The word “cenotaph” literally means “empty tomb” and was commonly applied to war memorials.
The Cairns Cenotaph WW1 Memorial was originally erected at the intersection of Abbott and Shields Streets in 1925 as a tribute to those who gave their lives during WW1. The four faces of the plinth list those from the community who died. The monument was relocated to its current location on the Cairns Esplanade, opposite the RSL, in 1972. Here, the Digger on the top of the Cenotaph gazes out on the Coral Sea.
The Memorial panels lists 141 names of WW1 soldiers, and 2 nurses, all of whom died while serving.
The Cairns Cenotaph includes a granite, sandstone and marble World War I monument with a digger statue; an 1887 naval gun and a 1940 field gun; and a memorial garden walkway with plaques commemorating four post-WWI conflicts, the military services, and emergency service organisations.
Like all Australian towns and cities, Cairns was affected by the impact of WWI. Of the 330,770 Australians who embarked for overseas service in WWI, 58,961 died and 170,909 were wounded, went missing or became prisoners of war. This meant that around 69% of embarked personnel became casualties, or 21% of eligible Australian males. No previous or subsequent war has had such an impact on Australia in terms of loss of life; almost every community in every Australian state lost young people. Even before the end of hostilities, memorials were being erected by Australian communities to honour local people who had served and died. These memorials were a spontaneous and highly visible expression of national grief; substitute graves for the Australians whose bodies lay in battlefield cemeteries in Europe and the Middle East.
WWI memorials took a variety of forms in Australia, including honour boards, stone monuments, tree-lined memorial avenues, memorial parks, and structures such as gates, halls and clocks. In Queensland the digger (soldier) statue was the most popular choice of monument, while the obelisk predominated in southern states.
In Queensland, 61 “digger” statutes were erected to commemorate WWI, and 59 survive today. Monumental masons Melrose & Fenwick, of Townsville, with a branch Cairns, supplied the digger statue at Cairns in 1926.
The Cairns soldier statue stands “at ease”, as do about half of Queensland’s statues. The remainder stand in an attitude of mourning – “Rest on arms reverse”. All the statues supplied by Melrose & Fenwick stand “reverse arms” except for the Cairns statue.
The movement to build a war memorial in Cairns started as early as October 1916, when a collection was taken to form a fund for a permanent memorial, but no further action took place for some years. In early 1919 fundraising began for rest homes for returned men across Queensland, with the proceeds to be divided amongst eight districts, including Cairns. Later that year the Mayor of Cairns, RCF Gelling, discussed possible memorial forms and locations, but it wasn’t until May 1922 a Cairns Soldiers’ War Memorial Committee was formed to raise funds for a memorial to those soldiers of the district who had died. Subscription lists were issued and collectors were appointed for different areas of Cairns.
The Cairns Post regularly publicised a running total of donations from June 1922, but progress was slow, and in September of that year a citizen complained in the Cairns Post that members of the Memorial Committee were “waiting for another war, so that the one memorial will do for the fallen in both wars”. On ANZAC Day 1923 a procession took place from the military drill hall on Lake Street to ANZAC Park, where wreaths were laid on a temporary platform, and Digger Brown, the veteran presiding at the platform, stated it was a disgrace that a town of 8000 people could not raise money for a memorial.
Part of the reason for a delay in erecting a Cairns war memorial was disagreement over its form.
The argument over whether a war memorial should simply be a monument, or have a utilitarian function, was repeated all over Australia.
In November 1923 a Cairns Post article noted that the city could only erect a memorial which it could afford, and added the project was more likely to get local government subsidies, and public support, if the memorial had public utility – such as a city clock.
After wrangling within the War Memorial Committee in early 1924, at a public meeting of subscribers in July 1924 voted for a public clock, on a column (the final form was an obelisk rather than a column).
The foundation stone was laid by Mayor AJ Draper on 4 January 1925. It was anticipated that the memorial, of blue granite and freestone, would be unveiled on ANZAC Day 1925, but delays occurred over the design of the clock to surmount the obelisk, and no tenders were received until mid-1925.
The monument was finally unveiled by Mayor Draper in front of a crowd of 3000 citizens. The eventual cost of the monument and clock, 2074 pounds, was met by last minute fundraising by Scouts and Girl Guides, plus an anonymous donation of 66 pounds, allowing it to be unveiled debt-free.
The Cairns monument is the most expensive soldier statue memorial in Queensland, probably due to the extra cost of the clock function.
As Cairns grew and motor traffic volumes increased, the monument at the intersection of Shields and Abbott Street became a traffic hazard. It was relocated in 1972 to its current location opposite the RSL.
By 1972 the clocks had been removed. The four clocks had not worked accurately since mains power was installed. They have now been replaced with painted replicas, set to the time of the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli, 4:28 am on the morning of 25 April 1915.
The significance of our war memorials
War memorials resulted from a ground swell of community sentiment. Until the Vietnam War, the remoteness of conflict locations prevented the return of soldiers’ remains to their homeland. Early war memorials tended to be sited in cemeteries. However as the mass casualties of the First World War affected almost every family, communal memorials in prominent public places were established as a tangible symbol of national mourning. These war memorials also symbolised the growing sense of nationhood for the young Australia.
First World War memorials tend to be monumental and often remain as the principal memorial for today’s communities. These memorials often record those that served as well as the names of the fallen. Of the 324,000 Australians that served overseas in this war, 60,000 died. This disproportionate number of deaths was greatly felt in what were still new communities. They have developed iconic status as part of the town’s or locality’s heritage.
The Virtual war memorial site lists all 141 names, with details of most. .https://vwma.org.au/explore/memorials/2278
Sources:
Cairns Family History https://cdfhs.org/indexes
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairns_War_Memorial
Queensland War memorials Register https://www.qldwarmemorials.com.au/
Virtual War memorial https://vwma.org.au/explore/memorials/2278
