Career : 1913
Debut : Round 6, 1913 vs St Kilda, aged 19 years, 9 days
Carlton Player No. 278
Games : 5
Goals : 1
Last Game : Round 13, 1913 vs Collingwood, aged 19 years, 58 days
Guernsey No. 27
Height : 170 cm (5 ft. 7 in.)
Weight : 65.5 kg (10 stone, 4 lbs)
DOB : 22 May, 1894
Left; Christopher Aldane Cameron A.I.F. no.2810 59th Battalion,1915 (ancestry web site)
Born with the aristocratic moniker of Christopher Aldane Nickels Cameron at Rushworth, Victoria in 1894, Chris Cameron played five matches for the Carlton Football Club over a seven-week period in 1913. He then left Princes Park to finish his training as a school teacher, and later, courageously served his country in two world wars.
Slim-framed, but quick and elusive on the football field, Cameron came to Carlton from the Rushworth Tigers, and then Beverley, playing his debut game in a forward pocket against St Kilda at Princes Park in round 6, 1913. He and full-forward Vin Gardiner shared all of Carlton’s four goals between them that afternoon (Gardiner 3, Cameron 1) while the Blues beat the hapless Saints by 13 points.
But exactly 49 days later, Cameron voluntarily ended his VFL career after Carlton’s 23-point, home ground loss to Collingwood at Princes Park in mid-July. Sadly, Chris’s brief time with the Navy Blues had been marked throughout by uncertainty and little success. He began each of his matches in a different position, and played around the flanks from one end of the ground to the other. It was little wonder then, that he decided that life would be much more rewarding if he turned his energies toward completing his training as a school teacher.
The defining chapter of Cameron’s life began almost a year to the day after he and Carlton parted company, when Germany invaded Belgium and World War 1 began. Aged just 22, Chris enlisted for active service as soon as he was able to, and by December 1915 he was under fire on the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula. Following the Allied withdrawal from Anzac Cove, he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant, and pitched into the maelstrom of trench warfare in north-eastern France.
In July 1916, he was seriously wounded by a bullet through the thigh, and it took almost six months before he recovered enough to return to duty. Then, only ten days after picking up his rifle again, he was hit a second and third time in quick succession when a burst of machine gun fire ripped into his right arm and right knee. Those wounds were more serious than the first, and understandably ended Cameron’s war service. After extensive treatment in a British Military Hospital, he was repatriated home and honourably discharged in July, 1918.
After the war, Chris married and returned to teaching, and while he was troubled throughout the rest of his life by the lingering effects of his wounds, it didn’t stop him from volunteering again when World War II began in September, 1939. Although he was 45 years old by then, he managed to convince the authorities that his training and experience could still be useful – and he was right. Assigned to the Volunteer Defence Corps (Australia’s equivalent to England’s Home Guard) Chris soldiered on for another three years, and was eventually promoted to the rank of Captain.
Finally discharged in October 1945, he returned to the classroom for the remainder of his working life, and passed away in August 1966 at the age of 72.
The Inglewood Football Netball Club says Chris Cameron played with them in 1911.
Chris Cameron's Enlistment Document
https://discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/browse/records/188753This was the only known image of Chris Cameron from Round 13, 1913 v Collingwood at Princes Park.
Image; cropped from Table Talk photo July 24