FRANK Wintle and Arnall Salway are two World War 2 veterans and old classmates who grew up in the Bega Valley.
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Mr Wintle’s father Andrew worked on a farm which stretched 260a around Camel Rock Beach, and so Mr Wintle spent the first 10 years of his life there.
Mr Salway’s father Norman was a general carrier and would carry products from Cobargo to the shipping steamers wharf at Bermagui and his grandfather started one of the first Jersey cow studs in the district, at Cobargo.
The Bermagui school teacher had a bad reputation, so Mr Wintle would catch a mail car out to Fox Hill School at Coolagolite until it closed down due to lack of students, so he went to a school at Cuttagee until it also closed.
He ended up at the school in Bermagui, where he found the teacher wasn’t so bad after all!
In 1935 Mr Wintle’s family bought the grocery and newsagent business in Bermagui and so moved into the town, while his father joined the Department of Main Roads.
Mr Wintle and Mr Salway attended Bega High School, and would board in Bega during the week then go home on weekends.
Mr Wintle’s father would pick up Mr Salway at Cobargo on Monday mornings in his 1927 Overland Whippet to drive to Bega together.
The three of them would sit across the front seat, and in winter it was freezing as there was no air conditioner.
It would also be very foggy, so Mr Wintle would use the manual windscreen wiper controls to clean the front windscreen while Mr Salway would stick his head out the window to navigate them through the fog.
When Mr Salway turned 16 and got his intermediate he left school to work at Balmain Brothers in Bega, where he became an apprentice panel beater.
After the war started and he turned 17, he had an “inkling to join the air force”.
He was called up in 1942, when travelling to Sydney by land would have taken two days as he would have to go through Cooma to get a train, so his father asked his acquaintance, the captain of the SS Cobargo, to give him a lift by ship.
The trip took 18 hours as the ship went cautiously, as Japanese submarines had been sinking ships along the route.
Mr Salway formed very close bonds with his friends in the squadron, and continues to see his mates every year.
Look out in coming weeks for more stories from local World War 2 veterans.
