Honor Boards

During WW1 and in the decade that followed, 'Honor Boards', also known as 'Honor Rolls',* were constructed and displayed in towns across Australia. An Honor Board was a list of the members of a local society or institution who had enlisted in the Army. Schools erected Honor Boards of ex-students who had signed on, and churches of their joined-up parishioners. Post Offices, and fire-stations, and railway employees'clubs, and other recreational, commercial, and philanthropic bodies, including local branches of State and and Federal organisations such as the Australian Natives' Association, all created and publicly displayed honor lists of their own.

It has been suggested that Honor Boards were erected by communities impatient to have their contribution to the war effort acknowledged and, more cynically, that displaying the names of those who had accepted their duty to serve was a reminder to men who had not yet enlisted.

In September 1920 the Honor Board of the Avoca branch of the Australian Natives’ Association (ANA) was unveiled. It had been made in Avoca, by Mr H.F. Classen, the town's cabinetmaker.

Unveiling the Board, Mr Moir, the Chief President of the Association, declared that the Avoca Board was typical of the many Honor Boards he had unveiled in Victoria. It was a 'splendid work of art, made from Australian timber by skilled Australian hands, and designed by a skilled brain'. He was concerned in his address to note that history was soon forgotten and many boards would be neglected, but he prophesied that 'the boards, if cared for, would be of greater value in the future, as [Australians] wanted their descendants to know who helped to make the history of this great island continent'.

 

The ANA Honor Roll now located in the Avoca RSL Hall

In October 1999, Mr Herb Robinson, an Avoca WW2 veteran, kindly arranged for me to view several of the town's Honor Boards in various churches, local halls and in the Avoca RSL. I was able to learn a little about the men whose names are recorded on Avoca's honour boards and about the Avoca associations that erected these memorials to them.

* 'Honour' is variously spelled, with and without the 'u'; as with 'Labor' in the name of the political party the British convention was not always followed.