16th Battalion Lance Corporal Ernest William Moorhouse

Born in Hobart, Tasmania, on 14 July 1892, Ernest was the second of six children born to Miles and Henrietta nee Richardson. In the early 1900s the family came to Western Australia where Miles, an ordained minister who’d moved into teaching, taught in country postings at Mingenew and Tipperary, near York. Ernest was a keen and talented young student and, while at Tipperary in 1906, received a £10 bursary.

In around 1908 the Moorhouses came to Perth and made their home at ‘Apsley’, Finnerty Street, Fremantle. Miles then taught at East Fremantle State School and was a prominent member of the Presbyterian Church of WA. 

Ernest completed his schooling at Fremantle Boys’ State School. Afterwards he trained as a clerk and was employed as the paymaster at shipping company McIlwraith, McEacharn & Co Ltd. He also served two years in the citizen forces with the 11th Australian Infantry Rifles. 

On 10 September 1914 Ernest (22) enlisted. After training in the miserable conditions at the cold, muddy, under-provisioned Broadmeadows Camp in Melbourne, the battalion departed on 22 December 1914 on board HMAT Ceramic and were part of the second convoy that gathered in Albany’s King George Sound nearly two months after the first. He arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, in January 1915, never to set foot on Australian soil again. 

After three months' training at Aerodrome Camp, Heliopolis, about 10kms out of Cairo, on 12 April 1915 the 16th Battalion was deployed in three ships (Seang Bee, Hyda Pasha and Clan McGillivray) to the Greek island of Lemnos. Troops remained on board in Mudros harbour while waiting to take their part in the Gallipoli landing, engaging in sea training; embarking and disembarking from the smallboats that would take them closer to Gallipoli’s deadly shore. During this time, Ernest was promoted to lance corporal.

Ernest landed with his battalion at Gallipoli later in the afternoon of 25 April. He survived the landing and the next nightmarish week, but was reported missing after the disastrous charge up Bloody Angle on 2 May; a night that decimated the battalion and nearly broke its spirit.

For the next months, despite numerous enquiries, his parents faced an agonising silence from the army as to Ernest’s whereabouts and wellbeing. In August they received unofficial reports from his mates that their son had actually been killed in action on 2 May.

At a Court of Enquiry held in Serapeum, Egypt, in April 1916, these reports were presented, along with an eye witness account of Corporal Courtney, who said he had been shot through the back at about 10:30pm that night. His recovered paybook, with a bullet hole clean through it, was also recovered and given to authorities. 

Faced with this evidence, Ernest was declared to have been killed in action at Quinn’s Post on 2 May 1915; his parents advised a fortnight later. 

Ernest’s body was never recovered and his name is on the Lone Pine Memorial to the missing.

The family, and many of Ernest’s friends, placed heartfelt memorial notices for him for at least the next ten years, most along the lines of this one, from The West Australian of 2 May 1917:
We miss thee from our home, dear,
We miss thee from thy place,
A shadow o'er our life is cast,
We miss the sunshine of thy face.
We miss thy kind and willing head,
Thy fond and earnest care;
Our home is dark without thee,
We miss thee everywhere.

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