Thomas and Herbert Mulligan were brothers, born in Brown Hill, Ballarat. Their mother, a widow, later ran the Woolpack Hotel in Bungaree - a hotel that’s long since disappeared.
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Like the hotel, the brothers are lost to history. They were killed in France during the Great War. Both have no known grave.
Their grand-niece Gail Buchanan has researched the story of their short lives as far as she can. What she has discovered is that neither Tom nor Herb are remembered in the Avenue of Honour in Ballarat. She’d like to rectify the omission.
Thomas and Herbert were born 10 years apart. Herbert, the elder, was born in 1888. The family were proud Roman Catholics and he was educated at St Alipius in Ballarat East. A slaughterman by trade, he had moved to NSW and married his wife Una before he enlisted in 1915.
He was posted to the 18th Battalion, and left Australia in September, 1915. He was killed at Pozieres on July 27, 1916, in the very middle of that dreadful battle where thousands of Australians were lost.
His brother Thomas, “5 foot 4 inches tall, heavy build, fair complexion, with red hair”, enlisted just six months before his brother’s death in France. A labourer before he joined up, he was assigned to the 5th Tunnelling Company. The ‘sappers’ were responsible for extending trenches forward into No Man’s Land and for digging the long drives under enemy trenches to plant mines and explosives.
By time he was fighting in France he had been transferred to the 45th Battalion. On February 27, 1917, his company was holding the trenches around Gueudecourt, in an area reputed to have the worst conditions of anywhere on the Somme. It was the depths of winter, well below freezing, when a German barrage opened.
Private W.J. Matthews informed the Red Cross:
“We were in the front trenches. I was a few yards away from him when a shell burst right on the trench, it killed five of us, and wounded one. Mulligan was killed outright. I saw him lying in the trench after he was killed.”
Private Mulligan was buried with his mates in front of the trench. He was 19.
Gail Buchanan says it’s disappointing that the Avenue of Honour Committee won’t consider adding the brothers to its rolls, especially considering both gave their lives, and that the men were born and bred in Ballarat.