Duntroon man Andy Pickles has teamed up with Duntroon School principal Mike Turner to take a "treasured" photo album of the town’s World War 2 soldiers and produce a photobook to help gather further information about the soldiers.
The album was entrusted to Mr Pickles and his wife Sonya by the late Valda Peterson and her son Peter, where it was originally housed in their family butchery in Duntroon.
Mr Pickles said he had realised the importance of preserving "any known information" about these soldiers.
"Over the past three years of looking through the album, along with showing a number of people — I now realise the significance of this album to Duntroon and the surrounding district," he said.
Mr Turner said "people would come in [to the butchery] and they’d write little things on the back of the photos about things they knew about these guys".
"It became quite a treasured wee thing. People would come in and sit down and read through it," he said.
The two men worked on an idea to capture as much information about these local soldiers, using Mr Pickles’ current knowledge and the album, as a base for a school project.
They created an Anzac photobook of 100 World War 2 soldiers from Duntroon, with a page next to each soldier’s photograph that was left blank for anyone to record details about the men.
Mr Pickles said the photobook had attracted a lot of interest.
"Mike and the school secretaries did such a great job in making the book and we sent it out to the old guys that we knew would remember these soldiers.
"It’s gotten exponentially huge.
"Sadly, a lot of people have passed on who would know ... but many people have reached out and Duntroon artist Burns Pollock has been a good source of information."
The school pupils will engage in a project to gather the information and discover any interconnectedness with the soldiers.
"It is then hoped that students will be able to help create a detailed document on our district’s history and in doing so become more aware of what has happened before them, even aligning students with the very soldier from their [farm] property," Mr Pickles said.
Mr Turner said it would be great to be able to get the pupils to map where these soldiers went and what they did, or about their families.
"Basically, it was about how can we pass this knowledge on so it doesn’t get lost and how can we share these stories."
Mr Pickles’ own family history in Duntroon can be traced back as far as 1857 and two of his mother’s cousins are in the photobook.
Mr Turner praised Mr Pickles for initiating the project.
"His passion for it and his knowledge — he really doesn’t want this information lost," he said.
Mr Turner said it was "a school project that will lead on to a community project" and they had begun receiving new information and "stories back from local families".
People had started to hear about the photobook and it had "gone quite viral".
"I had a knock on the door and it was John Bole from down the road. His dad wasn’t even in the album but he had heard about this album ... and he gave me some information on his dad.
"[He’d had] random emails from guys who don’t have the book, but have scanned the pictures and passed them on to them, to people they knew would know these men in the photos.
"We aren’t 100% sure what we’ll put together out of it, but we do know that we’ll use the information to let the community know about these people who were in our area and who went to war. And you know, some didn’t come back and that’s reality," Mr Turner said.
Mr Pickles said he was excited for the "information gathering" stage and said they hoped to find someone who could write up the histories of the soldiers that could then be displayed in the town.
"I haven’t approached the fossil centre yet but it would be good to have a wee corner.
"It’s important it is not forgotten," Mr Pickles said.
