ROBERT KNEALE WESTWOOD, MNP
Merchant Seaman, and last known survivor of the Centaur
submitted by his son Rolfe Westwood
I think one of the first questions I asked Dad was, “Why did you join the Merchant Navy?” He said he left Hampton High School when he was 14. He said that he liked school well enough but hadn’t studied for, and didn’t think he would pass, the upcoming exams, so being the practical person he was, he left school instead.
His father (Frank) worked as a clerk for the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service and got Dad a job as an office boy. A vacancy as a deck hand became available on the Cape York, one of the Service’s vessels. According to Dad, his parents thought that going to sea during wartime would be a safe thing for a 14 year old to do! Dad duly signed up as a deck hand in the Merchant Navy. The vessel, Cape York serviced lighthouses in Bass Strait, the only problem was that Dad got seasick! One can only envisage the heaving seas crashing onto the coastal rocks while the provisions, spare parts and mechanics were unloaded at rickety docks. In due course, and while he was still only 15, Dad qualified as an OS (Ordinary Seaman), but as there were no OS vacancies on his ship he remained employed as a deck boy.
A vacancy became available on the refitted cargo ship, now the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur. He tells of the recruitment process – the Mate yelled out in the yard “who wants to join the Centaur as an OS”. Dad stood in line with a dozen others, and was chosen for the position. Apparently the mate had also served on The York with Dad.
On her second voyage in May 1943 the Centaur was bound for PNG although Dad didn’t know the destination at the time. Fast forward to that night, I asked Dad if he was on duty when the torpedo struck, no, he was sleeping in his bunk. From here, his retelling differs from what was reported in the press. He said that what saved him were the safety drills. So, when he heard the explosion, it was pure reflex that made him grab his life preserver before heading out onto the deck.
He first went to a life boat station where they were attempting to launch a life boat, but the ship was already on too much of a lean and this attempt was abandoned. Dad then climbed up the leaning deck using the handrails as support. At this stage he says he wasn’t frightened, which he now puts down to the adrenaline flooding his system. He remembers people jumping overboard, and at one point a life raft sailing over his head. Dad didn’t jump, but just waited until the water rose up to his position and he let go of the handrail. He was briefly drawn under the water but soon bobbed up to the surface.
At this stage I envisioned burning seas from the fuel oil, but he said there was no fire. There was also no life raft in the vicinity but he soon encountered someone else floating. He doesn’t remember who it was, but they talked while looking around for other survivors and life rafts. Then Dad said he turned around, and the person had disappeared and was no longer floating beside him. To this day, he doesn’t know why, but his first thought was sharks, and thought it a good idea to move away from the area. He eventually came across a small raft. He described it as 6×6 life raft, and he climbed on board. He was with two others at this stage. I’m unsure how long he spent on this until he eventually encountered a larger life raft with many on board and moved onto that.
On this raft were Martin Pash and Sr Ellen Savage amongst others. They were eventually rescued by the USS Mugford. I asked Dad about his injuries, but he had none. He said that while Sr Ellen Savage did indeed tend to, and comfort, the injured survivors, he had no injuries to speak of. He said the press reports of the youngest on board being nursed by Sr Ellen Savage made a better story.
When Dad subsequently gave evidence to the inquiry into the sinking, he mentioned that during the night they saw lights and heard a noise like an engine. Thinking it may have been an enemy sub, they were careful not to show any lights. They stayed very quiet. He said that was the one bit of his story that piqued the interest of those hearing the evidence.
After his ship was sunk he went back home. He got a job in a factory where he worked for about six months. He became bored and decided to go back to sea. He turned up at the office, where he was greeted with “Where the hell have you been?” Apparently he was supposed to report back pretty much the next day, but no one told him. The 15 year old boy thought you get a free pass after surviving a torpedo sinking. Fortunately his father was well known in the office and he didn’t get into trouble. Also fortunately he knew the person recruiting for the next ship he was assigned to. The remainder of his time at sea was on bulk ore carriers and general freight. His service at sea records the following ships: Kooyong, Koonda, Age, plus others that are illegible.
One amusing story came from this later service. Dad once said he spent an hour in gaol. While on the Kooyong and docked in Melbourne, the deck crew refused to work unless they had a refrigerator like the officers. Five police cars arrived at the dock, the rebellious crew members were arrested, and because it was during the war, they were charged with mutiny. So they spent an hour in gaol before being released on bail as the ship could not go anywhere without the deck crew. They got the fridge when they arrived in Sydney.
I never asked dad directly if he resented the Japanese for the sinking. I don’t believe he did, at one point in our conversations he just shrugged his shoulders and said “there was a war on”.
