Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  Now the days were long and dismal,

  Though the wildflowers blossomed bright

  And Spring’s warm sun made living glad for some.

  There was plenty good tobacco,

  But we felt the ‘drought’ at night,

  When in our tents we’d smoke and yarn of home.

  And the big, bare slopes seemed cheerless

  With their camel bush and rocks,

  And barley, golden in the morning light;

  But a happy rumour’s reached us,

  Hailing from the Suez docks,

  That has somehow changed life’s prospects over-night.

  For a freighter’s berthed in Tewfik,

  That has sailed from southern seas,

  A-laden to the decks with cargo rare.

  And each mulga mail’s confirmed it,

  Borne in on the southern breeze—

  She’s beat the Japs and anchored safely there.

  No, she’s not an ocean liner,

  Just a rusty, battered tramp,

  With a tired stoker leaning on the rail;

  But she’s heaved the green seas from her,

  And we reckon she’s a champ,

  For she’s brought a load of Aussie beer and mail!

  JACK EDMONDSON

  Jack Edmondson was born in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, later moving to Liverpool where he attended Austral Public School and Hurlstone Park Agricultural high School.

  After he left school, Edmondson worked on his parents’ farm. He joined the 4th CMF militia when war broke out and enlisted in the AIF in May 1940. He was promoted to corporal and embarked for the Middle East with the 2/17th Infantry Battalion, as reinforcements for the 9th Division.

  After training in Palestine, his battalion were sent to relieve the 6th Australian Division at Marsa Brega and became part of the Australian contingent defending Tobruk.

  In April 1941, German tanks and infantry breached the defences on the southern desert side of Tobruk and established machine-gun posts as well as positions for mortars and field guns.

  A seven-man Australian patrol attacked a strategic German position. Edmondson was wounded in the neck and stomach but ran to the German position under heavy fire and killed the German gunner with his bayonet.

  He continued to advance and saved the life of his commanding officer who was attempting to bayonet one of the enemy when the man grabbed his legs and another German soldier attacked him from behind. Although severely wounded, Corporal Edmondson ran to his assistance and killed both of the Germans, saving his officer’s life.

  Jack Edmondson died from his wounds soon after the German attack was repelled.

  An hour later, the post they had captured was re-taken by a force of two hundred German infantry and the Australians were forced to withdraw,

  The Germans then established a bridgehead in the outer defensive line at Tobruk. The ferocious Australian defence and counterattack, however, forced Rommel to change plans and the Australian tactic of letting German tanks pass and then following and destroying them from behind forced Rommel’s army to retreat with heavy casualties.

  Corporal John Edmondson was the first Australian to be awarded the Victoria Cross in World War II and is buried in the Tobruk War Cemetery.

  His mother accepted his VC from the Governor-General on 27 September 1941 and, in 1969, she presented her son’s medals and military belongings to the Australian War Memorial. You can see them there today.

  A school, a park and a street in Sydney, a suburb of Wagga Wagga, a rest area on the road to Canberra, and a street near the War Memorial are named in memory of Jack Edmondson, VC.

  JH

  LEST WE FORGET

  The Rats of Tobruk hold an almost sacred place within the ranks of returned servicemen in Australia. There is the Rats of Tobruk Memorial in Canberra and the international Rats of Tobruk Association was responsible for official memorial services and the erection of numerous other monuments in Australia and the UK. The association also organised with the Royal Mint of Australia the striking of a fifty-year anniversary medallion in 1991.

  A big part of the legend being firmly established in Australian minds and hearts was the 1944 movie The Rats of Tobruk, starring Peter Finch and Chips Rafferty and directed by Charles Chauvel. The Rats were remembered with almost the same reverence as the original Anzacs and traditionally received the loudest cheer at every Anzac Day march.

  An incident which occurred sixty-seven years after the siege is indicative of the respect Australians give to the memory of the Rats.

