by Ann Howard
We made our own amusements in those days before the advent of electronic entertainment. The Fletchers had some old Edison cylindrical wax gramophone records that could no longer be played. Neville wanted to see if he could make a gramophone record and so we melted several cylinders in my mother’s best saucepan on the stove to produce a flat disc. Neville then drilled a hole in the centre of the disc, and placed it on the turntable of our gramophone (powered by a spring and with a steel needle). He then guided the needle in a more or less spiral path towards the centre of the disc while the rest of us yelled as loudly as we could down the speaker of the gramophone. When he replayed our ‘record’, the needle faithfully followed the spiral and we could faintly hear our voices coming through the speaker.
My mother was concerned about two major diseases because this was before the days of immunisation and antibiotics. One was polio and the other was pneumonia. There was no defence against the first except cleanliness, and her defence against the second was to ensure that our respiratory systems were as robust as possible. This meant that we all slept on a veranda through the Armidale winters and we all escaped both of these diseases. I certainly was used to the cold because I can distinctly remember running down to the bridge across the small creek near the present Armidale Cemetery in the early morning in winter, in shorts and with bare feet, and running my finger along the bridge railing and watching the long frost crystals fall over my finger.
One morning in February 1942, I woke up and found my mother in tears in the kitchen. We had not heard from my father since the invasion of Malaya had commenced and she had just heard on the morning radio news that Singapore had fallen, and of course, had no idea of what had happened to Dad. We heard nothing for some weeks and then suddenly a telegram from him was delivered from Townsville, Queensland. It turned out that before hostilities commenced, he had become very ill because he had absorbed large quantities of chromium from the khaki dyes used in the uniforms of the day. This had given him severe dermatitis before hostilities commenced and he had been sent to hospital in Singapore. He and fellow patients were evacuated by ship some 72 hours before the surrender on the 15th February, 1942 and after some weeks of dodging enemy warships, made it to Townsville. He later joined us in Armidale and during the rest of the year, he alternated between time here and periods in the military hospital in Croydon, Sydney. The whole family returned to Sydney about the end of 1942. The dermatitis gradually declined over the next 20 years or so.
When he was in Armidale, my father had to keep himself active to keep his mind off the continual itch of his dermatitis. Weekends were often spent in long walks along Dumaresq Creek to Commissioners Waters for picnics, catching yabbies in the water holes under the willows. My father had been a boarder at TAS and so he knew of many other picnic spots in the district as well. My mother would invite boys boarding at St. John’s Hostel (now part of NEGS) to spend a Saturday with us to give them a bit of home life. We kept up with some of these young men for many years.
The site of the present water reservoir for South Armidale off Garibaldi Street was an abandoned gravel quarry at the time, and had magnificent blackberries growing up the sides. We found some old sheets of roofing iron and would use them to flatten the thorny bushes so we could reach the most luscious berries during blackberry time. We also had a Mulberry tree and so raised many silk worms and laboriously wound the fine silk on to pieces of cardboard after the larvae had pupated. I had some of these for many years but they have all disappeared by now. Other amusements were putting two crossed pins on the railway line at the Butler Street railway crossing and then searching for them after the Glenn Innes mail had passed. If we were lucky, we could find the two crossed pins welded into a miniature pair of scissors by the pressure of the heavy locomotive wheels.
Those two years or so that I spent in Armidale made a big impression on me, and I have many happy memories of our time here.
Alan Ecob has a romantic memory of a little evacuee:
Her name was Frances Heinz and in 1942-43 she lived with her aunt in Kurnell and attended our one-room public school. She was the same age as I (11 to 12) and had been sent south by her Queensland parents because they feared Japanese invasion. She was a typical girl of that age and that time with regular features, lightly tanned skin, brown hair and eyes and average build. I would have liked for us to have become friends, because in our eight-pupil school, only two others were near my age, and neither were friends. But it was not to be. Frances avoided friendship, perhaps because her aunt dissuaded her. So she made no friends and was seldom seen outside of their house. She was better at school than I. In every exam she was always a couple of marks ahead of me. Dad niggled at me to do better, but my impression was that if I did, Frances would simply lift her game. Still, the challenge ended in mid 1943 when her parents took her back to live with them in Queensland.
