and we’d go down into some of the mills down Storm Bay or Lune River or somewhere and pick up a load. If the weather was all right, we’d sail, if it was no good we’d oil down.

12:00 Oil down?

Yeah, go down by under the engine. Most of them only had old car engines in them and marinised car engines and some of the newer ones had diesel engines. It was an old Rugby, the one we had in. It was all right, it worked all right.

An old car engine wouldn’t get you,

12:30 do all that much, would it, for a boat? A car engine would give you all that much motorage for a boat, for a ship that size?

Oh they were truck engines, but pretty powerful I think.

When you pulled up to these rivers, these mills that were only accessible by water half the time, the blokes who worked in the mills would they be stuck up there for months on end just sawing wood?

Yeah, sometimes they used to come out with us?

They’d be pretty rough and ready types though, I’d take it out there?

13:00 Oh yeah, pretty wild. Cause we used to take cases of beer to them and stuff like that.

Crikey, I bet that would be the first thing unloaded?

Oh yeah, but sometimes if we were stuck there overnight, we’d go up and use there facilities, sort of thing, go up and use their shower or something. Because they’d usually rigged up a shower and stuff like that for themselves, cause they had a donkey boiler to get a bit of hot water and stuff

13:30 like that. It was all their, they had steam engines to run their sawmills and stuff, and what they’d do, they’d build a little railway down from their mill, down to the waterfront and that’s how they’d get their timber down onto the jetty.

And would their facilities be pretty rough or would they?

Oh yeah. Cause there was no women up there, didn’t have to be too particular.

14:00 And what sort of food would they be getting off you? Just tinned, bully beef and?

They eat all right, they had to make a lot of stews and that. I know we did. Much the same as us I think.

Mutton mainly would it be?

Yeah. A bit of kangaroo sometimes I think.

What sort of, cause you’re up in the wilderness of Tasmania there aren’t you? Up the rivers?

Well we weren’t that far out of Hobart

14:30 at that time.

Well any ever sightings of Tasmanian tigers? No, but some, they used to tell me there were still some round in the scrub. I don’t know if it’s true or not, whether they’d had too much of their beer or something.

What beer would it be? Tassie beer, would it be Cascade?

Yeah, Cascade, mainly Cascade at that time.

Would have been very nice.

Well it was the best beer in Australia at that time,

15:00 course I didn’t drink too much of it me self.

Still not far off being the best beer in Australia. It’s a good drop, Cascade.

Oh, it’s improved a bit, it has.

And you’d be loading timber onto your ship, would it be sawn into lumber?

Yeah. It was sawn timber, it wasn’t rough timber, cause they cut it all up at the mill and that.

And what sort of wood would they be harvesting up there?

Oh it would be just hardwood I think,

15:30 and sometime we’d get a bit of, occasionally we’d get a bit of Huon pine, but not a lot, because it was pretty expensive.

And how many tons would they load onto you?

Well I suppose, take them three weeks to get a boatload, in some cases.

How much is a boatload?

Well

16:00 I suppose about fifty ton, or something like that.

Was it all stored below decks or was some lashed on deck?

No, it was as much on deck as there was below.

And if it’s brought on with a winch, what’s the heavy work involved, what’s have you got to do that’s?

Well they had to, they had to make it up in bundles, and swing it across and load it, and drop it down into the hatch.

16:30 And you had one man on the wharf and you had two men down below and you had to be very careful to keep your load even, otherwise if you put too much one side, she’d just tip over.

I hope that never happened.

It was the same applied with unloading it. You always made sure you unloaded it, do a little bit either side as you go, sort of thing.

Any accidents?

Oh there

17:00 were a couple turned over.

Did you ever see any of them turn over?

No. I heard about them though. The Mary Ann that turned over but they got her upright again. She turned over twice, the second time they didn’t bother.

Gosh, what about accidents in the terms of loads splitting and a cascade of timber hitting you on the head or…?

Oh I fell down a hatch once, when I was a kid.

17:30 Didn’t seem to do me much harm. Was only about five foot, I think.

And then you turn around and head back to Hobart?

Yeah.

Ever anybody fall overboard?

Oh I got knocked over the side once, she jibbed and knocked me over the boom, knocked me over the side, picked me up, swung around and picked me up. Were you wearing lifejackets?

18:00 No.

So you had to be a good swimmer?

I don’t think we had any.

Were they the type of boats, ships that could turn around pretty quickly?

Yeah they was pretty manoeuvrable.

How did you feel when you got knocked overboard? Were you pretty worried or?

Cold.

I bet you felt cold. But were you worried? Did you think “I hope they can find me”? Or did you think?

No, I knew I’d be all right, I think, but they seen me, they seen me go over.

Thank goodness for that.

18:30 Yeah.

Where were you when you went overboard?

I think in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel I think.

And this timber that you’re picking up, what’s it going to be used for? Is it war effort stuff?

Well, before the war it was used for general building and all that stuff, but during the war they was building a lot of army stuff, huts and you know, barracks and all that sort of thing.

19:00 And the smaller ships, the smaller stuff was used for ammunition cases. They even used Jones & Co’s factory for canning, their canned food, the stuff like that.

What are you hearing at this stage? You’re still only a kid, you’re fourteen, but you’re working, you’re on a boat, you’re getting into the docks and so forth, are you managing to get your hands on a newspaper

19:30 and read about the war, just to see how your brother’s going perhaps or are you hearing much about what’s going on?

Oh you heard things. You only heard what they tell you, sort of thing. Cause you didn’t hear a lot of the things about ships going down around the coast and that.

They never told you about that?

Oh, they wouldn’t tell you about that, didn’t want panic, sort of thing.

Pretty hard to keep it secret though. What do you do about all the men on board and their wives

20:00 wondering where they are and what would they tell them?

I don’t know, cause at that time I didn’t realise that there was a war on sort of thing. It didn’t sink in, sort of thing. It wasn’t until I seen a ship go down that I realised that there was a bloody war on.

That was ’43 wasn’t it?

Yeah that was 1943.

So with the, just let me check my notes for a second, you’re on the Enterprise at this stage aren’t you?

Yeah.

And then the Tianna?

20:30 Yeah.

When did you swap to the Tianna? Was that with your uncle again?

Yeah, he changed because the bloke that had the Tianna had a rather large family and he had all his family working with him, a bloke called Billy Price. He eventually bought the Enterprise, but he had all his sons working with him. I think there was about four of them,

21:00 and he had them all, and the Tianna was too small for him and he come and seen me uncle. I think there was a bit of a cash exchange went with it, sort of thing, he’d take over the Enterprise and me uncle would take over the Tianna. And she was small enough for two of us to handle, sort of thing, so by that time I had a bit of experience, you know, was a bit of used to him, 21:30 sort of thing, and for quite some time worked just the two of us. But it took us a bit longer, but he gave me a bit extra pay, sort of thing, and made it quite easy until one young kid he come down. He was looking for a job and his father come down and talked Uncle

22:00 Allen into giving him a job. Anyhow he come with us, he didn’t like it very much. I think he only lasted two months.

Not suited for a life at sea?

Well he stayed at sea, but he didn’t like it on the ketches. He reckoned it was too hard and too long.

How old was he?

Oh he was, I think he was a year younger than me, I think.

Were you doing the big, old time seaman number

22:30 on him?

No, no, nobody did at that time, sort of just a job.

And how much was your uncle paying you?

I was getting about three pound, ten a trip I think.

And what would you spend that on?

Oh, pictures, things like that. Saved a few bob.

Were you living with your uncle back in Hobart?

No, living with my father.

Was your mother there then?

23:00 No, my father, they’d separated by then. My father got married again.

And how was that, living with your Dad?

Oh it was all right for a while, but my mother-in-law got a bit fed up with me I think. She was a lot younger than Dad and she reckoned she was too young to be looking after a teenage son, sort of thing.

How did that make you feel?

Oh, I didn’t feel much about it, I didn’t go much on her.

23:30 So did you go somewhere else after that?

Yeah, I went with my brother. Cause me brother was married by then.

Was he out of the war by then?

Yes, he got hurt, something fell on his foot. He got his foot jammed or something, he had to give away the navy. But he finished up going on the coast, going on the merchant navy.

Did he tell you about his time in the navy?

24:00 Where was he?

Well he was up around the Islands. He was in corvettes. His last one was the Burnie. He was a petty officer in the Burnie. But he didn’t say much about it.

Was he in the Middle East, in the navy in the Middle East at all?

No, no.

Just up around the Islands?

Only round the Islands.

He didn’t talk much about it?

No.

Ok, you’re staying with your brother, you’re

24:30 working on the Tianna, for another year or so, at any time were you thinking “Well when I’m sixteen I’m going to hop off here and join the navy,” or were you still thinking about the merchant navy?

Oh, I was thinking, more or less been conditioned to go towards the merchant navy sort of. So did your family not have a very high regard for the navy, for the military navy?

25:00 Dad said at one stage said they were a pack of bloody creampuffs.

Really? Tell us about that. What did he say?

Oh he said, “Getting round in bloody fancy uniforms, look like Hollywood sailors,” or something.

They weren’t the real sailors?

No. He reckons they done most of their time in the depot, he said. Well a

25:30 lot of them now, they say they agree. They said a merchant seaman does his time at sea, they don’t do any time at a depot.

Right, so the merchant navy was the real deal, as far as the Langfords were concerned. And your grandfather was Stormy Jack, did your dad have a nickname? Did he have a similar kind of temper?

No, I don’t think so.

So after twelve months on the Tianna,

26:00 you’re about sixteen now, aren’t you?

Yeah.

Did you feel it was your duty to do something for the war, like join the merchant navy, or that wasn’t part of it?

No, it wasn’t duty, I think I just wanted to spread out a bit, sort of thing. I got so far, I wanted to go a bit further, sort of thing. If you understand what I mean?

Yeah, yeah and was Japan in the war at this stage? Was Japan in the war by this stage?

Yeah, they would

26:30 have just been, I think.

So this is the end of ’41, start of forty two?

Forty two, yeah. I had a talk to my uncle about it and he said, “Well if you want to go on big ships, I’ll give you a reference and that.” And he gave me a reference and I took it across to the shipping master in the Mercantile Marine Office,

27:00 and he asked me a few questions, cause he knew me father and grandfather and that, and he asked me if I could read a compass. I said, “Yes.” “Can you splice?” I said, “I can splice rope,” and he said, “You realise what, when you’re an AB [Able Seaman] you’ve got to be able to splice wire too?” I can remember that. I said, “Yes.”

27:30 He said, “You’ll have to learn that before, and you’re a bit young to go as an able seaman now.” He said, “I’d like you to go, to do twelve months at least before you go for AB.” So I said, “Right-o.” Then as I said I wanted to join the Alma Doeppel, and the army took her over, so I joined the Kermandie, much to my regret.

28:00 And it was my father did his lolly. He didn’t think I should have gone into it, he was going to give me a hiding.

What did he think you should have done instead?

Well he said I should have stayed on the ketches, or something I suppose. Cause he didn’t like the crowd on the Kermandie, anyway it was too late then, I’d signed on. Couldn’t do much about it,

28:30 so I went away. But as I said it was pretty rough, you had to supply everything yourself.

You say your Dad didn’t want you going one the Kermandie, he’d heard it had a pretty bad mob on board, did ship’s have reputations for being good or bad ships?

Oh yeah, they were. The worse a ship was, the worse sort of crowd she got on board her.

29:00 So what was wrong with the Kermandie then? What made her so bad?

Well I think the fact she wasn’t covered by the Union for one thing and for another she was the type of ship that attracted a bad sort of a crowd. I mean, you worked long hours and hard and at that time

29:30 when I first joined her our watches were four on and four off. That’s four hours on and four hours off, and that included dog watches too. You had to do dog watches too. That was pretty rough.

And that would be every day, four on, four off? That’s when you were at sea, yeah. In port you worked from eight till five.

And with it being, like you said, a poor ship

30:00 why would fellows go and work on that ship, rather than work on a better ship?

Well some of them had been kicked out of the Union for playing up and.

So you had roughnecks and guys who’d work for the smell of a crust of bread?

Yeah, yeah.

Sounds charming.

Some of them liked it. The officers were all right, cause in most cases the officers were part owners. There was no refrigeration or electric light, or anything

30:30 like that.

And Kermandie was she a sailing boat too, or a steamboat?

Yeah, that’s her up there, the four master.

Right, so how long was she?

She was three hundred and fifty ton and she would have been possibly a hundred foot long.

And how many men did she carry?

She carried four

31:00 ABs, an ordinary seaman, deck boy, bosun, skipper, mate, cook and two engine drivers.

So were you the ordinary seaman deck boy on that boat?

Yeah, I’m the ordinary seaman.

Was that a little bit of a step down from what you were doing on the ketches?

I didn’t actually, the only title I had was a deck hand on the ketches.

But you would have had a bit more responsibility probably, wouldn’t you?

31:30 Oh yeah, yeah.

And you said you had to learn splicing wire, is that very different to splicing rope?

Yeah, it’s much harder. I don’t think I could do it now. It’s been many years since I done it. I still do a bit of rope splicing occasionally but.

Is it harder simply because the wire’s harder or is it a different process?

It’s a slightly different process because you’ve got six strands in a wire and you’ve only got three in a rope.

32:00 So it’s a different weaving

Yeah.

Does the wire hold together as well as the rope does?

Yeah.

Cause you’ve got friction with a rope haven’t you?

Yeah. With a rope it will swell when it gets wet, that helps to hold it. Wire, you’ve got to use a slightly different process and you lock the last tuck in so it won’t pull out.

32:30 What do you mean lock it in, what do you mean by that?

Oh when they tuck the wires they cross them like that and they sort of give them a bit of extra power.

So when you step aboard the Kermandie and you’ve heard from your Dad this is a pretty rough and ready ship, what was your welcome like?

Oh, just get to work sort of thing, that’s it.

33:00 Was this a place where you’d cop one around the ear hole for?

Oh yeah, the bosun was pretty easy, he wasn’t a bad old fellow he was an old chap. He wasn’t a bad sort of bloke, though. So what was work? What was your daily routine on that boat?

Oh during the day you worked cargo. When you were at sea, you know, you stood watches. You done two hours on the wheel,

33:30 and an hour, and hour and a half on lookout. When we were doing four on, four off, we had three to a watch. That meant every third watch you didn’t do a wheel.

And at the wheel, that meant you were reading the compass and steering?

Yeah.

And what would you be looking out for at that stage, the lookout?

Well any other ships or

34:00 anything like that, mainly other ships or if you had a crook man at the wheel you’d be watching he wasn’t running into anything ashore or anything like that.

So were you reading a chart or anything while you’re at the wheel?

No, we didn’t read the chart, it was the skipper’s job.

Are you given a bearing then? Does he say, “Steer north, north east”?

