The rest of our time at Igam was spent establishing this barren area, driving the long hot dirt road into Lae to shop, and meeting the boats when they came in with supplies.
In the evenings we played cards and had dinner parties with the few other couples in the barracks or dined and watched movies in the Mess. Rob had a great scam with his soldiers – slightly unorthodox, but very popular. Whoever was the best turned-out soldier for the weekly parade would be made ‘fisherman of the day’. A great honour and one highly sought after, for the said soldier could take the Friday afternoon off to go fishing, meaning we had some fantastic reef fish on our table over the weekend – as did the rest of the soldiers. Sometimes they speared huge succulent lobsters that we would cook in a tin drum over a fire in the area under the house. In Vanimo, a few years later, we had some magnificent lobster bakes on the beach in front of the Officers’ Mess.
Colourful tribal festivals, where the soldiers dressed up in costumes depicting their tribe and village place, were a feature I remember well. For hours they entertained us with electrifying song and dance routines. Some even looked quite terrifying with their magnificently painted and pig-greased bodies, feathered headdresses, and large spears, stomping, chanting and literally shaking the earth with thundering black feet and banging on ornate drums.
Soon, however, this weird and wonderful life of mine in New Guinea was to come to an end. For Rob had been told he was being posted to Vietnam with the 5th Battalion early in the New Year. Before I knew it, I was on my way back to Australia, to a life far removed from this great adventure.
What I didn’t know then was that within a few years I’d be back again in this extraordinary country which has shaped so much of my life.
Chapter 22
Back Home and Off to War
My early move back to Australia was brought about by the airlines at that time not allowing women to fly when in the last trimester of pregnancy. So after a number of farewell parties and a sad goodbye to Snoopy at his new home in Igam, and then Rob out at the airstrip in Lae, I flew to Moresby and then on to Brisbane to see Eugene, now returned from Vietnam. Back in Canberra I stayed in my old bedroom with my parents at Ijong Street.
To fill in the time until Rob came down to prepare for his tour of duty in Vietnam, I secured a part-time job at David Jones department store where I worked behind the cosmetic counter selling Helena Rubenstein and Estee Lauder, dressed in a short black shift. I was soon told to lower the hemline, making me realise we were further advanced in the fashion stakes in New Guinea than they were in Canberra at the time.
When Rob returned to Australia he was stationed at Holsworthy Barracks, south of Sydney, where the 5th Battalion was preparing for Vietnam. After much searching we found a home in Illawong, with five acres of thick bushland rolling down to the Georges River, about thirty minutes’ drive from the barracks and not far from where Diana and Mike Battle were now living. Mike was to go to Vietnam with the 5th Battalion also. Here we awaited the arrival of Charlotte, who was born on the 11th September, 1968, in the Sutherland District Hospital.
‘The most beautiful princess in the world,’ were Rob’s words, as he stared at the blonde, blue-eyed vision through the glass partition. This was well before the time when husbands were allowed anywhere near the labour ward.
As the hospital was pretty crowded at the time I spent much of my labour on a trolley in a corridor. Somewhat surprised when they handed me a blue eyed blonde baby to breastfeed, I watched in horror the woman in the next bed feeding a brown eyed, dark haired one. Surely this was a mistake. Even the nurse looked a bit confused, eyeing my nut-brown eyes and long dark hair, before studying the woman’s blue eyes and blonde hair in the next bed. I used to joke with Charlotte that it was only years later, when our second daughter, Georgina, was born that I realised it wasn’t a mistake after all. She was just as blonde with the same blue eyes. Today Georgie’s beautiful daughter, Eleanor, looks identical to them both.
Rob and I both immediately fell in love with Charlotte. Needless to say, we’ve been in love ever since. Unfortunately September the 11th has become notorious for the horrendous New York twin towers terrorism attacks. Not a great day to celebrate a birthday, but back in 1968 it was a joyous day for us and the rest of our families.
Gunga Din joined the three of us at this time also. A large Doberman Pincher with a will of his own, he became Charlotte’s minder. In fact, on the way back from the hospital, I was somewhat put out when Charlotte and I were left in the car on a busy street in Sutherland as Rob disappeared into a pet shop to find a bed and a collar for Gunga Din.
‘Well, he might feel left out,’ he said, opening the car door and dumping his new acquisitions on the seat beside Charlotte’s bassinet.
Mind you, as Gunga Din sat protectively under Charlotte’s bassinet out in the sunshine at Illawong, barking furiously when anyone approached, I could see Rob’s reasoning.
Rob was deeply involved in pre-Vietnam training and away a lot, so Gunga Din looked after me too. As part of the battalion’s preparation they went for weeks on end to Shoalwater Bay in far north Queensland to acclimatise to jungle warfare. Other times Rob was on exercises in the bush around Sydney, yet unable to come home at night. In response to a desperate plea for help, my mother came to lend a welcome hand with Charlotte, as she was spending rather a lot of time yelling and screaming (what I thought were huge obscenities she must have learned in a previous world) due to dreadful colic. No doubt this was caused by an anxious mother trying to feed an anxious baby, and not made any easier by the fact I was awaiting the departure of my husband to Vietnam. Not having a helper in the house, for the first time in a number of years, I also had to spend hours starching and ironing Rob’s jungle greens till they stood up on their own accord, a job at which I was not good, as I explained earlier.
