Honoring Family Legacy: Back to Mortlake on the 110th Anniversary of Gallipoli
Yesterday marked the 110th anniversary of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’ (ANZAC) landing at Gallipoli, Turkey. To commemorate the occasion, three generations of my family - my father, my son, and myself - made a pilgrimage to Mortlake, a small country town in Victoria.
Mortlake isn’t just any rural town to us. It’s where my great-grandfather and his two brothers were living and working when they answered the call to serve in the First World War. Their stories embody the sacrifice and courage that we honor on ANZAC Day.
Two of the brothers fought at Gallipoli. One served as a stoker in the engine room of the troop ship HMT Southland (pictured above) which was torpedoed traveling from Egypt to Gallipoli. When the vessel began taking on water, he was among 40 who remained on board as it was sinking to hold the ship together while everyone else evacuated. These actions helped keep the ship afloat for a whole day after the attack. He later died in France at the battle of the Somme in 1916.
The other brother was a soldier who landed on the Gallipoli Penninsula in February 1915, alongside New Zealand and British soldiers. Uninjured, after a month he was evacuated from Turkey before too being rotated out to France.
My great-grandfather, the third brother, spent three grueling years fighting on the Western Front in France. Wounded twice during his service, he was hospitalised each time before being sent back to the front lines, a harrowing experiance. He demobbed in Rhyl, Wales, where he met and married my great grandmother before returning to Mortlake.
As we arrived in Mortlake for the ANZAC Day commemoration, it felt like the whole town was gathered at the old Post Office.
A Highland marching band (pictured above) led the procession of former soldiers, highschool kids and ordinary locals, proudly carrying the Australian flag and the Mortlake Returned Service Leave Sub-Division Club flag down the main street.
As we walked the same path my great grandfather and his brothers would have taken before departing for Melbourne, and eventually the battlefields of Turkey and Europe, people joined the procession as we passed them.
We went past one store that had unexpectedly raised a Union Jack, an uncommon sight in Australia in 2025. I felt quite a powerful connection across time - walking in the footsteps of those three brothers who left this very town to face the unknown horrors of war a century ago.
The march concluded at the town war memorial, a cenotaph, where the names of local soldiers who never returned home are remembered (pictured below). Among them are two members of my family - the brother who fell in France in 1916 and a cousin of the same generation who also never returned. It was an emotional moment.
After the march, we joined the ANZAC Day service along with the many others who joined in the march (pictured below). Together, we listened to speeches recounting the horrors of war, did our best to recite the hymns, and observed a moment of silence to remember those who did not return. Then we went and ate a Clarke's pie - something less sobering Mortlake is well known for.
As my son, my father, and I drove home from Mortlake, I reflected on the day’s significance. I have arranged several ANZAC Day dawn service events in this past while overseas. These events have a focus on the story of Australians who fought in wars past in the region they are held.
But this ANZAC Day reminded me that history very much also lives on in our local communities, our families, and in the stories we pass down. In visiting Mortlake, we didn’t just join a dawn service - we reconnected with our own family story and ensured that the legacy of our forebears continues to be honored for generations to come, including by my son.
Lest We Forget.