The Somme

Mr Zietsch conducts a short but very moving ceremony at the Australian War Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux.

Friday morning an early breakfast and then a whistle stop tour of Paris. The ’boys from the bush’ were blown away by the pace of Paris, the lack of personal space on the Metro and the size and sights of one of the classic cities of the world. Our Tour mascot Russell the Wombat visited some of the great tourist attractions of the world before getting lost with the rest of the party, almost catching the wrong train to the wrong place. After a hectic morning in Paris, it was onto our coach and off to the Somme. An unfortunate delay in Albert saw some of our plans curtailed. A quick visit to some of the WW1 war graves sights to visit the graves and memorials of ex-Grammarians ended with a lovely ceremony at the memorial to Captain CM Johnson, a scholarship boarder from Homestead (1906-1908), killed in action at Guedecourt in November 1916. Dinner was ‘beefsteak’ in the town of Albert. Clayton recons that the beef “came from a thousand different cows".