My brother Gooza (Leslie) and I joined the army in 1940. At first we camped in the horse stalls at Caulfield Racecourse, then were shifted to Mount Martha, where we camped in tents, and later we shifted to a new camp called Darley, outside of Bacchus Marsh. There were many other service men for our town, seven of whom didn't come home. Some women enrolled in the Ladies section too.

It was towards the end of 1926 that my parents moved to a dairy farm called Myrtle Mount a few miles from a quiet country town. The road to the farm turned off the main highway on to a rough gravel road, past several small dairy farms, up a steep hill until it reached the last farm on this road. Tucked under the shadow of Curry’s Mountain, the farmhouse commanded a splendid view of the surrounding country but that was of little interest to this family of Mum, Dad and two small boys, aged eight and seven.