Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Hobart Torpedoed
About 6.45 pm, during the 6 to 8 pm “dogwatch” on 20 July 1943, the Australian warship HMAS Hobart was struck by a Japanese torpedo on the port aft side, just below the Officer's Wardroom, while steaming with a US-Australian naval task force towards the New Hebrides Islands (now Vanuatu). The explosion very nearly blew Hobart’s stern clean off, killing 14 crewmen and injuring 17, with the Officers’ Wardroom taking the brunt of the blast.

Stoker Harold Dihm aboard HMAS Australia happened to be on deck, looking aft and directly at Hobart at the very moment of the explosion. He described Hobart’s stern lifting right out of the water.

Leading Supply Assistant A.H. “Tug” Wilson (RAN) 18000 described how a Wardroom steward was handing a drink to an officer at the time of the explosion. The shear effect of the blast took the glass out of the steward’s hand, yet he was unscathed, while the officer died.

Supply Assistant John Donald Shedden (1917-1992) PM3417 (“John” to his shipmates but always “Don” to his family) along with many others of the 600-plus crew, was below decks at the time of the explosion when the crew was preparing for the ship to be “closed up at first degree for action” at dusk, as was the daily routine as a defensive measure while sailing in contested waters.

In addition to his duties in the ship’s store, Don’s battle station was in the Gunnery Control Room, deep in the heart of the ship, where he was able to make use of his mental arithmetic skills in plotting coordinates.

Trapped Below Decks
In the aftermath of the torpedo’s blast, Hobart slowed to a halt, and steerage and lighting were lost. Watertight bulkhead hatches were immediately locked and secured by driving steel wedges with sledgehammers by crewmen stationed at each of them. Personnel who could not make it to the upper deck in the few seconds before the hatches were locked remained trapped below decks until released.

Crew members were later of the opinion that a second torpedo had struck the ship but had failed to explode. It was much later learned that Australian prisoners-of-war working in Japanese torpedo manufacturing factories were sabotaging torpedoes whenever the opportunity presented itself, possibly saving the lives of all of Hobart’s crew.

Don described the deck hatches being rather comically jammed tight by the bodies of crewmen fleeing to the upper decks, but it was no joke because they were well aware that should the ship have sunk quickly, there was little chance of survival for the entombed crew.

Service on WW2 warships was very dangerous. Both of Hobart’s two sister ships of the Modified ‘Leander’ Class, each carrying eight 6-inch guns, were previously sunk with heavy loss of life; HMAS Sydney, off the West Australian coast with the loss of all 645 crew, and HMAS Perth, in the Sunda Strait, with 352 killed and a further 106 dead as Japanese POW’s.

Don and his fellow entombed shipmates spent, in tropical heat, an anxious, sleepless night trapped below decks, with the ship sinking by the stern and listing alarmingly and threatening to “turn turtle.” To steady frayed nerves, Don broke open supplies of alcoholic vanilla essence from the ship’s store and made up a “jungle juice,” which was passed around. It is not recorded if Don, a strict teetotaller, partook of this concoction.

Don said the only time he got really worried was when oil began seeping through under the bulkhead hatches, thinking that the Damage Control teams above deck were losing the fight to stabilize the ship.

Fortunately, the ship was stabilized, lighting restored and a steel hawser rove around the gunwale to secure the badly damaged stern section, which was precariously hanging by the starboard hull plating.

In later review, damage control was considered very effective because the ship’s company had intensively drilled for just such a disaster every week for the previous year, so that all hands knew what was expected of them.

A Grisly Duty
After release from below decks the following morning, Don and his Damage Control party were immediately ordered to report to the Wardroom with “shovels, brooms and sieves.” There, they cleared away debris, scrapped human remains off the walls, and shifted through the clammy bilge water for others, to account for missing personnel.

It was a very shaken ship that buried its dead at sea the following morning. Because of the ferocity of the torpedo’s explosion, not all body parts were found, and other crewmen were lost overboard with no bodies recovered.

Sojourn in Espiritu Santo
Having survived the torpedo explosion, Hobart was able to make headway on its one remaining propeller. It sailed under escort by the destroyers USS Nicholas and USS Radford, docking at the big US Segong naval base on Espiritu Santo Island (the setting of some of James A Michener’s famous South Pacific stories) twenty-four hours after being torpedoed.

