When the French President addressed Australian troops after their smashing victory at Hamel in July 1918, he said: ‘the French people expected a great deal from you because they had heard what you accomplished in the development of your own country…but we did not know that…you would astonish the whole continent.’ What Georges Clemenceau thereby acknowledged was that the so called ‘Anzac spirit’ had not been miraculously conjured up by diggers as they were rowed ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. Rather, its origins could be traced back as far as 1788, when a unique form of social egalitarianism first took root around Sydney Cove, before spreading and flourishing over the next 125 years. It was this spirit of mateship which was exported to the Old World aboard the Australian nation’s first fleet: the 26 troop transports which carried the 1st AIF to Egypt in 1914. And it was this spirit which the next generation sought to emulate during World War II.
After eight years as a barrister, followed by nineteen years as a member of the NSW Parliament, eleven of them on the front bench, Andrew Tink stepped back from active politics in 2007 to concentrate on writing. Andrew’s first book, William Charles Wentworth, won the NIB CAL Waverley Award for Literature in 2010. His second, Lord Sydney, was published in 2011 and his third, Air Disaster Canberra, in 2013. Andrew’s latest book, Australia 1901 – 2001: a narrative history was released in November 2014. Andrew is an adjunct professor at Macquarie University’s law school and a trustee of Sydney Living Museums. In 2013, Andrew was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Macquarie University. On Australia Day 2014, he was made a member of the Order of Australia. And in January 2015, he commenced a three year appointment as President of the Library Council of NSW.
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