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Brighton WRANS

During the Second World War, tens of thousands of Australian women served in auxiliary military units, playing a vital part in supporting Allied operations. In this article, we look at two Brighton women who answered the call to service.

The suit is smart and respectable, a dark blue blazer with a matching skirt. Marion Caffrey (nee Bullock) only wore it for a short time before it migrated to the bottom of a drawer, never to be used again. She held onto it all the same, a reminder of a brief but deeply fulfilling chapter in her life, and it remained in the family for seven decades before being entrusted to BHS by her children.

It's a uniform belonging to what was, at the time, a newly formed unit of the Australian military: the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service.

WRANS uniform, circa 1943, belonging to Marion Caffrey (BHS collection)WRANS uniform, circa 1943, belonging to Marion Caffrey (BHS collection) WRANS uniform hat, circa 1943, belonging to Marion Caffrey (BHS collection)WRANS uniform hat, circa 1943, belonging to Marion Caffrey (BHS collection)

WRANS was established through the efforts of Florence McKenzie OBE, Australia’s first female electrical engineer. In 1938, with war looming on the horizon, Florence began offering women free classes in Morse code and wireless telegraphy, believing rightly that these skills would be crucial inany armed conflict. By the time war was officially declared, she had already trained nearly a thousand women, and she and her students were teaching communication codes to military recruits.

The government and Australian Commonwealth Naval Board were initially reluctant to allow women into the navy. However, in 1941, through Florence’s persistence, fourteen of her female trainees weretaken on as a trial – the first members of what would become WRANS. Within a few years, they would be 2,600 strong, around ten per cent of the entire Royal Australian Navy.

Marion and Betty

Since graduating from Star of the Sea College in Gardenvale, twenty-two-year-old Marion Bullock hadtaken a job with the T&G Insurance Company in Collins Street. Another recent Star graduate, nineteen-year-old Betty Corder of New Street, was studying law at the University of Melbourne while working as a clerk at her father Frank’s legal firm. But in 1943, as the war in the Pacific raged hotter and fears of invasion loomed closer, both women volunteered for service in the WRANS.

Marion Bullock in WRANS uniform, circa 1943 (Courtesy of Marion and Ann Caffrey)Marion Bullock in WRANS uniform, circa 1943 (Courtesy of Marion and Ann Caffrey) Betty Corder in WRANS uniform, circa 1943 (Courtesy of Carmel Curtain)Betty Corder in WRANS uniform, circa 1943 (Courtesy of Carmel Curtain)

New recruits first undertook a 24-day intensive training course in which they were taught how to march and acquainted with naval jargon, command structure, ship layouts, security protocols, first aid, hygiene and etiquette. Marion was sent to HMAS Cerberus at Crib Point to train as a coder while Betty studied wireless telegraphy at HMAS Lonsdale, a training base tucked behind a factory complex in Port Melbourne.

Moorabbin and Monterey: Australia’s Bletchley Park

After completing her training, Betty was given a posting in Moorabbin on the corner of Keys and Chesterville Roads. It was a rough and ready operation, a group of huts and radio masts cobbled together on the site of a market garden. None of the locals would ever have guessed that it was part of a top secret joint Australian and American naval operation, the details of which remained classified for decades after the war. Even Betty’s family had no idea of the work she was doing.

The Moorabbin site was a listening post staffed by US naval personnel and WRANS telegraphists in round-the-clock shifts to intercept coded radio transmissions between Japanese ships and submarines. WRANS women would scan the dial continuously in search of a signal, sometimes spending hours listening to nothing but static, at other times scrambling to keep up with rapid- fire transmissions. All women needed to be fluent in Wabun code, a version of Morse adapted to the Japanese katakana alphabet, which has twice the number of characters as the Roman alphabet.

The contents of the intercepted messages were so sensitive that they could not be forwarded on by phone but had to behand delivered to a code- breaking unit in Monterey Flats near Albert Park. Betty was one of several Brighton women to spend time at Monterey. Another was Joan Fairbridge (nee Duff), who served as personal assistant to Navy signals intelligence head Lieutenant Commander Jack Newman. Never officially given a WRANS uniform—Newman was concerned he would lose her if she enlisted—she began referring to herself jokingly as an ‘also-WRAN’. Of the strict secrecy, Joan recalled, ‘No one ever had the big picture. We weren’t allowed to talk about it or even to associate with each other when we left the building.’

Transmissions intercepted at Moorabbin gave the Allies crucial intelligence. With advance warning of Japanese ship and personnel movements, Australian and American forces thwarted an attempted invasion of Port Moresby in the Battle of the Coral Sea. When Japanese Admiral Yamamoto’s plane was shot down in April 1943, it was thanks to a message decoded at Monterey revealing his location.

Betty Corder with two fellow WRANS, circa 1943-45 (Courtesy of Carmel Curtain)Betty Corder with two fellow WRANS, circa 1943-45 (Courtesy of Carmel Curtain) Betty Corder's WRANS identity card (Courtesy of Carmel Curtain)Betty Corder's WRANS identity card (Courtesy of Carmel Curtain)

HMAS Magnetic: A garrison town

Marion was sent to HMAS Magnetic Townsville, a strategically important Allied port and airbase. By the timeshe arrived in 1944 it was very much a garrison town, inhabited largely by Australian and American servicemen. Whereas in Melbourne the war in the Pacific may have felt somewhat distant, in Townsville it was very immediate. Though the town never felt the heavy bombardments of Darwin, a series of small air strikes in July 1942 had made the fear of air raids quite real.

HMAS Magnetic was responsible for communications, Port Examination Services and servicing of Allied warships. Marion worked as a coder, encoding outgoing transmissions and decoding incoming ones either manually or using a Typex cipher machine. She could potentially served in the Section ‘Y’ Wireless Signal Station, a secret facility that, like the Moorabbin listening posts, intercepted and recorded transmissions from enemy ships.

In 1945, Marion completed additional training to attain the rank of Leading Coder. Her keenness for the work is evident in a note on her service record: although no WRANS women were ever sent to active warzones, Marion volunteered for overseas service.

Though the job was demanding, there was still time for companionship. WRANS women enjoyed taking trips into town or catching the ferry to Magnetic Island and were popular at dances, where women were always in demand. Although required to wear their uniforms off base, some would hide their civilian clothes in bushes, sneaking out to change under the cover of dark before hitting the town.

After the war, Betty returned to her study. She completed her law degree, was admitted to the bar and spent two years working at a law firm in the UK before taking a government posting in Papua New Guinea. Marion found a job with Metro Goldwyn Mayer, where she worked until her marriage to Hugh Caffrey in 1947. Yet she held onto her uniform, proud to recall her wartime service, and even later inlife she would remember her time with the WRANS as one of the happiest and most personally fulfilling periods of her life.

 By Jessica Curtain

Originally published in BHS Journal no. 211 (Autumn 2025)

 

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