The Gallipoli Letter by Keith Murdoch Page B

Of his earnest talks with his father about the bravery of the soldiers and the sad work his father had, as a clergyman, of giving parishioners the news that a son or a husband had been killed at Gallipoli. They had discussed his duty; whether he should go to the war as a soldier or continue to work as a journalist, and he had never really settled the issue in his own mind. Now he was coming to Gallipoli as a journalist on a mission.
    The sea was choppy as he jumped down onto the deck of the trawler and the ragged hills loomed high above him. Those cliffs are just as high as we have been told, he thought, ever the sceptical journalist. Imagine scrambling up there under fire, in the dark, and not knowing what was to come next. And I can talk to the men who did this, he told himself. The Anzac heroes. I can walk the tracks they raced over to get at the enemy. I can see for myself what many Australians would dearly love to see. This is the most exciting day of my life, no doubt about that. I am, at last, at Gallipoli.
    Keith Murdoch, journalist
    Keith Murdoch was born in Melbourne in 1885, less than twelve months after his parents had migrated to Victoria from Scotland.
    Keith’s father was a minister in the Presbyterian church, as had been his grandfather. The influence of the church on Keith, along with the influence of his Scottish heritage, was deep, profound and lasting. But Keith Murdoch would not follow the path of his father and grandfather into the ministry. He would dedicate his life to journalism.
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    For most of their lives the Reverend James Murdoch and his wife Helen, Keith’s grandparents, had lived in the fishing village of Rosehearty in the north of Scotland. They had fourteen children, nine boys and five girls, but tuberculosis haunted the family, being ultimately responsible for the deaths of six of these offspring. In 1881, then 63 years of age and fearing further deaths, James Murdoch told his congregation that he must resign his ministry and leave Scotland. Two sons had already migrated to Victoria; it seemed logical that, if they must move, to Victoria it would be.
    James Murdoch’s first born, Patrick John—also a minister of the Presbyterian church in Scotland and married with one child—had accepted a call to a church in Melbourne and had already booked passage on S.S. Potosi . James Murdoch obtained passage on the same ship for himself, his wife, three daughters and his youngest son Walter, who would celebrate his tenth birthday on the voyage— these were all of James Murdoch’s remaining family in Scotland. On 20 August 1884 S.S. Potosi sailed from London to Melbourne, docking there on 3 October 1884 after a journey of 44 days. The Murdochs were all travelling first class. Young Walter remembered the terrible passage through the Red Sea: ‘No first class passenger went down to it [the heat]; the trouble was all in the 2nd class and the steerage. In the steerage, they died.’
    James Murdoch survived less than a month in Melbourne, dying on 29 October 1884. Responsibility for the family fell to Patrick John, minister of the West Melbourne Presbyterian church in the centre of the city. He had already found a terrace house in William Street, West Melbourne, for his own growing family. There was a son, George, born in Scotland but soon to die, then a daughter, Helen, then in August 1885 a second son, Keith Arthur; there would be four more children. In 1887 Patrick John moved to Trinity Presbyterian Church in Camberwell, a rapidly growing and prosperous Melbourne suburb. The manse attached to the church became home to Patrick’s children. Described as ‘broad-shouldered, straight-backed and full of Christian fun’, Patrick was a demanding father with high expectations of his children.
    There should have been enough money in the extended family for all their needs but the collapse of the land boom in ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, the bank crash and the