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Category Archives: World War 2

Trove Tuesday: remembering the Fall of Singapore

15 Tuesday Feb 2022

Posted by Anne Young in Champion de Crespigny, prisoner of war, Trove Tuesday, World War 2

≈ 1 Comment

Today is the 80th anniversary of what came to be known as the Fall of Singapore. On 15 February 1942, 130,000 British-led forces surrendered the island to the Imperial Japanese Army. 15,000 8th Division Australian soldiers were taken prisoner; half of these were killed, starved, abandoned to disease, or worked to death by their captors.

Front page of The Age 17 Feb 1942 from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/19384337

Singapore in its possession, the Japanese Army continued its advance, and a few weeks later, on 9 March, my grandfather’s cousin John de Crespigny (1908-1995) became a prisoner of war with the surrender on 8 March of all Allied forces on Java.

John Chauncy Champion de Crespigny, then 31, had volunteered for military service on 29 February 1940. At the time of his enlistment he was employed as an advertising manager. He lived with his mother in Caulfield. de Crespigny had trained as a cadet and had had the rank of lieutenant in the officer reserve. He was first posted to Syria, where he served as a lieutenant. In May 1941 he was promoted to captain and in February 1942 to temporary major.

photos taken on enlistment from National Archives of Australia B883, VX253 CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY JOHN CHAUNCY : Service Number – VX253 : Date of birth – 25 Aug 1908 : Place of birth – MELBOURNE VIC : Place of enlistment – SOUTH MELBOURNE VIC : Next of Kin – CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY BARBARA https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=6231381

On 1 February 1942 John de Crespigny sailed from Suez on the SS Orcades with his unit, a Guard Battalion of the 7th Division, now re-deployed for the defence of Java. They disembarked at Batavia 18 February. A few weeks later the island fell to the Japanese and the battalion was ordered to capitulate. He became one of 2736 2nd AIF prisoners of the Japanese on Java.

He was first interned in the Dutch Army barracks at the No 12 Bandoeng camp, West Java. A fellow prisoner was Lieutenant Colonel Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop of the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, who later achieved a high reputation for his selfless dedication to the welfare of the suffering troops.

John de Crespigny was reported missing and there were reports he had been killed. In September he was reported to be a prisoner of war:

Maj John C. Champion de Crespigny reported missing is believed to be a prisoner of war in Java. He is the younger son of Mrs Champion de Crespigny of Balaclava rd. E St Kilda, and the late Phillp Champion de Crespigny, AIF, killed on active service in 1918. Maj de Crespigny was educated at Camberwell Grammar School. Before enlisting he was advertising manager at Ronaldson Bros and Tippett, Ballarat, and was an officer in the 8th Battalion. He and his elder brother Lieut Philip de Crespigny, embarked for the Middle East early in 1940.
(SERVICE CASUALTIES (1942, September 1). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 4. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11993260)

In November 1942, 1000 Australian prisoners, including Dunlop and de Crespigny, were moved to a camp at Makasura, Batavia where they shared quarters with British prisoners.

In the camp John de Crespigny worked with his fellow officers to keep morale up and the inmates busy. John taught art classes and lectured on various aspects of advertising. He helped produce hand-drawn posters advertising camp activities. The camp magazine, ‘Mark Time‘, was produced and illustrated under his guidance.

One of the copies of Mark Time with a cartoon of John de Crespigny from the collection held by the Anzac memorial (NSW). Flight Lieutenant Sid Scales of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, was a gifted caricaturist and illustrated the covers of the camp magazine ‘Mark Time’ with cartoons of the senior officers.

Early in 1943, many Australian prisoners, including Dunlop and de Crespigny, were moved to Singapore and from there to the Konyu-Hintok Area near the Burma-Siam border. Those below officer rank were forced to work on the construction of the infamous 260-mile railway linking Thailand and Burma.

The Hintok-Tampi trestle bridge located ninety kilometres south of Kinsayok. This was one of the bridges built to complete the Thailand-Burma railway for use by Japanese military forces during the Second World War. Construction was carried out by Allied prisoners of war including many Australians under supervision by Japanese engineers. The height of the bridge at this spot was 100 feet and rough scrub timber from the surrounding area was used in the bridge construction. Image from the Australian War Memorial https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C47450

Following the Japanese surrender in September 1945, John de Crespigny was ‘recovered from the Japanese at Siam.’ He sailed for Melbourne via Singapore on 17 October 1945 and was discharged as an Honorary Major in December. On his return, he provided a sworn statement to the inter-Allied team investigating Japanese war crimes.

In 1997, twenty-four POW camp posters from Bandoeng and Makasura, numerous copies of ‘Mark Time’, John de Crespigny’s wartime diaries, and many pieces that had been penned and drawn for the planned souvenir Memorial Book were donated to the New South Wales Anzac Memorial by one of his step-sons.

Some of the posters in the collection of John de Crespigny now held by the Anzac memorial (NSW)

Further reading:

  • Anzac memorial (NSW) The John Chauncy Champion de Crespigny Collection: an online ehibition https://www.anzacmemorial.nsw.gov.au/event/john-chauncy-champion-de-crespigny-collection
    • Biography of John Chauncy Champion de Crespigny https://www.anzacmemorial.nsw.gov.au/major-john-chauncy-champion-de-crespigny-1908-1995

Related posts

  • Sepia Saturday 192 : John Chauncy Champion de Crespigny (1908 – 1995)
  • Trove Tuesday: Mother’s Day 1943
  • E is for Exile

Wikitree: John Chauncy Champion de Crespigny (1908 – 1995)

Peggy de Crespigny and Ruth Smith in the Australian Women’s Army Service 1942

26 Saturday Jun 2021

Posted by Anne Young in Adelaide, army, Champion de Crespigny, World War 2

≈ 1 Comment

A week ago I received an email about a photo in a family collection: “I have come across a photo of Peggy Champion De Crespigny with my mother, Ruth Smith, circa 1942, both in Army uniform.

They enlisted in the army around the same time and were good friends. I don’t know if this friendship pre-dated the war, but mum used to talk about the Champion De Crespigny’s with great affection. I don’t think they ever met up in future years even though they both eventually lived in Adelaide – mum since the mid-1950s. Mum passed away in 2005. [Peggy died in 1989.]

Mum has written on the back of the photo: Peggy de Crespigny and Ruth coming from the Torrens Parade Ground along King William Road near Govt. House, Adelaide.”

Peggy de Crespigny and Ruth Smith 1942

The Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) was formed in August 1941 to release men from less important military duties so that they could serve with fighting units.

Isobel Ruth Smith (Service Number – SF64955), 23 years old, enlisted at Adelaide on 21 May 1942. Her occupation was clerk.

Margaret Champion de Crespigny (Service Number – S65003) enlisted at Adelaide on 26 May 1942. Her occupation was coding and deciphering, she had just started the signals course the day before.

From 25 May 1942 to about August Ruth and Peggy attended a communications course called the Australian Signals Course No. 41.

On 13 August 1942 Ruth was transferred to a special wireless school at Bonegilla near Albury. Ruth was graded as a Group 1 Wireless Telegraph Operator and later promoted to Sergeant. She was discharged in January 1946.

Ruth’s son sent another photo of Ruth “Also a photo of my mum, Sgt. Ruth Smith, who served in signals with the Australian Special Wireless Group a somewhat secretive outfit who were told that they were never mention their role, or mention the Aust Special Wireless Group, and were never to march in ANZAC Day parades (and she didn’t). Interestingly the ASWG became the Defence Signals Directorate.” He also recalled that his parents “would talk fluently in high speed Morse code, especially if they didn’t want [him] to know!”

Sgt. Ruth Smith

On 17 August 1942 Peggy de Crespigny became a Sig [Signaller] Wm Gp 2 with SA L of C [South Australian Line of Communications Area]. In July 1943 she attended the LHQ [Land Headquarters] School of Military Intelligence at Southport, Queensland. In December 1943 she was discharged at her own request on compassionate grounds. Peggy’s mother Beatrix had died 11 November 1943.

I was interested to see that the attesting officer on Peggy’s forms was Captain May Douglas. I met May Douglas many years later. She was a friend of my grandmother Kathleen—both played golf—and she was also much involved in the Girl Guides.

