Sergeant Calder Woodburn was a Goulburn Valley boy, who’d enrolled in and graduated from Dookie Agricultural College as a sheep and wheat farmer before his enlistment in the Royal Australian Air Force and deployment to fight in World War II.
Sadly, he never returned to the Goulburn Valley after being killed in action, in France, in 1942.
His father, Arcadia farmer James Louis Fenton (Fen) Woodburn, began planting trees along the Goulburn Valley Hwy as soon as the war ended in 1945, to create a living memorial to his son and in remembrance of other district servicemen.
He diligently planted Australian species of trees for four years, in a zig-zagged pattern, finishing his tribute in 1949.
It is now known as the Calder Woodburn Memorial Avenue, a Heritage-listed war memorial, also recognised for its environmental value.
“It’s unique because one man did all the work,” Calder Woodburn Memorial Avenue Advisory Committee community representative Jan Sinclair said.
The double avenue of 2457 eucalypts stretches south for 20km from just near the bridge past the Shepparton Racecourse in Kialla to the Murchison and Euroa turn-off.
A granite memorial — unveiled by the Shepparton RSL sub-branch in 1995 — was moved from its original location at a picnic area near Karramomus on the Goulburn Valley Hwy before that section became a freeway, to the Calder Woodburn Rest Area on the northbound side of the new section of freeway.
“A lot of people in the Goulburn Valley don’t know it’s there and that all of the men from the Goulburn Valley (who died in World War II) are listed there,” Ms Sinclair said.
“It lists the fallen by their service — air force, navy, army, and there’s a story about Mr Woodburn on it.”
After 80 years, the avenue is deteriorating and the committee is working hard on grant applications to update signage along the avenue and trial a restoration of vegetation.
“We would remove the undergrowth that’s not supposed to be under where the trees are,” Ms Sinclair said.
“Signage at both ends is very poor, people passing through don’t know what it is.”
The committee has had new signs designed in anticipation of being granted funding to have them made.
Prior funding allowed 54 missing or damaged name plates of the original 100 to be replaced in December 2024.
In June this year, students from Grahamvale Primary School and Kialla West Primary School joined committee members to plant a selection of shrubs and bushes at the rest area to enhance the area and encourage more people to stop and take in the history.
Ms Sinclair said the Shepparton RSL had played a continued role in the memorial since it began.
RSL president Bob Wilkie said up until COVID, the committee was in “full flight”, but the pandemic saw things come to a bit of a standstill.
Now, he says, it’s back to its pre-COVID strength.
“We’ve got such a good committee working on it,” Mr Wilkie said.
“I’m delighted they’re all so passionate.
“We are struggling with government funding because there’s not much money around, but we’ll get there in the end.”
Mr Wilkie has been involved with the Shepparton RSL since 2005 when many World War II veterans were still active and involved, but now he says the club has just one remaining member who served in the conflict that took place between 1939 and 1945.
“It’s quite sad, there’s not many of our World War II soldiers still going,” Mr Wilkie said.
“We’ve lost a lot in the past five years. You’d have to be around 102 now to have served in World War II.”
A new Calder Woodburn Memorial Avenue committee was instated in September.
Members include community representatives Ms Sinclair, deputy chairperson Julie Jackson, Mark Reynolds and secretary Terri Cowley, Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority’s Allison McCallum, Goulburn Valley Environment Group’s John Pettigrew, Greater Shepparton City Council’s Jennifer Brewis and councillors Stephen Threlfall and Paul Wickham, Greater Shepparton Heritage Advisory Committee’s George Ferguson, Shepparton RSL’s Bob Wilkie, Strathbogie Shire councillor Fiona Stevens, and Regional Roads Victoria’s Joanne Kowalczyk.
Ms Sinclair said they would stay active in keeping the focus on the memorial so its history was not lost, as it held educational, historical and environmental value.