Beneath Hill 60 Premier

This week the movie premiered in Townsville where it was shot last year.



It interests me because it is a bit of lesser-known Australian history and because I have a need-to-know.
Dad's Uncle Thomas (click for more information) was a tunneller in the war.  He was recruited in Tasmania where he was a miner.  He suffered from mustard gas poisoning twice in Belgium and was repatriated home to Tassy. He died a few days before the Armistice was signed.

In his last weeks of life, the Australian Defence Force denied Thomas' application for a pension.  They (whoever "they" are) claimed that his "rheumatism" was a pre-existing illness even though they gave him a clean bill of health when he signed up only two years earlier.  This information is in his records which are accessible from the Australian Archives online.  Was this an injustice?  I believe so.

Brave, fit men signed up, compelled by noble motives, to do a dangerous, frightening and dirty job which took them far from their loved ones.  To return, frail and ill, traumatised and dying and be denied a pension by a penny-pinching government - that's betrayal.

Maybe the movie will fill in some gaps for me.