Marrickville War Memorial

Of Sydney’s inner suburbs, so many sons of Marrickville enlisted to fight in the First World War that Sydney’s Daily Telegraph remarked that “[the suburb] has a fine military record.” Of 43,000 residents, over 4,000 served and sadly, over 450 did not return. Such losses demanded an appropriate memorial and the community apportioned £800 to the project. 

On the 24th of May 1919, an estimated 15,000 Marrickville locals attended the unveiling of the largest war memorial in Australia at that time, proudly positioned in front of the Marrickville Town Hall. 

Standing at over 30 feet, the memorial's design exemplifies the commonplace style of a plinth bearing the community’s Roll of Honour topped with a column. The foundation and unveiling stones are also inset into the base on the east side. Both plinth and column are hewn from rough dressed Australian granite, and the names are inscribed and highlighted in gold. The memorial is set on four steps and is bordered on three sides with a brick and concrete fence. Three of the fence pillars have contemporary plaques attached, which tell the story of the history and evolution of the memorial. 

Topping the granite column, prominent local sculptor Gilbert Doble’s colossal sculpture 'Winged Victory' originally stood formidably against the sky. At 18 feet tall and weighing over 4 tonnes, the sculpture was the largest bronze pour of any type in Australia at the time. Depicting a female personification of victory, the winged woman held a sword aloft in her left hand and a laurel wreath in her right. These traditional symbols of victory were however juxtaposed by her stance. Her head was depicted sunken, and the laurel wreath was shown hanging by her side away from her focus. Rather than evoking conquest, Doble desired to show the hollowness of such costly victory. The Sydney Evening News described viewing Winged Victory from beneath as “a certain feeling of relief is felt.” 

Owing to her mass and vulnerability to lightning strikes, Victory's plinth became unstable and in the early 1960s the sculpture was removed for restoration. She was subsequently lost and then rediscovered among Council's storage in 1984, her lower half unsalvageable. The remains of the sculpture from the waist up were welded onto a new lower section and reinstalled in 1988. 

By 2009, Winged Victory was collapsing again. The sculpture had sustained too much damage and was removed and donated to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, where she was restored and now stands on display.  

The last Australian veteran of the First World War died in 2009. With the generation for whom such war memorials had been dedicated now passing, the option existed to leave the memorial’s column bare. However, the community disagreed.  

Melbourne’s Meridian Sculpture were contracted to reinterpret Winged Victory. They cast a new winged female figure, known as 'Winged Victory 2015', with the same identifiable sword and laurel wreath, however with the sword now downturned. The aim of the new sculptors was to recapture that “image of peace and sacrifice.” 

In the lead up to the 100th anniversary of Australian troops landing on Anzac Cove in 1915, the new memorial was unveiled on 19 April 2015. Once again, many thousands from the Marrickville community turned out to pay tribute to their forebears and to acknowledge the history of their iconic memorial.