Frederickton First World War Memorial Avenue Trees

This memorial Avenue is a grouping of 58 trees planted across three locations in the Frederickton area to form what is known as a Memory Drive. 26 trees are located on Ferry Road in East Frederickton and 32 are located along Great North Road and Edgar Streets in Frederickton to comemmorate the soldiers from the area who had served during the First World War. Each tree was protected by a guard rail comprising of 20 rails with wooden corner posts constructed from railway sleepers. At the time of planting in 1919, it was also planned to install copper name plates on each guard rail with the name of each soldier on it, but this never eventuated.

These trees were planted as part of a Memory Drive concept which had been agreed upon by Frederickton residents following a meeting in May 1919. Fifty trees were supplied by the government nurseries free of charge for this purpose. The tree species provided consisted primarily of camphor laurels and silky oaks but also included some buttonwoods and white cedars. The Memory Drive was designed to start at the Frederickton school corner on Great North Road and extend down to Macleay Street via Edgar Street and then onto East Frederickton. 

A tree planting ceremony was held on Wednesday 30 July 1919. The Macleay Chronicle newspaper published a list of names of the soldier commemorated by each tree as well as the names of the people who had planted the tree in their memory. Following the plantings, the ceremony moved to the Frederickton Public School where speeches were given by Committee Chairman, R.J. Jamieson, Reverend David Smith, Councillor Kissane, Mr E.C. Hollow (secretary of the local R.S.S.A.I.L.A.) and Mr Goud, Headmaster of the school. During Mr Gould’s speech he outlined the idea for monument near the school; a concept which would eventually develop into the Frederickton Cenotaph.