Joan CARTER
An Extraordinary Life
Mimi Packer
Joan was born in Adelaide on 10 November 1918, the day before Armistice Day, when the Allies and Germany agreed to the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of WW1.
The youngest of three children, Joan’s mother was English and her father was a New Zealander from Christchurch. He was successful as a pharmacist and ended up owning six pharmacies in South Australia. Joan’s father liked to travel frequently and when she was 20, Joan was aboard a Dutch ship with her parents going to Singapore and Malaysia. During the voyage she met Tom Carter, also a New Zealander from Christchurch, who was travelling to Malaysia to work as an engineer. Joan had been asked to be in charge of sports aboard the ship. Tom asked if he could help, which he did, as well as expressing his liking her red evening dress. They spent two wonderful weeks together aboard the ship. One evening Tom asked Joan how old she was. She was 20 and Tom was 31. She sobbed when he got off the ship in Malaysia and he promised to write but she didn’t hear from him.
Joan met another Tom soon after that and received letters from him, all the while wanting to hear from Tom Carter. However when she returned home to Adelaide her brother asked, “Who is Tom Carter?” There on the dresser was a stack of letters from “the Tom!”
The pair exchanged letters for over a year and then Tom proposed. After Joan’s mother had Tom Carter’s character vetted by relations in Christchurch and her parents had agreed to the marriage, Joan made the four-day journey to meet Tom in Kuala Lumpur. Joan’s brother accompanied her as far as Darwin, flying from Adelaide to Alice Springs and then Alice Springs to Darwin. The then 21-year-old Joan boarded a flying boat to Surabaya and then flew to Singapore. That night she boarded a train and went to KL and met Tom again, for the first time in 15 months. “You really do run a risk, but I knew that he was the one I wanted. All my boyfriends had been around my own age, whereas Tom was older. He was experienced and polished and knew how to treat a woman. I thought this was terrific,” Joan recalls.
They married and spent ten months in Malaysia, which Joan loved, and then Tom was transferred to lower Burma which was isolated and awful. When the Japanese attacked Burma in 1942, Joan was ready to leave. The Japanese attacked Burma from the south, and Joan and Tom had to be evacuated from the mine site. The Japanese were approaching as they waited for the tidal river to rise to take them down river to Mergui in lower Burma, from where they boarded a ship that took them and some other westerners to Rangoon.
As they pulled into Rangoon, the Japanese were conducting air raids and bombs were dropping all around the ship. “We were lucky we weren’t hit really.”
Joan left on the last convoy out of Rangoon and Tom joined the army, the Royal Engineers. It was awful saying goodbye to Tom. She didn’t know when or if she’d ever see him again. Together with one other woman, Joan went from Rangoon to Calcutta and on to Bombay. They didn’t have much money and were staying at a rather shabby hotel in Bombay when Joan saw some Australian army officers. “We are two stranded Australians and we want to get home,” she told them. They were marvellous.
They arranged for Joan and her friend to go on a little Dutch ship to Colombo where they transferred to the ‘Stirling Castle’, a ship taking Australian and New Zealanders home to fight in New Guinea. There were hardly any women aboard the ship, and it took a long time to get to Australia because it had to avoid torpedoes. It was freezing. Joan made friends with some young doctors who lent her ‘woolies’ and she arrived eventually in Melbourne. She then returned to Adelaide where she stayed with her mother for the next 2 ½ years. Joan didn’t hear from Tom for many months. Burma had been taken over by the Japanese and Joan had no idea about her husband until she received a cable saying that he was alive and in hospital in Assam.
Tom and others had walked out of Burma to Assam in India, through the hills, nearly 300 miles, just ahead of the Japanese, doing demolitions as they went. They survived on rice wrapped up in banana leaves, which they would cook by day because they couldn’t light fires at night. Tom normally weighed 12 or 13 stone but when he got out of Burma he weighed less than 8 stone.
Joan returned to India to join Tom in 1944. She left Melbourne aboard a little ship, ‘Mulberra’ and recalls having to say a code to board the ship, which was M for ‘Mary’. En route to India they picked up the survivors of two ships that had been torpedoed. When the ‘Mulberra’ got to Colombo, it couldn’t proceed until they had a convoy. The waters were too dangerous. They stayed in Colombo for two weeks and were allowed to go ashore for three hours at a time. Joan had great fun going to the ‘Galle Face’, a lovely hotel for dinner.
Joan proceeded to Bombay and on to Lahore where she finally met up with Tom. Tom couldn’t do active service because he’d been ill after getting out of Burma. He was in the engineering depot in Lahore, which was part of India then. It was pretty hard meeting after 2½ years. Joan had grown up a lot in that time. “Being the youngest, I was spoilt and pampered. But I had to stand on my own two feet very abruptly. And thank goodness I could do it.”
Tom got a month’s leave, and they went up to Kashmir on a houseboat and got to know each other all over again. It was their second honeymoon. They returned to Lahore and Madras in India, where Tom was attached to the British Military Administration. They returned to Adelaide on leave in June 1946 and returned to Malaysia after the war. Joan spent 14 years overseas, mainly in Malaysia, India and Burma. She and Tom moved to Perth when Tom got a job with WAPET, West Australian Petroleum Pty Ltd.
“I’ve had an extraordinary life really. I’m not praising myself. It’s what you do if you love a person,” Joan recalls. Joan’s parents were keen bridge players and she used to watch them when she was young. She and Tom would play every Friday night when they lived in India and it was great fun and when she got to Perth she played often. Joan used to play in the State Events on Monday and Thursday nights and go to all the congresses. Joan and Joan Oldham won everything one year at Geraldton, Best Pairs, Teams and Best Overall!
Tom Carter died in 1980 and Joan has lived on her own in Claremont for nearly 36 years.
Joan – an extraordinary life and an extraordinary woman!
Mimi Packer
Published in June 2016 Edition of Trumps Plus
