Mindil Beach Archives - Pidgeon Post

August 2, 2023August 11, 2023

War Letters – NW Australia: 2 Aug 1943, Darwin; Barber’s shop in a forward area

W.E.Pidgeon
C/O DPR Unit
Army Post Office
Darwin

Monday Aug. 1 or something
[2 Aug 1943]

Darling,

Sorry I growled about there being no letters from you. Very little mail arrived for anyone last week. Must have been some hitch. Happily I received two this morning and was thereby much delighted.

What - No Letters Blokes

You seem pretty lonely poor darling – it is obviously sickening to have to either stay home alone or still see the same faces & the same chatter. It’s lonely here as a rule when I’m not working. That is why I like to get out each week to some camp down the road and settle in to steady effort. There is a great deal round about here I want to get on to, moreover the general atmosphere of this mess is slow. At the moment all the correspondents are spine bashing. Apparently there is bugger all for them to find in the way of news with the exception of raids. Now that would be exciting if I didn’t catch a bomb. And the food up here is bloody awful. Margarine, dried eggs, macaroni pudding, stewed tea & leathered meat. That wouldn’t be so bad if the cook thought of something besides going on leave. Believe you me, I’ve been criminally spoilt.

On the beach again yesterday¹. Water really wonderful – the sunshine and Freds bountiful. I’m losing the lolly pink – changing chameleon like into tiger stripes owing to a little semi spine bashing of my own the other day. Curled up in a deck chair & came to with pink bands across my belly skin where the creases between folds of fat had been retained it lily white line. Got sunburnt on the flat yesterday – result – pink & brown now instead of original barber’s pole style. Nerves not much better – worry a bit about the job as I don’t know how I can remember all the different colour & tones of the scenes I have ideas of portraying. Most of the stuff I want to get down is of the rapid impression type –Much too quick even to get the drawing let alone tone, etc. The only painting I do is to note down appropriate backgrounds & incidentals to the job. Have written these blue lines while waiting for a haircut in a military camp.

He’s a hell of a little barber about as short & thick as a fart. An ex-ladies’ hairdresser from Farmers, or, some say Borrowmans – anyway he cuts a pretty hair. The charge is 1/- of which he gets 6^d & his unit comforts fund 6^d. You sit on a sawn off log in a parlour of the most delicate hessian. Whilst outside in the ante-room grim faced & spare witted troops purse lips and pen handle heads in the agonising concentration of writing the dear ones at home. I draw. Somebody asks how to spell Americans. I oblige.

Have returned to Happy Messy. This mail is due to go off in 10 minutes. So lots of love dear & keep on writing even if it kills you. Won’t be very long before I see you again. Thanks for the lipstick – tasted good. Love

Bill.

The Australian Women’s Weekly, 29 July 1944

Reading and writing letters whilst waiting for a haircut

Notes:

1
Most likely Mindil Beach

July 24, 2023August 16, 2023

War Letters – NW Australia: 24 Jul 1943, Darwin; Material for Women’s Weekly, daily diet & journo’s gossip

C/O DPR Unit,
Army Post Office,
Darwin,

Saturday night
[24 Jul 1943]

Darling,

I was enormously pleased to get your letter, sweetheart – it did me a lot of good – picked the old soul up no end. Forgive me if my last letter sounded somewhat morbid. “Troppo” madness sets in early and I was too tired & weak to attempt good cheer. However you will overlook it – yes?

Letters do help – one has to be away to realize that. Poor Ivan – he must eat his heart out waiting for them.

I’m sitting down to work – have been fairly busy although my painting is not of any class as yet, it being overwhelmingly amateurish. Obviously I need much more practice. It’s mostly rough notes that I am compiling for a more or less free use when I come home to my cuddly snugglepot. Judging from the material I have gathered in less than two weeks it will take me at least 2 months back in Sydney working flat out to cover the space necessary for any sort of decent display. That’s good news, heh?