He just gives you a course. It might be by numbers

34:30 or it might be a straight out course.

Does it work like North, North East at such a speed for such an amount of time and then, how does the course work? What does he tell you?

Well he just gives you the course he wants you to steer at the time. Cause there’s always an officer with you. There was three watches. There was the twelve to four, the four to

35:00 eight, and the eight to twelve, and the mate always took the four to eight watch. The bosun took the twelve to four and the skipper took the eight to twelve. And well they’d know what time to change course and that. They’d give the man at the wheel the course, he’d repeat it to them,

35:30 say, “All right it’s north by east,” or something. Well he’d come round, “Steer north by east,” as he’d repeat it, “North by east,” to make sure you’ve got the right course. Or it might be numbers. There’s three hundred degrees in a compass, well he might give you the numbers, sort of thing, “Ninety degrees,” sort of thing.

Is ninety degrees east?

Yeah.

36:00 So it works off the degrees of a compass, so if you said like two hundred and seventy degrees, that’s west, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Right, so do you still remember it all?

Oh yeah, can still read a compass.

What’s two hundred and eighty degrees?

Oh, I can’ t remember now.

That’s all right, just thought I’d throw that in there. So what sort of language are you speaking on board ship, cause seamen have a language of their own, don’t they, there’s lot of?

Oh I don’t know, it still gets it a bit now.

36:30 Well I confused a couple of blokes the other week up in the RSL [Returned and Services League] club. They said, “What have you been doing?” and, “Why weren’t you here?” or something. And I said, “I was at home doing my dhobying,” and they said, “What’s dhobying?” They didn’t know what dhobying was.

Well you tell us what dhobying was?

It’s washing your clothes, laundry.

Does that come from the Indian dhobi wallah?

It’s an Indian word, but there are quite a lot of things like that.

37:00 What other things would there be?

Oh, the top of the flagpoles a truck, Is a truck? Where does that come from?

I don’t know, it’s always been there really.

Well what other nicknames? Because I’ve heard of people with different surnames would get a particular nickname on board a ship?

Oh well, Nobby, a bloke called Crowdes, a lot of them were English.

Would you have a nickname

37:30 on the ship?

No, can’t think, don’t know that I did, “Hey you.”

Hey you, clout. What about sailors like languages, different names of different parts of the ship and so forth that landlubbers wouldn’t understand?

Oh there was forward and aft and stuff like that.

What about your food? Did you have a special name for the food?

No, I don’t think so. Tucker was as much

38:00 as we went. I think on English ships I believe it was quite different, but not on Australian ships.

Tell me then, what sort of food were you getting on the Kermandie?

Oh, just it would have been good food if it had of been cooked properly. The cook we had wasn’t the best, he was

38:30 a dirty old bugger. I remember once I seen him, he was peeling spuds. He was sitting in the galley doorway, he was peeling spuds, he had his feet in a bucket, he was washing the spuds out and dropping them into the pot.

In the same bucket his feet were in?

Yeah.

Charming.

I don’t think he’d had a bath for about three months.

That would give a bit of flavour to the potatoes, wouldn’t it?

Yeah,

39:00 you were that hungry, you’d eat anything.

All right on that note, another tape.

Tape 4

00:31 You talked a little bit about this, but I’m wondering about the black market, did you have any knowledge of that operating when you were a kid?

Only as far as cigarettes were concerned.

How did that work then?

Well cigarettes was in very short supply here. I know one bloke he, cause I didn’t smoke myself, I heard the adults talking about it and I knew where to go and get them.

01:00 But he was a bloke in Faraday Street, Carlton. He was there for many years. He had a café there. You could always get cigarettes if you had enough money to buy them, sort of thing.

Gosh how things were things were changing in the war then. Cigarettes just everywhere, paving the streets.

When the Americans come out here, everybody went wild. Cause I think it was something like ten shillings

01:30 a packet or something for a packet of cigarettes we was paying sixpence for.

And what about crime in general, was that apparent to you in Carlton, with burglaries and?

No, I don’t think so. Bank robberies?

No.

I was wondering during the Depression whether people were really pushed?

Well I think they weren’t real criminals, I don’t think, the people that done crimes then. They were stealing to eat.

02:00 None of my family was ever involved in anything like that, I don’t think.

I wasn’t suggesting that for a second.

No, I was just saying in a general way, sort of thing.

Not at all, it did sound like I was hinting.

I got caught pinching bottles out of a bottle yard once.

I’m sure you were young enough to just get a cuff over the ear, but speaking of that, punishment in schools,

02:30 not yourself of course, the golden boy that you were, but how did the teachers discipline their kids back then?

The strap.

Yeah, did they do it publicly or was it always behind?

Out in front of the class.

Which was part of the punishment I’m sure?

Well to most of the kids it was worse getting kept in or getting a hundred lines to write out or something like that. We’d rather have the strap and get it over and done with.

Yeah, I can understand that. Did you ever get it?

Yeah.

What for?

03:00 Oh all sorts of things, fighting. I don’t know, just being late for school and answering back or something like that. Not in later years, cause I had quite a good rapport with a teacher in later years. He was a great bloke.

I bet it would sting even more in the cold weather if you got the cuts?

Yeah.

Shocking.

But they weren’t

03:30 allowed to hit you on the body, only had to be on the hand.

Right. Not the legs? Not the backside?

No. No, had to be on the hand.

That’s interesting.

I believe in some schools they kept on them with the cane, but they weren’t allowed to use a cane either.

Must have been a good school you went to then.

Only public schools.

Oh public schools were allowed to did you say?

Yeah, not, I believe Catholic schools used to use the cane but…

04:00 I think Catholic schools just used anything, tanks, you name it, air to ground missiles to whack their kids…

My girls they both went to Catholic schools and their kids. They seemed to think they was good.

Good. In the unions on board, oh no, before that I wanted to also ask about restaurants, Carlton now, of course, is just restaurants galore,

04:30 Yeah. Was there anything like that when you were growing up? You said there was a café and so on.

Lygon Street wasn’t like it is now, it was purely commercial.

It wasn’t an eating place then, even with all the Italians around?

No, no, Lygon Street and Elgin Street was just, well was a shopping area.

Ok. And you said, I was curious about the Italian greengrocers and so on, declaring themselves Greek when the war broke out, for obvious reasons,

05:00 did you have much to do with them? Did you mix with them at all, and talk to them?

Not socially, only by way of business like, you know, as I say the grocer shops. The greengrocers we used to deal with, a bloke in Nicholson Street in Carlton.

Did you ever hear them talk about what they thought of the situation overseas and what they thought would happen

05:30 to them or did you meet any?

Not till after the war. During the war I talked to some of the prisoners, sort of thing.

Where had they been sent? Where had they been sent?

They was working on the wharves and things like that. Nobody was watching them, they was all right. They used to wear military uniforms dyed red, that’s how you could tell them.

06:00 They was, quite a lot of them was nice fellows.

Yeah, they were interned in all sorts of places.

They didn’t want to go to war, Mussolini called them up, sort of thing. They was picked up in the Middle East and sent out here. They was put into prison camps until people realised how placid they were and quite a lot of them came back after the war and settled cause they’d met girls here and married Australian girls and

06:30 that.

Can you remember anyone talking about the local Italians during the war? Were they afraid of the locals?

A couple of ratbags were going to smash their windows, or something like that, put a brick through their windows but I don’t think anything really serious ever happened to any of them.

Ok.

07:00 Jumping sideways again, you mentioned unions before, the merchant navy union, how did you join and what did it entitle you to, do you remember?

You had to be a seaman, which I was. You had to get a job on a ship, well the only way you get a job on a ship was to apply through the Union, had to go through the Union.

07:30 I think actually the first trip you had to get a permit to stand for a job from the Union and you had to be accepted by the shipping company or by the ship’s officer, the engineer, or whatever. There was a lot of blokes went away as coal trimmers, that didn’t need to be experienced but to go on deck, you had to go as a deck boy.

What would you need to

08:00 get their approval.

There had to be a vacancy for a start. You’d have to take a chance, you’d have to go into the pick up yard, the slave market, as we used to call it in those days. It was down behind the old Customs House in Flinders Street, there. We used to go down there. Had a bit of a shed there and we used to go in there. They come in and call out for, well a coal trimmer for such and such a ship.

08:30 Well anybody that wanted a job would go and if you had a discharge you went and stood in a line and they came and picked who they want. If nobody stood, if there was nobody available, there’d be a bloke there waiting for a job, well he’d go and stand, the union bloke would say “Righto, there’s your chance” and he’d stand for it,

09:00 and he’d have to agree to join the Union. He’d be given a card but he’d have to agree to join the Union his first full pay. That was all right. Once he got a discharge off a ship, he was all right. He could go to sea again. As deck boy you had to be the same circumstances, you had to be sixteen years old. I was a bit younger because I’d gone through

09:30 the family, sort of thing. But you had to be sixteen years old, had to have your parents approval, all this sort of thing and you had to pay a union fee, but it wasn’t the same as an able seaman, sort of thing. But you had to do twelve months as a deck boy. Part of that was you had to do what they called the peg in,

10:00 that was the cleaning up, bringing the food down from the galley down to the mess room, and all that sort of thing. You done twelve months of that and once you’d done your twelve months, you could go as an ordinary seaman. You done ordinary seaman for two years.

Can you recall about how much it was to join the Union then?

I think it was, for me it was about

10:30 five pounds, I think.

It’s a lot of money. That’s for an annual?

Five pound a year. Well it wasn’t really bad cause they got a lot of good conditions for you.

What did they guarantee for you? What did they guarantee for you? Would they come in and broker a deal if there’d been industrial action?

Yeah, yeah well the bloke we had there, everybody used to say, the government

11:00 used to say he was a Commo [Communist] and everything else, he was no good, but he was good for us, he was good for the seamen. A bloke called Bill Bird. He’d been a seaman himself, naturally, had to be, but he was a very good man for us. He wouldn’t stand no nonsense at all from the ship owners.

Can you recall accounts of needing Bill Bird to come and broker for you, to negotiate for you?

11:30 After the war we had occasion to get him down. It was in the, I’d just joined a ship, it was called the Barwon, it had (UNCLEAR), the chief steward was touching the crowd. He was, there was a shortage of stores and stuff like this and went down, and Birdie went to the owners and told them either get rid of him, or the ship don’t sail,

12:00 well she finished up she was tied up for six months. Well they had to get rid of him, he was a good company man, but he was no good for the crowd.

After the war there was all this business in Australia of fear of communists and so on, there was the Red scare and so on, and there was a bit of it building up before and during the war, and I don’t know much about it but I do know there was wharfie strikes and so on during

12:30 the war, which cut people to the quick to the bit. Did you see much of that sort of action in the merchant navy, of union aggression versus employers and so on?

I didn’t see much aggression, I don’t think. I was mainly on pretty good ships. The crowd was all right and the ship was all right, mainly. I don’t think there was any out and out action, only the BHP

13:00 strike, just after the war, but that had been building up for some time and they wouldn’t cause a general strike because of during the war, but after the war the miners went out and everything else. Cause their conditions were pretty shocking and they had good reason to go out, cause when they went out it created a shortage of coal and they brought a lot of the

13:30 ships ashore too, because we relied on coal to run, because they was all coal burners in those days. There was very few motor ships.

Ok, that’s kind of all I wanted to know about the unions. I had a feeling that there was a bit of argy-bargy going on around that time.

Oh there was small, there were small things, well some of the ships, they were individual things,

14:00 like somebody said during the war one ship was struck up because of the brand of tomato sauce. It wasn’t, it was nothing like that.

Do you know whether after the war there was, you know, problems in terms of carrying cargo that might have come from somewhere connected with Japan or Germany? Was there?

Oh that was later. That was later in, I think, I don’t know,

14:30 I was on the coast, sort of thing, I don’t know with the (UNCLEAR) ships, I never heard anything much about it, but we never had any trouble about that. We did with carrying some chemicals and stuff.

What troubles did you have with that?

Well carrying petrol for instance. It always had to be carried on deck, especially empty drums, empty petrol drums they was a no-no down below, they was always on deck.

15:00 Were you allowed to smoke if you were carrying that kind of flammable?

Not on deck.

No? An empty petrol drum was worse than a full one.

So I believe. Creates a vacuum.

Because of the fumes.

Yeah, that must have been a bit stiff for the smokers if they couldn’t smoke on deck?

You didn’t miss it. I was one person that didn’t normally smoke while I was working, cause I used to roll me own and I didn’t like rolling a smoke with dirty hands.

15:30 Do you recall being inspected by any of the government inspections that were going on during the war? Did you ever have occasion to discover there were inspectors on board checking out whether your equipment was up to scratch and so on?

We had customs on board a few times.

Yeah? And how did they operate and within Australia were there customs?

Oh to check on to see that you weren’t carrying any more booze

16:00 or anything more like that than you should have, or cigarettes or anything like that.

Were you ever?

After the war we were.

What happened then?

We was in Fremantle once and we got the whisper that customs was coming down the next day and it was on a weekend, and we’d invited everybody on board the ship that was in the port of Fremantle to come down and help us drink it. They reckoned all you could see floating down the Swan River was this one great

16:30 stream of bottles, about three miles of it.

I’m sure you had a good night there. I bet customs knew it.

They never found anything more than they should have.

Who would cop it in that case? Would it be just the captain or would the whole crew?

Well the person caught with it, possibly. In some cases, as you say, after the war we had a hide, we used to bring a few cameras in and stuff like that, but

17:00 we, they come aboard, they couldn’t find anything, they looked around and when they eventually found it they just confiscated as contraband. They couldn’t proof who owned it, who it belonged to.

Gee I bet there was a lot of that going on after the war?

There was never any dope.

Dope as in?

As in heroin or anything like that.

No drugs ever showed up?

No. We wouldn’t carry it.

Were you ever offered it?

Yeah.

17:30 Who was offering it?

Oh, Chinese bloke up in Christmas Island.

Whoa, how about that.

Give him a hiding.

Did you?

Yeah.

Tell me, can you tell me a little bit about how that happened?

He came up and offered it to us, “If you bring it in I’ll give you so much money,” I can’t think what it was now, “No we don’t touch that.”

Whoa, did he show it to you, did you see it? No.

He didn’t take you to where it was?

No.

And did you ask him where he’d laid his hands on it or how it came into the country?

No.

18:00 We don’t bloody want it.

Now a lot of people were just unaware of the existence of those sorts of hard drugs in Australia for a long time but as a sailor you probably did come across all sorts of things?

None of us people, they liked their beer and all that sort of thing, some of them was pretty hard cases and they never ever went for that.

So what sort of stigma did it have about it then? It sounds as if…

I don’t know, it was just the way we was brought

18:30 up I think.

But were you ever, sort of told, “Don’t ever do drugs”? I would have thought that was…

No, because it never entered our head I don’t think.

