On Tuesday 15 November 2022 HPG was pleased to be part of a ceremony to plant a new Lone Pine tree at Georges Heights. The ceremony was held in conjunction with Mosman sub-Branch RSL and the Harbour Trust in the presence of the Governor of New South Wales, Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC.
ABOVE L-R: The Governor of New South Wales, Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, Jill L’Estrange HPG President, Alan Toner President Mosman sub-Branch RSL and Janet Carding Executive Director, Sydney Harbour Federation Trust.
Read the speeches of HPG President Jill L’Estrange and Alan Toner President Mosman sub-Branch RSL (and HPG Committee Member) below:
Speech by HPG President Jill L’Estrange
The planting of the Lone Pine today, replaces the tree planted here at Georges Heights in 2002 by the then NSW Governor Marie Bashir. The tree was donated by the Late Mr Don Goodsir, then president of the Headland Preservation Group and the Late Mr Phil Cannane representing Mosman Sub- branch RSL. Its planting honours those fallen in the Battle for Lone Pine and those veterans who served in the campaign.
The significance of the Lone Pine as a symbol of that Battle and the Gallipoli campaign more generally, has over time taken on great National significance and has in many ways helped inform our national identity.
Just as the ANZAC name was born from the Gallipoli campaign, the pride the soldiers took in that name back then continues today and now carries enormous national significance.
The Battle for Lone Pine was one of the earliest successful battles of the First World War or the Great War as it is known. It has been described as ‘the heaviest of its kind in which Australian Troops ever took part... it was brutal, and bloody and often confused’.
For the rest of the war, the Battle for Lone Pine became a touchstone for Australian troops, as they compared the intensity and brutality of the combat there with subsequent battles at the Western Front.
The devastating losses, more than 2,277 men in just 4 days, incurred by the ANZAC’s in the Battle for Lone Pine, had an enormous impact at home.
It was the loss of so many of our brave young men, some as young as 16, that shook the Nation. Many had enlisted seeking adventure not considering the consequences of war. For the vast majority of them, it was their first experience of combat. Stories of heroism and courage in circumstances of the fiercest fighting filtered home.
This, compounded with subsequent battles of this Great War, led to a circumstance where Australia lost a generation of men! And nowhere was this loss more keenly felt than in the rural areas of this Nation.
For example, every country town, village and regional locality in NSW has a memorial to these men. The loss is heartbreaking!! These memorials hold the name of not just one son, but many sons, and in some cases husbands, fathers, uncles, cousins - all from the same family group. They perished serving their King, the Empire and our Nation.
Seeds brought back from Lone Pine produced trees which have forever since produced trees which honour our fallen soldiers. This tree is propagated from seed that was sent home to Inverell – a northern NSW rural town, to a mother who sent two sons to war and only one returned.
Her sons, Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith and Private Mark Smith, were involved in the capture of the Lone Pine positions. Mark was killed in the action. Benjamin retrieved a pine cone from one of the logs used by the Turks as overhead cover for their trenches and sent it home to his mother Mrs Jane McMullin. This tree, an Aleppo pine (Pinus Halepensis), is a living descendant of that pine cone.
We plant this tree today, in respectful memory of those who fell during the Gallipoli campaign.
It is planted in the precinct of the WW1 hospital where we are reminded of the many soldiers who were repatriated from the war to this site for medical treatment and rehabilitation.
We plant it also, overlooking the harbour and the Heads from whence these soldiers sailed on a mission to protect the freedoms of the western world. For many it was their last port, for others, the lucky ones, the Heads welcomed them home.
We plant this tree also in affirmation of the service of all our veterans and the sacrifices they made for our country.
As we pass by this tree let us remember not only our veterans from that long ago theatre of war but all our veterans who have since fought for our freedoms.
Speech by Alan Toner President Mosman sub-Branch RSL
When the ANZAC troops landed on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915, they made little advancement up the steep slopes and hill tops across the heights of that great Turkish peninsula.
In the months that followed the landing, our ANZACs were forced to seek shelter from Turkish fire by digging shell scrapes and trenches using any material accessible to them. Yet, in the hill tops above, along what Turkish troops called the Ridge of Blood, the Turkish continued to fortify their positions using nearby pine trees.
However, the stalemate between our ANZACs and the Turkish was set to change in August. At 5:30pm on the 6th of August 1915, the Australian guns in ANZAC Cove fell silent long enough for the ANZAC troops to break out from their positions and advance across No Man’s Land towards the top of Hill 971. This is where a solitary pine tree still remained and this offensive became known as the ‘Battle for Lone Pine’.
Whilst under fire from the Turkish troops, our ANZACs went from parapet to parapet making ground along No Man’s Land. ANZACs fired, bombed and even bayoneted from above Turkish trenchers, some found their way inside Turkish trenches and in hand to hand combat, whilst others ran on past Turkish defence lines. By nightfall, on the 6th of August, most of the Turkish front line was in Australian hands but the Battle for Lone Pine was not over yet.
Having captured the Turkish trenches, the ANZACs now tried to hold what they had taken whilst the Turkish troops desperately tried to force the ANZACs out. Over the 4 days of the Battle for Lone Pine, fierce fights between ANZACs and the Turkish troops were fought not only above the ground but underground too, within a maze of Turkish tunnels.
On the 9th of August, the Turkish troops launched a violent assault on the ANZACs with intense rifle and machine-gun fire. But, among our ANZACs was a 19 year old Private named John Patrick Hamilton, who, back home in Australia, was a butcher in Lithgow who now found himself in the thick of it on No Man’s Land in Gallipoli.
For six hours he lay in the open, protected only by a few sandbags of a parapet, telling those ANZACs in the trenches where to throw their bombs whilst he himself maintained sniper fire at Turkish troops. Hamilton was later awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for acts of bravery on the battlefield, for his coolness and daring example to others during the heat of battle. The Battle for Lone Pine was to be one of the bloodiest battles of the Gallipoli campaign, where Hamilton was one of seven Victoria Cross recipients but sadly, more than 2,200 Australians and more than 5,000 Turkish troops were killed on the Ridge of Blood in just four days.
We acknowledge the tragic loss of life during the Battle for Lone Pine as well as the acts of bravery and mateship that also forged the ANZAC spirit within the fires of Gallipoli in 1915. Yet, there is one act that is not to be forgotten, it is the act of remembrance by Lance Corporal Benjamin Charles Smith. When Benjamin learnt that his brother, Private Mark Smith had died on the first day of the Battle for Lone Pine, he collected several pine cones found on the ridge and sent them home to his mother back inAustralia.
His mother kept the cones for 13 years before planting the seeds in 1928 and since then, the Lone Pine descendants have signified not only the loss of life and suffering of war, but also, signify the enduring ANZAC spirit that underpins the veryAustralian identity.
Today, 94 years since the first planting of a Lone Pine on Australian soil, we remember and renew the ANZAC spirit by planting this young Lone Pine Tree. In closing, I’ll leave you with the words of Prime Minister Bob Hawke, during his speech at the Lone Pine ceremony in Gallipoli on ANZAC Day in 1990, he said “to breathe, as it were, new life into the old story.”
Ladies and gentlemen, that is what we are doing today. We are renewing life into the old ANZAC story. Lest We Forget.