By CASEY NEILL
THE Dandenong Pioneers Memorial Garden honours the area’s early settlers.
The council built the monument and garden at Stuart and King streets in 1976 and with help from the Dandenong and District Historical Society selected 29 pioneers to honour on the dedication plaque.
Names include those recognisable from Dandenong’s streets: Clow, Lonsdale, Langhorne, McCrae, Foster, Thomas, Wedge, Keys, Power, Kirkham Walker, Kidd and more.
Bluestone quarried from the Churchill National Park, behind the Dandenong Police Paddocks Reserve, forms a cairn on which a tablet rests.
Two large bronze signs with the park’s name are positioned at its boundaries and there was a bluestone sun dial installed in about 1980 to celebrate the Rotary Club of East Dandenong’s 75th anniversary.
Dandenong and District Historical Society’s Carmen Powell in 2004 led a campaign to save the park, earmarked for car parking.
Former society president and Noble Park resident Murial Norris, 92, remembered the park opening.
“I was involved in the research of that memorial and feel honoured that two of my ancestors’ names are recorded on it,” she said.
“It was to be a quiet park with paths, benches and flower beds, etcetera, close to the market where people who did business there could meet friends and rest a while.”
Journal columnist and society member Jack Johnson reminisced about the rural Dandenong of old in a letter about the park in 2004.
He said it was the only small piece of central Dandenong not under bitumen or building and he thought of it as a retreat.
“This small precious piece of land is the only remaining piece of earth and gums in central Dandenong that links us with the past,” he said.
“This treasure this is not just a stone monument to be moved elsewhere, but a living, breathing remnant of our Australian landscape, in which our pioneers and their families and descendants created Dandenong.
“It is part of our history and it is part of our future.”
Mr Johnson said that to cover the park with bitumen and concrete was against all things that brought Dandenong into existence.
The pioneers honoured include:
1837
Joseph Hawdon
Christian L.J. de Villiers.
1838
Reverend James Clow.
James Maxwell.
Captain William Lonsdale.
Alfred Langhorne.
1839
Dr Farquhar McCrae.
J.V.F. Leslie Foster.
William Thomas.
1840
John, Charles and Henry Wedge.
1842
Captain Henry Edward Pulteney Dana.
1844
William Dana.
1845
George Keys.
1846
Thomas Herbert Power.
1847
John Dunn.
1848
George K. Dunbar.
1850
John Wood Beilby.
Edward Kirkham.
1851
H.H. Valiant Roberts.
1852
William Blackmore.
Thomas Cahill.
1855
William Monger.
James Greaves.
Henry Powis.
RC Walker.
Alexander Watt Bowman and Janet Bowman.
1854
Robert Kidd.
1855
John Hemmings.
