Places where you can observe Remembrance Day in South Australia

At 11 am on 11 Novem­ber 1918, the guns on the West­ern Front fell silent, bring­ing the four-year con­flict, now known as the First World War, to an end.

The day became known in Allied nations as Armistice Day and was observed each year in mem­o­ry of the fall­en, includ­ing one minute’s silence at 11 am to remem­ber all war dead.

There are many places in South Aus­tralia where you can pay your respects, includ­ing a num­ber of her­itage places.

Here are some suggestions:

Mil­i­tary places

The Tor­rens Parade Ground in Ade­laide was used as a mus­ter­ing point, enlist­ment cen­tre and parade train­ing ground dur­ing both world wars, while the Keswick Bar­racks, estab­lished in 1901, was a cen­tre of local mil­i­tary activ­i­ty. The Aus­tralian Army has a muse­um here and Build­ing 32 is heritage-listed.

The Fort Largs and Fort Glanvillebar­racks and mil­i­tary build­ings were part of the first nation­al defence net­work and were also used for train­ing and stor­age of ammu­ni­tion dur­ing the war.

Sculp­tures and monuments

War memo­ri­als recog­nise ser­vice and loss, but they also remind future gen­er­a­tions about the cost of warfare.

Most peo­ple would be famil­iar with the Nation­al War Memo­r­i­al on North Ter­race in the city. It was built in hon­our of those who served in the First World War and was unveiled in 1931. It hosts Anzac Day and Remem­brance Day for­mal­i­ties and its inner walls bear the names of South Aus­tralians who died.

But there are many impos­ing region­al memo­ri­als that cap­ture the post-armistice desire to pay trib­ute to mem­bers of local com­mu­ni­ties who served or died.

Two exam­ples are at Bur­ra and Angas­ton. The Bur­ra mon­u­ment — a tall gran­ite col­umn with a bronze stat­ue of a dig­ger hold­ing a rifle and bay­o­net — dom­i­nates the town square and is a good place to pay your respects.

The Angas­ton War Memo­r­i­al fea­tures a bronze fig­ure depict­ing the Archangel Michael, mount­ed on pink Angas­ton mar­ble. It’s set in a gar­den that offers anoth­er ide­al place to reflect.

There’s plen­ty of her­itage-list­ed memo­r­i­al gar­dens you can vis­it. The avenue of trees along Alexan­dra Avenue at Rose Park in Ade­laide has the serene feel of a park, and there’s also a bronze memo­r­i­al stat­ue and plaques in trib­ute to the fallen.

The Sol­diers’ Memo­r­i­al Gar­dens at Strathal­byn were designed in the style of a town com­mon where you can sit on the lawn by the riv­er or vis­it the monument.

Lest we forget.

Main image: Alexan­dra Avenue at Rose Park, Ade­laide (image cour­tesy ofJen­ny Scott)

For more infor­ma­tion about these places, or any her­itage-list­ed place, search the reg­is­ter. If you’d like to learn more about some of South Australia’s her­itage places, check out our blog about some of the state’sless­er-known her­itage placesor fol­lowHer­itage SAon Face­book.

This sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed in Novem­ber 2018.