Now and Then - Beryl Fergy, Tumby Bay 1942

This original photo was taken by Lola Pedler on her box brownie in 1942 when Beryl Fergy was only 18 years old and everyone knew her as ‘Blondie’.

 

She was sitting on the back of a car parked on Lipson Road as she was leaving Tumby Bay to go to Adelaide to work at a munitions factory.

 

There was a big call for workers back then and Beryl had done a few different jobs in Tumby Bay, but the young man she was engaged to – Gordon Kotz – was overseas in Egypt, where he’d been posted as a soldier.

 

Beryl thought that by working in the munitions factory, this was a way she could help out the war effort, and her fiancée.

 

When she got to Adelaide Beryl was given a hard time by other workers at the factory, for being engaged to a man with such a German sounding name.

 

What she couldn’t tell them at the time was that Gordon (or Dusty as he was known) had been moved from Egypt into the M Special Commando’s, known as the ‘Coastwatchers’ who worked behind enemy lines tracking the details of the Japanese submarines out from Australia, New Guinea and other islands off the Australian coast.

 

He might have had a German name, but he put himself in perilous situations for the love of his country.

 

Beryl ‘Blondie’ Fergy moved back to Tumby Bay when Gordon ‘Dusty’ Kotz returned home from war.

 

It was here they were married, settled and had four children.

 

Done