The Harefield junior school also contributed to helping the ANZAC service men who convalesced at the hospital during the war and now teaches its students about Anzacs. Picture: John Ferguson Source: News Limited
- Aussie millionaire offered his manor home to Anzacs to recoup in 1914
- more than 50,000 wounded diggers passed through the home
- Village school now teaches Australian war history
IN the school hall, the children sit cross-legged on the floor listening intently as teacher Miss Baines explains the origins and rules of two-up.
At stake on each toss, several packs of ANZAC biscuits bought from the local supermarket.
Down the corridor and the Year 3 class listen as Miss Penny talks about Gallipoli as they colour in pictures of Diggers and complete World War I puzzles. Next door at 3H, Mrs Holland and her students are making poppies out of cardboard and thread.
It's not an uncommon scene, one being played out in schools across Australia this week ahead of ANZAC Day on Thursday.
But this is Harefield Junior School, in the village of Harefield in Middlesex just outside of London and because of a quirk in history, probably the only school in Britain taking comprehensive lessons in Australian war history.
In 1914, like a TV script from Downton Abbey, millionaire Sydney expat Charles Billyard-Leake offered his manor home and 250 acres of parkland for injured Australian troops to recoup. It was imagined 50 soldiers in winter, 150 in summer would be catered for. But by the following year and post Gallipoli it had become a fully-fledged hospital with 1000 beds just for Australian soldiers. More than 50,000 wounded Diggers passed through the home which became known as Number 1 Australian Auxiliary Hospital; 110 men and one woman nurse died there and were buried in the local village cemetery.
The presence of so many Aussies changed the face of the village forever, the Anzac tale now so interwoven in its spirit the town emblem, a large steel example of which is seen as you turn into the main drag, has a large hare leaping over a map of Australia. Australian flags fly at the parish church St Mary's and the local school and each year the Cubs, Scouts and Girl Guides lead a parade through the village to the graves of the Australian soldiers to lay flowers they make or collect from the fields. The children of the village have done so each year for more than 90 years.
Harefield Hospital was known as Harefield Park and was owned by an Australian Millionaire Charles Billyard-Leakes. In 1914 he was too old to join the army so he decided to help the war effort by offering his home and grounds as a field hospital for Anzac soldiers. Picture: John Ferguson Source: News Limited
"It's one of the things that make Harefield and the school special," Junior School headmaster Paul Dodd said yesterday.
"The (Great) War is a complex thing for them to understand, how and why it started and the issues but it is part of Harefield's story and they understand the influence the Australians had here."
Such is the affinity, in 1953 the Australian Government hacked of a large chunk of the Great Barrier Reef and sent it to the school which it still proudly displays in its library.
Daily assemblies for a week feature talks on Australia's part of the war including reading of letters from the Front, with classes following up with specific lessons. As seven-year-old Suzie Beach sticks an Aussie flag up on the wall she talks about how it looks like the British flag and how Australian soldiers came to their hospital once. On the other side of the room Kieran Hornibrook, 8, shakes his head after one lesson and remarks: "Having trench foot would be very painful".
If you grow up in the village, the Australian connection is bred into you at an early age and adults today recall the lessons they had and the annual Anzac parade and memorial. The old mansion-hospital today is a ruin but on the grounds is a new hospital considered one of the world's leading heart and lung transplant centres. Its patient services unit is known as the Anzac Centre.
Gallipoli in Turkey is understood and the affection for Australians in Villers Bretonneux in France is catching on but Harefield is only just getting recognition it deserves thanks largely to its children.
"I think its good, I think it's important for schools generally to learn this history, I don't think schools do enough to learn about the past and the sacrifices made and in Harefield we obviously have this unique link," Mr Dodd said.
"It's a cultural exchange that goes beyond Kylie or Men at Work and Jason (Donovan) of course."
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