Australians at War Film Archive

Neville Elliot - Transcript of interview

Date of interview: 2nd October 2003

http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/992

Tape 1

00:34 Well good morning, Neville. I would like to start off today by asking if you can tell me a bit about where you grew up?

Well, I grew up in the Newcastle area, I was born in Hamilton,

01:00 which is a suburb of Newcastle, and I was born 25th of January 1925. My schooling, I went to Hamilton Boys’ Public School and then I moved onto Newcastle Boys’ High School.

01:30 High School I found a bit boring, I went through to fourth year and then decided I would leave school and go and get a job. I got a job with a shipping company in Newcastle, and I had a wonderful time in that job. To do with shipping and ships; it was a very interesting profession then.

02:00 And I worked in an office in what we call Watt Street, which in those days used to be the street where the shipping officers were, the whole street was different shipping companies. And we were agents for the British Phosphate Commissioners. And they had three very nice vessels of

02:30 their own and they used to travel between Newcastle, Nauru and Ocean Island. And they would bring cargoes of phosphate into Newcastle. And we also used to get American ships form Texas brining sulphur in, and that was on a regular basis. And I worked there until

03:00 I was seventeen. I started there late fifteen, and I worked there until I was early seventeen. And then all of my mates and friends were slightly older than me, but they were eighteen, and they had joined the forces, some the air force, army, navy, and I was left fairly lonely. And then I decided

03:30 I would join the navy. I had always been interested in the sea, and I had done a lot of sailing early life, and I had done a lot of fishing outside. A friend of mine had a professional fishing boat, and I used to go out with him often and I had a leaning towards the sea from those experiences, and the sailing.

04:00 And Newcastle, the public, I don’t think were too worried about the war a great deal at that time. Until Darwin was bombed. And then people started to get concerned, there was talk that the Japanese were going to invade. I know a lot of people sent their children into inland areas, a lot of people left the areas, moved out of Newcastle.

04:30 And then the navy gave a talk one night out at the yacht club, I was a member of the Lake Macquarie Yacht Club. And they were setting up what they called Auxiliary Naval Patrol, which was a voluntary organization. There was a big panic on that the Japanese were definitely going to land on the east coast, and every boat was commandeered.

05:00 Any boat, rowing boat, yacht, anything, was commandeered and put on dry land so that it couldn’t be used by the Japanese, which thinking back is the silliest thing I have ever heard. And this navy chap asked for volunteers to join the Newcastle section of the volunteer coastal patrol. So quite a few of us did enlist, we signed up as volunteers. And we used to do

05:30 patrol work, two nights a week I think we used to do it, on motor cruisers that were owned by a lot of the Royal Navy Yacht Club chaps, they were another club at Toronto. And we used to do patrols on Lake Macquarie, patrols on Newcastle Harbour but not out in the open ocean. And one experience we had, a very good friend of mine who I

06:00 used to go out fishing with outside, he was a member and he used to provide his vessel, and we were doing a patrol in the Newcastle Harbour area, on the night of the, I think it was the 8th of June 1942, and our patrol used to take in the upper harbour area, and out as far as the end of the breakwater on Nobby’s Head. And on that night

06:30 was the night the Japanese shelled Newcastle. It was quite an experience. The first warning we had that there was something happening was the star shell, and it illuminated just like day the whole of the Newcastle area. And we carried an Aldis signal lamp, plus some other equipment, and we flashed a warning to the

07:00 the pilot station. And there is a fort which is still there, Fort Wallace was at Stockton, they had nine point two guns, I think, and the other fort on the headland at Newcastle had six-inch guns, they had three guns, and we signalled and signalled and got no response from them. And then there was an air- raid

07:30 siren went, and the whole of Newcastle was blacked out, and the power station is right up above Newcastle in an elevated position, it was lit up like a candle. And then the shells came over. And I think on records there was eight star shells fired to illuminate the area. And I think there was about twenty- four heavy calibre, they were about five point five

08:00 inch shells that the submarine carried. They fired all over different areas of Newcastle. Strange to say, only about three exploded; the rest were duds, but they were fairly accurate. They put two, I think, into the steelworks, they hit the wall of the powerhouse. One exploded up the top in Parnell Place, but no one was injured, and the rest were all failures.

08:30 But that brought Newcastle people to suddenly realise that they were exposed. After that a couple of months later, I think it was that time, I then decided I would join the navy. So I went to Sydney and enlisted but I had to

09:00 wait for a call up. And apparently when you join the navy, you go to a big training depot down in Victoria, called HMAS Cerberus. Well naturally, they can only limit their intake to the area they have got and how many they can train at a certain time. So I had to wait quite a few weeks before I got the call

09:30 to go down. And I think I went down to Cerberus in about October in 1942. And the course is a fairly long one and it is pretty hectic. And I always

10:00 remember how it taught everyone discipline. And thinking back and thinking what we have got today in Australia, that’s one thing we are lacking in our youth. And I think it would do them a lot of good to get a periodic call up and go and do some training. Getting back to the navy, I was down there for about

10:30 three months, I think, to start with. And then I decided I would do a course on gunnery, that’s heavy armament. And then that went on for another couple of weeks. And I failed the final gunnery shoot. It wasn’t my fault, I don’t think. It was almost dark and it was very hard to find

11:00 the target, so they failed me. So I could have saved that time and gone with the initial intake. But I stayed behind with a couple of other fellows. Then I was drafted to a big depot at Balmoral in Sydney. What they call HMAS Penguin.

11:30 It was a fairly new depot; it was a lovely depot. And that was the point where they drafted all of the intake to various ships. I got friendly with a nice young WRAN [Women’s Royal Australian Navy] who worked in the drafting office and asked her to keep her ear open and let me know if she heard of anything coming up for me. And finally she

12:00 told me that she heard a whisper that there was quite a few going to be drafted to the HMAS Shropshire, which was in England, and it had been given to the Australian navy as a replacement for the HMAS Canberra, I think it was, that had been sunk up in the Solomon Islands. Well, her information proved correct and I got

12:30 notification from the drafting office that I was going on pre-embarkation leave but I was to stay in the area for the next twenty-four hours so they could let me know to come back to the depot. Anyway, I went to Newcastle and I think I had about seven days leave, and I know I went away from Newcastle somewhere, I don’t know

13:00 where it was, and I had been there overnight and when I came back, there was a telegram there and to get to Sydney as quick as I could. By the time I got to Sydney and got out to the depot and they told me to get straight back to Central Station and catch the troops train, the train had left. So I missed that first troops train. And I had to

13:30 wait for the next one which was, I just forget how long it was it was, a few hours after that first one had gone. And we were delayed going through to Brisbane, they had put the troop train on a siding to let other trains go through that were more important. When we arrived at Brisbane, there was three of us. We were

14:00 picked up at the station, driven down to Hamilton Wharf where the big American passenger ship, the Monterey, I think it was, either the Monterey or the Mariposa, had all of these RAAF fellows going to Canada, and army, it was a big troop ship, but it was a big ex-passenger ship. And as we drove on the wharf, I could see that the ship had moved off the wharf about ten feet,

14:30 they had let the lines go and she was just going. And they could have put us in a liberty boat and driven us down the river but they said, “No the draft is cancelled.” So I missed that trip. It would have been a wonderful experience, they were going to sail across to San Francisco, across to New York. Now York across the Atlantic 15:00 up to England, northern Scotland and pick up the Shropshire and bring it back to Australia. And I missed out. So I had to go back into the Brisbane depot, which was pretty run down. It was a dreadful place, and I got various different duties while I was there. I used to be on ammunition parties. There was a big ammunition depot out of

15:30 Brisbane called Darra, and we used to go out there and load trucks with shells and explosives and take it into the wharves and load it onto ships. I was doing that for a while, and then on one of the corvettes, one of the seamen got very ill. They had to take him off at sea, and I was drafted, ‘on loan’, as they call it, in his place.

16:00 And I spent three or four months on the Lithgow, and we were running convoys, mainly from Brisbane up the north coast of Queensland and, strange to say, I had never, ever been sea sick in my life,

16:30 and the first 24 to 36 hours, I thought I was going to die. I got dreadfully seasick. And I can always remember one of the chaps took pity on me and he said, “You have got to eat.” And I used to eat dry Saos [biscuits], but from that time on, I never had a minute’s trouble. But I found out later on, even the real good seamen at

17:00 different times, in rough conditions, even they get sick. And I would have liked to have stayed on the Lithgow; they were real good fellows. The captain was only a lieutenant, and his name was Lieutenant Holtane, he was a great bloke, really good fellow.

17:30 Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay on it, the chap that had taken ill, he came back and I had to go back to this Brisbane naval depot, and I was only there a short time after that and I got drafted to the Echuca. And the Echuca was at sea out in Moreton Bay. And I remember vividly,

18:00 they took me out on a Fairmile class navy boat, only about 112 feet long, I think. Was pretty rough, and even though the bay is fairly protected, and I always remember clambering up the ladder on the ships side you know, with my gear and everything. That convoy, I remember the

18:30 first convoy we took was south, and we struck pretty bad weather, too. We took that convoy down. We stayed off, we let some ships go, that convoy was coming form further north, we had got it from Moreton Bay and took it down, different ships would drop off

19:00 into Newcastle, into Sydney, and we kept going down into Victoria, and we done a lot of runs from Sydney down to a place called Cape Liptrap I think it is, before you get to Melbourne, and

19:30 we used to stand off there and wait for the convoy to come out of Melbourne. And that’s where we struck bad weather. Terrific big swells, and that’s where the yacht race got into trouble. I can understand; apparently in Bass Straight, you have got very shallow water and you have got two tidal systems come in and it makes the waves a lot bigger.

20:00 What else? Ask some questions.

Well that’s terrific, Neville. That has give us a great overview, what I would like to do is go back to the beginning and get more detail. You were born in ’25 and the Depression came fairly quickly after that, can you tell me a bit about what it was like growing up in the Depression?

20:30 Well, I remember it quite well, it must have been difficult at times for our parents. When I think back, the different people who were trying to make a bit of money. You would have a chap that would come around the street with a horse and

21:00 cart, and he would be singing out, “Clothes props.” And in that time people didn’t have these ropey clotheslines. You had what you called a clothesline which was a pole each end with a cross bar on the top and two wires, and you used a clothes prop to hold the wire up with your washing on the wire. And then another

21:30 chap might be going around selling rabbits. And you would go out and buy a rabbit and he would skin the rabbit while you were out there. I know times we used to go out with my Dad, and my other, middle brother was a lot younger than me, but Dad and I would go out on pushbikes and we would go and get

22:00 half a kerosene tin of blackberries and bring them home and the mother would make blackberry pies. What else? You would find sometimes a chap would come and they used to make different things out of wire and you would be amazed with what they could do with wire, you would get coat hangers, soap holders,

22:30 I think we might even still have, not here, but. What else did they make? Then, that’s right, everyone used to use a lot of coal, a lot of people had a fuel stove and

23:00 the coal man would come around the street with his horse and cart and you would buy a bag of coal and you would have in the backyard, what you would call your coal shed. And I remember I used to save newspapers, rolled up newspapers and I would take them down to the butcher shop and they would put them 23:30 on the scale and I would get so many pence for a roll of newspaper. I always remember as a kid I never had any money. I might be given a penny or two and you would go down to the shop and you would be amazed at the, what you could buy in lollies for a penny. When you think of things today.

24:00 I would go to the movies on a Saturday, and I think I used to go, it was a fair walk. My mother would give me an apple and I think it used to cost sixpence to go to the movies.

24:30 My Dad worked for a timber company, and he was the company secretary, and they had quite a big timber yard, the company, not far from Broadmeadows, where we lived. Right near the railway station. And Dad used to always ride to work on his pushbike and I can still see me Dad on his pushbike.

25:00 When I think of those times and you compare it with today, what kids used to do and what kids had and what kids have got today, it is incredible. We used to have marbles, I was pretty good at marbles, you would have little ring, middle ring, big ring,

25:30 pothole, and then tops. Tops used to be the rage. Everyone had a wooden top. But you would make your own. You would make toys out of jam tins. You always had something to do and you always had plenty of enjoyment, playing cricket out in the backyard,

26:00 cricket was the rage then. It is a time I will never forget. And I can always remember as a young fellow, the big steelworks at Newcastle was a long way from our house, but on a still night, it was all operated by steam in those days, and they had these huge rollers that used to roll the slab backwards and forwards. And of a night-time we could hear those big

26:30 rollers going, right back to our house. And of course, I think back to the old trams. The council lorries, they used to be driven by steam engine, they were steam trucks, the old tramline.

27:00 I know my mother used to send me to the butchers, and you always bought cheap cuts. Something I could never look at today, and I had plenty of it as a kid, tripe, have you ever had tripe? Suet, had some suet, I think that’s what they used to use for fat.

27:30 They were pretty tough times. But we all enjoyed ourselves. My Dad, he didn’t have a car until 1939, I think was the first car we had. My mother’s brothers, they had cars, and they used to come and pick us up sometimes and you would

28:00 go for a Sunday drive, otherwise we would go for a big long walk. And we lived very close to, which was then, the Newcastle aerodrome, probably two hundred yards from our back fence was the

28:30 aerodrome. And that’s when I had some very interesting times as a young lad. We had Smithy come in, we had Holme came in, all of the good old air pioneers used to land. And I always remember there was a chap used to come up for the big air pageants, like air shows they used to have those days. And there was one chap, I used to have his autograph and everything, a bloke

29:00 called Henry Goyer [?]. And he had a plane, a twin-wing DeHavilland. And he had skull and crossbones painted all over it, he was a stunt pilot. And he was flying up from Sydney on one occasion to appear at the pageant. And us kids were sitting, we had not a garage but a big shed down the back and we were sitting

29:30 on the roof watching the planes come in. And he was going around and around above us, he could see us and he was waving like this. And he threw a spanner out with a note tied to it, “Ring fire brigade and police,” and when we looked up, all of his undercarriage was hanging. I remember that. We didn’t have a telephone on at that time, and we raced

30:00 across to the aerodrome and gave them the message and he brought the plane in, broke the propeller or something like that. There was always something interesting. I remember once Smithy [Charles Kingsford Smith] landed there. And his plane was the Lady Kingsford Smith, it was a single-engine plane and he taxied over right in front of the main hangar and he left it idling, ticking over.

30:30 And no one knows what happened, but all of a sudden the motor started to rev up and the plane moved, it started to get faster and faster and they couldn’t catch it and it nose dived into a big storm water channel along the edge of the aerodrome. It crashed into the channel. There was always something on at the aerodrome.

31:00 That’s another thing we used to get a lot of, mushrooms. It was all grassed area and we would go over there at the right time and get mushrooms. Bring baskets of mushrooms back. A lot of things we didn’t go short of, there was always plenty of butter and bread of course, but they were difficult times.

31:30 Not so much for the kids, but for parents. I know a lot of kids, when I was going to school, very seldom I went to school barefooted, I always had shoes of some sort; but lots of kids, you know, they would be no shoes, all bare foot, and a lot of the poor kids, their clothes were pretty daggy.

32:00 And how many brothers and sisters?

I have two younger brothers. Doug, he lives over on the North Shore he has got a lovely place on the waterfront, he is seventy-five; and my brother that built the home, he is seventy.

32:30 That’s quite a fantastic picture you have described of growing up in the Depression, I am wondering perhaps, in what way you learnt about World War 1 growing up?

I learnt a lot.

33:00 Mum’s brother was in World War 1. And he went through the bad stuff in Europe and he had this big volume all about World War 1, all of the different battles and the trench warfare and all of that. And uncle Roy, he

33:30 would always tell you stories. He was, he got gassed at the finish, he was a dispatch rider and I don’t think he was able to finish; I think they hospitalised him and he came home. He always had problems with his chest ever after. And I knew quite a lot of stories even then about what happened over there.

34:00 And then a great friend of my father’s, that’s right, he had a printing business but he had been through the thick and thin. He had a lot of high decorations and he used to come out sometimes and tell us what happened. So we had a pretty good knowledge of it, very good knowledge. When I was very young,

34:30 my aunt had married an Englishman, Uncle Will, and he used to often, I can still remember sitting on his knee and asking him. I used to think the Germans were germs. And I would ask him, “What was the germs?

35:00 What was the germs?” I remember that. It is amazing how you can remember these things so far back, but recent thing you have forgotten completely, amazing. So I did have a pretty good knowledge of what they had gone through and the shocking loss of life that went on over there.

35:30 Well I am wondering; what did they tell you?

Uncle Roy, he told me a few times about how stupid it was, they would leave the trenches to go and win a couple of yards. And the Germans would do the same, and either side would be waiting for you and they would just all be cut down.

36:00 I used to read a lot and I have read quite a few good books on World War 1, and some of the things and the decisions that were made by the senior generals they should have been shot. Shocking! Thousands in a day. Dreadful. Just for a few yards of ground.

36:30 Well, that was the war to end all wars, and there is wars all over the world even now. I don’t know what the world is going to come to, fair dinkum. I get very wound up about Iraq and different things, I can’t understand some of the hierarchy doing

37:00 some of the things they’re doing. The United Nations, I still think they don’t do enough; I mean after World War 1 they set up the League of Nations, and it was going to do wonders for the world and it just fizzed, it didn’t do much at all. And I think the United Nations,

37:30 the way they’re going will finish up the same. It is just, I don’t know, it is a bad thing to say, I suppose, but I think the United Nations now is just a big club, big meetings and big dinners, I don’t know.

38:00 Well I am wondering, because you were hearing so many stories of World War 1, I am wondering in what way the Empire affected you or what you knew about it?

Well, when we went to school we had a very good knowledge of the Empire. I enjoyed my primary schooling;

38:30 for the simple reason, I think, being younger you absorbed a lot more. I used to love geography and history. But in those times, you were taught a lot about England, being the mother country of course. I think we all knew the Empire as it was,

39:00 what countries the British Empire was. You would have to draw a map of the world and mark, you know? We had a pretty good idea about the British Empire. A lot of people criticise the British Empire, and I don’t I think they have done a lot for a lot of these

39:30 downtrodden nations, African nations. I mean, you just look at a lot of these countries that they have given their independence to, and the trouble they are having and experiencing now since they were given independence. I still think that the English done a good job. Sometimes they were a bit ruthless, but

40:00 a lot of the other countries were the same.

Well, you mentioned you developed a bit of a passion for the sea and sailing at a young age. I am wondering how that came about?

Oh, I don’t know. On my Dad’s side

40:30 we had a relative, I don’t know how he come to be related. But he came to our home on a couple of occasions, but he was captain of one of the big ships that used to come into BHP from overseas and load steel. Whether that had something to do with it, I don’t know.

