Artefacts serve as connection to past
THE Soldiers Memorial Hall on the corner of Ruthven and Herries Sts in Toowoomba stands as a link between the present and past military personnel who served our country, according to Toowoomba United sub-branch RSL president Lindsay Morrison.
Within its walls are stored thousands of artefacts and items donated by the region’s military families.
The artefacts, Mr Morrison said, make real the the horrors of war, and as such, need to be preserved.
“This is just a cross-section of the stuff we have got here,” Mr Morrison said, pointing to a number of items on the table in front of him.
One of the items is a black, marble mantel clock, donated by the mother of Major Dugald Maxwell Lockwood Graham back in 1923 - the year the hall was built.
“He was aged 41 on enlistment, so he was about 42 or 43 when he was killed. He was killed at Quinn’s Post at Gallipoli - that was one of the famous battle sites,” Mr Morrison explained.
“The trenches were only metres apart, and they used to throw bombs at each other homemade bombs.
“It was one of the more wellknown sites of that Battle of Gallipoli, and that’s where this Major Graham was. His mother donated that clock to us, to our sub branch, in memory of him.”
Mr Morrison said the artefacts were as relevant today as they ever have been.
“With Anzac Day every year in the last five years... (it) has always grown bigger every year and I’m sure it will this year again, and the families of all those (Toowoomba) people, lots still live in Toowoomba and there is a real interest here,” he said.