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By *BLUFFTON -- A dock proposed next to the public boat landing in the Buckingham neighborhood has area residents banding together to fight the structure *Sea kayaking riding a wave of popularity
*Jacksonville Beach wins cleanliness recognition from the Clean Beaches Council
Amended interview. One. 0071 Mackenzie Gregory Mac BHA, Dip Management Mr Mackenzie Gregory 0071 01 01:00:21:12 Q: Your life before the War, how you came to enlist and why you chose the Navy. 01:00:30:20 Then we'll move through your War experiences and then post-War and if we could just get a feel for the major events of your life initially and then we'll come back and talk in further detail about significant experiences you've had. First, if you could tell us where you were born? A: I was born in Geelong on 9 February 1922. I happened 01:01:00:16 to be there because Dad was working with the J-Class Submarines which had come out from England in 1919 and they were based at Osborne House in Geelong, which was the first Royal Australian Naval College. Mum and Dad were there and so that's how it happened. I believe I was born on the kitchen table at Hope Street in Geelong. 01:01:30:11 And after your early experiences, you went to school? A: Yes, Dad was always a Steward in the Navy and he worked for Admirals and generally the first Naval member so we went out of Geelong when I was quite young and were actually living in Heyington Place in Toorak with one of the Admirals and my first school was Christchurch Grammar 01:02:00:18 on the corner of Toorak Road and Punt Road and probably my earliest memory was catching the tram and I started school the day before I was 5 there. Subsequently the next Admiral had a house in St Kilda Road " Landene" and it's still there, a lovely old brick place. I used to have to walk across the park, Fawkner Park to get to school. 01:02:30:16 I remember it particularly when the magpies were nesting and I used to be quite terrified as they swooped down on me when I was wandering off to school as quite a young boy. Q: And did you want to join the Navy from an early age? Was that your intention? A: Probably not at that stage. They bought a block of land in Coburg of all places and built a house and I went to Coburg State School until I was about 11 or 10 01:03:00:09 I guess and then I went to Coburg High. At that stage I suppose I realised that we were very working class, went through the Depression. Dad was away a lot and Mother really had to struggle and I can remember her stuffing her shoes with paper to keep the rain out and making sure I had a pair of shoes and I had 01:03:30:13 learnt about the Naval College where boys during their 13th year could sit for the Naval College and they selected maybe a dozen out of 300 applicants and I guess I saw if I could get into the Navy and get a good education I'd get myself out of this very working class rut. Even at that young age that's what I wanted to do 01:04:00:10 and I was most surprised when I sat for the exam, then I was called for = a medical and then eventually I had to face a series of Captains and = Admirals at Victoria Barracks and being petrified as the young man being = interviewed and these gruff Naval Officers saying things like "Look out = of the window young man. What car is that going down the road" and all = sorts of questions. Then I was one of 13 who were 01:04:30:12 selected to go into the Naval College in January 1936. Q: And when you went to the Naval College did you have to sign up for a number of years? A: My father did. For the 4 years of the College, and a subsequent 12 years from the age of 18 and the only way you could get out was to pay quite a considerable sum of money which was never going to be forthcoming from my family so having made the bed I really had to lay in it. 01:05:30:11 Q: Tell me something about the College. A: Well the first year was pretty tough.
