President’s Message
Please do not mistakenly think that the Chauvel Foundation silence over the last few months is indicative of no activity! I am writing this having recently adjourned a meeting of your Executive Committee where I was impressed by the number of agenda items that have a ‘future focus’ and are achievable for an organisation that is now moving into a steady state after a period of maturing. I was also impressed by the enthusiasm of a small, focused team. We all know that getting the right volunteers on any committee is not easy. You can be confident that you have a very good team who are clearly driven by honouring the General’s name and attributes.
We will always be guided by the Foundation’s Aim and Objective as they appear in the Foundation’s Constitution:
Aim: To honour the life and achievements of General Sir Harry Chauvel and the Australian Light Horse.
Objective: To provide funding through the Foundation to eligible Australian citizens or permanent residents for them to develop their personal talents for the greater good of the community.
The Aim is the touch point for all that we consider and discuss and as this newsletter demonstrates, we are making some headway in increasing community awareness of who General Chauvel was, what he achieved and how that remains relevant in 2025 and beyond.
For those who are in Melbourne, or visiting over the holiday season, I encourage you to visit the Shrine of Remembrance where the display about Sir Harry will soon be enhanced with a statuette of Sir Harry mounted on his horse.
Achieving the Objective has started with modest financial support to the Chauvel Border Light Horse Trail focused on developing an awareness of the commitment of regional Australians along the New South Wales border and Victorian border to their service in the First World War. The Border Light Horse Trail inspired the Chauvel Australian Light Horse Memorial Ride that took the story of Chauvel and the Light Horse into regional communities, running simple and popular commemorative services at otherwise little-known memorials and inspiring talks in schools, RSLs and in aged care facilities.
The Foundation’s current project is encouraging and supporting the Banjo Paterson High Country Trail. Banjo Paterson was also a Light Horseman. If Chauvel had a decisive impact on the outcome of the First World War in the Middle East, then Banjo Paterson’s poetry in the pocket-sized anthologies of The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses took a taste of the High Country and regional Australia to the benefit of the soldiers in the battlefields and trenches and their families on the home front. Further in this newsletter you will read some Light Horse historical articles and news of recent activities where the Chauvel Foundation has been visible.
In closing for this edition, on behalf of the Chauvel Foundation Committee, best wishes for a Happy and Holy Christmas and a Prosperous 2026.
Rob Shoebridge
Foundation President
Between the Valleys – A Light Horse Family Ride: Lucyvale to Koetong
A reflection by Honor Auchinleck
A Light Horse bugle with an inscription commemorating the Charge at Beersheba on the 31 October 1917 brought a focus and special ambience to the riders of the Family Light Horse Ride as they gathered to saddle up and discuss the route. While some were saddling their horses, a mother was explaining to her daughter the significance of the bugle and its original use in signalling daily routines and troop movements in battle. The daughter needed no parental encouragement as she was ready to have a go and before long she was mastering notes.
Other kids gathered quickly, all wanting a go. They soon proved themselves more than adept than many adults and it was the kids’ bugle notes which brought a special touch to what was turning into a most enjoyable occasion.
The youngest member of the Ride was five-year-old Grace mounted on a black Shetland pony called Lou Lou. Lou Lou was rather unlike many mischievous Shetlands who love to shake and scrape their young charges from their backs by racing beneath the low lying branches of the nearest tree. Lou Lou was a delightful paragon of virtue who looked after her young charge like no other. Grace kept up with the Ride for three and a half hours as far as Shelley when it is likely that her mum and dad decided that she’d done enough for one day. Nonetheless I suspect Grace might have caught the bug and we will be welcoming her on similar rides in the future. If the Family Ride sought to pass the torch to the next generation, it was happening effortlessly.
Although perfect for a young rider like Grace, other riders with Shetland experience warned Gavin against trying to mount Lou Lou. One try was enough to convince him that he was not there to prove himself against a Shetland’s wily ways. More important for Gavin was supporting his family and the opportunity to reflect on lessons learned from the Chauvel Memorial Ride earlier in the year.
The Ride from Lucyvale to Koetong loosely followed the heritage rail trail and possibly the route taken by those riding to enlist to serve in WW1 at the Old Tallangatta hall. Some horses had a slight surplus spring spirit and tried their riders until they settled down to a steady, companionable pace.
The route covered approximately 30km with a break for barbecued sausages lunch at the old Shelley Railway Station – at one time Shelley had the highest railway station in Victoria. A blazing fire helped warm the riders and their supporters from the chilly wind coming off the High Country snows.
A family Ride has its own special appeal whenever it happens, as long as it not at the height of summer or in depths of winter. Spring is a particularly beautiful time in the Upper Murray. Recent rain had ensured new growth and a fall during the previous night had brought a damp freshness to the bush. Golden blooms covered the wattle trees and fruit trees blossomed along the roadsides and in gardens.
