Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Ernest was 33 and single when he joined the 8th Light Horse in September, only a few weeks into the war. He went to Egypt first then to Gallipoli with others of the 8th light horse as reinfocements, and survived to return to Egypt. While in Egypt he joined the Australian Camel Corp. He seems to have been in and out of hospital quite a few times and was eventually invalided back to Australia in 1918.

He doesn't seem to have married and lived most of his life with his parents or his brother Daniel.

He was the first of 3 brothers to join up, and the oldest son. His brother George also served in the Light Horse and the two are buried side by side in Chiltern Cemetery. Their younger brother Robert Bartolomeo also joined up and transferred to the bycicle brigade but was killed in 1918 in France.

The Fontana family's roots were in Italy. Their father Domenico was born in Genoa Italy and came to Victoria as a young man, married Mary Sutton in Fitzroy and lived most of his life in Avenel working in the timber industry.

Ernest Domenica Fontana joined the 8th Light Horse. As a country man from the heavily timbered Strathbogie Ranges, he was probably as at home in a saddle as he was in a chair.

Ernest was the first and oldest of the 3 Fontana men who enlisted. There were another 3 boys and 2 sisters who were left at home. Ernest lived at home in Avenel, was 30 years old, not married and called himself a Labourer when he enlisted.

Ernest’s father Domenica was born in Frasinello, Genoa, Italy but came to Australia in 1859 when he was 20 years old. He married Mary Sutton at the Melbourne Registry office and was a sawmiller when they lived at Avenel. Mary was 14 when her parents died and her Grandparents, who were in their 80s, were unable to care for 10 orphaned grandchildren, including a new born baby. She’d become a ward of the state and for the next 4 years had been farmed out as a domestic servant for 4 shillings a week.

She’d married Domenica in Melbourne when she was 19. Mary and James Read Sutton’s mother, Sarah, were cousins (in-law) and both lived in and near Bealiba in central Victoria when they were young. After Mary was taken away, it seems they didn’t have much contact and their sons probably wouldn’t have known each other. In 1914 when they enlisted, James was living in Bealiba and Ernest was living at Avenel near Euroa in the Strathbogie Ranges.

The records don’t seem to state whether Ernest brought his own horse, but even if he didn’t, the army had been busy all over the country buying up any suitable horses. The description of the send off for the volunteers in November took up two and half full columns in the newspaper.