Mounted Constable Registered Number 9388

My Dad’s Story

I was born in Sandy Bay in Hobart on 1 December 1918. Then we lived at Taranna, where my Dad was a Methodist minister. We came over to Victoria on the Rotamahama, [rotten banana], about 1922 I think. We probably went to Leitchville church. I can remember seeing the Torumbarry weir under construction or rather, some of the cement works. Dad then threw a penny across the Murray River on to Gunbower Island. Somewhere here I remember, because I was only three, driving along a gravel road in a one-horse caravan towards a very steep descent into or towards a bridge across the river at Anglesea. Dad had a dog which went missing and despite lots of loud whistling we still didn’t find the dog. We were travelling with another family in a similar outfit. Their name was Wilson, and both caravans stopped at the top of the steep hill while the men cut two big saplings which were tied to the back axle of each caravan, to drag down the hill as a brake. We all walked down the Hill. My sister Gwen must have been there, she may have been about 12 months old at that time. We camped on a riverbank on the left of the Bridge before crossing it.
I don’t know where we came from, or where we went after that trip, but we lived at Lake Bunga some time prior to 1924 on property belonging to J Wilson. Lake Bunga was near an aboriginal settlement about four or five miles east of Lakes entrance. I remember Mum serving peaches and cream to people making the four-mile trip out from Lakes Entrance.
I started school in 1924 at Bairnsdale State School 754. We lived in Macarthur Street in a house known as Struan on the west side, only a short distance from school. The school dentist that year must have been a butcher, because he pulled out six of my teeth. No parents gave permission, no parents were there. And when I got home Dad was so wild that he carried me back to the school looking for the dentist. He didn’t catch up with him. But Dad gave me a blue lead pencil for being brave.

Between 1924 and 1928, I think nearer to 1928, my Dad was working at the Bairnsdale Plume petrol depot, driving the delivery truck, and he used to take his fox terrier dog on trips. We were returning empty at Nicholson one day when the dog saw a rabbit on the roadside. He took a flying leap from the left window of the truck at 52 mph, and he survived. The rabbit got away. 52 mph was flat out for that old Rio truck. The manager at Plume was a good chap named Clyde Walker. Dad later took his place as manager. As well as petrol in rail tanker trucks, which arrived at the siding at the rear of the petrol depot, both petrol and kerosene came in four-gallon tins packed two to a wooden case. It had to be unloaded from rail trucks onto a series of rollers, with a downhill slope to the storage shed. I was allowed to push them along the rollers to the shed. I’ve just remembered, that Dad had a job for a while as a farm machinery parts salesman for JC Dahlsen. That must have been before he went to work for Plume. Wal Baker, a gentleman, was manager at Dahlsens, and got Dad the job. He had a new T-model Ford van. It was grey in colour and consisted of a cabin with a large box on the back. The ‘parts’ were all locked in the box. Somewhere here Dad had an Indian solo motorcycle, which was beaut fun sitting on a cushion on the pillion seat, and later an Ariel solo, which was very fast.

At school about 1926 I had a girl, or I thought so anyway, named Doris Jolly, a curly blonde. Her father was postmaster. I used to keep her supplied with chewing gum when I had it. Later about 1928 a new head teacher named Clinton arrived. He rode a bike, or rather scooted his bike, around the yard. Why was he remembered? He taught my mother at Pitfield! The trees along the east and south of the paddock were planted on Arbor Day that year too. I remember it because I was carrying a garden fork on my shoulder on the way to school, when I somehow dropped it, and it stuck a point through the outside of my shoe and my foot. My grandfather John visited us whilst at Struan, and he gave me a small pocket knife, which I lost. As far as I know that was the only time I ever saw Grandfather John.

About 1927-1928 my Dad build a house on the south-east corner of Mitchell Street and Dawson Street, one block west of the botanical Gardens, known by all as the Tannies. It took him six weeks working at night and all his spare time. We lived there for a time. I had a mate or rather a sometimes playmate named Keith Oliver who lived on the other side of that street. His father was manager of the Shell petrol depot, next door to Plume, and we did not always see things the same way. We used to go looking for frogs and tadpoles in the Tanny’s, when the old rubbish tip in the centre was full of water after rain. Somewhere around this time, in the early 1920s anyway, we lived in a house a few feet from a road on a soldier settlement block on “Trawallah”, which was near Beaufort. I stood at the front fence one day and watched a circus walk past our house; camels and donkeys were the main impression.

I remember that back in World War I my Dad got meningitis after he enlisted, and he didn’t get away overseas until 1916.

We even built a canoe from a sheet of corrugated iron and tried it out on the quiet in the Tanny Gardens, but it had too many leaks and sank on us. After one heavy rain there was water across the intersection on our corner, so all the nearby kids paddled and sailed boats of one kind or another in the knee deep water on the road. The whole family went to the pictures when the first “talkie” was screened in the Regent picture theatre. It was called “Wings” and as a promotion a Gypsy Moth aircraft plane landed on the morass behind the football ground. My Dad had to take Plume petrol down to refuel it. That’s how we got the free passes to the pictures…

Somewhere between 1924-1928 we lived at Flaggy Creek, Wuk Wuk, Bairnsdale. I think Flaggy Creek was first, where we lived at Fernleigh, owned by Charlie Treasure. I used to ride an old black horse three miles out to Flaggy Creek School. I sat on a butt of chaff going and on the empty bag coming back home. I used a stump in the school grounds to mount the horse, which I think was named Darky. On the way home the last half mile of road was sandy, up the hill from the creek, and I used to canter Darky up the hill. It was out of sight from my house, but Dad could still hear the horse coming. Dad had a black dog named Shark, but it was very savage, and eventually met a bullet. We used to go a mile or two to Batterberry’s paddock, where there was an old orchard with good fruit trees. Dad was riding a jumpy horse named Robin there one day when a rabbit ran under Robin’s belly, so Dad shot it with a .22 – did that horse jump!

When we moved to Wuk Wuk we lived in a house owned by Mrs Treasure-Brown-Ives. She was Charlie Treasure’s mother, had been married three times, and was a real tough old girl. The house was on Fraser’s Lane, west of Charlie Treasure’s house, which is now called Grassdale and is owned by Ken Treasure. One morning, cold and frosty, I was riding Darky and Dad was on Charlie Treasure’s horse Connie. At daylight we left Treasure’s, and rode via Flaggy Creek to Boggy Creek, rounded up about a dozen cattle, then drove them up via Mount Taylor and Wy Yung into the Bairnsdale Saleyards. Then we rode home via Lindenow, arriving about dark. At that time I was about six years old. There is a lot of family history in this area. For example, Charlie Treasure’s wife Rae was a daughter of Aunt Charlotte, who was a Clark, and sister of Grandfather Johns’s wife Sarah. Charlotte lived at Calulu, and her married name was Phillips. She was the mother of Algar Phillips whose son, from the 29th battalion, was a prisoner of war on a ship which was going to Japan but got torpedoed. Dad showed me a colony of “bottle swallows” building their mud nests on a large dry tree stump near Hillside. My sister Gwen and I walked down to Treasure’s, met Gladys Treasure and walked across paddocks to school, getting our feet wet in the long grass most days. Charlie Treasure had a four-cylinder Durant car, the engine of which he could actually stop by shorting the spark plugs with his hand!

About early 1929 we were living at Lake Bunga again, this time about quarter of a mile west of Wilson’s house. We walked to the lake, rowed across, and walked through the bush to school. In late November 1929 Mum had taken us into Lakes Entrance to something, and Dad came in after lunch. It was a hot day and we had a picnic and a swim. Late afternoon, smoke was seen rising from out our way, so we left for home which was about four miles further east. After we turned off the road beyond Merangbar hill the smoke was heavier, and the horse did a fast run to where we had lived. I remember Dad getting a milk bucket from the shed there; he yarded the cow and got a pint or two to give Mum a drink. The water tanks were empty as a result of the fire. The house and the contents had all gone. We stayed a while on board a large houseboat named the Barnyarnda, which was moored at a jetty opposite Maranui House in Lakes entrance, owned by the Broome family. I think Auntie Edna was working at Maranui at the time.

We moved to Wuk Wuk once more, about 11.3.1930, or so, and then we moved again to Calulu about April 1930. After we left Charlie Treasure’s we moved to a shanty at Calulu, north of where the school was on the north side of the road between Calulu and Wy Yung. The shanty was one part weatherboard and one part bark hut. I went to school there for a short time, just a matter of days, and then to Charlie Treasure’s, where I worked milking 45 cows morning and night for ten shillings per week and keep. The milking machines were worked by a “Ridd” engine. This did not always work and we often had to milk by hand, which took a little longer. I got up early, had tea and toast in the kitchen, milked those cows, and came back in to breakfast. This was in 1930. Charlie Treasure had a big draught horse, over 17 hands tall, and named Jumbo. He also had a big oil engine which was used to pump irrigation water from the Mitchell River, and to drive a chaff cutter. The engine weighed three old tons, and Jumbo pulled it from the river up to the chaff shed, with several spells. Aunt Charlotte lived at Calulu; she was my grandmother’s sister. She married Sydney Phillips and Algar Phillips, whose son had been a prisoner of war, lived nearby. Daughter Rae married Charlie Treasure of Wuk Wuk. We used to visit Aunt Charlotte, who wore long black dresses, and baked beaut little cakes. This could have been over Christmas holidays in 1930 I think. We then went to live in Pearson Street Bairnsdale, and I went back to school at state school number 754 for a short while. I can’t remember where Dad was working at that time.

