Revisiting one of Australia’s great wartime mysteries, more about the family history of the Unknown Sailor is revealed for the first time. I told a version of this story live on Ipswich’s West Bremer Radio.

The memorial to HMAS Sydney (pictured above) is in Geraldton, Western Australia. It’s located in a magic place, overlooking the Indian Ocean directed towards where the ship was lost in mysterious circumstances eighty-four years ago.

From there you have the perfect view of the sun setting over the ocean, and what I really love is the statue of a woman cast in bronze. She’s called the Waiting Woman, looking out over the very sea in the precise direction where the Sydney went down, waiting forever for her son, brother, husband, who never came home. The direction of her gaze was adjusted a number of degrees after the wreck was located in 2008.

HMAS Sydney was lost with all 645 men north of Geraldton in 1941 after an ambush by a German raider. It remains the worst disaster in the history of the Royal Australian Navy. The only body to be recovered was washed up on Christmas Island eleven weeks after the battle in which both ships were lost. It was washed up in a life raft and the man must have died an agonising death of thirst and sunstroke. The remains became famous as the Unknown Sailor.

For eighty years the identity of that one sailor remained a mystery, until a couple of years ago through DNA technology it was revealed to be Able Seaman Thomas Welsby Clark.

Tom Clark was born in Brisbane in 1920. He went to school in Warwick, and was working with an accounting firm in Brisbane when he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy.

Tom’s family had a military and sea faring history. A great-grandfather was a ship’s captain and was lost at sea, both his grandfathers were famous yachtsmen, and an uncle was killed in action in the First World War.

One grandfather was the “Pearl King” Jim Clark. That meant when Tom was just twenty-one years old and lost his life, his personal estate was valued at £42,000 which is almost $4 million today. He was perhaps the richest acting able seaman in history.

And now more about Tom’s maternal Welsby family which was closely connected to Ipswich. Family members included Pearson Welsby Cameron who in 1917 was the mayor of Ipswich. A strange one was Mervyn Welsby in 1939 was the first ever communist party candidate in Ipswich council elections.

More mainstream was Tom’s mother Marion Welsby, and his grandfather Thomas Welsby Snr who was the famous accountant, author, politician, and sportsman. He was born and bred in Ipswich, and went to Ipswich Grammar School. He became a member of the Queensland parliament.

And for those who love their sporting history, Tom’s grandfather was the manager and half-back for Queensland in the first ever inter-colonial rugby match between Queensland and New South Wales. He became president and a life-member of the Queensland Rugby Union. Rugby’s Welsby Cup is still played for today. He was also a founder of Australian Rules Football in Queensland and was named manager of the Queensland Australian Rules “Team of the 19th Century.” His brother and Tom’s granduncle John Welsby, who was also born and bred in Ipswich of course, was named as a player in the Team of the Century.

The grandfather was one of the founders of the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, and the founding treasurer and later president of The Royal Historical Society of Queensland. A Welsby family home at New Chum is today the home of the Ipswich Historical Society.

And all those Ipswich connections of Able Seaman Thomas Welsby Clark who for 80 years was the Unknown Sailor, is why I went to Geraldton. I visited his grave at the Geraldton War Cemetery and of course the memorial to his final ship the HMAS Sydney.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
HMAS Sydney Memorial, Geraldton, 2025 – Harold Peacock 20250814_174523.
Dive 2, HMAS Sydney II, wreck B, turret showing hit beneath sighting port – Australian War Memorial P09281.173.
Thomas Welsby Clark, the Unknown Sailor who died on HMAS Sydney in 1941 – Geraldton Guardian 2022.
Pearson Welsby Cameron, mayor 1917, Ipswich – Picture Ipswich.
Waiting Woman, HMAS Sydney Memorial, Geraldton 2025, – Harold Peacock 20250814_175326.