Well, hi everyone, Welcome to conversations. My guest today is a Vietnam veteran. Roger Hogman served in Vietnam in nineteen sixty eight sixty nine, and he now lives over on York Peninsula and was a little in there. He was a little bit indifferent when he came home of having served in Vietnam and the treatment that he received soldiers from previous wars. But in recent years he's been motivated to recognize that there are other veterans over there who
haven't been properly recognized. So he's dreamt of this project at edith Burg on the York Peninsula, and sometimes dreams become reality, and we'll find out all about that the Vietnam War Memorial Walk over there at edith Burg. Roger Hogman, Welcome to the program.
How are you really good? Thanks Graham, good to be here.
It's an amazing thing you've done. You've established this memorial walk between edith Burg and Quebek. Now I should know that I've been been to Edinsburgh, I've driven through Kabao. I don't know anything about them, but what's your association with the area.
We lived in a motorhome for eight and a half years, and we thought that New York Peninsula was a good place to finish up, so we retired to the York Peninsula. I like fishing, there's good fishing. So that's basically how it started.
What happened to the motor home?
Unfortunately we've still got it.
You just still live in it.
No, no, no, no. We bought we bought a place on a very old house on York Peninsula and were gradually re storing it.
Oh, how wonderful does that sound?
The original part of the building was put up in eighteen forty seven.
Wow, we might come to that in time. Now you're in New Zealander, ki No, you're not well. How come in and serve with the New Zealand Army.
It was an ANZAC battalion. It was four Roar and ZAID. So we had three rifle companies Bravo, Charlie and Delda, and then we had two Kiwi companies which was Victor and Whiskey. So there were actually five rifle companies in four or r as they were in two and six.
Okay, so did were you you controlled by New Zealand and CEOs or Kiwi and CEOs or officers.
No, we tried to avoid them out in the field. They were great fun in back in base, but out in field, no, we would prefer to be as far away as we possibly could.
Because they were wild, or because they were a bit reckless.
They had a different method of clearing an area than the Australian soldiers. They used to put four hundred rounds through the machine gun and then listen. And we've decided that we didn't like being close to that.
So they fire off four belts of ammunition into the into a scrub and then.
Change, change the red hot barrel, put a new barrel in, a new set of four hundred rounds, new four belts, all linked together. And if there was another noise, well, same same procedure.
Did you then sweep through the area.
I don't know what they did. We were never there, so.
You didn't fragnize with much at all.
Only in camp, back back in the Dad or down in Vuktow they were great. But yeah, not out in the not out where it was dangerous.
So where were you born? Where'd you grow up?
I was born in Adelaide. My parents both long Their families go right back to the early settlement of South Australia. They originated in Adelaide, went to Perry and then my mum and dad returned to Adelaide where I was born up down at Malvern.
So so when you say early settlement, how early.
Eighteen thirty nine through to eighteen forty two.
So three years after the first landing you had Hogbin's here. Yes, did you research that history?
Yes, we've got a very good family tree of that. It goes back to the Reverend George Hogben who was a Baptist preacher and he had two nephews with him. They they came out here and he was recognized. He's performed a lot of marriages in that very early part of the settlement.
He was a man of religion.
Yes he was.
Did that flow through to the family.
Not particularly? No, having said that my brother is a preacher, so I guess there's some of it.
Still definitely hasn't it. So he grew up at Melbourne. What was what was the malvin of your childhood?
Like great place? The end of Adelaide was Mitcham, which was only a mile and a half three kilometers away the Freedom. We would ride to Glenelg for a swim on our push bikes. People wouldn't understand now, But the mate and I used to do a lot of fishing in the West Beach sand dunes.
Fishing in the sand hills.
No, sorry, I meant shooting.
Shooting.
Yes, yes, we just go shooting in the sandhills. We'd ride our push bikes down to West Beach. There was no airport there in those days.
How did you get your rifle down there?
