{"id":97,"date":"2019-11-18T21:58:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T21:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.btrma.org.au\/wordpress\/?p=97"},"modified":"2020-05-01T11:53:20","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T03:53:20","slug":"senate-honours-ex-pow-adye-glen-rockliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/?p=97","title":{"rendered":"Senate honours ex POW Adye Glen Rockliff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Monday, 11 November 2019  Senator Eric Abetz of Tasmania made the\nfollowing speech in regard to the\ndeath  of<\/strong> <\/strong>Tasmanian World War\nII veteran TX3754 Adye Glen Rockliff of C-Company 2nd\/3rd Machine Gun Battalion\n in World War Two: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday I had the\nprivilege of laying a wreath on behalf of the Prime Minister and\nthe people of Australia at the Hobart Cenotaph to commemorate the contribution\nof our service men and women on this\nRemembrance Day. As I did so I recalled that last month a simple death notice marking  the passing of Tasmanian World\nWar II veteran TX3754, Adye Glen Rockliff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The death notice\nread as follows: (the widows, children, grandchildren and friends of\nAdye’s comrades from C-Company of 2nd\/3rd Machine Gun Battalion extend\nour deepest sympathy to his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A humble, able and\nmuch respected man; and\u2014most poignantly\u2014the last surviving prisoner of war of\nthis unit. One of Dunlop’s Thousand).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was 98 years old.\nAdye enlisted in the Second AIF, aged 18, and trained initially in Tasmania. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2\/3rd<\/sup>\nMachine Gun Battalion was formed in June 1940 and served in Egypt, Syria, the\nNetherlands, the East Indies and New Guinea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the command of\nLieutenant Colonel Blackburn, the battalion was primarily a South Australian\nunit, although it had subunits: B Company in Victoria, C Company in Tasmania\nand D Company in Western Australia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 1941, the\nbattalion embarked for the Middle East. In June and July it saw action against\nVichy French forces in Syria with the 7th division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Japan’s entry\ninto the war, Australian troops from the Middle East were transferred to the\nPacific region. In early 1942, the Japanese advanced through the Netherlands\nEast Indies. Four days after the fall of Singapore, and on the day Darwin was\nbombed, Australian troops disembarked in Java from the troopship Orcades<\/em>,\nhaving been diverted on their return journey to Australia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adye’s unit was\njoined by the 2nd\/2nd Pioneer Battalion and the 2nd\/2nd Casualty Clearing\nStation, which had served at Tobruk. The clearing station included the much\nrenowned surgeon Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop, a man whom I had the privilege of\nmeeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These units and\nothers already on the island became known as Black Force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the night of 28\nFebruary, when the Japanese began landing, Tasmania C Company was at the\nforefront of the action. It resulted in the loss of seven members killed and 28\nwounded, but afterwards they found that they had killed no fewer than 200\nJapanese. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Black Force\nwas ordered to surrender on 9 March, following the Dutch capitulation the day\nbefore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Members of Black\nForce unit spent captivity in a wide range of locations, including Thailand,\nJapan and Singapore. One hundred and thirty-nine from the 2nd\/3rd MG Battalion\ndied as prisoners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adye and other\nTasmanians moved to a prisoner-of-war camp and came under the command of Lieutenant\nColonel Weary Dunlop. They were then transferred to Changi, in Singapore, and\nthen the Burma-Thailand railway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Nine thousand five hundred Australians worked\non this railway, where 2,646 died from the deprivations, the effects of\ntropical diseases and malnutrition. This was despite the heroic efforts of\ndoctors and officers like Weary Dunlop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 18 months of\nthis brutal existence, Adye and some of his unit were selected to work in Japan\nin undersea coalmines. His convoy of 14 transport ships suffered bad weather\nand attacks by allied submarines, meaning only four ships reached Japan.\nTwenty-seven members of his machine gun battalion died on one of those sunken\nships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rockliff survived in\nthe coalmine until the end of the war. He returned to Tasmania after six years\nat war and immediately found it difficult to reacclimatise to normal life, no\nlonger fighting to survive each day or dealing with life-or-death issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He found Australia had\nchanged. His brothers and sisters had grown. And he felt the loss of being part\nof a large organisation such as the Army. Like his prisoner-of-war camp\ncommander Weary Dunlop, after the war Adye became an advocate for his returned\ncomrades, often battling the department for medical and social assistance for\nfellow mates. In recent years, he took the opportunity to write to the Minister\nfor Veterans’ Affairs and also to write a book on his wartime experience,\nentitled simply The War Time Memories<\/em> of Adye Rockliff<\/em>. Adye was\nthe loving husband of his wife, Sheila (deceased); loving father of John\n(deceased), David, Kathy and Chris; father-in-law of Merril and Sue; and\ngrandfather of Claire, Megan, Aaron and Luke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adye Glen Rockliff’s\nsacrifice in war for his family and his country was typical of many Australians\nwho served in World War II and those who continue to serve in the Australian\nDefence Force. His battles with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs remind us\nof the importance of getting the right response by government to the\nrecommendations of the Productivity Commission’s review of veterans’\nentitlements. His life reminds us of the importance of Australian values\nmateship, loyalty and courage in the face of adversity and that there are virtues,\nvalues and principles which are worthy of sacrifice. His sacrifice and that of\nhis fellow veterans was acknowledged by the Prime Minister in his recent visit\nto Hellfire Pass and the memorial to our prisoners of war that were on the\nBurma Thailand Railway. The memorial, I had the honour of visiting\u2014and, indeed,\nof hearing, as I walked around, the reminiscences of former Labor minister Tom\nUren and former Liberal government Senate leader John Carrick, both of whom\ncontinued their service, after the war, in this parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is appropriate on\ndays such as this to reflect that our privilege to serve in this place was\nbought with the blood and lives of our forebears and continues to be protected\ntoday by similarly minded individuals in our ADF. In my home state, we have\nseen the Headstone Project in Tasmania mark the final resting place of World\nWar I veterans who previously lay in unmarked graves. It is right and proper to\ncontinue the tradition of acknowledging the sacrifices of our diggers on\nRemembrance Day and to offer our deep heartfelt thanks to all those who served in\nany war or conflict. Lest we forget\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Burma Thailand Railway Memorial Association\nextend their commiserations to the family of Adye Glen Rockliff and record\ntheir gratitude to Senator Eric Abetz for addressing the Senate.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Association also acknowledges with thanks the\nsource of the speech in the Senate as published in Hansard.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, 11 November 2019  Senator Eric Abetz of Tasmania made the following speech in regard to the death  of … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.btrma.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}