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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-11-15 Daily Xml
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Remembrance Day

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:55): I rise today to inform the house about our southern communities moving remembrance ceremony on 11 November at Morphett Vale within my electorate of Reynell. I am always both impressed and touched by how giving and generous our local veteran community is and by their ongoing willingness to reach out to our broader southern community to make sure that we have the opportunity to remember and reflect together, to understand our past better, and to give our thanks for everything our veterans, past and present, have done for all of us.

It is always a deep honour to be asked to lay a wreath at the Eternal Flame in Morphett Vale for the Morphett Vale Returned and Services League Sub Branch. As always, it was moving that our community once again came together to pay our deep and heartfelt respect for those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. I understand that another service also took place at the other RSL in our southern community, the fabulous Port Noarlunga Christies Beach RSL. I have been trying for many years to be in two, or sometimes more, places at once but, alas, to date it has proved impossible. I am sure that they also similarly commemorated our fallen in a moving fashion, and I understand that the member for Kaurna had the pleasure of joining them there.

The RSL Morphett Vale Sub Branch is an extremely active and important part of our southern community. The RSL places significant importance on remembrance and commemoration of those service men and women who have passed away. They also actively educate and engage with our community, particularly in our local schools, about the role of Australians in conflict, and are particularly committed to raising awareness amongst our young people.

Together with other organisations, including my office, each year they collaboratively hold an ANZAC youth vigil prior to our dawn service, with young people stationed at our local Eternal Flame at Morphett Vale all night, and they welcome our community to the dawn service in the early hours of ANZAC Day. In a similar vein, it was wonderful that as always the Wirreanda Secondary School band played at the Remembrance Day service last Friday and were an integral part of leading us in song to remember our fallen.

Our Morphett Vale RSL's dawn service is renowned across the state for providing emotional and stirring tributes to our past and present service men and women. With in excess of 10,000 people in attendance each year, the magnificent, well-run and moving service holds a significant place in the hearts of many in our southern community. With a series of rolling 100-year commemorations of the events of the First World War, we remember that 1916 was a terrible year with the Battle of the Somme, where Australians saw action with some 23,000 casualties. As Charles Bean reported in his official history of Australian participation in WWI:

They're not heroes. They do not intend to be thought or spoken of as heroes. They're just ordinary Australians, doing their particular work as their country would wish them to do it. And pray God, Australians in days to come will be worthy of them.

I have had the opportunity to contribute to the Pozieres Memorial in France, a distinct honour as that Pozieres ridge is, in the words of Charles Bean, 'more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth'.

Remembrance Day also recalls the battle at Villers-Brettonneux, a village that holds a special place in the heart of Australians. Exactly three years to the day after the disastrous military campaign of Gallipoli, Australian troops broke through the German positions and the French and Australian flags were raised over the town. Australian troops established a new front line marking the end of the German offensive on the Somme. A British general called the ANZAC attack perhaps the greatest individual feat of the war; 1,200 Australians died in the assault, a not uncommon occurrence in a war when so many died.

What is remarkable is how the French chose to remember this sacrifice. Kangaroos feature over the entrance to the town hall, the main street is named Rue de Melbourne, and the school, built through donations of Australian schoolchildren, has emblazoned across the school blackboards and playground: 'Do not forget Australia'. The children of Villers-Bretonneux continue to learn about the soldiers from half a world away who liberated their towns from the enemy. It is a special place for Australians and the French alike. To come together a century later in our local community to remember these tragic moments that also represent courage, mateship and camaraderie, together with our own young people, is very special.

On the day after Remembrance Day, last Saturday, together with Amanda Rishworth (the member for Kingston) and Chris Picton (the member for Kaurna), I also had the opportunity to attend a magnificent book launch by the Fleurieu Peninsula Family History Group. At the Port Noarlunga Arts Centre, they took the time to take us through the many and moving stories they had collated about local men and women who lived among our forebears in our southern community 100 years ago and also entered that World War I battlefield. It was particularly touching that at that book launch descendants led the way in speaking about the fallen and those who came back to live in our southern community. It was also wonderful to have our local Army cadets as part of that launch.

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