Wikitree:

  • Margaret (Champion de Crespigny) in’t Veld (1919 – 1989)

V is for Victory

25 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2020, ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day, World War 1, World War 2

≈ 6 Comments

In Australia today is ANZAC Day, the anniversary of the first large (and pointless and losing) military action by Australian and New Zealand soldiers (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), their landing at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

11 November 1918, when WWI came to a halt, was called Armistice Day. It was a truce, not a victory. Armistice Day is set aside as a day to remember all the men and women who served in Australia’s armed forces.

When WWII in Europe ended with the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945, the day was known (on the Allied side) as V-E (Victory in Europe) day. In London there was great celebration.

Churchill_waves_to_crowds

Prime Minister Winston Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall on the day he broadcast to the nation that the war with Germany had been won, 8 May 1945. Imperial War Museum photograph H 41849 retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

British Movietone News Film of VE Day in London 1945:

V E Day began with Mr Churchill’s broadcast officially announcing the end of war in Europe. Londoners took to the streets in celebrations which continued for nearly two days. Outside Buckingham Palace the crowds chanted ‘we want the King’ and were rewarded by the Royal Family appearing on the balcony. At nine o’clock in the evening the King broadcast to Britain and the Commonwealth.

Plans for V-E day had been announced in Australian newspapers on 2 May, a week before.

The war was not finished for Australians, however. The Japanese had not yet surrendered and Australia and its allies were still fighting in the Pacific. The Adelaide News noted that “the Allied victory in Europe, V-E Day, was [celebrated] in Adelaide in an atmosphere of sober satisfaction and thanksgiving rather than one of wild rejoicing.”
(News (Adelaide), 8 May, p. 3.)

The front page of the Adelaide News on 9 May did not report local V-E celebrations. It gave prominence instead to an article announcing that King George VI had pledged Britain would use all her resources in the war against Japan.

It was more than three months before Japan surrendered, on 15 August 1945 August, finally ending WWII for Australia. This day was celebrated as V-J (Victory over Japan) Day.

VJ day Adelaide Advertiser

WORLD REJOICES AT VICTORY (1945, August 17). The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), p. 1. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43506752

“The Fallen of World War II” is an animated documentary about war and peace that looks at data on the human cost of the wars in the twentieth century and how these compare to wars in the distant past and more recently.

 

I hope we never forget the suffering and misery of war and the unspeakable wickedness and stupidity of people who let it happen.

Sister Minnie Goldstein

15 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Anne Young in Goldstein, medicine, New Guinea, Trove Tuesday, World War 2

≈ 6 Comments

Looking at some paintings by Nora Heysen recently, I was delighted to discover that one was of a relative of mine, my second cousin twice removed, Minnie Sutherland Goldstein (1908-1984). She was my grandfather’s second cousin, one of the children of Selwyn Goldstein (1873-1917) and Minnie Waters Goldstein née Sutherland (1883-1952).

Minnie’s father Selwyn was a mining engineer, manager of the Mount Cattlin Copper Mining Company near Ravensthorpe, a couple of hundred kilometres west of Esperance in Western Australia. Minnie was born there on 13 August 1908.

On 13 October, with Minnie only two months old, the family moved to England, sailing on the Runic from Albany to Plymouth.

In 1909 the Goldsteins moved to Mexico where for two years Selwyn managed a large mine. They were forced to return to England, however, by the upheavals and danger of the Mexican Revolution.

On 9 November 1915 Selwyn Goldstein enlisted in the 173rd Company of the Royal Engineers. On 8 June 1917, during the Battle of Messines, where he had a part in blowing up the ridge the day before, he died of a gunshot wound, self-inflicted.

In 1922, Minnie’s mother and her four children – Minnie was then 13 – returned to Australia, where they settled in Perth.

Goldstein Minnie Western Mail 1927 03 17 pg 4

THE DAUGHTER OF MRS. M W. GOLDSTEIN, OF WEST PERTH, MISS MINNIE GOLDSTEIN. from 17 March 1927. Western Mail (Perth, WA : 1885 – 1954), p. 4  Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38002701

Digitised newspapers and other records held by the National Library give us glimpses of Minnie’s life. In November 1922 Minnie wrote to the Children’s Page of the Perth Daily News. In 1923 Minnie played lawn tennis for her school, but she lost the game. She was at school at St Mary’s Church of England Grammar in year V and won a prize for divinity; her sister Isobel was in the same year and won prizes for divinity and languages. In 1926 she was at many events including a party, a dance at the rowing club, the Children’s Hospital Ball.

By December 1926 Minnie was training as a nurse at the Perth Hospital. The social whirl seems to have continued, and Miss Minnie Goldstein was often mentioned in the society columns.

In 1930 Minnie became engaged to Jack Round-Turner. The marriage did not go ahead.

Minnie Goldstein enlisted in the Australian Army on 28 August 1942. In 1944 she was painted by the war artist Nora Heysen in Alexishafen, Papua New Guinea while working in the blood bank of 111 Australian Casualty Clearing Station.

Goldstein Minnie by Norah Heysen 1944

Sister Minnie Sutherland Goldstein, WX32605, of the Australian Army Nursing Service working in the blood bank of 111 Australian Casualty Clearing Station, Alexishafen, New Guinea. She is working on medical equipment relating to blood bank services such as blood transfusions. She was painted by Nora Heysen, official war artist in 1944. The painting is in the collection of the Australian War Memorial ART23921

Alexishafen map

Map showing Alexishafen, 23 kilometres north of Madang on the north coast of Papua New Guinea

AWM 3871745

South Alexishafen, New Guinea. 1944-08-08. Officers and members of the nursing service on the staff of the 111th Australian Casualty Clearing Station. Identified personnel include WFX32604 Sister M.S. Goldstein (8). From Australian War Memorial photograph 075085.

AWM 3987777

South Alexishafen, New Guinea. 1944-08-08. Walking patients find humour in another patients getting a blood transfusion at the 111th Casualty Clearing Station. Identified personnel include:- WFX32605 Sister M. Goldstein (1) Australian War Memorial photograph 075083

AWM 3871746

South Alexishafen, New Guinea. 1944-08-08. Sisters of the 111th Casualty Clearing Station enjoying a walk along the shores of the bay in the cool of the evening. Identified personnel include:- WFX32605 Sister M.S. GOLDSTEIN (7) Australian War memorial photograph 075087

AWM 3923873

South Alexishafen, New Guinea. 1944-08-08. Sisters of the 111th Casualty Clearing Station outside their quarters. Identified personnel include:- WFX32605 Sister M.S. GOLDSTEIN (7) Australian War Memorial photograph 075086

 

Sister Goldstein was discharged from the Australian Army on 17 February 1947 with the rank of Lieutenant. Her posting at discharge was 2/1 Australian General Hospital.

Minnie returned to work as a sister at the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children in Perth.

In 1956 Minnie married Maxwell Percival Rose (1915-1973). Minnie died in Perth on 5 April 1984.

Related Posts

  • P is for Poperinghe New Military Cemetery

Sources

  • PROGRESSIVE RAVENSTHORPE. (1907, January 30). The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950), p. 3 (THIRD EDITION). Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article83311792
  • PHILLIPS RIVER FIELD. (1907, October 10). Kalgoorlie Miner (WA : 1895 – 1950), p. 3. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article90385275
  • Runic shipping list retrieved through ancestry.com: Surrey, England; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists.;Class: BT26; Piece: 347; Item: 97
  • A LADY’S LETTER (1911, June 20). Kalgoorlie Western Argus (WA : 1896 – 1916), p. 11. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article33392744 gives an account of Minnie’s mother in Mexico entertaining, at their own invitation, the leader of the rebels and several of his followers at dinner.
  • Euripedes outward passenger shipping list retrieved through ancestry.com, similarly the inwards list from State Records Office of Western Australia; Albany: Inward Passenger List from Overseas 1900-1932; Accession: 108; Item: 2; Roll: 17
  • DIPS FROM MY LETTER BAG. (1922, November 18). The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950), p. 14. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article83156187
  • Engagement: He’s Bought the Ring (1930, October 25). Mirror (Perth, WA : 1921 – 1956), p. 13. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article75492890 and The Social Whirl and Personal Pars on Prominent People (1930, October 19). Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954), p. 25. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58401391
  • World War 2 nominal roll: Minnie Sutherland Goldstein
  • Film of women’s work at 2/1 Australian General Hospital in Papua New Guinea 1945

N is for New Guinea

25 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by Anne Young in New Guinea, World War 2, Young

≈ 3 Comments

Remembering Peter on the anniversary of the Battle of Milne Bay

Anne's Family History

In World War 2 both my father-in-law and my grandfather served in New Guinea .

On 17 April 1942 Ernest (Peter) Young (1920 – 1988) was living in East St Kilda when he enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF). He gave his age incorrectly  as 23 years and his date of birth, correctly, as July 8th 1920, but there is no correction or annotation on the Attestation form about the discrepancy. He gave his name as Peter, by which name he was always known. In January 1945 he signed a statutory declaration to correct his name to his baptismal name of Ernest.

Peter was first in camp at Caulfield then a few days later he was transferred to Watsonia.  He was assigned to the 37th Battalion.In October 1942 he was assigned to the 2/4 Dock Operating Company and then in April 1943 he transferred to the…

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Kathleen Cudmore: a Memoir

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by Anne Young in Adelaide, Cavenagh-Mainwaring, Champion de Crespigny, Cudmore, dogs, golf, Kathleen, Rafe de Crespigny, riding, sport, Symes, Whitmore, World War 2

≈ 4 Comments

Kathleen Cudmore: a Memoir

by Rafe de Crespigny

Kathleen Cavenagh née Cudmore was born on 27 June 1908, the second daughter and second child of Arthur Murray Cudmore (1870-1951) and his wife Kathleen Mary née Cavenagh-Mainwaring (1874-1951). Her sister Rosemary had been born in 1904.

Kathleen with her older sister Rosemary about 1910

Arthur Cudmore, second son of James Francis Cudmore (1837-1912) and his wife Margaret née Budge (1845-1912), was born on 11 June 1870 at Paringa Station on the Murray near Renmark in South Australia. Arthur’s grandfather, Daniel Michael Paul Cudmore (1811-1891), had emigrated from Ireland in 1835 and after a period in Tasmania arrived in South Australia early in 1837, a few weeks after its proclamation on 28 December 1836. His wife Mary née Nihill came from Hobart to join him later that year, and James Francis was born at sea on the ship Siren off Kangaroo Island on 11 October 1837.

Daniel Michael Paul first worked as a labourer in South Australia, but then founded a brewery, and from the late 1840s he began to acquire pastoral land and took up a large number of properties. His son James Francis continued the policy, extending his interests into Queensland in partnership with Robert Barr Smith and Thomas Elder, and by the 1870s he was one of the wealthiest men in Australia, controlling hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle; his great house, “Paringa Hall” near Glenelg, built in the early 1880s, is a monument to his success. In the late 1880s, however, the arrival of rabbits had devastating effect upon the various stations, and James Francis was in serious financial trouble. He transferred some property and arranged to compound his debts, and though he was still in difficulty at the time of his death in 1912 a life insurance policy and the sale of Paringa Hall after Margaret’s death a few months later more than covered his obligations. They were still comparatively wealthy, but James Francis and Margaret left eleven children, and the inheritance was divided.

Though Arthur Cudmore maintained the family connection to the land, his profession was medicine. Graduating from Adelaide University in 1894, he travelled to England for further training and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1900. His future wife Kathleen Mary née Cavenagh-Mainwaring was also born in Adelaide, and her brother Wentworth (1869-1933) was a friend and colleague, but Kathleen Mary was four years younger than Arthur, and the couple became closely acquainted only while they were in England during the late 1890s. Kathleen Mary had hoped to remain there, but Arthur insisted on returning to Australia, and they were married in Melbourne in 1901.

The Cavenagh-Mainwaring family had a long connection with Whitmore Hall in Staffordshire, which is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1087, and which has passed by inheritance ever since. Kathleen Mary’s mother Ellen Jane née Mainwaring (1845-1920) inherited the estate in 1891, and the family then travelled to England. Ellen Jane’s husband Wentworth Cavenagh (1822-1895) had been a minister in the South Australian government, and in 1892 the couple took the combined surname of Cavenagh-Mainwaring. Whitmore Hall itself was leased out, and it was not until 1928 that their son James Gordon (1865-1938) took up residence, with his son Rafe Gordon Dutton (1906-1995) as manager of the estate.

Kathleen Cudmore’s family was well established in South Australia, with many connections by marriage; she would later claim to have ninety-two cousins, but that her mother quarrelled with all of them; the figure was actually closer to fifty. Besides any inherited money, Arthur Cudmore developed a substantial practice; there were few doctors with such high qualifications, and he became Honorary Surgeon at the Adelaide Hospital in 1904. In 1910, when Kathleen was two years old, he moved into a large house at 64 Pennington Terrace in North Adelaide, directly opposite the parklands. Beside the house itself, there were a number of small cottages on the property, most of them demolished to allow for gardens and a tennis court, while a few were adapted to form a large garage. Arthur had one of the first cars in Adelaide, and when registration was introduced in 1906, he took number SA 4; it was later transferred to Kathleen and remained in the family for a hundred years.

In 1915 Arthur went to the Middle East with the Third Australian Hospital and was stationed on Lemnos, base for Gallipoli. He was invalided home with typhoid in the following year, but went back to serve in France from 1918 to 1919.

Kathleen had limited formal schooling. One of the small buildings at Pennington Terrace was known as the “Schoolroom,” and it appears that her early education was at home. She was a boarder at The Hermitage in Geelong for a few weeks in 1922, but became extremely ill and left. From 1923 to 1924 she was a pupil at Allenswood, a “finishing school” in Wimbledon, England, where students were taught and spoke entirely in French, and in 1926, aged eighteen, she was at Creveen, a small private day-school in North Adelaide. Despite this varied experience Kathleen wrote well, with a strong hand, became a skilled typist, and always enjoyed reading. [There is a small notepad containing a hand-written newsletter from 1919. Entitled Stuffed Notes, it is written by eleven-year-old Kathleen in the persona of a nurse caring for her toy animals and dolls during the influenza epidemic.]

Kathleen about 1914 photographed in Southsea, England

It seems fairly clear that while Kathleen Mary Cavenagh-Mainwaring had been prepared to return to Adelaide with Arthur Cudmore, she did obtain an agreement that they would return frequently to England, which she referred to all her life as “home” – not uncommon among colonials of her generation. The family were in England before the First World War and young Kathleen’s diary of 1924 describes how she was at Beaulieu near Nice in the south of France on 1 January, returning to Allenswood later that month. She stayed there, taking holidays with her parents in London and at Broadstairs in Kent, until the family left to return to Australia in July. This was one of many such visits to England and Europe, and Kathleen remarked in 1960 that she had been through the Suez Canal at least twenty-five times. In addition, there were a number of trips to Ceylon/Sri Lanka: it was an agreeable custom to take passage on a liner bound for England, disembark at Colombo and take the next liner back home; the effect was the same as a modern cruise.

Kathleen was always most attached to her father, who was a considerable sportsman: he played Australian football as a young man at league club level, his family background made him a good horseman and a good shot, and he was a talented golfer. Kathleen played golf from an early age, rode horses in competition, and also learnt fencing and played hockey. She remarked in a later interview that when she was young she would often play golf in the morning and go riding in the afternoon – or riding in the morning and golf in the afternoon. From this alone one may judge she had a privileged life: there were always maids and other servants to keep things tidy at home, she played regularly with the professional, Willie Harvey, at Royal Adelaide Golf Club, and she had her own car to get to her various engagements – her father was President of the Royal Automobile Association of South Australia and she herself got her driving licence at the age of sixteen; she held it until she was over ninety.

Horse-riding was based on the stables owned and run by Miss Roach in Prospect, where there was comparatively open country north of Adelaide; she was a good friend and Kathleen gave lessons for her to those more junior or less experienced. Her favourite horse was Black Opal, and among other events she won a blue ribbon at the Royal Adelaide Show of 1929. Her main achievements, however, were in golf: she won the Associates competition at Royal Adelaide in 1931, and she was Ladies Champion of South Australia in 1934.

The Woman’s Realm (1929, September 14). The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 – 1954), p. 21. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63432788

Kathleen was a good-looking young woman: blue eyes, brown hair and a fine complexion. A popular satirical newspaper, the Melbourne Truth, described her as “Adelaide’s pastel,” which was somewhat of an exaggeration, but the fashions of the 1920s and the opportunities for outdoor exercise suited her, and she remained active and kept a trim figure all her life.

