Moreland State School Honour Board

Image courtesy B. Garrett

2837 Moreland State School opened in 1887 with about a hundred pupils. It expanded rapidly and by the 1920s there were nearly two and a half thousand pupils, making it the largest state school in Victoria. (Vision and Realisation, volume 3, p.96)

Not surprisingly, then, a large number of old boys served in WW1, as can be seen by the size of the school’s Honour Board.

As Moreland is on the border of Coburg and Brunswick, some men came from Brunswick and some from Coburg. 

Some, like Rupert Adams, are listed on this Honour Board, on Coburg State School’s Honour Board and on the Coburg Town Hall Honour Board. He is also in the Coburg State School Soldiers Book and the Holy Trinity Roll of Honour. He died in 1920 from TB which he'd contracted during the war.

The Fleiner brothers (Frederick and Leslie) attended Moreland State School, but lived in Coburg. Their family orginally came from Albury where the brothers were born, but by the time of the 1909 electoral roll, they were living in Linda St., Coburg.

Llewellyn Ambler, who was killed in action in June 1918, is remembered in the Memorial Avenue of Trees at Lake Reserve, Coburg, on the Coburg Town Hall Honour Board and on the Moreland State School Honour Board. His widowed mother Lizzie lived at 168 Moreland Road, Coburg West. 

As an aside, Ambler’s sister Milanie served as a WW1 staff nurse, yet did not make it onto any honour boards in either Coburg or Brunswick. Was she overlooked or did the powers that be decide that nurses were not service personnel? Her mother remained in Coburg until well into the 1920s so the family's connection to Coburg was there during the time the memorials were being put together. Besides, many of the men whose names are listed on the Coburg Town Hall Honour Board, for example, had tenuous links to the district, often appearing on Honour Boards because they played sport in the area, or their parents lived there.

So far in my research, Milanie Ambler and Dagmar Dyring are the only Coburg women I have found who went overseas. I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who knows of other women who went overseas, not necessarily as nurses.