Discrimination they faced back home definitely didn’t disappear during the war and after the war as well…coming home they still faced enormous difficulty being recognised for their service !
There was definitely still a disconnect among their white comrades and it definitely persisted after the war. A famous saying was that a lot of Aboriginal men were too dark to fight in the Light Horse while Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes bid Australian soldiers in France to fight for white Australia.
Elizabeth Heffernan is an Australian cultural historian specialising in World War I. She is a current postgraduate student at the University of Sydney, where her thesis examines the relationship between Australian soldiers and religion in the war. Her Honours thesis was awarded the 2020 Australian Army History Unit’s CEW Bean Prize (Honours Division) and an edited chapter won the 2020 History Council of NSW’s Max Kelly Award. In 2021 she developed the online project, Researching Soldiers in Your Local Community.