Wednesday 25 April 2012

Anzac Day and Mateship

I'm back at home, warming up after attending this morning's Dawn Service at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance. The large crowd endured what I heard one man describe as 'disgusting weather', we couldn't feel our feet by the end, we all wished we'd worn gumboots and everyone went home to change into dry clothes. But tens of thousands stood silently to hear the Anzac Day message.

The bugle calls, the poems, the stories and the choral and band music engendered a tear. But what struck me most was one speaker's attempt to define the Anzac spirit as 'mateship', carrying the implication that Australian mateship was forged at Gallipoli. Having researched and written three books about convicts in early colonial Australia, it puzzles me that the speakers never mention our convict past as the true origin of this spirit of mateship.

My first book (about Robert Forrester) makes it obvious that Australia's version of mateship began with those who arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. The period spent together on the long sea journey and the adversity faced by our earliest settlers forged strong bonds. Governor Phillip seeded this spirit by insisting that everyone receive equal rations at a time when starvation loomed. From the late 1790s, two decades of continuing floods at the Hawkesbury, the colony's food bowl, were the catalyst for the community-sponsored disaster funds and volunteer emergency services we take for granted today.

My second book (about Paul Bushell) began with the suffering on the notorious Second Fleet, proving that its survivors were tough, in mind and body.  His experience on that journey turned Paul into a man with a lifelong focus on the welfare of others.

My forthcoming book (about Charles Homer Martin) mentions the mateship which existed among the young men of the Hawkesbury, nearly all of whom were the sons of convicts. Many became the hardy young men who pioneered the outback. They stuck together as mates, even with the likes of Captain Thunderbolt, the famous gentleman bushranger who was a Hawkesbury lad.

Given Australia's small population at the start of the Great War, a high proportion of the servicemen we honored today must have been the descendants of our convict settlers, their mateship sealed by decades of struggle against, and often triumph over, adversity.

As I walked home I passed many cars parked illegally (on footpaths, in driveways, too close to intersections, in turning circles of nearby streets), all evidence of people arriving too late to find parking and caught by surprise at how early everyone now arrives. These latecomers were clearly desperate to get to the service on time. Today was a tribute to the ongoing willingness of large numbers of people to stand silently, today in the pouring rain, recognising the suffering and sacrifice of those who've gone before us, even if we all acknowledge the ultimate futility and sadness of war.

My visit to Bomana War Cemetery outside Port Moresby taught me that lesson when I was 22 years old. For now, I'd like to see the history lesson delivered to the large crowds each Anzac Day extend a little further in the scope of its coverage of 'the spirit of Australia'. Even a sentence or two providing the background to 'mateship' would help to avoid what seems to be a growing cultural acceptance that Australia's history virtually began at Gallipoli.

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