The Waratahs

During late 1915 and early 1916, a number of recruiting marches originating in country New South Wales attempted to raise enthusiasm and the number of volunteers.  The first such march in New South Wales began at Gilgandra in October 1915 and other parts of the state quickly began organising marches of their own.  The Waratah march passed through the Illawarra in December 1915 having started in Nowra on 30 November and arrived in Sydney on 17 December 1915.

Identifying the Waratahs is a difficult process in itself as there is no ‘list’ of the marchers and newspapers did not always name the men who enlisted along the way.  The author of The Waratahs, Alan Clark, has identified 84 men as almost certainly being Waratah marchers, with 38 of these coming from the Illawarra section of the march. Thirty one Illawarra Waratahs embarked on the Makarini as reinforcements for the 1 Battalion. Another 28 Illawarra men were aboard the Makarini, but had enlisted after the Waratahs passed through the region and were members of the reinforcements for the 2, 3 and 4 Battalions who were also on board the same transport.

Fifteen of the thirty one Illawarra Waratahs who embarked on the Makarini were either killed in action or died of wounds, a death rate far above both that for the AIF and the Illawarra.  The Illawarra Waratahs also appear to have had a penchant for disobeying rules.  Seventeen of the 84 Waratahs identified by Clark were charged with committing various offences, with a disproportionate 12 of these coming from the Illawarra region.1 

When examined statistically as a sub-group of the Illawarra volunteers, the Waratahs exhibit some different characteristics to both the total Illawarra enlistments and the AIF.  At the same time as the Waratahs were marching from Nowra to Sydney the Kangaroos were undertaking a similar march from Wagga Wagga to Sydney and it is possible to also compare the two sets in some respects.  For both the Waratahs and the Kangaroos the most startling difference from the AIF occurs with religion (Table 10).  In comparison with the general population the Waratahs and Kangaroos were over-represented respectively by Church of England adherents and Catholics.  This undoubtedly has some basis in regional variations.  Les Hetherington notes that the Riverina had a higher proportion of Catholics in the general population, but not as high as the Kangaroos’ 39 per cent.2  The high number of Church of England volunteers in the Illawarra appears to be at the expense of the other Protestant churches who comprised only 17 per cent of Waratah enlistments compared with 35 per cent for all of the Illawarra.

Table 10

Waratahs:  Religion

Percentage of affiliation to each religion

 WaratahsKangaroos1AIFIllawarra
Roman Catholic193920 17
Church of England644847 47
Other Protestant171229 35
Other/Unknown 0 1 5 1

1.Hetherington, ‘The Kangaroos March’, JAWM, 26, p.21.

With regard to the occupational base of the Waratahs and Kangaroos, Table 11 shows that it is clear that groups of marchers were predominantly from the working class, with a high proportion of unskilled workers, especially among the Waratahs.  The mobility of these types of workers was not constrained by the trappings of wealth.

Table 11

Waratahs:  Occupations

Percentage of each occupation

 WaratahsKangaroos1 AIFIllawarra
Labourers534822 24
Industry/Trade02120 9
Primary Industry361021 41
Transport6139 7
Commerce3312 7
Professional/Clerks0310 8
Other/Unknown0210 3

1.Hetherington, ‘The Kangaroos March’, JAWM, 26, p.21.

No professional or clerical workers were amongst the Illawarra Waratahs, and Table 12 shows that their age was even more concentrated in the 20-24 year group than the Kangaroos, the AIF or the Illawarra.

Table 12

Waratahs: age at enlistment

Percentage for each age group

 WaratahsKangaroos1AIFIllawarra
18-19111614 13
20-24493738 40
25-29202821 24
30-34111012 12
35-39648 7
40 +357 4

1.Hetherington, ‘The Kangaroos March’, JAWM, 26, p.21.

It appears that generally the men who joined these recruiting marches were often younger and less skilled than the average AIF volunteer, factors which perhaps made joining such a march an easier decision than for an older man with property and in a position of some responsibility.

Ernest Scott describes the snowball marches held in 1915/16 as having been effective,3 but is difficult to see either the Waratah or Kangaroo marches as such.  For all the efforts made in each community which they passed through, the ensuing number of volunteers to come forward was very small given the large number of men who were able to volunteer in January 1916.  Even more unsuccessful was the ‘South Coast March to Freedom’ which passed through the Illawarra in August 1918.  Numerous photographs of the march at various places in the region show crowds watching the marchers, yet not one single volunteer from the Illawarra is known to have enlisted as a result of this march.

1. ↑ The most common offence committed by the Illawarra Waratahs was being absent without leave and some were persistent repeat offenders, one man being charged with this offence at least eight times and another five times.  Another man was charged with desertion in the field from 21 September 1918 to 16 October 1918, and another court martialled for disobeying a superior officer. 

2. ↑ Hetherington, Les, “The Kangaroos March: Wagga Wagga to Sydney, December 1915 – January 1916”, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, 26, April (1995), 19-25 p.22.

3. ↑ Scott, Ernest. Australia during the war, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1936, p.460.

This is an excerpt from Caldwell, Vivienne, ‘Illawarra at War’, honours thesis, University of Wollongong, 1999.