Meet the Blackboy Hill Team

(most of) The Blackboy Hill is Calling Team
Left to right, back row first: Peter Moss, Mardi May, Fay Dease, Mimma Tornatora,
Valerie Everett, Anne Goodhue-Watkins, and Betty Pyke and Shannon Kayne

The Blackboy Hill Team is made up of many authors, consultants and supporters who are passionate about the project. Please find their biographies and descriptions of roles below.

Contributors (Authors, in alphabetical order)

1) Shannon Coyle (Kayne), Author/Administrator

Shannon is the current Coordinator of the KSP Writers’ Centre and has worked professionally as a freelance writer, journalist and editor. Her fiction and non-fiction work has been published in indigo Journal (Issue 5), Writing on the WAll, A Swift Century, and The West Australian, and she has won awards in various literary competitions. She is author of three self-published books, including a family history, and holds a degree in Professional Writing and Publishing from Edith Cowan University. In 2013 she was the selected representative for the Communications and Arts sector in that year’s Graduation Catalogue (ECU).

Allocated chapter: ‘The Camp Chronicle’

As the current editor of The KSP News, a monthly e-magazine produced at KSP Writers’ Centre, Shannon is interested in researching the editorial process as it was in 1914 -1919, and using her background in writing to produce a lively account of the production involved in creating the camp newsletter. www.shannonkayne.com


2) Fay Dease, Author

Fay has been a KSP member for ten years. With Leanne Lennon, she jointly started and facilitated the KSP Writing Group at Northam for three years. In 2005 Fay had a short piece published in a Word Thirst anthology (Benmax Box publication). She has also had stories published in the 2012 KSP Past Tense Group anthology, Time of Our Lives, and the 2013 KSP Past Tense anthology, Time Passes. Fay was also the Competition Secretary at KSP for five years and served on the management committee, as well as doing other voluntary office work.

Allocated chapter: ‘John Charles Spratley’

Fay’s contribution to the Blackboy Hill project is a personal story concerning her grandfather, John Charles Spratley, (known as Jack) who migrated from England to Australia, with his family, arriving at Fremantle on February sixteen 1914. Jack had been a soldier in the British army, having served four years in the Reserve and a further eight years in the Royal Field Artillery, and fought in the Boer War. In August of that year when war was declared against Germany he joined the 11th Battalion at Black Boy Hill. Jack with his Battalion embarked at Fremantle on the second of November, on the troopship HMAT Ascanius, sailing for Egypt. Leaving his wife and two baby daughters behind, he was never to return. Fay is contributing original documents, a poem, letters and photos from the period.


3) Valerie Everett, Author/Project Convener

Valerie has been researching and writing for more than fifteen years and is passionate about exploring topics in Western Australia’s history. Her first children’s book The House that Was Built in a Day: Anzac Cottage (UWA Press, 2007) was awarded a Notable Book in the Eve Pownall Award for Information books by the Children’s Book Council of Australia in 2008. Valerie also researches and writes family and local histories and has twice won the Open Section of the City of Vincent’s Local History Awards. Valerie has a keen interest in Western Australia’s involvement in World War One and volunteers at Anzac Cottage in Mount Hawthorn to tell the story of this significant house and war memorial to the public. Valerie is a teacher and has been a member of KSP for over ten years. In 2013 Valerie joined the Management Committee. She is very interested in Blackboy Hill as the birthplace of the Australian Imperial Force in Western Australia.

Allocated chapters: ‘11th Battalion’ ‘YMCA Social Centre’ ‘Teacher’s Notes’

Valerie will research and write about the 11th Battalion which comprised the first recruits to the camp and formed part of the first contingent of soldiers to leave Australia and land at Gallipoli. She will also write about the YMCA Social Centre and its valuable role in providing entertainment and a social hub for troops at the camp. The YMCA at Blackboy Hill was believed to be the largest social Centre on a military base in the world at that time. Valerie is the convener of the book project on Blackboy Hill.

 
4) Anne Goodhue-Watkins, Author

Anne has been a member of KSP for ten years. As a member of Past Tense she has had stories published in the 2012 KSP Past Tense Group anthology, Time of our Lives, and in the 2013 KSP Past Tense anthology, Time Passes. Anne is currently working on a memoir about sailing around the world for six and half years in the 60’s and 70’s.

Allocated chapter: ‘Feeding an Army of Men’

Her mission is to research and write about the provisioning, storing and feeding an army in training at Blackboy Hill, Western Australia, Australia’s largest training camp at the time. Cooks had to be trained, not only to feed those in training but also to ensure that each unit and reinforcement draft had a quota of men with the rudimentary skills of cooking in the field, using the traditional methods of “trench fire”, “dixies”, “soyer stove” and “billyhut”. Hopefully this will give us an insight into how difficult it was to feed and train an army of men.

