General News
3 September, 2024
Memorial to Duff children awaits repair
The Jane Duff Memorial, a granite obelisk on the side of the road between Natimuk and Goroke in an area known as Sheepwash Reserve, is yet to be restored after its upper section became dislodged.
The memorial relates to one of the Wimmera's best known and loved stories.
It commemorates three children who were lost in dense bush for nine days in 1854 and found alive after Aboriginal trackers from nearby Mt Elgin Station joined the search team.
The saga began when Hannah Duff, the wife of a shepherd farmer at Spring Hill Station, sent her children Jane, Isaac and Frank to gather firewood.
The children became lost and when found had wandered about 80 kilometres through dense bushland.
During their ordeal without food they gathered water by sucking dew from leaves.
Soon after the siblings were found donations poured in from around the world and helped to pay for the monument.
The story of the lost children was later written up by historian Les Blake in a school reader used extensively in Australian schools in the 1960s.
A West Wimmera Shire spokesperson was unable to say whether the damage to the monument was because of wear and tear since its unveiling in 1935 or because of attempts to climb it.
"The upper section is now in storage while the council seeks quotes to reattach the missing section," she said.