Towards the end of his long life, Alan taped his memoirs for his family who have generously shared them with us. Those of us who were privileged to know Alan will hear his voice in this transcription of a lifestyle long past which today we can barely imagine.
I was born in Preston, in Melbourne on the 5th September 1916. I don’t remember much about living in Melbourne because when I was about 3½ we moved onto a wheat farm a place about 360 miles away. The house there was built of limestone and had only two rooms. We had a wood stove and our water had to be carted from the dam as we didn’t have a tank. We used to have a bath in a tub of water heated out in the yard in a copper.
The house had mouse holes around the stove where it was warm, and the snakes used to come in through the mouse holes and my poor old Mum was scared of them. The floor was only packed dirt and she used to put sand down outside the holes so that when she came back inside she could see if a snake had made a mark over the sand. And if there was she’d go and get my father to come back and find the snake and kill it. And he said: “I can’t be coming up here killing your snakes all the time because I’ve got work to do.” He would have been out driving the horses in a team preparing the ground for sowing wheat or whatever, and he said, “I’ll make you a snake killer”. So he twisted about eight strands of wire together and he gave it to her. Once she started to kill snakes she got to be quite good at it. She used to kill all her own snakes then.
It was all right, we were quite happy there. Then I started school and we had to ride about 7½ miles bareback on a horse to the closest school. My brother and I used to ride two of us on a horse. Going along the road to school one day we couldn’t make the horse hurry, and of course we were always late and in trouble. This day there was a banana on the road and my brother said “You’d better get off and get it.” It was all right, we reckoned it was all right anyway, and then we had to take the horse over to the fence so I could climb back on. A little way up the road there was another banana, and another one. We picked them all up then we found a bag with a couple of them in it so we took them to school and shared them with the other kids.
The school only had 16 pupils. It wasn’t really a school; it was a hall, and it served as a church for the Methodists and Baptists, and they used to have concerts in it and the school used to have it. Later on a proper school was built.
Our closest town was Lascelles about 9 miles away but we would go in there about once a fortnight, or mum did. She used to drive a horse and buggy into town to get her supplies. There was only the one shop. There were no fruit shops, the bread used to come in from another town and they were big high loaves of bread, and we used to get enough for a fortnight. I don’t know how they used to keep it because it was always all right. Mum used to get a flour bag full, and she would bring it home and put it away and we had bread for a fortnight and that’s how we used to live. She used to buy our meat at the butcher shop. There was no refrigeration, he used to just keep the meat in a dark room. We didn’t get very much because we didn’t have much money.
It was quite an experience when we went to town; we’d always want something or other and perhaps Mum would buy us thripence worth which is 3c of lollies, and we had to share that between four of us, but we were quite satisfied with that, and it was quite a treat.
After about 4 years we moved from that farm to another one which was close to the school and the old chap that owned the farm gave the Education Dept three acres of land and they built a new school. We only had one teacher and eight classes. There were about 16 or 18 kids going to school and the teachers used to board on one of the farms. We used to get a good education. They were very strict and we couldn’t muck up or anything or we got the strap. When we moved to this other farm we were only about half a mile from the school so we could walk. The school was much the same as the other one. We didn’t always have the same teacher, they’d come for twelve months then they’d leave and we’d get another one.
We had a lot of fun on that farm. There used to be a water channel running through it, and my brother and I used to paddle in it. Then we’d have to come home across a ploughed paddock, up there in the summer time when it gets up to 116 in the shade, and we used to run like billyo across the ploughed paddock. One time when I got home my feet were blistered from running across the hot ground and my mother said, “Well perhaps you won’t go again.”
At Christmas time we used to get one toy each. One time my brother got a two-wheeled bike but it only had steel wheels and when you pedalled it the front wheel used to spin so we put wire around it.
I got what they called an express wagon, a little wagon on four wheels because I had to go and get the kindling wood every night. I used to take my little wagon and go and get a load of kindling wood for my mother to light the fire in the morning. She used to be first up and had to light the fire and boil the kettle and cook the breakfast.
This house had three rooms, and Dad built a kitchen out of galvanized iron. In the summertime it used to be terribly hot in that little kitchen so he put a little window in that you pushed out, and a door, which made it a bit better for Mum. We used to have a big table that we all sat around but we didn’t have chairs, we had forms, and the floor was board but it didn’t have lino on it. Then when we got a bit of money and Dad bought a lounge suite and put lino on the floor and we thought we were made.
