Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Warrant Officer I Ivor Franklin Huxley (Service No:SX17608) had served in the Army from 1926 (Service No:1706) with 1 Heavy Brigade Royal Garrison Artillery in Victoria, Sydney, Newcastle and Brisbane and was in Boothby, South Australia when he enlisted in the AIF on 24 February 1942 as a Corporal attached to 48th Infantry Battalion. He served with 2 Australian Tank Battalion and embarked from Brisbane for Lae on board the Duntroon on 10 September 1944. Promoted to WO in 1946, he served in New Guinea with 2/31 Port Operating Docks Coy and was Discharged in Rabaul on 17 October 1946. In 1958 WO Huxley's Identity Discs were returned to the Army from New Guinea, where they were found in the ocean near Bialla Plantation, about 60 miles east of Talasea, on the north coast of New Britain (NAA).

Ivor was born at Currie; King Island, Tasmania in 1904, youngest of fifteen (nine died in infancy) children of George Patrick Huxley (b1857 in Hobart, Tasmania) and Elizabeth Franklin (b1862 in Hobart, Tasmania). From the early 1970s, George was an Able Seaman with the Hobart Marine Board on boats taking supplies and passengers to lighthouses. George and Elizabeth married in Hobart, Tasmania and lived at Cape Wickham, where George was Lighthouse Keeper until 1889. George and Elizabeth settled at Currie on King Island in 1889, where they raised their family and George was Lighthouse Keeper, from 1912 a Storekeeper, and from 1918 to 1936 a Dairy Farmer. George was involved in the local community - President of the Race Club, Master Warden of the Marine Board, Coroner and Government representative on the licensing bench.

Ivor enlisted in the Army in 1926, and in 1934 in Sydney, NSW married Isabel (Wendy) Leslie Bewley (b1914 in Sydney, NSW). Ivor and Wendy had one son, and Divorced in 1941. Following his Discharge from the Army in 1946, Ivor settled in Rabaul, New Guinea where he worked as a Hotel Employee, Ivor died in Brisbane in 1953.