Chub from Uki

Everyone has a story to tell. A lifetime is such a complex thing that you cannot possibly go through it without having a tale to tell at the end. Some stories are told, some are never told, and some are not told until years after the lifetime that they concern has come to an end. This is the story of my great uncle Eric Sweetnam - or uncle Chub as I always knew him. To anyone else, Chub would seem to be any ordinary bloke. He lived and worked on his dairy farm in Uki, just outside of the town of Murwillumbah, with his wife Margaret. To those who were lucky enough to know him, though, he was far more than ordinary.

I lived on the Gold Coast during my childhood so visiting the Sweetnam farm was a rare treat. The land was endowed with deep rockpools that I have never swam to the bottom of, and rolling hills dotted with cows that stared mindlessly at you as you walked past. Like his land, Chub seemed timeless. He was a third-generation farmer, and was as much married to his farm as he was to Margaret.

He once told me of the time he was bitten by a king brown snake; he sucked the venom out himself, killed the snake, put it in a lunch-box so the doctors could identify the venom and made it to the hospital with moments to spare. It is stories like this, combined with his kind nature, that made me respect him so much as a child. To me as a boy, he was like the intersection between Chuck Norris and Santa Claus. He passed away in November last year, but I only came to know the most interesting side to Chub’s life very recently. When I contacted Margret to talk over information for this story, she gave me a recount of Chub’s time at war - something that I never heard him talk about. Understanding what he went through gave a whole new context to his attitude toward life.

Chub was too young to be a soldier. He lied about his age so that he could travel the world with the military, fighting the enemy and having a jolly good time in the process. This was appealing to a country boy who had never even set foot on a train before. However, even on his first day of basic training in Tamworth he realised that the idea of the war portrayed by the propaganda was far from reality. I can only begin to imagine the torturous process of turning a teenager into a soldier; it was enough for Chub to vow never to step foot in Tamworth again, and he was a man of his word.

From Tamworth he went to Perth, and from there he travelled by sea to the Middle East on an old Cruise ship that had been stripped bare to fit thousands of soldiers. In the mayhem of boarding the colossal Queen Mary he was separated from some of his friends from Murwoolambah. These friends missed the boat by just minutes and would be sent to a different battle on a different boat, ultimately to their death. I suspect it is tragedies like this that made Chub so reluctant to speak of his time overseas. He fought in the battle of El Alamein, in which more than thirteen-thousand men died. The supplies given to Chub’s battalion by local Egyptians ensured their survival throughout the gruesome fight.

This would not be the end of Chub’s experience in the war, though. From the hot sands of the battle for Europe in the Middle-East, he was sent to the tropics to defend Australia. As the Japanese advanced upon southern Asia, Chub’s battalion touched down in Papua New Guinea. Once again his life was saved by the kindness of strangers. The ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’ (a group of local Papua New Guineans) risked their lives to bring food and medical supplies to the Australian soldiers trapped on a hillside, subject to heavy shelling from the Japanese. Margaret emphasised Chub’s respect for these brave men.

It was in this battle that Chub was shot in the chest. The bullet travelled through his arm in the direction of his heart, only to be stopped by the metallic shaving mirror that he kept in his left pocket. Yet again, by chance or fate, he was saved; shortly after he was taken from Papua New Guinea to a medical station in Borneo, the remainder of his platoon were captured and made prisoners of war until the Japanese surrendered years later. Chub recovered despite the disease-ridden tropical conditions, and went on to earn seven medals in combat. After many long years, he returned home to the comfort of the Sweetnam Farm, and to Margret.

Despite his admirable bravery, he was never proud of being part of the war. His medals were hidden away, only to see be worn on ANZAC day each year. Even then they meant little to him. His one prize was a short letter that his Commander had sent to Chub’s mother at some point: “Eric is doing a fine job and you should be proud of him.” He carried this note in his pocket whenever he left the farm.

Literally up until the day he died -at the remarkable age of ninety-one - he got up early each morning to ride the tractor and heard the cattle in. After almost a century he was still active and witty as ever. He now lies in the Murwillumbah cemetery with the three generations of Sweetnams above him. He witnessed the brunt of mankind’s greed take the lives of his friends, but still held faith in humanity after witnessing the kindness of the locals who risked their lives to save him. The remarkable thing about Chub was that he had the strength of character to go through the depths of hell and ultimately come out with an optimistic view of the world.

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