Walter Allen remembers the day war ended quite well.
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The veteran, who lives in Old Bar on the NSW mid-North Coast, is a member of the local RSL Sub-branch and joined the army in 1944.
Wal and men from his unit were only being taken for overseas service in small numbers as replacements.
Wal's unit was camped on a golf field at Parramatta but on VP Day, August 15, they were at Prospect quarry, blowing up rocks as a training exercise, so they didn't initially know anything about the signing of the Japanese surrender.
When they were returning to camp at the end of the day, the streets of Parramatta in western Sydney were packed with revellers and it took them a long time to get through.
Wal remembers a store in the main street with a white horse up on the awning. A man was up on the horse "riding it" and drinking a bottle of rum.
It was then "the penny dropped", the Japanese had surrendered and people across Australia were celebrating the end of war after nearly six years.
When they got back to camp, Wal recalls, "the city blokes went home and we just went to the canteen to celebrate".
Audrey Griffits
Another Old Bar resident, Audrey Griffits, was attending art school in Bristol, England at the time, doing clay modelling and pottery.
She remembers the day was initially referred to there as VJ Day (Victory over Japan) but later become known as VP Day.
Although perhaps not as much celebration as VE Day, it was recognised as a very important day, meaning the end of the war, not just for their own part of the world.
She remembers there were street parties with army girls from a nearby camp attending. There was also a bonfire and some American soldiers from a nearby camp were around it. Some of them were African American and she remembers one of them jumping over the fire.
Audrey's late husband, Basil, was in the Royal Navy at the time and served in Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, Sydney and Darwin. He was accommodated on HMAS Kuttabul in Sydney Harbour but was absent when the ship was attacked and sunk by a Japanese midget sub.
The Royal Navy was patrolling in the waters around Darwin, a very dangerous location at the time but again, he escaped unscathed from these operations and the nearby bombing of Darwin.