Celia Hammond (Curtin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise today to mark Remembrance Day, to acknowledge the sacrifices and service of defence personnel around Australia, and to pay my respects to all those who have served or continue to serve. In my electorate of Curtin on Remembrance Day, students from Scotch College and St Hilda's converge at train stations and shopping centres to support our RSLs by selling poppies for the annual Poppy Appeal. Veterans and community members attend remembrance ceremonies across the electorate. There are countless stories of service and sacrifice of the people in our local communities, and it is important that, on a day like today, we hear these stories of our local people.

There are people like Pamela Burgoyne, who joined the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service in 1944 as a probationary telegraphist at HMAS Penguin. She was later stationed at HMAS Harman, in Canberra. Pamela's role was to intercept Morse code messages, which were then decoded for further action. Dennis Williams, now 93, volunteered to join the Royal Navy in Wales, aged just 17. He joined to avoid being conscripted into the coalmines. He served on the HMS Devonshire, which was stationed in Sydney. He still talks of his experience of seeing the devastation the atomic bombs wrought in Hiroshima when his service took him to Japan in 1946. Then there is Eileen Gillon. I want to share her story in her words: 'I decided I'd join the forces and I ended up at the Army at Swan Barracks, in Perth, in 1942. I did it on my own. I came home and I said, "I've joined the Army." I got no reaction. I don't think anybody cared. I was taught to drive. Not many girls drove in those days. I spent quite a lot of my childhood living in a tent and now I was living in a tent again with three other girls: Millie, Dulcie and Ivy. It was a bit cosy, but we didn't mind. I wore a khaki shirt with a khaki tie, and a skirt and a driver's cap. We had a great coat and boots called half-heavies, which weren't as heavy as the men's boots. We would shine them up for drills and inspections. If you weren't shipshape with your blanket turned in the right way, you copped it. We had to clean our own vehicles. We had to change tyres and do degreasing and cleaning. An officer would come along and run his gloved finger over them to check for specks of grease. Officers—they were young blokes with two pips on their shoulders who thought they were just it. We would march in our dress uniforms through the city of Perth to stir people up so that they would donate to the war cause. I made some great friends in the Army. That was the best thing.'

To those who have served and to those who continue to serve, I say thank you. To those who are no longer with us, lest we forget.