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Researching WW1 diggers and nurses

from Sunshine Coast region of Queensland


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2014 was the centenary year of Australia's first deployment of soldiers to Europe to fight in the First World War.

The purpose of the Adopt a Digger Project is to commemorate the centenary by honouring the men and women from the (current) Sunshine Coast region of South-east Queensland who fought in World War One either with the Army, Navy or Airforce. Criteria for a soldier's inclusion is either that he was born in the district, or his next-of-kin was resident in the district, or he enlisted in the district or he is commemorated on a local honour board or memorial. This same criteria applies to our nurses. Since the inception of the project we have decided to include the settlers who took up land at Beerburrum Soldier Settlement from 1916 as the Settlement is such a significant piece of the region's WW1 history. Our criteria dates are 1914 to 1925.

The aim of this website is to create a database which records each soldier's WW1 military history and a brief personal history. This database will be a valuable source of reference for historians, researchers, descendants and school students, and will be a significant contribution to the social and historical military records of Australia, and particularly the  Sunshine Coast region.

We held an exhibition in April 2015 to commemorate the Anzac Centenary and to remember and honour "our boys".

nambour-wallAdopt a Digger Project is now in its second month and the response from the community has been very positive. On Remembrance Day, Chrissy was interviewed by WIN local news and ABC Coast FM radio. The photo of Chrissy accompanied an article in the Caloundra Weekly on 24 November. As of today we have 53 Sunshine Coast diggers adopted. Many researchers are asking if they can add diggers from other areas – even from New Zealand!

It took many months and a great deal of research to create the database of diggers from the Sunshine Coast region. It would take a government department to do that for all of Australia! So we have decided to allow “outside Sunshine Coast” diggers to be added to the database as they come in. Let me know your thoughts on this. The historians’ network is always active and I was directed to a website created by Sydney historian, Kim Phillips, about diggers who are buried or are commemorated at Gallipoli. If your digger was at Gallipoli you should have a look at this site http://www.spirits-of-gallipoli.com/

We will soon be able to search by Google within the site; this means that you can search by any keyword and it will be very fast. So you can search by battalion, surname, town name, ship name etc. It is still being aligned with Google which may take some time, so if you have trouble searching for a digger, use the Digger Database tab on top of the page for the time being.