No, that’s what.

I think it’s much harder for the kids now than what it was for us then. There’s too much temptations now and they haven’t got enough to do, sort of thing.

Totally. I’m, the question I was trying to get to is how did you know, for example, when that

19:00 Chinese fellow showed you the heroin that it was really bad news?

Oh we’d heard a bit about cocaine I think, but not heroin at that time. But cocaine was a definite no-no.

And had you heard much about opium and morphine and so on?

Oh read stories about opium sort of thing, you know. That was only in China sort of thing. I believe there was a little bit

19:30 of it around Little Bourke Street in the early days.

So I hear tell. Can’t quite find out the facts on that one, but so I hear and cocaine, fair bit of that going on…

Oh it was just sort of rumours you heard. You might hear people talk about. I might possibly hear my parents talking about it or something like that, when I was a kid. One of those things you sort of pick up along the way, sort of thing, you know.

20:00 Where’s the furthest you’ve ever sailed?

Oh went up around, went up to Nauru, been to Nauru, that’s about the furthest I think. Went up around the Islands during the war, with cargo and Christmas Island and things like that.

So did you ever pal up with any of the locals up there in the Islands, any of the Islanders, the Aboriginal people?

Nauru we weren’t allowed ashore.

Did you know why?

20:30 There was a bloke in charge of the island, Nauru, a bloke called Hammer de Robert, he was a chief. And he said his people were polluted enough and he didn’t want any whites on shore. Only the white residents, if we went ashore at their invitation, we had to be back aboard before dark.

What about any of the other islands up north?

21:00 Oh they didn’t worry about them much I don’t think.

So you never got to know any of the people that would have been up there?

No.

All right. You said there were some hard cases on board, especially the Kermandie, I wonder if you could give me a bit more of a description of what some of these fellows were like, including the cook with his feet in the bucket of potatoes? Oh they used to get drunk and smash thing up and come on board and cause fights and

Were they knife fights if they were fights?

21:30 Were they fisticuffs or knife fights?

Oh anything, chairs, anything they could get hold of, pieces of timber.

Did anyone ever get badly wounded on board?

Oh , just after the war I believe, one of the Howard Smith ships, the time there was a bloke killed. I didn’t ever actually see anybody killed but we seen a few blokes taken ashore.

22:00 Quite badly beaten up?

Yeah.

What would the captain do if a fight broke out?

Call the police.

What if you were out at sea?

Oh it didn’t happen at sea.

Is that right?

They didn’t have access to beer, to drink at sea very much.

So it was always alcohol related?

More or less, yeah.

Oh, OK.

Unless in some cases, “I’m better than you are,” but not a lot.

22:30 In a situation like that would anyone ever bother to patch the guys up on board or would they just be sent ashore?

Oh we had a medico, usually one of the officers, usually the second mate was usually the medical officer who’d patch them up the best he could, put a couple of stitches in, give them a drink of rum, to settle their nerves.

And what provisions were there on board for medical supplies?

Oh they had a pretty good medicine chest it was, a basic

23:00 medicine chest.

And were you all supposed to know what to do under those circumstances or it was it just left to the first mate to do?

It was only up to the mate.

Did anyone ever threaten you for a punch up?

Yeah, one bloke did in the mess room. He threatened to hit me and I throw a bowl of hot soup over him, quietened him down.

You’re small but you packed a punch by the sound of it.

23:30 Wouldn’t have liked to have messed with you, quite frankly. Let’s talk about something a little bit more pleasant. Living in the city as you can appreciate, you don’t get to see much of the stars at night, but out at sea the stars must have been extraordinary?

Oh beautiful, I sort of found it the same up the bush, cause there’s no pollution and you’ve got a clear sky, sort of thing, it’s just a mass of stars.

24:00 Were there times when the sky seemed closer than others?

Sometimes, yeah. If the weather was good, it was really good cause you, another thing too, in the good weather, especially up north, up the Queensland, along the Queensland coast, you had a real starry night, not a cloud in the sky, and the phosphorus in the water and it was beautiful up

24:30 there, especially through the Whitsunday Passage.

I bet. Did you ever see any fabulous celestial action, shooting stars or the Southern Lights or?

No, I don’t think, not really, no. You wouldn’t be looking up, you’d be looking, when you were on lookout you’d be looking straight ahead of you, or around you. Sure.

Yeah.

And what about superstition? Sailors are considered to be reasonably superstitious? Was any of that true for you?

Only

25:00 Friday sailing.

What was that?

Sailing Friday’s bad luck.

Would you have any choice? You wouldn’t have any choice, would you?

No, but it was still bad luck.

Can you recall anything particularly bad happening on a Friday?

Well on the old sailing ships, especially in the old Kermandie, having women aboard.

Oh yes I have heard that was bad, although I can’t understand why that would be bad.

Well it’s not now because they have them in the crew now.

25:30 Yeah, I’m being even more sort of basic, I suppose, I thought having a woman on board from time to time would have been OK but I guess the men would have got uptight or she would have done…?

Having a corpse aboard was a thing too.

Did you ever have a corpse aboard?

Yeah, we brought one bloke down. Brought another bloke, we brought his ashes down and there was a bit of a grumble about that. We dumped them at sea.

Unceremoniously?

No.

26:00 It was a rather humorous thing too, actually. An old skipper in the company and he’d arranged to have his ashes strewn over the waves, I think, was the full words. Anyhow they brought his ashes aboard and we sailed and the skipper called out for all hands to turn to witness a burial, so all turned out, all the watch below and

26:30 everything, all turned out, all the firemen, all the sailors, all stood round and skipper said a few words over him and he sprinkled the ashes over the side. All the firemen immediately went down and got the overtime book and booked overtime for dumping ashes.

That’s a bit rich. How did the captain cope with that, the skipper cope with that?

They never got paid.

27:00 I don’t reckon they should have either. What about the corpse on board? What brought that about?

Oh, somebody died in Brisbane, I think it was. We only brought them down to Sydney, or it down to Sydney.

At the request of his family?

Yeah.

Ok, ok. Did anyone ever die on board that you just had to bury at sea?

No, no anything like that we weren’t far enough away

27:30 from the coast, sort of thing.

How did they arrange payment to you? Did they give it to you just when you were at shore or?

No, you got paid, normally the first and the fifteenth of each month. Actually it was your pay was monthly. You got paid, well during the war I got something like twenty pound a month, but

28:00 you was given a sub on the fifteenth, the middle of the month. It was the closest to that time when you was in port, naturally you didn’t get paid at sea. There was nothing to spend it on at sea anyhow.

Could the captain cause you problems for your pay if something had happened?

Well if you had played up, he could log you. And how would that occur and what would happen if you got logged?

28:30 If you caused trouble on board the ship or you refused to do work, or something like that, you, the mate would take you up on the bridge and he’d read out the riot act to you. The skipper would decide that he would put you in the log and fine you, well if it was only a minor

29:00 offence, it would be a couple of days pay. If it was worse that that, it would be something like five pound or ten pound.

And what about other punishments? Were you ever, sort of locked up?

No.

Not you personally, but were sailors ever locked up on board their own ship?

No, only if they was violent.

And you said that didn’t happen if there wasn’t any alcohol around?

Ah well, one bloke went mad. He jumped over the

29:30 side. He reckoned we was going to hit Sydney Harbour Bridge and jumped over the side.

Did you see that coming with him? Did you see it coming?

Yeah, I seen him.

But did you notice him going slowly (UNCLEAR)

Yeah, he was going funny for a long time.

What did he start to do for example?

Oh he just, he had a big lump of wood and he reckoned it was a baby. He ran around nursing it, he had it wrapped in a blanket, he was nursing it. He was right off his

30:00 trolley.

Any idea what tipped him?

I don’t know. Don’t know whether it was booze or what it was.

Poor old WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK . You said he jumped overboard?

Yeah.

How long did it go on for? Was it a few weeks before he finally?

Oh I suppose it must have been about a week. He wasn’t in our department. He was a coal trimmer.

So you wouldn’t have bumped into him every other minute on board?

30:30 Cause he was away from you?

No, he was on a different end of the ship.

Did the fellows tell you about that afterwards? Did they talk about what he’d been doing afterward and…?

One of the firemen said to us, we asked them and he said, “Yeah, he’d been getting funny for a long time.” Came on gradually apparently. But we was going into, what do you call it? In Sydney there?

31:00 Oh it’s a big tourist area now?

The Rocks? The Rocks?

Yeah, round past the Rocks, we was going in there under the Bridge, anyhow, under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and he said, “Look out! We’re going to hit the damn thing!” and he went over the side. They picked him up and that. The lines boat picked him up, took him ashore, put him ashore. I don’t know what happened

31:30 to him.

Were you ever worried about getting injured on board? I should prefix that question by asking, if you were injured on board was there any compensation?

Oh yes, yes. If it, I walked into a winch one night, in the black out on the Iron Monarch and I cut me chin under here, and I didn’t even realise it was cut and I went up to wake the mate, for him to go on

32:00 watch and I lent over his bunk like that and there was blood all over his bunk and everything. It was the next morning, we was in Whyalla, in South Australia, and they sent me up to the doctor and the doctor said ‘You should have had a stitch in this,” but he just stuck a bit of sticking plaster and said, “Right you can go back on board now.”

So would the ship make provision for you financially for that? Would

32:30 they pay doctor’s bills and so on?

Yeah, that was compensation. If you was injured or hurt yourself in any way you was, that was actually the reason I paid off the Iron Monarch. I was, hurt my back. The hatches they had, they weren’t slab hatches like they got now. They lifted them off with the cargo winch now, but in those days they were all single hatches.

33:00 They was something like about ten foot long. They was a foot wide by two or three inches deep and we was on the iron ore run and they got very heavy with the iron ore, cause I was never a big bloke. I hurt me back slinging the things, we had to lift them off one at a time and throw them, throw them across. There was one bloke each end. And I hurt me back. It was in Newcastle and I,

33:30 the bosun seen me getting around and he said, “What’s wrong with you?” and I said, “My back’s hurt, it’s sore.” He said, “You’d better go up and see the mate,” so I went up and saw the mate and he said, “I can’t do anything, you should go and see the doctor.” BHP had their own doctor. And they sent me up to him, up at the steel works in the yard there and I go in to see him and he

34:00 asked me what was wrong and I told him. He had a feel around me back. He said, “You’ve strained a ligament.” He said, “It’s not serious.” He said, “You’ll have to take it easy.” He gave me a fortnight off, a whole fortnight off but it was no good to the ship cause it was only in two or three days, so I had to pay off. They had to, the company had to

34:30 pay my accommodation and me board for a fortnight and then pay me passage back home again.

Would they have words with you about that? Say we understand that you’ve been hurt but we’re not very impressed, would they have issue with you about that?

Well in some cases they would, but in my case they didn’t because they realised it was fair dinkum. Where people used to use it as a means to get off a ship,

35:00 normally if you, I always sailed out of Melbourne mostly, but if I wanted to pay off in Sydney, it had to be mutual agreement. But if they didn’t want me to sign off they wouldn’t let me and I had to stay there and only sign off in me home port.

You were going to tell me before a little bit about

35:30 some of the chaps on board, some of the eccentrics you were on board with. I think you said on the Kermandie there was a bunch of rough fellows there. Were any of them your friends?

Not really. I mean you had to go ashore with somebody and I used to go ashore with the deck boy. He was a kid about me own age.

What would you get up to just on a half day’s leave or so on shore?

Oh a lot of them used to go

36:00 to, they’d head for the closest pub. Cause when I was in Melbourne, if I was in Melbourne, I had family here, so I could go home, so I could go to their place sort of thing. If I was at home in Hobart, I usually went to me Dad’s place or me brother’s place, or somewhere like that.

36:30 Talking about on shore for a day or two, you said you’d got and visit your family and so on.

Oh there was always plenty of places, Sydney was a good place. Sometimes I used to hop on the ferries and ride right around Sydney Harbour on the ferries. Especially if you had no money, if it was between pay days.

I think it’s still the cheapest holiday tour to do in Sydney isn’t it?

There was always plenty of places to see up there. One thing

37:00 we were, during the war we was always told if we went up to Kings Cross don’t wear your merchant navy badge.

Because?

You left yourself wide open to get dipped or something like that.

I’m sure when you’re a very young boy that wasn’t a problem for you, but when you became old enough to know what was going on, being in the navy, especially the merchant navy, you would have lent yourself to getting accosted by quite a lot of the women of the night, wouldn’t you?

37:30 Oh yeah, sometimes you took them up, but other times you didn’t. Was that your early experience of the female sex?

That was over in Western Australia, I think.

Well I heard Fremantle had pretty good brothels?

Yeah, especially the Palms.

Was that the name of it?

Yeah.

What would set one brothel apart from another?

I don’t know. Just the girls, the way they treated you, sort of thing.

I’m going to be asking you more about this a bit later on,

38:00 but I don’t want to run out of tape too much, so don’t think you’re off the hook. Final question before we finish this tape, did you see any wildlife out at sea? Unusual birds that you’d never seen before or strange looking fish?

We had a man of war bird come aboard once, cause those things couldn’t take off,

38:30 off a flat surface. Somehow it got on deck and it couldn’t take off again, so we treated it like a pet, beautiful old thing.

How long did you have it on board for?

About a week.

Oh, did you feed it?

Yeah, the cooks fed it, in the galley.

I don’t know man of war birds, what do they look like?

Oh they’re a bit like a rather big seagull, but they’ve got a tail, the tail feathers come out

39:00 like that.

Now isn’t that considered good luck, having a bird drop in?

That’s an albatross.

Well I’ve heard that was good luck too. I reckon that would be good luck.

You never kill an albatross cause they’re dead sailors. My grandfather told me that.

Tape 5

00:32 All righty, seeing as you insist on talking about romance, let’s talk about that. When did you start to figure out that a man had needs?

Oh I don’t know. I think I was told.

Did you find out the facts of life the hard way?

I don’t know. I was shamed into it sort of thing, cause I was a bit innocent. My mother never told me any damn thing.

01:00 But being on board ship, at such a young age, the men must have revelled in telling you all sorts of things?

My father was rather religious. He was a Seventh Day Adventist. He was rather tied up in it, cause he wouldn’t tell me anything.

That’s a particular kind of religion too, I’m not sure how many people in Australia were Seventh Day Adventists.

At that time there weren’t very many. I think he was buried,

01:30 his funeral was an Adventist funeral too, sort of thing.

And did he not want you to become a Seventh Day as well?

Yes. But I didn’t want too. I told him, at a very early age I worked it out for me self, I don’t believe in religion. He asked me why and I told him. It’s caused more misery than anything 02:00 else in this world and because I married a Catholic, my wife was Catholic and everybody said, “Won’t last five minutes.” But it did. Both the kids were brought up as Catholics. I said, “If we have boys I’ll bring them up my way, the girls they’re your worry.” But they turned out good kids.

