The Secrets of the Anzacs by Raden Dunbar

Author:Raden Dunbar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS027000, HIS027090, BIO008000, BIO006000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2014-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

The leading group of the St Patrick’s Day procession in Bourke Street, Melbourne, on 17 March 1920. Some VC awardees are leading on horseback, while others are seated in the limousine with Archbishop Mannix. (NLA)

Archbishop Mannix in an open car, surrounded by the VC awardees who escorted him during the St Patrick’s Day parade. (SLV)

The relationship with John Wren led to Maurice receiving assistance from him to start a contracting business. In January 1921, while managing road construction in south Gippsland in eastern Victoria, Maurice was seriously hurt in a horseriding fall. This was clearly the result of more daredevilry, although afterwards it was said to have been an accident. The circumstances of the accident were typical for a man who had been attracted to dangerous thrillseeking for much of his life.

Boolarra is a tiny town in the picturesque Strzelecki Ranges of south Gippsland, and Maurice had been living in a contractor’s camp a few miles away. One Saturday afternoon, he rode into the town, it appears, to visit the pub. One thing led to another, and Maurice, the daredevil horseman, accepted a challenge to jump his horse over the railway gate adjacent to the new railway station. At the last moment, the horse baulked, Maurice was sent flying, and he crashed headfirst onto the road. According to the report of the coroner’s inquiry, which appeared in The Argus,

he remounted immediately and rode away, without appearing to be hurt. The horse was a jumper, but was not put to the gates the right way. At half-past 7 o’clock that evening Buckley was found by Mounted-constable Ernest C. Edwards lying unconscious beside the Ganyah road, near Boolarra, where he had apparently collapsed, and fallen from his horse. He was taken to Boolarra, and later to Mont St Evin’s Hospital. The Coroner said that it was the irony of fate that a man should, after having gone right through the war, be killed by a fall from his horse. He found that Buckley died from cerebral haemorrhage, caused by an accidental fall from his horse.

In fact, after being taken to Melbourne in an ambulance and admitted to Mont St Evin’s hospital in Fitzroy, this almost indestructible man appeared to make a recovery, but then lapsed into a coma. He died from his injuries on 27 January, aged 29 and unmarried, and became the first of the returned Australian VC men to lose his life. A full military funeral was held for him in Melbourne, beginning with a requiem mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral, and then a long procession down St Kilda Road to the Brighton general cemetery, where the pallbearers were eight Victorian VC recipients. The Age reported that

the crowd in the vicinity of the cathedral comprised many thousands, and extended nearly to Collins Street. The cortege moved off with the VC men flanking the gun carriage, and Brigadier-General Brand immediately following on foot. Then came about 100 members of the 4th Brigade, marching four abreast, and the mourning coaches followed …

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