About the beginning of 1931 Mum packed furniture et cetera, and including clothes and crockery, in an organ case which had been in the shed at Lake Bunga and escaped the fire. Once again we moved, to Franklin in Tasmania, where we lived in the Congregational manse next door to Brimble’s store. The teacher, Mr Long, used a cane on the hands and fingers were numb for quite a while afterwards, so I learnt to spell correctly! In May 1931 I joined the first Franklin Troop of Scouts. Scoutmaster John Hopkins drove an Avius Voisin car which had a very noisy exhaust. I rode in the back seat with others to the Scout Exhibition in Hobart, and I was carsick!

When I went to do a cooking test I asked Mum for some porridge. She said it was in a paper bag in a cupboard so got a handful or two and put it in my new billy. It did not look like porridge when I added salt and water and cooked it – that’s because it was bran! Later on several boys camped one weekend on Scouter’s motor launch, moored at the Huon River bank south of Franklin, opposite his property. At that point were mudflats, islands just above water level and held together by water, grass and reeds, in the middle of the river. We crossed to the mudflats in the rowing boat, taking some string and boards from fruit cases, which we were going to tie in our feet as skis on the mud. But they did not stop us from getting bogged so we stripped off, put our clothes on reeds out of the mud, and slid around on our stomachs, having great fun. We had a swim to wash the mud off. That night we had a thunderstorm and it turned really cold. We were glad to see daylight because we had shivered all night on the boat. Oh yes, there were some ducks swimming nearby and when they came out on the bank they were chased, and one got caught. The idea was to roast it on the fire, but the wood was a bit wet after the thunderstorm and there was much more smoke than fire, so the duck took a long time to cook for lunch. Talk about tough, and the white feathers didn’t float away on the water. A day or two later it was heard that someone had seen some seals on the mudflats last Sunday!

There was a dried apple factory on the riverbank in Franklin and it was on the way home after Scouts. The furnaces which heated the air to dry the racks of apple pieces were stoked up overnight and it was a great place to keep warm on a cold night, and eat an apple from one of the hundreds of boxes which were stacked up. Then there was a girl named Enid Norris who lived about half a mile up the hill above the town. She was a Girl Guide and they met the same night as the Scouts, but they were always home before the Scouts, and her bedroom was on the town-side of her house, so we practised Amateur Morse code with torches on our way home. A boy named Cameron and I used to go fishing from a wharf covered by a shed about two miles down-river. We caught barracuda with nasty teeth. We used to ride our bikes to Port Huon further down river and watch the big cargo boats loading apples for overseas at the cool-store wharves. At home Dad had a fox terrier named Felix and my sister Gwen had a white rabbit. They played together chasing each other around the yard. Dad had taught Sprint not to eat that bunny. A rowing boat about 12 feet long called a “punt”, because both ends were blunt, was our means of transport across the river to Cradoc. In the centre of the river was a long scrub-covered island named Egg or Snake Island, extending along the river to about a mile or so above Franklin. Opposite the town was a canal cut through the island to the other half of the river. Names of people I can remember at school were Cameron and Arthur Brown, whose nickname was Tubby; Boy Howard; Possum Leatham; Enid Norris; Iris Welling. One test at Scouts was running 10 paces then walking 10, and repeating, to cover a mile in six minutes, exactly. That was called scout pace. It was easy with practice.

Dad decided that he had had enough of living in Franklin, which was in August 1932. We moved over, or rather around, over the Huonville Bridge to Cradoc, which was a just a locality with a school and a shed on the wharf. Skye Farm was on top of the ridge, east of the wharf, and was owned by Jack McVilly who had an orchard at Cradoc. While we were there we used to drive up and down in a governess cart drawn by a pony named Tommy. I rode Tommy down to the wharf, tied him up in the shed with a feed of chaff, rowed a boat over to Franklin, went to Scouts, and reversed the process going home. I was only allowed to go on Saturdays, and a few fine moonlight nights. I didn’t go to school there at Cradoc. I remember rowing an eight-foot-long cockleshell, which was almost as wide as it was long, about a mile upstream to Cradoc and then over to Franklin. There was a strong headwind, and I had to hug the shore to pass the canal before crossing to the canal. To make it harder the oars in the cockleshell were too long and I had to overlap my hands each stroke. Going back was easy with a tail wind! The next move for our house was to a farm four miles north of Sorell, which is 14 miles east of Hobart on the road to Port Arthur. The locality was known as Cherrytree, and Dad called the property Oakbank because there was a big oak tree, which has now fallen down, in front of the house. That was about February 1933. I don’t know how big the farm really was, but I guess about 250 acres of mostly cleared land. There were two acres of good apples next to the house and a quarter of an acre of Moore Park apricots down on the flat about 300 yards away from the house, and two big pear trees kept us in fruit with some to sell if possible. It was my job, or one of them, to shoot mynahs and parrots in the orchard with a .22 calibre rifle. BB caps cost two shillings and sixpence for 100. We had about 100 sheep, 100 beehives, a cow, a pony, chooks, eggs, and bandicoots living in the bush. We worked on additions to the house, and I mixed the mortar for bricks for the chimney which Dad built. In 1983 that chimney was still there. We, that is Dad and I, worked in the small slab shed at night making up beehives from packing case timber, and nailing and wiring frames. Lighting was by a carbide gas lamp with a double jet burner. Carbide came in seven-pound tins which were later filled with honey. Four-gallon square kerosene tins were used for honey too. I had to carry water for the house from the creek, which was more than a quarter of a mile away, and I used two kerosene tins slung on a Chinese-type yoke across my shoulders. The creek water was clear and clean and flowed over limestone rock. We had a good swimming hole, not more than four feet deep, in part of the creek.
One hot day there were bushfires to the west of us, and by night one was burning towards us. About 9 PM Dad and I went out to the west boundary fence, cut the boughs, and beat the fire back each time it jumped or blew our way to the grass on our side in our paddock, and leaves in bush on other side of the fence. On the way home, we stripped and swam in the creek and that water tasted good! It was nearly midnight when we got home after fighting the fire, and Mum had a pan of fried onions cooking. Fried onions on toast at midnight!
Our pony Tommy was a lazy coot and usually needed a tickle with an apple switch to get him out of an amble. Dad got a nice little mare from somewhere. She was a pacer, and she could trot as fast as Tommy could gallop. She was very smooth riding, when I could, but she was traded on a big trotting horse. Dad and I drove the pacer to Hobart in the spring cart, and then drove the trotter back home in the same cart. It was dark when we got back to Sorell and the street lights were on. Passing under one streetlight the trotter shied at her own shadow and kicked the front board right out of the cart. Luckily we were sitting back in the seat over the axle. On the city side of Sorell was the Pittwater, a tidal inlet which went several miles inland. When the tide was going either way under the wooden bridges on the causeway was the best time to catch fish, mainly flathead, and usually there were plenty of fishers trying. Near the apricot orchard at Oakbank was a deep dry creek bed, in which grew thick blackberry bushes, covering lots of rabbit burrows. A big black and white cat lived there, and Felix, our fox terrier, had many a chase after the cat. We grubbed the blackberries out, and caught the rabbits, but I don’t remember what happened to the cat… A family of plovers nested in the paddock between the house and our apricot orchard, and they were champion dive bombers. The first you knew they were there was the “whoosh” sound as they just missed your head. I never was able to hit one with the .22 even though they dived in a straight line! I forgot to say that I went to Sorell High School, which was eighth grade, for a month or two.

About November 1933 we moved again, this time to live in Kew as Dad had a church in Burnley. I went to Scouts at the 1st Burnley Troop, going with them to the Frankston Jamboree in January 1934. I had a job at the Kew Post Office for a few days as a temporary telegram boy, and worked at a bike shop in High Street, Kew. The chap there did not sell enough bikes to stay in business, but I did have a ride on the bike on which Sir Hubert Opperman actually broke a motorcycle-paced world record. At the jamboree one day was very hot. I got sunburnt behind the knees, and went to the first aid tent to have the burns painted with acriflavine. I stayed there the rest of the day painting sunburn on other Scouts. Then I had a job in a wood-yard at Heidelberg for five shillings a week, splitting blocks of wood, bagging and weighing it in hundredweight lots. One hundredweight weighed one hundred and twelve pounds weight. I had bought a new Viceroy bike at the shop in Bridge Road Richmond for about £12 and paid for it from my earnings. I had to ride over to Heidelberg to work, and at weekends I rode it out into the country around Doncaster. There were farms, dairy cows, and orchards extending for miles and miles around Bulleen and Templestowe, and a lot of the roads were just gravel surfaced.

