Tom Parry
SURROUNDED by the walls of the Memorial Hall on Macalister Street is a conspicuous structure known as the Sale Cenotaph.
For close to a century, this stone monument has served as a focal point for locals to honour all those who paid The Ultimate Sacrifice – on it bears the names of service personnel who died during the First and Second World Wars.
It plays an important role during Remembrance Day (November 11) and Anzac Day (today), when dozens of dignitaries and residents will surround it to pause for a minute’s silence, or lay a wreath at its base.
Its importance will be obvious to all; less so its symbolism and its history.
The cenotaph hasn’t always called the Sale Memorial Hall – which was constructed in the late 1950s – home; in fact, it was first located at the intersection of Raymond and Foster Streets.
Its position was met with some resistance from locals, as noted by the Gippsland Veterans Centre’s resident historian, Ross Jackson.
Prior to the cenotaph’s construction, the Soldiers Memorial Women’s Fund – established with the purpose of raising money for a veterans’ monument – had wanted a structure placed in a prominent public location, and believed the Raymond/Foster St intersection would be ideal.
But one member of the group objected to the idea, citing safety concerns.
“Some person had the effrontery (to say) that the cenotaph shouldn’t be put where it was originally placed because a car could run into it,” Mr Jackson said.
“The person (who) wrote that was rather forward-thinking, because they knew that the automobile was here to stay.”
At the time though, their argument was rejected, with the cenotaph being built on the intersection and unveiled to the public in June of 1924, albeit without names as had originally been planned.
This, according to Mr Jackson, was due to debate around who should be memorialised.
“There was talk of inscribing everyone who went to war, and then there was talk of, ‘Hang on, if we inscribe everyone who went to war, it’s going to cost us ex-amount of quid, and we don’t have that’,” he explained.
Eventually, it was agreed upon that only the names of fallen soldiers would be inscribed on the structure.
Photo: Tom Parry
A trawl through the archives of the Gippsland Times revealed that the cenotaph was “erected at a cost of over £900” – the equivalent of $83,000 in today’s money.
“The coping stone on the pillar supports additional tiers of fine granite, which is surmounted by the figure of a woman carved out of the best Italian marble,” the Times reported in 1924.
“In her right hand is the bronze figure of an angel holding out a laurel wreath symbolic of Victory, and in her left upraised hand she holds a palm leaf typifying Peace.”
(What the Times neglected to mention was that the granite was sourced from Harcourt in central Victoria, and the “angel” referred to is actually Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory.)
By the 1960s, an increase in motor traffic saw it necessary to relocate the cenotaph to its present site on Macalister Street.
A crane was loaned from the Air Force to help with the move, which saw the 1.5-tonne structure dismantled in segments and reassembled on April 6, 1963.
The event helped lay rest to a local legend claiming that a message was contained within the cenotaph, with the Times confidently reporting that “NO HIDDEN MESSAGE” was found.
The Sale Cenotaph has truly stood the test of time – the only alterations made have been the additional inscriptions of those killed during WW2, and the marble lady’s left arm, which broke off and was replaced in the late 1980s.
Next year marks its 100th anniversary, and plans are already underway for a stirring celebration.
