Maroon War Memorial & Memorial Enclosure is a heritage-listed memorial at Boonah - Rathdowney Road, Maroon, Scenic Rim Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed and built in 1920 by Frank Williams and Co. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
History
The Maroon War Memorial was constructed and unveiled in the grounds of the Maroon State School in 1920, to honour and memorialise the men from the Maroon district who had served in the armed forces during World War I (1914-1918).
Maroon in 1920 was a farming district in the Burnett Creek catchment, extending from approximately south of Boonah southwest to the Queensland-New South Wales border. The district was taken up for pastoral settlement in the early 1840s, when the Melcombe run was established in 1843 by WO Haly. The lease on this run changed hands a number of times in the ensuing decade, until acquired by James Carden Collins in 1853. Collins' wife changed the name of the run to Marroon (now spelt Maroon), which is derived from the indigenous name for Mt Maroon, "Murrun", which means "sand goanna". In 1864 Marroon was purchased by Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior and a substantial proportion of this land was retained by the Murray-Prior family for nearly half a century.
In the late 1880s, following the opening in 1887 of the extension of the branch railway south from Ipswich to Dugandan, south of what later became the town of Boonah, part of Maroon run was resumed and surveyed for closer agricultural settlement. As a consequence of the subsequent influx of farming families into the district, the Maroon Provisional School was established on the Maroon flats in 1891. In a farming community without a town centre, the Maroon school soon became a district focus.
In 1914 the remaining of Maroon Station was subdivided into 27 dairy farms, which then were sold at public auction.
At the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914 Maroon was a small, isolated agricultural community without an urban focus, engaged principally in dairying. Forty-two men from the 35 families resident in the district enlisted and of these, 17 made the supreme sacrifice. This represented a mortality rate for the Maroon community of approximately 40%, compared with the average nationally of 20%.
Maroon was not alone in experiencing the devastating impact of this war. Australia-wide, over 300,000 volunteers from a national population of 4 million served overseas and one fifth, approximately 60,000, made the supreme sacrifice. Virtually every community in every state was affected in some fashion by the "war of attrition" in Europe and Asia Minor.
In the aftermath of the war, and in some instances prior to the cessation of hostilities, memorials honouring those who served in the war were erected in nearly every city, town and community in Australia. They were the expression of a grateful and grieving nation. Maroon was no exception. In 1919 a local committee (composed principally of the local Maroon school committee members) was formed to raise funds by public subscription for a memorial and honour stone to express the community's gratitude to the men from the district who had served during the Great War. In September 1919 the committee requested permission from the Department of Public Instruction to erect a memorial, flagpole and honour avenue of trees within the Maroon State School grounds.
The memorial committee commissioned the Ipswich firm of F Williams & Co., sculptors and stonemasons, to design, sculpt and construct the memorial. This firm was established at Ipswich in 1901. Its founder, Frank Williams, promoted the use of local marble and became noted for his ecclesiastical marblework in the Ipswich and Darling Downs areas. In the wake of the Great War, Williams designed a significant number of war memorials in southeast Queensland, including "digger" statues at Ipswich's Western Suburbs (1917), Mount Alford (1918), Booval (1919), Bundamba (1919), Boonah (1920), Maroon (1920), Oxley (1920) and Toombul Shire (1921). Williams also designed the mausoleum and Weeping Mother Memorial at Gatton (), obelisks at Toogoolawah (1917) and West Ipswich (1917) and a stone honour board at Colinton (1918).
The design for the Maroon War Memorial consisted of a "digger" statue atop a tall column, which in turn rested on a substantial pedestal and plinth. The whole was executed in sandstone, with Queensland marble inscription panels, and stood in height. The cost of the monument () plus foundations and extras, totalled . A surrounding timber fence was constructed by voluntary labour.
