Australians at War Film Archive

Ronald Halsall - Transcript of interview

Date of interview: 22nd August 2003

http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/574

Tape 1

00:38 Ok. Tell us about your life story?

Well my great grandfather came from England. He sailed from Liverpool in 1858 I think it was. He lobbed in Melbourne and settled there for a while, and then he went to Yea. Selected land at Yea.

01:00 He had been going along the Hume Highway or City Road as it was called in those days to Albury and he discovered…he noticed a very nice, little, running stream and it always seemed to have water in it, so he had an idea he’d like to shift his property or his selection. They were cutting up the stations at the time, so he put

01:30 in for the one over at Creighton Creek it was called. It ran beautiful water, about a foot deep and never ran dry. They were there for over 100 years. And it dried up twice in that time. A beautiful stream, still there today. Then he went on to Violet Town, that’s where the Land Office was situated in those days and they said, “No you’ve already had a selection you can’t go again.” But he said, “I’m going to put this in my young

02:00 son’s name,” who was about ten or twelve. So they did and he put it in his son’s name and it’s still in the Halsall name now. It’s out at Creighton which is half way between Longwood and Avenel on the Hume Highway. Ned Kelly used to come through there when he was shifting from, going through to his property when he shifted up to…when did he go?

02:30 Glenrowan. I can’t think of the name. Shall I still keep going? Can you stop and start easy?

Just keep going.

You’ll cut it out. Why can’t I think of the name…Gosford. Not Gosford. Greta. That’s where he lived for years and then he became a wanderer.

03:00 He had a few horses. There were a lot of Irish policemen in those days, probably related to you. They heard about this chap who they reckoned was stealing horses. And they hounded old Ned. His mother, they locked her up when she had a babe in arms. So the police…the big flat foots from Ireland didn’t get a very good name up there.

03:30 Of course, Ned shot about three or four of them out at that shootout, out at Mansfield on the creek, out there. That was the first chap he ever shot, I think. And they hounded him after that of course. Four years he was free for, to go up into New South Wales and rob the bank in 1888, I

04:00 think. And old Ned was well liked around there. A lot of people would help him. He’d say, “Where’s the police?” And they’d tell him. Kate Kelly too, that was Ned’s sister, she was a very popular girl around the place. They all seemed to want to help the Kellys. But anyhow he came to grief at

04:30 Glenrowan at that shootout at the hotel. Glenrowan was when he had the armour on. It’s been in the news lately. They’ve been testing it at the Lucas Heights electronic place.

Did your grandfather know Ned Kelly?

Yes he knew him. They always had beautiful horses, the Kelly gang. There were about three or four of them going through. Dan…Ned was the leader, and Dan was his

05:00 two in charge, and they used to ride…see when they landed in Victoria they came up to an old house and I think it might be still there, and then they went from there up to Avenel which is 22 mile, and then from there he used to ride up to Greta where he finally settled.

05:30 But they lived a few years at Avenel. As a matter of fact I think Ned’s son…no Ned wasn’t married, Ned’s grandfather saved a chap from drowning in Hugh’s Creek at Avenel. He was a popular boy down there then too. They used to ride through my grandfather’s and great grandfather’s selection. The boys…there was going to be a country dance on that night and they were calling out,

06:00 there were no phones or anything in those days. They used to have to call out to the bush. So they were hollering out to their girlfriends who lived miles away really. Three or four miles. They were hollering out. And he got very frightened one day, he said, “What’s going on?” He thought they were letting the police know they were riding through. They weren’t doing that at all. What’s the matter?

06:30 So old Ned baled them up see. Grandfather Sam Halsall and his brothers Mark and they explained to him what they were doing. And Ned said, “That’s alright boys, have a good night,” and rode on. And they used to see him on other times but he never stopped.

07:00 That was at Creighton about five miles south of...

And your grandfather would tell you these stories?

Yes. Grandfather would say…

What would he say about them personally?

Well he said, like a lot of people at the time, the police hounded them and they didn’t give them a chance. A bit like the present politicians, I think.

07:30 They thought the Kelly’s were a good mob. Just like themselves. Just trying to earn a living. They might have knocked off a cow or two, they’re still doing that. Where they mark them in the Northern Territory, who’s cows are whose. By helicopter now it would be harder. Where do we go from here?

08:00 Tell us about your father’s service in World War I?

Oh yes. My Uncle George who was the second eldest of his family, he joined the Light Horse and I think he went over to Egypt and then to France. He never got to Gallipoli I don’t think. I don’t think he did any brave deeds.

08:30 One of our cousins did get a MM [Military Medal], Lesley Halsall. That would be my Dad’s cousin. He got an MM in France. Maygar who Dad trained with in the Light Horse around Seymour and that, they used have to camps. And Maygar, Lieutenant Maygar, and Major Freddie Tubb, later Major, he won his VC [Victoria Cross] at Lone Pine

09:00 with Corporal Burton. Burton and who else, there was three of them. But two of them came from Euroa. God, there we go, a black out. Doesn’t matter. Maygar got his VC in the Boer War in South Africa in about 1900 and he

09:30 got it for rescuing a chap under fire [Lieutenant Leslie Maygar, VC, Natal, 1901]. This chap had had his horse shot from under him. He was wounded and Major Freddie Tubb jumped on his horse and Maygar went out and brought the wounded fella in. It wasn’t Tubb. Tubb was at Lone Pine. Maygar, after the Boer War, he joined the Great War [First World War]. He was killed at the Charge

10:00 of the Light Brigade [Light Horse charge on Beersheba, Palestine] there. It was an aerial bomb. In the days when they used to grab the bomb and put it over the side of the cockpit and aim it. It was very unlucky to get hit by one of them. That’s where he met his Waterloo. And Burton was the brother of the chap who had the store, and I never knew him. And Tubb, he got his at Lone Pine [Lieutenant Frederick Tubb, VC, Lone Pine, 1915] which is a little spot

10:30 on the Gallipoli Peninsula. You’ve heard of Lone Pine probably. They kept building the barricades. They were getting knocked down by Turkish artillery and they’d build it up again. They were both killed…no, Burton was killed there, Tubby was killed later on fighting in France somewhere, I think. His parents came to Longwood in about 1890,

11:00 and his father was a school teacher and he taught my mother. At the old Longwood…see Longwood’s been shifted. The railway was put through in 1870. They shifted it away from the hills. Steam trains in those days couldn’t get up hills, so they took it down into the flat country, three mile west of where it was going through (UNCLEAR)

11:30 Hill and so forth.

What about your father in World War I?

My father didn’t do much I don’t think. He was trained up to go over there but he must have been pulled out. I don’t know what happened, I never asked Dad that. I presume because there was no other man on the farm, he had a quite a few acres by then, and I guess Dad was called out to work on the land. He grew sheep and that for the

12:00 bully beef and biscuits. But he was in the…in the last war he was in the Home Defence. And as you know they did start up and a lot of the old chaps formed up into battalions and did stunts and that in our defence. We didn’t know. We might have needed them but we didn’t thank goodness. They called for volunteers. I joined the

12:30 …will I tell about myself? Sure.

I joined the 58th Battalion. It was the Essendon Coburg Brunswick Rifles that was the Battalion really. Nearly all Melbourne chaps, except we had one company from the country. From Euroa, Murchison and Gilmore. Country bumpkins. So I joined that. I joined up with the Lieutenant for that company. We used to

13:00 go into camp for about a fortnight and for three months we were in another camp. That was about ’39 they were doing that. Then they called more chaps up and we went in permanently. And in ’41 we stayed in permanently. I was an apprentice at a garage then on a handsome salary of seven and six a week. Seventy five cents a week. But fortunately

13:30 they had a factory inspector who used to come around and he said to me one day…Mr Findlay was his name. He said, “How old are you son?” And I said, “Fifteen.” “How much are you getting?” “Seven and,” I said. “Oh dear,” he said. He had a little black note book, “You should be getting eleven and threepence.” And I got back paid. But I don’t think my boss spoke to me for about a month after that. He had to pay me the back pay. Gee I was rich. I had pound notes

14:00 floating around. Back pay. I had been working…I didn’t say that, but I left school because I had to. Dad was out of work in 1933 and ’34. That was the Great Depression days and I left school. They put fees on the state schools. I think it was about nine pound

14:30 or three pound a term I’m not quite sure. It’s a long while ago. And I worked with my brother who was already working at the Gazette office. The newspaper. And I saw and ad coming up in the Gazette for the Ford man over the road…(phone ringing)

Just continue on.

15:00 Just continue on, you’re alright. You joined up…can you briefly give us an overview of your service?

Right. So I joined up because quite a few chaps had already joined up in 6th Division. They were fighting over in Libya and Africa and I thought we’d better do something. My brother came home from a Fire Brigade meeting and frightened hell out of me. Got home about one o’clock. He said the Japs have landed in the top of Australia.

15:30 So that got us thinking see. We said we should do something about this. Dad and Mum didn’t want me to go overseas, over to the Middle East. But I said, “I’m going to join up with Fergie and them.” They were all joining the Militia, which we did. And we were quickly called ‘chocos’ [chocolate soldiers - militia] of course. We were country company, C Company comprised of chaps from Euroa, Murchison and Gilmore.

16:00 Quite a few of those chaps went to the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]. Charlie Anderson was the Lieutenant in charge. He ran a grocer shop. He employed a couple of chaps who were later 2/14th Battalion boys. Anyway I held the bible up and swore on the bible that I would defend the country to the last man against the Japs. And we thought that was fair dinkum then. I was in the scouts,

16:30 and I had been trained on camping out and sleeping on the ground and cooking my own rabbits, catching and cooking them. But I did man them when they forgot to take their rosary out between the legs. I finished up Scout Master just before…I had to resign to go away to New Guinea. But I had many good experiences and I’m quite sure

17:00 that being a scout helped me a lot in the army. Straight out onto the ground from Melbourne from soft feather beds. We used to go fishing a lot. Dad was a Murray cod fisherman. They used to ride down to the Murray at Goldburn 22 miles away for the big fish. They’d tie it onto the top part of their bike and ride home bandy legged. There were big fish around in those days. Sixty to eighty

17:30 pounds were quite common. Now where am I?

So you went to New Guinea?

Yeah, I went to New Guinea. Yes we volunteered. I was in camp at …no I wasn’t, out from Seymour I should say and we were in camp there. We were doing full time camps then and ready to go up north and defend Australia.

18:00 When I was in the Scouts I forgot to tell you. I learned the Morse code taught by an old signaller from the First World War. Archie Johnson was his name. And old Archie taught us the Morse code, lights and the Lucas Lamp and signalling.

18:30 So, God I went into the 58th Battalion with my friend Keith Pallis who lives at Cohuna. Kanga’s a great old mate. I’ll tell you about him later. So we went in and they said, “You know the Morse code do you? Are you signallers? Right we’ll give you an extra two bob a day.” So instead of five bob a day, Keith and I went straight onto seven bob a day. We were Craftsmen or something.

19:00 Specialists. We got extra pay. But they didn’t say anything about danger money. So we went into the 58th. Then every Militia unit got a notice from Headquarters, 3 Division Victoria to say they wanted volunteers to go to New Guinea to garrison New Guinea. The 49th Battalion were up there. They’d been there for 12 months and they wanted to be relieved.

19:30 So righto. We all volunteered. There were 50 from each battalion. I’ve got a photo of us marching out at Trawool which is out from Seymour. Anyhow we went to Darley out from Ballarat. There was an AIF training battalion there staffed by permanent men. A lot of them were returned men from the First [World] War. Great chaps and I think they helped us a lot.

20:00 Fathers sort of thing. Telling us what to do and what not to do. We listened to them. I think that’s what helped us a lot when we went into action. Anyhow we went straight from Darley after training there. We went there in October, and we left there Boxing Day ’41. Jumped on the trains and went up to Sydney where the Aquitania was

20:30 to rush us up to Port Moresby. Things were getting desperate then. The Japs were coming through the Pacific like a wild fire. We got on the boat…oh, we lost our padre. Yes, we lost our padre on the train. He died of a heart attack between Melbourne and Sydney. So anyway, we get over there and we’ve got no padre. Anyway, we had a lovely cruise on the Aquitania and we put it over the

21:00 fellas, the guards on board. They used to…anyone who was limping or on crutches they would say, “No get off. You’re not going.” We had a couple of blokes who had lost an arm and they hung their great coat over that and we crowded in around them and got them through, passed the inspection points. One chap was our mailman after that. He was a very good chap too. He did a good job.

21:30 They took the train right down on the upstream side of Sydney Harbour Bridge, and we got onto little ferry boats, and they took us around to the Aquitania. We went on board there and we were there overnight I think. Someone started to signal from one of the high rise buildings. We thought, this is alright so we started to answer them back. It turned out that they were

22:00 Sea Guides. Not ordinary Guides…what do they call Sea Guides [actually Sea Scouts]? They do have such things like in the navy. Anyhow they knew the Morse code and we gave them our addresses where we were going, and of course we were in trouble. Spies were watching us and signalling. Anyhow we got to New Guinea,

22:30 and those were good. They sent us cakes. They used to be put in a galvanised tin with calico over it. So they sent us a few fruitcakes. See, there’s 35 chaps in our platoon, the signaller platoon, and it was very nice to get a fresh bit of cake. We had dried biscuits, bully beef and occasionally a tin of vegetables,

23:00 and a bit of fruit, peaches or something. We landed at Moresby anyhow. There were four and a half thousand troops on it. Rushing ack ack [anti aircraft] and anyone they could get. Even the 53rd Battalion, young chaps who were called up and they were shanghaied straight onto the boat. They didn’t even have their final leave, poor coots. No wonder they didn’t do much after they got up there. They were very bitter. And the 49th was up there. So that

23:30 comprised three battalions which formed the 30th Brigade. Then I think our intelligence knew that the Japs were sniffing around over the mountains, looking at Gona and going to land there. So Tom Blamey [General Thomas Blamey] said you had better send your mob up there pretty quick. We weren’t quite quick enough. It was bad luck really. We went around with supplies

24:00 on a little coastal vessel and it landed just as the Japs were shelling the place. But they rushed the stuff ashore but the Japs got most of it. Bad luck, and from then on they went straight inland. They were very mobile the Japanese. They had a dixie full of cooked rice on their side which would keep them

24:30 going for days. They didn’t have to cook to anything and away they went. Anyway, we had one platoon set up with old 1914-18 equipment. We had Lewis guns and our almost Crimean [War] model rifles. They would take a Jap’s arm off clean

25:00 near the shoulder, whereas the Jap bullet was only 25 calibre. A fast firing bullet but it would go straight through and wouldn’t take the arm off. I met one chap and he’s related to me too, he had a bullet right through from the front of his throat to the back, and he was still walking around. He was very lucky. It must have missed all the vital points.

25:30 Anyway we landed at Port Moresby after the boat ran aground in the middle of Simpson Bay. That many on it, and the old skipper, I’ve got a photo of him looking at why she had run aground. Over the side because you weren’t allowed to take photos of course on the ship. Anyhow, we went down rope ladders down the side of the Aquitania onto corvettes and barges and they had to ferry us about a mile

26:00 to the pier. When all four and a half thousand men got off, high tide came and the boat lifted off. She turned around and went straight to Singapore. She’s a good fast boat the old Aquitania. You could tell her anywhere. I’ve got a photo of her somewhere. Four funnels. Her sister ships were the Lusitania and it could have been the Titanic too because she was a four funnel [actually Aquitania’s sister ships were the Lusitania and the Mauretania. The Titanic’s sister ships were the Olympic and the Britannic]. It was about that time, about,

26:30 in about 1910. Built for the Atlantic run. My god it was hot down in the bottom. We were down below the water level. You couldn’t sleep down there. It was too hot. We’d come up and sleep on the deck. See it was built, as I say for the Atlantic run. Cold weather stuff. We’d sleep on deck, bring out light stuff for a pillow and sleep on deck until the crew started hosing the deck down at about four o’clock. And

27:00 anyhow when we got off the boat and got onto the pier, we said, “Where’s the bloody trucks?” No sign of any transport. “Oh no, you don’t get any transport. We haven’t got any trucks here. You’ll have to march.” All gear, rifles and everything. We had to march and away we went, up and around out of the town, up towards Murray Barracks which is where we thought we were going to be billeted. But no, we get to Murray Barracks, four mile

27:30 out, we go straight past the barracks. What’s going on? There was someone else in there. I think it might have been the Papua New Guinea chaps, and they had built it all see. So we went straight past that and we were marching…it was sealed the road. The only bit of seal in the territory. It went from Moresby to the drome. So we get out to the drome and we say, “Where’s the bloody huts? Where are we going camp

28:00 tonight?” “Well, there. Turn left, go off the track and camp in the kunai grass,” which is full of mosquitos, all sorts of ticks and rats. I tell you what happens there later. So we had to camp there because our tents and our tools and utensils and all that, mosquito nets were all at the bottom of the

28:30 cargo hold of a slow moving Norwegian cargo boat. The old Aquitania, as I say was fast. It could do about 25 knots, which was about 30 mile an hour. It was too fast for the Jap subs. They did sniff us out one day. He had already sunk a cargo vessel. There was jetsam everywhere. He had just gone

29:00 down as we went through. Probably from Townsville. We went outside the reef. When we went through the Heads, I’ve got photos taken by the navy boys of us going through the Heads. We had an escort of navy ships. The old Sydney and a few sloops and that. And one had an old pusher plane on board.

29:30 They had to stop to pick it up when it had the reccy, or what ever it was supposed to do. It would go up and fly around and look for submarines and the ship would have to pull up. What a target for the subs when he stopped. Anyhow that was the days of the old push…we had 80 combat planes in the Australian Air Force when the war started you know. Eighty.

30:00 They counted the Wirraways as front line fighters. They had two 303 guns on them. They were made down in Melbourne at Fishermen’s Bend and they were flat out at 200 mile an hour I think. Anyhow we weathered that. And I think we had some [Avro] Ansons I think they called them. A

30:30 sleepout or something on a house. It was all glass along the sides. It looks like a passenger plane gone wrong. I think they could do about 200 mile an hour too. The best planes we had at the time I would say would have been the old Catalinas [flying boats]. They were marvellous. They could go so slow and they could stay up for 24 hours. They used to turn…I don’t know how they used to get away with it, but they used to turn the fuel right back.

31:00 Well on a motor bike or small…that would burn the pot out. Anyhow they were wonderful. They could go in and rescue other pilots on the beaches. They could land anywhere where there was water. Gee they were good. We’ve got a plaque on the outside of Port Moresby Yacht Club up there. Anyhow where were we?

You were in New Guinea.

31:30 In New Guinea. We slept for about 8 days in this kunai grass. We had one grey blanket, an army blanket, and we used to pull that over our head. We’d stay under there for as long as we could, a few minutes and then we’d suffocate and have to get out. That was to get away from the mozzies. We were getting eaten alive. Then we got dysentery. Within a fortnight we had dysentery.

32:00 And in about three weeks our first malaria. It takes awhile for that to develop. Oh my god, it was terrible. That’s the sort of welcome they gave the poor old 39th Battalion Bloody hell. “Oh no, we’ve got no new equipment for you blokes. It’s all got to go over to Churchill.” The bugger. He took it all. Even the guns. We did have Thompson sub machine guns,

32:30 but we never had any Brens or any of the later model ones. We had Tommies [Thompson guns] and the Lewis gun and the Enfield. It was probably the best rifle, and it was a repeater. Bold action. It would hold 10 in the magazine, and by Jesus when it hit the Jap it shifted him. Anyhow, we thought…when we smelt the

33:00 area there, every place has a different odour, aroma. And we could smell the natives and their camps and that. Hanabada was built out just left of Moresby proper and it was all on sticks. All crooked old… see there was no tall timber up there. It was all stunted, a bit like the Mallee,

33:30 and no big trees at all. Gum trees, eucalypts of course. Anyhow we put up with that for a fortnight and then our tents arrived, and equipment. I was in the signals, of course. We had to lay lines out to every company. One company was out at a mission or Bootless Inlet they called it. And that was about

34:00 twelve or fifteen mile. One single wire that’s all we had. The signal wire was comprised of about seven little copper wires and one stainless steel one, so that would give it strength. They couldn’t break it. But then my job was taking despatches around to the companies. Every day I had to go…one at eight o’clock in the morning and

34:30 then about 12 o’clock at noon. We were riding WD BSAs [motorcycles]. Rigid frames but except, the front was a girder spring. Oh god, did it do the old back in on these tracks made by the Bren carrier. We did have a few Bren gun carriers there. They would smash off the trees about seven inches off the ground,

35:00 and the stumps would be there. And if you had your toe hanging down and you hit one of those then you’d break your ankle or something. But I’d been riding motorbikes. I’d had a few motorbikes. I had worked at the garage in those days as I said. And I started to deal in motorbikes for the boss, of course. But I had ridden bikes and I knew a bit about them. And I used to keep my BSA

35:30 well tuned up. Order came through, every officer had to learn to ride the motorbike. Doctors and the priest and everyone. When they gave me mine back it was a total wreck. They’d bent everything. I said, “I can’t ride that.” They said, “Oh that’s alright. Go down and see old George, he’s a First World War bloke, get another one.” We took 50 of those new bikes still in their oil packing, you know.

