{"id":37616,"date":"2020-05-04T10:26:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T00:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/?p=37616"},"modified":"2020-05-04T10:29:54","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T00:29:54","slug":"hidden-history-great-ocean-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/news\/hidden-history-great-ocean-road\/","title":{"rendered":"The hidden history of the Great Ocean Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

LORNE Historical Society vice president Peter Spring has dedicated himself to finding those lost to history.
\nLast week, The Story of the Road<\/em> aired on SBS, with Mr Spring featuring heavily in the documentary.
\nAs he states in the film, more than 3,000 returned servicemen worked on the road after World War I, but the identities of only about 440 of these soldiers are known.
\nThis number would be lower if not for Mr Spring, who has dedicated himself to building upon the records of the individuals who worked on the road. He has become more active his journey to build upon the records in recent years, but he said his interest was piqued long ago.
\n\u201cIn the late Seventies my wife and I bought a block of land at a place called Big Hill.
\n\u201cWhen we got the title I saw that the original title holder was the Great Ocean Road Trust. So, that made me curious about the whole things and what the Great Ocean Road Trust was.
\n\u201cI did some digging and what we had was one of the blocks that was converted from Crown land to freehold title and sold to raise money for the construction of the road.
\n\u201cThen when I retired in the early 2000s I got involved in the historical society down here and started to do some research.
\n\u201cThe historical society have an amazing collection of photographs. So it became a bit of a passion to see what we could find out about it.\u201d
\nThrough existing records, Mr Spring was able to learn much of the road\u2019s construction, including the treacherous working conditions the servicemen often worked in.
\n\u201cIn the early days it was all done by pick and shovel and the reason for that was so many of the workmen were still suffering from shellshock, so they weren\u2019t using explosives.
\n\u201cWhile the work was hard, there was a degree of regimentation in what they were doing.
\n\u201cMaybe I\u2019m being a bit idealistic, but there was probably an element of rehabilitation. After their experiences on the Western Front it would have helped some of them return to normality.
\n\u201cFrom some of the letters I\u2019ve seen people talk more about the work and their comrades, there wasn\u2019t a lot of complaining about the conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Returned servicemen working on the Great Ocean Road.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mr Spring was able to gain much through the information available, but a few years ago he became aware of a gap in the historical records.
\nThe late Iain Grant was a member of the Portland Family History Centre. One day he was contacted by someone who said they believed one of their relatives had worked on the road and wanted this verified.
\nMr Spring said this led to him and Mr Grant coming to a realisation about the incompleteness of the records of those who worked on the road.
\n\u201cIain rang me and said \u2018Have you got any records?\u2019 and I said \u2018Well, we\u2019ve got a list of a couple of hundred (names)\u2019.
\n\u201cWe checked the name and it wasn\u2019t there. Afterwards Iain and I had a couple of long conversation and we said \u2018This is ridiculous; we need to compile this list’.\u201d
\nHe said Mr Grant was instrumental in adding more names to the record.
\n\u201cHe wrote to history centres and RSLs all around Victoria, he travelled around speaking on country radio stations and addressing history societies and asking if they could help us piece together the names.
\n\u201cAnd then I helped him in the background in compiling the data, and we went from 160 or so names to over 400.\u201d
\nDespite their efforts, Mr Spring is determined to build upon this knowledge.
\n\u201cThere are two things that came out of the experience of working on the documentary. One is that it was such a historic project and we only know a bit over 10 per cent of the names of the servicemen that worked on it, and the second thing is so many people simply don\u2019t know the road is a war memorial.\u201d
\nHe requests anyone who believe they had an ancestor work on the road contact the Lorne Historical Society.
\nLorne Historical Society has already had people contact them about their relatives working on the road since the documentary aired.
\nPeople can contact the Lorne Historical Society by heading to lornehistoricalsociety.org.au\/contact<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LORNE Historical Society vice president Peter Spring has dedicated himself to finding those lost to history. Last week, The Story of the Road aired on SBS, with Mr Spring featuring heavily in the documentary. As he states in the film, more than 3,000 returned servicemen worked on the road after World War I, but the […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":37617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-37616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe hidden history of the Great Ocean Road - Surf Coast Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/surfcoasttimes\/news\/hidden-history-great-ocean-road\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The hidden history of the Great Ocean Road - Surf Coast Times\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LORNE Historical Society vice president Peter Spring has dedicated himself to finding those lost to history. 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