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

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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.

Were any other members of your family involved in the war effort? You mentioned your brothers and your sisters. What about your parents, did they do ...?

No, they didn't seem to .... I mean, they had the home to care for and they were quite involved in that. And my mother was a very shy person and she didn't involve herself in any of those activities.

(10.00) So why did you decide to join the Land Army?

Well, it was the outdoor life. And another thing was, I resented the fact that in the army you had to salute all the officers, and this was a bit of a gripe with me and I didn't want that. And apart from the fact that Land Army was my first choice, I always resented that.

So even if you had got the medical - passed the medical - for any of the other services you would still have preferred the Land Army?

Yes. A lot of girls from the Land Army did transfer to other services after they had been in the Land Army but that thought did cross my mind and if I'd passed the medical I might do that, but no, I was quite happy as a Land girl.

And how old were you when you enlisted?

I'm not sure now. I was one of the older ones, I know, in our camp. It was '43. How was I when I ...?

1919 you were born.

Yes. About twenty-four I think I was.

And what did your family and your friends think about your decision to join the Land Army?

My sisters thought it was a great joke, they really did.

They were already in the services.

Yes. They were in before me, yes. And they thought this was a bit of a, you know, I wasn't really doing a war effort, they were, type of thing.

So they rather looked down on you?

Definitely. And then while I was in camp one of the girls wrote an article for a paper called the Salt, which was a little army-issue paper. And she showed it to me and - we'd been digging holes all that day, you see, and she thought it was a good subject so she wrote this DULCIE GULLISON 7 of 37 article on digging holes. And I looked at it and the grammar was dreadful. And I thought, I won't hurt her feelings, I just let it go, and she published it and she'd put my name in front of hers. My family was so furious with me (laughs).

And what about your friends, what did they think about you joining up?

Well, I found that as soon as you joined up you lost your friends at home. They just didn't seem to exist any more. You'd go to see them but there wasn't that same thing with friends at home. Your friends were in the Land Army.

So you didn't actually join up with a particular friend?

No.

You just joined up on your own.

While I was waiting to join up while I had this wretched tonsils out, two or three girls said to me, 'I'll join with you', but they couldn't wait. They went in ahead of me.

So can you sort of take me through the process of joining up? Where did you actually go to?

Oh, I just wrote a letter from home and they finally sent me back .... I sent the application in with the medical certificate and they finally wrote back and gave me a date to come to Sydney. Then they just issued us with all our gear on that one day and I think we went off to Bathurst perhaps the next.

And so how did you get from Queanbeyan and Canberra to Sydney?

By train, of course.

So was there a whole group of you on the train?

No, I came individually from Canberra. But then when we got to, when we went to Bathurst of course there were a lot of us going to the camp in Bathurst. That would be perhaps half full of rookies, as we were, on our first day out.

And were you split into groups?

Yes, in that camp we were in particular. In Bathurst there were four different - I think it was three or four - different groups of people working on the farm, on the Edgell's asparagus.

Can you tell me what conditions were like in the camp in Bathurst?

Well, it was the biggest shock to the system, I think, to all of us that we'd ever had, because everybody came from a home. We went into this huge, big, empty place - bare boards, little iron beds. We were handed a palliasse each to fill with straw. My first night these all scratched and screeched all night. I don't think any of us slept that first night. There were no electricity. We were all running around with either lamps or candles, I forget which now. It was terribly hard. And to get water .... There were showers actually. We had quite good hot DULCIE GULLISON 8 of 37 showers that had been erected out in the back yard, in a type of courtyard at the back of the building. But the conditions were just so different from anything anybody had ever realised.

(15.00) How many of you were sleeping ...?

In the particular, in the old Mount ... there were different people. For instance the governor's old bedroom held about sixteen people. I was fortunate, I was in his dressing room and there were four of us. But different rooms held different numbers of girls.

Can you just tell me a little bit about the actual building? This was Mount Pleasant which is now known as Abercrombie House.

Yes. To us it was a wonderful old building. Of course it was full of ghosts as far as we were concerned. It was something like you'd see in a dream. It was something like they would use on a movie. It was just so different from .... It was all these big slabs of stone. And down in the cellars were still the - I'm not sure what you'd call them - but where they locked the convicts up and held their hands up - where they had to sit up and sleep all night with their hands in these locks - and those were still there when we were there. And I suppose they're still there.

What was the food like?

Well, we ate it. It was a matter of eat it or starve. But our main thing I remember about the food .... I don't remember anything about food except that before we went of a morning, because we were leaving, I think it was about three o'clock or three thirty. It was at daybreak anyhow. We were all given a slab of bread and jam each to eat on the bus on the way in to the fields of asparagus. Then about eight or nine o'clock somebody would arrive with a couple of kerosene buckets full of tea and our breakfasts for us then.

Just going back to the time when you enlisted in Sydney, did they issue you with uniforms there?

Yes, that very day we received, from memory, we must have had two overalls of the old bib and brace kind, and perhaps two khaki shirts, a dress to go out in, a brown felt hat, and nice army shoes. I can't remember whether we bought the stockings or they did. And our overcoats were very special because they were made with some material which had been sent out for the Americans but came too late for them for the winter and they had used our material for the Americans so we got this lovely material for our overcoats.

Were you keen to wear the uniform?

Yes, we were very proud wearing uniforms, and I think I could honestly say that every girl, ever in the Land Army, was most particular about the way she dressed when she went out.

So did you feel that you were well provided for in terms of clothing and equipment, or not?

Well, the clothing was .... I mean they even issued us with these old woollen singlets and things. I mean they were real passion killers sort of thing. But we accepted them. Nobody DULCIE GULLISON 9 of 37 ever questioned anything in those days. Not like the present day set-up. You didn't question any of these things.

How did you feel during those first few weeks when you were at Bathurst?

Terrible (laughs). I think that everyone in the whole place felt the same, and that gave us some reason to carry on because we all felt, you know, we all had the same feeling.

How did you get on with the other girls?

It was great. I enjoyed the company of the other girls. We were such a mixed bag of people. There were people from all walks of life, and it was that made it so much more interesting. I was with one girl that had come from Parramatta, and another dreamier girl who was an artist, and little Jess Harriss[?]. She was only sixteen and she was the life of the place. The girls themselves .... And we'd formed those friendships that we still have.

(20.00) So it was a very special bond.

Oh definitely, yes.

And what sort of things did you used to do after work hours?

Sleep. We were all just so tired, 'cause none of us, I don't think, had ever done a day's work like that before.

Did you ever go into town at the weekends?

We'd go into town, yes, and you'd be so tired you could hardly move but you still went into town. But it was very difficult there because that was all right if you had your day off the day the bus went. But if you went other days you either had to get permission to take the horse and dray or pay for a taxi which was quite without our ranges. So that .... Sometimes you stayed home because just didn't have enough money to go to town.

How much were you paid, can you remember?

From memory, I think it was ten shillings a week.

And the Edgell's presumably paid that to you direct, did they?