Despite an air of “flapper” frivolity, Kathleen was a tough competitor in any sport, particularly at golf. She once told her daughter-in-law that you should never concede a putt; there was always a chance your opponent might drop dead. To win her South Australian Championship in 1934 she sank two long putts on the last two holes in wind and driving rain.

The Advertiser TUESDAY. JUNE 19. 1934 (1934, June 19). The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 – 1954), p. 16. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article35114240

At the same time, Kathleen was very conscientious and always agreeable. She had a charming smile and, although she was shy, that characteristic made her all the more attractive. She never spoke unkindly of her friends, she did not gossip, and if anything she preferred not to discuss or to remember things which had angered or upset her – she did not hold grudges. Loyal and reliable, people trusted her, and she held leading positions in several different institutions.

In December 1930 Kathleen became engaged to Richard Geoffrey Champion de Crespigny (1907-1966), eldest son of Dr Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny (1882-1952) and his wife Beatrix née Hughes (1885-1943). The de Crespignys were essentially a Victorian family – Constantine Trent’s father had been General Manager of the Bank of Victoria, he himself had taken his degrees at the University of Melbourne, and his son Geoff was born at Glenthompson south of Ararat. Constantine Trent moved to seek better opportunity in Adelaide, and indeed became the leading pathologist there. Geoff was first educated at the Queen’s School, but then went to Geelong Grammar School and also took his medical degrees at Melbourne. While at university he rowed for Trinity College and was in the university eight for three years, being a member of the winning crew for the inter-university Oxford and Cambridge Cup of 1929. Kathleen was amused by the fact that while she was described as a promising young golfer, he was a “veteran oarsman.”

After graduating in 1930, Geoff returned to Adelaide to spend the compulsory year as Resident Medical Officer at the Adelaide Hospital [renamed the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 1939]. Given his time at Geelong and Melbourne, it is uncertain how much he and Kathleen had seen of one another before, but both fathers were leaders of their profession and had worked together on a number of cases. One major contact was between Kathleen and Geoff’s sister Nancy (1910-2003): though they were two years apart, and Nancy had a degree in archaeology – her husband Hallam Movius would become a professor at Harvard – the two were close friends and remained so until Nancy’s death. For his part, Geoff said later that he fell in love with Kathleen from the first, and never thought of anyone else.

In 1932 both Kathleen and Geoff were in England, Kathleen spending time with her sister Rosemary, who was now married to her cousin Rafe Cavenagh-Mainwaring, and Geoff studying in London. Geoff was a frequent visitor to Whitmore, and served as cameraman for the amateur film A Run for his Money, which was set in Whitmore and had Kathleen as the beleaguered heroine with fluttering eyelashes: Rafe played her plutocrat father and Rosemary was a conniving vamp: there were elements of casting to type.

Still from A Run for his Money showing Kathleen as the beleaguered heroine

On 10 June 1933, Kathleen and Geoff were married in Adelaide Cathedral. It was a grand formal wedding: the bride wore a long white gown and a lace veil, the groom was in morning suit, and local newspapers celebrated the union of two distinguished medical families.

Kathleen on her wedding day 10 June 1933

Geoff had joined a partnership in Walkerville as a general practitioner, and he and Kathleen were living there when their son Richard Rafe was born in 1936; they had no other children. In that same year Kathleen’s parents built a house by the sea in the suburb of Tennyson, a mile north of the Grange jetty, and the land and title were later transferred to Kathleen. Soon afterwards, Geoff became a member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and established his own practice at 260 Main North Road, on the border of Prospect and Enfield. It was almost frontier territory at that time – the terminus of the Enfield tram was some hundred yards to the north, with fields beyond – but Geoff and Kathleen had a fine two-storey house, with a large garden and a tennis court, consulting rooms and quarters for servants. (The site of the house and all its land is now part of the Northpark Shopping Centre.)

As a young married woman, Kathleen led an active social life in Adelaide. She continued to play golf, and after her success in 1934 she was defeated in the final of the South Australian Championship in 1935. Following Rafe’s birth in 1936 she continued to play in competitions, but did not reach that level again. Otherwise, she was a member of the Queen Adelaide Club, had some overseas travel, and was involved in charities, including her mother’s interest in the Missions to Seamen and her father’s in the Friends of the State Library – which was suffering from a lack of government funding due to the Depression – and the usual concerns of a new household and a new child.

In 1937 Kathleen’s sister Rosemary and her husband Rafe visited Australia for some months, returning to England in January 1938. Their son Guy, born in 1934, had come with them but then stayed behind in the care of his Cudmore grandparents, and early in 1939 Kathleen took Guy back. She was away for several months, returning through Boston in the United States to visit Nancy Movius.

Kathleen and Rafe in 1940. This photo was damaged by a bomb blast in Tobruk.

When the Second World War broke out at the beginning of September 1939, Geoff felt obliged to join the army. While some doctors would stay behind to care for civilians in Australia, both Geoff’s father and his father-in-law had served in the previous war and still held reserve commissions, so family tradition and his position in society made the decision all but inevitable. Geoff enlisted in November, and a few days later he left for Melbourne and was stationed at Puckapunyal near Seymour in Victoria for further training. The practice was contracted out, and as the new incumbent took up residence in the house on Main North Road Kathleen was left without a place of her own. For the time being, she stayed at the beach house near Grange, with visits to her parents’ house in North Adelaide, but the situation was difficult and money was tight. (Handwritten calculations by Geoff at this time indicate that he expected a net income of £725 per annum from the rent of the practice together with his own pay as a Captain in the army, while estimated expenses were £750 “probably reducible to £700”. ) She was able to come with Rafe to join Geoff in Melbourne and for a few weeks in Sydney, so the family had some time together before Geoff sailed for the Middle East on 15 April. He was three years overseas, including nine months under siege in Tobruk from January to October 1941, and Kathleen did not see him again until the beginning of April 1943.

Returning to Adelaide, Kathleen found accommodation in an apartment in the complex at Prospect House in North Adelaide, on the junction of Pennington Terrace and Palmer Place by Montefiore Hill, a short distance up the hill from her parents’ house.

The war brought more charity work, first with the Cheer-Up Hut, a hospitality centre for servicemen near the Adelaide Railway Station: Kathleen’s mother had been involved in the organisation during the First World War, and Kathleen joined her in the revival, while both continued with the Mission to Seamen. In 1942 she took a course in motor mechanics at the School of Mines, explaining that she wanted to be ready for auxiliary service. Always good with her hands, she had a second diploma in carpentry, possibly acquired also about this time. And in that year she had her portrait painted by Ernest Milston – it is still in the possession of her family. (Ernest Milston (1893-1968), born Arnost Mühlstein in Czechoslovakia, was of Jewish background and escaped to Australia in 1939. A distinguished architect in Europe, he later designed the 1939-45 forecourt of the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Portrait-painting was presumably one way of establishing himself in the new country.)

Kathleen’s portrait painted in 1942 by Ernest Milston. The portrait is mentioned in SEES ART FUTURE FOR AUSTRALIA (1946, March 30). News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 – 1954), p. 3. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article128344371

After Geoff’s return from the Middle East in 1943, he was stationed for a time in Sydney, where Kathleen and Rafe went to join him for a few weeks, and then in central and Western Australia. Kathleen was able to spend six months with him in Perth, and she joined a program there for the rehabilitation of wounded and disabled soldiers, assisting them to sew toys and stuffed animals; she was later a member of a committee in Adelaide which checked on the suitability of manufactured toys for children, including such problems as lead-based paint and sharp edges. Geoff later served in New Guinea, but was invalided out with malaria and thereafter held appointments in Australia, though not in Adelaide, which he visited only on leave, notably when his mother Beatrix died in November of 1943.

Also in 1943, with encouragement from Beatrix, Kathleen became a member of the committee of the Mothers and Babies Health Association, and began a long association with that organisation. She succeeded her mother-in-law as Honorary Treasurer, and was senior Vice-President from 1955.

The MBHA had been founded by Dr Helen Mayo in 1909 with the object of assisting mothers to care for their infant children, and so reduce the rate of infant mortality. The basic concept was comparatively simple: all new mothers were encouraged to bring their children at regular intervals to MBHA clinics, which were staffed by trained mother-craft nurses. Each child was weighed, its general progress was checked, and the nurse would offer such advice, assistance or referral as might be needed. Visits to the clinics were something of a social event, babies were admired and their weights were compared, while it also meant that the vast majority of children in South Australia were under regular medical inspection.

