The Hon Bruce Billson MP
Minister for Veterans’ Affairs
Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence
Interview – ABC 774 Melbourne, Tuesday 24 April 2007, 7:08pm
Subject – announcement of a new Interpretive Centre at Villers-Bretonneux

DEREK GUILLE: The Federal Government is to build a $2.5 million centre in northern France, aimed at extending awareness of the sacrifices and achievements of Australian troops in World War I. It's to be built near the already moving Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux; moving, because when you go there, it is… oh, words fail to describe the sensation of walking over that land, and having the president of the Australia France Society [sic], Monsieur Thierry, turn to you and say as you walked past the graves and past the flagpoles towards the enormous memorial, turn to you and say, we are now Australia. The federal Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Bruce Billson, is with us. Bruce, good evening.

BRUCE BILLSON:    Good evening to you, Derek, and the best to your listeners.

DEREK GUILLE:      Bruce, under normal circumstances, I would restrict myself to calling you Minister, but under these circumstances, I think this is… this is so much a non-partisan thing, this is such an important part of the ongoing recognition of Australian service in World War I that, that… and I know that you weren't… not that long ago, you were at Villers-Bretonneux yourself.

BRUCE BILLSON:    Yes. Very moving there, Derek. It's quite remarkable. But even the journey to get to Villers-Bretonneux is something else, where you can't travel more than a handful of kilometres without coming across another war cemetery, rows and rows of tributes to very courageous men who fought at what must have seemed a completely futile, insurmountable battle at some stages, but then transformed into very moving moments where Australians were leading a battle that saw the direction of the war change.
And I guess that's why the Prime Minister and the Government are so keen to see the whole story of Australia's involvement in the Western Front captured, so that the many thousands of visitors there from Australia and other countries, can understand not only the tragedy and the trauma of battling in boggy mud, where military innovation saw the tank created, mustard gas introduced, those duckboards, the timber slat bridges that kept soldiers out of this quagmire that they were fighting in, where underground tunnelling was used as a way to try and break the stranglehold that the Germans had on strategic positions, that meant so much of that battle was a bottleneck.
But there is no place in our history more tragic than these locations and sadly no place where Australian blood has been spilt in such incredible volumes.

DEREK GUILLE:      Yeah. That's another thing that, while it's so important that we remember Anzac Day and what happened in 1915 at Anzac Cove, at Gallipoli, at the same time it's worth our remembering that on the Western Front and at the battles on the Somme, we lost thousands of men and yet we turned the course of the German advance on Paris.

BRUCE BILLSON:    And where those stories about the magnificence of Monash came through...

DEREK GUILLE :     Yes.

BRUCE BILLSON:    ... and the tactical strategies and the absolute commitment that these are times when the line needs to be broken, that the Hindenburg Line needed to be challenged and that the momentum, or I guess the intransigence of the German defensive positions, could be challenged.
And, you're quite right, the 8700 Australian lives lost in that… that Anzac Cove was horrendous in its own right, but to think that those that survived then went on to the Western Front, where we lost 46,000 Australians; more than, you know… well, more than 180,000 killed or wounded in that three-year period. And that's why, as you mentioned, with the leadership and Monsieur La Mer(*) in Villers-Bretonneux and the communities there in northern France and southern Belgium, they truly know the Australian sacrifice and what a remarkable contribution our nation played.

DEREK GUILLE:      So it interested me that the Government would decide to establish a new centre. There is, as you're well aware, already that museum next to and above the school in Rue de [sic] Victoria, that perhaps it could have been expanded to house a greater depth of interpretation and explanation.

BRUCE BILLSON:    Yes. What we looked at were a range of possibilities and you could imagine the communities in northern France were very keen to be a part of that assessment.
The museum above the school area, you'd know it well, as I do, offers an insight, but a very sincere testament to the appreciation of generations of French citizens for what Australia has done. But what it didn't lend itself to was the kind of numbers of people and the facilities and the capability to cope with coachloads and things of that kind that need to be accommodated. Because you're quite right, it is a loft of a school building and at its heart, there's an education program being delivered there.
So we canvassed those possibilities and worked very collaboratively with the local French authorities and the local communities and the Prime Minister has announced today that on the site behind that magnificent tribute that you mention, the National Memorial, dedicated in 1938 by King George VI that displays the names of 11,000 missing Australians killed in battle, which sits behind the War Cemetery, which has more than 2100 graves of Commonwealth servicemen, including 779 of our own.
That area was thought to be the most appropriate place where we could pay proper tribute, commence the story and the journey of the Australian involvement on the Western Front and ensure that the visitors to that region understand Australia's contribution and the Australian experience.

DEREK GUILLE:      Has the plan reached the stage of having an idea of what the interpretative centre will look like itself?

BRUCE BILLSON:    Yes. We've got some conceptual drawings that we've been working through that seek to take account of the elements that are considered important. What we also need to do is liaise very closely with the French authorities.
The French are remarkably accommodating, but the land on which the memorial is constructed is French property, made available in perpetuity to the nation of Australia and there are some issues around land availability and access roads and the like that we're working through with the French authorities, and the funding that the Prime Minister announced today will enable a fine-tuning of these concepts and a formal plan that can then receive budget consideration.

DEREK GUILLE:      And will it be… in terms of the content, will it be an up-to-date and modern use of technologies that tell the story, in the way that we've come to expect in museums and, oh indeed, in the War Memorial in Melbourne, for instance?