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Two. We had 3 senior years and we were really dogsbodies. There was a pretty nasty sort of initiation and you doubled everywhere around the College and we were the youngest and the eldest were 17 or 18 were quite young men. For instance we went swimming in an open swimming pool which was one end of Flinders Naval Depot from where the 01:05:30:12 College was. We doubled everywhere and we carried our own gear and we carried the seniors' gear as well. The first year was quite rough and one of our term was told not to return after the first term. We never knew what happened. We started with 13 and then after Ian Nursey, as his name was, just did not appear after our first term leave and we never knew why. He subsequently joined the Air Force 01:06:00:11 and unfortunately as a Fighter Pilot got killed in the Western Desert in about 1940, '41. Q: And what about the rest of your class? A: Well we bonded pretty well of course. We had to survive I guess. For instance at night you had to be totally undressed, all your gear laid out, your chest of drawers open for inspection and have had a shower in 3 minutes against the stop watch and 01:06:30:08 if that didn't happen you got a size 10 gym shoe on your bum quite regularly and that you learnt pretty quickly to be able to it. One would help each other and we had 2 double bunks in a cubicle so you lived with 3 others and we had our own gun room. I guess out of that 12, 2 died in the War and one got killed in a car accident but the other 9 of us are still going. 01:07:00:11 We all were 80 last year and we all met in Sydney in July last year for a wonderful lunch at the Sydney Yacht Club and went from midday to about 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Q: And what year did you graduate from the College? A: We were due to finish our 4th year in '39 and in August '39 the international situation was quite alarming and we were due to go on leave in August 01:07:30:16 of '39 to come back for our final exams, our big passing out parade, our graduation ball which was a big deal. The College was lined up and the Commander said "Years 1, 2 and 3 will proceed on leave. The 4th Yearwill stay. You are going to sea. Leave is a privilege not a right." We had a week's extra seamanship and signals 01:08:00:12 and we were sent off to sea and we all went off to join the Navy at sea before the War. Q: Which ship did you join? A: We all went to the Canberra an 8 inch cruiser and the Australia was not in commission at that stage, our sister ship. They'd both been built by the British Navy in about 1928 and came out to the Australian Navy. The Canberra and Australia were sister ships of the County class 01:08:30:15 Cruisers because they were named after counties, Shropshire, Devonshire, Sussex, Essex, etc. Just after War was declared, 6 of us went to the Australia and I was one of those, so 6 stayed in Canberra. Q: Do you remember the day War was declared? A: Very well. Very well. It was about quarter past nine in the evening when the Prime Minister who was Robert Gordon Menzies made the announcement that 01:09:00:16 because Britain was at War, we too were at War and I was sent to run the pinnace which is a motorboat, Mid-Shipmen ran the boats, in charge of the boats. You had a bowman, a stern sheet man and a stoker to run the engine and interestingly enough a couple of Anzac Days ago a tall gentleman fronted me and said "Sir, do you remember me?" and I had to say "Not really" and he said "Let me take you back to the day 01:09:30:18 War was declared. You were running the pinnace and you came into Man O'War steps and the end of Man O'War steps is a blue stone wall, you said stop engines, go astern. The engines cut out and we crashed into the blue stone wall and the bowman went over the side and I was the bowman" and then I remembered the incident and it was really breaking up the sailors from wives and mothers all saying goodbye. 01:10:00:15 The ship's crew had been recalled to go to sea. It was a Sunday and I remember it quite vividly still. Q: Where did you sail? A: Oh, we went straight out, just down the coast and to make sure all was well and we sailed around the coast for a day or two and then - we didn't do much more than convoy work around the coast for the first 3 months then early 1940 we went over 01:10:30:11
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Three. to New Zealand and picked up a New Zealand Army group and a couple of troop ships and that was probably a poignant memory of the War. I can recall the troop ships pulling away from the wharf in Wellington and thousands of people breaking out into the Maori farewell and singing as the troop ships left and we took them round to Melbourne where we picked up the Melbourne, Australian group 01:11:00:11 over to Perth and we went across to South Africa with them and then the ship went on to England and joined the home fleet in 1940 about a month after Dunkirk when it was quite dark days. Q: And you were then stationed where? Where did you sail after that? A: We were stationed in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, in the North of Scotland its very bleak up in the Orkneys. Very bleak and cold and 01:11:30:16 wet. At one stage we were sent up to Bear Island to look for German trawlers giving away they thought convoy information. That's 75 degrees north which is only 900 miles from the North Pole and bitterly cold, ice. The ships were not built to go into that sort of weather and within the month we back based on 01:12:00:12 the Clyde in Scotland. Greenock which is a Naval Base on the west of Scotland close to Glasgow. We were told we were going down to Dakar withDe Gaulle's expedition which he was hoping to take for the Free French.Dakar sits right on the hump of West Africa right on the convoy routes.The Americans