Wattle Day League
| Type of organisation: | Community Service
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On 1 September 1910, the first Wattle Day was celebrated in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. The aim of the League was to have the wattle accepted throughout Australia as the nation’s native flower and to be viewed as a symbol of ‘home, country, kindred, sunshine and love - every instinct that the heart most deeply enshrines’. (Sydney Morning Herald, September 1, 1910)
After World War I, the Wattle Day League established a wattle Memorial Grove to fallen soldiers within the grounds of Gawler Oval. When the trees failed to thrive, the Grove was moved to the old cemetery. As the Wattle Day League went into decline, the garden began to revert to wilderness until the RSL assumed responsibility for maintenance. A boxthorn hedge which had been planted on the boundaries of the cemetery in 1892, was removed from two sides. A cyclone fence was erected, neglected tombstones were recovered and repaired and placed in a row in the remaining recognisable portion of the (Pioneer Park) Cemetery.
This information was extracted from Gawler's Cemeteries. Please click here to read reference to Wattle Day League on page 4 in Gawler's Cemeteries, researched by Anne Richards.
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