36:00 They only done about 2000 miles before they were wore out. Had to have new air cleaners on them. And the officer decided one day, “I think I should go around one day and see your run Ron.” So I thought, that will be good. So we went through a gully and of course, he’s not an experienced rider and he conks out in the middle. He conks out and sucks up all the mud into the

36:30 exhaust pipe. The mud was coming out the carburettor. No wonder they wore out. That was all through the cylinder walls and the rings and everything. Anyhow I done that for about six months. I enjoyed that because I could get around. I had transport. Any special plane came into the drome, such as when the Philippines stoush was on, big planes, the B17 Superfortress [bomber]…

37:00 it wasn’t really the Fortress. It was the one before that. They were making them from ’35 and they made 50,000 of them I think. They had plenty of them. Anyway, this came in. I was down at the drome one day and I thought what the hell are those big things. They looked like big cigars with wings on them. A couple of B17s floating around at the end. Prior to that we had only seen the poor old RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] with their Hudson bombers and the

37:30 Wirraway fighter. Hell. Anyhow we made the best of a bad situation there. We got our tents and that and really got pretty well set up. Got a few positions for the Vickers guns…that’s the water cooled one. That’s a damn good gun. It will fire all day because it’s water cooled. They lay their positions all around the drome. We had the phones laid on to them.

38:00 I didn’t mention the spotters. The month we got there…we landed there on the 3rd of January 1942, and they called for volunteers to join the Spotters or Coast Watchers. Our blokes jumped at it. I think some of them were with us for three weeks. That’s all and then they were in the Spotters. Put in a Catalina with a radio set,

38:30 battery charge and that, and taken into some remote path that the Japs would take between Rabaul and Moresby. And they would warn us. We’d get about 20 minutes warning. They say, “Probably nine bombers coming your way, and probably several Zeros [Mitsubishi A6M fighter bombers] too.” Sometimes they were coming to do Moresby over

39:00 and sometimes they went right on to Horn Island near Thursday Island, on the Cape. Sometimes they’d go down to some rubber plantation, up the coast towards us near the Fly River and bomb that because some of our fighters were using it as a staging ground to refuel and let down before they got to Moresby. They had a tough time those guys.

39:30 75 Squadron they called them. They had Kittyhawks. Heard of the Kitties?

Tape 2

00:35 Ok. Your uncle talked to you about the war. What did he tell you?

George? He didn’t mention it much I don’t think. I think he might have been with Lieutenant Maygar… not Maygar, Livien. Major Livien. He was his

01:00 officer and he often talked about him. He got very friendly with him because he was from Euroa. George was born in Euroa. I was born in Euroa. We didn’t move far. And my brother was three years older than me and he joined the Air Force and went into 460 Squadron, the Lancaster Squadron.

01:30 And I’ve got photos of him there. He was one of the lucky ones. They would go out on a do, a stunt, and there would be ten crews would go out and about seven would come back. Cliff used to write to me on those aerograms. You know those? And 02:00 he used to send a lot of letters. I had one somewhere. It was only about that size but they condensed it, and there may be perhaps a thousand letters on a little film. That was very modern.

How would they work?

Well they would take …they must have photographed and condensed it like…onto a film.

02:30 Excuse me I’m getting interruptions. Yes, so Cliff and I used to correspond and once he said, “Ron things are getting very dangerous here. I mightn’t be able to write to much longer because we’re losing about three crews a night.” I said, “Don’t worry Cliff, you’ve done a good job mate.” And I said, “I’m in the same boat as you at the moment. Neither of us might walk through the old gate.”

03:00 But I did think I would, you know. Faith. I wasn’t a real religious man but I went to Sunday School and the choir and all that sort of thing, as well as the Scouts. But I had faith that I would be coming through that gate. And I used to think of that, and by gee I did too. Anyhow, we confided in each other that we mightn’t see each other again. Things were pretty grim in

03:30 those days. Anyhow where was I? My brother. Yes, he was a bloody, great sport. A good athlete. Football, a high flyer. An Australian Rules man. He used to go up too high and he would come down on his ankles, and he would have a job to get to work and get that paper out on the Monday. Anyhow. I’ve got them here somewhere too.

04:00 That could be one over there. They’re all colour now. He sold the business when he got too old. What did I do? I joined the army and made that my career then. I served from October ’39 to October ’45. I was discharged and I came back. I had two trips to New Guinea.

04:30 I didn’t tell you. They broke the 39th Battalion up after the Papua campaign. They were short of fighting men and we were knocked about. Only 30 odd men came out of Sanananda….officers and 27 men or something. And they couldn’t even get a ride on a plane to take them back to Moresby. No one would give them a ride. “No you blokes are alright. You can

05:00 walk it.” Of course they wouldn’t let them go out of the front line until they had a temperature of about 104 or 105. It was too late then with scrub typhus. The didn’t have no antidote for it. The [William and Eliza Hall] Institute in Melbourne worked on it and they got it. One of their doctor ladies had killed a cell and she pricked her finger one day

05:30 and got scrub typhus. They found out then it was carried by fleas on rats. When we were sleeping out in the kunai grass you could feel the rats chewing at your hair. They get in under your net. I was pretty lucky. I seemed to be too tough to get proper malaria. I didn’t get a positive slide. I had dengue fever a lot.

06:00 That would kill you too at that stage. But I was up there for two or three years …two years I think, before I got malaria, and some got it in two or three weeks, straight away. So I must have had a pretty good constitution. I blame the winters for that. Anyhow, I didn’t get sick very much. The first time I went into hospital when I came off the track,

06:30 that was in September ’42. The first time I’d been in a hospital. I’d been through the Kokoda Track. That was a pretty tough old job. Yes, Cliff was in the fire brigade and this, like that. Ladder races. Up the ladders, he could go like a bloody possum up a tree. I remember him at school putting on an exhibition.

07:00 He used to get up a gum tree which had good limbs sticking out and he’d fall and grab the limbs. He would go through like Tarzan. He had the whole school of 60 people watching him. Pretty tough. He’s the only mate I’ve got left from Longwood School. My mother went to that school. As I said, she was taught by grandfather, and then I went to that school and Cliff went.

07:30 Then Dad shifted us to Euroa, he wanted us to have a better education. And there was a high school up at Euroa so we went up there, and we put in a few years there. I was going alright until they put the fees on us. Dad said, “Ron I think you’ll have to leave school mate and get a job.” So I got that big job at the garage, but first of all at the printing office. I didn’t like that much either. A lady editor there.

08:00 I remember her doing up her desk with flowers in vases and dusting and I…ahh. I want to be a mechanic, so I went over the road to Fords. I did my time on the first V8s that came out practically. I think they might have come out and been out for about a year. I went there in ’34. Yes, they were good days. We went to Melbourne on two bob

08:30 I think. Had a good holiday down in Melbourne then. I had cousins who were mad keen on sports. The Harpers. They were Catholic. They were Victorian sportsmen. All round sports. Pole vault, high jump, running and everything. That was years ago. And Bertie Harper my other cousin, he played for Essendon

09:00 when Dick Reynolds was captain and coach forever. I think he was ten years captain. One of the brothers would go down and he was a pretty good footballer. He just started really. It looked like he was going to buy the Gazette off us. He didn’t buy it so he carried on with his printing and couldn’t afford to go to Melbourne and do nothing through the week much. 09:30 I still barrack for Essendon.

Tell us about trips to Melbourne?

On the train? The first trip I can remember to Melbourne…they used to have what they called excursions, train excursions for the poor old country schools. They would take us down to Melbourne. They’d take us to Brighton, and the first ocean I seen was at Brighton. They had these little white horses.

10:00 It fascinated me, this heap of water with little ripples on it. I had my…I think I had my first icy pole, flavoured ice-cream. Flavoured ice they were, they weren’t ice-cream. Gee that was tough. We got it once a year at Longwood. My Uncle, Ron Bundy and Auntie Nell, they had the store and they used to get ice-cream.

10:30 They used to get it in a canvas container thing about that high. About garbage bin size, and they used to have ice…what’s that ice that smokes? Dry ice. That’s the way they kept the ice-cream hard. You could get like a little sandwich. A vanilla slice between two wafers. What a day.

11:00 Ice-cream in Longwood. They had a pub there. Still going. One of the footballer’s sons is running it now. He played for Collingwood until he broke his leg. Yes, Cliff and I used to go rabbiting a lot. Had to make money some how. Another racket was…I’ll finish the rabbiting first. We used to set traps in the evening. Around

11:30 Longwood we’d set traps and we’d look at them at 10 o’clock at night with the lantern. With the old kero lantern, we’d go out looking at them. We were going to make a packet. And I found I was carrying all the bloody rabbits. Then we sold them and I think we got twenty-two and sixpence for the skins. That was a lot of money. I got the two and six and Cliff got the quid. Didn’t break it up very fair did he.

12:00 That was the way Cliff was. He was a pretty lousy old bugger.

How did the traps work?

Oh you had to set them and put your foot on it and the jaws would open like that, and then you had a little plate which would be on there and then the trigger would be on the end of the plate. Then you’d put sheets of newspaper…you had to have sheets of newspaper to put over the plate and then you’d gently sprinkle

12:30 the leaves…don’t put too much soil on it, it sticks and that would block the trap from grabbing the rabbit’s leg. Oh yes, we used to get…a good day would be ten pair, twenty rabbits. We’d get a few tom cats too. Gee, they’d go mad when they hit the trap. I have to knock them on the head with a big stick before I could get them out. Anyway that was one way we would make money. Another way was

13:00 papers off the train. We used to get twopence a pound I think, for papers. All the meat was wrapped up in those days with newspaper, then they brought it in that they had to use white paper and then newspaper. But then it was just newspaper. But they woke up that the ink on the paper weren’t doing the customers much good. That was one way, and we would go…paper!

13:30 We’d get the Melbourne train see, after they brought papers, and it would get to Longwood. It was about 70 or 80 miles from Melbourne. They be finished with them and they’d throw them out and they’d go everywhere. Papers. One day the bloody train must have blown a cylinder head on one of the cylinders, and it was going bang, bang and I was too scared to go near it.

14:00 I stayed outside the fence that day. We used to go on wildflower trips along the railway line. It was marvellous what grew along there. See there was no stock whatsoever. They had cattle pits at every crossing. The cattle couldn’t get in there. So there was all sorts of wild plants. You couldn’t get them anywhere else. They were still there.

14:30 Cranberries. They were lovely and very rare. They were a prostrate plant and they’d be all over the ground like that. The big ones would be about that far out and there were these little berries. They were green of course, when they weren’t ripe and then they’d go brownish. Did they have a lovely flavour. I’ve thought since I wish I could get onto a man who knew about propagating.

15:00 They’d be lovely. They don’t grow them in Australia, cranberries. They’ll all imported from America. Cranberry sauce and all that. I haven’t forgotten about that. We used to walk, march along the railway. We’d get little orchids, wild orchids. Cats paw, beautiful. Another job of ours was going fishing. I’ve even caught blackfish on a

15:30 bent pin and a worm. It’s all you need. And we used to get a cork for a float and the cork would go under of course, when you had a bite. Gee this is a goodin’ and something whoosh over your shoulder of course. You didn’t play him or anything. A little blackfish. It would be about ten inches. The average would be about six or seven. Oh, they were sweet. And we used to cook a lot. Take the

16:00 gut out, leave the head on and you’d grab the head when they were cooked, browned up and beautiful, and we used to fry them in fat of course in those days, and you would grab them and pull down the back bone and you would eat the lot. My daughter still longs for the day when I can take her blackfishing again. 16:30 You have a little cork and it goes under and then you pull the other way and you had him. A good catch would be say 20 or 30. Dad’s sisters would be the best catchers. They’d catch up to about 60 in an evening. I used to pray for a float with a light on it. You’d get it rigged up now easy enough, I reckon. But you used to have to knock off as soon as it got too dark.

17:00 You would catch them in every little stream around Euroa. The Nine Mile and the Seven Creek.

So what would you eat when the Depression was a bit tight?

Rabbits. Yes rabbits were very good. My Dad was a chap who had to have a good, cooked, solid meal. He would say you can’t work on an empty stomach. He’d have eggs and bacon and chops or steak.

17:30 One morning he got up and poor old Mum wasn’t very well. She hadn’t got any meat. And he said, “Well I’ll fix that. There’s a hare grazing out the back there, I’ll have him for breakfast.” And God he could shoot. He only had an old Winchester single shot rifle, but he would shoot that rabbit through the head every time. He used to do a bit of shooting around the clubs. They used to have 22 shooting clubs in those days.

18:00 He used to file the front one down to a point. File all the bead off it and then file it back onto the bead. And then he used to blacken it with black off the lantern glass and that. By god he could shoot. Anyhow, he shot this hare this morning. He said, “He’ll be good.” He cleaned him up and boned him.

18:30 Put him through the mincer, the hand mincer, and seasoned it. We used to have thyme and all that seasoning. So he seasoned it all up and made rissoles out of it. Fried them for breakfast. They were still jumping out of the pan you know. It was good though. He used to brown them up nicely. They were a bit gamey, but still it was tucker. And Dad had done a bit of butchering for a while

19:00 in his younger days. He had a butcher shop in Longwood I think, when Cliff was a baby. I don’t remember that. I wasn’t around. He used to kill sheep, his own sheep. Usually his own I think. Dad was an old bugger. Yes, mutton, mutton, mutton. Cliff and I got fed up. We said, “How about a bit of steak Dad?” “Oh it’s

19:30 too dear.” The butcher in those days had a box on wheels pulled by a horse. It used to sit up on top of it like the bakers did. He used to pull the back doors open. It had fly wire over the grill so no blowflies could get at it thank god. He’d pull out half a sheep. Now when the butcher let the

20:00 door down he would have a chopping board and chop it up in four quarters. And by gees Mum could cook it and brown it up, and that. And potatoes. We used to grow potatoes. We grew our own vegetables. I think we could have lived off the land. We had our own cow. We had to milk before we went to school. Even if we got up at quarter to nine

20:30 we still had to do it. We had a short cut. If we went along the road it was twice as far as we could go if we went straight threw the race course. Every place had its race course in those days you know. There were race courses everywhere, saddling paddocks and the whole works. We would generally get there… I don’t think I ever got the cuts for being late though. I’ll tell you what though, by the time I got to school…

21:00 We had a horrible baker in Longwood, an alcoholic he was I realise now. And the bread used to crumble to bits. You’d run to school with your lunch in a school bag and it would be crumbs by the time you got there. You had to do a bit of fast trading with some of your mates. One bloke, his mother was always cooking cakes, those whirling twirly one. I liked them and I traded for them. I don’t know what I traded.

21:30 They’re all dead now of course. I think my main chap who done the best for himself was Jack Bundy. He got on with Professor D.B. Copland [Australian economist and diplomat]. He’d been to university in Melbourne. He’d been to Trinity Grammar, then university. Got his degree in something or other. And Professor Copland…

22:00 during the war Professor Copland was the chap who was in charge of all the rationing. So he got a job there with him. And apparently Bob Menzies spotted him or heard of him and he got him to go to the Prime Minister’s Department. By gee they paid him too. He finished up as Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department, and then he got knighted…Sir John Bundy. His

22:30 widow still lives in Canberra. I pop in when I go through. I don’t know when it will be next. Play with Peg for a day or two and talk. Old Peg. And Jack got on very well. I’ve got a photo of him there. He was just too good for me at sport. He’d beat me by half a yard in the running. Half an inch in the jumping. But brains, he had some brains that Jack. Dux of the school.

23:00 Then another one who did very well was Gilhouse. A cousin of Dad’s and he helped capture a wanted man. They found him camped in a bark hut just down a lane not far from Creighton’s Creek. Old Gil must have thought. ‘He’s a bit suspicious that bloke. He looks a bit like the

23:30 report that’s in the Herald. I’ll ring up Melbourne.’ No, he went to the local police. There’s a policeman in every local country town. We only had about 100 people in those days you know. They had a police station and lock up. So he went in there and told him, and he got in touch with headquarters in Melbourne, and so they took a gang up to surround the place. By the time he got there old Gil had him under arrest.

24:00 Then they took him down to Melbourne. Took Dad and Gil down to Melbourne, and of course he was sent along for his time. Anyhow, they asked Dad and Gil if they’d like to join the police force. Well they thought we’re only running farms here. There’s not much future, so oh yes. They joined the police force. So Gil got through but Dad never made it.

24:30 He fell off a haystack, making a haystack, and he landed on a stump and it tore his eye open here and the tear duct was always running. It wasn’t properly fixed up. You wouldn’t go like that today. His eye was always bloodshot. It knocked him out on that one. In our history there, somewhere I’ve got a photo and he looks like [US General Douglas] MacArthur.

25:00 Hell of a well built man. His son Basil won the Sun Tour, a great bike rider back in…you wouldn’t remember. Back in the days of Paterson, Sid Paterson and those fellas. Ever heard of those names? You’d know of him. Yes…

Just going back to your impressions of the Depression and your family how they

25:30 got through that.

Well, I think living off the land, eating rabbits and our own butter and milk and cream. We had to buy a few Weeties now and again. We couldn’t make them. We had porridge. Mum used to make porridge… like you did this morning. That was good. Yes, Dad was in and out of work. But he had a few good mates, Charlie Snell.

26:00 Yes, Charlie Snell was one. He married a Euroa girl and he was a contractor for the CRB [Country Roads Board]. He used to be pretty sweet with the top boys there I think. He used to get a lot of the contracts. For instance, they shifted the highway back in…what did I kick? Anyhow they shifted the highway and it used to run along

26:30 through the flat. That was when they brought it out of the hills, and when they put the railway through in 1870 odd. They had to get the train out on the flat country see. The steam trains didn’t go too good trying to pull up grades. So they went out on the flat about three mile west of where they were. Then they put

27:00 the highway back on the grade, and by this time the cars and trucks had a bit more steam. So they took the road back into the steep country, and Dad got a job with Charlie Snell. The first bull dozer I had ever seen. It must have been all of three foot high I think and about ten foot long, and it had three tracks on it.

27:30 No cover, no blade no nothing. It was used for pulling out trees and that. That was one job. He had a good job with old Snelly. And they sealed through the town of Euroa. I remember them doing that in ’29 I think it was. And they done it by hand with watering cans, big watering can about ten inches wide. They used to heat the tar up.

28:00 It was like…you could cut it with an axe and they used to heat it up in big hoppers, wood fired hoppers. They’d have a big tap on it and they’d put their huge watering can under it the thing, fill it and then run it diagonally across the prepared surface they had. Then a mob would come with their broad mouth shovels and throw the screenings,

28:30 which was fine sandy stuff, from the quarries. And they’d put the gravel on. They sealed that in ’29 and gee what a difference. It went for about three miles through the town, and the other bit was as rough as guts. Stone…I remember in the old jigger bouncing up and town.

29:00 We used to go and do our shopping in the jigger. Cliff and I would be down in the front, and Mum and Dad would be up in the seat. We had a dog, a great big back curly retriever. He was a great one with the guns…shooting with the dogs. Pointers, Setters. I remember we had…our hats were little khaki hats and we had a clip on the hat and we used to clip it onto our collar or shirt.

29:30 So if it blew off we didn’t have to stop the horse and cart and go and get it. Sensible thing. Simple.

What about your schooling?

Oh yes, I went to school. I started at Creighton, by the way. Creighton was where my great grandfather had selected land. They had to build the first school. They wrote to the Education Department and said they wanted a school. “Oh yes, go ahead. So long as you build it yourselves.”

30:00 Which they did out of split timber and bark and whatever they could find. And that was built about a quarter of a mile from my great grandfather’s selection. That was the first school I went to at Creighton. We used to have to walk about three mile I think it was, bare footed, summer and winter.

30:30 We used to go…we used to call it Goanna Lane. Gee there were some big goannas there. Seven footers you know. They would be as big as those over in Timor or somewhere. Anyhow we’d get a fright now and again, but they’d go up a tree out of your road. They wouldn’t attack you. That’s right, Miss Lucas was the teacher at the school. I started in 1924 31:00 I think. I remember my first…there were about 15 of us at the school. They’re all dead now of course except me. All Halsall clan. My Dad and my uncle. They had all gone to the same school. My eldest brother had the same teacher as my Dad had. Mr Hodge. He taught him and he was there that

31:30 long…they wouldn’t stay there that long now, would they. I think he shifted into Longwood, Hodgie too. But oh yes…I remember Arbour Day. That was a wonderful day. He’d take us for a walk around the countryside. We’d go up and see Quarry Hill. Why do they call it Quarry Hill? Well they quarried all the granite for all those railway bridges

32:00 in the ‘70s. You see great cut granite. Clean as a whistle. We would be looking for birds too. Birds were part of the deal. We used to plant trees. Some would grow and some die. Sometimes we’d go to the hills and sometimes we go to the flats. Down to Meeds. There were people called Meeds. He was a bit like my grandfather. He saw the next creek from the Creighton Creek.

