Carved in Maple
Honouring A Son Who Served
World War I (1914–1918) stands as Australia’s most devastating conflict when it comes to loss of life and injuries. With a population of less than five million, a staggering 416,809 men signed up to fight. Sadly, over 60,000 of them never made it home, and another 156,000 were wounded, gassed, or captured. Volunteering for someone else’s war may seem strange, but in the eight years prior to 1914, more than 90% of Australia’s migrants were from the United Kingdom. The ties that bound them to their mother country were still strong.
Although authorities at recruiting depots were sometimes reluctant to enlist all eligible members of a single family, this Roll of Honour suggests that some families had more than one empty chair at the dinner table at war’s end.
Mrs Agnes Cameron (nee Kerr 1862-192) presented this Honour Roll in memory of her son, Private Leslie Alexander Cameron (1895-1918), whose death from wounds had been announced on the 399th NSW Casualty list six months earlier. The Narrabri Presbyterian Church unveiled the memorial to a full congregation on 27 November 1918. Carved from Queensland Maple, it features the Presbyterian Church emblem, the burning bush, and a Scottish thistle, referencing the Cameron’s ancestry.
Furniture maker Mr H Logan made two identical rolls, one for Narrabri and the other for the Wee Waa congregation. The rolls honour the service of forty-three men and one woman from the parish, and the timing of their completion could not have been better. Two weeks earlier, on 11 November 1918, Germany and the Allies had signed an armistice. The war was over, just in time for Christmas.
