Do I know you from somewhere?

Many of the first brats to be found were the boys of NZ Service High School, Woodlands 1976/1977. 

Why? 

Because i only had the 1976 school magazine by my side at the computer and because well, the girls get married and change their surname don't they?

So the first intake were predominately males along with a few females who were not married or were still known by the male brats and were told about the site.

It was so exciting to check my email to see who had come along next.  People i hadn't seen for almost 30 years who had remained the teenagers that they were in the photos on the pages of that school magazine.  

I wonder if anyone who grew up in the same town, suburb or city knowing the same people all their lives, can imagine and understand what it was like for us who grew up feeling as if we never really new anyone or any place.  

And no one really knew us.

We have no understanding of their type of life either, but we thought about it.  We tried to imagine what it would be like..didn't we.

When in my early 20's i settled down and started to feel some sense of community where i was living.  The first place i'd lived in for more than 3 years.  I made some good friends and i got used to my surroundings and daily life, but i never got used to the concept of people knowing people.

Walking with a friend we would pass someone in the street and they would casually comment that the person passed was someone they knew from primary school.  I would stop and gasp.."you knew them in primary school?! as in when you were a kid? why didn't you say hello to them???"  a look of strange uncertainty from them would follow after my reaction.  They couldn't see what the big deal was and would shrug then go on to tell some stories of that persons life that someone else had told them.

Amazing!

Friends had the same Doctor for years, even since birth.  Corner store owners knew them by name and would ask after their parents, sisters and brothers.  Old Mrs Corner shop lady would say 'I remember when you were a little tacker coming in every week to spend your pocket money on 10 cents worth of mixed lollies".

They showed me locations, such as a park or a skating rink, as we walked or drove by and tell a story of a particular incident that happened in their childhood.  There, right there, they would point. 

Wow!

The friends who cared to ask about my curiosity for something they found quite normal would be told that i didn't know what it was like to be feel so familiar with the people and surroundings in my area.   I hadn't stayed still long enough to experience it.

So the kids in the photos of my trusty old school magazine from 1976 came to life as they found their way to the group.  All grown up with families of their own and stories of their lives since the printing of that magazine.

John Terewi, John and Colin Murphy, Rip (Ruapeka) Rogers, Dean Rennie, Ross Fearon, to name but a few.

I knew them, i knew the things of Singapore they remembered, our other classmates and Teachers.  I knew the places they were talking about when they talked of playing handball at school.  The school or Tengah disco's we went to, the Fernleaf where everyone swam in the pool, hung out at the tables and the night we all first saw 'Jaws' on the white brick wall of the hostel used as a screen with the scary water of the pool under it in the dark.  (if you were there that night, you know exactly what i'm talking about)

And..they were able to pass on the whereabouts of others from our time in Singapore because they had kept in touch over the years, ran into them or they served in the NZDF as their Fathers had.  If they didn't know each others exact location, they had a fair idea and a phone call or two was only needed to track them down.

These boys, our Soldier Brat Boys as i call them, (i have nick names for all groups and groups within groups to do with Singapore brats if you haven't already noticed)  are an integral yet hidden facet of Australian and New Zealand Military Brats of Singapore. 

I'd like to tell you why i know this to be so....another day.

The Changi Brats

Three people played an important part in the beginnings of this story,  Andrew Baumback, Glen Mooney and Jon Anda. 

The aussie brat, the kiwi brat and the kiwi consulate brat who had seen it all.  

Three very different people with three different reasons and three different perspectives.

They may be surprised to read their names here, they may not, but it is here i feel i must acknowledge them because i want to.

Many people have asked me over the years, what made you think to start the group Jo?

my simple answer to that question is - Because there wasn't one.

    

Did i think i should be the one to do that? 

No.  

Did i think i could be the only one who could do that? 

No.

The long answer to the question is given in my entries to this blog and congratulations (and thank you)  if you have stayed with me through it thus far.

Come back with me for a little bit to schoolfriends.com.au where i found the first brat who was also seeking others who lived in Singapore for a brief but happy time of their life.

As i have already stated, that site didn't have an option to select our schools of Singapore back then.  I wrote to the sites administrators and explained and others must have too because before long there was an option to add a school not listed on the site.  

I quickly got to work to follow the prompts and added 'Woodlands High School, Singapore'. Embarrassed to say i did not yet remember the actual name of the school 'NZ Services School, Singapore.  Over time i checked to see if there were other entries of Australian or New Zealand Services Schools and there was.

