TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL HISTORY RECORDING Accession number S00989 Title Gullison, Dulcie Interviewer Thompson, Ruth Place made Not stated Date made 22 November 1990 Description Dulcie Gullison, Australian Women's Land Army, interviewed by Ruth Thompson for The Keith Murdoch Sound Archive of Australia in the War of 1939-45 DULCIE GULLISON 2 of 37 Disclaimer The Australian War Memorial is not responsible either for the accuracy of matters discussed or opinions expressed by speakers, which are for the reader to judge. Transcript methodology Please note that the printed word can never fully convey all the meaning of speech, and may lead to misinterpretation. Readers concerned with the expressive elements of speech should refer to the audio record. It is strongly recommended that readers listen to the sound recording whilst reading the transcript, at least in part, or for critical sections. 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Any request to use of the transcript, outside the purposes of research and study, should be addressed to: Australian War Memorial GPO Box 345 CANBERRA ACT 2601 DULCIE GULLISON 3 of 37 BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE A. Identification: This is an interview with Dulcie Gullison on 22 November 1990. I'm Ruth Thompson. Can you tell me just a little bit about your family background? Where were you born? I was born in Cooma and went to school in Jindabyne and in Queanbeyan. That was Queanbeyan. You were in high school in Queanbeyan? In high school in Queanbeyan, yes. And what did your parents do for work? My father was a railwayman. We were a large family. And my four brothers went to the war and my two sisters were also - they were all classified as returned soldiers. So what, were your brothers in the army? Three in the army and one in the air force. And what about your sister? One was an AWA, and one was an AAMWA. So there was a real tradition of serving your country. Yes, very strong in our family. I was the only one that was way out on a limb because I couldn't pass the medical to go into any of those services. You really wanted to go into one of the other services, did you? Not particularly. I did always feel that I would have loved to have been on the land. And what did you do before you joined the Land Army? Had you done some education after you left school? Had you got a job after you left school? No, I had very little education, very, very little. I left school at thirteen, after a car accident, and I never returned to school. So did you do any work? I worked in a shop in Canberra for a couple of years, and I helped at home a lot. What sort of a shop was that? It was a dress and haberdashery type of thing. DULCIE GULLISON 4 of 37 Before the war happened what were your ambitions? How did you see your life progressing? I just didn't. All I really thought that some day I might write something. This was, I suppose, a dream of most growing up people. But apart from that I didn't seem to have any ambitions. What did you want to write? Oh, I suppose I was rather serious. I always thought I'd write about the world. And I always had a regard for earthy things like [inaudible] rocks and minerals and trees and grass and things like that. So as you were growing up as a child did you play a lot in the bush? How did your affinity for the land grow? Yes, always. We grew up in the bush and we, sort of, caught rabbits to eke out an existence, you know, because money was scarce in those days. We always kept our own cow and an old horse but I think we had a very happy childhood. Were you a bit of a tomboy, if you had all those brothers? Yes, you had to be. You couldn't not be. Can you tell me a little bit about the car accident that you had? Well, I was watching two boys fighting in a tree trying to take down a bird's nest and me, in my usual bullying way, I raced across the road to try and stop them and walked straight into the front of a car. So you were obviously rushed off to hospital. I was rushed off to hospital. I was a few days before I came round, and the doctor decided that I shouldn't go back to school that year. But then I was quite a help at home so my mother decided that it may be better if I stayed home and helped her. Were your brothers older or younger than you? Older, mostly - one younger. And what sort of things did you do in your leisure time? (5.00) Growing up, we rode bikes everywhere. We lived in Queanbeyan then and the general thing was to ride your bike everywhere, and I think that was mostly our main leisure. Were there any members of your family who served in the first world war? No. And what was your family's and your reaction when you knew that Australia was going to take part in the second world war? DULCIE GULLISON 5 of 37 Well, I felt for my mother because she had lost her two brothers in the first war. One of them died of influenza in France afterwards and the other one they never, ever found. So that I knew that she was terribly worried that our boys would go. But she didn't expect girls to go also. And then she was most concerned when one of my sisters went to Morotai with the army and the other one was in Darwin when it was bombed. One brother was a prisoner of war in Malaysia for many - for the duration of the war. But they all came home. And what was your mother's reaction when her children wanted to sign up? She just accepted it as the inevitable. She was quite resigned to it. And the girls as well? Yes, she didn't seem to worry that very much. She had one daughter still at home. My elder sister was home and she was very close. But then I couldn't join the Land Army even because they asked you, in those days you had to bring your own doctor's medical certificate to say that you were fit. And when I saw him he just rejected me and said, 'You'll just have to have your tonsils out before you go anywhere'. And after a series of cold after cold after cold, I finally had them out and my health improved and I was much better. So it was only the tonsils that was making you fail the medical? Holding me back, yes. And my eyesight. I never did pass the medical properly. I think I had it about a couple of years after I was in the Land Army, out of the blue once when we were in Sydney on leave we were sent out to Victoria Barracks and they gave me a list of things that ... As I hadn't had any sick leave they gave me a list of things that I wasn't to do. Silly things like I wasn't to climb and I wasn't to do any driving, and all this sort of thing because of my shortsightedness. But I mean, the first job you got when I went to a farm at Maitland was work in the silos, and climbing up those ladders was very, very hard on you. So none of your problems with the medical had to do with your car accident? Oh no, that was only .... What did I have? What do you have when you have a cut on the head? A fracture? No, oh, it's got a name. Um, what do they call that? Concussion. It was concussion I was suffering from. So you didn't have any broken bones? No, it was just a cut on the head, was all I suffered for that. So when war broke out you were working in the dress shop in Canberra. Did you join any voluntary groups like the Red Cross or ...? No. Oh, I had been going to St John's Ambulance lessons in the old fire station in Canberra. And a few lessons in Queanbeyan also. DULCIE GULLISON 6 of 37 You didn't join the Emergency Signalling Corps, or any of those sorts ...? No, I had no intentions of joining those. I wanted to go away.