Moe Swamp and the Carlo Catani Memorial

Growing up on the Koo Wee Rup Swamp I was well familiar with Carlo's work there, however, a few years ago we went for a drive north of Trafalgar and came across this monument to Carlo. It's  a good looking memorial, with a list of the names -  the 'Pioneer roll of renown' - of the families that selected land on the Moe Swamp prior to 1914. I do think we could have a memorial for Carlo on the Koo Wee Rup Swamp - of course we have the town of Catani, but is that better than a memorial stone and bronze portrait?  Not sure, I rather like the monument.

Photo taken May 2021.

The Memorial at Trafalgar, on Willow Grove Road,  was erected in 1988 by the Trafalgar Bicentennial Community Committee. There is a small plaque on the north side of the rock which says Erected to commemorate the settlement of the Moe Swamp "Trafalgar Meadows" at the turn of the century. The selectors overcame many difficulties to successfully farm the area. The Moe Swamp was renamed to the more euphonious (1) name of Trafalgar Meadows around 1918. The first reference I can find in the newspapers is in January 1918, when there was a reference to the Trafalgar Meadows Drainage Area (2). The Trafalgar Meadows Drainage Trust came into existence on August 13, 1918 (3). There are numerous references to Trafalgar Meadows in the papers in the 1930s, but very few after that (4).

The bronze memorial plaque was created by sculptor, Stanley Hammond.

Photo taken May 2021. See the photo at the end of this post, taken in 2010, when the plaque had a patina.

The artist responsible for the bronze plaque was Stanley Hammond. The following information comes from Stanley's obituary, written by David Roper, which was published in The Age on March 2, 2000. Stanley Hammond was born on August 1, 1913 in Trentham. He attended Daylesford Technical School and at 17 became an assistant to Orlando Dutton and worked with him on the stone sculptures at the Shrine of Remembrance. In 1933, Stanley began working with Paul Montford, to learn to work in bronze. During the Second World War, he joined the Army and produced accurate scale models of military hardware for recognition purposes. He resumed his career after the War. His works include a bronze of Sir Walter Scott at Ballarat and one of John Batman in Melbourne. He worked with George Allen to carve the 125 ton Victorian Second World War Memorial - Fallen Warrior - which is in the forecourt at the Shrine. In 1970, he created a 3 metre bronze statue of an Australian World War One soldier which was erected in Mont St Quentin, France to commemorate the Second Division. He also created six bronze panels for the entrance to Albert Park Reserve. Stanley died February 1, 2000. 

Interesting that Stanley worked with Paul Montford as it was Paul Montford who created the bust of Carlo at the base of Memoral Clock Tower in St Kilda. You can read about this, here.

Stanley Hammond's signature.

The Pioneer Roll of Renown on the Moe Swamp Memorial

Sadly both these plaques were stolen in September 2024 and all that remains is the rock. This was just a senseless, selfish and and anti-social act and I really hope the Carlo plaque is found as I feel it is unlikely to be replaced in a similar form.

The rock after the plaques were stolen in September 2024.

Photo taken September 2024.

What do we know about the Moe Swamp? I have an article by Lewis Ronald East, engineer with  and later Chairman of  the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, called Swamp Reclamation in Victoria, published in 1935 by the Institute of Engineers, Australia.  This is what he says (inter alia) about the Moe Swamp 

The Moe Swamp, which parallels the Main Gippsland Railway from Darnum to Moe, is approximately 2 miles wide and 11 miles in length. The streams which discharge into the Swamp are the Moe River and the Shady Creek, they drain 79 and 75 square miles of hilly country respectively and other smaller creeks bring the total catchment  to about 250 square miles. The reclamation of the Swamp began in 1887.  East says the 'works proposed and constructed were, however, hopelessly inadequate'. The scheme comprised a main drain through the middle of the Swamp from the Moe River to the Narracan Creek and thence to the Latrobe River and a herring-bone system of minor drains. Around the edges of the Swamp irrigation channels were constructed as well a subsidiary side drains. 

This inadequate work was  not the fault of the Public Works Department, according to East (so that mean's not Carlo's fault!)  but rather the 'Swamp Board' which designed a scheme that would 'merely be one of partial drainage that would enable the land, although subject to floods, to be utilized'.

Upon completion the land was subdivided into holdings from 15 to 150 acres and sold by auction. The first land was sold on December 3 1899 and East said the swamp from end to end was under water! Other works took place and the cost to reclaim 9,000 acres was £83,000 (although East also lists the size of the Swamp as 12,682 acres).Land sales recouped £76, 000. The works turned land that was 'practically useless' into  a very prosperous settlement chiefly devoted to dairying and root crop production.

One of the conditions of settlement was that the farmers had to maintain the drains. 'This they did not do satisfactorily' according to East, so the drainage was taken over by the Narracan Shire and the Trafalgar Meadows Drainage Area was established.

I don't know how much time Carlo spent at the Moe Swamp but here are two reports that put him on the spot.

Report about Catani's visit to the Moe Swamp to attend to the classification of the land.

Warragul Guardian August 29, 1899 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article68740721

In 1902 Catani visited both the Koo Wee Rup and Moe Swamps, with a view to widening the drains.

  West Gippsland Gazette  February 11, 1902  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article68718051

Acknowledgement

I wrote this post in October 2018 and it wasn't until May 2021 that I even wondered who the artist was who created the bronze plaque of Carlo and that was only because, my research colleague, Isaac Hermann, asked me the question. I went for a drive and found Stanley Hammond's signature on the plaque and did some research. Thank you, Isaac, as I believe Artists should be acknowledged for their work, so this is a belated recognition of Stanley Hammond's work on the Carlo memorial.

Footnotes

(1) Adams, John  So Tall the Trees: a Centenary history of the Southern Districts of the Shire of Narracan (Narracan Shire Council, 1978). p. 15.

(2) Narracan Shire Advocate, January 23, 1918, see here.

(3) Adams, op. cit., p. 173. 

(4) Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ -  117 references in the 1930s, four in the 1940s and one in the 1950s.

I took this photo of the memorial plaque in March 2010. Compared to the image, above, 

it seems to have been 'cleaned up' sometime in the last ten years,  as it has lost its patina.