Rename Melbourne Ports to Monash
May 20, 2015 by Henry Greener-The Shtick
Read on for article
Kate Ashmor tells Henry Greener about her many shticks, including being a self-employed Lawyer, recently appointed Chairman of Bendigo Bank Caulfield Park Community Branch, being a Councillor at Glen Eira Council and recently starting a petition to rename the Federal Electorate of “Melbourne Ports” to “Monash”, in honour of arguably the greatest Australian ever !…a J-Wire video report
Kate is very involved in many aspects of community activity and has the potential to be a leading light in the wider community…watch out world….!!
With acknowledgment to The Shtick.
On the proposal to promote General Sir John Monash to Field Marshall posthumously the forces he commanded did not warrant that rank.
Here is how the Australian Army senior ranks work. A Maj Gen commands a Division, a Lt Gen commands a Corps (3 Divisions) while a General commands an Army (3 Corps). Near the end of WW1 Monash commanded the Australian Corps of 5 Division but it was 4 Divisions short of an Army.
A Field Marshall commands 3 Armies and no Australian force, not even in WW1 and WW2 was ever that large.
Perhaps Monash could have been promoted to General in mid 1918 but this did not happen then.
The promotion of General Blamey on his death bed in early 1950’s to Field Marshall was incorrect too for the above reasons and besides there were other officers that out ranked Blamey like the Chief of the General Staff (now Chief of Army).
Finally dead and dying men command nothing.
We have Monash University and Monash Freeway in Melbourne and a suburb in Canberra is called Monash too.
Monash also was the first, I think, civilian engineer to pour medium rise build floors with a single concrete pour (M Block at Victoria Barracks, Melbourne is one) in 1939 in Melbourne.
He build the Anderson St road bridge (now a pedestrian bridge) earlier across the gap were the realigned Yarra River was to go before the water was let in.
Later in life he was in charge of building the SECV power station in Gippsland and Yalorne township (now removed for an open cut mine expansion) for the workers.
The 1939 concrete pour is only an example and was done after Monash had died about 7 year earlier but he did similar pours before he died.
Lt Gen Sir John Monash was a great tactical and strategist who commanded the Australian Corps made up of 5 Divisions in the last months of WW1 however Lt Gen Sir Harry Chauvel commanded the Desert Mounted Corps made of 3 Mounted Division plus in Palestine and Syria captured more land, with a small force and with less than 2000 KIA’s in 3 years of fighting. The Western Front and the Desert Campaign were very different though but Chauvel is often overlooked other than the glorious but risky mounted infantry charge at Beer Sheba by a unit of his force.
Chauvel’s nephew Charles Chauvel, with wife Elsa, were Australian filmmakers who made “40,000 Horsemen” about his uncles exploits in Palestine in WW1 and
“The Rats of Tobruk” about the Libya campaign in WW2. Both made during WW11.
Later he and his wife made “Jedda” about the baby Aboriginal girl raised by a station managers wife in the NT. This film was shown at Cannes recently too.
This colour film had to be partly re-shot in NSW Blue Mountains after the film was destroyed returning from England in the Comet airliners crash. Australian film laboratories could not develop colour film then I understand.
Dear Rabbi Woolstone,
Sir John Monash wouldn’t be Jewish without Jewish descendants! Well, unless he converted, of course, in which case he would still be Jewish. His parents were Jewish; I’m unsure of family tree before that.
does Sir John Monash have Jewish descendents
Monash had a daughter Bertha who died in 1979 but no reference to family after that. Its all on Wikipedia.