By VICTORIA STONE-MEADOWS
THE Mount Evelyn RSL, in conjunction with other local community groups, will be unveiling commemorative plaques at the war memorial park to replace the old avenue of honour.
Representatives from the Mount Evelyn Environment Protection Progress Association, the Mount Evelyn Township Improvement Committee, the Mount Evelyn Chamber of Commerce and the Mount Evelyn History Group have been working together for the last 18 months on this project.
The project is to replace the old avenue of honour trees that used to line Wray Crescent with plaques that detail the service history and lives of the men originally honoured on the trees.
Anthony McAleer of the Mount Evelyn RSL said all the groups agreed that they did not want to use trees to honour these servicemen.
“We got together and discussed a number of ideas and what we all agreed on was not to use trees again because trees have a potted history,” he said.
“Most of the avenues of honour that were planted after WWI are not around anymore and we didn’t want our grandchildren in 100 years to be reorganising the trees we plant.”
There will be 18 new plaques added to the war memorial park in Mount Evelyn to commemorate the original 18 names that were displayed on the trees on the original avenue of honour.
All the groups in the committee agreed the plaques should go at the war memorial park, so the servicemen will be commemorated each time there is a service at the park.
The new plaques will have more biographical detail added to them and detailed personal histories of the men so visitors to the memorial park can read them and learn about the servicemen from the local area.
One of nine projects in the area, the Mount Evelyn Avenue of honour replacement received $6450 of federal funding to pay for all the plaques from the Centenary of Anzac project applied for through MP Tony Smith’s Casey Committee.
After about six or seven months of waiting, the project was approved by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
“It’s been a long journey,” Mr McAleer said.
“It’s always good to see these projects up and running and we’ve had a good committee and we all agreed on things fairly quickly.”
“We decided it is quite important to give thanks to members of our community who fought, suffered and died for our community. It’s important to recognise these people 100 years on.”
Casey MP Tony Smith has been involved in getting this project off the ground and will be in attendance on the day.
“The Centenary of Anzac is the most important period of national commemoration in
Australia’s history,” Mr Smith said. “These grants help to ensure that with the efforts of our Casey community, we can appropriately pay tribute to the Anzacs.”
Guest speaker Dr Bart Ziino grew up in Mount Evelyn and is now a lecturer of history at Deakin University and has written numerous books on WWI.
A memorial rock with a plaque will also be unveiled that gives a history of the avenue of honour in Mount Evelyn.
The unveiling will take place from 2pm on Sunday (26 July) with a ceremony at the war memorial park in Mount Evelyn, where all are welcome to attend.
