A memoir by his daughter, Kerry Mccouatt

John Bede Cusack, the author of They Hosed Them Out, was born on 22 February 1908 in West Wyalong, a country town in New South Wales.

Both sides of his family came from Irish rebel stock. John’s paternal grandfather, Michael Cusack, had migrated from Ireland in 1854, sponsored by a ‘ticket of leave’ uncle, Timothy, who had been convicted as a rebel and transported in 1827. John’s maternal grandfather, Michael Crowley, a member of Sinn Fein, had escaped to Australia after being sought for his part in rebel activities.

John’s mother Bridget (nee Crowley), had been a governess before her marriage. His father James, a sheep farmer, was 14 years older than his wife. John was the second youngest of their six children.

At the time of John’s birth, West Wyalong was somewhat of a boom town. The 1893 discovery of gold in the district had transformed it from a sleepy hollow to a thriving centre with a population, at its peak, of about 12,000. Gold had also transformed the Cusack family’s fortunes – James had successfully joined the rush by pegging out the productive True Blue goldmine right in the main street of the town.

This time of relative prosperity for the family came to a sudden end in 1914, when the seam of the True Blue ran out. James Cusack soon found himself bankrupt and the family was forced to move to Sydney, where they set up an inner city boarding house. Unfortunately, however, James exhibited an almost pathological jealousy of any male boarder, and Bridget was forced to leave him. She and the children moved to Coogee, a seaside suburb, where she set up another boarding house. From then on, James played no further role in the family. John was only about six at the time of the break-up and there was no mistaking where his sympathies lay. He adored his mother but would never have a good word to say for his father.

Growing up in Coogee

The break-up and upheaval was no doubt traumatic, and placed the family in a totally different environment. Coogee would become the family’s base from then on, and the centre of John’s social life. It was at Coogee’s famous beach that John’s long-term love of surfing and surf clubs started.

Then, as now, Coogee was one of Sydney’s prime seaside attractions. Apart from a 150 foot Canadian toboggan slide on its northern hillside, Coogee’s most distinctive building at the time, and the hub of its social activities, was the Aquarium Baths. Built at the northern end of the beach, with a distinctive large dome modelled on those in English seaside resorts, it housed a collection of exotic fish displayed in glass tanks surrounding a large dance floor.

There was also a large swimming baths. These would later become famous in the 1930s when a shark, newly captured and placed on display, disgorged the tattooed arm of an unfortunate individual who had been murdered and thrown into the sea. The ‘Shark Arm Case’ made international headlines and, decades later, even formed the basis of an episode of the television show CSI: Miami.

Coogee’s attractions multiplied further in later years, when a pleasure pier was opened, and a shark net securing the southern half of the beach was installed. The pier’s attractions included a large theatre, a ballroom and an upstairs restaurant for 400. The shark net was revolutionary for its time and attracted 10,000 people to the beach on its first day. It also allowed for night time swimming.

Despite the family’s reduced circumstances, they were happy in Coogee. With their mother placing a particularly high value on education, all of the children attended and matriculated at local Catholic schools, and distinguished themselves in various ways.

John’s oldest brother, Leo, reportedly became the youngest wireless operator in the British and Australian navies in World War I, later becoming involved in the early days of wireless communication between Australia and England. John’s sister Margie became a nursing sister, eventually owning a nursing home on the hill between the Coogee Bay and Oceanic hotels. Due to health issues, his sister Dymphna (Nell) lived from an early age with an aunt and uncle in the country but later won a Teachers Training scholarship to Sydney University. As we shall see, Dymphna would later go on to a distinguished writing career. Molly became an outstanding tennis player and, as detailed later, Beatrice (Bea) assisted John in his early writing efforts.

The Irish influence in the family was strong. One night, during a period when Grandma Crowley lived with them, everyone in the household – other than Grandma – was startled by an unnerving shriek. The next day, it was discovered that Grandma had passed away. The cry, it was agreed, must have been the wail of the Banshee which, according to legend, presages death and is heard by all but the victim.

‘On the wallaby’

John finished his education at Christian Brothers, Waverley, but by this time, in the late 1920s, work in Sydney was becoming hard to find. When opportunities dried up altogether during the Great Depression, John and a mate applied for a ‘work for the dole’ scheme. They spent a year in Tuena, a small town west of Sydney, panning for gold and learning a lot about life in a country town. However, the pickings were meagre. By the end of the year, the sum total of John’s efforts went into the making of a gold ring for his mother. Years later, he would return with his wife to revisit his old haunts in the town. The visit was highlighted by a bizarre incident where – to everyone’s amazement – John killed a snake in the main street.