They’re still discussing this & that. It’s U.S. and Jap strategy now & I cannot help but listen. Destroys my thoughts.

A great call comes through for us to eat supper sandwiches. And at present that’s nothing to look forward to. We are on “tropical spread” a bloody margarine substitute – tastes like blasted coconut oil. Should be butter any time now. We have only had to bear the burden for a couple of days.

The poor old pate is sight to behold, huge shivers of burnt up skin float slowly off its tarnished dome. My face is a dried apricot with pimples on it. The bank roll is still well – I’ve only spent a tenner so far. You must apologise to the boys for me and explain that to date it is next door to impossible to buy anything up here. My only expenses are household – you can’t spend any on grog at other camps as each officer only gets so much ration & none is really left over for visitors to buy for them. I’ve just bought 18 large packets of Capstans. They seem to be all you can get. Also I let the office buy me a real kangaroo skin tobacco pouch for 10/-. Incidently (sic) I haven’t heard from them yet – touch wood.

You’d better go in and price that casserole doings as it’s a moral I won’t be home to consummate our tenth anniversary. Get it if you like & give a dinner to the Watso’s¹ & O’Deas² out of it. Do me in style and don’t forget to leave an empty setting at table for me – don’t neglect my drinks either. Telepath me lots of lurv.

It’s no secret about McNulty³. I knew in Brisbane. No doubt King⁴ & Cyril⁵ resented his queer behaviour. Perhaps he didn’t like to let Cyril know that the estimable Brian⁶ was to be his superior. The set-up has violent possibilities. Cyril will object to Penton’s policies & the daily night work. Pretty ‘orrid what!

We don’t do our own washing. Every day we change and one of the poor unfortunates chores for us all. Ironing is done as well. We do nothing but eat. None of these blokes are what you could call drinking men. Although there is at least 5 bottles Corio – 3 gin & 5 port, 1 hock, 1 advocat & 2 beer no one wants a drink. I’ll be glad to get out again. Am going down the road tomorrow – shall be away about 4 days finishing up at the last camp I stayed at. They’re having a do on Thursday 29^th. Ray Stehr & Tom Izzard, prominent Sydney footballers, also 4 other leading Sydney Rugby players are in the unit. To my great despair I won’t see any of your letters until I come back, my pet. I’ll forward you letters from where ever I am.

All the gang have been on the beach this afternoon. It seems incredible that the water should be so warm and the weather so glorious. Dozens of soldiers turn out for a dip it’s all very gay and nude – the probeing & squealing is reminiscent of a schoolboys water carnival. An amazing assortment of Freds strike the eye. I retire with modesty – grander and stouter are encountered with every flick of the eye.⁷

Cards on a northern beach – The Australian Women’s Weekly, 26 February 1944, p1 The scene is Mindil Beach, Darwin

Playing cards, Mindil Beach, Darwin, July 1943

Sunset, Darwin area most likely near Mindil Beach, July 1943

W.E. Pidgeon (WEP) at work

Yesterday I spent some time painting the delightful freshwater pool I wrote you of some time back. To my great satisfaction I had the spot alone for close on 1½ hours when 20 or there about soldiers came roaring down like wolves on the fold. I fled soon after. On the way back saw dozens of wallabies. The poor creatures suffer the fate of rabbits down south – dazzled by car lights they are struck & killed.

The blarsted typing has started again. So farewell for the nonce my love. It’s going to be a great thrill when we meet.

