Frederick Andrews was born in Canterbury, England, in 1891. As a young man, he made his way to Geraldton, Western Australia, and found work as a labourer. Within a few years he’d join the Western Australian Government Railways as a fuelman on steam locomotives.
A three-team football league had commenced in Geraldton in 1913 and for the second season of competition Frederick played in the forward line for Thistle, who won the league and Hansen Cup. In December 1914, Frederick married Amy Carpenter, who he set up home with on Augusta Street.
Frederick was 25 when he enlisted as a Private with the 16th Battalion. Within a month of disembarking in England, he was admitted to hospital in rural Codford suffering influenza. In April 1917 he proceeded to France where his battalion took part in bloody trench warfare in the Somme valley.
Struck down by acute appendicitis in August, Frederick was admitted to No. 16 General Hospital at Le Treport, France, and two months later was transferred England’s Berrington War Hospital for his recovery. Soon after returning to the battlefield he received a shotgun wound to the head, most likely at the Battle of Epehy, in September 1918.
On returning to Geraldton in mid-1919, Frederick resumed employment with WA Government Railways. Promoted to Examiner, he was transferred to the mid-west towns of Mount Magnet and Yalgoo before relocating to Perth in the mid-1930s. By 1940 he was living in Bunbury, in the state’s south-west, where he remained through to retirement in April 1956.
Frederick Andrews was about 75 when he passed away on 27 April, 1966, in Bunbury.