Indigenous Australian, Trooper Albert Matthew DRURY, 5th Light Horse Regiment. Albert Drury was born in 1892 at Nelligan, NSW to Matthew and Ruth Drury (nee Willoughby). He was employed as a labourer at Farleigh, Mackay when he volunteered to serve with the first AIF in December 1914. Albert Drury embarked on board HMAT Star of … Read more
Guest blogger: Michael Brumby, Charters Towers Archives This special photograph showing Enlistment Sergeant William “Mack” Mackay, surrounded by members of the 15th Battalion Knitting Club, was taken in the front garden of Mrs Mary Urquhart’s home in Prior St, Charters Towers in 1917. “Mack” had been severely wounded while serving with the 15th Battalion at Gallipoli. … Read more
To be a Queensland soldier on foreign soil meant many different things. For Lieutenant Keith Mackay it meant loneliness and frozen cheese. For future aviator, Bert Hinkler, it was a source of pride, and for Corporal Ernest Mitchell it provided an opportunity to trumpet Queensland achievement. 2015 Q ANZAC 100 fellow, Robert Hogg, has spent … Read more
Lieutenant Archie Lindesay BLACK, 9th & 14th Field Artillery Brigades. Archie Black is one of the 25 collections featured in the State Library of Queensland’s Distant Lines Exhibition, which commemorates the lives and stories of Queenslanders who served in the First World War. The Black Family were well known in Mackay, Archie’s father Henry co-established the Mackay Horse … Read more
This portrait of Lieutenant Harold Porter was taken whilst he was on leave from his duties with the 31st Battalion in 1917. He had enlisted in 1916 aged 22, and had already seen service in Thursday Island with the Kennedy Regiment and instructed at the Exhibition Camp, before being commissioned as a Lieutenant. Born in Mackay, his civilian … Read more
In 2012 James [Harry] Sargent’s descendants retraced his World War 1 footprints in France and Flanders using his unit’s War Diary from the Australian War Memorial. Harry served with a little-documented corps – the Australian Light Railway Company. Harry was a fireman with Queensland Railways, in Mackay. Already a member of the Kennedy regiment for 5 years, he spent 6 months … Read more