On the 28th of January 1920, more than 1,000 local people assembled in Redfern Park. Attendees included legendary light horse commander Brigadier-General Charles Cox and State Premier James McGowan, who had played in the park as a child and received an enthusiastic reception from the locals when he stated that “no other service of this kind at which he had officiated, held for him the significance that this one did.” This ceremony was the opening of the Redfern Park War Memorial, which was erected to commemorate around 1,000 members of Redfern’s community who left to fight in the First World War and the more than 150 who were killed, all lying beneath foreign soil.
War memorials in Australia are expressions of the communities that created them and as such, follow no clear style. However, the Redfern memorial includes many design elements that are common to memorials nationwide that can be immediately recognised.
Made from granite, a plinth supports a tall column stretching 28 feet into the sky, mounted with a marble figure of an Australian soldier dressed and accoutred in the romantic style of Norman Lindsay’s Anzacs, complete with a German Pickelhaube helmet crushed beneath his boot. The marble soldier on top is juxtaposed by a marble sculpture of a woman at ground level, whose modest clothing matches her mournful expression. She gazes thoughtfully upon a scroll bearing the words 'none sine gloria militasts', which translates to 'none without the glory of the soldiers'. To her left and right, around the plinth, are marble panels listing the names of every son of Redfern who lost his life serving in the war.
The Redfern Park War Memorial was created to stand proudly for all time. However, for many decades, it was missing its most striking feature. A severe storm in 1975 put such strain on the central granite column that it broke and toppled. The soldier statue survived its fall, however the granite column could not be salvaged. As a result, for decades, the marble light horseman stood simply atop the plinth.
Fortunately, in 2008 approval was given for a total restoration of Redfern Park. Funds were supplied to restore the memorial by creating and installing a replacement column for the soldier to stand atop and by 2009, the memorial had been restored to its former glory.
No Redfern veteran of the First World War was alive to see the completion of the restoration. But for these memorials, originally erected as a testament to communal suffering, they have gone beyond this generation and this time in Australian history. They stand guard over communities, testifying to an exchange of service, which remains as relevant to our future as it does our past - the service of the military to Australian communities and the service of those communities in return. An important historic and social landmark, the Redfern Park War Memorial continues to symbolise a community’s ongoing commitment to remembrance.