When we worked for Edgell's, yes, they paid us direct. And Edgell's, bless them, they gave us all ten shillings each for Christmas, an unheard of thing in those days.

So you felt this was a generous gesture?

Oh, we did, we really did.

The rooms that you were in in Abercrombie House, or Mount Pleasant as it was known then, did you attempt to sort of decorate them in any way? Hang pictures, or ...

DULCIE GULLISON 10 of 37

No way whatever.

Was this because you were just too exhausted and couldn't be bothered?

I don't know why, because we only seemed to go to our rooms to sleep. While ever there was any fresh air we used to lay out in the grass and sleep in the afternoons, because we finished work about three, I suppose it would be, it was very early. We'd come home and just like down outside in the grass and go to sleep.

And was there a sort of recreation room down in the house?

There was a big mess room where we had our meals that we used. We had a couple of concerts and things there put on by a few people. But most of us I think spent more of our time outside than in the actual building because there were no lights once it got dark. You see, we were all glad to go to bed.

So how did you go with the concert, with no lights, et cetera?

They had [inaudible] lamps and a few candles and - you can always make do when you have to.

Can you remember anything about the concerts that they had there?

Only that I was amazed at how good some of the girls were, to me, because I came from the bush and I'd never been to concerts and things, and they fascinated me. They were just so clever.

Did you receive any training when you joined the Land Army?

No.

What about training on the job by the employer?

Some farmers might try and train you but it was all by trial and error. The whole thing was just trial and error the whole way through.

So you basically just got stuck in as best you could.

As best you could.

Just talking about Edgell's at the moment, and not the other ones that you worked at, were there men working there when you arrived?

There was one man there who I think removed the asparagus. As we filled these little asparagus box things, I think he removed all those. And he looked after the horses after we had finished. He fed and watered the horses and groomed them and they were his responsibility.

Presumably there were more men working within the factory.

DULCIE GULLISON 11 of 37

Yes.

So did you have much contact with them, or not?

No, none whatever.

So were there any other instances where you felt opposition from workers who were already there?

No, we never ever saw that. It never even entered my head to have even have thought of such a thing.

So was there very little interaction between the Land Army and ...

The local people?

... well, either the local community or the workers at Edgell's?

No, none. We just were there to cut this asparagus, which we did. When we first went there, I mean, I don't know how they suffered us those first weeks, any more than we suffered them. But you see, we weren't used to horses, and it just so happened that I happened to get a job with the horse. Each person had to take their turn at cutting asparagus 'cause it's so back- breaking, but two people had to work with the horse and sleigh each day. And it was up and down these furrows with this horse and sleigh. Well, that was all right on fine days but on wet, in that wet slippery mud, we'd tip the cart over nearly every corner we came to for the first few weeks until we learnt how to handle them. But you had to learn the hard way, there was no one to teach you.

(25.00) And who was supervising you?

The one man that looked after the horses. And out of our own girls we had a gang leader for each little group.

And what was her responsibility?

Just probably to keep us all as a group. She didn't have any power of any sort.

So discipline was fairly lax.

Discipline was lax but nobody thought of not doing their work. We just went ahead and did it.

So you were really encouraged to work as a team.

Yes, for Edgell's.

And what about if any of the girls did something wrong back at the camp, what happened then?

They were just confined to camp on their rest days. DULCIE GULLISON 12 of 37

And who would have meted out the punishments?

We had - in a big camp like that - we had a matron and an assistant matron, as well as cooks, because it was quite a large camp.

So they were the ones who ...

They meted out the discipline.

And what about things like parades and route marches, did you go on any of those?

They took us on a route march once, and we sat down and wouldn't come back, so we never had another route march, because we were averaging - oh, I've forgotten the time now - but we walked miles and miles each day cutting asparagus up and down those furrows, so that when they took us on our .... The first day we were there we had this route march and there was never anymore.

Just getting back to the pay, did you think you should have been paid more than you were?

At the time it didn't occur to me. We just accepted it, like sheep. I don't think that any of us had ever .... I had never handled money very much in my life, you see, so it didn't mean much to me.

You didn't think that women should be receiving the same amount of pay as men?

No, I don't think we ever discussed it or thought about it. I know I came out of the Land Army with less money than I went in with.

Why was that?

Because of expenses. You had to buy all your own stamps and writing material and your own fruit if you wanted it, your toilet things. Depended I suppose, on just how you wanted to live.

And did you go home fairly frequently?

When we could.

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE B

Identification: This is tape one, side B.

You were going to tell me a little bit about the horses, which obviously played a very big part.

DULCIE GULLISON 13 of 37

If the horse behaved, it made our days so much easier. If we had trouble with the horse we had to stop every now and again and repack all the asparagus back into the carts, so that the horse was important to us. And at the end of each day you had to walk the horse back down to where he belonged, which was quite a long way down. So we decided we'd ride down, bare back, and then this man that looked after the horses came along and said, 'If you girls want sweat boils, stop on that horse' (laughs). So from then of course we treated the horses with much more respect.

Were you aware of opportunities for promotion within the Land Army?

The only opportunity for promotion would have been if you had gone on to the kitchen staff, and not many people wanted that - or in charge of a cab. Some girls did do this. They felt that the field work didn't agree with them, so they went on to - they called them field officers - but they really just had to stay home all day and cook the meals and shop for the girls that went to work.

And how were women selected for these positions?

You just applied for it.

Was there much competition?

No, I mean, I was approached and asked would I like to join them once, so that I'm sure there couldn't have been a lot of people wanting it.

This is obviously because everybody preferred to be outside.

Yes, I should think so. Well, that was why we went.

So did you have much contact with the Land Army field officers?

In small camps we did. In small camps, you see, there were only eight people, and of course you, well, you became rather too fond of your field officers sometimes.

Did you feel more loyalty to your employer, or did you feel that your ties were to the Land Army, or was it a bit of both?

Perhaps a little of both, but I think mainly it would have been Land Army.

Did it depend at all on who the employer was?

Yes.

So were there some employers that you felt you had a better relationship with than others?

Of course, yes.

Can you tell me about those?

DULCIE GULLISON 14 of 37

Well, they weren't in Bathurst, you see. It would have been more or less when we were on the fields, perhaps. In Leeton, you see, we had just so many different - I went to work for so many different people in Leeton that some of them were much more understanding than others. For instance, one day I was given - there were four of us, I think - had what they called a lorry. It was a flat-topped wagon with two horses in it and we had to go up and down this orchard and throw this fertiliser along, you know, fertilising all the trees with these bags on the back of this thing. And of course, I'm driving the horses and it was our first day. Well, he didn't tell us very much at all because he had had girls for a long time prior to that and they had earned their experience, and we hadn't.

(5.00) And I'm driving these horses and one of the girls threw some fertiliser that went out in front of the horses and of course immediately frightened the horse when they saw this white spray going past, and they took off with me hanging on to the reins. And the bit in one horse's mouth broke and as a result, of course, there I was madly going around between all these trees and up and down and in and out. And of course there was fertiliser for miles - everywhere it shouldn't have been - and me rolling around the back of the thing. And they just had to run till they ran themselves out because I couldn't stop them. And our boss was so furious. But it was really partly his own fault because of the fact that the bit broke, and that way I couldn't stop them, and the fact that he didn't have trained girls doing the work. He hadn't realised that we couldn't handle it, so that was one sad episode we had. But I had lots of trouble with horses all through the Land Army. I had some funny experiences with horses.

