I AM a veteran and past secretary of the Wonthaggi RSL with a passing interest in the Wonthaggi Cemetery veterans’ burials.
First, my congratulations to the family and the Phillip Island RSL sub branch for their act of “Remembrance” to mark the grave of this WWI veteran with a memorial plaque. It is very sad that the graves of many veterans remain unmarked in many cemeteries.
In the Wonthaggi Cemetery, some 80 veterans lie in unmarked graves, despite the unsuccessful efforts to date of the Wonthaggi RSL and local volunteers in Wonthaggi to try and correct this issue. It is hoped that this will change in the future with the transfer of the Wonthaggi Cemetery, operated by the BCSC to the Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust.
The article says that the cross on this grave was removed, and many graves were destroyed. It is more likely this cross was burnt along with many other timber crosses when the Borough of Wonthaggi reportedly tried many years past to burn off the long grass in the cemetery at the time.
Readers may know that the late Noelene Lyons was invited by Paul Buckley, a past CEO of The Bass Coast Shire Council, to survey the Wonthaggi Cemetery with the then “Friends of The Wonthaggi Cemetery” in order to correct its poor burial records. This survey is complete. Concurrently with that survey, a volunteer, wife of a Vietnam Veteran and daughter of a WWII veteran, past secretary of the Wonthaggi RSL and also a man killed in a stone fall at the mines, commenced a separate survey of the Wonthaggi Cemetery veteran burial with the twin aim to identify veteran graves and their condition, and produce a historical profile of each veteran. That work is now substantially complete with the recent printing of a “Directory of Veteran Graves”.
The results are impressive. Some 710 veteran burials have been identified, 80 lie in unmarked graves, 76 are veterans who were miners, there are 51 Commonwealth War graves and 15 prisoner war burials.
During this survey, I was approached as the then secretary of the Wonthaggi RSL by a Vietnam Veteran to make up grave markers for the unmarked graves. This veteran had already produced 100 small crosses with poppies, which he placed around the Wonthaggi Cemetery flagpole on ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day. I told him to proceed with this project.
Bunnings donated the timber, The Wonthaggi Wood Turners engraved the crosses, and the veteran assembled and installed them using the survey results. Given the response from the BCSC as the then Trustee of the Wonthaggi Cemetery, you would have thought we had murdered the Pope.
Demands to immediately remove the crosses, a Councillor calling them ugly, and uncomfortable Cemetery Trust meetings followed, where the Wonthaggi Volunteers reluctantly resigned, and the BCSC followed up by closing the “Friends of Wonthaggi Cemetery”, with a brief one sentence statement along the lines of “Thank you for your Service”. I wrote to the Wonthaggi Cemetery administrators, BCSC staff, asking what standards they would accept for memorial crosses. I still wait for an answer.
Today, that is the reason there are no crosses on the unmarked veteran graves in the Wonthaggi Cemetery, caused by a total lack of leadership and support, and no interest from the BCSC.
Rod Gallagher, Inverloch, Vietnam Veteran
