Australians at War Film Archive William Deane-Butcher - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 15th January 2004 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1355 Tape 1 00:30 – was a young doctor in London, and finally he migrated to Australia and finally he recovered quite well and his fiancé came out and they were married here. 01:00 And I was born outside Pittsworth, which is outside Toowoomba in Queensland and he had gone there because it was a hot place and that’s what suited his health. We moved from Pittsworth to Warwick and I was brought up there until the age of twelve at the local school and at twelve I came down as a boarder to Scots College in Sydney at Bellevue Hill. 01:30 And I was there for some five years or so. Strangely enough several of us used to go to the house next door and I found when I came to this place – the nursing home – I found that the director of nursing was the daughter of the girl that I used to go and see then. That was interesting. Anyway we 02:00 my brother and I moved on to Sydney University. He had decided to undertake medicine. I wanted to do architecture. My father said, “There is no future in architecture.” Because there was a Great Depression at that time. So I did medicine as well. I have a very curious name, Deane-Butcher 02:30 which was immediately abbreviated at Scots to Butcher, Butcher one and Butcher two. The name came because it was just a matter of identifying the Butchers in England by the person they married, they would say, that’s the Butcher married to Deane, and then it became Deane Butcher and then it became hyphenated. 03:00 So then I went to Sydney University for some years and I was at St Andrews College. And from then on I went to North Shore Hospital where I was a resident doctor for a year and then I went to the Coast Hospital, that’s Prince Henry Hospital and I was there for a year and three or four months. 03:30 During the latter part I went and did a couple of locums at Lismore and a suburb of Sydney and so on. But I was at the Coast Hospital when people started to enlist. War had been declared and it was suddenly getting serious, and another doctor and I left and enlisted in both the army and the air force and 04:00 if necessary the navy. I had no preference between the army and the air force. He was called up into the army and I the air force, I might say that he was trained for a year or two, when the Japanese came in he went straight to Singapore, captured and went to Borneo and was on the Borneo March and so on and was killed 04:30 there. I had quite a good war really if anything could be called good. But for a year I did nothing but recruiting. I was in Brisbane, I was living out, I had just become married before I went into the service. And we had nothing much to report at that stage. And then I went to Archerfield Air Base 05:00 as medical officer to an elementary flying training school. They were flying Tiger Moths and it was a pretty good life. Then the Japanese came into the war and it wasn’t a good life. I went immediately to the formation of 75th Squadron in Townsville, on to New Guinea 05:30 and I was with the squadron which we will talk about later for eighteen months. And then I went to Sale in Victoria which was 1 Operational Training Unit. That was more exciting then you might imagine because crews were crewing up in Beauforts, more of that later. 06:00 From there I went to Canada. There was a liaison officer in Ottawa, the Australian air force had to liaise with the Canadian air force and I was the medical representative there for a year. That was rather interesting time. And when I came back I was 06:30 discharged. Great and after the war? Well after the war I had to decide whether I would be a general medical practitioner somewhere or whether I would specialise. I decided to try a specialty, ophthalmology, so called. 07:00 And I went down to Sydney Eye Hospital, I can enlarge on all of these points later so I trained as an eye specialist and that’s what I became. And what about family and children? I had two sons and daughters. Daughter came first, 07:30 she is now at Gosford, a son came second, he is my best friend now, he lives at Lindfield. And he is extremely good to me. My third child was a daughter and she married an American who was out here and she has lived in America ever since, and I am very close to her by phone, 08:00 but I don’t see her as often as I would like to. And the fourth one was a son who is at Hornsby. He is manic depressive and he causes me plenty of trouble. Has done since he was twelve, he is now forty-six. But I am very fond of him and he is very fond of me. That’s another story. 08:30 We lived at Killara, well we lived at Lindfield first, that was the first place that we had a house, but after the war it was hard to get a house and we lived in a cottage at Dee Why for a while and then at Ryde for a while in a rented cottage. Then we got this place at Lindfield. Moved from there to Killara where we had a nice home. 09:00 Then my wife couldn’t manage the stairs and so we moved to a second home at Killara, which was one level. And then she couldn’t manage a lot of things, and so we moved to Huon Park which is a retirement village on Bobbin Head Road. And we were there for a couple of years and comfortable, but then it was necessary for her to go to 09:30 a nursing home and I selected this one that we are in, North Haven which is satisfactory. And she is in the nursing home, but I found this self-care place belonging to the same establishment next door and so I left Huon Park and live here. Thanks that has given us a great overview, 10:00 so now we can go back. I would like to know what you remember of growing up and spending time in Toowoomba? Well I don’t remember much because we transferred to Warwick near Toowoomba and I think I must have been seven or so then. At Pittsworth 10:30 near Toowoomba I do remember several incidents but they are not really worth reporting. In Warwick we moved there because there were quite good schools in Warwick, I was in kindergarten there, at the boys’ school I was a weekly boarder. Pretty hard work being a weekly boarder when you’re about eight I managed. It was a boys’ school then. It is since amalgamated 11:00 with the girls school in Warwick, Presbyterian Girls College. Its now combines and it is a very good school. You mentioned that your father came out to Australia because of ill health how was your relationship with your father? Very good. 11:30 He developed tuberculosis in England and he had to stop work as a doctor and he was sent to Switzerland where he lived in a place on a high mountain and didn’t get any better at all and was advised to go to a hot country and that’s why he came to Australia. He didn’t know anyone here. Interesting thing is he decided 12:00 to try a general practice and made enquiries from the Australian Medical Association or the British Medical Association at the time and was told to buy a farm on the edge of a city, and wait until the city grew and it was growing, and then he would have lots of people around. The farm was the top of Bellevue Hill and he didn’t buy it unfortunately. 12:30 He went out to Hay which is a western town and is very hot. However it was good for his health. And you then eventually came down to Scots College? Can you tell me about that and how you – ? Well I was a full boarder there and I was only 13:00 about twelve. And the main thing was sport. We were kept occupied. I rowed and played football and was in the shooting team and athletics team and did all of those things. We had to go on a tram to the city twice every Sunday and go to church. I occasionally got off the wrong side of the tram and went to the pictures. 13:30 But it was fairly good life. I had a good relationship with my two parents, my father and my mother in Warwick during this stage. Can you tell me a bit about your mother? My mother came from England, actually she was a sort of house companion. She came from 14:00 Killmarsh in Scotland first and then to Halifax, and then came to my fathers home which was a big home in a suburb of London as a house companion.