There is a stillness to this morning that feels different from any other day of the year. It is not just the quiet before dawn, though that is part of it. It is something held, something shared. A pause that stretches across time as much as across place.
ANZAC Day has always been described in large terms. Gallipoli. Sacrifice. Nationhood. These things matter. On 25 April 1915, Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in what became their first major action of the First World War. It was a campaign marked by courage, confusion, and heavy loss.
But the day does not live at that scale.
It lives in smaller things.
It lives in the names read out, not as history, but as people. It lives in the way a medal is held, or worn, or sometimes left in a drawer. It lives in the stories that are told carefully, or not told at all. It lives in the understanding that those who went did not return unchanged, and many did not return at all.
There is often an effort to define the day. To say what it stands for. That has never quite held. ANZAC Day is not a single idea. It gathers together memory, loss, pride, discomfort, gratitude, and at times unease.
It is not a day that celebrates war. It reminds us what war takes, and how completely it takes it.
That is why the silence matters.
Not as ritual alone, but as recognition. In that silence there is space. Space for those who served. Space for those who waited. Space for those who were never asked. Space for those whose stories do not sit easily within the national story.
Time has widened the day beyond Gallipoli. It now holds those who served in later wars, in conflicts, and in peacekeeping. It recognises that the experience of service did not end in 1915, and that the cost has not been confined to one place or one moment.
But even that is not the whole of it.
Remembrance is not only about those who served overseas. It also sits alongside the histories of conflict on this land. Those stories remain, whether they are spoken of or not.
Perhaps that is where the day is most honest.
Not in certainty, but in reflection.
Not in a single story, but in many.
This morning I will stand in that quiet. I will listen. I will think about those who went, and those who did not return, and those who carried it with them for the rest of their lives.
Courage and Compassion: A Stretcher-Bearer’s Journey from No-Man’s Land and Beyond by Don Farrands is best understood as a personal and reconstructive narrative rather than a work of analytical military history. Its purpose is not to explain the First World War in structural terms, but to recover and give shape to one individual life within it, and more importantly, to trace the long consequences of that experience. Read in that light, it becomes a work concerned less with combat than with endurance, memory, and the persistence of damage.
The book’s greatest strength lies in its chosen perspective. By focusing on Nelson Ferguson as a stretcher-bearer, Farrands shifts attention away from combat action and toward exposure, aftermath, and obligation. Ferguson is present at the Somme, Bullecourt, Ypres, and Villers-Bretonneux, but always in a role defined by response rather than initiative. This produces a narrative characterised by constant proximity to violence without the release or resolution typically associated with combat accounts. The experience is one of sustained pressure: movement through danger, repeated confrontation with the wounded, and the accumulation of strain over time. The effect is to foreground a dimension of war often treated as secondary, revealing instead how central such roles are to the functioning—and human cost—of the battlefield.
The book is at its most effective in its treatment of the post-war period. Ferguson’s gassing and subsequent blindness are not presented as a tragic endpoint but as the beginning of a prolonged struggle that reshapes his identity, work, and family life. The loss of his teaching career, the necessity of adaptation, and his eventual work in stained glass all demonstrate the long arc of recovery and adjustment. The later restoration of sight, occurring decades after the war, introduces a note of resolution, but it does not erase the years of impairment that precede it. In this sense, the book insists that war’s consequences are not confined to the battlefield but unfold across a lifetime.
Farrands’ use of family diaries and letters gives the narrative immediacy and authenticity, grounding it in primary material rather than retrospective invention. At the same time, this method shapes the work’s limitations. The story is mediated through a familial perspective, and the tone often leans toward reverence. Suffering is clearly conveyed, but it is not always subjected to deeper interrogation, and the broader structures that produced that suffering remain largely unexamined. The narrative tends to preserve rather than challenge inherited frames of memory, including elements of the Anzac tradition.
There is also a degree of narrative smoothing inherent in the reconstruction. Events are arranged into a coherent arc in which hardship leads toward resilience and eventual resolution. While this gives the book clarity and emotional force, it risks obscuring the fragmentation and discontinuity that characterise much lived wartime experience. The result is a story that feels shaped by hindsight, imposing meaning where the original experience may have been far less ordered.
