There the Cloncurry Shire Council was meeting at Jimberella Hall which may not too noteworthy – though it is good to see the current council re-start an old tradition of meeting in Dajarra once or twice a year.

The centrepiece of the day was the opening of the new Anzac memorial opposite the caravan park.

The project was made possible by $4021 of funding provided by the Queensland Anzac Centenary grants program which supported the delivery of landscaping, white rock structures and a memorial plaque.

Cloncurry Shire Council also put in some money and work and the end project is lovely to see.

Certainly the monument is unmissable if you are driving through town and Cloncurry Mayor Greg Campbell hopes it will encourage more people to stop a while in Dajarra on their way south or north.

The memorial  honours Dajarra’s Indigenous First World War digger Peter Craigie and his surviving relatives including son Terry Craigie and grandsons Joe Rogers and Tom Simmons were there to mark the occasion.

Both Mr Craigie and Mr Rogers spoke at the dedication of the monument and their pride in their relative was obvious.

Kim-Maree Burton told Peter Craigie’s story a few years back in the North West Star.

He was born on Roxburgh Station near Boulia in 1895 and died in Cloncurry Hospital of heart and kidney failure in 1946.

His father Jim Craigie was a stockman and his mother a Pitta Pitta woman.

In 1915, aged 20, he enlisted as a private, 32nd Battalion and just before being sent abroad he married Daisy Cusack in Adelaide. Peter Craigie suffered from the effects of being gassed on the Western Front in the First World War,  one of many Aboriginal soldiers who volunteered but who remained second class citizens on their return.

Discharged in 1919 – an ill man but with no pension – he came back to the North-West where he and Daisy had 10 children while he worked as a drover.

It is good to see him honoured in Dajarra and town now has a great central resource for Anzac Day on Wednesday – Derek Barry