Clement Murray #47 Depot Battalion

Indigenous Australian, Clement Murray, 47 Depot Battalion

Clem (Alan) Murray was born in Burketown, Qld in 1881 and was working in Quairading, WA when he volunteered to serve with the first AIF in January 1917.

When he signed his enlistment papers he stated that he had no ‘next of kin’ and instead he named his friend Nita (Anita) Gaebler (later Aubrey) of the Imperial Hotel, York.

Formerly a police tracker at Toodjay, his skills as a horseman would have been keenly sought by the Light Horse Regiments. Clem enlisted in York, 25 January 1916 where his application was provisionally accepted, but when he underwent medical examination two days later at Black Boy Hill Training Camp, he was not considered eligible to serve for his country.

His papers stating that he had been discharged because he was ‘not of substantially European descent’.

Sadly 10 years later, Clem Murray died of meningitis in the York hospital, age 45.

Read more ...

• Service record: MURRAY, Clement
• 'Death at York Hospital', Eastern Districts Chronicle, 21 May 1926, p2
• One of the soldiers featured in SLQ’s HistoryPin Collection
• Queensland’s Indigenous Servicemen [Digital story & oral history, 12 mins, mp4]

The information in this blog post has been researched by State Library staff and volunteers, it is based on available information at this time. If you have more information that you would like to share or further research uncovers new findings, this post will be updated.