Coo-ee March plinth at Dubbo War Memorial
After attending the dawn service at Dubbo War Memorial this morning along with a record size crowd, I took the opportunity to view the new Coo-ee March plinth on the Anzac Memorial Walk at Victoria Park, just near the cenotaph.
‘The Coo-ee March’ plinth near Dubbo War Memorial (Photograph: H. Thompson 25/4/2015)
It is one of ten plinths recently erected by Dubbo City Council to commemorate different aspects of Dubbo’s involvement in the First World War, which was officially unveiled last Thursday, 23rd April 2015.
The Coo-ees had held a recruiting meeting in Dubbo, and stayed overnight at Dubbo Military Camp at Dubbo Showground on 13th October 1915.
Looking at the wreaths laid on the cenotaph I remembered reading a 1925 newspaper article in the Dubbo Liberal about the unveiling of this cenotaph and laying of the wreaths ceremony held 90 years ago today, on Anzac Day in 1925.
The wreaths included a ‘beautiful wreath nearly three foot in diameter, to the memory of the unknown soldier’, and ‘individual wreaths and those to battalions’ which ‘covered the whole of the base on one side of the monument’, and ‘above the wreaths was placed the historic flag which had been carried by “The Coo-ees” in their march from Gilgandra to Sydney’.[1]
Wreaths at Dubbo War Memorial in the same area where a flag from the Coo-ee March was displayed during the 1925 unveiling of the cenotaph (Photograph: H. Thompson, 25/4/2015)
Wilfred Ernest McDonald’s name is listed on the Dubbo War Memorial Roll of Honour, who was born in Dubbo, and had joined the Coo-ees at Wongarbon. He was killed in action in France on 3rd May 1917 and has no known grave.
‘McDONALD W E’ name on Dubbo War Memorial Roll of Honour (Photograph: H. Thompson, 25/4/2015)
[1] “Laying wreaths,” The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 28 Apr 1925, p. 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article76099146.
1915 Coo-ee March 