Wauchope High School War Animals Memorial

About

This memorial is a large bushrock, with a bronze plaque attached. The plaque bears a dedication to all war animals. The stone was sourced from a local quarry. The memorial is located outside the adminstration office of Wauchope High School. It sits just inside the memorial gates, which were erected in 1960 by the Wauchope sub-Branch and Airmen's Imperial League of Australia in memory fallen comrades. The memorial was added to the school grounds in 2017, following the donation of the plaque by Sergeant Chris Stafford. An Aleppo pine was also planted in the memorial space, but it did not cope well with the climate.  Students at the school carried out a research project on the memorial. As part of their work, they collected some information from Sergeant Chris Stafford. Their findings about the symbols and images on the plaque are outlined below: The emblem on the plaque represents the Australian Defence Force. The bird in the middle is an Australian wedge-tailed eagle, representing the Royal Australian Air Force (R.A.A.F). The anchor represents the Royal Australian Navy (R.A.N) and the cross swords represents the Australian Army. The seven-pointed star is the commonwealth star, with the baton underneath. At the bottom is the up-right boomerang, representing Australia as a whole. There are also six animal heads, representing the animals that served in the Australian military. They are the horse (top left), dog (top right), camel (middle left), donkey (middle right), pigeon (bottom left) and mule (bottom right). Horses, donkeys, mules and camels carried either personnel, food, water, ammunition and/or medical supplies to the front, and wounded soldiers back. Pigeons were used to carry messages. Dogs were also used to carry messages, and acted as either a guard, attack, or search dog, originally searching for wounded soldiers on the front line during the First World War, then later for Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Access to the memorial is restricted as it is within school grounds.