ONE hundred years ago today, a loving mother inscribed a beautiful bible for her son as he departed the Ballarat goldfields in exchange for the WWI battlefields.
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Today, that soldier’s daughter and grandson were finally reunited with that very same bible, found randomly by tip salvagers in Canberra.
Harold Berryman was born in 1885 and grew up in a house called Lorna Doon in High Street, Ballarat. He worked as an engineer on the goldfields in an industry deemed “protected”, meaning he wouldn’t be enlisted for war.
However, Harold had other ideas. He threw in the job and travelled to London, joining the Royal Naval Air Service as a test pilot.
As he left, his mother gave him a bible, which she inscribed with: “From Mother, Nov 11th 1915 On his departure from Australia”.
A century later, Sandie and Charlie Bigg-Wither, who own the Green Shed, a tip shop in Canberra, found the bible in the tip. Sandie felt compelled, for some reason, not to pass the bible on or sell it in her shop, but instead try to seek out the owners.
A journalist mentioned the bible in a feature story about the Bigg-Withers, which Major Berryman’s 57-year-old grandson just happened to see.
It was a big day for Hugh Batters, who has recently written a comprehensive history about his amazing grandfather, who died in 1951.
“I don’t catch up with the news every morning and I did that morning and had the shock of my life,” he told The Courier.
Sandie travelled to Melbourne on November 11, where Mr Batters and his mother Beverly – Major Berryman’s daughter, 91 – now live, to return the beloved family treasure.
Mr Batters said he “didn’t have a clue” the bible existed.
“It’s very exciting because we didn’t know it existed; its’a another piece of the puzzle. I’ve written the family’s history - 20 or 30 pages - and of course now we’ve got a postscript,” he said.
“Mum is saying she has to get a glass holder and enclose it. It’s great to hold something that probably went up in the planes with him.”
Mr Batters said Major Berryman’s CV was impressive – he was a founding committee member of the RAAF, met Winston Churchill and once saved a man from drowning.
“The reason I wrote the history is because he’d done such remarkable things,” Mr Batters said.
“I thought with the death of grandchildren he might be forgotten entirely and he doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. He’ll live on instead of being just a footnote in ancestry.com
“The fact that these young people went over and saved the world from tyranny, it is very important.”