USN repair ship Vestal was waiting for Hobart. It immediately set about repairs of the grievously damaged ship. Portside plating above the waterline and Quarterdeck was patched over and reinforced. The steering gear was reconnected, and various bulkheads were installed to act as stiffeners for the damaged sections. Ten divers spent over a week cutting away damaged plating below the waterline to reduce drag.

Back in Sydney, news travelled quickly but not accurately. Don’s wife, Mavis (May), was told at her local shop “the Hobart’s been sunk!” This alarming news for his young wife was, of course, later found not to be true, but the public was not told of Hobart’s torpedoing until September 1945, by which time the threat from the Japanese navy in the Pacific had been neutralized in a very bloody war, which culminated in the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While Hobart was undergoing repair in Espiritu Santo, Don and many of the crew spent time ashore on the vast US naval base. The harbour, at the town of Luganville, later became famous as “Million Dollar Point,” where, after the end of hostilities in 1945, vast amounts of war materiel, including bulldozers and vehicles, was disposed of by simply driving or pushing it into the sea.

The wreck of the converted luxury ocean liner SS President Coolidge lay in the main harbour channel. Due to a monumental failure to communicate, the ship had entered the harbour on 26 October 1942, loaded with thousands of troops and war materiel. It struck two mines laid by the US Navy and ultimately sank with the loss of two lives. Luganville harbour is now a world-famous diving tourist attraction.

Don had time to get to know the US sailors, and, as a conservative, church-going young man from suburban Melbourne, he thought that they were “sex mad.”

The US Navy generously extended its daily canned beer ration to the Australian sailors. Don, as a teetotaller, saved his ration, and at appropriate moments, would stand on top of a 44-gallon oil drum and auction off his ration, making a tidy sum in handy US dollars.

Souvenirs of Espiritu Santo were kept for his lifetime. These included a 0.50 caliber armour-piercing bullet, which served him as a metal punch in his workshop, and a lady's brooch made from the large, flat seed of Entada phaseoloides.

Ditching the Washing-up
After temporary repairs were completed, Don was part of the skeleton crew assigned to sail Hobart back to Sydney, under escort by destroyers HMAS Warramunga and Arunta.

During that voyage, crew members were cynically betting that the badly damaged ship would surely break up and sink before reaching Sydney, so after meals “the washing-up” was simply tossed out of a porthole. Dad, as a Supply Assistant, later had to account for the missing crockery and cutlery. He said that he simply wrote “lost in action” on the ship’s manifest!

Keeping the Pennant Flying
After arriving in Sydney on 26th August 1943, Hobart was placed in the dry dock at Cockatoo Island Naval Dockyard for extensive repairs and a complete refit. Although it was under repair for nearly 18 months, Hobart was never decommissioned; as Don said, the “pennant remained flying” until work was completed in December 1944.

During the repair work, it was discovered that a turbine driving one of the damaged propellors had itself been badly damaged when the drive shaft over-sped after the propellor had been blown off. It was realized then that further catastrophic damage potentially caused by a disintegrating turbine was averted by the swift action of the engine room staff in immediately cutting power after the torpedo explosion.

A tragic incident which occurred one day while Don was on watch. He noticed a dockyard worker cutting metal plating away from a damaged gun turret, with an oxy-acetylene torch. He called to the man to take care, that there were bags of cordite, the explosive used to propel cannon shells, on racks behind the plating. He was rewarded with a mouthful of abuse. He then watched aghast as the cordite then ignited, seriously burning the worker in the resulting explosion and fire. The worker died soon after in Balmain Hospital.

Fractured Elbow
Don remained with Hobart until late 1944, when he returned to Melbourne to see his unwell mother. It was intended that Don would rejoin Hobart when it visited Melbourne to pick up crew and supplies before rejoining the war, which, by that stage, was converging on the Japanese mainland.

However, fate intervened, when, while sweeping in Melbourne’s HMAS Lonsdale shore base, he tripped on a piece of coal and fell heavily into a concrete vehicle loading bay. His left capitulum of the humerus, at the base of his upper arm, was painfully fractured. Don was taken to Heidelburg Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne, where it was deemed that surgery was required. As he was succumbing to total anaesthesia, the Naval surgeon said to him, “don’t worry, son, I’ll try to save your arm!”