Changi Brats.

Changi High School, Singapore or ANZ Services School, Changi.

I get some strange looks when i'm waffling on to my civy friends about the Singapore brat group and referring in particular to the Changi Brats.  Changi? as in Changi Prison?  

Thats what Aussie's and Kiwi's know about Changi isn't it, where the POW's of WW2 were kept after the Fall of Singapore. 

Well, the Changi Brats for us are the ex-dependents of Australian and New Zealand, predominately Army, some Airforce and even fewer, Navy personal. 

Their Fathers, therefore the family, were posted to Singapore and the school they went to was in Changi. This was during the years 1971 to 1973.

A time cut short when the then Australian Prime minister, Gough Whitlam and his Labour Party, cut defence spending and the Australian contingency had to pack up and go home.  Some families were only part way through their 2 year posting.  Sorry folks, party is over time to go, just like that.  The name Whitlam is a dirty word within the Australian Brat community, and i can understand why it would be.

I sent a message one of the Brats listed under Changi High, registered at Schoolfriends.com.au , about the site, the now defunct yahoo one.  I think it was Gill Pennock. It could have been Rosie Cornwall and Steve Jones too.  I do remember that they contacted one another to make sure they knew about the site.

My initial idea for contacting them was to learn more about what came before us.  The Singapore they knew of in the early 70's.  I didn't think they would be interested in the site too much, after all, it was then filled with mostly the memories of mid 70's brats who came after.  But they came, they saw and they stayed.  

Changi Brats, as they know they are affectionately known to me as, have a special place in the Brat part of my heart.  

Why? well, I'll leave that story for another day, but in the meantime i made another video especially for them. 

The first sighting of a male/boy in the video is none other than Steve Jones, one of the more  well known and much loved Changi brats of the group.  

Enjoy.

Bigger, Better, Brighter

So we were originally a yahoo group, but it wasn't to be for too long.  From memory we had about 60 members and there was warning that yahoo was going through the groups doing a massive upgrade.  Notice from the site administrators that we would be out of action for a few days while they did their thing.  A few days turned into a week until i looked into it to find they had lost our group in this process.   

Gone.

Just like that.

I recovered a few days later after a talking to from one of our members, a newly acquainted friend, Jon Anda.  

I vaguely remembered Jon from my time in Singapore, he was one of the 'big kids'.  A few years older than me, he was with the big kids over in the senior part of the school.  Big kids could be seen sometimes if you ventured to that high area, on the parade ground each morning for assembly or in the senior hall once a week.  They were always 'over there', at the back of the hall or at the other end of the parade ground.  

Jon and his younger brother Michael, i was to learn, were unique in that their Mother worked for the New Zealand Consulate and they lived in Singapore for, i think, 7 years.  They first went to a Chinese primary school for a little time then were put into the  Royal Naval School at Woodlands which was handed over to the Australians in 1971 and renamed ANZ Services Primary School. Jon started high school at ANZ Services School, Changi and then moved back to Woodlands after the hand over to New Zealand when the school then became known as NZ Services school, Woodlands.

Jealous? i was.  

Jon had experienced the two handovers ..British to Australian to New Zealand Armed Services and was a wealth of information.  He knows Singapore like no other brat of Singapore.

We lost our group, or rather Yahoo did, and i was devastated.  What was i going to do? 

"Build it and they will come", that voice (the one that comes to people who need a push along) kept whispering in my ear.  Well i built it and they came and suddenly there was no where for them to go.  The field was missing.

Mr Anda encouraged me to find another field and build again, so i did and we became a MSN group...community as they were known as back then.  The 22nd March, 2002 i opened the new site and i sent out emails to explain what had happened.  

Gradually, brats found their way back and with the help of Jon, this brief  err.. interruption made me more determined to build a stronger base. 

We shall not be beaten.

It was Jon who showed me the potential for this reuniting of Brats of Singapore and what it would mean to so many, why it was important.  

Others may have already thought the same but Jon expressed it all to me in a way that i could now see the big picture, i guess because he himself was a part of that big picture having experienced the changes over the years he was there.  This contact with Jon was.. somewhat symbolic.  Another something that was meant to be in this strange and exciting time travel back to bring brats together to the future.

What's in a name? -part 4

So i decided to create an online group but what should i name it? I took weeks to ponder this  because it needed to be something which would be self explanatory at a glance and easy to find online with a search.  

