Generally we teenagers in boarding school weren’t a bad lot. Not nearly as sophisticated as we imagined, we lived under very strict rules: one just didn’t do this, and you certainly didn’t do that. We had excellent teachers and no doubt should have been more appreciative of their efforts on our behalf.
Our school motto was ‘Guard Thine Honour’, which I feel was generally done for us by the vigilance of the nuns. Our house motto was ‘Born to Fly Upwards’, which my mother found particularly hilarious in my case.
This fine girls school had a decidedly British tone; several of our teachers were English women. In moments of exasperation, our Maths teacher would reproach a student as an ‘idle ass’, but this came out as ‘arse’. As my Maths marks were always abysmally low, I came in for an ‘idle arse’ more than most.
On Tuesdays we took our ‘French lunch’ with Madame Claire, a chic and gentle Frenchwoman who actually said, ‘Oh là là!’ She provided us with wine glasses—for coloured cordials, of course. What we didn’t ask for in French, we didn’t get, so lunch could be quite sparse for the idle student.
When France fell to the enemy in 1940, Madame had us stand solemnly to sing ‘La Marseillaise’. We had the anthem word perfect; even today I can sing along with patriotic Frenchmen.
Our games mistress was large, loud and intensely determined to instil English traditions of good sportsmanship in her pupils. She sprang about in a short pleated gym uniform, with matching puffy bloomers that displayed a generous expanse of robust haunch when she took us through our callisthenics. Her special interest was her hockey team, and she quite embarrassed her girls, when one missed a shot, by loudly baying, ‘Oh, you silly sausage!’ Visiting teams sniggered behind their hands at our expense.
Latin was still a compulsory subject for us, and one wonders at the time we wasted mumbling our Latin verbs into memory before we faced ‘The Bug’, our tiny venomous teacher. I was actually fairly good at Latin, possibly because there wasn’t the remotest need for it in ‘real’ life.
I recall with affection our gentle English tutor, who chided us when our voices became strident and unladylike by quoting Shakespeare: ‘Her voice was ever soft, / Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman,’ and hoping the message got through.
These women were untiring in their efforts to make ‘ladies’ of us, hopefully with some success. There was no television that might encourage unacceptable behaviour; an hour listening to war news on the radio was considered sufficient exposure to what might be happening outside our walls. Any thought of mutiny? Totally out of the question! There was also not the hazard of drugs; we thought ourselves quite daring to toss off a glass of champagne, or cough and choke our way through a cheap cigarette.
Together we managed a fairly harmonious existence. Occasionally a girl would appear among us whom we generally disliked; I remember a new student from a local, socially prominent family, who found us all too plebeian and treated us with a weary superiority. Her surname was Ramsbotham, and we were unworldly enough to think ourselves quite risqué to refer to her—among ourselves, of course—as Sheepsarse.
Times, they were a-changing fast! Petrol rationing meant our school car went up on blocks; dental visits and trips to the city now entailed a tram ride. Butter, tea, sugar, meat and clothing all required coupons, and we were issued with ration books and wore identification tags as bracelets or neck chains.
Word would filter through that underwear, coats or perhaps a consignment of shoes had just arrived at a certain store. Queues formed early, so with ration books clutched firmly in hand, we girls desperately hoped stocks would last until our turn came around. Clothing coupons disappeared so rapidly, and we’d watch sadly as the sales lady snipped them out with her scissors.
But gloves, even if holes in fingers must be patched, were deemed an absolute necessity for the well-groomed young lady—there was no way they were going. Woe betide any student seen in public without her gloves.
Silk or nylon stockings were to die for, but just not available, so they were painted on, the seams carefully drawn with eyebrow pencil; this required a steady hand and was a believable substitute for the real thing.
As the war progressed and clothing stocks dwindled even further, the nuns reluctantly permitted us to discard our thick brown cotton stockings for socks. This relaxing of the school dress code—and the very thought of their older charges displaying a bare leg in public—was almost too much for the poor nuns to bear, but nothing could be done about it. It’s possible they considered it their major contribution to the war effort.