At the beginning of the century infant mortality in South Australia had been 100 per thousand, but by the late 1930s it was 30 per thousand and it fell below 20 per thousand in the 1960s; it is now less than 5 per thousand. Much of this development was a matter of improved medical technique, inoculating against many infectious diseases, and general advances in hygiene, and while the MBHA took credit, some modern historians claim that its role was marginal at best, arguing that it was a conservative and authoritarian organisation. On the other hand, it seems difficult to suggest that a regular check of babies’ health was actually a disadvantage, and many mothers were certainly glad to have some support and guidance in what was a new and often rather frightening experience. The MBHA is surely best seen as part of a broad program of public health which was effective and well-regarded in its time.

It was a substantial enterprise, with hundreds of branches and buildings all over the state, heavy costs and investment in the local centres and their attending nurses, and a headquarters and training centre in Adelaide. There were also “Baby Health Trains” – carriages set up and transported by South Australian Railways, which took the service to outlying places where it was impracticable to establish permanent offices. Formally a charitable organisation, it was nonetheless heavily subsidised by the state and local governments, so that in 1952, when Kathleen was Honorary Treasurer, almost £20,000 of a total income of £38,000 came from official sources, with the bulk of the balance made up of donations, subscriptions and other fund-raising; total turnover was close to $3 million in 2013 values. In 1978 the MBHA was incorporated into the South Australian Department of Health, and Kathleen’s work is now carried on by a senior civil servant.

In the New Year honours of 1945 Arthur Cudmore was made a knight bachelor, and later that year Geoff came back from the war. As the family returned to 260 Main North Road, Kathleen continued her charity work, and she also became a member of the committee of the Queen Adelaide Club and was President from 1950 to 1952. The Club was formally a registered company, with a board of directors who had hitherto been all men, but when Kathleen retired as President she was appointed to the Board and became its Chairman in 1980. Although an amateur, she was now an experienced administrator, and in later years she held leading positions in many different organisations. Beside the MBHA, she was Chairman of the local Victoria League and – as below – she became strongly involved with the RSPCA.

One part of charity work was the annual badge day, when organisations took it in turn each week to raise money in the city. Basically rather shy in unstructured situations, Kathleen did not particularly enjoy standing on street-corners by the hour seeking support from passers-by on a Friday morning. On one occasion at least a kindly man stopped to purchase one of the most expensive that was for sale, remarking that she looked so woebegone she reminded him of his cocker-spaniel, and he felt he had to encourage her.

Kathleen on button day 1941

Her social life was largely based on such social and charitable activities, and the people she met and worked with were commonly from the same families and background as herself. She did have some special and different friends, notably Hannes and Marlis Thiersch, who came from German background and arrived in Australia during the 1930s. Hannes was a member of the Medical and Veterinary Research Institute, founded by Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny, and was later involved in development of the contraceptive pill in the United States; Marlis later took a doctorate and became a lecturer in drama at the University of New South Wales. Other friends included the future Chief Justice John Bray and the lawyer Norman Tucker; Jack Smart, who was professor of philosophy at the University of Adelaide and later at the Australian National University; Archer Kyffin “Tiddy” Thomas who was editor of The News in Adelaide and later of the Melbourne Herald, and his wife Judy; and, from the early 1950s, Edith and Eric von Schramek, who had come as migrants from Czechoslovakia: Eric became a noted architect. Neither Kathleen nor Geoff were strongly artistic, but they regularly attended concerts, ballet and films, they were good ballroom dancers, they were early sponsors of the Adelaide Festival of Arts, first held in 1960, and Kathleen was an enthusiast for the theatre all her life.

Kathleen and Rafe with Bernard the Pekinese in 1954

Kathleen’s parents had always had servants in the house, and Kathleen and Geoff also had assistance; at first a cook and housekeeper, later only a housekeeper, and eventually no live-in help. Kathleen’s mother had insisted she should learn to clean and sew and cook, but her cooking was basic: “peas in the pot, potatoes in the pot, meat in the oven.” In an interview about her work at the Cheer-Up Hut during the war, she remarked that

… I’ve never been very fond of food, giving it or eating it myself, so I started making beds in the Cheer-up Hut, and I became an expert bed-maker…

Omelettes were always useful, and she was enthusiastic about stew, being fairly simple – the stew was occasionally enhanced and made exotic by the addition of bay-leaves. Desserts were a little more interesting: she was good on chocolate mousse and on hot chocolate sauce for ice cream, she made excellent short-bread biscuits, and she used her influence at the Queen Adelaide Club to acquire their special recipe for barley-water. There was also a very good Club Cocktail: a quarter gin, a quarter sweet vermouth, half dry vermouth and a splash of lime juice; lime juice concealed the full effect of the other ingredients.

Geoff’s practice in Prospect and Enfield began to develop as new houses were built in the area and settlement expanded to the north. In 1948 Kathleen’s sister Rosemary and her son Guy came from England for a year, and in 1950 she and Geoff made a long visit to Europe, spending time at Whitmore in England, with Geoff’s sister Margaret (1919-1989), now married to Cornelius in’t Veld and living in Holland, and with Nancy and Hallam Movius in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After Rosemary and Guy had visited once more in 1953, there were a series of extensive overseas trips: in 1954 Kathleen accompanied Rafe to England as he entered Cambridge University; in 1956 she went with Geoff to Europe; and in 1957 she went again to Europe, returning with Rafe as he left Cambridge.

Kathleen and Rafe in Munich in 1954

In 1953 Geoff became a Fellow of the College of Physicians. He had an increasing interest in pediatrics and children’s health – presumably in part influenced by the involvement of his mother and of Kathleen in the Mothers and Babies Health Association, and he became a founder of the Pediatrics & Child Health Division in the College. During the visit to Europe in 1956 he attended the International Congress of Pediatrics in Copenhagen, and that was followed by similar meetings in Portugal and Indonesia. In 1965, when he and Kathleen went to the Congress in Japan, the family received letters from each of them, written at the same time on board ship: Geoff wrote with delight about sailing into the Inland Sea with the loudspeaker playing “Colonel Bogey” [theme song of the 1957 film Bridge on the River Kwai]; Kathleen complained that it had been a long and boring voyage.

Between the occasions of overseas travel, there had been major changes to life in Adelaide. Kathleen’s parents both died in early 1951, within a few days of one another, and she and Geoff moved into their former house on Pennington Terrace in North Adelaide. Geoff’s father died in October 1952, and Geoff transferred his practice to rooms in the city. In 1955, however, they left North Adelaide and went to live in the house by the beach at Grange; remodelled and slightly enlarged, it was Kathleen’s home for the next fifty years.

In 1960 Geoff was President of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Medical Association, and he largely retired from private practice to become the Medical Director of the Mothers and Babies Health Association.

Kathleen always had her own car. During the 1950s there was a series of soft-topped Singer roadsters, and then French Simcas, while Geoff drove Jaguars. In the 1960s she too transferred to a Jaguar, initially with less success, for she found it heavy and clumsy, and the automatic gearing system which was just being introduced was not always reliable. As she was stalled at a traffic light on one occasion, the taxi-driver next to her called, “Better get a Holden next time,” to which Kathleen agreed. In fact, in 1964 she transferred to a Daimler sports car, also with difficult gearing; fifty years later the car is maintained by her grandson Mark, while Kathleen eventually had a long-term relationship with a Mazda 323: simple, automatic, and bright-green in colour “so you could find it in any car-park.”

Kathleen with a family car in 1926

Kathleen’s family always had animals, and soon after their marriage she and Geoff had a dachshund, Max, and a Pekingese named Bubbles or Buds. Both died of distemper during the war, and the first replacement, Fritz or Chips, was run over on Pennington Terrace; his sister Antonia – better known as “Mrs Tone,” came to take his place. An elegant but temperamental brown dachshund, she lived into the mid-1950s, and she was joined in 1946 by another Pekingese, called Bernard from the second name of Hannes Thiersch who had given him. Son Rafe was very fond of cats, and the appropriately-named Biffer was an equally long-lived contemporary of Mrs Tone.