Lot & lots

Bill

Notes:

1
King and Eleanor Watson
2
Tommy O’Dea
3
Clarence Sydney McNulty was Editor in Chief at the Telegraph. He was arrested in early 1943 in an embarrassing situation and gave Police a false name
4
King Watson
5
Cyril Pearl
6
Brian Penton
7
The scene at Mindil Beach provided an influence for several paintings by Pidgeon throughout the 1950s including The Sun Bathers, which was a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize in 1956 and again with The Bathers in 1957. Other versions in the later 1950s introducing the female form based on new wife, Dorothy following Jess’s death in 1953 of a brain tumour), adorned the walls of Wep’s home

July 15, 2023August 16, 2023

War Letters – NW Australia: 15 July 1943, Darwin; 2/11 Australian Army Field Regimental Beach Carnival

W.E. Pidgeon
C/O DPR
Army Post Office

Darwin
[15 Jul 1943]

Dear Jess,

Or should I say darling? This is the first time I have been alone in this house. Until 11 pm typewriters & dopes clack out their stuff and I cannot settle down to think of you and myself to the exclusion of everyone else.

God, darling, if you and I had a house to ourselves (and heavens know there are many empty) we would have a time such as only those days in the trailer gave us¹. Tonight for some reason one of the permanent lieutenants asked me to accompany him for a drink. He & his & our understrapping sergeant enlisted more or less together in 1940 and they have a fellow feeling or pact to get stinking at least once a week together. Tonight they asked me to accompany them. This of course all under the lap as far as this end is concerned as officers & sergeants just don’t drink together. Be that as it may it was my privilege (and I take it as such) to have been the only one asked to drink with them. From what I can gather they really hate the guts of the fellow correspondents! Any goodwill I seem to have gathered is because I still can mix with people of the lowlier orders without being the perfect quince &/or pounce, or ponce or (blast it you know what I mean!).

There is so much to tell you honey. I can’t fit it all in these rapid scribblings. The pages left unsaid in which I could say how much I would like you to be here are legion. I went to the pictures again tonight & saw “Johnny Eager”. Robert Taylor & Lana Turner. God only knows why they insist on showing pictures in which the dames crawl all over the man’s body. Not very helpful to the troops. Got home about 10.30. (Harold Dick took us in his car by the way.) Had a couple of gins on return & then went out with this chappy and polished off (amongst us) some port & sherry. Returned about 1. Strangely enough I felt very restless & a bit sick. I tried to get to bed – lay there ½ hour, decided to put the old finger down the throat & write you. Not since Thursday previous to my leaving have I had so much to drink. (Special note – The mosquitoes are really eating me alive. When I say that it’s no foolin!) Everyone is asleep and its nice and peaceful and I feel as if I love you with the affection of a thousand Willies in the month of July 1932. Look after yourself, pettie.

Went for a swim today. The water was wonderful. The whole setup was much the same as we had at George Warnecke’s place at Ettalong. The weather is the same & the surroundings fairly similar.

Tomorrow I am going on the road again. Always it is about as far as Mittagong to get anywhere. And the dust is colossical. I’m getting an occupational disease – you could almost call it potters lungs – there is so much clay about.

Have spent the day on the beach watching a regimental anniversary picnic. Quite a GOOD SHOW marred only by the untimely death of the pig for the greasy pig race. Poor bastard snuffed it about 2 hours before it was due to appear in the race!

Bike Race; 2/11 Aust. Army Field Regiment Third Anniversary Beach Carnival, Mindil Beach

Watching 880 Yards Race; Third Anniversary Beach Carnival, Mindil Beach, Thursday, 15 July, 1943

Low tide 10.30 Thursday; Third Anniversary Beach Carnival, Mindil Beach, Thursday, 15 July, 1943

This really is a wonderful winter climate – you’d go nuts about it. The town is full of slick & well conditioned brown gods – not that you’d notice them! The only soft bodies here are senior officers & war correspondents. Am getting sunburnt. Lolly pink – that’s about my status at the moment. Shall meet fluttery eyed Gloria – from the Officer’s husband, F/O Newton when I get down to Caldwell’s Spitfire Squadron.

Guess I should go to bed.
Send me a little kiss in your letter.
Love from Winnie the Poo

P.S. (Something out the back stinks something dreadful!)

Wep’s plan view of the War Correspondents Mess, Darwin, July 1943

Notes:

1
Reference to Wep and Jess’s six month caravan trip in 1937