We moved again, to a farm a mile and a half south-west of Woodend in 1934. Dad had built, or part built, three rooms of sawn timber, and we worked on completing the inside as money and time permitted. Brother Roy and I slept in a tent at the rear of the house. We had a cedar chest of drawers, a part-floor made of the two ends of a large wooden packing case, bunks made of native saplings strung through chaff bags, a mattress in the hollow, and grey blankets on top. The sides of the tent had a wooden frame made of sawn palings around it to stop dirt and water getting in. It was cold at night! Dad and I worked a Trewhella tree-puller on clearing trees and cutting logs, which was sawn into timber at a saw-bench owned by a neighbour over the road. The saw was driven by an old Bleriot car engine, which was French made, and I had to control the throttle to keep up the revs when we were sawing up the timber. There was one straight stringy bark tree which was 50 feet long to the first branch, a real beauty. Dad got a contract to supply six-foot long furnace wood to H.V. MACKAY, the people who made Sunshine harvesters. We cut a mix of dry and green timber, loaded the tip dray as high as Dad could reach, and I took it down to Woodend railway station and tipped it in a standing-on-end position. The first part of the trip in to the railway station was down a steep slope on the road and the horse literally inched its way down the Hill with the dray load pushing it. The firewood was cut and split with crosscut saw, maul and wedges mostly on dry wood; green wood was often split with just axes. I got careless one day when splitting, and took a small-sized slice off the side of my left big toe with the axe. Dad chewed up a gum leaf and put it over the cut; the eucalyptus was a mild antiseptic against the sap and the dirt on the axe. I think the return for a cord of wood was six shillings a cord. A cord was equal to 3 ½ tons, or maybe it was even six shillings a ton in cubic measurement, and it all had to be delivered to Mackay’s in cords.

I got a job at Kyneton and rode my bike the ten miles from Woodend, plus 1 ½ into Woodend and back each day. I worked at the envelope factory, making straw envelopes in which bottles of beer were packed in those days. The envelope was just a straw sleeve the same length as a bottle of beer, made by spreading straw on a metal table, pressing a lever or two, and the machine sewed the straw into an envelope. A good machinist made about 4500 pieces in a day. It was too much travelling in the winter so I worked a few days on battering the banks of an irrigation channel a few miles from home. That was heavy work swinging a mattock all day while perched up on the sloping bank of the irrigation channel. I earned two shillings and sixpence one day, caddying for a round of golf in Woodend. I used to go to Scouts in the log cabin at Woodend. Because it was logs we had to sweep the borer dust from walls and floor each time we used it.

The local policeman was named Earnshaw and he had a big Alsatian dog. He used to send the dog around the block one way, and he would walk around the other, or did until we found the dog was doing all the work, just walking quietly along the street. Earnshaw had a beautiful daughter but she thought so much of herself that no one could get near her. Along with a couple of lads named Williams and Staples we rode our bikes out to Hanging Rock a few times, and climbed up to the top, which was a magic view. I went for a ride in a bike race one day. A chap named Carl Poletti lent me a racing bike and I started on the limit. The race distance was 15 miles. That was 7 ½ miles out towards Gisborne uphill, and then back. I was first around the turn but then the others raced past me on the way back. I was riding a fixed wheel bike with about 70 or 72 gear, and going downhill my legs would just not turn fast enough. Most others had larger gears and freewheel clutches! I saw a train load of sawn timber from Trentham one day and it was covered in snow, frozen solid. That must have been in the winter of 1935. I was on the Woodend railway station with a mate named Williams one day and we read a poster, advertising job vacancies for “Lad Porters” in the railways, so we decided to apply. I got in and he didn’t. I had an abscess in my right ear and when I went to Dr Lincoln he handed me a kidney dish, and had me hold it under my ear, while he lanced the abscess and washed it out with a syringe!

Things were often tight at home and we often had bread and dripping for a meal, or kettle broth, or bread and milk. The first is bread spread with dripping, and pepper and salt. Kettle broth is made with bread broken in a bowl. Pour hot water on and drain the excess off; add a knob of butter, pepper and salt mixed together. Bread and milk is just bread with hot milk in a bowl. Mum used to make what she called “bran bicks” – bran with a little flour and fat, rolled thin and baked. She made ginger beer and yeast beer in four-gallon cans but I think it seldom lasted long enough to be bottled. I had a Franchotte 297/230 single-shot rifle which one day got me three hares with two shots – two were sitting one behind the other with the one shot, and as one was wounded it squealed, bringing the third hare in to have a look, and it got the second shot. We had a few sheep, which the town dogs annoyed until I got a couple with lucky shots, because they always run away. I went to the Saturday night pictures occasionally and the tune played on the Panatrope before the show was usually “Silver Bells” with the chorus played on little bells. Ice-creams were one penny each or tuppence, cigarettes were threepence or sixpence for 12, haircuts were sixpence with little kids – that sounds cheap, but not in comparison with the wages way back then.

In early March 1935 Mum went to hospital in Woodend to have a baby. It was stillborn, and Mum died on 11th of March 1935, the day before her birthday. We kids decided not to go the funeral. Dr Lincoln charged Dad only ₤5 for the confinement.

Early January 1936 saw me living with Uncle Harold and Auntie Ethel at 14 Ovens Street, Moonee Ponds, and after a few weeks of classes at the Victorian Railways Institute I was working as a porter, registered number 40, on Ascot Vale railway station. The station master was about 5’4” tall, a wizened up old Irishman with bandy legs named Scanlon, who chewed tobacco, and spat juice on my nice clean platform. The assistant station master was a big six-foot tall ex-wrestler with cauliflower ears named Bull Aska. Shifts were worked from 5 AM to 12:30 PM. In those days milk used to come in every morning from Craigieburn on a steam train and I unloaded the 10-gallon cans onto a trolley on the platform; they were picked up by the milkman later. Empty cans went back out to Craigieburn in the evening. The platforms had to be swept each morning and toilets washed, all in between selling tickets to and collecting money from passengers on trains, and passenger tickets on the downside. I had to attend weekly classes in train running and telegraphy. I attended the Gladstone Street Methodist Church and youth activities, usually with Cecil Ford, uncle and aunt’s adopted son. He was a good piano player. I made a few bob by doing up old bikes and selling them, and eventually I traded my old Viceroy bike in on a new Simpson, a proper semi-racer, which I bought in Puckle Street, Moonee Ponds. I used to go around with a young lady named Sadler and her brother, and if I got home at 2 AM I still had to go to work at 4:30 AM. On a weekend when I finished work late on a Friday night or Saturday morning, I would put on my rain cape and gloves and set out on my bike to ride to Tylden, to where Dad had moved. I usually had a spell at Diggers Rest railway station and arrived at Tylden for an early breakfast. Dad and I went shooting in the afternoon, rain or shine. I saw the foxy dog set at a big tussock one day and then dive in and emerge with a mouthful of the rump of a hare as big as the dog. It was a tug of war which the little foxy won. On Sunday about midday I rode back through Woodend to town.

With a friend named Jack MacPherson I joined the Fifth Battalion, Victorian Scottish Regiment, and we went to the drill Hall in Sturt Street South Melbourne for parades. It was over a proposed ten-day period of January 1939 that we went to camp at Bittern with the Sixth Battalion University Rifles and 32nd Battalion from Footscray. The University rifles were known as the Pope’s Own because of the number of Roman Catholic members. We had a few fine days in which we had some practical instruction in signalling, route marching, making beds in tents, remaking beds in tents, being raided at night by the U.R. whose lines were behind our tent, and of course raiding them back in return. The camp was on a slope and when it began to rain heavily water ran down through the tents. Everyone was out with coats on trying to stop water from flooding, and got wet. The rain kept on and on and between mud and wet clothes were all sent home. It was a real washout camp. Uncle Harold had a Whippet Tourer which he restored, and it was painted a rich red wine colour. Somewhere in 1938 I was transferred to Cheltenham Railway Station, and used to take my bike to work on a train then ride home to Moonee Ponds afterwards.

