From Here to Gallipoli

Sam Merrifield Library, Mt Alexander Rd, 
Moonee Ponds.  Tuesday 21 April, 7 pm.  
Bookings preferred 8325 1950

Farewell to Dave Hunter, citizen and soldier of Australia

Well-wishers, some holding paper streamers connecting them to men on the ship, on the wharf prior to the departure of HMAT Anchises.

For some, the streamers connecting the troops on the Anchises with their friends and family on the dock at Port Melbourne would be their last link with home.  Gus Stelling, en route to Gallipoli two months later, told his parents that they had not yet received any letters from Australia.  Gus died within days of arriving at Gallipoli in October 1915.  His friend Dave Hunter, who left by the same ship, survived two months on the peninsula, returned to Egypt for further training, and then travelled on to France with 22 Infantry Battalion.  Rod Martin tells the story of David Hunter, a woolclasser from Kensington, in his usual compelling fashion.

Gus Stelling - a short life

Gus as a member of the Essendon Rifles, 1915.

Gus Stelling was a young man of great promise.  He was a lively boy who enjoyed life - he joined the Boy Scouts, did Universal Training with the Senior Cadets and the Essendon Rifles, and was a skilled artist. He was employed prior to enlistement as a process engraver with a company in Melbourne.  Gus literally gave his life for others at Gallipoli.  Thanks to the kindness of the Dusek family we are able to catch a glimpse of  the life of a young man who paid the great sacrifice.  He died aged 20.  See Gus's story here.

Lieutenant Arthur Le Patourel of the 13th Hussars - Update

13th Hussars in Mesopotamia, 1917.  Source:  British Empire.

Arthur MacGregor Le Patourel was a grazier with substantial land and stock holdings when war was declared.  It took nearly 12 months after that declaration to sell his land and stock so that he could enlist.

Why he chose to travel under his own steam from Australia to enlist with the 13th Hussars in the British Army remains a mystery at this stage.   He had served as a private in the 3rd Victorian Bushmen Contingent during the South African War.  As a man of substance and prior campaign experience, and aged 36, he would have received a commission in the AIF as readily as the British Army, though a British Army commission had more prestige.  He may have responded to an invitation from a friend or relative.

After the war Arthur returned to Essendon,  in time moving from Essendon to Sunbury.

UPDATE:  Gunner Frederick Sydney Loch embarked on the Shropshire with the 2nd Field Artillery Battalion, serving at Gallipoli, and wrote an account of it published as Straits Impregnable by Sydney de Lough in 1917, though initially disguising it as a novel.  An annotated version of Loch's book has been published by Susanna de Vries, and now called  To Hell and Back.  Arthur le Patourel was a friend of Sydney Loch, and drove him to the Broadmeadows camp to enlist.   When Sydney returned to Australia after becoming very ill at Gallipoli, he stayed at "Peterleigh", which was Arthur's Essendon home.

The Lost Grave of Robert Thomson Barbour

Thiepval Anglo-French Cemetery, Authuille.  Source:  Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

In view of the fact that 100 years after the Great War that bodies of soldiers are still being identified and buried with a stone bearing their names, it should not be surprising that it might take fifteen years for the body of Private Robert Thomson Barbour to be located on the battlefields of France.   And while in present times it is a relief to members of families  of lost soldiers to be located and reburied, for families at the time it was an agony not to know the last resting place of their husbands and sons, as evidenced by the persistent inquiries made by members of Robert Barbour's family during those fifteen years.

Rod Martin tells the story of Robert Barbour's short months on the battlefield, and how he was buried, lost, and found again.