The Shrine of Remembrance acknowledges the Bunurong people of the Kulin nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the Shrine stands, and pay our respects to their Elders past and present. As a place of remembrance and storytelling, we honour their deep connection to Country and waterways, shaped by generations of stories and memories.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this magazine contains images and names of deceased persons.
Remembrance is published by The Shrine of Remembrance
Editorial team: Sue Burgess, Sue Curwood, Ryan Johnston, Jessica Trigg and Laura Thomas
Design: Multiple Studio
Copy Editing: Paula Ruzek, Professional Word Services
On the Cover: Victory celebrations in Melbourne ca. 1945, reproduced courtesy of the State Library Victoria, H98.101/304.
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CONTENTS
ON THE HOME FRONT
Carolyn Argent p.02
ONE WAR, MANY ENDINGS
Alessandro Barilaro p.10
HONOURING COUNTRY, HONOURING SERVICE
Asim (‘Sam’) Halim p.16
20 YEARS OF THE VICTORIAN ABORIGINAL REMEMBRANCE SERVICE— A FAMILY REFLECTION
Dr Andrew Peters p.21
1966: THE MOST IMPORTANT YEAR
Dr Adrian Threlfall p.22
ART, ESPIONAGE AND PROFESSOR
A.D. TRENDALL
Gillian Shepherd p.30
AN ENDURING MESSAGE: COMMEMORATING THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN STONE
Dr Katti Williams p.36
EUCALYPTS OF HODOGAYA
Neil Sharkey p.44
FROM THE COLLECTION
TINY TROOPS: THE HISTORY OF TOY SOLDIERS
Selina Wilmott p.52
FROM BUSH TO BATTALION: BLINKY BILL GOES TO WAR
Toby Miller p.54
A LIFE DEDICATED TO THE FALLEN: THE SERVICE OF BRIGADIER
ATHOL EARLE BROWN OBE CMG
Dr Lisa Cooper p.56
THE GREATEST BLUFF OF THE PACIFIC WAR
Katrina Nicolson p.60
WHAT IS REMEMBRANCE?
Steve Cotterill p.64
PEACE WITHIN
Kat Rae with Mae Mao and Elizabeth Tun p.68
A TRIBUTE TO MAUREEN BUGDEN OAM
Sue Burgess p.71
Through interviews, diaries and war service records, discover how three Victorians—each with a unique perspective—experienced the end of the Second World War on the home front.
Elizabeth Mackenzie
Bill Cherry
Carolyn Argent
Alf Argent
It was a cool morning with light rain in Melbourne on Wednesday 15 August 1945 when Australia’s
Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, addressed the nation over
the
radio.
“Fellow citizens, the war is over… Let us remember those whose lives were given that we may enjoy this glorious moment and may we look forward to a peace which they have won for us…Nothing can fully repay the debt we owe them…”
Newspapers, word of mouth or radio, when the news came through, Australians rejoiced.
As we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, I set out to uncover how the news was received on the home front, including by my father, Alf Argent. For some, it was business as usual. For many, a profound sigh of relief.
Elizabeth Mackenzie
Elizabeth Mackenzie, now a sprightly centenarian, recalled her wartime service with me in her home in Melbourne. Elizabeth was born in Quarry Hill, Bendigo, in December 1924. She worked as a legal typist with a solicitors’ firm in Bendigo, where she completed the course and training to become a stenographer. When Elizabeth turned 18 in December 1942, she was quite determined she would join the Army to “travel the world”, proclaiming this much to the protests of her mother. Elizabeth officially enlisted in the Commonwealth Military Forces (CMF) in the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) on 10 August 1943. She explained her desire to travel took her “from Bendigo to Melbourne and back to Bendigo again!”
There was training in Bacchus Marsh and at ‘Camp Pell’, named after Major Floyd Pell, also known as Royal Park. Elizabeth’s first accommodation was a house named ‘Flete’ in Armadale. Later there was an old home called ‘Harbury’, which Elizabeth referred to as a ‘women’s barracks’. Harbury House was a stately house in Ackland Street, South Yarra, and was the headquarters for the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), which was a military intelligence unit.
Elizabeth was also billeted in Elwood to a house named ‘Fortuna’, with recollections of bicycle and tram commutes, and once being fined on a train for being in a first-class area with only a second-class fare! Her Army service soon took an intriguing turn that would change the course of her life. Elizabeth was sent to work at ‘Airlie’, a former private home at the corner of Punt and Domain roads in South Yarra—just up the road from the Shrine of Remembrance.
During the Second World War, ‘Airlie’ was used for planning secret missions including Operation Jaywick, the infamous raid on Singapore Harbour conducted by Z Special operatives. Elizabeth remembers that there was a secret tunnel under Punt Road from Airlie; however, she stated quite clearly there were things that she would never speak about and has kept her word throughout her life. During her time at Airlie, Elizabeth used her typing and secretarial skills, handling personnel files among other things, and it was there she met her future husband Gilbert Mackenzie, a Z Special operative.
When news of the end of the Second World War reached Elizabeth in Melbourne, and those still working for the Army back here on the home front, it really was business as usual. Memos were written, letters typed, personnel files continued to be updated. Elizabeth has only fleeting recollections of the event, but the ethos was that there was still work to do and she did not recall any prolonged celebrations or festivities. Instead, she simply remembers things continuing on as they had. Elizabeth remained in the Army until 19 September 1946 and,coming full circle, was transferred to the Australian Army Cartographic Company (mapping) back in her hometown of Bendigo.
Elizabeth continues to share her story of service to ensure this time is not forgotten.
Elizabeth Mackenzie as an 18-year-old in the AWAS.
Elizabeth revisited Airlie years after her wartime service.
Reproduced courtesy of the Mackenzie families
Alf Argent
My father, Alf Argent, was 18 when the announcement came that the war had ended. A country lad born in March 1927 in Lang Lang, south-east Victoria, Alf was the eldest of six and was keen to join the Navy or Air Force in particular. His parents, having lost family in the First World War, were not so keen to bid farewell to their son. There was much mourning for these losses in Alf’s family, a grief that was echoed in households worldwide.
Alf was undeterred and his diaries note he sent in applications to join the Naval reserves and completed the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) medical and aptitude examinations. However, the RAAF had a glut of air crew and he awaited ‘Manpower’ directions—wartime instructions from the government telling you where you were needed most. It was suggested Alf join the Army instead, and he eventually enlisted on 29 May 1945. A tram trip from Flinders Street up to Royal Park followed where he was issued with uniforms and identity discs. The next day, 1 June 1945, the recruits travelled by train to Cowra. In his diary notes Alf recalls:
‘We arrived at Cowra, in the freezing cold at 01:30 hours, were put into trucks and driven the short distance out of town to the camp; given hard biscuits and cocoa, six blankets and a palliasse; shown empty, unlined corrugated iron huts, each of which held 24 men and told to sleep and be quick and quiet about it. Thus we entered the training machine of the 2nd AIF.’
The training entailed marching, drills, .303 rifle practice, throwing grenades and firing Bren and Owen guns, and training in a gas hut. Sunday afternoons after chapel provided an opportunity to enjoy a walk. The nearby Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, while out of bounds, could be viewed in the distance just over three kilometres away.
Alf’s diary recalls:
‘On Monday 6 August 1945, we marched out to the Pioneer range and fired our rifles from 100, 200 and 300 yards. My score was 65 out of 75. On the same day, 4830 miles to the north, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.’
No sooner had it begun for Alf, his diary notes:
‘ …15 August 1945, the War was declared over.
The siren went off at Brigade hill to celebrate this and I remember men running over the hillsides up there.
The War had come to such an abrupt and unexpected end that the only thing the authorities, all the way down the line from Canberra to Cowra, could do was to let things run on as they were’.
The war was over, and while there was a sense of relief, there were no jubilant scenes or celebrating as training continued for the soldiers of A Coy 4 ARBT (Australian Recruit Training Battalion). Alf’s diary does hint at the uncertainty felt at the time: ‘... nobody knew how the Japanese armed forces all around Asia would react to this sudden capitulation’.
Army life on the home front simply continued on.
‘On Friday 17 August 1945, I marched out of 4 ARTB with a movement order to the 1 Australian Signals Training Battalion (1 ASTB) Depot at Bonegilla… Much improved food and there was more of it and longer hotter showers’.
After applying and being accepted into Duntroon Military College, Alf was demobilised and discharged. The next day, Friday 22 February 1946, he and 19 others boarded a troop train that would carry them to Duntroon, where they joined other successful candidates. Those who completed the training would become the class of 1948.
Alf Argent would go on to serve 30 years as an Army officer, mainly with 3RAR (Royal Australian Regiment). He served with the British Commonwealth Occupied Forces in Japan (BCOF), as an Intelligence Officer in Korea, Malaya and Borneo, and did three tours of Vietnam. There are several of Alf Argent’s objects on display in the Galleries of Remembrance at the Shrine.
Three buglers sound The Last Post, commemorating the end of the Second World War.
Reproduced courtesy of State Library Victoria H98.101/309
Alf Argent pictured at Hume Weir as an 18-year-old training at Bonegilla, 1945.
Alf Argent in 1988.
Reproduced courtesy of the Argent families
Ascot Vale Public School students knotting camouflage nets during the Second World War. Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial Shrine volunteer Bill Cherry. Shrine Collection
Crowds gathered at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance in 1945 after the declaration that the Second World War was over.
Reproduced courtesy of State Library Victoria H98.101/327
Bill Cherry
Bill Cherry is one of the volunteers at the Shrine of Remembrance, and he graciously shared his recollections of the end of the Second World War. Born in December 1932, Bill was just 12 years old when he heard the news of the end of the Second World War. At the time, he was a student at Brunswick Technical School in Melbourne. News of the war was daily fodder. Food rationing affected the family, although Bill recalled no one he knew went hungry, but the same food was often on the menu. There was a slit trench as a shelter from air raids, but Bill said it might have only provided some protection if they could all fit in! With toys in short supply, Bill and his neighbourhood friends made balsa wood model aircraft.
At school, some of the classes had limited resources and RAAF fitters were trained in the engineering workshops there, which Bill found disappointing as he missed out on such classes. Bill also recalled watching students knotting ropes together to create camouflage nets that were then distributed by the Army to wherever they were needed. He recalled the ropes were hooked onto the drinking bubblers as they were woven together. Bill was in woodwork class when the announcement came that the war had ended, and he distinctly remembered a teacher coming in saying ‘it’s all over’ ‘There was a school assembly and we went off up Sydney Road to the sound of car horns and tram bells. In the evening Dad took me into the city to join in the festivities. This turned out to be a very scary experience for me as a 12-year-old, as we were caught up in a surging crowd. Dad managed to squeeze us in behind a tram, which we followed to safety, walking on the tram tracks behind the tram.’ Bill was happy to reach the security of his family home and it was a very overwhelming moment, not just for Bill, but his family too. The war was finally all over, except for the mourning and remembrance of Bill’s family member in the 2/21 Battalion who was first thought to have died of illness, but was actually executed in Ambon. Bill believed the reality of this loss was kept from his mother, but Bill’s older brother thought she probably knew. At 18, Bill registered for National Service and at 19, he started training. He spent 198 days over a three-year period serving the nation, which he enjoyed. Bill, now 92, still enjoys sharing stories of service and sacrifice with visitors to the Shrine.
My father, Alf Argent, passed away in 2014 and these reflections were drawn from his diaries and earlier conversations he had with me. As a family, we lived in Army Barracks at times and my older brother and I just accepted as normal that Dad was in the Army; my mother worked hard to create a sense of normality. We saw him in uniform and were surrounded by Army staff every day. My Dad, as is true of other Defence personnel, seldom spoke of his service. It wasn’t until later in his life that he would share small snippets of his Army life.
Now, together with Elizabeth and Bill, all have offered an insight into a moment in time that will long be remembered.
Carolyn Argent is an Education Officer at the Shrine of Remembrance and is Alf Argent’s daughter.
Bill Cherry in National Service uniform, aged 19. Reproduced courtesy of Bill Cherry
ONE WAR, MANY ENDINGS
On 15 August 1945, a soldier serving at Bougainville wrote: ‘JAPS SURRENDER AND WAR ENDS. The greatest news of the century’. People poured into the streets in Australia’s major cities, embracing each other. Children had the day off school. But in Nagasaki, Australians did not have the luxury of hope. In Johore, Australians were on the brink of starvation.
Alessandro Barilaro
Diary of serviceman Keith Lindsey Lewtas, stationed in the Pacific, on VE Day 1945.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, 2019.22.64
Members of the crowd dancing in Bourke Street during the Victory in the Pacific (VP Day) celebrations in Melbourne.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, 113022
Australian POWs at their liberated camp in Johore.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, P03541004-1
Surrender of Japanese aboard USS Missouri. Mr Shigemitsu, Japanese Foreign Minister signing the instrument of surrender on behalf of Japan.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, 040962
A group of unidentified civilian men and women celebrating in the streets of Perth on Victory in the Pacific (VP) Day.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, AWM2018.641.1
The culmination of the Second World War in the Australian memory is usually incarnated by the jubilation and partying in city streets. This was described in a letter received by seaman Pete Russell Mayor in Tokyo from his sweetheart Greta: ‘People went really mad; they threw anything in the line of papers out of the windows and in a short while the streets were carpeted with paper. It was inches deep in Collins Street’. Scenes of the ‘Dancing Man’ filmed in the streets of Melbourne typify the understanding of the Second World War’s ending, like the confetti pouring down from the heavens, signalling an outpouring of emotions in a moment of deliverance.