  In April 2007, the Victorian contingent of the Rats of Tobruk Association reluctantly decided that it could no longer afford the upkeep of Tobruk House, the inner-city Melbourne meeting hall purchased by the association in the 1950s, when the Victorian association had 2000 members.

  In 2007, the eighty who were left, all aged in their eighties and nineties, decided they had to sell the hall. From the sale, they hoped to raise a million dollars to be used for research at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, where there is a Rats of Tobruk Neuroscience Ward.

  Bill Gibbons, who made his wealth out of trucking, had seen reports of the Rats deciding it was time to sell the Victoria Street property and felt it was a shame they should lose the home they had bought in the 1950s. At the auction, he beat off four other bidders for the hall, but had to pay $400,000 above what anyone expected. He then told the veterans they could keep the hall as long as they liked.

  Bill Gibbons, whose father had served three years in the Middle East, but not at Tobruk, said, ‘I went down there, shot my hand up and paid more than I ever intended, as you do at auctions—but everyone in Australia would have a feeling they should retain this place.’

  JH

  TOBRUK

  ANONYMOUS

  There’s places that I’ve been in

  That I didn’t like too well;

  Scotland’s far too bloody cold

  And Cairo’s hot as hell.

  English beer is always warm,

  Each place has something crook.

  But each is perfect when compared

  To the place they call Tobruk.

  I’ve seen some dust storms back at home

  That made poor housewives work,

  But there’s enough inside our shirts

  To smother all of Bourke.

  Two diggers cleaned their dugout,

  Their blankets out they shook;

  Two colonels perished in the dust,

  In this place they call Tobruk.

  There’s centipedes like pythons,

  And there’s countless hordes of fleas;

  As big as poodle dogs they are,

  All snapping round your knees,

  And scorpions like lobsters

  Come round to have a look,

  There’s lots of bloody livestock

  In this place they call Tobruk.

  Now there’s militant teetotallers,

  Who abhor all kinds of drink.

  There’s wives who break good bottles

  And pour grog down the sink.

  This place would suit them to the ground,

  We’ve searched in every nook,

  But booze is scarce as hen’s teeth

  In this place they call Tobruk.

  The shelling’s nice and frequent,

  They whistle overhead.

  You go into your dugout

  And find shrapnel in your bed;

  And when the stukas dive on us

  We never stop to look,

  We go down our holes like rabbits

  In this place they call Tobruk.

  Sometimes we go in swimming

  And we float about at ease,

  The water’s clear as crystal,

  There’s a lovely ocean breeze,

  Then down comes bloody Herman

  And we have to sling our hook;

  We dive right to the bottom

  In this place they call Tobruk.

  I r
eally do not think this place

  Was made for me and you,

  Let’s leave it to the Arab,

  And he knows what he can do.

  We’ll leave this god-forsaken place

  Without one backward look,

  We’ve called it lots of other names,

  This place they call Tobruk.

  HOW WOULD I BE?

  This is the archetypal Aussie yarn and has usually been attached to Tobruk. It is sometimes known as ‘The World’s Worst Whinger’.

  The deadpan, self-deprecating black humour of the story somehow seems to fit the dry Aussie humour that sustained the troops at the Siege of Tobruk. The Aussies took the German insults and attempts to destroy their morale and used them to boost their morale and thumb their noses at their enemies.

  I struck him first in a shearing shed near Longreach in far western Queensland. He had a smoke stuck to his bottom lip and was wearing a dirty old blue ‘Jackie Howe’ singlet. He’d just shoved a cranky old ewe down the shute and was taking a deep breath when I nodded and asked the usual Aussie question by way of greeting.

  ‘How’d ya be?’

  He didn’t answer for a few seconds, he just looked at me as if I’d crawled out from under a log, took the roll-your-own smoke out of his mouth and scratched his head.

  ‘How would I be?’ he said slowly, ‘how would I bloody well be!?’

