Radio propaganda and the kindness of strangers

15 January 2010 by Alessandro Antonello. 1 Comment
Collection,New acquisitions,News, Prisoners of war, Propaganda

In 1944, Yvonne Jobling was a schoolgirl studying shorthand.  Every evening at her home in Geelong, Victoria, she practiced her shorthand by listening to the radio.  On Friday, 17 March 1944, she happened to be listening to the short-wave broadcast of Radio Tokyo, and heard messages from Australian prisoners of war. 

Collection of letters sent to Yvonne Jobling, March 1944 (PR04494).

Jobling took the messages of five prisoners of war, and sent them to their families across Australia.  A few days later families in Katoomba (NSW), Fairfield (NSW), Petersham (NSW), Adelaide (South Australia) and Sunshine (Victoria), received these welcome messages.  Each family responded with deep gratitude.  Mrs Barber of Petersham thanked Yvonne for her kind letter, and told her that ‘my heart has been aching for news of him’.  Nancy of Adelaide, sister of Robert Louis Whitington (SX8121), wrote: ‘If you have a friend or brother a prisoner I sincerely trust you have received news of him ‘ere this.’

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Recent acquisitions: nominal roll of 2/8th Battalion

07 January 2010 by Craig Berelle. 2 Comments
From the collection,New acquisitions,News

Official Records is pleased to announce the acquisition of original nominal roll cards of the 2/8th Australian Infantry Battalion into the National Collection. The nominal roll has been catalogued as AWM359 on the RecordSearch database.

Card of Lt-Col John Mitchell DSO*, first CO of the 2/8th Battalion

Provenance

Each card presents a record of service for an individual unit member. Their creation during the Second World War appears to have been an initiative of the battalion itself; i.e. they were not required to keep them, nor are they on official forms. Responsibility fell to each of the four company clerks of the battalion to create, manage and safeguard the cards. At the end of the war, the cards were transferred to Secretary of the 2/8th Association. The collection was managed as a membership database of the Association until they ceased activity in 2007.  Later that year the cards were offered to the Memorial.

Content

AWM359 consists of index cards, one for each individual of the battalion, upon which detailed service information is entered. The top section identifies the soldier’s regimental number, name and rank. The middle section (‘Remarks’) records the date and nature of his service. Typically, these consisted of routing, embarkation, battles and operations, injury, evacuation, promotion and home leave. The bottom of the card lists next of kin (relationship and address), date of birth, religion, civil occupation, date of enlistment, date of joining battalion and previous unit or regiment (if applicable).

Men of 2/8th Battalion at Wewak in June 1945 093462

Arrangement

The nominal roll is arranged alphabetically, reflecting the way the cards were used by the association secretary.  They were subdivided as follows:

• Main roll (Items 1-8)
• Soldiers as members of the battalion for only a short time (9-10)
• Officers (11)
• Members killed in action (12)
• Members taken prisoner of war (13)

In order to safeguard the handling of the collection, the cards have now been divided into manageable quantities and housed in archival quality containers.

These records form an additional valuable source of information useful to researchers of individual soldiers or those researching the battalion as a whole.  They should be used in conjunction with the official service records held by the National Archives of Australia and the 2/8th unit war diaries held by the Memorial.

First World War unit war diaries – digitising the final page

06 January 2010 by Theresa Cronk. 20 Comments
ANZACS online,News

There was movement in the Research Centre yesterday afternoon as news spread about a momentous event in the history of the AWM4 First World War unit war diaries digitisation project. For those who have been involved in this project, space was not an issue as we crammed into the digitisation room to witness the scanning of the final page at 2pm on 5 January 2010.

The final page to be scanned for the AWM4 digitisation project

The final page was taken from the unit war diary of the Australian Base Post Office, Egyptian Expeditionary Force for January 1919, item AWM 4 17/3/8. Titled, “A statement of mail handled at the Australian Base Post Office”, this document records the numbers of letters, packets and parcels unloaded from SS Wyreema on 27 January 1919. These figures also include details of the amount of items originating in each Australian state and an estimate of the date they were posted.

