Time to honour them properly

With thanks to Woodend & District Heritage Society. The society meets on Wednesdays, 10am-4pm, at the old courthouse in Forest St, Woodend.

It’s June 1919. The president of the Woodend branch of the Returned Soldiers’ Association, James McDonald, is about to address a public meeting at the Mechanics Institute.

Seven months have passed since the end of World War I, and the meeting has been convened to discuss a suitable memorial to the district’s soldiers.

Support for the memorial project has been underwhelming. The number of people at the meeting is smaller than expected. And before this night, less than £40 has been donated to the memorial fund (much of it raised by the soldiers themselves).

Mr McDonald rises to speak. What he says will strike the hearts and minds of those present.

“It will be for the people of Woodend and district to say if there is going to be a memorial costing £25 or £30, which they may be ashamed of, or one that will do some honour to the ‘boys’, and credit to the public,” he says.

By the end of the meeting a further £111 had been pledged.

And so began the long journey to build what has since become Woodend’s most notable landmark – the memorial clock tower.

Designed by the architect Harold Trigg and constructed from reinforced concrete by Charles Peeler (who also built Woodend’s bandstand), the 16m tower cost more than £600.

However, in May 1927, as the building work neared completion, the memorial committee still needed £200 to pay for the clock.

Another public appeal was launched and the shire council donated £50.

Several months later, in February 1928, the clock mechanism was installed and four round holes in the tower were filled with clock faces.

By then it was more than eight years after the public meeting, but the soldiers’ memorial was finally complete.

✍️ Richard Padgett

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📘 They Went to War, by Sylvia Boxshall, describes the life of people from the Woodend district during World War I. Available from Woodend & District Heritage Society, $39.70.