Yet thousands of kilometres away, a very different ending to the war was unfolding—one that did not simply end on 15 August 1945. While some celebrated, many grieved, and all breathed a collective sigh of relief, those closest to the location of the war itself—especially prisoners-of-war (POWs) around the Pacific— experienced a far more complex conclusion. When their deliverance finally came, their relief was muted, starvation persisted, forced labour continued for many, and most were simply left to fend for themselves.
Those on Johore, the southern state of what was then known as Malaya, had been so deprived of food that their daily meal involved a stew of tapioca and roots foraged from nearby ground. When Red Cross parcels fell from the heavens bringing freedom, they weren’t to know that the worst thing to treat starvation is an abundance of food. ‘Our eyes are bigger than our bellies and one poor chap last night ate a pint of sugar and died during the night,’ Stan Arneil, a POW in Johore, wrote in his diary. This was emblematic of the circumstances that defined the end of the Second World War for those closest to its point of crescendo—not of the home front, nor the front line, but a different human experience altogether.
Victory in the Pacific Day (VP Day), 15 August 1945, was the day of the Japanese surrender. Eighteen days later, the Pacific War officially ended aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay amid General Macarthur’s contrived official surrender, in which the Japanese were seen to yield to the Allies.
In the meantime, Japanese forces were conceding in fragments. Piecemeal concessions also occurred within Japanese POW camps, especially those closer to, or on, the Japanese mainland. In the Fukuoka POW camp near Nagasaki, it took three days for confirmation of the surrender. On 17 August, a surge of relief and rising optimism reached a volatile peak as emotions boiled over into physical altercations among the men, as recounted by Jack Nevell, a POW in Fukuoka, who kept a diary throughout his containment.
‘The war must surely be over. Excitement everywhere. Four fights this morning. They are becoming almost international contests. Dutch against the Australians. Aussies are well ahead.’
The men were tense, at the end of their tether, and often bore visible scars that reminded them of their captivity. They soon began celebrations in earnest, mirroring the celebrations on the front in the Pacific and those back home. They held a concert, with flags displayed prominently and national anthems bellowing. The Japanese camp commandant gave a speech telling them that all would be well.
Two weeks later, on 1 September, the Dutch contingent in Fukuoka held a lively celebration for Queen Wilhelmina, complete with patriotic speeches. As Nevell wrote, ‘The Aussies soon had enough of it and eventually one, in a loud voice, said “F*** old Wilhelmina”, and a Dutchman hit him and then it was on. They are still repairing the damage’. Clearly, the end of the war had not dissolved the strain or hardened facades forged in captivity.
Some in other places in the Pacific did celebrate as B-29s flew overhead. Tom Henling Wade, a POW in Tokyo, recalled: ‘Prisoners waved, cheered, and skipped with pleasure among the fallen and bouncing boxes. It made glorious, theatrical spectacle’. Others, such as Dorothy Jenner, a civilian internee in Japan, processed their liberation with a profound deepness of emotion. ‘Instead of cheering and screaming, the emotions were so deep that they dumbfounded us and we were completely silent’. Many could hardly ignore the devastation that surrounded them. ‘Two-thirds of the population of Nagasaki are dead,’ Sister Regina McKenna, freed from internment in Nagasaki, wrote to a friend.
In Johore, days after the news had finally reached them, each man fell silent when presented with a pen and paper to write letters home on 6 September. It had only been on 28 August that leaflets dropped over the jail the Australians had now made their camp, telling them that the war was officially over and they would be going home. In the ensuing 24 hours, more men died from collapsed nerves, their strength finally giving out after prolonged strain.
Former POWs could hardly leave camp and find a ship home; they were forced to remain among those who had held them captive during the war. In most cases, nobody even knew where these people were. A group of nurses who had been taken from Rabaul and held on the Japanese mainland remained isolated in their camp for two weeks until, one day, three of them went into town and waved down an American officer, bringing him to the camp. Jean McLellan’s 31 August diary entry simply read:
‘Eventful day—most of my life— we were FOUND!!’
The relief, and the complex and layered emotions visible in their deliverance, were entirely understandable given the hardships they were forced to endure. Stan Arneil, who kept a diary during his internment before and at Johore, wrote of his regimented prison life, working all day, ‘chasing time all the while’. Rations were irregular and unreliable; in April 1945 a working man was sustained daily on 400 grams of rice and corn. Any perceived slight against their captors or the honour of Imperial Japan would see even those rations sliced and the axe come down, as Arneil recorded, ‘with a vengeance’.
By June, men such as Stan Arneil were rejoicing at the prospect of half an ounce of chilies each, and reality was sinking in: ‘We repeat to each other, of course, day in and day out that the war must end and we all agree on that, but as we have been repeating the same things for three years we are not getting very far.’ Optimism was at a premium when only two men out of 20 were deemed fit enough to work. By August, men were ‘scrounging’ tapioca from the rubbish of Imperial Japanese Army quarters. ‘It is frightful of course to think that men have been reduced to such a state but still even the pigs at a local piggery eat much better tapioca and greens than we,’ Arneil recalled.
On the Japanese mainland, prisoners were regularly beaten not only by their captors, but by members of the Japanese navy looking to take out some frustration. Men who stepped out of line could have their skulls split with their work tools by a Japanese guard. At Hainan, the prisoners had dug a pit between the huts where they were to be shot and dumped in the event of an Allied landing. By 15 August, 130 out of 273 Australians who had been shipped to Hainan had survived, and only eight were strong enough to bury their dead. Then there was the Sandakan Death March, in which 980 prisoners were forcibly marched through hundreds of kilometres of mountainous jungle and marshland from Ranau to Labuan. Six prisoners escaped, and they became Sandakan’s only survivors. The rest were either left to die on the trail or exterminated upon arrival.
Relief was never going to be enough for these people at the Second World War’s closure. Some, such as those at Fukuoka, Japan, attempted to ‘even things just a little’ by beating the first Japanese soldiers they came across. Most did not. They were either too weak or too apathetic. But as victory settled in, some chose the victor’s right to plunder. This wasn’t a trait purely typical of POWs, as Australians on ships moored in Tokyo Bay regularly took trips onto the Japanese mainland to secure alcohol and procure ‘souvenirs’, such as Japanese swords.
Some POWs went in different, more ambitious, directions. Jack Nevell said: ‘Some of the lads have just landed back from robbing a bank. They have rice bags full of money. They had been drinking all the morning. When that started to pall, they decided they would go rob a bank to see if that would give them a kick.’
Why rob a bank? Because the war was over, and nobody had come to fetch them. Because their existence as POWs revolved around a strictly implemented routine, which had entirely disappeared. Because nobody had prepared these men to run their own camps and, chiefly, because they were bored. In the words of one of their comrades in camp, the men were ‘feeling their way gingerly along and finding they can get away with nearly anything’. Jack Nevell himself, recording the exploits in his diary, was less enthused: ‘I am afraid I have not the stomach for the way a minority of the lads are carrying on, especially regarding the civilian population. I just want to get home and forget about it all.’
For many, the war certainly did not end on 15 August. However, the Nagasaki bank heist did not go unnoticed. Fukuoka’s mayor rode his bike down to the liberated camp, demanding compensation, and every former POW was called to parade. The mayor gave a speech: ‘I quite understand these happenings. When the men were under the Japanese control, they were knocked about and treated badly. Now it is our turn to be knocked down and kicked. We expect it. There are no hard feelings.’ He drew up a bill for 3000 yen, which was passed around the men. By the time it had reached its end point, the men had contributed 6000 yen. Everyone had satisfaction. Except the mayor had to walk home—‘one of the lads had stolen his bicycle.’
Alessandro (Alex) Barilaro is a PhD student at Deakin University with an interest in historical narratives and dynamics, particularly those which emanated from Australian forces during the First World War. He completed the Australian War Memorial’s Summer Scholarship program in 2025.
Australian
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, 019394
Australian former POWs attempting to capture the attention of aircraft flying over their now-liberated camp.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, P02491.065
prisoners of war at the Notogawa Camp near Osaka after the Japanese surrender.
HONOURING COUNTRY, HONOURING SERVICE
Aunty Dot Peters at the first Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service in 2006.
Photographer Marlene Habib
Twenty years on, the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service (VARS) stands as a powerful symbol of reconciliation, paying tribute to the vital contributions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service personnel have made and continue to make to the Australian Defence Force.
Asim (‘Sam’) Halim
Around 1,200 Indigenous soldiers served in the First World War and an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 in the Second World War.
The Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service (VARS) is held annually on 31 May and provides Victorians the opportunity to come together during Reconciliation Week and reflect on the sacrifices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen and women who have served, and still serve, in the nation’s armed forces. In 2026, the service celebrates its 20th anniversary.
The VARS traces its beginnings to Healesville in the idyllic Yarra Valley, the town I have called home for the past 40 years. The location is significant, given the town’s proximity to the former Coranderrk Aboriginal Station— a 2350-acre mission established in 1863 for Aboriginal people from across Victoria. The station closed in 1924 after most of the land was sold or leased and the residents moved to Lake Tyers in Gippsland. What remained of Coranderrk was finally revoked in 1948 and divided up for soldier settlement; however, Aboriginal soldiers were not eligible for the land.
The VARS began in 2006 when I was president of Healesville RSL Sub-Branch. Yarra Yarra Elder the late Aunty Dot Peters AM approached me to ask if the RSL would honour her father and other Indigenous soldiers who fought and died in the defence of Australia but had received little or no recognition.
Since the Boer War (1899–1902), thousands of Indigenous Australians have served in the nation’s armed forces; some Aboriginal participation was also recorded in colonial military units before Federation. Around 1,200 Indigenous soldiers served in the First World War and an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 in the Second World War. Indigenous men and women have continued to serve in conflicts and peacekeeping missions from the post-war period through to the present day.
Members of the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Committee and VIPs at the VARS 2016.
Reproduced courtesy of the Victorian Aboriginal
This was despite restrictive enlistment policies that lasted up to the second half of the 20th century, as well as continuing social discrimination upon their return when very few received their full entitlements, including soldier settlements. Aunty Dot had tried for many years to get recognition through the RSL and other government organisations, but her attempts had been unsuccessful.
I recognised that a formal acknowledgement needed to take place. I have always believed that if you fight for your country, it owes you acknowledgement, equality and recognition. As a result, the reconciliation to honour the Indigenous soldiers began, and the first remembrance service was held.
The service was not without its detractors, but with the support of the Healesville RSL Sub-Branch Committee we forged on. I raised the Aboriginal flag for the very first time at the RSL. During Reconciliation Week, the SubBranch introduced a change to the daily playing of The Ode, accompanying it with the sound of the didgeridoo. Following the service at Healesville RSL, Aunty Dot and I held consultations with the Shrine of Remembrance and government organisations with a view to establishing a permanent remembrance service at the Shrine.
On 31 May 2006, the Shrine held a remembrance service to honour Victoria’s Indigenous servicemen and women and raised the Aboriginal flag for the first time in its history. This has become the service we know and recognise today—an important event within Victoria’s annual commemorative program and a cornerstone to Victoria’s Reconciliation Week efforts. The Shrine has hosted the VARS every year since its inception (including a 10-person commemoration that took place in 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic).
The Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Committee (VARC) was established to work with the Victorian Government and other organisations to deliver the service. In addition to being a Co-Founder of the VARS, I have also served as Vice-Chair of the VARC for the past 19 years.
The evolution of the VARS
In its early years, the VARS was smaller and had a slightly different focus. While reconciliation was always at its heart, the service initially provided a space for Indigenous Victorians to honour the service of their loved ones. Today, it invites the wider community to come together in a shared act of remembrance and reconciliation, acknowledging the contributions of First Nations servicemen and women.
Over the years, the VARS has grown in size and stature and is attended by the Governor of Victoria (or their lieutenant), government ministers and other dignitaries, as well as senior officers from within the Australian Defence Force. In recent times, there has been representation from the Federal Government—an indication of how highly regarded the event has become.
At its heart, however, the VARS remains a community event. What makes the service unique is the way it blends the formal elements of a traditional commemorative service with celebrations of Indigenous culture, such as songs and music. A didgeridoo accompanying the Royal Australian Air Force Band in the national anthem has become a familiar sound but would have been unheard of 20 years ago.
Such changes have taken time as protocols are finally being peeled back. Each year, The Ode is recited in both English and Indigenous language (Taungurung) and begins with a Welcome To Country and Smoking Ceremony where guests are invited to smoke themselves.
More recently, the program has included a fly-past. Great views were had this year of a Pilatus PC-21 aircraft from the Roulettes Aerobatic team based at RAAF East Sale, which appeared to almost clip the tiled roof of the Shrine as it flew past, sending tingles down collective spines.
In 2021, the VARC was recognised with the prestigious Helping Achieve Reconciliation Together (HART) Award in the Champions of Reconciliation category. Presented by Reconciliation Victoria and the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA), the award celebrates sustained and meaningful contributions to reconciliation.
Co-Founders of the Victorian AboriginalAssistant Minister for Defence The Honourable Peter Khalil MP representing the Prime Minister (left) with VARS
Co-Founder Sam Halim at the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service 2025.
Photographer Helen Halim
Co-Founders of the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service, the late Aunty Dot Peters AM and Sam Halim 2015.
Reproduced courtesy of the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Committee
Looking to the future
Despite the growing appeal of the VARS, the VARC acknowledges that there is still work to be done. One of our top priorities is the need to increase Indigenous representation at future services. It is hoped that for the 20th anniversary service in 2026, as many invitations as possible can be made to Victorian Aboriginal communities to attend and lay a wreath on behalf of their Indigenous veterans, many of whom still remain unidentified.
