Excellent work, Debra. Pretty much what I was thinking of doing if I'd been able to get into the Irish census web site.
John gave his age as 28 years and 4 months when he enlisted in August 1915. If this was accurate, that means he was born in the first half of 1887.
There are no births of Bennet* with mother's name either McGin* or Do*rt* in Lanarkshire in 1887 - or indeed between 1885 and 1889. Nor is there a John Bennet* in Glasgow whose mother's name is not in the index (there is one in Dalziel in 1885) so it does appear that his birth was not registered as John Bennet*.
There are no marriages or deaths of a Den*s Benn*t* in Scotland who could conceivably have been John's father, and no records of a likely marriage in Ireland.
So the question arises whether he might have been illegitimate and registered as Do*rt* or McGin* instead. Maybe John's father Denis was Denis Docherty or Denis McGinn and Bennett was his mother's surname?
There are no births of a John McGinn in Lanarkshire in 1887 with no mother's name in the births index, but there are eight John Do*rt* births of which three are in Glasgow.
Neale1961 is right - you need to look at his marriage certificate to see what it says were the names of his parents. It's indexed twice in the NSW indexes in 1952, with his wife's name shown as Charlott (not Charlotte) Hayek. Looks as if she was Charlotte Fulton, and married William Hayek in Canterbury in 1908.
Could he have been married and widowed before he married Charlotte Fulton or Hayek? And if so, might his earlier marriage certificate give more information?