When Rafe turned sixteen in 1952 he was allowed to obtain a driving licence, and as Geoff was giving him a lesson on a country road just outside Adelaide he saw trap-pigeon shooting in a field nearby. In this system, pigeons were caught alive, then placed into cages with springs at the base, and on command the spring was released and the bird was thrown into the air as a target for shot-guns. “Clay-pigeons” perform the same function, but it was considered better entertainment if the birds were alive.

Geoff mentioned the incident to Kathleen, who was furious and resolved to do something about it. She joined the RSPCA and embarked on a campaign to have the practice forbidden. It was not easy, for the long-serving government of Thomas Playford had many country supporters who saw trap-shooting as a sport, but at the end of 1954 a private member’s bill introduced by the Labor member for Prospect passed both houses of state parliament.

Kathleen was by that time a member of the general committee of the RSPCA and she continued her involvement with that organisation and others associated to it. Chairman of the RSPCA from 1965 to 1975, she was then President until 1990, and when she retired from that position she became Vice-Patron, second to the Governor of South Australia.

Kathleen and Geoff about 1960

Following Cambridge, Rafe went to study Chinese in Canberra, and in 1959 he married a fellow student Christa Boltz; their first child Anne was born at the end of that year.

Born in Berlin in 1939, Christa spent the war years in Germany and came to Australia at the age of ten. Her father Hans, a geological cartographer, was brought out by the government to assist in the exploration for minerals, and he became chief cartographer in the Bureau of Mineral Resources. Canberra was a very small town, and neither Christa nor her mother Charlotte found it easy to adjust, but after their marriage Christa and Rafe spent university vacations – almost half the year – in Adelaide. Christa speaks of the extraordinary contrast from Canberra to Adelaide, where she was introduced to clubs and parties, played golf and tennis and watched the cricket, and was treated by Kathleen and Geoff as if she were their daughter. It made no difference that Geoff had been engaged in the war with Germany: the two families were always friendly; Christa’s young sister Margaret came to stay in Adelaide; and Christa found a way of life with Kathleen and a role-model to admire.

Rafe and Christa’s second child Mark was born in May of 1963, and when Rafe gained appointment as Lecturer at the Australian National University Kathleen and Geoff bought them a house in Canberra. They continued to visit Adelaide each year, but at Christmas 1965 Geoff was taken ill with the effects of a brain tumour. He died in February 1966 at the age of 58.

In the latter part of 1966 Kathleen travelled with her friends the Thomases, visiting Geoff’s sister Nancy Movius in Boston and Rosemary Cavenagh-Mainwaring at Whitmore. On 30 March 1967, at a small ceremony in Box Hill, Melbourne, she married George Symes.

George Symes in 1941

George William Symes (1896-1980) was a retired Major-General of the British Army. During the First World War he was commissioned as a Captain in the York and Lancashire Regiment, served in the Machine-Gun Corps in France and in Italy, and was awarded the Military Cross and Bar. During the 1920s and 1930s he remained a professional soldier, and at the outbreak of the Second World War he received rapid promotion, being appointed Major-General in command of the 70th Division in Africa and then in India. By very ill luck, however, the 70th Division was transferred to form part of the “Chindit” Special Force under Orde Wingate, designed to operate behind the Japanese lines in Burma. George became deputy, but was stationed at New Delhi, and when Wingate was killed in an air crash in 1944 George was passed over for a closer associate and his active career was at an end. He held command of Lines-of-Communications divisions in France and later in Burma, and after the war he was commander of the South-West District in England, but in 1949 he resigned his commission and came to Australia.

George’s first wife Katherine née Lucas came from an Adelaide family. He had met her on a visit to Australia, and they were married in Bombay in 1939. Katherine died in 1961, and they had no children.

A strong, tall man, George was a skilled yachtsman, a good cricketer, and played excellent golf. He became active in the Royal Adelaide Golf Club, was a founder of the National Trust of South Australia and was heavily involved in Cottage Homes, a charity for the elderly. From 1956 to 1964 he was Private Secretary to the Governor of South Australia. Besides his pension as a retired general, in 1946 George had received a large inheritance from an unmarried friend of his mother, Eva Kennedy, daughter of a British merchant in the far east who had held property in Shanghai, and in 1955 he was a founding Director of Santos Ltd [South Australia and Northern Territory Oil Search], which became one of the largest mining companies in Australia. George left the Board in 1978, but continued to hold a substantial number of shares.

George and Katherine were friends of Kathleen and Geoff: George and Geoff were partners at bridge in the Adelaide Club, and after Katherine died George came often to their house for dinner on Sundays.

Soon after Geoff’s death, Kathleen resigned from the committee of the Mothers and Babies, explaining that she felt it would not be right or fair to be involved with and possibly comment upon the work of his successor as Medical Director. In 1963, however, she had become a member of the Board of Management of the Adelaide Children’s Hospital [now the Women’s and Children’s Hospital], and she held that position until 1979. She was also on the committee of the state branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, and was President from 1971 to 1973.

Twelve years the elder, George was a man of traditional style, and while she maintained many of her own interests Kathleen was quite prepared to share his. With his encouragement, she took up golf again, though not at the same level as before, and they were both active members of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia. Kathleen also shared George’s involvement in the National Trust: in 1964 she had been one of the organisers of an exhibition of “Gold and Glass;” the display included five Melbourne Cups and two Caulfield Cups which had been won by South Australian horses, accompanied by the owners’ colours, and it attracted visitors who might otherwise have had little interest in the work of the Trust.

One concern she did not share, however, was religion. George was a committed member of the Anglican Church and a lay member of Synod, and Geoff had also been a strong Christian; but though Kathleen had been confirmed when she was in England in 1924 she became an atheist and remained so all her life. She was nonetheless tolerant, and would attend Christmas services without complaint; on regular Sundays, however, she would drive George to the church in Adelaide and then go on to visit Geoff’s younger brother Adrian (1919-1993), who had been injured at birth and was permanently in a mental hostel.

Despite differences, the marriage was happy and successful. Kathleen remarked on the importance of mutual tolerance, but it seems clear that she found George to have some attributes of her father, and she was quite prepared to support and assist him, notably in later years by driving him to appointments and then waiting for him in the car. For his part, he was always generous and agreeable to Rafe and Christa, his step-son and daughter-in-law: when the family played golf together he was generally paired with Christa, as it was felt that her presence and his natural courtesy would restrain him from expressing his full indignation when a stroke went astray; he had at one time scored a hole in one, and he was an extremely good putter, though annoyingly less accurate as he grew older. He also became very fond of Rafe and Christa’s son Mark, who would travel to Adelaide by himself to spend holiday time with Kathleen and George.

George and Kathleen made some journeys overseas, notably in 1978 when they went on an extended tour to visit old friends of George in England, some of whom he had not seen since the First World War. After their return, however, George suffered from increasing medical problems, and he died on 26 August 1980; despite his illness, at the time of his death he was preparing a paper for the Geographical Society on the life of Charles Todd, director of the Overland Telegraph in the 1870s– it was presented posthumously.

George left the bulk of his property to Kathleen, with some special bequests to charities and sporting associations with which he had been connected, and a large sum to the Regimental Chapel for the York and Lancashire in Sheffield Cathedral, England. His military orders, decorations and other insignia went to Kathleen’s grandson Mark.

Kathleen did not marry again, but she continued to live at Tennyson for another twenty years. She made a number of trips overseas, once to China in 1981, with Rafe and Christa and their daughter Anne, followed by some months stay with Nancy Movius in Boston. She visited the United States several more times for similar lengthy visits, and was also in France, where Hallam Movius had a major archeological site at Les Eyzies in the Dordogne and where a museum was established in his honour. Kathleen also travelled many times to England to see the theatre in London, and to stay with Rosemary and Rafe at Whitmore.

Kathleen in 1983 with her dog Sam

In Australia, Kathleen played bridge and did crosswords, and she continued to have dogs and a cat – the dogs tended to come from the RSPCA or the Lost Dogs Home, and were rather large and more than she could easily handle: there were several discussions with local Council officers about activities on the beach, but none had long-term effect.

Sunday lunch became important, always at the golf club, where Kathleen was now a life member, and always accompanied by one or more friends from the neighbours at Tennyson. The same honest and generous nature that had encouraged people to give her affection and responsibility in her various organisations now found her close companionship in the small local community of Tennyson, and she gained a great deal of social and practical support.

