Brian Winspear - Kupang Timor
Transcript
Our main job was, because the 2/40th Battalion which was mostly Tasmanian, was based in Kupang in Timor to stop the Japanese getting to Australia, so we had to go there, move everything. Actually, half the squadron went to Kupang in Timor and the other half went up to another station up in Indonesia. I've forgotten the name now.
Our job was to keep the Japs away from Timor. Every day we had to go out on patrol and see if any of the enemy were coming and look for submarines and so on. It was pretty difficult living there because there was no good food. The only meat we had was water buffalo which was as black as the ace of spades and pretty tough and our vegetable was the green weeds, the weeds that grew in the ponds around the place.
A lot of the members were getting problems with malaria. They were getting signs. Some got malaria and some got…What was the other thing? That's right…at one stage thirty per cent of the personnel were on sick parade with sores, tropical sores and all those sorts of things. We were having a few accidents. One plane went out one day and got struck by lightning and disappeared.