Fortunately, his arm was saved. He, however, had restricted movement of his left arm for the remainder of his life, for which this and other injuries sustained in service, he later received a part (15%) disability pension.

That accident prevented him rejoining Hobart, and he spent the remainder of his naval service in Melbourne, before being discharged medically unfit in February 1946.

Hobart went on to see much action in the Southeast Asian theatre, finally being present in Tokyo Harbour, along with 257 other ships of the Allied navies, at the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945.

War Impending
Don’s journey to his service with Hobart began when in 1935, at 18 years of age, he joined the Commonwealth Militia Forces.

In the years between WW1 and WW2, Australia did not maintain a standing army.
By the mid-1930’s, the Commonwealth government recognized the signs of impending war and re-activated the part-time Militia Forces, and boosted its small air force and naval reserves.

Don enlisted on 27 February 1935 as a “sapper,” that is, an army field engineer, with Army Number 315726. Even before that date, he served as a cadet with the 3rd Division Engineers.

In return for a “£1 a year, and a £1 for a special skill,” Militia soldiers attended weekly parades of two hours duration at their local military drill hall, occasional “musketry” training at a rifle range, and a six-day annual training camp. Employed at the time as a maintenance engineer in a Melbourne office building, Don valued the extra income at a time when his family was experiencing considerable financial hardship, commencing with the 1929 Wall St financial collapse and the ensuing Great Depression.

Don’s special skill was “pioneering.” This is the ability to build military structures with poles and ropes, something at which he was adept, as a keen Rover Scout and experienced bushwalker.

Don appears with his fellow soldiers in a photograph inscribed No 1 Tent, 4th Field Company, 3rd Division Engineers, on 29 March 1935, at the Seymour (now known as Puckapunyal) military training camp. Although these sappers were field engineers, they were dressed in rather smart WW1 Light Horse (cavalry) uniforms and armed with the Lee Enfield 0.303 caliber rifle, which the Defence Department obtained from its extensive WW1 stores.

This camp ran from 25 to 30 March 1935. It included a live artillery firing exercise during which 200 live shells were fired, and 3rd Division infantry practiced a fighting withdrawal. A “point of honour” was that the horse-drawn artillery was withdrawn “at the walk,” so as not to disturb the morale of the “dismounted troops.”

Don attended the 1936 Remembrance Day service, as part of the honour guard, at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, dressed in a dark blue Militia tunic , with a good conduct chevron on each sleeve, and Light Horse breeches, and black leather gaiters. Don remained with his Militia unit until discharge at his request on 1 April 1939. By this time, he was preparing himself for a career in the mining industry, as well as being associated with his father’s real estate business.

Report to Your Units
Don enrolled for a degree course in mining engineering at the world-famous Colorado School of Mines in Denver, Colorado. As a farewell gesture, he and Rover Scout friends took a week’s skiing holiday at the then newly built Rover Scout Lodge on Mt Bogong., Victoria. Access to the lodge then was via a day’s walk, with equipment carried on pack animals, from the town of Omeo, Victoria. Don said that when they arrived back in Omeo, the local police sergeant told them “you boys have to report to your units,” as a result of a military mobilisation order.
On 13 October 1940, Don re-enlisted in the Militia Forces as number V53142 in 2nd Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers (RAE), 4th Division. He cancelled his trip to the United States and abandoned his plans for formal study. Although he may have been able to argue for an exemption from compulsory military service, during his later years he related that he felt compelled to enlist when all of his mates were involved.

Don served from 30 September 1940 to 6 December 1940 in a Militia training camp, located principally at Fort Queenscliff, Victoria. There, he was involved in the building of fortifications against a possible enemy attack on Melbourne.

Off to Join the Navy
Under circumstances not recorded, but which involved his protest about corrupt behaviour by his unit’s officers, Don resolved to transfer to the Royal Australian Naval Reserve (RANR), which was then actively recruiting. Following release from the RAE with the rank of Corporal, he immediately transferred to the RANR on 31 March 1941, with the rank of Supply Assistant. This was an administrative division role, for which he wore a “class III uniform” suit with a double-breasted jacket, rather than seaman’s “blues.” His wife, May, remembered having to starch the collars of his white shirts.

While serving at sea, dress was more practical for the work and conditions, usually cotton boiler suits and work trousers and shirts. While on watch duty in Australia’s cold southern oceans, Don wore a hand-knitted dark blue seaman’s jumper, which he kept for many years after the war.

