Why Did I Write About This?
8 March, 2008 : I am standing at the gate of the cemetery, wondering what I am in for. Inside
the boundary hedge, four rows of low, white, uniform crosses, each engraved with a minimum
of simple, black lettering, mark the graves of airmen and soldiers. There are no stone slabs, no
footstones, and the grass is neatly mown. Not so many compared to the war cemeteries in
Europe, but this is rural New South Wales and a long way from any front line.
Sprawling away up the slope is the comparative jumble of the civilian cemetery, now closed. I
have walked those paths as historian, teacher and writer. The more recent, closer graves are
easily distinguishable by the heavy, highly polished slabs of black, grey, or red-flecked stone.
Lettering is predominantly in gold, silver, and black, large and easily read. Markers vary in
height also, and the quantity of prose. Singles, doubles and families. Bronzed Defence badges
adorn a few grave-markers from the late fifties onwards. Further along among the older
graves, tall spires, some topped with a sculpture, strike up from the mottled mass, marking the
resting place of folk with means or position, or both. Mausoleums stand out, different, in an
area of weathering, sandy headstones marking carefully bordered plots. Sometimes, though,
there is only a footstone left, the headstone smashed or disintegrated, or the wooden cross of
the poor long perished and forgotten. Way over, a small number of Chinese graves are set apart
– heathen burials. Across the back is a long line of uniform crosses. These mark the graves of
the Presentation Sisters who died in service at the Mt Erin Convent from the 1880s. The
section that disturbs me most is in the older part: that set aside for the burial of children,
infants and babes. The eldest was four years old; the youngest was still-born. Some were
siblings who died within days of each other. The few words bespeak unimaginable grief, even
years later to this stranger, softened only by their inclusion in the broad sweep of human
experience that always includes death.
I do not sense that sweep of life across the gate in the military cemetery. Those regimented
crosses speak to me of lives wasted – young lives, because we only send our fit young men off
to war. The prospect of walking among them is strangely daunting and confronting for me. In
all my twenty-seven years living in Wagga, I’d never set foot in it. There had been no reason to.
This sort of military matter was a recent interest. I was too young to be aware of Vietnam in
any meaningful way, just old enough to be caught up with the wave of anti-nuclear protest that,
for me, crested in the late seventies and powered through the eighties. In the eighties I was a
peace marcher – Palm Sundays spent out on the streets of various Riverina towns with
hundreds of others, feeling embarrassed by the hot-heads with the megaphones trying to whip
up a chant for the television cameras, but also feeling like we were on the frontline of
something vital. I refused to attend Anzac services or parades for decades, believing the
ceremonies were rationalising something I abhorred. My heroes were Mahatma Gandhi and
Martin Luther King, Jr. I feel grim. Later, I write in my journal: ‘They say that generals are
always willing to fight the last war again. Well let them. Send them.’
I stand at the gate and wonder again ‘Why am I here?’ Answer: John Winterbottom. John is a
local historian, archivist, character and himself a walking archive of the Riverina. I went to him
for help with researching my novel. I wanted to learn about the RAAF training bases near
Wagga Wagga in 1943 – specifically 1943. With my embryonic novel outlined, he said, ‘You’ve
got to write about the Kapooka Tragedy!’ I knew Kapooka because I lived in San Isidore, a fiveacre settlement alongside the base, for nearly twenty years. The settlement and the base had
been neighbours since the late fifties and, like many neighbours, their history together was a
little chequered. Mothers of babies and infants did not take kindly to pre-dawn route marches
along their streets in the early days; our fire brigade helped them put out grass fires and
supervised a major burn-off in my time; the commander allowed we fellows from the local
homeless men’s shelter to collect firewood from their paddocks in a major, annual operation;
some of our kids raided their dump; we listened to their band on Monday mornings and
grenade and bayonet practice whenever. Night exercises were usually conducted so as to be
over by a reasonable hour for the residents to get a decent night’s sleep.
I’d never heard of a Tragedy. John couldn’t believe that someone with with nearly thirty years
in the city and an interest in history could be ignorant of it. He proceeded to enlighten me with
a passionate explanation of the event – the biggest, the most – and the reasons why the story
ought to be written – so many lives, forgotten. I wasn’t keen. When I evinced my doubts –
wrong time, wrong project, BIG story – he said, ‘Go and take a walk through the Military
Cemetery.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Just do it,’ he said.
But I still wasn’t keen. We were two months past our deadline for moving to Tasmania. Time
was short, the days were shortening and the list of things to do wasn’t. On my next trip along
Kapooka Lane to the Uranquinty tip, I found the spot John described and stopped at the little
plaque which commemorated the event. It was less than three kilometres from home in the car.
