From Shrapnel

Gully To Heaven’s Gate

It would need a very extra ordinary writer to make much out of the legends that surround

John Simpson Kirkpatrick. In

The Man with the Donkey, Sir Irving Benson does his best in a small book issued on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the land

ing at Gallipoli.

Kirkpatrick enlisted in the Ist AIF at the outbreak of war as John Simpson—he had dropped his surname four years previously when he had jumped ship in Newcastle,

Nsw.

He had been born in South Shields, near Durham, and in Australia had cut cane in Queensland, worked in coal mines in NSW, gold mines in Western Australia and at the time of his enlistment, had gone back to sea in the Australian coastal trade.

In the AIF he was a private in the 3rd Field Ambulance and as a stretcher-bearer landed at Gallipoli on that first Anzac Day, April 25, 1915.

On the day following, he found a donkey wandering somewhere on the

shell-marked hillsides and from then on he became a self-appointed one man evacuation unit bringing badly injured men down from the front lines to the casualty clearing stations on the beach. Many owed their lives to him.

On Gallipoli he was known as Scotty, Murphy, or Simmie but gener ally as the “man with the donk”, and in the early weeks of the campaign became a symbol to the men trying to dig themselves into the inhospitable cliffs of the Peninsula. As he made his daily trips up and down the ex posed positions in Shrapnel Gully and Quinn’s Post, he seemed to bear a charmed life.

But not for long. While taking a wounded man down to the beach early on May 19, Simpson was shot through the head by a machine-gun bullet, and fell beside his donkey, who remained unhurt.

They buried him that night at Hell Spit.

“Where’s Murphy?” asked a mem ber of the Ist Battalion who had missed him from the Gully that day.

“Murphy’s at Heaven’s gate,”

mswered his sergeant, “helping the loldiers through.”

So much for the facts. But May, 1915, was early in the Great War ind the Australians went on to fight onger, if not grimmer, battles in Yance and the Middle East. Why hen the legend?

Why did the Man with the Donkey □spire painters, sculptors, poets, the nen who fought with him, the jenerals—and even the Australian >ost office which has issued three ►ostage stamps showing “Murphy” lolding a wounded man on a tiny lonkey to commemorate the 50th mniversary of Anzac? Why did a oung man from South Shields, near Durham, become an Australian folk ore hero?

The author does not really explain t —perhaps because legends are un xplainable and best left that way,— T.

(The Man With The Donkey.

[odder. 19/6.) ☆ ☆ ☆

Australia's

Aboriginal Problem

A USTRALIANS who live in Australia’s capital cities can easily ive from one year’s end to another /ithout seeing a single aborigine or art-aborigine.

For this reason, most Australians lever give a thought to the problems >f these people, whose numbers are iow increasing after many years of onstant dwindling.

Government policy on aborigines nd part-aborigines is that they hould be assimilated into the white ociety. This, as in any other ountry with racial problems, is asier said than done.

It was with the object of examin ng the effects and results of the ntegration policy that Dr. Marie leay, a Fellow in the Department if Anthropology and Sociology at he Australian National University, Canberra, asked a number of mthropologists, etc., to contribute heir views on the subject for pub ication in a book, which has been ssued under the title of Aborigines ow .

The contributors to the book—a ►rovocative one are Randolph ►tow, Ted Docker, Diane Barwick, eremy Barwick, Malcolm Galley, ames Bell, Jeremy Long, Nancy dunn, Fay Gale, Judy Inglis, Catrin Wilson, Ruth Fink and John Vilson. (ABORIGINES NOW. Angus and lobertson. 32/6.)