32:30 He used to escort prisoners and gold and that. He was in the escort business. You had to look out for bushrangers of course. Always someone prepared to pinch your dough and that, and gold. He did say that Mr Meed was a good citizen and had a bit of land down in the Nine Mile Creek. It ran for about nine miles so they called

33:00 it the Nine Mile. It had fish in it. Bream, perch, Murray cod, and mainly blackfish. Anyhow we lived on a lot of fish. Dad used to be a naughty boy with a cousin and go and put a net across the channel. It was illegal. Never caught.

33:30 Tell us a bit more about the Scouts. Like you talked about it before.

Scouts. When we came to Euroa in…we left Longwood and Dad wanted us to get a better education. My brother had been staying with my aunt and grandfather up near Euroa. He had had a couple of years boarding with them and going to school. He had a better reign than me, I think. Anyhow, we all

34:00 went up in 1929. We never owned a house until then. Dad got an insurance, a couple of hundred pounds or something and he built a lovely new house through the State Savings Bank. You just paid them off. It took him about 20 years, but he paid it off. He got an insurance, that’s right.

What was that?

He got insurance, when he was 40 he got

34:30 two hundred pounds, so he put it into a new house. And by gee, it was well built. Soft wood. All the rafters and that were oregon. I remember they had an inspector from the State Bank going around and inspecting. He would mark any timber that was a bit out…say it had any sap in it or a crack in it and he would mark it with chalk, and the mill would have to replace it. Anyhow, that was our

35:00 trip to Euroa. I remember going out and all we had when we got there was German sausage and a bit of bread and butter. It wasn’t bad though. We lived in that house. It’s still going and will be there forever, I think. It was built in 1929 as I say. It was well built. Still looks good. And Dad went mad with gardening. He liked gardening.

35:30 Dahlias. There’s a competition between the old boys of Longwood. I called them old boys because they were all about 40. The school teacher, the railway station master, and Uncle Ted was with us, and Dad. They had a competition for who could grow the biggest dahlia. You used to get your petrol in kerosene tins you know. Square tins, and there were two to a crate.

36:00 Flume, straight from America it came. We didn’t have any raw oil or refineries in those days. So the petrol had to come straight from America. The crates were beautiful soft wood pine. They used to use them for furniture, a lot of the old blokes. You could make a chest of drawers out of them and all that sort of thing you know. With the kerosene tins, one old bloke used to make his own cream cans out of them.

36:30 Cream cans and wash tubs, and all that. See the washing was all done in a tub. In tubs with the washing boards. They used to scrub them up and down on the glass, corrugated glass. It was hard work. No washing machines. Very rare. You were a millionaire if you had a washing machine.

Tell us about how you joined the Scouts?

Well when we went to Euroa there was an old

37:00 Churchman, Canon Scott from Seymour and he formed the scouts up there in Seymour. When he came to Euroa of course it was in his blood and he got stuck in. So one night in the vestry he asked, “How do you think scouts would go in Euroa?” Someone said, “Badly needed.” So he said, “I’ll start it up.” He was only knee high to grasshopper, but he had a whistle on a lanyard and he’d go around and give it to you

37:30 on the back of your legs. Old Canon Scott. I had some good days with that. I went to a couple…[Lord Robert] Baden-Powell came to Frankston, to the Jamboree at Frankston in about 1934 or ’35. That’s right. He started the scouts you know. Powell and his wife [actually sister] started the Girl Guides 38:00 I think. He fought in the Boer War in Africa. Some didn’t like the idea of putting them into uniform. They reckoned it was too much armified, but I was alright. So that’s what happened. We joined the scouts, and by gee I enjoyed that. We used to go on camps and we raised money and got our own tents. When I was

38:30 at the garage I could always borrow off old Mobil, the owner. He used to lend me his old 1910 Napier Design. Built like a Rolls Royce it was. It was a great old car. It had separate cylinders. Water cooled. Or were they in twos. I just forget. You had to crank them. No self starter in them.

39:00 The driver used to be out the front and Queen Mary used to be in the back, in the glass. He pulled all that off and he made it our tow truck. Gee it was a good old thing. We used to pull trucks and everything in with that thing. That’s what I learnt to drive in. It had a gate change. Gear change. You know the old gate idea, have you seen that? Well just imagine. First gear there, second

39:30 and across the gate. A dirty big handle on it. We went to Jamborees. Where did we go? South Australia Centenary, a hundred years is a centenary. They had a Jamboree, no not a Jamboree, a Corroboree. And I got out of Victoria for the second time I think. By train. I had about twelve pound in the bank when I left

40:00 Euroa. I went over to the Jamboree and it lasted ten days in Belair at the edge of the Lofty Ranges. A lovely spot. You’d look straight down King William Street. Straight down from up at about four or five thousand feet. It’s still a beautiful little city. They took us down to the beaches and various spots like that. They used to have big

40:30 displays in the camp too. We got a bit sick of that. We wanted to see the country so we went AWOL [Absent Without Leave]. That’s how I learnt the trick of the game.

Tape 3

00:48 Tell me about the guy who taught you signals?

Old Archie Johnson was a signaller in the 1914-18 war. A returned man to the boot straps, he was.

01:00 He had a big dint in his head there, but he still had his brains and he was dedicated to signals. He enjoyed teaching us young boys and we made up Morse code keys, and things. He taught us the Morse code. It was another language really. Morse code, you can pick it up because like…I’m talking to you now and you know what I’m talking about,

01:30 each word. It’s the same as Morse code when it comes over, it’s just like another language. It was very valuable it gave me an extra two bob a day in the army.

Can you still remember it?

Dit dar did dar. A little bit. SOS. Dit dit dit dar dar dar dit dit dit.

How would he teach it to you?

We had keys there. We borrowed some thing from the PMG [Post Master General’s Department] I think. But they use it different to us. They

02:00 use the spaces not the dar dit dit dar. It’s just like someone talking to you. But they’ve got to be a good sender. They can’t clip the signals. We used to have trouble with the girls in Australia here. They would be clipping their signals to us at Moresby. We’d say slow it down a bit please, dear.

02:30 They were doing a good job because they hadn’t been in it long. But I stayed in the signals for…I got out in ’43. I had four years on the signalling and two in the workshops. See when they disbanded our unit, into the 7th in ’43, they put me…

03:00 they knew I was a mechanic from reconditioning Ford engines and that, so they put me in the workshop where I finished my days at Bandiana. The best thing I had ever done. By gee it was a good life after being out in the jungle with no protection, no clothes, no food some days. But we, no we enjoyed that very much. We used to have competitions. Have Jamborees,

03:30 they would have Scout Rallies. We would compete against Seymour, Gilmore, Shepparton. We’d go to the gatherings and we’d compete on the signalling and bridge building, first aid and all that.

Did you win?

No, not very often. We believed in enjoying ourselves.

When Archie would teach you the signalling and the Morse code, would he tell you of

04:00 how he used it in the First World War? Oh my word.

What would he tell you?

Their signal wire used to get blown up more than ours. They had so much more artillery. Especially over in France. I wouldn’t like to have been in that war. Much rougher than the one we were in. The conditions were just about as bad. They were in mud up to their waist whereas we had mud too, but we also had more

04:30 trees than them, and less artillery in the ranges. They only had the mountain guns, the Japs. We never had any guns like that. Ours were too heavy to get up. Archie said the biggest trouble about being a signaller was when the line went out and they were under fire, and they had to repair it, and sometimes the Japs would cut the wire and they’d be waiting there for you to come and

05:00 repair it. So the cunning cowards used to trap you. We lost a few boys up in the mountains. They had terrific accurate rifles, the Japs. Rifles you would use today to shoot foxes at 300 yards. They had telescopic sights. Only a light bullet but they were fast. Twice as fast I think, really, as the old 303. The bullets used to go twice as fast.

05:30 Didn’t do as much damage. And that was one of the worst things. And they were on pretty poor rations too during the war. Bully beef and biscuits. I still buy bully beef you know for old times sake. It’s still good. I generally have a tin in the fridge but I’ve got none at the moment. It’s good. The Americans used to want it. “Buddy, have you got any of that

06:00 bully beef?” That’s not what they called it… “Have you got any of that steak man? We’ll give you two tins of meat and vegetables for one tin of corned beef,” or steak he called it. And sugar. They wanted sugar. Ice-creams. The joke up there used to be: “Where’s the Yanks?” “Oh, their ice-cream cart’s been held up.”

06:30 They were our friends the Yanks. It done us good when they came into Moresby, we’d been using picks and shovels, digging drains along the roads and making roads, they had no machinery, Moresby, or I didn’t see any. I don’t know who they had sealed that several miles of road. But anyhow, they came in there and they were Negro engineers. We used to laugh at them.

07:00 They were great blokes. Very welcome. I can remember our Sig Sergeant coming in and say, “Oh God, I’ve just had a car go straight under me.” I said, “What are you talking about?” This little low car…a jeep. We’d never seen a jeep. Oh god yes, it went straight under him. He was a funny man, the old Scottie. His mother was a Scotch lady, and I

07:30 think he said his father was an Hungarian or something. He was a bit old. They culled all the older men out when we were going into action. They put us in because they reckoned we were the best battalion out of the three, out of 30th Brigade. We had the 53rd, and the 49th and the 39th. We were pretty complete but we didn’t have very good weapons.

08:00 No one man tent. We slept out in the open. We had a ground sheet. Two of them. One ground sheet would go over the top and the other would be underneath. But your boots got wet and they fell apart.

When you joined up did you think about the stories that Archie had told you and your dad?

08:30 Oh yes, definitely. You knew what to expect. You knew it wasn’t going to be a picnic. We were very confident little buggers you know, young buggers. We reckoned we could do the little Jap no trouble. I never, and a few of my mates never thought for one minute that we would be done. When the Japs were coming down and closing in on New Guinea, we

09:00 saw them take Lae about 170 miles over the mountain. But we said, “They’ll never get through the mountains, those little buggers.” They didn’t get through either. See we knew damn well that their lines of communication and supply lines would stop them. They had a lot of mules. A lot of indentured carriers that they had got from the islands.

09:30 They had trucks from Singapore. Some of them are still lying up there, and plenty of men. But I tell you what, I think they put too many men in to take New Guinea, and they didn’t have a lot up their sleeve you know, after that. That was the beginning of the end, ’43. In 1943 we thought well, we’ve got them now. The Yanks are there in big numbers.

10:00 And aeroplanes and ships. And we were very confident we were going to beat the Jap. We got a few frights when we heard that the convoy was coming to Moresby and we had to go down and man the defences. We had some barbed wire there and old machine guns. One of our older men in the army had put two

10:30 machine guns together. He had a dual machine gun. He reckons he shot a plane down. I’ve got a bit of it there. The first plane shot down in Australian territory. That would have been February. We were there exactly a month when the first bomb lobbed on us. So it didn’t take long for our baptism of fire.

When you sign up to the 58th initially,

11:00 what did your dad say when you went home? He was proud of me. He would have liked to have gone in the First War. I mean I wouldn’t have been here now but he wanted to go. But George had gone and they wouldn’t let him, I don’t think. But he would have been a well built soldier. He was a well built, rugged old man He could run like a hare. I’ve seen him run from one end of the ground and kick a goal. AFL [Australian Football League] of course.

11:30 So tell me about the grocer shop you went to join up in?

Well that was next door to the Ford agency in Euroa. I asked my mate Fergie, they’ve both gone now, Lyn and Bob. Bob was our best man. My brother couldn’t get leave. He was up at Parkes training for the airforce. He couldn’t get leave so we went next door

12:00 and asked Bob. And Bob said, “Yes go down to Charlie. He’ll sign you up.” So in I go and said, “Hey Charlie do you mind signing me up, I want to join the 58th.” “Come into the office Ron,” he said. In I go. He had the bible there ready. He’d been signing the others up too. So I promised to defend Australia to my last breath.

Can you remember what you had to say exactly?

12:30 Not quite. I was thinking the other night. I was thinking you’d ask me this. “I promise to defend my country and people and King.” King then, we had a King then, not a Queen. I think that’s all. You had to be loyal and faithful to the Crown and so forth.

13:00 And we meant it. I’d been in the Scouts and signed up. It was similar to the Scouts in some ways. I mean the Scouts were just a little bit lower, but we were a proud mob you know. We thought we’d do these bloody Japs no trouble. We were quite happy to go up there. No danger money. By the way the boys now, they deserve it. They get $200 a day danger money on top of their pay.

13:30 Now, they’re putting their life out for us aren’t they. On the edge. It makes me cry when I think of the poor bugger they kept sending in. I think if a man had done an excellent job…I quote the second Colonel we had, Colonel Bill Owen. He got out of Rabaul. Overwhelmed they were there. Outnumbered to buggery. He got out of that and then within about a month after getting back to Australia,

14:00 and after having a bit of leave and cleaned up and re-equipped, he was with us a fortnight and he was shot through the head when he was throwing grenades where he shouldn’t have been. That was the old days when the leader, the King led the charge. He shouldn’t have been out where he was, Bill Owen. He was in a trench at the end of Kokoda…it’s on a peninsula. It’s a funny little place.

14:30 It’s just a peninsula that juts out into the valley. It’s got a little bit of rubber on the back end of it and the rest is a couple of administration buildings, and he was right over the edge. The Japs were coming in from Gona and he was right out over there in a little slit trench, throwing grenades. They were great at getting up trees those little Japs. They had special shoes.

15:00 The big toe was separate in the rubbery shoe they had, separate from the other part of their foot. They could climb like monkeys. They get up there and they’d make a nest and they’d stay up there for a few days, living off their bit of rice in the pannikin on their waist. Anyway he was out there throwing a grenade. Poor old Bill.

15:30 He should have been, I reckon, left in Australia. He had survived one battle and then they put him in, bang. He was with us for, I think a fortnight and he was gone. So it doesn’t pay you to do a very good job. There should be plenty of jobs after that. I remember our mob, they couldn’t take Gona because they had had a few months from September was it, or some of them had been there longer.

16:00 They landed in July 15th on Gona, and they had from then, those who were set there to garrison it. They were there from July to December. All they did was burrow, God they could dig, but they had proper tools to dig with. They had trenching tools and that. But how they dug around holes and around tree roots, I

16:30 don’t know. Anyhow, they were well dug in and they cut down an enormous number of coconut palm logs. They were really anywhere where there was civilisation. Coconut trees. Lever Brothers were up there in a big way, you know, the soap people. They still own half the coconuts up there.

17:00 They were in a plantation. So they cut down a few logs and they would dig this hole in the ground. Of course they’d strike water down at about a foot because we were right on the beach there at Gona. Black sand, no beach. Black sand, a stinking place. Then they’d put logs over that, and logs over that and more dirt and logs and they’d plant plants.

17:30 Grass and that and you couldn’t see the buggers. They would have the rifle gun barrel sticking out and there they were. So there was no use going frontal on them. There’s Colonel Owen there. That’s Colonel Owen. See that chap there. And he died at 90, about 3 or 4 years ago. Now he said, “Look we’re going to do it the proper way.” The AIF battalions had gone in and they had got shot up.

18:00 Some of their best fighters from the Middle East. They had terribly good records. They were shot up and killed. This was no good. Brigadier Allen, and some other Brigadier…I was going to look it up because I don’t remember. He said, “What makes the…we had better get the 39th Battalion, bring those boys in.” He said, “I don’t know what makes them fight like they do, do you?” Now that’s in the…have you seen

18:30 the Australian history on the war? You have seen it? The first volume. The first year…who wrote that? Was that Doctor…? I must get it one day. I had a loan of it for a while, but I’ve lost it now. Anyway, he said, “I don’t know what makes them fight, but we’ll have to get them in.” So they went out and circled them and played their own game, and got around their protection instead of going straight at them.

19:00 And he took it. He said…one of the books there, he said, “Gona’s gone.” He sent me out to send the message back to Brigade. And he [Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner] just wrote, “Gona’s gone.” Gee wonderful luck that. I would have been one of the first blokes to meet him when he came up the Kokoda Track at Isurava. We were at Isurava. The AIF were just starting to come in and help us out.

19:30 They could only come in piece meal because we couldn’t get enough ammo or food for ourselves….only what natives would carry it to us, and they had to eat some of it. So it was a battle. And Bert Kinds, one of the old chaps…he wasn’t old then. Thirty seven he was then, but we thought he was old. He had mine and rubber up at Yodda which was west of Kokoda, inland.

20:00 He said, “I’ve flown over this place a few times. I’m going to go out. I reckon I could find it.” It was a dry lake area. There’s no trees on it, only kunai grass, and he said, “I’m going to go and look for that.” And away he went, but the natives were a bit wary of going out because they were great on their hoodoos and devil devils, and things. So he said, “I might have a job to get them to come with me,” but he went out there. They found this place. They

20:30 called it Myola, which was the name of the wife of the Governor, the New Guinea Governor at the time. That was her name I think, Myola. And Bert went out there and he said, “I’ve found it Ron, and I think we’ll be a lot better off. And I think with a bit of native labour we’ll be able to clear a small runway for small take off planes. They tried but every plane that landed there never got up. It crashed. Too short

21:00 or something. I don’t know what. Anyway it meant we could get more supplies because the supplies were out in the open. Not on razor backs covered with jungle. If you missed the top of the razor back it would go down into the valley. A mile away and you’d never see it again. And there were no parachutes to drop that stuff. It had to be wrapped up in army blankets and pushed out

21:30 the door. And you know what happened with a crate of bully beef or beans. It would hit the deck, roll along and smash up everywhere. That was dangerous if there were mortar bombs out there because it ruined the bomb. If it dropped into the muzzle of the gun it would explode and kill the crew. A lot went up. So we really had no

22:00 artillery. But the Japs had fellas carrying there. Plenty of indentured labour. They went bush and a lot of them finished up with us from various islands between New Guinea and the Philippines, I think. So things weren’t too good. Our bombers were the old DC3 [Douglas] passenger planes

22:30 that they first used in Victoria for the airlines. Remember? You would have seen photos of them. And the Yanks were funny in some ways. The used to fill the planes up with ammo and biscuits and beans and all that, and then they’d line them up on the strip, line them up, wing tip to wing tip, ready for the morning.

23:00 And one of the top Australian generals came up and said, “What’s going on here?” He said, “Get those planes dispersed.” Too bloody late. The Zeros came in and shot them all up. They were burning and what they didn’t destroy entirely they put out of action. So for three days we had no supplies whatsoever. But we’d been told that the natives will give you heaps of sweet potato and

23:30 bananas and stuff like that, and sugar cane, for a tablespoon of salt. We took up a tin of salt, and gee we needed it. We lived on that and traded that. The natives would only go off the track into the bush and far enough so they couldn’t hear the shooting, and that. It was marvellous the ones who came out of the scrub when they new it was safe.

24:00 They were good too. One old bloke used to come in. I think he had been in a fight or had cancer, or something. He had no nose left. Oh god, it was a terrible sight. Poor old fella. No doctor to go to up there, see. There’s a few planes still lying around in that scrub too. They’re still finding them up there you know, like they are over in Europe. When you see a plane going

24:30 off smoking from the dromes after a dog fight, not many of them would make Lae or Salamaua. They go in to the jungle. See, it was about 7000 feet to get up…that’s how far we were up at the highest point. It was between Templeton Crossing or Kagi. And Kagi was just a little place at the top. It was flat like a

25:00 footy ground. About as big as a football ground, and straight down and all around. The natives used to build up there because they were fighting a lot of the time. Tribal fights and for defence they’d be up on the hill. Hit him on the head as he stuck his head over the ridge. Well to get up to that, from there to Kagi was a day’s march,

25:30 or walk or struggle. And the last 15 yards or so we had to pull ourselves up on a rope to get up there. That was about where we finished up, fighting there. The Japs knew all the tracks around. We went straight up the main track. There were branches, we didn’t know where they were going, but the Japs knew them. They had natives and they gave them more rice than what we could afford to give them. 26:00 Yes, there was one tribe, the Orokaiva. The tried a few after the war and they hung a few of them. The ones who had given the missionaries away. Mission ladies and Father Bensen. He was the only missionary who survived from Gona and Buna.

26:30 They must have thought he was alright. They never touched him. But the others, they just beheaded them and took them down to the beach. Kids, young girls and boys, and cut their bloody heads off. I would have liked to have been there, even with an air rifle. Yes, that’s right. Of course they did try quite a few of those people.