My brother and I used to sleep out in a tent in the yard because there wasn’t any room inside. We slept there for quite a number of years and we used to have bits of fights like they all do but we used to get over it
In the summer time during school holidays I used to go with my father on the wagon to cart the wheat into the station which was five miles away. We used to do one load a day, and we used to take 50 bags at a time. We’d always stay on the wagon when it was getting weighed because it made the load a bit heavier and we thought we were doing good, but then when we came back to weigh the wagon on the way out we had to get out so we didn’t gain anything. Not far from that railway siding was a desert called the 90 mile desert. My brother and I rode our horses over there a couple of times, but it wasn’t very nice. It was white sand and stunted scrub and nothing lived there, and we didn’t like to go in too far because it was easy to get lost.
Up there in the Mallee they get terrible dust storms, and you can hardly see in front of you. You can hardly see more than 20 yards and the dust is red and my old mother used to set the table and put a big sheet over it. She’d put all the food under the sheet because you could write your name in the dust on the table, and before you finished your meal it was covered in dust again. You’d have to get under the sheet to have your meals because of the dust. It was that thick that I don’t know how she ever got her washing cleaned. She had no furniture, she didn’t have wardrobes or drawers or anything, she used to just put the clothes on shelves. And the washing was always clean and white. She even used to make her own soap, boiling it out in the backyard. She didn’t have a washing machine. She used to wash by hand on what they called a scrubbing board, and she used to put it in the copper and boiled it and that’s why she got her things so white.
While we were on that farm we had one particularly good year, so Dad bought a new car, a Dodge for 307 pounds, and he thought it was great. He built a nice new shed for it because most of the sheds on the farms only had straw roofs. The stable only had a straw roof and the machinery shed they all had straw roofs. Anyhow he built a shed out of corrugated iron for this car.
We were there about 12 months after we got the car but the old chap we were on shares with sold the farm, so we went on to a farm with my uncle at Cranbourne down near Melbourne. I was still going to school, and with my two sisters I used to drive a sulky, a two wheeled cart with one horse. We had about six miles to get to school in Cranbourne. It was a big school, and I was on the wrong side of the teacher. I was made to sit out in front of the class because I couldn’t behave myself, and I used to get the strap quite often. I took it all in my stride.
We had a lot of bush on this property and I used to ride my little horse through the bush chasing kangaroos, but of course that was to no avail. Up at the back corner there was a big sandpit in the hill and a big cable that went across for a scoop to go across on. It was about 50-60 ft. up in the air and my brother and I climbed across this cable. It was all greasy and if we had fallen we’d have fallen onto machinery and railway trucks and goodness knows what. But we thought nothing of it and when we got home we couldn’t get the grease off our legs and our arms, so we were in big bother, but it didn’t worry us.
We used to go swimming quite a lot and there was a Council factory not very far away and they had a pit there that was a good swimming hole. We used to go over there and we didn’t have a swimming costume we just went in with nothing on. We’d dive in and get wet then we’d go and get in the Council bin and it was all powder and it would stick to us; then we’d dive in the water and leave a trail of whatever we had on us. And we thought that was wonderful but I don’t suppose the people that owned it thought it was a good thing because we used to do it on weekends. That’s the sort of thing we used to get up to.
The house at Cranbourne had four rooms with a separate kitchen, and there were a lot of tiger snakes around there. One day my sister went to the toilet which was in a woodshed. She put her hand down to get a bit of paper and there was a snake in the paper box. She wasn’t very old and she came running out with her pants down around her knees and yelled out to Mum to come and kill the snake, which Mum did. And after that she wouldn’t go there by herself.
The house itself was made out of mud and sticks which they called wattle and daub and it was very cool and not very big. It was all overgrown with vines and grasses and goodness knows what and we had a great job to clear the vines and that away from it.
There was a blood plum tree in the little orchard and Snow, my youngest sister, and I used to go there when they were getting toward ripe; we’d go down and eat them while Mum was waiting for them to ripen for jam. By the time they were there were hardly any left, Snow and I had eaten them all.
