Country Victorian Anzac honoured at Australian War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial in Canberra will be commemorating the service and sacrifice of Talbot resident Second Lieutenant Vivian Gilbert Garner at the Last Post Ceremony on Thursday 25 September 2025.

“Vivian Garner was born in 1890 in Talbot, Victoria. He was one of eight children born to cab proprietor James Garner and his wife Helen,” Australian War Memorial Director, Matt Anderson said.

“After he left school, he moved to Melbourne to work for Victorian Railways. He was a clerk there when the First World War broke out in 1914.”

Vivian Garner was among the first young men in his district to enlist. He joined the Australian Imperial Force on the 18th of September 1914 and was assigned to A Company of the 14th Infantry Battalion with the rank of corporal.

At the end of April 1917, he was commissioned as second lieutenant and then posted to general reinforcements, before making his way to the Western Front in mid-May. He re-joined the 14th Battalion after the 4th Brigade’s disastrous attack on Bullecourt a month earlier.

On the 8 August, Garner ventured out with some of his men to reconnoitre the area they would be holding. As they were returning to their lines when an enemy sniper began firing. The group of men dashed towards the company headquarters in a nearby pillbox, but Garner was not with them. He was 27 years old.

The Last Post ceremony is held at 4.30 pm every day except Christmas Day in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial.

Each ceremony shares the story behind one of 103,000 names on the Roll of Honour. To date, the Memorial has delivered more than 4,100 ceremonies, each featuring an individual story of service from colonial to recent conflicts. It would take more than 280 years to read the story behind each of the 103,000 names listed on the Roll of Honour.

“The Last Post Ceremony is our commitment to remembering and honouring the legacy of Australian service,” Memorial Director Matt Anderson said.

“Through our daily Last Post Ceremony, we not only acknowledge where and how these men and women died. We also tell the stories of who they were when they were alive, and of the families who loved and, in so many cases, still mourn for them.

 “The Last Post is now associated with remembrance but originally it was a bugle call to sound the end of the day’s activities in the military. It is a fitting way to end each day at the Memorial.”

The Last Post Ceremony honouring the service of Second Lieutenant Vivian Gilbert Garner will be live streamed to the Australian War Memorial’s YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/awmlastpost.

The stories told at the Last Post Ceremony are researched and written by the Memorial’s military historians, who begin the process by looking at nominal rolls, attestation papers and enlistment records before building profiles that include personal milestones and military experiences.

HANDOUT images: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1300786