Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I too want to join with the many voices in this parliament to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings—the Centenary of Anzac. It is incumbent on all of us in this place that we do so on behalf on the hundreds of men and women from our constituencies who left for those fateful shores, many of whom were never to return home. On behalf of the people of Ballarat and their descendants I make this speech.

Anzac Day this year marked the centenary, but centenary commemorations have occurred a lot earlier than this, with 2014 commemorating the first disembarkation and the first people enlisting. It is really important to remember that these commemorations will go on for several years to come because the war went on for several years; it was not just one day. Many who went did think it was going to be over by Christmas, but it was not. It was a war that changed the course of this world's history and the course of the personal lives of many of the people we represent.

In reflecting on the centenary commemorations I want to congratulate the many communities, large and small, across the electorate of Ballarat for the respect and the beauty with which they have commemorated this. There were schoolchildren putting poppies over the entire avenue. There is a fantastic new memorial at Navigators, and Bungaree has done the same; as has Yandoit, a very small community with very small numbers of volunteers. They have pulled together new memorials that did not exist before. They have come and restored old memorials, many of which were forgotten. They drilled for hundreds and hundreds of hours to find the stories of local men and women and to record them—not only to record them but to make sure they stay part of the commemorations for all of those communities for years to come. Ballan had a fantastic exhibition in the RSL Hall where schoolchildren were asked to reflect on what it might have been like to leave and to farewell parents, and to write letters to those parents.

It is not often when you are funding a road project that you get to commemorate such a historic event. Unfortunately, in the 1980s, when we were busily building new highways, we cut the Ballarat Avenue of Honour and left a part of the avenue forgotten for over 20 or 30 years. The funding for the Western Highway duplication, the extra $1 million—and I want to acknowledge that the member for Grayndler was very good as minister in putting this forward—has allowed us to re-open a railway crossing to reconnect the lost part of the avenue. The Avenue of Honour and the Arch of Victory that commences the Avenue of Honour in Ballarat, were paid for through fundraising by the local community, by the 'Lucas Girls'—lovely women who decided after the war that we had to have our own avenue. That that avenue stands to this day as one of the longest and most beautiful avenues of honour in the country.

I am so proud of the many events that occurred across my electorate. There was the fantastic book by Gary Snowden, a local amateur historian who literally walked for hours and hours the entire Ballarat old and new cemeteries finding graves and headstones that had any mark or connection with World War I and then researched meticulously the history of all of those men and some women. They Answered Their Country's Call is a terrific book for anyone who has ancestors in Ballarat from World War I or to start a research into whether you have an ancestor in one of the cemeteries who had a connection with Anzac. Whether it be the commemorations in Trentham and Buninyong, from Miner's Rest to Bacchus Marsh, they absolutely have done us proud, and I want to thank my community for that.

But the thing that is so important about these commemorations are the connections. It is about the connections with people, and I think the commemorations have richly delved into those histories and what it has meant for individuals. I want to share a little story about our family's connection. Our family does not know whether we have anybody in our family tree who served in World War I. That is a history of our family that we will try to rectify. But I went to a Victorian talk by former Premier Ted Baillieu, who was at that stage leading the Victorian commemorations for Anzac, and one of the projects that former Premier Baillieu talked about was a project that the ADFA school has done, which is called the AIF Project. It is a very simple project. If you Google the AIF Project and you know that you live in a house that is over 100 years old—as I do—you can enter the details of your address and see whether someone who lived in your house enlisted in World War I.

I went to this talk and I thought, 'I must do that'. I got home at about midnight and my husband and I were sitting up in bed and I got the IPad out and thought I would just Google it. It was an extraordinary feeling to suddenly see pop up our address in Ballarat with the name John Lawrence Simpson—who, to the day that I was looking at it, had enlisted in the AIF and was part of the first disembarkation from Australia. I would like to talk very briefly about John.

John lived at the house that I now call home. But, like so many of his generation, he answered the call to arms and joined the tens of thousands of Australians who now lie forever in a foreign field. He was just 22 years of age when he enlisted in the AIF on 18 August 1914, and he was among the first to enlist in Ballarat in the original 8th Battalion. Just one month later, on 19 October 1914, he sailed with the first contingent embarking from Melbourne on board Transport A24 Benalla.

Like many of those who rushed to enlist, he first saw action at Gallipoli, fighting through the entire campaign from landing to evacuation as a private, corporal and finally a sergeant. He also fought at the Ferry Post and Tel El Kebin. After surviving Gallipoli, Simpson gained a commission as an officer and went to France with the 60th Battalion. It was there that he was wounded and invalided home. The battle is known as Fromelles. In a 24-hour period across 19 and 20 July, Australian troops suffered around 5½ thousand casualties in that disastrous attempt to break the German lines—and John was there.

By any measure, John Simpson had done his bit. He had, against the odds, survived both Gallipoli and the Western Front, been wounded and then repatriated. Amazingly, he decided to re-enlist, and in July 1917 he sailed once more form Port Melbourne—this time for the last time. On 26 April 1918 he was killed at Villers-Bretonneux in France—a very important battle in the war. John was only 25 years old when he died. He was a young man who shared the corridors and the rooms of the house that my family now live in and he went to the same primary school that my son now attends. There were six young men from the street that I live in in Ballarat who enlisted—some of them on the same day as John. John served under Pompey Elliott, who was a fine Ballarat man. It was said of John:

During the preliminary advance at Villers-Bretonneux, East of Amiens, on the night of 24th/25th April 1918, this Officer rendered valuable assistance in the consolidation of the line. He then went out on patrol and rushed an enemy machine gun post containing several of the enemy. The patrol, which was under machine gun fire from two other enemy posts had two wounded and one killed This officer, and 4 men approached the position where he lay. He shot the officer and two men. At nightfall he rejoined his own lines, bringing his wounded in with him. He was 14 hours in this post under continuous machine gun fire. At a later stage in the operations this gallant officer was killed by enemy shell.

Looking at John's records, you see the incredible impact that this had on his family.

Since we learned about John, we have been trying to trace some of his family to invite them to our home, but it looks as though he does not have any surviving ancestors. The family lived in the house until the 1970s. On looking at John's war record, right up until his brother was in his late sixties he was still sending letters to the Department of Defence to find out more about John. His two sisters never married and they continued to live in our house until the 1970s. You can see the extraordinary impact that this would have had on the family.

So I want to encourage everybody who lives in a house or on land that is over 100 years old to look up the AIF Project, because it is those connections to the real men and women who left from our neighbourhoods and suburbs, who walked the hallways and lived in the homes that we live in, that will mean that we will forever remember the sacrifice that they made.

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