Captain Max Hinchcliffe subtitled this talk as ‘bits and pieces, odds and ends’. It is an entertainingly personal account of his early years in the RAN, beginning as a young cadet arriving with 11 others at Jervis Bay in 1930. Weevils in the biscuits, a dead mouse in the honey, and the legendary salt pork from a barrel dated 1845, half an hour to bath and shave and dress and gulp down a cup of scalding cocoa before parade, ferocious PT instructors, lessons, drills, the one-size-fits-all-swimming costumes, first tastes of life at sea; gradually these young men evolved into the officers who would face the hard school of active service in wartime campaigns around the world. Captain Hinchcliffe would, in his retirement, become a core member of the NHSA in its formative days.
Recorded on 1st November 1978.
Duration is 1 hour 10 minutes