What about your mum? Was she religious at all?

02:30 She was Church of England, but she went to church once a year.

Right. Did your father’s beliefs kind of get in the way of family business at all?

No, not really, I don’t think. Cause he never owned, at one stage he owned his own business, he owned the fishing boat. In later

03:00 years he bought a half share in a ferry company. The company’s still going down in Hobart, but he had to get out of it because he got pretty crook, but I worked with him for a couple of years on it. I acted as his mate.

But he never kind of put his religion before his family, this is what I’m asking, did he ever do that?

Not really,

03:30 cause Mum was pretty adamant sort of thing, she wouldn’t stand for it. Cause there was all this Saturday, going to church Saturday, sort of thing. Saturday’s the Sabbath and all this sort of thing. She didn’t believe in that. I think possibly that’s what broke them up in the finish.

Which wasn’t, it certainly happened, it wasn’t all together common as it is now, parents divorcing and so on but it,

04:00 how old were you when that happened?

Oh I would have been, I must have been about thirteen or something like that.

Oh still quite young enough for it to affect you quite specifically.

Well there was no actual animosity. As far as Mum was concerned she always made me respect my father and stuff like that, you know. She always said, “He’s your father,” sort of thing.

Now you’ve bamboozled me

04:30 because I wanted to talk about sex and prostitutes and all sorts of other sins and you’ve got me talking about parental responsibilities and religion. I don’t know how you did that. But sailors are supposed to have a girl in every port, did you start cutting a swath through the ladies?

No, I don’t think so. I used to go out with girls and that, but I don’t think that, we weren’t long enough around, sort of thing.

Which is probably why they had one in every port, I guess?

05:00 But a lot of the girls, you’d meet a girl in the seamen’s mess, you know, some where like that, they weren’t allowed to go out with you. There was a place in Fremantle, it was an ex-serviceman’s canteen, sort of a thing, run by one of the charities, sort of thing. There was a couple of girls in there, who we went in there one Sunday, there was nothing to do, so we went for a walk ashore and we seen this place there, so we

05:30 went in for a cup of coffee and started talking to a couple of the girls in there. I was with the deck boys, who was both about the same age as myself and we said to them about going out with them. And they said, “Just a moment” and they went away and asked their supervisor and they said, “These boys want to go out with us.” Oh yes that would be all right, so they gave us tickets to a theatre.

06:00 That was very nice, we got a free trip out to take these girls out.

How about that?

Yeah, it was good. We took them home and met their mother and she gave us a bloody great chocolate cake to take aboard and everything. We thought that was great.

Now boys in the navy had a pretty good reputation, apparently the women preferred their uniforms to any of the other services and preferred

06:30 them, what sort of reputation did the merchant navy have in that respect?

Much the same, cause the navy they got round in a flashy uniform, we didn’t get a uniform, all we got was a badge. But the navy the girls went for them, because of the uniform, I think. Cause with all sailors,

07:00 they’ll be going away soon, they can’t talk. They can’t tell anybody what happened.

What was the relationship in ports, between the military navy and yourselves? Was there friendly rivalry or animosity?

I don’t think it was friendly rivalry. The reason they turned around and they said to us, even after the war, very recently

07:30 “You blokes were civilians, you got paid war bonus” and all that sort of thing. Actually our pay wasn’t any more than the navy’s was because, or the army if it come to that, because we had to buy all our own clothing, and in some cases our own tools and if the ship was sunk by enemy action or anything like that, especially the Australian ships,

08:00 your pay stopped. I know one bloke was wandering around in a life boat for a month in the Indian Ocean, his pay didn’t go on. His pay stopped when his ship sunk and we had to pay board on the ships too.

So what was the benefit of being in the merchant navy then?

Just the fact that you weren’t tied down looking at four walls. That was part of it I think.

08:30 I mean as opposed to joining the other navy? I mean as opposed to joining the navy?

Well you didn’t have the discipline, sort of thing. In port you worked your eight hours and that was it.

You said before there was no uniform, you had to supply your own clothes and so on, but was there a kind of a uniform for the merchant navy? Did men dress similarly?

The officers wore a uniform. There’s a thing up there on the,

09:00 the Captain, they wore a uniform like that. If we wanted a uniform we had to buy it. Only the lairs wore a uniform, we didn’t. We didn’t bother. Just a blue suit or whatever.

I’m sure you would have copped a mouthful if you’d bought your own uniform and worn it on board?

There was one bloke on the Kermandie who used to get round like a Swiss admiral. He was the only one

09:30 in the ship that wore a uniform. The skipper didn’t even have one.

Did you ever meet any officers or seniors on merchant navy ships that were, had a screw loose, sort of the power had gone to their heads or something?

Not as far as power goes, there was one bloke he was queer.

And he was the captain?

He was a mate in (UNCLEAR). He was chief officer when I knew him.

10:00 Did he make peoples lives a bit difficult as a consequence or?

No, only for the deck boys and young ordinary seamen, and stuff like that.

Was it quite serious or was he?

Oh yes, he was serious. He finished up he got kicked out.

Can you tell me a little more about that because we don’t hear much about that?

Well I didn’t know him long enough but he was always trying to entice the young blokes up into his quarters and things like that,

10:30 but they found out about him. Some of the stewards, especially in passenger ships, there is a lot of that goes on. I always tried to steer clear of passenger ships, I didn’t like passenger ships.

Why was that?

Too much, too much washing paintwork and all this sort of thing, shaving everyday and all that sort of thing.

Just make a note to talk to you about shaving, but before that

11:00 back to this officer, wouldn’t the men have taken the law into their own hands in a situation like that, even if he was an officer?

Well if anything really serious had of happened he would have, I think.

Have you heard the expression “Going down to find the golden river”?

Yeah.

Right, another fella told us about that and I hadn’t heard it before. So that would be the kind of behaviour that perhaps would?

Yeah. It’s not surprising with lots of

11:30 you know, young fair haired, young deck boys on board. It must have been difficult for some of the older fellas.

Especially first trippers.

Yeah I bet. Was there some sort of initiation if it was your first trip? Did you get a particularly rough time of things or?

Not in later days. In the earlier, especially in the old Kermandie you did. But it was pretty hard, cause they egged them a bloody lot. I don’t think a

12:00 lot of them had much schooling or anything like that.

Did you cop something like that on your first trip?

Oh a bit of smacking about and stuff like that.

And did you continue to perpetuate the tradition afterwards?

No, not really. Well actually after the war when I got, I was bosun in a couple of ships and I started off and had a talk to the mate, I said, “Right, I’d like

12:30 to have the deck boy and the ordinary seaman in the store doing the rope splicing and wire splicing and stuff like that, teach them, get them to learn early,” sort of thing and he said, “We’ll give it a try,” and he carried on with it after I left the ship. He said it was a great idea. By the time the kids were able seamen they knew what was what.

Did you have any mentors on board any of the boats, of the ships that you were on?

13:00 Anyone that took you under their wing and helped you out a bit?

No I don’t think so. If I had of been a boy, a deck boy, I think they might have, but I, I went to sea as an ordinary seaman, in the bigger ships as I said, but I was supposed to know a bit, sort of thing, by then.

13:30 I suppose you had all your family background that kicked you along?

Yeah.

What room was there for promotion in the merchant navy and how did you go about, I don’t know, going up the ladder?

When you come out of the fo’c’sle sort of thing, you, well you it was ability, like I was in a government ship, the Delungra, I was

14:00 an able seaman in it, and our bosun had to go home on compassionate grounds. His baby got crook and he had to pay off and I was the next eldest bloke aboard. I think I was twenty one, possibly. And the bosun come down to me before he paid off and he said, “The mate wants to see you,” and I said, “What have I done?” He said, “Nothing, he wants to see you.”

14:30 And I went up and he said, “Do you intend staying on board the ship for a while?” and I said, “Yeah, for a while.” And he said, “Well, you know the bosun’s paying off?” I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “Do you want his job?” And I said, “Oh yeah, righto.” It meant a pound a week more, so I took it and I stayed on her for five months.

Never going to turn that sort of work down.

It was ability more or less

15:00 that got you the job.

So it was ability more than seniority?

Yeah.

This might sound like a very naff question, but did sailors sing together while they worked?

No. Not together. The officer of the watch was always telling me to shut up when I was on lookout. I used to get in the corner of a wing of the bridge and sort of sing to me self

15:30 softly and he’d come out and tell me to shut up.

What about all the talk of sea shanties and so on?

The sea shanties went out with square rig.

Ok. I’m very sorry to hear that. It’s blown my romantic image of men at sea singing.

When they got drunk and sentimental they used to sing. But they weren’t the sea shanties as you know. Well I’m not sure that I do know any.

There’s things like ‘Maggie May’ and

16:00 ‘Hi ho Kafusalman’ and things like that.

Can you give me a few more lines and please feel free to put a bit of melody behind it?

No, I don’t know really, I’ve forgotten them, I’ve forgotten a lot of them, most of them, that was years ago.

But when you were singing to yourself, can you recall what little ditties?

I remember one night, standing there singing. I was singing the ‘Skye Boat Song’ to myself and the mate was an old Scotsman from Skye

16:30 and he come out, “Oh, that’s a lovely song,” and, “Where did you learn that?” I was allowed to sing in front of him, he used to come out and give me biscuits and everything.

Where did you learn it?

I think I learnt it at school.

We can’t get a bit of a tune now?

No, I don’t think so, I’ve got no voice left now.

Oh we’ll try a bit later on then. What personal possessions could you keep on board a ship? The Kermandie was not that big but, sorry I have to check my notes

17:00 for the larger crafts that you were on later on. How do I say it? Tianna? Tianna?

Tianna.

Tianna.

Oh you didn’t carry much because

That was only the two manner.

Yeah, she was only a ketch, she was only about sixty foot, seventy foot long.

But on something like the Kermandie what personal stuff could you keep and was it safe from the others?

No, no, only your clothes and your travel schooner rig, more or less. You didn’t take too much with you.

17:30 Just one going ashore suit and your working clothes, sort of thing, sea boots and oilskins.

And were you a letter writer?

No, and I’m still not. That’s why I’ve got a telephone.

So I take it you didn’t keep a diary then?

No, not really. I did have to write a story for one of the local papers there a while back

18:00 but that was for the RSL, they wanted, they were writing articles about old characters around Prahran and that, you know, somebody put my name up and I give them an article. Still got it here somewhere, cut it out of the paper and kept it.

In the army, some of the navy and some of the air force, I guess, have that

18:30 reputation of great camaraderie during the war in service, did you ever notice anything like that in the merchant navy? Was there good camaraderie among the men or?

Well you join a ship usually, well you got to know, we had a group sailed out of Melbourne, well you’d knock about together with them and you’d meet in different ships.

19:00 You’d join a ship, oh I was with him a couple of ships ago, sort of thing. But not as, well the navy used to join a ship and they might stay there for a few years, the same ship, but we didn’t. We sort of stayed for a while on a ship, then pay off and join another ship. But I got in pretty close with me brother-in-law cause he was in

19:30 the navy and after, when he got out of the navy he went to sea as a merchant seaman and he was in the engine room, but we always used to try and sail together, cause we was good mates, sort of thing.

Sorry, just want to check my notes for a little bit. You said that you didn’t notice the war that much, that it didn’t really, that it wasn’t

20:00 really in front of you and you didn’t notice any of it effects around the ports and so on, but there was a little bit of concern of subs and destroyers doing?

Yeah, all the wharves were closed in as much as you had guards on the gates and cyclone wire fencing all around everywhere. They had police guards, Commonwealth police, you weren’t allowed to take a lot of things ashore or take

20:30 a lot of thing aboard. You weren’t allowed to carry cameras or anything like that and but that, apart from that it wasn’t really until I seen a ship get hit that I realised there was a war on, sort of thing, until then it was just a job.

Was that the Iron Crown that was hit?

The Iron Knight I think.

The Iron Knight.

I found out later that George Fisher was in it, that he went down in that one.

That was the same boat was it?

21:00 Yeah.

Off the coast of the (UNCLEAR) River?

We was coming down from Sydney and we passed her, it was about a quarter of a mile or something away from her. I was only a kid in the Mundella, and I can’t remember what I was doing now, but I heard the thump and somebody shouted, “A ship’s been hit!” and we shot up on deck and looked and we just seen it, it was practically just going down, cause I think she was full of iron ore and

21:30 only take a couple of seconds to go down, it was that heavy, once the water gets into it. That was off Eden somewhere.

So you said you heard it and you could see it?

Yeah we was only about a quarter of a mile away. Seen a bit of a flash.

And you’re on the Mundella?

Yeah.

Was it up to the Captain to make a decision as to whether to go back and see if there were any survivors?

He wanted to go back but apparently they was

22:00 in a convoy, I found out after they was in a convoy, but the navy warned us away, told us to keep going.

Did they do that by signalling, by radio contact or?

By radio I think, yeah must have been radio. There was no flags, might have been Aldis, I don’t really know, which was the lamp. But

22:30 all I know was somebody said to me after, “If they hadn’t been there, it would have been us.” They was going North and we was going South.

Such is the luck of the draw I guess?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it had manganate on board, I remember, something red. How did you come to join the Iron Monarch then? You’d done, I think you said you’d been on the Mundella for six months to get

23:00 your union card?

I got me time in on the Mundella, I signed off as an ordinary seaman off the Mundella. I took me discharge into the shipping office, the mercantile marine office, and got it in endorsed to say I was eligible to sail as an able seaman.

23:30 And I went down to the pickup yard and they called out for an able seaman on the Iron Monarch. There was two of us stood and the bloke that stood alongside of me, was falling over. He wasn’t in the best of health.

Was he unwell or drunk?

Full I think. He smelt like it anyhow. But the second mate picked me up. He looked at the other bloke, he

24:00 was a bit older than me, you know, I was only seventeen. Hadn’t long turned seventeen, I don’t think, and he looked at me discharge and said, “When did you get your AB’s time in?” I said, “I just got it in.” He said, “ Oh, what have you been in?” I told him and I said I’d been in the Kermandie and he said, “What was she?” and I said, “A four-masted schooner” and he said, “You’ll do.”

24:30 Blokes been on sailing ships they were a good bet, sort of thing and they were usually good sailors they reckoned because they knew a thing or two. So they give me the job, but I stayed on her to close on the end of the war.

Was your work on board as an able seaman, sorry ordinary seaman, much different to what you’d been doing previously?

25:00 Oh it was a lot easier on powered ships rather than sailing ships because you didn’t have to work your own cargo, your done deck work, sort of thing. You prepared the ship ready for the wharfies, and then you went about, oh you might be washing down paintwork, or painting or you might be helping out in the store, making up stuff for the wharfies, like

25:30 cargo slings and stuff like that.

