Researched and Written by Cheryl Griffin.
‘Our regiment has been completely capsized.’[i] With these words, Lieutenant Fred Stebbins of Brunswick summed up the disaster that befell the 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles (5VMR) at Wilmansrust on the evening of 12 June 1901, a disaster that was to bring home the reality of the war in South Africa to those at home. For Stebbins, who was in charge of H Company, it meant the loss of nearly half the casualties that night.[ii] And for the citizens of Brunswick, that night of ‘pandemonium’,[iii] as Stebbins called it, resulted in the loss of the first Brunswick man after two years of fighting.
On the afternoon of 12 June 1901, the 350 members of the left wing of the 5VMR, among them a number of Brunswick men, had set up camp at a farm at Wilmansrust, 22 kilometres (13.7 miles) south of Middleburg in eastern Transvaal. As they were to make a surprise attack on the Boers at 3.30am the next morning and it was a bitterly cold night, the men prepared for bed early. They had had their tea and drunk their rum ration. Some were asleep, wrapped in their blankets to keep warm. Some were keeping warm and cooking food in front of the fire. Some were on picket duty. As the mail from home had just arrived, others had lit candles and were reading newspapers or letters from home.[iv]
At 7.45pm the Boers made their attack, taking the men of the 5VMR by complete surprise. They had no time to get their rifles, which were stacked in the middle of the camp, or to defend themselves. They went down ‘like leaves falling from a fruit tree in the autumn time.’[v] Trooper Wilkie G. Collins wrote home to his parents, ‘We were mown down. We could not see the enemy, whilst our camp fires afforded them a fine aim.’[vi] Fifteen minutes later the Boers were gone, leaving behind them a scene of devastation. They had swept through the camp, killing 18 men and wounding 43, many of them while they slept. They took everything they could lay their hands on: two pom pom guns, ammunition, food, saddles, clothing. They stripped the dead of their clothes and belongings and even took boots from survivors.[vii] As well as the human casualties, 116 horses were killed that night and Veterinary Lieutenant Sherlock, who had tended the wounded throughout the night after it was discovered that the doctor had been killed in the raid, shot 23 more the next morning.[viii]
When the right wing of the 5VMR arrived an hour after daybreak, having been alerted by men who had managed to escape, they found an indescribable scene. There was little they could do but tend to the wounded and bury the dead. A long trench was dug and the casualties were buried side by side, along with a Boer soldier and a native mule driver who had also been killed. Lieutenant Sherlock drew a vivid word picture of the scene: ‘No coffins, or wreaths, or pomp on the battlefield. They are rolled in their blankets, and laid side by side in one large pit, friend and foe lying together – peace at last.’[ix]
Despite the devastating events of the night, some soldiers, such as Private Richard Phillips of Brunswick, thought that the Boers had let them off as lightly as they could.[x] Private William Temple, also of Brunswick, said that once the Victorians had surrendered the Boers treated them like ‘toffs’. He claimed that the Boer General (Muller) even wished their Major ‘better luck next time’, going on to comment that ‘It has been our night tonight, perhaps it will be your day tomorrow.’[xi]
On the other hand, their commander, Major-General Beatson, was scathing in his criticism of the men of the 5VMR. He railed against them, referring to them (and all Australian soldiers) as a ‘damned fat, round-shouldered, useless crowd of wasters’ and a lot of ‘lily-livered curs.’[xii] He thought that the men should have fought back, even though eye-witness accounts make clear that there was no time to do anything and the Boers were skilled at guerrilla warfare. The men (and later others) believed that the officers were to blame: they were employing tactics unsuited to guerrilla warfare; pickets were so widely spaced that they let the Boers through; rifles were stacked in the centre of the camp and the men were left without weapons.
Two weeks later, back home in Victoria, news of that terrible night began to filter through. A list of casualties was posted at the Argus office in Melbourne and the news began to spread.[xiii] Letters from soldiers who were there began to arrive, adding details that nobody wanted to hear. The news was all the more shocking because it was unexpected. When the men had sailed for South Africa just four months earlier they believed that the heavy fighting was over and that the war would soon end. They were there, they thought, to destroy Boer resources, not to fight.[xiv] They had not taken into account the Boers’ guerrilla-style warfare, something they had never seen before.
