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Indigenous veterans commemoration service

28/5/2017

Each year we celebrate National Reconciliation Week for our first peoples, our indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters. This week is that week!

Quite by chance I got a train into the city on Friday morning when I saw Gordana, the woman I always say hello to in our local Summer Hill café Decolata, getting on the same train. It turns out Gordana is a teacher at St Vincents Primary School in Ashfield. She was carrying a floral wreath and was escorting three indigenous students to the annual Indigenous Veterans Commemoration Service in Hyde Park.

I wasn’t able to attend the ceremony at such short notice which I was quite disappointed about, but I did ask Gordana if I could take a photo of her with the school’s floral wreath which her three students were going to lay during the service. But I did have just enough time after my errand to get to Hyde Park to get a programme of the service and to take a photo of the indigenous veterans’ memorial next to the Anzac Memorial.

Again, with luck on my side, I saw a priest standing alone at the memorial. He was having a quiet reflective moment going over his sermon while preparing to conduct the service. He was Army Chaplain Ivan Grant, a Wiradjuri man.

I first became aware that many indigenous people enlisted to serve in WWI when Brad Manera, the senior historian and curator from Anzac Memorial spoke about their service and sacrifice at a family history conference I attended in 2012.

Those veterans were treated as equals by their fellow soldiers, only to find when they returned home after their war service that the discrimination they had always encountered still occurred.

As part of National Reconciliation Week, the NSW Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Veterans and Services Association conduct the annual Indigenous Veterans Commemoration Ceremony around the Pool of Reflection at the Anzac Memorial. The Ceremony commemorates the service and sacrifice of indigenous veterans who have fought for Australia in every major conflict since the Boer War.

As part of National Reconciliation Week, this commemorative service was first started to recognise the many years of armed service Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have contributed — a history often lost to Australians.

“The majority of Australians wouldn’t have a clue about Aboriginal history,” NSW Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Veterans and Services Association president David Williams said.

The service is important not just for the recognition of indigenous service, but also to highlight the continued need to support veterans, Mr Williams said.
National Reconciliation Week (NRW) runs annually from 27 May – 3 June. These dates mark two milestones in Australia’s reconciliation journey: The 1967 referendum and the historic Mabo decision, respectively.

The week is a time for all Australians to learn about indigenous shared histories, cultures and achievements and to explore how each of us can join the national reconciliation effort.

For more information on National Reconciliation Week: http://www.reconciliation.org.au/nrw/

For more information on Indigenous Veterans Commemoration Service: http://www.indigenous.gov.au/news-and-media/event/indigenous-veterans-commemoration-service

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Silken souvenirs of a lost love...

21/5/2017

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When David Livesey brought his Aunt Hetty’s WWI keepsakes from England to show me for my WWI project they were in a small box that had been treasured by their owner for over sixty years. It is a deeply touching story of a young girl of 18 who just engaged, had lost her sweetheart and fiancé to the Great War.

Her young man James Aspinall had sent Hetty a silk handkerchief embroidered with the flags of France and England and what looks to be a Scottish thistle. It was kept in a little box, along with a photo of James, and the handwritten note saying they had just become engaged when he was called up to serve in 1916. She did not see him again!

According to the BBC UK website and Narrative Threads, a Canadian website, the women of France and Belgium embroidered silks that were made into postcards, pillow covers and handkerchiefs. These were popular with the Allied men serving on the Western Front because they were beautiful objects that were lightweight and could be sent home to the mothers, wives and sweethearts. This thriving cottage industry helped provide an income to the families affected by the war in France and Belgium.

Sadly, like Hetty’s young James, many of the young men who purchased these handmade souvenirs, did not return home!

And young Hetty, not knowing her young James had been killed writes this poignant Christmas card, pictured below. It was either never sent to him or it was returned to her after he was killed on the Western Front.

But even though her life moved on, and she married, she kept these little treasures of her first love. And now that Hetty has now passed, so too does David her nephew keep the little box. No doubt it will pass on to one of his daughters and so on, down through the ages! Lest we forget the sacrifices, not only of all those young and not so young men, but also the huge losses and sacrifices suffered by all the women at home waiting!

The young man on far right below is Hetty's sweetheart James Aspinall. The photo looks to be of James and his fellow school mates.

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Young broken hearts....

14/5/2017

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David Livesey at his daughter's home in the Blue Mountains with WWI keepsakes of his Auntie Hetty which he had brought from England to share with me. Unfortunately, during that same visit David broke his leg.

I met David Livesey in 1998 when he and his wife Val came to Australia to see their daughter Joanne married to my brother Clive. At that time Clive and Joanne still lived in England in Lancashire with their 3 month old son Aaron, but had all come to Australia so that our parents could attend their wedding. In 2001 they returned to live in Australia and David and Val have visited every few years. When he heard of my project David recalled that he still had some WWI keepsakes that belonged to his Auntie Hetty.