41:00 While I was working in the shipping office, we were agents for a company based in Hong Kong, I will think of their name in a minute, but they had two very big lovely ships, the Silkworth and the Kenilworth. And the captain on the Kenilworth, it is strange to say, his name was Captain Storm.

41:30 Lovely Englishman. And I thought a lot of Captain Storm, and we had a lot to do with that shipping line. He wanted me, right or wrong, to go to sea with him as a cadet. And sometimes, I really regret that sometimes I didn’t take that up. I could have worked my way up and been a ship’s officer later on.

42:00 End of tape

Tape 2

00:30 Well you were just telling me about when you joined the shipping company in Newcastle?

Yes, well the British Phosphate Commission ships used to load at Nauru what we called the big cantilever, and it was a huge loading device that used to swing out over the lagoon. And there

01:00 was no wharves or anything there. The ships used to tie off big mooring buoys and then this big arm, the boom, used to go out over the ships’ holds. And a German raider came in and done the decent thing, ordered all of the crews off, and they were taken captive aboard the merchant

01:30 cruiser, and the merchant cruiser shelled everything. All of the shiller installations. It sank. From memory, there were three ships there at the time, sunk all of the ships. And Captain Storm’s ship, the Triona, it was one of the ships that was sunk. And he had done a lot of favours for me in his time connecting with our office.

02:00 He used to send stamps down to me. He would be going somewhere and I would say, “Look, would you do me a favour and send me some stamps?” Well, we corresponded on and off for quite a long while. And he eventually got back to Germany on the merchant ship and he was taken to a prisoner of war camp, stalag something. And he used to write every now and again and I have got the envelopes with the big swastika all over it.

02:30 But they were a breed of their own, I think, some of the ship skippers. We had some funny times, the, some of the ships had various nationalities on their

03:00 crews. Some ships had what they called Lascars, they were Indians, and there would be Chinese crews, Filipinos; but on one occasion, there was a big strike by one of the crews on one of the ships. They were all Chinese; I believe it might have been the Kenilworth.

03:30 They went on strike, but I can’t recall what the cause of the strike was, but they led a big protest march down the main street of Newcastle, and the police stopped them, and they were all put in the Maitland Gaol and the ship had no crew for quite a while. That was the Kenilworth, Captain Storm.

04:00 It was very interesting, the different ships we would get in at times. Some we would get in there had been in the Middle East. I remember one beautiful English ship with a Welsh skipper on board, I forget his name. I used to have to meet the ship when they came into

04:30 berth at wharf, and I used to have to take over different papers and all of their mail, their mail used to come to us and then we would take the mail over, and I think his name was Dale, big bearded man. And when I went up to his cabin and we were talking and I had given him all of his mail and everything,

05:00 on the fo’c’sle, that’s right up on the bow there was a flag flying. And as we walked out on the deck he said to me, “Laddie, can you tell me what that flag is flying on the bow? If you can tell me I will give you a bottle of whisky.” I said, “Captain, that’s the Welsh flag.” So I got a bottle of whisky. Some of the ships that come in had been doing

05:30 convoy work in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, and some in the Atlantic. And you could see what they had been through. Their funnels would have all riddled with, where they had been machine gunned and shelled. Some of them still had raw material in their holds that they hadn’t completely discharged.

06:00 There was never a dull moment. And then of course, Newcastle was a busy shipping port even in those days. A lot of coal used to go out, and BHP [Broken Hill Proprietary] steelworks used to send a lot of steel out. A lot of timber used to go out of Newcastle, and I think also wool used to go out then.

06:30 It has all changed now.

Well, I am wondering what gave you the idea to go to the shipping company in the first place?

Well, at that time, you got a job where you could get a job. I did apply for, it is funny to say it now but my cousin and I, after we left school we went to technical college,

07:00 this was before I applied for work; you would be surprised, I was pretty good at shorthand. We done shorthand, typing and business principles. And one of our teachers told us that the job to get in those days was a court reporter; that was the job, a court reporter.

07:30 And I got pretty good in speed in shorthand and two of us went up and applied for a job at the courthouse and missed out. And then I applied to Nesca, which was the big electric authority in Newcastle, I applied to Nesca and missed out there. You know, you would go for an interview in Newcastle, and there would be 30 or 40 blokes there after work. And then Newcastle state dockyards was just about to start up.

08:00 And my father was a keen bowler, and he used to bowl at all different clubs. But he struck who was to be the manager of the dockyards, a Mr McLarty. And in the conversation Dad said, “My boy is looking for work.” So he said, “Well, tell him to get in touch with us.” So I tried there and missed out there and then there was a job in the paper for the shipping office and

08:30 I went and I got it. I tried about, I must have made about four or five different visits to different people, and that’s how I ended up at the shipping office.

Well, I am wondering what you recall of when the Second World War was declared?

09:00 Well, I can remember vividly when it was declared. My father also had a home, we called it a holiday home, on Lake Macquarie and we would go out there quite regularly.

09:30 And we were out there, the fire was going in the open fire place, I can still picture my father. And we had the wireless on and he was standing with his arm leaning on the mantel shelf and I remember him saying, “My God.” And then we heard, I wasn’t listening to the radio, but when he said, “My God.” I then heard Menzies

10:00 speech, “We are at war.” I wasn’t perturbed or anything at the time. But I will tell you when the only time that I could say I was really worried was when Darwin was bombed and I just had a

10:30 feeling that they were going to invade. I did, I was very worried. And then, you know, I used to always think, “We’re down south, we’re too far away. Nothing will happen to Australia,” but that woke me up.

11:00 The other thing that was very worrying was, it got out that when MacArthur came, or before he came? I think it might have been at the Australian, I don’t think it had anything to do with MacArthur, but they were going to have something called the ‘Brisbane Line’, and when they landed

11:30 they were going to fall back that far. And it was the silliest thing you ever heard of. Fortunately, they were stopped in New Guinea. Books I have read, the Japanese maintain that they had no intention of invading, I doubt that a bit, but their supplies were stretched, they couldn’t keep up supplies and food,

12:00 and that’s one of the reasons why some of the Japanese used to starve in New Guinea in the finish.

You mentioned that you had quite a few family members enlisted for the Second World War?

I had three cousins join the army 9th division. They come through unscathed.

12:30 I had another cousin who joined the navy, I am nearly sure that Alf was in the navy just before the war started. I am nearly sure because he was on the, a couple of our larger ships we had at the time. And he had been on the, that’s right he was on the Sydney in the Mediterranean, he went all through that action over

13:00 there, and then he came back to Australia. And he was on leave for quite a while and then he was transferred from the Sydney to the Perth was sunk later on in the Sunda Strait, Indonesia. And we were saying how unfortunate, if he had

13:30 stayed on the Sydney, it would have been all right. But then sometime later, the Sydney went down, too. So he was lost. Another one, Eric, was in the navy, he came through it okay,

14:00 but he was in the pick of all of the ships we had, he was in what they call M class destroyers, he picked that up in Scotland. The English gave us four destroyers; they had only just been built: the Norman, the Nestor, the Napier, and the Nizam. He was on one of those, and he got through all right.

14:30 That’s about the lot I think.

Well, I am wondering, Neville, you mentioned you were attracted to living near the aerodrome and the planes, I am wondering what

15:00 drew you to enlist in the navy and not the air force?

Well, for one thing, my mother was against it. Someone we knew, I can’t remember who that was, they enlisted in the air force as a tail gunner and he was killed. And 15:30 apparently the story got around that the life of a tail gunner or one of the aircraft crew at that time in the bombers was a matter of minutes. They were getting killed that quick and that often. And the other thing, I wasn’t old enough, I was only seventeen. And to by quite honest,

16:00 I had a bit of trouble getting my mother to sign, my Dad signed the papers, but my mother wouldn’t, when I was going in the navy. Finally, Dad said to Mum, my mother’s name was Daisy, he said, “Daisy, if you don’t sign, he is going to get called up, anyway, when he is eighteen.” So Mum signed in the

16:30 finish. But I was mad on aircraft, I used to build model aeroplanes, I built stacks of them, and when I went to high school, I was in a model aero club we formed at the high school, and we used to go over every Sunday morning to the aerodrome, and we used to make these

17:00 we used to call them gassies. Quite a big plane, about that wide, and put a little petrol engine, and some of them were just starting to use radio controlled at that time. But otherwise, what we used to make, we would make the plane and then we would buy, they used to put them on a camera.

17:30 You could set it. What did they call them, tiny thing about that long, and you could set it and time it, and we used to set that timer up to the engine, and you could set if for two minutes or three minutes and you would set the timer and let it go, but so you couldn’t lose your plane, the timer would cut the petrol off and they would glide down.

18:00 Exposure metre, little tiny exposure metre. It was great fun. I built a lot. As a matter of fact, when things were tough in the Depression years, the latter part of them, I used to make them and try and sell one every now and again to make a few bob. That’s if I had enough money to buy the balsa wood and stuff to make them.

18:30 And why was your mother reluctant to sign the papers?

She used to say, “Look what Roy went through.” That was the brother from World War 1. “Look what Roy went through, and look what Roy has told us.” Another lady I knew she refused point blank. A chap called Harold Saddler was a good mate of mine, he joined the air force.

19:00 And his mother didn’t object to him joining the air force but he came home on final leave and he told his mother he was doing gunnery. And he was going to be a tail gunner. And his mother, Mrs Saddler, wrote direct to one of the VIPs and he didn’t get the position.

19:30 He finished up in the air force, mostly in northern Australia and in New Guinea, not in Europe. I know a lot of my school mates, they joined the air force and they never came home, a lot of them.

And what about your brothers, what did they think of you enlisting in the navy?

20:00 Well, I don’t know. They probably looked up to me; I don’t know. I think Doug would have joined up if he had have been able too but he was just too young.

20:30 Oh no, I wouldn’t know. I got a lot of good memories even before I joined the navy, I have got a lot of good memories.

21:00 Well, I am wondering if you can tell me about – you first enlisted and you had to wait for a period of time, and then got called up and went to the HMAS Cerberus?

Yes.

For training, can you tell me about your training?

21:30 Yes, looking back now, I think the training was excellent. We used to begrudge some of the things we had to do at the time, but I mentioned to Serena I think, the thing that was pretty hard was the physical culture training. I always remember that to me at the time I think,

22:00 I couldn’t say it was brutal, but it was very cold when we were down there and we used to have to go down to the parade ground and there was a huge, I suppose you would call it a drill hall, great big pavilion, and there was a big

22:30 cement concrete paved area at the front of it, and we used to do all of our training down there. And the instructor, we would only have shorts and shirt on, it would be bitterly cold, I think it would be about half past six or seven in the morning. And we used to do all of these physical exercises. One of his favourites was

23:00 frog marching. I don’t know whether you have ever tried it, but you kneel and you have got to walk. I tell you what, it is painful. And you just have to keep doing it until, you didn’t have to go a along way, but even a few hundred yards, you wouldn’t do it.

23:30 It was on the muscles on your legs. I suppose it was all for a good cause, it might have been for later on trying to hang onto a ship I don’t know, but it was pretty hard. They were very strict. It’s a funny thing with the navy at that time. I have got a book out there now, had it for years,

24:00 it is the handbook issued by the Royal Navy. And a lot of the things that we were taught and instructed in, they go back to the old navy sailing ship days. They have carried on the traditions rather than modernise. Some of their instructions and ,”Aye aye, sir!” and a lot of other things.

24:30 You can relate that to what they would say when they were on a big blooming square rigger sailing ship or something. Oh no, you were taught in what you were exactly would experience when you went to a ship. When you first went into a big, what we called the barracks, when you

25:00 first went, you were issued with your uniform and your hammock, and various other things. I have still got my old boot polish brush out in the kitchen. And then you had your own stamp. You stamped all of your name on all of your clothing and things like that, I have still got that out there.

25:30 You were taught from the word go, how to sling your hammock, how to lace your hammock. Your hammock had to be laced in a certain way, like a sausage, had to be neat and tidy, your hammock had to be slung every night to sleep in. And I tell you what was the funniest thing on earth climbing up into a hammock. The hammock would be

26:00 about that high., and you had to grab a hold of it and swing up into it.

I imagine you might have missed occasionally?

Sometimes, yeah. A few times you would go ashore and have a few beers and you come back and you wouldn’t attempt to go in the hammock.

26:30 You wouldn’t get there. But the routine of living on a ship that’s what they trained you with. Your messing arrangements, that was the same thing you struck when you went to sea. What else was there?

27:00 Sleeping problems, hammock, messing, of course there was field drill, used to do the same thing that the army used to do. You would do field drill, parade drill, then if you done something wrong, you were in trouble. What they would do, one of their prized things, if you misbehaved on the parade ground or done something glaring,

27:30 you would be told you had to report to the petty officer’s quarters or mess at sixteen hundred, that’s four o’clock, with your rifle, pack and something else. And the petty officer would go out and watch that you done everything he told you to, and you would double backwards and forwards, on the parade ground with a full pack on your back and rifle.

28:00 That’s discipline, you behave yourself or else. I remember when we first went in the group, in my hut there was one, he was a lot older than us, I reckon he was mid twenties, very suave debonair bloke and he had a lovely moustache. And

28:30 about the second morning we were there we were all lined up and our instructor was a long serving able seaman with about three bars. He had probably close to twenty years service, and he was our instructor, and he would stay with you all of the time, very good fellow.

29:00 And he ordered this chap, he said, “I want that zip gone by oh six oh in the morning.” And this smarty come on parade with this thing. I tell you what, he paid for it, he gave him all of the worst jobs under the sun to do, he took it off.

Well, I am wondering if you encountered any bullying in your training?

29:30 Not that I can recall. No, I cannot. No.

30:00 That would also apply to both of the ships companies I was with during the war. Not once, oh no you might get the odd occasion where someone might have said a few words and got a bit cranky but no major problems, no.

30:30 They were all pretty good.

And how did you respond to the new discipline regime that you were faced with?

All right, well put it this way, I didn’t get into any trouble. It was good. There was one funny, episode we had, you have got to be prepared that you might have to swim in the ocean

31:00 sometimes, and they had a beautiful swimming pool down there at Cerberus. And they had a beautiful swimming pool down there at Cerberus, and you had to swim – I don’t know whether it was twice the length of the pool or what, doesn’t matter – but you had to swim nearly fully clothed, but there were some funny episodes in that

31:30 exercise, some of the boys were flat out seeing, but anyone that they could see really wasn’t a good swimmer, they would teach them, but you had to do it really in your own time. And not during the course. You had to do that to qualify, swim a certain distance. And there was the torpedo school and the gas school.

32:00 How to use gas masks, they would put you in a big chamber and you had to have the gas mask on and they would let the gas in and it was all very interesting. Do you want to just stop for a minute? Well, what do you think you found was the most difficult in training?

32:30 Well, I think I found the most difficult was when I was doing the gunnery course. We had a gunnery instructor, and if memory serves me correctly, he finished up, he went well up in the ranks after the war. But he had been

33:00 the gunnery officer on the HMAS Sydney in the Mediterranean when they sank the Italian cruiser, and he was hard. Well, that was his job; he was a gunnery officer. And we used to train on the actual big gun in the depot, and you would have all of these different functions to perform, and you could be one of the party, but you had to take turns

33:30 of doing a certain job in the gunnery position. And he used to call a spade a spade. He was pretty hard and strict, I didn’t go much on that. As a matter of fact I often think, well, why did I ever stay and start the gunnery school, because all of my mates had gone. They all got really good ships,

34:00 at the time. Otherwise, I enjoyed the whole lot of it except physical training. And I tell you, in those days I was pretty fit but, I’ll tell you what it was hard. I was disappointed, I was down that way

34:30 not long ago, and I was through Western Port and that area, and I am sorry now I didn’t go in and go through the depot, because a couple of my mates have been there before and they said, “You should have gone in, they would welcome you with open arms. It has all changed since we were there.” But it was a very good set up when I was there.

I am also wondering how you adapted to being in a large group of men

35:00 or boys, and how that sort of having to, I guess, bond with each other or find yourself in a large group?

Well, I found it pretty easy. For quite some time I had been in the Newcastle YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association]. My cousins and I and another good mate, we had joined

35:30 the YMCA. And we used to go away on camps, we had some wonderful times, you know we would go for a week’s camp and have contests and competitions. I was used to groups. Bit like when I was involved in sailing. Sometimes we would have 40 or 50

36:00 boats in a race and the crews all get together after the race. I didn’t have any problem. It was good, actually. I always remember we had one young fellow, I was only telling Jill about it the other day, we have got a disc in the car we play every now and again.

36:30 What's his name? He is one of the top clarinet players? And I said the other day, “This young fellow had been part of a group and he had been in a band.” Boy he could play! I often wonder how far he went with his playing because he was brilliant, he really was. They used to have some fun in the training for the night-time,

37:00 gambling was taboo, no gambling; if you were caught, you were in trouble. Lights out was at 10 o’clock or something. But we used to play a wonderful game of cards called pontoon. Lights out and boys would get their torch out. I tell you what, I won a bit of money; it is a good game. I think it is what the Yanks call, you have got to beat the

37:30 banker, you know the one? Twenty-one. Yeah. But at sea, I don’t know anyone that gambled on the ship, but some of them were mad keen on the board with all of the holes in it.

Bridge?

38:00 Jill knows. I asked her the other day what they call it. It doesn’t matter, but it is a very popular game., you use a match, each player, calculations it is.

38:30 Otherwise, some of them play euchre. Different things like that, but no gambling.

Well, I am wondering, you have mentioned one of your instructors but in the main who were your instructors?

Well, that depended on what course you were doing. I mean

39:00 we had the elderly AB [Able Seaman]. He taught us seamanship, that’s knots and ropes and splicing. And then you would go to … there is that many things.

39:30 If you went to do shooting on the rifle range, well then you had a gunnery instructor. And then you would do another section in your course was if, they had a replica of part of a ship’s bridge with a steering wheel and the controls, and you would do a course

40:00 through that. I forget what they called that, that was something bridge, bridge something. And you were trained in, they would put you on the steering wheel and they would give you instructions, “Steer so and so.” You would have to respond, it was all that training. The AB would just stand back while another 40:30 instructor would teach you that. Some of the boys, we wouldn’t all be doing the same course in our mess, some were doing signals, that would entail flags and Morse code. Some were stokers, and that was the engineering side.

41:00 Sydney was the anti-submarine section, they didn’t do that there. Radar didn’t come in until late so they did that in Sydney. That was about it, I think.

That’s great, I have got a good picture of what you were learning, we might just stop there because our tape is about to run out.

41:26 End of tape

Tape 3

00:30 Well, Neville, I was wondering if you could tell me about when you joined the navy; where were you hoping to go and what were you hoping to serve on?