Victoria has no official public record of Aboriginal soldiers who have served from the state, as ethnicity was not historically recorded. This means the true number of Aboriginal servicepeople may never be known. Despite this challenge, the VARC recognises the importance of such a register and is working to develop a framework to establish one, aiming to launch it as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations in 2026.
I believe that for the VARS to continue growing, it must remain relevant and we must embrace new and bolder initiatives that build on past efforts. Thanks to the committee’s advocacy, meaningful changes have already taken place, including the dedication of a tree on the Shrine Reserve with a plaque honouring Indigenous servicemen and women. Amendments have been made to the Victorian school curriculum to include Indigenous military history. These are just some of the positive flow-on effects from the service.
I will personally continue to advocate for a permanent memorial to First Nations servicemen and women from Victoria, a long-held aspiration of many Indigenous Victorians that has so far remained elusive despite the existence of permanent memorials in other states such as New South Wales and South Australia.
As the flag-bearers of the future, our young people will play a crucial role in driving the whole reconciliation process forward. I am working to this end to increase the number of schools represented at future services so that young people understand more about the sacrifices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen and women.
In June, I attended a small remembrance service at Badger Creek Primary School (which coincidentally sits in the vicinity of the old Coranderrk Aboriginal Station). To my knowledge, this service was the first of its kind anywhere.
While the school typically sends a group of students to the Shrine for the VARS each year, they chose not to attend in 2025 due to concerns following disruptions to the Welcome to Country on Anzac Day. Instead, they chose to honour the occasion by holding their own ceremony during a school assembly, and I was invited to speak about the remembrance service I initiated 20 years ago at Healesville RSL.
The impressions I took away from the school that day have filled me with a deep sense of optimism for the future, that the Aboriginal soldiers will never be forgotten again. I cannot help but feel in many ways the journey I began in 2006 has come full circle, and that with the small service at the school, history has been made for a second time in Healesville.
The Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service is held on 31 May and is supported by the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Committee and First Peoples State Relations. The VARC thanks the Shrine of Remembrance for its ongoing support of the service.
After a two-decade career in the Royal Australian Air Force, Sam Halim co-founded the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service. Sam has been awarded the Australian Service Medal for Iraq and Kuwait, and the Defence Long Service Medal, First Clasp. Sam is a former President of Healesville RSL Sub-Branch and Healesville Rotary Club.
An array of colourful wreaths surrounds the Eternal Flame at the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service 2025. Photographer Helen Halim
20 YEARS OF THE VICTORIAN ABORIGINAL REMEMBRANCE SERVICE— A FAMILY REFLECTION
From humble beginnings as a small local service at the Healesville RSL in 2006, the Victorian Aboriginal Remembrance Service has grown to become a key Aboriginal community event. It acknowledges the long-ignored yet hugely significant contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women to Australia’s war efforts—something of which my Mum was immensely proud.
For an ‘ordinary’ mum from Healesville, Mum accomplished an extraordinary number of wonderful achievements. I still receive comments from now-adults to whom she taught Aboriginal culture at primary school in the 1980s, and from women who tell me they learned traditional basket coiling from her over the years—many of whom now teach others. This would also make Mum immensely proud.
But for Mum, I think this service would be her greatest joy. It would not be because it has grown into an event attended by hundreds each year including federal, state and local politicians, high-ranking Defence personnel, Shrine staff, community members and school children alike and receives a great deal of public attention—although seeing the backdrop of young Aboriginal people sitting together with Elders at such a public event filled her heart with joy.
Her joy would come from the fact that Mum did this for her dad—Private Vincent Peters, 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion, lost to the infamous Thai Burma Railway in 1942—and the thousands of other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who sacrificed all to fight for a country that did not recognise them as citizens. Despite losing him when she was only 12, I know Mum always felt connected to her dad, and this service allows her (and us) to share that connection with so many other families and communities.
It is a huge honour for our family to continue this legacy for Mum and all our uncles, aunties, brothers and sisters who came before us, as current Chair of the Aboriginal Remembrance Committee. I hope we’re doing her proud.
Lest We Forget
Andrew Peters grew up in Healesville and is Associate Professor in Indigenous Studies at Swinburne University. With family connections to Coranderrk and Cummeragunja Aboriginal Reserves, Andrew is extremely proud to follow in his mother’s footsteps to further her dreams for reconciliation, including the ongoing recognition of Aboriginal service in Australia’s war efforts.
Andrew Peters
Andrew Peters with his Mum Aunty Dot Peters.
Image reproduced courtesy of Andrew Peters
1966 was the most important year in Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Large increases were made in the size of the force and set in place the way the Australian Defence Force would operate for the next six years.
Dr Adrian Threlfall
1966: THE MOST IMPORTANT YEAR
1966 was a seminal year in the history of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Decisions taken during the year set the shape and scale of Australia’s military contribution for the next six years. These political and military decisions markedly increased the size of our military commitment to the Vietnam War and eventually led to widespread political unrest on the home front. The stories in this article, of four young Australian men and women far from home, provide us with insights into one of the most important conflicts in our history. 2026 marks 60 years since those events occurred, making it timely to revisit the period.
A painting depicting several Australian soldiers leaving an Iroquois UH-1H helicopter flown by members of 9 Squadron RAAF in Vietnam. The painting is by Ken McFadyen, who served as an official war artist in Vietnam from July 1967 to May 1968.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, ART40741
Errol Wayne Noack
‘I don’t want to go to war, but I must obey the call to duty. I will go and do my best.’
One of the most controversial aspects of the Australian commitment to the Vietnam War was the issue of conscription, otherwise known as national service. Introduced by the Australian Government in November 1964, it required that all 20-year-old Australian men register for national service. Between 1965 and 1972, 15,300 national servicemen (nashos) were conscripted into the Australian Army, with 200 of them killed in action and 1,200 wounded in Vietnam.
While support for the commitment to Vietnam remained relatively high, the issue of conscription became increasingly unpopular, especially once young conscripts became casualties (they were old enough to be sent overseas to fight, kill and possibly die, but were too young to vote).
The first ‘nasho’ killed in action was Adelaide-born Errol Wayne Noack. He was in the first intake of national servicemen on 30 June 1965, joining the 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (5RAR), at Holsworthy, NSW. This battalion was the first to contain both regular soldiers and the newly inducted national servicemen. The unit had only three months’ notice that it was to deploy to Vietnam, but they prepared as best they could in this brief period, including training at the Jungle Warfare Training Centre, Canungra, in the Gold Coast hinterland.
On 12 May 1966, Errol Noack left Australia. Within two weeks, he found himself on patrol in the area outside the 1st Australian Task Force Base at Nui Dat. The task of 5RAR was to clear the area around the base of People’s Liberation Force (PLF) soldiers—usually known as Viet Cong (VC), short for Vietnamese Communist. On 24 May, a firefight broke out and Noack was hit. Evacuated by the ubiquitous UH-1 ‘Huey’ helicopters, he died on the way to hospital. Tragically, it was later discovered that Noack’s B Company had been involved in a friendly fire incident with A Company.
On 1 June, only weeks after saying goodbye to his family, he was buried in Adelaide’s Centennial Park cemetery. His death became a symbol for the fledgling anti-Vietnam War movement. Although the protests and marches that became a regular occurrence on television did not occur until the years between 1969–71, Noack’s death continued to be a touchstone for those opposed to the war.
His death also bought about a change in government policy after his grieving father, Walter, who had just lost his only child, insisted that his son’s body be returned to Australia for burial. Prior to this, Australian service personnel killed on operations were buried in the closest Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery—in this case that was Terendak, Malaysia.
Walter Noack forcefully argued that as the government was responsible for the death of his son, they could pay to return his body. Since 1966, it has been standard practice that the families’ wishes be acceded to and bodies are now automatically returned to Australia.
Soldiers of 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) alighting from an Iroquois helicopter back to Long Tan to set up a memorial cross and a commemorative service at the battle site.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, EKN/69/0075/VN
Errol Wayne Noack (right) with his father Walter Noack (left) and an unidentified friend from Port Lincoln before he left for Vietnam.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, P04010.002
Soldiers of 6RAR /NZ (ANZAC) aboard armoured personnel carriers move back to Long Tan to set up a memorial cross and a commemorative service at the battle site.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial EKN/69/0076/VN
A reconstruction of the Battle of Long Tan between D Company and Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army forces. Several events that happened at intervals during the battle are shown here happening simultaneously.
Bruce Fletcher, Long Tan action, Vietnam, 18 August 1966, c.1970, oil on canvas, 152 x 175 cm. Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War
Memorial ART40758
‘Gordon Sharp radios in that he’s facing at least a platoon of VC. He counts at least three MGs firing at him. Harry Smith tells him to withdraw towards company… Gordon radios in again, telling Harry that the VC are moving on both flanks, and that the platoon can’t withdraw without taking more casualties in the crossfire.’
The above passage was taken from letters written by Lieutenant Dave Sabben MG to his wife at home in Gosford, NSW. At the time, he was 12 Platoon Commander, D Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (6RAR), during the most well-known engagement that the Australian Army was involved in during the Vietnam War— the Battle of Long Tan. Today, the date of that battle, 18 August, is known as Vietnam Veterans’ Day—the day we commemorate all those who served in the Vietnam War.
Dave Sabben was born in Suva, Fiji, in 1945, but attended boarding school in Sydney from 1958 to 1962. Sabben volunteered for the army and then applied for officer training. After attending the first course at the Scheyville National Service Officer Training Unit, 55 kilometres west of Sydney, Sabben was posted to 6RAR in January 1966. The battalion marched through the streets of Brisbane on 31 May in a farewell parade, before boarding aircraft bound for South Vietnam in early June.
Just over two months later, on the night of 16–17 August, the Task Force Base at Nui Dat came under heavy mortar and recoilless rifle fire. The next day, B Company was ordered to try and locate the enemy firing positions. They did this, and on 18 August D Company took over from them.
Soon after 3.30pm on 18 August, contact was made by 11 Platoon. Led by another young National Service Lieutenant, Gordon Sharp, the platoon would take the brunt of the casualties on this day. But soon the whole company was engaged, and the soldiers found themselves surrounded and greatly outnumbered.
They fought desperately in torrential monsoon rain as their perimeter shrunk and wave after wave of Viet Cong soldiers charged towards them under the cover of heavy machine-gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire.
Artillery support from 161 Battery, Royal New Zealand Artillery, two Australian field batteries, as well as a US Army heavy battery was called in. At times they were firing ‘danger close’, with the shells landing less than 100 metres from D Company. Air support was also critical, with two Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) helicopters of No. 9 Squadron flying a resupply mission at treetop level to drop ammunition to the beleaguered infantrymen.
Heavy ground fire was directed at the helicopters, but despite taking multiple hits they successfully completed the supply drop. The ammunition was rapidly distributed to the men, most of whom were down to their last magazine. Despite the resupply, it was clear that D Company needed more support.
B Company was ordered to assist, while at the same time 3 Troop, 1st Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) Squadron with the men of A Company aboard, also charged to the rescue. Four long hours after the battle had begun, they arrived, hitting the VC as they formed up once again to attack the survivors of D Company.
The Battle of Long Tan was over, with the wounded evacuated by RAAF Huey helicopters. The next day, 6RAR swept the battlefield, finding two wounded Australians and the bodies of 245 VC and dozens of rifles, machineguns, mortars and rocket launchers. While Long Tan would never be forgotten, 6RAR would participate in many more operations before its tour of duty was at an end in mid-1967.
2nd Lieutenant Dave Sabben receives his Mentioned in Despatches from Task Force Commander Brigadier Oliver Jackson.
Photographer William James Cunneen Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial
Dave Sabben mg
Sister Dorothy Angell (back, right) and Sister Pamela Matenson (front, right) transporting a patient from the surgical suite to the ward with the help of two Vietnamese staff who were trained to assist them in the recovery ward.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, P03122.002
Dorothy Angell’s name badge, civilian nurse of the Australian Surgical Team, Vietnam.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, REL34126
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, NAVY20402
Dorothy Angell
‘Dearest Mum & Dad, well, here I am back from the first day’s work; tired, filthy but happy. The work is really cut out for us here, but even though today was a bit of a shambles I think everyone is really going to work well together.’
This passage is taken from the first letter that 26-yearold nurse Dorothy Angell wrote home to her parents. Working at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital, Dorothy and other Alfred staff responded to a call from the South Vietnamese Government to provide medical assistance for the civil population.
As the war had escalated over the early 1960s, most civilian doctors were conscripted into the army, leaving fewer than 100 doctors to provide medical care for the entire South Vietnamese population. In response to that call for help, from 1964 until 1972, teams of doctors, surgeons, radiographers, anaesthetists and nurses from the Royal Melbourne and Alfred hospitals were despatched.
The first team from the Royal Melbourne Hospital arrived in 1964 and was based in the Mekong Delta town of Long Xuyen. Conditions were rudimentary, with incredibly overcrowded wards, hundreds of patients in corridors and hallways, appallingly unsanitary conditions, and a range of diseases and wounds that the Australians had never faced.
Soon the Australian contribution increased, and Dorothy arrived in late 1966 at the newly established hospital at Bien Hoa, 25 kilometres from the capital Saigon. Bien Hoa was also home to the massive US Long Binh airbase, which meant frequent Viet Cong attacks, some of which endangered the hospital.
