Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

28/03/1916

Date of Discharge

29/10/1917

Place of Enlistment

Duntroon ACT

Gender

Male

Date of Birth

28/12/1873

Address (at enlistment)

Duntroon ACT

Occupation

Driver

Next of Kin

Mary Shoobert (wife), Duntroon, Federal Territory

Service Number

2491

Final Rank

Private

Final Unit

56 Battalion AIF

Queanbeyan RSL Wall of Remembrance, Crawford St, Queanbeyan NSW

Frederick Shoobert was employed as a groom at the Royal Military College, Duntroon in April 1915 and was working there when he enlisted in March 1916 claiming to be 40 years of age - he was actually 42. He served in the Boer War as a Trooper with the 2nd New South Wales Mounted Rifles. He and his wife Mary lived at the Home Affairs Camp at Duntroon. She was a member of the Oldfield family, one of the oldest in the district, and they had married in Queanbeyan in 1915. Shoobert embarked for overseas in September 1916 as a Private with the 5th reinforcements to the 56th Battalion, joining his unit in France in February 1917. He took part in the attack on Louverval but was hospitalised with haemorrhoids and piles in May 1917. He returned to Australia in September and was discharged on 29 October 1917.

Shoobert returned to work at Duntroon after the war and leased land covering most of what later became the Pialligo nurseries and orchards. In 1923 he secured a soldier settler block in Belconnen (including parts of Latham and Higgins) which he called Etaples after the town in France where he first landed. He played cricket for Duntroon and also captained the Canberra Cricket Club during the 1920s. The family struggled during the Great Depression and had to sell Etaples. Shoobert was living in Ainslie when he died in January 1945 and was buried in Woden Cemetery. Four of his sons served in World War 2.

Description - height 5 feet 7½ inches, weight 167 pounds, chest 38 inches, fair complexion, blue eyes, light brown hair, Church of England, top joint big toe right foot missing.

Ross Howarth, 'Civilians employed at the Royal Military College of Australia, Duntroon, from 1911 to 1931', RMC Duntroon, November 2000
Lyall Gillespie, 'Ginninderra - Forerunner to Canberra', 1992 (p.179, 240)
Queanbeyan Age - 7 December 1917
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
ArchivesACT, 'Repat & Rabbits - WW1 Soldier Settlement in the ACT', http://www.archives.act.gov.au/repatandrabbits