Service Details
- Branch of Service
- Army
- Conflict
- World War I (1914-1918)
Personal Details
- Gender
- Male
- Place of Birth
- Queanbeyan NSW
- Address (at enlistment)
- New Zealand (previously Oaks Estate ACT)
- Occupation
- Bank clerk
- Next of Kin
- George Gillespie (father), Oaks Estate via Queanbeyan ACT
Unit and Rank Details
- Final Rank
- Lieutenant
- Final Unit
- New Zealand Rifle Brigade
Commemoration
Queanbeyan RSL Wall of Remembrance, Crawford St, Queanbeyan NSW
Roll of Honour at St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church, Lowe Street, Queanbeyan
Notes
Gillespie was born in 1886 at Queanbeyan and belonged to the Gillespie family from Ginninderra. He grew up in Oaks Estate but, as a bank employee, he had left the district by 1904. At the outbreak of the war he was in New Zealand and enlisted with the New Zealand Rifle Brigade. He was wounded on the Somme in 1916 and by the end of the war had been commissioned as a Lieutenant. He had married while in New Zealand and he and his wife Mary returned to live in Oaks Estate where he was a member of the Oaks Estate Progress Association. On 2 December 1939 he was returning home from Canberra when his truck broke down near the Mill Creek (Jerrabomberra Creek) bridge on Uriarra Road (now Canberra Avenue). He was knocked down and killed when he tried to wave down a passing motorist.
Sources
Rex Cross, 'Bygone Queanbeyan', 1980
Karen Williams, 'Oaks Estate: No Man's Land', 1997
Neil Gillespie, 'History of a Pioneer family of the Limestone Plains', 2005 (p.37)
Queanbeyan Age - 14 November 1916, 20 December 1918, 12 December 1939