Chapter 7- Vietnam-Vietcong-2
The Letter, the Truth, and the Waiting
In August 1967, I found myself in a situation so precarious, so surreal, that it would etch itself into the marrow of my memory. I was aboard a cargo ship docked in China, surrounded by Red Guards stationed on board twenty-four hours a day, spaced no more than thirty paces apart. After being coerced into writing a confession—declaring myself a U.S. aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader in Taiwan—I was told by the second steward, who handled the ship’s correspondence, that I had about two days before a response to my letter might reach me. That response, whatever it might be, would be delivered by the head of the Red Guards himself.
It was the second steward who quietly suggested I write to my parents. I did. I poured myself into 22 foolscap pages, writing with the urgency of a man who believed he might not live to see the end of the week. I told my church-going parents that I was not the saintly 18-year-old they believed I was. I confessed that the woman they had so often thanked in their letters—believing her to be my landlady or carer—was in fact my lover. She was 42. I was 15 when we met. From 1963 to 1967, she had been my anchor, my warmth, my truth. I wrote about my life at sea, about the chaos and the camaraderie, about the loneliness and the longing. I wrote because I needed them to know who I really was, in case I was executed before I ever saw them again.
As the ship’s cook and duty mess room steward, I had a front-row seat to the daily rhythms of life on board. I often watched the crew eat their meals on deck, plates balanced on the handrails that lined the ship. We were carrying grain to China on humanitarian grounds, and yet, the irony was unbearable—food was being wasted while the people we were meant to help were starving. Sausages, half-eaten steaks, baked potatoes—they’d slip from plates and tumble into the sea. But there were no seagulls to swoop down and claim them. They’d been eaten too. The food floated aimlessly, untouched even by fish, which had grown scarce in the harbour. Starvation wasn’t a concept. It was a presence. It was in the eyes of the Red Guards who watched us eat. It was in the silence that followed every wasted bite.
A Tray of Leftovers and a Silent Exchange
After my arrest, I was placed under house arrest aboard the ship. One day, I took a small metal tray from the galley and filled it—not with scraps, but with decent leftovers. Food that would have gone into the stockpot or been turned into dry hash cakes. I walked it out to the deck, placed it on one of the long benches, patted my stomach as if I’d eaten my fill, and walked away without a word.
Ten minutes later, I returned. The tray had been licked clean.
At the next meal, I did it again—this time with enough food for three or four Red Guards. I placed the tray on the bench and left. No words. No eye contact. Just food. I repeated this quiet ritual for two more days, all while waiting for the response to my letter. During that time, something shifted. The Red Guard, who had been waking me every hour to check if I was sleeping, stopped coming. The tension in the air thinned, just slightly. And I kept bringing food—whenever the crew was busy unloading wheat with grappling hooks wrapped in chicken wire, I’d slip out with another tray.
To this day, I don’t know what saved me. It was certainly not the letter declaring myself a U.S. aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader in Taiwan. Maybe it was luck. Or perhaps it was that tray of food, offered without expectation, without speech, without condition. A silent gesture that said, “I see you. I know you’re hungry. I know you’re human.”
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
Chapter 7-Vietnam Vietcong
The literary work Casualties of Telstra contains two distinct sides—two battlefields, if you will. One is corporate and bureaucratic, fought in boardrooms and courtrooms. The other is older, bloodier, and more haunting: the jungle war of Vietnam. Both are stories of betrayal. Both are stories of silence. And both, in their own way, have left scars that never fully heal.
In this chapter, I turn to a moment that has haunted me for decades. It is not a memory from the battlefield itself, but from the halls of Parliament—where decisions were made that cost lives, and where silence was often louder than truth.
On September 7, 1967, during a session of the Australian Parliament, the Honourable Dr Rex Patterson, a member of the Labour Party and representative for Dawson in Queensland, posed a question that cut to the heart of a national contradiction. He asked whether the Australian government could guarantee that wheat exported to mainland China was not being redirected to North Vietnam. The question was simple. The implications were not.
The Liberal–Country Party Coalition government, then in power, offered an evasive response at best. The subtext was clear: economic interests trumped military alliances. The government could not—or would not—guarantee that Australian wheat wasn’t feeding the very soldiers our own troops were fighting in the jungles of North Vietnam.
Let that sink in.
While young Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans were bleeding and dying in a war they were told was about freedom and democracy, their own government was profiting from trade deals that may have sustained the enemy. It was a betrayal not just of the soldiers but also of public trust. And it was done in the name of pragmatism, of diplomacy, of trade.