Can you remember any others?

I always remember the one in - oh, where were we? In Maitland was my biggest thing. We lived in a house in the middle of a huge paddock that had a fence around it with three gates. And if anyone left the gate open, of course, anything could get in. And this night I was there on my own in the house and I could hear this awful noise, and I got up and looked. And here was a draught horse on the verandah. And if you've ever tried to push a draught horse backwards off a verandah in the middle of the night .... It took me nearly an hour to get him off. I just could not move that horse, and he wouldn't go backwards. And I couldn't bring him forwards because I couldn't get him around the corner. It was .... It took so long, and I was so angry to think somebody had left the gate open. And in the same camp another night, when I was in bed, we were still on these straw palliasses, you see, and we'd put our beds near the entrance to the verandah. And in the night I could feel somebody tugging the foot of my palliasse. It was a most frightful thing to think that somebody was doing this. And I put my head under the blankets and it didn't help - we had mosquito nets, you see. And in the end I jumped up and looked, and it was a horse trying to eat the straw out of the bottom of the palliasse. Because it was a drought year and there wasn't much feed. And they'd come in and found the straw in the bottom of these mattresses. Oh, it frightened the life out of me.

Were there some employers who asked you to do domestic work as opposed to work in the fields?

Yes, there was one in particular. He particularly picked on me because I used to often help his daughter out when she was busy, so he asked ...

Where was this?

DULCIE GULLISON 15 of 37

This was in Maitland. And he asked me would I spend so many days a week helping her in the house, but I said no. That wasn't what we were there for. And that poor girl, she'd been an officer in the WAAF and she'd gone home to look after the farm for her father. But I mean, that wasn't our responsibility.

So he accepted that. [Inaudible]

He was quite, used a lot of pressure but it didn't work because she had nobody else to relieve in the dairy if I went. You see, I was his dairy hand.

So what sort of pressure did he use?

He kept asking - not pressure exactly - but he kept asking me would I consider coming and helping Maxine two or three days a week.

What about any of the other girls? Were they also approached on various farms?

I think some of them may have been, yes. But I don't think it ever happened. I don't think any of our girls would ever have accepted that.

Did you ever move interstate?

No, unfortunately when the girls went to Renmark on the grapes - one year a whole trainload of girls went - and I was left behind because I was the only one on the farm that could milk.

This was at Maitland, again?

That was Maitland, yes. Out of Maitland with the .... So that everybody in the camp went but me.

So how did you feel about that?

I felt rotten (laughs). Didn't enjoy that at all.

Did you belong to a union?

No, never heard of them.

So you weren't involved in any strikes?

No, never heard of anything like that. Didn't even know they existed.

Did you have much interest in politics at the time?

(10.00) No, not really. I came from a family who were interested in politics but in camp there was never any talk of politics.

What about your family's politics?

DULCIE GULLISON 16 of 37

They were always talking and arguing politics in our home.

What side of the fence?

My dad was a Labor man (laughs).

But his interest hadn't rubbed off on you particularly?

No.

Were you ever asked to do work that you might have thought was dangerous, or unsuitable for you, or did you ...?

But you did it. I mean, climbing into a silo was very hard. It was hard because, for instance, you only had a little tiny thin ladder to get up with and you had to take your boots and tie them round your neck while you climbed up this little ladder and climbed into one of the windows on the silo. And then you had to drop the boots in. And then you got in yourself. I was always terrified that I'd never get out (laughs). That somebody would send up a load of lucerne or something and I'd be there underneath it. And to climb out sometimes was absolute agony because you had tramped the ensilage so hard, it had gone down so low, it was well passed one of the openings and you'd have to put a spade or something along the wall and then climb up that, sort of thing, to try and reach and heave yourself out. And that was really hard. I always thought that I'd be left with the ensilage some day.

Could you take me through process of silo work?

Yes. Lucerne cutting's a process where, first of all you have to mow the lucerne, then the lucerne rake comes along and heaps it into rows. And then my job was often with the horse and wagon, to go and load the horse and wagon with lucerne, take it up to the silos and put it through the chaff cutter, into the silo. It was carried up on a belt but you had to get into the silo and tramp it down so that it would ferment and then you had to get out again - that's where the trouble was.

You were telling me earlier about somebody who had a special chaff cutter.

That was at Gooloogong - Mr Pengilly. He invented this chaff cutter.

Can you tell me about it?

Yes, well, he lost the rights to it afterwards, unfortunately. Somebody beat him to it. But this machine used to fascinate me. And sometimes he let me work on the back where the bags came through when they chaffed up. This was a lucerne seed that he was growing which was a very expensive crop. It wasn't just ordinary lucerne - grown on the banks of the Lachlan River - it was very valuable. But sometimes he'd let me have a break from tomato picking. I worked, like handling the bags as they filled up you had to sew the bags up and drop them off and get the next bag and put it on, that sort of thing. That was a fascinating thing to me, and he'd built that himself. But the normal procedure was, you had Italian prisoners of war working on that. But when they were short, sometimes I worked on that.

So did you have much contact with the Italian prisoners of war? DULCIE GULLISON 17 of 37

Very little really. Some girls had contact with them. If you wanted to you could have contact with them. We used to pick the tomatoes and they always used to come and carry the cases away. That was their job. And they worked on the lucerne flats. And it was good to see - they wore maroon uniforms. Our own uniforms dyed maroon. And to see them up on a load of green lucerne, singing as they came home of an afternoon, I'll always remember that. They were fascinating.

So did any of the girls make friends with them?

Some of them did. Oh yes, I think quite a few did. But not in any large way, or anything, just an occasional girl would. It was a big thing in Gooloogong to give them, either it was a shilling or a two shilling, and they'd make you a ring out of it. This went on a lot. And of course, we were rather resentful in one way because Mr Pengilly always brought his prisoners of war into Gooloogong to mass on a Sunday, and he drove them in in the truck. We had to go backwards and forwards to work on the horse and dray, and we couldn't see why they couldn't have gone in on the horse and dray (laughs). There was a little bit of resentment there.

(15.00) So did you go in to mass on a horse and dray?

No. We didn't go full stop. But I mean to say, they were out on the property you see, and he brought them into the town to mass on the Sunday. But to get backwards and forwards to the property, we had to use the horse and dray which used to jib on the hills. And of course it was all right going to work for day but when we were in a hurry to get home of an afternoon and you'd come to a hill and there you'd stop because the horse would jib. And one of us would have to get out and run this up the top of the hill and jump on as it came down the other side. This was one of the trials of the horse and dray.

Just looking now at the various places that you went to. After Mount Pleasant at Bathurst, you were there two or three months I suppose, and then you went briefly to Locksley, but you were only there a couple of days. And what were you doing there?