The other dilemma was that although i went to a School operated by the NZ Armed Force under the New Zealand school system, i am an Australian.  Would the kiwi's appreciate this aussie girl managing a site for predominately ex dependants of NZ Service men? I wasn't sure and i wasn't sure for a very long time how that would be received.  

There was a contingency of Australian Service families in Singapore in the mid 70's, albeit a small one, of around 40 families and the kiwi's outnumbered aussies averaging 1 to every 20 kids per class.

The choice of name was crucial, i wanted to do this right, figuring that you only get one shot to make something a success, something worthwhile.  The name couldn't be changed once started, a group like this needed to be consistent and have structure, sound base. This couldn't be a one hit wonder, i wanted it to last for as long as it could.  It would take time, years, to find everyone and it would be a good thing if the group was around still for the late comers.

I took this responsibility very seriously and i still didn't really understand why, only that this was important.

So, i put the A in ANZ as it was inclusive to brats from both countries who lived in Singapore during the mid to late 70's.  Little did  i know...or rather, it took me a while to realize, that i had unintentionally  used the beginning of the name of the school before the New Zealand take over.  ANZ Service Schools, Singapore, something i will talk more about at a later time.

In the 70's we referred to the Airforce, Army and Navy collectively as the Armed Services or The Services.  Later we said they were our Armed Forces and then Defence Force..ugh, which one to use, the old and the new were a mouthful.  I wondered if the word Military sounded too ... American.  I checked with my Dad, a man who is against Americanizing our vocabulary, if he said it was ok then it would be ok and it was... at least in this case and for this purpose.

Brats, well Brats had to be used didn't it.  Known as or introducing myself as a RAAF brat, more in my adult years, it was my identity.  I didn't know if other ex dependents felt the same, there has been a mixed reaction to the word Brat over the years since we started. I think it has created a sense of pride amongst us now so I'm happy i used it.  

Besides, "Ex dependents" - another mouthful.

Singapore goes without saying, no need to explain that one.

With a name, some facts and some photos, i created a yahoo group, just as i'd seen for the britbrats.  Using ICQ in the same way i found Glen, my '76 school year book at my side as reference for names, i sent out messages and brats began to join.

Slowly, very slowly, they came.  Brats were gathering to this place created on this relatively new concept to the home pc user called the internet. 

There was a murmur of something building, a wave of  energy i was yet to fully comprehend.

I was ready though, ready to understand...it was time.

How to bring back the Past-part 3

Altavista was the search engine to use in my new days of the internet and i sat looking at the search box thinking about what words i should type into it. I wondered if there was anything out there about our old school and tried different words and combinations.

Woodlands          Singapore            NZ         Service School          Brats

...nothing, there was nothing.

However, i did find a yahoo group called Ex South East Asia Brit Brats Schools which was managed by a lady named Jean Rontree. I remembered that the Brits occupied Singapore with their Forces for the years before, since WW2. My Mother often referred to the British Army wives she played cards with in Penang and Singapore because with both postings we caught the very end of their withdrawal from those posts.

Jean's group talked about growing up in South East Asia and Singapore was there in the discussion. I could relate to their stories and memories and smiled as i read, so i joined the group. Jean was very welcoming to this little colonial as were her other members and it was through them that i started to see the big picture of Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom Armed Forces in Singapore and where we fit in to that picture.

A scene from our classroom flashed through my mind, it was the end of the first year at NZ Service School, Woodlands (Singapore). The teacher asked us to clean out the built in cupboards of the classroom. It was something to fill in the lst week of school and they were in a bad state. Cluttered with old books that seemed to be just thrown in there. Some of the books were old exercise books with ANZ Service School, some had Royal Naval School, Sembawang on the covers. Obviously left there over the years, i noted as the 12 year old i was, but had thought no more of it until reading through the britbrats messages.

The story was coming together and intrigued me.

Why were we there?  What did our Fathers do?  What service did they provide?

With those questions i built a story in my mind and queried on Jean's yahoo brit brat group. I also interrogated my Father any chance i found until i was  thinking about those days of Singapore almost every spare moment of my day. I became obsessed, researching and seeking out anything i could find. I still didn't know why but that wasn't important. Something was pushing me on and i kept going looking for the end as it does still to this day.

One thing i learned was that our old school was taken over by the Singapore government and turned into a prison officer training school. What a disappointment it was to learn that. Oh, our poor school. Happy smiling kids played and learned in those school grounds and the layout was so unusual compared to those we went to back home in Australia and New Zealand. Open class rooms with glass folding walls on each side to allow the breeze to find us. Winding covered pathways we followed to find our next class.  Old english bungalow style school halls, one for the primary school and a bigger version for the the high school. Known as the junior and senior halls.

