They sit before Adamson Hall (built by, and named after, Wesley College's eminent headmaster, Lawrence Adamson), sure of their prowess with javelin and spiked shoe: the athletics team of the Melbourne private school. With their coach, Harry Kaighin, they look out from a photograph in the last months before a world war overwhelmed them. A century on, knowing of the cost of the Great War in general, and the price paid by private-school boys in particular, we imagine their fates: Gallipoli, the Somme, Passchendaele. Before we have finished scanning the rows we have imagined epics of enlistment, sacrifice, grief and mourning: a representative story of Australia and the First World War.
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