Then I bought a motorbike on time payment. It was a new Imperial, which was a very nice motorbike, but very hard to start on a cold morning or late night. I got a beaut heavy black rubber coat and trousers, and leather helmet and gauntlets to keep dry and warm. Petrol back then cost one shilling and nine-pence a gallon. I rode the motorbike to Tylden one weekend and Dad rang Woodend police station to say I wanted my licence on the Saturday morning. By the time I got there Cliff Tarrant, who was the relieving policeman, had the receipt ready. I paid my two shillings and sixpence, and he said “If you rode up from the city to here you must be able to ride”. Cold mornings with that motorbike I would have to kick for five minutes before it would fire, and always it was the same thing on cold nights when I wanted to go home. One night despite hot bricks sat around the cylinder in an attempt to warm it, it would just not go with a kick, or with a push down the platform ramp, so the battery was flat! I wheeled it from Cheltenham up to the top of the rise at Highett, where there was a little garage on the left-hand side of the road. The time was after 1 AM by then, but I knocked the chap’s front door down before he came out. He just connected a battery to the bike and it started with just a kick or two. That cost me one shilling then. Despite a new battery and spark plug that bike was just too much trouble so I took it back and told the seller to keep it.

I was riding it one day out past Diggers Rest, and with a strong wind blowing from my left front I was learning into about 40°, crawling along against that until I got into the timber country at the back of Gisborne. I went back to my pushbike for a while after that, and when I was transferred to Parkdale about early 1939 I moved to Mrs Egan’s boarding house in Parkers Road, where I only had a few hundred yards to go to work. I had a bed in a sleep-out in the yard. I still went to militia parades, and on Anzac Day 1939 we were lined up on the south side of the Shrine for crowd control. Evidently a beautiful 16-year-old girl on the train to town from Parkdale that day liked the look of the kilt I was wearing, so I heard much later. Anyway one morning she had forgotten her periodical rail ticket, and went back home to get it, so that gave me a reason to say “hello.” I’ve been saying it just about every day since! About this time I was asked to sign up for a permanent job in the railways, but instead I decided to apply for the Victoria Police Force. I was one of 70 picked from over 300 applicants, so I decided to resign instead from the railways.

In July 1939 I finished with being supernumerary Lad Porter number 53480, and two days later I started at the Police Depot in Grant Street Melbourne, with Trainee Number 652. I had a bed in number one dormitory, one of a dozen lined up around three walls, the fourth wall being doors with a glass panel top half dividing us from number two dormitory. Along the centre of the room was a double-sided set of lockers or cupboards in which we kept all our gear. Numbers were issued from T650 alphabetically and I was the third number T652. Early mornings we had to do “fatigues” before breakfast. This included sweeping floors, cleaning windows, washing breakfast dishes, mowing grass, picking up straws which got under the tan bark down in the mounted branch stables, sweeping the floor, dusting the walls of the horse stalls, raking the tan bark in the riding school and so on and so on, or anything else that “Dirty Dick” Smith or “One-eye” Sinclair could think up to make us do. Doug Ramsay was there too. As well as written subjects we had drill with rifles, physical training in the Drill Hall, trained as toy soldiers for display at Graduation, and gymnastics, not forgetting boxing with Les Harley and wrestling with Jack Fletcher. We were all down on the floor one day doing push throughs, not push-ups, with Doug on the piano. The idea was that when you couldn’t do any more you flopped on the floor. Anyway the piano was still going and I was still going, and then I heard some clapping, so I sneaked a look around. I saw that I was the only one still going! Keith Hamilton the drill instructor had been walking around, as usual making his sarcastic remarks to us, and as I was in the front row with head down I didn’t see the others stop, and he was still talking. If you made a wrong move during drill on the oval the punishment was one or two laps of the oval on the double whilst carrying your rifle over your head. Hamilton had a trained memory for names and personal details, as he always called the roll of 70 in our squad without missing any, and he could and often did throw in some sarcastic personal details of anyone at any time. We had to do our own washing in the laundry, and hang it in the drying room, which was heated quite hot by steam pipes, so your clothes were often dried quite stiff in the heat. After PT, often the last subject in the afternoon, I could shower and dress and be out the front gate in 10 minutes for a brisk walk or run uptown to meet Bett.

When war was declared on 3 September 1939 or shortly after, I had to hand in my rifle number 299817 and the Fifth Battalion Scottish Regiment uniform.

On December 19th we had our Passing-out Parade on the oval; Bett was there, and next morning after breakfast we paraded in our new uniforms, and marched up to Russell Street Police Headquarters. The barracks at Russell Street was a two-storey bluestone block along Latrobe Street towards Mackenzie Street, on the east side of the courtyard. The rooms were small and cold with worn and mouldy lino on the floor. Early shift start at 6 AM was after a cup of tea and two slices of toast which we made on a gas toaster in the kitchen. At least it warmed me up, especially if I was on a quick change over and it finished at 11 PM the night before. We paraded in the courtyard and after noting in our notebooks that Bill Smith or someone was wanted and producing our batons and handcuffs we were sent here and there for whatever was needed on that shift. Russell Street Guard was a lousy cold job; Parliament house was cold but it was better in that you could walk around and move around, and one of you could make a quick trip down Bourke Street about 100 yards for some hot dim-sims. Of course this was only at night… Only Parliament House and Government House guards had guns. I was sent out with an old chap named Barrow. Shanghai was his nickname, and what he didn’t know about Little Bourke Street Patrol wasn’t much. He knew where the best dim-sims were, and where all the fan-tan games were, and where the opium joints were. But that’s about all I learnt from him. The Sgt Russell Street was named Mudguts Abley and I never knew him as anything else. One night a chap named Taylor was coming in from Parliament house at about 11:10 PM, because it took 10 minutes to walk back to Russell Street from there, and when he was nearing the corner of Russell Street and Latrobe he was emptying out this great big Colt when he managed to put a shot through his wrist. Any drunks arrested whilst on the beat were walked up the hill to the City Watch-house on the other side of the road from Russell Street. It was eerie on the beat at night because in wartime there were no outside lights on; the moon was a great help. We were armed with a baton and a torch, and many a cat making sudden noises was helped on its way with a well-aimed baton. Beats were usually on your own around one city block, to be at a certain point at a certain time for checking by the Senior Constable. If you were not at your point on time the Senior worked the beat backwards until he found you. If you left your beat for any reason you notified the chap on the next beat. If there was a shortage of men, you could get a faster beat covering two blocks. I liked riding the bike patrol because you covered the whole city east of Elizabeth Street with a mate. On day shift the best jobs were paid escorts for the railways or the SEC when you rode around the city and suburbs, and sometimes the near country, in the back of a car while the pay was delivered. One escort stopped for lunch at a pub in Bourke Street near Spencer Street. Their oysters were very nice. If you worked over-time you signed and countersigned a slip of paper about three inches square, showing time, and put it in the box in the Sergeants office. As little as a quarter of an hour added to the total, and you got four or eight hours off if possible.

About May 1940 I was sent with Senior Constable Jack Lowry to Wonthaggi where we had to do a night guard on a big mine a fair way out of town. We sat in an office high up in buildings with a view all around the in the floodlights. Jack had a pistol and I had a .22 rifle. We were there to stop any coal miners, who were all communists, from sabotaging the works as they threatened. We relieved the monotony by shooting at rabbits in the spotlight from our torches. I was there for four weeks and then went through a test to join the mounted police where I started on 24 June 1941.

