Tongala families saluted the dairy farming town’s 100-year plus connection to the armed services on Thursday when a memorial wall was on display for the time at an Anzac Day service.
Portraits of 120 former service men and women are the first faces visitors see on entering the recently refurbished Tongala RSL-Sub branch hall in Mangan St.
Sub-branch president Dale Hateley, who was a member of the regular army and is himself featured on the wall, said there were still family of at least half of the former service men and women featured on the wall in the immediate area.
It was one of several highlights of the Tongala commemoration, which started with the traditional dawn service and a few hours later involved community members joining the sub-branch members to walk the 200 metres from the RSL headquarters to the shire hall.
That march also featured a spectacular flyover by five planes, co-ordinated by pilots Neil Madill and Mark Turner.
Highly respected, and long-time community members Daryl and Jenny Reid are among the 32 active members of the sub-branch who hosted a bumper Anzac Day crowd.
They have a unique connection to the faces on the wall, as both their fathers served during wartime and are both on the wall.
In fact, they were placed alongside one another several months ago by sub-branch treasurer and curator of the wall Chris Andrew.
Private Leslie Percival Reid served in Darwin for 3 1/2 years in his early 20s before returning to his Birchip farm and eventually buying a dairy farm at Tongala..
Four years after coming to Tongala he died, in 1961.
Corporal Ian Winter Norman, Jenny’s father, worked with the Department of Agriculture and joined the war effort through the RAAF, based at Gove.
He was a Radar Technician who kept close watch on the northern extremities of Australia for enemy activity.
Mr Andrew said the decision to create the wall had been made because there were so many portraits of different shapes and sizes.
“We were doing an upgrade last year and all the photos on wall were re-scanned. Then we decided to present them in a more ordered fashion,” he said.
The Tongala RSL sub-branch has had a constant stream of visitors through its doors in recent times, the addition of a Vietnam mural memorial at the end of the building attracting plenty of attention.
Another of the sub-branch members, Allan Wallace, was guest speaker at the Tongala mid-morning ceremony.
He served for more than a decade as a diver with the Australian navy before purchasing a dairy farm at Koyuga and now lives in Echuca.
He is a member of the Tongala and Echuca RSL sub-branches and spoke of his father, Leslie James Wallce, born in 1920, a member of the famed RAAF 450 Squadron.
His father spent four-and-a-half years in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe , providing ground support for the Kittyhawks and other aircraft that drove the Germans out of the occupied territory during World War II.
Students from Tongala Primary School and St Patrick’s Primary School also spoke during the ceremony, in front of a jam-packed town hall.