Brisbane City Architect Frank Gibson Costello designed the City Council’s air-raid shelters to provide a post-war utility as well as short-term safety. After the bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942 and the presence of Japanese submarines off the Queensland coast, Brisbane prepared for the possibility of attack, building more than 200 air-raid shelters throughout […]
The following transcript is of a letter written by Michael Arbuthnot Fraser on the 12th November 1916. “Dear Mr Sigley Tell Mrs S I got her first letter & the last one & I don’t know how I can thank her for her thoughtfulness in having my clothes attended to for I am sure they […]
Sir Thomas B Robinson’s endeavours as Queensland’s Agent General held a unique place during the First World War, but we’ll come back to that part of his story later. Robinson was born on the 24 November 1853 in Rotherhithe, England and moved to Australia in 1881 with his wife, Elizabeth. He first managed the firm […]
Four days before Australians voted in the 1916 referendum about compulsory military service, a teacher at Richmond Hill State School decided to explore this process of voting when teaching the combined Fourth and Fifth classes. On Tuesday 24 October Mr William John Williams discussed the concept of a referendum -“what it is, when it is […]
March 1916 and the Australian Imperial Force had arrived in France, within four months they would find themselves at the centre of the conflict taking place on the Western Front. The 5th Division was the first to engage with the German military, taking part in a bloody engagement at Fromelles in Northern France on 19 […]
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 […]