CHAPTER 20
The Bombing of Darwin
At exactly seven minutes to ten on the hot calm morning of 19 February 1942, a time etched deep in the memory of old Darwin town, Japanese bombers and fighter planes flew in over the Darwin Harbour in a neat V formation. They screamed down so low that sailors could clearly see the heads and shoulders of Japanese pilots machine-gunning their ships.
Earlier that day, American Kittyhawk fighter planes had set off from Darwin to Koepang. Due to adverse weather conditions, they turned back, flew right into an uneven dogfight and covered themselves with glory. Their planes were all destroyed; several pilots died in the battle.
More than fifty ships of all types were in the harbour that morning—warships, flying boats, a floating dock, a hospital ship. The Japanese made direct hits on the wharf and two ships moored there: the SS Barossa and the MV Neptuna, the latter of which was packed with explosives and depth charges. A naval officer on the nearby HMAS Platypus recalled a low rumbling from Neptuna, then a warning cry ‘She’s going up!’ He dropped flat on the deck while Neptuna blew sky-high with an explosion that shook the entire town.
The wharf collapsed under the bombing and 22 of the 70 waterside workers died. A goods train and a loco engine were blown clean over the side. The hospital ship Manunda, with large red crosses clear on its brilliant white sides, took a direct hit but remained afloat. Among its casualties was 26-year-old Margaret de Mestre, the first nurse of the Australian forces to be killed.
The post office also took a direct hit, killing all within. Iris Bald, the postmaster’s young daughter who’d just returned from boarding school, died endeavouring to reach her home. The blast tore every item of clothing from her body, yet there wasn’t a mark on her—she died from concussion.
After the first raid that day, the Japanese swept in to attack again. The American destroyer USS Peary took a direct hit. With decks awash, she fought on. Another bomb exploded her magazine and finally she pointed her nose to the sky and sank. Her forward gunners were clearly silhouetted against the brilliant blue of the tropic sky still valiantly firing their guns upward as she disappeared beneath the sea. Eighty American sailors went down with her.
That day war came to Australia, and people I knew were in the midst of it. The Convent lugger St Francis, with Brother Smith commanding, arrived in the harbour just after the bombing, with nuns he’d evacuated from Port Keats Mission. Fearlessly they manoeuvred around the chaos, rescuing survivors.
Dr Clyde Fenton flew the wounded from the outer islands, while Dr Bruce Kirkland, who’d delivered me into the world and bestowed my name upon me, worked with patients in a makeshift hospital. Operating by torch and kerosene lamp, he boiled instruments on a Primus stove, all in the roughest conditions. He was later decorated for this work.
A message was relayed to naval personnel stationed in Darwin, its meaning crystal clear:
The town and harbour of Darwin has now been designated a fortress area. As you are naval personnel defending your native land, you are now expendable. You will defend this fortress area until the last man. This is an order. An invasion of Australia is deemed inevitable.
How dispiriting to be told this so coldly!
In 1942 alone there were over forty Japanese air raids on Darwin, causing fearful damage. Enemy planes ventured as far inland as Katherine, where they strafed rocky outcrops they imagined were gun emplacements.
/> My parents had both joined the armed services; my mother entering the Nursing Corps, my father the Small Ships Division of the United States Navy. One wonders why, aged in his forties, he would return to active service after the rigours of the First World War. But there he was, resplendent and très debonair in a smartly tailored khaki naval uniform and gold braided cap, ready to fight.
Delivering supplies to Pacific Island battle areas was a dangerous job, sometimes under heavy fire. In bad weather, my father wrote, the waves were mountainous; the small ship wallowed through troughs that blotted out the sky. But dangerous situations were always part of his life—and he always prevailed.
I rarely saw him during those war years, apart from the odd visit to him in American servicemen’s hospitals. His legs were still a problem, but didn’t deter him from sailing out with his ship—he made sure of that.
