2/6th Australian General Hospital, Rocky Creek, in Australia during WW2

2/6TH AUSTRALIAN GENERAL HOSPITAL - 2/6 AGH
ROCKY CREEK, ATHERTON TABLELAND
IN AUSTRALIA DURING WWII

The 2/6th Australian General Hospital was formed at the Sydney Showgrounds in July 1940 and relocated to Wallgrove with 600 beds. In September 1940, a detachment moved to Bathurst to look after the camp hospital there and the rest of the unit joined them in November 1940 leaving a detachment behind at Wallgrove.

2/6th Australian General Hospital left for the Middle East in December 1940 and arrived at Gaza Ridge, in Palestine, in January 1941. They departed for Greece in March 1941. After a number of moves they were evacuated from the beaches at Navplion before the end of April 1941. They landed at Canea on Crete minus their equipment but departed in May and reassembled at Kilo 89 in Palestine to re-equip. They relocated to Beit Jirja in September 1941 then Jerusalem in November where they worked with the 2/4 Australian General Hospital.

In early 1942 the 2/6th AGH moved to Gaza Ridge to relieve the 2/1 Australian General Hospital. They stayed at Gaza Ridge as the main base hospital for the 9th Infantry Division. The 9th Infantry Division was withdrawn after the victory at El Alamein and the 2/6th AGH then departed for Australian in January 1943.

The personnel of the 2/6th AGH took some well deserved leave when they arrived in Australia. The unit reassembled at Wallgrove and moved to the Rocky Creek hospital area in April 1943.

The Australian Army established the largest military hospital area to be built in North Queensland during WWII near the Rocky Creek rail siding which was located between the towns of Atherton and Mareeba. It comprised various Australian general hospital and convalescent depot units.

Work on the hospital site began in October 1942 with the arrival of 5th Australian Camp Hospital which established a small camp hospital area. They were joined by the patients of 1st Australian Camp Hospital from Wondecla.

During January 1943 the 2/2nd Australian General Hospital was relocated to Rocky Creek from Watten Siding in western Queensland. They replaced the 5th Australian Camp Hospital. The small tent hospital quickly grew into a very large 1200 bed general hospital. As mentioned above, the 2/2nd Australian General Hospital was joined by the 2/6th Australian General Hospital in April 1943.

Pathology Laboratory 2/6th A.G.H., Rocky Creek. L to R Miss E. Paton,
Sgt. Tom Wilkinson, Maj. E,B. Jones, and Miss E.M. Robinson

The 4th Australian Ambulance Train would move patients from New Guinea arriving at Cairns to the Rocky Creek Hospital area.

The hospital wards at Rocky Creek had been transformed from tents with earth floors to prefabricated huts with concrete floors by March 1944

By mid-1944 the facilities included about 150 prefabricated buildings. In addition to the normal general hospital services, Rocky Creek also specialised in the treatment of malaria and other tropical diseases.

Quarter Master's Office in EPIP Tent at the 2/6th A.G.H., at Rocky Creek.
L to R Cpl. Maher - clerk, Joan Bryce - Dietician, l/Sgt. T.G.(Tom) Hogan - Caterer,
Captain R.C.Worrell - Quarter Master, S/Sgt. T.S. (Tom) Whitehead - Acting RQMC

In late 1944 the 2/6th AGH was allocated to join the ADMS 1 Base Sub Area to support 1 Australian Corps which was waiting in North Queensland for a role north of New Guinea. 1 Australian Corps was assigned the liberation of Borneo with the 9th Infantry Division to land at Brunei Bay to enable it to be used by the British Pacific Fleet as their main base.

In May 1945 the 2/6th AGH absorbed the 2nd Hospital Laundry Unit and in June they moved to a staging area at Morotai in the Netherlands East Indies. They then moved to Labuan in July 1945 under ADMS 8 Base Sub Area which was supporting the 9th Infantry Division. The 2/6th AGH stayed there until the end of the war.

The Rocky Creek hospital area on the Atherton Tablelands finally closed in September 1945.

Dad was a Sergeant Quarter Master with the 2/6th Australian General Hospital. After returning from the Middle East and the Greek campaign the Hospital was built across the gully at Rocky Creek from the 2/2nd Australian General Hospital sharing an area of approximately 50 acres. The unit arrived on 20th April 1943 and provided general hospital services like the 2/2nd. Sick and wounded soldiers were received from the Pacific Campaigns, many suffering from malaria and other fevers. Casualties arrived at the Mareeba Airstrip and were transported by ambulances to the hospitals. My father was interviewed by the AWM in 1990 and here is an edited of a part of his memories of being based at Rocky Creek.

"Coming up by train we stopped in Brisbane and got out and had a couple of nights at the Exhibition Ground where we slept in pig pens on straw, the streets had these huge water mains going through with emergency supplies of water coming across from Stradbroke Island, I think, (actually pumped from the Brisbane River) and there were many more servicemen and so on around. Oh, and the passenger trains in Brisbane were using firewood instead of coal because coal was pretty hard to get. And then our troop train moving up to the tablelands, we were in suburban cars with six people to a compartment which would carry eight people in a crowd but we had our equipment with us. The train averaged twenty miles an hour and there was a very grave shortage of water. We didn't wash at all for the whole period and we certainly had no chance of changing clothes. And when we arrived up there we were very glad to get off the train and get a decent feed.

