Artist Terri Tuckwell shares the stories about her latest mural ahead of Bega Soldiers Memorial’s centenary

Bega District News

Artist Terri Tuckwell shares the stories about her latest mural ahead of Bega Soldiers Memorial’s centenary on Saturday, May 25.

Transcript

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.

06:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended