----- WHEN WAR CAME TO AUSTRALIA -----

This page will highlight the recollections of personnel who were stationed around Darwin during WW2.

New recollections will added over the coming months...

This is the story of Jack Fraser’s journey to Darwin, which started, from Sydney on December 22 1942 after completing training at Richmond, Sydney, as an R.D.F. (Radar) mechanic in the Royal Australian Air Force. I was sworn in to the force in Sydney on Monday 27th April 1942.

For my “rookies” course I was sent to the Evans Head air base in Northern NSW. On May 10 I arrived at Point Cook on Port Phillip Bay in Victoria where I was trained as a wireless mechanic. Passing the exams I was posted to Richmond base in New South Wales where I arrived on October 11, 1942.

Having trained at Richmond as an R.D.F. (radar) Mechanic I was posted to Birdum N. T. and, following a short leave, departed by train to Melbourne on my way to the Northern Territory.

Now, sixty-two years later, I have found a story of the trip to Darwin which I wrote after arriving there. The following is that story in the words I wrote at the time.

THE JOURNEY TO DARWIN

I had often wondered what it would feel like to be leaving home to go on active service at a destination unknown. On the night of 22nd December 1942, I ceased to wonder because I was experiencing myself that going away feeling.

As the train steamed out of Sydney’s Central Station I didn’t feel like a gallant soldier; I was thinking, with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, that I was leaving all those who meant so much to me and that I might not see them again.

I had pictured myself as being proud and excited, but for the first few hours of that train journey it didn’t work that way. I wasn’t thinking of myself so much as those who were staying behind, as it is always those at home who suffer most. I realised, after a while, that it would not do to be morbid, and after a sleep I felt much better.

After the train journey to Melbourne and the overland to Adelaide we headed north.

Terowie was the end of the standard gauge railway and we had to leave our train there about midnight and bunk down in tents in the dark. From now on we were to be under military control and a bulky sergeant major had us up very early the next morning to be on the 8.10 a.m. train for “all points north”.

That morning the military brought breakfast to us while we sat at the tables - afterwards we thought they may have done the overland trip themselves and fed us that way as a farewell gesture to the “poor cows”.

Being one of the early arrivals at the railway station (they called it a station) I commenced looking about for our train, but couldn’t find anything that resembled one we could be expected to travel half across Australia in. I gradually realised, however, that a funny little “toy” train was for our use.

The carriages were little more than half the length of those on the state’s railways. There is a platform on each end with wooden

steps leading up to it - there are no built-up platform sidings on this line. At the top of the steps there is the only “Mod-con” that this has and other trains haven’t - iron boot

scrapers. On the top of each carriage at the centre there is a water tank on the roof which, during the heat of the day, supplies

hot water to the two conveniences and washbasins in two cubicles near the centre of the carriage.

Sgts Dorothy and Jack Fraser

More coming soon...