Chapter 59 - I
Call Australia Home By Stan Blackford
I
reported to Fort William at Calcutta, showed my discharge authorisation,
surrendered my pistol and ammunition and was issued with a discharge
certificate. In this way I became 'lost' as far as the Indian Army was
concerned, but called every day on the British Army Repatriation section asking
for passage to Australia.
My
social life had ground to a halt. Apart from the Leicesters, I had no more
friends to call on; they had all gone to England or Australia. The few
Anglo-Indian girls left in Calcutta were monopolised by American and British
servicemen who had more money to spend than local lads – and most of these
girls entertained the hope that some serviceman might marry them and
'repatriate' them to England or America as war-brides!
I
was delighted, therefore, when my Aunt (by marriage) Olive Duncan wrote and
suggested that I call on her young sister, Sheila Roberts, who was employed as
a governess with a Mr and Mrs Harley in an exclusive suburb of Calcutta. A
liveried servant showed me into an elegant drawing room, where I was received
by an aristocratic-looking, silver-haired lady who asked me my name and
business. I was attired as a Captain of the Indian Army. This tended to blur
arbitrary class distinctions; or rather it posited me on the side of the upper
crust, and she felt it her bounden duty to protect an apparently lonely and
vulnerable British officer from the machinations of an Anglo-Indian nanny, fair
and attractive though she may be, but nevertheless below the class to which we
belonged.
'Captain
Blackford,' she said in cultured tones when I had introduced myself. 'What a
coincidence! My maiden name is Blackford. What is your father's name, and what
part of England do you come from?'
When
I told her my background, she exclaimed, 'Why, you must be Edward's son. Then I
am your Aunt Dolly – Dolly Harvey.' 1
'And
How is Edward keeping these days?' she continued. 'He had such a promising
career ahead of him in the civil service. What a shame it was that he broke
ranks and married that terrible Anglo-Indian girl from one of the railway
colonies.' Her disgust at miscegenation over-rode her sense of tact and polite
behaviour! 2
I
was so obsessed with getting to Australia as soon as possible, that I ignored
other options, such as travelling via England. There was only one ship, the Asturias,
catering for the thousands of servicemen and their families going direct from
India to Australia, and it was taking one month for each return trip. On the
other hand, three or four troopships were leaving Bombay for England each week.
Had I gone to the UK, I could have secured an immediate passage from there to
any Commonwealth country for only £10. I could have visited relatives in
England, seen a bit of the country and arrived in Australia sooner instead of
cooling my heels in Calcutta for some months without any occupation or income!
I
spotted a small advertisement in the Personal column of The Statesman.
Anyone wishing to migrate to Australia, it stated, should contact a Mr Chas P
Smith MBE, expatriate Australian and former Assistant Postmaster General of
Burma, who could arrange employment and accommodation in Australia, and
sometimes a passage also.
I
met the charming old gentleman in his room at the Grand Hotel. He perused my
references from school and from the two firms I had worked for prior to joining
the Army, and asked me numerous questions about my experience. Finally he made
his pronouncement: Adelaide in South Australia offered the best opportunities for
a fine upstanding man of my 'talents and qualifications'. I hadn't realised
hitherto that I had any special marketable talents and qualifications, but I
graciously acknowledged his high estimate of my many sterling qualities,
accepted his advice on settling in Adelaide and paid a fee of Rs50.
He
told me to call and see him two or three times each week as he had many
contacts in the shipping business and was well placed to find me a berth on a
vessel going to Australia. He explained that extra cabins had been added to
many cargo vessels during the war to accommodate the naval ratings who manned
the guns that had been fitted, and that these were now available for
passengers.
'These
ships are not licensed by the Board of Trade to carry passengers,' he continued,
'so the Captain may sign you on as a clerk and sign you off at the first
Australian port of call. You won't have to do any work!'
The
next time I saw him he asked, 'Now where are you going to in Australia?'
'Adelaide,'
I said.
'What
on earth do you want to go to Adelaide for?' he objected. 'For a man with your
qualifications, Sydney is the obvious place to settle!'
'But
you told me to go to Adelaide,' I blurted out.
'O,
did I? Let me look at your file again.' He thumbed through his papers. 'O yes,
yes.' He humphed and hawed as he turned several pages over. Surely he couldn't
have amassed such a large file on me after one short chat!
'Ah,'
he said at last. 'Yes, I have it here. Yes, with your particular
qualifications, Adelaide is definitely the best place for you to settle. There
are great new developments taking place in South Australia which require people
with your particular expertise.' I was glad to learn that I had particular
expertise, and that it was in demand in Adelaide.
