Geoff Ayling Manilla Story 1939-1948

I was very encouraged upon finding your website with photographs of life in Manilla. I lived in Manilla from 1939 to 1948 and went to the Manilla District Rural Public School. My family first lived on the corner of Court and Hill Street, then on the corner of Strafford and Hill Street. It appears among your photographs that you have shown the home owned by the McKenzie family where we lived in Strafford Street. In those days we had a tennis court which does not show in your photograph. My father was employed at the Commonwealth Bank during the war and was then transferred to Bathurst. In 1949 he was transferred to Tasmania.

There is much I would like to know about homes and people, many of whom have now all gone. The only person I know who is still alive is Ken Moy, who has moved into the town upon the sale of the family farm at Rushes Creek Road. I have looked up the Manilla General Cemetery records and have found many people I knew.

My father was the Captain of the Manilla Rifle Club. The mayor of the town was Alton Richmond McLeod, who had been a keen rifle shooter and was captain of the NSW Rifle Team. He died about 1951.

I often wondered where Tony Vere, the daughter of the Headmaster of the school, eventually resided. As well, I would like to know where Kay Harrison is now living. She was the daughter of Bill Harrison who was employed on the NSW Railway and I think later owned the picture theatre. His wife succeeded him and by now would have passed on.

I can remember the vacant block on the corner next to the picture theatre when the building on it was on fire. That was during the war. Half the town came out at night to see it burning.

What happened to the McKenzie house with the tennis court? Your photograph does not show the beautiful jacarandah trees and white fence around the whole property. Someone told me that there had been a family murder there sometime after 1948. Is it being looked after today or does it remain empty?

You will be just as aware as I of the temporary nature of residency of many people who lived in Manilla. From the encounters I have had with Manilla people living in other Australian States, there is no doubt that more than 90 percent of those I went to school with have grown up and made their lives elsewhere. Two of those people for example approached me in Hobart, Tasmania to say that they remembered me at school in Manilla, i.e. before 1948.

Hence, your search of events in the past has had to be largely from people who have tended to remain in the Manilla area. There were however 10 times as many people from Manilla who lived elsewhere.

I certainly did know Grant Harrison from the time he was brought home from hospital as a baby about 1948. I saw him again as a little kid when I visited Manilla in 1959. His father Bill was by then advancing in his efforts to own half the town. I imagine that Kay married and left Manilla. In 1996 I was driving through on the way to Sydney and visited her mother for about 30 minutes, when she told me Kay was living in Gunnedah. By then Bill Harrison had died. I could not find a record for him in the General Cemetery. I was then on a one-month visit from China, to then go to live in Hyderabad, India. On that occasion I visited Don and Fay Moy, also Ken Moy. I was glad I did visit because in that year both Don and Fay died.

It is quite a coincidence that you were employed at the McKenzie house opposite the Church of England. I also had the job with my young brother of spreading cow manure from our kids' billy cart over the entire garden. We were however just slave labour. Your photograph shows the beautiful jacarandahs, palm trees and citrus grove missing. I guess they do not last forever. In the back yard were two huge fig trees, one blue and the other golden. But they also appear to have disappeared.

You may remember that the McKenzie family also owned another home directly across from the church in Strafford Street. During the war my task for our family was to take a can of milk each morning across to Miss McKenzie. We milked a cow in the garden at a small holding shed located next to the chook run. Then in 1948 she asked us to vacate when she thought her nephew would want to return to the house upon being released from a prisoner of war camp in Thailand. We had a feeling that he never returned from that camp. Instead, my father received a transfer in his job and we moved to Bathurst.

War-time was interesting for Manilla kids. The crossroads at Hill Street and Strafford Street, with the church on one corner was a regular bombing run for pilots training at the Commonwealth Air Pilots Training Aerodrome near Tamworth. In 1942-3 we used to watch several Kittyhawks in their camouflage colours flying low around the town. Those pilots were sent up to New Guinea where they were all shot down near Port Moresby. In 1944 I well remember young pilots in Liberators would wave to me as a kid as they took a run down Strafford Street and opened their bomb-bay doors, right over my head as I would walk over the cross-road.