Always following the Boy Scouts’ “be prepared” motto, Don made himself a survival kit, which he could strap to his thigh. This comprised a handmade canvas sleeve in which was inserted a compass, large-scale waterproofed map of the Southwest Pacific, whistle, compass, pencil, notepad, crossword book (for keeping one’s mind active), knife, and a 0.25 caliber automatic Beretta pistol and ammunition. Don said that this never left his possession while at sea, and no one else knew of its existence, because personal weapons were supposed to be locked in the ship’s armoury. When he ceased his sea duty, the pistol was given to his wife’s nephew, Lieut A (Bertie) H Blair RANVR PM/V79, who had been posted to New Guinea waters towards the end of hostilities, after training and service in Great Britain.

For a young man with no particular prior association with the sea, Don’s decision to move to the RANR seems surprising. In the subsequent fortunes of war, it was said that members of his RAE unit were killed in combat during the Malayan campaign, before the Fall of Singapore, while he had a near-death experience aboard Hobart.

Naval Posting
Don’s first naval posting was to HMAS Lonsdale, the RAN’s Port Melbourne training base. This was a relatively stable, shore-based period during which Don married Mavis (May) Joan Burt (1917-1980) at St Thomas’ Anglican Church in Essendon, on Thursday 9 April 1942.

As manpower time was precious to the Navy at that time, Don was given only a 24-hour leave pass for their wedding.

The war did not go well for the Allies on his wedding day. The largest surrender of US troops in history occurred at Bataan in the Philippines; the British aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and the Australian destroyer HMAS Vampire were both sunk by Japanese carrier-borne aircraft off Ceylon: landings of Japanese troops commenced on the New Guinea mainland, and the Japanese were making serious gains in Burma, putting the RAN on full alert!

War on Japan had been declared by Australia on 8 December 1941, massively increasing the demand on the Navy for the active defence of Australia and the Mandated Territories of Papua and New Guinea. The RAN rapidly increased both its shore-based and sea-going establishments to meet these demands, and to help cater for a huge build-up of US forces in Australia.
Sir Fred

During the war years, Sir Frederick (Fred) Geoffery Shedden (1893-1971), a career public servant trained in Great Britain, was the Secretary (head) of the Commonwealth Department of Defence. Also, as Secretary to the Government’s War Cabinet and Secretary for the Department of Defence Co-ordination, he was a key and influential link between the civil government and the military administration, including that of the US armed forces. He was a principal advisor to the wartime Prime Ministers, successively Robert Menzies, John Curtin and Ben Chifley. Knighted in 1941, he was well-known to the public during the war years.

It was generally supposed, including by Don, that Sir Fred was a cousin of his, although a generation older. It seems that Don never met Sir Frederick, nor has a direct familial link been established.

However, according to Don’s wife May, he was approached on multiple occasions by his commanders, to accept a promotion or even a commission as an officer, on account of this supposed connection, but he always refused.

As Don explained in later life, he was quite willing to do his duty, but did not want the responsibility of higher command. As he put it, he didn’t want to be in the position of sending men to their certain death.

Chronic Seasickness
Don’s first sea duty posting was to the elderly minelaying and survey ship, HMAS Moresby, based in Sydney Harbour, and sailing on convoy defence along the east and southern coasts of Australia. Don recalled sighting Cape Leeuwin, Western Australia from the ship, but did not land there.

On one of these voyages, a photographer from the popular illustrated magazine, PIX, was on board. A photograph of Don, in beanie and raincoat, just coming off a four-hour deck watch into the seaman’s mess, appeared on page 30 of the 30 February 1943 edition of the magazine. This is the only known photograph of Don at sea, as sailors were forbidden to use cameras while in contested seas.

Moresby was an uncomfortable, overcrowded, ship, never designed for such work on the high seas. It rolled incessantly, and Don suffered chronic seasickness. He also fell heavily down a gangway. Although he did not seek medical assistance at the time, he blamed this fall for spinal problems he later suffered.

On return to Sydney, having lost 12.7kg in weight, he was hospitalized in the Naval Wing of Randwick Military Hospital in Sydney. Recovering, he requested and was granted transfer to a large ship or a shore establishment.

