General News
21 April, 2026
Memories of a father’s First World War service
With Anzac Day approaching, stories of service and sacrifice of family members are revisited across the Central Goldfields. Maryborough’s Jean Hart marks this time of year by sharing the well preserved stories her father used to tell.
Born in 1897, Victor Allan Dennis enlisted in June 1915 with permission from his parents. He was 18 years and two months old.
“He came from Northcote … dad was in the middle, there were five boys. There were different reasons why his older brothers couldn’t join. One had flat feet, the other one had breathing issues,” Ms Hart said.
“I suspect his parents were very proud he was going to be in the army, but he was lucky to survive.
“Lots of them had never been overseas, they thought it would be an adventure.”
While Ms Hart said her father was devastated from what he experinced during World War I, he would sometimes share more light hearted moments with his family.
An avid storyteller, Mr Dennis’ verbal recounts and diary entries have been documented, printed and bound in a book prepared by Mr Hart’s brother.
The family’s book documents their father’s first person accounts from sand storms that were so severe he couldn’t see past a few yards, or the times he spent in England when he took leave during the war.
She still has her father’s payment book that was signed when he enlisted.
Around the time it was first stamped, he sailed aboard an Austely Royal Mail steamer with around 200 other troops, stopping at Adelaide, Fremantle, Colombo and then finally, the Suez, Egypt.
Upon arrival, he was transported by cattle truck to camps near the pyramids, immersed in an unknown landscape and climate.
“They landed in Egypt and in the desert to get fit. He and his company had to take these camels with all of the goods on them to go across to the Suez Canal,” Ms Hart said.
Despite a false alarm and almost being made to prepare for Gallipoli, he was instead ordered to move the settlement to avoid a likely Turkish advance. As a result, Mr Dennis was assigned to escort a camel train carrying supplies across about 20 miles toward the Suez Canal.
“Dad used to say ‘geez, those darn camels, they wouldn’t move, they would keep sitting down’,” Ms Hart said.
In 1916, he boarded a boat for Marseilles in France. He made it, despite a submarine scare. Settling in the north of France, he was met with contrasting conditions to Egypt, facing rain and snow, and knee high mud.
“With the mud, slush and rain, it was quite primitive, really,” Ms Hart said.
Later, his battalion faced even worse conditions, staging a night attack against the Germans. Despite the harsh winter conditions, Ms Hart said her father still had some fond recollections during his time near the villages of northern France.
“They had tents to live in if they weren’t in trenches. There were some funny moments too. One of dad’s mates was always thinking up things to do,” she said.
“The troops were told ‘nobody is allowed to go beyond here now we have taken the town. If you go in here, you’ll be strung up. But his mate said ‘y’know, there are all cellars under this place and all of this lovely cognac. When it gets dark, I have a chaff bag, you and I will go over the bridge, into town and get these bottles’.
“So they got these bottles and loaded up the bags. They came across the bridge trying not to get caught. Dad said every now and again, the bottles would clink ... but they got back and my dad said ‘the boys really enjoyed the cognac and had a good drink’.”
However, Mr Dennis would also tell his family of the night around a year before the war ended, during a movement on the battlefront.
“They were told they were not to stop for anyone. He was going along, and heard a voice singing out. He stopped of course, and went over. It was a German laying there yelling for help, and dad said ‘I can’t do anything for you, mate, but I can prop you up for when the stretcher barers come’. The German said ‘I want you to have my watch, and photos of my family’,” Ms Hart said.
“My dad said, ‘you speak really good English, how come?’ and he said ‘because I used to work in England’.
“Dad would say ‘it’s terrible. They were just the same as us. Why was this happening?’
“We don’t know what happened to the man, because dad just had to keep going.”
During different times in World War I, he was admitted to hospital with an injured ankle, gastritis, and was wounded in action. But he returned to Australia in January 1919, after the war ended.
“I think dad, like a lot of them, was traumatised. I think he couldn’t settle, he did asphalting around Northcote and when he saw there were soldier settlers in the Mallee, he did that. One of his brothers encouraged him to come to Beaconsfield, when it was just farmland,” Ms Hart said.
Following many farming attempts, Mr Dennis finally spent over 40 years living on the Central Goldfields.
“Dad was also part of Tullaroop Shire Council when we were shifted up here to Carisbrook, in 1948 ... and dad decided he wanted a farm again,” she said.
By the late 1970s, he began to compile his war recollections in a diary, which was added to the family’s book. Mr Dennis died in 1990.
“We had dad right until the very end ... he lived with us and used to tell us things,” Ms Hart said.
For Ms Hart, Anzac Day reconnects with her family, spending that time speaking with relatives and revisiting her father’s story.
“There’s a lot of young people, that should know about this. It’s our ancestors and it’s what happened to them. There are some really bad stories and I think he got traumatised,” she said.
“We always contact one another and talk about it.”