John - Part of Our Life, All Our Life

John was born in Colchester in Essex, England in 1934. After an administrative mix up his father was posted to Singapore in the second world war, and the family went to live in the now infamous Changi prison. This very unorthodox childhood didn’t stop John from getting up to some typical mischief; making the most of the regular downpours to slide down the city’s storm water drains with the centipedes and out into the sea.

But in 1942 when the bombing started they had to be evacuated, and John together with his five siblings and mother were stowed in the hold of a ship as they made the perilous ten-day journey to Freemantle in Western Australia. The family finally settled in Sailors Falls, near Daylesford, where John met his wife to be. They were married at Christ Church, Daylesford on the18th of April 1953, and their family has been an integral part of the church for the 73 years since.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Ah, g'day there. Welcome to The Spirit, where we share stories of faith from the heart of the country. I've got good news. Sharon left you some of those pink sponge cakes with the cream that you like. So pull up a chair, settle in, and join us for a chat. I'm Darcy and I'm here on the lands of the Jar Jawarong, who I acknowledge and offer my respect. And I'm in a little place called Dalesford, and I'm speaking to John. G'day, John. G'day, Darcy. John, uh, we're here in Dalesford. Did you start life here or did you grow up somewhere else? I grew up somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

You want me to tell you my story?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Tell me the story, John. I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Well, I was born in Colchester in Essex. Oh, okay. In England.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

In 1934. Um, my dad was a sergeant in the British Army, and he was in the Royal Artillery. In 1937, when I was three, there were two sergeant clerks in Dad's regiment at the time, and they were both posted overseas at the same time. We were going to India and the other sergeant was going to Singapore. And it was a mess up, wasn't it? With the army, and we went to Singapore, and the other sergeant went to India. I should tell you that my mother's name was Hilda Olive Clark. And I had twin sisters that were nine years older than me. Right. Lived in Singapore for five years. Dad got posted to a place called Changi. And I don't know whether you've heard of the infamous Changi Prison. And we lived actually in the grounds of Changi Prison. But we as kids growing up never even thought about it being a prison. We never thought it was a prison.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

That was the last thing we would have thought about because it was a British Army garrison, if you like.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

And we used to take Dad's tea up to him when he was doing Sergeant of the Guard at Changgy Prison. Um, because Pete was six and I was seven at that particular time. Uh and I didn't mention before that when we went to Changgi, uh there was five children in the family. And there were before we came home, there was another little girl. Um, so there were six of us actually in Singapore.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Um, she was born in Changgi. It was always hot. Yeah. And nearly always in the afternoon it would rain like billio. And we loved it when it the rain stopped. Because these drains were big concrete drains. Um, and it was like going into Luna Park and when it came riding down the water slides. The big dipper or something. The water slide, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Wow. Uh doesn't sound altogether safe, John, but um I'm sure it was fun.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

It was fun, but you had to really watch because it was great big centipedes. Because the the the drains were all green, slimy sort of business, you know. Wow. It didn't matter how dirty you got, because it all ended up in the sea. And if you got wet or dirty or what, didn't matter, because you were always clean once you got out of the ocean, you know.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

But you couldn't stay there too long because it was too dangerous. And it didn't matter how wet you got because you were always dry by the time you got home.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

But this particular day there was four of us. Um, and it was quite common to walk along the beach after you'd gone down the drain, you know, and there was always little canoes in under the trees that were were the locals, you know. Uh but this particular day we came across these two canoes and they both had the paddles in, which was very unusual. So we borrowed the two canoes, didn't we? Uh and we we sailed them or rowed them out to the lighthouse, which was quite a ways out. And uh being kids, we played around the lighthouse for quite some time, and by the time we decided to go back, the tide was going out, and we were trying to get back in, and it took us ages. Um, and when we got back in, the owners of the canoes with their the families and the kids that owned the canoes were there, Malay police were there, the army MPs were there, and our family was there, and the two families belonging to the other two boys uh were there, never forgotten the post experience wasn't very good.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

No, so you would you'd made a bit of trouble.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

