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

As part of their education on the Great War, students from Freshwater Bay Primary School recently marked the unmarked graves of fallen soldiers at Karrakatta Cemetery. These soldiers have been acknowledged by the Australian government as having died from the effects of war and were originally honoured with a war grave and granite headstone. However, the headstones no longer stand.

This amazing Remembrance Day project was a truly collaborative community effort, initiated by Ben Turner at Freshwater Primary School, coordinated by the Claremont and Nedlands branches of the RSL, with Ian Jones from the Showgrounds Community Men's Shed crafting each of the wooden crosses. The year 6 students researched the soldiers, whose official war graves had been destroyed, and decorated a wooden cross to be laid at their unmarked grave. Two days prior to Remembrance Day, 56 students visited Karrakatta and laid their crosses to mark the graves of 35 soldiers.

I want to record my admiration and thanks to all of those involved, but I also want to note my absolute disgust at the removal of the headstones of our World War I vets at Karrakatta and the building of footpaths over some of their graves. I want to assure the local RSLs and the vets' families that I will continue to work with them to ensure that this abject injustice is remedied.