27:00 They got paid. Some were saying they didn’t get paid for all the work they done. Well we didn’t get any more than them. Five bob a day, and we did get a bob a day deferred pay, which they paid to us after the war. That was handy. I bought Dotty a washing machine with that. Sixty or seventy pound.

27:30 Where were we, on the track. I was going to say when Colonel Owen arrived. No Colonel Honner. He came struggling in. I seen this chap on his own. He came walking in on his own. He didn’t have any escort, no batman or anything. He came in and, by gee, he was a lather of sweat. He had a jungle green outfit on. Dyed shirt and trousers and that.

28:00 And he took it all off, and he was ringing wet. But apart from being ringing wet, when he took it all off he was lily white. So I said, “He hasn’t been up here long Jackie has he?” Jack Sutherland that was. “No,” he said, “no he hasn’t.” Just then there was a call on the phone and Jack said, “Do you know where Colonel Honner is?” I said, “I don’t know him.” He said, “I think that might

28:30 be him there, drying his clothes off now.” He had them spread out over a bush drying them. So I had to go down and front up. “Sir, are you Colonel Honner?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Brigadier Potts wants to speak to you.” And he calmly went up to the phone. I handed him the phone and he said, “Honner here…” like he was talking to his sweetheart or something.

29:00 Gee I thought, he’s bloody calm, cool and collected. He’s come through like, a whirlpool. He was hopping villages too…two villages in a day. Not suppose to do more than one. Are you going to walk it are you? Are you going to walk it? I was talking to Bob on the phone a while ago. He said he’s done 21 walks now, that parliamentarian down in Sydney.

29:30 I’ll tell you his name after. You might want to get in touch with him if you want to walk it. Some of the ladies have done it haven’t they. Some of the TV stars. Name that girl, what’s her name? What’s her name? Anyhow, I had better keep going. Anything else you want to know? Oh yes, we had the …then we had Brigadier Potts. He was Brigadier

30:00 of the 21st Brigade who were the AIF boys from the Middle East. They arrived on the scene. You know the first fella I saw standing there with Brigadier Potts was my mate Ferguson with little Sir Echo who had been an Adjutant in the 58th. I said, “What are you blokes doing here?” I didn’t know it was Brigadier Potts.

30:30 Anyhow he said, “We’re up here to help you blokes.” They just got there in time too. We would have been annihilated in a few more hours. We would have been wiped out. You know, the only bloke…I think on that battle there on Kokoda, we were the only blokes who lost all our colonels. Colonel Owen went. Colonel Keys of the 2/14thBattalion. Colonel Ward from the 53rd Battalion

31:00 and I think the 27th, he went from Adelaide. Talk about cleaned out. They found out what was wrong. The Japs were going for these with revolvers on their side. So after that the CO’s [Commanding Officer] put the revolvers behind their backs. It saved a few that way, they were good.

Tell me what you said to Ferguson when you first saw him?

31:30 “Bloody Stumpy! What are you doing here?” He said, “Do you know this bloke do you?” Brigadier Potts I think it was. Our Brigadier was the Victorian Police Commission after that too. What was his name? I was going to write these out so I could rattle them off. Yes, it was funny meeting chaps like that. And I was back working

32:00 my way up. I spent a week or so at Eora Creek. And the boys started to call it Euroa. “How’s Euroa Creek going?” It’s very similar isn’t it. It’s only the U.

What was your relationship like with the AIF guys when they arrived?

Good because I knew them all, just about all. They were chaps

32:30 …a lot of the 58th chaps went over in complete platoons, like the 2/14th from…we were camped at Seymour on the Nagambie road, and they went over to Puckapunyal in one big group. The CO was Charlie Anderson, the CQMS [Company Quartermaster Sergeant]. He went over. He did very well. He finished up a Brigadier in the

33:00 Stores and he gave good jobs to all the Euroa boys.

And what about earlier on when they called the militia ‘chocos’ and things like that. Were you cranky at all? Oh we thought…only a few of the donkeys in the AIF, wild boys when they were pulling that. No, we didn’t worry much about that. Fortunately we were away when a lot of the rough stuff happened in Brisbane and that.

33:30 We were over there, looking after Australia.

So was there…what was the respect like between the militia?

Well in the end they called us the Ragged Bloody Heroes. That’s what the 14th…you ask any of the 14th…you must run into a few….the 2/14th, they were a Victorian regiment. We were right. Thank goodness we didn’t

34:00 see any of that. We were united to do those chaps over. They gave us a funny description of the Jap you know. The Heads, the Powers to Be. They were little blokes, not much over five foot. Glasses and buck teeth and they couldn’t see very well and they were terribly crook marksmen. They were terrific. They’d get up a bloody coconut

34:30 tree. or whatever tree. I don’t know how they would get up. They had special climbing gear. And they’d make a nest up there and they’d camp up there for a week if necessary. And they’d be picking you off. Marvellous how far you can see from up high. They’d be picking you off with their telescopic scope sniper’s rifle. We didn’t know where the shots were coming from for a while. But in the end they woke up. Every time they took up a new position

35:00 they shot all the tops of the trees to bits. They would shoot the top off, and quite often a Jap would come down with the coconuts. We had to learn the hard way. One thing they did use, after they came back to Australia, they took quite a few of our boys up to Canungra up to the jungle training school. And they taught

35:30 what they found out over there.

What did you know about jungle fighting before you got up there?

Nothing. Nothing. I was hiding in the gum trees with the 58th. I didn’t know anything jungle, thank goodness. We had to learn the hard way. But they did do the right thing. They did take our boys and get the information up at the jungle school at Canungra. It’s just up in the mountains here. It’s still there.

36:00 We went back there one day. They invited us up…the Association….about 30 or 40 of us and our wives. And we had a great day up there. And the young Diggers up there, the young fellas about 19 or 20, said, “You were really on the Kokoda Track?” They couldn’t believe it. We said, “We’ve come to see what sort of armour they’re giving you now mate.” They

36:30 didn’t have anything spare to give us. It all had to go to the Middle East. It was said by the leaders over there I think. “We’d like to clean the Germans up first,” he said, “And then your little side show, we’ll come over and finish it up, no trouble.” But they found them tough. Look what they did with the British battleships. A few aeroplanes, torpedoes, they sunk them. No trouble.

37:00 Churchill thought that was impregnable, Singapore, didn’t he.

Tell me about…you said you had to learn the jungle training the hard way. Tell me some of the lessons you learnt?

Oh god. Well we had to be prepared that when we hit them we had to go around them. That was one thing. The next thing we’d know they’d be behind us, so we beat them at their own game. We had to spread out and make sure you were well

37:30 covered. We had to be quiet as a mouse and not move too much. The first thing they would do was grab a bush and hold it up in front of them, and when you weren’t looking they’d go a few yards this way. And sometimes we’d say gee that bush wasn’t there before.

So do you think that you actually learnt a lot from the Japanese?

Oh yes, how to fight in the jungle, too right.

38:00 We learnt a lot from them and we taught them a lot more. When we got the numbers and the equipment we were alright. But fancy lining up…as one chap said to me, one officer, he said, “We’ve got a lot of reinforcements.” I should have told you that. Our old boys were all brought in in June ’42. They said, “You blokes are going into action and we’ve got to get young officers.” And the new CO, Bill Owens he was killed

38:30 in a fortnight, and then we got quite a lot of lieutenants and that. Some of them were terrific. Some thought they were Jesus Christ, and they were too rough. They tried to make us all join the AIF. By the way we had some join the AIF when we were in training down at Darley. And they wouldn’t have us. Wouldn’t let

39:00 us join and we got our backs up. We said, “You don’t want us now,” we’d say. We all joined in the end. And this is something I must tell Ray Martin. If you ever see him tell him will you. If he wants to live a few more years stop calling us ‘conscripts’. He said, “There were a second grade lot of conscripts there, weren’t there.” And he’s still doing it, I think. He’s giving the wrong information. How would he get that?

39:30 Who’d write that for him. Conscripts. Admittedly most of the boys up there were conscripts, but most of us in the 39th we’d been in the militia before, and we’d volunteered to go in of course. Didn’t expect to fight the Jap quite so soon. I think he’s been told now, don’t call those buggers conscripts.

40:00 That hurts us you know. We were out to defend Australia. We didn’t want to go and defend the bloody Arabs in Egypt. See, we wanted to defend the homeland. Really we did. We were confident we were going to do it too. Too confident. Some weren’t. I had one chap. One of the Sigs, poor old Wal Roland.

40:30 He was a miner from the Morning Star Mine out at Mansfield. When Singapore fell on the 15th February 1942, he was saying we haven’t got a chance. We haven’t got a hope. He was right. “We’re next you know,” he said. I said, “We’re not. We’ll be right Wal.” I was confident we’d be right. I don’t know why but I was.

Tape 4

00:41 It was the 2/14th. A lot of them are my mates from Euroa, and also my mates from the 58th days. I met my first army mate, other than a Euroa boy, in the signals of the 58th. He was President forever of the 58th Battalion

01:00 Association and he died last year. Poor old Johnny…Johnny, what did he do? I can’t remember. Forgotten his name. Know him as well as anything. Anyhow he was a great chap.

When did you hear the news that the AIF were coming with reinforcements?

Well I suppose we got it off the Furphies Tank you know. The

01:30 water carriers. I suppose we had known. We didn’t get much news once we got into the mountains of course. Dotty never heard of me, and my parents never heard of me for around about four or five weeks. Some fellas wrote letter cards back but I never seem to get offered one. We had plenty to occupy our minds. Yes it was a lonely job for a start.

02:00 We couldn’t get the airforce boys in. Our radios weren’t good enough. We had to be quick. We had to get the calls in before ten o’clock in the morning or it would be blanked out for the rest of the day in the clouds, and in the mountains. The sets were pretty weak. One day we put on a bit of a stunt to get us familiar with the conditions. We had a remote control.

02:30 The set was on our back with the control coming around the front. We get back to our headquarters and one of the controls was missing. So they said, “Speed, you better go back looking for that.” We never saw poor old Speed again. Don’t know what happened. Whether he walked into a Jap sniper or what. Never saw him again. That was back well too, from the firing line. I think

03:00 old Speed’s bones are down there at the bottom of the gorge, on the banks of the river. He’s a funny man Speed. Got his photo there. So they came in there the AIF. Some smart arse said, “Right we’re here, you can go home now.” This is what the Yanks said to us. But we said, “I think you might need us, we’ll all stick together you know.”

03:30 How true.

Did they tell you any stories about the Middle East and Africa?

We knew pretty well what they had done over there. That news seemed to come through. But yes they did, especially about the clubs they went into in Cairo. I said, “You had everything over there, mate. Not like us up here.” We had our first film show six

04:00 months after we hit Moresby. The shops closed down. Martial law was declared and I think that would have been about March. So that meant that the shops in Moresby closed, Steamship and whoever the others were. I used to go into…one of my runs was…there was a wireless station and it was the only connection we had with Australia then. I don’t know about the cable and whether the cable was still going. But it was from the wireless station

04:30 in Moresby to Queensland. I would take despatches there. Then I would go around to the Administrator there. I forget his name now. He wasn’t a very popular boy. He was like a Governor General living up on the hill. Ack Ack Hill, that was over Moresby. They had big guns there, 3 point 7. They could blow the old Jap out of the sky. We had none out at the drome that could hit them.

05:00 They would only go to 15,000 feet. The Japs knew that. They would come in at about 18,000 feet tormenting us and it was out of our range, and they would blast us and strafe us. By the way, Tokyo Rose [Japanese propagandist], you’ve heard of her haven’t you? Well we could pick her up, the Tokyo radio station, on our 108 sets, our portable ones. We could get two stations. Tokyo and Hotel California. 05:30 Oh that was good, the music they had.

What sort of music?

Oh you know, the latest of the day. Who did we have? Ginger Rogers and those sorts of sheilas. Singing and going on. That was good.

Where was that radio coming from?

Straight from America, we picked it up, and straight from Tokyo. Tokyo Rose was really American, I hope they shot her after the war. The things she used to say.

06:00 She knew damn well…and it was the truth what she used to say. She called us the ‘Mice of Moresby’. You’ve heard of the Rats of Tobruk. I’d like you to emphasise that if you don’t mind. People haven’t heard of it. But Tokyo Rose started that. The Mice of Moresby. “We know you’ve got no planes on your dromes and all you’ve got on your dromes is empty petrol drums and coconut logs.” And that was correct too. We didn’t.

06:30 The Zeros, as soon as they came in they burnt up every old plane belonging to New Guinea’s airway. They had some Kingsford Smiths. I call them Kingsford Smiths Southern Cloud. They were three motors. They were really made by Ford. They were a copy of the Junkers [German planes] which used to come across the Pacific and do all his flights with. It had three motors and the Ford company made a lot of them.

07:00 They were great. And I remember when they evacuated Salamaua and Lae. All the Chinese, they brought them over. Some of the Parers were pilots up there then, Parers and Carpenters I think. They were that busy bringing them over, and they were all wearing their national uniform. The Chinese, red kimonos aren’t they, red.

07:30 A lot of red and yellow and bright stuff. I said, “They’re going to lose that to the Japs.” They’d dress themselves up in their Sunday best. They would come in. They would unload them on the drome and before they shut the door just about, the plane would be off again. It wouldn’t go the length of the strip and then turn. They climbed pretty quick those old three motors.

Just while we’re talking about Tokyo Rose, can you tell us any other things she used to say?

08:00 Oh lots of bloody things but don’t ask me…let’s see, Tokyo Rose. She was like Lord Haw Haw [William Joyce, Nazi propagandist in Berlin] over in England.

What did her voice sound like?

Good, very English, but she was a Yank, I think. Gee, that’s something I’ve forgotten. I can’t remember. I remember saying what she did but I don’t remember the voice much. Very clear. I don’t know what she did. I should have followed that up. I should have found out after the war.

08:30 What breed she was.

Did you listen to her often?

Oh tried to when we could. Every evening just about through the week. Tokyo Rose, you bugger.

What did most of the guys think of her?

Well they used to laugh about her really. We were cocky little buggers. We were going to stop the Japs. You could have all your Tokyo Roses.

Did she, some of the things

09:00 she said, did you think about them a little bit?

No. She didn’t stir us very much. We thought she was a bloody banana, you know. We didn’t think much of her. She was a real rat wasn’t she. But she was truthful. So it just shows you they were right under our noses there in Moresby. During some of the night raids we would see fairy lights go up over the other side of the

09:30 strips, and they would get out looking for them. Blokes would go out. The Yanks were good at that. They’d shoot them on the spot you know. Never tried them. Didn’t arrest them. Shot them. One bloke they got was a German sympathiser. He was part German. He used to run the picture theatre in Moresby pre-war. And they soon fixed him up. Shoot first and ask later.

10:00 Well that was alright when you were doing that but the Yanks were trigger happy a little bit. You had to be careful. They’d shoot at you if you didn’t give the right password or something.

What was the general relationship like with the Americans?

Terrific. We treated them like our buddies. We’d pinch all their stuff as quick as we could. Anything that wasn’t nailed down was gone. And we had transport available to cart it. God we poured everything…one thing 10:30 particular was, we got a gramophone and it had a record on it… “Casey will waltz with the strawberry blond, and the band played on.” That’s a wartime tune. “Casey will waltz with the strawberry blond, and the band played on.” Over and over we’d play it.

Can you sing it?

I don’t think it. “Casey will waltz with the strawberry blond, and the band

11:00 played on.” Haven’t sung that for a while. But when you get a few beers into a heap of blokes…no I’m not a singer dear. I don’t know of a Halsall that was. But still…

What other things would you pinch from the Americans?

Refrigerators were very popular. Plenty of them.

How would you steal them?

11:30 Oh we’d have the cockatoos out checking up on who was around and what was there. We’d back the ute in and away we’d go. Oh damn it. They were well looked after. They really were. Well paid. We reckoned they could get it replaced. When we used to unload the Yank ships. That’s when we did the dirty on them. We used to unload all the goods… we were everything, labourers, wharfie, road makers, drome makers,

12:00 until the Yanks came in with their bulldozers and engineers. They were funny. We used to laugh at them. They used to say, “Go ahead buddy, back up.” Go ahead and back up. How the hell do you do that? They were toey boys. Three shots and there was a raid on. Jesus you wouldn’t see them for dust. They’d gone. They didn’t have to run really.

12:30 Brigadier Potts, when he arrived there, he nearly got knocked over when three shots went off. When he went into the Brigade Headquarters at ….gone…the trooper area, Murray Barracks. He said, “What’s going on?” We said, “There’s a raid on, sir.” “You’d better get down.” “What for?”

13:00 “They might be coming for you.” They didn’t either. We got a little bit toey, you know. A little bit bomb happy. Our doctor did too. So we didn’t have a doctor. He went troppo. Properly mad.

Tell me the story about that?

He was a druggie it turned out. Doctor…oh gee, I did know his name too. Doctor Edwards. So we had a doctor. We just had

13:30 to rely on the sergeants, the RAP [Regimental Aid Post], to look after us.

What happened to Doctor Edwards?

Edwards? Well he went troppo. He couldn’t do his work and they shot him up to Rona Falls, about 25 miles towards the rubber plantation and they had a ….I’ll get it in a minute, a

14:00 Con Depot, a convalescent depot. So they stuck him in there for a while. I used to drop in some mail for him as I went past there. It was one of the longest runs I had. It was about 35 mile up to the rubber. They used to have to fly the rubber out. The roads were…you couldn’t use trucks on it. So they used to fly it out, and they thought the Japs were going to land paratroops on this old

14:30 aerodrome, up there near the plantation. So they put a battalion, no not a battalion, a company with mortars and things. But they used to back around the corners to get around them. Oh Jesus, you could go straight down 150 feet or 200 feet. We had a look when we went back and there’s quite a heap of old chassis down there. Twenty five years after. Anyhow what was I doing…

15:00 When Doctor Edwards…when you said he went troppo, what does that mean?

Well you go off your head, off your brain. You’re out. You say silly things and you can’t work. You have no coordination and that.

What would he say?

“What do you want buddy?” “You go there…” In the end they grabbed him and put him up there. He was only there staging his way

15:30 to the first available seat to get him back to Australia. They sent him back…he came from Victoria and he was …I think he shot himself in a hotel at Port Melbourne. He married a ‘Miss Australia’ too. In his prime I think he was, then apparently. But he was no good. He wouldn’t do his work.

When you said he was a druggie,

16:00 what sort of drugs would he use?

They been on cocaine and that sort of stuff. Snuff…

Were there many drugs around? The crooks had it. They would call it snow, wouldn’t they. They’d take a dose when they were going to do a bank robbery or something. I had an uncle who was the Chief of Police in Melbourne.

16:30 He had some terrible stories. He was there when Squizzy Taylor was arrested. He was one of those who took old Squizzy. Have you heard of him? No, we didn’t get a replacement doctor. That was in about February, April, I think, we must have lost our doctor. We never had any doctors around. And we had a Doctor Shearer came in, and he was a wonderful man. He came in…

17:00 I first saw him on the Kokoda Track in July. We had no doctors as far as I know for March, June, July. April, May, June, July. Six months. And now they’re looking for… “Where’s your records?” That’s what they say when you go for a pension…well how the hell are you going to have records? Anything that was written down, was lost.

17:30 We had over a 100 raids on us there, at Moresby, on the drome. We were sitting ducks there. God, I remember one day they nearly got us. The bloody joint shook, and I jumped up and I thought, Jesus what’s that. But we didn’t lose many by air raid. We lost the most when we were unloading the Macdhui, the ship. They only sunk one ship in the harbour, that was the Macdhui.

18:00 A steam ship. It took two days to sink her but we lost about five men on her. Captain McLeod, Sergeant Stewart…and two or three others, and quite a few wounded. She’s still lying there in the harbour. They’ve taken a bit of her away. We took the mast…we had the mast taken away and put it in front of the yacht club. It’s now…there’s a plaque on the base.

18:30 A memorial to the chaps who died. Where was I?

Just some more questions about the time in Moresby actually. Apart from pinching things from the Yanks and things like that, what sort of other, I guess, entertainment would you have?

Entertainment. Well as I said we didn’t get any pictures, no films

19:00 until…I think it was about June before we got a film. We got our first fresh meat in about April and it gave everyone the trots. It must have been off. We all had a terrible night…. “Hello mate how you going!!” That was our first fresh meat.

What kind of meat was it?

Mutton. But I wish I had my last GG.

19:30 There was a good write up of me as a camera man. I used to take the films into Steamships and get them developed and printed of course. And then that martial law cut that out and we had to send them home to Australia. Then they cut that out. So I said, “Well, we’ll have a go at developing our own, printing our own.” And I got Keith Pallis, my

20:00 old mate, he’s still alive and one of the Sigs who was in the Scouts with me. So he’s a great old mate. So we went into Moresby, jumped on the back of my bike with me. We had a look around. I don’t where we got it…I don’t remember now. But we got a printing frame. We got a hypo and developing stuff and paper…all we needed. I’ve got some of mine there. They’ve gone a little bit sepia now.