Well, I made an application to be drafted to destroyers mainly because I mentioned earlier one of my cousins had gone to England and joined the Nizam, and

01:00 he had been home to our place on leave telling me how wonderful they were. And they were a very glamorous vessel, when you think that the corvette I ended up on could do fifteen knots and the M class could do nearly 40. They were a real racehorse, that was my ambition then.

01:30 But then later on, another good friend of mine, he had done gunnery. The same course I was doing. And he had been successful, but he had been drafted, I think it was later on, too, as a DEMS gunner. And Dems means, D E M S, defensively

02:00 equipped merchant ships. And he was a gunner on a six inch gun on the stern of a big freighter. And he said it was the life. So I applied on a number of occasions through our captains for a draft to DEMS gunnery school. He knocked it back every time, wouldn’t release me.

02:30 But to answer your question I would have loved to have been on destroyers, they were a very nice vessel. Fast, well armed, and they were in the thick of everything all of the time. Right in the forefront of all of the engagements, they had a wonderful war record.

03:00 We built two excellent ones in Australia at that time, it was a different class but they were also very fast. It was the Waramanga and the Arunta, they were built in Williamstown, I believe, down in Victoria.

Was there anywhere you were hoping to go to serve in the war or that you wanted to go?

No, I didn’t have

03:30 any particular choice, no, I would have liked to have done more than what we actually did, put it that way. In the latter part of the war, we done a lot of survey work, and I don’t say it was boring, but it

04:00 was far from glamorous, I mean, some of the other corvettes were right up further up north and they were involved in a lot of things that I wish we had have been involved in. But you just did what you were given to do. Survey work was interesting. The thing that always amazed me, I was on the bridge quite a lot of the shift,

04:30 and our first lieutenant was a Lieutenant Girlay he was an ex keen yachtsman. And I used to have the opportunity to have a look at some of the ship’s charts where we were working. And even at that time, say 1944 era, a lot of the north west coast of Western Australia was marked uncharted water. And we had to

05:00 chart all of those areas and outlying areas. It was interesting. But some of it was pretty hard work. To tell you a little bit more about the survey work, it was all done with mapping and charting, but to do all of this work, you had to have, what do you call it, reference points, and we used to carry, at

05:30 times, very large bamboo poles about that round. And the highest point on a shore line would be a selected point to erect that beacon, so that when the ship was at sea, they could take a bearing at sea and we would have to get our way through some shocking country, hack your way with

06:00 axes to get through. And erect that beacon up on the hilltop. On the cliff top. That was the hardest part. Of course, you are talking 40-odd degrees temperature, and the humidity; it was shocking. I always remember the senior ship at one time in our flotilla, was a ship called the

06:30 Moresby. It was a, I suppose all it had ever done in its career was a lot of survey work, they were the experts. And my aunt had a cousin a chap called Harvey Saunders and he joined the navy as a lieutenant commander, he had quite a lot of experience, he had been a captain 07:00 on the sugar refinery, CSR Sugar [Colonial Sugar Refining Co Ltd], they had their big plantations of sugarcane in Fiji, and Harvey was the skipper of one of their ships called the Rona. And she used to bring the sugar to Australia, and him, having so much experience, he almost automatically became a reserve officer. And Harvey was in charge of our party on one occasion where we had to go ashore and erect these

07:30 beacons, and he was that fatigued, he has field glasses around his neck. And I think he would be the only fellow in the whole party that wasn’t bare-chested, we just had shorts on and Harvey had his jacket and his shorts. And by the time we went down to the beach Harvey went in clothes and all and sunglasses and just sat out in the water, he was that hot.

08:00 He was the navigating officer on the Moresby; he had quite a big job. That same man, after the war, he was the senior pilot in the Harbour of Melbourne.

Pretty amazing physical work on land for a sailor to be doing.

That’s right it was, there was lots of different

08:30 things we had to do. A lot of people wondered, I know the ship’s crew used to wonder why we were doing that sort of work when we could be doing something a bit more exciting. But the story I heard later on, and we heard rumours, at that time there was big talk that they were going to make a move and do a landing in Indonesia, particularly since the war in Europe had finished, the

09:00 British had diverted a lot of their naval vessels into the Indian Ocean. And we were doing a survey on big reef formation called Scots Reef, and that would be about midway between Darwin and Java,

09:30 Indonesia, I suppose it would be. It is like in the shape of a big horse shoe. And they had thought that they might have been able to use that as a safe harbour for oil tankers that could come and anchor in the big reef to service ships that were going to do the invasion of Indonesia. We were there for quite some time and it was a very interesting operation.

10:00 It had to be sounded for depth, make sure there was no ‘nigger heads’, or coral ‘nigger heads’, in the middle of it, and of an evening, because you could only work in daylight hours, in the evening we would do some beautiful fishing, boy we used to get some fish.

10:30 We done all of those outlying islands and reefs and we used to get some shocking thunderstorms . And I always remember some of the most vivid lightening I have ever seen in my life up around the north west coast of Western Australia and I used to say there is iron ore in those hills, because the, and it was right because after the war they found all of that iron ore. Gee, the lightening used to be bad, and rain. In

11:00 the wet season, it used to pour, and of course we would be working in all of that.

How uncomfortable would that make things on board ship the storms and the rain?

Not that bad. The water used to get away quickly,

11:30 it just didn’t lay on the decks, it would get away quick. And we had good wet weather gear we would have on if we were on deck on duty, it wasn’t a problem. But the weather, where it used to be bad was the weather on the convoys down the south coast into Victoria in the winter. It used to be freezing cold. But we had the big duffle coats that they used

12:00 in the Atlantic, coats about that thick and you put a big hood over it. That wasn’t too bad. I think the heat and the humidity was the worst.

What I might do, Neville, that was great bit about the survey work, I might come back to that later. I want to talk to you about the Lithgow, which was your first ship, I just wonder – your reaction

12:30 when you heard you were posted to it and –

I was tickled pink, I was, because you know it had been so long from the time I went down to Cerberus until I got a ship. You’re looking at –

13:00 it would have been nearly six months, I suppose it would have been. Five months anyway, and I knew of other chaps that had been with us and had gone to a ship straight away. It was just one of those things, and I was tickled pink when I got it. It was a bit strange for a little while because they were complete strangers,

13:30 you know, you had to make pals with someone and it was good.

Well, can you tell me about those first days on the Lithgow, and settling in with the crew that was already there?

Well, the first couple of days I was pretty crook, I remember that, then I settled down pretty quickly, from memory.

14:00 I am just trying to think. The only thing that I can ever say that really scared me, I don’t know whether it was on the Lithgow or the Echuca. It was the first time I was ordered to go up lookout on the masthead lookout, up in the crows nest. To me that was frightening, I wasn’t frightened of heights, but it was to get up there.

14:30 And the ship is rolling, if it is not rolling that way it is going this way. And you go up this rope ladder and one minute you’re out over the side of the ship, then you have got to get from the top of the ladder into the crows nest. Once you have done it it is not near as bad the next time.

15:00 How secure were you once you got up into the crows nest?

Oh, you’re secure, your inside like that. You are quite secure. It was all right. The only time that it was bad – see, the corvettes were oil burners, not coal burners, they were oil burners, and the fumes from the

15:30 funnel. Shocking, what would you call it like? Not the fumes from the car, burnt oil fumes, but if you’re on lookout duty up in the crows nest and you had a fairly still day with not much breeze, you

16:00 would get the fumes coming from the funnel would come up to where you were and you would have to ring down to the bridge to come down below. And sometimes they would say, “Okay, come down.” Other times they would say, “Stay at your post.” The fumes could be pretty bad at times, too.

16:30 Well, in doing tasks like climbing the crows nest at sea or any of the other bits that you were doing on deck, I wonder what safety equipment or harnesses you had?

Well, the only piece of safety equipment I can recall in really rough weather, I am nearly sure we used to run a line

17:00 when you come out of the mess deck onto the waste of the deck, that’s on the lower deck, and you had to walk from there, say, down to the stern, we had a line rigged along the side of the cabin work so if the ship was really, you had that line to hang onto as you moved. That’s the only

17:30 one I can remember, and of course, you had guard rails all around the whole ship. Nothing else I know of.

I guess I wondered, doing things like climbing in bad sea, if there was anything to protect you if you slipped?

No, not that I can recall.

18:00 Well, you were telling me a bit about that reaction to getting onto the Lithgow and those first couple of days, I just wonder who you made friends with initially?

Well, I always remember one chap from Gosford, but he had a fair bit of

18:30 experience before he had even joined the navy. He had been on a merchant ship that used to sail from New Zealand to Coffs Harbour. Take cargoes of timber across to New Zealand, so he knew what the sea was like. And he took pity on me when I was real seasick.

19:00 He gave me dry Saos, they mightn’t have been Saos, but they were a dry biscuit, and he said that’s the only way it would fix me, and it was. I was all right after that and we were great mates. And I went looking for him at one of the recent national corvette reunions, to look him up again, but apparently he was pretty ill he hadn’t come.

19:30 I think he is all right now. He was a good mate. And then was another chappy there too, but I just forget his name. See, actually, it was only a short three months or something like that, probably wouldn’t get enough time to get to know everyone.

20:00 I always remember the captain of the Lithgow; Holtane, I reckon he was a fine man. Apparently he had been in the Northern Territory for quite a while before the war, this was a story I was told, and he was in charge of a Northern Territory patrol boat, whether it was to do with the fisheries or what, I don’t know.

20:30 So when he joined the navy, he joined as an experienced skipper, and he went to naval college and done a short course, and he got the corvette. And my first watch on the bridge as a bridge lookout one evening, it was after dark, and this chappy in the darkness to me looked like he had an air force jacket on and an air force cap.

21:00 And I don’t know whether he spoke first or I spoke first, I don’t know. We had quite a, he must have asked me had I just joined the ship or something. I forget now. Anyway, in the mess next day having breakfast or lunch I said to Tommy, this friend of mine from Gosford, “I

21:30 struck a nice fellow on the bridge last night.” He said, “Who was he?” and I said, “I don’t know but have you got air force blokes on board?” Because I knew for a fact that the navy had been taking air force fellows on convoys to give them an idea of what it was like, because they used to fly over the convoy and he laughed. He said, “No that’s the skipper.” 22:00 He said, “That’s an old jacket he wears before he joined the navy.” And of course, in the dark I couldn’t see if it was an air force hat or a navy hat. And he was a darn good fellow, I reckoned he was a beauty. He was the skipper. Old Holtane. I was sorry to lose that one, it was a good ship and it had quite a good record in the finish, too.

22:30 What were you doing on board the Lithgow; what was your assigned job?

Oh, you do a number of duties as an AB; actually, I was only an ordinary seaman then. I was doing a lot of what they call watch keeping, on the bridge lookout. And then during the day, you would be doing a lot of work around the ordinary deck, might be doing rope splicing or painting.

23:00 Dozens of jobs there were. You might even be peeling potatoes for the cook. I have done that before.

I guess what was the job you least wanted out of the selection?

Oh, what they called spud barber was one, that was peeling potatoes. The spud barber.

23:30 What would the other one be? I don’t know. I used to love being on the wheel, I enjoyed that.

24:00 I don’t know, they were all, you could put up with all of them.

Well, I wonder about the difficulties of getting used to living in such a confined space with so many people?

Oh no, it wasn’t difficult. It was a bit,

24:30 of an evening it might be a bit cramped, because they had all hung their hammocks overhead. The only, it used to get very, very hot. Very hot. Particularly if you were doing convoy work, particularly in north Queensland and going onto New Guinea, your ship is in complete blackout,

25:00 everything is closed. No lights to be shown or anything. And you have got steel all around you. Steel decks that have been in sun the whole day, and the heat that used to generate, it was blooming hot. You would be sitting there of an evening, and most of us used to wear a sweat rag around our necks, you would be wiping perspiration off your body. I know that was bad.

25:30 I will show you a photo in a minute of, can I stand up and,

Can we have a look at it when the tape stops, is that okay?

That will give you an idea of how many were sitting in the area at one time. It was bearable.

26:00 You had, you weren’t all in that one area, you had two mess decks. One each side of the ship and petty officers and the leading seamen, they were on a lower level again. You got used to it. The only time it used to be a bit of a mess down there,

26:30 if there was heavy sea on and a bit of rough weather, some of the locker doors would fly open and stuff would fly out over the mess deck and you would have to clean it up. But they were very, cleanliness was the main thing, that’s what I liked about the army. We only struck one grubby bloke, a cook, and we fixed him.

27:00 We used to make a regular practice of every, I forget how often, but we would scrub our hammocks. Everything was spotless. Most boys had a, you, there was some funny terms in the navy, you would scrounge, that was to get anything. Most boys used to share a kerosene tin to do your washing in.

27:30 And we used to wash our clothes regular, what clothes? We never used to wear much just a pair of shorts, really, and underclothes. But this chap repeatedly never washed his hammock, so we decided we would fix it and we, his hammock and tied it to a big long length of rope and flung it over the back of the ship and let it drag behind the boat a few times, he got the message.

28:00 Cleanliness was a main item. We used to have, I forget how often that would be, captain’s rounds. And he would do a whole inspection of the ship and pity help you if you were responsible for certain mess and he found something wrong. The quarters would all be scrubbed out regularly. Toilets. Showers were done every day.

28:30 Someone was rostered on to do that. Scrub the toilet walls and the toilets, and the floors. They were spotless. I used to often think, you know, you go to, if we were in Brisbane you might go to a Sunday night movie show, and at that time you could go to the movies free if you were a serviceman. And you would be sitting there and watching the news and some of the shots of the boys going over the Kokoda trail and the muck

29:00 and mud and you would think to yourself, “How lucky am I? I could have been going through what they were going through if I had joined the army.” We had such good conditions. I reckoned they were good conditions. Food was reasonable. Always had a hot meal, depends how rough it was, it was quite bearable.

29:30 You mentioned the food was good, I wonder just what the cook would do with the rations? Well a very good friend of mine was a leading cook, and apparently before he joined the navy, he was a lot older than I was, but he had his own business up at,

30:00 it was either Maryborough or Rockhampton, he came form. And Ted was the leading cook, and he had two other cooks under him, and people used to complain, I heard them in the army about bully beef, you know, “Bully beef, bully beef, bully beef.” But Ted could make a meal from bully beef so many different ways. He was priceless, he was.

30:30 At times, I used to get sick of, we used to get, what do they call it, all of the synthetic stuff? There was an egg we used to get, and it wasn’t eggs, it was

31:00 the same colour, yellow and it looked like, you know, if you cook an egg a certain way, not omelet,

31:30 I don’t know whether it used to be made of egg powder. But there was a lot of different ingredients we would get, and it wasn’t the true thing, it was made up. And we used to get sick of that. They used to give us a lot of tin carrots, they reckoned that was good for your eyesight, I don’t know whether that was right or not, but we always had tinned carrots.

32:00 A lot of tinned food. If we were working out from Darwin there would be a work party go out, I went out once or twice out to the big army store department, out of Darwin it was, and we would go out there, they would provide us with a truck from the navy headquarters and we would drive the truck out and load it

32:30 up with sides of beef. I still think it was Northern Territory buffalo. Oh God, it used to be tough. It was awful meat. That’s the time when we would get fresh meat. It may have been bullock, I don’t know; I think it was buffalo. If we were in harbour, we would get milk. I

33:00 am trying to think. I don’t think we got the proper butter; we got something else, it was imitation butter. But we lived all right. Someone would get sent a fruit cake and they used to, my mother used to send in a tin of fruit cake, wrap it up in canvas and you would

33:30 eventually get it and everyone would have a party. Yeah. I can’t remember much about the meals.

I wonder, Neville, at seventeen, were you a fair bit younger than the rest of the crew on the Lithgow?

No. See, when I went to sea, I was eighteen

34:00 by the time I got to sea. Let me think, when we go to one of our ships reunions I think the majority of the boys were about the same age as I was at the time, yeah. And then we got some of our association are a lot

34:30 younger, because they joined the Echuca just after the war finished and they had to sign up for, poor fellows, I think they had to sign up for about eight years each, something like that. Where we were signed up for three years or the duration of the war. And we got the duration. Oh no, they’re all about,

35:00 I would say the majority of the Echuca boys would have been about the same age as I was at the time. The leading seaman would have been older, and then you have got your petty officer, they would have been older again. And the stokers would have been mainly the same age, and then we used to carry, a lot of times we would carry two midshipmen, they would have been,

35:30 they would have gone into naval college when they were thirteen or fourteen. But they wouldn’t have come to sea until they were, I would say seventeen. But then your engineering officers, they were a lot older.

36:00 Ken Girlay, who was the first lieutenant on the Echuca, he was the youngest commanding officer on any corvette at that time, that I know of. And he left us and got captain of the Deloraine, and he was about twenty-five twenty-six. He was a lieutenant. So they were all fairly young.

36:30 The skipper of the Echuca was a chap called Ron Nevenfold, he was a lieutenant commander, he wasn’t a young man, I don’t know what age he might have been, in his 50s, I would think.

Well I wonder, as a young man, especially first on the Lithgow, I wonder what the older

37:00 men who had been to sea before, sailing, could tell you about or help you to adjust?

Oh, they were very helpful. I remember on corvettes, you had mine sweeping wires. They are a massive big wire rope that they

37:30 used for sweeps on the sweeping gear. And I can’t describe how it is made, it has got like serrations on it, the idea being that when the rope is out over the stern of your boat and you hit a suspended mine, it will cut the cable off. Well, there was an art in the splicing off one of those big wire

38:00 ropes. And the leading hands would show us and get us to do it and watch us. And get us to start doing it and showing us how to do that. Otherwise, we would have never known how to do it properly. A lot of the old ABs would give good advice, they wouldn’t belittle you or try to be smart. They were all very good.

38:30 They were pretty clever, some of them, too. We got a wire rope in one of our propellers and that first lieutenant Kenny Girlay he dived over the side and got the wire rope free. He was clever

39:00 doing that. I think it was a wire rope.

Well I wonder, you mentioned someone helping you out when you were seasick. At the time, how much could you have done if the sickness had continued, around the ship?

I couldn’t have done anything.

39:30 What they do, the skipper, he would class you as, if it got serious enough, he could class you as unfit for sea duty. I will give you an instance, on the Lithgow, we had a young midshipman

40:00 there, and he was suffering terribly with seasickness. Worst I had ever seen. He got to the stage where he was bringing up blood. He was in a bad way. We put him off, I forget where we put him off, must have been Brisbane, I think and he went to hospital I believe, and he was

40:30 declared unfit for sea duty on small ships. And they had to give him a capital ship, that was a big cruiser. Nearly thought of his name then. And he was drafted to the HMAS Australia and he was killed in the first kamikaze attack when it hit. When the plane hit the bridge.

