BATTLE OF BRITAIN ‘LACE’
A War Cemetery, located at the entrance to the Belgian Gardens cemetery in Townsville, was proudly established during World War 2 for those ADF members, in the local area, who were lost on active service.
In 1946 the War Cemetery was closed to any further burials with the graves and grounds currently being maintained by the Office of Australian War Graves.
Comments from some Branch members in October 2024 identified that 16 ADF graves, located immediately outside the war cemetery, badly needed refurbishment.
At a branch meeting in October 2024, a proposal was put forward that a restoration project be undertaken by the Townsville Branch to repair these external ADF graves.
At a meeting in June 2025, it was decided that a project leader was needed to run this project.
Branch member, AIRCDRE Tony Jones CSC (Retd), was appointed as the project leader. preliminary research was commenced and an application to the Townsville City Council for approval to carry out the work was submitted.
After the research and approvals were complete, the 20 August 2025 was identified as the commence date for the repairs.
The team assembled for this work was Tony Jones (Project Leader), David Cowie, Mervyn Cowie (roped in by his father David as he was on holidays from Melbourne), Lindsay Gordon and Jeff Mustard. The first stage of the project was to pressure wash the graves to remove any flaky paint or debris and took about three hours to complete. The pressure washers were loaned from the Townsville TPI Association and from branch member Jeff Mustard who supplied his own machine. To ensure the best paint results, the team had to wait until the concrete slabs at the graves were completely dry.
Following a three week break the team reassembled and carried out the final stage by painting the graves. After four hours the painting was complete, and the project finalised with the grave sites looking clean and refreshed. Thank you to local painter, Mr John Ford, who kindly supplied the paint for this project.
Because of the excellent results achieved by the project team, the branch membership decided that to maintain this pristine look, these graves should be inspected annually in July with any reparations being made in August.