Kathleen on her 90th birthday with her great grandson Peter and a conflagration of 90 candles
In 1996 Kathleen was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her public service (click to enlarge)

By 2000, however, as Kathleen was in her nineties, life became increasingly difficult. The house was old and needed repairs, and she was less able to organise it. Worse still, after almost eighty years she no longer held a driving licence, and though many neighbours took her shopping and on other expeditions, and she could travel to Adelaide by train, she was a good deal more restricted than before. In 2004 she asked to come to Batemans Bay to be near to Rafe and Christa, and she took residence in a nursing home, Edgewood Park; at first she was in her own apartment, with her dog Josephine, but later moved to high care. She enjoyed the social life – far more than anyone had expected – she gained many new friends among the other residents, and she was very well treated by the staff.

Kathleen on her 100th birthday with a book we made for her

Kathleen celebrated her hundredth birthday in 2008, with Rafe and Christa, Anne and her husband Greg Young, Mark and his wife Kim, and five great-grandchildren: Peter and Charlotte Young; Nicholas, Alex and Sophia de Crespigny. The following years, however, were for the most part spent asleep, with little memory and increasing physical weakness. She died on 11 June 2013, a few days before her 105th birthday.

Related posts

  • My grandmother’s cousins
  • Largs Bay Hotel
  • Trove Tuesday: Ready for the ring
  • Trove Tuesday: home movies in 1933
  • Trove Tuesday: S. A. Women’s Golf Championship
  • Outdoor Christmas in True Australian Style 4 December 1937

M is for Manpower, Mills, Malaria, and Marjorie, my Mother-in-Law from Melbourne

14 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2016, Melbourne, Sullivan, World War 2

≈ 6 Comments

My mother-in-law, Marjorie Young née Sullivan (1920-2007), supported me in my family history research. We would often talk about her family history and when I compared her reminiscences I found that her recollections matched well with the documentation I had found, and often helped to point the way to a more accurate tree.

Besides her relatives, Marjorie would talk about her own life.

She was born in Oakleigh, a suburb of Melbourne, in 1920, the fourth of six children.

In 1926 Marjorie started school in Tatura, a small town near Shepparton in northern Victoria. She recalled that her father would not allow any of his children to begin school before they were six years old nor start work before sixteen. Marjorie did well at school and wanted to become a teacher. But she couldn’t. Her family, at that time living in Malmsbury, was too poor to send her off to a teachers’ college.

From the age of about thirteen, Marjorie was a junior teacher in the Malmsbury school helping to look  after the kindergarten classes; as a result she was awarded the Merit Certificate without being required to pass the usual examination at the end of Grade 8. She left school at 14.

After leaving school Marjorie helped to look after her youngest sister Gwenny (1933-1935). Sadly Gwenny died of meningitis after a few day’s illness when she was only two years old.

Marjorie’s first job, at the age of 16, was in Kyneton where she went to be a mother’s helper. She enjoyed the work. There was one baby when she started and by the time she left there were two more. She left when she was 19, moving with her family to Castlemaine. She had been happy in the Kyneton job.

In Castlemaine Marjorie learned to be a weaver in the woollen mills there. This was 1939, the year war broke out. The mills were busy making cloth for uniforms and blankets.

In 1941, when she was 21, Marjorie and a girlfriend, one of her workmates, decided to go to Melbourne to work for the Laconia blankets woollen mill.  In 1942 Marjorie met her future husband, Peter, while working there.

Peter and Marjorie in 1942 in the garden of Marjorie’s parents’ house in Castlemaine

Peter enlisted in the army in 1943. They became engaged and married in 1944 when he was on leave.

In 1990 Marjorie told me about a trip she made to Sydney during the war to see Peter.

When Peter went back to an army camp near Sydney after his leave he became ill with malaria and was admitted to hospital. It was then that Marjorie decided to go to Sydney to be near him.

She applied to Manpower, a Commonwealth wartime employment regulatory authority, for permission to leave her work and travel to Sydney. Manpower deemed the journey to be unnecessary and refused her request.

So Marjorie packed her suitcase and took the train to Albury, on the New South Wales border. Because she had no travel permit, she could not be too open about asking for accommodation, so she got a taxi driver to recommend a hotel. He found one and suggested that she should get up very early the next morning and catch a milk truck going to Culcairn, further up the line. In Culcairn she would be able to catch the Albury to Sydney train without any difficulty. But the hotel didn’t give her an early call so she found another taxi to take her to Culcairn where she waited at a hotel. She paid hush money to both taxi drivers, to the hotel keeper in Culcairn, to the hotel rouse-about, who went to the station and bought her ticket, and also to the conductor of the train.

Marjorie stayed in Sydney for three months with Peter’s cousin Betty [this was possibly Bessie Bridges, wife of Robert Charles Cross], but then she got a please-explain letter from both Manpower and the travel authorities. Her Melbourne flat mate had dobbed her in.

She felt she had to return to Melbourne – was afraid not to go back – but did not want to repeat her journey through Albury with hotels and taxis, so she bought a ticket from Sydney to Tocumwal, on the New South Wales border further down the river, paid hush money to the ticket-seller at the Tocumwal station, bought a first class ticket (to lessen the chances of being spotted as a border-hopper) to Melbourne. She paid hush money to the conductor of that train too.

Peter Young’s military records show he had malaria in 1944. He was first ill with malaria in June and then re-admitted to hospital with malaria in August.

Manpower

In January 1942 the Commonwealth Government established the Manpower Directorate which was responsible for administering ‘reserved occupations and industrial priorities’. The Director-General of Manpower was authorised to prevent employees from leaving their employment. In March 1942 the whole of the civilian population of Australia over the age of 16 was required to register with Manpower. Nearly three million people were placed in employment from January 1942 to January 1946. There were 13,500 direction orders. I suppose it was a direction order to return to work that Marjorie received in Sydney.

Marjorie left weaving later in the war. She said she got germs under the nails from the wool. Manpower would not otherwise have let her resign.

The Laconia Woollen Mills building still stands in South Melbourne, refurbished as offices. The present tenant is a travel company.

Further reading

  • Reserved occupations, Second World War’, at: https://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/homefront/reserved_occupations/
  • National Archives of Australia Agency details for CA 533 Directorate of Manpower, Central Office

Remembering my grandfather at Tobruk

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Anne Young in Champion de Crespigny, Remembrance Day, World War 2

≈ 1 Comment

Yesterday my daughter gave me a coin commemorating Australia’s role in withstanding the siege of Tobruk. I have previously written about Richard Geoffrey Champion de Crespigny known as Geoff de Crespigny (1907 – 1966), my grandfather, who served in the Australian Army as a doctor and was at Tobruk, during the North African campaign, from January to October 1941.

His diaries from the time he was in Tobruk have been transcribed by my father. Entries from May 1941 are from a period when my grandfather was supervising evacuation of the wounded by sea.

Australian troops about to embark in Vampire. Retrieved from http://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-vampire-i

 

16 May
Went to the hospital for supplies and to HQ to see Cookie.1Also had a hair-cut – long overdue. Later wrote to Kathleen, and went in again to arrange for embarkation tonight on a destroyer.
At 7, Jerry dropped bombs from an unprecedented height close to the San Marco water point. It seems to be our water he is trying for these days.2We drove down just before dark, and quite by accident were made aware of a huge crater in the road made by one of the latest bombs and which would have been a death trap to our first ambulance. The Vampire was delayed3– but berthed at 1 in the morning and we started. Cramming them in we got 109 stretchers and 98 walkers away. I found to my joy that Pat Reilly was the [p.91] MO. I was delighted to meet him again, and we were able to have a short yarn. She left at 3 – and after the usual signal parley we got to bed. But not undisturbed – for there were a series of lone but noisy raiders who were taken up by a long and loud artillery bombardment.
17 May (really continuing)
I seemed to get mighty little sleep. Stayed put after B in B [breakfast in bed] and got up and had a bathe about 11. After lunch went to the hospital and fixed the evening’s arrangements, and I went to HQ later. While there about 30 planes came over and dive-bombed the other side of the harbour – without doing much, and so many people said afterwards that they had shot down a plane that it became [p.92] monotonous. Some were downed, however.
News from Egypt is rather heartening now. We have retaken Salum, and there are all sorts of rumours about Capuzzo.4
Went to the docks with the failing light. The ship turned up at 10, and we had her away by 11.30. Then fixed the signal, had a liqueur[?] with a charitable soul, and returned to bed. A pretty tricky drive in very complete darkness.
18 May
Almost a blank. Didn’t go out, and neither side did any fighting.
19 May
A number of bombs dropped early this morning just “over the wall” from us.5Went over to the beach hospital and had a long yarn with Eric Cooper which ended in my staying to lunch. A jolly good lunch too! Rest of the day quiet.
[p.93]
20 May
Once again bombs “over the wall.” We hope they realise the importance of that wall as a boundary and don’t encroach on our side!
Went to embark invalids onto Vampire, which came in at 2330. Found poor Pat [Reilly] in a state, as the intelligentsia at Alex had taken off all extra RAMC [Royal Army Medical Corps: British] personnel and all equipment. We had 61 stretchers and 98 walking wounded, and it was a great squeeze and a great shame. Also we lost all the stretchers and 200 blankets and have damn few left in Tobruk now. Pat was very well, but a bit harassed. Home about 0330.
Some of the 180 wounded that were evacuated from Tobruk by HMAS Vampire in May 1941. Retrieved from http://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-vampire-i