I bought a pair of white riding breeches and my dress riding boots for £10 from Tom Harrison, an older First Constable who ran the canteen at the Depot. We had to have two pairs of whites and two pairs of khaki breeches so Louis Epstein the Tailor got some work. I had a room of my own in the Depot building, this time on the St Kilda Road side with a view. Every few weeks I was rostered as night guard. This entailed working a shift 10 PM to 6 AM where you sat in the reserve room on the back veranda and booked in all the rookies who had a late pass and had to be in before midnight. On the hour you made a round of the buildings and punched several time clocks on the way, otherwise you could read and listen to the radio. For a bit extra you also had to answer the phone, take broadcasts from D24 and record them, chase trespassers out, go to the help of the hospital sisters when you were called, take a quick run around the Barracks internally, and eat your cut lunch! Training and exercise rides around the Tan track around the botanical Gardens and the streets of South Melbourne, and down to the beach at Port Melbourne, were held every few weeks with marches, and parades at the races at Flemington every now and then. Riding along Bay Street one day two abreast, I was riding a jumpy mare named Trixie, in the second pair on the gutter side, when a rattling timber-jinker came along towards us. Trixie took off in front of the horse on my right, racing along Bay Street. The gutters were bluestone blocks and I had to ride across this at an angle on the grass strip, or the nature strip along the footpath, before we ran into a vehicle parked ahead. On the grass she came to a sudden stop with the help of the curb rein. I had a good gallop along the beach later and she wasn’t quite so jumpy on the return trip. Another time I was riding an old gelding named Dandy at the head of a march. Dandy had a peculiar habit when he smelt women in the crowd and I didn’t know of it then, but I wondered at the titters from the crowd, until whoever was riding beside me told me! I wasn’t riding him the day he reached out and took a mouthful of a lady’s straw hat. Captain was content to be with other horses but hated being alone. One day I rode him up St Kilda Road as far as the Bridge, with others going further up; I was to patrol between the Bridge and the Police Depot, and keep the crowd back, but as soon as the others left Captain started neighing and trying to follow. I had to try to hold him still in a hole in the crowd in front of the Depot. It was not safe to patrol with Captain that day. “Uncle Tom” Coffey was the officer in charge of the Mounted Branch and was very strict on discipline. An old white horse named Kirk was used in the riding school to try out new riders. They’d been there so long that he could go around over the jumps on his own just on Uncle Tom’s command [Doug Ramsay and Dirty Dick were at the Depot at this time as officer in charge of rookies, doing the fatigues et cetera] Uncle Tom retired about the end of 1940 and we got a new Senior Constable, Lesley Tronton Bryant, as O/C Mounted Branch. When a truckload of chaff and grain arrived it pulled into the doorway at the northern end of the stables, and we unloaded the bags into the loft, climbed up to the storage area, stacked them onto the trolley that ran along on rails and rolled them to the storage stack. The lift was worked by water power; you had to pull the rope up or down to move and it was very slow moving. Each time we had been out riding all the saddlery had to be cleaned and polished before we left the stables. Stalls were cleaned out each morning and the straw stacked around the walls, then late in the afternoon they were cleaned out again, and straw spread over the floor, and rugs put on the horses if needed.
One day late in April 1941 Les Bryant told me that he was sending me up to Yarra Junction to relieve Bill Dix, the mounted policeman there, who had been off sick and would be so for some time. It was said that a horse he was leading with a halter pulled back and his little finger was caught in the rope. The finger died at the tip, went black and shrivelled, so the finger was finally amputated. The horse there was nicknamed Grey Ghost; it had apparently dumped Bill a few times, and was then sent back to the Depot. I got a big bay rocking chair named Big Red and rode him around the district for the three months I was up there. While there, Gordon Charlton at Powelltown went on leave, and I had to run both stations. One day Gordon rang to say a tractor had overturned and killed the driver at a forestry camp on the south side of the range, south of Gladysdale between Yarra Junction and Powelltown. As Gordon was at home he went with us to the site. I got the local Justice of the Peace, who was also the deputy Coroner, and a hire car, and we drove out as far as possible past Gladysdale and met Gordon. A local chap who had walked out of the bush to report the accident had a draught horse harnessed to a sledge, and we all walked up the wooden tramline behind the sledge. A crawler tractor was pulling stumps on a steep slope and the driver who was named Cogger misjudged the centre of gravity on the dozer, and pulled the tractor over backwards. An inquest was opened and adjourned in about two minutes flat, a couple of workers were identified and their names were written down, Cogger was wrapped in an old tarp and tied on the sledge, with a rope trailing out behind. We went back to the top and down the tramline to Gladysdale. Why the rope on the sledge? Those walking behind held onto the rope to stop the sledge getting a run on to the horse ahead of it. I had sent the hire car away earlier, and it was now waiting with the undertaker for us to arrive. It was almost dark, still raining and blowing, and the three miles coming down were faster than going up!
The timber mill at Powelltown was the largest in Australia at that stage and all the dressed timber was stamped Ada River Mill. I rode the horse Big Red 16 km out there to Powelltown two or three times a week to attend to anything required, or to open the police station mail, because some poor coot always owed somebody something. I was Registrar of Births and Deaths too, because the previous one died and no replacement was available. Bruce Baird at the garage ran the town’s lighting plant, and I used to go there at night to practice playing the mouth-organ with him. Eventually we played a bracket of numbers, some of which were “Kiss me good night Sgt Major, Nursie, and Colonel Bogey”, with three more for encores, at a charity concert at the local hall.

I had won a permanent vacancy at Healesville, so on 18 August 1941 I moved over there, stationed with Senior Constable George Alexander Newton registered number 6938, who turned out to be a sly coward and a bully. I boarded at the hotel near the station about four months until Bett and I were married on 16.12.41, when were able to rent a house with a shopfront on the corner of Castella and Martin streets. We lived at the pub for six months until the place became vacant, a nice life. This house was next door to the old Palais dance hall. I had a beautiful issued bay mare named Princess and I started work in the stables at 7 AM each day. A few days after I arrived, which was the 21st I think, I was riding back from the east end of town along the main road when Princess took fright at a truck and bolted towards town. I managed to stop her just short of the Bridge and turned around on the grass to go back to look for my cap. She took off again, and I remember seeing a light pole just ahead, and then waking up when somebody picked me up from the grass. I had hit the pole with my right ear, shoulder and hip, and went off over her tail, landing on my back. She stopped a few yards away. The butcher, Bill Christie, wouldn’t let me ride back so someone gave me a ride and Bill Christie led Princess back to the police station. My right ear was cut so I went to Dr Sam Phillips, who sat me on a low stool in front of him, said “this won’t hurt, it’s still warm”, and stitched up my ear without painkillers! I went by train that afternoon to the city, walked down to the Police Hospital at the Depot and saw the Sister on duty. She said “come back in the morning and see the Doctor”. I walked up to Flinders Street and got on a train to Parkdale, woke Bett who was sleeping on the front veranda, and went to bed in the sleepout on the back veranda. A week later I was able to go and see the doc at the police hospital; but in the meantime I was so stiff and sore that I couldn’t even turn over in bed without help. When my riding gear was sent up from the Depot there was no curb chain for the bit, so I had tied an old watch chain in place until the curb arrived. The watch chain broke when I pulled the curb rein on the bridle back, soon after the horse started to bolt. I had no problems afterwards with Princess trying to bolt, even though I tried to make her go. I had ridden the ten miles north to Toolangi pub one day and tied her up by the bridle rein to a fence. A wattle bird flew over and squawked loudly, Princess pulled back and broke the rein, but as soon as the reins fell and touched the ground she stopped. She had been trained to stand with reins grounded, and I could leave her in the street or anywhere and she wouldn’t move the reins any more than a couple of feet.