Medical assistance was provided to anyone, civilian or military, so the hospitals were regularly overwhelmed with patients. Shifts were very long and time off was infrequent. Supplies were intermittent or unobtainable and the nurses had to beg, borrow, repurpose and reuse items to keep the hospitals running.
By the time the program came to an end in late 1972, more than 450 Australian doctors and nurses had served in civilian hospitals in Vietnam. They had treated more than 100,000 patients. While their posting to Vietnam had been incredibly difficult, most found it very rewarding.
But like Australian military veterans, the civilian medical teams experienced post-traumatic stress and increased levels of cancer. Although it is still contested, the widespread use of pesticides and herbicides in Vietnam is believed by many veterans to be linked to the ongoing health problems of those who served in Vietnam.
HMAS Hobart at sea off the coast of Vietnam 1967.
John O’Callaghan
‘Took the army up from Sydney to drop them off at Vung Tau.’
John O’Callaghan grew up in Gippsland, before enlisting in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) as a 16-year-old in 1961. After training at HMAS Cerberus on the Mornington Peninsula, he was posted to the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne. Serving in the RAN for the next 10 years, he deployed on vessels that supported operations in Vietnam on several occasions.
The first of these occurred when the Melbourne escorted the Vung Tau ferry, the aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney, on her early trips to Vietnam in 1964–65. The RAN’s role was critical in supporting the Australians deployment to Vietnam—both for the Australian Army and the RAAF.
Across 25 trips between 1964 and 1972, more than 16,000 army and RAAF personnel were carried to and from Vietnam, along with a multitude of equipment, weapons, vehicles and supplies. Without this RAN support, the Australian war effort in Vietnam could not have occurred.
In 1966, the Australian Government decided that the size of our commitment needed to increase. This decision meant that when O’Callaghan was posted to the new guided missile destroyer HMAS Hobart in late 1966, he would be off to Vietnam again. The Hobart became the first Australian combat ship assigned to the gunline— sailing up and down the coast of Vietnam to provide naval gunfire support to army operations onshore.
Naval deployments to support operations in the Vietnam War were for six months’ duration, so in late 1967 O’Callaghan returned to Australia. He undertook more training before he returned to Hobart, serving on her during her 1970 deployment to Vietnam. Two years after his final tour to Vietnam, he left the navy in 1972.
These stories, among many others, reflect how 1966 was arguably the most important year in Australia’s decade long involvement in the Vietnam War. On 29 June 1966, during his official visit to the White House in Washington DC for a meeting with US President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt had enthusiastically told reporters that Australia would go ‘All the way with LBJ’. This unequivocal statement was soon followed by the despatch of another infantry battalion and a squadron of tanks, as well as a RAAF bomber squadron.
As the size of the Australian contribution grew, and the numbers of national servicemen deployed increased, so too did the disquiet at home. While it would not be until 1970 that the moratorium movement saw 100,000 antiwar demonstrators take to the streets of Melbourne, the decisions taken in 1966 paved the way for that to happen. Finally, when Australians gather on 18 August to remember all those who served in the Vietnam War, it is 1966 and the seminal Battle of Long Tan that they recall.
Dr Adrian Threlfall is a military historian who has worked at the Shrine of Remembrance for 14 years. In the past, he was a history lecturer at Victoria University and La Trobe University. His next book, on the Australian Army in the Cold War, will be released in 2026.
During the Second World War, the classical art historian Professor A.D. Trendall emerged as one of Australia’s most brilliant cryptographers. He combined the connoisseurship of ancient Greek vases with the art of wartime codebreaking to decipher Japanese messages, directly contributing to the Allies’ success in the Pacific theatre of war.
Gillian Shepherd
ART, ESPIONAGE AND PROFESSOR A.D. TRENDALL
Fragment of a Lucanian volute-krater depicting the ‘Centauromachy’ (c. 400 BCE, attributed to the Palermo Painter, LTU 1980.01).
Image reproduced courtesy of Trendall Research Centre
A.D. Trendall holding a South Italian vase (Apulian red-figure pelike, c. 340 BCE, ANU Classics Museum 1976.13).
Image reproduced courtesy of Trendall Research Centre
The art of the ancient world and the art of codebreaking do not obviously go together. Yet during the Second World War Professor A.D. Trendall, an expert in ancient Greek vase-painting, emerged as one of Australia’s most brilliant cryptographers. His academic work focused on what is more specifically known as South Italian vase-painting, the decorated pottery produced mainly in the 4th century BCE in Greek cities founded in South Italy and Sicily. His wartime work involved decoding Japanese messages, directly contributing to the Allies’ success in the Pacific theatre of war.
Who was Professor Trendall? Arthur Dale Trendall—always known as Dale—spent most of his life in Australia, but he was in fact a New Zealander, born in Auckland in 1909. At school, he excelled in maths and languages (including Latin) and went on to study classics at the University of New Zealand (Otago), where he was introduced to ancient Greek art. This became his lifetime interest.
In 1931, Trendall travelled to England to continue his classical studies at Trinity College at Cambridge University, where he was supervised by the renowned classicist A.S.F. Gow. This relationship did not get off to a good start: as Trendall left the room after their first meeting, he overheard Gow exclaim ‘another damned colonial!’. However, Gow soon realised Trendall’s intellectual abilities and interests, and it was through Gow that Trendall met the Oxford scholar J.D. Beazley, the expert on ancient Athenian vase-painting whose work very much inspired Trendall’s study of South Italian pottery.
Beazley’s work involved the attribution of ancient Athenian painted vases to specific artists. These vases—of which thousands still survive for us today— were not usually signed by their makers. Very occasionally they bear the name of the potter, or painter, or both, but such signatures are rarities.
Yet, despite the apparent anonymity of these ancient artists, Beazley was able to assign individual vases to particular hands. He seems to have used a version of the Morellian method, an approach developed by the 19th century art historian Giovanni Morelli in relation to Renaissance artworks, which likewise are often unsigned. Morelli’s method involved looking not simply at the overall style—because it is easy enough for one artist to imitate the general style of another—but at the small details, such as the way an artist depicts toes, or nostrils, or drapery folds. These details are often repeated little idiosyncrasies that effectively form the signature of a particular painter.
ambushed by Odysseus and Diomedes. Lucanian red-figure calyx-krater, c. attributed to the Dolon Painter, British Museum 1846,0925.3.
Beazley adapted this method and applied it very successfully to Athenian vases, making up names for the otherwise unknown artists based on favoured motifs (e.g., the ‘Painter of the Woolly Satyrs’) or modern connections such as the city or museum where a significant work was held (e.g., the ‘Berlin Painter’). Through this form of connoisseurship, a huge amount of artistic and archaeological evidence could be put into order, especially chronological order, and the imagery better used to understand ancient Greek culture and society.
Dale Trendall was intrigued by Beazley’s approach and further inspired by his first visit to Italy in 1932, including to the magnificent site of Paestum, which was one of the centres of production of South Italian pottery. At the time, South Italian pottery was not a fashionable subject of study: it was regarded as somewhat inferior, with provincial and imitative products that were secondrate in comparison to the works produced in Athens.
This meant that Trendall was able to be one of the pioneers in the field and, inspired by Beazley’s work, he published his first book, Paestan Pottery, in 1936. During his long career he produced further major publications identifying the wares and artists of four other main areas of production: Campania, Lucania and Apulia in South Italy, and Sicily.
A fragment from a Lucanian vase of c. 400 BCE in the Trendall Collection may be used to demonstrate Trendall’s method. It shows a scene of a well-known Greek myth, the ‘Centauromachy’, or battle between the Lapiths (a legendary tribe) and the centaurs, the half-human, half-horse creatures of mythology.
The forelegs of a rearing horse are clearly attached to a human torso, and a human elbow is visible at the top of the fragment, near the tail of another centaur. The Lapith warrior, his helmeted head and shield preserved, is about to plunge his spear into the centaur. Trendall attributed this fragment to an artist he called the ‘Palermo Painter’ because it displays the painted details typical of works by that specific hand, especially in the Lapith’s facial features: the fleshy lower lip and short upper one; the rounded chin; the upper eyelid lines which almost join; the distinct black pupil; and the shorter lower eye line.
Trendall had been awarded a fellowship at Trinity College in Cambridge but in 1939, just as the Second World War broke out, he moved to Australia to take up the position of Professor of Greek at Sydney University. His academic work was curtailed by the war, since he could no longer make the trips to European museums and sites essential to his study, but he still managed to be productive.
For example, in 1942 he published the first detailed study of the Shellal Mosaic, the 6th century CE mosaic uncovered by the ANZAC Mounted Division in Palestine in 1917 and currently in the Australian War Memorial. His friends and contacts overseas also helped him, especially in the purchase of new artefacts for Sydney University’s Nicholson Museum.
One such friend, Noël Oakeshott, would look out for ancient vases coming up for sale in London and acted for Trendall if he wished to buy them. In 1942, she acquired a krater (wine bowl) then attributed to the Dolon Painter (now to the Minniti Group) and also spotted a vase by Python, one of only two South Italian vase painters known to have signed their works. She thought Trendall would be interested in this vase also, and sent him a telegram which read:
Trendall often recalled the summons to the Australian military censor to explain the quite obviously encoded contents of her message. It was, of course, a perfectly innocent communication, but if the military censors had anything of a classical education, they would have instantly recognised the name ‘Dolon’ and become even more suspicious.
In the ancient Greek myths of the Trojan War, Dolon is the Trojan solider who volunteers to spy on the Greek camp. Dolon was not a very good spy; he was immediately spotted by the Greek heroes Odysseus and Diomedes, who killed him as soon as he had revealed what the Trojans were up to. The ‘Dolon Painter’ takes his name from a South Italian vase that depicts this story. The scene shows a forest, with Dolon in the middle wearing the skins he hoped would act as camouflage, and on either side Odysseus and Diomedes are about to apprehend him.
Dolon
DOLON DISPATCHED HAVE PYTHON TEN POUNDS
The impact of the Second World War on Trendall’s work, however, went far beyond antiquities shopping and in fact called upon his very particular intellectual skills. In late 1939, the Chief of Naval Staff proposed that an Australian codebreaking organisation be established. As a result, in January 1940 a small group was formed in Sydney and asked to study Japanese signals traffic. The members included two Sydney University mathematicians, Professor T.G. Room and Mr R.J. Lyons, and they soon invited the newly arrived Dale Trendall to join them, who in turn brought in Mr A.P. Treweek, a lecturer in Greek. Of the four, Anasthasius Treweek was the only one who knew some Japanese and had a military rank (Major).
This group was highly skilled in mathematics and languages, disciplines extremely useful in codebreaking. Trendall was good at both, and especially the complexities of highly inflected languages such as ancient Greek and Latin, which require logic and a good understanding of the mechanics of languages. Indeed, Treweek later commented that Trendall naturally absorbed Japanese, despite never taking any lessons in it. Together they studied cryptography, mainly at weekends and in their spare time, and were provided with Japanese messages for practise.
Early in 1941, the group succeeded in breaking LA code, a relatively simple Japanese cipher used for low-level messages. They were given other sorts of messages to practise with. One was a letter in a dot code
intercepted by the postal censorship, which turned out to be a quite explicit love letter written by an eminent British gentleman (with a knighthood) in China to a married woman in Melbourne. The Sydney academics proposed that the letter be sent on to its recipient but with ‘Careful!—The Censor’ inserted at the beginning in the same dot code. Whether or not the censors followed this advice is unknown.
Such was the success of this group of codebreakers that it prompted the creation of something more formal. Commander Eric Nave, an Australian naval officer who specialised in Japanese, had run a small intelligence unit at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne since early 1940. It seems to have been on Nave’s initiative that a new section devoted to breaking Japanese diplomatic codes was set up.
Room, Lyons and Treweek were called up for full-time duty in Melbourne and they moved there in the middle of 1941. Trendall remained in his post in Sydney but was available for part-time duty if required. The nature of the war was, of course, about to change very rapidly: on 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbour was attacked, Japan and the United States entered the war formally, and Australia found itself in a very different strategic position. As a result, on 12 January 1942, Dale Trendall reported for duty in Melbourne to Commander Nave.
Initially, the codebreakers worked at Victoria Barracks, but in March 1942, they moved to an apartment block called ‘Monterey’ near Albert Park Lake. Here, offices were created for Nave’s Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) and it was also home to the American FRUMEL (Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne). Room, Lyons and Treweek continued to work directly under Nave, and later in 1942 were deployed in different directions. Trendall, however, was put in charge of the group breaking Japanese diplomatic codes, and over time he was joined by new recruits. In total, 33 staff were employed between January 1942 and the end of the war.
Two of this group warrant special mention because of their connection with Trendall. One was Ronald Bond, who at just 19 years old had graduated in classics with first class honours from Sydney University, where he had been taught by both Trendall and Treweek. He became Trendall’s deputy and headed the group after Trendall finally returned to Sydney in 1944.
The other was Arthur Cooper, a British consular officer who was an expert in Chinese and Icelandic. He arrived shortly after the move to Monterey in 1942, having been evacuated from Singapore. He had managed to smuggle his beloved pet gibbon Tertius into Australia—thus Tertius was, as Trendall commented, ‘a highly illegal gibbon’.
Cooper was recalled to Britain in December 1942, but he made a very positive impression on Trendall during his time in Melbourne. Trendall later recalled Cooper as ‘a really good linguist… for intelligence purposes he was very much at the top of the tree’. No doubt there is a gentle monkey joke in this assessment.