20:30 I didn’t know it would go sepia, but they did. Some were very faded. I have shots there. No one else in the world has got them I’m sure. The remains of the first Zero on Australian territory and how they shot it down with an old Lewis gun. We accidentally shot our own Kittyhawks when they first came in. We were that bomb happy or trigger happy.

21:00 We were being Zeroed every morning at breakfast time, at 8 o’clock, and there would be eight, or ten, or twenty come over, Zeros. And strafe up anything. Any planes that were on the ground the Zeros would set them on fire. See the Zero…you don’t know where the Zero came from do you? It was built by the Jap but it was designed by that multi millionaire Howard Hughes, and the Americans

21:30 said, “We don’t want it. We’ve got plenty of better planes than that.” Well it turned out to be one of the best, lightest, fighters in the war. See it was…our Kittyhawks were twice the weight. Admittedly they didn’t lose as many pilots because they had armour plating around them, but it made them a bit heavy. But still…the bloody Zeros. They had canon on it. One canon in each wheel. Well any plane that hit it would go up in smoke.

22:00 You take our little Wirraway, with its 303s and go through something, it wouldn’t explode. Gee they used to frighten me those Zeros. They were so quiet, and a rotary motor whereas the Kittyhawk had an inline like a motor car. And they were liquid cooled. Well the Japs didn’t have any water in them, any coolant

22:30 or radiators. They were air cooled like the Volkswagen car. And bloody hell they could go. They were as fast as our Kittyhawk but they weren’t as strong. They weren’t well armed, apart from their canon. They still had about three guns in each wing and the canon. We had, no…the only ones were some of those Whispering Deaths [Bristol Beaufighters].

23:00 What are they called? What’s the name of them? English plane it was, twin motor. They had canon on it. The Spitfire never even had canon I don’t think. I don’t know a lot about them. But, oh gee, they were good. Fortunately they soon ran out of planes. We flattened a lot of their planes up there you know. They’d lose 150 in a day or two.

23:30 We might lose 10 or 12.

When would the Zeros come through when you were in Moresby?

They had to come over 70 miles, and they could do that in half an hour, twenty minutes. We had brave blokes up over the dromes with binoculars, and they could tell us. “They’re getting about ten bombers ready for you and there’s a Zero escort and probably about a dozen Zeros. Estimated time of arrival

24:00 about twenty minutes time, mate.” And sure enough we’d have time to get down in our holes and do what we had to do.

What was your routine when you knew they were coming over?

You’d go for…you’d mount your guns and get ready to use your ack ack. And also we’d be getting ready to get into our holes, and take our lunch in if it was lunch time. We used to have Zero for

24:30 breakfast and bombers for lunch. The worst part about it, as far as I was concerned, I had to go across the end of the drome every morning at 8 o’clock to some of the battalions. Jesus I used to scurry across there, because sometimes I’d run the bike and everything into a drain.

Tell me about that?

Well that was fun. That’s how I done my back riding that old bike. They used to dig drains. It got wet up

25:00 there at times. You had to get the water out or they’d get the planes bogged…until they brought the dinette plates. They hooked them together out of steel right over the whole drome. It was good. It made a bit of a rattle when you landed but you wouldn’t get bogged. Anyhow these Zeros, I’d be riding along with the motorbike noise in

25:30 my ear…pup pup pup and then bang bang, oh Christ what’s going on here. There’d be canon shells bursting around on the road. I’d look up and there’d be a dog fight on. A Zero would dive on one of our Kittyhawks and the shells continued on naturally, to the ground. That used to be a bit frightening. I used to think every Zero was after me then.

What thoughts would go through

26:00 your head?

Oh well this is it. I had my tin hat on though. I reckon that was a goodin’. It was bloody heavy. I wore it all the time…that tin hat. That’s why I reckon I haven’t got any hair now. They were pretty badly fitting you know. They were loose.

What did they look like?

I’ll show you. I’ve got a photo there.

No. Just describe it and we’ll look at the photos later. So describe it for everyone that can’t see the photo.

I was

26:30 in shorts and tin hat and just a shirt, a khaki shirt. I carried a bag to carry the messages and despatches in. I had leather leggings. Now that’s something new. We were issued with leather leggings which came from the Light Horse. They had leather leggings. And they issued them, and gee they were good too.

27:00 I found them very good. I couldn’t burn my legs on the exhaust then because of the leather leggings. And I put my pencil down my leggings and anything, a spare knife or something. They were good for carrying stuff and they protected my legs a lot from say, a stick, you’d run into a bush or something.

What was your bag like that you kept your messages in?

It was a haversack. Just a little one.

27:30 Like a fishing bag, a small fishing bag. We used to fish too, using grenades mainly, and sticks of gelignite.

How does that work?

You just go out in the boat and throw it overboard, and you’d generally have a native who would swim down and pick them up…the ones which didn’t come up. Some wouldn’t. You’d bust their float and they’d go to the bottom. Most fish have got a float in them see. Some would float and you’d get them.

28:00 But you had to cook them pretty quick. They wouldn’t keep much. But they were handy, they helped the table quite a bit. We had our own cook you know. Each little platoon had their own cook. There would be about 20 seated at our table. It was in a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK house by the way. We cleaned out Mrs McGray’s WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK house. Deloused it and never saw anyone scratching much.

28:30 And we sat in there. Plenty of wood around to make a seat. It was better than sitting on the ground. We sat on the ground at Seymour until they built the huts.

Can you describe…like walk me through the camp at Moresby where you lived?

Yes. We were overlooking the drome of course. We were there to guard the drome. He’s yarning. (He want’s to go and have a lie down.)

29:00 (There’s a bed there if you want a lie down. )

He’s not yarning, he’s had a cold.

Poor fella. Anyway, where were we. You wanted to know about…yes. The road went past there, on the right, over the end of the drome. That’s where I would have to come across. Then there’s a road that went along that way. That was in front of the house,

29:30 Mrs McGray’s house. The old CO would take over one house somewhere for his headquarters. It was quite a good slope down to the drome. We could get a bird’s eye view of the drome. The airforce boys were down one end, on the west end of the drome. They were building…they hadn’t completely built their quarters there. Those poor buggers used to have to go out

30:00 in almost defenceless planes. Bomb over Rabaul and those places up in New Britain. And some wag…I must try and find them wherever they are….they made up a poem. I remember it on the door of the Op hut. That’s the Operations Room. He wrote it as though he was a doctor. I can’t think of the first words. “We will remove

30:30 your Gasmata and also your Rabaul…” [towns New Britain] That’s all I can remember. But I might find the full words of that. We go to the 75 Squadron reunion up in Brisbane every year. I’ll have to look them up again. I used to pull in there and get my hair cut by one of the airforce boys.

31:00 A man from Euroa. Anyhow there were some brave boys amongst them.

How did you get along generally with the airforce boys?

Terrific. Terrific they were. We were all a band of brothers. We were. We were fighting for the one cause dear. We were a cocky lot of buggers. We had nothing to throw at them really. Anyhow yes…

31:30 So tell me about the huts that you slept in? Had you got them yet or were you still sleeping in the grass?

Oh tents we got. Yes we got tents. That was alright. It was an improvement. We didn’t get wet then.

How many people in each tent?

I think there was only about four. I think it could have had twice that many really, but why crowd yourself out when you’ve got plenty of tents. We got them eventually I think it was about ten days after we should have had them.

32:00 By that time most of them had been inoculated with malaria and dysentery….those big, green blow flies. You know the green ones. They get onto the sheep in some places. They were the only flies. We didn’t see many little house flies or brown blow flies, they were the green ones. And we had nothing, you’d be up in a position and you’d be from the water perhaps, half a mile from the creek,

32:30 and you couldn’t wash your plate. No wonder we got dysentery. Flies, big green flies around everything.

So the plates didn’t get washed?

No, no quite often you couldn’t get them washed. The kitchen, they had to cart water up. It was a dangerous job going down to get water at the creek, and the Japs would be waiting there for you quite often. They get right around

33:00 behind you. Pretty hairy at times. You did have a water bottle on your side which would hold a couple of litres I think. Some of them which were made for the 14-18 war, they were.

When you were with the signals in Moresby, what would you do when the bombs came over.

33:30 We’d go for our slit trenches. We dug a signal station into this garden. We had a trench when we were over at McGray’s house, but when it got a bit too hot they started to bomb a bit too close to McGray’s house. And the old CO said, “I think we’ll get over to the other side.” So we went about a mile north of the drome. There was an old road that went in, and we followed that in.

34:00 We would tunnel…we had chaps from Maryborough, very good fellas, strong blokes, they’d been miners. And they tunnelled in the side of this creek. The creek that I used to wash my films in. And they tunnelled in there quite a distance and they made, brought in all the lines over head. We only had a ten line switch board. 34:30 Can you tell me what that looks like?

About that long…haven’t you seen the girls in…no, I keep forgetting how old I am. It looks a bit like an old wireless thing…well you wouldn’t know what they look like either. It was made of metal, like all old portable

35:00 army radios. About that long, about that wide, about that deep with plugs on it, and you’d plug in. You’d get a call and…Captain Johnson wants to talk to the CO. Ok then, you’d plug him into the CO’s office at Battalion Headquarters. “Putting you through, sir.” And away you’d go.

35:30 You’d done your job. That’s what happened. Anyhow, someone would have to be there all night and day, and we used to have to do shifts. It was very good in that tunnel. We felt so confident. We’d say, hey there’s a raid on, and we’d come out and have a look.

What, you moved the whole set up into the tunnel?

The switch board. Yes, we had an army table, one of those old folding tables. We sat it on that.

36:00 And we used to have seats. We could all get in there if we wanted to. Quite good. There was a good write up in the second last GG about …the editor of our GG, he’s doing a terrific job. He can use words better than me. He’s a parson. He trained to be a Church of England parson. A good job.

Can you tell me about some of the guys in the signals that you worked with?

36:30 Too right. Well I was always at Battalion Headquarters. I would have a chap who would relieve me, Squizzy Taylor, but he finished up, poor old Squizzy, down on the railway line, down at Kanchanaburi and he forgot to get off when the train came along, they tell me. He went to Korea too, the silly bugger. He didn’t have a nerve in his body. God he was game. I found the young fellas were the

37:00 best. I was too old. My nerves had sprung up in me. Might have been my breeding I don’t know. But some of the young ones, they’d get out and walk around like the Generals. Bullets flying around.

How did you deal with the nerves?

Well it didn’t seem to…they gnawed at me and ruined my indigestion. I got a bad case of dysentery and I’ve never been the same since in the stomach. Dysentery takes all the

37:30 lining off the stomach, so the doctors tell me, and it doesn’t grow back. It was good this way. I couldn’t drink very much beer. Yes, well, we had our own cooks there. They would open the tins and put them into the big dish, meat and vegetables and mix it all up.

You said you were the Don R?

Don R, Despatch Rider, yes.

38:00 What did that stand for?

Despatch rider…I would carry the despatches, in other words the letters, messages from one battalion to another if it had to be in writing. Every morning they had to give the strength of what they had. The OC [Officer Commanding] of every company had to give a report to the CO. I had to deliver it. It had to be in writing. He couldn’t do it over the phone. It had to be all in the records.

38:30 That was one job. But I’d get jobs such as…I would have to go to the Air Force and the Navy Headquarters and the local administration. The worst job was going to get an ambulance in the middle of the night. Not allowed to put your lights on, and you’d be going through new country with no roads, no tracks. That was the worst. When the Coral Sea battle came up,

39:00 “Quick, pack up your gear, we’ve got to get down the coast, the Japs are coming. This time’s it fair dinkum.” Alright we got packed up and sat down there, like fried fish for a couple of days, and then, “It’s all clear. It’s alright. They’ve turned around and they’re going back to Rabaul.” It was all done by the airforce, you know that. The navy was well in it but

39:30 they didn’t see each other, the navies. They just fired. They knew where each other were. It was a funny fight that. But we won it.

What were you blokes thinking when you were sitting there on the beach?

I wasn’t sitting. I had to go around from place to place. That was when I had to go and get an ambulance for a bloke about midnight.

What did you have to get?

An ambulance to pick him up. He couldn’t sit on the back of my bike,

40:00 I don’t think. He wasn’t too good.

What had happened to him? He got a dose of malaria, I’d say. Shaking like hell. When you get malaria properly…when we came back the first time from New Guinea, we landed at Brisbane…or did we land at Cairns, I’m not sure. Anyhow we finished up in the theatre in Brisbane. There was no beer in the pubs.

40:30 We had to drink liquors and all that. Anyhow we were in a theatre, and all of a sudden the seats start shaking, and he was having a shiver. Temperature. Of course, they backed in and took him away to hospital.

Tape 5

00:40 Your job in Moresby, the details of it?

I did have some time on the switchboard, on night shift. See it had to be manned all through. And see we were in a garden, a big garden belonging to a fella called

01:00 oh Jesus…anyway a garden. And there were fruit trees there. Five corners with those Queensland plum things, and also custard apples. They used to attract the flying foxes and I didn’t know. I had never seen a flying fox before. We would change duty at two o’clock in the morning in the dark, and you’d have a flying fox trying to land on your head.

01:30 So you’d clap your hands. They were going from fig tree to fig tree. We had huge fig trees. We had two tents underneath and you couldn’t see a sign of them from the air. A beautiful spot as far as camouflage. We just had to be careful that we didn’t make tracks where we went out from them. And that was in Evan’s House. Got it! And he was

02:00 a plantation owner right up on top of Hombrom [Bluff]. Hombrom was a very…we had one main river run through, the Rona River…yes, Rona Falls, Rona River. Sorry…there was the one river anyway running through the place [the Laloki River] and there was a deep cliff all along this big mountain range. They called it Hombom Bluff.

02:30 We reckon that’s where old Squizzy is. He’s gone over that. Very easy to fall over. The track went right along and it zigzagged down donkey tracks. Someone made it years ago apparently. One night we got up and they said, “Right we’re leaving here today, we’re going to move you out back on the coastal defences.” So we went out there until they wanted us to do our second stint over at Gona, Buna.

03:00 So we packed up from there and were flown over by biscuit bombers [DC-3s] and taken over, and into action again at Gona and Buna. It was wet and bloody muddy, and stink! Dead Japs everywhere you know. They lived like pigs. Now, in those bunk houses I was telling you about, their men would get shot or blown up and killed and they’d have their ammunition and bags of rice

03:30 in there. Well they’d stack the ammo and bags of rice on the dead bodies. One on top of each other. A real sandwich. They’d have to wear a gas mask in those trenches, in those dug outs. Fight to the last. They wouldn’t give in, you know. Very seldom would they surrender. They died for their emperor, so we would say, “Alright, die you bugger, die.”

04:00 Terrible isn’t it. At Gona Mission. We give so much money to the Gona Mission. It’s a school there. We send money over for a scholarship for one of the pupils. And when I went back with the 70th, we chartered the plane from Essendon and went back over there, ’67. That’s right, 25

04:30 years after the battle of ’42. It was a wonderful show that they put on for us. The RSL [Returned and Services League] in Moresby. They gave us a dawn service out at the Bomana Cemetery. All the bodies were brought back from Moresby. They got most of them off the track. They couldn’t find a lot so

05:00 they left them. They were unknown soldiers. So they’ve got monuments for them at the cemetery at Bomana. (UNCLEAR) is the name of the river. Not much water going off the Rona Falls now because it’s all used for generating power. It was more than half way up towards the rubber plantations. But some, Bert Kinsell, he had rubber over, near Kokoda, at a

05:30 place called Yodda. He cut it all out and put cattle in and found they could control the ticks and stuff, which they couldn’t before the war. And he sold it to the natives when he left there. They took over, local rule see. He got robbed he said. Some of the other planters who sold early, they had plenty of money and they bought…they paid more for their plantations.

06:00 But he reckoned he got robbed.

Take us back to some of the details of your job as a signaller. What exactly would you do?

Signalling? Well we had to lay a line down to Cannasea [Rarona], about 50 or 60 miles from Moresby. It was an emergency landing field for the fighters when they were coming up from Australia. See, they had to fly them up

06:30 and we had to lay a phone on down there. That took quite a while through the scrub. We did have brigade sigs and divisional sigs and they were helping. But around Moresby of course we had to keep in touch. All the companies had to keep in touch every day…report in how many tins of bully beef and how many packets of biscuits they wanted for the day.

07:00 The medical side fell down because our doctor went whoopy. And Doctor Shearer was a wonderful replacement . He came from Ipswich and he got an OBE [Order of the British Empire]. And I didn’t finish telling you about our doctor…no, when our padre died between Melbourne and Sydney, we got a replacement and when they declared martial law, all civilians, miners and missionaries were supposed

07:30 to get out and take a job in the ANGAU [Australia and New Guinea Administration Unit], Australian and New Guinea Administration. It was set up as a war time body, and poor old Nobby was caught up with the miners and he was down at…well it became known as Milne Bay. We knew it as…anyway, it was way down on the eastern point of New Guinea. And anyhow, he came up to Moresby.

08:00 They brought him up to Moresby on a lugger with the miners, and he said he’s learnt a few stories from the miners while he was on the boat. He was a wonderful old bloke. An R.C. [Roman Catholic] missionary he was. When he got to Moresby they asked him if he wanted to back to Australia, he was a Sydney chap….they said, “Do you want to go back to Sydney or do you want to stay here, because there’s one battalion here who haven’t got a padre, they need one.”

08:30 “I’ll bloody stay here,” he said. He was standing out the house with Missus whatever her name was, I forget now, and he was standing outside the door. And the RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major] got the Colonel to come out and talk to him. He thought this bloke was putting it over him. Anyhow they had a bit of gear

09:00 …and he said, “What about all the gear you had?” And he said, “I didn’t bring much, but I’ll tell you what I’ve got out there. I’ve got a case of whisky,” he told the old Colonel. “A case of whisky! What are you standing out there for, come on in.” That’s how Nobby started his war with us. Between him and the doctor, I would say, would bring in more wounded than anyone. Out under fire even.

09:30 I think Nobby thought the Good Lord was protecting him. But they gave him an OBE. He got an OBE and also the Doctor. He died. I went to his funeral out in Ipswich about four or five years ago. Very good.

Can I just stop you there a minute Ron. The microphone’s fallen down a bit. Alright we’ll go back to where we were.

10:00 We were talking about how our padre. He was a beauty. He would play poker until four o’clock in the morning with the boys. He was a game bloke too. And we got him to come down to Australia, and we brought him up to Euroa and we had a great time with the old fella. One of the boys he was. Outstanding. But he died suddenly and a lot of them went up for his funeral in Sydney. We put a plaque on the chapel where he used to

10:30 preach, somewhere I didn’t go, in Sydney. His sisters were there. They’ve written to us since.

What about in battle, what kind of beliefs sustained you?

Oh I think…I believed in the Lord you know, and I was a Sunday school boy, and I started off going to the Methodists. I can remember those old hymns now.

11:00 Mrs Phillips on the old organ, peddling away there, pumping the old organ up. “Shall we gather by the river…” and that sort of stuff. Oh yes. My mother was a pretty churchy lady. She was in the choir, many years ago. They had a double wedding in Longwood. My mother and father, and auntie, her sister and uncle Will Walker. I’ve got cousins

11:30 spread all over Victoria. It takes me a while to get around to them all. I hope, I did plan to go down next April for the Anzac Day. I’ve been going one year down there and one year up here. I might not be able to this year. I might not be fit enough. I might. I’ll try anyhow if I can get down. Oh yes, I went to a church service…

12:00 The Japs had a habit of putting on a special raid when there was a special day. Such as Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and that. And I went to a service after I done my run on Easter Sunday, after getting frightened by the canon going off on the track. I got in there and I thought, gee I’d better go to church. Bishop Strong, the old Bishop of New Guinea was there. They used to fly him around in little

12:30 tiny planes…about the smallest we had. What sort were they now? Very tiny, but they were safe. They were too slow for the Zeros. It’s hard to realise that planes could be too slow, but they were. But they were safe. They built a wonderful big cathedral over on the north coast near Popondetta,

13:00 which is over below Buna. And they built it out of native staff and it’s a huge thing. You know the cathedrals which have a big front and that on. He finished up he was Primate of Australia, and Bishop of Wangaratta which was our diocese. He died down there.

What were the services like when you were out of Port Moresby or on the track?

13:30 Mainly similar to what we had at home, in church, only short. We didn’t hang around long. They were alright. But when you line up Sunday morning for your roll call, they’d say RC’s [Roman Catholics] fall out. And I thought Jesus, they’re nearly all RC’s here. They’re all falling out. And I found out after the war that the coots only done that because

14:00 they could have a free morning. They wouldn’t go to church. They weren’t RC’s at all. They just wanted a morning off. But of course me, good little Ron, wouldn’t do anything like that.