Was there ever time when you actually did not have anything to do or was always something to do?

I remember once, in peace time it was, in peace we was in Sydney, it had been raining for a week cause it often does that up there, it’s a funny sort of a place. But we’d run out of work to do and we was sitting in the forepeak,

26:00 in the stores, making up the rope slings and stuff and we’d been doing that for about three days and the mate come along and said, “Oh when you’ve finished what your doing it will do,” and of cause I got into trouble that day actually. I got locked in, there was nothing else to do so I climbed up on top of the ropes and coiled up on the ropes and went to sleep. When I woke up it was dark, they’d locked me in.

26:30 What would be punishment for nodding off on the job?

When they found out, they let me out. I heard the watchman and he went and got the second mate and let me out. And the next day the mate called me up and he said to me, “What happened yesterday?” I said, “You told us to finish off what we was doing. It was a bit early to knock off.”

27:00 I said, “I climbed up on top of the coils of rope and dozed off to sleep.” And he said, “Had you been drinking?” I said, “No, I haven’t been ashore for three or four days.” And I said, “I think I was bored more than anything.” And he said, “I suppose it could happen. All right, don’t worry about it.” It was the following trip he offered me the bosun’s job.

You were very lucky. I think if you’re in the navy and you do that, it’s a very serious

27:30 offence.

You get a hundred lashes or something.

I think they shoot you. I’m not sure.

Not quite.

Do ships have their own personality?

Yes they do. I think the crew helps make the personality and that. I remember I was in one ship, the Barwon, she was a big ship, a Howard Parker,

28:00 she was the happiest ship I’d ever been in. She was a great crowd, the officers were good and I think because the crowd was a good crowd they done their work and there wasn’t much grizzling. Everybody got on well together, sailors and firemen got on well together, which was an unusual thing.

Why are they so competitive normally?

It originated way back in the sail days when the first steam

28:30 ships came about because the fireman were breakaway sailors.

They were ambitious were they?

No, not actually ambitious, they wasn’t much hope for them cause they go down amongst that stinking coal stuff.

There is a lot of dirty work on board a ship, is there not? A lot of really rough work?

Yes, if you played up you got all the dirty jobs.

Did you not mind all of that? Did you quite like it?

29:00 Oh you took it with a grain of salt.

I’d lay even money that sailors are born, they’re not made and you know, for whatever reason, the sea suits your needs, what did it give you being at sea? I don’t know, a sense of freedom, I think, more than anything. I’ve always had it, sort of thing. I found in later years, even when I joined

29:30 the tramways, I finished up, I was in charge of a crew and we worked in our own gang, sort of thing, and that was good cause I could please me self.

It’s interesting cause you get this freedom and this sense of adventure but you get twice the amount of discipline usually, you can’t go anywhere, you have to get on with everybody, it’s a bit of a paradox in terms of freedom.

Yeah, somebody said it’s like being in gaol, with a chance of getting drowned, but

30:00 I found it never, I never minded being at sea.

Gosh, it sounds like being in gaol to me, I have to say, but then that’s the way I am. I’m a beach girl not a sea girl. What did you miss on board then when you were out?

I don’t know, I think, I found in later years when we’d be going to sea on Saturday and everybody was going ashore, going out somewhere and you’d be getting ready to sail.

30:30 That would be tough I’m sure.

Yeah.

Did you have a favourite day to come into port?

No, I think any day was good to come in. It was also good to go out sometimes, you got fed up with the place.

How long would it take you to get bored with being back on land, was it like a couple of days and you were itching to get back to sea?

If I spend a week ashore I’d be happy to get away again.

31:00 I come ashore on holidays for a fortnight and I’d be breaking my neck to get back after a week.

I can imagine on board with all those busy tasks to do and to keep yourself occupied and having to live communally all the time, that there’s a lot of internal monologue going on. I guess that some people might call it meditation, I don’t know what they’d call it, but when you’re very busy and you’re working in a team, I think there’s this privacy that you get inside of yourself.

31:30 I used to read a lot, I like music. It wasn’t until later years that we were able to get radios and stuff. We used to do a lot of handcrafts and that, macramé work was a good thing. We used to make belts and handbags and all that sort of thing. It took me six months to make me wife a handbag once.

32:00 What did you make it from?

Macramé twine.

Twine? Like hemp twine? Was it hemp?

It was macramé, it came from the Philippines. You can’t buy it now. I’ve tried to buy some now, but I can’t buy it.

The only thing I can think of are those hanging pot plant things.

Yeah, but it was the very thin stuff, like string, and you made that, you worked that.

And what other crafts, handcrafts?

Oh some of them used to make model ships and as I said I used to read a lot.

32:30 Was there a library on board any of the ships you were on?

In later years there was, but usually we bought stuff when we went ashore.

Sure, what did you read, can you recall?

Oh novels, Zane Grey I liked.

Did you read comics as well?

Some of the blokes did, I didn’t.

Did you have ambition or a sort of sense of adventure from any of the

33:00 literature you read? Did it make you kind of want to take on the world in any way? Become a hero?

No, I often thought about owning me own sailing ship, sort of thing. I would have liked to have sailed in one of the square riggers, but I was never that lucky. I saw the Premier come into Sydney once, she was under full sail and she looked beautiful. She was glorious.

Did you become a bit of a boat spotter? Have you been a boat spotter all your life?

33:30 I have since I’ve lived up here, cause I can look out the window. When the weather’s good I can look out that window and I can see them all coming up. I seen the QE [Queen Elizabeth] come up and I see all the big cruise ships coming up and down.

Now you said that you liked music as well but it was a few years before you got radio, and I asked you to sing before, so I’m going to have to you again, what kind of music did you have on board?

Oh we had musical instruments

34:00 and stuff like that. One bloke had a violin, he was rather good. I had me banjo mandolin. I had that for a while.

There you go, there’s something I’ve just found out about you. You’re musically talented.

I wasn’t talented really. I learnt to play by ear because we couldn’t afford the lessons.

But you had both a mandolin and a banjo?

No, it was a banjo mandolin.

Oh banjo mandolin, sorry.

I don’t know where we got it. Somebody bought it in a pub and

34:30 give it me or something. Had to keep it in the fridge for a while before I could use it, I think.

Why was that?

It was a bit hot, I think. I was told not to take it out in the street.

What could you play on it?

All sorts of stuff, modern stuff at that time. Can’t remember now. Couldn’t play it now because I’ve got all this stuff on me hands.

And would you sing while you played?

35:00 No, not really.

All right I’ll have to get that out of you later on I think. What was I up to? Radio and radio on board, during war was your ship allowed to have radio contact out at sea.

At certain times of the day I think, and certain areas.

Did you have much to do with the radio signalling that was going on?

No,

35:30 we carried a radio operator.

So you wouldn’t know much about it?

He was employed by AWA [Amalgamated Wireless Australasia], I believe, the wireless operator and he looked after all the radio. I think, during the war, there was a certain time each day, and various parts of the coast,

36:00 there used to be a plane come over and the ship had to show their numbers. They had a set number for a certain time of the month and a plane come over and they had to fly that particular number and sort of, it they give the wrong number they had the navy check up on them.

Did you have a sense during the war that what you were doing as a merchant navy man was contributing to the war effort?

36:30 I don’t know really. I think when we went into Fremantle, at that time Fremantle was a submarine base. There was submarines from all over, the Dutch navy and the Americans and the whole lot of them, sort of thing. That’s about the only time. They had to move, we had a full load of ammunition and stuff on board and

37:00 of course, we’d been told to be very careful.

Bloody oath.

There was a submarine lying alongside the wharf and they had to move out and let us get in, cause we had priority to get alongside the wharf and unload. Were you a bit nervous carrying all that ammo?

Didn’t think about it.

Were you allowed to smoke on board at that stage? I’m sure it wasn’t as dangerous as having petrol on board?

Yeah,

37:30 the ammunition was only in one hatch, there was general cargo in the other hatches, but well it was pretty secure because you had the hatch covers and all on and there was no hope of getting a spark down on her.

At any stage on shore did anyone ever confront you about not being in the enlisted services?

38:00 This woman gave me a white feather once.

She did? I haven’t met anyone who received a white feather, can you tell us about that?

I said, she said something about me, “You should be in the services,” and I said, “I’m not old enough,” or something like that and I pulled out me badge and put me badge on. Stuck the white feather in the badge. And she said, “I’m sorry.”

She apologised?

Yeah.

Yeah, I bet she must have felt a bit rough. I’m not sure if the merchant navy was a restricted occupation or not. But…

38:30 It was. As a matter of fact I came ashore in Melbourne, I can’t remember what I paid off now but me mother said, “There’s a letter here waiting for you, it’s been here for six months.” It was from the Manpower. At that time they had a group that made sure people went to work and where to go to work and I went and seen them and they give me a job to go down to Rosella Jam Factory. And I said,

39:00 “I’m not going down there. I’m a seaman, you can’t touch me.” And I wouldn’t go to it and I sailed the next day and I believe the police come to home a couple of days later looking for me.

So what was the case there? If you were in the merchant navy and it was a restricted occupation, then why, was it just a bureaucratic bungle that they’d made coming looking for you?

Yeah, that’s all. Well they didn’t have me registered for any employment since I’d left school.

Oh, so they’d keep your number from school would they?

39:30 Apparently, yeah.

How about that? Did you know you had a school number?

No.

How very interesting?

During the war all civilians were given an identity card.

Can you remember receiving one?

Yeah, I had one. I can’t remember what happened to it.

Did it have your, what did it have on it?

It had my name and address and I think occupation and

40:00 something like that.

So man, woman and child, did they all get one or just adults?

Everybody got one.

How about that?

Well we didn’t get one, we got a seaman’s card of identity in the ship, but if we went overseas we never got a passport.

Right. OK, our tape’s finished.

Tape 6 00:32 Did you celebrate Christmas on board ship any time, Trevor when you were in the merchants?

Yes, yes. It was quite good actually. Never in wartime, always in peace time, but it was very good. They always used to lay it on. During wartime there was two menus on board ships, one for the officers and one for the crew.

01:00 So just tell us again about the two menus on ship, Trevor?

Oh well, early on there was two menus as I said, one for the officers and one for the crew and they vastly different. We never ever got poultry or anything like that in the fo’c’sle, but later on when they changed, they brought it in one menu, cause we had the cooks and stewards with us, because it’s much easier for the cooks. We all got the

01:30 same thing. And it was quite good. But Christmas it was really good, they used to really lay it on for us. It was really good.

But they wouldn’t do that in wartime you were saying, at Christmas?

I assume they had some sort of celebration, but I was never at sea at Christmas during war.

Where were you during war at Christmas times? Can you remember any of those wartime Christmases?

Most likely would have

02:00 been at home or…

With your dad or with your mum in Melbourne.

Oh I think most likely would have been in Melbourne.

Can you remember any Christmases, what they were like and what you may have had to eat there and during wartime?

Oh just the normal thing, roast beef and roast lamb cause in those times over Christmas it was English Christmas and there should have been snow, but it wasn’t, it was quite hot, the middle of

02:30 summer, sort of thing. It’s a bit different now, have ice cream instead of plum pudding and stuff like that, but not those days.

Can you actually have much of an effect on Christmas?

Not a great deal I don’t think. There was things that were rationed like cream. I can’t understand why in this country, but things like cream and butter and stuff like that was rationed. You can understand

03:00 tea being rationed but not meat and milk and cream and stuff like that.

Would you as a merchant seaman be able to get your hands on anything on the docks that would be a bit interesting or exciting for Christmas?

Not officially.

Lets talk unofficially, what could you get your hands on?

Oh sometimes if you did a wharfie a favour he might give you something, sort of thing.

What would that be?

But you had to keep it quiet. Oh it

03:30 might be tea or coffee or something like that, a packet of coffee or some chocolates or something like that.

And what sort of favours would you be doing for them?

Oh I don’t now, let them us your toilet or something like that. Cause they was a different breed to us.

What were they like?

Oh they was all right I suppose, but they were strangers more or less. We got used to living with one another, we was like a family on board

04:00 a ship and anybody that was ashore they weren’t one of the family, sort of thing.

What about when you hit shore then, and you go out, as sailors are want to do, to go and have a beer or something like that, would the merchant navy be a bit bristly with the military navy? Would you guys be, you know, a bit unhappy together or would you muck in?

Oh I don’t know, I think we mixed that much.

04:30 We was polite to one another, I think. I know the naval patrols were always around the pubs making sure no-one got into blues and stuff, there would have been a few wild and rowdy times and things during the war.

Only in Fremantle cause as I said earlier Fremantle was a naval base and the merchant navy came under navy jurisdiction in there and they had to do as they was told over there

05:00 by the navy.

Did you ever get over there in the wartime?

Pardon?

You get to Fremantle during wartime?

Yeah.

Did you resent having the navy patrols telling you what to do?

Oh not really cause, well we was only kids. Some of the older people might have, but we was only kids and we was used to being told what to do, sort of thing.

All right, what’s the basis in truth

05:30 of a sailor has a girl in every port saying? How true was that?

I think it stems from way back but there is some truth in it I think. Some blokes chased round after girls no matter what trade they was in.

That’s true. Would sailors be going out to dances and trying to pick up girls all the time in port? Was that what you’d do?

Not all the time, I don’t think.

06:00 We just do normal things.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that’s all you did all the time but I mean.

Say for instance, up around Cairns and that we used to take, almost act like tourists, go for trips up to the Barron Falls and things like that on the weekends when we had time off.

What about the ladies of the night and sailors, they’re always a potent mix?

Well there used to be a group

06:30 of women in some of the pubs, they wouldn’t go out with anybody else but sailors.

Really?

Yeah.

Why was that?

I don’t why, whether we spend more money on them or what it was, just one of those things I think.

And sailors when they hit town do they have a tendency to splurge with their money?

Some of them did, yeah. Especially if they was Blue Water men did cause they were at sea longer than we were though. It was a thing you picked

07:00 up though, sort of thing, it was a thing that sailors do.

Spend their money?

Yeah.

On wild women and song?

Yeah.

What about the wild women you have to actually pay to spend money on?

I never ever spent money on them in that fashion, I used to take them out and things like that and buy them a meal and a few drinks and something like that but I didn’t really spend much on them, sort of thing. Might give them a gift

07:30 of some sort or a bit of cheap jewellery or something like that.

I guess what I was round about hinting at was prostitutes and so forth. Were sailors often off to the brothel when they got off the port?

Not a lot of our people cause as I said, we weren’t at sea that long, not like a Blue Water man. A lot of our people were married. I was married quite young. How old were you when you got married?

Oh about twenty or something like that.

08:00 So that was just after the war wasn’t it?

Yeah.

Did you have a girlfriend during the war?

