On 5 May 2012 a memorial was unveiled at Canberra to commemorate the crucial 1942 battle of the Coral Sea in which Allied naval forces turned back a Japanese invasion fleet bound for Port Moresby, now the capital of Papua New Guinea. The memorial had a dual purpose, however, as it also recalled the role that Rear Admiral John Gregory (“Jack”) Crace—later Admiral Sir John Crace—played as commander of the Australian component of the victorious Allied force.
Crace had been born in 1887 at the pastoral estate known as Gungahlin (then called Gungahleen), owned by his father Edward, before embarking on a career in the Royal Navy in 1902. As this property now lay within the boundaries of the Australian Capital Territory, covered by some of the national capital’s latest residential development, it was only appropriate that the memorial had been constructed atop the highest point in the suburb of Crace (named after Edward Crace) within near distance of the admiral’s birthplace, which these days houses a division of the CSIRO.
The 86 year-old son of the admiral came from England to attend the ceremony and was welcomed by Vice-Admiral Peter Jones of the RAN, who gave the address—find a Youtube clip of this on the Links page of this website. Admiral Jones also mentioned that I was present, having been invited on the strength of my 1991 book Action Stations Coral Sea: the Australian commander’s story which drew on Crace’s diaries and papers in the Imperial War Museum in London. This was a great thrill for my 87 year-old mother, who was staying with us at the time (just a year before her final illness) and accompanied me to the event.
While Admiral Jones’ speech gave a great deal of the story about both the Coral Sea battle and Crace’s career, he did not mention an incident which I will always associate with the Crace name and the Gungahlin homestead. The details of this came from Admiral’s Crace’s diaries in the IWM and were recounted on page 27 of my book.
Sixteen months after Jack Crace arrived to take command of the Australian naval squadron at the end of October 1939, his wife Carola had joined him in Sydney. Seven weeks later, in mid-April 1941, the two of them made a weekend visit to Canberra to take in the sights of the national capital in company with a nephew Richard Crace (son of Jack’s only brother Everard, who died in 1928) and his wife Peggy, who undertook to be their guides.
On Saturday, 13 April, the party of four visited Gungahleen homestead—as it was then still formally known—on what was intended as a sentimental pilgrimage. The house had not been in Crace occupancy since Everard’s death, from when the lease on the property (which had been resumed by the Commonwealth in 1915) was held by Dr Frederick Watson, originally a medical practitioner who became well-known in historical, library and archival circles. Watson, however, had just departed from Canberra during 1940, whereupon the lease was taken over by Ambrose John Kitchen who used it for sheep grazing.
Although the property had a new leaseholder, Kitchen had chosen not to move into the old house so the building stood empty and locked up. From the outside, the whole place seemed almost derelict, with the grounds looking neglected and unkempt while outbuildings were nearly all in a very poor state. Although entry inside the homestead was initially barred to them, this problem was solved by Richard Crace, who climbed through a pantry window at the rear and let the others in by opening a drawing-room window. The group then wandered throughout the house, noting that it, too, was in very bad repair.
I have often wondered what might have happened if the Craces’ presence on Gungahlin had not gone unnoticed and their trespass been reported to police or the new leaseholder. At a minimum, there could have been some interesting headlines on the front page of the Canberra Times.
(Left) son of Admiral Crace (in centre) with veterans of the Coral Sea battle, at the unveiling of the Coral Sea-Crace memorial; (centre) Admiral Crace with Prime Minister R. G. Menzies in Sydney, February 1940; (right) Gunghlin Homestead today