With the colors: honour boards acquired

What a wonderful acquisition. Hats off to the researcher who had rescued the boards and then honoured the servicemen by compiling the treasure trove of index cards.

Mosman families must be celebrating the return of these fine men. No doubt there are some current branches of the families who have never before seen originals or copies of portraits of their men.

Congratulations to all concerned with the acquisition, and best wishes to all concerned in the ongoing project of digitising and cross-checking the material.

Wow! what a wonderful find and addition to your collection.
At Ryde we were recently looking at a photo from “Sydney Mail” titled ‘Unveiling a Roll of Honour at Eastwood, N.S.W.’ from May 1916, part of the photo’s caption reads ‘…no fewer than 107 have joined the colours, and an honour roll containing their names was recently unveiled in the local public school grounds by Mr. F.W. Lee, president of the Eastwood Patriotic Association.’
It also stated the band of the 19th Infantry was in attendance.

This rang a bell when I read of your recently acquired honour boards titled “WITH THE COLOURS’ and suggest that you look for possible connections with the local patriotic Association or your local pre-war militia, as the 19th (Ku-ring-gai) Infantry was in the Ryde Municipality. Many who joined from our district recorded having some pre-war experience as members in their service records.

We at the ‘Ryde goes to war project’ hope that one day we might also be lucky to find the 1916 Eastwood Roll of Honour that goes with our newspaper story!

Regards,
Margaret from the Ryde goes to war Project.

Alison and Margaret, thank you for your comments. And good idea, Margaret, we’ll follow that trail and see where it leads.

I contacted Pierre Durand, the Melbourne militaria dealer who sold the honour boards to our Canberra researcher. He has some information on the provenance of the boards, and kindly gave permission for his email to be published on the blog:

Yes I remember the panels well. My understanding was that they came from a defunct RSL in NSW somewhere not known. (But country location). My wife Jacqui and I purchased them from an Antique Centre, also defunct and now closed. We aquired them in the 1980’s. We used them with many other Military photos as a backdrop display for our first photo exhibition during the same time period. Sir Edward ‘Weary” Dunlop hosted our exhibition which was a great success. The attached photo shows them on the wall of our old shop. Hope this helps.

Well done, Bernard! The challenge on provenance is still before you, but …… Here’s hoping for a final breakthrough. You are certainly doing your bit. Now about that beer…

And thank you, Alison and Margaret for your kind comments!