I have read that Hansard transcript many times. Each time, I find myself rereading the same lines, hoping I’ve misunderstood. But the facts remain. The silence remains. And with it, my anxiety rises—an old, familiar ache that never quite leaves.
As an octogenarian, I still struggle to reconcile the politics of the Liberal–Country National Government. How can any politician justify the loss of life in Vietnam as “collateral damage,” while defending the sale of wheat to a regime that may have used it to feed the Vietcong? How do they sleep at night, knowing that the lives of our soldiers were weighed against the profits of grain exports—and found wanting?
The mistreatment of Chinese citizens by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution affected me deeply. I witnessed their cruelty firsthand. And yet, what lingers even more painfully is the knowledge that I was nearly shot by those same forces—forces our government was indirectly supporting through trade. The hypocrisy is staggering.
In 2019, as a septuagenarian, I visited the Vietnam Memorial precinct in Portland, Victoria. I stood before the names of the fallen, etched in stone, and felt a profound sense of disgrace. Not for having been able to stop this terrible trade with the then enemy—no, never that—but for not having spoken louder. For not having challenged the machinery that sent so many to die while quietly feeding the very war it claimed to oppose.
That visit marked a turning point. It was just before I relocated to Ballarat, and I remember thinking: This is not just history. This is legacy. And silence is no longer an option.
I write this not to reopen old wounds, but to ensure they are not forgotten. The story of Vietnam is not just about battles fought in the jungle. It is about the wars we fight within ourselves—between duty and doubt, between loyalty and truth. It is about the quiet deals made in Canberra that echo through the graves of the young and the haunted dreams of the old.
As I close this chapter, I do so with a heavy heart. But I also do so with resolve. The past cannot be changed, but it can be told. And in the telling, perhaps we can find some measure of justice—not just for those who died, but for those of us who still carry the weight of what was done in our name.
Author’s Note
This chapter is not an indictment of the Chinese people, whose suffering under the Red Guards I witnessed with deep sorrow. My condemnation lies squarely with the Australian government officials and bureaucrats who, even after I alerted them to the diversion of wheat shipments from China to North Vietnam, allowed the trade to continue. Their silence—then and now—speaks volumes.
The Arbiitraitor is not just a record of institutional failure; it is a call to conscience. Whether in wartime or peacetime, the machinery of bureaucracy too often protects itself at the expense of truth. I write to ensure that those who were silenced are finally heard—and that those who turned away are finally seen.
This story is not mine alone. It belongs to every soldier betrayed, every citizen ignored, and every whistleblower punished for daring to speak. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for listening. The silence ends here.
Portland Memorial Vietnam Peace Park
Please visit → https://shorturl.at/aejRT
By courtesy of Yu Xiangzhen May 2019 → https://shorturl.at/kRTUW
"On May 16, 1966, I was practicing calligraphy with my 37 classmates when a high-pitched voice came from the school’s loudspeaker, announcing the central government’s decision to start what it called a “Cultural Revolution.”
It was my first year of junior high, I was just 13.
“Fellow students, we must closely follow Chairman Mao,” the speaker bellowed. “Get out of the classroom! Devote yourselves to the Cultural Revolution!”
Two boys rushed out of door, heading to the playground yelling something.
I left more slowly, holding hands with my best friend Haiyun as we followed everyone else outside.
It would be my last normal day of school."
FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978
In January 2024, for the second or third time since 2021, I read through the paper FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978, prepared by Tianxiao Zhu. Between Footnote 82 to 85 - T Zhu names not only the Hopepeak ship which I was on between 28 June and 18 September 1967 (refer to British Seaman’s Record R744269 - Open Letter to PM File No 1 Alan Smiths Seaman), he tells the story the way it happened (I was there) not the way the government of the day told it to the people of Australia in 1967 through to the present. The Australian Minister of Trade and Industry, Sir John McEwen, referred to by Tianxiao Zhu as having stated the British seafarers of the Hopepeak ship were fearful of going back to China, was only an afterthought after being flown from Sydney back to England. When John McEwen knew full well, this was not an afterthought.
Those British seaman had witnessed me on two occasions being frog marched off the Hopepeak under armed guard never to be seen again. I was only seen again because my life was not worth 13,600 tons of wheat still in Australia ready to be loaded on to the Hopepeak for her return voyage back to the Peoples Republic of China. The voyage these British seaman was affraid of (for good reason) if they retuned with the Hopepeak.
