‘Women in Service” is the focus of Anzac Day 2026.
Some of our early Probus members (some who are now deceased) served in WW2 and wrote briefly of their experiences for our newsletter, or were guest speakers at our meetings in the early 2000s.
NINA CARNE: My Experience as a V.A.D. (Voluntary Aid Detachment) in World War 2
I decided to do my war service in hospitals as I had trained as a junior nurse. On joining the army, I was lucky enough to be posted overseas however we were not told the destination immediately. A group of 20 V. A’s. left in a hospital ship and were told two days later that we were destined for Ceylon; it was at the time a British Colony.
Our uniform of cotton garments was suitable, but bloomers of Milanese (synthetic) were as hot as hell in the tropics! On arrival in Ceylon, we soon found that Nuns from a convent nearby were good at sewing, so we had cotton scanties made up. I’m sure it was quite an eye opener for them.
The hospital we ‘took over’ was destined to be a T.B. hospital, with wards suitable for 20 patients. Our 2/12th unit had been placed in Ceylon to take the overflow of casualties from fighting in the Middle East and Malaya. The ward I was assigned to, coped with tropical diseases and eye problems and our equipment was basic and had to be mobile. My job was to cope with the kerosene fridge's that smelt and smoked and went out from time to time.
There were no antibiotics in those days so patients waited much longer in hospital. Pills didn’t have a name - only a number. Tins plates and mugs were issued but these soon became rusty so another task was to clean rust off with steel wool and soap, then put them out in the hot sun to dry.
If we had an air raid, the siren would go off, a skeleton staff was left in the wards, and the rest of us took to the jungle. The V.A.D’s were allotted a cinnamon plantation, so off we went quick smart, with tin hats and gas masks, to wait under cover for the ‘all clear’.
We lived on a rise above the hospital, in native huts, partitioned into five rooms. The huts and walls were made from dried, plaited banana leaves. Army food left much to be desired, scrawny tough local chicken, tinned meat, rancid butter and dried egg powder for scrambled eggs.
If we weren’t busy, we had a day off each week, and a week off every six months. I was fortunate enough to stay with an English Tea Planter and his wife in the ‘hill country’. They lived like kings; delicious food, piped music through the house and we dressed for dinner at 9pm each night. The tea plantation was very interesting - girls dressed in bright colours, carrying baskets of tea on their heads to the factory where it was dried and the tea blending, tasting and spitting out carried out.
Six months later my second leave was spent with a Burgher Family (Dutch x Ceylonese) - a delightful family. They were on a Rubber Plantation and did not live quite as opulently. I remember watching men tapping rubber trees for latex, and elephants working in the jungle. When I was leaving, they gave me a cane flower basket which I still use today.
When the war ended in the Middle East and Singapore fell, we packed up and left for Australia on a hospital ship. It was good to be home.
Getting to know you - DARA AITKEN
Shortly after my father died, my mother had to find work and so I left Sydney and went to live with my grandmother at Berri in N.S.W. I was there for two years until my brother paid a visit and found me running around with bare feet. He reported back to my mother and they must have thought that I was running a bit ‘wild’ and needing some ‘finishing’, so I was sent off to a convent boarding school near Richmond. I was about 13 at the time. I was there for a couple of years and then returned to Sydney to stay with my mother and finish school at the beach side suburb of Clovelly.
My first job was in an office working for Slazenger’s, the company that made tennis and golf equipment. However, I wanted to be closer to the city so I moved to a new job, again in an office, at the Princes Restaurant in Martin Place. It was a very up-market and fashionable place in those days – definitely the place to be seen. They had a band playing during the lunchtime meal.
War was brewing and so I decided to join the Australian Women’s Armed Services rather than be called up and sent just anywhere. I was age 18 and grew up very fast!
I did my training at Wagga in N.S.W. and met my first Sgt. Major who said he would ‘make soldiers out of all of us’. We were shown how to put up a tent and fill a hessian bag (pallasis) with hay and straw for our mattress. We were then issued with 303 rifles, five rounds of ammunition to carry in our pockets, and a gas mask. We marched and drilled each day with rifles and experienced the effects of gas without a mask. We also learned how to work the searchlight.
From Wagga we then went to Sydney where we worked in an underground tunnel, which is now the rail line to Bondi. Airmen, Sailors and Soldiers had sections and it was well guarded. It was here that we learnt to plot planes and show the course on maps.
