by Ann Howard
I was sent to Toowoomba Boys Prep School for one term and then the army took it over. The girls at St Hilda’s in Southport were sent to Warwick and our lot was sent to Southport. So they got the girls out and left the boys to take the flak! Many a time the sirens went over Brisbane and there were no Japanese planes, and the Japanese planes flew over and there were no sirens! We had trenches at Southport and were drilled at a signal to stand, push in our two pupil benches and march to the trenches. The first time the warning went, the boys fled to the trenches, jumping over verandas and each other in their eagerness, getting there in record time.
On Wednesday, 8 January, 1947, Brigid Richmond aged 13 wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald:
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I used to live up at Brisbane until last December and in February 1941, when I was eight years old, our schools were all shut up because of the war. The Trades and Labour Council decided to evacuate some children to the country, with women to look after them. I was one of the children who went. We had many good times, such as picnics in a pine forest.
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Bruce Crawford was intrigued that he and his brother were sent north of the Brisbane Line,
My father Harold Crawford OBE, VRD had obtained a commission in the Royal Australian Navy Reserve in 1927. At the outbreak of WWII, he held the rank of Lieutenant Commander. As he was proficient in Italian, he was called up in the phony war period to Naval Intelligence, serving as Naval Intelligence Officer Torres Strait, at Darwin, the Philippines and Japan.
With the call up, my mother moved back to my mother’s parent’s home situated on the corner of Mark Street and Elystan Road, New Farm, Brisbane. For reasons never explained to me, my elder brother David and I were sent to Biggenden in the Northern Burnett district of Maryborough. Our mother accompanied us and as an uncle was then living in Biggenden, I presumed we lived with him. Why we were sent north of Brisbane is a bit of a mystery. No doubt in Naval Intelligence there would have been considerable discussion about the Brisbane Line. New Farm was in the direct bombing line. The assumption was, if Brisbane was bombed, the Japanese aircraft would come up the Brisbane River, bombing the shipping wharves on the Teneriffe and New Farm reaches. The United States navy had their submarine base with mother ships moored off Macquarie Street, New Farm. Aircraft would proceed to the New Farm power house, the major power supply for Brisbane at that time, cross New Farm to the Story Bridge and the city centre. During the war, opposite our house in Elystan Road, was the WRAAF hostel and across the road in Oxlade Drive was the USA navy officer’s club, known as ‘Riverside’. I do not know when we returned to New Farm. The uncle in Biggenden joined the RAAF. I presume the return was after the Battle of the Coral Sea, when things stabilised. We also had a sand-bagged air raid shelter under our home at New Farm, which survived until the 1950s.
Not every household was lucky enough to have the luxury of an air raid shelter close to their home. These shelters in the backyards were usually a deep trench covered by a corrugated water tank cut in half and covered in sandbags. For women who were fortunate to have one it was a constant reminder that bombs might fall from the sky as she hung her washing in the sunshine.
With the Allied successes, the danger from Japanese occupation receded and most of the students were back home by February 1943. The air raid shelters however continued to silently provide escape in Australian backyards.
Chapter 11
Staying with Friends
Often and often we talk with gratitude of your Mum and Dad in taking Aileen and the boys in 1942. It was a great relief to me to know that whatever happened to Sydney – and perhaps to me – they at least were as far away from trouble as was humanly possible, and in very good hands.
– Max Craymer to Stella (nee Pfeiffer) on death of her mother 13 May, 1974
If there were no relatives in Australia, desperate parents turned to friends.
Ann (Vernon) Gray was evacuee from Double Bay:
My family lived in Double Bay and I was at school at Ascham in Edgecliff. I don’t know whether the school was closed down in May - June, 1942, but I do remember air raid drills being practised with all the little girls lying down on the floor of the washroom of the preparatory school and my father and his friends digging an air raid shelter in the garden at home. My parents were friends with Dulcie and Everett Magnus who lived in the next street and I was close in age (five and three quarters) and in the same class at Ascham as their daughter Judith. Dulcie came from Armidale originally and her mother Mrs Hutton, always known to us as Huttie, still lived there. At this stage many of the Ascham boarders had either gone home to the country and were being tutored by Ascham via correspondence, or had been moved with some teachers to properties out of Sydney.
