honor role

Blackall, William Edward

** Hon. Capt 1st Australian Field General Hospital and 1st Australian Field Ambulance.

Born at Folkstone, Kent in 1876, CoE. Enlisted 28 June 1917 age 41, Medical Practitioner. Nok wife, Ethel Gray Blackall, corner of View and Leake Sts, Cottesloe Beach. Between 1914-1916 he was a volunteer gunner with the Australian Field Artillery. Embarked at Fremantle 29 June 1917 per A30 Borda. Served in France from September 1917 to September 1918 when he was wounded by a spent shell fragment and suffered extensive bruising and a hernia. Returned to Fremantle per A71 Nestor 18 January 1919 and discharged two days later. Service medals: BWM and VM. Dr Blackall arrived in Western Australia in 1904 as an Oxford University graduate with BA, MA, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Chemistry. Following six years as a medical officer at Fremantle Asylum he opened a surgery at Cottesloe. After the war he resumed his medical practice and died at Cottesloe on 7 October 1941. Dr Blackall was also a consultant to Lady Lawley Cottage by the Sea in Cottesloe and to the W.A. School for Deaf Children in what is now Curtin Avenue. Botany was his hobby and Western Australian flora his passion. Professor B.J. Grieve completed Blackall’s manuscript on WA wild flowers in 1947 and it has since had seventeen editions. How to Know Western Australian Wildflowers. A Key to the Flora of the Temperate Regions published by the University of Western Australia Press. (extracts from his biography in The Encyclopaedia of Australian Science.)

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