That was when we were pitching peas - pea vines - onto trucks in a drought.

That must have been tough.

It was tough. And the accommodation there was the worst I had ever seen.

What was it like?

They'd failed to bring the full amount of things. I think there were eight of us sleeping on three palliasses, side on, on the cement floor. So this was, of course, one of the reasons why we had to be moved. I think it was a mistake. It was a cross between the employer and the Land Army, something went wrong.

And then ...

Oberon was pea picking. DULCIE GULLISON 18 of 37

You went to Oberon. Sorry, I've just .... You went home for Christmas.

Went home for Christmas. Yes, I went home for Christmas for a few days, a couple of days.

And can you remember that Christmas? 'Cause you would have just had your first couple of months in the Land Army, so it must have been ...

Yes, we sat up. We caught the train. What was it, about nine o'clock at night and we got to Queanbeyan at about twenty to five in the morning. You had to practically stand up all the way 'cause the trains were absolutely packed, crammed with people.

Can you remember anything about the Christmas? Were your brothers and sisters get home leave, or not?

Some of them were. I just can't remember who was home but somebody was. Somebody was always getting there because we were such a lot of us, you see. I think my two sisters were probably home for Christmas with us. They were mainly around Sydney at that stage, when they first went in.

Okay, so after Christmas, off to Locksley for the very short time, and then to Oberon. So tell me a little bit about Oberon.

Oberon was pea picking all the time.

What were the conditions like there?

There were only eight of us in the camp and we were living in one of the showground pavilions, and of course that was rough but it was a very nice little camp. We had a wonderful matron. I always remember the horses there. There were horses in the showground as well as us, and we had had a quarrel with the milkman over some .... We didn't tell him when we were going away, that's right, so he wouldn't deliver milk to us any more. So we had to buy skim milk or something. I don't know how we came to get this milk but we had it in a big gold dish. And it used to disappear of a night. We couldn't believe it, this big dish of milk was gone of a morning and one night we heard something down there. And of course they're all saying, 'You're the one that's not scared. You're the one that doesn't think your frightened of anything', and I was shaking in my boots. I was terrified. So we grabbed brooms and whatever we could and we went off down to the next pavilion which we were using, and it was where the, there was a lean-to on the back in the old country showgrounds where they had the stove and the copper, and the sides were open. And of course the horse put his head around the corner and drank our milk. We discovered who was drinking our milk. They had no idea how frightened I was but I had to go down and find out.

What about things like, sort of, washing your hair, how did you manage with that?

We had one day off a week. We worked six days. And in Oberon we worked for Seventh Day Adventists so we had Saturdays off, which we thought was great. And we all washed each other's hair. In Oberon we had a bath in a corner of the one big room and of course we DULCIE GULLISON 19 of 37 had to carry our water so far for a bath that we used to bath three at a time. And we'd all wash each other's hair. You know, that was a community thing.

(20.00) What about washing clothes?

Oh, that was the same. Everybody just did their own and some were well done and some weren't. Quite a mixed group.

So at Oberon you said you were working for the Seventh Day Adventists?

No, the family were Seventh Day Adventists.

Oh, the family were.

Were members of the Seventh Day Adventists, and they wouldn't work on Saturdays, so therefore we had Saturdays off and we worked the other six days.

And were your hours of work much the same?

From about seven till seven [inaudible].

So you worked a little bit later.

Yeah, because we had to travel by truck to work. And we had to go out to the farms, you see, to wherever their peas were. And sometimes they were quite a distance from the town, but we would leave camp about seven of a morning and of course it was summertime, and we wouldn't get back till about seven in the evening. It was a long, hot day.

And you would have had a meal when you got home in the evening?

Oh yes, the matron in charge, our field officer, always had a meal for us.

And who brought you your meal in the middle of the day?

We took a cut lunch. We all had to get up and cut a lunch.

And breakfast would have been at the camp.

At the camp, yes.

So in fact the employer didn't have to feed you at all?

Oh no, unless you boarded privately. I did at one stage boarded privately.

Where did you board?

That was before I left Maitland. They closed the camp and another girl and I went to board with one of the families - the boss's son.

Didn't you find days and days of pea picking pretty boring? DULCIE GULLISON 20 of 37

Yes, but along the rows we'd laugh and joke and we sort of made each day a picnic more or less.

Did you sing?

Yes, especially on the trucks going in and out. There were always singing.

What were the songs you were singing?

All the old songs that are still around today. And when we're together today we still sing those same old songs.

Can you remember any of them in particular?

Oh, only 'Gundagai' and what else? 'Ten Green Bottles' and things like that, you know, those old traditionals people used to sing, and still sing.

So after the pea picking you went to Gooloogong.

Yes.

Does somebody from Sydney ...? I mean how do you know where to go next? Did they send you a letter or ...?

Yeah, they send a letter to the field officer in charge and she tells you where you're going.

Did you always move with the same group of girls?

No, sometimes there might be only one going. Somebody might find that they weren't suitable in that camp and they might ask for a transfer, or they may .... Because you see a lot of it was seasonal work and somebody might want twenty girls in a hurry and just .... They'd say, 'You, you, you and you'. Off you went. Nobody ever questioned it, you went.

So were there any girls that you sort of stayed with during the time that you got to know better perhaps than others?

Yes, I had the same girl friend through Bathurst and Oberon. Then she didn't come to Gooloogong with me. And I was more or less on my own at Gooloogong, Griffith and Leeton. Well, I was with other girls but, you know, I didn't have any particular friend. And then when I went to Maitland I met a girl that used to work a few doors from me in Canberra (laughs). And the girls in the Maitland camp were a wonderful group. There were only about eight there but they were just really good people, and I'm still friends with them.

Can you remember their names?

Yes, there was Jean Kirley, known as 'Pearly', and Greth Willington. She was the Canberra girl, Gracie Gambrill who has since died of cancer, and Joyce Lawrence, and Barbara Scott was another one. There were a few others I can't just remember. Maeve Cumpton[?], I think was one. DULCIE GULLISON 21 of 37

You all got on really well.

(25.00) Some of us did. Maeve Cumpton, I didn't get along with her. She was about the only person that really crossed me in the Land Army. She used to pinch my firewood (laughs). Because firewood, to have a bath, it was rather difficult at Woodville, because you had to gather the wood, light the fire in the copper and then transfer it to the bath. And of course every time I'd get myself a little hoard of wood it would go off.

Was that how you generally had a bath in most of the camps?

Yes. Well, in that particular camp we had the copper. In another .... In Leeton, in Wade Cottage, we had chip heaters - the most wonderful things in the winter, because we used to bath nearly all night. We'd keep the chip heater going and we'd be warm, you see. Every now and again we'd have to run some more water in the bath because we'd sit around the baths. Of course we didn't do that all the time, but lots of the time we did. Other times you sat round and wrote letters. And everybody seemed to be knitting things for soldiers.

Were you knitting?

Not very often. I was a lazy knitter. And I always thought the funniest thing was for girls to go into town and meet a soldier and come home and start to knit him a jumper. That was something I could never understand. We all thought, goodness! I valued my knitting too much for that.

