Have Your Say

TRANSCRIPT: RICHARD NORDEN MEMORIAL STATUE SPEECH, CARBERRY PARK, GUNDAGAI, SOIL TURNING CEREMONY 29 MAY 2025 

29 May 2025

 E&OE 

 

STARTS 11.15am 

ENDS 11:20am 

 

Paul Vercoe 

Thank you, Mayor McAllister. Id now like to ask our Federal Member for Riverina, Michael McCormack to address out meeting here today. Thank you, Michael. 

 

(applause) 

 

MICHAEL McCORMACK 

Well, thank you very much, Paul, and thank you for everything that you’ve done to make this a reality and in 12 months’ time, indeed it will be a reality. I’d like to acknowledge Steph Cooke, the Member for Cootamundra, David Harris MLA, the Minister for Veterans Affairs in NSW, Abb McAllister, who you’ve just heard from, the Mayor of, I’ll say the Mayor of Gundagai, but the Mayor of Cootamundra Gundagai Regional Council. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we are blessed today to have in our presence Victoria Cross recipient, 91 years young today. I’d like you to please …  

 

(applause) 

 

Keith Payne. Yes, thank you. A true hero. A hero amongst many heroes, everybody who puts on a uniform is a hero because they sign up to protect and to serve. And a special mention too today goes out to our New South Wales police officers because Richard Norden, when he stopped wearing the khaki, he donned the police uniform. And it was as a policeman on a motorcycle, that he lost his life, 24 years young. He had his whole future ahead of him. He was a family man, a husband, a brother. Somebody who had so much more to give, but somebody who gave so much in his young life. We’ve heard today how he won, received, earned a Victoria Cross for his efforts at Coral Balmoral. Sadly, it took 56 years for him to be recognised. He got a DCM, a Distinguished Conduct medal at the time, but it took 56 years, to Remembrance Day last year, for him to be properly acknowledged and recognised for going into No Man’s Land time and time and time again. No fear of the bullets that were whizzing around him, no fear of the enemy, just like Keith Payne. Risking his life to save others, risking his life to do the job that he’d been taught to do at the Home of the Soldier, the Blamey Barracks, Kapooka, at Wagga Wagga. And aren’t we lucky that here in this electorate of the Riverina, that we’ve got the three training bases, Air Force, Navy and Army. And the Army base at Kapooka at Wagga Wagga was where Richard Norden learned the right stuff, learned how to be determined, learned how to protect himself, and he didn’t do that very well, so far as put himself at risk, but learned how to protect others. And aren’t we lucky, that here in Gundagai that they produced this hero! Gundagai is quintessentially Australia, it’s got the Dog on the Tuckerbox, it’s got the story of Jacky Jacky and Yarri, those Aboriginal warriors who saved many, many people in those awful floods in the 1800s, it’s got Phar Lap’s saddle cloth from the Agua Caliente race, it’s got Rusconi’s Masterpiece, and at the end of Sheridan Street, it’s got a War Memorial on which there are 1133 names, including Richard Norden’s, including his relatives and I acknowledge his family members here today. But that name stands out, not just amongst those names on that War Memorial, but it stands out amongst the pantheon of heroes Australia has produced. There are only 102 VC recipients, and this town produced one of them, and you should all be very, very proud. And I’m glad to see some of the young people here today because it’s their job to keep the ANZAC story going, it’s their job, those young people’s jobs, to keep the torch burning brightly for the ANZAC legend, which goes way back to Gallipoli. But the ANZAC legend that will endure in the statue that we are going to erect here in this special place, in this special town, in this special part of Australia for a very, very special Australian, Richard Norden, Victoria Cross recipient. Thank you very much. 

 

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