He once sent me an enormous unhusked coconut from New Guinea, my name and address in white paint on the outer husk. This was an impressive thing to arrive in the school postbag; few city girls had seen a real coconut.
Most students at my school had relatives in the armed forces, and a father, brother, friend, even a female relative, was sometimes reported wounded, missing or killed. This brought the war very close to us all. Telegrams were delivered by hand, prettily decorated for birthdays and anniversaries, but if you had a man at the front, the telegram boy on his bicycle could cause heart-stopping anxiety.
Letters came marked ‘somewhere in Europe’ or other vague destinations, so you never really knew where they were fighting, and every letter bore the stamp ‘Opened by Censor’; sometimes large sections had been scissored out.
The popular wartime song ‘They’re Either Too Young or Too Old’ became a standard joke among women at home. The only man readily available as an escort was either under eighteen or over 60. A young man not in uniform was a rare sight.
But although these were stressful times, parties and diverse entertainments proliferated. Civilians were expected to do their bit by helping to keep up the spirits of those in the armed forces—to work in canteens, perhaps organise a dance, or entertain in their homes where possible. There was a feverish determination to have a positive attitude and ignore the uncertainties of the times. Parties welcomed the return of troops, for however brief a stay, before they went on to another theatre of battle and a farewell party would be thrown.
Well-known entertainers hosted street parties where musicians performed for huge crowds. This raised money for numerous charities, among them a most popular cause called ‘Smokes for Sick Soldiers’. Much money was raised to keep the hospitalised servicemen well supplied with cigarettes. We felt it our duty to contribute to such a worthy cause, so almost every serviceman had a cigarette pack protruding from his shirt pocket—it was a rare picture of Diggers at the front without a cigarette adhered to lip.
Much to our pique, we older school boarders had little access to all this social gaiety. We were also dying to leave school and enlist, our preference generally to join the Women’s Royal Australian Navy Service: the dazzling white uniform, with braided gold epaulets and a natty little cap, was bound to appeal to young girls. We knew boys in uniform who had only just left school; one shot down in his aircraft over Milne Bay had been my escort at a school dance, so we were very aware of the war raging around us.
Streets were crowded with uniformed men and women: the hard, brown faces of Australian Diggers in their slouch hats, and soon Americans everywhere in smartly tailored uniforms, the sailors with gob caps squared on their foreheads. They cheekily wolf-whistled at every female over twelve. We thought them all wonderful; when they told us of their close relationships to famous movie stars, we believed them utterly, and hung on their every word.
With their arrival came novelties that are commonplace today, such as Coca-Cola in its shapely bottle—never heard of a canned drink in those days. We tea drinkers took to coffee with gusto, and until then we’d thought a Hamburger was a citizen of a German city. We were also introduced to such unfamiliar delights as pizza and doughnuts. But Colonel Sanders and his fried chickens hadn’t yet made an appearance—for us, chicken was a special dish presented for the family Sunday lunch.
Through my father’s American friends we acquired blue jeans from the navy stores, and through his nurses at the American hospitals, cosmetics and glossy magazines. These all gladdened the heart of a teenage girl when almost every necessity was rationed and luxuries were unattainable. Americans were also generous in the extreme with the abundance of their PX canteens.
We danced to the big bands of the day, cheek to cheek under dimmed lights to Glenn Miller, or jiving to Harry James and the Dorseys. We collected their records and lugged our wind-up gramophones wherever we went.
CHAPTER 21
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
A part from spending occasional Christmas breaks with my mother in various places, I spent most school holidays at the houses of my school chums. Betty, Pat, Barbara, Elaine and me Jackie—what fun and good times we managed to extract from those trying years. Our hearts were young and carefree.
Betty’s father was a hotelier in Brisbane and I recall roller-skating through endless hotel corridors, endeavouring to avoid expensive decor and disapproving, well-heeled guests. Unfortunately, those holidays were short-lived, for her father joined the air force and became one of the uniformed masses.