Tell me about the signal work when you went on the Kokoda Track?

Well we had one phone line, one single strand and for each village…I forget now,

14:30 there was Uberi, Iorabaiwa, Nauro, Menari, Efogi, and Kagi and Templeton’s Crossing and Eora Creek. There was, must have been about 14 phones on that run and we used to have to relay the messages. It wasn’t strong enough to go right through. We had to relay them. That’s about all we did. We didn’t use much else. We tried

15:00 codes to the airforce but we couldn’t get through. We had big AWA [Australian Wireless Association] sets, about that big. The natives carried batteries. Car batteries on a pole. We had a charger and fuel. We had ten fellas to move it…to carry the fuel and the charger and the set. I remember we were shifting back, retreating of course, we done a fair bit of course.

15:30 We were getting out of Deniki, which is this side of Kokoda, and we were sneaking back. And…oh that’s right. They told me to go forward from Isurava and help them out with the wireless station. I just got there and was walking down the path, and there was a chap walking out. It was about…it was down off the main track. It would have been about 40 metres. He was half way there, and he bloody looked and he said, “What

16:00 the…Ron, what are you doing here?” And I said, “Jesus, Barry Harper what are you doing here?” Barry was one of the first to give the alarm about the Japs landing at Gona. He was a coast watcher. I didn’t know he was there. He was the oil company rep. The Castrol oil man. He use to call on us at the garage. Well that was a surprise.

16:30 He spent the night with us and he came back with us. We had to come back a couple of villages. We had the native boys. They could slap you up a water proof hut in an hour or so. We made it about the size of a double bed. About six foot by four across and ten of us slept there that night on the floor. “You going to let me in your bed?” “Yeah come on, you bugger.” We tried sleeping in the native huts and lighting the fire up.

17:00 They would have a fire in the middle of the floor. I don’t know what they used, bark I suppose. We tried lighting the fire. It got a bit cold up there, see it’s pretty high altitude. Anyway it smoked us out and we couldn’t bloody stand it. We soon got out of sleeping in their huts.

What did you think of the locals?

Oh alright. They were alright.

17:30 Treat them right. I don’t think they ever got annoyed. They were a very calm mob. They’re not so calm there now though. They were unemployed. When we went back after 25 years, they were walking along the roads, unemployed everywhere. The Raskols [gangs].

What about then?

Oh, they were alright then. You got them to

18:00 carry and that would quieten them. And they had an old doctor. Doctor Benson it was I think. He was 62. He was in the Light Horse in the First War and he was a plantation owner up in New Guinea when the war broke out, and he said, “Look, I’ll look after the native carriers for you.” I’ve got a photo there. The first times I’d seen Damien Parer [war correspondent] and Doctor Benson

18:30 inspecting the carriers. Poor cows. See they were from the beach, and they got down in the warm weather on the beach, and they got chest troubles. Pleurisy and that, and Doctor looked after them. (You out of power are you?)

No it’s just a buzz with our microphone, don’t worry.

19:00 Just continue on.

The local fellas joined what they called the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. The miners who wanted to go back to Australia. The planters and that did a wonderful job behind enemy lines, you know.

19:30 They gave us a lot of information. We had fellas like…our spotters were right in under the noses of the Japs. And trying to find them…they had to generate power for the batteries for the wireless. They had the generator going there and sometimes if they had the chance they would put it in a tunnel, in a hill, or under a waterfall for instance, or behind a waterfall. That would muffle it out. But they were good.

20:00 There’s been quite a few books written about the New Guinea Air Warning. They were the coast watchers. There was an old chap named Beale. He was about 90 when he was up there, and he was in the navy. He organised the locals from the navy and they done a great job. All we wanted was a few more men, fit fellas with

20:30 latest model rifles and a few machine guns etcetera. And a few faster aeroplanes. They did a wonderful job, those first aeroplane boys, with their old Hudsons. They had a rear gun and the poor cows would get in from the outside. He was out there sitting in the tail with an old 303. He’d come home

21:00 and they had to just about hose the poor cow out. It was cruel. What else?

Well on the Kokoda, how did you operate exactly?

Well the platoons of fighting men, they’d have to go in. We’d be on patrol. We’d have a…out in front was always a standing patrol and we’d have to phone to them and be in touch,

21:30 and they could tell us what was going on. When the Japs started to reinforce the place just before Isurava, the big one, before the AIF came in. My God, there was hundreds and hundreds of Japs all in dark uniforms camouflaged. By Jesus I thought we were going to get it this time. Anyhow they waited, and they came charging through, and ran into…

22:00 we had Bren guns by this time, and the boys were right. They stopped them and the AIF 2/14th Battalion came into relieve us. The 2/16th…see, we were along a river valley…I can’t think of the name, the Eora Creek, that’s right. And by gee, it did roar too.

22:30 They came in there. They said, “Don’t worry, you can go home now.” But we didn’t. They got cleaned up and our blokes had to go in and help them out. That’s where Bruce Kingsbury won his VC. They absolutely go mad when they win a VC you know. They think they must be armour plated I think. The buggers, one machine gun

23:00 after another. They take out three or four machine gun nests and they’re being shot at all the time. Just lucky…well he didn’t stay alive. A sniper got Bruce. He silenced about three or four machine gun nests and a damn sniper got him.

Describe the scene that you would see on the Kokoda track in battle?

Well you didn’t see a lot because

23:30 it’s so jungly, so much undergrowth. It’s so thick. You wouldn’t see them until it was too late. One poor fella said to me, one 2/16th chap who had just come from the Middle East, “God if we could only see the buggers.” See they’d come from fighting in open country in the desert, and he said if we could only see them. We had some great blokes. Quite a lot got

24:00 awards. I think we had about 6 or 7 MCs [Military Crosses] and MMs [Military Medals] would be about the same, and they gave the old Colonel a DSO [Distinguished Service Order], I think. We only got the crumbs. The AIF got most of it. They didn’t really class us as first class soldiers. We were untrained, undisciplined buggers.

24:30 Still, you were doing the job.

We did the job. Later on they said, “You buggers did a terrific job. And when you come back to help us out your wounded blokes staggered back to help us out too.” Blokes were shot up something terrible but they still went back to hold the line while the AIF got out, the 2/14th particularly. The 2/27th seemed to get lost on the way up. That’s a good idea. I’ll know next time

25:00 to get lost and you come out a hero. You might get a bit of dysentery and a bit of malaria, but you would be a hero though. I know quite a few of those fellas who got their TPI [Totally Permanently Incapacitated], but they won’t get me a TPI. No way.

Tell us about the first time you saw action

The first time? Well I suppose that would have been Isurava.

25:30 Isurava. That was where the biggest battle on the coast was…on the mountains. I think, give them their credit. I think the 2/14th had about 130 killed in that scrambled. We lost about 130 altogether. We were hit and run. A few would be hit and then we’d fall back, and then set up

26:00 another trap. We were outnumbered see. I think we had about 400 fighting men in the line, that would have been the most. They had something like five or six thousand. The airforce didn’t sink enough ships. They were getting them down, flying them down, and getting them down anyhow, in vessels from Salamaua and Lae.

26:30 They were getting reinforced. And as I say, they had all these horses. They had a thousand horses there. Pack horses and they used to pull these mountain guns apart. The wheels on one, and the barrels on another. God they were well equipped. And they would practice on the Chinese and Philippines and all that. They were experienced, and we were green as grass. We were told what to do but

27:00 it’s a different thing when you’re in action to what you’re trained for. Describe that first action that you saw.

Bloody frightening. Anyone who says they weren’t frightened is a bloody liar. You’re really frightened. You can’t stop it. But you go through. It’s funny when your mates get knocked beside you, after awhile it’s just, oh Christ they’ve got Watty, or they’ve

27:30 got someone. And you say well that’s the way it is. You sort of get used to it. Down here if someone dies it’s, oh god. It’s terrible. One person dying. But they were dying all around us. You get used to the bullets going over your head. You like to hear them going over. They break the sound barrier you know…click, click, click. It breaks through…like the aeroplanes. It hits like a boom, sort of thing.

28:00 A bullet goes crack, crack. It’s good to hear them because it means they can’t get their guns down onto you. The worst thing for you then is when they start dropping mortars. They come over with the mountain, and by gee they were accurate with that mountain gun. Had a big shell. I think it must have been about three and a half inch. But it was only short though, about ten inches long. But they used to

28:30 drop them and you would hear….whirrrrrr….going through the air. It sounded like they were wobbling. But our blokes were pretty cunning…our old leaders…how they got us behind a high hill, and everything seemed to go over our heads. This forward place was a cow of a job. We had to man the phone out there. Take it in turns. Jesus one night, the last night they were there, Duffy

29:00 was out there and he was another Sig. Anyhow, they’re sitting there squatting and it’s raining you know in this bloody wet hole, and anyhow they hear a bit of a rustle and all of a sudden the Sig’s got a bayonet through him, through his chest, and it was on then. They shot badly at anything and they cleared out. They had an order to get going and to come back.

29:30 It took them two days to find their way back and the fellas was puffing and breathing out through the hole in his chest. He lived alright though. There were some bad luck things. One of the reinforcement chaps from the 2/27th, that was the Adelaide Battalion from the 21st Brigade. There was an Adelaide Battalion,

30:00 a West Australian Battalion, 2/16th and then the Victoria, 2/14th. That comprised the 21st Brigade. One chap was …what was his name now….Dasher Dean was one of his mates. Tubby Jacobs…I don’t know why they called him Tubby because he was no more tubby than me. Anyhow he was carrying a few loaded rifles on his shoulder and he slipped, and he had them

30:30 loaded but he didn’t have the safety on. One went off and went right up through him, killed him. Poor old Tubby and his mate Dean. They were great mates. They got promotion by joining us see. They went from Lieutenants to Captains, and he came in there. He didn’t last long poor old Tubby. That can happen to you. Bad luck. And two of the boys from Ballarat,

31:00 Brian….and, I forget their names but they had real Irish names. One shell from the mountain gun landed in their hole. Killed them both. They’d been to school together in Ballarat and they had been together ever since I think. I laughed.

31:30 At this time they decided it was time I had a bit of a change so they sent me out to C Company, back towards Moresby about five mile, not seven mile, or seven, or eight. That’s the way they call them. They don’t have villages…it’s four mile and that sort of thing. Anyway,

32:00 I was out there. No, Captain Dean came to get me in the company ute and he said, “There’s no doubt about you blokes in the 39th, you’re very mobile.” I was loading up my timber bed made out of timber I’d pinched from the RAAF, and all the souvenirs I had.

What did you have?

A wheel off one of those

32:30 Kingsford Smith landing wheels, the back one. I had old phones and all sorts of junk. I was going to take it home to Australia but I never got it there. I went back three years later and dug out my slit trench where I’d buried it. There were a few mango trees growing in the trench. And it was empty. All my souvenirs. I was going to put it on a wheelbarrow.

33:00 It was a bloody nice wheel.

Well tell us about the environment there?

Bloody cold. Once you got up passed (UNCLEAR) it got very, very cold. It was about six and a half thousand feet around Templeton’s Crossing. There was phosphorous

33:30 sticks on the ground and they’d light up at night. And when you were getting around at night you used to hang a bit on your belts at the back so you could see how close your mate was. Very handy for that. I think it was a sort of moss that was growing and it was florescent. Very good. We didn’t

34:00 have any tools to dig in with. We just used the trees and rocks and what ever we could. Food was a problem. We were out for a few days. I told you about that I think. A few days and we traded with the natives with salt. Had some nice potatoes and…there were wild 34:30 tomatoes growing up there. They all went in together. Biscuits and everything. A real Irish stew it was. But we had…when our Colonel Owen was killed, Major Cameron took over and he was a real adventurous man. I think he had come from…he had been in New Britain before the war.

35:00 He had a plantation up there. And he said, “I know a few tracks on this Kokoda, and I bet the Japs don’t know them all.” He said, “I’m going to retake that place,” and he got the boys organised. C Company were to go straight down the main track and another would go this way, and A Company another track. He got in there and the Japs were hell of a surprised. They hadn’t left anyone on guard or anything.

35:30 They got in and they held it for about two days. Absolutely. They took it right over. Then they ran out of ammunition and food. All they could do was get out. But that’s where we fought twice there. First time they kicked us out when Colonel Owen was killed, and the second time after we had retook it. If we had only had a game one or two pilots, who could have brought in a platoon or two…the aerodrome

36:00 was still open. They could have flown them in, but they had young Yanks and they were terrible. Young Yank pilots. There were too many Zeros around, they wouldn’t land. One lot they brought over, one platoon load, they wouldn’t land, they took them straight back to Moresby. It was bad luck really. Everything we did was a day or two too late. It could have been all different.

36:30 The Yanks never…there were never ever any Yanks on the Kokoda Track. They attempted it of course over the Owen Stanley’s, about 100 mile east of us, and it didn’t take them much to get into trouble. I was sorry for them really. They were as green as grass. They came out like the Colonel, pale and

37:00 probably…I think they were conscripts. That upset MacArthur you know. The conscript Yanks had to fight anywhere. They could send them anywhere, up to the islands, but the Australians they couldn’t. We were only really allowed to fight on Australian territory. But they eased that a bit. They let them go onto New Guinea, up around the top of New Guinea in the end.

37:30 But General Macarthur, our Hollywood General we called him…he was keen to get onto Japan. “I will return!” You’ve heard his story. I will return he said when he left the Philippines. He did too, but he was a real showman.

38:00 He reckons the Aussies were no good. They won’t fight! He was saying this back in Brisbane. He was in the AMP [Australia Mutual Permanent] Building in Brisbane. That was his headquarters, and in the end he decided he had better go and have a look. And old Tom Blamey came up too. Old Tom was my mate. He helped me arrive one day. It was pouring with rain and I’m hitch hiking out on the road. I’m out about 17 mile and I’m standing under a tree trying to keep dry,

38:30 and I see this car with a flag on the front and I thought who’s this. It’s old Tom sitting in the back. “Soldier, would you like a lift?” And I said, “Sorry sir, but I’m going the other way.” I crossed over the road so I looked like I was going into town when I really was going further out. So old Tom’s a mate of mine. He at least offered me a ride. The blokes started condemning Tom and I said,

39:00 “Just a minute, he offered me a ride one day in his staff car.” He was a donkey old Tom in some ways. You know, when our CO came out of the Owen Stanley’s I think someone said, “Blamey wants to see you Ralph.” “So,” he said, “I brushed myself up the best I could and I went around to see Tom Blamey.” And Tom’s just saying

39:30 goodbye and wishing them luck…a plane load of troops going up to the Front, and he said, “Oh you’ve just come from the mainland?” And the CO said, “No sir, I’m in charge of your troops up at Kokoda, or I have been.” “Oh,” he said. And he really insulted poor old Tom. He said, “He didn’t seem to care who I was or where I was.” That was terrible wasn’t it.

40:00 Didn’t know what his troops were doing.

Tape 6

00:39 You mentioned before that you had met Damien Parer. Can you tell me how you met him?

How I met him? I had got back to Eora Creek. I had already helped a 16th Battalion chap who was wounded in both legs and the first aid chap

01:00 said, “Look, can you carry this bloke back? Can you give him a hand, he can’t walk at all and we’ve got no stretcher bearers.” I knew that because I had been trying to get some for Doc Shearer. And the Doc told Major so and so off. He said, “You buggers.” And he said, “What did he say?” And I said, “He said that will be ok sir.” So I squared up for Shearer. Anyhow, this RAP chap said, “Can you help this fella out and help him get back?” And I said, “Give me a look at him, how big is he?”

01:30 He was a bloody little jockey. So he was no trouble. I put him on my back…oh he had dysentery and passing blood and all that. So I carried him back to Eora Creek. When I got there they were all standing around. Doc Vernon’s got the troops all lined up, the carriers, he’s going through them. Then there was a fella climbing around on a log with a camera. And I said, “Who’s that?” And they said, “That’s Damien Parer.”

02:00 So he never got past Eora Creek. I know that. The Japs were pretty hot on our tail at that stage. Anyhow, that’s where I met him first and we went back still further and I ran into my mate, poor old Kanga Bayliss from Cohuna. A chap I’d gone to school with and been in the Scouts lived in the same street. I used to signal up and down the street to him with flags.

02:30 So we were buddies. Still are. “Keith,” I said, “did you know Damien Parer?” I said, “That’s him there.” He had about two or three natives carrying some of his gear. He had already thrown a lot of it in the Eora Creek. Chucked it away, couldn’t carry it. So I got talking to him. He said, “I’m making up a film.”

03:00 Have you seen that one on ‘Retreat from Kokoda’? He said, “I was full of beans when I got back to Moresby.” He starts in his announcement… “I was full of beans when I got back to Moresby after seeing these blokes and the way they were fighting up there.” That’s the first time I met him and I haven’t seen him since. And I won’t now. His son lives up in Brisbane doesn’t he. Do you know where he is? I would like to meet him. He was born after poor old

03:30 Damien was killed. I believe so. So I only spent a few minutes with him on two occasions. One at Eora Creek and then again at the junction of Kagi and Efogi tracks.

Did he take any pictures of you?

Yes, I’m in one of those in the books.

Tell me about the picture?

Well I’m sitting there like a

04:00 big prawn looking to see what was going on. I know I had been talking to a wounded boy in the hut just along side me. He was one of ours and he got a blast in the hip. They got him out thought. Anyhow…yes well, I went off next morning and I don’t know what time he went off.

04:30 I didn’t see him leave Eora Creek but I ran into him about one and a half villages further on. And then we were together…oh yes I forgot that. We were together at Nauro, that was lovely…it was on the flat. There was a Brown River flat and the biscuit bombers were coming through. “Jesus,” Parer said, “we’d better get out of here. These buggers are mad.” They were pushing all the crates of stuff

05:00 onto the village. Some went through the huts. They killed one poor bugger. One 27th Battalion chap with a crate of biscuits. And gee, what a way to go. And also they broke another bloke’s leg. Damien and I and a few others, Keith, got under a log. It looked a very pithy log too. “We’re right here Keith.” “Yeah, she’ll be right.” Then we could see the plane.

05:30 He did get over…we were waving him over…saying get over you bugger. And he did get over a bit and we were safe. Then I lost track of Damien then. I didn’t see him after that. That was a nice village. I could have lived there. I got to like New Guinea in a way. I had mixed feelings when I packed up to come home the last time. I think I would have soon got sick of it. Some of our blokes went back you know.

06:00 One bloke, Bill Guest who was our OC of the 39th Association in Queensland. He went back and worked for one of the trading companies at Wau, and in the mountains where they have those big parades. Have you heard of them? Anyway he worked for them there and he met his wife over there, Pat. She lives up there too.

06:30 When you were at Eora Creek, when you first met Damien, how hard were the Japs pushing you back?

No, they weren’t. We had them held then. They hadn’t got very many reinforcements then. But when they started to get reinforcements then they pushed. No, we cut their water off a bit at times too. And

07:00 gave them some of their own medicine. We knew the AIF were coming sometime, but we didn’t know how soon. They could have come earlier. But of course they gave them leave in Australia. They came into South Australia you know, the 2/14th and they mucked around for a few weeks. They needed a rest no doubt, but we needed them up there more though. We could have stopped a lot of that, that loss

07:30 of life. The whole show, bad luck, bit late.

Did anyone take any souvenirs on the track?

Oh yes. Flags. All the Japs had little Rising Sun flags you know. And what else…I had a lot of gold teeth. I used to borrow our pliers to pull their teeth out.

Whose teeth?

The Japs, once they were dead.

08:00 They got a lot too, quite a bit. Some of them at a pocket full of gold teeth. What would you do with the Jap’s body?

Well, bury them. We buried Nobby Earl and …I think they buried about 500 at the Gona Beach. That was the worse show they had.

08:30 We had to bury them. The stink was terrible. A battle area would pollute in a few days. You could sniff and you’d smell the dead bodies. You could smell the blood on the ground in the mud. And we’d say, let’s get out of here.

How did you deal with that?

Oh well it’s all part of the deal. You got pretty hardened. You couldn’t do anything about it.

09:00 Stick to your guns and keep the enemy at bay if you could.

Was there any sort of ritual, if any of your mates died…was there any sort of ritual?

