Dictionary of Sydney

The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

Transcript: Mrs Jessie La Trobe describes delivering newspapers to military camps during WWII

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Description

Mrs Jessie La Trobe, who was born in 1910, was [media]interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' Her family owned a news agency in Liverpool and here she describes delivering newspapers to local military camps during World War II.

Transcript

JESSIE: We had all the camps to do and down there, where all the houses are now on the left hand side, near Warwick Farm Station, before you cross the bridge, that was a big army camp. It was the British navy that really had it and they called it the 'Golden Hind' and they treated it like a ship. When they went in the gate they went 'onboard', when they came out they came 'ashore'. Then we had the Americans in the centre of Warwick Farm racecourse so we had all that to do, and all the extra people who were about. We had nothing to do with Moorebank and Ingleburn as far as papers went but there were a lot about, a lot of people in the street. I still have my pass to go aboard the Golden Hind. They gave me a pass because we used to have to take papers in to the boys, the paperboys. I used to have to pick the papers up at the railway station, Warwick Farm railway, and take them and deliver them into the camps to the boys in different parts of the camps because they were big camps, and take them down, and then the boys would ride their bikes back here and check their money in. [1]

References

Catherine Johnson (ed). Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900–1960 (Liverpool: Liverpool City Council, 1986). http://mylibrary.liverpool.nsw.gov.au/Electronicbooks/Lookingbackatliverpoolanoralhistory-1900-1960.pdf

Notes

[1] Mrs Jessie La Trobe, interviewed for Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900–1960 project, Liverpool City Library, audio, Liverpool, 1986, http://liverpool.spydus.com/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/ENQ/OPAC/BIBENQ?BRN=57225

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