Scanning the final page of AWM4

Planning for the AWM4 digitisation project commenced in 2005 with the aim to make digital copies available for research online to preserve the original documents. Following a tender contract process, the first page was scanned by Document Imaging Services (DIS) in December 2006.

Since then, approximately 500 000 pages have been scanned. The scanning of the final page is the latest significant event in a project that has passed many milestones whilst edging closer to completion through the collaboration of Memorial staff and DIS.

Some of the people who worked on the AWM4 project over the past three years

These diaries document the daily activities of military units on active service in the First World War and supplement the war diaries from other conflicts that are already available online. The digital versions of these files are available on the Australian Army War Diaries web page on the Australian War Memorial’s website.

Christmas cards

23 December 2009 by Kerrie Leech. No comments
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

Memorial’s digitisation project shortlisted for cultural award

18 December 2009 by Robyn Van Dyk. No comments
Collection

The Australian War Memorial’s Bean diaries digitisation project was short listed for the Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards – 2009. The Award recognises outstanding contributions to the quality of Australian cultural life in 2009.

The digitisation of these fragile bound diaries represented a significant achievement for the Memorial. Personal records are not always presented in a logical or chronological order. The challenge for the Memorial’s Research Centre was to digitise all of Charles Bean’s 286 volumes of diaries, notebooks and folders without damaging them and to make the digital images of the records accessible and usable in the online environment without interfering with the integrity of the original documents.

Our intention of displaying this valuable collection online means that the original records are now preserved and this  historically significant and unique collection is available to all researchers across Australia and the world.

The records can be viewed on the Memorial’s website here: http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/war_diaries/cew_bean/

Conservation Cleaning of a Wedding Dress

14 December 2009 by Jessie Firth. 4 Comments
Collection,Conservation,From the collection,Of love and war, Conservation, Dry-cleaning, Exhibition, From the collection, Of Love and War, Textile, wedding dress

Emma Jones previously mentioned in 60 year old sweat on a wedding dress – a conservation challenge the preparation of Miss Platt-Hepworth’s wedding dress for the exhibition Of Love and War. The decision was made by the curator Rebecca Britt to keep the staining as evidence of use. While the staining is important to keep, the fabric was not as lustrous as it once was. The dress has a pattern of pretty daises made from cream silk woven with numerous silver threads. A lot of the silver plating on the metal threads had tarnished and been damaged; this has exposed the copper substrate of the thread and gives the dress a more golden appearance than it originally had.

Due to the presence of the metal threads, I discounted the use of many of the cleaning methods that a textile conservator might normally use such as washing. As any treatment with water could damage the silk or cause further corrosion of the metal I decided to use a solvent to ‘dry-clean’ the dress. Petroleum spirits was my chosen solvent as it is less toxic than a lot of the other dry-cleaning solvents. My tests also indicated that the lustre and handle of the silk would be improved, while leaving the historical staining intact.

Petroleum Sprits is an unpleasant chemical to use, so to ensure our safety we used gloves and respirators. The bath was set up in a large fume extractor in the Large Technology Conservation Workshop, which is usually used to paint tanks!

When historical textiles are being treated it is important to be very gentle so as not to damage the fabric. So for this wedding dress a large bath was used to prevent creases and folds.  During ‘dry-cleaning’ the dress was very gently sponged by hand to move the solvent through the fabric without moving the fabric too much. Once rinsed with more of the solvent, the dress was lifted out of the bath on a nylon netting supporting sling and placed on a hammock (made of more netting) to dry.

The following photographs show Sarah Clayton, Senior Textile Conservator, and myself, ‘dry-cleaning’ Miss Platt-Hepworth’s wedding dress in Petroleum Spirits and the dress drying.

Sarah Clayton and Jessie Firth ‘dry-cleaning’ Miss Platt-Hepworth’s wedding dress

Miss Platt-Hepworth’s wedding dress drying after 'dry-cleaning'

This was a successful treatment; the fabric is fresher and more lustrous after cleaning, whilst the historical stains remain intact. It is now very important that we use gloves when handling this dress, to prevent the natural oils and acids from our skin tarnishing the silver threads again.

