My father was an anti-tank gunner stationed on Stirling Island in the Treasury Group in the war. There were Catalina PBY flying boats in Blanche Harbour between Mono and Stirling Islands. This is what he wrote in his diary:

A ship is at anchor permanently as a tender for the flying boats, its name is the "Coos Bay".

The flying boat tender has an amplifier or an electric gramophone (…a gramophone and amplifier on board) and it's pretty loud – we can hear the music from here and it's pretty good. (They thrash one song, "There's a man comes to our house every other day, Poppa isn't home, so the man comes to stay." How true in America these days.)

SATURDAY 8TH. JANUARY 1944