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Boonah War Memorial and Memorial Park is a heritage-listed memorial at Park Street, Boonah, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1920 to 1922. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. == History == The Boonah War Memorial is a major regional war memorial and was unveiled on 31 July 1920 by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) who was visiting with Mrs G A Bell of nearby Coochin Coochin Station (whose three sons served in the First World War). The marble and granite memorial was designed and executed by F Williams and Company and honours the 374 local men who served during the First World War, including the 69 dead.〔 The town of Boonah was established as support for the pastoral runs in the area, of which Coochin Coochin was the first. Prior to the establishment of the town, all stores were brought by bullock dray from Ipswich twice yearly. After the extension of the railway to Dugandan in 1887, the surrounding district was rapidly populated and the town of Boonah prospered.〔 On 19 May 1920, the foundation stone for the memorial was laid by General Sir William Birdwood. The monument was erected at a cost of £600 which was raised by public subscriptions organised by a memorial committee. The specifically designed memorial park was opened on Anzac Day in 1922 with the unveiling of the fence by war hero and politician Captain Arnold Wienholt.〔 Australia, and Queensland in particular, had few civic monuments before the First World War. The memorials erected in its wake became our first national monuments, recording the devastating impact of the war on a young nation. Australia lost 60,000 from a population of about 4 million, representing one in five of those who served. No previous or subsequent war has made such an impact on the nation.〔 Even before the end of the war, memorials became a spontaneous and highly visible expression of national grief. To those who erected them, they were as sacred as grave sites, substitute graves for the Australians whose bodies lay in battlefield cemeteries in Europe and the Middle East. British policy decreed that the Empire war dead were to be buried where they fell. The word "cenotaph", commonly applied to war memorials at the time, literally means "empty tomb".〔 Australian war memorials are distinctive in that they commemorate not only the dead. Australians were proud that their first great national army, unlike other belligerent armies, was composed entirely of volunteers, men worthy of honour whether or not they made the supreme sacrifice. Many memorials honour all who served from a locality, not just the dead, providing valuable evidence of community involvement in the war. Such evidence is not readily obtainable from military records, or from state or national listings, where names are categorised alphabetically or by military unit.〔 Australian war memorials are also valuable evidence of imperial and national loyalties, at the time, not seen as conflicting; the skills of local stonemasons, metalworkers and architects; and of popular taste. In Queensland, the soldier statue was the popular choice of memorial, whereas the obelisk predominated in the southern states, possibly a reflection of Queensland's larger working-class population and a lesser involvement of architects.〔 Many of the First World War monuments have been updated to record local involvement in later conflicts, and some have fallen victim to unsympathetic re-location and repair.〔 Although there are many different types of memorials in Queensland, the digger statue is the most common. It was the most popular choice of communities responsible for erecting the memorials, embodying the ANZAC myth and representing the qualities of the ideal Australian: loyalty, courage, youth, innocence and masculinity. The digger was a phenomenon peculiar to Queensland, perhaps due to the fact that other states had followed Britain's lead and established Advisory Boards made up of architects and artists, prior to the erection of war memorials. The digger statue was not highly regarded by artists and architects who were involved in the design of relatively few Queensland memorials.〔 Most statues were constructed by local masonry firms, although some were by artists or imported.〔 The Boonah memorial was designed and executed by well known and highly regarded Ipswich masonry firm, F Williams and Company.〔 The digger statue on the Boonah Memorial is represented in the casual stance synonymous with Williams diggers.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Boonah War Memorial」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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