41:00 That was only a few months after he left the Lithgow; if he had stayed on the Lithgow, it would have been all right. He was in a bad way. They have got different categories, regarding small ships, medium ships and larger ships. But very, very seldom that I ever saw anyone

41:30 else really seasick. And if we did, we would help them overcome their problem. The main thing is, from my experience, I have only had it once, when you get seasick, it is the most dreadful feeling, you nearly want to end your life. But the last thing you want is to eat, you have got to force yourself to eat, to get something

42:00 into your stomach.

42:02 End of tape

Tape 4

00:30 I wonder, Neville, just before, we were talking about seasickness, and I wonder if there was shame for a sailor that did suffer from seasickness?

Eh?

Any sense of shame to be so ill?

I would say a little bit, yeah. But I have seen

01:00 some of the best seamen, able fellows that had been at sea for donkey’s years, before the war some of them, and they would go ashore and play up and the first morning you go to sea, they are crook. I mean, they mightn’t be heaving, but they will tell you they are crook. Yeah, but that’s mainly to do with,

01:30 if you drink a bit of beer, I think, upsets your stomach. I mean, it is like a major hangover, isn’t it?

Well, I wonder if anyone ever got a hard time from other crew members?

No. Wasn’t very often that you would see anyone sick.

02:00 I am just thinking about some of the funny things that happened when they used to go on leave.

Well, can you tell me about the leave and what you’re thinking of?

We had a big fellow, his nickname was lofty. And he had come from out west; he had been a labourer on a big wheat property, strong as an ox he was. And Lofty used to

02:30 like his beer, and one particular night we were in tied up in Brisbane, and he had gone on leave for the night, and I suppose he would have ended up at the theatre, I don’t know. He was coming back, it was in the weather, with his great goat on and it was in South Brisbane, where the train line runs, South Brisbane, and

03:00 he was pretty full. He was walking along on the tram lines and I didn’t witness it, but one of my mates witnessed it. Anyway, the tram is ringing the bell, to get him out of the road, and Lofty must have stepped aside and thought he was right and the tram hit him and 03:30 knocked him flying, and he got to his feet and this friend of mine that seen it happen walked over to him and said, “Are you all right Lofty?” and he said, “Did you see that big so and so hit me?” And he said, “He ran away.” That’s true, the tram hit him. Probably if he had have been sober he might have been killed.

04:00 They had a system, any naval ship that was in port, this applied to Brisbane I am talking, that ship might be told that they have got to supply a couple of chaps for shore patrol duty on such and such a night. And I was involved in that twice.

04:30 I was, what do they call it? They call you a volunteer, but you are not a volunteer, they say, “You, you, you and you.” And we used to have to go into Brisbane as shore police, shore patrol and we used to have to be based at the American provo [Provosts – Military Police] centre. And the navy patrol boys were pretty lenient. I mean, if you

05:00 struck a fellow that was really drunk, you would give him a good talking to and in some cases you might even pull a cab up and put him in a cab and tell the cabbie where he was going. That’s as far as we would go. And sailors apparently, or were, not supposed to wear what they call their cap flat a back. That’s like not, and all we

05:30 would do would be to say, “Look put your cap on straight.” And let them keep moving. The Yanks were different; they were brutal. I have seen some dreadful things, how they used to treat their own men for the least little things. They would bring them back, they had cells at this place as well, and they would put them in a cell. And I used to hate that sort of work.

06:00 But we didn’t have any trouble at all with any of our fellows on shore. But the Americans were different because they were permanently policed. And … oh dear.

What would you see them do that shocked you?

I don’t know whether I should tell you.

06:30 One night they brought an American petty officer in, and I can’t recall what he was charged with, but I know it wasn’t very much at all. He wasn’t drunk, I remember he wasn’t drunk, but he was quite tired. It must have been something that he had said to the patrol blokes. They threw him in the

07:00 cell, one of them kicked him in the stomach, which wasn’t that bad, but they kicked him in the stomach. And then they put his arms behind his back and put his feet up behind his back and put manacles on him so he couldn’t move. And some of our fellows, there was four or six of us, they objected and

07:30 they were told to mind their own business or they would get the same. They were bad. And that was, it was, I am sure it was, the way he was, I think they brought him in, interrogated him first, from memory I just forget now., but it was the manner which he spoke back to this officer.

08:00 Because he was critical of the fact that he had been brought in for this little infringement. I have seen other acts, too. I wasn’t witness to it, but one night we were all coming back form the theatre, and our ship was at this same place in South Brisbane, and you walked across the bridge into South Brisbane from Queen Street,

08:30 and at that time there was this strict difference between the Negro American and the white American, very distinct. They had a ruling that the Negro American could not cross the bridge into the main city. They had to stay on the south side, and this particular night, there was a group of us walking across the bridge and we could hear someone running, and a

09:00 dark American raced past us going like mad. Next thing there is an American provo after him, and we were told later on, we heard the shot but we were told later on that this policeman shot him before he got to the other side of the river. Because he stepped into town. They were bad.

09:30 But they were pretty wild boys, I had the relatives that lived at Northcote in Brisbane, and there was a railway crossing in that suburb, and I was with my cousin and we were standing down near the railway gates, I forget where we were going, and a big army truck came down with all Negroes on it and a Negro driver and

10:00 they sat at the railway gates which were closed blowing the horn. Blowing the horn like mad, “Let us through!” And you know, they drove that truck straight through the gate, smashed the gate to bits and just kept going. They were pretty wild boys.

10:30 Oh, there was some very bad fights in Brisbane, too at that time. The Americans and the Australian army boys. That was it.

I wonder what you would have to do if you saw fighting or …

I saw plenty of fighting, but if you had any sense you kept out of it.

11:00 Not talking fighting, but I used to feel sorry for a lot of our army boys. They used to have to wear those big army boots. There was a very steep street where, I stayed there a couple of times, there was a hostel where you could go and stay the night, and

11:30 it was only very cheap, you would pay so much a night and get a clean towel and a bar of soap, everything you wanted if you wanted to have your shower and everything like that. And the number of times I saw them poor army blokes with those big hobnail boots slip over walking up that steep street with these silly looking big boots on.

12:00 That was a good hostel, that one, too.

Well, I wonder how often, apart from doing the shore guard, that you would actually get ashore for leave?

Depend how long your ship was going to be in port.

12:30 Usually, if you were in Brisbane, we would be in for, might be two or three days, and you might get two shore leaves. I remember one time there was a major job to be done on the Echuca, I forget what the terms was,

13:00 it had to be done on a regular basis, but it was, they had a term for it. Anyway, I could have got leave and gone down to Newcastle on the train, and my cousin lived in Brisbane

13:30 and he wanted me to, he had a car, he wanted me to go and do some shooting, and so I decided I would stay and, they keep what they call a special party on that ship while everyone else goes on leave, and I could go off every night doing that if I wanted to. Every night I could go on leave as long as someone was retained

14:00 on the ship, you take it in turns. But, oh no, I think the leave was pretty good, I thought, when you were in port. I got into trouble a couple of times. What they would do in that case, you would go up before the captain and, they call it captains

14:30 defaulters. You would go up before the captain and the chief petty officer would tell the captain what the charge was, and you would get what they call stoppage of leave. And I got a couple of those. You might come back, if you overstayed

15:00 your leave, you would get about 14 days stoppage of leave for that. Which meant you couldn’t, if your ship came into port you couldn’t go off, you had to stay on board, and another one was, you might jump ship for a couple of hours, but you would get caught coming back, well that was a bad one; you got 28 days for that. Oh yeah, there were plenty of stoppages.

15:30 But most of our leave we would spend in Brisbane. Sydney quite a few times. See, it’s not like the army was, you could be in an army platoon

16:00 or regiment and they would probably all be from the same state, whereas in the navy, you could get someone from every state in Australia, they were from all over the place. So it wasn’t everyone who could get home when there was leave. I remember one time I was in Brisbane, and I would have liked to go home but the floods were on and the lines were cut and no one could go south

16:30 of Brisbane. That would have been 10 days leave, I would say, that time .

Well, can you tell me, Neville, you have talked about arriving on the Lithgow, just wondering about the convoy work that the Lithgow was doing, can you tell me about that?

Well, the convoys started a little bit,

17:00 a little bit late. I think the first submarine attack on the east coast might have alerted them that they had to have convoys, and the system is that certain merchant ships are nominated to sail at a certain time to a certain destination. Well, they know where they are going to go, but they are told when to leave and

17:30 they are told to go in convoy, so they have to assemble at a point, usually a naval section and they’re spoken to by the senior convoy officer of the navy. That’s the senior man of any of those naval ships, and he tells them what the routine is, what their manoeuvres will be and everything like that. So they

18:00 assemble and they leave but they will do, they don’t just go straight, they do what they call a zigzag, they have got to do that all of the time. Which supposedly puts any submarine that’s in the area, puts them not on target long enough, in theory. And then they might be going

18:30 to three different ports, but all they will do, they will just drop out of the convoy and go to their destination. And they formed the convoys from about 1942, early ’42 I think convoys started.

19:00 The bulk of the convoys early were from Sydney to Melbourne, that’s where the main loss of ships were. And then later, they went from Sydney to Brisbane, and then there was a big move then from, where was it? Townsville, I think. Convoys started running up to Port Moresby. And then was

19:30 convoys then from either Cairns or Townsville running full loads of army troops up around the coast of New Guinea where the Buna and Gona and all of those places. But then in the latter part of the war, most of our convoys were north, not south where they had been early in the piece.

20:00 So it was mainly Brisbane-Townsville; Townsville-Milne Bay; and Milne Bay up around the northern coast. But I just can’t recall how many ships used to be in a convoy; it used to vary, some were fast convoys, depending on the speed of the merchant ship. In the main, they were pretty slow.

20:30 Then you would have problems with, they would all be instructed not to make too much smoke because you can see smoke form 20 or 30 mile. And you would see one of the ships starting to puff out black smoke, and they would get a blast form the convoy commander and, oh God! And then some would drop out with engine trouble. Oh yeah. But nothing like the convoys they had in the Atlantic.

21:00 They were incredible, apparently. You are looking at three or four lines of ships; 50-odd ships.

Well, I wonder, on that convoy duty, what would you be doing on the ship?

Normal duties, I mean, I suppose you could say you closed up a lot,

21:30 Because, you know, you’re on stand by action stations because you’re in waters where you know there is probably a lurking submarine. So your lookouts are very alert. You got a fright now and again, for the simple reason – with a porpoise,

22:00 on a real black night and very high phosphorus in the water, for some reason a porpoise would come straight at your ship, and you would see this great streak and straight away the alarm would go and you would swear it was a torpedo, but it is a porpoise, and they would get almost to the ship and just get on your bow. In the phosphorescent, it stands out so plainly, yeah.

22:30 Porpoise. I will just read you something about the convoys, it is surprising, people would never realise just how much went on on the coastline. This is all true, gospel.

23:00 I will just put my glasses on for a minute.

Is it something that you just know that you can tell me or is it …

No, I would have to ... In 1942, there was eight submarines operating off the coast. When I talk convoys, ‘in 1942 there were 211 convoys

23:30 of 1505. There was a 167 ships in 41 convoys to New Guinea. And in 1943 there were 4155 ships in 748 convoys’. So that’s a lot of convoys and a lot of ships.

24:00 Of course, there was a lot of ships lost, too, that people don’t realise. There was …

Well, I wonder in that convoy duty how worried were you at the prospect of the submarines and submarine attack?

Well, you were at risk all of the time; you don’t know where they are.

24:30 And you’re kept on your toes by the fact that quite often you will get an echo that’s the anti-submarine device, you will get an echo and everyone will be called to action stations, but it is what they call a false echo, a whale will give you the same effect as a submarine. And you know, you’re on your toes all of the time. It’s …

25:00 but at that time, there were submarines in the area, they knew that and they didn’t know just exactly where they were. It had been rumoured, and I believe it, that down in the south, where the worst of the attacks were, that was before I went on the Echuca or the Lithgow in early ’42, that the submarine

25:30 used to go in and hide in behind Montague and the other island. Because what you get as the echo off the land, they couldn’t be picked up, and I quite believe that. But

26:00 I just wonder if it played on your mind, the thought of having a submarine in the water nearby?

Sometimes. I think a couple of times you would be lying in your hammock and think, “What would I do if we were hit?” And you probably wouldn’t be able to do anything because it would do that much damage, I don’t know.

26:30 There was one bloke on the ship, that’s right Johnny McConachie, he had been torpedoed and sunk in the Canberra, and he said, “It is a frightening,” Well, I can imagine it is a frightening experience. Another very good friend of mine from Tasmania, he was on the Canberra, Bob Charlesworth,

27:00 he had been in the navy for quite a while. He was leading signalman on the bridge at the time when they were torpedoed. In the, up in the Solomon Islands, he was blown completely off the bridge into the ocean, and at our last reunion he was having a bit of trouble with his leg, and a little piece of shrapnel had worked its way

27:30 out of his thigh. After all of that time! He is lucky he is alive, he was on it. He said what a, how frightening it was, because he was in the water, and I think an American destroyer came along near them and picked the survivors out of the water.

28:00 And he was injured, but he was lucky he was alive because I think most of the others on the bridge had been killed.

I can imagine for you, listening to the stories of what he had been through, it would have been quite frightening?

Yeah, it was.

28:30 Did you, what plan did you have, if you had a plan for sinking?

I know I always kept my life jacket handy. Not that I can remember. What did we have? We had the whaler and the launch

29:00 and a couple of Carley rafts. There would have been ample life saving equipment on the ship if we had have been hit, as long as you could have got out in time. I don’t think many of us worried about it, honestly.

Well, what were the action stations that you would be at while on a convoy in the Lithgow?

29:30 Well, you would be on the bridge, on bridge lookout, they would have a lookout on both sides of the bridge, they may even have a mast head lookout of a night-time. Two lookouts there, one on top.

30:00 There would be someone on the wheel. Someone on the wheel all of the time, but they would be watched closely that you kept your pattern of zigzag up and you kept on course. Then, I would say, probably you would have the depth thrower operators would be down on position, just in case.

30:30 What would you do at that action station, what was the role there?

What would they do?

Yeah.

Well, they were there in readiness if anything did transpire where they had to be used. You know, you would be closed up in readiness.

31:00 That was in case of submarine attack or air attack or. I just don’t quite follow what you …

I just wonder, if something had happened, what you would then have done at that section station?

Well, you would get instruction from your officer, your petty officer.

31:30 It’s all, it’s very closely knitted with, you have got your gunnery officer, your anti-submarine officer, and they will instruct their people in their department what to do. See, no one could fire a gun on the ship until the gunnery officer is instructed by the skipper,

32:00 or I think on occasions the gunnery officer can use his own judgment. That’s how it is operated. But on big ships it is completely different.

And so what were some of the other action station you might be at?

Gunnery crews, there could be gunnery crews close up, they could be on the main armament on the bow.

32:30 The two Oerlikons, one on each side of the bridge, another one down the stern. And point five machine guns in the waist, they could have been manned. So everyone is in readiness in case it had got to be used.

How prepared did you feel to do whatever job it was that you were called on to do if something did

33:00 happen?

Prepared, yeah. See, at different times, when you’re in different ports, a couple of times in Darwin, we used to go out and exercise with pouter ships and make out that you were being attacked and we would go out and,

33:30 not on a regular basis, but we would do gunnery shoots, there would be another ship towing a big target. And on another occasion, the air force would come out and they would be towing what they called the sleeve. So you kept up in training nearly all of the time. Yeah. And then what we had an exercise once with a Dutch submarine

34:00 out of Darwin. Yeah, we did too, we had to track this submarine and make out he was the enemy. And another night, we could have sunk one; and he was a friendly one. I remember that. We got the echo, and I think that was a Dutch one too, might have been an American, a lot of the big American subs used to work out of Darwin at the time.

34:30 And they used to go up in the Philippine Sea and all of that. Up in the Philippines.

Which particular action station would you have preferred to be on, or wanted to be on if something happened?

On the wheel, I liked the wheel.

35:00 That was a good job, you stood for a long while, you couldn’t sit down, but that was a good job. The only time you really worked hard on the wheel was when you were in a big sea, and you were in a following sea, where you were going ahead of the waves; depending on the size of the sea, you have got to

35:30 correct the ship, because it will slew. And that’s when you’re constantly this way, that way. That was a bit constant.

I wonder if there was a sense of status or importance about being at the wheel?

I don’t think so. The main thing was you were out of the weather, if it was bad weather you were out of the weather.

36:00 And you’re up reasonable high and normally you’re getting a breeze in through there, not completely closed off. I used to like the wheel. Other than that, I would say probably one of the lookouts.

36:30 Used to have this great big field glasses about that long. That would cover it.

Well, can you tell me about the ships you would be escorting and where you would be taking them to?

Yes. I would say the bulk of

37:00 them were what they called tramp steamers, they would take them, well they could be on a long trip and we would hand them over to another lot of escorts, they could be taking war supplies up to New Guinea. Others could be taking general cargo into, say, Brisbane.

37:30 Lets see. But I think the bulk of them would have been taking something to do with the war effort going north, the ones in the early stage coming form south, they were mainly, a lot of them were BHP ships bringing iron ore from South Australia up to Newcastle to the steelworks.

38:00 Convoys from Newcastle south would be taking coal down to Melbourne for power generation. The ones north up through Queensland and that way, I am nearly sure that the bulk would be for the war effort., coming south, possibly some

38:30 would be bringing sugar down from north Queensland. Then again, we used to sometimes, we would have to escort, in the convoy would be LSTs, the big American landing ship tanks.

39:00 They would be going north. Often we were escorting oil tankers. And they could be going anywhere, the New Guinea area, to Brisbane or to even Sydney, loaded with fuel, petrol and benzine.

39:30 And I think on occasion some of them were loading, the big refrigerated ships were taking beef and butter and all frozen stuff back to England, and we would be escorting them down south. That’s about it, I think.

40:00 At the time, did it feel like important work that you were doing?

Yeah, it did. We had the air force over us form time to time. If we were on convoys between, say, down around the Melbourne area, back to Sydney area, and even Sydney area to Newcastle area,

40:30 the big airbase at Rathmines, they used to send out seaplanes and do patrols backwards and forwards over our convoy area in case they could pick up submarine. And quite often we would take, sometimes one, but often two, we would take air force pilots on board with us out on a convoy

41:00 to show them the routine, that was quite often. So they were all kept up to date on what was going on.

I wondered if at the time you realised how important the work you were doing was, so that’s interesting.

