Diocesan News
Across the Diocese of Ballarat, Avenues of Honour, War Memorials and Cenotaphs stand in town after town, each a tribute to service, sacrifice and courage.
The Ballarat Avenue of Honour is Australia’s longest Avenue of Honour. It spans 22 km with 3,771 trees, each planted with a plaque dedicated to the individual men and women from Ballarat who enlisted their services in World War 1.
The Warrnambool Soldier’s Memorial is a beautiful piece of monumental masonry erected at a cost of about £3500. It stands 36ft. high and consists of three Harcourt granite steps, a polished Balmoral red and grey Harcourt granite pedestal with a segmental base on top, of which stands the figure of a soldier in white marble 6ft. high, with arms at the reverse. The expression of infinite sadness on the soldier’s stern face is a fine example of the sculptor’s art.
The base of the pedestal bears the following inscription: “Hallowed to the memory of the gallant men and women who fell in the great war, 1914-1918, for the freedom of the world. Then shall they stand before the throne an exceeding great army, and in that last muster shall be found there our own beloved.”
The Swan Hill War Memorial is a white-painted concrete cenotaph on which is a white marble tablet, which includes the names of soldiers from the district who lost their lives in the First World War, down either side of which is a black marble tablet inscribed with the fallen from World War 2 and Korea.
The memorial was expanded with the WW2 names and officially unveiled by Sir Dallas Brooks on 23rd May 1958.
And so many more – https://vwma.org.au/
Wai Hong at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Mattinbgn (talk · contribs), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons