Artist Terri Tuckwell shares the stories about her latest mural ahead of Bega Soldiers Memorial’s centenary on Saturday, May 25.
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00:00 Hi, I'm Terry Tucker from Toys'Vela Art and I have been commissioned to do a mural for
00:08 the RSL Vigour sub-branch for their centenary.
00:12 So we've got five panels.
00:14 Four of the panels are depicting different eras of war and the street panel is the one
00:24 that's in the eternal flame scenario with a serviceman from all three services with
00:34 reverse rifle and two verses of the ode.
00:37 So that just sets the tone of respect and remembrance.
00:43 Then we move on to the first stage of war which is World War I, although we've been
00:48 fighting the whole war this is what we've come up with and we have Lieutenant Colonel
00:57 Irwin and there's some debate about whether he was Major Irwin or a Colonel but he was
01:05 a Major during this war but then he was a Colonel later on and we have some of the war
01:10 horses which are a big feature of the Australian effort in World War I.
01:17 The next portrait, we have some smaller portraits, not that they're lesser in any way but just
01:28 some smaller portraits just so we could get as many locals represented as we could.
01:33 We have here a prisoner of war, Frank Dwyer.
01:38 His son still lives in the district and gave us the story about his poor emancipated father
01:48 who was in Changi.
01:51 They were ordered to smile for the camera by the Japanese under threat of machine gun
01:57 and he cheekily stuck his little leg and arm out just to show how unwell they really were.
02:05 If we move on to World War II and Korea, so we've got the very well-known Vivian Boerwinkle
02:12 who has some distant relatives in the area but we felt that that was, well the RSL felt
02:19 strongly about including her in this and I've been really grateful, I've loved painting
02:24 that one.
02:26 People will probably be familiar, she was one of the, well she was the sole survivor
02:31 of the Australian nurse massacre at Bango Island.
02:40 We've got our Korean local, Henry, I spoke to his brother this morning, Bert Deacon and
02:54 he was talking about Henry and how Henry volunteered to go and unfortunately was killed in action.
03:01 He was first in Japan and then shipped to Korea and didn't come back unfortunately.
03:06 So he's, yeah, so that's a pretty sad thing.
03:10 He's the only representative on here who was killed in action.
03:13 I quite like how he's been represented.
03:17 The only photograph I had was one where there's sort of a flash but I just feel like that
03:24 it does sort of, yeah, it's apt I think.
03:30 Okay, so then we've got the next panel which is going to be Vietnam, Malaya and Borneo.
03:37 So we have local resident John Lehman who is, he was, he trained with this fellow here,
03:48 Ronnie Keft and they were basically split.
03:53 One went to Vietnam, one went to Borneo.
03:58 And they're both still living in the area now so it would be really great to see them
04:02 on Saturday and have their photos taken against the mural.
04:06 So this is, as I was saying, the Vietnam section.
04:09 Ronnie Keft, a local man.
04:12 I really enjoyed doing that portrait.
04:15 I hope he likes it.
04:17 There's always that pressure of capturing that likeness of the person and hoping that
04:23 they're happy with it as well.
04:25 Then we have our local Indigenous submariner.
04:31 So this is Adrian Luck and his family are, well, Adrian's no longer with us but I've
04:40 had the pleasure of seeing his daughter and she's been lovely and really appreciative
04:47 of just the whole project and the respect that that's given to all these servicemen
04:53 and women.
04:55 The next one is another local, not local now, but local-born.
05:01 And his name is Darrell Skip Holzhiser and he's still in the Army, so he's still serving.
05:11 And yeah, so we've pictured him here in the full combat gear of that era.
05:18 I really liked, about the different eras, I really liked certain things but it's, but
05:23 during all of that year, I mean that's just synonymous with modern war, isn't it?
05:27 Just seeing the combat helmets and the night vision goggles and all that sort of thing.
05:36 In the background I've got sort of little just silhouettes, just notations of different
05:44 things.
05:44 So we've got the Humbees and the Blackhawk, Kiwis and the Vanderbrook was a faded ship
05:53 that Vivian was on that was shipwrecked and that's why the nurses ended up on an island.
06:00 And of course I already talked about the horses.
06:04 The remembrance poppies, I really liked the idea of carrying that through and looking
06:12 at the War Memorial website they do talk about the poppies as being an eternal sort of
06:17 remembrance symbol.
06:19 Although it did start obviously with northern France and Belgium in World War I.
06:24 I like carrying that through, I think that's an apt thing and they say it's now a typical
06:33 symbol for, representative for all wars really, all war conflicts.
06:37 I have yet to poke in some rosemary.
06:41 Time is now very short but that's about, yeah, there's just a few more flourishes.
06:48 And then yeah, we should be done.
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