Anzac Memorial Turned 90
THE Fallen Sailors and Soldiers Memorial foundation stone was laid on Anzac Day 1928. The completed monument was unveiled on Armistice Day the same year.
Formerly ‘Obelisk Hill’, the site overlooking Fremantle harbour was vested as a park on July 20, 1904. Generations have gathered here ever since.
The State heritage-listed treasure covers 4.45ha and is listed on the City of Fremantle’s municipal heritage inventory. In 2016, the City and descendants of the Whadjuk people of the Swan River region identified three sites of significance to Indigenous Australians – Cantonment Hill (‘Dwerda Weearinnup’), Rocky Bay (‘Waugul Cave’) and Swan River (‘Derbal Yirragan’).
The earliest recorded European structure at Monument Hill was an obelisk erected as a trig point similar to ones used for navigation and survey purposes at Buckland Hill and Naval Base.
Post Office records indicate the site had become known as ‘Monument Hill’ by as early as 1897, though a 1925 letter to the Fremantle Harbour Trust refers to the site as, ‘Church Hill’.
Today, the reserve is Crown land, the majority vested in the City for, ’Contemplation of Memorials, Look-out, Landscape and the Community’.
Interestingly, small portions of Bateman Street and the intersection of Swanbourne Street and High streets were, and still are, vested as a road reserve.
On April 25, 1929, Fremantle hosted its first Anzac Day service since the unveiling of the Fallen Sailors and Soldiers Memorial on Remembrance or Armistice Day the previous year.
“Solemn and impressive, the service was held yesterday afternoon in the shadow of the memorial to fallen sailors and soldiers on Monument Hill, Fremantle. A large crowd, including detachments of the Royal Australian Naval Reserve, Royal Australian Artillery and Australian Garrison Artillery, Girl Guides, and Boys’ Brigade, who marched in procession from the Fremantle Town Hall.”
Monument Hill’s central sandstone pillar and plaques pay homage to the war dead, including the names of 849 Fremantle ‘boys’ killed in WW1. Their names, which were inscribed on Monument Hill at the start of the Anzac centenary in 2015, were to be included in 1928, but there was no room after the original design was scaled back to its current size.
Details of Fremantle’s sacred war memorial are available in the Easter issue of Freo StreetWise Magazine and ‘Monument Hill – 1928-2018’, which was published by StreetWise Media in the lead up to Remembrance Day 2018 (90th anniversary of its unveiling), and again on Anzac Day 2019.
Copies of the commemorative booklet supported by sponsors and the City of Fremantle which paid for printing and provided historical images raised hundreds of dollars in donations to Legacy WA.
The Kings Park war memorial commemorates its 90th anniversary on November 24, 2019.
