Over the last 4 + years I have used the blog to record, against the chronology of the War, the deaths of soldiers from the Shire of Alberton. In this sense the blog has acted as a formal attestation of their service. In six-monthly intervals I have also given an overview of all those who enlisted, and also considered the issue of those who chose not to enlist. More broadly, I have also attempted to analyse the impact of the various crises, pressure points and divisions that either emerged or were exacerbated in the local community – and Australia more generally – during the course of the War.

However, now that the centenary of the Armistice has passed, future posts will not keep to the previous regular time frame but will be posted at progressive intervals.

I still need to cover the cases of 2 local men who died overseas on service. Harold Claude Perkins died of disease in France on 26/2/19 and John Albert O’Neill died of illness in the UK on 25/11/19. Both names are included on the Alberton Shire Soldiers’ memorial. I will combine the 2 in a single post early next year.

There is also further work to do on the complete database of all those locals who enlisted. This always has been, and still remains, a work-in-progress. As already indicated, as the research has continued over the course of the blog I have uncovered additional names and I need to add this number – approximately 20 – which will take the final tally so nearly 800 men. I will include the additional men as a separate post.

Also, I intend to carry out additional analysis of the complete data base. To now, the data has been released, and interpreted, in intervals of 6 months but it now needs to be looked at as a whole. It represents a significant data set – nearly 800 men of the AIF who can be tied to a particular location – and it deserves more attention. I am also considering including additional characteristics, in order, for example, to provided a greater focus on the issue of the men’s health. However, there is a significant technical problem here because throughout the blog I have struggled to find a sufficiently sophisticated online data base to use alongside the blog. What I want to do might not be possible. At the same time, I should at least be able to use the blog to release additional insights from the data.

Then there are all the issues associated with the men’s return to Australia and the local area. There are questions about how easily they were able to fit back into their former lives and the local community, and the extent to which they wanted to retain the experience of ‘mateship’ fashioned in the AIF, even if this bond was ‘exclusivist’ in nature. There were certainly major disputes in the local community over the issue of the commemoration of the men’s service and sacrifice. And all this was taking place within a community where much of the division seen over the course the War, particularly that over religion, was actually intensifying not diminishing.

The soldier settlement scheme was also critically important. It promised so much after the War. But one of the most interesting features of the program was the way the ex-soldiers, representing the younger generation, succeeded or failed in their ventures within an administrative and political context that gave power to the older generation of established farmers and town elders. In a real sense, the former soldiers swapped the authority of the AIF – where most of them were relatively young and never rose above the rank of private – for the generational authority of the established social and political order of the community to which they returned; and the power of the local authority overseeing the settlement scheme was considerable. I hope to give at least an overview of the success or otherwise of the scheme over the first 10 or so years.

I would also like to look in more detail at the whole question of the White Australia Policy, particularly in the context of the end of the War and the widespread conviction that victory had secured this fundamental national commitment. In this context I also hope to revisit the local history written at the time by Rev George Cox.

It is important, at the very least, to begin to show that the full legacy of the War – even within the confines of just the one local community of the Shire of Alberton on which I have focused these past 4 + years – went far beyond the preoccupation with memorials and commemorations, and all the associated myth-making.