It was Anne’s interest in cooking, history and her families’ involvement in various wars over the centuries, along with the importance of food to sustain the body that has led her to focus on this aspect of the life in the Blackboy Hill Camp.


5) Mardi May, Author

Mardi May is a long-time member of the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, where she is a member of the Management Committee and Literary Advisory Board. She has facilitated the social history writing group since its inception 11years ago and the poetry group for the last six years.

She has several books of social history and poetry, and has been widely awarded and published. One of her books on the multicultural stories of the Swan Valley, was short-listed for the Premier’s Book Award and won the City of Swan Heritage Award.

Allocated chapter: ‘Poets at Blackboy’

Mardi’s particular focus of interest in the Blackboy Hill Project is the poetry written by the soldiers during this time span. As a poet herself, she understands the motivation for the soldiers to employ this form to express their feelings, but also to use humour to make light of an often overwhelming situation.

She believes the Blackboy Hill project will be a valuable chronicle of camp life in this largely unknown facility. Its planned publication during the centenary year of Gallipoli will help to raise awareness in schools and among the general public. It is time the wealth of available material is assessed and presented in this important collection for the future.


6) Glad McGough, Author

Glad McGough is currently an undergraduate student at ECU working towards an Arts degree, majoring in Writing with a minor in Professional Writing.

As a qualified freelance journalist she has been a lead story writer for Country Newspapers Ltd, particularly, The Albany Advertiser and The Port Hedland Times, having been a centre page columnist, sports writer and drama critic. Glad has also had work published in magazines, anthologies and collections of poetry, facilitated writing workshops, presented public workshops on writing family history, and scripted and presented a weekly half-hour radio program.

For the past ten years she has been an inaugural member, co-facilitator and facilitator of the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre’s Non-Fiction Group. She was an inaugural member of KSP’s Karibu Writing Group and has facilitated a church writing group for the past eight years.

Allocated chapter: ‘Aboriginal Australians and Blackboy Hill’

Avidly interested in Western Australian history and Australian history in general, Glad has been researching material for her non-fiction novel focussed on the Swan River Colony and the impact it had on the Aboriginal people. Glad is an enthusiastic participant in the Blackboy Hill Project and will undertake research on the impact and involvement of the Aboriginal people during the establishment and operation of the army training camp.


7) Dr Peter Moss, Author

Peter Moss is a long-time member of the KSP Past Tense writing group, and a doctor whose medical career took him to visit many different countries. He now lives in the Perth hills with his wife, Pat, and their spoilt dogs. Peter enjoys travel, bushwalking, music and writing travel stories or short stories which often explore other cultures.

Allocated chapters: ‘The Third Field Ambulance’ ‘Influenza camp’

Apart from knowing that Blackboy Hill was a local site to commemorate Anzac Day, Peter was unaware of Blackboy Hill’s historical significance until recently. Now, having had the privilege of been shown over the site and done some research, he is more than convinced that Blackboy Hill should be commemorated and celebrated by the West Australian public, especially with the 100th anniversary of Anzac Day approaching in 2015. Peter’s medical background will create a unique depth of insight into this chapter.


8) Betty Pyke, Author

Betty Pyke belongs to the Past Tense Group of the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre and has had short stories published in anthologies regarding her father’s imprisonment during WW11. Betty is the daughter of a WW11 British prisoner of war. Her father was captured in Singapore and interned for three and a half years at Changi and the Burma railway. She possesses his handwritten diary of this terrible ordeal. As a consequence Betty has been researching this aspect of warfare before attempting to make his diary into an interesting book.

Allocated chapter: ‘Women at Blackboy Hill’

Betty joined the Blackboy Hill book project in November 2013 and volunteered to investigate the role of women at this Western Australian WW1 military training camp. As Betty has studied many aspects of Western Australian history and warfare whilst obtaining her Library Degree she is keen to research the role of women at the Blackboy Hill training camp in WW1.


9) Mimma Tornatora, Author

Mimma Tornatora is a passionate poet who draws on inspiration from her environment, personal observations, history and the faintest of sparks that will ignite her creative soul. Mimma has had poetry published in various journals and anthologies. She has also performed her work throughout Western Australia.

Between 1994 and 2001, whilst in Carnarvon, Mimma established Poets’ Corner, organised writing workshops for adults and was a judge for the Nestlé’s Writing Competition. She is currently working as a specialist teacher teaching Italian and providing literacy support to primary school children.

