14/08/2026
FRIDAY FLASHBACK | Stories of the Kangaroo March
Each fortnight until Remembrance Day, we’re taking a look back at the men who joined the Kangaroo March and sharing some of the stories behind the names.
We’re sharing these stories as part of our Kangaroo March Banner conservation appeal, to fund critical conservation work to this nationally significant object. Donations of all sizes can help preserve this iconic ANZAC object for generations to come.
You can donate to the appeal here: museumrivinera.com.au/kangaroo
As part of the appeal, we’re also pleased to announce that we will be hosting a special guest lecture, Remembering the ANZACs: War Memorials, Museums and What We Preserve, with Anzac Memorial Collections Officer Rebecca Jones.
Rebecca will explore how we remember those who served, what war memorials represent, the role museums play in preserving and sharing these stories and why objects like the Kangaroo March Banner are critical to this work.
📅 Sunday 27 September 2026
⏰ 10am–11.30am
📍 Museum of the Riverina – Historic Council Chambers Site
🎟️ FREE | RSVP Here: https://museumriverina.com.au/remembering
Now for the story of today's Kangaroo, Fred Farrall.
Fred Farrall featured in an article in the “Australian Women’s Weekly” of October 1973. Then 76 years old, he was a pensioner, self-declared socialist, ardent trade unionist, a radical and a rebel. On paper, he was everything the Australian government feared our young ANZACs would become upon returning home, having experienced the horrors of war.
Born at Cobram, Victoria on 17 September 1897, Frederick Theodore ‘Fred’ Farrall was the fourth of six children born to William Robert and Emma Janet Farrall (née Hamann). Like his father and older brother William, Fred was a farmer at the time of enlistment, eking out a living on the family property ‘Eureka’ at Dullah (via Ganmain).
He was barely 18 years old when he joined the Kangaroos on their snowball march from Wagga Wagga to Sydney, enlisting with his father’s permission. Alongside the other Kangaroos, Fred left Australia aboard the “Ceramic” on 14 April 1916, serving with the 2nd Reinforcements, 55th Battalion.
Fred’s time at the front was riddled with illness and injury. Soon after his arrival in France (September 1916) he was hospitalised with rheumatism and sent to England to be treated for trench foot and then Furunculosis (a painful skin condition defined by the presence of multiple recurrent boils).
In September 1917, Fred was admitted to hospital again, having received a gunshot wound to his left knee, most likely at the Battle of Polygon Wood.
Fred did not return to active service in France until 11 October 1918, shortly before Armistice. Before leaving England, he contracted mumps and suffered through scabies in early 1919.
Once back in Australia, Fred did not return to his pre-war occupation as a farmhand in Dullah.
Discharged from the AIF in January 1920, Fred settled in Sydney. Gaining employment as an upholsterer in Meadowbank, he joined the union and the Australian Labor Party, which led to him becoming a member of the Communist Party of Australia. And so began his lifelong passion with politics.
Fred was actively involved in unemployment struggles, and increasingly radicalised, became involved with the Australian branch of Friends of the Soviet Union soon after they were founded in 1930.
In 1937, Fred was detained by police for selling ‘radical’ literature in the Sydney Domain without a permit. A year later, he moved to Melbourne, where he continued to battle unemployment, as many returned soldiers did. Like many of his brothers in arms, he spent much of the Great Depression unemployed, surviving on the dole.
1944 saw him become vice-president of the Federated Clerks’ Union, after securing a job with the Commonwealth Public Service three years earlier.
However, due to his continued interest in socialism and political activities, he was sacked from the Public Service. Undeterred, Fred continued to live in adherence to his left-wing ideologies. In 1950 his home was used for binding the first copies of Frank Hardy’s historical novel “Power without Glory”, one of the most controversial books in Australian literary and political history.
After joining the Socialist Party of Australia in 1970, Fred became increasingly involved in municipal politics. From 1968, he served as a councillor with Prahran Council, and in 1973 he was elected Mayor of Prahran. In that position, he earned the sobriquet “Fish Fingers Fred”, for his refusal to attend the fortnightly Council dinners where ‘wealthy councillors’ dined on oysters and wine paid for by ‘poor pensioners’.
In later life, Fred was active in the Henry Lawson Society, the Melbourne branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, the East German Democratic Society and the St. Kilda and Prahran historical societies.
Fred died in Melbourne on 26 December 1991.
He is definitely not forgotten.
