At canteen

Lieutenant J.M. Brindley, Pioneer Platoon O.C. (NX70592) created this quick sketch while a member of the 2/19th Battalion in Malaya in 1941. The subject of the drawing is a line up of Australian soldiers at the canteen tent in an Army camp. The camp chapel is visible in the left and a group of local Malayans watch on in the lower right. It shows that Brindley started making a visual record of his service prior to becoming a POW and provides insight into Australian army life in Malaya prior to 1942.

After being taken prisoner in February 1942 Brindley transferred from 2/19th Bn back to Engineers, the corps in which he was commissioned. He became the camp architect while at Changi Barracks and was with an engineer working party transferred to Havelock Road/River Valley Road Camp, Singapore. From here the working party was tasked with repairing bomb damaged buildings in the city. Brindley recorded aspects of camp life in a sketchbook and also produced many watercolours some of which he traded with Japanese guards in return for cigarettes. He was known as the camp architect at Changi and designed a camp theatre. Later in 1945 his design won a competition for a war memorial for the Changi POW cemetery. In 1944 Brindley was selected to work on the Thai Burma Railway and was unable to produce any further art works during this period.

The Memorial holds 6 drawings by Brindley: 5 created during his time at the Havelock Road / River Road Camps and 1 of a hospital hut at the Sime Road camp after he survived the Thai Burma Railway. The artist left his sketchbook and watercolours in a valise when the POWs were ordered to leave their belongings at a railway station at Canmburi, Thailand, prior to starting work on the railway and was astonished to have them returned to him more than 9 months later intact.