Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Finding aid to the Harold Robert Colquhoun and George Foulds Gilmore collection
Summary information
Reference code: 30580
Title: Harold Robert Colquhoun and George Foulds Gilmore collection
Dates: 1900-1945
Creator: Colquhoun, Harold Robert, 1896-1915
Gilmore, George Foulds, 1897-1970
Extent and medium: 0.17 linear metres
Location: Box 13220
Box 20285 O/S (grey album)
Map Cabinet 4D/136-D11
Repository: Queensland Memory
State Library of Queensland

Sergeant Harold Robert Colquhoun (service no. 275) was born in Fremantle, Western Australia, in 1896. He was the son of Robert Duncan Colquhoun, a mining engineer, and Marianne Isabel Matthews. He was educated at Scotch College in Perth, and later, when the family moved to Queensland, at the Rockhampton Grammar School. After finishing his education he worked as a teacher at the Leichhardt Ward State School in Rockhampton. Harold enlisted on the 23 September 1914 and was assigned to the 15th Infantry Battalion, B Company, as a sergeant. His parents and three sisters were living at Mareeba. He was at the first landing at Gallipoli on the 25 April 1915 and on the 29 May was shot through the lung during a bayonet charge at Quinn's Post. After recovering in Egypt he returned to Gallipoli and was killed in action two days later on the 27 August 1915. He was 19 years old at the time of his death.George Foulds Gilmore (service no. 20664) was born in Toowong, Brisbane, in 1897. At the time of his enlistment on 19 June 1917 he was working as a fitter and living at Wolfram Camp, near Cairns. He was assigned as a Sapper to the Field Company Engineers, January to October, 1917, Reinforcements. He embarked from Sydney on the S.S. Canberra on 16 November 1917, and after training at Parkhouse Camp in Wiltshire, England, served on the Western Front. In February 1919 he was transferred to the 23rd Battalion and promoted to sergeant. At the end of the war he was an instructor of motor mechanics, training Australian troops at the Universitie-du-Trevail in Charleroi, Belgium, before returning to Australia in December 1919. After the war he returned to Cairns and was employed as a fitter. In 1922 he married Muriel Colquhoun (known as Minna) who was a sister of Harold Robert Colquhoun. The couple had two children, Dorothy and Ian. Muriel died in 1940. George Gilmore married Lydia Grace McPherson in 1944. In 1930 he established his own engineering firm, Gilmore and Cadlolo, in Cairns. During World War II he served as a warrant officer with the Citizen Military Forces, and in 1950 was elected president of the Far Northern District Returned Sailor's Soldier's Airmen's Imperial League. He died on the 25 July 1970 in Cairns