  ‘How the bloody hell do you think I’d be? Get a look at me, will you? I’m covered in dags and burrs, these bloody shears are blunt and the shearing engine only works when it feels like it.

  ‘The boss of this place is the lousiest bastard in Australia, me missus is chasing me for maintenance on three kids that aren’t mine and I haven’t had a beer for weeks.

  ‘Last time I got a beer in me mitt some dopey bastard knocked it out of me hand and then the publican threw me out of the pub for hitting the dopey bugger!

  ‘The cook in this shed should be cooking for murderers in some prison, his gravy and his custard taste exactly the same and he’s the only bloke I know who can make eggs taste like India rubber!

  ‘How would I be!? How do you bloody well think I’d be!?’

  Next time I saw him, he was sitting outside the recruiting office in Brisbane with a pile of army gear in his lap.

  I should have known better, but the words were out before I could stop myself, ‘How’d ya be, cobber?’

  ‘How would I bloody well be?’ he said, ‘Take a gander at me, would ya! Get a load of this bloody outfit; look at me bloody hat—size nine and a half and I take a six and a half; get a bloody eyeful of these strides, you could hide a brewery horse in the bloody things and still have room for me; they gave me one shirt four sizes too big and one three sizes too small and look at these boots, there’s enough leather in the bastards to make a full set of saddle and harness; and they told me this was a man’s outfit!

  ‘How’d I be? How do you bloody well think I’d be!?’

  I next saw him in Tobruk. He was seated on an upturned ammunition box; tin hat over one eye, cigarette butt hanging out from his bottom lip, rifle leaning against one knee, trying to clean his fingernails with the tip of his bayonet.

  I should have known better, but I asked him: ‘How’d ya be, digger?’

  He swallowed the butt and fixed me with a fearsome look. ‘How’d I be? How would I bloody well be? How would you expect me to be? Six months in this bloody place being shot at by every Fritz in Africa and used as target practice by the bloody Luftwaffe ten times a day!

  ‘I’m eating bloody sand with every meal; there’s flies in me hair and eyes, frightened to sleep a bloody wink, expecting to die in this bloody godforsaken place and copping crow every time there’s a handout of a job to anybody. How’d I be? How the bloody hell do you expect I’d be?’

  Well, he must have died at Tobruk, because the last time I saw him I was dreaming—and he was in Heaven.

  I know I should have known better, but I said, ‘G’day old mate, how’d you be?’

  ‘How’d I be? How in bloody Heaven’s name do ya reckon I’d be?

  ‘Get a look at this bloody regulation nightgown, would you! A man trips over the bloody thing fifty times a bloody day and it takes me ten minutes to lift the bloody thing when I want to scratch my shin.

  ‘And get a gander at this bloody right wing, feathers missing everywhere—a man must be bloody well moulting!

  ‘Get an eyeful of this halo—only me bloody ears keep the rotten thing on me skull.

  ‘How would I bloody well be? Cast your eyes over me bloody harp; five strings missing and there’s band practice in ten minutes.

  ‘How’d I be? How do you bloody well think I’d be!?’

  JH

  MIDDLE EAST SONG

  ANONYMOUS

  Oh, they took us out to Egypt, that God-forsaken land,

  It’s filled with bloody nothing and covered up with sand.

  They fed us on stale biscuits, camel piss and stew,

  And we wandered round in circles with bugger-all to do.

  The generals that they sent us had not a bloody clue,

  They ought to round the bastards up and put them in a zoo.

  They said, ‘Keep your eye on Rommel, don’t let the bastard pass.’

  But he’d sneak around behind them and kick them in the arse!

  Then out came Montgomery, his prayerbook in his hand.

  He said, ‘Now men, the time has come to make a bloody stand.

  We’ve got the Lord on our side and Rommel’s cupboard’s bare.

  Now then men, down on your knees and say a bloody prayer!’

  And we prayed, ‘Oh, Jesus save us, ’tis not the Hun we fear,

  Save us from the crazy bastards Churchill sends out here!’