Interestingly to note, after the crew was flown back to England (I remained in Sydney), a new crew was flown out at the expense of the ship's owners. Had the ship's crew not proven they had good reason to be fearful of returning to Communist China, the ship owner would not have met the cost of flying the two crews.
If the skipper had not reported my experience and that of another crew member of the Hopepeak at the hands of the Chinese Red Guards, on the Hopepeak's return trip to Sydney, the Commonwealth Police (now called the Australian Federal Police) would not have been waiting on the dockside to interview me and this other crew member on 18 September 1967 when we arrived back.
Both the police and media wanted to know why so many crew members feared returning to Red China. For a ship's crew to all refuse to take the ship to sea because it was to travel to a certain destination is unheard of. This refusal to sail was NO afterthought. I reiterate, If what happened was not true, why did the Commonwealth Police and media meet the ship? The captain and ship owner must have notified them that not all was well even before the ship had berthed.
What is not mentioned in the footnotes by Tianxiao Zhu, is that the Australian Trade Minister misled many people about the seriousness of what had taken place so that the Australian government could continue to sell wheat to Red China.
Likewise, the Commonwealth Police asked me to describe to them the context of what I was forced to write under threat of being shot. They would not have done this had there not been some official acknowledgement from the ship's captain that this was what had happened. Why was I escorted off the Hopepeak under armed guard by the Red Guards and taken to the hospital in the manner I was? I was told I had syphilis, which I knew was highly unlikely, and when I refused to be injected with an unsterilized needle, I caused a scene at the hospital.
Refusing any demand by the Red Guards in the People's Republic of China in 1967 was not something one did for no good reason.
I was placed under armed guard for several days, being regularly threatened as was another crew member who had not taken to lightly to being stopped and forced to recite verses from Mao's Red Bible; the ship's officers helped me compile two different letters addressed to Mao and the People's Republic of China. In those two letters, I apologized for causing a problem at the hospital and for my treatment of the Red Guards, whose treatment of me later was threefold.
What the two ship's officers had written differed from what the Red Guards wanted to say in those letters. A third letter was written under pressure from the Red Guards, stating, "I am a US aggressor and a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalist Party." When I told the skipper that writing this statement meant I was signing my death warrant, as Chiang Kai-shek was against Mao Tse Tung, the 'Second Steward' in charge of the ship's correspondence said I was dead if I did not.
At the suggestion of the 'Second Steward,' he stated it would be more powerful if I wrote ", I disliked America and its invasion of North Vietnam" It was agreed for me to hand deliver this letter to the armed guards as a show of respect (I did what I was advised) fearful of loosing my life over an unsterilized needle).
Before leaving the ship with this letter, the '(Third Officer) on the Hopepeak, who was from Mauritius, pulled me aside and informed me the cargo being unloaded had already been paid for by the People's Republic of China. A further load of similar wheat still in Australia had also been paid for with that money held in transit until the Hopepeak returned with the next shipment.
The 'Third Officer' made it noticeably clear to the Chinese Commander that if I were shot, there would be no further wheat sent to Red China, and the fight over what had already been supplied would be arbitrated on with the ship owners winning on appeal because they had completed their first part of the deal. This threat worked, and I returned from delivering this letter in a daze.
After arriving in Sydney on 17 September 1967, I provided the above and below information to the Commonwealth Police and a newspaper journalist they had been contacted by the ships agent.
While the ship was in China, for twenty-four hours a day, (night and day), we could hear a loud voice coming from speakers attached to flood light poles on the quayside, which allowed the wharf labourers to work through the night. In English (not in Chinese), the voice was making propaganda statements about British imperialism. The constant drone of the propaganda recordings day and night was unnerving. A sentry box had been placed at the bottom of the ship's gangway, where a Red Guard, sometimes two Guards, stood (not sat) to check the credentials of everyone boarding or leaving the ship. The ship's crew, from officers down, were told we could have shore leave but only to visit the Seaman's Mission and a Shop that sold trinkets and large bottles of Chinese-made beer.
No fishing lines were allowed to go over the side of the ship. Some ship's crews were treated differently from others. For reasons not known, our crew was being treated harshly. Rumours had it that two young Chinese girls had been seen on a sister ship to ours and had been shot as prostitutes. Their bodies no longer belonged to The People's Republic of China. Those two bodies left with the sister ship to the Hopepeak. While these were only rumours that may have be why our ship had been singled out.
