General News
24 April, 2023
Piece of Anzac history finds a home at Talbot pub
Talbot’s Court House Hotel holds a very special piece of local history made even more significant with the advent of Anzac Day, with a certificate and blanket awarded to two local WWI veterans upon their return adorning the pub’s walls. The...
Talbot’s Court House Hotel holds a very special piece of local history made even more significant with the advent of Anzac Day, with a certificate and blanket awarded to two local WWI veterans upon their return adorning the pub’s walls.
The certificate and blanket were presented to Talbot servicemen and brothers Frederick and George Tyers upon their return from the Western Front and came to be housed in Talbot’s pub by complete chance.
Presented by the Shire of Talbot to local returned soldiers, the certificate formally acknowledged their service and was paired with the blanket.
Publican Reiny Gunther has had the certificate for several years while the blanket, or travel rug, has been there for just a few months and said it was a stroke of luck that brought the certificate back to Talbot.
“The certificate was found in a garage roof in Railway Street, Maryborough,” he said.
“They were demolishing the garage and building a new one and everything was going to the tip — one of the people involved was working for me at the time and saw the certificate and brought it to me.
“I’m always looking for old things that belong to the town, I don’t want them to be lost because too much gets lost.”
Mr Gunther, who works alongside Talbot’s Arts and Historical Museum to showcase the district’s history, has a number of historic items in the pub but said he’s never seen anything quite like the certificate.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, when it first came into the pub I knew how important it was,” he said.
“I’ve always done things like this for the town because they’re important, people can come in and see this local history that otherwise they would never know about because it’s lost.”
Frederick and George were two of four brothers who enlisted and served during the First World War, seeing action at Gallipoli and later in France on the Western Front.
While the brothers would have both received a certificate and blanket, the whereabouts of Fredericks’s blanket is unknown and likewise, it’s unclear where George’s certificate is.
Surviving daughter of George, 85-year-old Chris Burns, said she wanted her father’s blanket displayed at the pub as it was an important example of local history.
“When they came back from the war they were welcomed home with that certificate and a travelling rug,” she said.
“The certificate is my uncle’s but the travelling rug is my father’s — all the local veterans were welcomed home and each one got a certificate and rug.
“George and Fred enlisted with their two other brothers to fight in the war and they all came back —they weren’t all the same, Fred had some shrapnel in his legs — but they came back.”
Private George Herbert Tyers enlisted on July 19, 1915 and by the war’s end in 1918, had attained the rank of Sergeant, returning home on July 8, 1919.
Initially a part of the 14th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force, George saw action at the Gallipoli landing and was later transferred to reinforce the 46th Battalion, where he again saw action on the Western Front.
A photograph from the Australian War Memorial shows George, along with eight other 46th Battalion members, in a trench after their company of 127 men was involved in capturing 500 German soldiers along the Hindenburg Line.
At last year’s Anzac Day service in Talbot, a special plaque signifying George’s service was unveiled at the Soldier’s Memorial Plot.
Chris said her father never spoke much of the war and was surprised by the information she found about his service during her own research.
“I researched the 46th Battalion on the internet and images of my dad came up, it was an emotional sort of thing,” she said.
“He didn’t say a lot about the war and there’s a lot I suppose we didn’t think to ask people after the war.
“Dad used to go down to his reunion in Melbourne every year and he would march in the Dawn Service each year too, they all did.
“It was going to one of those reunions that he died, he was hit by a car. Fancy going to war and you come back only for something like that to happen.”
Chris said today, Anzac Day, was special to her.
“The war was a long time ago but it’s important to remember and think about it,” she said.
“I often think what my father and that generation would make of the world today with all the technology we have.
“Anzac Day is a special day really, it was always special to dad and is a special sort of time for me, it always has been.”
