Apprentices' Stories
George Bickerstaff and Joseph McQueen
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It is hard to separate the story of these two mates, who shared so many adventures.
Detail from History Trust of South Australia glass negative no. 1022A. |
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Bickerstaff and McQueen attended the Kibble Institute in Scotland and emigrated to South Australia on the SS Irishman. They were both sent to the Murray Mallee: Bickerstaff to Edwin Thomas Wray at the Hundred of Bews, Lameroo, and McQueen to Alfred Henry Gum at 'Mallee Dell', Pinnaroo.
The newly-settled Murray Mallee was severely impacted by the 1914 drought. Due to the bad season, the State Government allowed the farmers to suspend apprenticeship contracts and reduce the boys' wages. While other apprentices based in the Murray Mallee, like Alexander Galbraith Simpson, stuck it out, Bickerstaff and McQueen chose to leave their farms.
McQueen
and Bickerstaff in AIF uniform,
c. 1916
(courtesy State Library
of South Australia, ref. B46130/241)
They were assigned to the B Company of
the 27th Battalion when they enlisted together for the Australian Imperial
Force (AIF). Both soldiers were identified as ringleaders in a
riot at Heliopolis during 1915. Bickerstaff was consequently
court-martialled and served time in a Cairo prison (it seems McQueen
escaped punishment for that offence).
Bickerstaff was court-martialled again later in the war when the majority of the AIF were moved to the Western Front. Like several other Kibble boys, he went absent without leave (AWOL) for an extended period and was apprehended in his home town of Paisley, Scotland.
McQueen was also court-martialled again late in the war, when he
went AWOL in order to help recover his uncle John Queen from the
Stanrigg
Pitt collapse. This tragic story is featured in the
article 'Homeward Bound?' in the April 2008 edition of
Wartime.
Bickerstaff was discharged from the AIF early due to rheumatism and returned to Adelaide. He died of tuberculosis in 1932 aged 36 at the Austin Hospital, Heidelberg, Victoria.
After returning to Australia in 1919, McQueen settled in Adelaide's eastern suburbs and raised a family. He is buried in the AIF War Cemetery, West Terrace, Adelaide.