In war, governments face the challenge of having to move large numbers of troops to the battlefield quickly and safely, usually under a shroud of national secrecy. And it was no different when Australian and New Zealand troops entered the First World War. In this post we consider the information available from our records that […]
By Adrian Harrison, Department of Justice and Attorney-General, guest blogger Few people realise that the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages (RBDM) holds comprehensive death registrations for a large number of service men and women¹ who enlisted in Queensland and died while on active duty during both world wars. Only the registries in South […]
I won’t pretend to know what the troops thought as they left Pinkenba, Queensland in September 1914 or when they left Albany, Western Australia in November 1914 but I’m fairly certain many had thoughts of home on 25 December 1914. Most of the Australian men who joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in August 1914 […]
The first convoy of Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) was remembered as part of the Anzac Centenary commemorations on Saturday 1 November 2014 in Albany, Western Australia. This first convoy included a contingent from Queensland which embarked from Pinkenba in September 1914. This departure happened without fanfare. Police Department correspondence […]
This blog post is part of a series of essays commissioned by Queensland State Archives and written by historian Brian Rough. 4 August 1914. Britain, Australia and other Commonwealth nations declared that they were at war with Germany following its invasion of Belgium the day before. Queensland’s Premier, Digby Denham, was advised of the outbreak of […]
This blog post is part of a series of essays commissioned by Queensland State Archives and written by historian Dr Judith McKay. The number of men enlisting for active service at the outbreak of the First World War was high. However, by late 1915, as casualties rose and enlistments fell, the AIF faced a shortage of […]
The first hurdle when searching for records relating to the First World War, or The Great War, is what to call it. Our records containing First World War information were created during or shortly after the war of 1914–1918. Recordkeepers of the day simply used the term their department was using when they registered, bundled […]
The recruitment of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the First World War has been called ‘the greatest effort that Australia ever made as a nation’ (Robson, 1970). Approximately 417,000 Australians enlisted voluntarily between 1914 and 1918, of which more than 57,700 were Queenslanders. This figure constituted about 40 per cent of all men aged […]