Celebrating Marlborough’s Homefront heroes this ANZAC Day

Marlborough’s homefront heroes - members of the Women's War Service Auxiliary gather at A&P Park in 1941. Photographer unknown - Vercoe Collection, Marlborough Museum.

An exhibition looking at the lives of Marlborough women during World War 2 opens at the Marlborough Museum this Friday 26 April to coincide with Anzac Day. 

Homefront Heroes – Marlborough Women during the Second World War explores topics like rationing, spinning and knitting for soldiers, and voluntary work in the Women's War Service Auxiliary and will run until 4 August. 

Marlborough Museum manager Liz Ward said the exhibition would also celebrate the Land Girls (women who went to work on farms during the war) and highlight the “manpowering” of women sent by the Government to help fill wartime gaps in essential industries such as clothing manufacturing.

The exhibition features a recent addition to the museum’s collection, a wall hanging made by the Clarence Branch of the Women's Division of the Farmers’ Union. It was made as a fundraiser and is embroidered with the names of local soldiers and families.

“We would love to know more about the people whose names are on the wall hanging. We encourage anyone who has connections to the Clarence area to see if any of their families’ names are on the hanging to share that history with us,” Liz said.

The war had an enormous impact on women at home while their brothers, husbands and fathers served their country on the other side of the world. “This exhibition celebrates those who were left behind to be our homefront heroes,” she said.

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