Australian Bronze Commemorative Plaques around the world.

[spidge]

Dr Ross J. Bastiaan has done a wonderful job with this project.

Australian Bronze Commemorative Plaques

DR ROSS BASTIAAN OAM RFD is a periodontist, commencing private practice in Melbourne in 1978. He is a graduate of Melbourne University with a Master of Dental Science in 1975 and a Master of Science from London University in 1977. He became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons in 1979 and has fellowships in three International colleges. He has published over 25 scientific articles and contributed to three dental textbooks.

Chairmanships have included Committees of the Australian Dental Association, the Australian Society of Periodontology and he is the Vice President of the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons. For 20 years he was a senior part time lecturer at the Dental School, Melbourne University.

Dr Bastiaan was the Forensic Dentist to the Melbourne Coroner and Homicide Squad, Victorian Police Force, from 1981 to 1990. He is still an active Army Reserve officer in the Royal Australian Army Dental Corps holding the rank of Colonel and was the honorary dentist to the Governor General of Australia.

Dr Bastiaan is on the Council of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra and the Australian War Memorial Anzac Foundation. He is a member of the Rotary Club of Melbourne and was a Director of Odyssey House Drug Rehabilitation Centre for 10 years.

Australian Military History has been a long term interest of his and since 1990 he has placed over 140 multi-lingual bronze commemorative information plaques with bas-releif sculptures and maps on Australian battlefields of the First and Second World Wars. They are in 20 different countries around the world with many in Gallipoli, Singapore, Thailand, Papua-New Guinea, France and Belgium. Duplicates of these sculptures are exhibited at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; House of Commons, London; Imperial War Museum, England and many other centres. In 1995 he designed the Sir Edward Weary Dunlop memorial in St Kilda Road, Melbourne.

He has published three books on the First and Second World Wars, including a guide to the Gallipoli battlefields and the Kokoda Walk in the Dandenong Rangers.

In 1991, his work resulted in him receiving the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for �services to Australian Military History� and Anzac of the Year from the RSL. In 1992 he was awarded the Advance Australia Award for Australian History and the Reserve Force Decoration (RFD) in 1996 whilst in 1998 he was made a Life Member of the RSL.

[Kyt]

That's great work on the site. I hope he manages to get pictures to all of the plaques at some stage

[liverpool annie]

Originally Posted by Kyt

That's great work on the site. I hope he manages to get pictures to all of the plaques at some stage

He mentions ...... Phineas Gage and his accident .. we saw this memorial a few years ago .... these aren't my pictures of course though I do have some somewhere .... !

Gage's accident outside Cavendish while constructing the Rutland and Burlington Railroad secured his place in medical history. On Sept. 13, 1848, an explosive charge Gage was preparing detonated prematurely, driving a three-foot-long tamping iron through his left cheek and out the top of his head, landing a distance behind him. Not only did he survive -- standing up and speaking moments later, legend has it -- but he returned to work several months later and lived another 12 years. The personality change Gage exhibited after his accident was science's first glimpse at the relationship between the brain and personality. Neurologists mark the 150th anniversary of the incident in September with a symposium at the Okemo Mountain Resort, several miles from Cavendish.

Cavendish, Vermont - Phineas Gage monument

A plaque in the town of Cavendish, VT commemorates a freakish event that happened near the town on the 13th of September 1848. An explosion sent a 3 foot tamping rod through the cranium of Burlington Railroad foreman Phineas Gage. Gage survived the accident, but his personality was altered by the experience. Once level-headed and intelligent, he became a crazed, profane loony, carrying the tamping iron as a cane. His skull and the tamping iron are now on display at Harvard University's Countway Library of Medicine. The plaque in Cavendish shows a picture of Phineas's skull as well as a map to the site of the explosion. A quick walk along the railroad tracks will take you to the curve where the accident happened. [Ethan Crenson, 08/25/2002]


Phineas Gage - Man With a Metal Rod in His Head, Cavendish, Vermont

[spidge]

Originally Posted by Kyt

That's great work on the site. I hope he manages to get pictures to all of the plaques at some stage

I am sure they were all there at some stage. May contact him to see if there is a glitch.

Another labour of love for the fallen!

[Antipodean Andy]

Excellent thread, Spidge. I go passed the Weary Dunlop statue and memorial twice every work day. When I have some time in the arvo, I'll take some pics.

Must get around to doing the Kokoda Walk in the Dandenongs.

[Antipodean Andy]

I can confirm also, after finally remembering to do so, that the Boer War memorial, barely 300 metres from where I sit, also features a Bastiaan plaque. Having seen this and the Weary Dunlop examples, I believe he also did the one out the front of Victoria Barracks which is 10 minutes' walk from me and still has the original ops rooms used during the war. Photos to come.

Slightly irked to see, on the website, Kokoda referred to as the Kokoda Trail and 79 Sqn as 79th Squadron but, that's just me!