White Coolies Audiobook By Betty Jeffrey cover art

White Coolies

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

White Coolies

By: Betty Jeffrey
Narrated by: Beverley Dunn
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $19.49

Buy for $19.49

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

It is October 1942. From the doorway of this small three-roomed cottage, which houses thirty-two of us, we look out beyond to a steaming jungle in Sumatra.

In 1942 a group of sixty-five Australian Army nursing sisters was evacuated from Malaya a few days before the fall of Singapore. Two days later their ship was bombed and sunk by the Japanese. Of the fifty-three survivors who scrambled ashore, twenty-one were murdered and the remaining thirty-two taken prisoner.

White Coolies is the engrossing record kept by one of the sisters, Betty Jeffrey, during the more than three gruelling years of imprisonment that followed. It is an amazing story of survival and deprivation and the harshest of conditions.

©1954 Betty Jeffrey. Betty Jeffrey asserts her moral right to be identified as theauthor of this Work. First published by HarperCollinsPublishers in. This audio version produced by arrangement with HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Ltd. (P)1997 Bolinda Publishing Military

Editorial reviews

A harrowing but ultimately inspiring account of Australian Army nurses attacked and imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II. In her dignified and matter-of-fact-voice, Australian actress Beverley Dunn reads a secret diary kept by one of the nurses, Betty Jeffrey, written while imprisoned in the Sumatran jungle. Jeffrey's account of tortures, starvation, murder, and humiliation is hard to hear, although it’s brightened by the courage and perseverance of these brave women, and their determination to find humor and even joy in the bleakest of times.
All stars
Most relevant  
I liked the truth exhibited by the women in such horrible situations, their perseverance in such circumstances.

the cruelty of the Japanese

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Uninteresting and boring. Could not get through it.

Skip it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.