For the people of Brunswick the news from Wilmansrust was personal. One of the dead, Jack Barnard, was a Brunswick man and another, Jack Fanning, was among the dangerously wounded. Twenty-four year old Fanning, originally from Sunbury, lived in Albert Street, Brunswick and worked as a wagon driver for milk dealer, J. Kelly. He had been shot through the hip, was hospitalised in South Africa for a year and on his return to Australia required even more medical treatment. Twenty-five year old Jack Barnard, a tram conductor, was reading a letter from home when he was killed,[xv] in all likelihood a letter from his brothers Harry and Claud with whom he lived in Cassells Street, North Brunswick. The five Barnard brothers had already suffered great loss. Their father James had died in 1879, when the oldest boy was twelve and the youngest one. Their mother Ellen died only three years later and the boys were brought up by their guardian, William Palmer, in Brunswick. They attended school in Brunswick, married in Brunswick and two, Harry and Claud, remained in the area. At the time of Jack’s death, Harry and Claud were also tramway employees.
A commemoration service for Jack Barnard was held at Christ Church, Brunswick on the morning of Sunday 30 June 1901. It was an occasion of some note, attended by members of parliament, the mayor and local councillors as well as many others. Three hundred employees of the Melbourne Tramways Company marched from their northern terminus down Sydney Road to the already crowded church. They were led by the Tramway Band. At the intersection with Glenlyon Road, close to the church, the choir joined the procession and sang the hymn ‘Through the night of doubt and sorrow’ as they entered the church. After the Rev J.B. Sharp’s sermon on the spirit of sacrifice, the congregation sang Kipling’s recessional hymn, ‘Lest we forget’.[xvi]
The people of Brunswick did not forget. Two months later, Harry and Claud Barnard, and a number of other tramways employees, approached the Brunswick Council, asking for a memorial to be erected in memory of Jack Barnard, the first Brunswick man to die in the South African conflict. And so began a two year campaign.
Only a few weeks earlier, the Coburg Leader had reported (incorrectly) the death of another Brunswick member of the 5VMR, Arthur Littlejohn. Littlejohn had been severely wounded at Rhenoster Kop on 7 May 1901. Back in Australia it was believed for a time that he had died of his wounds, although it was later found that he had survived and was, in fact, in hospital. He returned to Australia with the rest of the 5VMR in April 1902. The Leader, though, in reporting his death, made clear its attitude to the war and those who died in it: ‘His memory should be kept green by Brunswick people.’[xvii]
So it is not surprising that when Jack Barnard died, the citizens of Brunswick rallied. Although only thirty-five people attended that first meeting regarding a memorial, those present were soon debating the issue, most agreeing with Cr Passfield that the name of every Brunswick soldier should be recorded on the memorial, not just those who died. A memorial committee was established and subscriptions were received, including £20 from Barnard’s brothers.[xviii]
The Coburg Leader exhorted the citizens of Brunswick to be patriotic:
[This memorial] cannot fail to have the support of every right thinking and patriotic citizen .’ … ‘It is true that monuments cannot materially benefit the fallen, but they can help keep alive the sense of duty and the patriotism of a people … The blood of the fallen heroes has cemented the British Empire. At the moment when Australia, like the goddess of old, sprang from the ocean foam and startled the world sun-kissed and free, her first loving act was to help the Motherland in her struggle with a Boer conspiracy, and the love of the daughter for the Motherland has been sealed by the dying blood of her sons on many a rocky kopje and along the lonely veldt… Their sacrifice for liberty and the freedom of man has already strengthened and given a new lease of life to that Empire upon which the sun never sets.’ [xix]
Despite the Leader’s periodic criticisms of the apathy of Brunswick citizens, support for a local memorial was taken up enthusiastically. The lodges, friendly societies and athletics clubs all responded positively. The Brunswick Cycle Club and the tramway workers, among others, had representatives on the committee, for example.[xx]
However, some, like Cr David Phillips, argued that they should not try to raise the money but should wait for the Government to erect a national memorial. Others, like Cr John Fleming and Cr Phillips, pushed for all the councils within a thirty mile radius of the General Post Office to club together to erect a joint monument.
Nevertheless, most, like Cr Thomas Passfield, did not want the money they raised to go outside the district and although they had not decided on the nature of the memorial or where it was to be located and could not yet know all the names that were likely to be on the memorial, the campaign began in earnest.
