There’s a slight shake in the hand as Maurice Corigliano excitedly leans forward with a postcard of a ship and launches into a tale of four uncles whose courage, sacrifice and mateship is to become an inspiration to tens of thousands of Australian schoolchildren.
“That’s it - that’s the Australia, that’s the vessel my Uncle Jack served on,” he says.
“His name was John, but everyone knew him as Jack. He rose up the ranks to become engineer lieutenant commander from a stoker, and he was the longest serving man in the Australian navy when he retired.”
The 85-year-old riffles through the yellowing pages of a well-thumbed ledger as he continues his oral journey through his forebear’s feats.
“Another brother, Maurice was killed at the battle of Fromelles, he says.
“Peter was an artillery man and was badly gassed during the war, and Charlie – he served 12 years on the navy and he was on the first Sydney when it sunk the German cruiser Emden.”
These days, the Corigliano family is famous in South Australia for fishing. What’s less known is their story of past service.
'It was hitting them and killing them – that haunted him more than the human loss.'
The contribution of newly arrived migrants like the Coriglianos to Australia’s defence during the Great War is being honoured in a historical guide for schoolchildren, published for the Anzac Centenary celebrations.
Jack, Peter, Charles and Maurice were the eldest of 15 children to Charles Corigliano and his Irish bride Mary O’Connell.
Maurice the younger never met his namesake, but played a vital part in solving a family mystery.
“Eventually they located this burial site near Fromelles where there were 250 bodies buried,” he says.
“Then the job was to find out who was who and, as a matter of fact, it was my DNA that established the Maurice was one of the 250 missing.”
The other three brothers survived. The injured Peter returned to Beachport in South Australia’s south east to join his nephew at sea but, like many servicemen, he was taciturn about the horrors he’d witnessed.
“He was quite badly gassed, but he took up life back in Australia afterwards,” he says.
“All he ever said to me, because I used to fish with him, he’d often say ‘those poor horses, oh those poor horses’. Because there they were up to their haunches in the mud and shot and shelled and it was hitting them and killing them – that haunted him more than the human loss.”
'Someone sent me a letter, saying ‘the Coriglianos have done this country proud’. And I feel that way.'
Veteran’s Affairs Minister Michael Ronaldson says the Coriglianos deserve to be proud of feature in a newly produced historical guide for schoolchildren that gives insights into migrant Anzacs.
“It’s almost the untold story of this nation, and I think the contribution of those who may not have originally called Australia their home, to that war effort, I think it’s a great story,” he says.
“When they left these shores, they left as one, and I think that’s the really important part of this story, they left as one. They came from all over the world but they left as one.”
Maurice Corigliano has plenty of feats of his own - from rounding the treacherous Cape Horn in a wooden sailing ship to establishing a fishing empire inherited by his own children – yet it’s not just seawater that seemingly runs through his veins.
He feels his family legacy has helped forge the Australian spirit.
“They could have squibbed it, but they didn’t” he says.
“Someone sent me a letter that they’d written, saying ‘the Coriglianos have done this country proud’.
“And I feel that way.”
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