Slung over me? Two young blakes riding from cross roads down cross roads and heading off to the How would you have been there fifteen sixteen.
And you've got a twenty two rifle And it was Dad, and what you after? Rabbits?
I guess, yeah, yeah, just rabbits. It was a good place to go and get a couple of rabbits. Yeah, that's good fun.
So what ambition did you have in terms of leaving school?
I was told by the woodwork teacher at on the High school, mister Tulk, that I should never go anywhere near wood. So I left school at fifteen and Dad said to me, what are you going to do? And I said, I'm coming to you to work with you. Dad was a very good carpenter. He was a craftsman's craftsman carpenter. So I became a carpenter.
What did you What did the old school teacher think of that?
I never met him again. I would have loved to have met him, because I went on. When I went to Vietnam, I went in, I completed my apprenticeship. When I came back out, I didn't didn't put my enrollment off. I completed my apprenticeship, became a carpenter with the same company, and became the building supervisor three years later. So twenty three years of age or less than that. At twenty three years of the age, I was a building supervisor for a company turning off sixty hourses a year.
Wow, we were a good carpenter, come on, not particular. So the school teacher maybe was right.
The school teacher was probably right. I was a proficient carpenter, but I was mentored by some extremely good people building inspectors my own employer, and became a proficient handler of staff and capable of coordinating work. Over that.
Do you think we're seeing the same degree of proficiency with tradesmen these days.
My last work was as a training coordinator with a register training organization, and the apprenticeships are totally degraded. What took us five years to get to the stage where we were beginning to learn about the building industry is now cut back. An apprenticeship doing a carpentry. We'll have carpentry and in brackets rufa or foundations or whatever. So they're divided into very tiny segments. So it's changed dramatically, and I'm not impressed.
Okay, so you're working as a carpenter, then your number gets drawn out and if you go into the army, we'll talk about that when we come back. Roger Hogben is my guest, Folks, Vietnam veteran who's been involved in an amazing project over the Edithburgh on the York Peninsula. All about that when we come back. Welcome back to conversations. Everybody in the studio with me is Roger Hogben, a carpenter by trade, gets called up and goes off to Vietnam.
We'll talk about that. He's been involved in a significant project over there on York Peninsula which has come to fruition and will come to fruition in August this year, August the eighteenth, the Vietnam War Memorial Walk. But there's so much to talk about. You get drafted. What was the emotion like?
What would you?
What are you thinking?
Look if we were young and silly, it was a great advance, It was a huge adventure.
How long did it last? The sense of adventure, though, I had the same feeling, but evaporate after two days of recruit training.
They said about the recruit training, it would make men out of boys and boys out of men. I think you had to survive that. You had to have a very strong values in your own life. And I found it interesting more more than anything else. I'd never been dealt with that way. Standing in line at a inspection and having the corporal cut the buttons off the back pockety of the trousers hanging, handing it to the sergeant and saying this soldier is undressed came with a bit
of a shock. It was quite a different era. It would never happen that way today, But in that era, I guess that was to some extent seen as an easy way to enforce people to do to follow the rules.
Yeah, I've often contemplated this. I mean, you're talking about that's just making boys out of men. With some everyone is so different. The brutality with which they tried to enforce discipline. Some people weren't just they weren't wired for that. And I don't know how many times. I don't know what the suicide rate would have been, but there's definitely
would have been a consideration. I look back on those few weeks of recruit training with such disdain that those guys jumped up Lance corporals and corporals could be.
No.
We had to copy it, and we did, and we did cop it, but it was just so disrespectful.
Absolutely it was. It was by today standards, absolutely disgraceful. It was disgraceful then. But there were no options for us as recruits, regardless I would think, whether we're National Service, whether we were regular recruits, there was no option. Once you're in there, you did as they did and as they said. It's interesting about the Lance corporal. After I'd been to Vietnam and came back, my brother in law marched out of Puckerpaniel and I went down to see
him march out, and I was hauled up. I had a red lanyard on my right shoulder, and he yelled out at me, Hey, soldier, what are you doing. We're in your lanyard. I turned around and had ribbons, and he nearly went through the bitchmen.