The money for the memorial (they aimed to raise £250) was to come solely from public subscriptions and the friendly societies and lodges began collecting immediately. Subscription forms were sent to the various potteries and by the end of October they had collected £25 in this way. They had decided also to ask for a subscription of one penny from each child attending a Brunswick school in order to ‘identify the children with the movement.’ The head masters agreed to cooperate.[xxi]
The first big fundraiser was a concert, held at the Brunswick Town Hall, on the evening of Wednesday 20 November. The committee had issued one thousand tickets at a cost of 1/- and 2/- and sold them, for the most part, through the lodges.
It was a wet night. Nevertheless, the event began impressively, with the Brunswick State School cadets, under the command of Lieutenant Ramsay, and cadets from the West Brunswick school, parading along Sydney Road, led by the East Brunswick Brass Band. The concert was well attended and featured many well known local performers.[xxii]
By the start of December they had raised £40, £13 of which were concert profits. One tram employee alone collected an impressive £11/11/6d.[xxiii]
As they began planning the next major fundraiser, a moonlight trip on Port Phillip Bay, news arrived of three more deaths: William Healy, of the 5VMR, who died of enteric fever (typhoid) at Pretoria in August; Robert Harrison, of the 5VMR, who was killed at Vryheid in early November and Vincent Kearns, of Waldron’s Scouts, who died a week after Harrison at Kip River near Platrand. There was now even more reason to erect a local memorial.
As a prelude to the moonlight trip on the Bay, a torchlight procession was held the night before, on Thursday 23 January 1902. It was headed by the ‘Rose of Denmark’ Band (Independent Order of Rechabites) and travelled from the Moreland Tram Terminus along Sydney Road to the Town Hall where the Mayor, Cr Hamilton Smith and the local Member of Parliament, Hon. J. Hume Cook, MHR, addressed the crowd.[xxiv]
The next night nearly a thousand Brunswickers (as the local paper called them) boarded the Hygia for the eagerly awaited moonlight excursion. The Tramway Company’s Band played for the crowd on the deck and other musical performers entertained those in the saloon. Elsewhere a Scottish piper played ‘airs from the land of heather.’ Deemed an outstanding success, the trip raised £32 for the fund.[xxv]
The fundraising continued. In late February, making the most of the good weather, the Brunswick Orchestra held a concert at the Town Hall and raised £5. Hoffman’s employees raised over £1 at their annual picnic and individual donations continued to arrive.[xxvi]
Now that they had collected a substantial amount of money, the committee decided to invite designs for the monument.[xxvii] The memorial was moving closer to reality.
In the meantime, the committee’s fundraising efforts continued. The moonlight cruise around the Bay had been a great success, but they were not so fortunate with the next major fundraiser, the Brunswick War Memorial Carnival and Sports Meeting. Bad weather forced its postponement in early March. It was eventually held on the afternoon of Saturday 26 April 1902, at the Recreation Reserve in Park Street west. Described by the local paper as an ‘attractive military friendly societies’ carnival and Highland Sports meeting’, it was preceded by a ‘monster procession’ through the streets, beginning at the corner of Moreland and Sydney Roads.[xxviii]
The weather was so poor that by midday the committee considered cancelling the street march, but at just after two o’clock the procession set off, led by two hundred junior cadets. The cadets were followed by the junior cadets’ bugle band and forty members of the Old Colonists. Then came the Post Office Brass Band, the Druids Lodge, Oddfellows and members of the Loyal Orange Lodge, who made up half of the procession. Attractions included footraces, cycling races, highland flings, sailors hornpipes. Despite the weather and the delayed start, they managed to raise £35 towards the Memorial Fund that day.[xxix]
