Victory Memorial Gardens are located on the banks of the Wollundry Lagoon in the central business district of Wagga Wagga New South Wales, Australia. The 2.02 hectares (5.0 acres) of land were formerly the site of the Old Police Barracks and Police Paddock, where all of the police horses were kept. It became land for public recreation in February 1931. In 1925 the Wagga Wagga Municipality Council planned a tribute to those who fought and died in the First World War. The Council and Returned Sailors, Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA) originally planned a memorial hall to be added on to the council chambers but public preference was for gardens. There was a public competition for the design which was won by Thomas Kerr who was the chief landscape gardener of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. Work on the gardens started in 1928.
In the midst of the war, there had been a proposal for a Memorial Arch to honour volunteer soldiers from 1916. The proposal gained momentum when the servicemen returned after the War. A plan was finally planned to construct a monumental archway entrance to a memorial gardens in 1925. The Victory Memorial Gardens Arch was finally completed at a cost of £1700 and was officially unveiled amid great fanfare on Anzac Day 1927 by Major-General C. F. Cox.
A cenotaph had been built earlier in 1922.
In 2006 the Chisholm Fountain, previously located in the Civic Centre precinct, was restored and installed in the gardens in time for Anzac Day commemorations.
Famous quotes containing the words victory, memorial and/or gardens:
“The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance—that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Have We not made the earth as a cradle and the mountains as pegs? And We created you in pairs, and We appointed your sleep for a rest; and We appointed night for a garment, and We appointed day for a livelihood. And We have built above you seven strong ones, and We appointed a blazing lamp and have sent down out of the rain-clouds water cascading that We may bring forth thereby grain and plants, and gardens luxuriant.”
—Qur’An. “The Tiding,” 78:6-16, trans. by Arthur J. Arberry (1955)