28/08/2026
BLOCKIES: Invitation - from photographer Greg Branson
RSL members are warmly invited to a gallery talk by Greg Branson:
Blockies: What happened when the soldiers came home from the first World war.
Blockies is a photographic exploration of the Victorian Soldier Settlement Scheme and the returned servicemen and their families who were asked to build new lives on the land after the First World War.
It is also a very personal story for analogue photographer Greg Branson.
Greg's grandfather was a Blockie, and he grew up hearing his stories about farming, hardship and the struggle to make a living from the land. Those memories led him to explore what happened to the men who returned from the First World War and were offered land through the Soldier Settlement Scheme.
These men had already endured the extraordinary physical and emotional trauma of war. Some returned with serious physical injuries, others carried psychological wounds that were little understood at the time. They came home to a nation that wanted to reward their service with the opportunity to build an independent life on the land.
For many, however, that promise proved difficult to fulfill.
Returned soldiers were allocated farms across Victoria, including throughout Gippsland and along the Murray. Many had limited farming experience.
Some blocks were too small or unsuitable to provide a reliable income. Settlers faced debt, isolation, fluctuating commodity prices and the enormous physical demands of establishing and maintaining a farm.
Their wives and children shared those hardships.
For some families the scheme provided the new beginning they had been promised. For others, years of determination and hard work were not enough, and they eventually walked away from their properties.
Blockies asks us to consider what happened after the celebrations welcoming the soldiers home had ended.
Rather than simply documenting the remains of these settlements, I have photographed them as symbols of the people who lived there. A precarious shack recalls men returning physically and emotionally wounded by war. Repeatedly patched walls suggest their attempts to keep going.
A boarded-up dairy door becomes a symbol of a dream ending. Abandoned harnesses speak of farms and livelihoods left behind. An unlocked shed door suggests the moment someone finally walked away.
The exhibition is not intended as a judgement on the returned soldiers who took up these farms. Rather, it is a reflection on the enormous expectations placed upon them and on whether the country they had served always provided the support they needed when they returned.
Through the remnants of their farms, Blockies remembers their optimism, resilience, hardship and loss, and asks us to think again about a largely forgotten chapter in the story of Australia's returned servicemen.
RSL members are warmly invited to a gallery talk by Greg Branson:
Saturday 29 August, 2–4 pm
WAS Gallery
37 Latrobe Street, Lions Club of Warragul
More information:
https://wasgallery.com.au/current-exhibitions/
