Paul Francis

I was browsing this marvellous thing called the 'Internet', and just casually, wondered if there was anything I could find out about the RAAF in Malaya in the early 60's - and Lo and Behold, I came across this site! I work with the Internet and am still amazed at the best and the worst this Internet thing has to offer - but it has pretty near ALL the world has to offer. So long ago. Haven't thought about these things for so long. Lying in bed and all the old memories came flooding back.

I've have taken a little time to think about my life at the RAAF School Penang from about December 1958 to December 1960 when I arrived age 13, left age 15. My thoughts and memories are disjointed and I only have about seven photos plus the memoirs of others on this site to help me but here they are;

First came the idea I was going to a foreign country - very exciting - then the injections at RAAF Richmond - then the trip to Qantas House in Sydney and passports and so on. A British pilot and his family stayed in our house while we were overseas. He thoughtfully lined the drawers in my bedroom with navigation charts. A big deal for me! (About December 1959)

Then the big black RAAF limo came to pick us up and take us to the "Modern" Sydney Kingsford Smith International Airport - Nissan huts - chicken wire fences (c.1958). Boarded a big four engine Qantas Constellation - actually, a beautiful airplane. It lumbered into the sky low over the southern suburbs; I could see houses and people below. Then the brown desert of Australia, then dark, then landing in Darwin late at night. Opened the door and walked into a wall of heat - and this was about 12pm. Pilot complained a French plane 'took our spot' and we had to wait a while. Walked around the airport for a while, sent a post card to friend in Sydney then took of again. Could see vaguely the dark outline of Indonesia - following the path on a map that was in the back of the seat. Nose to the window the whole time - night and day. Pilot sprung me in washroom - forgot to lock the door.

Coming into Butterworth reminded me of the opening scene of Harry Bellafonte's movie "Island in the Sun". Could see Penang off to the left. Beautiful. Hustle and Bustle at Butterworth Air base then the drive to Ayer Itam, close to Ayer Itam temple, a new two-storey house, a big novelty for me, which was to be our home for the first year. There were separate living quarters downstairs for the Amah, but she didn't live with us. Many Amahs lived with other RAAF families. Beautiful views, Mountain at front, jungle and river at back with catfish in it. Our Indian gardener caught some and cooked them in a delicious curry for us. Across the street there was a little store that sold huge bags of raw green peanuts - they were OK, and Toblerone chocolate. Every time I see Toblerone Chocolate here it reminds me of that shop. I kept some square Malayan one-cent coins to bring home.

New smells, new people, new scenery. Occasionally a DC3 dropping leaflets in hills not far behind the house - Telling remaining Communist guerrillas to surrender - so I was told. We didn't think much of the real reason why we were all there - Australians were still fighting not far away, but we were just there to have a good time. Long green beans growing in the back yard, our gardener picked one that turned out to be a tree snake, he was still shaking when we came home from school. Another time we had a Cobra in the front garden - I forget how we got rid of it. Mice infestation is the big deal now...
The water in the Straights was always dirty looking, but it was beautiful at night with pretty phosphorous along the beach.

A couple of days exploring then off to school.
First memory of school; Large white colonial type building with huge grass area all round, my classroom on upper floor looking out over wide veranda windows to dark green trees full of flowers. About 15 or 20 Australian students already here. We would soon become a close little group in a foreign land. We got to know each other pretty well. This was the class one year before the Intermediate Certificate, whatever year they call that.

A game at school for the boys was to try and guess what type of bike was coming from the sound it made. Triumphs, Norton's, Ducatis, etc. They sounded better than the bikes today. They had a deeper, more powerful sound compared to the high-pitched whine of today's bikes. We were pretty good at bike recognition.

Our gardener at Ayer Itam Sebastian invited us to come and view him to a Hindu ceremony where he was going to do a fire walk. We were warned to keep our distance from the 'faithful' as they appeared to be drugged and could be dangerous. Sebastian liked 'Toddy'. He was often drunk. He invited us to go with him to see an Indian movie. It probably would have been interesting, but we never did go.
We got on very well with all our Amahs and gardeners, although we only had the one Amah - Lim Gaik Choo for the whole two years, but about three gardeners. It was no secret that they much preferred to work for the Australians than their own people. They were much better treated and better paid too, I think. We could often hear the servants being beaten in the Asian house next door.

