The Australian War Memorial Collection. Test site
Custom made khaki Bedford cord jacket lined throughout with dark grey wool flannel. The jacket is loosely modelled on the standard AIF soldiers' service dress jacket, but with an open notched collar that was a feature of an officer's jacket.
The jacket is closed down the centre front with four brown plastic buttons. A buttonhole has been worked into the proper left lapel. Each breast carries a pleated patch pocket with a triple pointed flap, and each hip an expanding bellows type pocket with triple pointed flaps. The flaps are secured with brown plastic buttons. The jacket has an integral self fabric belt, back yoke and centre back box pleat. Each cuff carries a horizontal self fabric 'strap' secured by a brown plastic button.
A white linen tape sewn inside the back neck is marked in ink 'C E W BEAN/ 1st AUSTRALIAN DIVN.'
Australian war correspondent C E W Bean had this jacket custom made before he left Australia in 1914. He wore it throughout the First World War. He recorded that he had deliberately asked his tailor to make a jacket that looked similar to a military uniform in both colour and style, but with sufficient difference in detail to ensure that he would always be identified as a civilian.
Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean was born on 18 November 1879 at Bathurst, New South Wales. His family moved to England when he was ten. He completed his education there, eventually studying classics and law at Oxford. Bean returned to Australia in 1904 and was admitted to the New South Wales Bar.
Having dabbled in journalism, Bean joined the Sydney Morning Herald as a junior reporter in January 1908. He published several books before being posted to London in 1910. In 1913 he returned to Sydney as the Herald's leader writer. When the First World War began, Bean won an Australian Journalists Association ballot and became official correspondent to the AIF. He accompanied the first convoy to Egypt, landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and began to make his name as a tireless, thorough and brave correspondent. He was wounded in August but remained on Gallipoli for most of the campaign, leaving just a few days before the last troops.
He then reported on the Australians on the Western Front where his admiration of the AIF crystallised into a desire to create a permanent memorial to their sacrifice and achievements. In addition to his journalism, Bean filled hundreds of diaries and notebooks, all with a view to writing a history of the AIF when the war ended. In addition he organised the collection of battlefield relics from AIF soldiers on the Western Front through the formation of the Australian War Records Section. In early 1919 he led a historical mission to Gallipoli to collect relics for the Memorial, obtain Turkish accounts of the campaign and report on the condition of war graves.
On his return to Australia Bean and his staff moved into Tuggeranong homestead, south of Canberra, to work on the official history. In 1921 he married Ethel (Effie) Young, a nursing sister at the Queanbeyan hospital whom he first met when she visited Tuggeranong to play tennis. They later moved to Sydney, where he continued to write at Victoria Barracks. When he began, Bean imagined that the history would take five years to write; in the event it took 23 years, and the final volume did not appear until 1942.
Besides his written work, Bean worked tirelessly on creating the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. He was present when the building opened on 11 November 1941 and became Chairman of the Memorial's board in 1952. He maintained a close association with the institution for the rest of his life.
During the Second World War, Bean liaised between the Chiefs of Staff and the press for the Department of Information. He became Chairman of the Commonwealth Archives Committee and was instrumental in creating the Commonwealth Archives. Between 1947 and 1958 he was Chairman of the Promotion Appeals Board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. He also continued to write, producing a history of Australia's independent schools and finally a book on two senior AIF figures, Sir William Throsby Bridges and Sir Cyril Brudnell Bingham White. Bean received a number of honorary degrees and declined a knighthood. Bean, one of the most admired Australians of his generation, died after a long illness in Concord Repatriation Hospital in 1968.
Small oval paint tin painted black on the slightly rounded top and cream on the bottom and inside. It is hinged on the side and has a ring soldered to the top for carrying. Below this ring is a brass
Brown pigskin leather satchel with flap closure, secured by two brown painted brass press studs. The sides are folded so that the satchel can expand to hold more papers, and are reinforced over the st
Pen stand with an oval-shaped black glass base and swiveling black plastic pen holder. The base has a perished rubber lining and the pen holder has been damaged. This object was collected from Charl
Small wooden storage chest with flat, hinged, lift up lid. The interior, but not the lid, is lined with galvanized steel, joined with solder in the lower corners. A 95 mm high wooden band is attached
Small glass paperweight in the form of a cube with bevelled edges. The remains of a paper label, showing the heraldic shield of Trinity College, Oxford, in blue and gold, are glued to the base, face u
Steel eraser with sheath. The steel eraser consists of a long wooden handle with a short spade-shaped blade which could also be used as a letter opener. Both edges of the blade are sharpened and it is
