Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Phil Brown was a labourer before enlistment and the son of Alfred Charles Brown and Alice Ball. He enlisted one month before his 19th birthday and stood 5 feet 6½ inches tall with hazel eyes and brown hair. He departed from Sydney on HMAT A20 Hororata 14 June 1917. Philip was gassed in France during the conflict and sent to hospital in England to recover. He married Alice Eliza Dockerill 8 February 1919 at the Holy Trinity Church in Birchfield, UK. A couple of hundred cheering and applauding people gathered at Nambour railway station on a rainy-looking evening of October 1919 to welcome home Private Len Chadwick and Private Phil Brown. The town band played a selection of music and afterwards the men were conveyed to Mr. Chadwick’s home for a private gathering. When Mr. Brown’s wife came to Australia is not recorded.
They took up farming at Rosemount and had lived there for some years when Phil Brown, his wife and three children went for an outing along the Yandina-Coolum Beach Road with Mr. R.E.A. Elliott in his car. Mr. Elliott, who was driving, was momentarily distracted from his concentration on the road and overturned the car into a roadside drainage ditch. The driver and all passengers escaped injury except Phil Brown, who was trapped in the car and drowned. It was a tragic end to the man’s life. Philip Brown has been remembered on the Maroochy Shire Honour Roll, Shire Chambers, Bury Street, Nambour; Nambour (Maroochy Shire) Roll of Honour Scroll, Private Collection, Nambour (this scroll was available for sale to the public after the war).
Sources: National Archives of Australia; Nambour Chronicle 17 October 1919 p.5.; 11 January 1935 p.4; 26 October 1934 p.9;Adopt-a-Digger.