A grant application is being lodged this week that could see a rich piece of Gunnedah’s war history honoured with a memorial on the western edge of town.
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Working Anzac Committee Chair, Owen Hasler, is seeking $98,000 from the Department of Veterans Affairs to install the monument, which will be dedicated to the 1st Australian Armoured Division at the Lions rest stop on the Oxley Highway.
“The 1st Australian Armoured Division came and trained in this area in 1942-43 – they were based in and around the showground and were camped in this area where the memorial will be,” Cr Hasler said.
“The idea all commenced from a book written by local historian Cate Clark, who wrote To Fight and Do Our Best, and The Black Soil, Plains and Beyond, both about the 1st AAD.”
Ideally the group want to install an iron image of a Stuart Tank, that would be layered to give a striking three-dimensional effect that could be seen from the highway.
Recently a similar two-dimensional memorial of a soldier was installed at the nearby Alkira Aged Care Home, although the life-sized tank would be on a much grander scale, and would also include signage to tell the story of the division and their time in the region.
“The rest stop, toilet and picnic area, came from a Shenhua grant in 2015, and is the ideal location for the memorial,” Cr Hasler said.
“It will have god visibility from the road in both directions, and we would like people to be able to pull up have a look and use the facilities.
“We wanted to do something that was eye-catching, as well as being a quality recognition of those men that served here to continue the great tradition of recognition. It was fairly significant that a division such as the 1st AAD was based in a county town like Gunnedah.”
Gunnedah Shire Council approved the grant application submission at the ordinary meeting last Wednesday night, and the working group will need to submit the application by Friday.
“It is an amount of money that is usually reserved for major city memorials and projects, although we are optimistic – if you don’t ask, you will never know,” Cr Hasler said.
The idea was first raised with council in 2011, but was only recently allocated $3000 in initial funding for research, design and costing to get the project to the application stage.
“If we don’t get the full funding we might scale it back to a two-dimensional version, or look at other ways to cover the difference,” Cr Hasler said. “Some funding bodies do require dollar for dollar, so we might also have to look at council, the community or local business.”
