Imagine, you are a young woman. You, like so many of your friends, love to get new pieces of jewellery, but you always want something a bit different, something which will stand out from the crowd. Having 'normal' jewellery is simply no fun! Recently, you saw a beautiful piece in a shop, a piece made with a fossil. You hadn't seen a fossil like it before - it was shiny and colourful and sparkling. You simply had to have it. You'd never even thought you could make fossils into jewellery before now.
When I took this fossil jewellery to show the children, they were quite intrigued by it. The boys were impressed that girls would wear something 'so cool', while the girls were impressed that 'dirty old fossils could look so pretty'. They all agreed it was 'very elegant'. The thing which surprised them most though was that, although this is a modern piece, the use of fossils as fashion accessories dates back thousands of years. They knew that ancient people wore jewellery, but to wear something which people would still wear today was very surprising.
Although using fossils, particularly ammonites, in jewellery is very popular in modern times, fossils being used as decorative pieces is by now means a new phenomenon. In ancient times, attractive stones, pieces of bone or antler, wood and all sorts of items were incorporated into jewellery and everyday items. Fossils, with their attractive colours, interesting shapes and patterns were no different and we know that they were used in ancient jewellery. Finds like a necklace, thought to be 30,000 years old and made of fossilised shell and stone beads, discovered in the Czech Republic, show that fossils were certainly known to and valued by ancient man.
It is likely that in ancient society fossils had some symbolic or ceremonial associations, but we cannot know for sure what these are. One fossil takes its name from an association with an Egyptian god. Ammonites, the fossils used in the jewellery in these photos, were actually originally called Ammon's Stones because they looked a bit like the rams horns of the Egyptian God Ammon. Whether they served a symbolic purpose, it is unlikely that ancient people really understood what fossils were. For thousands of years, fossils were thought to have fallen from the sky or to be natures jokes. After all, it was unimaginable that living organisms could turn to stone. It wasn't until the 1600s that people began to understand what fossils really were. In 1666 a shark was caught in Italy and its body was sent to the anatomist Niels Stensen (known as Steno) for examination. He noticed that the sharks teeth bore a strong resemblance to rocks known as 'tongue stones'. He demonstrated just how similar the stone was to sharks teeth, and argued that the stones were the teeth of sharks which lived thousands of years ago. He also argued that it was a gradual process by which living things turned to stone. All of this was of course a radical idea, but he was not the only one to believe that fossils came from once living things. Among others to believe this idea was the famous Leonardo da Vinci. If you would like to learn more about the history of fossils, click here.
Great Grandad’s War
Photo of Grandad in later life
For many who lived through the ‘Great War’ the experience was harrowing and when they returned home after the War had ended, they wanted to go on with their lives and leave the memories behind. At least, that is what many of the First World War soldiers wanted their families to think. The memories never left though, and many of the soldiers kept keepsakes of their time at War and of the people who they befriended and lost, carefully tucked away. Yet they often never spoke of their experiences. This was the case with my Great Grandfather.
I never met Great Grandad, but I have heard a lot about him from my Great Grandma, my Granddad and my Mum. I knew that he was a kind, gentle man, a Postmaster, had known Lionel and Rose Lindsay during his time as Postmaster in Springwood and May Gibbs when he worked in North Sydney. I knew he smoked a pipe, liked to have the chicken giblets from the roast chicken as an entree for dinner, had a thing for painting things with lots of layers of thick paint and even that he liked to decorate pots for the garden. I knew nothing of his war service.
According to my Mum, her Grandfather never mentioned his time at War, and certainly my Great Grandmother never revealed anything of his service either. It wasn’t until after Gran died and we were cleaning up her things that a picture of Great Granddads war service emerged. A ratty box was found, bulging with papers and photos, and held shut with a couple of rubber bands. We had never seen the box before, even when we were moving Gran to live with her daughter.
Photo of the box
When we opened it, we discovered it was full of the ephemera of war. All carefully labelled in the beautiful aqua writing of my Great Grandfather which we were so familiar with were photos, postcards, letters, envelopes, newspaper clippings, documents. Presumably put together and packaged up after he returned home from the War, the box was the carefully cared for, hidden keepsake of Great Grandad’s war.
It all seems to have started with a postcard, from Auckland. The postcard was addressed to my Great Grandfather, Roy Turner, by his friend John Walker, known in the district as Johnny Walker. John, who had worked in the Mungindi Post Office with Roy had joined up and was off to his active service, wishing my Grandfather a time like I am having.
Auckland postcard
The next we hear of Johnny is a newspaper clipping In Loving Memory Of Johnny Walker who died, doing his duty, at the Dardanelles, June 13, 1915.
