Rochester College Year 11 student Oakley Tarrant and Hilma Sinclair sharing afternoon tea on Friday afternoon. Oakley will be visiting Colin Sinclair’s gravesite in Papua New Guinea on behalf the family.
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It is impossible to know how emotionally Rochester soldier Colin Sinclair farewelled his family as he left their embrace for World War II, not knowing it was the last time they would see each other.
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But last week it was a different farewell as Year 11 Rochester College student Oakley Tarrant treated Colin’s family, who is still living in town, to his homemade lemonade scones before heading to Brisbane today and Papua-New Guinea tomorrow for his trek along the Kokoda Trail, where the 28-year-old private died in 1942.
An inaugural recipient of the Colin Sinclair Kokoda Scholarship, Oakley’s trip has been sponsored by the Freemasons Foundation Victoria, organised by Wing Commander (Retd) John Glover. He will join four other Year 11 students at Tullamarine this afternoon to begin their journey.
Oakley thought he had been honoured simply by receiving a Colin Sinclair Scholarship, but after meeting all the soldier’s family members still living in Rochester, the trip has become as much a pilgrimage as a physical challenge.
This portrait of Colin Sinclair is one of the last images his family has of the soldier who fought and died on the Kokoda.
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“I had afternoon tea with Hilma Sinclair, Colin’s sister-in-law, and the Sinclair family on Friday and Hilma loved my scones,” Oakley said.
“The scholarship means a lot to their family and I am pretty humbled to be playing a part in that story. I am so glad I will be able to visit Colin’s grave on their behalf.”
The Victorian Nationals leader and State Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh, who founded the scholarship and organised the visit by the five students, said each one of them had been given a gravesite to visit at Bomona.
Mr Walsh described the visits as an integral part of the scholarship program as they would make the trip a “uniquely personal journey for each of the local students going in the inaugural year of the scholarship”.
He said it was his “privilege and honour” to visit Colin’s grave last year.
“I was able to deliver pictures of the gravesite to Colin’s family, and for me that incredibly humbling moment made me more determined to encourage and enable more young people to see and to experience what I did,” he said.
“I genuinely believe it will be one of the experiences of their lives. I know it had a profound impact on me.”
Mr Walsh said he wanted the teenagers to be excited about the whole trip, to be looking forward to going overseas and the things they would see and do there.
But at the same time, “we want to make sure they understand why we are going there at all,” he said.
“We are going to honour the memory of the many, too many, young Australians who went there, died there and are still there. That is why we are running these scholarships,” he said.
“These young men made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the freedom we have come to expect.
“It is our hope these young people will come home and share their time in PNG, what they have learnt from it and encourage others to try it as well.”
Colin Sinclair was a member of B Company, among the first to journey across the trail and confront the Japanese at Kokoda.
John Glover, Oakley Tarrant, Peter Walsh and (front) Hilma Sinclair at the Rochester Cemetery. Photo: Supplied
When the force withdrew and the other companies of the 39th battalion arrived, and then the 2/14th at the battle of Isurava, Colin was among the many reported missing in action.
In the following weeks, a number of these men made their way back to their units through the jungle, but many more were either killed in action, caught and executed by the Japanese or succumbed to the jungle and hunger.
Colin was one of the lucky ones and after four days he was able to rejoin his unit. But his luck was not to last.
Sent to the northern beaches, he suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen and legs, contracted dengue fever and died on December 19, 1942.
