Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Each year it has been my practice to read into the record the Anzac Day essays of young students from Kangaroo Valley Public School. I am always delighted to do that because it shows that they too are part of the make-up of what it means to be an Australian. As well, it is always important to reinforce why we need to make every effort to ensure that the Anzacs should never fade from our collective memory. Sometimes the simplicity of a child’s language is so eloquent that it gives true justice to that memory.

This year I have four contributions. Patrick O’Connor is in year 4, and this is some of what he wrote:

It was one week into battle and over 8,000 people had wounds, disease or even had died.

The smell of death and gun powder.

They didn’t have proper toilets so they really struggled back then.

There was not much water and they couldn’t open a can of bully beef without blowflies trailing them.

There was a man called Simpson that collected the dead or wounded on the battlefield.

One day he found a donkey and started feeding it and getting it ready to go on to the battle and collect the dead and wounded or the ones that had disease.

He only lived about 8 weeks doing this job until he got shot.

Cameron Leslie, year 5, contributed the following:

Very few soldiers stayed behind.

The Red Cross and Salvation Army wrote to those who received no letters.

The men that stayed manned huge searchlights, manned the docks, defended Australia and ran uniform factories.

If you didn’t sign up, you were sent a white feather which meant that you were a coward.

People who worked in essential industries like timber cutting or you’re a doctor that was too old to go to war, you would stay home to do your job.

Retired men were brought back to work and married women were allowed to teach.

Children made scarves, socks and other clothes.

They were taught first aid and how to bandage wounds.

They were taught how to get people on to a stretcher.

They dug trenches in the playground and had turf on tin to pull across the trenches if being bombed.

Some teenagers worked in uniform factories.

Sophie McGregor, also of year 5, spoke of the experience on the home front. She said:

The women were always excited to receive mail but some women didn’t want to receive mail about how a son or husband died.

The women were enlisted in jobs like the Women’s Land Army, teaching, working in food canneries and making bombs in factories.

The chemicals in the bombs made their skins turn yellow.

In 1943, 2,000 women were sent to the food canneries to package bully beef and send it over to the war.

The women used things around the house to make clothes because cloth was rationed.

When it came to food, all the women had ration books and identity cards.

Laura Kent is in year 6 and she too described life during World War II in Australia, writing in the first person. She said:

Things were pretty bad to start off with because people were unemployed, miserable and sad because of the Great Depression, so some people were happy when they were called in to work in a job.

Everything Australia did between 1939 and 1945 was for the war effort.

I went to Red Hill school where we made scarves, socks, camouflage nets, pound cakes, balaclavas and bandages, which were picked up every Friday by a truck and then sent overseas.

In 1943 they started serving us school lunches so we had more energy and cuts and bruises healed quicker.

They consisted of a salad sandwich, a piece of fruit and a bottle of milk.

Mum often didn’t get home to five o’clock if the fixed amount of cans weren’t filled so my sister and I usually cleaned the house and prepared dinner.

Food was rationed, so on Thursday afternoon, we would walk to town and collect our food for the week.

We had a ration book so that every time we bought rationed food, the shopkeeper would mark it off in our book.

First we went to Mr Greens and bought some vegies and fruit that weren’t rationed and gave us nutrients.

Then we went to the butchers and asked for some pork but it was rationed and we had already had our pork for the week so instead we got beef.

I am indebted to the students of Kangaroo Valley Public School for their interest and involvement. A special thankyou to Joan Bray for getting the material together. It is exercises like these that make Anzac Day relevant to our younger generation. Well done to all students at Kangaroo Valley Public School who participated and to Mr McCarthy, the principal, and teachers. I am extremely proud of you all and your school.

In the few minutes I have left allocated to me, I place on record how well Gilmore is serviced by its schools, both state and private. As a federal member, we are used to receiving complaints from many different areas. However, when it comes to schools, I can honestly say we hear nothing but praise from both the parents and the community as a whole. Kangaroo Valley Public School is particularly community minded—something that does not go unnoticed—and, by its involvement, sets a very high standard for other schools to follow. Well done, Kangaroo Valley Public School.