The Christmas Hills cenotaph was unveiled on 10 Dec 1921 by Captain Stanley Melbourne Bruce, who had served on the frontline at Gallipoli, and was to become Australia’s eighth Prime Minster (1923-29). The Eltham and Whittlesea Advertiser painted a vivid picture of the moving ceremony of dedication, and captured some of Bruce’s heartfelt speech, delivered from a lorry ‘kindly… lent by Mr A E Birch, and which had been draped with a Union Jack’.
From the Eltham and Whittlesea Advertiser Friday 16 December 1921 Pg 3 ‘Captain Bruce…made a speech that will live in the minds of his hearers for as long as memory lasts. It was a privilege, he said, to be asked to perform these ceremonies; for it was the only tribute we could give to those who counted life well lost if they could, by laying them down, do it for their country’s sake.’ After the unveiling of the cenotaph, and the ‘clear bugle notes’ of the Last Post had sounded ‘over gully and hill’, the reporter describes the pensive silence of the crowd. ‘We felt the bleak blankness again that had so often filled our lives during the war, when the dread cables came from over the seas.’
The text on the cenotaph reads: In memory of the men of Christmas Hill, who laid down their lives for King and Country in the Great War, 1914-1919.
This story first published on Facebook Nillumbik Shire Council Nillumbik Chronicles #13 18 March 2014 and in “Fine Spirit and Pluck: World War One Stories from Banyule, Nillumbik and Whittlesea” published by Yarra Plenty Regional Library, August 2016
Image: War Memorials in Banyule, Nillumbik and Whittlesea Collection (2017) Photographer: Kev Howlett