General Sir Harry Chauvel, a Light Horseman, Commander of the Desert Mounted Corps and Australia’s first regular officer to become General was a family man. It was very fitting that his ongoing legacy should be commemorated with a family ride between Lucyvale and Koetong. Enjoyment of the Ride was a great tick for wellbeing for all who took part.
Gone were the pressures of the earlier Chauvel Australian Light Horse Memorial Ride, although as Gavin remarked the challenges of the earlier Ride gave the Riders a taste of the discipline and resilience required by the First World War Light Horsemen. Back at Ross and his wife Jane’s house near Bullioh, the kids rode billy carts down the drive while Frankie prepared a delicious spit roast for everyone. Yarns and reflections on Light Horse stories and a day in the saddle commemorating those original Light Horsemen continued.
Beersheba Day on 31 October passes, almost unnoticed by all except the descendants of those who took part, military historians, and other like-minded people. The story of the Charge at Beersheba and its contribution to turning the tide of the First World War provides a different perspective on the tragedies on Gallipoli and the Western Front. It is time to remember those who bravely contributed to turning the conflict towards the Armistice of Mudros, a year less a day later on 31 October 1918. What better way to commemorate the past and pass a torch into the future than a family ride?
A partnership ‘Forged under Fire’
Australia and the Great Arab Revolt – the 1918 campaign in Jordan
Reviewed by John Boyce
This is a new 2025 documentary about the history shared by Australia and Jordan during World War 1. Centuries of Ottoman rule in the Middle East region were ended in 1918, and this film emphasises that the Australians and other Allied troops of Chauvel’s Desert Mounted Corps “worked with and alongside Arab forces”.
Produced by the Australian embassy with the Jordanian government, there are many comments in this film about “the ties that bind”, during interviews with the Australian and Jordanian ambassadors, Jordanian historians, and government representatives of the Hashemite royal family of Jordan.
We are shown the annual Anzac Day dawn service at Amman citadel (site of a major and costly battle in March 1918), and are also shown rare and interesting modern views of many other battle sites such as Es-Salt, the Goriyeh crossing on the Jordan river, the Mafraq railway station, and Black Hill. This brings out in full colour what most of us only know from WW1 black-and-white photos.
The Arab revolt began in Mecca in June 1916, and by 1918 was impacting east of the Jordan river, along the key railway that led from Hejaz to Damascus. (Lawrence of Arabia famously assisted them).
Narrator James Brew (who was an embassy staff member and military historian at the time of the original book’s compilation in 2022) takes us through the Australian battles of 1918 from the first battle for Amman in 26-30 March and the second “raid” on Es-Salt in 29 April-03 May, before the final success in September (after a tactical pause in the Jordan valley over summer under extremely tough conditions, to distract the Ottomans from preparations for General Chauvel’s surprise breakout near the coast at Megiddo and that Great Ride to Damascus).
He narrates how members of the 1st LH Regiment provided the honour guard at the ceremony to raise the Arab flag in Amman, future capital of Jordan, in October 1918.
Left: The Arab Revolt flag
Above: Unfurling the flag in Amman – note LH in foreground
Brew also talks of the contribution made by the Australian Flying Corps in support of the Arab forces, including their reconnaissance, messaging and bombing attacks. Pilot Ross Smith was awarded the Order of the Nahda by Sharif Hussein bin Ali.
On a more sombre note, Brew visits the gravesite of two Light Horsemen killed in the last weeks of the war, and reminds us that there were thousands of Australian casualties during the campaign, 80 of whom are still buried in Jordan.
This 28-minute documentary is now available on YouTube here and is well worth viewing.
A.B. “Banjo” Paterson is certainly one of Australia’s most famous bush poets and writers.
But not so many people are aware that he also made a very significant contribution to the Australian Light Horse during World War One, as commander of the Remount depot in the Middle Eastern theatre.
John Boyce explains……
The man celebrated on our $10 banknote and in poetry, film and song (he wrote the words for ‘Waltzing Matilda’) grew up in the bush near Orange NSW. He became a law clerk and solicitior in Sydney, but increasingly wrote for The Bulletin magazine in the 1880s and 1890s. As a writer he used the pen name Banjo, after his favourite horse.
He served as a war correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald during the Boer War in 1899-1900, aged 35 years old.
In 1914 at the outbreak of WW1, he sailed with the first convoy of Australian troops and went on from Egypt to England hoping to get a war correspondent post there. Having been unsuccessful, he volunteered as an ambulance driver with the Australian Voluntary Hospital in France in 1915, then accompanied three horse-delivery voyages as an honorary vet, before finally gaining a commission with the 2nd Remount Unit AIF in October 1915 aged 50 years old.
