December 11th, 1911 –
Samuel Rouget (Wandin): At the age of 20 he leaves the family orchard in Wandin to enlist for a period of seven years in the Royal Australian Navy.
July 1st, 1912 –
Ordinary Seaman Samuel Rouget (Wandin): After undergoing his initial training at Williamstown, Vic he is assigned to HMAS Warrego, a Torpedo boat based in Sydney Harbour.
December 31st, 1912 –
Frank Larkins (Mt Evelyn): At the age of 14 he leaves the family home in East Melbourne to enlist for a period of twelve years in the Royal Australian Navy as a cadet. During his youth he was a regular visitor to Mt Evelyn where his parents owned a ‘weekender’ home.
February 1st, 1913 –
Cadet Midshipman Frank Larkins (Mt Evelyn): He is one of twenty-eight Cadet Midshipmen in the first intake at the RAN College, Osborne House, Geelong to train to become a submarine officer. He is to become the first cadet Captain of the College.
February 18th, 1913 –
Robert Croydon McComas (Montrose): At the age of 17 he leaves the family farm ‘Pine Hill’ in Montrose to enlist for a period of seven years in the Royal Australian Navy.
April 11th, 1913 –
Nolan Footit (Gruyere): At the age of 18 he decides to enlist for a period of seven years in the Royal Australian Navy.
May 21st, 1913 –
Ordinary Seaman Nolan Footit (Gruyere):After undergoing his initial training at HMAS Cerberus at Crib Point, Vic, he is assigned to HMAS Encounter, Australia’s first Cruiser, and over the coming months operates in waters around Australia.
July 1st, 1913 –
Able Seaman Robert Croydon McComas (Montrose): After undergoing his initial training at HMAS Cerberus at Crib Point, Vic, he is assigned to HMAS Sydney, a Town Class Light Cruiser, one of three ordered from the UK to form the initial Australian Fleet unit. He joins the ship at Portsmouth, England just after it was commissioned and would be part of the crew to sail her back to Australia.
April 23rd, 1914 –
Ordinary Seaman Samuel Rouget (Wandin): He is transferred from HMAS Warrego to HMAS Melbourne, a Town Class Light Cruiser newly arrived from England.
June 27th to July 2nd, 1914 –
On June 28th, 1914, the Heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austrian province of Bosnia. It was the spark that would soon ignite the First World War.
Zola Janson (Lilydale): Zola was the daughter of Edward Janson who owned ‘The Towers’ at Lilydale. At the time of the assassination in Sarajevo both she and her mother were in Germany and in the following letter to her father she describes their escape as events in Europe began to quickly escalate. She would be the first resident from the Shire of Lillydale to experience the conflict first-hand.
‘Dear Dad,
We have just reached England again (July 2nd) after our most thrilling adventures in Europe, once in a life’s experience. We have had many ups and downs and seen many wonderful sights. We only arrived here yesterday, after a sixty hours’ train run and no sleep.
Every British subject had to leave Bale, Germany, within twenty-four hours of the notice given. Luggage etc had to be left, and we had to go as best we could to Geneva. The poor Italians who worked in Germany had to go without food or money.
We heard of a train leaving from Geneva via Paris; as lines were taken up on the Bale route and bridges blown to pieces, we had to go miles around to reach the special train. There were eight hundred of us on the train which was composed of only second-class carriages. We had to take food and water for a sixty hours’ journey, and the train, with one engine and poor coal supply, travelled very slowly. There were ten people in each compartment and we had to eat and sleep as best we could. All along the line were soldiers, and the train whistled from morn till eve.
We had a grand reception at Lyons where about three thousand French welcomed we English. We sang ‘La Marseillaise’ and they sang ‘God Save the King’. There were soldiers everywhere. We had no sleep for two nights. At Lyons we saw over one thousand Belgian engines sent out of Belgium into France away from the Germans. We also saw several flying machines on the German frontier, up about two thousand feet and looking like huge cigars. On the outskirts of Paris we passed six train loads of troops going to Metz, we also passed many trains carrying dying and wounded men.
At Paris we saw the remainder of the grand Zouarves who fought so bravely, their officers not being able to keep them back. At another part of the journey we saw hundreds of French soldiers crowded around our train carrying shoulder high one wounded English Officer. Everyone tried to shake hands with the French, there were thousands of them, all clad in red trousers and blue coats, they could be seen for miles off. The Germans wear a greenish grey uniform and are very hard to see at a distance.
I will never forget the cheering, singing and flag waving on our trip to England from Basel and Douisberg. There were about one thousand, eight hundred people on a very small boat, the fog in the Channel was very thick, and it took us five hours to cross to Folkestone. We left the French land behind with its people on the wharf crying out ‘Long life to your King’.
The German Emperor has said that he will eat his Christmas goose at Buckingham Palace but though the English and French have lost many people at the war, Russia is now well on its way to help. Everywhere in Europe there is great excitement, but at the time of writing, London is very quiet’.
July 13th, 1914 –
James McClure (Yering): At the age of 19 he decides to enlist for a period of five years in the Royal Australian Navy.
August 3rd, 1914 –
Stoker James McClure (Yering): After undergoing his basic training at HMAS Cerberus he is transferred to HMAS Pioneer, a Pelrous Class Light Cruiser operating in Australian waters.
Sr Alice Card (Olinda): She is serving as a nurse at the American Hospital of Paris when the Board of Governors at the hospital offer the hospital’s facilities to the French authorities to use as a neutral military hospital facility for wounded soldiers. She is possibly the first Australian nurse to go into service in the war.