We couldn’t do any good on that farm so we moved to another one with the same uncle. It was a dairy farm in Scoresby at the foot of Wheeler’s Hill and is still there today. Some organisation has taken it over and they built a bigger house there. It was terribly wet and you had to wear rubber boots all the time. I used to walk to school at Scoresby about two miles away. I used to have to get up in the morning and milk the cows before I went to school. Dad and Len and I all had to milk eight each. Then I’d have to rush off and go to school and the schoolmaster didn’t like me. His name was Mr Callow. Bic thought he was wonderful but I didn’t. Whenever he got the chance he used to give me the strap.
When we got out of school I used to have to run home because I would have to milk the cows again. Then I had to clean the cow bails while Len took the milk down to the road and dad used to clean the cooler and the buckets and whatever.
When I left school I worked on the farm, but Dad couldn’t pay me any money, so my uncle up in the mallee said I could come up there and work for him. He sent me my train ticket, and I went up with my grandfather. We arrived at four o clock in the morning, and next day my uncle came in to wake me up to start work. I didn’t know what I had to do. There were four cows. He said, “you can milk the cows”, and that was my job in the morning. I had to milk the cows, and separate the milk, then I’d have to feed the pigs; I’d get the three little kids ready for school and drive them about four miles to school, then I’d have to go back in the afternoon and pick them up. During the day I used to look after the house. Then my uncle decided he didn’t like driving the horses so he taught me to drive the team and he stayed at home. I wasn’t very happy about that because I couldn’t knock off with the horses till sundown, then I’d have to come back and milk the cows. But I had to do it because I couldn’t do anything else.
While I was there Dad and Snow (sister) came up. Dad was working for my uncle and Snow was going to school. One day they had a school picnic. All the ladies used to make cakes and goodness knows what, and there would be kids races, and it was a real picnic day at the school. They used to have a competition for the women to drive a three-inch nail into wood, and there would be four or five of them lined up, and they’d have to drive it in with a hammer. It used to be quite funny because they nearly all used to bend the nails over, and they couldn’t drive the nails at all.
Snow could run very well and they always used to want to put her in the front because she was so small, but Dad said, “no, put her in the back”, and she used to always win her race: she could always run fast, she was terrific. I wasn’t too bad, but I couldn’t win them all. I used to win now and again.
We went back to Broadford because there was a job for Dad and Len. I couldn’t get one because I wasn’t old enough, so I used to catch rabbits. I had a ferret and a dog and I used to walk with them about six miles out to this place carrying an axe, the dog used to chase rabbits into hollow logs and I’d cut them out.
Three times a week I had to take my catch over the road where a rabbit buyer used to come by and give me 1/6 a pair if they were good ones. I used to have perhaps 20 or 30 pair, and away I’d go again and get another lot.
I was making a bit of money which I used to give to my mother because she used to feed me, and she said, “I don’t know why you don’t get a job”, and I said “I can’t anyway”. She said the women over on the main road want someone to work for them, and she told me to go over and see them. Anyhow, these two old ducks said “yes, yes, we could do with someone, you’ll do; we’ll pay you 8/- a week, but we’ll give you your lunch”, and I said all right I’d do it. But about this time, my uncle used to cart wood into the town and he used to get 5/- a cartload for it. He gave it up because he got a job on the railways, and I said I’d do the carting. I didn’t even start on the 8/- job.
I used to do two cartloads a day which was 10/- a day, and I thought that was good money, even though I had to feed the horse and shoe her. On Friday I couldn’t collect the wood as I’d have to go into town and go to all the customers I’d delivered wood to during the week to collect my 5/-, otherwise I wouldn’t get paid.
I used to take the money home and give it to Mum. and I’d say, “I’ve got to get a sack of chaff and a bushel of oats for my horse”. I did that for quite a long while. Because there was no electricity – everyone had fuel stoves – it didn’t make any difference what time of year it was. I still used to cart my two loads a day, eight loads a week, and if someone had run out of wood, I’d go and get a load on Saturday for them. It was a lot of fun, but it was hard work.
I tried to keep Saturdays free though because I used to like to go to the football on Saturday afternoons. I used to follow the local Broadford team, and we used to have to travel by train. They had special trains in those days, and you would go from Broadford to Seamore or wherever we were going to play, for 2/- up and back.
