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Meanwhile, Singapore fell, and I could not imagine what future lay ahead. I took Jonathan in his pushchair and walked into the town, looking up at the cloudless sky, wondering how soon it would be before the Japs started dropping fire bombs prior to landing on the beach, and I decided I must contact some cousins in Victoria, with whom my mother had corresponded for years. To that end, I went into the Bank and, to my relief, found Roy had managed to transfer Post Office savings before the end of Singapore, so I told Kathleen and managed to get a plane seat as far as Adelaide, thinking we ought to be with some kind of relatives when invasion came!

I got on a night train from Adelaide, to a small place in Victoria called Beaufort where we arrived very early in the morning, cold and exhausted as Aussie nights are very cold at that time of year (February). On the platform were cousin and husband and two small boys, very smartly dressed, with an antique Model ‘T’ Ford. I was shattered and tried to get used to cousin’s very high pitched Aussie accent. It went through one’s tired ears and Jonathan set up a protesting wail.

They drove us out to the farm, through fields, or rather paddocks, full of dead trees. The custom at that time was to ring bark the eucalyptus trees, leaving them to die, in order to take them for firewood when needed. So the countryside looked like a dried up petrified forest which, with a few Jap fire bombs, would have gone up in flames.

Meanwhile cousin chattered on, and we eventually arrived at the tin roofed wooden bungalow, which I had, by now, got used to. But this one was VERY small, and the only bed for Jonathan and me was a single one in what was locally known as the ‘sleepout’. It was just a small verandah, slightly wider than the bed, and ‘open to the elements’ except for fly wire — like sleeping in a meat safe. We got only snatches of sleep as Jonathan objected to having me in the same bed. Also it was freezing, and I had only a light woollen coat, so the next day I persuaded cousin to take us into Beaufort for some woollens, and, there to my horror, I found we were famous as refugees and all cousin’s friends came to see the curiosity. Jonathan retired behind my skirt, or rather my shorts, which I seemed to have worn since leaving Singapore.

Cousin was immensely well meaning and I couldn’t leave without an excuse (anyway nowhere to go!) which Jonathan provided. He became very feverish and I told cousin I must get him to hospital in the nearest big town, which was Ballarat, and I asked for the RC hospital. Cousin said it was most convenient as her husband had a pig to go to market. So off we went with porker in the trailer, and we were delivered at the door of the hospital where I felt that I had really got to ‘rock bottom’ — tatty clothes and hair with frail looking little boy in arms. I explained our predicament and the nuns were wonderful and gave us a quiet and beautiful room with bed and cot. I think we both slept for hours — even Jonathan.

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