As history, the book is therefore limited in analytical scope. It does not engage in sustained examination of stretcher-bearing as a system within trench warfare, nor does it explore the organisational or logistical structures that governed medical evacuation and exposure to risk. Instead, it operates as a micro-history centred on lived experience and its aftermath. Its contribution is ethical rather than explanatory, emphasising the centrality of care roles and the enduring impact of war on individuals and families.
In sum, Courage and Compassion is a strong work of human history and memory, but a restrained one in terms of critical analysis. It is most effective when read alongside more structural accounts of the First World War, where it can serve to deepen and complicate understanding. On its own, it offers a compelling but particular perspective, shaped by both its sources and its purpose, and best approached as a study of endurance rather than a comprehensive account of war.
I picked this up fro AU#2.00 and it was worth that. I wouldn’t purchase new.
Another part Daemon part machine for the Blood God.
The Chaos Skull Cannon is a grotesque fusion of infernal machinery and demonic entity that serves as a mobile artillery piece for the legions of Khorne. Built from the scorched brass of the Blood God’s own forges, this engine of war grinds across the battlefield on spiked rollers, macerating the bodies of the fallen into a bloody pulp to fuel its dark appetites.
Within its gaping mechanical maw, the spirits and remains of its victims are transmuted into searing bolts of supernatural fire. When the cannon fires, it launches flaming skulls that scream with the agony of the damned, exploding upon impact to scatter white-hot shrapnel and soul-chilling terror among the enemy ranks.
Operating with a predatory instinct, the machine-beast thrives in the thick of slaughter, as every life harvested by its crushing wheels provides more ammunition for its relentless, pyroclastic barrage.
Beyond its role as a long-range devastator, the Skull Cannon possesses a savage sentience that drives it to seek out the densest clusters of infantry. The Bloodletters who crew the machine do not merely aim a weapon but guide a beast, directing its hunger toward those who attempt to flee the carnage.
As the engine accelerates, the gnashing grinders at its front consume both the living and the dead, stripping flesh from bone with mechanical precision to ensure the furnace within never grows cold. This constant cycle of consumption and combustion makes the vehicle a self-sustaining nightmare, capable of maintaining a terrifying rate of fire so long as the blood continues to flow across the earth.
The psychological impact of the weapon is as lethal as its physical payload, for the projectiles it hurls are infused with a fragment of the victim’s lingering malice. Those struck by the blazing craniums are often incinerated instantly, but survivors are left to contend with the psychic echoes of the screaming ammunition.
The air around the cannon grows thick with the scent of ozone and charred marrow, a sensory assault that breaks the morale of even the most disciplined defenders. In the grand hierarchy of Khorne’s arsenal, the Skull Cannon stands as a testament to the Blood God’s belief that every death should serve a dual purpose, acting as both a sacrifice and a means to harvest even more skulls for the throne.
More Power to the Blood God! I have been looking forward to adding this one to the collection for a long time.
A Soul Grinder is a towering monstrosity that fuses the raw essence of a daemon with the cold lethality of a mechanical war engine. Born from a desperate bargain within the Forge of Souls, this entity consists of a hulking daemonic torso grafted onto a massive, six-legged iron chassis. Its mechanical limbs provide a stable platform for heavy artillery while allowing it to scuttle across the battlefield with a predatory speed that defies its immense bulk.
One arm typically remains a mutated limb of flesh and bone used to wield massive blades or claws, while the other is replaced with a high-caliber harvester cannon or a vomit-spewing maw.
These engines are bound by ironclad oaths to the master smiths of the Warp, compelled to harvest souls to pay off the debt of their construction. On the battlefield, they serve as unstoppable shock troops that bridge the gap between a lumbering tank and a frenzied monster.
Because they possess both the warp-shielded resilience of a daemon and the thick plating of a machine, they are notoriously difficult to destroy. They exist as a literal nightmare of metal and malice, crushing tanks under their piston-driven legs while reaping the spirits of the fallen to fuel their eternal hunger.
A still have a few more toys for the Blood God to add to the collection!
Konongwootong has always been close to my heart as we raised our 4 children in the old WW1 returned Soldier Settlement Konongwootong North Primary School No 4362, which is still owned by my daughter.