Dad had originally planned on becoming an officer, but after the war, on 24 April 1947, he quit his life at sea, with the rank of Able Seaman and returned to land. I believe he enrolled in an electronics course, but these plans changed when he met his future wife and my mother, Elizabeth, and he quit the course.
Mum was living in College St, Caulfield with her parents when Dad met her. They became engaged in 1948. Their plan was to purchase a block of land, build a house, get married and move in. The block was in Prince Charles St,
Clayton. Dad doesn’t recall how he managed to pay for it, but I guess land in Clayton was cheap back then. The plan to complete the house and get married came unstuck when Mum’s parents said they had to be married by Christmas – l believe because they themselves were moving house. On the 18 August 1951 they were married and moved into a partly built house with only half the flooring, but they at least had a bedroom and kitchen. It was one of Dads regrets that he couldn’t deliver a completed house for his new bride. This was the first of several homes they would live in together over the next 55 years. But they didn’t live in this one for long as their life for several years became one of buying, renovating and selling houses.
The renovations consisted of building a brick veneer over the timber houses and Dad would subcontract out this work. He also revealed he used asbestos over this period and tells of clouds of asbestos dust while cutting sheets of the stuff with a circular saw – no masks back then.
Over a period of about four years they bought, renovated and sold many houses.
When Dad married he was a roof repairer, and described climbing 40ft ladders to repair slate roofs. He then got a job with the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission as a lab assistant in their soil testing laboratory. Dad quit that job and became a bus driver for what was then called the Middle Brighton Busline. Lab assistant sounded like a good job and I asked him why he quit. He said bus driving allowed him to work night shift on the buses and renovate houses during the day. On occasions Dad was the driver when Ian and I took the bus to school.
As always, things were soon to change. The plan at this stage was for them to again build their own home, but now with two sons, something bigger and more permanent was needed.
These days when we build our own home we leave it to the pros, but Dad of course was going to do the actual build himself. Now what better way than to learn and get paid at the same time? He quit bus driving undertook a series of jobs including the following: bricklayer’s labourer, plumber’s labourer, plasterer’s and builder’s labourer – always watching and learning how it was done. As the plan was to build a brick house, he concentrated on honing his bricklaying skills and graduated from labourer to qualified bricklayer. Not that there was an actual piece of paper stating this fact, back then you apparently could call yourself anything. He said at first he wasn’t very good, and one of my early memories is of Dad bringing home bricks, tools and cement and practising brick laying in the backyard – in particular constructing corners – the more difficult bit. And that’s how he learnt how to build a house. Thankfully he never wanted to became a surgeon.
It wasn’t all work and no play, and Dad, believe it not, had a yacht which he kept at the Brighton foreshore, however Mum 
wasn’t keen on sailing. Dad’s other love was motor cycle riding and he owned several over the years: an AJS, Triumph, a 2-stroke Villiers and an Indian. He tells of riding along an unmade beach road to Mordialloc and beyond. He also participated in motorcycle sidecar racing with a friend’s BSA. He was on the side car, that’s where you are inches from the ground, balancing the cycle while flying around corners as fast as possible. Surprisingly, Mum was okay with this particular form of madness.
While living in Ormond he learnt he was eligible for a war service loan which they used to purchase a block of land in Nepean Street, Greensborough, where he would put his new skills to work to build what was to become the childhood home for Ian and myself.
When Dad learnt he qualified for a war service loan he bought a block of land in Greensborough and put his new skills to work to build what was to become the childhood home for Ian and myself. Except for electrical work, Dad did everything, starting with the foundation trenches all dug by hand, in this instance with help from his brother-in-law Harry. He tells of getting assistance from another friend for the concrete pour – madly wheel-barrowing when the mixer arrived. Problem was that part way through the work, the friend had to leave for work and Dad was left frantically wheelbarrowing the concrete from the truck to the trenches and levelling off. He did it, and said there was no cracked concrete during construction.
He did all the bricklaying, flooring, roofing and, except for the street connection, the plumbing. He also left the final plastering to the experts. He applied the rough cast plaster to the inner brick wall, but left the final finish to a professional. The professional was at first uncertain about the quality of the work, but when he put his spirit level to the walls he pronounced them perfectly level.
