Alexander Collin Johnston was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 6 April 1945. The Johnston family, Alexander and Elizabeth with their children Alexander ‘Collin’, Janet, Norman, Angus and Jessie, sailed from Tilbury in London and arrived in Fremantle on 13 June 1952 on the Chitral. Their destination was Melbourne!
Collin completed his secondary education at Yallourn High School in Gippsland, Victoria, a school-mate of Dave ‘Dafydd’ Lewis (2/68). He then went to Melbourne University with Dave Lewis (2/68) and graduated as a Bachelor of Civil Engineering in 1969. He was still a student when he commenced National Service as 3797955 on 22 April 1970. Selected for officers training Collin commenced with OTU Class 2/70 on 8 May 1970. He was allocated to 2 Platoon, Bridges Company. In his senior term Collin was the Section Commander of 4 Section in Sergeant Ey’s 2 Platoon. Collin graduated with his class on 2 October. On 3 October he commenced his ‘Corps Training’ at the School of Military Engineering at Casula, near Liverpool. Collin was next posted to 24 Construction Squadron in Queensland from where he got with road construction, quarrying, blasting and earth moving as well as some concreting jobs. At the end of his time he discharged from National Service.
Dave believes that Collin’s civilian career very much benefited from his Scheyville experience/RAE service. He was now well qualified for open cut mining and his first post-NS job was managing tin mining operation at Ardlethan, NSW. He impressed here the lifting mine’s efficiency, sufficiently for his next job to be finally opening Poseidon’s nickel mine at Laverton, WA. By this time, he had a young family.
After a couple of years there successfully tapping into Poseiden’s long held promise, he returned to Victoria where worked fairly briefly managing a Pioneer Concrete production plant at Laverton, not far from where Dave worked in petrochemicals at Altona. This led to managing a series of big concrete construction project over balance of his career. Some highlights were: Loy Yang Power Station coal bunkers & cooling towers.
Freeway construction in Hobart & that tower on top of Mt Wellington which took two summers to complete. As it is too cold & windy to work on it in winter. Collin had some involvement with Savage River Mine in Tasmania’s west where his main achievement was supervising construction of a rail bridge about 100m above the Pieman River to facilitate iron ore transport to the coast.
Collin attended a number of Victorian Chapter lunches until his health began to fail. Dave visited Collin on Saturday 8 March. ‘I was glad to have caught up with him for an hour at Casey Hospital … to say our final goodbyes. His mind was so clear right to the end, but he’d just run out of energy. We reminisced about the 65 years plus we’d known each other from our Yallourn High days. He could remember all the “5th form” boys in the photo I showed him of when we were last at school together. He had no trouble naming everyone in the photo where I’d forgotten one or two. But after an hour of sitting on the edge of bed and talking, he suddenly became very tired, clearly time to lie down and rest before Pam & others arrived. So, after making him comfortable and throwing bed clothes back over him, we had our final handshake and a brief hug.
Collin’s wife Pam had phoned David on 17 March and advised him that Collin had lapsed into unconsciousness the day before. Pam texted Dave on 18 March 2025 to advise him that Collin had passed away early that day. Dave replied with: ‘After such a full life and the last 25 years so courageously fighting “escaped” prostate cancer, he richly deserved to now be resting in peace.’ Collin had a private cremation. There will be Memorial Service, after Collin’s son Alexander’s wedding, at a date to be advised.
(Alexander) Collin Johnston’s Vale appeared in The Scheyvillian 1 of 2025. It prompted the following from 2/70 Classmate Jonathan Lewis:
Col was called up one intake before me but did not apply for OTU when he first could. His CO at Puckapunyal told him he would be very bored if he didn’t apply. He applied for the 2/70 intake and got in. It took a while before I got to know him, but I think these two anecdotes were probably his. The NCOs used to yell at us to hurry up etc. and used the phrase A Piece of Piss to a Trained Digger A voice from among us said: You mean A Piece of Training to a Pissed Digger! The NCOs couldn’t use the original phrase from then on. When we marched it was “Left -, left-, left right left”. Someone (I think Col) started grunting “Ugh -, Ugh -, Ugh ugh ugh”. Others joined in so the platoon grunts swelled in number, but no one could tell which individuals were doing it.
We were both in Bridges Coy, Col in the 2 Section, me in 1 Section. Our paths crossed, but not eventfully until the end of our course. Col told me a couple of things years later. Apparently Col did not feel like going to classes so stayed in his room for two days. When instructors asked where he was, others in the class said he was sick. No-one checked and he got away with it. There was an overnight exercise where we weren’t supposed to use our torches – but most did. Col was walking in the dark and stopped for no special reason and turned on his torch. He was on the edge of a sheer drop. Even several decades later his near escape from death or serious injury still affected him.
On our last day Col and I were walking near the front of OTU, when Dick Flint (Chief Instructor) stopped us and warned Col that they were very unsure as to whether they should have graduated him. He reminded Col that we were on probation for nine months. Col told me later that he had had a few run-ins with Dick Flint, who had taken a dislike for him. Obviously, I never knew most of our graduating class but, despite some unconventional behaviour, I think Col was one of our better graduates.
