A few months after I first arrived at Mackenzie Station, I asked John if he knew about the family who had given their name to the property. It seemed they were a large family that had owned the property in the early years of the twentieth century. That would explain the seven bedrooms and the large dining room. It seemed by the early nineteen twenties they had left the property and that was as much as he knew. I made up my mind to learn more, but my life changed dramatically not long afterwards and I never followed it up.

Not long after we returned to Australia after my father's passing, something happened to rekindle my interest. I was cleaning out a large wooden wardrobe in one of the bedrooms to store some linen, when I noticed something I had missed before. It appeared to be a sheet of cardboard caught behind one of the shelves. Brown with age it had blended in with the wood of the wardrobe. I carefully eased it out and turned it over. It was a family portrait and I knew instantly which family without looking at the title in beautiful copperplate “The Mackenzie Family of Mackenzie Station, near Heyward's Crossing, Queensland” In the bottom right-hand corner of the mount was the company name "Evans Bros, Photographic Studios, Brisbane." This was a time when it was rare for a family to own a camera, so doubtless the studio sent photographers out into the bush to take photographs of individuals, groups and families.

A photograph in those days was an event, as could be seen by the clothing worn by the family. The photographer had posed them around the steps and verandah at the front of the homestead, which had hardly changed from that time to the present. Seated in the middle was Mr Mackenzie, a man in his fifties at a guess, wearing a dark suit and sporting a pointed beard similar to that favoured by King George the Fifth. Next to him was Mrs Mackenzie, in a long black dress, presumably in mourning for some member of the family. Standing above them on the verandah were four handsome young men wearing suits. Their ages appeared to range from late teens to mid twenties. Seated next to their father were two young women in their mid teens, wearing floor-length light coloured 'day dresses', and on the other side, next to Mrs Mackenzie, another young woman of similar age and a boy of about twelve years, looking uncomfortable in his first suit.

There was no date on the picture which was frustrating. I turned it over and scanned the cardboard mount closely, and then I found it in faded ink '3rd June 1912'. I examined the photo again. What were all their names? I would love to know. Then something strange happened. As I looked at the four young men on the verandah, the faces of three of them seemed to blur and fade. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes and their faces were clear again, and then it felt like a cold draft swept through the room, and I shivered. Of course! This photograph was taken only two years before the start of the 'War to end all Wars'. So many young men, filled with patriotic zeal to serve their country, and excited by the prospect of a great adventure would have enlisted, and surely the Mackenzie boys would be among them? What had happened to them? I had to find out.

I showed John the photograph and how much I wanted to find out what had happened to the family and especially the sons. John suggested a solution to the problem. The local newspaper, the 'Heyward Gazette' had been founded in 1895 and our librarian had started to copy all of the existing back copies onto microfiche, a time-consuming but very valuable way of storing irreplaceable information. Why not go to the library, and work my way through the 1914 to 1918 years in the hope of finding out what had happened to the Mackenzie men?

I was able to make a start the following week, and was soon reading about the Gallipoli campaign. I quickly found that there were young men from other local families who make the supreme sacrifice in that campaign. Then I found the first of the Mackenzies — William, who fell on the eighth of August 1915 at the Battle of Lone Pine and lies in the cemetery there along with so many of his countrymen. I was half expecting it, but it was a shock nevertheless and I could not help but shed a tear. Which one of the young men on the verandah was William?

I continued my search into 1916, and by now the Australians were fighting in France and Belgium and I found the two words which can still send a shiver through many a family “The Somme”. Many of the men who returned from the war refused to ever talk about it as the memories were too painful. Those who did described 'The Battle of the Somme' as the closed thing to Hell on earth that they had ever experienced. In those months between July and November 1916 so many men died and so many were wounded in that blasted landscape of ruined villages, waist deep mud and trees reduced to matchwood. There it was that I found another son George, who died on fifteenth August. By now, I had no doubt about the significance of the my strange experience when looking at the photo, and worse, I knew that I would find one more Mackenzie death recorded in the newspaper, and in due course I did.

His name was Henry and he was lost in the Battle of Passchendale in Flanders in November 1917. Can anyone hear the word Flanders and not be reminded of John McCrae's famous poem?

'In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.'