In 1942, four codes and two ciphers were used by the Japanese. All four codes could be read, and most traffic in the FUJI cipher. A main task was to ascertain the daily key for the FUJI cipher. According to Bond, Trendall devised a technique for determining this daily key and from there breaking the FUJI cipher. The messages were diplomatic; their value mainly related to economic warfare as up until the end of 1942 shipping information was sent in diplomatic codes.
Arthur Cooper with his pet gibbon Tertius. Reproduced courtesy Edward Cooper
One message the group decrypted must have been a particular source of satisfaction: it was an assurance from the Japanese ambassador in Budapest to his Foreign Ministry that it was highly unlikely that the Allies were reading his communications because Japanese was such a difficult language. This message was read loud and clear by Trendall and his codebreaking team in Melbourne. Other messages, however, were the source of serious concern. One revealed that the Japanese were reading field communications between Australian guerilla troops in Timor. Admittedly, Australian ciphers at the time were not very complex, but it was a problem that had to be remedied and Trendall did just that. He invented a new cipher called, appropriately, TRENCODE. It was highly effective: simple enough to be used readily in the field, but sufficiently complex that it took hours or days to break it—by which time the information was redundant. Such was its success that TRENCODE was reportedly still used by the Australian military until at least 1946.
In late 1942, the Monterey team was moved back to Victoria Barracks and named D Special Section. Trendall returned to Sydney in March 1943 but was recalled in July; the Japanese were introducing new ciphers and his expertise was needed. One was called GEAM, the acronym of the Greater East Asian Ministry. GEAM was introduced on 21 July 1943; by 12 August Trendall had broken it, beating his rivals in London and Washington. Later attempts to reproduce the steps Trendall took to break GEAM were not entirely successful, and in fact Trendall himself could not really account for it: he simply said he had an inexplicable ability to see patterns in encoded text.
An ‘inexplicable ability’ must in large part be a natural ability, combined with rigorous training in relevant disciplines Trendall certainly had both the natural ability and training in mathematics and languages needed for success in codebreaking. But did he have some extra talent?
A recent book on cryptographers in Australia during the Second World War notes that Trendall’s linguist skills were important for his war work but doubts that his renowned expertise in South Italian pottery would have been of any use in solving codes. Is that really the case?
The connection is certainly not obvious, but Trendall’s success in attributing thousands of ancient vases to individual painters was based on his ability to detect significant patterns within a large amount of graphic information—precisely the work of a codebreaker. It was Trendall’s skill and experience in the connoisseurship of ancient art that made him a brilliant modern cryptographer.
In 1944, Trendall returned to Sydney University and resumed his career as a classical art historian. He moved to Canberra in 1954 to become the Master of University House and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the Australian National University (ANU). On his retirement in 1969, he took up the position of Resident Fellow at the newly founded La Trobe University in Melbourne.
Following his death in 1995, his bequest to La Trobe University resulted in the establishment of the A.D. Trendall Research Centre for Ancient Mediterranean Studies, which continues to maintain Trendall’s legacy and promotes the study of ancient art and archaeology, especially through its superb library and Trendall’s research archive of some 40,000 photographs of South Italian vases.
To this day, Trendall’s scholarship dominates the study of South Italian vase painting and the archaeology of South Italy in the Classical period. However, his wartime work is much less well known, and indeed the man whom Commander Nave would later describe as ‘the best’ of the codebreakers was notoriously reticent about this period of his life.
Nevertheless, in 1990, Trendall agreed to an interview in which he was asked about the process of codebreaking. His musing on that question must surely also apply to his work in ancient vase attribution: ‘You get a feeling for it. Your eye lights upon something and…bang!’.
In writing this article I am indebted to the following for information: Ian McPhee, close friend and colleague of Dale Trendall; RS Merrillees, ‘Professor A.D. Trendall and his band of classical cryptographers’, Strategic and Defence Studies Working Paper no. 355, 2001, Australian National University, Canberra; D Ball and K Tamura (eds), ‘Breaking Japanese Diplomatic Codes. David Sissons and D Special Section during the Second World War’, 2013, ANU Press, Canberra; C Collie, ‘Code Breakers’, 2017, Allen & Unwin, Sydney; and Corinne Fenton, author of ‘My Friend Tertius’, 2017, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, for generously sharing her research on Arthur Cooper.
Gillian Shepherd is Director of the A.D. Trendall Research Centre for Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at La Trobe University.
The Shrine of Remembrance gratefully acknowledges the support of La Trobe University in the development of this article and associated programming.
The ‘Monterey’ apartment block on the corner of Queens Road and Arthur Street, Melbourne.
Image reproduced courtesy of Gillian Shepherd
Discover the story behind the Shrine’s Second World War Memorial Forecourt and how its powerful design pays tribute to those who served.
Dr Katti Williams
AN ENDURING MESSAGE:
A group of young schoolchildren cluster around the Eternal Flame on the Shrine of Remembrance’s Forecourt. Gripping the metal railing with their small hands, they lean in to try to feel the warmth, then swing backwards, tipping their heads as far as they will go, craning necks to see the sculpture on top of the neighbouring cenotaph, trying to determine what the massive figures carry. It’s a scene that has repeated over the seven decades since its completion.
Viewed from the air, the forecourt extends seamlessly from the Shrine’s imposing geometry. Its cross-shaped, grass-bordered paving is terrain welltravelled by successive generations of visitors: veterans marching on Anzac Days; pilgrims approaching for more private remembrance; and tourists, dog walkers and schoolchildren. Many of us will remember performing a similar set of movements, and the feel of the railing on tiny hands. An older generation would also remember the reflection pool in the foreground of the Shrine, or the grass around the Shrine disturbed by a series of zigzagging slit trenches dug in 1942 to provide protection for staff at Victoria Barracks in the event of an air-raid at the height of the Second World War.
The Shrine itself was built to commemorate the service and sacrifice of Victorians in the First World War, fulfilling the community’s need for public remembrance and private grief. When the Second World War came to an end, the question of memorialisation again arose. How could the service of Victorians in this larger, and geographically closer, conflict be commemorated without detracting from the imposing and evocative memorial already occupying the site? To find a solution, in 1947 the Shrine Trustees held the first part of what would become a three-phase competition: a thesis competition, open to Australian veterans of either war, calling for suggestions.
Architects Ernest Milston and Alec S. Hall were declared joint winners, having independently proposed a great forecourt on the north side of the Shrine: a sensitive augmentation of the existing monument which would provide for large gatherings. Their visions would come to underpin the second phase— a formal design competition held in 1949 for which 21 entries were received.
This was assessed by architects Robert Demaine, Marcus Martin and W. Balcombe Griffiths. Again, Milston and Hall emerged victorious: Milston secured first place and Hall second. The assessors and winners were all veterans from either the First or Second World Wars—or both. Yet Milston’s experience of war had an added element of tragedy.
Ernest Edward Milston (1893–1968) was born Arnost Edward Mühlstein to a Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia. His training as an architect at the University of Prague and the Academy of Fine Arts had been interrupted when he was drafted into the Austrian Army in 1918. Post-war, his career prospered in the newly formed liberal democracy of Czechoslovakia. Over the next two decades, he built a successful practice with Victor Furth in Prague. He travelled widely and mingled within intellectually brilliant circles that included figures such as writer Franz Kafka, portraitist Lotte Frumi, and architect Adolf Loos.
All this ended, however, with the outbreak of the Second World War and the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. As Jews, Milston and his family faced the full horrors of the Holocaust. Milston escaped for Italy in 1939, but the stark tragedy of his family’s eventual fate was revealed in letters from the Red Cross and the Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia in 1946, held in the Milston Papers at the University of Melbourne Archives. These carefully preserved typed sheets convey the terrible intelligence that his brother Viktor was deported from the Terezin ghetto to Auschwitz. No trace of his sister, or her family, could be found.
Ernest Milston at the time he won the competition.
Papers of Ernest Milston, 1976.0025 Unit 15 University of Melbourne Archives.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian
His family, business and homeland shattered, Milston arrived in Adelaide in 1940 to take up a job with the prominent South Australian architectural firm Lawson and Cheesman. He was one of several European architects seeking refuge in the tumultuous years either side of the war, bringing with them a wealth of knowledge, culture and experience that would have a profound impact on the Australian architectural profession.
In 1942, Milston enlisted in the Royal Australian Engineers as a friendly (non-enemy) alien, serving within Australia. In his new country, Milston later wrote, he had hoped to find the freedoms that had characterised his homeland of Czechoslovakia between the wars; he was now ‘proud and happy to have thus been associated with the Australian Army and its great traditions’. He was naturalised in 1946 and anglicised his name to Ernest Edward Milston. Within three years, he had won both the thesis and architectural competitions.
Milston’s winning design was deceptively simple, comprising a trapezoidal paved and low-walled forecourt including a darker-paved Cross of Sacrifice, and punctuated by flagpoles, an Eternal Flame and starkly rendered cenotaph surmounted by sculpture. The assessors recommended that the paving around the cross form, and inside the trapezoidal boundary walls, be replaced with grass, as it is today. The sacrificial and religious symbolism of the cross is obvious, rooted in Christian symbolism, and echoed in the uniform use of the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission’s Cross of Remembrance.
The slit trenches and reflection pool are clear in this image of the Shrine from 1944.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial VIC0956
Zigzagging slit trenches were dug in 1942 to provide protection for staff at Victoria Barracks in the event of an air-raid at the height of the Second World War.
War Memorial 026959
Its orientation echoes the internal and external cross-axial nature of the Shrine itself and provides distinct zones for the Eternal Flame, Cenotaph and flagpoles, while facilitating procession between these features. Viewed from the air, the cross is immediately recognisable, with Milston at one point describing it as an ‘open-air Cathedral’. But his initial thesis and the contemporary press coverage reveal an added inspiration—one drawn from ancient precedent, just as Philip Hudson and James Wardrop had done in their own design for the Shrine of Remembrance.
In his thesis, Milston wrote of the potential to turn the existing Shrine site into ‘an architectural group’ akin to the Athenian Acropolis. In particular, he referenced the Parthenon and the long-destroyed, massive sculpture of Athena Promachos, which had been erected nearby.
Recognising the Shrine’s architectural importance and sacred character, he proposed that an adjacent large-scale sculpture—initially conceived as a winged victory ‘transporting to God a dying man who fell in battle’—sited to the side of a ‘large formal square’ for gatherings would be an ideal solution. Furthermore, a tracing in the Milston Papers depicts visually the analogy he sought to make, juxtaposing his proposed plan with a simplified one of the Acropolis.
The trapezoidal shape of the Forecourt echoes the Acropolis’s angled contour, while the tapering towards the northernmost point is reminiscent of the narrowing of the Acropolis towards its entrance gateway. The sculpture is prominent but placed carefully to the side to preserve the axial views of the Shrine itself. His vision underpinned his subsequent design for the second competition, but with
Plan view of Milston’s entry for the architectural competition of 1949.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, 113022
Perspective view of Milston’s entry for the architectural competition of 1949.
Papers of Ernest Milston, 1976.0025 Unit 10
of Melbourne Archives
the addition of the cross-shaped paving, the Eternal Flame, and the flagpoles. By that stage his thinking on the sculpture had moved on.
The third and final phase of the competition for the selection of a sculptor was held in 1951. It stipulated the size of the piece as well as its form: that of two servicemen from each service, carrying a dead comrade on a bier, to be mounted on a tall, stern-sided pillar. It was won by George Allen, whose design brought the massive form to life with a fitting solemnity.
Milston’s sympathetic solution to a design problem respected the original scheme, harnessing and enhancing Hudson and Wardrop’s classical allusion, but it also established a careful approach to additions on the Shrine Reserve, which carries through to the present day.
As generations of veterans, tourists and schoolchildren continue to visit, the various components of the ‘architectural group’ of the Shrine site may be added to, but the core commemorative elements, once introduced, have intellectual, spiritual and even tactile resonance. Just look at the school-children, seven decades on, clutching the railing, leaning in, then gazing up.
Dr Katti Williams is a Research Fellow in Australian architectural history at the University of Melbourne. She is an authority on commemorative architecture and soldier architects.
With thanks to the University of Melbourne Archives, architectural historian Catherine Townsend and Dr Laura Carroll.
Sculptor Stanley Hammond working on a half-scale clay maquette of George Allen’s cenotaph figure group, 1953.
Photographer Max Lyle, Shrine Collection
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II lighting the Eternal Flame at the dedication of the Shrine’s Second World War Memorial Forecourt in February 1954.
Reproduced courtesy State Library Victoria 1718977
University
The Shrine of Remembrance’s Second World War Memorial Forecourt.
Photographer Earl Carter
The Shrine of Remembrance’s latest special exhibition, Eucalypts of Hodogaya, tells the story of a team of Australian and Japanese architects and landscape gardeners who created a masterpiece of memorial landscape architecture—recognised by experts as one of the finest war cemeteries in the world.
Nestled within the hinoki pine and sakura cherryshrouded hillscape of Hodogaya, five kilometres west of the Yokohama city centre, lies CWGC Yokohama—the Commonwealth War Grave Commission’s sole cemetery in Japan. The remains of 1,555 Commonwealth service personnel lie here, within a breathtakingly beautiful setting of 27 acres.
Most of the individuals buried and memorialised here perished as prisoners of war held in Japan and China during the Second World War (1939–45). Others succumbed to illness, disease or misfortune while serving as occupation troops between 1945 and 1952 or died in Japan as a result of illness, or wounds sustained during the Korean War (1950–53).