In May 1902, nearly a year after it began, the focus of the campaign broadened. For the first time it was suggested that instead of a ‘pillar in some street of the town’, the money raised should go towards the purchase of a recreation reserve. After all, the recreation reserve used by Brunswick was outside of the city. (It was in Park Street west, so in Parkville?) The Coburg Leader took up the cause. A reserve would make a popular memorial where the young of Brunswick could ‘play and breathe the fresh air of liberty’, it said. A ‘graceful drinking fountain, with appropriate inscriptions’ should be erected in the reserve so that those who drank from it would always remember the men who had lost their lives in South Africa. Not only would this help raise more money for a memorial, it was suggested, but it would mean that Brunswick men need not leave the municipality to go to the football or cricket. So struck with the idea was the Town Clerk, C.E. Ogden, that he offered to contribute £25 to the fund if this option was adopted. In such a place, he felt, ‘young children could exercise their limbs and make future soldiers for the Empire.’[xxx]
While the debate about the nature of the memorial continued, a call was put out for the names and addresses of those who had fought in South Africa. No one was to be overlooked or forgotten. The name of every Brunswick soldier was to be recorded on the memorial.[xxxi] In late June, after the war had ended, designs for the memorial were submitted to the committee, but a decision was not made, perhaps because of the recreation reserve debate.[xxxii]
And, of course, the relentless fund-raising effort continued, despite the end of the war. A Scottish concert was held at the Town Hall in May. The Tramway Employees held a grand theatre party. Early November 1902 a festival was held at the Recreation Reserve in Park Street, two of the main events being a ‘Hindoo Chinese’ football match and a display by Australian stockmen.[xxxiii] A second moonlight excursion on the Bay was organised. It was well attended (450 participants, mostly young people) and the weather was ‘delightfully fine’ but at the end of the day, the event lost money.[xxxiv]
At the end of January 1903, the Mayor put out an appeal for more funds. They had received £150 but needed £225, so somehow the citizens of Brunswick would have to find another £70. Subscription lists were handed out, the Ladies Committee organised concerts, dances, social evenings. Eventually, they found the money they needed.[xxxv]
By now it was clear that any idea of purchasing a recreation reserve as a Boer War Memorial had been abandoned. There was to be a conventional monument, but the next hurdle to be faced was its location. The first site chosen by the committee was in front of the Brunswick Court House, close to the gaol yard, but this choice was deemed unsatisfactory because it blocked entry to the Court House. It would encroach two feet onto Government land and two feet onto the pavement and would be placed nine feet from the front door of the Court House.[xxxvi] Alternative locations were mooted, Cr Phillips suggesting the monument be erected between Brunswick Road and Park Street, on open land where they could also erect a ‘nice rockery worthy of the men who had fallen’.[xxxvii] In a letter to the editor, ‘No Gaol-bird Statue’ suggested that if it were placed in the court house location, or as he called it, the ‘gaol’ site, the memorial would become little more than a ‘Drunks’ Memorial. He favoured a monument located at ‘the main approach to the town – where all who enter must see – or, failing that, at the Mechanics’ Institute corner.’[xxxviii]
Throughout April, the controversy relating to the Boer War Memorial and its location continued to play out in the local press. The Memorial Committee were accused of ‘childish stubbornness’ in their desire to erect the memorial in front of the court house. If it could not be in front of the court house, they wanted to place it in the north or the south of the site.[xxxix] They caused further controversy by refusing to reveal the winning design.[xl] Nevertheless, work on the monument itself proceeded and at the 24 April meeting of the committee (it was now styled the Brunswick Citizens’ War Memorial Fund) it was reported that the contractor, a sculptor, Mr George Summers, of Carlton, had completed his work and the monument was ready to be erected. It was not until this moment that the committee began to consider the inscription and put together a final list of the soldiers whose names would appear on the monument.