I did. I knew it was important.

41:30 Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Neville, we’re just at the end of our tape. We might stop and have a break for lunch now.

41:37 End of tape Tape 5

00:34 Well, Neville, I would just like to pick up your story by asking, at the end of your time on the Lithgow, can you tell me how you came to be posted to the Echuca?

Well, it was a matter of that I was still on draft to a ship and I don’t know what the story was,

01:00 I think someone on the Echuca of the original crew had been drafted somewhere else. I think that was the story. And I was notified that my draft had come through and it was on its way south to Brisbane and that I would pick it up when it came in. And it came in and berthed at the wharf and I went and joined it there.

01:30 And didn’t know a soul on it. It was all strange again. Had to get to know everyone, but it was a very happy ship, a good ship.

And can you tell me why the Echuca was so happy?

Well, I don’t know; probably the class of fellows that we had. It is amazing,

02:00 the different jobs they had had in peacetime, you know, where they had come from. I remember one good friend of mine, he has since died; I went out and looked for him after the war and I couldn’t get any correct information. Apparently he had come from a very big grazing family and I was invited to his wedding, he got married during the war.

02:30 He married the daughter of a bank manager that worked in Oxford Street. And I couldn’t make it; I was going home, I had something important in Newcastle. Anyway, for his wedding present, I always remember, he told us someone said to him, “What did your Dad give you for a wedding present?” And his Dad gave him 500 or 600 merino, prize merino sheep. And he showed me the photo of the home, beautiful big

03:00 home, and the big curved driveway. And, actually, he came from Cumnock. And the chap that I have coming here doing my lawn, bonzer bloke, he moved here about three years ago, ex-shearer, and he came from Cumnock. And I said to him, “Did you know a family down there called Reynolds?” and he said, “Yeah I

03:30 knew them well; actually, I have got a book all about them.” And he gave me this book to read on the history of the Cumnock family and the property. And they were very big. And he told me that apparently the father split the property into three and Clive, that’s my mate, he was given one of the portions and he said that he was the

04:00 laziest B [bastard] that he had ever sheared sheep for. And I was surprised, because this fellow on the ship was a real livewire; he never stopped, he was always doing something. Anyway, I always thought he was at Young and I had gone out to Young a couple of times when I was doing trips away and no one had heard of him. They were a very old pioneering family, from when the first grants came about, you know.

04:30 They were very big, now it has all been split up and sold off. But regarding the crew, they were a real happy bunch., I can’t recall anyone getting real cranky or going crook about anything. Sometimes they might go crook about some of the officers, but that’s the norm.

05:00 And who was the captain?

Captain Nevenfold was the main captain. He with us, he was actually on the commissioning of the ship when it was commissioned in Williamtown in Victoria and he went through until about 1944,

05:30 end of ’44, I think it would have been. And then we got Lieutenant Commander Pixley and I didn’t go much on him. Other boys reckoned he was a beauty but there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. But he had been highly decorated, he had a DSO [Distinguished Service Order], I think. But I think he had been in the Mediterranean

06:00 early in the piece. He was a high ranking lieutenant commander, whereas Captain Nevenfold, I was on the bridge a fair bit and he would talk to you. You could have a good old chat, a yarn. We got on pretty well. As a matter of fact, when he left the ship and no one knows the reason why he was,

06:30 no one knew where he went to. And he said to me, he knew, see cameras were illegal on board and he knew I had a camera and he said to me when he was leaving, he said, “I think I can do you a favour.” And I said, “What's that, sir?” he said, “I believe you have some films?” and I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “I will take them ashore, have

07:00 them done provided you allow me to order a copy.” He did too, he sent two of my films back. He was a good bloke. All of our officers were very good officers, they got on well with everyone. The only time I can ever recall when

07:30 Lieutenant Girlay got a bit upset, he was our first lieutenant, I was coming off watch one night and I was told to go and give the first lieutenant a call, and I went down to the wardroom and I spoke to him alongside his bunk and he was sound asleep. They didn’t have hammocks, incidentally, they had nice bunks. And I said, “Lieutenant Girlay sir, on duty sir.”

08:00 And I kept, and I shook him, and he spun awake and he said, “Don’t ever put your hand on me.” I always remember that. Normally he was such an easygoing bloke.

What class was the Echuca? Class of ship?

08:30 It was what they call a Bathurst class corvette, and there was, all told, some fifty something of the ships built. And the story behind the corvette was they all had a town’s name, which I didn’t know anything about this, until after the war,

09:00 but I was told, well, I knew about war bonds, because I had bought some war bonds before I even joined the navy. Certain towns had a quota to raise for war bonds, and any town that achieved a certain figure that they set, the name of that town would be placed on a naval vessel, so all corvettes were on this scheme of the war bonds business with every township.

09:30 And there is, I forget how many, they were all built in Australia, they were built in little shipyards and big shipyards all around Australia. But some were built for the Indian navy I think too, and there was a couple built for the British navy that went to the Mediterranean. Very solid well built vessel. Not like today, they were all riveted, not welded.

10:00 And very thick steel plating and the engines were built locally, when I say locally, in Sydney, and I think some were built in Victoria, they maintained. We had the skills in Australia to make the engines because the railway

10:30 workshops in Australia were building railway locos [locomotives] steam engine, so they gave the orders, they were spread around, for different components to be built by this one and that one and then they were assembled. And they each produced a thousand horsepower each motor, they were trouble free, we never had one minute’s trouble with them to my knowledge. And as I mentioned earlier,

11:00 that would give the ship 15 knots, which for a ship of that size was a fair speed. They launched, one was built in Newcastle, they built them in Maryborough, in Victoria, I don’t think Western Australia was in it.

11:30 I think there was 48, I think, there might have been in Australia, and the rest were overseas. Very seaworthy craft, believe me.

Well, when you first went aboard the Echuca, I am wondering what did she look like and what were your first impressions?

12:00 Well, after being on the Lithgow, my first view of the Lithgow was, “My God, it is small!” So by the time I went to the Echuca, I knew all about it, what it looked like and everything. One impression I did get, it was beautifully clean, it was clean. And that was built in

12:30 1941 or ’42, I think it was built. It was one of the early ones. As I mentioned earlier though, they were pretty fussy, everything was kept spotlessly clean and nothing was let get grubby. The only time things got a bit grubby was the exterior hull paint work, you know, you would get after weeks and weeks

13:00 or months, your paint work would start to get a bit rust stained or like that. So the first chance we would have ... I remember one time we came into Brisbane and we were going to be there doing a boiler clean, which takes quite a few days and everyone was over the side on scaffolds painting.

13:30 I remember someone, it wasn’t me, but some sprite, up above the ship, there was a high rise building and a lot of the girls used to be waving out, and some bright spark painted right along the ship’s side the phone number, and they found out about it and there was a bit of a stir.

14:00 I enjoyed my time on.

Well, can you describe the Echuca? What did she look like?

Can I show you a photo?

Well, perhaps tell me now, and we will look at the photograph later.

What did it look like? Well it looked seaworthy.

14:30 I am wondering how many decks and how many chimneys?

Well, you had the fo’c’sle, which was from the bow along. And then you had the bridge and you had what we call the upper deck, and then you had the quarter deck, which was still on the same upper deck level. And then you had the lower deck which started up in the bow under the deck level,

15:00 that was the quarters. And then you walked out where it wasn’t covered over, that was called the waist. And then that went from there down to what they called the tiller fret, that’s was down where the steering mechanism is and then there is the stern. I can explain it better off a photo.

15:30 Actually, the design started with the English Atlantic convoys, they had a corvette called the Flower class, every one was named after a flower, which was very peculiar names for a boat, but they struck such extreme conditions and handled it so well and they were so capable for anti-submarine work, they decided they would copy it for Australia.

16:00 A few things came into it, which were not quite suitable for Australian conditions; for instance, if they were in the tropics, the heat and the humidity, anyway, what they decided to do was to keep as much of the design as possible from the Flower class and

16:30 incorporate our ideas, say, internally. And that’s what they came up with. They’re only about 850–900 tons, and they draw nine feet of craft, good wide beam.

17:00 But as good as they were in sea conditions, I have seen us in big head seas where the bow has been completely buried, and the waves comes right up and smashes up against the front of the wheel house, that’s pitch poling like that. They handled it well.

17:30 We used to stake our life on it because you would think the thing would roll right over but never. They were real, what would you call them a workhorse, mean they done minesweeping, they done anti- submarine work, they done carrying of troops, they done everything.

18:00 And I am wondering whether you might know this now, you mightn’t have known then, where the Echuca got its name?

It was one of the towns on the Murray that raised the required amount in war bonds. And we were a little bit disappointed, our association,

18:30 we were told from a good source recently, at our last reunion it was, they’re building a new class of naval vessel at the moment, a new patrol boat for doing up around the north of Australia for poaching and boat people and that, quite a bit bigger than the current ones they are using. The idea being that they were going to name it

19:00 after a lot of the corvettes and the mayor at Echuca, we went to a mayoral dinner with him and his wife and alderman, and they made the announcement that they had pulled a few strings and they knew someone in Canberra who could put some weight behind a request that the Echuca would be one of those named. I seen the names on a list the other day and we’re not on it. We missed out.

19:30 But we still had one of our members, he was an officer on Echuca and his father was the Minister for Defence, so he was going to pull a bit of weight too, he reckoned, but it didn’t come off. But that’s how that name came to the ship, through the Echuca township.

20:00 I am just wondering how you were received by the crew when you first joined the Echuca?

Really well, I was. One of my very best mates that is still going well, Lou Rischin, his parents, he told me they were

20:30 Russian Jews, Russian. I think Russian Jews or his might have been his grandmother and grandfather, bonzer bloke he lives up on the Gold Coast now. He must have joined the ship, not the same time but either just

21:00 must have been just before I did. Well, we got on like wildfire straight away and we have been friends ever since. And then another chappy, I found out knew a good mate of mine on another ship, and so that clicked. And then I got very friendly with a life long friend, he was our leading signalman, from Williamstown,

21:30 a chap called Ken Brown. Used to grow the most magnificent red beard you have ever seen, it was a picture. Bluey we used to call him and he was a great mate, we did a lot of things together. And he got me going on this macramé twine, making watch bands and hand bags and he was clever.

22:00 And I made quite a few and we ran out of macramé twine and we finished up, we used to put so much in and we would buy twine and split it and we would make bags in our spare time. And we ran out, and in Brisbane they had a beautiful big store something like DJs [David Jones], and I think it was called

22:30 Pinny’s or Penny’s, lovely store. And we decided we would have a shop around in Brisbane and find out if we could buy some more macramé. So we went into Penny’s and saw the lass behind the counter and asked if they had macramé twine and she said, “Yeah.” And she brought out some which was fairly thick and we said, “No that’s not it we want the more fine one.” And she brought out

23:00 some and we said, “That’s it, how much is it?” and I forget how many boxes she had we bought the lot. She was amazed, she said, “You want the lot?” and I said, “We want the whole lot.” And we bought the whole lot, I forget how many boxes it was, but it was all used. We used to make bags and send them down to friends and family and give them away. Someone said we were mad, reckoned we could have made a fortune selling them to the Yanks.

23:30 The Yanks were always after, wanting something. We tied up alongside a submarine once in Darwin harbour, a big one, they had just come back from the Philippine Islands, up there, on a patrol up there. And we were nearly, not level, but one of our port holes was not much higher than, I forget what part it was. One chappy there asked,

24:00 they always wanted grog and we used to get a beer ration, two bottles of beer, I don’t think it was a week, anyway, but the ration was two bottles of beer and what most of us would do, we wouldn’t drink it, I forget whether you had to wait for a certain time or day to drink it, I forget all of this, but

24:30 most of us used to put ours in a locker and keep it until such times as were would have a bit of a party. And this guy sings out, “Any of you guys got any grog on board?” and somebody sings out, “How about beer?” “Yeah, that’ll do.” And we were getting we would make them pass the cigarettes in first, cartons of beautiful cigarettes, Lucky Stripe cigarettes,

25:00 and we would get two, three or four cartons of cigarettes for a bottle of beer, it was beaut. Yeah. But they were mad on grog. But I still can’t remember, it was two bottle I know that because you never got the same brand of beer, sort of

25:30 whatever they delivered to us on the ship in cases, you would get Tassie beer one time, the next time Sydney beer and Queensland beer. But we were very grateful to get it. It might have been two a fortnight, I think, I am not sure. See, none of us used to draw any money, the only time I used to draw any money

26:00 was the first time you would be in port. And the chief petty officer would come up and they would have the big register with everything, just like a wage book and you could draw all of that or part of that whatever you like. It is amazing when you think back, we were only getting six

26:30 or eight shillings a day, and if you didn’t touch that money for a few weeks and you came back, in those days it was a fair bit of money. And I used to race and never spend it all, go to the bank and put it in a savings account. And it paid too.

27:00 Well, it is interesting to hear you talk about getting beer and cigarettes, I am imagining when you joined the navy, that was your first time away from home?

Yeah.

Well, I am wondering on your big adventure; how were you coping, living away from home?

27:30 I don’t think I had time to worry about it, to be honest. I suppose that’s not correctly true. I know for a fact every time we would come into Brisbane, the first thing I would do, I would go straight up to the post office, and when you think back how

28:00 chaotic some of the communications were in Australia at that time. I would have to go up to the post office, we would get leave off the ship about half past four, a few of us would all go together, tear up Queen Street up to the post office, make a call and book it. We would go and have a

28:30 few beers, the pub was just opposite, and come back to that post office and we could sit there for three hours waiting for our turn for the call. And that used to go on every time we went to make a phone call, you had to sit and wait. So that’s one time when we used to make a point of ringing straight home, most of us any rate. But at sea, never worried.

29:00 I was just wondering whether you found a new sense of freedom, being able to smoke cigarettes and drink beer?

Oh probably, in a way.

29:30 Yeah, probably to some extent that could be true, yeah. But my parents, though they weren’t what

30:00 you would call stern or anything like that. I can always remember Dad gave me the key to the front door, I forget how old I was then, and I thought I was made.

30:30 After I got out of the service, I played up a little bit and it was a big thing to readjust. Honestly. I had a very good mate he was, went through school with me, we sailed together, we done everything together,

31:00 and he joined the army because his brother had served in the Middle East in the 6th Division, and he was back in New Guinea and this mate though he would do the right thing, his brother was in the army so he joined the army and he couldn’t stand a bar of it . And he applied for transfer to the navy because I was in the navy at the time and

31:30 he done very well in the navy, he got his gunnery ticket and everything like that. And he was hoping to get, he applied to get with me. Which you can do sometimes, anyway he didn’t have nay luck there, anyway, they drafted him of all ships it was the heavy cruiser the Australia. And as he called it the hell ship because there are so many fellows on board you don’t know half of the people. And after the war, he went through a lot.

32:00 Terrible lot, they got hit and bashed around, damaged badly, a lot killed. Well, after the war he worked in a shipping office diagonally across from where I used to work, he went back to his job and I went back to my job and he was, as a result of his war experiences and his bombing and kamikazes and all of this other jazz, he started drinking heavily.

32:30 And he didn’t have me following suit, but I used to have a few beers with him of a night after work. And my Dad got a bit cranky with me because he said, “You had better cut this back a bit; if you keep this up, there is going to be a problem.” Which I had to do. My mate, it got the better of him, wonderful fellow, clever, very smart man.

33:00 This was getting around the story, he decided he would stay at sea and he joined the Australian National Line on merchant ships and worked his way up the ranks, he was boson and then third officer, and then they had an ex-Australia reunion at Circular Quay in Sydney and they all got pie eyed and the Korean War had

33:30 just started and there was eight of them I think in the party, from what he told me. Six of them reckoned they would go down and enlist the next morning in the army and four did, four of the six enlisted in the army. He done two stints in Korea, after all he had done in the Pacific. And he never ever settled down, and that’s what they call the war neurosis.

34:00 Crying shame. That’s what can happen to you. He went through a lot. Only destroyed a lot of his letters recently and

34:30 Jill has still got things in there that he used to send down from Korea and Japan when he was would go on leave, and he thought the world of my kids. Well, you should see the things, I can show you, behind this I will show you when we’re finished, the beautiful tea set he sent for Jill from Japan.

35:00 But he just wouldn’t settle down. Anyway, that’s getting off the point. But that’s how lucky you can be. In my case I was very lucky; admittedly, we didn’t get into glorified action and get our name in papers. But the same thing I could have got, a cruiser you know, I always considered myself very lucky.

35:30 Well, you have mentioned being a boy from Newcastle when Japan entered the war people were scared in Newcastle and Newcastle was bombed. When you joined the Echuca, I am wondering what did you know of what was going on in the war at that point in time?

36:00 Well, we were getting good information in the paper at the time, from memory, and then the old Movietone news, and then different people who I would strike that were home on leave, particularly

36:30 army boys that I knew, they were a bit older than me. They would tell you a few things of what was going on. That was early in the piece, but then when things got going in New Guinea, that’s when I started to worry, they’re going to definitely come in

37:00 and then of course Darwin, so I really knew a bit about what was going on; but I was worried about what was going to come. I really was. Jill’s sister that died, she and her cousin, they were both sent away way down to, in the south west, because everyone was fearful that there was

37:30 definitely going to be an invasion. But it really took the shelling of Newcastle to really wake everyone up that it could happen to us. And Sydney, the same. When you read, I have got a book in there that is an excellent book, it is called Battle Circus. And when you read some of the facts in there that

38:00 has been put in that book, written by an Australian, but a lot of it is from the Japanese themselves; he went there and looked through the archives the war museum everything, when you think that a submarine stood off Sydney Harbour, launched a seaplane and he flew over the whole of the city twice

38:30 unbeknown. It is incredible, you know. And we’re supposed to be on a war footing. They even interview the pilot in the book, there is a photo of him. And he says how amazed he was that he could do it so easily.

39:00 They flew over Townsville on a few occasions, no one knew about that. And at one stage they flew over Broome and Wyndham. And they weren’t troubled, makes you wonder.

And as a new sailor joining a crew, I am wondering what happens in terms of a welcome aboard?

39:30 Oh, there is no such thing as a welcome. Just a few blokes might shake your hand. Someone might ask where you are from or what ship were you on or something like that, but it is just one of those normal things. That might be a storm.

40:00 I shouldn’t have said that.

Well, I guess I am wondering what did you have with you in terms of belongings?

I always had an iron with me, see?

40:30 That was one thing I was sure I was going to take, I had my mother’s old iron, an electric iron, and I packed that. Made sure I always took that when I was getting a move. But clothing, we mainly underwear, couple pair of shorts. all we ever wore was shorts up north. 41:00 See, you had your navy uniform, that’s a funny story about uniform I will have to tell you.