We were appointed “Air Observers” which meant that we were supplied with a pair of binoculars, numerous charts of all sorts of air planes for identification, and on hearing a plane had to spot it, identify it if possible, get on the phone and say “air flash” and within a second relay the information to the RAAF in the city. A plane was supposed to have crashed in the bush in the vicinity of Murrundindi sawmill, out past Toolangi, and miles into the bush. Newton and I went out with some forestry workers and some mill workers, and went looking. The bush consisted of bracken ferns up to eight feet high, and saplings which had fallen and lay crisscrossed one on top of the other, so you had to walk along them several feet above the ground. You were maintaining your balance as you walked along them with the aid of a long stick. The only way to get through the ferns was to take turns trail breaking, that is, the leader turned side onto the ferns and fell on them so that they bent down, then we walked on them. Needless to say the lead changed quite frequently. We poked around for four hours; we couldn’t find any sign of a plane. When we got back to the mill the other party was there, and so was Newton, who had only gone a short way and then returned. The track in and out to the mill was the usual mud and potholes, and it was a rough ride in the back of a truck. Another time we had a report that seven silly female schoolteachers, who had been staying at a guest house at Narbethong, had gone bushwalking to a certain place and hadn’t returned that night. It was arranged that six forestry and timber workers be at the start of a track going off the main road at daybreak next morning, and Newton drove me up in his car to meet them there. The going was good for a mile or so until the track petered out then it was mostly up and down hills in fairly open country, with some big trees, logs, scrub and sword grass. Sword grass grows in long tendrils many yards long and tangles in patches, growing several feet high. The stems are about 1/8 of an inch thick, tough and covered in millions of little hard razor sharp edges, with the result that you get a nasty scrape if you are careless with hands or face. I wore out the knees of a pair of riding breeches that day. We found tracks in places, and one or more had known to bend bushes and hang pieces of paper on them, so each time we lost tracks we stood still, and two of us walked around in a big circle until the tracks were found again. We found two cold fires, their lunchtime and night camps, and from the latter it was possible to see Maroondah Lake in the distance. I was climbing over a big log on a steep downhill slope and pulled a muscle on the inside of my left knee when I landed so I was quite glad it was mostly downhill from there. We covered in six hours the miles that had taken those females a day and a half to travel. They had come out on the main road at Fernshaw, just an hour ahead of us. Some few years before I went to Healesville, a man had been lost on Mount St Leonard and despite searches, had never been found. A local chap, a tough old fella around 50 years of age, vowed that he would find the missing one. He did too, but the body was too heavy to carry miles to town, so he gutted the corpse and carried it out on his shoulders!
There used to be an aboriginal reserve called Corranderk near Healesville, and it was closed about 1942. The last of the stores from there were moved into the police station stables. There were dozens of 1/4lb blocks of black plug tobacco, which later I burned; it made good nicotine spray for the garden bugs!
One day George Newton and Ossie Fleischer from Yarra Glen went to Marysville in Newton’s Ford sedan to raid the pub. They arrived after dark and parked the car around the corner. But they were spotted because when they got into the bar the birds had flown. There had been a full bar and they all got out through the trapdoor under a mat on the floor and down stairs and out to the back yard! Newton and Fleischer started for home and a few miles out of Marysville the car engine stopped, and would not start again. Ossie told me about it afterwards. Newton, after a couple of false starts, walked back into Marysville and rang their respective wives. The car was towed back to Marysville and when the engine was pulled down it turned out that sugar in the tank had caused the engine to seize. Newton and Ossie returned on the bus next day, but Newton got the message pretty strongly from Marysville. There was a family named Mapley lived out-of-town, bits of bucks, but nothing really serious. Anyway one day we were doing the six-o’clock-swill clearing of the pubs; it must have been summer because it was still daylight. We were still outside the central hotel when Newton told this Mapley, who was in army uniform, to go home. Mapley had had a few beers and swore at Newton, told him where to go. Of course Newton, being a fool, pulled out his baton and made a grab for Mapley, who bolted across the road and disappeared. The crowd milled around Newton, someone took his baton from him, he grabbed it back, and with all the row things looked bad for him. I had missed seeing Mapley go, and by the time I found that he wasn’t with his mates in the crowd, I also found that Newton wasn’t there either. I found him some time later, in the Grand Hotel, drinking a cup of coffee and looking quite shaken. In Healesville the hotels are not far apart, and the crowd around Newton came from both hotels. There was a chap named Bennett, the postmaster, only about 5’4” tall, who was an ex-serviceman and who said that he would back me up if needed. But because I knew all the men by name to talk to, I knew that their ire was directed at Newton. Anyway, I waited around and encouraged a lot of them to go home, found the Senior Constable at the Grand, and we went back to the station, where he rang Lilydale police station for support. Their Senior Constable and another chap arrived, Newton took out a warrant for Mapley although I forget just what it was for, and the four of us went out to the Mapley house. Mapley’s Mum met us at their front door. She denied that the villain was there. The Lilydale Senior Constable had the warrant and soft talked mum into it so inside we went. A bedroom door was shut, and when the Senior asked the Mum she said “that’s my sick daughter”. On looking in, there was Mapley in bed in a nightie, holding a baby up on his chest! Exit Mapley pronto. I can’t remember the court result for that incident. A few days later an inspector named Martin John Kennedy arrived up from Malvern headquarters and informed me that Newton had reported me for running out on him during the Mapley incident; I gave him my side of the story verbally, and referred him to Bennett the postmaster, Bradshaw the estate agent, and a couple of other worthy citizens. He interviewed them, then told me not to worry at all about the issue. George Newton got a message from one of his two cronies, that if he was seen around the town at night, he wouldn’t make it home! The consequence was that he wouldn’t go out at night and I had to do all night work on my own. I would be in the office attached to the house late at night when Newton would drop his boots on the floor from a height, and they thumped loudly. That was not a signal that he had gone to bed and I could go home early, because I saw him a couple of times sneak around from the back to see if I was still in the office after he had dropped his boots off. He had to look for a chink of light because we had the windows blacked out.
I used to get a few “villains” for liquor at a dance, if they were getting a bit full. I had one smarty who hired a solicitor from Lilydale. He arrived in a black suit and bowler hat to defend his client before Magistrate Mr Brady. The wartime Liquor Control Act was quite different to 20 years later. Bowler-hat was going well on his spiel, and I was looking at the Act, when I suddenly realised that it looked wrong. Don’t ask me how or why now, and on re-examine I submitted what I’d found. The bench agreed. I had found a loophole in the act, and until it was amended I won every case. One day a Constable Nicholls and I were having a struggle with two villains on the railway station opposite the office, when Newton came running with baton in hand to the rescue. I had to work on my days off to help the war effort, so I worked for an orchardist named Vin Wilson on his property I had trained Princess to do drill by command while in the paddock. I always had to give her a few laps before going out or she would buck on return. She pelted the chap who took over after I left, so he decided he couldn’t ride her, starved her to a shadow, and had the local butcher who weighed about 16 stone ride her weekly.