It was depressing to think that people were learning how to perform restraint holds, strokes of the cane (i don't remember anyone getting the cane at that school) or maybe even the preparations and procedure of a hanging. Thankfully, it was recently reported to me by a brat who currently lives and works in Singapore that the old school is now being used by a Youth Adventure group or some such, but i'll talk about that at another time.

With some information at hand i knew it was time to create a place of our own, a place to gather Australian and New Zealand brats together. 

If i was riding this great wave of nostalgia, maybe others would like to as well. Maybe others will one day sit at the computer and wonder about those days, access a search engine, type the keywords in hope to find something..anything..out there.

Only, when they did, magical words would appear when they hit the enter key.

ANZ Military Brats of Singapore.

Whatever happened to.. -part 2

When memories begin to re-surface you start wanting physical evidence, you want more.. well i do anyway. Reliving the old Singapore days was a great feeling, i found myself back there in my dreams because there was no where else to go with these memories after exhausting them all via emails with Andrew. Vivid dreams where it felt i was actually back there walking the streets (always at night) exploring the kampong of Nee Soon, trying to remember the route the school bus took to Woodlands (and telling the driver he was going the wrong way) walking around the pool on Nee Soon army camp.

All memorabilia came out of my camphor wood chest. You remember those, the ornately hand carved boxes with a hinged lid found anywhere in Singapore back in the day. The aroma of camphor rises when you lift that lid. I call it my treasure chest, because, well, it holds all my treasures. Things i've held on to over the years, which isn't an easy thing to do when your Mother wants to keep your chattel and effects to a minimum for the many moves you will make as any good serviceman wife did. Out came photos and school reports, little Singapore nick knacks i'd been given as gifts by my sisters, a swimming trophy .... anything i could find.

My swimming trophy, i looked at it, the only real award i ever won. I remembered the day i got it, the only person still at the Nee Soon Camp pool when it was handed to me was Glen Mooney and he even took a photo. Ahh..the pool. We loved the pool, it was our place to meet and swim to cool down in the tropics. I thought about our group as we were as kids. I belonged to the older group, the teenagers, small exclusive group we were with our own area right up the back of the pool grounds. We had 4 tables to choose from which we sat at most days after school, most weekends and certainly every day during the school holidays. One of those teenagers who was almost always someone who could be seen at the pool was Glen Mooney.

Glen was the oldest boy of the Nee Soon camp kids. He was a tall 16 year old boy, friendly face, polite, considerate and funny. Always felt safe around Glen and he was always good company, even if we had to suffer through listening to his Black Sabbath or Rainbow cassettes while he played pretend drums beating on the concrete table we sat at and told us how Ritchie Blackmore formed the band after leaving Deep Purple. Not something a teeny bopper 13 year old girl wants to listen to, we'd screw up our noses at it and he'd just laugh.

Those memories came back and i wondered whatever happened to Glen. My family left Singapore to go home to Australia before Glen's family but we kept in touch with letters for a few years after. He went home to New Zealand in 78 so i was kept up to date with what had happened at school after i left, his new school back home and his first job but i didn't know what had happened after that. We had lost contact which is something easy to do when you move around like a brat does, new addresses all the time.

I started to feel the need to find Glen to continue this travel back in time i found myself in, where in the world do i start? Back then there was a IM program called ICQ (i seek you) which had a search feature. Type in a name and if they are using ICQ with details of their full name and location and you might come up with something. Glen Mooney isn't a common name, surely there is only one in New Zealand. I gave it a shot, and there was only one so i sent a message. "Did you go to school in Singapore and do you remember a girl named Jo Rendle?"

It took a few weeks, maybe a month, before i got a response. I checked every day, and finally a message - it was him. I'd found Glen.

The lost brat had awakened after contact with Andrew, now i was catching up with someone who knew me as a girl and remembered me. Remembered more of the same things i did because we were in Singapore at the same time and we knew the same people. We shared the same table at the pool..we shared Ritchie bloody Blackmore.

If finding my first adult brat of Singapore was overwhelming, it was nothing in comparison to finding Glen. The last time i saw him was my last day at the pool, next day we had to leave for the hotel where we stayed overnight before flying out the morning after. It was school holiday time, just after Christmas but monsoon season so no-one was there, but Glen was there, in the rain.

