Blackboards to battlefields

It is great to see that local groups are applying for grants from the government's Anzac Centenary Program to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of Australia's involvement in the First World War (see my post of 8 June 2012).
The Warracknabeal Historical Society is looking to locate all the Honour Boards from local schools and collate all their information into a database. A seriously involved operation when you realise that most of the local rural schools no longer exist and it will be a detective job to research who may have inherited the boards (and shudder with the thought that some may no longer exist).

On the subject of school honour boards and teachers & ex-students serving in World War I is a new book - 'Our schools and the war' by Rosalie Triolo.

The Great War profoundly touched the lives of Australian teachers, school children and local communities, and with lasting consequences. Every teacher had the task of explaining the war to their students. Many teachers, a disproportionately large number, fought and died, and were joined by their older students. For years after, the names of those who fell were respectfully displayed on school honor boards, in honor books and remembered by other commemorative means, including through the introduction of Anzac Day. 
How teachers and school communities were affected by patriotic appeals and activities, and how they responded to the long years of grim news from Gallipoli, the Western Front and other sites of training, fighting and convalescence, is revealed in an account that historians, general readers and today’s students will find illuminating and deeply moving. 
Many of the contributions to the book come from Norman Heathcote a school teacher who joined up  in July 1915, when he was 28, and wrote about his experiences and about teachers, trainees and pupils he knew on active service from schools where he'd taught. He was a quartermaster during the war, he sailed with fellow teacher-soldier Lance-Corporal Henry Pender of Dadswells Bridge. After the war he became a School Inspector in 1924. He was the President of the Nhill RSL in 1921.

A wonderfully fascinating account from the book concerns a Ni Ni East teacher who arranged for a pair of socks to be knitted for General W.R. Birdwood (he was the commander of the Australian forces at Gallipoli), and as a fund-raiser, a charge was made for the privilege of knitting a row. The General replied that it "is really wonderful that your school, with only 10 pupils, has been able to build up a fund of 50 pounds".
If you know the location of a school honour board, the Society would love to hear from you.