It was stinking hot, one of the most blistering summers in Sydney on record.
One day I was ironing in the laundry, with the sweat pouring down my face in rivulets. Charlotte was screaming as usual and there was only a week to go before Rob’s departure for Vietnam. Kindly, Rob’s mother, Hazel, staying with us at the time, came to see if she could help. Falling over Gunga Din sprawled on the ground, the poor woman broke her ankle, and I had to pack her and Charlotte into the car and make a hurried trip to the hospital where the amiable doctor put it in plaster and told her to go home and rest. Looking at my distraught baby and then at a frazzled me, he suggested we do the same, a highly stupid recommendation I thought, thinking of the army greens still in the laundry and Rob’s imminent departure to defend his country from the hordes of communists about to arrive.
However, we did have a number of good parties around the barbeque and makeshift above-ground pool in the heat of that 1968/69 summer. There were a few of the class of ’65 in Sydney at the time, either having just returned from Vietnam or Malaya, or, like Rob, preparing to go. I was envious of the ones who’d returned, although as it turned out, many of them were to go back again for a second time, including Eugene. It was a nerve-wracking time waiting for the inevitable to happen. I optimistically hoped the war would end before Rob had to leave us.
It was not to be.
We packed up the car early on the morning of his departure on HMAS Sydney. With Charlotte ensconced in her bassinet on the back seat we drove in peak-hour traffic from Illawong, down to the Woolloomooloo docks to our date with the inescapable. Not much was said on the trip in. I recall the music playing on the radio. One maudlin love song after the other did little for our morale. I looked miserably out of the window at all the other people in their cars going to work and wished I could be one of them. It seemed odd to me that life was going on around us as usual, when Rob was about to leave for the war. I’ll always be grateful to the cheery Salvation Army officers down on the docks serving tea and biscuits to the soldiers, their wives, and families, doing their utmost to try and keep the morale up. A difficult job.
I desperately clung to Rob a
s he clasped Charlotte in his arms for one last time. His mother sobbed when he leaned down and kissed her goodbye. When it came to my turn for a final farewell I couldn’t speak, just hiding my face in the folds of his uniform before lifting my lips for a lingering kiss.
Minutes later, he and the other soldiers boarded the carrier and stood proudly on the deck. After an agonising wait, we waved a final goodbye as the huge ship drifted out to the harbour to commence her journey to Vietnam with Rob and much of the cream of Aussie youth on board. Rob was sad to leave, but also excited to be heading off to war. After all, this is what he’d been trained for. He was also anxious to get it over and done with.
Behind where I stood, the anti-Vietnam protesters waved banners high in the air, at the same time screeching anti-war chants.
‘Get lost,’ I wanted to shout at them. Instead I stood holding my screaming baby in one hand and clutching Rob’s distraught mother with the other.
His father had decided to say his goodbyes the night before and I must admit standing there, I thought he might have made the right decision.
Drominagh on the shores of Lough Derg in Tipperary where my father and his family grew up and where I lived after my birth. The family to whom we sold it in 1949 still own it and we all often visit.
Ballynastragh Castle in County Wexford, burnt down in the Civil War of 1922/23 and since rebuilt on the same piece of land the Esmonde family has owned since the eleventh century. I spend many happy times there with my cousins.
My father, Owen, with his mother, Eily, when he was about eight.
My grandfather, Dr John Esmonde, MP for North Tipperary (on left) with John Redmond, leader of the Home Rule Party (which wanted to end Westminster’s rule of Ireland) in the grounds of Drominagh.
My maternal grandfather, George Henry Louis Mackenzie, who spent a great deal of his life in India as a jute broker.
My maternal grandmother, Lillian Mackenzie, known as Granny Mac, who once worked for the Nizam of Hyderabad.
Coul House, Inverness, Scotland. The home of the Mackenzies, my mother’s family. It is now a hotel where I love to visit and watch croquet games on the lawn.
My mother on far right end of top row at Sacré Coeur Convent, Tunbridge Wells, England.
My mother early 1930s, working at the Savoy in London where she often went dancing with the Aga Khan.
At Drominagh, 1938.
My parents on their wedding day in 1938.
Setting out for a hunt from Drominagh in 1939. My parents in foreground.
My mother’s sister, Zita, and her husband, Phillip Burch, on their wedding day in Calcutta. Later Phillip, an officer with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry in India, tragically died of rabies. My mother was heartbroken as she lived with them for sometime and adored Phillip.
My father’s younger brother, Eugene Esmonde VC, DSO, not long before he was killed flying a Swordfish in the Channel Dash action in 1942. He was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously.