Mahatma
Gandhi was cut down by an assassin's bullet on 30 January 1948. Inter-communal
tension increased, murder and mayhem stalked the land and Europeans were more
anxious than ever to leave the country. Anglo-Indian men were in an unenviable
position. They manned the police and communication systems to maintain order,
they ran the railways that were evacuating the British, and they went to work
each day leaving their wives and families at home without protection, and not
knowing whether or not they would live to return home, or whether they would
find their families alive and unharmed.
They
knew full well that the Indians hated them, that Indians saw them as lackeys of
the British who had helped their Imperial masters to hold the country in
subjugation. Now they were helping to evacuate their masters and protectors to
safety, but they, themselves, had no place where they could seek asylum. They
were being thrown to the wolves.
I was
an asylum seeker with nowhere to run to.
'I've
got good news for you,' Mr Smith told me one day towards the end of February.
'Come back straightaway with Rs1000 and I'll give you a letter to a ship's
captain who will take you to Fremantle. He's holding the berth for you until
this evening.'
I
rushed to the bank, drew out Rs1000 and returned to my benefactor. He gave me a
letter to take immediately to the Captain of the Norwegian freighter MV
Elisabeth Bakke, and told me to call back the following day when he would
give me letters regarding employment and accommodation in Adelaide. I gained
the impression that he would have spent no great time or effort in trying to
contact me (domestic telephones were rare at the time); that he would have
given the berth to whomsoever of his numerous clients happened to call next. It
was my good fortune that I visited him at that particular time.
I
reported to the captain within the hour. The following day I called again on Mr
Smith and received copies of correspondence he had allegedly written on my
behalf: a letter to the Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide asking him to arrange
accommodation for me, and letters to the South Australian Chamber of Commerce
and Industry, to Actil Ltd and to General Motors Holden.
Charles
P Smith certainly knew how to write a powerful letter. All these missives
praised me in glowing terms and paid tribute to my character and
industriousness, and left no doubt in the minds of would-be recipients that I
would be a commercial asset of inestimable value to the firm that was fortunate
enough to secure my services – but such abundant praise from a man who really
knew nothing about my background other than what I had told him! His pen had,
no doubt, been dipped in the literary equivalent of the Blarney Stone. 3
Three
days later, on the evening of 29 February 1948, the Elisabeth Bakke
sailed down the Hooghly River with the outgoing tide, carrying eight clients of
the helpful Mr Smith. Apart from myself there were Bill and Mildred Smith with
their twenty-one year-old daughter Joyce (no relatives of Chas P); a Mrs Kelly
with her children Peter and Rosemary, twelve and ten respectively; and an
Anglo-Indian just discharged from the British Army, Noel E Carlysle-Watson. The
consensus of opinion was that Chas P Smith was a confidence man, but we didn't
mind being conned as we had all obtained passages, albeit at black-market
prices, from sources that were not known or available to the general public.
Chas P had provided us with a very much needed service, and we were grateful.
My
first glimpse of Australia was early one morning as the Elisabeth Bakke
sailed up the Swan River and berthed at Fremantle. The drabness of the wharfs
with their long iron sheds and gantries and cranes did nothing to diminish my
excitement. We all wanted to continue our journeys post haste to our final
destinations: the Smiths and I to Adelaide, the Kellys to Melbourne and
Carlysle-Watson to Sydney.
The
ship's agent came aboard as soon as the ship had docked and informed us that
normally 'foreign bottoms' were not allowed to carry passengers on Australian
coastal routes but, due to an acute shortage of travel accommodation, the Elisabeth
Bakke had been granted a special licence to carry us from Fremantle to
Devonport in Tasmania, and thence to Melbourne, its final destination. We eight
immediately paid our fares to Melbourne.
The
ship was to stay exactly seven days in Fremantle before sailing again, and we
thought we'd use the ship as a floating hotel during our short stay. We were
soon disabused of that notion, however. Regulations did not permit passengers
to live aboard 'foreign bottoms' unless they were 'through passengers'. We
claimed to be through passengers: from Calcutta, through Fremantle and through
Devonport to Melbourne. No, our original journey apparently had ended on
arrival at Fremantle. The new journey would not start for another seven days
and No, we could not live aboard this foreign bottom till the sailing
date!
By
eleven in the morning we eight immigrants had been cleared by Customs and were
free to leave. 'But' said the ship's agent, 'I don't know where you will find a
place to stay tonight.' This sounded ominous. Australia was suffering from war
time shortages, the officer explained, and accommodation was scarce. The Smiths
had been met by relatives and thus had been offered a roof over their heads,
but five of us had to find shelter by that evening.
'Well,
in that case we won't hang around,' we declared, 'we'll travel to the Eastern
States by rail. Will you please refund the passage moneys we have just paid?'
'You
have to book at least two weeks ahead for train travel,' the agent told us.
'What
about ships?"
A
few ships apparently carried interstate passengers, but they also were booked
out well in advance, and air travel was not yet in vogue.