Les Reedman was in a target area in Newcastle:
Our family lived opposite an army base in Adamstown, Newcastle. We built an air raid shelter. In 1941, we moved to Belmont because BHP was a target area, as was Nine Mile Beach, from Redhead to Blacksmith, near Swansea, (actually six miles long, but a good possible landing place). We returned to Adamstown in 1942, when I was about seven, and I remember looking through the window as the Japs bombed BHP.
Anthony Euwer:
When my parents thought the Japs might attack, Mum and my sister and I were evacuated from Newcastle to Denman. Mum had discovered a farm in Denman which would take paying guests, and we all got in the train and headed west. Dad had to stay behind in Newcastle to work in a protected job at the BHP. I was intrigued by our new life, and found the farm to be a fascinating place, and I immediately became a farmer, aged seven. I can still smell the farmhouse kitchen, the kerosene lamps, and the cow-bails. I still have some of the scars I collected from a ferret, and a cart wheel.
I feel quite sorry for the poor farmer. He was stuck with a family he did not want, a two-year-old girl, a boy who asked never-ending questions and wanted to be included in everything, and their very disapproving parent. Lately we have found that visitors are like fish. They go off after three days. How he managed to put up with us for the six months we spent with them is beyond my imagination.
Until she had to give it up when she got married, Mum had been a primary school teacher. Her grammar was flawless, her knowledge quite wide, and she was very scornful of her ‘inferiors’. I seem to have inherited some of this unlovely trait. The farmer and his family were good solid salt-of-the-earth people, but Mum disapproved of their speech, their swearing, and just about everything else they did. We ate with them, and their table manners included things like tossing the loaf of bread from father at one end of the long kitchen table to son at the other end. Mum was suitably horrified. Looking back on this, I expect they were exaggerating their coarseness and crudities, specially for Mum’s benefit. I know that in the same situation, I certainly would.
I managed to con myself into everything that was going on at the farm. I milked cows, separated cream, churned butter, shovelled dung, and made a general nuisance of myself. They let me drive the horse and cart sometimes, but I never did get the hang of cracking a whip properly.
Once when I was riding in the cart, I was hanging on to the side of the cart, and as we went through a bump, the wheel wobbled over and ground a bit of my finger off.
We went rabbiting quite a lot. Rabbiting presented interesting challenges. Putting a chicken-wire trap in EVERY hole in the rabbit warren was really important, because when you finally put the ferret down a hole, the rabbits would race out all the other holes and into the traps. Any hidden hole without a trap in it was a great escape route, and you could also lose your ferret! Getting the ferret out of his sugar bag and into a hole should have been simple enough, but I managed to get his head out of a small hole in the sugar bag, and he expressed his gratitude by biting the same finger recently ground down by the cart wheel. Hence the scars, which have remained to this day! I
learnt to kill and skin rabbits, and nail the skins up on the wall of the cowshed to dry.
There was no school nearby, and several children in need, so the next door farmer, about a mile away, built a small shed out of corrugated iron, for a schoolhouse, which soon became known as the Tin Bitsa. His daughter became the ‘teacher’ and while I expect she did her best, she was not qualified, just well meaning … There were about eight or ten of us, of different ages, so getting through to all of us would have been no mean feat. I was learning more on the farm!
The Tin Bitsa Schoolhouse was considered too far away for a small boy to walk, so Dad turned up to visit, bringing a beautifully done-up red push-bike! It was explained that this was a great privilege, and I was to take great care of it. The route to school was partly across the paddocks, and partly along the road. The route was alive with a particularly virulent form of prickle, known as goat-heads, or three cornered jacks. They are seed pods designed to be spread by sticking into anything passing, and they punctured many tyres. They are tetrahedron shape, so no matter which way they fall, there is always a sharp spike sticking UP. I set up a wooden vee shaped cotton reel to run on each tyre, so it would pull the spikes out as fast as they went in. This worked really well.
