The bright colours of Anzac Day memorabilia covering Bev Liversidge’s white picket fence stand out against the stripped-bare home that sits behind it.
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With the help of her daughter Debbie, every April 25 Mrs Liversidge sits out the front of her Mooroopna home in McKean St surrounded by Anzac Day memorabilia in remembrance of her own family that fought.
But this year was different.
This year Mrs Liversidge wasn’t sitting in front of a fully furnished home in a liveable state.
This year Mrs Liversidge wasn’t sitting with her husband Harry of nearly 60 years.
Last year, Mrs Liversidge dealt with the death of Mr Liversidge and the inundation of their home of 55 years in the October floods.
Mrs Liversidge is still not able to live in her home.
But she didn’t want to let this year become an exception.
Like every other year, Mrs Liversidge sat in front of her home commemorating the efforts of her father and his six brothers in World War II.
“I wanted to go back and sit out the front of my house on Anzac Day again because it’s my house and I’ve been there for most of my life, I raised eight kids there,” Mrs Liversidge said.
“Every year is important to remember no matter what and I want to continue this legacy for my family.”
Between 1940 and 1941, seven brothers went to war.
Only three came back.
Mrs Liversidge’s father Malcolm ‘Mike’ Hutchins was one of the men who returned.
A family of 14, the Hutchins brothers, like most young men at that time, put their hand up to volunteer for the war effort.
Malcolm, Ivan and William all enlisted in June 1940 and served in the Middle East, then New Guinea — they all returned home.
Alan enlisted at the same time alongside David, Eric and Fred in July 1941.
They were sent to defend the islands of Ambon and New Britain.
They were all captured by Japanese, tortured and ill-treated before dying as prisoners of war.
It wasn’t until February 2, 1946, that Mary and Henry Hutchins received the first telegram detailing the death of one son.
The remaining telegrams would later arrive that week.
“Arriving on the same day, Mary got three more telegrams to say she lost her other three sons and I thought, you’ve got nobody there to hold your hand or anything,” Mrs Liversidge said.
“The poor mother, the poor father.
“That would have been hell for them to go through.”
The boys’ parents suffered in silence, rarely speaking out about the loss of their sons.
These were family stories Mrs Liversidge didn’t grow up hearing about.
“You don’t think about it growing up and when they came home they say nothing about anything,’’ she said.
“They were told not to talk about it and then you’ve got to try and find that information out after.”
It wasn’t until the early 2000s that Mrs Liversidge found out the truth after her son Paul did some digging.
“In the early 2000s he and I just travelled all over Victoria trying to find different members of the family that could give us information on what had happened and who was there.
“Paul did a lot to get the story out and told.
“He (Paul) was trying to get it done while the two sisters of the soldiers were both still alive and had a memory of all the history.”
This led to the development and unveiling of a plaque commemorating the service of the Hutchins brothers in 2007 by their two sisters, Myrtle Salau and Mary Coburn, in Swan Hill where they were born.
With the passing of Paul in recent years, Mrs Liversidge is determined to keep the legacy alive.
“I want people to know about this story; how significant it was that four boys were killed from one family,” she said.
So, much like on Anzac Day this year, Mrs Liversidge will continue to sit outside her home reflecting and remembering the great sacrifice of the Hutchins brothers.
Journalist