(06) Dimitrios Aronis-Beys: The Spectre of War

(An extract from the memoirs of Prof. Manuel J. Aroney)

The strong conviction existed within the Greek community that our presence in Australia was greatly resented by many Anglo-Celtic Australians. A legacy of bitterness had been left by the “Report of the Royal Commission into Social and Economic Effect of Increase in Number of Aliens in North Queensland” – the Ferry Report of the 21st of June 1925 which contained outlandish generalisations such as “the Greek residents of North Queensland are generally of an undesirable type and do not make good settlers – they are not agriculturalists and add nothing to the wealth or security of the country – they engage in no useful work”. My family, often in company of friends out for an evening stroll, were frequently sworn at and angrily berated with the almost standard “speak English you bloody dagos”. We never reacted in an overt way but the feeling within us was reinforced that we were hated and as Greeks we should stick together. The children were given to understand that it was imperative to learn Greek and to cling to our traditions and culture.

My spoken Greek was quite good considering we didn’t have a Greek school or teacher and hence no formal tuition - it was acquired through conversation with my parents and others but I was not able to read or write. I had a smattering of English, not all of it polite, picked up mainly from the sons of our neighbours, the Evans family. Mostly these people kept their distance since in their perception we were an inferior race and had “a touch of colour”. This was conveyed in many ways; I recall Mrs Evans saying to my mother one day “I see you had visitors and one of them was white”. It was not meant to be unkind – just a statement of fact as she believed it. The Evans family were particularly annoyed when visitors to our home talked animatedly in Greek; I suppose it always sounds louder and more irritating when you don’t understand it. One Sunday afternoon, a mighty crash and, on exploring, we found someone had thrown a whole brick on our roof - a blunt expression of resentment. We came to terms with such incidents and never complained. In later years relations improved but there was rarely any warmth or acceptance.

Our quiet world suddenly changed in 1941. The war in Europe had been raging for two years and the situation looked very bleak for the allied forces. We read in the papers that Australian troops were in North Africa fighting Rommel’s army and among them was George Kepreotis, our distant relative, who had volunteered for the Australian infantry. In Mackay, all of this somehow lacked reality though we did notice that Italian men from the various shops disappeared as they were taken away to be interned. One balmy night on the 28th of October 1940, Paul Malos, who lived two houses from us, came striding down Macalister Street looking agitated and calling out excitedly “the Italians have attacked Greece”. He heard it on the radio. The invasion caused great dismay among the Greeks of Mackay; they feared for the motherland and for relatives living there. As the war progressed, despair turned to jubilation when the Greek forces defeated Mussolini’s army in Albania and sent it reeling into retreat in what was the first major setback suffered by the Axis powers. The Mackay Daily Mercury wrote of the heroism of the Greek army and on the radio Winston Churchill lavishly extolled the fighting qualities of the Hellenes. The Greeks of Mackay were ecstatic but, regrettably, their euphoria was short-lived as the might of the German war machine was unleashed on the Greek forces and their British and Australian allies and both mainland Greece and Crete fell after heroic defence. Despite this, a new-found respect was evident between the Greeks and Australians.

We didn’t know it then, but the horror of war was soon to menace us even in Mackay. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on the 7th of December 1941 brought the United States of America into the war on the side of Great Britain and her allies. Everyone was stunned to hear three days later that the warships Prince of Wales and Repulse, which were symbolic of Britain’s naval might in the far east, were sunk by the Japanese. The Americans were expelled from the Philippines and General Douglas McArthur set up headquarters in Brisbane in the south-eastern corner of Queensland. The Japanese imperial army seemed invincible as it thrust south conquering all in its path and the fall of the British bastion of Singapore brought to Australians the sudden realisation that “mother England” could not protect them and that they were under serious threat. This was further emphasised by the destructive Japanese air raid on Darwin and raids on Townsville as well as the midget submarine attack in Sydney harbour. Trenches were dug in our school grounds and we were drilled in what to do in the event of an air attack. Sandbags were used to build air raid shelters in the backyards of homes; they offered little protection from close bomb strikes but could absorb flying shrapnel. When Japanese planes approached northern Queensland, air raid sirens sounded a warning right along the coastal towns and everyone scurried into the shelters. The first time this happened, my mother quickly jumped out of bed and grabbing her handbag, rushed me into the shelter, calling loudly to my father to join us. He did this slowly and reluctantly but when siren warnings were heard on subsequent nights he took no notice and stayed in the comfort of bed. Mackay was never bombed but rumours were circulating of an imminent Japanese invasion and everyone seemed certain it would happen at Mackay which, in contrast to Townsville, had no armed forces stationed there and was unprotected and vulnerable. Also, the people of central and north Queensland were convinced that a secret agreement existed to implement the “Brisbane line” strategy in which Queensland north of the state capital Brisbane was regarded as indefencible and would be allowed to fall to the enemy.

