Letters Home: From Gallipoli and Beyond

Sapper Hubert Anthony was a very young man of very humble beginnings when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in October 1914 as a 17 year old. He wrote deeply affectionate letters home to his mother in outback NSW, an extraordinary woman who had virtually sole responsibility for raising a family. They show the thoughts of a young man and provide great insights into to a long gone period in Australian rural history. They also tell the story of the horrors of Gallipoli. Sapper Anthony returned to Australia to establish one of Australia's great political families. He served twenty years in the Australian Parliament and was Minister of Commerce, Minister of Transport, Postmaster General, and Minister for Aviation. His son Doug became leader of the Country Party and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, and his grandson Larry served in John Howard's Cabinet for a number of years. It was by the strangest coincidence that the letters were found with photographs, diary entries and postcards in Doug Anthony's farm barn a year ago. Lying at the bottom of a little globate school case with a leather strap holding the lid down, was this extraordinary insight into the war experience of a very young man, but more importantly the relationship between a son and his mother.