Brooweena and its digger statue

Brooweena, according to Wikipedia, is a small town and rural locality in Fraser Coast Region of Queensland, Australia with a population of 263 as of the 2011 census. It's located 266 km north of Brisbane, on the Maryborough-Biggenden road.  

The railway arrived in 1889, the same year that the Brooweena Post Office opened. The school opened in 1904. A timber mill was set up in 1924. The school is still there (but very small) although I think the timber mill closed a few years ago. It has an Early Settlers Museum run by the Woocoo Historical Society and two war memorials:  a soldier, or 'digger' statue, and the bridge. 

I didn't know any of this before but I was interested, so I kept looking. 

This is the Brooweena 'digger' statue. 

Brooweena War Memorial (Digger). Source: Fraser Coast Regional Council

Brooweena War Memorial (Digger) Panel. Source: Fraser Coast Regional Council

Brooweena War Memorial (Digger) Panel. Source: Fraser Coast Regional Council

The top panel contains a four-line poem. I'd never come across these lines before: 

On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

They come from a much longer poem called "The bivouac of the dead" by Theodore O'Hare (1820-1867), a lawyer, soldier and editor, Mexican War veteran and poet. More about him here. This was a total distraction but very interesting (I'd never even heard of the Mexican War, which took place in 1846-48, more than a decade before the American Civil War).

According to the US Dept of Veterans Affairs website, he wrote the poem to remember the many casualties suffered by the Second Kentucky Regiment of Foot Volunteers at the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847. The poem became very popular and these four lines in particular appeared at national cemeteries all over the US after the Civil War.

This was still on the way to finding the bridge itself, but I already liked this link because Masterton, the nearest big town to Kaiparoro, also has its own 'digger' statue. 

Photo by Brenda Anderson, Creative Commons licence

The Masterton soldier is sometimes called "the untidy soldier" and another version of him appears on the war memorial in Devonport, Auckland. The idea is that he is looking back after battle, with clothes creased and battle-worn and boot laces untied.