 

1Colonel T P Cook had been in charge of RGCdeC’s unit in Egypt, and now commanded Lines of Communication [general civilian-style administration] in Tobruk.

 

 

2On water supply, see Walker, Middle East, p.199.

 

3HMAS Vampire, an Australian ship, was one of flotilla of destroyers operating in the Mediterranean: Jane’s Fighting Ships, p.107. There were five, the Stuart, Vampire, Vendetta, Voyager and Waterhen. Built during the First World War, and transferred to the Royal Australian Navy in 1932, they were derided by German propaganda as the “Scrap Iron Flotilla,” a title later borne as proudly as that of the Rats of Tobruk. One of their main tasks at this time was to maintain the “Tobruk ferry,” which brought new troops and supplies in from Alexandria and took the sick and wounded out.
Vampire was later among the escort of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales when they were sunk by Japanese aircraft off the coast of Malaya in December 1941. In April 1942 she was escort to the light carrier HMS Hermes when they were caught by Japanese planes in the Indian Ocean near Ceylon; both ships were sunk.

 

4This was a British attempt to relive Tobruk. Fort Capuzzo was close to Salum; both places were taken, but could not be held.

 

5Since being bombed out on 19 April, RGCdeC and his colleague Saxby had camped in Snake Gully. The “wall” was presumably a ridge along the top of the gully on one side. Lieutenant-Colonel NHW Saxby, from Sydney, was DADMS in charge of local medical administration in Tobruk town. RGCdeC was initially Deputy Assistant Director of Hygiene [DADH].

 

A night photograph showing an air raid over the harbour. Bomb bursts and searchlights can be seen.Retrieved from the Australian War Memorial image 020592

Related posts

  • T is for Tobruk

Trove Tuesday: Mother’s Day 1943

05 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by Anne Young in Champion de Crespigny, prisoner of war, Trove Tuesday, World War 2

≈ 1 Comment

In 1967 the Australian Women’s Weekly held a Mother’s Day story-writing competition, for ‘The Best Mother’s Day I’ve Had’.

The contest prompted many letters to the editor. One, from Harry Thorpe,  a former Army Padre, wrote about a Mother’s Day he had spent in a Japanese POW camp.

His letter caught the attention of my grandfather’s cousin John de Crespigny (1908-1995).

de Crespigny, who in 1943 had been a Major interned in the same camp, wrote to Thorpe recalling the occasion.

His letter was reproduced in the Women’s Weekly a month later.

 

Prizewinning letters in our “Best Mother’s Day” Contest. (1967, May 17). The Australian Women’s Weekly (1933 – 1982), p. 55. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47121756

 

AN ECHO FROM MOTHER’S DAY, 1943— IN A POW CAMP. (1967, June 28). The Australian Women’s Weekly (1933 – 1982), p. 14. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article42114056

Related post:

  • Sepia Saturday 192 : John Chauncy Champion de Crespigny (1908 – 1995)

A to Z 2015 reflections

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by Anne Young in A to Z 2015, World War 1, World War 2

≈ Leave a comment

My blog tells some of the stories about my family history. All my posts, including A to Z posts in 2015, have this focus. In 2015 however, a hundred years since World War 1 and seventy years since the end of World War 2, many of the posts recall men of my family who fought in those wars.

My family, like so many others, felt the effects of those wars. Both my grandfathers and my father-in-law fought in World War 2. All four of my great grandfathers and both my husband’s grandfathers and my step grandfather fought in World War 1. All ten men survived, though both my husband’s grandfathers and one of my great grandfathers were injured.

Our forebears lost brothers and cousins in the wars. Most of these uncles and cousins did not have children and so it is up to us, the descendants of their siblings and cousins, to remember them.

Of course I have never met most of the men I have written about, and I cannot comprehend the appalling experience of fighting in a war. I hope I have done something to keep their memory alive by gathering together the dry facts of their military experience.

  • A is for aviator: Ernest Osmond Cudmore
    Ernest Osmond Cudmore (1894 – 1924) was my 1st cousin 3 times removed
  • B is for Buick
    continuing the story of Ernest Osmond Cudmore
  • C is for Compiègne on 1 September 1914
    Claude Norman Champion de Crespigny (1888-1914) my 5th cousin; twice removed, although relatively distant in fact the English and Australian cousins stayed in close contact
  • D is for Durham Light Infantry
    George Champion de Crespigny (1783-1813) my 4th great uncle who was killed in the war against Napoleon. My great grandfather had an engraving of his portrait hanging in his hallway. My brother now has the picture.
  • E is for Exile
    George Napier Sprod (1919-2003) my 2nd cousin twice removed
  • F is for fundraising
     my great grandmother Kathleen Mary Cudmore née Cavenagh-Mainwaring (1874-1951)
  • G is for Gallipoli

     Walter Fish (1878-1915) brother-in-law of two of my husband’s great aunts
  • H is for Hindenburg Line

    George Murray Cross (1890 – 1962) was one of my husband’s paternal great uncles
  • I is for insulin

    my great grandfather Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny was one of the first physicians to use insulin in treating diabetes
  • J is for James: James Curtis (1826–1901)

    my husband is researching James Curtis, a note businessman of Ballarat  and a Spiritualist
  • K is for Kanatte General Cemetery in Colombo

     Vyvyan Westbury Hughes (1888-1916) was my great grand uncle
  • L is for Lagnicourt

      William Stanley Plowright (1893-1917) was the cousin of my husband’s grandmother
  • M is for muddle

     my great grandfather Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny was not aide-de campe to General Birdwood though he did meet the General and probably met his 4th cousin once removed, Henry de Crespigny who was Birdwood’s aide-de-camp
  • N is for New Guinea

    my father-in-law Peter Young (1920-1988)
  • O is for orders

    William James Harris (1898-1917) is the great uncle of my sister-in-law
  • P is for Poperinghe New Military Cemetery

    Selwyn Goldstein (1873 – 1917) was the first cousin of my great grandmother
  • Q is for Querrieu

    John Percival Young (1886-1918)was my husband’s great uncle
  • R is for No. 1 Australian General Hospital at Rouen

     Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny (1882-1952) was my great grandfather
  • S is for St Eloi

    Milo Massey Cudmore  (1888 – 1916) was the cousin of my great grandfather
  • T is for Tobruk

    Richard Geoffrey Champion de Crespigny (1907-1966) was my grandfather
  • U is for unwilling or hesitating to obey an order

     Henry Sullivan (1894-1969) was my husband’s great uncle
  • V is for Vizefeldwebel

    Fritz Hermann Boltz (1879-1949) was my great grandfather
  • W is for West Africa

    James Morphett (Jim) Henderson (1915-1942) was my grandmother’s cousin
  • X is for the Military Cross

    George William Symes (1896-1980) was my step grandfather
  • Y is for Ypres

    William Alfred Fish (1890-1917) was my husband’s first cousin twice removed
  • Z is for Zillebeke

    Stanley Gilbert Edwards (1889-1917) was my husband’s great grand uncle
During the month I had trouble with my broadband internet connection and I was also away from home travelling for a week. I had trouble completing my daily posts.
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