Sergeants' Mess 2/6th A.G.H., Rocky Creek - President of
the Mess was W.O.II Alan Braby sitting in the second
row from the front with hands on knees, fifth from the left.

I was contacted by Jochen Ludewig on 9 November 2022 and he advised that his father Staff Sergeant Milton John Ludewig NX30382 was in the above photograph. He was the 5th person from the left in the 2nd back row. Jochen told me that his father was in a small group of five Australian soldiers left behind on Crete in 1941. He and these other soldiers evaded capture for several weeks, with the German troops hot on their trail. The group managed to walk to the north western tip of Crete, surviving with help from the locals, hiding in olive groves and moving only at night. Finally the pursuing German were exceptionally close on capturing them all. Just a 1/2 a day behind them and if caught they would have been shot on sight! Somehow, with help from the locals, under the cover of darkness one night they swam some 2 miles out into the Mediterranean and all 5 were picked up by an Australian destroyer, 5 naked men in the middle of the sea, one carrying a Cornet, Jochen's Dad!! HMAS Stuart just happened to be picking up escaping troops from Crete. They were taken to Tripoli and safety.

Soldiers on Parade, may be members of the 2/6th A.G.H., the leading soldier
may well be W.O.II Alan Braby leading the Q.M. Staff, at Rocky Creek

Soldiers on Parade, "Blitz" Field Ambulances and Hospital tents and buildings behind .

The site on the Tableland was prepared by army engineers who'd poured concrete slabs, who'd built annexes for wards and kitchens, so that everything was - the basics were laid down. We drew from the ordnance store at Tolga all of the equipment which was handled by ordnance rather than ourselves and we were set up very quickly and very efficiently.

Our equipment schedule provides, for example, brooms - troops, for the use of; one for the sergeants' mess, one for the officers' mess and perhaps one for each ward and so on. And there might have been one for a chapel but at this stage we had probably two, at least, chapels - might have been a Catholic and a Protestant. But I remember one of the, I think it was a batman who was in charge of the chapel coming to me and wanting a broom. And I said, 'There's no provision for one, we haven't got any spare brooms they're all out'. And he said, 'Do you mean to say that you can't find a broom for God's house?'. And I was taken aback at that and had to scrounge one from somewhere.

The army system was that if a thing was broken or worn out you filled in a certain form, sent that along to ordnance together with your requisition and you had the things replaced. But it was your onus to make sure that the right amount of paper followed.

We had one experience on the tablelands where one of our batman who managed to arrange a contract with a local dealer and flog off some blankets to him but we caught him red-handed and he went for the limit. On the tablelands the civilians were quite a fair way away and we didn't have much stolen at all. I think we were pretty lucky in that sense as far as the unit was concerned - our stores were pretty good.

I think that the hospitals were established there in anticipation of our losing Port Moresby but the 2/9th AGH was there and functioning and we did receive casualties from them but generally we had enough patients coming from the number of troops on the tableland. When you bear in mind there were probably five Divisions there at one stage and with the things like scrub typhus occurring some of the nursing problems were pretty severe. But there was enough to keep us going and active as a 600 bed hospital.

Oh yes, things were pretty well organised and it was a pretty soporific sort of climate and a lot of people used to have lunch and then have a snooze after lunch but I thought that was a dead waste of time so I started doing the economics course through the University of Sydney. I did Economics I and Psychology I, but then the Borneo campaign came up and kyboshed that.

Oh, quite good in between the troops and the nurses and the visits from other fellows, because obviously a lot of the officers and NCOs from other units would come and see their mates in hospital and they'd call on us in our mess and stay for lunch and have a yarn. We had a dance every now and then in the sergeants' mess and we'd invite some of the AAMWS and the nurses and, oh, it was a pretty good social life in many ways.

A.A.N.S. Nursing Sisters and A.A.M.W.S. on parade, (possibly
2/2th A.G.H. and 2/6th A.G.H. Personnel), Rocky Creek

We had no visiting entertainers but we had a picture show right alongside us which wasn't too bad. And I still remember vividly going to the pictures with your tin hat on and a gas cape - that was the best way to keep the water out as it was an open air theatre, sitting on boxes. And of course the other one was that the two-up ring was pretty popular.

Travelling to and from the south was very difficult because you'd spend three days by train getting to Brisbane, then you were offloaded and put into a staging camp where you might be up to three or four days before you catch the train to Sydney. So that it was over a week to get from the tablelands to Sydney and to return again. I was lucky on one occasion to go by air and that was quite an amazing transition, taking only one day to get down.

Where we were at Rocky Creek it wasn't really bad. We had heavy tropical downpours but being high we didn't have the humidity and the stickiness that Cairns experienced. We weren't as dry as Mareeba but it was quite a delightful climate. In fact I would say it was one of the best climates in the world. Not a great many mosquitoes and beautiful sunny days. "

Warrant Officer Class 2 Alan Humphrey Braby (NX54049) of the 2/6th Australian General Hospital (passed away Feb 2016)

I'd like to thank Jochen Ludewig, Tim Braby and Graham McKenzie-Smith for their assistance with this web page.

"WWII NQ - A cultural heritage overview of significant places in the defence of North Queensland during World War II"
by Howard Pearce, Environmental Protection Agency, Brisbane, January 2009

"The Unit Guide - The Australian Army 1939 - 1945 - Volume 4 of 6 - Medical and Signals Units"
by Graham R. McKenzie-Smith

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