It was appropriate that he was the first person from our days to catch up with again when he was the last person i had seen that day before we left  Nee Soon. We talked and talked for hours over the weeks, months, about the old days and he had stories of school brats, where they were and what had happened to them since. More and more memories surfaced and greater became the my need to do something with them, about them. The question was...what?

Awakening the Lost Brat-part 1

Nearing the end of the last century i started to become acquainted with the internet and what a wonderful new dimension it added to my life. For me it was a way to explore the world in the spare room of the house i called the computer room. I was curious about what this new technology was all about and how i could use it, reading everything i could find and teaching myself the basics. Lots of trial and error, still the best way to learn.

I found something, somewhere about a site called Schoolfriends.com.au, an Australian site to reunite old school friends. Everything was novel and gadgety back then, OK, that would be cool thinks I, so i created an account to join and was then required to fill in my details and find the schools i attended.

The site was very new back then, and has undergone many changes since. (Kiwi's will know the site as findakiwi.co.nz, but both sites are now owned by the British group, FriendsReunited.com)  Schools to choose from were found by the site creator listed with education Australia or perhaps state by state, i'm not sure, but they were definitely schools that were current at the time.

I was able to list Amberley State School(Qld), Sunshine East State School and Broadmeadows High (Vic) but not my first school, RAAF School Penang, or my first High School which was in Singapore.

Every time i signed into the site it would bug me that 2 of the schools i went to weren't listed. My profile was incomplete and damn it if no one cared to know all these years about those times of my life i at least wanted those schools to be showing on my list even if it was only for me. Proof in words that those times, those schools, actually existed.

Upon one of my visits to the site i found a message board, a forum of sorts (that word didn't exist for me back then) and i posted my first ever message that went something like..

"My father served in the RAAF and we lived in Penang and Singapore, is there anyone else out there who went to schools there?"

And so it was out there ..that simple basic sentence, a question, one i thought would be quickly spotted by anyone who had the words RAAF, Penang or Singpore in their vocabulary. Maybe there are others who prick up their ears or zoom their eyes into those words whenever seen or heard as i still do after all these years.

Not long after i created that post, there was a reply. I don't recall his words, but i do remember who it was from. Andrew Baumback. Andrew had lived in Singapore in the mid 70's and his father was in the RAAF, or maybe he was Army. Many emails were exchanged, both of us equally excited to find someone else who was 'there'.

To add further to this miracle, and it felt like a miracle back then because Andrew was the first adult i had contact with who shared the same experience of Singapore, we discovered that we lived in the same house and had the same amah. Andrew's family left Singapore in 1975, we arrived in August 1975. Actually, the Baumbacks lived at 60 Meng Suan Road, Nee Soon, and we first moved into 95 Meng Suan but later moved around the corner to 60. Still, we did live in the same house and with 100's of houses available to Australian and New Zealand Armed Forces families in different areas of the island..what was the chance of that happening? The area we lived in, Nee Soon, had about 7 houses rented out to Australian and New Zealand Service families so it was one of the less known areas within the ANZ community too.

Imagine our excitment, no one to really talk to about our time in Singapore for almost 30 years and here we were finally able to talk about the area, the house, the neighbours and even the amah and her quirky ways.

It was more than that though, not just about living in the same house and location, it was more than experiencing a coincidence. Somehow this correspondance with Andrew brought the Singapore experience back to life, made it all real again when in my late 30's it had become a distant memory of my past. Fading pictures in my mind, faint memory of names and places. These things disappear over time when they aren't talked about and i had been desperately trying to hold on to them since leaving Singapore in January 1978.

My Dad was posted to Melbourne and we went to a school in the outer suburbs where the kids thought New Zealand was actually Tasmania, had no idea what Singapore was and had never known a RAAF Brat. I had a tan like no Melbournite had never seen and talked with an accent which to them probably sounded very ..British. They wanted nothing to do with this strange girl or her stories of Singapore where she had just come from.

My ex Husband, a Melbournite, didn't like me to talk about Singapore and seemed embarrassed if i talked about it in front of other..civy's. He claimed i sounded as if i was showing off, as if i was a snob. He obviously didn't understand, he was a civy.

It was the 80's, i was young and gullible, husbands were always right, and i just stopped talking about it.

So, in 2001, with contact with my first adult fellow Brat of Singapore, the memories were unlocked and allowed to come out and play again. They played, they smiled, they explored and wondered....