Ocean Grove educator Vin Healy will spend this Anzac Day in Villers-Bretonneux, where he will perform his songs about the Australian men and women who fought for France’s freedom. He spoke to Matt Hewson about the importance of keeping history alive through music and storytelling.
When Vin Healy, then the director of learning for primary years at Kardinia International College, was asked in 2008 to perform at the school’s Anzac Day ceremony, he quickly accepted.
The youngest of 10 children growing up in Norlane, Vin had a healthy respect for both his father, who had served in the Second World War, and his mother, who had raised the kids by herself while her husband was overseas fighting.
For the school’s event, Vin struggled to find an appropriate tune, eventually settling on an Eric Bogle song, No Man’s Land.
“Afterwards I stopped and thought about it; (Bogle’s) music was for a different era, for a different time,” Vin said.
“So I decided to write some more songs that were (initially) primary school orientated… some songs that kids could relate to about real people, the real stories and real unlikely heroes that I described.
“And when I did some research and found out some things the lyrics actually came quite easily.
“One of the first songs I wrote was about the school in Villers-Bretonneux, which was rebuilt by kids in Melbourne through a thing called a penny drive. The kids at Middle Park Primary School raised money to rebuild the school in the 1920s.”
Vin will visit the school, now called École Victoria, when he visits the small French town of Villers-Bretonneux in April to perform his songs about the efforts of the Anzacs in France and around the world for Anzac Day.
Less than 100km from the Belgian border in northern France, Villers-Bretonneux holds its own Anzac Day services each year to remember the thousands of Australians who died defending the town from the invading Germans during WWI.
The town is also home to the Sir John Monash Centre (SJMC), a modern museum dedicated to telling the story of Australians who served on the Western Front in their own words.
The centre sits on the grounds of the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, adjacent to the Australian National Memorial.
Vin will perform at SJMC on April 23, ahead of his tribute concert at the Villers-Bretonneux Covered Market on Anzac Day itself.
In 2017, Vin’s music was featured in the documentary Never Forget Australia, which tells the stories of how the connection between Australia and Viller-Bretonneux was forged in the fires of war.
“I had sent a song through to Guillaume Cornet, who’s the head teacher of École Victoria, and they were using it (in the school),” Vin said.
“So when Alan McGirvan and Vicki Bennett, the producers of Never Forget Australia, were there filming this documentary they said to Guillaume it was a shame there wasn’t an Australian song.
“And Guillaume said, well, there’s a teacher in Australia called Vin Healy who has written some songs, you might want to contact him.
“They used three or four songs in the doco, including the Unknown Soldier, which is probably the most powerful song I’ve written. It was used so beautifully in the documentary, I was so proud that song was used in that.
“And I’ve been told that they’re going to use sections of that documentary before the dawn service (this year at Villers-Bretonneux), as people arrive before the dawn service starts, so I’m really hoping that song is going to be used there too.”
Vin’s performances in France this April will feature his newly released song, Sister Ella Tucker, which tells the story of a 28-year-old Australian nurse on the HS Gascon during the entire Gallipoli campaign.
“There’s not much written about the nurses at all, so I just thought this would be a great lens to maybe write something about,” he said.
When Sister Tucker and her story came to Vin’s attention, he reached out to artist Sue Macleod-Beere, who was a finalist in the 2021 Gallipoli Art Prize for her portrait of the nurse.
Sue connected Vin with Sister Tucker’s family, who supplied him with the text from her wartime journal.
“I was reading through it and I thought, this is just so powerful, the way she’s written it,” Vin said.
“For a very educated person, there was hardly any punctuation through it. You can actually see her writing this stuff down between the carnage of what was happening in Gallipoli.
“So what I wanted to do in this song was to contrast her with a young backpacker; one that lived that experience, and then the young person going back a hundred years later and paying their respects.”
Vin has always played guitar and sung – “I was that school teacher in the 80s who brought his guitar into the room, singing with the kids” – and while he has performed at weddings, funerals and other events for decades it has never been a financial pursuit.
“It’s funny, because I suppose part of this process is I’m hoping I can reach a wider audience, but the important thing for me is not so much how many people hear my music, but who, who you can actually touch with your stories and your songwriting,” he said.
While performing a dawn ceremony prior to the pandemic, Vin noticed the hundreds of Vietnam vets who were affected by his music.
Feeling inspired to write a song for those vets, he began researching the Battle of Long Tan.
“Long Tan was a rubber plantation, and during the battle these monsoonal rains came through – it must have been horrendous – and I wrote the song through the eyes of one of the (Australian soldiers),” Vin said.
“So here’s me, a bloody school teacher in Ocean Grove, and I thought, do I have the right to write a song through their eyes about what they saw? So I sent a letter and the song to David Sabben.
“He actually got back to me, and we’ve connected four or five times since. He’s an amazing man in his late 70s now, highly articulate, and he wrote this beautiful feedback.
“His line to me was, ‘Thank you, this song will be the balm to all those who cannot readjust to the lives they now find themselves in. I hope they find peace in their lives.’
“I just thought, well, that’s the reason to keep writing songs, no matter if it’s only touching a small audience. It’s the ones who it does reach that are most important.”