Oh, a little short service when they were buried. But sometimes they were buried that quick. We had no padre. He couldn’t be everywhere at once. So if a chap was knocked off here by a sniper then we’d bury him on the spot. And the machine gun company was running out

09:30 of ammunition and food…Bill Merritt and Sid said to us…Jackie and I, “You’d better take some ammo and tucker up to the machine gun company, they’re running out.” Bill Merritt wants some food. Oh Christ. From our place in the trees there was clear ground between us and the place. It was a garden. An old

10:00 native garden. And they changed…they shifted their gardens every now and again. Anyhow we crawled along…we were crawling along with sandbags. We had sandbags with food in it. I suppose they were sent up to barricade around Moresby. You know how they fill sandbags and barricade. So anyhow, we got these and we had them tied around our foot and we were pulling them along,

10:30 and we got up there, and I stand up and went to walk and they say, “Mate don’t stand up. That’s where your mate was knocked off a few minutes ago.” That’s where he was killed. His rifle was caught in a vine and he stood up to untangle it, and bang. Sniper waiting with his telescopic sight. Those buggers would shoot you in your head. They got the CO in the head. Most of the snipers got them in the head. They were good

11:00 marksmen. They had no eye trouble because they had good rifles. I can remember Alf Salmon walking along the track. I ran into Alf and he had a grin on his face. And he said, “I’ve got a homer Ron.” I said, “What do you mean?” He’d been shot across the chest and his chest had been opened up, and he said, “I’ve got a homer. This will get me home.” And it did. He got a job on the troop trains and he was happy.

11:30 Poor Alf. He died too soon later on. He was in the 39th Battalion. He organised everything. The first trip back to New Guinea. We’ve had about three or four trips back to New Guinea. Sometimes they go to Japan and meet the enemy over there. I remember…I didn’t go because I had a business to run and couldn’t afford to be away too long. And Jack said, “Gee they were miserable, lousy, sour

12:00 old buggers.” The old Japs they met. Jack said, “I would have liked to have had my old gun there. I would have shot a few of them.” Actually talking about…this is changing the subject…the Rats of Tobruk. My mate Wattsy got a note from the Afrika Korp leaders. ‘Dear Enemy, we were pleased to hear of and be at your 50th or

12:30 60th anniversary over in the desert in Tobruk.’ Now they weren’t bad people, the Germans. Not bad, not bad. Some of them were crooks. Some of those buggers. But the Japs were worse. The things they did to our prisoners was shocking wasn’t it. The poor buggers. They had huts full of food and medical stuff and they wouldn’t give it to them.

13:00 I don’t know how poor old Doctor…Doctor …who am I trying to say? The Australian doctor, Weary Dunlop, how he could forgive those buggers. I couldn’t, sorry. I’m not that religious. Where was I dear? Keep me on track. I wander.

We were still up on the track, speaking of being on track.

13:30 I’m just wondering if there was any superstition amongst the men…

What, amongst the Australians? There might have been. I know there was amongst the natives. Certain areas are taboo to them. Les said, “Gee, I’m going to have a job to get the boys to come out with me to Myola.” But he did. That was taboo. You didn’t go out into that area. I don’t know what it was. But you know.

14:00 They were superstitious. Funny ways those natives. A bit like our Aboriginals I suppose. There’s certain things they don’t like doing.

Was there any…I don’t so much superstition, but was there a wound that people were most scared of getting?

The belly. You were gone. They couldn’t do anything for you. If you got a stomach wound 14:30 you were gone. A body wound you were gone. Alright if it was the leg or the arm or…that sort of thing. But a body wound, you see, the doctor’s couldn’t do anything. You just had to gradually die. That was the sad part about it. That was the worst part, a body shot. It still is, unless they can get to you immediately. Yes there were a lot of good fellas died in front of your eyes.

15:00 You couldn’t do a thing for them. It was sad for the doctors really.

Was there any sort of…if somebody was shot and you were near them, were there any sort of ways that you would help take care of them?

All you could do was cuddle them. Let them lie back on you. And you could whisper, “Well you’ve had a good life.

15:30 You’ve been a good bloke.” You’d talk about old times if they could still listen.

Would they talk back?

Sometimes they could. They might say, “She’s right mate. I’ve told them I might cop it. They’ve been expecting a message.” I lost a brother in law at Tarakan. He was a sergeant with the 2/14th, no 2/24th

16:00 sorry. The 2/24th Battalion. He died from, probably a drop short from our own mortar. Hit a tree or something and came back at him. You don’t have time to get away. Yeah, they had more fire power than us, the Japs. More fire power. They had mountain guns and mortars. They could carry the stuff. When you work it out…

16:30 I think we had a bit over 1000 carriers. That was all Burke could muster up, and those fellas were 8 days carting stuff. Well they were going to have to eat a lot of food themselves, so by the time they got there there wasn’t a hell of a lot left.

What do you think the Jap’s reaction was when you held them back so well?

They were annoyed. That’s what we wanted them to do, get annoyed, the buggers.

17:00 So they got a surprise. Their intelligence hadn’t been very good. They didn’t expect to see a battalion there ready to have a go at them. Our blokes were determined. Did you see Cookie…that TV personality, Cookie… Sid Heylen…don’t know Cookie in A Country Practice wasn’t it?

17:30 She hasn’t been watching old Cookie. I seen him last night singing along with some crowd. Old Sid was our boy. He used to entertain us before he took on TV. He died about five years ago old Sid. Sid was one of the first fellas to see the Japs come across the river. That was the river nearest to Buna and Gona. We’ve got some letters from the

18:00 missionary ladies, the sisters. We’ve asked them along. They’ve come along to some of our concerts, our get togethers. Parkinson’s and that.

Did you spend much time in the villages of Kokoda?

No fear. Not a lot of us did. There would have only

18:30 been a couple of platoons, of A Company. Bill Guest. Bill can tell you some stories. I don’t know if he’s making them up or he’s a bloody good liar. He’s got all the details and he sends us a GG now and again. We get one…oh no, they’ve cut that out now. You’ve got to send it to Victoria and it goes in the main one. He’s a good old bloke Bill.

19:00 We don’t know. We laugh about old Bill and his stories. Something about taking Atebrin. There’s an Atebrin tablet there if you’d like to try one. Gee they’re bitter. And we used to have to take for a start… we didn’t have Atebrin, that was a new model. We were on the liquid…quinine. That’s what they gave us for a start. It was funny.

19:30 On the one hand they give you a dessert spoon and you had to take it down in front of the sergeant, and then in the other hand you got a bottle of beer. That was the first week or two. But that soon ran own and then we had to make our own …jungle juice after that. That’s not bad stuff you know. You get tinned fruit and

20:00 tip it in a drum and then put anything you like in it that will ferment, sugar if you’ve got it. Yeast to hurry it along if you like, then you let it bubble away there for a few days, all the contents coming up. Then you strain it through a mosquito net and you drink it. It’s just like thin honey, only it’s white. But be ready for the kick later on.

Was it hard hitting?

20:30 Oh yeah too right. It would really knock you off your perch. That’s how desperate we were. Some…I wasn’t a drinker before the war. See, I was a boy scout. A good boy. There was no alcohol in our home. See our house was a…I think they used to drink a bit of champagne, going by the bottles I used to dig up around the old place. 21:00 But they were wine drinkers our family, dark wine. Sixpence a quart bottle.

So what other sorts of stuff would you get up to, apart from making jungle juice, for relaxing or entertainment.

We had no balls. No footballs. We had nothing. Absolutely nothing. The first show,

21:30 picture show came on six months after we got there. The meat came six months after we got there, the rotten mutton. No we didn’t have much entertainment.

Did you play cards?

Oh yes, that’s what we did. Played a lot of that. I wasn’t a card player though. I used to play a bit some times.

Any other games?

I can’t think.

22:00 I don’t know. We seemed to be occupied watching the skies (door bell). That will be George I think.

We were just talking about two up?

What’s that?

It’s just the top of your mic. I’ll put it back on for you.

22:30 No, we didn’t play much around in the battalion, two up. But when we got to another transit depot or something, the Yanks were there rolling the dice in the dust. God they loved that ‘craps’ didn’t they. No we used to play it up outside the hospital and that sort of thing. And by gee, up at the workshop they had a beautiful set up.

23:00 Power laid on, seats around. One bloke used to sell down in the workshop down in Victoria, baked rabbits. Trapped them off the hills around the camp at Bandiana…anything to make a bob.

Did you win ever?

Forty dollars I got out of it. I’ll show you my pay book. I sent it home to my wife…

23:30 no, my engaged lady. We weren’t married then. I got married in the second leave in ’43. No, 10th April 1943. We’d been married for 43 years. Hasn’t been the same since. I need her now. Anyhow we should have been thankful for small mercies. Forty three

24:00 years is a fair innings. Yes, Dotty was a great little saver. She saved up enough money that we could buy a business down there, a cycle and sports shop.

From your two-up winnings?

Oh some. Some from my huge pay I got and the allowance….a wife’s allowance which was about two bob a day.

24:30 Terrific pay. I’m still crooked on that danger money. I should have had a few years of that but we didn’t get any. Danger? What danger they used to say. It’s quite safe where you are.

And what happened with two up?

Oh they banned it but they soon forgot that, because they couldn’t ban it really.

Why did they ban it?

One chap shot himself. Lost all his money and

25:00 some of his mates. This was up at the lower level on the … River. Oh they get carried away, gamblers, don’t they, like these ladies on the pokey machines. Not the one-arm bandits, they press buttons now. I never did it. But I’ve got a daughter, one daughter living here, she always makes about $80 when she goes to the casino.

25:30 I had better not diverge too much.

Start telling me about when you guys were being pushed back from Kokoda?

It wasn’t very nice at all. See, the poor buggers coming in…the ragged bloody heroes.

26:00 They’d been out for days some of them, no food. When they came back they had no hats, no nothing. No blankets, no ground sheets. They had to go so quick at times they dropped them. That was the worst part. I’d say the last, the Kokoda Handicap we call it. The Kokoda Handicap. That was the worst part, towards the end, after…

26:30 they brought in that many they could overrun us. They had…I think at one stage they had about 10,000 trained men and we had about 400 or 500. The AIF fellas came in but they were bloody expert at getting lost. They got lost and they lost their skippers, I think that was a lot of the trouble. 53rd Battalion, they were untrained, and they were put on the Aquitania

27:00 without any final leave. They had just been conscripted into the army. They got no final leave. They put them on the boat and sent them to New Guinea. That was terrible really. They got away with it, but don’t they. No one knows enough about it.

What was the morale like, amongst you guys, as you were being pushed further back?

Well, you couldn’t say it was good. We thought we’ll stop the buggers eventually. Hurry up you AIF boys.

27:30 You big bronze …they came…gee they looked like Amazons when they came up there. The big bronzed AIF from the Middle East. Suntanned and fit looking. And thank God. But they got done just like us. The numbers were outdoing us. You’d mow down a mob who were charging, you’d mow them down but in a few minutes they’d mass for another lot. Wave after wave.

28:00 They must have lost five or six hundred there I think. At Isurava. They’ve got a nice memorial there now. It’s got so many pillars of granite. They brought them in by helicopter. They weigh a ton and a half each, I think. Anyhow, it overlooks the valley. It looks straight down the valley to Kokoda to Eora Creek. So the morale wasn’t really good, but we knew if we got back

28:30 far enough, they’d suffer from the shortage of food and the long lines of communication, and they did. They turned cannibals you know. You’d see a bloke with an arm cut off. If you had looked around you’d probably find the arm strips cut off it. They were desperate. They were eating their mates. They were eating our blokes too. Steaks, yes they did. Up around Efogi….

29:00 they did get a bit further than that. A couple of villages further. They just didn’t have enough food. They had a hell of a lot of them to feed, you know. We didn’t have that many to feed really. We never had more than…what would it have been…a quarter of what they had. But that was about all the army they had in the world, wasn’t it. Up there at Rabaul…what did they have, about 30,000 in Rabaul, and the Solomon Islands.

29:30 Bougainville and Guadalcanal. They didn’t have enough men I found out. (What’s that…didn’t I kick it. These tinny machines you have, I suppose they cost you millions too).

30:00 Now, what are we doing? Retreating like hell. We call that the Kokoda Handicap. A horse race that was, on the Kokoda. We could still have a bit of a joke you know. We had our (UNCLEAR) cut into the bank alongside the track. We’d wake up in the morning and someone would say, “Right ho, line up for the Kokoda Handicap, she’s about to start,” and away we’d go.

How fast would you move?

30:30 Oh, just a brisk walk. You couldn’t run. That’s about all. You could only go so far dear, and you’d be leap frogging each other. You wouldn’t leave a space wide open. You’d leave…what did they call it…oh God, I’ve forgotten my military terms…you’d leave a defence line and you’d fall back through them. They were the front line then.

31:00 We would do that, leap frogging.

How would you move…in platoons?

Yes, it was mainly in platoons. But in the end when we were so short of men we were all in together. We would only have been…I think when we came out of Sanananda, we had 32 men altogether. Two officers and 30 odd men. That’s all that came out.

31:30 They wouldn’t give them a ride. I was telling you. They wouldn’t give them a lift, and some of them were still running temperatures over 100, and they wouldn’t give them a lift. So when they got on the ground, that little fella on there…I must show you.

No, no. Show me when we stop.

I’m a pig headed old coot. I can’t see him there. That’s been cut down to fit that cover.

32:00 Anyway he looks like a boy and he was our adjutant. And as he marched them to attention at this airstrip at Dobodura which was the nearest aerodrome from Popondetta…march to attention! But you know how they were, floating along, and some chap sitting there said, “What bloody mob’s this?” They were trying to march to attention across the strip.

32:30 And Keith heard him say… “This is not a bloody mob, this is the 39th,” he bellowed out. That’s one of our pet ones.

What was the feeling about being such a small amount of men come back?

Terrible.

33:00 We expected it. So many were sick. See they were getting this bloody scrub typhus. It’s worse than malaria. It’s a type of malaria I think. Some of them were up to 104 and 105 before they would go out. Some of them were left in too long. Snowy Ryan one of our Sigs was left in too long. He passed away. I suppose half of them died of scrub typhus. There was no antidote for it.

33:30 As I said before, the lady down at [Walter and Eliza Hall] Institute in Melbourne pricked her own finger and died quick. It’s alright now. It’s a fever. I used to read a lot of books. Stanley Livingstone exploring through Africa and those things. They got terrible fevers and died. That would be the same.

34:00 We had Atebrin at that stage for malaria. They laughed when we went back with our Atebrin to New Guinea. They had something better than that. They billeted us out at some of the officers’ billets over there around Popondetta. Popondetta is an inland town from Buna Gona. I stayed with a major so and so.

34:30 And he said, “They’re no good. I’ll get you some of our tablets.” It still didn’t help me anymore. Atebrin….I never got malaria for two years over in New Guinea. I got plenty of dengue fever. But I’m not quite sure now whether they were telling me fibs, the orderlies or not. When I read my report I’ve had malaria about

35:00 three times more than I thought I did. But apparently they didn’t bother telling me that they got a positive spike. It wouldn’t make much difference though would it.

Just one question going back a little bit, tell me about the rain?

The rain? Well we were in Moresby which is a dry area.

I mean up on Kokoda?

Oh yes, it rained every day there. You could hear it coming about half past three every afternoon.

35:30 You’d hear it belting down on the heavy foliage. Roaring across the mountains. We’d get under our ground sheet. That’s all we had and two of you would get together. You’d put one ground sheet over you and one under you. Unless you had good native boys with you who could build a shelter pretty quick. They were pretty good at that.

36:00 Yes they were pretty good. The way they folded the leaves you know. The rain would all run off.

And how did the rain and being wet all the time affect your clothing?

They would rot on you. The stitches would go. You’d chuck them away in the end. Some fellas were running around in socks for awhile. They wore them out.

36:30 It was terrible. We had no replacements. None what so ever. Well I never saw any spare clothes. No, I did take a spare outfit which I gave to Sidney Duvet. Poor old Sid, his trousers rotted off him. And I had a pair of Bombay bloomers…do you know what they are? They’re something like the bottom of yours there but they’re shorts. Big wide things. They call them Bombay bloomers.

37:00 Not a bad name. Sid said, “I believe you’ve got a pair of Bombay bloomers you’re not wearing?” “Yes, glad to have them.” So I gave them to poor old Sid. Jesus he was a nervous fella, poor old Sid, our officer. He used to smoke a bent pipe and you could see it chattering in his teeth. Anyhow one day, we put an (UNCLEAR) above our Sig office. We used to have to race up about

37:30 say four or five hundred yards, and we had a trench up there and the phone was on, and we used to be listening and watching. We’d go up there because we could see straight down the Seven Mile drome. We could see the planes come over and drop their bombs, puffs of dirt everywhere. Anyhow, what did Sid do? Sid’s sitting on the edge of the trench. Jackie’s standing in front of him with his tin hat on

38:00 and all of a sudden we hear (tap tap). What’s the bloody hell’s that, a time bomb? It was poor old Sid’s bent stem pipe on Jackie’s tin hat. He was chattering that much it was going up and down. He was nervous. He couldn’t help himself. Anytime anything went bang, poor old Sid was gone. Some were terribly nervous you know.

38:30 I wasn’t nervous then but I am now. If someone fired a gun outside I’d nearly go through the roof. But I’m not too bad I suppose. But we had some good officers, particularly when the old boys were with us. They trained us. And they really advised us wisel, and told us what to do and that.

What was the …

39:00 We didn’t expect to get beaten of course, so we made up for it. When they stopped chasing us we were into them. Most of them were dead that chased us I think. They would be. Gee they lost them by the thousands at Gona Buna. They wouldn’t surrender you see. What were you going to ask me?

I was going to ask you about your mates actually

39:30 and the kind of friendships you made.

Well that’s one of the worst parts of it. Your friends are dying before you. I’ve got one fella left in the Sigs up here, no two. Bill Belair, he’s over near the yacht club, Keith Ballis down at Cohuna. He’s my longest living mate. School mates, boy scouts and all that. And who else…oh, Ken Fielden

40:00 down at Oakleigh. Ken’s still going. There’s 4 of us out of 45 with reinforcements. Some, we didn’t sight them after the war. Some never showed up at all. We don’t know if they’re dead or alive.

Tape 7

00:41 Was it hard to make friends?

No. Very easy I found, and they’re still friends. Like brothers. Like our book says. ‘We Band of Brothers’. That’s for real. You’d do anything for them.

Can you explain that to me a bit?

01:00 Yes, you were pretty close you know. You would be in the same hole together. You were being killed together or survived together. The two boys who went to school together in Ballarat, they were killed in the same hole. You depended on your mates. By gee you did. Shared everything. We were a close knit mob. You had to be.

01:30 No use fighting with them.

Was it hard to get close to someone and know they might not be there tomorrow?

No, I didn’t find it that way. I must have been a friendly type I think. No, I had no enemies. There were no ratbags in the team. See the signallers are a little bit picked. They were a little bit more than the average rifle man. Perhaps they were better educated

02:00 some of them. Some weren’t religious like we were. You know, that helped. I had one particular good friend from Bendigo, Noel Looms, he only died about three years ago. He was a very staunch Catholic. His son tried to be a priest at one stage but he woke up and pulled out. He’s now head of the news in Melbourne for the Police. All the paper reports have got

02:30 to go through Kevin Looms. We’ve got another bloke working in the same department. That’s Wal Waller and Sons. He had seven sons Wal. Good god. Gee if they were all like Wal they would be lovely men. He trains the police at the barracks, and he’s very good. We’ve got young people taking over as our office bearers.

03:00 That’s the only way we’re going to survive for a bit longer isn’t it. Our President retired the other day. He was 90. He’d been in for about 30 years.

Speaking of being Christians, did you pray at all?

Oh yes. I went to church when I could. Otherwise yes…I’d pray, for God sake, please

03:30 get me in through this old gate at home when the show’s over. And I got there.

Did you think about that a lot?

Yes. I thought, yes because it seemed to be working. I’m not kidding anyone, I did. But fellas did pray who didn’t normally pray. Didn’t go to church. Some fellas were hardened. They

04:00 wouldn’t, but a lot would when we had a chance. We had a bloody great old padre. He was a Catholic bloke but he was a beauty. Old Nobby Earl. He applied for leave the second time in the year I think it was, down at Rossel Island. He said to his Bishop, “I want some more leave.” He said, “You’ve just finished one lot.” And he said, “Yes but the 39th

04:30 Battalion are coming back up and where those buggers go I go.” That was Nobby. And he would too.

What kind of relationship would you have with the padre?

Pretty good. I liked the padres. Some were broadminded boys, terrific chaps. God we couldn’t have done without them.

Why?

Oh I don’t know. They seemed to keep your pecker up you know. Help you along.

05:00 Can you explain that a bit more?

Well they made you feel good after you had been talking to him and praying. You felt better than when you started. You could have been down in the dumps. You would think of those at home and that and he would seem to lift you.

Would they go into action with you?

Bloody oath. They gave Nobby an OBE for bringing in the wounded. He brought more wounded in 05:30 than our ambulance boys. He was terrific. He thought he was immune to bullets. He used to go out under fire and bring wounded in, and that. Some of our blokes wouldn’t take that on but he did. And he wasn’t a trained army man, just a trained priest.

