Transcript

And that was a very tense time for him because they [the troops] were two or three weeks coming home and even when they hit Australian soil, which was Perth, it was very much under censorship. Even their letters were censored until they got right back into their headquarters and away from the dangers of whatever might have happened. There was no release of any news about the boys coming home. So we used to see pretty secret things like that and we had to keep it under our chest, if you can put it that way.

There was a certain amount of tenseness about it all, but we were fighting a war and I had four brothers in the air force during the War, so I knew what was behind a lot of it. And I happened to be over in Perth with Mr Curtin when the news came through that my brother was missing. He was most sensitive about that and offered to let me to go down instead of staying at the hotel, to go and stay with them at their home if I so wished. I didn't accept his offer, but I was appreciative of the fact that he did make that offer to me.

And he used to tell me lots of interesting little things which give you an insight into what he was like. He had an elder sister when he was, I would say probably a lad, I don't know quite what age he was, but she was diagnosed with TB and one of the terrible ways they used to cure people in those days was this cold-water treatment and she was ordered to have a cold shower every morning. And he said to me, 'I always think things are better if you share them so I had a cold shower, too.'

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