ANZAC The Play: An Epic on War and Peace in the 20th Century Book

Most of the characters in this play are taken from real life. When war was declared in 1914, Charters Towers was a happy, carefree but tough pioneering town where all hands were needed on the land. However most of the young men go to war, traveling first to Gallipoli on the coast of Turkey. They were decimated there. The survivors and new recruits were sent to France. Before leaving, Pal , torn between love of country and the call to fight for liberty for all the world, meets Madeline, an aboriginal girl from the Dreamtime who decides to follow him through the powers bequeathed her by the great Earth Mother Eingana. Liberty presents herself to Pal during the war reviving him as the Eternal Soldier each time he is killed. Pal's brother Fred also enlists and is killed on Gallipoli. In Charters Towers Fred's love Jessica dies in childbirth. Mother, Father and daughter Millicent together with their friends, Kate, Ilene and Kitty try to go on with their lives. Young Pal, Fred's son is raised by all these women but enlists in the second world war and is killed at Dunkirk but not before he and his English love Kathleen have conceived their child during the London Blitz. Kathleen carrying the pendant that Young Pal had made for Kate and returned to him upon his enlistment, travels to Charters Towers to deliver their baby with Kate. He is called Boy Pal. Pal, the eternal soldier, travels the world, receiving many visions of a global Eternal Justice who will eventually arbitrate the Peace and World Commonwealth who will preserve it. Pal returns to Gallipoli experiencing the continuing conflict between Death and Liberty. He secures the keys for Peace, returns to Charters Towers and gives them to Boy Pal and a young Madeline as they both receive the covenants.