When last seen years later, Betty was driving a Mercedes-Benz sports car along the coastal highway, with the same disregard for anything in her path as she had on her skates in those corridors long ago.
Pat’s family were city jewellers, but happily for us they owned a beach house on what’s now called the Gold Coast. This timber cottage, with a small outdoor lavatory, stood on a rise directly opposite the famous Surfers Paradise Hotel, which had the popular attraction of a zoo within its grounds. The hotel was the only one in the heart of the city. Along Cavill Avenue to the beach were all private holiday homes, not a high-rise in sight, and we rode our bicycles around quiet streets. Now clustered skyscrapers rear up against the sea, and there are no timber shacks and certainly no outdoor privies.
Elaine’s father was a theatre-owner who had met and married her mother when she danced in a chorus line. She was a tiny, dark-haired, effervescent lady who missed her life in show business. When her husband was away, she would take a little drink or two, strip down to minimal underwear that resembled her stage costumes and entertain us with her favourite dance routines. We were an enthralled audience, clapping our approval, yelling the odd catcall, and momentarily giving a thought to a stage career ourselves. It was all great fun, although when her husband was home she was the epitome of decorum.
Barbara, a great personality, life of every party, took up a medical career.
And Jackie? She went north into the wilderness, stepped off the edge of the world and wasn’t seen by these old friends again.
The five of us spent weekends at the beach, lying about in the sun, baking to the colour of mahogany. Ruin our complexions? Yeah! We’d exhibit our newly minted skills of flirtation by daringly displaying our two-piece costumes to wolf-whistles from callow youths. Those costumes rarely displayed more than a few inches of midriff, as the bikini was not yet born.
Weekending on the coast, we might spend a Sunday at Byron Bay to see the great whales brought in to be flensed, a fishy name for them being stripped of skin and blubber. They were looked upon as no different to any fish being prepared for market—try telling that to today’s public!
George Patterson, a sun-scorched old beach bird, was a fixture at Surfers in the mid-1940s. He was known as the ‘Mutton Bird Oil Man’. Every day he took up his post on the sand, close by his ancient, cut-down Rolls-Royce with its rough coat of silver paint. A mutton bird, dead for many years, dangled forlornly from the car’s aerial, and drew attention to his special-formula suntan oil.
If business was slow, we teenagers might receive a generous and free spraying,
and be assured it would do wonders toward acquiring a great tan. Well marinated with this vile-smelling concoction, we lay in the sun and fried.
My sixteenth birthday fell in the last year of the war, when my mother was stationed on an island off the Queensland coast. She arranged a dinner party for the occasion and, with donated coupons, I was able to purchase enough fabric from mainland stores to have a sixteen-year-old’s dream party dress made.
It was an elegant party and everyone wore their dress whites. I sat in honorary splendour at the top of the table. When the officers in their handsome uniforms stood with glasses raised, it was like an echo of a Kipling poem.
This was a party to relate in minutest detail to envious chums on return to school—a story that weathered an entire term of ‘after lights out’ retelling.
Then Germany surrendered. The war in Europe was over. Living in the twilight days of a great war, we teenagers could no longer imagine peace-time living. What is life like, when there is no war? What does the radio broadcast? Can you just walk into a shop and buy anything at all? Will there be no one in uniform? It was going to be a strange and exciting life in a world at peace.
With the surrender of the Japanese in September 1945, the war was truly over. Victory in the Pacific Night was one of those public celebrations you could never forget. Ask anyone of the time and they will tell you exactly where they were. Brisbane went wild, on the streets and everywhere else—champagne corks popped and hotels overflowed, many distributing free drinks to the exuberant crowds. School boarders were allowed to join family and friends in the long lines spanning the city streets, linking arms, dancing, singing, throwing streamers, blowing whistles, totally ignoring any authority until dawn.
Daughter of the Territory Page 11