Welcome to the Blackboy Hill Project!

Select members of the KSP Writers' Centre in Greenmount, WA, and associated organisations have embarked on an ambitious project to commemorate the history of Blackboy Hill. We are working on compiling a book which will be launched on Anzac Day 2015, the centenary of Gallipoli.

Authors and supporters of the project will be posting on this blog, telling tales of their research, sharing photos, links and interesting bits of information found along the way.

Never heard of Blackboy Hill or know very little? This is what we aim to rectify!

BBH in a nutshell and why this project is important:

Blackboy Hill in Greenmount was the birthplace of the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) in Western Australia and approximately 32,000 Western Australian men trained there before heading overseas to fight in World War I. It is now a commemorative site and each year an evening and dawn service are held there for Anzac Day. PUBLISHED MATERIAL ON BLACKBOY HILL IS CURRENTLY MINIMAL and there is NO BOOK dedicated to the history of the site– we would like to rectify this. KSP is proposing that a book be written and launched to commemorate the Centenary of Anzac Day in April 2015. The book will be a compilation of articles, photographs, stories and samples of the soldiers’ poetry, and will ultimately preserve this important period of WA history.

Following the second meeting of the Blackboy Hill Project on Saturday 9 November 2013, the goals and overall vision for the book have been clarified. It will be a COMMEMMORATION of the Australian soldiers of Gallipoli and a detailed social history of the Greenmount training camp, combined with an argument that Blackboy Hill was instrumental in installing the indefatigable strength and spirit of the Anzac soldiers that ultimately won the Great War.

Want to learn more, contribute to or sponsor the project? Please email Shannon at kspf@iinet.net.au .