
Cummings Street in Norville was named in November 1951 in honour of Second World War Private Mark Harold Cummings who was a resident of Bundaberg.
Mark Cummings enlisted in the Australian Military Force aged 21 years old and served on the 2/12 Field Ambulance AAMC Centaur.
Bundaberg Regional Council’s Street of Remembrance program sees the badge under which local veterans served added to the signs of Bundaberg Region streets as a tribute to their service.
Mark was born 25 June 1919 at Mt Morgan, Queensland, to Harold and Gertrude Cummings.
He was a single man, working as a labourer and living with his family on Wallace Street in Bundaberg, when he enlisted for military service on 4 January 1941.
He was stationed in Darwin for a time before being attached to the Australian Army Medical Corps in December 1941.
Mark was on the 2/3rd Australian Hospital Ship Centaur when embarked from Sydney on 12 May 1943, sailing unescorted and unarmed up the east coast of Australia.
Early in the morning of 14 May, when the Centaur was around 50 miles east north-east of Brisbane, it was struck by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine and sunk.
The Centaur was carrying no patients but had 332 persons on board, of whom only 64 survived.
Private Mark Cummings was presumed drowned, killed by enemy action, aged 23 years old.
Doris Joyce Wyllie, another Bundaberg resident onboard the Centaur as a nursing sister, was also killed in the tragedy.
The location of the final resting place of the Centaur was unknown for many years after the war until the wreck was found in 2009, and it is now a protected site in memory of the 268 lives lost.
Read more about the Centaur on the Australian War Memorial website.
Private Cummings is remembered on the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Bundaberg Civic Centre Memorial Portico, AHS Centaur Memorial Gold Coast, Gympie WWII memorial, Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital Centaur Wing and Sydney Memorial (Sydney War Cemetery) Rookwood.
In 1997, amendments to the regulations governing medals meant Australian Defence Force personnel who were on board the Centaur when it was sunk were eligible to be awarded the Pacific Star.
Mark’s sister Gladys Mackey (nee Cummings) applied for his Pacific Star medal in 1997 and his mother Gertrude was given the female relative badge in June 1943.
Service Number: QX25635
Information on Private Mark Harold Cummings’ life and service is from the National Archives of Australia, Australian War Memorial, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and Virtual War Memorial Australia.
Find out more about Bundaberg Regional Council’s Streets of Remembrance program and how to nominate a street or service person here.