George Henry Burrows was an electrician who first emigrated to New South Wales in 1908. He moved onto Goodna in 1911, then a village between Ipswich and Brisbane, where he was employed at the Goodna Hospital for the Insane. The facility had previously been known as the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum and in 1875 hosted the earliest known soccer game in Australia.
After his arrival, Burrows installed the hospital’s first electric lights. The Hospital at this time was run by Dr Henry Ellerton, an ex-soccer player who believed in recreational activities for patients and staff. Ellerton soon built new sporting facilities, including a new football ground. The Goodna Hospital entered a soccer team in the Ipswich and West Moreton competition in 1913, made up of hospital staff. Burrows was a member of the team, and such was his form he selected for the 1914 Queensland side which beat a visiting New South Wales 3-2. Strangely Burrows, along with 5 others, was not retained for the second game of the series.
Burrows enlisted late, in August 1918, and departed for Europe four days before armistice. He was 33 when he enlisted, a widower with three children. His daughter Alice, aged 9, was listed as his next of kin. At the time he and the children were living at the Hospital, where he had been promoted to Chief Engineer. He signed a statutory declaration assigning guardianship of the children to Stella Scott while he was away. He also applied to transfer to an AIF technical unit, citing his long experience as an electrician but it appears this was not successful before his departure.
Burrows’ record ends with his departure from Australia. With the war ending it is unknown whether he arrived in Egypt or Europe, how long he served and what work he undertook. Burrows returned to Goodna by the time he married Eva Holledge in 1920.
He continued to work and live at the Hospital and became heavily associated with the Goodna (now Gailes) Golf Club for many years, another facility built by Dr Henry Ellerton. Burrows passed away in 1946, aged 61.