Finally, in early May, a site was chosen: in front of the Town Hall. The Mayor, Cr Passfield, was firmly in favour of the Town Hall site and had already begun the process of tidying up what had essentially been a bare patch of ground, had it converted to lawn, complete with rockery and fountain.[xli] Even so, there was a further hurdle to face. When Emma Dawson had transferred the land to the Borough of Brunswick in April 1879, the conditions on which she did so stated that the site could be used for municipal chambers and offices only. If there was any deviation from that condition, Council would have to pay the Dawson family £500.[xlii] It would seem, then, that the council did not have the power to erect the monument on the land, but eventually, after long debate, the councillors decided that it was within their power and the monument was set in place on Monday 11 May under the supervision of the town surveyor.[xliii]
By this time, relations between the Mayor and the committee, particularly Cr Fleming, had become difficult. The vote in favour of the Town Hall site (13 for, 9 against) showed that many members still preferred the Court House site. As a citizens’ group, the committee wanted to maintain its independence. The people of Brunswick had raised the funds for the memorial and the people of Brunswick alone should choose its nature and location.[xliv]
Plans for the unveiling began in earnest at the start of May 1903. In the lead up to the event, a Pleasant Sunday afternoon was held at the Town Hall, not only to help raise the final £20 needed to pay for the monument, but to stir up patriotic feeling, no doubt to ensure a large turnout at the ceremony.[xlv] The Ladies Committee held a concert and dance and it was noted that amongst those attending were a number of ‘Khaki-clad warriors’.[xlvi]
Finally, at 3 pm on Saturday 30 May 1903, the day before Boer War Day (commemorating the end of hostilities), the long-awaited unveiling of the Brunswick Boer War Memorial took place with great pomp. It was a fine afternoon. Brunswick trams stopped running between 3 and 4 pm while the ceremony took place, appropriate, perhaps, as the first man killed, Jack Barnard, was a tram conductor on the Brunswick tram line. Thousands of people and members of the military lined Sydney Road, which was a-flutter with flags and bunting. The Town Hall was decorated with flags and had been transformed into a wash of red, white and blue. The 1st Battalion Infantry provided the guard of honour and marched to the front of the Town Hall accompanied by its band. A raised platform had been erected around the monument and there sat the dignitaries, including councillors, local members of parliament, members of the War Memorial Committee and prominent citizens, with a number of returned soldiers standing in front of them. Major-General Sir Edward Hutton, the commanding officer of the Australian military forces, performed the unveiling, but not before many speeches. He removed the Union Jack, which had covered the statue and read aloud the names of the four dead soldiers. The National Anthem was sung, as was a verse of the hymn the Old Hundredth (‘All people that on Earth do dwell’) and finally the bugles sounded the Last Post. [xlvii]
Although original plans were for the sculpture on the memorial to represent the first of the fallen, Jack Barnard, ‘in consideration of the great financial assistance the tramway employees [had given]’, several of the lodges objected and the decision was reconsidered.[xlviii] The chosen design represented ‘a typical khaki clad Australian soldier on duty’, the local paper claiming that ‘the sculptor seems to have happily caught the Young Australian’s expression of joyous frankness.’ Made from Sicilian marble and mounted on polished Harcourt granite, the total height of the monument is an imposing 17 feet (5.2 metres).[xlix] The soldier on the monument faced east, into the rising sun.
On the day of the ceremony, only the names of the fallen had been added to the monument, but the committee was determined, ‘when sufficient funds are available, to add the names of the … Brunswick citizen soldiers who served in the campaign.’ Even on the day of the ceremony soldiers’ names were being collected. It was not until October that all 76 names were inscribed on the monument. The cost of the lettering was one shilling per word, a considerable amount, most of which still had to be raised at the time of the unveiling.[l] Over a hundred years later, in 2010, a State government grant of $8,000 was used to restore the memorial, most of which was spent on regilding the lettering and removing carbon stains from the stonework and the soldier.[li]
It had been a difficult two years. It had been hard to maintain momentum and keep the people of Brunswick’s interest. Several fundraisers had lost money. The Mayor had come to the rescue on several occasions, but it was clear that the campaign did not have the whole-hearted support of the Brunswick public. Then, when it came time to make the big decisions, the committee found itself divided, the location of the memorial being the main sticking point. However, by October 1902, Brunswick had managed to finance and erect its Boer War Memorial.
On 22 December 1903, the Brunswick War Memorial Committee officially handed over the monument to the council. The final cost was £274, an amazing feat for a working class community like Brunswick, especially at a time when its citizens had barely recovered from the economic depression of the 1890s. The only conditions the committee placed on the handover were that the council should keep the memorial in proper repair and that no more names were to be inscribed on the memorial.[lii] This goes a long way to explaining why some Brunswick soldiers were not included on the monument.
Although the committee wanted to stipulate that the monument should remain on its original site, it was not able to do so because the land was council property. In 1926, when the Town Hall was extended and renovated, the Memorial was moved to its current location in Hooper Reserve, at the gateway to Brunswick and in the vicinity of Cr Phillips’s preferred site twenty-five years earlier. The soldier faces east still, into the rising sun.
As Tony O’Brien reminded the audience at the 2010 ceremony relating to the restoration of the memorial, Major General Hutton, who originally unveiled the memorial, is credited with proposing the ‘Rising Sun Badge’ as the insignia for the Australian Army, an Army that he had been responsible for creating out of the six colonial forces. Tony reminded the audience, too, that men such as those memorialised here ‘foreshadowed the men of the ANZAC legend and they must never be forgotten.’[liii]
In many ways the war in South Africa has been a forgotten war. Between 1899 and 1902, twenty thousand Australian men fought in South Africa and a thousand died.[liv] The campaigns and huge losses of World War One and in particular Gallipoli campaign are firmly etched into the Australian psyche. This is where, it is said, the ANZAC legend began. Yet the conflict in South Africa, which ended only a dozen years earlier, was significant in a number of ways.