Allocated chapters: ‘Drills and Marching’ ‘Personal Stories’ ‘Teacher’s Notes’

Mimma’s involvement in the Blackboy Hill Project arose because of her love for local history. It is an area she believes needs to be brought to the forefront. To educate the masses that Blackboy Hill was the main training ground for the majority of men that fought in the Great War and cemented the ANZAC Tradition. Mimma will be researching personal stories, drills and marching. She believes it is going to be a rewarding experience to be part of a magnificent team who will make every endeavour to showcase Blackboy Hill in its entirety.

 
10) Greenmount Primary School – years 6 & 7

Under the direction of Year 6/7 teachers Peter Thomas and Glenys Sims, and with support from project convenor Valerie Everett, the year 6 and 7 students of 2014 will each research a soldier – some of whom are direct relatives – for inclusion in the book. Greenmount Primary School, being a neighbour of the site, has a Blackboy Hill Museum including an extensive range of photographs, books and artefacts.



Contributors, Partners and Consultants (in alphabetical order)

Colin Barnett, West Australian Premier, Supporter

The Premier has expressed formal support of the project and will provide the foreword to the book, pending successful funding for its production.


Paul Bridges, Fact-Checker

Paul is a museum curator with a specialist interest in Western Australian military history. He was deputy curator at the Army Museum of Western Australia for 6 ½ years before moving into museum consulting. This work included preparing a feasibility study to establish a museum at the Pensioner Guard Cottage (1856) in Bassendean and the Interpretation Plan for Princess Royal Fortress in Albany.

As curator for the Mundaring & Hills Historical Society he researched and prepared a significant exhibition on Blackboy Hill Training Camp and regularly lectured on the topic.

He recently co-curated an exhibition for the WA Museum titled Debt of Honour on the Western Australian 2/2nd Independent Company in East Timor in WWII. This exhibition is currently touring regional WA. Paul is president of the Bassendean Historical Society and led a team that researched the names on the Bassendean War Memorial. He has been a member of the Military Historical Society of Australia since his teens and today is the curator for the Swan Guildford Historical Society. He is also a Councillor for the Town of Bassendean.


William Gaynor, Project Consultant

William (Bill) Gaynor is the former President of the Western Australian RSL, and former headmaster of Greenmount Primary School. Bill has a long association with the Blackboy Hill site and was involved in its preservation and heritage-listing. He is now the Chairperson of the Blackboy Hill Commemorative Site Committee. Bill supports KSP’s Blackboy Hill book project and is available to the team for site tours and consultation. He will also assist with arrangements for the book launch.


Dr Joanne Godfrey MACE, Editor/Proof-reader

Joanne Godfrey is a teacher and researcher of history. She has over twenty years of experience in the classroom and spent a brief time lecturing postgraduate students at Edith Cowan University. Her first research project – a history of Greenbushes Primary School, 1893 to 1993 – was published under the guidance of the school’s P&C Association. That work was re-developed into her Honours thesis after which she commenced a PhD into the history of development of state government education in regional Western Australia – specifically the rural southwest – looking for any link between government education and economic development policy between 1888 and 1930. She received outstanding results from her examiners in 2011.

Joanne has received several awards including a Fogarty Foundation Excellence in Education Travel Award, an Australian & New Zealand History of Education Society Travel Grant, a UK History of Education Society Bursary, a letter of appreciation from Frank Blackwell, District Superintendent, of the Manjimup Education District of which Greenbushes is a part and the A.E. Williams History Award, from the Royal Western Australian Historical Society. Joanne is also the author of several published articles in her chief fields of educational interest: the teaching of reading and historical research.


Loreley Morling, Research Assistant

Loreley Morling originally worked as a librarian before completing a diploma in family historical studies, and has since worked as a freelance researcher. This has included writing articles, presenting courses, seminars and conference papers. She has carried out research for authors of a number of books including Terri-ann White, Finding Theodore and Brina, (Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001), Robert E. Webber, Yankee Captain: Amasa T. Webber 1840-1880, (Rutland, Vermont: Robert E. Webber, 2007) and Suzanne Falkiner, The Imago: E.L. Grant Watson and Australia, (Crawley, WA: UWA Publishing, 2011). Loreley is an accredited member of the Australasian Association of Genealogists and Record Agents, an accredited historical researcher with the Professional Historians Association (WA) and a life member of the Western Australian Genealogical Society Inc. Loreley is a supporter of the Blackboy Hill Project and will help to organise the Camp Chronicle research material.