Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

NOK Mrs. Blonde ALBION

Of Skinner Street, West End, Brisbane, Qld.

Charles Albion grew up in the country and became a baker by trade, but having found the working conditions affected his bronchial health he later went farming. Consequently, he was disappointed that the Army assigned him to bakery duties, important as those were.  His previous experience with horses would also have been an asset in the field, as bakery supplies and the demountable bread ovens were transported from site to site on horse drawn vehicles. Charlie had always found history fascinating and he sent home culturally interesting souvenirs from Egypt while stationed there. From his time in France he used to recall that as soon as they got the bread ovens assembled and ready to bake, the enemy guns would fire across to destroy them. Charlie's weak chest left him susceptible to bronchial infections and he eventually caught influenza. The attached family photo shows him at his enlistment in 1915 with his wife Blanche and daughter Evelyn Jean. A second daughter (Estelle Joyce) was born after the war. For a while during the 1920s, Charlie was the proprietor of the horse drawn Wooloowin to Aspley Omnibus. (The Qld Museum should still have the original photo donated to them ca. 1972, while the original vehicle is currently at the Cobb & Co. Museum, Toowoomba.) Contributed by Joan Holloway, great-niece.

An article in the Brisbane Courier available on Trove mentions the enlistment of Charlie, his brothers Arthur John Albion and Percy Miles Albion and their nephew Francis Mansfield. It shows photographs of all four and of Frank Mansfield's enlisted cousin. Ref: "THE ALBIONS OF KELVIN GROVE" Brisbane Courier, Sat. 2 December 1916, page 12. The text (in small type above the photographs) reads: "Mr. and Mrs. F. Albion of Eureka St., Kelvin Grove, are represented at the Front by three sons and their grandson."