By October 1916 he was promoted to Major and he commanded the unit for the duration of the war while it broke-in and delivered hundreds of replacement horses to the troops. He had been wounded in April 1916.
The letter below, written to his wife shortly after the great victory at Beersheba, shows the nature of the Remount delivery work, and also the close connections Banjo Paterson had with a wide range of senior officers, including General Sir Harry Chauvel himself.
Moascar, 16 November 1917
My own dearest wife
It is some three weeks since I last wrote so I must send you a long letter to make up especially as I have a good deal to say… I left here on 18th October with 150 horses and fifty men to take the lot up to the front. Owing to the great amount of traffic on the railway it was decided to walk the horses up to the front instead of railing them so that gave us a chance. It was a godsend to get away as we have had two years real solid depot work seeing nothing and hearing a lot of what other people were doing and I think one gets very very sick of it. We started for the first day to Kantara on the canal and thence by very easy stages up through the desert to Palestine the same road that Napoleon and Moses (or was it Joshua) and a few other unimportant people went in the olden days. If you look at the map you can see the track — Kantarra, Romani, Bir El Abd, El Arish and up to Rafa where the boundary of Asia and Africa is and we crossed into Palestine. The English recruits have an advanced section at Rafa and here we handed in the horses. I only lost one mule that dropped dead out of sheer mulishness I think. I won’t describe the trip except to say that it was ride all day slowly in dust and heat. Hunt for water at night at the camps and tie up our horses for the night and off at dawn each day…The first afternoon we arrived a Turkish aeroplane came over on a bomb dropping expedition and our anti-aircraft guns opened on him and that was the first shot we saw fired. We saw plenty later on. They used to come every day and the rush of men to see them shooting used to bring us all out. We had 1200 horses and mules at the depot and were issuing them in various lots all day long which kept us very busy [. We] never had a moment to ourselves but it was a great experience. We had also captured Turkish donkeys recaptured Turkish cattle nearly all shot as they had been driven into Turks guns. The first night I was there the bombardments started. There were six or eight warships working off the land, their huge guns (14 inches they say) used to make [the] ground shake and there was one continuous roll of firing like beating a big drum very quickly. We could see the shells bursting all along the Turkish position and it did seem impossible to believe that any human being could stand such a fusillade for a moment. Great clouds of earth used to fly up and it seemed as if nothing could live a moment in such an inferno but the Turks stuck it out gamely enough…I was delighted at getting orders to start for Beersheba right along the Turkish front.
I left Rafa with 186 animals and 60 men and travelled first day to a place called Shellal. Here we were about 5 miles off the Turkish lines could see their shells coming over to us. I had to tie the horses to bags of sand and pull them into an old abandoned Turkish hideout which made a sort of fence in itself. I got away at dawn and had to hand over some horses at a place called Karin. Here I found countless thousands of troops, tents, camels, motor wagons, traction engines, supply depots, yeomanry, Australians, infantry, in fact a whole army. One division of mounted men, about 1000 I suppose, was just moving in and another just moving out. Countless thousands of mule wagons, motor wagons and camels were loading up with supplies from this place (which was the end of the railway) for Beersheba. By great good luck I found the regiment I had to give the horses to which was no mean feat as the camp stretched for about 3 miles and was one blinding bewildering cloud of dust. Having got rid of 19 horses here I set off for Beersheba with the fighting still going on on my left. Every now and again a plane would come over and shells go up at it and we could hear the machine guns at night hammering away. I got in with the multitude and never expect to see such a sight again. The road ran over rolling downs like the Cunningham Plains country and the huge stream of traffic had spread out until it was a mile wide and this multitude surged along in dust unspeakable. Never have I seen or dreamt of such dust. There was a so-called motor road or two down the centre of the stream of traffic and we could hear but not see the continuous roar of motor wagons and caterpillar tractors in an endless procession. How they kept clear of accidents goodness only knows. The road was pretty bad for them, very deep ruts here and there but they scooted along each in the tail of the other chain of traffic like Piccadilly on a busy day. We mounted men were put on the wings of the stream of traffic but even then it was unusual to be able to see 20 yards for more than a few moments at a time. Where the road narrowed in the din and dust were unspeakable. One would pull to one side to give room to roaring hungry caterpillar tractors and find oneself firmly wedged among a stinking mess of camels. Oh it was some trip alright. By degrees we worked to the head of the procession and got into the town of Beersheba almost first. Beersheba is a place very unlike one’s idea of a Palestine Biblical city. There are about six or eight big buildings evidently put up for official purposes and much as one would expect to see in Melbourne or any other city but certainly looking out of place in Palestine. One