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BGVR/ BRISBANE WORKSHOP DAYS Sgt Abel Richmond SHEATH NG 2380 I was born in Bexley, a suburb of Sydney, on 6 th July, 1916. My father was an accountant with Mauri Bros and Thomson, Wholesale Merchants, of York Street, Sydney. I went to Pri- mary school at Carlton and High School at Hurstville. The eldest in our family was a sister Dulcie, then came Ernest, Brentnall, myself and Winifred was the youngest. Each year we went to the Blue Mountains for a holiday at my Uncle’s cottage. The whole family went up and down from Bexley to the Mountains in a train drawn by a steam engine. When I left school the first job I obtained was with Bennett and Woods as a delivery boy. I had used to ride my bike to work in the city and carry out deliveries with the bicycle they provided. The reason I rode to work was to save 2/6 (25c), the cost of the train fare There were not many cars on the road in those days – mainly bicycles. The worst delivery of the lot was up to Kings Cross where the hill up William Street is so steep that you had to push the bike up the hill, not ride it. I then obtained a position with a Company called Electric Control and Engineering at Camperdown. I was not apprenticed, as very few apprentices were available in those days, but I started doing fitting and turning – mainly lathe work. I learned to use all the lathes and milling machines myself. I used to prefer lathe work myself as it was better paid than the other jobs I used to carry out. At this stage I still rode by bike to work as Camperdown wasn’t very far. When you knocked off work at 5pm the roads were full of people cycling home. One of the things I did in my spare time was to join the Mili- tia when I turned 18. I joined the 33 rd Fortress Company and we trained out at Malabar Rifle Range at Long Bay. We had huts there and used to spend a lot of time on the Rifle Range firing our .303s. We had searchlights which operated from their own motors and these searchlights were based at South Head, on the southern entrance into Sydney Harbour. After we had fired up these searchlights they would shine all the way into Sydney Harbour and for about 3 miles out to sea – they were very powerful. I go to New Guinea I had a friend at the time, Harley Blackman, incidentally, later on a Rifleman in NGVR, who was married and had gone to Bulolo in New Guinea working as a dredgemaster. The life and the money sounded pretty good to me, so I asked him to find out if I could get a job in the machine shop at Bulolo. I left Sydney on the ‘Machdui’, a Burns Philp ship in 1940. I recall my brother-in-law took the whole family down to the wharf to see me off and drove right onto the wharf up almost to the gangplank. The ‘Machdui’ called at Brisbane, where I had a short walk around the City, then went to Townsville, Port Moresby and then to Salamaua where I left the ship by lighter and flew up to Wau in a tri-motor Ford aircraft. I dis- tinctly recall looking out at the motor on my side and it was moving about three inches in its sockets. That was probably deliberate and gave the motor plenty of room to move while vibrating, but, for a young lad on his first flight it was not a comforting sight. There was no glass in the aircraft windows, only perspex, and you could open the window and put your hand out – a huge difference from aircraft of today. I started out working on the baby machine in the machine shop, a lathe, no doubt until the Supervisor found out how good I was. I quickly learned that, up there, there were plenty of requests for ‘foreign orders’ of various types, mainly brass, for the other work- ers in Bulolo. However it was not long before I commenced oper- ating the other bigger machines, lathes and drilling machines which cut gears etc for the dredges. The Bulolo Gold Dredging machine shop was the best set up workshop I had ever seen – a lot better than any I had seen in Sydney. The Foreman was very competent but was not interested in imparting any knowledge to anyone else – it was a matter of having to do your own thing. We were very busy at the time as BGD had 8 dredges operating and it was our job to keep up the spare parts to them so they were able to operate around the clock. . Each Friday a group from the workshop went out to one of the dredges and went over it com- pletely. We had to examine the huge pins that held the buckets in place etc. One of the things that amazed me about the Bulolo Valley at the time was the huge rock piles that the dredges, which had been operating for some years, had left behind them. At the time there was no attempt made to revegetate the valley I stayed in the single men’s mess which was high set off the ground to keep the quarters above the water when it rained heavily. We worked 6 days a week and were paid additional for Saturday work. You could have worked 7 days if you wanted to, but I never did, and on my day off I used to go for walks around the district and up into the mountains. The villages were very primitive in those days but we were always made welcome. As I recall I was paid about 10 pounds ($20) per week and I used to send most of my pay down to my mother. When I came down on my first leave with the Army she had it all banked and waiting for me. Among the photos I have now are some of the workshops show- ing the quality of the machinery there, a lathe in the foreground, a huge drill in the middle distance, and a power hammer in the background. Another photo is of a Junkers airplane with the top cut out so that heavy machinery and vehicles could be loaded in with a crane. One in particular shows a crane bringing out an ambulance, which had been flown into Bulolo. I join the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles (NGVR) In January, 1942, I was working one Sunday in the workshop – I think it may have been some sort of ‘foreign order’ for myself making brass egg-cups – when I heard some planes fly over and the air-raid sirens sounded. As it happened there were two Junk- ers transport planes sitting on Bulolo airstrip, one with a load of beer, and the two planes flying over were Zeros. They destroyed both planes on the strip and also destroyed the hydro-electric power station. One minute we had all the work in the world and the next moment – nothing. All able bodied men were called up to full time duty on 22 nd January, 1942, and I was among those called up. As I recall some of the more important people in BGD obviously had seen what was coming and had gone on leave and not returned. I do not remember now but it may have been possible for me to just walk out – over the Bulldog Track and down the Lakekamu River, but I just accepted the fact that we were now at War and allowed myself to be called up. We were given very little formal training that I can recall. I was lucky in that I had seen my pervious service in the Militia in Syd- ney but do not consider that I was well trained in any way. I was issued with a 1917 .303 rifle. I was attached to B Company. My Platoon Commander was Lt Col O’Loghlen, the Pl Sgt was Lea Ashton, my Section Corporal P AGE 2
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