Eugene, second from left on the aircraft carrier, Ark Royal in 1941, after the action from HMS Victorious, which saw him drop the torpedo on The Bismarck, which contributed to its sinking by the British Navy. This is the action which won Eugene the DSO, which he received from King George V1 shortly before his death in the Channel Dash action, which won him a posthumous Victoria Cross. He also flew the first surcharged airmail to Australia, piloting flying-boats with Imperial Airways and Qantas Empire Airways for a number of years in the 1930’s.
My father and his brother, Paddy, with their mother, after receiving the Victoria Cross from King George V1 for Eugene at Buckingham Palace, 1942.
Captain Thomas Esmonde, the first Esmonde VC, who won his award in the Crimean War.
Clonmoylan on the other side of Lough Derg from Drominagh, where we moved to in 1948.
With Brownie and Peggy at Clonmoylan.
Viv on my much-loved donkey, Early Mist, at Clonmoylan.
On the bog cart on Lough Derg at Clonmoylan with my father. Dibs and Eugene in background. Such joys of childhood.
With Gill, Eugene, Dibs and Viv (I am bottom left) at Clonmoylan.
At Clonmoylan when I was six. Note the gumboots, which were rarely off my feet. Lough Derg in background.
Having fun in the snow with Peggy on the sleigh made from my mother’s old skis.
At Bray outside Dublin before leaving for Australia in 1954 (we are the five on left). It was the first time Viv and I had friends nearby to play with. Eugene says we look like something out of Angela’s Ashes. He’s not far wrong!
Viv in front of Reidsdale Post Office sign. My mother ran the post office and my father dug post holes for the farmer who owned the land.
The house and post office at Reidsdale not far from Braidwood in NSW where we lived in 1954. A long way in more ways than one from Drominagh and Clonmoylan. It was even more derelict in 1954.
With Eugene, setting out for a day’s sheep mustering with our neighbour at Reidsdale. He taught us all how to boil a billy, crack a whip and some good Aussie slang.
Eugene in front of Steve Forsant’s horse-drawn caravan, which his horse, Cuddy, later pulled all the way to Canberra and parked outside our house.
Sitting on Clown with Eugene, Dibs, Viv and Gill holding Porky at Reidsdale.
With Dibs in front of my father’s prized Armstrong Siddeley.
From left: Dibs, Gill, Eugene and Viv with our catch of the day at Whale Beach. I am on right.
Having fun Whale Beach, 1956. I am in the middle.
Heading off for Sunday Mass at Ijong Street. Gill, who had an even fuller rope skirt, after hoops went out of fashion, took this photo.
Braddon Catholic Girls High 1959 Hockey team in Canberra (now Merice College) I am third from right middle row.
With Viv on a working holiday in Cairns, 1964. We caught the mail train from Brisbane, a slow trip.
Dibs with our friend Father O’Brien at the Irish Embassy, Canberra.
My father in his garden at Ijong Street, which passersby would stop to admire.
At Ijong Street heading back to Rose Bay convent (now Kincoppel Rose Bay) in Sydney. Viv happier than I was with prospect of another term away.
Gill in back garden of Ijong Street. Note Eugene’s bedroom – the old RAAF hut behind.
Riding with Mrs Bobby Llewellyn (Mrs Lew) in the Murrumbidgee River, now Lake Burley Griffin, in 1958. I am front left in check shirt riding Goldie. Next to me, also in check shirt, is Viv on Danny Boy. In front of her is Gill on her white horse, Aaron. Dibs (white shirt) behind her on Kinsale. Eugene not there. Bobby Llewellyn (far left) won a Queen’s Birthday award for dedication to young horse riders in Canberra and surrounds.
Eugene at Duntroon Military College, where he introduced me to Rob.
First photo with Rob. At his 21st at Ijong Street. This suit I wore often and in many combinations. I was 18.
Rob receiving the Heritage Cup from General Finlay at Duntroon. He is the only Duntroon cadet to ever win both the tennis and squash trophies every year for four years. He was also in the first XV rugby team.
Rob’s father, John (Poppy), and his in-laws on New South Wales coast in 1930s. Poppy lived with us for close to 20 years later in his life when his wife Hazel died.
Rob’s mother, Hazel (on right), on South Coast NSW 1930s. Love the hats.
The Peterswald Chateau (circa 1785) in Buchlovice in the Czech Republic, housing one of the best art collections in Europe. We have visited often with the family. Sadly the chateau above and castle below went out of the family many years ago.
The Peterswald Castle (circa 1208) sitting above Buchlovice in Czech Republic. It was so cold and windy each time we went there that I can quite understand why the family moved to the chateau above.
Rob’s great grandfather, William John Peterswald, moved to Australia in mid 1800s, where he became the third police commissioner of South Australia in 1882.
Rob’s graduation at RMC Duntroon, 1965 – a proud mother and girlf
riend.
Our wedding at Taurama Barracks, Port Moresby Dec 1966. My mother, who was the only member of our families able to come to Moresby, made me drop my hemline. Later I took the hem up again and used it as a tennis dress.
Can My Pony Come Too? Page 19