Australian Service Medal

In the mail last week was a box with a return address of the Brisbane City Council. There was no way to identify exactly who the sender was, or from which department inside the council structure it came. 

Inside the box was an Australian Service Medal with clasp Timor Leste. The cardboard sleeve around the medal box shows water damage and the medal is rusty. This medal has been out in the elements for a while. 

As soon as I saw the name on the box a bell of familiarity started to ring. As it turns out this medal was awarded to the son of someone I've served with in the past. It took about 30 minutes to track down my colleague's phone number and then it was catch up time as well as explain how the medal came my way. What we don't know was how the medal was lost in the first place. 

Thank you to the unknown Good Smartian in the Brisbane City Council. 

The returned medal tally is now 2881.

Glen O'Toole part 2

The post is the next chapter of the story I posted about Glen O'Toole in August 2020.

This update is about two more medals awarded to Glen which Jason S purchased from a St Vinnies store about three years ago. When he started to research the medals, he came across my original post and sent me a message. I fired of an email to Glen's nephew, Robert, who I sent the other medal to. Robert was amazed these additional medals have surfaced. I'll send them to him shortly.

The returned medals tally is now 2880.   

Service in both World Wars

This is one of these bits of research that was going no where until one piece of information solved the whole problem.

These medals, both the main group and the miniatures came from RSL Care SA. Victor James Hopkins was born in Victoria in 1896. He served in WWI with the service number 4519.  Victor was received a gunshot wound on 4 September 1918 and repatriated to Australia. This didn't stop Victor enlisting in WWII with the number VX18590. He did have to lie about his age to enlist.

There was limited information available on the public record about Victor's life. I had to make a couple of assumptions about him to narrow down the search possibilities until I could either prove or disprove those assumptions. For example, Victor named his father as his next of kin both times he enlisted. This suggested that he didn't marry. That was the start point of looking at the Birth, Death and Marriage records and marriage notices in news papers. I found no evidence he married. I found his father's death notice which only mentions Victor. This suggests he was an only child.

The search then began for the siblings of his parents. After a false start which took over a year to close off, I looked at his mother, Agnes McClure. I had to go back in history to her parents Ralph and Margaret McClure, and work out the names of any other children who were Agnes' siblings. This is the lead which led to success. 

I've now been in contact with Annie who is descended from Ralph and Margaret and her family will become the custodian of Victor's medals.

The returned medal tally is now 2878.