BRUCE BILLSON:    Yes, it will. The idea is to tell the story of the Australian experience and our involvement on the many Western Front battlefields.
I mean, you would have got a sense from your own visit that there are… the interconnectiveness between battlefronts and the frontline and the way events shaped the military strategy that came afterwards. You really need an innovative graphic audiovisual interactive presentation of that, so you can really come to terms with the service and the sacrifice; not just those horrendous statistics, but a chance to try and connect more directly with the experiences of the men that were fighting there and just how incredibly selfless their service was, but how tragic the whole events of that time were.

DEREK GUILLE:      In that cemetery in front of the Australian War Memorial is, amongst other graves, the grave of a Canadian VC winner, because it's a Commonwealth gravesite…

BRUCE BILLSON:    That's right.

DEREK GUILLE:      There's the grave of the Canadian VC winner. So the gravesite itself is visited by people from different parts of the world.
So I guess the question is why do we need a specific Australian area there, when it's… it was the combined forces for Australia and from Canada and from Britain and so forth, South Africa and India, that were involved in the various battles around Villers-Bretonneux and along that front?

BRUCE BILLSON:    And, Derek, that's an excellent point in why our planning is taking account of those existing interpretative facilities on the Western Front.
The Canadians have an interpretative centre at Vimy Ridge, which for your listeners' interest, the Newfoundland Memorial Park, which is near Beaumont Hamel, is really a site of enormous tragedy. My recollection is about 800 soldiers from the Newfoundland area, which was then a separate colony of England, but is now part of Canada, were involved in a battle and then the next day about 70 to 80 reported for duty. It was the most horrendous carnage.
And that's something that's worth remembering, too, that for much of our history, military units were raised by district or area, so if there was a particularly fierce battle and losses were severe, it was a profound tragedy for communities, because there was this connectedness between the way those military units were raised in geographical areas.
So the Canadians have captured that in their Newfoundland Memorial Park. The British have a rather striking tribute at Theipval, at the memorial there to the missing, and the South Africans have brought their story to life at Delville Woods [sic] and the Department of the Somme, the French aspect, have their own aspects.
What we're keen to do is there's about 450,000 Australians visit France each year, our estimates are about 5000 to 7000 only make the journey to northern France. There's a fast train out of Paris to this area that would complement getting… coming to terms with this important part of our history is a part of the plans of those visitors from Australia to the area, as well as the many hundreds of thousands of visitors to the area that are interested in our experience that we need to bring to life for them.

DEREK GUILLE:      It's actually a very cheap and quick journey from Gare du Nord to Amiens and then that diesel rail motor from Amiens to the town of Villers-Bretonneux.
And there's something about that journey where you feel like you're being taken back in time, because of the landscape, because of the village life and those sorts of things. It really is from the moment you leave Amiens to get to Villers-Bretonneux, it's a journey in time as well as in place.

BRUCE BILLSON:    Well, those undulating hills…

DEREK GUILLE:      Yes.

BRUCE BILLSON:    …the images, the photographic images that, I mean, for instance, we've just launched a commemorative publication through the War Memorial about Bapaume and Bullecourt, 1917; Australians on the Western Front. 
And you look at those images, and you know, the towns and the efforts that local communities have made to recreate them after the battle to know that they've endured that.  And you see out the corner of your eye, Derek, just as you're reflecting on the headstones and this seeming row upon row of tributes to people that have lost their lives, then you see the poppy.  You see the genesis of another story that connects with so many Australians, as on the roadside as a French farming tractor or something trundles by.  You then see, you know, the poppy and then the story of Flanders starts coming into your mind. 
It is a deeply moving thing, and we're trying to make sure that that loss and Australia's contribution's understood and appreciated and we can connect that with some of the good fortune that we enjoy today, realising it's come at great cost.

DEREK GUILLE :     Just before I let you go, Bruce, and thank you so much for being with us tonight, there's - in that museum above the school in Villers-Bretonneux, there is a photograph, and I - as I mentioned, I visited with members of the brass section of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. 
The principal trumpet is Geoffrey Payne, who's one of the finest trumpet players in Australia.  He lost two great uncles at the Villers-Bretonneux.  When we were touring that museum, he came across a large photograph on the wall, taken in 1919 of two local schoolchildren, tending the grave of one of his uncles. 
And those sorts of family connections, which - and Geoff's a friend of mine, not a family member - but I could feel the punch to the solar plexus that he could feel. 
And it's a - it is such a moving experience that I would recommend that anyone going to France take the - it's only a day from Paris, but it's one of the days that you will never forget.

BRUCE BILLSON:    I think that's right, and there's information available on the Office of Australian War Graves website.  The Commonwealth War Graves Commission also have some quite remarkable online resources and there are a number of publications available, but as you move around those areas, even go to Zonnebeke, where there's another remarkable tribute - Australia's contributed to the new visitor centre there as well, and that's in southern Belgium. 
There's interpretive panels that we've put in place across significant Western Front battle sites.  We hope we can bring a remarkable story to people and connect them with it, because it is - it'll stay in your soul forever.

DEREK GUILLE :     It will.  Bruce Billson, thank you for being with us tonight.

BRUCE BILLSON:    Thanks for your interest, Derek.

DEREK GUILLE :     The federal Minister for Veterans' Affairs, the Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence, Bruce Billson.