The Konongwootong district, located in the Western District of Victoria on Gunditjmara Country, occupies a significant and difficult place in the history of the Australian frontier. It is a landscape where violence is not only plausible but consistent with broader regional patterns, and where memory, material recognition, and fragmentary documentation intersect. The site now associated with the Konongwootong Reservoir, formally recognised for its Aboriginal cultural heritage values and recorded on the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Register, stands as a focal point for this intersection.¹
Long before the arrival of Europeans, Konongwootong formed part of a managed and inhabited cultural landscape. For thousands of years, the area functioned as a seasonal wetland system, with winter pools and more permanent water sources sustained by springs and soaks during drier months.² These conditions supported a stable and productive environment, providing food, water, fibres, medicinal resources, and shelter. The Konongwootong Gunditj people lived within this system, maintaining cultural practices tied to the rhythms of the landscape.³ As elsewhere in the Budj Bim region, this was not wilderness but country structured through long-term use and knowledge.
This continuity was disrupted in the late 1830s with the arrival of European pastoralists seeking to establish large sheep runs across the Western District. Their occupation of land was not neutral. It involved the assertion of control over water, pasture, and movement, and in practice required the removal or suppression of Aboriginal presence.⁴ Conflict emerged quickly and took on a recognisable form across the district: livestock spearing by Aboriginal groups as an assertion of economic resistance, followed by organised settler reprisals.
One such reprisal occurred in March 1840 in the area known as the Fighting Hills, near present-day Casterton. Settlers, armed with firearms, pursued Gunditjmara men following the taking of sheep. The resulting encounter was profoundly unequal. Contemporary and later accounts suggest that several dozen Aboriginal men and boys were killed, while settler losses were minimal.⁵ This episode is among the clearer examples of organised lethal force applied under the language of retribution.
Within a short period—traditionally understood as occurring within weeks—violence extended to Konongwootong itself. The event now commonly referred to as the Fighting Waterholes massacre is associated with the wetland system that once occupied the site of the present reservoir. Local historical accounts and interpretive material indicate that a group of Gunditjmara people, including men, women, and children, were surrounded and killed in a location where the terrain formed a natural enclosure.⁶ The amphitheatre-like character of the ground is repeatedly noted, suggesting that the physical environment constrained movement and contributed to the outcome.
Estimates of those killed vary, but commonly refer to several dozen individuals. The absence of precise numbers reflects the broader problem of documentation. No definitive contemporary report has been identified that records the event in detail, names participants, or establishes an exact date. Instead, the evidence is cumulative: oral tradition, local historical reconstruction, and later commemorative recognition.
The question of burial further illustrates the fragmentary nature of the record. The location of those killed was not formally documented at the time. However, accounts from the mid-twentieth century refer to the exposure of human remains following significant flooding in 1946.⁷ These remains were reportedly collected and reinterred by a local resident, indicating both the persistence of physical traces and the absence of earlier formal recognition.
Despite this evidentiary uncertainty, the Konongwootong site has undergone a process of historical acknowledgement. In 2014, a commemorative area, referred to as a Quiet Place, was established at the reservoir.⁸ This landscape intervention was designed not as a monument in the traditional sense, but as a site for reflection. It incorporates a walking path, interpretive signage, and seating positioned to overlook the wetland area. The design draws attention to the natural amphitheatre associated with the historical account, allowing visitors to engage with the spatial dimensions of the event.
Joining the Winda Mara dancers are (from left) Wannon Water chairman John Vogels, Southern Grampians Shire mayor Albert Calvano, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Tim Bull, and Nationals Candidate for Lowan Emma Kealy. The memorial was established in 2014 by Wannon Water in collaboration with the Gunditj Mirring Aboriginal Corporation to commemorate the Konongwootong Gunditj people and the massacres that occurred there in 1840. Photo Courtesy of the Warrnambool Standard.
The creation of this site was the result of collaboration between Gunditjmara Elders and organisations, including Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, alongside state agencies and regional authorities.⁹ This partnership is significant. It situates the Konongwootong narrative within both Indigenous knowledge and contemporary heritage practice, reinforcing its status as a recognised historical site rather than an unverified tradition.
The Konongwootong material therefore rests on a layered evidentiary base. Oral histories preserve the memory of violence and its location. Local research has assembled these accounts alongside fragmentary documentary references. Material commemoration, through plaques, signage, and the Quiet Place, anchors this understanding in the landscape itself. What remains limited is the formal colonial archive, which is consistent with the broader pattern of frontier violence in the Western District.