After John’s Tuena stint, like thousands of fellow Australians, he took to travelling the countryside, ‘on the wallaby’, looking for work. Through a fellow surf club member he obtained a job in a shearing shed as a piece picker, which paid well for those days – 3 pounds 10 shillings ($7) and keep. He also cut timber, ringbarked and felled scrub for little more than the cost of his tucker. He tried his hand at professional boxing, where the going rate was from 10 shillings to one pound a round – less if the crowd was poor.

At one stage, he even took the position of coach of a country rugby league team, though this ended up with almost a fight a day, when the local footballing lads, hearing that John had been in the fight game, had a few beers and came forward to try him out. He even spent six weeks on the infamous Boggabilla Railway where, as he later described it, the dregs and scum of the out-of-work labour force had gathered.

John returned to Coogee in 1932, but work was still hard to find, and he decided to move down the coast to Stanwell Park. Here he survived by living in a tent, and made a modest start to his literary career, optimistically writing stories and articles for magazines and newspapers. Using up to six different names enabled him to submit multiple articles to editors on such occasions as Anzac Day and other national events. Younger sister Bea helped out by typing the stories up, and they shared the slim proceeds. (Some years later, when Bea’s marriage broke up, John returned the favour by encouraging the rest of the family to put in money for her two children’s education.) During this difficult period, elder sister Dymphna would also send John money whenever she could. It was support for which he would always be grateful.

Birth of a salesman

Things started looking up in 1933, when John saw an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald. Its message was compelling: ‘Do you want to earn 8 pounds to 12 pounds a week? Many of our men are earning 15 pounds a week!’ The prospect of good regular pay saw John present himself, crumpled suit and all, at the city office of Electrolux. Today, Electrolux is known as one of the largest electrical appliance manufacturers in the world, but in those days it had just recently started its Australian operations and was only selling vacuum cleaners.

The interview went well, and the next day John started at their training school. Everything proceeded smoothly until our budding salesman was asked to put theory into practice by simulating an approach to a customer. The problem was this. John had a secret which he had somehow failed to mention at his initial interview – under pressure, and in some circumstances, he stuttered. In fact, he attributed his fighting abilities to this affliction, as in his early school days he had got ‘stuck into’ anyone brash enough to imitate him. (Later, in England, his stutter would be noticed by the Queen Mother when she and the King visited the Squadron. She was able to put John at his ease by revealing to him that her husband also had the same affliction – itself later depicted in the 2010 film The King’s Speech).

The stutter initially looked like making John’s sales career a very short-lived one. Nevertheless, his mother encouraged him to keep trying, and John persisted, travelling by tram round Sydney, and carrying his demonstration products in a reinforced cardboard Globite case. It was a tough job. At the time, vacuum cleaners were still novelties, and most homes did not even have refrigerators or other electrical appliances. As he recounted in a sales manual which he wrote much later, he had to overcome a number of objections wherever he went: ‘My mother cleaned the house with a broom and lived until she was 88, so dirt can’t be dangerous’. ‘Every Spring we put the carpets on the line and my husband beats them – he’s the best vacuum cleaner in the country.’ And so on.

After a very dispiriting two weeks with no sales, John decided on one last door knock. As the front door opened, his heart truly sank. The house had no carpets or mats at all. There were not even any power points. He realised he would have to pitch his demonstration solely on the basis of the vacuum cleaner’s many fancy attachments. With the help of an adaptor which he plugged into the hallway light socket, he used the floor brush to vacuum sweep the floors, showed how the utility nozzle could be used for cleaning mattresses, blankets and suits, and demonstrated the ‘Insector’, which blew paradichlorobenzene into the atmosphere to eliminate cockroaches and fleas. His hopes weren’t high but, to his amazement, he found that he had impressed the housewife and her tram conductor husband. They decided on the spot. He had made his first sale.

