Stories

As the depot was equipped to only handle air crew going overseas a unit our size stretched the goodwill of place so after a fortnight we had to collect all our gear from the wharves as no ship was available and went by train and truck to Coominya outside Ipswich in Queensland. I went on a truck convoy loaded on to train in Sydney we had our cook house van and could walk the length of train back and forth. It took us 56 hours before we were to reach Yeerongpilly south of Brisbane where we unloaded to Coominya and establish a camp. We were to stay there till end of December. 

This time we were subjected to real heavy training – mock bomb attacks – hurdling windrows of timber along which gelignite was planted and would be blown up as we approached and anything up to 16 mile route marches with full pack. It certainly had all of us in top condition when we embarked late December. 

While here we experienced the biggest hail storm I have ever seen. It fell in huge slabs the size of dinner plates. Ripped half of our tents to shreds and unfortunately inflicted head wounds on two or three of the boys. This caused a hurried trip to Brisbane to pick up new tents. 

Also while here a local farmer used to arrive with a cut down Chevrolet car loaded with watermelons which he sold for 3p or 6p each. On our last day here we were all lined up on parade ready to move when he came straight down the centre of airstrip pulled up beside the CO and other officers and said “here is a parting gift for the boys”, so we embarked on trucks loaded with melons. 

The unit moved off in trucks to Pinkenba Wharves in Brisbane while our section was left behind to clean up the site so we left much later in the day loaded onto a semi-trailer, loaded high with gear and we were all sitting on top of this. 

There had been torrential rain before we left and about 10 miles from the site we came on a long line of cars stopped by a flooded creek.  Our driver Tich Murray walked up had a look at the water came back and said to the boys on top of the load “hang on I’m going through, you may get a swim” and took off. He nosed into the water which was about 3 feet deep and 30 to 40 yards wide. Semi-trailers were not the monsters on today’s roads, ours was a small Chevrolet truck with a 20’ trailer. Tich eased it into the water with every car driver on both sides of the creek urging him on. With a few rock and rolls Tich eased us safely through and we were on our way to cheers of the assembled car drivers.

We arrived at a staging camp near Pinkenba after dark in pouring rain and told there were two tents for us to camp the night in. When we carried our gear to them they were an absolute quagmire with water draining through them. Someone sotted a truck loaded with tarpaulins so we helped ourselves to a couple of these and spread over the mud and managed to get a little sleep. 

At dawn we located the rest of the unit and had breakfast. We each had a number chalked onto our tin hat, we loaded on the trucks and proceeded to wharf where we were to embark on the Edward D. Baker, a liberty ship. The number on our hat was checked at the foot of the ramp and moved on board. The date: 17th January 1944.