I looked across the paddock. Just an ordinary paddock, except perhaps for the high, thick,
concrete wall next to the hayshed.
Now, short weeks later, I am hesitating at the gate. Beside the entrance, a shiny, newish board
beside the surrounding hedge summarises the event known as The Kapooka Tragedy and lists
the names of those buried here. Twenty-six – still the largest, single, military funeral on
Australian soil – an event of significance, largely forgotten. There are more than twenty-six
graves in there, but my attention is focused on the twenty-six and the event that cast them
together. There is nothing to gain from this, I had thought. It is outside the scope of the novel
and that is what I want to write, so I am here partly to humour my historian-archivist mate but
also because, if he thinks it is worth doing, then it is. I wonder if I will learn anything I don’t
already know.
Through the gate the four rows of graves split by a grassy aisle. The uniform crosses bear the
same information in the same pattern: name, rank, serial number, date of death and age. At the
foot of each is a memorial phrase. I wonder whether the families chose these. The twenty-six
are not buried side by side; they are scattered through the cemetery in small groups, but it is
obvious who they are. Seeing the date repeated, 21 May 1945, over and over, has a profound
effect on me. To hear John talk about the numbers involved was a cerebral experience: I was
struck by the size of the event and the enormity of the aftermath, Australia’s largest military
funeral on home soil in my adopted home town, but it was still nothing to do with me really. It
was another interesting but unconnected fact… Until I walked through that cemetery. Until I
looked at each cross marked 21 May 1945. Twenty-six of them. That and the ages – so many
were no older than the kids I’d been teaching. Outside, I copy down their names and details
from the board. The names mean nothing to me. They could be anyone. They are only
important to me because they are part of he twenty-six.
I walk the rows a second and third time, making another list of the others buried in the
cemetery. I note their dates of death and circle those who died in ’42 and ’43, still with an eye
on the novel: perhaps one of these can provide the material I want about a serviceman who is
killed in 1943, leaving a wife to raise their child alone.
16 March, 2013: In the land of my memory, my image seems ghostly. Pale. As I reconstruct the
memory here, now, from the notes I made then, I feel the sombre mood from that hour’s walk.
There is no past or present in the feeling. They are one.
John was right. Walking in the cemetery changed something in me. It left me with this abiding,
sombre awareness that this really was a tragedy. ‘The Kapooka Tragedy’ was not a hyperbole,
but when I looked at the list on the board, they were all strangers. They could have been
anyone. I was in awe of the number. No – I was awed by what the number meant. Each grave in
the whole place marked a gap in the lives of the living left to mourn. Twenty-six – so many
families, friends, beloveds, colleagues, workers, neighbours… So many holes in the already
messy weave of life. I remember the board with its title, ‘The Kapooka Tragedy’, the brief
description and the twenty-six names, and I see my hand copying them down. Each means
nothing to me. Ages vary and service numbers tell in which state they enlisted, but the names
are just names. I don’t know them yet. They are only important collectively. I wanted that to
change.
Despite the emotional engagement with it and the keen, multilayered but inexplicable sense
that here was a significant event, the Kapooka story still existed outside me. And I was a writer
on another mission. The novel was personal, from within me. I felt a duty towards it: there was
no-one else to tell it. Without my attention, it would evaporate. And I had already invested a
huge amount of effort in researching it. I walked away from the Kapooka Tragedy.
On 7 May 2008, we drove out of San Isidore, past Kapooka and through Uranquinty, down to
Melbourne to catch the Spirit of Tasmania across Bass Strait. I was not aware then of how deep
and lasting the effect of that confrontation in the cemetery was. The next few years may be
summarised thus: we settle into our little patch of paradise; I finish the novel and start
teaching again; I finalise and print four family histories; I rewrite the novel three or four times
as it is ignored by publishers. Dad dies. Finally, in 2013, I decide to self-publish and now it is
done.
All the while, the Kapooka story niggled away. From 2011, there was a many a late night
session spent trawling through online archives and websites when I didn’t want to do anything
else and I’d spent all my pocket money on eBay. The thrill of the chase was rising again.
Research, unattended, can deteriorate into Researchitis. A hazardous condition in itself, it may
also be a symptom of a more sinister condition: Procrastination. As the research notes pile up,
the task of bringing some order to it all may become overwhelming. Much of the motivation to
complete this project, however, has come from the developing relationships with the people
whose story this is. I want to finish this project out of respect for their generosity, to
acknowledge their loss and grief and to create in this something of a memorial to the memory
of those they lost to war. Their enthusiasm and their gratitude have been great support.