Sydney--Billy Sing earned the nicknames "The Murderer" and "The Assassin" as a deadly sniper who shot more than 200 Ottoman troops during the Gallipoli campaign of World War I.
He was also part-Chinese and among thousands from non-European backgrounds, some of whom hid their identity, who joined the Australian Imperial Force to fight for their country despite being legally barred from signing up.
"He was a real Australian, an Australian at heart even though he had Chinese heritage," his great-nephew Don Smith, 62, told AFP from the small Queensland town of Clermont where Sing was born in 1886, 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) north of Sydney.
"He put his life on the line for the rest of us so that we can have the life we have today, (like) all the guys that went to war."
Under Australia's 1909 Defence Act, "those who are not substantially of European origin or descent" were blocked from active service.
But some from minority backgrounds including indigenous Australians still stepped forward, trying multiple times despite being rejected.
Of the 416,809 Australians who enlisted in WWI, more than 1,000 were Aborigines while about 400 were estimated to be of Chinese descent. The Australian War Memorial has identified about 50 indigenous people who served in Gallipoli.
"You had to enlist without saying you were of indigenous background at all otherwise you might be turned away, and some were turned away," Robin Prior of Flinders University told AFP, adding that the majority of Australians at that time were of Anglo-Celtic heritage.
"It seems extraordinary now, but that was the law."
In 1917, with recruits harder to find, military orders were relaxed so only one parent needed to be of European origin.
AFP
