Contributed by Ron Inglis, October 2021 and updated by Pickering relatives, March 2025:
Frank Hessell Pickering Snr, like many men and women in the late 19th century, worked for the railways. He was born in Singleton, and together with his wife Kate, born in Surry Hills, they had 12 children, though not all survived infancy. They moved around frequently, as was typical of railway families in those pioneering days.
Frank and Kate’s eldest son, Frank Hessell Pickering Jnr, was born in Newtown in 1893. Another son, Roland Taaffe Pickering, was born in Cootamundra in 1895. In 1904, Frank Snr was Station Master at Cessnock. Shortly after the family moved to Auburn and Frank Jnr and Roland were enrolled in Auburn Public School. The family lived at Railway Reserve, Auburn, close to where Frank Snr worked in the clerical office of the Clyde Railway Yards.
The first son to enlist was Roland, 20, a blacksmith’s striker who also worked in the Clyde Railway Yards. He enlisted on 14 August 1915, one day before his brother, Frank Jnr, 22, a telegraphist working in the NSW Parliament. Travelling to France via Egypt, the brothers ended up together in the 3rd Battalion. About a year after enlistment, and after only a few months at the Front, both brothers were killed in action in the fierce fighting around Pozières and Mouquet Farm in July-August 1916. Frank was reported missing while working as an aerial signaller when his reconnaissance biplane failed to return on 22 July, and he was later declared dead. Roland was a gunner killed in battle on 17 August. Neither of their bodies were ever found.
In Australia, the names of the Pickering brothers are on the Auburn War Memorial, the honour rolls in Auburn Public School, the Municipality of Auburn Honour Roll 1914-1919, the St James Anglican Church Roll of Honour in Sydney, and in the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial Canberra. They also appear on the Cessnock War Memorial. It is thought that the brothers may have spent some school years there when their father was Station Master at Cessnock and the Cessnock Public School may have put the brothers’ names forward. Frank Jnr is also recorded on the NSW Officers of the P.M.G.’s Department Honour Roll in the former Sydney General Post Office. Overseas, both their names are inscribed on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in France.
Parents Frank and Kate had died by the time of the Second World War. Another of their sons, NX7129 James Alexander Pickering, was born in Rockdale in 1902. He had been a 14 year old when his two eldest brothers died in WW1, but by the time he enlisted in the 2nd AIF during WW2 on 7 May 1941 he was 39, and a local baker living in Auburn with his wife Rose and two daughters.
James became a POW as a result of the fall of Singapore in 1942, and eventually ended up in the notorious Sandakan POW camp. After nearly three years as a POW, 43 year old
Frank died at Sandakan, reportedly of illness.
As with his brothers in the First World War, James' body was never found. His name is on the Auburn War Memorial and the Sandakan Memorial in Burwood Park, Burwood, as well
as the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial Canberra. Overseas, his name is inscribed on the Commonwealth War Memorial at Labuan in Malaysia.
Roland Pickering is honoured on the following memorials in Australia:
- Auburn War Memorial
- Municipality of Auburn 1914-1919 Honour Roll
- Auburn Public School First World War Honour Roll
- Auburn Boys Public School Great War Honour Roll
- Cessnock War Memorial
- Roll of Honour Australian War Memorial Canberra
His decorations:
- British War Medal 1914-20
- Victory Medal
