99th anniversary of the opening of the Avoca Soldiers' Memorial

 

The Avoca Soldiers' Memorial in October 2020

Ninety-nine years ago, on 18 November 1921, a large crowd gathered in the main street of the Victorian goldfields town of Avoca for the formal opening of its new band rotunda. The dedication ceremony, part of a 'Back to Avoca' festival, had as its most distinguished speaker the Nationalist Senator Harold Elliott, who as Brigadier General 'Pompey' Elliott in the recent war had many men under his command who had enlisted from Avoca and the Avoca district.

Portrait taken about 1918 of Australian Brigader-General Harold "Pompey" Elliott (1878–1931).

When it was first proposed, the Soldiers’ Memorial Band Rotunda was intended to honour the men who had enlisted from the South Riding of the Shire of Avoca and those who had enlisted from Percydale, ten miles northwest. By 1921, however, the small gold-mining settlement of Homebush, five miles northeast of Avoca, was in the last stages of economic decline. Though not part of the South Riding of the Shire of Avoca, its population had shrunk so much that the Homebush Memorial Fund  committee asked to join the Avoca Memorial Fund.

The lists of the names of soldiers to be inscribed on the Memorial appear to have been prepared in rather a rush.  In a letter published in the Avoca Mail in mid-November 1918, Councillor Paten of the Shire of Avoca asked to be given the names of soldiers who had been on active service from the South Riding of the Shire and from the Percydale portion of the North Riding. On 23 July 1921 a sub-committee of the Avoca Memorial Fund met to discuss names to be included on the memorial. A list of soldiers from Natte Yallock had been supplied by G. Cain, a farmer. Robert Robinson, who had served in the AIF, contributed a list of soldiers from Percydale. Names for Avoca and Homebush were compiled by the Anglican vicar Canon Reynolds and Mr William Helliar, a farmer from Natte Yallock.  Several of the men listed on the Homebush Honor Roll prepared in Homebush in 1917 were not included on the Avoca memorial, and some men listed on the Avoca School Honor Roll and the Percydale School Honor Board are also absent. In the end, the names of only half the men eligible to appear on the Memorial Band Rotunda were recorded there.

To be precise, only 117 of the 223 men (52%) from the district who enlisted from the specified areas and served in the War are named on the Memorial. In deriving this percentage I have counted men from Avoca, Percydale, Rathscar, Natte Yallock and Homebush. These centres were specifically intended to be included in the Memorial's catchment area. I have excluded men mentioned in the local papers who are not named on other memorials, including men reported in the Avoca Free Press and Avoca Mail as having enlisted from the district or having been recruited at Avoca. I have also excluded from my calculation men from Amphitheatre, Barkly, Bung Bong,  Moonambel and Warrenmang. Although men from these areas were mentioned in the Avoca newspapers, the Memorial was not intended to include men from these areas.  For example, Percy Tuck - the first casualty reported in the local papers - was from Warrenmang, and therefore out of area and not listed.


[Over the next few days, a series of posts will consider these honour boards and other records, comparing them to the list of names on the memorial.]