12th Battalion Private Edwin Augustus Perks 

Edwin Augustus Perks was born in the Binalong area of NSW’s Southern Tablelands in 1869. In 1894, in Condobelin, NSW, he married Emily Ann Banks, a woman previously deserted by her first husband, James Pearce, and widowed by her second, Arthur Smith. There were children from both marriages.

Edwin and Emily’s first son, Edwin James, was born in 1895 before the family moved to Western Australia. Another son, William Thomas, was born two years later in 1897 in East Fremantle. By 1906, electoral records show Edwin was farming in Cunderdin.

At the time of enlisting in August 1915, Edwin was farming at Hines Hill, between Kelleberrin and Merredin. His stated age was 43 years and 6 months (which was three years shy of his actual age), and that he had served in the Fremantle Volunteers for four years, ending in 1901. Edwin was large for the time; six foot two and a half inches tall (188cm) and 202 pounds (92kgs).

Originally assigned to the 12th Battalion, he embarked from Fremantle on the Ajana on 17 December 1915. Arriving in Egypt in January 1916 he was then transferred to the 52nd Battalion and in May, the 16th. It was with the 16th he landed in France on 11 June. He served in the field until contracting mumps in February 1917. While in hospital, he was found to have a goitre from an enlarged thyroid, which saw him sent to England where he was admitted to the 3rd Australian General Hospital in Brighton.

With this, and now being deemed overage, Edwin left England on the Themistocles from Devonport on 9 May and returned to Fremantle for discharge.

William, Edwin's younger son and a farmhand on their Hines Hill farm, enlisted in March 1916 as a private with the 4th Machine Gun Company while Edwin was in Egypt. Sadly William was killed in action on 11 April 1917 near Bullecourt, just as his father was preparing to return home. William’s body was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. It is unlikely Edwin would have received news of his 19-year-old son’s death before he returned home in August 1917.

On his return to civilian life, Edwin resumed farming in WA's Wheatbelt at Yelbeni with older son Edwin James. After Emily died in 1931, Edwin moved to Korbel where he continued farming. He died at Yelbeni in 1941 aged 72, his family describing him as "a grand old man".  

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