Baden-Powell Memorial Oak
Well if something doesn't remind you of the futility of war, this memorial does. Nothing wrong with the lovely oak that is more than 120 years old, but something is truly amiss in who and what it memorialises.
The old oak remembers the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902), the first war in which the as yet unfederated Australian colonies sent troops overseas to fight. It wasn't our fight, but of course in trying to prove we were loyal members of the British Empire, fight we did. And what did this war achieve in the end? A victory for Britain over the Dutch immigrant settlers, the Boers, but a pyrrhic one at best.
For the 20th century saw the introduction to South Africa of a racist regime that virtually enslaved the majority black people, until a long struggle by people like Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko, assisted by an international campaign of embargoes and sanctions, finally broke the back of apartheid. Apartheid was the Boer word for segregation. Well may we remember!
But it is also bizarre that this tree memorialises Colonel Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941), better known around the world as the founder of the Scout movement. That a British soldier with no links to Australia was remembered here at the beginning of Australian Federation tells us as much about the attitudes of white Australians at the time as did the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 (otherwise known as the White Australia policy). This act was designed to turn Australia into a bastion of white privilege in the southern hemisphere.
On this Remembrance Day, November 11, 2025, we do well to remember more than the wars we fought in (often unnecessarily), but also our chequered history of race relations.
www.monumentaustralia.org/themes/people/military/display/...
Baden-Powell Memorial Oak
Well if something doesn't remind you of the futility of war, this memorial does. Nothing wrong with the lovely oak that is more than 120 years old, but something is truly amiss in who and what it memorialises.
The old oak remembers the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902), the first war in which the as yet unfederated Australian colonies sent troops overseas to fight. It wasn't our fight, but of course in trying to prove we were loyal members of the British Empire, fight we did. And what did this war achieve in the end? A victory for Britain over the Dutch immigrant settlers, the Boers, but a pyrrhic one at best.
For the 20th century saw the introduction to South Africa of a racist regime that virtually enslaved the majority black people, until a long struggle by people like Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko, assisted by an international campaign of embargoes and sanctions, finally broke the back of apartheid. Apartheid was the Boer word for segregation. Well may we remember!
But it is also bizarre that this tree memorialises Colonel Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941), better known around the world as the founder of the Scout movement. That a British soldier with no links to Australia was remembered here at the beginning of Australian Federation tells us as much about the attitudes of white Australians at the time as did the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 (otherwise known as the White Australia policy). This act was designed to turn Australia into a bastion of white privilege in the southern hemisphere.
On this Remembrance Day, November 11, 2025, we do well to remember more than the wars we fought in (often unnecessarily), but also our chequered history of race relations.
www.monumentaustralia.org/themes/people/military/display/...