Horace Archibald Davies was born to Moses and Catherine on 3 April 1895 in Normanton, north Queensland, Australia.[1] This little town boomed briefly as a port following the discovery of gold nearby at Croydon in the 1880s, but by 1911 the population was down to about 541 people and falling.[2] Normanton is a long way from anywhere. Horace was the eldest child of his family, with a sister and three brothers. He was nine years younger than his cousin, my … Continue reading
Originally published as GSQ Blog on 23 Oct 2016 One hundred years ago the world was engulfed in conflict. Men and women from every nation were conscripted or volunteered to fight when hostilities broke out in Europe in August 1914. Some 416,809 Australian men and women enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF), the main expeditionary force of the Australian Army. By the end of the war, over 60,000 Australians had been killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed or taken … Continue reading
This is my first blog for GSQ and I thought I would share my passion for family history and combine it with my research on Queensland First World War nurse. This is the story of Violet Stirling who joined the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) and was a nurse with the AIF Violet Jane (Jean) Stirling was the eldest child of James Thomas Stirling and Annie Porter. She was born in North Branch on the Darling Downs on 24 June … Continue reading
‘Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important…They don’t mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them..or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.’ T.S. Eliot Australia’s national identity – strong, free and independent – had its genesis in the British values of individual freedom and parliamentary democracy. When Britain called upon its Empire to fight in the Great War of 1914-18, Australia responded with … Continue reading
And all this madness [WWI], all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilisation and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride – Bertrand Russell For many Australians, Australia’s contribution in the Great War is defined almost entirely by the Anzac … Continue reading