Can you tell me a bit about…would any of the locals help you out

06:00 with your job at all?

Job?

With the signals part?

No I don’t think so. Only Archie Johnson the fella who trained us. Yes we might have got a bit of help from the post office boys…

I mean in New Guinea.

In New Guinea…oh well, I didn’t know of any locals there. Do you mean locals, chaps that I knew?

06:30 Any of the local people in New Guinea.

They were alright really. They used to advise us. “Don’t worry about those buggers…those black buggers.” And we’d say, “Cut it out mate. They’re human.” “Don’t give them ten bob for a grass skirt or a lacquer toy.” God strike me, I would reckon it was worth more than that.

07:00 Yes, they treated them rough.

But would any of the blacks help you at all?

Too right. They would build us a taffita. “We will build you a shelter!” “Quick…hurry up.” Yes, they were good in those cases.

Did they help you carry gear or look after radios?

Oh yes carrying gear, they’d help you. “We help you,” they’d say.

07:30 They’d smile, and as for doing…no not with fighting they didn’t. Not so much. But we had Senopa, he got a MM. He was a very good scout. He’d lead you out…say you got trapped. He’d know where to take you, up over a dry creek bed or something. He earned his MM, by gee. He was still going when we went back in

08:00 ’67, but he’s died since. We send money over to the Gona School. That’s run by a dedicated band of… mainly natives teaching now. The plane, when we went back then was piloted by a native. “Gee,” I said, “I hope you’re a good pilot.” “He’s alright,” they said. But when he landed us

08:30 at Dobodura, the President of the RSL said, “God I thought he was going to put you down in the river.” We did too. The plane was going that way and he went like that with it. He was getting used to the job. But anyhow, they’re very good. They’ve had a university of course up there for years. Built on Ward’s Drome. Yeah, a good, flat bit of dirt.

09:00 When…jumping forward a bit…I guess, can you tell me about the time when you got the call that you were coming back to Australia?

Boy, oh boy, I’ll never forget that. That was lovely. They said…of course we were going several times before we actually went. Every time a ship came in we were going back on this, someone would say.

09:30 It went on and on and in the end we did go back. Did I say that we had to going looking for the CO? He was out looking at defences along the coast. We were due to go out and man these defences that they had during the Coral Sea battle, again. Anyhow I couldn’t find him. When I got home he was home in our camp at 18 Mile.

10:00 We came home on the Taroona, a little vessel. It carried us well. There would have been about 1000 or 1200 of us.

What was it like coming back, after being in action on the Kokoda, and coming back to the camp at Moresby?

Terrific. That’s something. They put me out of the infantry. They disbanded our fighting

10:30 machine because they were running out of reinforcements and fighting men, so they had to break our battalion up, probably because we were ‘chocos’, because we were fighting pretty well at the time… doing better than some of the AIF units. They…that’s right, they put us into the 2/2nd Battalion on the 3rd of the 7th 1943 that happened.

11:00 Where did they do that?

At Atherton Tablelands, in Queensland out there. They marched them around. They only had to march them about a mile. The 2/2nd Battalion, the 6th Division chap was camped up there after the Papuan campaign. Anyone who was in the Papuan campaign got 14 days leave. So I went home and got married during that time. And gee we had to speed things up too.

11:30 But we did it.

What was the reaction when they said the 39th was going to be disbanded?

Well we’re still…some of our blokes haven’t got over it. They’re still writing to everyone trying to find out who did it. No doubt it came from Tom Blamey and those top brass. I can understand why they did it. They were running out of fighting men. There were too many of the fighting men like myself for instance…I was put into a workshop

12:00 well back behind the lines, there weren’t any good as reinforcements for a rifle company once we were back there. And that’s why…Bill Belair’s is still writing to them. “Bill,” I said, “you’re wasting your ink mate. They’ll never admit…” Our Colonel, he was good with words.

12:30 He studied Shakespeare. He was a well educated man. And he said, “We’ve been broken up and tossed to the winds. After all we had done.” Anyhow it didn’t worry me.

How did that make you feel?

I was a bit sorry for a start because we had lost some of our mates. Some went to the 2/2nd. Some went to the 2/8th.

13:00 Some went to the 36th Battalion and then they woke up that I was an engineer and they put me in the workshop. I thought that was a bloody good idea. I’ve got photos of myself there testing out engines. I used to assemble engines and used to rebore them. I had a beautiful workshop. Big huts, big workshop. One for woodwork, one for repairing trucks,

13:30 and instrument shops. And gee it was a big show.

Did you go back to New Guinea during the war?

Yes, the fighting was up around Ataipe and Madang when I went back the second time.

Where did you go?

Where did I go? They grabbed me and put me in workshops. I was wasting time.

14:00 I was in the 36th Battalion and they were only doing garrison work around Buna Gona. We were there just in case the Japs decided to go mad and land there again. When the 9th Divvy came through and they landed up in Scarlet Beach, by gee they got belted up there. Poor cows had to wade across rivers which was about two foot higher than them. They were under water half the time.

14:30 So their mates had to get them by the hair and lift them up for them to breathe. Quite a few got drowned crossing the mouths of those rivers. After a downpour you’d have a flood, see. One bloke, one day when he was coming back down off the Kokoda, was washed off a little log. He was going and I grabbed his hand. Roy Kirk was his name. He’s still going. He had appendicitis.

15:00 One doctor up there took the appendix out on the wrong side. No, no that was me. Mine’s still there. The left side or the right? Have you had yours out?

No. It’s the right side.

Right. Anyhow, this doctor had his finger nail taken off so he could keep it hygienic with no germs.

15:30 And he used to just make an inch slot, I’ve seen the scar on old Kirkie. Inch long, put his finger in, hook it out and cut it off. That’s not bad and he would be back in the lines in 14 days. Back here at that time, you’d be 3 months recuperating after you’d been gutted. Oh gee. What was I talking about?

It just made me think of one thing

16:00 that you said earlier. You said you got married on your leave, did you get letters from your fiancée while you were in New Guinea?

At times. But in action we got nothing. For six weeks or so, we got nothing. She didn’t know if I was dead or alive. But we couldn’t ring them up of course like they do now. No, they just had to hope that no news was good news.

Did the letters help?

Much.

16:30 Yes, I got engaged before I left New Guinea in 1941, Boxing Day ’41. I got engaged then. Got photos of my little wife in there too. And sister and friends. They came up to see…you know how they visit army camps…to say goodbye on final leave. Away we go. So we got engaged. And I thought damn it.

17:00 I was probably thinking of the money too, and Dot wanted to get married. So we got married. Fourteen days. I had to come down from Atherton to Melbourne. Dot had arranged everything. Caterers…I was a bit short of best men. My brother was training for the airforce to go to England and he couldn’t get leave. He was up at Parkes. So I looked around and Fergie was there. Old Bob.

17:30 “Bob, are you doing anything on Saturday, I want a best man?” “Oh yeah, I’ll be in it.” I’ve got a photo of him there to. Bob Fergie. He was mentioned in Despatches. His brother got an MC, no a MM at Tarakan for bringing out a wounded artillery man. He carried this officer…

18:00 he carried him out under fire. He was my main shooting man, Ferg. We used to go fishing and shooting together a lot. Ducks, bang bang. Sniper he used to call me. Poor old Fergie. He got cancer and died a horrible death. It can be cruel. I’m glad they’re getting on top of it a bit, aren’t they. Some are. You’ve got to be lucky.

18:30 So, the letters you got from Dot, how would they help you?

Oh Dot was there waiting for me. She was loyal too. Lovely. And honest as the day. Very lovely. And you’ve got to get home when you’ve got a wife waiting for you, haven’t you? That used to help me. It made me all the keener,

19:00 I think, to survive. Come on Lord, look after me please. Dot wants me. Poor old…I used to get letters from Captain Freddie Tubbs’ brother. Arthur Tubbs. And his son was a

19:30 prisoner of war over in Malaya in Changi, and I used to write to him. Fred was amazed that I used to write to his father when he came out. He always used to finish up, “Keep the powder dry Ron.” Oh God strike me. You go right back to keep your power dry…that was muzzle loaders, way back to…

20:00 way back before the Crimean War when they had bullets, shells in the cartridge. I’ve got some at home.

Just one question about the Aquitania when you sailed over…

Lovely cruise.

I’ve read a little bit about ships and sometimes it’s traditional to have a bag pipe player…

Too right. We had a bag pipe player and he was very good.

20:30 One of my mates, poor old Les Nicholson from the Maryborough Pipe Band he was. So he could play. We were told to take all sorts of musical instruments and tennis rackets, and we were going to have a great time. That didn’t eventuate. It was work, work, work. Digging holes and trenches and unloading ships and you name it. So anyhow, yes bagpipes. Gee, that was lovely.

21:00 We went straight out from Sydney. They said they were going to take us to bloody New Zealand, then we turned and went up outside the Barrier Reef. We left on the 27th, the day after Boxing Day. We got up there on the 3rd of January. On the way up Nicko borrowed a set of pipes from one of the crew. There were about 800 crew on the old Aquitania of course.

21:30 He got up on the top deck, I can hear him now playing all those Maori farewell songs, and ‘Now’s the Hour’. Gee whiz, there wasn’t a dry eye I don’t think.

How did they go?

How did they go? “Over big, lovely, moonlight night, gliding along.” This is alright we thought. It changed later on, but by gee we enjoyed that trip. I didn’t get sea sick.

22:00 Remarkable because I’m a bugger as a sailor. I get sick in a rowing boat on a weir. Anyhow we enjoyed that. And when we landed there of course…I’ve told you this haven’t I…the boat ran aground in the harbour and we had to be taken off on lighters and little naval vessels. I told you about how we had to walk all the way out to Seven Mile.

22:30 No tents or anything. They treated us like second class citizens alright.

I’m going to jump ahead again.

Go ahead, go ahead. I don’t know where I am, to tell you the truth.

I want to ask about coming back, I mean at the end of the war.

Oh it was lovely to be at home. Gee, I didn’t know home was so nice. Really

23:00 lovely. Dad and Mum were alive then. My sister who was later killed in a car accident with her husband. She lost her husband, the first one, Jack Nightingale. He was the chap who was killed on Tarakan. There was only three in our family. My brother Cliff. He was still in England when I got home.

23:30 Then he came home by boat through the Panama Canal. I remember him telling me that. Not many of them came that way I don’t think. Anyhow…

Can you tell me about being demobbed?

Yes, I was only reading the demobbed thing the other day. Down at Royal Park. We went back, back, I don’t know how many bloody times we went back…no not now. They’d sometimes put a couple of marks on your demobbed

24:00 book. I think I should have it there somewhere. Time wasting. And I had bought a business. It was still going and old George Russell was running it still. When he was introducing me to the business houses in Melbourne, I’d put on my uniform and get a free ride down in the train. Terrible rude of me wasn’t it. I reckon I had earned a ride. A free ride.

24:30 Can you explain why it took a few times to get demobbed?

Oh gee…they were trying to demob that many, they could only do a certain number a day. You had to be medical examined, x-rayed and all that. I’ll show you the thing there. There were a lot of things they asked. Stupid questions. I was quite prepared…I had my own business to go to, but I made out I was too healthy. I should have been limping

25:00 around with my crook back. I would have got a pension straight away I think. My mate Bloomsie, from Bendigo did. They x-rayed him and found a spot in his lung. He was on 100% pension back in 1947, I think it was. No, 1945. He was on a full pension on his full pay at Bendigo Council, plus his other pension. I didn’t get a penny from them

25:30 until ’85, and then they gave me 40%, God bless them.

Where were you when you heard about the end of the war?

I was…which one? The English one or the Australian one?

Japanese.

The Japanese one ended in August ’45. I was up at the workshops at Bandiana. I was on a good thing there, I was. I could get home each weekend except when I was on guard

26:00 duty. Jump on the train for a free ride home to Euroa. That was good.

How did you hear that the war had ended?

Well they were talking about the atomic bomb, this big bomb they had. This is the way it started. They were going to use it on the Japs. I didn’t understand what an atomic bomb was, no one did. And anyhow, they said, this will save a lot of lives. We knew the Japs were getting

26:30 pushed back in the Pacific, island to island. The Yanks were doing a good job. They lost a lot of men there. Irijima and those islands. Bloody slaughter. Anyhow, that bomb saved a lot of lives. That’s when I heard…and gee, everyone went mad. She’s all over boys. It was good enough when the European war was finished. That was over in about April wasn’t it.

27:00 In 1945 was it? I forget now. What do you reckon there? We’re right. It ended anyway. Lovely, relief. Free again

How did you celebrate?

I didn’t get drunk.

27:30 I didn’t believe in that. I don’t know what I did dear. I don’t remember. Probably Mum put on a Christmas dinner at the wrong time of the year for us. She was a good old cook, Mum…old Anastasia. That’s a Russian name, Anastasia isn’t it?

Did you think about your mates that you’d lost when you heard that the war was over?

Not much.

28:00 We were too busy thinking about what you were going to do to make a living. You had a wife to look after and a family, we hoped. That was hard but we got a couple of daughters. No, I don’t know. We were prepared to go to services any time there was a service…returned service. I’ve done that every since. Anzac Day and special days. We have a Kokoda Day up here at Sherwood every year. On August 8th. The nearest Sunday

28:30 to August 8th. That’s the day we retook Kokoda.

Can you tell me about the first time you marched on Anzac Day?

Gee you make them hard for an old rusty brain like mine. Oh yes. Tarrara I suppose it would have been. That’s right. We would start up near the school and march along the main Hume Highway and down Binny Street.

29:00 There’s three VC trees there. That’s a big attraction. So it was eyes right at them. Freddy Tubb, Burton [Corporal Alexander Burton VC, Lone Pine 1915] and [Leslie] Maygar three VC’s in Euroa. I think it’s the only town in Australia that’s got three VCs.

What was that feeling like, marching? Oh very proud. We’re the boys who can do the Japs any time you like.

Did you have any trouble with memories

29:30 of the war?

Not much. I didn’t. I used to have a few little nightmares. I would start jumping around in bed and thought he had me.

What sort of nightmares?

Oh just imagination I think. I’d kick at him. A Jap of course, always a Jap.

Did you think about the war much? Do you think about it much?

Well I keep

30:00 reminding myself because I want to remember my mates. My poor old mates who never saw…they shall not grow old, you know. And gee that’s true. Old… knew what he was talking about there. No, I don’t think I got war neurosis, I don’t think. Some did, something terrible. Because a lot of them got sick after the war, reoccurring malaria, and some even

30:30 died from it. But I was a tougher breed. Must have been. A bit lucky. Must have been the Wither’s breed. They all lived until about 95. So I suppose I’m going to do the same. I don’t feel like it at times, with the crook back, but it will come good.

When you remember your mates, what sort of memories do you have?

Very good memories. I just think, what a waste.

31:00 We could have saved some of them you know. We did stupid things. We…I don’t know, just the luck of the draw. You had to be a bit lucky you know. The bullet might hit your mate over here. Miss you, go past your ear and hit your mate. You wonder why he fell over.

31:30 You wouldn’t see the bloke that fired it. If it was a piece of shrapnel, it would go a hundreds and bang. Some fella might just have one spot of shrapnel hit him in the heart. That’s all it took. If you were up there in New Guinea, anyone who got a body shot was gone. Not too many survived.

32:00 You couldn’t do a thing for them. That’s how bad it was…Doctor Allan Hogan was operating on a chap outside the area of the 15th Ambulance. He was still at the operating…they had a little mobile table. They would put them on that. He was operating on this bloke, and a Jap…we didn’t know they were that handy. Right across the valley

32:30 about a mile away. The shot him with a big Woodpecker [Japanese heavy machine gun]. Poor old Allan only died two years ago but he always had awful trouble with his legs. He was head of the…what do they call the chap who takes in the patients at a hospital like that? Administrator or something. Something like that. Poor old Allan. He said anyone who was on the Kokoda Trail in my opinion (probably including himself)

33:00 should have got a VC. You didn’t get them that easy.

When you think about all the Australians that died and all the Japanese that died, do you ever think about whether or not it was worth it?

Well yes. We’re silly buggers wanting to fight all the time aren’t we. We haven’t improved one little bit have we. Look at the madmen we’ve got in the world today. I don’t know who’s right or wrong, but

33:30 something’s going horrible wrong isn’t it. I don’t think we’re told the truth always. I think they garnish it a little. Still, we’ve got to fight for what we know.

What were you fighting for?

Australia, my home land. Yeah, too right. I didn’t want to really go over to the Middle East and fight for the Arabs and anybody else.

34:00 I think I would give the Poms away too. They did a wonderful job but they got belted about over there. We only had a little side show over here. They told us, we’ve got to beat the Germans first. You’ve only got a little side show out there. We’ll get over there and knock that one over in a fortnight. Well hell, it took them months and months. They didn’t know the Japs were so well armed I don’t think.

34:30 And fanatical. We die for the emperor. That’s all they would do. You had to kill everyone. You couldn’t capture him. He wouldn’t put his arms up. Die you bastards we used to say. Some of our blokes had tears in their eyes when they shot people. I remember poor old John Manell. When he shot this fella

35:00 he…he had gone through his pockets and seen a photo of his wife and children. That got to John a bit. He only died last year, John. Another bloke was telling me too…who was that, I can’t remember now for sure… Did it ever get to you?

No, it didn’t. No I wasn’t

35:30 really…didn’t have my finger on the trigger all the time. Sometimes on the telephone see. If there was another war and I was young enough to go, I would certainly look for a base job. These fellas get two or three hundred dollars a day, danger money. They earn it because you never know when they’re going to go. I’d be a bit more

36:00 fussy about who I gave that too. No base blokes would get it. I would see it was given to the real fighting men who could have been shot at any minute. Some fellas are yelling and squealing and going on that they can’t get the pension, some bloke was chasing Japanese subs around Sydney Harbour. He was going crook. He wants a pension.

36:30 I don’t think he’s entitled to it. It’s a pretty good trip around Sydney Harbour isn’t it? It’s like going on a ferry trip. They didn’t do much damage down there. They tried very hard. Gee didn’t they sink a lot of ships. If you go to that memorial down here at the Tweed. It’s surprising isn’t it. How many ships were sunk and how many were killed.

37:00 Our biggest navel vessel, the Perth wasn’t it. Several hundred on that wasn’t there.

Have you got anything you would like to add to this? Anything you think I haven’t asked you?

I’m trying to think but I’m not having a good go. What did tell you about…Tokyo Rose, and the airforce. I haven’t spoken

37:30 much about the navy have I. They did a wonderful job. And the airforce too, with their Catalinas. They used to take Z-Force fellas [Services Reconnaissance Department] in behind the enemy before they went into invade, say up the top of New Guinea. They would go in and put them in there. They would have to live off the land most of the time. They would look like swaggies [swagmen – itinerant workers] when they were leaving the base. I was watching them

38:00 one day, billy cans hanging on their belts, big jungle knives to cut a track through. They were brave boys. We’ve got one of them up here on the bay, Deception Bay named by Captain Cook.

I guess…are you proud of what you did?

38:30 Oh yes. I think the people appreciated what we did. And that does make us proud. And accepting us. We started to try and get known back in…about 20 years after the war. And I didn’t understand. One chap said, “It’s too soon yet mate. We’ll have to wait about 50 or 60 years.” Well that’s so. People are starting to know who we are now. When we march

39:00 the dear old dears, probably lost their husbands in the last war, or their sweethearts, holding up placards, just bits of white paper…’Thank You’. ‘Thank You Very Much’. Well that touched us. We knew what they meant. Thank you for saving us. Yeah we’re a proud mob and we don’t like people stealing our thunder.

39:30 We have to watch those AIF boys, especially the ones who went up there to help us out. We had to help them out, and really they admired us for it. They said ‘the ragged bloody heroes’ they called us. We were ragged I’ll admit. But too many get a free ride with this ragged bloody heroes. Some of them never left Moresby and they were still

40:00 one of the 39th. See there’s always a few left out of battle. You can’t get the battalion wiped right out, they reckon. It might be 50 or so out of battle. Some might be in hospital and that and can’t go. They get the same treatment as the poor cows who were in. Five or six weeks when we were there the first time, (what are these little notes, just like being in school again.)

40:30 It just says there’s one minute left on the tape. So if there’s anything else…

We better talk up quick. Stop it please. One of the best mates, I’ve ever had apart from my own family. No, they’re terrific. I’ve still got a few left. They ring me up. I have a

41:00 pretty big phone bill, but that doesn’t matter. I’d sooner ring them than write now.

Do you talk about the war?

Do we? Just, how are the boys going…did you hear about so and so. He got knocked. Yes, I was with him up there for a while they’ll say. That sort of talk. No we don’t …I don’t think we sort of

41:30 weep over them. You get hardened to losing mates you know. The first time is bloody terrible. But after a while you had to keep going yourself. Life had to go on.

INTERVIEW ENDS