If I were to take issue with this wonderful poem which tugs at the heart strings, it is in the second verse which starts
'Take up our quarrel with the foe' Did these young men of either side really have a quarrel with each other? The answer perhaps lies in the spontaneous unofficial Christmas truces which took place up and down the trenches in 1914. From joining in singing 'Silent Night' together, both sides left their trenches, showed each other family photographs and exchanged small gifts. This infuriated the high command of both sides who from their comfortable billets far from the front line insisted that such fraternisation cease, afraid that it would lead to the troops deciding that they would refuse to continue that pointless killing and being killed because these old men said they should.

There was one son out of the four left on the verandah, and after a further search I found him. In mid 1918, Captain John Mackenzie MC returned to Mackenzie Station. There was a picture of him surrounded by his sisters and forcing a smile, as he stood upright with the aid of a crutch. Obviously he was not returning home unscathed. He had won the Military Cross too which is awarded for 'acts of exemplary gallantry'. I was so relieved to see that one of the older sons had survived that I couldn't help shedding a tear again, as indeed I had done for his three brothers who lie in foreign lands.

I was skimming through further pages of the paper, when to my surprise I saw a letter written by Alfred Mackenzie, their father. The sub-editor had titled it “Letter to a coward” and it read as follows:

'To the anonymous coward who sent my youngest son Edward a white feather. The Mackenzie family has sacrificed three sons for king and country, and another of our sons was badly wounded. It is for this reason that Mrs Mackenzie and I refused our youngest son permission to enlist, even though he begged to be allowed to do so. If you care to write to me, signing your name and showing that your family has made a similar sacrifice then I am prepared to discuss the matter further with you. If, as I suspect you have not sustained similar losses, and I would not wish it on anyone, then I suggest you think twice before causing even more pain to a family such as ours.'

“Good on you Alfred” I murmured. I could imagine why the Mackenzies left the property only a few years later. The memories and their losses probably broke their hearts and indeed I later discovered that Mrs Mackenzie died in 1921 and I couldn't help wondering if losing three sons had a bearing on that.

I found a further reference to the sale of the property in 1922, but there was no mention of what happened to the Mackenzies. Presumably there were descendants of the daughters and Edward, perhaps even John, depending on the extent of his injuries, but I had no way of tracking them down. At least I knew more about the Mackenzies, although I could have wished for a happier outcome to my search.

As a long shot, I decided to place an advertisement in the major Brisbane newspaper seeking any descendants of the Mackenzie family who lived at Mackenzie Station near Heyward's Crossing who might be willing to share some family history with the present owners, and to my surprise I had a reply in careful although slightly shaky handwriting. It was written by a Mrs Annie Southall who wrote that she was the daughter of Edward Mackenzie. She said she was too old to travel, but would be happy for me to visit her the next time I was in Brisbane, and she would share all she knew about the Mackenzies with me.

It was two months later after an exchange of letters, that I knocked on the door of a typical 'Queenslander' house and it was opened by an elderly lady who welcomed me inside and insisted on giving me a cup of tea and cake before we got down to business. She was Edward's only child, and she knew there were other relatives, children of his sisters, but she had no contact with them. I showed her the photograph I had found and had framed, and she was able to identify the three sons who had died. She also gave me the names of the three daughters - Viola, Mabel and Annabelle. I had had a couple of copies made of the portrait, so offered her the original, but she said a copy would be fine for her to keep, and she preferred that the original stay in the homestead.

Edward had told her about the deaths of his brothers but strangely had never mentioned the 'white feather' incident. Did it still affect him all those years later? Mrs Southall was very interested to see the letter his father had written and quite spontaneously said 'Good on him.' words similar to my own. John Mackenzie had never married. His injuries were probably more severe than had been reported, and presumably he did not feel it was appropriate to take a wife. He had died in his early forties. Edward had lived to be seventy five and his wife had died the previous year. Mrs Southall had more photographs of the family which she kindly allowed me to borrow to have copied, and I prepared a small folder where I put the results of my research and the photos, deciding that I would make sure it stayed with the house. I also sent a copy to Mrs Southall as a 'thank-you' for all her help, together with a framed copy of the family portrait. Thus ended my investigation into the Mackenzie family. I was glad to have done it, but I could not help thinking that they were only one family of so many whose lives were shattered by that war which we all know did not 'end all wars'.