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My father took leave to join us in Australia [arriving in March 1943] accompanied by some oriental rugs and one or two items of jewellery. These were as security for our mother should she wish to cash them in and pay for our fares out of Australia back to join him in India. Or at least that is what we understood, but I think he meant her to stay in Australia.
Jack sailing the Jennings boat (probably 1943)
We did however sell up, and before we caught our boat back to India we set up in an establishment known as the Dude Ranch as a temporary measure while waiting for our ship out. It was situated in the country outside Sydney and was a holiday camp for children learning to trek. All the instructors were jackaroos and the mounts were various old hacks and one or two good horses. We slept in rather primitive bunk-style accommodation, and were taught to ride through the bush by jackaroos on a variety of rather decrepit horses.
You needed guides through the bush, because the land was like all Australia, gum trees virtually indistinguishable from each other unless you happened to know the way on the old tracks through the woods. We met a very interesting variety of characters, and there used to be singsongs round the billycan fire at night and tall stories. It was all quite moral and respectable as far as I remember, and we had the occasional barn dance.
Maisie Ryan riding Albert at the Dude Ranch
Barbara's photo of the MacMahons house in Melbourne.Â
Possibly Jack and Uncle Mac standing to left.
We finally left the Dude Ranch to catch our boat to India, the SS Mulbera. It was October 1944 [the 16th to be precise], when the Burma war was at its height.
Although Sheila does not mention a stop in Melbourne there is a photo in Barbara's album from there, and Robin provides the story of visiting Sheila's diving instructor from the Kokine swimming club in Rangoon.
We stopped in Melbourne for quite a while, at least a week - I seem to remember there was a dock-workers strike, which there always was in Australia. We looked up the MacMahons who had moved there. I remember it as being rather tragic, because even at that age (Robin was 11) I picked up that their son had been killed in the Army, and they were obviously very heartbroken. He had been posted missing but was almost certainly dead, and they kept his room completely untouched in the hope that he would come back and was still alive. His father talked very proudly of the fact that some friend had said he went down with his gun blazing. His father said that he had a tommy gun which he was very proud of. So I remember the sadness of that.
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