at that stage of course were not in the War, were very interested in 01:12:30:13 getting hold of Dakar because of the convoy routes and Britain had torely on America and Canada for food and oil to keep them going and wedid convoy work for best part of a year. Dakar was an absolute fiasco.De Gaulle at one stage thought he was going to march in and take over including the brand new French battleship, The Richelieu had gotten into Dakar and she had 01:13:00:11 14 inch or 15 inch guns and she was virtually a land fort. They had cruisers, destroyers. They had forts with 9 inch guns and for 3 days we went in and for 3 days they bombed us. They shot at us. We got hit twicewith 6 inch shells. Q: Was this the Vichy French? A: Yes, it was the Vichy French and they were not going to give up to DeGaulle and he virtually stood off and said "Well I'm not 01:13:30:=20 going to shed the blood of Frenchmen for Frenchmen." I'm afraid Ihaven't been too fond of the French where they showed pretty well in that war I think they didn't want to fight that much. Q: And after Dakar, where did you sail to? A: We went to Gibraltar. We did a bit of time in the Mediterranean with supporting a convoy off to Malta and then we went back to England doingconvoy work.. We were based in Liverpool. 01:14:00:12 At that stage we went into dry dock to fix up the damage we had and it was December 1940 when Liverpool was very badly bombed and it was much worse being in harbour than it was being at sea running the gauntlet of the U-boats and ships being sunk and it was pretty nasty sort of time.At that stage we had 3 bad nights in December 1940 01:14:30:15 when in fact the side of the dock was hit with a 500 pound bomb and one of the jobs - they dropped incendiaries all over Liverpool and one of the jobs the midshipman had was to rush around the upper deck and kick off the incendiaries that landed there over the side as we'd left a few feet of water in the dock. There was a whoosh one evening and somethingcame down and lobbed between the ship and the dockside which was probably 01:15:00:12 no more than 15 or 20 feet. Nobody paid much attention and we were duly taken out of dock and another ship was put in and they pumped out the water and there was a 4000 pound land mine sitting on the bottom ticking away still. We'd been lucky. Q: Lucky! A: Yes. Q: When an incendiary hit the deck - how big is an incendiary? A: Oh fairly small. They just set fire. 01:15:30:13 I think they were phosphorous and they'd burst into flame and the idea was to set the place alight then the bombers could follow where the fires were coming from and drop their bombs accordingly. Rather like we use pathfinders on our side to go into Germany and drop bombs and start the fires so the bombers could follow. Q: So did you have to run around the deck literally and kick these things off the deck? A: Oh if they happened, yes. Q: You did that yourself? A: Yes. 01:16:00:12 Q: And were you burnt at all? A: No, no. You wore boots and gave it a quick kick hope it would happen. I only did it on one occasion I think but it was a bit scary. Q: I'm sure it was. What happened after you left Liverpool? A: We did a number of convoys working out of the Clyde. We did convoy work and prior to that in November 1940 we were out looking for a German cruiser or a pocket battleship I 01:16:30:13 think. We were called out and a Sunderland aircraft which was quite a big flying boat which we used for anti-submarine work ran into a storm and it was a real Atlantic gale. Waves 30, 40 feet hight, 100 mile an hour winds. It had run out of petrol and had gone down and somehow the pilot had got it down. She'd been down for a number of hours and she was using her radio 01:17:00:11 and with our directional finding equipment we were trying to find her. I think if I remember correctly the Captain said he would offer 10 Pounds to anybody who sighted the
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Four. wreck. 10 Pounds was a lot of money. As a midshipman we got 6 shillings a day, 42 shillings a week and that didn't go very far and eventually we sighted it and just as we got her in sight a huge wave picked it up and turned her right over on her back 01:17:30:16 and broke the Sunderland in 2. There was one of the airmen clinging to the tail and we were coming up with the wind and sea behind us doing 26 knots and I can remember watching the speedo down below decks and it went up to about 31 and back again as we literally surfed and the airmen were then in the water and they were too weak to even grab a line 01:18:00:14 so eventually our Commander, an Officer and some sailors secured a line to themselves and leapt over the side and physically tied a line to the airmen and we got 9 out of the 13 and I remember being sent up to the focsle with a party of sailors and heaving lines to try and get the 4 who were drifting past but we were unable to cast a line to them. As soon as you threw it out it came flying back with the wind over yourhead and they went off to die. 01:18:30:08 That was a dreadful moment to see them so helpless. 60 years ago I can still feel the absolute helplessness of myself and everybody else. We then took them back into Scotland - we could only do 5 knots back into the storm and we took them back into Glasgow and we recovered 9 out of the 13. Q: Then from the Atlantic? A: The ship 01:19:00:17 was coming home. We left England with the biggest convoy that had ever left at that stage. The Mediterranean was virtually closed. It was a troop convoy and we took them round the Cape up to Aden to go into theMediterranean that way. We then went to Cape Town and Durban and Ceylon and the ship was coming home and this was about 01:19:30:12 May 1941 and I'd been promoted to Acting Sub-Lieutenant where you get your commission. We did our Seamanship Exam in the British cruiser, the Emerald. We had 3 glorious weeks in Ceylon at the Government's expense at the Gallface Hotel for 10 days and then we got sent up country to a rest camp at Detalawa which was interesting. We never had any money. 