His first taste of success buoyed him along. He became an eager pupil, accompanying and observing the company’s top sales performers. He learned to be a salesman, not just a demonstrator. Within a year he was the fourth most successful salesman in Australia, second the following year and in the next he was promoted to supervisor and transferred to Queensland. With his new found prosperity, he traded in his old second hand car, and bought a new Ford sports roadster, later replaced over the years by a series of Oldsmobiles. (Despite the fancy cars, however, it has to be said that John never showed any mechanical or handyman abilities whatsoever.) Later, John’s burgeoning Electrolux career took him to various other managerial roles in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

Off to war

One day in 1939, when John was in Grafton establishing a couple of sales agents, he met two air force officers on a war recruiting campaign for the RAAF. At this stage, the ‘phoney war’ that preceded the real outbreak of hostilities in the Second World War had been in progress for three months. John had given some thought to joining up, but couldn’t see any urgency. However, during a rather riotous night of drinking with the air force men, John and five others signed up.

At the time, the Air Force had an age limit of 25 which should have made John, at a ripe 31, ineligible. This barrier was overcome by one of the RAAF men suggesting that John put back his age and claim that he was born in Eire, a neutral country where they apparently had no birth certificates. All John needed to do was sign a statutory declaration.

As it happened, the ruse proved to be unnecessary. Two months later, when the call-up papers hadn’t come through, he went down to the RAAF headquarters at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney. Strangely, they had no record of his enlistment. The clerk simply asked him if he wanted to join up, and the answer was ‘yes’. He was accepted on the spot.

After training in Australia, being ‘volunteered’ as an Air Gunner and travelling to England, he started flying in March 1942. His wartime activities from then on are, of course, the inspiration for They Hosed Them Out. After many operations over Europe he had his last flight on 1 September 1944. He sailed back to Australia, stopping in New York where he and his fellow airmen were billeted with local families for a bit of rest and recreation (R and R). John found himself staying on the country estate of a wealthy New York family, complete with pool and tennis court. He later described how he and his friends awoke one morning to find a string of polo ponies tied up outside the house – a birthday gift from the lady of the house to her husband.

Home again

John arrived back in Sydney in December 1944. Two weeks later, he married his long-time girlfriend Cath Gunn at St Brigid’s Church in Coogee.

Cath had grown up in Melbourne as the oldest daughter of the nine children of Dan and Tottie Gunn (nee Reilly). A mix of Scottish and Irish backgrounds, Dan and Tottie were an enterprising and hardworking couple, with Dan having to work multiple jobs during the Depression to feed and clothe his large family.

One family member recalls that he once asked the meaning of the distinctive imprint on the family crockery. Dan promptly told him that it was the Gunn family crest. The true situation was revealed a number of years later when it was realised that the initials RMJC on the plates actually stood for Royal Melbourne Jockey Club, one of Dan’s many workplaces.

Cath worked as a photographer, and had first met John when he was working in Victoria before the war. As the story goes, Cath was at a dance at the seaside town at Lorne. Owing to the competition for girls, the young men who had accompanied Cath and her friends formed a protective semicircle around them. The first that Cath saw of John was when she saw his arm come through the human barrier and a disembodied voice asked, ‘Can I have the next dance?’

Cath’s oldest brother was Terry Reilly, the well known welterweight boxer and referee. With four young sisters to protect, Terry cast a stern eye over any visiting boyfriends, but John evidently passed muster.

John, despite all his reported wartime liaisons (later described by him as ‘poetic licence’), was greatly intrigued by the independent-minded Cath, who was seven years younger. For her part, she thought John had that touch of magic. But their relationship had to overcome several hurdles. Before the war, with John travelling a lot in his job, much of their relationship was conducted by telephone – not the best medium for a stutterer. And later, of course, the war intervened in a major way. But despite having a number of boyfriends – and several marriage proposals – Cath corresponded with John for the duration and decided to wait for him.

Once married, they had to find somewhere to live. However, in 1945, with the Pacific War still in progress, accommodation in Sydney was hard to come by. A small block of flats that John had purchased in Kings Cross before the war was no longer available, having already been sold by Dymphna under a power of attorney that John had previously given her.

The circumstances surrounding that sale were revealing of the times. Dymphna had always been a harsh critic of racism, sexism and political complacency – a feminist before the word was popular. So, when she found during John’s wartime absence that the block of flats had become filled with prostitutes and American servicemen, she took to ‘cleaning up’ the residence with a vengeance. Later, the Japanese submarine attack on Sydney in 1942 prompted her, along with many others, to vacate Sydney and she sold the flats for way below their real value. Dymphna had of course acted from the highest of motives, but with property values subsequently spiralling upwards, it was an unfortunate setback for John’s hopes of future prosperity!