It was funny when Amahs and gardeners were looking after pre-school Australian children. These little Aussie kids could speak fluent Chinese, Indian and Malayan (and English) without mixing up the languages.

All windows in the houses had wire grills to discourage burglars. Considering this was 40 years ago, they thought they had a crime problem! Crims found a way around this supposedly, by putting hooks on long fishing poles and would lift watches and wallets and things out through the windows. If you woke up and saw someone doing this you were warned not to grab the pole because they put razor blades on it.

Many locals chewed Beetle nut, (a narcotic) then spat it out on the pavement, which gave the pavement a pinkish tinge. There were signs in three languages in the buses -"Do Not Spit!" - No please nor thank you.

You could pick up a lot of nasties if you walked bare-foot. We were told never to walk without thongs or shoes. There was a microscopic thingy called Hookworm; it would chew into the sole of your foot with its teeth! And then travel in the blood stream up to your Liver and Lungs to do whatever.
I just read on the Internet some of the symptoms of Hookworm; "increased appetite for bulky or strange substances (e. g., clay)" I never knew that!

The disease I got was Planters Warts. They are very painful large flat warts on the feet that push back into the skin. Felt like a stone in my shoe. Very contagious. I could hardly walk. An Army ambulance took me to the Army hospital in KL to burn them off. Being a skin problem, you can guess what ward it was. In my two years in this country, I was learning heaps.
Planter's Warts were nothing compared to what I could have got, thanks to Sydney Tooth. He was a friend of a local girl named 'Sity'. I thought she was cute, and we would visit her from time to time. City wanted to be more friendlier with me, but it didn't work out, I'm not sorry to say.

Sometimes we were taken over by ferry to the Air Base. I would sit in the Sabres (careful not to touch anything with black and yellow stripes) and take photos of the Sabres lined up - lost all these photo's - Swimming in pool at Butterworth. The instrumental 'Guitar Boogie Shuffle' always puts me back at the Butterworth Pool when I hear it. I crawled in a Canberra bomber - very snug for whoever sat in the back - I wouldn't like to fly there. I liked seeing the big Vulcan Bombers flying down the Straights.

After a year, for some reason, we moved to Tanjung Tokong, Pantai Molek Street I think. A new duplex built on reclaimed swamp. Two houses joined by a common hole in the middle. Rain, sun and dust came into the middle of the house - grew plants very well - plenty of light - I liked it - but we could hear the neighbours next door very clearly and vice versa. Wayne and Fay Grinter lived there. Our families were all good friends. At the back the fence was wire mesh and looked straight down into a mangrove swamp. Any time we could go and see eels and sea snakes just a couple of feet from our fence.

After about six months, the house started to crack, so we moved up the hill to a new two-story house in Hok Hin Terrace, Choong Lye Hin Road at the South end Mainland side on the corner. (When I went back for a visit in 1974 I took a photo of it. It had changed a lot - I should have gone in and said hello, it didn't occur to me that RAAF families would still be there.) I'd roar down the hill on my bike from home to the main intersection opposite Snowies (which I don't think was there in 1960) and stop the bike with my thong against the back wheel. The bikes in Penang were all heavy black things. I had to leave my nice red and white Speedwell in Sydney.

Behind us was Mount Erskine Road with its Jap Pill boxes and Chinese graveyards. Jap Pill Boxes - that's what we called them but I think they were built by the British - As far as I know there was no land fighting in Penang - A lot of bombs were dropped on Georgetown though (only 15 years before...).

While in the Senior Scouts, 23rd Georgetown North, I went for my Marksman badge. The Army let us use their rifle range and equipment. We used Jungle Carbines, a shortened 303. I earned the badge, by hitting the target a number of times, but never got the badge. A couple of us picked up spent bullets from behind the targets - while someone started shooting! I took a pile of bullets and empty casings home, melted the lead in a cooking pot. Then I scraped sulphur off match sticks and stuffed the sulphur into the empty cartridges, jammed lead into the cartridge and made a really 'heavy duty' gun barrel out of a bicycle pump with a lit candle under the cartridge and the barrel pointed at a dart board. The cartridge blew up and I shot myself in the leg. I didn't feel it hit, but my brother noticed blood spurting out. We went to a RAAF friend who worked in the first aid clinic at the Hostel (and he didn't tell anyone about this) but he couldn't find any bullet in my leg. It's still there now, probably just a small part of the copper shell casing. Incidentally, the badge was for 'proper care and handling' of guns.

