This year, as in the past four years, the Bellinger River RSL Sub Branch will conduct a Remembrance Day service at the Lone Pine Memorial in Piggott Park.
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Members of the public wishing to attend the Remembrance Day service on Saturday November 11 are asked to be assembled by 10.45am in readiness for the minute’s silence at 11am.
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the death of SGT Matthew Locke, MG in Afghanistan and the Reverend Zoe Everingham will be performing a dedication of a plaque for Matthew during the Remembrance Day service.
The Lone Pine Memorial was created in this quiet locality to provide an alternative to the busy Cenotaph site for commemorative activities.
The development of the memorial was a collaboration between the Sub Branch and Bellingen Shire Council. Former Sub Branch president, Brian Mortimer and his wife Kathy, also a Sub Branch member, drove the original idea for the project and also donated the Aleppo pine that forms the centerpiece of the memorial. Council provided the commemorative garden and plaque.
The original "Lone Pine" stood on Plateau 400, Gallipoli Peninsular Turkey in 1915. This tree was a sole survivor of a copse of trees that had been felled by Turkish soldiers who used the timber to reinforce and cover their entrenchments in this locality. The single tree was a prominent landmark and the ANZACs knew the area as “Lone Pine”. This tree was obliterated during the battles of August 1915; however, pinecones that had remained attached to the cut branches over the trenches were retrieved by two Australian soldiers, Keith McDowell and Benjamin Smith and returned to Australia. These cones produced seedlings of Aleppo pine that have provided memorial plantings across Australia from the 1920s until the present day.