Did you have any boyfriends at this stage?

I had a boyfriend that I had left. You know, that had been in camp before I went to camp.

Was this in Maitland, or before?

Oh, that was all through the war. He was away in the army all the time I was there.

So did you ever cross paths? Did he have a leave when you ...?

No, we never seemed to get leave at the same time. And when we came out of the .... When the war was over we realised that, you know. We were still friends but that was all.

So the war had really split you apart.

Split us apart, yes, more or less. But I did get a letter nearly every day while I was in the army, which was nice.

From him? So the letters obviously managed to get through.

Yes, he was in New Guinea.

Your family presumably wrote to you as well, did they?

Yes, patchy like. My mother always wrote to us. DULCIE GULLISON 22 of 37

Have you still got any of the letters?

No, none at all.

Okay, it's March 1944 and you've been sent off to Gooloogong. Where did you live there?

We lived in the Gooloogong Hotel. One of the three buildings in the main street.

And what were conditions like there?

The conditions were good. I didn't care for the matron, or I should say, she didn't care for me, because we arrived there when she had a full camp and she didn't appreciate three extra people. But we were fitted in and just accepted after a while. But Gooloogong was a very interesting camp because we worked for a Mr Pengilly who was a very good farmer. We were picking tomatoes from his farm, that were all going to Edgell's. Edgell's used to come and supervise, now and again, the picking of the tomatoes. And then on some days I was released from this and I helped with the work on the lucerne seed that Mr Pengilly had a special interest in, and his own self-made machine for sorting the seed from the lucerne.

If you were living in the hotel, did you patronise the hotel yourselves?

It was definitely out of bounds. Definitely. Never ever occurred to us to ever go to the hotel. I don't think any of us really had had anything to drink at that stage.

What about the drinkers at the pub, did they talk to you?

No. Well, there'd only be about one man and a dog there. It was such an isolated little place in those days. And it's still the same because we went back a few years ago and had a 'Back to Gooloogong'. Actually there was the hotel that was the - oh, what was it? The big hall opposite it, a log cabin hall, and a post office, and I think that was the main street.

END TAPE 1, SIDE B

BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A

Identification: This is tape two, side one of the interview with Mrs Gullison.

Now, we were in Gooloogong. Can you tell me a little bit about the work in Gooloogong?

Gooloogong was mainly an area where tomatoes and lucerne were the two main products. Tomatoes were grown more or less for Edgell's for cannery, which we visited on one occasion. But they used to come and advise the farmers on how and what to grow. And of course with all the wonderful flats along the Lachlan River, a lot of lucerne was grown also. And this was mainly the two things that Land Army were there for.

Did Edgell's give you girls any training?

DULCIE GULLISON 23 of 37

No, none at all.

No supervision?

Nothing at all. I don't think we ever had, well, I'm sure I never had any supervised training of any sort ever.

What about the townspeople of Gooloogong?

We didn't see a lot of them, but they what we did, they were very friendly people - what we did see. We rode pushbikes one Saturday afternoon to Eugowra to the pictures, never dreaming how far it would be. The people there were so wonderful when we got there. We went to the pictures in the evening and slept all through the pictures. When we left Gooloogong to ride home there were some horses just outside the village, which we drove ahead of us all the way back to Gooloogong, so we never knew where they ended up. This was when we got back to camp, and the next day Matron said to me, 'Have you any idea of what time you got in last night?'. And I had to say to her, 'Well, I know it was late, Matron. That's about all I can tell you. I know how dreadfully late it was because we had no idea how far it was to Eugowra'. She said, 'You arrived here at twenty to five'. And of course we weren't very popular for the rest of that day.

But you weren't punished?

No, she was a very understanding person. And we hadn't realised seventeen miles each way on a dirt road, and lots of hills was really hard work.

Okay, so then you go on to Griffith.

Yes.

And where were you in Griffith?

A huge camp at Marua[?] House.

So lots of girls in that one.

Lots of girls.

Was that a camp under canvas, or ...?

No, it had been a guest house previous to the Land Army taking it over. I would think it was one of the largest camps Land Army ever had.

So do you know how many girls were in that?

I don't really. But it was a very large camp, in comparison with others. Very, very well organised because it was one of the very earliest camps.

And how many girls to a room?

DULCIE GULLISON 24 of 37

Depended on the size of the room.

What about your room?

Well, I slept on the verandah for the first while because they didn't have a room for me. And then I moved into a two-bedroom room, but there were girls with four in a room.

Can you remember the person you were sharing with?

Yes, Daphne McGuire. She's the girl that .... She now lives in Perth.

And how did you girls get on?

We were very good friends.

Did anybody ever try and bring boys back into any of these camps?

We had a young chap stay at our camp for a few nights in Oberon. He'd joined the army at fifteen and when they'd put him out he came to Oberon pea picking. And we looked after him for about a week once.

(5.00) Nobody discovered it?

No, well, everybody knew. He wasn't hidden or anything, but he just lived there with us for about a week and then he disappeared one day.

I presume boys weren't allowed in the camps.

No, not officially, never. But it was surprising how many girls going down to catch a train, coming home to be married to a soldier, used to kiss their local boys goodbye at the station. So that that was quite a regular thing.

So did you have sort of dances and things [inaudible]?

We went to the local dances.

Can you remember any in particular?

No, we used to have quite nice dances at Woodville Park when I was there. But I think that's about the only place I ever went to dances.

So what were you doing in Griffith? This is pea picking.

Pea picking again, but lush beautiful peas. And I picked peas for the remainder of my time in Griffith, which wasn't for long because as soon as I got there I asked for a transfer because I liked to move from place to place.

So you then got your transfer.

And I went to Leeton. DULCIE GULLISON 25 of 37

And what were you doing there?

Well, in Leeton I just had so many different jobs. I think we started in the cannery. The cannery was the place you went when there was nowhere else to go. And we were out of season when we went there. And then ...

What was your job in the cannery?

Pushing spinach in tins (laughs), or peeling onions. Peeling onions, that was very highly paid. You even got piece work money for peeling onions. You'd sort of suffer them all the morning and you'd cry all the afternoon. And you'd go home smelling like something .... You know, you wouldn't know what you'd smell like when you left after the day of peeling onions.

Was it set up on a sort of conveyor belt system?

More or less, yes. They weren't structured ...

Can you describe the factory to me?

Leeton's a big factory - was. And we used to just stand in rows and, well, this spinach .... I can't really remember much about that, but I do know we stuffed spinach into tins. And then I was transferred and put on to the onions. And of course I got rather friendly with the young fellow that brought the onions around. And he used to pick me out the big ones, which was an enormous help because it helped to build up your supply for the day.

And did they have special clothing because you were working so close to the food? Did they have ...?

The same old overalls as we wore to work in the fields.

You didn't have any special thing to keep your hair back?

No, not at all, not in those days, nothing like that. And of course anybody that was very lucky got working on peaches and fruits and things like that. But I never managed to get on to fruit.

And were there men working in the factory?

