25 April 2025
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
The sun rises today at the memorial at Sandakan like any other day.
But the 25th of April is no ordinary day.
For Australians, this is a day etched in our national memory.
One hundred and ten years ago a generation of Australian and New Zealand soldiers landed on the shores of Gallipoli, and paid the ultimate price.
Their sacrifice created the Anzac legend that today draws together all Australians.
Each campaign from the Western Front to Afghanistan carries both the heavy weight of loss, and eternal gratitude for what was sacrificed.
Here today we honour our most profound obligation … to remember our dead … on behalf of their families, their loved ones, their mates and their country.
As we gather here, nothing speaks more to the true brutality and cost of war than those who endured Sandakan.
2,400 Australian and British service members arrived at this place, never to return to their families and homes.
It is tradition on days like this to tell the story of one who gave the ultimate sacrifice … to remind us of the human face of battle.
Private Ross Ferguson Bushell’s remains lie here, somewhere.
Ross was born in Glenelg, a small, beautiful sea side town in South Australia, known for its wide beach and glorious sunsets.
A young man of just nineteen years he enlisted into an Australian Army that was at the time engaged in a visceral fight, far from home in the Middle East.
But Tobruk was not to be Ross’s destiny … the dark shadows of war were falling across Asia.
Ross’s role in the Army was not glamourous. He was a driver in the 8th Division Salvage Unit.
Sent to Malaya and Singapore in July of 1941, his task was to scavenge the battlefield to redistribute vital equipment to fighting units in the 8th Australian Division.
The situation on the peninsula was desperate. Anything that could be found had to be re-used. Ross and his mates did what they could. But it simply wasn’t enough. Singapore fell in February 1942, and Ross and 15,000 of his fellows had no choice but to surrender to the Imperial Japanese Army.
The remainder of Ross’s war, and indeed his very short life, was the hardest a soldier could imagine.
After a year in Changi Prison, he was brought to Sandakan to build an airstrip.
Two years of forced labour, starvation and brutal beatings followed. Ross endured these hardships, sustained only by the camaraderie of his mates, and the shallow hope that one day the war might end.
But on 28 May 1945, just as Allied forces advanced through Borneo, Ross’s hopes met their end. He was sent on the second Sandakan – Ranau ‘death march’.
The 260 kilometre journey was fateful. Of the more than 2,000 soldiers who began the march to Ranau, only six survived.
Ross was not one of them. He lived only a week into the march. He died of sickness somewhere on the trail on 7th June 1945.
He was just twenty-four years old.
Private Ross Bushell does not have a known grave, only a name in Plot Panel # 31 in the Labuan War Memorial.
But he lies out here somewhere. We do not know where. To echo the inscription on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Australian War Memorial, he is ‘known unto God’.
‘He is all of them, and he is one of us’.
By remembering Ross today, we remember all Australians who fell at Sandakan, and in every war.
I hope that Ross, wherever he lies, hears our thoughts and prayers this morning. They are for him, for the family he left behind, and for the mates who died with and around him.
We know from the six who survived that the ‘diggers’ at Sandakan embodied hope, humour and the spirit of humanity in the face of adversity.
Like their fore fathers at Gallipoli, they faced their fears with characteristic humility. Surely the essence of courage.
Their example defines the Anzac spirit.
It is almost 80 years since Ross and his mates fell. Our commitment to remembering is undiminished by the passing of time.
We remember those who fought, fell and never returned home.
Here, and in all wars.
We commemorate the courage and compassion of the Malaysians who watched over our soldiers, who, at great personal peril, fed, cared for and saved as many as they could as this tragedy unfolded in their homeland.
Today we remember also the service and sacrifice of those from other nations whom we have fought alongside. We acknowledge all who have served in the wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations in which Australians, British, Malaysians and New Zealanders have served.
We acknowledge the service and sacrifice of our families.
We commit to strive every day for enduring peace.
We pray that we may never have to make such a sacrifice again.
Private Ross Ferguson Bushell, and all those who fell at Sandakan, will stand as our example should we ever have to do so.
Lest we forget.