I was drafted to Stonecutters Wireless Station in 1960 (C.O. Lt. "Lofty Rimmer) following an 18 month posting in South Africa at Cape East Wireless Station (H.M.S. Afrikander), a marriage to a lady that I met in Cape Town and a short course at H.M.S. Collingwood.
That lady, Yvonne, gave birth to our twin son and daughter at Bowen Road Military Hospital in 1961.
We lived at "Wuthering Heights" at the top of the hill and overlooking the senior ratings mess, the transmitting station and East Pier.
During the two and a half years we were there we experienced an earth tremor and two typhoons, Typhoon Mary and Typhoon Wanda, both of which passed directly over the island. The silence during the period that the eyes were passing was "deafening".
Some of the photographs in the Picture Library were taken immediately following the typhoons.
The ship on the rocks in one of the photo's had also dragged its anchor over the shore cables and consequently removed shore supplied power and all landlines putting us out of touch with the R.A.F.communication centre at Kai Tak. We had emergency power but while we were not watching someone had built a high-rise building directly in line with our back-up U.H.F. radio link with Kai Tak rendering it useless, not only that, the typhoon had knocked down some masts supporting the rhombic aerials.
We aquired a couple of Go-Carts from one of the HSBC bank clerks and set up a track around the soccer pitch down by the NAAFI and the rifle range. Great fun as we did not win too many football matches (To make up a full soccer team they even had to ask me to play and my game was snooker).
Enough for now, maybe more later when we hear from others who were lucky enough to be based on "Fantasy Island" for a while during their time in the services.