Christmas in Egypt and keeping in touch with 'the boys' before the internet age

The 8^th Battalion of the 1^st Division, AIF, included many Ballarat men who enlisted in the first days after war was declared. In the history of the 8^th Battalion, Cobbers in Khaki, the author Ron Austin describes the Battalion’s first Christmas away from home as “a most forgettable one” - the Christmas dinner left a lot to be desired.  It sounds a very ordinary menu – stew, followed by rice and raisins.  The Battalion was encamped near the Pyramids and after lunch some of the men climbed the Cheops pyramid – and then had bread and jam for tea!

Cyril Bryant, from Ballarat, wrote home to his mother – 

Just fancy Mother, it is Christmas Day that I am writing this letter in Egypt, little did we know that I would be so far away from you this Xmas. We had a telegram from the people of Ballarat today, wishing us a merry Xmas…¹

Meanwhile, the 100 year old Ballarat Courier reports arrangements have been made for soldiers in Egypt to have cablegrams sent to them at reduced rates:

…cable messages could be sent to the Australian troops in Egypt at the rate of 10 pence a word.  The ordinary rate would be 3/6 a word.

And on Christmas Day the Courier reports:

Taking advantage of the innovation the Mayor of the City (Cr. R. Pearse) despatched the following message: Col. Bolton, 8^th Battalion, Mena House, Guizeh: Ballarat greets Australia’s soldiers and wishes them a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

On the 28^th December the Courier records Colonel Bolton’s reply:

Greetings much appreciated. Please express greetings to all our folks.  Our hearts are in Victoria. Bolton

     1.  Austin, Ronald, Cobbers in khaki: the history of the 8^th battalion 1914-1918. Slouch Hat Publications, 1997 p. 25 (there’s a copy in the Australiana Research room if you would like to look at it)

Corporal Gordon Crocker

Amongst all those troops of the first Convoy landing at Alexandria in Egypt, was one Gordon Crocker.  This name is well known in Ballarat, because of Crockers’ department store on the corner of Armstrong and Sturt Sts, a shop well-loved by many and still family owned right up to recent days.


Gordon was the son (b. 1885) of George Crocker (who began the store) and his wife Clara. They lived in Errard St Nth, and as there were 8 children in the family it must have been a busy household.  As well, George Crocker had just completed a term as Mayor of Ballarat, in 1912-1913, and he continued to sit on the Ballarat Council.


Gordon was working as an accountant before he enlisted as a private with the 8th Battalion on 24 August 1914, and on 17 September he was promoted to corporal. The Battalion disembarked on 8^th December and proceeded to Mena Camp – where Gordon and the Battalion  had desert training to look forward to.

from Ballarat Courier,  March 1915

First use of the term ANZAC

This week marks the 100th anniversary of two key events for the 1st AIF in their preparation for war. Firstly,  December 3rd marks the day that troops who departed Albany as part of the first convoy disembarked in Alexandria, Egypt.  Four and half months of training followed near Cairo, Egypt as well as defence of the Suez Canal as they prepared for the assault on the Dardanelles.

The second key event occurs on December 8 when the term ANZAC is first used to refer collectively to Australian and New Zealand forces.  While stationed in Egypt troops from both countries were placed under the command of Lieutenant General William Birdwood and formed into the ANZAC Corp. 

Major Richard Wells

There is a tree in Ballarat’s Avenue of Honour dedicated to Major Richard Wells, even though his links to Ballarat may seem tenuous. 

William Richard Wells was born in Hotham – North Melbourne, once a municipality in its own right – in 1878.  In all later records his names are reversed as Richard William.  His parents were both born in London, but married in Victoria in 1877, and it appears Richard William was their only child.

In 1909 Richard married Miss Grace Burrow, and their son Richard Edward Burrow Wells was born in Essendon in 1909. 

Richard was working as a clerk in the Victorian Railways Accountancy Branch when war broke out. He enlisted very quickly, on the 19^th August 1914.  He was 36 years of age and the father of a 4 year old boy…  But he was also a member of various militia prior to the Great War and had risen to the rank of Captain.  He joined the 6th Battalion and sailed away with the first convoy on HMAT Hororata. 

*** 

And he has tree no. 151 in Ballarat’s Avenue of Honour.  His father-in-law, Mr. Con Burrow, who was living in Ballarat, must have put his name forward to be included.  There are many included in the Avenue, who are not Ballarat people, and similarly there are many Ballarat people who are not in the Avenue, even though it is commonly believed that all volunteers from Ballarat were honoured in the Avenue.   

