© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Author: Greg Ray

This author has written 481 articles
Read more about the article Trauma and tragedy in the life of a Hunter Valley preacher in the 19th Century
Missionary John S Austin, at 70, from his book

Trauma and tragedy in the life of a Hunter Valley preacher in the 19th Century

As a young circuit preacher at Murrurundi, in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW in the 1860s - then later at Maitland, Singleton and Newcastle - the Reverend John S. Austin had his fair share of near-death experiences, witnessed a fatal traffic accident in High Street, Maitland and lost his daughter in a drowning tragedy in the Hunter River. The Methodist minister John S. Austin lived into his 80s and wrote an autobiography with the unpromising title Missionary Enterprise and Home Service, a Story of Mission Life in Samoa and Circuit Work in New South Wales.…

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Read more about the article How a vanished soldier’s “deserter” label harmed his family, and how he eventually “died”
Russell Atkinson was labelled a deserter on the basis of no evidence at all. How Smith's Weekly reported his eventual vindication.

How a vanished soldier’s “deserter” label harmed his family, and how he eventually “died”

Private Russell Atkinson went into the front line with his unit of the Australian Imperial Force's 54th Battalion in October 1916. When his unit was relieved on October 28, he had disappeared. On the tumultuous Western Front in The Great War many men disappeared. Sometimes they deserted to enemy lines in the hope of surviving the war as a prisoner. Sometimes they drowned in waterlogged shellholes, were buried by explosions or were blown into unrecognisable fragments. In the case of Private Atkinson, the army decided desertion would be the official explanation. He had already been treated…

Continue ReadingHow a vanished soldier’s “deserter” label harmed his family, and how he eventually “died”
Read more about the article Maud Butler, the Kurri girl who wanted to be a soldier, and her bad soldier brother
Maud Butler in uniform. Photo from The Sydney Mail

Maud Butler, the Kurri girl who wanted to be a soldier, and her bad soldier brother

The main fighting Maud Butler did in World War I was with the authorities who wouldn’t let her go to the front to “do her bit”. A feisty Kurri Kurri teenager, Maud stowed away twice on troopships – having first disguised herself as a boy – and later got in trouble for collecting donations in uniform on a wartime Anzac Day. Stowaways were not rare. Digger diaries refer to stowaways being caught after troopships had sailed and being taken on strength and posted to battalions. But only if they were male. Maud Butler claimed at the…

Continue ReadingMaud Butler, the Kurri girl who wanted to be a soldier, and her bad soldier brother
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