Charlie Frazer

Frazer was born on 2 January 1880 at Pelluebla, a rural locality south of Yarrawonga, Victoria. He was named after "Bonnie Prince Charlie", Charles Edward Stuart.[1] He was the youngest of nine children born to Susannah Atkinson and James Frazer. He had three older brothers and four older sisters, with another sister dying as an infant. His mother was born in Melbourne, while his father was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and arrived in Australia in 1852 during the Victorian gold rush.[2]

Frazer grew up on his father's property of 248 acres (100 ha), where the family lived in wattle and daub huts.[2] He received his only formal education at the Pelluebla South State School, a one-room school that had become overcrowded due to the large size of families in the area.[1] At one stage his father received a fine for keeping the children home from school to work on the farm.[3] The property was subjected to several years of drought and locusts in the early 1890s, and the Frazers also experienced financial difficulties caused by the banking crisis of 1893. By 1895, the family was preparing to move to Mulwala, New South Wales, located opposite Yarrawonga on the other side of the Murray River.[3] Frazer was unwilling to move with them, having come to dislike the monotony of farm work. He made up his mind to move across the country to Western Australia, where gold had been found two years earlier; as a child he had been fascinated by his father's recollections of the 1850s gold rush. He arrived in Fremantle a few months after his 15th birthday, travelling via Sydney.[4]

After arriving in Western Australia, Frazer did not travel on directly to the goldfields but instead took up an apprenticeship with the Western Australian Government Railways at the Fremantle Railway Workshops.[4] He joined the Locomotive Drivers', Firemen's and Cleaners' Union, and after starting in the engine sheds progressed rapidly through the ranks, becoming a fireman after only a few months. He subsequently worked on the extension of the Eastern Goldfields Railway from Southern Cross to Kalgoorlie.[5] Frazer settled in Kalgoorlie's twin town Boulder after the line was completed.[6] He qualified as a locomotive engine driver in 1899, aged 19, and joined the Certified Engine Drivers' Union. He subsequently worked at the Hannan's Star and Boulder Perseverance mines, and occasionally as a driver on the Kalgoorlie–Boulder loop line. He invested his earnings in part-ownership of a Boulder hotel.[6]

Frazer was elected as president of his branch of his union in 1902 and secretary of the Goldfields Trades and Labor Council in 1903. In August 1904 he married Mary Kinnane.[7]

Frazer photographed by Kalgoorlie's Sarony Studio

In November 1902, Frazer was elected to Kalgoorlie Municipal Council and was elected as the member for Kalgoorlie in the federal parliament at the 1903 election, representing the Australian Labor Party. In parliament, he studied law in order to improve his leadership skills, campaigned successfully for the Labor parliamentary caucus to select the ministry when in office and for Labor to stop supporting Protectionist Party governments. Following Labor's success at the 1910 election, he served as honorary minister in the Second Fisher Ministry. In 1911, he acted as Treasurer for several months while Fisher attended the 1911 Imperial Conference and coronation of George V.[8] In October 1911 he was appointed Postmaster-General.

Frazer worked closely with Douglas Mawson to assist in the success of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Mawson needed the support of the department in respect of postal mail from Cape Denison and Macquarie Island. The expedition was the first to make provision for wireless telegraphy but the range was considered likely to fall short of the Australian mainland and Mawson sought and obtained the moving forward of the establishment of the Hobart wireless station to ensure the communications link.[9]

He was a strong supporter for a uniform stamp for all of Australia, which was still using the old colonial (now state) issues. His first issue, now known to philatelists as the Kangaroo and Map series, was designed by Blamire Young and issued in 1913[10]

Beginning in 1911, Frazer suffered from frequent bouts of ill health.[11] He caught influenza while in Perth in April 1913, and while campaigning a few weeks later suffered a relapse which developed into pneumonia. He was confined to hospital in Leonora for a week, taking another three weeks to fully recover.[12] Frazer spent the day at Flemington Racecourse on 22 November and awoke the following morning with what he believed was a slight cold. He was subsequently examined by a doctor and found to be suffering from severe pneumonia of the left lung. He was taken to a private clinic where he died on the morning of 25 November.[13] He was granted a state funeral and buried beside his mother at Melbourne General Cemetery. Andrew Fisher, George Pearce, Josiah Thomas, Joseph Cook, John Forrest, and Agar Wynne served as pall-bearers.[14]

• Murdoch, John Robert Morris (2013). "The Leader Who Never Was: The Short Life of Charlie Frazer". The Triumph & The Tragedy: A Personalised History of the Federal Labor Party 1901–1931. TB Books. pp. 187–270. ISBN 9780987123824.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)