Like many other townsfolk we locked up our home and distanced ourselves from Mackay, going to a sugar cane farm at Farleigh a few miles inland. This farm with a large rambling home was owned by the Tziolis family who were our “koumbari” (the youngest of the Tziolis boys was my father’s Godson). For years my parents had extended much hospitality to the Tziolis family whenever they came to town so there was a sense of obligation on their part to take us in. Living on a farm was a totally new experience for me. So much was different – our drinking water was that collected in a tank as rainwater runoff from the roof of the house. For other purposes such as washing, a hand pump was used to bring up water from a nearby well, but I had little confidence in its purity as small green frogs would be drawn up as well. The men would often go shooting and this was followed by a feast of cooked game under a tree outside the home. When walking through cleared bush or to the watermelon field nearby, we always took two dogs with us which were experienced in sensing and scaring off snakes and there were plenty of those around. On one occasion the Tziolis sons took me to a distant, partly-hidden shed which was a repository for bottles of spirits from an illicit still close by. Drinking appeared to add lustre to what seemed to be a monotonous existence though of course it was restricted to the men. Life on the farm was tolerable for a while but it was not for me. Being used to the shops and picture theatres of Mackay I found it very boring.

Rumours intensified about the momentum of the Japanese thrust towards Australia and my parents decided to go further inland to a very small settlement in the sugar lands called Finch Hatton, about thirty miles west of Mackay. The road there was really rough and subject to flooding in the wet season. We rented a small house on the fringe of a sugar cane plantation. Two shops and a hotel were the centre of the township; one of the shops was a very modest general store owned by David Andronicos while the other, a restaurant, was run by Charlie Zaglas (son of George Zaglas of Mackay). There wasn’t much to do and most afternoons my father, David and Charlie would pass the time playing “prefa” (a Greek card game) at the back of the restaurant; they seemed to enjoy it greatly. My major excitement came with the cane burn-offs at harvesting time which were spectacular and lent a sense of drama to an otherwise very tranquil life. The flames could be seen in cane fields close to us and the sky glowed orange or red at night as fires swept through delineated areas of cane burning off leaves, undergrowth and vermin. The cane cutters subsequently moved in to harvest the “cleaned” stalks and load them on narrow tracked mini-train wagons for dispatch to the sugar mill which from the outside looked like a large factory with smoke belching from a tall chimney. Most of my days were spent at the state primary school about a mile walk down the road which had a solitary male teacher who supervised and taught all classes – an impossible task. Needless to say, no-one learnt much but attending school gave focus to the day and imposed a regime of discipline. Occasionally we went to Mackay to see our home, to say hello to relatives and friends still there and of course to do some shopping, though there wasn’t much to buy in those days of austerity. Nonetheless, I found it exciting and looked forward to it greatly.

Following the great American victory in the Coral Sea Battle of May 1942, people came to realise that the threat of Japanese invasion was receding and late that year we returned to Mackay. It was wonderful to be home but the town had changed in that it seemed to be full of American airmen flown in from New Guinea and elsewhere for periods of leave.

Thrilling to me were the large numbers of military aircraft flying low over the town. Flying Fortresses and Liberators, my favourites among the bombers, were fearsome war machines. I was glad they were on our side. Most spectacular of all were the fighter planes with their incredible speed and manoeuvrability and these would frequently buzz the town like gigantic angry wasps. Lockheed Lightnings and Thunderbolts were the best. I would rush out onto Macalister Street and watch in awe as they dived from great heights hurtling towards the ground in a near-lethal display of brinkmanship, waiting to the last few seconds before pulling out of the dive and shooting upwards. The thunderous roar added to the drama. It seemed to me, a solitary figure transfixed in the middle of the road, that at times a pilot would be targeting me with his plane – a fanciful notion.