Yes, there was a girl in Western Australia in Bunbury, Busselton, that’s right. I used to write to her, I only actually met her a couple of times, I wrote to her for quite some time. The last letter I wrote to her she wrote back and she said she’d just got married. So that knocked that on the head.

So don’t write any more.

08:30 What was she up to up there? Did she have a job or?

She was, her people had a farm just outside of Busselton.

Fair enough. So she was your only wartime love?

Regular girl, sort of thing. One that I’d write to. There was a girl, a friend of Mum’s daughter, she worked for the Tivoli circuit.

09:00 She was in Sydney. I used to see her occasionally but that was only friendship cause we grew up together.

She worked for the Tivoli circuit? Was she a dancer or a singer?

Yes, she was one of the ballet girls, about the same age as me. I met her by accident actually. She was, she trained at the May Downs School. It was a dancing school there in Melbourne in the thirties and early forties

09:30 and the better ones they put on the Tiv and there used to be a club in Sydney, the Merchant Navy Club, and we happened to go in there one Sunday and the Tivoli crowd used to put on a show for the men on Sunday nights in there. And I went in there and she was on and I went in there with one of the lads and I don’t know who seen who first

10:00 but anyway she seen me and she come over and after that every time we went to Sydney I used to contact her and she’d always get us tickets to the Tivoli and stuff like that. We used to go out together and things like that, but that was all that was in it. But she got married anyway.

What about in Melbourne, there’s the Seamen’s Chapel is it?

The Seamen’s Mission?

The Seamen’s Mission, was that in existence

10:30 then when you were a seaman?

Yeah, yeah, that’s been going for many years.

What’s that place like? What would they do for you then?

Oh they had a kiosk. They used to hold dances on a Sunday night, every Sunday night, but a Church of England group owned it, the Flying Angel, but the padre was a ex-naval, ex-British naval padre and he didn’t like Australians

11:00 very much.

Well he picked the wrong country to settle in then, didn’t he?

If we had an English badge, we was a sweet as a nut with him but if we had an Australian badge, no way. That’s our badge, that’s the Australian badge. That’s wartime issue that one.

It’s a great badge.

11:30 Would that be on your cap or on your shoulder?

On your lapel, your jacket lapel. I should use that at any services I go to, funerals or something like that, Anzac Day and things like that.

So the Seamen’s Mission, like you said it had a kiosk, would that be it basically where you could get a cup of tea and?

Yeah, and you could buy stuff. You could buy soap and stuff like that. Although we got issued with soap but if we wanted fancy soap we could buy it there,

12:00 hair oil and stuff like that. I spoke to another sailor a while ago who was in the Royal Australian Navy and he was saying soap on ship was a prized commodity because, you know, if you rang out of soap on a ship you’re not going get any more until you get back. Was it the same way in the short trip merchants?

No, we always had plenty of that sort of stuff, because we got a weekly issue, more or less. The same with fruit, we got two pieces of fruit

12:30 a day, fresh fruit. That was part of the agreement, sort of thing, that we got that. It was laid down in the Board of Trade rules what we should get.

And those rules I guess would have been negotiated by the Seamen’s Union wouldn’t they?

In later years, yeah. Originally it was laid down by the British Board of Trade.

Was the Seamen’s Union active during the war?

13:00 Yes, as long as, well most ships was good but occasionally there was a bit of an outlaw, sort of thing. They had a bad steward or a bad cook or something like that, cause they was a different union to us and their union would stick up for them, even if he was bad, they wouldn’t

13:30 sack him because he was one of their union members. We’d say, “Well he’s no good to us, he’s dirty,” or something like that. I know one ship I was in we complained about the cockroaches falling off the deck into the soup and he said, “What’s wrong with you? You’re getting bloody fresh meat, what are you complaining about?” Things like that, I mean, I don’t think he ever washed his aprons or anything like

14:00 that.

That’s terrible. Was there an agreement between the Government and the unions not to strike during the war?

Yeah.

Tell us about that.

I don’t know much about it. It was in existence when I joined the union, sort of thing. They let substandard ships sail, ships that should have been condemned and that, because they were short of shipping. More so on Blue Water stuff than

14:30 round the coast, because especially the iron boats cause most of those ships were only build about 1935 or something, and there accommodation and that was really good for that time.

And was that across all trades, that no-one would strike during the war?

I don’t know ashore, but that was the way it was at sea.

15:00 Was there a wage freeze as well, at that time?

More or less, yeah.

So you couldn’t ask for a raise or anything like that?

For an able seaman we got twenty pound a month, and North of Cairns, it was in the war zone, it was classed as North of Cairns, I think it was about fifty per cent war bonus or war risk and South of Cairns it was thirty three and a third.

15:30 That’s why they knocked us back on repat [repatriation] benefit and that for so many years cause they reckoned we was getting the war effort and we was paid it and paid for what we done.

Gee they’re generous, aren’t they?

Yeah. Well as far as health benefits go, it took us fifty years to get health benefits. It was 1995 before we got health benefits.

How does that make you feel or how did that make you feel?

Not too good. Well the RSL in

16:00 Victoria they wouldn’t let us join.

Did the rest of the country’s RSLs let you join?

Yeah I joined the RSL in Sydney in 1946 and I came down to Melbourne here and I went to South Melbourne RSL with my brother-in-law. Would have been in late 1946 or 1947 and I was introduced to the President there and he asked me where I come from and

16:30 I said Balmain in Sydney and he said, “What branch of the service was you?” and I said, “Merchant navy,” and he said, “You shouldn’t be wearing that badge, you’ve got no right to wear that badge, you’re a civilian.” What did you say to him?

Ah? I didn’t say anything much, I just turned round and I walked over to me brother-in-law and told him what he said and he pulled his badge off and threw it at him and we walked out.

That must make you feel pretty rotten that they’d say that to you?

17:00 Well it does now cause I’m used to it and I know how to answer them back now.

What do you say now?

Well you I say, “You wouldn’t be around cause we took your bloody tucker in for you.”

That’s right.

And our ships was attacked first before they had a go at the navy, they went for our ships cause we was the more important ones. We was the ones with the supplies on.

17:30 And in the navy, merchant or Royal, you are a target all the time, aren’t you? You’re at sea, you’re a target.

Yeah, it’s known on the Russian run, the North Sea run which was bad. I would have hated to have been on that but they, I don’t know how many thousand of tons were sunk but it was usually the merchant ships that got it and once they hit the water there was no chance at all. They was dead as soon as they hit the water, they’d freeze to death.

18:00 It’s terrible isn’t it?

Yeah, it’s very bad.

So what did you think of post-war then, when was it you went down to the Victorian RSL or the one here when they said you can’t come in?

Oh that was in 1947, I think.

It’s amazing isn’t it that after a war when the whole country’s been fighting together that as soon as the war’s finished that people start dividing it up again into you can, you can’t?

18:30 Well we was better off actually than the blokes in the First World war, the merchant navy in the First World War got no recognition what so ever.

Did you feel, RSL aside, that the government gave you adequate recognition for your service during the war?

Not during the war and not immediately after. They treated us as civilians.

Even though you were on, and in many cases damaged ships?

We were, technically we were civilians.

But you were still on, is it

19:00 DEMS [Defence Equipped Merchant Ships] they were called?

We had DEMS gunners on board, they taught us how to use the guns. We was paid sixpence a day to be in the gun crew.

Well saying you’re a civilian is like saying an army pay clerk is a civilian, isn’t it? He’s still there, he’s still doing the job, he just doesn’t go out and actually shoot people.

Well I’ve got friends now that never left, they joined up, they was volunteers in the army and they never left Victoria, so they don’t get any

19:30 benefits. They’re not even allowed to get a service pension, they’ve got to take an old age pension.

Is there much difference between the two?

Not the pension, the pensions are exactly the same but with the repatriation benefits now it’s a lot different. See I get seventy per cent disability pension now too, that’s on top of me service pension.

What disabilities

20:00 did you suffer in the war?

Lungs, through smoking, through the tobacco fumes in the accommodation and the quarters.

Now you said that was a tiny room with twelve men smoking all the time in there?

Not all the time, coming and going. There was always smoke fumes in there.

That would be awful I reckon. I couldn’t stand that. So to keep on this theme, when you were paid off finally,

20:30 after the war, was that in Sydney and was that off the Era?

Yeah.

And was there any, was there an official like demobilisation thing for you?

No, because we didn’t stop going to sea. We stayed seamen. I joined another ship.

Was there any contact from the government

21:00 or any of the armed services to the merchant seamen at that time?

No.

Was any approach ever made by them to you or did the Merchant Seamen’s Association, in one form or another, contact the Government and say “Look you’ve got to recognise our members”?

Only with respect to campaign medals and stuff like that. They notified me that they was available for me to pick up, which I’ve got over there if you’d like to have a look at them.

21:30 But they was the only the same as the navy got, sort of thing, we got the same thing, but because you had those it didn’t mean you got a service pension or anything.

And how come the, what made the Sydney branch, the Balmain branch of the RSL accept merchant seamen.

Well they’d only just started and they was looking for members.

Right, so it was a bit of a backhanded compliment there?

22:00 Well one of the people, I think it was the secretary, he was a wharfie and he was on board and he come on board the Barwon, and he was a winch driver. And I was walking past and he called out “Hey sailor, can I see you for a minute?” and I said, “Yeah, what do you want?” I thought he wanted something to do with the ship. He said, “Any of you chaps got wartime service in?”

22:30 I said, “Most of us,” and course that was immediately after the war and he said, “Would you be interested in joining the RSL?” I said, “Well, I don’t know. Why don’t you come down to the quarters at meal break and you can have a talk to the fellas?” Anyhow he came down there and had a bit of a yarn to us, and most of us said,

23:00 “Oh yeah, we’re interested.” He said, “Well look, you don’t have to join immediately, but if you’re interested,” he said, “I’ll send a few cars down for you Sunday and you can come over to Balmain and we meet in so and so’s backyard,” he said. “He’s got quite a big backyard.” It was too, it was a very nice place and he said, “You can have a drink and have a bit of a yarn to the fellas and see what you think.” Anyhow I think it was only ten shillings to join and five bob a year, or something,

23:30 at that time, but most of us went over there and I think half of the crew joined the RSL then. As I said when I came back to Melbourne they wouldn’t let us join, they knocked us back as even coming in as visitors. And there was another association here, the Merchant Navy War Service League, cause when

24:00 I give up going to sea I joined that and I’m now Vice President of that one.

And did the Merchant Navy War Service League and the RSL have any kind of relationship over the years they wouldn’t let you join, or was it very antagonistic?

Well I think it must have been about, in the 1970s they, when they was running short of members and that, cause a lot of the First World war

24:30 blokes was either too decrepit to get along to the meetings or crossed the bar, or something like that, and they started inviting a lot of us to join in various places, and they wrote me a letter. I got a letter and I was living in Northcote, that was before my wife died, and I got a letter telling me that I was eligible and

25:00 come along and see them. That was Northcote RSL. I didn’t bother about it for a while because I was in the War Service League and later on, one of the bosses where I worked in the tramways was a member down at Northcote, and he asked me to come along, so I went along with him and cobbered up with a few blokes and I finished up joining there and I’ve been in it ever since.

And did you forgive them for their earlier refusal to admit you?

Oh yes.

25:30 Cause now we’ve got our own sub-branch and hall and that. Our President, that gentleman up there, he just died the other week, that was the funeral I was at on Thursday. Right.

He was a Scotsman incidentally. He was a very good man, a wonderful man.

What did the Merchant Navy War Service League offer? Was it basically the same sort of organisation as the RSL?

Yeah.

26:00 It was purely seamen though, it was all seamen, there was no other services in it. DEMS gunners was allowed to join it, cause they was basically merchant seamen.

Were you allowed, or were you invited, I don’t know how it works, to march on Anzac Day from the start, from 1946 onwards?

Yeah.

So even though you’re invited to march on Anzac Day, the RSL wouldn’t let you join?

No.

It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it? It just seems

26:30 quite petty and, I don’t know what you thought of it, but it seems quite an unusual thing?

Well a lot of it, I think, the First World War hierarchy, they was sort of set in their ways, they was more or less old men by then, my age now, but they was old men then, sort of thing. But I think they even knocked back the kids that was in New Guinea, cause they said New Guinea

27:00 was an Australian territory, so they didn’t go outside of Australia, so they wasn’t eligible. They done the same with the blokes in Vietnam.

They went away to war, didn’t they?

Yeah, they left the country, they returned, they’re ex-servicemen, returned servicemen.

That’s very strange behaviour isn’t it?

Yeah, now they let, if you’re a member of the police force for six months you can join the RSL now.

I guess they need the membership subs, don’t they?

27:30 Yeah. I asked them why garbagemen and postmen couldn’t join too and said they’re a public service.

Why not?

Cause I’m an official of the RSL now and I can have a bit of a say and have a bit of a go back at them.

Good on you, good on you, I think that’s good. What do you think, as an official of the RSL

28:00 now, what’s the future for the RSL, do you think?

Well we’re taking in children of ex-service now, but as affiliate members, they’ve got almost the same rights as a member, but the only thing they can’t hold, they can’t be President of a sub-branch. They can be vice-president or they can take any

28:30 job, sort of secretary, treasurer, anything like that, but President’s the only thing they can’t do.

Do you think then because it’s sixty years now that a huge number of Australians were involved in a war, sure there were guys in Vietnam but it wasn’t the same sort of numbers, do you think that the RSL is in danger of losing virtually all it members in the future?

29:00 Is that something you’re worried about?

Through natural attrition I think. Most of us, and I’m one of the youngest ones that was in the Second World War and I was eighteen when the war finished and I’m very long in the tooth now myself. Even the Vietnam blokes are getting on now too.

Well they’d all be about sixty now, wouldn’t they?

In their fifties. Yeah

29:30 So when they’re all gone, you know in another thirty years or so?

Well there’s the peace keepers, they’re about the only ones that can.

Is the RSL looking to that point in the future? Saying “What will we do?”

They’re looking towards it but a lot of them aren’t interested because they’ve got other interests now. And then when you’re young enough, when you’re working, you don’t get time to attend meetings and stuff like that. I do now, I’ve made it my business 30:00 to because it’s given me an interest, keeps me from sitting here stagnating, sort of thing.

Well it is an important institution and I think it’s something that we need to look at in terms of where will it be in thirty years from now.

I believe it’s important even in the running of the country. I believe we should have a say in the running of the country after all we fought for it.

30:30 Yeah. What about in recent times there’s been a resurgence of interest in Anzac Day in the last ten years or so?

There is, very much so.

Does that make you feel, cause I guess it’s a long winded question, in the sixties and seventies with Vietnam people tended to turn their backs on Anzac Day and think, “That’s a celebration of war,” but in the last fifteen years or so they’ve realised, I think, that it’s not, it’s a celebration of men who did something for the country?

