'From Bullets to Pullets': Bankstown Soldier Settlement

Abstract

New Zealand-born Sydney Arthur Spooner enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) on 25 Match 1915, and joined the 18th Battalion on the Gallipoli Peninsula in August. That year, within weeks, and with three other members of his battalion, he went into Monash Gully, under Turkish tire, to retrieve two wounded soldiers and bring them back to the Australian lines. His contemporaries called him and his mates heroes. He was Mentioned in Despatches and awarded the Military Medal in recognition of his deeds. However, Spooner's war was short. He returned to Australia and was discharged from the forces as medically unfit in August 1916. Thomas Buckley, born in Wales, enlisted at Townsville in August 1914. He had previously served 12 years in the Royal Army. At a strapping five feet ten inches and aged 36, he landed at Gallipoli with the 2nd Light Horse on 12 May. Three days later, Buckley received a gunshot wound resulting in a compound fracture of his right leg. He was discharged in Australia as medically unfit on 29 March 1916. What could these two men have in common, other than being a part of the Gallipoli campaign? After the war both men were allotted Block 144 at Bankstown Soldier Settlement, and tried unsuccessfully to make a living for themselves and their families on the six-acre poultry farm. The first soldier settler on the block, James John Edwards, had already forfeited in September 1921. Edwards, a blacksmith before the war, with nine children to support and no capital, joined the settlement on its establishment in May 1917. The archival files do not record why Edwards forfeited, nor why he chose not to return to his trade.