Finding a boy in the hero

THERE is something quintessentially Tasmanian, and more specifically of the North-West Coast, about sailor Teddy Sheean’s heroics.

In giving his life to save his mates in World War II, Teddy made the ultimate sacrifice; a selfless decision acted out while surrounded by carnage, and facing certain death.

As he lay shot, not once but twice, on the deck of the HMAS Armidale, which was under attack from more than a dozen Japanese aircraft in a bay south of East Timor, his fellow seamen were running for their lives and for life rafts.

The Armidale was going down, having been hit by two torpedoes. Panic stations. All aboard were abandoning ship.

Teddy had been helping get a life raft in the water when shot. Wounded, he had every excuse to be overwhelmed by fear and panic. But rather than huddle in foetal position or turn his mind to friends and family or pray to God or dwell on the pain and shock of being shot in the chest and back, he had the remarkable composure to recognise his number was up and turn his mind to the wellbeing of his mates.

Japanese fighters were firing on the sailors in the water. They were sitting ducks.

Teddy strapped himself into a 20mm anti-aircraft cannon and began shooting. He brought down a bomber and shot and damaged two other fighters.

The sailors in the water later told of watching Teddy’s fire continuing even as the

Armidale went right under.

Teddy was just weeks off his 19th birthday when killed that day in 1942. He saved 100 lives. It is the stuff of legend.

Where does a young man, who judging from photos was barely shaving, find the will, courage and composure to deny his own pain in such an audacious act of heroism?

I reckon Teddy’s selfless and uncommon valour was a result of the traditional values of his home on the NorthWest, where a chivalrous code of conduct thrived.

WHEN I was a boy my family left the “rat race”, as Dad called it, in Melbourne to live on the North-West. We traded a house in Hadfield, at the time a new suburb of Italian migrants and Aborigines that has since only once made the news, and that was for being the horrific final chapter in the life of murdered multimillionaire swinger Hermann Rockefeller, for a doublestorey mansion on the beach at Somerset, a town of 2000 people east of Wynyard.

Another boy, Roger, lived down the road and we became friends. Roger’s dad worked in the Public Works Department and had a huge shed behind his house where he worked on all things mechanical.

At 10 or 11 years old, Roger knew how to use all his dad’s tools, did running repairs on his bicycles, rode a dirt bike, was skilled on a woodworker’s lathe and was the kindest, most friendly boy I ever met. He tried to teach me his skills and was always first to share lunch or stop to help. His whole family was the same.

Another primary school mate, Dean, taught me where to catch blue-tongue lizards in the wild fennel along railway tracks and how, if you were gentle and calm, they were happy to be held. One day we walked through Somerset’s main drag, both wearing a pair of lizards, one on each shoulder. I still recall the quizzical looks at our reptilian epaulets. Dean taught me how to light a fire, how to erect a bush shelter and how to make a spear by grinding the end of a stick to a point on a hot rock in the fire, spitting on it, and repeating the process over and over. The spearhead was sharp and hard.

Another mate, Nick, at 14, had his own .22 rifle. He taught me how to tie fishing knots and hooks, to shoot, and to skin and gut eels, blackfish, rabbits and leather jackets. I recall the rancid stench when Nick’s mate, Rodney, showed us both how to gut a wallaby.

We sat on mossy logs in rainforests, dropping lines into the dark water in still “holes” in rivers, fishing for slippery old blackfish. The rabbit (shot, skinned, gutted and soaked overnight in a plastic bag of saltwater) Nick cooked for breakfast in the coals of a campfire, with a smear of Dijon mustard and wrapped in aluminium foil, remains the best I have tasted. Nick’s family took me in as another son during holidays, and my family returned the favour.

My boyhood friends were grown-up beyond their years while being distinctly childlike. Just like Teddy, I reckon.

TEDDY was born in Lower Barrington in 1923 but his family soon shifted to Latrobe, half an hour’s drive east of where I would be raised 50 years later.

Before enlisting, Teddy was a labourer like his dad, working on farms in the district. It is gorgeous, lush country, with place names like Nowhere Else and Paradise. I reckon Teddy was like my boyhood friends — capable of a man’s work by 14, skilled at fishing and hunting, wise to bush know-how, good with his hands, responsible, and unfailingly generous.

He would have shared the values that prompted Roger’s family to care about the newly arrived city kid down the road.

I returned to the NorthWest as a young reporter in Burnie and Devonport and witnessed those values again when local farmers insisted I join them for a roast lamb lunch or scones hot from the oven, then thrust at me a Christmas pudding or a fillet of fish to take home.

Farm jobs are often done alone, all day, and as a result some farmers could at first be awkward in conversation. This was especially endearing when they were big bulls of men shuffling nervously from foot to foot, scuffing at their famous sticky red soil.

Teddy has a shy demeanour in his grainy black and white photos. But, like the farmers I met, I reckon if Teddy vowed to do something, he bloody did it. A man’s word was gospel.

I found similar country traits and values in places like Ouse, Queenstown, Geeveston and beyond, but not quite with the same humble innocence of the North-West. I don’t know whether this charming chivalry persists, I hope so, but I know it has had a lasting impact on me. And I reckon it was even more pronounced in Teddy’s day.

Very few of us have the kind of courage Teddy displayed, but I can imagine some of my boyhood mates having the presence of mind to make the ultimate sacrifice. Of course, no one knows until their day comes. Teddy was presented with the moment and did what others hope and dream they may have the fortitude to do.

Potentially, we are all heroes but thankfully few of us are put to the test like Teddy as he lay wounded on deck.

He deserves the highest possible honour for bravery.