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Pru lost To France for a brave uncle Has the bottle plot? WIDOWED father of three, Private James Thomas Cranston, of the 38th Battalion, died in action on World War I’s Western Front on July 23, 1918.
“He was a butcher before he enlisted and he left to go to France three days before Christmas,” Cranston’s great great niece Ketinia McGowen told “CityNews”. “He had curly red hair and three daughters and when he died they were all under the age of six.” Buried at the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, Cranston has not been forgotten and this Anzac Day Ketinia will be reciting John McRae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” at the Bullecourt community service there. Australian soldiers retook Villers-Bretonneux from the Germans on April 24-25, 1918 and the walls of the Australian National Memorial alongside the cemetery are inscribed with the names of 10,771 Australian casualties of the battlefields of France who have no known grave. The region annually commemorates Australia’s efforts in the war and a school was built in the town with funds raised by the children of Victoria.
By Eleri Harris
Canberra Girls Grammar School student Ketinia is excited about going to the Villers-Bretonneux service with her Year 12 French class. “I’ve only ever been to ceremonies in Australia, so I have no idea what it will be like in France,” Ketinia, 17, said. Ketinia’s class has made a wreath for Cranston, which they will bring with them on their two-week European trip, to lay at the bilingual wreath-laying ceremony in VillersBretonneux at the Monument aux Morts in the town square. Speaking fluent French, thanks to her Lebanese mother, Ketinia comes from a military family; her father Marc McGowan served for 28 years in the Australian armed forces and her grandfather in World War II. Marc researched Melbourneborn Cranston’s history at the Australian War Memorial and is pleased his daughter has the opportunity to pay respects for the family. “This guy was one of three brothers, all three brothers enlisted and he was the only one who was killed and the last to enlist in December, 1917,” Marc said. “His brothers enlisted in 1915
By Sonya Fladun
HAS Pru lost the plot? I’m referring to politician Pru Goward’s appalling attack on new mum and Sydney radio personality Jackie O.
Ketinia McGowen at the Australian War Memorial... off to France to honour a brave and distant uncle. Photo by Silas and 1916; one of them was seriously wounded, but they both came home. His wife died about a year before he enlisted and his daughters were brought up by his parents.” Marc says it is a mystery why a widower and father would have enlisted to fight in the war initially dubbed the “War to End all Wars”. “Ketinia and I were talking about what would make him go,” Marc says.
“He had three girls under five. Why would he do that?” Ketinia says Cranston’s Bible and medal were sent back to Australia, his sister signed for them at the post office, but they have since been lost. The traditional Dawn Service and National Ceremony will be held on Anzac day at the Australian War Memorial on Monday, April 25. More information at www.awm.gov. au/commemoration/anzac/
briefly
Function centre retires
THE Gold Creek Homestead Function Centre has closed after 33 years. The site will be redeveloped into a retirement village.
Snapper scores in Vegas CANBERRA photographer Dan O’Day has been placed second and third in awards at the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International Awards of Excellence in Las Vegas.
Concert for red Cross THE Queanbeyan Red Cross has been given $4580, the proceeds of a charity concert at The Q theatre last month, for the Red Cross Disaster Appeal, to assist victims of the floods and cyclones across Australia.
CityNews April 14-20
Jackie had been photographed by the paparazzi feeding her infant daughter Kitty with a bottle while walking across a pedestrian crossing. When the photo appeared in the press, talkback radio flared up and the newly appointed NSW Minister for Community Services and Women couldn’t help herself. Goward weighed into the debate, declaring that Jackie had recklessly endangered her baby and compared the new mother’s actions to those of the late Michael Jackson, who infamously dangled his infant son Blanket over the balcony of four-storey hotel in 2002. For good measure Goward, a former Federal sex discrimination commissioner, added that Jackie O had been “unnecessarily cavalier” and that no parent “or hardened feminist” could think it was a good way to feed a baby. It may be that Goward, a mother of three daughters, has forgotten some of the practical realities of feeding bubs. New-born babies require feeding somewhere between every one to three hours. Sure, it would be nice to sit down in the comfy rocking chair and enjoy some quality time with your baby, and no doubt Jackie O manages that much of the time. But life doesn’t stop when we have a baby. Actually, it speeds up. We all have to do what needs to be done, and for generations, babies have been fed on the run – by mums racing around doing housework, tending to other children, at work, doing the shopping or whatever. And what mum couldn’t identify with Jackie’s description of the so-called “incident”: “I’ll be the first to admit it is not the most ideal place,’’ she told her radio audience from her home, where she now works. “We were running late and Kitty was screaming and I knew I had to feed her because, you know, what else can you do? When your baby’s hungry, your baby’s hungry and I pulled out my express bottle and I fed her... whilst walking.” Often circumstances are not ideal. But who really thinks that carrying a bub across a pedestrian crossing with a bottle in his or her mouth is an irresponsible risk? Perhaps the real danger would have been if Jackie O had carried and fed her baby somewhere between a politician and a microphone. Get real, I say.