Two tragedies awaited indigenous soldier and Changi Prison survivor John Huggins when he stepped from a train at Townsville after returning from World War II.
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His daughter, historian and author Jackie Huggins, recounted his return as an only child who had adored his parents, as the saddest moment of his life.
"As my father got off the train, weak, emaciated and tired, he scanned around for his mother and wondered why she had not written to him for a few months since his liberation," Dr Huggins said.
"On the platform he was told the tragic news by a good mate, she had died three months earlier," Dr Huggins said during her commemorative address at the Australian War Memorial on Remembrance Day.
"He collapsed in his friend's arms, his father had died earlier, in 1942. Neither knew their son had survived the brutal horror of the Thai-Burma Railway," Dr Huggins said.
The second tragedy afflicting indigenous families was their dispossession beginning in 1788 that destroyed their ancient civilisation. And yet John Huggins, and his father before him and their fellow indigenous soldiers showed their abiding loyalty to this country and rose above the past, Dr Huggins said.
Under umbrellas and any available shelter including gum trees almost 4000 people attended the national ceremony, about 1000 fewer than expected, even though Prince Charles and Camilla were among dignitaries.
Dr Huggins said her grandfather John Huggins, an excellent stockman, enlisted in December, 1915, from Charters Towers, trained in Egypt and was twice wounded in separate conflicts, first in the arm, and then in the leg, before being repatriated to Australia.
Dr Huggins father was known as Jack, a compassionate man in a country far different from Australia today.
"Despite the class and racial barriers at the time, he was the first indigenous Australian to serve in the Australia Post Office, he was a surf life saver and a fervent rugby league player," she said.
Captured by the Japanese in 1942 during a fierce defence of Singapore, he spent three-and-a-half years in Changi Prison.
"As one of the fittest soldiers, Dad was sent to the horror that was building the Thai Burma railway. Japanese engineers estimated that the railway to be built through dense jungle and mountain, would take five years to construct and require thousands of engineers and labourers. Instead it took under a year using starved, diseased and beaten POW labour."
In civilian life Mr Huggins did not experience the exclusion that other indigenous people had. Many veterans were refused memberships, even entrance into RSL clubs. He died from medical complications of his war injuries when he was 38.
"These men and women forged new identities that challenged the haunting devastation wrought by widespread violence, colonial brutality and heralded a new and different future for us all," Dr Huggins said