I see how Lance corporal tried.
To Yes, Lance corporal tried to jump on me because recruits prior to the march out were not allowed to wear the lanyards. I, on the other hand, was a return serviceman, which came as one terrible shock to this poor young lance corporal who was seen as one stage below God.
Now your march out of recruit training, did you nominate a call given the fact you had a trade? Normally they make good use of guys with trades.
Yes, they do, This was the message we got. So I applied for engineers, which would be the obvious thing to do. But of course, as with ninety percent of the people who applied for to be working in their own trade, I finished up in infantry. Sometimes I wondered whether it was because as trades we knew more than some of the junior officers who were running those units.
I certainly got into trouble for that. In Vietnam, I suggest the way they were pouring concrete was not quite the best way to do it.
So if you go to core training to learn how to be an infantry soldier in a bit more Where did you Where did you do that?
That was Singletent, Wales, New South Wales really interesting. Having done a lot of rabbit and kangaroo shooting over my younger years, I was interested in how the rifles work and I couldn't make marksmen. You couldn't really interesting just the totally different total difference of the weapons that were using. But having said that, it was a very interesting time.
That was it was far more oriented towards training for what you were going to be doing in future, which made it totally different to recruit training, which was just discipline and enforcing rules. I found infantry training to be much more interesting.
Did you go over with the battalion or did you join them as a reinforcement?
I joined as a reinforcement through Rio wing it at Engelburn.
What was that? Like me? You haven't trained with these guys and you just you just sort of dropped into them.
Look, I think that the Australian Army training in that era was exceptionally good. If you were trade trained into a corps, you were given all of the all of the information that you would require. We fired everything, I think except for the rocket propel armored armory. They can't remember which one it was. We didn't fire those, but we fired pretty much everything else from grenades to handguns through that training.
The RPG was the one that the plastic onages extended.
Yeah, that was that was the one. A bit expensive to play with.
They didn't even look like a weapon, didn't They looked like a toy bit of down That's what it looked like.
However, they did a lot of damage, but the look we were exceptionally well trained and by the time we got to Ingleburn. At Engelburn we did a lot more weapons training. Is the security on us was much easier. We were allowed to leave camp when we wanted. We had to be there all the time during daytime, all that sort of stuff, but we had a lot more free time in My parents never knew, but I volunteered for Vietnam. To me, if I was going to get anything out of that two years, it would be war service.
War service or the War Service Liane.
War Service loan. There is a difference.
It was good for a while, it lasted.
By the time I wanted to do it, I was told that I was that I was certainly had the met the requirements for it, but I couldn't do it because I already owned a couple of investment properties and therefore was ineligible for a war service.
Loan, so it should be there.
So it worked hard for them.
So I guess you flew over into Vietnam.
Yes, flew over with the QUANTUS people, landed in Singapore for refueling. Singapore was really interesting because we before we left the plane or before we got on the plane, we were told to have a civilian shirt, preferably bright, bright colored, and so we took off our army shirts
and put on civilian shirts. We were ushered into the Singapore terminal, which wasn't a particularly interesting place at that stage, not like it is today, and we were put behind a rope barrier with armed guards, and nobody knew we were in the army because we had We all had the same khaki strides on, shiny shiny boots and short haircuts, so we wouldn't have been obvious with it because we had wonderful flowering shirts.
Obviously, don't join the unit.
It went through one IRU, the Australian Reinforcement Unit at vun At Nui Dat, and that was an acclimatization period, So.
Doing patrols and.
A little bit of patrol work just outside the wire and back in again. Lost a mate in that first couple of weeks.
Yeah, it's just doing just a just a what a contact. No.