There was a lot of men in the factory. Men and housewives and all sorts of people were working in the factory. They were a very mixed lot of people. We lived in the dormitories which were the Land Army cabins where we had four girls to each cabin. The windows were a push-out job under your bed and it was so cold when they wouldn't close at night. Oh dear, it was cold.

So where were the cabins?

They were in the showground. They used the Leeton showground to put all these, I suppose they were, pre-fab, made of fibro.

DULCIE GULLISON 26 of 37

And just getting back to the cannery itself, what was the reaction of the existing workers when the Land Army girls moved in?

They just accepted us. Talked to us the same as they did to everybody else.

There was no resentment, or ...?

No, didn't seem to be. Didn't seem to be ever anything like that.

So when you moved out of the cannery where did you go then?

We went to work for Porky Adams. Mr Adams had a pig farm, of course.

And what was your job there?

(10.00) One job we had there was to feed the pigs each week from this huge stack of wheat. Now, the first week I was there I thought I'd die because you'd lug bags of wheat - I can't remember the number of bags we had to move each week. I really can't remember. It could have been eight. It could have been twenty. But I can't remember. But you had to get them off this stack, take them on the slide, and take them to the pig feeders in the paddocks. And from there you just filled up the feeders. But getting them off that pile, that was hard work. But once you were there for a while you knew ... this funny little gadgets with claws on it that you can use and it's surprising how easy it is to move a bag of wheat once you are able to do it. Once you learn .... Nobody teaches you these things. You've got to learn for yourself. But once you learnt it, it wasn't such hard work.

And did you have to muck out the pigs?

No, they were in paddocks. They weren't in pens. They were all in paddocks. Then we had to, besides that, we had to irrigate his orchard. And as nobody had ever shown us how to irrigate an orchard I made the most shocking mess of one of his orchards.

What did you do?

Oh, I put drains in the wrong places and oh .... You had this water coming and you had to dig channels for the water to run through and it had to run downhill and of course I'm trying to make it run sideways, or something. It was a terrible mess. But he never complained. He never said, 'You've done the wrong thing'. He just came and probably grunted and said, 'Be easier if you did so-and-so'. He was a very nice old farmer.

Did he have any other help on the farm apart from the Land Army girls?

No, he relied on two Land Army girls for his help. And I don't think we were always terribly helpful. But then he'd give us different jobs to do. I know one day his told us to .... I just forget now what we did. I've got an idea, I thought that they were dahlias, or something, and they were artichokes. I made an awful mess of those. But things like that that we weren't told about. We worked for Porky Adams for a while, then we went to a man that had the two horses where I wrecked his orchard. He had these two horses and, as I said, the bit of one broke and I was going up and down and round and round through the things. We actually, we did fertilise all the trees but not the way he wanted us to. DULCIE GULLISON 27 of 37

In Porky Adams place, where did you live? Did you ...?

We lived in the camp. We lived at .... At that time, when we left the cannery we went to live at Wade Cottage which was a smaller camp in Leeton.

And how many girls in Wade Cottage?

Let me think, there'd be about .... Had them all around the verandahs. I suppose there'd have been about twenty - between twenty and thirty.

And was there electricity there, or not?

Yes.

So this is luxury living.

Yes. And that's where we had the wonderful heaters - the chip heater.

I bet you never wanted to leave there.

No, that was good. And then where did we go from there? I worked on different farms. And another time Daphne McGuire and I, we planted out onions for a farmer. And his wife told us we were the two slowest people she had ever seen in her life. She said of all the girls that have ever planted out onions we were the worst. But she could not understand why because she said every time she looked at us we were working. We weren't talking. We were just plain slow. So we didn't last there very long. We just managed to do that job.

Could the employer go back to the Land Army and say, 'These girls are hopeless. I want somebody else'.

Yes, they were quite entitled to do that. But as they said to us, well, there was no reason why they could go back and ask for somebody else because we hadn't stopped work, but we were just slow. But I suppose we very carefully put each onion in, you know.

And by the same token, could you say that you wanted to move from a farm?

Yes, we could. That's when we left. We left Porky Adams because we were mixing cement and he had a bad heart and he was lying in the shade telling us how to do it. And I got cross this day and said, 'Well, I'm going home. I'm not stopping any longer'. But it wasn't actually, if I'd have approached him in another way he might have done something about it.

Because you felt that mixing cement really wasn't what you were there to do?

(15.00) No. We were there to do it, but it was too hard the way we were doing it. And carrying these buckets of cement down to stop this - fix up a canal it was that had washed away. So we went. But I was only really looking for an excuse. I wanted to move.

Were there other things that he'd asked you to do that were hard?

DULCIE GULLISON 28 of 37

Oh well, feeding the pigs, that was hard. It was hard. But once we got to know it, it was still hard work, but once you taught yourself how to do it, it wasn't quite as hard.

So after Leeton, it was off to Maitland.

Maitland, yes.

And you were there right up until the end of the war in Europe.

Mm.

And what were you doing in Maitland?

I was the dairy .... Oh well, besides doing the dairy and harvesting lucerne, and shifting irrigation pipes by the hundred. Have you ever shifted an irrigation pipe? Oh, they're rotten things - skinners they're called. They're about as long as this room and you've got to couple them up and, you see, you used to sprinkle so much of the field and when that had enough water you had to lug them about another 200 yards up and then couple them all up again and sprinkle that - you know, that had to be done. And this might take you a whole day to water a whole field. That was a rotten job.

And whose farm was that on?

That was on .... It was owned by R.M. Boydell. He was in the finance business. And I'm sure he used us as cheap labour.

In what way?

One of our girls drove the truck with all the produce to town and I thought that was hard work. He had two tractor drivers. I used to want a tractor so badly, and finally when the girls went off to South Australia I was given a tractor. It was a Friday. And I had a lovely morning on the tractor. I sang all the morn but after lunch it got so boring I cried all the afternoon. But I came home and cleaned the tractor and put it away and still went on with my milking. I still had to milk even though I'd worked on the tractor all day. And he happened to come home that weekend, our boss. He didn't always come home. And when he came in while we were having our meal that night. He said, 'Whoever worked on the tractor today is not to work on it again'. He said, 'I don't like the field down near the roadside all scalloped'. So that was my one and only day as a tractor driver.

But you felt he used you as cheap labour.

I don't see .... I know we weren't always cheap because sometimes we'd be rather useless at some of our jobs. But I felt that the tractor drivers .... I think that - that was hard work for those girls because it's not just the sitting there driving the tractor, you've got to switch the scarifier. You see, they're automatic today, but in those days you had to heave it up by hand and at the end of every row you had to heave your scarifier, or whatever you were using, to change at the end of each row. And that was hard work. I felt tractor drivers and a truck driver .... I think they had very hard jobs. But of course I was the lowest of the low because dairy farmers got very poor money on the whole, if you were working on a dairy anywhere. I think it's still the same today, isn't it? But I loved the dairy and I loved my cows. DULCIE GULLISON 29 of 37

How many cows did he have?

Eighty-five - milking each day. They had to keep them up to eighty-five.

