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The Last of his Kind?

by Peter Conole (WA Police Historian)

The subject of this article seems to have been a typical and very capable imperial adventurer of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. However there is a difference, for his ‘Boys Own Paper’ type adventures ended in a very different era when the gentleman was well over the age of sixty. Victor Bolton Pennefather arrived in the world in the North Sydney suburb of Willoughby on April 22, 1884 – the date is that given in his WA Police Record of Service.

Victor’s ancestry is noteworthy and perhaps partly explains a pretty obvious desire to seek out adventure and excel. His Pennefathers were an old and very distinguished family of Anglo-Irish gentry, descended from Robert Pennefather (died 1543) of Staffordshire, England. A descendant of the latter named Matthew moved to County Tipperary in Ireland some time in the early 1600s and married Lavinia Kingsmill. The family built up land holdings in the county and down the centuries various members served as officers in the military or as Church of Ireland ministers (for online information see pennyfather.com/ind1762.html). During the 1850s a certain Major Kingsmill Pennefather settled on the Canning River in WA.

Another Kingsmill, the son of Richard Pennefather of Ballynira House, County Tipperary, arrived in Victoria in the 1860s and married Theresa Hobbs there in 1871. They later settled in North Sydney and raised a large family. Victor Bolton Pennefather was their eighth and last youngster. He received a fine education, but cut things short when he heard the ‘call to arms’ and rushed off to take part in the Boer War. He enlisted as a private in the 6th Commonwealth Contingent of Light Horse – a largely Victorian unit which gave reliable service in South Africa during 1902.

Victor did not return to Australia. His WA Police data shows he transferred to either the South African or Natal Mounted Constabulary. Details of his service may or may not survive in the South African National Archives. He was active in the suppression of the bloody Zulu Rebellion of 1906 in Natal and received the usual swag of campaign medals for that business and the earlier war against the Boers.

Soon afterwards he embarked for WA and obtained work here as an Assistant Surveyor, possibly in a public sector agency. Victor then decided to try the WA Police and joined as a P r o b a t i o n a r y Constable (number 942) on September 2, 1908. A month later he became a fully-fledged Constable. He served in Perth for a year and then at the rugged Kimberley postings of  Halls Creek and Wyndham until February 1911. Pennefather’s first police career can be traced in surviving Kimberley police station records. His experience as a bushman and obvious physical prowess made him an asset.

He may have received a fine offer to move into the pastoral industry prior to his resignation in early 1911. Pennefather teamed up with stockman Tom Cole. They led a famous droving party from Halls Creek on April 26, 1911 and traversed the entire Canning Stock Route with  a ‘mob’ of 400 bullocks and horses. It was a dangerous adventure and in the course of it they investigated rumours and confirmed that two earlier drovers had been murdered by aborigines. Their names were Christopher Shoesmith and James Thomson. Pennefather wrote up his report of the atrocity on September 6, 1911 and joined up again as a WA Constable (number 1020) in the following November.

He served for four years, firstly in Perth and then at Fitzroy Crossing and on the Kalgoorlie Goldfields. The onset of World War I led to yet another change of direction. Victor joined the Australian Imperial Force as a private on August 24, 1915. Like some other over-eager police officers, in the scramble to ‘follow the colours’ he sent in his formal resignation as an afterthought a week or two later. There is a lot of information on Pennefather’s World War I service at the National Archives of Australia. He began as a private in Company 2 of the Depot Battalion at Blackboy Hill, won promotion to Corporal in October 1915 and then moved into the ‘New Guinea Guard’ (also known as the ‘4th Tropical Force’). An Australian task force had conquered German New Guinea in late 1914. Australian troops had to remain there for years and Pennefather was based in Rabaul, the former German capital. He operated in various other places during the tough, hazardous work of suppressing tribal feuding and imposing well-organised civil control.

Soldier Victor Pennefather was promoted several times – Sergeant (1917), Warrant Officer (August 1918), 2nd Lieutenant (October 1918), Temporary Lieutenant (March 1919). On May 9, 1921 his military service in the New Guinea Expeditionary Force ended and he was transferred to the civil administration at Rabaul. Pennefather received three more medals – the ‘World War I Trio’ – for his excellent services.

Details of Pennefather’s role as a colonial administrator in Australian New Guinea are difficult to track. It will have involved work as a district officer or as a senior man in the New Guinea Constabulary. He married Elizabeth Esson in 1921 and their daughter Joan Victorine Pennefather was born at Rabaul on April 29, 1924. Son Kingsmill Pennefather arrived in December 1928. Then came tragedy: Elizabeth died in October 1931. Soon afterwards Victor resigned from the service, moved south to Sydney with his children and married Mavis Lamb during 1936. The Pennefather family still had property in Sydney and that will have made things easier.

Incredibly, service in Victor Pennefather’s fourth war was yet to come. After hard campaigning in New Guinea the Australian Army had the Japanese on the run by the end of 1942. Army brass knew of Victor’s vast local knowledge. They brought him back into the army as a Warrant Officer (Class I) on April 16, 1943 for service in a combat zone during the next Australian offensives. He was posted to the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit, which moved with the army as the campaign progressed in order to re-establish humane civil administration in territory liberated from the enemy.

Soon after the war ended Pennefather was discharged on October 12, 1945. He collected yet another handful of service and campaign medals. The Australian armed forces obviously recognised he was a good man to have on the spot, regardless of his age. For the record, Warrant Officer Pennefather was over 61 when his appointment was terminated – possibly the oldest man in any World War II army to experience active service in the tropics. The National Archives records indicate he remained on the army list until final demobilisation in about 1947.

The old warrior was alive as late as July 1965, when the press reported him as being seriously ill in Sydney whilst a relative tried to gather details of his remarkable career. Victor Bolton Pennefather died in St.Leonards, New South Wales, in the year 1966. It can be safely said that we shall never see his like again.

Family History Society of Rockingham & Districts Inc.

Between the Lines, June 2013, ISSN 1444-3414 Vol. 18 No. 4

http://fhsrd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/BTL-Jun-2013-Archived.pdf