Dorothy's war

With ANZAC Day approaching I thought I'd write about my grandmother, Dorothy Wyllie.

Dorothy was a teenager, a young woman, at the start of World War 1. She lived with her parents in rural Victoria at South Ecklin near Cobden and she had a lot of relatives in Western Victoria as well, her mother's siblings and their families.

In 1916 Dorothy married Allan Wyllie and moved to the Wimmera area of Victoria where Allan was a farmer.

Dorothy Wyllie nee Taylor

So how is this relevant to ANZAC Day? Dorothy didn't go to war but a lot of her relatives did. Some came home, some came home injured, some didn't come home. She, and many other women like her, waited at home, worried, wrote letters, joined the Red Cross and organised packages to send overseas and ran a home and raised her family on the farm.

This is a long list of Dorothy's close relatives who served in World War 1 and World War 2.

World War 1

Brother: James William (Bill) Taylor. Bill served in 2nd Australian Machine Gun Battalion in France and returned to Australia 1919.

Brother: David Edgar Taylor. David served on Gallipoli and France and was killed in action at Pozieres, France 5 Aug 1916.

Brother-in-law: William Angus Wyllie. Angus served in the Middle East then France with the 58th Battalion. He was wounded in action and sent to England for treatment to a gunshot wound in his shoulder. He rejoined his unit in France, was wounded a second time and again sent to England. He returned to Australia 1919.

Cousin: Francis George Brown was a private in the 9th Light Horse. Served in Gallipoli, France (wounded in action) and the Middle East. Returned to Australia 1919 an invalid. Two half-brothers (Jack and Gordon) also served.

Cousin: John Henry (Jack) Brown. Jack was a private in the 60th Battalion and served at Gallipoli and in France. He was killed in action at Fleurbaix, France on 19 July 1916.

Cousin: Lindsay Gordon (Gordon) Brown, Jack's brother. Gordon enlisted under a false name using his mother's surname, Cooper. He was a private in the 29th Battalion and served in France. He died in France of influenza on 27 November 1918, just after the war ended.

Cousin: William Herbert Maskell. A private in the 14th Battalion. He enlisted in 1914, served in Gallipoli and the Middle before being transferred to France. He was sent to England suffering from shell shock and was sent home to Australia in 1917 an invalid. He was Mentioned is Despatches for bravery at Pozieres, France in August 1916.

Cousin: Stanley Gordon Maskell, William's brother. Stan was a private in the 58th Battalion. He served in France and was wounded in action (gassed), wounded a second time (gunshot wound to a knee). After being transferred to a hospital in England he was invalided home to Australia in 1918.

Cousin: John James (Jack) Brown. Jack was a private in the 38th Battalion and served in France. He suffered from trench feet and was eventually sent back to England to recuperate and take furlough before returning to France. He was shot in the arm and was sent back to hospital in England. He was sent back to Australia as an invalid.

World War 2

Brother: Leonard Allen (Allen) Taylor. Allen was a sapper in the 2/16 Army Field Company and served in the Middle East and Asia.

Son: James William Wyllie. Jim served in the Middle East and South-east Asia with the 2/1st Battalion in northern Africa and the south-west Pacific.

Son: Angus John Wyllie. Angus served as a Corporal in the 101st Motor Regiment before volunteering to transfer to the 'Z' Special Force for covert operations in New Guinea and the Indonesian islands. He specialised in communication. Invalided to Australia with tropical dermatitis.

Brother-in-law: Charles William Fraser. He was a Corporal in the RAAF, a motor cycle driver. He served in Darwin.

Cousin: David Edgar Brown

Cousin: Geoffrey William Brown. Geoffrey was a Private in the 2/21st Infantry Battalion, captured and held as a Prisoner of War on Ambon. He was executed (beheaded) there in 1942.

Cousin's husband: William Harry Tasman (Bill) WHITBREAD. Bill was a Corporal  in the 2/29th Aust. Inf. Batt. POW on Burma-Siam Railway.

Cousin's husband: Albert William Hampson

Cousin's husband: David Llewellyn Roberts. In the 2/3rd Infantry Battalion. Served in Greece. Captured in Crete. Prisoner of war at Stalag Hammelburg 13C (XIIIC), working on railways. Flown to UK 10 Apr 1945 and returned to Australia in May 1945.

And, as well, several family members including her brother-in-law Angus Wyllie, served in the Citizen Military Force for the duration of the second World War.

Sepia Saturday: Hello

Ghan workers tapping in to the telephone line in central Australia 1942. [Photo: D Kendall]

This photo needs some explanation.