No, we were coming back in and we'd gone outside the wire, through the out into the scrub, did a circuit, and we were coming back at the next entry point and they spotted a mine of some sort. Whether it was I've got no idea what it was. But the corporal and two soldiers stopped and they were supposed to build a pyramid of sticks to market so that the engineers could go out and blow it away. But instead of building the pyramid adjacent to the explosive, they built
it over it, and it collapsed onto the explosive. And my mate was killed at that, just instantly. He was putting sticks over it.
And he's barely been there days.
Only Oh maybe, I guess we would have been there ten days. Yeah, just frightening stuff. I often wondered about his parents.
So it's national service and goes over it two weeks nationaler.
That one ira was both National service and.
Regular Roger Hogman, it's my guest, Folks, we're talking about his time in Vietnam. But he's done an amazing job in recent years establishing the Vietnam War Memorial Walk over there at Edithburg on New York Peninsula. And there'll be a big reveal of that, I guess and a big opening of that on August the eighteenth, twenty twenty five. So back shortly, we are talking with Roger Hogman. Folks. If you just tuned in, Roger's a Vietnam veteran, retired
after touring around Australia and a significant career. Has started off as a tradee, got called up Whent to Vietnam. He's established or been one of the parties who's established the Vietnam War Memorial walk over there at Edithburg. But if you just tuned in, he's gone up to Vietnam. He's gone in as a reinforcement. You were a bit of a You're a little bit lucky because you're the unitude joined came came home not that long after you. After you got there.
Four RII was due to come home, and both the sixth and the seventh intakes of National Servicemen were due to get out of the Army before the army, before the unit reformed. So their expectation was one hundred and thirty soldiers to reform a battalion that should have been around six hundred people. So anybody that joined, with the exception of officers in the latter half of that period,
came home with the battalion. So I joined them, and I came home with them on the Hma Sydney, the old Vuntaw Ferry.
What a fun trip they would have been coming home. I'm surprise they wouldn't have transferred you out another unit that the needed reinforcements.
If we'd objected to coming home. I guess they would have transferred this. But they needed on re establishment at Anaugraa. They needed to have the author of return serviceman. I think they wanted people with experience to come back to reform a battalion.
Now this is where life gets a bit interesting for you. Maybe one of the reasons that you've delved into this memorial and the way that Vietnam veterans are recognized. Tell us about your experiences coming back, particularly when you tried to join the RSL Well.
I returned to Port Lincoln, where I'd been called up from and went.
To what are you doing over there?
I was working as a builder over there, back to being an apprentice carpenter when I got out, But I was actually in uniform on an ANZAC day and went to the dawn service at the RSL, and then walked back into the RSL after the service and was told by a fellow who had had too much to drink, that I had no right to be in the RSL, that I hadn't been to a proper war and that
I should remove myself, so I did. I also removed the RSL badge that I had that went in the gutter, and until very recently, i'd never grossed the.
Yeah, I've heard these stories before, I didn't experience it myself. How did you feel.
Discussed? Was what I felt? It wasn't. I didn't feel rejected when we marched back into Brisbane with the battalion. We arrived back in Brisbane and we were fortunate we had what I believe was the last ticket tape welcome into Australia. The march was absolutely fantastic, but we had been warned off if we were attacked on the march, we would be given the order to disperse so the march would break up. We would melt into the crowd and then go to our port for departure to leave,
because immediately after the march we were on leave. It never happened, had a fantastic march, but there was this fear of people attacking the march.
Well that would have I mean, I don't think I would have dispersed that ease. I think there would have been fights everywhere.
We were all in uniform. It wouldn't have worked. It was, it was. It was ridiculous, but the army didn't know how to deal with it. Looking back on it. The young woman who attacked the one ra when they came back and she covered herself in paint, Yes, and how brave was she to do that on her own volish She wasn't part of a group. She just that was what she believed in. My sister didn't wasn't happy thought that I was annoyed with her because she'd been in
the moratory marches. Isn't that what we should be fighting for? That we have the ability to do that?
