Memorial Articles

Driver Percy Gordon Hendy was serving on Gallipoli in November 1915 when he sent Christmas wishes to his family back home in Melbourne, written on a hard tack biscuit.

On 25 December 1916, Thomas Charles Doe sent Christmas wishes to his family in Melbourne in a handwritten note which he sealed inside a bottle and threw overboard as his troopship sailed for the war in Europe.

Peter Wilkinson OAM was six years old when the telegram came. His father, Lieutenant Commander Alexander Wilkinson, had been killed on board HMAS Sydney during the Second World War.

Len Davies was a 19-year-old rear gunner when he was ordered to bale out of his burning Lancaster bomber during a night raid over Germany.

Just after dawn on 7 December 1941 Japanese planes launched from aircraft carriers struck the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Their primary target was the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Perhaps the first use of a kangaroo image on a warship occurred in 1852 with the launch of the Royal Navy’s HMS Kangaroo.

Reverend John Howell-Price and his wife Isabel would farewell five of their six sons off to serve during the First World War. Only two would make it home.

George Wheatley will never forget the day his father died. It was 13 November 1965, and his father, Kevin “Dasher” Wheatley VC, was on a search and destroy mission with a platoon of South Vietnamese soldiers in Vietnam.

Ada Rayner was nine years old when she watched her father, Percy Larkin, march at the opening of the Australian War Memorial 80 years ago.