“Dorothy” the Kitbag

11 December 2009 by Bridie Kirkpatrick. 3 Comments
Collection,Conservation,Exhibitions,Of love and war, Conservation, Dorothy Lamour, Exhibition, kitbag, Of Love and War, pin-up, Sgn John Conrad Lynam, Textile

Isn’t it funny how things come about? While working on the textiles component for the exhibition Of Love and War a painted kitbag came to me for treatment. The lovely pin-up painted on the bag looked an awful lot like Dorothy Lamour, a beautiful actress known as the “Sarong Girl” in the 1940’s.  As the exhibition will be travelling I had to chuckle that Dorothy Lamour made a string of Bing Crosby/ Bob Hope “On the Road” films. The kitbag belonged to Signaller John Conrad Lynam, a timber cutter from Brisbane. Signaller John appears to have had an artistic hand and a taste for beautiful women.  The kitbag was worn and many years of use and storage had caused abrasions and losses. The paint was also flaking from the canvas, leaving the surface very unstable. The conservation challenge was to find a binding agent to stabilise the paint surface that was strong but flexible and would not discolour the paint or underlying canvas. After much testing a traditional conservation material “Isinglass” was chosen. Isinglass is made from the bladder of the Sturgeon fish and has the consistency of wall paper glue. It was applied sparingly with a small paint brush in conjunction with a wicking solvent.

Applying solvent to "Dorothy" the Kitbag

The kitbag is currently on display and Dorothy is safe to go “On the Road” again.

Rock n’ Roll and the first Radio RAAF Butterworth, Malaysia

09 December 2009 by Pen Roberts. 1 Comment
News

“’Rock Around the Clock’ took the place by storm,” recalls Doug Lewin. “People in Butterworth and Penang loved it.”

This was 1956 and the global hit by “Bill Haley and the Comets” was broadcast through a small radio station set up by the men of RAAF No. 2 Construction Squadron at Butterworth in Malaysia. The squadron was there to construct an airfield strip in Butterworth for the British during the Malayan Emergency. They were housed in a camp of Attap huts next to the construction site, and rock was sourced from a quarry about 5 miles away.

Corporal Doug Lewin in the No. 2 Construction Squadron workshop in Butterworth. Next to him is a D7 tractor, that he was repairing. (Photo courtesy of D Lewin.)

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Evacuation of Gallipoli

09 December 2009 by Kerrie Leech. No comments
Collection,From the collection,Personal Stories

Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey. 17 December 1915. A view of Watson's Pier. During the last days of the evacuation, Anzac Beach, was utterly deserted, but fortunately Turkish airmen, flew too high to notice this. G01287

In mid December, 94 years ago, the preparations to evacuate Gallipoli were well underway. Much has been written about the stealth with which the operation was undertaken.  The Private Record collection at the Memorial has a number of accounts of the evacuation written by those who participated in it.  The account below is from Sergeant Robert Clive Hunter who was serving with 6th Light Horse Regiment at the time.  He recounts his experience in a letter to his parents shortly after the event.   

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Wedding Dresses, Part 3

19 November 2009 by Sarah Clayton. 3 Comments
Conservation,Of love and war, Conservation, Of Love and War, preservation, Textile, wedding dress, Wedding Dresses

Once we determined that the remaining three wedding dresses, requested for the exhibtion Of Love and War, were able to be safely put on display, the textile conservators worked in collaboration with curators and exhibition staff to determine the dimensions of showcase and, the types and styles of mannequins. To get the most accurate dimensions the dresses were placed on temporary mannequins and the trains were arranged as they will fall on display.  In the picture the two wedding dresses in the foreground have undergone no conservation treatment and are on ill-fitting temporary mannequins, the wedding dress in the back is on a mannequin previously custom made for it. 

Wedding dresses for Of Love and War on temporary mannequins

As part of the process of conservation we will ensure that mannequins are custom made for all the wedding dresses and uniforms on display in Of Love and War.  This will ensure that the garments are correctly supported and shaped and that all materials used in the construction of the mannequins are of archival quality.