Old Frank

Francis Lewis Altmor von Stieglitz, Frank or Old Frank was always a larrikin in the Australian tradition. Born September 1883 at his grandparents home in Tasmania, his early years were free and cheerful living on his parents’ sprawling property Wambo and around Chinchilla in Queensland’s Western Darling Downs. 

With four brothers and a sister (who died in infancy) Frank had the quintessential late colonial upbringing. A natural leader of brothers and cousins his flaming red hair proclaimed his lack of time for authority. From school to war it stood out. While a boarder at the very formal Toowoomba Grammar School he led a protest over food an conditions. Climbing onto the steep pitched roof of School House on fete day he threatened to disrobe when the guest of honour, the Governor of Queensland, Lord Lamington arrived.

Graduating from Grammar in <<>> Frank enthusiastically embraced the hardy healthy life of pre war rural Queensland. He worked as a horse breaker, drover, stockman and at one time ran a camel train on the Birdsville Track. When excitement was lacking he would go looking. From getting ahead of the big horse flies by biting horses on the hock to joining the expedition gathered at Jimbor House near Dalby to look for the missing Ludwig Leichhardt, Frank did not lack adventure.

In 1914 the first world war broke out. The family was rocked, first when his cousin Thomas vS was killed at Gallipoli in August 1915. In March 1917 another cousin, Robert vS, was killed in heavy fighting at NAME. In 1917 Old Frank at the age of 34 enlisted into the Australian Imperial Force. By 1918 he and all four brothers were fighting on the Western Front. In the atrocious conditions Frank was said to throw himself into the fighting with gusto, mirroring his all out approach to life.

Having been in Australia since the 1820s, intermarriage had made Frank’s family overwhelmingly British. They considered themselves loyal sons of empire and were active members of the Church of England. However ominously as the war dragged on public opinion increasingly turned against all things German. Frank’s commanding officer told Frank that if was captured the Germans would likely shoot him as a spy, and ‘if we get sick of you mate, we might do the same”. Bowing to pressure Frank travelled to London and traded his historic family name for his mother’s very British “Thomson”.

Returning to the front, in July 1918 he was badly gassed fighting at Le Hamel. With other wounded soldiers he followed the miserable path of evacuation to England and a long fight to regain some sort of health. There the grim period of recovery was lightened by meeting Miss Flora Perry, a volunteer physio nurse. Although the gas would eventually kill him, Flora’s presence and the green English landscape spurred on Frank’s recovery. He returned to Australia in 1919 and was discharged.  

In 1920 Frank travelled to England and in June of that year married Flora. Together they returned to Australia and took up a soldier block ‘Come by Chance’ near Chinchilla. Four children followed and for a time they managed. Four children (Edgar, Margaret, Lewis and Norm) were born. However the gassing and vagaries of life on the land closed in. Frank’s health started to fail. To augment their income Flora worked in town selling sweets at the cinema and other jobs. It was a reverse when they found rust in the wheat on the farm. Soon after fire destroyed the house Frank had built, an event Edgar recounted in a story published in The Bulletin.

By the mid 1930s, too ill to work, they planned to live in Toowoomba and made arrangements to purchase a house at 144 Mackenzie St. However with Frank’s health fading they resided in the warmer climate at Sandgate. Compounding the family’s situation finances gave out forcing the eldest son Edgar to leave school at 15 to earn money for the family as a stockman.

With Flora and the children’s help Frank struggled on; closeness to family helping to minimise the reality of dependence on others. Finally in April 1938 the middle children heard Norm call for help from the bedroom where Frank was reading to him. Frank had died.

Flora never remarried. With Frank’s death she relocated with the younger children to Toowoomba and lived there until her death in 1989. My Father Edgar continued on the land and by age 19 was the head stockman on Millungera Station near Cloncurry in Queensland’s Gulf Country. He in turn fought for Australia in the second war, suffering his own share of injuries.

The events of WW1 had a profound impact on the family.  The war resulted in my Grandparents meeting, marrying and building a large and close family; yet that same war resulted in the loss of family members, and the mental and physical injuries to others, particularly my Grandfather, Old Frank. We remember him and thank him for such strength in adversity.