Douglas Grant Douglas Grant ( 1885 - 4 December 1951 ) was an Aboriginal Australian soldier , draughtsman , public servant and factory worker . During World War I he was captured by the German army and held as a prisoner of war at Wittendorf , and later at Wunsdorf , Zossen , near Berlin . Early life and career . Grant was probably born in 1885 in north Queensland near Yarrabah . In 1887 , as an orphaned infant , he was fostered by taxidermists Robert Grant and E . J . Cairn , who were in the region on a collecting expedition for the Australian Museum . The baby ' s parents were apparently killed in an undocumented skirmish . He was renamed Douglas and taken to Lithgow , New South Wales , to live with Robert Grant ' s parents . Douglas was later adopted by Robert Grant and his wife and lived with them and their son Henry at their home in Annandale , New South Wales . Grant attended public school and trained as a draughtsman , working for Mort ' s Dock & Engineering in Sydney . In 1913 he was employed as a wool classer at Belltrees , near Scone , New South Wales . World War I . Grant first joined the Australian Army at Scone on 13 January 1916 . Private Grant completed training with the 34th Battalion but was blocked from embarkation because , at that time , Aboriginal Australians could not leave the country without permission . He re - enlisted in August 1916 and was sent to France to join the 13th Battalion . On 11 April 1917 , during the First Battle of Bullecourt , Grant was wounded and captured . In the German prisoner of war camps he became an object of curiosity . German doctors , scientists and anthropologists sought to examine him . As a result he was given favor and allowed some comparative freedom within the camp . The German sculptor Rudolf Markoeser modelled Grant ' s bust in ebony . During his incarceration ( April 1917 to December 1918 ) Grant became president of the British Help Committee and organised food parcels and medical supplies for the large number of Indian prisoners held at the Halbmondlager prisoner - of - war camp for coloured soldiers , near Zossen . Grant wrote on behalf of his fellow prisoners to agencies such as the British Help Committee , the Invalid Comfort Fund for Prisoners of War , the British Red Cross and the Merchant Seaman ' s Help Society . On 22 December 1918 Grant was repatriated from Germany to England . He took the opportunity to visit his adoptive fathers ' family in Scotland . Grant was able to mimic a Scottish accent and attracted much attention in Scotland . In 1919 he sailed back to Australia on the troopship " Medic " and arrived in Sydney on 12 June . He was discharged from service on 9 July and returned to civilian life , and to his former position as a draughtsman at Mort ' s Dock . Post - War and death . Not long after returning to Sydney , Grant left Mort ' s Dock and moved to Lithgow , working as a labourer at a paper products factory and then at the Lithgow Small Arms Factory . Percy Cowan introduced Grant to Henry Lawson . The three whiled away evenings at Lawson ' s North Sydney home , with Cowan playing the Violin , Lawson writing and Douglas , an accomplished speaker , probably chatting about the War and his " imprisionment " in Berlin . In February 1929 , the Sunday Telegraph Pictorial published a commentary by Grant on a Massacre of Aborigines in Central Australia , the previous year . Grant also worked for the Australian Museum . He assisted WW Thorpe to catalogue a collection of Aboriginal Relics which had been left to the yet to be established Federal Museum ( National Museum of Australia ) . The collection was transferred to the newly built Institute of Anatomy in 1931 . In the early 1930s , after the deaths of his adoptive parents , Grant returned to Sydney and eventually became a clerk at the Callan Park Mental Asylum where he also lived . In his later years he lived at the Salvation Army ' s old men ' s quarters in their Home at Dee Why , New South Wales , then after 1950 , at La Perouse , New South Wales . It is not known if Grant associated with the Aboriginal community at La Perouse . Grant died in Prince Henry Hospital , Little Bay , on 4 December 1951 . His cause of death was a subarachnoid hemorrhage . He is buried at Botany Cemetery . He never married or had children .