Graeme Tolhurst, 61, of Wattletree Road, Malvern, has marched down St Kilda Road to the Shrine of Remembrance every Anzac Day since 2011 wearing three service medals belonging to his late father-in-law, a National Service veteran who served in Vietnam. For thirteen of those years, nobody said a word. On the fourteenth, a step-cousin he has not spoken to since a 2019 dispute over a trailer recognised the medals in a photo in the Stonnington Leader and reported him to the RSL's medal compliance line.
The issue, as RSL Australia's official guidance makes plain, was never that Mr Tolhurst wore the medals. Descendants are actively encouraged to march with a relative's decorations pinned, correctly, to the right breast. Mr Tolhurst had been wearing them on the left, in the position reserved for medals a person earned themselves, a detail the compliance officer described as "not ambiguous" and Mr Tolhurst described as "a chest thing, mate, I'm not a tailor."
He was charged under section 80B of the Defence Act 1903, which makes it an offence to wear a military decoration a person is not entitled to wear. At the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday, his lawyer argued the medals were worn out of family pride rather than any intention to claim service that wasn't his. The magistrate accepted this was probably true, noted that pride is not a defence recognised anywhere in the Act, and fined him $440.
The reversal nobody saw coming arrived three days later, when a Malvern collector who read about the case in the Leader offered Mr Tolhurst's wife $2,200 for the medal set, citing "provenance and now, frankly, a story." The Tolhursts are keeping the medals. Mr Tolhurst has told family members he will continue marching this year, on the correct side, under advice from a second cousin who did two years at Duntroon and is, for the first time in his life, being listened to.
The Malvern RSL sub-branch has asked members to check the guidance before Anzac Day. A spokesperson said the branch holds "no view" on the trailer dispute.