November 11th 2024 – 106 years from the signing of the Armistice
Australia was more than a little involved in World War 1. Over 421,809 Australians served in the military with 331,781 serving overseas. 60,000 Australians lost their lives and 137,000 were wounded. These were all people who chose to serve King and Country: referendums on conscription were held in 1916 and 1917; both failed.
Across Australia, as in the UK, you’ll find war memorials everywhere, most usually in the form of stone pillars or honour boards listing the names of the fallen or those who served. ANZAC Day – 25th April, the date of the first Gallipoli landing – is an important day on our Australian calendar.
On this post I’ve pulled out a few photos of mine that show some unusual war memorials.
The first two photos were taken at Lakes Entrance Avenue of Honour in Gippsland (SE Victoria) when I visited in December 2021. In 1924 twenty-six Monterey Cypress pines were planted along the Esplanade to honour local soldiers who were killed In action in WW1. By the 1990s many of these trees were dying. Six stumps were preserved, with local chainsaw artist John Brady commissioned to carve memorial images in 1998.
Twenty-two years old, English-born John Simpson Kirkpatrick was an unlikely figure to become a national hero. He enlisted in the AIF, expecting this would give him the chance to get back to England; instead, he found himself at ANZAC Cove on 25 April 1915, and was killed less than four weeks later.
Famously, Simpson used a small donkey to carry men down from the front line, often exposing himself to fire. The bravery of this “man with the donkey” soon became the most prominent symbol of Australian courage and tenacity on Gallipoli.
The second, third and fourth pictures commemorate WW1 nurses. The second is another of the Lakes Entrance carvings.
The third, taken December 2021, of one of the Devenish silos, shows a modern day combat medic and a nurse from WW1.
The fourth is of the Lemnos memorial, Albert Park, Melbourne. It was unveiled on the 8th August 2015 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Australian nurses’ arrival on Lemnos, a Greek island, on the 8th August 1915 and was the first commemorative memorial dedicated to honouring the role of Lemnos in the Gallipoli Campaign to be erected outside of Lemnos in Greece. The memorial is located near Port Melbourne from where Australia’s diggers and nurses departed during the First World War.
Almost every one of the 50,000 Australian diggers who served at Gallipoli received medical care or rest on Lemnos. Many of those who arrived ill and wounded recovered with the care of Australia’s nurses. Amongst the over 1,300 Allied service personnel buried in Lemnos’ war cemeteries are over 200 Australian and New Zealand war dead.
The Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee, who got this memorial erected, hold an annual commemorative service at the memorial to commemorate and raise awareness of the role of Lemnos in Australia’s Anzac story,
My last picture, taken last month, is of a memorial in Victory Park, Ascot Vale, Melbourne. The plaque reads:
This statue was commissioned by Women Caring for Veterans of War Inc.
In Honour of the Enduring Sacrifice made by Women who cared for Veterans of World War 1
Unveiled on 29th August 2015
We will remember them