The cemetery itself is set into the natural landscape of Hodogaya, which changes dramatically with the seasons. Paths meander over CWGC Yokohama’s undulating hills and link five discrete burial grounds—a British section, an Australian, a joint New Zealand–Canadian, one section for the troops of pre-partition India, and the post-war section.
The Yokohama Cremation Memorial is located within the British section. It houses the ashes of 335 people whose names—save for 51 unidentified—are inscribed on the shrine’s walls. The Australian section, the second largest at Hodogaya after the British, contains 281 graves of which three are unidentified. It includes 10 sailors, 250 soldiers, eight airmen and nine merchant seamen. A further 57 Australians lie in the post-war cemetery.
This beautiful cemetery did not just come into being but was the result of vision and skilled workmanship. It was born of many careful and deliberate decisions made by a group of Australian and Japanese architects, who put aside recent wartime enmity to build an eternal memorial. Its design stresses the profundity of loss, the regenerative power of nature, the gratitude of a Commonwealth, and the reconciliation between nations.
Hodogaya
When United States Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Japan in August 1945 at the head of a multinational occupation force, Yokohama—then a city of approximately 400,000—lay in ruins. The victorious Allies had much to do and high on their list of tasks was the recovery and burial of those Allied combatants who had died in Japan as prisoners of war (POWs).
Within weeks the Americans had established many temporary burial grounds across Japan, including one at the sports fields of the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club at Hodogaya. Following the American lead, the Australian War Graves Service (AWGS) also began consolidating Commonwealth war dead at Hodogaya. These burials were intended to buy time, until money and expertise became available to provide the Commonwealth’s war dead with the magnificent cemeteries they deserved.
The headquarters of the Australian-led British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) was at this time located not at Tokyo, or Yokohama, but Kure—in Hiroshima Prefecture—some further 800km west. The commander of BCOF, Lieutenant-General Horace Robertson, nevertheless selected Hodogaya, where the Commonwealth war dead had already been concentrated, as the site for the permanent Commonwealth War Cemetery on 4 July 1946.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The construction and maintenance of war cemeteries for all the nations of the British Empire had, since the First World War (1914–18), been the responsibility of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC)—established by Royal Charter on 21 May 1917. Hundreds of cemeteries had been built across the world, many at locations of great significance to Australia, including at Gallipoli and the Western Front.
At the close of the Second World War (1939–45) Britain was victorious, once again, but thoroughly exhausted. Diminishment on the world stage and forced to contend with the growing nationalism and confidence of its Commonwealth partners, Britain could not—and would no longer—shoulder the burden of burying the Empire’s war dead alone.
From June 1946 onwards, the IWGC was aided in its work by a new Melbourne-based organisation—the Anzac Agency—today known as the Office of Australian War Graves. The IWGC would itself be renamed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) in 1960.
Eucalypts of Hodogaya exhibition.
Plans of CWGC Yokohama.
Photographer Vlad Bunyevich
The Anzac Agency
In 1946, Brigadier Athol Earle Brown (1905–87), a former head of the AWGS, was appointed Secretary-General of the new Anzac Agency. Brigadier Brown quickly assembled a team of demobilised architects, engineers and horticulturists and established a headquarters in Melbourne.
The new Agency immediately began work expanding upon and creating new war cemeteries across Australia. Among these were the two most significant war cemeteries in Victoria—CWGC Springvale in Melbourne and the German Military Cemetery at Tatura.
Overseas, the Agency would be assigned responsibility for the design and construction of CWGC cemeteries at Labuan in Malaysia; Bomana, Lae and Rabaul in Papua New Guinea; Makassar in Indonesia; and Bourail in New Caledonia.
Maintaining IWGC standards across the Asia-Pacific was often very difficult. Local labourers, unused to such stringent construction methods, required close supervision. Suitable building materials often proved difficult to source. Civil strife in post-war, newly independent Indonesia made building cemeteries in that nation especially difficult. CWGC Makassar, in Sulawesi, was eventually abandoned and, in 1961, the graves were relocated to the nearby, British-built, CWGC Ambon.
However, at Hodogaya, the Anzac Agency was able to create a masterpiece, tapping into a skilled local workforce with a rich tradition of garden design. Between 1946 and 1951, the Australian architects forged fruitful partnerships with expert Japanese architects and suppliers to a degree not possible elsewhere.
One of Brigadier Brown’s early hires would be instrumental in the success of the Anzac Agency. Horace John Brett Finney (1913–97), the Agency’s Chief Architect from October 1946 until September 1949, was the chief liaison between the Agency architects, the AWGS, and the officials and contractors in all the countries where the new cemeteries were built. In Australia and across the Pacific, talented Anzac Agency architects, such as Alan Gerard Robertson (1908–2005) and Clayton Vize (1912–96), took the lead in the construction of beautiful cemeteries in New Guinea, New Caledonia and elsewhere.
Robert Coxhead (1915–87), meanwhile, took a primary design role at CWGC Yokohama. He was a keen photographer and artist and the exhibition features many keepsakes from his career. Among these is a pencil drawing of the Nikkō Tōshō-gū Shrine, in central Honshu’s Tochigi Prefecture, which Coxhead drew while touring a nearby quarry.
The build at Hodogaya was overseen by site supervisor Jack Leemon (1910–1962). He arrived in Japan with his family in 1948 and stayed until the cemetery was complete in 1951. Leemon, like Brigadier Brown, was a former member of the AWGS. At war’s end Leemon had travelled the entire length of the Thai-Burma Railway, recovering the bodies of the fallen. A year before that, Brigadier Brown had dispatched Leeman to Cowra, NSW, with the grisly task of identifying and burying the 234 desperate Japanese POWs who had died during the infamous camp breakout of August 1944. In 1964 a war cemetery, for all Japanese who died in Australia during the war, was established by the Anzac Agency at the same burial ground Leemon established.
Local knowledge
Peter Elliston Spier (1909–74), the Agency’s Director of Works, oversaw the Agency’s many complex projects across the Pacific. He was an admirer of Japanese culture and the exhibition features a selection of the many items he collected during his frequent trips to the country. It was Spier who was responsible for hiring two Japanese architects who would have a profound influence on the work done at CWGC Yokohama— Michael Yoshio Iwanaga (1912–2005) and Yoji Kasajima (1921–2012).
Michael Iwanaga was working for the American Embassy’s Foreign Buildings Operation Attaché when he was introduced to Spier by the American Christian missionary Paul Ruschin in 1946. Born in Fukuoka Prefecture but raised in the United States, Iwanaga studied architecture at the University of Washington under modernist Lionel Pries. He received an American Institute of Architects’ School Medal in 1937, before returning to Japan where he designed St Andrews Chapel at Kiyosato for Rusch. He was forcibly conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army during the war and served in Manchuria, Malaya and Burma.
Yoji Kasajima was an architecture student at Nihon University during the war. After graduation in September 1945, Kasajima taught architecture at Jiyu Gakuen— a Christian school designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959). Impressed by Wright’s innovative use of the native Ōya stone, Kasajima was primarily responsible for the extensive use of the stone at CWGC Yokohama—most famously in its boundary walls. Indeed, it was while visiting the Ōya quarry (on advice from Kasajima) that CWGC Yokohama’s architect, Robert Coxhead, drew his picture of the Nikkō Tōshō-gū Shrine.
Cross of Sacrifice: Canadian and New Zealand Section
Anzac Agency Drawing No. 760.
A map showing the various CWGC cemeteries in the Pacific and the air routes used by Anzac Agency staff c. 1950, unknown CWGC cartographer. Reproduced courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
in
Yoji Kasajima 1955
Helsingborg, Sweden, Sydsvenskan. Reproduced courtesy of Sydsvenskan
3D model of CWGC Yokohama.
Stone samples used
the construction of CWGC Yokohama provided by Yabashi Marble.
Photographer Vlad Bunyevich
Everything in nature, living and non-living alike, is imbued with kami, and these spirits possess positive and negative characteristics.
Ōya is a soft, easy to carve volcanic stone traditionally used to line Shinto burial chambers. CWGC Yokohama is, in fact, unique among CWGC cemeteries, both in terms of the large variety of stone used and its very specific uses.
The traditional religion of Japan, Shinto, seeks to establish and maintain harmony between divine nature spirits called kami (神). Everything in nature, living and non-living alike, is imbued with kami, and these spirits possess positive and negative characteristics. The Shinto worldview therefore lends a religious dimension to decisions that might not otherwise seem relevant including, for example, the building materials one might choose when constructing a sacred site such as a war cemetery.
Iwanaga and Kasajima were both Christian but were nonetheless steeped in these ancient traditions. Their approach to the design of the buildings at Hodogaya and the materials in which it was rendered had a profound influence not only on the final design but also the work of their Australian colleagues.
Eucalypts of Hodogaya features samples of the 10 different stones used in the construction of CWGC Yokohama. Accompanying them are explanations as to where and how they are used and the cultural significance underpinning these uses. The samples come from Yabashi Marble, Japan’s preeminent stone contractor and the source of the original stone used by the Anzac Agency at Hodogaya.
Another important cultural thread in Japan, Buddhism, has for thousands of years imbued Japanese garden design with simplicity and a contemplative appreciation of the natural environment. Specific features of karesansui (dry landscape gardens) and kaiyu-shiki (strolling gardens) that evoke these principles are also fully integrated into the design of CWGC Yokohama.
The gardens
John Alexander (Alec) Maisey (1902–91) was appointed the Anzac Agency’s first Horticultural Officer in 1947. He contributed to the planting schemes of all the Anzac Agency’s cemeteries but devised his most sophisticated and expansive landscape scheme at Hodogaya, in concert with a British-born Anzac Agency Inspector Leonard Schofield Harrop (1915–2011) and a local contractor, Tokio Nursery.
The plantings at CWGC Yokohama reflect the various nations buried at Hodogaya—eucalyptus for Australia, roses and oaks for Britain, manuka and maples for the New Zealand–Canadia section and Himalayan pines for India. The cemetery, however, also embraced Japanese azaleas, apricot, cherry, bamboo and zelkova.
Len Harrop had transferred to the Anzac Agency in 1948 from a previous role in the British Army’s War Graves Service. Appointed permanent inspector for CWGC Yokohama in 1952, he would hold the post until 1986. For five decades, Harrop was the ‘face’ of CWGC Yokohama, escorting dignitaries through the cemetery—including, long after retirement, Princes Diana in 1995. Harrop was awarded an MBE for services to the British community in Japan in 1978. Unique among the Anzac Agency team that built it, Harrop alone is buried at CWGC Yokohama.
Legacy
Ultimately, the construction of CWGC Yokohama was a process of ‘mutual acclimatisation’—a softening of the standard design practices of both the Australians and Japanese. Together, the Australians and Japanese achieved a hybrid design acceptable to all—an organic expression of diplomacy.
Eucalypts of Hodogaya is a celebration of the Anzac Agency’s exceptional achievement at CWGC Yokohama and the Australian and Japanese architects, landscapers, horticulturalists, contractors and officials who put aside cultural differences and recent wartime enmity to collaborate on this momentous project. The exhibition also showcases the Agency’s monumental work across the Pacific and the legacy for which the whole of Australia and the Commonwealth can be proud.
Neil Sharkey is a Curator at the Shrine of Remembrance.
Eucalypts of Hodogaya was made possible by exhibition co-curators, Professor Anoma Pieris and Athanasios Tsakonas, upon whose groundbreaking research an tenaciously won contacts the entire project is built.
Eucalypts of Hodogaya is on display at the Shrine until July 2026. LEARN MORE
Want to uncover more about the Yokohama War Cemetery? Listen to a podcast with two of the exhibition curators Professor Anoma Pieris and Athanasios Tsakonas.
TINY TROOPS: THE HISTORY OF TOY SOLDIERS
Selina Wilmott
Toy soldiers have a long and fascinating history of introducing concepts of war to children at a young age. The Shrine of Remembrance recently accepted the donation of 375 lead toy soldiers.
Figurines of soldiers, made in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials, have been enjoyed by children and adults alike for centuries. Lead-based miniature soldiers became particularly popular across Britain and its territories from the late 1800s. As a child, Winston Churchill was known to reenact scenes from real-life battles with his collection of 1,500 pieces comprising British and French forces. In 2025, the Shrine of Remembrance accepted a donation of 375 lead toy soldiers.
Cast lead figurines were mass-produced in France and Germany in the 19th century, with a key manufacturer being Heyde of Dresden. The relatively expensive figurines were solid metal and most often positioned in profile.
In 1893, William Britain Jr of the Britains London firm introduced hollow casting as a new manufacturing technique. This process involved the removal of excess lead once the external case had dried. With this reduction in cost, the soldiers became an affordable toy that was widely available at department stores and other retail outlets. The United Kingdom quickly replaced Germany as the primary toy soldier manufacturer.
The figurines were standardised to a ratio of 1:32 and stood 54mm tall. Toy production mirrored current events by replicating the uniforms worn by real soldiers. They were most frequently sold in box sets, with new variations being released each year and popular sets kept in continual
production. Lead toy soldier manufacturing ceased in 1966, following concerns regarding the health risks of lead and the widespread introduction of commercial plastic in the 1950s.
The Shrine’s new collection of toy soldiers was donated by Colonel Catherine Carrigan, trustee of the Shrine since March 2020 and current Deputy Chair. Colonel Carrigan, who has more than 35 years of service in the Australian Army, inherited the collection from her father who also served in the military. Both Colonel Carrigan and her father played with these toys as children.
Among the toy soldiers are examples of the earlier solid-metal design as well as those made with the hollow casting technique. There is great representation of forces from within the British Empire, as well as allied and enemy armies. Most notable are soldiers of Australian, Austrian, French, Hungarian and German backgrounds. Each group is easily distinguishable by their intricate, colourful, handpainted uniforms, which also contribute to the unique nature of each soldier.
