Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Len grew up in country Tasmania, the youngest of five surviving children. Their father was a school teacher and the family moved to wherever he was transferred. The happiest years of Len's childhood were spent at Oatlands, for which he retained an abiding affinity. His childhood heroes were his much older brothers, Mervyn and Harold, who enlisted early and served overseas in WW1. He was deeply affected by their war experiences and the death of Mervyn and he remained proud of his brothers all his life.

Len was a keen sportsman and hoped to be either a farmer or a sailor, but became a clerk at IXL in Hobart. As a young man he migrated to Queensland, obtaining a position as oil company clerk at Rockhampton, where he met and married his wife. He enlisted for WW2 on15 December 1941 (as shown on his actual records, though currently not on this site) but was rejected for overseas service on account of admitting to having had rheumatic fever as a youth. This was always a bitter disappointment to him (and clearly, his heart had not been affected by this disease, since it lasted him throughout a hard-working life to the age of 84). Len was assigned to oil depot work at Rockhampton until formally enlisted and sent to Townsville's BIPOD collective (the army's combination of all oil companies for the duration). Len threw himself into serving the war effort to his utmost ability, proving a highly effective depot superintendant. After the war, he continued in this role with Vacuum Oil at Mackay, managing the town depot and supplies, the company trucks servicing country areas, and later the transfer to a new large depot over at Mackay Harbour. He could be a tough task master, though no one could fault his focus on service, honesty, accurate bookwork and depot maintenance. He worked tenaciously himself, and undertook some tasks he felt were injurious to younger workers (such as scraping all rust from the inside of the hugely tall petrol storage tank - in those days, done without protective masks, etc.). At both depots he created and maintained landscaped hedges and garden plots, as he did also at his own home. His chosen sport at Mackay was lawn bowls and he spent countless unpaid hours on physical green maintenance, about which he became very scientific. He remained especially proud of his last green, at the newly established Mackay Harbour club. This was built as a War Memorial and Len worked on it tirelessly for years, installing drainage systems as well as maintaining carefully layered soil and appropriate grasses. Perhaps no one knew that the depth of Len's personal commitment to this project stemmed from the fact that he saw it as a work of homage, a living tribute to the servicemen of WW1 and WW2.