I might just stop you there and hand you over to Isabel [interviewer] and she can take up your story of the navy uniform, okay?

41:14 End of tape

Tape 6

00:30 Before we finished the last tape, Neville, you were about to tell us a funny story about uniforms?

Oh, that’s right. Well, I can honestly say the issue uniforms weren’t anything you would rave about. The cloth

01:00 was all right, but there was a word in navy slang called pussa, P U S S A. and pussa was anything issued by the navy, I think that’s how it went. But what you did, even though it was frowned on, the first chance you got when you were in Melbourne, in the city, you went to a big company in there that specialised in making uniforms.

01:30 And you would go and get measured and you would get a beautiful new suit made out of this, Jill knows what they call it, this specialist material. And there would be a waiting list for weeks and weeks because everyone was getting a uniform made. And we used to get these tailor made. They would fit you like a glove.

02:00 But the only problem with them, they used to make them, we liked them nice and snug and tight. Before I was married I had taken Jill to the theatre or something and we would get home late and something happened one night the car wouldn’t start, I used to borrow Dad’s car. And Mrs Christie said, “Well you had better leave the car there and stay the night.” Jill will vouch for this

02:30 Jill’s trying to get my jacket off and it is like skinning a rabbit, anyway she finally got this jacket over my head. But they looked smart, the tailored uniform looked a hundred per cent on the, I shouldn’t be saying this. And then what else? You got a nice pair of shoes and I think we got a pair of boots.

03:00 And the rest of the towels and everything were nice. I think they were good Dickie [brand] towels. The suit was the only problem.

Was it comfortable to wear, with it being that tight?

Oh yes, because, see you have only got,

03:30 that’s not a shirt that you can see underneath, that’s what they call the dicky front, all it is it is a piece like that with four tapes on it, and that just shows there. It is like a bra in reverse. That’s all that is.

04:00 I would say that ninety per cent of everything we were issued with was good, but I didn’t go much on the suits.

What were some of the other alternations that some of your mates might have had to their suits?

Oh, let me think. Well, it is like the young people do today, you know, how

04:30 they get jeans and scrub them so they look used and old. Well, that’s what we used to do with our dicky plates, we would scrub them to make them fade; that was to give you the appearance that you had been an old hand for a long while. What else? That’s about all, I think.

05:00 But I would say ninety per cent of all of the chaps I knew, might have been a hundred per cent, had tailored suits. We had what we used to call number ones. I don’t think we were issued with the white ducks in those days. It was mainly for tropics, I think.

05:30 We did get an issue of khaki shorts and shirts in the tropics too, yeah. And now and again we might draw, used to draw something from the American canteen. Might have been shirts, I think. Didn’t have to buy it; we would get

06:00 it for nothing, just go and ask and they would give it to you. Always remember ironing those creases. That’s what I was saying earlier, that reverts back to the British navy sailing ships times, and now I went aboard down here at the port wharf, HMAS Rushcutter, which Port Macquarie

06:30 has adopted. And I went down to get a look over the Rushcutter, and I couldn’t get over how smart even the seamen are now with their clothing.

You were telling us in the break about the use that your iron was put to on the ship? 07:00 Just that you were running a bit of a business, really?

Oh, it wasn’t what you would say a big business, I am just trying to think who had other irons. I can’t remember now. A lot of my mates I wouldn’t dream of charging, but if someone came to me and he wasn’t a mate

07:30 he would come to me and say, “How much are you charging for an iron?” an hour or something like that. But I didn’t charge a lot of people. I just can’t remember, now. What else did we have? What we took in the way of clothing.

08:00 Well socks, my mother taught me to darn socks before I even went down there, I was a good darner too. Oh, we got a housewife, do you know what a housewife is? I have still got mine. It is a little sewing kit and it rolls up and it is in little compartments and it has got safety pins and, well, normal sewing kit, needles and thread and buttons,

08:30 everything like that. But I always had in my kit bag a lot of wool that Mum had given me for darning and I used to do my own socks. I learnt a lot. Jill doesn’t, she would say you have forgotten all that you learnt because you could be ironing, you could be doing this.

09:00 They really thought of everything, I would say, in the navy.

Well, what else could you do on the ship to pass a bit of time and have a bit of fun?

Well, I say a very good mate on the ship was the leading signalman and he had been on the ship for quite a while, he was on the last ship out of Singapore,

09:30 and he was mad keen on macramé work. He used to make hand bags and wrist bands. He taught me how to do them and we used to sit and do them together. We made a lot of them. Others would play euchre, cards. And then that other game with the, what's the game?

10:00 Crib?

Yeah, they would play crib. A lot of them used to do a lot of letter writing, I used to write quite a few letters too, but not as many as some of the boys did, some of the boys were writing all of the time. I don’t know if they were writing a book or what they were doing, but they seemed to be doing a lot of writing.

I wonder at the chance, you mentioned before you were fishing a lot?

10:30 We all done a lot of fishing. This was the latter part of the war. When we used to do survey work, we would anchor overnight because you have got to so survey work in daylight. And what we would do, our LTO, that’s leading torpedo operator, he was

11:00 like our major electrician on the ship. He done a lot of functions but one of his main jobs was as an electrician. He would go and approach the first lieutenant for permission to have a cluster of lights over the side of the ship to attract the small bait fish. And mostly we would get permission to do it, and he would rig it all up, connect the wiring and

11:30 everything like that. And we would all line along the side of the ship. Nearly everyone had a fishing line of all different sizes. How did we get those little fish? That’s right, when we had been in a place called, I think it was Oro Bay, a couple of boys had gone ashore to a native village and they had bought fish spears. They were

12:00 beauties too, with the prongs. Well, we used to get this little fish with the fish spear and use them for bait. Oh, we used to catch some beautiful big fish. And they all went into the cool room or refrigerator for future use. We used to live like kings when we could get fish. My hobby was shark fishing, I used to fish for sharks a lot, but I used to use a rope about that thick

12:30 and another fish for bait. And I think from memory I finished up using an empty four gallon drum and I would just let it go over the side and some of the boys would give you a hand to drag the darn things in. Most of the time you would shoot them.

13:00 A couple of times we would hoist him right up and open him up with a machete and throw him over the side and then all of the sharks absolutely like a pack of wolves would just tear him to pieces, oh we caught a lot of sharks. I got in trouble with one shark on, it tangled in the propeller, that’s when the ship wasn’t going, luckily. We got that out all right.

13:30 But oh there was some sharks up there. That’s up in the, it is where these Indonesian fisherman are now coming for shark fins, and I tell you what, they will never catch them out, there are some sharks up there. But the general ordinary fishing was excellent because the only people that had ever been there, I think,

14:00 were the Indonesia fishing people. We found an old wreck on one of the islands that we were surveying and I tried to find out what it could have been, but there is no record of it. Looked like the hull of a big old steel sailing ship, and it is up there rusting away. 14:30 And there was another island, I forget what that was called, but apparently years ago, I think it might have been Japanese, they were mining rock phosphate years ago.

15:00 All of the old ruins were still there, and the jetty. I forget the name of the island, up there way out from Timor.

Well Neville, can you tell me about the mine sweeping work that the Echuca was doing in the Pacific?

15:30 Well I wish I had a diagram of how it operated. When you’re sweeping mines, you have got to put what you call power veins out, and you have got a power vein each side and it works, it is a steel frame with steel louvres on an angle.

16:00 Just like a louvre window. And that’s fastened to your main sweep wire and that’s a very big wire and it is, I don’t know how they make them but it has got like serrated pieces. Sharp pieces sticking out of the wire which would act like a cutter.

16:30 But then from your power vein to the surface of the water is a big float, that keeps your power vein at a certain depth so it doesn’t go right down, and you can adjust the power vein so it can sweep at a bigger or less angle. So you stream your sets of gear and

17:00 the petty officer operates the winch system, and it is a huge winch because it has a lot of wire rope on it, and he just gradually rolls it out and then he locks everything down. And there is your, like a big V getting towed behind the boat. We didn’t strike any mines, but quite a few of the others did and they are very effective. But then later on in the piece,

17:30 the Germans came up with a new type of mine called a magnetic mine. I think this is how it worked, don’t know much about this. The old type mine was held at a certain depth below the surface; the magnetic mine, I think the idea being that the

18:00 depth hadn’t to be regulated to any set depth, it was the magnetism from the steel ships hull that would draw it straight up to the ship. And all of our corvettes were fitted with anti-magnetic – the gauzing system, I am sure that’s what they call it.

18:30 When it operated, it is out of my depth, this. When it operated, it set off this funny sound that went right through the ship, and it must have had something to do with demagnetising the steel in the ship. And we were using that a lot then, instead of the big sweep.

19:00 But I don’t know a great deal about it. I know we had to go to Sydney to have it all installed. But it is the weirdest sound and a slight vibration used to go through the whole ship.

I wonder if mines in the water were a worry for your ship?

19:30 If there was fear there might be mines in any of the waters you were?

Oh yeah, you’re worried about that all of the time, yeah. See, the Germans laid mines in Australia before the Japanese even entered the war. Down around southern New South Wales and Victoria, that’s where some of the first mines were swept, but they were laid by a German mine layer.

20:00 So how much damage do you think, if the Echuca had hit a mine, it would have done to it?

Well it depends where the mine hit the ship. One of the corvettes was hit by a mine after the war when they were doing the clean ups and sweeping the big channels.

20:30 It was the Warrnambool, but she didn’t sink. I think there was a few of the seaman injured, from memory, but she was towed back to port. I would say if a mine exploded under the middle of the ship it could be the finish of her. Because

21:00 there was so many ships sunk during the war through a mine, when you read books, they were pretty powerful explosives. It was a worry. The worry to me was that righto, your doing a sweep, you have got a report that there could be mines in a certain and you are sweeping that area,

21:30 what if you’re sweeping and there is still one ahead that you’re coming to? That’s one of the worries you would have, yeah. But some of the others, they got some, not a lot but now and again they would get some. I think in those instances

22:00 when the mine surfaced, they would stand off and fire their weapons on it and explode it in the water. From what I have seen on film, they showed this down at the Cerberus depot, of a mine exploding in the water, and I tell you what it’s a big one. When we used to fire depth charges, you put a couple of them over the stern and

22:30 watch them. And the mines has got, I don’t know what weight a mines explosive is, but a depth charge is four hundred and something, I forget know. But it is a huge water spout that comes up. That’s a good storm that. Gee this rain will do a lot of good. 23:00 Well I wonder, you mentioned that at some point, Neville, you had a tropical ulcer?

Yeah.

Can you tell me about how you got the ulcer?

Well the only thing I can recall that could have caused it was that I brushed my shin up against the mine sweeping wire. Now I don’t know if that is really correct. But what we used to often wear a lot at sea was rubber sea boots,

23:30 but we used to turn the top of our sea boots over so they were up about that high, otherwise they were up there, and I often wonder if it was the continual rubbing of the top of the sea boot. But I know I did bump the wire on a few occasions, I didn’t worry about it one bit, I have always

24:00 been a good healer and I thought, “It will be right.” But it got bigger and bigger and we didn’t carry a doctor but we had what they call a sick berth attendant, he is like a first aid man. And his little cubicle was in our mess area so I saw him and I said, “Can you put something on this leg of mine, it is starting to get a bit sore?”

24:30 And he looked at it and said, “Gee, I don’t like the look of that.” So he was treating it, I don’t know what he was treating it with and it started to get worse pretty quickly. And the sick berth attendant got one of the officers to come and have a look at it one day. And he said straight out, “I think this man wants shore attention.”

25:00 So if memory serves me correctly, a ship that was working with us at the time, we would all come into Darwin together, was an English ship, HMS Challenger, it was. Quite a big one, and they carried a surgeon on board, so they took me across on the motor launch and I went aboard and he was a Scotsman, ginger

25:30 haired. I still remember him. Very nice man. And I went down to the sick bay and he took one look at my leg and he said something about I should have given it more attention or something. And I don’t know what he put on it. But he made me stay over in the sick bay overnight, I know I was on the ship for a day.

26:00 And his recommendation was, because they were all going to sea the next day, I think, that I be placed in the little Thursday Island hospital. And that’s where I went and I had a ball. You wouldn’t credit, it was a little public hospital.

26:30 I think I might have been the only white person in there and some of the old Torres Island women. One woman was called – do you want to keep it going?

Might just stop. Neville you were going to tell me about the hospital incident?

27:00 Ah, the TI hospital, yeah. We were on a point, this little point of land away from the township, as it was then. And as I mentioned, I think I was the only white man in there. Some of the old local ladies that were in, some were having babies, some had babies. But the names that they had given themselves. There was one old girl called Wazzum Blanket.

27:30 And another one was Ma Tea Pot and another was so and so Kettle. This is true. All of their funny names, and there was a little native boy used to come into hospital doing odd jobs. And where the hospital was built on the point, it was like a coral reef on the end of it. And I would give him a shilling and he would toddle

28:00 off down to the point and dive in with his spear and he would come back with a lobster like that. And the cook at the hospital would cook it for us. He would get a few and bring them back. We lived like kings. And there was a local Australian there, that’s why I will never forget the Salvation Army, I was in hospital there for a few weeks. And he would come and bring

28:30 toothpaste, cigarettes, writing pad, envelopes, you name it. I have never forgotten it, he was terrific. I came out of hospital when the ship came back.

This might seem like an odd question, but can you describe what your ulcer looked like?

29:00 Look, well, the scar on my leg, you would think nothing of it; but believe me, I was worried, the shin bone was all exposed, and the smell! And all I could think of was “Gangrene, gangrene, gangrene!” When the ship came back, after about three weeks and they came back, they came and picked me up at the hospital

29:30 with a vehicle and I went aboard and I had to get straight into a hammock. And down in the sick bay attendants area, and I stayed in that all of the way to Brisbane, and when I got to Brisbane, I forget,

30:00 they picked me up at the wharf and they took me into Brisbane Moreton Hospital, HMAS Moreton, and I went to the medical officer there. And he took one look at it and straight away he said, “You’re going back into hospital.” And well I didn’t know of any navy hospital in Brisbane. 30:30 And they didn’t even tell me where I was going and the navy vehicle came and, that’s right, all my baggage, my gear was still on the ship, from memory. Anyway, we left the main city of Brisbane and we drove out west and I thought, “Where the dickens are we now?” And we finished up at

31:00 this great big army hospital at a suburb called Enoggera. And I found out later it was what they called, I forget the number of it, 112 AH or something. It was the army’s tropical skin disease hospital. Where they treat you for ulcers. In my ward they were all army boys, they were painted with,

31:30 for dermatitis and all of this; there was purples, greens, blues, it was the funniest sight you have ever seen! Well I was there for quite a while. The surgeon that looked after me was a Major F O O T S, I remember that, Major Foots.

32:00 He was concerned about it and he said if we weren’t careful, or if I wasn’t careful, that there was a probability that I could lose my leg. And to start with, I think from memory, I think my leg from there right down to my ankle was plastered, tried that.

32:30 And the matron there, she was a character. And I said, “What’s the idea of the plaster? What's that going to do matron?” she said, “Let it cook in its own juice.” I always remember that saying. The smell, honestly, was disgusting. I used to have relatives in Brisbane and they used to come out and see me fairly regularly and they would have to sit well away from my bed.

33:00 It was embarrassing, it was rotten flesh. They tried the plaster, but it was weeping through the plaster, so they cut the plaster off after a week or fortnight, and then one of the nurses said that they would try what they called a saline bath, salt water bath, I used to have to sit

33:30 on the side of the bath in this real hot salty water and soak it for hours. That didn’t do any good. I am nearly sure that what fixed me in the finish was another sister that knew of someone that had somewhat the same problem in civilian time, and they had used Condies crystals.

34:00 I can’t remember whether it was a Condies crystal solution or in granular form, I can’t remember, but we tried it, and it started to correct it. Well I was there, must have been there for quite a while. I know I was there long enough to make,

34:30 I forget whether it was the Red Cross, I think, wanted to know if I would be interested in doing some handicrafts. And I decided to do leatherwork. I know I made, I have got one outside, I made two or three leather handbags while I was there, so I was there a few weeks, you know. But it is strange to say that none of this is on my history sheets. Not one bit.

35:00 There is nothing about Thursday Island hospital, there is nothing about the hospital in Brisbane. So I was eventually allowed to leave the hospital and I reckoned I was right, it was closing up nicely and the skin was growing back. There was three of them: one there, one down there and on there.

35:30 They were dreadful. I came back to the ship thinking, “I am right, going back to sea.” And the first lieutenant said to me, “What are you doing back on board, Elliot?” I said, “I got cleared form the hospital.” He said, “I don’t care what you got, you are not fit for sea duty any more.” And I said, “Who told you this?” he said, “I am telling you; it is official. Your draft has been made for someone to come aboard.” And that was it. he said, “I want you to get

36:00 someone to help you with all of your gear and I will arrange for transport back to the depot.” Which I did and I wasn’t happy about this. And I asked one of the boys when they were sailing, and it was about three or four days away and I thought, “I will come back and have another crack.” So I went back to the ship and

36:30 this Lieutenant Commander Pixley was the captain, and I asked to see him and I went up on the bridge and told him my problems. He said, “I am sorry, Elliot. On your medical report, we cannot run the risk of you going to sea again.” And, oh gee, I was disappointed, so I had to go back to the depot.

37:00 And I was there for a couple of weeks, I suppose and then someone tipped me off that there was going to be an opening out at this big ammunition depot, I could get a position out there as one of the security staff which would have been better than hanging around the depot. So I applied for it and got it. And it was out at a place called Geebung, and I was there

37:30 until it finished and that’s where I got word I was going to be discharged and I went to Sydney and got discharged at Rushcutters down in Sydney. But I enjoyed it out at Geebung, it was quite interesting. When I arrived there, we were security, we used to do patrols of a night-time and all day long, guards around the perimeter. And

38:00 apparently the Yanks had built it. I think that’s the story during their occupation in Brisbane. And then the British navy took it over and they had all of their navy armaments stored there. And these big trucks used to come in every day and load shells and ammunition and explosives and take it down to the ships. Well then when the war was finished, all of

38:30 this had to be disposed of, so the Royal Navy sent out these explosive experts, but they were civilians with officer ranking. Very nice fellows they were. They worked there for quite a few weeks. And of course, the war was finished and all of this had to be defused, made safe. And there was lorry load after lorry load

39:00 used to go down to the wharves in Brisbane, loaded onto ships, taken out in Moreton Bay and dumped at sea. Thousands of tons. And they were still doing it when I went in and caught the train to come home. Ammunition, crying shame. You should have seen it. So the bad leg cost me.

