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Sam Harris (S95J) and wife Martha had left Singapore for Perth for the
annual Remembrance Day service (see August Call Sign) and were now ready to
fly onto Sydney... (Continued from September...) East to Sydney... So here we were once again in the air heading due east, 2400 miles and 3 time zones further from the UK, making a time difference of 11 hours in front. It was a pleasant flight and for once the food was quite edible, including a choice of Chinese. One up to Quantas... We touched down at 16.30 and headed for the taxi rank. Just as we reached the head of the rank, a cab came zooming in after having just set down a job. He beckoned us in but there were cabs already on the rank, the controller was on the ball and sent him packing! It's the same all over the world...! Our taxi driver hailed from China and was not very enamoured with Australia. It's been my experience that whenever I've come across a cab driver in a country that has taken him in, he invariably has a list of complaints about the host country and my stock answer is always to the effect that if he's not happy, he can always go back to where he came from.... By the time we reached Sydney Town Hall, I was too busy pointing out to Martha the places that I remembered from my previous Pacific visit with HMS Vengeance in 1945. Sadly, the scene of many of my early day 'conquests' - the old Trocadero ballroom - had gone!" Martha should have seen me then! Our magnificent hotel stood in thearea known as The Rocks, a tarted up old part right by |
SAM HARRIS GOES TO AUSTRALIA |
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 Sam with Sydney Harbour in the backgrond the bridge. We had originally booked another hotel through our travel |
seen that before and we are great
Epicureans when it comes to seafood, they were just delicious. The bill came to under £20 including coffee! No wonder the Aussies think London is expensive! Next morning up nice and early to start the familiarisation trip but my, how the place had changed! Main streets in the centre had become part-pedestrian walkthroughs while many of the shops and cinemas that I knew had gone, to be replaced by large commercial buildings. But I was pleased to be able to point out to Martha a store called Davy Jones. It was here that we young men used to pay just over 10 shillings to send our folks back home food parcels containing commodities which were either on ration or unobtainable in England - goods such as tea, tinned pineapples, peaches and sugar etc. Not one of those parcels to the best of my knowledge ever went adrift and naturally they were very much appreciated. I pointed out Martin Place, where the equivalent of our Cenotaph stands and also Sydney's main Post Office, where in the early hours of 13 January 1946, after celebrating a riotous first night back, my mate and I decided to send a telegram back home. There on the floor lay this Aussie soldier, 'well gone' and clasping a bottle of plonk, insisting that we have a swig. Even in his drunken stupor he had recognised us from HMS Vengeance, the ship that had picked him and 300of his fellow soldiers up from Borneo on January 1. It was uncanny really, as ship identification hatbands were not worn during the war or just after!
(Continued next month...) |
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