In his speech at the ANZAC Day service, Paul Haw had
mentioned that his father had bought him a camera when he was called up for
National Service in 1967. “Dad had said, they are taking Minolta cameras to the
moon”, and so we went to Bendigo and bought one and I took mine to Vietnam, he
said.
During his time he captured on film fellow soldiers at work
and Vietnamese villagers and their daily activities. From that time he amessed
a body-of-work of around 500 photographs and, with his wife Cathie, has put
together 70 framed photographs in an exhibition ‘Vietnam framed’.
The exhibition is a collaborative undertaking between
Wycheproof RSL sub-branch, Wycheproof Historical Society and Boort Development
Committee. It is open at the Court House, High St, Wycheproof, Sunday to Friday
until 7 May.
There are photographs of Vietnamese school children and
children at work getting water from a well repaired by Australian soldiers, juxtaposed
with himself on a Howitzer gun, Chinook and Huey helicopters, piles of shell
casings, tangled barbed wire and other detritus of war. Each photograph is
captioned and tells but a snippet of the story of men named Peter, Steve, Shorty
and Jock; perspectives of war in the jungle, and village life in rural Vietnam.
He said the photos and captions and the work collating the
exhibition were a release for him and helped him emotionally. This record of
life has also helped families of Vietnam veterans. He recalled one family whose
father had returned from the Vietnam War broken emotionally and spiritually.
Paul said he had met the man’s daughter and was able to provide photos of his
time in Vietnam to show her and her family that at one time he had been a happy
man.
The Minolta camera is part of the exhibition, as too are
letters saved by his mother. In opening the exhibition Mr Haw said that he had
received letters daily from his large extended family, he had 57 first cousins
and 20 aunties who all wrote to him, but when evacuated from Vietnam he had
burned all those letter. When he arrived home his mother presented him with a
package, she had kept every letter he had written to her. 