From the Big Show to the Showman. The irrepressible Bruce Crowl.
By Simon Brooks RSL Queensland.
WWII navy veteran turned actor Bruce Crowl wasn’t about to miss Townsville’s Victory in the Pacific 80th anniversary (VP80) celebrations over 14-17 August 2025, with the RSL member travelling up from Foster with his wife Kate to be part of the action.
The spritely (then) 99-year-old set a cracking pace for his ADF minders, and anyone else who tried to keep up with him, as he took in the hospitality of a city which had served as a vital airbase and major staging point for Allied forces in the South West Pacific during the Second World War.
Serving as a Visual Signalman on the HMAS Australia, the flagship of the Australian squadron, Bruce said conditions on board were far from luxurious.
“She was a Kent Class Cruiser, built in England in 1926, so by 1942 in the Pacific, she was an old ship,” Bruce said.
“And, of course, she’d been built for service in northern, cold waters. Totally useless in tropical, hot waters, so it wasn’t a comfortable ship to be honest.
“She’d been built for a crew of 700 and we had 1000 on board, so it was cramped and hot,” he said.
Bruce was quick to point out that, in his opinion, the war was mostly humdrum.
“90 percent boredom and 10 percent getting the pants scared off you, when something really happened,” he said, “as it did when we got up to the Philippines, and we suffered casualties”.
“When we were part of Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines, with his assaults on Leyte and on Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines, then things became scary and then we really earnt our time.”
HMAS Australia was significantly damaged during the Allied invasion of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. A solitary Japanese dive-bomber struck the ship in the first apparent kamikaze attack on an Allied vessel at Leyte Gulf, leaving 30 crewmen dead, including the ship’s captain, and 64 wounded.
The ship took hits from another five kamikazes during the invasion of Lingayen Gulf in January 1945.
“[In early 1945], they decided to send us to England for repair. So I was actually in England, in a dockyard in Devonport, when VP Day came along.
“So, I had none of the excitement of being in an Australian city somewhere, with crowds dancing…[from the] news photos we saw that was happening.”
Repairs to the ship stopped almost immediately, once Victory in the Pacific was declared, and it was made ready for the voyage back to Australia.
“They tidied it up, just so she could proceed again, under her own stream, and we brought back with us to Australia all oddments of army and air force and navy personnel. Gave them a free taxi ride home,” Bruce said.
“And we also brought back a young contingent of marines who were going to depot in Sydney. And they’d never been to sea before in their lives.
“They didn’t take to the rough water very well,” he laughed. “It was a bit awkward”.
Bruce found his way into the entertainment industry after the war. He had started 3-year industrial design course but quickly began to find work on the stage.
“I also did a course in radio announcing and radio acting in Melbourne [and] eventually got a job as a radio announcer, in Victoria and then in Perth.
After nearly 20 years working in radio and TV with ABC Perth, Bruce returned to Melbourne in the 1980s, where he was cast in some of the biggest television shows being filmed around the city at the time.
Among his credits are the TV shows Neighbours (1989-94), Prisoner (1986), Sons and Daughters (1987), The Flying Doctors (1989), and Janus (1995).
“I was always in the background, well in the background, but that was interesting too. So, I’ve sort of been in the entertainment industry all along.”
Not a truer word could be said. From the Big Show, as WWII was often metaphorically referred, to a showman in his own right, Bruce’s star continues to shine bright.
Bruce recently celebrated his 100th birthday and his wife Kate says the celebrations were fun and memorable.
He still performs on stage and, since returning from Townsville, was nominated for Best Actor for his performance alongside his wife in a play called Dinner for One during the One Act Play Festival. Congratulations Bruce!