  BIGGER THAN PEARL HARBOR

  The Darwin raids on 19 February involved more Japanese aircraft than the Pearl Harbor raid and more bombs were dropped than at Pearl Harbor.

  The two separate air raids carried out against Darwin on 19 February 1942 were planned and led by Japanese Naval Air Service Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who also famously planned and led the attack on Pearl Harbor two months earlier.

  It was the first time since European settlement that mainland Australia had been attacked by a foreign enemy. The operation has often been described by military historians in retrospect as ‘using a sledgehammer to crack an egg (or a walnut)’ and even Fuchida himself said later in his report that the operation ‘seemed hardly worthy’ of his highly trained strike force.

  Fuchida led the first group of 188 attack aircraft, which were launched from four Japanese carriers stationed 350 kilometres from Darwin in the Arafura Sea near Timor.

  In the first attack, which began at 9.58 a.m., heavy bombers pattern-bombed the harbour and town while dive-bombers and Zero fighters attacked shipping in the harbour and bombed the military and civil airfields. The first victim of the raid was a US Catalina flying near Bathurst Island, which was spotted and attacked by nine Zeroes.

  The pilot was Lieutenant Tom Moorer, who would survive to later become an admiral and eventually Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Moorer crash-landed into the sea and, although the passing freighter that rescued him, the Florence D., was later attacked and sunk, Moorer and most of his crew survived.

  Once the pattern-bombing runs of the town and harbour were completed, eighty torpedo bombers attacked the ships in the harbour, while seventy dive-bombers, escorted by thirty-six Zeroes, attacked the RAAF bases, other airfields and public buildings, including a hospital.

  Eight ships were sunk in Darwin Harbour, including a large American troop carrier and the destroyer USS Peary, which lost eighty crew in the attack. The merchant ship SS Zealandia, which was being used as a troop transport, also sank. Not long after the raid was over, MV Neptuna exploded spectacularly when 200 depth charges she was transporting blew up as a result of fires caused by the bombing.

  The HMAS Mavie, a patrol boat, was also sunk, along with an Ame
rican freighter, a British refuelling vessel and a coal transport ship. A locomotive, which was on the pier, was blown into the harbour and the jetty was partly destroyed.

  The seaplane tender USS William B. Preston was badly damaged but managed to make a run to the open sea and was later repaired at Fremantle.

  The hospital ship Manunda was attacked and damaged in spite of her obvious white hospital colour and signage, and the mine-sweeper HMAS Gunbar was damaged by strafing as she left port. A crewman was killed and five others were wounded.

  Three ships were saved from sinking only by being beached after suffering severe damage and another ten were badly damaged in the raid.

  In total, the air force hardware damage included ten Kittyhawks, a B24 bomber, and three transport planes. The US navy lost four flying boats and the RAAF lost all six Hudsons and the Wirraway training planes.

  Most civil and military facilities in Darwin, along with most essential services including water and electricity, were badly damaged or totally destroyed.

  The attack lasted forty minutes and was followed, an hour later, by the second wave of fifty-four land-based heavy bombers, flying out of recently captured airfields at Ambon and Kendari, which attacked the RAAF base from high altitude for about twenty minutes.

  While Darwin was devastated and the population was left in chaos, the Japanese were dismissive of their easy target. Captain Fuchída noted derisively that:

  a single pier and a few waterfront buildings appeared to be the only port installations. The airfield on the outskirts of the town . . . had no more than two or three small hangars, and twenty-odd planes of various types scattered about the field . . . were destroyed where they stood. Anti-aircraft fire was intense but largely ineffectual, and we quickly accomplished our objectives.

  Two aircraft were acknowledged as lost by the Japanese, but Allied reports claimed five Japanese aircraft were definitely destroyed and another five probably shot down. One Japanese Zero pilot who crash-landed on Melville Island was captured by a local Tiwi Islander and handed over to the army to become the first prisoner of war captured on Australian soil.