Roundabout at Bangalow (14 page)

An Australian division, the Sixth, returns from the Middle East and is rushed from Melbourne through Sydney and straight to New Guinea. Prime Minister Curtin has insisted, against all Churchill's arguments, that this division return to defend Australia. Churchill, perhaps enraged, perhaps genuinely short of ships, refuses a naval escort.

The
Westernlander,
a Dutch ship, sneaks out of the harbour at Colombo in the dead of night, carrying an Australian artillery regiment, their guns and equipment. Intended for the defence of the Dutch East Indies, which has since fallen to the Japanese, they have been in Ceylon for nearly three months. They are now alone in a trackless ocean patrolled by Japanese submarines. They head due south, straight for the pole.

He lies alone on the deck each night, sleepless on his pallet in the salty air, always cold, sometimes drenched with sea-spray He has a horror of being caught below if the ship goes down. The stars and planets group and re-group in the heavens above him. The northern constellations stream away behind him, along with the aromatic and spice-laden air of Ceylon, its steamy harbour, its cool uplands and tea plantations, and the Southern Cross rises triumphant before his face. The tattoo on his upper arm, a kangaroo holding an Australian flag, done in a back street in Colombo while on the run from the provos, is now regretted. He'll keep it hidden for the rest of his life. His memories are not regretted. They're replete and he's bringing them home
.

Curtin, alone in his frugal room in the Hotel Canberra, is one of the few who knows that this is the most perilous moment of the war: the Sixth Division is at sea, plunging south through the Indian Ocean without an escort, the Eighth is lost in Singapore and the Ninth is left behind to face Rommel at the Battle of El Alamein. His mind, sleepless, moves upon the water. Anxious as any parent, he refuses to rest until he knows they are beyond the reach of submarines, coming home.

Meanwhile, back home, strange planes fill the skies and crash around us. An Airacobra crashes on the railway line at Carrs Creek, one wing neatly sheared off by the railway gates, and the pilot walks away. He is probably from an American aircraft carrier off the coast. One witness, a small boy at the time, recalls the laid-back way the crash is handled. We are, after all, far from the action:

Our teacher led the charge across Miss Sanders' cornfield to the scene of the crash which was about five hundred metres away … The pilot was getting into a car at the corner of Broad Street and Back Lane and the plane was surrounded by ‘Dad's Army
' …
The port wing was shorn off on one post, one post was knocked out of the ground and the plane had come to rest leaning against a third straddling the railway line … A locomotive choofed out from Grafton to have a look and went back. A crawler tractor came from somewhere and the plane was pulled clear of the railway line
…
A ‘fence' was erected around the wreckage and guarded by ‘Dad's Army'. A tent was set up by the soldiers and one night a storm came up and blew it over and the soldiers forgot about their top secret charge and spent the remainder of the night at the Blue Goose [the local pub]
.

The next incident is more serious: two B-52 Mitchell Bombers from the 5th American Air Force crash-land on the small aerodrome at South Grafton and the wreckage is spirited away the next day, hauled off in pieces on heavy American army trucks. Five bombers have come from New Caledonia bound for the big airforce base at Amberley near Brisbane. They mistake the Clarence River for the Brisbane River and are hopelessly lost. They circle low around the horizon, droning like demented blowflies while we watch in amazement. The shortwave frequency on which they are broadcasting their Mayday messages soon becomes known and half the town tunes in. Through our mantel wireless in the kitchen we hear disembodied voices with strange accents, growing more desperate by the moment. Dusk is falling, the streetlights are on and still they circle until their fuel is almost used up. All the cars in the town converge on the aerodrome and switch on their lights to guide the approach. They will attempt to land, one by one, and most of the population, including my parents, gather there to see the spectacle.

I'm forbidden to go, and remembering my air-raid drill, crouch under the kitchen table alone, for that is said to be the safest place. I'm right under the flight path. Two come in in quick succession, each with a roar like an express train, just over the roof, almost shaking the house to pieces, and crash-land on their bellies, for the runway is not long enough. The other three decide to try elsewhere and we hear later that two crash between Grafton and the big RAAF base at Evans Head, and another on the tarmac there. Wartime censorship prevents us from hearing the details but we learn later that of twenty-five American airmen, only one is lost, parachuting down near Casino. Nevertheless it's a bad night for the Americans: five big bombers lost and nowhere near the enemy. This is South Grafton's most exciting moment during the war, remembered long afterwards and the details lovingly embroidered by those who were there. Although it's the closest I come to the real war, to me it's just like another film or a circus stunt.