After school the other boys with bikes raced down the hill to the gate, and I followed. Not noticing that they all rode close to the gatepost, I sailed through the middle. There was a big pothole in the middle … My new bike stopped dead in the hole, but I sailed straight on, flying right across the road, and landing in the blackberries on the other side …
They say that wisdom comes from experience, and as most experience is loud, painful and expensive, I should have absorbed huge amounts of wisdom by now … I must have learnt something, because even now, seventy years later, when I see a long line of traffic, and an empty lane, I say to myself, ‘What do they know that I don’t?’
While I was at the farm, the kids who had not been evacuated were still at Mayfield West, being introduced to their Times Tables and Arithmetic. I was happily milking and rabbiting, and learning very little of any use in the Tin Bitsa. When I got back, I was way behind in everything I suppose, but losing that introduction to tables, and arithmetic was disastrous. I have never really caught up!
I loved Geometry and Algebra, because they involve logical thinking, but if it involves anything to do with Calculus, get someone else! I have really resented the dud deal I got with Maths, as it has affected a lot of life choices. I blame the horrible Maths teacher mostly. He coached the top football team, and spent parts of every lesson up the back of the room He once hit the Mayor’s son behind the ear where he had a boil. John Norris got straight up and decked him! When witnesses were called for, no-one had seen anything … I survived by picturing him in his bath, or on the toilet …and reciting James Shirley’s poem, The glories of our blood and state.
Mum hatched a plan to secretly make a surprise visit to Dad in Newcastle for a few days in June 1942 and we got on the train. This was undoubtedly also a respite visit for Mum from the indignities of the farmhouse. Poor Dad! He was certainly surprised! He had his bike in a million parts all over the Lounge Room! Mum expressed significant displeasure and disappointment … She was really good at that … While we were there, I got the flu, and we stayed on longer, as Mum quite rightly decided it was easier to nurse me in our own home than up at the farm. Any excuse not to go back!
So we were still there in our house in Mayfield West, for the night of 8 June, 1942, when the Japs attacked! There was general panic in our house for a while, 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 … We watched a few hits down the hill in Waratah…
Dad helped me build a trolley which was the name given then to a billy cart made with ball-races for wheels. Very fast! Very noisy! Very low. I roared across the Buruda Street intersection to the butcher once, straight through under a semi-trailer! All my mates had a trolley, and we used to race down the footpath, much to the annoyance of one crotchety old hag opposite who we delighted in tormenting by riding past her house. I used it to go to the butcher to get a ‘Pound of shin beef, chopped up very finely please!’ I had no idea we were poor … Mum’s ‘grey stew’ was magnificent! Mutton chops were the base, and goodness knows what else, but we loved it!
Our landlady over the back fence, had the only phone in the area and so I ran a lot of messages.
After a year or so, my mates got their own bikes, and my popularity declined … More experience. Their bikes were shiny black, and my beautiful red bike suddenly became black, much to Dad’s displeasure. It’s the last time I remember succumbing to peer group pressure! I was about ten by then. I have been studiously doing my own thing ever since. To hell with other people’s opinion. My mother used to say, ‘My face I don’t mind it, for I am behind it. It’s those out the front get the shock!’
Children had their own world of billycarts, playing with the dog, football, comics and cowboys and Indians. ‘Can I go out?’ was the often asked question, and rainy days were not good days. They played war games. An Australian Women’s Weekly reporter, December 1941, was told ‘Taking Cover’? was ‘Practising - you’re out in the street, you throw yourself down on the ground like this, and raise your head and chest on your elbows like this and keep your mouth open, then the bomb goes bang! and you’re alright, see?’
Arnold Meaker, who lived in Newcastle, thinks his father evacuated them well before any attacks.
