The Spirt of Adventure

While camped at Dubbo in 1941, and training with the 9th Pioneer Battalion, I met up with a whole bunch of new friends, one of them being Geoff Turner, whose parents had just moved to Victoria.

As I was a Melbourne boy, we had a few things in common.

When it came time for Final Leave, we found just the two of us travelling together to Melbourne.

We left Dubbo at night and changed trains at Blayney then on to Albury where, due to the different rail gauges in each state, we had to change trains again.

We had to wait some time as the 1st Division train, The Spirit of Progress, was at the platform before our train, the 2nd Division, which made more stops and was much slower than the 1st Division.

The Spirit was a VIP train and out of bounds to all ORS like myself.

However, seeing that we did not have much time, I thought we should catch the Spirit to get home a few hours earlier.

The trick was to get onto the train unobserved. We were in uniform and stuck out a bit, loitering near the Spirit.

The time arrived and I told Geoff to follow me, so we ducked into a fairly empty carriage and clambered into the gents' toilets. With all our gear, it was a bit crowded.

We sweated it out until the train pulled away from Albury, and we passed through Wodonga Station.

Geoff and I then found a seat.

In due time the conductor appeared, sticking his head through the door.

He blessed us a few times and mumbled something about a dead black cat, saying "What am I going to do with you blokes?"

We showed him our leave passes and rail warrants and told him we were on Final Leave and had no time to waste with only a few days off.

He was a good bloke, and said if we kept out of sight and behaved ourselves we could get off at Spencer Street Station without being seen by the Provost Corps.

When we arrived at Spencer Street, it was only a matter of kit bag over fence into the car park with us very close behind.

I met up with Geoff a couple of weeks later at Dubbo.

It has been a little adventure we talk about every so often, and this is a true story - you ask Geoff.

Snow Dicker, December 13