Honouring WW1 men in Ballarat

Welcoming back their surviving sons and brothers to Ballarat

1919, Victorian Collections.

Because dead soldiers were not repatriated to Australia from Europe during or after the Great War, the dead were had to be buried thousands of ks from their homes. The planting of a tree was a replace­ment funeral for families who could not provide a funeral for their own dead soldier-sons.

Most of the cost for the plantings was met by the Lucas Girls, raised through the sale of dolls made from scraps salvaged at the Lucas Clothing Factory. The first planting of 1000 trees occ­urred in June 1917. Although winter may have been more conducive to an air of suff­ering rather than celebration, the Lucas Girls bravely planted the trees firmly in the ground. And for Christmas 1917, laurel wreaths were place by the Lucas Girls on every tree guard in the Avenue.

Memorial Rotunda, Ballarat

1938

The Ballarat Avenue of Honour  became famous for being the first organised avenue of trees in Australia. This Avenue of Honour was a symbol that would last for­ever, so descendants would know how the war-generation made history for Australia and the British Empire. The creation of the movement to build the avenue was attributed to Tilly Thompson, director of the Lucas Clothing Factory. The tree planting was undertaken by 500 employees of that company, with the support of local farmers.

Each tree represented a Ballarat servicemen who enlisted in WW1, and included a bronze plate with the name, battalion and tree number. The names of those brave men and women who served were derived from enlistment records and called for by the Avenue's comm­ittee through a series of news­paper articles. This included the updating of the individual plaques to reflect if a service man or woman had been killed.

Victorian Premier Sir Alexander Peacock wanted more trees to be planted in the near future, and said he would be pleased to attend and deliver a speech. This line of trees was then extended by a planting in Aug 1917 - with another 801 trees rep­resenting soldiers and 47 for nurses. The Avenue of Honour move­ment was supported by a huge crowd turned out by rail, motor-car, horse buggy and on foot. The Avenue was again extended in Sept 1917; 73 trees were planted commemorating the service of young district men in all branches of the land forces and 31 recognising the service of young locals in the Navy. Each tree was surrounded by a protective timber barrier - to which the plates bearing the soldiers name, rank and unit was affixed.

Locally, the efforts of the Lucas Clothing Co. became an example for sporting bodies etc. The Ballarat Orphanage held an Arbour Day in Aug 1917 to plant their own avenue marking the contributions of past inmates to WW1. And the Orphanage planted an avenue of 1200+ pine trees dedicated to the organisat­ion's past officials and subscribers. On the main Ballarat-Beaufort Road, the Rip­on Shire Soldiers' Avenue of Honour was opened in an Aug 1918 ceremony. In Seb­as­top­ol the Birdwood Ave was created and dedicated to the local young servicemen who served in WW1.

In June 1918 another planting saw 500 more trees planted. The sixth plant­ing occurred in Aug 1918 - with another 530 trees added, bringing the total to 3300 trees. A special train ran from Ballarat, carrying a thousand people to the event and a carnivalesque atmosphere was created by the Red Cross ladies.

As a fundraising project for the maintenance of the Ball­ar­at Avenue of Honour the Lucas Clothing Factory commissioned special edition booklets marking Lucas' Appreciation of Brave Men. The booklets contained lists denoting: tree number; name of the soldier assoc­iated with the tree; their date of enlistment; and name of the tree-planter.

With the cessation of hostilities in Nov 1918, the Khaki Girls (workers from the Common­wealth Clothing Factory) and the Lucas Girls raised £2600 for the building of the 18 metres-tall and 20 metres-wide Victory Arch at the Avenue’s Entran­ce. By Aug 1919, 3771 trees extended 22km along both sides of the Western Highway from Ballarat to Burrumbeet.

General Sir William Birdwood laid the stone for the Victory Arch in Feb 1920 and presented decorations to returned service ­men. That June, a dense crowd wat­ched as the Arch was off­icially opened by the visiting Prince of Wales - the 600 Lucas Girls in pride of place on special tiers beside the Arch. The Governor-General Sir Henry Forster travelled around Australia dedicating war memorials, including Ballarat in Nov 1921.

Victory Arch, 1936 

opening onto the Avenue of Honour

But the memorial effort went on for far longer than I had known.  Lucas and Co. and their employees continued to maintain the avenue with community support until 1931, when a committee was formed to take care of future maintenance. In 1934 the orig­in­al Ballarat Avenue of Honour name plates fixed to the tree guards were replaced with permanent bronze name plaques. Manufactured by Mann Bros Ballarat, the plaques were hand cast in gun-metal and bolted in concrete footings at the base of each tree.  

In 1936 a Memorial Cairn and a Cross of Remembrance were erected. In 1938 a Memorial Rotunda was built alongside the Arch of Victory, originally containing a Book of Remembrance with the name of every person with a tree. The Ballarat Cenotaph was erected in memory of those who died in both world wars, unveiled by Governor Sir Dallas Brooks in Nov 1949 in front of a crowd of c3500 people.

Ballarat Cenotaph, 1949

built to commemorate the dead from both world wars

Much later they included a memorial wall, with names and tree num­bers inscrib­ed, that was opened by WW2 hero Sir Edward Weary Dunlop in 1993. In 2011, the Governor-General Quentin Bryce attended the Ballarat Arch’s re-opening after restoration works.