Our first son John was born at Healesville hospital on 10.1.43. I’d applied for Warburton as a police station vacancy and on 10.8.43 we moved over there into a small house, up on the hillside in the same street as the then-police station. The front veranda was about 6’ high and the back door was at ground level, the backyard rising up steeply. There was a wood stove in the kitchen and I rigged up a pull-up clothes drying frame in front of it, so that the napkins could be dried when I pulled on a rope and lifted the frame up near the ceiling. We had mostly mountain ash wood offcuts from the sawmill for the stove and it was easy cutting and splitting. There had been an old First Constable named Theobald there for many years who had recently retired. Senior Constable Jim Wilson was Officer in Charge, with a big grey horse named Dirty Face because he had dark smudges on his nose, as my transport. We’d not been there very long when I bought a single-seater Morris Cowley car from Mr L R Spark for £32. It was a good goer but the magneto needed frequent attention when starting, and the clutch burnt out a couple of times. When I got my driver’s licence from Jim Wilson, on the test drive we were trying to get up a fairly steep slope, but because of the slipping clutch I only got halfway and had to back down again. The clutch plate had lots of holes about three quarters of an inch in diameter in it, and the holes had bottle corks jammed into them and cut off at a particular length so they met the opposite face correctly. We had several trips over the Don Valley Road across to Healesville and back; it was an interesting trip when the clutch was slipping. The road was gravel then, and it was a case of grind slowly up a slope at two or three mph and then get a run up down the other side to repeat the process once more. I had a trip out to the Federal Mill one day. I started early one morning from East Warburton on the timber train, which was a string of four-wheeled wagons pulled along a wooden railway line by a big tractor which had rail wheels. The train went 17 miles out into the bush to the mill and on the way actually crossed a line from the Ada River sawmill at Powelltown. The tractor hooked on a string of loaded wagons behind, and braked them back down hill to East Warburton, as well as having a brake man on a wagon, because each wagon carried about a truckload of timber. I went to a place one day with a Warrant of Distress, but there was no one home and there were two savage Alsatian dogs which came running when I knocked on the door. I didn’t turn my back on the dogs, but backed out with my pocket knife open in my hand. The next time I went there I had a pistol! The pub at Launching Place was in our district and the female licensee was an old character, tough as boots, who was usually called Ma. I can’t recall her name but she was an old villain for trading after hours. At Warburton in those days the big holiday boarding-house owned by Mr Mayer, which was called the Chalet, was closed to the public and rented by the RAAF as a convalescent hospital. The dozens of nearly-well airmen were not supposed to take liquor to the night-time dances which were held at the dance hall on the Main Street, down below the Chalet, twice a week. We got to be quite expert at poking at possible hiding places in the dark with a stick, and listening for the clink as it hit the bottles, which were then removed. If a particular one made a nuisance of himself we kept watch on him until he went out to his “plant” and caught him in the act. Why was it necessary to work until nearly midnight twice a week, after a full day’s work? After a couple of nasty stoushes by half-full airmen at the dance hall they proved they could not be trusted to control it themselves. On 8.9.44 I rode Dirty Face to Dalry Road, 12 miles towards Healesville, and swapped him for Princess ridden over from there by Pat Wheelens. On eighth of October Princess pulled a front shoe off in the timber-floored yard, and trod on some nails. I poulticed her foot in a canvas bag, and she went back to the Depot for further treatment. At Warburton we could buy Weet-Bix from the Sanitarium factory for one shilling for a large paper bag. Sanitarium had a hall for meetings and they used it to show pictures. The film used then was not safety film and one night it caught alight, flashed the length of the hall and back again, killing one I think. Richards Bros had a sawmill at East Warburton and it was Don Richards who invited me to join Donna Buang Lodge number 324. The night I first attended in 1944 was wet weather with a thunderstorm, and very cold. I was also Captain of the Rural Fire Brigade, and luckily only had one small scrub fire in the 14 months I spent there. On 23.9.44 I sold the Morris Cowley single seater to Bill Brown for £38, and on 26.10.44 we left Warburton. The band at the dances for the RAAF personnel came from Seville and was owned by a chap named Arthur Levins, who had a garage there, so when we knew we were moving to Werrimull on 26.10.44 I asked him to find me a car. He came up with an A-model Ford tourer for £100, so we set off for Werrimul via Maryborough, which was then District Headquarters. I forgot to mention that when I drove the Morris over to Seville to look at the Ford I was running it on Shellite with a dash of kerosene. I was also carrying a quart bottle of power kerosene as spare fuel. Anyway, going up the hill the engine stopped suddenly, out of fuel. I tipped in the kerosene but even though the engine was hot it would not restart. I finished the trip by being towed the last couple of miles. Because of wartime rationing I got fuel on a ration-ticket to make it back home. Our furniture went by rail to Werrimul and took a week to get there, so after we arrived we had to stay for four days at the local pub. I had a supply of petrol ration tickets thought to be enough for the trip, but by the time I got to Maryborough I had to get more, because the A-model Ford was doing only 21 miles per gallon. When we got further up the track I started fiddling with the fuel mixture adjustment on the steering column and improved the mileage quite a lot. We went out from Red Cliffs along the road beside the railway line, and in those days the sand drifts were very bad across the track. We went along well until approaching Merinee when we got bogged just on dark. The shovel, which had been tied on the back of the car, was lost or stolen so we were stuck. About a mile away across a paddock we could see the lights of a house, so I hiked over and borrowed a shovel, which I returned a week or two later. We eventually arrived at the hotel about 10:30 PM on the 26th after just getting through, due to many more sand drifts. We stayed at the pub until after tea on 31.10.44. We cleaned up the house before moving furniture from the railway station to the house, because our furniture didn’t arrive until late on the 30th. Heavy dust blew in from the north-west at 6:30 PM on 12th November with visibility down to 20 yards, and again on the 19th with heavy haze from dust clouds all day, and strong winds and dust at night. It was a change from the cold weather at Warburton! I took two four-gallon tins of dust out of the ceiling, which was sagging. The drought broke in June 1945 with heavy rain. Visibility was only out to the front fence. Farmers started to get tractors bogged, one of which I can recall was a Minneapolis Moline, when the drought broke. About this time I sent the troop horse back to the police Depot by rail and all the remaining fodder down to Underbool. I had a lot of car trouble with the A-model Ford, having to renew all four tyres and tubes, put new jets in the carburettor, fix timing problems and fuel blockages, et cetera. I found a complete blowfly inside the carburettor bowl, so it must have flown into the petrol tank, gone through the fuel pipe and into the bowl, and then kept causing an intermittent stoppage. I had replaced gears in the gearbox, and also worked on the starter motor, the battery, the head gasket. I pulled out the pistons and renewed the rings and bearings with the car up on blocks in the backyard. I must add I had lots of faith in my ability to get that car home each day, because many times I was a long way from habitation and facing quite a long walk, with no chance at all of any passing cars.
With a car full of passengers I went to Renmark on 31.7.45 to be sworn in as a Special Constable for South Australia. At Christmas 1945 we went to the Werrimul pub for dinner. It was 117°F so we wet sheets and wrapped that over the pram with Ian inside. I wheeled it with Bett helping John walk. By the time we got to the pub the sheet was dry, and so were we! Ralph Jones took Bett to Mildura Hospital to pick me up from there after I had my tonsils out.
I had a report one day from a chap named Fox that on a count of sheep in a particular paddock it was two short, since a recent count. I went out to the paddock, checked the fence line for breaks and found it okay, but saw tracks of an iron-tyred cart on the sandy road. Then I saw blood spot on the sand, repeated every few yards. I drove 2 ½ miles following the tyre tracks and spots to the farm of a chap named Whitehead. In the yard was a jinker with blood on the floor, and a wide crack in the floorboards which allowed blood to drip out onto the road. In one shed was a skin with the brand cut out and under some timber in the yard was a head minus the ear marks. Whitehead’s story was that his kids were hungry, so they went to the neighbours paddock and shot a sheep, because the neighbour had plenty. He could have actually killed one of his own sheep, but they were all in poor condition. For the offence he got six months, suspended for 12 months of good behaviour. So I tracked a dead sheep for 2 ½ miles! On the way home from being made a Special Constable we got to Yarrara North and half of the fan blade on the A-model Ford broke off. So I filed the other half off, and we went two and a half miles and the radiator boiled. The fan blade had holed the radiator and pipe. I walked 2 ½ miles to D. Cameron’s house, and got him to tow us home, which we got to by about 9:30 PM. On 17.12.45 early in the morning I took two local chaps with me up to Ned’s Corner and then to a locality which was called Freemans, on the river, to look for a soldier who had gone AWOL. His name was Norris. He was on the other side of the river, so I had to row a boat across, talk him into coming back with me, row back with him in the stern of the little boat, and then heave a sigh of relief when we got back to my car. We drove to the Army Depot near Tenth Street in Mildura along the River Road, had a cup of tea there, went for a haircut and I was home by 8 PM. That morning, 28.1.46, on the way I had towed Keith Robertson’s car to the Meringur garage. I went into Mildura base Hospital travelling by bus and had my tonsils out the next day. I was on sick leave right up until 18 February. I think I weighed about 9 ½ stone! While on sick leave I took the car to the Meringur garage and had the engine sent out for a rebore. Nearly a month later the block came back, but minus rings for the pistons, which arrived a fortnight later. I got the car back together next day and the following morning got Keith Robertson to tow me so that I could start it. We left for Red Cliffs via the highway for the Duke of Gloucester’s visit, then back to Mildura for tea, and home by 9 PM. Sometime during the day Bett’s handbag was lost from the car. Four days later the bag came back, minus the cash which had been in it. A few days later I went out to Ralph Jones’s place to borrow an old trailer to go for a load of mallee roots, at Bambill. Backing off a mallee stump a lump of it flicked up, hit me in the mouth and gashed my lower lip. And on the way home a nut on the trailer axle turned tight and burst the hub, so I had no option but to leave the trailer there. At 5:30 PM we left Ian with Robertsons and took John to Dr Boothroyd in Mildura, with tonsillitis. On the way home a mallee root fell off the load of a truck going the opposite way to us, and nearly hit our rear wheel. We were home by 11 PM and we spent the night dosing John with tablets every four hours. Next day I took a spare wheel with me and collected the trailer full of mallee roots, and then turned the axle around the right way. And the next day I had to pump up the trailer tyres, after John had let them down! About a week later I went to Meringur and had a new exhaust fitted to the car. That evening I had to clear a petrol blockage, and had just finished when the ammeter fused, and burnt out all the wiring, so I rang Motor Spares in Mildura for new parts. When they came I fitted them the next day. On 14.4.46 at 11 AM Ian was christened in the Werrimul Methodist Church. A week later on the way back from Morkalla the main leaf on the rear spring on the A-model Ford broke, so I wired the leaves together at Bailey’s property, and we got home at 7 PM. It took most of the day to get the broken spring off, and I ordered a new leaf. A week later I got a leaf from an old T-model Ford and Keith Robertson gave me a hand to fit it, then a week later two spring leaves arrived, so I went to Meringur to have them fitted. About another week later I rewired the ammeter, the lights and the horn. Two months later I put a new front spring in the fool car. I helped get the Millewa League football going again, and of course had to attend each week to watch the football. If I wasn’t playing football I quite often had to umpire, and that was unpaid too! Umpires cost us ₤3.0.0 a game and came out from Mildura. If we were short of funds and couldn’t afford one that week it was my turn. If the umpire just didn’t arrive it was my turn also! Footy grounds were all gravel, there was no grass. I was taking a load of Werrimul players to a game at Bambill one day and a couple of miles out from Werrimul a big black snake crossed the road in front. I stopped, and grabbing my .22 rifle, I shot it through the head as it moved. The passengers were all standing around in awe at my very lucky shot. I always carried the pea rifle in my car. I used to go spotlighting rabbits along the roadsides along with Bill Sampson. Bill worked for the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission and lived next door to the police station. Rabbit eyes shine as one or two bright red dots, but in that area there is also a species of spider that has the same coloured eyes. So a few of these spiders were shot at just in case! Bill drove a little sports touring car, so it was handy to shoot from, with no hood, and we could stand up and shoot over the windscreen. One day the local carrier, Jack Russell, couldn’t start his loaded five-ton truck in the Main Street so I towed the truck with the Jeep so that he could start his engine. One day in July Bett and I set out for Lock Seven via Meringur and Ned’s Corner, and then down to the second fence west, then followed an old track north towards the islands in the river. Dodging a wet clay pan I bogged the car in a weed-covered hollow. We left the car there and walked a mile to a fence and met Cecil Jones in his car. We went down to the lock with him and on our return we dug Lizzie out of the mud and pulled it out. I put the track grips on and left them on until we were out to the sand near the highway. While we were spreading weeds on the wheel-tracks looking for traction, Bett’s engagement ring came off in the mud, but after a search she found it under some weed spread out in the rear wheel track. We had afternoon tea at Ned’s Corner then went to Meringur and home via Baileys place about 6:30 PM. On 15.11.46 I sold the A-model Ford to Mr. Fox at Merbein, and paid £130 deposit on an amphibious Jeep, drove home from Mildura, and got caught in a hail storm between Lake Cullulleraine and Werrimul on the way home. There was no hood on the Jeep so I only had a small seat cushion to cover me. Bett was taken into Mildura hospital by ambulance on 5 November and I went in for her on the 20th. On 27th at 3 AM I had to go to Karawinna re the death of a chap after falling off the tray of a truck while going home from a football dance at Karawinna. I could not get the Jeep started so I borrowed Jack Russell’s car to go into Mildura re the inquest, and got home at 2 PM. I took a fuel filter off the Jeep and got half a pint of mud and water out of it. It still wouldn’t start so I got the local mechanic, Colin Worsley, to take the carby and petrol pump off. Both were full of mud and water but he got it going all right. Next day I went into Mildura and got the Jeep measured for a hood. On 14 December it was a school picnic at Lake Cullulleraine. I tried the Jeep out in the lake near the jetty. It swam around for about five minutes; coming out the front wheels got caught in the fork of a log deep in the mud. So we went to the pump house and borrowed a half-inch cable and Jack Russell pulled the Jeep out with his big truck. I took the drain plugs out and let out about 10 gallons of water from inside the hull. I found later that the rubber seal on the propeller shaft was perished. I couldn’t get another seal for it. On 21st, about 3 PM, I went to Werrimul South re the death of an employee out on Arthur Middleton’s property. He had tried to take a spring rim off a tractor wheel on the ground, without covering it. The split rim flew off and took the top of his head with it. I took the body to the undertakers in Mildura in my trailer. I had an inquest opened and adjourned to the 23rd. I was home by 10:20 PM! On 10.1.47 I got the hood on the Jeep and on the 11th I worked all day because at 8:30 PM that night we left in the Jeep for Melbourne, as I was on Leave. I had made a shelf which fitted above the rear seat which was wide enough for Ian to sleep on. We got over to Red Cliffs at 10 PM and I drove to 2 AM. We camped on a sandy patch beside the road about four miles south of Mittyack until 0410 a.m. when the cool change came in. I put the side curtains on the Jeep and we drove down to Charlton, where we had breakfast at the Globe hotel, and at 9 AM we drove on down to Parkdale. On the 13th I had trouble with the generator and the voltage regulator and I had to take them in by train to the city to have them repaired. At 10:30 PM we left for Bairnsdale, had a doze in the Jeep from 1 to 3 AM at Warragul, and drove until 0515, when I disconnected the field wire from the generator and ran on the batteries only, getting into Bairnsdale at 8:30 AM. Later in the day I had the cut-out adjusted. On the 17th we left Bairnsdale at 11 AM heading back, had lunch at Sale, and got back to Parkdale at 6 PM. On the 20th we left at 5:30 AM heading back to Werrimul. We stopped at Wedderburn at 11:40 AM and visited friends. At Charlton we stopped at the swimming pool for lunch. Bett and the boys had a swim. It was a very hot day. We left there at 2 PM and at 4:45 we had ice cream and malted milks at Sea Lake for tea. We got back to Werrimul at 11:30 PM. Over the trip we had travelled 1252 miles, used 60 gallons of petrol, had no punctures in either the Jeep or trailer, been from one end of the state to the other, and it cost £11. On Tuesday, May 20 I took Bett in to Olinda Private Hospital in Mildura and at 11.00 PM Jim was born. Next day I worked in the office in the morning and went to a sheep sale at Meringur until around 5 o’clock. On the 23rd just after nine Jack Russell came to tell me of the death of an old chap named Thomas McGinn in the street. I put the body on the stretcher and tied it on to the bonnet of the Jeep in front of the windscreen, took it into Mildura mortuary which was at the undertakers, had the inquest and was home by 5:30 PM. On 3 June I went to court in Mildura and took Bett and Jim home; I paid £10.4.0 shillings at the hospital! I have either lost or mislaid my diary from around now up to when we left Werrimul. Along the way Ross was born in Mildura; we traded in the Jeep on a new 1948 Chevrolet sedan in which I took them both home from hospital. The car cost us about £600. I hadn’t had the car long when I staked a tyre on a piece of Murray pine wood on the road. After 4 ½ years at Werrimul we left for Drouin, where I started on 18.5.49. We lived in a housing commission house in McKindlay Street on the south side of town. The police office was on a corner of the brick house opposite Drouin Motors. The O/C was named Tratford and later on it was Bob Morrison. I worked at Warragul on occasions and relieved at Berwick once for a week, and Bunyip several times. A chap named Reichelt liked the look of the Chevrolet car, and as they were very hard to get and he had the money, I sold it for £1200! He hadn’t had it long when he cooked the engine on a fast drive to Adelaide. We had several vehicles after that, most of them new. One was an Austin A30 sedan, and another was a new ute with a canopy, a new Austin A40 sedan, a second-hand Plymouth sedan, another A-model Ford sedan, and the 1936 Dodge sedan which we had when we eventually went to Wunduk. We did a lot of miles in that car. The engine was a bit troublesome and it finally had to have a re-bore, which cost £200. I had a big wooden box which I tied onto the rear luggage carrier to hold the shopping, because inside the car was usually full of bodies. We went to Wunduk in July 52 to April 58. I was driving down the slope before passing the old police station in Main Street Bairnsdale one day when the steering arm fell off! Luckily we were only going quite slowly and ran into the kerbing on the right-hand side of the road. Driving up Gibbs Hill near the top Chris was on the back seat and opened the left rear door and fell out, because the door opened to the rear. Again I was going slowly and braking. She was wearing an old coat of mine and was not hurt at all. Another day I was driving in a Dodge truck along near Harold Peck’s place when the right front wheel fell off. The nuts had worked loose, so I used nuts from other wheels to replace them, and made it back home. While I was stationed at Drouin I used to drive over to Warburton to go to lodge. That Christmas they put on a party for kids, with good presents. About 1951 at Christmas time Nance Gibson was visiting us, so we all went to Warburton for the party in an A-model Ford sedan. Coming back to Drouin late that night the distributor cooked, about two miles from Neerim South. Young John and I walked in the dark, without a torch, to the Neerim South post office, where I rang George Clarke in Drouin and he came out with the tow-truck. He towed us home about 4 AM! I was Assistant Scoutmaster at Drouin, and at a camp one weekend one boy had matches and lit a fire, for which he was sent home in disgrace. I used to run a PT class in the Fire Brigade hall for Scouts and footballers once a week and one of them was named Ablett! After much care and thought I resigned from the Police Force and we went to the farm near Eagle Point in July 1952. The house was built by a chap from Bairnsdale named Stan Simpson, and we had a petrol-kero engine fitted with a 32-volt generator to supply power. There were two 10,000 gallon tanks for house water. A local chap and I built the shearing shed and I built the sheep yards. We had a steel wheeled Fordson tractor and later we also got a rubber-tyred Fordson. At various times we had different bulldozers. I got one of the Fordsons bogged near the tree on One Tree Hill and by hooking up all the steel cables I could find together I was able to use a neighbours Fergie tractor to pull the Fordson out, but that was a couple of days later. I’d built a small cowshed in which we milked two Jersey cows and the cream, after separation, went off to the Bairnsdale butter factory. I used to work from daylight to dark. As a result of this I spent three months off in bed with rheumatic fever. Things were getting tight and as my wage at that time was £17 a week I decided to rejoin the Victoria Police in April 1958. We moved to a house at Mount Taylor and I went back down to Russell Street. Bett lived there with the family and taught at Mount Taylor School, driving the Dodge across each day. I hitched a ride from Dandenong to Bairnsdale when possible whilst I was at Russell Street. One night I had walked about eight miles from Dandenong thumbing a ride, and I got one with a truck driver. That truck driver was drunk, and I had to keep talking to him to wake him up. I was glad to finish that ride!

