I finally got myself a scanner which works and I'm very excited as I can scan my old photos, including these gems from my maternal grandfather Horace Darvell. I was brought up by my grandparents and mother after my parents divorced. Horry and his wife May lived through a lot of hardships. In the Depression they extended credit to customers in their shop business and went broke as a result.
Horry was a nice bloke.Pop used to take glasses of lemonade out to the postman. He was always joking around with me as a little kid. He was also clever at fixing things, like my bike. He painted his own house and his Holden car with the same light green and did it with a paint brush! His lawns and gardens were always immaculate, like his short back and sides hair cut.
In World War Two he was a corporal and acting sergeant with the RAAF plane salvage in New Guinea and the islands. This was the 22nd Repair Salvage Unit. Pop is second from the right in the first photo. Two things that were especially fascinating to the Australian servicemen were the Yank planes with their half naked painted ladies and the natives. I always new my pop as being puritanical when it came to nudity so the natives attitude to wearing clothes and the Americans plane decoration must have been a little shocking. I think the planes are Liberators as the one in the hangar is labelled as such.
Yes, one of the babies the native woman is breast feeding is a pig!
Above: English entertainers Gracie Fields and Monty Banks arrive at Labuan 17-8-1945
Above: Horry and mate.
Above; Orange POW ship
Above: Unidentified Japanese airmen's graves.
Above: Horry Darvell after the war with wife, May and children Des and Lorna (my mother).
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