The
CLERMONT RAG Community Newsletter Friday March 27, 2015
Pictured back row left to right: Walter (Dave) Murphy, Charles Oats, Arthur Lawrence and Roy Richardson. Front left to right: Theodore Williams, George Barker and Ivan Bettridge. Photo courtsey of Robert Hiette
Clermont’s proud World War II veterans The Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) in 2015 has taken on a large and ambitious community project to photograph all World War II veterans in Australia. There are 3500 photographer members of AIPP Australia wide and the RSL estimate there are 14,000 WWII veterans still alive in Australia. Each veteran will receive a complimentary print in a presentation folder to commemorate their service given some 75 years ago, reinforcing in the ANZAC tradition, “We will remember them”. The Australian War Memorial is a strong partner with the RSL and the AIPP in this project. Tim Sullivan, the Assistant Director, Branch Head National Collection of the Australian War Memorial, wrote, “The Australian War
Memorial will archive the images taken for the Reflections: Honouring our World War II Veterans project. The images will be kept for posterity and accessible to the veterans and their families, and to researchers in the future. It is an appropriate addition to the Memorial’s collections as we commemorate a Century of Service by Australians in our military forces, and honour all those Australians who served in the Second World War.” Thanks to Townsville photographer Robert Hiette for kicking off the photography of the Reflections Project on 28 February. We have received some feedback already from relatives of the veterans photographed in Clermont,
saying how everyone thoroughly enjoyed the experience and were looking forward to receiving their complimentary photographs. Robert’s work and images are the first of the 10,000 veterans to be photographed nation wide over the next four months.
The group image above features all of Clermont's surviving WWII Veterans that registered with the project to have their photographs taken. Please spread the word about this project to any WWII Veterans and get them involved in the Reflections project. Go to https://aippveterans.com/veterans to register.