'Well, what about hotels?' we asked. 'Or
boarding houses?'
'Nope,'
said the man. 'They are all over-crowded, and things are much worse just now as
country people have flocked into Perth for the Show.'
'The
Show?' Never having heard of a 'Show', we were none the wiser even after he had
told us about the Royal Perth Agricultural Show. He soon convinced us that beds
for visitors were impossible to find.
'This
is an emergency,' we wailed. 'Can't we stay on the ship until we find
accommodation?'
'No,'
said the Captain.
'Just
for one night? Please, one night only.'
'Nope,'
said the agent. 'Regulations forbid it. Better get yourselves a taxi and start
searching.'
Five
of us crammed into a taxi at eleven in the morning, and by four in the
afternoon we were still driving around, calling on hotels and guest houses. The
weather was warm. We were hot and thirsty and tired, and despaired of finding
beds for the night. The Salvation Army and the YMCA and the YWCA hostels were
crowded out.
Mrs
Kelly was hysterical and in tears. 'Take me to a Catholic priest,' she wept.
The taxi took us to the cathedral and Mrs Kelly went into the sacristy wiping
the tears from her eyes.
Half
an hour later Mrs Kelly and a priest came out smiling. 'Take Mrs Kelly and the
girl to the Maylands Hotel,' he instructed the driver. 'And I've booked the
three gentlemen into Pauline Guilfoyle's Hotel Australia.'
'Oh,'
he added, almost as an afterthought, 'I didn't know your names, so I have
booked you all in under the name of Kelly!'
After
dropping Mrs Kelly and Rosemary off at Maylands, we three males booked in at
the Hotel Australia in Perth. We gave our real names, but the receptionist
insisted that the bookings were for three Kellys, so we had to register as
Kelly, Kelly and Kelly. We were ushered into a large room into which six beds
and one dressing table had been crammed; no room for a chair. Three beds each
had an occupant sitting on it, smoking, reading newspapers and idly chatting.
We were introduced to them as Mr Kelly, Mr Kelly and Mr Kelly. And the same
introductions were made as we seated ourselves at a large table for breakfast
the following morning.
Each
day after breakfast the three of us would catch the electric train out to
Maylands, and return to the city with Mrs Kelly and Rosemary. The Hotel
Australia was always crammed with people, either about to go to the showgrounds
or just returned from there. A holiday, almost festive, atmosphere prevailed.
We
five made it our headquarters too, spending much time sitting in the over
crowded lounge and lobby, and venturing out occasionally to the movies or to
Luna Park. The staff took great delight in introducing us to all and sundry as
Mrs Kelly, Mr Kelly, Mr Kelly, Mr Kelly and Rosemary. The real Kellys were very
fair, and the children were rotund in shape like their father, of whom we had
caught a glimpse as we
waved our friends and relatives goodbye at the Kidderpore Docks in Calcutta.
The rest of our small party were slim. As to complexion, I am khaki-ish and
Carlysle-Watson was very dark. The other patrons of the hotel were intrigued
with us as a group and were obviously trying to work out our relationship.
Finally one old woman couldn't contain her curiosity any longer. She sidled up
to Mrs Kelly and remarked, 'My word, Mrs Kelly, your three sons are very
different in appearance, aren't they?'
Quick
as a flash she retorted, 'Yes. I've been married three times.'
I
was struck by the cleanliness of the streets and the shops of Perth after what
I had experienced in the Indian sub-continent and in Iraq. And the neat rows of
houses: they looked like doll's houses after the palatial mansions of India.
The picturesque gardens and parks, though neat and tidy, were not as large and
numerous, nor as colourful as the ones in India where we had teams of malis
to tend them. The hotels and restaurants bore no comparison with the luxury
establishments we knew in India, and the best cinemas here were more like the
dingy country picture theatres of Indian country towns. Shops, especially the
department stores, were bright and cheery looking, and we were overwhelmed by
the array of goods on sale. I had never seen an escalator before and I rode on
them for the slightest pretence.
I
was thrilled by the quantity and quality of confectionery available. I could
not remember how many months, or years, it had been since I had last tasted chocolate.
Here the shops seemed to be overflowing with chocolates: Nestles, Cadbury and
MacRobertson. And milkshakes! The last milkshake I had tasted was in Calcutta
and had cost the equivalent of four Australian shillings, with two shillings
extra for malt. Calcutta, the second city of the British Empire, had only two
milk bars, and the next nearest milk bar was in New Delhi 1500 kilometres away.
Australia
seemed to have a milk bar round every corner, stacked with chocolates and
lollies, and milkshakes cost only four pence, with ha'pence extra for malt.