Eventually I got a transfer to Bairnsdale and started there in January 1959. We moved over to East Bairnsdale and I remember whilst there our border collie Mate caught parvovirus and I had to shoot him. That hurt! We moved over opposite the Bowling club, and I had a single spinner Ford sedan for a while, but traded it in on a second-hand Holden, before we left there to go to Penshurst. Whilst we were in Bairnsdale I was the local Scoutmaster. My Dad lived in Francis Street, and he died in 1962.

We moved over to Penshurst, right in the middle of the Western district near Hamilton, in November 1963. I traded in the Holden at Warrnambool on a 1964 EH Holden sedan.
At Penshurst there was a court attached to the Police Station and the usual solicitor for anyone charged was a chap named Gordon Lewis from Hamilton. I only ever lost one case against Lewis. He later became Judge Lewis. I kept a copy of all briefs at Penshurst.

Finally, I retired in November 76 and we moved into Hamilton and bought the house in which we now live. We have had four caravans and tried to take a trip way up north each year, going well above Cairns and Mount Isa and a lot of the area in between them.
Almost all the time we were looking for gemstones and we visited the Emerald area several times looking for sapphires. I bought a wood lathe in Geelong and then I bought another one in Melbourne, and this one turned out many many items over 30 years.

As well, I’ve had several gold detectors and they’ve given us endless hours of enjoyment. I played bowls for 30 years and Bett has played for nearly 45 years. She has also been a CWA member for almost 70 years. For enjoyment I go to Probus, and the local Woodturning Club has club meetings each month. We have just been to the 150th anniversary celebration of my old State School, number 754 at Bairnsdale.