And you Sando back in Port Lincoln, disin chanted with the RSL.
When I got out, which was not long after that, I returned to my employment in Port Lincoln, and life went back to what was supposed to be normal. However, my best mate said that I was never the same, and I guess none of us were. You don't do those things and come back the same. I had a really,
really good employer. He was more than happy to look after me as a returning from National service, and I became his building building supervisor, turning off sixty hours a year at the age of twenty three, which I thought was some sort of achievement.
Indeed, do you have contact still with guys you've served.
I've got contact with a number of them, not a big number. I've never never joined the or the Vietnam Veterans associations. I just didn't take part. I was not interested and I was too busy.
So how on earth did you find the motivation to establish this memorial to not just you know, the infantry soldier, the various people who served in Vietnam.
It's a really interesting situation. For a start, don't go drinking coffee with an old mate, because it gets you into all sorts of trouble. The old Yeah, John Edwards. We discussed the fact that there were no memorials that covered the people who went. There were memorials about incidents about for instance, Long Tan. There were lots of memorials to local individuals, but there was nothing explaining who had
gone to Vietnam. So we thought we'd have a bit of a look at it, and we found that there were not only all of the armed forces, but there were also a lot of civilians. There were lots of interesting things. The army had four ships in Vietnam. Nobody really recognized that small ships the small ships landing craft, but they were medium sized landing craft and in fact one of them took Centurion tanks from Sydney to Vangtau. Really yeah, so they were not little boats. There were
very large stingies. So yeah, that was an interesting thing. The Australian Navy, the Royal Australian Navy Helicopter Flight Vietnam served with the one thirty fifth Combat Helicopter Unit with the Yanks in both carrying passengers the troops around the place and also with gunships. And that'll become interesting in a minute. Those so nobody realized that you're.
Talking about, you know, quite as flight crew. You took all the people that have been issued with Vietnam Logistics Support medals, and people wouldn't think someone who was a quant a screw person would get a medal for serving in Vietnam.
When I landed in Vietnam the Ton Sinut, which was the regarded then as the busiest airfield in the world. It had a ladder runway with the two runways parallel crossovers, so it looked like a ladder from the air. When we landed, the pilot pulled into we were on the
outside runway. He pulled into one of the crossovers, and I was on the left hand side of the aircraft looking up the runway and there's three Phantom jets coming down the runway and all of a sudden, our pilot starts pouring the kerosene into the burners, much loud roaring, and I'm looking out the window with very large eyes. I thought he was going to cross in front of these, but what it was. There are another three fandoms behind that first three, and he was going across between them.
So very very interesting. And those pilots were all volunteers. The crew on board those quality aircraft were also volunteers, and there were five hundred issued medal.
I have one of the greatest nights of my life Continent Air Base, coming back off my R and R. They had all these nightclubs and bars on the base. I got caught up with these American soldiers. I had a better time in that night at Continent Air Base, and I did on the six nights I had five nights I had on R and R in Taipei. Roger Hogman is my guest. Folks a bit more about the Vietnam War Memorial Walk, because it's going to be significant
back shortly. My guest in the studio is Roger Hogman. Roger, it's a Vietnam veteran who's spent a lot of time over there on your peninsula and dwiling on the fact that maybe there's not enough recognition for logistical staff. You know, I suppose there's the recognition of the combat staff and soldiers and the like. So what did you think you could do about this?
When I started looking at it, or we started looking at it, we started to research information about who was in Vietnam. And there's a document which is often looked at as the gospel of who was there, and it is called the Order of Battle. Vietnam. I've since found out that it hasn't a number of anomalies in it, but that's all right. So going through that, I found that there were a lot of civilians as well as military personnel.
There were also civilians who what do you mean, give us an example?
