Feature - LEST WE FORGET

At 11am on November 11, 1918, after more than four years of continuous warfare, the guns on the Western Front fell silent. The allied armies had managed to drive the German invaders back, having inflicted heavy defeats upon them over the preceding four months. 

The Germans called for an armistice in November to secure a peace settlement, and they accepted allied terms that amounted to unconditional surrender. 

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month has become a day to remember all those who served and all those who sacrificed in wars and conflicts since.

It is marked by a minute’s silence in solemn ceremonies in towns and cities across Queensland.

Monuments, memorials, honour boards, and gates honouring those who fought, can be found across the Sunshine Coast, as places to mark Remembrance Day.Six trees were planted in Montville by the children from Montville State School in 1923, each bearing a plaque naming one of six soldiers lost during WWI. 

Marble plaques mounted on the front pillars of Montville Memorial Gates record the names of members of the Montville district who enlisted during World War 1, those who fell and those who were not accepted for service.

Eumundi and Beerburrum also have similar tree-lined avenues, and Eumundi Memorial School of Arts has an honour board from 1917.Maleny has the Soldiers Memorial Hospital built from timber used in the old Beerburrum Soldier Settlement Hospital and, just past Landsborough on the way to Maleny, the Landsborough Peace Memorial gates can be seen.

The land for Landsborough Peace Memorial Park was donated by Arthur Bennett in 1919 and in 1922 the site was officially opened as the Landsborough Peace Memorial Park.

Gheerulla has an ornamentally designed honour board made of hammered copper with a silky oak background, which was erected by the residents of the Kenilworth District.

Yandina is home to the memorial for 2/14th Australian Infantry Battalion Memorial, which features an inscribed commemorative plaque, erected in 1995 to honour the Battalion members who were killed in action in World War II.

In Nambour, a cenotaph memorial was erected in Coronation Avenue in 1927 and while it was being built the names of all who had enlisted from the Maroochy Shire were recorded on parchment, then placed in a sealed cylinder inside the Obelisk, behind an inscribed marble slab. A second slab was added later, in memory of those who fought in WWII.

Remembering memorials and what they depict provides the Sunshine Coast community with a cultural understanding in a familiar landscape and identifies what our early communities experienced and endured.

Local RSL Services on November 11 can be found in Beerwah, Nambour, Maleny, Mapleton, Palmwoods, Yandina-Eumundi, Kenilworth, Woodford and Glasshouse.  

For more details please contact your local RSL branch, or visit the RSL Australia website on rslaustralia.org/remembrance-day.