The figurines have been crafted in distinctive positions and with intriguing accessories. When placed in a line, groups of soldiers appear to march with their comrades, others stand proudly holding flags, guns or musical instruments, while mounted horsemen tower above the rest. Tiny arms and heads of some soldiers’ swivel into different positions, while others crouch in a fighting stance. The most poignant figurines are the two stretcher bearers carrying their injured mate.
These toy soldier figurines are interesting examples of the methods in which concepts of warfare and service can be introduced to young children through play.
Selina Wilmott is the Exhibitions and Collections Officer at the Shrine of Remembrance.
Interested in donating items to the Shrine?
Stretcher bearers.
British Lance Horses and Mounted British soldiers. Photography Selina Wilmott
FROM BUSH TO BATTALION: BLINKY BILL GOES TO WAR
Toby Miller
The Shrine recently acquired a copy of Blinky Bill Joins the Army (1943) by Dorothy Wall. This wartime children’s book charmingly depicts Blinky Bill’s journey to becoming an army mascot, offering a whimsical lens on Australia’s military history.
The incorporation of animal mascots into military tradition is a longstanding cultural practice within Australia and abroad. During the First World War, servicemen of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) were accompanied by a variety of native and non-native animals—including dogs, kangaroos, koalas and a Tasmanian devil—that served not only as companions but also as symbolic embodiments of national identity. These mascots played a significant role in boosting morale, evoking memories of home, and providing emotional relief amid the harsh conditions of warfare.
Like the soldiers themselves, animal mascots were at times actively recruited. Public appeals in newspapers solicited animal donations from citizens, and specific requests—such as calls for kangaroos and wallabies— were made to enhance morale within training camps.
However, the enthusiastic sentiment of early wartime efforts was soon tempered by practical concerns. Although servicemen formed strong attachments to their animal companions, considerations for their long-term welfare were often overlooked. When the first contingent was dispatched to Gallipoli, most of the mascots were donated to Cairo Zoo.
By the onset of the Second World War, the Australian military had shifted its policies, opting to keep mascots within domestic borders. These animals assumed roles in morale-building efforts and public fundraising campaigns, rather than accompanying troops abroad.
The Shrine of Remembrance recently acquired a copy of Dorothy Wall’s 1940 publication Blinky Bill Joins the Army, a book that understood well the plight of mascots during the First World War and keenly advocated for animals such as wallabies and koalas to remain in their natural habitats. As Wall begins her story, a group of local bush animals compete to become the mascot for the army in Sydney:
Dorothy Wall, Blinky Bill Joins the Army 1943.
Reproduced courtesy of the Shrine of Remembrance Library
Illustrations by Dorothy Wall from Blinky Bill Joins the Army 1943, Angus & Robertson.
Reproduced courtesy of the Shrine of Remembrance Library
Once again the bushland was filled with excitement and chatter just as it was a few years ago when the news went round that Mrs. Koala had a baby. You all know Blinky Bill very well by now and again he is the cause of all this excitement. And what do you think it is all about? You’d never guess. He’s [Blinky Bill] been chosen as the mascot for the Australian soldiers— not to go overseas of course, as that would never be permitted. All koala bears are protected as no doubt you know, and no one, not even Royalty, is allowed to have one. Why? I can hear you asking. I’ll tell you in a few words the reason. These dear little creatures are very delicate. They catch cold very easily. So just imagine how quickly they’d die if sent from warm sunny Australia to a cold climate with snow and ice in the winter; and think of the bitter winds. Although the koalas have furry coats and look very cosy in the winter time, their coats would not be nearly warm enough to keep out the cold as a big ground bear’s does.
Wall’s humour is evident on the front cover of the book, which depicts the officer Blinky in an army uniform carrying the Australian flag as he drills a column of marching red ants. Beneath the image, the usual army motto ‘Duty First’ is replaced with Blinky’s own motto, ‘Scratch & Kick’, a change that suggests Wall understood wild Australian animals were best left in the bush.
A committed advocate for Australia’s native flora and fauna, Wall used her portrayal of bush animals vying to become army mascots to reflect shifting attitudes to the environment. Following in the footsteps of May Gibbs, Wall created a vibrant world filled with anthropomorphised native creatures whose humorous escapades invited children to identify Australian values in the spirited larrikinism of Blinky Bill. Yet Blinky represented more than cheeky charm—his adventures became emblematic of a growing wave of Australian nationalism, one that anchored the nation’s character firmly in its unique natural landscape. For soldiers embarking overseas, many for the first time, Blinky Bill Joins the Army served as a reminder of the distinctive way of life they were leaving behind and for which they were, in essence, fighting to keep. For children separated from family members by the war, Blinky Bill’s enlistment as an army mascot must have offered a welcome dose of cheer and escapism—a light-hearted distraction in a heavy time.
Toby Miller is the Collections Coordinator at the Shrine of Remembrance.
Lisa Cooper
Brigadier Athol Earle Brown OBE CMG, a veteran of the Middle East campaign, played a pivotal role in commemorating the fallen. During the Second World War, he established and led the Directorate of War Graves Service. In 1946, he was appointed the first head of the Anzac Agency of the Imperial War Graves Commission.
The Pacific War brought conflict to Australia’s doorstep, affecting life at home in unprecedented ways and leaving behind a devastating number of war dead whose burial and commemoration needed careful and sensitive consideration. One man would oversee efforts to both locate and identify the dead and create and beautify the war cemeteries we see today throughout Australia and around the Pacific. Yet despite his vital role in the war, he has gone largely unrecognised.
That man was Athol Earle MacDonald Brown OBE CMG, and much of his work during the war and in the decades after was carried out in the heart of Melbourne.
Born in January 1905 to William John Brown and Alice Catherine (nee MacDonald), Athol Earle Brown was employed as a company manager and company director throughout the 1930s. He married Millicent (Millie) Alice Heesh on 16 February 1929 and they had three children—Russell, William and Janet.
Brown’s first experience in the services was in the Royal Australian Navy Cadets from 1919 to 1923 when he was a boy. He later enlisted in the Royal Australian Artillery in the Middle East during the Second World War aged 35 years old. Ongoing illness saw Brown transferred to the Artillery Training Regiment at the end of May 1941, then to Records with the 2nd Echelon Headquarters base area before returning to Australia in July 1941.
Brown completed a Staff Captains’ course at Royal Park, Melbourne, in August 1941. While attached to Army Headquarters, Major (Temporary) Brown was appointed to raise the Directorate of War Graves Service (DWGS) on 16 March 1942, which he headed from its base at Victoria Barracks in St Kilda Road.
Australia had never dealt with war dead on such a scale. The scattered nature of the fallen added to the challenges faced in caring for them. As head of the DWGS, Brown was tasked with carrying into effect war graves policy on the ground during the war and in the early post-war years, and the creation and beautification of war cemeteries in the region.
He spent much of his time travelling around Australia, the Pacific and the Middle East inspecting war graves and cemeteries, including after the end of hostilities in August 1945. He visited areas where Australia’s war dead lay in significant numbers, particularly the remains of Australian POWs scattered along the Sandakan death march tracks and the Thai-Burma Railway, seeing for himself the challenges war graves men were facing on the ground.
Brown managed stakeholders with confidence and efficiency, from all levels of government and the Departments of Army, Air, and Navy in Australia, to foreign officials and the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), particularly while negotiating policy. In 1944, he was called to London by Sir Fabian Ware, the man behind the creation of the IWGC, to discuss the state of war graves in the Middle East.
With Brown familiar with the Australian Government’s view on war graves policy, he was authorised to act on behalf of Australia during his visit. This would come to include discussions with UK authorities on establishing an Australian branch of the IWGC, something Brown had been strongly advocating for since 1943 amid discussions to break away from the IWGC and establish an independent Australian War Graves Commission.
Athol Earle Brown during the Second World War. Reproduced courtesy of Janet Sebald/A.E Brown Collection
In May 1946, Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley announced that Brown had been appointed Secretary-General of the newly formed Anzac Agency of the Imperial War Graves Commission. Its purpose was to administer war graves in its own territories and beyond as an agency of the Commission. Brown was granted the rank of Honorary Brigadier upon his appointment.
Within weeks, Brown secured a lease in the Scott’s Building on Collins Street, from where the Anzac Agency first operated. He organised everything from typewriters and paper to the card index system and the necessary staff, before overseeing the transfer of responsibility of war graves and cemeteries from the Australian Army from September 1945. By May 1948, Brown announced that the Agency had completed the takeover of all war graves within its remit except the Yokohama War Cemetery, which was handed over in August 1948.
It was the bereaved who remained foremost in Brown’s mind. He continued to show enormous dedication to his administrative duties while also ensuring that veterans and families were kept informed of the progress of the Agency’s work. He corresponded with grieving relatives querying the efforts to find a lost loved one or the location of a war grave, or just how and when relatives would be able to visit the graves.
Brown appeared in radio broadcasts and often wrote articles on the progress of war cemeteries. In January 1962, he wrote in Reveille that the Port Moresby (Bomana) War Cemetery had an ‘atmosphere of dignity and tranquillity’ and that ‘the graves are carefully tended at all times’.
He also presented lectures and a film showing the beauty of war cemeteries to the public, commenting in 1951 in the Border Watch newspaper in Mount Gambier that, ‘The Commission does not aim to establish war cemeteries— our aim is to establish living memorials to those who are buried there’. He firmly believed that only when war graves were thought of as memorials would their significance remain.
Athol Brown aged approximately 14 years as a Royal Australian Navy Cadet, third row from back, three from the left.
Reproduced courtesy of Janet Sebald/A.E Brown Collection
The Commission does not aim to establish war cemeteries—our aim is to establish living memorials to those who are buried there.
It was Brown’s ability to negotiate war graves agreements with several nations, including with decolonising nations and, most importantly, with Japan, that proved one of the most significant achievements for the Commission, ensuring the security and permanent construction of Allied war cemeteries.
Sent to Yokohama in August 1949, Brown met with Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers General Douglas MacArthur, who was steadfast in his desire to have all Allied war dead buried in Japanese soil exhumed and buried elsewhere in accordance with US policy. Brown explained the position of the IWGC and its founding principle of non-repatriation and, having received a very sympathetic hearing from MacArthur, managed to secure the Commission’s control over war dead in Japan.
The Mail newspaper in Adelaide once described Brown as ‘a quiet, grey-haired man’ who had ‘brought a lot of comfort to the relatives’ of Australia’s war dead. For his dedication to the fallen, Brown was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) Civil Division in the 1956 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. In 1964, he was also made a Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) as part of the British Honours list.
Brigadier Athol Earle Brown OBE CMG retired from the Anzac Agency on 31 May 1969, having given ‘outstanding service to the Commission’. He had dedicated three decades to the memory and commemoration of Pacific War dead that saw him often spend extended periods of time away, domestically and overseas, from his wife, Millie, and their children. He died aged 82 on 5 August 1987.
In remembering their father, his surviving children, Bill and Janet, both thought he would be very happy with the attention he and his work were getting, adding, ‘We’re very proud to acknowledge him and send [his legacy] on to the next generation’.
Brigadier Athol Earle Brown’s legacy is easily recognisable in the very war cemeteries he spent his career caring for. His aspiration for these war cemeteries was a simple one, reported in The Courier-Mail in February 1948: ‘I hope that people in Australia will visit these places and see the beauty of these cemeteries for themselves’.
Dr Lisa Cooper is a historian and writer specialising in Australia’s experience of the Second World War. Lisa graduated with a PhD in 2023 with her thesis, A ‘most heartbreaking job’: caring for the dead of Australia’s war against Japan. Lisa’s thesis will be published by the Australian Army History Unit as part of the Australian Army History Series with Cambridge University Press.
Brigadier Athol Earle Brown, centre, at official unveiling of Ambon War Cemetery.
A group photograph of Army officers with Athol Brown back row second from the left.
Reproduced courtesy of Janet Sebald/A.E Brown Collection
THE GREATEST BLUFF OF THE PACIFIC WAR
Katrina Nicolson
Camouflaged wooden Bofors anti-aircraft gun were made of wood, tin and hessian.
Reproduced courtesy of State Library Victoria H98.105/3958A
Tanks were made of hessian on wooden frames.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial 090203
Imitation barbed wire entanglements were made from jungle creepers.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial 090196
In 1943, Goodenough Island—part of the D’Entrecasteaux Islands archipelago off the eastern tip of New Guinea—became the unexpected stage for what the 5th Australian Division’s Public Relations Office called ‘the Greatest Bluff of the Pacific War’.
In October 1942, the bulk of Australia’s infantry was concentrated on mainland New Guinea defending against the Japanese advance along the Kokoda Track. The 600-strong 2/12th Battalion, however, was charged with clearing Goodenough Island of 350 Japanese troops who were cut off in their attempt to reach Milne Bay. The Japanese forces took advantage of the difficult and steep jungle terrain to retreat westward, with about 250 escaping to nearby Ferguson Island.
The 2/12th was withdrawn to New Guinea in December and a small garrison of around 200 Australians was installed to secure Goodenough Island against a possible Japanese counterattack. Allied forces planned to build an aerodrome on the strategically ideal eastern side of the island but feared the garrison would be overrun before support arrived. The Japanese must be made to think they faced a brigade of several thousand men. A clever plan of deception employing camouflage was devised.
