People Australia

Charles Gaudie (1842-1922) carpenter, trade union official and Scottish nationalist 

Birth: 13 October 1842 at Montrose, Forfarshire (Angus), Scotland, son of William Gaudie (1810-1881), flax mill manager, and Margaret, née Anderson (1813-1865). Marriage: 7 April 1879 at Brisbane, Queensland, to Mary Ann Porter (c.1846-1915), born in Antrim, Ireland. They had five sons and one daughter (who died in infancy). Death: 11 October 1922 at Ascot Vale, Victoria. 

• In 1861 he was working as a railway clerk and lodging at Guthrie, Angus. Lived for 9 years in Perthshire, Scotland.
• Arrived in Victoria about 1878. Worked as a carpenter. Prominent citizen of Moonee Ponds, occasional contributor of letters to the press on public issues from overcrowding in railway carriages to whisky distillation.
• In 1891 was elected to the founding committee of the Scottish Home Rule Association, and the following year was on the platform with other members of that body now renamed as the Scottish Nationalist Association, urging home rule for Scotland.
• First secretary of the Melbourne branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, 1880; sometime president. Forty-year involvement with the union as rank and file member, official and employer. Late in life was in business as a contractor.
• Cause of death: uraemia and heart failure.
• Two sons enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I. Samuel Robert Gaudie (1886-1930) served at Gallipoli, was seriously wounded in action with the 5th Battalion in France in December 1916 and returned to Australia the following year. The other, gunner Charles Hugh Gaudie (1881-1920), returned to Australia as an invalid, and died in hospital in Victoria in January 1920.

Sources
Carpenters’ Monthly Journal, November 1922; Labor Call (Melbourne), 22 April 1909.