大象传媒

I write this at the behest of a charming member of your staff who felt that any details might unexpectedly be of value, though what we could do in the War seems so little compared with the hardships endured by British and Commonwealth/Empire servicemen and the British here at home, that I apologise for this contribution.

My English grandmother and her daughter and son-in-law (1st generation New Zealanders) had moved to Sydney before the War; I lived with them on and off and then permanently from the mid-40s; in 1949 we moved to London. We had 2 lots of cousins in England, and my family were always very English-orientated.

In Australia, food rationing existed only in theory, but I believe petrol was rationed, and I remember cars running on gas with oiled silk "balloons" of it resting on their roofs. There did not seem to be a true black-out but cars' headlights were partly painted over, to limit their light.

When WWII began, my uncle (55) who had spent all of WWI in the NZ Army and then the RNVR, immediately became an ARP warden. My aunt sent food parcels every week to our cousins (alternately, I imagine) and I remember us all weighing the tins and sewing them into parcels with unbleached calico, addressing these in Indian ink. My grandmother, a wonderful knitter who never needed a pattern., knitted hundreds of pairs of khaki socks for the troops. My aunt invited small groups of friends in and they all made camoflage netting (she was running a full-time business all this time).

The wallpaper of our dining-room was mostly covered with newspaper cuttings and photos of Churchill and the Royal Family
pasted on. Every night we listened to the 大象传媒 War News.

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