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I was one of those that was evacuated to Australia during the war, the Children’s Overseas Reception Board. I was seven when I went out to Australia and came back at the age of thirteen and a half. We went by Liverpool on the MS Victoria, the Virginia America Line, a ship which had been converted to carry troops and to take children to Australia. There were about 400 of us on that particular voyage which had left on the 1st August, 1940 and arrived in Melbourne on the 15th October 1940. Ten weeks, for what is normally a four week voyage. The reason of course for that was the fact that it was war time and the U-Boats around, the City of Benares had just been sunk. We were requested to go in a hard circle to Freetown in Sierra Leone then down to Cape Town, from there they learnt that there were German radar ships in the Indian Ocean, so we went north to Bombay, then down to Colombo, Colombo to Singapore, then we were fairly free at that time in 1940, we then went down to Fremantle, Fremantle to Melbourne. I got off, and met by my Aunt, whom I was going to stay with for the duration of the war.

Was the ship frightening? No, I thoroughly enjoyed it,

The other thing is you’ll probably find that there are lots of books that have been written about this, one in particular which was written by one of the escorts from the Victoria, used old school teachers as escorts to take the kids, and one of them wrote a book called ‘The Singing Ship,’ which was notably about the Victoria and that particular voyage, so that’s all on record.

Were you in Australia for the whole war, you didn’t see your parents? No, not at all, from 1940, I didn’t see my parents for the whole war, 1940-1946.

A cold homecoming

What was it like coming home? Was it to Salisbury? No, I lived in Newcastle. We came back, left from Sydney, on the RMS Aquitania, which was being used as a troop ship. But on board we had a number of troops who had been POWs, from the Far East, who had recovered and had been allowed to go home. This was in December, 1945, so a number of them were on board, we didn’t realise then what they really were. They were just soldiers to us.

Coming back to Newcastle it was cold and very miserable, January 1946. I arrived without an overcoat, I did have one eventually! It was cold.
I didn’t really know my parents, 5 1/2 years from the age of 7-13. I didn’t speak like they did. I had an Australian accent for a start!

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