The place is central Australia near Alice Springs. The year is 1942 - it's the middle of the war. Our friend Don was an Australian soldier stationed at Darwin when he and a mate were told to find their own way south to Melbourne and report for duty at the Air Force base at Point Cook because their applications to transfer to the RAAF had been accepted.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? The problem was that Darwin is a long way from Melbourne, especially in war time. It's 3,800 kms and the population is very sparce for most of the way. The road was really just a track for most of the way. They had very little money and the army provided them with a few food vouchers and travel passes but they had to organise their own route.

So, they hitched rides to Alice Springs on various army transport vehicles, then they went by train to Adelaide, and then by another train to Melbourne. It was all a bit of an adventure for two young lads.

The Ghan railway route today.
 In 1942 the old Ghan route (brown dotted line) from near Adelaide terminated at Alice Springs.

In 1872 a major engineering feat was completed. It was called the Overland Telegraph Line and it connected Darwin to Port Augusta in South Australia. It allowed much faster communication between Australia and the rest of the world. The building of the Overland Telegraph was fraught with difficulties but that's a whole other story.

The famous old Ghan was a narrow-gauge railway that opened in 1927 as 'Central Australian Railway'. It ran north to Oodnadatta in 1891 and then to Alice Springs in 1927. Its nickname derives from the Afghan cameleers who were so important in the the early days. (That's another big story, and so is the story of the difficulties encountered in the building of the Ghan railway.) The new Ghan is one of the great railway journeys of the world - all the way from Darwin to Adelaide in comfort. The old Ghan was a different story as weather and the environment played havoc with the infrastructure so travellers never quite knew when they would arrive at their destination.

For the purpose of this blog suffice to say that the telegraph line was extremely important and so was the Ghan, and that they followed the same route for much of their journey through the tough Australian landscape.

In 1942 Don and his mate travelled south from Alice Springs on the old Ghan and in Don's photo we can see that some of the workers on the Ghan are in the middle of nowhere tapping in to the telegraph line to set up some sort of temporary communication.

This post is in response to Sepia Saturday's theme photo of electrical linesmen in Tasmania.

Sepia Saturday: Working horses

Women's Land Army, England, WW2

My photo this week is one I purchased several years ago. It was in an album of family snapshots taken in England in the 1940s and some of a family living near Perth in Western Australia. As there were no surnames in the album I have no idea who the people were but I have uploaded them to my Flickr page so maybe someone one day will recognise a friend or relative.

There were about ten interesting photos of Women's Land Army activities in the album, including this one. The women appear to be wearing the land army uniform and would have been employed in using the horses to prepare the fields. As the same women are in several of the photos I assume the land army was organised so that the same women worked together over time. 

The smiles seem to indicate genuine enjoyment, the women having fun together on a summer's day and enjoying each other's company as well as the hard work. Hopefully the horses were happy on their food break as well.

To see more working horses I suggest you trot on over to Sepia Saturday's webpage and follow the blog links.

Sepia Saturday: Ration coupons

A magazine cover encouraging people to ration food in the US during the war is the theme at Sepia Saturday this week.

Rationing was introduced to Australia in May 1942 but was never as stringent as that imposed on the people of the United Kingdom. Clothing, tea, sugar, butter and meat were rationed and a coupon system established.

This table shows the initial ration amounts and the date rationing was abolished.

Item	Date gazetted	Date abolished	Quantity per adult
Clothing	12 June 1942	24 June 1948	112 coupons per year
Tea	3 July 1942	July 1950	1/2 lb per 5 weeks
Sugar	29 August 1942	3 July 1947	2 lb per fortnight
Butter	7 June 1943	June 1950	1 lb per fortnight
Meat	14 January 1944	24 June 1948	2 1/4 lbs per week

Source: Australian war Memorial

Petrol was also rationed (the logistics if this was a very tricky problem for the government) and, among other things, car owners were encouraged to use gas producers. Many private cars were put up on blocks in garages for the duration because it was so difficult to obtain petrol. The rationing scheme was very complicated and the paperwork horrendous. I've recently researched a soldier's record that revealed he was court martialled for stealing a gallon of petrol and he was confined for six weeks.

Aunt Lena has some rationing coupons in her photo album. She was a single lady at the time, and a teacher in central Victoria.

The newspapers and magazines at the time helped the war effort by providing articles about rationing and photos of food and clothing made with rations in mind. The Australian Womens Weekly was a popular magazine and I found theses two articles in digitised form on Trove at the National Library.

