Gallipoli illness had home toll
He looks like he doesn't have a care in the world.
Edward Alex Hardey is sprawled on a blanket with a couple of mates in uniform and two well-dressed women, one of whom, Theresa Woods, would become his wife.
Behind them are the tents which housed the men who had arrived at Blackboy Hill army camp, Greenmount, after enlisting within days of Australia joining World War I in August 1914.
Life in uniform was not new to Hardey, whose story has been collated by his son Edward and daughter-in-law Beryl, of North Beach.
Hardey was a grandson of Samuel Hardey, a minister of the Wesley Methodist Church in the Swan River Colony, who later moved to South Africa to continue his ministry.
Edward's father then moved the family to Christchurch, New Zealand, from where Edward joined a New Zealand contingent that went to South Africa to take part in the Boer War.
He then stayed on in South Africa to study and work before returning to New Zealand and then striking out again for Kalgoorlie.
His next major journey was as a member of the 11th Battalion aboard the Ascanius as it sailed from Fremantle on October 31, 1914.
The battalion disembarked in Egypt for further training and 703 men gathered on January 10, 1915 on Cheops Pyramid for a photograph.
_The West Australian _ is supporting a WA Genealogical Society project to name them.
The society has divided a digital copy of the photo into grids, so each man is numbered.
Hardey's family has so far been unable to identify him in the famous image.
The 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th battalions formed the 3rd Brigade, the covering force for the Anzac landing at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, and were first ashore about 4.30am.
Hardey survived the landing but like many other men, he eventually fell ill in the appalling living conditions, having attained the rank of sergeant-major.
In September he was evacuated to Malta and then taken to England where he was admitted to hospital before being repatriated to Australia in March 1916 with a severe chest illness.
In 1917 he married Theresa and after working for a while at the War Commission, where he was in charge of base records, he took up life on the land at Jingalup, near Kojonup, in about 1920.
After a happy time farming and by then with two children, Hardey's health deteriorated and in 1933 the family moved to Perth, where he had been offered a position as manager of Karrinyup Country Club.
But before long his journeys came to an end.
Edward Alex Hardey died in January 1935, leaving a growing family in Perth and Melbourne.
