George SIMS #57915
Indigenous Australian, George SIMS, 26th Infantry Battalion
George Sims was born in Windsor, NSW in 1890 to Walter Henry Sims and Louisa Lock of the Darug people. He was working as a labourer in Goomeri when he enlisted in Brisbane 10 June 1918.
Sims was initially assigned to the 5th General Reinforcements, Queensland and trained at Rifle Range Camp, Enoggera, just outside the city of Brisbane. Sims left Brisbane aboard a specially assigned troop train bound for Sydney where they embarked on the troopship HMAT Borda in July 1917 arriving in England 6 weeks later in late September.
While training at military camp at Fovant, in Wiltshire he was assigned to the 26th Infantry Battalion but fell ill in late October with chronic bronchitis and was admitted to the Military Hospital at Hurdcott, another Australian facility.
Simms was never to see action in the front line, the war had ended in Europe by the time he was well enough to participate. He was repatriated to Queensland in December 1918 returning on the hospital ship Somali.
Sims lived and worked in both Queensland and NSW – Cloncurry, Wowan in the Dawson Valley and Junee, in the Riverina region of NSW; he married Mary Ellen Armstrong in 1939.
Read more ...
- SERVICE RECORD: SIMS, George
- EMBARKATION ROLL: 5th Reinforcements Queensland
- New South Wales Aboriginal Soldiers – the Lock Family and World War One
- One of the soldiers featured in SLQ’s HistoryPin Collection
- Queensland’s Indigenous Servicemen [Digital Story and Oral History, 12 min]
The information in this blog post has been researched by State Library staff and volunteers, it is based on available information at this time. If you have more information that you would like to share or further research uncovers new findings, this post will be updated.