Australian Womens Weekly 21 Nov 1942

Australian Womens Weekly 11 July 1942

You can see what other bloggers have written on the theme over on the Sepia Saturday webpage.

Sepia Saturday: Peace

There used to be a town called Mologa. It developed to serve the land selectors that started arriving in the 1870s. Now the shops, churches, school and post office have almost gone. But the War Memorial remains and it records the names of sons of those selectors who served in two world wars.

The two photos below have been taken from almost the same position and you can see in the first some of the buildings that used to be there in the 1920s. Great-uncle Ray Leed was killed in France and Great-uncle George Leed served in France. Both are named on the memorial. In fact for such a small community there are a lot of names on the memorial and this is repeated all over Australia.

Mologa war memorial (Alford family album)

War Memorial, Mologa (2013) Photo: Tim Fitzgerald
http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/conflict/ww1/display/32659-mologa-war-memorial

Most towns and cities in Australia erected memorials after the first world war and they still hold an important place in our culture. They are the focus point for the ceremonies that are held each year to celebrate the volunteers who left to serve overseas. And the communities also planted memorial avenues of trees, installed memorial boards in halls, clubs and workplaces and built memorial halls, bridges and so on. The war had a huge impact on the peace time that followed.

Not far away from Mologa is the town of Mitiamo. At the time of the first world war it was bigger and busier than it is now but it hasn't disappeared like Mologa has, and the community at Mitiamo also installed a memorial. I remember reading somewhere that this memorial is unusual in that it has a female sculpted figure - presumably she represents something or other and is not just there to look pretty. She seems to be holding a basket of fruit or vegetables.

Grandpa Roy Phelan (at right in the photo below) served in France in WW1 and his name is on the memorial. And so are the names of his two sons, Neil and Keith, who served in WW2.

Mitiamo war memorial (Phelan family album)

Mitiamo war memorial (Phelan family album)

The photo above is interesting because it records the German machine gun that was also installed at the memorial. It is no longer there and I believe it was stolen.

Mitiamo memorial as it looks now.
More information here: http://en.tracesofwar.com/article/8643/War-Memorial-Mitiamo.htm
and here: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ausvsac/Mitiamo_War.htm

The theme for this week's Sepia Saturday was peace, as in a campaign for peace, but I don't have any campaigners in my photo collection. So I went for the 'peace after war' idea.  I suggest you march on over to see what other Sepians have to say about peace.

Sepia Saturday: Army hospital

WW1, a kitchen on a hospital train, nurses, cooks, pots and pans. I'm looking forward to reading the other blogs for this week's theme on Sepia Saturday, but I'm going to write about WW2 hospitals (and not a train in sight).

Have you heard of a place called Tarakan? Or Morotai?

Both are islands in the Indonesian archipelago and in WW2 and both were held by the Japanese until battles late in the war secured them as bases for the Australian and American forces. I had heard of Morotai because my father was on Morotai with the Australian Army until he was hopitalised there with a tropical skin condition and then sent home. I had never heard of Tarakan.

But then an album of photos came my way, small photos taken by an Australian soldier while he was serving in Morotai and Tarakan in WW2. We aren't sure who the soldier was but I have now scanned all the photos and added them to my online Flickr album and the associated National Library of Australia's group called Trove. Maybe we'll find out for sure who the photographer was one day.

I was interested to see that there was a photo of a hospital at Tarakan and also Morotai. I showed my dad but he said he couldn't remember what the hospital looked like but he did remember almost falling out of the ambulance because he had a high fever!

Hospital, Tarakan, WW2

Army Hospital and ambulance on Morotai, WW2

Sepia Saturday: Red Cross calling

Each week over at Sepia Saturday a photo is posted as a theme for contributors to blog about.

This week's photo has a truck with someone standing on the tray and I immediately thought of a photo in my mother-in-law Shirley's album that also includes a truck with people standing on the tray.

In 1939 a number of young men from the rural area of Mologa in central Victoria volunteered to serve their country. It was the start of World War 2. Shirley's mother, Mary Alford, was the local Red Cross coordinator and put a lot of time and effort into fund raising, recruiting members and making items for the soldiers. It must have been a cause close to her heart because her brother was killed in France in the first World War. For several years a truck was decorated and driven in Pyramid Hill, a nearby town (possibly at the annual show). Shirley and her cousin Mary Leed dressed as nurses, and two local men, Ernie Boorn and Dave Williams, as soldiers.

Patriotic Red Cross truck, Pyramid Hill, c1939