Assistant Commissary General Lieutenant Colonel Julien Thomas Blanchard 1844-1913

Born in Sydney, he was commissioned in the NSW militia in 1862. He joined the colony’s Commissariat running Goat Island Magazine, appointed Assistant Ordnance Storekeeper and Barracks Master in 1871 and Ordnance Storekeeper and Barracks Master in 1876.

He joined the NSW Sudan Contingent in 1885 serving on the Headquarters as Commissariat Officer and Paymaster, being commissioned for the occasion from the NSW Ordnance Department, and after returning became an Assistant Commissary General in that Department. The Commissariat tradition was strong in both NSW and Victoria, both of which carried it through to their own ongoing stores organisations, which was less the case in the other colonies.

Blanchard was re-commissioned in 1888, holding the rank of major then lieutenant colonel in the militia, so achieving the military status for which Deputy Commissary General Allen had striven so earnestly eighty years earlier. This recommissioning as Assistant Commissary General was to give some military appearance to the Colony's Commissariat and a placebo for the deferment of a military organisation; it lasted three years, after which the NSW Commissariat and Transport Corps was formed.

He joined the Ordnance Store Corps when it was formed in 1895, and his military service provided a similar ongoing semblance of militarisation to the civil Ordnance Department.