There are rumours too that the periscope of a submarine is sighted in the river. It's probably a long-necked shag, but there is certainly much shipping sunk off the North Coast, including the second
Wollongbar
and the hospital ship
Centaur.
One young man breaks down at church. He's just heard that his twin brother, enlisted as a stretcher-bearer, has been lost with the
Centaur.
These are two simple Christian boys, little more than children. One is training to be a minister; the other thinks he can best serve God by becoming a stretcher-bearer. What will become of the young theologian now? Meanwhile strange faces fill the streets: officials from the Manpower, recruiting agents, Yank soldiers on leave, Indonesian refugees and Dutch airmen. Boyfriends, husbands and fathers come back on leave from New Guinea and the Pacific islands with skins bright yellow from Atebrin and their children don't recognise them. Small sons defy their authority and are belted for it, daughters run sobbing to their bedrooms from yellow strangers they don't remember, and wives submit to embraces they've almost forgotten. The Peace won't be much easier than the War.

Everyone becomes an expert on strategy. Men and women who have never been further than Lismore or Coffs Harbour discuss convoy movements through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, or round North Cape to Archangel; they talk of the siege of Leningrad and the vicious winter battles in the Ukraine. Dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, forgetting Stalin's earlier pact with Hitler, cheer on the Red Army and swear that they'll never be beaten because they're fighting for what they believe in. My mother and father read all the Russian novels in the South Grafton Railway Institute; after they read
And Quiet Flows the Don
their heroes are the Don Cossacks. The Red Army, they say, is full of such heroes and can't possibly be beaten. The Red Army is very big in South Grafton.

Strategy in the Pacific is followed as closely. General MacArthur is soundly hated. He's a
poseur
who takes credit for Australian victories in New Guinea and elsewhere, and Curtin allows it. As the flow of war moves north through the Pacific and it seems that victory will soon be ours, the strategists gather in every pub during the few hours of each day that the
beer's on
and celebrate the battles of the day or the week. But society has been irretrievably changed. The Peace will be very difficult.

Down by the station

All the frantic activity during the war is centred on the railway station; all men and materials on their way to the north must pass this way. Here an observer, even an anxious child, can witness close up the horrible industry of a country at war. Here I see the first few train-loads of American soldiers move through. They seem like beings from another, more luxurious planet. The word passes round the town, the children gather as if by magic, the soldiers cry out to the excited children, throw chocolates and small tins of ground coffee. The military police become nervous, cordon off the train and push the children back. On another occasion I walk past a closely guarded carriage at the very end of the train. It's full of Japanese prisoners of war from New Guinea and the islands on their way, no doubt, to the prisoner of war camp at Cowra. So ferocious is the fighting in New Guinea that few Japanese prisoners are taken, so this is a rare glimpse of the enemy. I hadn't believed they existed in the flesh, so much had they been identified with the forces of evil. They need to be closely guarded for an Australian crowd at this time would tear them to pieces.

The railway has always possessed this town. For those who live close by, the clang of the couplings, the shunting of engines, the sounds and smells of the railway are ever present. Children are born into the railway culture and know no other, born with smoke in their eyes and cinders in their hair. Boys dream of becoming train drivers or stokers: to feed the yawning fireboxes, to control the giant machines as big as houses. Train drivers and stokers are the Kings of the Permanent Way. Guards are almost as glamorous, as they travel far and wide and are said to have many amorous adventures on the way. Then come the fettlers, porters or, up a notch, the clerical workers in the big railway offices on the hill above the station. All these workers are held together by their union, which also runs the Railway Institute.

