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Suez Canal, the shipment was a closely guarded secret. The ship arrived without enemy conflict, via South Africa, right on schedule. When the mill was assembled and working successfully the engineers returned to England and their important work there. Some of the Lilydale men were employed in the mill and worked alongside the English men.
    Many of the farmers in the district were contracted with the Department of Defence to grow the flax. When the flax was ready for harvesting, anyone including older school children on school holidays, was employed by the growerto pull the flax by hand, gather it into big sheaves, tie it with twine and then stook it. For this hard work the wage was a halfpenny a sheaf or, if one was fortunate, a penny a sheaf.
    Mum would make a huge cut lunch for each of us and a big bottle of lemon barley water to drink. By 7.30a.m, Geoff, Joan and Valda would be at the shop corner for the farmer to pick them up in his open lorry and take them to the paddock where the flax was to be pulled. The workers stopped for lunch and dinner breaks when the timber mill at the top of our road blew its whistle. Knock off time also coincided with the mill whistle which could be heard all over the district and was so regular that many residents used it as a clock. By the end of the day the younger workers were utterly exhausted and on many occasions suffered sore and blistered hands. Because of the blisters many days work were lost, but the farmer didn’t worry about it because he knew that when they were ready to return to work they would be standing at the comer ready for another day’s hard work.
    The flax was used to manufacture the fibre to make camouflage netting for the army to conceal their war equipment. Nearly every household in Lilydale had a special board attached to the wall in a convenient place where a portion of camouflage netting could be made by hand. The netting was collected at regular intervals and taken to the mill to be joined together. The mill made an enormous number of nets but the idea was that “every little helps”. The mill and its operations were strictly secret and never talked about, so what else was manufactured there remained a secret. A slogan during war time was “loose lips sink ships” and was strictly adhered to.
    In 1942 Geoff started work in an apple orchard, but Joan and Valda returned to the flax-pulling earning fifteen and twelve shillings respectively, which they spent on a school case each and their schoolbooks. The little that was leftoverwas deposited in their school bank accounts. The next year when they went flax-pulling Joan forgot her sun hat and was very sick with a bad dose of sunstroke that ended that work for both girls as Valda was not allowed to go on her own.
    Every afternoon at knock off time the farmer made his rounds and checked off the number of sheaves each one had pulled. The flax had to be pulled by hand as at that time there wasn’t any mechanical harvester in Tasmania that could do the work.

    During the war years all homes were “blacked out” so that from the air the town could not be seen at night. Lilydale was thought to be on the flight path Japanese planes would use if they came on a bombing raid to Launceston. Every evening at dusk Mum very carefully covered all the windows in the house with dark blankets so that even the smallest chink o flight could not be seen from the outside. Men were rostered to patrol the town at night to make sure that all the “black outs” were effective.
    At this time the school playground was a maze of trenches which had been dug in a zigzag fashion. Each day we would have “air-raid practice”. When the school bell rang during lessons everyone had to go to the trenches in an orderly way. Each child was designated a certain area to hide in with their heads tucked onto their knees and their hands on their heads. Some of the older children were given the responsibility of