The studio portrait of 15421 Private Selwyn Teignmouth Bishop, 16th Reinforcements, 6th Field Company shows a determined young man. The youngest of six children, of Anglican Archdeacon George Nickells Bishop and his wife, Annie Mary (nee Kelly), he enlisted on 29 February, 1916, and embarked from Sydney on board HMAT 'Ceramic' A40. his sister, Gladys Patricia, followed him on 26 December, 1916, serving as a Staff Nurse until she was discharged through ill-health on 9 August, 1918. In 1913, the family was living at 'Tudor', 74 Hotham St. East Melbourne.

Selwyn Bishop was 24 years old when he left Australia and had been working as a clerk. He had applied to enlist some time previously, but had been rejected because of his poor chest proportions  - only 31 inches in a man of 5'7".  He trained first at Seymour with the Engineers Reinforcements, and was promoted from Sapper to Lance Corporal, before being transferred for further training at Moore Park in Sydney.

He landed at Plymouth on 21 November, 1916, and was immediately transferred to the 5th London General Hospital with influenza. It must have been a bad case, because he was not discharged until three months later, on 20 February, 1917. By 4 April, he was at Perham Downs, at the No. 1 Commissary Depot, but five days later he was transferred to the 16th Field Company Engineers, then marched in to Brightlingsea, a coastal town and centre for shipbuilding, in Essex. He stayed here until October, when he left for France and, ulitmately, Belgium, where he was taken on strength with the 67th Company Engineers. 

Selwyn Bishop would have reached the front lines in time for the second battle of Passchendaele on 26 October and remained in the front line over the winter of 1917-18. In March, he was given two weeks leave and spent it in Paris, returning to his Company on 23 March. He stayed with them until 7 May, when he was taken ill to hospital in France, then transferred to Fransham Hill in Egland, with trench fever. He was invalided out, returning to Australia on HMS 'Sardinio' 19 October, 1918, just in time to celebrate the end of the war on 11 November, 1918.

Selwyn Bishop became a broker after the war. He married Caldie Katrine Jenkins, an only child, at Christ Church South Yarra on 18 January, 1926 and lived after his father - in law's death at the family home 5 Hawthorn Rd., Caulfield. He died at Burwood in 1980.