I assume that my parents and the Magnus family talked together and decided that it would be also safer to send Judith and me to the country – Judith to her grandmother Huttie and me to Cam and Myra Howard who were friends of Huttie’s and lived nearby. Cam Howard taught at the Armidale Teachers’ College, in the Music Department, I was later told. Interestingly, I have no memories of the journey from Sydney to Armidale, of meeting the Howards and their sons Graham and David, nor of the departure of my parents (or perhaps just of my mother). I had been used to staying for periods of several days with my grandfather and great-aunts at Roseville, so perhaps the idea of an extended ‘sleep-over’ without my family didn’t worry me as much as it would worry many small children. Memories I do have are: The Howard’s house, which was brick with an entry porch approached up several steps, and with a smallish front lawn surrounded by a tall, clipped cypress hedge. I particularly remember the cypress hedge as Graham (who was the same age as I was) and I had a hidey-hole underneath it into which we could retreat after having occasionally reduced poor Myra Howard to tears with our bad behaviour. Graham and I and Judith Magnus all went to the Armidale Public School. Presumably I usually walked there and back with Graham, but I distinctly remember one day when I must have arrived home after school before Graham. I went back to look down the street after hearing a loud wailing coming nearer and nearer. It was Graham who was tearing down the street pursued by an angry nesting magpie. I learnt to avoid the magpie nesting trees after that. I have no memory of the school buildings or of other children there, with the exception of one girl (name unknown) who invited Judith Magnus and me to come home with her after school. We walked and walked along a dusty road right out into the country (it seemed to me) and finally arrived to be greeted by the girl’s mother who sent us straight back to our homes in town.
Presumably there were no telephone calls possible, because when Judith and I arrived back at her Grandmother Huttie’s house, no-one was at home to greet us. We sat contentedly on a large box outside (perhaps a meter box) and Huttie finally arrived home furious. She and poor Myra Howard had been out searching the streets for us. I can only appreciate now, after having been responsible for my own children and their various friends, just how worried they must have been. My final memory is being in the Armidale Hospital with measles. It seems I was sent there because my family wanted to ease Myra Howard’s task of caring for her own family and for an extra sick child. My memory is not of being sick, nor of the hospital surrounds, but of my mother coming from Sydney to visit me and bringing with her the Disney comic book of Dumbo, the Flying Elephant. What joy! I have no idea how long I was with the Howards in Armidale. It may have only been two or three months as I have no memory of hot weather. However, it must have been a happy time because I have no unhappy memories which often, together with the real dramas of life, seem to be the ones which linger longest. In later years we would meet with the Howards when they came to Sydney and I knew them as warm and loving people.
Dick Craymer was a city kid on a farm.
Around early May 1942 my father Max Craymer sent me (about 9½), my brothers Graham (5½) and Alan (3), together with our mother Aileen Craymer, to a farm at Mogongong near Grenfell NSW. Although we lived away from the coast a
t Eastwood we can conjecture that Dad may have had some ‘inside’ information. Having returned from WWI, Dad worked as an accountant with the Sydney City Council and after the outbreak of WWII, he was rostered to work at nights as a ‘roof spotter’ stationed on the roof of the Town Hall to look out for enemy aircraft. He was also an Air Raid Warden for the street in which we lived in Eastwood. During the first war Dad had met Eric Pfeiffer and they became firm friends, so it was arranged that Dad would take us to Eric’s farm, Glenairlie, near Grenfell. At the time, the closest railway siding to the farm was Mogongong, between Cowra and Grenfell. The railway has not operated for many years and my brother Alan and I could find no sign of the old siding.
