Take it as it comes. That’s about all I can say. You got the good and the bad. I forget the bad parts. My age is a hundred and four. I was born in Camperdown, in the Western District (Victoria). I can't remember much when we were really young but life was simple but life was good though. You got up, you got dressed, had your breakfast. We all walked down to school, come home for dinner, back to school again and at night, any kids around, neighbours, we’d be playing with them, until you have tea. Mum never used to ask us what we what we wanted to eat. You were given it and you ate it. And these days there was no TV. And there were very few wirelesses too. We were on the only ones in the street that had a wireless [radio]. One of the neighbours at night... Somebody would come in and they’d sit down in the loungeroom and listen to the wireless. My father, he bought a car. We used to go out on the weekends. That’s one thing I can remember. We had a dog. Called him ‘Nip.’ We used to go out rabbitting with him. It was close to the Stoney Rises between Colac and Camperdown. They go for the rabbits. We skin a rabbit and I sell the skins. My parents, they were in Camperdown. My father had a a tailoring business. He had a fairly good business but I wasn’t too wrapt in tailoring. I didn’t like it. I didn't I didn’t want to be a tailor. You go down and you sit on your tail and sew all day. Until I was fourteen you had to be at school. When I turned fourteen, that was it, I went out and got myself a job. You’d leave school, you couldn't get a job . It wasn't there. It was just a country town, still be in the middle of The Depression. Yes, work at anything, anything as long as you earned a little bit. They were bad years...those... The Depression. Her name was Yvonne. She lived in a place called Terang and I lived in a place called Camperdown. And there was fourteen miles between them. And we used to go over to Terang. We had motorbikes. We’d go over for skating. Roller skating. And that’s where I met her. Yvonne. At the skating rink. We got to know each other on Sunday on the back of the motorbike we’d go away on a Sunday. I liked her. That’s all I can say. You have your blues. Your differences of opinion. Well that’s happened to us. We wouldn’t talk to each other for a few days. You come together again and make it up. Carry on again. I was working in a garage. When I left there it was to go into the army. I joined up from Camperdown. I just went overseas, the Middle East and New Guinea. And they used me in their workshops. Second, Fourth Army Field Workshops. We didn’t do any fighting. They gave us a rifle but it was a nuisance. We didn't use weapons. We fixed them. Running repairs, that was our jobs. We were up in the front. It was a bit hairy at times. After any skirmishes, we’d go out and collect the vehicles that were out of action. And we repaired, running repairs on them. As a unit that we were a fairly small unit. We got on all pretty well. No worries there. We stuck together. I've got a soft spot for that unit. I was placed at Tobruk just towards the finish of it. When I went over there, entered Tobruk, it wasn’t so bad. It was just at night time when they’d come over and do a bit of aerial bombing. In Tobruk there were these levees. We used to dig into the levee and put a bit of tarpaulin across it. We lived in that. All our workshops, we had that all camouflaged. We were there for a little while and they moved us out. We went to Alamein. We were at Alamein. It was a bit like Melbourne, the beaches in Melbourne. And then at the end of each there’s a headland. We’re in between. We were there for a while, and from Alamein they withdrew us. We went to Cairo. I went to the pyramids. Went into the pyramids. We were there for a while and they shifted us over to Palestine. It was a staging camp and they shipped us down to Suez. Port Suez. Île de France ship brought us back home. It was good to be home. We decided to get married. We were married in Terang. And I went back into the War. Second Fourth Workshops were disbanded. They went all ways. Some went west. Some went north. Oh, we were taken from Port Moresby and we went up through Kakoda and in there. We didn’t see much fighting. It was the same there in the workshops. I was in a different crowd. I was sent back from New Guinea, back to Melbourne. I think I was about six years or something like that in the army when I was discharged. It’s a futile thing, war. They are people like we are. There wasn't much work going down at Camperdown. The young people had grown up and had taken over the jobs. I had mates in the army that worked in the SEC (State Electricity Commission) and they told me to get a job down at Yallourn, in Gippsland, which I did. I was working down around the open cut. We had our own home. A nice little home. A brick veneer home. We were quite happy there. Life was good then and Yvonne became pregnant. And then Wendy followed up. Just the two girls. We were there for about 19 years, I think. Still in the SEC. They transferred me, gave me a different job. Transferred me to Richmond. They had a laboratory there and I was doing research work there. I was doing that until I retired. It was good to me. Good wages, good salaries. They did the wrong thing when they sold SEC. I can’t understand why they sold out. When Yvonne went, I’d be about 96 or something like that. We were together here. She’s lucky, I think, in a way. She was 94 and she had this fall and she just slipped away quietly. She was in no pain. She wasn’t in any pain then, and I've been here on my own since. We had a good life.