I was born at Mayfield in 1932. The family lived with Granma Meaker in Ingall Street while Dad built our future home at 16 William Street Mayfield. When I was nine or ten years old, Dad worked as a builder at the big storage sheds on Lea Wharf (in the Honeysuckle area). Whether he was advised to evacuate us kids or maybe it was an inclination of some sort of attack we were moved to a house in Lord Street, Dungog. This was before the eventual attack on Newcastle. We resided in Dungog for about two years. My eldest brother, Trevor was too old to attend public school and it was considered too expensive for him to go to high school in Maitland. We, my other two brothers and two sisters spent a fair bit of time going to the Army Training Rifle range over the hill from the showground, or we’d wait for the trains going north with the soldiers on board, who were handed meat pies as the trains never stopped but rolled slowly through the station. Great were the tasty meat pies that sometimes dropped. This I remember quite vividly, just as much as the pinching of the juicy oranges hanging over the fence (I was dobbed in to the headmaster by a classmate). The house we lived in must have been owned by a very keen gardener, with all those strawberries in the back yard. I assure you that none of those strawberries got really ripe. In 1953 I got married to a girl from Wallsend, Gloria Dickson, (we are still married), and it turned out her uncle Abe lived in Dungog and she and her family went to live with them in 1942. She is three years younger than I and guess what, she also lived in Lord Street and was at the same school, no! I didn’t know her then.
Cecily Atton was evacuated from Eastwood to Narrabri with her sister.
We lived at Eastwood. There were a lot of Italian market gardeners and they were interned. Dad was a paymaster on Garden Island. My sister and I were evacuated to my mother’s sister and her husband, Auntie Sadie and Uncle Dick, who had no children, so that we could go to a convent school at Narrabri. We had no idea of what might happen, we were very naive. If I had heard anything bad, I would not have known what it was. To get to Narrabri, fourteen miles away, we had to catch a little train called Lulu. We waited at the 440 mile post, watching for the puff of smoke in the distance. Permission was given for Lulu to stop and pick us up. We got into the guard’s van to Turrawan and then we got out and into a carriage. Coming home, we’d catch the Sydney train.
The most noteworthy of our trips on Lulu, (at the time I thought so anyway), was t
he day the Governor, Baron Wakehurst visited Narrabri, and how I remember the opening lines of the welcoming speech given to him: ‘To His Excellency, The Right Honourable John de Vere 2nd Baron Wakehurst, Rightful Order of St. Michael and St. George, Governor of New South Wales. We, the children of Narrabri, welcome you, and your noble wife Lady Wakehurst, to our town and school’. Although we were not VIPs, the Vice Regal Carriage, connected to Lulu, had to stop allowing my sister and me to get on, so I suppose for that moment we were VIPs! Our aunt and uncle were wonderful we’d holidayed with them since we were little. We had beautiful country food from the property. They made their own butter and we collected the eggs. Turrawan 6 was the telephone number. We phoned home every week.
Children were also evacuated from inland suburbs, as Winsome Shepherd relates:
A couple of cousins from Artarmon were sent to Mudgee, to one of the aunts on a property. My grandmother and grandfather were there.
Port Kembla, as a safe harbour with good roads just south of Sydney, was a likely target. At night enemy signals and flares could be seen.
Marie (Jilroy) Hellmund:
I was at Keiraville, an inner suburb of Wollongong, with my family, which being on the coast and near Port Kembla, was considered a dangerous place. Submarines belonging to the Imperial Japanese Navy were very active off the east coast of Australia. At least five ‘I Class’ submarines patrolled the waters off NSW. Between 1940 and 1944 twenty-two ships struck mines or were torpedoed, resulting in the loss of 244 lives. In June 1942, the MV Echunga and MV Orestes came into contact with submarines directly off Port Kembla but evaded them. A month later the George S Livanos and the MV Coast Farmer were both sunk near Jervis Bay.