The 2/1 CCS set up a small hospital at Ipswich, near Brisbane, and, soon after that, when my leave was over, I rejoined them. One day, Brigadier Fairley visited the Unit and asked me whether I would like to become a hospital pathologist. With visions of six months in Sydney for a training course, I had no hesitation in accepting. Instead, a few days later I found myself on the narrow-gauge train steaming north to Hughenden, in Central Queensland. I was the only male on the train, but there were a couple of hundred women, nurses moving up to the tented 2/2 AGH. I did not talk to any of them, but I remember seeing a particularly attractive nurse combing her long hair; she was later to become my wife. I was replacing Major (later Colonel) E. V. (Bill) Keogh, who had been pathologist there when the hospital was at Kantara, in Palestine. When the troops returned to Australia he was appointed Director of Hygiene and Pathology at Land Headquarters in Melbourne and, as such, was my boss until the end of the War. One of the surgeons at 2/2 AGH was Major Edgar King, who was appointed Professor of Pathology at the University of Melbourne at the end of the War, so my principal worry, that I did not have skills in histology, was relieved. Promoted to Major on 10 November, 1942, I worked at the 2/2 AGH for about nine months, during which time there was a constant stream of patients from New Guinea, most with malaria or dysentery. I published three papers (of mediocre quality) in the Medical Journal of Australia as the result of my work at 2/2 AGH.

It turned out that the young woman with the long hair who I had noticed on the train was Sister Ellen Margaret (Bobbie) Roberts, who, in June 1945, was to receive the honour of Associate of the Royal Red Cross for her work in the 2/2 AGH blood bank (see below). There was not much demand for blood transfusions in Hughenden, and she was assigned to help me with haematology and malaria diagnosis. Major Patrick de Burgh, who was to succeed Professor Hugh Ward as Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Sydney, ran a Mobile Bacteriological Laboratory near the hospital, and he and I examined Bobbie for her skill in thick film diagnosis of malaria; she passed with flying colours. Thereafter, she worked for a few hours each day in my laboratory.

On 3 December, 1942, the tented hospital at Hughenden was hit by a cyclone. Every tent was blown over. My laboratory, one of the very few wooden buildings, was tipped sideways but held up by the water pipe leading to the laboratory tap. After a few days, the tents were re-erected, but early in January the hospital was moved to Rocky Creek, inland from Cairns on the Atherton Tableland, which was high enough to be free of Anopheles mosquitoes (Anopheles punctulatus, an effective vector, was common in Cairns).