ANZAC DAY...Reflections From My Childhood.
ANZAC Day, the 25 April, one of the most sacred days on the Australian calendar is fast approaching. For many hundreds of thousands of us Australians around the world, we stop and honour the brave men and women in the armed services who fought and are fighting in conflicts around the world.
The 25 April, 1915 is particularly important as it was the day in which brave Aussie and Kiwi men in the early morning stormed the shores of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Thousands of Australian and New Zealand men died tragically during that campaign in World War One.
So how did children throughout Western Australia learn about ANZAC Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) a most sacred day ? Trove, the database of the National Library of Australia contains many articles and photographs about how children as a part of a school and wider community paid tribute over the last hundred or so years. But before I share those stories I am going to share some about my childhood traditions.
When I was a child growing up during the 1960's and 1970's I lived in the suburb of Greenmount on the outskirts of Perth. For seven of those years I went to school at Greenmount Primary built on Blackboy Hill. Blackboy Hill during World War One was the training ground for the Australian Imperial Forces. After the war a memorial was built and the Blackboy Hill Commemorative Site established to honour those involved in conflicts. 
My school education (and for those students generations on) include the ANZAC tradition. In the days before ANZAC Day, we would attend a service at the memorial as children and the surrounding schools still do today. Every year we learned about the legend of the ANZACS and the sacrifices these brave men and women made for our country. One of those men in particular, was sister and I and our friends use to walk to school, we walked down Old York Road, then into Innamincka Road where we would pass a memorial to Hugo Throssell, the war veteran from the 10th Light Horse Regiment, who was awarded the Victoria Cross. The memorial was built in 1954. He was married to and lived in a house opposite the memorial with the well known West Australian writer Katherine Susannah Pritchard. Years later when doing family research I found out my great uncle Darcy Logan Wheelock, my grandmother's brother was in same regiment as Hugo Throssell, the 10th Light Horse Regiment.
The ANZAC tradition that has formed is an important part of the Australian identity with the meaning and interest in participation changing and growing over the years. Commemorative services are held at dawn, the time of the original landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula at memorials and significant sites in Australia, New Zealand and around the world followed by a march. The ANZAC legend is honoured at sporting events held in the round for example, the AFL, NRL and SuperRugby.
Last year most ceremonies and marches including those in Perth and local suburbs were cancelled due to COVID-19. The soldiers were not forgotten. For those with driveways they were asked to stand in them to remember. At dawn in my apartment in a drop, dead quiet Subiaco I could hear the "Last Post" being played by a lone bugler and I stood to pay my respects and remember. It was very moving indeed.
In 2014 an article was published in the West Australian newspaper about the relationship between Greenmount Primary School and the Blackboy Hill Commemorative Site. The first volunteer camp was set up there in August 1914 and the first soldiers trained and sailed to war from there. The article is copied below. No copyright infringement intended.
The photographs of the Hugo Throssell memorial and Blackboy Hill Commemorative Site in Greenmount are from the Monument Australia site at momumentaustralia.org.au . No copyright infringement intended.
The photograph of John Simpson and his donkey at Gallipoli is from Trove, the database at the National Library of Australia. No copyright infringement intended.
School celebrates link with Diggers' camp The West Australian 15 August 2014
For 50 years, successive generations of students at Greenmount Primary School have had a unique link to one of WA's most important historical sites.
The school sits on a portion of what was the birthplace of WA's involvement in World War I - the Blackboy Hill training camp.
This year the link will come into special focus as the State marks 100 years since the camp was set up and the first soldiers marched and then sailed off to war.
The first volunteer soldiers set up camp at Blackboy Hill on August 17, 1914.
The 11th Battalion, the first raised in WA, marched out of camp on the morning of October 31, 1914, caught the train to Fremantle and departed on the transport ships Ascanius and Medic, which were joined on November 3 by a giant convoy carrying Australian and New Zealand soldiers which had left Albany on November 1.
By the end of the war in 1918, a total of 32,000 men out of a total State population of about 320,000 had trained at the Blackboy Hill camp.
In 1957, the RSL asked that a portion of the land be used as a commemorative site and Greenmount Primary School was built on a portion of the site in 1964.
The school has collected historic books and photographs as well as military insignias, equipment, bottles and buttons dug up on the site, and proudly displays them in its foyer.
Greenmount students attend Anzac Day services at the site each year and have been working on Anzac projects and profiles of soldiers that they will submit to the nearby Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre, which is working on a book about Blackboy Hill.
The school will be part of events to commemorate the departure of the first soldiers in 1914, which will include storytelling, music and memorabilia displays on the school oval on the evening of October 30.
On October 31, a commemorative service will take place at the site memorial, followed by a re-enactment by military cadets of the train journey from Blackboy Hill to Fremantle.
The Greenmount school choir will sing the school song at the Blackboy Hill service.
School principal Lucy Webb said that the association with the site helped students better understand Australia's history and identity.
Year 6 student Bianca Kassinas, 11, said researching the Anzac story helped students understand "why Australia is the way it is today".
Lest We Forget, ANZAC Day, 2021.
