David Balooda from Riga was most likely a Latvian. According to his naturalisation he came to Australia in 1907 and worked on the farms in Victoria and Queensland, but in his obituary it was mentioned that, being a Lutheran, ‘he arrived in Australia in 1902 and was a pastoral worker in South Australia until war broke out in 1914’.
In his naturalisation and in the obituary it was stated that, enlisting in the AIF in Melbourne, he sailed to Egypt with the 24th Battalion, but was later invalided back to Australia. Service records concerning his AIF service have not been found in the archives and Balooda himself later stated that all his documents were lost when his camp at Barracoola in Queensland burned down.
In 1927, by the time of his naturalisation, he worked as a coal miner in Barracoola and had a family. In 1928 he took a selection at Callide Valley where many Russian families were engaged in farming.
John Hendrickson from Riga enlisted in the AIF in South Australia and fought with the 10th Battalion in Gallipoli.
In August 1915 he fell ill with otitis and rheumatism and was invalided to Australia. Nevertheless in 1917 he enlisted once again and served at the Western Front, where he was wounded in left arm in May 1918.
After the war, he disappears from Australian archival records.
Karl Richard Ljung from Helsingfors (Helsinki) in Finland settled in South Australia before the war.
Serving with the 10th Battalion, he participated in the landing in Gallipoli and later served on the Western Front. In April 1917 he was killed in the battle for Noreuil in France.
His mother Ida was never found, but his Australian friends, the Glazbrook family from Birkenhead in Port Adelaide, commemorated his death in the local newspaper, printing his portrait. In October 2012 the Australian War Memorial dedicated one of its Last Post evening sessions to his memory.
Russian Anzacs