Trooper Albert Thomas Day
by Bev Day
No.600 Trooper Albert Thomas Day, 9th Light Horse Regiment
Albert (Bert) Thomas Day was born on April 14th 1869 in Camperdown in the Western District of Victoria. He was the seventh child of Alexander and Beata Day who had migrated to Australia from Wiltshire, England in the 1850s. His family lived on the property, “Chocolyn” where his father was employed as manager by the locally well-known grazier, William Adeney.
When Bert was about nine years old the family moved to Kew to live near his older sister, Emily, who had married William Adeney and moved to “Clifton”, 209 Cotham Road, site of the present Cotham Private Hospital. Bert attended a school that was known as Kew High School. This was said to be a “first-class boys’ school” and had opened in Cotham Road Kew in the early 1870s. The school buildings were later to become the home of Trinity Grammar junior school. In information supplied to the Defence Department after World War 1, Bert’s widow stated that he had trained as a midshipman, and had served for three years in the Victorian Army Militia.
In 1895, at the aged of 26, Bert married Williamena (Minnie) McNab, a girl from the Western District town of Cobden, where the couple were to live for a few short years. Sadly Minnie died from pregnancy complications in 1899, one month after the birth of their second child, Alexander. The tiny baby and his toddler sister, Jessie, were reared by Bert’s younger sister, Laura Day. At the time of Minnie’s death Laura was a single woman of 25. She had the help of her mother and sisters to rear the children. In her middle years Laura married Herbert Pitman, son of a family of well-known architects and builders. As an adult Jessie Day worked mainly as a hairdresser, spending some time in theatrical circles. At the time of her death in 1947, aged 50 years, she was living back at the family home in Kew with her aunt Laura and brother, Alexander. Alexander suffered a disability that in recent years would have been diagnosed as autism. He died of multiple illnesses in 1965. Both Jessie and Alexander are buried in the family grave in Boroondarra Cemetery, Kew.
A grieving Albert Day enlisted in the Australian armed services shortly after his wife’s death. It was always believed in the family that Bert had served in the British Army during the Boer War in South Africa, possibly because he enlisted there. Recent research has revealed that he served as a Lieutenant in Brabant’s Horse, a highly mobile light horse regiment formed by then Brigadier General Edward Brabant, a South African colonial military commander. It was made up of approximately 600 South African colonials, Australians, British and Canadian soldiers and was heavily involved in fighting, mainly in the Transvaal. Records show Lieut. Albert Day of C Squadron, serving from May 1901 to June 1901. Some time after this he joined the 2nd Battalion Australian Commonwealth Horse which had arrived in South Africa in March 1902. This very select battalion was raised in Victoria soon after Federation and accepted men who were experienced in country life, horse management and were good shots. Married men were excluded except for “N.C.O.’s (Non Commissioned Officers) of exceptional merit” This battalion was highly praised for its performance during their brief engagement in the war. Bert was awarded the Queen’s South Africa Medal, with five clasps. His unit sailed for Australia on 5th July 1902, calling at Albany and Adelaide, and arriving in Melbourne on August 2nd.
Soon after his return to Melbourne, Bert met and fell in love with a young single mother who was working as a chambermaid at a private hotel in Bourke Street. Kathleen (Kitty) Newstub, nee Beamish, was a young British woman who had migrated to New Zealand as an eleven-year old. She came to Melbourne with, and married a theatre performer who had later deserted her and her young daughter, Clarrie. After divorcing her husband, Kitty and Bert were free to marry in 1903. They lived in Box Hill where Bert worked as a painter. While here their first three children, Beata, John and Laura were born. Their last two daughters, Emily and Dora, were born at Anderson’s Creek (now Warrandyte) in 1908 and 1910.
Bert had bought a property of about 40 acres, in what was at that time known as Eltham Road. While their new weatherboard home was being built the family lived in a small, wattle and daub cottage near Stony Creek. Bert named the new home, finished about 1912, “Rooipoort” after a place he had admired in South Africa. In the electoral roll of this year Bert’s occupation is given as farmer. Although of a reasonable size the property would not have earned much income and by 1914 Bert was also working as a surveyor’s assistant. The children all walked to and from the Warrandyte State School No.12, a distance of three kilometres.