Michael Taffe addresses this in his 2008 thesis The Avenues of Honour, Ballarat :  “the Elliot family of Ballarat had two sons overseas, one of whom was Brigadier  ‘Pompey’ Elliot. Neither of these men had a tree in any of Ballarat’s avenues of honour nor is this an isolated instance. The Elliot family … chose not to so honour their children in the services. Others … honoured children who lived elsewhere and enlisted interstate or overseas.”  ¹

If you wish to read more about the Avenues of Honour in Ballarat – and there were many, not just the main one we all know of today – we have copies of both Michael’s theses in the Australiana Room, and in later blogs we will write more about the Avenues. 

Meanwhile I will follow Richard Wells into the Great War over the coming months and will report back here.

1. Taffe, Michael. The Avenues of Honour, Ballarat : what were the origins, development and cultural meanings of Ballara’s avenues of honour 1917-1918? p. 9 

Able Seaman Reuben Mitchell DSM

In Ballarat's Avenue of Honour there has been a tree planted for R.J.E. Mitchell.  The tree's number is 1446 and it was planted by R. Herbert.  I thought rather than see this person as just a name on a plaque in the Avenue of Honour, it might worthwhile to find out about this person and his war experiences.   So over the coming months  new posts about Reuben will be posted on the blog as we follow him through the war.  His name was chosen at random so there is no special reason why he was chosen to blog about, just that he had a tree in the avenue and he had a connection to Ballarat.

For this first post it might be a good idea to introduce Reuben so as to get an idea of his family and his life prior to the war. Reuben was born on 28 July 1894 in Ballarat the youngest child of Thomas and Alice (nee Holman).  Reuben had 4 siblings, Dorothy, Richard, who died when he was 7 months old, Richard James and Thomas.  They lived with their parents at 206 Creswick Rd, Ballarat.

Reuben stood at 5'7" tall, he had brown hair, blue eyes and a fresh complexion.  In 1910 he decided to join the Royal Navy straight from school. He enlisted on 19 March 1910 and was based on the Australia Station.  He served on several ships  before joining HMS Challenger for her voyage back to England.  While based at Portsmouth he volunteered for submarine service and on completion of his training at HMS Dolphin based at Fort Blockhouse and HMS Vernon which included training in HM submarines A6, A13 and E4 he joined HMAS AE2 for he voyage back to Australia as an Able Seaman.

At the outbreak of the war in 1914 Reuben was still serving on HMAS AE2 and saw action off German New Guinea and in the Pacific in the closing months of 1914.

Hopefully this snapshot has provided an overview of Reuben prior to the war and the family he left behind in Ballarat when he enlisted in the navy.

S.M.S. Emden, H.M.A.S Sydney, and the man who made Ballarat home

The First A.I.F. convoy sailed on November 1st, 1914, leaving Albany, W.A. and sailing into the Indian Ocean.  You may have seen on television the large commemorations which took place two weekends ago.

Escort cruisers of the convoy were H.M.A.S. Melbourne and H.M.A.S. Sydney.  The convoy received reports of a mysterious raider at the Cocos Islands, where there was a cable and wireless station.  Disruption to this station would have wrecked communication between England and Australia, and so the Sydney steamed to investigate - the raider was indeed the Emden, which had been prowling and troubling shipping in the Indian Ocean for some months.  Reports in the 100 year old Ballarat Courier this week announce with acclaim the destruction of the Emden by H.M.A.S. Sydney - Australia's first naval engagement and victory.  You can read more about this in The Royal Australian Navy, edited by David Stevens, volume 3 of the Australian Centenary of the History of Defence, which we hold in the Australiana Research Room.

This morning, we had some visitors from Kyneton, and while chatting, we found that our visitor's father-in-law was aboard the Sydney at this famous engagement.  His name was Arthur A. Hart, and he was in fact a member of the British Navy, seconded to the Australian Navy.  After the Great War was over, Arthur Hart migrated with his family to Australia, to live in Ballarat for the rest of his life. His ashes were scattered in the Ballarat New Cemetery in 1978. He was aged 88 when he died.

When the famiy first arrived in Ballarat they lived with a relation, a Miss Derby, in Dana Street.  Miss Derby worked at the School of Mines.  Later, Arthur bought his own home in Magpie Street.  Maybe someone remembers the Hart family.

This is information as supplied by Arthur Hart's son-in-law.  He has promised to return with Arthur Hart's medals and other service documents, so we may be able to update this post soon.