I don't know whether I will be able in my 70s to return again and see the museum. I do know that young Austin Kelly used to return each year to Manilla. By now he must be about 85 years of age. I found records of graves for his parents.

If you are interested to document wartime life there were two major centres of interest: the Manilla Road Training Camp of the Australian Army (out of Tamworth) and the Empire Air Training Scheme airfield, also at Tamworth. Manilla regularly received visits from trainees on exercises from these camps. I described to you the aircraft that regularly flew around the town. However, these young fellows were all destined to join units fighting against the Japanese.

Our family had contact with a relative who had just joined up in the Army when I was a very small child in 1941. That unit at Manilla Road was then sent up to a camp at Camooweal, west of Mount Isa. They arrived in Singapore at the end of 1941, just in time to be met by the Japanese Army, which sent them all to Changi and to work on the Burma Railway. A small number were sent to Sandakan in Borneo where all were murdered. These blokes were all from the Manilla Road Training Camp intake of 1941 and came from all over NSW.

During the early part of the war it was common to find men on leave in Manilla, who were in uniform: the Australian Army, RAAF and airforce people from the UK, Canada and the US. Most of them were billeted in homes around the town. They also took up available accommodation in the pubs. The overseas airforce blokes were there because the Tamworth aerodrome was a base for all kinds of aircraft, which were being prepared for departure to the north of Australia.

You might also like to try to obtain accounts from people who were kids at the School, where each week until the end of 1945, there were assemblies where fathers who would not be coming home were honoured. The heads of the school at that time were a Mr Hunt (Senior School) and Mr Vere (Junior School). The assemblies were for the school to advise of the need for sensitive consideration needed for kids, who had suddenly ceased to come to school upon their mothers receiving the worst possible news.

The notes I provided would definitely have rung a bell for many families who had someone among the prisoners of war on the Burma Railway. They had been trained in 1941 at the army camp on the Tamworth Road. They arrived in Singapore shortly before the Japanese arrived, only to have the English general in charge at Singapore decide the gallant thing to do was surrender.

Many pilots who flew over Germany from 1942-43 on, had been trained at the Tamworth Airstrip. There were many nationalities who trained there. I can remember a Mrs Campbell who lived next door to us in Court Street (second house down from Hill Street; we were on the corner until 1944) because she used to host groups of those blokes as a home away from home. Her own son was already away and serving. I was a kid and used to climb up on the fence to watch all these blokes arriving in airforce uniforms at the home of Mrs Campbell. Later on as kids we would be amazed at fighter aircraft in camouflage colours wheeling around over our houses with pilots waving to us.

The pilot teaching program near Tamworth  included Australians, Canadians, British and others. They were training in the planes they took with them to Port Moresby. All the rest of the trained troops went by truck north through Barraba, then west of Qld and crossed over the NT border near Mount Isa. When they arrived at Singapore, they were just in time to obey the Governor's order to surrender to the Japanese.

Those who were in fighter aircraft and had flown around Manilla, landed at Port Moresby. They were all killed fighting in their aircraft. My grandfather's youngest brother Lindsay kept a diary of his capture while working on the Burma Railway. He was buried beside the trainline with a biscuit tin containing his diary. After the war he was dug up with his tin. He was reburied in North Thailand. But his tin was received by his wife and sisters, who typed it out and sent it around the Ayling family.

Those years of these pilots-in-training are very much in my memory as the pilots waved to me in Court Street, Manilla. We always waved at low planes flying overhead. We were sometimes surprised when we saw a plane come down on the other side of the river, where the racetrack was located. Very often they would buzz the turn and wave at us as they did tight turns to the delight of us kids.

In 1959 I visited Manilla and stayed at the motel on the corner of Court and Manilla Streets. The owners were new in the town and asked me where the airport was during the war. I explained that we used to watch planes bring the next movie from Tamworth, landing at the race-track.

Throughout the war I lived (1939-1944) on the corner of Hill Street and the main road that travels from the school to the hospital. In 1944 we moved to the home owned by the Mackenzie family opposite the Church of England. I went back there at one time and found the two large fig trees in the middle of the back yard hard gone. As well, there were two large jacaranda trees on the western side of the property, immediately opposite the church. They also have gone, no doubt taken over by white ants.

