WR/55381 – L/Cpl Hubert Bulliard – Royal Engineers
Hubert Joseph Bulliard was born in Fribourg Switzerland in 1866 to Pierre & Marie Bulliard. He married Marie Vonlanther in Fribourg Switzerland on the 15th August 1894. They then moved to Western Australia where Lionel, Sarah, Stanley and Albert were born, though unfortunately four others died shortly after birth.
The family set up their residence in Bond Street and later Napier Street North Fremantle and Hubert secured work with the Fremantle Harbour Trust as a tug master and was a member of the Lumpers Union and United Order of Druids. The 1912 census lists his occupation as a lumper.
In 1911 Hubert was in trouble with the local law enforcement when apparently drunk, he resisted arrest and was accused of biting a policeman. In court Hubert’s only statement was ‘I don’t remember anything about it’. He was fined 14 shillings in default of 14 days in prison.
As Hubert was over fifty years of age by the time that war was declared, instead of enlisting into the Australian Imperial Force, Hubert journeyed to England where he enlisted into the Royal Engineers in Cardiff on the 25th May 1917. A portion of his service record has survived among the burnt series of papers that was recovered following the blitz in WW2. Hubert lists his occupation as a sailor and that he was 5 feet 1 and ¾ inches in height and a chest measurement of 36 inches. It was also listed that both forearms were tattooed.
He initially had Home service in England from the 25th May to the 20th July 1917. Hubert was then sent overseas. As part of the Royal Engineers he was made an Acting Corporal Reg. No. WR/553810 and was assigned to the I.W.T.R.E (Imperial Water Transport Royal Engineers) in Mesopotamia. He served here for the majority of his service and it would have been hot and tough work with the work from Basra and up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. and upon the cessation of hostilities he returned to England and was demobilized at Fovant on the Salisbury Plains on the 20th March 1919. It does appear he was kept on home service in England until his departure for Australia.
He returned to Fremantle on the 23rd July 1919 aboard the transport ship HMT Main.
Hubert Joseph Bulliard died aged 55 on the 7th January 1921 at the Military Hospital No.8 AGH in Fremantle. The official cause of death (Listed on DC) was Arteris Sclerosis Auricular Filtration Cardiac Failure.
Hubert was buried in Fremantle Cemetery and his name placed on North Fremantle War Memorial with the rest of the North Fremantle residents who died as a result of the war.
In 1922 the authorities in England sent the Bulliard family the British War Medal and Victory Medal.
Marie Bulliard died in Fremantle in 1923
His sons went on to be sport and community minded assets to the Fremantle district. In 1924 Albert was awarded the Royal Humane Society’s medal for saving a life the previous year and in 1935 Lionel Bulliard performed successful CPR on a boy who appeared to have drowned in the Swan River.
