"LEGERWOOD" a Legerwood Travel Page by tiabunna

The day was as bleak, wet and miserably cold as it had promised to be. After extended discussions on whether to proceed we headed for Legerwood, encouraged by the large tree carving on the St Helens – Scottsdale Road (above) pointing us in the right direction.

Until 1936, Legerwood didn’t even exist as a place name: it was just a cluster of houses, a sawmill, and a railway station – known simply as Ringarooma Road (population 270 even now). But the name change followed a community project, begun in October 1918, to commemorate the soldiers from the little settlement who had failed to return from World War 1.

Realistically, what had the “Great War” to do with Legerwood? With 100 years of hindsight, I would suggest the answer should have been “almost nothing” – it involved countries and issues on the diametrically opposite side of the world. To understand the relevance, we need to abandon our modern cynicism and try to see the world from the perspective of the Australian population of 1914.

In 1914, the Australian colonies had newly federated and most Australians still considered themselves “British”. So successful was the ‘call to arms’ in selling the idea that “The Mother Country” needed assistance, that Australia remained unique among WW1 combatants in having an entirely volunteer army. In total, about 8% of the population were recruited. For little Tasmania that meant about 13,000, and 16% of those lost their lives. The British Generals were only too happy to use ‘colonials’ as cannon fodder and, pro-rata of the population, the ANZAC forces (Australia and New Zealand) had the highest losses on the Allied side.

Back to Legerwood. That ceremony in 1918 involved planting an avenue of trees, one for each local soldier who would not be returning. It was a fine idea, adopted widely throughout Australia. But time rolls along and, with age, the trees became diseased. In 1999 the region’s Council reluctantly decided they needed to go, for public safety.

The locals had a better idea and recruited a chainsaw tree carver. Each tree was carved to represent the soldier or event it memorialised, with the task completed in 2007. Memories preserved, the village now has a magnificent lasting memorial to its fallen.

The rain continued as we wandered along, inspecting the carvings and reading the plaques. Accepting that weather was doing nothing for the quality of my photos, I carefully kept the camera dry. But I did find that I needed to wipe a few drops of moisture from my eyes – must have been that bloody rain!