Moresby served throughout WW2, taking the surrender of Japanese forces on the island of Timor on 11 September 1945. However, the irksome conditions onboard resulted in two crew mutinies, the first in 1934 and the second immediately after the cessation of hostilities in October 1945.

Malay Section
After Don was posted to Sydney, his wife May followed, having gained official approval, as all civilian movements were controlled, as were most aspects of life under wartime regulations. They lived off base, which was the newly commissioned and rapidly growing HMAS Penguin.

While stationed there, Don was given responsibility for a section of Malayan sailors, whom he recorded in several photographs.

Because of the institutional racism of the time, the RAN was giving the Malayans the “run-around.” Don found these men good company, and took them into his own home, to give them a welcome break from barracks life.

The Royal Navy created, in the 1930s, the Royal Navy Malay Section, the foundation of today’s Royal Malaysian Navy, which was trained in Singapore. On the Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, while many of these sailors lost their lives, 150 were evacuated to Colombo, Ceylon and it seems that at some of this group finally made their way to Sydney and were placed under the control of the RAN.

At the time of Don’s involvement, these sailors were guarding SS Mactan, an ammunition store ship moored off Spectacle Island, upstream of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Mactan had made a celebrated dash from Manila Harbour, just before the surrender of the Philippines to the Japanese, as a hastily prepared Red Cross hospital ship, carrying 224 wounded US and Filipino servicemen.

Epic Troop Train Journey
Towards the end of December 1942, Don was given a travel warrant and boarded a troop train, with instructions to join Hobart near Rockhampton, North Queensland.

The Australia’s 19th Century railway network had been upgraded to cope with the surge in traffic to move large numbers of troops and supplies to North Queensland, in support of the New Guinea campaigns. Troop train travel, drawn by steam engines, was slow and tedious.

Old suburban commuter “red rattler” carriages were pressed into service. In an overcrowded, airless carriage, the ever-inventive Don commandeered a luggage rack as a bunk, from where he passed the hours watching troops playing cards and otherwise amusing themselves, on that long journey.

Troops were fed at major railway stations, where the local populations rallied to the huge task of catering for up to 1000 passengers per train.

Rockhampton
Arriving in Rockhampton, Don was billeted for two days with the Butters family, who ran a newsagency on the main street.

He then joined Hobart. It is not known exactly where he boarded the ship on 28 December 1942, but Hobart and other ships of Task Force 44 regularly replenished around Dunk and Palm Islands, nearly 1000km north of Rockhampton. The anchorages within the Barrier Reef provided excellent defence against torpedo attacks, and crews could relax.

By the time Don joined Hobart, it was a deeply battle-hardened ship. Its crew were highly sensitized to calls to action, and moved quietly about the ship, so as not to trigger any unnecessary false alarms.

Many of the crew had been with the ship since the start of the war in 1939, seeing much action in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, Java Sea, the Coral Sea, and most recently, in the Solomons Islands campaign, where it covered the US Marine landings at Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Japanese torpedo and air attacks wrought much damage to Allied ships and had regularly been fought off by Hobart, presaging things to come.

The Paddock
Hobart’s primary role in the Coral Sea, which became known as “The Paddock” in the aftermath of the Battle of the Coral Sea (4 to 8 May 1942), as part of the joint US-Australian naval Task Force 44-1, was the defence of the convoys then daily supplying the war in Papua and New Guinea.

Sea patrols were conducted on ten-day rotations, sweeping as far to the northeast as Milne Bay, with three-day rest and replenishment periods at Dunk Island or Palm Island off the Tropical North Queensland coast. Patrol sweeps were conducted out of sight of the convoys. Troops carried by the convoys, which usually sailed at night from Townsville or Cairns to Port Moresby, would have no knowledge of the naval protection in the event of capture by the enemy. By daylight, the Task Force ships were out of range of enemy bomber attack.

Hobart was supplied by the store ship MV Merkur in the Barrier Reef anchorages. A feature of these visits was a much-awaited cold beer ration, as Australian warships at sea were “dry.” Crew members were also encouraged to participate in fishing and oyster gathering trips, and to play softball with crews from the American ships and football against Palm Island locals.

Portuguese Man’o War
About 11 April 1943, Hobart received reports of Japanese landings in the remote Princess Charlotte Bay, about 340km north of Cairns.