cannot reconcile Joshua or even Napoleon with the idea [of] — I have got it now — suburban Council Chambers. That is exactly what the buildings look like, suburban Council Chambers and the rest of the town was the ordinary flat roof mud brick streets that one sees in the slums of Cairo. Altogether Beersheba was unlike what it should have been than any other place that I have ever imagined. The town was full as London all sorts of staff officers rushing around and I saw General Allenby get out just as I came in. General Chauvel was there with his staff and I saw Norton (Mrs Lang Wants’ brother) who is on his staff. The Light Horse had got round the end of the Turkish lines and galloped into Beersheba full split and then out pursuing the fugitives. I was walking along the railway (Turkish) to look at a lot of prisoners and some guns that had just come in when there was a roar beside me that half knocked me off my feet. I thought it was an anti-aircraft gun firing at an aeroplane and looked up in the air first (one always does look up in the air first about here) and then seeing no aeroplane I looked down into the little cutting and there was a poor wretched Egyptian soldier had tripped over a concealed wire and exploded a Turkish mine and was blown to pieces. It made me feel lucky I wasn’t 20 yards further back I can tell you. I got a doctor for him but he was passed all doctoring poor wretch. The same today a mine was discovered under the steps of the house the men were in and it seems a miracle that they got it out without exploding it. All together about 18 people were killed by these mines or bombs or whatever you like to call them. I would have liked to stay a day or two and go on with pursuing troops who were fighting for a reservoir outside the town but orders are orders so I handed over the horses to a lot of excited young devils of the Light Horse and went to look for camp. I found plenty of friends and camped with old Maitland Woods, a Queensland person who is on Chauvel’s staff. He said ‘you will find the bugs bad.’ Well I said I was up all last night and riding in the dust all day today so I guess it will take a division of bugs to keep me awake. He said there’s more than a division here there’s at least an army corps and he was right. Though I was dead dog tired and incredibly dirty (water all on allowance and very limited at that) I never slept a wink all night. Bugs! They came in their troops like camels to water. One man said he lit dung fire to keep them off but they just put on their gas masks and defied him. Another said he rolled over like a cocoon in his blankets but two bugs held up a fold of the blankets while the rest crawled under. They drove me out into the yard among camels and horses where I got a little sleep about dawn. Next day I hunted round the camp for transport for myself and men back to Karin to the railway and was lucky enough to meet a boy that knew me, a young Johnson who used to work with Lang Ward and he gave me a lift with his supply chain of 150 wagons — as the wind was strong across the back we got no dust…we got back to Karin in the pitch dark and Johnson again helped me by sending the wagon with my stuff (saddlery and head collars, nose bags and men’s kit) to the railway station. There we got into an open truck and I had a good nights sleep in a truck, getting back to Rafa at 2 a.m. or 0200 hours in military time. I got back to camp and found another lot of horses were to leave at dawn next morning for Beersheba again and the officer who was to go was sick so I offered to take his place and I set out again with a fresh lot of men over the same track. This time the change was wonderful the Turks had cleared and when we got to Beersheba the army had gone after them. It was like a city of the dead and I had great trouble to get any transport for my men and gear back to Karin. At last by making friends with an artillery general named…I got my men and gear into one of his motor wagons. I cadged a ride in an ambulance with a wounded man and a medical Major of an English hospital and came back quite compatibly. I took a shoulder on a packhorse on this trip and…and slept like a tired child to Rafa and so back to camp. Next day I was ordered back home as our Colonel had no men left in camp so I had to take my lot back…I’m going to Cairo tomorrow to order some breeches. I fairly rode through two pairs while out on the trip, never off a horse all day.
It seems funny to say it here but we don’t know at all how big the victory really is. I mean we don’t know the number of prisoners yet and guns and property taken. I dare say you will hear it before we will. Anyhow it is a great victory and has sent Turks scurrying back 40 miles apparently…my next trip may be to Jerusalem… Let us hope so….Will end soon dearest. I hope this war will not go on for another winter as now I have seen the real thing for a while I feel more than ever anxious to get back. Read this to the children and tell them to write to me. x x x x x x x x
——————-
Source
Paterson, A. B. (1917). Letter to his wife, 16 November 1917. In A. Campbell, Banjo Paterson: A life in pictures and words from the Banjo Paterson family archive (2022). Macmillan Publishers Australia. Used with permission.
Commemorations
This time of year has again seen considerable attention paid to commemorations.
RAAC units of the Australian Army and Army Reserve held parades and dinners on the anniversary of the Charge at Beersheba (several television stations also screened the ‘Lighthorseman’ film).
Remembrance Day was also marked by many local ceremonies, with catafalque parties and Light Horse re-enactors taking part. (Many of those can be seen on the Australian Light Horse Society’s Facebook page here).