Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Spence for his words and I invite him, if he has time, to stay for my contribution here as I will be talking about constituents from his electorate. It is with no doubt the biggest honour of an MP's life, and, indeed, of my life, to stand here in this place to speak about some of the heroes of World War II, those brave soldiers who faced the enemy in the Siege of Tobruk from 11 April to 10 December 1941—eight months of brutal fighting.

I start by paying tribute to the last Rat of Tobruk to pass, Thomas Page Pritchard. I extend my condolences to his family and pay tribute to his service to his country and to the Commonwealth. On the honour roll, which I looked up, he is listed as Tom, a driver, born 24 August 1921, which is not the same as what the member for Riverina just outlined, but I did look it up on the honour roll. VX23441 was his number, and he was in the 2nd/5th Field Ambulance unit. That would make him 103, if he were indeed alive today. Tom's service helped to preserve our freedom and rights as we enjoy them in a democratic nation today. We must continue to remember those who fought so bravely for us. I humbly thank him for his sacrifices and for those of all service men and women, past, present and into the future. I highlight those serving men and women at the Kokoda Barracks in Canungra, close to my electorate on the Gold Coast, and those of the 5th/11th Battery 9th Regiment Royal Australia Artillery, and B company 25th/49th Battalion, Royal Queensland Regiment, at Ashmore, in my electorate.

It was also the service and sacrifices of two brothers from Broken Hill—Hergott Springs, to be precise, which is now known as Marree, off the Oodnadatta Track in South Australia—that I would like to highlight for the house and for the history books. Colin Arthur, SX5015, born 26 September 1919, was 22; and Maurice Geoffery, SX5014, born 31 August 1921, was just 20. There was just two years between those two boys. Both privates served, unusually, in the same battalion, in the 2nd/43rd. They fought side-by-side to save each other and to save their families from the enemy. They fought for our democracy. They fought so we didn't have to. They fought with courage.

Colin and Maurice both returned from the war, but with injuries they lived with for the rest of our lives. Colin moved to Western Australia and was badly affected by the war. He isolated himself from the family unit until his passing, of which there are no details. The honour roll says he's still alive, actually! But, if he were, he would be 105 years old, and Tom Pritchard would not be the last to pass. So that scenario is fairly unlikely.

Here is a vignette from Elizabeth about Colin's younger brother, Maurice—here's where it gets hard—in South Australia. Circa 1975, a small girl sat on her old uncle Mott's knee, giggled about the hard lumps in his gnarled fingers and wondered innocently why he had a glass eye. He always smiled, and he never talked of the horrors of war, especially to children. But his family knew that he was the only soldier in Tobruk to step on an antipersonnel mine and survive to tell the tale. He lost an eye, and his legs were badly damaged in the blast. Not just his hands but his body too were riddled with shrapnel. That young, innocent girl was seven-year-old me. My grandmother, Doreen Marion Bell, after whom I am named, was born 16 March 1916, and she died on 13 August 2012, aged 96 years. Her much loved baby brothers, Maurice and Colin, both survived and both served together. They returned from Tobruk to marry and to have their own families.

To close, I want to thank driver Tom Pritchard for his service to our nation, to those who returned and, sadly, to those who never had the chance to start their own families. To all of the Rats of Tobruk and to the Bell brothers from Hergott Springs, thank you. On behalf of my dearly beloved grandmother, Doreen Marion—Colin and Mott's older sister—my father, Roger, his two brothers, Trevor and Ian, and my wider family, we will remember them. Lest we forget.

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