Early leanings towards a medical life
I remember going and having some work done on my nose and my tonsils when I was about eleven. I think when I was something like three, I had pneumonia, and I was in hospital in New Norfolk … I remember a doctor that was looking after my mum coming up to the farm and just appearing from nowhere and asked could he go rabbit hunting on our property. So, you know, I thought, “Oh.” It looked like something I ought to do. On the farm, I mean, I often treated the cattle. I remember treating mastitis for the cows and if the cats had bad legs or something, so suddenly, I was always doing things. I think people thought I'd be a nurse, but it didn't interest me much, I wanted to be in the top because the thing is, I mean, you got to do what’s hardest.
Wartime resilience
I think that, you know, it was a case of survival more than anything during the war, during that period of time. We never felt that we were in any way disadvantaged. You know, country, people are very, very able people. Everybody looked after everybody else, nearly everybody, I mean you always gets a few people that aren't cooperative. Being on the farm, there was kind of, people took it in turns to do various things like killing an animal for meat and distributing the meat to everybody in the village. So, I learned very early about how people could cope by being so much community minded, community minded, that’s really what I wanted to say. I remember my Dad, see, that was 1926, 1930 , more like1930, and he would walk all the way to New Norfolk, which was 12 miles to see the bank manager, and he would come back, have a drink of water from a creek and always used to bring us back peanuts because that was quite a, you know, a luxury in those days.
Joining the WAAAF
I’m a country girl and I was born in New Norfolk and I noticed that New Norfolk has claimed me, which was rather nice. I started schooling in the country, and then I went to, came to Hobart to do further schooling. I had bad health for a while and I went back home because I developed measles on the week of our exams, I went home to look after my mum, but I got restless. I got in touch with the Education Department, and I joined the educational department and did some teaching and then my brothers decided to join the army and, of course, I'm very competitive. So, I thought, “If they’re in the army, I’m going to join up.” So, I joined the Air Force and from then on, my life totally changed. The Air Force took me, at the beginning from Hobart to Launceston to Melbourne, and to Larundel, which was a psychiatric hospital that they had taken over for the rookie training and I really enjoyed that. It was really, really something new for me. I made a lifetime friend, who was the girl that was next bed to me. They taught us first and foremost, how to make a bed. They gave us a grey black woollen blanket with a blue stripe straight down the middle and they taught us how to do the hospital corners, which I had no idea about. We learned how to march, we learnt the aircraft, and we spent three months in Melbourne before being taken by train to Adelaide. When we got to Adelaide, we went to Aquinas College, which is just behind the Church of England Cathedral, and we did another, I can't remember how many months, but it was quite a long time and we were learning all kinds of skills. I was just so blown away by the wonderful teaching that I got there and I learnt how to make many useful things because what we were really learning was aeronautical engineering because when I was in the area where we looked after all the instrumentation on the aircraft. The aircraft that we were working on, was Beauforts, Beaufighters and then one day I was told a big plane was coming in, it was a Lancaster and the Duke of Gloucester got out and weaved his way across the tarmac, I believe that he had an alcohol problem. So that was very interesting.
Leaving teaching
I was teaching and it came the Christmas break. I'd had breakfast with the Inspector of Schools. and I said to him, “I've been thinking about joining up.” And he said, “Well, you're not allowed to if you're in this, if you're teaching because all the men are away.” … and so I waited until the Christmas and, of course, I wasn't working either the Christmas or not when I slipped down and asked could I join up? … The only permission that they asked for was could I go overseas? And they said, “No, certainly not.” So, when I actually got my posting, I didn't realize that I was one on an active unit.
WAAAF Training in Melbourne and the Americans
I did the first year here because there wasn't a medical faculty. So, I went to this university and then over to Melbourne. The food, too much. I put on a bit of weight. I really enjoyed everything. My girlfriend was next bed to be when I first went over. She and I both enjoyed ballet and opera and classical music. So, we, and she had been a ballerina. So, we had access to good entertainment and, of course, oddly, on the unit we had a lot of entertainment. I was surprised at how much. We had dances and all kinds of things going on o entertain us … the thing that was always remembered mostly, was the fact that anybody who went out with a Yank, was given orchids. That was the period of time when orchids were relatively expensive for local people, and it was only when the American sailors and soldiers were here, they used always buy the girls orchids.
Heavy work and the decision to become a doctor
Reveille I think was 7am and then you had to shower, go for breakfast, then onto the parade ground, go up to join my unit and the thing that always impressed me most was the fact that when you get in the aircraft to do the work that you need to do on instrumentation, it's quite a heavy job, I had to lie in the pilot seat with my legs over the back of the seat and get my shoulders and arms and head in below the panel, unscrew the bolts and often the whole thing would come down. Bang. And that caused me trouble because when I was ready for discharge, by that time I had ruptured part of my lower abdomen and so, before I left, I had to have an operation. It was when I had that operation, I was in bed and that must have been, that was at the end, wasn’t it, because I had to be interviewed for what was I going to do when I came out of the Air Force. And the duty officer came around, and he asked me, “What are you going to do when you get out?” And I thought for a minute and I said, “Oh, I think I'd like to be a doctor.” And he just, “Okay.” And it all started from there.
Delayed university entry
When I came back here, of course, I had to have, there was 32 blokes and me and the teacher said, “I'm not having a woman in my class.” So, my mother came to my rescue, and we went and saw the head of the educational area, and just told him that that's really what I want to do, and we'd like to make sure that I'd get to do that. But the teacher kept me out for a whole year, I wasted. But I didn't waste it because I did all kinds of other jobs. I did dress making and tailoring. I was the demonstrator at Fitzgeralds, and Nescafe when it was first introduced here. I was a ‘Hello girl’ down the exchange. I did a whole lot of things in that year. And then the next year, of course, I turned up and I got a very, well, not a good reception. But it was interesting that the end of that year, when we all graduated, the teacher told me when I made the presentation, that was the best class he'd ever had because the influence of a woman on all thess kind of young men, they were all very respectful and caring, I think that, I felt that we did a good job. An excellent contribution. We used to go every Saturday, half a dozen of them, used to go with me, and we’d go up onto the mountain and have a steak up there and then come down. And it's absolutely magic up there because when the sun comes up, everything turned pink. It really was absolutely fascinating.
A most fantastic life
I really do want to thank you all for giving me this opportunity to tell you how much I've learnt about myself and the changes I have made after my call to duty when I joined the WAAAF. When I first started to write a little bit about this, I was, what I was doing was, it was all me, me, me. What I did, what I thought, what I felt, and I suddenly realized about my joining up, I wouldn't have had a life like this. I think I have had the most fantastic life. Supported. Everything that I needed was given to me, even though it was very small amounts. I lived on three pounds 7s/6d for the first three years like everybody else, but the other people who only did three years university, they got their knickers in a knot. and they said, “It wasn't fair that the medics were all getting six years”. So, when I went to Malaysia to work, they, I sent the money back every month. So, it that I paid for the second three of the six and I thought that was, I had mixed feelings about it because studying isn't that easy, as Doug said, you really have to put your nose to the grindstone because there's a lot of work and you need to do a lot of thinking and they were already out earning their money while we were still being trained.