Nevertheless, John was able to use his pre-war contacts to secure a bed-sit back in the Cross. It was so small that the bed had to be pulled down from the wall. Cath’s good-natured mother, Tottie, was most intrigued when she visited later and was given a bed on the window seat of a bay window, with only a pull-across curtain to separate her from the newlyweds.

Before the war had started, the Cross had been the most densely populated area in Australia, with flats, hotels, shops and restaurants in profusion open at all hours. It was the home of artists such as William Dobell and actors like Chips Rafferty. The combination of businessmen, confidence men, ladies of quality and ladies of the night made living at the Cross a real experience. Well-dressed and cultivated ‘Reffos’ (refugees) from Europe’s troubles added to the mix. John had always loved this cosmopolitan and bohemian atmosphere and had many friends there from all walks of life.

Much of the background for John’s later book You Can Only Die Once comes from his experiences in the Cross during that era. He once told of being invited out one Friday night to accompany his ‘copper friends’ from the Vice Squad. His friends spent the night visiting the brothels in the area, collecting their hush money and being entertained by the madams and their girls. (Much later, it was these connections that, in the 1950s, enabled John to obtain a range of gambling equipment which he and Cath used to run fund-raising nights for their daughter’s school.)

Getting back to normal

John and Cath’s stay in Kings Cross was followed by a period of house swapping and an interlude in Melbourne. They later moved back to Coogee, where they bought a house on Bream Street. In 1947, I was born, their only child. My first memories are of the moon rising over Coogee bay, of night swimming during heat waves, and fish cooked fresh on Coogee headland from the local fishermen’s catch.

Despite John’s upbeat nature – PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) was his favourite byword – the stress of the war years and his crash landings continued to take their toll long after the war had ended. He had alarming nightmares. Cath would be woken up by him standing on the bed making plane and gun noises. One night he grabbed her by the foot thinking she was an escaping German soldier. During the day, he spent a lot of time at the beach, just lying on the edge of the water allowing the waves to wash over him. Unable to return to full-time work, he starting selling real estate part-time. It was not until 1948 that John’s full fitness finally returned and he rejoined Electrolux.

John had always been a natural at most sports. He had played first grade rugby union for Randwick, the Galloping Greens, after leaving school. But surfing was his first love and also his therapy. He belonged to Coogee Surf Life Saving Club – the Penguins – from an early age and was always down there for the Sunday races and drinks afterwards.

Even when he was transferred to Newcastle for 18 months, I remember that we returned to Coogee every weekend (a 200 mile round-trip) to stay in the flat underneath our Bream St house.

John’s next transfer was to Brisbane as Queensland manager, where the locals proved to be very welcoming, The Electrolux crowd became family friends and our large old Queenslander house was the scene of many happy parties. The girls all brought a dish and each bloke was given the chore of looking after one girl’s drinking glass. If he was forgetful and the glass became empty, he was fined. The money went into the ‘whale’s eardrum’ – a souvenir from a family visit to the still active whaling station on Tangalooma Island in Moreton Bay – and was invested in a lottery ticket for all the party goers. The evening usually ended with everyone on the floor playing dice – ‘up and down the river’, poker dice and so on.

Brisbane was a hot city in those pre air-conditioning days and it was also 60 miles from the nearest beach. Undeterred, John organised the family to travel every weekend in summer and every second weekend in winter down to Surfers Paradise. Over the Christmas holidays, my mother and I, along with our wire-haired terrier Curly, would spend six weeks in a rented house with John joining us for his annual three week holiday.

Surfers was like our home away from home. Today, of course, it is a famous resort, but in the 50s and 60s it was just a friendly local village. The beach had a PA system with a resident disc jockey. Mutton bird oil was sprayed on the sun worshippers by John Paterson, a regular sight with his big tanned belly and pith helmet topped with a stuffed mutton bird. It seemed that half of Brisbane migrated there in the summer for the cooling ocean breezes, and half of Melbourne – including some of Cath’s old beaus – migrated there for the winter sun.

The shark bell went off at least once a day in the summer. Any sharks that were caught were put on display in the boatshed and an entry fee was charged. Paula Stafford’s bikinis also made their first appearance in that era. John usually gave me the task of alerting him to any ‘good sorts’ that might appear on the beach while he was occupied reading his newspaper. At midday, everyone would repair to the Surfers Paradise Hotel beer garden where Melbourne band leader, Stan Bourne, and his musicians were in residence. I remember John partnering one of my girlfriends to win the twist dancing competition one year.

