Australian Military Units

Captain James Francis (Frank) Hurley, OBE

Date of birth  1885-10-15  Glebe, NSW. 
Other  1899  Began work on the docks in Sydney. 
Other  1902  Bought first camera. 
Other  1905  Began work with a Sydney postcard company. 
Other  1910  Held first exhibition of his work. 
Other  1911  Douglas Mawson invited Hurley to be the photographer for the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. 
Other  1914  He joined the Antarctic expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the British Trans-Antartic Expedition, and took the famous photographs of the destruction of the Endurance. 
Other  1914 - 1916  Was on one of his six trips to the Antarctic, the famous Shackleton expedition, when the First World War began. 
Date of honour or award  1914-06-30  Silver Polar Medal, for his work as the photographer with Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition. 
Other  1916  Returned to England. 
Date of honour or award  1916-06-30  Silver Polar Medal, for his work as the photographer with Shackleton's British Trans-Antartic Expedition. 
Date and unit at enlistment (ORs)  1917  Joined the AIF as an official Australian War Records Cinematographer and Photographer and worked in France, Belgium and Palestine. He was given the honorary rank of captain. 
Date returned to Australia  1918   
Date of honour or award  1918-05-28  Mention in Despatches. 
Date of discharge  1918-07-11  AIF appointment ended. 
Other  1919  Joined Ross Smith on the final leg of his flight from England, filming Australia from the air. 
Other  1920 - 1923  Made two long expeditions to the Torres Strait Islands and Papua and produced both a film and a book with the title Pearls and savages. 
Other  1929  Returned to the Antarctic as a photographer with the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition. 
Date of honour or award  1934-05-01  Bronze Polar Medal for his work as the photographer with the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition. 
Other  1940 - 1946  Hurley resumed war photography, with the AIF in the Middle East. 
Date of honour or award  1941-06-12  Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for his work as Official War Photographer wth the AIF. 
Other  1948  Published Shackleton's Argonauts. 
Date of death  1962-01-16  Sydney, NSW.