And so who brought the cows in?

Me. And I had to get up at about four o'clock and go round the paddock and get the cows in. We had a herdsman there, a qualified herdsman he was, a New Zealand man with lots of qualifications about dairying. But he didn't do the dirty jobs 'cause I had to keep the bails .... All round the bails and the yards were all cemented. Every day I had to scrub those twice a day with a great big, about a three-foot broom - a heavy scrubbing brush sort of a broom. And that was hard work.

So what was the herdsman doing?

He milked the cows .... Yeah, he milked quite a lot of the cows. And he sort of attended to the machinery side of things. And sometimes he'd put the feeds out, and sometimes I'd put the feeds out, depend on what we were doing.

(20.00) So while you were dairying your day must have started early again.

About four o'clock.

And when would you have finished then?

About .... Well, I was always finished for my meal, but it'd be about half-past six or seven.

So that was one of the longest days you had.

Yes, they were long days but they were happy days. And, you see, I had the horse and dray in the winter .... Well, I had the horse and dray all the time I was there. That was mine. My first day I got into awful trouble. I tied the horse up too tightly, because nobody tells you anything. And when I came out the shaft of the cart was under his belly. But we had a wonderful old man there, and he came and cut it and wired it together for me and made it respectable-looking, so the boss wouldn't know. So I always owned the horse and cart - that was mine. And I used to have to, after dairying of a morning, I used to have to go down and feed the pigs. And if water had to be taken to any plants - like, I had a row of trees I planted. If I had to water them, well, I'd have to put a few drums in the cart and take them. And any children living on the property, they used to come with me in the cart of a morning - how they all survived I'll never know.

So having the horse and dray made a difference to you.

That was mine, yes. And I was glad to go back to it after my day on the tractor. I was quite happy to go back to the horse and dray. When the cauliflowers were ready, and it rained, and it rained. And of course it's all black soil, heavy black soil. These caulis had to be picked in the rain because they were to go to the troops, and they had to have these caulis. We worked for about four days in the pouring rain all day, in the mud, filling these trucks with caulis, and DULCIE GULLISON 30 of 37 somebody read in the paper the next week where Boydell topped the market for caulis that week. So you could imagine how annoyed we all were.

So they didn't go to the troops at all.

No. That was one very .... He was definitely a financer more than a farmer.

A Pitt Street farmer.

Yeah, that's exactly what he was.

So were there any other things in Maitland that ...? Did you celebrate ...? How did you celebrate the end of the war in Europe?

With [inaudible] as usual. Actually at the end of the war I was at Ingham's', and he gave us half a day off to go to town. The only thing Mr Ingham ever gave, I think, in his life - he gave us this half a day. Oh, I hated that farm.

How did you get transferred there?

To there, or from there?

To there. Did you ask to leave Boydell's?

No, well, you see, when the war in Europe ended and we'd got down to the fact that there were only two of us, two Land girls, left on the farm, and our accommodation was over, and he was able to employ a few people. So it was sort of an amiable thing we left because he felt - or we felt - that we wanted to get away. The other girl was being married and it would have only been me left there, and that wasn't any good to me, so that's when I left there.

How did you get the posting to Ingham's?

Headquarters just said, 'You're off to Ingham's, so ...

And where did you live when you were with Ingham's?

We had quite good accommodation there. But the only thing, the sad thing there was he had employed also, he had boys from a state school, or somewhere, and they were all kids of about fourteen to sixteen who .... Well, their IQ was very low. Their standards of living were very low. And they were very difficult to try and share a farm with. And besides that, I found that farm more boring than anywhere 'cause we were all day picking up eggs, picking up eggs. My hands must have spread inches while I was at Ingham's because you had to pick up so many eggs at a time. I never liked that farm, yet I loved the farm at Epping, because I was on my own there and I had to do everything there.

This was Jacob's poultry farm?

Jacob's, mm.

And what were your jobs there? DULCIE GULLISON 31 of 37

I was everything at Jacob's. I had to fertilise the lucerne and cut it. I had to hand cut it at Jacob's. It was all done by hand and everything had to be cut off by hand - no fancy machinery there. And just generally look after the fowls, collect the eggs, and pack them, market them, keep the pens clean, and you know, it was just generally farm.

(25.00) Was the family there ...?

The family there - I was living with the family there.

How did you like living with a family?

I quite enjoyed it while I was there.

And why did you leave in the end?

Because I wanted to do something different. I went into chiropody then and started to do a course of chiropody - and I left there. 'Cause I realised I'd have to do something.

Why did you choose chiropody?

I just .... It interested me, I think. I thought about nursing and then afterwards I saw this thing for chiropody so I did the course.

Was there any difference within the Land Army of the way single women were treated as against married women?

There were so few married women in the Land Army. And I don't think it made any difference whatever.

Let's just talk a little bit about the post-war. What was your reaction to the news that the war had ended?

Very excited.

Did you have any special celebration? Oh, you had your half day off in the city.

Yes, and we marched in the march in the city. As many Land girls as could get there marched in the city that day.

You didn't actually leave the Land Army though until much ...

Much later.

Why was that?

Because it suited me to stay at Epping so that I could visit my brother in Concord Hospital where he was there for twelve months after his experience as a POW in Changi.

DULCIE GULLISON 32 of 37

Did you have difficulty finding work after the war?

No, not at all.

So you stayed with the poultry farm and then you went on to do your chiropody?

I did the course of chiropody and found it was interfering with my eyesight too much. So then I went to the Statistician's office where I loafed till I was married.

Did you have to leave when you were married?

I didn't have to leave but my husband worked night shift and made it difficult.

You hadn't met your husband during the war?

No, not ...

And you married in 1950?

Mm.

What about the other girls? Did many of them get married soon after the war was over?

Not all straight away, it was in dribs and drabs.

And were these people that they'd met during the war, or ...?

Some were, some weren't.

When you did the chiropody course did you get any education grant, or anything like that?

No. I think only one girl ever got any help and that was Skipper Rowe[?] that you see in the TV program.

And did the other girls not apply, or ...?

Everybody thought it was so hopeless. Skipper just sat on the steps up there till they did something about her.

But there weren't many others who followed?

I don't really know whether Marjorie Smith[?] ever got a grant, or not. She was one of our matrons. And she did a social worker's course at the uni, but I don't know whether she ever had any help.

Did you think that was unfair? I mean, the Land Army hasn't received the recognition that ... DULCIE GULLISON 33 of 37

No, I don't think it at all unfair, although you'll find the majority of Land girls do think it was unfair. I think this was all pointed out to us before we ever joined the Land Army, that we weren't entitled to any of those benefits.

And why do you think it's not unfair?

Because of the fact that it was pointed out to us beforehand, and we didn't have to join that service if we didn't want to.

And would the length of service have anything to do with it?

No, we've had girls accepted into our Land Army Association with two weeks employment, against other girls who served the whole war years out.

And is part of the reason that you don't think it's necessarily unfair, is part of that reason that some of the girls only served for a very, very short period? I mean, they might have just been ...