They were going to build a weir in Yarrawonga so we went there looking for work, but they didn’t begin for about two years. We drove a covered wagon and a cart with a horse in it all the way.
But we couldn’t get a house there because of the depression. No one had money; there was no such thing as the dole, so we used to camp. We camped on a common which was an area you were allowed to camp in. There were no showers or toilets or anything like that. Dad got a job with the council because he was married and had two kids dependent on him, Snow and young Bill. He had a job two days a week filling in potholes around the back streets. I couldn’t get a job because I wasn’t old enough and I was single, so I went out and got a job on a farm. I had to work six days a week for 10/-, driving the team of horses. It was a wheat farm and they were terrific people that I worked for. I used to ride my bike in to where Mum was camping and I’d stay Saturday night there. I’d have Sunday with my family then I’d have to ride my bike out Sunday night to be back at the farm so I could get up at five o’clock in the morning to clean my team and brush them and put their collars on and get them ready for work. I used to have breakfast with the family then I’d go to work.
I didn’t take my money every week; I used to leave it with him then when I’d want any money I’d ask him if I could have a pound, and he’d write me out a cheque for a pound. I’d take it in and cash it and give it to Mum, and that’s what I used to do with my money. I mightn’t want any money for anything, then at harvest time when the wheat was ready I used to drive his header and the binder that cuts the wheat and ties it in bundles, and we used to cut the hay and cart it. He paid me three pound ten for a couple of weeks and my keep and as soon as harvest was finished he used to say: “well, you can have a holiday now”, and I’d have to go because there was nothing for me to do. He’d get in touch with me when he wanted me back again. I did that nearly every year. There was no work anywhere, you couldn’t get a job. You were lucky to get a job on a farm, and I was always very lucky – I could always go back there and I enjoyed it.
When they started to build the weir in Yarrawonga I thought I might get a job but I still wasn’t old enough. My dad was lucky, he got a job with his two horses which was good, so I went back to
the farm again. A contractor came and asked me if I wanted a job driving horses to dig the big channels in Victoria – they were about 13 feet deep and 60 feet wide and they were like a river. He had a contract to dig so much of it, so I got a job with him and he used to pay me three pound a week, I used to get my pay every now and again and I’d give it to mum. Then we moved further out and I had to go and camp in a tent because it was too far for me to ride my bike… in and out. I used to have my meals with this contractor and I used to work six days a week with him, and it was pretty hard work. Then I had a little bit of a tiff with him and I left and went back to Yarrawonga and worked on the farm again.
Later he came and told me he had a contract over the river in NSW, way out at Finlay which was about 60 mile away. He was digging a channel and I went with him out there. We were about 15 miles from Finlay and I camped in my tent. There were another couple of fellows there, and they had an old chev car. Now and again I used to go in with them to Finlay, but they used to drink all the time so I had nothing to do. I didn’t go in very often. Then we had an argument one day, and it took me four days to get home because I had no transport.
The contractor didn’t pay me and I had to go back to get my money so I borrowed Len’s motorbike. He told me when to come, and said he didn’t have any money. He had to pay the feed bill and he didn’t get as much because of wet weather, so I missed out. Eventually I got my money, about 40 pounds which was a lot of money in those days. And I gave that to my mother.
Then my old dad got very sick. He had arthritis and couldn’t work so Len took his place on the weir and I went for a little holiday down to Melbourne for three or four days. There was no work for me so I decided to ride the bike from Yarrawonga down to Broadford because my uncle was manager of a paper mill and I thought I might get a job there. It was a long ride and I had a head wind all the way. I left about 6 o’clock in the morning and I was still riding at 8 o’clock at night. I got to Seymour and thought I can’t ride any further but I had no money to get lunch or anything and 2/6 was all I had, so I bought a ticket for myself and my bike and I got on the train and went to Broadford and out to my uncle’s place.
I stayed with him and I used to go into the paper mill 2 or 3 times a week to see if there was a job. At that particular time of the year the straw was coming in, what they used to make strawboard out of it, and I got a job unloading big railway truckloads of straw, three shifts a week. At least it was a job, and eventually I got a job inside and I thought that was great.
It was still 3 shifts and I thought well I’m pretty good now I’ll buy a football guernsey and I’ll play football, so I bought my football guernsey and boots and my socks and I joined their football club and I used to play for Broadford. We weren’t very good because we were all inexperienced and the good players had left and gone to other teams. I think we went through the whole season and we didn’t win a match.
