One hundred years after the end of World War I the stories of 50 young men from Cloncurry who served in that conflict have been given new life.
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Former Cloncurry resident and local historian Shirley Powley has spent more than a year investigating historical records that reveal more about the men whose names are etched on the town’s cenotaph.
That detective work has resulted in a collection of stories titled Think Kindly of Me.
The name of the collection was inspired by words words written by a young Cloncurry carpenter William McGregor Moore in a letter from the front to his family.
“Every name of the memorial represents a man who lived and breathed the air of the North West,” Mrs Powley said.
Researching the backgrounds of the men listed on the memorial was not as easy as Mrs Powley and her helpers first imagined.
“Whether a name ended up on the memorial was not guaranteed. Often it was up to a soldier’s family to nominate their name, but any family not living in the Cloncurry district may have been unaware that the memorial was to be built,” she said.
“In some cases, young men who had come alone to Australia to work in the mines around Cloncurry had no family in the country at all.”
The names on the Cloncurry War Memorial highlight the diverse social and economic life of Cloncurry, other nearby mining towns and local stations in the early 20th Century.
“Prior to and even after the discovery of ore at Mount Isa in the 1920s, Cloncurry was the hub of a vibrant mining and pastoral region that drew men from across Australia and overseas,” Mrs Powley said.
“The stories from the WW I names on the cenotaph remind us of the importance of towns like Kuridala and Selwyn.
‘It is impossible not to be moved by the sacrifice that these young men made, and it’s important that they are more than names on a Memorial.”
Shirley Powley has donated copies of the Think Kindly of Me collection of stories to Cloncurry schools and the local library, and she hopes that this will be a great resource for the people of the district.