Glenairlie was a mixed farm with wheat, sheep and pigs. Although it was autumn and winter, I remember some quite hot days. One of the pleasures was learning to ride a children’s bike and just about riding the wheels off it around the compound near the homestead! The two horses were called ‘Six Bob’ and ‘Rose’, but I cannot remember the names of the dogs – I was frightened of dogs at the time! My brother Graham remembers climbing a haystack, going to Church on a dray with all the other kids and seeing a Maxwell truck on the farm, no doubt because his second name is Maxwell. Alan, being only three years old at the time, has only vague memories. Eric Pfeiffer and his wife Connie, a typical farmer’s wife, were welcoming hosts and their five children, particularly the older girls, were friendly enough towards these strange kids from the city. Their daughter, Stella reminded me that my mother’s health broke down while we were at the farm so Dad came up again around August and brought us all home. But as we were away from the city in May of 1942 we missed all the fun of the Japanese midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour!
Joan Craymer remarked on the lasting friendships that came from times of stress, when true feelings were shown in actions and worried parents were reassured that their children were being cared for
Letter of sympathy from Max Craymer to Stella (nee Pfeiffer) on death of her mother 13 May, 1974:
Often and often we talk with gratitude of your Mum and Dad in taking Aileen and the boys in 1942. It was a great relief to me to know that whatever happened to Sydney – and perhaps to me – they at least were as far away from trouble as was humanly possible, and in very good hands. For a few months at that time it seemed that a big city on the coast was no place for a mother and her three young children. Going further back I still live again in memory the happy times we had (Max and Eric) in our army days with your Dad’s dry sense of humour and his infectious chuckle especially when the joke was on him. He was a really fine man to have as a friend.
People who immigrated often kept in touch and helped each other. Single child families were unusual in the 1940s. Large families visited relatives during the Depression and for holidays. Grandma’s, aunts and uncles’ places were favourite destinations.
Chapter 12
Mum Slept Through the ‘All Clear’
There was general panic … with poor Dad having sent his family away for safety, now here they were, in the middle of a Japanese invasion! Mum was a bit more sanguine about it all, and I remember her saying that I was no safer in my bed so I might as well be up watching the fireworks.
– Anthony Euwer
Mosman NSW was considered a target area because of its proximity to the Harbour. Shirley Hazzard, the novelist was evacuated from there to Penrith and spoke gloomily to friends about having to help with the cows.
Mosman Day Nursery School teachers, (shelled in May 1942), searched for a safe haven for their preschoolers and found premises at Ariah Par and Burradoo, south of Sydney. Joan Fry, a teacher at Tahmoor recounts challenges of evacuation in Leone Huntsman’s book Sydney Day Nurseries 1905-2005: ‘We didn’t have a radio, didn’t have a telephone …We had to walk about a mile to a pub phone every night. You had to boil the copper and bathe the children. You had someone dressing and undressing the children and someone in the other room telling stories. And the sanitary man ceased coming. So we thought ‘here goes, we have to do it’. So we tied a handkerchief round our mouths and dug a hole miles away and we got the giggles carrying the can …. Sixteen went down with measles in one fell swoop. We rang the doctor in Picton. There was no petrol. He couldn’t come out. We tried to get a nurse. We couldn’t get a nurse. We sent 10 children home. Two of the children developed pneumonia, so for three days, we (the teachers) sat on a mattress in front of the fire eating oranges because the children kept crying and waking up. And I’ll never forget the smell of measles, ever …’
Leone has a story herself:
Mum evacuated with the three of us to the town of Young at the urging of her brother-in-law, the state member for Young. There we shared a house with relatives from the other side of the family. With three or four adults, and seven children under ten, it would have been a very crowded house at times. I don’t know how long we stayed there, but it must have been a rather miserable time for Mum. Dad was an air raid warden so he needed to sleep at his workplace, the Commonwealth Bank in the City; he had to be around to manage things in the event of an air raid. He came to stay with us when he could, and I can remember racing downhill to jump into his arms as he walked up the long hill from the station. We all got sick in Young, with impetigo (contagious in a houseful of children) and measles (I seem to have had complications, and was sick in bed for a long time after the spots disappeared). Eventually it must have been decided that the Japanese threat had receded and we returned to Sydney.