That didn’t worry us as we liked playing; it was great fun. I played about 3 years there, then the mill closed down so my uncle said to me: “do you want a job down in Taralbin?”. And I said I’ll go anywhere where there’s work, and he said all right and put my name on the list to go to Taralbin down in Gippsland on the other side of Melbourne. The job was with a contractor that was building a paper mill down there. I got a job with him and it was hard work. It was on a pick and shovel and digging trenches and all sorts of things and pouring concrete. It was very hard work. But I stuck to it.
The boss came up to me and he said I’ve got an electrician started and he’s German and he can’t talk English. I’m going to put you with him to teach him the names of the tools and to speak English and he said “he’ll teach you too”, so I said “all right”. I thought that was great, so I went with him. It was very hard for him to make me understand but he used to make me do all the heavy work all the drilling into steel and goodness knows what, and someone would walk past and swear at him and he’d come over to me and tap me on the shoulder and say “what dat? What dat?”. And I’d say, “no , no , no, you musn’t learn that”. And this is how it went on for quite a while. Then the paper mill was going to open again in Broadford and they wanted us all back, so we went back to Broadford.
In the meantime down at Taralbin, I bought an old motorbike and did it up and it was 500. When we went back to Broadford I boarded with my cousin. I built a little shed for my motor bike out the back yard and I used to walk to work as it wasn’t very far. I got my old job back in the neater room and then we were there for about 12 months. I didn’t play football any more then. They wanted me to but I didn’t, and after about 12 months the mill was closing down again so my uncle said to me “will you go to Sydney?” And I said ‘yes I’ll go anywhere”, so he put my name on the list to come to Sydney and that was in 1939.
In Sydney I boarded at a boarding house in King Street. Mascot for a while, then my cousin got a house in Rosebery, so I went to board with her. I didn’t bring my motor bike over for a start; I reckoned I could ride my pushbike over, but it was too far from Rosebery out to Matraville so I used to go by tram. Then my dad sent my motor bike over by train and I got that going and I used to ride that to work. My cousin was on the same shift so I used to take him to work as well, and we used to go along Botany Road and we were always running late. I used to go pretty fast, and the police at Botany came out to the mill to find who rode this Victorian registered motorbike, and they said because we’re going to catch him; he goes too fast. They told me at the mill so I changed my direction: I used to go along Bunnerong Road and it turns out through Matraville. I had a good job there, and I was on the 3 shifts, but then I decided I’d join the Army and I had a lot of fun.
Next door there was a girl and I used to talk to her, and as it turned out she became my wife but anyway that’s another story. I got married after I’d been in the Army about 2 years. When I enlisted the boss said to me: “You can’t because you’re in a protected industry'” and I said “well, I’ll have to leave, and you can’t stop me from leaving. While I was in the Army the paper mill made up my pay and every month they sent me a parcel of goodies which I thought was great.
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The Houston had already left Darwin but they sank the USS Peary that was with us. We were taken back to Winnallie (suburb of Darwin. Ed). We still had ten rounds of ammunition and they were inspected each morning to see that we still had them. When the Japs flew over our camp just above the trees we could have had a pot shot at them but we weren’t allowed to. They used to wave to us. It was quite an experience.
We were up there for the best part of three or four months after they bombed Darwin then we got word that we were going back to Sydney. We went down on the train to Burnham then the Americans picked us up in trucks and drove us over to Mt Isa. They were terrific fellows, they were wonderful and we had a good trip with them. When we got to Mt Isa we heard that we were to take the portable kitchen back down south with us. The CO said to Jack and me “you don’t drink so you can escort the kitchen”. The rest of them went in a passenger train. We were on a goods train with one carriage to ride in. Whenever they stopped to do some shunting we had to check that they didn’t leave our kitchen behind.
At Gympie they did leave it behind. They gave us a lot of meal tickets and when we got to the stations where we could get a feed they were surprised because they didn’t expect to feed people on a goods train. Jack and I went down the street and got a good meal and when we got back the train was going out and we had to chase it. We caught up with the guard and he stopped the train. They had to go back for our kitchen and hook it on again.