Another explosive device we made used two large nuts and bolts. Screw nut part way into one bolt and put about half a matchbox full of match heads into cavity. Screw other bolt into nut - very tightly. Then throw the device into a concrete ditch up in hills near the Jap pillboxes. Tremendous noise - We stopped doing this because the bolt nearly always fired backwards toward us. Would these descriptions come under the Internet definition of terrorist bomb making?

We would have rock fights with the Jap pillboxes. Some would defend the Pillboxes, and others would attack them. I know where I would rather be any day. Outside! Being in one of those things with someone shooting at you, with very poor vision of what's going on outside, would be terrifying - even with rocks it was bad. It seemed such a dumb concept to want to waste so much concrete on these things.

Up near the Jap pillboxes where we went lots of times, we came across a large swarm of wasps hanging from a tree. We started to throw rocks at them from 'a safe distance'. No such thing as a safe distance. Many people have been killed (and eaten) by these wasps. In the hills there, there were these little weeds that closed up their leaves when you touched them - they fascinated me.

Kite flying was a big thing then. You could buy a kite for a few cents or make your own. They weren't like our diamond shape kites. A type of oval shape and extremely manoeuvrable. We used to have kite 'fights'. A lot of fun. If another kite appeared nearby, you would manoeuvre over to it and try to cross his line with yours. Then you give it a couple of tugs and cut his line. We ground up glass and mixed it with glue and spread it on the line. Everyone did it. It took a fair amount of skill, manoeuvring and dodging into position and evading the other kite.

Our Scout group went on an overland hike diagonally across the island, coming out at Ayer Itam. We had a lot of adventures on that trip! The jungle was so thick in places, you had crawl on your stomach to get through. Plenty of snakes and other things! I woke up one night with a big black round thing about the size of a penny (or 20 cents coin) on my arm - when I moved it took of with a very odd noise. A cobra slid into a tent I was sharing with Kenny Piggot. I forget how we got it out. I wouldn't do any of this stuff now!! Our scout hike needed to be registered with local police. They wanted to lend us some rifles in case we met any communist guerrillas. Still supposed to be some around. Imagine reading about a gun battle between some scouts and guerrillas! Silly! We did some skinny-dipping along the way - I recommend it. Some local coolie women appeared on a hill hooting at us.

Quite a few of us learned Judo from a Malayan fellow named Mal, who lived in Erskine Road. He was a big fan of James Dean. On a wall inside his house he had a picture of James Dean's crashed car with candles and incense burning in front of it.

The Icing on the Cake was the trip home on the JVO in December 1960. About three days out the RAAF treated us to an air display. We converted our Malayan dollars into Dutch Guilders to use on the ship. I spent a lot of Guilders on Lime Sodas with icecream. Does anyone remember the old (30) fellow playing some strange type of 'accordion' "Begin the Beguine" at the back of the ship?. We could see the ocean bottom coming down Cape York inside the Barrier Reef - Rainbow colours on the horizon. I had a crush on Miss Bamberger, I think I managed to get a goodbye kiss before we left on the JVO.
There was a baby born on the JVO (whether this happened or was just the subject of conjecture) by an Australian father, a Chinese mother, coming from Malaya, to Australia, and born on a Dutch ship. Could it take its pick of five nationalities?
Sailing into Sydney Harbour on a bright sunny morning took my breath away. Unfortunately, about two years later the JVO blew up and sank with a lot killed.

I now live in Dundas, Sydney, married and no children and work in the IT field. I'd love to see more photos on this site for the 58-60 years.

Here are some names of a few I can remember;

Sid Tooth
Lynne Stratford
Sue Stratford
Judy Smith
Judy Turvy
Gary Cooper
Penelope Betteridge
Wendy ?
Paul Cooke
Kevin Moon
Tony 'Spud' Murphy
Ian Alcock
John Paget

Very Detailed Commentary of War in Penang
http://www.penangstory.net/docs/Abs-PaulHKratoska.doc

My web site with a lot of personal nonsense;
http://members.value.com.au/paulfrancis/
My work email;
PaulF@Unwired.com.au

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt
You need to browse to 'Nederland Line' to see excellent site about this ship.
http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/