An evacuee joke from the Molong Express entitled ‘Underdone’:
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Two girl evacuees were billeted on a farm. One day, they accompanied the farmer’s wife on her rounds of hen houses and came back with a basketful of brown eggs. The next day they went with her again and collected more eggs. On the third day they were allowed to go alone. When they came back, one of the girls said, Here they are. We left two because they aren’t done yet. They are still white.
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Ron Goodhew was just three years old when the war broke out in Europe, so remembers little of its early part:
Since I was nine by the time world peace was restored, there are plenty of memories of that time still racing through my head. It was not a pleasant time, even though we were never actually invaded in any serious way. Of course there was the submarine shelling of Newcastle from waters off our coast when the Japanese ventured this far south. And there were air attacks on Darwin, but that seemed so far away it could have been another country to our north.
But the effects of war still came to us. Food and fuel rationing was one. Our cars and trucks sprouted inflatable bags to hold gas to run our vehicles when petrol was so very short in supply. Then there were other means, like modifying engines to run on kerosene, so you would start up on petrol and after a mile or so of warm-up the driver would turn a tap or two to switch to kero. Vehicles didn’t like it much and their performance was poor, but we got there just the same.
Although the risk of air raids was slight, all our windows needed to be blacked out so our lights would not give away our presence to attackers at night. Air raid shelters were even built by some citizens in their backyards, but I can’t ever remember one at our place.
My father was always bitter because he was prevented from joining his brothers and sister by enlisting in the service of his country. The patriotic fervour was much stronger at that time than might exist today. Dad was considered a primary producer, of food in particular, so was one that needed to stay home for the national benefit. But that was not any consolation to him, so he joined the Voluntary Defence Force (VDC). This was similar to what we currently call the Reservists. But, because we were at war, the VDC trained more regularly. In fact, most weekends would be taken up with such activities in various parts of the district.
Then my mother was not to sit on her hands either. She became an aircraft spotter. Now you could imagine, there were very few (in fact there were none!) enemy aircraft in our skies. But these spo
tters had to learn the shapes and distinguishing features of all types of enemy fighting planes so they could record their movement in case they invaded us.
Mum and Dad took their war service very seriously, so much so they decided to send me away for quite a while during one part of the war, I suppose they felt they could do it better without a young child to get in the way. Well, that is the reason that I have been told, but it has always puzzled me somewhat.
You see, my aunt (my mother’s younger sister) had recently married and moved to a little home of her own, so offered to take me in. Auntie was miles (240 km) or so away. My maternal grandparents also lived in the town, as my grandfather, Bertram Teasdale, was night officer at Lawson railway station. We invariably spent time at their place over the Christmas holiday, so the location was not unfamiliar to me, even at that early age.
Well, I can’t be precise with the date when I moved from Morisset to Lawson, but I believe I was about seven. I certainly spent my first year at school at Morisset Primary, but started there aged six, straight into first class, bypassing Kindergarten. It was awkward for Mum to get me to school and I would have started mid-year in any case, so they thought I could wait for first class instead. It didn’t seem to adversely affect my schooling. I always enjoyed school and did reasonably well at it, without being in the genius league.
I remember something of my stay in the Blue Mountains. Joyce and John Leggatt had a very small home in a street behind the shops at Lawson. John was a baker in his father’s bakery, so worked very early hours. I think my aunt also served in the baker’s shop part-time. Being of school age I was sent to Lawson Primary, which was so easy to get to (by comparison with the 1.5 miles walk at Morisset) because it was at the end of our short street, just a couple of hundred metres from ‘home’.