Frank Dunstan, the son of a nomadic Methodist minister, played soccer for Toowoomba Grammar School where he was a boarder. On graduation at the end of 1915, Dunstan deferred a scholarship to the University of Queensland to enlist. His importance comes from the diary he kept from April 1916 to January 1920. Dunstan detailed the journey to Egypt and onto France and Belgium with the 25th Battalion where he endured long days’ marching and regular shelling. Dunstan captured the conditions in the trenches and the devastated landscape, as well as the battles he took part in such as those at Lagnicourt and Zonnebeke.
He was gassed in November 1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele and evacuated to England but returned in time to fight at Villers-Bretonneux in mid-2018. Here Dunstan received shrapnel wounds and had to be carried 2 miles to the aid post. He was again evacuated to England where his wounds led to his return to Australia after the Armistice.
After the war, Dunstan studied at the University of Queensland and became an engineer. He drowned in the Noosa River at Tewantin in 1933 while attempting to save his young son.
Dunstan’s name appeared on the honour boards of Toowoomba Grammar School and the Toowoomba Brisbane Football Association, while his diaries are kept at the Australian War Memorial. A lengthier biography by his grand-niece Sue Smith can be found at Virtual War Memorial, Frank Wheatley DUNSTAN Source: Commonwealth Gazette No. 109 Date: 15 September 1919