The Australian War Memorial Collection. Test site
Crude smoking pipe with shank made from local clay and fired. The pipe was used with the stem (REL/1961.003) which also served another pipe.
The interior of the bowl contains tobacco residue.
Crude pipe fashioned from clay which was smoked with a stem (REL/1961.003) by Arthur Cyril Robinson, a resident of Rosedale, Victoria who enlisted on 2 July 1940 aged 37. He was assigned to 8th Division Signals and given theservice number VX28150. He became a prisoner of war of the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in February 1942.
No details of his service are presently available, but when he donated this collection in 1966 (he died in 1968) he wrote regarding his health 'have no wind and have been made TPI from some of my POW experiences. Worst trouble is emphysema, spondylitis and recurring dysentry. It is a bugger as I feel OK when doing nothing.'
The material used in these pipes varied from camp to camp but prisoners were often reduced to smoking tobacco stalks or dried grass.
Short (60mm long) commercially made ebonite pipe smoking stem and mouthpiece. The shank end is provided with a length of coated copper piping. The mouthpiece is chewed and damaged. Used by Arthur Cy
Pipe bowl which appears to be of commercial manufacture of the billiard shape, but was made from native wood, with the stem fashioned from a very long length (270 mm) of copper pipe, probably from a w
Wooden briar pipe of the bent billiard style with slightly bent ebonite stem. The shank has been stamped with the maker's mark. The bowl bears evidence of having been smoked heavily - the rim of the b
Improvised smoking pipe with an octagonal bowl and an octagonal shank. This is likely made from wood local to Borneo. The mouthpiece appears to be fashioned from a piano key or similar; it has yellowe
Improvised prisoner's smoking pipe, the bowl crudely shaped like an elongated hexagon. The shank has split and there is what appears to be a repair along the split line. The stem is a length of bamboo
Briar wood pipe of the straight billiard shape, with a nickel-plated steel collar around the shank and a ebonite stem and mouthpiece. The ebonite has deteriorated along its length, revealing the grey