During my first two days in Perth I ordered three milkshakes at a time and
stood at the counter and drank them in one continuous guzzle. (During my first
six months in Australia I put on four stone in weight, and had to receive three
lots of clothing coupons from the rationing authority to keep myself clothed).
Most
of my week at Perth was spent at Lunar Park, and similarly at Devonport,
Tasmania, where the ship stayed four days. At Melbourne I booked into a hotel
for a week of sightseeing, then caught the overnight train to Adelaide,
arriving here on April Fool's Day 1948. I didn't know that money could
disappear as rapidly as it had over the previous three weeks.
At
Adelaide I was referred to a boarding house run by a delightful English couple,
Mum and Pa Blunt, at 40 North Terrace, Kent Town. They provided board and
lodging for eight young men, all just out of the forces, and this was my home
for twelve months. Bill had been a corporal in the British Army in India before
the War. He immediately conscripted all his lodgers into the British Imperial
Sub-Branch of the RSL4 in Tynte Street, North Adelaide, and
every Friday night he marched his contingent to the clubrooms for our weekly
booze-up and games of indoor bowls.
The
cost of migrating from Calcutta to Adelaide had cost me a small fortune. The
RSL Secretary informed me that I was entitled to claim reimbursement of travel
expenses on discharge from the Army and put me in touch with the Department of
Veteran Affairs. On the latter's advice I wrote to the FCMA 5 in Poona and claimed the cost of a first
class sea passage from Calcutta to Adelaide.
The
FCMA replied promptly, querying how a regular officer of the Indian Army had
managed to land up in Adelaide without authorised travel documents, and
instructed me to return to India forthwith to face a Court of Enquiry to
determine whether or not I should be court martialled for desertion. It
informed me further that I had been demoted from captain adjutant to
lieutenant, that the demotion had been backdated many months, and that the
difference in pay had been debited to my account; and would I please repay it
promptly? Meanwhile it was freezing some thousands of rupees of my deferred
pay, together with discharge pay and gratuities, pending the outcome of the
Court of Enquiry and the possible Court Martial.
I
stopped corresponding with the FCMA – and I never claimed my service medals in
case the Army traced me and had me extradited to India on a charge of desertion.
The
Department of Veterans Affairs said that it would refund me the cost of a
first-class train fare from Perth to Adelaide only. But first I had to fill in
a form giving details of my arrival and stay in Perth. I did this, and some
weeks later I received a letter stating that the DVA had verified my arrival by
MV Elisabeth Bakke in Fremantle, my subsequent travel to Melbourne via
Devonport, my stay in Melbourne and subsequent arrival in Adelaide.
But,
it stated, there was no record of a Captain S T Blackford's having stayed at
the Hotel Australia in Perth during the dates given; would I please explain?
I
explained to a DVA officer that I had booked into the hotel as Captain Kelly.
And why had I assumed the name of Kelly? the man wanted to know. As I told him
about the fiasco his face grew more and more puzzled and incredulous. 'Put your
explanation in writing,' he said.
Not
being a man of letters, I found this a daunting and painstaking task. But
eventually I despatched a long missive to the DVA, and for my trouble I
received a cheque in the post for £17.
Thus
was severed my last link with India and the Indian Army.
I
now called Australia home.
1.
The Harveys had a factory in Calcutta and they profited immensely from
supplying tarpaulins and rubber sheets to the war machine.
2. 'Breaking ranks' or 'letting the side down' was common parlance for describing a union where one of 'our class' had married into a family that was known to have a 'touch of the tarbrush'. It highlighted also a heart-breaking fact that the children of many large Anglo-Indian families were often most dissimilar in colouring, because of the strange propensities that genes have for combining in diverse manners to produce a variety of differing characteristics among siblings. Thus dark children, explained as 'throw-backs', often appeared along with fair ones in many families even when both parents were fair, and was a source of acute embarrassment to the fair-skinned members of the family. It was not unknown during the last century and a half of British rule in India for fair-skinned Anglo-Indian families at retirement to 'go home' to an England which they had never seen, taking only their fair children and leaving the dark ones behind with relatives or friends, or even to fend for themselves, to conceal the fact that their blood line was 'tainted'. Such was the force of colour bias among the British in pre-independence India.
3.
When I arrived in Adelaide and called on the recipients of these laudatory
epistles, I discovered that none of them had ever heard of Charles P Smith
M.B.E., nor recalled receiving letters from anybody in the previous few weeks
concerning an army officer arriving from India needing accommodation and
employment. I am now certain that he never posted the originals!
4. The Returned Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen's
League, commonly referred to as the RSL.
5. FCMA: Field Controller of Military Accounts
who handled all our pay and allowances.
About the Author:
E-mail to: Stan Blackford
Stan Blackford is an Anglo-Indian who was born in and grew up in India. After spending
time in the Army in India during the second World War he moved to Adelaide Australia where he has lived since 1948.