31:00 It was mateship sort of thing, the mates that you’d lost and the mates that you’d made and that. I made some and I’ve remade some mates now that I thought was dead and through the association that we’ve got.

Does it make you feel, or how does it make you feel then though, I guess what I’m saying is, the fact that the country has re-awoken to what Anzac Day really means?

It’s good I think for the kids. It shows that they’re getting to learn

31:30 a bit of the history of the country. I believe the past is very important to the future as far as education is concerned.

Well the past is the textbook for the future, isn’t it?

Yeah. There’s even more interest in young people going across to Gallipoli and those places and seeing things now.

32:00 Well they’ve got the means to do it, sort of thing, there’s a bit more money flying around than what there used to be.

There certainly is, in many ways. Did you, you were still in the merchant navy in the 1950s weren’t you?

Yeah.

Was there any merchant navy involvement in the Korean War?

Only as far as taking supplies up them and stuff like that,

32:30 cause most of the servicemen that went there was flown, they was flown to Japan I think, even to Korea itself. We had the Australian National Line ships taking supplies up to Japan and places like that.

Were you involved in any of that shipping?

Not really, no, I was nice and safe in Holyman’s running across to Tassie.

That sounds very sensible of you.

33:00 Did you think at that time that, “Well we’ve just fought a war”? Did you think, “What on earth is this all about this time? I’d thought we’d finished the last war.”

Well it came on top of the occupation forces BCOF [British Commonwealth Occupation Force], actually. Blokes were joining up for the occupation forces and they finished up getting sent to Japan, to Korea, but cause as I say

33:30 I was at sea, I was still at sea and I wasn’t much interested. Some of my school friends they joined up, but I just wasn’t interested, I liked what I was doing.

Fair enough. With the fellas who fought actually against the Japanese, who fought them face to face in New Guinea and the guys who fought the Germans in the Middle East of Europe, some developed quite a

34:00 lingering and, you know, justifiable hatred of those races, did you have any lingering hatred of the Japanese or German people?

I’ve got a dislike for them, not actually a hatred, I don’t like them. I think mines for family reasons cause I had a cousin, he was in the Perth, when she got hit and he finished the war in the railway in Burma and he had a pretty rough time of it.

34:30 But he came back and after the war he got a job with Ansett, at that time, and he stayed with them for a few years and then he went back to sea again and the first ship he joined was a little thing called the Blythe Star and they took her out of Hobart and took her South about and she got down the South West coast and tipped over, so he wasn’t

35:00 very lucky.

All hands lost on that?

No, they got out of it, but luckily, very luckily. He joined one of the ferries, one of the Bass Strait ferries and he stayed there and he got crook, through war injuries, through what the Japs done to him, that it killed him in the finish.

35:30 So do you still have a dislike or a, for the Japanese?

Yes, it’s not because of the war, I think, I believe they’re very arrogant.

Did that affect you post -war in terms of would you not buy Japanese products and so forth?

I think you’re forced to now here, cause the motor industry’s all Japanese, the majority of it’s Japanese.

Yes, it’s very hard these days to buy anything that’s not Japanese,

36:00 if you want to buy something electrical or motor, but in the post-war years did you go out of your way not to buy Japanese?

Immediately after the war, yes, cause it shouldn’t have been. I believe it was the Americans who financed them to start off with, to get them on their feet again, when they shouldn’t have, I don’t think.

What do servicemen think of that, because if you look at the war,

36:30 the two countries that boomed in the post-war were West Germany and Japan, what do servicemen feel about that, who went over there and gave their lives or gave years out of their lives, and then they end up the biggest economies of the countries they were fighting against?

Well some of them don’t think much for it, but people like ‘Weary’ Dunlop and those people, they sort of forgave them. I mean he had a pretty rough time

37:00 of it too, but he was a rather remarkable man, Weary.

He certainly was.

He had it in him to forgive them and he did a lot of them and he done a lot for us actually.

What did he do for you?

Well not me personally, but the Australian people in general. I believe he done quite a lot for.

I think he did a lot in terms of trying to get disability pensions for fellows.

He did that too.

37:30 Did you feel after the war then, when you paid off from the Era in Sydney, and there was no contact from any kind of Government organisation that you’d been a bit let down in a way? Did it strike you then about that thing or was that not?

No, I don’t think so because we always had another ship to look forward too, sort of thing, and they was better. Because the conditions improved, had better accommodation, especially the

38:00 government ships, they had two berth rooms, recreation rooms and all that sort of things on board the ships, that was very good.

Did you think that, I know you were only eighteen when the war finished and it’s not really the age when you do to much in depth thinking, I know I certainly didn’t at eighteen, but did you think when the war finished and you step on Australian soil again, you’re off a ship, you’d been paid off, did the country seem

38:30 different to what it had done before the war or?

No, I think they were still sort of converting gradually, it was a gradual process, I think, easing down, sort of thing. The munition factories were winding down and all that sort of thing. There was still guards on the gates on the wharves and things like that for quite some time

39:00 after the war. But you didn’t see the military police around the streets and things like that, so much. But there were still quite a lot of servicemen wandering around.

Tape 7 00:32 I’d like to talk a little bit about your work on the Mundulla, Mundulla?

Mundella, yeah.

Mundella, as in Nelson, that was an armed ship wasn’t it?

Yeah she had a four inch gun on her stern and she had two twenty millimetre Oerlikon cannons on the bridge of her, either side of the bridge.

Was there a rule about how much armament you could place on a merchant ship?

01:00 Well I don’t think so, I’ve seen them stacked to the minimum, sort of thing. I believe there was a couple of Lewis guns on board her, but I never seen them. As I said we got sixpence a day, we had four gunners, four naval DEMS gunners, and they taught us how to use the guns and one of them was a gun layer and.

How many in the crew for these four inch guns?

01:30 Well there was forty odd crew overall, officers and stewards.

I mean on a gun crew, who would be on the gun crew? How many guys?

I think there was two of the gunners, two of the naval gunners, and we had about four of the merchant seamen.

And what would the different roles be?

Well there’d be a gun layer, an aimer,

02:00 I was projectile, what they call projectile supply, and there would be a bloke from the ready use locker, that was a bin they kept the shells in. He’d hand them to me, I’d hand them to the bloke on the block,

02:30 he’d load it, and the other bloke would close the block, the layer would lay the gun and fire it.

Would the charge, was the ammunition stored as a unit, or was the charges and shells kept separate?

Oh that’s right, there was a cordite bag. One bloke handed that to the loader

03:00 and then I handed him the shell after, I think. No, I handed him the shell first and he handed, he give them the cordite bag.

So they were stored separately?

Yeah.

Right, cause I’ve heard that sometimes on a ship they were stored separately and sometimes they weren’t.

The cordite was more or less gun cotton, the same as gun cotton. It was, you wouldn’t want to be smoking near that, it would go up like nothing.

You’d go up with it.

Yeah.

03:30 Did you fire the gun in action at all?

I never fired it.

Oh were you involved in it?

Only in drill.

Was the gun ever fired in action while you were on ship?

Not while I was on it.

Or the Oerlikons or the Lewis guns, or anything?

Only in gun drill.

And what was your run with the Mundella? Where did you go along the coast?

Oh from Brisbane round to Fremantle.

04:00 So you’d be going down the East Coast, which is where the main Japanese submarine concentrations were?

Yeah, round about, I believe late 1942 to the beginning of 1944, it was pretty bad. We never knew about it at the time but that’s when the subs were around. I think there was something like twenty ships sunk during that period.

There was forty ships sunk around the Australian coast all together.

Yeah.

04:30 I’ve got a list of them all.

Quite a surprising number of ships actually sunk.

Not of all those were Australian. There was a couple of Dutchmen and a few Americans.

So if ships were being sunk and you’re not finding out about it, is the Government then censoring the merchant navy, so it, headquarters obviously know if a ship’s gone down, but they weren’t telling you? Were there no rumours getting around?

Nobody was told about it. The only time you’d

05:00 hear if you knew somebody that had been in it, like the Centaur, the hospital ship that got hit. A friend of me mother’s, her husband was in it, he was a greaser and he got out of it and that’s how we found out about that, how I found out about the Centaur. Cause there was nothing in the papers about it at that time.

That’s quite remarkable isn’t it?

Yeah.

05:30 Cause I imagine the navy would be, each ship’s like a little family but I imagine the whole merchant navy’s a bit like a family, so if you lose forty or fifty of your men on a ship that goes down, I imagine there would be some kind of bush telegraph that would tell everyone.

You’d see a bloke in the pick up and you’d say, “Where’s so and so? I haven’t seen him.” “Oh he was in such and such a ship. It went down,” or something like that. That’s the only way you’d find out about it.

And on the Mundella you were an able seaman

06:00 by this stage?

Yeah.

What were your duties as an able seaman on that ship?

Oh pardon me, I wasn’t, I was still an ordinary seaman. It was the same as an AB, you done the same sort of work. You was only more or less on the job training.

So you were doing watches in the wheelhouse?

Yeah, you do all that. Do a crows nest lookout from dawn to dusk.

You’d be up there all day by yourself?

You only done two hours, or something like that. You stood four

06:30 hour watches, it was four on and eight off. If there was three men to a watch then you done two hours on the wheel, you had a half of hour break. You made yourself a cup of coffee and the officer of the watch you took him up a cup of coffee, out of politeness, sort of thing.

07:00 If you didn’t like him, you made it too strong or too weak or burnt his toast or something like that. But then you went and done maybe an hour and a half lookout. They was pretty strict with the lookout in those days. If it was daytime you done it in the crows nest. You done that once and the next watch you, if you was first wheel, the first watch, you done the second wheel

07:30 the second watch, the third watch, you didn’t do a wheel, but you done two hours lookout.

When you say they were pretty strict with the lookouts, what do you mean by that?

Well you had to keep your eyes open. You wasn’t allowed, you know, you had to keep a lookout, as I said you didn’t go to sleep or anything like that.

Well if you, ooh.

And you wasn’t allowed to smoke on watch.

08:00 Well if you were stuck up the crows nest, how high above the deck is it on something like the Mundella?

Top of the mast.

Thirty feet, sixty feet?

Forty foot, probably. So if you’re in even a small swell, you’re going to be going back and forth aren’t you? Not a place to be if you’re a bit queasy?

Didn’t feel like that up there because there was no, you couldn’t smell any engine room oil or anything like that, it was fresh.

Was that what would make you feel ill, being below decks with the oil smell?

Did with me cause I come out of sail, that’s one thing that made me feel

08:30 crook, the smell of the engine room.

Well let’s get back to the top of that mast then. You’re up there. When you’re down South in Bass Strait and round Melbourne area, it would be pretty cold up there at times?

Oh yeah, you were all rugged up though.

Obviously you can only look at one direction at a time, but you’ve got a three hundred and sixty degree radius to cover, would you look five minutes that way, five minutes that way, what would you do?

I’d more or less keep on looking, continually

09:00 turning round.

You wouldn’t get dizzy up there, turning around all the time?

Oh no, you didn’t turn round all that fast, you know, a couple of minutes you’d look here and then look this way and look over that way and.

And were you looking mainly just for submarines or?

Well anything, other ships. If you seen another ship you reported it.

Did you have to come down or would you?

No, you had a voice pipe.

What were the signals, on the voice pipe did you have to like go (demonstrates)?

Yeah, just blew into

09:30 it and they heard it down the bridge and whoever was on watch, where the officer was, he’d answer it and you’d give him your report what you’d seen and it might only be smoke, or it might be well anything. See a submarine come up near us once. It was an American, no warning, just popped up alongside of

10:00 us.

Did that scare the pants off you?

I think it might have scared him a bit. I think there was a mate on watch. He yelled out, he yelled at him, the bloke come up in the conning tower and he said you were lucky you didn’t get blown out of the bloody water, not that we could do much with the stuff that we had. It was First World war stuff.

Did you know at the time that it was old rubbish that you had on board in terms of guns?

10:30 Oh we knew that it was First World war stuff, because that’s all they had to give us.

Did you think then if you were attacked that you’d have no chance to defend yourself or did you think it would work, be serviceable?

I think, I don’t think there was any case of a merchant ship sinking another vessel on purpose by gun fire around the coast, never heard of

11:00 it. But the Oerlikons were good, they was modern guns.

They were the ones with the shoulder pads, the Oerlikons?

They was more or less anti-aircraft. None of them would depress enough. If a submarine came up close enough, along side you, the gun couldn’t depress low enough to hit him, used to go over the top.

Did you ever encounter any other submarines, or just that American one?

Only the ones in Fremantle harbour I seen.

11:30 Did you carry depth charges?

We didn’t, no.

Lets have a talk then about, was it on the Mundella that you saw the Iron Crown go down? Yeah. The Iron Knight.

The Iron Knight was it?

Yeah.

Tell us about that. You were coming from Sydney down to Melbourne?

Yeah. We’d seen all these ships and I think it was the third mate, I asked

12:00 him what, I said it was as busy as bloody Bourke Street and he said, “That’s a convoy.”

Could you see the convoy?

Oh you could see all these ships going past us. Next thing, we was well clear, I think we must been almost to Gabo and we heard the bang and a bit of a flash. I was off watch by then and

12:30 heard the flash and that and heard the bang and somebody said, “Something got hit,” and the next thing, a few of the officers running around, and the next thing we just carried on and apparently someone asked a mate or something about going back for survivors and the mate said the captain’s been told to keep going.

13:00 Apparently the navy told him.

That was the way wasn’t it? If you were in convoy you couldn’t really stop to pick up survivors because then you’d all be sitting ducks.

They had special ships to pick up survivors. We weren’t in convoy we was on our own.

But I mean if the convoy had stopped, or if you’d gone back then you’re just a sitting duck.

Well we might have got hit too, that was the idea. But as one of them said to us later on,

13:30 he said, “If they hadn’t of been there, it might have been us that got it.”

Did that make the war really come home for you?

Yeah, I really woke up to it then.

Did it weigh on your mind? Was it constant fear from then on that you might be torpedoed?

No, it wasn’t fear, I wouldn’t call it fear, cause you were usually to busy to be frightened. Had too much to do, didn’t think about it.

14:00 What would you do when you’re off watch then? Your four hours off, what would you be doing?

Oh you had eight hours off, sixteen hours off, sort of thing, well in the night time you went to bed, the same as everybody else, sort of thing, you slept for eight hours. Your other eight hours you read or some blokes studied, some blokes done handcrafts,

14:30 or something like that.

How did you go on a ship with fellas snoring during that eight hours sleep?

Got used to it.

You get used to it? You just throw things at them and?

Yes. Drunken snore was worse than anything really.

You shouldn’t be getting drunk on a ship though, surely?

Oh not at sea. None of us ever got drunk at sea. They didn’t drink at sea at all.

You’re more likely to get sick if you drink at sea, aren’t you?

It wasn’t that.