All his life John was happy to pick up hitch hikers, even people who were at the local bus stop on his way to work. As most of the young lifesavers hitched from Brisbane to their clubs on the Gold Coast every weekend, we always had two or three in the back seat. In his best story-telling way, John would spend the journey regaling them with colourful details of his life adventures, while my mother and I listened patiently to the familiar tales.

John’s stories and general conversation were always peppered with colourful terms. Characters were criticised for being dill brains and drongos as well as whingers and earbashers, while bright sparks got the thumbs up. Acting like a big girl with no pants on or being full as a goog was not a good look. Enthusiasms were marked with you beauty! and whacko the did (diddle-oh). Bloody was as far as he went with regard to actual swearing, at least in my hearing.

John and Cath spent a lot of time raising money from the local businesses and beachgoers at Surfers to build and equip a new clubhouse with bunk beds for the Brisbane boys. John’s salesmanship talents were put to full use. He became president of the surf club and, no doubt, a role model for many of the boys.

John was always ‘John’ to everyone – including all my friends and even me from a very early age. When my mother asked me why I didn’t call him ‘Daddy’, my reply was that he didn’t act like a Daddy, he was simply John.

He was an indulgent and enthusiastic father. Despite the fact that he probably would have loved to have had a son, I was always taken out the back in the surf, and to a local pool in Brisbane two or three mornings a week. Queenslanders hate the cold, and every winter Brisbane pools were closed down – except for one winter when one of the city pools opened. As it turned out, John was their sole customer, earning him a photo in the Courier Mail.

The origins of They Hosed Them Out

Although life was going well, John continued to suffer from insomnia and recurring war-related nightmares. On the advice of his local doctor, he started writing down the stories of his air force days, hoping to purge the old memories. For a number of years, this became his ritual, each night before he went to bed.

Fortunately, writing came easily to him. During the war, with Dymphna’s assistance, he had already had a number of articles published in the Sydney papers (see Appendices 1 and 2) and had even been dubbed the ‘official’ Ventura historian. Gradually, as his nightmares slowly diminished, the pile of foolscap pages mounted in the guest bedroom of our Brisbane house.

As chance would have it, Dymphna was staying with us at the time, waiting to travel overseas on a passenger freighter, her preferred mode of travel. Dymphna by this stage had become quite famous as the author of a number of books, all with a focus on social and political issues. Her best-known, Come in Spinner (later a television mini-series), was inspired partly by her Kings Cross experiences, and told the story of three young women set in the wartime Sydney of black marketeers, abortionists and R-and-R Yanks. The book won Dymphna and her co-author, Florence James, the Sydney Daily Telegraph prize in 1948 – a real feat for women in that chauvinist era. The fact that they entered the competition using assumed gender-neutral names no doubt helped. Dymphna’s other works included Say No to Death (about the death of her friend, Kay, from tuberculosis) and Southern Steel (about Newcastle, where she taught during the war).

Her books were also published overseas in 15 different languages, and were particularly popular in France, Eastern European countries, the Soviet Union, North Korea and China. As royalties in many of these countries were not transferable, she and her husband Norman Freehill, a financial journalist and Communist, lived an exciting and nomadic lifestyle travelling in these countries. In 1956, they were invited to China and spent over two years there. Dymphna wrote Chinese Women Speak after interviewing women from a variety of backgrounds, including Madame Mao. Perhaps not surprisingly for those times, both she and Norman had ASIO files and were never allowed into the USA.

On this particular occasion, as it happened, a dock strike had delayed Dymphna’s departure, so she took the opportunity to read through John’s stories. She soon realised that he had the makings of a book, and she introduced him to contacts at the Australasian Book Society. Later, the massive chore began of editing 250,000 words down to a manageable size. The book was finally published as They Hosed Them Out in 1965, under John’s pen name John Beede. To John’s delight, the book was greeted with a mass of favourable reviews, being praised as ‘a minor war classic’ (Max Harris), ‘outstanding’ (Daily Telegraph) and ‘of the stature of Hersey’s The War Lover’ (Australian Book Review). It has since been reprinted a number of times (including under the title Rear Gunner), with the present expanded and annotated edition being the sixth.

