Charles Bean WW1

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Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean was born in Bathurst on the 18th of November 1879 and was raised in bathurst until 1898 when he moved with his family to England. His father, Edwin Bean was the headmaster of the All Saints College in Bathurst and was also a priest. From 1889 to 1898 while living in England, Charles attended several schools including Brentwood, Clifton College and Hertford College. In 1898 he was lucky enough to win a scholarship to Oxford where he was able to study the classics, one of his loves. Charles was a conscientious student who graduated with second-class honours and continued to study law.

In 1904 Charles Bean returned to Australia, sailing into Sydney Harbour full of hope for his next adventure and was soon accepted to the New South Wales Bar. As a lawyer, Charles Bean decided to start his own practice. During the process of setting his practice up, however, he began writing articles for the ‘Evening News’, a newspaper Edited by ‘Banjo’ Paterson and worked as an assistant master at Sydney Grammar School. It was at this time that Charles Bean realised he preferred writing and teaching to law. By 1908, Charles Bean had been made a junior reporter for ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’.

After several successful articles, showing his ability to write the ‘Big Stories’ Bean was assigned as a special correspondent for the Royal Australian Navy to report on the upcoming visit of sixteen American Warships, known as the Great White Fleet. He was later to write a book about his findings which included all his own photographs, drawings and watercolours.

In mid-1914 as war quickly approached, Charles Bean was given the task of writing a daily piece on the escalating crisis in Europe. This soon lead him to becoming the offi...

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...s Bean became the founder of the Parks and Playgrounds Movement of New South Wales. He found himself going off on a tangent becoming involved in the Town Planning Association, working towards creating a city that resembled the country.

Even though Charles Bean was often described as a modest man, he would have described himself as shy and it was said that he admitted that he was ”too self conscious to mix well with the great mass of men". He even declined a knighthood on more than one occasion. It was no secret that he was held in high regard for his bravery during the war, and his commitment to his writings from the war, and was once described by his long-time assistant, Arthur Bazley, as one of the finest men he had ever known.

Charles Bean died on the 30th of August 1968 at Concord Repatriation Hospital after being admitted there in 1964 with failing health.

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