Anzac Day - St Mary's church Harefield

The annual service of commemoration and thanksgiving was held at St Mary’s Parish Church, Harefield at 3.00pm on Anzac Day.  The churchyard contains 120 war graves from both world wars; of these 111 are Australian soldiers and one nurse who died at the No. 1 Australian Auxiliary Hospital at Harefield Park during the First World War.  The graves are in a separate plot, known as the ‘Anzac Cemetery’ and earlier, at 9.45am, children from the Harefield Infants’ School continued the tradition of laying flowers on the graves. 

 

Uniquely, the graves in the Anzac cemetery are marked by scroll shaped headstones, chosen by the staff and patients at the hospital. In the centre of the plot stands a memorial obelisk which records that it was erected in 1921 by ‘Sir Francis Newdegate KCMG, late Governor of Tasmania and of Western Australia and Honorary Colonel of the 11th Bn., Commonwealth Military Forces and Mr. Charles Arthur Moresby Billyard-Leake, of Harefield Park’.

 

After the service wreaths were laid on behalf of various organisations and children from the Harefield Junior School together with ‘brownies’ and ‘guides’  laid more flowers on the graves.