Honour for an Anzac hero – 50 years on (veteran of the Boer War, and two World Wars)

AN Army bugler sounded Last Post, old men saluted, and a true Anzac hero was officially farewelled in a windswept corner of Fawkner cemetery yesterday morning.

For more than 50 years, Captain Edward Renata Mahunga "Tip" Broughton has lain in an abandoned, bare grave at Fawkner. He died intestate, aged 70, in 1955.

Until yesterday, a weather-beaten bronze plaque was the only marker on the cracked grey clay of Tip Broughton's final resting place.

The marker recorded that it had been placed by "the ex members of the 8th AEC, AMF -- mainly Dunera Boys -- in cherished memory of their former C.O. April 1942-May 1944".

Yesterday, surviving Dunera Boys were among the 30 people at the graveside with its new black marble headstone and letters of gold.

Some spoke softly in German among each other, for they are the last of the German and Austrian Jewish refugees who were transported from Britain to Australia aboard the SS Dunera in 1940, after being regarded as enemy aliens.

They had been, said one, shoved around like so much flotsam and jetsam before they ended up here. Most of them volunteered for the Australian Army after being initially interned at Hay and Tatura.

They joined the 8th Australian Employment Company, and Captain "Tip" was their first commanding officer.

"He was a first-class man, a leader of men, and so kind to us, too," said Reinhold Eckfield, 84, yesterday.

"I am here to give him honour, here in a Catholic part of a cemetery, although I am an Orthodox Jew," said Erwin Lamm, aged 85.

"I have no cemetery to go to myself -- both my parents were killed in Auschwitz in 1944.

Yes, it is in effect, and Australia activated it on the 12th September 2001 under the provision that an attack on the mainland territory of any party to the treaty was to be regarded as an attack on all parties to the treaty - the Prime Minister was actually in the US that week, and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Treaty was celebrated at the Washington Naval Yard on 10th September 2001.

New Zealand is still part of the ANZUS Treaty, but US and NZ obligations to each other under the treaty are currently suspended - so basically ANZUS commits Australia to the defence of New Zealand and vice versa, and Australia to the defence of the United States and vice versa, but does not formally commit New Zealand and the United States to each other at the present time (as of 1986).

However, even though the obligations have been suspended and so New Zealand did not formally invoke the ANZUS treaty, New Zealand did commit troops to Afghanistan and so has honoured its treaty commitments (the terms of the ANZUS treaty do not oblige Australia or New Zealand to be involved in Iraq - Australia did commit to Iraq from the start, but not under the terms of the ANZUS treaty. New Zealand did not commit to Iraq, but even if ANZUS had been fully active would not have been obliged to - and in fact, though New Zealand wasn't involved in the initial war, it has contributed non-combat military forces in the post invasion period).

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