The 100th anniversary of the planting will be celebrated on Friday with the opening of the Avenues of Honour exhibition at 10am.

The Memorial Trees in Laurieton were the first such memorials in the British Commonwealth and encompassed two streets forming the shape of a cross. Robert Longworth proposed the tree planting and it was quickly taken up by the community. 

Mr Longworth, as the town’s leading timber miller, donated the timber to build guards around the young trees. He also donated the labour to dig the 157 holes for the trees. The trees honoured the men who volunteered to serve and one, planted on the corner adjacent to the School of Arts, was in honour of Lord Kitchener.

The trees planted were Camphor Laurels, Norfolk Island pines, one Bunya pine, Brush Box and Forest Red Gum. Some of the soldiers planted their own trees before going off to war, like Ernest Rose who planted his outside the family’s Robertson-Rose General Store on August 19, 1916. 

By this time Laurieton’s first casualty, Private Colin Arnott, had been killed at Fromelles. 

Within months Private Robert Laurie died at Messines, France on June 12, 1917. In a ceremony at home on August 17, 1918 the wooden tree guard of “The Laurie Tree” was replaced with a Victorian-style wrought iron fence. The site became his surrogate grave and a plaque the headstone. The plaque, shows the date “1914 – ...” with no final year shown as the war was yet to finish, however the plaque was never completed. 

The plaque and fence were removed some time between 1968 and 1978. Part of the fence was cemented into the graves of the PS Prince of Wales, shipwrecked in 1862, at Prince of Wales Point. The graves mark the resting place of engineer James Stuart of the Prince of Wales and two seamen from the Diamantina who drowned when crossing the bar. Pilot William’s wife Francis was added soon after. 

The plaque was cut from the fence and reappeared more recently in the Laurie Memorial Park in Laurieton.

Over the last 100 years many of the trees succumbed to age or lightning strikes. Others have had to make way for infrastructure and electricity poles. When camphor laurels were listed as a noxious weed, the preservation of these trees as memorials has presented a dilemma for council and the historical society.

Mr Bowman hopes a formal plan of management for the 33 remaining trees, and the suitable replacement of trees which died or were removed, can be created. 

Information in this article was sourced from the Camden Haven Historical Society.