There was no pool in Manilla, so we would drive to Tamworth at the end of a hot day. Otherwise, we would go to the river about 200 yards down from the weir. Half the town used to go there to soak and laze about on the river bank.

My father was transferred with the Commonwealth Bank and was one of the few staff employed there. He was transferred in 1948 to Bathurst, where he did the same work for the Bank. Then in 1949, he was transferred to the Commonwealth Bank in Launceston, Tasmania. I ran across a young Manilla fellow there, known to me as Ronald MacDonald and working with the ANZ Bank. Otherwise, I have not met many friends from the Manilla District Rural Pubic School.

I graduated as a Forensic Scientist and performed regular duties as chemist in the Mortuary at the Royal Hobert Hospital. My young brother Richard graduated as a doctor and is still working in his practice on the Gold Coast. I was keen on physics and chemistry and in my retirement taught 18-year-old kids at several cities across PR China. I did that for 20 years.

I am now back in Australia and writing a book on Epigenetics which I plan to present to the University of Tasmania for my Doctorate of Science. I will need to get cracking because I have had some worrying events for an aged old bloke.

I currently teach people to shoot with the 7.62 rifle from 300 to 1500 yards. I remember the rifle range at Manilla which went back to 600 yards. They opened it up after the war, but my father (who was the keen rifle shot of the family) was transferred to Bathurst with the Commonwealth Bank in 1948. I really only started rifle shooting in 1950 when we were in Launceston, Tasmania. I remember an old fellow in Manilla, Mr Macleod, who had been a keen rifle shot just before the war. In my shooting career, I won the Queen's Prize 16 times, including HM The Queen's Prize at Bisley, England in 1981. I also won the World Championship in Rifle Shooting at Bisley in 1980.

You described the large works on the corner of Manilla Street and Court Street. My father took me down to see it burn down in 1943-4. The sight is greatly improved by the public park set up by the Manilla Council.

I remember Dr Dick Windeyer, a graduate of Cambridge University. He came out here with his very English wife and he undertook to provide a service to the town upon Dr Racin retiring and living on the coast. I understand that he later married Nurse James from the hospital.

I used to know a 16-year-old lad who got a job working as the office boy at the Commonwealth Bank. He was the son of our dentist when we were in Manilla, Dr and Mrs Duncan? He used to visit Manilla each year; but I imagine that went on until he was about 80 years old. He lived in Sydney where I am now, having returned from China to live in Australia.

I started to go to the Manilla District Rural Public School in 1945. We used to hear the apologies received from widows whose children would no longer be attending that school. Our teacher was Miss Manville. Many fathers were in prisoner of war camps in SE Asia. In 1948, We had a teacher for Year 3, Mr Casey. I then went to Bathurst Public School in 1948 until 1949, then after 18 months my father was transferred to Launceston in Tasmania.

I graduated in Science (Chemistry) at The University of Tasmania. I have worked as a university research scientist, hospital mortuary scientist and as a teacher (Science, Physics and Chemistry) in PR China, India, United Kingdom and Australia.

We lived in two rental homes in Manilla (Cr Court St and Hill St) and later on at the other corner of Hill Street and opposite the Church of England. We lived there from 1944 until 1948, but had to relocate when a Mackenzie son was expected to return to Australia on being released from a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp.

My grandfather's youngest brother was trained as a soldier at the Training Camp just out of Tamworth on the Manilla Road. It has since been changed to become a Nursing Hospital. On completion of his training, all of the unit were relocated to Singapore in 1941-2. Upon capture by the Japanese, he was then transferred to work upon the Burma Railway, where he died in 1943 after putting up with surgery without anesthetic. He was reinterred from his grave beside the railway line to a cemetery in Northern Thailand.

Best regards

Geoff Ayling

Partner and Principal Researcher at The Forrest Project, set up to collate and publish every one of about 3000 oil paintings by Haughton Forrest (1826-1925). Ian Malik is my cousin and other Partner.

Link to Main Manilla NSW Australia Page

https://manillanswaustralia.blogspot.com/

Link to Ken and Win Rogerson Story

https://kenrogerson.blogspot.com/