Army Museum of South Australia: Keswick Barracks, Anzac Highway Keswick with Keith Conlon
It was called The Great War. Australia, still a young federation, rallied an Army in its own name to send to the horrors of World War I. And on April 25, 1915, a growing sense of nationhood was confirmed in a terrible bloody war. We'll remember the lives lost there and in wars ever since again on Anzac Day. In advance of it, I took a tour of Australian Army history.
First, however, a very Adelaidean story about how South Australia's army headquarters came to be built at Keswick - just out of the city - in 1912. "Plan A" was for the administration building to be built on the Torrens Parade Ground behind Government House. "Definitely not", said the city mayor, "that's parkland". "Plan B"? The army sought acreage in the parklands along West Terrace, and that caused more consternation. Thus the new Australian Army came to buy vacant land on the edge of the city at Keswick. The imposing two storey building looking to the city is still the administration headquarters for the state…. very Federation-style classical in form, it was the first substantial Commonwealth structure built in South Australia.
The Army Museum is housed in another 1913 building, but this had much more humble origins. Just off Anzac Highway past the old military hospital stand the long stables built for up to fifty horses. Inside the collection begins with a section of cabinets brimming with nineteenth century memorabilia, all with their own stories. All black with red trimmings, there's the uniform of Private James Harvey, who came out on the Buffalo in 1836 and eventually enlisted in the Glenelg Rifles, a volunteer corps of the kind that popped up in several districts.
Further along, a Boer War water bottle made in 1900 has a claim to fame. It's the very one that our legendary bush poet "Banjo" Patterson carried with him as a war correspondent in South Africa. It was made by his batman…. who asked for it back when the stoush was over.
Our Light horsemen were proudly part of our early Anzac tradition, and inside the front entrance a life-size horse and soldier are kitted out as they would have been when he took his own horse to Palestine. A bandido, a spare ammunition belt, hangs around his steed's neck. In its bucket at the rear of the saddle is his .303 rifle, and across the back is strapped a bag of oats. On the other flank, a feed and water bag hangs off the saddle horn, while behind is a leather wallet for two horseshoes and nails - they carried everything.
The fine-looking chestnut horse has been nicknamed "Cedric". He stood for years over the verandah of a coach building firm in Adelaide. Frost and Holden were the forerunners of the giant Holden plant at Elizabeth that turns out more than 150,000 cars each year.
The Anzac spirit was born in World War I, the dreadful conflict that took the lives of more than 5,500 South Australians. Another 150,000 were wounded in the trenches of the Western Front in France and earlier at Gallipoli. The grind of that ill-fated campaign is portrayed in the Army Museum in a cramped dugout. A simple cross marks a grave, a sign points to a home in Adelaide that many of these young adventurers would never see again, and at the side of the trench there's a touch of Aussie ingenuity. Come the call to withdraw from the Turkish Peninsula, these contraptions bought invaluable time. Next to a .303 rifle tied in place, a tin full of water with a carefully created leak dropped water into another billy below. When it was heavy enough, it pulled a string attached to the gun's trigger - bang! Enough of these went off periodically to give the diggers eleven hours evacuation time before the Turks realised the Anzacs had ticked off.
In a cabinet nearby, there is a gentler, sweeter touch. The men sent intricate silk embroidered postcards home to family and sweethearts. They generated a cottage industry in the French villages over there and brought precious sentiments to loved ones over here.
Retired Army Reserve Officers and orthodontist, Sven Kuusk is the honorary curator of the museum. He showed us a special flag from sixty years ago in World War II.
"This is a Union Jack signed in Changi after the fall of Singapore by members of a signals group. The flag is upside down - that's a signal of distress. The signature here is L.C. Matthews who was awarded the George Cross posthumously for services to his fellow prisoners of war. He was beheaded by the Japanese."
Sven is here to tell such compelling stories each Sunday afternoon, or he'll take tours by appointment. These days you will need photo identification to come in through Keswick Barracks' main gate.
The extensive army complex sits appropriately on Anzac Highway. It was originally called the Adelaide Road, and from Glenelg it passed through swamps and the bushranger danger of "the black forest" (which is how the suburb gained its name). By 1917, still in the World War I years, Glenelg Council suggested it should be a national highway, and with the other affected councils agreeing, it became the Anzac Highway in 1923 to honour our fighting forces.
It had one central bitumen strip just wide enough for a car in each direction, but hot summer days produced such traffic jams that in the state's Centenary year, 1936, the dual highway with its wide lawn central strip was approved by the government. It took a couple of years to complete.
At the city end, outside the Keswick Barracks, there's a memorial artwork in the median that is much younger. Made of sheets of thick steel, its stenciled versions of the rising sun army badge on one side and soldiers with an army nurse on the other are strikingly different by day and night. The monument is the result of mid 1980's co-operation between Arts SA who provided government funds, Transport SA who supervised the project and the RSL who approved the design.
With Anzac Day approaching, we might contemplate its meaning as we pass by in the traffic. As a tribute to monumental sacrifice and service in a century of war it is a suitable symbolic beginning to our Anzac Highway.
Details
Army Museum of Australia
Keswick Barracks
Anzac Highway, Keswick SA 5035Open - Sundays 12:00pm - 4:00pm Group tours by arrangement
Admission - By donation
Location - Main Gate (Gate 2), Keswick Barracks Bus Stop 2, Anzac Highway
Phone: (08) 8305 6374
Fax: (08) 8305 6393
