Friday 29th of March 2024

The Forgotten Memorial

(Published in full, the poem I wrote for that Petition last week)

As World War Two came to an end, those who'd lost Loved One and Friend

Petitioned Woodville Council that they set aside land

A place In Living Memory, the love for their Dead for all to see

and future people warned of the cost of War's Hand.

 

As decades went past, people came to remember

and the memory to always preserve

Crosses and plaques were laid in sad honour

Some scattered their ashes on St Clair Reserve

Seventy years since the locals requested

and parkland is valuable real estate

St Clair is to fall to a housing development

when never intended to suffer this fate.

 

Questions were asked, how the land had been taken,

An Inquiry was started in our Upper House

with no verdict due before the election

And you, Mr Premier, are as quiet as a mouse.

Problems with land deals now surround you

Roofs you no doubt want to thatch

Regarding land, let us remind you

St Clair is in your Electoral Patch

 

The contracts bringing residents

are daily further far-away

Those houses planned for St Clair Park

No longer need to be built today

Until the truth of of the deal's revealed

"Moratorium" is our call

Show the landswap just and clean

before the first trees fall?

 

The boss of the War Memorial

and the warriors who returned 

have asked to save St Clair

Jay, please show them all is fair

before the Park is gone.

and the lessons that they learned

are lost for Time Eternal.