Photo of newspaper clipping
The newspaper, ‘The Mungindi News’ had been carefully labelled and the article of importance marked, then it was folded up, tucked into an envelope, put into the box and forgotten for the best part of a century.
The next postcard is from Norman, Roys Brother. It was sent to Roy in 1916, on the enlistment of Norman in the services, ‘The Kurrajongs’. Norman writes he and his friends are having the time of our lives. Will be going into camp tomorrow The postcard almost makes war sound like a camping holiday. A year later, it would be Roy heading off to war.
Photo of Roy
Roy joined up in July 1916 as a 2nd Class Air Mechanic and the photo above, showing Roy resplendent in Uniform, was probably taken shortly after he joined up. He sailed on the H.M.A.T. Shropshire on the 11th of May, 1917 and he kept a photo of the ship carefully filed in the box.
Shropshire
The box also held a telegram from his Mother and Sisters wishing him God speed, love and kisses. It had clearly been carefully looked after throughout the war and when he returned home, it was pasted to a piece of paper to hold it together, labelled and filed in the box.
Telegram
Soon, Roy’s position was changed. Before he joined up he was a Postal Service Telegraphist and his skills as a Morse Code operator were recognised when he was moved to the Wireless Australian Flying Corps, one of the ‘January Reinforcements’.
January Reinforcements
During his service, he kept various documents and photos which were part of his life, including troop photos and copies of the Field Service Postcard and Field Service Envelope which were given to the soldiers.
Troop photo, English Cavalry, Tobacco Postcard, Field Service Envelope and Postcard
He also kept a couple of special postcards and letters from home and friends.
Ragtime, New Year, Greetings from Newtown
Some of the other things he kept related more directly to his war service, like his leave form for 1918, carefully pasted onto a piece of paper to keep it together.
Leave form
We have a photo of Roy from about this time, still proud, but not the bright eyed boy he was. He seems ready for that leave.
1918 photo
Unfortunately for Roy it seems that his leave was interrupted when he contracted Influenza. He is in the ward by November 8, 1918 when a letter from a friend nearby who has visited him in the ward reaches him and writes home to his family in late November to let them know he is in hospital.
Letter YMCA, The Cross, Springburn
He was still Ward C on Christmas Eve, 1918, perhaps with his friends David Young and Ralph Shepherd
Photo Ward C, David Young, Ralph Shepherd
The end of the War itself doesn’t coincide with the end of the records in the box though. Roy still had to be discharged and get home. His discharge papers were carefully filed away in the box, along with a photo of the Nestles Hut he was billeted in before sailing home and a photo of the SS Plassy, which carried him back to Australia.
Discharge papers, nestles hut, SS Plassy
There was one last thing in the box though, and this was possibly the thing Roy treasured above all else. This item was an illuminated copy of the Address from the Bishop of Amiens to the Australian Troops, but it did not spend its whole life in the box. Family stories say Roy carried it with him in his wallet, and when it became too fragile, even tried to copy it in his own beautiful calligraphy.
If You Don’t Laugh, You’ll Cry
War is a terrible thing. The loss of life, loss of hope, loss of innocence and loss of health cost society greatly and those looking back on wars past often wonder how people survived, let alone lived in the aftermath. For those looking back, it is hard to imagine overcoming such horrendous experiences and carrying on life. Certainly, there were some soldiers who never recovered from the horrors of war. Yet there are others who had an indomitable spirit which refused to be crushed.
The ANZACS were known for their strength and bravery in the face of adversity and for their unique spirit. They were resourceful, valued mateship and, one of their most famous and applauded traits, they had ability to find humour in the most terrible of situations. Yet the ability to find humour in war was not unique to the ANZACs.
Humour was a potent weapon against the horror of war. It saved soldiers from boredom, helped to create a sense of group identity and mateship, and provided a foil to the hardships of war. Through humour and laughter, soldiers coped with fear, pain, hardship, death, loss and all manner of terrible experiences. They laughed at the enemy, their commanders, the food, the conditions, the weapons, the training, the leave (or lack thereof) and a multitude of other things.
The humour of war is usually irreverent, often black, and sometimes quite cruel, but it got our boys through. The following are just a few examples of wartime humour, drawn from the Bystander Fragments From France series. Usually, the series are seen in booklet form, but the cartoons the booklets contain were collated from cartoons appearing in Britains Bystander magazine. The magazine ran in Britain from 1903 until 1940. The cartoons, drawn by Bruce Bairnsfather, first appeared in 1915 and were published weekly. Bairnsfather had seen active service but been sent home in 1915 to recover from being gassed and wounded by a shell during the Second Battle of Ypres. As the preface of the first edition of Fragments From France said the cartoons were "not fun poked by a mere looker-on ; it is the fun felt in the war by one who has been through it"
