Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Hawkesbury Agricultural College Cairo Centenary Memorial Dinner held last Friday evening in the Soldiers Memorial Hall, at the University of Western Sydney in Richmond. Alumni of the college, fondly referred to as 'the old boys', held the reunion dinner in honour of all students and staff who gave service and sacrifice in World War I. In total there were some 750 men from the college that served in the war.

Dr William Helsham, who was a doctor in Richmond and taught at the college, enlisted in what was to become the 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance. For that reason, 40 college men joined the light horse field ambulance and some 135 were light horsemen. Twenty-two joined either the Royal or the Australian Flying Corps, almost 60 served in the Veterinary Corps, and at least 70 served with the artillery units, if not as drivers again using horses to pull guns and ammunition supplies. Dr Helsham also established the Richmond Ambulance Division of St John Ambulance in 1913, and it continues today.

The dinner replicated the dinner held at the Eden Palace Hotel in Cairo. Some two months later, many from that dinner took part in the landing at Gallipoli on the original Anzac Day in 1915. The Soldiers Memorial Hall was turned into the Eden Palace, Cairo, and there was an enormous effort made to replicate the original dinner, with the menu depicting the original selection and the original program of events. A cake was made in the shape of a pyramid beside a slouch hat. Even the national anthem from that time, God Save the King, was sung. The dinner was a remarkable display of honour, respect, camaraderie and college spirit 100 years ago. The reading of the Ode to Stanley Campbell was a particularly moving moment, as was a seat reserved with a slouch hat at the plate in honour of Lieutenant Harold T Watkins, the first to lose his life at Gallipoli, representing all those who died in action. I particularly wish to thank Grant Chalk, Vice President of the Hawkesbury Alumni Chapter, and all those who spared no effort to honour those who served in World War I.

I wish to read from this poem, the Ode to Stanley Campbell:

So he survived the pointless killing of the Dardanelles campaign,

And the horror of the Western Front, the shelling and the rain.

In the rent and wretched trenches

His defiant fist he clenches,

But the shrapnel tears him fiercely and he'll never rise again.

A vision comes to Stanley Campbell of a favoured country lass

And a Blood and Mustard blazer and a sunlit Christmas mass.

He no longer hears the shelling,

And his final breaths are telling,

For the blood is now his own blood and the mustard now is gas.

Stanley Campbell died one hundred years and half a world away,

There's no telling what he'd say or do if he was here today.

But I'd like to think he'd stand again,

With his kindred Blood and Mustard men,

And honour well his fallen friends with a long and proud Hoopray!

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