The carriage had a toilet and when we went in to have a wash and there was no water. I said “that’s terrible”. We stopped at a little siding where they were going to replenish the water in the engine and I went up to the driver and asked if he could back the train up to the tank so that we could put some water in the carriage.
He said right-o and I said to Jack ‘well I’ll get up’. The hose was about a foot in diameter and Jack said ‘I’ll turn it on when you’re ready’. I had to squeeze the hose because there was only a two inch hole to put the water in. It was taking forever so Jack turned the hose on full and the hose sprang out of my hand and fell down and water went all over the carriage and Jack couldn’t turn it off.
Eventually he got it off and we went up to the driver and told him we were right and when we got in the carriage the whole thing leaked and the floor was awash. It was sloshing around our feet but it didn’t worry us too much, we just took our boots off, and eventually it ran out of the holes.
We went in and filled the basin and tipped the water over one another. We left our clothes on the seat because we were the only ones there. We didn’t take any notice when the train stopped but when we came out there were four aboriginal women and about ten kids. Jack said “don’t take any notice of them”, so we came out and got dressed. I said “at the next stop we’ll make a cup of tea”, and he said “we haven’t got a billy”. There was a fair-sized tin there so we put a handle on it with some wire and when the train stopped we went and boiled it in the engine. We put it on a poker and put it in the engine’s firebox and it didn’t take long to boil so we made our tea and took it back to the carriage.
It’s funny, all the food they gave us to do us on the train were these dog biscuits and a case of tinned pears, and the pears got hot and you couldn’t eat them. So all we had were dog biscuits, and we had this cup of tea and the aboriginals wanted some but we couldn’t share it with them, there wasn’t enough. That’s how we used to make our tea for the rest of the trip.
It was a long trip but finally we got to Townsville and the officers said we shouldn’t have left (the kitchen?) out there, and I said “it’s sitting way out there in the middle of the railway yards, it won’t go anywhere it’s not on a train”. He gave us a ticket so we could get a meal there which we did. Eventually they hitched it up again and we took it all the way to Sydney where we escorted it out to St Ives Showground. That’s where we were stationed.
They gave us I think it was about five days leave when we went back to the showground (St Ives) and transferred down to Corrimal. It was good down there, we used to go into Wollongong and we made a nice camp of it, and then they said ‘right-o you can pack up we’re off, now’. We didn’t take any of the trucks, we had to hand them over, and we went up to Sydney and they said ‘you’re going on the Centaur, the hospital ship, and you’re going to NG so you’ll have a good trip there’. Our old CO he wanted us to have at least one good trip.
It was great we were sleeping in the patient’s beds which was terrific. We used to get meals served up to us it was quite good. We sailed the next morning about 9 o’clock and we thought this is like a cruise, so off we went down the harbour and out we went and three o’clock in the afternoon one of the crew ‘we’ve got a Jap sub with us’ and I said, ‘that’s odd’, but he said ‘he won’t touch us we’re a hospital ship’. He was with us all the afternoon; he was a bit away but he was there, although he wasn’t right on the surface. The next morning we were coming towards Brisbane and when we didn’t turn into Brisbane he torpedoed as at ten past four in the morning, and that wasn’t a very nice experience.
The next thing I knew I was going through the air. Anyhow I hit the floor and there was all oil on it and it was on a hell of a slope I could hardly stand so I grabbed the bed and we were told to take out hats, and I thought I had my hat but I didn’t, I had my webbing and my hat wasn’t there so I decided I’d better go out to the boat station, and our little corporal (Corbett, Ed.) was standing at the bottom of the steps and he was grabbing everybody by the arm and pushing them up the steps, but he didn’t get off. When I got up on deck I went around to my boat station and there was no one there. There was a piece of wood and the raft was on the guy wires of the mast and it slid over the side and you were supposed to jump in. There was another raft sitting on the deck up further because it was on a terrific slope and it came sliding down the deck and took me down into the galley amongst all the rubbish bins and that’s where I was pinned, and I couldn’t move and I thought ‘well this is no good I can’t get out of here’, then I felt the water coming upon me and it floated the raft away. The rafts were made of 8 x 44 gallon drums and they were pretty heavy. Anyhow it floated the raft off me and I thought ‘I’d better get out of here’ so I started to swim and I swam right out and I got a fair bit away.
