Walter Pratt was a farmer at Pranjip near Euroa.
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He had bought a farm there and the family had moved into the area only a few months before.
Previously, they were living near Foster in South Gippsland.
Pratt and his wife were the proud parents of seven children aged from 16 to a 20-month toddler.
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On November 12, 1918, Pratt’s eldest son drove him to Longwood railway station to catch the morning train to Melbourne.
This was a time when driving licences and age were not that important; an ability to drive counted for more.
That same day, hundreds gathered in Euroa to celebrate the Armistice that had come into effect the day before.
At last, there would be an end to the killings in the trenches.
As the weather warmed up early that morning six of Pratt’s children went to a dam 50 metres from their house and resumed playing.
The eldest had not yet returned from the railway station.
The children were using a wooden trough as a makeshift boat in the dam.
Suddenly, the trough overbalanced and capsized.
Susan, aged 10, who had been in the trough at the time, was pitched into the dam and disappeared.
Mary-Ann, who was aged 14, rushed to the spot where her sister had disappeared and dived down to find her. Mary Ann also never resurfaced.
The screams of the other children brought Mrs Pratt from the house.
Once informed what had happened, Mrs Pratt plunged into the dam to search for her two missing children.
She was a big woman, but she immediately disappeared beneath the water.
At that moment the 16-year-old arrived home from the station.
On being told the situation, he went to his family’s rescue.
He was a sturdy boy who stood almost 180 cm tall.
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Like the others, he disappeared under the waters of the dam.
His nine-year-old brother, now distraught, made a rescue attempt but he almost drowned in the cold, deep water.
He struggled back to the bank and then set off for the family’s nearest neighbour, the Hogans.
It took time to make the trip. The neighbours were two kilometres away.
A search party was quickly gathered and returned to the dam with the boy.
Hogan rushed into the water.
He managed to retrieve Susan’s body before he suffered life-threatening cramps from an icy water layer just beneath the surface.
By evening, the other bodies had been recovered by Hogan and two other neighbours.
To avoid drowning themselves, they used barbed wire to snag the bodies.
The next day, police found Pratt, who was staying in a Melbourne hotel.
He had been in Melbourne for business. He was immediately driven home by car.
The four family members were buried in Longwood cemetery the next day.
On the day after the Armistice, Pratt was widowed and was left with four children of the seven who got out of bed that day.
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