The EC Perkins 4503 website has been a labour of love since 2011. The last time the site was refreshed was prior to 25 Anzac Day 2015.
There has been a number of changes in relation to the links that the site has provided to other resources domestically and globally.
It has also raised the question, why have the links to other sites changed?
For instance, some sites this site was linking to, could have had a new piece of web technology in place, therefore rendering the link dead, or in some cases, with 100 anniversary of ANZAC now past, the nation has moved on and in some ways it got too hard for people to maintain a website and its integrity, and therefore the site was abandoned.
That could be some of the reasons why, I’m sure there are more, however, Government sites we link to changed policies, so decisions were made somewhere to no longer host information we previously linked to.
Time for site refresh – out with the old in with the new.
As for the EC Perkins website, the site technology that was underpinning the design of the website required a refresh. This meant that it wasn’t working as good as it could on mobile devices, therefore the way it was presented to a user, someone like yourself reading this post, it was pretty ordinary.
The main approach was to keep the site as simple as possible In this case, I’ve been able to keep a number of the graphics that we use on the first two iterations of the website, and it’s also allowed me to make sure that it does its job in presenting itself effectively.
EC Perkins 4503 Story
The story of a 16 year old boy in the first world war.
Is this website still relevant?
The story has served as a tool for our family history and it’s also been great tool for helping people understand the plight of young soldiers who served during the first world war and successive wars.
On a personal level, as I was going through the site and refreshing the content, I came across the page I had written some time ago of where Edward Claude Perkins is remembered. There are a number of places domestically and internationally that record officially his death, however, from a family perspective he’s remembered at one place in particular, Rookwood Cemetery, Lidcombe, NSW.
In the 30s, several of the Perkins family were/had passing/ed away. By the amount of newspaper articles which they paid for each year to remember Claude, they must’ve thought it was fitting to have his name added to a memorial headstone. In this case, he shares the same headstone with his brother Herbert who passed away. Why would they do that?
I believe they did it for posterity. For myself and those of us today descendants of Tom and Mary Perkins’, Claude’s parents, it is with a glad heart of thanks that they did it, because it seems they did it for us.
Is the website still relevant?
Yes, to me and my family today it is a reminder of Claude and his family, what happened to Claude, what happened to his family, the love and the loss of someone close to you. It solved the questions they probably asked from the empty letters from the Department of Defence of what happened.
For anyone reading this story, the website is a reminder of the the old story of war, struggle, sacrifice and loss.
We hope that one day, people will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
In the meantime, read the story and be reminded of your own family’s story and the importance of keeping the story going into the future. You never know, there may be a gem there for future generations to learn something of the past and not make the same mistakes for the future.