15:00 I don’t know if it was respect for the ship, or what it was. You played up went you got ashore, but when you were at sea you didn’t drink.

It’s hard enough to run a ship sober at times at sea isn’t it?

It’s different now I believe, cause they’ve got bars for the crew and all on board the ships, but then it was nothing.

Can you remember encountering in Bass Strait in particular, any really huge seas?

A couple, yeah, especially in the sailing ships.

15:30 What sort of waves would you be looking at? Oh, ten or twelve foot, pretty bad, cause the smaller ships we didn’t go out when it got too bad.

But you can go out when it’s fine and end up getting stuck out there?

That was it, the trip that I said took us three weeks to get across, that was pretty bad. We was laying under the hammocks, under shelter. And we run out of meat and

16:00 the meat got too rotten to eat so

Had to eat each other?

No, the skipper caught us tipping it out and he said, “You’d better get your bloody fishing lines out, cause that’s all you’ve got to eat.” And one of the blokes got a gummy shark and that lasted us a couple of days, but we had a few couta and stuff like that, but lived on vegetables most of the time.

Probably the best diet you had the whole time you were at sea?

16:30 Fish and vegetables. So where were you on VE [Victory in Europe] day, when victory was declared in Europe?

I think I must have been steaming up the Gulf up to Whyalla I think.

And was the mainbrace spliced at that time?

No, we got issued two bottles of beer each.

17:00 That’s all right.

Didn’t go far.

I’m sure it didn’t, crikey, but it’s better than nothing. Did you all think, “Well that’s it, the war will be over soon in the Pacific too,” was it a feeling that the whole thing’s winding up?

They started pulling the guns off the ships around about that time, cause they, I think they realised that the Japs had too much to worry about

17:30 further North than to be worrying about round the coast, sort of thing, so they started pulling the guns off everything. Cause they lay the ships up to do that.

Now on that point, about the Japanese being further North, with the merchant navy being a restricted occupation you couldn’t just quit, could you? You couldn’t say, “That’s it, I don’t want to be a merchant seaman”?

Oh you had to get a permit to go ashore,

18:00 if there was illness in the family or something like that, they’d give you a permit to go ashore for maybe three months or something like that.

Well on that note, could they say to you then, “Well fellas, we don’t need any merchant ships down south at the moment, we really need people up north on ships”. Could they make you go up north and work up there?

No, not really.

How would they get people to work up north then?

Well I think they had a pool more or less in every port.

18:30 There was some blokes sailed out of Melbourne, there was some blokes sailed out of Sydney, some blokes sailed out of Brisbane and that was their home ports, their families lived in those ports so they worked out of there, they sailed out of there.

So if you were sailing out of Brisbane and that’s where all the trouble is, that’s just your bad luck, that’s your port, that’s where you work out of?

Yeah.

I see. What about VJ [Victory over Japan] Day, where were you then?

I think we must have

19:00 been going up the coast going into Newcastle, cause we unloaded in Newcastle and I think we went back to Sydney and they laid her up and paid us all off.

Did you get a couple of bottles of beer when that was announced as well, but was it more?

No, not from Howard Smith, they was hungry. We got nothing off them.

That’s a bit rough. So you were on ship, you hear the news and that’s it and you have a cup of tea and…?

Oh we went mad 19:30 when we got ashore, naturally.

Tell us about that. Was that when you got ashore in Sydney or up in Newcastle?

Yeah.

Tell us about that, it must have been a crazy time?

Everybody went mad I think, it was just one big party. Women was coming up and kissing you, complete strangers sort of thing, you know. It wouldn’t matter who you were or what you were, sort of thing, everyone was so damned happy it was over.

They should have a few more of those days I reckon.

20:00 Yeah.

Did you catch up with your friend who was in the Tivoli then? Did you catch up with your friend on the Tivoli circuit at that party?

At that time, they used to move around, I don’t know where she was then. She, I don’t know if she come back to Melbourne, she was on the Tiv here.

And how long did this party go on for?

A couple of days.

And did you go to bed that night or were you up all night and all the next day?

No, I was up all night I think.

20:30 Geez, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself, would you? I can’t imagine, all the New Year’s Eve parties.

You could gatecrash any party anywhere, whether you’re a complete stranger, “Oh come in, you’re right mate,” that was it, sort of thing.

Was every house like an open house?

Oh pubs was wide open, drunks all over the place, even police was…

Police were drunk?

Yeah.

Wow, that would be one

21:00 of those days that a real once in a lifetime day that not many people get to celebrate.

I remember there was a Royal Navy ship in, the Manxman, and I cobbered up with the petty officer off her and a day and a half we was together, knocking around together, and a good bloke too.

Did you keep in contact with him after that?

21:30 No, I lost contact with him, he sailed, and he never give me his address or anything. If he did I forgot it when I was full.

Strange how, I guess war at any time forces people together and you make friendships, but at a time like that, everybody loves everybody, don’t they?

Yeah, yeah, you know, naval blokes, especially, they

22:00 seen our badge and that, cause we was still wearing the badge officially, but you know, they was three parts full and in love with everybody sort of thing, you know, cobber up with you. Stick a bottle of whisky in your hand, “Have a drink mate,” cause I couldn’t, I still don’t like whisky, I’ve always hated it.

After that night?

No, I’ve never liked spirits much.

22:30 Gee, I reckon two days after that must have been the biggest hangover that this country has ever seen.

Well everybody I’d say. They closed up everything, they closed the doors in the factories and everything, they give people the day off, they said they might as well, nobody was going to be working anyhow. The only ones that was working was the publicans, I think.

They would have made a bloody killing, they’d all be retiring on that.

I don’t know, a lot of them weren’t even charging, I don’t think.

Well how would you get on then, cause 23:00 was beer and that rationed as well?

It wasn’t officially rationed but it was short and the pubs used to only open a couple of hours a day, or something like that, from four to six. In Victoria it was six o’clock closing, I think Sydney was nine o’clock, I can’t remember really, but they only opened for a couple of hours.

Can you remember the Prime Minister or anybody on the wireless making speeches

23:30 and stuff like that?

Yeah, I can, but I can’t remember what they said, sort of thing.

Cause you were a bit too…?

Yeah, I wasn’t old enough I don’t think, didn’t take much notice. I still don’t take much notice what politicians say anyhow, they’re a pack of bloody liars.

Well I’m not going to disagree with you there. What was I going to say then? I guess at the same time though VJ Day

24:00 must have been a time of sadness for a lot of people because they knew someone wasn’t coming home?

Yeah, there was that to it I think. Well you never seen those people, sort of thing, cause they kept to themselves to a certain extent.

Yeah, because we never think about that do we when we talk about the great parties, but there must have been people who thought, “Well that’s it”?

Well it’s the same with us now, when you look back on things

24:30 you only remember the good times, you don’t remember the hard times that you had.

Well looking back on the wartime then, is that how it is for you, you just remember some golden times and the good things?

To me it was, I was young enough to enjoy it, sort of thing. I believe from what I’ve spoken to army blokes, and that, even the blokes that was in the Middle East and that, and they only remember the good times, the fun they had. You know they don’t remember really how bad it was,

25:00 sort of thing a lot of them.

Do you think the war changed you in any way or do you think it helped you grow up faster than you might have otherwise?

Well I think I got a bit of an education out of it. Gave me a bit more understanding towards people, other people’s feeling and that, I think.

How did that develop, where you might not have had that otherwise?

Oh, gave you a bit more compassion in a way towards other people, if they’re crook

25:30 and that, you know, if your ship mate was crook you took him tucker in, instead of him having to get out of his bunk to go to the mess room and that. Only little things like that but I think it was sort of grew on you in later years.

How did you meet your wife after the war, speaking of compassion?

I met her at the Catholic Seamen’s Mission on Sunday night.

Was she a Catholic seaman?

No, she was a hostess, she was a

26:00 dance hostess. They used to run a, the Catholic Seamen’s Mission and the Flying Angel used to run a dance, but I don’t know what it was, whether the girls were better looking in the Catholic Seamen’s Mission, or what it was, but some of us used to go in there and I met Alice in there. Cause we weren’t allowed to take the girls home, or anything, or even take them out.

26:30 But I just happened to run into her in the street one day, she worked in Myers, and I think I took her to lunch and it sort of grew from there, sort of thing, and cause she took me home after a while. I remember the first time I took her home, I was sitting on her front veranda, in the corner of the front veranda, and the old man stuck his head out of the window, “Get to buggery out of there.

27:00 Get home, you. And you get your bum inside here,” or something like that.

Was he an Englishman?

Yeah, he was a Bristol Pom. Good old bloke. So how long did it take before he would let you actually come in the house?

A couple of months I think. She said I was a sailor and cause he was a wharfie and he wanted to meet me and he said, “Bring him home so I can look him over,” sort of thing.

27:30 And she had a couple of brothers, they was beefy big buggers too. But I cobbered up with them, finished up I sailed with one all the time, he was a good bloke, but the other bloke was a barman which made him a real good mate.

Yeah, good to have in the family, isn’t it? Now so your wife was Catholic, you’re not Catholic?

No.

How did that go? Did the old man say, “You’re not marrying a bloody non-Catholic.”

Quite good, we was married in a Methodist church.

28:00 She always wanted a church wedding and we went and spoke to a priest and he wanted me to convert and everything else. He wanted me to agree to bring up our children Catholic and everything else, and I said, “No, I won’t be in it.” And rather split up altogether, we said, “We’ll get married in a church all right. It will be a Protestant church, a Methodist church.”

Well that’s a good compromise.

28:30 Yeah, well it worked out, worked out quite good.

Was she all right with that your wife being Catholic? She just wanted to get married I suppose?

We must have wanted to get married cause we did and we stayed married. I never ever thought about getting divorced or anything.

Well that’s a good story, that’s good to hear. One a completely different note, something’s just popped into my head about what you said earlier about being left handed,

29:00 did being left handed cause any trouble during the war, cause I know the rifles are all for right handed men, was everything else built for right handed men in the war?

No, most of the tools were mostly right handed, I think.

What sort of tools would they be?

Some sort of knives that we used were right handed.

How could a knife be one handed?

They’ve got the blade chamfered on one side, like a pair of scissors. A pair of scissors, most of scissors are right handed.

29:30 That’s right, yeah. So you had,

There was other things that I can’t recall, sort of thing, that were expressly right handed. Some of them I learnt to use but I had too.

Did you have to learn to shoot a rifle at all?

No, but I did.

How did you manage that as a leftie, or did you shoot as a right?

All right. Used it the right way.

30:00 Used it as a right -handed? Oh that’s good. Sorry that just popped into my head and I wanted to ask it before I forgot

That was for rabbit shooting, the same thing as that actually, it wasn’t for wartime use.

Speaking of wartime, when you finished, when the Second war finished, did you think, did people think in general, “That’s it, we’ve fought the last war now,”

30:30 in the same way after the First World war they thought, “Well that’s got to be the war to finish all wars”?

I think there was that about it. They said well, it was more the Germans, they had two goes at them and they said, “We’ve beaten them this time, that’s it, don’t have to worry about them.”

So how did you feel when the Korean War started?

Well 31:00 I think it was a bigger propaganda war than the Second World War, cause the Americans had more say in it, and they’re the greatest propaganda merchants in the world, the Americans.

They’re not bad at that, are they?

They were more or less running the show. They even had our soldiers dressed in American uniforms more or less to, they had our badges on them, but

31:30 they was American uniforms. They were better than ours admittedly, but the only distinguishing mark was the Rising Sun they wore on their cap and half the time you couldn’t see that anyway.

Did it strike you that the Korean War and the Vietnam War, I suppose, was a war we had any business to be part of, or did you thing we shouldn’t have been in those wars?

Well I don’t believe we should have been in the Vietnam War. I always said that,

32:00 I believe that was purely political. Especially the ballot, when they called the kids up by ballot. Politicians’ kids never went.

Did you feel very strongly about that at the time?

I did, yes.

Did you march? Did you march in pickets?

No, I can’t remember what I was doing at that time. I know I didn’t march, but I did

32:30 feel strongly against it. I think most of us did.

Did you think most of the fellas that had been in the war felt particularly it wasn’t fair to be calling these kids up?

Well I believe most of the ex-servicemen felt they shouldn’t have been called up, not in that manner. Cause they had plenty of people ready to volunteer to go away and they reckoned at that time you had to have a university degree to get in the army.

33:00 You don’t have to have a degree to pull a trigger, do you?

No.

What did you think about our involvement in Iraq recently?

Well there again I believe it was a lot of propaganda. Where’s all this chemical warfare they’re talking about? The Americans said right from the start they wanted to take

33:30 out Hussein, I think.

Did you think we’ve learnt a lesson from the Second World War or do you think we’re heading towards, because my generation and the generation before me and the generation after me, hasn’t fought really, do you think we’re forgetting the lessons from the Second World War?

There a lot of lessons learnt I think, especially in the

34:00 uniform services, because, I mean, with the British army, didn’t go to a decent school he couldn’t be an officer, things like that. And they found out there was some talent in the ranks, sort of thing, even though they didn’t speak the King’s English, more or less.

34:30 But they were good men. They found out after the war like, that they were good soldiers.

Do you think with the way war is portrayed these days, as a television event basically, the Gulf war we’ve just had was on television twenty four hours a day, do you think we’re in danger of glamourising war?

I don’t think we were glamourising it,

35:00 but I think it’s getting so it’s more mechanical and it’s more dangerous I think. I mean they don’t even have to see you to kill you now.

That’s right. Do you think we could be in danger of having another war like the Second World War where everybody’s involved?

There will always be war because there’s always somebody greedier than somebody else.

I agree with you on that point, definitely, but

35:30 do you think it would be possible to involve most of the world again, or do you think it would just blow everything up.

I believe it could be religious, it’s the way it’s heading now, between the Muslims and the Christians, sort of thing. Do you feel then, about the Second World War, are you,

36:00 I always find this question hard to phrase because I’m, I can never phrase it properly, so I’ll just ask it, do you feel, not glad, because glad’s not the word, but glad that you were involved in the Second World War? Do you think it was a good thing to be part of?

Yes, I believe, I’m glad I was there. I made some good friends, friends that I kept for a few years, most of them are dead now

36:30 unfortunately, but I think I learnt a lot. I learnt more at sea than what I ever would have if I’d have stayed at school.

Are you proud that you did something for your country in its hour of need?

No, not for my country, I believe I done something for me mates and my friends, sort of thing.

Is that how you think of it at the time? You’re doing it for your mates,

37:00 you’re doing it for more of a personal thing?

I done it for the money in the beginning.

You’re a very honest man.

If they hadn’t have paid me, I wouldn’t have gone.

I don’t think anybody would have gone, if they didn’t get paid. You’re a very honest man. I’ll think we’ll end that tape there.

INTERVIEW ENDS