My ANZAC story for today (a #Thread): Roughly 3 years ago, a Kempsey fella I didn't know (either online or in RL) contacted me out of the blue to let me know that the coppers had my pop's war medals

Being in Melbourne, I called Port's cop shop straight away and said, 'I reckon you've got my pop's medals there' and they said, 'Can you come in then?' - 'Nup, but I can sort something out,' I said.

So I got on to my cuz up north and told her and she got onto her mum (my cousin-auntie)and she got onto my favourite great-uncle (pop's son) and he said, yep, they were pop's medals alright, but that he wasn't going into the fucken cop shop

So another cuz was contacted to go into the copper's and pick up the medals and anyway he got them back and they weren't originals anyway, but replicas somebody in the family had commissioned, which got me thinking about pop and the war and 21st Century Australia's ANZAC fetish.

Pop was a commando in New Guinea and fought a number of battles there, including being part of the Battle of Milne Bay https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/E84334 which was (as Pop used to say) the first time in the war that the Japanese were successfully repelled.

Anway, a bit later on Pop got himself blown up. I think he literally had his arse blown up and eventually went home with shrapnel injuries to recover somewhere in remote QLD - I've got all these details in my archives somewhere from when he put it on record years ago -

Anyway, eventually he went back down to Sydney and at some point after that was discharged and after the war he - like so many Aboriginal soldiers - didn't get the promised block of land and had to fight to get and then keep his war pension, and got shifted back onto the mish

and then a few of his and Nan Jo's kids got taken down to Cootamundra and the NSW Aboriginal 'Welfare' board threatened to take a couple of the boys to Kinchella, so for that & other reasons he was forced to get another kind of 'dog tag' known as a Certificate of Exemption

The 'dog licence' as it was also commonly known as permitted the holder to live in White Australia... sort of. There was a shit-tonne of caveats attached, including not being able to go back to the mish and see family. It was as insidious AF in terms of attempting to erase us

Anyway, years on, when I knew Pop, he never had any time for ANZAC Day or RSLs and all that bizzo. He refused to march on April 25 and avoided the clubs. In the recording we have somewhere, he names a lot of our Birpai and Dunghutti mob - his mates - who didn't make it back

And that's what I think of every ANZAC day. Pop rattling off those names, and the names of more of his mates who died tragically on home soil & on Country, working in dangerous & shit conditions for little to no pay

and having their kids stolen and movements restricted and regulated and not being allowed to speak language or practice culture in any way.

And that's not even taking into account the Frontier Wars and the ongoing reluctance of the Commonwealth to acknowledge the losses that First Nations peoples experienced as original patriots of Country. Anyway, that's Anzac day for a whole lot of mob besides me and mine.