Browsing Tag

SOLDIER

WORLD WAR 1

ANZAC COTTAGE: MOUNT HAWTHORN, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

May 20, 2015

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The House Built in a Day!

Anzac cottage is a house on Kalgoorlie Street in the Western Australian suburb of Mount Hawthorn. Mount Hawthorn for Eastern staters demographically is sort of like a Paddington or North Fitzroy. It’s cool, leafy, close to the city, elegant old houses, it’s really lovely. I have a very personal connection to the area because I’ve lived very close by my entire life, in addition to having recently bought a house just 5 streets away.

Places like Anzac Cottage is the reason Backyard Battlefields exists. It’s somewhere you may have driven past a thousand times and never looked twice at. However the house has an amazing and unique connection to Gallipoli and the story of Anzac and more people need to know about it.

To summarise, Anzac Cottage was built in 1916, in a day, by enthusiastic and patriotic locals for free, they all donated their time, material and efforts. I
t was then given as a gift to a veteran of Gallipoli. In addition to being a gesture of gratitude to all the troops who served in WW1 it was intended to be a quote unquote ‘useful’ war memorial.

It only came to my attention in the past couple of years and I was very lucky recently to speak to the wonderful Anne Chapple, who is the granddaughter of Private John Porter who was the soldier given the home to live in. 

Here is a link to the amazing souvenir booklet that was issued when the house was built:

http://purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b1350285_1.pdf?agree

You can download this and other episodes of the podcast here:

https://itunes.apple.com/is/podcast/backyard-battlefields/id910408871?mt=2