Nudgee College Old Boys' Association

Bill left Nudgee at the age of seventeen, went straight around to a job in the  Customs House where incidentally we held our meeting , and whose roof was built by John Cusack, great-grandfather of our distinguished, long serving former President/Secretary, and now Registrar Lawrie Cusack.

Bill was posted to Customs in Darwin and was providentially away from the wharves when Darwin was bombed and the wharves were destroyed with great loss of life. He joined the CMF Militia and eventually was recruited into the RAAF as a Navigator /Rear Gunner / Wireless Operator and was posted to the famous No 22 City of Sydney Squadron, then based in Darwin.

No 22 Squadron was famous for two things –it produced the “legendary “Fl. Lt. Bill Newton, the only RAAF V.C. winner in the South West Pacific (shot down and beheaded by the Japs) and it was also the only Australian squadron to fly Boston Bombers – till a sneak raid by the Japs over Morotai wiped them out on the ground. The squadron then converted to Beaufighters, nicknamed “Whispering Death “.

On 4th October 1944, Bill was on a low level attack over Ambon, shooting up Tan Tui, the Japanese camp holding Aussie POW’s. The Japanese rather unsportingly shot out one of the Beaufighters engines. With base 400 miles away, they were facing crash landing and probable death, when they “miraculously “stumbled across an airfield at Sansapor which the Dutch had just completed a few days before.

Bill “completed his tour of duty“, i.e., survived his twenty-four missions and was then posted to No 34 Squadron, flying DC3’s between Townsville and the Philippines. He had the distinction of being awarded the ‘Philippines Liberation Medal’.

After the war Bill completed his LL B at the University of Queensland, was admitted to the Queensland Bar, and had an illustrious career in the Public Prosecutor’s Office, where he ended his career as a Senior Prosecutor. Sadly his wife died last year. He is a little slower on his feet these days but remains as mentally alert as ever.

He recently returned to Nudgee for an open day and was proudly shown around by a “young man - seventy something years his junior! Bill had only two requests. He wanted to see where they slept and where and how they ate. Suffice it to say, he was impressed with Both!

Some are lucky, some are not. Bill readily concedes he miraculously escaped death twice and is thankful for his full and fruitful life. He was a friend and contemporary of the legendary Terry McKenna (McKenna House), (Senior 41).

The story of Terry McKenna is well known. He spent his last night in Australia at Nudgee before embarking for Canada where he completed his Empire Scheme pilot’s training was posted to the UK and his body was washed up in Sweden on 20th July 1942.

Terry was posthumously awarded the Signum Fidei Old Boy Award in 1995 which was the year of “Australia Remembers “, which celebrated Victory in the Pacific in WW11. The Religious Signum Fidei Award that year was presented to an equally distinguished Old Boy with an equally distinguished RAAF wartime record, attached to the USAF, Monsignor “Bart“ Frawley  OBE. The stories of McKenna and Frawley are recorded in their Citations for the Signum Fidei Awards but are certainly worth retelling again some time.

As is the story of Bill O’Connor as told here by Dr Ian Marshall

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