01:20:00:12 We'd gone to 11 shillings a day which was a big increase and we were walking down the street one day and a very toffee-nosed English voice said "Oh, some Australians I see." It turned out it was a tea planter who had been at Gallipoli and was badly injured and some Australian had hauled him up off the beach and he gave as a wonderful time. He had a Rolls Royce and he wined and dined us for 10 days in Detalawa. 01:20:30:15 We then caught a troop ship Empress of Japan, back to England to go ando our Sub-Lieutenant's course. There is nothing worse for a sailor than to serve in a ship run by the Army, I'm afraid. They had so many troops it was a hot bunk system almost. 4 hours in and 4 hours out. Two meals a day because they couldn't cope with 3 and we ran the gauntlet of theU-boats and got into Glasgow. 01:21:00:17 We were late for our courses and nobody really knew that we were there. So we said "let's go off" to people we know. We told our own group where we were going, there were 6 of us and eventually we got a recall with a telegram. Somebody had run out of money and gone into Australia House who said "what are your doing here, you should be on your courses". They rounded us all up and sent us down and we did our 01:21:30:13 Gunnery, Torpedoes, Signals and Navigation. Some in Brighton in England. That was quite amusing. We were again bombed because 1941 was when they were expecting the invasion and at times you'd get called out to go and man the beaches overnight when they thought the Germans might be coming.There were stories, whether it happened I don't know, but there were stories that they'd set the sea alight at one stage by putting oil on it and lighting it. Our hotel got 01:22:00:12 the top floor knocked off with a bomb one night which wasn't very pleasant but we were all safe and the Signal School. The Navy had taken over Roedean Girls School, like our Firbank here, fairly toffee-nosedschool. Q: That's where Princess Anne when to school, I think isn't it? A: Yes and it still had notices in the rooms if you want a Mistress during the night please ring. We rang those bells like hell but it never happened. 01:22:30:06 We had quite an amusing time. We had 3 or 4 months we went to WhaleIsland for our Gunnery. We did Navigation at Dryad, which happened to be just out of Portsmouth and was General Eisenhower's headquarters for D-Day where he made his famous decision, we will go. That's where we did our Navigation courses and we were to come home and we got bundled into a Blue Star 01:23:00:15 ship called the Tuscan Star and we sailed in convoy to Halifax and thenwent individually down to Panama through the Canal and the ship had boxed Avro Anson aircraft on their decks coming for the Air Force and we stopped on the east coast at Cristobal on the eastern side of Panama for the night and I'm afraid we all stayed ashore until about 1 in themorning and we missed the tide and the Captain wasn't 01:23:30:12 very pleased with us. We were late coming back. We got through the Canal and all of a sudden in the Pacific, smoke started to come out of these boxes. Somebody had got at them in Panama and put some type of incendiary and they all finished up all dropped over the side as they burst into flames. So the RAAF didn't get their Avros. Q: So that was sabotage? A: Yes it was. I understand you could have a 01:24:00:10 little metal container with 2 chemicals which ate through and thencaused a small conflagration and so they were dumped over the side and we arrived back in Melbourne on Pearl Harbour Day, 7th December 1941 We'd been away almost 2 years. Q: Then were you immediately sent north? A: I think we had 2 weeks leave. I was then not quite 20. 01:24:30:13 We got engaged. I got engaged to Gladys who I'd gone to school with. Her brother was my best friend. Gladys was a year older than I was and we said we wouldn't get married until the War was over in case I got bowled over. I got sent to the Canberra as a Sub-Lieutenant to get my Watch Keeping Certificate which means that you keep a watch on a Bridge as an 01:25:00:11 Assistant Officer until the Captain says you are competent to run a watch on your own. I guess it would have been February '42 when we tookthe last troops into Singapore just to put then straight into the bagvirtually and we went up through Sunda Strait through Banka Strait not quite to Singapore, called in at Surabaya or Jakarta as it now is. 01:25:30:23 Then we did a bit of convoy work and went back into Sydney and we were in Sydney Harbour in May when the midgets attacked Sydney Harbour on May 31st, 1st June. It was a mad night in Sydney. Q: After Sydney Harbour? A: After Sydney Harbour we were then part of the force that was to back up a landing in the Solomons. There were coast watchers in the Solomons and on 01:26:00:11 Guadalcanal. There was Martin Clements, he was an Englishman but he was in the coast watcher force for Australia. He was a Captain in the British Army and he'd been a District Officer and the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal and landed on Tulagi and they were building an airfield on Guadalcanal. He sent this information back and the Americans 01:26:30:14 had decided and the British had decided that Germany was going to beknocked over first before the Pacific but Admiral King who was the Commander in Chief of the American Naval forces decided that we ought to do a landing on Tulagi and Guadalcanal and we sent as part of the force for that operation. Operation Watchtower and we were part of the bombardment force and there were 18,000 marines under
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