All right? There were about four hundreds doctors, nurses, and medical technicians.
Weren't they weren't they in the army? Were medical? No?
There, These were civilian medical staff. They were in Vietnam as part of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, which no longer exists. They were serving in the Vietnam civilian hospitals. They were on rotation predominantly for about six six months, and they served as just with the civilian medical people in Vietnam.
Were based in Saigon, they were all over.
They were certainly throughout book free province.
How danger would that have been for them?
I couldn't have been dangerous. They were only recognized in twenty nineteen.
You're a civilian doctor in the war zone. They used to assassinate village chiefs and school teachers.
And I couldn't find any of the doctors or medical staff that were killed over there. But I've spoken to a couple of one doctor and one nurse who was there. Weary Dunlop was there as part of that organization. Yes, he was there. The nurse that I spoke to, she's now in her eighties and she served on part of his team. Our local doctor in Yorktown was to be the next group to go over when they withdrew them from the SITO operation. So there were those sorts of people. Of course, the entertainers.
Now, I guess we know the entertainer because they've been They're pretty well recognized. And we see the march On and Nan Wills and Little Paddy and Johnny Mack. Yeah, Bob Francis used to yes.
Yes, but it's interesting that these people we have only recently been recognized. This is nearly fifty years ago. It's the reason we've put the march this the warm rail in this year is it's fifty years since the fall of Saigone, which is officially when Australia withdrew from Vietnam.
So how did you get it up and did what did what was your vision? How did how did you what sort of a memorial did you see? And we imagine like a wall or a statue or a nobilisk or something like that. But what did you envisage?
This one's quite different Because of the research that we did, we found that there were lots of stories. So we've written the stories about the people. So it talks about the National Service because it's the only time Australia has ever set National servicemen into a combat zone. We speak about the civilian groups that went. We speak about the armed forces that had unusual jobs there, like the helicopter pilots with the Navy. So these stories or these.
Stories there, where are these stories written?
They were written off our research so with the assistance of a number of people.
No, I meant where do I see the story?
The story will be. The stories will be on boards. These are aluminum marine grade aluminium. The stories are being cut laser cutting these boards and the boards are black laser cut and backed with a white powder coated board behind sother be easily red. They'll be on frames along the walk. As you wander along the walk, you'll be able to see them.
How long is the walk?
The walk is just under four kilometers wow, between where between Edithsburgh and Kebowi and along that walk that's a fair way to walk, we're all. So it's a well established path. Most of it is bitchmen. The bits that are not bitchmen. That's our next project to get that side of out. But the walk will have about twenty six story boards along it, so there's a number of
these boards. We've also got people sponsoring seats along that walk, which are very comfortable seats also cut out of aluminium and they've got dedications on the backrest of the seats and we're hoping to put in about fifteen those, which works out about one seat that will set three or four people about every three hundred meters.
Okay, so we're running out of time. So a couple of quick questions, So how much did it cost? And how did you get the funding for it? We put up and who helped.
We put up a business plan to the York Peninsula Council, which was accepted. We then applied for Saluting their Service funding from the Department of Veteran Affairs. We were told that we would get a few thousand out of that, but not much. In that round, we were the only people in Australia that received a four hundred and fifty thousand dollars grant from saluting their service funding and that got us off the mark with this.
So your business plan must have been impressive.
It was a proper business plan with my history allowed me to submit a proper business plan to council explaining how and where to get funding. We've since had a fair number of donations. We've had sponsorship from veterans Essay, which has allowed us to get John Schuman over. Poor John. I am bushed him in Canberra, but he's coming over and putting on a concert and it's enabled us to keep the prices for that concert right down.
I've seen John and the Vagabond Crew. It's a fantastic concert. It's very emotive and he's passionate about it and he puts on a great show. So that'll be really good. That'll be really impressive. Now. The thing that you're most proud of, I think is you've been able to find a Huey helicopter, the sort of helicopters that transported us around in Vietnam that were gunships as well, and how many of those are still around the place.