Family weekends were now spent driving to and from Greensborough in a VW beetle towing a rickety trailer with building materials supplies. A building site was a lot of fun for a young kid, watching a new house take shape. It was a giant playground where we walked, jumped and hopped on and over the floor joists, and when the scaffolding went up, that was a whole new exciting and slightly dangerous adventure. It wasn’t all fun and games, and Dad put everyone to work. The house was to be double brick and the inner walls were second hand bricks. Ian and I were given the unenviable job of cleaning the old mortar off the bricks – a dirty, dusty, bone-jarring job that left my hands aching at the end of the day. Dad tells me I got paid for this. As the walls got higher, I would help Dad get bricks to the top of the scaffolding, me at the top while Dad tossed each brick from the ground so that it reached my hands at the top of its trajectory. He would have to scurry if I fumbled the odd brick and sent it crashing back to the ground.
The bricks used to build the house (they used clinker bricks before they became fashionable) were often in short supply and during downtime when materials ran out, Dad, never one to lie around, would take on casual work as a labourer while waiting for the next delivery. The house was completed, and we moved in during January 1966 – this time no incomplete flooring, but, joy of joys, we had an outback dunny for many years until sewerage was connected. After spending the year building their house, Dad returned to the workforce. One of the several jobs was working for the Goodrich incinerator company. Installing industrial incinerators.
One time his job took him to Mildura, this was during school holidays and I got to accompany him. The exciting prospect was taking the train, the Vinelander, where we had our own sleeper. Dad’s final job was in retail, where he worked for Crosby Tiles.
While in Greensborough, Mum and Dad got on well with one particular set of neighbours. It was through this friendship that they were invited to a farm stay in Apollo Bay. Then, around 1973 an opportunity arose to buy a share of what was to become the Binnawee Cooperative and they bought in. Dad was in his element during their time at the farm. He loved working on the land, tinkering, repairing and building. The accommodation that came with their share was renovated, BBQs were built, fencing repaired, weeds sprayed and a new challenge – a tractor to tinker with.
Mum and Dad made lasting friendships with other members of the cooperative. They also took up an unexpected hobby – birdwatching. The diversity of bird life lead them to start identifying birds and eventually they joined Birds Australia and participated in monitoring and counting hooded plovers on the foreshore.
In retirement they also travelled, sometimes just the two of them, sometimes with others. They were on one of the first Qantas flights to land in Beijing when China opened up for tourism. England, Europe and Fiji were also on the travel itinerary, as they explored the world.
Later, they sold Greensborough and bought a flat in St Kilda East. The hills around Apollo Bay soon became too much for Dad’s knees and they sold their share in Binnawee.
Due to Dad’s failing eyesight from macular degeneration and his dodgy knees, he had to give up driving and became a resident at ANZAC House in Brighton. He was well looked after and was happy in his twilight years. He embraced advances in technology and owned a mobile phone and laptop for email, internet banking and online ordering. There were often parcels from China turning up at reception – electronic gizmos that sometimes worked, and clothes that may or may not fit properly. Just prior to the 2020 lockdown I bought Dad an iPad which he loved as his failing eyesight was no longer a problem. He was able to magnify the text and so continue using technology.
Dad always claimed he would live until he was 99, later he revised this estimate to 100. He was always interested in advances in science, technology and space travel and wanted to see where it was all heading, so an extra year was added to the tally. He was over 90 when he announced his adjusted lifespan and I said to him you will probably see man land on the moon in the next few years. He replied, somewhat grumpily, “I still remember the first time that it happened”.
We would take Dad out for a pub meal every couple of weeks. I would speak to Dad two or three times a week during 2020 when we couldn’t visit and I would continue to coax stories from his early days while furtively making notes on my iPad. At one stage he asked why I was asking questions about his youth and I said I’m writing your eulogy, you’re almost there. He laughed!
So Dad survived a war time sinking, motorcycle side car racing, clouds of asbestos, smoking, drink driving. He even survived the 2020 pandemic lockdown in Vasey RSL house, as well as the odd brick falling from the sky.
Two things occurred to me about dad recently and may say more about him than anything else. The first may seem innocuous: but he always managed to figure things out without getting angry or frustrated. He became adept in the use of his devices, and during phone conversations would occasionally mention a problem he encountered with his iPad. I suggested the problem was in one of the app settings and offered to walk him through it. He said, no, I’ll figure it out – and he did, even if it took all day, with his failing eyesight, he would methodically delve into the mysteries of the iPhone and sort it out by himself. Not bad for someone 90 something years old.Dad told me, in one of his idle moments, he sat down and worked out how many jobs he had had in his lifetime. The number came to 17 and included: Sailor, delivery boy (on a bike), builder, bricklayer, tiler, tile salesman, incinerator builder, lab assistant, bus driver, scaffolding salesman. These were the ones I knew about. How did he come to grips with each profession? Slowly and methodically, not getting angry or frustrated learning a new skill, just sorting it out.
That’s what carried him throughout the whole of his life.