ONE hundred years on from WWI a book has captured the sacrifices made by one mid north coast family when 25 members enlisted to fight in the Australian Imperial Force.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Hollywood movies have been made about less but the Laurie family have now been remembered in Dr Rod Kirkpatrick’s book Cobbers and Cousins: A Family at the Great War.
The majority of the soldiers grew up in and around Gloucester and were descended from Joseph Peter Laurie (1793 to 1880), a Scot who emigrated to NSW in 1841 with his wife Elizabeth and six sons.
Other soldiers grew up in the Camden Haven, Manning and Walcha districts. Of the 25 who left, 19 returned. One died from wounds in Gallipoli and two cousins in the battle of Fromelles, leaving behind a grave that was never found.
Rod said writing the book was an “amazingly moving experience” which took three visits to the battlefields of the Western Front and two research trips to Gloucester. Rod’s initial inspiration came from a bundle of research papers filling three filing cabinets, left more than 30 years ago by his late mother in law Jean Leary, a Laurie descendant.
Rod had been the editor at the Manning River times in the early 1970s and later lectured in journalism at various universities. He was awarded a PhD in history at the University of Queensland in 1995.
“Writing a Laurie family history always seemed to be a project that could well be unfinishable. The centenary last year of the start of World War I was the clincher and I knew I had to write [it] in a family-history context,” Rod said.
Rod Kirkpatrick can be contacted on (07) 4942 7005 or on email: rkhistory3@bigpond.com