Betty graduated with a Degree in Information and Library Studies in 1994. She has joined SWWWA to liaise with like-minded people and extend her writing skills. Betty grew up in the Sydney Quarantine Station and at present she is assembling the childhood memories of each of her three brothers of this unique place.

She is also in the process of compiling her late mother’s memoirs, who was a member of SWWWA Papermates Writing Circle in the 1990s. During this time, she wrote many of her own memoirs of life, of a four-year old child during the 1930s depression, and up to the 1990s.

ROLL ON…A Changi POW Remembers

 A large achievement by Betty is the investigation into, and the publishing of, her father’s POW Diary: Roll on. A Changi POW Remembers.

His qualifications as a Nursing Orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) hardly equipped him with the skills required when he became a prisoner in 1942. He was regularly called upon to assist in major surgical operations and amputations, without anaesthetic and proper medical equipment.

Betty’s research and proof of her father’s diary entries took her to the United Kingdom, Singapore and to the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, Kanchanaburi, where she found his POW Record. Proof of his imprisonment was discovered on a Japanese POW Index Card at the UK National Archives, along with the records of ‘F’ Force, which placed him on the train that made its way north to Ban Pong. In his copperplate handwriting, he made one-line entries in the diary of the enforced two-week march of 170 miles to the Burma rail construction site. 

The Wagtail’s Tale

Betty’s mother had also written 40 poems during her lifetime and Betty compiled these into a book published in 2019. As her mother was deceased Betty had to make sure the poems were original and not plagiarized. This was a long, interesting and arduous task, but successful.

The Wagtail’s Tale and Roll On are available from Betty via email bettypyke@gmail.com

or

Amazon: The Wagtail’s Tale

Amazon: ROLL ON…A Changi POW Remembers

Or ebook: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1074253