Annie Wheeler WWI Mother of all Queenslanders

You may have never heard of Annie Wheeler, but if you turned back the clock more than a century, and you were a young Queensland man fighting in the trenches of WWI, Annie Wheeler would have been your lifeline. She was not only essential to the soldiers on the front lines, but also to their families back home. This Queensland woman set up headquarters in London and made sure that more than 2300 soldiers from Central Queensland could keep in touch with their families.

 In our world of internet, smart phones, Wi-Fi and instant connection, it is hard for us to imagine what it would be like to have a loved one go off to war and hear nothing…at all…for months on end. Imagine that feeling of being ‘left on read’ for not just hours, days or weeks, but for months and sometimes even years. No news from your brother, sister, father or mother, friends or any loved ones. But that’s what it was like being in the trenches. Or even if you were a relative on the home front, you would have had with no idea what was going on in the world, except for the measly scraps that were fed to you through the heavily censored newspapers. We are used to living in world with a constant news cycle, where we can scroll through the news feed or look on YouTube or Tik Tok and we can find out what is happening on the other side of the world instantaneously. But back in 1914, the world did not work like that. There was not even television. Telephones were rare and all news had to come through the newspaper and who knew how up to date the article might be. You could write a letter- but that might take months to reach home. This is where Annie Wheeler came in. With her intricate filing system, she became a conduit for soldiers and families to be able to pass news to one another without the arduous months of waiting for letters to travel on ships across the seas.

So, how did it come about that Annie was able to play such vital role in WWI, that by 1919 more than 5000 people from the Rockhampton area petitioned the Governor to secure royal recognition of Annie Wheeler’s services to the people of Central Queensland? Oh, and for the record, the petition was successful! In 1920, Annie Wheeler was granted an OBE or Order of the British Empire.

Annie Wheeler was born in 1867 in the fabulously named town of Dingo. According to the 2016 census, the town of Dingo only had 340, so you can imagine 150 years earlier, Dingo was not a huge town. In fact, Annie went to school in Rockhampton, which is about 150 km (or 93miles) to the east of Dingo. She also received some nursing training from Sydney Hospital before she returned home and did some private nursing.

When she was 29 years old, she married Henry Wheeler and moved out to a town called Blackwater, which is about 50km further west than Dingo. There she had a daughter, who she named Portia. Unfortunately, her husband died after only six years of marriage and she moved back to Rockhampton as a single widowed mum with her 4-year-old child Portia. She stayed in Rockhampton until Portia was about 15 years old, and in 1913—one year before WWI broke out—she and her daughter moved to England so that Portia could complete her education. It was this move, that put Annie and her daughter in just the right place so they would be able to facilitate communication between the Queensland soldiers fighting on the front lines in France and their families who were desperately awaiting news of their sons back in Central Queensland.

When the war broke out, Annie was compelled to help, and of course with her background in nursing, it seemed only natural that she applied for work in a hospital in Sussex. She also joined a couple of Australian associations; the Australian Natives’ Association and the Australian War Contingent Association. However, she was a little frustrated with the organisational systems of the Australian War Contingent Association and she resigned and decided to take matters into her own hands. This way the families from Central Queensland could easily get news of their boys from the other side of the world. She and Portia created their own filing system to keep track of the soldiers. For this they used index cards. If you have not seen an index card, it is a small piece of lined cardboard just slightly larger than an iPhone; 3 by 5 inches is the standard size.

On these index cards, Annie would record the name, battalion and serial number of each soldier, contacts, where they are stationed, and if they had been injured or reported missing. She was said to have more than 2300 soldiers on her books. She would also forward packages and mail to them, and if they ended up in a hospital in England, she would visit them and care for them. For some soldiers who were on leave and whose wages were tied up in bureaucratic delays, she would loan them money so they were able to survive and enjoy their recreation leave fully.

When Australian mail was delivered, there was a special van from the London GPO that dropped off huge canvas bags which would be tipped out on Annie and Portia’s living room floor to be sorted and distributed to the soldiers. Apparently, any London policeman knew where she lived as so often, they had to direct a soldier wearing a slouch hat there. There was a sign on her front door that had been drawn by one of the soldiers that showed an Australia rising sun badge, a kangaroo and the words “Hop right in dig”.

But this was only half the job, she also sent back a fortnightly letter to Rockhampton that was published in the Capricornian and Morning Bulletin newspapers.

Here is a little extract of one such letter published on 29^th August 1918.

“Stan Alrey wrote on the 12th instant. He is well and cheerful. I had told him

to let me know if he wanted any socks, and he says he would like some, so we have sent over a parcel. G. H. Alford says he is well provided with underwear, but would like some socks and something to smoke, so a parcel will go to him also. Walter Bath was well when he wrote in the 8th instant. He says that there is nothing definite to be had in the way of leave yet.” This letter published in the paper goes on for about 2 pages and just lists the name of the soldier and a little snippet of information about each one and a message they might like to pass on. You can imagine how the families back home would have cherished these little nuggets of information about their beloved sons, brothers and husbands.

This massive workload and the emotional burden of seeing so many of her ‘boys’ wounded or finding out they were missing or killed in action, took toll on Annie Wheeler and in 1918 she suffered from a nervous breakdown and was unable to do the work. Luckily, her daughter Portia, who had been helping her all throughout the war 20, continued on with her mother’s work. Also, a Nurse called May Macdonald was sent to help her with this very important work.

In 1919, a support fund was set up for Annie in Rockhampton, and the Commonwealth government provided free passage for her return in to Australia. Over 5,000 people met her train where she received a hero’s welcome. This is when the people started a petition so she could receive her OBE. The State Library of QLD have digitised many of her records and you can access some of them in their online collections and of course there are many references to her in the newspapers on the free Trove digital archives of the National Library of Australia. Annie Wheeler lived to a ripe old age of 83 and she lived out her twilight years in the late 1940s in the then new resort town of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. She lived in Orchid Avenue, which back then was a quiet street near the beach, but of course is now known as the Glitter Strip where all of the night clubs are located.