Settling in Sydney

Although Brisbane had been enjoyable, John had welcomed the news that he would be transferring back to Sydney in 1962. This time it was as Electrolux’s NSW manager, a prize position. It meant a return to his old home ground at Coogee and we rented a house there. Cath, however, had other plans in mind. After months of house-hunting, she managed to talk John into buying a block of land in Mosman overlooking beautiful Chinamans Beach in Middle Harbour. Despite John’s misgivings that he might find himself surrounded by ‘a bunch of snobs’, it turned out that a lot of our neighbours were from John’s old stamping grounds.

Wherever we lived, my parents made friends with the neighbours. Many a barrier was broken down by John’s standard response, ‘Let’s have them in for a drink, Cath’. I don’t think I ever heard John offer any guest a cup of tea. If they arrived anytime after midday, they were given a beer.

During the week, John was rarely home on time, as drinks with the Electrolux boys at the Petersham RSL Club were nightly occurrences. Cath had become used to this routine over the years and fined him if he didn’t ring her before 7 pm. John’s other extra-curricular interest was gambling on the horses. He had always had an SP bookie and listened avidly to the Saturday races on the radio. However, his success at punting did not match his enthusiasm. Once, when we were in Newcastle, Cath decided to stem this steady outward flow of money by setting herself up as John’s bookie. The extent of John’s lack of punting prowess soon became undeniably clear. He refused to place any more bets with her after she had accumulated enough winnings to buy herself a fur stole!

John eventually retired from Electrolux in 1973, with many farewells. His going away card from his work colleagues was festooned with a big ‘Merci Bucups’ on the front (John’s version of ‘merci beaucoup’), one of his favourite expressions.

In retirement, John always had itchy feet, saying that he wanted to fit in as much travel as possible. He didn’t want to become ‘one of those old buggers’ he used to see travelling round the world, hobbling on a walking stick. Trying to encourage him into a more relaxed mode of travel, Cath rather cunningly used to book them on cruise ships. Even on these, John was always up at the crack of dawn walking round the deck, playing table tennis and joining in any competition in the pool. Inevitably, he was the first to arrive at the Captain’s cocktail party, and the last to leave.

At about this time, I had moved to London on an extended working holiday. Cath and John came over on one of the Women’s Weekly World Discovery Tours and we met up there. My boyfriend (and future husband) Philip’s introduction to John occurred when I took him up to their hotel room. As soon as we knocked, John’s arm appeared through the half-open door, brandishing a welcome can of ice-cold VB beer.

Cath and John also took off on a number of European tours. Cath had to shush him on the Rhine cruise when he kept audibly recalling many of the towns which he had previously flown over on bombing raids. As he always had an excellent memory for dates, he was able to add that helpful detail as well.

Back home in Mosman, John spent his retirement swimming locally, with Cath keeping an eye out for sharks from the balcony. He quickly became an outstanding local lawn bowler and did some beach fishing. At one stage Cath even found him a job as a ‘messenger boy’ at a large city bank. After befriending everyone there, he said he’d never experienced such an easy time earning money.

Despite his cheerful and party going disposition, John retained a number of health problems from the war years. There were mentions of ‘those bloody Repat doctors’ who refused to acknowledge that any of his conditions were related to the crash landings and the stress of all those wartime ops. His athletic fitness and PMA probably helped him to stay on top of most of his injuries.

John’s problem with insomnia was notorious. As a teenager, I could never sneak in late at night, as he awoke at the slightest sound. Cath’s plan of a lily pond in a sunken bath in the garden came to an end when it attracted ‘those bloody noisy frogs’. Onion and potato plants sprouted around the pond as a result of these vegetables being thrown from the balcony to quell the nightly noise. Many a frog ended up in a jam jar in the kitchen awaiting a ride across the Spit Bridge.

A serious blood disorder finally caused John to spend a lot of time in isolation in hospital. He kept the staff entertained with his stories, and inspired all of his specialists to read They Hosed Them Out. In the winter of 1979, yearning for some warm weather and sunshine, John talked Cath into going to Cairns where he had spent some of his early years. He died suddenly from a blood clot soon after his return. He was 71. He had donated his body to the university and his ashes are interred in the war veterans’ cemetery in Sydney.

Dymphna died soon after receiving her Order of Australia in 1981. John’s grandson Nicholas was born in 1982. Cath, despite losing her ‘dear John’, enjoyed life for another 20 years, a time spent with friends, playing golf and indulging her grandson.

Kerry McCouat (nee Cusack)