Hobart sent an armed squad into shore, by ship’s cutter, to investigate these reports. Don described how a sailor, stepping into shallow water, was stung by a Portuguese Man’o War (Physalia Physalis) or “Bluebottle.” The sailor was painfully stung by the tentacles of this creature and reportedly died.

Drunken Sailors
In the age-old tradition of the British navies, on return to port from war patrols, many sailors headed for the nearest pub, and released their tensions by soon becoming thoroughly incapacitated by alcohol. Don, known to be teetotal, often found himself drafted to assist the Naval shore police in rounding up drunken sailors, and getting them back to their ship, usually via dockyard wheelbarrows. In his later years, he rather ruefully observed that he may have been better served by having a few drinks himself. His way of de-stressing was to find a bakery and consume a cream cake.

A Lucky Shot
Task Force 44 was reformed as Task Force 74 in March 1943, and continued operations in the Coral Sea area.

Following the loss in rapid succession, to Japanese attacks, of three US and one New Zealand cruisers in the Solomons Island campaign, Hobart and its fellow Task Force 74 ships were ordered to join Admiral Halsey’s fleet at Espiritu Santo, arriving on 16 July 1943, and immediately commenced active patrolling.

It was while the Task Force was returning to Espiritu Santo, after a patrol to the west of the New Hebrides, that Commander Meije Tagami in Japanese Imperial Nay submarine I-GO11 unleashed a salvo of torpedoes at HMAS Australia, from the extreme range of 16 km. Tagami missed Australia but hit Hobart, considered by many to have been a lucky shot, and taking the reader back to where Don’s story begins.

Aftermath of War
Don sought early release from the RANR in late 1944, but this was denied on manpower grounds. But the serious fracture of his left arm in December that year put paid to further sea duty, and he remained working at Lonsdale until discharge on 21 January 1946, deemed physically unfit for further service.

In the lead-up to his discharge, other serving family members, including May’s several nephews of about her age, and Don’s brothers, Sergeant Alan McKenzie Shedden VX115281 and Leading Aircraftsman William (Ed) Edward Alexander Shedden (RAAF) 56190, were returning from their various overseas duties. There was much coming and going of uniformed men from Don and May’s home in Stott St, Preston, so much so that people at her local shops began querying whether she was operating a brothel!

On discharge, Don received a War Gratuity and 30 days’ pay, totaling about £159 (about $12,600 in 2022). He also received a 15% partial disability pension of about £1 per week. Later, this was re-assessed to a 10% disability, rather to his annoyance.

Back in "civvy street," now with a wife and child, like many ex-servicemen, he found it difficult to settle.

While receiving osteopathic treatment for his injuries, he first ran a shop that his father owned at Tocumwal NSW, took for a short period a clerical job with the State Department of Waters and Rivers, and his father was keen for him to take over the family real estate business.

But none of this suited Don. In 1949, he took a job in Ballarat as a Gold Assayer with a company retreating old gold mine tailings in Ballarat, Victoria.

This work interested him, but post-war inflation and the then-fixed price of gold rendered that venture unprofitable. Following this, after he and May had shifted their growing family to Ballarat, Don worked for a time as a plant operator in a Ballarat chemical works. A proposal to take an assayer’s position near Broken Hill, NSW, was considered but rejected, and they sold their house in Preston, built a house in Ballarat, and settled into the community.

Finally, he accepted a role with the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service in Ballarat, which he retained until retirement in 1977. With his self-effacing and empathetic personality, over the years he matched hundreds of job-seekers with employers, becoming well-known in the district. During the Vietnam War years, his work included that of a Defence Force Recruitment Officer, in which role his own military and naval experience was well regarded.

Never quite letting his interest in mining go, he operated small-scale gold tailings retreatment plants, maintained a gold assay laboratory in his back shed, prospected for gold, and took an active interest in that industry, becoming an authority on the mining history of the Ballarat district. With Don’s encouragement, two of his three sons subsequently followed careers in the mining sector.

In retirement, Don became a very keen beekeeper, regularly moving his hives around the Ballarat district. He very much enjoyed this hobby, but illness intervened, and he passed away in February 1992, having just turned 76 years of age.

His Hobart shipmate, Leading Supply Assistant “Tug” Wilson, attended his funeral, and the Ballarat Sub-branch of the Returned Services League gave its traditional serviceman’s farewell.