Military Awards

The son of German immigrants, Gustav Adolph (Gus) Ebeling was born at Percydale in the Pyrenees Ranges of the central Victorian goldfields on 5 March 1871. A farmer and grazier, he served with distinction in the first contingent of the 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles in the Boer War starting as a private and ending up as a commissioned officer with the rank of Lieutenant. He returned to South Africa with the controversial second contingent of 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles which departed in February 1901.

Within a month of the break out of World War One, Gus Ebeling had enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Ebeling was the officer-in-charge of 8th Infantry Battalion, ‘F’ Company.  The 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Battalions were recruited from Victoria and formed the 2nd Brigade of the First AIF. Gus Ebeling took part in the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, as part of the second wave. During the landings, Ebeling was wounded in the head and foot as the result of a bursting shell. A few weeks later, he was promoted to Major and was awarded a Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his efforts at the first landing and the intervening months. 
As with so many others at Gallipoli, he became very ill over the summer, developing diarrhoea and dysentery and was hospitalised at Lemnos later returning to Australia early 1916. He later commanded the Bendigo and Royal Park military camps.

In March 1931, he became involved with the League of National Safety (LNS), the so-called White Army, and created havoc in Victoria's Wimmera region with bizarre rumours about an army of communists, the unemployed and Catholics marching from Melbourne to overrun the area.  Ebeling also seems to have misrepresented his rank and military awards. It was said that the eccentric Ebeling used to drive around Avoca, Victoria in an old Chevrolet Coupe and even tried to enlist for the Second World War at the age of seventy. From a man who was once honoured as a military hero through the streets of Avoca and hailed for his hybrid ‘Avoca wheat’ to a man who was remembered by some locals as an unpopular little dictator – a most ambivalent and intriguing legacy.

J.Linderski, Orbilius, Scaurus, and the Award of Corniculum, Roman Questions II, 2007, 184-215.
Corniculum as a military award: ILS 8888 turma Salluitana), Suet., De gramm. 9; Auctor de vir.ill. 72.3; Fronto 208, lines 2–3 (van den Hout 1988). The phrase corniculo merere, and cornicularii as administrative officers (Orbilius [Horatius, Sat. 1.10.1-8], M. Aemilius Scaurus). Cornicularii and canalicularii under the Empire. Ink-wells. From canalicularii to the Byzantime imperial Ink Master.