Robert Allen Nowland and family: shaped by the circumstances of war

Robert Allen Nowland grew up in Hughenden, Queensland, the son of a Cobb & Co coach driver, and worked as a saddler amongst other rural occupations. Typically, in places such as Hughenden, he was also active and popular in many sporting and social events. In 1910 he went to Townsville to work in the railways on the Northern Line. When he enlisted at Townsville in 1914, he was leaving the position of stationmaster at Prairie, about 40 kilometres from Hughenden. Then, his rural North Queensland life was about to change significantly.

In September 1914, he embarked with the Third Field Artillery Brigade from Brisbane, eventually reaching the Middle East. Meanwhile his role changed from driver to bombardier. On the afternoon of 25 April 1915, he landed at Gallipoli as part of the 1st Anzac Corps; he was in the firing line for ‘13 solid weeks’, survived unscathed and was promoted to corporal. His account of the experience to fellow railway workers was published in the Townsville Daily Bulletin 28 September 1915 p2. He summarised it with the statement ‘that all the glamor and glory of soldiering is in the illustrated papers, etc. It is awful work in every way.’ The Third Australian Field Artillery War Diary for these important days gives a further idea of the experience. By January 1916 he was a sergeant and by March, a 2nd lieutenant. In July, having reached France, he was a 1st lieutenant. Following transfer in August to the Medium Trench Mortar Battery, he experienced a period of sickness and was sent to England. In January 1917 he was at one of the grim places in northern France, Etaples. As a major British base and a key railway junction, it was repeatedly bombed. Further, an article in the English Independent, ‘Flu epidemic traced to Great War transit camp’,  presents a summary of scientific opinion that it was where the 1918 epidemic developed. He fluctuated between Etaples as a base and England because of illness. In March 1917, Field-Marshall Sir Douglas Haig mentioned him in despatches for gallantry and good service. Back in France in October 1917, he was promoted to captain and awarded the military cross for his actions at Westhoek, Ypres, Belgium.

In the same year, 1917, he married Constance Mary Harley in Scotland. He returned to North Queensland in June 1919, a war hero, an important background when standing for Parliament twice. Unsuccessful in politics, he moved into insurance. His son Robert Harley (1920) and daughter Constance (1922) were born in North Queensland before he moved to Brisbane where he bought land, part of the Guthrie estate, Northgate in 1923, preparatory to building a house.

Lieutenant Robert Harley Nowland, not as fortunate as his father, was a Japanese prisoner of war at Ambon (now in Indonesia) in February 1942. Fortunately, he was liberated there in September 1945. Constance joined the Australian Army Medical Women's Service (AAMWS) and married a serviceman. During the war the Nowlands also took an evacuee from Glasgow, Lois Mackie, niece of Mrs Constance Nowland, for five years. Davida Nowland, too young for World War II service, joined the Red Cross in 1953 as a first aid welfare worker in the re-settlement team in Malaya, assisting with the re-settlement of Chinese there.

Robert Nowland’s brother stayed in North Queensland, and it seemed a distinct possibility Robert might have too if it not for the war: he left when he was 29. However, the war influenced success in his military career, enabled him to find a Scottish wife, directed him to new paths in politics and employment opportunities beyond the railways and in Brisbane. He joined associations and supported events to help returned servicemen. War service assisted him to purchase a solid home, still standing today. His family continued service during and after World War II. The war shaped not only Robert Allen Nowland’s life but also that of his family in ways which were largely fortunate, unlike so many other war-affected families.