In the early 1980s, the historian Alistair Thomson began recording the oral histories of veterans of the First World War, with particular focus on how these men remembered their wartime experience.  These interviews formed the basis for the book ‘Anzac Memories –Living with the Legend', published in 1994. 

Thirty years after it's first publication Alistair Thomson decided to return to this history. The three key veterans with whom he'd recorded oral histories, and written about in his book, were no longer alive, but, in recent years, a new source of information had become available to researchers and historians of war - the records of the Repatriation Department (now known as The Department of Veterans Affairs). The 'Repat' was responsible for the medical assessment and care of veterans, as well as for the provision of pensions. These case files offer new ways of understanding the post war lives of soldiers, and how these men, and often their families, tried to make sense of the legacies of their war time experience. The 'Repat' files also offer rich insights into the history of medicine, psychology and the treatment of mental illness, and reveal the shifts and changes in the way the state responded to veterans of war. 

An updated edition of 'Anzac Memories' has just been released, and in this interview Alistair Thomson discusses the findings of his research into the Repatriation Department case files of one of the veterans he recorded and wrote about in the first edition of the book, the late Fred Farrall.


Alistair Thomson on ABC radio national Hindsight

Listen to Clinton Fernandes discussing Island Off the Coast of Asia on 8/10/18 on Melbourne's 3CR Community Radio 855 AM. http://publishing.monash.edu/books/ioca-9781925523799.html

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