I then transferred to Fullers Bridge, an all-girl camp where we had a searchlight to work and an engine to keep going. At this time I took up smoking. I was on guard duty and scared of the dark. Jim, my future husband and also serving in the army at the time, told me the cigarette glow would have been a ‘sitting duck’ for any little Jap! He also said I was just a little puffer – I didn’t inhale! This was probably why I was able to give it up quite easily when I was pregnant with my first child.
Later we were all put on a troop train to Townsville but the Burdigan River was in flood so we were stuck in Rockhampton with no showers and no toilets on the trains – three trains were held up there. Eventually we were taken across the river, about six at a time, to Ayr, where the Salvation Army met us and organised houses so we could have a shower – the first for over a week, before we headed off to the camp at Townsville. R & R was spent on Magnetic Island, just off the coast from Townsville, but we had no swimming costumes, so with the use of little floral tablecloths, which were not rationed, and an army sheet for lining, and the use of an old sewing machine – we all hit the water! Townsville was where the Mounted Soldiers let us go riding with them, chasing the brumbies. It was not at all like city riding – the girl from Probus had a ball!
In the closing down stages of the war I asked for a discharge and went back to office work on the Atherton Tablelands near Cairns and to care for my very sick mother. Yes, I did enjoy this stage of my life.
FRAN NOBELIUS
My father came to Australia in 1912 and joined the AIF in 1914. He returned in 1919 and married my mother Nina and they bought a Soldier Settlement farm at Foster. After the depression in 1929, the family walked off the farm and came to Avonsleigh. By then there were five little girls.
I joined the AWAS 2nd Sig. Trg. Bn. on 4th July 1942. Five hundred of us were stationed at Ivanhoe Boys Grammar School. After three months 30 of us joined 1st Sig.Trg.Bn. at Inglewood for a NCA course. We then became Sergeant’s Instructors and took the training over from the men who went to the Atherton Tablelands and New Guinea.
The Ivanhoe School closed and we moved to Bonegilla, joining 1st Sig.Trg. Bn. I was commissioned (Lieut. F.C.W. Ayers) and posted to advance L.H.Q. Signals, then officer in charge of “Lines of Communication” at Warrick. We were billeted at the Grange Hotel – such comfort! From there I went to L.H.Q. Signals office, Townsville and back to DR’s in Albert Park, Melbourne. I was discharged on 22 January 1947 and went home to live at Avonsleigh.
HILDE ALEXANDER
I was born in Salzburg, Austria. Salzburg is known as ‘Mozart’s City’ and tourists in the summer make it very busy & crowded - but back to earlier times. I was born during the depression and things were pretty tough. There were five kids in our family, all under six years old. We lived in two rooms, one in which we all slept (7 of us) and a kitchen.
When I turned ten, I had to join the ‘Hitler Youth’. It was WW2 and compulsory for all children on turning 10 to join. There were weekly meetings and other activities and I just couldn’t wait to turn 10 and join, but after a couple of meetings I hated it. If you missed two meetings they came to the door demanding to know why. Thanks goodness that after 10 months the war finished and there was no more bombing.
Father went to war in 1941, to fight on the Russian front. When the war finished he, and others in his troop, had to make their own way home. It was tough, they struggled to find something to eat and grabbed whatever they could find, sometimes a rabbit could be caught. On the way to get home he was caught by the Russians and put into a prison camp. Mum didn’t know what had happened to him, whether he was dead or alive. It was five months before he was released. In 1944 we got a flat with four rooms. We all thought we lived in a mansion!
YVONNE STRIK
Looking back on my childhood in Holland I can only say that it has been a time of wonderful memories. There were hard times during the war, our house was bombed, food was scarce and my mother became very ill. For many years I was raised by an aunt who became my second mother.
MARY STEPHENS
Mary was a speaker at one of our meetings and it’s a great pity that we do not have a written record of her speech as it was very moving. These are a few memories I have:
Mary was born on one of the Channel Islands - Jersey I believe. In 1940 Germany occupied all the islands including Jersey and in 1942? they removed children from the island and took them to internment camps in France/Germany. Mary was one of those children. She was frightened, had no books or other items and hated her time there. When the war ended, she returned to Jersey but the family were unsettled and immigrated to what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The rest of her talk focused on happier times in South Africa & the move to Australia.
ERNA HOLMES
Erna was another of our speakers whom I wish we had her many memories in print. She was born in Germany and in WW2 was required to work for the German army. She plotted movements of the Allies and told many stories, including, if I’m right, predicting one of the beach landings – Normandy I’m guessing, but none of the officers believed her. She was very proud of herself when it turned out she was right. Her stories were always told with much humour…and a certain amount of irreverence! They might have been stories set in wartime but she had us laughing so much.