His acceleration was so swift that he raced from 48 to 85 in only six overs while Macartney scored three singles. He reached his century soon afterwards with a magnificent lofted drive that smashed into the pickets. Callaway’s first fifty took 67 minutes, and his second only 27 minutes.

Such rapid run-making was extraordinary, but onlookers were even more enthralled by the way he made them. This was not a display of agricultural slogging aided by plentiful luck, but a breathtaking series of glorious, authentic strokes of the highest quality.

Callaway was 125 not out at stumps, and the Governor-General was on 57. On the second day they extended their partnership to 256 – which became a longstanding record for their state against Queensland – before Macartney was caught for 103. Callaway converted his hundred into a double-century, and was eventually dismissed for 207.

The essence of his remarkable feat bears repeating: he came in aged 18 on his first-class debut with his team 3-17, and made 207 in brilliant fashion. No one had previously scored a double-century in his initial appearance in first-class cricket, and rapturous reviews trumpeted Callaway’s “world record”. A future Test champion had emerged, and pundits and fans were thrilled.

As one columnist wrote, Callaway’s “masterful and brilliant batting against Queensland caused more talk and excited more outside interest than anything that has happened in cricket for some time”.

The Callaways’ move to Sydney had turned out wonderfully, even better than they could have dared to hope. However, the situation changed when casualties at Gallipoli kept rising, and in response, the NSW Cricket Association unilaterally cancelled first-class cricket. Its Victorian equivalent, taken aback, proposed that Sheffield Shield matches could continue as patriotic fundraisers, but the NSW authorities were adamant. Cricketers should be in khaki, they insisted, not playing cricket.

Callaway, now deprived of his cherished goal of seeing how far his talent could take him, felt under relentless pressure. It was repeatedly emphasised in a variety of implicit and explicit ways that enlisting was the right and manly thing to do. “What on earth are you doing, how can you go on playing cricket while others are dying?” was the kind of sentiment often heard.

Soon after the 1915-16 season ended, with the NSW association maintaining its inflexible obduracy, Norman Callaway enlisted.

He had just turned 20, so he needed parental consent to volunteer, but he claimed he was 21 (that is, not under-age), which indicates that his parents presumably disapproved of his enlistment.

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Concern was publicly expressed that a precious talent was being risked, but Callaway left Sydney aboard a troopship in October 1916 with a batch of 19th Battalion reinforcements. He arrived in England, and then transferred to France, during the most severe northern winter for decades.

Conditions at the Western Front were diabolical. Private Callaway felt frozen, sodden, hungry, weary, filthy and itchy (with lice) while concurrently hoping to avoid the enemy missiles, large and small, landing in his vicinity. He was a long way from sunny Sydney and the heat of Hay.

The AIF was involved in two costly battles at Bullecourt in 1917. Callaway’s battalion took part in the second one, on May 3. He advanced with his unit until there was a pause, whereupon he halted in a shell-hole.

It was there, 107 years ago this month, he was killed by shrapnel that sliced part of his head away – an anonymous death, like thousands of others, in one of the ghastly Western Front battles that inflicted misery on so many Australian families.

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His parents and sister never recovered. But his death had wider repercussions because so many cricket pundits and fans knew he had the makings of a future Test champion. Dismay was widespread.

Callaway retains a unique place in cricket’s international heritage. While other batters have scored a double-century on their first-class debut since he accomplished the feat, no one else has exceeded 200 in their only innings at that level, and no one has come close to his career average of 207.

His admirers remained convinced of his illustrious lost destiny. Claude Corbett, a renowned sporting columnist, insisted in 1935 that the “brilliant” Callaway was “a glorious batsman and would have been a champion”.

Today, however, Norman Callaway is long forgotten. He should be better remembered.

Ross McMullin’s latest book Life So Full of Promise: Further Biographies of Australia’s Lost Generation, which includes the story of Norman Callaway, was recently awarded The Age Book of the Year Award (non-fiction).