Diary pages from this date

Mary's name is down for a chest x-ray and the threat of chest trouble looms again.  She gets 2 bottles of milk a day at hospital and that will help.

Rumour is (a) the Russians are retreating round Stalingrad, and (b) the Russians have counter-attacked on various fronts.  Also, that Canada has invited us in the Far East to go to Canada, all our expenses paid.

Mr Bendall gave Mabel a lovely cake of good soap for her birthday - Agafuroffs sent him in a parcel.  ((Pre-war we often played tennis with Jimmy Bendall and the Agafuroff brothers at the Civil Service Club, Happy Valley. The Agafuroff brothers were not interned, I think they were Indian and probably both worked in the HK Government.   I never heard anything of them after the war.))

Well-known Australian journalist Dorothy Jenner ('Andrea') has recently been elected representative of her camp area (such people were generally called 'blockheads'). It's not an easy job and today she confides to her diary, 'committee a hellish one - I am automatically everybody's enemy'.

Source:

Christina Twomey, Australia's Forgotten Prisoners, 2007, 61

(Brown)

No news of importance. High wind, rain.