Transcript
Transcript... then of course in September of that same year, war broke out. And we used to ... we were a good deal in Melbourne at that stage because there was ... Britain wasn't ready for the War and we were even worse if it came to that point, and not only didn't we have the departments, we didn't have anybody to head them or anything.
Well, naturally they were hectic times, because there just seemed to be so much to be done in so little time and the War Cabinet used to meet at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne. It became ... took precedence over the general Cabinet because well, I've known them to work - meet at eight o'clock at night - there would be the Prime Minister and all the ... like the Minister for Defence and Army and Navy and Air Force and the Chiefs of Staff of each of those services and go on until midnight. And whereas in Parliament the Hansard people would take 10-minute turns about, Irene Lenihan would go in and take shorthand verbatim right through until midnight. And she'd come out and her hands would be probably just about ... just stiff, you know. And of course in those days there was no such thing as junior people, such as I was in the office, of getting a car to go home. It didn't matter if anything had stopped, so that you'd have to wait until the secretary was ready and he or she would get a car and you'd then be taken home. So you know, you might be there until about two o'clock in the morning. But we, well we took it all as, I suppose, as part of our war effort, if it came to that.
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