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Ossie DICK #Q19609

By Marg Powel & Des Crump | 16 January 2018

Ossie Dick, Light Horse Depot Battalion

Ossie Dick, The Queenslander Pictorial, 28 July 1917

Indigenous Australian, Ossie Dick, Light Horse Depot Battalion

Born in 1897 near Roma, Queensland, Ossie DICK a horseman, was residing with his sister Eliza Malone on Barambah Aboriginal Mission, now known as Cherbourg when he volunteered to serve with the first AIF. Dick was among 17 Aboriginal men who were recruited during a drive by the Queensland Recruiting Committee on 14 May 1917.

The committee represented by Chaplain Canon Garland and the Chief Protector of Aborigines, J W Bleakley, travelled by train to the Mission to specifically recruit men for Active Service.

10 days later in Brisbane, during a patriot speech given by recruiting officer Lieutenant Colonel David Garland, a line of Light Horsemen rode past each leading a riderless horse.

The 17 recently recruited men from Barambah took up these mounts in a demonstration of their patriotism and paraded along Queen Street to ‘considerable cheering.’

However their inclusion in the first AIF was short-lived.  All 17 recruits were discharged just 30 days later on Wednesday, 13 June 1917, for “having been irregularly enlisted”.

The men were returned home to the mission, under escort, with out any receipt of payment or any discharge documents.

The AIF was brutal in its response when queried for their action – ‘a coloured man must have been associated with white people for some time prior to enlistment’ – and those who were considered too dark ‘would not make soldiers’.

The following year Ossie Dick married Raby Gundy at Barambah. They were removed in 1920 and placed at Taroom Aboriginal Mission; then to Woorabinda Mission. They had two children Douglas (1924) and Maizie (1926). In the 1930s they were moved to Fantome Island, a treatment facility for leprosy suffers, in the Palm Island group, where Raby died. Ossie Dick died in February 1968.

All recruits: 

Bertie Beckett #Q19608 | Harry Baker #Q19600 | Daniel Cabbo #Q19612 | William Christie Q19606 | Ossie Dick #Q19609 | Myrtle Douglas #Q19614 | James Fisher #Q19615 | Christie Hill #Q19610 | Robert Hubbard #Q19603 | Fred Johnson #Q19607 | Bismark Mitchell #Q19601 | Henry Monsell #Q19604 | Charlie Morgan #Q19605 | Sunny Moss #Q19611 | William Pagel #Q19602 | Arthur Riley #Q19613 | [Unidentified] #Q19616?

Read more …

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.

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