ANZAC Day Tour duration

The Quiet Lion Tour departs Perth on Tuesday 17th April and the students return on Saturday April 28th.
The Premiers ANZAC Tour departs Perth on Sunday 15th April and returns to Perth on Friday April 27th.

The Sandakan Death Marchs

A little known aspect of Australian WW2 history, is the Sandakan Death Marches. This year the PREMIERS ANZAC Tour is being attended by me (Lynne Noack), as a supervising History teacher. Sandakan is on the northern reaches of Borneo. Lebuan is an island to the north west off, Borneo. Both places will go down in infamy as places of great atrocities for Australian POWs in WW2. I will be spending ANZAC Day at Sandakan with 10 students from around WA, searching out the history and the pain of the 1800  (Australian, British and NZ) men who were ordered Japanese to march from Sandakan to Sabah at the end of the war. 6 survived. The Japanese did not expect these men to survive, certainly they did not expect these men to give evidence at the Lebuan trials of Japanese officers in December 1945.

We will be marching (a paltry) 6 hours of this march before commemorating ANZAC Day. We will also travel to Lebuan, the site of the trials, which will mean a lot to me personally. My Uncle, an airforce navigator during WW2 was ‘demobilised’ and transferred to Lebuan to bear witness to the trials as a civilian. The trials achieved very little, but it was a huge emotional drain to those involved.

Having done ANZAC Day at Hellfire Pass in 2008 and experienced the emotion that envelopes everyone there, I am only too aware that the emotion of Sandakan may be over whelming.

Upcoming Quiet Lion Tour

The Quiet Lion Tour is conducted annually for members of our community who wish to commemorate ANZAC Day with ex-POWs in Thailand. At the same time the tour is to remember the outstanding deeds of Edward “Weary” Dunlop. Each year students from numerous schools attend this ANZAC Day ceremony and share in the memories of an ever dwindling number of POWs able to return to the site of their incarceration. It is a tour filled with memories, few of them pleasant. In 2012 only two ex-POWs are to return – they are the young at heart and sprightly Milton “Snow” Fairclough (a very young 91 years) and Neil MacPhearson (also 90 years young). Andrea and Emma from the year 11 Modern History classes will be joining these two men in their remembrance day.

The girls will learn a huge amount, travel to places that bring a great deal of pain to these men, see the sites of personal devastation, feel the emotion of the dawn service in Hell Fire Pass and experience their first “Gunfire” breakfast in the jungles of Thailand. It will be a richly rewarding experience, one they will never forget. After dawn they will travel to the provincial capital for a very steamy and hot 11.00am service which will be attended by many government officials – from Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, the USA, Canada, Singapore among others. ANZAC Day has become an important day in many countries – it is not ‘solely owned’ by Australia and NZ now. The intent of the day is respected by many nations, the emotion of the day is felt by all.

Welcome to Our ANZAC Blog

Welcome to our ANZAC blog. You will be able to follow two trips this year – to Hell Fire Pass with the ex POWs of the Thai Burma Railway and to Sandakan, on the POW death March.