39:30 After I went to the ship the last time and was refused to sail, the ship left and she went up to, it would have been a wonderful trip, they went up and took the Japanese surrender up at one of the big Japanese garrisons in the islands.

I wonder the gash that had caused all of the problems, was it anything

40:00 particularly bad, would it have been anything that would have caused you problems had you been at home?

How do you mean?

I just wonder if it was a particularly bad cut or …

No, I think it was like any ulcer; it must be an infection, and it just grows

40:30 bigger and bigger. But when I didn’t mention, when was that? I came to Newcastle on leave,

41:00 and I had to report to the naval depot in Newcastle to a surgeon, and he had to inspect my leg. I don’t know whether that was –

41:30 I don’t know when that was. I know I had an accident some years later when I was in the mill. I slipped and fell and took all of the skin off my shin again. I tell you what, if I just bump that, it is the most painful area; that leg, I can do anything to it, but that one is touchy. But when I fell, I skinned my shin and you wouldn’t read about it

42:00 Jill said, “I am going to keep my eye on that.”

42:01 End of tape

Tape 7

00:30 Well Neville, I would just like to go back a bit before you got your ulcer, you mentioned one of your main functions or roles of the Echuca was mine sweeping, but I understand you made a couple of trips up to New Guinea and New Britain, can you tell me a bit about what you were doing up there?

01:00 We made one trip to Milne Bay. Earlier, that was the first time I had been to Milne Bay. I am just trying to think what we did, we took a convoy to Milne Bay the first time. And on the second occasion we

01:30 went up with another convoy that we had taken from Townsville, I think, from memory. And the third occasion we went up to, I call it Finschhafen, but apparently the records show that it was called Langemak, now whether the harbour was called Langemak I don’t know, it was quite a busy area, I know that.

02:00 And we done some patrol work out form there because there were rumours, the Japanese had the big base in Rabaul. And the Japanese forces on the New Guinea mainland were suffering badly from lack of food and arms and ammunition and they were bringing stuff through on submarine and landing it of a night-time, so we were doing anti-submarine patrol.

02:30 And we were up off, not Gasmata, but further north, up in New Britain, on the eastern coast of New Britain, I think it might have been New Year’s Day, this particular incident, we got a very strong echo. Submarine echo. And there was two of us, there was the Deloraine and the Echuca.

03:00 And the echo became stronger and it was a definite pick up, so both of the corvettes made an attack on this submarine, and we let go every, I am nearly sure we carried 40 to 45 depth charges, and I am certain that we let all of ours go, I think, I am not sure if it was two each side

03:30 or one each side, but their pattern fired every time, that way and that way. And we let all of ours go over a period, I forget how long, it would have been going around and around. And the Deloraine did like wise. And a certain bit of oil came up and a bit of other stuff and we just assumed that we may have got it. And it wasn’t until

04:00 well after the war we found out that we had been credited with getting the submarine, yeah. And we were there in that area for, probably a few weeks. And then we came back down to Milne Bay and then I think we may have taken on fuel at 04:30 Milne Bay then and then we went down through what they call the great north east passage, from Milne Bay down through the Torres Strait Islands down to Thursday Island and then we started on all of this survey work headquartered out of Darwin.

Well can you take me through that attack on the Japanese submarine and being called to action stations, what were you doing in that?

05:00 We were all having lunch, I am nearly certain it was New Year’s Day, and we were all having lunch and it was a special lunch and the next thing the alarms were going and there was a scatter. I am nearly sure it was New Years Day.

And what did you have to do?

05:30 I cant even recall where I was and where I went. Thinking about it, I don’t think I was down on the throwers, because I had never operated down there before. And I wasn’t on the stern rails. I don’t know, I could have been lookout on the bridge, I wouldn’t have a clue, it was a long while ago.

Well I am wondering,

06:00 hearing those alarms go off and being called to action stations, I am wondering how frightened you were?

We were all, it gave us all a bit of a stir, you know, I don’t know whether any of us expected to spot a ship near us when we came up out of our quarters or what it was.

06:30 But we could see that there was nothing on the surface anywhere near us so it must have been a submarine contact. Yeah, we had had this a couple of times before with no luck. It had been a false echo, or whether there had have been something there and we lost it, we don’t know. But I used to feel sorry for the asdic officers, they would be sitting in

07:00 a little cubicle on the bridge with that ‘ping’ going all of the time. ‘Ping, ping, ping’, you know’ it would send you batty. And then once you get a contact you go ‘ping, ping, ping, ping’. But I think it might have been New Year’s Day

07:30 1944, I think.

Well I am just wondering, the threat from Japanese was very real, I am just wondering how you felt about being up in those waters at that time?

Well most of us was pretty happy because

08:00 up around Finschhafen there, there was so much going on. The Americans were there in a very big way. There was equipment, there was ships getting unloaded with equipment, and trucks going here, there and everywhere, we even got a chance to go to the outdoor movies in the pouring rain. I always remember that. It was teeming,

08:30 and we were slodging through mud, and trucks flying past throwing mud everywhere, we should have all stayed on the ship. The other day, I even thought of the movie we all saw. I forget it now. But that was one experience we had. It was one of the top movies of the time, that was one. And we nearly saw Bob Hope

09:00 and his troop at one place we were at, I forget where that was. They had been entertaining the American troops, but they had just left and then on our way south Bob and his partner of entertainers, they crash landed just here in the seaplane, you probably know about that, in a Catalina.

09:30 Well you haven’t spoken all that highly of the Yanks that you came in contact with during the war, it sounds like when you were up in that area you had a bit of contact with them?

Yeah particularly in Milne Bay. I am just trying to think.

10:00 A young chappy, he was younger than me at the time. He came from Newcastle and my mother and father knew his parents. And Mum had met his mother and said, “He has joined the navy and tell Neville if he comes aboard a ship that he is on will he look after him.” Anyway, lo and behold, he joined the Echuca, and he had gone ashore at Milne Bay

10:30 with a couple of boys, I know I hadn’t, I must have been on duty. And I think it might have been to see a movie at Milne Bay, I forget now. On their way back, because there is troops walking everywhere around then. Anyway, on the way back he got left behind somehow, or lost him or something, and

11:00 the rest of the boys came and someone must have said, “Where is so and so?” And they said, “We thought he come aboard; he was in front of us.” And they said “No he hasn’t shown up yet.” Anyway, a little while later he arrived and he had been badly beaten up. And apparently the some of the Negro troops were mad

11:30 to try and get a hold of grog, anything. And the story goes that the Yanks were that desperate for grog, some of them would even drink the alcohol out of the torpedo, and this was true, apparently they had taken the grog out of the torpedo, and apparently this young bloke ,we asked him what had happened and he was pretty bad, not really bad, but he was bruised and bashed, they

12:00 had taken what money he had on him and all they wanted, demanded was grog and he said, “You can see I am not carrying grog, I haven’t got grog on me.” Whack they hit him. So some of the boys they reckoned they would get even, I didn’t go ashore, I think four of them went. And we also had great big heavy buckled belts that we used to wear

12:30 on our work, and they reckon in a good brawl you can wrap them around your hand and use the buckle as ... So they went back looking for these four blokes, the four Negroes. But they were carrying these cut throat razors in their belt and they held one to what's his names throat and threatened him if he didn’t put them onto some grog. And apparently

13:00 someone must have come along and interrupted this and he ran. Got back to the ship. But that sort of thing happened a lot at different times, I believe, up there. And I think a lot of it could have been drugs too, they used to be sky high. Oh no, I got to know a nice bloke on

13:30 leave in Brisbane, they weren’t, I suppose you get good or bad. But I was in Queen Street one afternoon in Brisbane on leave and this American petty officer, you could tell he was sort of lost, he was looking for something. And I said causally, “Can I help you, are you looking for something?” and he said, “Would

14:00 you know if there are movies on tonight?” I think it was Sunday, it must have been Sunday and I said, “Yeah there are movies on every Sunday night and it is a free charge for servicemen. I will show you where it is.” So we walked along a bit and I showed him where it was and he said, “Would you care for a bite to eat?” this must have been about five o’clock or something. And I said, “Yeah I’ll have a bit to eat.”

14:30 So we went and had something to eat and he said, “Are you going to the …” they don’t call them movies, I forget the word. And I wasn’t but I said, “Yeah.” And we both went. And he was off a motor torpedo boat that was tied up ahead of our ship at the wharf, and I think from memory they

15:00 had brought it in from America on the deck of a ship, a couple of them, and they offloaded them and gave them a trial in the river, fuel them up and off they go. Any rate, he came aboard the ship. He come along the wharf and he came on board the ship. And I mean if it had been today I would have been wary because we got that many queer types getting

15:30 around, today you wouldn’t know who to trust, but this fellow then was pretty good. And we went somewhere else. Another time, I took him to show him something, anyway he came aboard another afternoon to tell me they were leaving the next day and thanked me for what I had done and helped him and I said, “Oh that’s all right don’t worry about it, it was a pleasure to meet you.”

16:00 And do you know before that motor torpedo boat left he came to the quarter master on duty and he said, “Give this to Able Seaman Elliot.” And it was a box of big American cigars. Box of cigars.

16:30 Well I guess the Yanks had a reputation for having the big ships, the big equipment?

And the big money. This used to rile the Australian diggers most, the army boys. They would be lined up somewhere, say in a pub at a bar or

17:00 they might even be going into the movies and they would get up to the cashier and they would have a roll of notes like that and they used to always make sure that everyone could see the money they had. And the poor old Australian army bloke, he would be on peanuts and the Yanks used to always look so smart, they had beautiful uniforms, it was top notch. There was a lot of jealousy between our

17:30 army and their army, believe me a lot of jealousy and a lot of good brawls too. And what used to annoy them all, there might be two troops trains, one troops train carrying Americans, one troop train carrying Australians. And they would hang out the window the Americans and sing out

18:00 something lie, “Like your Australian girls!” things like that., she was bad.

Well I am wondering if you had concerns about the American sailors being in Australia?

No I didn’t.

18:30 I was in, I think it was in Queen Street, General MacArthur had his headquarters in one of the top notch places in the main city centre. And I was walking along there one day and he came out and I bumped into him with all of his

19:00 Entourage, he came flying out of, I think it was a big hotel where he used to be. That was his headquarters when he first came out here to Australia.

And what did you do?

I just said, “Sorry sir.” I think.

19:30 He wasn’t looking where he was going any rate. Well you have mentioned that the Yanks in their sailor outfit was a bit of a magnet for the girls, I am wondering if your own sailor outfit was a bit of a magnet when you were on leave?

No I don’t think so.

20:00 It was annoying to a lot of Australians to see the way the girls used to flock to the Americans. I know they were very good friends of mine too, they were in the yacht club in Lake Macquarie. Two lovely girls and they finished up, they married two Americans and they are living in America now.

20:30 And they were the last two I thought would ever get involved with Americans. Another girl that worked above me when I was in the shipping office, she was a lovely girl and she married an American and he was a deserter and they were after him and I don’t know whether they ever caught up with him. As far as I know she went back to American with him.

21:00 Lots of them married Americans. I suppose when you look at it realistically, quite a couple of my good friends, air force blokes, they married English girls and they came out here. Chap that worked with me he had a good record as a Lancaster pilot and his wife, she is not living here now, he died not long ago and she is now living in Canberra. Same thing applied.

21:30 But they were just something new and modern and plenty of money.

Well you mentioned that you saw plenty of sailors getting into brawls, I am wondering do you know what those brawls were about?

22:00 No, I honestly don’t. We were in a café having tea one night in Brisbane and a bit of a disturbance started out the front, it was only a small scuffle and I think there was four of us sitting at the table and

22:30 within a few second it seemed from about four or six people there was about 20, and they were into it hammer and tongs. And I remember one of my mates was sitting there and, “Sit down,” he said, “Don’t get involved.” And it looked very nasty. I don’t know what it was over and the police finished up, they broke it up and lumbered a couple of fellows and took them away.

23:00 I am trying to think back now. It was Australian army fellows and I think that was American army too, that was involved. It was pretty nasty. But there was a lot of ill feeling like that in Brisbane at the time. And we went to a,

23:30 I remember one night there was a big boxing contest between the American servicemen and the Australian servicemen down at the big racecourse at Hamilton. And everyone was invited to go and support their country and we were in Brisbane at the time and we went along and there must have been about four or five different fights, different weights.

24:00 I tell you what, the barracking was for the Australians, but every boxer the Americans sent out was a big Negro and I tell you what, did they make a mess of the Australian boxers. I can always remember the booing and the cheering going on, one side against the other.

24:30 It was a big night, but the Americans won again.

I have heard that there used to be a bit of a little bit of rivalry I guess between ships and having to defend the name of your ship?

I haven’t heard that, no.

25:00 Cant recall hearing that, no.

Well I am also wondering, and you may not have seen any evidence but I am wondering if you saw an evidence of homosexuality in your time in the navy?

Never.

25:30 I think if anyone had ever tried anything like that they would have been thrown overboard, that’s my opinion. Might have happened in the bigger ships but not in the smaller ships as I

26:00 can recall.

Well I am wondering, on the corvette what is the secret to getting on so well together when you’re away for so long?

Oh. Just don’t know whether it was luck or what, everyone seemed to get on so well together irrespective of what department

26:30 they were from. Whether they were engine room, stokers, telegraphists, you name it they were all good mates. All good mates. You know a good indication of how well we used to get on is the fact that here we are, 60 years later and we have still got an association,

27:00 Well, two associations. The corvettes association and we have got our own Echuca association, and we are still getting 20 to 30 ex-Echuca members at every one of our two year reunions. And then the last national reunion we had was

27:30 in Broad Beach on the Gold Coast, and they reckoned that would never get off the ground because we’re all getting too old. There was nearly 800 at the reunion. Now we went to, the reunion before that was Adelaide and they thought they might have got about 600, 750. And there was nearly 1000, all ex- corvette blokes.

28:00 Even the admiral that spoke at – that must have been Adelaide. He was absolutely amazed at the strong fellowship, and to think

28:30 that so many blokes would still come together after all of that time. He was amazed, he really was.

And what do you think lies at the heart of your affection for the corvette?

Well

29:00 probably one of the main facts they were such a safe little ship. Your officers, I think if you compared officers on corvettes with officers that were on a far bigger ships, it would be like chalk and cheese,

29:30 mainly because, and I don’t think I am wrong. Most of the small ship officers were RANR, Royal Australian Navy Reserve, and I think the bulk of them would have, probably 50% of them, probably came of merchant ships as the captain in the first place, where as you get on a big ship,

30:00 I would say at the time the Perth or the Canberra or the Sydney. They are what we call straight laced, brought up form a kid of 13 at the naval college and strict as you can get, and that, I reckon, is the difference. The Royal Australia Navy fellows are really doing the job they were trained to do, discipline and

30:30 the good of the navy, and where the other type of officer on the smaller ships, I reckon they weren’t real easy going, but there was a bit of leeway, that’s my opinion.

And what made the corvette a really safe ship in your opinion?

31:00 I think it is just the design. Might also be the fact that they have got twin propellers, twin shafts. They have

31:30 got a beam of thirty something feet, good big beam. But you know, actually I can’t say, because I have got nothing else to compare, because I have only been on that type of vessel.

32:00 They reckon destroyers, I know they are a marvellous vessel. But when we were at one of the national reunions at Perth – the Perth organization had organised a special Australian Pacific Tour down the south east, and most of us decided we would do it – and we were standing down at the point where the

32:30 Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean at Albany, right down at the most southern point of Western Australia. And there is a monument there and I walked over to this monument and I read it and I thought, “I never knew that.” There was 10 navy men lost off the destroyer’s deck and disappeared,

33:00 apparently they were massive seas. So you know. And you would think they would be nice and safe, and I had never heard of it before, 10 men.

Yeah that’s a lot. I am wondering, in really rough sea or whatever, where was the safest place on the Echuca?

33:30 The safest place, I would say in the middle of the ship, just about inside what we call the mess deck. Where you come in from the open deck into the main living quarters, say. That’s about the middle of the ship, because that’s

34:00 where you’re pivoting the middle. Well you’re not pivoting but that’s the least area that is moving up and down.

34:30 How could you stop yourself from slipping and sliding around?

Sometimes good luck. I can’t recall that the decks ever becoming what you would call real slippery. And in rough weather we would be wearing sea boots, and the sea

35:00 boots gave you a certain amount of grip. I never had any trouble with that regard, moving around. No I can’t think of why.

Well you mentioned when you went to

35:30 Thursday Island you were the only white person. I am wondering whether you had had any contact with the locals up in New Guinea?

No, a couple of places we weren’t allowed to go ashore. There was one place Morobe, M O R O B E, I remember that .and we were dying to get ashore to have a look around the village and that was taboo. It was one of the worst places on the coast line for malaria mosquitoes, and they

36:00 wouldn’t let us go ashore. And even though we were taking what they call Atebrin tablets all of the time, but they still wouldn’t let us go ashore. There was that and something else, might have been scrub typhus, but it was a renowned area for it. So the only natives I come across were New Guinea natives at

36:30 Milne Bay and up at Finschhafen. But I saw plenty in the Torres Strait Islands. They are a wonderful, they are. We would be at sea doing survey work, and a pearling lug would come sailing towards us, we used to barter, they would give us pearl shell and we would give them a packet of tea or something.

37:00 They loved tobacco, so we would give them a packet of tobacco and they would give us pearl shell or something. They were wonderful people, and we were in Thursday Island on one special occasion, I think they called it a corroboree, I don’t know whether they do there or not. But they put this special night on for us with all of their traditional gear.

37:30 They were a ferocious looking mob. They were the last of the head hunters in the Pacific, did you know that? The last head hunters, big sturdy fellows but they were very nice people. Completely different to the Aboriginals we have,

38:00 and in some ways, they might be a little bit similar with the New Guinea natives. Because, actually they are not far away from the New Guinea coastline the islands. It is a pretty spot up there, all of those islands. The other night on ‘Getaway’ or one of those travel shows, what was it called? Coconut Island.

38:30 Well I am wondering if you can just explain a bit more why you came in contact with New Guinea natives and what you would be doing with them?

Oh just seeing them, not in contact with them. If you were moving around in Milne Bay you would see them, but

39:00 I never, ever spoke to any of them at all. Same in Finschhafen. You would see them, they used to keep well away from everyone but you would see them. The only natives I spoke with, Australian Aborigines we were around

39:30 near the Kimberleys there somewhere, and we were doing survey work and erecting beacons, and the chap I was with, there was only three of us, and a chap said to me, “There is someone watching us in the scrub.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” and he said, “There is someone watching us; have a look.” And when I turned around there was this Abo [Aboriginal] with all of the paintwork on.

