Joining the Colac
I joined up down at Moreton on Alice Street down behind the Botanical Gardens there, then I was there quite a few months and they send you off to Flinders Naval Depot, in Victoria, where you done three months training.
Then they shoved you off to a ship. The first ship I went on was a minelayer, the Bungadore. There was about twelve of us from the one class went on that. It was in Sydney Harbour and all they sent us there for was, the crew was on leave, to strip and paint the bloody thing and when they come back, I went to the Colac. I don't know where the other boys went but I went to the Colac for about eighteen months on that.
Minesweeping
Colac was easy going to the other ship because it was a smaller ship and you got away with things you wouldn't get away on the other ships. But it was a hard life, small ships. We done convoy work, now and again mine laying. You get three corvettes together and they'd spread out over the ocean and sort of looking for mines, you know.
The main thing was the mines we knew were up around Caloundra and them places...Down the back of the minesweeper they had big reels of wire and all that wire had the sharp edges on it and then you had kites, what they called kites, like a little ladder, and they kept the power blades below and you could set that wire to the certain depths that you wanted and if there were mines there it would rub up against the mines as it went by the side of the mines that were there and cut the wire which the mines were attached to and when they came to the surface, well you have jaegers there with rifles to fire at them and if you hit the horn it would blow up but if it only hit the mine, the round part of the mine, well it would just sink and go to the bottom.
The main part was to hit the horn, which was hard, bouncing up and down in the water, you know, like your fingers, so many on a mine but if a ship hit, the concussion of the combustion would put a hole in the ship or anybody in the water within quite a few metres of it, well, that was the end of them. Not the top of them, underneath the water.
If you, from the waist down, you'd be gone. It'd just blow you to pieces but it didn't affect the top of your body... If you hit the mine shrapnel would go everywhere but if you just put a hole in it, as I said, the mine would just gradually sink to the bottom...Mining was a pain in the arse, but you had to do it, you know, generally two or three ships together, sometimes one out.
Two or three ships together you'd cove a wide area but half the time you didn't get mines, you know. They were supposed to be there, and they weren't there. They caused a lot of bloody trouble... Sometimes, the storms, you'd see a mine floating around. Well, you'd get a rifle party, go in so far and just fire at it. The storm, they'd just break away from their mooring. Could have been one of your own mines, not German or the Japs.
Lights out
You had a hammock bin you got out of a morning. The first thing you done was lashed your hammock up and put it in the bin of a night-time and after the rounds, officer of the watch would come around about 8 o'clock every night to go through the mess to see if everything was in place and tidy and you hung your hammock up if you wanted to go to sleep and that. Lights went out at 9 o'clock.
Jokers used to get in the corner and play cards with the night lights and if you were down on the mess deck and you wanted to go up to the loo or action stations, you had them lights to guide you from the toilet and action stations and at the end where you went out on deck they had curtains, black curtains and you only opened one and went out that one and closed that before you opened the other so it didn't throw the light out and it's surprising that people ... not so much light, I think, but noise.
Any noise carried over the sea...And your rubbish from your mess deck, your meals ... every tin had to be punctured at the bottom so when you threw all your cardboard and rubbish out, it all went out of a night-time so it wouldn't be floating around so the enemy wouldn't see it.
The sinking of the Limerick
We lost the last ship on the convoy, a New Zealand ship, the Limerick. So we picked up the submarine, but they were cunning. Once they sunk a ship, the skipper of that ship would try to go under the survivors so you wouldn't drop depth charges and kill the whole crew of the survivors. Some skippers done it, in England they...to get the ship because they thought, well, if you leave it go, it lives to sink another ship. It was a hard thing but we didn't do it. We lost it and the ship took about two hours to sink, the Limerick, and all the jokers are floating in the water.
They've got their life belts on and a little light they had on their life belt and they all had whistles they used to blow them to let you know, of course, you're in the dead dark of night. We picked them up and the other ships went ahead with the other corvettes and we rushed into Brisbane, come in under the Storey Bridge.
They must have sent a signal though and the Red Cross were there waiting for all the men, all the survivors and we dropped them off there and they took over from there and took them clothing and looked after them and then we went out speeding ahead and caught up with the convoy again.
Buna
As the war went on, we went up further. We had three corvettes and we picked up all these army jokers up one night. Where was it? I just forget.
All 2/9th Divvy, hadn't been long back from the Middle East and we were to land them at Oro, Buna not Burma, Buna that night to take it over and we found out later the Japs were doing the same thing on the other side of the island.
We snuck in there and these bloody planes come over and dropped flares all over the place and to tell you the truth me and this crew knew to this day whether they were Yank planes or Jap planes but all the crew were still on board luckily, so we up anchored, pissed off down to another island and stayed there all day and later that night we loaded them in there and they [were] successful.
They took that island from the Japs. A few weeks later we were in Moresby and we struck a couple of the jokers who were in hospital. They lost quite a few when taking the island and one joker there had half his arm gone and he was telling us there was about eight of them going over this embankment and the Japs just whizzed past and he was lucky he went down with them and just got hit in the arm. The Japs were tied to the coconut trees, up in the coconut trees.
Six weeks waiting
When I came back to Milne Bay once ""Rudkins, pack your bag and hammock. You're going to the Bendigo"". That was another corvette. Anyhow, packed me bag and the officer of the watch said, ""They'll be here tomorrow. They'll pick you up here"".
I spent about six weeks in Milne Bay doing nothing. Of a night-time, you don't do nothing, they had an army of jokers doing night work. All the stores were coming, they'd come in off the ship and we had to sort them.
So, of a daytime, I done nothing. I come back, I slept till about ... they had a special dorm for the nightshift, and we slept there. Had to come back, got up, had breakfast, and slept and walked around the island all day doing nothing. Could have had a... but that's the way it was, and it was bloody six weeks before that ship come back and picked me up.
Venereal disease
We were over there at Durban, Bombay, Aden. Never go to Aden. Not a bit of bloody grass anywhere. It's all sand. Getting up near the Red Sea once you go through Aden. [30.50] We went ashore once and that just to have a look around. We could buy elephant legs, you know, plenty of things and that.
Bombay was the same, a bit more excitement, but you were warned on the ship, the ship's company were warned. You never went to a brothel in them places and some of them did and ended up with venereal disease. Of course, what they worried was if too many got it, it took them out working part of the ship.
They were either in sick bay on the Norman, which only held two or three, or went to a hospital ship. Oh, they were all cured, you know. They spent about three months away and even when they come back to the ship, they had their own mess, their own knife and fork and every bloody thing.
