INTRODUCING OUR REPORTER, FRANKIE ATKINSON
In 2012 the RSL/Connecting Spirits Fleurieu Region Tour left for Singapore, London, France and Belgium. Of the group of 13, one of the young members Frankie Atkinson (age 16) , was studying her final year at school. Seven years on she will return and in the final year of her Professional Writing & Journalism degree at the University of South Australia, she will see the former killing fields through new eyes. She will be our reporter and throughout the tour will seek out the stories of our group and the soldiers we are commemorating. Her research and reports will form part of her assessment by the university and will receive accreditation for her work . The Connecting Spirits narrative continues and will be enriched by her work. Thank you Frankie...
PROFILE NUMBER 1: 'They Are Still There', by
Francesca Atkinson
Frankie commemorating one of her soldiers in 2012
The young women of 2012: Mollie Sandercock (2015 Youth Leader for the CS tour), Madeline Stangewtiz, Nicole Campbell, Ashleigh Martin (Youth Leader for the Anzac tour in 2014...and will also take part in the 2019 tour) and Frankie Atkinson.
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Community-based
tours connect South Australians to the battlefields of WWI
South Australian retired teacher Julie Reece is
thrilled to be just weeks away from her next overseas battlefield tour to the
Western Front in Europe. Now a community-based commemorative tour, Reece takes
groups of students and adults to the battlefields of WWI to commemorate family and
community members who fought and died on the Western Front.
“We’ll be there for Anzac Day and of course it will be
after all of centenary events have finished, which I am really pleased about,”
Mrs Reece says.
“The serenity of the former battlefields will return free
from the increased numbers of day trippers and mass tours,” she says.
Reece hopes that by running her tours based in the community,
the core tenets of the Connecting Spirits project, of research and
commemoration, will continue to flourish. The project is about connecting those
on the tour with their ancestors and family who fought in WWI, hence the name
‘Connecting Spirits’.
The next tour departs on 9 April 2019 and links many
parts of South Australia with people from the Adelaide Hills, the Coorong, Fleurieu
Peninsula and Adelaide. Reece is pleased communities can be brought together
and connected through such a powerful project.
Connecting Spirits originally began on an untested
idea for Reece who took two groups of Mount Barker students to Europe in 2001
and 2004. Admitting she had no previous experience in overseas tours for
schools, Reece chuckled when looking back on those early days.
“I was much younger and I thought I could just do it,”
Mrs Reece says.
“I sort of had this arrogance and thought I’d just
wing it and now I look back, I cringe a bit,” she says. “I think when you’ve
never done something and you’re younger, you’re a bit braver because you don’t fully
grasp what can actually happen.”
Now experienced, Julie is able to reflect on the
significant changes that have been made to Connecting Spirits since its
inauguration. She only recently changed the tours to be community-based after
setting up her business Julie Reece Tours, enabling the tours to be a more
inclusive experience rather than being restricted to school sectors.
Reece often keeps in contact with past students who
have been part of Connecting Spirits, with many returning as Youth Leaders to participate
in new projects. She is pleased these past students are able to take the
memories of their tours with them in life and describes Connecting Spirits as a
project that is constantly evolving. The evolution and continuity of the tours
is why Reece relishes the tours and she is pleased to continue to share the
opportunity with many more people.
“It’s been life changing for a number of people
without a doubt,” Mrs Reece says. “It’s like chucking a rock in the pool creating
all those ripples; in some ways those ripples are still going,” she says. “None
of this was originally planned; it has a life of its own and has morphed into
lots of different things.”
On previous tours many unexpected events have
occurred, including taking soil from the traditional lands of the Ngarrindjeri
people to the grave of a young indigenous soldier from Raukkan, Private Rufus
Rigney in 2004. Once home, Reece gave the soil to the niece of Private Rigney,
the late Doreen Kartinyeri, who wanted to commemorate her uncle in the lead up
to Anzac Day in 2005, thus giving birth to Connecting Spirits as we know it
today.
In 2015 another CS tour group had the opportunity to
attend the reburial of six unknown British soldiers. While on the Western
Front, Reece works alongside Rod Bedford, the head of the Royal British Legion on
the Somme. In the lead up to the reinterment, Rod made arrangements so that the
CS members could attend this ceremony.
“That was incredible, I’ve never seen that before and
to be there when just the day before, we had been at Fromelles and we’d spoken
about the Known Unto God’s, who were never found, never identified,” Mrs Reece
says.
“To be at the reburial of six unknown British soldiers
blew us all away,” she says. “Those sort of random things that happen, are
always surprising and along with personal commemorations to your family, are
right up there in importance”.
Since the beginning of Connecting Spirits, Reece has
taken students to the grave of her great uncle James Martin Clement Neagle
(Marty) in Polygon Wood. Uncle Marty, as Reece’s mother affectionately knew
him, enlisted in 1916 and was killed in action in 1917.
Through her mother’s stories of Marty, Reece has
shared the story of her great uncle and wrote the children’s book ‘Jimmy’s
Anzac Pilgrimage’ to honour this man from Port Pirie. Reece described how
several failed attempts of writing the book led her to write the story from the
perspective of a close grandfather and grandson bond.
“I was staying with my friends in Sutton Veny (a small English Village) and one Sunday
I went and sat in their local cemetery, where over 170 Australians who died
during and after the war are buried,” Mrs Reece says. “By that stage my husband
and one of our grandchildren had developed a really close grandfather-grandson
relationship, which to this day is very special,” she says. “I sat there and
thought about a kid going on a journey with their grandparent, rediscovering the
trail of a soldier and that’s where the story was born.”
Reece included many family artefacts her mother had
kept from Marty, including postcards he sent home from Europe. By reprinting
them as part of her book, she was able to cherish the original copies, while
also sharing them with others.
As Reece sat explaining her family history, inside a
quant coffee shop in the middle of Adelaide Arcade, it was poignant to see how
one family member who she never met, could have such an impact on her life.
Showing a copy of Jimmy’s Anzac Pilgrimage, Julie began telling the story of
Marty’s time serving on the Western Front. And so, as the story was told, it became
obvious that the pain of losing Marty was one that Reece’s mother never forgot,
even though she was only a young girl at the time of his death. She explained
how the telegram of his death would have arrived before the Christmas card he had
sent home.
“My mum had memories of that telegram coming to the
home, the two grandmothers were there and her mother, they didn’t say a word
and they were crying,” Mrs Reece says. “The telegram was scrunched up and she
said I found it really shocking because there were adults crying,” she says.
“She had never seen that, it was a different era.”
For those keen to learn about future Connecting
Spirits tours, you can register your interest with Julie via email and welcomes
any who would like to participate in the Connecting Spirits project. You can
follow this year’s tour via the links below:
Private James Martin Clement Neagle (2233A) KIA October 18, 1917 in the Battle of Passchendaele, buried in Buttes New British Cemetery, BELGIUM
(Uncle of Cathy Royal / great uncle of Julie Reece)