That's one of the contributing factors that I look at. I know that I'm considered a bit of a rebel about it because I feel differently to what most of our girls do. In fact I was surprised they asked you to interview me (laughs).

What about taking up with old friends again after the war? Did you find that difficult?

Very difficult. They'd all altered and changed.

You didn't live at home - go back to living at home?

No, I never went home again.

And you obviously joined your association, the Land Army Association.

Yes, once I found out it was established I joined it.

And why did you decide to join?

(30.00) To meet up with old friends. Some of my friends had joined and so I went along with them.

So you obviously still go to reunions?

Yes. I've never regretted any of those friendships. I consider that those girls were just as valuable to me as my sisters.

So when you reflect on your years during the war, how do you see those years in relationship to the rest of your life?

DULCIE GULLISON 34 of 37

I don't think anything would have been any different. Maybe if I'd have had more sense I would have perhaps studied something and made more of my life. But I suppose lack of education's contributing to this.

Do you think your experience during the war increased your self-confidence, or your sense of independence?

Maybe a sense of independence. I've never .... I don't know whether I've ever really been a very confident person, although I always seem to .... If I want to do anything, I've always done ...

You were going to tell me about Bathurst, and some of the leisure activities of some of the girls. Can you remember any particular occasions.

Our only leisure was to go into Bathurst, of course. And at times, of course, some of the girls, because they had never been away from home before, went to the local pubs and had too much to drink - something that was rather sad because these girls were often very young and had never been away from home before. And we had an awful experience with them on Christmas Eve where we had to send the horse and cart in. And the provosts from the army just through them into that cart as though they were sacks of potatoes. It was very degrading. And I'm sure that none of those girls would ever have got drunk again.

So what happened to them?

Really nothing. The camp was breaking that afternoon, we were all leaving, so that I don't know whether it was ever held against them or not. But matrons in camp did have to make out a report on each individual girl. And these reports are now all down in the archives, and you can go down now and find your report if you want to and read up just what they thought of you.

Have you ever looked for yours?

No, I've never gone for mine. I know one girl was deeply disappointed and disillusioned when she read hers.

A bit of a shock.

Yes, she did get a surprise.

What did you think of the television documentary they did on the Land Army?

Well partly, I didn't appreciate Faith Bandler's comments because she made it sound as though we were working without getting full benefits, and made it sound more like as though we were - how shall I put it - that we should have had unions or something behind us when nobody else felt like this. I'm sure that it was a one-only person. And I didn't agree with her comments at all. But the other people I thought were very good, although I only knew one of them - and my old friend, Skipper Rowe, of course.

And Faith Bandler did a concert while you were in Bathurst?

DULCIE GULLISON 35 of 37

In Leeton. She used to come to the camp and sing on a Sunday evening. She had a beautiful voice and she really - it was very enjoyable to hear her sing at the concerts.

Did she come with anyone?

Other girls from where she was living out on the farm. She was posted out on a farm outside of Leeton somewhere.

And did she bring her sister along?

No. Her sister used to come up from Wade Cottage, but she was never very friendly or nice to her sister. Fay had all the attributes and Cath had all the nice things.

The other thing I was going to ask you was, do you march in the ... now that the Land Army girls march?

No way. I don't march. I don't approve of Land Army girls marching. I think that when we were refused all those years by the RSL that we can do without it now. And I think we'd have far more dignity if we didn't march. But I do go along and get them their lunch ready for when they're finished.

So obviously there's a lot of other girls who are marching.

(35.00) There's only about four out of our group that don't march. There's only four rebels I know of that don't march. The others that don't march have got bad feet or something wrong with them. But there's only four of us that agree that we wouldn't march.

And how do the others react to you?

They don't mind. It's only a matter of opinion really. I don't think they mind.

Just going back to the issue of women performing what were seen as men's tasks, how did it affect your self-perception to find out that you could actually do all these hard physical tasks that you really hadn't been [inaudible]?

I was rather surprised to think that we could handle it, and quite often we did have to work, sometimes along with men, but we always seemed to keep up and do what we had to do. That was something that surprised me but then we had .... I think we didn't lose out on being feminine because we had our nights in the camp where we'd all get together and kiss[?] each other's hair up and talk about all the clothes we were going to buy afterwards, and all this silly feminine frilly things that we were going to do.

What about your hands? Did you ...?

My hands when I left Gooloogong for a weekend once were like two big slimy black blobs from picking tomatoes solidly for a month. We could remove the hardness from your hands by rubbing them with kerosene and sugar, but you couldn't remove the black stains, the black - dark greeny black, horrible look, that had to grow out.

Did you protect your hands in any way? DULCIE GULLISON 36 of 37

We'd never heard of gloves, ever. It never ever occurred to any, I don't think, to ever think of wearing gloves. In fact I think you would have been the laughing stock if you had've worn them.

What from the men, or from the other ...?

From the other people - the other girls. We had two beauticians with us also who were doing it tough and each night they'd plaster their faces in cream and this sort of thing to help keep their skins nice. But I'm afraid most of us just let things slide.

Also back-tracking a bit and talking about how you used to get to work. Presumably there was a lot of different forms of transport?

Yes. There were all manner of different ways to get to work. Some girls rode bikes to work, some instances girls' had horses, some road tractors and some had lorries. I had the horse and cart. Then in Leeton, Peggy used to come around each morning and collect all the girls in her old Ford truck and deliver them all around the different farms on their way out and then she'd pick them all up coming back in an afternoon. She was a leader right from those days, and now she's our president. I think you can still see that she was a leader right from the start.

Were there other people who stood out like that?

A person that interested me a lot was Nancy Baume. When you'd be picking peas beside Nanc, or in the cannery, she'd tell you stories all day. She was a very interesting person. And of course she disappeared; she's in England. And who else? Of course, my friend Grace Gambrill, she was a beautiful person. There were a lot of girls that were very clever girls.

And what had motivated them generally to join the Land Army?

The open air, I think. Just that open air life.

Were they mostly country girls, or ...?

No, they were mostly city girls.

So, looking for something different?

Looking for something different, yes - mostly city girls. The street where Peg lived in Homebush she said there were seven girls from her street all joined the Land Army, which was rather amazing.

And what about matrons?

Matrons came from all walks of life. Quite a few of them were older retired people that were forced back into positions, and some of them were just young girls that came in, that weren't suitable for field girls. And also girls that perhaps wanted to earn a little more money joined the ranks of the matrons or field officers, as we called them.

DULCIE GULLISON 37 of 37

(40.00) But they were just as mixed and as varied a group as the Land girl herself. And the cooking was much the same. Sometimes you were very lucky and got somebody who could cook well and other times you got somebody who was no better than yourself.

You certainly had a lot of jobs during your time in the Land Army. Did you have to pay tax on the pay?

Yes, we did. One of my problems was I had been a taxpayer before the Land Army days and the first year, or one year, I did have a very big problem because I worked on thirteen properties in twelve months, making it very difficult to try and fill it in. And the next year I think I might have just fibbed a bit and put it all in on the one.

END OF INTERVIEW