Heeding the call of the Empire, Bert Day enlisted in the 9th Light Horse 1st Relief regiment at Broadmeadows on December 18th, 1914, his enrolment details describing him as being of medium height and weight with blue eyes and grey hair. Bert’s section of the 9th Light Horse sailed with the 10th Light Horse regiment on the H.M.A.T. A2 Surada, leaving Melbourne on February 6th, 1915, and Fremantle on February 17th. The troops disembarked at Alexandria, Greece on March 13th. The troops and horses were then sent to the large training camp at Heliopolis, north of Cairo, for further training. In early May 1915 men from the 8th, 9th and 10th Brigades joined the Third Light Horse regiment at Gallipoli under the command of Lieut.Colonel J. M. Antill. Bert’s unit spent much of the next three months in the trenches of Walker’s Ridge, engaged in sporadic fighting with the Turks. There were occasional respite periods when the units withdrew to a safer camp.
The War Diaries of the Third Light Horse Brigade show many instructions for the major assault on the hill, Baby 700, the Battle of the Nek, planned for August 7th. The history of this disastrous battle has been well recorded – this is the battle immortalised in the movie, “Gallipoli”. In this battle Albert Thomas Day received a bullet would to the head. He must have been near enough to the trenches to be taken to a New Zealand field hospital where he died three days later and was buried nearby on the same day. His body lies in the Ari Burnu Cemetery along with another 81 men from the Australian Light Horse Regiments who perished in the same battle. His grave, with a new headstone, has been visited by family members over recent years.
In Warrandyte, life must have been quite difficult for Kitty and her children. Wood fires, candles and kerosene lamps – water was hauled up from the well, and like most women of that era Kitty made her own and the children’s clothes, grew vegetables and made her own bread. A grocer, travelling in a spring cart, called once a month with provisions. The family had a horse and jinker for trips to the township or to visit relatives in Kew.
Kitty Day remained at “Rooipoort” until her death in 1923, one year after the birth of her first grandchild. Of Bert and Kitty’s children: Clarrie married Jack Cook, an accountant and land developer; Beata (Beat) married Carl Schult and had one daughter and two sons. Beat later married William (Bill) Betton and both were prominent in community activities in Warrandyte; Laura became a successful golfer. She never married; Emily married Len Hindle and lived in Ivanhoe. They had one daughter, Claire; Dora suffered some disabilities and died in a private hospital, aged 30. The Days’ only son Jack, 18 years old at the time of his mother’s death, lived on in the family home.
For some years after his mother’s death Jack Day lived on in the family home, at first with his eldest sister, and later his wife, Dorrie(nee Fellows), after they were married in 1931. Jack and Dorrie Day raised their three sons, Brian, Alan and Geoff at “Rooipoort” where they always had a few cows and horses and plenty of room to live their rural lives. During the 1950s Jack extended the house and clad it in stone – a labour of love which took him several years. Jack served in the A.I.F in World War ll and died due to a war-related illness in 1973. The boys all built their first homes on the family property and the grandchildren were able to enjoy the joys of “Rooipoort” and Warrandyte. The original house and remaining block of land were sold after Dorrie Day’s death in 1999. Geoff Day and his wife Nola remain in their house next door in Research Road, North Warrandyte.
Sources:
Day Family Bible
Victorian Birth, Marriage and Death records
The Jubilee History of Kew, F.G.A. Barnard
Australian War Memorial Records
Official Records of the Australian Military Contingents to the War in South Africa, compiled and edited for the Department of Defence by Lieut.Colonel P.L. Murray, R.A.A. (Ret.)
Family anecdotes
This story was first published in “Fine Spirit and Pluck: World War One Stories from Banyule, Nillumbik and Whittlesea” published by Yarra Plenty Regional Library, August 2016