We did. In 1942, when the bombing started. Yes, of course. And the back of our place had a fairly big veranda, but it was part of the building. Never had a wall on two sides, and the army actually filled the walls in on two sides and left them down 18 inches from the roof to get the air in because it was very hot all the time. And we could actually sit on the seats at night time or when there was a raid on, and you could watch the planes over the top where they'd left the walls down to let the air come in. We could watch the Jap planes with the searchlights at night or at night time. And they used to come over regularly between 10 o'clock and eleven o'clock, was against the outside wall.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

So you could hear them going up the ladder.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Oh, they dropped wake us up.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

We were on the inside and they were on the outside running up the ladder. Yeah. Um, pretty scary. Very scary. And then of course the bombing started. Uh, we used to go to school in a little bus. It only held about eight or ten kids, little little one, and the seats were on the sides and across the back, nothing in the middle, because it wasn't very big, you know. And we happened to be going to school, and the road was very straight, it's slightly downhill, with big trees on either side, very well kept, you know. And all of a sudden going down the road, we did a left-hand turn as sharp as you would believe it. Over the gutter and under the trees, everybody piled out, and this zero was coming up the road between the trees, and he had to keep going straight because he couldn't turn anywhere, or he couldn't veer off the road because he was in between the trees, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Um, well, they the zeros had actually been flying in the daytime for a few days.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

But when you say zero, that's an aeroplane. Japanese zero. So that was coming down the road. He was coming up towards us. Now I understand. Oh, sorry. No, you're right. Wow. So was it flying or was it on the was it? Oh, he was flying or just really low.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Yeah. Wow. That that would have been around about uh the 12th or 13th of January.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Something like that. But that was the last day we went to school. We spent most of the day in the slip trenches beside the school in the playground. Yeah. We hadn't seen Dad for ages because he was on active duty like everybody else was, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

And we got evacuated about the 14th of January. There was a big long line of army trucks parked in front of the married quarter blocks, and uh the order was take what you can carry and get in the back of the truck for a five-hour trip to Singapore docks. Uh I often think about mum. Yeah she would have yeah. The trucks were lined up in front of the married quarters about half past one in the morning, and they all had blackout things on their lights because they only shot straight down on the ground so the aircraft couldn't see them at night time, you know. We got to the dockyards about six o'clock, and the zeroes were flying around then, and there was seven hundred odd women and kids to get on this ship called the Narkunda, a Russian troop ship. It was a big line of kids and women, very few men, if any, and they all had to have their names entered into the ship manifest in the log book before they got on the ship.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

As they were going up the gagplank. So you can imagine 700 odd people getting on the ship and everybody having to put their names down, even the babies as well.

unknown 9:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

And how long that would have taken.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah, and all you want to do is get out of there. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I don't remember any attacks on the dockyard while we were there or on the wharf. They were more interested in capturing the wharf and the dockyard without any damage, you know. They didn't want sunken ships up against the wharf or anything like that. Because of the size of our family at the time, we ended up down in the ship's big hold, about four decks down below the waterline. No portholes, no windows, no nothing. You could only hear the water slapping up against the side of the ship, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

And we had Hessian mattresses for a ten-day trip from Singapore to Fremantle. I think the very first night, I don't remember actually leaving the wharf because we were down in this great big hold. And I don't remember anybody else being in the hold either. And we had these big steel doors that were electronically controlled from somewhere else, you know. And we had to climb over them like getting into a bath.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Mum was lucky from the point of view that my two sisters were going on 18 at that time. Yeah. Because they were nine years older than me. And the very first night out, I think we were anchored somewhere off the coast of Sumatra, and everybody got woken up at just a crack of daylight. The machine guns were going, and the pom-poms were going, and they were blowing up mines in the water.

unknown 10:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

And I think we ended up coming down through the Straits of Java, between Java and Sumatra.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Were you still down in the hold at this point, John?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yep. Wow. We spent ten days in that hold. That sounds frightening. So frightening. And the captain, he was very concerned about the kids crying at nighttime. Oh. Really? Well, the sound travels very easily over the water, especially at nighttime.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

And he was more concerned about Japanese submarines that might have been on the service charging their batteries up or something or other like that. We couldn't do much about the noise, you know, from the kids crying and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

We we had ten days from Singapore to Fremantle, and we docked at Fremantle on the 24th of January, and I turned eight the day after. So I remember that pretty well.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Yeah, what a what a birthday.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

When we got to Fremantle, everybody got off the ship at Fremantle, but half the people stayed in Western Australia, and the other half, which was part of us, got on another ship and come to Melbourne.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Was there any you it doesn't sound like there was, you know, your mum was asked what she wanted to do or anything, was it?