Born 21 March 1897 Harriet Livesey was living in Lower Darwen in Lancashire when she became engaged at age 18, circa 1915, to her young man James Aspinall. David believes James was a local boy from either Blackburn or Darwen, or even Lower Darwen, which was the local village between the two towns.

Sadly, young James had enlisted in the army during WWI but died in action in either France or Belgium. Due to the destruction of over 60% of WWI British war records during the London bombings of WWII, there is little hope of finding out more about James’ war service. Later on Hetty meets another James.

James Lowe was born in 1899 and enlisted in the army on 27 July 1917 (4th Res Cavalry Regt). David’s Uncle Jim was demobilised into the army reserve in 1919 and he and Hetty married circa 1924. They did not have any children, but David remembers them as a kind and generous couple, who without much money, doted on him and then later on his children Joanne and Pam, spoiling them with love and kindness, like the grandchildren they never had.

Despite a lifetime spent with her husband James Lowe, Auntie Hetty kept a few keepsakes of her first love, young James Aspinall. How often this story must have been played out across countless young hearts during such a heartless war!

The family knew nothing of James Aspinall and his relationship and place in Hetty’s life until after her death on 16 October 1988, when the keepsakes were found.

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Charles Bean, official WWI historian

7/5/2017

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Last Friday I drove to a place not far from Sydney that I’ve never been before. In fact I’ve never even heard of it before….Darkes Forest.

I went to meet Bob Fulton whose family moved there when he was nine. Bob’s father Walter had served in WWII and had run a fruit shop in Ashfield, while the family lived in Concord on Majors Bay Road. Bob remembers that all the fruit prices were fixed and it was very hard for his father to make a living.

In Darkes Forest they lived on 15 acres and grew vegetables and fruit. Bob played in the bush, with its local creek and waterfall. His parents have since died and now he visits their home each weekday to look after the grounds.

After WWII Bob’s father purchased a full set of Charles Bean’s Official War Histories of Australia in the War of 1914 – 1918 and several of them have never even been opened. They are tenth editions printed in 1940 and hard bound and purchased circa 1944. In the garage Bob discovered the original hard cardboard post boxes his father had kept that each volume came in, so he placed each one back in its own box.

Six of the volumes were written by Charles Bean. They cover the Story of Anzac (Vol I & II), AIF in France 1916 (Vol III), AIF in France 1917 (Vol IV), AIF in France 1918 (Vol V) and the last, Vol VI has no label, so without opening it I’m not sure of its subject matter.

Five other volumes were written variously by Gullett, Cutlack, Jose, Mackenzie, and Scott, and edited by Bean. They cover conflicts in Sinai, Palestine and Rabaul and the Australian Flying Corps and the Royal Australian Navy. There is also a 12th volume, a photographic record of WWI, annoted by Bean and Gullett.

I met Bob through his old childhood friend Ian who moved to Darkes Forest with his family when Ian was ten. Ian’s son Craig has been a friend of ours since 1995. Ian and his wife Fay are in Sydney from South West Rocks while Fay undergoes surgery, and Ian is staying at the old Darkes Forest property for a few weeks. It was while I was visiting Fay in hospital that Ian told me of the Charles Bean books that Bob had.

Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean was born on 18 November 1879 in Bathurst. His family moved to England when he was ten but he returned to Australia in 1904. He was the SMH’s lead writer when WWI began and he won the Australian Journalists Association ballot and became Australia’s official war historian.

Bean was at the landing on Gallipoli on 25 April 1917. While there he was wounded but remained on, only leaving days before the last troops. Afterwards he followed the Australians onto the Western Front. After witnessing those horrific battles he formed the desire to memorialise their sacrifice and achievements.

Bean wrote of the Diggers in Pozieres: “They have to stay there while shell after huge shell descends with a shriek close beside them. Each one, an acute mental torture — each shrieking tearing crash bringing a promise to each man — instantaneous — I will tear you into ghastly wounds — I will rend your flesh and pulp your arm or a leg — fling you, half a gaping, quivering man and like these that you see smashed around you one by one to lie there rotting and blackening.’’

Throughout the war, Bean filled hundreds of diaries and notebooks, with the idea of writing a history of the AIF when the war ended, for which he is best remembered. After the war he began the work on the official history series that would consume the next two decades of his life. The books pictured are the fruits of his labours.

Charles Bean was also the driving force behind the creation of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and was present when it opened on 11 November 1941. He became Chairman of the Memorial's board in 1952 and maintained a close association with it for the rest of his life.

Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean died in Concord Repatriation Hospital on 30 August 1968. This is the very same hospital where my partner Stelios has worked as a theatre nurse since 2004.

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WWI: Mementos of our Grandfathers

Indigenous veterans commemoration service

Silken souvenirs of a lost love...

Young broken hearts....

Charles Bean, official WWI historian

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