Blog category - Collection Highlights
The Dinkum Oil
30 September 2010 by Nicholas Schmidt.
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ANZACS online,Collection Highlights,From the collection,News,Wartime
This afternoon I will be talking about an interesting collection, held in the Memorial’s Research Centre, on Canberra’s 666 ABC Drive program. (Update: listen to it here)
While serving overseas Australian servicemen and women have often produced publications for their own entertainment and the Memorial collects these in the Troopship and Unit Serials collection. The collection is diverse including publications from the Boer War up to the Peacekeeping in 1980s. However, I think the First World War publications are perhaps the most interesting as they were often less regulated. This means that a lot of the character and humor of the First AIF is able to shine though. My favorite is a trench newspaper which was created during the Gallipoli campaign, The Dinkum Oil .
The Dinkum Oil is an early and unique example of trench newspapers and can be seen as an important way in which the ANZAC ‘legend’ has been transmitted and understood as copies were sent home to families and extracts were published in various newspapers.
The Dinkum Oil. First edition.Nothing Like the Real Thing
12 July 2010 by Daniel McGlinchey.
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Collection,Collection Highlights
Recently while cataloguing battlefield relics from Fromelles I came across an item I had not seen before, a German ersatz (substitute) sandbag made from paper. A search on the Memorial’s database shows that this was not the only item that used substitute material; there are many items in the collection, including an ersatz felt pickelhaube (spiked helmet) and a packet of ersatz ‘coffee’. As with France and Britain during the First World War, Germany brought in measures to save resources for the war effort, these shortages of material and food affected civilians and military alike.
read on
A collection of First World War fundraising badges
11 June 2010 by Pen Roberts.
2 Comments
Collection,Collection Highlights,From the collection,New acquisitions
“.. give what you can, give a little of your happiness, a little of your well-being and a lot of your soul.”
These words are an English translation of a 1916 French poster for “Journée Nationale des Orphelins” (National Orphans’ Day).
Christmas cards
23 December 2009 by Kerrie Leech.
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Collection,Collection Highlights,From the collection, Private Records
At Christmas time most people take the opportunity to stop and think about family and friends and pass on their greetings and well wishes by means of the traditional Christmas card. The Memorial holds an interesting collection of Christmas cards – different types, various shapes and sizes, and from all conflicts. One of our earlier and more unusual Christmas cards can be seen below. read on
Proactive Collecting with HMAS Parramatta
04 November 2009 by Alexandra Orr.
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Collection,Collection Highlights,From the collection,New acquisitions,News,Personal Stories, HMAS Parramatta, Iraq., Operation CATALYST, Royal Australian Navy
HMAS Parramatta (author's collection)The Australian War Memorial faces unique challenges presented by the modern age to its collection development for recent conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan. With email, phones and internet communicative tools largely replacing traditional keepsakes such as diaries and letters, this has made identifying and retaining objects of the ADF experience in modern conflict rather difficult. Furthermore, given that the number of ADF personnel serving overseas is far less than those who saw service in such conflicts as the World Wars, this also limits the amount of material representing recent conflicts and therefore what will shape the Memorial’s collections in the future.
One attempt to address this issue involved a representative from the Memorial being sent, in late 2008 to accompany Australian forces in Iraq. Mal Booth, former Head of the Memorial’s Research Centre, was fortunate enough spend time with Australian forces in Iraq and was able to identify and target items which would be of interest to the Memorial. Some of this material was identified on the industrious HMAS Parramatta, which was at that time conducting its second tour of the Gulf as part of Operation CATALYST. Mal travelled with the ship on his journey and found that the vessel and its crew provided extensive opportunities for proactive collecting.
In September 2009, the Memorial returned to HMAS Parramatta in order to gather further material…
German Official and Regimental Histories
20 October 2009 by Mel Hunt.
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Collection Highlights,From the collection
The Memorial’s Research Centre holds over 900 First World War German Official and Regimental Histories in its Published Collection. These extensive holdings of rare German language histories are mainly due to the foresight and enthusiasm of Capt. J. J. Herbertson who was instrumental in the collection of these titles over the period 1922-1937.
A view of some of the 900 plus German histories held in the stacks.
A selection of German Regimental histories from the Published Collection.Official record series AWM47 provides the best context for Herbertson’s work in its series description. AWM47, 1914-18 war information obtained from Germany for the Australian Official War Historian is a small series of mostly German records, which Herbertson was employed to locate and translate:
“At the suggestion of the Director of the War Memorial (Major J L Treloar) and the Official Historian (C E W Bean) arrangements were made in January 1923, by the Prime Minister’s Department through the High Commissioner’s Office in London, to engage Captain J J W Herbertson to collect certain information from German sources. This was required to complete the war records in the Australian War Memorial Library.
