Derek Holyoake's story

Derek Holyoake was three months old when his parents moved to Australia from England in 1924. He joined the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in July 1940, for what would be a career spanning almost thirteen years.

In January 1941 Derek joined HMAS Hobart, which sailed for the Mediterranean in June to replace HMAS Perth. As part of the Mediterranean Fleet, Hobart supported the North Africa campaign, including taking part in the operations to relieve troops from Tobruk between August and October 1941. In December 1941, Derek's ship was transferred to the Far East, arriving in Malayan waters in January 1942. Hobart departed Singapore in February 1942 to operate with the Dutch, British, American and Australian forces in the Dutch East Indies.

Derek remained in the RAN after the war and was selected to be a member of the original crew of Australia's first aircraft carrier, HMAS Sydney, travelling to the United Kingdom in 1948 with his shipmates to collect the ship and sail it out to Australia. Promoted to Leading Electrical Mechanic in 1949, Derek served aboard Sydney during her operational deployment to Korea in 1951—52.

Working as a Leading Electrical Mechanic aboard the Sydney, Derek's team was responsible for the maintenance of the ship's electrical systems and testing flight deck communications before take-off. Derek recalls one instance in which his team were required to work continuously for twenty-four hours to repair a lift motor.

Thinking back on his time in Korea, Derek recalls the sea and snow storms were most feared by those aboard the ship. Derek was aboard the Sydney when she weathered Typhoon Ruth and remembers enduring two days of frightening big seas, gale force winds and water sloshing around the mess decks. The water also entered the ships ventilation shafts, damaging electrical equipment. Derek was impressed by the efficiency of the Japanese engineers who worked to repair the damaged equipment within two days.

Derek took his discharge from the RAN in June 1953. As a civilian he undertook government sponsored and subsidised trade training to qualify him as a civilian electrical mechanic. Continuing his studies, he became a trade training teacher for the Victorian Department of Education. Derek retired from teaching in 1984 and moved to Tuross Head on the New South Wales south coast, where he worked part-time as an electrical contractor.

In 1995 Derek and his wife returned to Queanbeyan, where he now lives. Derek is an active amateur radio 'ham' operator and a volunteer at school wreath-laying ceremonies at the Australian War Memorial. He thinks the ACT is a 'vibrant and exciting place to be' and often rides his Vespa 300 on Wednesday rides with the Ulysses Motor Cycle Club.

Derek Holyoake - Rescue at sea

Transcript

We were only a day out of Singapore when we came cross a little merchant ship that was being bombed by some Japanese aircraft. They'd set it on fire. Our medical staff went over to the ship and they brought back in their own boat a lot of Lascar seaman. Have you heard of Lascar seaman? They're Asian [seamen]. The shipping companies employed very cheap labour and they were Indians and different races and that.

And because we couldn't anchor we had to keep moving, because these aircraft were still flying around dropping bombs around the ship. Luckily they'd run out of their big ones and they were only dropping small ones. So we had to keep underway, and their boat came alongside with all these wounded people in it and the doctor standing in the boat injecting them with morphia. And being on the quarterdeck, which was about the lowest part of the ship, so we could actually lean over the rail and grab these guys under their armpits because you couldn't stretcher them - there wasn't time.

These poor guys were in a lot of pain and they didn't speak English. We had them lying around on stretchers everywhere and as they were dying we were sort of burying them at sea. We took the ones that were still alive to Batavia [now Jakarta, Indonesia] but we don't know what happened to them. They probably finished up as POWs, too.

Derek Holyoake - HMAS Hobart under fire

Transcript

So we sailed out of Sydney Harbour on the 20th June 1941 at 10pm, sailed out of that harbour, and to what we were going to go through I didn't have a clue. But anyway we finally finished up in Port Tewfic [Egypt] and we stayed there for a day. Well I think we were there for about two days. That was pretty hectic because we had a very, very heavy air raid on the night from about 12 o'clock til about 4 o'clock and that was my introduction to World War II.

I was a loader on one of the four inch anti-aircraft guns and it was pretty scary because of the noise of the aircraft and the bombs and the flash from the muzzles of the guns as they fired. And of course that was my first experience but on the other side of the four inch gun was an old sailor who had been through it all before. I heard this weird, whining noise in the sky and I said "Hey, we've shot one down!" And he said "You silly bugger, that's a bomb!" You know, that was coming near the ship.

But anyway after that of course, the Georgic, the motor vessel which had unloaded the Australian troops, was hit badly and set on fire and our medical people had to go over and help bring the wounded out and so forth. Then the Captain decided to beach the ship so it didn't sink and ran into another ship called the [HMS] Glenearn and set that aground. So there was this ship blazing away during the night and early morning and then we had to tow the other ship off.

And then after that we had to go through the Suez Canal. That was a bit hairy too because the Germans had laid 13 mines in the canal at different intervals. We didn't know what kind of mines they were. So we had to, when we saw the red flag, we had to stop making any noise and shut down everything we could, and everybody who wasn't on deck down below had to come up and stand on deck and be very quiet while we just glided over each mine. So after 13 mines we had to anchor in the Great Bitter Lake. That's where we assembled for the other convoy to come back through the other way. So the Captain said "All hands to bathe over the side", so that was a great relief from that one. That was the start of our Mediterranean sojourn.


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DVA (Department of Veterans' Affairs) ( ), Derek Holyoake's story, DVA Anzac Portal, accessed 3 May 2025, https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/stories/oral-histories/derek-holyoakes-story
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