A Museum Of Difference!
  
World War 1 (1914-1918)

• This is just a small sample of what is on display at the museum ....
Click on images to see larger view.


• Private Henry Martin was hit by shrapnel in the left side breast pocket of his tunic, in which he carried his razor, pay book, wallet and steel mirror.

The shrapnel ball was deflected from his heart and entered the right side of his chest.

He returned to Australia and 10 years later had the shrapnel removed from near his spine in the Maryborough hospital.

See the display of the razor and other items with holes in them from the shrapnel and also the ball which was removed from Henry.




• Sergeant John William Warrener

Will Warrener was nearly 21 when he enlisted at Warwick in 1915.

He arrived in Egypt 25th May 1916 and he, and others in the 5th Light Horse Regiment thinking they would not see any action, transferred to the artillery in order to serve in France.

In the last stages of the Passchendaele battles, Will was mortally wounded on 14th October, 1917.

His first reaction was to write a farewell message to his family in his diary.

The blood (or mud) stained entry is on display at the Museum. Letters written by Sister Griffith who nursed him are also on display.

Read his final message to his family. See where a flower was pressed in the pages of his diary and left an image on the pages.



• Mural: World War 1 Australian soldiers at Peronne in France.
Painted by Blake Greer.

Vickers Machine Gun
Was a water-cooled .303 inch calibre used from around 1912 up until production ceased in 1968. It was fitted in fighter planes such as the Sopwith Camel during WW1. The guns were last operated by the Australian Army in Korea.


A bit of history ....
For Australia, as for many nations, the First World War remains the most costly conflict in terms of deaths and casualties. From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which over 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.

The outbreak of war was greeted in Australia, as in many other places, with great public enthusiasm. In response to the overwhelming number of volunteers, the authorities set exacting physical standards for recruits. Yet, most of the men accepted into the army in August 1914 were sent first to Egypt, not Europe, to meet the threat which a new belligerent, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), posed to British interests in the Middle East and the Suez Canal.

After four and a half months of training near Cairo, the Australians departed by ship for the Gallipoli peninsula, with troops from New Zealand, Britain, and France. The Australians landed at what became known as ANZAC Cove on 25 April 1915 and established a tenuous foothold on the steep slopes above the beach. During the early days of the campaign, the allies tried to break through Turkish lines, while the Turks tried to drive the allied troops off the peninsula. Attempts on both sides ended in failure and the ensuing stalemate continued for the remainder of 1915. The most successful operation of the campaign was the evacuation of troops on the 19th and 20th December, under cover of a comprehensive deception operation. As a result, the Turks were unable to inflict more than a very few casualties on the retreating forces.

After Gallipoli the AIF was reorganised and expanded from two to five infantry divisions, all of which were progressively transferred to France, beginning in March 1916. The AIF mounted division that had served as additional infantry during the campaign remained in the Middle East. When the other AIF divisions arrived in France, the war on the Western Front had long been settled in a stalemate, with the opposing armies facing each other from trench systems that extended across Belgium and north-east France, from the English Channel to the Swiss border. The development of machine-guns and artillery favoured defence over attack and compounded the impasse, which lasted until the final months of the war.