NSW: Settled soldiers remembered

AAP General News (Australia)
12-08-2009
NSW: Settled soldiers remembered

Diggers who returned from World War One .. and took up land in failed government farming
schemes .. have been remembered for their battles in the trenches and on the land.

More than 300-thousand Australian soldiers returned from the great war .. and some
40-thousand of them took up an offer of farming land .. made possible by federal and state
soldier settlement schemes.

NSW organised the largest such scheme .. but just 15 years after the war .. fewer than
half the nine thousand returned soldiers remained on the land.

Records of their achievements and failures have recently been released by State Records
NSW .. and these have been produced online by The Australian Research Council .. the University
of New England .. and Monash University.

UNE Associate Professor MELANIE OPPENHEIMER .. one of the chief investigators on the
project .. says for the first time historians will tell the story of this generation ..

who traded a battle in the trenches for an equally relentless battle with the land.

AAP RTV vpm/psm/

KEYWORD: SOLDIERS (SYDNEY)

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