Report on "Helping Hands" Exhibition

Helping Hands

A new photographic exhibition has opened at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne called 1966: The year that changed the world, reflecting the Vietnam war 50 years on.

It features an iconic image, Helping Hands, which shows former NHS student Dave 'Stretch' Bryan and Ron 'Shoey' Shoebridge, of the C Company 5th Battalion assisting  a wounded Dave Riik. The young men were part of the first Australian soldiers to be conscripted to the war. (courtesy ABC News - click here to follow the link)

Dave Bryan's own story of being conscripted into the Army and serving in Vietnam can be found here. Dave's own son Harrison studied at NHS until 2013, and Dave has been a regular visitor to the school, often visiting the plaque in the foyer that remembers his friend and another former NHS  student, Les Farren, who was killed in action just before his 21st birthday.