User:Sellindge1947/sandbox

The Arthur Kenny Avenue was a avenue of trees originally planted in 1917 beside a 700 metre long looping track at Mount Xavier, Fussell Street in East Ballarat. From the 1920s onwards its link to the former Ballarat Orphanage became progressively “lost". Through the efforts of a group from the Ballarat community headed by Frank Golding, historian and former resident of the Orphanage, and Sharon Guy, Heritage Coordinator, Ballarat Child & Family Services, its story was "rediscovered" and commemorated at a well-attended event on December 9 2012. It is now a place where visitors can reflect on the more than one hundred former residents of the Ballarat Orphanage who served in the First World War a century ago, and their families left behind and who later lived with the effects of war service. For the moderately fit, walk the 700metre looping track through regrowth pine plantation and see occasional stumps or fallen trunks of trees that once lined the Avenue of Honour. The 105 Commemorative plaques on logs from original avenue cypress trees can also be viewedw at Heritage Centre, Community and Family Services Ballarat (CAFS), 4 Market Street, Ballarat whwre a Commemorative Booklet is also avialable. http://www.cafs.org.au/heritage-centre.

=Significance=

Historian Frank Golding has written: "There is no other avenue of honour which is so distinctive in honoring such a cohort of soldiers. It is unique." Avenues of Honour were a distinctively Australian mode of commemorating young men who had served and died during the First World War (1914-8). Nione were planted in Ballarat and many others in Victoria. Close assessment of the evidence gatyhered about the 105 former orphanage residents who served (of whom 20 were to died in battlke) shows that the Orphanage ‘old boys’ volunteered earlier in the War and at a younger age than Australian men at large – and, sadly, had a higher casualty rate. Many of these young soldiers had no parents, or if they did, family relationships were so disrupted that no one but the Orphanage knew of their enlistment – or even their death where that occurred, as it did for 20 of the 105 boys.

The orphanage superintendednt was Arthur Kenny, an Irish-born. Kewnny wrote in 1918 that: "Still more of our boys have left these shores to fight for king and Empire. Many never will return, having given their lives in the grandest work of all, defending their country and fighting for Right. Others have returned – some with limbs missing, others with health impaired. All, both those going and those returning, have managed to visit their old home and be either speeded on their way with good wishes or be welcomed home. We honor them every one." (From the Ballarat Orphanage Annual Report, 1917-1918)

The Avenue of Honour was created from virgin land by the then current residents and staff as a memorial to the boys from the Orphanage. The Governor-General of the day, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, opened the Avenue and planted the first tree. The Victorian Premier, Sir Alexander Peacock, and many other dignitaries were in attendance. A feature of the Avenue was a “permanent look-out (now long gone) erected on the summit of the mount” (Ballarat Courier, 4 August 1917, p.5).

In the 1920s the Orphanage lost control of the land on which the Avenue was built and, as a consequence, it fell into a state of disrepair and has been all but lost to history. The children in the Orphanage in the time of the Second World War were not aware of the Avenue even though they made frequent walking forays to Mount Xavier. Its existence is a revelation to the current generation, therefore its ‘re-discovery’ is a matter of great satisfaction.

In 2009 the Australian Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition together both Houses of the Australian Commonwealth Parliament issued an apology to the ‘Forgotten Australians’ – those many thousands who grew up in Australian orphanages in the twentieth century whose history had been hitherto hidden or not acknowledged. Speakers in the Parliament stressed the importance of maintaining the heritage by encouraging the erection of plaques or heritage centres on or near the sites of the former institutions. The Mount Xavier site is near to the former Ballarat Orphanage Farm famous in its time around Australia as a training ground for capable and disciplined farm workers. The nearby former site of the Orphanage is being developed at the present time and there is local interest in seeing the Orphanage association remembered.

The original old Orphanage building was demolished in 1965. Other buildings currently remain (including the Kenny Memorial Toddlers Block) and the old site is earmarhed for development (2014)

. The rich social and contextual history that is attached to the orphanage often evokes strong emotional responses for those associated with the home. The Arthur Kenny Avenue of Honour will become part of the Orphanage Trail booklet, which is currently being developed by CAFS to offer tangible places to visit for those revisiting their orphanage past. --Sellindge1947 (talk) 05:53, 22 July 2014 (UTC)