The South African War was fought at a critical time in Australia’s nationhood. The first troops who left for the war from Brunswick did so as members of a colonial force, as Victorians. By 1901, those who left did so as Australians, the first soldiers to fight as Australians in a foreign land. They may still have identified themselves as Victorians, or South Australians, or Queenslanders, but they were Australians and much of the reputation of Australians as brave but reckless fighters who were disdainful of rigid discipline was born in South Africa.
In this war, too, soldiers fought a war on horseback. Those who could not ride, and ride well, had no place in this force. Australians were seen as ideally suited to this style of warfare and already the image of Australians as excellent horsemen was widespread. This is the myth of the Australian bushman as perpetuated in Banjo Paterson’s ‘Man from Snowy River’, an image even now seen as quintessentially Australian. Yet most of the Brunswick men who served in South Africa worked for the tramways or in industry. On their attestation papers they may have written that they were station hands or boundary riders, but in reality they were tramway conductors, labourers or tradesmen. A number of them had lived nowhere but Brunswick.
In the South African War new methods of fighting a war were seen, methods that did not comply with the image of the nobility of war as witnessed in the Crimea, for example. There were no heroic battles such as those recounted in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s iconic ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ and people at home did not understand and became indifferent.[lv] Soldiers quickly learned the meaning of guerrilla warfare, a style of combat that Australian troops would meet again sixty years later in the jungles of Vietnam. Lieutenant Fred Stebbins, a Brunswick man, referred to the guerrilla fighting and likened it to the tactics of Australian bushrangers. Stebbins tried to warn newcomers of what he called ‘Boer tricks’ but many ignored him, because as he said ‘facts are stranger than fiction’. Those men soon learned that they should have listened.[lvi] The Boers swept across the country undetected, making surprise attacks on camps, killing and plundering. In turn the British rounded up women and children and herded them into concentration camps, something we look back on today in horror, remembering Hitler and wondering how our side, the ‘good’ side, could be capable of such actions.
The press at home worked hard to whip up patriotic fervour and there was a belief that the men who went to South Africa did so out of loyalty to the Empire, out of a strong sense of patriotism. But, largely, this belief is a myth. The truth is more prosaic: most went for adventure, for the money or to escape the years of drought and economic depression they had just lived through.[lvii] They left behind social tensions and strikes. Already about a thousand men had emigrated to South Africa, mostly to Johannesburg, lured by the prospect of gold in the Transvaal.[lviii] These ‘uitlanders’ (foreigners) included Brunswick men Fred Stebbins and Vincent Kearns. Some, lured by the promise of a great future, remained in South Africa after the conflict ended in May 1902, including Fred Stebbins and John Fawcett of Brunswick. Most returned home eventually, broke and disillusioned. Even so, the men who went to South Africa still identified with the British Empire and many wrote to their families in Australia to say that they hoped to be able to go ‘Home’ (England) before returning to Australia.
When I look at the Brunswick Boer War Memorial today, I do so from twenty-first century eyes. I am not caught up in the sentimentality and emotion that many citizens of the times experienced. We no longer live in the Victorian era when every aspect of life oozed sentimentality, even when life was at its harshest. It is over a hundred years later. The world has been through two major world conflicts. Australia servicemen have fought and lives have been lost in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East. Looking back on the Boer War, I look back with eyes that have also looked back on these conflicts. One thing that can never change, though, is that these men who fought in South Africa, men from Brunswick and other cities and towns around Australia, left behind families and friends. They went not knowing what they would face or whether they would return, but they were willing to ‘give it a go’.
It behoves us to remember them and not ‘let [them] fade away and gradually die.’[lix]
Cheryl Griffin
February 2012
Image credits: The memorial as it stands today at Hooper Reserve; Photo of Brunswick Town Hall with Boer War Memorial at Front, circa 1910. Images of Moreland, 2147~B2_14; Boer War Memorial unveiling. 1906. Images of Moreland, 2066~U3_1_2.