Historians of the frontier have long noted that such violence was frequently obscured in contemporary records. Terms such as “dispersal” masked lethal outcomes, while incidents occurring beyond administrative centres were often underreported or omitted entirely.¹⁰ In this context, the absence of a detailed primary account at Konongwootong is not anomalous. Rather, it reflects the conditions under which violence was enacted and recorded.
Environmental factors further support the plausibility of the event as described. The Western District landscape, characterised by broken basalt, wetlands, and confined approaches, favoured ambush and limited avenues of escape.¹¹ Water sites in particular acted as focal points for movement and encounter. A wetland basin enclosed by rising ground, as described at Konongwootong, would have presented both a resource and a risk, particularly under conditions of pursuit.
The central issue is therefore not whether violence occurred, but how it should be represented. The convergence of oral tradition, physical evidence, and formal commemoration places Konongwootong on firmer ground than unsubstantiated rumour. At the same time, the lack of a definitive contemporary account requires caution. The most defensible interpretation is to treat the Fighting Waterholes event as a probable massacre grounded in strong local evidence and recognised through collaborative heritage practice, while acknowledging the limits imposed by the surviving archive.¹²
In this sense, Konongwootong is both specific and representative. It marks a particular place where violence is understood to have occurred, and it illustrates a broader historical condition in which many acts of frontier violence remain only partially recoverable. The Quiet Place established at the reservoir does not resolve the historical record, but it ensures that the event is neither forgotten nor reduced to silence. It stands as an acknowledgement that the landscape itself retains memory, even where the archive does not.¹³
FOOTNOTES
Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Register, entry for Konongwootong cultural heritage place.
Environmental and cultural description of Konongwootong wetland system, interpretive material, Konongwootong Reservoir site.
Richard Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 28–35.
Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2006), 86–90.
Jan Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder: Western District Frontiers 1834–1848 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1990), 120–125.
Local interpretive signage, Konongwootong Reservoir; regional historical accounts of the Fighting Waterholes incident.
Coleraine district historical accounts of 1946 flooding and recovery of human remains; local records relating to T. J. Fitzgerald.
Interpretive material, “Quiet Place,” Konongwootong Reservoir, established 2014.
Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation et al., project collaboration records for Konongwootong commemorative site.
Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, 121–125; Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, 114–118.
Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2011), 241–260.
Bain Attwood, Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 67–72.
Ian D. Clark, Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria, 1803–1859 (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1995), 1–5.
This book comes out of a long engagement with the Western District of Victoria, and in particular with Gunditjmara Country around Budj Bim and the Eumeralla River. It has taken nearly ten years to finish and has been a labour of love whose focus has changed and be rewritten many times over that period of time.
What I have tried to do here is to understand the conflict that took place in this landscape on its own terms, rather than treating it as a series of isolated incidents or as a simple story of expansion and resistance.
The starting point is the Country itself. The basalt flows, wetlands, and broken ground of the district are not just background. They shape how people move, where they can go, and what they can do. Long before pastoral settlement, this was a structured and managed landscape, with systems of water, stone, and resource use that reflect deep knowledge and continuity. When that structure was disrupted, the conflict that followed was shaped by the same features.
The violence that developed across the district was rarely concentrated or decisive in a single moment. It unfolded over time, in small actions that accumulated. Livestock spearing, reprisals, patrols, and attacks took place across a wide area, often with limited visibility and uncertain outcomes. Pursuit was difficult, coordination was uneven, and both sides operated under constraint. The result was a pattern of conflict that was dispersed, adaptive, and persistent.
Much of the evidence comes from colonial records and settler accounts. These sources are uneven and often use language that obscures as much as it reveals. Terms like “dispersal” appear frequently, and part of the task here has been to consider what lies behind them. The aim has not been to resolve every uncertainty, but to place events within a clearer structure and to examine how they relate to one another across time and space.
I have also approached the material with an awareness that this is not only a question of what happened, but how it can be understood. Ideas drawn from “just war theory” are used at points to frame questions about violence, authority, and conduct, but they do not sit comfortably within a frontier setting where recognition and legitimacy are contested. Rather than forcing the material into those categories, I have used them to test where they hold and where they do not.
What emerges is a picture of sustained conflict shaped by environment, organisation, and pressure. It is not a story of single battles or decisive moments, but of actions that build, constrain, and influence what follows. The intention throughout has been to keep the focus on how the conflict worked, how it was experienced in place, and how it developed over time.
