K'gari hosts Anzac Day service beside wreck of WWI hospital ship Maheno

Australia Broadcast Center

25-04-2025

As the sun soaks the east coast of K'gari (Fraser Island), silence falls over the crowd of hundreds that gather around the rusted bones of the TSS Maheno.
Only the sound of waves crashing against the 120 metre shipwreck can be heard as the masses reflect on a much less peaceful time 110 years earlier.
A service is held beside the Maheno on Anzac Day.
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ABC Wide Bay: Lucy Loram
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Among those gathering on the World Heritage listed island off south-east Queensland for this year's Anzac Day ceremony is Sarah Johnson, a wing commander with the Royal Australian Air Force.
But her own involvement in the defence force is not the only reason she is attending the ceremony.
Sarah Johnson's great-grandfather served on the Maheno.
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ABC Wide Bay: Lucy Loram
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Her great-grandfather Francis Jackson was the first officer onboard the Maheno when it served as a hospital ship at Anzac Cove during the Gallipoli campaign.
Francis Jackson was a merchant sailor.
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Supplied: Sarah Johnson
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"He was a merchant sailor … he worked basically as a civilian on the Maheno before it was commissioned as a hospital ship," Ms Johnson said.
Ms Johnson said the Anzac Day service beside the Maheno — the fourth she had attended — was always a moving experience.
"I think it's very emotional. So far to date I feel like my career is nothing compared them," she said.
"But you just hope that you're making them proud and they're looking down and going, 'You're doing a good job.'"
The Maheno cared for casualties from the Gallipoli campaign at ANZAC Cove.
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Supplied: Russell Postle
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Rescuing Anzacs
The Maheno started life in 1905 as a passenger steamship.
The New Zealand government commissioned it as a hospital ship following the outbreak of World War I.
Ms Johnson said her great-grandfather, who was working as a merchant sailor on the Maheno at the time, had no choice but to stay on the ship when it was ordered to support the Anzacs on the other side of the world.
Henry Bade served as an orderly on the Maheno.
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Supplied: Kevin Bade
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"I don't know how he felt about it at that time, he seemed pretty resilient," she said.
"That was his employment at the time so he just went with it. I suppose he just tried to help people as best he could."
The Maheno arrived at Anzac Cove on August 26, 1915, four months after the momentous landing commemorated throughout Australia and New Zealand today.
One of the orderlies Henry Bade recorded in his diary "the cloudy moonlit night, with lightning flashes" that greeted the ship on its arrival, with the quiet of the evening occasionally broken by "an awful lot of firing".
The Maheno and its crew would go on to retrieve more than 2,000 injured Anzacs, ferrying the survivors to hospitals in the Mediterranean, England and home to Australia and New Zealand.
Henry Bade drew a picture in his diary of the ship's location in Anzac Cove.
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Supplied: Kevin Bade
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After the war, the Maheno returned to the trans-Tasman passenger run before being retired in 1935, overtaken by more efficient diesel-powered ships.
While being towed to Japan where it was to be broken up for scrap, a cyclone blew the Maheno onto K'gari's eastern shore where it remains today.
The mysterious, rusted shipwreck has been a drawcard for generations of tourists and is one of the most well-known landmarks on the island.
Children played in the sand during the Anzac Day service at the Maheno.
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ABC Wide Bay: James Taylor
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'Epitome of mateship'
About 400 people gathered on the beach by the wreck of the Maheno for a moving Anzac Day service under clear skies.
Kevin Bade, the grandson of orderly Henry Bade, gave an address in which he spoke of how he and his wife only recently learnt they both had a familial connection to the Gallipoli campaign.
The grandfathers of both Kevin and Jennifer Bade served in the Gallipoli campaign.
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ABC Wide Bay: James Taylor
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The grandfather of Mr Bade's wife Jennifer served on the Maheno's sister ship, the SS Marama, and both men knew each other.
"If either of them didn't make it, we wouldn't be here," Mr Bade said.
Mr Bade said the service was a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by his grandfather and the troops who fought in the campaign.
"It did bring home the reality of the situation, not just the people serving on the ships who helped the wounded and dying, but the people who fought in the war for our freedom," he said.
The Maheno shipwreck is a tourist attraction on K'gari.
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ABC Wide Bay: Nicole Hegarty
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Brisbane Rotary Club project coordinator Russell Postle said the Anzac Day ceremony at the Maheno was an acknowledgement of those who supported the servicemen and woman in battle, like the nurses and medics.
"That's one of the things that we really love to demonstrate, that the hospital ship is the epitome of mateship," Mr Postle said.
Russell Postle acknowledges those who supported servicemen and woman.
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ABC Wide Bay: Lucy Loram
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"Defence forces are built on mateship — you don't leave a mate behind, you go and look after them — and that's the role of a hospital ship."
Mr Postle said many visitors to K'gari were unfamiliar with the Maheno's historic ties to the Anzacs.
"Those who were standing on the Gallipoli beach would have been able to look out and see the white ship sitting amongst all the grey warships knowing that their mates are our there should they befall and injury, or should their mate have an injury," he said.
"[The Maheno] is the true recognition of the broad effort that was done by those behind the scenes — the doctors, the nurses, and in the case of the Maheno, the merchant marine crew that sailed the ship as a passenger ship, and took that same ship into the war zone."
Anzac Day service attendees were served dishes from the Maheno's 1918 Christmas menu.
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Supplied: Russell Postle
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Ms Johnson said the backdrop of the Maheno made the K'gari service unlike any other Anzac Day ceremony.
"It's fantastic. I think the sense of reality just brings it home," she said
"I think it is just the fact that it's right there, you're looking at it and you're hearing about what it did."
With the next generation of Francis Jackson's family set to play a central role in the service in the future, Ms Johnson hopes the values her great-grandfather stood for will live on.
"Just knowing the history of their family is important and having an appreciation of what people went through and what they gave so that we can live in the country that we live in today," she said.
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