It was pretty dark though your eyes got accustomed to the dark and I could see a raft do I thought ‘that’ll do me, I’ll get on that’, but the sea had a bit of a roll and the mast came over and hit it and cut it in half. Anyhow I got on half a raft, then two or three more got on and we floated around then we got another bit of raft and wreckage. The roof of wheelhouse it was, and tied that on with bits of wire onto the raft and when it got properly daylight it was an awful mess. There was a lot of rubbish floating round, and there were sharks everywhere, and we were sitting on the roof of this wheelhouse about a foot under water. It was supporting about four or five of us and the sharks would swim around and we had this piece of timber and we used to him them on the nose or push them off.
Then during the morning we could see a lifeboat, the ends of it sticking out of the water I said to Les Horgan – he was a funny fellow, old Les; he reckoned that if ever he was on a boat and it sank he imagined himself running up the back of it and diving off, and that’s just what he did. He had a driver’s cap on and it pushed it down over his ears and when the water shrank it we had a hell of a job to get it off. Anyway we swam over to the boat to see if we could do any good. We didn’t think of sharks and we climbed in at one end and first of all we started to bail it with a piece of board and I said ‘we can’t bail it Les, the sides are under water, so he said “well, I’ll go up the other end it might make it better’, and he was walking along in the boat and he disappeared – there was no bottom in it. He came up outside of us. Anyhow he got up the other end and we had a piece of board and we paddled it back and tied it on to the wreckage and we had quote an assortment of stuff and there was about 16 of us all told, AAMC, Merchant Crew and our lot. I don’t know who they all were.
We sat around all day, couldn’t do anything else, couldn’t go anywhere, and it wasn’t very warm either, nothing to do, nothing to eat, we didn’t even have a fishing line to do a bit of fishing. It became dark and we spent the night there. We were supposed to swap around, two would get onto the life-boat out of the water and the two on the raft were sitting on the wheelhouse which had four staples in it where the electric wires were on it, and it wasn’t very comfortable sitting there. There were rations in the boat. a bit of chocolate and some water and a bottle of whiskey. Two of them shared the rations with us, but they wouldn’t leave the boat and during the night they drank the whiskey all themselves. They were still there when we were picked up about 4 o’clock next after-noon.
There had been planes going over and we yelled and waved, but that didn’t make any difference. About 4 o’clock in the afternoon the USS Mugford came speeding up to us and he pulled up then he said ‘we’ll pick you up’ but he must have got a message because he took off like a rocket. Two or three on the raft went berserk ‘he’s left us’. They were running about the wreckage and onto the raft and just about knocking people into the water. He went away but we thought well anyway he knows we’re here and he’ll come back.
He came back and picked us up and there was an American who was about four foot high and about four foot wide and there were several there standing on the deck with machine guns shooting at the sharks to keep them off us and anyone who was too weak to get up the rope ladder on the side of the boat and fell in the water, they’d hit the water and so would he. He’d pick them up on his shoulder and carry them up the rope ladder on the side of the boat. A wonderful fellow he was.
After they had run around and picked all the rest of us up, we didn’t know who’d got off and who hadn’t, and they took us into Brisbane and we went into Greenslopes hospital.
The doctor came around, he was only a young fellow and from being in the water so long the skin was coming off our feet and I said, ‘can I have something to put on my feet?’ He said ‘you want to soak them in salt water’, I said ‘I don’t think so, they have had a pretty good soak, I don’t think they need any more’. They brought salt water but I didn’t use it.
We were in Greenslopes Hospital for a few days and then they took us out to a camp and we had leave every night. I went into Brisbane a couple of times. Dad had a friend who had a boot shop and I went in and saw him. Anyhow we got a few clothes together and they decided to bring us back down to Sydney to the Showground. I was in hospital in Concord for a while and then they sent us back down to Goulburn. Jack Bayley and I, we were down there in that hospital for about ten days I think it was. Then they brought us back to the showground and they said: ‘we’re going to discharge you’. It took about two weeks to discharge us and we used to get leave every night. We didn’t have to go back to camp, so Jack and I used to just hang around for a while then we’d tell the bloke we were going into the city. We’d go to a billiard room and have a few games then get our leave pass and go home for the night. Eventually I was discharged and that was the end of my army life.