In 1916-17, Herbertson had been an intelligence officer attached to 1st Anzac Corps. In the 1920′s he was Political Officer for the British Department of the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission at Coblenz. Herbertson acknowledges the willing assistance of the German authorities, especially Herr Archivrat Stenger of the Reichsarchives in Potsdam”.
Official Record AWM47 Series Description
A selection of Regimental Histories held in the Published Collection.“also responsible for arranging the acquisition of a number of German publications for the War Memorial Library”.
This is why the Research Centre is lucky enough to hold such a large and almost complete collection of First World War German language Official and Regimental Histories.
The histories which include German official histories and German, Bavarian, Prussian and Saxon unit histories can be located on our books database using the following subject searches:
World War, 1914-1918 – Regimental histories – Germany.; (870 books)
Unit histories, German.; (957 books)
Official histories, German.; (43 books)
The Swinden collection
29 September 2009 by Pen Roberts.
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Collection Highlights,From the collection,New acquisitions,News
Greg Swinden (PAIU 2008-157.03)
The Not So Great Escape
12 August 2009 by Alexandra Orr.
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Collection,Collection Highlights,From the collection,New acquisitions,News,Personal Stories, Escape Maps, HMAS Sydney, HSK Kormoran, Prisoner of War, Theodore Detmers
On the 19th November 1941, Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney II was lost, with all hands, off the coast of Western Australia after engaging with the German raider HSK Kormoran. The discovery in March 2008 of the final resting place of the Sydney and the Kormoran attracted much attention. Understandably, there has been much discussion over the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Sydney; however the story of the Kormoran’s Commander, Theodor Anton Detmers, and that of his crew, continued long after the battle. Almost a week after the sinking of the Kormoran, Detmers was picked up in a lifeboat along with other crewmen. Brought to Australia as a prisoner of war, he and several of his countrymen were detained in Dhurringile Prison Camp, Victoria. It was not long before the Commander and his countrymen had formulated a plan to escape their fortress using a hand-drawn map of Australia’s east coast, now held by the Australian War Memorial.
Group portrait of German Officer prisoners of war (POWs) interned at Dhurringile. Detmers is in the front row, third from left. 030185_05Preserving Gallipoli aerial photographs
20 July 2009 by Mel Hunt.
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Collection Highlights,Conservation,From the collection
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The Research Centre holds a fascinating and unusual collection of 68 aerial photographs of Gallipoli in 1915. The majority of the collection consists of 48 numbered aerial photographs taken over Anzac and South Suvla by the British Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) in October and November 1915 at a time when aerial photography was very much in its infancy and highly experimental.
Much of the early aerial photography at Gallipoli was conducted by Flight Lieutenant C. H. Butler of No. 3, RNAS. From April to June in 1915, when he was badly wounded, Butler would personally take over 700 photographs of fortifications and gun positions before the landing at Gallipoli.
At the war’s end It was soon discovered by the Memorial that these aerial photos were not suitable ‘for permanent record purposes’. In the field, early issue of the photographs was more important than permanency and many of the prints were insufficiently washed and liable to fade, so it was arranged for permanent prints to be prepared (AWM16 5). Despite being ‘Treated for Permanency’ by the Memorial in the 1930s, as suggested by the Royal Photographic Society, these Gallipoli aerial photographs have since faded and yellowed to the point where the images were virtually unusable.
With the help of our multimedia section, a project was undertaken to photographically restore these images to their former glory.
Often when old prints have faded they will become a yellow or brown colour. By using a blue filter and an increased exposure to make a new negative for each image we were able to restore contrast and density levels.
Even when very little detail is seen by the naked eye in the original print, a blue filter (Kodak Wratten filter number 47B) can pick up much of the unseen information. The blue filter works by reducing the yellow content, and teamed with increased exposure the original detail (before fading) is able to be restored and seen in the new negative and print. It can then be further enhanced using Photoshop if required.
This process reminds us of the importance of proven traditional photographic techniques, especially because a lot of what we are working with is quite old and sometimes unstable.
Dr Phoebe Chapple: The first woman doctor to win the Military Medal
30 June 2009 by Craig Blanch.
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Collection,Collection Highlights,From the collection,News,Personal Stories, First World War, Heraldry, military medal, People, Western Front, women in war
Phoebe Chapple was always going to be someone special. She grew up in a family of high achievers. Apart from her father, Frederic Chapple, who was headmaster at Prince Alfred College Adelaide, five of her seven siblings held university degrees: Alfred a lecturer in engineering at St John’s University Cambridge; Ernest, another Cambridge graduate at Jesus University and president of the Fresher Debating Society before taking up a position in Rangoon, Burma; Harold a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in London; Marian an arts graduate from the University of Adelaide; and Fred, another doctor. However, Phoebe stood apart even in such accomplished company.