After graduating I went home to Melbourne with my family. I think that Col hired a car (Commissioned Officers could then hire cars but not NCOs, however senior). The car apparently either did not make it to Melbourne, or only with difficulty – due to Col’s driving. We both had to report to the School of Military Engineering at Casula, near Liverpool in Sydney at the end of leave, so Col and I came up from Melbourne in my Mini Moke (which I had left in Melbourne until then). We got close to Liverpool with enough time to report in at 8.00 am, but Col decided he needed a haircut before reporting, so we reported in at about 10.00 am – which did not impress the CO. Col and I were appointed Troop Commanders in the Depot Squadron, each with overall responsibility for a Training Troop. I wondered if we got those appointments because of our lateness.
Training Troops meant early starts – too early for Col, who turned up as required, but then went back to bed. His Troop and NCOs didn’t appear to mind, and no-one important seemed to notice. His Troop performance was excellent, and they won four of the five Troop competitions. My Troop won the fifth – the tug of war. The NCOs in the Squadron had fixed for all Col’s Troop’s strong men to be on Guard Duty at the time of the competition – perhaps not wanting his Troop to win all the competitions, or in appreciation of my Troop’s handling of a slightly sensitive situation in a constructive way. Col found doing the Troop pays a bit boring – so he handed the task over to two of his men and went back to bed. This he did for the several pays he was in charge of. I have no direct evidence of this, but I got the impression that he was a popular Troop Commander.
I think that Col and I were the only 2nd Lieutenants of our intake from out of State (Melbourne), so we spent a lot of time in the evenings, in the mess, drinking. I remember that on one occasion a Major had won a bottle of Scotch at the Happy Hour on a Friday night. He invited us to share it with him. His guest was a Major from America, who insisted that bourbon was better, so when the whisky was finished he bought a bottle of that. When (between the four of us) we finished that, we went on to Rusty Nails. Eventually Col felt he had had enough, and decided it was time for him to hitchhike to Melbourne for the weekend. He told me later that he had a memory of standing in a shop doorway for some time waiting for the rain to stop. Later he was dropped by one of his rides at a service centre, as the driver wanted to stop 2 for food. He soon got a lift, but that didn’t last because the first driver had apparently turned into a service centre on the other side of the road, and this driver was driving towards Sydney. After that night I had trouble drinking whisky for several months.
After Troop Training had finished Col was assigned to supervising spare troops (going on and off leave) required to do odd jobs around the base over Christmas, while I was assigned to supervising the construction of the Mine Dog Centre. He had one Sergeant to help him most of the time, and the numbers that he supervised varied wildly from day to day. He solved the management problem by assigning groups to various tasks and telling them they could have the rest of the day off when they had finished. It worked very well – he got more work done than if they hadn’t had an incentive. Over the Christmas period we spent quite a lot of our time in the bar drinking. I remember the day that the various messes had their Christmas parties we ended up in the evening in a fairly cheerful condition. At one stage Col disappeared and no-one could find him. I finally found him in the TV room – intertwined with the open web ceiling trusses, and sound asleep. I left him there.
At some stage Forster Rayward (also of our OTU intake) had his birthday party, to which we were invited). It was on a Saturday night and was right across Sydney. Col and I went into the city in the Mini Moke to do some shopping. We ended up each buying a very colourful sleeveless jacket (possibly Mexican?) We decided that it was too far to drive back to camp to pick up our gear and so arrived a Forster’s place in the Mini Moke with the roof down. We had the jackets and odd hats that I had collected on, and absolutely no luggage. Forster’s mother had some difficulty understanding this or believing us, and told us to bring in our luggage several times.
In February 1971 we finally started our Corps Training. In one session Col appeared to be dozing, and the instructor asked Col what he (the instructor) had just said. Col then summarised the early part of the lesson, going into more detail progressively, and then repeating the last couple of sentences verbatim. He clearly had a very sharp and organised mind (and probably spent a lot of his time being bored). In the bar that evening a slightly shaken instructor stated that he would never ask Col a question ever again. After we graduated from our training we went to our postings, and lost touch.
After Corps Training I was sent to 35 Water Transport Squadron to become, in due course, the Water Transport Troop Commander (taking over from Tony Beddison of Class 3/69). Col was posted to 24 Construction Squadron in Queensland! Forster’s posting had something to do with Terminal Management. I remember at some stage he had to borrow some of my Sappers to load/offload the supply ship Jeparit.
At the end of my National Service, I returned to the company that I had been working for. I started work even before completing discharge procedures. After two years I left and became an Australian Volunteer with what is now known as Australian Volunteers International. Except for brief holidays I did not return to Australia for more than seventeen years. I completely lost touch with everyone I knew from my National Service days. Sometime after I returned, I eventually caught up with the OTU Association and got details of Scheyvillians. A few years ago I caught up with Col on the phone and eventually we met in Windsor. Some of the above information came from him at this time.