40:00 He looked pretty ferocious, too. And they just stood there and watched us for a while, there was two of them, carrying a spear each. And I think one of the boys had a packet of tobacco in his pocket, and he went like this and they both came in and we gave them some tobacco and they yabbered away and away they went. But they were really proper Aborigines.

40:30 And then the others, the only ones I met were the Torres Strait Islanders. Yeah.

I can imagine that would have been an eye opener for you?

With the Aborigines? It was.

41:00 We were fishing somewhere too, we were given what they call – there is a special word for it – we had been on the go for quite a while and we were given this special leave.

41:30 Anyway, on the Echuca, we went from Darwin up around the northern area and back around into this big bay, it was a lovely spot. Recreational leave, that’s what it was, for three days. And there is a lot of people flying up there on special fishing tours,

42:00 like you see on these fishing shows.

42:01 End of tape

Tape 8

00:30 Neville, you were just telling a story about being in the Northern Territory?

Yes, we went on recreational leave by ship, we went with the Echuca and we went into this protected bay in the Northern Territory for this three days of recreation leave,

01:00 where the boys could take the whaler, which is a 25 or 27 foot sailing boat. Which is a life boat as well. We could take it away sailing, which we used to do. And then we also carried a 16 foot launch, and we could take that away and go fishing in the protected bay, and some of the boys elected to be

01:30 landed on the shore, and they were getting oysters, huge oysters they were. And some of the boys would go ashore and do some shooting., there were wild pigs there and we saw quite a few water buffalo, which we didn’t shoot and kangaroos, and had a really good time.

02:00 Lazed about and it was a lovely few days, yeah, that was nice there. Now I believe it is very popular with sports fisherman, they fly to Darwin and fly with light plane further out. It is out on what they call the Coburg Peninsula. It is a lovely spot.

02:30 I wonder Neville, something that we haven’t talked to you about today I don’t think, I think you mentioned on the Echuca you had a job in the paint locker?

Yes. Well there is always one AB responsible for the issuing of paint that is used on the ship. And a cobber of mine used to look after the paint there, that was his job.

03:00 And he got a draft to another corvette, he wasn’t too happy about it either. And he said to me, “You want to make application to take over the paint locker.” and so I saw the chief petty officer and he said, “Yeah you can have it.” It wasn’t as good a job I thought as it panned out. I used to get nine pence a day extra,

03:30 I think for being in charge of the paint locker, we used to call it . And we had all of these big containers of different coloured paints, you could name it. And I was going along like wild fire. The captain approached me one day and he said, “Elliot, I would like you to do a little job for me.”

04:00 I said, “Yes sir?” he said, “I would like the wardroom repainted.” And I said, “Oh?” he said, “You have done painting before?” I said, “Oh yeah, I have done a little bit.” He should have known, because we were always painting the ship. I think it was the wardroom, and I said, “What colour would you like, sir?”

04:30 He said, “Come up with a couple and let me have a look and I will pick one.” Anyway, he picked one off the colour chart I had there, but I had to mix paint to get the right colour, which I fluked close to it. And I finished up, I painted the interior of the wardroom. And then he wanted his own cabin painted out and he wanted the same colour.

05:00 And I couldn’t get the colour right. Anyway, I finally got something fairly close to it. But it was a bad place to be doing anything a bit rough because the fumes from the oil and the turps [turpentine] and all of this stuff was pretty crook; it would soon turn your stomach up. Fortunately, when it was really bad weather you couldn’t work in there because it was like that and you wouldn’t stay in there, it was right up in the, well you

05:30 only had the anchor locker in front of you where the anchor used to come down on a chain. It was all right for a while. But then I got a ship writer, I got that job for a little while. The writer that we had was a great mate of mine he came from Shepparton,

06:00 bonzer bloke. And he got drafted to another slightly bigger ship. And I didn’t want the job. Captain Nevenfold called me up one day and said, “We’re losing our ship’s writer.” And I said, “Yes I am aware of that, sir.” And he said, “I see you were a shipping clerk?” he had looked up the records and everything. He said, “Can you type?”

06:30 I said, “Yeah.” “Right,” he said, “You have got the job.” So I had for a while. It was a good easy job, bit of typing, bit of writing, bit of filing. Filing yeah. Didn’t get extra money for it, though.

Well can you tell

07:00 me now Neville, when you heard the news that the war was over?

Yeah, unfortunately I was on duty out at the ammunition depot at Geebung, and we heard it from one of the other boys. See, out at the ammunition depot there was a private home in the middle of the sight and we used to,

07:30 that was our accommodation headquarters. And I am nearly sure someone was up there with the radio going, we had a radio up there and yelled out, “The war is over.” So of course, we went on with a bit of, “Coo-ee!” and these ammunition experts decided the next night

08:00 they would use some of the magnesium flares to give the locals a show. Which they did; it was a beaut show, too! They went berserk in Brisbane, even where we were, we could hear horns blowing, ships’ hooters going. You could hear the noise, you know.

08:30 They went mad in the main street of Brisbane, I believe. Marvellous. Was fun for everyone. But when the war finished in Europe, they put a special big march on in Brisbane, and we were in Brisbane, we were tied up at the time, and the message came out that they wanted all ships companies to assemble at the northern entry of

09:00 the big bridge. Doesn’t matter, I have been over it that many times. For this big march down through the centre. There was quite a lot of sailors and the American army was strong in Brisbane then and we had this great big parade down the main street, and the Americans couldn’t march in a fit, they were the sloppiest marchers we had ever seen.

09:30 Yeah. That was a big day. That was to celebrate the end of the European war. So I missed out on all of the celebrations for the end of the Pacific War, not that it worried me.

10:00 They were good, you know, when I think of all of the time I had to wait in Moreton depot for things to be done and for a draft to go to a ship, I caught a troops train from Brisbane, I had to go through to Sydney, I caught the troop train and I know there was a lot of army boys on there with me.

10:30 But I had my kit bag in the carriage with me, in the compartment, and I had all of my souvenirs in there, it was as heavy as lead. And I think I might have got in touch with my brother, I believe I might have rung him up the day before to say I was coming through on the train. I found out what the train number was,

11:00 to meet me on the railway station, the train wouldn’t be stopped for long. And when we pulled into Broadmeadow Station we never even stopped, still moving slowly, and I didn’t have time to get around to the doorway and so I passed my big kitbag out the window to my brother and it was that heavy he fell over on the platform. “What have you got in here?” he said. I had a lot of stuff.

11:30 All we had was a sea bag, a round very heavy canvas bag. And you just pulled the top closed. But it held a lot of gear.

What did you have in it that was so heavy?

Some ammunition.

12:00 A 303 rifle, taken apart, that was in there. Ammunition for it, pearl shell. Something else I bought in Thursday Island, I forget what that was. I had a lot of beautiful shells too, that’s right. I had been collecting a lot of shells up in the

12:30 Torres Straits and I had them wrapped in a foam like stuff so they didn’t get damaged, they were in there. That’s about it. The rest was clothing. Oh, big greatcoat rolled up in there too, but they wouldn’t let me keep my hammock. I wanted to keep my hammock, right or wrong, they were the most

13:00 comfortable thing I have ever slept in, they were. You know the ship could do what it liked, but the old hammock, it just went like that.

I wonder Neville, if you can tell me about the welcome you got when you came home to your family?

It was beaut, yeah, that was really good.

13:30 There was quite a few local boys came home about the same time and the local, at that time there wasn’t just, now it is just Newcastle City Council takes in the whole, but at the time when we came back they were still operating small councils for most of the bigger suburbs, and the local mayor, he put on a big welcome

14:00 for all of the ex-servicemen that were home at the time. And we went along, and a couple of other fellows I knew, and we were presented with a lovely big charter, a lovely wallet and

14:30 I think it might have been like a writing bureau. Pad and envelopes and you fold it up, it was very good of them, yeah. It was good of them. That was there, the family were, you know, pleased to see me. The relations, the whole family used to live all around the same area, they were really close knit all of the relations.

15:00 They were all thrilled. My two cousins that were in the army, one had one arrived home before I did, the other one he was with the 9th div, he was stuck up in Borneo waiting, and he was a while before they got a ship out of Borneo.

15:30 It was good to be home. But then, I was telling on the phone the other day one of the nicest things that happened when I came home, when I went back to my old job, my boss was a fine old gent called Mr Andreeson.

16:00 And his father had been a, or his grandfather had been a Barakanteens captain sailing around Cape Horn, a lovely man he was. And he shook hands and welcomed me back and all of that. “I suppose you’re pleased it is all over? Blah, blah.” And he said, “Come in the office I want to give you something.” And he handed me a big envelope

16:30 and he said, “That’s for you.” And I said, “What is it?” and he said, “Well open it and have a look.” And it was a Commonwealth Savings Bank passbook, and he had found out what I had been getting a day, and then he had compared that with what I would have been getting on a weekly wage, and he had banked the difference of that every week. And I

17:00 think, at that time, I think it was in the vicinity of three or four hundred pound, and in those days that was a lot of money. But that’s what he had done. I will never forget that. Apparently a lot of even the bigger companies did do the same thing. I had never heard of it.

17:30 And I was disappointed and sad when I finally found I couldn’t knuckle down in an office all day and when I had to tell him that I felt about it pretty strongly and I couldn’t stay on. And fortunately we had put another young fellow on before this and I had been teaching him and

18:00 so I didn’t leave him in the lurch. He said he understood. We kept in contact, if I was in Newcastle I would go up and see him. He was a wonderful man. And he finished up he got highly decorated by one of the European countries because he had acted as a vice consulate in Newcastle

18:30 for them. he got a big write up in the Newcastle paper, showing the photo of the presentation of this award.

Why do you think it was that you think you couldn’t settle back into the job?

Too used to the open air, I would say.

19:00 When I finished from the navy, I went and saw Mr Andreeson and said I would like to have a few weeks, sort of to get settled down before I came back into work, and he was happy about that. So I took six weeks and I went up to Kendall

19:30 and a very good friend of mine was a tractor driver for the timber company I finished up working for, strange to say. And I used to go out in the forest with them and we would camp for the week and do all of the logging, falling trees and it was fantastic. And then I went back to the office. I have always loved the bush.

20:00 What was it that you missed about the navy life?

Mates and fellowship. It took a while to get used to being back as a civilian.

20:30 In some ways you think about these things, it was offered to us that we stay on and possibly if I hadn’t have been thinking about getting married eventually, I think I might have stayed on, but Jill and I were engaged at the time and I thought it

21:00 wasn’t fair on her. See, I would have had to stay on for another five or eight years. But I decided not to. I had a couple of approaches from them, and later on I also had a letter form them they wanted me to remain on the naval reserve, but to do that I would have had to periodically go down to Sydney. Well that

21:30 would have been all right, but at the time when they wrote to me the last time we were living in Kendall, well there was no way I was going to travel all of the way backwards and forwards down there from Kendall so I didn’t worry about it.

Well I wonder how you think the navy or the war changed you?

How it has changed now?

22:00 No, changed you while you were?

Oh, I don’t think it would have changed me a great deal.

22:30 No, I don’t know I couldn’t say.

Well I wonder then, how it maybe developed you into the person you became, what it taught you and gave you in terms of skills?

I learnt a lot. Which I never followed on to use.

23:00 I learnt navigation when I was on the bridge quite a lot. This first lieutenant who I mentioned was a keen yachtsman pre-war Ken Girlay, he taught me navigation, he taught me how to use a sextant, all of the other navigation routines he taught me all of that. And he also taught me

23:30 something else about map reading, this is while we were on duty up in the bridge. And Kenny Brown, my mate who was the leading signal man. He taught me all about the signalling flags, but I couldn’t ever have used it after the war; but I could have made a good go of navigation. If I had, I

24:00 might have decided to go ocean racing or something because I was ocean mad at the time. Well, I didn’t. it was something that you don’t learn everyday, sun sights and star sights. I would say probably it taught me how to get on with people better.

24:30 And also it taught me discipline, it really taught me discipline. And how to save your money.

25:00 Well over your time in the service I wonder if there are any moments that stand out as the proudest?

25:30 The proudest. There must be something.

I just wonder at times that you felt that you and your ship

26:00 were really doing your job and you were really helping the war effort? Yeah. Probably the proudest moments would have been,

26:30 I think, some of the convoys, particularly with the convoying out of Brisbane North, there might be some old tans steamers carrying a great gathering of army blokes going north . And we would have to drop that convoy to another

27:00 lot of naval vessels and as we would turn away all of the army blokes would be waving on the deck as we left them. that was quite a stirring moment, them sort of thanking us for what we had done for them then. Quite often we got a lot of waves from some of the boys going north.

27:30 Other than that, I used to feel very proud if I was in a march anywhere. I remember that march I mentioned, the cessation of hostilities in Europe.

28:00 That’s when I really felt proud because that’s one thing they really taught us at Cerberus was marching. And that’s what I said, the Americans looked so sloppy, and not just us but all of the other ships represented in that march looked so smart. Because everyone was marching in time, in step, their arms were

28:30 swinging, I felt really proud. And then the other, I even feel proud now when we go to Echuca every two years, we go down there for Anzac Day. And even thought there is only 20 or 30 of us, I feel proud when we lead the march, it is something that you will never forget.

29:00 Well I wonder Neville, you mentioned marching on Anzac Day, what does Anzac Day mean to you as a returned serviceman?

It means a lot, that, well it’s a shame

29:30 that so many wonderful young lives were lost in the First World War. And I agree with what's done for Anzac Day, because it should never be forgotten what losses we have and how brave our fellows were in that conflict.

30:00 And that’s what I don’t know, I might have funny idea, but that’s what concerned me and I was very upset when George Bush decided to do what he has done in Iraq and it has cost so many lives and it is going to cost more before it is all finished. And it is causing so much damage. He was going to fix

30:30 everything but I think all he has done is upset everything. Admittedly the chap that was there, he wasn’t popular with everyone but they still haven’t got him. But Anzac Day I think is very important, it is a great day for old mates to get back, they mightn’t see each other until every Anzac Day and it is a wonderful comradeship and I think its

31:00 Wonderful, I do. I used to march down here at Port every year, and I had some very good mates, ex-navy mates used to be in Port Macquarie, but most of them they were with government departments or something, and they have been moved on, transferred. And I was secretary of the association here for years

31:30 and we were losing that many over the time that I just couldn’t keep it going. And it’s going again now but I have never rejoined. These reunions I think are wonderful. I didn’t know about the Echuca association until it had been going for about six years I think,

32:00 but I have been to every one since. And the national one, I heard about it when they first got it going and I have been to quite a few of those. To me it is a lot of travelling. We flew to the west for Perth. I don’t know how many times I have driven from here to Echuca; it is a long way.

32:30 And we done Adelaide twice; but it is great. We make a holiday of it, from there we cut across to the coast and see the boys and see the daughters in Newcastle. It is a great break.

I guess what sort of things do you talk about when the old mates got together?

What do we talk about? Oh you know the old saying, “Remember when? Remember when?”

33:00 Then you ask them, “What are you doing these days?” A lot of them, “How is your family?” A lot of them, their family comes with them. Our Echuca reunion is a beauty. As Jill said, the last one we went to – what a shame it will be if it doesn’t keep going.

33:30 Jill reckons it is just like a big happy family. And all the wives love it, they can get and have a talk and they go and look at the shops, and the people of Echuca, they think it is wonderful. We were honorary guest members of the Big Moama club across the river from Echuca; boy, do they look after

34:00 us! They are wonderful. They put on, usually, a special night, and it is good. But I don’t know how long we can keep going with the Echuca one because some of our boys are getting very old. Quite a lot in their early 80s, you know. Some that joined up

34:30 very early in the piece and some where what we called perms, they joined the permanent navy before the war. But we’re still going. I wonder Neville, looking back over your time in the service what advice would you give to a young man who came to you today and said he wanted to join the navy because there is a war on?

Well, I can tell you exactly.

35:00 When I left the service I had one of my cousins from my mother’s brother’s son he was, and he was a bit of a handful. There was three boys and a girl in the family, and Russell was the second eldest boy. And he was at that stage, he was about

35:30 18 or more, he was becoming a handful for his parents. And his father, this was the man form World War 1 very hard man, and I knew that if he kept going the way he was his father would be nasty, he had a very bad temper. And I said to Russell one time, “You know your trouble?”

36:00 and he said, “What's that?” and I said, “You need a bit of discipline, the best thing you could do is join the navy mate.” And lo and behold he did. And it wasn’t long after I had the talk with him that he decided to join, and he joined for twelve years. Now that boy, his father was a very good engineer, this World War 1 chappy. Very good engineer,

36:30 and he had picked a lot of things up from his Dad, in experience. He finished up in the ERA, engine room artificer, and he finished up a chief petty office on one of the big aircraft carriers. He had a terrific career, and he thanked me when he got out, he said, “The best thing I ever done was join the navy.” Another, Jill’s cousin, he

37:00 used to come up and stay with us at Kendall and I used to arrange to get him out in the forest, watching the loggers. Bonzer [terrific] bloke and he was thinking about joining the navy. And I said to him, “Don’t miss it, the conditions are now miles better than what we experienced.” And he finished up, he was at the atomic explosion at Montebello. Travelled the world, he did.

37:30 He came out of the navy and he joined the police force and it was very sad, he was doing a higher course, used to travel from Newcastle over the Atherton Way, over to, might have been Sydney, I don’t know. No he wouldn’t go that way to Sydney. Anyway, they were in a police car, he was a sergeant and a police constable was with him and they were

38:00 coming back from this college, head on collision and was killed, but he was the licensing sergeant at Wollongong for quite a few years. Bonzer bloke. But he saw the world in the navy.

Sounds like you should have been a navy recruiter after the war?

Well, I told my second eldest boy that’s one of his options he could have done. But he wanted to do forestry, go to uni but I couldn’t get him in.

38:30 He finished up he done ag [agricultural] college and he went through there all right, and he went to Armidale uni [university] some years later and done some higher course for education.

Well I am wondering Neville, we are coming to the end of our session today, is there anything that you would like to say in closing or anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to say now?

39:00 I don’t think so. All I can say is, it might have been 60 years ago, I would have done it again and I enjoyed every minute of it and made some wonderful friends.

39:30 Thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope I have given you enough of what happened and what we done, it has been very good.

I wonder if those memories of your great times in the navy are amongst the clearest and most important?

40:00 Yeah I have often spoken to the family about different things. They will say something and I would say, “Oh, we didn’t do that when I was in the navy.” Most of them know. I have enjoyed your interviewing, it was very good.

40:30 Well, we have enjoyed it, too, so thank you very much for today.

Thank you.

40:42 End of tape