Currently there are two flying in Australia, the ones in navy colors and ones an air force and we got in touch with the people that own it, HARS Historic Aircraft Restoration Society and Arts. It was absolutely not this. This aircraft will not leave the east coast of New South Wales. The furthest it will possibly go will be Canberra. So after three months of some serious negotiations they said yes they would come over.
Who owns it?
Historic Historic Aircraft Restoration Society which is at shoal Haven. They've got a lot of aircraft including Caribou Sea one thirties and.
Now shoal Haven that's near the navy bases and in New South Wales.
Yes, it's very close to the navy base. They've got a lot of historic aircraft, both civilian and military.
So they own it.
They own it.
Are they a government body.
Or volunteer volunteer association or society? They do really interesting work. They've got a number of military aircraft and this one they're allowing us twenty two hours the pilot that it's a Vietnam era helicopter. It was first served in Vietnam with the nine Squadron. It will fly to our opening hopefully from from New South that's good.
They've got they've got limited lifespan though they not.
This aircraft has two hundred and thirty hours left on its ROTA at the moment. They can't find a replacement ROT for that aircraft. If they can't find a replacement rot, that means it's got two hundred and thirty hours left of life. They've given us twenty two hours.
So how will it take to fly over?
About twenty over and back?
So you've got a couple of hours whizzing around?
Won't They won't be doing joy flights. This aircraft uses three hundred and fifty liters of fuel per hour, very expensive to fly.
And who pays that? You've got a sponsor of that?
I'd like to say we have. We're still looking for donations. We've got a guaranteur for the funding of that, but the guarantor doesn't want to pay for it. They will if we can't raise the money. But we're still about between forty and fifty thousand dollars short of funding for the whole for the whole exercise. We're getting there, and were certainly is there a website? People can go to the York menas the Council website. That's York at SA
dot gov dot AU. They can certainly contact us through there. The Vietnam Veterans Association the Vietnam Veterans Federation of Australia both super supportive. And the reason that I think we got the helicopter is because the director of the Australian Warman Wargan Canbra that's Matt and Anderson, has been backing us right from the very beginning.
You've had you almost unanimous support for have you counseling of the people who write letters in support, I mean a long list of prominent people who've supported you, and that you must feel gratified.
Absolutely. The Mayor has invited an eminent Australian to open the memorial Walk. That won't become official for another couple of weeks, but the Mayor will have a really interesting announcement to make in the next few weeks about who's going to open the walk. We're proposing to get that person brought to the official opening by.
Huey by helicoptery.
Yes, so they'll bring that person in. They'll be delivered from the landing zone which is adjacent to the opening, to the opening and the helicopter will take off and will be for open inspection. On the Edithburgh Oval for the next three or four hours.
So on the eighteenth of August twenty twenty five, what's the pro and where does John Schuman and his banned the Vagabond Crew come into it.
The opening the day starts off with a cenotaph service at the RSL at nine o'clock. It's followed after that by the official opening at eleven o'clock on the foreshore at the southern end of the golf club. We then adjourned to have some lunch either at the sports Club, Community Club or the RSL. And following that at two o'clock, John Sherman and the Vagabond Crew are putting on their
concert in the local hall. The Light Church has got a beautiful auditorium seat three hundred and fifty and he's performing in there with his crew.
Yeah, that's a great concert. I've seen it and it was important Lincoln last year when he did it and just loved it, and so of the crowd. Look, it's a great thing you've done. That's great vision, it's great enterprise. Have great persistence and obvious, very persuasive too, with your ability to extract the funds for it. I have it's a great success and I will get over there to Edithsburgh one day and walk that walk or maybe write that walk.
It'll be there for the next one hundred years. It's designed to last.
Got on you, Roger Hoggden from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Walk Project, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks Graham, it's been a pleasure.
And thank you folks.