page_title: Graceville Memorial Park
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Graceville Memorial Park / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Graceville Memorial Park grandstand at Graceville, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
context_page_description: Graceville Memorial Park is a heritage-listed park at 173 Oxley Road, Graceville, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was established in 1904. It is also known as Graceville Recreation Reserve and the Sherwood War Memorial. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 5 September 2006.
context_section_description: Graceville Memorial Park, located on a flat, low-lying part of Graceville, was gazetted as the Graceville Recreation Reserve in 1904, but it was referred to as Graceville Memorial Park by 1926. The park was enlarged in July 1979, with the resumption of about 11 perches (280 m²) of vacant, ownerless land (lot 2, RP 70795) for an access way to Churchill Street, south of the park.
  From 1840 to 1859 the peninsula that includes the suburb of Graceville was known as Boyland's Pocket, a run for sheep and cattle. After 1859 the area was subdivided into farms with an average size of about 30 to 40 acres (12 to 16 ha). Maize, potatoes, and bananas were grown, cotton was attempted in the 1860s, and sugar cane was produced until a cold spell in the 1870s. The area was relatively isolated from Brisbane until the railway line from Ipswich crossed the river from Chelmer to Indooroopilly in 1875. Graceville's subdivision for residential housing started during the building boom of the 1880s, and the Graceville railway station was opened in 1886. The Shire of Sherwood was created in 1891, excised from the Yeerongpilly Division (created in 1879).
  From the late 1880s onwards there was an increased interest in Queensland in healthy outdoor recreation, and the flood-prone grassland on which the park was later sited was used as a lacrosse field in the 1890s. The formation of sporting clubs in Queensland led to pressure on local councils to provide facilities, and in May 1904 fourteen acres of this grassland was gazetted as the Graceville Recreation Reserve by the Queensland government. The reserve was vested in the Sherwood Shire Council, to be held in trust for recreation purposes, and the park's primary role since then has been as a leased venue for various team sports, mainly cricket and hockey, but also including soccer, rugby league, and Australian Rules football. A croquet club and a tennis club were also established. Other users included the Graceville Methodist Sunday School, which held classes in a ground shed on the reserve between November 1914 and November 1917, and a bridge club, which was formed at the croquet club premises around 1929. Aviators may have also used the park as an aerodrome in the 1920s.
  The outpouring of grief in Australia that accompanied the deaths, and overseas burial, of 60,000 service people in World War I, led to a period of memorial building across the nation. A memorial was unveiled in Graceville Recreational Reserve on 28 November 1920 by Lieutenant E.M. Little, chairman of the local R.S.S.A.L.I.A. Funded by public subscriptions, the memorial was designed by Mr I Bennet, and was erected by Andrew Lang Petrie Monumental Works, at a cost of £225. On a copper scroll made by Ernest Gunderson, 51 soldiers and one nursing sister were included in a list of Sherwood Shire's fallen. 265 men, and seven nurses had enlisted from the Shire. Between 1985 and 1996, a low sandstone wall was built around the monument, and three flagpoles were set to the west. Plaques representing each of the three armed services have also been added to the north, east and west sides of the monument since 1985. In 2004 sandstone pavers replaced the bitumen that had been laid around the monument.
  Before the unveiling of the memorial, 52 memorial trees were also planted. Bunya pines and cotton trees were set in a single row along Plumridge Street and Appel Street (then called Graceville Parade) to commemorate the dead. Today, 29 bunya pines and 11 cotton trees remain. Some locals claim that there were memorial plaques on these trees, but that the plaques had gone by the 1950s. In addition to the memorial trees on the western and northern edges of the park, an avenue of bauhinias, cabbage tree palms and Chinese elms was planted either side of a drive from Oxley Road to the memorial. A single line of figs and camphor laurels continued west from the memorial towards Appel Street. The eastern section of the drive had a bitumen surface by 1961, but the western section of the memorial drive, from the memorial to Appel Street, has reverted to grass
caption: Grandstand, 2014
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