Ballarat Showgrounds

Its Show Weekend in Ballarat: the Ballarat Agricultural and Pastoral Society has been part of Ballarat life for over 150 years now.

It seems like an appropriate time to bring out these photographs of the Ballarat Showgrounds during the Great War, when they were the site of an AIF training camp...

Photographs from the Ballarat Courier Christmas special, December 14, 1915

But dont strain your eyes to try and recognise any features of today's showgrounds!  These are photographs of the showground situated off Wendouree Parade, on the North East corner of the Lake shore.

Detail of 1936 survey map showing new showgrounds site on Creswick Road, and old site near Lake Wendouree

This 1936 map shows both the showgrounds sites.  The new site in Creswick Road was officially opened in 1933.  The old site was at first thought to be a great place to relocate the Ballarat Base Hospital, but funding was not available for this.  The site was cleared during 1933 and the land sub-divided into 61 residential allotments.  Extraordinary, but there was not a great deal of interest in the land - it was the mid-1940s before all the blocks were sold.

Just as a footnote, the old showgrounds were also used during the Spanish Influenza pandemic: people with influenza could be isolated and treated there. But the conditions were very spartan!

This blog has even more relevance for today's Courier page 1 headline is "Vic Park on radar: key site identified for new showgrounds" (November 8, 2014)

If you'd like to read more about the Agricultural and Pastoral Society, or if you live in the Brawn Avenue area, you should look at Golden Showtime, the history of the Society.  There are more  photographs there, and on page 65 an interesting map of the subdivision, which outlines the old oval - maybe your house is on it!

The Sheppard brothers of Ballarat East

Recently I was helping a couple do some research on their house.  They were so excited and happy about their property, and were seeking some information about the family that built it and lived there for many years.

A usual part of research when we are “hunting up” Ballarat people is to look at a little book called Citizens and Sports which was compiled and printed in 1916, by a gentleman named M.M. McCallum.  This book provides brief biographical details in very abbreviated form, so you have to be up with your acronyms, to understand it.  But it often provides a clue or a key that leads to further information, and it is very valuable to us.

On this day I checked Citizens and Sports, actually looking for the father of the family, but what I found was information on two of the sons, and it astonished me.  Here it is:

Citizens and Sports, Ballarat 1916 p. 93

You can see that the brothers were corporal and sergeant of the same company of Field Engineers, and that they were both at the Gallipoli landings.  They have both received high military honours. How proud the Sheppard family of Rowe Street, Ballarat East, must have been.

The National Archives of Australia holds records about service in the Australian defence forces from Federation in 1901, and the Archives have digitised all the WW1 records.  I haven’t been able to look at the Sheppards’ war records - somehow I don’t want to know their fates.  But here are the links, and I will leave it to you to check for yourself, if you want to …

Albert Sheppard    
 

Charles Sheppard

 

Allchin Bros and one enormous tent

Ballarat Courier, Monday 26th October 1914

The above article attracted my attention as turned the pages of the 100 year old Courier.  Messrs. Allchins, the firm known as Allchin Brothers, have made a very large tent for the YMCA, in order that the YMCA be able to support and assist the troops in training at Queenscliff.

In the very next column is a letter from the secretary of the YMCA thanking various dignitaries for their donations to the YMCA fund, and suggesting to the general public that they might like to donate more as well! The YMCA aims to raise 200 pounds.  I wonder how much this tent cost.

Allchin Brothers operated at 14 and 16 Doveton Street North, and the building is still there - now the RACV - although the numbering has changed.  It is somehow appropriate, the RACV looking after our transport needs via the motor car.  Allchin Bros looked after the transport needs of people at the time, via the horse.

They claimed to be the largest manufacturers of saddlery in the colony.  But this isnt all they did - as we see above they worked with canvas, making tents, tarpaulins and horse rugs, they did all kind of leatherwork, not just saddles but collars and harness, all kinds of bags "from the dainty lady's handbag to the solid leather trunk". Perhaps the most interesting bit of canvas work they did was making firemen's helmets and buckets!  They also made footballs - in the 1900 season they made almost 4000.

So such an enormous tent probably didn't tax them at all.  Here is a photograph of Allchin's from the book Ballarat and District, 1901 from where the above information is taken. Ballarat and District, 1901 is one of our most important resources in the Australiana Room; if you would like to look at it any time, just ask a member of staff.

Allchin Bros, Doveton Street North from Ballarat and District, 1901