The Sherwood Indooroopilly RSL / Schools ANZAC Centenary Project 2014 – 2018 – Final Project Report
The three World War One Memorials in local council parks from Indooroopilly to Oxley are inscribed with the names of the 83 young men and one young woman from this part of South West Brisbane who gave their lives in ‘The Great War.
As part of the Commonwealth Government’s ANZAC Centenary, Sherwood Indooroopilly sought and obtained federal funding to research and publish the stories of the local young people who gave their lives for our future during the ‘Great War’. Sadly, these people and their sacrifice were now all but forgotten so we saw a crying community need to make their stories public before any more time was lost. Also, the project sought especially to involve local school students in the research. This two-fold objective was because among the RSL objects are ‘to ensure the preservation of the memory and the records of those who suffered and died for the nation’ and ‘to encourage citizens to serve the Nation with a spirit of self-sacrifice and loyalty’. Over the five years of the project, the stories were researched and written by school students at both Primary and Secondary levels and our editorial policy was to edit these only very lightly, to let their words stand.
As well as having local school students writing the stories over five years of participating classes, a bonus that emerged was that three local amateur historians had also researched all of these names and it is with gratitude and with their permission that we were also able to publish their stories along with those of the students. They were Ian Lang, the late Jim Gibson and the late Dr Peter Crossman and they are properly acknowledged in the book.
We also took the opportunity to tell the stories of three WW1 survivors and their ladies who, with others of their ilk, gave us at the RSL our start and shaped us. First, E Maurice Little, although blinded and maimed at Gallipoli, but with tremendous support from his wife Bessie, still had the astonishing amount of life force to become one of the founders of our RSL sub-branch and its first president. Chronologically the next founder or shaper was Harry Dalziel VC who was a member of our sub-branch and has given his name to Sherwood Indooroopilly RSL Sub-branch’s headquarters at Corinda. Last in time were Colonel Doctor David Gifford Croll CBE VD MB ChM and Sister Marion Winifred Croll AANS whose bequest to the sub-branch in the 1950s helped to set up our sub-branch to be the strong supporter of the community and veteran welfare that it is today and as it will be into the future.
‘The Great War 1914-18 - Lest we forget - Indooroopilly to Oxley’ has been published primarily as an e-book to give it wide and long-lasting public availability. Just as the stories now published reach back 100 years at this time, their ongoing public availability as an e-book published on an RSL website should ensure that these stories will reach far forward into the future. Fifty years from now authors of stories who wrote them when they were in primary or secondary school will be able to use this e-book to get their grand-children as interested in the history of local heroes as they were themselves, albeit perhaps only briefly at the time.
As well as the e-book format, the project objectives were furthered by a small print run of 256 copies in order to place copies in official libraries as well as in the libraries of participating schools and to properly acknowledge project contributors. Also a smaller and preliminary print run of 100 copies was published in time for the official launch of the e-book on Remembrance Day 2018 as part of the Community Centenary Commemoration and March conducted by the sub-branch at Graceville Memorial Park. This smaller version contained mainly the stories as authored by the school students and omitted much of the other material. But it well served to provide a memento of the importance of both the launch itself and of the community’s participation in the Centenary Commemoration. In order that the publication in its three versions can be readily found through library systems, they have been recorded with ISBNs as follows: the e-book 978-0-6482051-1-1, the paper book (full edition) 978-0-6482051-0-4, the limited paper book (schools) edition 978-0-6482051-X-X.
Project funds of $9249, including GST, were provided through the Ryan electorate as DVA Project 198077 and of $27,499, including GST, through the Moreton electorate as Project 197949. Project expenditure came to $XXXX.
The Committee and Members of Sherwood Indooroopilly RSL Sub-branch Inc wish to express their grateful thanks first to the late Jim Gibson and the late Dr Peter Crossman and to Ian Lang, the adult authors of stories of the fallen, and also to David Dalziel, John Pearn, Beulah Cox, Marion Mackenzie, Ron Aumann, Hayley Goss of the sub-branch staff and Brian Wade, AM, MSM (RSL) for their contributions. We express gratitude also to each of the mentoring teachers in the 14 participating schools, north and south of the river, who, with patience and persistence, organised, supervised and coached their participating students. Generally they selected students who they felt had the capacity to be ‘stretched’. And we are grateful, of course, to the student researchers, nearly all of whose names are shown in the index of the book. We thank Jane Prentice, Federal Member for Ryan, and Graham Perrett, Federal Member for Moreton for assisting us with obtaining funding from the ANZAC Centenary Project with which we could hire a professional editor and our thanks go to John Reynolds, Writer for Hire, in this regard.