Talk:Stratford, Queensland

Named after ...

The following addition was made to the article "The Cairns Regional Council website incorrectly attributes the suburb's name to an unidentified Australian Imperial Force veteran, 'Harry Stratford', whose alleged exploits at Gallipoli occurred several decades after the opening of Boden's Stratford Hotel and the Stratford railway siding." Having looked into this matter, I must concur that the hotel opened in "Stratford" and the Statford railway siding/station existed well before the Gallipoli landings and the name cannot be attributed to a soldier's heroism. I considered the possibility was named after a man who later became a soldier at the Gallipoli landings but, given the years between the place name being in use and the landings, the soldier would have been a boy at the time of the name being first used and it would seem unlikely to name a place after a child. Also, despite there being good WW1 service records available at the National Archives of Australia, it is unclear to me too which soldier (if any) was "Harry Stratford". So, removing this claim from the article, despite having a citation. Kerry (talk) 08:16, 1 November 2024 (UTC)