As I grow older, it distresses me that so many of the people who are important to me and have influenced my life, live only in the few surviving memories of the people like me whose lives they've touched. On these following pages are a few recollections of those wonderful people who lent their colour to my life, the people who continue to enrich my life, and my family without whose love my life would be as an empty house.
Among those people are my lifelong mates who were my neighbours, and others I met at The North Unley Boys' Club, and very importantly the gentleman who formed that club, way back around 1940, Mr George Aubrey Jessup. All my life the friendships formed back then, when we were children, that have continued into old age, have been a continuing source of companionship, support and security. The person I am today, good or bad, has been partially forged by the people whose company I have enjoyed (or not) over the years. I've been lucky. Very, very lucky.
This site will always be a work in progress.
It's also in the hope that putting the Wormwell name out into the internet universe in this way may help find any other of the family who could be descendants of, or related to, James Wormwell (1843-1907) and Hannah Benson (1847-1909) from Kelbrook, England. (Also Earby or Colne.)
And when life's confusion lifts, and only the important things are clear,
I find it's all about mates, and my family, the people I hold dear.
The Eighth Division Motor Transport, Australian Infantry Force, was stationed in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese, when the Aussie soldiers were ordered to surrender. Those who weren't killed, spent the next three and a half years slaving on the Burma Railway and the infamous River Quai crossing. The only reason any survived was because they had mates to support them and watch their backs.
The poem below was written by one of the survivors and, I'm told, is read at the funeral of every remaining member (I've only been to one).
EIGHTH DIVISION MOTOR TRANSPORT
I've travelled down some lonely roads, both crooked and straight, and I've learned life's noblest creed summed up in one word, "mate".
I'm thinking back across the years, (a thing I do of late), and one thing sticks between me ears, ya gotta have a mate.
Someone who'll take you as you are, regardless of your state, and stand as firm as Ayers Rock because 'es yer mate.
Me mind goes back to '43, to misery and hate, when a man's one chance to stay alive depends upon 'es mate.
With bamboo for a billy can and bamboo for a plate, a bamboo paradise for lice and bugs was a bed for me and me mate.
We'd slide and slither through the mud and curse our rotten fate, but then you'd hear a quiet word, "Don't drop your bundle mate"
And though it's all so long ago these words I have to state, a man doesn't know what lonely means until 'es lost 'es mate.
If there's a life to follow this, if there's a golden gate, the welcome that I want to hear is just "Good on yer mate".
To all of you who ask why we hold these special dates, like ANZAC day I answer, "Why, we're thinking of our mates"
And when I've left my driver's seat and handed in me plates, I'll tell ole Peter at the door, "I've come to join me mates".
My mates
Photo taken around 1960 at the home of one of the survivors, my brother Jeff (not in the photo). I'm squatting, second from the left, sharing my glass.
