Story by :- David McMillan
Truth can be stranger than fiction, can’t it? Frank Day’s life is stranger than most and shouldn’t be forgotten.
Blackboy Hill was the Western Australian training camp established in 1914 to house local Australian Imperial Force (AIF) recruits before they left for the battlefronts in the Middle East and western Europe. Situated at the foot of the Darling Range just east of Midland Junction, troops were taken from Perth by train to the nearby station and marched into camp.
All this activity would have been magnet to local children. One in particular, 11-year-old Frank Day, who lived in nearby Bushby Street, became infatuated with the military camp. Members of the 11th Battalion, the first battalion recruited in Western Australia and among the first infantry units raised for the AIF, became fond of Frank, adopted him as a mascot and supplied him with the uniform of a Lieutenant Colonel.
The 11th Battalion departed Fremantle in October 1914, and over the next year a series of reinforcement companies were trained at Blackboy Hill and sent to Egypt. During this time, the 11th was heavily involved in the ANZAC attack on Gallipoli until its withdrawal back to Egypt in December.
The battalion’s 10th Reinforcements departed Fremantle on the 13th October 1915. Somehow, by means devious and cunning, the diggers evaded officialdom and smuggled Frank Day aboard their troop transport, HMAT Themistocles, and spirited him off to Egypt.
Frank was in Egypt for about six months. In March 1916 the 11th, along with Frank’s mates in the 10th Reinforcements, sailed for France and the Western Front. The authorities returned Frank to his parents in Western Australia. He was later used in some campaigns encouraging people to enlist.
The full story of this escapade will probably never be known. Frank didn’t speak about it in any detail to his family. One newspaper reported that the Education Department permitted him to accompany the battalion to Egypt as their mascot, but is this likely?
HMAT Themistocles
Frank married a Boulder girl, Ina Vigus, in 1926 and worked and raised a family in the Eastern Goldfields. While working as a winch driver at the New Hope Gold Mine, Kalgoorlie, his coat was blown out by the wind and caught in the flywheel. No one saw the accident—he was found lying dead beside the winch having sustained shocking injuries. He died on the 31st August 1937, aged 33, and is buried in the Kalgoorlie Cemetery and memorialised on the Eastern Goldfields Miners Memorial at the WA Museum, Kalgoorlie.
A section of the 11th Battalion at lunch, Blackboy Hill
