Watch : Chaplain J K Miller, 7 Light Horse Regiment, AIF

Gold wrist watch with a white enamelled face bearing black numerals. The number 12 is in red. A small inset dial between the 7, 6 and 5 bears a second hand. The back of the watch is engraved ' To Capt. Rev. J. Keith Miller From his Congregation Inverell 28.10.14'. The watch glass is a replacement purchased in Malta for the original that was broken off Gallipoli on the morning of 25 April 1915. The watch has a gold link ladies band that replaced the original leather strap.

James Miller was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 24 June 1870 and emigrated to Australia in October 1887. He subsequently adopted and used the middle name 'Keith'. After working in a bank he trained for the Presbyterian ministry and was ordained in 1903. He was a 44 year widower at Inverell, NSW, when he enlisted in the Chaplains Unit of the AIF, as Chaplain 4th Class, on 23 October 1914. His congregation presented Miller with this watch as a token of their appreciation on his departure. Miller was assigned to 7 Light Horse Regiment and sailed from Australia on 21 December 1914. While dressing in the dark on a troopship off Gallipoli on the morning of 25 April 1915 he broke the glass of the watch when he knocked against an upper bunk. Soon after the landing the watch was damaged by dirt. Miller was evacuated sick from Gallipoli in August 1915 and sent to Malta for hospital treatment. While there he had his watch cleaned and repaired. He was repatriated to Australia and discharged on 6 January 1916. He married a widow, Blanche Gordon, on his return and the first of his five children, Joan, was born at the end of the year. Miller served briefly with the Chaplain's Department in 1919, when he was sent to accompany troopships bringing soldiers back to Australia. In the 1930s Joan left school to become a junior teacher. In need of a watch, her father replaced the strap on his Gallipoli watch with one suitable for a woman and presented it to her. Keith Miller served as a minister in Sydney, Wellington and Goulburn in NSW, and Korumburra in Gippsland, before retiring to Melbourne in 1940. He died there, on 23 December 1941.