My Story

War had been declared some nine months earlier and I, with my brothers and sisters, lived with my parents in the small village of Gloucester, a population of approximately 2,000 people.

We lived in a modest house on the northern side of the town and, as my father was a well known local identity, it was not unusual for people being referred to him for his knowledge of the district or where a local might live.

It was on a mild autumn morning, just prior to my tenth birthday, that a stranger came to our front door and enquired if he could rent our back yard, shed and the adjoining vacant land for a few weeks as he was travelling through Australia with his three camels and needed a place to stay where he would have enough feed for his camels.

Not considering this a strange request my father gave permission for the man to move into the yard with his camels. He had a tent and so pitched the tent near the shed where the camels could spend the nights under cover. The shed was a very large one, once being used for horses and carts and was ideal for his purpose.

With camels within the town, a very unusual sight indeed, the place became a viewing place for the local kids and to the enjoyment to my older brother and I the camel-man suggested he would give us both a ride to school on his camels.

It was a terrifying and exciting experience to ride a camel, not even having seen one in real life, and it was the envy of other children in the area.

The camel driver would charge school children for the pleasure of rides on his camel and it became a new experience to one and all. Lawrie and I, however, rode to and from school on the back of the camels for free.

This man was with us for three weeks and then, sadly for us, he announced that he was moving on and so loaded his camels and headed off on the highway heading for Taree where he intended carrying on with his nomadic lifestyle.

Two weeks after his departure we had another visitor to our door, this time it was the local sergeant of police, who was to inform us that our guest of three weeks was arrested in Taree as a German spy. He would use a radio to transmit information to a pre-arranged location but to this day I could not see what information he would pass on that would be of benefit to the Germans.

As a foot note, around this time there was a bomb scare at the local movie theatre but this turned out to be a false alarm. Another incident that happened around the same time was a neighbour of ours was at school and playing about on a heap of hay when an explosion happened, as a result of this she was badly burned and scarred on both legs and from that day on she always wore slacks.

I do not know if these two occurrences were connected in any way to the camel man but it was an experience in my life that still stays with me.