When I found out who was Australia's Minister of the Army, I wrote to the Minister Malcolm Fraser asking him to ensure Australia refrained from sending more grain back to Red China on the Hopepeak with a new crew. The ship still left for Communist China carrying 13,600 tons of wheat regardless of my pleas. Australia will, of course, never find out how much of that wheat went into the bellies of the North Vietnam soldier's/guerillas before they marched off into the jungles of Vietnam in search of Australian, New Zealand and USA blood.
John McEwen could not afford an Australian public to see behind the stand of the crew of a British ship saying we are not going to be a party to the slaughter of those conscripts that the Australian government forced to forfeit their lives for a few bowls of grain. That's what the crew of the Hopepeak did: put their seaman discharge books on the line, knowing some of them might not be allowed to sail again until an investigation proved them to be of sound judgment for having to been forced to take the cargo they refused to take to Red China aware it was being redeployed to North Vietnam. For a seaman to have their discharge book stamped Voyage Not Completed meant some shipping companies would refuse to employ them. Sir John McEwen (Australia's Trade Minister) turned these British Seaman's bravery into something sordid.File number 114 ⇒ AS-CAV Exhibit 92 to 127 is a letter dated 11 November 1994 from John Wynack, Director of Investigations at the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office, to Frank Blount, Telstra’s CEO. The letter indicates how desperate I was becoming. I believe in this letter that Mr Wynack made it quite clear to Mr Blount that he would be more than a little concerned if my allegations were proved correct regarding Telstra deliberately blanking out information on documents previously supplied under FOI and the withholding of relevant documents which discussed my conversation with the former prime minister of Australia. What had Telstra deleted from this discussion?I had alerted Mr Fraser to my concern the government was concealing what they knew about their wrongdoings concerning redeploying to grain to North Vietnam to feed the enemy that Australia, New Zealand and the US were fighting.Voyage not completednever to see their beloved England againThe last time, an almost entire crew of British seamen refused to sail with their ship, and the master was the crew of the Bounty. Historians know the crew's sacrifice for standing up against a British Captain of a Ship was a life sentence never to see their beloved England again. The 'Mutiny on the Bounty' may seem worlds apart, but the story shows something had to be radically wrong for an almost complete crew to refuse to take a ship to sea regardless of the cost. The British seaman on the Hopepeak were no different they were refusing to go back to China because of what they had seen there weeks before. For a British ship to be taking a cargo of Australian wheat to a country Australia was at war with was a Judas kiss. They felt like traitors and told the Hopepeak captain this, as I had done.I left the Hopepeak in Sydney and stayed because Australia was my home. On September 18, 1967, when I left the ship, I had been an Australian citizen since May 11, 1965. How could I, with any conscience, turn my back on my new country (Australia) and sail with the Hopepeak, aware of where some of her cargo would end up?Sir Robert Menzies (the Prime Minister of the day) and Sir John McEwen, (Minister for Trade), should have been stripped of their knighthood for allowing this Communist China trade to continue,
I reiterate, how can a country like Australia sell their produce (wheat) to Communist China on Humanitarian grounds when Communist China was redeploying some of that wheat to another Communist Country (North Vietnam), which was the enemy of Australia? The same enemy who was killing and maiming young Australian lives and the young lives of Australia's allies, New Zealand and the USA? Young lives (mostly conscripts) who were never to see their homeland again
I ask every single visitor to this website to read footnote pages 82 to 85 of the paper FOOD AND TRADE IN LATE MAOIST CHINA, 1960-1978, prepared by Tianxiao Zhu. The paper discusses the Hopepeak ship I was on between June to September 1967, which went to communist China during the Vietnam War.
I have mentioned some tough memories from my short stay in China, including witnessing some pretty horrific scenes. It's understandable that these experiences have stayed with me and even affected my sleep until recently when I started writing about these events. It's important that we acknowledge and address these kinds of events, so I wanted to share a resource with you - a first-hand account from a Chinese girl who witnessed similar events. You can find it at the link https://shorturl.at/ltv89. It's frustrating when those in positions of power try to downplay or deny what's happening, like John McEwen did. It's important that we hold our leaders accountable for their actions and their words. In this case, I think it's only right that the Australian government apologize to those who were dismissed as liars by McEwen.
Confronting uncomfortable truths is never easy, but it is necessary to do so in order to move forward. It's important to recognize that thanks to the unwavering support of the British seamen who stood by me, refusing to return to China, my British Seaman's book was able to receive a clean discharge. This meant I could continue to pick up British-manned ships in Australia and Britain. Despite the not so Hon. John McEwen's disregard for the welfare of others.
Please read Chapters 1 to 12 below and learn how my China episode affected my life even after I purchased the Cape Bridgewater holiday camp in February 1988.
