Don Spinks - Early influences on enlistment

Running time
1 min 14 sec
Date made
Copyright
Department of Veterans' Affairs

Transcript

My grandmother's brother, who lived with us, the family farm was in through my grandmother and her brother, and he was in the second AIF. He was 2/2nd Battalion. And around ANZAC Day when I was really young, we would have all of Gundy's, who was my great uncle, all of his mates would turn up and they'd be around for a couple of weeks, and a lot of memories with those old fellas.

And I become quite close to one of Gundy's very good mates and he was sort of like a mentor, second grandfather figure to me, because both my grandfathers passed before I could remember them fully. So they may have been sort of an influence, but also I'd left school in... finished end of 1977, and all of '78 I was a full-time hand, working on the farm with my father, and I just thought, "I need to get out and see a bit of the world." If this was going to be my life, I wanted to have a bit of an adventure before I became a full-time farmer.

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