Using two primary strategies of camouflage, crypsis (using colours, patterns and shading to blend objects into their surroundings) and mimicry (creating decoys and disguises to mislead), Allied forces set out to fool the enemy.
The elaborate deception, known as Operation Hackney, began at Milne Bay with false radio reports and rumours of troop movements to mislead nearby Japanese forces. On 10 February 1943, a flotilla of transports tasked with delivering the ‘brigade’ to the island departed under Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) protection. Rather than men and weapons, the ships carried ‘wooden packing cases, empty petrol drums, camouflage paint, sheets of tin, hessian, old tents and mosquito nets’—everything required to create the illusion of a large occupying force.
Imitation defence guns were made of wood and cunningly camouflaged.
Reproduced courtesy of the Australian War Memorial 4102210
Wooden Bren guns were used to hoax the Japanese into believing that Goodenough Island was heavily fortified.
Reproduced courtesy of State Library Victoria H98.105/3958A
Camouflage is on display in the Galleries of Remembrance until April 2026.
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To hear more about the history of camouflage in the military, tune into this podcast with Professor Ann Elias.
LISTEN HERE
Camps began to take shape on Goodenough. Areas were cleared of grass, tents set up, kitchens built, dumps established, slit trenches dug, weapon pits rigged, barbed wire lined the beaches. Apparently a full brigade had taken up its position along the eastern side of the island. But there was no brigade in the series of camps just one company, scattered widely, and a few score natives.
Fires were lit in the kitchens every day. The dumps—piles of old cases and tins partly covered with tarpaulins—were primed with petrol and oil, and wired so they could be set on fire immediately if a bomb fell anywhere near them.
The 25-pounder guns (Bofors) were most convincing…made of wood, tin and hessian. They were set in sunken emplacements, correctly sand-bagged, trenched and netted. One of the simplest and most effective deceptive devices was the apron ‘barbed wire’. Wooden stakes replaced metal, and thin jungle vines replaced genuine wire. From 50 yards this ‘wiring’ was indistinguishable from real wiring. The tops of jam tins were tacked to trees outside to look like shaving mirrors. Washing and blankets were hung on a clothesline [and changed daily].
Army News, Darwin, NT, Saturday 9 September 1944
No detail was too small, with the garrison creating paths between installations, mimicking the traces left by many troops when seen from the air.
The deception was a success—strategically, logistically and financially. So much so the Public Relations Office of 5 Australian Division waived its normal embargoes on publicising the use of camouflage, releasing information on Operation Hackney in 1944. The operation demonstrated Australians could successfully carry out large-scale camouflage deceptions and was influential in the acceptance of camouflage as a legitimate war tactic by some previously sceptical troops and commanders.
Katrina Nicolson is the Exhibitions and Grants Coordinator at the Shrine of Remembrance.
The Argus (Melbourne, VIC) ‘Australian troops in New Guinea’
Listen to Steve Cotterill, inaugural Poet Laureate for the Australian veteran community, performing his poem, remember. He discusses how curiosity, creativity, and the Australian National Veterans Arts Museum have supported him post service.
Steve Cotterill
WHAT IS REMEMBRANCE?
Curiosity, contemplation, community and creativity have been vital companions to my growth and healing since I transitioned from the Army in 2017.
I was a Cavalry Officer in the Army with 14 years of service across the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, the Royal Military College, Special Operations Headquarters, and the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation. I served on deployments in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Israeli-occupied Syria.
The Australian National Veterans Arts Museum (ANVAM) and its vibrant community of veterans and family members of veterans resonated with me when I was first introduced in 2021 and have been an important ally and support to me since then.
The soft pull of its gravity started to gently draw me into a community and sense of togetherness that I have rarely felt or experienced before. I now feel safe deep in my bones to be my authentic self, especially while I work out who I am once I remove the masks that I have been taught— or taught myself—to wear to ‘fit in’ and be accepted.
Up until recently, I haven’t had the words to clearly explain to others why this growing community has felt so right. The Festival of Veterans Arts (FOVA) this year helped me realise the answer was hiding in the question on my tongue; why has it felt so right?
Steve Cotterill was a Cavalry Officer in the Army with 14 years of service.
Reproduced courtesy Melbourne Business School
It feels right. It feels safe.
Feeling is the answer.
The power of this community—of any authentic and nourishing community or culture— is one where its rightness and togetherness is a ‘felt’ sense.
Not something to be explained and understood in your head, rather a resonance to be experienced in your body that can proceed to marinate and soften your nervous system if you allow it. Once you have felt it, you will understand its power.
You deserve to be in environments that bring out the softness in you, not the survival in you.
— Brené Brown
My poem, remember, comes from my thoughts and feelings on a question that has been on my mind for some time:
What are we forgetting in our remembrance?
I find words interesting, especially their meanings and etymologies. It’s understandable for each of us to assume what others mean with their words and that others will comprehend what we mean. I find it valuable to check and align this, so that what is intended matches what is received.
Commemorate (verb) means, to call to remembrance. Remembrance (noun) means, to keep or bear in mind Both share a common Latin root, memorari, which means to be mindful of.
A common thread that connects those of us who served our nation, whether in a uniform or not, is that we did so for the safety and security of our society or members of it.
When I look around me at the state of our communities, society and planet I see answers to my question. I find evidence that too many people do not live with safety or security in their current reality.
I see a genocide being perpetrated on the Palestinian people while I feel that the majority of western governments sit indifferently on the sidelines. Current estimates are at least 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza including at least 19,000 children since October 2023.
I see a femicide and domestic violence epidemic happening on our doorstep where 104 women were killed in 2024, and 46 have been killed so far in 2025.
I see an epidemic of suicide, addiction and loneliness that is rife across society, where I feel that too many people don’t know there is another way to be.
Part of what we have forgotten is the why. Why so many sacrificed so much during the wars and conflicts in our history. That they did what they did for us to all live in safety, connected in community. For us to honour their sacrifice, our first act of remembrance should be to focus on what we can do to change our current reality.
The opposite of good is not evil, it’s indifference.
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
— Joshua Michael Schrei
This quote resonated deeply within me when I heard it recently. So? My invitation to myself and to you is this.
Let us be different.
Let us be curious instead of being fragile.
Let us listen instead of speaking.
Let us be vulnerable and connect authentically with others.
Let us hold space with empathy for others to be vulnerable.
Let us enquire within and work through our shadow, our wounds, our feelings.
During FOVA, I was privileged to witness powerful moments in the workshop I ran, where I could sense someone drop into the safety and freedom to be whoever and whatever they are. I could feel them soften and surrender into this.
Annabelle Wilson performing at the
What does it feel like for you to feel a sense of welcoming and belonging?
How can you help others feel this?
Steve Cotterill is the inaugural Poet Laureate for the veteran community. He is a creative with a love of words, be they written, spoken or sung, a love of photography, and a budding love of the guitar he is learning to play. He also works as an MC and as a facilitator and coach on leadership and culture.
If you are a veteran or the family member of a veteran and are curious about or involved in arts or creativity, please check out ANVAM’s website (www.anvam.org.au) or Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/anvam310) for information and events. FOVA is returning in March 2026 with the theme of ‘curiosity’. Curious? Save the date and come join us in Melbourne!
If you are interested in supporting ANVAM or veteran artists please contact ANVAM community.
Steve Cotterill running a poetry workshop during FOVA25.
Photographer Sita Norsworthy
Shrine during FOVA25.
Photographer Steve Cotterill
PEACE WITHIN
The Shrine’s Young Ambassadors teamed up with artist Kat Rae to craft a moving tribute to the women and families whose lives have been shaped by war.
Peace Within is a mixed media artwork on display in the Shrine’s Education Centre. Created by the Shrine’s Young Ambassadors with guidance from artist-in-residence Kat Rae, the piece captures a tender moment between a mother and her children—offering a quiet reflection on the impact of war on families.
The Young Ambassadors are in Years 9 and 10 at various Victorian secondary schools and are 14 to 15 years old. They volunteer with the Shrine for a year and learn about commemoration and defence service, museums and community organisations, and they grow as people. In 2024, thanks to a grant from Freemasons Victoria, the Shrine began including a collaborative art project in the Young Ambassador program.
Kat Rae’s own art practice explores place, memory and experience. She served in the Australian Army for 20 years, deploying to Afghanistan and Kuwait, before beginning her art career in 2019. She is also a war widow to veteran suicide and a mother. Her work Deathmin received the prestigious national Napier Waller Art Prize in 2024.
In Kat’s words, Peace Within explores ‘post-traumatic growth and representing those in war commemoration who don’t always get seen’. She planned the project as a reimagining and broadening of the Shrine’s commemorative language, prompted by her artistic aims and her lived experience. The lilac, white and green prints arranged on the walls reinterpret the feminine floral emblems of violets and jacarandas in the Ex-Servicewomen’s Memorial Garden at the Shrine. The family is the same group we see in Louis Laumen’s Widow and Children sculpture in the Legacy Garden of Appreciation, but they have been brought inside, protected from the elements.
Movingly, the quilt enfolding them is an important example of a personal war relic. Kat was gifted it many years ago, upon arrival in Afghanistan, by Aussie Hero Quilts, a community group of volunteer quilters who make personalised quilts and laundry bags for deployed ADF personnel. The psychologist Richard Tedeschi has defined the notion of post-traumatic growth as ‘positive psychological changes experienced as a result of the struggle with trauma or highly challenging situations.’ Peace Within shows a family that is not frozen forever in pain, loss and isolation but has painstakingly built another life of togetherness, care and love.
The artwork was made at the Shrine over six busy days (‘art boot camp’ was how everyone started to describe it) and Kat built in opportunities for the Young Ambassador group to meet and work with people from her overlapping communities of veterans, their supporters and artists.
Kat Rae with Mae Mao and Elizabeth Tun
Peace Within (installation view). Photographer Vlad Bunyevich
Kat Rae with Young Ambassadors Elizabeth, Mae, David and Chloe and the finished project. Photographer Laura Carroll
The project is a beautiful way to reflect on living commemoration. We, the Young Ambassadors, are endlessly grateful to have worked with an incredible artist and learnt the value of art, history and life-long learning.
Representatives from Legacy met the group at the Shrine and explained their organisation while the students sketched the Laumen sculpture. The group was privileged to spend a day at the Australian National Veteran Arts Museum (ANVAM), where they learned about the healing work happening in the veteran arts movement while also converting their sketches to linocut prints.
Kat’s military leadership skills came to the fore on the papier-mâché days when the students worked as a disciplined team to build the three figures with the welcome assistance of artist friends. This included a member of the Aussie Hero Quilts group, who talked about her quilt-making while she helped to paste strips of paper onto modelled legs, arms and torsos.
The choice of papier-mâché and printing as the key techniques is meaningful. The figures were built up with soft layers of treated paper and gently bound in string; this making process is like the process of rebuilding selves, families and lives. Similarly, printmaking involves a cutting-away of parts of an image that are no longer needed. In contrast to the cool metallic surfaces of the statue outside, the figures are bathed in a resonant burnt orange. The colour was chosen to convey a warm and contemporary mood.
The project concluded with installing the artwork and sharing celebratory pizzas. The Young Ambassadors were visibly, and rightly, proud of what they had achieved. Mae Mao, a member of the group, made this reflection:
‘This project is about honouring those who serve and those left behind. My favourite part has been learning and listening to the personal stories of the artists we worked with.’
Elizabeth Tun added:
‘The project is a beautiful way to reflect on living commemoration. We, the Young Ambassadors, are endlessly grateful to have worked with an incredible artist and learnt the value of art, history and lifelong learning.’
Peace Within is on display at the Shrine until July 2026.
Kat Rae (Lt Col Retd) is a Melbourne artist. Mae Mao and Elizabeth Tun are Shrine Young Ambassadors.
Young Ambassadors are Year 9 and 10 students who participate in programs and commemorative services at the Shrine. Applications open in October and the program runs for 12 months from December each year.
The Shrine Young Ambassadors program is proudly supported by Freemasons Foundation Victoria.
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Young Ambassadors drawing on the Shrine Reserve.
Photographer Laura Carroll
A TRIBUTE TO MAUREEN BUGDEN oam
Sue Burgess
2025 marked the passing of a much-admired former volunteer, Maureen Bugden OAM.
Maureen Bugden OAM was one of the Shrine’s longest serving and most loyal volunteers. She was part of the first intake when the Volunteer Program was established in 1989. When she retired in October 2022, Maureen had given a remarkable 33 years of voluntary service to the Shrine.
Born on 6 June 1928, Maureen often reflected on how her birthday, while unremarkable at the time, later became a date of great significance: D-Day, the 1944 Allied landings in occupied France. She was proud to share her birthday with this historic event. So strong was her connection to it that she later visited the D-Day landing beaches. She often recalled how, during the war, she wanted to put her age up to enlist but her father would not allow it. Like many of her generation who lived through the Second World War, Maureen felt a deep bond with those who served.
In 2012, Maureen was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for ‘service to veterans and their families through a range of volunteer roles’. This recognised not only her contributions to the Shrine but also her tireless work with Legacy, the Red Cross and the RSL—causes that meant so much to her.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Maureen, a passionate sewer, turned her talents to making face masks and provided them to staff, volunteers, family, friends and the RSL.
To the staff and volunteers at the Shrine, Maureen was inspirational, compassionate, empathetic and warm. She will be deeply missed.
Sue Burgess is the Director of Public Programs at the Shrine of Remembrance.
Thank you
TO OUR FRIENDS
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Able Seaman Hiram Ristrom at a Last Post Service 26 January 2020. photographer Cormac Hanrahan
