For nearly 100 years, Australia has been collecting the letters and diaries of service personnel to write the official histories of the country’s involvement in conflicts around the world.Among the more than 15,000 collections are beautiful letters brimming with love, poignant letters describing the realities of war, and letters sharing news from home that soldiers have missed while deployed.
Robyn van Dyk and Idris Murphy are both intimately acquainted with these letters from the front. Robyn is the head of the Research Centre at the Australian War Memorial, and looks after these letters, making sure they’re preserved for perpetuity. Idris Murphy is a painter who discovered 160 letters in a camphor wood box under his mother’s house when he was sorting through her estate.
These letters were written by his grandfather, Idris ‘Charlie’ Pike from Gallipoli and the Western Front, to his sweetheart Violet back home in Sydney.
Listen to Idris Murphy’s full episode on ‘Conversations’ by the ABC here.
Image: Idris Murphy ‘Half Moon at the Nek’, 2015, acrylic on aluminium, 153x153cm.