John D. Grainger’s The Battle for Palestine 1917 is a really solid, down-to-earth look at a part of World War I that usually gets ignored in favour of the trenches in France. Most people only think of Lawrence of Arabia when they picture this part of the world, but Grainger looks past the Hollywood version of things. He focuses on the actual nuts and bolts of the campaign, showing how the British military dealt with massive supply problems and a very tough Ottoman army.
The way he explains the change in leadership is one of the best parts. He doesn’t just act like General Allenby showed up and saved the day with his personality. Instead, he explains how the British finally got organized by fixing their supply lines and bringing in the right gear. He makes you realize that the biggest enemy in the desert wasn’t always the other army, but often the lack of water and the insane heat. You get a real sense of why the first few tries at breaking through at Gaza failed and what actually changed to make the later attacks work.
Grainger is also great at highlighting the Australian Light Horse and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles. While most people just talk about the charge at Beersheba like it was a scene from a movie, this book explains why they actually had to do it. Basically, they were desperate for water and had to take a huge gamble to get around the Ottoman defenses. He captures the grit of these guys without making them sound like superheroes, showing how their ability to move fast gave the British an edge they never had in Europe.
What makes the book feel fair is that Grainger gives the Ottoman forces their due. He describes them as capable, stubborn fighters rather than just an empire on its last legs. He also goes into the drama between the Turkish commanders and their German advisors, which made their defense even harder. By the end, you see how these battles weren’t just about winning a few miles of sand, but about setting the stage for all the political chaos that hit the Middle East after the war ended.
The last few chapters do a great job of connecting those old victories to the world we live in now. Grainger doesn’t just stop when the fighting ends; he looks at how taking Jerusalem and pushing toward Damascus basically redrew the map. He explains the tension between British military goals and the promises they made to local groups, showing that the seeds for future conflicts were being planted even while the British were celebrating.
Even though it’s a detailed history book, it doesn’t read like a dry textbook. Grainger keeps things moving and focuses on what was at stake. It’s a great choice if you want to understand how modern warfare started to take shape or if you just want a clear story of how the British eventually took Jerusalem.
It’s definitely worth a read for anyone who wants to see the bigger picture of the Great War beyond the Western Front.
Thomas James Rogers’ The Civilisation of Port Phillip (2018) offers a rigorous and unsettling examination of the gap between the “civilised” rhetoric of the British Empire and the brutal reality of the frontier in what is now Victoria. Focusing on the pivotal years between 1835 and 1850, Rogers dissects how the Port Phillip District was established not just through physical occupation, but through a sophisticated linguistic and ideological framework designed to legitimise the displacement of Indigenous people. Unlike other Australian colonies that began as penal outposts, Port Phillip was touted as a refined venture from its inception. Rogers explores how settlers and administrators used the concept of civilisation as both a goal and a shield, framing themselves as agents of progress and morality so that the erasure of Aboriginal society appeared as an inevitable byproduct of enlightenment rather than a series of violent choices.
One of the most compelling arguments in the work is the idea of rhetorical possession. Rogers demonstrates how the British used legal documents, diaries, and official reports to effectively write Indigenous people out of the landscape. By describing the land as underutilised or vacant, settlers mentally cleared the ground for sheep and fences long before the first shot was fired. This extended to the passive language used in official records, where the deaths of Aboriginal people were framed as mere disturbances or clashes, masking what was often state-sanctioned or settler-led violence.
While the rhetoric remained polished, the reality was visceral, and Rogers does not shy away from the bloodier aspects of the settlement. He meticulously tracks the escalation of violence, showing how even the Protectorate system, intended to shield Aboriginal people, facilitated dispossession by confining them to specific areas and undermining traditional life.
The book argues that violence was not an aberration of the process but a foundational component. Even the most humanitarian officials were often complicit because their ultimate goal remained the absolute establishment of British sovereignty and private property.
Ultimately, Rogers’ work is a vital contribution to Australian historiography because it moves beyond a simple narrative of victims and villains to examine the intellectual machinery of colonialism. The research is impeccably detailed, drawing on a wealth of archival material to bridge the gap between cultural and political history. It challenges the reader to consider how the language of the 19th century still influences modern identity and politics, serving as a sobering reminder that the pen was often just as destructive as the sword. This is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the sophisticated justifications buried beneath the foundations of modern Victoria.
A truly disturbing read which is a must have for anyone interested in the period.