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Oh, it was all controlled by the army.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

You just did what you were told.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

That's exactly right. Wow. And we came to Melbourne and we got um sent to Rochester. We lived in Rochester for three years. We didn't know what had happened to Dad. Got looked after by the Red Cross, Australian Red Cross, which was really good. We got billeted first with the police sergeant in Rochester. I think he was really glad to get rid of us. I sort of feel he thought he might have might have should have put us in his jail instead of in his house.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

He certainly would have noticed six extra kids around.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

We were very fortunate because we got a um worker's cottage and we lived there for three years. And like I said, we didn't know Dad spent six months actually in Changhi prison, and then he spent three years up in Thailand. But um he never ever talked about it.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

What state was he in when he finally got back to you guys?

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Well um we thought he was pretty good. Yeah. But on the other hand, they were kept in holding camps other than the prison camp to rehabilitate them. Right. Build them back up again, because um they didn't want the public to see the condition that they were in, sort of business, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Uh but he was still in the British Army, not the Australian Army.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

So in late 1945, we all went back to England, didn't we? Wow. And that was the worst winter they'd had for 25 years.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Oh great, just what you want. We we went back to England. Post war two, I imagine it was all pretty bleak.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

One of my twin sisters came back to Australia in 1947, another one back came back to work Australia in 1948, and I come back to Australia in 1949 when I was 15.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah, you would have been young still.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

15. And the rest of the family came back out in 1950.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

So, how was that decision made, John, that you were going to come back out to Australia? Oh, England wasn't a place to live. So, John, one question that I wanted to ask was through those early years of your life, you had all those incredible experiences. Was the Christian faith part of your upbringing and and was it part of your memory of that time at all?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Um it it was from Rochester. And actually it was a Salvation Army. And then when we went back to England at Pluma Barracks, went to church and the padre got us into choir, which is that one.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

I'm gonna have to take a photo of these in a minute because they're amazing.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

When the family came out and we were all together again in Melbourne, the accommodation business was just as bad then as what it is now. Yeah. It was really bad. I was fortunate because I was living with the sister, uh, but mum and dad and the rest of the family were living in two rooms, kitchen and bedroom, you know. But then we came up here because they couldn't put up with the two rooms in Melbourne. Um, they brought this old place out at Siders Falls, which was two minutes away from the sawmill. And Dad and I started, we came up on the Saturday, and Dad and I started working the sawmill on the Monday.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

They we've got a pool here in the town now, but didn't have then everybody's home in the lake.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Dalesford Lake.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

And I met this lovely young lady, and we got going together for quite a while. We went to many dances all around the place, and we actually got married when I was 19, and and the wife was 20.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Yeah. And so when you were moving into Dalesford, Jod, is is that where you started connecting in with the church there?

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Um, we got married in Christchurch on the 18th of April, 1953.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Well remembered.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Oh well, we were actually married for 69 years when the wife passed away and she was 89. Yeah. And we've had six children. They were all baptized at Christchurch. Five of them have been married there. Two of the boys have been Deb leaders, and the girls were GFS leaders. So we've had a long to-do with 73 years, I think. Something like that with Christchurch.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Long time.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Very long time. I'm sure you've noticed the ways that the church has changed in all those years, and um one of those changes is there's certainly less people going to church. Um, but when you reflect back on your time, what was the significance of church for you? Why was it worth sticking at and and continuing on with?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Uh with me it's always been family. The wife was very church-minded. I'd been a warden of the church, and she had a lot to do with the ladies' guild. The church was a second home, really, because she had lots of friends through the church, you know. Yeah, the church has been part of her life all her life.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

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