The Railway Institute at the South Grafton School of Arts is a hothouse of instruction, whether typing and shorthand for the clerks, or more technical courses for the apprentices. The Railway Institute Library, manned by retired union members, is to be found up the rickety staircase near the front door of the School of Arts, and is open to the public. I learn later that this library is part of a vast network of workplace libraries, and that the Railway and Tramway Institute has, at this time, one million books in circulation. Here my parents borrow not only the English classics — Dickens, Scott, Hardy, Bronte, Austen and others — but also the Europeans. They choose from Hugo, Balzac and Zola, and all the Russian classics that are available at this time, and I read them too, sometimes surreptitiously. It's thought nowadays that Australian working people were unread, but this wasn't true of my parents and others like them.

When we go to Sydney we pile into either dogboxes or the more modern corridor cars. Each carriage, even in second class, is a triumph of the cabinet-maker's skill and is lined with the sumptuous timbers of the rainforest: coachwood, cedar, tulipwood and teak. Behind the leather seats are rows of framed photographs of the engineering triumphs of the NSW railways: the fabulous border loop which doubles around over itself in the ranges north of Kyogle, the zigzag at Lithgow, or perhaps the new railway bridge over the Hawkesbury. We sit there trembling with excitement, absorbing the smell of the leather, or demanding a drink from the heavy glass water bottle swaying in its brass cradle above our heads. We lean far out of the windows to watch the locomotive shunting leisurely around the curve ahead, and drink in the delirious smell of eucalyptus from the bush, mingled with the smoke and cinders from the engine. We wake up, stiff and dishevelled, with the fresh air of the Hawkesbury in our faces and the cries of the hawkers selling bottles of oysters and bunches of Christmas bells on the station at Gosford. The train pushes on through the grimy slum backyards of Redfern and finally into the big concourse at Central, thronged with passengers, with porters and newspaper sellers, and the big station clock overhanging all. Every joy and adventure is bound up with the railway.

This has changed with the war; a river of humanity, of Australians and Americans on their way to the north, flows through the station at South Grafton. Hundreds of thousands of men are fed at the Railway Refreshment Rooms, while many forgo a meal, run to the pubs close by, and tank up for the next part of the journey. Noisy locomotives shunt day and night. Troop trains are shunted onto sidings to allow the Brisbane Express through or, when things are critical in the north, the Express is the one to be sidelined. Troop trains and goods trains, trains carrying food, guns, trucks and other equipment for the war in the jungle are rushed through. At this time a trip to Sydney becomes hazardous, with the carriages jammed with soldiers, some even sleeping on the overhead luggage racks in the carriages. At home alone in 1943, my sleep is disturbed more and more by the sounds of the giant locos toiling up and down the line, the shriek of their whistles as they approach the viaduct, and later on the drunken cries of soldiers as they troop down to the local pubs.

Something of the panic to the north impinges on my consciousness when, at the height of the war, I see a whole division of the AIF, the Ninth, with all their equipment, rushed through on their way to the islands over a couple of days. They had been left behind in the Middle East to fight the battle of El Alamein, where Rommel and his Panzer Divisions were defeated. They had also held out in Tobruk through a long and bloody siege. They are distinguished from the other AIF divisions by their T-shaped colour patch
(T for Trouble
they boast). They are given no leave to see their families, not only because of the situation to the north, but also because they are said to have sworn to kill every American they can find in Sydney. They may be joking, but full-scale battles do break out in the Brisbane streets and on the Rockhampton railway station and some are killed or wounded. The incidents are hushed up but soon become known.

These men, who include my cousin Rob, are heroes to us. He's five years older than I am, a Don-R or dispatch-rider who has led a dangerous life in the Middle East. Of all my uncles and cousins in the RAAF and the AIF Rob is my favourite, and throughout the war I've corresponded with him, and keep his photo by me. I suppose that, handsome as he is in his uniform, I'm half in love with him. Soon the word passes round that the Ninth is coming through, and fast. Between our house and the railway line is the main road on which convoy after convoy of camouflaged trucks, gun carriages, guns and armoured cars roar past. The convoy stops and starts, surging along as the provos, the military police, manage the traffic at the crossroads. Meanwhile the railway is also choked with traffic as troop-train after troop-train passes by for days. The trains bank up: one train is in the station, one waiting on the viaduct over the crossroads at South Grafton, full of shouting and waving men, and another is held back at Glenreagh, waiting for its clearance. Each train, as it pulls out of the station on its way north, blasts its whistle again and again to call back those who have made a break for the pub. If they miss one train, they'll scramble onto the next.